Re:See what happens when you rely on NT
on
Microsoft Cracked
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· Score: 1
This child process sniffs out passwords, because hey, any user account can sniff packets, not just root.
No, you need root privs to set the NIC to promisc mode. Or do I misunderstand you?
It also spawns a child process, but you're probably unaware of this.
Well, my shell kills all bg processes it spawns before logging out (it asks me first - it's zsh, BTW).
The exact same type of crack could happen on ANY Unix machine, not properly safeguarded.
You mean 'ANY machine running braindead, insecure software that executes remote binaries'. Yes, you can receive an email in mutt w/ a binary attachment, you can download it, make it executable, and run it. But who's stupid enough to do that? And even so, it's not exactly easy. You've got to go out of your way -- with Outlook, it practically does it behind your back.
he considers the idea of building the "NDA-ed bridge" to be a good idea because it would annoy Sony!
Not so much annoy, but 'make them feel bad'. In other words, make the Sony's decision to make the PS2 such a closed platform result in unhappiness for them. Sony won't have total control over the platform, and Free Software developers will be able to write games that run on all platforms relatively easily (via Crystal Space). Once they understand this, perhaps their next console will be more open.
There's an interesting article @ Daemonews here: http://www.daemonnews.org/200010/da dvocate.html. It's a short summary of the history of BSD, the various leadership approaches (NetBSD's + FreeBSD's CORE, Linux's benevolent dictator, OpenBSD's hybrid), and other cool stuff. I recommend it.
This was mentioned on the mod_perl mailing list, and I agree. The idea is to use this like IBM's virtual machines on an S/390 to separate webhosting boxen into 1 'machine' per client. Some cool + fast technologies (like mod_perl) can crash Apache if written poorly. This is obviously a problem for webhosting companies. With user-mode Linux, you could separate each client from one another, and all the clients from the actual kernel.
This probably wouldn't be necessary for most clients (doing static content, CGIs, etc). It could be offerred as a 'premium package', or whatever. So all the static content + CGI stuff could run in 1 kernel, and you could give each premium client their own kernel to play with. The efficiency problems would probably be offset by the big speed boost mod_perl and similar apps give you (after all, that's why they need to be so closely integrated with Apache). Plus, if these people are willing to pay extra for a `premium' package, you can probably afford to buy a couple big Sun boxen to host them on.
However, there is a new kid on the block if you want a fast, solid, modern, compatible browser for *nix, and that's Konqueror. As it stands now, for pretty much every aspect of web-browsing I can think of, it's significantly better than moz is. It's blazingly fast (neck and neck with Opera IMHO), solidly standards-compliant (it claims HTML4/CSS2 compatibility, and I haven't seen anything which implies otherwise yet), has a small memory footprint, does Java, Javascript and SSL well... what more could you want?
I just installed the latest Debian packages of KDE2, and switched over from Blackbox (perhaps temporarily). The first thing I did was try Konq - and honestly, I'm not that impressed. It doesn't even render Slashdot properly (the topic icons are way to the left, some text doesn't line up, forms aren't spaced properly, etc). Moz renders all this perfectly. It's also not particularly 'sleek' - it's using about 25 MB of RAM for me, and I've only been browsing for about 4 or 5 minutes. Pages also seem to render at about the same speed as Moz/Gecko.
It has some nice features - it's fairly responsive, and contains 'just the basics', which is good. But it's not nearly as good as you make it out to be. Maybe the Debian packages are out of date, and the version in CVS is much nicer.
With smart cards, the issue is two fold. One, you need small code footprint, which both Rijndael and TwoFish did satisfy.
And RC6 and MARS did not. In fact, MARS takes up more than 200 bytes of RAM : more than is on most 'smart' cards. Although you might be able to adjust to algorithm to get this down the ~100 (the same as RC6), Twofish, Serpent, and Rijndael are all 50-60.
Oh really? Can you name any big installations running Solaris/x86? Solaris/SPARC is definately 'proven', but how is Solaris/x86 more than a virtually unsupported, bastard son?
While this is some fact and some opinion the truth remains Solaris/SunOS were running stable and secure servers when 99.995% of the world had yet to hear of Linus Torvalds.
