Maybe, but last I looked at purchasing prices for medium businesses and I was appalled how expensive a new PC really was. Never mind the option of the SSD, here in Europe you'll have to make special arrangements for that it seems. Maybe it is because so many laptops are sold, but the PC's you can currently buy suck, and the screens suck even more. Try to get a cheap non-reflective screen with a good angle - it's almost impossible at any fair price.
I don't get it. But I know a lot of drivers that would be very much helped with this device. Many people would like to have a warning when they actually doze off. I had a friend who had a night job while he was obviously the wrong person for it. He crashed his car after falling asleep behind the wheel. He could hardly have stayed at the factory floor though. If he could have a (preferably cheap) device that went off when actually falling asleep he would have pounced on it.
If it would issue a warning if you have tired eyes then this would be a problem.
Uh, what exactly triggered this rant? I don't think the discussion of it being mandatory was anywhere in the parents post. Don't drink and type (said I after drinking 3 single malts and a very passable Bordeaux)!
I'm as anti-religious as it gets (although I'm still tolerant to the people coaxed into religion). But even I think that is misrepresenting the facts. I do think that a lot of people want to give money instead of actually doing the good thing. It's more buying off the fact that you don't do a whole lot of good. What I've seen, if you help other people get along, it is basically thought of as good (well, as long as it doesn't go against either scripture or "common practice").
I've seen some religious text in the train that said that even if you did a lot of good but did not convert people then you would still go to hell. But I don't think that is the consensus, or even close to it.
My cheap router has about 20% of the functionality in the thin client GUI that it provides though. The rest is (proprietary but simple) scripting and SNMP. And telnet is at least as easy, if not easier to script than HTML. At least you don't have to filter all the tags to get to the results of the commands.
The security model of both phones is quite different. iOS is based on digital trust (only downloading signed authorized apps from the appstore), android's model is permission based (although the default market could count as authorization as well).
If a free game is requesting permission to use my GPS coordinates or to use maps, then I simply don't install it.
And anyway, it seems that Amoebe uses process distribution rather than thread distribution. I don't know if these "processes" map directly to the processes found on common OS's, but this seems the case. That fact alone makes Amoebe scheduling absolutely worthless in my opinion.
It (Amoeba) has also been created to reflect very fast processors in a distributed environment with slow interconnects. This is not at all the case with multi-core chips. I think that Amoeba and this ARM chip are so far apart that it is probably not worth the trouble of even researching if technologies of Amoeba can be used in a commonly used operating system.
Oh, I know about the Amoeba OS, that project got started at the VU in Amsterdam while I was studying there (not that I would recommend the place for its educational capabilities, but that's another discussion).
I wonder though if these kind of projects are of any use to current operating systems. Amoebe is a research project by Tanenbaum, and he's well known to not care too much about actual use within the field. A (very) quick look at Amoebe shows me a system that is rather different than current operating systems. I wonder if you can just take the scheduler and put that in a commonly used operating system.
Personally, I read it as a three core chip, where one of the chips is the controller (since the others could be powered down). I'm not certain of it though, since there is just not enough information about it on the internet.
Furthermore, I think it says in their press release that they are sampling to OEM's. That does not sound like vaporware, even though it is not produced in quantity just yet. It does normally mean that for most part their processor design is done.
But I'll probably completely wrong about this, since you can read a hell of a lot/from just a few fuckin' quotation marks/.
Good question, I haven't found out yet. But I presume that is all in the software, which might make it a tricky processor to program for. I cannot see it transfer all state from one core to one of the faster ones without some help of software in the operating system. And if it does run all three processors at the same time, you will basically have an ASMP. So it is an interesting design, even though it is rather obvious. It is not hard to see ASMP's become more common ground on SoC's (you just don't need each and every function X times on an X core chip). This seems to be a first step - scheduling algorithms will be an interesting subject for the years to come.
Sure thing, but you still have to program the OS to do it, and for now each and every CPU has evenly matched cores. If you look at the mainstream desktop operating systems, they are all assuming that every core is equal to all the other cores. Then you've got the Cell computer which is a single CPU and multiple "Cell" CPU's. This is a different beast altogether - each and every program can be switched from one core to the other, but there is one special CPU that is much slower. So your scheduler has to be adopted for this kind of CPU. I'm not saying that that cannot be done, but it *IS* going to add complexity none-the-less.
Of course, it gets even more interesting if (and maybe this is already so) when cores have different capabilities (ecryption, graphics, multi-media instructions etc) as well. In other words:
They market it as a 3 core CPU. This more or less implies that the slower core is still fully ARMed. This also implies that it will be a nice challenge for operating system engineers: what are you going to run on the slower core and what will you run on the faster one? Can you move one thread from the one core to the other ones, and how easy is this? How do you handle applications that don't play nice and keep using large quantities of CPU time after you've told them to go into sleep mode? This is rather different than having a separate "CPU" or dedicated logic for a specific purpose.
