Well instead of building technology to prevent overclocking, why not build it to DETECT overclocking and somehow log that its been done, so that when the chip is returned it can be identified. Otherwise, any anti clocking measures will be circumvented sooner or later anyway, and then people will do just as you described. Atleast if theres no barrier to overclocking, just to warrantee abuse, then there will be far less people trying to break the measures in place.
As for disreputable dealers selling overclocked systems, this could be hindered by storing the true clockrate both printed on the chip like it is currently, and also somewhere in the cpuid.. the bios or the os can then read the cpuid and display official clock and actual clock side by side, so that its easy to detect an overclocked chip. Someone who overclocked their chip on purpose won`t care about this.
Why not just code the rated clockrate into the cpu, under the vendor string or such, aswell as printing it onto the surface.. so that if an unscrupulous vendor sells you an overclocked cpu claiming it`s a genuine higher clock model, you can tell... Also have it somehow detect having been overclocked, so people cant clock their cpus to crazy rates, fry them and then claim a warrantee repair. other than that: Overclocking increases cpu sales and reduces warrantee repairs, overclocking is always done at your own risk, if you fry the cpu its your fault and you can go buy a new one. A chip being easily clockable often encourages buyers... The ability to overclock doesnt lower cpu sales, most people who overclock do so to be at the cutting edge of performance, thus they buy the fastest cpu they can, and THEN overclock it even more. All in all, overclocking should be a win for cpu makers, not something they should encourage.. but they shouldnt try to prevent it either. Afterall, an overclocked cpu isnt harming anyone... It`s just like adding a turbo to your car.
While i`m all for choice with regards "desktop" environments and window managers, is interoperability... For instance, an app installer should be able to add itself to a central standard location and it then appears in the menu of all window managers, it should NOT need to add itself to multiple places, nor should individual window managers need to support the menu format of multiple others.
I also dont like the "desktop" analogy, my desktop is what the monitor stands on. A computer is a unique tool in it`s own right, it shouldnt be an emulation of something we have already... that`s why you dont call a television a window.
Because currently there is no level playing field, products are usually chosen based on what those in positions of power have vested interests in, or what the salesman managed to tell them. NOT based on research and testing by qualified unbiased professionals. I dont want to pay tax to the local government so that they can buy microsoft (or any other vendor) software based on "the mayor plays golf with one of their execs" or "senator whoever owns shares in them" I have no problem what the government uses, so long as its used for the RIGHT reasons, ie efficiency, cost, etc... Personally i think the results of cost effectiveness and efficiency studies should be made available to the public, so that the government can be held accountable if they`ve wasted taxpayers money.
But is it still possible to buy a *NEW* windows 95 license? Most businesses won't want to buy 2nd hand hardware or software, due to lack of support and guarantees (not that you ever got any guarantees with software) Also it would be hard to find hardware to run it on, not all modern hardware still has drivers for 95, and if you planned to network it atall you wouldnt get any security updates for the various holes that are still being found. And ofcourse consider the amount of stress caused to users by the instability of windows 95. NT3.5 would likely be better, i`m not sure if it has wordpad, NT4 does but its less stable than 3.5, go figure.
It`s NOT free, you have to buy windows before you can use it.. thus it is effectively a component of something you pay for. Compare it to a car battery, sure you get one when you buy a car, but its not free, its part of the cost, and if you want one seperately you have to pay. Only you cant get wordpad seperately.
Modern low-end sun hardware uses commodity ram, usually ecc sdram (same as you would use in a server class x86 system.. you wouldnt want 8gig of non ecc ram anyway!) and pci cards, as do most alpha systems apart from the very early ones. I believe the very latest use rambus, but i cant afford one of these machines *g* As for performance, virtually any of the PCI based alpha`s will trash a p2/350, you can get a 500 or 600mhz "Miata" workstation cheap as hell (under $200) from ebay, and it will go upto 1.5gig... or if you look around a bit more you can find an ultimate workstation or a low end alphaserver which will support a lot more ram.
And ofcourse the Alpha was introduced in april 1992, not supported by NT4 until 96 or so, and ran in a 32bit mode. And i`m pretty certain that 64bit MIPS processors predated the Alpha, and NT ran on those too.. but also in 32bit mode. So microsoft finally produced a 32bit os, but only AFTER 64bit chips were available... Will we see 128bit chips before a 64bit windows?
