I've been using CentOS and other Red Hat derivatives for 15 years. When I want to get a certification, who do you think I'll get it from? Microsoft? I'll get Red Hat certified, of course. When my employer, a government agency, adds new servers and wants enterprise support, which OS am I going to recommend. Hint - not Ubuntu.
Red Hat isn't competing with CentOS. They are competing with other large companies selling enterprise support, certifications, and training. More people using Linux is good for Red Hat and especially more people being comfortable with Red Hat derived systems is good for Red Hat.
Originally, Red Hat Linux was free. The company was built on cooperating freely with the communityand contributing, while earning a reputation that allowed them to sell support, training, etc. Working with the CentOS community is classic Red Hat, that's the kind of thinking that once made Red Hat THE Linux distribution and the #3 operating system behind Windows and Mac.
Shape your Hotwheels track into a loop. Roll a car through it real fast. Notice that the car stays on the track when it's upside down - when gravity is trying to pull the car AWAY from the track.
Notice also when the car is vertical gravity is pulling the car backwards, neither toward the track or away from the track. You now see that gravity has nothing to do with it
Yes, these magnets are indeed not available domestically. It was just three months ago that Molycorp completed the first and only rare earth mine in the US. Very soon they'll have full production capability to manufacture ready-to-use magnets.
I've messed around with a few things. It turns out the traditional method gets two things right and one thing wrong. Simple wired sensors are good. Changing batteries in wireless ones sucks. Monitoring is also good. What sucks is the traditional marketing strategy, where you pay $50 / to cover commissions for various middle men and that "low cost" alarm.
There are companies that provide the same monitoring service for about $5 / month. You may already own the alarm system. If not, you can buy a traditional alarm system at low cost. Of course you can also build one with something like a Raspberry Pi.
This is one area where geek hacks don't end up making a lot of sense. China cranks out well designed alarm panels cheap and $5 / month for monitoring can't be beat.
The wrt54gL (L for Linux) is an example of such a device. The early versions of wrt54g were popular with people using openWRT and such of course. Recognizing this, the company released a version specifically for nerds.
I'd love to see some other, more up-to-date options. I have some projects that would fit nicely in several MBs of RAM, without necessarily needing all the ports. A Raspberry Pi would work, but a beefed up WRT would be better.
Whats the MOST inefficient way to make a decision? Having millions of people vote on it is probably the least efficient way possible. The second most inefficient way to make a decision is probably to send it through the US Congress. On the other hand, North Korea makes decisions efficiently - the dictator simply decides. That might take ten seconds, while the same decision by the US government might take years.
The US government isn't SUPPOSED to be efficient. If we wanted efficient, we'd have a dictator. We don't want efficient government, we want FAIR governance. We want to be sure that all voices are heard and that everyone's rights are respected. That's incredibly inefficient.
In my small business, when we need a computer we log onto Provantage, Newegg, or Tigerdirect and order it. We know those companies provide good service and good prices. It takes us maybe 30 minutes to select and order a computer. When the government needs computers, they initiate the bid process. The bid process is supposed to be transparent, so that all citizens can see that the government official isn't buying from their brother at inflated prices. It takes a few months. The government process takes a few months, the private business practice takes a few minutes. Obviously the government process isn't efficient - it's not supposed to be! It's supposed to be transparent.
What, if anything, should we do about all of this inefficiency? Well, the inefficiency is how we get fairness, transparency, etc., to the extent we manage to get those things. We COULD give up fairness etc. by choosing a dictator. Laws being made by a dictator doesn't sound like a good idea, so we're probably stuck with government being extremely inefficient. That's okay, though, there is a way to get things done efficiently while still having an inefficient (fair, transparent) government.
To make certain things efficient, we can simply not have them done by the government. Some things, like making laws and courts, need to fair, transparent, etc., and need to be done by the government. Other things don't need to be. For example contrast Google fiber versus the various attempts by governments in the US to provide fiber access. The government run projects mostly failed to one degree or another. Google is getting the job done. I don't CARE whether or not the Google executive is sending contracts to his brother-in-law. There's no need for transparent bidding. Fiber is delivering bytes, mostly porn, not sentencing people to prison, so there's no need for the same guarantees of fairness we demand of the government who runs the court system.
