You cannot not use segmented memory on a 386+ cpu. But segmentation does not jibe with the UNIX process model, so the Code, Data, Stack, Extra, File, and Global segments are set to
0x00000000-0xffffffff. It's not for performance; it's for simplicity and (source-level) compatibility with Paged-only architectures.
A free UNIX-Like OS could use the segmentation model to prevent heap or stack execution, but it might require changes to GCC to make sure it's referencing the right segment (because CS:0000abfe is no longer the same as DS:0000abfe). You'd then have to to re-compile every library and executable on the system. It would also break any code that produces self-modifying, or jit compiled code (but probably not non-jit VM interpreters like PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby, etc.
Some stupid developers (including Canada Customs & Revenue Agency's contractor who did the "tables on disk") put their data files in the "Program Files" subtree, and don't set any acls to allow anyone other than admin access.
One method I've used to get around this is logging in as a normal user, watching for what files it can't write, logging in as admin, setting the acls (with "cacls") to allow access to that file, log in as normal user again, run the program again, etc.
Sure, it's slow, but some programs you just need (like TOD), while others really should say "must be run as admin" on the box so we know to avoid them (like Quicken).
Interestingly, Tables on Disk (which is used to calculate payrol deductions) is a java program, but is only provided as windows & mac self-extracting installer. If they provided a zipped version, we wouldn't need any closed-source OS machines where I work.
Can fast neutrons be captured by ordinary hydrocarbons (say, acetone) to turn some of their hydrogen into Deuterium?
And for the chemists: is it relatively simple (perhaps given energy & a catylist) to turn a solution of acetone, methane, and whatever you get from removing random hydrogen atoms from acetone, back into acetone?
Just how dangerous are fast neutrons? What are the risks of being near a Sonoluminescence micro-fusion reactor, if these experiments turn out to be repeatable and create surplus energy?
Is there any known way to capture some of the kinetic energy of the fast neutrons? (Preferably without setting off nearby fissile materials a-la the sheilding on a non-neutron Hydrogen Bomb)
development-sources is currently at 2.6.4-rc1 and is not masked.
Re:It's time for a redesign, anyway.
on
XFree86 4.4 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The average person is greatly confused by the myriad issues involved with X, such as fonts,
The average person doesn't need to know about xfs, or font dirs etc. Their distribution vendor takes care of this.
the third mouse wheel,
Again, the distribution vendor takes care of this.
printing
Printing is not an X issue, for the same reason that embroidering is not. It's a completely different medium.
and the jillion interfaces available via desktop shells (for which there is no analogue in the Windows world)
Again, the average user does not need to know about this. The distribution vendor chooses a default, and if the user has a reason to prefer a different one (which implies they already know about them), they may select a different environment. KDE software runs in GNOME, and vice-versa, and motif/CDE/XLib, etc software still runs in either, or neither, or twm, fvwm, etc.
there's got to be a bunch of tweaks for speed available for the X86 platform
XFree86 runs on a lot more platforms than just x86, which is a good thing now that 64 bit commmodity CPUs are coming out. Even AMD64 is likely to break those optimizations.
something not intended to run in safe mode all the time.
What does "safe mode" have to do with XFree86? Most of the users are on UNIX-like systems (Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, etc). If you want to run an X Server on Windows 95, you're free to try one of the commercial implementations.
In Nanaimo, BC, Canada, the crosswalk buttons work... kinda.
Except for crosswalks (where there is no cross street), all the buttons do is turn on the walk signal when the light turns green. They don't change the timing any. Thanks a lot, public works, I could've figured it out myself.
To make matters more interesting, one of the crosswalks takes so long to change that whoever pressed the button has usually jaywalked by the time it changes.
One use I thought of right away...
on
Mini-ITX Clustering
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It would be quite useful for a university with an undergraduate course in high performance computing to have their own little NoRMA cluster to play with without the space, heat, and power consumption of a supercomputer.
Let the researchers use the real supercomputer, but the undergraduates can still play with message passing parallel algorythms to their hearts content.
Plus if you look at the Linux USB project, most of the commits come from Vajtech Pavlik, who aggregates patches posted to the linux-usb-devel mailinglist. Just because someone doesn't have commit access doesn't mean they've not written code in the kernel.
Does the security enhancements developed by the NSA slow down the kernel?
No
Does it make it harder to set up services such as email or apache?
Yes
How much more secure is it than a standard vanilla kernel?
It's not much more secure, except that it's based on a more flexible permissions system. So even Root may not have full root access, and it's not nescesary to be root to run a server (bind to ports lower than 1024), so long as you're given permission to that port. Also there's a lot more auditing support.
So for standalone home desktops, it's mostly not nescesary, but for Banks, the military, and others than need a major paper trail for everything it's worthwhile.
Designed to be limited (so they can sell ARC GIS) (I thought it was only good for viewing maps, not creating your own; perhaps I'm mistaken)
Java (sub-optimal for number crunching like GIS)
Not available for other distros or architectures than RedHat 7.2 on x86.
