Novell's sudden assertion of their ownership of UNIX copyrights seemed to derail the SCO case in its early stages; it's nice to see that their explanation of this provides yet another nail in SCO's coffin. Way to go, Novell.
That was for corporations, where naturally OS turnover and hardware upgrades are far more likely to take advantage of the latest and greatest, once they've been sold to management. I was referring to the consumer and small business market; IIRC they were the last bastion of 16bit OSes simply because they couldn't be as easily convinced to upgrade. What they had worked for them and they felt that they didn't need anything better.
IMO, that's part of the problem with 64bit computing: the only people who are adopting it are corporations, enthusiasts and scientists - all three of these groups require or desire the abilities that a commodity 64bit platform, compatible with the vast installed base of 32bit software, is able to provide. Once the n00b masses of grandmas, Joe Sixpacks and organized-sports parents can be convinced to buy 64bit platforms, then I believe 32bit will be booted for good.
But what does this really mean for people who want to exercise their fair use rights?
I have a feeling that this ruling will be cited continuously by people trying to fight restrictive DRM in the US and other parts of Europe as part of their legal arguments. Who knows - this might be a watershed event.
It took 11 years for 32bit operating systems to finally displace 16bit operating systems. Your prediction of 32bit PCs being laughed at by December 2004 is probably a little too radical.
However, your other comments about AMD and the Opteron are spot on, IMO - the enterprise world is NOT going to buy a competing, slightly incompatible 64bit platform when it has already invested in another 64bit platform that is ALREADY AVAILABLE and is KNOWN to be just as fast/faster than a 32bit commodity platform or an older 64bit platform like a PPC box from IBM. It's hard enough these days for IT departments to support the current heterogenous mix of 32bit commodity desktops and servers and the old/new 64bit platforms from AMD and IBM. Throwing in a third which could cost even more and add more headaches would be pretty hard to sell, IMHO.
You were also right about marketing; AMD abolsutely MUST find a way to conclusively show that GHz != Speed. They need a new aggressive marketing campaign ASAP - unless the rumours about Prescott being a bit of a dud are true.....
Either way, AMD knows that they're sitting on a goldmine; they just need to exploit it as much as they can.
So what's your opinion on the AMD64 core and instruction set? Does it inherit the same problems in the core's 64bit modes, or do those 64bit modes actually remove some of the limitations of the original x86 instruction set? For example, you cited the lack of registers onn the x86 platform. The AMD64 platform has twice as many registers in the 64bit modes, both standard and SIMD registers; is this an improvement? Or does it come down to good compiler support?
Indeed. Hopefully this will remove the roadblocks which have characterized the slow development of XFree86, and fostered the creation of projects like Xouvert.
However, will this affect XFree86 4.4? In that vein, how will the removal of this mysterious core team, blamed for the glacial pace of XFree86 advancement, affect the development of this project?
That sounds reasonable - I run a dedicated Linux firewall on a P-!!! 933MHz with 512MB PC133 SDRAM on a Soyo SY-7VEM, and it works quite nicely as a firewall, Samba master browser and DNS server. The processor, mobo, and case (with PSU) came out to approx. $300, IIRC.
The parent was right - try going to a nearby computer show, you'll probably find something fairly cheap that will do the trick.
It depends on the signal encoding and protocols transmitted on that band. In this case, 5.8GHz is an additional signal band being added to the group of signal bands utilized by the IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g standards. The encoding used by those standards (Orthogonal Frequency Divison Multiplexing, link)
allows for a maximum clean-room EM-free speed of 54Mbps. In reality, once you factor in interference, equipment quality and distance, you can only really reach approxmiately 20Mbps, which will still outstrip most consumer-level broadband options.
What I was trying to say was that irregardless of whether or not the OS or application in question has source available or not, when a security problem is discovered involving one of those items, the fix should be written, tested and made freely available without expectation of renumeration. Especially in the case of OSS security fixes.
