I don't like this negative talk about Mozilla. No, their tech is not the best. (But their JavaScript performance and HTML 5 feature implementations are very good!) Yes, there are patent issues on web video they face that commercial entities do not. Things will work themselves out, have a little faith.
In my eyes, there is no better choice for browser vendor. Mozilla isn't lily-white-pure-as-the-driven-snow, they've been funded by Google and have been a means in the past for Goog to strike at Msft. But, they're still the best independent choice, and they've got the long view of this web thing. Oh, and they seem to care a lot about security.
Go Mozilla and Go Firefox! You are my #1 choice for development, working with your browser is a joy and it just keeps getting better. All the other browsers get support from me only begrudgingly, but you're my true love. And of course, whenever I'm asked to play tech support and help people set up their new computers, yours is the browser I download and get them all using ("because you will avoid all the viruses by running this..."):)
Tectonic shifts in computing begin with humble first steps like this. I know it was years worth of work, and you had to suffer lots of naysayers along the way. So, great job, and I hope to see less humble moves as we go forward.
I have always been puzzled as to why game hardware manufacturers don't circle back around to the home computing market and release hardware there as well.
Take the game cube hardware, downclock it, make it a system on a chip to control costs, and give it some internal flash and SD slots for storage. Throw it in a keyboard or laptop form factor and call it done. I am not convinced it would even need network hardware...
Don't tell me computers are not Nintendo's business model or there's no money in it. Cater to the kids; give them a cheap, modern programmable computer. So what if you break even on the deal, it's just a nice thing to do for the world.
I've used my homebrew projects as references, and they show very well to prospective employers. I've also dabbled in producing a little open source, and the source code for that is easy to show and reference.
As a professional software developer, it's my responsibility to keep my skills sharp. Coding has always felt as much craft as science to me, and I love the craft so I don't mind doing lots of homework.
I have noticed that prospective employers want to see that you can work with a large code base. Show you can manage and create many libraries from scratch and tie them all together in the runtime. Demonstrate instances of reuse if you can. Of course show them you're proficient with an xUnit tool and show them your test suites. If you can make it all sound sexy with war stories, it will be easy to sell your talents.
In my opinion, if you know how to code it would be irresponsible not to try to constantly develop business ideas from scratch. Many barriers to entry are so low in the.com business, there are so many niche markets to jump into, and there are so many routes to success. This is why I think every coder worth his salt who would like something more than a paycheck w/ occasional bonus should do a homebrew coding project and try to make a business out of it.
My current homebrew project is CardMeeting, which I've been working on since 2006 in my spare time, and I think it has some potential there.
The open source project I referred to is CeeFIT, a C++ port of Ward Cunningham's Framework for Integrated Tests.
In all cases, I tried to do home work that has nothing to do with my day job - just to keep the two separate. Also, I intentionally bit off challenging problems that I was not sure I could solve. I think it's ok to set yourself up for a little failure here and there, it's all part of the learning process and testing your limits.
It all depends on the license terms, every website that hosts open sources should have a license file you can read for the details.
BSD and Apache basically place very few restrictions on the use of their software. I can include apache or BSD licensed libraries it in my products, and I don't have to cough up the source code to the libraries or my code even if I make changes to the libraries, etc. On the other hand, GPL says that, if I distribute binaries, I need to cough up the source code to my ENTIRE PROGRAM if it incorporates even one line of GPL'd code. LGPL says that I need to cough up the source code, but just to the library.
GPL and LGPL try to force the issue of free software by mandating that distributed binaries are accompanied by the sources used to create them. Apache and BSD take a kinder, gentler approach where the distribution of sources is not mandated but it is encouraged, the source is open but there are no obligations to commit any changes/enhancements back to the community.
Companies like IBM are making their bread and butter on a lot of apache and eclipse licensed open source software. As far as I know, IBM sponsors but takes a mainly hands-off stance to those organizations. Microsoft uses the BSD TCP/IP stack and GZIP libraries among other open sources in Windows, but as a policy they do not release sources because they're bastards. Not sure I'd want their hacks anyhow...
Yeah, thanks for the concern. We're mostly using apache licensed libs, and some public domain stuff. We do not distribute LGPL or GPL licensed libraries presently, but I don't think we'd hesitate to use an LGPL'd library if one were available that we wanted to use. We try to acknowledge any libraries we use by including their notices and license files, etc in the applet jar. If we've messed up, I'm sure someone will come along and let us know so we can fix it.
