The scheduler may not make a difference if the user is only running one single threaded application, but how many users really do that? What about users who do multiple things at once? The 3d designer, who might be using his modeling program while his computer raytraces a scene. The script kiddie who is recompressing a movie to a smaller size under a different format while playing doom 3. The photographer who surfs the web while waiting for his editing program to finish a processor intensive filtering job--I remember the Resynthesizer GIMP plugin would sometimes take hours to complete a job.
I don't see why everyone thinks you need to fork the entire kernel for this. I would think you only need to maintain changes for a few files like sched.c and the like. But, as has already been pointed out, an easy "nice" (scheduler priority) system for the desktop user would probably be much more helpful. Top/nice can sort of do the job, but they are not graphical and mouse driven. I don't use KDE / GNOME much, but I haven't seen anything in them which allows one to manipulate nice levels. On my desktop system I set my daemons to a higher nice level and start xdm with a nice level of -2. I don't know if it helps, but seems like the right thing to do...
If we're talking a more responsive UI, here too we are not talking about heavy thread contention....
I think the main problem with many apps on todays supercomputers would be using bloated "desktop environment" crap like GNOME and KDE or poorly designed apps like Mozilla/Firefox and the screwed up "Web 2.0" pages they view. Those should run easily on 100 MHz machines, yet they are slow on multi-GHz computers. WTF?
Or things like that. X, itself is of course no performance deamon (due to it's network centric design), but you can't change X without breaking X-compatibility - basically it would be something else entirely.
Xlib could be changed to detect whether the connection is local or remote and use direct kernel calls to draw primitives for local connections. You could create a local only server which more or less sets up the kernel mechanism, handles IPC and higher level things. There would be a second daemon to run for remote connections, if they are needed. I don't see how such a design would break X compatiblity...
Since this is a different uncensored version, it could very well be people who have bought the game also want to see the AO version. I think it would have been better for the guy to say, "if you do download this, at least buy our game so we can get paid. Otherwise we might not be able to produce another."
Then again, maybe that is what he said or wanted to say. In our soundbyte society, that message probably wouldn't have survived the press anyway.
The "copy = lost sale" argument is just bullshit idiot control freaks spray to defend their copy protection and drm crap. All it does is make it so legit honest customers have problems using the product they buy and the warez junkies crack it in a matter of days. The warez leeches probably wouldn't buy it if someone didn't offer for download. It is not possible to make uncrackable copy protection because there are millions of monkeys out there with nothing better to do but try to crack the "latest and greatest" copy protection. In fact, they get high off it. They are just like drug junkies, they'll spend obscene amounts of money and time towards their habit.
Copy protection doesn't stand a chance. Game makers should just try to sell to the honest people, and most people are honest--especally the older crowd. Yet they focus all their effort on attracting the stupid and superficial--most of which are preteen script kiddies who couldn't possibly afford the crappy game in the first place. WTF?
Oh come on! You aren't a real programmer. Everyone knows the binary is the source code. My uncle eddy doesn't even need those fancy disassemblers or debuggers. He edits memory by looking at LEDs and flipping dip switches. Now that is a real programmer.
I used to run Lynx, but many sites require javascript these days. Though if I didn't have to worry about javascript these days, I'd probably go with dillo. Mozilla and Firefox both take several seconds to start up on my 1.8GHz supercomputer!
Realize you are talking to someone who, when his hard drive died, didn't buy a new one for a year because he was satisfied with using boot floppies and a live CD.
That was my point. This was a reply to your other post about backing up your facts. Sometimes you are the source (how can you prove that over the internet?) and sometimes the source is a news story you read six months ago, and it would take a long time to find the link.
Insane markup? Luckily for you, Slashdot is not about journalistic integrity. Otherwise I'd have to ask you to cite some sources for your "facts". It is so much easier to throw accusations around without having to back them up, isn't it?
What the hell are with the silly posts? Use a live CD? Does everyone here use Win98 now? Haven't they heard of filesystem permissions which have been in Linux (and other Unix/Posix style systems) for years?
Make sure that the permissions on each person's home directory are such that they can't write to eachother's directory, and you're set
Then we get to here. You must be using one brain dead distro if you have to worry the adduser script will set the home directory's permission to allow everyone write access.
However, it does seem silly that my distro defaults to allowing everyone read access. I change that. Use a different directory if you want to share...
