It's a shame more people don't pay attention to Volcker.
I also think it's a shame/. commenters string together a series of cuss words and add the word "capitalist" and get modded up. Instead, how about we have an intelligent discussion about whether this trading practice promotes bad ethics or somehow hides information from customers or trading partners.
Also, since this is supposedly a technology site, can we discuss whether the fact this trading is computerized somehow makes it unique from other kinds of markets?
While nothing technical is stopping an intelligence agency from passing on criminal tips to LEOs, there are legal road blocks to doing so. At least in the U.S. there are supposed to be restrictions on federal agencies spying on private citizens. More importantly though, our federal Constitution, state laws, and over 900 years of English common-law heritage guarantee one's right to face your accuser. Unless the originating agency can prove where and how they intercepted some communication, and it wasn't obtained as part of an unreasonable search or seizure, any such evidence is "fruit of the poisoned tree".
You don't know me, but I consider myself more Libertarian than Republican, but wouldn't call myself an anarchist in any way. I want a smaller government, but there's a happy medium where the central government is "powerless" to mandate things that really should be decided at the local level, like what's on the school lunch menu, how you purchase your health care, who get's housing assistance funds, who gets a subsidy for building a business or producing a crop.
There's a difference between anarchy and a well and truly federated system of government. What we need in this country is a return to federalism where the central government does a few things and does them well, like providing for national defense, entering into treaties, managing the money supply, and managing disputes between the states.
No criticism about the ridiculous wealth disparity in the world is appropriate if it comes from someone who spends significantly more than his share.
I wish I could mod this whole thread about share of wealth irrelevant. Whether Larry Ellison buys a huge chunk of real estate in Hawaii has nothing to do with whether a starving kid in Africa gets a meal today. And if Larry never got to the point where he could afford such a thing doesn't matter one iota to solve the plight of impoverished people around the world.
There are many fair criticisms about his management tactics and business decisions, but I fail to see how someone who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity can be criticized for what appears to be yet another business deal.
The laws of the U.S. and Hawaii should ensure that he doesn't do anything harmful to the people or environment of this island. And if his involvement means the people that live there have a better life and he comes out ahead financially, then that's a net win we should all agree on.
The United States is a republic, not a democracy. I think you've confused feudalism with the concept of federalism. That is, where powers are divided between a representative central government and individual state and local goverments, compared to feudalism, where power is divided among property owning lords and giving fealty to a monarch.
Thankfully, we have moved on from a scheme where property rights were equivalent to voting rights. Today, basically anyone who is a citizen can vote.
The problem as I see it today is too little federalism. If the central government dictates so much of our day to day lives, you can't move to another city or another state to escape the tyranny.
Finally, political science aside, the difficulty with the actual mechanics of voting lies in the limited resources available to local election officials. These people are often city or county administrators or auditors, with other responsibilities beyond election time, and they are bound to competitively bid a "boxed" solution, rather than roll their own. I think this is definitely a situation of "build it, and they will come". It will take a critical mass of interested parties (like a trade group of local election officials) to certify and support a solution that could then be built by the private sector.
The problem is that while the President has a majority in Congress on paper, reality is much different. It would be a lot more obvious that he hasn't got a majority were we under a Parliamentary system....
The only thing that could realistically screw it up for them is if the Tea party steals too many votes or the American people collectively grow a spine.
Wow. I'm actually a bit dismayed this post got modded insightful. All you're doing is calling a large portion of the population spineless and brainless for having a different opinion than yourself.
I think it's a perfectly valid point of view to believe a government should protect an environment where it's most productive members are enabled to enrich themselves and society as a whole. I also think it's perfectly valid to believe a government's largest expenditures should not be income transfer programs. I also think it's quite realistic to expect to strike a balance where society's poorest members can be helped in times of need without bankrupting the entire nation.
It amazes me how so-called "open minded" people can be so intolerant of differing opinions.
