Can I also point out these terms only apply if the product is made publicly available. So:
Stallman: If you use my code in your code, and sell it, presumably for profit you have to make your source code available 'Old-style' software company: That's not good enough. We want to sell your code too, but you can't look at ours, and if you do you're a pirate.
It wasn't the greatest example, but microkernel modules can be anything, and are generally low level. For example, while Linux has module interfaces for supporting different file systems, there's no way you can load a module for a real-time scheduler. Any scheduler changes (and there are a lot of people interested in Linux real-time scheduling) would have to be made in the actual scheduler code itself. Similarly, things like memory management which are typically low level monolithic parts of the Linux kernel could each be in their own module. This is what the Hurd is - lots of processes running providing the OS services.
Linux modules, on the other hand, have more in common with device drivers than microkernel architectures. Which is the way Linux wants it, of course...
Looking back at the run of the original PlayStation, it's very clear that the games have become better and better visually as time has progressed, and the programmers have learned to better utilise the hardware and it's abilities. I only hope for Sony's sake that they can do that again.
Of course, this always happens with console platforms. For example, compare
Early C64 games (Commodore Soccer) with later games (Uridium)
Early Amiga games (Marble Madness) with later ones (Elfmania, Stardust)
Early SNES games (Mario) with later ones (Donkey Kong Country)
Early Saturn games (Daytona) with later ones (Panzer Dragoon)
Early PS games (Destruction Derby) with later ones (Gran Turismo)
Early Nintendo64 games (Mario64) with later ones (Zelda)
As developers familiarise themselves and build up/optimize their platform skills, the amount of performance they wrench out can be amazing. You should have seen the Spectrum port of Chase HQ - it's unbelievable how much they crammed into that crappy little box!
The real deciding factor tends to be the gap in technologies at deployment. The most successful consoles had a combination of far superior technology and good early games. That's why the SNES killed the Genesis, and the Playstation killed the Saturn. N64 was hampered by a late arrival and fairly insignificant graphical advances. More pointedly, the Sega 32-bit upgrade didn't really offer much above the SNES so it flopped. So the question is - how much better (tech wise) is the PS/2. I can't really say - initially it looked like the tech would blow everything out of the water, but now I'm not so sure. All I know is, if it flops, there goes another victim of the RAMBUS touch of death.:)
I'm surprised no one's mentioned that you already can read SSL pages in Mozilla, by installing the Personal Security Manager. It's an XP thingy, so you just need to start Mozilla with write privileges, then visit the website:
and click on the Install Personal Security Manager. Then you can do all your on-line banking and shopping and stuff. I've tried it on the latest nightly build and it works a charm.
Can't they just make an e-mail client that works? Don't they know that writing network software that analyses the e-mail you send just makes everyone suspicious?
Hmmm...this reminds me of an Amiga story from way back. Do you remember Star Trek IV (or maybe V), where they had to save the whales. Scotty, looking a bit whale-like himself at this stage, comes down to earth and finds himself having to use the "primitive" interface on an old Mac LC, and whizzes through a bunch of stuff.
Well anyway, it turns out the graphics producers of the film were big Amiga fans, and were trying to get an Amiga there instead. They contacted Commodore, who wouldn't supply a unit, then found they couldn't track one down in the stores due to poor distribution. In the end, they approached Apple, who promptly sent a computer and technician down to help out with the scene. And that, dear readers, is how the Amiga died (in general).
I'd like to add that Microsoft is right to claim innovation. Innovation is not invention. Look it up. Innovation is ABOUT stealing others' ideas and using them in a "better" way. And in this business, "better" = "more popular" because that means more money, and money is what business is all about. If MS was able to steal bits and pieces of other companies and make more money than the idea's originator had, then that is, by business definitions, innovation.
I took your advice and looked it up on the on-line Merriam-Webster dictionary:
Main Entry: innovation 1 : the introduction of something new 2 : a new idea, method, or device : NOVELTY
MS fails on the first count as you assert innovation is not invention. The closest they have come to introducing something new has been through acquisitions of other companies.
