Posts by Doctor Syntax 42398 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"not Debian and its purists."
Searches package descriptions for "firmware". Finds 116 packages.
OK, some of them aren't firmware themselves, such as b43-fwcutter, Utility for extracting Broadcom 43xx firmware, but others are, some explicitly non-free.
All told I've got 14 of those packages installed, several of which provide binaries. Do I care they contain binaries? No.
If and only if you are normally paid for your work are you a professional.
If you work for free you're an amateur.
Could you explain a little further.
Are the devs working for Intel being paid or not? Assuming they are that makes them professionals. Intel donates their work to the Linux kernel for free. Does that make them amateurs?
"So my answer stands: why they should publish their IP for free? "
And so does mine. Drivers exist to sell hardware, not vice versa.
Unless, of course, you think they should go a step further and not publish Windows drivers either. That would really keep their IP under wraps, wouldn't it?
"Lack of quality code comes from getting your code second hand, built by people paid to fulfill some paying companies own project"
The biggest single contributor is usually Intel. Their "project" is the Intel processor line. Of course, given some recent experiences you may have a point....
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/03/netgear_recalling_hardware_with_bad_intel_atoms/
"Man known for shouty & sweary outbursts....has a shouty & sweary outburst."
You really should have read the article before commenting.
Shouting? There's scarcely an expletive to report in Torvalds' post, which is rather tame compared to past missives.
Even better, read the announcement the article links: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1703.0/03031.html
Go on, read it now.
What was that you were saying?
http://www.zdnet.com/article/whos-writing-linux-today/
"Leading the way were Intel employees with 10.5 percent of Linux code to their credit. Following Intel was Red Hat, 8.4 percent; Linaro, 5.6 percent; Samsung, 4.4 percent; IBM 3.2 percent; and SUSE, 3 percent."
Maybe it's Intel & co who are the charity cases. Torvalds is managing their product development for them.
"Does he also wear a powdered wig?"
I don't know if the appointment's full time. If not he may also sit in court in which case he probably does wear a wig. Having had the opportunity to see a good many barristers and judges from the vantage point of the witness box I've never seen any sign of their wigs being powdered.
Do you have any relevant questions to ask?
"Its rare, but unlike the UK, you don't take your life in your own hands if you walk in to a bar wearing the wrong football jersey."
Nothing on Earth would persuade me to take any interest whatsoever in football. In fact I often say I can understand football violence. If I spent an afternoon watching 22 men old enough to know better kicking a bag of wind up and down a field I also might get violent.
But for a few years we lived in High Wycombe and the railway line serves Wembley. We were travelling into Town one day and realised it was cup final day and both teams were from the Midlands and fans of both were on the train. I have to say that they were extremely well behaved to each other; I even saw them wishing each other luck. Oddly enough we travelled back on the same train as some of them after the match and I couldn't tell from their demeanour which had won.
The committee transcript is linked below should anyone want to see the gory details.
I'd guess the discussion on the European Arrest Warrant will be pored over fairly carefully my more then one person in the Ecuadorian Embassy. If the UK ends up outside the EAW system will an outstanding warrant still have force?
"If May was forced to suspend IPA to keep the EU happy she would undoubtedly have to resign as PM."
I wouldn't look at it quite like that. I rather think the reason she wanted to leave* was because she wanted to be outside the scope of EU legislation. I doubt she'd resign. She might, however, explode, a spectacle we'd all look forward to.
*I never believed that almost invisible pre-referendum Remain stance.
" tweak the act so that it is only UK citizens privacy that the British government is shitting on, and job done"
They would face the same problem the US does in ensuring they don't spy on their own citizens. Both gather data indiscriminately so there's no way they can effectively discriminate. It's a matter of how long they can keep up the pretence that they're not doing that. The US manage it by not bothering to answer Congress' questions. Not answering questions when you need to provide a (hopefully verifiable) satisfactory answer to get something you want is going to be trickier.
"Any reason why it wouldn't have been easier to just point a microphone at the bell and use a spectrum analyser to find the resonant frequencies?"
It was a follow-up to a visual demonstration of vibrational modes of a flat plate. The plate itself was pretty dreadful sounding with a lot of non-harmonic modes so the obvious follow up was to look at the modes of something made to be euphonious. The spectrum analyser in itself wouldn't show the mechanical basis of the modes. Having said that, they whisked through the results PDQ.
There were some odd aspects to the programme.
