Stirling engines have a 'almost, nope not quite' history. Modern material science helps to solve the problem of containing the working fluid, but for whatever reason, commerical engines you can go buy are not even CLOSE to reasonable, as each 'commerical' engine is hand-made. ($5000 for a kit engine, or $16,000 for the engine in the whipsergen product.)
Why would a stirling engine matter? The concept of just heating one side and cooling the other to do work. Thus a solar concentrator, the methane burned at the landfill, and the act of heating your home can get you electrical power. Using the solar concentrator, you can even get air conditioning via ammonia.
Want a demo engine that moves? At least 15 kits exist for this kind of engine. One will even run off the heat your computer monitor makes.
Onto the 'small but can do meaningful work' engines: You've got DEKA (Kamen, the segway ppl). Not shipping, no real public statements as to where they are. Wayne Conrad http://www.omachron.com/contact.html claimed to have a 1 hp Stirling design at a $89 price point due to the ease of manufactoring. The ST-5 was a shipping an engine, and stopped.
Bigger engines: One company sells a 100Kw stirling, the Swedes use them in subs. The car companies have had experimental cars with these engines.
http://www.stirlinginfo.com/ and http://www.sesusa.org/ have links-o-plenty and you can go find out what happening (or not) in stirlings.
Perfect for people who have 'bad knees' - the knees can take a load, but don't fair well with the bending.
If you say 'this is a medical device' you enter a strange, parallel world where every move you make requires paperwork. But without the medical tag, its hard to get insurance to pay.
Thus, the Segway is being sold the way its being sold w/o the company pointing to the medical needs.
The 'novelity' of the Segway is the self-balancing feature, but "The market" does not feel $5000 is worth it. Kamen and Company need to examine what price point makes them money on EACH unit w/o reguard to past expenditures and price them there if they want to stay in business at this time. The sunk costs of R/D are sunk, and the product isn't moving.
Microsoft Corp. was found guilty of patent infringement and ordered to pay $120 million in damages to a tiny California firm in a rare setback for the giant computer software company.
However, the federal jury on Wednesday also ruled that the violation was not willful and awarded Microsoft $13.6 million on a counterclaim against Stac Electronics, which makes a data-compression program called Stacker.
Anyone remember NT 3.1 at 1,299 for 'unlimited users'? The claim it will be a 'better UNIX than UNIX?' Or other good MS claims?
Does anyone have a list of bookmarks to such info?
(and the same goes for Oracle...I smell blood in the water about Larry's yacht and wouldn't mind scraping together links to data about Oracle sticking it to its customers)
For the last 8 years, from a advertising POV, UNIX has been considered dead. Most 'small' computer shops (they sold NOVELL for years, now just Microsoft) had bought hook, line and sinker the Microsoft Mantra about the death of UNIX.
How many remember HP's announcements of 1994-95 that they were not going to do alot of development on HP-UX, but instead focus on NT?
What would be NICE is if the "This is a Linux program" software authors saw themselfs as UNIX coders - but rather than 'a rising tide floating all boats' you have press releases from (defunct) companies like Progeny Linux saying 'we are better because we are not unix.'
To be 'fair', the "name of the game" is to collect that email address. You know that. So the 'logging in' is a way to collect that information.
Apple's customer care has dropped off after they didn't have the Apple ][ line to suck profits from....or you can pick the day Micheal Spindler stood in front of a crowd and said "We are committed to maximizing shareholder value" (We'll screw our customer base)
A company that actually has a postmaster who reads mail, and routes it to parties that then don't respond is IBM. (Trying to get detailed technical info on the USB in an iSeries 1300. If you have RedHat and call the USB port in a particular order, it will work. On FreeBSD, it won't work (4.4-RELEASE) Wanting to fix it, I tried enlisting IBM's help. The postmaster saw what I was looking for was going to be hard to get, and told me so. Now *THAT* is service, ok. Service when compared to the rest of the computer industry. Sad when a failure to deliver information that is wanted/needed is seen as a success because someone tried.)
Is it me, or do you have to be a bit brave or stupid to run an operating system that can't even provide working links to it's release notes?
Is it me, or do you believe anything that is printed on/. as true?
