The NATO and the German army are using unmodified Windows NT, running Microsoft Office, in the Kosovo and Bosnia. The German army is using Lotus Notes, the export version, to communicate internally. The Swedish govment is using Lotus Notes, the export version, to communicate internally.
Be afraid. Very afraid.
Mirrors and What is GNUstep?
on
GNUstep 0.6.0
·
· Score: 5
GNUstep is an attempt to provide an Object-Oriented application development framework and tool set for use on a wide variety of computer platforms. GNUstep is based on the original OpenStep specification provided by NeXT, Inc. (now Apple).
GNUstep is written in Objective-C, the language from which the Signal/Slot concept of Qt was borrowed. Objective-C is basically standard C with one single syntax addition and a dozen or so additional keywords. That is all that is needed to implement an object system that is more powerful than that of that other language. In Objective-C all method calls are done via a mechanism that is similar to, but slighly more efficient than, the signal/slot mechanism of Qt. This has some interesting implications for the implementation of remote method invocation, on object serialization and some other things that are very hip in a Corba context.
Like Nextstep, GNUstep has a record of technical excellence that even today is unmatched by any other object framework, and of abysmal PR performance (also unmatched:-). A current commercial implementation of the same API (same API, different code) is the foundation of MacOS X.
What are the implications of this regarding the Microsoft Passport programme? From hotmail.com:
Microsoft® Passport is a single, secure way for you to sign in to multiple Internet sites using one member name and password. And now, as an MSNTM HotmailTM member, you can use your Hotmail member name and password as your Passport!
That means you can use your Hotmail member name and password to sign in to Hotmail as well as many other Passport sites-without having to retype any information. This summer, many of the MSN sites will begin accepting your Passport, as will other major Internet sites later on this year.
Here's how it works: If you sign in to Hotmail or any other MSN site, you are automatically signed in to all MSN sites that use Passport. As you move from site to site, you'll instantly be recognized, and you'll have access to the best features the sites have to offer. Once other Internet sites begin using Passport, you'll also be able to sign in to those sites with just one click-without having to re-enter any information. No multiple sign ins, no hassles!
Is there a way to transfer your forged hotmail identity to use other services under the passport programme as well?
The you should really have a look at MacOS X. It is a complete Unix environment with a Mac desktop on it. Open yourself a Terminal window and there it is, your man(1) command, your bash, your C-Compiler and your emacs.
xyz-Guru is fine, if you need a specific term, as in UNIX-Guru or similar. It fails as a general label, though. How about the Babylon-5ish "Technomage", or the more cyberpunkish "Technomancer"? I think they both have white meaning and they are more in-style then "Whiz-Kid" or "Whiz-xyz"...
In the Sweeney Paper, read chapter 5. Allocation groups allow XFS concurrent activity, where current ext2 blocks the entire filesystem when a single process grows a file. Sparse large file support works well with a 64 bit filesizes, while producing only little overhead for many small files. Dynamic allocation of inodes and organizing these inodes in B+-trees allows for a dynamic number of inodes and for a very large number (64 bit again) of files per FS. B+-tree organizing directories makes searching very large directories very fast. Log structure makes crash recovery fast even for TB sized filesystems.
By delaying allocation and not assigning physical block numbers until the buffer cache is being flushes, XFS can cluster blocks in a file much better than ext2 can do this. Integrating this change into Linux will need some work on the caching subsystem, though.
If the license for XFS is any sensible (i.e. a true Open Source license), this is the single most intelligent thing SGI could have done to score with the Open Source movement. Linux is in dire need of an Journalling File System and XFS is one of the very best of this flock.
Their white paper on XFS explains how XFS is different from conventional file systems and what they did to it to make it fast with very large files as well as with many, many small files (SGI is not Open Sourcing their GRIO capabilities, which together with RT scheduling would make Linux a serious multimedia contender).
If you are a USENIX member, you will be able to download the Sweeney paper Scalabilit y in the XFS File System from the USENIX server. It was published in the Spring 1996 proceedings of the USENIX, so you may also read it in your Universities library.
People, please. Shorten the URL and look at his homepage. This is satire, and good one, since you almost fell for it or could not decide if it was for real.
Do not forget scaling issues. It may be okay for you to install a single system, including software download and recompilation. But read that article again: They are talking about a rollout of 4000 systems. You do not download Debian 4000 times and you do not want to compile 4000 kernels.
