They might possibly be running it at that. Probably they are only counting server OS uptime (as measured by 'w' or 'rup', i.e. time between reboots), not applications availability. It would be pretty hard for them to claim only 5 minutes downtime per year on user processes! Their httpd &/or incoming network link is probably swamped, regardless of the nature & state of the OS. See message below:
I was going to make an observation along these lines, only with respect to network hardware manufacturers (Nortel, Cisco, Lucent et al.). Their end-user connectivity products (as opposed to backbone products) should not be forwarding spoofable-origin packets to the Internet BY DEFAULT. This would not be unduly burdensome to implement in software or hardware, although of course getting upgrades out to everybody is still an issue. Unfortunately, it seems the old distinctions of bridge vs. router vs. switch vs. gateway have all but disappeared these days in the rush to hook everything to the net....
#include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
These are active matrix screens, most of the really horrible ghosting is on passive matrix LCD's. Plus it sounds like they are working on the latency issues -
"The liquid crystal in Toshiba's new screens is a material called polysilicon glass, which reacts 100 times as fast to electricity as amorphous silicon glass. That allowed Toshiba to shrink the transistors and wiring surrounding the pixels and speed up the overall screen operation by moving some of the integrated circuits that now ring the edge of L.C.D. screens directly onto the glass surface itself. "
Still maybe not as fast as slewing an electron beam with magnetic fields (CRT), but getting closer...
#include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
What's really nice is that IIRC alot of Drexler et al's work on nanotech is concerned with avoiding quantum effects that would disrupt their atomic-scale gears, etc. Here the scientists are turning the problem on its head and using the quantum nature of matter at the nano scale for their nanocomputing device. However, obviously heat is still a problem (cooled to 4K - don't think Kryotech will cut it anytime soon;-p) #include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
These are two decisions (Calif. State District Court, and S.D.N.Y Federal court) that, should they be finalized in a verdict that upholds the Bad Guys' positions, will (thankfully) be able to be reversed on appeal. Hopefully even if the Good Guys lose in the trial court, some more clued-in appellate judges will be able to see through the industry arguments. Maybe even invalidate the DMCA as unconstitutional (probably wishful thinking though, especially with the markedly anti-consumer makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court these days). However, not to impugn the caliber of attorneys representing the Good Guys, but I'm sure they could use more help (especially if it does go up on appeal). I think now would be a good time for the IPO millionaires and the Linux commercial enterprises to weigh in on the defendants' side in both cases - if for no other reason then because Linus said so at LWE in his keynote (read: good publicity, plus a truly free/libre DVD player will drive greater Linux adoption).
Just my $200/hr. worth (I wish).;-)
Disclaimer: IAAIL - I Am An Inactive Lawyer (State Bar of Texas Inactive Status as of 8/99) so, effectively, IANAL. Get your own attorney. Ingest with large crystal of NaCl.
#include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Yes, as a matter of fact I still do in a sense (f/t UNIX sysadmin). But I started out years ago as a phone support rep at Apple in Austin. Thus my Woz quote and soft spot for Macs in general.
However, the point I was trying to make is that since the target market for Linux laptops won't be the clueless newbie set (cf. the iMac market), there should be a whole lot fewer calls with "user error" as the root cause (and "clue stick" with the irreversible corrective action;-) ). Although I suppose we've all done our share of 'rm -rf *' and its brethren in our lifetimes;-p
Of course, the distro needs to be rock solid (as well as the laptop itself) in order to reduce the real software and hardware support issues. I'm sure it can't be any worse than MacOS [7,8,9] or Win[95,98,NT,2000] - and will probably be a whole lot better. #include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
I think the Null-A site explains it pretty well - he and his wife got sucked into the black hole of Scientology in the early Fifties and did not re-emerge until the Seventies. A lot of the work that made his contemporaries better-known (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, et al.) was going on throughout that period. Unfortunately Van Vogt never again rose to his previous level of prolific output even after ditching the Hubbardites. Damn those Clams!
#include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
I think the price should be lower, after all they won't have to pay MS for licenses. Although they might have to fork over some dough to LinuxCare. However, the support calls should be way fewer with the stability of Linux....
