My apologies. Unfortunately, your post came across a bit trollish, so I responded as such.
I liked Sun's pre-boot shell just fine...but I haven't had much use for it in the past decade. I welcome more sophisticated pre-boot console systems, but I do NOT welcome entry points for hackers and virus writers to screw with my system before my OS has a chance to get started.
In the many years that OpenBoot/OpenFirmware has existed, it has generally proved itself to be secure except in situations of physical compromise (a damning situation anyway). This makes it a far more ideal choice than a new firmware standard that has not yet withstood a trial by fire.
Question is, what's the OF crowd doing about automated registration (and qualification against "certified" model/versions) of DMA and PCI bus device controllers? If I decide, at some point, that I no longer "trust" Intel intelligent network interface cards (because their firmware isn't using a GPL-friendly version of S/WAN in it's integrated IPSEC implementation), what will OF do to tell me / warn me that a "tainted" device has been added to a system I'm trying to trust (ASP hosted Apache server, or whatever)?
I'm not really sure this is a necessary feature. You (as the admin of your box) have made a decision to add a piece of hardware. Relying on the firmware to warn you that you may be crossing the barrier of your ideals, is out of scope for such technology.
Most "driver signing" to date, has been implemented by Microsoft as an attempt to improve their image. With computers other than PCs, users would never dream of installing hardware that wasn't first approved by the vendor. Microsoft however, is a software only company and thus by default has very little control over hardware. So Microsoft set to the task of adding signed drivers to their OS to prevent non-Microsoft hardware from being installed.
Now I won't argue that OpenFirmware on Intel wouldn't run into the same problem as Microsoft. However, it would be relatively simple to add signature support to an Intel implementation to accomplish the same goal as Microsoft.
Sun and HP are by no means "mainstream" on the home desktop
No one specified the desktop. Nor should it really matter.
Apple is not "mainstream" on the home desktop until more proprietary software designed for Mac OS appears on the shelves of Best Buy stores.
I think you're making the mistake of thinking that only new Apple machines used OpenFirmware. Macs have used OF for a VERY long time, especially back when they were neck in neck with the PC market. I think they qualify as "Mainstream Desktop". (Speaking of which, I happen to be typing this on an iBook. Note the lack of spelling errors. Now if Apple would only add a grammar checker...)
ostScript is Turing complete and, in theory, more general-purpose than its graphics-language stigma would suggest. Would an HTTP server written in PostScript convince you?
I'm well aware of the power of Postscript, having coded some of it in my time. As a super-advanced LOGO, it's great. As a general-purpose, turing complete language, it's not so great.
There's an old saying, "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."
Still, I was unaware that Postscript was actually turing complete. Thanks for clearing that up.
Do you have any idea WTF you're talking about? Postscript is a document display language. Forth is a general purpose, turing complete, mathematics language. Quite a difference there.
Besides, it's not like you actually have to be able to code Forth to use OpenFirmware. It's just a feature.
No wonder it's not hit mainstream.
That is, if you don't consider Apple, Sun, IBM, HP OR JUST ABOUT EVERY FREAKING COMPUTER MAKER OTHER THAN INTEL mainstream.
What's to stop SCO from butting their ass in and requiring a change in the spec that only allows approved operating systems to run in OF?
What's to stop all the actual OF members from either voting SCO down or ignoring their spec changes? Like it or not, SCO/Caldera *used* to be a reasonable company in the computing world. It should then come as no surprise that their on many technology standard boards. But when you consider the fact that they are probably the only OpenFirmware member that doesn't have an implementation (Their market is Intel after all), their ideas probably won't carry much weight.
OpenFirmware is older than the hills, well tested, loved by all, and used on just about every machine EXCEPT Intel. Is anyone getting a sense of NIH syndrome?
I notice that Alaska is not a significant producer of corn. Or wheat. Or rice. Or soya, or grass-fed beef, or wool and mutton, or anything else that America relies on to feed itself.
Why should they? Amercia uses its fertile lands very effectively. With the number of farms *shrinking* in the U.S. (a sad state of affairs), why would anyone grow exports in Alaska? If there was actually a serious food crunch, then those giant vegatable might come in handy. Otherwise they're just an oddity.
The Imperial Valley being a prime example, but the two essential inputs are water and money.
Back to the original topic, the money would flow if there really was a crunch for food. There isn't though. There's really a crunch for better economies that could support either more advanced local farming or imports from food rich countries.
If I recall correctly, the land in W. Texas could support about one steer per ten acres.
Ah, but you could increase that by growing crops that are normally not edible by humans. Thus land that is very poor for corn, could grow various types of grass, hay, or rough grains for feeding steer, sheep, or chickens.
I'm not saying that livestock will solve the food problem, but it could help make some of the most difficult farmland into producing land.
Dude... I've lived in the Midwest for 97% of my life.
You read Lomborg and decided you're an expert, eh?
Who?
This is the kind of statement I expect from people who've read one book on the subject in their lives.
Actually, my wife is from Russia. Nearly all of her family are biologists, and her aunt and uncle work with the farmers across the "far east" (the area from the edge of Asia to China) to preserve cranes.
Also quite a few of my friends are chinese. It's quite interesting how different regions contrast one another. Some chinese are quite adept with modern technology and customs. Others have had very little exposure, and don't consider the "dead meat" in the supermarket to be fresh.
Most of the chinese I know are excellent learners, but they often have trouble with the idea that something is a "trade secret". (Chinese culture has long used appreticeships to pass skills, while keeping the concepts behind those skills secret.) Seeing a grown man trying to spy on a deck builder to learn his secrets is really a funny sight!
The land is too hot to grow food crops.
That's why we have crops bred for extreme temperatures.
The land is too cold, ditto.
Did you know that some of the largest produce in the world is grown in Alaska? Apparently, some Alaskan regions have soil so rich, that you can literrly watch the plants grow. Damnest thing.
In any case, we have cold weather stock too.
The land has lost its nutrients or topsoil and now has little fertility (like most of Australia, a sparsely-populated expanse you don't mention).
I didn't mention Austrailia, because they don't consider themselves overpopulated.:-) Irrigation is an old problem, but there are ways of turning desert into farmland.
The land is too steep or too dry to support agriculture
Mountain ranges. Fair enough.
