Maybe. But my initial reaction was "binary logs?!? on a *nix system? WTF?"
But then I chilled out 'cause it seems Debian is configured to double log, ot the same old comfortable places it has always logged in plain text.
Emergency over.
Err what do you call utmp and wtmp since they have been around in Unix since pretty much, well forever.
You have obviously not played with AIX which is a real Unix system and actually uses a database for administration purposes. Try any of the other Unix systems and they all have different flavours although there is allot of similarity.
As for Linux not being Unix. Well it isn't although it does have the look and feel of a Unix system. Oh and what do you call a text file? Strictly speaking it is a binary with a specific structure and can only be read with tools that can read that type of file.
Basically Linux and also Unix do change over time. If you want to call yourself a professional get over it.
Indeed. And it would help even more if they told us how the machines were infected. As the number is quite low, I expect some configuration mistake that is not commonplace.
That seems to be the problem and I struck this similar thing over 30 years ago. Basically it went like this "The sky if falling, everyone panic" and when asked the reply was "Oh that's a secret". It appears nothing has changed. Sigh!
Fortunately there are people who give these smug whistle blowers a binary four finger and tell every one.
Or put a Linux distro on your device (maybe even move that Windows stuff to a VM and disable network if the apps don't need it).
I already have the latest Skylake chip-set for my desktop and Fedora 23 runs on it without any issue. I have even got Mint running in a virtual machine and again no issues. When you look at the BIOS boot it lists Windows 7 onwards however I just selected "Other OS" and I had no issues installing Fedora 23 which took less than 30 minutes.
Since I am not into over-clocking I chose the basic 4 Core i7-6700 which has a maximum power rating of about 65W and a GA-Z170M-D3H motherboard with 16GB of DDR4 RAM. This is by no means top of the line however even though the clock frequency is rated at 3.4GHz to 4GHz Turbo. See the following info . When my desktop is idle or I am only doing some simple web surfing the clock frequency is about 800MHz and can ramp up to 4GHz depending on what you are doing and this is the default after the sixth motherboard update.
What is interesting is that my desktop (including everything) when idle to simple web surfing consumes less than 40W when I just use the inbuilt graphics of the motherboard and the most power consumption I have seen is 140W when doing some video translation. Of course once you start using one or more graphics cards then power usage will increase enormously.
Personally I don't care what Microsoft tries to dictate I am very comfortable with Linux and like you have said if I really need a Microsoft OS I can run it in a virtual machine although when that happens be prepared for Hell freezing over.:-)
Since this is an American issue, so far I think the saying "Hoisted with one's own petard" applies here. Unfortunately sometimes American issues become world wide problems.
I think it means three things: "Why do people use Mint when Ubuntu is better in every way? Some people think the only answer is 'Cinnamon' . Ubuntu should port that over so they are the awesome and Mint can die"
I use Fedora which IMHO is better. Now let the battle lines be drawn and I will get the popcorn \{^,^)/
I don't know what to do at this point. Switching to FreeBSD is looking like the most likely option. It still suffers from some of the same problems as Linux distros do, due to it using a lot of open source software, too. But at least it will minimize the problems by FreeBSD itself being of an extraordinarily high quality, and it using better alternatives (like Clang and LLVM instead of GCC) where possible.
I can install and use Clang and LLVM under Linux as well. Interesting troll though.
What hardware are they focusing on? Vax11? IBM 360?
Is it just me or is there something serious missing here?
You do realise that those machines are circa 1970's and rightfully belong in a museum. You would be really hard pressed getting parts for them.
If you want older still usable machines I suppose you could look at the HP9000 series (still being made) or the IBM 7026-6m1 which was the last IBM machine I worked on in 2004 yet is still usable today. The IBM machines even in 2004 were very capable of running Redhat or CentOS Linux in an LPAR.
There are certain applications that run like crap in the VM. Have you tried Autocad? Solidworks? Both will run like crap and doesn't matter if you have the latest and greatest in hardware. Running it on a laptop just makes things worse.
