Sounds like someone is playing a numbers game to me. The SMP effect is going to chew their lunch on performance. Say you have an application that runs on ten processors. Now, can you imagine the new performance level if you change that to 100 processors? It won't be even close to a 1000% increase. You'll have contention between the processes, and contention (especially) within the kernel. (Hell, I get it with just 12 processors, depending on the application that is running.)
If they know something I don't here, I'd love to see it.
But I can't help myself, so I'll go on talking for a while. There are so many ways a user can be tracked, its like asking if _X_ can make a full-blown implementation of UNIX completely secure? There are always holes. And we (the humans) create our own holes in privacy when we give out information. Encryption and pseudonyms don't protect us against outselves.
I wish that eBay would offer a replicated server that data could be extracted from. I, myself, would find it handy, and would be able to make some really cool apps. The only problem is that some people won't play nice, and it would end up deadlock city. Too bad there isn't a good way to make this happen (aside from certifying people, and cutting out the little guy who wants to make soemthing cool).
Here's an interesting twist on this. You have a web page with copyrighted material. You've got a "robots.txt" which controls access to robots and says not to scan the page. If a robot circumvents this access control device (either by not reading it or by ignoring it), is this a DMCA violation?
I personally use a metabrowsing robot to search eBay to see if the things *I* want are on there. Twice a day, the robot goes out (during off-peak times), does searches that I would normally have to do on eBay by hand, and then tells me the number of hits. Handy as hell when you've got a large number of different items you want to track.
But, if the Bidder's Edge metabrowsing is held illegal, then using a personal robot agent to go out and collect and summarize information is illegal. This will be an even greater loss to all of us in the future.
Here's a number of things. How many CPUs does this 450 have? How much RAM? Are you using "lockstat" to look at the locks during all of this? How much are you swapping to disk during this? How much of the CPU time is system time, and how much is user time? If the system time is high, get a copy of the "SE Toolkit" (available at the Sun website) and monitor your mutex [multiple exclusion] contention within the kernel. See if it is excessively high. If you REALLY want to do something painfull, run a "truss" on your server process to see if you can gleem anything useful. Same thing with a "snoop". See if you can use it to identify a point of delay in the communications. Probably not an issue, but go ahead and use "iostat" to look at your disks.
There are lots of things you should be able to do to pin-point it down a bit. Hope this helps?
Vector displays are dead, except in a few niche applications (military?). Their reason for being in the 80's was that they could get a really high resolution display. But that isn't really an issue anymore. 1024x768 is pretty achievable by raster technology.:) Vector also had some nasty problems, like software being able to burn a hole in the phosphor of the screen, or wreck the entire circuitry. Of course, some of this is a hardware issue, but its all really just been abandoned.
Can you possibly guess without looking at my alias? An Atari 400 with 16k RAM, BASIC cartridge, and an Atari 410 "program recorder" which loaded programs at an outrageous 600 baud. I've been addicted ever since. Can I sue Atari for the carpal tunnel caused by a membrane keyboard?
As mentioned, aside from SBC doing the "roll your own" kits to simplify installation, they're also doing the "free PC" to simplify installation. But this raises a question in my mind.
Let's say that SBC is very successful with their free PC offer. Of course, a few crackers will be receiving these as well. And they will probe them for vulnerabilities and will find them. I don't mean to cast some fear/uncertainty/doubt here. But I wonder if having a large number of computers with identical vulnerabilities constantly connected on a tight range of IP addresses / hostnames will make them very prime targets for attack? ("Attack" means unwitting hosts for software for coordinated denial of service attacks, IRC bots, etc.)
Please help me out here. Am I being silly, or is this a serious concern?
Yeah... but did you see the strings attached? Not only do you have to lock into a two year contract (with heavy severance penalties), but you have to pay a $200 "shipping and handling charge". Come on. How stupid do they think their customers are? I hate it when a telco shows their true colors. (Want to bet they won't let me just "pick it up" from them to avoid the shipping fee?)
