When people know where the boundaries are there is less chance of conflict over where they should be. The impression I got from the author is that he has trouble with Corel pushing the UI in a particular direction. But there would be no need to push in any direction if the software development counterpart to fences, design guidelines, were in place.
A bug report says that a dialog should say 'Close' vs. 'Dismiss'. Why isn't there a design guideline for this? If there was one, the report could be answered succinctly; either, 'you're right we'll make it conform to the guideline', or 'RTFG' (read the **** guidelines). The more detailed the guidelines the fewer the 'issues' over silly issues.
I haven't been involved with the development of KDE, so I don't know what they have set up. But it sure does sound like they need to stop coding and develope a complete set of UI guidelines. That move will make the UI ready for end users faster than anything else they could do.
I'm only 33, and I can already tell you that I wouldn't want to live forever. As you get older, you begin to lose the highs and lows. It's not that I hate life, it's just that there isn't as much excitement when you have enough experience to know the outcome of a set of action.
Let's take a for instance. I have a young friend who is all tore up over his on-again/off-again relationship with a girlfriend. There is a lot of turmoil and excitement in his life over this relationship. My view on it is that he is being foolish and should just move on. I don't have any hope of the relationship working (she's too stupid). From my experience, I can see that all he's doing is riding a roller coaster. There's a lot of ups and downs, but no real chance of being seriously injured. The worst that will happen is that he'll feel a little nauseated at the end.
The thing that keeps life interesting is the idea that it will someday end. For me, it adds urgency. I've got to do what I've got to do, NOW.
Living a cyborg existence in a tin bucket for a million year would just have to suck. Besides, what would you do once Alzheimer's set in?
it is hilarious. To paraphrase M$, "We're removing a popular part of our program that only 1% of our customers use in order to provide a security enhancements, not fix a security hole that has allowed email viruses to flourish."
All this tells me is that developers are selective in what they link to. Some tend to get together and link to each other. Some tend to link only to themselves. Some want to be noticed so they provide lots of links, but aren't truly interesting, so nobody links to them.
This makes complete sense. If every page had links to every other page, you would never be able to find anything. Each page would have too many links. The way the web is developing, you start looking for info within the IN group (usually a search engine or someones index page). This lead to the SCC which eventually points you to a leaf node in the OUT group which has the truly interesting information.
I find this structure to be efficient and elegant.
They're not asking you to censor anyone's particular ideas on a subject, they're asking you to stop copyright infringement from taking place on your server.
The problem is that it's not/.'s job to stop copyright infringement. It is M$'s job to stop infringement of their copyrighted materials. The way they would do this is to go to a judge, explain the situation and have the judge issue a court order. DMCA is a bad law because it attempts to bypass the judicial system. Instead of a duly appointed judge issuing edicts, it allows anyone to make them by claiming copyright infringement.
/. should not remove any post without a court order. By doing so, they would endanger their status as a common carrier. If M$ wants stuff removed, let them get a court order.
Put concisely, in the US, the judicial branch of the US goverment should judge what constitutes copyright infringement, not M$.
An alternate solution would be to perhaps send a packet out of order, like a window a head of the most recently sent packet. The optimistic ACKers would then send back ACKs for the intervening data (because they would assume that the other data was on its way), which mostly would not have been sent yet, or they would send ACKs continuing on from the advance piece of data (to try to meet the expected growth of the window), once again sending ACKs for data that had not yet been sent. The resulting data loss would eliminate any gains from the optimistic ACKing. This solution is not quite as drastic as Stephan's, as it would not require changes to the TCP protocol or the client TCP stack (I think; I will have to do some research to verify that). Since optimistic ACKing relies on being able to predict the next packets sent, I think that this solution, adding some unpredictability to the packets sent using out of order packet sending, would effectively neutralize optimistic ACKing.
So, how would this differ from semi-randomly modifying the packet size? I 'think' the benefit of modifying the packet size would be that it would make for a simpler modification of current stacks. Just modify the 'window growth' algoritmn. Then if you don't ACK properly, the server assumes you're cheating, gets confused, and drops your connections. A very strong disincentive. It just seems to me that sending a packet out of order would require a lot more bookeeping and much more modifications to the current algorithmns (I'm not spelling that right am I?)
A user connects. Server uses sting to determine network characteristics. If the user is ACKing faster than what is reasonably possible start decreasing the window size. That'll teach them to try to cheat!! Bwhahaha...