...and if you are really paraniod, set the/home partiton to noexec. Maybe even change the permissions so the user(s) can't write anywhere, not even their home. Perhaps leave the cache, but if they don't need to save files, it may be easier to just create one guest account and only allow it to write to cache and bookmarks. That way they can't even mess up the settings. I would think the old people would prefer sharing bookmarks. Especially if they are learning about the internet. Assuming they're not bookmarking anything they would be embarrassed about. I would also run a dns caching program (dnsmasq) to speed things up and save your ISP's resources.
Yeah, but then it would work like a normal computer. People might actually have the gall to think they are allowed to write programs for it. Then the "evil hackers" will find a way. Next thing you know...OMG! Those nasty "pirates" might be able to write programs without paying the console manufacturer their "rightful" penance! Oh may the royal subjects of the console lords never be so bold!
All hell will break loose! Oh the humanity!!! AAAAArr rrgggghhh!! aaaahhhhh hhhhhh!!!!! SCARY.
Ah yes, the infamous slashdot "you should have searched three hours for that obscure link even though 99% of slashdot readers have already seen it" argument. Few are willing to waste that much time for a slashdot post, so the troll "wins."
From what it sounded to me, they were using the direction of the spin of the electrons to hold the information. There are only two directions, so that is why you only get binary. I suppose if you found a way to read the spin of each individual electron, you'd be able to store mulitple bits per atom. And yes, this is new (certainly for computers), as currently there are two types of RAM used most of the time: SRAM and DRAM.
SRAM uses only transistors to store the data. This takes several components, so it is very big and expensive, but also very fast. DRAM uses a capacitor to store the data and a transistor to select it. This only requires two components, but accessing the capacitor is slower and the capacitor slowly loses the charge, so it has to be refreshed within a certain amount of time, or the data it holds will be lost. Both of those require components which at minimum will be several atoms big, so creating a memory cell the size of an atom will most certainly reduce the size of RAM.
There is also trinary systems. This is probably what you where trying to get at. I have heard of RAM based on trinary, but I don't know if it is in use yet. I don't think it would work here as there are only two directions the electron spins. The trinary RAM I think is based on having the capacitor with either a positive voltage, negative voltage or no voltage across it. That is what gives the three possible states. With a capacitor, you could have more, but you'd have to use analog style circuits and probably higher refresh rates, which would mean higher failure rates and other problems.
That is a very simple explanation from what I know, and technically there are other types of RAM, but hopefully it gave you an idea what is going on.
The first thing I found that really aggravated me was how hard it was to set up a simple FTP server
Problem is: to make a easy ftp setup, the project needs to make it easy to set up the server securely, otherwise people who use the easy tool will just be screwing themselves. It won't be very easy if your box is rooted.
I still don't even know what the last two 0's on/etc/fstab lines are supposed to mean.
They are both optional. The first one indicates if you want to backup with dump. The second one indicates whether you want the filesystem fscked at boot (0=no check), the fs is the root filesystem to be checked (a 1), or it is a non root filesystem to be checked (listed as 2). It's all in the man page for fstab. Problem is, the GUI tool to look up man pages (xman) sucks ass--you can't type in the command/file to look up and you have to select it from a HUGE list. Maybe there is a better one out there, but I haven't seen it...
I'm thinking maybe a repository of XML based configuration frontends loaded up by a single dynamic configuration program would be a good start...
If you want to get rid of the somewhat human readable text files, then at least you should go for a more machine readable format. Yeah, you can't edit binary files with a text editor, but it would save programming effort, complexity and CPU time. Why should we be afraid to use hex editors when needed anyway?;-=)
It is good from a performance standpoint to put drawing functions into the kernel. That is why they made DRI. But actual GUI functions would just be a mess. Toolkits and such work fine in userland. My wish would be if they integrated graphics into the virtual terminal switching so one could easily have multiple graphical apps beyond running them on a X server.
Figuring out how to make a framebuffer app not screw up when the virtual console was switched really really sucked. Maybe things have improved since I tried last, but I don't think so. I don't think my proprietary driver NVidia card even supports the framebuffer at all anyway. This is why I just use X all the time. Most apps are written for it anyway. Oh well.
The worst thing is permissions editing in Nautilus....
This is a big problem with many apps and toolkits I've seen. How many file save dialogs have you seen which allow you to set permissions and the group? I can't recall seeing any. It's like they were made for a system which doesn't have file permissions. This needs to change.
As I understood, one of the entertainment "industry" proposals was to watermark everything then convince or require by law that consumer electronic manufacturers put watermark detection into their hardware. Such hardware wouldn't copy or play "unauthorized" watermarks. In fact, wasn't this put into the SSSCA?
