The term "distribution layer" is defined by Cisco, which is just a corporation. There is no standard where you will encounter this term.
The most well-known networking standards are the OSI model and the TCP/IP model. Neither of these standard models include the term "distribution layer", which means nothing by itself: Is it about physical-electrical distribution, data distribution or information distribution?
I personally dislike "standards" or tech-speak set by corporations and I believe international bodies and computer scientists should be preferred when it comes to standards and technical jargon: Imagine two computer scientists, one using Cisco-speak and the other knowing only Microsoft-speak, how are they going to communicate? It's impossible! - unless they both adopt a common language like these proposed in the OSI or TCP/IP model.
I personally can communicate network concepts using the OSI model, and I am completely unaware of Cisco-speak. In an attempt to answer your question, I will assume that by "distribution" Cisco means "routing", which translates to "Internet layer" in TCP/IP-speak and is related to the Internet Protocol, while in ISO-speak it translates to "Network layer". If my understanding is correct, then the answer is that no matter how small your network is, you will want to use routing, for example for connecting your small network to the Internet. Even if the routing functionality is included in a device of another layer, or even when it is implemented in software, it will always be there, no matter whether the users or even the administrator can see it, especially if you are going to use the TCP/IP protocol suite.
I always try to release under libre licences and open-source whatever I can, including my university assignments. Recently a professor asked us to program an Eliza-like chatbot, software that lets the user to discuss with a computer. He joked "the perfect language for chatbots is Perl, but you won't learn a new language just to write one program, will you?". I did: I was fascinated with the idea of learning a new language just to finish a university assignment, and I learnt Perl and finished the chatbot (including documentation) in 3 days. Now I published it under a permissive licence (BSD-like) and you can download the complete source code.
Right now I am working on my B.Sc. individual project and dissertation, doing research and evaluation of modern content management systems and wikis, as well as developing my own wiki-CMS, and I intent to release it to the libre software community too.
I encourage all students and employees to publish your work under libre licences, such as GPL, BSD or Creative-Commons, if this is allowed by your university or employer.
"was fined $3,000 plus $260 in court costs" - what I see in this sentence is that the fine was $3000 but the court costs were a mere $260. It seems that New Zealand isnot a haven for money-hungry lawyers! Contrast this figure with USA where you can declare bankruptcy just by paying court costs.
I am not a lawyer, but it says it's a scanned image. Is the first image published on the Web a copyright violation? Probably it is not, but this means that the first Web image was not very different than the today's P2P networks where people share material got from other sources. So RIAA et al should ban the whole Web if they want to keep control on music etc.
Sorry I pressed Submit before finishing my post: This means that we will have great difficulty analysing and understanding Martian bacteria, considering how easily we can miss Earthly bacteria even when their DNA sequence is available at genetic banks where everyone (on the Internet) have access. I wonder how Martian DNA will look like and whether we will be able to decode it.
we found that bacteria can live after 32000 years in frozen condition and we are considering the possibility of Martian bacteria, but we still don't know all bacteria living on Earth. We explore other planets and we know very little about our own planet. For example, we recently identified three new bacteria species by closely examining publicly available DNA data. It is surprisingly how easily we can look at a DNA sequence and miss vital information in it. All that data were available to all scientists, but just one understood that there were new species footprints hiding in them.
It uses JavaScript and requires client-side support. It also sends XML to the client. In my opinion, the Web should be based on server-side scripting, not client-side. I analysed my thought on my blog.
I, for one, like to follow such self-destructive policies. I run a site which has a policy of placing as many links as possible (in my view every word should be a link). Whenever I see that I site has a no-linking policy, I remember it and I disallow any links to it from my site. In this way I help them to kill themselves by destroying their Google pagerank, and I am very happy for that. Let them die by their own stupidity. The Web cannot be Free without links!
Some people ask why a Mac Mini owner would install Debian on it. Of course MacOS-X is a great OS, but it isn't a community-supported project. It is something you buy, not something you build by yourself (although it contains a good amount of opensource in it). Debian on the other hand is _your_ OS, something you wrote by yourself and you can feel proud for it. That's why I would install Debian if I had a Mac Mini.
I just finished writing my article on this topic. Don't forget to visit the links I give in the end which include information about the ranges of North Korean missiles.
You can learn why a fourth servicing mission is necessary by reading my article. I say: "several components of Hubble, most probably its batteries, are expected to stop operating in the next 2-4 years" and "HST was designed to be maintained with servicing missions operated from space shuttles every few years" (i.e. it is impossible to keep Hubble there without launching servicing missions, we need to fix its orbit and replace components every few years). In addition, the gyroscopes will also stop working, but I think the most important problem will be its batteries (Hubble can work with just 2 or 3 gyroscopes, but not with dead batteries).