If I was running a large site and I were concerned about people running 'predictive acknowledgers', could I not modify my stack to send packets of varied size? I could just modify the last bit or two of the packet size semi-randomly. The bogus ACK would be ignored, the luser using such a technique wouldn't get his download and would eventually play fair.
Also, if I tell the server to dump my 2Meg download into 1 packet, what happens when my wife picks up the phone and interrupts transmission? Will the whole 2Meg need to be resent? IOW, is this technique only useful on extremely reliable connections (which are VERY rare)?
Before we accuse someone of a crime, we have to define what that crime is?
What crime did the virus author commit? How does this crime differ from companies placing hidden functions within their software (ie, spy-ware and delete-the-competition's-dll-ware)?
What I'm getting at here is that any prosecution of this fellow would require dragging Steve Case and Bill Gates into court also.
You're not getting patents on the good stuff, the things people haven't done before. In the interest of showing that not everyone on/. is biased against you, here is a little help, the title for your next patent application:
A method for allowing random users to execute arbitrary code within a secure network.
/**Describe your email program here**/
This patent will not be attacked by the prior art argument, but that just may be because previous programmers actually thought about what they were putting in their email programs. You know, they had a clue.
To the rest of/.: This is offtopic, but we've been fruitlessly brainstorming here all morning. Is there any valid business use for having an email execute itself?
Yes code can be considered speech, but not, as others have said, because it is text. It's speech because of its content, which constitute a list of instructions. Even if that list of instructions constitute a virus, it is still just a list of instructions. High level languages were specifically designed to allow humans an easy way to list instructions.
For instance, suppose I tell you the following: Microsoft operating systems are inappropriate in a multi-user environment. As proof I submit that any one user can interrupt the work of all others by simply executing a sequence of commands from the console.
You can respond, "That's just FUD!" The argument would be dead at that point unless I could provide further proof. Am I allowed to provide that proof? Am I allowed to tell people how to interrupt a computer system?
One way of doing this task would be:
cd / del/s *.*
Should we have laws that allow the Feds to bust down my door and take my computer because script kiddies now have a tool to destroy their schools network? Why should the MPAA be allowed to bust people for telling each other how to view a movie?
We have the First Admendment in America, because it is the only way for the truth to be known. Restricting the way people communicate is just silly.
The problem is that people are stupid/lazy and will believe the first thing they read.
IBM thought that OS/2 would weather MS FUD and that technical superiority would eventually win. For the most part, they left most of the MS arguments unanswered. IBM's upper management now has the dubious task of trying to convince some large customers to move off of a technically superior platform onto a hacked toy so that they no longer have to single handedly support an infrastructure for a platform they wish had never been (NOTE: No flame wars about IBM loving OS/2. I worked at IBM for 2 years, and had to actively fight to continue using OS/2 there. The corporate word was that NT was the only official workstation platform. Damn support desk got confused if I even called with an OS/2 question.)
This FUD, like a kudzu, must be destroyed as soon as it pokes its ugly head out of the ground. Else it will quickly grow to completely cover everything in sight.
Why are these list always so myopic? They always seem to list things that are new and glitzy, while ignoring the things that we tend to take for granted but really have a deeper impact on our lives.
Doesn't this whole debate cry out for the French Solution?
Clinton could simply state that every agency under the executive branch of government must investigate the appropriateness of open-source solutions.
Or he could ban the purchase of any software that does not provide source-code (it has improved my computing experience, why not the Feds).
Nearly every monitor on the market is Energy Star compliant. Why? Because the Feds said they wouldn't buy anything that wasn't. There were no laws detailing how manufacturers would produce monitors to be in compliance. They simply said, "We won't buy your crap if it ain't." The Feds have such a large buying power that, voila, everyone complies. "If you do not document you software completely, including all protocols and document formats, we will not buy your crap." Of course, the easiest way to do this is to release source. Microsoft (or anyone else) won't be forced to do anything differently, but watch how their behavior will change.
This is a good view to take, and I think it represents the situation accurately in this case. But consider this, the government is fighting on multiple fronts. They have not only lost power to individuals, they have also been losing to corportations. One way to win in a multi-front war is to get your enemies to fight amoungst themselves, but come to the aid of the weeker if one side starts to win.
The current situation provide WAY to much power to the corps. The proposed law strengthens the hands of the people and checks the corps. Yes the government is also strengthened, but does it matter in this case? Is it a power grab, or aid to the losing side? I tend toward the latter and say let's take our wins where we can.
