"...how one company made the transition from desktop operating system to embedded system."
So, what he's saying here is that linux has stronger roots in GUI's than it has in the embedded area. Hmm... interesting. Linux has been doing the embedded thing for some years now, and quite successfully... while you still read articles devoted to why linux still isn't ready for prime-time desktop useage.
Basically, what I'm getting at is this: I automatically lose interest in an article when its opening statement is ignorant about the topic. The author's opening line made the rest of his entire arguement null-and-void, as far as I'm concerned. Claiming that linux has more successful roots in the desktop GUI market than it does in the embedded market is one of the more ignorant things he could have said.
"...The beauty of Slack is in its simplicity. The core of the OS is based off of BSD, whereas Debian and RedHat are based off of AT&T UNIX..."
eh... Is this guy smoking crack or something? I've played with Slack, and have multiple FreeBSD boxes. While Slackware might be the least graphical (and thus, more arcane -- like the BSD's) linux distro out there, it is not based off any BSD that I've ever seen. The kernel is linux, the userland utilities are all GNU, and the location and configuration of all the system files is definitely not BSD related.
I dunno... while much of this dude's article seemed accurate, after reading the above, I've come to the conclusion that even after all his years of experience, he's still a newb... or he's just plain smoking crack.
"...the public at large would not seem to agree and is not actually demanding any such stripped down version..."
Well, of course the general public has no interest in such measures -- for much the same reason that the general public has no interest in running an OS other than Windows (such as gnu/linux): compatibility and familiarity.
Consider: What are the real alternatives to using the Windows Media Player for the average Joe? From any practical standpoint, there aren't many. On one hand, you've got RealPlayer... with all it's nagging for upgrading to the full-blown registered version, and all the garbage it tends to load along with itself. Not really much of WMP replacement, all things considered. What of QuickTime? Sure, it'll play mp3's and a few other formats... but I find that WMP can handle a much larger scope of codecs than QT. And though QT won't nag you nearly as badly as Real will, it still bugs you about registering for the Pro version.
And what of the OSS alternatives? Personally, I love VLC and MPC... but configuring VLC is a nightmare compared to WMP (or most any commercial media player that I've ever seen), and MPC development is pretty stale. Sure, there are other alternatives not mentioned here... but the fact is: WMP comes with Windows for free, and manages to do an acceptable job most of the time. Why on earth would the average Joe want to replace it? Remember: The average Joe could care less how evil Microsoft is... he just wants a functional computer.
Now let's consider the browser market: You've got IE, FF/mozilla, and Opera. Sure, FF is free, and rapidly becoming a very robust browser, and Opera is a well crafted and extremely speedy browser (and more)... but you cannot get past the large number of sites that are not fully compatible with browsers other than IE. Once again: does the average Joe really care about the semantics of supporting alternative browsers? Or, is he more concerned with just being able to surf the web? Unfortunately, I think you'll find that most users would rather face security risks than the occasional site not formatting or being viewable with non-Microsoft browsers.
The end result, to me, is un-surprising. By far, most people that really wanted to get rid of IE or WMP had already done so by switching to an alternative OS.
The ruling by the EU was more than anything a way for some pissy European lawmakers and officials to drive home a point to Microsoft: Microsoft may be huge and rich beyond words, but they are not all-powerful. The practical results of this ruling are about nill. Who really expected more, at this point??? The real-world is rarely such an ideal place.
"None of these stores offer Open Source software on the computers they sell (Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, etc)..."
To my knowledge, no one actually sells a (support) license or a retail box for any of these products. (Maybe OO.org... but definitely not FF or T-bird.)
So, who is going to support these additional software packages? Who is going to be responsible for the software if/when it breaks, or if/when Firefox leads to a virus infecting the computer?
Geeks often forget that a major part of the computer industry is support.
Do you actually expect Office Max, or some mom 'n pop computer store to directly support third party apps? 'Cause that is what would happen... At least, when you have a licensed copy of MS office, and it goes whacko, you can call up MS and demand that they fix it. Can the same be said of the OSS that you listed?
What, do you expect these retailers to tell their customers, "tough nookie, we're not going to support it.. and there is no 1-800 number to call for help, either. We suggest you find the correct forum and post a request for help." ??
