I'm reading this book at the minute. [I'm only half way through reading it.]
I'm reading it for a bit more of the human background to open source, and I'm enjoying it. But... for any software engineers out there, it reads like a waterfall development model. It seems to introduce a new idea, then go back, then explore the new idea in the next chapter, where it will kindof introduce stuff from the chapter after it. It seems to loop around somewhat.
There is just something about the style of the book, that makes me thing I'm watching an episode of Teletubbies.
Eh, maybe it's just my bad. Maybe I'm getting forgetful in my old age, and just keep reading over the same bits:-)
Wait! Don't defend M$ on Slashdot!
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Free For All
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· Score: 2
Ironically (if you see it this way) this means undercutting some of the arguments that Microsoft is a monopoly. Perhaps Microsoft was a monopoly, but the cut is made and the tree is toppling.
Uh, if we stop chopping now, I think they'll find a way to prop themselves back up.
US antitrust law is meant to see to two things - that the illegal activity is halted, and that the playing field is leveled out, for competitors who are at a disadvantage due to the illegal activity.
That means that there is a legal right to punish Microsoft for the way they have behaved.
Let's make Bell Gates and Steve Balmer our bitches.
Sun has been designing their own chips since the Sun 3. They have designed a neat new processor (ps. anyone else - it really is neat, check out that link). The MAJC processor is in no way tied to running Java code. It is just a neat way at getting hardware to support multi-threading better.
But let's judge Sun on their history. Look at Sun's history with chip production. Look at the bios they use: OpenFirmware. Look how they have spun control of the sparc architecture off into Sparc International, to make it a truely open platform.
Then look at MicroSoft's track record. Do you doubt that M$ will be trying to gain monopoly control over WebTV devices, in the same way they have captured the desktop market?
It interesting to see how Linux progresses as compared to, say, Irix. Linux progresses, and each branch (from kernel 2.0 to 2.1) is the "new" Linux, with the old branch dying off, while Irix runs in a straight, continuous line.
It'll be interesting to see how they continue - It looks like chunk by chunk Irix will be opensourced, and absorbed into Linux.
You have to wonder whether IBM are ultimately planning the same fate for AIX.
In May, Microsoft demanded that links to a copy of its Kerberos source code be removed from a discussion forum.
Hey! - That us!
Seriously - can anyone explain how this is legal in any way at all?
Kaplan's ruling, legal experts say, appears to be an unprecedented expansion of traditional copyright law.
I thought that the whole point in having a seperate legislature and judiciary, was that the people who set the law, and the people who apply the law are different. It looks like the judge is making up his own laws to me, and un-constitutional laws at that.
However, the thing that I have most problem with is how the law is being changed, not that it is being changed at all.
Any lawyers out there? What would be the legal position if I sold a phonebook of illegal gun traffickers? Would I be breaking any laws?
Okay, I know this is a funny and I shouldn't get all serious...
But I think you can service pack the Intel processors! I think you can flash update Intel processors since the Pentium II, to replace the microcode while the chip is running, to fix bugs or try to add work-arounds any physical defects that might crop up.
Now, I'm the sort of person who would rather hide something right under Sony's nose.
Splitting the transimission over mutliple connection would be useful to confuse the fuck out of them, but I see a certain beauty in simplicity.
Why not just use port 80?
http has the capability for bi-directional transfer of binary files - you can submit files in your request, e.g. as an attachment to an email sent through a web based mail system like hotmail.
Write a totally de-centralized system, so they have no-one to attack, then write your own crap encryption system, and get it encrypting/decrypting stuff at each end.
As I understand it, from the case againts DeCSS, it would be illegal for them to even try to break the encryption. There is, of couse, such poetic justice about this. You live by the DMCA, you die by th DMCA!
Oh, and I'd love to see Steve Heckler try to tell the ISPs that they must firewall port 80:-P
May I note to you that the SDK is running hosted on top of Linux with a performance penalty of 30-50%. ALso note that VP native assembler is several magnitudes faster than Java code while maintaining all the portability benefits.
Tao`s Java engine is reported as being on THE fastest Java engine available on the market today (on native hardware with its own drivers etc)!
