I don't think I've mentioned traffic at all. I'm not describing traffic. A link with 0% traffic or 100% traffic has the same "bandwidth".
This tricky 'bandwidth' term you're throwing around. ..
"Bandwidth" is the "slang" term commonly used in networking to describe the bit per second capacity of a link. Hence, a symmetric "bandwidth" link is capable of transmitting the same number of bits in either direction per second. For example, if a link between A and B can be used to send say 1000 bits per second in the direction from A to B, and can be used to send 1000 bits per second in the direction from B to A, it would be classed as a symmetric bandwidth link. Note that that doesn't indicate that traffic is on the link all the time, much like the speed limit on a road doesn't indicate the amount of traffic on the road.
"Bandwidth" is certainly the technically wrong term to use - it's actually a term describing the width of a band between two frequencies. However, it's what everybody uses to describe the bit per second capacity of a link in networking circles.
The first ever links deployed in the ARPANET were 56 Kbps synchronous links.
Technically the ARPANET wasn't the "Internet". My point is more that the default assumption when designing both the orginal and modern "Internet" protocols, including those of the ARPANET, was symmetric bandwidth. I'd even go so far as saying that this wasn't a indentified assumption - up until the introduction of DSL, Cable and some forms of wireless, all bandwidth was symmetric. There was no reason to consciously design for bandwidth asymmetry, as it didn't exist.
Asymmetric bandwidth wrong in the first place
on
P2P Not Dead, Just Hiding
·
· Score: 4, Informative
TCP was designed with the assumption of a symmetric bandwidth path between the involved end points.
To try to put a figure on it, for around 80% to 90% of the Internet's history, the Internet has been run over symmetrical bandwidth links eg. 56Kbps full duplex point to point links, T1/E1s, T3/E3, Frame Relay, ATM, Token ring, the Ethernet variants etc. Asymmetric links such as DSL and cable are the exception.
It seems you are making the assumption that literally every bit they transfer (and every bit you transfer, by making that assumption) will be stored on a storage device. I'd doubt that is the case...
Metallica are selling FLACs of their live concerts here. In their FAQ they acknowledge that they know they aren't DRM protected and can be shared.
The main problem with this is Slashdot itself. When I discovered this at least six months ago I thought this was pretty major news as Metallica were one of the main, vocal opponents of DRM free music, which of course means it easily can be distributed via P2P file sharing. Do you think my Slashdot submission was noticed ? I don't ever remember seeing it.
Maybe Slashdot has secretly been taken over by RIAA, and don't want Metallica's change of heart to be known about by anti-DRM proponents.
I agree with your points - this is only a good thing.
Unfortunatly, the "slashdot community" has changed. It isn't primarily "free as in freedom" advocates anymore, I think it is more "free as in beer" advocates.
As one indicator, it seems that the majority of posters on this topic care most about 3D performance in the context of game playing under Linux. I.O.W, I think the "slashdot community", at least those commenting on this story, are gamers who've decided to have a go at running Linux. They just don't understand the principles behind the FOSS movement, and why open source, and specifically in this case, at least open specifications are important.
Actually, considering I could buy a PII or newer with two PCI nics, with full system specs that would thrash that sustem, for under 50 bucks, yes I would call that whole system "worthless junk".
Why spend money when you don't need to ?
The savings on your power bill alone yb upgrading to a modern mor epower efficient system/PSU would probably pay for the price of the upgrade in a few months.
You are assuming I run it often. I probably run it less than an average of 3 hours a month. The electricity savings you suggest are probably not going to pay for a new $50 machine within a decade, based on my usage patterns.
I have no real idea what kind of timeline it'd take to write a driver from scratch, nor how much an update from 2.2->2.6 would take. Anyone with any background in writing a driver, please inject.
I wouldn't expect all that much effort to move a 2.2 driver to 2.6 (which would apply to the original poster's TV card) - LDD 2nd edition goes into what is involved in a 2.2/2.4 compatible driver, and kernel developers are regularly co-developing 2.4/2.6 compatible versions of their drivers. I'd suggest it would be probably easily only a days work (probably less, maybe 3 to 4 hours) for a competent linux kernel developer. That may still be too expensive for an individual, however, the point is it could happen, because the only resource lacking is time and / or money, not the essential programming information required. Time and / or money is an "unlimited" resource, in the sense that "money" can always be made by working for it, and time can be taken from something else - switching the TV off magically produces more of it.
I'm all for them, but do you really expect this guy is going to worry about drivers in 2010 for his ancient TV tuner card? Whatever consumer level PC hardware you have today is going to be worthless junk in that sort of timeframe (6+ years). Its not much of an argument for open specs.
