C OS - Every single task you want to achieve has to be split into fifty bite size actions.
I think you mean fifty DWORD-size instructions.;-)
COBOL OS... but instead type bizarrely syntaxed English to do your work!
Sounds like SQL OS...
Perl OS... You can do EVERYTHING in one click or one line of code. Oh, face it, it's just the future of Linux.
Ditto with, say, bash. Given bash, sed, awk, and netcat one can do pretty much anything at the prompt. Oh, and bash is already the present of Linux.
PHP OS... no off-line facilities are available.
I've been using PHP in command-line mode for quite some time; I don't know what you're talking about.
C++ OS - A simple upgrade to C OS. Still just as complicated, but the ++ makes it cooler to use and adds a host of useless features that are non standard across all implementations.
True that!
Python OS - Supposedly this exists, but since no-one cares, we won't go into it.
Python is a serious language, though it has some 'features' I find irksome (whitespace as syntax element), it is nonetheless quite powerful and is actually used in the real world.
...being sure, of course, to make 'hda' the actual drive you want to zero. (You could blank individual partitions by using the appropriate names, of course.) Also, you could use '/dev/urandom' instead to fill your disk with random data.
I cataloged my entire library with it. I scanned each book and used some software I downloaded that looked up each book's barcode on Amazon, Library of Congress, (or other sites) and added it to a database.
Coincidentally, I am currently writing software for a private high school, and the current project is to do exactly that -- make a library system that fetches information from a variety of sources and allows access in a flexible way. (Amazon is used for most info, LoC for LCCN, amazon.co.uk for book cover art -- that's already coded.) Further requirements include complex indexing capabilities (allowing 'sounds like' searching) and lots of other things, most of which are at least partially implemented.
Oh, and guess what? The school made several stops to various Radio Shacks a few years ago and currently has nine CueCats that they plan to use on the library terminals. Nine. They read Code 128 for free, what more could you want?
are there going to be any PCI releases faster than the GeForce 2 MX400?
Probably not.
AGP exists for a reason -- PCI isn't fast enough for heavy graphics use. Heck, some SCSI setups can completely saturate the PCI bus, which is why there are other alternatives (like 64-bit PCI or AGP).
I'd love to get a new system, but I'm tight right now...
Then why would you be considering hundreds of dollars for a new video card when you can probably get a replacement motherboard for under $50?
a "key" as a JPG file; they print it out, and it's their open sesame
Problem: most barcode readers fail when trying to read fuzzy barcodes, making JPG a very bad choice. Also, unless you have a nice barcode reader, you'll probably have issues with barcodes if they were not produced by a laser printer; inkjets simply do not give the definition you need. (Besides which, laser printing is good for other reasons -- if your key gets wet, you won't have ink smearing all over.)
If you used PNG and could guarantee that the receiver had a laser printer (or thermal, for that matter), then it would work. If you want to use JPG and inkjet, well, good luck.:-)
I'm sure the GPL will then force them to disclose any information about whatever wrapping they do...
Well, maybe, but probably not. You can GPL software as much as you like and modify the output files in whatever way you want to without violating a license. Furthermore, from the Ogg Vorbis project home:
Xiph.org's Vorbis software libraries (libvorbis and vorbisfile) are distributed under a BSD-like license; these libraries may be used by any application, open or proprietary, linked or incorporated in whole, so long as acknowldgement is made to Xiph.org Foundation when using our codec source in whole or in derived works. See the file 'COPYING' in the source for all the details.
Anyway, everything else is LGPL, and given the fact that they can wrap the file however they like without violating any licenses, I'm sure it's not a problem.
but the bottom line is that the hype will die down as quickly as it did when Real Player came to Unix.
Perhaps, but it's still a huge thing.
Let's see here: Redmond giant creates a native client for their media formats to run on a competing operating system. If they release a Linux client, Microsoft will be acknowledging the sizable (and growing) user base of Linux and would show by their actions that ignoring the Linux crowd would be harmful to their business. That would be the story, not that Linux users can get WMP9 audio/video (which, BTW, is already possible).
$ dd if=/dev/random of=test bs=1 count=1023 1023+0 records in 1023+0 records out
$ dd if=test of=test2 bs=512 1+1 records in 1+1 records out
$ ls -l test2 -rw-r--r-- 1 delta407 delta407 1023 Jan 1 22:50 test2
See that? We created a 1023-byte file (test), and then dd'ed it to test2 with a block size of 512. Guess what? dd copied the file in its entirety, even though it didn't line up on a block boundary.
