There is finally a way to do direct PC to Phone calling from linux: GnomeMeeting now supports decent quality, low-cost VoIP calls to any real phone in the world. It's about time.
What is lacking is the use of your soundcard + software codec to do this. I understand there are patent problems, but the best solution would be a net2phone-style software solution, ported to Linux.
Windows for net2phone is one of the few uses I have left. Living in Morocco, it saves me $$$ every month to call Europe.
OK, so the article is wrong in stating "the Open UltraSparc-III architecture", it is rather the open Sparc9 archictecture upon which the UltraIII is based.
And, in all that, how much use is the SPARC9 specification for writing kernel code? Not much, I imagine... since indeed memory addressing and cache stuff is what the real issue in coding is.
This is very interesting, because it really hits on the blurry line between "open" and controlled (closed), and also between the way that Linux developers signed something to not disclose information on the hardware itself, although their source code to access this hardware is available.
Sun boasts their UltraSparc III as an "open" architecture, yet seem to recognize that there is insufficient information freely available for the open source community to support it with operating systems. I have been told that the required documentation does exist, however, with a Sun part number of 805-0408-05-P. An early version of this manual was allegedly made available to Linux developers once a Confidential Disclosure Agreement was signed (Sun's version of a Non-Disclosure Agreement), however no such offer has been made to the OpenBSD team, an offer that if made is likely counter to the project's goals.
Clearly then OpenBSD developers are sticking to their guns, their question is really how an "Open" architecture cannot be disclosed without some contractual agreement.
I begin to suspect that the other comment (against Linux kernel devs) about this may be key:-
There's always people who suggest it is possible, but the pain is
so high, it's just not worth it. Especially when the Linux kernel's
interface with hardware is detailed about as well as the Linux manual
pages. Especially when Linux is famous for stuff like: writereg(0x4,
0xff01);
Now, if I were a conspiracy theorist, I might say that the precise reason that comments are sparse in these sections of CPU code for the Linux kernel is due to some clause in the Sun disclosure agreement.
In any case
The Sun Ultra Sparc III cannot be open if you cannot access it publically, it is rather available under terms and conditions
The Linux project clearly had some other motivation to write the kernel code for this architecture, perhaps even encouraged by Sun (think Cobalt Linux?)
The OpenBSD project is somehow staking out that they are "purer" for adopting this stance, which is all very noble, but means ultimately that OpenBSD is unlikely to support this architecture (apart from OpenBSD zealots, most of us will just run Linux instead, I guess).
Still, I'd like to see as much openness from vendors as possible. They have to realise that the people who support closed source business models are going to be driven out by cheap commodity hardware which is now powerful enough to do amazing things (think clusters of cheap hardware on AMD/Intel/Sparc architectures all talking together via some OpenSource kernel and clustering project, think Google). Their days are numbered, sure they'll still have a place, but their creaming off profits from their current installed base will start seeing serious competition from value added service providers with no ties to specific hardware, and that is great for the consumer. Do not forget, it used to be IBM, Sperry (then Unisys) and Burroughs that did all hardware and software support. Now, as an independent consultant, you can get out there and do amazing stuff with commodity hardware and your own tailored solutions pulling from a wealth of great free server software solutions.
We are already in a phase (as are companies in European telecoms like France Telecom and British Telecom) where holding on to what you have for as long as you can, before competition really breaks you, is the only business plan they seem to have.
Score one for innovation and open projects, every time.
2) Suing the recording industry. I mean, a corporation can get sued and move all its operatios to Morocco to protect its dubious legality and continue operations. You sue in the United States, you're a legal target in the United States, plain and simple.
Morocco? And pay 10-15 times more for their bandwidth to push out ads? You must be joking. No Internet-savvy company would move to a country where TLD DNS is not RFC compliant (even the SOA record is incorrect in all zones)...
MPEG-4 SP, QVGA (320x240) 18f/s. AVI file format, can be read by DivX(TM) PC viewer, MP3 stereo sound stream
Cool, it's DivX. However, 320x240 isn't going to cut it for me, but it's nearly there. Oh, and 18fps is going to look a bit jerky. Gotta have 25fps!
Re:So far, it's the same old stuff
on
Superbowl XXXVII
·
· Score: 1
I always thought Lennon was bitching about the UK system, and _by_extension_ perhaps about the US, but really if you look at his life you'd tend to come up with it being a summary of the "western" (what a crazy way of classifying that is, since most "western" bollocks comes from East of the meridien) system.