It could be worse, it could be RedHat. Where you get experimental C compilers shipped with the OS, or have a NEW filesystem (extfs3) then not update the file systems man page (fs). And, provide no man pages or documentation in the.pdf's on how to make an extfs3 file system after you have made the system.
I'll take FreeBSD, and look to www.freebsd.org for any release info, not/.
Looking at the actual licence:
server# pwd
/usr/src/contrib/ipfilter
server# cat IPFILTER.LICENCE
Copyright (C) 1993-2001 by Darren Reed.
The author accepts no responsibility for the use of this software and
provides it on an ``as is'' basis without express or implied warranty.
Redistribution and use, with or without modification, in source and binary
forms, are permitted provided that this notice is preserved in its entirety
and due credit is given to the original author and the contributors.
The licence and distribution terms for any publically available version or
derivative of this code cannot be changed. i.e. this code cannot simply be
copied, in part or in whole, and put under another distribution licence
[including the GNU Public Licence.]
There is the licence. Now, what part of with or without modification == "he cannot stand to give the public the right to modify" ?
Oh, thats right. This is slashdot. "Let not facts get in the way of promoting all things Linux." From your post "IPtables and Rusty's Netfilter code has been kicking ipfilter's proverbial ass since the first release of Linux 2.4," All that 'ass kicking' must be why the 2.4 series is The kernel of pain Your anger is that the fine code of IPFilter can't be GPLed is all.
Wind River was a big IP customer of BSDI. When it came time to re-up that contract for the IP of the TCP/IP contract, BSDi got squeezed, and walked away from the table with some cash in their pocket as opposed to the potentional of leaving the table without any money or perhaps in debt in the future.
WRS tried finding someone to pay big money for FreeBSD, but no one opened their wallet to WRS, hence this turn of events.
Why SHOULD Apple as a company be trusted? Why SHOULD Jobs be trusted? (ok, why trust any company?)
Apple/// is a five year product. Dead in under 3. (Jobs was trying to prove himself as a designer. The lack of a fan was a big design problem here)
When Apple's income from the ][ line was sagging, and Apple NEEDED that money to prop up the Mac line, they came out with "Apple ][ Forever" and promises of 16 and 32 bit ][ products. Jobs had a BIG hand in killing the ][ line.
The Mac will sell 20,000 a month, thats why we need the automated Mac factory. They sold 512 and 1288 unit in two months. (ever wonder why the board fired Jobs)
How about the "Steve Jobs - Father of the Mac". He wasn't. Jef Raskin is. (Jef, Woz and Steve for serial #1 of the 20th annv. mac for a reason)
OpenDoc
Newton - Apple lost millions to Harris data over the Ameritech details. (Contracts that were signed and then Apple broke the legal promises) Before they killed the Newton, they were claiming they would not kill the Newton, and on March 3rd (they killed the product on Feb 27th) Apple staffers were seen at the national education convention saing "The Newton is an important part of the Apple product line"
WWDC 1997 the CEO said "Any machine sold by Apple in 1997 will run the new OS"
How about Steve Jobs himself? He lied to Woz over money paid on a contract job, and pocketed the extra money. He said the daughter from one of his flings was not his. That Daughter's name is Lisa. (Yea, he DID name the Lisa after her)
H. Ross Perot called his investment in NeXT - "his biggest mistake" Did Jobs lie, or was just 'overmarketing' the future of NeXT?
At least with Open Source and commodity hardware, you don't need to trust in a company, you place your trust in your fellow man, or in your own skills.
And, as an aside: Do you think people would have such a visceral reaction to Microsoft if the programs worked as advertised?
I guess then Apple having millions in cash, Microsoft having Billions in cash is due to the excellent service, while Gateway and other PC vendors going broke has NOTHING to do with Apple and Microsoft by having IP that is protected, while gateway has little IP that is protectable.
In *MY* world, the money the RIAA, Motion Picture Industry, etc la to BUY senators to get laws to continue to protect their IP. In *YOUR* world, the money the RIAA etc has must be because of the excellent products and services they provide.
* Shift the cost away from the consumer.
* Lower the cost making it affordable.
* Minimize parts to near zero cost.
* Subsidize the cost.