Um, I doubt many people has heard of Scott McNealy (sp?) either. And 'secure' - when was the last time you took a look at BUGTRAQ? Sun's security record sucks as much as any of the major UNIX vendors.
Solaris is a great operating system and for some things its better, yes I said better, than Linux.
I agree. The last place I worked, the main E450 and other Sun hardware was the lifeblood of the department. I think everyone would agree that Solaris has its uses (when you're willing to dish out the $$$). But I don't think this is one of them.
But I've yet to read a post in the comments that has any insightful revelations as to why Linux is better than Solaris on the Cobalt machines.
And I've yet to see a post revealing the huge advantage Solaris/x86 has over Linux for this application. If something works, why try to 'fix' it? Cobalt were using Linux across their entire line of products (both MIPS- and x86-based). Solaris runs on x86 (poorly), but it has yet to be ported to MIPS. I don't know if Cobalt plan to continue making MIPS based boxed, but if they do, they'll need to port Solaris too it. Not to mention legacy support.
But there is no way in hell I'm taking the time and security risks to install Java on my server.
That's ridiculous. A JDK/JRE is no more of a 'security risk' than Perl, Python, or Tcl. You're probably thinking of Java applets or something. But if you want a reason not to code in Java, security is NOT one of them.
Is there a reason these things don't use solar power? Considering it's already as large as a fridge, there is lots of surface area to absorb sunlight. You would need to put this outside, but I suppose you could have it built into the roof of a (new/old) house.
It would obviously use a battery so that if the day is too cloudy, you won't lose power. Plus, the existing gas power infrastructure could be used as a backup.
Why are people not using this already? Will it be used any time in the foreseeable future?
I also wouldn't be surprised if Don throws an anti-Sun clause in the next release of any of his drivers.
I doubt that. That would make the drivers non-free software according to the Debian Free Software Guidelines - this would make it illegal to distribute with Debian (i.e. these drivers would have to be distributed as a separate, 'non-free' package). It may also violate the Open Source definition.
No offence, but from what I can tell, the people @ M-Net are basically devoid of technical talent, despite being the 'first public-access unix machine'; if you've been running UNIX for so long, haven't you learned how to secure it yet? How were the M-Net systems hacked into? Apparently, you guys are running FreeBSD now - were you running it when the breakins occured?
The M-Net system remained down into July and became available only after M-Net replaced the system's equipment.
Why was this necessary? Why not just postmortem the box, whipe it, and start over?
Since no one has commented on this yet: this is a development release! It is not intended for public consumption. It *probably* breaks lots of stuff. Don't run this anywhere your job is on the line.
As was announced with Perl 5.6.0, Perl is now following a release style similar to Linux - even numbered releases are 'production' releases (e.g. 5.6.x, 5.8.x, 5.10.x), odd numbered releases are 'development' releases (5.7.x, 5.9.x, etc).
I haven't checked out the change summary yet - I wonder what's been improved. My personal hope is the Perl compiler (B::C, B::CC, etc). Neat stuff!
RedHat/GNOME/KDE & crew have a loooong way to go before they match the user experience of OS X
Steve Jobs and crew have a 'loooong way to go' before they even release MacOSX. When it's released, then it will be fair to compaire with a GNU/Linux distro. Considering the pace at which Linux is improving, it's very difficult to predict the future.
All the distro makers are trying very hard to make a luser friendly yet powerful unix system, but that exactly describes OS X. Except for the hardware constraints, anybody interested in linux from a user standpoint is better served using MacOS X. Why give Grandma Redhat when you can give her OSX?
I think MacOSX will be cool as hell, but it's nowhere near a 'better Linux than Linux' (not necessarily worse or better, just different). OSX will only run on Apple hardware. That means tossing out all that cheap, plentiful x86 hardware and starting over. It also means that old SparcStation in the corner isn't going to be running MacOS X any time soon. OSX is closed source (Darwin not withstanding - I'd say the majority of MacOSX will be closed source), and only runs on a closed hardware platform. If you use GNU/Linux for philosophical reasons, you won't want to have much to do with OSX. Once MacOS X is finally released, it will be brand new, 'fresh' code (stuff taken from BSD notwithstanding). Which is great from an 'innovation' standpoint; but I know I'll definately be hesitant to run MacOS X on any important servers anytime soon.
