I am highly annoyed at being adressed in this manner. You have no idea of my qualifications, obviously. Please read my bio.
I've worked at Dow Chemical and contracted at various academic and biotechnology corporations in Europe and the U.S. I have been exposed to large-scale computing equipment, including high-end hardware running DB2.
Although I haven't used Microsoft products avidly, as I've said, I have had some experiences, and they weren't favourable. Although this hasn't included Microsoft SQL Server, my personal opinion - yes, my professional opinion based on my dealings with NT Server - is that NT Server itself would not be stable enough to cope with the loads mentioned.
If someone had to try and do half the stuff that I've had to do at various institutions on NT - I actually shiver when I think about the consequences, considering the platorm wasn't even stable enough to compile some mid-intensity FORTRAN code my team and I were writing for chemical analysis at one firm I was working with. This was a while back, late 98 or so - The machines were Dual PII Xeon 400s if I remember correctly.
Before you question my "Experience", lad, please read my Bio. I'm not putting down your experience - we all have different experiences, and we should share them with eachother in order to build on eachother's knowledge. But please, before you comment, do read my Bio.
If you consider the "Enterprise" doing small, simple tasks, then yes you're right, Microsoft is doing well there. I can tell you from experience that when we tried to switch over from Tru64 to NT 4/Intel for our FORTRAN data processing (at the time we were writing chemical analysis systems), it was a complete joke. The system gave us "illegal operations" and hex dumps (on that blue screen with grey writing) at least twice a day.
I've never run an "Enterprise" server, but unless it doesn't require a lot of resources, I simply can't see how Microsoft "owns" the Enterprise. It's ridiculous. In the scientific community, NT is considered something of a joke. I don't see it being different in the "Enterprise" Market, unless the "Enterprise" Market has very, very low expectations.
Interbase is now OSS/Free Software, too. You left it out of the equation.
As for your claim about Microsoft SQL Server running terabytes of data, I'm very skeptical. I'm not an avid Microsoft user, but I've heard several stories about Microsoft crashing when serving more than 30 clients on a Microsoft Access 97 database. So, how NT will handle terabyte sized SQL databases is beyond me, really.
Open|Free|NetBSD/Linux and Interbase will probably be the OSS database combination for the next few months, until Oracle opens the source due to OSS software eating up their market share.
Integrate Sun's StarOffice into the GNOME suite when it's released under the GPL. I realize it would take a fair deal of rewriting, but the core components would no doubt help them.
Once this portion was completed, they could integrate it into their existing Office codebase, all running off a Gtk+/Gdk base. It'll be interesting to see, if that happens, the ease of porting it to Win32 and other non-Unix platforms. I noticed that someone I knew was running Gimp under Win32. Wow, did that look strange. Gtk menubars etc etc running under Windows. But if Gimp was ported, why not the whole of GNOME ?
That, more than anything, would make it feasible for non-technical users to switch over to Linux/Unix.
Assembler has become somewhat of a black art, even amoung hackers and Real Programmers (tm). As a scientest I can't deny the need for FORTRAN like functionality (Numerical Basing), or C-like flexibility. But what I will say is this: I see languages out there that I'd much rather use if they were slightly different. Python is a key example. Unfortunately it's way to slow for my needs at present, but I've had a vision.
In the future, a new language will emerge that will combine the power of C with the syntax of Python. It will be called "Sheep". Sheep will be a portable assembler attempt in line with what C is trying to acheive, but much cleaner and more readable.
C fans won't like it, but reasonable people will see the advantages of using Sheep to reimplement a lot of their software. System level software especially will benefit from be reimplemented in Sheep due to the far shorter development times it will produce.
C will seem like quite a laughable language in comparison. Microsoft will jump on the bandwagon and release Visual Sheep, but they won't move their existing codebase over from VC++ because of the sheer bloat of it. gcc will be coming out with a sheep compiler, gsp, (or something similar), in a few months. Java will be totally replaced as well, because if you think about, who needs an interpreted (bytecode interpreted then, whatever) WORA language, when there's a compiled language that does away with the #ifdef's of C, yet is faster than C and cleaner than both C and Java?
A lot of C fundamentalists (some Open Source gurus amoung them) will protest and insist on keeping C as the official language. A new open source Operating system, a system written mostly in Sheep, including most of the kernel, will replace Linux and FreeBSD because of their lack of support (and by support I mean, rewriting all of their software in Sheep, including the kernels).
This new system will mostly be a clone of BeOS, but because of the better language, it will surpass BeOS is every way - and truly bring Open Source to the masses. It will combine the best elements of BeOS with the best elements of FreeBSD and Linux. A system that, while having a very smart GUI, will not be dependent on that GUI for normal operation, and will also be totally multiuser. C compatibility libraries, written in Sheep, will exist to make the transfer easier, but once reasonable developers start writing in Sheep, they will be sickened by the thought of going back to C.
X will be around for a while to come, and there are a few reasons I'll outline below.
Be realistic. So the x86 port of OS X comes out (No, it probably won't). Why won't it? Because Apple have too much to lose in terms of hardware sales, if people could run OS X on a $1000 PC instead of a $2000 Mac, would they really choose the Mac?