I was talking about running a "server." The bans by home ISPs on "servers", floating IP addresses and such reduced what is "allowed" on the internet.
NAT and firewalls which block everything except web traffic will make it worse and doesn't really increase security. If they are not secure, you shouldn't be running daemons which are connected to internet bound ports anyway. If you are running a test web server bind it to localhost, not *.
Yeah, MS software often binds to ports and there is no easy way to turn it off (if at all), but that is just another reason to avoid using their software. Firewalling those ports just puts a band-aid on the problem. There is no guarantee someone won't find a way to get through your firewall.
As for banning "servers": Talkd was the first IM system, not AIM. Why should I have to use AOL's proprietary server (and their absurd rules--how long till they make us watch adverts while we chat?) when I could do it myself? According to you, I shouldn't be allowed to do this? Wouldn't the internet be more useful if home users where allowed to do things outside of your box? What if I developed a collaboration system? Lets say it is completely text based so you can't say "well, it will gobble up your ISP's bandwidth" Does this mean I have to rent server space somewhere? Yeah, the price for that has come down, but why should I have to find somewhere else when my home computer will be much easier and will do the job?
web surfing -- exactly my point. The internet is supposed to work with much more than just your WebTV rig. Doing anything more these days isn't allowed on ISPs serving home users, which is exactly what I was complaining about.
The single easiest step being to plug a cheap $20 router between the computer and the internet.
Let me guess: that would be either NAT or a firewall which blocks all incoming connections. So your solution to security problems is to break two way communication on the internet? I suppose your solution to someone being harrassed by telephone would be to put in a box which blocks incoming calls.
The internet will only be "slowed down" by 3.4% if everyone uses the minimum packet size. This is unlikely, and a network won't exactly be slowed down by this amount unless it is 100% saturated 100% of the time.
Everyone needs their own IP address. You must be one of those people who think the internet is just a gateway to the web and email. The truth is the internet can be used for much more. How about two way communications instead of just "surfing the WebTV(TM) innernet tubes." It only works if everyone has their own IP address, preferably static so they don't have to play with things like dyndns. The current state of floating IPs and NAT and no servers allowed by ISPs sucks goat guy balls. When will we have the true promise of the internet?
Slashdot Mirror
The scheduler may not make a difference if the user is only running one single threaded application, but how many users really do that? What about users who do multiple things at once? The 3d designer, who might be using his modeling program while his computer raytraces a scene. The script kiddie who is recompressing a movie to a smaller size under a different format while playing doom 3. The photographer who surfs the web while waiting for his editing program to finish a processor intensive filtering job--I remember the Resynthesizer GIMP plugin would sometimes take hours to complete a job.
I don't see why everyone thinks you need to fork the entire kernel for this. I would think you only need to maintain changes for a few files like sched.c and the like. But, as has already been pointed out, an easy "nice" (scheduler priority) system for the desktop user would probably be much more helpful. Top/nice can sort of do the job, but they are not graphical and mouse driven. I don't use KDE / GNOME much, but I haven't seen anything in them which allows one to manipulate nice levels. On my desktop system I set my daemons to a higher nice level and start xdm with a nice level of -2. I don't know if it helps, but seems like the right thing to do...
I think the main problem with many apps on todays supercomputers would be using bloated "desktop environment" crap like GNOME and KDE or poorly designed apps like Mozilla/Firefox and the screwed up "Web 2.0" pages they view. Those should run easily on 100 MHz machines, yet they are slow on multi-GHz computers. WTF?
Xlib could be changed to detect whether the connection is local or remote and use direct kernel calls to draw primitives for local connections. You could create a local only server which more or less sets up the kernel mechanism, handles IPC and higher level things. There would be a second daemon to run for remote connections, if they are needed. I don't see how such a design would break X compatiblity...
That guy was being sarcastic.
It looks like you've done detailed research on pr0n. May I join your project?
Since this is a different uncensored version, it could very well be people who have bought the game also want to see the AO version. I think it would have been better for the guy to say, "if you do download this, at least buy our game so we can get paid. Otherwise we might not be able to produce another."
Then again, maybe that is what he said or wanted to say. In our soundbyte society, that message probably wouldn't have survived the press anyway.
The "copy = lost sale" argument is just bullshit idiot control freaks spray to defend their copy protection and drm crap. All it does is make it so legit honest customers have problems using the product they buy and the warez junkies crack it in a matter of days. The warez leeches probably wouldn't buy it if someone didn't offer for download. It is not possible to make uncrackable copy protection because there are millions of monkeys out there with nothing better to do but try to crack the "latest and greatest" copy protection. In fact, they get high off it. They are just like drug junkies, they'll spend obscene amounts of money and time towards their habit.
