You can always pick fight over Java is better than c or c is better than java. its tried a logt on the tech mailing list of freenet project.
There is a whiterose C++ implementation of freenet.(development is frozen there however 8) i think this is not picked up before 1.0
But above all freenet now requires:
-documentation. (no coding
-testing procedures. a test set or something like that. (you can code the tests in the language of your choice.....)
-more nodes in the network. (just download it)
-better client software. you can write a client in any language you want.
That was exactly the kind of link i was NOT looking for. One AC who replied did find something however.
your link basically says:
-buzztalk.(webservices trie tier bla bal bla)
-Get.NET studio, read the docs.
But then i asked for this bij allowing a link into MS
I dare you.
on
.NETly News
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Please post a link, possibly one from Microsoft.com that explains what.net is. I failed to find it a few months ago. All i found was buzz and stuff you could buy. Some link that is useful for a developer beyond "XML and VB and can do everything and more productive. "
P.S. Anyone else amazed by the fact that there is a place called Chevy Chase, Maryland?
And that someone MS worked/lobbied there? their 2001 site says::
"he Village contains about 200 single-family residences and a few religious and professional
establishments."
In the article they are talking about this readahead problem in the kernel. Just something they found. You can work arround it simply by setting you readahead to a higher value. This is not ideal for everyone.
Re:Slashdotted already?
on
SuSE 7.3 vs XP
·
· Score: 3, Informative
OK, then we have only the article subject:
-Everyone who thinks XP is best post on the left.
-Everyone who thinks Linux suse with patch xxx.xx is just as fast post right.
-Everyone who thinks DMCA is bad post on an other article. 8)
By the way, the article loads, but some link on the page fails. just press cancel and the text is there. or disable images and it goes fine
Don't mod this up(i am already karma capped), just post a good mirror
------------
Home >
Publications >
HP World >
Lab Report
Volume 5 Issue 2
Wizards and Windows
XP and Linux Go Head
to Head on Two HP OmniBook 6000s
by Jack Fegreus
While releasing Windows NT 4.0,
Redmond's Hexenmeisters were already dreaming of code convergence
with Win9x. But such black magic often goes beyond what apprentice sorcerers can handle.
Long, long, long before that
upstart Harry Potter, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote "Der
Zauberlehrling," a poem about a sorcerer's apprentice. Just
over 100 years later, that poem would inspire Paul Dukas to compose
his tone poem, the "Sorcerer's Apprentice." And some
50 years after that, Walt Disney, Leopold Stokowski and Mickey
Mouse would forever immortalize the tale of the hapless student
of the black arts in Fantasia.
It's a tale now playing out in
real life with the release of Windows XP, which for the first
time extends the reach of Windows NT technology into the consumer
market via the Home Edition. Like all good Gothic tales, this
one begins with the protagonist being driven from his home in
a swirl of deep and murky politics. As the Hexenmeister of DEC
West walked away from the Prism debacle, he turned his attention to the even bigger mess with OS2 at Microsoft. Once again, the
wizard worked his magic, and there arose an extraordinary, modern
IT operating system that evolved into the utterly rock-solid
Windows 2000.
Nonetheless, the success and
extraordinary adoption of Windows NT technology by IT is hardly
resounding compared to the mass consumer market for games and
other entertainment. And so the keepers of Windows 9x lusted after the stability of Windows NT just as Goethe's sorcerer's apprentice longed for the power of his teacher.
The Linux revolution greatly
exacerbated the Windows 9x problem as the master's thesis project
of Linus Torvalds turned first into a cult phenomenon and then
into a successful commercial OS. Now, with open source rising
up as the business-alliance tsunami of the century, Microsoft
for the first time in a very long while faces both fundamental technology and business model challenges.
The Convergence Challenge
The technical challenges to converging
Win9x and WinNT were prodigious. Just consider the polar-opposite, fundamental assumptions that underpin both architectures. Win9x
was designed for just a single hardware architecture: Intel.
As a result, it was also designed to permit driver developers
to tweak the underlying hardware right down to the iron. And
that's just what all those makers of the video, sound and game
port cards that proliferate in the home computer space did.
On the other hand, Windows NT
was born in an IT market that was trying to rationalize an explosion
in RISC technology that seemed to be racing away from Intel.
