OpenBSD has a focus on security and I believe they were the group that developed pf. Out of the box, OpenBSD will be pretty much configured well for a router. Also pf on OpenBSD uses a newer syntax. The install process is pretty basic and some of the terminology used for partitioning disks may be confusing for someone used to Linux terminology. In-version OS updates are handled by downloading patches and recompiling from patched sources. Major OS updates come out every 6 months.
FreeBSD has a focus on being a friendlier OS to work with. The kernel exposes many more tunable options and performance is generally considered better on FreeBSD. pf uses an older syntax that was forked off at some point and may never update to the newer versions OpenBSD offer. FreeBSD has a lot of other features like ZFS, which can be a big deal for Samba. The installer is more friendly and OS updates are handled through a fetch/install command. Major OS updates come out frequently according to a set schedule.
I have the expectation that FreeBSD will support new hardware faster than OpenBSD. I think most people serious about OpenBSD will be running it on a machine with Intel network cards. Other nics (realtek, broadcom) may work but sometimes have problems under heavy load on OpenBSD.
I use OpenBSD for my routing/firewall and a separate FreeBSD system for samba/fileserving. I don't expect any problem with running samba on OpenBSD alongside the firewall, but you won't have the benefits of ZFS, which is a big deal for me.
pfsense and m0n0wall are both based on FreeBSD, due to performance.
Unfortunately I don't have as much knowledge about NetBSD.
"The Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS) is a very large, 1400 pound tank of ammonia that was used to cool electronics on the International Space Station (ISS). When a permanent cooling system was installed, the EAS was thrown overboard by spacewalking astronaut Clayton Anderson on July 23, 2007. NASA does not normally dispose of debris by throwing it overboard. The risk of collision with the International Space Station or another satellite does not justify the ease of disposing of debris this way. In the case of the Early Ammonia Servicer, it was too heavy and dangerous (because of the ammonia) to return to Earth in the Space Shuttle, and throwing it overboard was the only option. The EAS has been in a slowly decaying orbit since then." - blatantly copied from an email I received earlier today on this subject.
It looks like every test that was ran was run from the local machine. The tester set "block incoming connections" not "block local connections" and/or "block outbound connections"
If you lsof, you're going to see ports open to localhost, unless the firewall is specifically dropping packets to 127.0.0.1.
ntpdate is an ntp client tool, so it makes an outbound connection instead of an inbound connection.
nmblookup actually warns the guy testing this - it realized that 192.168.69.21 was the local interface, so it responded as "localhost" instead of the samba name!
The nmap test was the only tool that specifically checked a non-localhost IP, and it's not clear to me if it actually checked the localhost interface cleverly or actually sent packets out and through the firewall.
As I said, perhaps I missed some critical fact. However, I would put more credibility in the tests if the tester had used a 2nd machine on his subnet to nmap the leopard firewall.
Your pollution numbers are exactly correct, and I believe you misunderstand my point.
I'm not disputing that the car is creating emissions and therefore pollution - I'm making a rather true statement that in certain areas of the country where pollution is particularly bad, the car produces less pollution than what the catalytic converter and exhaust scrubbers absorb from the air the car intakes.
The reason the smart is "special" is it meets modern laws governing crash safety, which your honda amost certainly would not. Not that a 1990s civic is a bad car - it's just not as "safe" according to today's laws.
What's happened here: - In the 1970s when gas first spiked in the US, all the car manufactuers began to realize that a small, lightweight car or truck with a small engine produced better gas mileage and left the customer just as happy as big detroit steel. For every 100lbs they could shave off their vehicles, they gained 1mpg. Suddenly the average weight of vehicles dropped from about 4000lbs to 2500lbs, gaining 15mpg.
- In the 1980s, these cars began to hit the market - and eventually did quite well. Even performance cars like the mustang went on a massive diet, which produced better handling, and squeezed far better performance of the otherwise unchanged engines.
- However, fast forward to the 1990s where SUVs began to appear, and auto accidents between the 1980 compact and the 1990 SUV proved fatal to the 1980 compact. Congress steps in and starts to mandate air bags, crash crumple zones, side impact areas... all which add weight to a car. Suddenly the compact, lightweight car of the 1980s turns into the compact, heavy car of the 1990s, and gas mileage suffers.
- By the late 90s, most sedans average 25-30 at best, whereas ten years earlier they were getting at least that or better. Engine technology imporved the whole time - why did mileage get worse? (answer; weight!)
So, this leads us to now. Why is the smart a very big deal? Because this is one of the first cars which is compact, lightweight and safe.
