First of all, there are BIOS'es for standard PC's that do interface to serial or network ports. But more than that: with bthis, you can put Linux right into the BIOS. It too can communicate via serial or network, and allows you to completely eliminate any kind of mass storage. All you've got is a motherboard.
Or, with something like a Remote Supervisor Adapter, you can control a server (or POS terminal) remotely, even when it is powered off. Now, this is designed for servers, and is probably *not* what they have in a cash register, but it would fit the bill, as well.
Those of you who have used the old-school NCR ATMs with the green-screen text interface know of what I speak. The new Windows ATMs are 3 times slower and 100 times less reliable. One wonders why the rush to abandon the old software that worked perfectly well.
Simple: Advertising. And, I guess, user perception. But mainly advertising.
I agree with the function/performance argument. The new ATM's do seem slower, especially in transitioning from screen to screen. But people like them better: they're more friendly! And the color screen makes the bank look better. Forget selling you on a loan or something: just the fact that when people walk down the street and see a bank's ATM's, they're bright and cheerful.
People select products based on such factors. And banking is a competitive business, like most any other.
The biggest difference is that if you contribute and distribute your changes to an (L)GPL project, you must make your source publicly available. Under the SISSL, you could distribute binary-only versions of the project.
The difference between the GPL and the LGPL is that LGPL projects assume that others will create projects that interface with the original LGPL project, but that are not strictly part of the original project. Under the GPL, such items would need to be made available under the GPL themselves; under the LGPL, they can be licensed however the copyright holder sees fit.
As one of Jehovah's Witnesses, I resemble a person "spewing religious garbage". I must say that your illustration made me laugh, though!
A threat of forcible removal happens from time to time, but not often. We don't want to be forcibly removed any more than you want to do it. Just tell us politely but firmly to go away. We'll (usually) listen...
Ever wonder why we keep bothering when (almost) no one wants to hear? The next time someone stops by, tell them that you will give them no more than, say, five minutes to hear *why* we keep this up when most people don't care.
And *then* you can go back to the forcible removal!:)
Today, sure. In 1994 (OS/2's best year) those companies were *very* different. Remember: Packard Bell was a major computer distributer then! Dell was *not* the juggernaut they are now: they were a cookie cutter clone maker just like everyone else.
Remember Computer Shopper magazine? Not what it is today, but 2 inches of 9x12 newsprint pages *filled* with computer distributor advertisments? *THAT* was the environment in which OS/2 was best positioned to succeed.
Microsoft programmed OS/2 1.0 and PM. However, the WPS (the thing that gives you the object oriented GUI) and SOM (the thing that gives the *system* its object orientedness) were both 100% IBM.
Re:ICMP flaw #1 on Linux: it's in the kernel
on
Examining ICMP Flaws
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· Score: 1
Any type of buffering and queueing adds latency. So you have a choice: high performance and high latency, or low latency and less performance. A monolithic kernel makes the latency penalty much lower than a microkernel. The asyncronous API that heavily microkernel OS's like QNX provide helps you to lessen the effect of that increased latency, but it still exists. Total throughput may be similar (the total number of HTTP requests serviced per second, for example), but the beginning-to-end time for a specific task (servicing a singe HTTP transaction) will be longer. How important that is depends on what you're doing!:)
Now, having said that, I will say that I prefer (in theory) the idea of a microkernel (or even a nanokernel like Adeos). Especially a microkernel with multiple OS personalities. It would be great to run multiple copies of Windows, Linux and OS X all on the same box. But right now, that's a pipe dream.
Your point makes my point even stronger. The OP wanted to rip out a very low level piece of the network stack into userland. My point was that doing so was pretty much contrary to the design goals of the Linux kernel, and that, if done right, you'd end up with a microkernel architecture. The fact that a properly done microkernel (like QNX) is so dramatically different than a monolithic kernel like Linux just emphasizes what a crazy idea the OP was.
Can we agree on that?:)
Re:ICMP flaw #1 on Linux: it's in the kernel
on
Examining ICMP Flaws
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· Score: 3, Informative
You know what's ironic? You just described a microkernel...
