Slashdot Mirror


User: Ster

Ster's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
135
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 135

  1. Hyperbole on Microsoft Has Created Its Own FreeBSD (microsoft.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hi folks,

    Disclaimer: I'm a FreeBSD committer.

    MS has been committing various Hyper-V drivers for months. Just like VMWare does for its hypervisor.

    This is less

    OMG a new fork! Embrace, Extend, Extinguish!!!

    and more

    Here's a pre-built VM image with 10.3 + a few Hyper-V drivers that weren't backported in time for the 10.3 freeze + a few scripts to automate configuration in the Azure environment

    You know, like every other cloud vendor's VM images. Nothing to see here, move along.

    So, stop Hyper-Ventilating! ;-)

  2. Re:and when BSD moves to systemd... on Ask Slashdot: Migrating a Router From Linux To *BSD? · · Score: 1

    Jordan Hubbard, you know, that guy that has a little influence in the FreeBSD project, seems to think that systemd is a pretty good idea (Slideshare transcript).

    I was actually there when Jordan gave that talk. He specifically mentioned `launchd', rather than `systemd', as being something to look at. In fact, people in the FreeBSD community already have `launchd' running as PID 0, though I believe it's not fully stable. Right now, it just execs `rc' so most things just work as usual; individual services will have to be migrated to get started via `launchd', but that will take time.

  3. Re:There is more news than can ever be parsed on 30% of Americans Get News From Facebook According To Pew Research Poll · · Score: 1

    ...

    It used to be until tons of old classmates from elementary school showed up on my facebook account pretty much devaluating the meaning of "friend"

    Then why did you accept the friend request? I limit my FB friends to pretty much only people I'd enjoy spending the whole day hanging out with.

    Okay, there are also a few few relatives, whose friend requests I accepted to not start a bunch of family drama. But I largely ignore their posts, and I have groups set up such that they can't see the vast majority of my posts either. As far as those folks are concerned, I'm rarely on FB at all.

  4. Re:Dongles on Apple Files Patent For New Proprietary Port · · Score: 1

    I think they were among the first to support USB in an era where PC makers were slavishly doing nothing new because nobody else had done it yet.

    Apple fought USB with their own proprietary connector called Firewire. Firewire was significantly faster than USB, especially at sustained transfers, but it was more expensive to implement because of a combination of the technologies involved and Apple's license fees. Apple ended up abandoning that technology for newer versions of USB and eventually Thunderbolt, mostly due to lackluster third-party support for Firewire devices.

    That is pretty fundamentally wrong. USB and FireWire were intended to be complementary connectors and protocols. USB was intended for inexpensive and low-bandwidth devices, master-slave connectivity, no DMA - the type of things that would previously have been connected with PS/2, DB9, or DB25. FireWire was intended for things that needed peer-to-peer connectivity, bandwidth and latency guarantees (like video - IEEE 1394 is part of the DV standard), and DMA - things that would previously have been done with something like SCSI or PCI. Both interface coexisted for years on Macs and PCs.

    It so happens that later versions of USB have added some of FireWire's features, to the point where USB2 and USB3 can do most - but still not all - of the things that FireWire can do. Because the chipset vendors included USB in commodity chipsets, but FireWire required a discrete chip, USB has better market penetration.

    Thunderbolt is another thing entirely - it's essentially 4x PCIe-Gen2, using an interface that allows for piggybacking DisplayPort as well. (For example, the Thunderbolt RAID enclosures that you see basically contain a PCIe RAID controller that shows up on the PCIe bus when you connect it.)

    -Ster

  5. Re:Captain Kirk to the Rescue (again) on Erasing Neuronal Memories May Help Control Chronic Pain · · Score: 1

    He never said that. The movie you think you're quoting doesn't exist. I bet you think they made sequels to The Matrix too.

    </denial>

    -Ster

  6. Re:When it takes off for Jupiter on US 'Space Warplane' Spying On Chinese Spacelab · · Score: 1

    When it takes off for Jupiter

    is when I get interested

    Tsien would have left a few years ago. :-)

  7. Re:OMG on North Korea Threatens South Korea Over Christmas Lights · · Score: 1

    How come Christians are the only ones that are asked to suffer this unconstitutional prohibition on their free exercise?

    Did you miss the part where the second item in the lawsuit was a Menorah?

    -Ster

  8. Re:Don't bitch. on PC Makers Run Short of Popular Drives · · Score: 1

    Don't take it out on others just because you're imperfect and ignore all of the S.M.A.R.T. and controller warnings... Some of us tech Gurus do religiously tend to our flock of hard-drives and recognize when they are in spiritual, and physical, need of replacement....

    I do hardware diagnostics for an HPC storage system vendor, including drive testing, qualification, and failure analysis. SMART has its uses, but, in my experience, if you've tripped SMART, you're already in serious trouble.

    It's not helped by the fact that pieces of SMART which are actually in the ATA standards are basically tripped/not-tripped - none of the attribute structures are in the current specs, let alone which attribute IDs mean what. Heck, even getting the thresholds is no longer in the ATA standard!

    Fortunately, *most* vendors implement *most* of the SMART structures the same way, and *most* use the same attribute IDs to mean the same things, and *most* still implement the sub-command for getting the thresholds. But all the really interesting data that could be used for more aggressive failure prediction (i.e. beyond the almost-always too late SMART trip) is vendor specific, and getting that information out of some vendors makes pulling teeth look like taking candy from a baby.

    </rant-let>

    -Ster

  9. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa on Good Disk Library Solutions? · · Score: 1

    with only two manufacturers of 3.5in form factor hard drives (seagate, wdc)

    Samsung?

    Actually, it's Hitachi. And Toshiba has (re?)entered the 3.5" space, at least on the enterprise side of the world - I have no idea if they make consumer 3.5" drives.