Copy protection doesn't stand a chance. Game makers should just try to sell to the honest people, and most people are honest--especally the older crowd. Yet they focus all their effort on attracting the stupid and superficial--most of which are preteen script kiddies who couldn't possibly afford the crappy game in the first place. WTF?
Oh come on! You aren't a real programmer. Everyone knows the binary is the source code. My uncle eddy doesn't even need those fancy disassemblers or debuggers. He edits memory by looking at LEDs and flipping dip switches. Now that is a real programmer.
I use e3 for my editing needs. The staticly linked binary is just under 13k.
I used to run Lynx, but many sites require javascript these days. Though if I didn't have to worry about javascript these days, I'd probably go with dillo. Mozilla and Firefox both take several seconds to start up on my 1.8GHz supercomputer!
Realize you are talking to someone who, when his hard drive died, didn't buy a new one for a year because he was satisfied with using boot floppies and a live CD.
That was my point. This was a reply to your other post about backing up your facts. Sometimes you are the source (how can you prove that over the internet?) and sometimes the source is a news story you read six months ago, and it would take a long time to find the link.
Insane markup? Luckily for you, Slashdot is not about journalistic integrity. Otherwise I'd have to ask you to cite some sources for your "facts". It is so much easier to throw accusations around without having to back them up, isn't it?
( Just making a point.
You mean I can't have a username like snapcracklepop??? There goes my Rice Crispies(r) storyline!
What the hell are with the silly posts? Use a live CD? Does everyone here use Win98 now? Haven't they heard of filesystem permissions which have been in Linux (and other Unix/Posix style systems) for years?
Then we get to here. You must be using one brain dead distro if you have to worry the adduser script will set the home directory's permission to allow everyone write access.
However, it does seem silly that my distro defaults to allowing everyone read access. I change that. Use a different directory if you want to share...
...and if you are really paraniod, set the /home partiton to noexec. Maybe even change the permissions so the user(s) can't write anywhere, not even their home. Perhaps leave the cache, but if they don't need to save files, it may be easier to just create one guest account and only allow it to write to cache and bookmarks. That way they can't even mess up the settings. I would think the old people would prefer sharing bookmarks. Especially if they are learning about the internet. Assuming they're not bookmarking anything they would be embarrassed about. I would also run a dns caching program (dnsmasq) to speed things up and save your ISP's resources.
Yeah, but then it would work like a normal computer. People might actually have the gall to think they are allowed to write programs for it. Then the "evil hackers" will find a way. Next thing you know...OMG! Those nasty "pirates" might be able to write programs without paying the console manufacturer their "rightful" penance! Oh may the royal subjects of the console lords never be so bold!
All hell will break loose! Oh the humanity!!! AAAAArr rrgggghhh!! aaaahhhhh hhhhhh!!!!! SCARY.
Ah yes, the infamous slashdot "you should have searched three hours for that obscure link even though 99% of slashdot readers have already seen it" argument. Few are willing to waste that much time for a slashdot post, so the troll "wins."
From what it sounded to me, they were using the direction of the spin of the electrons to hold the information. There are only two directions, so that is why you only get binary. I suppose if you found a way to read the spin of each individual electron, you'd be able to store mulitple bits per atom. And yes, this is new (certainly for computers), as currently there are two types of RAM used most of the time: SRAM and DRAM.
SRAM uses only transistors to store the data. This takes several components, so it is very big and expensive, but also very fast. DRAM uses a capacitor to store the data and a transistor to select it. This only requires two components, but accessing the capacitor is slower and the capacitor slowly loses the charge, so it has to be refreshed within a certain amount of time, or the data it holds will be lost. Both of those require components which at minimum will be several atoms big, so creating a memory cell the size of an atom will most certainly reduce the size of RAM.
There is also trinary systems. This is probably what you where trying to get at. I have heard of RAM based on trinary, but I don't know if it is in use yet. I don't think it would work here as there are only two directions the electron spins. The trinary RAM I think is based on having the capacitor with either a positive voltage, negative voltage or no voltage across it. That is what gives the three possible states. With a capacitor, you could have more, but you'd have to use analog style circuits and probably higher refresh rates, which would mean higher failure rates and other problems.
That is a very simple explanation from what I know, and technically there are other types of RAM, but hopefully it gave you an idea what is going on.
Problem is: to make a easy ftp setup, the project needs to make it easy to set up the server securely, otherwise people who use the easy tool will just be screwing themselves. It won't be very easy if your box is rooted.