Then again, I don't really know much about OSX, so go ahead and correct me. One quick question - is the GUI integrated into the OS? If you're running X on it, will you need to load Apple's GUI (for lack of a better term), as well as X? Can you forego a GUI entirely?
Throw in all the standard OSS tools
Have they actually been ported to OSX? How stable are they?
OS X makes me seriously consider picking up a mac
If you took offence at my comment, I apologize. It's clear that you understand the scope and limitations of your benchmark, even if the person I was replying to did not. Are you planning any followup Java on Linux articles in the future?
To build our new fast cache, we'll need to get rid of the inefficiencies of today's product, which requires the computer to constantly refresh it,... The inefficiencies in cache are so bad, in fact, that once you know the speed of your cache you can assume that its real-world performance will be about a third of that--the missing two-thirds being sacrificed to refresh cycles.
Isn't cache SRAM (i.e. static RAM)? So it doesn't need its charge refreshed periodically, unlike DRAM (i.e. main memory)? From what I understand, SRAM is currently so bulky and expensive that it would be totally uneconomical to completely replace DRAM with it - but it SRAM does have a number of advantages - lower power consumption (no refreshes), and faster performance.
Then again, maybe I'm smoking crack. Can someone back me up or correct me?
While I'm on the subject...
we'll hitch it directly to the CPU with a multiplexed optical bridge
Wouldn't it be faster to incorporate the cache on-die, like with Celeron As?
Holographic memory is three-dimensional by nature
Uh, why's that? What makes 'holographic memory' any different from regular memory? (I don't think they're wrong, I just want more info).
The important thing is that the script-kiddies and 15-year-old "cracker/hacker" stereotypes do exist -- the unfortunate part is that, though a minority, they have a loud voice.
Damnit. I'm really getting tired with this '15-year-old cracker/hacker' nonsense. I'm 16, and I consider myself a 'hacker', in the OSS sense of the word. I use Debian GNU/Linux + BSD at home (Solaris/SPARC at work), hack on Free Software projects in Perl, Java, C etc in my spare time, and work as a UNIX admin/web guy at a media company. I DO NOT crack into computer systems (although I might be able to, I've never tried, nor do I have any desire to try); I'm not a w3r4z d00d, or anything puerile like that. I'm not trying to boast or anything - but I think more people should be aware that not all - in fact, very few - teenagers are 'l33t hax0rs'.
I know that people like that do exist, and that's the stereotype that you were commenting on. But don't include the age group - there are many people like myself in the under-18 age group that feel sleighted at being associated with script kiddies - just like you would feel. If you want to refer to that group of peope, call them script kiddes, or crackers, or anything you like. But I don't think age has much to do with it.
That benchmark is shamefully poorly done. It doesn't include IBM's 1.3.0 JDK (which is, after all, what this story is about) - on my system, IBM's JDK does that so-called 'benchmark' very fast. I don't want to shut down X et al to doublecheck, but IIRC, IBM 1.3.0 can do ~945 objects per ms on my Celeron 500, 128 MB RAM, Linux 2.4.0test7. Since that's a different kernel and really different hardware, it's obviously apples-to-oranges, but it should give you an idea how fast IBM's JDK is.
Plus, the tests on Win32 are pretty meaningless because Win32's system timer is not precise enough to generate meaningful numbers when you use System.currentTimeMillis() . (AFAIK - someone correct me if I'm wrong)
Bottom-line: Try IBM's JDK 1.3.0 . Failing that, try a better benchmark which tests other aspects of Java performance, not just how fast you can create objects. But most importantly, don't trust a benchmark for anything - test real-world, production code. That's pretty much the only way you'll get a real idea if Java is suitable for your needs or not.
While Sun open sourcing Java might seem outlandish, I'd say it's a definate possibility. Sun has GPL'd StarOffice, and is a member of the GNOME foundation. I think the bottom line is that if Sun clearly understands it would be in their best interests to open source Java, they'll do it. After all, they're a public company like any other - they have to obey the will of the consumer. OSS currently has a mindshare among developers that can't be easily ignored.