Most of the cherry Java libraries out there are under the Jakarta brand, and those are all apache licensed.
Cheers,
Dave Woldrich
Disclaimer: I am the author of CardMeeting, so this comment is essentially shameless.:D (I have no shame!)
Another disclaimer: CardMeeting.com is alpha quality and we're adding features, but still purdy neat, (if I may be so bold.) Anyhow, please feel free to check it out!
Ok, I like Linux. In fact, I'd love to write software for it since, as a developer who leverages open source libraries, I feel like Microsoft has told me I'm no longer welcome.
So when I saw CentOS, I figured it was time to make the switch. It offered everything I needed. I went to fry's and bought the hardware for my new app server which included a cheapy HighPoint 1640 RAID card so I could setup a RAID 1 system. It said it supported Linux, so I figured I was good.
Well I wasn't good. There was source code for an open source driver from HighPoint. But trying to figure out how to package and build the thing was amazingly arcane and retarded! I HAD to install a floppy disk for godssakes. The experience of trying to bootstrap and get the damned open source drivers built for the thing was a long trip through the fiery pits. Equally evil was trying to figure out how to patch a new kernel with recompiled drivers whenever yum got me a new one. What a pain!
I'm a developer not a sysadmin. The fact that I figured out how to make my RAID card work with Linux was not a satisfying experience to me, it was frustrating and it was a waste of tens of hours over many months. You geeks who like to build kernels and fiddle with make files have at it. It's just not my thing.
In fact, I think there is no such thing as Linux device drivers... what there is is not abstract enough to be graced with that name. Module maybe fits. C'mon you geeks, seriously, what's the holdup here? What is the big problem with having a driver binary that just works across all minor revisions of a major version of a Linux kernel? That would be a HUGE plus for me.
Whatever the case, the other poster who said it's not 1992 anymore had it right - we need some more slickness around drivers if we are going to win. And since I'm planning on not upgrading to the next version of windows, I would prefer we start winning on the desktop real quick.
Microsoft has proven that the native userland.exe and.dll cannot be trusted. Security patch after security patch, month after month, Microsoft has shown that with a codebase as large as Windows/Shell/IE/Office, it is impossible to police all of the exploits. When will Microsoft finally drink the.Net kool-aid and start *requiring* all non-driver/non-kernel modules to run as CLR/.Net including their own?
I argue that:
Security and stability bulletproofing the.Net runtime to the point of +99.999% is doable (as proof, arguably Sun's JVM is an example of a bulletproofed VM of comparable size to.Net's whose only remaining exploits would be found in 3rd party native.dll's.)
You'll need to get that stinker 'unsafe' keyword out of C# - hopefully no big loss there...
JVM Hotspot and.Net runtime precompiling can produce reasonably fast execution.
Microsoft seems to be WAY too focused on micro-optimizations anyhow, please chill your techs out on achieving breakneck vertical scaling 1337-ness and give me some REASONABLE EXPECTATION OF STABILITY! On this point, a wider cultural and server technology embrace in Microsoft of horizontal scaling would be nice.
JRockit-style garbage collection technologies can reduce or negate any interruption to runtime from gc's.
A single, system-wide VM that eats all available non-kernel memory, handles, and CPU is best for understanding and working hand-in-hand with the kernel
This is how I wished the JavaVM would work since it's such a hog, running two java.exe's kills me!
Your users will forgive a one-time break with backwards compatibility (or being forced to have those crufty old native apps run fully virtual and sandboxed. (Sandbox written in.Net to keep you honest, big bonus points!))
It won't matter what the conspiricy theorists say about Microsoft's ulterior motives for banning native userland code because if Microsoft does not do this, the competitors will and MSFT will be eaten alive by a better written OS/VM combo. Just let user.exe's running in.Net have the freedom they expect, and no one will fault you when the transition is over. Don't play catch up on this one, lead!
You can remove many of your ever-increasing, annoying, and ignored modal dialog box security warnings from IE and the Shell - the.Net VM will just do the right thing and keep the user safe since that's how it was designed from the ground up. (Right?)