I suppose that you could argue they formulated an "innovation" that falls under category 2, with their "new" idea to study a competitor's ideas, use their superior capitalization to clone, Microsoft-ize the technology (branding, bloating, making it interoperate only with MS products) and go to market, undercutting said competitor (or, more commonly, purchase competitor and tech, Microsoft-ize and market). I, think, however, I found a more appropriate word for this:
Main Entry: exploit Pronunciation: ik-'sploit, 'ek-" Function: transitive verb Date: 1838 ... 2 : to make use of meanly or unjustly for one's own advantage
BSODi - for the OS division (in the hope people trying to order a decent OS from BSDi will confuse their order and get Win2000 instead)
Clippyosoft - for the apps division, all of which feature the ubiquitous assistant "innovation" which becomes the official company mascot/logo. I wonder how long they'll last...
Richard, you are known for always taking the hard line for free (libre) software, and your integrity in representing this cause is unquestionable. Your statements pro-free software leave no room for leniency towards even partially proprietary solutions. I would like to know if you view your role as a crusader towards a practically achievable goal of all software being free, or as a hardline advocate of free software to temper the hardline proprietary advocates?
If you read the press releases or had followed the whole NVidia thing at all, you would know that NVidia is co-developing it's OpenGL support with SGI and VA Linux, two big companies with acknowledged Linux technical know-how. But there have not been any new announcements for at least the past month or two, which is especially annoying to TNT2 owners such as myself, who upgraded to XFree86 4.0 in anticipation of an imminent release. Giving an ETA would at least give me something to look forward to, while as it is I can't seen an end in sight:(
I have been forced to do all my OpenGL programming under windows, simply because getting decent framerates under Linux for the stuff I'm doing is impossible. To give you an idea of how bad NVidia's current drivers are, I find software rendering with Mesa under XF4 seems occasionally faster. When the initial driver announcement was made, I wrote a grateful e-mail to NVidia and forked out >$250US for a brand new TNT2 card, more than I've ever spent on a single computer component in my life. One year later I'm kicking myself for doing so. Even if their implementation is faster, I have been stuck with a substandard OpenGL implementation for a year. If I'd bought a cheaper card with equivalent OpenGL muscle (such as, say, a Voodoo3 2000) I'd have more money to spend on the next generation cards.
My next card's gonna be a Voodoo baby! NVidia, you suck.
I'm guessing the linux version is in that directory too, you'll just have to figure out the filename.
Some more info about the leaked beta...
on
Netscape 6
·
· Score: 4
A couple of other things about the install I forgot to point out:
(as I mentioned earlier) Sun's JRE for Java 2 is included. This takes up 7.8MB by itself, so the 5.5MB figure quoted in the article is for the browser itself.
The browser comes with the Shockwave/Flash plug-in.
The installation procedure (at this stage) does not let you choose which Netscape components you want to install (ie you can't leave out the integrated parts, like the instant messenger, the mailer, the newsreader and the composer).
The AIM buddy list is one of the sidebar tabs now, along with (dysfunctional) newsfeeds from cnn.coma and reuters, and stocks.
There is no theme selector in the preferences panel. I hear latest Mozilla snapshots do have a functional theme selector built-in.
The URL about:mozilla doesn't do anything:(
The back and forward buttons don't have a drop down history list (it's back to using the Go menu a la Netscape 3.0) I'm sure this will be implemented though, as it is in IE5.
PS: It's interesting that they've dropped the "Communicator" title too.
The JDK included with this beta version (Sun's JRE for Java2, from the about page in Netscape) takes 7.8MB alone. On top of that they have bundled a separate application called Net2Phone that must take up at least a meg or two. In total the download was 13.xMB, so the actual browser/mail/news client (compressed) takes around 5-6MB.
It is now actually integrated into the browser. In the launch panel (where the Composer, Mail, Newsgroups, Navigator icons are) there is a new icon for the messenger. It pops up a window that uses the Gecko widgets, so I assume the whole component is integrated (I never use AIM, so didn't go any further).
