Apple and Intel strategically have very little issues (aside from Intel's current partner Microsoft... but that's another story)
Actually, Intel and Microsoft really haven't been getting along so well lately. Intel has become a big supporter of Linux and open source software; it is one of the founding members of OSDL and has contributed compilers and tons of driver code and specs to the open source community.
On the Microsoft side of coin, Microsoft tapped IBM to produce a custom-made CPU based on the PowerPC architecture for the Xbox 360, rather than using the x86 architecture the original Xbox used. Microsoft continues to work towards a Microsoft PC, which will marginalize Intel's role in the PC business if it succeeds.
No, Intel and Microsoft aren't the partners they used to be. Microsoft wants total domination of the PC industry, and that leaves Intel out in the cold. From what I can see, Intel's partnership with Apple gives it more than just shipping more units to another customer -- it gives Intel a strategic advantage against its growing enemy, Microsoft.
It's not as if Java and C# are the only languages anyone's developing in anymore.
While many applications can be written for Java and C# or LAMP, or one of many other "platform indepedent" development environments, there are many types of applications that absolutely cannot be because they need access to OS-level or hardware-level APIs.
The compiler optimizes for the Intel by using CPU-specific extensions to the x86 architecture such as SSE, MMX, 64-bit capabilties, etc.
The Intel compiler simply fails to detect the capabilities in AMD chips (by not identifying AMD chips as supporting those features, and sticking with generic 386 or 586 code), and thus the result is code that runs slower.
I think the problem is that, ultimately, zine's like Phrack and 2600 have become obsolete. They grew up out of necessity, when Net access was expensive and BBSers would spread their zines far and wide.
Now that Net access is nearly ubiquitous, the same information can be gotten from the Web and IRC fairly easily. No longer is there a need for such things as Phrack and 2600. Some people were even suggesting that/. have a 'Phrack' section, precisely because it would be so easy to do just that.
Plus, many of the generations that started 2600 and Phrack have all grown up and gotten 'real jobs' and families and such. Many can't risk getting arrested or losing their job over practicing such techniques, so they don't get a chance to be as skilled in the 'dark arts' of IT as some.
Well, you can have various modules handling 'password' management groups. For example, pam_pwcheck.so lets you have MD5 hashes and checks the passwords for uniqueness, against a dictionary, meets minimum security requirements, etc.
Generally, though, things like pam_pwcheck.so can plug into things like the Linux CyrptoAPI; they don't have to handle MD5 hashes internally. In fact, I think that pam_pwcheck.so does use CryptoAPI if it's available.
So that's where BioAPI would sit...exactly where CyrptoAPI does now. One way to implement this with PAM would be to have BioAPI sit as a kernel module like CryptoAPI -- affording it a level of protection from crackability by userland processes who do not have access to kernel space by definition -- and then either have a library that interfaces with BioAPI that could, say, translate the results of a fingerprint scan somehow into a repeatable MD5 hash that could be stored in the passwd file, or have a function call within the module itself.
They probably just chose the former instead of the later.
One company that I was at, did WiFi. It is not even close to 20K square mile to do it. I am guessing that we will find that this study was funded by some company such as Comcast, bellsouth, etc.
Possibly. Or more likely it was a company that represents that private part of that Private/Public Partnerships mentioned in the article.
I got the jist that it was along the lines of: "No, no, no, don't do WiFi yourself, it just costs too much. We'll do it for you have save you $$$$ millions!"
Believe it or not, there are tons of companies right now working to setup such private/public partnerships with a lot of cities either considering doing it themselves or still on the fence about it. This article reaks of being a marketing piece for those companies.
it simply works
"It simply works" == code words for why closed-source proprietary solutions are better than free software solutions.
I.E.:
Mac OS X -- it simply works.
Google Toolbar -- It simply works.
Windows XP -- it simply works (on crack.)
I've never heard of any atheists vandalizing chruches.
And as far as getting references to the 10 commandments removed -- it ain't just the atheists. Don't forget about those who follow paths other than the Abrahamic religions. Even many Christians and Jews agree that the 10 commandments ought not to be displayed.
Personally, given my experiences with linux so far, if it were up to me I'd concentrate more on building a GUI where you can change the monitor resolution to the resolution you want when you want it on arbitrary systems, without having to ever edit a file named "XF86Config".
I use Vonage. I have switched to VOIP entirely. I pay $24.99 (U.S., per month) and I have a regular cordless phone.
I have a phone number, voicemail, caller ID, call waiting, three-way calling, all that.