The problem was not how to get down to the iron but, rather,
how to avoid getting near it. The solution was to create a Hardware
Abstraction Layer (HAL) that would prevent any software--especially
drivers--from directly manipulating physical hardware. In this
way, Windows NT could be easily ported to Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC,
as well as Intel. It is, therefore, not without some irony that
Windows XP runs on Intel, while Linux runs on everything from
handheld PDAs to classic mainframes.
So the first major technical
hurdle was to create a unified driver model. To gauge Microsoft's
success with this part of the challenge, OpenBench Labs set up
a pair of identical HP OmniBook 6000 systems, which are representative
of typical high-end business laptops. Each system was powered
by an Intel Pentium III CPU clocked at 700 MHz. Each was configured
with 256 MB of PC133 SDRAM and an IBM TravelStar Ultra ATA disk
drive. In addition, technicians further complicated the equation
by setting up three hardware configurations for each laptop:
standalone, a simple port-replicator dock and a fully equipped
dock with embedded SCSI and ATA adapters.
On one OmniBook 6000, lab technicians
installed Windows XP Pro, the successor to Windows 2000 Professional
for business client computers. On the other OmniBook 6000, they
installed SuSE Linux 7.3, which is the latest distribution from
SuSE and is built on the Linux 2.4.10 kernel and version 2.2.1
of the KDE desktop.
Good News for SuSE
This HP World Lab Report
will be looking at SuSE 7.3 and RedHat 7.2 in much greater detail
in a future review. For now, simply running the various OpenBench
Labs benchmark programs on each OS allowed technicians to gauge
how closely Linux and the open source business model have evolved
in providing OS distributions with equivalent performance at
a fraction of the cost.
As a side note, SuSE 7.3 installed
effortlessly and, more important, flawlessly on the OmniBook.
No need for an exhausting "installfest" with the latest
version of SuSE--if you have a DVD drive, the installation is
downright trivial.
A lot of this good news is a
direct result of a number of enhancements to YaST2, SuSE's configuration
tool. A number of the noteworthy additions include a Logical
Volume Manager for partitioning an active system and ISaX for carrying out windows configuration while the X Windows system
is active. (Microsoft has touted similar features in Windows
NT since the launch of the OS.) For IT, there is support for
a second journaling file system, JFS, as well as ReiserFS, which
has long been a SuSE staple. There is also a new module for software
RAID support. Not to slight home users--after all, the big seller
for Microsoft will be Windows XP Home--SuSE has included a setup
for TV cards and the automatic detection and configuration of
IDE-based CD burners.
CPU Benchmark
With both laptop systems configured,
lab personnel were ready to calibrate the OmniBook's base CPU,
memory and streaming I/O performance under each OS. Technicians began with their CPU benchmark, which executes 34 numerically
intensive kernels, both integer and floating point. The results
here were very much in line with OpenBench Labs' first tests
of the Linux 2.4 kernel near the beginning of the year.
At that time, HP found the performance
gap between Linux and Windows 2000 to have been closed to about
18 percent from previous observations, which had been in the
range of 20 to 25 percent. Once again, the difference between
the geometric means for the 34 kernels was on the order of 18 percent, with Windows XP Pro clocking in at 240 and SuSE 7.3
clocking in at 203. Nonetheless, within a 95 percent confidence
interval, performance was almost identical. This is a function
of more variability in performance among the 34 kernels when
run on Linux. The variability is especially prevalent on the
high end since a number of kernels execute significantly faster
on Linux than Windows XP.
On SuSE 7.3, technicians utilized
a logical volume formatted with the Reiser File System (ReiserFS),
which is a journaled, extent-based file system. In theory, a
journaled file system should have an edge in performance when
checking the file during boot-up and when issuing writes. Reads
are supposedly more vulnerable to degradation due to fragmentation
of the extents. Nonetheless, for small block transfers, Linux
now held an advantage over Windows XP Pro. For sequential disk
I/O, it was Windows XP Pro that rapidly converged on SuSE 7.3,
which delivered throughput on the order of 15 MB per second as
read sizes grew larger than 8 KB.
I/O Benchmark
The final benchmark characterizes
the system's capabilities for transaction-processing database
operations. The fundamental goal of the load benchmark is to
determine how many I/O requests per second a given disk subsystem
can reasonably support.
