OS/2 Warp Server theoretically already supports 64 CPU's, and since it scales better than NT/2000, it should work great on these machines. Unfortuantely, I can't get to www.sequent.com, so I can't tell if OS/2 is supported. Does anyone know?
Nothing that Stallman wants would ever help the closed-source community. Stallman is single-minded about destroying all closed-source software. He doesn't want anyone to ever sell or buy software again. Therefore, every time he promotes something, it's always toward this same goal. IMHO, Stallman's opinion on what should happen to Microsoft is irrelevant, because he can't get past the closed-software issue and actually concentrate on the MS issue.
I can't help but think that Stallman wants to use the MS trial as a means to further his own agenda: the elimination of all commercial software.
I can't remember what it's called, and I don't think it's active yet, but Dell is working on some kind of instant one-button Internet-based support. The idea is that the keyboard has an extra button on it, and when the user presses it, the computer logs onto the Internet, connects to Dell's support line, and somehow provides assistance. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any information on this on Dell's web site, so I'm assuming it hasn't been implemented yet.
Of course, this technique won't work if your computer can't boot or you can't get Internet access, but it's not intended to solve those problems. Frankly, I think it's a stupid idea, because it's only going to convince the user even more that they don't need to read the manual.
I think there should be an incentive for support - if the solution to the problem can't be found in the documentation, the support call is free. That has a double benefit: the software vendor wants to make the manual as complete as possible, and the user wants to save money by reading the manuals first.
What moron would buy shoes online?
on
Boo No More
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· Score: 2
There are a lot of things I would buy online without seeing them first. Over the next seven days, UPS will be delivering tennis balls, cat food, and a laminating machine.
However, buying something that's supposed to fit your body is not smart. There are variations in the manufacturing of each item that requires a fitting before you purchase them. Shoes are a classic example. I went shopping for sneakers with my wife two weeks ago. She tried on about four pairs, all of which were her size and looked like they would fit. However, only one was comfortable, and we would never have known that just by looking at them.
The same applies to a lot of the other items for sale, such as pants, leotards, and bikinis. My god, what woman would buy a bikini without trying it on first!?!?!?
You may reproduce and distribute, in executable form only, programs which you create using the Software
The key phrase is "programs which you create using the software". The source code to my software is not created by the compiler. I create the source code, not the compiler. This license only talks about the stuff that the compiler creates.
So the question becomes, what does the compiler (and related tools) create? A bunch of things:
Executable binaries
Object files
Libraries
Listing files
A bunch of other things, like class browser files, makefiles, etc
I think the point they're trying to say is that of all the things that the compiler, etc (aka "Software") generates, the executable is the only thing you're allowed to distribute. You can't distribute, for instance, the listing files that show what kind of assembly code the compiler has generated.
It's hard to answer this question in a single post, but I'll try.
In a word, it boils down to coordination. The CPU's need to coordinate their activities. With two CPU's, you no longer have a single "master" that always knows what's going on.
For example, cache coherency is a problem. Each CPU has a write-back cache, which means that the data is not writting to memory right away, but held until it can be written in a burst. If one CPU has unwritten data in its internal cache, the other CPU doesn't normally know about it. So the two CPU's need to talk to each other.
Another issue is interrupts. Some SMP systems let interrupts go to any CPU. Some force all interrupts to go to one CPU. Obviously, the former is more complex.
On recent Intel CPU's, there is something called a system management interrupt (SMI) which is like a super-interrupt that the OS doesn't know anything about. It's meant for the BIOS only. SMI's run in "SMI mode", where all interrupts are turned off, and all CPU's jump the SMI handler simultaneously. Getting all CPU's to exit the SMI handler simultaneously is difficult.
Another issue is the chipset. The system bus needs to be able to handle multiple CPU's vying for PCI and memory devices.
Anyway, that's just a brief list. Maybe someone who's worked on the SMP support for an operating system could chime in.
The last link in the ring contains all the pictures from Playboy. Frankly, her breasts look so fake that I think they're ugly. Not only that, but she looks a lot like Madonna in those pics.
instead of printing hundres or thousands of VERY VERY expensive movie reels for every movie, then worry about people stealing/damaging them, and them all fading in five years, you just stream a movie up to the satellite and down to thousands of theatres simaltaneously....
