Not only is stability and being able to integrate the drivers better within the kernel a key part of having the source for the drivers. If some poor person gets stuck using a piece of once 'in' hardware that the manufacturer has long since abandoned supporting - the issues can still be fixed. Or will have been fixed before the hardware became obsolete.
It also allows people who can code to help stabilise the drivers. Which essentially means the user has a better impression of the hardware. So the manufacture can benefit significantly from the source for that driver being available.
The reasons are practical - not only for stability but for longevity of support well after the manufacturer has long stopped caring. Having a stable ABI did nothing for Windows XP when the driver ran riot and took down the entire system in an all too common video driver BSOD.
Physical rights
Personality rights
Copy rights
Trade mark rights
Patent/implementation rights ...
Planetary rights
Spatial rights
the list could go on because...
All abstract. All to address specific variances with the goal towards establishing abstract rights.
- More cores
- Lower clock speed for each core
- Ability to turn off unused core
- Power savings from all the last two points
- Distributed architecture for assigning work to cores (chips designed to offload the work in different ways on the motherboard)
That last part is the tricky bit, this is what people looking into multi-core technology and programming are really trying to solve - it's a distribution problem.
Vast savings of power are available if this can be done in a way that doesn't affect the way software is written in a big way. Cranking the speed of the chips just will not work without some new factor to overcome the thermal problems involved.
And no, we can't just all use dry-ice or liquid nitrogen:P
Oh, I would be surprised if there wasn't computers in 5+ years with vastly more than 8 processors. Not only that I would say that the clock speed for each of the chips will be reduced substantially to increase the efficiency and power consumption would be reduced and the thermal output would be much less as unused cores could be turned off when they aren't required (unless some technology arrives to increase the efficiency of higher frequency cores - but atm higher cycles = thermal waste).
The biggest problem will be the fact that this is will required distributed workloads for the core to work in this fashion - which is needless to say a difficult problem to address. Especially if you factor in that programming languages and/or compilers need to be modified substantially to work in this fashion.
I agree too, but it's hardly reason to ignore the fact that Firefox does have it's own problems. Look at FF's memory footprint and where Firefox came from and you'll see it's simply a very oversimplified and blunt statement about the ugliest bits that no one likes to focus on.
Stuck on a big rock with another chunk of rock hurtling in our direction, trying to find ways to get off and survive.
Great Filter = Copyright, Patents & Trademarks
Seriously the great filter is very nebulous concept and nothing that you could point to among all the different ways a civilisation could be destroyed or made extinct, so a lot of the assumptions about this filter are probably a bit silly. That's certainly not to say there may be an reason or type of cause that's more likely than others to cause the possibility of survival to plummet.
It seems to me trying to save the world from destruction like oooh, environmental destruction or massive industries fighting to extinguish technologies that might save people from burning fossil fuels seems like the problem we need to be thinking about. There is so much waste and self-interest imo that it's really impossible to advance technology in a big way without putting the whole world in danger. The atom and genetics have shown us that, easily.
With so many people complaining and commenting on fuel prices you would like to think that people would understand the problem.
Ideas are a dime a dozen; attaching monopoly rights to them simply makes the market less efficient and ends up with transaction costs that dwarf the inherent value of the improvement.
O'Really? Maybe you have a dozen ideas on how to speed up programs on multi-core systems better than what is available today, then. You could make a few billion if you did.
You can't patent ideas and this should not change. As a very simplified summary it's likely that the people designing a solution will be people looking at chips and the code used to run them and they might be thinking, 'How can we rearrange what we already have and what will we need to add to make this work?'.
They may not need to create anything regarding the technologies they bring in to make it work, but they can patent the implementation they come up with.
But this situation while good for the many does not currently lie within what the leaders of the United States of America see as in their strategic interest. Nobody said anything about the 'leaders' and 'strategic interest', this is something that the courts should be allowed to decide - it affects a lot of individuals too despite all the economic and social benefits the money might provide. I remember reading something in the last few months about whether the Congress has unlimited power to control issues of relevance to the US economy, that may be come up here too.
Excuse me?!