The OpenBench Labs' load benchmark
suite systematically launches an increasing number of I/O-intensive
daemon processes that read data in 8-KB blocks from a physical partition rather than from a file. I/O operations are performed on both hot-spot regions, which simulate database indices, and
randomly across the volume, which simulates a large database.
When the average access time of all of the processes exceeds
100 milliseconds, the I/O subsystem is deemed saturated and the
benchmark terminates with a report to the user.
As the graph shows, large volumes
of asynchronous I/O requests are currently a weakness in Linux
performance. On the OmniBook's simple ATA drive, Windows XP Pro
was able to deliver 70 I/Os per second with an average access
time of only 40 milliseconds. In comparison, Linux was able to deliver only about 32 I/Os per second. With hardware RAID and
storage on a SAN, this performance differential worsens dramatically.
The problem lies squarely within
the block I/O layer of the Linux kernel. In the current version
of the Linux kernel, 2.4.x, the I/O subsystem works with a single
spinlock, called io_request_lock. As a result, in a TP scenario
with hundreds of independent I/O requests queuing up, this spinlock serializes operations that have no dependencies and creates a
significant bottleneck.
This is all being addressed by
those working on the I/O subsystem in the 2.5 kernel now under
development. The new block I/O code eliminates the central spinlock
and provides each request queue with its own lock. In addition, the new kernel will work more with page structures, which can
be particularly advantageous when handling clustered requests
from the raw I/O layer.
The Dangers of Wizardry
The labs' experience in actually
using Windows XP Pro was not unlike that of Goethe's hapless
student. The problems all stemmed from Microsoft's "soft"
problem in converging Win9x with WinNT: How do you give naive
home users an OS as powerful as WinNT and expect them to properly configure and manage the system? The answer from Redmond's Zauberlehrlingen
was to create automatic wizards to take care of all the problems.
These wizards should work nicely in a simple SOHO environment;
however, in a complex, heterogeneous business network, they can become a very dangerous bunch.
A prime example of a wizard run
amuck is the upgraded Connect-to-the-Internet wizard. Once a
very innocuous fellow, this wizard has been put on steroids in
Windows XP. The new wizard looks for multiple Ethernet connections,
such as the built-in 100-Mbit port and the wireless Ethernet
PC Card that are in each OpenBench Labs OmniBook 6000. Once a wizard finds more than one NIC, the fun really starts. Without a moment's hesitation, the wizard assigns one address to all of the NICs and proceeds to bridge the offending LAN segments.
Imagine the effects of that cavalier action as the desktop PC
tries to build bridging tables for the LAN. On HP's network,
which has a number of Macs running AppleTalk in the art and production
departments, all of the Macs were instant goners.
While dramatic, that was the
least of the problems. At least that could be fixed by blowing
up the bridge. Not all of the wizardry was so easily reversible.
On each laptop, technicians had installed AT&T WorldNet for
dialup Internet connectivity while on the road. All configurations
were explicitly set to "Never dial," since most of
the time these systems are used in the office with a LAN connection. Unfortunately, Windows XP, quite unlike Windows 2000, treats
"Never dial" as merely a suggestion that can be ignored.
Whenever a networking application is launched, the OS may--or
may not--decide to launch the dialup application.
Another annoying gotcha for business
users is the dropping of support for Netscape-style plug-in modules
in the XP version of Internet Explorer 6.0. Just try to download
a PDF file from any site on the Web. It's easy as long as you right-click on the link and choose the option to "Save target as." The alternative is to make Opera your default Web browser.
Unfortunately there are even
more bundled add-ons, such as the home movie maker and the MS
Passport Messenger app, that make no sense whatever on a business
laptop and that you can't get rid of no matter how hard you try. Compounding the annoyance factor of these indelible programs
is the need to conserve disk space with Windows XP.
One of the really useful add-ons
for IT is the ability to checkpoint files under Windows XP. Once
again, however, there is a problem with introducing a sophisticated
IT tool to home users. Once again, XP is back to the mystical wizards. Worse yet, the checkpoint wizard, which should be on
steroids, is on sedatives. The only parameter that can be set
for this important function is the maximum amount of disk space
that will be made available for this feature to consume. When
the system creates checkpoints and when the system purges those
checkpoints is pure black magic on Windows XP.
Not-so-simple Solutions
For Goethe's young student, salvation
from the golem brooms came only upon the return of the great
sorcerer. Only the sorcerer knew how to stop the brooms in their
tracks. For Windows XP Pro users, the solution is not quite so
simple. To avoid the chaos of having a robust WinNT system that
is as quirky as Win9x, your best hope is to exorcise every automated
wizard that can be found.