Actually, it's not even GNU/Linux dd. dd is part of the coreutils package and is written by the GNU folks; it has nothing to do with Linux, other than GNU/Linux happens to include coreutils, which includes dd.
Somehow, I have a feeling William Scarboro would be happier with a $1 donation for the source code to his family than a free giveaway of one of his greatest works.
Somehow, I have a feeling that William Scarboro's family would be happier with people remembering one of his greatest works than taking donations.
Although not the first communications satellite, Telstar is the best known of all and is probably considered by most observers to have ushered in the era of satellite communications. This impression was a result of the tremendous impact upon the public by the first transmission of live television across the Atlantic Ocean. Telstar I was launched on July 10, 1962, and on that same day live television pictures originating in the United States were received in France.
I think most of those questions can be answered by the other messages in these threads.
Actually, very few of my points are addressed. Among them:
there will always be stragglers, and nothing can reverse that
Please explain the inefficient parts of DNS so I can understand what your DNS replacement would do.
There is nothing to stop you from referring to your web site as 1.2.3.4 and telling people to find it by typing "this is my site" into the Google toolbar
I'm saying that name resolution system could stand some improvements. Such as?
Continue.
To sum up, DNS is not a good 'average joe user web lookup system', in fact, it's a pretty poor one.
That's because DNS simply is not meant to be a 'web lookup system', but rather a way for an administrator to give a machine a name instead of a number. And at that, DNS excels.
DNS is designed to map domain names to IP addresses, and not designed to help the user find information.
Correct.
What is needed is something like a combo of realnames, dmoz, yahoo, google and your local yellow pages.
Then use Google or RealNames, but don't pretend that they are a replacement for DNS. Besides which, what entity would run said new system -- ICANN?
Look, if you want information anarcy, check out Freenet. No hostnames, just links between Freesites. There are alternatives to a DNS-based web, and Freenet is one of them, but don't plan on commerical involvement any time soon.
Agreed, but a number of services are -- SMTP, anyone? Yes, you can do address lookups via/etc/hosts, but MX records provide most of the redundancy that gives e-mail functionality. This would have to be replaced, which would be a large transition in and of itself.
By your account, the web can never leave the DNS system without completely and totally falling apart.
The current web, yes. Ditto with IPv6. The backbone routers can handle it, some ISPs use it, but there's no way to make Joe Sixpack use it. I know people running Windows 95 and liking it -- there will always be stragglers, and nothing can reverse that. Again, unlike IPv4->6, re-architecting DNS would break an immeasurable number of applications, operating systems, embedded devices, and so on.
1. There is no reason why DNS can't eventually be replaced by a more efficient system.
Please explain the inefficient parts of DNS so I can understand what your DNS replacement would do.
2. I'm not saying, dump DNS tomorrow, kill every legacy app out there and ruin 30% of all websites.
Good.:-)
3. I'm not even proposing a new name resolution system, that job is for people who have more experience in this field.
Here's the thing: that's what DNS is. It's a name resolution system with some hacks built into it for special applications (MX records, AXFR requests, and so on). DNS resolves names, and by proposing a replacement for DNS, you must provide a way to resolve names, meaning that the statements thus far are either incomplete or contradictory.
4. The Google Toolbar and Flash were EXAMPLES of moving away from strict DNS lookups, not a solution I was proposing.
I still don't see what you're saying with that. There is nothing to stop you from referring to your web site as 1.2.3.4 and telling people to find it by typing "this is my site" into the Google toolbar, but I for one would not use your site for that reason.
I'm saying that name resolution system could stand some improvements.
DNS was designed to be a distributed means of resolving names into IP addresses. It is distributed in that there is a built-in concept of delegation -- that is, I asked the registrar for lissard.org, they delegated it to my nameservers, and I can make whatever changes I like withing lissard.org without consulting.org. Furthermore, DNS isn't "fuzzy" like search engines are -- if I ask for smtp.myisp.com, I will get the IP address(es) for that machine, not some random SMTP server that a third party decided I was really looking for. To this end, DNS works, and works well.
Google toolbar... it hides DNS, it still uses it, but it wouldn't be a big jump to switch Google to an all IP address solution
Again, what are you smoking? Yes, you could have Google crawl the web by IP address, and get the search results back that way. But, what about round-robin load balancing? What if the web server's IP changes? And here's a big one: what about HTTP virtual hosts? (That's how you get more than one domain per IP.) All of those rely on DNS for proper usage.