First off, this sounds a lot like the New Coke fiasco to me. The audience is going to reject digital movies if the MPEG artifacts become visible. And what about when there's a storm, and the signal drops? Is the theater going to want to reimburse 400 people? I don't think so.
Second, is the price of a movie ticket going to drop? Of course not! The money savings will be pocketed by the theater or the production company.
Not only does it take a second to tune, but then it seems like it starts building the image before it gets a keyframe; ie you will see a bunch of boxes on the screen that eventually resolve into a normal image.
Heh, I forgot about that.:-) But I think that only happened with the premium channels.
"The amazing thing about streaming media today is how bad it is," said Jim Wood, vice president of advanced technology at AT&T Broadband.
This past summer, I had the misfortune of trying out digital cable. Our cable provider, Time Warner, is promoting "digital cable" as a superior alternative to the standard analog cable. With digital cable, you get:
A bigger cable box that generates more heat, takes longer to switch channels (something I really hate), and needs to initialize itself for 10 minutes every time you plug it in.
About three times as many channels, none of which interested me
"Digital quality pictures", which basically means video that has tons of MPEG artifacts. Dark areas which used to be one color are now represented by dozens of big squares, half of which are black and the rest brown. Occasionally, portions of the screen become replaced with green squares.
A bunch of music channels
I hated digital cable. The MPEG artifacts drove me crazy. I had technicians come out to my house FIVE times, and they couldn't do a damn thing. Most of them didn't even know what I was talking about when I pointed out the MPEG artifacts (they called it "macro blocking").
The problem was not my signal. They rewired my apartment, and it didn't help at all. The signal was coming in 100%, no lost packets or frames. It turns out that the real problem was the broadcast. It was being transmitted that way. Depending on the channel, it was possible for the signal to go through multiple D/A and A/D converstions before it got to my TV. The ironic part was that that channels I wanted the most (SciFi, Showtime, etc) were the ones that had the worst problems.
After about a month, I went back to analog. The picture is super-sharp in comparison, and I never experience any image degradation.
So what's this got to do with anything? The cable industry thinks that digital video is the way of the future. But MPEG only works when the bandwith is high enough, and the cable industry is not interested in providing enough bandwith to make the picture 100% sharp. We've all seen DVD's that have MPEG artifacts, and it really sucks. They say that streaming media over the Internet is bad. Well, streaming media from Time Warner over my cable TV is not much better.
1. Commissioners Swindle and Leary have previously stated...
It took me a few seconds to realize that Swindle and Leary are the last names of two commissioners on the FTC! FTC doesn't like swindlers, and they're leary (leery) of any minimum advertised price policies.
Actually, 'format' is not a bad term for what it was intended to do.
But that's beside the point. The fact that it re-initializes the directory structure and allocation tables is nowhere near as big of an issue as the fact that it erases all data on the drive!!!!
Here's an analogy:
Stepping on the accelerator in a car will:
A) increase the RPM of the engine
B) make the car go faster
Yes, both are true, but so what? When a driver steps on the accelerator, it's because he wants B) the car to go faster. 99% of all drivers aren't that concerned about the engine RPM, even if they know what it is.
Your post underscores the fact that many technical people have forgotton the original meaning of the words they use. It's really a shame.
To you and me, formatting means erasing. But that's only true in techno-speak. In every other context, the word "format" does not imply erasing - not at all! And since very few people actually format their hard drives (and hence, have no experience with the process), how can you expect them to know what that word means?
When you "format" something, you arrange it. You put it into some kind of order. To most people, that's a good thing! The moron who decided that "format" is a synonym for "erase" should be shot.
If your application had asked the user to "erase all files on your hard drive", I think very few people would have said yes.
You do have lm announce set to yes, for OS/2 support?
I thought LM ANNOUNCE was a Windows thing - it was a setting you need to have enabled (it's disabled by default) because OS/2 doesn't support the "Master Browser" concept.
I don't have Linux installed anywhere, let alone Samba. Are you saying that LM ANNOUNCE is also a Samba thing? I didn't see anything about LM ANNOUNCE in the DAVE documentation.
(getting off-topic) Specifically, my problem is that my Mac can't see my OS/2 drives, but it can see my OS/2 printers.
