From an early GNU adopter...
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RMS Turns 50
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· Score: 1
I have used GCC for about 12 years on different platforms. We had to use it first on VMS because Digital charged a fortune for their compiler. Later I used it on Solaris, yes Sun had a very nice development system, but again it cost money then.
Think also of the GCC for DOS that was knocking around. There were also ports to a number of different target systems. If you wanted a native or cross-compiler that could be relatively easily implemented, you went to GCC.
Even if you managed to avoid GCC, there was always "the other Unix editor", emacs which was definitely well known in the Unix world. Maybe the man in the street hadn't heard about this, but GNU and the FSF was well known by people in the computer industry for over ten years. probably the critical point was changing the GPL licence on the C library to LGPL. This made it easy to use GCC in a commercial environment.
Re:That's exactly why it should be called...
on
RMS Turns 50
·
· Score: 1
First, lets just get this bit right, the basic GNU toolchain consists of a compiler, libraries plus binary utilities. This is what Linus used to build Linux. The resulting program isn't bound to the GPL as the C library is LGPL. You will find the GNU toolchain all over the place becaus eof this.
Once you have the kernel plus a basic development tool chain, you need the rest, often referred to as fileutils. Linus used many of GNU's for Linux. However other Unix operating systems have their own, often BSD based. The thing is that without the GNU utilities and toolchain, it would have been much more difficult for Linus to get beyond a naked OS. To take the GNU out of Linux now, would be exceptionally difficult.
Oh and the HURD is working, it's just a lot more complicated to get a microkernel to function well and quickly.
I have never been in the business, but have just heard the horror stories. I had also heard about studio staff being billed to a film that they had never been near.
The Autostrada are ok, but the German Autobahns tend to be better. Remmeber there are still large bits of the Autobahn network that are unrestricted so people are going along at 140+ MPH.
The road surface is better than a runway, but they don't use cats eyes to keep people in lane.
The main constraint on driving in Italy is the ability to sound the horn and give the finger. I hope their technology can cope with these required signals.
From what I understand, the course is at best a track, and then with obstacles in it. Driving over such territory is very much more difficult then driving along a road which a) has a nice contrast to the surround land and b) has lane markings. Will they mark the course at all for this one? If they do, it would probably be poles.
To do all of this at 25MPH, is definitely not easy. A human driver has to slow down when crossing rough country. Certainly 30MPH over rough tracks is a high speed for a person let alone an autonomous vehicle.
From other sources, I heard that Farscape costs about $1.5m per episode to make. Sci Fi paid their $660K which was their share for first US rights. Henson retained rerun and DVD rights. Actually, I really don't understand Sci-Fi there becasue with a good series, you pick up the money on the reruns, not the first showing.
All the fans have to do is to finance the short-fall, but that is a lot of cash. Some syndicators have had success with the series, i.e. the BBC and may be persuaded to pay a little more, others screwed up badly (German TV) by poor scheduling so aren't even interested in Series 2.
Sure they have a convention scene and so on, but the series doesn't really take itself too seriously. This means that it has a fan base, but they aren't into it religiously as some trekkies are.
If you make a film, TV program or whatever through a studio, you can soon find yourself nicked and dimed with facilities costs.
You decide to use that bit of stock footage of LA, *then* you find that it is a recurring requiring royalties per showing. Maybe it isn't much but it all adds up. This also why nobody wnats to be in on percentage points of the profit, just of the gross.
If you own/produce the show, you can manage the costs a lot better with tight control on the recurring costs. Then even if you don't make money on the first showing, you can pick it up on the reruns/DVDs or whatever.
This is one of the things about Farscape, with two fairly strong female parts, Aeryn and Chiana, this seems to be SciFi for the female viewer, and seems to have a better demographic in that sense than trek or sg-1.
When Farscape in the UK ended on the cliff-hanger, they put up the usual "to be continued". The BBC announcer did a voice over explaining that the show had been canceled, directing viewers who wanted the show coninued to the BBC's own Farscape site and www.savefarscape.com.
It was somewhat like being slashdotted. Even the bbc's site, which is reserved for fan-based discussion forums was taken out by the number of new visitors. Savefarscape had no prior warning and their forum database and site collapsed too.
