I'm not sure what info we could get from having a beacon on a comet. After all, we would be able to pretty accurately compute its orbit after a month-long rendevous. But it would be so cool!;)
That's funny... it looks like an old terminal...
on
iMac Clone Gets Sued
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· Score: 0
with a translucent case to me. Who created that terminal that Apple cloned anyway? Lear-Seigler, perhaps? Anyone remember?
The justification that UTC replaced GMT due to GMT being based on the (changing) duration of the Earth's rotation probably doesn't tell the whole story. After all, the new UTC-defined second was based on the old second. It was merely a refinement of that well-established short period of time. It isn't really a new measure -- it's just a new, more precise, way of measuring the same period.
Why didn't we simply adjust GMT rather than come up with a new name -- that didn't include the name of a place in England? Maybe the new name was thrown in because we non-Brits vastly outnumber Brits.;)
Anyway, now that we have our atomic-clock derived whiz-bang UTC that is not *quite* GMT, we add a leap second now and then to bring it back in line with GMT. So much for the technological justification. Sheesh.
heh. I have to agree with your assessment of the legal climate. However, for Harvard to destroy the potential evidence, after receiving a letter using the word "libel" (IIRC) to describe the site's contents, does not sound like the rational CYA approach. OTOH, of late it appears that "accidents" and destruction of evidence are not as hazardous in practice as they are in theory.;)
If you're gonna start an alternative clone of Slashdot, I'd suggest you not do it anonymously.;)
Some of my best chances to win Darwin award, taken
on
Stop: Quickies Time
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· Score: 1
My desires to keep cobras, steal from the church, tie my bike to my hand before going swimming, and make love in a running hearse won't win me a Darwin award now. I'm running out of ideas!
Agreed. It does sound like they (Via) have a little cash reserve, in that they are bidding on a foundry also. I suspect that they may just know what they're doing and have a reasonable chance for success at it. Now, if I only knew what that plan was...
Is it just me or is the scale of these net.mergers unfathomable? Didn't Excite go for about $7 billion? Meanwhile, I heard that the market value of the big one, Yahoo!, recently exceeded that of General Electric. Altavista is not even clearly 2nd tier anymore, as best I can tell -- maybe 2.5 tier.
Well, there go my plans for a hostile takeover of Yahoo!;)
Congratulations Rob. This is surely a good thing./. has grown into one of the few truly important landmarks on the web and is deserving of the improved infrastructure that this can bring. I know you guys worked hard and long on this site and poured much of yourselves into it.
I can't imagine much better terms than these which let you retain complete control of the site. Of course, there will be detractors -- ignore them and keep going. Offload all the sales stuff, hire assistants to help with the email and stories, hire a sysadmin to run the servers, and go back to what made/. so successful in the first place.
You know what you're doing and you know what to do. Take what you have and refine and extend it. Make a better/. for all of us.
Wouldn't it be appropriate for MS supporters to "mince" the results of a benchmark I concocted specifically to show NT in its worst light and Linux in its best? Would you quietly accept that Linux was "faster"?....ah, I thought not!
And, in defense of some of the mincing, let me add this: Between my two sites I have maybe 25 static pages and over 64,000 dynamic pages. Static page tests on a single, very expensive, box are not very "real world". If I need more static serving capacity, I'm not restricted to one server (when multiple, smaller servers are cheaper). And, if I really require a single, centralized server, its because I'm serving dynamic content. Where does the massive, expensive, single machine, static web server logically fit in this scenario?
While I agree with the general advice of this article, I think the concern is a little overblown. Some points:
1) Resistance is sometimes necessary. It is not entirely bad when an inaccurate article draws flames. We can only hope that the flames are tempered by the presence of more numerous polite comments. And, hopefully, the percent of flames will not exceed the degree of inaccuracy and/or malice in the article.
2) The Authors are always free to selectively cite and publish negative emails in order to disproportionately prove "rudeness" on the part of Linux advocates. Since they will quite likely feel defensive, this is always a possibility. Scott Hacker, for example, provided no data on the percentage of flames versus constructive criticisms. It may be that the negative comments were not at all representative of the whole.
3) A few Anti-Linux folks can be counted on, now that the Linux flaming reputation is widespread, to supply a small amount of obnoxious flames for PR reasons.
4) This is not just characteristic of the Linux crowd -- it applies to OS/2, BE, Apple, and even mainframe supporters. The difference is one of scale and timing. There are *lots* of Linux supporters connected to the Internet. Their timing is coordinated by the/. effect to vastly amplify the apparent magnitude of the flaming.
