I'm definitely not saying this is plex86 or bochs' fault, because VMware and most console emulators have the same problem:
If the VM is really emulating the hardware, why have seperate support or debugging stages for different OSes? Why does it matter what software it runs; if it emulates the architecture 100% then it should run anything that would run on the architecture.
I suppose the two reasons I could think of are undocumented interfaces, and bugs in the software that make assumptions about bugs in the hardware. The console emulator's problem is pretty much explained by lack of documentation (most info is reverse-engineered) but on a fairly standard system like x86, why all the fuss?
I've been shopping for DSL with the intent of running a server too. I found Telocity. It's not installed yet, so no personal experience, but from the web site it looks good. They say they're linux frienly and they actually encourage running servers or hosting domain names. (static IP)
Anybody have more info, or a list, of free (libre) DSL providers like this?
Yeah, I give a few people I know (and mostly-trust) shell accounts (via a 56k modem!). Used to be with Telnet, but once I fount out how evil it is I switched to SSH.
Main reason for switching from telnet was when I found out how bad my school's network is. (which is where I usually used to connect from) They're paranoid about network monitoring, but they have 0 security. Things like routers, hubs, and printers with no password. You had to use nmap to find 'em, but if you did, it's trivial to bring down the office's laser printers, turn off a few network segments, etc.
Of course, an account on a reasonably-pseudo-secured system like mine can still manage to annoy. This has only happened once or twice, but a friend decided it would be fun to run a few hundred processes on my workstation;-)
So many facilities take the security approach of blocking everything at the door, and betting their network that nobody will get in, and that the people already inside won't do anything. Unless you know the IP addresses of those routers and such, it's impossible to touch them from an iMac, but my laptop with Slackware and an ethernet card could bring down the whole thing if I were malicious. (and if you're wondering why I run slackware, it's a 486 with a 200MB hard drive)
Never use an address tied to a specific ISP if you're concerned about reliability.
Definitely. For the longest time I had my e-mail on my own DNS, (homesoftware.com) but since I'm trying to get rid of that domain name and the expensive hosting, I turned to a more flexible alternative.
I like Sourceforge a lot (they host all my projects now, which is why I no longer need my old domain) so my 'primary' email address nowadays is the forwarder they give me. Any suitable forwarder will work, but my point is if you're planning on changing services soon, use a forwarder.
Right now the "back end" to my email is just a free webmail service that supports POP3. Whenever I get DSL though, it will be even better.
I don't see the point of getting rack space when there are so many things you can host with an old 486 or pentium and a broadband connection. Heck, I host webmail (not the delivery, just the frontend) http, https, and SSH though my 56K modem and a dynamic DNS from yi.org!
Equipment, software, and DNS: Free
Internet connection: $20 / month
Well, the FCC doesn't care. All that stuff is properly accepting the EM radiation as it should. But if I were walking by
and operating my radio, I'd probably be able to pinpoint which room in your house was your computer room - from
the outside.
But it's in the basement. Would it still work then?
Ah, I love the look of alligator clips and signal junctions duct-taped to the wall. Not to mention all the nice blinkenlights on the hubs. (can't wait till I get DSL!)
Hmm... I guess that means my room is a server closet. I have 3 computers, 2 monitors, some extra power supplies, and a bunch of homemade equipment. All running 24/7.
One time I had an audio cable hooked up to my line-in, but the other end wasn't hooked up to anything. Oddly enough, a strange beeping came from my speakers, perfectly synchronized to my home-made LCD clock.
Either that, or ban freeze-dried beans and cabbage from the next flight.
Talk about pissing away your money.
But maybe this will put $400 Department of Defense-approved toilet seats in perspective.
Mainly it was just frames and ad banners though. Frames don't seem to be that much of a problem anymore because most designers seem to realize they're bad. And JunkBuster takes care of most banners.
What really bother me are:
Animated GIFs
GIFs
800k of graphics just for some stupid logo
blink tags
Hard-to-read-over backgrounds
Extremely-lynx-unfriendly crowded navigation bars
JavaScript
Macromedia * (or any other plugins, for that matter)
While stray EM radiation seems to crash my Windows machine often, my Linux machine seems to put up with EM
radiation. I can't say I've ever noticed a benefit of EM radiation on Linux....
So you're saying windows runs better in the dark... And it's usually dark in server closets! Heresy!
