I never had any experience of the Unix-based tools, but I have used VEST[1], which is the VMS-based binary translator.
As you said, it worked like a charm. There were only three major limitations:
You couldn't translate "system"[2] images, because they were linked against the system symbol table (SYS.STB).
You couldn't translate an image which was compiled on VMS version 3.0 or earlier (well, there has to be a cut-off point for backwards compatibility somewhere!). So, programs compiled before 1984 were untranslatable [including VAX Space Invaders unfortunately (compiled 1981; never found any sources)]
You couldn't translate images which used self-modifying code.
Shareable images [=shared libraries] could also be translated, and images could then be pointed at the translated shareable image. So, even to this day, on an Alpha you have two Fortran sharable images: FORRTL (Alpha native) and FORRTL_TV (VESTed image for VAX support).
Object libraries could not be translated, but the compilers still generated (and maybe still do?) VAX object code and the linker could create a VAX executable, which could then be translated.
IIRC, it used recompilation rather than interpretation: the recompilation was not dynamic, but the image activator would generate.HIF files when it came across a piece of code that could be re-organised; these.HIF files could then be used to re-optimise the executable by VESTing the VAX executable and telling VEST to look at the.HIF file.
VEST is no longer available with new Alphas, but you can still get it, if you ask, from Digital...errm, sorry, Compaq...errm, sorry, "the new hp";)
A similar binary translator is planned to translate Alpha binaries to IA64 binaries for the IA64 port of VMS.
-M.
[1] Officially I believe the name stood for "VAX Executable Symbol Translator" or some such.
[2] Because it could be very bad for system stability, as kernel data structures were radically different.
I don't know about broadcast radio, but in the early days of telegraphy a lot of effort was put into stopping the radio waves from propogating along the ground. The more signal they could beam up into the air the further they could transmit. Early antennas were so bad at this that farmers in Holland could put a wire around their cows horns with a lightbulb attatched - the current induced in the wire by the RF would light up the bulb so they could see where they were when it came time for milking.
This reminds me of a story I was once told about the BBC World Service. They broadcast from a very large and powerful shortwave transmitter. The BBC began to receive reports of poor reception in parts of the world. Upon further inspection, it turned out some guy had set up a large number of copper coils in his attic and was using the power induced in them to power his house!
At the time, they discovered there was no particular law against what he was doing... so they had to offer him a large sum of money to stop doing it.
IANAL (again!), but I believe it was something to do with corporate copyright only lasting 50 years from date of creation. And the problem was that the image of aforesaid mouse was about to fall out of copyright.
So, you would have been able to use the image in whatever context you wished. You just couldn't call it you-know-what...
IANAL, but isn't it now 75 years across the European Union? I believe this was as a result of lobbying by Disney (Mickey Mouse) was away to fall out of copyright. Allegedly.
Oh, in order to comply with the law: "Mickey Mouse" and "Disney" are registered trademarks of the Disney Corporation and its worldwide representatives. All other words are public domain;-)
Oh, and where on IRC are the damned distro chans? #imp-iso seems to be closed now, and I didn't really know any others. (Aside from the #*-central channels on DalNet.)
Where can I get Xena episodes? They're for my girlfriend, honest...
channel #tv-central on the IRC server at 127.0.0.1...?:-)
Probably it found the "II" at the end of King George II, backtracked a word and found "George" (a name), then backtracked and found "King" (another name, though usually a surname).
So, it was pattern-matching for names followed by Roman numerals (as Americans such as William H Gates III are wont to do:). Not very hard. It probably then found a postal address on the page and cross-linked the two.
Well, this was exactly the sort of thing we were told the European Convention on Human Rights would save us from. But have you ever actually read the Convention? It is an incredibly weak document, which provides no cast-iron guarantees at all of the sort that the US Bill of Rights does.
In fact, it is no coincidence that we have only seen legislation such as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act since the UK Government ratified the treaty. Article 8 (Right to respect for private and family life) is effectivly nullified by 8.2:
There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
which weakens the Article so much as to make it effectively useless! Where do you draw the line?