... And if you cheat... If you give those goofball Office developers a backdoor to run native code when 3rd parties can't... well, it won't be pretty! And like I said, Microsoft can finally chill out on the breakneck hand-assembly language-tuned speed thing; users want stability going forward and they'll buy bigger processors to keep things running smoothly just like they always have.
I know you can't do this for Vista, but you could do it for the next. Announce now and make this the real direction that the company is committed to. There's no shame in it, it's a positive step, and I know Mr. Softie has enough mojo left to make it happen.
I downloaded the PS3's SPU instruction set pdf from the IBM download page. After reading that doc I thought, "Wow, this instruction set looks FUN!" It kindof reminded me of when I moved from MOS6502 to Intel 8088 - how much more fun it was to bit fiddle with the 8088. I think PS3 games are going to be a lot of fun to write code for - for bit fiddlers and premature optimization freaks.
Will it be harder to code PS3 for than the XBOX 360? Unless Sony does something amazing with their SDK, I would say yes. But the rewards will probably be much higher with the PS3. I read something about being able to drop code sequences onto a SPU stream for scheduling execution, I thought that was a nifty idea. There's all these nifty buses on the Cell processor, connecting SPU's, for data sharing. Complicated, but allows for sophisticated designs.
So the replacement page reads... "On the 3rd of February 2004, this page (or rather the page that was here) was swamped by requests and the server subsequentially failed."
I run a website on my home DSL with a store bought router and Linux. Whether that was a redundant T3 or plain ol' DSL, it shouldn't matter: if my poor underpowered server is getting too much traffic due to Slashdot or Google, IT SHOULD NOT EVER ACTUALLY "FAIL"! What, did the Julia ethernet port just start shooting flames? Did the harddrive platters melt? They are describing a software bug!
What in the Julia server people's hardware, router firmware, OS kernel, web server, Java VM, or Java App Server that caused the fault? Whichever vendor is to blame should be identified, taken out back, and given a paddling! (And if the Julia people are running IIS, then, of course, *they* deserve to be paddled because they screwed up on a fractal level.)
In my opinion, if my site got slashdotted, I should hope to return home and see all blinky lights normal (with only my DSL bandwidth jacked up to holy hell).
How do we get these internet infrastructure people (hardware, firmware, and software) to butch up our systems? Is anyone measuring the points of failure on average webservers under extreme load and then working to fix the problems?
Why was the hardest hit Neo ever delivered to Smith the very last slo-mo-punch-you-20-feet-into-the-concrete coincident with his mind being made up to finally just submit and lose to his enemy? (That being the 'inevitable' conclusion.) He was all weak, wobbly, and tired, yet he nearly caved Smith's face in with that punch.
Why was the active choice to lose and die, any better than the unwilling loss and death Neo had apparently suffered from battles in previous 'lifetimes'? His struggling led to his destruction and catastrophe in past lives. If he would relax and lose, then he could win... sortof like chinese finger prison.
Philosophically, this is like a division by zero for me. I can see mechanically how it worked because, as Neo relaxed allowed himself to be compromised by the Smith program at the end, he also allowed the source at the machine city to analyze the Smith code and issue the terminate command. The machine city was "hacked" into the matrix through Neo, and they used his psychic link combined with Smith's code (which had a psychic link to all the other Smith's) to trip the matrix reboot and delete the Smiths'.
Neo returned to the source physically in Revolutions rather than psychically as he could have in the Architect room in Reloaded. Because of this, I suppose he was able to save the lives of everyone in the Matrix. Why this distinction is important escapes me. This may be a simple Jesus/Faith-like story.
Anyhow, a mechanical "giving up and submitting to the pain of life and accepting fate" == "ultimate goal achieved" makes sense storywise. But there is a deeper philosophical reasoning behind this plot point that disagrees with me. How can making choices like this be a Good thing spiritually? What is the point of this?
It's questions like this that make me disappointed with the Matrix movies until I gain understanding. Like when Morphius held the red/blue pills and did his slavery and Alice in Wonderland schpiels. My immediate thought was "oh god, this movie is soo stupid." Two scenes later when Neo wakes up, all I could think was "Oh GOD, this movie is soo great!"
Oh yeah, and I don't think Neo died at the end. He was still "aware" of that robot death barge that carried him away from the precipice at the end. It appeared like a winged angel to him, but he was alive to 'see' it. So, I don't think Neo died, in fact I bet he continues to live with the machines and will be allowed to return in later Matrix movies.