I don't mean to beat a dead horse here, but that's another advantage of open source: when security problems appear, the fixes for those problems are more likely to be available.
Forcing people to pay for security updates would be so incredibly stupid that it would guarantee the insecurity of even more Internet-connected machines than right now. I think that security updates for ANY OS or application, irregardless of the status of its source code, should be free and available for everyone.
If this probe does manage to survive, then it will be a testament to the skill and abilities of the engineers and managers who helped build it. Hopefully, its success will inspire the bean counters to be a little freer in their funding in the future;)
It's not too early - Marcelo understands that 2.6 is where all of the new development should be taking place. 2.4 needs to become what 2.2 and 2.0 have become - the ultra-stable, thoroughly tested kernel that you use on boxes that simply cannot go down.
I think 2.2 was also closed down pretty fast when 2.4 was released. Then it was reopened, IIRC, for a while because early 2.4 was so horrible. Check the linux-kernel archives for more info.
What you suggest will never happen, because Linus has made it absolutely clear that the Linux kernel will NEVER have a binary-compatible ABI. He absolutely refuses to support closed-source binary modules and will NOT accept patches to the kernel to make it friendly to such modules.
Why? Because it goes against the spirit of the GPL AND because it's a legal grey area which could result in frivolous lawsuits which could waste the time of the OSS community, like SCO is so successfully doing right now.
Unless Linus changes his mind (unlikely) or hardware manufacturers GPL their code and/or release full programming specs, then the status quo will undoubtedly remain.
You don't need the nForce drivers anymore to make the nVidia Ethernet driver work properly; the 2.6.0 kernel, and IIRC the 2.4.23 kernel, include a reverse-engineered driver called forcedeth for the nVidia Ethernet controller on the nForce, nForce2 and nForce3 chipsets.
Yes, but conversely Linux can take advantage of it - SuSE, Mandrake, Red Hat and Gentoo all have functioning offerings available for purchase or download.
The only game I know of off the top of my head is Epic's Unreal Tournament 2003.
Either way, the Athlon 64 3000+, IMO, might just be what AMD is looking for to really break into the market. If the price goes below $200, then things will definitely start to get interesting for Intel.
That's what XFce 4 is supposed to be. I've switched from KDE 3.1 to XFce 4 and am amazed at how much faster logins are now - it used to take six to eight seconds to log in, and now it only takes two!
The best thing is that the Red Hat 9 RPMs integrate with the XFree86 graphical login manager, so when you reach the login screen you can select XFce 4 in lieu of KDE and switch back if you wish!
This already exists - Ingo Molnar has written something called the exec-shield patch which implements this functionality in a slightly different fashion. Here is a link to one of Ingo's patch announcements.
That may be true for small projects with a limited set of users and a relatively low profile. Could you say the same thing for projects like Mozilla, KDE, GnuCash, OpenOffice, Scribus, KDevelop or even the kernel itself?
Oh my $DEITY..... they're trying to make fast-forwarding past advertisements illegal?!?
I hope someone with a brain throws this out the moment it reaches that point. This whole thing is a crock -- it's being done only to suppress fair use rights and the like. It's just like the SCO suit -- they're trying to geta nice big wave of FUD going, and I'm sure that they know it.
What's next -- a SCO-style marathon of going after blue-haired grannies who want to watch DVDs on their Linux-based PVR system set up by their loving children?
As for their complaining, I think that network you describe has been successfully explained away as a method to protect people from crime. I.D. cards on the other hand can't be explained away so easily, which is way people are complaining about them.
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Novell's sudden assertion of their ownership of UNIX copyrights seemed to derail the SCO case in its early stages; it's nice to see that their explanation of this provides yet another nail in SCO's coffin. Way to go, Novell.
Let's just hope that they remain Linux-friendly.
