Great. The realtime Linux world has settled on the EL/IX API. But what does it actually do? How does it affect the Linux kernel? Is EL/IX a library that sits on top of the kernel, or is it part of the kernel itself? Does it replace the standard system calls, or merely augment them (perhaps with calls for controlling the realtime-ness of a process)? From the point of view of an application writer, how different will an EL/IX Linux system be from regular Linux?
three of those bands you mention are fucking Nazis who are banned in Germany
Wow. Care to tell me which three? Stratovarius, Rhapsody and Sonata Arctica are all coming to Germany in April, and are returning in May. The chances of them being banned are extremely slim. Similarly, Hammerfall have played in Germany recently, and given the size of their fanbase there, I expect them to return fairly soon. Do you want to enlighten us as to just why you think they're Nazis? Oh, BTW, Heavy Metal and skinheads are very rarely two thing that accompany each other. My hair's almost down to my ass...:-)
I much prefer having the 14 mm end wrench after the 13 one that the 17/32th inch one after the 1/2 one...
As do I. Fortunately, my Fords do use metric tools. I guess that's due to having British and German models, not American ones. Now if I can just work out why I'm getting overheating problems after putting my new engine in...
This is just one example of Slashdot's ongoing pandering to negative nerd stereotypes [...] Slashdot's owners assume we are fat, friendless heavy metal fans who have never been laid in our lives.
Yes, but some of us are:-). OK, so I've got friends and I've been laid, but middle age spread is starting to set in (and I'm not even middle aged yet!). I love scifi, and I'm a heavy metal fan. And proud of it, too! It may well be a stereotype, but it fits a sizeable percentage of the Slashdot readership.
Sidenote: I just wish the UK was more heavy metal friendly. There's nothing better than a good slab of metal to code to:-) It looks like I'm going to have to go to Germany to see the forthcoming Stratovarius/Rhapsody/Sonata Arctica tour, and I'd rate the chances of Hammerfall coming over here any time soon as pretty much zero. Sigh.
It sounds like a two year commitment to AOL may soon land you a free PC with Linux and Corel Office 2000.
Yes, but that would still be a two year commitment to AOL! Some of us would rather slit our wrists:-) Seriously, though, it's nice to see, even if I won't personally be interested.
This is actually what bothers me most about this deal. What could possibly justify this sort of valuation for Network Solutions? It's even worse than the absurd overvaluation of Red Hat and VA Linux (which is slowly returning to a more realistic level). Yes, they have a large share of a market that's only going to expand, but do they really have enough earnings potential to justify such a huge market cap?
Most computer users don't know what HA really means, but I honestly don't blame them. It is a very specialized field, and to be completely honest, no desktop user really needs HA in any form or fashion.
Agreed. HA solutions are mostly a matter of money. Specify your required amount of downtime, and then throw enough money at the problem until that target is reached. From the base level, you start by adding redundant storage, and move up, adding N+1 power, memory, processors etc., and then start into clusters with hot-spares and finally distributed clusters. By the time you're reaching that point, though, it's costing you a lot of money, and you have to weigh up whether the potential losses from downtime justify the amount you need to spend to guarantee the uptime.
Of course, to do it properly, you need to have kernel support, and at the five nines level and above, probably hardware support as well. For most, though, a software-only solution will be more than adequate, and will provide a suitable balance between cost and reliability demands.
Does anyone know if anyone is offering commercial support contracts for DOSEMU? I know of at least one company that is considering it as a means to gracefully migrate from DOS to Linux, and a commercial support option would certainly help. VMWare is also an option, but you need a much higher spec box to run it, so the gains from moving to Linux are negated somewhat. I this the sort of thing LinuxCare would offer?
On a completely different note, I used to use DOSEMU to play Heretic and Descent under Linux in the days before there were native versions, and it was great. It can only have improved since then. I understand they've even got graphics working in a window under X now.
Firstly, the notion of bearing your soul and your abuse to a group of strangers is ridiculous in itself. These folks need to deal with professional counsellors who can really help them, not a bunch of wannabe psychologists hanging out in newsgroups giving out bad advice.