Tell me what this piece of equipment offers me.
Does it work? Does it make me more productive? That's what I want to know. Everything else is secondary, especially how "inspired" and "exciting" it is.
I think this attitude is one of the things holding open source back, actually. Firefox is making inroads into the mainstream not by being utilitarian, but by being elegant and exciting at the same time as adding new functionality and utility.
While many get Firefox because it's supposed to be more secure than IE, many more, upon using it, note that it has customizable toolbars, a skinnable interface, and, darn it, it just looks cool!
It's not enough to be functional, you've got to look good doing it, too.
Why are so many Slashdot users in love with Apple?
Do you think only Apple has Desktop Search? Google, Copernic and many others have Desktop Search also. And there were rumours not too long ago about Ask Jeeves open sourcing its Desktop Search.
And it's not as if lack of a desktop search technology is going to make Microsoft irrelevant. The fact is that Microsoft has code, right now today, to make desktop search happen on Longhorn. If desktop search becomes a killer app for Apple or others (and believe me, it hasn't yet...no one sees floods of people flocking to Apple or some other platform just to get desktop search), Microsoft has the resources to make it part of Longhorn or release it as a separate application...and if it becomes important enough, they will.
I'm no big fan of Microsoft, but you've seriously got to take off the Apple fanboi Aqua-colored glasses.
Sure...the guy wasn't the fastest morse coder in the world, or he wasn't using special equipment or whatever...
But, you still have to admit that learning morse code and becoming skilled enough to do even 30 WPM takes a bit of mastery -- and it's probably not something the average person is willing or able to do or learn.
Keep in mind that the average IQ in America is about 90.
Granted, they can't push more than 4-6MB/s, but you've got 5-ports + wifi [+ usb + lpt] in small box.
I've gotten far better throughput than that (on the local LAN) with a similar router from Belkin...
Hmm....
Well, a 486 with Linux and IPtables has better throughput than the little ARM processor in a Linksys / Dlink
But those LinkSys/Dlink routers typically *are* Linux and iptables; the only difference is the processor and the bus.
I've got 1 GB of RAM on my Fedora Core machine and even though I use GNOME heavily and even use the machine to compile source (even kernel source) and I gotta say that the machine hardly ever has to go to swap. Right now I've got OOo, Firefox and a couple of terminal windows going and even opening files and such in OOo, this is my vmstat output
[me@host ~]$ vmstat 5 5 procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu----
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
1 0 5320 4996 364188 220788 0 0 8 11 45 15 16 20 64 0
0 0 5320 5012 364188 220788 0 0 0 8 1061 776 14 2 84 0
4 1 5320 4420 364364 221124 7 0 106 2 1178 1596 29 5 59 7
0 0 5320 3016 364568 222264 0 0 222 67 1228 1148 21 5 66 7
0 0 5320 3032 364568 222264 0 0 0 3 1139 1090 19 3 79 0
As you can see, very little swap activity; only 7 pages were swapped out and this machine has been up for 10 days.
You'd still have to put swap on the hard drive. Even modern flash memory won't survive the multitudinous rewrites that virtual memory requires. A flash drive would probably last about 1-3 months or so, depending on level of activity.
Unsupported OS? you mean like the millions upon millions of copies of windows?
Or, for that matter, many copies of Linux, which existed for *years* before support became offered for it.
You want support? Google is your friend. It's the best support available for any OS. If you have a problem, chances are someone else had the same problem and even posted their solution somewhere on a forum or a mailing list, will tell you the solution on IRC, or has the solution posted on a website somewhere.
Formal support is highly overrated. Even corporate IT department workers hit Google before calling the vendor.
I hadn't heard that. I did a little research and found that ASUS has an anti-Linux attitude, which is unfortunate considering the motherboard for my first Linux box was from ASUS.
I will say that an anti-Linux or at least Linux-ignorant attitude is hardly unique to ASUS to though.
I had two servers from HP that shipped with Linux when I worked as a sysadmin for one shop. Even though HP shipped these boxes with Linux installed on them, calling HP and getting technical support for the Adaptec-based HP-branded SCSI card was nearly impossible.
Turns out no one there knew anything about Linux. They said they'd call me back when they found someone who knew something about my problem. I didn't get a callback until 3 days later and it turns out there was 1 guy at that HP helpdesk facility that knew anything about Linux and he just got back from vacation.
It turns out by then I'd already figured out that the card was defective and simply ordered another one and let purchasing sort out the refund for the other card.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this perhaps affect other implementations of RDP, like the one included with Gnome?