I'm sorry.. maybe I'm just pescimistic, but... GET REAL. A major computer manufacturer, like IBM, may have the resources to full support an OSS app that they themselves did not code (or code much of), but expecting a small retailer to be responsible for some random OSS app? Yeah.. right.
Sorry, bud.. but you need to join the real world. Until Mozilla actually turns FF into a retail (or at least OEM) package and fully supports it as such, expecting some little retailer to be offering it is just looney.
Honestly, for me, at this point: the line starts with taking George Lucas out of the loop. Seriously. The original trilogy was brilliant... but not even the third, and best, of the prequel trilogy truely lived up to the originals. Whatever magic George Lucas had back in the late 70's / early 80's... he's since lost.
If a sequel trilogy is ever made, someone needs to have the guts to stand up and say, "George, you were once a brilliant man.. but your day is done."
"Officials promise to protect the confidentiality of the fingerprint records."
Yeah, because public systems have wonderful track-records for protecting sensitive data like that, these days. Just like I'm sure that my Social Security number is safe floating around all these financial institutions. 'Cause you know that they'd never allow such information to be placed on an insecure server that is publically accessible.
Oh... Wait.
Yeah, I don't care if it's "ethical," I think I'd just download the book I wanted to read after my community pulled something like that.
Just because linux gives you the options of going modular or monolithic whereas most BSD based kernels do not (you will use modules, period)
It's a good thing you've already been modded to zero...
To clear up any confusion: No *BSD uses a microkernel. (The only part of OS-X that is *BSD is the userland, which is derived from FreeBSD). The *BSD's are basically in the same classification as Linux/Solaris/HP-UX or any other UNIX or *NIX clone. Which means: all the *BSD's are monolithic in nature, with some modular abilities added on in recent years. Like Linux, the *BSD's can load a kernel-module upon request (either during boot, or upon superuser-request). These modules can also be compiled into the kernel itself (which is sometimes a good idea, as it saves a small amount of memory and improves performance).
Anyhoo, back to the original topic: The MACH microkernel. Apple's implementation is excellent these days, but it definitely went through its struggles (which is one reason why we continue to see major speed improvements with new versions of OSX, even on older hardware). Creating a monolithic kernel is difficult enough, but to create a micro like MACH, and do it properly... that takes serious skills. Mad props, Apple engineers.
Well, I'd tend to agree with the wasteful bit... but, unconstitutional? Federal, state and local governments have censors on what can and cannot be transmitted over public air-waves (ie. radio and tv). While some might scoff at these laws, the fact is that most people don't mind them. Many, in fact, are glad for them, so that their children are not flooded with pornographic advertisements during cartoon time. (we'll skip over the lack of violence censors, as it's a little beyond my scope.)
Anyways, as to the constitutionality of pornography: Last I'd known, the Supreme Court's ruling on pornograhy was that it was not covered under "Freedom of Speech." This is why laws controlling pornographic sales are constitutionally legal.
Under those same tenates, doesn't a community (be it a small town, or a state-wide effort) have the right to determine what should be provided over publicly accessible mediums? As long as pornography is not covered under the 1st Amendment, then why shouldn't a community have the right to ensure that little Billy doesn't stumble on to some kinky German fetish site while he's playing around on his laptop while his parents are using the bathrooms at a rest stop?
As much as people talk about the seperation of Church and State these days, it seems that many forget that our founding fathers were big fans of State vs Federal seperation. If Texas wants block pornography from public WiFi spots, fine. And, if San Francisco wants to dedicate their homepage to Gay and Lesbianism, that is their right, as well. And, it's your right to bitch about if you don't like it. That's what makes this country great.
As someone who has ran dual-processor rigs for years, I can tell you that system responsiveness requires more than just a pair of speedy processors.
For example, if your hard drive or other I/O devices are being taxed, your entire system will run slowly... which makes that second processor about worthless.
The biggest benefit of dual processors are when you are running a single-threaded application that only taxes the CPU, or when you are running a pervasively multithreaded application (like, say, video-encoding utilities).
On my Windows box, even with dual-processors, 2gigs of ram and a 10,000rpm SCSI hard disk.. the machine manages to hang at some simple dialog boxes. Go Windows!! wooooo.
