OTOH, they may be evaluating how the code they built upon Wine can be detached from it (say, modding Wine so that it can link to non-LGPL'd extensions and keeping those proprietary things in the extensions) or how much the contributions are really a competitive edge that needs to be kept secret.
"Even worse than that, the only way to defrag ext2/3 is to rebuild the file system manually by copying files off, running mkfs, and then reloading your files. Offline defrag is the only option."
It's not that bad. You don't need to defrag the whole FS or take all its contents off-line. You can do that a folder at a time. I certainly did it a couple times (mainly for disk-space purposes, but the reduced fragmentation was a plus). It goes like that: You pick an unfragmented FS and move the folder to it from the old FS and then symlink the new folder to the old one. It's simple as that. You can even copy-remove-and-symlink if the file is not being used.
I am not aware of heavy bottlenecks also. Even in the most fragmented FSs I saw, the time the processor spent in iowait was mostly due to swap activity.
We should start modding down posts that come from Microsoft IP addresses... That would sure help.
How about starting a data-mining project relating insightfulness/informativeness to geographic region, IP address or company affiliation? I offer my free time to do so.
Well... First, as someone pointed out, you don't need to defrag ext2 (nor ext3/4) file systems unless they get unreasonably full. Even then, it should be a minor problem to do so, provided you have enough free disk space and the file in question is not in active use.
Second, as it was also well pointed out by someone else, you don't need to GPL code compiled with GCC. Even if you did, there are a couple other compilers available. You usually have to pay for them, but I see you and your company don't want to pay for stuff. That's too bad.
And third: If you wanted a kernel you could turn proprietary, you should start with one of the fine *BSDs. Microsoft did it with its TCP/IP stack back in the WinNT days and it worked out fine for them.
And that's why I prefer GPL to BSD licenses: GPL prevents people from stealing the code, building on the work of others without giving anything (but FUD) back, and that's what you want.
Besides that, you are a Anonymous Coward. I don't expect you to come forward and to
I never saw a _smartphone_ that survived its battery. Long before the battery dies, the phone is either destroyed or so obsolete it can no longer do its job. I am considering replacing my E62 with a E61i because of the wi-fi connectivity and built-in camera.
And those simple phones are indestructible. 2 phones before the P800, I had a Nokia 2280. I still have it to test applications against minimal WAP browsers.
But the battery is still giving two days with a single charge. I wonder if it will outlive me.
When was the last time you replaced a smartphone battery?
I had a couple, the current being a Nokia E62 I got for free from the phone company after my faithful Sony Ericsson P-800 died. My SE P-800 was my phone, PDA, camera (for emergencies, because it was a lousy one) and MP3 player for over 3 years and its battery was still strong (a single charge gave it 48 hours) the day it died the bad checksum death.
It's been since the early 90s the last time I saw a phone whose useful life did outlast its battery.
By the time the first iPhone batteries start dying, there will be a better model and you will want to move on to it.
For me, the AT&T tie-in and the ban on installing homebrew software (I need SSH) make the iPhone an unpractical choice. Too bad, because it's really beautiful.
Actually the amount of equipment you send is the same.
But, with inflatables, you can send a bigger habitat in one launch (one that would otherwise be too large for your launch vehicle) and send "the furniture" in sequence and doing some in-orbit assembly.
With the upcoming Saturn V-class launch vehicles NASA is planning, truly huge LEO habitats can be deployed. Not to mention these structures can be combined to form even larger ones. While I don't think it's particularly clever to have very large open spaces without hatches to close in case of loss of atmosphere in LEO, if you build an inflatable ring structure, you can have artificial gravity 2001 style.
That's kinda cool.
Not to mention the publicity a 1000 meter wide billboard balloon at 200 km could create. Unless my math fails me, it would be the same angular diameter as a full moon and be easily visible during daytime. Using the same surface-to-mass ratio as the Echo 1 (I suppose we can do a lot better now), we would have a total 88 ton mass launch. I say it's very feasible.
BTW, an Ariane V (18000 Kg to the ISS) or a Delta IV Heavy (about 21000 Kg to the ISS) could launch a 500 m diameter inflatable sphere with these same materials next month if we really wanted it. We may need a higher orbit if we want it to last, but that's a start.
