Now it can be a big plus to have gui with mouse to config a raid card with out having to boot a full os.
Hahahaha! Really? Being able to use the mouse is such a big advantage?
Still, if you really want to use the mouse to configure things, no need to throw out the BIOS. I remember old (early 1990s) Compaq BIOSes that had GUIs, mouse and all. IIRC, they looked kind of like Windows 3.x.
The only reason UEFI is overdue is not because they are slow in development. It's simply the fact that UEFI isn't an open standard. If UEFI was made an open standard every new computer in a month would all have UEFI.
So, how come every new computer doesn't have Open Firmware?
I use an old Pentium III (old one that was just laying around) that pulls just a little power, and is orders of magnitude more powerful than any consumer router you could get.
I would re-check the numbers on that. Many routers being recommended in this discussion have clock speeds of over 600 MHz. I don't know how that compares to P3 MHz in terms of performance on router tasks, but I doubt your old P3 is orders of magnitude more powerful.
As far as little power goes, most consumer routers I've seen, including the ones I've owned, use just a few Watts for the entire system, including power supply inefficiencies. I doubt your P3 system gets that low.
So, while I don't disagree with rolling your own router so that you get all the flexibility you want, I am not convinced a P3 would be a big win in terms of processing power, and I am sure it would be a big loss in terms of electricity usage.
Perhaps, but it is surprisingly difficult to find good info on this. I mostly blame this on hardware manufacturers releasing hundreds of models, instead of just a few that work. But what you will find in practice is that free operating systems haven't been tested on most of them, many don't achieve the rated speeds (many not even anywhere near), much of the software has reliability issues, and much of this hasn't been posted to the Internet yet. So, you ask around. Sounds like a good idea to me.
Also, as I am going to be in the market for a new router myself, I am very interested in this thread.
I currently have a TP-Link TP-WR1043ND, which I am happy with. It runs OpenWRT, supports Gigabit Ethernet, and has a USB port. Sadly, transferring files over SSH only achieves about 1 MB/s, due to the CPU getting saturated. It has no problems saturating my Internet connection, though. In short, it does what I want it to do, and it's cheap.
Maemo runs X and native Linux apps on smartphones and tablets. I love it. Sadly, it hasn't really caught on.
Seems like it wouldn't be hard, just need an X.org or whatever with framebuffer support. X.org might be too big though, a stripped down non-networkable X might offer better performance.
"Today, the FBAR service is developed and maintained by two full time engineers, but according to the most recent metrics, itâ(TM)s doing the work of approximately 200 full time system administrators"
Which doesn't really tell anyone anything. Who expresses amount of work done in terms of number of full time workers? In case anyone had failed to get the message, the above shows that such a metric isn't very useful. Perhaps the message here is that 2 really effective people can do the work of 200 not so effective people - but that has been known for a long time. Still, the more this message is spread, the better.
So, what are the reasons California is one of the largest economies in the world, and why wouldn't you want to run a software company in South Carolina?
Most people were first introduced to the theory of global warming by Al Gore
I don't believe it. Not unless they have been in coma since before the 1980s. Public awareness of climate change issues predates Al Gore's campaign by a long time.
Why? Because he is reasonable and says that a system that is GNU + Linux is GNU/Linux, whereas a BSD is not GNU/BSD, even if it does use the GNU compiler collection?
I don't get the problem people have with this. The GNU project provides a Unix-like (and I would say, nicer than many actual Unices) userland. You can use it with a variety of different kernels (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_variants) and the experience of using the GNU software will be much the same. Operating systems based on the GNU userland are customarily referred to as GNU/. GNU/Linux is one instance of this.
With Linux, you also get the option of using different userlands than GNU. Android is an example of this, as are a number of installations I have performed using Linux and Busybox. These would be Linux, but not GNU. Hence, calling them GNU/Linux would be inappropriate.
In common usage, "Linux" is often used to refer to GNU/Linux systems, but, technically, Linux is only the kernel, and much of the personality of an operating system is determined by the userland. For example, Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 and Android 2.3 are quite different and applications written for one will likely not work on the other. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD 6.0 would be similar to Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 - even though/kFreeBSD isn't based on Linux and Android is.