You're right about diesels - in the 1970's and 80's that is. Modern diesels are far cleaner, and the US mandated low sulfur diesel this year for all 2007 and later cars.
BMW and Merc both have developed a european-spec diesel which if theoretically driven in the LA or DC areas where smog is a problem, the air going into the engine is dirtier than the air coming out of the exhaust. You're actually CLEANING the environment, just a little bit. The Mercedes engine passed the 2007 US diesel emissions standards as is, so is currently on sale here already. BMW will begin offering the diesel in their SUV models in 2008. All other manufactuers (including Volkswagen, the only other company that currently produces a small diesel for sedans) are currently refining their engines to meet the new US standards for low sulfer fuels.
In all seriousness, mile-for-mile, a modern diesel engine using low sulfur diself fuel is cleaner than a gasoline engine of the same displacement. Get over it.
Yes. Both use DirectX, though it's an optimized version for each the xbox and xbox 360 platforms. It's not the vanialla version you get if you go install DirectX on your PC.
Just because a game is written in DirectX doesn't mean that features that work on one video system will work equally well on a different video system though. Take for example any game written for DirectX version 3 which looks great on video cards from that era. In modern versions of DirectX occasionally you could get some "artifacts" (read glitches) because modern DirectX handles some routines differently. Usually it's just a frame missing or a polygon out of place, but occasionallly it can be much much worse. And that's on a version of DirectX that was optimized for compatibility across lots of hardware and lots of video systems.
Think about that for a second, and you can guess that our "optimized for xbox" version of DirectX is probably going to have some SERIOUS problems rendering graphics on anything but the original hardware it was written for.
I would be willing to speculate that all xbox games will run on an xbox 360 with errors. If this is so, Microsoft has chosen to "hide" those problems with a compatibility list of games that do work with few or no errors. As they release patches to DirectX and/or patches to the game, we get "newly added games" to our compatibility list.
If you remember, the xbox360 uses a different video system based on an ATI card than the original xbox which was based on an nvidia system. It's not the processor code that is difficult to emulate, it's the hooks to the video system which have to be re-written essentially from scratch to work on the new system.
My personal disclaimer: I use linux daily, and haven't touched windows in quite some time.
If the Microsoft Windows OS is becoming a better product than it used to be, then this is a great thing. If Microsoft Windows is becoming better DUE TO the presence of Linux as an alternative OS, then all the more better for both OS's. The computer world needs progress in order to keep millions of programmers and sysadmins like myself in proper employment.:-)
Now, as I originally stated in my discalimer, I am a Linux zealot like the next penguin-headed person. I have no problems with people who think that Windows is better than Linux, because I know that Linux is aimed at people who like to (borrowing from a Mac quote) "think different" and/or have needs that Linux better suits than Windows.
Why not have Microsoft suppliment the costs of the hardware on pcs, and then these machines will run a $500 copy of windows.
This is only slightly different from the business approach of what Microsoft does with the xbox (whereas there they take a loss on each xbox hardware sold, but make up for it in royalties on the games sold.)
This way, the consumer gets a bonus, each time they want a new version of windows, they get new hardware as well.
Well, if the fact that it crashed wasnt bad enough, now the ground crews are being alerted that live mortar may be on board which should have exploded to release the parachute.
The crews checked for reside, none found in quick scans. Now they'll have to call in a bomb expert to make sure its safe.
Basically, this all means that some poor soul is really getting his behind chewed out in his boss's office at nasa.
The Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP still plays the original Tetris game that shipped with the version 1 gameboy in 1989. I was amazed by this fact, and was the major reason that I bought one a couple of weeks ago. Having a game base which includes all the previously released titles for all the previous game systems highly makes the system more appealing I believe.
One of the reasons I purchased a PS2 first was the larger supply of games. A year later, I was given an Xbox for Christmas, and so far the only xbox specific game I really have enjoyed is Halo.
While I enjoy playing games on the Xbox more than the ps2 (I have developed a fondness for the xbox-s controller as well as better graphics) I still rarely ever find any fun or interesting games for the xbox I really want to play.
Well, if you remember the next gen Xbox is supposed to be some form of a multiprocessor system and I'm sure will sport a higher front side bus speed than the current Xbox. These two factors together will probably allow emulation to be possible, should the software be developed to do that. Remember, clock speed isn't the only way to increase performance on a computer.
As for endianess, that problem can also be overcome with a simple software algorithm - I do it all the time with data files stored on sun solaris machines being reduced by x86 linux platforms.
