I'm emphatically not saying that Micros~1 is linked with the Co$.
But they are!! At least according to the german government...
The integrated disk defragmenter software (DiskKeeper) built into Windows 2K is made by Executive Software, a company run according to Scientology guidelines. This has triggered an investigation by the BSI (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik - federal agency for security in Information technologies), who are to check if there may be some backdoors or snooping of users data in W2K.
Mind you, they cannot prohibit it from being sold, but all government bodies could for example refuse to buy Microsoft products (short anecdote: recently, a study has been posted on a german governemnt webserver which suggests that the generalized use of free/opensource software for the governements IT needs would substantially lower costs and increase security of the state's computer infrastructure).
The BSI is currently in negotiation with Microsoft to determine if and how much of the W2K source-code it's experts may get access to. Interestingly enough, the US has excerted some pressure on Germany to convince them to stop it's repression on Scientology...
You're so right. Here's what I've picked up from the latest c't magazine cpu-news column:
Intel has only been able to claim lower than 1 Watt consumption on their new SpeedStep CPUs trough a trick. They measure what they call "Average Power", which is supposed to simulate a realistic usage pattern. In reality, this means their cpus spend 80 to 95 percent of the time effectively turned of. Maximum consumption at 500 MHz and 1.1 Volt is still 8.1 Watt. Now compare this to the Crusoe which is supposed to burn only 1 Watt while decoding an MP3 (1.8 for DVD decoding), and add to this that the Northbridge is _integrated_ into the Crusoe. An Intel BX chipset typically burns about 2 Watts, which would put the Intel cpu at around 6 Watt for something like mp3 decoding.
So, everything else being equal, the Crusoe is a long way ahead in terms of power consumption. Overall, since Crusoe integrates part of the mainboard chipset, it should allow for simpler mainboard layouts, which again translates into size and consumption savings (not to mention cheaper manufacturing).
I think Transmeta have a damn fine product, and Intel should really watch out if they don't want to lose a big part of the mobile market (hmmm, only the paranoid survive anyone?)...
I seem to remember that MS marketed Win98 as having extensive Unicode support compared to Win95. You talk about Win9x in general however... Isn't there a difference?
Actually, I'm having a hard time deciding between Bladerunner and... Alien (the first one). The design of the Nostromo (and more generally the art) of this movie just blew me away.
The problem with all these is that I'm talking about my home network and a really thight budget, so the choice of OS for the server is either BSD or Linux (currently the latter). Basically, I was hoping for something along the lines of samba but for macs.
Right now I'm using netatalk+asun for filesharing, and I just mount the unix home directories at boot time on the Macs (still having troubles with charaterset conversion and ressource forks/filetype recognition tough).
Yes, two ego disputes ended in a split. It can be argued, though, that three BSD's is less fragmented than 40 or so Linux's.
Uh excuse me, but we _are_ talking about kernel development right? Where do you see 40 different Linux kernels? last I heard I could still download it from ftp.kernel.org and compile it on any distribution I might want to. The kernel is not fragmented, it's the distributions (and LSB should theoretically take care of this).
...Now that I think of it, I have a question: Why aren't there different BSD distributions? Let's say I decide to take the BSD kernel, the gnu utils, a bunch of apps and create a MyBSD distro. What's to stop me (besides it being somewhat dumb), and why has noone done it?
I have only gotten to know the *BSD developpment process recently, reading up on it to find out why there are *BSDs rather than one BSD. The impression I got out of it (I'm referring to the Net- OpenBSD split) was that the BSD way seems to be far from optimal.
I think formalizing the process by creating a core group would introduce much more politics and ugly flames rather than reduce them.
I'm not involved in Linux Kernel development (nor would I have the skills), but I lurk around the main lists and have found that the current way is fascinatingly efficient.
By all practical means, there _is_ a core group formed by those who can impose their opinions trough the work they have contributed or the knowledge they have in their specific field. Then, there's Linux, who acts as "benevolent dictator". This is the best form of organization imho, because it is based on good old-fashioned trust (however, it is also the most vulnerable to commercial outside interests).
Frankly, I think Linux development has already proven itself to be more efficient than BSDs trough the years by the lack of spectacular splits (just compare...).
Many important people are afraid of Linux's development system, or lack of it. OTOH, *BSD is pretty widely accepted anywhere but Linux isn't as much as some would like it to.
I'm not sure I agree with you here. Despite being younger, Linux has seen a much steeper adoption curve than BSD. This is imho again, and I don't have any numbers to back it up, so please correct me. However, it as been argued that it was precisely because of the more rigid organization at BSD that alot of people have turned to Linux, where they seem to be able to get their patches integrated more rapidly.