Yes, while probably not insurmountable, it would be horribly impractical to design a modern turbojet or turbofan engine that would "screen" birds and other foreign object debris (FOD).
You have to remember the intake flow to one of these engines is traveling at or near supersonic speeds. Any grate or screening device capable of blocking or diverting damaging material would have a severe negative impact on the performance and fuel efficiency of the engine.
That being said, considerable research and development has been done to make the internals of modern engines more hardened to bird strikes. Just search youtube for "jet engine bird strike test" some time to see some of the results. The latest engines can survive some considerable ingestions with only a reduction in performance -- safe enough for an emergency landing.
The fault I find with your argument is the asterisk post-script at the end -- *Current implementation of "government" is not what I'm talking about, I'm talking philosophically".
You cannot separate a philosophic ideal of government from its real world implications. Entrusting a bureaucracy to administer infrastructure you see as vital still creates a ruling class that then becomes entrenched and seeks to protect its own interest.
I do not see a protected bureaucracy as something superior to a corporation. Since governments, by there nature, are granted a monopoly on force, they should not be trusted with any more power than necessary to guarantee encroachment on our natural rights by other individuals or foreign powers who seek to usurp or deprive us.
here's 8,
I've never met Pat, but I live probably about a mile away from his dad's here in Fargo. I went to NDSU, but some of my HS classmates have CS degrees from MSUM.
Best of luck to you Patrick, and I wish you an easy recovery.
Regards,
Reid
Next time that happens, call your credit card company and reverse the charges due to "service not as advertised". Lufthansa (or whoever provides the service) will then have to eat the cost of the call.
Actually, no it won't. I've worked for a bank in credit card customer service, and small transaction amounts (less than $10-$30) will get written off by the bank and never charged back to the merchant as long as it's not too suspicious.
Also, to dispel another myth in this thread, card declines or referrals are not triggered by dispute history. Declines or referrals are triggered by either account status and limits, or suspicious activity - defined by locality, type of merchant, transaction type, transaction velocity (amount over time) and other factors.
The only thing that disputing the transaction on your credit card does is raise interest rates and fees for the rest of us. There's no substitute for complaining to the merchant or service provider and voicing your opinion with consumer protection groups. The dispute process is there to protect cardholders when they're being screwed by a merchant and they can't get a hold of the company or haven't gotten a resolution. In that regard, credit cards are safer than checks or cash. It is not, however, a substitute for complaining to who provides the service. Just disputing something rarely has the effect you say it does.
> I expect disparaging condescension from Fox News > or Rush Limbaugh. Not here.
I've never regarded Rush Limbaugh or the more conservative personalities on Fox News as rude and condescending. However, I am politically conservative, so at this point I should expect liberals to start vilifying my person, morals, and intentions.
Ultimately, your snide remark was more off topic and inappropriate than the original comment. Such an act, I, unlike you, would expect from a low-modded post on/.
Bear in mind that the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, excuse me, Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, actually brings US copyright terms in line with the EU.
For content providers that import to the UK or other EU nations, they could already copyright works longer there, so no, it doesn't really have an effect on non-US residents.
> Solaris 9 will not exist for x86 is that issue is moot.
and this...
> Sun is flogging their hardware! Is their operating system also a cash-cow of some kind?
That's the exception that proves the rule. Sun makes money on their hardware, which is mostly Sparc. Solaris runs best on Sparc. If Sun were to go whole hog for Linux, which is more platform agnostic, they'd be removing a valuable lock in tool. Hence Sun creates a one way street for Linux apps to move to Solaris, but not the other way around. They'll continue to pump software onto the Solaris platform to boost hardware sales, but they have little reason to give away software for Linux (esp. Linux/i386) when it doesn't drive sales.
Yes, Linux is a big threat to Sun/Solaris/Sparc, probably an even bigger threat than NT, but Linux based solutions and applications are more liquid in their ability to move to Sun hardware. In that vein, the enemy of my enemy is my friend... or keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
This certainly fits with their Solaris uber alles tack with regard to other OSes.