I may be wrong, but I think extraordinary things like these (a man-made object half the size of the moon anyone can point up and see crossing the sky during daytime) is the kind of inspiration this generation may need. At the very least, they will look up.
While things like CP/M and MS-DOS (all the way to Windows) allowed the formation of a critical mass of compatible computers and thus, the formation of the whole software industry we know now, it also creates a huge amount of inertia.
That's why almost every computer sold today is, in essence, a remake of the IBM 5150.
This inertia cannot simply be ignored. People won't buy a computer that runs no software these days. One would have, at least, to port a desktop environment to it.
Sun had something with tiny radio interconnects between chips. This way, they could have thousands of "pins" on the chip and the only metal pins you would need would be power and ground. If I remember correctly, I had a server whose memory had to be upgrades about 8 (or 9) modules-with-lots-of-pins a time, so, wide buses are nothing new.
Intel also had something about optical interconnects, which are also nice, since you can place your "connectors" anywhere in the chip and not just around the borders and, if you can aim properly, the receivers can be much smaller than the pads around a current chip (or, by properly spreading the signals, one could synchronize many receivers to a single source very efficiently).
We may not be constrained by the number of pins a connector has for that much longer.
I would be far happier if we had a bigger field than the x86...
There _must_ be a way to build a decent computer, desktop or notebook, around ARM, MIPS or SPARC and to do it at a reasonable price and we now have the software base to build a functional computing experience on just about any architecture. I think almost all my userland would run on all CPUs I mentioned.
Heck. The machine to my right has Firefox running on Solaris on a vintage Ultra 1 workstation and it's putting up a pretty satisfactory browsing experience. And I also love that Frog Design aesthetics...
If the VMs are all Linux-based, a single-kernel approach like Virtuozzo/OpenVZ makes more sense than Xen.
Xen is nice if you need to run many different kernels or different OSs tailored for the Xen way and sure keep things more isolated in case of a security breach, but the added walls are somewhat inconvenient for managing the virtual servers. I encountered many inconveniences in managing an 8 VM setup under Xen, but managing a similar setup under OpenVZ is a breeze.
Every dictatorship needs an enemy. The embargoes nicely produce one that keeps those regimes stable. I am curious - since I never witnessed a dictatorship without an enemy, how would the state propaganda machine react to such a situation if it persists long enough?
BTW, I can't help but wonder if Cuba, Syria, North Korea and the like aren't succeeding the Soviet Union in keeping the US status quo.
When I answer my phone while driving (with handsfree, of course), I let the other person know I am driving and my attention will be divided between our conversation and the difficult task of navigating a car in my city (São Paulo, Brazil).
As for making calls, my Nokia E62 voice calling is so lousy when compared to my old (and quite dead) Sony Ericsson P800 that I don't even care.
The technomages are not a bad idea by itself. They embody two characteristics I find interesting, the domain of "sufficiently advanced technology", as in being able to wreak havoc on B5's computers and predicting the future, and a reverence to it akin to religious devotion - They employ such technologies and, because of it, they inspire fear and respect and, in return, they commit themselves to preserving it.
It's an interesting group and, in the original series, I thought they could appear a little more.
Of course, the nice picture I made of them was utterly destroyed by lousy casting, horrid acting and cheesy lines in Crusade, which was, to put it mildly, sufficiently bad.
B5 will someday be in public domain. We can then remake it like it should have been.
"Reading Microsoft hackers' own experiences reverse engineering the WordPerfect document formats back when that product was dominant is extremely illustrative in this regard"
That's interesting. Where I can find out more about it?
Slashdot Mirror
That's the "deep shit scenario" for them.
OTOH, they may be evaluating how the code they built upon Wine can be detached from it (say, modding Wine so that it can link to non-LGPL'd extensions and keeping those proprietary things in the extensions) or how much the contributions are really a competitive edge that needs to be kept secret.
"Even worse than that, the only way to defrag ext2/3 is to rebuild the file system manually by copying files off, running mkfs, and then reloading your files. Offline defrag is the only option."