Neither government nor business is BAD. Each have their own place. A court of law should be deliberative, fair, slow. Being sentenced to prison SHOULD be a careful, slow process. Passing laws that drastically effect millions of people should involve public debate. It SHOULD take months or years to figure out a new medical care system and impose it on everyone. On the other hand, laying some fiber so you can stream more Netflix should be quick. You want to launch the new technology today, not three years from now. If Congress were in charge of internet access, they'd probably be approving the DSL standard about this time. It would probably be paid for by taxes on 56K modems. That's as it should be. Careful, fair, deliberative, slow government when you're forcing people to do things and quick, efficient businesses to provide consumer services.
You've been lied to. Every business in the country pays for their retirement plans while the employee in working. What USPS was doing was promising to pay today's workers 50 years from now, but not setting aside any money to do so. In most cases, it would be illegal for a private company to pull the crap the USPS was. It's fraud, telling employees they have a retirement fund when in fact there is no such fund. Congress had USPS stop committing fraud. Now, when a postal worker goes to work today, they earn retirement benefits today, and that money is set aside today to pay today's workers.
> It's not good enough that they track you at every site that uses Analytics, > every site that uses AdWords, every site you go to from their search engine, > every site you visit with their Toolbar in play. (I'm forgetting a hundred other ways they suck your data.)
Factoring in a few of the other ways you didn't list, like sites with YouTube videos, we can guess Google is aware of about 85% of consumer web traffic. Using their DNS would tell them the only the hostname of the other 15%, and only once per TTL. So call that 7% from using Google's DNS.
Using anyone else's DNS gives that other company 100% of your lookups rather than the 0% they had before. 100% is a lot more than 7% or 15%, so you're giving up a lot more privacy by using any DNS other than Google.
In other words, Google already knows which sites you're visiting - you got to those sites by searching Google. Why would you also give that information to some other company?
That was my thought process after I found that Chrome is so good for web development. I'm using Chrome, so Google has a profile of my web surfing. There is no reason to let another company have the same information, so I'm better off using Google services all around. (Besides the fact that Google provides good services, which get better as they are integrated.)
Agreed. It's a WORKSTATION. It doesn't need to be a tiny little 11 pound can. A few weeks ago a drive was going out in my old Mac Pro. I slid out the drive carriage and slid in a spare sata drive I had laying around on a shelf.
Reading what I wrote, I realize I have too damn many computers. At home, I have an Android phone, tablet, and TV box. Linux / Windows laptop, Linux desktop, MacBook Pro, Linux home server, and for some volunteer work I do a Linux PBX. That's 8 computers at home.
At my 8-5 job, I have the Mac Pro and for my side job I have a rack full of servers.
Perhaps you've confused the Mac Pro workstation with a portable iOS device competing with Android. I'm one of those "Google fan boys" I guess, since I have three Android devices. I also have a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro. All are excellent for their intended purpose.
I strongly prefer my $99 Android Nextbook over my iPad. So yes, Apple's iOS devices do indeed suck - their usefulness per dollar is really bad. The Mac Pro isn't an iPad, though, it's a workstation that runs certified Unix.
The problem with open deep frying is that as the moisture within the meat boils, it bursts out as little steam explosions popping through the coating. Sealing the deep fryer to create pressure keeps the moisture inside. Because the steam doesn't escape in a pressure fryer, the hot steam goes into the meat, cooking the center more quickly.
Am I the only Slashdotter thinking of trying this? The clothes washer on spin would be too big. Maybe put a faster motor on my ice cream maker and pour in some hot oil...
> Other bugs can even be truly random; a race condition that depends on whether one thread gets scheduled on a processor
The bug exists before the processor is even purchased. The bug is not random, though the output may be influenced by a random event. The output isn't even random - I debugged one of those in the kernel and the result was spinlock. The only random part is WHEN the problem becomes visible to the user.
That reminds me of a Heisenbug we had once. Completely off topic, but we once had a bug which would never manifest with debug tools running . You could try it a million times and it would be fine so long as IE's debug console was open. With the debugging tools closed, it would crash most of the time. Guess what the cause was.
