Sorry, I do not consider embedded, dedicated or other special-purpose OS qualify as "General Purpose" OS. They certainly have their uses, but cannot compete when security (wild user code) or flexibility (hardware) is important.
You might as well consider MS-DOS to be microkernel:)
Dr Tannenbaum may well be correct that from theoretical considerations a microkernel is superior. But AFAIK after 15+ years of maintaining that, he and his supporters still do not have a useful exemplar.
I do not doubt they've tried. The interesting information is why it hasn't worked. Unfortunately, people seldom publicise failures of ideas they advocate.
One very obvious impediment is the existance of priviliged instructions. For example, on x86 the HLT instruction (used to trigger powersavings) is priviliged, Ring0. So the idle thread has to be Ring0, in the kernel. Then there is Linus' point to trampling memory spaces.
I strongly suspect a microkernel will suffer in security or additional ring transitions/TLB if Ring1 or Ring2 are used. This modern fast hardware, this might be less noticeable.
Of course the Ds blame the Rs and vice-versa. They both want the spying, but know it's unpopular and cannot afford to be seen as supporting it in an e[rl]ection year. Yet they don't want to be seen/accused of doing anything to hamper the WOT.
The hypocrisy of Congress cannot by overestimated. Without the moral compass that principles provide, there will always be situations where expediency is unclear.
Sure, Berne/Bern is in Switzerland. The Federal capital, and capital of the canton.
That doesn't mean they signed the convention (although I think they did). The Swiss are famous for hosting things that they don't sign on for. In spite of hosting many UN agencies in Geneva since the beginning, the Swiss only joined the UN in 2002.
Thank you for the elaboration. But I believe that referenda were only for major laws, and not for minor changes. Allowing civil discover would probably be legally considered a minor change. Or maybe not if there is a specific Swiss Privacy Law (and not merely custom and provisions in other laws).
Well, yes, I've used a bit of shorthand. As have you. Prosecutors to not get cases from the public, they get them from police. Police get complaints from the public. The real problem here is the leak of police information, and I very much doubt it will be tolerated. It would undermine the respect for police, something the Swiss do have.
Oh my. Somebody is going to get into _big_ trouble. The Swiss are _very_ independant minded, perhaps even moreso than Americans. They also take their laws very seriously and playing games is quite simply not allowed.
I expect the civil suits to be dismissed with prejudice (or whatever the civil code equivalent is) and countersuits for fraudulent prosecution to proceed.
If the copyright holders don't like the law, they can lobby to get it changed. Otherwise, the Swiss guard their privacy very jealously. They've stood up to various flavors of nasty Germans and French. I very much doubt they'll cave to the RIAA equivalent. Please also remember that K-Tel is a swiss corp deliberately to take advantage of copyright laws.
To the extent that capitalism still exists (I have my doubts, it is mostly mercantilism now), I believe most of the ills could be solved if the capitalists (shareholders and their agents) would adopt a longer time-frame in their return calculations.
Most of what is criticised is nothing more than actions which yield short-term gains at the expense of long term profitability. The long term is ignored because the level of change in modern society tempts people into believing their current actions have no predictable consequences. But they do. Helping the poor, or taking care of your workers (as Henry Ford did) has a long-term payoff.
... that's all it takes [plus limited access to distro lists]. Yes, it's is a PITA for some cases, but to curb abule, the innocent usually suffer.
Trimming the top-posting is slightly less important-- people just delete the previous messages to have a nice archive. That is, if someone didn't trim early!
Abuses of this sort just teach young people to value and protect their freedoms all the stronger. Amd teach the lesson to far more people than those they martyr.
I very much doubt the joyless administrators can even comprehend the irony of their actions.
The claim seems exaggerated, but works: wiki tells me Morocco has 446,550 km2. crunching the numbers, 4% at 100% efficiency only gives 5.8 TW, or 19 kW per capita.
Couldn't "The Mouse" be protected by TradeMark? Mickey Mouse-brand cartoons? TM is perpetual if maintained.
I doubt Disney is too concerned about sales of "Steamboat Willy", but certainly would be if losing that copyright also lost them the right to exclude others from making MM products.
But I think they've got a TM, and what do they need copyright for?
Patents run only 17 years. Why authors life + 100 for copyright? I'd really like to know.
I'm familiar with Mark Twain's argument that his daughters "needed" his copyrights to live. Well, (with a father like him?:) that may be true. But needs don't beget rights. What about Edison's and Bell's daughters?
The justification for patents and copyrights is neatly given in the US Consitution "to promote the progress of sciences and useful arts". So what terms are reasonable for that promotion? Once you look at the rates-of-return required by commercial enterprises, 17 years looks generous, at least in prospect. Complaining afterwards for extentions cannot be other than grasping.
Five years from first commercial publication actually appears very reasonable and corresponds to creative project economic horizons. Allowing long copyright may actually _hinder_ "progress" as publishers milk catalogs instead of seeking out new projects.