It's not that bad. You don't need to defrag the whole FS or take all its contents off-line. You can do that a folder at a time. I certainly did it a couple times (mainly for disk-space purposes, but the reduced fragmentation was a plus). It goes like that: You pick an unfragmented FS and move the folder to it from the old FS and then symlink the new folder to the old one. It's simple as that. You can even copy-remove-and-symlink if the file is not being used.
I am not aware of heavy bottlenecks also. Even in the most fragmented FSs I saw, the time the processor spent in iowait was mostly due to swap activity.
We should start modding down posts that come from Microsoft IP addresses... That would sure help.
How about starting a data-mining project relating insightfulness/informativeness to geographic region, IP address or company affiliation? I offer my free time to do so.
Taco, do you copy?
Well... First, as someone pointed out, you don't need to defrag ext2 (nor ext3/4) file systems unless they get unreasonably full. Even then, it should be a minor problem to do so, provided you have enough free disk space and the file in question is not in active use.
Second, as it was also well pointed out by someone else, you don't need to GPL code compiled with GCC. Even if you did, there are a couple other compilers available. You usually have to pay for them, but I see you and your company don't want to pay for stuff. That's too bad.
And third: If you wanted a kernel you could turn proprietary, you should start with one of the fine *BSDs. Microsoft did it with its TCP/IP stack back in the WinNT days and it worked out fine for them.
And that's why I prefer GPL to BSD licenses: GPL prevents people from stealing the code, building on the work of others without giving anything (but FUD) back, and that's what you want.
Besides that, you are a Anonymous Coward. I don't expect you to come forward and to
OMG. The Microsoft FUD and Astroturf division found Slashdot...
I agree. When my last phone died (after the iPhone announcement) I bought a Nokia E62 expecting to wait what will come out of Apple.
For me, the most hackable phone wins.
OK. I should correct myself.
I never saw a _smartphone_ that survived its battery. Long before the battery dies, the phone is either destroyed or so obsolete it can no longer do its job. I am considering replacing my E62 with a E61i because of the wi-fi connectivity and built-in camera.
And those simple phones are indestructible. 2 phones before the P800, I had a Nokia 2280. I still have it to test applications against minimal WAP browsers.
But the battery is still giving two days with a single charge. I wonder if it will outlive me.
No, but if you make Exxon buy each and every ISP out there you can then use your very effective anti-monopoly legislation...
No. wait...
When was the last time you replaced a smartphone battery?
I had a couple, the current being a Nokia E62 I got for free from the phone company after my faithful Sony Ericsson P-800 died. My SE P-800 was my phone, PDA, camera (for emergencies, because it was a lousy one) and MP3 player for over 3 years and its battery was still strong (a single charge gave it 48 hours) the day it died the bad checksum death.
It's been since the early 90s the last time I saw a phone whose useful life did outlast its battery.
By the time the first iPhone batteries start dying, there will be a better model and you will want to move on to it.
For me, the AT&T tie-in and the ban on installing homebrew software (I need SSH) make the iPhone an unpractical choice. Too bad, because it's really beautiful.
Just imagine the incentive to develop light and cheap ground-to-space missiles ;-)
And I would go for the "inspiring absence of any message".
Or George Lucas could buy one and make it look like the Death Star...
It also seems they evolved their regexes by using mutation and selection.
Humans carry the nasty problem of having to bring them down safely.
Those cockroaches are not that lucky...
Actually the amount of equipment you send is the same.
But, with inflatables, you can send a bigger habitat in one launch (one that would otherwise be too large for your launch vehicle) and send "the furniture" in sequence and doing some in-orbit assembly.
With the upcoming Saturn V-class launch vehicles NASA is planning, truly huge LEO habitats can be deployed. Not to mention these structures can be combined to form even larger ones. While I don't think it's particularly clever to have very large open spaces without hatches to close in case of loss of atmosphere in LEO, if you build an inflatable ring structure, you can have artificial gravity 2001 style.
That's kinda cool.
Not to mention the publicity a 1000 meter wide billboard balloon at 200 km could create. Unless my math fails me, it would be the same angular diameter as a full moon and be easily visible during daytime. Using the same surface-to-mass ratio as the Echo 1 (I suppose we can do a lot better now), we would have a total 88 ton mass launch. I say it's very feasible.
