Didn't Tanenbaum (SP?) and Torvalds already have this conversation of monolithic kernel vs. microkernel based OS's? I had mklinux installed on one of my PowerMacs. I never pushed it performance wise, but it looked like a nice, working linux box when I had it up and running.
Re:Typical Australian Liberal Government Policy
on
Aussies Ban GTA3
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· Score: 1
I played phantasmagoria, and quike frankly the quasi-rape scene shocked me. Do I think it should have been censored? Not really. Did I consider it "fun" and "entertainment?" Hell no.
The last several posts on Slashdot's main page regarding Apple product announcements have been followed up by trite, critical comments. Comments of the variety that open source advocates often cry foul when they are made regarding their open source operating system. Hypocrits. There's only one complaint about the iPod I agree with - the typical Apple price tag. Other than that, the product shows a lot of promise.
If this thing was released for Linux and had a makefile that had to be hacked by hand to get it to integrate with some opensource playlist manager that has forked into two products, the main page announcement would have been followed up with something like "Wow! What a great UI! And it supports BOTH hybrids of the playlist manager. And it's GPL'd!"
I don't think using Gnome and KDE as a counter example to the author's assertion about the adequacy of open source development methods for GUI/Front-end applications is a good move. I think Gnome and KDE suck. So clearly, some of this is in the eye of the beholder.
When the Federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed, people instantly assumed Eastern terrorists and we found out later (and to our embarrassment) it was our own people.
The symbols chosen are powerfull for a vast array of interests. I've heard palestinians mentioned, but really I think we should stay cool and wait for reliable information.
Note - I'm at work and can't get any reliable information. So if there is reliable info about perpatrators out there, I'm not aware of it.
The technology articles at the economist are without peer in the mainstream media. Their article on Code Red provides a higher level overview and makes some good observations.
I'm surprised no one made mention of the free advertising for Mountain Dew.
Part of our technical interviewing involves sitting down with the candidate and a laptop that has BSD loaded on it. There are little problems that we throw at them to see not only if they diagnose them correctly, but can find a workaround. Then we can see problem solving skills in action.
Example, we have them cd to a directory where one of the files is named '-' and have them remove it. rm -. Ooops. Now, how to get around the fact that rm is parsing that as the first part of a flag instead of a filename? The goal isn't to completely stump them, but to give them small cases to display some problem solving skills.
Another question asked during "the laptop interview." "What OS is the machine running?" Not everyone knows the 'uname' command. For those that don't, there are other options! Like the header of the man pages. Or the log in screen. I personally didn't know the uname command during that interview (yes, I took it) but remembered machines advertise the operating system at the login prompt, so I logged out. Not conventional, but they weren't looking for conventional. They were looking for problem solving under pressure. (Being on the spot in an interview like that is pressure. Especially if you don't know the obvious answer and you know you don't know the obvious answer.:)
Another one they threw at me was having me log into an account. When the prompt appeared the first thing I saw was "no processes" followed by the prompt. If I tried to run any commands I got 'no processes'. What was going on? I tracked the problem down the the user having 'tcsh' in their.login. This was causing new shells to be invoked until the user had no further processes. Follow up question was: Why would a user do that? (Trying to change his shell in a not so smart way.:-)
I liked that particular problem as it involved diagnosing the problem, and then why the problem occurred, which involved getting into the "virtual" head of a confused user.
Most of the problems in the laptop interview are pulled from real-world examples of problems submitted to sys admins by users in our own environment or others.
Re:Cost for PPC Systems
on
SuSE For PPC
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· Score: 1
egcs produces the best-optimized code for the PPC architecture (as well as most others), and all of LinuxPPC is compiled with it (since origina-flavor gcc generates brain-damaged code for PPC). It's *really fast*
Do you have bench marks contrasting the performance of binaries compiled with egcs vs. xlc on PPC architecture machines? Likewise for egcs (now gcc) vs. aCC on hppa (HPUX) architecture machines?