I downloaded Netscape 6 earlier today from a URL posted on ars technica and have been using it to browse all day. Contrary to the notice at mozillazine.org, this is actually branded a Netscape 6 beta (Preview release) and has a few changes over the Mozilla branch snapshots (well, at least the last one I downloaded around 10 days ago). Since I couldn't find a Linux version, I am using the Win32 release.
It installed relatively painlessly with InstallShield (no restart required).
The cool stuff is it includes a Java 2 virtual machine licensed from Sun. I've tried a few java enabled pages today, and everything's worked fine on this relatively slow computer, at a comparable rate to MS's virtual machine.
SSL is enabled, so on-line shopping works well. The widgets don't feel nearly as "glitchy", especially the side toolbar. Dialogs are cleaner and closer to Netscape 4.7's. Page updates are as fast as recent Mozilla snapshots, if not more so, and easily comparable to IE5 on the same machine. Rendering speed is (subjectively) up there with Opera. And the new Netscape throbber really kicks ass. The memory footprint seems to be much smaller too, because I'm able to open a few windows without the usual disk grinding I had before.
The bad stuff - they still haven't fixed the button placement in the top toolbar. Grrrr...this is really ugly (but functionally irrelevant I should point out). No URL auto-completion. AOL have bundled some crappy Net2Phone application, and built in AIM to the browser. If these had been left out, I'm sure the 13MB download size would be significantly reduced (ie the bloat is not appreciated). And while I don't mind the general look of the Gecko widgets, I think the flat grey menus need at least a little sprucing up.
BTW, I'm not complaining. I actually used Communicator 4.x betas, so I realise that a lot of the final functionality will be fixed for the final release. It's disappointing the number of people who complain that Mozilla is unstable and not feature-complete. Well duh, it's a pre-release isn't it? The other frequent comment that bugs me is "Why Netscape 6 and not 5?" Well to the average consumer (and bear in mind Netscape is being produced by AOL for consumption by their user base, as the inclusion of the AIM messenger attests) version numbers are as good a way as any to compare software packages. Psychologically, a Netscape 5 release would imply a lagging of technology, considering IE5.5 is just around the corner. It's pretty obvious to me that this is a case of keeping up with the Jones's.
I should also warn to be wary of downloading this from the link at betanews because it appeared to link to a 4.7 release of Communicator. Use the direct link at arstechnica instead (if it's still up).
In the multitrack HD recording area, Paul Barton-Davies is working a on a promising looking application called Ardour, developed synchronously with the ALSA RME Digi96 driver. This looks like the beginning of Pro Audio sound support under Linux, and we all know it only takes one application to get the ball rolling:)
I took this course last year and have to agree that for educational purposes Minix is a better choice. A strong point in it's favour is that you have an excellent textbook with an (almost) full source listing, so you can study the actual code while reading the textbook. The other advantage is that Minix implements the described OS algorithms in the most straightforward possible way. A beginner would be confused sifting through the Linux source when faced with the various assembler optimization tricks and hardware workarounds in there to speed up performance, and this detracts from the basics you're trying to teach.
The other major factor I think of that favours Minix is that the codebase is completely stable, and has been for a long time. While it may have been at the root of the dispute between him and Torvalds, Tanenbaum's insistence on keeping the feature-set small enough to run on legacy hardware has made the code much more easily navigable and instructive. Having said that, comparing and contrasting the two would be valuable towards an overall understanding of the topic.
The only thing annoying about Minix is that it didn't run under VMware at the time (v1.0), so when programming kernel patches you had to resort to using bochs in the code-test-debug cycle. Setting up bochs at home was a real pain, and it still ran painfully slowly.
I don't think there is any book that fully documents in detail the workings of the Linux kernel like Tanenbaum does Minix; the rate that the kernel is evolving probably makes this a futile exercise. I do recall a thick book in the University library that covered the workings of a BSD kernel (NetBSD?), which would be handy in a course such as this, but not the title:(.