It may come as a shock to you but not that many PC users run Autocad or Solidworks.
For those people who need a CAD package or pretty much any software package there are Linux based alternatives. When I talk about alternatives I don't necessarily mean free either. A simple Google (oops sorry "Bing") search will find them for you.
Running applications under a virtual machine is a great way to at least have them working while you search for alternatives.
Basally we as a potential space faring species have to crawl before we walk much less run. Our Moon is a destination where we can learn to crawl in relative safety, Unfortunately the Moon is is not romantic enough in the eyes of the media or our politicians where Mars is, so basically we are learning to run before we have a chance to learn to crawl, what can possibly go wrong?
The part where your ridiculous argument tends to fall apart is that most modern games still run on 5-year old hardware.
You are sort of correct however however I will use Quantum Break as an example. You will need as the minimum System Requirements:
Windows 10 (64-bit), DirectX 12, Intel Core i5 4460 2.70 GHz or AMD FX-6300
Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 or AMD Radeon R7 260x,
2GB video RAM and
8GB RAM.
Now that is fine if your 5 year old PC meets those specifications, but I somehow doubt that most older PC's will be able to play this game without an upgrade.
Correct me if I am wrong but one thing I did not notice in the article is how Microsoft approaches the second hand market with respect to Quantum Break.
Ok let's say someone goes out and buys Quantum Break for their XBox then uses the digital download of the PC version to install on their PC. Personally I don't see any problems with this however the words "digital download" sets off alarm bells. Now say that person goes to a store that deals in second hand games and trades or sells their copy of Quantum Break, how does the store or prospective buyer know that the digital download of the game for the PC is still valid.?
Lets not get stupid arguments like "Oh he would never sell his copy". That is childish.
To me that is Microsoft harking back to the introduction of XB1 and basically having a no second hand games policy but this time they are doing it by stealth. Selling/trading Quantum Break is basically broken since you will need an access code for your PC then a prospective buyer of the second hand game has a flawed product. You could have another scenario of a buyer purchase the copy the loading the game onto their PC then getiing theor money back by selling the game but keeping the now cheaper game on the PC.
Obviously just getting a game by digital download effectively means you are locked out of trading it. I personally don't object to that but providing the media for the XB1 and a digital download for the PC effectively removes that game from the second hand market.
The second being by beamed radiation which could be ultrasonic or microwave or even Laser. See the following.
In principle wireless charging sounds good however there are normally huge losses associate with this and since we live in a society of "user pays" I don't think that many people would like to pay for energy losses. Fine for a mobile phone wireless charger since the losses are relatively small but for a car or bus the losses can be quite considerable although I won't deny they can be improved but there are theoretical limits and to date the laws of thermodynamics and transformers have not been repealed.
ability to embed charger at stop lights, bus stops(for electric buses), taxi stops(for taxis), and such for a 'quick top-off'. Might not matter for a Tesla type car, but for a electric bus? Might be the difference between getting through en entire day and having to swap out the batteries for a bus or taxi.
The mind boggles at this. Even it it could be done how much to you think it would cost. It is actually much cheaper to install enough batteries in an electric vehicle so it will get through a working day and I don't think this will change any-time soon. Actually gas and diesel powered buses have been very effective in many cities.
Pure electric cars are great if you are travelling relatively short distances (ie. less than 130 km) around a city although hilly terrain may be problematic. If you are travelling longer distances then petrol is the better solution although hybrids are pretty good as well but relatively more expensive. For long distance driving diesel is the most economical although it can be problematic for short stop and go conditions. Of course public transport is the best if it is cost effective and convenient and unfortunately I have yet to see or hear of a city where this is the case.
Wireless charging is wildly inefficient, in no way is it a better idea to do this than using a plug especially for something as hungry as a car.