Microsoft should close all ports on their next OS, period! Also, wherever they mistakenly use sockets to perform IPC, they should switch to pipes!
Clearly Microsoft cannot produce bulletproof protocols/servers, but the least they could do is protect the joe sixpack consumer from internet worms by closing the damned ports!!
Grrr, I'm so angry about all this. I wish Gibson would start beating the "close all ports" drum.:(
*Smile* I still have years of Compute!'s Gazette on my bookshelf. I loved that magazine!! I was always bummed when it got folded into a little subsection in the more generic Compute, and then cancelled altogether.:(
I loved that they had at least one game in every issue, totally understandable to a little kid if it was coded in basic. Later on everything was in MLX, an encoded machine code in machine form with some sort of checksum at the end of each row. I didn't mind MLX as much because the games and apps were so much more sophisticated and FAST. Typing it in was the worst though because it took all night. I was too cheap to send away for the programs on tape.
Are there any computer mags at all these days that kids can read but won't bore the adults to tears?
I'm a C++ programmer. The new Visual Studio.Net and Platform API licensing have forbidden me from linking in any open source libraries, which I use extensively in all my programs. I could keep using Visual C++ 6.0, but that's going to be totally obsolete sooner or later... (Not that I want to use VS.net: the MS marketing folks ruined the nice VC 6.0 IDE!)
You know, I didn't understand all the linux advocacy until something Microsoft did actually affected me. Now they are forcing me to consider alternatives. Being shut out like that is serious and not a laughing matter. I guess they must not have wanted me to be one of their developers.;(
Ballmer seems like a spaz to me. If he and Microsoft weren't so desperately greedy, I would have just kept on using their products. Now, Microsoft has incovenienced me, which is quite possibly the worst thing they could have done (meaning, no lawyer can sue me to get back lost business.)
I downloaded the Wine sources and it appears that Wine DOES call mprotect() followed by some memset into a page table(?) Apparently mprotect() does work on x86 processors. (or does it?)
So on Windoze API there is a nice little convenience method called VirtualProtect() where you can change the access permissions on individual pages of memory.
Since we're on the subject of pages and access and such, does such an API exist within Linux? Or, are Linux programs stuck with an all or nothing situation?
One of these days was a month ago for me... I got a VIA Eden ME6000 single board computer from Frys for 100 bucks and some change. No fans, even on the CPU! And, it eats very little power. It's got all the peripherals you'll need for a web server or a dinky home computer.
I bought a regular mid tower case (that takes the Mini-ATX form factor) two 120GB drives, and with Redhat Linux, I setup a software RAID mirror!
Looking inside this big case is laughable, there's nothing but a teensy little board in there. But, it's whisper quiet, and that was my point in buying the Via. Unfortunately, it looks like I have a heat problem and need to install a fan on the case to circulate more air over the CPU heat sink.
It sounds by your comment that you are looking for a fast computer though. Maybe you should consider purchasing a Pentium 4? That's a really excellent processor.
This is a dupe of a comment from a couple days ago:
Here's an idea I just thinked:
One of the perks of having the highest karma ratings on Slashdot could be that the top 50 users could see a story for the first 5 minutes before comments could be taken on that story. So that we can eliminate these pesky dupes once and for all, those users could be given a "this looks like a dupe" button. If the button is pressed by one of the chosen few, then the story could return to the poster for review and possibly cancellation, saving both time and embarrassment.
I like my idea, however I cannot foresee what the negative astroturfing aspects of this feature might wind up being.
I definitely wrote this before coffee, so all standard disclaimers apply.
One of the perks of having the highest karma ratings on Slashdot could be that the top 50 users could see a story for the first 5 minutes before comments could be taken on that story. So that we can eliminate these pesky dupes once and for all, those users could be given a "this looks like a dupe" button. If the button is pressed by one of the chosen few, then the story could return to the poster for review and possibly cancellation, saving both time and embarrassment.
I like my idea, however I cannot foresee what the negative astroturfing aspects of this feature might wind up being.
I definitely wrote this before coffee, so all standard disclaimers apply.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! OMG, I almost fell outa my chair this is so funny. This isn't April fools day.