That solution, however, raises
an intriguing issue concerning Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
for Windows versus open source systems. Until now, conventional
wisdom held that Windows wizards were a key factor in holding
down TCO by countering the initial licensing costs with lower
maintenance costs and lower skills requirements for the maintainers. OpenBench Labs' initial foray into the unconventional world of Windows XP puts that conventional wisdom about TCO into serious
question.
Thanks for your mirror. If you do this again (please please please keep doing this, google does not cache images)
you can create a link in slashdot by using plain html:
< a href = "
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mish/swg/" > here </a>
results in :
here
Making a link like this will prevent/. to create spaces in links.
-You troll, by pointing out someone is a troll.
-If you react to a troll, the troll succeeded. (Damn, i just reacted to a troll!)
-I am very happy you are moderated funny instead of interesting.
Ahh, the mark of someone trolling for karma. We all know the tricks: Point out karma is not important for you, Just my opinion, Link or post a copy of the google cache.
But did you know that we have far more official taps per habitant than in america? And that is for th official taps.
There are story's (ettienne U. ) of unofficial taps & phones lying next to to the phone so the police by accidenct could listen in to homes.
No officially we are not doing this in holland. 8)
Re:Having trouble with 2.4.17, should I get this?
on
2.5.4 Kernel Out
·
· Score: 2
There is a lot more in the changelog now, but this is only because a new tool is used to maintain the changelog.
If the nopentium option helps, stick there. If you want performance inprovements try:
-Enable dma by playing with hdparms.
-Try some 2.4.17 patch that promises improvement. (low latency patch is still available for the 2.14 tree, but will not be maintained as it is included in 2.5 now.)
-Buy more RAM 8-)
But I have an idea. Develop a system that implements the exact same interface as X but does no marshalling/demarshalling. Pixels can be written directly to the framebuffer.
The details should be implemented somewhat different, and i think in the end you will end up like windows NT3.5 vs 4.0,
In windows 4.0 the GDI was tied more to the kernel then before: more speed (no context switch for draing at the screen). Disadvantage: Bugs in implementation allow to bring down the screen=system. Hey they did not do it right the first time (highcolor bugs)
So DOS the hell out off those servers and make it gpl software!
I wonder who modded that down...
That is not so hard. It contains the word DOS, and that triggers the "oops i am mature" nature of moderators. That is why i posted without my +1 bonus. It was meant as funny.
In the real world a 180 days DOS attack would be very hard to execute, and the GPL'ed software would not hold it's licensence into court.
Anology:
I doubt that anything you sign with a gun against your head, where you can prove you had a gun agianst you head will hold up in court.
n the event that the Open Logging servers cease to function for 180 days, BitMover has written into the license that the software shall be licensed under the GPL.
So DOS the heel out off those servers and make it gpl software!
checking the size of a jpg file would not work. maybe an uncompressed jpg file would contain the information. A very small change in the original picture could lead to very much change in the resulting bytes of the jpg file.
but try seaching for webcam motion detector on google and you will find some useful stuff.
Amd competition. more numbers.
on
Intel's Big Chip
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Now that you mention AMD. It has been roumoured last week all over the net that intel has a backup plan, an P4 with 64bit extenstions
by the way, the amd hammer is expected to 105 mmm^2 on 130 nanometer (.13).
the current amd MP (palomino) has a die size of 129mm on.18.
the original P4 has a die size of 217mm and is now at 150 mm^2.(with a bigger cache)
Note that the original article does mention the 424 size is on.18 and the next generation is on.13. note that this can make a differce of a factor 2 (13^2/18^2= 0.52)
Slashdot Mirror
Do you know your weight in finland is more than on the equator.
But then to complete this myth:
Do you know a drain flushes the other way round 10 meters from the other way of the equator. (if you do not beleive me ask bart simpson)
that right , sell karma.
High id, karma = 50. any bids?
but then remember, karma is just a number.
Or name it 486-Pro
Everthing was better then.....
I think you are talking about the speed of electricty, which is much slower than the speed of light.
By the way the speed of light in matter (glass) is slower that the speed of light in vacuum.
And to answer your question: Yes.
You can always pick fight over Java is better than c or c is better than java. its tried a logt on the tech mailing list of freenet project.