Basically, what I'm getting at is this: don't expect dual-core to be some miracle cure to UI responsiveness. 9 out of 10 times, it won't be. The cure to better UI responsiveness is a better OS.
Am I the only one that sees this as possibly a bad thing?
I mean, sure, it's all fine and good to use an AMD cpu instead of an Intel...
...but the plain fact is that far too many OSS alternatives just don't interpolate well enough with proprietary applications. Take Microsoft Office as an example. OpenOffice is about the only real OSS alternative, and yet, there are far too many instances where OpenOffice cannot handle the way that MS-Office did something. In such instances, OpenOffice might crash... or worse, it might read the data incorrectly and the problem go unnoticed. If NASA can have space shuttles crash because they get confused dealing in both metric and english systems... what do you think the IRS will do when OpenOffice gets confused with Excel files and vice-versa...?
Alternatives are always good to have, and open source software is all well and good... but it's worth the money to purchase a mass MS-Office license if it will insure that important government agencies don't have issues working with each others' files.
Just my 2 cents worth. (actually, it's considerably more, seeing as how it's my tax dollars being thrown around)
"...and that P2P has had little, if any impact on the income of the artists themselves."
Artists don't make their money from CD sales. Most artists earn only a few cents off each CD sale. Labels and music stores earn by far the largest profits off CD sales.
Where artists make their money at is concerts and, to a lesser extent, merchandising.
So.. of course artists aren't being harmed by P2P. Anyone that knows diddly-squat about the music industry would know that. If anything, artists benefit from piracy... with them making so much off concerts, and so little off album sales.. the additional interest that P2P might draw to them could very well boost concert sales.
Go ahead and mod me flamebate, but I'm going to take this opportunity to remind the Slashdot community that this country (the USA) was founded in a very large part by religious fundamentalists. We were so intolerant of europe, and europeans of us, that we got in some boats and made a pretty long journey all the way accross a big ocean to start new lives in the "new world."
Like it or not, this country still has many of those same sentiments. This is part of who and what America is.
And, as a side-note, I saw absolutely no proof that there was any push by any religion (be it Christian, Hindu, or your garden-variety hippy seance) on Imax to drop such films. It seems to have been a choice Imax made voluntarily, and the liberal media is once again going after the right-wing. Just 'cause Imax dropped some pro-big-bang / pro-evolution type films doesn't mean Jerry Fallwell or whoever is out to get Imax!
"Linux software RAID. Makes all this crap obsolete except for some specific cases."
So, you're saying that somehow your software RAID is calculating XOR bits and such without putting a serious hurt on your CPU and memory? Interesting.
"...I can have hot swapability..."
You're also saying that your motherboard has hot-swap capabilities built into it? Because it takes nothing short of specialized hardware controllers and BIOS's to be able to hot-plug a drive in. (ATA/SATA drive initialization is done during POST. Sure, Linux may do its own thing afterwards, but you cannot escape the legacy limitations of PC hardware.)
No offense... but seems to me that you're talking outta your arse, here. Software RAID offers only one thing in comparison to a good hardware RAID solution: price. In every other aspect hardware wins.. assuming your hardware RAID card isn't a POS.
As I have not installed linux or solaris for over a year now, so I cannot comment on either of them... But I do know that all the *BSD's, at least, have native support for Blowfish (everything from user passwords to SSH, apache, java, etc).
Having found this and other comparisons, I see little reason to use SHA (any of the versions of it) for anything. Blowfish (BFS) has military grade strength and is insanely fast to compute. While the newer versions of SHA (-256 & -512) might be significantly more secure than SHA-1, they're still dog slow compared to BFS.
For all my encryption tasks I make sure to use BFS. Just my 2 cents.
does anyone actually use either md5 or sha-1...
on
SHA-1 Broken
·
· Score: 1
Does anyone actually use md5 or sha-1 for anything worth protecting?
Seriously... I don't even use them for hashing my passwords any more. Now it's BFS (blowfish) and AES.
About all I trust md5's and sha-1 for are CRC type checks.
