Re: Switching Compilers
on
GCC 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
If I switch from gcc 2.9x to gcc 3.2, what will I not be able to do, and what problems can I expect
If you compile programs or libraries with
GCC 3.2, they won't be able to link against
libraries that were compiled with prior
GCC compiler versions. But this only
affects C++ code! C code is unaffected.
And: This isn't really a problem if you
compile on your own anyway. You just don't need to
"switch compilers". Just do a parallel installation.
For example: ../gcc-3.2/configure --program-suffix=32 --prefix=/usr && make bootstrap and it will end up
as "gcc32" in your system.
Re: What does this mean for OS X?
on
GCC 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 3, Informative
AFAIK, the entirety of Jaguar is compiled with GCC 3.1 [google.com]. Replacing all the libraries with v3.2 is gonna be some mighty huge software updates...
This only affects C++ code. And only libraries
and object files.
Also, it's perfectly possible to have both
compilers on the same system. No need to rush
for gcc-3.2, anyway.
Re: kde speedups ?
on
GCC 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Where does the gcc 3.2 release stand in terms of fixing the linking speeds of C++ programs?
call me stupid, I know about API's, but what exactly is an ABI ?????
API: Application-Programmer-Interface.
ABI: Application-Binary-Interface.
ABI is the convention used when creating
object files (.o). How the assembly
calling convention is, how the symbols are
named... this sort of stuff.
Re: UltraSparc, Linux, and RAID1
on
GCC 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 2
So I was looking at GCC 3.1.1 yesterday and got it installed but I was unable to compile a kernel with it (make couldn't find the compiler).
Huh? Have gcc with exactly this name
in your path (check with type -p gcc.
This didn't work?!
Re: Finally, ABI stabilization. Now about optimiza
on
GCC 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Compile with optimization on -- visual glitches.
Compile with optimization off -- no visual glitches.
You know that GCC has been
tested more with optimization turned on
than with -O0 (no optimization)?
About two years ago, I was compiling linuxconf.
The Makefiles forced -O0 (no optimization),
and its author, asked, said that "there
will be errors by the compiler when I
turn on optimization, so I force it to
be off for everyone."
It turned out there was a bug in his
code. It wasn't gcc's fault. It just
showed up when you used optimization. But, btw,
the code of Linuxconf has been ugly
as hell since I first saw it.
Code that won't compile (or break) at -O1
is crap.
Re: Breaking interoperability... again???
on
GCC 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"Be aware that C++ code compiled by GCC 3.2 will not interoperate with code compiled by GCC 3.1.1."
When will they understand that breaking interoperability is not the way to go forward?
Please remember that the C++ standards comitee
encouraged vendors to use different
(incompatible) ABIs for C++. C++ compilers were not
supposed to interoperate, because
they thought that this would never work, because
the compiler had to do far too much things outside
the object files (compilation units) for exception
handling and initialization code.
And, for all compilers I know, they were right.
You really cannot blame the GCC people for this.
Whenever they have to change the internal handling
of exceptions, templates and stuff internally,
it really is the best choice to change the ABI.
The C++ standard was never designed to make
code compiled by different compilers link. And
gcc2, gcc3.1, and gcc3.2 are
different compilers because the internal handling
of these very complex structures changed.
I disagree. Pop-up ads are more annoying. They ruin my stream of concentration.
"popunder ads" are popup
ads. On many OS/browser combinations, first
they pop up and _then_ they go to the background.
This becomes even worse on slower machines.
Also, some browsers remember the size and
position of the last browser window you closed.
Which is still sane behaviour. So if you start up
the browser again, it will be small and you have
to resize it first.
Closing pop-under windows can be viewed similarly to closing all your programs and windows before shutting down the machine.
If you have already decided to shut down
your Internet session and close your browser,
how often would you click on one of those
ads then after you closed all your main
browser windows? This makes them even more useless
and annoying. And it wouldn't help advertisers
at all. It's a lose-lose.
So how can I pay my bills that total nearly $3,000 a month for this "free" service (and make a profit in the end)? Popunders. This is what advertisers are willing to pay for these days. Am I a sinner that should be crusified for supporting this ad format?
No, but you should be aware that pop-under
ads, if associated with your site, will make
more people block ads on
your site than without (or just make them not
visit your site anymore), because they are
a hell more annoying.
Remember that you're doing a deal.
Of course you can use ads to get money. But
ads alone won't get you money - you need
visitors or your fancy
ads are worthless anyway. So a good webmaster
should do anything to not annoy his
visitors.
Now think about popunder ads again...
Your using popup killer deprives these sites of revenue that they should be getting for you visiting their sites.