Secondly, X isn't tied to one platform. (By platform I mean hardware and software platform). It runs on Alphas, Sparcs, SGI boxes, Intel, PPCs, you name it. And on those platforms, (hardware), it runs on several software platforms running on those hardware platforms. So an OS X port for Intel comes out. Even if all the Intel UNIX users switced over to OS X, X Window System would still be more than alive and kicking on dozens of other platforms.
In other words, we should be commending the authors of this new implementation of X11, because without it, UNIX would have no standard GUI. Like it or not, (and you should, because it areas that it really counts, X11 is way ahead of other systems, ever tried multiple remote sessions on a Win 98 or NT box? Oh, sure....let's buy the Citrix WinFrame software or Microsoft's new ultra-expensive Terminal Server, both of which are overpriced and don't perform as well as stock X). X is here to stay for quite a while to come, and improvements are welcome. Congratulations, XFree86 Team!
These MS languages aren't the "in" languages of the day. The "in" languages over the next few months will be Python and Squeak
In time I think that the fascination with Python and Squeak will disappear though, and a new language will emerge that will combine the power of C with the syntax of Python. It will be called "Sheep". Sheep will be a portable assembler attempt in line with what C is trying to acheive, but much cleaner and more readable.
C fans won't like it, but reasonable people will see the advantages of using Sheep to reimplement a lot of their software. System level software especially will benefit from be reimplemented in Sheep due to the far shorter development times it will produce.
C will seem like quite a laughable language in comparison. Microsoft will jump on the bandwagon and release Visual Sheep, but they won't move their existing codebase over from VC++ because of the sheer bloat of it.
gcc will be coming out with a sheep compiler, gsp, (or something similar), in a few months. Java will be totally replaced as well, because if you think about, who needs an interpreted (bytecode interpreted then, whatever) WORA language, when there's a compiled language that does away with the #ifdef's of C, yet is faster than C and cleaner than both C and Java?
A lot of C fundamentalists (some Open Source gurus amoung them) will protest and insist on keeping C as the official language. A new open source Operating system, a system written mostly in Sheep, including most of the kernel, will replace Linux and FreeBSD because of their lack of support (and by support I mean, rewriting all of their software in Sheep, including the kernels).
This new system will mostly be a clone of BeOS, but because of the better language, it will surpass BeOS is every way - and truly bring Open Source to the masses. It will combine the best elements of BeOS with the best elements of FreeBSD and Linux. A system that, while having a very smart GUI, will not be dependent on that GUI for normal operation, and will also be totally multiuser. C compatibility libraries, written in Sheep, will exist to make the transfer easier, but once reasonable developers start writing in Sheep, they will be sickened by the thought of going back to C.
Soon Squeak Techonology will take over the graphics market. It's way ahead of its time. Check out the latest Squeak technology. This thing handles any colour depth, supports anti-aliased image rotation and is platform independent, as well as fully open source. Its graphics morphing system is also truly exciting. I think that this is the way that consoles should go, a tiny footprint, compared to Microsoft's propreitry bloatware.
I'll go a step further with this issue. "Girls not being able to math", that is. When I was a lad, my parents used to move from country to country, we literally didn't stay in one country for more than 3 years.
My school years were plagued with ignorant teachers. In Grade 3, for instance, I was told that I was extremely bad at mathematics, and needed "remedial" help. In Grade 2, I was told that I needed "special help" for dealing with b's and d's. Yes, I got the two confused during writing classes up until Grade 3. But the teachers failed to realize that I'd already started *reading* before I started school.
Another example is with my mathematics. In Grades 4-7, I scored quite low, mostly D's. In Grade 8 and 9, I scored C's, but in Grade 10 everything fell apart (mainly due to my betting on horse races, in Grade 6-10 my main thing was playing cards with other kids, for cash), I scored an F for mathematics.
In Grade 11, I scored one of hte lowest scores around, but mainly because I wasn't writing the tests. My teacher told me that unfortunately, I'd have to be dropped into the "stupid math" class. First term of grade 12, I scored 100%. They put me back up to the normal math class level, and I scored an "A" for my high school final.
And yet just a year before, a "teacher" told me I would never be able to get into any technical field, at all. So what do I say about education "tradition"? It stinks, it's actually nearly useless. Teachers in some places complain about low salaries, but perhaps we should actually look at what they're doing. They aren't the saints they're made out to be, and until education undergoes a major paradigm shift, we should look at issues like this. "Girls can't do math." "Cliff Watermore will never get into a technical field." "%Insert your own Bullshit statement here%". I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but I speak from experience. I've been to more than 14 schools around the world, and they've all led me to this conclusion: Western Education is sorely lacking. Admittedly, I've not been to any "non-Western traditional schools" or alternative education institutions, but perhaps looking at alternative teaching methods in Western World schools is the way to go.
And you know what? YOU are the one who's lost. Have you read my Bio? Obviously not. Enough said. You are making presumptions about what I said, based on YOUR limited knowledge. So please, don't pass your own ignorance off as other peoples', it doesn't reflect well on you.
Someone, please moderate this Anonymous Coward troll down.
Ha, ha:) Ok, almost got me again. Sorry lad, this form of "humour" isn't very interesting. Still, I did fall for it the first time, so I commend you for your effective trolling, even though I don't approve of trolling.
Where is the typo here? You know, I shouldn't really respond to trolls of your level of immaturity, but discrediting me for no reason is something that I just can't ignore. Learn to read, or - if this accusation was intentional - grow up.