After April, I might be able to work on an OS GIS project for casual users. My GIS experience is limited to a (upper undergraduate level) course on GIS (for geography students, not Comp-Sci), reading Geographic Information Systems An Introduction by Tor Bernhardsen (second edition), and trying (and failing) to use GIS GRASS. I have though taken courses on Human-Computer Interaction, and worked with a whole flock of toolkits and languages.
Have you ever programmed with Qt or KDE, or studied or worked with Object Oriented Design patterns? What is your experience with GIS or geography in general?
Most importantly, have you ever seen the source code to any closed source Geographic Information System?
A much more sensible aproach is to do network booting. Then you don't need CD-ROM drives and you don't need to distribute (and keep up to date) all those hundreds of CDs.
Well Actually, Linux for travellers might be handy...
A knoppix CD with email software (including MTA), AbiWord, gnumeric Mozilla FireFox and a GIS package, a complement of maps, and GPS and printer support (with autodetection for USB printers).
Just pop it in the drive at your local Web Cafe & plug in your GPS if you have one. Then go about printing custom maps with just those features you want marked, and at the scale you want.
It'd probably be distributed as a different CD for each country (or region of larger countries like Canada, Australia, and Russia) so the maps can fit on the CD.
On that note, does anyone know of an open source GIS package that is friendlier to the casual user (using it a few times a year) like ARCView? Last I tried to use it, GIS GRASS (5.3) was not at all intuitive, and the GRASS 5.7 development appears to be geared towards things other than usability.
I'd really like a GIS for tasks like travel maps, garden planning, etc, and GIS GRASS doesn't fit the bill (I'm sure it's fine for professional geologists & geographers who use it every day).
Didn't they teach you in elementary school that it's a comma before "eh?", not a period? It alsmost never has a capital unless it's a sentence of it's own (which would mean "oh really?", or "I don't understand", or "I didn't hear you" depending on the context. Also, "eh?" would replace the sir in the second paragraph, not come after.
Re:The tale of Ray Diosack and Mike Rocenter
on
Canadian Privacy Act
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The PIPDA's been on the books for two years. It only came into effect for non-government agencies Jan. 1st. It's been in effect for crown corporations, agencies, and federally regulated industries for quite a while.
One of the stipulations of the act is that they have to inform you why they're collecting the information.
If your code will be exec'ing other processes on a regular basis, consider prelink.
It's usually discussed in a desktop context, but I think it could make a noticeable difference on a server (I've not tried it on a heavily loaded server)
It shouldn't matter much for long-running jobs like Apache and mod_php, but if the user has to wait for something to link, it'll make a difference.
Slashdot Mirror
1) I have a Radeon card in a Gentoo system. Gentoo doesn't use RPMs.
2) What if ATI has linked it against the wrong library version?
3) What if I get an Opteron?
You cannot not use segmented memory on a 386+ cpu. But segmentation does not jibe with the UNIX process model, so the Code, Data, Stack, Extra, File, and Global segments are set to 0x00000000-0xffffffff. It's not for performance; it's for simplicity and (source-level) compatibility with Paged-only architectures.
A free UNIX-Like OS could use the segmentation model to prevent heap or stack execution, but it might require changes to GCC to make sure it's referencing the right segment (because CS:0000abfe is no longer the same as DS:0000abfe). You'd then have to to re-compile every library and executable on the system. It would also break any code that produces self-modifying, or jit compiled code (but probably not non-jit VM interpreters like PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby, etc.
Some stupid developers (including Canada Customs & Revenue Agency's contractor who did the "tables on disk") put their data files in the "Program Files" subtree, and don't set any acls to allow anyone other than admin access.
One method I've used to get around this is logging in as a normal user, watching for what files it can't write, logging in as admin, setting the acls (with "cacls") to allow access to that file, log in as normal user again, run the program again, etc.
Sure, it's slow, but some programs you just need (like TOD), while others really should say "must be run as admin" on the box so we know to avoid them (like Quicken).
Interestingly, Tables on Disk (which is used to calculate payrol deductions) is a java program, but is only provided as windows & mac self-extracting installer. If they provided a zipped version, we wouldn't need any closed-source OS machines where I work.
I thought it was called a lien.
Can fast neutrons be captured by ordinary hydrocarbons (say, acetone) to turn some of their hydrogen into Deuterium?
And for the chemists: is it relatively simple (perhaps given energy & a catylist) to turn a solution of acetone, methane, and whatever you get from removing random hydrogen atoms from acetone, back into acetone?
Just how dangerous are fast neutrons? What are the risks of being near a Sonoluminescence micro-fusion reactor, if these experiments turn out to be repeatable and create surplus energy?
Is there any known way to capture some of the kinetic energy of the fast neutrons? (Preferably without setting off nearby fissile materials a-la the sheilding on a non-neutron Hydrogen Bomb)
To get the equivalent of MS' "Just download the updates & inform me when they're ready to install:
#!/bin/bash
emerge sync >/dev/null
emerge -uDp world
emerge -uDf world
Cron should take care of mailing you the result.