You're wrong. Most importantly, there is
this difference between "ad killer" and
"popup add killer". For many people, ads are
okay, but they really, really hate
it if a mere web site causes their browsers
to open unrequested windows.
Popup killers don't cut revenue. It's
the webmasters own decision to switch to
popup/popunder ads (for more cash from
the marketing people). If they do this, they
have to expect that they are annoying their
customers/visitors and that they will block it.
It's perfectly their own fault.
If a website can't live without the financial
bonus of popup ads, then it's dead anyway.
All the extra possibilities that FireWire offers mean more complex software and more possibilities for misconfigurations and problems.
With Firewire/1394 you can plug your digicam
into a 1394 compliant printer and you get your
photos. In most cases, there isn't
even something you could misconfigure (talking about
cable and protocol).
In fact, in practice, it seems like USB and FireWire are really used in the same kinds of configurations by most people.
Yes; if 1394 is used for A, B, C, and D and
USB is used for A, B, and C, "most people" use
USB for the same thing.
I don't want to talk about licensing costs;
1394 transceiver chips are very cheap to
manufacture. 1394 protocol stacks for the OSes have been
around for quite some while, so there's another
point where things should have settled.
This is not rocket science; 1394 is just more
versatile than USB while at the same time being
as stable (although USB 1.1 had a much lower
bandwidth and already this
killed some drivers if there was heavy load
on the US-Bus - and they wanted to sell this
crap as "Plug and Play"?).
Have a look at the hardware and protocol specs of both USB
and 1394. 1394's are just so very more sane.
One of the "shocking stastitcs" they present is the following:
88% of the population "believes" in alternative medicine.
lol.. Do you know why?
I just double-checked whether there is more
information about this in the article or not.
It just says:
30 percent of adult Americans believe that UFOs are space vehicles from other civilizations; 60 percent believe in ESP; 40 percent think that astrology is scientific; 32 percent believe in lucky numbers; 70 percent accept magnetic therapy as scientific; and 88 percent accept alternative medicine.
Now imagine some people. They have to fill
out several pages of a form in this "survey".
Maybe question 13 is:
13. Do you believe in/accept alternative medicine? Yes/No
Most will think: "*What*
'alternative medicine' are they talking about?
Well, I believe that kissing an ill kid will
help him a bit, and I believe that there
are methods to cure illness that western
medicine doesn't yet know of, so - of course -
I will answer 'yes'."
I really hate statistics
when you only get to see the results but
not the questionaries to verify for yourself.:-((( No wonder this answer got
88%. This is scientific crap, sorry.
Also remember that just ten decimal digits would be enough to count every human alive. I assume there are less products in the world than that which need numbering than that! Remember that books get ISBNs (only 10 digits) too, etc.
Remember what they did to IPv4 address space?
Lots of companies (and institutions) still hold
large blocks of IPs that aren't
even in use or could easily be replaced by private
address space since they aren't even routed on
the net (read: public).
My per-user upload limit is set at 1, so someone queueing up 200 files at a time generates an enormous amount of protocol overhead. It might be 5 hours before that user gets all of his 200 files, all the while he's sending a constant barrage of packets which accomplish nothing.
How about an option in the protocol that
transmits the "per-user limit" value on
failed requests? How about clients that
react on this value?
Of course, peers that send requests for
the same files every few seconds should
be blocked. This really hurts bandwidth.
No. Download ratios are bad. There's no
easy way for someone to start getting in
such a "closed community" because, at the
beginning, you just don't have
interesting files to upload.
You have two choices: Upload lots of crap
(and probably get kicked/banned) or be
ethical and just don't upload crap but
wait maybe weeks until your friend
comes over and gives you CDs to upload.
Another possibility was to visit
other networks or
BBSes (this is where this ratio stuff
started) which don't
have ratios, download stuff there
and upload it on your ratio net.
But - if such networks exist, why
use the ratio ones anyway? On the other
hand, you would piss off those who
are running the non-ratio net because
you were just leeching like hell.
Download ratios actually hurt
the whole community very seriously.
Some time ago I read about a specie of frogs that were able to survive the freezing during winter. The cells containes a substance that avoid this water cristalls to form and therefor the cells didn't die.
I saw something like this a while ago, too
(yes, on TV, and it made sense). And yes, this
prevents the cells from being crushed by ice
crystals.
But for a frog, this is just a few months.
How are you going to keep cells alive for
decades without "feeding" them?
the article is talking about USB 2.0, which moves data at 480 Mb/s, vs. the current (?) firewire speed of 400.
Firewire aka IEEE 1394 is the better technology.