You'd be surprised. I know several people who have had real problems with professional counsellors, but have found what help they need from online support groups (including a.s.a.r.). Sure, it's not for everyone, but don't deprive those who need it just because it doesn't fit your preconceived ideas.
The first thing to remember is that each CPU can only ever do one thing at a time. An operating system like Unix will simulate being able to do multiple things simultaneously by allocating each process a small amount of CPU time, and then sending it to sleep, while another process is given access to the CPU. If you have multiple CPUs, then there is more total CPU time to allocate to each of your available processes, and so, with an SMP aware OS, the machine runs faster overall.
Individual processes, however, can only make use of multiple CPUs if they are specifically written to do so (e.g., by using a threads library). Otherwise, they will simply run at the same speed as they would do on a single CPU. This gives rise to some interesting situations. At my last company, we were doing some fairly hefty image manipulation. The main conversion program ran quicker on the departmental laptop than it did on a 64 CPU Sun Starfire. This is because the program could only make use of 1 CPU, and the Starfire's ran at 200MHz, compared to the laptop's 250MHz. However, as soon as you try running lots of those processes concurrently, the SMP machine comes into its own.
So, in answer to your question, if you're running computationally intensive single-threaded applications, and absolute performance is a high priority, then a faster single processor will be better. Otherwise, you're probably better off with two slightly slower CPUs.
I eventually decided to go with the Epson GT-7000 SCSI. It was far from the cheapest option (£180 -- about US$290), but it was worth every penny. It's probably the single best buy I've made for my computer. Extremely good quality, very fast, and it works like a dream with SANE. Everything I could ask for, basically. Avoid low end scanners. They tend to scan too dark, and correct it later in software, but the results are never as good as those from a better scanner.
Just as the market was saturated with scrolling shoot-em-ups 15 years ago, nowadays it seems that in order to convince the marketers, you need a Virtua Striker/Tomb Raider/Quake/Gran Turismo clone
How I long for those days! Have you actually tried to buy a scolling shoot-em-up recently? No one sells them, because they're all trying to make the next Tomb Raider/Sports Sim/GT clone. Yawn! At least those making Quake clones have come up with something worthwhile (Unreal Tournament is excellent, as is Aliens vs Predator). Some days, though, I'd just like to be able to sit down and have a good old blast away in Battle Squadron, DataStorm or Uridium. Yes, you can play them on emulators, but it's not quite the same (unless someone can tell me how I can connect up my old Kempston Competition Pro to my PC...) Until then, I guess I'll have to settle for R-Types and Xevious on the PlayStation.
I've lost count of the number of games which use predictable, tired storylines, or in which the storyline is totally unrelated to the game. A game with a great storyline in which your actions directly tie into this is extremely engrossing and keeps you coming back for more.
Nope, I couldn't disagree more. I wish games companies would concentrate less on storyline and character development, and more on gameplay. A game doesn't need a storyline to be playable. See Tetris for a prime example. Doom and Quake are more examples. Yes, they both have storylines, but they were tacked on to the game itself, and are basically just an excuse for saying "kill everything in sight", and weren't actually needed for the game at all. If a game is any good, it should be just as playable whether you know about the storyline or not.
Freedows is still in its early specification stages
Sigh. After 4 years, they still haven't got any code out of the door. As ever, the project is all about beaurocracy and assigning resposibility to various projects, and and nothing to do with getting the coding done. I've been following the project since the early days, when it was still called Freedows '98 (remember that?), and it hasn't gone anywhere since then.
Surely C++ has been used to write Windows applications, but I've never heard that it comprises most of the operating system proper.
Actually, as I understand it, Windows, BeOS and countless numbers of research OSes have been written in C++. As for whether it's a good idea or not, I don't know enough about it to have a valid opinion. Search the Linux-Kernel mailing list archives to see some of the arguments for and against using C++ for the Linux kernel.
this book focuses on concepts and techniques and goes to some pain to be complete and precise.
In my view one of the greatest strengths of C is K&R, particularly the second edition. In addition to being both complete and precise, it manages to be concise at the same time. One of my major criticisms of your book was that it's unnecessarily wordy. In particular, it takes far too long to get to the first code examples. Having flicked through the 3rd edition in bookshops, it appears to be noticably better in this respect than my version. Was this a deliberate decision on your part, and if so, what prompted it?