The whole reason for monolithic kernels like Linux is performance and simplicity. Having to do a context switch for every single packet gets expensive...
Nobody said it couldn't be done. I've seen lots of devices that let you put two modems together without going through a phone line, and they work just like you said: as a mini exchange.
However, we're talking about the feasability of replacing a $7 cable with a modem. By the time you build your mini exchange, it's gonna cost a little more than the $7 you're trying to avoid spending!:)
I've posted about this in another post, but I'll re-write here...
A modem is designed to interface with the phone line, not the phone handset, so a normal modem won't help you talk to a handset at *all*. This hack is designed to use the speaker and mic of a phone as the input and output of a sound card. Nothing more. Most voice modems are only half-duplex, so they won't help you, either. If you had a fancy full-duplex voice modem, it would allow you to replace the entire sound card, but then you'd have to make Skype work with that instead.
Basically, what you're asking for is what is called an FXS interface (not an FXO, as others have mentioned in this thread). They do exist: they make one, for example. However, they're not inexpensive. This cable costs less than $7: that's hard to beat.
A modem is not designed to interface with the phone side of the connection. It only interfaces with the line side. This hack basically allows you to use the handset of your phone as a mic input and speaker output. A modem isn't going to help you here.
Now, if you have a very fancy modem that does full-duplex voice (most only do half-duplex voice), you could use the modem instead of the sound card. But that doesn't save us very much: most people already have a sound card...
Echo due to hybrid circuits is a *major* problem with analog to VoIP hardware: particularly these analog boards. Part of the TDM boards' sensitivity to speicific lines is believed to be poor impedance matching. I've looked for hardware techniques for flexible impedance matching circuits I could experiment with. Unfortunately, I've found *very* little outside of "throw this cap and potentiometer on the line and see what happens...".
Would you have some links that illustrate what you're talking about? As soon as I finish posting this, I'm going to be googling "sidetone coil"! But if you or anyone else have any other thoughts...
Unless you're purely talking about enhanced hybrid to separate conversion circuits. *Those* I've seen, but that's not what we need. That's internal to the board, and we don't get to play with that!:) However, anything that allows us to improve the connection between the board and the POTS line, particularly in the area of impedance matching, wouldbe *much* appreciated.
I have a pair of DM-602 Series 3's. I really enjoy them too. However, the speakers I lust after are the NT-1's. At $1400 a pair, they're outside of my budget (they're only slightly more than twice what I paid for the 602's!).
I helped a friend of mine with more money design and build a whole house audio system as well as a home theater. ($10,000 total price!) I had to hold onto the speakers for about 2 weeks while construction was finished at his house. Of course, I had to "break in" the NT-1's...
I'm sure if I spent some quality time with, say, a good pair of electrostatics at $10,000 a pair I'd want them even more than the NT-1's. Does it ever end?:)
This is exactly the idea of "solving" a game. By analysis, you can determine how exactly a perfectly-played game will end. For example, you have most likely solved tic-tac-toe: you know that the person who goes first always wins, when they play properly, no matter *what* the other person does.
Of course, TTT is slightly simpler than chess... That's why it's not yet been solved. Given the number of legal positions on the board, it is unlikely that a game like chess will ever be solved (by some estimates there are more entries in the game tree than atoms in the universe). So possible in the theoretical and possible in the practical are two different things!:)
I'm not sure you should feel *better* about this...;)
I think that's why Mac people are so passionate. The Mac is *so* different from anything else, and for them so tuned to the way they work that anything else feels so completely foreigh. They can't figure out how *anyone* would want to use something like Windows. What we see as being designed to allow us to do *exactly* what we want to do in minute detail, they see as being rough, inconsistent, ugly and downright unintelligent.
After all, why *shouldn't* the computer think for you?
Was that question serious, or rhetorical? I think how you see that question determines which OS you will prefer!:)
I think the biggest problem is you have ideas about how a computer at its most basic level should work, and OS X doesn't match them.