Why? Because you don't need a central host. This is important.
Firewire devices can interchange data point-to-point.
USB always needs a host (read: PC, Mac, whatever)
to keep the bus up. This is why Intel is pushing
USB. Not because of technical aspects (ok, maybe
to punish Apple), but because they want you to
have to keep some central device (PC) to be
able to exchange data between (USB) devices.
Also, I don't know what kind of rechargers come with your laptop but be ready for an inevitable bump in line voltage in europe (220v).
In most European countries the voltage has
been raised to 230V(!) about
10 years ago.
Most 220V equipment can handle it (and "newer"
equipment, say, for the last 10(!) years, is
specified for 230V), but for older equipment, be
prepared that it might get hotter if it's
specified for 220V. Remember that it's an almost
5% increase.
There was a really
good article
about Go
on kuro5hin
maybe three weeks ago. In fact,
it caused me to start playing again and it
still is much fun.:-)
Just try it. There are lots of free Go
servers online. I prefer the
KGS
server. All you need is to download
the client or just play it online in your
browser with others (Java
required). There are usually ~100 people
online in the English room (yes, chat
included).
IceWM,
"The Cool Window Manager":-) came out
to be a small-footprint, functional X11 window
manager. Which it was (I think it was about
1.2M or less of RAM when I had it running).
Now it got deeper theme support, KDE and
GNOME hints, sound support...
I wished I could still run it in 1.2M.:-(
The problem is that you can't simply turn
off most of the bloat, and just taking an older
version of the code isn't an option, too, since
it contained several bugs. Guess it: The bugs
were fixed and bloat was
added.
I really hope these guys aren't going
to do the same mistake.
It's pure ignorance to believe you can win.
on
RIAA Smacked by DoS
·
· Score: 1
It's childish to declare a hacker war.
It's foolish to declare a war on all hackers.
It's pure ignorance to believe you can win.
How very true. Companies, please don't try
this at home.
There are a couple of problems that can lead to this symptom, and asymmetric connections are more likely to suffer from it. Basically, if your upstream bandwidth is swamped with file transfers, it's hard for the ACKs for packets you receive on your downstream to get through, so the downstream TCP sessions get throttled.
This is a design issue with TCP, since TCP
was simply not designed for asymmetric connections.
So the protocol assumes that if upstream capacity
is exhausted, then downstream is, too.
A modern Operating System is really no more easy or difficult to use then an Operating System that was in use nearly ten years ago.
It is. More difficult, I mean. Several years ago,
every Operating System for the end user came with
decent documentation for the end user.
Think about it. It's easier to point someone
to section 14.2 of their manuals than having them
check some "online help" when their only problem
was how to use the web browser in first place.
Also, Microsoft brought us a world where most
employers ask for "PC knowledge" for any secretary
while meaning "He/she is used to Windows".
Many, many companies don't teach their employees
anymore in things like PC office suites and their
computers themselves. It's their
fault. They (IMHO) should
complain about missing manuals at the manufacturer. But they don't. They just require their employees
to get the skills. It's not even cheaper. It's
just less of a hassle.
According to the reports, people see RoadRunner
scan their port 1214 and some time after
this the port becomes blocked.
I think it works like this: MPAA informs
RoadRunner of an "insult", RoadRunner staff
checks this customer's port and if there is
filesharing software active, they silently
block it. It seems to be done manually.
Nothing magical here. But seems like
RoadRunner is in bed with MPAA, or they
wouldn't do it without noticing their
users (and at least ASK
them if the MPAA insult is true at all).
the germanium diode might generate more 1's than 0's. That knowledge alone may be enough to break messages.
Mmh, I'm not really into the maths, but would
it help to add _another_ germanium generator with the same
characteristics that would invert the 0/1 signal
from the first's ADC if it by itself produced a 1 signal?
On second thought, though, I guess it won't:
One would knew that in - let's say - 52% of bits
the original signal was inverted. ok, bad idea,
but worth a thought.
[artifacts produced by the measurement equipment
attached to the entropy source]
Interesting thought. One would need a source
of signal that was produced by the detector
(ADC/whatever)
itself.
So, for computers, one'd need a source
that would generate states of "0" and "1"
in regular intervals and
provide its own clock.
Slashdot Mirror
If you compile programs or libraries with GCC 3.2, they won't be able to link against libraries that were compiled with prior GCC compiler versions. But this only affects C++ code! C code is unaffected.
And: This isn't really a problem if you compile on your own anyway. You just don't need to "switch compilers". Just do a parallel installation. For example: ../gcc-3.2/configure --program-suffix=32 --prefix=/usr && make bootstrap and it will end up
as "gcc32" in your system.