Leaving DNS will be a huge task... There needs to be some way to get everyone to install the replacement
That's the thing: there isn't some way to get worldwide deployment of your replacement. There are countless platforms -- from Big Company's mainframes to my colocated rackmount servers to grandma's desktop to Alice's 802.11 access point to all of those WiFi-enabled handhelds. The difference between replacing DNS and replacing IPv4 is that IPv6 has a compatibility mode -- with your proposed name resolution mechanism, here is no feasible way of grandfathering in the older units.
On a side note, at this time, there is only one plugin that has made it this far, and that's Flash.
Again, what are you smoking? If you want to refer to things by IP, by all means, do it. Does <img src="http://1.2.3.4/image.png"> ring a bell?
Grover's algorithm would not be used in 'database searches' as we know them (like looking up numbers in a phone book). Given only y = f(x) and y, solving for x is an O(n) function (brute-force of the possible inputs). That in mind, Grover's algorithm allows for such a search in O(sqrt(n)) time, which is why it's so impressive.
Re:Redundancy of information stored?
on
Molecular Photography
·
· Score: 3, Informative
With all sorts of EM disturbances that are recoverable in atomic-level computing like we have today
Ah, yes, the people that buy ECC RAM to correct for alpha-particle variations and so on.
I have to wonder what type of redundancy and error correction will have to be built into quantum computing.... I'm not necessarily asserting that it will happen
No, it doesn't. There are a lot of technical hurdles to overcome with quantum computing, and this article discusses very few of them.
For instance, it mentions that they used photons to carry information between ions. That's all well and good, but remember, working with single photons isn't all that easy to begin with, and that pesky Heisenberg guy keps getting in the way. Stray particles remain a problem. (Silicon computing has copper to carry electrons -- what do you to with individual photons?) Furthermore, it does not address the larger problem of decoherence, wherein the state of a quantum computation is lost after a short and unpredictable amount of time.
Really, what would be better is some great leap in quantum error correction or some quantum computer that does not rely on nuclear magnetic resonance. (NMR can only scale to seven or eight qubits before becoming unusable, at which point quantum computers are rather pointless...)
Although I am an avid supporter of linux, I have alot of trouble keeping up with the latest version of my principal programs as well as the ever-changing kernal.
Then you would be aware that Linux is the kernel and nothing more. In this instance, your service pack is patch-2.4.20.bz2, and that's it.
installing service packs in windows2000/XP, it updated the kernal and main programs like IE and media player all at once
Here's the thing: Linux doesn't have programs tied into the operating system that much. You could have a running Linux system without using a single GNU tool. As such, proposing service packs for Linux is nonsensical.
but I won't begin to start using [Linux] as my primary OS untill it has service packs.
Linux itself has service packs. Your distribution, on the other hand, is responsible for the rest of the pieces of software on your computer, and each distro has a different means of staying current. RedHat has up2date, Debian has 'apt-get update', and Gentoo has 'emerge -u'. Take your pick.
How many open source success stories are there, where the open-source solution is so clearly superior that it's used by everyone? Uh, zero.
Uh, let's see. All of the root DNS servers and a majority of other DNS servers run BIND, which provides likely the most key portion of the 'Internet' that people care about. Google runs Linux, because you can't do what they need on Windows. Apache serves more web pages than all other web servers combined. Also, sendmail and qmail run a majority of the world's e-mail servers.
Well, how about open source application that are good enough to compete with proprietary software?
See the above. Open-source software, in general, trashes proprietary software in the data center. Oracle, for one, is an exception -- but, in most cases, you don't need Oracle and MySQL (or Postgres) will suffice and be a lot cheaper.
How many are "up-and-comers" that just need good word-of-mouth to take over from a proprietary solution?
There's a lot of them; I just can't think of any because the word-of-mouth hasn't reached me yet:-)
Seriously, though, my current project is already good enough to compete with the software it was designed to replace. (This is after four months of part-time development -- it will waste the proprietary solution by this time next year.) Of course, I am sure many other such projects exist, but lack popularity to make themselves known.
Number one is that there is no WYSIWYG editor for Mozilla.
Are you on crack, son?
Keep reading. The original poster was talking about a WYSIWYG form element, not page editor.
