Care to elaborate? Actually there was nothing wrong with the NT microkernel design originally. 3.51 was fast and I believe fairly stable. As far as I can tell the instability came from the UI which has been allowed to contaminate the architecture.
I think you are correct. For NT 4.0 they basically moved everything but the kitchen sink into Kernel space, which helped increase the speed of the system at a huge cost in stability.
Well, anything that runs in Kernel space can take down the machine much easier if it misbehaves. Also, one of the cool things about the HURD is that you can actually have different services running for different users on the same machine.
You do know that the HURD was started before the Linux kernel, don't you?
Personally, I find development of the HURD much more interesting than development of the Linux kernel. I personally don't care too much about how popular the operating system becomes (either Linux or HURD) but I think it's fascinating that work on a design that actually shows some innovation is taking place in the public sphere.
You basically seem to have a big problem with Richard Stallman. Say what you will about him, but I can guarantee that you wouldn't be using Linux right now if it weren't for him.
I haven't toyed with FreeBSD enough, but I suspect that make cvsup (or whatever command you use to update the ports collection) is not significantly more simple than apt-get upgrade.
Yeah probably not -- but I have to admit that I've never used debian either. From what I've seen/heard, Debian seems like the distribution most like FreeBSD. I'm just much more familiar with the BSDs, and the linux distro's I have used (RedHat, Turbo) have left me feeling just a little unsure about exactly what's there. Well, Turbolinux is better than RedHat -- it doesn't enable so many services by default -- but I prefer to have a system that is completely stripped out of the box and I will add what I need. That way, even though I still might not be 100% secure, at least I won't be surprised by a hole in something I didn't even know was running!
Well, I don't use slackware (though I might give it a try at some point) but I don't typically use package management on my linux boxes. The problem is that most of the time the existing packages just aren't quite right for what I'm doing and I have to install from source anyway. Apache is the biggest example of this, there are just so many variations -- PHP (plus which extentions for that -- gd, mysql or pgsql etc, etc.), mod_perl, etc.
Overall, out of all the packaging systems, I still feel the most comfortable with the BSD ports collection. And updating FreeBSD is still much much easier than updating any distribution of Linux IMNSHO.
except that I don't really want either the PC or the console...
Actually, I have a couple of PC's -- one running FreeBSD and one running Linux, and another Mac. None of them looks as good as the iMac though -- I even bought an epson printer in the same color (strawberry).
From the other side of the coin, I have never owned a game console, and would have a hard time justifying such a purchase to myself (and my wife!), after all, I already waste too much time as it is. But I don't currently have a DVD player (except in my DV iMac) or mp3 jukebox, so those functions might be what actually get me to buy one.
Heh, yeah, the "higher taxes" thing worked oh-so-well for Mondale in '84. You think they'd learn....
Who exactly is "they"? Mondale wasn't a socialist.
I think, of all candidates, once the third-party candidates -- the only ones actually running on what they believe -- start pandering to get more votes, then we are truly finished as a democracy.
On what basis do you say that he has integrity? Because he exagerates his record in Texas? Because he is adept at misconstruing Al Gores record? Because he has real-world experience in driving a $20 million company into the ground at the expense of some family friends who hoped he'd be able to repay the favor someday once he was in public office?
I'm not a fan of Al Gore (I'll be voting for Nader) but I don't trust Bush any further than I could throw him. The guy's a politician, no better than Gore, but with 5% of the brains.
Yes his absolutely ridiculous handling of both nuclear energy and free trade. The stupid populist that he is opposes free trade because many people think its bad despite its economic benifit for nearly everyone (if not in fact for everyone).
Economic benefit for nearly everyone? Tell that to the thousands of autoworkers in Flint who have lost their jobs. Or the thousands of subsistance farmers in Mexico who have lost their land. What we call "free trade" is free for large corporations, but comes at a great price to working people.
Complexity theory solutions fall into two types:Ones where you can't understand the underlying process, in which case you can't trust the complexity theory result.
I saw it quoted in a British newspaper -- maybe the Gaurdian? -- just before the start of the Gulf War. Unfortunately I never saw it in its full context.
Well, isn't being first incentive enough? When Amazon.com started they didn't have any patents, yet they managed to dominate the market for online book sales because they did it first and built up a big customer base quickly.
As far as I'm concerned, if your business really relies on patent protection [talking about business model patents here, not "real" patents], you've probably got a pretty poor business model to start out with.
I think that the reason no one implemented one-click buying before Amazon isn't because no one thought of it, but because it's just such a really bad idea.
That would be fine if the goal was just to keep sending the shuttle up forever. But if we actually want to pursue space exploration we'll have to make some progress on some pretty big projects.
Basically they want the National Science Foundation to compete with NASA. Part of the reasoning is that the NSF would outsource almost all of its projects. Well, NASA already subcontracts almost everything - and there are only so many aerospace companies out there. So now instead of bidding against each other for a NASA contract, they get to bid against each other for an NSF contract. And now you might have NSF and NASA bidding against each other for a contractor's work, which if anything would drive prices up.
I think NASA itself needs reform, but I don't think that bringing free-market philosophy to the space program is the solution.