You may well be right - but I think the idea is to be able to charge while you drive. Even if it is wildly inefficient and almost certainly can't give you continuous driving (at least no time soon) - it could likely extend the range of an electric vehicle by a good 30% or so, which many people would value. The cost of the infrastructure will be high but since it's value is spread over so many beneficiaries it's cost-per-user is actually quite low.
A simple way to provide charging is to have a ground plate that would spring up and mate with an identical plate in the car therefore providing energy transfer very much like a standard transformer with a small air gap. It would be more efficient to have a charging plug which would remove the need to extra locating circuitry for the plates not to mention the losses associated with a loosely coupled transformer. Not to be a spoilsport but energy stored plus energy lost still has to be paid for by the consumer.
As for charging while you drive. This is actually done by regenerative breaking or where energy is not being applied to the drive motor such as downhill conditions.
From the article:
The idea is that, initially, a self-driving car would position itself briefly over a charging pad between rides, and ultimately, the infrastructure would be put in place that would allow a car to continually recharge its batteries as it travels along the road.
Now that broke me up considering electric buses and trains have been doing that for decades. But electric cars "briefly" passing over a charging plate? I really do think that some of these people should get their heads out of the clouds, what next Mr Fusion and flying cars - oh wait!
bought a skylake based HP Envy 17t last week. There is no bloatware-free install of Windows 10 Pro provided by any means that I found (the "minimal image" install that previously appeared with HP laptops is gone, apparently). After de-crapping Window 10 as best I could I shrank a partition and installed Ubuntu 15.10.
I built a Skylake i7-6700 based desktop recently and all including keyboard & mouse, 1 x SSD, 1 x 3TB HDD and monitor came to nine modules, so it was like putting together up market Lego. Basically all I did was to pre-prepare an installable USB key with Fedora 23 - KDE spin (see the web for info on how to do this - it's easy), inset the USB key in one of the USB slots in the case then. When the install info appears on the screen set-up (what I normally do) or just accept the defaults (for new users) and within 30 minutes I had a working Linux distribution.
The only thing that was out of the ordinary was to upgrade the BIOS Z170 motherboard which was stupidly easy. This fixed a HDMI signal stability issue with the on-board graphics of the motherboard.
Since I am not into PC games I am quite happy to use the on-board graphics of the Z170 motherboard which can support upto 2160p and if I am just surfing the web an/or doing any downloads my system consumes just under 60W and of that 20W is consumed by my IPS monitor. All up I actually use less power than most higher end laptops. Of course if I put in a powerful graphics card then my system would consume allot more power.
BTW. I installed Fedora but I would be very confident that pretty much any current Linux distribution would work well. Of course if the particular user need MS Windows because "Linux is not like Windows" then my commiserations.
I have a Skylake chip-set in my desktop and it runs perfectly under Fedora 23 and i did not have to do anything special to the Z170 motherboard. Updating the BIOS firmware (almost a no-brainier) did fix a video signal drop-out issue.
Am I missing something here? Do Skylake et al. really require substantial modificaitons to existing OSs?
Short answer, No!
On my Skylake chip-set I can boot from my bootable USB stick which has Fedora 23 on it and within 30 minutes I have a working system. You don't even need to update the firmware although it is advisable from a stability perspective. Add another 30 minutes and I can get my system fully configured and customised although to be fair I have already pre-prepared all information on how I want my system set-up. A full update (at least for me) takes an additional 30 minutes although you are dependent on your internet performance and I can be surfing the web or even playing a game on my system while I am waiting.
Slashdot Mirror
What are bug report good for if the developers simply close them as NOTABUG and WONTFIX?
And what use is winging if you won't give out information that can help developers fix the problem.
Maybe. But my initial reaction was "binary logs?!? on a *nix system? WTF?"
But then I chilled out 'cause it seems Debian is configured to double log, ot the same old comfortable places it has always logged in plain text.
Emergency over.
Err what do you call utmp and wtmp since they have been around in Unix since pretty much, well forever.
You have obviously not played with AIX which is a real Unix system and actually uses a database for administration purposes. Try any of the other Unix systems and they all have different flavours although there is allot of similarity.