This is useful in things like content management systems, and would generally make life a lot easier for a lot of people. IE can do this with only a small amount of hassle (see this page as an example), and Mozilla has nothing to compare. IE has a fully scriptable, customizable inline WYSIWYG HTML editor, and Mozilla does not.
If your definition starts with the word 'to', then the word in question is most definitely a verb. However, many verbs can be used as nouns (see "gerunds"), which was the usage in the article.
Yes, the Freenet crew is well aware that their project can and will survive the eventual massive infrastructure failure. It's a fully distributed, highly adaptive network that's not tethered to any method of communication -- there's experiments with FNP (Freenet Native Protocol) over ham radio, for instance. And, of course, you could always light up private fiber or communicate via Iridium or some other satellite network.
Unfortunately, Freenet is currently being used by a large number of child pornographers and could also easily be used (if it's not already) by people opposed to the DoD, so they would much rather not attract attention from the government...
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like SQL OS...
Ditto with, say, bash. Given bash, sed, awk, and netcat one can do pretty much anything at the prompt. Oh, and bash is already the present of Linux.
I've been using PHP in command-line mode for quite some time; I don't know what you're talking about.
True that!
Python is a serious language, though it has some 'features' I find irksome (whitespace as syntax element), it is nonetheless quite powerful and is actually used in the real world.
Ah, the joys of *nix.
The download page has been updated.
;-)
And yes, I am aware that not all OSS licenses are equal, but few school administrators care.
Oh, and guess what? The school made several stops to various Radio Shacks a few years ago and currently has nine CueCats that they plan to use on the library terminals. Nine. They read Code 128 for free, what more could you want?
State budgets are already in trouble, Bush's plan (i.e. has not happened yet) has nothing to do with it.
AGP exists for a reason -- PCI isn't fast enough for heavy graphics use. Heck, some SCSI setups can completely saturate the PCI bus, which is why there are other alternatives (like 64-bit PCI or AGP).Then why would you be considering hundreds of dollars for a new video card when you can probably get a replacement motherboard for under $50?
If you used PNG and could guarantee that the receiver had a laser printer (or thermal, for that matter), then it would work. If you want to use JPG and inkjet, well, good luck.
Anyway, everything else is LGPL, and given the fact that they can wrap the file however they like without violating any licenses, I'm sure it's not a problem.
Let's see here: Redmond giant creates a native client for their media formats to run on a competing operating system. If they release a Linux client, Microsoft will be acknowledging the sizable (and growing) user base of Linux and would show by their actions that ignoring the Linux crowd would be harmful to their business. That would be the story, not that Linux users can get WMP9 audio/video (which, BTW, is already possible).
dd does copy incomplete blocks. Try this:See that? We created a 1023-byte file (test), and then dd'ed it to test2 with a block size of 512. Guess what? dd copied the file in its entirety, even though it didn't line up on a block boundary.
Actually, it's not even GNU/Linux dd. dd is part of the coreutils package and is written by the GNU folks; it has nothing to do with Linux, other than GNU/Linux happens to include coreutils, which includes dd.
So, it's GNU dd.
So, yeah, they're just completely wrong.
They need our support, guys, let's rack up huge bandwidth bills and see if we can set their web server on fire!
Nothing like a good ol' slashdotting to bring a business back in the black.
- there will always be stragglers, and nothing can reverse that
- Please explain the inefficient parts of DNS so I can understand what your DNS replacement would do.
- There is nothing to stop you from referring to your web site as 1.2.3.4 and telling people to find it by typing "this is my site" into the Google toolbar
- I'm saying that name resolution system could stand some improvements. Such as?
Continue.That's because DNS simply is not meant to be a 'web lookup system', but rather a way for an administrator to give a machine a name instead of a number. And at that, DNS excels.
Correct.
Then use Google or RealNames, but don't pretend that they are a replacement for DNS. Besides which, what entity would run said new system -- ICANN?
Look, if you want information anarcy, check out Freenet. No hostnames, just links between Freesites. There are alternatives to a DNS-based web, and Freenet is one of them, but don't plan on commerical involvement any time soon.
The current web, yes. Ditto with IPv6. The backbone routers can handle it, some ISPs use it, but there's no way to make Joe Sixpack use it. I know people running Windows 95 and liking it -- there will always be stragglers, and nothing can reverse that. Again, unlike IPv4->6, re-architecting DNS would break an immeasurable number of applications, operating systems, embedded devices, and so on.