The land was developed once, but it became saline due to poor drainage and had to be abandoned
Drainage is at the opposite end of irrigation. Again, there are ways to correct this.
The failure to locate new cities and such in the non-arable land has to be counted as one of the great failures of the Communist party and its central planners.
Which is again their fault. Back to my original point.:-)
Dollars to doughnuts says that a good farmer could grow corn in many of those "infertile" areas with a little bit of work. The trick is that Asian's don't want corn. They want rice. Ergo the problem. Rice is very much a wetlands plant and won't grow anywhere else.
Corn on the other hand, is what finally ended world hunger around the 1500's. It grows just about anywhere, can be adapted to just about any climate, and doesn't run away like a weed. Had it not been for corn, it's believed that Africa would not be as populated as it is today.
Corn is generally seen by historians as an Indian invention. Sadly, many of the Indian farmers died from disease when Europeans started showing up. Most of the remaining Indians were the more nomadic tribes. It's too bad, because they were excellent farmers.
Putting that aside though, that land could be used to farm livestock such as cattle. Chinese generally don't eat their cattle as they're too valuable as farming equipment. If they were able to farm with machinary and spend time developing their livestock pool, they could potentially feed quite a few more people.
Basically, land is land. There are tons of ways it could be developed. If we became really desperate, we could even find ways to use the oceans to grow food or provide useful topsoil. And seeing as how the ice caps are melting, we should have even more usable land appearing.
Never argue with someone who grew up in the Midwest. If there's one thing we know, it's farming.:-)
((I look forward to never having to take the garbage out again; instead, having it disassembled locally into component molecules for later reassembly into burgers & fries, clothes, diamond, computer parts, etc.))
That's great and everything, but I was talking about today's technology. We can already superheat any material into a plasma. In that state, molecular bonds can't be maintained. Thus you can separate and recombine freely. The core problem is energy. It takes a freaking lot to do that stuff! But it's nothing that couldn't be provided by nuclear fission. We just need to get past our fears and realize that with proper handling, fission can change our entire way of life for the better.
I said what I said, and I mean what I said. Unless someone hits the ice caps with a giant blow-torch, there's just no way that the "sea-level" would rise 2 inches per year.
Someone made the point earlier that it's not the Earth it's self which is going to damaged by any nasty climate changes it's going to be us which suffer, this a fact many weak vegetarian eco warrior types fail to stress often enough.
Arguably, if we don't progress technologically, then the Earth's natural storms and floods will get us. If we *do* progress than we have a better chance of surviving the storms and floods indirectly caused by our progress.
But I agree. "eco warrior types" as you put it, worry more about us destroying mother nature and less about destroying us. In some ways, it's actually a self-important attitude. "We're powerful enough to destroy nature!" Bull. Nature will be just fine. We may have a few problems tho.
If a large rise in the water level did occur, I would suspect that not all of the shoreline would be protected, but based on the development on the shoreline in New Jersey, I would bet on a good portion of the shoreline requiring protection.
Most of the West Coast U.S. remains pretty much undeveloped. However, the East Coast U.S. is pretty well developed up and down. Much of this development is in the form of harbors. If you look at it from the perspective of every harbor hiring a few trawlers or dyke builders, it doesn't seem like such a huge problem anymore. Actually, I would be rather surprised if these harbors didn't already have one of those two options already available to them.
If this is just a small patch in the middle of a thriving rainforest, no problem -- when the ash is exhausted and the nutrient poor soil won't grow crops, it is abandoned and the rainforest regrows quickly. But most of the time it is massive deforestation instead.
Interestingly, there was an article a while back that suggested that the reason the South American rain forests grow as well as they do is because early indians cultivated the soil for farming. A similar situation is believed to be true for North America as well.
So cutting down the old trees to encourage growth of young ones is just the opposite of what you need to prevent unnaturally intense forest fires.
I'm not so sure about that. While younger trees are often consumed (and nature obviously reseeds), my understanding was that it was the dead wood that provided the fuel. By logging an area, we tend to remove the dead wood before it ignites.
Next, you also argue that extinction of species has been happening for a long time and that makes it normal, natural and okay. This overlooks the key issues of rates of extinction.
I'm hardly arguing that we aren't indirectly causing the extinctions. I'm arguing that we are changing the environment to meet our needs, and as a result, we are taking over the processes that used to be provided by various wildlife. As we take over those natural processes, the wildlife that depended on that place in the eco-system no longer has a home and goes extinct. But as I said, we are further changing our environment by preserving those animals which would otherwise disappear.
Finally, there's your delightful argument that [waste] "came out of the Earth in the first place. There's no reason why it can't just go back". This completely ignores the fact that one of the major results of industrialization is the concentration of wastes and the creation of entirely new forms of waste.
With enough energy, we can restore anything we use back to a natural state. That includes "Enriched" Uranium byproducts, which can either be reused, or reprocessed back into stable elements. (Processes exist to degrade radioisotopes into isotopes with a half-life of minutes. These expend a great deal of energy, then become an inert chemical.) BTW, that's FISSION, not Fusion. Fusion is still a Pie-in-the-Sky energy source. Even if fusion is finally accomplished, it still won't be as "clean" as everyone makes it out to be.
And of course, we shout down as "eco-freaks" those who have the temerity to suggest that technologies that produce less wastes are better than technologies to clean up waste.
You can only squeeze so much water out of a rock. Energy efficiency is the goal of any engine producer. However, there are hard ceilings on how efficient a given process can be. Interestingly enough, extremely high energy density processes (such as fission) tend to be cleaner than less efficient processes. However, the more energy you have, the more cautious you have to be with it. I label "Eco-freaks" as annoying anti-progressives, because they tend to hate any and all technology. They keep saying, "make the existing stuff 100% clean!" Sorry, it isn't going to happen. We have to move to processes such as Fission which produce bountiful energy, but are seen as "evil" by eco-freaks because of how dangerous they are.
Our choices boil down to:
1. Improve our technology and continue to improve the "eco-loop" we took over as a species.
2. Live like wildlife and be subject to the whims of the environment.
As a minor comment, the dinosaurs were in the second category.
"Could" being the operative word. Stopping the Gulf Stream would seriously suck, but it wouldn't immediately kill a whole bunch of people. Resulting weather patterns may, but we are getting better at dealing with those.
It was a simple format document so the moral of the story is... You still need to SAVE AS RTF!!!!