5) In a large enough crowd, there will always be some jerks. As Linux becomes ever more successful, expect there to be even more jerks. Nothing can be done about that.
Because MS/MC appears to have been so careful to research the underlying problem with that particular benchmark using that specific hardware configuration, they have illuminated a core scalability weakness in Linux. The lack of a multithreaded IP stack, according to their claims, slows even Zeus down to about the same speed as Apache. I'm convinced that they went into this *very* confident that NT would win.
Does anybody else suspect that the kernel gurus are, even now, working on clean, fast multithreaded IP code?
heheh! That Mr. Metcalfe developed Ethernet all those years ago, and must still be proud of it, is just *too* cool!
We are in the process of installing some Gigabit Ethernet on a backbone at work, according to our network guys. There is still life left in some of the old technology yet.
Sadly, I have to agree... it is an amateurish hoax designed to trick the naive into visiting their web site. After reading the "specs" one would conclude that they have a fully developed, productional product. SCSI, ATAPI interfaces, 128-pin PGA, a snippit of a description of their power and control buses, encrypted media serial number, etc. My favorite part is that they refer you to to their *sales* office for further information, heheh.
I also like the fact that they photographed "it" in a Pentium II casing as if there was a product that it would just plug into that uses a slot 1 bus. Presumably, it's a slot 1 SCSI or ATAPI bus, the two protocols they claim it supports.
This thing would obsolete disk drives *and* conventional memory. Based on the performance claims, it would probably obsolete cache memory also. It's not entirely clear, based on the claims, that it won't be faster than CPU registers!
Naturally, I'm a little skeptical based only on those performance claims. I might remain hopeful, however, except that the way they try to frame the performance claims in terms that sound impressive to the unsophisticated user: "...100,000's of times faster than the fastest mainframe hard drives ever made by IBM." *cough*
They go on to claim that it will be released "next year" in a document that claims to be the 1st revistion dated November, 1997. (the copyright dates, however, do include 1999).
I'll wait for independent benchmarking of the samples, thank you.
Re:It means what? (Was:Static page requests, BAH!.
on
NT vs. Linux: Again
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· Score: 1
Close but not quite. I wasn't suggesting "that NT was modified to be app. specific to target a narrow purpose (web servers)...". I was suggesting that it had been extended to perform well in the static html subset of this particular, high-profile, area of service -- with an eye on benchmarks rather than, and, possibly, at the expense of, actual user needs. Perhaps that is what you meant as well.
Your point that "MS has a far wider user base to afford making their OS better for just one app. at the sacrifice of other applications." only makes it a greater sin. It does not prove them innocent. Consider their slipping market share for NT in the server arena vs. Linux. This is the kind of advertising that they cannot buy. I would suggest that your logic applies here too -- can they afford to pass up such a chance to prominently display the "superiority" of NT with the disinterested blessing of ZD?
As for your annoyance "that people are coming up with all kinds of excuses instead of facing the facts", which facts did you have in mind? Note that I did not question the facts of the result, only the architectural decisions that contributed to NT winning these particular benchmarks.
On your claim that "This reveals our own denial of reality", do you know of a wide-ranging suite of disparate and concurrent benchmarks that show this NT performance advantage to be more than specific to these two areas? Please, update my reality and share them with me. If you can demonstrate that I am off-base, that these results are not anomalous, that this performance is typical of general, mixed-load, server performance, I'll humbly apologize to both you and Microsoft.:)
It means what? (Was:Static page requests, BAH!...)
on
NT vs. Linux: Again
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· Score: 2
Yes, Kurt, you hit the nail on the head.
There are probably a hundred (a thousand?)/.'ers who could take Linux and Apache and merge Apache into kernel space, compromise everything else, and personally release an OS/Web Server combination that could easily beat NT in Webbench. The same goes for Linux/Samba. What they would have created is an O/S with dedicated application functionality.
If Micros~1 really wants to beat Linux in general purpose operating system performance, they need to take this approach with *all* other applications. Start by integrating BackOffice, the rest of IIS, IE, Office (why restrict this brilliant strategy to server-only apps? MS should surely strive for the fastest desktop also) and their other in-house applications into the kernel. Then they will FLY!
Of course, *some* of this is actually good from an engineering perspective. Common functions that are essential to the performance of standard and widely used services -- and can be significantly improved by moving them into kernel space -- may justify this approach. Large chunks of application-specific functionality, however, will weigh down non-users of those apps and compromise stability for those who do use it.