I was looking at this. I'm currently evaluating SBC's ADSL versus a cable modem from COX Cable. But to be quite honest, I've come to the judgement that the SBC deal just isn't as good. The cable modem offers substantially more bandwidth, and I'm not tied into a contract. (And COX doesn't even require or charge a premium if I'm not a cable customer.)
Rolling my own may save a bit of time, but I'd be willing to wait even a month to get a better service elsewhere. Anyhow, that's my person take on it. Your mileage may vary.
A judge ruled that domain names aren't property and therefore...
I don't mean to be flippant, but a judge with jurisdiction over what area? If a French company says its my property when I buy it from them, can a judge over a completely different part of the US have any weight on the contract?
Build your own cabinet? Great. But if you're going to sacrifice an existing classic cabinet, make sure its something that nobody is going to want. Convert a Galaga into a MAME cabinet (as mentioned in the story)? Well, you've just screwed a collector. Convert a Bad Dudes into a MAME cab? You've just done the world a favor.:)
I am one of those people who is "Saving our Video Game Heritage"... by saving the actual hardware. Although I am a hardware purist, I must applaud MAME. It has helped many an arcade collector determine what a game is, and what it should act like (as I used to discover a flaw in my GORF).
But the last paragraph is true... MAME really doesn't compare well to the actual hardware. (Especially the phosphor glow of vector [non-raster] games.... MAME can't do it.) And the presence of having a Gauntlet II arcade game in your living room far exceeds that of having Gauntlet II on your PC. People will run up to your arcade game and want to play it. They don't really do that with your PC.
BTW... excellent article and good focus on some of the hardware.
If you find the answer to this, I'd worship you. (I wish this didn't appear just in "Ask Slashdot" but on the main story page as well.) I recently dumped a long-time color laptop (power problems), and I really wished I could salvage the LCD and make something useful into it. (Although a touch screen would be better for a web-pad, wouldn't it?)
I did see warnings in the area of the LCD about high voltages (assuming its for the display -- who knows), and there was a particularly disheartening connector leading up to the display with a mass of wires. Doesn't look easy.
I wanted to share a project that I started, but didn't complete, which would make an excellent piece of open source software like you described which could be used for a multitude of purposes. It's called OpenVAC (the OPEN Video Arcade Collecting application).
The site works off of a hierarchy, like Yahoo. But each page in the tree has its own miniture database which can be configured to display a number of different type boxes (messages, links, pictures, etc). The idea is, in a niche, you could go very in-depth and have a wealth of information, well categorized, that a major index site could never compete with.
I've aimed mine at arcade games right now. If you go to the home page, go to the "Games" subcat, then "Titles", then "C", then "Centipede" for an example. Then, say, click on "Atari Lighted Button". Yes, it can be self referencing.
The idea is that you could take a piece of software like this (...if it was open source -- its not because I've never finished it and it uses a mish-mash of bad technologies on the back-end...) and apply it to a niche with some minor tweaking.
This is the kind of Open Source web software I want to see! PS: Yes, I've hijacked the OpenVAC site to create the page that you also see in my tag line... but it does show the versitility of the idea. Wish I got the message area working. (sigh). Of course, if someone wants to hire me...:)
You know, off the top of my head, I really can't think of much more in the way of Open Source Web Sites. Well, depending on how you define it.
If you define it as a "complete and whole ball of wax from a-z ready to form a complete site (with some tweaking)" like Slash Code is, no. I don't think there's a lot. I'd love to see more software like that which could be put together and aimed at a particular niche (again like Slash Code can).
The major success I see is in all the little pre-packaged open source code snippets that make their way into web sites. Comment pages, voting booths, form processors, and more. That's the great success that I see here. The bits and pieces that enhance a site.
I'm wondering how this compares to what Sun is working on... the Java inside a chip for embedded devices. Or is this something completely different?
We've been headed for systems on a chip for quite some time know. I remember, when working for Creative Labs, that they had a chip version of the Sound Blaster Pro waiting in the wings to be placed on a motherboard (as opposed to a card). But there was no demand for it! Looking at my IBM desktop, I'd say its no logner the case. (Sound card is integrated.)