Long story short, ideology and popularity aside, "GNU/Linux" makes technical sense. Then again, I may be "full of it", too.
By the way, regarding your statement that RMS is trying to ride on Linux's popularity, you may want to consider that Linux is riding on the (previously developed) GNU system. I think both are true, and this is mutually beneficial.
I would also add to this that since Squeeze, backports.debian.org is now officially supported (eg: we do security maintenance for packages there, and the security team is involved)
Cool! I didn't know that. Thanks for pointing that out!
What's so wrong about using backports.debian.org? Is it so hard to add one line to your/etc/apt/sources.list? Why is this sub-optimal?
Optimal would obviously be it "just working" without having to keep multiple versions of the same package on your system. Whenever you have to change something from default, it makes it ever so slightly more annoying to do a reinstall, or set up the OS for someone else.
Alright, but having it "just working" would require the distro to correctly guess which software you want to update, to what version, at what time, and what software to keep stable. I am not sure this can be gotten right for you alone, let alone for all users and potential users of the distribution.
With Debian stable, all software is kept stable by default, but you get the option to explicitly update specific packages to specific versions (by using additional repositories, backports being one option). To me, this seems pretty much as close as we can get to the ideal of "minimal maintenance, but I want one or a few packages to be more up to date".
On the other hand, every time I look, AMD has the features I want in cheap CPUs that work in cheap motherboards, whereas for Intel, various features require paying quite a lot extra. In the past, this has applied to x86-64 (AKA AMD64 and EM64T), power management, support for ECC memory, and support for virtualization (AMD-V/VT-x).
Every time, picking the features I wanted in a CPU with low power consumption, going with AMD has been far cheaper. The only times I have ended up choosing Intel have been when they were the only choice - this applies to a number of laptops I have bought, and one machine I specced at work where we looked to get as many instructions per second as we could afford - though I don't know if it would have ended up being faster than a similarly priced AMD machine, because we ended up building neither.
For as long as I can remember, Intel have been in the lead when you really want cutting edge technology (excepting a few times when AMD has surprised the world), but AMD is what you go with if you want the most value for your money in an x86/x86-64 processor. Has this changed?
Since the time overpriced tablets hit the stores, on-line and off, I can't keep wondering why people fee the urge, buying these overpriced gizmos. The netbook, which was on the same boat few years ago, is now, obtainable around $200 price point
The $200 price point for netbooks isn't a new thing. It was what started off the netbook boom in 2007. For a time, "netbook" was defined by some as "subnotebook which you can just buy because it is so cheap".
So, why people are buying tablet at 4-500 dollars price points is beyond my understanding.
I reckon it is because that is the price point for the Apple iPad, and the iPad is currently the gold standard for what a tablet should be like. If you want, you can certainly buy tablets for 200 dollars or less. However, it won't be an iPad, and it won't be from Apple.
So, where do you think all that Rare Earth Metals and stuff the solar panels comes from? Where do you think the energy to make them comes from? Unicorns and Leprechauns?
The answer is, of course: it depends.
There are various materials that solar cells may be made from, and the environmental impact is bound to differ based on the materials used.
As for the energy required to make the panels, I think we all know that there are various ways to generate electricity. You can get the environmental impact arbitrarily low by using more environmentally friendly sources.
One study found that, using 2004-2006 technology for manufacturing solar cells and the then current mix of energy sources, solar panels reduce harmful air emissions by 89% compared to the current energy mix.
So, to run with that data point (and I know I'm oversimplifying here), if we were to stop doing any more research into better options, and simply convert everything to solar power using technology that is already deployed on a commercial scale, we will kill 89% less unicorns and leprechauns. Yes, we would still harm the environment. But doesn't a reduction by almost a factor 10 sound worth it?
Proposing a Lisp dialect as the "official" extension language of GNU is a stillborn idea. It might find favour with the small fanbase of Lisp hackers but nobody else.
That is probably why Guile is the official extension language of GNU. After all, RMS made Lisp machines before he started GNU.
The GNU manifesto mentions C and Lisp as the two languages in which system programming will be supported. Emacs is also written in Lisp.