Uh - I don't know that these are corrections:-)
I was analysing the only set of statistics available - talk is cheap, and I don't see any hard facts here.
I've heard the claims about Tao's speed on native hardware. I believe that Java should be running on naked hardware, and I do believe that it could run that damn fast.
While benchmarks are occasionally useful for clearly defined applications (such as the TumblerTM cryptographic toolkit), they can in most circumstances be thoroughly misleading. Most benchmarking systems for operating systems, the C language and the JavaTM platform fail to present relevant information in running 'real world' applications. Furthermore, different companies are selective about definitions so comparitive benchmarks between official corporate 'marketing' results has little value. While the benchmarks we have run for ElateRTM and for intent JavaTM Technology Edition, have provided stunning results, the Company has a policy of not providing operating system-related benchmarks which will inevitably lead Tao into an unwanted set of discussions. Tao's policy is to co-operate to allow the customers to reach their own conclusions about Elate's performance, compactness, consistency across platforms and other key criteria.
This is true - benchmarks are bogus - <cynicism>but this does look rather evasive.</cynicism>
Okay - so does the native Tao VM come with the SDK, or only the Linux version? Does anyone actually have the native Tao VM, so we can see some benchmarks?
I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade. I do hope this is true. I'd just like to see a grain of evidence.
we will block it at your cable company,
we will block it at your phone company,
we will block it at your [Internet-service provider].
We will firewall it at your PC.
-Steve Heckler
No you fucking won't.
-Me
Fine. Kill Napster in court. Firewall them ports. We have, uh I forget - is it 2^16?, more ports to choose from.
Go ahead and have your fun.
Kill Napster and we will replace it with a new way of sharing files 5 minutes later. Either you must ban the whole class of programs to share files of the Internet (ftp & web browsers included, after all web pages are just.html files), or we will keep producing new varients of file sharing programs.
So long as I have the right to swap.zip files with other people over the Internet, how can he know if I am swapping.mp3's in them?
And as for his last sentence - if he thinks he can do a damn thing to our PCs, then please would someone explain this whole open-source thing that has been going on around him. It makes controlling people that bit more difficult.
Final Thought:
"The [music] industry," Heckler said, "will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams. It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what."
Sorry, was that protect 'musicians rights to have a say in what is done with their art', or protect
'that revenue stream' - I couldn't quite hear.
G
Re:I hate to say this.....
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Is UNIX An OS?
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· Score: 3
I would guess that the number of applications which require access to disk storage (or benefit from a file abstraction, a la sockets, FIFOs, unix "special files", etc) outnumber those which require a pixel addressable display by several orders of magnitude.
For the minute, accept the definition that an OS should provide an abstraction of the machine's hardware. Imagine I write an OS which is lacking a file system, and other groups pick up my (GPL) OS and start releasing their own OSes, all incompatible with each other. Arguably, what I have written is not a complete OS, but the foundations to write a OS on top of - as it does not provide an abstraction of the hardware.
However, just for the sake of argument, let's pretend a GUI is a necessary component of an OS. Does a window manager, four xterms, and netscape count?
Yes.
Okay, calm down, I just said that to freak you out. But seriously, uh... maybe. Is bash part of UNIX? Virtual terminals? What ls, cd, and rm?
If we accept for a minute that the GUI is the appropriate abstraction of modern graphics hardware.... well I'm sure you can see where I'm going with window managers / virtual terminals.
In a GUI based OS, the browser is increasingly taking over the jobs that ls/cd/rm performed.
I don't really want to have to waste precious disk space, memory and CPU time on useless stuff like file managers, desktop icons, and 50 different confusingly named "control panel" doohickies none of which provide any more than the most basic of configuration options, but I don't know what I'll do if I find out that my computer isn't running an OS anymore.
Sorry. It's a shame, isn't it:-P
[...and I'm already pulling my hair out over that previously very useful machine sitting in the corner with no keyboard or monitor attached. On the other hand, that it does all it does without the benefit of an OS is an absolute technological wonder.]
Bejesus, it's a miracle!