Just my two cents... maybe I'm just snobby about my hashes;)
IMHO, Dual-Core should not infer an additional cost. The cost for per-cpu licensing should instead be based upon how many seperate chips are used. (ie. a dual-core dual-cpu rig would be priced as a two-cpu machine.)
I say this because dual-core is the natural evolution of moore's law. Has Oracle (or anyone else) ever charged you for having a faster processor? Or a processor with more advanced features, such as SSE or SIMD type instructions.
We're reaching the end of our abilities to push silicon based processors, and so dual-core is as natural an additional feature as SSE and the like. It doesn't make sense to charge extra for it, and doing so is just flat greedy. It's not like in a couple years there will be a single-core 10 ghz CPU available instead of that dual-core 6 ghz CPU.
Just my 2 cents worth. If anyone has a contrary thought, I'd be happy to hear it.
Yup, I tried submitting about lokitorrent... I even provided a link to this enlightening article. But the/. editors, in all their wisdom, apparently don't think that many/.'ers will be interested in finding out about lokitorrent.
"... but TorrentReactor.net is also quite good..."
What, are you trying to help the MPAA out or something? TorrentReactor got its domain hijacked months ago. The correct link to TorrentReactor is www.torrentreactor.to
Someone mod this guy down... he's either flat ignorant or actively trying to screw over TorrentReactor. Either way, he's a prick.
"So has the shutdown of centralized SuprNova had any impact?"
In a word... No.
Sure... Suprnova was a great place to meet your warez/gamez/moviez/mp3z needs... but it wasn't exactly the only Torrent site out there -- it was just the largest. As the *AA continues to go after every target within their lawyers' reach, the Torrent sites in Sweden, Russia, and other places are growing at break-neck speeds.
Basically, as long as their are "safe-harbors" for the trackers things will continue.
For all you pirates out there that want a good laugh, check out The Pirate Bay's legal responses to the *AA.
"Exeem is the declared heir to the SuprNova throne."
I have two replies to that statement:
Firstly, Exeem is ridden with adware and spyware. I can't speak for everyone out there, but to me, this does not exactly keep on in the spirit of Suprnova.
Second, because Exeem is decentralized, it will eventually become just another Kazaa, Morpheus, etc etc, as the *AA starts seeding fake files.
As to the statement that BT is not going anywhere soon... well, who knows. BitTorrent has known issues with NATs and firewalls... and hopefully some future generation of BitTorrent (or a similar product) will be able to find solutions to these common ailments. As it is, leechers are a significant problem for many torrent networks.
This is a wonderful step for Slackware. The FreeBSD Handbook is an incredible reference and guide, and every OS should have something similar....
But what of the 100+ other gnu/linux distributions out there? One of linux's greatest strengths (and weaknesses) is the insane number of distributions and the sometimes strikingly large differences between distros. This book will work for Slackware, and maybe help with a few of the slack-based distros... but probably won't be much help for fedora, gentoo, or the other distros.
But what do I know... I'm just a silly FreeBSD user, and this is only my two cents.;)
However, modern processors can handle almost all the tasks you throw at them without breaking a sweat. Off the top of my head, here are the only tasks I've everseen consume 100% of a processor's attention:
3D games
Compilers
Encoders and Video Editing suites
Heavy encryption and/or compression tools
Large databases and
Heavily trafficed server daemons
And that about sums it up. For everything else, a single 2.4ghz CPU can do it all and have room to spare.
For those few tasks that chew up a lot of CPU time, many of the above are high-end enough to be written for SMP... about the only one that (amazingly) stands out are 3D Games. Personally, I'm foreseeing it being a long, long time before Doom3 or HL2 runs well, as games like these don't have a clue what to do with additional CPU's.
Slashdot Mirror
Basically, what I'm getting at is this: I automatically lose interest in an article when its opening statement is ignorant about the topic. The author's opening line made the rest of his entire arguement null-and-void, as far as I'm concerned. Claiming that linux has more successful roots in the desktop GUI market than it does in the embedded market is one of the more ignorant things he could have said.
I dunno... while much of this dude's article seemed accurate, after reading the above, I've come to the conclusion that even after all his years of experience, he's still a newb... or he's just plain smoking crack.
