I may have been trolled, but the change from Windows XP to Longhorn will be about as big as between Windows 9x and Windows NT -- they changed the kernel between the two families of Windows, but left much of the Win32API, with its ugly legacy and infinite tackons, from DCOM to MFC.
Everything in Longhorn will be based on the.NET framework and sandboxed, with the Win32 API scrapped. Longhorn's ability to run the Win32 API will be through a compatibility layer, similar to the DOS compatibility layer in XP. However, WinXP's ability to run Indigo and Avalon, the two pillars of Longhorn, will be done through a forward compatibility layer.
Fortunately, they're doing everything clean this time with XML and SOAP, with an open API, as opposed to binary-only files, arcane RPC calls, and endless piles of undocumented, insanely messy code dating back until the early 90s. There actually might be some interoperability this time around -- Longhorn SAMBA certainly won't be nearly as hard to code and reverse engineer, especially with Mono in hand.
Many non-profit projects out in the world begin as independant projects, but as they grow, are later staffed and controlled by a board and a board chairman all comprised of the powerful ones who bring in profits, the business owners and such, who are the ones capable of further expanding and funding the operation.
For most of the 1990s, OSS was by programmers for programmers (and to an extent their non-programmer friends), but gradually those in the OSS field have been coopted by the business practices of capitalism, removing the pure element of communalism from the way the software is developed.
This only portends to what will happen soon: the sponsors of Open Source now include the large dictatorial corporations of the past, including Sun, Novell, and even big blue IBM, and those corporations will soon partition and control as many of the communal efforts as they can.
It's funny how petty squabbles between key developers could tear even what is now a major, corporation-funded project apart that millions of machines and companies depend on.
I'm willing to be if such things continue, some entity, perhaps IBM, will set down their foot and use pressure put maintenance of the kernel project under the jackboot of a truly dictatorial manager, making Linux more an open source Cathedral than a bazaar.
*nix will be a major target of worms in the future
on
Is Your OS Tough Enough?
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Despite Linux being hardened, its basis still is Unix -- which, from the beginning, was coded with such grevious insecurities, such as using a blank gets() at the beginning of crucial protocols. Worms ripped apart Unix in the 80s, and despite what has been hardened since, the methodologies which ripped Unix apart in the 80s mostly are still being used in Windows development.
Microsoft might have something with Windows Longhorn, since the entire API outside of the kernel will be written in C# completely sandboxed in a CLR, much like Java.
Combined with a monolithic auto-update system, Microsoft has no intentions of repeating the problems of Windows 2000/XP when they release Longhorn, much like they had no intention of repeating the problems of stability they had with Windows 95/98/ME when they designed Windows 2000/XP. For as much as they do, they mostly won with stability in 2000/XP, and they could win again, despite their market share, by sacrificing RAM (480MB commit charge, 1GB recommended) and processing power by implementing the.NET framework for their entire API.
I honestly hope open source has something to compete for their future desktop environments, or else desktop Linux could be relegated to processors too slow to deal with the overhead.
More people need to try and use FreeBSD
on
The Case for FreeBSD
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Repeat a lie enough, and it becomes true. That lie, mostly being, that FreeBSD is dying, or is some arcane system only to hack around on, similar to Plan9.
In fact, for those who haven't tried it, it's quite an excellent full-featured Unix, with everything you'd find under Linux. In fact, it's fully binary compatible with Linux.
The only difference is that it does things the old way -- vi is vi, not vim, and you get sh, csh or tcsh instead of bloated bash. It doesn't have anyone pushing for "ease of use," though it's about at the level of slackware, except with ports, the greatest package management system known to man. Gentoo's portage doesn't even come close to the flexibility and reliability of ports.
Internally, it runs great, because it's not doing things the kernel shouldn't do to boost benchmarks. It's not deeply involved in corporate America, but remains strong due to good management.
Plus it's far more secure. With how much Linux websites are hacked these days -- see http://zone-h.org/ and check out the statistics section, at least 70-80% of website hacks are Linux based -- I wouldn't run it on Linux. FreeBSD is the obvious choice, as it runs its services flawlessly.
The reason the American software industry is going to lose within the next 20 years has to do with the fact that lawyers, due to the American "justice" system, are bringing whole new levels of bureaucracy and stifling to the information and software industry as a whole by trying to apply outdated theories of legality to a dynamic industry. Companies shouldn't be forced out of business simply because of fears of legal action -- it's outright murder of creativity.