;-)
I definitely agree with this statement, as far as Linux is concerned. It seems to get the job done for everything- but it doesn't do SMP as well as the big server OSes, it isn't nearly as small as OSes designed for embedded systems, and it doesn't do multimedia as well as an OS designed for multimedia. For the purposes of putting as many developers as possible to work, though, I think it suceeds. That's why Linux always seems to have more driver and application support than other Free/OSS kernels.
As far as generalizing this to all Open Source project, though, I'd have to disagree. It really depends on how focused the project leader is and how much 'me too' syndrome there is hovering around it.
If the project is fairly low-key, or the developers are strict, the project will get the features it needs and people itching to implement something unnecessary will either not know about the project in the first place or go find something else to do. (or maybe even make a fork)
With more lenient project leaders, it's much more succeptible to "feeping creaturism". Instead of becoming specialized for one area, it gets the kitchen sink.
I'm not saying either method is bad, just that it is possible for open source to produce the "blue bloods". I'm a code optimization / embedded systems junkie, so I like to use code size as an example. IIRC, Linux was first coded on a 386, then as the hardware got faster and the features creeped in, Linux grew. It still works on the older machines, but probably not as well as it used to. XFree86 is another of those quite spread-out projects. It works on diskless terminals, big SMP machines, and it can even be crammed into an embedded system like the iPaq. But, a GUI specially designed for small systems will always be better at running on small systems and there's no reason it can't be open source too.
Wow. Thanks for the link, it's been quite a while since I've used REND386. It also appears that Bernie released the 'final version' of AVRIL under the GPL.
Video game manufacturers have always had quite
evil marketing and legal practices. All of the
console systems I've programmed for or investigated have proprietary APIs, but that's not the real problem- at least on the simpler 2D systems these are quickly reverse engineered. The game companies made it illegal to write games without their special licence. I don't know the technical details of most systems, but I'll use the Gameboy as an example:
The Gameboy itself has a tiny (512 bytes IIRC) boot ROM. It doesn't perform any initialization, its only purpose is to scroll the little "Nintendo" logo down the screen. The logo itself is stored in the game cartridge, but if it doesn't compare exactly to another copy in the ROM, the game never loads. This forces developers to put a copy of the Nintendo logo in their games, and buy the special license so it isn't "illegal".
I forget whether this was ever challenged in court. (Never stopped the hobbiests, of course:)
I think there was a legal case involving something similar with the Sega, but I don't remember the details.
Though I've never programmed for the NES, I have modified mine to play unlicenced cartridges. (Shhh... experimental purposes only;-) The NES and the cartridge both have an identical proprietary chip. They exchange data of some sort, and if the chip in the NES doesn't like the other chip, you get the flashing screen. This is easily remedied on the customer's part by clipping a wire in the NES, but I think Tengen built their own chip to release Pac Man (and maybe some other games) without a Nintendo license, and they got sued.
yeah and then hooking up the archive of pause music up to your digital phone system, so when you put somebody on
hold they will get a random pause music. makes sense, right? 'You are on pause.':)
It's a nice thought, but I don't think it would be practical in my house... The wiring's so bad, the local radio station is always in the background. With two phones off the hook at the same time it's so bad you can barely hear the people.
Oh well, sometimes I do put music on the phones,
just by setting one of those little hands-free headsets next to my computer speakers and firing up XMMS. Now all XMMS needs is a NES emulator plugin!
The Power Glove was basically just a cheapo VR
device for the NES. It has little resistive sensors for detecting finger position, and a sort
of 3D sonar to detect the position of the hand
relative to the TV. AFAIK they only released one
game for it on the NES (Glove ball?) and it was
pretty much a flop. But interestingly enough they started sort of a cult following among the 1337 DOS programmers of the day.
I remember ordering my Power Glove used for something like $8. (like I said, a flop) I built the quite simple paralell port
adaptor, and stuck the little sonar doodads on my monitor. 386s were new back then, so the graphics weren't great, but it was still pretty darn cool.
I remember this demo with a "western" town (saloons and things) and being able to pick up tables and even open the safe with my pixelated and jittery virtual hand.
It was neat, especially for that time period. I wonder if there's any linux software for that thing...
I always liked the music in Lemmings. (Yeah,
most of it was a classical music knock-off but
they synthesized it well) Especially the music
the gameboy Lemmings game played when it's paused.
Heck, maybe it's worth making an archive of
pause music?