There's room at the top, they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
They hurt you at home, and they hit you at school
They hate it if you're clever, and they despise a fool
Till you're so fuckin crazy you can't follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
Is there a working class in America? Or does it go straight from down-and-out to middle class these days?
Note: John Lennon was the LEAST working class of all the Beatles, brought up in a middle class suburb and going to a nice school and then Art College. I always find this song can only be taken with a lot of poetic licence, since it sure ain't about Lennon's "working class" background. Paul McCartney, however, was Working Class
Anyway, I fail to see the link between commercials and Lennon's working class hero, since it was a global sort of all-encompassing rant, rather than social comment. Think rather of Chumbawumba and Coca-Colanisation:
The rich world persuades the Third World, using advertising pressure,
that their traditional foods are inferior. Established nutrition is swapped
for quick commercial gain.
You're probably right. Re-reading my post I said "RADAR was conceived" when now I think about it night vision over Germany was a cool side-effect, but I have seen historic footage of that on TV and remember a few pilots saying how what really helped their attacks was RADAR
Radar in WWII
on
Tuxedo Park
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I had always thought RADAR played a minor role in WWII, but it turns out to have been extremely important, with nearly 25,000 units produced. It was conceived to help stop the German night raids on Britain
It was conceived in order to see at night, actually. Radar will up show coastlines and cityscapes clearly at night, through cloud cover. The resolution was very poor, but it allowed the RAF to attack Germany. It was not so much a defensive gadget, it was more for a primitive night vision. Plane mounted radar was a decisive factor in the war in the air over Europe.
Seeing German planes coming wasn't a problem, they could be detected by noise (they had to bomb from low down) and only stopped by launching bad surface to air missiles (there were of course plenty of coast stations armed with guns and launchers) or launching the RAF squadrons to attack them.
Accuracy was the key really, and that is what RADAR allowed at night, or from above low clouds during the day.
Isn't that "cliquetez" some kind of bullshit politically correct Canadian suggestion for Cliquer -> Cliqueter as being synonymous? Google returns over 21,000 pages with cliquetez in them, mostly French pages saying "Cliquetez ici"
Whitelist postmaster@mydomain.com i.e. allow it to bypass RBL checks.
I can tell you how to do this with Postfix, but not with qmail. It should be possible with qmail nonetheless - you need an address class which does not go through the same checks as the others.
I can whitelist. So I can also DNSBL. My server, my rules.
One proviso: if anyone complains, I will look at it.
RFCs require that one accepts mail for postmaster@domain.com and from the empty envelope sender. Since I do this, I believe I am fully RFC compliant.
So stop whining about DNSBL. The problem is wider than that, and will not be solved by getting rid of DNSBL. The system isn't perfect, but that is not the issue.
This post is just too funny. It should be modded as such.
I can believe you. I was a bit of a clever kid at school, and gave most teachers the runaround on computing, since even way back then, I had a personal computer at home since my Dad worked with Unisys (was Univac, originally).
Best thing was getting out of writing "lines" for punishment by asking if I could type them. The teacher said yes, so I just did a little loop in basic that printed the line 100 times and there I was!
I still can't believe the teacher called the monitor a "television" and that all computers have "mouse pads". I use an optical mouse, it works on the desk just fine without some advertisements on some piece of felted card.
In summary, detailed, accurate prediction into the distant past or future is impossible
Unfortunately, except for very special cases (like looking at the black holes at the hearts of galaxies), the distances and time scales involved prevent us from getting more than one snapshot of a galaxy's behavior. Galaxies are tens to hundreds of thousands of light-years wide. As most parts of them move far slower than light, the time required for any substantial galaxy-scale phenomenon to occur - even a very fast one, by galactic standards - will be many millions of years. It is unlikely that we will have time to observe this.
What I was wondering was if the information from several galaxies, at different states (young stars being born, old stars collapsing, etc) could put together to model a sort of overall ruleset. I believe, in fact, that this is already happening. But as we gather more data, get better at mining it, and adding it to computations, then we will be able to better extrapolate. However large variables are left - we know the Earth's gravitational pull right now, but this hasn't always been the case. Indeed I've already seen interesting argument about how the poles have shifted on the Earth, and indeed Magnetic North has switched poles too.
Details like collisions of bodies in space may take millions of years to show their final ramifications, but over a few years (100 or so) we could gather enough data to reasonably see what happens if we could just find a place where bodies crash (we have observed some for planets in our Solar System already I believe). Advances in telescopes which are able to see planets in distant systems, instead of just their suns, will probably enable something of a leap.