I'd have to say though, as much as I like technology, the thought of all my appliances having a fulling running OS of some sort and hooked up to a network really really scares me.
DUMMY-HOST 2D IN A 10.0.0.0 TEST-HOST 2D IN CNAME VENERA.ISI.EDU. www 1W IN CNAME VENERA.ISI.EDU. BTW... did slashdot remove the tag from HTML message submission?
[BTW, it is kind of an old joke. Say, has anyone visited that FTP site at localhost.localhost.com? Log in with your current username and password. They've got an awesome selection, but unfortunately, I already got what they had available.]
Re:Yes -- and one opportunity we missed!
on
Pirate DNS?
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· Score: 1
Probably because they thought it was a stupid idea? You wouldn't want to have a centralized database at netscape.com or microsoft.com because then that would be a single point of failure for the WHOLE WORLD!
What, you mean that Microsoft and Netscape aren't smart enough to set up their proprietary databases in a decentralized manner? In any case, that was the WORSE CHOICE. The best choice is that a third party runs the keyword database.
Who would be linked to the keyword "microsoft"? Would that be Microsoft Corporation, or a web page of "Microsoft Monopoly Practices"? Kind of like, who would be linked to "microsoft.com" or "microsoftmonopoly.com"? A keyword system would face the same challenges as the current DNS system does. But it should would be nicer if it was controlled by an open body.
Re:Yes -- and one opportunity we missed!
on
Pirate DNS?
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· Score: 1
The difference between a keyword and a DNS lookup would be that a keyword does NOT end in ".com" or ".anything". The browser would use the fact that the user had typed in a location that did not use domains as its hint to look it up in a keyword database. The keyword database is like DNS in some respects, but would be a totally different protocol.
BTW... why the hell did someone give me original posting the rating of "flamebait"?!?
Yes -- and one opportunity we missed!
on
Pirate DNS?
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· Score: 3
Yes, you could have a new DNS server with completely alternate TLDs that won't interfere with the existing system. But you'd have to be careful to steer clear of the way they are currently going with TLDs. A DNS server would point to the alternate root, which would return entries for the alternate domains, then pass along all others to the standard Internet root server. Or you could get nasty and pre-empt existing domains, but I don't think that'd be popular.
I mentioned a "missed opportunity" in the subject. Here's what it was. We had a chance to completely BYPASS the entire DNS crap years ago. Where? At the web browser itself. Now, I'm going to use a word that a number of people won't like, and that's "keywords". What if in Netscape, when someone typed in "glorious shoes", it didn't try to DNS it, or search engine it, but to look it up at a keyword registry site? (Sure, okay, its a little too close to AOL for some.) But the idea is to put the power of name lookups into the browser itself, bypassing the DNS mechanism. If this would have been done, NetSol would have been somewhat moot. (But then again, we could have created a new monster.)
Of course, it isn't TOO LATE for this to happen, but there better be a central keyword registry or Netscape and Microsoft will fight with registries of their own. Fun fun fun.
BTW... if someone can pull off this idea, they can become a VERY VERY rich person. If this becomes the case, please hire me.:)
That goes to show even further that there is more manual manipulation of this. Why wasn't DNS cut off? The domain was expired in February, hasn't been turned off, can't be re-registered, and can't be paid for! What the hell is NetSol doing?
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like someone is playing a numbers game to me. The SMP effect is going to chew their lunch on performance. Say you have an application that runs on ten processors. Now, can you imagine the new performance level if you change that to 100 processors? It won't be even close to a 1000% increase. You'll have contention between the processes, and contention (especially) within the kernel. (Hell, I get it with just 12 processors, depending on the application that is running.)
If they know something I don't here, I'd love to see it.
No.
But I can't help myself, so I'll go on talking for a while. There are so many ways a user can be tracked, its like asking if _X_ can make a full-blown implementation of UNIX completely secure? There are always holes. And we (the humans) create our own holes in privacy when we give out information. Encryption and pseudonyms don't protect us against outselves.
