One of the neat things about the Amiga is no matter how high the load is, or how slow the machine is (even the 7 MHz 68000), the GUI always looks and feels very fast and snappy. That doesn't mean it really is always fast, it's just that the gadgets (widgets) are responsive because the code that handles them runs at a higher priority than "normal" stuff, and the Amiga uses an absolute scheduler. This probably sounds like a pretty unimportant point to most people, but once you've used an Amiga for many years, you start to build up subconcious expectations from a GUI.
I don't know how long ago you actually last used a 7MHz m68k running AmigaDOS, but the GUI is definately not as fast and responsive as you make out. Often when running compute-bound tasks the interface takes many seconds to redraw (which could be sped up somewhat by using Chip memory as a backing store for the parts of window contents that were covered by other windows). Some things were faster thanks to the custom chips and use of Chip memory (smooth scrolling is a good example), that much is true, but I would never go as far as to call the GUI "very fast and snappy" when running the machine at a high load. Perhaps you should drag out that old 7Mhz m68k with 512kB of Chip memory and run something compute intensive on it, then try and tell me the GUI is fast.
Unfortunately, I don't know a great deal about QNX or Neutrino, so I can't comment as to how well the GUI performs. I do remember a quote from (I think) Dave Haynie about people eventually realising that GUIs should be a realtime task (I don't remember the exact quote, sorry).
Incidentally, I'll bet that when you compare the speed of the video subsystem on the 400MHz Intel PC and the 7Mhz Amiga, you're not comparing them running at equal screen modes and bit depths, are you? And of course comparing the speed of a different GUI on a different machine is not exactly scientific.
Don't get me wrong, security is definately important. But as this article points out, it's really the users that are insecure, more than anything else.
Obviously there's only so much you can do to secure machines and networks, but if you don't have educated users, then you may as well leave the whole system open.;-)
I was only complaining because it's frustrating to know you can't access your own machine via ssh from elsewhere because the sys-admin has deemed ssh to be 'too insecure' for use on the network, despite the fact that the only people who would want to use it are those who are probably quite aware of security issues already.
I hope this doesn't inspire PHBs to pressure the system administrators into tightening network security too much. Those of use behind firewalls already suffer enough.
Where I'm studying, the only thing access we have to the net is via a web proxy. Apparently everything else is too insecure, including ssh. Fortunately, if you know the right people, you can get access to the SOCKS5 server, which will let you do most things (although I still haven't found a good telnet client for NT which will work with this particular SOCKS server).
It's lucky we're even allowed email privileges after last years mail-bombing that had our mail servers unavailable for a couple of days...;-)
As some others have said, I also would have liked to see more technical details in the article. Before I read it, I expected at least a somewhat more technical article than it was. After reading it, I thought that there was very little content of interest to myself (and probably a majority of the others who read Slashdot).
I don't know a huge amount about the specific details of FreeBSD, but I have briefly installed and played with it (and will do so again when I free up a machine for it). I would have loved to learn a little more of the specifics, e.g. how the task scheduling and memory management is handled compared to Linux, etc.
I also found the article appeared to be a fair comparison on the surface, but to me the author seemed to be belittling the efforts of Linux developers, which is a real shame.
However, I don't know who the target audience for this article is, but I have a feeling that it's not the technical community, but more people who have a passing interest in Unix in general or more specifically, Linux/BSD.
One thing that was somewhat annoying was the author's example of running FreeBSD on a small system, and then saying that it scaled right up to big systems like Yahoo/Walnut Creek/etc. Although he provided some good examples of large systems which run FreeBSD, it was almost as if 'Linux can handle the in-between tasks'. However, I can't think of an example of a big/famous system running Linux to use as a counter (although I'm fairly sure that some exist).
7-8MB? My X server is using 48MB at the moment, I've seen it get up to 90MB with only a couple of windows open.
And I only have an 8MB graphics card, so minus the framebuffer the server is still using 40MB of RAM.
I'm running Enlightenment and Gnome, but it still seems to be an excessive amount of RAM (to me), but I'm fairly new to Unix/X and I guess that sort of RAM use could be 'normal' for what I'm running...
Re:Is there any reason to stay with the 2.0.x seri
on
Linux 2.0.37 Released
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· Score: 1
I've got a similar spec machine here, being used as a masquerading firewall. Compaq 486DX33 with 8MB and Debian potato.
I've been running the 2.2.x series on it since I set the machine up, so I don't have any comparison to go with. What are your reasons for not running 2.2.x on this spec machine?