Also, to those who think that Guile didn't become more popular because people don't like the parentheses: there is or at least was support for C-like syntax as well. Personally, I think whether or not extensions take off depends on other factors: how well they are supported by the base application, and how much value they add. Many extensions have been written for Emacs and Firefox, and they are a substantial part of the experience of using those programs. I don't think the syntax of the extension language (Emacs Lisp and JavaScript+XML, respectively) has much to do with it.
How does it stack up against X-Plane or MS Flight Sim?
Earlier versions of FlightGear (I haven't used 2.4.x yet) aren't as good as X-Plane or MS Flight Simulator when it comes to graphics or ease of use on a PC. The overall experience has tended to be more polished with X-Plane or FS. I don't know about non-PC (e.g. actual flight simulator hardware), and, again, I don't know about FlightGear 2.4. The other thing is that X-Plane and FS have the better graphics if you can get them to work at all - X-Plane, for example, only gives me white rectangles instead of textured surfaces, probably because of issues with my video card driver. FlightGear works fine on the same setup, though. All in all, YMMV.
As for accuracy of the simulation, I can't really judge, because I don't have a lot of experience flying actual planes. I am told X-Plane, FS, and FlightGear are all very good, though. And certainly all of them are used in professional simulation environments.
Does it support things like the Saitek Pro Flight Yoke, Pedals and switch panels?
The page you linked to doesn't really back up that claim. It says right at the top that this page lists only software written in C++. Sure, there is a lot of software being developed in C++, but there is also a lot of software being developed in C (e.g. Linux, most of GNU, most projects on Freshmeat), Java (a lot of commercial development, and a growing number of open source projects, too), and don't forget PHP and JavaScript, which are widely used for programming for the Web (e.g. by Google and Facebook).
Of the applications I use on a daily basis, only my web browser (over time, this has been Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror and Firefox) is written in C++. Most of the rest is written in C, with a handful of things written in Perl and a handful in Ruby. Then again, I don't use Windows. It seems to me that C++ and C# are much bigger there than in the Unix world.
Am I incorrect when I say that the root DNS servers are controlled by the US and all other servers are programmed to follow them? Switching to a non-US DNS server would be silly since the other server only mirrors the root server. What I think we need is a decentralized DNS equivalent.
There used to be several alternative DNS roots. One of the more notable ones was Open Root Server Network, which was created as a compatible alternative to ICANN's roots because of concerns about ICANN ultimately being controlled by the US government. Several ISPs actually used to use ORSN's services, but ORSN shut down in 2008.
There line between code and data is rather fuzzy. In the end, both are big lumps of bytes that will be processed by some software, which will then cause your computer to take certain actions. The problem is that the software processing the bytes will often happily allow things to happen that would generally be considered undesirable (e.g. sending spam).
In my view, the problem of malware is so persistent, because the vast majority of software vendors have an insecure by default approach. Software is developed in unsafe languages (allowing exploits like buffer overruns), runs on operating systems that will happily run any code they are told to run, and we are trying to secure this mess by patching the holes after they are found.
If we wrote software in languages that were memory-safe, this would prevent attacks such as embedding executable code in data files, and getting it to run through buffer overruns. If we used whitelists for software that is allowed to run (I imagine this like the repositories in Debian/Ubuntu/..., where you can choose your own trusted providers), this would stop untrusted code from running.
This would bring us closer to secure by default, where you would have to do extra work to make your system insecure, instead of having to constantly fight an uphill battle to keep up some semblance of security.
Slashdot Mirror
Now it can be a big plus to have gui with mouse to config a raid card with out having to boot a full os.
Hahahaha! Really? Being able to use the mouse is such a big advantage?
Still, if you really want to use the mouse to configure things, no need to throw out the BIOS. I remember old (early 1990s) Compaq BIOSes that had GUIs, mouse and all. IIRC, they looked kind of like Windows 3.x.
The only reason UEFI is overdue is not because they are slow in development. It's simply the fact that UEFI isn't an open standard. If UEFI was made an open standard every new computer in a month would all have UEFI.
So, how come every new computer doesn't have Open Firmware?