Moderators, please forgive me for veering offtopic, but this lad needs to be enlightened.
There are several alternative browsers on the market. They're all maturing slowly and some have even got features that Exploder doesn't already, despite Micro$oft's corporate feature bloating.
Grail is a good example of open source engineering. Written completely in Python and fully opensourced, it's a must have for novice hackers who want to learn HTTP/Browser internals.
Konquerer, part of the KDE Project, is another good example of an underdog browser that's starting to take hold in the market. It's support for standards which make a viable browser are almost unmatched at the moment (in the alternative browser market).
Xemacs has a Browser called W3. It supports the majority of standards that make a viable Browser, and is written in Elisp, thus compatible with the Xemacs editor.
There's another browser, (commercial, though) called Opera Web Browser.It supports a lot, but probably not as much as the above two. It also runs on the Be System.
Of course, we can't forget Mozilla. It's the open-source version of Netscape 5. Probably the best browser out at the moment aside from Exploder/Win32, it runs on many platforms and is the most likely browser to take over the Exploder market share. It already enjoys a large market share in the UNIX world, just under that of Netscape 4.x. This thing supports nearly everything, including Alpha channels. Watch out for it.
Finally, there's Lynx. A text-based browser, this thing is superfast, superstable, and very very handy. I use this a lot, and it's great for most sites, if you don't mind the lack of graphics (I don't mind).
The Honda walking robot is one example of what many scientests feel is the way forward with regard to artificial intelligence and cybernetic systems development: Instead of trying to replicate core intelligence, many feel that the way to go is to replicate physical functions - IE, to create a "synthetic humanoid", instead of trying to create a "Brain Box", or neural network emulating human synapses and neurons, rather create a "human frame" that duplicates human movement, and from there, slowly "teach" the "organism" using various methods. Even if it comes out as a very slow, sub-ape intelligence-wise, some feel it will be making more progress than neural network/software brain modelling.
I'm of the opinion that the brain is a system like any other, and, like any other system, will eventually have documented interfaces that scientests will be able to write against, creating an emulator, and eventually, a compatible interface. A lot of research going on at my current firm deals with software interfaces for biological structures, as well as analysis of the said biological structures. The future will, have no doubt, be very interesting.
The article in itself is interesting, the Human Genome Project is indeed a big milestone. However, a few of the things mentioned in the article disturb and annoy me, to be quite honest.
Each genome contains 30,000-100,000 genes containing the basic information that makes us who we are: the color of our eyes, our intelligence, the disease to which we are susceptible and more.
No argument with most of that, colour of eyes and disease-proneness are identifiable. Intelligence? That's utter nonsense. I've been working in this area for many years, and if anything, there are still more questions that have to be answered than answers themselves. We don't know how intelligence works, yet. We aren't there. We don't know if it's mainly genetic software (as this article just assumes, without proper consultation), wetware, or something chemical. The very definition of intelligence is in question. IQ tests prove nothing, and Academic tests are almost as useless.
I was contracted by a firm in the UK in 1995 to design a new generation of SQUIDS. Basically, what a SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device Scanner) does is convert electrochemical impulses into instructions. This way, scientests can analyze instruction patterns and try to better-design atrificial intelligence systems. I think that experience, and my academic qualifications, qualifies me tenfold to discuss this topic - there's no way intelligence is entirely genetic. Certainly genetics affects it, but to say that you can define intelligence totally by genetic mapping is utterly ludicrous, and I will take anyone out there up on that.
about a RealNetworks-sized penis (Linux)?...What about an OpenBSD sized penis (Solaris)?...What about an Ebay sized penis (NT)?
The point is, don't hold FreeBSD or any OS on a pedestal. If you do more digging in Netcraft, you'll actually find that a lot of big sites are also running Solaris, Tru64 Digital Unix, IRIX, HP/UX, GNU/Linux, NT 4 and even Windows 2000. There are plenty of operating systems in use out there, and to point out one site as a reason why one OS is superior to another...it's ummm...ridiculous.
At work, we use Linux because it's free and does the job well for us. We don't use it because it "powers a bigger site than another OS, blah blah." That's basically bullshit. Personally I wouldn't use NT because it only logs NetBIOS names, amoung other annoyances. (Yep, "HAXOR" machine logged in and tried to hack the network....now, let's search the whole internet for that "HAXOR", it'll be easy, really!)
But, all things considered, if corporations are willing to pay the price for NT (in more ways than one) and are happy with it, good luck to them. Linux will probably stay on our servers and everyone else is free to use whatever OS they'd like, although I'd not recommend NT - it crashes, it's slow, and it's a general pain. These are my experiences, though, and might not apply to everyone. Management at the last company I worked for wanted to switch from Digital Fortran compiler to some Windows NT-based package. We lost 2 months of work and after another month, our lead scientests started complaining and demanding their Digital workstations back.
These are my experiences, though, and might not apply to everyone
To me, the most exciting thing about the new kernels will be "netfilter". This thing is a lot stauncher than ipchains, but remains backwards compatible with both ipfwadm and ipchains if you choose to compile in the compatibility with them! I think this'll take packet-level firewalling under linux to a new level. (No pun intended).
Hmmm:) Unless you're running it on a new Duron, I don't really know what this has to do with the topic and I'm surprized you haven't been moderated down already, AC. Still it seems like a genuine question.