* Use parts having zero cost.
With respect to locating parts with lowered cost on software. There is one candidate the would evenly fit the requirement. As of this writing, there are several OS are out there having those properties, but there is only one having a large developer base and community scattered around the globe that can act as support contacts. The name is called GNU/Linux.
The author is so desperate to push a GNU/Linux adjenda that he is willing to warp reality as shamelessly as a Microsoft PR employee.
To make a claim that the ONLY choice is GNU/Linux is a flat out lie. *BSD is an equally fine choice. Why? Given most of the user space and user applications are the SAME across the UNIX space, if the statement "community scattered around the globe that can act as support contacts" is true, and most of the code in a complete GNU/Linux system is the same across the UNIX world, then *BSD is as good a choice as *Linux.
The Author even KNOWS he's lying, look at his verbage. He states "there is one candidate [that] would evenly fit the bill" Ok, so he's establishing there is one. Then he says "But there is only one" - this is the slip up in verbage. He'd already established there is 'but one choice' then he claims only one has the 'global reach'....why make the claim if there is only one?
Having the GNU blinders on, means the author misses the reality that wealth is built on Intellectual Property. The idea behind the GPL is to tear down IP. Using a BSD licence and BSD software means you can create economic value by choosing to protect IP. By actualling having IP to bring to the economic table, the "digitally divided" have IP to barter for money.
As you can see, the author doesn't actually CARE about the global condition....unless the answer to that condition is GNU/Linux.
Brett, this is not about hurting Windows, this is all about promoting linux at any cost.
They don't actually CARE about Open Source, just about establishing a NEW default standard *Linux.
When people talk about how *Linux just copied the UNIX API, want to copy the Windows API, or copy program X, you can add copy Microsoft's monopoly position via creating hardware that only runs one OS.
The 1st problem with this technology is the high temprature 400C is a material science problem.
The next is the poor overall efficiency. MIT says they get 2X times the efficiency. From Photonpower.com I remember a 5% efficiency, so lets be generous and claim 15% efficiency.
Yet, with the use of stirling engine technology A $90 750Watt engine or the mystical Ginger or IT you can use waste heat and get power. Stirlings will move with as little as a 2C temprature difference. 90% as a CHP is possible
If you want to get excited about the idea of heat/electricity, then go take a look at some Naval research that could provide room grade AC w/o state change presently used.
But this technology? Not that exciting, and that is ONLY because of the high temprature.
(and a reply to the troll about the SMP)
At least Linux FINALLY decided on a VM system. Just the other day, in fact. Given most of the Intel systems are one processor boxes, not 64 way SMP boxes, it doesn't bother me that SMP support with FreeBSD isn't up to the level of Solaris.
Before you start thumping your chest about how superior or cutting edge *Linux is, go look at these two links
A slashdot story pointing out how without the FreeBSD ATA code, the Linux kernel would be 'lacking'
The FreeBSD press release announcing the code is stable
If The Reg actually researched the story, Andy would have notice it is not a 'first' but more a 'dead heat' between the 2 leading software libre OSes. Instead, The Reg does more hyping of *Linux.
Note the actual license on GNU-Darwin-ports
on
GNU-Darwin Goes Beta
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Is actually a BSD license.
And, on the main page, the license is listed as GPL. http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-darwin/
Notice how that is no longer an option in the later 4.X series?
It 'was' dangerous....if you did any kind of CVSup and rebuilt your kernel, things like top would stop working. SCSI drives formatted on DPT RAID cards would boot with an error on Adaptec cards, and a upgrade from 3.x to 4.x would break.
If you ran in a non-dedicated mode, rebuilds had no effect. Same with the SCSI issue.
First off, if you are the system admin, there is something called a logfile. What is nice about reading the longs and interperting the logs is that is your job. Had you read your logs, you would not need ORBS to tell you there was a problem.
The ORBS run by Alan Brown used the entry tables as a form of 'punishment'. If you spoke out about how his methods were flawed, on the list you'd go.