Incidentally, I've got a spare 8MB SIMM sitting here, but it seems that the machine only takes 'Compaq' RAM or something, since I can't get it to accept the SIMM.:-/
Any system where you implicitly trust unknown users on the internet to send you non-malicious programs is inherently flawed.
Ah! But that's the thing, these macro virii that have been doing the rounds lately send themselves to people in your address book (and I believe the Melissa chose the people on the basis of how often you correspond with them). Therefore, you are hardly receiving the email from an 'unknown user', and it makes it quite a bit harder to discern whether what you've received is a virus or truly a legitimate file. (Remember that you might often get attached files from these people normally, so it's not unusual to be receiving one in this case).
It's a sort of 'social engineering' that the virii writers are using to get their malicious little programs run.
Remember that it's people's ignorance that is getting these files spread around, more than anything else. If the average user was educated about the issue enough to not blindly open attached files without virus scanning them, then the problem would be greatly reduced.
I think you are missing the point somewhat. It's more about the fact that the 'Kiwi Share' agreement gives us the right of free residential calls, and that Telecom is moving to take away that right for internet calls, by forcing us to 'admit' that they are different to voice calls by using these special dial-up numbers to avoid paying 2c/min for the calls to our ISPs.
Sure, it's free to call these new numbers now... but since we are being forced to 'admit' these calls are different to voice calls, they will, sooner or later, start charging for these calls - thus having avoided the agreement they signed when the company was purchased from the Government.
Another thing which is truly sickening is the fact that the government ever sold off the company in the first place. Hundreds of people have lost their jobs since, and Telecom are making larger profits each year - and yet they continue to find ways to screw the customers over.
The lines and equipment that is now owned by Telecom were paid for by the tax payers (by way of the government) and then almost GIVEN to Telecom. It's not as if they've had any hard work setting up the damn company, it was pre-existing and ready to run when they bought it.
This is not the first, and certainly not the last thing that Telecom will do. I can remember when I was using an ISP which was just getting running, around the same time as Xtra (Telecom's own ISP) was getting into the business... The ISP I was with had no end of problems with their connections and had to wait days, sometimes weeks to get the problems solved by Telecom technicians.
The British were certainly involved, they set up the site at Bletchley Park for the purpose of deciphering intercepted messages. However the Polish were involved far before the British (as early as 1932 I think) and made alot of the early discoveries, especially reguarding Enigma. They actually started to be able to crack the Enigma cipher before the war even started...
The Americans became involved in Bletchley fairly late (around 1942 IIRC), and I dare say clever people from other Allied sides were involved as well at some stage.
Really? Sorry. I was getting my information from a WWII book, and I didn't cross-check everything. I don't remember any mention of the ABC in any computing history books I've read, I shall have to go and have another look...
In the past, the U.S.A. has been able to crack any code. The Nazis were cracked early in WWII.
If you are referring to the Engima machine, you are completely wrong. The US wasn't involved with the deciphering project until 1942, for a start. And although the Polish had discovered how to crack Engima ciphered messages from 1932, it was not until very late in the war that the British were able to regularly decode a large number of intercepted messages. Alan Turing was the chief designer of the 'Bronze Goddesses', which helped calculate the keys used with the Enigma machine.
And do not forget that the Germans also had 'Secret Writer' (known to the Allies as 'Fish') which was far more difficult to decipher than Enigma, and led to the creation of the first electronic computer, 'Colossus', built by a Cambridge mathematics professor and a Post Office engineer. Colossus didn't start working on ciphered messages until 1943.
I would not consider this 'early in WWII', and the US contribution to the effort came quite late, compared to the Polish and British, who had been working in various forms since the early 1930s, and set up Bletchley Park as a central location for cryptography work.
And a big part of the reason why Enigma ciphers were broken was not the fault of the code itself, but the poor training and laziness of the operators who often used insecure keys and 'known' words.
As you will have heard people say before, security is as strong as it's weakest link. Often you will find than lazy or poorly trained humans will be a weaker link than anything else. Why have a fantastic cipher if the user is going to enter their passphrase via cleartext telnet?
In reply to your statement about screws, I've had a couple of Commodore Amigas... One of them had not flat-head screws, but very soft aluminium posidrive screws, which I proceeded to completely strip when using a much larger phillips screwdriver. Eventually they got so bad I had to cut slots in them with a knife and undo them using those.
And that certainly wasn't the worst thing I did to that computer... soldering wires directly onto an edge-connector, cutting tracks on the motherboard.. it lasting a surprisingly long time considering.:-)
The other Amiga, fortunately, had standard phillips screws.