While interesting, I think the perspective of the OS-X GUI treated pretty superficial in this story. Ars Technica carried an excellent in-depth look at not just the interface, but the underlying technologies that make OS-X an attractive proposition for even die-hard Mac haters like myself. Something like the Quartz technology described needs to start being implemented under Linux to stay competitive over the next few years.
Daniel.
Re:What do you mean "when it comes out"?
on
Free Solaris 8
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· Score: 1
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Thanks, that's exactly what I meant. I have nothing against Macs, just the people who put the blinders on and cannot look at the facts objectively.
:)
Cheers
Can I also point out these terms only apply if the product is made publicly available. So:
Stallman: If you use my code in your code, and sell it, presumably for profit you have to make your source code available
'Old-style' software company: That's not good enough. We want to sell your code too, but you can't look at ours, and if you do you're a pirate.
Amen to that. If I hear one more Mac *fanatic* crow about Photoshop results I know where to point them.
don't forget 12 monkeys.
It wasn't the greatest example, but microkernel modules can be anything, and are generally low level. For example, while Linux has module interfaces for supporting different file systems, there's no way you can load a module for a real-time scheduler. Any scheduler changes (and there are a lot of people interested in Linux real-time scheduling) would have to be made in the actual scheduler code itself. Similarly, things like memory management which are typically low level monolithic parts of the Linux kernel could each be in their own module. This is what the Hurd is - lots of processes running providing the OS services.
Linux modules, on the other hand, have more in common with device drivers than microkernel architectures. Which is the way Linux wants it, of course...
If someone wrote a driver to reinterpret normal keyboarding as chorded, that would be a cool hack. Does anyone know if just xmodmap could do this?
Daniel.
Looking back at the run of the original PlayStation, it's very clear that the games have become better and better visually as time has progressed, and the programmers have learned to better utilise the hardware and it's abilities. I only hope for Sony's sake that they can do that again.
Of course, this always happens with console platforms. For example, compare
As developers familiarise themselves and build up/optimize their platform skills, the amount of performance they wrench out can be amazing. You should have seen the Spectrum port of Chase HQ - it's unbelievable how much they crammed into that crappy little box!
The real deciding factor tends to be the gap in technologies at deployment. The most successful consoles had a combination of far superior technology and good early games. That's why the SNES killed the Genesis, and the Playstation killed the Saturn. N64 was hampered by a late arrival and fairly insignificant graphical advances. More pointedly, the Sega 32-bit upgrade didn't really offer much above the SNES so it flopped. So the question is - how much better (tech wise) is the PS/2. I can't really say - initially it looked like the tech would blow everything out of the water, but now I'm not so sure. All I know is, if it flops, there goes another victim of the RAMBUS touch of death. :)
I'm surprised no one's mentioned that you already can read SSL pages in Mozilla, by installing the Personal Security Manager. It's an XP thingy, so you just need to start Mozilla with write privileges, then visit the website:
http://docs.iplanet.com/docs/manuals/psm/psm-mo
and click on the Install Personal Security Manager. Then you can do all your on-line banking and shopping and stuff. I've tried it on the latest nightly build and it works a charm.
Can't they just make an e-mail client that works? Don't they know that writing network software that analyses the e-mail you send just makes everyone suspicious?
Hmmm...this reminds me of an Amiga story from way back. Do you remember Star Trek IV (or maybe V), where they had to save the whales. Scotty, looking a bit whale-like himself at this stage, comes down to earth and finds himself having to use the "primitive" interface on an old Mac LC, and whizzes through a bunch of stuff.
Well anyway, it turns out the graphics producers of the film were big Amiga fans, and were trying to get an Amiga there instead. They contacted Commodore, who wouldn't supply a unit, then found they couldn't track one down in the stores due to poor distribution. In the end, they approached Apple, who promptly sent a computer and technician down to help out with the scene. And that, dear readers, is how the Amiga died (in general).
Dan.