I think we all need to support free software projects. I personally paid money to get the original Slackware 10 CDs from the Slackware Store and I have put some Slackware propaganda on my site. You can also buy t-shirts from their store or join them and report bugs. Another way to help is to show ZipSlack to your friends, if they still use Windows, so that they can familiarise themselves with a GNU/Linux system without repartitioning their disk. You can also subscribe and get Slackware CDs whenever they release a new version.
You can also find more info on how to support free software projects in general by reading this FAQ.
As I have already written in my article, the White House has no intention to pay for a fourth servicing mission, and I doubt it will pay for a new telescope. They seem to prefer to spend $80 billion for Iraq. Very simply, science isn't in the roadmap of Washington anymore. However, if anybody is willing to advocate a servicing mission, I can help.
The spirit of the patent law is to allow the inventors of useful devices to earn some money and continue living, so that they can invent more things, and also to encourage them publish the details of their inventions. So, if an inventor has invested 20 years of his life and thousands of dollars to build an anti-gravity spacecraft, then he can patent it. To do that, he must publish all details about the device and its blueprint, but in return he gets protection from the court/law system in case someone builds his spacecraft without his approval (which usually costs money).
However, in practice, patents, and especially software patents and business methods patents are used to achieve a mini-monopoly over an idea or simple device. In this way patents hurt competition and lead to higher prices in the market. In my opinion, restrictive patents are not very compatible with the free market ideas.
The law in most countries usually says that you can patent a device or implementation, but not the idea of the device, only if its construction is not evident to an expert in the field. For example if you can create a new aeroplane and its construction cannot be immediatelly described by expert engineers, then you have created something new so you can request a patent.
When you request a patent, you submit some papers and blueprints to a patent office. The investigators will check whether the patent is really new and may accept or reject it.
The problem is, how can we be sure that the investigators really do their job? How can we know that megacorps don't have the power to influence their decisions? Unfortunately, we can't.
I have been hitted hard by PayPal's decision not to send cheques to my country, which is an EU member.
I plan to use MoneyBookers instead. I have communicated with their support department for a small problem and my experience was very positive, they seem to care about their customers and they offer very good support.
Another alternative is iKobo which gives you an ATM card to withdraw money from your account.
An operating system kernel can initialise processes, grant access to file system, has some basic network protocol support et cetera. A microkernel has nothing, it can just initialise processes. GNU Mach is a microkernel. L4 is also a microkernel.
HURD is a collection of software servers running on top of a microkernel. HURD/Mach is just HURD running over the GNU Mach microkernel. HURD/L4 is a port of HURD to the L4 microkernel.
FYI the Linux kernel has also been ported to L4 and it is called L4Linux.
I get these statistics from the slashdotting of my site:
Operating Systems: 67% Windows (45.6% WinXP, 14.4% Win2000, 2.6% Win98, 1.8% Win2003, 1.3% WinNT, 0.6% WinME, 0.2% Win95) 21% GNU/Linux 6% Macintosh (5.6% MacOS-X, 0.4% MacOS old) 1% FreeBSD 0.5% Sun Solaris 0.00001% AIX (wh00t!!) 0.00000001% NetBSD
Web Browsers: 44% Mozilla Firefox (39.3% Firefox 1.0, 2.2% Firefox 0.10.1, 0.8% Firefox 0.9.3, 0.4% Firefox 0.8) 33% Microsoft Internet Explorer (30.2% ie6, 1.4% ie5.5, 0.6% ie5) 9% Mozilla (Suite) 3.5% Safari 1.7% Konqueror (I use this) 1.7% Opera 1.4% Netscape (0.3% Netscape 7.1, 0.3% Netscape 4.0, 0.2% Netscape 7.2, 0.9% Galeon 0.4% Camino 0.2% MultiZilla 0.2% K-Meleon 0.1% Links (textbrowser) 0.00001% Lotus Notes web client (wh00t!!) 0.000001% Lynx (textbrowser)
My explanation of the statistics:
Slashdotters mainly use Windows and GNU/Linux. Some of them use a Mac. There are small percentages of slashdotters who use FreeBSD and Solaris. Very few brave adventurous slashdotters run IBM AIX and NetBSD.
Windows slashdotters use primarily the WinXP version, but also Win2000. Some of them still use the good old Win98. Some brave slashdotters use Win2003.
