The article on UnitedLinux's new partners has a number of interesting tidbits. First of all, I was completly unaware that SCO was such a major contendor in the group, has anyone thought about how this fits into their supposed lawsuits against Linux vendors? If they are really intending to sue, it could be a way to harm Redhat, and the other non-UnitedLinux distributions.
As for the new partners mentioned in the article, none of them seem that major. All that UnitedLinux seems to get out of it is the ability to use a name, and all the companies (HP, Intel, IBM, and AMD) get out of it is prerelease code.
Hobbits - The Movie
Sam: Something like 36.
Frodo: Something like 36? Including me?
Sam: Um, no. 37.
Frodo: I'm 37?...
Frodo: Try not to suck any dick on the way through Mordor!
This article's comments may set a new low for shitty "In SOVIET RUSSIA" posts. I count 5 or 6 in the first 10 posts. I hope that everyone can get this shit out of their systems now.
Of the remaining posts, nearly all of them comment on the IIS/ISS mix up. I would imagine that the few that slip through the cracks will be the shitty meta-posts like this one.
Does the soviet Russia thing bother anyone else? I suppose soviet USSR, or communist USSR could work, but soviet Russia?
Its worth noting that they are using NCD x-terminals. While buying used NCD equipment works well if you've already invested in their hardware, if you are setting up equipment from scratch, it is not an effective solution. NCD does not provide their drivers for download, and charges a fairly hefty amount of money for them, so if you want to set up x-terms at home, or at a small buisness, buy something else, unless you are already familiar with this.
Quite a few people seem to have picked these things up after the last article, not realizing how much of a pain it would be to get them running
Way to go with your innovate thinking. Apple is one of the major companies behind firewire, and they have been working on the standard for years. I seem to recall finding early references to firewire going back to 1995. So if Apple comes up with a standard, which Microsoft then implements before them, thats Microsoft innovating?
I can't make up my mind as to whether you are trolling, or just poorly informed.
I realize that this is probably a troll, but if you really are clueless, I guess I'll fill you in. DNS does not replace the IP system, it expands upon it. If the DNS heirarchy were to disappear there would be no negative effect upon the internet, you would just loose the ability to use symbollical names. If you really want to remove that "weak" link, your welcome to use IPs, and if the DNS fails, you can continue operating as normal. I personally link missing net access every once in a while is far less bothersome then memorizing IP addresses or adding them to my hosts file.
I've seen lots of articles about the various "information warfare" scenarios. The impression I've gathered is that it just isn't that big of a threat. In the past we've had break-ins to US military computers, but outside of the negative publicity, not much came of it (didn't the famous late '80s German attacks only result in copies of VMS reaching East Germany?).
The various commercial web sites are another matter, but none of them are critical to anyones life, and if eBay or someone were to be broken into, very few people (and one company) would really suffer.
Now if that one cracker were to instead get into the US and begin shooting people from the trunk of a car, or go hijack a commercial plane, the damage would be far greater, and less education would be required to pull it off.
(There was an article on the Register about this about a month ago)
I've heard the opinion that it isn't really in danger of being canceled. The argument behind it is that Sci-Fi feels that they are paying far too much for each episode, and that the calue of the episodes is inflated. By canceling it, they've shown that they are willing to stop carrying the show if the price per episode isn't lowered. I personally think that this isn't too unlikely, and while it could mean that a season could be delayed a year or so, it makes sense for Sci-Fi to do this.
Why should Microsoft change formats? They are presently in a position (in regards to office software) where they can force their own "standards" on everyone else. They continue to dominate because there are not reliable, transparent converters. If they were to adopt a document format where other companies software could edit documents created by Word, there would be little reason to stay with Office. I personally always use plaintext wherever I can, I don't want to rely on any document format (no matter how common) to continue to exist for long periods of time.
Commenting on how the new Origin systems are denser then any other single image system, and then comparing them to the current blade fad to make your point is a bit silly. Blades are seperate machines (unless they are Sun, in which case they are the current desktop line), this system is a single machine. I'm not entirely certain about this density claim either, doesn't Sun fit 128 processors in a rack with the Fire 15ks?
Do you neglect to mention that most of them do in fact have a network port sitting unprotected on the street? Most houses do not have locks on their telephone boxes, and as such, there is nothing preventing some random kid from droping recording devices in there, and capturing all phone data. I have not heard about this being done to listen to DSL connections, but it should be doable with the right hardware.
Now, I approve of the concept of computer porn, but the example above is just derivative of far better porn sites. I mean, the Unix Sex site(not entirely work safe) has been around far longer, and their selection of photos are far superior. You people call yourselves geeks, and yet you don't even know of good places to find man on pdp11 photos, sheesh.
This sort of thing must just be braking all the classic Crayons hearts. I mean, people were getting upset when Cray started building the T3 series Alpha based stuff, nowadays they are cooperating with Dell and making AMD based clusters. At least they have a new vector machine coming out soon.