This only affects C++ code. And only libraries and object files.
Also, it's perfectly possible to have both compilers on the same system. No need to rush for gcc-3.2, anyway.
Isn't this rather part of ld(1) (binutils)?
API: Application-Programmer-Interface.
ABI: Application-Binary-Interface.
ABI is the convention used when creating object files (.o). How the assembly calling convention is, how the symbols are named... this sort of stuff.
Huh? Have gcc with exactly this name in your path (check with type -p gcc . This didn't work?!
You know that GCC has been tested more with optimization turned on than with -O0 (no optimization)?
About two years ago, I was compiling linuxconf. The Makefiles forced -O0 (no optimization), and its author, asked, said that "there will be errors by the compiler when I turn on optimization, so I force it to be off for everyone."
It turned out there was a bug in his code. It wasn't gcc's fault. It just showed up when you used optimization. But, btw, the code of Linuxconf has been ugly as hell since I first saw it.
Code that won't compile (or break) at -O1 is crap.
Please remember that the C++ standards comitee encouraged vendors to use different (incompatible) ABIs for C++. C++ compilers were not supposed to interoperate, because they thought that this would never work, because the compiler had to do far too much things outside the object files (compilation units) for exception handling and initialization code.
And, for all compilers I know, they were right.
You really cannot blame the GCC people for this. Whenever they have to change the internal handling of exceptions, templates and stuff internally, it really is the best choice to change the ABI.
The C++ standard was never designed to make code compiled by different compilers link. And gcc2, gcc3.1, and gcc3.2 are different compilers because the internal handling of these very complex structures changed.
"popunder ads" are popup ads. On many OS/browser combinations, first they pop up and _then_ they go to the background. This becomes even worse on slower machines.
Also, some browsers remember the size and position of the last browser window you closed. Which is still sane behaviour. So if you start up the browser again, it will be small and you have to resize it first.
If you have already decided to shut down your Internet session and close your browser, how often would you click on one of those ads then after you closed all your main browser windows? This makes them even more useless and annoying. And it wouldn't help advertisers at all. It's a lose-lose.
No, but you should be aware that pop-under ads, if associated with your site, will make more people block ads on your site than without (or just make them not visit your site anymore), because they are a hell more annoying.
Remember that you're doing a deal. Of course you can use ads to get money. But ads alone won't get you money - you need visitors or your fancy ads are worthless anyway. So a good webmaster should do anything to not annoy his visitors.
Now think about popunder ads again...
You're wrong. Most importantly, there is this difference between "ad killer" and "popup add killer". For many people, ads are okay, but they really, really hate it if a mere web site causes their browsers to open unrequested windows.
Popup killers don't cut revenue. It's the webmasters own decision to switch to popup/popunder ads (for more cash from the marketing people). If they do this, they have to expect that they are annoying their customers/visitors and that they will block it.
It's perfectly their own fault.
If a website can't live without the financial bonus of popup ads, then it's dead anyway.
With Firewire/1394 you can plug your digicam into a 1394 compliant printer and you get your photos. In most cases, there isn't even something you could misconfigure (talking about cable and protocol).
Yes; if 1394 is used for A, B, C, and D and USB is used for A, B, and C, "most people" use USB for the same thing.
I don't want to talk about licensing costs; 1394 transceiver chips are very cheap to manufacture. 1394 protocol stacks for the OSes have been around for quite some while, so there's another point where things should have settled.
This is not rocket science; 1394 is just more versatile than USB while at the same time being as stable (although USB 1.1 had a much lower bandwidth and already this killed some drivers if there was heavy load on the US-Bus - and they wanted to sell this crap as "Plug and Play"?).
Have a look at the hardware and protocol specs of both USB and 1394. 1394's are just so very more sane.
lol.. Do you know why?
I just double-checked whether there is more information about this in the article or not. It just says:
Now imagine some people. They have to fill out several pages of a form in this "survey". Maybe question 13 is:
Most will think: "*What* 'alternative medicine' are they talking about? Well, I believe that kissing an ill kid will help him a bit, and I believe that there are methods to cure illness that western medicine doesn't yet know of, so - of course - I will answer 'yes'."
I really hate statistics when you only get to see the results but not the questionaries to verify for yourself. :-((( No wonder this answer got
88%. This is scientific crap, sorry.
Remember what they did to IPv4 address space?
Lots of companies (and institutions) still hold large blocks of IPs that aren't even in use or could easily be replaced by private address space since they aren't even routed on the net (read: public).
How about an option in the protocol that transmits the "per-user limit" value on failed requests? How about clients that react on this value?