There is a whiterose C++ implementation of freenet.(development is frozen there however 8) i think this is not picked up before 1.0
But above all freenet now requires:
-documentation. (no coding
-testing procedures. a test set or something like that. (you can code the tests in the language of your choice.....)
-more nodes in the network. (just download it)
-better client software. you can write a client in any language you want.
other suggestions:
An easier way might to buy a puppy.
Making babies is also fun.
Or reviews of linux 2.5.x.prex
which we all know is not complete, it is very much beta.
That was exactly the kind of link i was NOT looking for. One AC who replied did find something however.
.NET studio, read the docs.
your link basically says:
-buzztalk.(webservices trie tier bla bal bla)
-Get
But then i asked for this bij allowing a link into MS
Please post a link, possibly one from Microsoft.com that explains what .net is. I failed to find it a few months ago. All i found was buzz and stuff you could buy. Some link that is useful for a developer beyond "XML and VB and can do everything and more productive. "
hmm, might be a good one for ask slashdot.
As a negative:
It uses encryption, if the use of encryption is made illegal, just because, running a freenet node may be illegal.
Specailly if you know that (YOUR) freenet node can contain stuff that is VERY illegal and unacceptable.
That was the point of the article if you ask me.
Oops. did not know where maryland was. But i bet you do not know to find helmond, brabant.
Nice userid.
The proposed licensing is more like it works for CD's now. Philips (and sony) get a (very) small amount for every cd pressed.
You are talking about content. that is more like "The RIAA get a % of every song made"
Or am i wrong?
P.S. Anyone else amazed by the fact that there is a place called Chevy Chase, Maryland?
And that someone MS worked/lobbied there? their 2001 site says::
"he Village contains about 200 single-family residences and a few religious and professional
establishments."
In the article they are talking about this readahead problem in the kernel. Just something they found. You can work arround it simply by setting you readahead to a higher value. This is not ideal for everyone.
OK, then we have only the article subject:
-Everyone who thinks XP is best post on the left.
-Everyone who thinks Linux suse with patch xxx.xx is just as fast post right.
-Everyone who thinks DMCA is bad post on an other article. 8)
By the way, the article loads, but some link on the page fails. just press cancel and the text is there. or disable images and it goes fine
Don't mod this up(i am already karma capped), just post a good mirror
------------
Home >
Publications >
HP World >
Lab Report
Volume 5 Issue 2
Wizards and Windows
XP and Linux Go Head
to Head on Two HP OmniBook 6000s
by Jack Fegreus
While releasing Windows NT 4.0,
Redmond's Hexenmeisters were already dreaming of code convergence
with Win9x. But such black magic often goes beyond what apprentice sorcerers can handle.
Long, long, long before that
upstart Harry Potter, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote "Der
Zauberlehrling," a poem about a sorcerer's apprentice. Just
over 100 years later, that poem would inspire Paul Dukas to compose
his tone poem, the "Sorcerer's Apprentice." And some
50 years after that, Walt Disney, Leopold Stokowski and Mickey
Mouse would forever immortalize the tale of the hapless student
of the black arts in Fantasia.
It's a tale now playing out in
real life with the release of Windows XP, which for the first
time extends the reach of Windows NT technology into the consumer
market via the Home Edition. Like all good Gothic tales, this
one begins with the protagonist being driven from his home in
a swirl of deep and murky politics. As the Hexenmeister of DEC
West walked away from the Prism debacle, he turned his attention to the even bigger mess with OS2 at Microsoft. Once again, the
wizard worked his magic, and there arose an extraordinary, modern
IT operating system that evolved into the utterly rock-solid
Windows 2000.
Nonetheless, the success and
extraordinary adoption of Windows NT technology by IT is hardly
resounding compared to the mass consumer market for games and
other entertainment. And so the keepers of Windows 9x lusted after the stability of Windows NT just as Goethe's sorcerer's apprentice longed for the power of his teacher.
The Linux revolution greatly
exacerbated the Windows 9x problem as the master's thesis project
of Linus Torvalds turned first into a cult phenomenon and then
into a successful commercial OS. Now, with open source rising
up as the business-alliance tsunami of the century, Microsoft
for the first time in a very long while faces both fundamental technology and business model challenges.