I wish that eBay would offer a replicated server that data could be extracted from. I, myself, would find it handy, and would be able to make some really cool apps. The only problem is that some people won't play nice, and it would end up deadlock city. Too bad there isn't a good way to make this happen (aside from certifying people, and cutting out the little guy who wants to make soemthing cool).
Here's an interesting twist on this. You have a web page with copyrighted material. You've got a "robots.txt" which controls access to robots and says not to scan the page. If a robot circumvents this access control device (either by not reading it or by ignoring it), is this a DMCA violation?
But, if the Bidder's Edge metabrowsing is held illegal, then using a personal robot agent to go out and collect and summarize information is illegal. This will be an even greater loss to all of us in the future.
There are lots of things you should be able to do to pin-point it down a bit. Hope this helps?
Vector displays are dead, except in a few niche applications (military?). Their reason for being in the 80's was that they could get a really high resolution display. But that isn't really an issue anymore. 1024x768 is pretty achievable by raster technology. :) Vector also had some nasty problems, like software being able to burn a hole in the phosphor of the screen, or wreck the entire circuitry. Of course, some of this is a hardware issue, but its all really just been abandoned.
Can you possibly guess without looking at my alias? An Atari 400 with 16k RAM, BASIC cartridge, and an Atari 410 "program recorder" which loaded programs at an outrageous 600 baud. I've been addicted ever since. Can I sue Atari for the carpal tunnel caused by a membrane keyboard?
Let's say that SBC is very successful with their free PC offer. Of course, a few crackers will be receiving these as well. And they will probe them for vulnerabilities and will find them. I don't mean to cast some fear/uncertainty/doubt here. But I wonder if having a large number of computers with identical vulnerabilities constantly connected on a tight range of IP addresses / hostnames will make them very prime targets for attack? ("Attack" means unwitting hosts for software for coordinated denial of service attacks, IRC bots, etc.)
Please help me out here. Am I being silly, or is this a serious concern?
Yeah... but did you see the strings attached? Not only do you have to lock into a two year contract (with heavy severance penalties), but you have to pay a $200 "shipping and handling charge" . Come on. How stupid do they think their customers are? I hate it when a telco shows their true colors. (Want to bet they won't let me just "pick it up" from them to avoid the shipping fee?)
Rolling my own may save a bit of time, but I'd be willing to wait even a month to get a better service elsewhere. Anyhow, that's my person take on it. Your mileage may vary.
A judge ruled that domain names aren't property and therefore...
I don't mean to be flippant, but a judge with jurisdiction over what area? If a French company says its my property when I buy it from them, can a judge over a completely different part of the US have any weight on the contract?
Build your own cabinet? Great. But if you're going to sacrifice an existing classic cabinet, make sure its something that nobody is going to want. Convert a Galaga into a MAME cabinet (as mentioned in the story)? Well, you've just screwed a collector. Convert a Bad Dudes into a MAME cab? You've just done the world a favor. :)
I am one of those people who is "Saving our Video Game Heritage"... by saving the actual hardware. Although I am a hardware purist, I must applaud MAME. It has helped many an arcade collector determine what a game is, and what it should act like (as I used to discover a flaw in my GORF).
But the last paragraph is true... MAME really doesn't compare well to the actual hardware. (Especially the phosphor glow of vector [non-raster] games.... MAME can't do it.) And the presence of having a Gauntlet II arcade game in your living room far exceeds that of having Gauntlet II on your PC. People will run up to your arcade game and want to play it. They don't really do that with your PC.
BTW... excellent article and good focus on some of the hardware.
If you find the answer to this, I'd worship you. (I wish this didn't appear just in "Ask Slashdot" but on the main story page as well.) I recently dumped a long-time color laptop (power problems), and I really wished I could salvage the LCD and make something useful into it. (Although a touch screen would be better for a web-pad, wouldn't it?)
I did see warnings in the area of the LCD about high voltages (assuming its for the display -- who knows), and there was a particularly disheartening connector leading up to the display with a mass of wires. Doesn't look easy.