Sun has said for some time "Linux is Unix, and we're a Unix company". However, that only really extends to how much Linux can damage Windows NT or boost application support for Solaris. Sun still has a vested interest in making Solaris on Sparc the preferred platform.
Well the issue is moot in the US and Europe, as the treaty is enforceable in "signatory states". Accordingly, the U.S. and most European nations (specified as the European Community) have signed on to the treaty. Here is the text of the treaty and docs containing the signatories.
For those of you who can't open MSWord.docs here are the countries signed on: Argentina, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Luxembourg, Mexico, Monaco, Mongolia, Namibia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Panama, Portugal, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Senegal, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Togo, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela, European Communities (50).Albania, Argentina, Belarus, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gabon, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mali, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Saint Lucia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, United States of America (28).
No, not really. Game engine physics are purposefully incomplete for reasons of performance and gameplay.
I seem to remember for example that normal character run speed in Unreal Tournament is over 30mph. They also tend to disregard inertia for enhanced control.
Game engines could be modified for spatial realism. The Unreality Project for example. The problem is applying that technology for character models.
I too appreciate a simple, well designed timepiece. For me though plain analogue was not quite enough. Since my old analogue was lost (in about 40 feet of water, Grrr...) I've been very happy with the combo watch I picked up. I really like the analogue face that can give me the time at a glance but with the digital display for the day, date, and alarm. So from my experience, the Timex Expedition Camper comes highly recommended.
..."near linear scalability can be achieved for P2P populations on the order of several million peers each with only 20 open connections."
That 20 open connections figure is kind of alarming to me. If a large portion of the network is based on dialup class users forced to maintain nearly 20 open connections, the overhead could be horrendous. Over TCP/IP, at 40 bytes per packet, that's 800 bytes of network state that's not transmitting useful data. Fully saturate a dialup user's connection, and you'd be wasting at least a quarter of his bandwidth! Consider also high bandwidth users who accept connections from low bandwidth ones. Even though broadband users don't have to worry about transport overhead, they could get stuck servicing the high latency and low throughput packets of lowband users trying to maintain state.
While topology studies are interesting, and may even make a noticeable difference in system scalability, the original criticism's focus on network hardware and connection quality are quite valid. The practical limits enforced by overhead in the network and adequately determining good peer groups and neighbours require consideration of the quality of the network hardware for improving network efficiency and performance. In short, more people need decent broadband for P2P apps to be more than a novelty.
Just to avoid confusion... a few notes about this approach.
First, for those that didn't get it from the parent post, HZ is a system wide timing value. It has nothing directly to do with the mouse.
What it does deal with is how many times a second the system's interrupt timer fires. The problem with increasing the interrupt timer frequency is that you waste more time servicing interrupts than doing real work. It may improve interactive "feel" because the timer interrupt will trigger higher priority tasks to be rescheduled more often, but at the price of higher system time and lower "throughput".
Compared to the preemptible kernel patch, increasing HZ is actually harder on throughput, especially on slower systems. Much work has been done on finding and killing long held locks not covered by the preempt patch (thanks to Andrew Morton and RML), an approach which has been shown to be quite effective. Increasing timer interrupt frequency means you're creating more pointless interrupt load, which goes against the approach and advances of the other low-latency patches.
There is an interesting discussion of the HZ value and how it effects Linux in a VM at Linux Weekly News and for more arcana check out the high resolution timers project.
BY:... how did Microsoft get to own the desktop? Microsoft did not convince people to unplug VMS from their Digital VAX systems in 1979. They took advantage of a major shift in technology toward the PC, and they became the de facto standard on the new technology model, being the PC.
Chris:...How did Microsoft get to own the desktop? By single-handedly killing off every competitor they could get at, that's how - legal tricks, buyouts, underhanded dealings, the lot. What they did not do was anything innovative or revolutionary. They stole ideas, cheated, tricked a lot of people and managed to get stuff into small print that the legal department at Hell Inc would be proud of.