The Convergence Challenge
The technical challenges to converging
Win9x and WinNT were prodigious. Just consider the polar-opposite, fundamental assumptions that underpin both architectures. Win9x
was designed for just a single hardware architecture: Intel.
As a result, it was also designed to permit driver developers
to tweak the underlying hardware right down to the iron. And
that's just what all those makers of the video, sound and game
port cards that proliferate in the home computer space did.
On the other hand, Windows NT
was born in an IT market that was trying to rationalize an explosion
in RISC technology that seemed to be racing away from Intel.
The problem was not how to get down to the iron but, rather,
how to avoid getting near it. The solution was to create a Hardware
Abstraction Layer (HAL) that would prevent any software--especially
drivers--from directly manipulating physical hardware. In this
way, Windows NT could be easily ported to Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC,
as well as Intel. It is, therefore, not without some irony that
Windows XP runs on Intel, while Linux runs on everything from
handheld PDAs to classic mainframes.
So the first major technical
hurdle was to create a unified driver model. To gauge Microsoft's
success with this part of the challenge, OpenBench Labs set up
a pair of identical HP OmniBook 6000 systems, which are representative
of typical high-end business laptops. Each system was powered
by an Intel Pentium III CPU clocked at 700 MHz. Each was configured
with 256 MB of PC133 SDRAM and an IBM TravelStar Ultra ATA disk
drive. In addition, technicians further complicated the equation
by setting up three hardware configurations for each laptop:
standalone, a simple port-replicator dock and a fully equipped
dock with embedded SCSI and ATA adapters.
On one OmniBook 6000, lab technicians
installed Windows XP Pro, the successor to Windows 2000 Professional
for business client computers. On the other OmniBook 6000, they
installed SuSE Linux 7.3, which is the latest distribution from
SuSE and is built on the Linux 2.4.10 kernel and version 2.2.1
of the KDE desktop.
Good News for SuSE
This HP World Lab Report
will be looking at SuSE 7.3 and RedHat 7.2 in much greater detail
in a future review. For now, simply running the various OpenBench
Labs benchmark programs on each OS allowed technicians to gauge
how closely Linux and the open source business model have evolved
in providing OS distributions with equivalent performance at
a fraction of the cost.
As a side note, SuSE 7.3 installed
effortlessly and, more important, flawlessly on the OmniBook.
No need for an exhausting "installfest" with the latest
version of SuSE--if you have a DVD drive, the installation is
downright trivial.
A lot of this good news is a
direct result of a number of enhancements to YaST2, SuSE's configuration
tool. A number of the noteworthy additions include a Logical
Volume Manager for partitioning an active system and ISaX for carrying out windows configuration while the X Windows system
is active. (Microsoft has touted similar features in Windows
NT since the launch of the OS.) For IT, there is support for
a second journaling file system, JFS, as well as ReiserFS, which
has long been a SuSE staple. There is also a new module for software
RAID support. Not to slight home users--after all, the big seller
for Microsoft will be Windows XP Home--SuSE has included a setup
for TV cards and the automatic detection and configuration of
IDE-based CD burners.
CPU Benchmark
With both laptop systems configured,
lab personnel were ready to calibrate the OmniBook's base CPU,
memory and streaming I/O performance under each OS. Technicians began with their CPU benchmark, which executes 34 numerically
intensive kernels, both integer and floating point. The results
here were very much in line with OpenBench Labs' first tests
of the Linux 2.4 kernel near the beginning of the year.
At that time, HP found the performance
gap between Linux and Windows 2000 to have been closed to about
18 percent from previous observations, which had been in the
range of 20 to 25 percent. Once again, the difference between
the geometric means for the 34 kernels was on the order of 18 percent, with Windows XP Pro clocking in at 240 and SuSE 7.3
clocking in at 203. Nonetheless, within a 95 percent confidence
interval, performance was almost identical. This is a function
of more variability in performance among the 34 kernels when
run on Linux. The variability is especially prevalent on the
high end since a number of kernels execute significantly faster
on Linux than Windows XP.
On SuSE 7.3, technicians utilized
a logical volume formatted with the Reiser File System (ReiserFS),
which is a journaled, extent-based file system. In theory, a
journaled file system should have an edge in performance when
checking the file during boot-up and when issuing writes. Reads
are supposedly more vulnerable to degradation due to fragmentation
of the extents. Nonetheless, for small block transfers, Linux
now held an advantage over Windows XP Pro. For sequential disk
I/O, it was Windows XP Pro that rapidly converged on SuSE 7.3,
which delivered throughput on the order of 15 MB per second as
read sizes grew larger than 8 KB.