    -Ster

  10. Re:At a very young age on Now's Your Chance To Apply As an Astronaut · · Score: 1

    RBA

    -Ster

  11. Re:Next on A Job Fair For Jobs In India — In California · · Score: 1

    If there were call centers setup in the US to cater to Indian clients then why would they be speaking English in the first place?

    Because English is one of the official languages of India, and is spoken in every state.

    -Ster

  12. Re:LLVM? on GNOME Shell No Longer Requires GPU Acceleration · · Score: 2

    ... And also, does the above mean that Gnome is no longer using GCC to compile, but switching to the LLVM compiler? ...

    LLVM is designed to be modular. It sounds like what they're doing is probably similar to what Apple did a few years back - include LLVM bit-code files for functions that aren't handled natively, then hand those off to libllvm to emit native code when needed.

    -Ster

  13. Re:If your Mac is too old on Is the Apple App Store a Casino? · · Score: 1

    I've read comments in past stories about the iOS developer program from people who own a Mac but still can't develop because the Mac is too old to run recent Xcode. So you end up having to depreciate the Mac and the iPod touch on which to test as annual expenses just like the developer fee.

    Apple generally supports the current OS and developer tools on hardware going back three years, for both Macs and iPods/iPhones.

  14. Re:Say what? on When Having the US Debt Paid Off Was a Problem · · Score: 1

    If you've determined to never pay back all your treasury bonds, how can treasury bonds be a stable investment?

    You pay them all back, you just also issue new ones, which you will also pay back.

    -Ster

  15. Re:This answer makes no sense... on Opera's Haakon Wium Lie On CSS, Web Standards, and More · · Score: 1

    ... (Only works in browsers which recognize the data: URI scheme. Tested in FF and Opera.)

    Works in Safari 5.1.1 (on OS X Lion) as well.

    -Ster

  16. Not (primarily) about round-rects on Samsung Vs. Apple Tit-For-Tat Down Under · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... (unlike the patent-a-rectangle nature of the opposition) ...

    As previously stated, it's not a patent on round-rects:

    I came across this yesterday and found it interesting (comparisons of what Samsung's tablets looked like before and after the iPad came out):

    It seems like it's not quite as silly as it's usually been presented. (Don't get me wrong, I do think it's silly.)

    -Ster

  17. Re:How about Sagan on Renaming the Very Large Array · · Score: 1

    Oh, and the Argus Array in the book was located outside Socorro, New Mexico. Guess where the VLA is located?

    -Ster

  18. Re:How about Sagan on Renaming the Very Large Array · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In Contact, the facility Ellie was at when The Message started arriving was called the Argus Array. Then when they made the movie, they actually used the VLA and called it the VLA. So why not make life imitate art and go with the Argus Array.

    -Ster

  19. Re:How about giving Thunderbolt a few months first on Thunderbolt vs. SuperSpeed USB · · Score: 1

    ... Since Thunderbolt is Intel tech, Microsoft will support it as well. ...

    They already do. Thunderbolt is nothing more or less than 4-lane PCIe Gen. 2 over a wire instead of a board. Don't believe me? Ask Anand!

    (Okay, it's DisplayPort too. But they're muxed/de-muxed at the chip, so the OS doesn't know or care.)

    -Ster

  20. Re:Still kinda messy. on Designer Creates "Euthanasia Roller Coaster" · · Score: 1

    That's an option for people with a brain cloud.

    Never mod points when I need them! :-(

    Joe Versus the Volcano

    -Ster

  21. Re:Of course not on RMS: 'Is Android Really Free Software?' · · Score: 1

    I think the reason that Google isn't releasing Android 3 source is that they don't want it installed on every crappy phone and tablet coming out of China, and giving it a bad name.

    This sounds a lot like the argument Apple fanboys use for not allowing other OSes on iShinies.

    I never had any trouble from Apple with installing Linux on my G3.

    I never had any trouble from Apple with installing Linux, Windows, or FreeBSD on my MacBook Pro.

    I'm pretty sure people have installed alternate OSes on iPods and maybe iPhones as well.

    So where's Apple stopping people from putting other OSes on Apple devices? They take exception to putting Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, but that's the opposite of what you're complaining about.

    -Ster

  22. Re:The relevant piece of so-called "IP" on German Court Upholds Ban On Samsung Galaxy Tab · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I came across this yesterday and found it interesting (comparisons of what Samsung's tablets looked like before and after the iPad came out):

    It seems like it's not quite as silly as it's usually been presented. (Don't get me wrong, I do think it's silly.)

    -Ster

  23. Re:Urbana Ill on Michael Hart, Inventor of the E-book, Dead At 64 · · Score: 1

    I've never seen "font" misspelled as "browser" and "OS" before...</pedant>

  24. Re:Love my Sunrise clock on P2P Alarm Clock Service · · Score: 1

    Link?

  25. Re:move to GUI was step backwards on Most People Have Never Heard of CTRL+F · · Score: 1

    Now - type something, move right (or left) hand to the mouse - highlight - move mouse to menu - select - press mouse button - find "home" row again and start typing.

    While that's certainly one way to do it, I've never seen anyone actually do it that pessimally.

    'Cmd-B' to start the bolding (or 'Cmd-I' for italics), type whatever you need, and then 'Cmd-B' again to end the bolding. Hands never leave the keyboard. Or if you need to italicize something that's already there, select the text (keyboard is usually faster if it's just a few words away, mouse is often faster if the target text is far from the text-cursor location), and hit 'Cmd-I' (though if your hand is already on the mouse because you used it to select distant text, then it might be faster to pick from the menu).

    Short version: TMTOWTDI; the "right" one might depend on the context.

    -Ster