Eventually, things will become so draconian that companies and independant (often open source) developers are afraid to develop software in America, from fears of breaking things like the DMCA or being charged with "Software Patent Infringency" that they'll have to create new silicon valleys elsewhere in places that don't care.
Europe would be a nice setting, depending on how that turns out, but who knows? Bright young programmers could be fleeing persecution for their works in the USA to set up shop in Bangalore, where they'd probably be able to live like kings. Either way, the way things are going, only monolithic corporations will still be putting out software.
If the US government decides to ban the sale of what everyone else in the world is using, then they'll only fall behind in technology overall...
Converting even raw RGB video down to 1/10 the size, while leaving it lossless, is currently not possible using any compression known to man.
To get anywhere near that much, you have to at least convert it to the sum of cosines using Fast Fourier Transformation, which, since it distorts the data by converting it to not the exact amounts but the nearest amounts, is inherently lossy.
Any programmers in the UK want to start a lawsuit for false adverts?
I've heard from a few friends that the plugin that blocks Flash animations from playing until you hit the large button in the center will crash any pages that load flash under Firefox 1.0. Which is pretty much anything, from cnn to ebaums to slashdot itself.
Uninstall Firefox, delete your C:\progra~1\Firefox folder, and then delete the extensions folder from your profile under C:\docume~1\(username)\applic~1\mozilla\firefox folder, and install Firefox 1.0.1. It'll work fine.
Too bad it still doesn't fix the RAM problem
on
Firefox 1.0.1 Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I downloaded it a few minutes ago, and despite its claims of being a faster browser, it still has the issue of it consuming 48,324K of RAM to simply view this webpage, after a fresh install and start of it. I don't have many bookmarks, RSS feeds, or anything. Opening up a few tabs instantly balooned that amount to 69,424k.
Even the original Mozilla, which is bloated, uses a mere 20,482K to open slashdot.org, while it can open up my loads of e-mail only using 24,223K of RAM. Using Thunderbird in addition to Firefox, since they don't share the same instance of the Gecko rendering engine, causes another 28,292K of RAM to be used. Internet Explorer 6 even with SP2, on the other hand, only consumes about 3,840K of RAM to open up slashdot.org, and Outlook Express only consumes 2,248K.
I recall it even being worse on Linux due to the fact that it loads quite a large amount of libraries with it, that runs slowly under older machines even under Fluxbox or the ultra-minimalist evilwm.
Whatever Firefox does, it should have made it a priority before the 1.0 Release to clean up the amount of RAM it abuses to do what it does. Even after waiting months for 1.01, it seems to have gotten worse than I recall, and I haven't put it in debug mode or developer mode or anything -- I disabled anything like that in the Custom Installation.
But fortunately, I've got 1GB of RAM, and there's barely any spyware, so I'm ok with it now. I just wish I didn't have to put either Dillo for Linux or IE6 on Win98 for those old late Pentium Is / early Pentium IIs I fix up for people in my spare time, since Firefox is a nice browser despite its flaws. Too bad it won't run decently on anything less than a Pentium III with 256MB of RAM.
One of the main advantages Linux and FreeBSD have over Microsoft systems is that they are backwards compatible to nearly an infinite extent, and almost anything can be done on the most minimal of power.
What it seems like all these new developers are trying to do is pre-empt Windows Longhorn, which of course has the whole philosophy of creating a system with a high starting point -- targeted at machines with 1GB of RAM, a 64 bit processor, and a pixel shading graphic scard.
A few OSS developers are not going to catch up to Windows Longhorn -- they should stick to what they do best, and not alienate their base, which includes users of old PCs and small, cheap embedded devices by trying to standardize the minimum requirements of a GUI on some bloated XML/XUL/C#/Mono system with OpenGL as the minimum requirements for spinning around text. By doing that, they're going to lose on both fronts.
Every tutorial I've seen on the internet with apache + mod_ssl has had tutorials on how to generate your own SSL certificate. Most newbies who have followed those step by step tutorials have even done this, since many regular apache tutorials also include mod_ssl as part of it.
In fact, even mod_ssl has information on how to do so on the site:
Of course, the only way around this is for the UN to take ICANN by force, which won't happen in the United States, whether by the US government or especially by the UN. Until Vint Cerf at ICANN changes his mind, the internet will not be governed by the UN.
I see immediate applications for this technology -- we need to bring back Hands Across America to create the information superhighway of the 21st century!