To get such a rollout out of the door without many problems, you have to create installation servers. If you setup is a distributed setup, you may want to install a software distribution infrastructure for later software upgrades. You don't want compilers on systems deployed remotely, but you want to have a centralized testing and packaging center, where upgrade packages are being made, tested on reference hardware and then systematically installed and deployed - of course you have to keep an inventory database so that you know what version has been shipped to which system and if the install worked correctly or if it failed.
The article cited a single major problem with hardware support, caused by a video hardware change introduced by IBM. This, of course, can kill your NT rollout as well, because NT video driver setup isn't that rosy, too.
It did not talk about software distribution and maintenance issues, which I view as the major problem in a distributed rollout that size. I think that this is a good sign: While Linux has no tools that can manage and automatize such problems per se, you can surely build your own set of tools to manage such problems without to much hassle.
Of course it would be better if the distribution of your choice provided such enterprise scale deployment and maintenance tools instead of requiring that you hack them up yourself.
What AltaVista is trying to do here is to mix News, Comment and Ads. That is the problem I have with them, not the fact that they have ads.
In fact, I have no problem with ads (or comments for that matter), but I want to be able to recognize them as what they are: Biased, not objective information.
Kernighan also is (or at least was) executive editor for the Addison Wesley Professional Computing Series, which gave us among other things, the wrintings of W.R.Stevens and several other well known personalities.
Designing things of everyday use (and computers have become such a thing) requires more than just knowing to hack your way through a Slackware or a Debian system.
In general, the whole Linux coding and packaging community is sadly lacking even the basics of usability testing, proper screen and application design. The tools are generally based on incompatible cultural background, exspect you to know different paradigms where you could reasonably exspect them to work alike and all this is even before we start talking about documentation.
"If it was hard for me to learn, it should be so for everybody else" is not a valid attitude. For Open Source Software it is a killing attitude.
An ID within the processor can in no way be more trustworthy than an ID anywhere else. Consider the hardware ID in UNIX workstations you mentioned. These cannot be read by normal user code, but are read by the operating system and are made available via the hostid() system call.
Of course it is an easy example to patch your operating system to return any hostid() you desire instead of the real hostid(). In fact, you may return different hostid()s to different processes. A driver which does this for Solaris has been made available for many years. Check the comp.sources archives on USENET for more information.
The moral of this story is: In a "piracy" environment, your software cannot trust any other software, the operating system or even itself to perform as exspected. Or shorter: You cannot win.
You mean the part where Intel tries to create "a unified vision of Linux"? Right, but again, they do not understand and this is why they will fail.
As Thomas Scoville wrote in his article about the Open Source Summit: "Ultimately, Open Source is about letting go." Open Source is like Aikido or like Zen: It is action without control of the conscious mind. The moment you try to steer or channel it, you lose it.
Siemens developed the hpcLine specifically for use in High Performance Computing. The machines were presented at a customer presentation late in February. The system is based on a modular architecture featuring two dual-CPU boards. Each board can carry two Pentium-CPUs - currently PIIs with 450 MHz - and a maximum of 2048 MB RAM. Eight of these modules can be put into a rack, which is then a system with 32 CPUs.
For communication between the nodes Siemens uses the Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI), which delivers a bandwidth of 500 MB/sec within a ring-topology. SCI cards are made by Dolphin. The communication software, the Message Passing Interface (MPI) has been developed by Scali.
For Fortran, High-Performance-Fortran, C and C++ Portland Groups Compilers are available from Pallas.
Systems of these type have already been deployed by the Paderborder Center for Parallel Computing and at RWTH Aachen.
Siemens offers Windows-NT, Solaris x86 and Linux as operating system for these machines. The entry package, an 8 node system with 16 PII, 450 MHz and 512 MB RAM and 4.3 GB disk space per node comes at 130 000 Deutschmark (~75-80 Kilo-$).
This continues the trend towards the professional use of Linux in Clusters.
According to german c't there are certain hopes that the new Celerons can't be faked and repackaged. That would also be the end of overclocking, though.
Slashdot Mirror
The NATO and the German army are using unmodified Windows NT, running Microsoft Office, in the Kosovo and Bosnia. The German army is using Lotus Notes, the export version, to communicate internally. The Swedish govment is using Lotus Notes, the export version, to communicate internally.
Be afraid. Very afraid.
What is GNUstep?