If there's one thing IBM does well, it's compilers. Some developers on the core Mac OS, and Apple's initial Modern OS efforts (the first Mac OS 8), were of the opinion that xlc produced tighter code for the PPC than any other compiler. I don't know if metrowerks was able to tighten up their compiler since then to the level of xlc, but xlc on PPC pretty much dominates. Same for aCC on HPPA.
I would be surprised if gcc was able to produce better results than either of those compilers on their respective architectures. Naturally, it's moot with regards to linux, as I haven't seen xlc or aCC running on linux ever.:) But on AIX and HPUX gcc plays second fiddle.
It sounds like a lot of people commenting on this thread don't have to take care of over 5000 machines running multiple flavors AND versions of *ix, NT, along with multiple NFS servers offering terrabytes of data, AFS servers also offering a ton of data, with everything working across multiple physical sites.
Creative naming schemes are fun when your environment is small. They don't scale though. There are times when it's nice to be able to grep the NIS hosts map for a pattern and know you just tagged every machine in the env running Solaris 2.6 on SuperSparc architectures.
The only place I've seen more people with "expert" opinions is at the local sports bar when it's 4th and inches. "Gotta punt," some say. "Gotta go for it," other's say.
Maybe Blair Witch was an Internet movie or maybe it wasn't. Maybe it's worth going to or maybe it's not. It depends on each person.
One thing Blair Witch definitely is though is "different." And for that we should all be thankfull. Hollywood has been in a rut, and will continue to be in one for some time.
Wether BWP sucked in your eyes or not, please support the indy films and foreign films. There are enough out there such that there's something new and exciting for everyone.
-AutumnLeaf
Hollywood gives people what they want
on
Lo-Tech Cinema
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· Score: 1
The American film industry is not what needs to be saved. Studios make films based on their expectation of profit. To that end, when they deliver a movie, it's usually what they think the public wants, and in fact they are often right.
As much as we like to bag on Hollywood, the fact of the matter is that by and large the main stream movie going audiences of the U.S. wants what Hollywood gives them. They want the special- effects laden action adventures. They want the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks romantic comedies. etc...
From reading slashdot, it's pretty evident that most readers here are critical of the product Hollywood gives them. To interperate that sentiment as representative of the general public would be a mistake. By and large the readership of slahdot is college educated (or has some sort of education beyond high schoo), and involved with the technology industry in some way. This instantly puts the majority of the readership here a step up the ladder when it comes to viewing films with some degree of intelligence and appreciation for the various crafts involved. That's not to say everyone here loves indie films by default, either.
In all of the large cities I've been in, there have been many art house theaters. On any given week I have my choice of just about any indie film in circulation, and then some. Outside of large cities, indie theaters and art house theaters are far and few between. Why? Because they aren't commercially viable, because not enough people will go watch foreign or small-studio films.
My point is this:
Where people have had a choice, I've noticed that consitently, people still choose to go to the Hollywood cineplexes by and large. That's why I don't see this situation as being bogged down in a "chicken or the egg" situation, where one can argue that until Hollywood changes, Hollywood's audiences won't change.
Before Hollywood can give moviegoers something better, American audiences need to increase their awareness of what film is, and what can constitute a good movie. However, to a certain degree that implies people start thinking for themselves and watching films with more effort. In my estimation, the odds of that happening are slim. Which is sad because films like "Six String Samura," BWP, and others really deserve more attention and appreciation.
For me the Matrix was impressive in terms of it's cinematogrophy and equally impressive in having some incredibly bad writing in the script. Sometimes when you put the two together, you get a winner. Hong Kong Cinema is chock full of examples of movies that served up "cheese" on a golden platter with deadly intent to be cool, and I think the Matrix tapped into that.
Reading this article what I find more interesting is Katz's continued 'angst' at not being universally accepted and heralded as the journalistic voice of/. His brief aside on web logs in this article was a diversion that detracted from what was (as another reader wrote) an interesting article.
Katz, my man. I'll give you the advice Yoda gave Luke Skywalker on Dagobah..
When it comes to being a geek: "No! Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try."