I care about whether my connetion is secure or not, and I'm just a normal internet use.
I send lots of emails, instant messages, and other online video feeds and what not. The fact that my communication is secure is incredibly important to me.
Have fun, and god bless you all.
In response to the US Air Force creating incredibly advanced aircraft simulation programs, it seems that Fire Departments all over the U.S. are using the incredibly real life simulation "Sim Copter" to train it's pilots not only to rescue people, but also to put out fires quickly.
I'm laughing my ass off that the army decided to use this game to help train. I can't see how this game is the least bit helpful to training a American Soldier.
Well, all I can really say is that I'm sure glad we didn't have any big wars during the 80's, because this is just funny.
I'm off now, to download this incredible training simulation and turn myself into a lethal killing machine, able to blow up tanks with single shells.
Even after reading the arcticle, it seems doubtful to me that millions of dollars were spent on creating documents to say that Windows 2000 meets the security criteria.
Personally, even though this is Microsoft we're talking about, this seems a bit outrageous.
There's no reason to not be. Laziness is a rapidly growing problem now, thanks to the online world. Now, not only laziness is a problem, but obesity is growing faster more than ever.
I personally think people should go to the grocery store, get out of their car, and walk a bit to shop. It won't hurt them, and is actually more health for them.
The fact that we can do PLENTY of tasks online is presenting a problem. America already is the most obese county, and online shopping WILL NOT help the problem!
The article seems to praise the company and it's good fortune, yet it lists no negative remarks.
Personally, I would not buy from a food store online, just because I don't know *EXACTLY* what I'm getting. I'd be afraid that if this food was not properly packaged and delivered properly, that I could get some kind of disease or eat some bacteria that was growing on the food.
Well.....who cares about stuff like that, 25% less in cost saves you a lot of money!
Your email has now been official added to the list of Korean spam mail targets.
Thank you for posting on the/., we hope you leave you email again soon!
"So this is love, or so you tell me
As you're walkin', out the door
Months go by, and I know for certain
It's not the love, I'm lookin' for"
"Some times, just for a moment,
I reach out; hope you're still there"
"Miles away,
No; you're never turnin' back,
I just can't wait anymore
Miles away,
Nothin' left of what we had,
Just when I needed you most...
You were miles away..."
"It's hard to tell, what you're goin' through
You kept your feelings locked inside of you
Open your heart, and chances are,
What you're feelin', I'm feelin' too"
"If only, just for a moment,
Hold on, to the dreams that we had"
"Miles away,
No; you're never turnin' back,
I just can't wait anymore
Miles away,
Nothin' left of what we had,
Just when I needed you most
You were miles away"
"When times were tough, and you were down and out
Who was there by your side?
Now you've gone; I'm so tired of bein' alone..
With only youromises..."
"Lonliness just fades away,
Thoughts of you; just memories
No cryin' now, for what we're missin'
Time won't forget what you meant to me"
"Hold me, just for a moment
Hold on, to the dreams that we had"
"Miles away,
No; you're never turnin' back,
I just can't wait anymore
Miles away,
Nothin' left of what we had,
Just when I needed you most, whoa-oh,
Miles away,
No; you're never turnin' back,
I just can't wait anymore,
Miles away,
Nothin' left of what we had,
Just when I needed you most..."
Slashdot Mirror
Everything in Longhorn will be based on the .NET framework and sandboxed, with the Win32 API scrapped. Longhorn's ability to run the Win32 API will be through a compatibility layer, similar to the DOS compatibility layer in XP. However, WinXP's ability to run Indigo and Avalon, the two pillars of Longhorn, will be done through a forward compatibility layer.
Fortunately, they're doing everything clean this time with XML and SOAP, with an open API, as opposed to binary-only files, arcane RPC calls, and endless piles of undocumented, insanely messy code dating back until the early 90s. There actually might be some interoperability this time around -- Longhorn SAMBA certainly won't be nearly as hard to code and reverse engineer, especially with Mono in hand.
More details: http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/understanding/p illars/default.aspx
For most of the 1990s, OSS was by programmers for programmers (and to an extent their non-programmer friends), but gradually those in the OSS field have been coopted by the business practices of capitalism, removing the pure element of communalism from the way the software is developed.
This only portends to what will happen soon: the sponsors of Open Source now include the large dictatorial corporations of the past, including Sun, Novell, and even big blue IBM, and those corporations will soon partition and control as many of the communal efforts as they can.