They are both optional. The first one indicates if you want to backup with dump. The second one indicates whether you want the filesystem fscked at boot (0=no check), the fs is the root filesystem to be checked (a 1), or it is a non root filesystem to be checked (listed as 2). It's all in the man page for fstab. Problem is, the GUI tool to look up man pages (xman) sucks ass--you can't type in the command/file to look up and you have to select it from a HUGE list. Maybe there is a better one out there, but I haven't seen it...
If you want to get rid of the somewhat human readable text files, then at least you should go for a more machine readable format. Yeah, you can't edit binary files with a text editor, but it would save programming effort, complexity and CPU time. Why should we be afraid to use hex editors when needed anyway? ;-=)
It is good from a performance standpoint to put drawing functions into the kernel. That is why they made DRI. But actual GUI functions would just be a mess. Toolkits and such work fine in userland. My wish would be if they integrated graphics into the virtual terminal switching so one could easily have multiple graphical apps beyond running them on a X server.
Figuring out how to make a framebuffer app not screw up when the virtual console was switched really really sucked. Maybe things have improved since I tried last, but I don't think so. I don't think my proprietary driver NVidia card even supports the framebuffer at all anyway. This is why I just use X all the time. Most apps are written for it anyway. Oh well.
This is a big problem with many apps and toolkits I've seen. How many file save dialogs have you seen which allow you to set permissions and the group? I can't recall seeing any. It's like they were made for a system which doesn't have file permissions. This needs to change.
Just put a bomb in the predator. When it finishes its job or threatens a villager, send the signal and you don't have a problem.
Yeah, but the article says it is illegal to kill the monkeys.
As I understood, one of the entertainment "industry" proposals was to watermark everything then convince or require by law that consumer electronic manufacturers put watermark detection into their hardware. Such hardware wouldn't copy or play "unauthorized" watermarks. In fact, wasn't this put into the SSSCA?
Actually such a system seems to be in place for banknotes and photoshop... I also heard some printer drivers do this. Seems to require lots more CPU time as one would expect. Here are some interesting articles: Adobe anti-counterfeiting code trips up kosher users. Currency Detector Easy to Defeat.
What about soaps with citric acid ("Lemon scented")? I heard they kill bacteria. Is citric acid effective? Does it cause mutations?
I was talking about running a "server." The bans by home ISPs on "servers", floating IP addresses and such reduced what is "allowed" on the internet.
NAT and firewalls which block everything except web traffic will make it worse and doesn't really increase security. If they are not secure, you shouldn't be running daemons which are connected to internet bound ports anyway. If you are running a test web server bind it to localhost, not *.
Yeah, MS software often binds to ports and there is no easy way to turn it off (if at all), but that is just another reason to avoid using their software. Firewalling those ports just puts a band-aid on the problem. There is no guarantee someone won't find a way to get through your firewall.
As for banning "servers": Talkd was the first IM system, not AIM. Why should I have to use AOL's proprietary server (and their absurd rules--how long till they make us watch adverts while we chat?) when I could do it myself? According to you, I shouldn't be allowed to do this? Wouldn't the internet be more useful if home users where allowed to do things outside of your box? What if I developed a collaboration system? Lets say it is completely text based so you can't say "well, it will gobble up your ISP's bandwidth" Does this mean I have to rent server space somewhere? Yeah, the price for that has come down, but why should I have to find somewhere else when my home computer will be much easier and will do the job?
web surfing -- exactly my point. The internet is supposed to work with much more than just your WebTV rig. Doing anything more these days isn't allowed on ISPs serving home users, which is exactly what I was complaining about.
Let me guess: that would be either NAT or a firewall which blocks all incoming connections. So your solution to security problems is to break two way communication on the internet? I suppose your solution to someone being harrassed by telephone would be to put in a box which blocks incoming calls.
Yaar! Let's turn the inner-net into WebTV(tm).
The internet will only be "slowed down" by 3.4% if everyone uses the minimum packet size. This is unlikely, and a network won't exactly be slowed down by this amount unless it is 100% saturated 100% of the time.
Everyone needs their own IP address. You must be one of those people who think the internet is just a gateway to the web and email. The truth is the internet can be used for much more. How about two way communications instead of just "surfing the WebTV(TM) innernet tubes." It only works if everyone has their own IP address, preferably static so they don't have to play with things like dyndns. The current state of floating IPs and NAT and no servers allowed by ISPs sucks goat guy balls. When will we have the true promise of the internet?