I'm interested in the Duron, btw, and am going to try and run Solaris/Intel on it. Linux is very cool, but unfortunately neither myself or Johnny, our compiler expert - can compile our custom written software for anything other than Solaris. We still have hiccups with Solaris/Intel/cc! Anyway, it will be very interesting to try it with the Duron, I guess we'll need an externel compiler person to help us out though.
As I said though, your question seems sincere, so here goes:
I have Linux (mandrake 7.1) installed
Aha! The latest Mandrake.
I have a Linksys PC Card nic (ec2t) in it. I can't get it to see the other machines on my home network, or to even ping them, and I am really not even sure it is working (works ok when windows is installed).
Ok, I don't have much experience with PCMCIA cards under Linux or in general, but what you need to ensure is that PCMCIA support is compield into the kernel.
Go to/usr/src/linux
Type "make menuconfig". Configure everything appropriately, under networking, do add support for PCMCIA. Save the config by "Exiting", then type "make dep". After that, type "make bzImage". Copy the resulting bzImage from/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot into/boot, and edit "/etc/lilo.conf". add an entry for the new image. Once you have that going, your PCMCIA should be detected when you boot the new image.
I don't have any experience with Apples, but there's definitely a way to share drives through SMB (the protocol used by Microsoft for file/print/etc sharing, including Network Neighborhood). You'll need a package called "Samba". If you don't have it, you can download it from samba.org. Once this is installed, you will edit the/etc/smb.conf. Ensure that the domain/workgroup is the same as the one on your Windows machines. Also ensure that your Windows machine name has a Linux user account with the same name, then connect to the Linux machine using it. If you can't connect but do see the machine in your network neighborhood (the Linux machine from your Windows hosts), then you'll need to download the Windows 98 Registry Hack to Enable Cleartext Passwords. Perhaps with the latest Samba they've got built in support, I don't know.
Once all this is running, you'll need the latest Kernel. Get it from www.kernel.org. It has all the latest stuff in it. I'm running it, 2.3.99pre9. To do this, go into your/usr/src directory and type "lynx www.kernel.org". Scroll down and press enter on the "2.3.99pre9" link and type "D" for Download. Once you have it, click "save". Press "enter" for the default directory,/usr/src
Now, type "tar -zxpvf linux-2.3" . Now, proceed the same way as with your 2.2.15 kernel source code. Don't forget to backup your kernel images, btw. You should have a failsafe option in Mandrake 7.1 anyway. That's about it.
Thank you for the corrections, lad, my specializing field isn't astronomy, it's Bioinformatics. I do know a bit about it, though, and I can assure you that none of what I said was gibberish.
Lad, you don't seem to understand the fundamentals of astronomy. Although a neutron star might seem inert, the core falls in on itself, and it releases its stored heat in the form of ghostlike particles called neutrinos. As the neutrinos zig-zag out of nuclear fuel something extraordinary happens in the magnetic field that surrounds the newly formed neutron star. After that, the core becomes denser than the other side and then, form peculiar objects with properties of binary pulsar systems. Moreover, many recent observations have revealed that supernovae are not symmetrical in shape!Neutron stars, one group of which are called pulsars, are the cause - the accretion process is well known. This is the fundamental reason for the non-inertness with regard to motive frequency.
Umm, excuse me, lad. Why is "how many hops the backbone" not a valid question? It certainly is. Unless the company is one of the key internet backbone providers, like Digex, MCI WorldCom, MFS, Sprint, UUNET, WinStar GoodNet, etc, it's a very IMPORTANT question. Because while some other companies might have staunch bandwidth, a good backbone themselves - they might not be as highly rated as the KEY "backbone" providers. Maybe you should read my Bio before you tell me I'm a stupid "rube" person, motormouth.
Ask them "How many hops to the backbone?". Ask them how much bandwidth they have to their nearest peering point. Most importantly, ask them if you can put a test server in one of their racks, FTP and TTCP to it (Test TCP), really drown the link - to see what it's capable of, and then insist on comparing the results to similar results after your contract is processed. (Don't put your Auction Box in there until you've re-tested with an identical FTP set up).
But will the new chips run Intel/Solaris flawlessly? If so, perhaps it's worth a look, indeed. Although I'm talking about the Athlon models for servers, a Duron Solaris workstation might be an idea of note.
The technology I deal with at work is mainly of the SPARC and Alpha variety. SPARC hardware is ridiculously expensive though, and we have been cutting it down to the bare minimum (replacing some of it with cheaper Intel/Solaris boxen). When an outfit with the resources and funding the company I work for has resorts to that, you know there's a price problem.
As you can see, we're running an old version of the operating system on this box, as on most of our SPARC boxen. The problem is that a lot of the custom written software we have running (Written by myself, Greg, Paul, and Johnny) won't cleanly compile on the newer systems for some reason. Johnny is our key man with cc and gcc, and he can't figure it out. Mind you, this isn't a small program - it's a huge monster, millions of lines, written over 24 months (only 10 with my involvement, in which time I've cleaned up a lot of the tech style problems of the other guys). What it basically does is generate database templates for parsing by our custom-written template language conversion system (specifically for chemical components processing and analysis)Now, if we could get this to compile cleanly on a Duron with 5.6 running (for obvious reasons), we could free up that SPARC box. I'm actually thinking about it carefully after reading this article. Thank you, Slashdot!
Slashdot Mirror
Excuse me, lad!!