Or state that the file is in OpenOffice format. Mailing documents to people without telling them what to use is somewhat rude, even if it is a common document. There are plenty of people out there who don't have ANY Office software, and/or even know what a ZIP file is.
Get in the habit. A simple "Here's your document is OpenOffice format" goes a lot farther than "Here's your document."
You can believe all you want that we can always just sprawl out more and more, but think of the consequences, deforestation, extinction of species, contamination of water sources, etc...
Oh, cry me a river. We change the environment just by existing. The primary difference between the way we change it and animals change it, is animals find their niche for adding balance, and stop there. Humans continue to change their environments more and more, but as a price must learn to complete the cycle.
Thus "deforestation" has become a scientific process of cutting down older trees and encouraging the growth of young ones. Nature would have eventually wiped a whole area out with a forest fire instead.
Extinction of species sucks. It's also a natural process. When the balance that an animal brings to nature is superseded, they are no longer to change the environment to meet their own needs. By preserving them, we are actually changing our environment more. Is preserving them then a bad thing? I don't think so. You never know when another change in our environment would foster the reintroduction of a species.
Contamination of water sources is an age old problem. Fresh water in its natural state would never have been able to support the number of humans alive today. As a process of changing our environment, we've build damns, pumps and water purification centers to provide enough fresh water wherever it's needed. (Except California, where people seem to enjoy polluting and eco-freaks get in the way of actual solutions. Don't even get me started on how every technology to them is the wrong one.)
The way we do things in the US will not always work in other parts of the world.
This is true. I used the U.S. as an example, because it worked. Very few other countries with undeveloped land have tried much of anything.
Secondly it's not just a matter of food it's also waste.
Guess what? It came out of the Earth in the first place. There's no reason why it can't go back. The bigger picture is that we're learning to better deal with our waste. Recycling is a good step, but cheap energy could bring down the costs of waste processing. In fact, if energy were cheap enough, we could break everything down to its base components and either resell it or reintroduce it to our environment in its original state.
Not that any of that will happen as long as nuclear technology is seen as "EEEEVIL".
Thirdly while the rate of growth has slowed it has not stopped. The world's population is still rising and we are running out of places to go.
Got numbers? I'll bet I can show that the rate of growth has slowed considerably and that projections could be made for when a worldwide depopulation would start.
It sounds like one of the most contrived schemes I have heard of yet. The cost figures parent gave don't surprise me one bit. On the bright side, maybe we'll start building some modern Nuclear Plants instead of working to simply shut down all the 1960's plants.
r stop to think that maybe we shouldn't play god everytime. We screwed it up and you think we can fix it just as easily. The real problem is that we humans seem to be good at only one thing... breeding like rabbits. There are over 6 Billion people and in many parts of the world we can't adiquately feed ourselves.
*cough*bullshit*cough*
You do realize that the overpopulation fears of the 1970's never materialized? The population was supposed to grow to over 7 billion during the 80's. It didn't. In fact, many countries are depopulating due to the modern attitudes toward having children.
Most of the people out there who are starving are in countries where no economy has been imposed to foster the supply of goods. We have more than enough food here in the U.S. to feed most of Africa, but there's no economic incentive to do so. Throwing monetary "aid" at the problem only makes those people dependent on our kindness instead of improving their life-style.
I should probably also point out the tremendous amount of undeveloped land in Russia and China. Russia has two major cities: Moscow and St. Petersburg. Most people living outside of those areas are poor farmers that perform their duties with the equivalent of 1850's technology. Many of the tractors and combines they do have, are built to double as war vehicles! (Gotta love the thinking the Communists had.) Thus, everyone wants to live in Moscow. They only go to St. Petersburg if they can't get to Moscow.
China isn't much better. Everyone is crowded into the cities while hundreds of thousands of acres of land are left to be tended by townsfolk who haven't seen much technological progress in 400+ years.
If you look at U.S. history (as a comparison), land development has been fostered by capitalism. The government's grant of homesteads encouraged individuals to develop land for profit. Thus very little usable land has been allowed to sit like it has elsewhere.
we need to at least *prepare* for it if we cannot do anything else.
The thing that the "we're all going to die!" extremists miss, is that the changes will happen over a very long period of time. e.g. In 5 years, the shore may creep up 10 inches. If it starts becoming a problem, you'll find that governments will start building dykes, or digging shoreline trenches to keep the water at bay.
To anyone who thinks this sort of terraforming is a big deal, you need to take a trip to visit Superior-Deluth on the border of Wisconsin and Michigan. You can see quite a few Army Core of Engineers' trawlers on the water. These are used to regularly dig out deposits of dirt and soot to keep the harbor deep enough for the thousand footers to sail and dock.
As you said, humans are quite adept at adjusting the environment to meet our needs. The Earth will be fine. Worry more about poisoning ourselves or blowing ourselves to kingdom-come.
What work do you do that you need to use a BitTorrent client?
The original intent of BT: downloading ISOs and other large files. My software needs to be tested on different Linux environments, because (oddly enough) they all work different. I used to think it was sufficient to test RedHat, but then I started getting support problems on SUSE. And as I added desktop integration, I learned how f***ed up that is on Linux, and that every distro had its own way of handling it.
More like downloading movies, right you little illiterate Java zealot?
He spelled "illiterate". Huh huh. Duuuhhh...
Here's an idea. How about you grow up? That's a good little troll.
Maybe the next time you call bullshit, you can try addressing the statements made.
Why? So I can further the cause of said BULLSHIT? Java being useless because of startup times is bullshit, Bullshit, BULLSHIT. Nothing more, nothing less. And for those of us with Macintosh workstations, startup time is ZERO thanks to the shared VM.
Thanks for playing! Have a nice day! You have been trolled! I am not a lawyer, but I play one on TV! It's free, free, fat free!
Yep, no BitTorrent for me. Gentoo freak here. You use Linux and you need BitTorrent? Hand over your geek license now!:)
Actually, I only keep Linux around to do software compatibility testing. I prefer to work on FreeBSD or Sparc Solaris. Considering that I've been recompiling BSD ports and kernels since before Gentoo existed, I think my geek license is pretty safe.:-)
Wasn't able to get Wurm Online working... Looks like most of the people on Windows centric anyway, but I might post a message up on Monday and try to get it figured out.