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't Tanenbaum (SP?) and Torvalds already have this conversation of monolithic kernel vs. microkernel based OS's? I had mklinux installed on one of my PowerMacs. I never pushed it performance wise, but it looked like a nice, working linux box when I had it up and running.
I played phantasmagoria, and quike frankly the quasi-rape scene shocked me. Do I think it should have been censored? Not really. Did I consider it "fun" and "entertainment?" Hell no.
Who is really lame?
Apple
@Home
Baby Bells
BeOS Developers
FreeBSD Developers
CmdrTaco
The last several posts on Slashdot's main page regarding Apple product announcements have been followed up by trite, critical comments. Comments of the variety that open source advocates often cry foul when they are made regarding their open source operating system. Hypocrits. There's only one complaint about the iPod I agree with - the typical Apple price tag. Other than that, the product shows a lot of promise.
If this thing was released for Linux and had a makefile that had to be hacked by hand to get it to integrate with some opensource playlist manager that has forked into two products, the main page announcement would have been followed up with something like "Wow! What a great UI! And it supports BOTH hybrids of the playlist manager. And it's GPL'd!"
set CmdrTaco = Lame
I don't think using Gnome and KDE as a counter example to the author's assertion about the adequacy of open source development methods for GUI/Front-end applications is a good move. I think Gnome and KDE suck. So clearly, some of this is in the eye of the beholder.
When the Federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed, people instantly assumed Eastern terrorists and we found out later (and to our embarrassment) it was our own people.
The symbols chosen are powerfull for a vast array of interests. I've heard palestinians mentioned, but really I think we should stay cool and wait for reliable information.
Note - I'm at work and can't get any reliable information. So if there is reliable info about perpatrators out there, I'm not aware of it.
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cf
The technology articles at the economist are without peer in the mainstream media. Their article on Code Red provides a higher level overview and makes some good observations.
I'm surprised no one made mention of the free advertising for Mountain Dew.
Part of our technical interviewing involves sitting down with the candidate and a laptop that has BSD loaded on it. There are little problems that we throw at them to see not only if they diagnose them correctly, but can find a workaround. Then we can see problem solving skills in action.
:)
.login. This was causing new shells to be invoked until the user had no further processes. Follow up question was: Why would a user do that? (Trying to change his shell in a not so smart way. :-)
Example, we have them cd to a directory where one of the files is named '-' and have them remove it. rm -. Ooops. Now, how to get around the fact that rm is parsing that as the first part of a flag instead of a filename? The goal isn't to completely stump them, but to give them small cases to display some problem solving skills.
Another question asked during "the laptop interview." "What OS is the machine running?" Not everyone knows the 'uname' command. For those that don't, there are other options! Like the header of the man pages. Or the log in screen. I personally didn't know the uname command during that interview (yes, I took it) but remembered machines advertise the operating system at the login prompt, so I logged out. Not conventional, but they weren't looking for conventional. They were looking for problem solving under pressure. (Being on the spot in an interview like that is pressure. Especially if you don't know the obvious answer and you know you don't know the obvious answer.
Another one they threw at me was having me log into an account. When the prompt appeared the first thing I saw was "no processes" followed by the prompt. If I tried to run any commands I got 'no processes'. What was going on? I tracked the problem down the the user having 'tcsh' in their
I liked that particular problem as it involved diagnosing the problem, and then why the problem occurred, which involved getting into the "virtual" head of a confused user.
Most of the problems in the laptop interview are pulled from real-world examples of problems submitted to sys admins by users in our own environment or others.
egcs produces the best-optimized code for the PPC architecture (as well as most others), and all of LinuxPPC is compiled with it (since origina-flavor gcc generates brain-damaged code for PPC). It's *really fast*
:) But on AIX and HPUX gcc plays second fiddle.
Do you have bench marks contrasting the performance of binaries compiled with egcs vs. xlc on PPC architecture machines? Likewise for egcs (now gcc) vs. aCC on hppa (HPUX) architecture machines?