#include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
"The fuel cells, which are still about three to five years away from the store shelves, could power a wireless phone for more than a month and keep a laptop running for 20 hours, Bill Ooms, director of Motorola's material, device, and energy research, said in a telephone interview."
(sarcasm on) By then, Crusoe (with 99% market share no doubt) should be running at >50GHz with ~1 Mw power consumption. Making the fuel cell product effectively obsolete before it even gets to market. Oh well;-). (sarcasm off)
Seriously though, by 5 years from now I hope optical &/or nanotech computing breakthroughs start to appear - but we'll still probably be saddled with x86 compatibility! |-P
#include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
I noticed that their chips' names (TM3120, TM5400) are somewhat similar to Texas Instruments' naming scheme for DSP's:
TMS320C6000 (TMS320C6X or 'C6000 for short) TMS320C5000
etc.
Not too much alike - theirs starts with TM for TransMeta, obviously, but is much shorter; ours start with TMS - but might be enough to confuse somebody (or get somebody's lawyers' panties in a bunch).;-) I don't know where the TMS came from here, I'm pretty new to TI. Maybe "TI Microprocessor Solutions" or some such.
All the usual disclaimers apply, IAAISL (I Am An Inactive Status Lawyer), etc.
#include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Besides, I thought Apple lost the look-and-feel lawsuit against MS for Windows (IIRC, based on Win 3.0 or 3.1's use of WIMP interface way-back-when) many years ago. Although supposedly part of the $150m "investment" by MS in Apple a while back was as a final settlement of some of these type of issues, still that's not legally binding as precedent. Thus I would think they have pretty shaky ground legally speaking to threaten any Win32 theme makers.
P.S. IAAL (I Am A Lawyer) but I don't practice these days - I even let my bar card lapse this year (so I don't have to pay extra fees & taxes for something I don't even use anymore). So don't go by what I say, see your own (practicing) attorney.
#include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Not only a nerd himself (just read the obit, or [preferably] any of his work), but an inspiration to several generations of nerds. Definitely/.-worthy news. So there! BBBBLLLLLPPPPTTTTTHHHTT!
Where would Breathed, Larson, Watterson, et al. be today without him? Just the onomatopoetics alone should enshrine this guy in the cartoonists' hall of fame (is there one? Where!?).
Just my $0.02. We'll miss ya Don.
#include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
The review makes a somewhat misleading assertion, that steganography obviates the need for cryptography. Encrypting your message first somehow (e.g. making it look like line noise) is actually a good step to take, as it will enhance the protection afforded by steganography - the altered image just looks randomly "noisy." This is especially helpful when using images encoded with lossy compression schemes such as JPEG - since different compression factors can lead to visibly similar images, but with different noise patterns. After all, if the Bad Guys somehow come up with the original image, and compare it to your altered image, you don't want your plaintext just popping out at them instantly, do you? It's like the difference between running 'crack' and 'diff'... or giving away your one-time pad.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Biological detection should be possible (after all that's what our immune systems do every day) but might be harder with their process (pure DNA strands selected with massively sped-up evolution).
Get your patent now;-)
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Heh. That was funny. Actually the whole mono vs. color debate reminds me of the old-old days when the Mac first came out and was b&w only, while most of the PC's had (crappy) color. Eventually Apple had to release color Macs (II and beyond) to keep up, even though their target markets (desktop publishing & productivity) at the time arguably did not really need color (since color printing was in its infancy as well). Although my b&w Mac SE served me well all the way from 1987 to 1993 or so.... #include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Are they stuck that far behind, to still be using 2.1 kernel devel tree (2.2 & 2.3 have been out how long now? We're on the verge of 2.4 any day now...), or are they using some other nonstandard numbering scheme? Any Tivo devel's wanna comment? #include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Note that they said ISP's really want this. That leads me to believe that they really mean making servers running pppd answer connections over ethernet instead of serial lines, so maybe they can hook up modem pools/terminal servers to their LAN infrastructure, instead of directly connecting them to a whole bunch of serial ports. This especially makes sense when talking about DSL and cable modem services - I'm sure that Cisco, Lucent et al. are soon/now shipping what amount to gateways between Fast/Gigabit Ethernet and DSL/Cable. Disclaimer - I don't work at an ISP so maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about;-). But I do work at TI which churns out a lot of the DSL & cable modem chips (see e.g. www.ti.com), so maybe I do....