If you just look at the hardware it is a smart thing to do, but it might get tricky for OS vendors to support it (at full potential, getting just the slower core to run will probably be easy). Other CPU's probably inform the applications and adjust the frequency of the single or dual core. This seems to be easier to support.
As for the attack surface: sure thing, the more functionality (or: doubly implemented functionality in this case) the higher attack surface, the more vulnerable you are. But normally the attack surface of a CPU is more or less restricted to certain higher level functions and of course memory access. It should not be too hard to get this right; I don't know too much malware that attack a specific CPU implementation directly.
Maybe we should send them lots and lots of books with logic quizzes or tell them to read encyclopedia articles or something - sounds to me they are bored out of their skulls.
Problem is that both the market and mobile technology are moving pretty fast. There are already quite a few new technologies on the horizon that promise eBook kind of reading together with quick updates (and, probably later on, color). It seems to be a bit of a waste of time to develop all kinds of applications for the iPad and then find yourself locked in. The Android tablets that are now out are indeed terrible compared to the iPad, but they are about 33% of the price too. Now we just have to wait for someone to make a higher end tablet like the iPad without the ridiculous pricing (600 to 800 Euro's seems a lot, even when counting in the - fantastic - IPS screen).
That's probably the most easy way to handle it. I do it the other way around: I run a user that does administration and has access to my documents. That user just browses to well known sites (and hopes that they are keeping up with the latest patches). That's however a bit of a chore though - I always forget that I'm in the restricted user setting.
It does not work that well though. My restricted user and the real me are actually one and the same person. And this person uses GMail, orders tickets online etc. etc. So basically, this real person needs access to files of both identities anyway - at the same time.
The problem is that Linux (or better: current desktop OS's) just don't have clear restrictions for applications. Multiple ID's, SELinux, AppArmor and even VM's are just sub-optimal ways of dealing with the situation. It's evolution in action, but you have to wonder if current operating systems can be "patched" this way.
Yeah, super-easy. Just learn YET ANOTHER fucking configuration file setup, figure out why usr.bin.firefox is in the/etc/apparmor.d/disable folder, figure out that you have to use the "enforce" command line utility, figure out why that does not change any status for firefox and figure out why the fuck I am bothering in the first place. And that for something for which I wonder if it is still maintained at all. Reading the FAQ was interesting, but do you really want users to care if the system uses inodes or paths? More to the point: *should* users know that kind of crap?
Common guys, when are you going to learn that this way of handling systems is something for sysadmins that care to know what the system does? I don't have the time to go into this, let alone prove that it actually works for my setup.
In my browser? Meh. From my Android phone - phew, fewer words! If only choosing something from the drop down does not automatically assumes you are done. Now *that* is annoying.
Last time I checked most systems come with 4 GB RAM now. I just looked at a cheap (550 euro) Dell laptop that has 4 GB RAM. Personally I'm running 64 bit Linux because my system has 8 GB RAM (I needed to compile the OpenJDK a few times, and I decided that compiling to RAM disk was worth the additional 120 euro's or so - output is some 1.5 GB, excluding intermediate files).
As a home user, I'm always a bit aghast when people determine that preventing access to root is my biggest priority.
If they've got access to my browser, this means that they now have access to all of my documentation, and have the ability to run programs (e.g. through my.bin and.profile files) including full access to the internet.
I mean, they've got my data, they've got the power to run applications and they've got full internet access. I'm personally not that worried about root access - if they break through the browser barrier I'm basically f*cked already.
(yes, yes, I know, SELinux and such could protect me if I configure them correctly. Not even I can easily do that however, and nobody that I know would go that far).
So? Many things are written in Java, and it's probably the language most used for new commercial apps. There is a lot of Java in embedded real time apps, and there are extensions to validate pre- and post conditions as well. There is little to nothing that would prevent Java to be used within such an application.
That said, this seems to be a completely random piece of code used for a commercial video:
That's just too much of a coincidence. I looked it up after seeing the import for the zip package. Unless the car has automatic download capabilities, I just don't not see the need for it.
1-2 are good enough to be favorite movies of mine. 3, and in some senses, 4 are good enough to view now and then. Personally, I don't see the use of ordering them after that. It's like asking which song I like best. Well, that completely depends on the mood I'm in (or: want to get in).
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe, but last I looked at purchasing prices for medium businesses and I was appalled how expensive a new PC really was. Never mind the option of the SSD, here in Europe you'll have to make special arrangements for that it seems. Maybe it is because so many laptops are sold, but the PC's you can currently buy suck, and the screens suck even more. Try to get a cheap non-reflective screen with a good angle - it's almost impossible at any fair price.