If there's one thing IBM does well, it's compilers. Some developers on the core Mac OS, and Apple's initial Modern OS efforts (the first Mac OS 8), were of the opinion that xlc produced tighter code for the PPC than any other compiler. I don't know if metrowerks was able to tighten up their compiler since then to the level of xlc, but xlc on PPC pretty much dominates. Same for aCC on HPPA.
I would be surprised if gcc was able to produce better results than either of those compilers on their respective architectures. Naturally, it's moot with regards to linux, as I haven't seen xlc or aCC running on linux ever.
It sounds like a lot of people commenting on this thread don't have to take care of over 5000 machines running multiple flavors AND versions of *ix, NT, along with multiple NFS servers offering terrabytes of data, AFS servers also offering a ton of data, with everything working across multiple physical sites.
Creative naming schemes are fun when your environment is small. They don't scale though. There are times when it's nice to be able to grep the NIS hosts map for a pattern and know you just tagged every machine in the env running Solaris 2.6 on SuperSparc architectures.
-AutumnLeaf
The only place I've seen more people with "expert" opinions is at the local sports bar when it's 4th and inches. "Gotta punt," some say. "Gotta go for it," other's say.
Maybe Blair Witch was an Internet movie or maybe it wasn't. Maybe it's worth going to or maybe it's not. It depends on each person.
One thing Blair Witch definitely is though is "different." And for that we should all be thankfull. Hollywood has been in a rut, and will continue to be in one for some time.
Wether BWP sucked in your eyes or not, please support the indy films and foreign films. There are enough out there such that there's something new and exciting for everyone.
-AutumnLeaf
The American film industry is not what needs to be
saved. Studios make films based on their
expectation of profit. To that end, when they
deliver a movie, it's usually what they think the
public wants, and in fact they are often right.
As much as we like to bag on Hollywood, the fact
of the matter is that by and large the main stream
movie going audiences of the U.S. wants what
Hollywood gives them. They want the special-
effects laden action adventures. They want the
Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks romantic comedies. etc...
From reading slashdot, it's pretty evident that
most readers here are critical of the product
Hollywood gives them. To interperate that
sentiment as representative of the general public
would be a mistake. By and large the readership
of slahdot is college educated (or has some sort
of education beyond high schoo), and involved
with the technology industry in some way. This
instantly puts the majority of the readership here
a step up the ladder when it comes to viewing
films with some degree of intelligence and
appreciation for the various crafts involved.
That's not to say everyone here loves indie
films by default, either.
In all of the large cities I've been in, there
have been many art house theaters. On any given
week I have my choice of just about any indie
film in circulation, and then some. Outside of
large cities, indie theaters and art house
theaters are far and few between. Why? Because
they aren't commercially viable, because not enough people will go watch foreign
or small-studio films.
My point is this:
Where people have had a choice, I've
noticed that consitently, people still choose
to go to the Hollywood cineplexes by and large.
That's why I don't see this situation as being
bogged down in a "chicken or the egg" situation,
where one can argue that until Hollywood changes,
Hollywood's audiences won't change.
Before Hollywood can give moviegoers something
better, American audiences need to increase
their awareness of what film is, and what can
constitute a good movie. However, to a certain
degree that implies people start thinking for
themselves and watching films with more effort.
In my estimation, the odds of that happening
are slim. Which is sad because films like
"Six String Samura," BWP, and others really
deserve more attention and appreciation.
-Rob
For me the Matrix was impressive in terms of it's
cinematogrophy and equally impressive in having
some incredibly bad writing in the script.
Sometimes when you put the two together, you get a
winner. Hong Kong Cinema is chock full of
examples of movies that served up "cheese" on a
golden platter with deadly intent to be cool, and
I think the Matrix tapped into that.
Reading this article what I find more interesting is
Katz's continued 'angst' at not being universally
accepted and heralded as the journalistic voice
of
article was a diversion that detracted from what
was (as another reader wrote) an interesting
article.
Katz, my man. I'll give you the advice Yoda gave
Luke Skywalker on Dagobah..
When it comes to being a geek: "No! Try not.
Do... or do not. There is no try."
-AutumnLeaf