Seriously though, with the change in file formats could come some decent structure and less loosy-goosy WYSIWYG! (Yay structure!)
Unfortunately, office will essentially be a version 1.0 product, buggy as all hell. Even worse, now that the Microsoft documents will be saved in an open, self-describing, and flexible data format, I'm sure we can look forward to a new level of sophistication in the macro viruses that will attack this new platform. Life will get very interesting after this new Office comes out. (Boo viruses!)
Slashdot Mirror
I don't like this negative talk about Mozilla. No, their tech is not the best. (But their JavaScript performance and HTML 5 feature implementations are very good!) Yes, there are patent issues on web video they face that commercial entities do not. Things will work themselves out, have a little faith.
In my eyes, there is no better choice for browser vendor. Mozilla isn't lily-white-pure-as-the-driven-snow, they've been funded by Google and have been a means in the past for Goog to strike at Msft. But, they're still the best independent choice, and they've got the long view of this web thing. Oh, and they seem to care a lot about security.
Go Mozilla and Go Firefox! You are my #1 choice for development, working with your browser is a joy and it just keeps getting better. All the other browsers get support from me only begrudgingly, but you're my true love. And of course, whenever I'm asked to play tech support and help people set up their new computers, yours is the browser I download and get them all using ("because you will avoid all the viruses by running this...") :)
Dave
Tectonic shifts in computing begin with humble first steps like this. I know it was years worth of work, and you had to suffer lots of naysayers along the way. So, great job, and I hope to see less humble moves as we go forward.
Cheers,
Dave
I have always been puzzled as to why game hardware manufacturers don't circle back around to the home computing market and release hardware there as well.
Take the game cube hardware, downclock it, make it a system on a chip to control costs, and give it some internal flash and SD slots for storage. Throw it in a keyboard or laptop form factor and call it done. I am not convinced it would even need network hardware...
Don't tell me computers are not Nintendo's business model or there's no money in it. Cater to the kids; give them a cheap, modern programmable computer. So what if you break even on the deal, it's just a nice thing to do for the world.
I've used my homebrew projects as references, and they show very well to prospective employers. I've also dabbled in producing a little open source, and the source code for that is easy to show and reference.
As a professional software developer, it's my responsibility to keep my skills sharp. Coding has always felt as much craft as science to me, and I love the craft so I don't mind doing lots of homework.
I have noticed that prospective employers want to see that you can work with a large code base. Show you can manage and create many libraries from scratch and tie them all together in the runtime. Demonstrate instances of reuse if you can. Of course show them you're proficient with an xUnit tool and show them your test suites. If you can make it all sound sexy with war stories, it will be easy to sell your talents.
In my opinion, if you know how to code it would be irresponsible not to try to constantly develop business ideas from scratch. Many barriers to entry are so low in the .com business, there are so many niche markets to jump into, and there are so many routes to success. This is why I think every coder worth his salt who would like something more than a paycheck w/ occasional bonus should do a homebrew coding project and try to make a business out of it.
My current homebrew project is CardMeeting, which I've been working on since 2006 in my spare time, and I think it has some potential there.
The open source project I referred to is CeeFIT, a C++ port of Ward Cunningham's Framework for Integrated Tests.
In all cases, I tried to do home work that has nothing to do with my day job - just to keep the two separate. Also, I intentionally bit off challenging problems that I was not sure I could solve. I think it's ok to set yourself up for a little failure here and there, it's all part of the learning process and testing your limits.
Cheers,
Dave
It all depends on the license terms, every website that hosts open sources should have a license file you can read for the details.
BSD and Apache basically place very few restrictions on the use of their software. I can include apache or BSD licensed libraries it in my products, and I don't have to cough up the source code to the libraries or my code even if I make changes to the libraries, etc. On the other hand, GPL says that, if I distribute binaries, I need to cough up the source code to my ENTIRE PROGRAM if it incorporates even one line of GPL'd code. LGPL says that I need to cough up the source code, but just to the library.
GPL and LGPL try to force the issue of free software by mandating that distributed binaries are accompanied by the sources used to create them. Apache and BSD take a kinder, gentler approach where the distribution of sources is not mandated but it is encouraged, the source is open but there are no obligations to commit any changes/enhancements back to the community.