As for Linux not being Unix. Well it isn't although it does have the look and feel of a Unix system. Oh and what do you call a text file? Strictly speaking it is a binary with a specific structure and can only be read with tools that can read that type of file.
Basically Linux and also Unix do change over time. If you want to call yourself a professional get over it.
Some systems are designed to make you buy support. Like systemd, for example.
Ah! I was wondering when I was going to read a lame post like that.
Indeed. And it would help even more if they told us how the machines were infected. As the number is quite low, I expect some configuration mistake that is not commonplace.
That seems to be the problem and I struck this similar thing over 30 years ago. Basically it went like this "The sky if falling, everyone panic" and when asked the reply was "Oh that's a secret". It appears nothing has changed. Sigh!
Fortunately there are people who give these smug whistle blowers a binary four finger and tell every one.
Loonix is impervious to such things! Teh Open Sores was created by messiah Loonix Toreballs; and as a god, things with his name nevar have problems!
Ah! the troll is strong with this one. These aren't the Linux's you are looking for, move along.
I run OpenBSD and was unaffected.
That's funny I run Fedora 23 and was unaffected.
Go figere
Hmm. I wonder if they have informed Google or the Oxford Dictionarie. Maybe they did not get the memo.
Well all know the three E's. The first one starts with "Embrace". :-)
Or put a Linux distro on your device (maybe even move that Windows stuff to a VM and disable network if the apps don't need it).
I already have the latest Skylake chip-set for my desktop and Fedora 23 runs on it without any issue. I have even got Mint running in a virtual machine and again no issues. When you look at the BIOS boot it lists Windows 7 onwards however I just selected "Other OS" and I had no issues installing Fedora 23 which took less than 30 minutes.
Since I am not into over-clocking I chose the basic 4 Core i7-6700 which has a maximum power rating of about 65W and a GA-Z170M-D3H motherboard with 16GB of DDR4 RAM. This is by no means top of the line however even though the clock frequency is rated at 3.4GHz to 4GHz Turbo. See the following info . When my desktop is idle or I am only doing some simple web surfing the clock frequency is about 800MHz and can ramp up to 4GHz depending on what you are doing and this is the default after the sixth motherboard update.
What is interesting is that my desktop (including everything) when idle to simple web surfing consumes less than 40W when I just use the inbuilt graphics of the motherboard and the most power consumption I have seen is 140W when doing some video translation. Of course once you start using one or more graphics cards then power usage will increase enormously.
Personally I don't care what Microsoft tries to dictate I am very comfortable with Linux and like you have said if I really need a Microsoft OS I can run it in a virtual machine although when that happens be prepared for Hell freezing over. :-)
Since this is an American issue, so far I think the saying "Hoisted with one's own petard" applies here. Unfortunately sometimes American issues become world wide problems.
I think it means three things: "Why do people use Mint when Ubuntu is better in every way? Some people think the only answer is 'Cinnamon' . Ubuntu should port that over so they are the awesome and Mint can die"
I use Fedora which IMHO is better. Now let the battle lines be drawn and I will get the popcorn \{^,^)/
I don't know what to do at this point. Switching to FreeBSD is looking like the most likely option. It still suffers from some of the same problems as Linux distros do, due to it using a lot of open source software, too. But at least it will minimize the problems by FreeBSD itself being of an extraordinarily high quality, and it using better alternatives (like Clang and LLVM instead of GCC) where possible.
I can install and use Clang and LLVM under Linux as well. Interesting troll though.
What hardware are they focusing on? Vax11? IBM 360?
Is it just me or is there something serious missing here?
You do realise that those machines are circa 1970's and rightfully belong in a museum. You would be really hard pressed getting parts for them.
If you want older still usable machines I suppose you could look at the HP9000 series (still being made) or the IBM 7026-6m1 which was the last IBM machine I worked on in 2004 yet is still usable today. The IBM machines even in 2004 were very capable of running Redhat or CentOS Linux in an LPAR.