The four ISA 10Mbps ethernet cards I have in an old 486DX66, manufactured in 1991/92, aren't "worthless junk", and are currently supported in the latest 2.6.8.1 kernel, which this machine is capable of running (actually, it is running 2.6.7, I haven't got around to upgrading it).
Of course, if those cards had "binary" drivers, it's unlikely I would have been able to use them in recent kernels (quoting your "6+" year figure, that would probably mean the binary drivers stopped being updated around 1998), irrespective of them still working perfectly, and would have had to buy both new network cards and a new machine to fit them. I have no need to spend any money on "better" performance for what I'm using this machine for (IP routing if you're interested, not throughput based, just an experiment "lab" running routing protocols such as OSPF, BGP etc.), I would be being forced to spend money needlessly just because a hardware manufacturer won't tell me or anybody else how to get their hardware to do what it is designed to do.
I'm sure there is a lot of perfectly functional and good enough performing hardware lying around that can be useful to people - not only people like me, but also people in less priviledged countries. Open hardware programming specs ensures that those people don't end up being given "obselete" hardware that can't actually be used, just because the vendor has decided to abandon it, "driver development"-wise.
You mean like my Zoran TV tuner card that hasnt worked since the 2.2 series, despite their being public specs and sources for it? Drivers are only maintained as long as the developer is around. And unless you have the skills to write your own drivers (and most of us, including large numbers of application developers, *don't*), the having specs/source or not is irrelevant.
Why not offer to pay an open source developer to update it ? At least you have that option, independent of the manufacturer's support for doing so.
You going to have the same problem with Linux kernel version 4.0, when Nvidia don't provide a driver for their XYZ card in 2010. Problem is, at that time, you won't have access to the specs, so you won't even have the option of paying an open source developer to update the driver for you.
After all, my Uncle says that is what they do with the radio active mining equipment, and he has been down the largest uranium mine in Australia - Olympic Dam.
Who in their right minds is going to buy a new PC and put such an old OS on it?
Corporates who need to upgrade to a new server for performance, yet can't afford to spend huge amounts of money upgrading the applications to suit the newer OSes.
I'd be guessing you haven't worked in the large(ish) enterprise/corporate world. If you haven't, and haven't been exposed to custom applications, you probably aren't aware that hardware and the OSes to run the applications is a very, very minor cost when compared to the total costs of developing, deploying and supporting a custom application.
The great advantage of the existing PC architecture has been the fact that if your applications weren't performing fast enough, you could just throw newer hardware at it. An over-the-weekend upgrade could result in dramatic performance increases. Compare that to having to port an application to a new architecture, test it, fix bugs, and if it the opportunity was taken to improve it at the time by changing the way it worked, running training courses for users and support staff, all of which may take six to twelve months or more.
Continuing backward compatibility is probably the primary reason for the success of the PC architecture over the last twenty years.
NEW YORK -- George Soros, one of the world's richest men, has given away nearly $5 billion to promote democracy in the former Soviet bloc, Africa and Asia. Now he has a new project: defeating President Bush.
I don't exactly know how much BG has given away, although I'd doubt it would be significantly above and beyond what George Soros has given away. BG isn't the only billionair giving away large amounts of his money.
You probably know that, although your post seems to indicate that you think 3com could have provided it, just didn't.
Cisco are quite happy for you to use EIGRP, as it means you are locked into using their products, which means a constant revenue stream for them.
Route re-distribution is quite easy. If you can't be bothered doing that, I'd think your Cisco rep still has a smile on his or her face, that formed on the day you decided to use EIGRP.
that normal users won't like those answers and will stop using Linux.
Who are these "normal" users ?
You seem to think it is important that "normal" users use Linux. Would you consider Linux to be a failure if your so-called "normal" users stopped, or never started to use it ?
I'd be guessing you've started using Linux within the last 3 to 5 years, and see it as a want-to-be replacement for MS Windows on the desktop. Am I right ?
Question for the Kernel coders, what perctage of drivers are reverse engineered?? 60-70%
The percentage would be near 0% if not 0%. Plenty of hardware manufacturers have released open or open-enough programming specifications for their hardware. Intel, AMD and National Semiconductor are a few examples.
Slashdot Mirror
You can get smartd to execute tests automatically, using the -s option.
In my smartd.conf file, I have :
-s (L/../../7/03|S/../.././05)
on the device lines, which means do a weekly online long test at 3 am Sunday, and a daily online short test at 5 am every day.
mdadm running as a daemon, and watching the md arrays is also a good idea.
Traffic has never been symmetric.
I don't think I've mentioned traffic at all. I'm not describing traffic. A link with 0% traffic or 100% traffic has the same "bandwidth".
This tricky 'bandwidth' term you're throwing around. . .