BTW, an Ariane V (18000 Kg to the ISS) or a Delta IV Heavy (about 21000 Kg to the ISS) could launch a 500 m diameter inflatable sphere with these same materials next month if we really wanted it. We may need a higher orbit if we want it to last, but that's a start.
I may be wrong, but I think extraordinary things like these (a man-made object half the size of the moon anyone can point up and see crossing the sky during daytime) is the kind of inspiration this generation may need. At the very least, they will look up.
Anyone knows how much would that cost?
While things like CP/M and MS-DOS (all the way to Windows) allowed the formation of a critical mass of compatible computers and thus, the formation of the whole software industry we know now, it also creates a huge amount of inertia.
That's why almost every computer sold today is, in essence, a remake of the IBM 5150.
This inertia cannot simply be ignored. People won't buy a computer that runs no software these days. One would have, at least, to port a desktop environment to it.
I would say it's close, but not quite there:
2 38175
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=198099&cid=16
Sun had something with tiny radio interconnects between chips. This way, they could have thousands of "pins" on the chip and the only metal pins you would need would be power and ground. If I remember correctly, I had a server whose memory had to be upgrades about 8 (or 9) modules-with-lots-of-pins a time, so, wide buses are nothing new.
Intel also had something about optical interconnects, which are also nice, since you can place your "connectors" anywhere in the chip and not just around the borders and, if you can aim properly, the receivers can be much smaller than the pads around a current chip (or, by properly spreading the signals, one could synchronize many receivers to a single source very efficiently).
We may not be constrained by the number of pins a connector has for that much longer.
I would be far happier if we had a bigger field than the x86...
There _must_ be a way to build a decent computer, desktop or notebook, around ARM, MIPS or SPARC and to do it at a reasonable price and we now have the software base to build a functional computing experience on just about any architecture. I think almost all my userland would run on all CPUs I mentioned.
Heck. The machine to my right has Firefox running on Solaris on a vintage Ultra 1 workstation and it's putting up a pretty satisfactory browsing experience. And I also love that Frog Design aesthetics...
I am a karma whore, you insensitive clod.
If the VMs are all Linux-based, a single-kernel approach like Virtuozzo/OpenVZ makes more sense than Xen.
Xen is nice if you need to run many different kernels or different OSs tailored for the Xen way and sure keep things more isolated in case of a security breach, but the added walls are somewhat inconvenient for managing the virtual servers. I encountered many inconveniences in managing an 8 VM setup under Xen, but managing a similar setup under OpenVZ is a breeze.
Every dictatorship needs an enemy. The embargoes nicely produce one that keeps those regimes stable. I am curious - since I never witnessed a dictatorship without an enemy, how would the state propaganda machine react to such a situation if it persists long enough?
BTW, I can't help but wonder if Cuba, Syria, North Korea and the like aren't succeeding the Soviet Union in keeping the US status quo.
It all depends on the oxidizer. Both can burn just fine.
When I answer my phone while driving (with handsfree, of course), I let the other person know I am driving and my attention will be divided between our conversation and the difficult task of navigating a car in my city (São Paulo, Brazil).
As for making calls, my Nokia E62 voice calling is so lousy when compared to my old (and quite dead) Sony Ericsson P800 that I don't even care.
For a second, I wondered what the hell the European Space Agency had against a console modder...
The technomages are not a bad idea by itself. They embody two characteristics I find interesting, the domain of "sufficiently advanced technology", as in being able to wreak havoc on B5's computers and predicting the future, and a reverence to it akin to religious devotion - They employ such technologies and, because of it, they inspire fear and respect and, in return, they commit themselves to preserving it.
It's an interesting group and, in the original series, I thought they could appear a little more.
Of course, the nice picture I made of them was utterly destroyed by lousy casting, horrid acting and cheesy lines in Crusade, which was, to put it mildly, sufficiently bad.
B5 will someday be in public domain. We can then remake it like it should have been.
Captain Power?!
"Reading Microsoft hackers' own experiences reverse engineering the WordPerfect document formats back when that product was dominant is extremely illustrative in this regard"
That's interesting. Where I can find out more about it?