Actually, I see nothing mutually exclusive in your description of Microsoft business practices and their handling of the market and technology trends that put them on the top. I wouldn't say (nor I think, would Bob Young), that Microsoft innovated its way onto the PC desktop. Microsoft recognised the trend in technology and leveraged their small systems expertise with MS-DOS and Windows in the IBM PC and clone market. Fundamentally, they didn't do it better than anybody else, they just attacked the market in the most ruthless way they could. With a viewpoint like that, I don't think Mr. Young and RedHat are off base in their outlook of where technology is going and how they should attack the market.
Because of the economics and logistics of Free Software, I don't believe RedHat could ever set itself up to be another Microsoft. I don't even believe that they have it in to be the "Microsoft of Linux". Personally I don't use RH Linux on all my systems, but that's purely a technical consideration -- I sometimes disagree with default setup or behavior of a particular piece of software or layout or some such thing. Frankly I don't understand peoples animosity towards RH in regards to philosophy or politics. RedHat appears to have an understanding and mature outlook on their role of being an enabler of free software to their customers. Job one is to support their customers, and for them free and open software is the solution. RH doesn't seem caught up in the Wall Street hype -- Bob specifically downplayed that. They're not running their business toward corporate bureaucracy and greed -- they just have a vision and understanding of a solid business plan. In other words, they're not run by "Suits". Going forward, RedHat needs to establish a reputation for good value and leading support for its customers in the strongest way possible. If in doing that, they go after servers or embedded apps or whatever to leverage free software in well suited markets, in won't be because of some bulls*** rational, but because of good sense. RedHat sees (and I believe it too) that for Microsoft to be irrelevant on the desktop, the desktop PC has to be irrelevant. With the internet and associated technology driving innovation into the future, Linux and by association RedHat are in a good position to capitalize.
This strikes me as someone who isn't really interested in even attempting to have a go at making a grab for the desktop (which is fair enough) but would rather wrap that up in hyperbole rather than come out and say "look, RedHat aren't interested in making an everyman's desktop, if you wan that use Mandrake or some other distro like it". A Suit in other words.
I really don't think it's a bulls*** answer if you recognize that the question itself is flawed. Going after Microsoft on the "traditional desktop", -- specifically something like on the thousands of pc clones that your uncle lugs home from CompUSA with a Microsoft preload bundle and all the promotions -- it really is pointless in a global sense. You are not competing with just Microsoft. You're not even just competing with it's shady business deals and monopoly practices, you're competing with all of Microsoft's partners and developer houses, all the little software shops that produce programs that run on the platform. You're even competing with the VAR's and support companies and the OEM's. That's why Bob says they need somebody like IBM with "the man in the van". That's also why he sees RedHat concentrating on markets that don't depend on the PC and could even replace it's functionality in the future. Mandrake and SuSE aren't going to get multiple-digit desktop market share with customers buying a box and installing it one at a time on their Dell or Compaq or whatever PC. Even if they do get significant share in that manner, I see Linux taking a significant hit in prestige because of the difficulties in providing adequate support to so many desktops. The real hope is for displacement in technology. Take the desktop PC out of the equation. Make the desktop PC irrelevant. Take heart in news like today's earlier item about Linux thin clients. The future looks bright and I think RedHat's got the proper sun-shielding headgear.
BTW, perhaps this culling of the herd in the mainstream PC market will have a positive effect on PC quality. Dell is adjusting to lower margins, Gateway has been hemorrhaging for some time, IBM's Personal systems group is wandering in the forest, and all the consumer PC groups of the top-tier manufacturers are beholden to Microsoft.
Hopefully a shake out in the PC sector will not affect the interesting non-PC tech these companies work on. Compaq's professional services still seem intact, though I'm dismayed of their ceding the high end server market to Intel. They're less of an interesting company since they sacked DEC. IBM seems largely unaffected by those pressures. HP's Printing tech seems to me hit and miss with various recent products, though such product floundering is understandable given how cheap the printer market has gotten. The demise of HP's calculator division is unfortunate. They also seem to be withdrawing from scientific computing and visualization markets. I suppose they will need a successful and well accepted rollout of Itanium products with an associated push towards Linux to resurrect themselves there.