The survey is here, go and vote. Recently, a petition was put forward to open source javadoc (the Java sourcecode documentation tool), but Sun hasn't responded (possibly due to lack of attention from the media). I think if we really bug Sun about this, we might get an official response (*fingers crossed*).
As to the topic at hand, my primary Linux JDK for development is IBM's. It's excellent, and very fast - I haven't had any problems. Sun's 1.3.0 JDK hasn't even been officially released for Linux or Solaris yet, so there's not really much of an alternative at the moment.
Wouldn't molecular computers be a lot less stable than our conventional computers? The article talks about working at room temperature -- it sounds like if the temperature changed, the computer would stop working, or might even lose data. Not only is this a pain to work with it, it would be easy to sabotage someone else's computer -- just heat it up or cool it, and, presto, it stops working!
How is this any different from conventional technology? If you increase the tempurature of a CPU sufficiently, it will begin to malfunction or not even function at all (this is often encountered by overclockers). Molecular computers might be more vulnerable to this, but I don't think it's that big of a deal. Just get a cooling/heating system which always adjusts the equipment to the correct temps, or simply turns everything off if it is too hot or too cold.
Um, no, they haven't. I was talking to a guy from the IBM JIT team, and we discussed AFS - it is still used extensively by IBM for their internal network. He wasn't overly impressed with it, but we agreed it does have its uses.
the lack of an office suite has been one of the biggest shortcomings of linux as an office desktop.
Maybe it was a couple years ago, but Linux currently has at least 4 office suites - StarOffice, Wordperfect Office 2K, KDE's Office stuff, and Gnome Office (not sure - is this the next gen of StarOffice)? Plus other stuff like Abiword, and Applix.
MS Office makes Linux look like a more legitimate platform in the eyes of PHBs everywhere. But IMHO, it doesn't really fill a void. And I'll keep using LaTeX, Office or no Office, so it doesn't make much difference to me.
The reason MySQL was slower was because they used the ODBC drivers.
That's incorrect. From the PostgreSQL-hackers mailing list (msg):
Nope. If it were due to the ODBC driver, then MySQL and PostgreSQL would
not have had comparable performance in the 1-2 user case. The ODBC
driver is a per-client interface so would have no role as the number of
users goes up.
There are a couple problems with the MySQL benchmarks - I'm not saying the Postgres benchmark were perfect, but they're FAR better than these. From the page:
As some entries are posted to us from anonymous MySQL users we can't guarantee that all benchmarks are completely accurate
Okay, these are MySQL users for one thing. As anyone who has seen the Slashdot SQL flamewars, MySQL users tend to be quite rabid when it comes to their choice of RDBMS. At least the Great Bridge results can claim to be from a reputable database company (not a professional benchmarking house). Xperts Inc. have a reputation to uphold. I wouldn't be surprised if more than a few people fudged the results. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the MySQL people chose to fudge the results a bit. At the very least, they would probably choose to concentrate on the aspects of RDBMS performance that MySQL exceeds at.
Because these benchmarks are from MySQL users, we know they all have at least 1 skill - MySQL administration and/or use. We don't know if they know *anything* about any other databases. It stands to reason that many MySQL fans would spend a couple weeks optimizing their database for a production environment, then stick a stock install of Postgres or DB2 on the same machine and benchmark away.
Finally, these results are anonymous. While I'm all for freedom of speech, this is one area where authentication matters. Oh wait - I think I'll just submit some anonymous numbers to MySQL.com - it looks like Postgres is 10x faster than MySQL for pretty much anything on my computer!. What's that? I disabled my L2 cache and under-clocked my CPU for the MySQL tests? Nonsense! (end sarcasm)
I don't think the MySQL.com results are definately biased, but they are definately worse than the Great Bridge results.
I don't know how badly Copeland screwed Debian (I use it, and I've only heard this event referred to vaguely), but the one thing that puts Corel in a good light in my mind is their contribution to the WINE effort. Corel has been crucial in getting WINE to the state it is today (not perfect, but definately promising). Corel are definately not angels, and probably haven't been as nice to Free Software as IBM or SGI have, but Corel's extensive support of Linux was a very important factor in legitimizing Linux in the eyes of PHBs everywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
No, you need root privs to set the NIC to promisc mode. Or do I misunderstand you?