Two of the new ORBS are not much better, in the method department. (I don't know about the 3rd). Neither of the ORBS's can produce copies of 'spam' comming from my box when asked. (Given I look at the logs daily, I'd be interested in seeing how the relaying would be done) I have told the two off them NOT to come back with their probes until they have some proof. The jury is out if these new ORBS will honor the simple idea of "don't bother me until you have proof" or will put systems on thier lists simply because admins find thier methods rude.
Go back in time. What were records and movies going to do? Provide entertainment alternatives to theatre and live music.
If you are blessed to live in a place that has live music and theate, rather than spend coin on a movie, spend it going to the live music and the life theatre.
Then, make sure you not only let the 'entertainment industry' know that they didn't get your entertainment dollars, make sure you let the live music/theatre know also.
Write a 'letter to the editor' for the theater's publication and the local 'free press' expressing the "to hell with the RIAA" attitude.
Use the search engines and get the MP3's by the unknown artists that you like.
Every dollar you spend with the RIAA enables them to buy the laws. Every item of the "intellectual" property you take from them justifies their existance. The best individual action is to totally ignore them, and if EVERYONE did this, they would vanish.
Features:
1) you are supposed to use a flashing monitor to program the watch. - it doesn't work however. Like most Microsoft methods... you have to hold the watch perfectly still, and it only flashes on Windows 3.11 and 95, not NT.
2) The box the watch comes in says "Works with Windows", yet the paper licence says it it ony valid with 3.11 and 95. Not NT.
3) to actually program the watch reliabily, you have to buy the laptop interface. Why? Ever try holding your wrist as a special angle for 2 mins without movement?
4) No API is aviable to help you program the watch the way you want.
Summary, you can't program it because of the closed API, it doesn't work with later MS pograms-thus you need to upgrade, and the license doesn't agree with what is printed on the box.
Slashdot Mirror
As part of the actions Novell did when they bought UNIX from AT&T was to settle the BSD IP lawsuit.
So the BSD's have a clean bill of health.
So to avoid the lawyers on this one, you can run BSD. BSDi had bought a UNIX licence at one time, if you like paying $995 for your UNIX. *wink*
Stirling engines have a 'almost, nope not quite' history. Modern material science helps to solve the problem of containing the working fluid, but for whatever reason, commerical engines you can go buy are not even CLOSE to reasonable, as each 'commerical' engine is hand-made. ($5000 for a kit engine, or $16,000 for the engine in the whipsergen product.)
Why would a stirling engine matter? The concept of just heating one side and cooling the other to do work. Thus a solar concentrator, the methane burned at the landfill, and the act of heating your home can get you electrical power. Using the solar concentrator, you can even get air conditioning via ammonia.
Want a demo engine that moves? At least 15 kits exist for this kind of engine. One will even run off the heat your computer monitor makes.
Onto the 'small but can do meaningful work' engines:
You've got DEKA (Kamen, the segway ppl). Not shipping, no real public statements as to where they are.
Wayne Conrad http://www.omachron.com/contact.html claimed to have a 1 hp Stirling design at a $89 price point due to the ease of manufactoring.
The ST-5 was a shipping an engine, and stopped.
Bigger engines:
One company sells a 100Kw stirling, the Swedes use them in subs.
The car companies have had experimental cars with these engines.
http://www.stirlinginfo.com/ and http://www.sesusa.org/ have links-o-plenty and you can go find out what happening (or not) in stirlings.
The Segway is a standing wheelchair.
Perfect for people who have 'bad knees' - the knees can take a load, but don't fair well with the bending.
If you say 'this is a medical device' you enter a strange, parallel world where every move you make requires paperwork. But without the medical tag, its hard to get insurance to pay.
Thus, the Segway is being sold the way its being sold w/o the company pointing to the medical needs.
The 'novelity' of the Segway is the self-balancing feature, but "The market" does not feel $5000 is worth it. Kamen and Company need to examine what price point makes them money on EACH unit w/o reguard to past expenditures and price them there if they want to stay in business at this time. The sunk costs of R/D are sunk, and the product isn't moving.
http://www.base.com/software-patents/articles/stac . tml
Microsoft Corp. was found guilty of patent infringement and ordered to pay $120 million in damages to a tiny California firm in a rare setback for the giant computer software company.
However, the federal jury on Wednesday also ruled that the violation was not willful and awarded Microsoft $13.6 million on a counterclaim against Stac Electronics, which makes a data-compression program called Stacker.