Is there any converage on intergrating OS/2 and Mactinosh clients (and servers) with machines running Samba? I'm trying to get my Mac (using DAVE) and my OS/2 machines to see each other, and it's not working well. I'm thinking I may need to set up a Linux box running Samba and use that as the primary shared resource.
I believe that anyone who can profit from their crimes in a way that is (a) legal and (b) beneficial to society should be allowed to do so. If it's just for entertainment value, then, no, they should not.
Where do you draw the line between entertainment and beneficial to society? Some people would argue that entertainment is beneficial to society (if it weren't, everyone would be unhappy all day long).
The most powerful and useful GUI out there is actually an OOUI, and it's called the WorkPlace Shell, available on an OS/2 desktop near you.
I had high hopes for GNOME, but the truth is that the GNOME developers are only interested in making a Windows-like desktop, which is a real shame. Both GNOME and the WPS are CORBA-compliant, but I wonder if the GNOME developers really understand what that means.
Dell has a funding organization call Dell Ventures specifically intended to fund companies like Transmeta. The fact that they are not funding Transmeta is just more evidence that Dell is nothing more than Intel's sex slave. Dell doesn't do anything that Intel doesn't want them to. I wouldn't even consider Dell a technology company, because they don't do any original research. The fact that Dell sells computers is just a coincidence - they could be selling toasters without needing to hire new people.
The following documentation must be provided on paper:
Installation Guide - until the software is installed, online docs don't work. And no, HTML or PDF documentaion is not enough - it requires the user to have other software installed. Besides, most installation programs can't share the screen with other windows, so the user won't be able to see the online docs anyway.
Troubleshooting - if something is wrong with the software or computer, online docs will again not work.
Getting Started and Tutorials - people who read these documents, by definition, need some hand-holding, so they need to be able to read the documentation and run the software at the same time, and it's usually difficult to fit both on the screen at the same time.
Basically, there are three advantages for paper documentation:
Ability to read the documentation when you're not at the computer. However, I'm not sure if this has any real value, since I personally have had little success in understanding the documentation without the software right there to show me what's going on.
Ability to read the documentation when administering software remotely. Unless your documentation is available in cross-platform text, PDF, or HTML format, it's usually impossible to read it online from a different computer. Imagine setting up a Samba server remotely? If the docs weren't in text format, most people wouldn't be able to read them!
When you need to read the docs and use the software at the same time. Unless the user is running at 1600x1200, the screen is usually too small to display the application and the online documentation at the same time.
Advantages of online documentation include:
Frequent updates. Online documentation is typically more correct than printed documentation. If you discover an error in the documentation, you can simply provide a new PDF (or whatever) for download.
Total electronic delivery. A user can purchase and download the entire application in one shot. If the documentation were available only on paper, you couldn't download it.
Cost reduction.
Environmental savings.
Giant reference manuals, which are seldomly used, are a good example of documentation that can be placed online only.
One thing you should always do is provide all of your documentation electronically. A user should be able to view all the documentation online if he chooses. Never provide any documentation in paper format only. You may also want to sell two versions of the application: one with and the other without paper manuals. The version without paper manuals should be cheaper.
In the article, they claim that just because their nickname was "mafiaboy", that several people, including the "security expert" who pointed out the Montreal teenager. Their evidence is an IRC log that shows someone named icee identified "mafiaboy" as the Montreal teenager.
Well, if 2600's mafiaboy isn't the real mafiaboy, then how do we know that they were talking to the real icee?
So reading books online is supposed to be isolating and lonely? I can agree with that. But reading those books inside the Library of Congress is worse.
You see, only members of Congress can take the books outside of the Library. Everyone else has to photocopy them or read them inside. And believe me, you're not going to find any comfy, quiet reading rooms.
So for most people, downloading the Library's books is the ONLY way to read them. Imagine how much better it would be if researchers and students could download the text of any book (within copyright laws, of course)?
Not only that, but what about the deterioration of the physical books? Handling books over and over again will damage them. I think the Library Of Congress has the duty and responsibility to digitize any books it has that are no longer copyrighted. And they have a lot of catching up to do.
Slashdot Mirror
OS/2 Warp Server theoretically already supports 64 CPU's, and since it scales better than NT/2000, it should work great on these machines. Unfortuantely, I can't get to www.sequent.com, so I can't tell if OS/2 is supported. Does anyone know?