The Alpha version of NT4 ran using a backwards compatibility mode, ie only 32bit address space was available. However the initial work on making NT 64bit clean was done on the Alpha, taking advantage of the fact DEC/Compaq was funding it at the time.
Creating a new 64bit arch from scratch (IA64) is a stupid idea... AMD has the right idea, extend an existing one... I really cant understand why intel/hp/sgi are bothering with IA64... HP has the rights to PA-RISC and Alpha, Intel also has rights to the Alpha, and SGI has MIPS. Alpha MIPS and PA-RISC are tried and tested 64bit designs with existing users and existing apps, and ofcourse X86-64 is fully compatible with older x86 designs. Part of SUN`s marketting campaign against hp/sgi centers around the fact sun are sticking with a tried, tested and well used architecture. The money being poored into the itanic would have been better spent improving an existing design, beef up alpha or pa-risc, mass produce cheaper chips, interestingly enough... the Alpha can still emulate x86 faster than the itanic.
A lot of programs do this however, as a linux/alpha user i have encountered MANY programs with such problems, cksfv is the latest i found.. it performs a simple crc32 checksum and stores the result in a long, thus it effectively does a crc64 on the alpha.. Ofcourse, the results dont match the original crc32 so everything shows as failed.
Many programs are written for X11 without any thought for remote use, but are still used remotely because they can. In your scenario, people who dont think about remote support will write programs that dont support it atall. You would need to consider the remote display support when writing the program instead of the current system, which would for sure result in many programs not supporting remote displays. I`m typing this in a remotely running mozilla, why? because i want a powerfull machine but not a noisy one, i have a diskless/fanless terminal here and several noisy servers sitting in another room, and i have several more terminals in other rooms which are used often enough, and by my flatmates.
Local-only apps are only advantageous for things like games and media players, and in the case of most X11 media players there is support for remote displays aswell. Making other apps local only is just limiting flexibility and forcing hardware purchases, and i dont think theres any diskless/fanless machine that would be powerfull enough to run mozilla on it`s own.
Well if you can`t exercise your fair use rights by producing personal backup copies, then downloading a copy from irc is the only alternative. And there are MANY cases when you might want to make a backup for personal use... think of a family with kids who want to play games, do you cant the kids to ruin the games and then have to fork out for a new copy? CD`s arent as tough as cartridges used to be you know. And how about CD`s that your playing in your car... an environment likely to have extremes of temperature, and possibly be damp, and is likely not very secure... CDR copies are much less likely to be stolen than original discs.
I dont know about the OSX Xserver, but displaying a copy of xchat from a solaris box to my linux or irix box works perfectly. Personally i very much like the way X11 and the linux console handles cut+paste, its perfect for me, fast and doesnt require me to keep jumping between the mouse and keyboard. Ofcourse it would be better if it was configureable to satisfy people such as yourself, and also for machines with 1 button mouse.. i have to use an old mac sometimes.
Well, crummy videocards are usually not very popular with the technically literate, ie the people who write the linux drivers. Thus, these cards dont get very well supported, and so run slow.
Dropping X11 would be a HUGE mistake. X11 as a system is far more flexible than the gui system of windows, ofcourse this flexibility can introduce a performance hit, but theres many other things in modern os`s which sacrifice performance for features, ease of use, maintainability etc.. But even considering the larger and more featured system, X11 is as fast, or faster, than windows on all but one of my machines, the one where its slower is because the graphics card is very poorly supported by X. What causes slowness more than X11 itself, is the programs running on top of it... KDE for instance, its hardly a speed demon compared to say, windowmaker. You dont need a high end videocard to make X smoothe, you just need one that`s well supported... my PCI ATI Rage Pro works perfectly, as does my Elsa GLoria Synergy, both are oldish 8mb pci cards. Any system will completely suck with poor drivers, try configuring windows to use generic vga or vesa drivers if you want a laugh. X11 is FAR superior to any local-display-only gui system, i have several machines here, and 1 monitor for X, apps running from each machine and displayed here and interacting smoothly with each other and with locally running apps.