Companies like IBM are making their bread and butter on a lot of apache and eclipse licensed open source software. As far as I know, IBM sponsors but takes a mainly hands-off stance to those organizations. Microsoft uses the BSD TCP/IP stack and GZIP libraries among other open sources in Windows, but as a policy they do not release sources because they're bastards. Not sure I'd want their hacks anyhow...
Cheers,
Dave
Yeah, thanks for the concern. We're mostly using apache licensed libs, and some public domain stuff. We do not distribute LGPL or GPL licensed libraries presently, but I don't think we'd hesitate to use an LGPL'd library if one were available that we wanted to use. We try to acknowledge any libraries we use by including their notices and license files, etc in the applet jar. If we've messed up, I'm sure someone will come along and let us know so we can fix it. Most of the cherry Java libraries out there are under the Jakarta brand, and those are all apache licensed. Cheers, Dave Woldrich
Oops, my bad, we're not destined for the list at all: we aren't planning to release our code as open source.
CardMeeting is built using many open source libraries, but then again, what isn't these days?
Don't forget about #10: CardMeeting (multiplayer collaboration and planning), and that runs on Linux too, W00T!
:D (I have no shame!)
http://cardmeeting.com/
Disclaimer: I am the author of CardMeeting, so this comment is essentially shameless.
Another disclaimer: CardMeeting.com is alpha quality and we're adding features, but still purdy neat, (if I may be so bold.) Anyhow, please feel free to check it out!
Control freaks are always trying to mess with a good thing and make it their own.
Ok, I like Linux. In fact, I'd love to write software for it since, as a developer who leverages open source libraries, I feel like Microsoft has told me I'm no longer welcome.
... what there is is not abstract enough to be graced with that name. Module maybe fits. C'mon you geeks, seriously, what's the holdup here? What is the big problem with having a driver binary that just works across all minor revisions of a major version of a Linux kernel? That would be a HUGE plus for me.
So when I saw CentOS, I figured it was time to make the switch. It offered everything I needed. I went to fry's and bought the hardware for my new app server which included a cheapy HighPoint 1640 RAID card so I could setup a RAID 1 system. It said it supported Linux, so I figured I was good.
Well I wasn't good. There was source code for an open source driver from HighPoint. But trying to figure out how to package and build the thing was amazingly arcane and retarded! I HAD to install a floppy disk for godssakes. The experience of trying to bootstrap and get the damned open source drivers built for the thing was a long trip through the fiery pits. Equally evil was trying to figure out how to patch a new kernel with recompiled drivers whenever yum got me a new one. What a pain!
I'm a developer not a sysadmin. The fact that I figured out how to make my RAID card work with Linux was not a satisfying experience to me, it was frustrating and it was a waste of tens of hours over many months. You geeks who like to build kernels and fiddle with make files have at it. It's just not my thing.
In fact, I think there is no such thing as Linux device drivers
Whatever the case, the other poster who said it's not 1992 anymore had it right - we need some more slickness around drivers if we are going to win. And since I'm planning on not upgrading to the next version of windows, I would prefer we start winning on the desktop real quick.
Dave
Microsoft has proven that the native userland .exe and .dll cannot be trusted. Security patch after security patch, month after month, Microsoft has shown that with a codebase as large as Windows/Shell/IE/Office, it is impossible to police all of the exploits. When will Microsoft finally drink the .Net kool-aid and start *requiring* all non-driver/non-kernel modules to run as CLR/.Net including their own?
I argue that:
... And if you cheat ... If you give those goofball Office developers a backdoor to run native code when 3rd parties can't ... well, it won't be pretty! And like I said, Microsoft can finally chill out on the breakneck hand-assembly language-tuned speed thing; users want stability going forward and they'll buy bigger processors to keep things running smoothly just like they always have.
I know you can't do this for Vista, but you could do it for the next. Announce now and make this the real direction that the company is committed to. There's no shame in it, it's a positive step, and I know Mr. Softie has enough mojo left to make it happen.