Last I chatted with him, the developer was trying to keep it running on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. In fact, I just checked the JNLP file and the native Linux OpenGL libs are listed. Are you getting an error message after launching, or are you having difficulty with Webstart? Java Webstart is a great technology that allows applications to launch right off of a web page with maximum security enabled. Unfortunately, Linux doesn't do desktop integration very well at this point. Here's a quick guide to get you going:
1. Make sure you have Java 1.4 or higher installed (1.4.2+ is best at the moment).
2. Check in the directory you installed Java. There should be an installer called 'javaws'. This will extract the 'javaws' executable and supporting files.
3. Run 'javaws', go to 'File|Open' and paste the Webstart URL for Wurm into it.
The application should launch without difficulties.
Back to the topic at hand, I agree that apps can be written poorly in general and a slow startup time in an app doesn't mean that all apps written in that language will be slow to startup, but my personal experience thus far is not very promising.
I'd be curious about what experiences you've had. Most people tried a few unpolished Java apps years ago and since then have had a constant opinion of Java. The truth is that professional GUI developers have entered the Java development realm and have been steadily producing excellent Java software ever since. Still, it's been pretty slow as no one really wants to rewrite applications that already work. As a result, the best Java programs are in niches were no current C/C++ program exists. For example, many of the best P2P apps are Java based. Sometimes you'll even use Java software without even knowing it (such as Nikotel online phone software, NetZero dialer, a lot of the Red Storm games, etc.)
When I said I avoid Java apps when I have a choice, it's because when I look for a new editor/tool/etc and I compare a couple of apps, I tend to gravitate towards those apps that *feel* fast. I have yet to find a Java app that I *enjoy* running.
Well, keep your eyes open. Most of the Java apps today are in a different market than you've described yourself. That's changing as apps start pushing more and more into the consumer market. I wouldn't be surprised if in the near future a large chunk of your apps end up being Java.:-)
While those are good points, one of the requirements for the software in question is that it is open source
That's a bit of an odd requirement, but a fair enough one I suppose. One thing you are going to need to keep in mind is that Open Source programs are usually not focused on raw speed (with a few minor exceptions where the problem domain requires it).
Bouncy Castle is only one example of free crypto libs. I've personally been more impressed by its ability to do just about anything vs. performance. Still, it has not resulted in any negative performance for my employer's web application. Which is a good thing, because whoever speced the original server machines was apparently of the "a PC can run your business!" thinking. Of course, he wasn't the only one I want to strangle, but that's beside the point.
Probably your best bet for an Open Source J2EE server would be JBoss. They've spent time creating their own high performance servlet container and have optimized the hell out of the EJB component. I personally don't find it as easy to deploy as Orion, but the source is there, and you can easily hire an army of JBoss consultants to help get you going (not my cup of tea, but managers like that stuff...).
One other thing you need to consider in an enterprise environment that many developers miss: If you're spending time hand optimizing code or troubleshooting server wide crashes caused by memory leaks or illegal memory access, you're wasting your employer's money. A decent developer costs between $85-$130K per year. Scaling your hardware just a little larger costs significantly less. It's a good thing to keep in mind when you consider the costs of hardware.:-)
DataDino - I'm using a data model compiler I developed so I don't write as much SQL anymore. When I do, it's either through the command line mysql client, the C++/Qt MySQLCC editor from MySQL (looks a lot like DataDino) or my own custom reporting app.
Ah, but DataDino provides access to multiple database vendors (read: MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, etc.) on Windows, Linux, OS X, Solaris, HP, and many other OSes! Not to mention that it's about $450 cheaper. $495 cheaper (i.e. free) if you only need to do simple tasks.:-)
Granted, it doesn't (yet) have some database specific features such as server settings, but those settings are often managed by the DB sysadmin with command line tools anyway.
JGoodies - 5 years ago I used a VB app a buddy wrote for this;o) Now, the command line tool du does a great job.
In my experience, Unix machines don't suffer from the "lost file syndrome" as badly as Windows machines. This probably has a lot to do with files being forcefully kept in home directories. Usually when a Unix machine is a mess, everyone knows it's a mess but is too lazy to clean it up.:-)
As to a custom solution in VB, I'll bet it didn't have pie charts, graphs, "top 100" listings, and other great features that help find those lost ISOs, installers, temp files, etc. Oh, and did I mention that it's free?:-)
Azureas - This probably wouldn't be a bad Java app as you start it up and then leave it running. Ignoring RAM consumption, it probably performs pretty well.
The Java startup time is really overrated. It actually takes the regular BitTorrent GUI longer to start than the Azureas GUI. I think it has something to do with its poor handling of large file hashes.
Too bad I don't use BitTorrent...
You use Linux and you don't use BitTorrent to download it?! String him up by his pinky toe!
Seriously, BitTorrent is WAY faster than trying to get ISOs from the primary download mirrors. Every download actually increases bandwidth to the BT network, so more downloaders == faster downloads.
Wurm Online - Ok, pretty sure I hate you now. Just what I need... Another pretty cool looking game I can play;o) And as long as it starts up in under 5 minutes, I could care less.
BWHAHAHAHA!!! You've fallen for my evil plan! Too bad you're on Linux, or you'd fall for my 4K game contest entry called WarGames. Sadly, I was too lazy and too constrained by space to add support for Linux. The problem is that Full Screen mode is not currently supported on Linux, and I didn't bother to check that in my code. A simple fix is to comment out the method to set the resolution in the "main()" method and recompile.
BTW, I forgot to mention anything about SmartCVS. Thomas Singer would wring my neck if he found out. Actually, I should wring my own neck as it's really a great product. I usually use the built in IDE functionality for CVS checkins, but for tree maintenance, tracking changes, and just generally working with the whole tree at a high level, I always drop to SmartCVS. If you're still using anything other than TortoiseCVS (sadly only available on Windows), you NEED to do yourself a favor and check out SmartCVS.
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My apologies. Unfortunately, your post came across a bit trollish, so I responded as such.
I liked Sun's pre-boot shell just fine...but I haven't had much use for it in the past decade. I welcome more sophisticated pre-boot console systems, but I do NOT welcome entry points for hackers and virus writers to screw with my system before my OS has a chance to get started.