There are certain applications that run like crap in the VM. Have you tried Autocad? Solidworks? Both will run like crap and doesn't matter if you have the latest and greatest in hardware. Running it on a laptop just makes things worse.
It may come as a shock to you but not that many PC users run Autocad or Solidworks.
For those people who need a CAD package or pretty much any software package there are Linux based alternatives. When I talk about alternatives I don't necessarily mean free either. A simple Google (oops sorry "Bing") search will find them for you.
Running applications under a virtual machine is a great way to at least have them working while you search for alternatives.
Basally we as a potential space faring species have to crawl before we walk much less run. Our Moon is a destination where we can learn to crawl in relative safety, Unfortunately the Moon is is not romantic enough in the eyes of the media or our politicians where Mars is, so basically we are learning to run before we have a chance to learn to crawl, what can possibly go wrong?
The part where your ridiculous argument tends to fall apart is that most modern games still run on 5-year old hardware.
You are sort of correct however however I will use Quantum Break as an example. You will need as the minimum System Requirements: Windows 10 (64-bit), DirectX 12, Intel Core i5 4460 2.70 GHz or AMD FX-6300 Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 or AMD Radeon R7 260x, 2GB video RAM and 8GB RAM.
Now that is fine if your 5 year old PC meets those specifications, but I somehow doubt that most older PC's will be able to play this game without an upgrade.
Correct me if I am wrong but one thing I did not notice in the article is how Microsoft approaches the second hand market with respect to Quantum Break.
Ok let's say someone goes out and buys Quantum Break for their XBox then uses the digital download of the PC version to install on their PC. Personally I don't see any problems with this however the words "digital download" sets off alarm bells. Now say that person goes to a store that deals in second hand games and trades or sells their copy of Quantum Break, how does the store or prospective buyer know that the digital download of the game for the PC is still valid.?
Lets not get stupid arguments like "Oh he would never sell his copy". That is childish.
To me that is Microsoft harking back to the introduction of XB1 and basically having a no second hand games policy but this time they are doing it by stealth. Selling/trading Quantum Break is basically broken since you will need an access code for your PC then a prospective buyer of the second hand game has a flawed product. You could have another scenario of a buyer purchase the copy the loading the game onto their PC then getiing theor money back by selling the game but keeping the now cheaper game on the PC.
Obviously just getting a game by digital download effectively means you are locked out of trading it. I personally don't object to that but providing the media for the XB1 and a digital download for the PC effectively removes that game from the second hand market.
I thought I remembered a modular computer back in the 1980's. Someone should tell Microsoft they just reinvented the wheel.
On P14: "File Shuttle 4.1" gets file transfer rate of 3MB/minute. Wow I really have to get that product. :-)
Wireless charging can be done via two means.
The first being by induction charging .
The second being by beamed radiation which could be ultrasonic or microwave or even Laser. See the following.
In principle wireless charging sounds good however there are normally huge losses associate with this and since we live in a society of "user pays" I don't think that many people would like to pay for energy losses. Fine for a mobile phone wireless charger since the losses are relatively small but for a car or bus the losses can be quite considerable although I won't deny they can be improved but there are theoretical limits and to date the laws of thermodynamics and transformers have not been repealed.
ability to embed charger at stop lights, bus stops(for electric buses), taxi stops(for taxis), and such for a 'quick top-off'. Might not matter for a Tesla type car, but for a electric bus? Might be the difference between getting through en entire day and having to swap out the batteries for a bus or taxi.
The mind boggles at this. Even it it could be done how much to you think it would cost. It is actually much cheaper to install enough batteries in an electric vehicle so it will get through a working day and I don't think this will change any-time soon. Actually gas and diesel powered buses have been very effective in many cities.