The site works off of a hierarchy, like Yahoo. But each page in the tree has its own miniture database which can be configured to display a number of different type boxes (messages, links, pictures, etc). The idea is, in a niche, you could go very in-depth and have a wealth of information, well categorized, that a major index site could never compete with.
I've aimed mine at arcade games right now. If you go to the home page, go to the "Games" subcat, then "Titles", then "C", then "Centipede" for an example. Then, say, click on "Atari Lighted Button". Yes, it can be self referencing.
The idea is that you could take a piece of software like this (...if it was open source -- its not because I've never finished it and it uses a mish-mash of bad technologies on the back-end...) and apply it to a niche with some minor tweaking.
This is the kind of Open Source web software I want to see! PS: Yes, I've hijacked the OpenVAC site to create the page that you also see in my tag line ... but it does show the versitility of the idea. Wish I got the message area working. (sigh). Of course, if someone wants to hire me... :)
If you define it as a "complete and whole ball of wax from a-z ready to form a complete site (with some tweaking)" like Slash Code is, no. I don't think there's a lot. I'd love to see more software like that which could be put together and aimed at a particular niche (again like Slash Code can).
The major success I see is in all the little pre-packaged open source code snippets that make their way into web sites. Comment pages, voting booths, form processors, and more. That's the great success that I see here. The bits and pieces that enhance a site.
Interesting. Does JINI require JAVA to work, or under what circumstances can JINI facilitate communications between non-JAVA devices?
We've been headed for systems on a chip for quite some time know. I remember, when working for Creative Labs, that they had a chip version of the Sound Blaster Pro waiting in the wings to be placed on a motherboard (as opposed to a card). But there was no demand for it! Looking at my IBM desktop, I'd say its no logner the case. (Sound card is integrated.)
I'd have to say though, as much as I like technology, the thought of all my appliances having a fulling running OS of some sort and hooked up to a network really really scares me.
DUMMY-HOST 2D IN A 10.0.0.0
TEST-HOST 2D IN CNAME VENERA.ISI.EDU.
www 1W IN CNAME VENERA.ISI.EDU.
BTW... did slashdot remove the tag from HTML message submission?
[BTW, it is kind of an old joke. Say, has anyone visited that FTP site at localhost.localhost.com? Log in with your current username and password. They've got an awesome selection, but unfortunately, I already got what they had available.]
What, you mean that Microsoft and Netscape aren't smart enough to set up their proprietary databases in a decentralized manner? In any case, that was the WORSE CHOICE. The best choice is that a third party runs the keyword database.
Who would be linked to the keyword "microsoft"? Would that be Microsoft Corporation, or a web page of "Microsoft Monopoly Practices"? Kind of like, who would be linked to "microsoft.com" or "microsoftmonopoly.com"? A keyword system would face the same challenges as the current DNS system does. But it should would be nicer if it was controlled by an open body.
BTW... why the hell did someone give me original posting the rating of "flamebait"?!?
I mentioned a "missed opportunity" in the subject. Here's what it was. We had a chance to completely BYPASS the entire DNS crap years ago. Where? At the web browser itself. Now, I'm going to use a word that a number of people won't like, and that's "keywords". What if in Netscape, when someone typed in "glorious shoes", it didn't try to DNS it, or search engine it, but to look it up at a keyword registry site? (Sure, okay, its a little too close to AOL for some.) But the idea is to put the power of name lookups into the browser itself, bypassing the DNS mechanism. If this would have been done, NetSol would have been somewhat moot. (But then again, we could have created a new monster.)
Of course, it isn't TOO LATE for this to happen, but there better be a central keyword registry or Netscape and Microsoft will fight with registries of their own. Fun fun fun.
BTW... if someone can pull off this idea, they can become a VERY VERY rich person. If this becomes the case, please hire me. :)
That goes to show even further that there is more manual manipulation of this. Why wasn't DNS cut off? The domain was expired in February, hasn't been turned off, can't be re-registered, and can't be paid for! What the hell is NetSol doing?