Okay, i used to be a big supporter of the "slashdot should offer torrents" stuff as well, but your outrage got me reconsidering. thanks for that.
so here's my question: why all the anger directed at slashdot? is the submitter unaware of the slashdot effect? we all know that the editors don't read every article in depth (heck, it seems they don't read some at all!) so i figure the submitter has a better idea of the page's request for consideration of their bandwidth than the editors. if someone's going to be responsible for it, i'd suggest the submitter, not the editor.
also: bandwidth isn't free, even for someone like slashdot. they host, what two dozen stories a day (total guess). a high-rate submitter gets, what one a month? is it unreasonable for the submitter to say "oh, and here's a torrent i set up" in the story?
and since "it should not be difficult to do", we can assume you'll write the tools to do it, right? let us know where we can pick those up from. thanks.
We recently opened up a new R&D office in NJ (or headquarters is in MD). We decided to get Vonage lines for everyone there (one POTS line came with the office space). The experience has been solidly positive all around. I'm now on extended assignment in GB-London, and i brought the Vonage box with me - and it just worked, first time i plugged it in. Yup, i now have my US-NJ number in GB-London. We sometimes get some very small artifacts crossing the Atlantic at peak times, but even that's rare.
Should Europeans who outsourced to America tax American products given that Americans don't require workers to be near a window, don't require workers to have 5 weeks of vacation and can be fired with ease?
Yes.
i'm an american, but i've spent the last six months (and will spend the next six months) working primarily in london. england's probably the most americanized eurpoean country, and even here the difference in work expectations and environment is amazing. i'll occasionally say things - like i work overtime without being paid overtime - and get these looks like i'm from some backwards, barbaric country. europeans should defend that higher standard of worker's rights against a lowering influence from the US for the same reasons the US should defend theirs against a lowering influence from India.
that's interesting and informative. Inferno got it's in 1996 (latest, but i'm pretty sure that's right). registered. so at least on paper, the PTO doesn't think there's a conflict (and in this case i'm inclined to agree, which is rare)
i'm not sure it's a pun, technically, but it's a real pain in conversation: "when i run it through the Dis assembler it..." "hold on, why are you trying to disassemble it?" "no, no... the Dis (pause) assembler!" kind of a pain around the lab. thankfully, nobody really writes Dis directly.
Before i start pumping? Hey, man, i'm from New Jersey! We hire people to do that sort of thing around here!
(yes, i'm kidding. i think the NJ ban on pumping your own gas is dumb, and i've had to teach too many people how when outside the state because they've never had to before.)
i downloaded Inferno for free to play around with in '96. i believe it stayed that way. you didn't get the C source, but you got all the Limbo source (possibly not the compiler, if i remember right). it's not everything, but it's plenty if you're really just interested in trying it out.
also, you're improperly conflating plan 9 and inferno. this is fine in many technical senses, but the license histories are quite different. you're closer to the mark WRT plan 9, which was ~$350 to get anything beyond the very minimal 4-floppy distribution.
no, no, and no, in that order. one: the idea of portable executables is not a new thing to Java, nor is a virtual machine. Java and Inferno were started at about the same time, Java just beat Inferno to market. the fact that some solution to a problem exists shouldn't deter anyone from seeking a better one. Inferno takes a very different approach to platform portability than Java does, and manages to preserve the write-once-run-everywhere promise than Java does. two: javascript has nothing to do with java - the name was chosen as a (successful) marketing ploy. it isn't really a first-class language and certainly has no compatibility with Java. the point of my comment was that i could use Inferno/Limbo in all these places, with the same app. your suggestion of using Java for part and JavaScript for another part misses this. three: you can (and i have) build a custom inferno that starts up your app automatically, or only your app (and supporting infrastructure as needed), or simply includes it somewhere in the package for the user to run. there's no reason you'd have to distribute something separate, although you could do that if you wanted as well.
yes, GB is the ISO/UN country code for the United Kingdom ("what's GB stand for?" "United Kingdom." "oh, okay."). don't ask me why they didn't use the more obvious (and more common) UK, but they chose to use GB instead, and i try to use the proper codes when i can. as a trivia point, with the exception of legacy ones like.su for the former soviet union,.uk is the only ccTLD that isn't an ISO/UN code.
on to your question proper: i, of course, am neither a lawyer nor british, but from what i was told GB law doesn't allow one to disclaim all warranty in the way the GPL does. of course, none of that's ever been tested in court, and i don't know what GB law says about survivability of agreements in the case of a particular clause being invalid.
if you're really looking for "as fast as possible", run-time optimization isn't the way to go. not saying it isn't plenty fast, and i'm not a fan of obsessing over every last speed tweak, but the fact remains.