AmigaOS had something similar long before windows did, and amigaos was always a FAR more responsive system than windows, even from the first version. AmigaOS and windows are both fairly similar in purpose and features tho, unix is more tailored to heavy duty server use, and thin clients, and ofcourse its far more powerfull and flexible. Thus you have a powerfull stable kernel, multiuser abilities, and features such as remote displays and authorization in X. True, windows has tried to copy some of the age old unix features, but the basic design remains the same with extra things kludged in as an afterthought, and theres still no X style remote apps managed by your local wm, its whole desktop or nothing. So while windows may be faster on a single machine, due to its simpler design, once you scale up.. to say one server serving hundreds of thin clients, unix really pulls into the lead.
True, but anyone can tell the difference between each host connecting and viewing the site in regular ways, and each host sending floods of syn, udp, echo packets etc, or repeatedly sending an http request for the same file.
But thats not an intentional attack, thats unforseen usage, same as if a business suddenly becomes overstretched or sell out of a certain product because of unexpected demand etc. I`m not saying bill legitimate bandwidth, that is regular people who visit your site to actually read it, i`m suggesting we bill malicious traffic, ddos attacks, scans by worms etc. A huge bill might make some people think about their security a little harder.
But a kernel level rootkit may not even require ports to be open, it could wait for malformed tcp replies, incoming icmp packets, or maybe even ACK`s - remember most firewalls are stateless, and will block syn`s but allow ACK`s or perhaps RST`s... Ofcourse at kernel level you could listen for any single packet of data, or even a non ip ethernet frame etc, and possibly establish a full outgoing tcp connection with whoever is in control of your machine.
Well the original post talked about intentional ddos style attacks, a slashdotting is accidental, each individual user is only using a small amount of bandwidth and doing nothing abnormal, it`s simply the volume of hits. This is very different from a dedicated attack launched by one or two people for the sole purpose of taking a site offline and causing trouble for the site operators. It`s as with most things in law, intent is the difference between a crime and an accident.
Slashdot Mirror
Well instead of building technology to prevent overclocking, why not build it to DETECT overclocking and somehow log that its been done, so that when the chip is returned it can be identified.
Otherwise, any anti clocking measures will be circumvented sooner or later anyway, and then people will do just as you described. Atleast if theres no barrier to overclocking, just to warrantee abuse, then there will be far less people trying to break the measures in place.
As for disreputable dealers selling overclocked systems, this could be hindered by storing the true clockrate both printed on the chip like it is currently, and also somewhere in the cpuid.. the bios or the os can then read the cpuid and display official clock and actual clock side by side, so that its easy to detect an overclocked chip.
Someone who overclocked their chip on purpose won`t care about this.
Why not just code the rated clockrate into the cpu, under the vendor string or such, aswell as printing it onto the surface.. so that if an unscrupulous vendor sells you an overclocked cpu claiming it`s a genuine higher clock model, you can tell... Also have it somehow detect having been overclocked, so people cant clock their cpus to crazy rates, fry them and then claim a warrantee repair. other than that:
Overclocking increases cpu sales and reduces warrantee repairs, overclocking is always done at your own risk, if you fry the cpu its your fault and you can go buy a new one.
A chip being easily clockable often encourages buyers...
The ability to overclock doesnt lower cpu sales, most people who overclock do so to be at the cutting edge of performance, thus they buy the fastest cpu they can, and THEN overclock it even more.
All in all, overclocking should be a win for cpu makers, not something they should encourage.. but they shouldnt try to prevent it either.
Afterall, an overclocked cpu isnt harming anyone... It`s just like adding a turbo to your car.
While i`m all for choice with regards "desktop" environments and window managers, is interoperability... For instance, an app installer should be able to add itself to a central standard location and it then appears in the menu of all window managers, it should NOT need to add itself to multiple places, nor should individual window managers need to support the menu format of multiple others.
I also dont like the "desktop" analogy, my desktop is what the monitor stands on. A computer is a unique tool in it`s own right, it shouldnt be an emulation of something we have already... that`s why you dont call a television a window.
Because currently there is no level playing field, products are usually chosen based on what those in positions of power have vested interests in, or what the salesman managed to tell them. NOT based on research and testing by qualified unbiased professionals.