Sincerely,
Dave
I downloaded the PS3's SPU instruction set pdf from the IBM download page. After reading that doc I thought, "Wow, this instruction set looks FUN!" It kindof reminded me of when I moved from MOS6502 to Intel 8088 - how much more fun it was to bit fiddle with the 8088. I think PS3 games are going to be a lot of fun to write code for - for bit fiddlers and premature optimization freaks. Will it be harder to code PS3 for than the XBOX 360? Unless Sony does something amazing with their SDK, I would say yes. But the rewards will probably be much higher with the PS3. I read something about being able to drop code sequences onto a SPU stream for scheduling execution, I thought that was a nifty idea. There's all these nifty buses on the Cell processor, connecting SPU's, for data sharing. Complicated, but allows for sophisticated designs.
Hi, not sure how many people heard about this:
http://www.redhat.com/software/workstation/
But, isn't this essentially RH9? Looks like I have the upgrade I've been looking for for my RH8 server! Wheee!
So the replacement page reads ... "On the 3rd of February 2004, this page (or rather the page that was here) was swamped by requests and the server subsequentially failed."
I run a website on my home DSL with a store bought router and Linux. Whether that was a redundant T3 or plain ol' DSL, it shouldn't matter: if my poor underpowered server is getting too much traffic due to Slashdot or Google, IT SHOULD NOT EVER ACTUALLY "FAIL"! What, did the Julia ethernet port just start shooting flames? Did the harddrive platters melt? They are describing a software bug!
What in the Julia server people's hardware, router firmware, OS kernel, web server, Java VM, or Java App Server that caused the fault? Whichever vendor is to blame should be identified, taken out back, and given a paddling! (And if the Julia people are running IIS, then, of course, *they* deserve to be paddled because they screwed up on a fractal level.)
In my opinion, if my site got slashdotted, I should hope to return home and see all blinky lights normal (with only my DSL bandwidth jacked up to holy hell).
How do we get these internet infrastructure people (hardware, firmware, and software) to butch up our systems? Is anyone measuring the points of failure on average webservers under extreme load and then working to fix the problems?
Davester
Why was the hardest hit Neo ever delivered to Smith the very last slo-mo-punch-you-20-feet-into-the-concrete coincident with his mind being made up to finally just submit and lose to his enemy? (That being the 'inevitable' conclusion.) He was all weak, wobbly, and tired, yet he nearly caved Smith's face in with that punch.
... sortof like chinese finger prison.
Why was the active choice to lose and die, any better than the unwilling loss and death Neo had apparently suffered from battles in previous 'lifetimes'? His struggling led to his destruction and catastrophe in past lives. If he would relax and lose, then he could win
Philosophically, this is like a division by zero for me. I can see mechanically how it worked because, as Neo relaxed allowed himself to be compromised by the Smith program at the end, he also allowed the source at the machine city to analyze the Smith code and issue the terminate command. The machine city was "hacked" into the matrix through Neo, and they used his psychic link combined with Smith's code (which had a psychic link to all the other Smith's) to trip the matrix reboot and delete the Smiths'.
Neo returned to the source physically in Revolutions rather than psychically as he could have in the Architect room in Reloaded. Because of this, I suppose he was able to save the lives of everyone in the Matrix. Why this distinction is important escapes me. This may be a simple Jesus/Faith-like story.
Anyhow, a mechanical "giving up and submitting to the pain of life and accepting fate" == "ultimate goal achieved" makes sense storywise. But there is a deeper philosophical reasoning behind this plot point that disagrees with me. How can making choices like this be a Good thing spiritually? What is the point of this?
It's questions like this that make me disappointed with the Matrix movies until I gain understanding. Like when Morphius held the red/blue pills and did his slavery and Alice in Wonderland schpiels. My immediate thought was "oh god, this movie is soo stupid." Two scenes later when Neo wakes up, all I could think was "Oh GOD, this movie is soo great!"
Oh yeah, and I don't think Neo died at the end. He was still "aware" of that robot death barge that carried him away from the precipice at the end. It appeared like a winged angel to him, but he was alive to 'see' it. So, I don't think Neo died, in fact I bet he continues to live with the machines and will be allowed to return in later Matrix movies.
Microsoft should close all ports on their next OS, period! Also, wherever they mistakenly use sockets to perform IPC, they should switch to pipes!
:(
Clearly Microsoft cannot produce bulletproof protocols/servers, but the least they could do is protect the joe sixpack consumer from internet worms by closing the damned ports!!
Grrr, I'm so angry about all this. I wish Gibson would start beating the "close all ports" drum.