The feuding corporate factions in all these companies in these trying economic times don't help either.
Slashdot Mirror
Paul Volcker had the right answer, IMO.
It's a shame more people don't pay attention to Volcker.
/. commenters string together a series of cuss words and add the word "capitalist" and get modded up. Instead, how about we have an intelligent discussion about whether this trading practice promotes bad ethics or somehow hides information from customers or trading partners.
I also think it's a shame
Also, since this is supposedly a technology site, can we discuss whether the fact this trading is computerized somehow makes it unique from other kinds of markets?
While nothing technical is stopping an intelligence agency from passing on criminal tips to LEOs, there are legal road blocks to doing so. At least in the U.S. there are supposed to be restrictions on federal agencies spying on private citizens. More importantly though, our federal Constitution, state laws, and over 900 years of English common-law heritage guarantee one's right to face your accuser. Unless the originating agency can prove where and how they intercepted some communication, and it wasn't obtained as part of an unreasonable search or seizure, any such evidence is "fruit of the poisoned tree".
You don't know me, but I consider myself more Libertarian than Republican, but wouldn't call myself an anarchist in any way. I want a smaller government, but there's a happy medium where the central government is "powerless" to mandate things that really should be decided at the local level, like what's on the school lunch menu, how you purchase your health care, who get's housing assistance funds, who gets a subsidy for building a business or producing a crop.
There's a difference between anarchy and a well and truly federated system of government. What we need in this country is a return to federalism where the central government does a few things and does them well, like providing for national defense, entering into treaties, managing the money supply, and managing disputes between the states.
Posting to undo mistaken mod
No criticism about the ridiculous wealth disparity in the world is appropriate if it comes from someone who spends significantly more than his share.
I wish I could mod this whole thread about share of wealth irrelevant. Whether Larry Ellison buys a huge chunk of real estate in Hawaii has nothing to do with whether a starving kid in Africa gets a meal today. And if Larry never got to the point where he could afford such a thing doesn't matter one iota to solve the plight of impoverished people around the world.
There are many fair criticisms about his management tactics and business decisions, but I fail to see how someone who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity can be criticized for what appears to be yet another business deal.
The laws of the U.S. and Hawaii should ensure that he doesn't do anything harmful to the people or environment of this island. And if his involvement means the people that live there have a better life and he comes out ahead financially, then that's a net win we should all agree on.
The United States is a republic, not a democracy. I think you've confused feudalism with the concept of federalism. That is, where powers are divided between a representative central government and individual state and local goverments, compared to feudalism, where power is divided among property owning lords and giving fealty to a monarch.
Thankfully, we have moved on from a scheme where property rights were equivalent to voting rights. Today, basically anyone who is a citizen can vote.
The problem as I see it today is too little federalism. If the central government dictates so much of our day to day lives, you can't move to another city or another state to escape the tyranny.
Finally, political science aside, the difficulty with the actual mechanics of voting lies in the limited resources available to local election officials. These people are often city or county administrators or auditors, with other responsibilities beyond election time, and they are bound to competitively bid a "boxed" solution, rather than roll their own. I think this is definitely a situation of "build it, and they will come". It will take a critical mass of interested parties (like a trade group of local election officials) to certify and support a solution that could then be built by the private sector.
The problem is that while the President has a majority in Congress on paper, reality is much different. It would be a lot more obvious that he hasn't got a majority were we under a Parliamentary system. ...
The only thing that could realistically screw it up for them is if the Tea party steals too many votes or the American people collectively grow a spine.
Wow. I'm actually a bit dismayed this post got modded insightful. All you're doing is calling a large portion of the population spineless and brainless for having a different opinion than yourself.