Someone had left a call to console.debug in the code, which causes IE to stop execution if there is no object named "console".
> Sadly, I still see developers not testing, and are practically afraid of writing test scripts.
I'm a little bit afraid of some tests I've been asked to write, and I've been programming professionally since 1997. My credits include WordPress, Apache, testing the Linux kernel raid, and other well known software.
I fear it because tests for this project involve learning at least one and probably two new unit testing frameworks which each try to approach testing in an innovative new way. One has tests that look like English prose, not like code.
Also, I have to rewrite other people's code to make it testable, then try to get those changes, and all of the tests, through an arduous review process. This looks like it's going to be a giant PITA. Both of these problems could have been easily avoided.
If testing were integrated with the language, we wouldn't have a different test framework (or two) for every project. If you know the language, you know how to test it, if the two are integrated. Were it integrated, I also wouldn't need to rewrite the existing code in order to make it testable - any valid and reasonable code would be testable, or nearly so.
> The word "random" also includes the definition of "odd, unusual, or unexpected."
In everyday conversation, people may say "random" when they mean "unexpected". Hopefully they wouldn't WRITE that in a published article, but they may say it in informal conversation.
A computer programmer who passed Programming 201 will distinguish between random, unexpected, and arbitrary in informal conversation, because in our world those words have COMPLETELY different meanings. Among programmers, saying "random" when you mean "unexpected" would be like saying "pizza" when you mean "broom" - they are completely different concepts altogether, and both are important concepts. Witness the recent articles about the NSA messing with random generators - random is an important thing to us.
For a programmer writing for other programmers to conflate the two in a published article is sloppy, very sloppy.
Funny you should say that now. I was just now reading a historically important post from 1991. Slashdot covered the 20th anniversary of this particular post.
I'm curious, should George Bush be able to delete all records of things he said publicly, to remove all mention of WMD from the archives? There is a strong argument that once you choose to publicly make assertions, to engage in open, written discussion, the comments you chose to publish remain. If I were to call someone a thief and a liar, I'd fully expect that the accusations I chose to make publicly would remain a part of the public record. If I don't want to look like an asshole, I shouldn't act like an asshole.
Linus used Minix to write Linux. His motivations included pure geek fun, 32 bit support, and the ability to modify and distribute. Minix was free of charge, but not 100% freedom. You weren't allowed to modify Minix and distribute your own version. At the time, BSD included code written and controlled by AT&T.
Photoshop cloud different, not better
on
GNU Octave Gets a GUI
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I have the complete Adobe suite. I use Gimp more often. Photoshop, like MS Office, is the de facto file exchange format in certain fields. Photoshop is also much slower than Gimp and in my opinion harder to use, hiding commonly used tools like rectangular selection underneath other tools.
Neither is BETTER in an absolute sense. Most professional software engineers use/used C. That doesn't make C better than JavaScript.
That's true, Windows 3.1 did allow multiple apps on screen, which was useful for copy-paste or cross referencing. Windows 8 is less functional is some ways.
Still, it's funny to compare early Windows vs Mac of the same vintage. Windows would be a footnote in history had Apple licensed their OS to other manufacturers.
in systems I design, such as Strongbox, the sender also sends gettimeofday() and the receiver confirms the timestamp is within X milliseconds. Both sides use NTP, so both have accurate time to within a few milliseconds.
I've also implemented systems in which the timestamp element is modulo a few seconds. The receiver accepts either the current modulo time or the previous.
You could confirm whether a PIN is correct without sending it. For example, send sha1(card number + pin + time of day) The machine at bank's end does the same calculation with the correct pin and returns whether or not it matches.
I take it you thought these devices are dual boot, Windows OR Android. They are not. Instead, the run BOTH simultaneously, so it runs Android and Windows applications on the same screen. I started to say the same desktop, but of course Microsoft has thrown out the desktop metaphor in a return to Windows 3.1 style single-tasking.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been using CentOS and other Red Hat derivatives for 15 years. When I want to get a certification, who do you think I'll get it from? Microsoft? I'll get Red Hat certified, of course. When my employer, a government agency, adds new servers and wants enterprise support, which OS am I going to recommend. Hint - not Ubuntu.