I agree 100%. Maybe NASA itself could be structured in such a way as to have competing projects or something (though I'm not sure that's a really good idea either).
I think that the real problem with NASA is that its mandate seems really fuzzy, and in a way that competition will probably only make worse. Already there are huge commercial pressures on NASA. It seems that the way that they keep their funding is by up-playing the commercial benefits of the space program to such an extent (we invented velcro!) in order to get funding from congress that any science somehow has to fit into that framework.
What I would like to see (as a tax paying American!) is guaranteed funding for NASA for an extended period of time, with a congressional mandate to pursue pure science.
Of course we know how congress feels about science:(
Encrypted personal info stored locally. (strong encryption using RSA or something). Wouldn't be too hard.
Yeah, but it still get unencrypted at some point, otherwise what's the point of having it at all? If you trust them not to store this info on their own servers when they say they won't, why not trust them not to disclose the info they have when they say they won't? Either way it's all based on trust.
(Yes, I know that it would take care of the site-cracking issue - so it may be a better option on those grounds, but I still don't trust them not to give out my personal info no matter where it's stored.)
I believe that they are also not going to sell their list if the company gets bought.
Based on what evidence? It wouldn't be illegal for them to do so (assuming they change their privacy policy first, if neccessary), and it would probably be the one thing that they have worth selling.
Yeah, but you still have to trust them not to store your personal info, because the info still goes through their server at some point.
And since they're storing your UID and a list of sites you've been to or whatever on their server, what's to stop them from changing their privacy policy, grabbing your personal info (the only need to do it once) and linking it to all your past activity? With the rate that companies violate and/or arbitrarily change their internet privacy policies these days, I don't think I'd trust any company these days not to do this.
Actually, Moore's Law refers to circuit density, not processor speed. Also, originally the time period was every year. It slowed down to 18 months after a couple of years.
No of course I'm not arguing against reciprocity, or transparancy, or accountability. But what we need to do is make the entire institution accountable, and just knowing some personal info about the officers doesn't do that. What if insurance companies had to open the entire process to public inspection -- so we knew exactly what the criteria were for what medical procedures were/were not covered, and all internal communications about a case we made public. Things along those lines might make the companies more accountable.
Two way info flow is exactly what we need, but the info that we need from them is not the same as the info they want from us.
If an insurance company does genetic profiles, demand that the top 100 officers of that company publish the same data about themselves. If the IRs asks a bunch of intrusive questions, demand that IRS officers, auditors, etc. provide the same information. Often, two-way flows of information can remove the damaging effects of one-way flows without reducing the usefulness of the information flow.
I think you're way off here. Now, if in addition to having personal info on these guys I had the power to cancel the health insurance of the CEO with a genetic defect/addiction/bad eating habits/etc. or initiate an audit of the IRS officers that would be different. Then maybe they'd stop asking for so much info in the first place. As it stands, what you're suggesting is quite asymmetric. It reminds me of someone's sig here (I forget who the quote is from, and I'm probably mangling it):
Like the case of young women looking for husbands and husbands looking for young women, the situation is not as symmetrical as it first appears.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are correct. For NT 4.0 they basically moved everything but the kitchen sink into Kernel space, which helped increase the speed of the system at a huge cost in stability.
Well, anything that runs in Kernel space can take down the machine much easier if it misbehaves. Also, one of the cool things about the HURD is that you can actually have different services running for different users on the same machine.
You do know that the HURD was started before the Linux kernel, don't you?
Personally, I find development of the HURD much more interesting than development of the Linux kernel. I personally don't care too much about how popular the operating system becomes (either Linux or HURD) but I think it's fascinating that work on a design that actually shows some innovation is taking place in the public sphere.
You basically seem to have a big problem with Richard Stallman. Say what you will about him, but I can guarantee that you wouldn't be using Linux right now if it weren't for him.
Yeah probably not -- but I have to admit that I've never used debian either. From what I've seen/heard, Debian seems like the distribution most like FreeBSD. I'm just much more familiar with the BSDs, and the linux distro's I have used (RedHat, Turbo) have left me feeling just a little unsure about exactly what's there. Well, Turbolinux is better than RedHat -- it doesn't enable so many services by default -- but I prefer to have a system that is completely stripped out of the box and I will add what I need. That way, even though I still might not be 100% secure, at least I won't be surprised by a hole in something I didn't even know was running!
Well, I don't use slackware (though I might give it a try at some point) but I don't typically use package management on my linux boxes. The problem is that most of the time the existing packages just aren't quite right for what I'm doing and I have to install from source anyway. Apache is the biggest example of this, there are just so many variations -- PHP (plus which extentions for that -- gd, mysql or pgsql etc, etc.), mod_perl, etc.
Overall, out of all the packaging systems, I still feel the most comfortable with the BSD ports collection. And updating FreeBSD is still much much easier than updating any distribution of Linux IMNSHO.
I never said I couldn't afford it, I just don't spend much time playing games.
except that I don't really want either the PC or the console...
Actually, I have a couple of PC's -- one running FreeBSD and one running Linux, and another Mac. None of them looks as good as the iMac though -- I even bought an epson printer in the same color (strawberry).