Whilst everyone here is aware of the/. effect where a large number of people are directed towards a site, this one of the few times (other than a major disaster) that it has occurred elsewhere.
According to the article that you cite, there is a possibility of keeping a second Soyuz docked as an emergency earth return vehicle so increasing the total capacity to 6. There are some gotchas, and I don't know how they would keep everything docked. There should always be space for a third soyuz vehicle to allow for changeover as each capsule is only supposed to stay up there for a certain period and then they are rotated.
Yes, others have already noted too that beer was a somewhat more hygenic alternative to water.
I know that samples of the yeast have been found together with some illustrations of the brewing process and a beer beased on this has been brewed as an experiment in recent times. Personally, I can only hope that it tastes better than average modern Egyptian beer.
I can see problems with the smart-card proximity key. Whilst there is no problem with using a gun on the range, it is more difficult for deence against intruders at home (where did I leave that frelling key?).
OTOH, it would prevent problems where intruders or children get hold of weapons. If it reduces the number of accidents then I'm in favour.
Well unless the venusians were involved, the archeologists have a fairly good idea how to construct a pyramid using the tech that they had available at the time, esentially wood, rope, water and the inclined plane. Oh, I forgot the last point, a lot of labour.
There is a fascinating area of archeology where a prof or two takes a group of students to build things varying from bits of Stonehenge to the pyramids. The worst part about it is that people didn't have health and safety regulations the first time round and some of the actions are more than a little dodgy. In ancient times these would have been directly supervised by the master masons who weren't going to get their hands trapped by 50 tons of stone.
The rpproblem is that nobody really ahs these skills now and it can take some working out how to do the final movement of such stones without Daniken's antigravity rays and not to put the students at risk.
Think of this as a way of keeping people busy *and* paid. Farming was a lot worse than now because of the reliance on the flood. The government would tax the people and then use the taxes for paying the farmer who wanted to work. If you didn't want to work, you weren't drafted, its just that you still paid the taxes and you had better have enough money to last through the flood season.
As for slavery in general, it wasn't all bad until people started making raiding parties specifically to acquire people for use/sale. The alternative to enslaving a defeated enemy was often either death or mutilation. Whilst far from perfect, slavery was a better alternative.
Light alcoholic beverages were often considered better to drink than water (the alcohol acts as a mild disinfectant). In Britain, children were given watered down beer as late as victorian times. Yeast residue is also a good source of vitamins.
VMS has a lot of privileges, the user or an image may be assigned particular privileges which they can then subset when they don't need it.
Access modes is how the system is structured. There are two main modes, each with two sub modes. In the system space, which is common to all processes, there is kernel mode where the OS runs and exec mode where RMS (Record Management System) and databases run. They use the common nature of exec mode for global buffer management between processes. In per-process space we have executive mode and user mode. Exec mode is where the shell runs, and use mode is where most normal programs run.
Normal users do not write stuff that runs at elevated access modes. They require privileges to enter elevated access modes which they normally do not have. However, it is possible to enter an elevated mode through a declared entry point (think call gates in the x86). Arguments to these calls are checked for address violations in the space from which the system service was called. For example if you want to read something into a buffer, and you call from user mode then the buffer must be user mode writeable. Areas of system space are only accessible to a user if the system sets the protection accordingly.
The main benefit is that it is extremely difficult to get out of user mode except through defined entry points. However, if you particularly want to do things inside exec mode or the kernel, you can extend the system API with your own loadable service routines or you can enter the system with a change-mode-to kernel API call, where you stay in your program but now run with full access to the kerenl address space until you return. Naturally such a call is protected with its own privilege (CMKRNL). To write some thing that runs in exec or kernel mode requires more skills because although the call list will have been address checked, the references will not.
This means VMS is tight and with excellent availability. The various checks as you cross address spaces means that on any given system, Unix will always run faster, but with lower availability.
Actually the metre was originally defined as a part of an arc travelling from the North Pole to the equator via Paris. In more recent times, it has been defined as the distance that light travels in a vacum in a certain time period (specified by caesium oscillations). The capacity definition follows the length definition.