Red Hat isn't competing with CentOS. They are competing with other large companies selling enterprise support, certifications, and training. More people using Linux is good for Red Hat and especially more people being comfortable with Red Hat derived systems is good for Red Hat.
Originally, Red Hat Linux was free. The company was built on cooperating freely with the communityand
contributing, while earning a reputation that allowed them to sell support, training, etc. Working with the CentOS community is classic Red Hat, that's the kind of thinking that once made Red Hat THE Linux distribution and the #3 operating system behind Windows and Mac.
Shape your Hotwheels track into a loop.
Roll a car through it real fast. Notice that the car stays on the track when it's upside down - when gravity is trying to pull the car AWAY from the track.
Notice also when the car is vertical gravity is pulling the car backwards, neither toward the track or away from the track. You now see that gravity has nothing to do with it
Yes, these magnets are indeed not available domestically.
It was just three months ago that Molycorp completed the first and only rare earth mine in the US. Very soon they'll have full production capability to manufacture ready-to-use magnets.
I've messed around with a few things. It turns out the traditional method gets two things right and one thing wrong. Simple wired sensors are good. Changing batteries in wireless ones sucks. Monitoring is also good. What sucks is the traditional marketing strategy, where you pay $50 / to cover commissions for various middle men and that "low cost" alarm.
There are companies that provide the same monitoring service for about $5 / month. You may already own the alarm system. If not, you can buy a traditional alarm system at low cost. Of course you can also build one with something like a Raspberry Pi.
This is one area where geek hacks don't end up making a lot of sense. China cranks out well designed alarm panels cheap and $5 / month for monitoring can't be beat.
> Or does such a thing already exist?
The wrt54gL (L for Linux) is an example of such a device. The early versions of wrt54g were popular with people using openWRT and such of course. Recognizing this, the company released a version specifically for nerds.
I'd love to see some other, more up-to-date options. I have some projects that would fit nicely in several MBs of RAM, without necessarily needing all the ports. A Raspberry Pi would work, but a beefed up WRT would be better.
Whats the MOST inefficient way to make a decision? Having millions of people vote on it is probably the least efficient way possible.
The second most inefficient way to make a decision is probably to send it through the US Congress. On the other hand, North Korea makes decisions efficiently - the dictator simply decides. That might take ten seconds, while the same decision by the US government might take years.
The US government isn't SUPPOSED to be efficient. If we wanted efficient, we'd have a dictator.
We don't want efficient government, we want FAIR governance. We want to be sure that all voices are heard and
that everyone's rights are respected. That's incredibly inefficient.
In my small business, when we need a computer we log onto Provantage, Newegg, or Tigerdirect and order it. We know those companies provide good service and good prices. It takes us maybe 30 minutes to select and order a computer. When the government needs computers, they initiate the bid process. The bid process is supposed to be transparent, so that all citizens can see that the government official isn't buying from their brother at inflated prices. It takes a few months. The government process takes a few months, the private business practice takes a few minutes. Obviously the government process isn't efficient - it's not supposed to be! It's supposed to be transparent.
What, if anything, should we do about all of this inefficiency? Well, the inefficiency is how we get fairness, transparency, etc., to the extent we manage to get those things. We COULD give up fairness etc. by choosing a dictator. Laws being made by a dictator doesn't sound like a good idea, so we're probably stuck with government being extremely inefficient. That's okay, though, there is a way to get things done efficiently while still having an inefficient (fair, transparent) government.
To make certain things efficient, we can simply not have them done by the government. Some things, like making laws and courts, need to fair, transparent, etc., and need to be done by the government. Other things don't need to be. For example contrast Google fiber versus the various attempts by governments in the US to provide fiber access. The government run projects mostly failed to one degree or another. Google is getting the job done. I don't CARE whether or not the Google executive is sending contracts to his brother-in-law. There's no need for transparent bidding. Fiber is delivering bytes, mostly porn, not sentencing people to prison, so there's no need for the same guarantees of fairness we demand of the government who runs the court system.