Really? I can accept that, however, they are still adding extensions, even if they are trimming down the total instruction set. I know of no power chip that has Altivec, and Apple has firmly avoided moving away from Altivec (they stayed with the G4, even though IBMs G3s were hitting higher clock frequencies).
I'm afraid your a bit off. IBM uses Power4 chips in their RS/6000 (pSeries) machines, as I recall, this is a derivative of that chip, it has PowerPC extensions and its only 1 core per die, as opposed to 2. The zSeries machines are 64bit S/390 boxes, they use completely different processors then the pSeries boxes, and have a lineage going back to the S/360. The Power/PowerPC chips originate from a print server, or something like that.
Keeping the quality of ATI's software development team in mind, how long will it take to evolve into something a bit more like Pixar's suite?
Nice to see that ATI recognizes that their stuff is inferior to a nice render farm, nVidia doesn't seem to quite understand that yet, seeing as how they keep claiming "Pixar Quality".
Interesting that it only supports X.2. I would expect it to support older versions, as I was under the impression that X.2 mostly did stuff to the UI, but if there is no backwards compatibility for a CLI application, maybe that did some other things.
Why not look at the PocketPC machines? Quite a few people have gotten them working with serial chording keyboards (link), you can install Linux on them, and you have many input options, PCMCIA, serial, compactflash, smart cards, etc.
Of course, the Zaurus is a very similar device, and it comes with Linux, but you mention it in the article, so I assume you've already looked into it.
Browsing through the Microsoft link (the first one is a puff piece), it looks as though they still havn't patched the SSL certificate problem in IE/Windows. Will we have to wait until the next multiple security hole patch, or will they release it seperatly?
It would be interesting to know what kind of traffic each web server tends to take. It just seems to me that the end user perspective would be important here. If 90% of the machines out there run IIS, but the average person mostly accesses Apache machines, which would you say is the dominant server software?
Unfortunatly, I cannot think of an easy way to do any such overview.
Many people are commenting that Apple needs to move to x86, however, I think there are a few problems with that. First of all, Apple has never strictly enforced the licensing systems they have in place. Nearly all Mac users I've dealt with are lax about it too, usually installing the copy they get with their new computer on their older equipment, or borrowing a copy from a friend. There has never been much pressure from anywhere not to do this, because, after all, "everyone knows that Apple survives off hardware". As Apple has no copy protection scheme in place, they are worried that they would loose massive amounts of money by just selling an OS to a crowd which has always viewed the OS as a freebie.
Apple could avoid this by creating their own bios, or some other way of restricting the machines that could install Mac OS X for the x86, but historically, this hasn't worked well, just look at IBM. In the Mac world though, they have been able to hold patents and such on far more of the machine, preventing against unlicensed clones (they prosecuted quite a few companies in the '80s over Mac clones). If they don't have complete control over the hardware, its doubtful that they could prevent clones.
Finally, if we assume that Apple decides to release an OS X port that works on all x86 hardware, they would have to compete with all the x86 vendors on price (Dell, etc.), as well as Microsoft on the OS (and all the OEM agreements that entails), and they would have to set up support for a huge amount of hardware that they don't have experience. This seems unlikely to me.
As a combination of all these issues, I just cannot see Apple moving to x86 any time soon. Sure, they might be able to do it, but I don't see it making sense.
I wouldn't put it that way. Apple is selling a 5 machine "Family" license for somewhere in the range of 190$. There is functionally no difference between what you get from that, and the normal purchase, as Apple does not use serial numbers to distinguis products. However, that does not mean that with the 129$ version of Jaguar you are entitled to install on 5 Macs.
This sort of thing is really starting to get tedious. I don't know if the copy protection will be broken when it is originally released, and as such, I'm ambivalent about buying any music that might be using it, or other copy protection schemes. Between the lower prices, and the lack of copy protection, its almost worth moving to vinyl, the hip image that records have is just a side effect.
A lot of people are complaining about Apple's hardware, however, I have a slightly different view on it. I used to be a Mac person, and I am presently planning on going back, not because of the software (I prefer NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux, all of which support most modern Macs), but because of the hardware. Their laptops look nice, have reasonable battery life, and have more then enough power for what I do under Linux. As such, I'm currently planning on buying a loaded iBook as soon as possible, while the iBook doesn't look like that great of a deal if you look at it is a low end notebook, if you look at the 12.1" iBooks in comparison to PC "compact" laptops, the prices are really quite good. Sure the processors just are not keeping up with the x86 world these days, but my experiences with Apple in the past are such that I'm willing to bare that (plus their tech support ships you replacement parts quickly).