You want to quit applications. Why? Because every other OS you've ever used expects you to quit applictions. We think of users as clueless idiots when they accidently leave 50 things running because they closed their data file but left the appliction running for no reason. But with the Mac, it is *expected* that users will not quit applications. The entire app managment UI is designed to leave the app running: just use the Apple menu to get to them! Apps in the Dock don't necessarily show you if they're running or not. Who cares? Click on the icon to access it. If it's running, even better! If it's not running, it will be, and then it'll be ready forever!:)
You are mad because iTunes does something for you automatically, even undoing something you've intentionally done. However, ever talk to "clueless" Windows users? How often have you heard them get mad and whine a version of "Why can't my computer just do what I want it to do without me having to tell it every little thing?" even when what they want it to do is *diametrically* opposite to what they've actually told the computer to do?
You, like most experienced computer users, have become so good at telling the computer exactly what you want it to do in tiny little steps that you're mad when you can't work with that level of control. Mac users look at your case in just the opposite way: They would be mad if they had to tell the computer every mindlessly stupid thing they wanted it to do rather than it just doing it on its own for them!
Personally, I'm with you: I'm the control freak. However, for 90% of users, the inabilty to make those decisions is a huge benefit: it's that fewer number of times when they have to decide between options that have to them nearly identical or completely unintelligible differences.
That's Warp 3.0, release about 6 months before Windows 95.
The ironic thing is that it has a *lot* in common with many Linux desktops I've seen (and used)... That is one area that Microsoft almost always beat OS/2 in: polish. Windows was like an Jaguar, and OS/2 was like a dump truck. One was pretty and stalled if it went through a puddle, one was indestructable, but *ugly*. It's amazing how such analogies can be applied from top to bottom...
Z-series and clusters are diametrically opposed to each other. A Z-series processor is not any faster than in Intel processor--maybe even slower. So if you've got a 32-way mainframe (which is definitely on the big side), you've got no more processing power than a 32-way PC.
So what did you get for your $2 million? Two things: incredible reliability and amazing I/0 bandwidth. You can fully saturate all 32 processors for weeks at a time if you wish, with uptime measured in *years*, 24x7. And that's great if you're a bank doing account transactions. But that's not what you usually use a cluster for.
Clusters are for CPU processing. For doing lots and lots of calculations over and over. For calculating movie CG effects or modelling the movemt of molecules or nuclear explosions. In that case, the mainframe sucks. It's a very, very expensive 32-way box. Big deal. You would have been better spending $1 million on 2,000 dual-CPU plain boxes and connecting them together with even GigE. You'd have had far better results.
Use the right tool for the right job. Mainframes for critical I/o-based applications without huge CPU loads, and clusters for highly CPU-bound applications.
The other factor was Gerstner. He kenw nothing about the computer business and left knowing nothing about the computer business. He never got it. If he had got it IBM would be much bigger today than it is.
That is just crazy. I was a total OS/2 zealot from 1991 until 2001 or so. I too think that IBM poorly managed OS/2 from the beginning. But Lou Gerstner turned a struggling big-iorn hardware company into a growing services company that leverages their hardware to *gasp* actually *make* money for the company.
Yes, OS/2 died, and quite possibly directly because of the fact that it wasn't a product that *could* be leveraged to make money as quickly as the hardware side. If that is the case, I don't think any IBM shareholder (or the vast majority of non-OS/2 IBM employees) from that time would complain about its death.
Even if us *users* still miss it years after they quit using it...
OS/2 Warp Connect (built on Version 3) had every piece of networking code you needed for TCP/IP, IPX (Netware), NetBIOS (SMB) and SNA, among others, including a Web browser, newsreader, mail client and most everything else you'd expect for Internet access, including things like FTP and Telnet servers!
Before that, you had to buy each package separately. Probably over $1000 for all of it. At the time, Warp Connect was an *unheard of* collection of tools for a PC, let alone for just the cost of the OS.
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Or, with something like a Remote Supervisor Adapter, you can control a server (or POS terminal) remotely, even when it is powered off. Now, this is designed for servers, and is probably *not* what they have in a cash register, but it would fit the bill, as well.