Lynx had it's day but do we really have to keep supporting it?
Absolutely. I use it because it's so much faster than Netscape. At the end of the day, I'm rarely interested in how good the graphics are on a site, I'm after the content. I still have Netscape around, and use it for sites where the graphic content is important, but there's a place for both.
It's also not a case of actively supporting Lynx (or any other browser, for that matter). Any HTML 4.0 compliant page should be easily visible in any browser, including Lynx (yes, few current browsers fully implement HTML 4.0 yet, but they're getting there). What part of Lynx support do you think holds back advances? I'm not advocating support for Mosaic or Chimera, I'm merely hoping for standards compliant web pages. If I choose to use a browser that doesn't implement certain aspects of a page (e.g., images) that should be my choice.
Lynx is also great for those of us that have to do dial in support. When your only connection to the internet is through an 80x24 telnet window, and you *need* to check some details in order to fix a customer's problem, Netscape and IE aren't an option.
At the end of the day, if its readable with the browser; thats all it ever needed to be - is there any real need to go nit-picking?
But that's the problem. Buggy HTML means it won't be visible to all browsers. Few people are even aware of any browsers other than Netscape and IE, and so assume that if the page looks OK in those, it must be fine. People using Lynx are shafted, along with those using numerous other browsers that don't implement Netscape/IE extensions.
I was incredibly frustrated until I figured out how Styles work in Word.
Yes, but coming from a TeX and FrameMaker background, logical markup rather than physical markup (e.g., "section header" rather than "14 point Helvetica bold") is completely intuitive, and thus to me, styles have always made complete sense.
Word still has some way to go, though. When reapplying a paragraph style for example, I don't want it to offer to change the style definition to match the existing text. Can Word do hyperlinking like FrameMaker? My current techincal docs could really use that. And it would be nice if "update entire table" in a table of contents didn't reset the fscking font! I don't want my function names to be in small caps... And it would be really useful if it could perform a section sort. By that I mean sort the entire document (or part thereof), based on paragraph styles — each section (delimited by a given paragraph style) remains intact, but the sections themselves are sorted to be in alphebetical order, based on the text in the chosen style. Of course, vi-style editing keys would make my life a lot easier:-)
A word processor (sorry, I don't care how much "layout" it does it's still a word processor) for 5 times the cost of Windows? No thanks. I could buy a 21" monitor and a stick of 128Mb RAM for that.
Firstly, I don't care how much you try and claim otherwise, FrameMaker will always be more than a mere word processor. Find me a word processor that has the functionality of FM, and I may start using it...
Secondly, why not take your money, go buy your monitor and memory, and then download a free copy of FrameMaker for Linux. It's a beta, and the license expires at the end of 2000, but that should be enough for you to decide if you actually want to spend the money on the full product.
Slashdot Mirror
Great. The realtime Linux world has settled on the EL/IX API. But what does it actually do? How does it affect the Linux kernel? Is EL/IX a library that sits on top of the kernel, or is it part of the kernel itself? Does it replace the standard system calls, or merely augment them (perhaps with calls for controlling the realtime-ness of a process)? From the point of view of an application writer, how different will an EL/IX Linux system be from regular Linux?
Wow. Care to tell me which three? Stratovarius, Rhapsody and Sonata Arctica are all coming to Germany in April, and are returning in May. The chances of them being banned are extremely slim. Similarly, Hammerfall have played in Germany recently, and given the size of their fanbase there, I expect them to return fairly soon. Do you want to enlighten us as to just why you think they're Nazis? Oh, BTW, Heavy Metal and skinheads are very rarely two thing that accompany each other. My hair's almost down to my ass... :-)
As do I. Fortunately, my Fords do use metric tools. I guess that's due to having British and German models, not American ones. Now if I can just work out why I'm getting overheating problems after putting my new engine in...