I am highly annoyed at being adressed in this manner. You have no idea of my qualifications, obviously. Please read my bio.I've worked at Dow Chemical and contracted at various academic and biotechnology corporations in Europe and the U.S. I have been exposed to large-scale computing equipment, including high-end hardware running DB2.
Although I haven't used Microsoft products avidly, as I've said, I have had some experiences, and they weren't favourable. Although this hasn't included Microsoft SQL Server, my personal opinion - yes, my professional opinion based on my dealings with NT Server - is that NT Server itself would not be stable enough to cope with the loads mentioned.
If someone had to try and do half the stuff that I've had to do at various institutions on NT - I actually shiver when I think about the consequences, considering the platorm wasn't even stable enough to compile some mid-intensity FORTRAN code my team and I were writing for chemical analysis at one firm I was working with. This was a while back, late 98 or so - The machines were Dual PII Xeon 400s if I remember correctly.Before you question my "Experience", lad, please read my Bio. I'm not putting down your experience - we all have different experiences, and we should share them with eachother in order to build on eachother's knowledge. But please, before you comment, do read my Bio.
If you consider the "Enterprise" doing small, simple tasks, then yes you're right, Microsoft is doing well there. I can tell you from experience that when we tried to switch over from Tru64 to NT 4/Intel for our FORTRAN data processing (at the time we were writing chemical analysis systems), it was a complete joke. The system gave us "illegal operations" and hex dumps (on that blue screen with grey writing) at least twice a day.
I've never run an "Enterprise" server, but unless it doesn't require a lot of resources, I simply can't see how Microsoft "owns" the Enterprise. It's ridiculous. In the scientific community, NT is considered something of a joke. I don't see it being different in the "Enterprise" Market, unless the "Enterprise" Market has very, very low expectations.Interbase is now OSS/Free Software, too. You left it out of the equation.
As for your claim about Microsoft SQL Server running terabytes of data, I'm very skeptical. I'm not an avid Microsoft user, but I've heard several stories about Microsoft crashing when serving more than 30 clients on a Microsoft Access 97 database. So, how NT will handle terabyte sized SQL databases is beyond me, really.Open|Free|NetBSD/Linux and Interbase will probably be the OSS database combination for the next few months, until Oracle opens the source due to OSS software eating up their market share.
I'm sure there is already a free Minsesweeper game clone for Linux :=)
Integrate Sun's StarOffice into the GNOME suite when it's released under the GPL. I realize it would take a fair deal of rewriting, but the core components would no doubt help them.
Once this portion was completed, they could integrate it into their existing Office codebase, all running off a Gtk+/Gdk base. It'll be interesting to see, if that happens, the ease of porting it to Win32 and other non-Unix platforms. I noticed that someone I knew was running Gimp under Win32. Wow, did that look strange. Gtk menubars etc etc running under Windows. But if Gimp was ported, why not the whole of GNOME ?That, more than anything, would make it feasible for non-technical users to switch over to Linux/Unix.
Assembler has become somewhat of a black art, even amoung hackers and Real Programmers (tm). As a scientest I can't deny the need for FORTRAN like functionality (Numerical Basing), or C-like flexibility. But what I will say is this: I see languages out there that I'd much rather use if they were slightly different. Python is a key example. Unfortunately it's way to slow for my needs at present, but I've had a vision.
In the future, a new language will emerge that will combine the power of C with the syntax of Python. It will be called "Sheep". Sheep will be a portable assembler attempt in line with what C is trying to acheive, but much cleaner and more readable.C fans won't like it, but reasonable people will see the advantages of using Sheep to reimplement a lot of their software. System level software especially will benefit from be reimplemented in Sheep due to the far shorter development times it will produce.
C will seem like quite a laughable language in comparison. Microsoft will jump on the bandwagon and release Visual Sheep, but they won't move their existing codebase over from VC++ because of the sheer bloat of it. gcc will be coming out with a sheep compiler, gsp, (or something similar), in a few months. Java will be totally replaced as well, because if you think about, who needs an interpreted (bytecode interpreted then, whatever) WORA language, when there's a compiled language that does away with the #ifdef's of C, yet is faster than C and cleaner than both C and Java?A lot of C fundamentalists (some Open Source gurus amoung them) will protest and insist on keeping C as the official language. A new open source Operating system, a system written mostly in Sheep, including most of the kernel, will replace Linux and FreeBSD because of their lack of support (and by support I mean, rewriting all of their software in Sheep, including the kernels).
This new system will mostly be a clone of BeOS, but because of the better language, it will surpass BeOS is every way - and truly bring Open Source to the masses. It will combine the best elements of BeOS with the best elements of FreeBSD and Linux. A system that, while having a very smart GUI, will not be dependent on that GUI for normal operation, and will also be totally multiuser. C compatibility libraries, written in Sheep, will exist to make the transfer easier, but once reasonable developers start writing in Sheep, they will be sickened by the thought of going back to C.Hope you've enjoyed this look into the future :-)
X will be around for a while to come, and there are a few reasons I'll outline below.