The gov may be strengthen in this instance, but it is at the expense of the corps. As individuals, we are fighting a two front war also. If we let either the corps or gov get to strong we lose.
The law should simply forbid forging return addresses. There is precedent in the junk fax mail law. It is illegal to send a fax without including the originating number. That simple fix will eliminate nearly all spam within a week.
Scenario: 1)Spammer fires of 10,000,000 GET FREE PRON notes 2)I open the mail 3)I hit the RETURN TO SENDER button after attaching a 2Meg bitmap of HOT GRITS IN MY PANTS, as do 999,998 others (one person actually thought he could get free porn, but his wife was watching so he moved the note to a different folder for safe keeping) 4)Spammer's ISP get clogged mail servers and cancel the spammers account. 5)Problem solved.
The article says that Babbage purposely inserted errors to foil competitors. And here we were, thinking all the bugs in MickySoft products were because the marketing team rushed beta products out the door.
How would you like to spend all day lining up the same two pins on a resistor to the same two holes on your board. How would you like to spend all week at it?
I spent 4 years doing it at AT&T (later called Lucent) and it beats the hell out of construction work or being on a road crew. The nature of electronics requires a controlled environment. Sweat on a circuit board before solder is applied will play havoc with your quality control. I wouldn't bet that foreign high tech factories are as nice as those in the US, but I can almost guarantee that they are better than sweat shop conditions in textile factories.
Modify Linux so that I hit a key combination that stored the current memory contents and CPU state to disk. Then modify lilo so that it would load the image to memory and reset the CPU to the current state.
This way, I could load the programs I normally use and wouldn't have to wait for each to load each time I rebooted?
Just one problem I can think of off hand, What to do with the state of devices, say a sound card, that are normally reset when the driver is loaded?
My wife had a mix up involving a bank and a credit card company a few years back. She ended up with an overdrawn bank account that got cancelled and it took us a few months to clear the debt. The mix up was not her fault. There was not trial, and no finding of fault. No formal procedure whatsoever.
Today, she can not get a checking account. All the banks share information through credit agencies and if they find that you had problems previously they will deny you a checking account. Do you realize how hard it is to live without a checking account? A lot of companies use out-of-state banks, so you can't just cash your paycheck. Direct-deposit? To what?
She is being punished without a trial, without a chance to defend her actions, and without a chance to even speak to her accusers!! Some manager at a branch office just put her name on a list and -blam- she's guilty!!
Government is the group that governs, or controls. Government isn't necessarilly comprised of elected officials. If your neighborhood is controlled by gangs, then your neighborhood is governed by gangs. If your life (or a very large part of it) is controlled by corporations, you are governed by corporations.
We do need to worry more about the corps than about the Feds, because the Feds at least have judges sometimes telling them that they can't do as they damn well please. The corps are free wheeling right now.
Indeed, it can fairly be said that Judge Hupp left the door open for a link-averse Web operator to ban linking via a contract that a Web surfer is forced to agree to before being allowed to enter a site. He implied that those who deep link in violation of this conspicuous and assented to "agreement" would have a potential breach of contract problem on their hands.
How would such a ruling affect "click-through" licenses? I think this is something to watch.
The second point is the nature of the net. Everything is public. If I write a story and placard it on a billboard next to a busy section of I-40, can I stop the newspaper from printing a picture of it? I see attempts to stop any sort of linking in much the same light. How much control do I retain over works I publish in such an uncontrollable area?
IBM says the Internet is important. We need faster machines 'cause the Internet is too slow. We just might license this technology to other vendors so that they can help speed up the Internet...'cause the Internet is important. We also have some new paper manufacturing techologies. This is important 'cause people need to print things they find on the Internet. Did we happen to mention that the Internet is important?
Mainframes are usually tuned for block device I/O and are notorious for being crappy at TCP/IP
Spent some time working on IBM's TCP/IP stack. You're talking from the past. The mainframes stack used to be single threaded and very slow. As a workaround, IBM hacked it so that you could run several stacks on one image (this caused its own 'stack' of problems of course).
The Release 6 was a complete rewrite of the TCP/IP stack. They used it to set record industry benmarks when it reached the 1.5 Billion pages per day mark about two years ago. They gave us all nice denim shirts with the embroidered slogon "1.5 Billion served". I wouldn't call that crappy, would you?
Slashdot Mirror
make for good neighbors.