If you use it an enjoy it, great, but it adds nothing to your user experience if every Tom and Joe
uses it as well.
If you assume that software is static and all users do is use the computer, that's true. But, the more users linux has, the more potential developers. That includes the C-and-perl-wielding geeks like me, "beta testers", and game companies. ;-)
It's sad to see geeks that are frustrated with the M$ assimilation, but they're too dizzy from the FUD ray to see their alternatives.
Well, I agree that the original purpose (get advertisements for
products you already have!) is useless.
I have a little web app, WebQcat
that can make listings, with title, author, picture, and price, of books. It's sorta useful to make a quick listing of a stack of books or other items.
Not something I'd buy a barcode reader for, but it's ok for a freebie:)
I just finished a little web-based cuecat scanner, to make it easy to use the cuecat without any extra software, without infringing upon your privacy, and on any OS. It also has a mirror of HaveBlue's page.
Not only can you avoid the censors, but with rot13
you can use the DMCA to claim that any censorware
that could block your content would be reverse engineering your "encryption"!
Great... All the true hackers that go by the definitions in the Jargon File are now very angry with CmdrTaco for using "Hacker" incorrectly in the story! I thought slashdot was run by people who understood a geek's needs!
In an ideal world, there would be a well-defined API between the politicians and the companies, but alas there are still a few bugs to work out...
No matter what Netscape does, the X server isn't supposed to crash. If it does, sure Netscape might be the immediate cause but the X server is the root of the problem
Slashdot Mirror
If the VM is really emulating the hardware, why have seperate support or debugging stages for different OSes? Why does it matter what software it runs; if it emulates the architecture 100% then it should run anything that would run on the architecture.
I suppose the two reasons I could think of are undocumented interfaces, and bugs in the software that make assumptions about bugs in the hardware. The console emulator's problem is pretty much explained by lack of documentation (most info is reverse-engineered) but on a fairly standard system like x86, why all the fuss?
Anybody have more info, or a list, of free (libre) DSL providers like this?
Main reason for switching from telnet was when I found out how bad my school's network is. (which is where I usually used to connect from) They're paranoid about network monitoring, but they have 0 security. Things like routers, hubs, and printers with no password. You had to use nmap to find 'em, but if you did, it's trivial to bring down the office's laser printers, turn off a few network segments, etc.
Of course, an account on a reasonably-pseudo-secured system like mine can still manage to annoy. This has only happened once or twice, but a friend decided it would be fun to run a few hundred processes on my workstation ;-)
So many facilities take the security approach of blocking everything at the door, and betting their network that nobody will get in, and that the people already inside won't do anything. Unless you know the IP addresses of those routers and such, it's impossible to touch them from an iMac, but my laptop with Slackware and an ethernet card could bring down the whole thing if I were malicious. (and if you're wondering why I run slackware, it's a 486 with a 200MB hard drive)
Definitely. For the longest time I had my e-mail on my own DNS, (homesoftware.com) but since I'm trying to get rid of that domain name and the expensive hosting, I turned to a more flexible alternative.
I like Sourceforge a lot (they host all my projects now, which is why I no longer need my old domain) so my 'primary' email address nowadays is the forwarder they give me. Any suitable forwarder will work, but my point is if you're planning on changing services soon, use a forwarder.
Right now the "back end" to my email is just a free webmail service that supports POP3. Whenever I get DSL though, it will be even better.
I don't see the point of getting rack space when there are so many things you can host with an old 486 or pentium and a broadband connection. Heck, I host webmail (not the delivery, just the frontend) http, https, and SSH though my 56K modem and a dynamic DNS from yi.org!
Equipment, software, and DNS: Free
Internet connection: $20 / month
But it's in the basement. Would it still work then?
Ah, I love the look of alligator clips and signal junctions duct-taped to the wall. Not to mention all the nice blinkenlights on the hubs. (can't wait till I get DSL!)
One time I had an audio cable hooked up to my line-in, but the other end wasn't hooked up to anything. Oddly enough, a strange beeping came from my speakers, perfectly synchronized to my home-made LCD clock.
I'm sure the FCC would lock me up if they knew.
Bad pun! Defenestrate him!
What really bother me are:
- Animated GIFs
- GIFs
- 800k of graphics just for some stupid logo
- blink tags
- Hard-to-read-over backgrounds
- Extremely-lynx-unfriendly crowded navigation bars
- JavaScript
- Macromedia * (or any other plugins, for that matter)
Ah well, I like Taco Hell better.So you're saying windows runs better in the dark... And it's usually dark in server closets! Heresy!