Be realistic. So the x86 port of OS X comes out (No, it probably won't). Why won't it? Because Apple have too much to lose in terms of hardware sales, if people could run OS X on a $1000 PC instead of a $2000 Mac, would they really choose the Mac?Secondly, X isn't tied to one platform. (By platform I mean hardware and software platform). It runs on Alphas, Sparcs, SGI boxes, Intel, PPCs, you name it. And on those platforms, (hardware), it runs on several software platforms running on those hardware platforms. So an OS X port for Intel comes out. Even if all the Intel UNIX users switced over to OS X, X Window System would still be more than alive and kicking on dozens of other platforms.
In other words, we should be commending the authors of this new implementation of X11, because without it, UNIX would have no standard GUI. Like it or not, (and you should, because it areas that it really counts, X11 is way ahead of other systems, ever tried multiple remote sessions on a Win 98 or NT box? Oh, sure....let's buy the Citrix WinFrame software or Microsoft's new ultra-expensive Terminal Server, both of which are overpriced and don't perform as well as stock X). X is here to stay for quite a while to come, and improvements are welcome. Congratulations, XFree86 Team!These MS languages aren't the "in" languages of the day. The "in" languages over the next few months will be Python and Squeak
In time I think that the fascination with Python and Squeak will disappear though, and a new language will emerge that will combine the power of C with the syntax of Python. It will be called "Sheep". Sheep will be a portable assembler attempt in line with what C is trying to acheive, but much cleaner and more readable.C fans won't like it, but reasonable people will see the advantages of using Sheep to reimplement a lot of their software. System level software especially will benefit from be reimplemented in Sheep due to the far shorter development times it will produce.
C will seem like quite a laughable language in comparison. Microsoft will jump on the bandwagon and release Visual Sheep, but they won't move their existing codebase over from VC++ because of the sheer bloat of it.gcc will be coming out with a sheep compiler, gsp, (or something similar), in a few months. Java will be totally replaced as well, because if you think about, who needs an interpreted (bytecode interpreted then, whatever) WORA language, when there's a compiled language that does away with the #ifdef's of C, yet is faster than C and cleaner than both C and Java?
A lot of C fundamentalists (some Open Source gurus amoung them) will protest and insist on keeping C as the official language. A new open source Operating system, a system written mostly in Sheep, including most of the kernel, will replace Linux and FreeBSD because of their lack of support (and by support I mean, rewriting all of their software in Sheep, including the kernels).This new system will mostly be a clone of BeOS, but because of the better language, it will surpass BeOS is every way - and truly bring Open Source to the masses. It will combine the best elements of BeOS with the best elements of FreeBSD and Linux. A system that, while having a very smart GUI, will not be dependent on that GUI for normal operation, and will also be totally multiuser. C compatibility libraries, written in Sheep, will exist to make the transfer easier, but once reasonable developers start writing in Sheep, they will be sickened by the thought of going back to C.
Hope you've enjoyed this look into the futureSoon Squeak Techonology will take over the graphics market. It's way ahead of its time. Check out the latest Squeak technology. This thing handles any colour depth, supports anti-aliased image rotation and is platform independent, as well as fully open source. Its graphics morphing system is also truly exciting. I think that this is the way that consoles should go, a tiny footprint, compared to Microsoft's propreitry bloatware.
I'll go a step further with this issue. "Girls not being able to math", that is. When I was a lad, my parents used to move from country to country, we literally didn't stay in one country for more than 3 years.
My school years were plagued with ignorant teachers. In Grade 3, for instance, I was told that I was extremely bad at mathematics, and needed "remedial" help. In Grade 2, I was told that I needed "special help" for dealing with b's and d's. Yes, I got the two confused during writing classes up until Grade 3. But the teachers failed to realize that I'd already started *reading* before I started school.Another example is with my mathematics. In Grades 4-7, I scored quite low, mostly D's. In Grade 8 and 9, I scored C's, but in Grade 10 everything fell apart (mainly due to my betting on horse races, in Grade 6-10 my main thing was playing cards with other kids, for cash), I scored an F for mathematics.
In Grade 11, I scored one of hte lowest scores around, but mainly because I wasn't writing the tests. My teacher told me that unfortunately, I'd have to be dropped into the "stupid math" class. First term of grade 12, I scored 100%. They put me back up to the normal math class level, and I scored an "A" for my high school final.
And yet just a year before, a "teacher" told me I would never be able to get into any technical field, at all. So what do I say about education "tradition"? It stinks, it's actually nearly useless. Teachers in some places complain about low salaries, but perhaps we should actually look at what they're doing. They aren't the saints they're made out to be, and until education undergoes a major paradigm shift, we should look at issues like this. "Girls can't do math." "Cliff Watermore will never get into a technical field." "%Insert your own Bullshit statement here%". I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but I speak from experience. I've been to more than 14 schools around the world, and they've all led me to this conclusion: Western Education is sorely lacking. Admittedly, I've not been to any "non-Western traditional schools" or alternative education institutions, but perhaps looking at alternative teaching methods in Western World schools is the way to go.No, that's not what I said at all.
And you know what? YOU are the one who's lost. Have you read my Bio? Obviously not. Enough said. You are making presumptions about what I said, based on YOUR limited knowledge. So please, don't pass your own ignorance off as other peoples', it doesn't reflect well on you.Someone, please moderate this Anonymous Coward troll down.
Ha, ha :) Ok, almost got me again. Sorry lad, this form of "humour" isn't very interesting. Still, I did fall for it the first time, so I commend you for your effective trolling, even though I don't approve of trolling.
Ipswich, UK where I was an assistant Vet Tech.