Simple: Advertising. And, I guess, user perception. But mainly advertising.
I agree with the function/performance argument. The new ATM's do seem slower, especially in transitioning from screen to screen. But people like them better: they're more friendly! And the color screen makes the bank look better. Forget selling you on a loan or something: just the fact that when people walk down the street and see a bank's ATM's, they're bright and cheerful.
People select products based on such factors. And banking is a competitive business, like most any other.
The difference between the GPL and the LGPL is that LGPL projects assume that others will create projects that interface with the original LGPL project, but that are not strictly part of the original project. Under the GPL, such items would need to be made available under the GPL themselves; under the LGPL, they can be licensed however the copyright holder sees fit.
A threat of forcible removal happens from time to time, but not often. We don't want to be forcibly removed any more than you want to do it. Just tell us politely but firmly to go away. We'll (usually) listen...
Ever wonder why we keep bothering when (almost) no one wants to hear? The next time someone stops by, tell them that you will give them no more than, say, five minutes to hear *why* we keep this up when most people don't care.
And *then* you can go back to the forcible removal! :)
Remember Computer Shopper magazine? Not what it is today, but 2 inches of 9x12 newsprint pages *filled* with computer distributor advertisments? *THAT* was the environment in which OS/2 was best positioned to succeed.
Now, having said that, I will say that I prefer (in theory) the idea of a microkernel (or even a nanokernel like Adeos). Especially a microkernel with multiple OS personalities. It would be great to run multiple copies of Windows, Linux and OS X all on the same box. But right now, that's a pipe dream.
Your point makes my point even stronger. The OP wanted to rip out a very low level piece of the network stack into userland. My point was that doing so was pretty much contrary to the design goals of the Linux kernel, and that, if done right, you'd end up with a microkernel architecture. The fact that a properly done microkernel (like QNX) is so dramatically different than a monolithic kernel like Linux just emphasizes what a crazy idea the OP was.
Can we agree on that? :)
The whole reason for monolithic kernels like Linux is performance and simplicity. Having to do a context switch for every single packet gets expensive...
However, we're talking about the feasability of replacing a $7 cable with a modem. By the time you build your mini exchange, it's gonna cost a little more than the $7 you're trying to avoid spending! :)
Until the time I got hit by a ring. I've had worse pain, but not by much!
The moral of the story? Don't stick phone wires in your mouth! :)
Ring voltage can be well over 100V...
A modem is designed to interface with the phone line, not the phone handset, so a normal modem won't help you talk to a handset at *all*. This hack is designed to use the speaker and mic of a phone as the input and output of a sound card. Nothing more. Most voice modems are only half-duplex, so they won't help you, either. If you had a fancy full-duplex voice modem, it would allow you to replace the entire sound card, but then you'd have to make Skype work with that instead.
Basically, what you're asking for is what is called an FXS interface (not an FXO, as others have mentioned in this thread). They do exist: they make one, for example. However, they're not inexpensive. This cable costs less than $7: that's hard to beat.
Now, if you have a very fancy modem that does full-duplex voice (most only do half-duplex voice), you could use the modem instead of the sound card. But that doesn't save us very much: most people already have a sound card...
Would you have some links that illustrate what you're talking about? As soon as I finish posting this, I'm going to be googling "sidetone coil"! But if you or anyone else have any other thoughts...
Unless you're purely talking about enhanced hybrid to separate conversion circuits. *Those* I've seen, but that's not what we need. That's internal to the board, and we don't get to play with that! :) However, anything that allows us to improve the connection between the board and the POTS line, particularly in the area of impedance matching, wouldbe *much* appreciated.
I helped a friend of mine with more money design and build a whole house audio system as well as a home theater. ($10,000 total price!) I had to hold onto the speakers for about 2 weeks while construction was finished at his house. Of course, I had to "break in" the NT-1's...