Neither government nor business is BAD. Each have their own place. A court of law should be deliberative, fair, slow. Being sentenced to prison SHOULD be a careful, slow process. Passing laws that drastically effect millions of people should involve public debate. It SHOULD take months or years to figure out a new medical care system and impose it on everyone. On the other hand, laying some fiber so you can stream more Netflix should be quick. You want to launch the new technology today, not three years from now. If Congress were in charge of internet access, they'd probably be approving the DSL standard about this time. It would probably be paid for by taxes on 56K modems. That's as it should be. Careful, fair, deliberative, slow government when you're forcing people to do things and quick, efficient businesses to provide consumer services.
You've been lied to. Every business in the country pays for their retirement plans while the employee in working. What USPS was doing was promising to pay today's workers 50 years from now, but not setting aside any money to do so. In most cases, it would be illegal for a private company to pull the crap the USPS was. It's fraud, telling employees they have a retirement fund when in fact there is no such fund. Congress had USPS stop committing fraud. Now, when a postal worker goes to work today, they earn retirement benefits today, and that money is set aside today to pay today's workers.
> It's not good enough that they track you at every site that uses Analytics,
> every site that uses AdWords, every site you go to from their search engine,
> every site you visit with their Toolbar in play. (I'm forgetting a hundred other ways they suck your data.)
Factoring in a few of the other ways you didn't list, like sites with YouTube videos, we can guess Google is aware of about 85% of consumer web traffic. Using their DNS would tell them the only the hostname of the other 15%, and only once per TTL. So call that 7% from using Google's DNS.
Using anyone else's DNS gives that other company 100% of your lookups rather than the 0% they had before. 100% is a lot more than 7% or 15%, so you're giving up a lot more privacy by using any DNS other than Google.
In other words, Google already knows which sites you're visiting - you got to those sites by searching Google. Why would you also give that information to some other company?
That was my thought process after I found that Chrome is so good for web development. I'm using Chrome, so Google has a profile of my web surfing. There is no reason to let another company have the same information, so I'm better off using Google services all around. (Besides the fact that Google provides good services, which get better as they are integrated.)
Interix once claimed that they hoped to build a certified Unix. It doesn't appear that they ever did so:
http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/catalog.htm
I don't see Interix listed as certified Unix 93, certified Unix base, certified Unix 98, or certified Unix 03. I do see OSX listed.
Agreed. It's a WORKSTATION. It doesn't need to be a tiny little 11 pound can. A few weeks ago a drive was going out in my old Mac Pro. I slid out the drive carriage and slid in a spare sata drive I had laying around on a shelf.
Reading what I wrote, I realize I have too damn many computers. At home, I have an Android phone, tablet, and TV box. Linux / Windows laptop, Linux desktop, MacBook Pro, Linux home server, and for some volunteer work I do a Linux PBX. That's 8 computers at home.
At my 8-5 job, I have the Mac Pro and for my side job I have a rack full of servers.
Perhaps you've confused the Mac Pro workstation with a portable iOS device competing with Android. I'm one of those "Google fan boys" I guess, since I have three Android devices. I also have a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro. All are excellent for their intended purpose.
I strongly prefer my $99 Android Nextbook over my iPad. So yes, Apple's iOS devices do indeed suck - their usefulness per dollar is really bad. The Mac Pro isn't an iPad, though, it's a workstation that runs certified Unix.
I'm pretty sure they use Henny Penny fryersm
http://www.hennypenny.com/products/frying/pressure-fryers/
The problem with open deep frying is that as the moisture within the meat boils, it bursts out as little steam explosions popping through the coating. Sealing the deep fryer to create pressure keeps the moisture inside. Because the steam doesn't escape in a pressure fryer, the hot steam goes into the meat, cooking the center more quickly.
That's a good idea. So good that you could make millions of dollars from it, like Colonel Sanders did.
Am I the only Slashdotter thinking of trying this? The clothes washer on spin would be too big. Maybe put a faster motor on my ice cream maker and pour in some hot oil...
> Other bugs can even be truly random; a race condition that depends on whether one thread gets scheduled on a processor
The bug exists before the processor is even purchased.
The bug is not random, though the output may be influenced by a random event. The output isn't even random - I debugged one of those in the kernel and the result was spinlock. The only random part is WHEN the problem becomes visible to the user.