Yes, but some of us are :-). OK, so I've got friends and I've been laid, but middle age spread is starting to set in (and I'm not even middle aged yet!). I love scifi, and I'm a heavy metal fan. And proud of it, too! It may well be a stereotype, but it fits a sizeable percentage of the Slashdot readership.
Sidenote: I just wish the UK was more heavy metal friendly. There's nothing better than a good slab of metal to code to :-) It looks like I'm going to have to go to Germany to see the forthcoming Stratovarius/Rhapsody/Sonata Arctica tour, and I'd rate the chances of Hammerfall coming over here any time soon as pretty much zero. Sigh.
Yes, but that would still be a two year commitment to AOL! Some of us would rather slit our wrists :-) Seriously, though, it's nice to see, even if I won't personally be interested.
This is actually what bothers me most about this deal. What could possibly justify this sort of valuation for Network Solutions? It's even worse than the absurd overvaluation of Red Hat and VA Linux (which is slowly returning to a more realistic level). Yes, they have a large share of a market that's only going to expand, but do they really have enough earnings potential to justify such a huge market cap?
Agreed. HA solutions are mostly a matter of money. Specify your required amount of downtime, and then throw enough money at the problem until that target is reached. From the base level, you start by adding redundant storage, and move up, adding N+1 power, memory, processors etc., and then start into clusters with hot-spares and finally distributed clusters. By the time you're reaching that point, though, it's costing you a lot of money, and you have to weigh up whether the potential losses from downtime justify the amount you need to spend to guarantee the uptime.
Of course, to do it properly, you need to have kernel support, and at the five nines level and above, probably hardware support as well. For most, though, a software-only solution will be more than adequate, and will provide a suitable balance between cost and reliability demands.
On a completely different note, I used to use DOSEMU to play Heretic and Descent under Linux in the days before there were native versions, and it was great. It can only have improved since then. I understand they've even got graphics working in a window under X now.
You'd be surprised. I know several people who have had real problems with professional counsellors, but have found what help they need from online support groups (including a.s.a.r.). Sure, it's not for everyone, but don't deprive those who need it just because it doesn't fit your preconceived ideas.
You obviously haven't been around the net that long, otherwise you'd know the truth. Vax sucks.
Individual processes, however, can only make use of multiple CPUs if they are specifically written to do so (e.g., by using a threads library). Otherwise, they will simply run at the same speed as they would do on a single CPU. This gives rise to some interesting situations. At my last company, we were doing some fairly hefty image manipulation. The main conversion program ran quicker on the departmental laptop than it did on a 64 CPU Sun Starfire. This is because the program could only make use of 1 CPU, and the Starfire's ran at 200MHz, compared to the laptop's 250MHz. However, as soon as you try running lots of those processes concurrently, the SMP machine comes into its own.
So, in answer to your question, if you're running computationally intensive single-threaded applications, and absolute performance is a high priority, then a faster single processor will be better. Otherwise, you're probably better off with two slightly slower CPUs.
I eventually decided to go with the Epson GT-7000 SCSI. It was far from the cheapest option (£180 -- about US$290), but it was worth every penny. It's probably the single best buy I've made for my computer. Extremely good quality, very fast, and it works like a dream with SANE. Everything I could ask for, basically. Avoid low end scanners. They tend to scan too dark, and correct it later in software, but the results are never as good as those from a better scanner.
How I long for those days! Have you actually tried to buy a scolling shoot-em-up recently? No one sells them, because they're all trying to make the next Tomb Raider/Sports Sim/GT clone. Yawn! At least those making Quake clones have come up with something worthwhile (Unreal Tournament is excellent, as is Aliens vs Predator). Some days, though, I'd just like to be able to sit down and have a good old blast away in Battle Squadron, DataStorm or Uridium. Yes, you can play them on emulators, but it's not quite the same (unless someone can tell me how I can connect up my old Kempston Competition Pro to my PC...) Until then, I guess I'll have to settle for R-Types and Xevious on the PlayStation.
Nope, I couldn't disagree more. I wish games companies would concentrate less on storyline and character development, and more on gameplay. A game doesn't need a storyline to be playable. See Tetris for a prime example. Doom and Quake are more examples. Yes, they both have storylines, but they were tacked on to the game itself, and are basically just an excuse for saying "kill everything in sight", and weren't actually needed for the game at all. If a game is any good, it should be just as playable whether you know about the storyline or not.