When people know where the boundaries are there is less chance of conflict over where they should be. The impression I got from the author is that he has trouble with Corel pushing the UI in a particular direction. But there would be no need to push in any direction if the software development counterpart to fences, design guidelines, were in place.
A bug report says that a dialog should say 'Close' vs. 'Dismiss'. Why isn't there a design guideline for this? If there was one, the report could be answered succinctly; either, 'you're right we'll make it conform to the guideline', or 'RTFG' (read the **** guidelines). The more detailed the guidelines the fewer the 'issues' over silly issues.
I haven't been involved with the development of KDE, so I don't know what they have set up. But it sure does sound like they need to stop coding and develope a complete set of UI guidelines. That move will make the UI ready for end users faster than anything else they could do.
I'm only 33, and I can already tell you that I wouldn't want to live forever. As you get older, you begin to lose the highs and lows. It's not that I hate life, it's just that there isn't as much excitement when you have enough experience to know the outcome of a set of action.
Let's take a for instance. I have a young friend who is all tore up over his on-again/off-again relationship with a girlfriend. There is a lot of turmoil and excitement in his life over this relationship. My view on it is that he is being foolish and should just move on. I don't have any hope of the relationship working (she's too stupid). From my experience, I can see that all he's doing is riding a roller coaster. There's a lot of ups and downs, but no real chance of being seriously injured. The worst that will happen is that he'll feel a little nauseated at the end.
The thing that keeps life interesting is the idea that it will someday end. For me, it adds urgency. I've got to do what I've got to do, NOW.
Living a cyborg existence in a tin bucket for a million year would just have to suck. Besides, what would you do once Alzheimer's set in?
Actually, it is the BBC article. the URL is http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_ 750000/750456.stm
it is hilarious. To paraphrase M$, "We're removing a popular part of our program that only 1% of our customers use in order to provide a security enhancements, not fix a security hole that has allowed email viruses to flourish."
All this tells me is that developers are selective in what they link to. Some tend to get together and link to each other. Some tend to link only to themselves. Some want to be noticed so they provide lots of links, but aren't truly interesting, so nobody links to them.
This makes complete sense. If every page had links to every other page, you would never be able to find anything. Each page would have too many links. The way the web is developing, you start looking for info within the IN group (usually a search engine or someones index page). This lead to the SCC which eventually points you to a leaf node in the OUT group which has the truly interesting information.
I find this structure to be efficient and elegant.
They're not asking you to censor anyone's particular ideas on a subject, they're asking you to stop copyright infringement from taking place on your server.
/.'s job to stop copyright infringement. It is M$'s job to stop infringement of their copyrighted materials. The way they would do this is to go to a judge, explain the situation and have the judge issue a court order. DMCA is a bad law because it attempts to bypass the judicial system. Instead of a duly appointed judge issuing edicts, it allows anyone to make them by claiming copyright infringement.
The problem is that it's not
/. should not remove any post without a court order. By doing so, they would endanger their status as a common carrier. If M$ wants stuff removed, let them get a court order.
Put concisely, in the US, the judicial branch of the US goverment should judge what constitutes copyright infringement, not M$.
An alternate solution would be to perhaps send a packet out of order, like a window a head of the most recently sent packet. The optimistic ACKers would then send back ACKs for the intervening data (because they would assume that the other data was on its way), which mostly would not have been sent yet, or they would send ACKs continuing on from the advance piece of data (to try to meet the expected growth of the window), once again sending ACKs for data that had not yet been sent. The resulting data loss would eliminate any gains from the optimistic ACKing. This solution is not quite as drastic as Stephan's, as it would not require changes to the TCP protocol or the client TCP stack (I think; I will have to do some research to verify that). Since optimistic ACKing relies on being able to predict the next packets sent, I think that this solution, adding some unpredictability to the packets sent using out of order packet sending, would effectively neutralize optimistic ACKing.
So, how would this differ from semi-randomly modifying the packet size? I 'think' the benefit of modifying the packet size would be that it would make for a simpler modification of current stacks. Just modify the 'window growth' algoritmn. Then if you don't ACK properly, the server assumes you're cheating, gets confused, and drops your connections. A very strong disincentive. It just seems to me that sending a packet out of order would require a lot more bookeeping and much more modifications to the current algorithmns (I'm not spelling that right am I?)
A user connects. Server uses sting to determine network characteristics. If the user is ACKing faster than what is reasonably possible start decreasing the window size. That'll teach them to try to cheat!! Bwhahaha...