It also spawns a child process, but you're probably unaware of this.
Well, my shell kills all bg processes it spawns before logging out (it asks me first - it's zsh, BTW).
The exact same type of crack could happen on ANY Unix machine, not properly safeguarded.
You mean 'ANY machine running braindead, insecure software that executes remote binaries'. Yes, you can receive an email in mutt w/ a binary attachment, you can download it, make it executable, and run it. But who's stupid enough to do that? And even so, it's not exactly easy. You've got to go out of your way -- with Outlook, it practically does it behind your back.
Not so much annoy, but 'make them feel bad'. In other words, make the Sony's decision to make the PS2 such a closed platform result in unhappiness for them. Sony won't have total control over the platform, and Free Software developers will be able to write games that run on all platforms relatively easily (via Crystal Space). Once they understand this, perhaps their next console will be more open.
There's an interesting article @ Daemonews here: http://www.daemonnews.org/200010 /da dvocate.html. It's a short summary of the history of BSD, the various leadership approaches (NetBSD's + FreeBSD's CORE, Linux's benevolent dictator, OpenBSD's hybrid), and other cool stuff. I recommend it.
This probably wouldn't be necessary for most clients (doing static content, CGIs, etc). It could be offerred as a 'premium package', or whatever. So all the static content + CGI stuff could run in 1 kernel, and you could give each premium client their own kernel to play with. The efficiency problems would probably be offset by the big speed boost mod_perl and similar apps give you (after all, that's why they need to be so closely integrated with Apache). Plus, if these people are willing to pay extra for a `premium' package, you can probably afford to buy a couple big Sun boxen to host them on.
I just installed the latest Debian packages of KDE2, and switched over from Blackbox (perhaps temporarily). The first thing I did was try Konq - and honestly, I'm not that impressed. It doesn't even render Slashdot properly (the topic icons are way to the left, some text doesn't line up, forms aren't spaced properly, etc). Moz renders all this perfectly. It's also not particularly 'sleek' - it's using about 25 MB of RAM for me, and I've only been browsing for about 4 or 5 minutes. Pages also seem to render at about the same speed as Moz/Gecko.
It has some nice features - it's fairly responsive, and contains 'just the basics', which is good. But it's not nearly as good as you make it out to be. Maybe the Debian packages are out of date, and the version in CVS is much nicer.
And RC6 and MARS did not. In fact, MARS takes up more than 200 bytes of RAM : more than is on most 'smart' cards. Although you might be able to adjust to algorithm to get this down the ~100 (the same as RC6), Twofish, Serpent, and Rijndael are all 50-60.
There's a really interesting paper on AES candidate performance here: http://www.counterpane.com:80/a es- comparison.pdf
Oh really? Can you name any big installations running Solaris/x86? Solaris/SPARC is definately 'proven', but how is Solaris/x86 more than a virtually unsupported, bastard son?
While this is some fact and some opinion the truth remains Solaris/SunOS were running stable and secure servers when 99.995% of the world had yet to hear of Linus Torvalds.
Um, I doubt many people has heard of Scott McNealy (sp?) either. And 'secure' - when was the last time you took a look at BUGTRAQ? Sun's security record sucks as much as any of the major UNIX vendors.
Solaris is a great operating system and for some things its better, yes I said better, than Linux.
I agree. The last place I worked, the main E450 and other Sun hardware was the lifeblood of the department. I think everyone would agree that Solaris has its uses (when you're willing to dish out the $$$). But I don't think this is one of them.
But I've yet to read a post in the comments that has any insightful revelations as to why Linux is better than Solaris on the Cobalt machines.
And I've yet to see a post revealing the huge advantage Solaris/x86 has over Linux for this application. If something works, why try to 'fix' it? Cobalt were using Linux across their entire line of products (both MIPS- and x86-based). Solaris runs on x86 (poorly), but it has yet to be ported to MIPS. I don't know if Cobalt plan to continue making MIPS based boxed, but if they do, they'll need to port Solaris too it. Not to mention legacy support.