Consider: What are the real alternatives to using the Windows Media Player for the average Joe? From any practical standpoint, there aren't many. On one hand, you've got RealPlayer... with all it's nagging for upgrading to the full-blown registered version, and all the garbage it tends to load along with itself. Not really much of WMP replacement, all things considered. What of QuickTime? Sure, it'll play mp3's and a few other formats... but I find that WMP can handle a much larger scope of codecs than QT. And though QT won't nag you nearly as badly as Real will, it still bugs you about registering for the Pro version.
And what of the OSS alternatives? Personally, I love VLC and MPC... but configuring VLC is a nightmare compared to WMP (or most any commercial media player that I've ever seen), and MPC development is pretty stale. Sure, there are other alternatives not mentioned here... but the fact is: WMP comes with Windows for free, and manages to do an acceptable job most of the time. Why on earth would the average Joe want to replace it? Remember: The average Joe could care less how evil Microsoft is... he just wants a functional computer.
Now let's consider the browser market: You've got IE, FF/mozilla, and Opera. Sure, FF is free, and rapidly becoming a very robust browser, and Opera is a well crafted and extremely speedy browser (and more)... but you cannot get past the large number of sites that are not fully compatible with browsers other than IE. Once again: does the average Joe really care about the semantics of supporting alternative browsers? Or, is he more concerned with just being able to surf the web? Unfortunately, I think you'll find that most users would rather face security risks than the occasional site not formatting or being viewable with non-Microsoft browsers.
The end result, to me, is un-surprising. By far, most people that really wanted to get rid of IE or WMP had already done so by switching to an alternative OS.
The ruling by the EU was more than anything a way for some pissy European lawmakers and officials to drive home a point to Microsoft: Microsoft may be huge and rich beyond words, but they are not all-powerful. The practical results of this ruling are about nill. Who really expected more, at this point??? The real-world is rarely such an ideal place.
Well, first of all: The CIA isn't tasked with electronic/computerised intelligence/counterintelligence; that's the NSA's job.
And, second of all: Having experienced the wrath of korean hax0r's myself, while playing Counter-Strike, I can easily believe this.
So, who is going to support these additional software packages? Who is going to be responsible for the software if/when it breaks, or if/when Firefox leads to a virus infecting the computer?
Geeks often forget that a major part of the computer industry is support.
Do you actually expect Office Max, or some mom 'n pop computer store to directly support third party apps? 'Cause that is what would happen... At least, when you have a licensed copy of MS office, and it goes whacko, you can call up MS and demand that they fix it. Can the same be said of the OSS that you listed?
What, do you expect these retailers to tell their customers, "tough nookie, we're not going to support it.. and there is no 1-800 number to call for help, either. We suggest you find the correct forum and post a request for help." ??
I'm sorry.. maybe I'm just pescimistic, but... GET REAL. A major computer manufacturer, like IBM, may have the resources to full support an OSS app that they themselves did not code (or code much of), but expecting a small retailer to be responsible for some random OSS app? Yeah.. right.
Sorry, bud.. but you need to join the real world. Until Mozilla actually turns FF into a retail (or at least OEM) package and fully supports it as such, expecting some little retailer to be offering it is just looney.
If a sequel trilogy is ever made, someone needs to have the guts to stand up and say, "George, you were once a brilliant man.. but your day is done."
But that's just my 2 cents. YMMV
Oh... Wait.
Yeah, I don't care if it's "ethical," I think I'd just download the book I wanted to read after my community pulled something like that.
To clear up any confusion: No *BSD uses a microkernel. (The only part of OS-X that is *BSD is the userland, which is derived from FreeBSD). The *BSD's are basically in the same classification as Linux/Solaris/HP-UX or any other UNIX or *NIX clone. Which means: all the *BSD's are monolithic in nature, with some modular abilities added on in recent years. Like Linux, the *BSD's can load a kernel-module upon request (either during boot, or upon superuser-request). These modules can also be compiled into the kernel itself (which is sometimes a good idea, as it saves a small amount of memory and improves performance).
Anyhoo, back to the original topic: The MACH microkernel. Apple's implementation is excellent these days, but it definitely went through its struggles (which is one reason why we continue to see major speed improvements with new versions of OSX, even on older hardware). Creating a monolithic kernel is difficult enough, but to create a micro like MACH, and do it properly... that takes serious skills. Mad props, Apple engineers.