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OpenBSD has a focus on security and I believe they were the group that developed pf. Out of the box, OpenBSD will be pretty much configured well for a router. Also pf on OpenBSD uses a newer syntax. The install process is pretty basic and some of the terminology used for partitioning disks may be confusing for someone used to Linux terminology. In-version OS updates are handled by downloading patches and recompiling from patched sources. Major OS updates come out every 6 months.
FreeBSD has a focus on being a friendlier OS to work with. The kernel exposes many more tunable options and performance is generally considered better on FreeBSD. pf uses an older syntax that was forked off at some point and may never update to the newer versions OpenBSD offer. FreeBSD has a lot of other features like ZFS, which can be a big deal for Samba. The installer is more friendly and OS updates are handled through a fetch/install command. Major OS updates come out frequently according to a set schedule.
I have the expectation that FreeBSD will support new hardware faster than OpenBSD. I think most people serious about OpenBSD will be running it on a machine with Intel network cards. Other nics (realtek, broadcom) may work but sometimes have problems under heavy load on OpenBSD.
I use OpenBSD for my routing/firewall and a separate FreeBSD system for samba/fileserving. I don't expect any problem with running samba on OpenBSD alongside the firewall, but you won't have the benefits of ZFS, which is a big deal for me.
pfsense and m0n0wall are both based on FreeBSD, due to performance.
Unfortunately I don't have as much knowledge about NetBSD.
"The Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS) is a very large, 1400 pound tank of ammonia that was used to cool electronics on the International Space Station (ISS). When a permanent cooling system was installed, the EAS was thrown overboard by spacewalking astronaut Clayton Anderson on July 23, 2007. NASA does not normally dispose of debris by throwing it overboard. The risk of collision with the International Space Station or another satellite does not justify the ease of disposing of debris this way. In the case of the Early Ammonia Servicer, it was too heavy and dangerous (because of the ammonia) to return to Earth in the Space Shuttle, and throwing it overboard was the only option. The EAS has been in a slowly decaying orbit since then." - blatantly copied from an email I received earlier today on this subject.
Perhaps I missed something...
It looks like every test that was ran was run from the local machine. The tester set "block incoming connections" not "block local connections" and/or "block outbound connections"
If you lsof, you're going to see ports open to localhost, unless the firewall is specifically dropping packets to 127.0.0.1.
ntpdate is an ntp client tool, so it makes an outbound connection instead of an inbound connection.
nmblookup actually warns the guy testing this - it realized that 192.168.69.21 was the local interface, so it responded as "localhost" instead of the samba name!
The nmap test was the only tool that specifically checked a non-localhost IP, and it's not clear to me if it actually checked the localhost interface cleverly or actually sent packets out and through the firewall.
As I said, perhaps I missed some critical fact. However, I would put more credibility in the tests if the tester had used a 2nd machine on his subnet to nmap the leopard firewall.
Your pollution numbers are exactly correct, and I believe you misunderstand my point.
I'm not disputing that the car is creating emissions and therefore pollution - I'm making a rather true statement that in certain areas of the country where pollution is particularly bad, the car produces less pollution than what the catalytic converter and exhaust scrubbers absorb from the air the car intakes.
Best wishes.
The reason the smart is "special" is it meets modern laws governing crash safety, which your honda amost certainly would not. Not that a 1990s civic is a bad car - it's just not as "safe" according to today's laws.
What's happened here:
- In the 1970s when gas first spiked in the US, all the car manufactuers began to realize that a small, lightweight car or truck with a small engine produced better gas mileage and left the customer just as happy as big detroit steel. For every 100lbs they could shave off their vehicles, they gained 1mpg. Suddenly the average weight of vehicles dropped from about 4000lbs to 2500lbs, gaining 15mpg.
- In the 1980s, these cars began to hit the market - and eventually did quite well. Even performance cars like the mustang went on a massive diet, which produced better handling, and squeezed far better performance of the otherwise unchanged engines.
- However, fast forward to the 1990s where SUVs began to appear, and auto accidents between the 1980 compact and the 1990 SUV proved fatal to the 1980 compact. Congress steps in and starts to mandate air bags, crash crumple zones, side impact areas... all which add weight to a car. Suddenly the compact, lightweight car of the 1980s turns into the compact, heavy car of the 1990s, and gas mileage suffers.
- By the late 90s, most sedans average 25-30 at best, whereas ten years earlier they were getting at least that or better. Engine technology imporved the whole time - why did mileage get worse? (answer; weight!)
So, this leads us to now. Why is the smart a very big deal? Because this is one of the first cars which is compact, lightweight and safe.