Please explain the inefficient parts of DNS so I can understand what your DNS replacement would do.
Good.
Here's the thing: that's what DNS is. It's a name resolution system with some hacks built into it for special applications (MX records, AXFR requests, and so on). DNS resolves names, and by proposing a replacement for DNS, you must provide a way to resolve names, meaning that the statements thus far are either incomplete or contradictory.
I still don't see what you're saying with that. There is nothing to stop you from referring to your web site as 1.2.3.4 and telling people to find it by typing "this is my site" into the Google toolbar, but I for one would not use your site for that reason.
Such as?
DNS was designed to be a distributed means of resolving names into IP addresses. It is distributed in that there is a built-in concept of delegation -- that is, I asked the registrar for lissard.org, they delegated it to my nameservers, and I can make whatever changes I like withing lissard.org without consulting
Again, what are you smoking? Yes, you could have Google crawl the web by IP address, and get the search results back that way. But, what about round-robin load balancing? What if the web server's IP changes? And here's a big one: what about HTTP virtual hosts? (That's how you get more than one domain per IP.) All of those rely on DNS for proper usage.
That's the thing: there isn't some way to get worldwide deployment of your replacement. There are countless platforms -- from Big Company's mainframes to my colocated rackmount servers to grandma's desktop to Alice's 802.11 access point to all of those WiFi-enabled handhelds. The difference between replacing DNS and replacing IPv4 is that IPv6 has a compatibility mode -- with your proposed name resolution mechanism, here is no feasible way of grandfathering in the older units.
Again, what are you smoking? If you want to refer to things by IP, by all means, do it. Does <img src="http://1.2.3.4/image.png"> ring a bell?
Grover's algorithm would not be used in 'database searches' as we know them (like looking up numbers in a phone book). Given only y = f(x) and y, solving for x is an O(n) function (brute-force of the possible inputs). That in mind, Grover's algorithm allows for such a search in O(sqrt(n)) time, which is why it's so impressive.
Such variances are common and expected in quantum computing; hence the field of Quantum Error Correction. (Google for more...)
For instance, it mentions that they used photons to carry information between ions. That's all well and good, but remember, working with single photons isn't all that easy to begin with, and that pesky Heisenberg guy keps getting in the way. Stray particles remain a problem. (Silicon computing has copper to carry electrons -- what do you to with individual photons?) Furthermore, it does not address the larger problem of decoherence, wherein the state of a quantum computation is lost after a short and unpredictable amount of time.
Really, what would be better is some great leap in quantum error correction or some quantum computer that does not rely on nuclear magnetic resonance. (NMR can only scale to seven or eight qubits before becoming unusable, at which point quantum computers are rather pointless...)
Here's the thing: Linux doesn't have programs tied into the operating system that much. You could have a running Linux system without using a single GNU tool. As such, proposing service packs for Linux is nonsensical.
Linux itself has service packs. Your distribution, on the other hand, is responsible for the rest of the pieces of software on your computer, and each distro has a different means of staying current. RedHat has up2date, Debian has 'apt-get update', and Gentoo has 'emerge -u'. Take your pick.
See the above. Open-source software, in general, trashes proprietary software in the data center. Oracle, for one, is an exception -- but, in most cases, you don't need Oracle and MySQL (or Postgres) will suffice and be a lot cheaper.
There's a lot of them; I just can't think of any because the word-of-mouth hasn't reached me yet
Seriously, though, my current project is already good enough to compete with the software it was designed to replace. (This is after four months of part-time development -- it will waste the proprietary solution by this time next year.) Of course, I am sure many other such projects exist, but lack popularity to make themselves known.
This is useful in things like content management systems, and would generally make life a lot easier for a lot of people. IE can do this with only a small amount of hassle (see this page as an example), and Mozilla has nothing to compare. IE has a fully scriptable, customizable inline WYSIWYG HTML editor, and Mozilla does not.
Yes, the Freenet crew is well aware that their project can and will survive the eventual massive infrastructure failure. It's a fully distributed, highly adaptive network that's not tethered to any method of communication -- there's experiments with FNP (Freenet Native Protocol) over ham radio, for instance. And, of course, you could always light up private fiber or communicate via Iridium or some other satellite network.
Unfortunately, Freenet is currently being used by a large number of child pornographers and could also easily be used (if it's not already) by people opposed to the DoD, so they would much rather not attract attention from the government...