This is one of the coolest things I have seen for a long time! I'm really impressed. Congratulations, guys!
How many wake-up calls like this do organizations the world over need before they start doing computer security right?
Just had to get that off my chest.
I use an old Pentium III (old one that was just laying around) that pulls just a little power, and is orders of magnitude more powerful than any consumer router you could get.
I would re-check the numbers on that. Many routers being recommended in this discussion have clock speeds of over 600 MHz. I don't know how that compares to P3 MHz in terms of performance on router tasks, but I doubt your old P3 is orders of magnitude more powerful.
As far as little power goes, most consumer routers I've seen, including the ones I've owned, use just a few Watts for the entire system, including power supply inefficiencies. I doubt your P3 system gets that low.
So, while I don't disagree with rolling your own router so that you get all the flexibility you want, I am not convinced a P3 would be a big win in terms of processing power, and I am sure it would be a big loss in terms of electricity usage.
Having said that, really slashdot? Slow day?
Perhaps, but it is surprisingly difficult to find good info on this. I mostly blame this on hardware manufacturers releasing hundreds of models, instead of just a few that work. But what you will find in practice is that free operating systems haven't been tested on most of them, many don't achieve the rated speeds (many not even anywhere near), much of the software has reliability issues, and much of this hasn't been posted to the Internet yet. So, you ask around. Sounds like a good idea to me.
Also, as I am going to be in the market for a new router myself, I am very interested in this thread.
I currently have a TP-Link TP-WR1043ND, which I am happy with. It runs OpenWRT, supports Gigabit Ethernet, and has a USB port. Sadly, transferring files over SSH only achieves about 1 MB/s, due to the CPU getting saturated. It has no problems saturating my Internet connection, though. In short, it does what I want it to do, and it's cheap.
Maemo runs X and native Linux apps on smartphones and tablets. I love it. Sadly, it hasn't really caught on.
Seems like it wouldn't be hard, just need an X.org or whatever with framebuffer support. X.org might be too big though, a stripped down non-networkable X might offer better performance.
If it were non-networkable, it wouldn't be X. But stripping it down hardly seems necessary; you can run Linux + X.org in 64 MB RAM (and I'm sure it can be done in less), and most smartphones have a lot more memory than that.
"Today, the FBAR service is developed and maintained by two full time engineers, but according to the most recent metrics, itâ(TM)s doing the work of approximately 200 full time system administrators"
Which doesn't really tell anyone anything. Who expresses amount of work done in terms of number of full time workers? In case anyone had failed to get the message, the above shows that such a metric isn't very useful. Perhaps the message here is that 2 really effective people can do the work of 200 not so effective people - but that has been known for a long time. Still, the more this message is spread, the better.
So, what are the reasons California is one of the largest economies in the world, and why wouldn't you want to run a software company in South Carolina?
The summary mentions ultra-low prices from the likes of Samsung. What, exactly, does this mean? What counts as an ultra-low price?
Most people were first introduced to the theory of global warming by Al Gore
I don't believe it. Not unless they have been in coma since before the 1980s. Public awareness of climate change issues predates Al Gore's campaign by a long time.
Other than that, though, interesting scenario.
The OP never said that he doesn't download illegal things himself, but suggested that he wouldn't do so without protection.
I.e. using his roommate's computer as a proxy.
IMHO, RMS is full of it here
Why? Because he is reasonable and says that a system that is GNU + Linux is GNU/Linux, whereas a BSD is not GNU/BSD, even if it does use the GNU compiler collection?
I don't get the problem people have with this. The GNU project provides a Unix-like (and I would say, nicer than many actual Unices) userland. You can use it with a variety of different kernels (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_variants) and the experience of using the GNU software will be much the same. Operating systems based on the GNU userland are customarily referred to as GNU/. GNU/Linux is one instance of this.
With Linux, you also get the option of using different userlands than GNU. Android is an example of this, as are a number of installations I have performed using Linux and Busybox. These would be Linux, but not GNU. Hence, calling them GNU/Linux would be inappropriate.