I can't help but think that Stallman wants to use the MS trial as a means to further his own agenda: the elimination of all commercial software.
If you're talking about the SIQ, that can't be "fixed", because some apps depend on it. I believe it allows applications like VoiceType to work.
(SIQ = system/single input queue, where all mouse/keyboard messages go through the foreground app before being dispatched to other apps)
Of course, this technique won't work if your computer can't boot or you can't get Internet access, but it's not intended to solve those problems. Frankly, I think it's a stupid idea, because it's only going to convince the user even more that they don't need to read the manual.
I think there should be an incentive for support - if the solution to the problem can't be found in the documentation, the support call is free. That has a double benefit: the software vendor wants to make the manual as complete as possible, and the user wants to save money by reading the manuals first.
However, buying something that's supposed to fit your body is not smart. There are variations in the manufacturing of each item that requires a fitting before you purchase them. Shoes are a classic example. I went shopping for sneakers with my wife two weeks ago. She tried on about four pairs, all of which were her size and looked like they would fit. However, only one was comfortable, and we would never have known that just by looking at them.
The same applies to a lot of the other items for sale, such as pants, leotards, and bikinis. My god, what woman would buy a bikini without trying it on first!?!?!?
The key phrase is "programs which you create using the software". The source code to my software is not created by the compiler. I create the source code, not the compiler. This license only talks about the stuff that the compiler creates.
So the question becomes, what does the compiler (and related tools) create? A bunch of things:
I think the point they're trying to say is that of all the things that the compiler, etc (aka "Software") generates, the executable is the only thing you're allowed to distribute. You can't distribute, for instance, the listing files that show what kind of assembly code the compiler has generated.
In a word, it boils down to coordination. The CPU's need to coordinate their activities. With two CPU's, you no longer have a single "master" that always knows what's going on.
For example, cache coherency is a problem. Each CPU has a write-back cache, which means that the data is not writting to memory right away, but held until it can be written in a burst. If one CPU has unwritten data in its internal cache, the other CPU doesn't normally know about it. So the two CPU's need to talk to each other.
Another issue is interrupts. Some SMP systems let interrupts go to any CPU. Some force all interrupts to go to one CPU. Obviously, the former is more complex.
On recent Intel CPU's, there is something called a system management interrupt (SMI) which is like a super-interrupt that the OS doesn't know anything about. It's meant for the BIOS only. SMI's run in "SMI mode", where all interrupts are turned off, and all CPU's jump the SMI handler simultaneously. Getting all CPU's to exit the SMI handler simultaneously is difficult.
Another issue is the chipset. The system bus needs to be able to handle multiple CPU's vying for PCI and memory devices.
Anyway, that's just a brief list. Maybe someone who's worked on the SMP support for an operating system could chime in.
The last link in the ring contains all the pictures from Playboy. Frankly, her breasts look so fake that I think they're ugly. Not only that, but she looks a lot like Madonna in those pics.
First off, this sounds a lot like the New Coke fiasco to me. The audience is going to reject digital movies if the MPEG artifacts become visible. And what about when there's a storm, and the signal drops? Is the theater going to want to reimburse 400 people? I don't think so.
Second, is the price of a movie ticket going to drop? Of course not! The money savings will be pocketed by the theater or the production company.
Heh, I forgot about that. :-) But I think that only happened with the premium channels.
This past summer, I had the misfortune of trying out digital cable. Our cable provider, Time Warner, is promoting "digital cable" as a superior alternative to the standard analog cable. With digital cable, you get:
I hated digital cable. The MPEG artifacts drove me crazy. I had technicians come out to my house FIVE times, and they couldn't do a damn thing. Most of them didn't even know what I was talking about when I pointed out the MPEG artifacts (they called it "macro blocking").
The problem was not my signal. They rewired my apartment, and it didn't help at all. The signal was coming in 100%, no lost packets or frames. It turns out that the real problem was the broadcast. It was being transmitted that way. Depending on the channel, it was possible for the signal to go through multiple D/A and A/D converstions before it got to my TV. The ironic part was that that channels I wanted the most (SciFi, Showtime, etc) were the ones that had the worst problems.
After about a month, I went back to analog. The picture is super-sharp in comparison, and I never experience any image degradation.
