Funny thing with those dutch Internet kiosks was that some websites could crash the browser it used (www.digicrime.com had a section to kill various browsers).
With the browserapplication killed you got an all too familiar desktop... yep, the damn thing ran ms-windows and guess what? MSIE was also installed... funny. After crashing the browser wich checked your phonecard you could go on for free with MSIE or download another browser which didn't do anything with the phonecard at all.
The dutch telecom company was kind enough to put one of those thingies at the campsite of the Hacking In Progres conference.
The great idea was to make a "backup" of the harddisk onto one of the many computers on HIP (each with quite anonymous IP numbers) just to see what was on it and maybe even installing Linux on the kiosk.
We had it all planned...
Imagine the surprise of those dutch PTT engineers when they would have found out their kiosk suddenly ran an entirely different operating system!
Unfortunately someone else got a bit impatient and crashed the thing real good before we got a chance to implement our Evil Plans... It wouldn't boot anymore, so playtime was over.:-(
Too bad, it didn't seem too complicated to have it run Linux and figure out a way to make the chipcardreader/writer work.
I'm not sure if I'll ever trust those public Internet Kiosks with passwords... A few years ago they were just a bit too public! Maybe security is tightened a bit, but then again, I guess I'm just paranoid...
But still, I like the idea of being able to read slashdot at any moment, even in the pouring rain on the street!
Come on, I've been reading comments from people worrying about skewed polls, businesses being misinformed, and so on...
I think we worry too much about it.
Someone else already commented that the results of such polls most probably will be used to see if there are markets to be researched.
Just looking at the pollresults they will be likely to realise they've gotten themselves into the middle of a Mac vs. Linux voting war.
Internet poll results are *always* biased! First of all there still are people that do not have access to Internet. Besides that, only people that know about the poll get to vote in it. There must be dozens of polls on subjects I think I have something to say about, but I just don't have the time (or interest) to visit all the sites that may carry those polls. Occasionaly I stumble on a poll (most of the time thanks to sites like slashdot...) and vote as my conscience tells me to;-)
The fact Sierra seemed to have reset the scores is probably an indication about the importance of the poll. They have learned that they should investigate both Mac and Linux markets.
Oh no... I've inadvertently set off a *BSD vs. Linux thread?!? I'm feeling deeply ashamed, that wasn't my intention at all!
But your reply emphasizes my point: benchmarking a webserver isn't enough to make broad claims like "OS-X is faster than OS-Y".
The problem is the incredible amount of different configurations that are possible. Apart from choosing different webservers you also have the possibility to tweak the webserver sourcecode yourself. You can even try to optimize the kernel to improve performance.
Suppose you rigged a Linux system for optimal performance by making a Linux-optimized webserver and a webserving-optimized kernel, would it be fair to say "Linux beat..."? The same goes for NT or other systems (although I doubt many people are able to make drastic improvements to NT themselves that way since they don't have the sourcecode...).
It's a nice dilemma:
Not allowing customized configurations will have most people complaining the tests were done on a system that doesn't use all the capabilities of that particular system.
If you do permit tweaking kernels and applications for maximum performance there will alsways be people complaining this-and-that could have been improved on by some clever hacking.
I realise that the webserver benchmark is just a small part of the tests, but practically all of the benchmarks make claims like "NT beats Linux" and substantiate that by giving a lot of numbers on how much webpages were served by a Linux server and a NT server.
Apache runs on a whole bunch of other platforms, even on MS-Windows. Probably even NT... Wouldn't it make more sense to make claims like "Apache on NT beats Apache on Linux"?
That wouldn't prove the superiority of NT over Linux either, but it would IMHO make just a little bit more sense...
The same goes for Samba: Samba runs on Linux but also on other systems.
All these tests only test NT-running-some-software versus one-of-many-Linux-distros-running-other-software and then make claims like "NT kicks Linux' ass".
"Linux" is just the kernel... or have I gotten things completely wrong?
Benchmarkers should at least prove that bad scoring is caused by Linux (kernel) and not a program they're running on top of that!
If a webserver running Apache on freeBSD is doing better than Apache on Linux, that would be an indication of shortcomings in the kernel (although some people may dispute that as well).
Ah well, I never really cared for benchmarks anyway...
Well, actually that was just what I was going for: a cool idea.
But regarding the cdrom: wouldn't a parallel-port cdrom be a solution for the lack of IDE of SCSI connectivity?
Anyway, it's nice to think about this as a neat gizmo, but that's it as far as I'm concerned.
The uClinix simm costs about $150 if I'm not mistaken, add to that the cost of the decoder board (which I can't check because their webserver mysteriously seems to be having a hard time) and various other expenses and I guess you'd be better off buying a 2nd-hand computer... or real audio equipment.
How about putting one of those uClinux simms in your old cdaudioplayer (after removing all the old junk from the inside...) and hook a leftover cdromdrive and the mp3 decoderboard to it?
Now your cdplayer can play music-cd's, read data-cd's (filled with MP3's for instance) and do something useful with it and you can even hook it up to an ethernet to get your music from!
Oh, and you could brag about which kernelversion *your* cdplayer is running...;-)
I already have dreams of my compact disc player sending SNMP traps when it's done playing another CDR filled with MP3's!
Slashdot Mirror
Funny thing with those dutch Internet kiosks was that some websites could crash the browser it used (www.digicrime.com had a section to kill various browsers).