GNUstep is an attempt to provide an Object-Oriented application development framework and tool set for use on a wide variety of computer platforms. GNUstep is based on the original OpenStep specification provided by NeXT, Inc. (now Apple).
GNUstep is written in Objective-C, the language from which the Signal/Slot concept of Qt was borrowed. Objective-C is basically standard C with one single syntax addition and a dozen or so additional keywords. That is all that is needed to implement an object system that is more powerful than that of that other language. In Objective-C all method calls are done via a mechanism that is similar to, but slighly more efficient than, the signal/slot mechanism of Qt. This has some interesting implications for the implementation of remote method invocation, on object serialization and some other things that are very hip in a Corba context.
Like Nextstep, GNUstep has a record of technical excellence that even today is unmatched by any other object framework, and of abysmal PR performance (also unmatched :-). A current commercial implementation of the same API (same API, different code) is the foundation of MacOS X.
No, what you are talking about is LSD, which like
BSD, comes from Berzerkeley.
The enterprise edition of Windows NT Server does make use of this. They are doing the bankswitching thing, as with EMM.
Netscape
:-)
Sun
AOL
NSA
Really makes you wonder...
Soffice is written in C++.
What are the implications of this regarding the
Microsoft Passport programme? From hotmail.com:
Microsoft® Passport is a single, secure way for you to sign in to multiple Internet sites using one member name and password. And now, as an MSNTM HotmailTM member, you can use your Hotmail member name and password as your Passport!
That means you can use your Hotmail member name and password to sign in to Hotmail as well as many other Passport sites-without having to retype any information. This summer, many of the MSN sites will begin accepting your Passport, as will other major Internet sites later on this year.
Here's how it works: If you sign in to Hotmail or any other MSN site, you are automatically signed in to all MSN sites that use Passport. As you move from site to site, you'll instantly be recognized, and you'll have access to the best features the sites have to offer. Once other Internet sites begin using Passport, you'll also be able to sign in to those sites with just one click-without having to re-enter any information. No multiple sign ins, no hassles!
Is there a way to transfer your forged hotmail identity to use other services under the passport programme as well?
The you should really have a look at MacOS X.
It is a complete Unix environment with a Mac
desktop on it. Open yourself a Terminal window
and there it is, your man(1) command, your bash,
your C-Compiler and your emacs.
xyz-Guru is fine, if you need a specific term, as in UNIX-Guru or similar. It fails as a general label, though. How about the Babylon-5ish "Technomage", or the more cyberpunkish "Technomancer"? I think they both have white meaning and they are more in-style then "Whiz-Kid" or "Whiz-xyz"...
XFS is fast and it does support big files. Here are some more XFS ressources: SGI Performance Comparisons, a text about Myths about SGI dispelled (see Myth 8 for more information about what XFS does: 6.4 GB/sec sustained rates for a 16 processor Origin) and the text of the Sweeney Paper.
In the Sweeney Paper, read chapter 5. Allocation groups allow XFS concurrent activity, where current ext2 blocks the entire filesystem when a single process grows a file. Sparse large file support works well with a 64 bit filesizes, while producing only little overhead for many small files. Dynamic allocation of inodes and organizing these inodes in B+-trees allows for a dynamic number of inodes and for a very large number (64 bit again) of files per FS. B+-tree organizing directories makes searching very large directories very fast. Log structure makes crash recovery fast even for TB sized filesystems.
By delaying allocation and not assigning physical block numbers until the buffer cache is being flushes, XFS can cluster blocks in a file much better than ext2 can do this. Integrating this change into Linux will need some work on the caching subsystem, though.
If the license for XFS is any sensible (i.e. a true Open Source license), this is the single most intelligent thing SGI could have done to score with the Open Source movement. Linux is in dire need of an Journalling File System and XFS is one of the very best of this flock.
Their white paper on XFS explains how XFS is different from conventional file systems and what they did to it to make it fast with very large files as well as with many, many small files (SGI is not Open Sourcing their GRIO capabilities, which together with RT scheduling would make Linux a serious multimedia contender).
If you are a USENIX member, you will be able to download the Sweeney paper Scalabilit y in the XFS File System from the USENIX server. It was published in the Spring 1996 proceedings of the USENIX, so you may also read it in your Universities library.
People, please. Shorten the URL and look at his
homepage. This is satire, and good one, since you
almost fell for it or could not decide if it was
for real.