the Lucent Brick firewall does use Inferno, but i'm not sure it's 3ed. if i remember correctly, they're using something akin to a hybrid 2ed/3ed Inferno. but yes, it's a very nice product. at the time of its introduction, it was arguably the best firewall available. it's still very good, but the rest of the world hasn't stood still, of course.
to clear up a sibling: the C cross-compilers are used for building inferno, not for programming in inferno. you are correct that, at present, the only language you can write user-mode stuff in is Limbo (well, unless you count writing Dis assembly). anything that can be made to compile down to Dis bytecode is possible, though. there was a Java implementation some years ago (way out of date, not maintained or distributed), and a summer student at Bell Labs did an implementation for some scripting language (i forget which, but Perl or Python are sticking out at me; he was working with a bunch of web folks, so it seems likely). there's no theoretical reason why lots of languages couldn't compile down to Dis (C/C++ has issues in particular, however).
there are options for getting existing C code into the Inferno world. at a high level, 3.
keep it stand alone (on another OS) and provide a Styx interface to it. Styx is nice and simple; a project i was on did this with existing OCR software.
put it in the kernel as a file server. this is how, for example, the network stack works. it's all C code, but the kernel provides a Styx interface up to applications. we've done this with something, but i can't remember what. TTS maybe.
put it in the kernel and provide a module interface to it. this is how the fundamental stuff - like the Sys module, which provides the nearest analogue to libc for Limbo - works.
all three are more work than a simple ports, but the results of the first two give you distribution for free, and all three make things easily available to all your apps and the environment.
and yes, it has been an impediment to developer take-up, which is a real shame. Limbo is a simply beautiful language.
In fact, because of [java compiling at runtime], it can perform optimizations that couldn't be used in a C compiler (optimizing for specific CPU's, etc.).
C can optimize for specific CPUs, too.
The problem with Java is that its GUI toolkit is slow.
The problem with java? there's only one?;-)
You should never worry abot CPU efficiency if you don't need to, as you will only be making things harder on yourself.
i think this is an overstatement of an otherwise reasonable principle. certainly, one shouldn't obsess over every optimization, and CPU speed (overall) is not a bottleneck in most applications. it's also true that the amount of time you spend optimizing for the last few percent improvement is almost always overtaken by Moore's Law. however, that's not the same as saying don't think about it. you want to organize your data structures in a way that makes sense to the program. you want to think about elegant structure. thinking about these things helps the readability and maintainability of code.
Certainly you'd be better off with [writing portable C/C++] than you would be asking all of your users to install an extra OS over their current one just to run your program.
but you don't do that, you just say "here, install this app". to the underlying OS - and in most ways, to the user - it just shows up as another app. you just happen to be able to run other things in it. you can (and i have) build custom versions of Inferno that run a specific app on startup - say a full screen (full Inferno screen, that is) gui app. then there's really very little difference for your users.
okay, it sounds insane on its own, yeah. but the point isn't "ooh, look what i can do", it's the idea of being able to run the same app anywhere. i like (as does my company) the idea of only writing code once, and being able to install it on our (mixed-OS) desktops and also letting external parties use it without having to install as much (installing a browser plug-in is fairly unobtrusive compared to installing a stand-alone app). OS-in-a-browser isn't exciting on its own, but becomes really interesting with everything else already in place.
my understanding, not cannon: they didn't use BSD because they wanted to prevent people taking the stuff, using it to make tons of money, giving nothing back to the community, and not paying VN. a reasonable approach for a commercial company, i think. they didn't use GPL because (minor issue) they didn't want a license with a philosophical statement in the front of it and (bigger issue) they needed something catered to GB law.
yes, plan 9 has driver issues. so will any small project. if you want to try things outside the mainstream, you're going to have to get over that.
also, "its GUI sucked" is an overly broad and essentially content-free statement. a large part of it is subjective. the gui is certainly minimalist, but i really like that. i try hard to get any X11 system i have to use to look as much like it as possible. there's a number of things which you simply can't say "suck" - things like the chording in Acme, the exact window positioning with sweeping on creation, the underlying model. all amazing. particularly the underlying model - built using the same primitives as everything else in the system. you get things like distribution and recursion for free. wonderful stuff.
all that being said, if you can't get Plan 9 working, that's a good reason to check out Inferno. all the Plan 9 concepts, with one or two others in the mix, and can run hosted (read: no driver worries).
well then check it out again!:-) the license has changed substantially (it's free if your work is), a commercial source license is now a couple orders of magnitude cheaper, and the tech has progressed substantially since 1997 (which, if i recall properly, was before even the 1.0 release). MS, incidentally, found it interesting enough to offer to buy it twice in 1996 and 1997.