I heard that Lotus Notes was developed from/inspired from (take your pick) a product called DEC Notes, which ran on VMS systems.
Having used DEC Notes and Lotus Notes, however, I can't really see any obvious connection between the two. Except, maybe DEC sold the name to Lotus...
DEC Notes was designed primarily as an online, threaded conferencing system. A bit like/. really, but on text terminals. Not very many sites still running Notes, but it is quite a neat little system. AIUI, it also supports message replication over a network using DECnet. Don't know how the messages are stored.
On the mail front, VMS initially (V2.0?) stored mail in flat text files, with form feeds between messages. Later versions of MAIL stored the mail in an indexed file; messages under 2,048 bytes are stored directly in the MAIL.MAI file; messages over that size are stored in external files of the form MAIL$nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.MAI,
where nnnn...nnnn is the time of receipt in hexadecimal with a resolution of one hundredth of a second. The file organisation is handled by the file system. [Well, sort of. It's handled by RMS, the Record Management System, which isn't part of the filesystem per se, but is an adjunct to it. Like the name says, it manages records in files, not files themselves. The two are independent; the file system merely has to provide space for RMS to use to store file metadata. In situations where this is not possible (such as an ISO 9660 CDROM), the ACP (Ancilliary Control Program) for the file system ususally just makes a guess and fakes the RMS information: this is one of the major problems with trying to support foreign file systems in VMS...]
Mail stored in the old, flat-file format can still be read by MAIL in the current version of VMS (7.3). [Backwards compatibility has always been one of VMS's strong points...]. IMAP and POP3 servers are available (commercial and freeware) to allow your mail to be read from the platform of your choice.
One of the nice advantages of the way VMS mail works is that it is easy to merge mailboxes from two systems together. Just copy all the files into the same directory (the second MAIL.MAI becomes MAIL.MAI;2 thanks to version numbering), RENAME MAIL.MAI;2 MAIL_TO_BE_MERGED.MAI, then MERGE MAIL.MAI MAIL_TO_BE_MERGED.MAI.
Of course, in Unix you can just cat two mbox files together <g>
No doubt this post will be vigorously flamed for even mentioning the "legacy" operating system VMS, never mind explaining some of its mysteries:-) But, hey, I like it, even if no one else does these days. It has some really neat features and is incredibly stable (Until I get my hands on it!).
Numberplates made using LCD displays. Programmable from inside the car/on the bike to any number.
If the LCDs malfunctioned, that could take a lot of explaining!
"Excuse me, Sir? Are you aware your numberplate is flickering on and off? We'd like a word with you, Sir..."
You could even have it spell out interesting phrases as you went past cameras. If this became common, they'd have to put up video cameras covering the approach to the speed cameras, and have them automatically preserve the video footage if the speed cameras triggered... and you'd be in real trouble...
Oh, and I suppose they'd need another video camera facing forwards from the speed camera, to catch motorcycles. And another one to watch it all to make sure it doesn't get vandalised;)
www.urban75.com, especially its Brixton forums, is a very interesting example of a British community. It recently gained huge attention in the UK press. To summarise for those of you who don't know, a senior police officer in the Lambeth (which Brixton is part of) force actually started participating in the Brixton online forum. Unfortunately, some of the press heard about this and got the wrong end of the stick, implying that he was an anarchist and in favour of (shock horror) a tolerant attitude to drugs!
The web site and forum are now being used by the community to organise protests and petitions for his return to the force, after he was suspended after allegations of allowing a boyfriend (yes, just to make the story even more juicy for the Press, he was openly gay) to smoke cannabis. He has proved very popular with the populace (a figure quoted on the website is 83% approval), and they are campaigning for his return to the police force.
On the humour site, you might want to see the Punch a Celebrity page: although most of them are British, so the non-British may be bemused by these "celebrities"...!
PS Brixton is an area of London (England) in case you didn't know.