"Bandwidth" is the "slang" term commonly used in networking to describe the bit per second capacity of a link. Hence, a symmetric "bandwidth" link is capable of transmitting the same number of bits in either direction per second. For example, if a link between A and B can be used to send say 1000 bits per second in the direction from A to B, and can be used to send 1000 bits per second in the direction from B to A, it would be classed as a symmetric bandwidth link. Note that that doesn't indicate that traffic is on the link all the time, much like the speed limit on a road doesn't indicate the amount of traffic on the road.
"Bandwidth" is certainly the technically wrong term to use - it's actually a term describing the width of a band between two frequencies. However, it's what everybody uses to describe the bit per second capacity of a link in networking circles.
The first ever links deployed in the ARPANET were 56 Kbps synchronous links.
Technically the ARPANET wasn't the "Internet". My point is more that the default assumption when designing both the orginal and modern "Internet" protocols, including those of the ARPANET, was symmetric bandwidth. I'd even go so far as saying that this wasn't a indentified assumption - up until the introduction of DSL, Cable and some forms of wireless, all bandwidth was symmetric. There was no reason to consciously design for bandwidth asymmetry, as it didn't exist.
TCP was designed with the assumption of a symmetric bandwidth path between the involved end points.
To try to put a figure on it, for around 80% to 90% of the Internet's history, the Internet has been run over symmetrical bandwidth links eg. 56Kbps full duplex point to point links, T1/E1s, T3/E3, Frame Relay, ATM, Token ring, the Ethernet variants etc. Asymmetric links such as DSL and cable are the exception.
TCP has performance issues when run over paths which involve asymmetric bandwidth links. They are described in RFC 3449 - TCP Performance Implications of Network Path Asymmetry.
It seems you are making the assumption that literally every bit they transfer (and every bit you transfer, by making that assumption) will be stored on a storage device. I'd doubt that is the case ...
Move along, nothing to see here.
Metallica are selling FLACs of their live concerts here. In their FAQ they acknowledge that they know they aren't DRM protected and can be shared.
The main problem with this is Slashdot itself. When I discovered this at least six months ago I thought this was pretty major news as Metallica were one of the main, vocal opponents of DRM free music, which of course means it easily can be distributed via P2P file sharing. Do you think my Slashdot submission was noticed ? I don't ever remember seeing it.
Maybe Slashdot has secretly been taken over by RIAA, and don't want Metallica's change of heart to be known about by anti-DRM proponents.
Of course, it also means less half-naked people too !
I agree with your points - this is only a good thing.
Unfortunatly, the "slashdot community" has changed. It isn't primarily "free as in freedom" advocates anymore, I think it is more "free as in beer" advocates.
As one indicator, it seems that the majority of posters on this topic care most about 3D performance in the context of game playing under Linux. I.O.W, I think the "slashdot community", at least those commenting on this story, are gamers who've decided to have a go at running Linux. They just don't understand the principles behind the FOSS movement, and why open source, and specifically in this case, at least open specifications are important.
I'm curious what data you've used to come to such an absolute conclusion about the spending habits of open source users ?
Actually, considering I could buy a PII or newer with two PCI nics, with full system specs that would thrash that sustem, for under 50 bucks, yes I would call that whole system "worthless junk".
Why spend money when you don't need to ?
The savings on your power bill alone yb upgrading to a modern mor epower efficient system/PSU would probably pay for the price of the upgrade in a few months.
You are assuming I run it often. I probably run it less than an average of 3 hours a month. The electricity savings you suggest are probably not going to pay for a new $50 machine within a decade, based on my usage patterns.
I have no real idea what kind of timeline it'd take to write a driver from scratch, nor how much an update from 2.2->2.6 would take. Anyone with any background in writing a driver, please inject.
I wouldn't expect all that much effort to move a 2.2 driver to 2.6 (which would apply to the original poster's TV card) - LDD 2nd edition goes into what is involved in a 2.2/2.4 compatible driver, and kernel developers are regularly co-developing 2.4/2.6 compatible versions of their drivers. I'd suggest it would be probably easily only a days work (probably less, maybe 3 to 4 hours) for a competent linux kernel developer. That may still be too expensive for an individual, however, the point is it could happen, because the only resource lacking is time and / or money, not the essential programming information required. Time and / or money is an "unlimited" resource, in the sense that "money" can always be made by working for it, and time can be taken from something else - switching the TV off magically produces more of it.
I'm all for them, but do you really expect this guy is going to worry about drivers in 2010 for his ancient TV tuner card? Whatever consumer level PC hardware you have today is going to be worthless junk in that sort of timeframe (6+ years). Its not much of an argument for open specs.
The four ISA 10Mbps ethernet cards I have in an old 486DX66, manufactured in 1991/92, aren't "worthless junk", and are currently supported in the latest 2.6.8.1 kernel, which this machine is capable of running (actually, it is running 2.6.7, I haven't got around to upgrading it).