I'm willing to be if such things continue, some entity, perhaps IBM, will set down their foot and use pressure put maintenance of the kernel project under the jackboot of a truly dictatorial manager, making Linux more an open source Cathedral than a bazaar.
Microsoft might have something with Windows Longhorn, since the entire API outside of the kernel will be written in C# completely sandboxed in a CLR, much like Java.
Combined with a monolithic auto-update system, Microsoft has no intentions of repeating the problems of Windows 2000/XP when they release Longhorn, much like they had no intention of repeating the problems of stability they had with Windows 95/98/ME when they designed Windows 2000/XP. For as much as they do, they mostly won with stability in 2000/XP, and they could win again, despite their market share, by sacrificing RAM (480MB commit charge, 1GB recommended) and processing power by implementing the .NET framework for their entire API.
I honestly hope open source has something to compete for their future desktop environments, or else desktop Linux could be relegated to processors too slow to deal with the overhead.
In fact, for those who haven't tried it, it's quite an excellent full-featured Unix, with everything you'd find under Linux. In fact, it's fully binary compatible with Linux.
The only difference is that it does things the old way -- vi is vi, not vim, and you get sh, csh or tcsh instead of bloated bash. It doesn't have anyone pushing for "ease of use," though it's about at the level of slackware, except with ports, the greatest package management system known to man. Gentoo's portage doesn't even come close to the flexibility and reliability of ports.
Internally, it runs great, because it's not doing things the kernel shouldn't do to boost benchmarks. It's not deeply involved in corporate America, but remains strong due to good management.
Plus it's far more secure. With how much Linux websites are hacked these days -- see http://zone-h.org/ and check out the statistics section, at least 70-80% of website hacks are Linux based -- I wouldn't run it on Linux. FreeBSD is the obvious choice, as it runs its services flawlessly.
Eventually, things will become so draconian that companies and independant (often open source) developers are afraid to develop software in America, from fears of breaking things like the DMCA or being charged with "Software Patent Infringency" that they'll have to create new silicon valleys elsewhere in places that don't care.
Europe would be a nice setting, depending on how that turns out, but who knows? Bright young programmers could be fleeing persecution for their works in the USA to set up shop in Bangalore, where they'd probably be able to live like kings. Either way, the way things are going, only monolithic corporations will still be putting out software.
If the US government decides to ban the sale of what everyone else in the world is using, then they'll only fall behind in technology overall...
To get anywhere near that much, you have to at least convert it to the sum of cosines using Fast Fourier Transformation, which, since it distorts the data by converting it to not the exact amounts but the nearest amounts, is inherently lossy.
Any programmers in the UK want to start a lawsuit for false adverts?
Uninstall Firefox, delete your C:\progra~1\Firefox folder, and then delete the extensions folder from your profile under C:\docume~1\(username)\applic~1\mozilla\firefox folder, and install Firefox 1.0.1. It'll work fine.
Even the original Mozilla, which is bloated, uses a mere 20,482K to open slashdot.org, while it can open up my loads of e-mail only using 24,223K of RAM. Using Thunderbird in addition to Firefox, since they don't share the same instance of the Gecko rendering engine, causes another 28,292K of RAM to be used. Internet Explorer 6 even with SP2, on the other hand, only consumes about 3,840K of RAM to open up slashdot.org, and Outlook Express only consumes 2,248K.
I recall it even being worse on Linux due to the fact that it loads quite a large amount of libraries with it, that runs slowly under older machines even under Fluxbox or the ultra-minimalist evilwm.
Whatever Firefox does, it should have made it a priority before the 1.0 Release to clean up the amount of RAM it abuses to do what it does. Even after waiting months for 1.01, it seems to have gotten worse than I recall, and I haven't put it in debug mode or developer mode or anything -- I disabled anything like that in the Custom Installation.
But fortunately, I've got 1GB of RAM, and there's barely any spyware, so I'm ok with it now. I just wish I didn't have to put either Dillo for Linux or IE6 on Win98 for those old late Pentium Is / early Pentium IIs I fix up for people in my spare time, since Firefox is a nice browser despite its flaws. Too bad it won't run decently on anything less than a Pentium III with 256MB of RAM.
What it seems like all these new developers are trying to do is pre-empt Windows Longhorn, which of course has the whole philosophy of creating a system with a high starting point -- targeted at machines with 1GB of RAM, a 64 bit processor, and a pixel shading graphic scard.