A lot of questions remain unanswered... but I appreciate your response very much, these debates are the very nature of amateur (and professional) astronomy.
As far as concrete pro-Linux acts go, government tenders may soon stop specifying Microsoft or any other vendor's name while floating software tenders
That's precise if you say "will soon" instead of "may soon". Otherwise it's just conjecture.
The government is also setting up special interest groups with officials of industry and academia to find out how Linux can be deployed in e-governance, defence, education and so on.
That's only wide-reaching if these groups actually get up and do something.
Don't get me wrong - I think we'll see a lot of good IT out of India, and indeed there is already a lot of good stuff coming out of there. They are WAY ahead of supposedly developed neighbours yet early enough on the curve to avoid this Microsoft hold on the market. Think about it. In the US, Microsoft has dominated since DOS days, and people can't accept Linux, they think it's something new. IIRC however, Linux is now 10+ years old.
A lot of the things are based on theories which are tested on computer models. What I'd really like to know, is how these are programmed, that's the great mystery. Because they are all working on past events, and seem to only desire to do so. The quantum leap will happen when enough detailed data is gathered about actual events as they happen, which can then be extrapolated to the past. Now, maybe some of this happens already, but the issue I have with these sites is that they do not cross-link often enough to research papers that explain things to that %age of people who, like me, are thoroughly unsatisfied by the superficiality of such content.
Most of the models (follow the links in some sections) seem to have given incorrect output - so the real question is what they do then... it's a bit easy, really, to take your model and add a couple of new variables in there until they get it right. This doesn't really prove anything though, does it? e.g. There are a couple of planets missing but they are there, so let's bung in a bit of extra icy matter and UV radiation that will cause it to collapse into Uranus.
The moon creation simulation is the one that gets me. They seem still to be assuming that it's ONE impact that created the moon, and even give the analogy of a small car crashing into an SUV (follow links from moon story). I think it's much more chaotic than that, and is really a big highway pile-up, but where some cars could still run, and were driven away billions of years ago, some have degraded into other rocks and asteroids, and the big bit in the middle coalesced into the moon. But astronomers always simplify for a better comprehension. This is all very well, but then they go on to insist their model is somehow close to reality. I think it's way too complex for a computer to simulate; every atom has a/dev/random (OK it's more like a predictable Windows TCP/IP stack, but there's some entropy in there), and that's the real problem. How do you simulate all of those?
The real excitement comes when currently forming galaxies can be studied over a long enough period - perhaps by simultaneously studying several galaxies in enough detail to come up with decent fluid/gas dynamics in space.
The vast majority of people once believed that the sun orbited the Earth, which was flat, but that didn't make it any more true. Beliefs in fact have no effect whatsoever on reality.
You have to make a leap of faith to believe in either, unless you're a scientist who has done a lot of physical observation of orbits, etc.
And, my point entirely, is that the proof of the sun's orbit can be tested by anyone with rudimentary astronomy math.
Slashdot Mirror
What is lacking is the use of your soundcard + software codec to do this. I understand there are patent problems, but the best solution would be a net2phone-style software solution, ported to Linux.
Windows for net2phone is one of the few uses I have left. Living in Morocco, it saves me $$$ every month to call Europe.
So, to keep a few servers going for over a year, they haven't patched them, and are reaping the rewards ;-)
And, in all that, how much use is the SPARC9 specification for writing kernel code? Not much, I imagine... since indeed memory addressing and cache stuff is what the real issue in coding is.
It's a lame signature but it saves me a lot of hassle.
Sun boasts their UltraSparc III as an "open" architecture
So what is open, SPARC or UltraSparcIII. I haven't the time to find out. Do you know, sql*kitten?
All specs are Open, all code is open, if you change it, and re-release it, that's when the GPL really kicks in.
This is very interesting, because it really hits on the blurry line between "open" and controlled (closed), and also between the way that Linux developers signed something to not disclose information on the hardware itself, although their source code to access this hardware is available.
Sun boasts their UltraSparc III as an "open" architecture, yet seem to recognize that there is insufficient information freely available for the open source community to support it with operating systems. I have been told that the required documentation does exist, however, with a Sun part number of 805-0408-05-P. An early version of this manual was allegedly made available to Linux developers once a Confidential Disclosure Agreement was signed (Sun's version of a Non-Disclosure Agreement), however no such offer has been made to the OpenBSD team, an offer that if made is likely counter to the project's goals.