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One of the neat things about the Amiga is no matter how high the load is, or how slow the machine is (even the 7 MHz 68000), the GUI always looks and feels very fast and snappy. That doesn't mean it really is always fast, it's just that the gadgets (widgets) are responsive because the code that handles them runs at a higher priority than "normal" stuff, and the Amiga uses an absolute scheduler. This probably sounds like a pretty unimportant point to most people, but once you've used an Amiga for many years, you start to build up subconcious expectations from a GUI.
I don't know how long ago you actually last used a 7MHz m68k running AmigaDOS, but the GUI is definately not as fast and responsive as you make out. Often when running compute-bound tasks the interface takes many seconds to redraw (which could be sped up somewhat by using Chip memory as a backing store for the parts of window contents that were covered by other windows). Some things were faster thanks to the custom chips and use of Chip memory (smooth scrolling is a good example), that much is true, but I would never go as far as to call the GUI "very fast and snappy" when running the machine at a high load. Perhaps you should drag out that old 7Mhz m68k with 512kB of Chip memory and run something compute intensive on it, then try and tell me the GUI is fast.
Unfortunately, I don't know a great deal about QNX or Neutrino, so I can't comment as to how well the GUI performs. I do remember a quote from (I think) Dave Haynie about people eventually realising that GUIs should be a realtime task (I don't remember the exact quote, sorry).
Incidentally, I'll bet that when you compare the speed of the video subsystem on the 400MHz Intel PC and the 7Mhz Amiga, you're not comparing them running at equal screen modes and bit depths, are you? And of course comparing the speed of a different GUI on a different machine is not exactly scientific.
Don't get me wrong, security is definately important. But as this article points out, it's really the users that are insecure, more than anything else.
Obviously there's only so much you can do to secure machines and networks, but if you don't have educated users, then you may as well leave the whole system open. ;-)
I was only complaining because it's frustrating to know you can't access your own machine via ssh from elsewhere because the sys-admin has deemed ssh to be 'too insecure' for use on the network, despite the fact that the only people who would want to use it are those who are probably quite aware of security issues already.
I hope this doesn't inspire PHBs to pressure the system administrators into tightening network security too much. Those of use behind firewalls already suffer enough.
Where I'm studying, the only thing access we have to the net is via a web proxy. Apparently everything else is too insecure, including ssh. Fortunately, if you know the right people, you can get access to the SOCKS5 server, which will let you do most things (although I still haven't found a good telnet client for NT which will work with this particular SOCKS server).
It's lucky we're even allowed email privileges after last years mail-bombing that had our mail servers unavailable for a couple of days... ;-)
As some others have said, I also would have liked to see more technical details in the article. Before I read it, I expected at least a somewhat more technical article than it was. After reading it, I thought that there was very little content of interest to myself (and probably a majority of the others who read Slashdot).
I don't know a huge amount about the specific details of FreeBSD, but I have briefly installed and played with it (and will do so again when I free up a machine for it). I would have loved to learn a little more of the specifics, e.g. how the task scheduling and memory management is handled compared to Linux, etc.
I also found the article appeared to be a fair comparison on the surface, but to me the author seemed to be belittling the efforts of Linux developers, which is a real shame.
However, I don't know who the target audience for this article is, but I have a feeling that it's not the technical community, but more people who have a passing interest in Unix in general or more specifically, Linux/BSD.
One thing that was somewhat annoying was the author's example of running FreeBSD on a small system, and then saying that it scaled right up to big systems like Yahoo/Walnut Creek/etc. Although he provided some good examples of large systems which run FreeBSD, it was almost as if 'Linux can handle the in-between tasks'. However, I can't think of an example of a big/famous system running Linux to use as a counter (although I'm fairly sure that some exist).
Have you got some proof in the form of unbiased figures to back up these claims about *BSD?
If so, please post them (or a link to them), since I'm very curious about this...
I've already got SaveUnders turned off in Enlightenment, since I had problems with them in WindowMaker when using X11Amp...
I don't know about BackingStore though, is that an Enlightenment option, or something to do with the X Server setup?
(I'll be the first to admit that I'm quite ignorant about most of the works of X).
7-8MB? My X server is using 48MB at the moment, I've seen it get up to 90MB with only a couple of windows open.
And I only have an 8MB graphics card, so minus the framebuffer the server is still using 40MB of RAM.
I'm running Enlightenment and Gnome, but it still seems to be an excessive amount of RAM (to me), but I'm fairly new to Unix/X and I guess that sort of RAM use could be 'normal' for what I'm running...
I've got a similar spec machine here, being used as a masquerading firewall. Compaq 486DX33 with 8MB and Debian potato.