Of course, if those cards had "binary" drivers, it's unlikely I would have been able to use them in recent kernels (quoting your "6+" year figure, that would probably mean the binary drivers stopped being updated around 1998), irrespective of them still working perfectly, and would have had to buy both new network cards and a new machine to fit them. I have no need to spend any money on "better" performance for what I'm using this machine for (IP routing if you're interested, not throughput based, just an experiment "lab" running routing protocols such as OSPF, BGP etc.), I would be being forced to spend money needlessly just because a hardware manufacturer won't tell me or anybody else how to get their hardware to do what it is designed to do.
I'm sure there is a lot of perfectly functional and good enough performing hardware lying around that can be useful to people - not only people like me, but also people in less priviledged countries. Open hardware programming specs ensures that those people don't end up being given "obselete" hardware that can't actually be used, just because the vendor has decided to abandon it, "driver development"-wise.
,only other English speaking countries spell it "cheque" - a printed form, used instead of money, to make payments from your bank account.
DRI Project
You mean like my Zoran TV tuner card that hasnt worked since the 2.2 series, despite their being public specs and sources for it? Drivers are only maintained as long as the developer is around. And unless you have the skills to write your own drivers (and most of us, including large numbers of application developers, *don't*), the having specs/source or not is irrelevant.
Why not offer to pay an open source developer to update it ? At least you have that option, independent of the manufacturer's support for doing so.
You going to have the same problem with Linux kernel version 4.0, when Nvidia don't provide a driver for their XYZ card in 2010. Problem is, at that time, you won't have access to the specs, so you won't even have the option of paying an open source developer to update the driver for you.
After all, my Uncle says that is what they do with the radio active mining equipment, and he has been down the largest uranium mine in Australia - Olympic Dam.
At least I think so, I lost count. A few more ?s would have helped.
purchased over the last five years which you never bothered to register,
So it is their fault that YOU didn't register the product ?
Learn to take some personal responsibility for your actions, or lack thereof in this specific case.
First step in your learning process, read Weapons of Mass Delusion: America's Real National Emergency, Chapter 4, "Why Stop The Buck, When You Can Pass It?"
Who in their right minds is going to buy a new PC and put such an old OS on it?
Corporates who need to upgrade to a new server for performance, yet can't afford to spend huge amounts of money upgrading the applications to suit the newer OSes.
I'd be guessing you haven't worked in the large(ish) enterprise/corporate world. If you haven't, and haven't been exposed to custom applications, you probably aren't aware that hardware and the OSes to run the applications is a very, very minor cost when compared to the total costs of developing, deploying and supporting a custom application.
The great advantage of the existing PC architecture has been the fact that if your applications weren't performing fast enough, you could just throw newer hardware at it. An over-the-weekend upgrade could result in dramatic performance increases. Compare that to having to port an application to a new architecture, test it, fix bugs, and if it the opportunity was taken to improve it at the time by changing the way it worked, running training courses for users and support staff, all of which may take six to twelve months or more.
Continuing backward compatibility is probably the primary reason for the success of the PC architecture over the last twenty years.
Soros's Deep Pockets vs. Bush
NEW YORK -- George Soros, one of the world's richest men, has given away nearly $5 billion to promote democracy in the former Soviet bloc, Africa and Asia. Now he has a new project: defeating President Bush.
I don't exactly know how much BG has given away, although I'd doubt it would be significantly above and beyond what George Soros has given away. BG isn't the only billionair giving away large amounts of his money.
You probably know that, although your post seems to indicate that you think 3com could have provided it, just didn't.
Cisco are quite happy for you to use EIGRP, as it means you are locked into using their products, which means a constant revenue stream for them.
Route re-distribution is quite easy. If you can't be bothered doing that, I'd think your Cisco rep still has a smile on his or her face, that formed on the day you decided to use EIGRP.
Distributed Multihead X Project
that normal users won't like those answers and will stop using Linux.
Who are these "normal" users ?
You seem to think it is important that "normal" users use Linux. Would you consider Linux to be a failure if your so-called "normal" users stopped, or never started to use it ?
I'd be guessing you've started using Linux within the last 3 to 5 years, and see it as a want-to-be replacement for MS Windows on the desktop. Am I right ?
then exercise your freedom of choice, and stop using Linux.
Question for the Kernel coders, what perctage of drivers are reverse engineered?? 60-70%
The percentage would be near 0% if not 0%. Plenty of hardware manufacturers have released open or open-enough programming specifications for their hardware. Intel, AMD and National Semiconductor are a few examples.
For example, here are the programming specifications for my network card, a Netgear FA312 - DP83815 10 100 Mb s Integrated PCI Ethernet Media Access Controller and Physical Layer (MacPhyter)
Companies like NVidia and ATi are the exception, not the rule.