Mmmmm, I did think about this one, and you can take it further, saying does a headless server need a gui, does a linux dedicate router, firewall, or X-terminal need a filesystem? So is a filesystem part of an OS?
But this is where I feel you get to the crux of the question {... and here it's going to get even more subjective, and I'll piss you off even more:-)...} If you accept that an OS should provide an abstraction of the hardware, then you cannot simply a list of features an say 'an OS must contain these'. What constitutes an OS depends what hardware it is running on. That is why you can argue that UNIX once was a workstation/PC OS, but no longer is.
cheers,
G
But are you ducking the question?
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Is UNIX An OS?
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· Score: 2
And I wondered in another comment about that definition - looks dodgy to me.
Well put - and I'm sure that you are right about the motivation behind this article. But just pointing out that this is biased marketing fluff does not address the question - it just avoids it.
I'm not flaming here. And if you are not interested in entering the debate one way or the other - fair enough.
But anyone reading this - don't just think: oh, he's right - the article is fluff, I can ignore it. Whatever the motivation, the article raises a serious question.
Ask yourself, does the POSIX spec really offer a useful abstraction of my Voodoo3? Is X really a part of the UNIX OS?
Unix is no longer an operating system. An operating system is the software that comes with a computer (or OS distribution) that programmers and users need to make themselves productive.
A vegetable is a small blue cube. Therefore a carrot is not a vegetable.
My point is that if you redefine word as you wish, you can cheerfully prove that anything is, or is not, an OS.
Okay, so my books on OSes are a few thousand miles away at the minute, but as i recall, Andy Tannenbaum's definition of an operating system had 2 requirements:
Resource Management: an OS should allow multiple user processes to share the processor(s), memory, network connection, etc.
Extended machine: an OS should provide an richer abstraction of the underlying hardware, providing user programs with useful functionality & abstraction, eg. the ability to handle files, rather than blocks on the hard disk.
UNIX, and specificly POSIX OSes certainly still provide the first of these, but perharps not the second. A useful abstraction of the graphics card must today offer more than POSIX does (ie text mode only). To some extent, the fact that UNIX does not have a standard, built in, GUI means that it is no longer an OS.:-(
The most surprising result was not the Amiga one, but the IBM one.
The problem with the Logic test under IBM jvm is that it is too big, and the numbers are off screen.[about the 1.1.8 VM]
The logic test is designed to test the VM's ability to spot redundant loops of code & optomize them away. The 1.2.2 VM has an okay score but by the sound of this, it is a lot worse at this kind of optomization than the JIT in 1.1.8. That sucks.
A look at the breakdown of the test results shows the Amiga kicking ass at the image test, and especially the string test, but not showing too well elsewhere. That's a shame.
In the second set of tests, IBM gives it a thorough beating, everywhere except for the image test: 7000 to 3300 overall:-(
I wish them all the best, but methinks the 'blazing fast Java' claim is really a little premature.
I remember hearing about the a story a while back about the control of the drug extacy in Holland. Extacy, more technically the drug MDMA (I believe), is illegal. But under dutch law, it is the exact, specific, chemical that is banned. So drugs labs just come out with new varients, with slight differences, all the time. These varients may be more dangerous than the original - as companies have to keep trying to do something different, so the drug is mutating all the time. In England, and I guess most countries, it is the whole class of similar drugs that are banned. In Holland, every time they discover a new varient, they ban it. Just like whack-a-rat.
Whether this story is accurate or not, it is a good analogy for the legal situation RIAA and friends find themselves in. Either you must ban the whole class of programs to share files of the Internet (ftp & web browsers included, after all web pages are just.html files), or we will keep producing new varients of file sharing programs.
Let them ban gnutella. Let them have their fun. Who gives a damn - we'll only come back stronger. RIAA, I'll warn you this: I know that everytime I revisit a programming problem, I learn, and I do a better job than the last time. I'm sure most programmers are the same. If you keep making us come up with new programs to share files, then the programs we use will just get more and more sophisticated.
cheers,
G
*(ps. I am not dutch, I don't know the situation that well, so if I'm wrong and offend, I apologise.)