Slashdotters primarily use the Firefox Web browser, but some of them still use MSIE. Some slashdotters prefer Mozilla and few of them run Safari and Konqueror. Few brave slashdotters use textbrowsers or even Lotus Notes as a web browser. There are still slashdotters who run Netscape 4, and some Firefox slashdotters who haven't upgraded to 1.0.
It is interesting to note that not all Mac-loving slashdotters (6%) use Safari (3.5%).
and BTW my site slashdotted, so better use a cache service to see it: Coral Cache MirrorDot
Many hanks to the people who run these cache services.
if you enjoyed this story please keep the wikinerds.org on your bookmarks. Thanks:)
Slashdot Mirror
The term "distribution layer" is defined by Cisco, which is just a corporation. There is no standard where you will encounter this term.
The most well-known networking standards are the OSI model and the TCP/IP model. Neither of these standard models include the term "distribution layer", which means nothing by itself: Is it about physical-electrical distribution, data distribution or information distribution?
I personally dislike "standards" or tech-speak set by corporations and I believe international bodies and computer scientists should be preferred when it comes to standards and technical jargon: Imagine two computer scientists, one using Cisco-speak and the other knowing only Microsoft-speak, how are they going to communicate? It's impossible! - unless they both adopt a common language like these proposed in the OSI or TCP/IP model.
I personally can communicate network concepts using the OSI model, and I am completely unaware of Cisco-speak. In an attempt to answer your question, I will assume that by "distribution" Cisco means "routing", which translates to "Internet layer" in TCP/IP-speak and is related to the Internet Protocol, while in ISO-speak it translates to "Network layer". If my understanding is correct, then the answer is that no matter how small your network is, you will want to use routing, for example for connecting your small network to the Internet. Even if the routing functionality is included in a device of another layer, or even when it is implemented in software, it will always be there, no matter whether the users or even the administrator can see it, especially if you are going to use the TCP/IP protocol suite.
I always try to release under libre licences and open-source whatever I can, including my university assignments. Recently a professor asked us to program an Eliza-like chatbot, software that lets the user to discuss with a computer. He joked "the perfect language for chatbots is Perl, but you won't learn a new language just to write one program, will you?". I did: I was fascinated with the idea of learning a new language just to finish a university assignment, and I learnt Perl and finished the chatbot (including documentation) in 3 days. Now I published it under a permissive licence (BSD-like) and you can download the complete source code.
Right now I am working on my B.Sc. individual project and dissertation, doing research and evaluation of modern content management systems and wikis, as well as developing my own wiki-CMS, and I intent to release it to the libre software community too.
I encourage all students and employees to publish your work under libre licences, such as GPL, BSD or Creative-Commons, if this is allowed by your university or employer.
You can try Hurd/L4 right now by burning a bootable CD (iso) using the Gnuppix.
You can read the interview through its Coral cache or its MirrorDot cache . There is also a Google cache.
There is also a MirrorDot-cached PDF version of the interview that can be downloaded by clicking here.
Thanks
"was fined $3,000 plus $260 in court costs" - what I see in this sentence is that the fine was $3000 but the court costs were a mere $260. It seems that New Zealand isnot a haven for money-hungry lawyers! Contrast this figure with USA where you can declare bankruptcy just by paying court costs.
I am not a lawyer, but it says it's a scanned image. Is the first image published on the Web a copyright violation? Probably it is not, but this means that the first Web image was not very different than the today's P2P networks where people share material got from other sources. So RIAA et al should ban the whole Web if they want to keep control on music etc.
Sorry I pressed Submit before finishing my post: This means that we will have great difficulty analysing and understanding Martian bacteria, considering how easily we can miss Earthly bacteria even when their DNA sequence is available at genetic banks where everyone (on the Internet) have access. I wonder how Martian DNA will look like and whether we will be able to decode it.
we found that bacteria can live after 32000 years in frozen condition and we are considering the possibility of Martian bacteria, but we still don't know all bacteria living on Earth. We explore other planets and we know very little about our own planet. For example, we recently identified three new bacteria species by closely examining publicly available DNA data. It is surprisingly how easily we can look at a DNA sequence and miss vital information in it. All that data were available to all scientists, but just one understood that there were new species footprints hiding in them.
It uses JavaScript and requires client-side support. It also sends XML to the client. In my opinion, the Web should be based on server-side scripting, not client-side. I analysed my thought on my blog.