Anyone remember NT 3.1 at 1,299 for 'unlimited users'? The claim it will be a 'better UNIX than UNIX?' Or other good MS claims?
Does anyone have a list of bookmarks to such info?
(and the same goes for Oracle...I smell blood in the water about Larry's yacht and wouldn't mind scraping together links to data about Oracle sticking it to its customers)
For the last 8 years, from a advertising POV, UNIX has been considered dead. Most 'small' computer shops (they sold NOVELL for years, now just Microsoft) had bought hook, line and sinker the Microsoft Mantra about the death of UNIX.
How many remember HP's announcements of 1994-95 that they were not going to do alot of development on HP-UX, but instead focus on NT?
What would be NICE is if the "This is a Linux program" software authors saw themselfs as UNIX coders - but rather than 'a rising tide floating all boats' you have press releases from (defunct) companies like Progeny Linux saying 'we are better because we are not unix.'
To be 'fair', the "name of the game" is to collect that email address. You know that. So the 'logging in' is a way to collect that information.
Apple's customer care has dropped off after they didn't have the Apple ][ line to suck profits from....or you can pick the day Micheal Spindler stood in front of a crowd and said "We are committed to maximizing shareholder value" (We'll screw our customer base)
A company that actually has a postmaster who reads mail, and routes it to parties that then don't respond is IBM. (Trying to get detailed technical info on the USB in an iSeries 1300. If you have RedHat and call the USB port in a particular order, it will work. On FreeBSD, it won't work (4.4-RELEASE) Wanting to fix it, I tried enlisting IBM's help. The postmaster saw what I was looking for was going to be hard to get, and told me so. Now *THAT* is service, ok. Service when compared to the rest of the computer industry. Sad when a failure to deliver information that is wanted/needed is seen as a success because someone tried.)
Actually there are over 180 flavors.
Is it me, or do you believe anything that is printed on
It could be worse, it could be RedHat. Where you get experimental C compilers shipped with the OS, or have a NEW filesystem (extfs3) then not update the file systems man page (fs). And, provide no man pages or documentation in the
I'll take FreeBSD, and look to www.freebsd.org for any release info, not
Looking at the actual licence:
server# pwd
/usr/src/contrib/ipfilter
server# cat IPFILTER.LICENCE
Copyright (C) 1993-2001 by Darren Reed.
The author accepts no responsibility for the use of this software and
provides it on an ``as is'' basis without express or implied warranty.
Redistribution and use, with or without modification, in source and binary
forms, are permitted provided that this notice is preserved in its entirety
and due credit is given to the original author and the contributors.
The licence and distribution terms for any publically available version or
derivative of this code cannot be changed. i.e. this code cannot simply be
copied, in part or in whole, and put under another distribution licence
[including the GNU Public Licence.]
There is the licence. Now, what part of with or without modification == "he cannot stand to give the public the right to modify" ?
Oh, thats right. This is slashdot. "Let not facts get in the way of promoting all things Linux." From your post "IPtables and Rusty's Netfilter code has been kicking ipfilter's proverbial ass since the first release of Linux 2.4," All that 'ass kicking' must be why the 2.4 series is The kernel of pain Your anger is that the fine code of IPFilter can't be GPLed is all.
It had nothing to do with FreeBSD.
Wind River was a big IP customer of BSDI. When it came time to re-up that contract for the IP of the TCP/IP contract, BSDi got squeezed, and walked away from the table with some cash in their pocket as opposed to the potentional of leaving the table without any money or perhaps in debt in the future.
WRS tried finding someone to pay big money for FreeBSD, but no one opened their wallet to WRS, hence this turn of events.
Why SHOULD Apple as a company be trusted? Why SHOULD Jobs be trusted? (ok, why trust any company?)
/// is a five year product. Dead in under 3. (Jobs was trying to prove himself as a designer. The lack of a fan was a big design problem here)
Apple
When Apple's income from the ][ line was sagging, and Apple NEEDED that money to prop up the Mac line, they came out with "Apple ][ Forever" and promises of 16 and 32 bit ][ products. Jobs had a BIG hand in killing the ][ line.