At one point it suggested that Lesley Garrett's vocal range extended from 80Hz to 1kHz. That's some range. 1kHz is probably about right for a soprano but 80 is at the bottom of the bass range.
Also at some points they were illustrating natural sounds, in the sea for instance. Why did they cover them up with music?
"You can't just fire people like that."
You think not? When working in an only slightly foreign place (Lancashire) one of the salesmen asked me for a report. I had to work out how to get the data, code the query and format it. By the time I'd done that and printed it out I walked over to his desk at the other end of the office with the result. He wasn't there. I asked where he was and was told "he doesn't work here any more".
"File changes aside the Linux kernel gets updated (in the average distribution) EVERY FEW DAYS."
Citation needed.
My experience (Debian LTS): there may be updates of some sort every few days but very few of these are of the kernel.
If you get kernel updates every few days you must be running a bleeding edge distro. If you're using it for production then you have more problems than needing to reboot.
"when I used Fedora for about 6 months it had updates and needed rebooting pretty much every week"
It's a long time since I used Fedora but AIUI it might not be a bleeding edge distro but it does follow a faster release cycle than others so I'm not surprised. If you want stability you go with a distro with a slower cycle such as Debian stable and accept you might be running older versions of applications.
"Even in Linux, unless you restart the running processes that are using a patched file, they will keep on using the previous version."
In general processes running services will be individually restarted during the update without a reboot. Processes running a shared library will continue to run the old in-memory library. In general there's an assumption that such processes won't be long-lived and the new library will then be used next time they're run; in the interim there may be two versions of the library, both memory resident, one not yet finished with and one in use by processes started after the update.
What always amazes me is the relative speed of doing all this. One factor may be the fact that the greater number of Windows boxes puts a greater load on the servers and their networks so that they throttle the bitrates. Another might be that as Linux updates are much less disruptive they're pushed out as a available so that each is smaller; this, of course, has the additional advantage that a fix gets pushed out Right Now rather than waiting until the next big patch release.
"People don't reboot."
One thing I've noticed on Linux is that after a kernel replacement the machine won't hibernate, it has to be shut down. Perhaps if reboots weren't built into the Windows update the same thing would happen. That would mean users would be forced to reboot but only at a natural break in their work - other than those who'd simply leave the thing running overnight.
"If that is too difficult to manage for you, then set the appropriate expectations with your business managers and users. Your product is too cheap to support that high of an uptime requirement."
We keep hearing people saying things like this. And we have to keep replying that marketing has set inappropriate expectations with these very people who are the ones who make the decisions. They've been told that cloud someone else's computer is cheap and that it's resilient.
"This whole fiasco is probably a good example of why developers should not be put in charge of the IT systems"
To some extent I take objection to this. Back in the day it was possible to be in charge of development and operation and be paranoid about stability and uptime. It encouraged not developing what you knew you couldn't run. Times have changed and not, I think, for the better.
But some cloud someone else's computer usage is shadow IT, paid for with a company credit card by people who don't see the need for all the costs and time needed for the detailed stuff which enables in-house developers and operations to combine to provide reliable systems. Don't assume either real developers or operations get anywhere near such deployments. Again, sales and marketing by providers have to take some responsibility here.
And whilst you're extolling operations, don't forget it seems to have been Amazon's operations staff who grew fat fingers in this instance.
Not the Cloud, not Amazon but the internet as a whole.
Looking back at the origins of the internet it was preceded by separate networks which had a weird and wonderful spread of technologies.* The internet came along with its own protocols to connect these individual networks together but the original emphasis was on those individual networks. Local came first and the internet only provided what wasn't local.
Now that we're almost all using the same internet protocols to run our LANs the distinction between local and remote has been blurred. We've forgotten to put local first but we're relying on an internet designed under the assumption that we would.
Even if we go along with the old Sun slogan that the network is the computer we shouldn't extend that to believing that the internet is the computer. This was a reminder of that.
*I remember one which consisted of little terminal boxes each with a single RS-232 connection daisy-chained together with coax. TV aerial coax with TV aerial connectors.
"A cursory glance at the documentation would have educated you."
Does the marketing provide the same education? The decision makers all too often are those who not only wouldn't give documentation even a glance, nor would they understand it even after prolonged study. Those who get to read the documentation are those who have to read it to implement the decisions above their heads.
Cheaper than running your own data centre. Simple. We take all that hard stuff off your hands. That's what sways decision makers.