Realisticly, what I think MS has done here is create a "benchmark special". They have picked two high-profile applications and integrated them into the kernel a little too intimately so they can claim that NT in general is faster than Linux. The actual usefulness, of the web server speed up anyway, is questionable. Do *any* sites actually serve that many static pages? And, how many of those sites can afford the instability that such approaches bring?
Sorry, Microsoft. What you have created is an NT/Web server/file server combination that is faster than Linux in those same areas. That does not make NT the faster operating system -- and it most certainly doesn't make it the better operating system. Meanwhile, you have pointed out what are now high-profile areas of minor weakness in Linux performance. Those will be fixed -- and fixed correctly. Thanks.
Never assume (racist) malice when simple corporate greed will suffice. How does this case differ from a case where the small site was not owned by minorities? Or is there some actual basis for the racist assumption?
You gotta respect a guy who single-handedly did so much to start the microcomputer industry. He made the computer *and* wrote the BASIC...
Still, to me, the most amazing story from Woz history is that HP wasn't interested in his computer design -- reportedly because he wasn't an engineer. I guess Apple's early success says a great deal about Woz and HP.
They sound like they're just the right size to be called microbots. I want one! It's a shame salon didn't have a picture... anybody seen some closeups of these babies yet?
Yeah... If they implement a brain-dead system like our I think I'll go patent the blinking cursor and the onscreen pointer the day software patents go into effect. By the time their courts figure out there's a little "prior art" problem, they'll be set back 5 years.
Meanwhile, we could improve our trade balances and reduce our software patent problems by exporting some Lawyers!
If the world allowed to cheat, resurrect "Deep Blue", load it up with the latest and fastest PowerPC chips, and let it think about each move for 24 hours? That's "our" only chance of beating Mr. Kasparov! Of course, I would still bet on Kasparov with 24-hour moves. A committee (voting, no less!) stands no chance at all.
Disclaimer: this opinion is based on the vast (heheh) knowlege of chess I acquired gradually learning to beat "Mr. Jett" as a teenager in the downtown library. But mostly what I learned is that when you regularly start to beat someone, they stop showing up.;)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure what info we could get from having a beacon on a comet. After all, we would be able to pretty accurately compute its orbit after a month-long rendevous. But it would be so cool! ;)
with a translucent case to me. Who created that terminal that Apple cloned anyway? Lear-Seigler, perhaps? Anyone remember?
I think this is the ultimate in Ladies Geekwear.
;)
Does it run Linux?
Does this represent a change from a previous plan or was this Harvard's position all along?
Regardless, this is the right thing to do.
The justification that UTC replaced GMT due to GMT being based on the (changing) duration of the Earth's rotation probably doesn't tell the whole story. After all, the new UTC-defined second was based on the old second. It was merely a refinement of that well-established short period of time. It isn't really a new measure -- it's just a new, more precise, way of measuring the same period.
;)
Why didn't we simply adjust GMT rather than come up with a new name -- that didn't include the name of a place in England? Maybe the new name was thrown in because we non-Brits vastly outnumber Brits.
Anyway, now that we have our atomic-clock derived whiz-bang UTC that is not *quite* GMT, we add a leap second now and then to bring it back in line with GMT. So much for the technological justification. Sheesh.
heh. I have to agree with your assessment of the legal climate. However, for Harvard to destroy the potential evidence, after receiving a letter using the word "libel" (IIRC) to describe the site's contents, does not sound like the rational CYA approach. OTOH, of late it appears that "accidents" and destruction of evidence are not as hazardous in practice as they are in theory. ;)
If you're gonna start an alternative clone of Slashdot, I'd suggest you not do it anonymously. ;)
My desires to keep cobras, steal from the church, tie my bike to my hand before going swimming, and make love in a running hearse won't win me a Darwin award now. I'm running out of ideas!
Agreed. It does sound like they (Via) have a little cash reserve, in that they are bidding on a foundry also. I suspect that they may just know what they're doing and have a reasonable chance for success at it. Now, if I only knew what that plan was...
Is it just me or is the scale of these net.mergers unfathomable? Didn't Excite go for about $7 billion? Meanwhile, I heard that the market value of the big one, Yahoo!, recently exceeded that of General Electric. Altavista is not even clearly 2nd tier anymore, as best I can tell -- maybe 2.5 tier.
;)
Well, there go my plans for a hostile takeover of Yahoo!