I'm sure if I spent some quality time with, say, a good pair of electrostatics at $10,000 a pair I'd want them even more than the NT-1's. Does it ever end? :)
Been playing with my daughter for too long. I haven't lost a game of Tic Tac Toe in a while... I forgot that it's supposed to end in a tie! :)
Of course, TTT is slightly simpler than chess... That's why it's not yet been solved. Given the number of legal positions on the board, it is unlikely that a game like chess will ever be solved (by some estimates there are more entries in the game tree than atoms in the universe). So possible in the theoretical and possible in the practical are two different things! :)
I think that's why Mac people are so passionate. The Mac is *so* different from anything else, and for them so tuned to the way they work that anything else feels so completely foreigh. They can't figure out how *anyone* would want to use something like Windows. What we see as being designed to allow us to do *exactly* what we want to do in minute detail, they see as being rough, inconsistent, ugly and downright unintelligent.
After all, why *shouldn't* the computer think for you?
Was that question serious, or rhetorical? I think how you see that question determines which OS you will prefer! :)
You want to quit applications. Why? Because every other OS you've ever used expects you to quit applictions. We think of users as clueless idiots when they accidently leave 50 things running because they closed their data file but left the appliction running for no reason. But with the Mac, it is *expected* that users will not quit applications. The entire app managment UI is designed to leave the app running: just use the Apple menu to get to them! Apps in the Dock don't necessarily show you if they're running or not. Who cares? Click on the icon to access it. If it's running, even better! If it's not running, it will be, and then it'll be ready forever! :)
You are mad because iTunes does something for you automatically, even undoing something you've intentionally done. However, ever talk to "clueless" Windows users? How often have you heard them get mad and whine a version of "Why can't my computer just do what I want it to do without me having to tell it every little thing?" even when what they want it to do is *diametrically* opposite to what they've actually told the computer to do?
You, like most experienced computer users, have become so good at telling the computer exactly what you want it to do in tiny little steps that you're mad when you can't work with that level of control. Mac users look at your case in just the opposite way: They would be mad if they had to tell the computer every mindlessly stupid thing they wanted it to do rather than it just doing it on its own for them!
Personally, I'm with you: I'm the control freak. However, for 90% of users, the inabilty to make those decisions is a huge benefit: it's that fewer number of times when they have to decide between options that have to them nearly identical or completely unintelligible differences.
That's Warp 3.0, release about 6 months before Windows 95.
The ironic thing is that it has a *lot* in common with many Linux desktops I've seen (and used)... That is one area that Microsoft almost always beat OS/2 in: polish. Windows was like an Jaguar, and OS/2 was like a dump truck. One was pretty and stalled if it went through a puddle, one was indestructable, but *ugly*. It's amazing how such analogies can be applied from top to bottom...
So what did you get for your $2 million? Two things: incredible reliability and amazing I/0 bandwidth. You can fully saturate all 32 processors for weeks at a time if you wish, with uptime measured in *years*, 24x7. And that's great if you're a bank doing account transactions. But that's not what you usually use a cluster for.
Clusters are for CPU processing. For doing lots and lots of calculations over and over. For calculating movie CG effects or modelling the movemt of molecules or nuclear explosions. In that case, the mainframe sucks. It's a very, very expensive 32-way box. Big deal. You would have been better spending $1 million on 2,000 dual-CPU plain boxes and connecting them together with even GigE. You'd have had far better results.
Use the right tool for the right job. Mainframes for critical I/o-based applications without huge CPU loads, and clusters for highly CPU-bound applications.
That is just crazy. I was a total OS/2 zealot from 1991 until 2001 or so. I too think that IBM poorly managed OS/2 from the beginning. But Lou Gerstner turned a struggling big-iorn hardware company into a growing services company that leverages their hardware to *gasp* actually *make* money for the company.
Yes, OS/2 died, and quite possibly directly because of the fact that it wasn't a product that *could* be leveraged to make money as quickly as the hardware side. If that is the case, I don't think any IBM shareholder (or the vast majority of non-OS/2 IBM employees) from that time would complain about its death.
Even if us *users* still miss it years after they quit using it...
Before that, you had to buy each package separately. Probably over $1000 for all of it. At the time, Warp Connect was an *unheard of* collection of tools for a PC, let alone for just the cost of the OS.
P.