#include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Unfortunately I must inform you Dr. Cojones that you have infringed on my patent (pending) for creating or being a Lawyer Geek. I have a J.D. and Texas Bar license (currently on inactive status, but still valid) but work full-time as a sysadmin on UNIX boxen. My patent application has not yet been approved, since I only graduated from law school 5 years ago, but I am sure it will be (along with my patents pending on digestion, sexual reproduction, and breathing). Please desist immediately. My attorney (i.e. myself) will be contacting you shortly.
But seriously, that one was a scream. "Dr. Xavier ('Have-yer') Cojones?" Haw!
#include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
It's already at the SunStore website (store.sun.com):
SunStore United States : 3rd Party, Solaris Ready and 100 Percent Pure Java : Linux Operating Environments : Official Red Hat Linux 6.1 Deluxe SPARC
Part Number: RH-29000-S MSRP: 79.95 USD Package Description:
Official Red Hat Linux 6.1 Deluxe SPARC includes:
Operating System on 2 CD's Installation Guide Reference Guide Getting Started Guide SPARC Installation Addendum Product Registration insert Linux Applications Library - SPARC edition - 1 CD
Features and Benefits
Fully Open Source Access to source code which allows customization Graphical Installation Choice of text based or graphical install Hardware probing Enhanced autodetection of hardware
Product System Specifications Platforms SPARC/UltraSPARC Operating System Linux Memory 16 MB of RAM Disk Space 200 MB
Licensing Red Hat Linux is developed under the GPL license
Services Sun Enterprise Services does not support the Linux operating system. Support for this product is available through Red Hat at the following email address: support@redhat.com.
#include "disclaim.h" "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Slashdot Mirror
So we can finally discover the 2nd monolith... (the first one's on the Moon).
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
They might possibly be running it at that. Probably they are only counting server OS uptime (as measured by 'w' or 'rup', i.e. time between reboots), not applications availability. It would be pretty hard for them to claim only 5 minutes downtime per year on user processes! Their httpd &/or incoming network link is probably swamped, regardless of the nature & state of the OS. See message below:
- --------------------------------
- --------------------------------
ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved
-----------------------------------------------
While trying to retrieve the URL: http://www.mcg.mot.com/linux
The following error was encountered:
Connection Failed
The system returned:
(0) Error 0
This means that:
The remote site or server may be busy or down. Please try again later.
-----------------------------------------------
Generated by squid/1.1.22@dragon.ti.com
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Check out http://www.mozilla.org/mirrors.html for a list of download mirrors.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Try this link for an online version.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
And fix the URL. It's fbi.gov not fbi.org. Just picking them nits....
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
I was going to make an observation along these lines, only with respect to network hardware manufacturers (Nortel, Cisco, Lucent et al.). Their end-user connectivity products (as opposed to backbone products) should not be forwarding spoofable-origin packets to the Internet BY DEFAULT. This would not be unduly burdensome to implement in software or hardware, although of course getting upgrades out to everybody is still an issue. Unfortunately, it seems the old distinctions of bridge vs. router vs. switch vs. gateway have all but disappeared these days in the rush to hook everything to the net....
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
These are active matrix screens, most of the really horrible ghosting is on passive matrix LCD's. Plus it sounds like they are working on the latency issues -
"The liquid crystal in Toshiba's new screens is a material called polysilicon glass, which reacts 100 times as fast to electricity as amorphous silicon glass. That allowed Toshiba to shrink the transistors and wiring surrounding the pixels and speed up the overall screen operation by moving some of the integrated circuits that now ring the edge of L.C.D. screens directly onto the glass surface itself. "
Still maybe not as fast as slewing an electron beam with magnetic fields (CRT), but getting closer...
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Just wanted to correct the typo. Boink!