Finally, just to clear things up: I don't mean to slam BSD in any way. I've recently installed FreeBSD on a test machine and have been playing around with it extensively (love it)... Why Linux didn't reuse the BSD tcp/ip stack I still haven't understood. But having recently read up on the ugly flame wars which lead to the creation of OpenBSD, I don't want to see this happen for Linux.
Just a question (really! I don't want to get dragged into the Mac vs. Win slaughterhouse):
What about before MacOS9? I've recently installed it on my mothers iMac and love that feature, but afaik it wasn't in 8.5, 8.51 or 8.6.
(Oh and while we're at it, is there a way to store the user folders on a network server, like I can do this with win roaming profiles on my samba box? From the help files, it looks like this is a feature specific to OS X server)
I was actually going to check the release notes and other info I could dig up later on, but since this is slashdot and I'm lazy, I thought I'd just ask (RTFM, I know).
I've been sticking with 2.2(.16) until now, but if Holy Linux says it's perfect, I'd be willing to give 2.4 a try.
However, I have to ask: What other parts of the system have to be upgraded in order to make a smooth transition? Do I only have to compile the new kernel put it in/boot and shutdown -r now or are there any libraries or tools I need to upgrade as well? I've heard that the ipchains code has been rewritten (again?)... What about USB?
I'm sorry for misspelling it. To my defense, we call it Argentinien in german;)
My comment on Argentina was purely a reference to the fact that some well-known Nazis seeked refuge there after WWII. AFAIK know there have been rumours as late as the 70s that Hitler had actually escaped and was living there. It was not supposed to be inflammatory, only funny (mildly). You'll certainly have noted the nickname of the parent poster.
But thanks for the comment, I'm really surprised at the response my blurb generated...
... that was basically what I was trying to say, but you expressed it in a much more eloquent way.
I share your opinion completely, and I'm a little surprised to see the confusion between socialism, communism, as well as the negative connotations surrounding both around here. Dismissing ideas and opinions as undemocratic, totalitarian or even fascist to avoid discussing them thoroughly is a very dangerous habit, and I sincerely hope it's not an "american thing" but rather one of ignorance.
Social justice is a noble goal, be it in the form of a manifesto or whatever...
1) Castro, despite all his wrong-doings, is not a fascist.
2) The Nazis used socialist methods to gain more votes within the german people. never forget that the Nazis did (in part, at least) earn their power trough democratic elections! Of course, you know that better than anyone... How's the weather in Argentinia?
3) In my (western european biased) book, socialism is not a negative term. We have plenty of "socialist" parties around here who would never dream of taking away private property or outlawing democratic elections. Their main argument is creating a safety net for poorer people in an extremely competitive economy (strong medical and social institutions accessible for everyone). This requires a healthy (or powerful, if you will) governement.
We had an intro to perl as part of the "programming environments" course last year at my university. The reference book was O'Reillys Perl intro book. That's were I first played around with it (I had vaguely heard about it already).
It was great, tough a little superficial, but I now have about 5 other perl books on my bookshelf, so there you go.
Another cool Neuromancer movie tidbit...it's rumored that Aphex Twin will be doing the music.
Damn, I'm drooling all over the keyboard in anticipation. Didgeridoo!
Quick question as to the Aphex faces: What do you mean by That's Cunningham's design? I always thought it was just Richard D. James face plastered all over? What kind of design is involved in that?
Heh, thanks. Someone got me once. Now I've become a little more cautious.
This one uses a cgi, so you can't get the source, but here is another way of doing it (save it locally and open it with vi, if you're paranoid like I am now).
I'm not too well versed in http, but couldn't the slashdot comment submission script be patched to check for the referrer field of the browser and reject it if it isn't coming from slashdot.org?
Slashdot Mirror
Bah, all of those are way overrated. Try a nice Spanish Rioja sometime... Verrrry nice. Some call it "Sangre de La Tierra", for good reason.
I'm emphatically not saying that Micros~1 is linked with the Co$.
But they are!! At least according to the german government...
The integrated disk defragmenter software (DiskKeeper) built into Windows 2K is made by Executive Software, a company run according to Scientology guidelines. This has triggered an investigation by the BSI (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik - federal agency for security in Information technologies), who are to check if there may be some backdoors or snooping of users data in W2K.
Mind you, they cannot prohibit it from being sold, but all government bodies could for example refuse to buy Microsoft products (short anecdote: recently, a study has been posted on a german governemnt webserver which suggests that the generalized use of free/opensource software for the governements IT needs would substantially lower costs and increase security of the state's computer infrastructure).