Apple and Intel strategically have very little issues (aside from Intel's current partner Microsoft... but that's another story)
Actually, Intel and Microsoft really haven't been getting along so well lately. Intel has become a big supporter of Linux and open source software; it is one of the founding members of OSDL and has contributed compilers and tons of driver code and specs to the open source community.
On the Microsoft side of coin, Microsoft tapped IBM to produce a custom-made CPU based on the PowerPC architecture for the Xbox 360, rather than using the x86 architecture the original Xbox used. Microsoft continues to work towards a Microsoft PC, which will marginalize Intel's role in the PC business if it succeeds.
No, Intel and Microsoft aren't the partners they used to be. Microsoft wants total domination of the PC industry, and that leaves Intel out in the cold. From what I can see, Intel's partnership with Apple gives it more than just shipping more units to another customer -- it gives Intel a strategic advantage against its growing enemy, Microsoft.
It's not as if Java and C# are the only languages anyone's developing in anymore.
While many applications can be written for Java and C# or LAMP, or one of many other "platform indepedent" development environments, there are many types of applications that absolutely cannot be because they need access to OS-level or hardware-level APIs.
The compiler optimizes for the Intel by using CPU-specific extensions to the x86 architecture such as SSE, MMX, 64-bit capabilties, etc. The Intel compiler simply fails to detect the capabilities in AMD chips (by not identifying AMD chips as supporting those features, and sticking with generic 386 or 586 code), and thus the result is code that runs slower.
I think the problem is that, ultimately, zine's like Phrack and 2600 have become obsolete. They grew up out of necessity, when Net access was expensive and BBSers would spread their zines far and wide.
/. have a 'Phrack' section, precisely because it would be so easy to do just that.
Now that Net access is nearly ubiquitous, the same information can be gotten from the Web and IRC fairly easily. No longer is there a need for such things as Phrack and 2600. Some people were even suggesting that
Plus, many of the generations that started 2600 and Phrack have all grown up and gotten 'real jobs' and families and such. Many can't risk getting arrested or losing their job over practicing such techniques, so they don't get a chance to be as skilled in the 'dark arts' of IT as some.
Generally, though, things like pam_pwcheck.so can plug into things like the Linux CyrptoAPI; they don't have to handle MD5 hashes internally. In fact, I think that pam_pwcheck.so does use CryptoAPI if it's available.
So that's where BioAPI would sit...exactly where CyrptoAPI does now. One way to implement this with PAM would be to have BioAPI sit as a kernel module like CryptoAPI -- affording it a level of protection from crackability by userland processes who do not have access to kernel space by definition -- and then either have a library that interfaces with BioAPI that could, say, translate the results of a fingerprint scan somehow into a repeatable MD5 hash that could be stored in the passwd file, or have a function call within the module itself.
They probably just chose the former instead of the later.
I got the jist that it was along the lines of: "No, no, no, don't do WiFi yourself, it just costs too much. We'll do it for you have save you $$$$ millions!"
Believe it or not, there are tons of companies right now working to setup such private/public partnerships with a lot of cities either considering doing it themselves or still on the fence about it. This article reaks of being a marketing piece for those companies.
it simply works "It simply works" == code words for why closed-source proprietary solutions are better than free software solutions. I.E.: Mac OS X -- it simply works. Google Toolbar -- It simply works. Windows XP -- it simply works (on crack.)
The question wasn't what POTS offers me over VOIP (I already know that)...the question was what the 'chat cord' in the article offers me.
I've never heard of any atheists vandalizing chruches.
And as far as getting references to the 10 commandments removed -- it ain't just the atheists. Don't forget about those who follow paths other than the Abrahamic religions. Even many Christians and Jews agree that the 10 commandments ought not to be displayed.
Personally, given my experiences with linux so far, if it were up to me I'd concentrate more on building a GUI where you can change the monitor resolution to the resolution you want when you want it on arbitrary systems, without having to ever edit a file named "XF86Config".
SuSE and Red Hat/Fedora Core both allow for that.
I use Vonage. I have switched to VOIP entirely. I pay $24.99 (U.S., per month) and I have a regular cordless phone. I have a phone number, voicemail, caller ID, call waiting, three-way calling, all that. Tell me what this piece of equipment offers me.
Sun: the new "eggs."
*Crunch* *Crunch* *Crunch*.
Definitely not. This Blade 2500 does NOT taste anything like 'eggs'...
Hmmm...could use some ketchup though...