Anyways, as to the constitutionality of pornography: Last I'd known, the Supreme Court's ruling on pornograhy was that it was not covered under "Freedom of Speech." This is why laws controlling pornographic sales are constitutionally legal.
Under those same tenates, doesn't a community (be it a small town, or a state-wide effort) have the right to determine what should be provided over publicly accessible mediums? As long as pornography is not covered under the 1st Amendment, then why shouldn't a community have the right to ensure that little Billy doesn't stumble on to some kinky German fetish site while he's playing around on his laptop while his parents are using the bathrooms at a rest stop?
As much as people talk about the seperation of Church and State these days, it seems that many forget that our founding fathers were big fans of State vs Federal seperation. If Texas wants block pornography from public WiFi spots, fine. And, if San Francisco wants to dedicate their homepage to Gay and Lesbianism, that is their right, as well. And, it's your right to bitch about if you don't like it. That's what makes this country great.
As someone who has ran dual-processor rigs for years, I can tell you that system responsiveness requires more than just a pair of speedy processors.
For example, if your hard drive or other I/O devices are being taxed, your entire system will run slowly... which makes that second processor about worthless.
The biggest benefit of dual processors are when you are running a single-threaded application that only taxes the CPU, or when you are running a pervasively multithreaded application (like, say, video-encoding utilities).
On my Windows box, even with dual-processors, 2gigs of ram and a 10,000rpm SCSI hard disk.. the machine manages to hang at some simple dialog boxes. Go Windows!! wooooo.
Basically, what I'm getting at is this: don't expect dual-core to be some miracle cure to UI responsiveness. 9 out of 10 times, it won't be. The cure to better UI responsiveness is a better OS.
Am I the only one that sees this as possibly a bad thing?
I mean, sure, it's all fine and good to use an AMD cpu instead of an Intel...
...but the plain fact is that far too many OSS alternatives just don't interpolate well enough with proprietary applications. Take Microsoft Office as an example. OpenOffice is about the only real OSS alternative, and yet, there are far too many instances where OpenOffice cannot handle the way that MS-Office did something. In such instances, OpenOffice might crash... or worse, it might read the data incorrectly and the problem go unnoticed. If NASA can have space shuttles crash because they get confused dealing in both metric and english systems... what do you think the IRS will do when OpenOffice gets confused with Excel files and vice-versa...?
Alternatives are always good to have, and open source software is all well and good... but it's worth the money to purchase a mass MS-Office license if it will insure that important government agencies don't have issues working with each others' files.
Just my 2 cents worth. (actually, it's considerably more, seeing as how it's my tax dollars being thrown around)
Artists don't make their money from CD sales. Most artists earn only a few cents off each CD sale. Labels and music stores earn by far the largest profits off CD sales.
Where artists make their money at is concerts and, to a lesser extent, merchandising.
So.. of course artists aren't being harmed by P2P. Anyone that knows diddly-squat about the music industry would know that. If anything, artists benefit from piracy... with them making so much off concerts, and so little off album sales.. the additional interest that P2P might draw to them could very well boost concert sales.
Go ahead and mod me flamebate, but I'm going to take this opportunity to remind the Slashdot community that this country (the USA) was founded in a very large part by religious fundamentalists. We were so intolerant of europe, and europeans of us, that we got in some boats and made a pretty long journey all the way accross a big ocean to start new lives in the "new world."
Like it or not, this country still has many of those same sentiments. This is part of who and what America is.
And, as a side-note, I saw absolutely no proof that there was any push by any religion (be it Christian, Hindu, or your garden-variety hippy seance) on Imax to drop such films. It seems to have been a choice Imax made voluntarily, and the liberal media is once again going after the right-wing. Just 'cause Imax dropped some pro-big-bang / pro-evolution type films doesn't mean Jerry Fallwell or whoever is out to get Imax!
*Connection Terminated Unexpectedly*
No offense... but seems to me that you're talking outta your arse, here. Software RAID offers only one thing in comparison to a good hardware RAID solution: price. In every other aspect hardware wins.. assuming your hardware RAID card isn't a POS.