:-/
I've been running the 2.2.x series on it since I set the machine up, so I don't have any comparison to go with. What are your reasons for not running 2.2.x on this spec machine?
Incidentally, I've got a spare 8MB SIMM sitting here, but it seems that the machine only takes 'Compaq' RAM or something, since I can't get it to accept the SIMM.
Any system where you implicitly trust unknown users on the internet to send you non-malicious programs is inherently flawed.
Ah! But that's the thing, these macro virii that have been doing the rounds lately send themselves to people in your address book (and I believe the Melissa chose the people on the basis of how often you correspond with them). Therefore, you are hardly receiving the email from an 'unknown user', and it makes it quite a bit harder to discern whether what you've received is a virus or truly a legitimate file. (Remember that you might often get attached files from these people normally, so it's not unusual to be receiving one in this case).
It's a sort of 'social engineering' that the virii writers are using to get their malicious little programs run.
Remember that it's people's ignorance that is getting these files spread around, more than anything else. If the average user was educated about the issue enough to not blindly open attached files without virus scanning them, then the problem would be greatly reduced.
I think you are missing the point somewhat. It's more about the fact that the 'Kiwi Share' agreement gives us the right of free residential calls, and that Telecom is moving to take away that right for internet calls, by forcing us to 'admit' that they are different to voice calls by using these special dial-up numbers to avoid paying 2c/min for the calls to our ISPs.
Sure, it's free to call these new numbers now... but since we are being forced to 'admit' these calls are different to voice calls, they will, sooner or later, start charging for these calls - thus having avoided the agreement they signed when the company was purchased from the Government.
Another thing which is truly sickening is the fact that the government ever sold off the company in the first place. Hundreds of people have lost their jobs since, and Telecom are making larger profits each year - and yet they continue to find ways to screw the customers over.
The lines and equipment that is now owned by Telecom were paid for by the tax payers (by way of the government) and then almost GIVEN to Telecom. It's not as if they've had any hard work setting up the damn company, it was pre-existing and ready to run when they bought it.
This is not the first, and certainly not the last thing that Telecom will do. I can remember when I was using an ISP which was just getting running, around the same time as Xtra (Telecom's own ISP) was getting into the business... The ISP I was with had no end of problems with their connections and had to wait days, sometimes weeks to get the problems solved by Telecom technicians.
The British were certainly involved, they set up the site at Bletchley Park for the purpose of deciphering intercepted messages. However the Polish were involved far before the British (as early as 1932 I think) and made alot of the early discoveries, especially reguarding Enigma. They actually started to be able to crack the Enigma cipher before the war even started...
The Americans became involved in Bletchley fairly late (around 1942 IIRC), and I dare say clever people from other Allied sides were involved as well at some stage.
Really? Sorry. I was getting my information from a WWII book, and I didn't cross-check everything. I don't remember any mention of the ABC in any computing history books I've read, I shall have to go and have another look...
If you are referring to the Engima machine, you are completely wrong. The US wasn't involved with the deciphering project until 1942, for a start. And although the Polish had discovered how to crack Engima ciphered messages from 1932, it was not until very late in the war that the British were able to regularly decode a large number of intercepted messages. Alan Turing was the chief designer of the 'Bronze Goddesses', which helped calculate the keys used with the Enigma machine.
And do not forget that the Germans also had 'Secret Writer' (known to the Allies as 'Fish') which was far more difficult to decipher than Enigma, and led to the creation of the first electronic computer, 'Colossus', built by a Cambridge mathematics professor and a Post Office engineer. Colossus didn't start working on ciphered messages until 1943.
I would not consider this 'early in WWII', and the US contribution to the effort came quite late, compared to the Polish and British, who had been working in various forms since the early 1930s, and set up Bletchley Park as a central location for cryptography work.
And a big part of the reason why Enigma ciphers were broken was not the fault of the code itself, but the poor training and laziness of the operators who often used insecure keys and 'known' words.
As you will have heard people say before, security is as strong as it's weakest link. Often you will find than lazy or poorly trained humans will be a weaker link than anything else. Why have a fantastic cipher if the user is going to enter their passphrase via cleartext telnet?
In reply to your statement about screws, I've had a couple of Commodore Amigas... One of them had not flat-head screws, but very soft aluminium posidrive screws, which I proceeded to completely strip when using a much larger phillips screwdriver. Eventually they got so bad I had to cut slots in them with a knife and undo them using those.
:-)
And that certainly wasn't the worst thing I did to that computer... soldering wires directly onto an edge-connector, cutting tracks on the motherboard.. it lasting a surprisingly long time considering.
The other Amiga, fortunately, had standard phillips screws.