>The lawsuit was in relation to some clustering >software. Right?
Sorry, I have no idea. And perhaps that's a bit scary -- how many of us check our software for patent restrictions before running it? I mean, for all I know, me running NCP could be a violation of some Novell patent.
Hmmm, looking at/usr/src/linux/fs/ncpfs/, I see that the original code is quite old (1995), but more interesting: There is no license. Could anybody please clear up in this? It's a bit disturbing...
Moore's law is `slowing down'. It says that computing power will double in 12 to 18 months, and we're coming closer and closer to 18 months... My guess is, unless something really clever happens soon, we will be at 18 1/2 months... But then, try to run some old hand-optimized 8088 assembly on anything greater than a 386, and watch it fly... Games is what's driving stuff forward... And MS Office is coming after:-)
Just to clarify: There is already excellent IPX (the NetWare protocol) _and_ NCP (the NetWare network filesystem) support in Linux, giving you everything you need to connect to a NetWare server, read/write files, etc. (There is something called MARS as well, which lets you emulate a NetWare server, but I haven't been able to get it to work.) All you need is the Linux kernel and a copy of ncptools, which is (as you say) OSS. This works great, and I use it for my everyday work at school. Pretty bug-free, even, and with all the administrative tools you'll need.
Just so people wouldn't go mad looking around at the web:-)
Thanks for the info. BTW, I searched Freshmeat for SAW, and found nothing. If there was something for PC that could work approximately like an MD, I would want that:-) (I'm working a bit on my own program to do something like that, but surely somebody must have had about the same idea?)
Sound quality is not my primary concern, my primary concern is being able to actually have sound in the speakers, without spending those precious seconds looking for a CD, or find out that the CD is all scratched up. I wonder, what do you use instead? Just plain old CDs? What do you do if your dancers come over to you and ask `could you please remove the verse -- we don't like it'?
OK, this sounded real professional. I'm no pro at all, not even close;-)
Now, why would you want to store MP3s on MiniDisc? I saw a test of ATRAC (the compression used on MD) vs. MP3 once, and ATRAC (even in the early `version' it was in then) came out as the winner.
Sounds like a weird product to me, perhaps I should read the article?;-)
Betamax had something to lose to (VHS). What has MD lost to? MP3 players? Come on, give me a break! Ever seen the media cost of those? Must been something I haven't heard of before...
Before you say that MD is dead, try a day as a sound technician. MiniDisc is your friend. One small disc, not hundreds of CDs all over the place. Ability to edit at 1/75 sec resolution (anything more, and it just becomes too clumsy -- try to do editing on any PC program...) and good enough sound quality (yeah, yeah, it sounds different for classical music -- I don't care) -- in short, MD isn't dead. It's wonderful.
But still, you'd end up having to tune both servers. And tben it boils down to `which OS do you know best'. Besides, some parts of the disk are able to deliver more data quickly than others (outer/inner sectors). I don't really see how this should help anything.
And, `set up another machine to bang on them with wget or something' is a TOTALLY unrealistic perspective. One machine, downloading 100 copies of the same file, and never accessing a single CGI script?
And how are you going to benchmark Linux and NT at the same time, with only one machine? If you use it as a webserver box, no doubt the load would be higher at some times. There really are too many unknowns in such a test.
Sounds like good old security through obscurity. I think the NetBEUI thing gives you somewhat false security here... If somebody did actually break into your gateway (ie. get a root shell), I wouldn't doubt that they would be able to code some simple NetBEUI code as well. NetBEUI is essentially raw NetBIOS data in an Ethernet frame.
For the server component, fine, but you wouldn't mind telling which program that was? I mean, most of the things that people have thought you _must_ have (like NetWare, or NT for SMB connections) have good replacements now. If it's worth it (for enough people), I'm sure some kind of emulation/replacement could be made for Linux as well. But you do have a valid point there.
If you want to maximize throughput, you can easily tell the kernel to do just that (and trade it for latency) -- it's a simple setsockopt() call. Alternatively, you could use ipchains to do it, if your server program doesn't. I would be very surprised if Apache and Samba didn't do this already. (I think Samba lets you set individual socket flags in smb.conf, even.)