As I have not installed linux or solaris for over a year now, so I cannot comment on either of them... But I do know that all the *BSD's, at least, have native support for Blowfish (everything from user passwords to SSH, apache, java, etc).
Having found this and other comparisons, I see little reason to use SHA (any of the versions of it) for anything. Blowfish (BFS) has military grade strength and is insanely fast to compute. While the newer versions of SHA (-256 & -512) might be significantly more secure than SHA-1, they're still dog slow compared to BFS.
For all my encryption tasks I make sure to use BFS. Just my 2 cents.
Does anyone actually use md5 or sha-1 for anything worth protecting?
;)
Seriously... I don't even use them for hashing my passwords any more. Now it's BFS (blowfish) and AES.
About all I trust md5's and sha-1 for are CRC type checks.
Just my two cents... maybe I'm just snobby about my hashes
IMHO, Dual-Core should not infer an additional cost. The cost for per-cpu licensing should instead be based upon how many seperate chips are used. (ie. a dual-core dual-cpu rig would be priced as a two-cpu machine.)
I say this because dual-core is the natural evolution of moore's law. Has Oracle (or anyone else) ever charged you for having a faster processor? Or a processor with more advanced features, such as SSE or SIMD type instructions.
We're reaching the end of our abilities to push silicon based processors, and so dual-core is as natural an additional feature as SSE and the like. It doesn't make sense to charge extra for it, and doing so is just flat greedy. It's not like in a couple years there will be a single-core 10 ghz CPU available instead of that dual-core 6 ghz CPU.
Just my 2 cents worth. If anyone has a contrary thought, I'd be happy to hear it.
Yup, I tried submitting about lokitorrent... I even provided a link to this enlightening article. But the /. editors, in all their wisdom, apparently don't think that many /.'ers will be interested in finding out about lokitorrent.
Someone mod this guy down... he's either flat ignorant or actively trying to screw over TorrentReactor. Either way, he's a prick.
Sure... Suprnova was a great place to meet your warez/gamez/moviez/mp3z needs... but it wasn't exactly the only Torrent site out there -- it was just the largest. As the *AA continues to go after every target within their lawyers' reach, the Torrent sites in Sweden, Russia, and other places are growing at break-neck speeds.
Basically, as long as their are "safe-harbors" for the trackers things will continue.
For all you pirates out there that want a good laugh, check out The Pirate Bay's legal responses to the *AA.
Firstly, Exeem is ridden with adware and spyware. I can't speak for everyone out there, but to me, this does not exactly keep on in the spirit of Suprnova.
Second, because Exeem is decentralized, it will eventually become just another Kazaa, Morpheus, etc etc, as the *AA starts seeding fake files.
As to the statement that BT is not going anywhere soon... well, who knows. BitTorrent has known issues with NATs and firewalls... and hopefully some future generation of BitTorrent (or a similar product) will be able to find solutions to these common ailments. As it is, leechers are a significant problem for many torrent networks.
This is a wonderful step for Slackware. The FreeBSD Handbook is an incredible reference and guide, and every OS should have something similar....
;)
But what of the 100+ other gnu/linux distributions out there? One of linux's greatest strengths (and weaknesses) is the insane number of distributions and the sometimes strikingly large differences between distros. This book will work for Slackware, and maybe help with a few of the slack-based distros... but probably won't be much help for fedora, gentoo, or the other distros.
But what do I know... I'm just a silly FreeBSD user, and this is only my two cents.
Best of luck w/ the slackware handbook!
However, modern processors can handle almost all the tasks you throw at them without breaking a sweat. Off the top of my head, here are the only tasks I've everseen consume 100% of a processor's attention:
3D games
Compilers
Encoders and Video Editing suites
Heavy encryption and/or compression tools
Large databases and
Heavily trafficed server daemons
And that about sums it up. For everything else, a single 2.4ghz CPU can do it all and have room to spare.
For those few tasks that chew up a lot of CPU time, many of the above are high-end enough to be written for SMP... about the only one that (amazingly) stands out are 3D Games. Personally, I'm foreseeing it being a long, long time before Doom3 or HL2 runs well, as games like these don't have a clue what to do with additional CPU's.