Congratulations Rob. This is surely a good thing. /. has grown into one of the few truly important landmarks on the web and is deserving of the improved infrastructure that this can bring. I know you guys worked hard and long on this site and poured much of yourselves into it.
/. so successful in the first place.
/. for all of us.
I can't imagine much better terms than these which let you retain complete control of the site. Of course, there will be detractors -- ignore them and keep going. Offload all the sales stuff, hire assistants to help with the email and stories, hire a sysadmin to run the servers, and go back to what made
You know what you're doing and you know what to do. Take what you have and refine and extend it. Make a better
And, thanks for creating my favorite site.
Wouldn't it be appropriate for MS supporters to "mince" the results of a benchmark I concocted specifically to show NT in its worst light and Linux in its best? Would you quietly accept that Linux was "faster"? ....ah, I thought not!
And, in defense of some of the mincing, let me add this: Between my two sites I have maybe 25 static pages and over 64,000 dynamic pages. Static page tests on a single, very expensive, box are not very "real world". If I need more static serving capacity, I'm not restricted to one server (when multiple, smaller servers are cheaper). And, if I really require a single, centralized server, its because I'm serving dynamic content. Where does the massive, expensive, single machine, static web server logically fit in this scenario?
While I agree with the general advice of this article, I think the concern is a little overblown. Some points:
/. effect to vastly amplify the apparent magnitude of the flaming.
1) Resistance is sometimes necessary. It is not entirely bad when an inaccurate article draws flames. We can only hope that the flames are tempered by the presence of more numerous polite comments. And, hopefully, the percent of flames will not exceed the degree of inaccuracy and/or malice in the article.
2) The Authors are always free to selectively cite and publish negative emails in order to disproportionately prove "rudeness" on the part of Linux advocates. Since they will quite likely feel defensive, this is always a possibility. Scott Hacker, for example, provided no data on the percentage of flames versus constructive criticisms. It may be that the negative comments were not at all representative of the whole.
3) A few Anti-Linux folks can be counted on, now that the Linux flaming reputation is widespread, to supply a small amount of obnoxious flames for PR reasons.
4) This is not just characteristic of the Linux crowd -- it applies to OS/2, BE, Apple, and even mainframe supporters. The difference is one of scale and timing. There are *lots* of Linux supporters connected to the Internet. Their timing is coordinated by the
5) In a large enough crowd, there will always be some jerks. As Linux becomes ever more successful, expect there to be even more jerks. Nothing can be done about that.
Because MS/MC appears to have been so careful to research the underlying problem with that particular benchmark using that specific hardware configuration, they have illuminated a core scalability weakness in Linux. The lack of a multithreaded IP stack, according to their claims, slows even Zeus down to about the same speed as Apache. I'm convinced that they went into this *very* confident that NT would win.
Does anybody else suspect that the kernel gurus are, even now, working on clean, fast multithreaded IP code?
heheh! That Mr. Metcalfe developed Ethernet all those years ago, and must still be proud of it, is just *too* cool!
We are in the process of installing some Gigabit Ethernet on a backbone at work, according to our network guys. There is still life left in some of the old technology yet.
Sadly, I have to agree... it is an amateurish hoax designed to trick the naive into visiting their web site. After reading the "specs" one would conclude that they have a fully developed, productional product. SCSI, ATAPI interfaces, 128-pin PGA, a snippit of a description of their power and control buses, encrypted media serial number, etc. My favorite part is that they refer you to to their *sales* office for further information, heheh.
I also like the fact that they photographed "it" in a Pentium II casing as if there was a product that it would just plug into that uses a slot 1 bus. Presumably, it's a slot 1 SCSI or ATAPI bus, the two protocols they claim it supports.
Yep, this is a hoax alright, but it's working!
This thing would obsolete disk drives *and* conventional memory. Based on the performance claims, it would probably obsolete cache memory also. It's not entirely clear, based on the claims, that it won't be faster than CPU registers!
Naturally, I'm a little skeptical based only on those performance claims. I might remain hopeful, however, except that the way they try to frame the performance claims in terms that sound impressive to the unsophisticated user: "...100,000's of times faster than the fastest mainframe hard drives ever made by IBM." *cough*
They go on to claim that it will be released "next year" in a document that claims to be the 1st revistion dated November, 1997. (the copyright dates, however, do include 1999).
I'll wait for independent benchmarking of the samples, thank you.