If you omit the section 'Piranha: A Case Study' above, you could be right.
This is not about whether an having a default password is leaving open a backdoor, but about the media treatment of Linux and NT.
Linux (well, a linux service) has a theoretical problem, only allowing read-only access, and no reports of it ever actually being exploited: Linux is "basically a bunch of peoples' hobby."
Windows (you know the drill) has a real problem, allowing root equivalent access, it *IS* actually being exploited: Eerie silence.
Why?
Is this a media conspiracy against Linux?
Probably not. Probably just lazy journalism.
The minute that MS heard about piranha, they will have gone into spin frenzy, putting words into journalists mouths, and basicly writing the reports for them. We can't stop this happening - we just have to do it ourselves.
Linux just needs better PR.
Why have you forsaken us, ESR?
Not only would there be a huge amount of security holes, imagine the amount of server power that would take.
Just because you give 30,000 people permission to run CGI scripts, does not mean that 30,000 people go out and learn perl:-)
I doubt that you should worry about the processing overhead that CGI may add - it will hardly be used. Now the security issues, well that's another matter.
Let's see if it is possible to get useful information out of a troll....
every free webpage provider out there provides CGI access
Can you [or anyone else out there] name one?
I don't know any free space providers who allow you to run your own CGI scripts, rather than just a few guest book / counter scripts that they provide.
Please, please, prove me wrong. Lets have some links, please.
At a guess I'd say that what works for one langage will work for another, get some books on algorithms and programing in general.
Yes, this is true, general good programming practice, and intellegent use of algorithms is important.
But there are optomizations specific to the Java language, that people have not yet mentioned, and that everyone should know.
The use of the keyword 'final' has been mentioned above. You can also get the same effect from 'private' functions. But do not damage your libraries long term usefulness in exchange for a short term speed kick.
One of the (old) articles linked off another post suggests that having your java code call native code will be faster. This was true three years ago, when we had interpteting VMs. In Java 1.3, Sun has replaced a load of native math stuff in the standard libraries with java code. Doing this has increased speed of these functions by a factor of three or four. In most VMs, calling native code is very slow, and JITs are very fast.
Strings are immutable. The fact that the java language overloads the + and += operators can blind people new to the language about the importance of this. This is actually implemented using the class StringBuffer - e.g.
class ex1 {
int the_int;
public String toString() {
return "The value is " + the_int;
}
}
Compiles to exactly the same code as:
class ex2 {
int the_int;
public String toString() {
return ((new StringBuffer("The value is ")).append(the_int)).toString();
}
}
Obviously, in this situation, the first version is probably better. (The code is clearer). But you should never use the + operator to add Strings if you are doing multiple, seperate, adds. E.g.
class ex3 {
int the_int;
public String silly() {
String a = "A";
String b = "B";
String c = "C";
String ab = a+b;
return ab+c;
}
}
Lots of nasty, wasteful Object creation.
If you are writing applets, use.jar files. The reason: if your applet has to downloaded a set of multiple seperate.class files (and probably other resources, such as.gifs), you must open seperate http request for each one. This is a lot slower than doing it all in one go.
Hope this helps.
Oh, to address cllajoie's question about using the 'this' pointer: this produces exactly the same code.
Probably your best answer is to kick 7 shades out of your marketing & management, make them your bitches and you'll have the freedom to code good stuff.
I doubt that this would work... But nevertheless, I am certain that a lot more research should be done in this field.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm reading it for a bit more of the human background to open source, and I'm enjoying it. But... for any software engineers out there, it reads like a waterfall development model. It seems to introduce a new idea, then go back, then explore the new idea in the next chapter, where it will kindof introduce stuff from the chapter after it. It seems to loop around somewhat.
There is just something about the style of the book, that makes me thing I'm watching an episode of Teletubbies.
Eh, maybe it's just my bad. Maybe I'm getting forgetful in my old age, and just keep reading over the same bits :-)
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Ironically (if you see it this way) this means undercutting some of the arguments that Microsoft is a monopoly. Perhaps Microsoft was a monopoly, but the cut is made and the tree is toppling.