I took your advice and looked it up on the on-line Merriam-Webster dictionary:
Main Entry: innovation
1 : the introduction of something new
2 : a new idea, method, or device : NOVELTY
MS fails on the first count as you assert innovation is not invention. The closest they have come to introducing something new has been through acquisitions of other companies.
I suppose that you could argue they formulated an "innovation" that falls under category 2, with their "new" idea to study a competitor's ideas, use their superior capitalization to clone, Microsoft-ize the technology (branding, bloating, making it interoperate only with MS products) and go to market, undercutting said competitor (or, more commonly, purchase competitor and tech, Microsoft-ize and market). I, think, however, I found a more appropriate word for this:
Main Entry: exploit
...
Pronunciation: ik-'sploit, 'ek-"
Function: transitive verb
Date: 1838
2 : to make use of meanly or unjustly for one's own advantage
BSODi - for the OS division (in the hope people trying to order a decent OS from BSDi will confuse their order and get Win2000 instead)
Clippyosoft - for the apps division, all of which feature the ubiquitous assistant "innovation" which becomes the official company mascot/logo. I wonder how long they'll last...
How does the embrace of Linux at SCO affect project Monterrey? Can we expect to see Project Monterrey components merged with Linux?
Richard, you are known for always taking the hard line for free (libre) software, and your integrity in representing this cause is unquestionable. Your statements pro-free software leave no room for leniency towards even partially proprietary solutions. I would like to know if you view your role as a crusader towards a practically achievable goal of all software being free, or as a hardline advocate of free software to temper the hardline proprietary advocates?
If you read the press releases or had followed the whole NVidia thing at all, you would know that NVidia is co-developing it's OpenGL support with SGI and VA Linux, two big companies with acknowledged Linux technical know-how. But there have not been any new announcements for at least the past month or two, which is especially annoying to TNT2 owners such as myself, who upgraded to XFree86 4.0 in anticipation of an imminent release. Giving an ETA would at least give me something to look forward to, while as it is I can't seen an end in sight :(
I have been forced to do all my OpenGL programming under windows, simply because getting decent framerates under Linux for the stuff I'm doing is impossible. To give you an idea of how bad NVidia's current drivers are, I find software rendering with Mesa under XF4 seems occasionally faster. When the initial driver announcement was made, I wrote a grateful e-mail to NVidia and forked out >$250US for a brand new TNT2 card, more than I've ever spent on a single computer component in my life. One year later I'm kicking myself for doing so. Even if their implementation is faster, I have been stuck with a substandard OpenGL implementation for a year. If I'd bought a cheaper card with equivalent OpenGL muscle (such as, say, a Voodoo3 2000) I'd have more money to spend on the next generation cards.
My next card's gonna be a Voodoo baby! NVidia, you suck.
Daniel.
Who would have though it would end like this :)
Get it while you can :)
t scapeSetup.exe
ftp://lvftp.netscape.com/pub/blind/netscape6/Ne
(deliberately not hyperlinked)
I'm guessing the linux version is in that directory too, you'll just have to figure out the filename.
A couple of other things about the install I forgot to point out:
:(
(as I mentioned earlier) Sun's JRE for Java 2 is included. This takes up 7.8MB by itself, so the 5.5MB figure quoted in the article is for the browser itself.
The browser comes with the Shockwave/Flash plug-in.
The installation procedure (at this stage) does not let you choose which Netscape components you want to install (ie you can't leave out the integrated parts, like the instant messenger, the mailer, the newsreader and the composer).
The AIM buddy list is one of the sidebar tabs now, along with (dysfunctional) newsfeeds from cnn.coma and reuters, and stocks.
There is no theme selector in the preferences panel. I hear latest Mozilla snapshots do have a functional theme selector built-in.
The URL about:mozilla doesn't do anything
The back and forward buttons don't have a drop down history list (it's back to using the Go menu a la Netscape 3.0) I'm sure this will be implemented though, as it is in IE5.
PS: It's interesting that they've dropped the "Communicator" title too.