It may come as a bit of a shock to Europeans and Americans outside fly-over country, but "Employment at will" is the basic doctrine in all the US. People can be fired for good cause, bad cause or even no cause. There are statutory exemptions and some states have implied-in-law fair dealing. Of course, they can still sue for "wrongful termination, but most likely, they'll lose.
It is probably better this way because if you "protect" the employment relationship (like Europe), you basically make employers very fearful of hiring anyone. That also produces a very immobile, unflexible and fearful workforce.
The real reason employers don't act arbitrarily in most cases is pure self-interest: it is risky and hard to train and integrate new employees. A dismissal that others think is wrong is likely to very negatively affect morale in the remaining employees and is very ill-advised unless you believe they are all slackers and you want to axe the whole dept.
He can come back from wherever he likes, and be as satisfied or dissatisfied as strikes his fancy. However, when he wishes to convince other people, he needs some rational arguments they can accept. Not merely his feelings or impressions.
When he criticises OSS for a lack of creativity, by implication he is praising closed-source. Frankly, I see even less creativity there. It would be tempting to blame the omnivorous monopolist (Microsoft), but I'm not sure this is accurate either.
I think there is a more fundamental problem -- a lack of imagination. Most specifically for things humans might find desireable and can be facilitated by data processing.
I have a serious problem with observers criticising something for being old [un-novel] without being more specific about how "new" might be more advantageous.
Such remarks basically insult practitioners for a lack of imagination without giving any substantiation. "Who know how much better it could be" is an impotent whine [whinge]. The commentator reveals themselves.
Why stop there? Why be so mild? Why not require ID and signatures on tear-off forms on the back of CDs? Any sale without a valid signed form becomes theft. Very easy. Completely legal and enforceable so long as terms are not unconsciencable (first-born).
The simple answer to this reductio-ad-absurdam is illuminating: RIAA won't do this because it would hurt sales. IE -- commercial advantage is more important than protecting Intellectual "property". I take them at their word, and so their "overreaching" must fail. They could have chosen greater protection, and this choice must be considered in their later complaints. Contributory negligence[estoppel].
Kudos to Ars Technica once again. Amazing they stay sharp after all these years. The case against "net bias" is remarkably simple. Even moreso in the face of increasing traffic:
When traffic increases (overall, or peaky) to handle more video (for example), capacity has to be added or it quite simply will not get moved. Squeezing out/delaying other traffic will not go very far. Dark fiber has to be lit. When capacity is added because there is more traffic, there is also more "gaps" to fit in "low priority" traffic.
The fundamental problem is people think of the internet as a water pipe, with very simple capacity constraints. It is not. You don't care about water latency while data packet latency or jitter are extremely important.
It is beyond annoying that certain commercial entities are exploiting this misunderstanding to further their own interests at the expense of their customers. One cannot help but see them as grasping and acting out of malice.
No, "instant public domain" would yield other problems -- nothing-to-lose plaintiffs attacking corps with specious charges just for the discovery value.
This brings up the rather good point that civil discovery is a startlingly invasive process conducted by people who are hostile. While some discovery leads to evidence which is admitted and becomes public, the vast bulk does not.
Some sorts of safeguards are required for this material. Traditionally, this has been up to attornies having professional ethics. A dubious proposition in some cases. Perhaps some sort of "fruit of the poisoned vine" is required for civil evidence.
No, as best as I can tell, they've merely acknowledged that the legislatively mandated inspections are too rigid and the "Condition-based Inspection" can be allowed under suitably expert guidence. Actually, it is _safer_ because in certain critical instances, it will call for inspections more frequently than the legal minimum.
BTW, I hated the title "CDN Forces Reactor online... " I didn't know the Canadian Armed Forces had any reactors! It should have been "Ottawa forces reactor online..."
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You might as well consider MS-DOS to be microkernel :)
I do not doubt they've tried. The interesting information is why it hasn't worked. Unfortunately, people seldom publicise failures of ideas they advocate.
One very obvious impediment is the existance of priviliged instructions. For example, on x86 the HLT instruction (used to trigger powersavings) is priviliged, Ring0. So the idle thread has to be Ring0, in the kernel. Then there is Linus' point to trampling memory spaces.
I strongly suspect a microkernel will suffer in security or additional ring transitions/TLB if Ring1 or Ring2 are used. This modern fast hardware, this might be less noticeable.
Leaning on Ds won't work very much. They're just counting votes. Likewise the Rs. Without pricinples, all is expediency.
The hypocrisy of Congress cannot by overestimated. Without the moral compass that principles provide, there will always be situations where expediency is unclear.
Sure, Berne/Bern is in Switzerland. The Federal capital, and capital of the canton. That doesn't mean they signed the convention (although I think they did). The Swiss are famous for hosting things that they don't sign on for. In spite of hosting many UN agencies in Geneva since the beginning, the Swiss only joined the UN in 2002.