I don't get it. But I know a lot of drivers that would be very much helped with this device. Many people would like to have a warning when they actually doze off. I had a friend who had a night job while he was obviously the wrong person for it. He crashed his car after falling asleep behind the wheel. He could hardly have stayed at the factory floor though. If he could have a (preferably cheap) device that went off when actually falling asleep he would have pounced on it.
If it would issue a warning if you have tired eyes then this would be a problem.
Uh, what exactly triggered this rant? I don't think the discussion of it being mandatory was anywhere in the parents post. Don't drink and type (said I after drinking 3 single malts and a very passable Bordeaux)!
I'm as anti-religious as it gets (although I'm still tolerant to the people coaxed into religion). But even I think that is misrepresenting the facts. I do think that a lot of people want to give money instead of actually doing the good thing. It's more buying off the fact that you don't do a whole lot of good. What I've seen, if you help other people get along, it is basically thought of as good (well, as long as it doesn't go against either scripture or "common practice").
I've seen some religious text in the train that said that even if you did a lot of good but did not convert people then you would still go to hell. But I don't think that is the consensus, or even close to it.
"I would like to add the engine stop feature to my 'normal' car."
VW has been selling this for a while now - others probably do as well, maybe not in the US though.
My cheap router has about 20% of the functionality in the thin client GUI that it provides though. The rest is (proprietary but simple) scripting and SNMP. And telnet is at least as easy, if not easier to script than HTML. At least you don't have to filter all the tags to get to the results of the commands.
The security model of both phones is quite different. iOS is based on digital trust (only downloading signed authorized apps from the appstore), android's model is permission based (although the default market could count as authorization as well).
If a free game is requesting permission to use my GPS coordinates or to use maps, then I simply don't install it.
That's another paradox, a smart scientist would probably not be reading slashdot right now.
And anyway, it seems that Amoebe uses process distribution rather than thread distribution. I don't know if these "processes" map directly to the processes found on common OS's, but this seems the case. That fact alone makes Amoebe scheduling absolutely worthless in my opinion.
It (Amoeba) has also been created to reflect very fast processors in a distributed environment with slow interconnects. This is not at all the case with multi-core chips. I think that Amoeba and this ARM chip are so far apart that it is probably not worth the trouble of even researching if technologies of Amoeba can be used in a commonly used operating system.
Oh, I know about the Amoeba OS, that project got started at the VU in Amsterdam while I was studying there (not that I would recommend the place for its educational capabilities, but that's another discussion).
I wonder though if these kind of projects are of any use to current operating systems. Amoebe is a research project by Tanenbaum, and he's well known to not care too much about actual use within the field. A (very) quick look at Amoebe shows me a system that is rather different than current operating systems. I wonder if you can just take the scheduler and put that in a commonly used operating system.
I always thought Slashdot titles just went up to commander.
Personally, I read it as a three core chip, where one of the chips is the controller (since the others could be powered down). I'm not certain of it though, since there is just not enough information about it on the internet.
Furthermore, I think it says in their press release that they are sampling to OEM's. That does not sound like vaporware, even though it is not produced in quantity just yet. It does normally mean that for most part their processor design is done.
But I'll probably completely wrong about this, since you can read a hell of a lot /from just a few fuckin' quotation marks/.
Good question, I haven't found out yet. But I presume that is all in the software, which might make it a tricky processor to program for. I cannot see it transfer all state from one core to one of the faster ones without some help of software in the operating system. And if it does run all three processors at the same time, you will basically have an ASMP. So it is an interesting design, even though it is rather obvious. It is not hard to see ASMP's become more common ground on SoC's (you just don't need each and every function X times on an X core chip). This seems to be a first step - scheduling algorithms will be an interesting subject for the years to come.
Sure thing, but you still have to program the OS to do it, and for now each and every CPU has evenly matched cores. If you look at the mainstream desktop operating systems, they are all assuming that every core is equal to all the other cores. Then you've got the Cell computer which is a single CPU and multiple "Cell" CPU's. This is a different beast altogether - each and every program can be switched from one core to the other, but there is one special CPU that is much slower. So your scheduler has to be adopted for this kind of CPU. I'm not saying that that cannot be done, but it *IS* going to add complexity none-the-less.