Yes, somebody on Slashdot commented (after Mindcraft I) that the RAID controller used had very poor Linux support, due to the company not willing to release its driver specs. Mylex cards was recommended instead (just look at the Mylex README files in the kernel source -- these guys ARE nice). I can't remember anything being said from Mindcraft about this, though, and it certainly is an important part of the benchmark.
That being said, I think the parts about "the Linux community is working on these issues" tremendously adds to Mindcraft's credibility.
But then, about 30% of my spam is addressed to my own e-mail address...
I've released a product (yeah, yeah, here comes the commercials) called spamstop, which does this and has many other rules. Couple it with the RBL, DUL and others (if you can -- not everybody runs their own SMTP mailer, you know!) Check out its Appindex record. (Well, calling it a product is a bit too much, but it's effective enough.)
...of some weird bug in the communication between the three Slashdot servers. Hard-type one of the IP addresses (and change slashdot.org to that IP address whenever you can), and things seem to work MUCH better.
Yes, I've filed a bug report. And yes, this seems to affect most of the problems described in the other comments:-)
The slowest reboot for any OS would probably be the machines where you had to dip-switch in the BIOS. Then you had loaded the diskette boot driver, and from the diskette, you could load a program to boot from HD...
A really experienced person, working 100% all the time, could do that in 30 minutes or so. But then, the last machine of that type in Norway came around 1990 (I think), and it _still_ runs!
I don't think you can say that SMB is totally proprietary. Quoting from the Samba meta-FAQ:
SMB is a filesharing protocol that has had several maintainers and contributors over the years including Xerox, 3Com and most recently Microsoft. Names for this protocol include LAN Manager and Microsoft Networking. Parts of the specification has been made public at several versions including in an X/Open document, as listed at . No specification releases were made between 1992 and 1996, and during that period Microsoft became the SMB implementor with the largest market share. Microsoft developed the specification further for its products but for various reasons connected with developer's workload rather than market strategy did not make the changes public. This culminated with the "Windows NT 0.12" version released with NT 3.5 in 1995 which had significant improvements and bugs. Because Microsoft client systems are so popular, it is fair to say that what Microsoft with Windows affects all suppliers of SMB server products.
That's what Coda (or AFS, if you want) is for. NFS has some fatal flaws (like waiting infinitely), but it was the only working thing available at the time it was written.
The 6x86 has the RDTSC (read timestamp counter) function -- you just have to enable it by toggling some CPU flags (I think). I've seen a Windows program to do this. It wasn't entirely standards-compliant (!), though -- didn't always generate unique timestamps (over a period of 30 years or something...).
Check the `amendment' to the FAQs -- no emulators (OK, VMware isn't an emulator... or so they claim) allowed now.
That would have to be a big fsck, or a really big drive. My 2x4 GB RAID-0 cluster (long live Linux, taking RAID to the home users!) takes perhaps two or three minutes to fsck. Should be even better (hopefully), when I get them on my new Promise ATA66 controller.
Of course, in a business environment, you could have a 8x30GB RAID-5 cluster...
Perhaps RH should start starting sendmail in the background, then? I've never seen sendmail take any more than 2-3 seconds to start. And I'm not a sendmail fan either (go Exim!;-) ).
New chips! 133 Mhz! Once you (over)clock, you can't stop! You can't stop! And if you get hungry, you can even EAT THEM as well! Remember: don't take more than 256 MB if you're pregnant, or has a hamster.
I've seen some `anarchist's handbook' type of site, saying that if you smoke 15 bananas (only the seeds, of course, put in water and left for a while) it will work as a drug... Not sure if I believe it, though.
Slashdot Mirror
>The lawsuit was in relation to some clustering
/usr/src/linux/fs/ncpfs/, I see that the original code is quite old (1995), but more interesting: There is no license. Could anybody please clear up in this? It's a bit disturbing...
>software. Right?
Sorry, I have no idea. And perhaps that's a bit scary -- how many of us check our software for patent restrictions before running it? I mean, for all I know, me running NCP could be a violation of some Novell patent.