You're right about diesels - in the 1970's and 80's that is. Modern diesels are far cleaner, and the US mandated low sulfur diesel this year for all 2007 and later cars.
BMW and Merc both have developed a european-spec diesel which if theoretically driven in the LA or DC areas where smog is a problem, the air going into the engine is dirtier than the air coming out of the exhaust. You're actually CLEANING the environment, just a little bit. The Mercedes engine passed the 2007 US diesel emissions standards as is, so is currently on sale here already. BMW will begin offering the diesel in their SUV models in 2008. All other manufactuers (including Volkswagen, the only other company that currently produces a small diesel for sedans) are currently refining their engines to meet the new US standards for low sulfer fuels.
In all seriousness, mile-for-mile, a modern diesel engine using low sulfur diself fuel is cleaner than a gasoline engine of the same displacement. Get over it.
Yes. Both use DirectX, though it's an optimized version for each the xbox and xbox 360 platforms. It's not the vanialla version you get if you go install DirectX on your PC.
Just because a game is written in DirectX doesn't mean that features that work on one video system will work equally well on a different video system though. Take for example any game written for DirectX version 3 which looks great on video cards from that era. In modern versions of DirectX occasionally you could get some "artifacts" (read glitches) because modern DirectX handles some routines differently. Usually it's just a frame missing or a polygon out of place, but occasionallly it can be much much worse. And that's on a version of DirectX that was optimized for compatibility across lots of hardware and lots of video systems.
Think about that for a second, and you can guess that our "optimized for xbox" version of DirectX is probably going to have some SERIOUS problems rendering graphics on anything but the original hardware it was written for.
I would be willing to speculate that all xbox games will run on an xbox 360 with errors. If this is so, Microsoft has chosen to "hide" those problems with a compatibility list of games that do work with few or no errors. As they release patches to DirectX and/or patches to the game, we get "newly added games" to our compatibility list.
If you remember, the xbox360 uses a different video system based on an ATI card than the original xbox which was based on an nvidia system. It's not the processor code that is difficult to emulate, it's the hooks to the video system which have to be re-written essentially from scratch to work on the new system.
My personal disclaimer: I use linux daily, and haven't touched windows in quite some time.
:-)
If the Microsoft Windows OS is becoming a better product than it used to be, then this is a great thing. If Microsoft Windows is becoming better DUE TO the presence of Linux as an alternative OS, then all the more better for both OS's. The computer world needs progress in order to keep millions of programmers and sysadmins like myself in proper employment.
Now, as I originally stated in my discalimer, I am a Linux zealot like the next penguin-headed person. I have no problems with people who think that Windows is better than Linux, because I know that Linux is aimed at people who like to (borrowing from a Mac quote) "think different" and/or have needs that Linux better suits than Windows.
Here's a wild idea:
Why not have Microsoft suppliment the costs of the hardware on pcs, and then these machines will run a $500 copy of windows.
This is only slightly different from the business approach of what Microsoft does with the xbox (whereas there they take a loss on each xbox hardware sold, but make up for it in royalties on the games sold.)
This way, the consumer gets a bonus, each time they want a new version of windows, they get new hardware as well.
Well, if the fact that it crashed wasnt bad enough, now the ground crews are being alerted that live mortar may be on board which should have exploded to release the parachute.
The crews checked for reside, none found in quick scans. Now they'll have to call in a bomb expert to make sure its safe.
Basically, this all means that some poor soul is really getting his behind chewed out in his boss's office at nasa.
Gah, so this is what happened to my server and network on the 9th!
(Looks to corner, sees ashes of machine still smoking...)
Sigh...
The Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP still plays the original Tetris game that shipped with the version 1 gameboy in 1989. I was amazed by this fact, and was the major reason that I bought one a couple of weeks ago. Having a game base which includes all the previously released titles for all the previous game systems highly makes the system more appealing I believe.
One of the reasons I purchased a PS2 first was the larger supply of games. A year later, I was given an Xbox for Christmas, and so far the only xbox specific game I really have enjoyed is Halo.
While I enjoy playing games on the Xbox more than the ps2 (I have developed a fondness for the xbox-s controller as well as better graphics) I still rarely ever find any fun or interesting games for the xbox I really want to play.
Well, if you remember the next gen Xbox is supposed to be some form of a multiprocessor system and I'm sure will sport a higher front side bus speed than the current Xbox. These two factors together will probably allow emulation to be possible, should the software be developed to do that. Remember, clock speed isn't the only way to increase performance on a computer.
As for endianess, that problem can also be overcome with a simple software algorithm - I do it all the time with data files stored on sun solaris machines being reduced by x86 linux platforms.