The BSI is currently in negotiation with Microsoft to determine if and how much of the W2K source-code it's experts may get access to. Interestingly enough, the US has excerted some pressure on Germany to convince them to stop it's repression on Scientology...
You're so right. Here's what I've picked up from the latest c't magazine cpu-news column:
Intel has only been able to claim lower than 1 Watt consumption on their new SpeedStep CPUs trough a trick. They measure what they call "Average Power", which is supposed to simulate a realistic usage pattern. In reality, this means their cpus spend 80 to 95 percent of the time effectively turned of. Maximum consumption at 500 MHz and 1.1 Volt is still 8.1 Watt.
Now compare this to the Crusoe which is supposed to burn only 1 Watt while decoding an MP3 (1.8 for DVD decoding), and add to this that the Northbridge is _integrated_ into the Crusoe. An Intel BX chipset typically burns about 2 Watts, which would put the Intel cpu at around 6 Watt for something like mp3 decoding.
So, everything else being equal, the Crusoe is a long way ahead in terms of power consumption. Overall, since Crusoe integrates part of the mainboard chipset, it should allow for simpler mainboard layouts, which again translates into size and consumption savings (not to mention cheaper manufacturing).
I think Transmeta have a damn fine product, and Intel should really watch out if they don't want to lose a big part of the mobile market (hmmm, only the paranoid survive anyone?)...
_empty_
Just a quick followup question:
I seem to remember that MS marketed Win98 as having extensive Unicode support compared to Win95. You talk about Win9x in general however... Isn't there a difference?
2) is supposed to be a joke, right? RIGHT?
As to 1). If that's the case, they should hire Ridley Scott ASAP, coz the opening scene from Gladiator kicked some serious ass imho.
Actually, I'm having a hard time deciding between Bladerunner and ... Alien (the first one). The design of the Nostromo (and more generally the art) of this movie just blew me away.
Stormtroopers in general and their armour in particular were designed with exactly one goal in mind:
To serve as cannonfodder!
It's a movie guys. Stuff in movies are generally designed for best visual effect, not realism, let alone coherence.
Besides, if I recall my role-playing games correctly, the stormtroopers did have IR imagery built into their helmets.
Yeah, I second that, what's the deal?
With the monster setup slashdot runs on now, it could have gained a bit on the reliability front.
BTW: Why does slashdot.org swallow pings now? DDoS protection?
For Big Blue, that shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Of all corporations, IBM would have a sufficient patent pool of its own to resolve such an issue trough cross-licensing.
No?
Ah ok, I didn't know this, I thought they shared a single oir at least similar kernel (modulo the various ports).
Regarding the Net/OpenBSD split: I recently read up on it and there were also other, more controversial issues to it. This is one side of the story.
Heh, wow thanks, that was alot of info.
The problem with all these is that I'm talking about my home network and a really thight budget, so the choice of OS for the server is either BSD or Linux (currently the latter). Basically, I was hoping for something along the lines of samba but for macs.
Right now I'm using netatalk+asun for filesharing, and I just mount the unix home directories at boot time on the Macs (still having troubles with charaterset conversion and ressource forks/filetype recognition tough).
I'll check out the mac.com solution...
Yes, two ego disputes ended in a split. It can be argued, though, that three BSD's is less fragmented than 40 or so Linux's.
Uh excuse me, but we _are_ talking about kernel development right? Where do you see 40 different Linux kernels? last I heard I could still download it from ftp.kernel.org and compile it on any distribution I might want to. The kernel is not fragmented, it's the distributions (and LSB should theoretically take care of this).
...Now that I think of it, I have a question: Why aren't there different BSD distributions? Let's say I decide to take the BSD kernel, the gnu utils, a bunch of apps and create a MyBSD distro. What's to stop me (besides it being somewhat dumb), and why has noone done it?
I have only gotten to know the *BSD developpment process recently, reading up on it to find out why there are *BSDs rather than one BSD. The impression I got out of it (I'm referring to the Net- OpenBSD split) was that the BSD way seems to be far from optimal.
I think formalizing the process by creating a core group would introduce much more politics and ugly flames rather than reduce them.
I'm not involved in Linux Kernel development (nor would I have the skills), but I lurk around the main lists and have found that the current way is fascinatingly efficient.
By all practical means, there _is_ a core group formed by those who can impose their opinions trough the work they have contributed or the knowledge they have in their specific field. Then, there's Linux, who acts as "benevolent dictator". This is the best form of organization imho, because it is based on good old-fashioned trust (however, it is also the most vulnerable to commercial outside interests).