Check the numbers. I think you will find that working through 590295810358705651712 (2^69) combinations using the newly developed algorythm is far easier than trying 1208925819614629174706176 (2^80) brute force combinations.
Like the article says, 2^69 is about **2000 times smaller** than 2^80 (actually it's 2048 - but whose counting;-)
So think about it, your lovely new SHA-1 hash can get matched in 56 hours now, instead of the 2048 x 56hrs it might have taken otherwise - roughly 13 years, I believe. So whether or not you consider this a big weakness or not (which it is; or will be in a few years) you have been shown the door.
This does make sense. Microsoft has been under increasing pressure since *they* think that Open Source has really degraded *their* 'image'.
Though some of they work is good and genuinely well-intentioned, the OSS community know that they never really had an 'image' to begin with among the UN*X/OSS community - and I don't believe I need to expand or prove that claim. Maybe to organisations, companies and average users; but not to anyone who understand how MS 'thinks' collectively.
I think Ballmer's open desparation to cut-down Linux is continuing its established course.
As they have said Open Source/Linux is a concern to them and they continue to over-estimate the threat.
Hopefully this will boost the popularity of the browser enough to break the 10% browser share mark proper.
Congrats to all the donors - this is great work!
Lucky we are talking about Star Wars here and not Star Trek, otherwise you would have to be asking how many green chicks you would have to sleep with to get noticed;-)
Yeah, even with all the other jokes on the site, doesn't it make you feel that much better that ThinkGeek is able to sell you the most long awaited FPS games just to make up for it!;-)
Is it just me, or can anybody see a April Fool's joke on the way about this?!;-)
Seriously, I would be very glad for all this mess to be finally over. Though I'm going to miss the fun times. Ah yes, opening up my browser and heading over to/. & Groklaw to see what outrageous claims SCO were making that day.
Which brings up an interesting question... Will SCO now sue Microsoft for allowing the code to be release to the public since they claim it is a 'derivative product'.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly, this file from the kernel docs explains the practical reasoning of not having a stable ABI in detail - http://lxr.linux.no/#linux+v2.6.36/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt
Not only is stability and being able to integrate the drivers better within the kernel a key part of having the source for the drivers. If some poor person gets stuck using a piece of once 'in' hardware that the manufacturer has long since abandoned supporting - the issues can still be fixed. Or will have been fixed before the hardware became obsolete.
It also allows people who can code to help stabilise the drivers. Which essentially means the user has a better impression of the hardware. So the manufacture can benefit significantly from the source for that driver being available.
The reasons are practical - not only for stability but for longevity of support well after the manufacturer has long stopped caring. Having a stable ABI did nothing for Windows XP when the driver ran riot and took down the entire system in an all too common video driver BSOD.
Different types of monopoly rights:
...
Physical rights
Personality rights
Copy rights
Trade mark rights
Patent/implementation rights
Planetary rights
Spatial rights
the list could go on because...
All abstract. All to address specific variances with the goal towards establishing abstract rights.
Solution:
:P
- More cores
- Lower clock speed for each core
- Ability to turn off unused core
- Power savings from all the last two points
- Distributed architecture for assigning work to cores (chips designed to offload the work in different ways on the motherboard)
That last part is the tricky bit, this is what people looking into multi-core technology and programming are really trying to solve - it's a distribution problem.
Vast savings of power are available if this can be done in a way that doesn't affect the way software is written in a big way. Cranking the speed of the chips just will not work without some new factor to overcome the thermal problems involved.
And no, we can't just all use dry-ice or liquid nitrogen
Oh, I would be surprised if there wasn't computers in 5+ years with vastly more than 8 processors. Not only that I would say that the clock speed for each of the chips will be reduced substantially to increase the efficiency and power consumption would be reduced and the thermal output would be much less as unused cores could be turned off when they aren't required (unless some technology arrives to increase the efficiency of higher frequency cores - but atm higher cycles = thermal waste).
The biggest problem will be the fact that this is will required distributed workloads for the core to work in this fashion - which is needless to say a difficult problem to address. Especially if you factor in that programming languages and/or compilers need to be modified substantially to work in this fashion.