It looks like us PC hardware hackers are likely to have a much harder time in the next ten to twenty years as the average (desktop) PC becomes increasingly integrated. I see a trend away from the PC of today towards an increasingly closed 'black box' where the components are no longer a set of cards which are easily replacable. This is inevitable, especially at the lower end of the PC market, since increasing integration leads to lower costs for the manufacturers. Correspondingly, custom hardware will become more expensive and be increasingly restricted to the high end...
How do you think such a trend away from "open" hardware would affect open source development, especially at the lower end of the spectrum? As the computer becomes more and more of a mysterious black box, do you think that the would-be hardware hackers of tomorrow are more likely to turn towards software and application development, and would this be mostly good or mostly bad for open source software (more applications/systems programmers, but fewer hardware-level programmers)?
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As you said, it worked like a charm. There were only three major limitations:
- You couldn't translate "system"[2] images, because they were linked against the system symbol table (SYS.STB).
- You couldn't translate an image which was compiled on VMS version 3.0 or earlier (well, there has to be a cut-off point for backwards compatibility somewhere!). So, programs compiled before 1984 were untranslatable [including VAX Space Invaders unfortunately (compiled 1981; never found any sources)]
- You couldn't translate images which used self-modifying code.
Shareable images [=shared libraries] could also be translated, and images could then be pointed at the translated shareable image. So, even to this day, on an Alpha you have two Fortran sharable images: FORRTL (Alpha native) and FORRTL_TV (VESTed image for VAX support).Object libraries could not be translated, but the compilers still generated (and maybe still do?) VAX object code and the linker could create a VAX executable, which could then be translated.
IIRC, it used recompilation rather than interpretation: the recompilation was not dynamic, but the image activator would generate .HIF files when it came across a piece of code that could be re-organised; these .HIF files could then be used to re-optimise the executable by VESTing the VAX executable and telling VEST to look at the .HIF file.
VEST is no longer available with new Alphas, but you can still get it, if you ask, from Digital...errm, sorry, Compaq...errm, sorry, "the new hp" ;)
A similar binary translator is planned to translate Alpha binaries to IA64 binaries for the IA64 port of VMS.
-M.
[1] Officially I believe the name stood for "VAX Executable Symbol Translator" or some such.
[2] Because it could be very bad for system stability, as kernel data structures were radically different.
This reminds me of a story I was once told about the BBC World Service. They broadcast from a very large and powerful shortwave transmitter. The BBC began to receive reports of poor reception in parts of the world. Upon further inspection, it turned out some guy had set up a large number of copper coils in his attic and was using the power induced in them to power his house!
At the time, they discovered there was no particular law against what he was doing... so they had to offer him a large sum of money to stop doing it.
This may or may not be an urban legend......
So, you would have been able to use the image in whatever context you wished. You just couldn't call it you-know-what...
-M.
Oh, in order to comply with the law: "Mickey Mouse" and "Disney" are registered trademarks of the Disney Corporation and its worldwide representatives. All other words are public domain ;-)
Where can I get Xena episodes? They're for my girlfriend, honest...
channel #tv-central on the IRC server at 127.0.0.1...? :-)
-M.
--grendel drago
Probably it found the "II" at the end of King George II, backtracked a word and found "George" (a name), then backtracked and found "King" (another name, though usually a surname).
:). Not very hard. It probably then found a postal address on the page and cross-linked the two.
So, it was pattern-matching for names followed by Roman numerals (as Americans such as William H Gates III are wont to do
In fact, it is no coincidence that we have only seen legislation such as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act since the UK Government ratified the treaty. Article 8 (Right to respect for private and family life) is effectivly nullified by 8.2:
which weakens the Article so much as to make it effectively useless! Where do you draw the line?
It looks like we are in for a tough ride ahead...
-M.
Having used DEC Notes and Lotus Notes, however, I can't really see any obvious connection between the two. Except, maybe DEC sold the name to Lotus...