In common usage, "Linux" is often used to refer to GNU/Linux systems, but, technically, Linux is only the kernel, and much of the personality of an operating system is determined by the userland. For example, Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 and Android 2.3 are quite different and applications written for one will likely not work on the other. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD 6.0 would be similar to Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 - even though /kFreeBSD isn't based on Linux and Android is.
Long story short, ideology and popularity aside, "GNU/Linux" makes technical sense. Then again, I may be "full of it", too.
By the way, regarding your statement that RMS is trying to ride on Linux's popularity, you may want to consider that Linux is riding on the (previously developed) GNU system. I think both are true, and this is mutually beneficial.
you are not some freak of nature who is one in a million
If it's one in a million, there are still thousands of people like that on Earth. Who's to say he isn't one of them?
I would also add to this that since Squeeze, backports.debian.org is now officially supported (eg: we do security maintenance for packages there, and the security team is involved)
Cool! I didn't know that. Thanks for pointing that out!
What's so wrong about using backports.debian.org? Is it so hard to add one line to your /etc/apt/sources.list? Why is this sub-optimal?
Optimal would obviously be it "just working" without having to keep multiple versions of the same package on your system. Whenever you have to change something from default, it makes it ever so slightly more annoying to do a reinstall, or set up the OS for someone else.
Alright, but having it "just working" would require the distro to correctly guess which software you want to update, to what version, at what time, and what software to keep stable. I am not sure this can be gotten right for you alone, let alone for all users and potential users of the distribution.
With Debian stable, all software is kept stable by default, but you get the option to explicitly update specific packages to specific versions (by using additional repositories, backports being one option). To me, this seems pretty much as close as we can get to the ideal of "minimal maintenance, but I want one or a few packages to be more up to date".
On the other hand, every time I look, AMD has the features I want in cheap CPUs that work in cheap motherboards, whereas for Intel, various features require paying quite a lot extra. In the past, this has applied to x86-64 (AKA AMD64 and EM64T), power management, support for ECC memory, and support for virtualization (AMD-V/VT-x).
Every time, picking the features I wanted in a CPU with low power consumption, going with AMD has been far cheaper. The only times I have ended up choosing Intel have been when they were the only choice - this applies to a number of laptops I have bought, and one machine I specced at work where we looked to get as many instructions per second as we could afford - though I don't know if it would have ended up being faster than a similarly priced AMD machine, because we ended up building neither.
For as long as I can remember, Intel have been in the lead when you really want cutting edge technology (excepting a few times when AMD has surprised the world), but AMD is what you go with if you want the most value for your money in an x86/x86-64 processor. Has this changed?
Since the time overpriced tablets hit the stores, on-line and off, I can't keep wondering why people fee the urge, buying these overpriced gizmos. The netbook, which was on the same boat few years ago, is now, obtainable around $200 price point
The $200 price point for netbooks isn't a new thing. It was what started off the netbook boom in 2007. For a time, "netbook" was defined by some as "subnotebook which you can just buy because it is so cheap".
So, why people are buying tablet at 4-500 dollars price points is beyond my understanding.
I reckon it is because that is the price point for the Apple iPad, and the iPad is currently the gold standard for what a tablet should be like. If you want, you can certainly buy tablets for 200 dollars or less. However, it won't be an iPad, and it won't be from Apple.
So, where do you think all that Rare Earth Metals and stuff the solar panels comes from? Where do you think the energy to make them comes from? Unicorns and Leprechauns?
The answer is, of course: it depends.
There are various materials that solar cells may be made from, and the environmental impact is bound to differ based on the materials used.
As for the energy required to make the panels, I think we all know that there are various ways to generate electricity. You can get the environmental impact arbitrarily low by using more environmentally friendly sources.
One study found that, using 2004-2006 technology for manufacturing solar cells and the then current mix of energy sources, solar panels reduce harmful air emissions by 89% compared to the current energy mix.
So, to run with that data point (and I know I'm oversimplifying here), if we were to stop doing any more research into better options, and simply convert everything to solar power using technology that is already deployed on a commercial scale, we will kill 89% less unicorns and leprechauns. Yes, we would still harm the environment. But doesn't a reduction by almost a factor 10 sound worth it?
Proposing a Lisp dialect as the "official" extension language of GNU is a stillborn idea. It might find favour with the small fanbase of Lisp hackers but nobody else.