oh, and having met Dennis Ritchie in a work environment, i'm thinking that if your co-worker was chewed out, he/she deserved it. the big three - Dennis, Ken, and Brian - are some of the easiest geniuses to work with i've ever met (and Bell Labs had plenty wandering around).
not likely. leaving aside all the questions of them being in separate domains (they're both software, but they do totally unrelated things), there's precedence questions. Discreet's only been around since 1999; Inferno (the one originally by Lucent, now from VN) has been around since 1996. Inferno (the later) is a properly registered trademark and all that.
i'm currently running it on my PowerBook G4, although i'm not sure if i had to do anything "special" to make it work. ask on the mailing list, or search the archives (or the archives for the plan9 list "9fans" (or comp.os.plan9) which still gets some inferno traffic).
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, i used to be a big supporter of the "slashdot should offer torrents" stuff as well, but your outrage got me reconsidering. thanks for that.
so here's my question: why all the anger directed at slashdot? is the submitter unaware of the slashdot effect? we all know that the editors don't read every article in depth (heck, it seems they don't read some at all!) so i figure the submitter has a better idea of the page's request for consideration of their bandwidth than the editors. if someone's going to be responsible for it, i'd suggest the submitter, not the editor.
also: bandwidth isn't free, even for someone like slashdot. they host, what two dozen stories a day (total guess). a high-rate submitter gets, what one a month? is it unreasonable for the submitter to say "oh, and here's a torrent i set up" in the story?
and since "it should not be difficult to do", we can assume you'll write the tools to do it, right? let us know where we can pick those up from. thanks.
We recently opened up a new R&D office in NJ (or headquarters is in MD). We decided to get Vonage lines for everyone there (one POTS line came with the office space). The experience has been solidly positive all around. I'm now on extended assignment in GB-London, and i brought the Vonage box with me - and it just worked, first time i plugged it in. Yup, i now have my US-NJ number in GB-London. We sometimes get some very small artifacts crossing the Atlantic at peak times, but even that's rare.
i'm an american, but i've spent the last six months (and will spend the next six months) working primarily in london. england's probably the most americanized eurpoean country, and even here the difference in work expectations and environment is amazing. i'll occasionally say things - like i work overtime without being paid overtime - and get these looks like i'm from some backwards, barbaric country. europeans should defend that higher standard of worker's rights against a lowering influence from the US for the same reasons the US should defend theirs against a lowering influence from India.
that's interesting and informative. Inferno got it's in 1996 (latest, but i'm pretty sure that's right). registered. so at least on paper, the PTO doesn't think there's a conflict (and in this case i'm inclined to agree, which is rare)
i'm not sure it's a pun, technically, but it's a real pain in conversation:
"when i run it through the Dis assembler it..."
"hold on, why are you trying to disassemble it?"
"no, no... the Dis (pause) assembler!"
kind of a pain around the lab. thankfully, nobody really writes Dis directly.
Before i start pumping? Hey, man, i'm from New Jersey! We hire people to do that sort of thing around here!
(yes, i'm kidding. i think the NJ ban on pumping your own gas is dumb, and i've had to teach too many people how when outside the state because they've never had to before.)
i downloaded Inferno for free to play around with in '96. i believe it stayed that way. you didn't get the C source, but you got all the Limbo source (possibly not the compiler, if i remember right). it's not everything, but it's plenty if you're really just interested in trying it out.
also, you're improperly conflating plan 9 and inferno. this is fine in many technical senses, but the license histories are quite different. you're closer to the mark WRT plan 9, which was ~$350 to get anything beyond the very minimal 4-floppy distribution.
they're too busy bothering the people who'd rather not have 'em around. ;-)
no, no, and no, in that order.
one: the idea of portable executables is not a new thing to Java, nor is a virtual machine. Java and Inferno were started at about the same time, Java just beat Inferno to market. the fact that some solution to a problem exists shouldn't deter anyone from seeking a better one. Inferno takes a very different approach to platform portability than Java does, and manages to preserve the write-once-run-everywhere promise than Java does.
two: javascript has nothing to do with java - the name was chosen as a (successful) marketing ploy. it isn't really a first-class language and certainly has no compatibility with Java. the point of my comment was that i could use Inferno/Limbo in all these places, with the same app. your suggestion of using Java for part and JavaScript for another part misses this.
three: you can (and i have) build a custom inferno that starts up your app automatically, or only your app (and supporting infrastructure as needed), or simply includes it somewhere in the package for the user to run. there's no reason you'd have to distribute something separate, although you could do that if you wanted as well.