Do not forget scaling issues. It may be okay for you to install a single system, including software download and recompilation. But read that article again: They are talking about a rollout of 4000 systems. You do not download Debian 4000 times and you do not want to compile 4000 kernels.
To get such a rollout out of the door without many problems, you have to create installation servers. If you setup is a distributed setup, you may want to install a software distribution infrastructure for later software upgrades. You don't want compilers on systems deployed remotely, but you want to have a centralized testing and packaging center, where upgrade packages are being made, tested on reference hardware and then systematically installed and deployed - of course you have to keep an inventory database so that you know what version has been shipped to which system and if the install worked correctly or if it failed.
The article cited a single major problem with hardware support, caused by a video hardware change introduced by IBM. This, of course, can kill your NT rollout as well, because NT video driver setup isn't that rosy, too.
It did not talk about software distribution and maintenance issues, which I view as the major problem in a distributed rollout that size. I think that this is a good sign: While Linux has no tools that can manage and automatize such problems per se, you can surely build your own set of tools to manage such problems without to much hassle.
Of course it would be better if the distribution of your choice provided such enterprise scale deployment and maintenance tools instead of requiring that you hack them up yourself.
Free Tivoli, anyone?
What AltaVista is trying to do here is to mix News, Comment and Ads. That is the problem I have with them, not the fact that they have ads.
In fact, I have no problem with ads (or comments for that matter), but I want to be able to recognize them as what they are: Biased, not objective information.
Kernighan also is (or at least was) executive editor for the Addison Wesley Professional Computing Series, which gave us among other things, the wrintings of W.R.Stevens and several other well known personalities.
Designing things of everyday use (and computers have become such a thing) requires more than just knowing to hack your way through a Slackware or a Debian system.
In general, the whole Linux coding and packaging community is sadly lacking even the basics of usability testing, proper screen and application design. The tools are generally based on incompatible cultural background, exspect you to know different paradigms where you could reasonably exspect them to work alike and all this is even before we start talking about documentation.
"If it was hard for me to learn, it should be so for everybody else" is not a valid attitude. For Open Source Software it is a killing attitude.
An ID within the processor can in no way be more trustworthy than an ID anywhere else. Consider the hardware ID in UNIX workstations you mentioned. These cannot be read by normal user code, but are read by the operating system and are made available via the hostid() system call.
Of course it is an easy example to patch your operating system to return any hostid() you desire instead of the real hostid(). In fact, you may return different hostid()s to different processes. A driver which does this for Solaris has been made available for many years. Check the comp.sources archives on USENET for more information.
The moral of this story is: In a "piracy" environment, your software cannot trust any other software, the operating system or even itself to perform as exspected. Or shorter: You cannot win.
You mean the part where Intel tries to create "a unified vision of Linux"? Right, but again, they do not understand and this is why they will fail.
As Thomas Scoville wrote in his article about the Open Source Summit: "Ultimately, Open Source is about letting go." Open Source is like Aikido or like Zen: It is action without control of the conscious mind. The moment you try to steer or channel it, you lose it.
Even Intel will have to learn this.
Siemens developed the hpcLine specifically for use in High Performance Computing. The machines were presented at a customer presentation late in February. The system is based on a modular architecture featuring two dual-CPU boards. Each board can carry two Pentium-CPUs - currently PIIs with 450 MHz - and a maximum of 2048 MB RAM. Eight of these modules can be put into a rack, which is then a system with 32 CPUs.
For communication between the nodes Siemens uses the Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI), which delivers a bandwidth of 500 MB/sec within a ring-topology. SCI cards are made by Dolphin. The communication software, the Message Passing Interface (MPI) has been developed by Scali.
For Fortran, High-Performance-Fortran, C and C++ Portland Groups Compilers are available from Pallas.
Systems of these type have already been deployed by the Paderborder Center for Parallel Computing and at RWTH Aachen.
Siemens offers Windows-NT, Solaris x86 and Linux as operating system for these machines. The entry package, an 8 node system with 16 PII, 450 MHz and 512 MB RAM and 4.3 GB disk space per node comes at 130 000 Deutschmark (~75-80 Kilo-$).
This continues the trend towards the professional use of Linux in Clusters.
Bring in the Narn Bat Squad!
According to german c't there are certain hopes that the new Celerons can't be faked and repackaged. That would also be the end of overclocking, though.