Relax, I'm sure it was all there for research. It's all part of his job.
Spelldot - Spelling for nerds, grammar that matters.
I agree too, but it's hardly reason to ignore the fact that Firefox does have it's own problems. Look at FF's memory footprint and where Firefox came from and you'll see it's simply a very oversimplified and blunt statement about the ugliest bits that no one likes to focus on.
Limited impact in the same post as XP machines with alternate architectures. Just lucky not too many people use x86 & IA-64 :)
Stuck on a big rock with another chunk of rock hurtling in our direction, trying to find ways to get off and survive.
Great Filter = Copyright, Patents & Trademarks
Seriously the great filter is very nebulous concept and nothing that you could point to among all the different ways a civilisation could be destroyed or made extinct, so a lot of the assumptions about this filter are probably a bit silly. That's certainly not to say there may be an reason or type of cause that's more likely than others to cause the possibility of survival to plummet.
It seems to me trying to save the world from destruction like oooh, environmental destruction or massive industries fighting to extinguish technologies that might save people from burning fossil fuels seems like the problem we need to be thinking about. There is so much waste and self-interest imo that it's really impossible to advance technology in a big way without putting the whole world in danger. The atom and genetics have shown us that, easily.
With so many people complaining and commenting on fuel prices you would like to think that people would understand the problem.
You can't patent ideas and this should not change. As a very simplified summary it's likely that the people designing a solution will be people looking at chips and the code used to run them and they might be thinking, 'How can we rearrange what we already have and what will we need to add to make this work?'. They may not need to create anything regarding the technologies they bring in to make it work, but they can patent the implementation they come up with.09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
...just in case your connection fails.
'... and in Redmond the weather will be a balmy 88 degrees with the chance of an afternoon chairstorm.'
'Nah, that's not a cloud. It's a chair from the Microsoft CEO's office.'
Excuse me?! Check the numbers. I think you will find that working through 590295810358705651712 (2^69) combinations using the newly developed algorythm is far easier than trying 1208925819614629174706176 (2^80) brute force combinations.
;-)
Like the article says, 2^69 is about **2000 times smaller** than 2^80 (actually it's 2048 - but whose counting
So think about it, your lovely new SHA-1 hash can get matched in 56 hours now, instead of the 2048 x 56hrs it might have taken otherwise - roughly 13 years, I believe. So whether or not you consider this a big weakness or not (which it is; or will be in a few years) you have been shown the door.
--
Everyone out of the pool!
Hehe, those two responses when Ballmer's name is involved never fail to get a laugh ;-)
This does make sense. Microsoft has been under increasing pressure since *they* think that Open Source has really degraded *their* 'image'.
Though some of they work is good and genuinely well-intentioned, the OSS community know that they never really had an 'image' to begin with among the UN*X/OSS community - and I don't believe I need to expand or prove that claim. Maybe to organisations, companies and average users; but not to anyone who understand how MS 'thinks' collectively.
I think Ballmer's open desparation to cut-down Linux is continuing its established course.
As they have said Open Source/Linux is a concern to them and they continue to over-estimate the threat.
Hopefully this will boost the popularity of the browser enough to break the 10% browser share mark proper. Congrats to all the donors - this is great work!
You could always download the full version of Mozilla and give Composer a try ;-)
http://www.mozilla.org/releases
Damn! I do that and I am a full-time IT person. Must be the pr0n!
Lucky we are talking about Star Wars here and not Star Trek, otherwise you would have to be asking how many green chicks you would have to sleep with to get noticed ;-)
Yeah, even with all the other jokes on the site, doesn't it make you feel that much better that ThinkGeek is able to sell you the most long awaited FPS games just to make up for it! ;-)
Is it just me, or can anybody see a April Fool's joke on the way about this?! ;-)
Seriously, I would be very glad for all this mess to be finally over. Though I'm going to miss the fun times. Ah yes, opening up my browser and heading over to /. & Groklaw to see what outrageous claims SCO were making that day.
Which brings up an interesting question... Will SCO now sue Microsoft for allowing the code to be release to the public since they claim it is a 'derivative product'.