If I was running a large site and I were concerned about people running 'predictive acknowledgers', could I not modify my stack to send packets of varied size? I could just modify the last bit or two of the packet size semi-randomly. The bogus ACK would be ignored, the luser using such a technique wouldn't get his download and would eventually play fair.
Also, if I tell the server to dump my 2Meg download into 1 packet, what happens when my wife picks up the phone and interrupts transmission? Will the whole 2Meg need to be resent? IOW, is this technique only useful on extremely reliable connections (which are VERY rare)?
Before we accuse someone of a crime, we have to define what that crime is?
What crime did the virus author commit? How does this crime differ from companies placing hidden functions within their software (ie, spy-ware and delete-the-competition's-dll-ware)?
What I'm getting at here is that any prosecution of this fellow would require dragging Steve Case and Bill Gates into court also.
Note to Microsoft:
/. is biased against you, here is a little help, the title for your next patent application:
/.:
You're not getting patents on the good stuff, the things people haven't done before. In the interest of showing that not everyone on
A method for allowing random users to execute arbitrary code within a secure network.
/**Describe your email program here**/
This patent will not be attacked by the prior art argument, but that just may be because previous programmers actually thought about what they were putting in their email programs. You know, they had a clue.
To the rest of
This is offtopic, but we've been fruitlessly brainstorming here all morning. Is there any valid business use for having an email execute itself?
Yes code can be considered speech, but not, as others have said, because it is text. It's speech because of its content, which constitute a list of instructions. Even if that list of instructions constitute a virus, it is still just a list of instructions. High level languages were specifically designed to allow humans an easy way to list instructions.
/s *.*
For instance, suppose I tell you the following:
Microsoft operating systems are inappropriate in a multi-user environment. As proof I submit that any one user can interrupt the work of all others by simply executing a sequence of commands from the console.
You can respond, "That's just FUD!" The argument would be dead at that point unless I could provide further proof. Am I allowed to provide that proof? Am I allowed to tell people how to interrupt a computer system?
One way of doing this task would be:
cd /
del
Should we have laws that allow the Feds to bust down my door and take my computer because script kiddies now have a tool to destroy their schools network? Why should the MPAA be allowed to bust people for telling each other how to view a movie?
We have the First Admendment in America, because it is the only way for the truth to be known. Restricting the way people communicate is just silly.
The problem is that people are stupid/lazy and will believe the first thing they read.
IBM thought that OS/2 would weather MS FUD and that technical superiority would eventually win. For the most part, they left most of the MS arguments unanswered. IBM's upper management now has the dubious task of trying to convince some large customers to move off of a technically superior platform onto a hacked toy so that they no longer have to single handedly support an infrastructure for a platform they wish had never been (NOTE: No flame wars about IBM loving OS/2. I worked at IBM for 2 years, and had to actively fight to continue using OS/2 there. The corporate word was that NT was the only official workstation platform. Damn support desk got confused if I even called with an OS/2 question.)
This FUD, like a kudzu, must be destroyed as soon as it pokes its ugly head out of the ground. Else it will quickly grow to completely cover everything in sight.
Why are these list always so myopic? They always seem to list things that are new and glitzy, while ignoring the things that we tend to take for granted but really have a deeper impact on our lives.
Doesn't this whole debate cry out for the French Solution?
Clinton could simply state that every agency under the executive branch of government must investigate the appropriateness of open-source solutions.
Or he could ban the purchase of any software that does not provide source-code (it has improved my computing experience, why not the Feds).
Nearly every monitor on the market is Energy Star compliant. Why? Because the Feds said they wouldn't buy anything that wasn't. There were no laws detailing how manufacturers would produce monitors to be in compliance. They simply said, "We won't buy your crap if it ain't." The Feds have such a large buying power that, voila, everyone complies. "If you do not document you software completely, including all protocols and document formats, we will not buy your crap." Of course, the easiest way to do this is to release source. Microsoft (or anyone else) won't be forced to do anything differently, but watch how their behavior will change.
This is a good view to take, and I think it represents the situation accurately in this case. But consider this, the government is fighting on multiple fronts. They have not only lost power to individuals, they have also been losing to corportations. One way to win in a multi-front war is to get your enemies to fight amoungst themselves, but come to the aid of the weeker if one side starts to win.
The current situation provide WAY to much power to the corps. The proposed law strengthens the hands of the people and checks the corps. Yes the government is also strengthened, but does it matter in this case? Is it a power grab, or aid to the losing side? I tend toward the latter and say let's take our wins where we can.