Is it 16, with 4 unused bits? That would make sense to me, and explain why it was originally labled 16 bit. If so, I don't know if customers should get angry about it, after all, we've had 24 bit color labeled as 32 bit for quite some time.
Slashdot Mirror
The article on UnitedLinux's new partners has a number of interesting tidbits. First of all, I was completly unaware that SCO was such a major contendor in the group, has anyone thought about how this fits into their supposed lawsuits against Linux vendors? If they are really intending to sue, it could be a way to harm Redhat, and the other non-UnitedLinux distributions.
As for the new partners mentioned in the article, none of them seem that major. All that UnitedLinux seems to get out of it is the ability to use a name, and all the companies (HP, Intel, IBM, and AMD) get out of it is prerelease code.
Hobbits - The Movie Sam: Something like 36. Frodo: Something like 36? Including me? Sam: Um, no. 37. Frodo: I'm 37? ...
Frodo: Try not to suck any dick on the way through Mordor!
This article's comments may set a new low for shitty "In SOVIET RUSSIA" posts. I count 5 or 6 in the first 10 posts. I hope that everyone can get this shit out of their systems now.
Of the remaining posts, nearly all of them comment on the IIS/ISS mix up. I would imagine that the few that slip through the cracks will be the shitty meta-posts like this one.
Does the soviet Russia thing bother anyone else? I suppose soviet USSR, or communist USSR could work, but soviet Russia?
Its worth noting that they are using NCD x-terminals. While buying used NCD equipment works well if you've already invested in their hardware, if you are setting up equipment from scratch, it is not an effective solution. NCD does not provide their drivers for download, and charges a fairly hefty amount of money for them, so if you want to set up x-terms at home, or at a small buisness, buy something else, unless you are already familiar with this.
Quite a few people seem to have picked these things up after the last article, not realizing how much of a pain it would be to get them running
Way to go with your innovate thinking. Apple is one of the major companies behind firewire, and they have been working on the standard for years. I seem to recall finding early references to firewire going back to 1995. So if Apple comes up with a standard, which Microsoft then implements before them, thats Microsoft innovating?
I can't make up my mind as to whether you are trolling, or just poorly informed.
I realize that this is probably a troll, but if you really are clueless, I guess I'll fill you in. DNS does not replace the IP system, it expands upon it. If the DNS heirarchy were to disappear there would be no negative effect upon the internet, you would just loose the ability to use symbollical names. If you really want to remove that "weak" link, your welcome to use IPs, and if the DNS fails, you can continue operating as normal. I personally link missing net access every once in a while is far less bothersome then memorizing IP addresses or adding them to my hosts file.
I've seen lots of articles about the various "information warfare" scenarios. The impression I've gathered is that it just isn't that big of a threat. In the past we've had break-ins to US military computers, but outside of the negative publicity, not much came of it (didn't the famous late '80s German attacks only result in copies of VMS reaching East Germany?).
The various commercial web sites are another matter, but none of them are critical to anyones life, and if eBay or someone were to be broken into, very few people (and one company) would really suffer.
Now if that one cracker were to instead get into the US and begin shooting people from the trunk of a car, or go hijack a commercial plane, the damage would be far greater, and less education would be required to pull it off.
(There was an article on the Register about this about a month ago)I've heard the opinion that it isn't really in danger of being canceled. The argument behind it is that Sci-Fi feels that they are paying far too much for each episode, and that the calue of the episodes is inflated. By canceling it, they've shown that they are willing to stop carrying the show if the price per episode isn't lowered. I personally think that this isn't too unlikely, and while it could mean that a season could be delayed a year or so, it makes sense for Sci-Fi to do this.
Why should Microsoft change formats? They are presently in a position (in regards to office software) where they can force their own "standards" on everyone else. They continue to dominate because there are not reliable, transparent converters. If they were to adopt a document format where other companies software could edit documents created by Word, there would be little reason to stay with Office. I personally always use plaintext wherever I can, I don't want to rely on any document format (no matter how common) to continue to exist for long periods of time.
Commenting on how the new Origin systems are denser then any other single image system, and then comparing them to the current blade fad to make your point is a bit silly. Blades are seperate machines (unless they are Sun, in which case they are the current desktop line), this system is a single machine. I'm not entirely certain about this density claim either, doesn't Sun fit 128 processors in a rack with the Fire 15ks?
Do you neglect to mention that most of them do in fact have a network port sitting unprotected on the street? Most houses do not have locks on their telephone boxes, and as such, there is nothing preventing some random kid from droping recording devices in there, and capturing all phone data. I have not heard about this being done to listen to DSL connections, but it should be doable with the right hardware.
Now, I approve of the concept of computer porn, but the example above is just derivative of far better porn sites. I mean, the Unix Sex site(not entirely work safe) has been around far longer, and their selection of photos are far superior. You people call yourselves geeks, and yet you don't even know of good places to find man on pdp11 photos, sheesh.