That's ridiculous. A JDK/JRE is no more of a 'security risk' than Perl, Python, or Tcl. You're probably thinking of Java applets or something. But if you want a reason not to code in Java, security is NOT one of them.
It would obviously use a battery so that if the day is too cloudy, you won't lose power. Plus, the existing gas power infrastructure could be used as a backup.
Why are people not using this already? Will it be used any time in the foreseeable future?
I doubt that. That would make the drivers non-free software according to the Debian Free Software Guidelines - this would make it illegal to distribute with Debian (i.e. these drivers would have to be distributed as a separate, 'non-free' package). It may also violate the Open Source definition.
As was announced with Perl 5.6.0, Perl is now following a release style similar to Linux - even numbered releases are 'production' releases (e.g. 5.6.x, 5.8.x, 5.10.x), odd numbered releases are 'development' releases (5.7.x, 5.9.x, etc).
I haven't checked out the change summary yet - I wonder what's been improved. My personal hope is the Perl compiler (B::C, B::CC, etc). Neat stuff!
Steve Jobs and crew have a 'loooong way to go' before they even release MacOSX. When it's released, then it will be fair to compaire with a GNU/Linux distro. Considering the pace at which Linux is improving, it's very difficult to predict the future.
All the distro makers are trying very hard to make a luser friendly yet powerful unix system, but that exactly describes OS X. Except for the hardware constraints, anybody interested in linux from a user standpoint is better served using MacOS X. Why give Grandma Redhat when you can give her OSX?
I think MacOSX will be cool as hell, but it's nowhere near a 'better Linux than Linux' (not necessarily worse or better, just different). OSX will only run on Apple hardware. That means tossing out all that cheap, plentiful x86 hardware and starting over. It also means that old SparcStation in the corner isn't going to be running MacOS X any time soon. OSX is closed source (Darwin not withstanding - I'd say the majority of MacOSX will be closed source), and only runs on a closed hardware platform. If you use GNU/Linux for philosophical reasons, you won't want to have much to do with OSX. Once MacOS X is finally released, it will be brand new, 'fresh' code (stuff taken from BSD notwithstanding). Which is great from an 'innovation' standpoint; but I know I'll definately be hesitant to run MacOS X on any important servers anytime soon.
Then again, I don't really know much about OSX, so go ahead and correct me. One quick question - is the GUI integrated into the OS? If you're running X on it, will you need to load Apple's GUI (for lack of a better term), as well as X? Can you forego a GUI entirely? Throw in all the standard OSS tools
Have they actually been ported to OSX? How stable are they? OS X makes me seriously consider picking up a mac
Me too!
If you took offence at my comment, I apologize. It's clear that you understand the scope and limitations of your benchmark, even if the person I was replying to did not. Are you planning any followup Java on Linux articles in the future?
Then again, maybe I'm smoking crack. Can someone back me up or correct me?
While I'm on the subject...
Wouldn't it be faster to incorporate the cache on-die, like with Celeron As? Uh, why's that? What makes 'holographic memory' any different from regular memory? (I don't think they're wrong, I just want more info).Damnit. I'm really getting tired with this '15-year-old cracker/hacker' nonsense. I'm 16, and I consider myself a 'hacker', in the OSS sense of the word. I use Debian GNU/Linux + BSD at home (Solaris/SPARC at work), hack on Free Software projects in Perl, Java, C etc in my spare time, and work as a UNIX admin/web guy at a media company. I DO NOT crack into computer systems (although I might be able to, I've never tried, nor do I have any desire to try); I'm not a w3r4z d00d, or anything puerile like that. I'm not trying to boast or anything - but I think more people should be aware that not all - in fact, very few - teenagers are 'l33t hax0rs'.
I know that people like that do exist, and that's the stereotype that you were commenting on. But don't include the age group - there are many people like myself in the under-18 age group that feel sleighted at being associated with script kiddies - just like you would feel. If you want to refer to that group of peope, call them script kiddes, or crackers, or anything you like. But I don't think age has much to do with it.