Uh, if we stop chopping now, I think they'll find a way to prop themselves back up.US antitrust law is meant to see to two things - that the illegal activity is halted, and that the playing field is leveled out, for competitors who are at a disadvantage due to the illegal activity.
That means that there is a legal right to punish Microsoft for the way they have behaved.
Let's make Bell Gates and Steve Balmer our bitches.
What would also be interesting, would be a map of OS programmers, so you could see where one OS leans on anothers design, if not it's source code.
I think that Sun hired a load of the guys at Berkely, Bill Joy etc, who did a lot of the early work on UNIX.
Also, didn't Micros~1 hire one of the key programmers on Mach to write the NT kernel?
Sun has been designing their own chips since the Sun 3. They have designed a neat new processor (ps. anyone else - it really is neat, check out that link). The MAJC processor is in no way tied to running Java code. It is just a neat way at getting hardware to support multi-threading better.
But let's judge Sun on their history. Look at Sun's history with chip production. Look at the bios they use: OpenFirmware. Look how they have spun control of the sparc architecture off into Sparc International, to make it a truely open platform.
Then look at MicroSoft's track record. Do you doubt that M$ will be trying to gain monopoly control over WebTV devices, in the same way they have captured the desktop market?
I really don't see any point in your comparison.
cheers,
G
- It interesting to see how Linux progresses as compared to, say, Irix. Linux progresses, and each branch (from kernel 2.0 to 2.1) is the "new" Linux, with the old branch dying off, while Irix runs in a straight, continuous line.
It'll be interesting to see how they continue - It looks like chunk by chunk Irix will be opensourced, and absorbed into Linux.You have to wonder whether IBM are ultimately planning the same fate for AIX.
Oh, but he's missing kernel 2.4.
cheers,
G
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In May, Microsoft demanded that links to a copy of its Kerberos source code be removed from a discussion forum.
Hey! - That us!Seriously - can anyone explain how this is legal in any way at all?
-
Kaplan's ruling, legal experts say, appears to be an unprecedented expansion of traditional copyright law.
I thought that the whole point in having a seperate legislature and judiciary, was that the people who set the law, and the people who apply the law are different. It looks like the judge is making up his own laws to me, and un-constitutional laws at that.However, the thing that I have most problem with is how the law is being changed, not that it is being changed at all.
Any lawyers out there? What would be the legal position if I sold a phonebook of illegal gun traffickers? Would I be breaking any laws?
cheers,
G
Okay, I know this is a funny and I shouldn't get all serious...
:-)
But I think you can service pack the Intel processors! I think you can flash update Intel processors since the Pentium II, to replace the microcode while the chip is running, to fix bugs or try to add work-arounds any physical defects that might crop up.
There is hope for micros~1 chips yet
cheers,
G
Particularly, a couple of quotes from Intel about this:
- Ron Smith, a senior VP at Intel's wireless division in Santa Clara
-
"I have no problem competing with Microsoft."
This may also answer Hemos' question, about why is Intel demoing Linux failover.- Mark Christiansen, Intel's senior VP in charge of its IXA project
You sell chips: we push other operating systems.
-
Actually,
.zip encryption is laughably weak...
Then write your own - and it doesn't matter if is laughably weak.Isn't the case against DeCSS based on the fact that, under the DMCA, it is illegal to even attempt to break somebody's encryption?
If they can use it against us, we can use it against them. :-)
cheers,
G
Now, I'm the sort of person who would rather hide something right under Sony's nose.
:-P
Splitting the transimission over mutliple connection would be useful to confuse the fuck out of them, but I see a certain beauty in simplicity.
Why not just use port 80?
http has the capability for bi-directional transfer of binary files - you can submit files in your request, e.g. as an attachment to an email sent through a web based mail system like hotmail.
Write a totally de-centralized system, so they have no-one to attack, then write your own crap encryption system, and get it encrypting/decrypting stuff at each end.
As I understand it, from the case againts DeCSS, it would be illegal for them to even try to break the encryption. There is, of couse, such poetic justice about this. You live by the DMCA, you die by th DMCA!