(my karma is so dead for this one)
This sort of thing must just be braking all the classic Crayons hearts. I mean, people were getting upset when Cray started building the T3 series Alpha based stuff, nowadays they are cooperating with Dell and making AMD based clusters. At least they have a new vector machine coming out soon.
Really? I can accept that, however, they are still adding extensions, even if they are trimming down the total instruction set. I know of no power chip that has Altivec, and Apple has firmly avoided moving away from Altivec (they stayed with the G4, even though IBMs G3s were hitting higher clock frequencies).
I'm afraid your a bit off. IBM uses Power4 chips in their RS/6000 (pSeries) machines, as I recall, this is a derivative of that chip, it has PowerPC extensions and its only 1 core per die, as opposed to 2. The zSeries machines are 64bit S/390 boxes, they use completely different processors then the pSeries boxes, and have a lineage going back to the S/360. The Power/PowerPC chips originate from a print server, or something like that.
Nice to see that ATI recognizes that their stuff is inferior to a nice render farm, nVidia doesn't seem to quite understand that yet, seeing as how they keep claiming "Pixar Quality".
Anyone tried installing on an older X system?
Why not look at the PocketPC machines? Quite a few people have gotten them working with serial chording keyboards (link), you can install Linux on them, and you have many input options, PCMCIA, serial, compactflash, smart cards, etc.
Of course, the Zaurus is a very similar device, and it comes with Linux, but you mention it in the article, so I assume you've already looked into it.
Browsing through the Microsoft link (the first one is a puff piece), it looks as though they still havn't patched the SSL certificate problem in IE/Windows. Will we have to wait until the next multiple security hole patch, or will they release it seperatly?
It would be interesting to know what kind of traffic each web server tends to take. It just seems to me that the end user perspective would be important here. If 90% of the machines out there run IIS, but the average person mostly accesses Apache machines, which would you say is the dominant server software?
Unfortunatly, I cannot think of an easy way to do any such overview.
Many people are commenting that Apple needs to move to x86, however, I think there are a few problems with that. First of all, Apple has never strictly enforced the licensing systems they have in place. Nearly all Mac users I've dealt with are lax about it too, usually installing the copy they get with their new computer on their older equipment, or borrowing a copy from a friend. There has never been much pressure from anywhere not to do this, because, after all, "everyone knows that Apple survives off hardware". As Apple has no copy protection scheme in place, they are worried that they would loose massive amounts of money by just selling an OS to a crowd which has always viewed the OS as a freebie.
Apple could avoid this by creating their own bios, or some other way of restricting the machines that could install Mac OS X for the x86, but historically, this hasn't worked well, just look at IBM. In the Mac world though, they have been able to hold patents and such on far more of the machine, preventing against unlicensed clones (they prosecuted quite a few companies in the '80s over Mac clones). If they don't have complete control over the hardware, its doubtful that they could prevent clones.
Finally, if we assume that Apple decides to release an OS X port that works on all x86 hardware, they would have to compete with all the x86 vendors on price (Dell, etc.), as well as Microsoft on the OS (and all the OEM agreements that entails), and they would have to set up support for a huge amount of hardware that they don't have experience. This seems unlikely to me.
As a combination of all these issues, I just cannot see Apple moving to x86 any time soon. Sure, they might be able to do it, but I don't see it making sense.
I wouldn't put it that way. Apple is selling a 5 machine "Family" license for somewhere in the range of 190$. There is functionally no difference between what you get from that, and the normal purchase, as Apple does not use serial numbers to distinguis products. However, that does not mean that with the 129$ version of Jaguar you are entitled to install on 5 Macs.
This sort of thing is really starting to get tedious. I don't know if the copy protection will be broken when it is originally released, and as such, I'm ambivalent about buying any music that might be using it, or other copy protection schemes. Between the lower prices, and the lack of copy protection, its almost worth moving to vinyl, the hip image that records have is just a side effect.
A lot of people are complaining about Apple's hardware, however, I have a slightly different view on it. I used to be a Mac person, and I am presently planning on going back, not because of the software (I prefer NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux, all of which support most modern Macs), but because of the hardware. Their laptops look nice, have reasonable battery life, and have more then enough power for what I do under Linux. As such, I'm currently planning on buying a loaded iBook as soon as possible, while the iBook doesn't look like that great of a deal if you look at it is a low end notebook, if you look at the 12.1" iBooks in comparison to PC "compact" laptops, the prices are really quite good. Sure the processors just are not keeping up with the x86 world these days, but my experiences with Apple in the past are such that I'm willing to bare that (plus their tech support ships you replacement parts quickly).
Is it 16, with 4 unused bits? That would make sense to me, and explain why it was originally labled 16 bit. If so, I don't know if customers should get angry about it, after all, we've had 24 bit color labeled as 32 bit for quite some time.