In the many years that OpenBoot/OpenFirmware has existed, it has generally proved itself to be secure except in situations of physical compromise (a damning situation anyway). This makes it a far more ideal choice than a new firmware standard that has not yet withstood a trial by fire.
Question is, what's the OF crowd doing about automated registration (and qualification against "certified" model/versions) of DMA and PCI bus device controllers? If I decide, at some point, that I no longer "trust" Intel intelligent network interface cards (because their firmware isn't using a GPL-friendly version of S/WAN in it's integrated IPSEC implementation), what will OF do to tell me / warn me that a "tainted" device has been added to a system I'm trying to trust (ASP hosted Apache server, or whatever)?
I'm not really sure this is a necessary feature. You (as the admin of your box) have made a decision to add a piece of hardware. Relying on the firmware to warn you that you may be crossing the barrier of your ideals, is out of scope for such technology.
Most "driver signing" to date, has been implemented by Microsoft as an attempt to improve their image. With computers other than PCs, users would never dream of installing hardware that wasn't first approved by the vendor. Microsoft however, is a software only company and thus by default has very little control over hardware. So Microsoft set to the task of adding signed drivers to their OS to prevent non-Microsoft hardware from being installed.
Now I won't argue that OpenFirmware on Intel wouldn't run into the same problem as Microsoft. However, it would be relatively simple to add signature support to an Intel implementation to accomplish the same goal as Microsoft.
Sun and HP are by no means "mainstream" on the home desktop
No one specified the desktop. Nor should it really matter.
Apple is not "mainstream" on the home desktop until more proprietary software designed for Mac OS appears on the shelves of Best Buy stores.
I think you're making the mistake of thinking that only new Apple machines used OpenFirmware. Macs have used OF for a VERY long time, especially back when they were neck in neck with the PC market. I think they qualify as "Mainstream Desktop". (Speaking of which, I happen to be typing this on an iBook. Note the lack of spelling errors. Now if Apple would only add a grammar checker...)
ostScript is Turing complete and, in theory, more general-purpose than its graphics-language stigma would suggest. Would an HTTP server written in PostScript convince you?
I'm well aware of the power of Postscript, having coded some of it in my time. As a super-advanced LOGO, it's great. As a general-purpose, turing complete language, it's not so great.
There's an old saying, "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."
Still, I was unaware that Postscript was actually turing complete. Thanks for clearing that up.
Forth?
Wasn't Postscript good enough for them?
Do you have any idea WTF you're talking about? Postscript is a document display language. Forth is a general purpose, turing complete, mathematics language. Quite a difference there.
Besides, it's not like you actually have to be able to code Forth to use OpenFirmware. It's just a feature.
No wonder it's not hit mainstream.
That is, if you don't consider Apple, Sun, IBM, HP OR JUST ABOUT EVERY FREAKING COMPUTER MAKER OTHER THAN INTEL mainstream.
What's to stop SCO from butting their ass in and requiring a change in the spec that only allows approved operating systems to run in OF?
What's to stop all the actual OF members from either voting SCO down or ignoring their spec changes? Like it or not, SCO/Caldera *used* to be a reasonable company in the computing world. It should then come as no surprise that their on many technology standard boards. But when you consider the fact that they are probably the only OpenFirmware member that doesn't have an implementation (Their market is Intel after all), their ideas probably won't carry much weight.
because we're not all using mac's. hello. welcome to the real world.
Exactly. Because most of us are using UltraSparcs and other Unix machines that use OpenFirmware. Hello! McFly?!
OpenFirmware is older than the hills, well tested, loved by all, and used on just about every machine EXCEPT Intel. Is anyone getting a sense of NIH syndrome?
I notice that Alaska is not a significant producer of corn. Or wheat. Or rice. Or soya, or grass-fed beef, or wool and mutton, or anything else that America relies on to feed itself.
Why should they? Amercia uses its fertile lands very effectively. With the number of farms *shrinking* in the U.S. (a sad state of affairs), why would anyone grow exports in Alaska? If there was actually a serious food crunch, then those giant vegatable might come in handy. Otherwise they're just an oddity.
The Imperial Valley being a prime example, but the two essential inputs are water and money.
Back to the original topic, the money would flow if there really was a crunch for food. There isn't though. There's really a crunch for better economies that could support either more advanced local farming or imports from food rich countries.
If I recall correctly, the land in W. Texas could support about one steer per ten acres.
Ah, but you could increase that by growing crops that are normally not edible by humans. Thus land that is very poor for corn, could grow various types of grass, hay, or rough grains for feeding steer, sheep, or chickens.
I'm not saying that livestock will solve the food problem, but it could help make some of the most difficult farmland into producing land.
Dude... I've lived in the Midwest for 97% of my life.
Ok. So why are we having this argument?
You read Lomborg and decided you're an expert, eh?
:-) Irrigation is an old problem, but there are ways of turning desert into farmland.
:-)
:-)
Who?
This is the kind of statement I expect from people who've read one book on the subject in their lives.
Actually, my wife is from Russia. Nearly all of her family are biologists, and her aunt and uncle work with the farmers across the "far east" (the area from the edge of Asia to China) to preserve cranes.
Also quite a few of my friends are chinese. It's quite interesting how different regions contrast one another. Some chinese are quite adept with modern technology and customs. Others have had very little exposure, and don't consider the "dead meat" in the supermarket to be fresh.
Most of the chinese I know are excellent learners, but they often have trouble with the idea that something is a "trade secret". (Chinese culture has long used appreticeships to pass skills, while keeping the concepts behind those skills secret.) Seeing a grown man trying to spy on a deck builder to learn his secrets is really a funny sight!
The land is too hot to grow food crops.
That's why we have crops bred for extreme temperatures.
The land is too cold, ditto.
Did you know that some of the largest produce in the world is grown in Alaska? Apparently, some Alaskan regions have soil so rich, that you can literrly watch the plants grow. Damnest thing.
In any case, we have cold weather stock too.
The land has lost its nutrients or topsoil and now has little fertility (like most of Australia, a sparsely-populated expanse you don't mention).
I didn't mention Austrailia, because they don't consider themselves overpopulated.
The land is too steep or too dry to support agriculture
Mountain ranges. Fair enough.
The land was developed once, but it became saline due to poor drainage and had to be abandoned
Drainage is at the opposite end of irrigation. Again, there are ways to correct this.