I/O Benchmark
The final benchmark characterizes
the system's capabilities for transaction-processing database
operations. The fundamental goal of the load benchmark is to
determine how many I/O requests per second a given disk subsystem
can reasonably support.
The OpenBench Labs' load benchmark
suite systematically launches an increasing number of I/O-intensive
daemon processes that read data in 8-KB blocks from a physical partition rather than from a file. I/O operations are performed on both hot-spot regions, which simulate database indices, and
randomly across the volume, which simulates a large database.
When the average access time of all of the processes exceeds
100 milliseconds, the I/O subsystem is deemed saturated and the
benchmark terminates with a report to the user.
As the graph shows, large volumes
of asynchronous I/O requests are currently a weakness in Linux
performance. On the OmniBook's simple ATA drive, Windows XP Pro
was able to deliver 70 I/Os per second with an average access
time of only 40 milliseconds. In comparison, Linux was able to deliver only about 32 I/Os per second. With hardware RAID and
storage on a SAN, this performance differential worsens dramatically.
The problem lies squarely within
the block I/O layer of the Linux kernel. In the current version
of the Linux kernel, 2.4.x, the I/O subsystem works with a single
spinlock, called io_request_lock. As a result, in a TP scenario
with hundreds of independent I/O requests queuing up, this spinlock serializes operations that have no dependencies and creates a
significant bottleneck.
This is all being addressed by
those working on the I/O subsystem in the 2.5 kernel now under
development. The new block I/O code eliminates the central spinlock
and provides each request queue with its own lock. In addition, the new kernel will work more with page structures, which can
be particularly advantageous when handling clustered requests
from the raw I/O layer.
The Dangers of Wizardry
The labs' experience in actually
using Windows XP Pro was not unlike that of Goethe's hapless
student. The problems all stemmed from Microsoft's "soft"
problem in converging Win9x with WinNT: How do you give naive
home users an OS as powerful as WinNT and expect them to properly configure and manage the system? The answer from Redmond's Zauberlehrlingen
was to create automatic wizards to take care of all the problems.
These wizards should work nicely in a simple SOHO environment;
however, in a complex, heterogeneous business network, they can become a very dangerous bunch.
A prime example of a wizard run
amuck is the upgraded Connect-to-the-Internet wizard. Once a
very innocuous fellow, this wizard has been put on steroids in
Windows XP. The new wizard looks for multiple Ethernet connections,
such as the built-in 100-Mbit port and the wireless Ethernet
PC Card that are in each OpenBench Labs OmniBook 6000. Once a wizard finds more than one NIC, the fun really starts. Without a moment's hesitation, the wizard assigns one address to all of the NICs and proceeds to bridge the offending LAN segments.
Imagine the effects of that cavalier action as the desktop PC
tries to build bridging tables for the LAN. On HP's network,
which has a number of Macs running AppleTalk in the art and production
departments, all of the Macs were instant goners.
While dramatic, that was the
least of the problems. At least that could be fixed by blowing
up the bridge. Not all of the wizardry was so easily reversible.
On each laptop, technicians had installed AT&T WorldNet for
dialup Internet connectivity while on the road. All configurations
were explicitly set to "Never dial," since most of
the time these systems are used in the office with a LAN connection. Unfortunately, Windows XP, quite unlike Windows 2000, treats
"Never dial" as merely a suggestion that can be ignored.
Whenever a networking application is launched, the OS may--or
may not--decide to launch the dialup application.
Another annoying gotcha for business
users is the dropping of support for Netscape-style plug-in modules
in the XP version of Internet Explorer 6.0. Just try to download
a PDF file from any site on the Web. It's easy as long as you right-click on the link and choose the option to "Save target as." The alternative is to make Opera your default Web browser.
Unfortunately there are even
more bundled add-ons, such as the home movie maker and the MS
Passport Messenger app, that make no sense whatever on a business
laptop and that you can't get rid of no matter how hard you try. Compounding the annoyance factor of these indelible programs
is the need to conserve disk space with Windows XP.