Plus, the tests on Win32 are pretty meaningless because Win32's system timer is not precise enough to generate meaningful numbers when you use System.currentTimeMillis() . (AFAIK - someone correct me if I'm wrong)
Bottom-line: Try IBM's JDK 1.3.0 . Failing that, try a better benchmark which tests other aspects of Java performance, not just how fast you can create objects. But most importantly, don't trust a benchmark for anything - test real-world, production code. That's pretty much the only way you'll get a real idea if Java is suitable for your needs or not.
The survey is here, go and vote. Recently, a petition was put forward to open source javadoc (the Java sourcecode documentation tool), but Sun hasn't responded (possibly due to lack of attention from the media). I think if we really bug Sun about this, we might get an official response (*fingers crossed*).
As to the topic at hand, my primary Linux JDK for development is IBM's. It's excellent, and very fast - I haven't had any problems. Sun's 1.3.0 JDK hasn't even been officially released for Linux or Solaris yet, so there's not really much of an alternative at the moment.
How is this any different from conventional technology? If you increase the tempurature of a CPU sufficiently, it will begin to malfunction or not even function at all (this is often encountered by overclockers). Molecular computers might be more vulnerable to this, but I don't think it's that big of a deal. Just get a cooling/heating system which always adjusts the equipment to the correct temps, or simply turns everything off if it is too hot or too cold.
If you hijacked a corporation's DNS, you'd probably be prosucuted. Can someone explain what's going on?
Um, no, they haven't. I was talking to a guy from the IBM JIT team, and we discussed AFS - it is still used extensively by IBM for their internal network. He wasn't overly impressed with it, but we agreed it does have its uses.
Perhaps someone from IBM can confirm this?
Maybe it was a couple years ago, but Linux currently has at least 4 office suites - StarOffice, Wordperfect Office 2K, KDE's Office stuff, and Gnome Office (not sure - is this the next gen of StarOffice)? Plus other stuff like Abiword, and Applix.
MS Office makes Linux look like a more legitimate platform in the eyes of PHBs everywhere. But IMHO, it doesn't really fill a void. And I'll keep using LaTeX, Office or no Office, so it doesn't make much difference to me.
That's incorrect. From the PostgreSQL-hackers mailing list (msg):
Nope. If it were due to the ODBC driver, then MySQL and PostgreSQL would not have had comparable performance in the 1-2 user case. The ODBC driver is a per-client interface so would have no role as the number of users goes up.
As some entries are posted to us from anonymous MySQL users we can't guarantee that all benchmarks are completely accurate
Okay, these are MySQL users for one thing. As anyone who has seen the Slashdot SQL flamewars, MySQL users tend to be quite rabid when it comes to their choice of RDBMS. At least the Great Bridge results can claim to be from a reputable database company (not a professional benchmarking house). Xperts Inc. have a reputation to uphold. I wouldn't be surprised if more than a few people fudged the results. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the MySQL people chose to fudge the results a bit. At the very least, they would probably choose to concentrate on the aspects of RDBMS performance that MySQL exceeds at.
Because these benchmarks are from MySQL users, we know they all have at least 1 skill - MySQL administration and/or use. We don't know if they know *anything* about any other databases. It stands to reason that many MySQL fans would spend a couple weeks optimizing their database for a production environment, then stick a stock install of Postgres or DB2 on the same machine and benchmark away.
Finally, these results are anonymous. While I'm all for freedom of speech, this is one area where authentication matters. Oh wait - I think I'll just submit some anonymous numbers to MySQL.com - it looks like Postgres is 10x faster than MySQL for pretty much anything on my computer!. What's that? I disabled my L2 cache and under-clocked my CPU for the MySQL tests? Nonsense! (end sarcasm)
I don't think the MySQL.com results are definately biased, but they are definately worse than the Great Bridge results.
I don't know how badly Copeland screwed Debian (I use it, and I've only heard this event referred to vaguely), but the one thing that puts Corel in a good light in my mind is their contribution to the WINE effort. Corel has been crucial in getting WINE to the state it is today (not perfect, but definately promising). Corel are definately not angels, and probably haven't been as nice to Free Software as IBM or SGI have, but Corel's extensive support of Linux was a very important factor in legitimizing Linux in the eyes of PHBs everywhere.