The failure to locate new cities and such in the non-arable land has to be counted as one of the great failures of the Communist party and its central planners.
Which is again their fault. Back to my original point.
Dollars to doughnuts says that a good farmer could grow corn in many of those "infertile" areas with a little bit of work. The trick is that Asian's don't want corn. They want rice. Ergo the problem. Rice is very much a wetlands plant and won't grow anywhere else.
Corn on the other hand, is what finally ended world hunger around the 1500's. It grows just about anywhere, can be adapted to just about any climate, and doesn't run away like a weed. Had it not been for corn, it's believed that Africa would not be as populated as it is today.
Corn is generally seen by historians as an Indian invention. Sadly, many of the Indian farmers died from disease when Europeans started showing up. Most of the remaining Indians were the more nomadic tribes. It's too bad, because they were excellent farmers.
Putting that aside though, that land could be used to farm livestock such as cattle. Chinese generally don't eat their cattle as they're too valuable as farming equipment. If they were able to farm with machinary and spend time developing their livestock pool, they could potentially feed quite a few more people.
Basically, land is land. There are tons of ways it could be developed. If we became really desperate, we could even find ways to use the oceans to grow food or provide useful topsoil. And seeing as how the ice caps are melting, we should have even more usable land appearing.
Never argue with someone who grew up in the Midwest. If there's one thing we know, it's farming.
((I look forward to never having to take the garbage out again; instead, having it disassembled locally into component molecules for later reassembly into burgers & fries, clothes, diamond, computer parts, etc.))
That's great and everything, but I was talking about today's technology. We can already superheat any material into a plasma. In that state, molecular bonds can't be maintained. Thus you can separate and recombine freely. The core problem is energy. It takes a freaking lot to do that stuff! But it's nothing that couldn't be provided by nuclear fission. We just need to get past our fears and realize that with proper handling, fission can change our entire way of life for the better.
You're confusing "sea level" with "the shore".
I said what I said, and I mean what I said. Unless someone hits the ice caps with a giant blow-torch, there's just no way that the "sea-level" would rise 2 inches per year.
Someone made the point earlier that it's not the Earth it's self which is going to damaged by any nasty climate changes it's going to be us which suffer, this a fact many weak vegetarian eco warrior types fail to stress often enough.
Arguably, if we don't progress technologically, then the Earth's natural storms and floods will get us. If we *do* progress than we have a better chance of surviving the storms and floods indirectly caused by our progress.
But I agree. "eco warrior types" as you put it, worry more about us destroying mother nature and less about destroying us. In some ways, it's actually a self-important attitude. "We're powerful enough to destroy nature!" Bull. Nature will be just fine. We may have a few problems tho.
If a large rise in the water level did occur, I would suspect that not all of the shoreline would be protected, but based on the development on the shoreline in New Jersey, I would bet on a good portion of the shoreline requiring protection.
Most of the West Coast U.S. remains pretty much undeveloped. However, the East Coast U.S. is pretty well developed up and down. Much of this development is in the form of harbors. If you look at it from the perspective of every harbor hiring a few trawlers or dyke builders, it doesn't seem like such a huge problem anymore. Actually, I would be rather surprised if these harbors didn't already have one of those two options already available to them.
If this is just a small patch in the middle of a thriving rainforest, no problem -- when the ash is exhausted and the nutrient poor soil won't grow crops, it is abandoned and the rainforest regrows quickly. But most of the time it is massive deforestation instead.
Interestingly, there was an article a while back that suggested that the reason the South American rain forests grow as well as they do is because early indians cultivated the soil for farming. A similar situation is believed to be true for North America as well.
So cutting down the old trees to encourage growth of young ones is just the opposite of what you need to prevent unnaturally intense forest fires.
I'm not so sure about that. While younger trees are often consumed (and nature obviously reseeds), my understanding was that it was the dead wood that provided the fuel. By logging an area, we tend to remove the dead wood before it ignites.
Next, you also argue that extinction of species has been happening for a long time and that makes it normal, natural and okay. This overlooks the key issues of rates of extinction.
I'm hardly arguing that we aren't indirectly causing the extinctions. I'm arguing that we are changing the environment to meet our needs, and as a result, we are taking over the processes that used to be provided by various wildlife. As we take over those natural processes, the wildlife that depended on that place in the eco-system no longer has a home and goes extinct. But as I said, we are further changing our environment by preserving those animals which would otherwise disappear.
Finally, there's your delightful argument that [waste] "came out of the Earth in the first place. There's no reason why it can't just go back". This completely ignores the fact that one of the major results of industrialization is the concentration of wastes and the creation of entirely new forms of waste.
With enough energy, we can restore anything we use back to a natural state. That includes "Enriched" Uranium byproducts, which can either be reused, or reprocessed back into stable elements. (Processes exist to degrade radioisotopes into isotopes with a half-life of minutes. These expend a great deal of energy, then become an inert chemical.) BTW, that's FISSION, not Fusion. Fusion is still a Pie-in-the-Sky energy source. Even if fusion is finally accomplished, it still won't be as "clean" as everyone makes it out to be.
And of course, we shout down as "eco-freaks" those who have the temerity to suggest that technologies that produce less wastes are better than technologies to clean up waste.
You can only squeeze so much water out of a rock. Energy efficiency is the goal of any engine producer. However, there are hard ceilings on how efficient a given process can be. Interestingly enough, extremely high energy density processes (such as fission) tend to be cleaner than less efficient processes. However, the more energy you have, the more cautious you have to be with it. I label "Eco-freaks" as annoying anti-progressives, because they tend to hate any and all technology. They keep saying, "make the existing stuff 100% clean!" Sorry, it isn't going to happen. We have to move to processes such as Fission which produce bountiful energy, but are seen as "evil" by eco-freaks because of how dangerous they are.
Our choices boil down to:
1. Improve our technology and continue to improve the "eco-loop" we took over as a species.
2. Live like wildlife and be subject to the whims of the environment.
As a minor comment, the dinosaurs were in the second category.
"Could" being the operative word. Stopping the Gulf Stream would seriously suck, but it wouldn't immediately kill a whole bunch of people. Resulting weather patterns may, but we are getting better at dealing with those.
It was a simple format document so the moral of the story is... You still need to SAVE AS RTF!!!!