Thank you for the elaboration. But I believe that referenda were only for major laws, and not for minor changes. Allowing civil discover would probably be legally considered a minor change. Or maybe not if there is a specific Swiss Privacy Law (and not merely custom and provisions in other laws).
Well, yes, I've used a bit of shorthand. As have you. Prosecutors to not get cases from the public, they get them from police. Police get complaints from the public. The real problem here is the leak of police information, and I very much doubt it will be tolerated. It would undermine the respect for police, something the Swiss do have.
I expect the civil suits to be dismissed with prejudice (or whatever the civil code equivalent is) and countersuits for fraudulent prosecution to proceed.
If the copyright holders don't like the law, they can lobby to get it changed. Otherwise, the Swiss guard their privacy very jealously. They've stood up to various flavors of nasty Germans and French. I very much doubt they'll cave to the RIAA equivalent. Please also remember that K-Tel is a swiss corp deliberately to take advantage of copyright laws.
Most of what is criticised is nothing more than actions which yield short-term gains at the expense of long term profitability. The long term is ignored because the level of change in modern society tempts people into believing their current actions have no predictable consequences. But they do. Helping the poor, or taking care of your workers (as Henry Ford did) has a long-term payoff.
Cable has a difficult problem that many customers share a cable segment and bandwidth that is much harder to expand than splitting a DSLAM.
One bandwdith hog might ruin performance for the many normal users on that segment. For them, it would be unfair _NOT_ to throttle the hog.
Trimming the top-posting is slightly less important-- people just delete the previous messages to have a nice archive. That is, if someone didn't trim early!
I very much doubt the joyless administrators can even comprehend the irony of their actions.
I doubt Disney is too concerned about sales of "Steamboat Willy", but certainly would be if losing that copyright also lost them the right to exclude others from making MM products.
But I think they've got a TM, and what do they need copyright for?
I'm familiar with Mark Twain's argument that his daughters "needed" his copyrights to live. Well, (with a father like him?:) that may be true. But needs don't beget rights. What about Edison's and Bell's daughters?
The justification for patents and copyrights is neatly given in the US Consitution "to promote the progress of sciences and useful arts". So what terms are reasonable for that promotion? Once you look at the rates-of-return required by commercial enterprises, 17 years looks generous, at least in prospect. Complaining afterwards for extentions cannot be other than grasping.
Five years from first commercial publication actually appears very reasonable and corresponds to creative project economic horizons. Allowing long copyright may actually _hinder_ "progress" as publishers milk catalogs instead of seeking out new projects.
It is probably better this way because if you "protect" the employment relationship (like Europe), you basically make employers very fearful of hiring anyone. That also produces a very immobile, unflexible and fearful workforce.
The real reason employers don't act arbitrarily in most cases is pure self-interest: it is risky and hard to train and integrate new employees. A dismissal that others think is wrong is likely to very negatively affect morale in the remaining employees and is very ill-advised unless you believe they are all slackers and you want to axe the whole dept.
When he criticises OSS for a lack of creativity, by implication he is praising closed-source. Frankly, I see even less creativity there. It would be tempting to blame the omnivorous monopolist (Microsoft), but I'm not sure this is accurate either.
I think there is a more fundamental problem -- a lack of imagination. Most specifically for things humans might find desireable and can be facilitated by data processing.
Such remarks basically insult practitioners for a lack of imagination without giving any substantiation. "Who know how much better it could be" is an impotent whine [whinge]. The commentator reveals themselves.
AFAICS, the concern is military and dual-use technology, and that can adequately be covered by ITAR and EAR regs.
The simple answer to this reductio-ad-absurdam is illuminating: RIAA won't do this because it would hurt sales. IE -- commercial advantage is more important than protecting Intellectual "property". I take them at their word, and so their "overreaching" must fail. They could have chosen greater protection, and this choice must be considered in their later complaints. Contributory negligence[estoppel].
When traffic increases (overall, or peaky) to handle more video (for example), capacity has to be added or it quite simply will not get moved. Squeezing out/delaying other traffic will not go very far. Dark fiber has to be lit. When capacity is added because there is more traffic, there is also more "gaps" to fit in "low priority" traffic.
The fundamental problem is people think of the internet as a water pipe, with very simple capacity constraints. It is not. You don't care about water latency while data packet latency or jitter are extremely important.
It is beyond annoying that certain commercial entities are exploiting this misunderstanding to further their own interests at the expense of their customers. One cannot help but see them as grasping and acting out of malice.
Some sorts of safeguards are required for this material. Traditionally, this has been up to attornies having professional ethics. A dubious proposition in some cases. Perhaps some sort of "fruit of the poisoned vine" is required for civil evidence.
BTW, I hated the title "CDN Forces Reactor online ... " I didn't know the Canadian Armed Forces had any reactors! It should have been "Ottawa forces reactor online ..."