*crunch* *crunch* *crunch*
Does it work? Does it make me more productive? That's what I want to know. Everything else is secondary, especially how "inspired" and "exciting" it is.
I think this attitude is one of the things holding open source back, actually. Firefox is making inroads into the mainstream not by being utilitarian, but by being elegant and exciting at the same time as adding new functionality and utility.
While many get Firefox because it's supposed to be more secure than IE, many more, upon using it, note that it has customizable toolbars, a skinnable interface, and, darn it, it just looks cool!
It's not enough to be functional, you've got to look good doing it, too.
Load balancing can be also be done with iptables. See also this thread on the netfilter mailing list.
Why are so many Slashdot users in love with Apple?
Do you think only Apple has Desktop Search? Google, Copernic and many others have Desktop Search also. And there were rumours not too long ago about Ask Jeeves open sourcing its Desktop Search.
And it's not as if lack of a desktop search technology is going to make Microsoft irrelevant. The fact is that Microsoft has code, right now today, to make desktop search happen on Longhorn. If desktop search becomes a killer app for Apple or others (and believe me, it hasn't yet...no one sees floods of people flocking to Apple or some other platform just to get desktop search), Microsoft has the resources to make it part of Longhorn or release it as a separate application...and if it becomes important enough, they will.
I'm no big fan of Microsoft, but you've seriously got to take off the Apple fanboi Aqua-colored glasses.
Sure...the guy wasn't the fastest morse coder in the world, or he wasn't using special equipment or whatever...
But, you still have to admit that learning morse code and becoming skilled enough to do even 30 WPM takes a bit of mastery -- and it's probably not something the average person is willing or able to do or learn.
Keep in mind that the average IQ in America is about 90.
Granted, they can't push more than 4-6MB/s, but you've got 5-ports + wifi [+ usb + lpt] in small box. I've gotten far better throughput than that (on the local LAN) with a similar router from Belkin...
Hmm.... Well, a 486 with Linux and IPtables has better throughput than the little ARM processor in a Linksys / Dlink But those LinkSys/Dlink routers typically *are* Linux and iptables; the only difference is the processor and the bus.
Actually, you might be right.
I've got 1 GB of RAM on my Fedora Core machine and even though I use GNOME heavily and even use the machine to compile source (even kernel source) and I gotta say that the machine hardly ever has to go to swap. Right now I've got OOo, Firefox and a couple of terminal windows going and even opening files and such in OOo, this is my vmstat output
[me@host ~]$ vmstat 5 5
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu----
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
1 0 5320 4996 364188 220788 0 0 8 11 45 15 16 20 64 0
0 0 5320 5012 364188 220788 0 0 0 8 1061 776 14 2 84 0
4 1 5320 4420 364364 221124 7 0 106 2 1178 1596 29 5 59 7
0 0 5320 3016 364568 222264 0 0 222 67 1228 1148 21 5 66 7
0 0 5320 3032 364568 222264 0 0 0 3 1139 1090 19 3 79 0
As you can see, very little swap activity; only 7 pages were swapped out and this machine has been up for 10 days.
You'd still have to put swap on the hard drive. Even modern flash memory won't survive the multitudinous rewrites that virtual memory requires. A flash drive would probably last about 1-3 months or so, depending on level of activity.
...Ford warns consumers against public transportation.
Funny stuff...If I had mod points, I'd mod you up.
Or, for that matter, many copies of Linux, which existed for *years* before support became offered for it.
You want support? Google is your friend. It's the best support available for any OS. If you have a problem, chances are someone else had the same problem and even posted their solution somewhere on a forum or a mailing list, will tell you the solution on IRC, or has the solution posted on a website somewhere.
Formal support is highly overrated. Even corporate IT department workers hit Google before calling the vendor.
I hadn't heard that. I did a little research and found that ASUS has an anti-Linux attitude, which is unfortunate considering the motherboard for my first Linux box was from ASUS.
I will say that an anti-Linux or at least Linux-ignorant attitude is hardly unique to ASUS to though.
I had two servers from HP that shipped with Linux when I worked as a sysadmin for one shop. Even though HP shipped these boxes with Linux installed on them, calling HP and getting technical support for the Adaptec-based HP-branded SCSI card was nearly impossible.
Turns out no one there knew anything about Linux. They said they'd call me back when they found someone who knew something about my problem. I didn't get a callback until 3 days later and it turns out there was 1 guy at that HP helpdesk facility that knew anything about Linux and he just got back from vacation.
It turns out by then I'd already figured out that the card was defective and simply ordered another one and let purchasing sort out the refund for the other card.