The gov may be strengthen in this instance, but it is at the expense of the corps. As individuals, we are fighting a two front war also. If we let either the corps or gov get to strong we lose.
The law should simply forbid forging return addresses. There is precedent in the junk fax mail law. It is illegal to send a fax without including the originating number. That simple fix will eliminate nearly all spam within a week.
Scenario:
1)Spammer fires of 10,000,000 GET FREE PRON notes
2)I open the mail
3)I hit the RETURN TO SENDER button after attaching a 2Meg bitmap of HOT GRITS IN MY PANTS, as do 999,998 others (one person actually thought he could get free porn, but his wife was watching so he moved the note to a different folder for safe keeping)
4)Spammer's ISP get clogged mail servers and cancel the spammers account.
5)Problem solved.
The article says that Babbage purposely inserted errors to foil competitors. And here we were, thinking all the bugs in MickySoft products were because the marketing team rushed beta products out the door.
How would you like to spend all day lining up the same two pins on a resistor to the same two holes on your board. How would you like to spend all week at it?
I spent 4 years doing it at AT&T (later called Lucent) and it beats the hell out of construction work or being on a road crew. The nature of electronics requires a controlled environment. Sweat on a circuit board before solder is applied will play havoc with your quality control. I wouldn't bet that foreign high tech factories are as nice as those in the US, but I can almost guarantee that they are better than sweat shop conditions in textile factories.
Modify Linux so that I hit a key combination that stored the current memory contents and CPU state to disk. Then modify lilo so that it would load the image to memory and reset the CPU to the current state.
This way, I could load the programs I normally use and wouldn't have to wait for each to load each time I rebooted?
Just one problem I can think of off hand, What to do with the state of devices, say a sound card, that are normally reset when the driver is loaded?
My wife had a mix up involving a bank and a credit card company a few years back. She ended up with an overdrawn bank account that got cancelled and it took us a few months to clear the debt. The mix up was not her fault. There was not trial, and no finding of fault. No formal procedure whatsoever.
Today, she can not get a checking account. All the banks share information through credit agencies and if they find that you had problems previously they will deny you a checking account. Do you realize how hard it is to live without a checking account? A lot of companies use out-of-state banks, so you can't just cash your paycheck. Direct-deposit? To what?
She is being punished without a trial, without a chance to defend her actions, and without a chance to even speak to her accusers!! Some manager at a branch office just put her name on a list and -blam- she's guilty!!
Government is the group that governs, or controls. Government isn't necessarilly comprised of elected officials. If your neighborhood is controlled by gangs, then your neighborhood is governed by gangs. If your life (or a very large part of it) is controlled by corporations, you are governed by corporations.
We do need to worry more about the corps than about the Feds, because the Feds at least have judges sometimes telling them that they can't do as they damn well please. The corps are free wheeling right now.
Indeed, it can fairly be said that Judge Hupp left the door open for a link-averse Web operator to ban linking via a contract that a Web surfer is forced to agree to before being allowed to enter a site. He implied that those who deep link in violation of this conspicuous and assented to "agreement" would have a potential breach of contract problem on their hands.
How would such a ruling affect "click-through" licenses? I think this is something to watch.
The second point is the nature of the net. Everything is public. If I write a story and placard it on a billboard next to a busy section of I-40, can I stop the newspaper from printing a picture of it? I see attempts to stop any sort of linking in much the same light. How much control do I retain over works I publish in such an uncontrollable area?
IBM says the Internet is important. We need faster machines 'cause the Internet is too slow. We just might license this technology to other vendors so that they can help speed up the Internet...'cause the Internet is important. We also have some new paper manufacturing techologies. This is important 'cause people need to print things they find on the Internet. Did we happen to mention that the Internet is important?
IBM has a free evaluation version of VisualAge for Java available. Both Linux and Windows versions.
Mainframes are usually tuned for block device I/O and are notorious for being crappy at TCP/IP
Spent some time working on IBM's TCP/IP stack. You're talking from the past. The mainframes stack used to be single threaded and very slow. As a workaround, IBM hacked it so that you could run several stacks on one image (this caused its own 'stack' of problems of course).
The Release 6 was a complete rewrite of the TCP/IP stack. They used it to set record industry benmarks when it reached the 1.5 Billion pages per day mark about two years ago. They gave us all nice denim shirts with the embroidered slogon "1.5 Billion served". I wouldn't call that crappy, would you?