Where is the typo here? You know, I shouldn't really respond to trolls of your level of immaturity, but discrediting me for no reason is something that I just can't ignore. Learn to read, or - if this accusation was intentional - grow up.What you've said is totally incorrect, and somewhat annoying.
Have you read my Bio ? I am certainly NOT stupid.
Please read my Bio before commenting on my level of intelligence.Moderators, please forgive me for veering offtopic, but this lad needs to be enlightened.
There are several alternative browsers on the market. They're all maturing slowly and some have even got features that Exploder doesn't already, despite Micro$oft's corporate feature bloating.
Grail is a good example of open source engineering. Written completely in Python and fully opensourced, it's a must have for novice hackers who want to learn HTTP/Browser internals.Konquerer, part of the KDE Project, is another good example of an underdog browser that's starting to take hold in the market. It's support for standards which make a viable browser are almost unmatched at the moment (in the alternative browser market).
Xemacs has a Browser called W3. It supports the majority of standards that make a viable Browser, and is written in Elisp, thus compatible with the Xemacs editor.
There's another browser, (commercial, though) called Opera Web Browser.It supports a lot, but probably not as much as the above two. It also runs on the Be System.Of course, we can't forget Mozilla. It's the open-source version of Netscape 5. Probably the best browser out at the moment aside from Exploder/Win32, it runs on many platforms and is the most likely browser to take over the Exploder market share. It already enjoys a large market share in the UNIX world, just under that of Netscape 4.x. This thing supports nearly everything, including Alpha channels. Watch out for it.
Finally, there's Lynx. A text-based browser, this thing is superfast, superstable, and very very handy. I use this a lot, and it's great for most sites, if you don't mind the lack of graphics (I don't mind).The Honda walking robot is one example of what many scientests feel is the way forward with regard to artificial intelligence and cybernetic systems development: Instead of trying to replicate core intelligence, many feel that the way to go is to replicate physical functions - IE, to create a "synthetic humanoid", instead of trying to create a "Brain Box", or neural network emulating human synapses and neurons, rather create a "human frame" that duplicates human movement, and from there, slowly "teach" the "organism" using various methods. Even if it comes out as a very slow, sub-ape intelligence-wise, some feel it will be making more progress than neural network/software brain modelling.
I'm of the opinion that the brain is a system like any other, and, like any other system, will eventually have documented interfaces that scientests will be able to write against, creating an emulator, and eventually, a compatible interface. A lot of research going on at my current firm deals with software interfaces for biological structures, as well as analysis of the said biological structures. The future will, have no doubt, be very interesting.Each genome contains 30,000-100,000 genes containing the basic information that makes us who we are: the color of our eyes, our intelligence, the disease to which we are susceptible and more.
No argument with most of that, colour of eyes and disease-proneness are identifiable. Intelligence? That's utter nonsense. I've been working in this area for many years, and if anything, there are still more questions that have to be answered than answers themselves. We don't know how intelligence works, yet. We aren't there. We don't know if it's mainly genetic software (as this article just assumes, without proper consultation), wetware, or something chemical. The very definition of intelligence is in question. IQ tests prove nothing, and Academic tests are almost as useless.I was contracted by a firm in the UK in 1995 to design a new generation of SQUIDS. Basically, what a SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device Scanner) does is convert electrochemical impulses into instructions. This way, scientests can analyze instruction patterns and try to better-design atrificial intelligence systems. I think that experience, and my academic qualifications, qualifies me tenfold to discuss this topic - there's no way intelligence is entirely genetic. Certainly genetics affects it, but to say that you can define intelligence totally by genetic mapping is utterly ludicrous, and I will take anyone out there up on that.
The point is, don't hold FreeBSD or any OS on a pedestal. If you do more digging in Netcraft, you'll actually find that a lot of big sites are also running Solaris, Tru64 Digital Unix, IRIX, HP/UX, GNU/Linux, NT 4 and even Windows 2000. There are plenty of operating systems in use out there, and to point out one site as a reason why one OS is superior to another...it's ummm...ridiculous.
At work, we use Linux because it's free and does the job well for us. We don't use it because it "powers a bigger site than another OS, blah blah." That's basically bullshit. Personally I wouldn't use NT because it only logs NetBIOS names, amoung other annoyances. (Yep, "HAXOR" machine logged in and tried to hack the network....now, let's search the whole internet for that "HAXOR", it'll be easy, really!)But, all things considered, if corporations are willing to pay the price for NT (in more ways than one) and are happy with it, good luck to them. Linux will probably stay on our servers and everyone else is free to use whatever OS they'd like, although I'd not recommend NT - it crashes, it's slow, and it's a general pain. These are my experiences, though, and might not apply to everyone. Management at the last company I worked for wanted to switch from Digital Fortran compiler to some Windows NT-based package. We lost 2 months of work and after another month, our lead scientests started complaining and demanding their Digital workstations back.
These are my experiences, though, and might not apply to everyone
Cliffton WatermoreTo me, the most exciting thing about the new kernels will be "netfilter". This thing is a lot stauncher than ipchains, but remains backwards compatible with both ipfwadm and ipchains if you choose to compile in the compatibility with them! I think this'll take packet-level firewalling under linux to a new level. (No pun intended).
Hmmm:) Unless you're running it on a new Duron, I don't really know what this has to do with the topic and I'm surprized you haven't been moderated down already, AC. Still it seems like a genuine question.