:-(
With the browserapplication killed you got an all too familiar desktop... yep, the damn thing ran ms-windows and guess what? MSIE was also installed... funny. After crashing the browser wich checked your phonecard you could go on for free with MSIE or download another browser which didn't do anything with the phonecard at all.
The dutch telecom company was kind enough to put one of those thingies at the campsite of the Hacking In Progres conference.
The great idea was to make a "backup" of the harddisk onto one of the many computers on HIP (each with quite anonymous IP numbers) just to see what was on it and maybe even installing Linux on the kiosk.
We had it all planned...
Imagine the surprise of those dutch PTT engineers when they would have found out their kiosk suddenly ran an entirely different operating system!
Unfortunately someone else got a bit impatient and crashed the thing real good before we got a chance to implement our Evil Plans... It wouldn't boot anymore, so playtime was over.
Too bad, it didn't seem too complicated to have it run Linux and figure out a way to make the chipcardreader/writer work.
I'm not sure if I'll ever trust those public Internet Kiosks with passwords... A few years ago they were just a bit too public! Maybe security is tightened a bit, but then again, I guess I'm just paranoid...
But still, I like the idea of being able to read slashdot at any moment, even in the pouring rain on the street!
To keep in style we *could* make a webpage containing reasonable, friendly, constructive comments people of the linux-community sent to Mindcraft...
;-)
I'm pretty sure they received those as well!
I hope so, because else the sad truth is we are a pathetic bunch of foulmouth lusers!
... which we are not!
Well... I'm not anyway... and no doubt more of you aren't either.
Oh and forget that webpage... it's not worth the effort.
Come on, I've been reading comments from people worrying about skewed polls, businesses being misinformed, and so on...
;-)
I think we worry too much about it.
Someone else already commented that the results of such polls most probably will be used to see if there are markets to be researched.
Just looking at the pollresults they will be likely to realise they've gotten themselves into the middle of a Mac vs. Linux voting war.
Internet poll results are *always* biased!
First of all there still are people that do not have access to Internet.
Besides that, only people that know about the poll get to vote in it. There must be dozens of polls on subjects I think I have something to say about, but I just don't have the time (or interest) to visit all the sites that may carry those polls. Occasionaly I stumble on a poll (most of the time thanks to sites like slashdot...) and vote as my conscience tells me to
The fact Sierra seemed to have reset the scores is probably an indication about the importance of the poll. They have learned that they should investigate both Mac and Linux markets.
Oh no... I've inadvertently set off a *BSD vs. Linux thread?!? I'm feeling deeply ashamed, that wasn't my intention at all!
..."? The same goes for NT or other systems (although I doubt many people are able to make drastic improvements to NT themselves that way since they don't have the sourcecode...).
But your reply emphasizes my point: benchmarking a webserver isn't enough to make broad claims like "OS-X is faster than OS-Y".
The problem is the incredible amount of different configurations that are possible. Apart from choosing different webservers you also have the possibility to tweak the webserver sourcecode yourself. You can even try to optimize the kernel to improve performance.
Suppose you rigged a Linux system for optimal performance by making a Linux-optimized webserver and a webserving-optimized kernel, would it be fair to say "Linux beat
It's a nice dilemma:
Not allowing customized configurations will have most people complaining the tests were done on a system that doesn't use all the capabilities of that particular system.
If you do permit tweaking kernels and applications for maximum performance there will alsways be people complaining this-and-that could have been improved on by some clever hacking.
I realise that the webserver benchmark is just a small part of the tests, but practically all of the benchmarks make claims like "NT beats Linux" and substantiate that by giving a lot of numbers on how much webpages were served by a Linux server and a NT server.
Apache runs on a whole bunch of other platforms, even on MS-Windows. Probably even NT... Wouldn't it make more sense to make claims like "Apache on NT beats Apache on Linux"?
That wouldn't prove the superiority of NT over Linux either, but it would IMHO make just a little bit more sense...
The same goes for Samba: Samba runs on Linux but also on other systems.
All these tests only test NT-running-some-software versus one-of-many-Linux-distros-running-other-software and then make claims like "NT kicks Linux' ass".
"Linux" is just the kernel... or have I gotten things completely wrong?
Benchmarkers should at least prove that bad scoring is caused by Linux (kernel) and not a program they're running on top of that!
If a webserver running Apache on freeBSD is doing better than Apache on Linux, that would be an indication of shortcomings in the kernel (although some people may dispute that as well).
Ah well, I never really cared for benchmarks anyway...
Well, actually that was just what I was going for: a cool idea.
But regarding the cdrom: wouldn't a parallel-port cdrom be a solution for the lack of IDE of SCSI connectivity?
Anyway, it's nice to think about this as a neat gizmo, but that's it as far as I'm concerned.
The uClinix simm costs about $150 if I'm not mistaken, add to that the cost of the decoder board (which I can't check because their webserver mysteriously seems to be having a hard time) and various other expenses and I guess you'd be better off buying a 2nd-hand computer... or real audio equipment.
How about putting one of those uClinux simms in your old cdaudioplayer (after removing all the old junk from the inside...) and hook a leftover cdromdrive and the mp3 decoderboard to it?
;-)
Now your cdplayer can play music-cd's, read data-cd's (filled with MP3's for instance) and do something useful with it and you can even hook it up to an ethernet to get your music from!
Oh, and you could brag about which kernelversion *your* cdplayer is running...
I already have dreams of my compact disc player sending SNMP traps when it's done playing another CDR filled with MP3's!