I think it's a perfectly valid point of view to believe a government should protect an environment where it's most productive members are enabled to enrich themselves and society as a whole. I also think it's perfectly valid to believe a government's largest expenditures should not be income transfer programs. I also think it's quite realistic to expect to strike a balance where society's poorest members can be helped in times of need without bankrupting the entire nation.
It amazes me how so-called "open minded" people can be so intolerant of differing opinions.
Yes, while probably not insurmountable, it would be horribly impractical to design a modern turbojet or turbofan engine that would "screen" birds and other foreign object debris (FOD).
You have to remember the intake flow to one of these engines is traveling at or near supersonic speeds. Any grate or screening device capable of blocking or diverting damaging material would have a severe negative impact on the performance and fuel efficiency of the engine.
That being said, considerable research and development has been done to make the internals of modern engines more hardened to bird strikes. Just search youtube for "jet engine bird strike test" some time to see some of the results. The latest engines can survive some considerable ingestions with only a reduction in performance -- safe enough for an emergency landing.
The fault I find with your argument is the asterisk post-script at the end -- *Current implementation of "government" is not what I'm talking about, I'm talking philosophically".
You cannot separate a philosophic ideal of government from its real world implications. Entrusting a bureaucracy to administer infrastructure you see as vital still creates a ruling class that then becomes entrenched and seeks to protect its own interest.
I do not see a protected bureaucracy as something superior to a corporation. Since governments, by there nature, are granted a monopoly on force, they should not be trusted with any more power than necessary to guarantee encroachment on our natural rights by other individuals or foreign powers who seek to usurp or deprive us.
... putting all your eggs in one basket is a stupid idea...
....but... maybe they blew their budget on a really, really good basket?
Here's the Dept. of Commerce website that describes the classification and licensing of exported goods: http://www.bis.doc.gov/Licensing/ExportingBasics.h tm
here's 8, I've never met Pat, but I live probably about a mile away from his dad's here in Fargo. I went to NDSU, but some of my HS classmates have CS degrees from MSUM. Best of luck to you Patrick, and I wish you an easy recovery. Regards, Reid
Next time that happens, call your credit card company and reverse the charges due to "service not as advertised". Lufthansa (or whoever provides the service) will then have to eat the cost of the call.
Actually, no it won't. I've worked for a bank in credit card customer service, and small transaction amounts (less than $10-$30) will get written off by the bank and never charged back to the merchant as long as it's not too suspicious.
Also, to dispel another myth in this thread, card declines or referrals are not triggered by dispute history. Declines or referrals are triggered by either account status and limits, or suspicious activity - defined by locality, type of merchant, transaction type, transaction velocity (amount over time) and other factors.
The only thing that disputing the transaction on your credit card does is raise interest rates and fees for the rest of us. There's no substitute for complaining to the merchant or service provider and voicing your opinion with consumer protection groups. The dispute process is there to protect cardholders when they're being screwed by a merchant and they can't get a hold of the company or haven't gotten a resolution. In that regard, credit cards are safer than checks or cash. It is not, however, a substitute for complaining to who provides the service. Just disputing something rarely has the effect you say it does.
Regards,
Reid
> I expect disparaging condescension from Fox News
/.
> or Rush Limbaugh. Not here.
I've never regarded Rush Limbaugh or the more conservative personalities on Fox News as rude and condescending. However, I am politically conservative, so at this point I should expect liberals to start vilifying my person, morals, and intentions.
Ultimately, your snide remark was more off topic and inappropriate than the original comment. Such an act, I, unlike you, would expect from a low-modded post on
For content providers that import to the UK or other EU nations, they could already copyright works longer there, so no, it doesn't really have an effect on non-US residents.
and this...
> Sun is flogging their hardware! Is their operating system also a cash-cow of some kind?