The Mac will sell 20,000 a month, thats why we need the automated Mac factory. They sold 512 and 1288 unit in two months. (ever wonder why the board fired Jobs)
How about the "Steve Jobs - Father of the Mac". He wasn't. Jef Raskin is. (Jef, Woz and Steve for serial #1 of the 20th annv. mac for a reason)
OpenDoc
Newton - Apple lost millions to Harris data over the Ameritech details. (Contracts that were signed and then Apple broke the legal promises) Before they killed the Newton, they were claiming they would not kill the Newton, and on March 3rd (they killed the product on Feb 27th) Apple staffers were seen at the national education convention saing "The Newton is an important part of the Apple product line"
WWDC 1997 the CEO said "Any machine sold by Apple in 1997 will run the new OS"
How about Steve Jobs himself? He lied to Woz over money paid on a contract job, and pocketed the extra money. He said the daughter from one of his flings was not his. That Daughter's name is Lisa. (Yea, he DID name the Lisa after her)
H. Ross Perot called his investment in NeXT - "his biggest mistake" Did Jobs lie, or was just 'overmarketing' the future of NeXT?
At least with Open Source and commodity hardware, you don't need to trust in a company, you place your trust in your fellow man, or in your own skills.
And, as an aside: Do you think people would have such a visceral reaction to Microsoft if the programs worked as advertised?
Yea, right.....
I guess then Apple having millions in cash, Microsoft having Billions in cash is due to the excellent service, while Gateway and other PC vendors going broke has NOTHING to do with Apple and Microsoft by having IP that is protected, while gateway has little IP that is protectable.
In *MY* world, the money the RIAA, Motion Picture Industry, etc la to BUY senators to get laws to continue to protect their IP. In *YOUR* world, the money the RIAA etc has must be because of the excellent products and services they provide.
* Shift the cost away from the consumer.
* Lower the cost making it affordable.
* Minimize parts to near zero cost.
* Subsidize the cost.
* Use parts having zero cost.
With respect to locating parts with lowered cost on software. There is one candidate the would evenly fit the requirement. As of this writing, there are several OS are out there having those properties, but there is only one having a large developer base and community scattered around the globe that can act as support contacts. The name is called GNU/Linux.
The author is so desperate to push a GNU/Linux adjenda that he is willing to warp reality as shamelessly as a Microsoft PR employee.
To make a claim that the ONLY choice is GNU/Linux is a flat out lie. *BSD is an equally fine choice. Why? Given most of the user space and user applications are the SAME across the UNIX space, if the statement "community scattered around the globe that can act as support contacts" is true, and most of the code in a complete GNU/Linux system is the same across the UNIX world, then *BSD is as good a choice as *Linux.
The Author even KNOWS he's lying, look at his verbage. He states "there is one candidate [that] would evenly fit the bill" Ok, so he's establishing there is one. Then he says "But there is only one" - this is the slip up in verbage. He'd already established there is 'but one choice' then he claims only one has the 'global reach'....why make the claim if there is only one?
Having the GNU blinders on, means the author misses the reality that wealth is built on Intellectual Property. The idea behind the GPL is to tear down IP. Using a BSD licence and BSD software means you can create economic value by choosing to protect IP. By actualling having IP to bring to the economic table, the "digitally divided" have IP to barter for money.
As you can see, the author doesn't actually CARE about the global condition....unless the answer to that condition is GNU/Linux.
Brett, this is not about hurting Windows, this is all about promoting linux at any cost.
They don't actually CARE about Open Source, just about establishing a NEW default standard *Linux.
When people talk about how *Linux just copied the UNIX API, want to copy the Windows API, or copy program X, you can add copy Microsoft's monopoly position via creating hardware that only runs one OS.
The 1st problem with this technology is the high temprature 400C is a material science problem.
The next is the poor overall efficiency. MIT says they get 2X times the efficiency. From Photonpower.com I remember a 5% efficiency, so lets be generous and claim 15% efficiency.
Yet, with the use of stirling engine technology A $90 750Watt engine or the mystical Ginger or IT you can use waste heat and get power. Stirlings will move with as little as a 2C temprature difference. 90% as a CHP is possible
If you want to get excited about the idea of heat/electricity, then go take a look at some Naval research that could provide room grade AC w/o state change presently used.