Oh, and I'd love to see Steve Heckler try to tell the ISPs that they must firewall port 80
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May I note to you that the SDK is running hosted on top of Linux with a performance penalty of 30-50%. ALso note that VP native assembler is several magnitudes faster than Java code while maintaining all the portability benefits.
Uh - I don't know that these are correctionsTao`s Java engine is reported as being on THE fastest Java engine available on the market today (on native hardware with its own drivers etc)!
I was analysing the only set of statistics available - talk is cheap, and I don't see any hard facts here.
I've heard the claims about Tao's speed on native hardware. I believe that Java should be running on naked hardware, and I do believe that it could run that damn fast.
But I'd like to see it for myself.
Let's go to Tao's Website & look for benchmarks:
-
While benchmarks are occasionally useful for clearly defined applications (such as the TumblerTM cryptographic toolkit), they can in most circumstances be thoroughly misleading. Most benchmarking systems for operating systems, the C language and the JavaTM platform fail to present relevant information in running 'real world' applications. Furthermore, different companies are selective about definitions so comparitive benchmarks between official corporate 'marketing' results has little value. While the benchmarks we have run for ElateRTM and for intent JavaTM Technology Edition, have provided stunning results, the Company has a policy of not providing operating system-related benchmarks which will inevitably lead Tao into an unwanted set of discussions. Tao's policy is to co-operate to allow the customers to reach their own conclusions about Elate's performance, compactness, consistency across platforms and other key criteria.
This is true - benchmarks are bogus - <cynicism>but this does look rather evasive.</cynicism>Okay - so does the native Tao VM come with the SDK, or only the Linux version? Does anyone actually have the native Tao VM, so we can see some benchmarks?
I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade.
I do hope this is true.
I'd just like to see a grain of evidence.
cheers,
G
Sony's behaviour is amazing.
It makes me so sick - it actually makes me want to buy an X-box.
:-(
:-)
Got his email address?
Just guessing, maybe we should try steve.heckler@sony.com
we will block it at your phone company,
we will block it at your [Internet-service provider].
We will firewall it at your PC.
-Steve Heckler
- No you fucking won't.
Fine.-Me
Kill Napster in court.
Firewall them ports.
We have, uh I forget - is it 2^16?, more ports to choose from.
Go ahead and have your fun. .html files), or we will keep producing new varients of file sharing programs.
Kill Napster and we will replace it with a new way of sharing files 5 minutes later. Either you must ban the whole class of programs to share files of the Internet (ftp & web browsers included, after all web pages are just
So long as I have the right to swap .zip files with other people over the Internet, how can he know if I am swapping .mp3's in them?
And as for his last sentence - if he thinks he can do a damn thing to our PCs, then please would someone explain this whole open-source thing that has been going on around him. It makes controlling people that bit more difficult.
Final Thought:
-
"The [music] industry," Heckler said, "will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams. It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what."
Sorry, was that protect 'musicians rights to have a say in what is done with their art', or protect 'that revenue stream' - I couldn't quite hear.G
-
I would guess that the number of applications which require access to disk storage (or benefit from a file abstraction, a la sockets, FIFOs, unix "special files", etc) outnumber those which require a pixel addressable display by several orders of magnitude.
For the minute, accept the definition that an OS should provide an abstraction of the machine's hardware. Imagine I write an OS which is lacking a file system, and other groups pick up my (GPL) OS and start releasing their own OSes, all incompatible with each other. Arguably, what I have written is not a complete OS, but the foundations to write a OS on top of - as it does not provide an abstraction of the hardware.-
However, just for the sake of argument, let's pretend a GUI is a necessary component of an OS. Does a window manager, four xterms, and netscape count?
Yes.Okay, calm down, I just said that to freak you out. But seriously, uh... maybe. Is bash part of UNIX? Virtual terminals? What ls, cd, and rm? If we accept for a minute that the GUI is the appropriate abstraction of modern graphics hardware.... well I'm sure you can see where I'm going with window managers / virtual terminals. In a GUI based OS, the browser is increasingly taking over the jobs that ls/cd/rm performed.