Clearly then OpenBSD developers are sticking to their guns, their question is really how an "Open" architecture cannot be disclosed without some contractual agreement.
I begin to suspect that the other comment (against Linux kernel devs) about this may be key:-
There's always people who suggest it is possible, but the pain is so high, it's just not worth it. Especially when the Linux kernel's interface with hardware is detailed about as well as the Linux manual pages. Especially when Linux is famous for stuff like: writereg(0x4, 0xff01);Now, if I were a conspiracy theorist, I might say that the precise reason that comments are sparse in these sections of CPU code for the Linux kernel is due to some clause in the Sun disclosure agreement.
In any case
Still, I'd like to see as much openness from vendors as possible. They have to realise that the people who support closed source business models are going to be driven out by cheap commodity hardware which is now powerful enough to do amazing things (think clusters of cheap hardware on AMD/Intel/Sparc architectures all talking together via some OpenSource kernel and clustering project, think Google). Their days are numbered, sure they'll still have a place, but their creaming off profits from their current installed base will start seeing serious competition from value added service providers with no ties to specific hardware, and that is great for the consumer. Do not forget, it used to be IBM, Sperry (then Unisys) and Burroughs that did all hardware and software support. Now, as an independent consultant, you can get out there and do amazing stuff with commodity hardware and your own tailored solutions pulling from a wealth of great free server software solutions.
We are already in a phase (as are companies in European telecoms like France Telecom and British Telecom) where holding on to what you have for as long as you can, before competition really breaks you, is the only business plan they seem to have.
Score one for innovation and open projects, every time.
Morocco? And pay 10-15 times more for their bandwidth to push out ads? You must be joking. No Internet-savvy company would move to a country where TLD DNS is not RFC compliant (even the SOA record is incorrect in all zones)...
Cool, it's DivX. However, 320x240 isn't going to cut it for me, but it's nearly there. Oh, and 18fps is going to look a bit jerky. Gotta have 25fps!
There's room at the top, they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
They hurt you at home, and they hit you at school
They hate it if you're clever, and they despise a fool
Till you're so fuckin crazy you can't follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
Is there a working class in America? Or does it go straight from down-and-out to middle class these days?
Note: John Lennon was the LEAST working class of all the Beatles, brought up in a middle class suburb and going to a nice school and then Art College. I always find this song can only be taken with a lot of poetic licence, since it sure ain't about Lennon's "working class" background. Paul McCartney, however, was Working Class
Anyway, I fail to see the link between commercials and Lennon's working class hero, since it was a global sort of all-encompassing rant, rather than social comment. Think rather of Chumbawumba and Coca-Colanisation:
The rich world persuades the Third World, using advertising pressure, that their traditional foods are inferior. Established nutrition is swapped for quick commercial gain.
You're probably right. Re-reading my post I said "RADAR was conceived" when now I think about it night vision over Germany was a cool side-effect, but I have seen historic footage of that on TV and remember a few pilots saying how what really helped their attacks was RADAR
It was conceived in order to see at night, actually. Radar will up show coastlines and cityscapes clearly at night, through cloud cover. The resolution was very poor, but it allowed the RAF to attack Germany. It was not so much a defensive gadget, it was more for a primitive night vision. Plane mounted radar was a decisive factor in the war in the air over Europe.
Seeing German planes coming wasn't a problem, they could be detected by noise (they had to bomb from low down) and only stopped by launching bad surface to air missiles (there were of course plenty of coast stations armed with guns and launchers) or launching the RAF squadrons to attack them.
Accuracy was the key really, and that is what RADAR allowed at night, or from above low clouds during the day.
Check the mouse button name: Enfoncer et relâcher le bouton-poussoir (ou cliquet) from here: http://www.cfwb.be/franca/bd/infofich.htm#Cliquer
In France, a rebound doesn't count, it has to go in and stay in.
I can tell you how to do this with Postfix, but not with qmail. It should be possible with qmail nonetheless - you need an address class which does not go through the same checks as the others.
One proviso: if anyone complains, I will look at it.
RFCs require that one accepts mail for postmaster@domain.com and from the empty envelope sender. Since I do this, I believe I am fully RFC compliant.
So stop whining about DNSBL. The problem is wider than that, and will not be solved by getting rid of DNSBL. The system isn't perfect, but that is not the issue.