That was for corporations, where naturally OS turnover and hardware upgrades are far more likely to take advantage of the latest and greatest, once they've been sold to management. I was referring to the consumer and small business market; IIRC they were the last bastion of 16bit OSes simply because they couldn't be as easily convinced to upgrade. What they had worked for them and they felt that they didn't need anything better.
IMO, that's part of the problem with 64bit computing: the only people who are adopting it are corporations, enthusiasts and scientists - all three of these groups require or desire the abilities that a commodity 64bit platform, compatible with the vast installed base of 32bit software, is able to provide. Once the n00b masses of grandmas, Joe Sixpacks and organized-sports parents can be convinced to buy 64bit platforms, then I believe 32bit will be booted for good.
But what does this really mean for people who want to exercise their fair use rights?
I have a feeling that this ruling will be cited continuously by people trying to fight restrictive DRM in the US and other parts of Europe as part of their legal arguments. Who knows - this might be a watershed event.
It took 11 years for 32bit operating systems to finally displace 16bit operating systems. Your prediction of 32bit PCs being laughed at by December 2004 is probably a little too radical.
However, your other comments about AMD and the Opteron are spot on, IMO - the enterprise world is NOT going to buy a competing, slightly incompatible 64bit platform when it has already invested in another 64bit platform that is ALREADY AVAILABLE and is KNOWN to be just as fast/faster than a 32bit commodity platform or an older 64bit platform like a PPC box from IBM. It's hard enough these days for IT departments to support the current heterogenous mix of 32bit commodity desktops and servers and the old/new 64bit platforms from AMD and IBM. Throwing in a third which could cost even more and add more headaches would be pretty hard to sell, IMHO.
You were also right about marketing; AMD abolsutely MUST find a way to conclusively show that GHz != Speed. They need a new aggressive marketing campaign ASAP - unless the rumours about Prescott being a bit of a dud are true.....
Either way, AMD knows that they're sitting on a goldmine; they just need to exploit it as much as they can.
So what's your opinion on the AMD64 core and instruction set? Does it inherit the same problems in the core's 64bit modes, or do those 64bit modes actually remove some of the limitations of the original x86 instruction set? For example, you cited the lack of registers onn the x86 platform. The AMD64 platform has twice as many registers in the 64bit modes, both standard and SIMD registers; is this an improvement? Or does it come down to good compiler support?
Indeed. Hopefully this will remove the roadblocks which have characterized the slow development of XFree86, and fostered the creation of projects like Xouvert.
However, will this affect XFree86 4.4? In that vein, how will the removal of this mysterious core team, blamed for the glacial pace of XFree86 advancement, affect the development of this project?
That sounds reasonable - I run a dedicated Linux firewall on a P-!!! 933MHz with 512MB PC133 SDRAM on a Soyo SY-7VEM, and it works quite nicely as a firewall, Samba master browser and DNS server. The processor, mobo, and case (with PSU) came out to approx. $300, IIRC.
The parent was right - try going to a nearby computer show, you'll probably find something fairly cheap that will do the trick.
It depends on the signal encoding and protocols transmitted on that band. In this case, 5.8GHz is an additional signal band being added to the group of signal bands utilized by the IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g standards. The encoding used by those standards (Orthogonal Frequency Divison Multiplexing, link) allows for a maximum clean-room EM-free speed of 54Mbps. In reality, once you factor in interference, equipment quality and distance, you can only really reach approxmiately 20Mbps, which will still outstrip most consumer-level broadband options.
IANASS.
I think you just agreed with me....
What I was trying to say was that irregardless of whether or not the OS or application in question has source available or not, when a security problem is discovered involving one of those items, the fix should be written, tested and made freely available without expectation of renumeration. Especially in the case of OSS security fixes.
I don't mean to beat a dead horse here, but that's another advantage of open source: when security problems appear, the fixes for those problems are more likely to be available.
Forcing people to pay for security updates would be so incredibly stupid that it would guarantee the insecurity of even more Internet-connected machines than right now. I think that security updates for ANY OS or application, irregardless of the status of its source code, should be free and available for everyone.