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
What's really nice is that IIRC alot of Drexler et al's work on nanotech is concerned with avoiding quantum effects that would disrupt their atomic-scale gears, etc. Here the scientists are turning the problem on its head and using the quantum nature of matter at the nano scale for their nanocomputing device. However, obviously heat is still a problem (cooled to 4K - don't think Kryotech will cut it anytime soon ;-p)
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
These are two decisions (Calif. State District Court, and S.D.N.Y Federal court) that, should they be finalized in a verdict that upholds the Bad Guys' positions, will (thankfully) be able to be reversed on appeal. Hopefully even if the Good Guys lose in the trial court, some more clued-in appellate judges will be able to see through the industry arguments. Maybe even invalidate the DMCA as unconstitutional (probably wishful thinking though, especially with the markedly anti-consumer makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court these days). However, not to impugn the caliber of attorneys representing the Good Guys, but I'm sure they could use more help (especially if it does go up on appeal). I think now would be a good time for the IPO millionaires and the Linux commercial enterprises to weigh in on the defendants' side in both cases - if for no other reason then because Linus said so at LWE in his keynote (read: good publicity, plus a truly free/libre DVD player will drive greater Linux adoption).
;-)
Just my $200/hr. worth (I wish).
Disclaimer: IAAIL - I Am An Inactive Lawyer (State Bar of Texas Inactive Status as of 8/99) so, effectively, IANAL. Get your own attorney. Ingest with large crystal of NaCl.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Yes, as a matter of fact I still do in a sense (f/t UNIX sysadmin). But I started out years ago as a phone support rep at Apple in Austin. Thus my Woz quote and soft spot for Macs in general.
;-) ). Although I suppose we've all done our share of 'rm -rf *' and its brethren in our lifetimes ;-p
However, the point I was trying to make is that since the target market for Linux laptops won't be the clueless newbie set (cf. the iMac market), there should be a whole lot fewer calls with "user error" as the root cause (and "clue stick" with the irreversible corrective action
Of course, the distro needs to be rock solid (as well as the laptop itself) in order to reduce the real software and hardware support issues. I'm sure it can't be any worse than MacOS [7,8,9] or Win[95,98,NT,2000] - and will probably be a whole lot better.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
I think the Null-A site explains it pretty well - he and his wife got sucked into the black hole of Scientology in the early Fifties and did not re-emerge until the Seventies. A lot of the work that made his contemporaries better-known (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, et al.) was going on throughout that period. Unfortunately Van Vogt never again rose to his previous level of prolific output even after ditching the Hubbardites. Damn those Clams!
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
I think the price should be lower, after all they won't have to pay MS for licenses. Although they might have to fork over some dough to LinuxCare. However, the support calls should be way fewer with the stability of Linux....
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
"The fuel cells, which are still about three to five years away from the store shelves, could power a wireless phone for more than a month and keep a laptop running for 20 hours, Bill Ooms, director of Motorola's material, device, and energy research, said in a telephone interview."
;-). (sarcasm off)
(sarcasm on) By then, Crusoe (with 99% market share no doubt) should be running at >50GHz with ~1 Mw power consumption. Making the fuel cell product effectively obsolete before it even gets to market. Oh well
Seriously though, by 5 years from now I hope optical &/or nanotech computing breakthroughs start to appear - but we'll still probably be saddled with x86 compatibility! |-P
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
I noticed that their chips' names (TM3120, TM5400) are somewhat similar to Texas Instruments' naming scheme for DSP's:
;-) I don't know where the TMS came from here, I'm pretty new to TI. Maybe "TI Microprocessor Solutions" or some such.
TMS320C6000 (TMS320C6X or 'C6000 for short)
TMS320C5000
etc.
Not too much alike - theirs starts with TM for TransMeta, obviously, but is much shorter; ours start with TMS - but might be enough to confuse somebody (or get somebody's lawyers' panties in a bunch).
All the usual disclaimers apply, IAAISL (I Am An Inactive Status Lawyer), etc.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Besides, I thought Apple lost the look-and-feel lawsuit against MS for Windows (IIRC, based on Win 3.0 or 3.1's use of WIMP interface way-back-when) many years ago. Although supposedly part of the $150m "investment" by MS in Apple a while back was as a final settlement of some of these type of issues, still that's not legally binding as precedent. Thus I would think they have pretty shaky ground legally speaking to threaten any Win32 theme makers.
P.S. IAAL (I Am A Lawyer) but I don't practice these days - I even let my bar card lapse this year (so I don't have to pay extra fees & taxes for something I don't even use anymore). So don't go by what I say, see your own (practicing) attorney.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Not only a nerd himself (just read the obit, or [preferably] any of his work), but an inspiration to several generations of nerds. Definitely /.-worthy news. So there! BBBBLLLLLPPPPTTTTTHHHTT!