Thanks. That's one thing the article didn't mention it was just a bunch of technical specs.
This looks like some kiddies LED kit. Yes, it's visible from further, blah, blah, but how is it really useful? Hmmmm.
I can believe you. I was a bit of a clever kid at school, and gave most teachers the runaround on computing, since even way back then, I had a personal computer at home since my Dad worked with Unisys (was Univac, originally).
Best thing was getting out of writing "lines" for punishment by asking if I could type them. The teacher said yes, so I just did a little loop in basic that printed the line 100 times and there I was!
I still can't believe the teacher called the monitor a "television" and that all computers have "mouse pads". I use an optical mouse, it works on the desk just fine without some advertisements on some piece of felted card.
What I was wondering was if the information from several galaxies, at different states (young stars being born, old stars collapsing, etc) could put together to model a sort of overall ruleset. I believe, in fact, that this is already happening. But as we gather more data, get better at mining it, and adding it to computations, then we will be able to better extrapolate. However large variables are left - we know the Earth's gravitational pull right now, but this hasn't always been the case. Indeed I've already seen interesting argument about how the poles have shifted on the Earth, and indeed Magnetic North has switched poles too.
Details like collisions of bodies in space may take millions of years to show their final ramifications, but over a few years (100 or so) we could gather enough data to reasonably see what happens if we could just find a place where bodies crash (we have observed some for planets in our Solar System already I believe). Advances in telescopes which are able to see planets in distant systems, instead of just their suns, will probably enable something of a leap.
A lot of questions remain unanswered... but I appreciate your response very much, these debates are the very nature of amateur (and professional) astronomy.
When I said "past events", I'm getting at very old events, distant past, millions of years ago.
I think a bit of curve fitting does go on, but the physical models are of course getting better
Nice chess quote. Cheers.
As far as concrete pro-Linux acts go, government tenders may soon stop specifying Microsoft or any other vendor's name while floating software tenders
That's precise if you say "will soon" instead of "may soon". Otherwise it's just conjecture.
The government is also setting up special interest groups with officials of industry and academia to find out how Linux can be deployed in e-governance, defence, education and so on.
That's only wide-reaching if these groups actually get up and do something.
Don't get me wrong - I think we'll see a lot of good IT out of India, and indeed there is already a lot of good stuff coming out of there. They are WAY ahead of supposedly developed neighbours yet early enough on the curve to avoid this Microsoft hold on the market. Think about it. In the US, Microsoft has dominated since DOS days, and people can't accept Linux, they think it's something new. IIRC however, Linux is now 10+ years old.
A lot of the things are based on theories which are tested on computer models. What I'd really like to know, is how these are programmed, that's the great mystery. Because they are all working on past events, and seem to only desire to do so. The quantum leap will happen when enough detailed data is gathered about actual events as they happen, which can then be extrapolated to the past. Now, maybe some of this happens already, but the issue I have with these sites is that they do not cross-link often enough to research papers that explain things to that %age of people who, like me, are thoroughly unsatisfied by the superficiality of such content.
Most of the models (follow the links in some sections) seem to have given incorrect output - so the real question is what they do then... it's a bit easy, really, to take your model and add a couple of new variables in there until they get it right. This doesn't really prove anything though, does it? e.g. There are a couple of planets missing but they are there, so let's bung in a bit of extra icy matter and UV radiation that will cause it to collapse into Uranus.
The moon creation simulation is the one that gets me. They seem still to be assuming that it's ONE impact that created the moon, and even give the analogy of a small car crashing into an SUV (follow links from moon story). I think it's much more chaotic than that, and is really a big highway pile-up, but where some cars could still run, and were driven away billions of years ago, some have degraded into other rocks and asteroids, and the big bit in the middle coalesced into the moon. But astronomers always simplify for a better comprehension. This is all very well, but then they go on to insist their model is somehow close to reality. I think it's way too complex for a computer to simulate; every atom has a /dev/random (OK it's more like a predictable Windows TCP/IP stack, but there's some entropy in there), and that's the real problem. How do you simulate all of those?
The real excitement comes when currently forming galaxies can be studied over a long enough period - perhaps by simultaneously studying several galaxies in enough detail to come up with decent fluid/gas dynamics in space.
You have to make a leap of faith to believe in either, unless you're a scientist who has done a lot of physical observation of orbits, etc.
And, my point entirely, is that the proof of the sun's orbit can be tested by anyone with rudimentary astronomy math.
And, it was a joke.