One of the really useful add-ons
for IT is the ability to checkpoint files under Windows XP. Once
again, however, there is a problem with introducing a sophisticated
IT tool to home users. Once again, XP is back to the mystical wizards. Worse yet, the checkpoint wizard, which should be on
steroids, is on sedatives. The only parameter that can be set
for this important function is the maximum amount of disk space
that will be made available for this feature to consume. When
the system creates checkpoints and when the system purges those
checkpoints is pure black magic on Windows XP.
Not-so-simple Solutions
For Goethe's young student, salvation
from the golem brooms came only upon the return of the great
sorcerer. Only the sorcerer knew how to stop the brooms in their
tracks. For Windows XP Pro users, the solution is not quite so
simple. To avoid the chaos of having a robust WinNT system that
is as quirky as Win9x, your best hope is to exorcise every automated
wizard that can be found.
That solution, however, raises
an intriguing issue concerning Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
for Windows versus open source systems. Until now, conventional
wisdom held that Windows wizards were a key factor in holding
down TCO by countering the initial licensing costs with lower
maintenance costs and lower skills requirements for the maintainers. OpenBench Labs' initial foray into the unconventional world of Windows XP puts that conventional wisdom about TCO into serious
question.
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Thanks for your mirror. If you do this again (please please please keep doing this, google does not cache images)
/. to create spaces in links.
you can create a link in slashdot by using plain html:
< a href = "
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mish/swg/" > here </a>
results in :
here
Making a link like this will prevent
-You troll, by pointing out someone is a troll.
-If you react to a troll, the troll succeeded. (Damn, i just reacted to a troll!)
-I am very happy you are moderated funny instead of interesting.
Ahh, the mark of someone trolling for karma.
We all know the tricks: Point out karma is not important for you, Just my opinion, Link or post a copy of the google cache.
What's your point again?
What was your point ac?
Well if i look at his CV I think we will end up with C++. Not to mention he names it twice in the languas he looked at.
Next question:
what runtime libraries? What IDE?
But did you know that we have far more official taps per habitant than in america? And that is for th official taps.
There are story's (ettienne U. ) of unofficial taps & phones lying next to to the phone so the police by accidenct could listen in to homes.
No officially we are not doing this in holland. 8)
There is a lot more in the changelog now, but this is only because a new tool is used to maintain the changelog.
If the nopentium option helps, stick there. If you want performance inprovements try:
-Enable dma by playing with hdparms.
-Try some 2.4.17 patch that promises improvement. (low latency patch is still available for the 2.14 tree, but will not be maintained as it is included in 2.5 now.)
-Buy more RAM 8-)
But I have an idea. Develop a system that implements the exact same interface as X but does no marshalling/demarshalling. Pixels can be written directly to the framebuffer.
The details should be implemented somewhat different, and i think in the end you will end up like windows NT3.5 vs 4.0,
In windows 4.0 the GDI was tied more to the kernel then before: more speed (no context switch for draing at the screen). Disadvantage: Bugs in implementation allow to bring down the screen=system. Hey they did not do it right the first time (highcolor bugs)
So DOS the hell out off those servers and make it gpl software!
I wonder who modded that down...
That is not so hard. It contains the word DOS, and that triggers the "oops i am mature" nature of moderators. That is why i posted without my +1 bonus. It was meant as funny.
In the real world a 180 days DOS attack would be very hard to execute, and the GPL'ed software would not hold it's licensence into court.
Anology:
I doubt that anything you sign with a gun against your head, where you can prove you had a gun agianst you head will hold up in court.
n the event that the Open Logging servers cease to function for 180 days,
BitMover has written into the license that the software shall be licensed under the GPL.
So DOS the heel out off those servers and make it gpl software!
checking the size of a jpg file would not work. maybe an uncompressed jpg file would contain the information. A very small change in the original picture could lead to very much change in the resulting bytes of the jpg file.
but try seaching for webcam motion detector on google and you will find some useful stuff.
Now that you mention AMD. It has been roumoured last week all over the net that intel has a backup plan, an P4 with 64bit extenstions
.18.
.18 and the next generation is on .13. note that this can make a differce of a factor 2 (13^2/18^2= 0.52)
os.opinion article
news.com
by the way, the amd hammer is expected to 105 mmm^2 on 130 nanometer (.13).
the current amd MP (palomino) has a die size of 129mm on
the original P4 has a die size of 217mm and is now at 150 mm^2.(with a bigger cache)
Note that the original article does mention the 424 size is on