Or state that the file is in OpenOffice format. Mailing documents to people without telling them what to use is somewhat rude, even if it is a common document. There are plenty of people out there who don't have ANY Office software, and/or even know what a ZIP file is.
Get in the habit. A simple "Here's your document is OpenOffice format" goes a lot farther than "Here's your document."
I'd start getting .sxc as attachments instead of .doc!
.sxw, not .sxc. I think you're getting confused with the old StarOffice sdw format.
You can believe all you want that we can always just sprawl out more and more, but think of the consequences, deforestation, extinction of species, contamination of water sources, etc...
Oh, cry me a river. We change the environment just by existing. The primary difference between the way we change it and animals change it, is animals find their niche for adding balance, and stop there. Humans continue to change their environments more and more, but as a price must learn to complete the cycle.
Thus "deforestation" has become a scientific process of cutting down older trees and encouraging the growth of young ones. Nature would have eventually wiped a whole area out with a forest fire instead.
Extinction of species sucks. It's also a natural process. When the balance that an animal brings to nature is superseded, they are no longer to change the environment to meet their own needs. By preserving them, we are actually changing our environment more. Is preserving them then a bad thing? I don't think so. You never know when another change in our environment would foster the reintroduction of a species.
Contamination of water sources is an age old problem. Fresh water in its natural state would never have been able to support the number of humans alive today. As a process of changing our environment, we've build damns, pumps and water purification centers to provide enough fresh water wherever it's needed. (Except California, where people seem to enjoy polluting and eco-freaks get in the way of actual solutions. Don't even get me started on how every technology to them is the wrong one.)
The way we do things in the US will not always work in other parts of the world.
This is true. I used the U.S. as an example, because it worked. Very few other countries with undeveloped land have tried much of anything.
Secondly it's not just a matter of food it's also waste.
Guess what? It came out of the Earth in the first place. There's no reason why it can't go back. The bigger picture is that we're learning to better deal with our waste. Recycling is a good step, but cheap energy could bring down the costs of waste processing. In fact, if energy were cheap enough, we could break everything down to its base components and either resell it or reintroduce it to our environment in its original state.
Not that any of that will happen as long as nuclear technology is seen as "EEEEVIL".
Thirdly while the rate of growth has slowed it has not stopped. The world's population is still rising and we are running out of places to go.
Got numbers? I'll bet I can show that the rate of growth has slowed considerably and that projections could be made for when a worldwide depopulation would start.
For those who have no idea what he's talking about, see here:
http://mindprod.com/kyoto.html
It sounds like one of the most contrived schemes I have heard of yet. The cost figures parent gave don't surprise me one bit. On the bright side, maybe we'll start building some modern Nuclear Plants instead of working to simply shut down all the 1960's plants.
You mean the giant wooden vessel that I am building in my backyard which I plan to use to repopulate the earth, is unneccesary?
May I direct your attention to that pretty arch of light in the sky known as a "Rainbow". I believe it has some cultural significance to your plans.
r stop to think that maybe we shouldn't play god everytime. We screwed it up and you think we can fix it just as easily. The real problem is that we humans seem to be good at only one thing... breeding like rabbits. There are over 6 Billion people and in many parts of the world we can't adiquately feed ourselves.
*cough*bullshit*cough*
You do realize that the overpopulation fears of the 1970's never materialized? The population was supposed to grow to over 7 billion during the 80's. It didn't. In fact, many countries are depopulating due to the modern attitudes toward having children.
Most of the people out there who are starving are in countries where no economy has been imposed to foster the supply of goods. We have more than enough food here in the U.S. to feed most of Africa, but there's no economic incentive to do so. Throwing monetary "aid" at the problem only makes those people dependent on our kindness instead of improving their life-style.
I should probably also point out the tremendous amount of undeveloped land in Russia and China. Russia has two major cities: Moscow and St. Petersburg. Most people living outside of those areas are poor farmers that perform their duties with the equivalent of 1850's technology. Many of the tractors and combines they do have, are built to double as war vehicles! (Gotta love the thinking the Communists had.) Thus, everyone wants to live in Moscow. They only go to St. Petersburg if they can't get to Moscow.
China isn't much better. Everyone is crowded into the cities while hundreds of thousands of acres of land are left to be tended by townsfolk who haven't seen much technological progress in 400+ years.
If you look at U.S. history (as a comparison), land development has been fostered by capitalism. The government's grant of homesteads encouraged individuals to develop land for profit. Thus very little usable land has been allowed to sit like it has elsewhere.
we need to at least *prepare* for it if we cannot do anything else.
The thing that the "we're all going to die!" extremists miss, is that the changes will happen over a very long period of time. e.g. In 5 years, the shore may creep up 10 inches. If it starts becoming a problem, you'll find that governments will start building dykes, or digging shoreline trenches to keep the water at bay.
To anyone who thinks this sort of terraforming is a big deal, you need to take a trip to visit Superior-Deluth on the border of Wisconsin and Michigan. You can see quite a few Army Core of Engineers' trawlers on the water. These are used to regularly dig out deposits of dirt and soot to keep the harbor deep enough for the thousand footers to sail and dock.
As you said, humans are quite adept at adjusting the environment to meet our needs. The Earth will be fine. Worry more about poisoning ourselves or blowing ourselves to kingdom-come.
What work do you do that you need to use a BitTorrent client?
The original intent of BT: downloading ISOs and other large files. My software needs to be tested on different Linux environments, because (oddly enough) they all work different. I used to think it was sufficient to test RedHat, but then I started getting support problems on SUSE. And as I added desktop integration, I learned how f***ed up that is on Linux, and that every distro had its own way of handling it.
More like downloading movies, right you little illiterate Java zealot?
He spelled "illiterate". Huh huh. Duuuhhh...
Here's an idea. How about you grow up? That's a good little troll.
Maybe the next time you call bullshit, you can try addressing the statements made.
Why? So I can further the cause of said BULLSHIT? Java being useless because of startup times is bullshit, Bullshit, BULLSHIT. Nothing more, nothing less. And for those of us with Macintosh workstations, startup time is ZERO thanks to the shared VM.
Thanks for playing! Have a nice day! You have been trolled! I am not a lawyer, but I play one on TV! It's free, free, fat free!