Frankly, I think Linux development has already proven itself to be more efficient than BSDs trough the years by the lack of spectacular splits (just compare...).
Many important people are afraid of Linux's development system, or lack of it. OTOH, *BSD is pretty widely accepted anywhere but Linux isn't as much as some would like it to.
I'm not sure I agree with you here. Despite being younger, Linux has seen a much steeper adoption curve than BSD. This is imho again, and I don't have any numbers to back it up, so please correct me. However, it as been argued that it was precisely because of the more rigid organization at BSD that alot of people have turned to Linux, where they seem to be able to get their patches integrated more rapidly.
Finally, just to clear things up: I don't mean to slam BSD in any way. I've recently installed FreeBSD on a test machine and have been playing around with it extensively (love it)... Why Linux didn't reuse the BSD tcp/ip stack I still haven't understood. But having recently read up on the ugly flame wars which lead to the creation of OpenBSD, I don't want to see this happen for Linux.
Just a question (really! I don't want to get dragged into the Mac vs. Win slaughterhouse):
What about before MacOS9? I've recently installed it on my mothers iMac and love that feature, but afaik it wasn't in 8.5, 8.51 or 8.6.
(Oh and while we're at it, is there a way to store the user folders on a network server, like I can do this with win roaming profiles on my samba box? From the help files, it looks like this is a feature specific to OS X server)
Hehe, thanks.
I was actually going to check the release notes and other info I could dig up later on, but since this is slashdot and I'm lazy, I thought I'd just ask (RTFM, I know).
Hi,
/boot and shutdown -r now or are there any libraries or tools I need to upgrade as well? I've heard that the ipchains code has been rewritten (again?)... What about USB?
I've been sticking with 2.2(.16) until now, but if Holy Linux says it's perfect, I'd be willing to give 2.4 a try.
However, I have to ask: What other parts of the system have to be upgraded in order to make a smooth transition? Do I only have to compile the new kernel put it in
I'm sorry for misspelling it. To my defense, we call it Argentinien in german ;)
My comment on Argentina was purely a reference to the fact that some well-known Nazis seeked refuge there after WWII. AFAIK know there have been rumours as late as the 70s that Hitler had actually escaped and was living there. It was not supposed to be inflammatory, only funny (mildly). You'll certainly have noted the nickname of the parent poster.
But thanks for the comment, I'm really surprised at the response my blurb generated...
... that was basically what I was trying to say, but you expressed it in a much more eloquent way.
I share your opinion completely, and I'm a little surprised to see the confusion between socialism, communism, as well as the negative connotations surrounding both around here. Dismissing ideas and opinions as undemocratic, totalitarian or even fascist to avoid discussing them thoroughly is a very dangerous habit, and I sincerely hope it's not an "american thing" but rather one of ignorance.
Social justice is a noble goal, be it in the form of a manifesto or whatever...
1) Castro, despite all his wrong-doings, is not a fascist.
:)
2) The Nazis used socialist methods to gain more votes within the german people. never forget that the Nazis did (in part, at least) earn their power trough democratic elections! Of course, you know that better than anyone... How's the weather in Argentinia?
3) In my (western european biased) book, socialism is not a negative term. We have plenty of "socialist" parties around here who would never dream of taking away private property or outlawing democratic elections. Their main argument is creating a safety net for poorer people in an extremely competitive economy (strong medical and social institutions accessible for everyone). This requires a healthy (or powerful, if you will) governement.
What was my point now? Damn, gotta go to sleep
We had an intro to perl as part of the "programming environments" course last year at my university. The reference book was O'Reillys Perl intro book. That's were I first played around with it (I had vaguely heard about it already).
It was great, tough a little superficial, but I now have about 5 other perl books on my bookshelf, so there you go.
Another cool Neuromancer movie tidbit...it's rumored that Aphex Twin will be doing the music.
Damn, I'm drooling all over the keyboard in anticipation. Didgeridoo!
Quick question as to the Aphex faces: What do you mean by That's Cunningham's design? I always thought it was just Richard D. James face plastered all over? What kind of design is involved in that?
Bwuahasplarsh
Uh sorry, that was just me spilling coffe on my keyb&£è
Excellent idea. I second that.
Heh, thanks. Someone got me once. Now I've become a little more cautious.
This one uses a cgi, so you can't get the source, but here is another way of doing it (save it locally and open it with vi, if you're paranoid like I am now).
I'm not too well versed in http, but couldn't the slashdot comment submission script be patched to check for the referrer field of the browser and reject it if it isn't coming from slashdot.org?