Close but not quite. I wasn't suggesting "that NT was modified to be app. specific to target a narrow purpose (web servers)...". I was suggesting that it had been extended to perform well in the static html subset of this particular, high-profile, area of service -- with an eye on benchmarks rather than, and, possibly, at the expense of, actual user needs. Perhaps that is what you meant as well.
:)
Your point that "MS has a far wider user base to afford making their OS better for just one app. at the sacrifice of other applications." only makes it a greater sin. It does not prove them innocent. Consider their slipping market share for NT in the server arena vs. Linux. This is the kind of advertising that they cannot buy. I would suggest that your logic applies here too -- can they afford to pass up such a chance to prominently display the "superiority" of NT with the disinterested blessing of ZD?
As for your annoyance "that people are coming up with all kinds of excuses instead of facing the facts", which facts did you have in mind? Note that I did not question the facts of the result, only the architectural decisions that contributed to NT winning these particular benchmarks.
On your claim that "This reveals our own denial of reality", do you know of a wide-ranging suite of disparate and concurrent benchmarks that show this NT performance advantage to be more than specific to these two areas? Please, update my reality and share them with me. If you can demonstrate that I am off-base, that these results are not anomalous, that this performance is typical of general, mixed-load, server performance, I'll humbly apologize to both you and Microsoft.
Yes, Kurt, you hit the nail on the head.
/.'ers who could take Linux and Apache and merge Apache into kernel space, compromise everything else, and personally release an OS/Web Server combination that could easily beat NT in Webbench. The same goes for Linux/Samba. What they would have created is an O/S with dedicated application functionality.
There are probably a hundred (a thousand?)
If Micros~1 really wants to beat Linux in general purpose operating system performance, they need to take this approach with *all* other applications. Start by integrating BackOffice, the rest of IIS, IE, Office (why restrict this brilliant strategy to server-only apps? MS should surely strive for the fastest desktop also) and their other in-house applications into the kernel. Then they will FLY!
Of course, *some* of this is actually good from an engineering perspective. Common functions that are essential to the performance of standard and widely used services -- and can be significantly improved by moving them into kernel space -- may justify this approach. Large chunks of application-specific functionality, however, will weigh down non-users of those apps and compromise stability for those who do use it.
Realisticly, what I think MS has done here is create a "benchmark special". They have picked two high-profile applications and integrated them into the kernel a little too intimately so they can claim that NT in general is faster than Linux. The actual usefulness, of the web server speed up anyway, is questionable. Do *any* sites actually serve that many static pages? And, how many of those sites can afford the instability that such approaches bring?
Sorry, Microsoft. What you have created is an NT/Web server/file server combination that is faster than Linux in those same areas. That does not make NT the faster operating system -- and it most certainly doesn't make it the better operating system. Meanwhile, you have pointed out what are now high-profile areas of minor weakness in Linux performance. Those will be fixed -- and fixed correctly. Thanks.
Never assume (racist) malice when simple corporate greed will suffice. How does this case differ from a case where the small site was not owned by minorities? Or is there some actual basis for the racist assumption?
You gotta respect a guy who single-handedly did so much to start the microcomputer industry. He made the computer *and* wrote the BASIC...
Still, to me, the most amazing story from Woz history is that HP wasn't interested in his computer design -- reportedly because he wasn't an engineer. I guess Apple's early success says a great deal about Woz and HP.
They sound like they're just the right size to be called microbots. I want one! It's a shame salon didn't have a picture... anybody seen some closeups of these babies yet?
Yeah... If they implement a brain-dead system like our I think I'll go patent the blinking cursor and the onscreen pointer the day software patents go into effect. By the time their courts figure out there's a little "prior art" problem, they'll be set back 5 years.
Meanwhile, we could improve our trade balances and reduce our software patent problems by exporting some Lawyers!
heh. Never underestimate the popularity of Solitaire! Tour any big bureaucracy in the middle of the workday...
I thought the article was very positive and encouraging to Linux newbies. All in all, a good thing.
If the world allowed to cheat, resurrect "Deep Blue", load it up with the latest and fastest PowerPC chips, and let it think about each move for 24 hours? That's "our" only chance of beating Mr. Kasparov! Of course, I would still bet on Kasparov with 24-hour moves. A committee (voting, no less!) stands no chance at all.
;)
Disclaimer: this opinion is based on the vast (heheh) knowlege of chess I acquired gradually learning to beat "Mr. Jett" as a teenager in the downtown library. But mostly what I learned is that when you regularly start to beat someone, they stop showing up.