DEC Notes was designed primarily as an online, threaded conferencing system. A bit like /. really, but on text terminals. Not very many sites still running Notes, but it is quite a neat little system. AIUI, it also supports message replication over a network using DECnet. Don't know how the messages are stored.
On the mail front, VMS initially (V2.0?) stored mail in flat text files, with form feeds between messages. Later versions of MAIL stored the mail in an indexed file; messages under 2,048 bytes are stored directly in the MAIL.MAI file; messages over that size are stored in external files of the form MAIL$nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.MAI, where nnnn...nnnn is the time of receipt in hexadecimal with a resolution of one hundredth of a second. The file organisation is handled by the file system. [Well, sort of. It's handled by RMS, the Record Management System, which isn't part of the filesystem per se, but is an adjunct to it. Like the name says, it manages records in files, not files themselves. The two are independent; the file system merely has to provide space for RMS to use to store file metadata. In situations where this is not possible (such as an ISO 9660 CDROM), the ACP (Ancilliary Control Program) for the file system ususally just makes a guess and fakes the RMS information: this is one of the major problems with trying to support foreign file systems in VMS...]
Mail stored in the old, flat-file format can still be read by MAIL in the current version of VMS (7.3). [Backwards compatibility has always been one of VMS's strong points...]. IMAP and POP3 servers are available (commercial and freeware) to allow your mail to be read from the platform of your choice.
One of the nice advantages of the way VMS mail works is that it is easy to merge mailboxes from two systems together. Just copy all the files into the same directory (the second MAIL.MAI becomes MAIL.MAI;2 thanks to version numbering), RENAME MAIL.MAI;2 MAIL_TO_BE_MERGED.MAI, then MERGE MAIL.MAI MAIL_TO_BE_MERGED.MAI.
Of course, in Unix you can just cat two mbox files together <g>
No doubt this post will be vigorously flamed for even mentioning the "legacy" operating system VMS, never mind explaining some of its mysteries :-) But, hey, I like it, even if no one else does these days. It has some really neat features and is incredibly stable (Until I get my hands on it!).
-Malcolm (a VMS sysadmin).
If the LCDs malfunctioned, that could take a lot of explaining!
"Excuse me, Sir? Are you aware your numberplate is flickering on and off? We'd like a word with you, Sir..."
You could even have it spell out interesting phrases as you went past cameras. If this became common, they'd have to put up video cameras covering the approach to the speed cameras, and have them automatically preserve the video footage if the speed cameras triggered... and you'd be in real trouble...
Oh, and I suppose they'd need another video camera facing forwards from the speed camera, to catch motorcycles. And another one to watch it all to make sure it doesn't get vandalised ;)
The web site and forum are now being used by the community to organise protests and petitions for his return to the force, after he was suspended after allegations of allowing a boyfriend (yes, just to make the story even more juicy for the Press, he was openly gay) to smoke cannabis. He has proved very popular with the populace (a figure quoted on the website is 83% approval), and they are campaigning for his return to the police force.
Read more at the website.
On the humour site, you might want to see the Punch a Celebrity page: although most of them are British, so the non-British may be bemused by these "celebrities"...!
PS Brixton is an area of London (England) in case you didn't know.
It looks like us PC hardware hackers are likely to have a much harder time in the next ten to twenty years as the average (desktop) PC becomes increasingly integrated. I see a trend away from the PC of today towards an increasingly closed 'black box' where the components are no longer a set of cards which are easily replacable. This is inevitable, especially at the lower end of the PC market, since increasing integration leads to lower costs for the manufacturers. Correspondingly, custom hardware will become more expensive and be increasingly restricted to the high end...
How do you think such a trend away from "open" hardware would affect open source development, especially at the lower end of the spectrum? As the computer becomes more and more of a mysterious black box, do you think that the would-be hardware hackers of tomorrow are more likely to turn towards software and application development, and would this be mostly good or mostly bad for open source software (more applications/systems programmers, but fewer hardware-level programmers)?
-Malcolm.