Not all the hardware you might want is turned on by genkernel (notably Video4Linux and tablets are off)
development-sources is currently at 2.6.4-rc1 and is not masked.
The average person doesn't need to know about xfs, or font dirs etc. Their distribution vendor takes care of this.
Again, the distribution vendor takes care of this.
Printing is not an X issue, for the same reason that embroidering is not. It's a completely different medium.
Again, the average user does not need to know about this. The distribution vendor chooses a default, and if the user has a reason to prefer a different one (which implies they already know about them), they may select a different environment. KDE software runs in GNOME, and vice-versa, and motif/CDE/XLib, etc software still runs in either, or neither, or twm, fvwm, etc.
XFree86 runs on a lot more platforms than just x86, which is a good thing now that 64 bit commmodity CPUs are coming out. Even AMD64 is likely to break those optimizations.
What does "safe mode" have to do with XFree86? Most of the users are on UNIX-like systems (Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, etc). If you want to run an X Server on Windows 95, you're free to try one of the commercial implementations.
Remove that feed from your list. End of problem.
The Crosswalk across the highway between china steps and harbour park mall.
In Nanaimo, BC, Canada, the crosswalk buttons work... kinda.
Except for crosswalks (where there is no cross street), all the buttons do is turn on the walk signal when the light turns green. They don't change the timing any. Thanks a lot, public works, I could've figured it out myself.
To make matters more interesting, one of the crosswalks takes so long to change that whoever pressed the button has usually jaywalked by the time it changes.
It would be quite useful for a university with an undergraduate course in high performance computing to have their own little NoRMA cluster to play with without the space, heat, and power consumption of a supercomputer.
Let the researchers use the real supercomputer, but the undergraduates can still play with message passing parallel algorythms to their hearts content.
Plus if you look at the Linux USB project, most of the commits come from Vajtech Pavlik, who aggregates patches posted to the linux-usb-devel mailinglist. Just because someone doesn't have commit access doesn't mean they've not written code in the kernel.
SLI0NUX!
Riiiight... that's why we're all just sitting on our butts, never having to un-install click-by installed adware & spyware & trojans
ArcExplorer is
After April, I might be able to work on an OS GIS project for casual users. My GIS experience is limited to a (upper undergraduate level) course on GIS (for geography students, not Comp-Sci), reading Geographic Information Systems An Introduction by Tor Bernhardsen (second edition), and trying (and failing) to use GIS GRASS. I have though taken courses on Human-Computer Interaction, and worked with a whole flock of toolkits and languages.
Have you ever programmed with Qt or KDE, or studied or worked with Object Oriented Design patterns?
What is your experience with GIS or geography in general?
Most importantly, have you ever seen the source code to any closed source Geographic Information System?
Clam AntiVirus can scan for windows viruses. I don't know about spyware.
Open Source Linux / UNIX Anti VirusWithout the information nescesary to verify the problem, it's just libel.
A much more sensible aproach is to do network booting. Then you don't need CD-ROM drives and you don't need to distribute (and keep up to date) all those hundreds of CDs.
Well Actually, Linux for travellers might be handy...
A knoppix CD with email software (including MTA), AbiWord, gnumeric Mozilla FireFox and a GIS package, a complement of maps, and GPS and printer support (with autodetection for USB printers).
Just pop it in the drive at your local Web Cafe & plug in your GPS if you have one. Then go about printing custom maps with just those features you want marked, and at the scale you want.
It'd probably be distributed as a different CD for each country (or region of larger countries like Canada, Australia, and Russia) so the maps can fit on the CD.
On that note, does anyone know of an open source GIS package that is friendlier to the casual user (using it a few times a year) like ARCView? Last I tried to use it, GIS GRASS (5.3) was not at all intuitive, and the GRASS 5.7 development appears to be geared towards things other than usability.
I'd really like a GIS for tasks like travel maps, garden planning, etc, and GIS GRASS doesn't fit the bill (I'm sure it's fine for professional geologists & geographers who use it every day).
Didn't they teach you in elementary school that it's a comma before "eh?", not a period? It alsmost never has a capital unless it's a sentence of it's own (which would mean "oh really?", or "I don't understand", or "I didn't hear you" depending on the context. Also, "eh?" would replace the sir in the second paragraph, not come after.
The PIPDA's been on the books for two years. It only came into effect for non-government agencies Jan. 1st. It's been in effect for crown corporations, agencies, and federally regulated industries for quite a while.
One of the stipulations of the act is that they have to inform you why they're collecting the information.
If your code will be exec'ing other processes on a regular basis, consider prelink.
It's usually discussed in a desktop context, but I think it could make a noticeable difference on a server (I've not tried it on a heavily loaded server)
It shouldn't matter much for long-running jobs like Apache and mod_php, but if the user has to wait for something to link, it'll make a difference.