Hmmm, looking at
/* Steinar */
Moore's law is `slowing down'. It says that computing power will double in 12 to 18 months, and we're coming closer and closer to 18 months... My guess is, unless something really clever happens soon, we will be at 18 1/2 months... But then, try to run some old hand-optimized 8088 assembly on anything greater than a 386, and watch it fly... Games is what's driving stuff forward... And MS Office is coming after :-)
/* Steinar */
Just to clarify: There is already excellent IPX (the NetWare protocol) _and_ NCP (the NetWare network filesystem) support in Linux, giving you everything you need to connect to a NetWare server, read/write files, etc. (There is something called MARS as well, which lets you emulate a NetWare server, but I haven't been able to get it to work.) All you need is the Linux kernel and a copy of ncptools, which is (as you say) OSS. This works great, and I use it for my everyday work at school. Pretty bug-free, even, and with all the administrative tools you'll need.
:-)
Just so people wouldn't go mad looking around at the web
/* Steinar */
Thanks for the info. BTW, I searched Freshmeat for SAW, and found nothing. If there was something for PC that could work approximately like an MD, I would want that :-) (I'm working a bit on my own program to do something like that, but surely somebody must have had about the same idea?)
/* Steinar */
Sound quality is not my primary concern, my primary concern is being able to actually have sound in the speakers, without spending those precious seconds looking for a CD, or find out that the CD is all scratched up. I wonder, what do you use instead? Just plain old CDs? What do you do if your dancers come over to you and ask `could you please remove the verse -- we don't like it'?
;-)
OK, this sounded real professional. I'm no pro at all, not even close
/* Steinar */
Now, why would you want to store MP3s on MiniDisc? I saw a test of ATRAC (the compression used on MD) vs. MP3 once, and ATRAC (even in the early `version' it was in then) came out as the winner.
;-)
Sounds like a weird product to me, perhaps I should read the article?
/* Steinar */
Betamax had something to lose to (VHS). What has MD lost to? MP3 players? Come on, give me a break! Ever seen the media cost of those? Must been something I haven't heard of before...
/* Steinar */
Before you say that MD is dead, try a day as a sound technician. MiniDisc is your friend. One small disc, not hundreds of CDs all over the place. Ability to edit at 1/75 sec resolution (anything more, and it just becomes too clumsy -- try to do editing on any PC program...) and good enough sound quality (yeah, yeah, it sounds different for classical music -- I don't care) -- in short, MD isn't dead. It's wonderful.
/* Steinar */
But still, you'd end up having to tune both servers. And tben it boils down to `which OS do you know best'. Besides, some parts of the disk are able to deliver more data quickly than others (outer/inner sectors). I don't really see how this should help anything.
And, `set up another machine to bang on them with wget or something' is a TOTALLY unrealistic perspective. One machine, downloading 100 copies of the same file, and never accessing a single CGI script?
And how are you going to benchmark Linux and NT at the same time, with only one machine? If you use it as a webserver box, no doubt the load would be higher at some times. There really are too many unknowns in such a test.
/* Steinar */
Sounds like good old security through obscurity. I think the NetBEUI thing gives you somewhat false security here... If somebody did actually break into your gateway (ie. get a root shell), I wouldn't doubt that they would be able to code some simple NetBEUI code as well. NetBEUI is essentially raw NetBIOS data in an Ethernet frame.
For the server component, fine, but you wouldn't mind telling which program that was? I mean, most of the things that people have thought you _must_ have (like NetWare, or NT for SMB connections) have good replacements now. If it's worth it (for enough people), I'm sure some kind of emulation/replacement could be made for Linux as well. But you do have a valid point there.
/* Steinar */
Just commenting on one point...
If you want to maximize throughput, you can easily tell the kernel to do just that (and trade it for latency) -- it's a simple setsockopt() call. Alternatively, you could use ipchains to do it, if your server program doesn't. I would be very surprised if Apache and Samba didn't do this already. (I think Samba lets you set individual socket flags in smb.conf, even.)
/* Steinar */
Yes, somebody on Slashdot commented (after Mindcraft I) that the RAID controller used had very poor Linux support, due to the company not willing to release its driver specs. Mylex cards was recommended instead (just look at the Mylex README files in the kernel source -- these guys ARE nice). I can't remember anything being said from Mindcraft about this, though, and it certainly is an important part of the benchmark.