That is probably why Guile is the official extension language of GNU. After all, RMS made Lisp machines before he started GNU.
The GNU manifesto mentions C and Lisp as the two languages in which system programming will be supported. Emacs is also written in Lisp.
Also, to those who think that Guile didn't become more popular because people don't like the parentheses: there is or at least was support for C-like syntax as well. Personally, I think whether or not extensions take off depends on other factors: how well they are supported by the base application, and how much value they add. Many extensions have been written for Emacs and Firefox, and they are a substantial part of the experience of using those programs. I don't think the syntax of the extension language (Emacs Lisp and JavaScript+XML, respectively) has much to do with it.
How does it stack up against X-Plane or MS Flight Sim?
Earlier versions of FlightGear (I haven't used 2.4.x yet) aren't as good as X-Plane or MS Flight Simulator when it comes to graphics or ease of use on a PC. The overall experience has tended to be more polished with X-Plane or FS. I don't know about non-PC (e.g. actual flight simulator hardware), and, again, I don't know about FlightGear 2.4. The other thing is that X-Plane and FS have the better graphics if you can get them to work at all - X-Plane, for example, only gives me white rectangles instead of textured surfaces, probably because of issues with my video card driver. FlightGear works fine on the same setup, though. All in all, YMMV.
As for accuracy of the simulation, I can't really judge, because I don't have a lot of experience flying actual planes. I am told X-Plane, FS, and FlightGear are all very good, though. And certainly all of them are used in professional simulation environments.
Does it support things like the Saitek Pro Flight Yoke, Pedals and switch panels?
FlightGear supports several kinds of joysticks and pedals. Don't know about switch panels. It looks like the Saitek Pro Flight Yoke is supported: https://gitorious.org/fg/fgdata/trees/master/Input/Joysticks/Saitek
I guess the best way to figure out if FlightGear works for you is to simply try it out.
How about Softpedia?
Or the fact that practically every major software project is developed using C++?
The page you linked to doesn't really back up that claim. It says right at the top that this page lists only software written in C++. Sure, there is a lot of software being developed in C++, but there is also a lot of software being developed in C (e.g. Linux, most of GNU, most projects on Freshmeat), Java (a lot of commercial development, and a growing number of open source projects, too), and don't forget PHP and JavaScript, which are widely used for programming for the Web (e.g. by Google and Facebook).
Of the applications I use on a daily basis, only my web browser (over time, this has been Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror and Firefox) is written in C++. Most of the rest is written in C, with a handful of things written in Perl and a handful in Ruby. Then again, I don't use Windows. It seems to me that C++ and C# are much bigger there than in the Unix world.
Am I incorrect when I say that the root DNS servers are controlled by the US and all other servers are programmed to follow them?
Switching to a non-US DNS server would be silly since the other server only mirrors the root server.
What I think we need is a decentralized DNS equivalent.
There used to be several alternative DNS roots. One of the more notable ones was Open Root Server Network, which was created as a compatible alternative to ICANN's roots because of concerns about ICANN ultimately being controlled by the US government. Several ISPs actually used to use ORSN's services, but ORSN shut down in 2008.
There line between code and data is rather fuzzy. In the end, both are big lumps of bytes that will be processed by some software, which will then cause your computer to take certain actions. The problem is that the software processing the bytes will often happily allow things to happen that would generally be considered undesirable (e.g. sending spam).
In my view, the problem of malware is so persistent, because the vast majority of software vendors have an insecure by default approach. Software is developed in unsafe languages (allowing exploits like buffer overruns), runs on operating systems that will happily run any code they are told to run, and we are trying to secure this mess by patching the holes after they are found.
If we wrote software in languages that were memory-safe, this would prevent attacks such as embedding executable code in data files, and getting it to run through buffer overruns. If we used whitelists for software that is allowed to run (I imagine this like the repositories in Debian/Ubuntu/..., where you can choose your own trusted providers), this would stop untrusted code from running.
This would bring us closer to secure by default, where you would have to do extra work to make your system insecure, instead of having to constantly fight an uphill battle to keep up some semblance of security.