From the other side of the coin, I have never owned a game console, and would have a hard time justifying such a purchase to myself (and my wife!), after all, I already waste too much time as it is. But I don't currently have a DVD player (except in my DV iMac) or mp3 jukebox, so those functions might be what actually get me to buy one.
It's an open source project -- if someone wants to do the work to turn it into a more serious product do you have a problem with that?
So PostgreSQL and InterBase are basically worthless as well, I take it?
Who exactly is "they"? Mondale wasn't a socialist.
I think, of all candidates, once the third-party candidates -- the only ones actually running on what they believe -- start pandering to get more votes, then we are truly finished as a democracy.
On what basis do you say that he has integrity? Because he exagerates his record in Texas? Because he is adept at misconstruing Al Gores record? Because he has real-world experience in driving a $20 million company into the ground at the expense of some family friends who hoped he'd be able to repay the favor someday once he was in public office?
I'm not a fan of Al Gore (I'll be voting for Nader) but I don't trust Bush any further than I could throw him. The guy's a politician, no better than Gore, but with 5% of the brains.
Economic benefit for nearly everyone? Tell that to the thousands of autoworkers in Flint who have lost their jobs. Or the thousands of subsistance farmers in Mexico who have lost their land. What we call "free trade" is free for large corporations, but comes at a great price to working people.
Regarding scare quotes: check this out.
So... what's the other type?
I saw it quoted in a British newspaper -- maybe the Gaurdian? -- just before the start of the Gulf War. Unfortunately I never saw it in its full context.
Well, isn't being first incentive enough? When Amazon.com started they didn't have any patents, yet they managed to dominate the market for online book sales because they did it first and built up a big customer base quickly.
As far as I'm concerned, if your business really relies on patent protection [talking about business model patents here, not "real" patents], you've probably got a pretty poor business model to start out with.
I think that the reason no one implemented one-click buying before Amazon isn't because no one thought of it, but because it's just such a really bad idea.
That would be fine if the goal was just to keep sending the shuttle up forever. But if we actually want to pursue space exploration we'll have to make some progress on some pretty big projects.
Basically they want the National Science Foundation to compete with NASA. Part of the reasoning is that the NSF would outsource almost all of its projects. Well, NASA already subcontracts almost everything - and there are only so many aerospace companies out there. So now instead of bidding against each other for a NASA contract, they get to bid against each other for an NSF contract. And now you might have NSF and NASA bidding against each other for a contractor's work, which if anything would drive prices up.
I think NASA itself needs reform, but I don't think that bringing free-market philosophy to the space program is the solution.
I agree 100%. Maybe NASA itself could be structured in such a way as to have competing projects or something (though I'm not sure that's a really good idea either).
:(
I think that the real problem with NASA is that its mandate seems really fuzzy, and in a way that competition will probably only make worse. Already there are huge commercial pressures on NASA. It seems that the way that they keep their funding is by up-playing the commercial benefits of the space program to such an extent (we invented velcro!) in order to get funding from congress that any science somehow has to fit into that framework.
What I would like to see (as a tax paying American!) is guaranteed funding for NASA for an extended period of time, with a congressional mandate to pursue pure science.
Of course we know how congress feels about science
Yeah, but it still get unencrypted at some point, otherwise what's the point of having it at all? If you trust them not to store this info on their own servers when they say they won't, why not trust them not to disclose the info they have when they say they won't? Either way it's all based on trust.
(Yes, I know that it would take care of the site-cracking issue - so it may be a better option on those grounds, but I still don't trust them not to give out my personal info no matter where it's stored.)
Based on what evidence? It wouldn't be illegal for them to do so (assuming they change their privacy policy first, if neccessary), and it would probably be the one thing that they have worth selling.
Yeah, but you still have to trust them not to store your personal info, because the info still goes through their server at some point.
And since they're storing your UID and a list of sites you've been to or whatever on their server, what's to stop them from changing their privacy policy, grabbing your personal info (the only need to do it once) and linking it to all your past activity? With the rate that companies violate and/or arbitrarily change their internet privacy policies these days, I don't think I'd trust any company these days not to do this.
Actually, Moore's Law refers to circuit density, not processor speed. Also, originally the time period was every year. It slowed down to 18 months after a couple of years.
No of course I'm not arguing against reciprocity, or transparancy, or accountability. But what we need to do is make the entire institution accountable, and just knowing some personal info about the officers doesn't do that. What if insurance companies had to open the entire process to public inspection -- so we knew exactly what the criteria were for what medical procedures were/were not covered, and all internal communications about a case we made public. Things along those lines might make the companies more accountable.
Two way info flow is exactly what we need, but the info that we need from them is not the same as the info they want from us.
I think you're way off here. Now, if in addition to having personal info on these guys I had the power to cancel the health insurance of the CEO with a genetic defect/addiction/bad eating habits/etc. or initiate an audit of the IRS officers that would be different. Then maybe they'd stop asking for so much info in the first place. As it stands, what you're suggesting is quite asymmetric. It reminds me of someone's sig here (I forget who the quote is from, and I'm probably mangling it):