I, for one, like to follow such self-destructive policies. I run a site which has a policy of placing as many links as possible (in my view every word should be a link). Whenever I see that I site has a no-linking policy, I remember it and I disallow any links to it from my site. In this way I help them to kill themselves by destroying their Google pagerank, and I am very happy for that. Let them die by their own stupidity. The Web cannot be Free without links!
Some people ask why a Mac Mini owner would install Debian on it. Of course MacOS-X is a great OS, but it isn't a community-supported project. It is something you buy, not something you build by yourself (although it contains a good amount of opensource in it). Debian on the other hand is _your_ OS, something you wrote by yourself and you can feel proud for it. That's why I would install Debian if I had a Mac Mini.
I just finished writing my article on this topic. Don't forget to visit the links I give in the end which include information about the ranges of North Korean missiles.
"Your browser is not supported by Google Maps just yet" - Konqueror
You can learn why a fourth servicing mission is necessary by reading my article. I say: "several components of Hubble, most probably its batteries, are expected to stop operating in the next 2-4 years" and "HST was designed to be maintained with servicing missions operated from space shuttles every few years" (i.e. it is impossible to keep Hubble there without launching servicing missions, we need to fix its orbit and replace components every few years). In addition, the gyroscopes will also stop working, but I think the most important problem will be its batteries (Hubble can work with just 2 or 3 gyroscopes, but not with dead batteries).
I think we all need to support free software projects. I personally paid money to get the original Slackware 10 CDs from the Slackware Store and I have put some Slackware propaganda on my site. You can also buy t-shirts from their store or join them and report bugs. Another way to help is to show ZipSlack to your friends, if they still use Windows, so that they can familiarise themselves with a GNU/Linux system without repartitioning their disk. You can also subscribe and get Slackware CDs whenever they release a new version.
You can also find more info on how to support free software projects in general by reading this FAQ.
As I have already written in my article, the White House has no intention to pay for a fourth servicing mission, and I doubt it will pay for a new telescope. They seem to prefer to spend $80 billion for Iraq. Very simply, science isn't in the roadmap of Washington anymore. However, if anybody is willing to advocate a servicing mission, I can help.
The spirit of the patent law is to allow the inventors of useful devices to earn some money and continue living, so that they can invent more things, and also to encourage them publish the details of their inventions. So, if an inventor has invested 20 years of his life and thousands of dollars to build an anti-gravity spacecraft, then he can patent it. To do that, he must publish all details about the device and its blueprint, but in return he gets protection from the court/law system in case someone builds his spacecraft without his approval (which usually costs money).
However, in practice, patents, and especially software patents and business methods patents are used to achieve a mini-monopoly over an idea or simple device. In this way patents hurt competition and lead to higher prices in the market. In my opinion, restrictive patents are not very compatible with the free market ideas.
The law in most countries usually says that you can patent a device or implementation, but not the idea of the device, only if its construction is not evident to an expert in the field. For example if you can create a new aeroplane and its construction cannot be immediatelly described by expert engineers, then you have created something new so you can request a patent.
When you request a patent, you submit some papers and blueprints to a patent office. The investigators will check whether the patent is really new and may accept or reject it.
The problem is, how can we be sure that the investigators really do their job? How can we know that megacorps don't have the power to influence their decisions? Unfortunately, we can't.
There are many great GNU/Linux games available, like FreeCiv.
I have been hitted hard by PayPal's decision not to send cheques to my country, which is an EU member.
I plan to use MoneyBookers instead. I have communicated with their support department for a small problem and my experience was very positive, they seem to care about their customers and they offer very good support.
Another alternative is iKobo which gives you an ATM card to withdraw money from your account.
Updated statistics: 33% of slashdot readers use GNU/Linux, and 60% use Mozilla Firefox.
"Aside from academics is there any reason whatsoever that anyone on earth would ever want to attempt to operate this?" My answer
An operating system kernel can initialise processes, grant access to file system, has some basic network protocol support et cetera. A microkernel has nothing, it can just initialise processes. GNU Mach is a microkernel. L4 is also a microkernel.
HURD is a collection of software servers running on top of a microkernel. HURD/Mach is just HURD running over the GNU Mach microkernel. HURD/L4 is a port of HURD to the L4 microkernel.
FYI the Linux kernel has also been ported to L4 and it is called L4Linux.
Coral Cache
MirrorDot
Many hanks to the people who run these cache services.
if you enjoyed this story please keep the wikinerds.org on your bookmarks. Thanks
MirrorDot Cache Link
Coral Cache Link
I have written an informative article about Hubble on my site.