-
I don't really want to have to waste precious disk space, memory and CPU time on useless stuff like file managers, desktop icons, and 50 different confusingly named "control panel" doohickies none of which provide any more than the most basic of configuration options, but I don't know what I'll do if I find out that my computer isn't running an OS anymore.
Sorry. It's a shame, isn't it-
[...and I'm already pulling my hair out over that previously very useful machine sitting in the corner with no keyboard or monitor attached. On the other hand, that it does all it does without the benefit of an OS is an absolute technological wonder.]
Bejesus, it's a miracle!Mmmmm, I did think about this one, and you can take it further, saying does a headless server need a gui, does a linux dedicate router, firewall, or X-terminal need a filesystem? So is a filesystem part of an OS?
But this is where I feel you get to the crux of the question {... and here it's going to get even more subjective, and I'll piss you off even more :-) ...} If you accept that an OS should provide an abstraction of the hardware, then you cannot simply a list of features an say 'an OS must contain these'. What constitutes an OS depends what hardware it is running on. That is why you can argue that UNIX once was a workstation/PC OS, but no longer is.
cheers,
G
And I wondered in another comment about that definition - looks dodgy to me.
Well put - and I'm sure that you are right about the motivation behind this article. But just pointing out that this is biased marketing fluff does not address the question - it just avoids it.
I'm not flaming here. And if you are not interested in entering the debate one way or the other - fair enough.
But anyone reading this - don't just think: oh, he's right - the article is fluff, I can ignore it. Whatever the motivation, the article raises a serious question.
Ask yourself, does the POSIX spec really offer a useful abstraction of my Voodoo3? Is X really a part of the UNIX OS?
Jus' saying - don't just dismiss this article.
cheers,
G
- Unix is no longer an operating system. An operating system is the software that comes with a computer (or OS distribution) that programmers and users need to make themselves productive.
A vegetable is a small blue cube. Therefore a carrot is not a vegetable.My point is that if you redefine word as you wish, you can cheerfully prove that anything is, or is not, an OS.
Okay, so my books on OSes are a few thousand miles away at the minute, but as i recall, Andy Tannenbaum's definition of an operating system had 2 requirements:
- Resource Management: an OS should allow multiple user processes to share the processor(s), memory, network connection, etc.
- Extended machine: an OS should provide an richer abstraction of the underlying hardware, providing user programs with useful functionality & abstraction, eg. the ability to handle files, rather than blocks on the hard disk.
UNIX, and specificly POSIX OSes certainly still provide the first of these, but perharps not the second. A useful abstraction of the graphics card must today offer more than POSIX does (ie text mode only). To some extent, the fact that UNIX does not have a standard, built in, GUI means that it is no longer an OS.cheers,
G
The logic test is designed to test the VM's ability to spot redundant loops of code & optomize them away. The 1.2.2 VM has an okay score but by the sound of this, it is a lot worse at this kind of optomization than the JIT in 1.1.8. That sucks.
A look at the breakdown of the test results shows the Amiga kicking ass at the image test, and especially the string test, but not showing too well elsewhere. That's a shame.
In the second set of tests, IBM gives it a thorough beating, everywhere except for the image test: 7000 to 3300 overall
I wish them all the best, but methinks the 'blazing fast Java' claim is really a little premature.
cheers,
G
I remember hearing about the a story a while back about the control of the drug extacy in Holland. Extacy, more technically the drug MDMA (I believe), is illegal. But under dutch law, it is the exact, specific, chemical that is banned. So drugs labs just come out with new varients, with slight differences, all the time. These varients may be more dangerous than the original - as companies have to keep trying to do something different, so the drug is mutating all the time. In England, and I guess most countries, it is the whole class of similar drugs that are banned. In Holland, every time they discover a new varient, they ban it. Just like whack-a-rat.
.html files), or we will keep producing new varients of file sharing programs.