If this probe does manage to survive, then it will be a testament to the skill and abilities of the engineers and managers who helped build it. Hopefully, its success will inspire the bean counters to be a little freer in their funding in the future ;)
It's not too early - Marcelo understands that 2.6 is where all of the new development should be taking place. 2.4 needs to become what 2.2 and 2.0 have become - the ultra-stable, thoroughly tested kernel that you use on boxes that simply cannot go down.
I think 2.2 was also closed down pretty fast when 2.4 was released. Then it was reopened, IIRC, for a while because early 2.4 was so horrible. Check the linux-kernel archives for more info.
What you suggest will never happen, because Linus has made it absolutely clear that the Linux kernel will NEVER have a binary-compatible ABI. He absolutely refuses to support closed-source binary modules and will NOT accept patches to the kernel to make it friendly to such modules.
Why? Because it goes against the spirit of the GPL AND because it's a legal grey area which could result in frivolous lawsuits which could waste the time of the OSS community, like SCO is so successfully doing right now.
Unless Linus changes his mind (unlikely) or hardware manufacturers GPL their code and/or release full programming specs, then the status quo will undoubtedly remain.
You don't need the nForce drivers anymore to make the nVidia Ethernet driver work properly; the 2.6.0 kernel, and IIRC the 2.4.23 kernel, include a reverse-engineered driver called forcedeth for the nVidia Ethernet controller on the nForce, nForce2 and nForce3 chipsets.
The latest patches can be found here
Yes, but conversely Linux can take advantage of it - SuSE, Mandrake, Red Hat and Gentoo all have functioning offerings available for purchase or download.
The only game I know of off the top of my head is Epic's Unreal Tournament 2003.
Either way, the Athlon 64 3000+, IMO, might just be what AMD is looking for to really break into the market. If the price goes below $200, then things will definitely start to get interesting for Intel.
That's what XFce 4 is supposed to be. I've switched from KDE 3.1 to XFce 4 and am amazed at how much faster logins are now - it used to take six to eight seconds to log in, and now it only takes two!
The best thing is that the Red Hat 9 RPMs integrate with the XFree86 graphical login manager, so when you reach the login screen you can select XFce 4 in lieu of KDE and switch back if you wish!
Check it out here.
Arjan van der Ven has a directory here which has RedHat RPMs available for 2.6 and all of the userspace components needed to run it properly.
This already exists - Ingo Molnar has written something called the exec-shield patch which implements this functionality in a slightly different fashion. Here is a link to one of Ingo's patch announcements.
Image: http://pcmunkey.net/h1/saddowned.jpg
When you look at the matter as an IT project, you realize just how unlikely it was to succeed. I wonder what sort of answer he'll give next week.
Pure comedy gold! The scary thing is that it even sounds like something Darl would do!
Didn't someone post a link to a T-shirt with quote #3 on it on GrokLaw?
That may be true for small projects with a limited set of users and a relatively low profile. Could you say the same thing for projects like Mozilla, KDE, GnuCash, OpenOffice, Scribus, KDevelop or even the kernel itself?
Oh my $DEITY..... they're trying to make fast-forwarding past advertisements illegal?!?
I hope someone with a brain throws this out the moment it reaches that point. This whole thing is a crock -- it's being done only to suppress fair use rights and the like. It's just like the SCO suit -- they're trying to geta nice big wave of FUD going, and I'm sure that they know it.
What's next -- a SCO-style marathon of going after blue-haired grannies who want to watch DVDs on their Linux-based PVR system set up by their loving children?
Disclaimer: I am not a U.K. citizen.
As for their complaining, I think that network you describe has been successfully explained away as a method to protect people from crime. I.D. cards on the other hand can't be explained away so easily, which is way people are complaining about them.
The link I gave talks about it in greater detail.
|-|o\/\/ d0 `/u0 +|-|i|\|| |=0L|5 |i|3 /\/\3 |=33L?