*Smile* I still have years of Compute!'s Gazette on my bookshelf. I loved that magazine!! I was always bummed when it got folded into a little subsection in the more generic Compute, and then cancelled altogether. :(
I loved that they had at least one game in every issue, totally understandable to a little kid if it was coded in basic. Later on everything was in MLX, an encoded machine code in machine form with some sort of checksum at the end of each row. I didn't mind MLX as much because the games and apps were so much more sophisticated and FAST. Typing it in was the worst though because it took all night. I was too cheap to send away for the programs on tape.
Are there any computer mags at all these days that kids can read but won't bore the adults to tears?
I'm a C++ programmer. The new Visual Studio.Net and Platform API licensing have forbidden me from linking in any open source libraries, which I use extensively in all my programs. I could keep using Visual C++ 6.0, but that's going to be totally obsolete sooner or later... (Not that I want to use VS.net: the MS marketing folks ruined the nice VC 6.0 IDE!)
You know, I didn't understand all the linux advocacy until something Microsoft did actually affected me. Now they are forcing me to consider alternatives. Being shut out like that is serious and not a laughing matter. I guess they must not have wanted me to be one of their developers. ;(
Ballmer seems like a spaz to me. If he and Microsoft weren't so desperately greedy, I would have just kept on using their products. Now, Microsoft has incovenienced me, which is quite possibly the worst thing they could have done (meaning, no lawyer can sue me to get back lost business.)
if Slashdot DIDN'T cover E3. I mean, what's a "games" site without E3, right?
I dunno, I like the mini reports. Please keep doing them.
I downloaded the Wine sources and it appears that Wine DOES call mprotect() followed by some memset into a page table(?) Apparently mprotect() does work on x86 processors. (or does it?)
So on Windoze API there is a nice little convenience method called VirtualProtect() where you can change the access permissions on individual pages of memory.
Since we're on the subject of pages and access and such, does such an API exist within Linux? Or, are Linux programs stuck with an all or nothing situation?
One of these days was a month ago for me ... I got a VIA Eden ME6000 single board computer from Frys for 100 bucks and some change. No fans, even on the CPU! And, it eats very little power. It's got all the peripherals you'll need for a web server or a dinky home computer.
I bought a regular mid tower case (that takes the Mini-ATX form factor) two 120GB drives, and with Redhat Linux, I setup a software RAID mirror!
Looking inside this big case is laughable, there's nothing but a teensy little board in there. But, it's whisper quiet, and that was my point in buying the Via. Unfortunately, it looks like I have a heat problem and need to install a fan on the case to circulate more air over the CPU heat sink.
It sounds by your comment that you are looking for a fast computer though. Maybe you should consider purchasing a Pentium 4? That's a really excellent processor.
This is a dupe of a comment from a couple days ago:
Here's an idea I just thinked:
One of the perks of having the highest karma ratings on Slashdot could be that the top 50 users could see a story for the first 5 minutes before comments could be taken on that story. So that we can eliminate these pesky dupes once and for all, those users could be given a "this looks like a dupe" button. If the button is pressed by one of the chosen few, then the story could return to the poster for review and possibly cancellation, saving both time and embarrassment.
I like my idea, however I cannot foresee what the negative astroturfing aspects of this feature might wind up being.
I definitely wrote this before coffee, so all standard disclaimers apply.
Here's and idea I just thinked:
One of the perks of having the highest karma ratings on Slashdot could be that the top 50 users could see a story for the first 5 minutes before comments could be taken on that story. So that we can eliminate these pesky dupes once and for all, those users could be given a "this looks like a dupe" button. If the button is pressed by one of the chosen few, then the story could return to the poster for review and possibly cancellation, saving both time and embarrassment.
I like my idea, however I cannot foresee what the negative astroturfing aspects of this feature might wind up being.
I definitely wrote this before coffee, so all standard disclaimers apply.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! OMG, I almost fell outa my chair this is so funny. This isn't April fools day.
Seriously though, with the change in file formats could come some decent structure and less loosy-goosy WYSIWYG! (Yay structure!)
Unfortunately, office will essentially be a version 1.0 product, buggy as all hell. Even worse, now that the Microsoft documents will be saved in an open, self-describing, and flexible data format, I'm sure we can look forward to a new level of sophistication in the macro viruses that will attack this new platform. Life will get very interesting after this new Office comes out. (Boo viruses!)