Of course, it gets even more interesting if (and maybe this is already so) when cores have different capabilities (ecryption, graphics, multi-media instructions etc) as well. In other words:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_multiprocessing
They market it as a 3 core CPU. This more or less implies that the slower core is still fully ARMed. This also implies that it will be a nice challenge for operating system engineers: what are you going to run on the slower core and what will you run on the faster one? Can you move one thread from the one core to the other ones, and how easy is this? How do you handle applications that don't play nice and keep using large quantities of CPU time after you've told them to go into sleep mode? This is rather different than having a separate "CPU" or dedicated logic for a specific purpose.
If you just look at the hardware it is a smart thing to do, but it might get tricky for OS vendors to support it (at full potential, getting just the slower core to run will probably be easy). Other CPU's probably inform the applications and adjust the frequency of the single or dual core. This seems to be easier to support.
As for the attack surface: sure thing, the more functionality (or: doubly implemented functionality in this case) the higher attack surface, the more vulnerable you are. But normally the attack surface of a CPU is more or less restricted to certain higher level functions and of course memory access. It should not be too hard to get this right; I don't know too much malware that attack a specific CPU implementation directly.
Maybe we should send them lots and lots of books with logic quizzes or tell them to read encyclopedia articles or something - sounds to me they are bored out of their skulls.
Problem is that both the market and mobile technology are moving pretty fast. There are already quite a few new technologies on the horizon that promise eBook kind of reading together with quick updates (and, probably later on, color). It seems to be a bit of a waste of time to develop all kinds of applications for the iPad and then find yourself locked in. The Android tablets that are now out are indeed terrible compared to the iPad, but they are about 33% of the price too. Now we just have to wait for someone to make a higher end tablet like the iPad without the ridiculous pricing (600 to 800 Euro's seems a lot, even when counting in the - fantastic - IPS screen).
That's probably the most easy way to handle it. I do it the other way around: I run a user that does administration and has access to my documents. That user just browses to well known sites (and hopes that they are keeping up with the latest patches). That's however a bit of a chore though - I always forget that I'm in the restricted user setting.
It does not work that well though. My restricted user and the real me are actually one and the same person. And this person uses GMail, orders tickets online etc. etc. So basically, this real person needs access to files of both identities anyway - at the same time.
The problem is that Linux (or better: current desktop OS's) just don't have clear restrictions for applications. Multiple ID's, SELinux, AppArmor and even VM's are just sub-optimal ways of dealing with the situation. It's evolution in action, but you have to wonder if current operating systems can be "patched" this way.
Yeah, super-easy. Just learn YET ANOTHER fucking configuration file setup, figure out why usr.bin.firefox is in the /etc/apparmor.d/disable folder, figure out that you have to use the "enforce" command line utility, figure out why that does not change any status for firefox and figure out why the fuck I am bothering in the first place. And that for something for which I wonder if it is still maintained at all. Reading the FAQ was interesting, but do you really want users to care if the system uses inodes or paths? More to the point: *should* users know that kind of crap?
Common guys, when are you going to learn that this way of handling systems is something for sysadmins that care to know what the system does? I don't have the time to go into this, let alone prove that it actually works for my setup.
Thanks for pointing out the app, but I'll pass.
In my browser? Meh. From my Android phone - phew, fewer words! If only choosing something from the drop down does not automatically assumes you are done. Now *that* is annoying.
Last time I checked most systems come with 4 GB RAM now. I just looked at a cheap (550 euro) Dell laptop that has 4 GB RAM. Personally I'm running 64 bit Linux because my system has 8 GB RAM (I needed to compile the OpenJDK a few times, and I decided that compiling to RAM disk was worth the additional 120 euro's or so - output is some 1.5 GB, excluding intermediate files).
As a home user, I'm always a bit aghast when people determine that preventing access to root is my biggest priority.
If they've got access to my browser, this means that they now have access to all of my documentation, and have the ability to run programs (e.g. through my .bin and .profile files) including full access to the internet.
I mean, they've got my data, they've got the power to run applications and they've got full internet access. I'm personally not that worried about root access - if they break through the browser barrier I'm basically f*cked already.
(yes, yes, I know, SELinux and such could protect me if I configure them correctly. Not even I can easily do that however, and nobody that I know would go that far).
So? Many things are written in Java, and it's probably the language most used for new commercial apps. There is a lot of Java in embedded real time apps, and there are extensions to validate pre- and post conditions as well. There is little to nothing that would prevent Java to be used within such an application.
That said, this seems to be a completely random piece of code used for a commercial video:
http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/356
That's just too much of a coincidence. I looked it up after seeing the import for the zip package. Unless the car has automatic download capabilities, I just don't not see the need for it.
1-2 are good enough to be favorite movies of mine. 3, and in some senses, 4 are good enough to view now and then. Personally, I don't see the use of ordering them after that. It's like asking which song I like best. Well, that completely depends on the mood I'm in (or: want to get in).
Yeah, they like to push the P-RAM a lot.