Sure, castles last a long time. People still love 'em. Have you tried living in one? They are very ill suited to us in so many ways... Bringing them up to code
I can't speak for castles, but I have a relative live in a 500 year old cottage.
You will find that in many places where there are such places, there is also a list kept by the state of buildings that are considered historical and are 'protected'. It is easier not to do something to such a listed building than to do it because there are many exemptions. The main issue is you want to run a listed building as a guesthouse or a hotel. In the UK, you *must* have fire precautions and medieval rest rooms (a hole in the battlements) are definitely 'out'. However, building preservation has priority which leads to the situation where any changes to the construction must be first approved by the state as not injuring the fabric of the building before you can go forward.
This is a bridge built to a design by Sir Issac Newton using wood and no fastenings, much like the Japanese construction. It is kind of interesting as there was a;most no contact with the west in those days and certainly none with England.
The problem is that some of the wood needed replacement and a professor was curious how it was made. It turns out they didn't fully document the process and it now has a few fastenings in to keep things together,
If you google around, you will find that although the pyramids were a massive 'public-works' project, the workforce were farmers who had nothing to do during the flood season. The workers even received beer as a refreshment.
Maybe someone was working for Verisign and didn't like the reference there. However, whoever is the root, the original point is valid as who do you really wan to trust as a CA and why. This is a valid question. Many of the other wauestions raised
AFAIK, moderations as over or underated can't be caught in meta-mod, so maybe someone didn't want their mod changed. Yes, maybe mods should be forced to give a reason to say why they put a particular moderation on a post. I too was curious about the Flaimbait mod. What next, Troll?
Slashdot Mirror
Think also of the GCC for DOS that was knocking around. There were also ports to a number of different target systems. If you wanted a native or cross-compiler that could be relatively easily implemented, you went to GCC.
Even if you managed to avoid GCC, there was always "the other Unix editor", emacs which was definitely well known in the Unix world. Maybe the man in the street hadn't heard about this, but GNU and the FSF was well known by people in the computer industry for over ten years. probably the critical point was changing the GPL licence on the C library to LGPL. This made it easy to use GCC in a commercial environment.
Once you have the kernel plus a basic development tool chain, you need the rest, often referred to as fileutils. Linus used many of GNU's for Linux. However other Unix operating systems have their own, often BSD based. The thing is that without the GNU utilities and toolchain, it would have been much more difficult for Linus to get beyond a naked OS. To take the GNU out of Linux now, would be exceptionally difficult.
Oh and the HURD is working, it's just a lot more complicated to get a microkernel to function well and quickly.
I have never been in the business, but have just heard the horror stories. I had also heard about studio staff being billed to a film that they had never been near.
It is interesting to see the DoD defining "unmanned" in this way.
The road surface is better than a runway, but they don't use cats eyes to keep people in lane.
The main constraint on driving in Italy is the ability to sound the horn and give the finger. I hope their technology can cope with these required signals.
To do all of this at 25MPH, is definitely not easy. A human driver has to slow down when crossing rough country. Certainly 30MPH over rough tracks is a high speed for a person let alone an autonomous vehicle.
All the fans have to do is to finance the short-fall, but that is a lot of cash. Some syndicators have had success with the series, i.e. the BBC and may be persuaded to pay a little more, others screwed up badly (German TV) by poor scheduling so aren't even interested in Series 2.
Sure they have a convention scene and so on, but the series doesn't really take itself too seriously. This means that it has a fan base, but they aren't into it religiously as some trekkies are.
You decide to use that bit of stock footage of LA, *then* you find that it is a recurring requiring royalties per showing. Maybe it isn't much but it all adds up. This also why nobody wnats to be in on percentage points of the profit, just of the gross.
If you own/produce the show, you can manage the costs a lot better with tight control on the recurring costs. Then even if you don't make money on the first showing, you can pick it up on the reruns/DVDs or whatever.
It was somewhat like being slashdotted. Even the bbc's site, which is reserved for fan-based discussion forums was taken out by the number of new visitors. Savefarscape had no prior warning and their forum database and site collapsed too.
Whilst everyone here is aware of the /. effect where a large number of people are directed towards a site, this one of the few times (other than a major disaster) that it has occurred elsewhere.
Yes, mud probably helped a lot but so does wood, they reckon that it was wooden rollers that carried the main stones from Stonehenge.
According to the article that you cite, there is a possibility of keeping a second Soyuz docked as an emergency earth return vehicle so increasing the total capacity to 6. There are some gotchas, and I don't know how they would keep everything docked. There should always be space for a third soyuz vehicle to allow for changeover as each capsule is only supposed to stay up there for a certain period and then they are rotated.
I know that samples of the yeast have been found together with some illustrations of the brewing process and a beer beased on this has been brewed as an experiment in recent times. Personally, I can only hope that it tastes better than average modern Egyptian beer.
OTOH, it would prevent problems where intruders or children get hold of weapons. If it reduces the number of accidents then I'm in favour.
There is a fascinating area of archeology where a prof or two takes a group of students to build things varying from bits of Stonehenge to the pyramids. The worst part about it is that people didn't have health and safety regulations the first time round and some of the actions are more than a little dodgy. In ancient times these would have been directly supervised by the master masons who weren't going to get their hands trapped by 50 tons of stone.
The rpproblem is that nobody really ahs these skills now and it can take some working out how to do the final movement of such stones without Daniken's antigravity rays and not to put the students at risk.
As for slavery in general, it wasn't all bad until people started making raiding parties specifically to acquire people for use/sale. The alternative to enslaving a defeated enemy was often either death or mutilation. Whilst far from perfect, slavery was a better alternative.
Light alcoholic beverages were often considered better to drink than water (the alcohol acts as a mild disinfectant). In Britain, children were given watered down beer as late as victorian times. Yeast residue is also a good source of vitamins.
Access modes is how the system is structured. There are two main modes, each with two sub modes. In the system space, which is common to all processes, there is kernel mode where the OS runs and exec mode where RMS (Record Management System) and databases run. They use the common nature of exec mode for global buffer management between processes. In per-process space we have executive mode and user mode. Exec mode is where the shell runs, and use mode is where most normal programs run.
Normal users do not write stuff that runs at elevated access modes. They require privileges to enter elevated access modes which they normally do not have. However, it is possible to enter an elevated mode through a declared entry point (think call gates in the x86). Arguments to these calls are checked for address violations in the space from which the system service was called. For example if you want to read something into a buffer, and you call from user mode then the buffer must be user mode writeable. Areas of system space are only accessible to a user if the system sets the protection accordingly.
The main benefit is that it is extremely difficult to get out of user mode except through defined entry points. However, if you particularly want to do things inside exec mode or the kernel, you can extend the system API with your own loadable service routines or you can enter the system with a change-mode-to kernel API call, where you stay in your program but now run with full access to the kerenl address space until you return. Naturally such a call is protected with its own privilege (CMKRNL). To write some thing that runs in exec or kernel mode requires more skills because although the call list will have been address checked, the references will not.
This means VMS is tight and with excellent availability. The various checks as you cross address spaces means that on any given system, Unix will always run faster, but with lower availability.
Actually the metre was originally defined as a part of an arc travelling from the North Pole to the equator via Paris. In more recent times, it has been defined as the distance that light travels in a vacum in a certain time period (specified by caesium oscillations). The capacity definition follows the length definition.
You will find that in many places where there are such places, there is also a list kept by the state of buildings that are considered historical and are 'protected'. It is easier not to do something to such a listed building than to do it because there are many exemptions. The main issue is you want to run a listed building as a guesthouse or a hotel. In the UK, you *must* have fire precautions and medieval rest rooms (a hole in the battlements) are definitely 'out'. However, building preservation has priority which leads to the situation where any changes to the construction must be first approved by the state as not injuring the fabric of the building before you can go forward.
The problem is that some of the wood needed replacement and a professor was curious how it was made. It turns out they didn't fully document the process and it now has a few fastenings in to keep things together,
If you google around, you will find that although the pyramids were a massive 'public-works' project, the workforce were farmers who had nothing to do during the flood season. The workers even received beer as a refreshment.
AFAIK, moderations as over or underated can't be caught in meta-mod, so maybe someone didn't want their mod changed. Yes, maybe mods should be forced to give a reason to say why they put a particular moderation on a post. I too was curious about the Flaimbait mod. What next, Troll?