;-)
As far as generalizing this to all Open Source project, though, I'd have to disagree. It really depends on how focused the project leader is and how much 'me too' syndrome there is hovering around it.
If the project is fairly low-key, or the developers are strict, the project will get the features it needs and people itching to implement something unnecessary will either not know about the project in the first place or go find something else to do. (or maybe even make a fork)
With more lenient project leaders, it's much more succeptible to "feeping creaturism". Instead of becoming specialized for one area, it gets the kitchen sink.
I'm not saying either method is bad, just that it is possible for open source to produce the "blue bloods". I'm a code optimization / embedded systems junkie, so I like to use code size as an example. IIRC, Linux was first coded on a 386, then as the hardware got faster and the features creeped in, Linux grew. It still works on the older machines, but probably not as well as it used to. XFree86 is another of those quite spread-out projects. It works on diskless terminals, big SMP machines, and it can even be crammed into an embedded system like the iPaq. But, a GUI specially designed for small systems will always be better at running on small systems and there's no reason it can't be open source too.
Ack! I've been rambling!
The Gameboy itself has a tiny (512 bytes IIRC) boot ROM. It doesn't perform any initialization, its only purpose is to scroll the little "Nintendo" logo down the screen. The logo itself is stored in the game cartridge, but if it doesn't compare exactly to another copy in the ROM, the game never loads. This forces developers to put a copy of the Nintendo logo in their games, and buy the special license so it isn't "illegal".
I forget whether this was ever challenged in court. (Never stopped the hobbiests, of course :)
I think there was a legal case involving something similar with the Sega, but I don't remember the details.
Though I've never programmed for the NES, I have modified mine to play unlicenced cartridges. (Shhh... experimental purposes only ;-) The NES and the cartridge both have an identical proprietary chip. They exchange data of some sort, and if the chip in the NES doesn't like the other chip, you get the flashing screen. This is easily remedied on the customer's part by clipping a wire in the NES, but I think Tengen built their own chip to release Pac Man (and maybe some other games) without a Nintendo license, and they got sued.
It's a nice thought, but I don't think it would be practical in my house... The wiring's so bad, the local radio station is always in the background. With two phones off the hook at the same time it's so bad you can barely hear the people.
Oh well, sometimes I do put music on the phones, just by setting one of those little hands-free headsets next to my computer speakers and firing up XMMS. Now all XMMS needs is a NES emulator plugin!
I remember ordering my Power Glove used for something like $8. (like I said, a flop) I built the quite simple paralell port adaptor, and stuck the little sonar doodads on my monitor. 386s were new back then, so the graphics weren't great, but it was still pretty darn cool. I remember this demo with a "western" town (saloons and things) and being able to pick up tables and even open the safe with my pixelated and jittery virtual hand.
It was neat, especially for that time period. I wonder if there's any linux software for that thing...
Heck, maybe it's worth making an archive of pause music?
If you assume that software is static and all users do is use the computer, that's true. But, the more users linux has, the more potential developers. That includes the C-and-perl-wielding geeks like me, "beta testers", and game companies.
;-)
It's sad to see geeks that are frustrated with the M$ assimilation, but they're too dizzy from the FUD ray to see their alternatives.
Originally it required a TRG, but it has been sucessfully run from the Flash ROM in many palms, and even from the RAM
Well, I agree that the original purpose (get advertisements for products you already have!) is useless. I have a little web app, WebQcat that can make listings, with title, author, picture, and price, of books. It's sorta useful to make a quick listing of a stack of books or other items. Not something I'd buy a barcode reader for, but it's ok for a freebie :)
Well, considering Apple's recent zero-button mouse, I'm sure they will need zero-click shopping too.
You can find it at:
webqcat.sourceforge.net
Not only can you avoid the censors, but with rot13
you can use the DMCA to claim that any censorware
that could block your content would be reverse engineering your "encryption"!
Great... All the true hackers that go by the definitions in the Jargon File are now very angry with CmdrTaco for using "Hacker" incorrectly in the story! I thought slashdot was run by people who understood a geek's needs!
No matter what Netscape does, the X server isn't supposed to crash. If it does, sure Netscape might be the immediate cause but the X server is the root of the problem