That being said, I think the parts about "the Linux community is working on these issues" tremendously adds to Mindcraft's credibility.
/* Steinar */
But then, about 30% of my spam is addressed to my own e-mail address...
I've released a product (yeah, yeah, here comes the commercials) called spamstop, which does this and has many other rules. Couple it with the RBL, DUL and others (if you can -- not everybody runs their own SMTP mailer, you know!) Check out its Appindex record. (Well, calling it a product is a bit too much, but it's effective enough.)
Anti-spammers, unite!
/* Steinar */
...of some weird bug in the communication between the three Slashdot servers. Hard-type one of the IP addresses (and change slashdot.org to that IP address whenever you can), and things seem to work MUCH better.
:-)
Yes, I've filed a bug report. And yes, this seems to affect most of the problems described in the other comments
/* Steinar */
The slowest reboot for any OS would probably be the machines where you had to dip-switch in the BIOS. Then you had loaded the diskette boot driver, and from the diskette, you could load a program to boot from HD...
A really experienced person, working 100% all the time, could do that in 30 minutes or so. But then, the last machine of that type in Norway came around 1990 (I think), and it _still_ runs!
/* Steinar */
I don't think you can say that SMB is totally proprietary. Quoting from the Samba meta-FAQ:
SMB is a filesharing protocol that has had several maintainers and contributors over the years including Xerox, 3Com and most recently Microsoft. Names for this protocol include LAN Manager and Microsoft Networking. Parts of the specification has been made public at several versions including in an X/Open document, as listed at . No specification releases were made between 1992 and 1996, and during that period Microsoft became the SMB implementor with the largest market share. Microsoft developed the specification further for its products but for various reasons connected with developer's workload rather than market strategy did not make the changes public. This culminated with the "Windows NT 0.12" version released with NT 3.5 in 1995 which had significant improvements and bugs. Because Microsoft client systems are so popular, it is fair to say that what Microsoft with Windows affects all suppliers of SMB server products.
/* Steinar */
That's what Coda (or AFS, if you want) is for. NFS has some fatal flaws (like waiting infinitely), but it was the only working thing available at the time it was written.
/* Steinar */
The 6x86 has the RDTSC (read timestamp counter) function -- you just have to enable it by toggling some CPU flags (I think). I've seen a Windows program to do this. It wasn't entirely standards-compliant (!), though -- didn't always generate unique timestamps (over a period of 30 years or something...).
Check the `amendment' to the FAQs -- no emulators (OK, VMware isn't an emulator... or so they claim) allowed now.
/* Steinar */
That would have to be a big fsck, or a really big drive. My 2x4 GB RAID-0 cluster (long live Linux, taking RAID to the home users!) takes perhaps two or three minutes to fsck. Should be even better (hopefully), when I get them on my new Promise ATA66 controller.
Of course, in a business environment, you could have a 8x30GB RAID-5 cluster...
/* Steinar */
Perhaps RH should start starting sendmail in the background, then? I've never seen sendmail take any more than 2-3 seconds to start. And I'm not a sendmail fan either (go Exim! ;-) ).
/* Steinar */
Wasn't it Loki who was in The Mask (in the movie)? My router is called `themask' because it does, well... masquerading :-)
/* Steinar */
I thought they improved retention, not speed. And only the people with bad memory was helped. So unless your RAM is forgetful, it won't help.
/* Steinar */
Join those lines together. There is one, not two lines. His .sig was just broken up.
:-)
And... one or two lines would have been enough
/* Steinar */
New chips! 133 Mhz! Once you (over)clock, you can't stop! You can't stop! And if you get hungry, you can even EAT THEM as well! Remember: don't take more than 256 MB if you're pregnant, or has a hamster.
Those commercials are driving me mad anyway...
/* Steinar */
I've seen some `anarchist's handbook' type of site, saying that if you smoke 15 bananas (only the seeds, of course, put in water and left for a while) it will work as a drug... Not sure if I believe it, though.
/* Steinar */