I'm interested in the Duron, btw, and am going to try and run Solaris/Intel on it. Linux is very cool, but unfortunately neither myself or Johnny, our compiler expert - can compile our custom written software for anything other than Solaris. We still have hiccups with Solaris/Intel/cc! Anyway, it will be very interesting to try it with the Duron, I guess we'll need an externel compiler person to help us out thoughAs I said though, your question seems sincere, so here goes:
I have Linux (mandrake 7.1) installed
Aha! The latest Mandrake.I have a Linksys PC Card nic (ec2t) in it. I can't get it to see the other machines on my home network, or to even ping them, and I am really not even sure it is working (works ok when windows is installed).
Ok, I don't have much experience with PCMCIA cards under Linux or in general, but what you need to ensure is that PCMCIA support is compield into the kernel.Go to /usr/src/linux
Type "make menuconfig". Configure everything appropriately, under networking, do add support for PCMCIA. Save the config by "Exiting", then type "make dep". After that, type "make bzImage". Copy the resulting bzImage fromI don't have any experience with Apples, but there's definitely a way to share drives through SMB (the protocol used by Microsoft for file/print/etc sharing, including Network Neighborhood). You'll need a package called "Samba". If you don't have it, you can download it from samba.org. Once this is installed, you will edit the /etc/smb.conf. Ensure that the domain/workgroup is the same as the one on your Windows machines. Also ensure that your Windows machine name has a Linux user account with the same name, then connect to the Linux machine using it. If you can't connect but do see the machine in your network neighborhood (the Linux machine from your Windows hosts), then you'll need to download the Windows 98 Registry Hack to Enable Cleartext Passwords. Perhaps with the latest Samba they've got built in support, I don't know.
Once all this is running, you'll need the latest Kernel. Get it from www.kernel.org. It has all the latest stuff in it. I'm running it, 2.3.99pre9. To do this, go into your /usr/src directory and type "lynx www.kernel.org". Scroll down and press enter on the "2.3.99pre9" link and type "D" for Download. Once you have it, click "save". Press "enter" for the default directory, /usr/src
Now, type "tar -zxpvf linux-2.3" . Now, proceed the same way as with your 2.2.15 kernel source code. Don't forget to backup your kernel images, btw. You should have a failsafe option in Mandrake 7.1 anyway. That's about it.Good luck
.Thank you for the corrections, lad, my specializing field isn't astronomy, it's Bioinformatics. I do know a bit about it, though, and I can assure you that none of what I said was gibberish.
Lad, you don't seem to understand the fundamentals of astronomy. Although a neutron star might seem inert, the core falls in on itself, and it releases its stored heat in the form of ghostlike particles called neutrinos. As the neutrinos zig-zag out of nuclear fuel something extraordinary happens in the magnetic field that surrounds the newly formed neutron star. After that, the core becomes denser than the other side and then, form peculiar objects with properties of binary pulsar systems. Moreover, many recent observations have revealed that supernovae are not symmetrical in shape!Neutron stars, one group of which are called pulsars, are the cause - the accretion process is well known. This is the fundamental reason for the non-inertness with regard to motive frequency.
Umm, excuse me, lad. Why is "how many hops the backbone" not a valid question? It certainly is. Unless the company is one of the key internet backbone providers, like Digex, MCI WorldCom, MFS, Sprint, UUNET, WinStar GoodNet, etc, it's a very IMPORTANT question. Because while some other companies might have staunch bandwidth, a good backbone themselves - they might not be as highly rated as the KEY "backbone" providers. Maybe you should read my Bio before you tell me I'm a stupid "rube" person, motormouth.
Ask them "How many hops to the backbone?". Ask them how much bandwidth they have to their nearest peering point. Most importantly, ask them if you can put a test server in one of their racks, FTP and TTCP to it (Test TCP), really drown the link - to see what it's capable of, and then insist on comparing the results to similar results after your contract is processed. (Don't put your Auction Box in there until you've re-tested with an identical FTP set up).
But will the new chips run Intel/Solaris flawlessly? If so, perhaps it's worth a look, indeed. Although I'm talking about the Athlon models for servers, a Duron Solaris workstation might be an idea of note.
The technology I deal with at work is mainly of the SPARC and Alpha variety. SPARC hardware is ridiculously expensive though, and we have been cutting it down to the bare minimum (replacing some of it with cheaper Intel/Solaris boxen). When an outfit with the resources and funding the company I work for has resorts to that, you know there's a price problem.SunOS Biometric12 5.6 Generic_105181-03 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
As you can see, we're running an old version of the operating system on this box, as on most of our SPARC boxen. The problem is that a lot of the custom written software we have running (Written by myself, Greg, Paul, and Johnny) won't cleanly compile on the newer systems for some reason. Johnny is our key man with cc and gcc, and he can't figure it out. Mind you, this isn't a small program - it's a huge monster, millions of lines, written over 24 months (only 10 with my involvement, in which time I've cleaned up a lot of the tech style problems of the other guys). What it basically does is generate database templates for parsing by our custom-written template language conversion system (specifically for chemical components processing and analysis)Now, if we could get this to compile cleanly on a Duron with 5.6 running (for obvious reasons), we could free up that SPARC box. I'm actually thinking about it carefully after reading this article. Thank you, Slashdot!