Yep, no BitTorrent for me. Gentoo freak here. You use Linux and you need BitTorrent? Hand over your geek license now! :)
:-)
:-)
Actually, I only keep Linux around to do software compatibility testing. I prefer to work on FreeBSD or Sparc Solaris. Considering that I've been recompiling BSD ports and kernels since before Gentoo existed, I think my geek license is pretty safe.
Wasn't able to get Wurm Online working... Looks like most of the people on Windows centric anyway, but I might post a message up on Monday and try to get it figured out.
Last I chatted with him, the developer was trying to keep it running on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. In fact, I just checked the JNLP file and the native Linux OpenGL libs are listed. Are you getting an error message after launching, or are you having difficulty with Webstart? Java Webstart is a great technology that allows applications to launch right off of a web page with maximum security enabled. Unfortunately, Linux doesn't do desktop integration very well at this point. Here's a quick guide to get you going:
1. Make sure you have Java 1.4 or higher installed (1.4.2+ is best at the moment).
2. Check in the directory you installed Java. There should be an installer called 'javaws'. This will extract the 'javaws' executable and supporting files.
3. Run 'javaws', go to 'File|Open' and paste the Webstart URL for Wurm into it.
The application should launch without difficulties.
Back to the topic at hand, I agree that apps can be written poorly in general and a slow startup time in an app doesn't mean that all apps written in that language will be slow to startup, but my personal experience thus far is not very promising.
I'd be curious about what experiences you've had. Most people tried a few unpolished Java apps years ago and since then have had a constant opinion of Java. The truth is that professional GUI developers have entered the Java development realm and have been steadily producing excellent Java software ever since. Still, it's been pretty slow as no one really wants to rewrite applications that already work. As a result, the best Java programs are in niches were no current C/C++ program exists. For example, many of the best P2P apps are Java based. Sometimes you'll even use Java software without even knowing it (such as Nikotel online phone software, NetZero dialer, a lot of the Red Storm games, etc.)
When I said I avoid Java apps when I have a choice, it's because when I look for a new editor/tool/etc and I compare a couple of apps, I tend to gravitate towards those apps that *feel* fast. I have yet to find a Java app that I *enjoy* running.
Well, keep your eyes open. Most of the Java apps today are in a different market than you've described yourself. That's changing as apps start pushing more and more into the consumer market. I wouldn't be surprised if in the near future a large chunk of your apps end up being Java.
While those are good points, one of the requirements for the software in question is that it is open source
:-)
That's a bit of an odd requirement, but a fair enough one I suppose. One thing you are going to need to keep in mind is that Open Source programs are usually not focused on raw speed (with a few minor exceptions where the problem domain requires it).
Bouncy Castle is only one example of free crypto libs. I've personally been more impressed by its ability to do just about anything vs. performance. Still, it has not resulted in any negative performance for my employer's web application. Which is a good thing, because whoever speced the original server machines was apparently of the "a PC can run your business!" thinking. Of course, he wasn't the only one I want to strangle, but that's beside the point.
Probably your best bet for an Open Source J2EE server would be JBoss. They've spent time creating their own high performance servlet container and have optimized the hell out of the EJB component. I personally don't find it as easy to deploy as Orion, but the source is there, and you can easily hire an army of JBoss consultants to help get you going (not my cup of tea, but managers like that stuff...).
One other thing you need to consider in an enterprise environment that many developers miss: If you're spending time hand optimizing code or troubleshooting server wide crashes caused by memory leaks or illegal memory access, you're wasting your employer's money. A decent developer costs between $85-$130K per year. Scaling your hardware just a little larger costs significantly less. It's a good thing to keep in mind when you consider the costs of hardware.
DataDino - I'm using a data model compiler I developed so I don't write as much SQL anymore. When I do, it's either through the command line mysql client, the C++/Qt MySQLCC editor from MySQL (looks a lot like DataDino) or my own custom reporting app.
:-)
;o) Now, the command line tool du does a great job.
:-)
:-)
;o) And as long as it starts up in under 5 minutes, I could care less.
Ah, but DataDino provides access to multiple database vendors (read: MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, etc.) on Windows, Linux, OS X, Solaris, HP, and many other OSes! Not to mention that it's about $450 cheaper. $495 cheaper (i.e. free) if you only need to do simple tasks.
Granted, it doesn't (yet) have some database specific features such as server settings, but those settings are often managed by the DB sysadmin with command line tools anyway.
JGoodies - 5 years ago I used a VB app a buddy wrote for this
In my experience, Unix machines don't suffer from the "lost file syndrome" as badly as Windows machines. This probably has a lot to do with files being forcefully kept in home directories. Usually when a Unix machine is a mess, everyone knows it's a mess but is too lazy to clean it up.
As to a custom solution in VB, I'll bet it didn't have pie charts, graphs, "top 100" listings, and other great features that help find those lost ISOs, installers, temp files, etc. Oh, and did I mention that it's free?
Azureas - This probably wouldn't be a bad Java app as you start it up and then leave it running. Ignoring RAM consumption, it probably performs pretty well.
The Java startup time is really overrated. It actually takes the regular BitTorrent GUI longer to start than the Azureas GUI. I think it has something to do with its poor handling of large file hashes.
Too bad I don't use BitTorrent...
You use Linux and you don't use BitTorrent to download it?! String him up by his pinky toe!
Seriously, BitTorrent is WAY faster than trying to get ISOs from the primary download mirrors. Every download actually increases bandwidth to the BT network, so more downloaders == faster downloads.
Wurm Online - Ok, pretty sure I hate you now. Just what I need... Another pretty cool looking game I can play
BWHAHAHAHA!!! You've fallen for my evil plan! Too bad you're on Linux, or you'd fall for my 4K game contest entry called WarGames. Sadly, I was too lazy and too constrained by space to add support for Linux. The problem is that Full Screen mode is not currently supported on Linux, and I didn't bother to check that in my code. A simple fix is to comment out the method to set the resolution in the "main()" method and recompile.
BTW, I forgot to mention anything about SmartCVS. Thomas Singer would wring my neck if he found out. Actually, I should wring my own neck as it's really a great product. I usually use the built in IDE functionality for CVS checkins, but for tree maintenance, tracking changes, and just generally working with the whole tree at a high level, I always drop to SmartCVS. If you're still using anything other than TortoiseCVS (sadly only available on Windows), you NEED to do yourself a favor and check out SmartCVS.