Of course, peers that send requests for the same files every few seconds should be blocked. This really hurts bandwidth.
No. Download ratios are bad. There's no easy way for someone to start getting in such a "closed community" because, at the beginning, you just don't have interesting files to upload. You have two choices: Upload lots of crap (and probably get kicked/banned) or be ethical and just don't upload crap but wait maybe weeks until your friend comes over and gives you CDs to upload.
Another possibility was to visit other networks or BBSes (this is where this ratio stuff started) which don't have ratios, download stuff there and upload it on your ratio net.
But - if such networks exist, why use the ratio ones anyway? On the other hand, you would piss off those who are running the non-ratio net because you were just leeching like hell.
Download ratios actually hurt the whole community very seriously.
I saw something like this a while ago, too (yes, on TV, and it made sense). And yes, this prevents the cells from being crushed by ice crystals.
But for a frog, this is just a few months. How are you going to keep cells alive for decades without "feeding" them?
Firewire aka IEEE 1394 is the better technology. Why? Because you don't need a central host. This is important.
Firewire devices can interchange data point-to-point. USB always needs a host (read: PC, Mac, whatever) to keep the bus up. This is why Intel is pushing USB. Not because of technical aspects (ok, maybe to punish Apple), but because they want you to have to keep some central device (PC) to be able to exchange data between (USB) devices.
Again, on Firewire, this is not needed.
In most European countries the voltage has been raised to 230V(!) about 10 years ago.
Most 220V equipment can handle it (and "newer" equipment, say, for the last 10(!) years, is specified for 230V), but for older equipment, be prepared that it might get hotter if it's specified for 220V. Remember that it's an almost 5% increase.
There was a really good article about Go on kuro5hin maybe three weeks ago. In fact, it caused me to start playing again and it still is much fun. :-)
Just try it. There are lots of free Go servers online. I prefer the KGS server. All you need is to download the client or just play it online in your browser with others (Java required). There are usually ~100 people online in the English room (yes, chat included).
It's a wonderful game.
IceWM, "The Cool Window Manager" :-) came out
to be a small-footprint, functional X11 window
manager. Which it was (I think it was about
1.2M or less of RAM when I had it running).
Now it got deeper theme support, KDE and GNOME hints, sound support...
I wished I could still run it in 1.2M. :-(
The problem is that you can't simply turn off most of the bloat, and just taking an older version of the code isn't an option, too, since it contained several bugs. Guess it: The bugs were fixed and bloat was added.
I really hope these guys aren't going to do the same mistake.
How very true. Companies, please don't try this at home.
This is a design issue with TCP, since TCP was simply not designed for asymmetric connections. So the protocol assumes that if upstream capacity is exhausted, then downstream is, too.
Because people can. That's what Linux is all about.
This doesn't mean it has anything to do with people trying to see Linux as a desktop OS.
Guess which ones hurt the most.
It is. More difficult, I mean. Several years ago, every Operating System for the end user came with decent documentation for the end user.
Think about it. It's easier to point someone to section 14.2 of their manuals than having them check some "online help" when their only problem was how to use the web browser in first place.
Also, Microsoft brought us a world where most employers ask for "PC knowledge" for any secretary while meaning "He/she is used to Windows".
Many, many companies don't teach their employees anymore in things like PC office suites and their computers themselves. It's their fault. They (IMHO) should complain about missing manuals at the manufacturer. But they don't. They just require their employees to get the skills. It's not even cheaper. It's just less of a hassle.
After reading the newsgroup postings, I strongly think that this is MPAA at work. There was this story of MPAA contacting ISPs to shut down customers that offer files using filesharing software just yesterday.
According to the reports, people see RoadRunner scan their port 1214 and some time after this the port becomes blocked.
I think it works like this: MPAA informs RoadRunner of an "insult", RoadRunner staff checks this customer's port and if there is filesharing software active, they silently block it. It seems to be done manually.
Nothing magical here. But seems like RoadRunner is in bed with MPAA, or they wouldn't do it without noticing their users (and at least ASK them if the MPAA insult is true at all).
Mmh, I'm not really into the maths, but would it help to add _another_ germanium generator with the same characteristics that would invert the 0/1 signal from the first's ADC if it by itself produced a 1 signal?
On second thought, though, I guess it won't: One would knew that in - let's say - 52% of bits the original signal was inverted. ok, bad idea, but worth a thought.
Interesting thought. One would need a source of signal that was produced by the detector (ADC/whatever) itself.
So, for computers, one'd need a source that would generate states of "0" and "1" in regular intervals and provide its own clock.
Reminds me of the NT paradoxon. :-)