But this technology? Not that exciting, and that is ONLY because of the high temprature.
Lets see:
FreeBSD is core to Mac OS X. How many people claim Mac OS X is NOT a desktop OS?
GNOME don't ship unless it compiles on FreeBSD.
(Is GNOME considered a 'server' product?)
You *DO NOT* have to 'compile all your Apps'. Packages takes up 4.7 gig. 4.7 GIG of pre-compiled stuff.
Finally: FreeBSD - The Desktop edition
(and a reply to the troll about the SMP)
At least Linux FINALLY decided on a VM system. Just the other day, in fact. Given most of the Intel systems are one processor boxes, not 64 way SMP boxes, it doesn't bother me that SMP support with FreeBSD isn't up to the level of Solaris.
the missing link
Before you start thumping your chest about how superior or cutting edge *Linux is, go look at these two links
A slashdot story pointing out how without the FreeBSD ATA code, the Linux kernel would be 'lacking'
The FreeBSD press release announcing the code is stable
If The Reg actually researched the story, Andy would have notice it is not a 'first' but more a 'dead heat' between the 2 leading software libre OSes. Instead, The Reg does more hyping of *Linux.
Is actually a BSD license.
And, on the main page, the license is listed as GPL. http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-darwin/
Notice how that is no longer an option in the later 4.X series?
It 'was' dangerous....if you did any kind of CVSup and rebuilt your kernel, things like top would stop working. SCSI drives formatted on DPT RAID cards would boot with an error on Adaptec cards, and a upgrade from 3.x to 4.x would break.
If you ran in a non-dedicated mode, rebuilds had no effect. Same with the SCSI issue.
First off, if you are the system admin, there is something called a logfile. What is nice about reading the longs and interperting the logs is that is your job. Had you read your logs, you would not need ORBS to tell you there was a problem.
The ORBS run by Alan Brown used the entry tables as a form of 'punishment'. If you spoke out about how his methods were flawed, on the list you'd go.
Two of the new ORBS are not much better, in the method department. (I don't know about the 3rd). Neither of the ORBS's can produce copies of 'spam' comming from my box when asked. (Given I look at the logs daily, I'd be interested in seeing how the relaying would be done) I have told the two off them NOT to come back with their probes until they have some proof. The jury is out if these new ORBS will honor the simple idea of "don't bother me until you have proof" or will put systems on thier lists simply because admins find thier methods rude.
When they had their inital showing on /., the press release mentioned how great they were because they were not Unix.
Given they did not understand WHAT they were, I doubted how long they would stay in the marketplace.
Looks like the answer is 'not long'. If they had something worth having WRS will buy it.
Go back in time. What were records and movies going to do? Provide entertainment alternatives to theatre and live music.
If you are blessed to live in a place that has live music and theate, rather than spend coin on a movie, spend it going to the live music and the life theatre.
Then, make sure you not only let the 'entertainment industry' know that they didn't get your entertainment dollars, make sure you let the live music/theatre know also.
Write a 'letter to the editor' for the theater's publication and the local 'free press' expressing the "to hell with the RIAA" attitude.
Use the search engines and get the MP3's by the unknown artists that you like.
Every dollar you spend with the RIAA enables them to buy the laws. Every item of the "intellectual" property you take from them justifies their existance. The best individual action is to totally ignore them, and if EVERYONE did this, they would vanish.
Microsoft 'made' a watch.
Features:
1) you are supposed to use a flashing monitor to program the watch. - it doesn't work however. Like most Microsoft methods... you have to hold the watch perfectly still, and it only flashes on Windows 3.11 and 95, not NT.
2) The box the watch comes in says "Works with Windows", yet the paper licence says it it ony valid with 3.11 and 95. Not NT.
3) to actually program the watch reliabily, you have to buy the laptop interface. Why? Ever try holding your wrist as a special angle for 2 mins without movement?
4) No API is aviable to help you program the watch the way you want.
Summary, you can't program it because of the closed API, it doesn't work with later MS pograms-thus you need to upgrade, and the license doesn't agree with what is printed on the box.