I dont want to pay tax to the local government so that they can buy microsoft (or any other vendor) software based on "the mayor plays golf with one of their execs" or "senator whoever owns shares in them"
I have no problem what the government uses, so long as its used for the RIGHT reasons, ie efficiency, cost, etc... Personally i think the results of cost effectiveness and efficiency studies should be made available to the public, so that the government can be held accountable if they`ve wasted taxpayers money.
But is it still possible to buy a *NEW* windows 95 license? Most businesses won't want to buy 2nd hand hardware or software, due to lack of support and guarantees (not that you ever got any guarantees with software)
Also it would be hard to find hardware to run it on, not all modern hardware still has drivers for 95, and if you planned to network it atall you wouldnt get any security updates for the various holes that are still being found.
And ofcourse consider the amount of stress caused to users by the instability of windows 95.
NT3.5 would likely be better, i`m not sure if it has wordpad, NT4 does but its less stable than 3.5, go figure.
It`s NOT free, you have to buy windows before you can use it.. thus it is effectively a component of something you pay for.
Compare it to a car battery, sure you get one when you buy a car, but its not free, its part of the cost, and if you want one seperately you have to pay.
Only you cant get wordpad seperately.
This actually seems to be SLOWER than the software-based x86 emulation supported by the alpha for years.. Can anyone confirm that?
Modern low-end sun hardware uses commodity ram, usually ecc sdram (same as you would use in a server class x86 system.. you wouldnt want 8gig of non ecc ram anyway!) and pci cards, as do most alpha systems apart from the very early ones. I believe the very latest use rambus, but i cant afford one of these machines *g*
As for performance, virtually any of the PCI based alpha`s will trash a p2/350, you can get a 500 or 600mhz "Miata" workstation cheap as hell (under $200) from ebay, and it will go upto 1.5gig... or if you look around a bit more you can find an ultimate workstation or a low end alphaserver which will support a lot more ram.
What if you install mysql on a 64bit system, such as an ultrasparc or an alpha?
And ofcourse the Alpha was introduced in april 1992, not supported by NT4 until 96 or so, and ran in a 32bit mode. And i`m pretty certain that 64bit MIPS processors predated the Alpha, and NT ran on those too.. but also in 32bit mode. So microsoft finally produced a 32bit os, but only AFTER 64bit chips were available...
Will we see 128bit chips before a 64bit windows?
The Alpha version of NT4 ran using a backwards compatibility mode, ie only 32bit address space was available. However the initial work on making NT 64bit clean was done on the Alpha, taking advantage of the fact DEC/Compaq was funding it at the time.
Creating a new 64bit arch from scratch (IA64) is a stupid idea... AMD has the right idea, extend an existing one... I really cant understand why intel/hp/sgi are bothering with IA64... HP has the rights to PA-RISC and Alpha, Intel also has rights to the Alpha, and SGI has MIPS. Alpha MIPS and PA-RISC are tried and tested 64bit designs with existing users and existing apps, and ofcourse X86-64 is fully compatible with older x86 designs.
Part of SUN`s marketting campaign against hp/sgi centers around the fact sun are sticking with a tried, tested and well used architecture.
The money being poored into the itanic would have been better spent improving an existing design, beef up alpha or pa-risc, mass produce cheaper chips, interestingly enough... the Alpha can still emulate x86 faster than the itanic.
A lot of programs do this however, as a linux/alpha user i have encountered MANY programs with such problems, cksfv is the latest i found.. it performs a simple crc32 checksum and stores the result in a long, thus it effectively does a crc64 on the alpha.. Ofcourse, the results dont match the original crc32 so everything shows as failed.
Many programs are written for X11 without any thought for remote use, but are still used remotely because they can.
In your scenario, people who dont think about remote support will write programs that dont support it atall.
You would need to consider the remote display support when writing the program instead of the current system, which would for sure result in many programs not supporting remote displays.
I`m typing this in a remotely running mozilla, why? because i want a powerfull machine but not a noisy one, i have a diskless/fanless terminal here and several noisy servers sitting in another room, and i have several more terminals in other rooms which are used often enough, and by my flatmates.
Local-only apps are only advantageous for things like games and media players, and in the case of most X11 media players there is support for remote displays aswell. Making other apps local only is just limiting flexibility and forcing hardware purchases, and i dont think theres any diskless/fanless machine that would be powerfull enough to run mozilla on it`s own.