The JDK included with this beta version (Sun's JRE for Java2, from the about page in Netscape) takes 7.8MB alone. On top of that they have bundled a separate application called Net2Phone that must take up at least a meg or two. In total the download was 13.xMB, so the actual browser/mail/news client (compressed) takes around 5-6MB.
Daniel.
It is now actually integrated into the browser. In the launch panel (where the Composer, Mail, Newsgroups, Navigator icons are) there is a new icon for the messenger. It pops up a window that uses the Gecko widgets, so I assume the whole component is integrated (I never use AIM, so didn't go any further).
Daniel.
It installed relatively painlessly with InstallShield (no restart required).
The cool stuff is it includes a Java 2 virtual machine licensed from Sun. I've tried a few java enabled pages today, and everything's worked fine on this relatively slow computer, at a comparable rate to MS's virtual machine.
SSL is enabled, so on-line shopping works well. The widgets don't feel nearly as "glitchy", especially the side toolbar. Dialogs are cleaner and closer to Netscape 4.7's. Page updates are as fast as recent Mozilla snapshots, if not more so, and easily comparable to IE5 on the same machine. Rendering speed is (subjectively) up there with Opera. And the new Netscape throbber really kicks ass. The memory footprint seems to be much smaller too, because I'm able to open a few windows without the usual disk grinding I had before.
The bad stuff - they still haven't fixed the button placement in the top toolbar. Grrrr...this is really ugly (but functionally irrelevant I should point out). No URL auto-completion. AOL have bundled some crappy Net2Phone application, and built in AIM to the browser. If these had been left out, I'm sure the 13MB download size would be significantly reduced (ie the bloat is not appreciated). And while I don't mind the general look of the Gecko widgets, I think the flat grey menus need at least a little sprucing up.
BTW, I'm not complaining. I actually used Communicator 4.x betas, so I realise that a lot of the final functionality will be fixed for the final release. It's disappointing the number of people who complain that Mozilla is unstable and not feature-complete. Well duh, it's a pre-release isn't it? The other frequent comment that bugs me is "Why Netscape 6 and not 5?" Well to the average consumer (and bear in mind Netscape is being produced by AOL for consumption by their user base, as the inclusion of the AIM messenger attests) version numbers are as good a way as any to compare software packages. Psychologically, a Netscape 5 release would imply a lagging of technology, considering IE5.5 is just around the corner. It's pretty obvious to me that this is a case of keeping up with the Jones's.
I should also warn to be wary of downloading this from the link at betanews because it appeared to link to a 4.7 release of Communicator. Use the direct link at arstechnica instead (if it's still up).
Cheers,
(posted with Netscape 6.0 Preview Release 1 :)
His other project Quasimodo is even more ambitious - a modular synth system, where the modules are written in CSound code. This makes a whole bunch of modules instantly available, and I can see an application like this being embraced by the audio/DSP Education sector, where CSound is used to test pretty much everything. I'm mentioning theses programs not because I have any affiliation with the project, but Ardour and Quasimodo are two of the most promising Linux audio applications out there, and it's a shame not more developers are working to get them finished.
The other major factor I think of that favours Minix is that the codebase is completely stable, and has been for a long time. While it may have been at the root of the dispute between him and Torvalds, Tanenbaum's insistence on keeping the feature-set small enough to run on legacy hardware has made the code much more easily navigable and instructive. Having said that, comparing and contrasting the two would be valuable towards an overall understanding of the topic.
The only thing annoying about Minix is that it didn't run under VMware at the time (v1.0), so when programming kernel patches you had to resort to using bochs in the code-test-debug cycle. Setting up bochs at home was a real pain, and it still ran painfully slowly.
I don't think there is any book that fully documents in detail the workings of the Linux kernel like Tanenbaum does Minix; the rate that the kernel is evolving probably makes this a futile exercise. I do recall a thick book in the University library that covered the workings of a BSD kernel (NetBSD?), which would be handy in a course such as this, but not the title :(.
Just random thoughts :)
Daniel.
He means when it comes out for free.