That reminds me of a Heisenbug we had once. Completely off topic, but we once had a bug which would never manifest with debug tools running . You could try it a million times and it would be fine so long as IE's debug console was open. With the debugging tools closed, it would crash most of the time. Guess what the cause was.
Someone had left a call to console.debug in the code, which causes IE to stop execution if there is no object named "console".
> Sadly, I still see developers not testing, and are practically afraid of writing test scripts.
I'm a little bit afraid of some tests I've been asked to write, and I've been programming professionally since 1997. My credits include WordPress, Apache, testing the Linux kernel raid, and other well known software.
I fear it because tests for this project involve learning at least one and probably two new unit testing frameworks which each try to approach testing in an innovative new way. One has tests that look like English prose, not like code.
Also, I have to rewrite other people's code to make it testable, then try to get those changes, and all of the tests, through an arduous review process. This looks like it's going to be a giant PITA. Both of these problems could have been easily avoided.
If testing were integrated with the language, we wouldn't have a different test framework (or two) for every project. If you know the language, you know how to test it, if the two are integrated. Were it integrated, I also wouldn't need to rewrite the existing code in order to make it testable - any valid and reasonable code would be testable, or nearly so.
> The word "random" also includes the definition of "odd, unusual, or unexpected."
In everyday conversation, people may say "random" when they mean "unexpected". Hopefully they wouldn't WRITE that in a published article, but they may say it in informal conversation.
A computer programmer who passed Programming 201 will distinguish between random, unexpected, and arbitrary in informal conversation, because in our world those words have COMPLETELY different meanings. Among programmers, saying "random" when you mean "unexpected" would be like saying "pizza" when you mean "broom" - they are completely different concepts altogether, and both are important concepts. Witness the recent articles about the NSA messing with random generators - random is an important thing to us.
For a programmer writing for other programmers to conflate the two in a published article is sloppy, very sloppy.
Funny you should say that now. I was just now reading a historically important post from 1991. Slashdot covered the 20th anniversary of this particular post.
http://classic.slashdot.org/story/11/08/25/1535255
I'm curious, should George Bush be able to delete all records of things he said publicly, to remove all mention of WMD from the archives? There is a strong argument that once you choose to publicly make assertions, to engage in open, written discussion, the comments you chose to publish remain. If I were to call someone a thief and a liar, I'd fully expect that the accusations I chose to make publicly would remain a part of the public record. If I don't want to look like an asshole, I shouldn't act like an asshole.
Linus used Minix to write Linux. His motivations included pure geek fun, 32 bit support, and the ability to modify and distribute. Minix was free of charge, but not 100% freedom. You weren't allowed to modify Minix and distribute your own version. At the time, BSD included code written and controlled by AT&T.
http://www.learnlinux.ie/content/linus-torvalds-original-announcement-usenet
I have the complete Adobe suite. I use Gimp more often. Photoshop, like MS Office, is the de facto file exchange format in certain fields. Photoshop is also much slower than Gimp and in my opinion harder to use, hiding commonly used tools like rectangular selection underneath other tools.
Neither is BETTER in an absolute sense. Most professional software engineers use/used C. That doesn't make C better than JavaScript.
That's true, Windows 3.1 did allow multiple apps on screen, which was useful for copy-paste or cross referencing. Windows 8 is less functional is some ways.
Still, it's funny to compare early Windows vs Mac of the same vintage. Windows would be a footnote in history had Apple licensed their OS to other manufacturers.
in systems I design, such as Strongbox, the sender also sends gettimeofday() and the receiver confirms the timestamp is within X milliseconds. Both sides use NTP, so both have accurate time to within a few milliseconds.
I've also implemented systems in which the timestamp element is modulo a few seconds. The receiver accepts either the current modulo time or the previous.
You could confirm whether a PIN is correct without sending it.
For example, send sha1(card number + pin + time of day)
The machine at bank's end does the same calculation with the correct pin and returns whether or not it matches.
I take it you thought these devices are dual boot, Windows OR Android. They are not. Instead, the run BOTH simultaneously, so it runs Android and Windows applications on the same screen. I started to say the same desktop, but of course Microsoft has thrown out the desktop metaphor in a return to Windows 3.1 style single-tasking.