Pure electric cars are great if you are travelling relatively short distances (ie. less than 130 km) around a city although hilly terrain may be problematic. If you are travelling longer distances then petrol is the better solution although hybrids are pretty good as well but relatively more expensive. For long distance driving diesel is the most economical although it can be problematic for short stop and go conditions. Of course public transport is the best if it is cost effective and convenient and unfortunately I have yet to see or hear of a city where this is the case.
Wireless charging is wildly inefficient, in no way is it a better idea to do this than using a plug especially for something as hungry as a car.
You may well be right - but I think the idea is to be able to charge while you drive. Even if it is wildly inefficient and almost certainly can't give you continuous driving (at least no time soon) - it could likely extend the range of an electric vehicle by a good 30% or so, which many people would value. The cost of the infrastructure will be high but since it's value is spread over so many beneficiaries it's cost-per-user is actually quite low.
A simple way to provide charging is to have a ground plate that would spring up and mate with an identical plate in the car therefore providing energy transfer very much like a standard transformer with a small air gap. It would be more efficient to have a charging plug which would remove the need to extra locating circuitry for the plates not to mention the losses associated with a loosely coupled transformer. Not to be a spoilsport but energy stored plus energy lost still has to be paid for by the consumer.
As for charging while you drive. This is actually done by regenerative breaking or where energy is not being applied to the drive motor such as downhill conditions.
From the article:
The idea is that, initially, a self-driving car would position itself briefly over a charging pad between rides, and ultimately, the infrastructure would be put in place that would allow a car to continually recharge its batteries as it travels along the road.
Now that broke me up considering electric buses and trains have been doing that for decades. But electric cars "briefly" passing over a charging plate? I really do think that some of these people should get their heads out of the clouds, what next Mr Fusion and flying cars - oh wait!
bought a skylake based HP Envy 17t last week. There is no bloatware-free install of Windows 10 Pro provided by any means that I found (the "minimal image" install that previously appeared with HP laptops is gone, apparently). After de-crapping Window 10 as best I could I shrank a partition and installed Ubuntu 15.10.
I built a Skylake i7-6700 based desktop recently and all including keyboard & mouse, 1 x SSD, 1 x 3TB HDD and monitor came to nine modules, so it was like putting together up market Lego. Basically all I did was to pre-prepare an installable USB key with Fedora 23 - KDE spin (see the web for info on how to do this - it's easy), inset the USB key in one of the USB slots in the case then. When the install info appears on the screen set-up (what I normally do) or just accept the defaults (for new users) and within 30 minutes I had a working Linux distribution.
The only thing that was out of the ordinary was to upgrade the BIOS Z170 motherboard which was stupidly easy. This fixed a HDMI signal stability issue with the on-board graphics of the motherboard.
Since I am not into PC games I am quite happy to use the on-board graphics of the Z170 motherboard which can support upto 2160p and if I am just surfing the web an/or doing any downloads my system consumes just under 60W and of that 20W is consumed by my IPS monitor. All up I actually use less power than most higher end laptops. Of course if I put in a powerful graphics card then my system would consume allot more power.
BTW. I installed Fedora but I would be very confident that pretty much any current Linux distribution would work well. Of course if the particular user need MS Windows because "Linux is not like Windows" then my commiserations.
It wouldn't.
Well put. Your two words said it all.
The 1990's called and want's their FUD back.
I have a Skylake chip-set in my desktop and it runs perfectly under Fedora 23 and i did not have to do anything special to the Z170 motherboard. Updating the BIOS firmware (almost a no-brainier) did fix a video signal drop-out issue.
Am I missing something here? Do Skylake et al. really require substantial modificaitons to existing OSs?
Short answer, No!
On my Skylake chip-set I can boot from my bootable USB stick which has Fedora 23 on it and within 30 minutes I have a working system. You don't even need to update the firmware although it is advisable from a stability perspective. Add another 30 minutes and I can get my system fully configured and customised although to be fair I have already pre-prepared all information on how I want my system set-up. A full update (at least for me) takes an additional 30 minutes although you are dependent on your internet performance and I can be surfing the web or even playing a game on my system while I am waiting.