From the last status update (in September):
Sigh. After 4 years, they still haven't got any code out of the door. As ever, the project is all about beaurocracy and assigning resposibility to various projects, and and nothing to do with getting the coding done. I've been following the project since the early days, when it was still called Freedows '98 (remember that?), and it hasn't gone anywhere since then.
See /usr/src/linux/arch/sparc64/kernel/starfire.c:
I've personally had it running on an E4000. Apparently, Sun gave davem access to a starfire to allow him to add the support.
Ah yes, but that would make it gray31 by X11's reckoning, and not DarkSlateGray.
Care to educate us on the difference between "dark slate" and "gray"? If you go by X11 named colours, then you can contrast the old and new by doing:
However, the X11 dark slate gray looks a bit on the green side to me, and the plain gray is significantly paler than an old Pilot.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if someone had described the old palm pilot colour as being dark slate, I wouldn't have thought twice about it.
Actually, as I understand it, Windows, BeOS and countless numbers of research OSes have been written in C++. As for whether it's a good idea or not, I don't know enough about it to have a valid opinion. Search the Linux-Kernel mailing list archives to see some of the arguments for and against using C++ for the Linux kernel.
In my view one of the greatest strengths of C is K&R, particularly the second edition. In addition to being both complete and precise, it manages to be concise at the same time. One of my major criticisms of your book was that it's unnecessarily wordy. In particular, it takes far too long to get to the first code examples. Having flicked through the 3rd edition in bookshops, it appears to be noticably better in this respect than my version. Was this a deliberate decision on your part, and if so, what prompted it?
Absolutely. I use it because it's so much faster than Netscape. At the end of the day, I'm rarely interested in how good the graphics are on a site, I'm after the content. I still have Netscape around, and use it for sites where the graphic content is important, but there's a place for both.
It's also not a case of actively supporting Lynx (or any other browser, for that matter). Any HTML 4.0 compliant page should be easily visible in any browser, including Lynx (yes, few current browsers fully implement HTML 4.0 yet, but they're getting there). What part of Lynx support do you think holds back advances? I'm not advocating support for Mosaic or Chimera, I'm merely hoping for standards compliant web pages. If I choose to use a browser that doesn't implement certain aspects of a page (e.g., images) that should be my choice.
Lynx is also great for those of us that have to do dial in support. When your only connection to the internet is through an 80x24 telnet window, and you *need* to check some details in order to fix a customer's problem, Netscape and IE aren't an option.
But that's the problem. Buggy HTML means it won't be visible to all browsers. Few people are even aware of any browsers other than Netscape and IE, and so assume that if the page looks OK in those, it must be fine. People using Lynx are shafted, along with those using numerous other browsers that don't implement Netscape/IE extensions.
Yes, but coming from a TeX and FrameMaker background, logical markup rather than physical markup (e.g., "section header" rather than "14 point Helvetica bold") is completely intuitive, and thus to me, styles have always made complete sense.
Word still has some way to go, though. When reapplying a paragraph style for example, I don't want it to offer to change the style definition to match the existing text. Can Word do hyperlinking like FrameMaker? My current techincal docs could really use that. And it would be nice if "update entire table" in a table of contents didn't reset the fscking font! I don't want my function names to be in small caps... And it would be really useful if it could perform a section sort. By that I mean sort the entire document (or part thereof), based on paragraph styles — each section (delimited by a given paragraph style) remains intact, but the sections themselves are sorted to be in alphebetical order, based on the text in the chosen style. Of course, vi-style editing keys would make my life a lot easier :-)
Firstly, I don't care how much you try and claim otherwise, FrameMaker will always be more than a mere word processor. Find me a word processor that has the functionality of FM, and I may start using it...
Secondly, why not take your money, go buy your monitor and memory, and then download a free copy of FrameMaker for Linux. It's a beta, and the license expires at the end of 2000, but that should be enough for you to decide if you actually want to spend the money on the full product.
http://www.adobe.com/products /framemaker/fmlinux.html