That's the exception that proves the rule. Sun makes money on their hardware, which is mostly Sparc. Solaris runs best on Sparc. If Sun were to go whole hog for Linux, which is more platform agnostic, they'd be removing a valuable lock in tool. Hence Sun creates a one way street for Linux apps to move to Solaris, but not the other way around. They'll continue to pump software onto the Solaris platform to boost hardware sales, but they have little reason to give away software for Linux (esp. Linux/i386) when it doesn't drive sales.
Yes, Linux is a big threat to Sun/Solaris/Sparc, probably an even bigger threat than NT, but Linux based solutions and applications are more liquid in their ability to move to Sun hardware. In that vein, the enemy of my enemy is my friend... or keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Regards
Sun has said for some time "Linux is Unix, and we're a Unix company". However, that only really extends to how much Linux can damage Windows NT or boost application support for Solaris. Sun still has a vested interest in making Solaris on Sparc the preferred platform.
Anyway, we'll always have OpenOffice.
Regards
For those of you who can't open MSWord .docs here are the countries signed on:
Argentina, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Luxembourg, Mexico, Monaco, Mongolia, Namibia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Panama, Portugal, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Senegal, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Togo, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela, European Communities (50).Albania, Argentina, Belarus, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gabon, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mali, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Saint Lucia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, United States of America (28).
Regards
I seem to remember for example that normal character run speed in Unreal Tournament is over 30mph. They also tend to disregard inertia for enhanced control.
Game engines could be modified for spatial realism. The Unreality Project for example. The problem is applying that technology for character models.
Regards
Regards
..."near linear scalability can be achieved for P2P populations on the order of several million peers each with only 20 open connections."
That 20 open connections figure is kind of alarming to me. If a large portion of the network is based on dialup class users forced to maintain nearly 20 open connections, the overhead could be horrendous. Over TCP/IP, at 40 bytes per packet, that's 800 bytes of network state that's not transmitting useful data. Fully saturate a dialup user's connection, and you'd be wasting at least a quarter of his bandwidth! Consider also high bandwidth users who accept connections from low bandwidth ones. Even though broadband users don't have to worry about transport overhead, they could get stuck servicing the high latency and low throughput packets of lowband users trying to maintain state.
While topology studies are interesting, and may even make a noticeable difference in system scalability, the original criticism's focus on network hardware and connection quality are quite valid. The practical limits enforced by overhead in the network and adequately determining good peer groups and neighbours require consideration of the quality of the network hardware for improving network efficiency and performance. In short, more people need decent broadband for P2P apps to be more than a novelty.
Regards
First, for those that didn't get it from the parent post, HZ is a system wide timing value. It has nothing directly to do with the mouse.
What it does deal with is how many times a second the system's interrupt timer fires. The problem with increasing the interrupt timer frequency is that you waste more time servicing interrupts than doing real work. It may improve interactive "feel" because the timer interrupt will trigger higher priority tasks to be rescheduled more often, but at the price of higher system time and lower "throughput".
Compared to the preemptible kernel patch, increasing HZ is actually harder on throughput, especially on slower systems. Much work has been done on finding and killing long held locks not covered by the preempt patch (thanks to Andrew Morton and RML), an approach which has been shown to be quite effective. Increasing timer interrupt frequency means you're creating more pointless interrupt load, which goes against the approach and advances of the other low-latency patches.
There is an interesting discussion of the HZ value and how it effects Linux in a VM at Linux Weekly News and for more arcana check out the high resolution timers project.
Regards
Chris: ...How did Microsoft get to own the desktop? By single-handedly killing off every competitor they could get at, that's how - legal tricks, buyouts, underhanded dealings, the lot. What they did not do was anything innovative or revolutionary. They stole ideas, cheated, tricked a lot of people and managed to get stuff into small print that the legal department at Hell Inc would be proud of.
Actually, I see nothing mutually exclusive in your description of Microsoft business practices and their handling of the market and technology trends that put them on the top. I wouldn't say (nor I think, would Bob Young), that Microsoft innovated its way onto the PC desktop. Microsoft recognised the trend in technology and leveraged their small systems expertise with MS-DOS and Windows in the IBM PC and clone market. Fundamentally, they didn't do it better than anybody else, they just attacked the market in the most ruthless way they could. With a viewpoint like that, I don't think Mr. Young and RedHat are off base in their outlook of where technology is going and how they should attack the market.