So what's this got to do with anything? The cable industry thinks that digital video is the way of the future. But MPEG only works when the bandwith is high enough, and the cable industry is not interested in providing enough bandwith to make the picture 100% sharp. We've all seen DVD's that have MPEG artifacts, and it really sucks. They say that streaming media over the Internet is bad. Well, streaming media from Time Warner over my cable TV is not much better.
It took me a few seconds to realize that Swindle and Leary are the last names of two commissioners on the FTC! FTC doesn't like swindlers, and they're leary (leery) of any minimum advertised price policies.
But that's beside the point. The fact that it re-initializes the directory structure and allocation tables is nowhere near as big of an issue as the fact that it erases all data on the drive!!!!
Here's an analogy:
Stepping on the accelerator in a car will:
- A) increase the RPM of the engine
- B) make the car go faster
Yes, both are true, but so what? When a driver steps on the accelerator, it's because he wants B) the car to go faster. 99% of all drivers aren't that concerned about the engine RPM, even if they know what it is.To you and me, formatting means erasing. But that's only true in techno-speak. In every other context, the word "format" does not imply erasing - not at all! And since very few people actually format their hard drives (and hence, have no experience with the process), how can you expect them to know what that word means?
When you "format" something, you arrange it. You put it into some kind of order. To most people, that's a good thing! The moron who decided that "format" is a synonym for "erase" should be shot.
If your application had asked the user to "erase all files on your hard drive", I think very few people would have said yes.
I thought LM ANNOUNCE was a Windows thing - it was a setting you need to have enabled (it's disabled by default) because OS/2 doesn't support the "Master Browser" concept.
I don't have Linux installed anywhere, let alone Samba. Are you saying that LM ANNOUNCE is also a Samba thing? I didn't see anything about LM ANNOUNCE in the DAVE documentation.
(getting off-topic)
Specifically, my problem is that my Mac can't see my OS/2 drives, but it can see my OS/2 printers.
Is there any converage on intergrating OS/2 and Mactinosh clients (and servers) with machines running Samba? I'm trying to get my Mac (using DAVE) and my OS/2 machines to see each other, and it's not working well. I'm thinking I may need to set up a Linux box running Samba and use that as the primary shared resource.
The 1981 mini-series version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is only available on VHS. Are there any plans for a DVD version?
Wow, that's a brilliant idea. Someone needs to make an RFC for that.
Where do you draw the line between entertainment and beneficial to society? Some people would argue that entertainment is beneficial to society (if it weren't, everyone would be unhappy all day long).
I had high hopes for GNOME, but the truth is that the GNOME developers are only interested in making a Windows-like desktop, which is a real shame. Both GNOME and the WPS are CORBA-compliant, but I wonder if the GNOME developers really understand what that means.
Dell has a funding organization call Dell Ventures specifically intended to fund companies like Transmeta. The fact that they are not funding Transmeta is just more evidence that Dell is nothing more than Intel's sex slave. Dell doesn't do anything that Intel doesn't want them to. I wouldn't even consider Dell a technology company, because they don't do any original research. The fact that Dell sells computers is just a coincidence - they could be selling toasters without needing to hire new people.
Basically, there are three advantages for paper documentation:
Advantages of online documentation include:
Giant reference manuals, which are seldomly used, are a good example of documentation that can be placed online only.
One thing you should always do is provide all of your documentation electronically. A user should be able to view all the documentation online if he chooses. Never provide any documentation in paper format only. You may also want to sell two versions of the application: one with and the other without paper manuals. The version without paper manuals should be cheaper.
BTW, does anyone know for sure that her Playboy pictures won't be published, and if so, why?
Well, if 2600's mafiaboy isn't the real mafiaboy, then how do we know that they were talking to the real icee?
You see, only members of Congress can take the books outside of the Library. Everyone else has to photocopy them or read them inside. And believe me, you're not going to find any comfy, quiet reading rooms.
So for most people, downloading the Library's books is the ONLY way to read them. Imagine how much better it would be if researchers and students could download the text of any book (within copyright laws, of course)?
Not only that, but what about the deterioration of the physical books? Handling books over and over again will damage them. I think the Library Of Congress has the duty and responsibility to digitize any books it has that are no longer copyrighted. And they have a lot of catching up to do.