Because then programs would be written for one or the other, and then you would lose the ability to run anything remotely, which is what i like.
I always wondered, what would the specifications of the AAA chipset have been, had it ever been finished?
Well if you can`t exercise your fair use rights by producing personal backup copies, then downloading a copy from irc is the only alternative.
And there are MANY cases when you might want to make a backup for personal use... think of a family with kids who want to play games, do you cant the kids to ruin the games and then have to fork out for a new copy? CD`s arent as tough as cartridges used to be you know.
And how about CD`s that your playing in your car... an environment likely to have extremes of temperature, and possibly be damp, and is likely not very secure... CDR copies are much less likely to be stolen than original discs.
I dont know about the OSX Xserver, but displaying a copy of xchat from a solaris box to my linux or irix box works perfectly.
Personally i very much like the way X11 and the linux console handles cut+paste, its perfect for me, fast and doesnt require me to keep jumping between the mouse and keyboard. Ofcourse it would be better if it was configureable to satisfy people such as yourself, and also for machines with 1 button mouse.. i have to use an old mac sometimes.
Well, crummy videocards are usually not very popular with the technically literate, ie the people who write the linux drivers.
Thus, these cards dont get very well supported, and so run slow.
Dropping X11 would be a HUGE mistake. X11 as a system is far more flexible than the gui system of windows, ofcourse this flexibility can introduce a performance hit, but theres many other things in modern os`s which sacrifice performance for features, ease of use, maintainability etc..
But even considering the larger and more featured system, X11 is as fast, or faster, than windows on all but one of my machines, the one where its slower is because the graphics card is very poorly supported by X.
What causes slowness more than X11 itself, is the programs running on top of it... KDE for instance, its hardly a speed demon compared to say, windowmaker.
You dont need a high end videocard to make X smoothe, you just need one that`s well supported... my PCI ATI Rage Pro works perfectly, as does my Elsa GLoria Synergy, both are oldish 8mb pci cards.
Any system will completely suck with poor drivers, try configuring windows to use generic vga or vesa drivers if you want a laugh.
X11 is FAR superior to any local-display-only gui system, i have several machines here, and 1 monitor for X, apps running from each machine and displayed here and interacting smoothly with each other and with locally running apps.
AmigaOS had something similar long before windows did, and amigaos was always a FAR more responsive system than windows, even from the first version.
AmigaOS and windows are both fairly similar in purpose and features tho, unix is more tailored to heavy duty server use, and thin clients, and ofcourse its far more powerfull and flexible. Thus you have a powerfull stable kernel, multiuser abilities, and features such as remote displays and authorization in X.
True, windows has tried to copy some of the age old unix features, but the basic design remains the same with extra things kludged in as an afterthought, and theres still no X style remote apps managed by your local wm, its whole desktop or nothing.
So while windows may be faster on a single machine, due to its simpler design, once you scale up.. to say one server serving hundreds of thin clients, unix really pulls into the lead.
True, but anyone can tell the difference between each host connecting and viewing the site in regular ways, and each host sending floods of syn, udp, echo packets etc, or repeatedly sending an http request for the same file.
But thats not an intentional attack, thats unforseen usage, same as if a business suddenly becomes overstretched or sell out of a certain product because of unexpected demand etc.
I`m not saying bill legitimate bandwidth, that is regular people who visit your site to actually read it, i`m suggesting we bill malicious traffic, ddos attacks, scans by worms etc. A huge bill might make some people think about their security a little harder.
But a kernel level rootkit may not even require ports to be open, it could wait for malformed tcp replies, incoming icmp packets, or maybe even ACK`s - remember most firewalls are stateless, and will block syn`s but allow ACK`s or perhaps RST`s...
Ofcourse at kernel level you could listen for any single packet of data, or even a non ip ethernet frame etc, and possibly establish a full outgoing tcp connection with whoever is in control of your machine.
Well the original post talked about intentional ddos style attacks, a slashdotting is accidental, each individual user is only using a small amount of bandwidth and doing nothing abnormal, it`s simply the volume of hits.
This is very different from a dedicated attack launched by one or two people for the sole purpose of taking a site offline and causing trouble for the site operators.
It`s as with most things in law, intent is the difference between a crime and an accident.