A few OSS developers are not going to catch up to Windows Longhorn -- they should stick to what they do best, and not alienate their base, which includes users of old PCs and small, cheap embedded devices by trying to standardize the minimum requirements of a GUI on some bloated XML/XUL/C#/Mono system with OpenGL as the minimum requirements for spinning around text. By doing that, they're going to lose on both fronts.
In fact, even mod_ssl has information on how to do so on the site:
http://www.modssl.org/docs/2.6/ssl_faq.html#ToC27
http://australianit.news.com.au/common/print/0,720 8,11393890%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html
Of course, the only way around this is for the UN to take ICANN by force, which won't happen in the United States, whether by the US government or especially by the UN. Until Vint Cerf at ICANN changes his mind, the internet will not be governed by the UN.
I see immediate applications for this technology -- we need to bring back Hands Across America to create the information superhighway of the 21st century!
I care about whether my connetion is secure or not, and I'm just a normal internet use. I send lots of emails, instant messages, and other online video feeds and what not. The fact that my communication is secure is incredibly important to me. Have fun, and god bless you all.
This was a great thing in a making, and its discontinuation greatly saddens me. May it rest in peace... God Bless
I'm downloading this and running a Beowulf cluster off of it.
In response to the US Air Force creating incredibly advanced aircraft simulation programs, it seems that Fire Departments all over the U.S. are using the incredibly real life simulation "Sim Copter" to train it's pilots not only to rescue people, but also to put out fires quickly.
You could always use the highly confused statement as an excuse to play it that states:
"If you do not own this rom, you must delete it from your harddrive within 24 hours of the download."
I'm laughing my ass off that the army decided to use this game to help train. I can't see how this game is the least bit helpful to training a American Soldier. Well, all I can really say is that I'm sure glad we didn't have any big wars during the 80's, because this is just funny. I'm off now, to download this incredible training simulation and turn myself into a lethal killing machine, able to blow up tanks with single shells.
Even after reading the arcticle, it seems doubtful to me that millions of dollars were spent on creating documents to say that Windows 2000 meets the security criteria. Personally, even though this is Microsoft we're talking about, this seems a bit outrageous.
There's no reason to not be. Laziness is a rapidly growing problem now, thanks to the online world. Now, not only laziness is a problem, but obesity is growing faster more than ever.
I personally think people should go to the grocery store, get out of their car, and walk a bit to shop. It won't hurt them, and is actually more health for them.
The fact that we can do PLENTY of tasks online is presenting a problem. America already is the most obese county, and online shopping WILL NOT help the problem!
The article seems to praise the company and it's good fortune, yet it lists no negative remarks. Personally, I would not buy from a food store online, just because I don't know *EXACTLY* what I'm getting. I'd be afraid that if this food was not properly packaged and delivered properly, that I could get some kind of disease or eat some bacteria that was growing on the food. Well.....who cares about stuff like that, 25% less in cost saves you a lot of money!
Your email has now been official added to the list of Korean spam mail targets. Thank you for posting on the /., we hope you leave you email again soon!
"So this is love, or so you tell me
As you're walkin', out the door
Months go by, and I know for certain
It's not the love, I'm lookin' for"
"Some times, just for a moment,
I reach out; hope you're still there"
"Miles away,
No; you're never turnin' back,
I just can't wait anymore
Miles away,
Nothin' left of what we had,
Just when I needed you most...
You were miles away..."
"It's hard to tell, what you're goin' through
You kept your feelings locked inside of you
Open your heart, and chances are,
What you're feelin', I'm feelin' too"
"If only, just for a moment,
Hold on, to the dreams that we had"
"Miles away,
No; you're never turnin' back,
I just can't wait anymore
Miles away,
Nothin' left of what we had,
Just when I needed you most
You were miles away"
"When times were tough, and you were down and out
Who was there by your side?
Now you've gone; I'm so tired of bein' alone..
With only youromises..."
"Lonliness just fades away,
Thoughts of you; just memories
No cryin' now, for what we're missin'
Time won't forget what you meant to me"
"Hold me, just for a moment
Hold on, to the dreams that we had"
"Miles away,
No; you're never turnin' back,
I just can't wait anymore
Miles away,
Nothin' left of what we had,
Just when I needed you most, whoa-oh,
Miles away,
No; you're never turnin' back,
I just can't wait anymore,
Miles away,
Nothin' left of what we had,
Just when I needed you most..."
"You were mi-les a-way..."
I think I'll take you up on that offer. *wink wink*