Where would Breathed, Larson, Watterson, et al. be today without him? Just the onomatopoetics alone should enshrine this guy in the cartoonists' hall of fame (is there one? Where!?).
Just my $0.02. We'll miss ya Don.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
A modest proposal -
offer a certain percentage of stock to Slashdot
users, but divide by their user ID - so those who have been around longer, get proportionately more.
Not that it would help me much, either...
userid = fluffhead (32589)
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
The review makes a somewhat misleading assertion, that steganography obviates the need for cryptography. Encrypting your message first somehow (e.g. making it look like line noise) is actually a good step to take, as it will enhance the protection afforded by steganography - the altered image just looks randomly "noisy." This is especially helpful when using images encoded with lossy compression schemes such as JPEG - since different compression factors can lead to visibly similar images, but with different noise patterns. After all, if the Bad Guys somehow come up with the original image, and compare it to your altered image, you don't want your plaintext just popping out at them instantly, do you? It's like the difference between running 'crack' and 'diff' ... or giving away your one-time pad.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Biological detection should be possible (after all that's what our immune systems do every day) but might be harder with their process (pure DNA strands selected with massively sped-up evolution).
;-)
Get your patent now
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Heh. That was funny. Actually the whole mono vs. color debate reminds me of the old-old days when the Mac first came out and was b&w only, while most of the PC's had (crappy) color. Eventually Apple had to release color Macs (II and beyond) to keep up, even though their target markets (desktop publishing & productivity) at the time arguably did not really need color (since color printing was in its infancy as well). Although my b&w Mac SE served me well all the way from 1987 to 1993 or so....
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Are they stuck that far behind, to still be using 2.1 kernel devel tree (2.2 & 2.3 have been out how long now? We're on the verge of 2.4 any day now...), or are they using some other nonstandard numbering scheme? Any Tivo devel's wanna comment?
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Note that they said ISP's really want this. That leads me to believe that they really mean making servers running pppd answer connections over ethernet instead of serial lines, so maybe they can hook up modem pools/terminal servers to their LAN infrastructure, instead of directly connecting them to a whole bunch of serial ports. This especially makes sense when talking about DSL and cable modem services - I'm sure that Cisco, Lucent et al. are soon/now shipping what amount to gateways between Fast/Gigabit Ethernet and DSL/Cable. Disclaimer - I don't work at an ISP so maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about ;-). But I do work at TI which churns out a lot of the DSL & cable modem chips (see e.g. www.ti.com), so maybe I do....
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Unfortunately I must inform you Dr. Cojones that you have infringed on my patent (pending) for creating or being a Lawyer Geek. I have a J.D. and Texas Bar license (currently on inactive status, but still valid) but work full-time as a sysadmin on UNIX boxen. My patent application has not yet been approved, since I only graduated from law school 5 years ago, but I am sure it will be (along with my patents pending on digestion, sexual reproduction, and breathing). Please desist immediately. My attorney (i.e. myself) will be contacting you shortly.
But seriously, that one was a scream. "Dr. Xavier ('Have-yer') Cojones?" Haw!
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
It's already at the SunStore website (store.sun.com):
SunStore United States : 3rd Party, Solaris Ready and 100 Percent Pure Java : Linux Operating Environments : Official Red Hat Linux 6.1 Deluxe SPARC
Part Number: RH-29000-S
MSRP: 79.95 USD
Package Description:
Official Red Hat Linux 6.1 Deluxe SPARC includes:
Operating System on 2 CD's
Installation Guide
Reference Guide
Getting Started Guide
SPARC Installation Addendum
Product Registration insert
Linux Applications Library - SPARC edition - 1 CD
Features and Benefits
Fully Open Source
Access to source code which allows customization
Graphical Installation
Choice of text based or graphical install
Hardware probing
Enhanced autodetection of hardware
Product System Specifications
Platforms
SPARC/UltraSPARC
Operating System
Linux
Memory
16 MB of RAM
Disk Space
200 MB
Licensing
Red Hat Linux is developed under the GPL license
Services
Sun Enterprise Services does not support the Linux operating system.
Support for this product is available through Red Hat at the following email
address: support@redhat.com.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak