Unlike wine, computers do not get more potent with age.
I beg to differ! In the early 70s, toggling in a boot loader on the front panel switches of your PDP-11 was considered mundane and detestable. Today, many collectos live for that very activity. I know because I'm one of them; I'm currently restoring a PDP-11/20 (ca. 1970) so I can do exactly that.
All this threatening language coming from the BSA (I heard it myself on the *radio* yesterday) is a bit interesting, especially the talk of BSA "investigations" or "audits". Aren't they just another corporate (non-government, non-law-enforcement) entity? HTF can they investigate or audit companies unless the companies agree to it?
What would happen if the BSA called my company, and I told the BSA guy to leave me the fuck alone and then hung up?
But the concept of connecting the older machines is insanely dumb.
Not really; compared with the several different hacks out there such as PUTR ad VTserver, direct transfer between the machines is much more elegant and much less troublesome.
I know you can probably get boxes for $50 at yard sales and whatnot. But if Linux doesn't apply, you're telling me I have to find an ancient copy of SCO that ran on a 486 with 8 megs of memory
I think you've got the wrong idea... I said *classic*, not junk, for gods' sake. We're talking about doing this with our PDP-11s and VAXen, not a bunch of old 486s.
A few classic computer collectors I know are working to bring back the UUCP network to enable easier file sharing between classic machines. One of the side projects will be to create "USENET-0" on this network. It has a very simple moderation system: you have to set up UUCP on a classic machine and get people who are already there to peer with you. If you're interested, go to Google and see what you can find.
If you don't like the service... then don't use their service.
I agree. However, you missed the point. The whole reason he's miffed is that he paid for something and didn't get what he expected. Whether his expectations were created by actual advertisement or were his own idea is not presented here.
Either way, he bought a Windows PC that came with a bundle of crudware. He should have expected to pay for something he didn't want.
It seems that Micro$oft, or at least part of Micro$oft, *may* be finally starting to "get it". This might just be a first step towards a bigger goal. Of course, given its recent anti-open-source statements, it seems that there still is quite a bit of intra-company conflict between traditional and progressive ideologies.
Of course, no one has actually considered the following question: is it a Good Thing for them to "get it"?
The problem is not what goes into the binary but what dependencies are there. Device drivers in linux are tied to the kernel. Thats what makes Linux monolithic. Code size and code complexity are two different things. Monolithic design is really out-of-date.
I don't know exactly what you mean by 'dependencies' or 'tied', but I suspect you are wrong. The parts you don't turn on in the configurator aren't compiled in. It's as simple as that.
Also, to use words similar to yours, complexity and design are two different things. Being monolithic or micro does not entail any level of complexity. Both designs can be implemented elegantly/modularly, and indeed both can be totally screwed to hell.
2437470 source lines of code for the Linux kernel... going to collapse under its own weight.... Maybe it's time [to turn] Linux into a true microkernel.
Think for a second about how many of those lines make it past the preprocessor: not many at all. Most of the lines in the kernel are device drivers, and most of those are disabled in any sane configuration.
People will continue to add device drivers, but if you don't use them, you don't see much of a difference in the number of lines you end up acutally compiling.
Changing to a microkernel won't reduce code size appreciably.
In Everquest my main is Saraxi Khal`Ex, a level 30 Erudite enchanter on the Prexus server and officer of Sign of Unity. In the last couple of months, several of the people in my guild have been hyping all over the place about Anarchy Online, talking about how cool it will be. I've also seen OOC chat to that effect several times. I've even seen several guildies leave EQ for good to pursue their fortune with AO. I don't think EQ will die when better things arrive; there will be a lot of converts, but EQ will keep a loyal following (at least enough for Verant to keep servers up) for many years to come.
I'd be willing to bet that the number of "careers... ruined... is vastly outnumbered by the number of people who are gainfully employed every day using Microsoft products.... That's 90-plus percent of the computer-using world.
Answer 0:
So it is OK if only a few lives are ruined? At exactly what ruined-lives/gainfully-employed-person ratio would you begin to fault Micro$oft?
Answer 1:
By your logic, we should also legalize murder. Since 90-plus percent of the people out there would be gainfully employed and in no danger of being murdered, it's OK.
Answer 2:
Yes, Micro$hit is everywhere in computing. 90-plus percent, as you said. But UH-OH, that does not constitute a positive point about them. Indeed, you've just SHOT yourself in the FOOT. They ARE everywhere! They ARE a MONOPOLY and YOU'VE REALLY GOT NO CHOICE IF YOU WANT TO BE A PART OF 90-PLUS PERCENT OF ALL AVAILABLE GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT!! YES! YES! YESSSS!!!!
I always love it when people bring out the "Micro$oft is big and everywhere" argument, thinking that they're so sly. Now, enough of your insolence!
Gates & Co. have learned the real way to take over the world, keep people employed and happy
I'd be willing to bet that the number of happy, employed microserfs is miniscule in comparison to the number of careers and even lives that have been ruined by the Micro$oft Empire's ruthless opression. Every time a small company or individual is trampled underfoot for even thinking about standing up to the giant, every time they buy a government official, and every time Windows crashes in a critical environment, jobs and even lives are lost.
People collect this stuff. Aquariums, VAX bars, door stops, or even (gasp) running them for fun are all common activities for classic computer collectors.
Depending on how old the equipment is, there might be a small army of collectors eager to pick up or have shipped any surplus hardware you may have, at no cost to you. Got a bunch of old 486s? Don't hold your breath. Got an XT or an old 8-bit system? Probably. Got a PDP-11 or a VAX? Hell yeah! For an example, I just hauled a VAX 8600 system from Austin, Texas in a 24-foot Ryder truck to my home, where it now takes up nearly half of the garage.
Note: If you absolutely must turn your mac into a fishtank, VAX into a wet bar, etc., I beg you to *please* make sure that your machine has already been gutted for parts.
If the other guy is hiding behind the wall, figure that out on the server instead of relying on the client... no reason the server couldn't offload this to a 3D card
With our current technology, this is a bad thing to do. First of all, as someone already pointed out, most gamers don't have the budget for a supercomputer to do all that processing. I mean, that is a lot of processing. Secondly, our current idea of gaming graphics engines, 3D APIs, and 3D hardware have no way to do this processing (without some sort of gross hack, and even then the performance would suck tremendously). Everything tries to shovel information at the frame buffer as quickly as possible. By the time you figure out what is in front of what, it's probably already way too late
to have any concept of show or not-show for a particular player (or even polygon).
I'm surprised that no one has put forth this thought (or, at least, no one has gotten it visible when browsing at moderation level 3 or above). I'm not trying to troll here; I think I have an important point.
Red Hat is taking the initiative to broker deals with state legislatures
Brokering deals with the state legislatures!? I hate UCITA as much as the next guy, but it's not worth it, in our fight against UCITA, to advocate corporate control of our government.
Reminds me of a sig I saw the other day: Invest in America. Buy a senator today!
[It] is now an open source effort, with a vision to enable developers to create innovative services and applications
Great! As a programmer, I've always longed for something like that. No matter how hard I or my colleagues have tried, we have not been able to make either services or applications that were at all innovative. I'm glad that these guys are finally doing something about it. No more thinking about these program things that I could write! Now, programmers everywhere will be able to turn the designs that they've had in their heads for the last 60 years and turn them into real programs! I've had this idea for a while about a program that displayes remotely stored pages of what I call 'hypertext'. Maybe I should patent it...
Honestly, these guys are the best people to enable me to proactively leverage my synergies and grow my productivity so that the whole is more than the sum of the parts!
This might be a little off-topic, but it does need repeating:
Please remember that Wind River does not "own" FreeBSD. FreeBSD is still under the control of its committers and core team, the same people as before. Wind River just happens to pay many of those people to do nothing but work on FreeBSD. The biggest blow Wind River could deal to FreeBSD is to terminate those people's employment. Wind River *cannot* run FreeBSD into the ground.
Hahaha! Sorry, No. I'm 22. I'm a full time college student. I have two jobs. Most of my e-mail comes from eBay auctioning and from collecting old computers (which, by the way, is quite hard when you don't have a lot of money to spend). Boy, you had me figured wrong!
I get 100 to 200 messages a day, and usually no spam. Every one of these messages is relevant in some way to the things that I do or like. Many are the communications between myself and people I'm setting up business transactions with. I don't think that the time I spend reading and answering all of this is wasted time in the least bit. In fact, it is only because of e-mail that I'm able to handle all of this in only an hour or two. Let's imagine what my life would be like if all these contacts had to talk to me on the phone. I would basically have to sit by the phone all day to make myself available to take the calls, and also I would have to deal with constant interruptions. With e-mail, I can handle messages when I want to and actually get other work done. Without e-mail, my productivity would be approximately zero.
The main problem being digital records are so much more easily tampered with compared to old paper
Sometimes the answer to your question about how do we do X with technology can be found by remembering the history of technology. In this case, what might be a better long-term storage medium than magnetic or optical media is good 'ole paper tape. Now, some research should probably be done to increase both the durability of the tape material and the density of information stored on it, but it is the best solution I can think of, and probably the easiest to decipher by archaeologists of the far future.
I thought the job of the Secret Service was merely to protect the president. Is this wrong? If so, what exactly is their responsibility? If not, on whose authority did the raid take place, and why was it not the FBI? I'm a little confused here.
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Unlike wine, computers do not get more potent with age.
I beg to differ! In the early 70s, toggling in a boot loader on the front panel switches of your PDP-11 was considered mundane and detestable. Today, many collectos live for that very activity. I know because I'm one of them; I'm currently restoring a PDP-11/20 (ca. 1970) so I can do exactly that.
I'm a FreeBSD user, but I prefer bash over the default tcsh. I use:
PS1='\u@\h\$ '
Pretty standard and boring, I guess, but I'm a minimalist.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Oh, and I meant BSA in the subject, not BSD. I think I've been doing too much flaming today...
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
All this threatening language coming from the BSA (I heard it myself on the *radio* yesterday) is a bit interesting, especially the talk of BSA "investigations" or "audits". Aren't they just another corporate (non-government, non-law-enforcement) entity? HTF can they investigate or audit companies unless the companies agree to it?
What would happen if the BSA called my company, and I told the BSA guy to leave me the fuck alone and then hung up?
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
But the concept of connecting the older machines is insanely dumb.
Not really; compared with the several different hacks out there such as PUTR ad VTserver, direct transfer between the machines is much more elegant and much less troublesome.
I know you can probably get boxes for $50 at yard sales and whatnot. But if Linux doesn't apply, you're telling me I have to find an ancient copy of SCO that ran on a 486 with 8 megs of memory
I think you've got the wrong idea... I said *classic*, not junk, for gods' sake. We're talking about doing this with our PDP-11s and VAXen, not a bunch of old 486s.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
A few classic computer collectors I know are working to bring back the UUCP network to enable easier file sharing between classic machines. One of the side projects will be to create "USENET-0" on this network. It has a very simple moderation system: you have to set up UUCP on a classic machine and get people who are already there to peer with you. If you're interested, go to Google and see what you can find.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
fast boot so you can crash sooner
Hrm. FreeBSD has always booted much faster for me than any version of Windows I've ever run. Man, 4.0-RELEASE was just damn snappy booting.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
If you don't like the service ... then don't use their service.
I agree. However, you missed the point. The whole reason he's miffed is that he paid for something and didn't get what he expected. Whether his expectations were created by actual advertisement or were his own idea is not presented here.
Either way, he bought a Windows PC that came with a bundle of crudware. He should have expected to pay for something he didn't want.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
It seems that Micro$oft, or at least part of Micro$oft, *may* be finally starting to "get it". This might just be a first step towards a bigger goal. Of course, given its recent anti-open-source statements, it seems that there still is quite a bit of intra-company conflict between traditional and progressive ideologies.
Of course, no one has actually considered the following question: is it a Good Thing for them to "get it"?
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
The problem is not what goes into the binary but what dependencies are there. Device drivers in linux are tied to the kernel. Thats what makes Linux monolithic. Code size and code complexity are two different things. Monolithic design is really out-of-date.
I don't know exactly what you mean by 'dependencies' or 'tied', but I suspect you are wrong. The parts you don't turn on in the configurator aren't compiled in. It's as simple as that.
Also, to use words similar to yours, complexity and design are two different things. Being monolithic or micro does not entail any level of complexity. Both designs can be implemented elegantly/modularly, and indeed both can be totally screwed to hell.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Anybody think that they'll actually try to make it protable across all Unices?
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
In Everquest my main is Saraxi Khal`Ex, a level 30 Erudite enchanter on the Prexus server and officer of Sign of Unity. In the last couple of months, several of the people in my guild have been hyping all over the place about Anarchy Online, talking about how cool it will be. I've also seen OOC chat to that effect several times. I've even seen several guildies leave EQ for good to pursue their fortune with AO. I don't think EQ will die when better things arrive; there will be a lot of converts, but EQ will keep a loyal following (at least enough for Verant to keep servers up) for many years to come.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
I'd be willing to bet that the number of "careers ... ruined ... is vastly outnumbered by the number of people who are gainfully employed every day using Microsoft products. ... That's 90-plus percent of the computer-using world.
Answer 0:
So it is OK if only a few lives are ruined? At exactly what ruined-lives/gainfully-employed-person ratio would you begin to fault Micro$oft?
Answer 1:
By your logic, we should also legalize murder. Since 90-plus percent of the people out there would be gainfully employed and in no danger of being murdered, it's OK.
Answer 2:
Yes, Micro$hit is everywhere in computing. 90-plus percent, as you said. But UH-OH, that does not constitute a positive point about them. Indeed, you've just SHOT yourself in the FOOT. They ARE everywhere! They ARE a MONOPOLY and YOU'VE REALLY GOT NO CHOICE IF YOU WANT TO BE A PART OF 90-PLUS PERCENT OF ALL AVAILABLE GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT!! YES! YES! YESSSS!!!!
I always love it when people bring out the "Micro$oft is big and everywhere" argument, thinking that they're so sly. Now, enough of your insolence!
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Gates & Co. have learned the real way to take over the world, keep people employed and happy
I'd be willing to bet that the number of happy, employed microserfs is miniscule in comparison to the number of careers and even lives that have been ruined by the Micro$oft Empire's ruthless opression. Every time a small company or individual is trampled underfoot for even thinking about standing up to the giant, every time they buy a government official, and every time Windows crashes in a critical environment, jobs and even lives are lost.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
People collect this stuff. Aquariums, VAX bars, door stops, or even (gasp) running them for fun are all common activities for classic computer collectors.
Depending on how old the equipment is, there might be a small army of collectors eager to pick up or have shipped any surplus hardware you may have, at no cost to you. Got a bunch of old 486s? Don't hold your breath. Got an XT or an old 8-bit system? Probably. Got a PDP-11 or a VAX? Hell yeah! For an example, I just hauled a VAX 8600 system from Austin, Texas in a 24-foot Ryder truck to my home, where it now takes up nearly half of the garage.
Note: If you absolutely must turn your mac into a fishtank, VAX into a wet bar, etc., I beg you to *please* make sure that your machine has already been gutted for parts.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
If the other guy is hiding behind the wall, figure that out on the server instead of relying on the client ... no reason the server couldn't offload this to a 3D card
With our current technology, this is a bad thing to do. First of all, as someone already pointed out, most gamers don't have the budget for a supercomputer to do all that processing. I mean, that is a lot of processing. Secondly, our current idea of gaming graphics engines, 3D APIs, and 3D hardware have no way to do this processing (without some sort of gross hack, and even then the performance would suck tremendously). Everything tries to shovel information at the frame buffer as quickly as possible. By the time you figure out what is in front of what, it's probably already way too late to have any concept of show or not-show for a particular player (or even polygon).
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
I'm surprised that no one has put forth this thought (or, at least, no one has gotten it visible when browsing at moderation level 3 or above). I'm not trying to troll here; I think I have an important point.
Red Hat is taking the initiative to broker deals with state legislatures
Brokering deals with the state legislatures!? I hate UCITA as much as the next guy, but it's not worth it, in our fight against UCITA, to advocate corporate control of our government.
Reminds me of a sig I saw the other day: Invest in America. Buy a senator today!
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
[It] is now an open source effort, with a vision to enable developers to create innovative services and applications
Great! As a programmer, I've always longed for something like that. No matter how hard I or my colleagues have tried, we have not been able to make either services or applications that were at all innovative. I'm glad that these guys are finally doing something about it. No more thinking about these program things that I could write! Now, programmers everywhere will be able to turn the designs that they've had in their heads for the last 60 years and turn them into real programs! I've had this idea for a while about a program that displayes remotely stored pages of what I call 'hypertext'. Maybe I should patent it...
Honestly, these guys are the best people to enable me to proactively leverage my synergies and grow my productivity so that the whole is more than the sum of the parts!
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
This might be a little off-topic, but it does need repeating:
Please remember that Wind River does not "own" FreeBSD. FreeBSD is still under the control of its committers and core team, the same people as before. Wind River just happens to pay many of those people to do nothing but work on FreeBSD. The biggest blow Wind River could deal to FreeBSD is to terminate those people's employment. Wind River *cannot* run FreeBSD into the ground.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Hahaha! Sorry, No. I'm 22. I'm a full time college student. I have two jobs. Most of my e-mail comes from eBay auctioning and from collecting old computers (which, by the way, is quite hard when you don't have a lot of money to spend). Boy, you had me figured wrong!
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
I get 100 to 200 messages a day, and usually no spam. Every one of these messages is relevant in some way to the things that I do or like. Many are the communications between myself and people I'm setting up business transactions with. I don't think that the time I spend reading and answering all of this is wasted time in the least bit. In fact, it is only because of e-mail that I'm able to handle all of this in only an hour or two. Let's imagine what my life would be like if all these contacts had to talk to me on the phone. I would basically have to sit by the phone all day to make myself available to take the calls, and also I would have to deal with constant interruptions. With e-mail, I can handle messages when I want to and actually get other work done. Without e-mail, my productivity would be approximately zero.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
The main problem being digital records are so much more easily tampered with compared to old paper
Sometimes the answer to your question about how do we do X with technology can be found by remembering the history of technology. In this case, what might be a better long-term storage medium than magnetic or optical media is good 'ole paper tape. Now, some research should probably be done to increase both the durability of the tape material and the density of information stored on it, but it is the best solution I can think of, and probably the easiest to decipher by archaeologists of the far future.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
I thought the job of the Secret Service was merely to protect the president. Is this wrong? If so, what exactly is their responsibility? If not, on whose authority did the raid take place, and why was it not the FBI? I'm a little confused here.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
I live in the OKC metro area (Norman, actually). I have a cable modem. I gets me 2Mbps for $44.95 a month.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)