yes, GB is the ISO/UN country code for the United Kingdom ("what's GB stand for?" "United Kingdom." "oh, okay."). don't ask me why they didn't use the more obvious (and more common) UK, but they chose to use GB instead, and i try to use the proper codes when i can. .su for the former soviet union, .uk is the only ccTLD that isn't an ISO/UN code.
as a trivia point, with the exception of legacy ones like
on to your question proper: i, of course, am neither a lawyer nor british, but from what i was told GB law doesn't allow one to disclaim all warranty in the way the GPL does. of course, none of that's ever been tested in court, and i don't know what GB law says about survivability of agreements in the case of a particular clause being invalid.
if you're really looking for "as fast as possible", run-time optimization isn't the way to go. not saying it isn't plenty fast, and i'm not a fan of obsessing over every last speed tweak, but the fact remains.
the Lucent Brick firewall does use Inferno, but i'm not sure it's 3ed. if i remember correctly, they're using something akin to a hybrid 2ed/3ed Inferno.
but yes, it's a very nice product. at the time of its introduction, it was arguably the best firewall available. it's still very good, but the rest of the world hasn't stood still, of course.
i'm not sure these qualify as "major components".
there are options for getting existing C code into the Inferno world. at a high level, 3.
- keep it stand alone (on another OS) and provide a Styx interface to it. Styx is nice and simple; a project i was on did this with existing OCR software.
- put it in the kernel as a file server. this is how, for example, the network stack works. it's all C code, but the kernel provides a Styx interface up to applications. we've done this with something, but i can't remember what. TTS maybe.
- put it in the kernel and provide a module interface to it. this is how the fundamental stuff - like the Sys module, which provides the nearest analogue to libc for Limbo - works.
all three are more work than a simple ports, but the results of the first two give you distribution for free, and all three make things easily available to all your apps and the environment.and yes, it has been an impediment to developer take-up, which is a real shame. Limbo is a simply beautiful language.
okay, it sounds insane on its own, yeah. but the point isn't "ooh, look what i can do", it's the idea of being able to run the same app anywhere. i like (as does my company) the idea of only writing code once, and being able to install it on our (mixed-OS) desktops and also letting external parties use it without having to install as much (installing a browser plug-in is fairly unobtrusive compared to installing a stand-alone app). OS-in-a-browser isn't exciting on its own, but becomes really interesting with everything else already in place.
my understanding, not cannon:
they didn't use BSD because they wanted to prevent people taking the stuff, using it to make tons of money, giving nothing back to the community, and not paying VN. a reasonable approach for a commercial company, i think.
they didn't use GPL because (minor issue) they didn't want a license with a philosophical statement in the front of it and (bigger issue) they needed something catered to GB law.
you're right. that's why the dumped Tcl (well, from the core, anyway). Tk, of course, was already named.
yes, plan 9 has driver issues. so will any small project. if you want to try things outside the mainstream, you're going to have to get over that.
also, "its GUI sucked" is an overly broad and essentially content-free statement. a large part of it is subjective. the gui is certainly minimalist, but i really like that. i try hard to get any X11 system i have to use to look as much like it as possible. there's a number of things which you simply can't say "suck" - things like the chording in Acme, the exact window positioning with sweeping on creation, the underlying model. all amazing. particularly the underlying model - built using the same primitives as everything else in the system. you get things like distribution and recursion for free. wonderful stuff.
all that being said, if you can't get Plan 9 working, that's a good reason to check out Inferno. all the Plan 9 concepts, with one or two others in the mix, and can run hosted (read: no driver worries).
well then check it out again! :-)
the license has changed substantially (it's free if your work is), a commercial source license is now a couple orders of magnitude cheaper, and the tech has progressed substantially since 1997 (which, if i recall properly, was before even the 1.0 release).
MS, incidentally, found it interesting enough to offer to buy it twice in 1996 and 1997.
oh, and having met Dennis Ritchie in a work environment, i'm thinking that if your co-worker was chewed out, he/she deserved it. the big three - Dennis, Ken, and Brian - are some of the easiest geniuses to work with i've ever met (and Bell Labs had plenty wandering around).
not likely.
leaving aside all the questions of them being in separate domains (they're both software, but they do totally unrelated things), there's precedence questions. Discreet's only been around since 1999; Inferno (the one originally by Lucent, now from VN) has been around since 1996. Inferno (the later) is a properly registered trademark and all that.
i'm currently running it on my PowerBook G4, although i'm not sure if i had to do anything "special" to make it work. ask on the mailing list, or search the archives (or the archives for the plan9 list "9fans" (or comp.os.plan9) which still gets some inferno traffic).
oh, and isn't posting AC kinda silly with your name in your name in your sig?