Because of the economics and logistics of Free Software, I don't believe RedHat could ever set itself up to be another Microsoft. I don't even believe that they have it in to be the "Microsoft of Linux". Personally I don't use RH Linux on all my systems, but that's purely a technical consideration -- I sometimes disagree with default setup or behavior of a particular piece of software or layout or some such thing. Frankly I don't understand peoples animosity towards RH in regards to philosophy or politics. RedHat appears to have an understanding and mature outlook on their role of being an enabler of free software to their customers. Job one is to support their customers, and for them free and open software is the solution. RH doesn't seem caught up in the Wall Street hype -- Bob specifically downplayed that. They're not running their business toward corporate bureaucracy and greed -- they just have a vision and understanding of a solid business plan. In other words, they're not run by "Suits". Going forward, RedHat needs to establish a reputation for good value and leading support for its customers in the strongest way possible. If in doing that, they go after servers or embedded apps or whatever to leverage free software in well suited markets, in won't be because of some bulls*** rational, but because of good sense. RedHat sees (and I believe it too) that for Microsoft to be irrelevant on the desktop, the desktop PC has to be irrelevant. With the internet and associated technology driving innovation into the future, Linux and by association RedHat are in a good position to capitalize.
This strikes me as someone who isn't really interested in even attempting to have a go at making a grab for the desktop (which is fair enough) but would rather wrap that up in hyperbole rather than come out and say "look, RedHat aren't interested in making an everyman's desktop, if you wan that use Mandrake or some other distro like it". A Suit in other words.
I really don't think it's a bulls*** answer if you recognize that the question itself is flawed. Going after Microsoft on the "traditional desktop", -- specifically something like on the thousands of pc clones that your uncle lugs home from CompUSA with a Microsoft preload bundle and all the promotions -- it really is pointless in a global sense. You are not competing with just Microsoft. You're not even just competing with it's shady business deals and monopoly practices, you're competing with all of Microsoft's partners and developer houses, all the little software shops that produce programs that run on the platform. You're even competing with the VAR's and support companies and the OEM's. That's why Bob says they need somebody like IBM with "the man in the van". That's also why he sees RedHat concentrating on markets that don't depend on the PC and could even replace it's functionality in the future. Mandrake and SuSE aren't going to get multiple-digit desktop market share with customers buying a box and installing it one at a time on their Dell or Compaq or whatever PC. Even if they do get significant share in that manner, I see Linux taking a significant hit in prestige because of the difficulties in providing adequate support to so many desktops. The real hope is for displacement in technology. Take the desktop PC out of the equation. Make the desktop PC irrelevant. Take heart in news like today's earlier item about Linux thin clients. The future looks bright and I think RedHat's got the proper sun-shielding headgear.
Regards
BTW, perhaps this culling of the herd in the mainstream PC market will have a positive effect on PC quality. Dell is adjusting to lower margins, Gateway has been hemorrhaging for some time, IBM's Personal systems group is wandering in the forest, and all the consumer PC groups of the top-tier manufacturers are beholden to Microsoft.
Hopefully a shake out in the PC sector will not affect the interesting non-PC tech these companies work on. Compaq's professional services still seem intact, though I'm dismayed of their ceding the high end server market to Intel. They're less of an interesting company since they sacked DEC. IBM seems largely unaffected by those pressures. HP's Printing tech seems to me hit and miss with various recent products, though such product floundering is understandable given how cheap the printer market has gotten. The demise of HP's calculator division is unfortunate. They also seem to be withdrawing from scientific computing and visualization markets. I suppose they will need a successful and well accepted rollout of Itanium products with an associated push towards Linux to resurrect themselves there.
The feuding corporate factions in all these companies in these trying economic times don't help either.
Regards,
Reid
Regards