Whether this story is accurate or not, it is a good analogy for the legal situation RIAA and friends find themselves in. Either you must ban the whole class of programs to share files of the Internet (ftp & web browsers included, after all web pages are just
Let them ban gnutella. Let them have their fun. Who gives a damn - we'll only come back stronger. RIAA, I'll warn you this: I know that everytime I revisit a programming problem, I learn, and I do a better job than the last time. I'm sure most programmers are the same. If you keep making us come up with new programs to share files, then the programs we use will just get more and more sophisticated.
cheers,
G
*(ps. I am not dutch, I don't know the situation that well, so if I'm wrong and offend, I apologise.)
Excellent, I'll check this out.
Many thanks,
G
You seem to be missing the point.
If you omit the section 'Piranha: A Case Study' above, you could be right.
This is not about whether an having a default password is leaving open a backdoor, but about the media treatment of Linux and NT.
Linux (well, a linux service) has a theoretical problem, only allowing read-only access, and no reports of it ever actually being exploited: Linux is "basically a bunch of peoples' hobby."
Windows (you know the drill) has a real problem, allowing root equivalent access, it *IS* actually being exploited: Eerie silence.
Why?
Is this a media conspiracy against Linux?
Probably not. Probably just lazy journalism.
The minute that MS heard about piranha, they will have gone into spin frenzy, putting words into journalists mouths, and basicly writing the reports for them. We can't stop this happening - we just have to do it ourselves.
Linux just needs better PR.
Why have you forsaken us, ESR?
cheers,
G
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Not only would there be a huge amount of security holes, imagine the amount of server power that would take.
Just because you give 30,000 people permission to run CGI scripts, does not mean that 30,000 people go out and learn perlI doubt that you should worry about the processing overhead that CGI may add - it will hardly be used. Now the security issues, well that's another matter.
cheers,
G
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every free webpage provider out there provides CGI access
Can you [or anyone else out there] name one?I don't know any free space providers who allow you to run your own CGI scripts, rather than just a few guest book / counter scripts that they provide.
Please, please, prove me wrong. Lets have some links, please.
cheers,
G
Last I heard approx. 80% are still BSD. Microsoft will probably, eventually, have to move to win2k, for technical (PR) reasons.
cheers, G
ps. Netcraft is now reporting (at least for me) hotmail.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000
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At a guess I'd say that what works for one langage will work for another, get some books on algorithms and programing in general.
Yes, this is true, general good programming practice, and intellegent use of algorithms is important.But there are optomizations specific to the Java language, that people have not yet mentioned, and that everyone should know.
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The use of the keyword 'final' has been mentioned above. You can also get the same effect from 'private' functions. But do not damage your libraries long term usefulness in exchange for a short term speed kick.
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One of the (old) articles linked off another post suggests that having your java code call native code will be faster. This was true three years ago, when we had interpteting VMs. In Java 1.3, Sun has replaced a load of native math stuff in the standard libraries with java code. Doing this has increased speed of these functions by a factor of three or four. In most VMs, calling native code is very slow, and JITs are very fast.
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Strings are immutable. The fact that the java language overloads the + and += operators can blind people new to the language about the importance of this. This is actually implemented using the class StringBuffer - e.g.
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If you are writing applets, use
.jar files. The reason: if your applet has to downloaded a set of multiple seperate .class files (and probably other resources, such as .gifs), you must open seperate http request for each one. This is a lot slower than doing it all in one go.
Hope this helps.- class ex1 {
Compiles to exactly the same code as:int the_int;
public String toString() {
return "The value is " + the_int;
}
}
- class ex2 {
Obviously, in this situation, the first version is probably better. (The code is clearer). But you should never use the + operator to add Strings if you are doing multiple, seperate, adds. E.g.int the_int;
public String toString() {
return ((new StringBuffer("The value is ")).append(the_int)).toString();
}
}
- class ex3 {
Lots of nasty, wasteful Object creation.int the_int;
public String silly() {
String a = "A";
String b = "B";
String c = "C";
String ab = a+b;
return ab+c;
}
}
Oh, to address cllajoie's question about using the 'this' pointer: this produces exactly the same code.
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Probably your best answer is to kick 7 shades out of your marketing & management, make them your bitches and you'll have the freedom to code good stuff.
I doubt that this would work...But nevertheless, I am certain that a lot more research should be done in this field.