Comment oops...old news (Score 1) 1
Just realised that this is from 2009 and old news, sorry people!
Original and non-social-bookmarked-to-oblivion article here
Submission + - How Well Will Linux Handle Future Multicores? (mit.edu)
eldavojohn writes: Multicore (think tens or hundreds of cores) will come at a price for current operating systems. A team at MIT found that as they approached 48 cores their operating system slowed down. After activating more and more cores in their simulation, a sort of memory leak occurred whereby data had to remain in memory as long as a core might need it in its calculations. But the good news is that in their paper (PDF), they showed that for at least several years Linux should be able to keep up with chip enhancements in the multicore realm. To handle multiple cores, Linux keeps a counter of which cores are working on the data. As a core starts to work on a piece of data, Linux increments the number. When the core is done, Linux decrements the number. As the core count approached 48, the amount of actual work decreased and Linux spent more time managing counters. But the team found that 'Slightly rewriting the Linux code so that each core kept a local count, which was only occasionally synchronized with those of the other cores, greatly improved the system's overall performance.' The researchers caution that as the number of cores skyrockets, operating systems will have to be completely redesigned to handle managing these cores and SMP. After reviewing the paper, one researcher is confident Linux will remain viable for five to eight years without need for a major redesign.
Comment Re:Why not build upon J2ME then? (Score 1) 341
This pretty much explains the reasons behind Google's decision to go with Dalvik (well, except the specifics of the failed negotiations over J2ME licensing).
In short J2ME as licensed by Sun/Oracle under the GPL has deliberately had the 'classpath exception' removed. Developers targeting a GPL J2ME are forced to release their code as GPL due to the linking with all of the GPL'd libraries. According to their plan this would make paid J2ME licensing under non-GPL license a the only option for mobile vendors. Sun specifically did this for J2ME and not J2EE or J2SE as this is where they saw the most licensing money.
All this talk of complete implementation getting a patent license is moot it seems. Google decided that the paid licensing from Sun was prohibitive for one reason or another and that forcing the GPL on Android app developers was unacceptable. So when they took the decision to clean-room a VM from scratch any efforts to make the implementation complete would not have been rewarded with a patent grant.
Comment Re:Yay you. (Score 1) 245
My 'works for me' attitude is only the equivalent of your 'they suck as it won't work for me' attitude. I was just making a counter example where the results from the open source radeon driver have been excellent.
I can't stand fanboism either, my emphasis on the word *Ubuntu* was meant to mean : 'hey, its been stable for me *even* on Ubuntu' who don't have the best record on QA and have a reputation for putting features before stability.
Anyway its a shame you've had such a nightmare with the radeon driver but don't paint the efforts being made by AMD as worthless for everyone from your bad experience with one mobile GPU, there's a lot of happy users out there too.
Comment Re:And they suck. (Score 1) 245
Mobility X1400 (r500) in Thinkpad T60 user here. Radeon has been working great for well over a year now and KMS seems totally solid now, laptop goes for up to week or more at a time between reboots (suspend to RAM every night). 2D compiz is superbly smooth, even Flash plays smoothly full screened at 1650x1050. And thats on 64-bit *Ubuntu*.
Comment Re:Here is your benefit (Score 3, Informative) 245
You are missing the fact that when AMD introduced their open source strategy, they had a huge backlog of 'IP' to trawl through and review before releasing the documentation. Things started slowly and the wait for my R500 based laptop GPU to reach a decent level of support felt like a long time.
But from what we are seeing now AMD have made steady gains and have reached a point where they are releasing an OSS *driver* (albeit an immature one) for their latest GPU series less than a year after the hardware was released. Being able to 'drop' support for the proprietary drivers on legacy hardware earlier (in favour of the OSS driver option) will free up more developers within AMD to work on drivers for the latest GPUs. As the OSS driver team become and more more integrated within the workflow of the company we can expect to see OSS driver code and documentation get closer and closer to the hardware releases.
In short it looks like things are paying off for AMD and the OSS driver strategy. Keep up the good work AMD!
Comment Re:Cheap NAS (Score 1) 609
My one criticism is that those DNS-323's are really slow.
Its not that bad compared to most home other home NAS boxes though. Also if you put Debian on it the more recent kernels have had performance improvement work done by Marvell.
Submission + - 'Killing in the Name' UK No. 1 thanks to Facebook (bbc.co.uk) 2
Josh04 writes: Due to a 900,000+ Facebook campaign, 90's rap metal group Rage Against the Machine are this year's Christmas number 1, beating out Simon Cowell's X-Factor contestant Joe McElderry to the top spot, making 'Killing in the Name' the first ever UK download-only Christmas number 1. The popular 90's rock song had support from celebrities and the BBC, who got in trouble earlier in the week for allowing five 'fucks' to slip through the censor on a live performance.
Submission + - Standard and Interesting Books for IT? 2
Voulnet writes: Hello Slashdot, I am a Computer Engineer, fresh off graduation, and I would like to educate myself on a broad range of technological fields and aspects. I am the kind of person who is easily distracted while reading from a screen, and so I would like to ask fellow slashdotters about the best books for computer related topics. I consider my level to be intermediate in some fields, and beginner in others.
Some books are de facto standards in a certain technology field, others can be classified as Hidden Gems, while others are Interesting Reads (like GUI Bloopers). Therefore, I would love to hear what is everybody's book recommendation in the following fields:
- Programming (C++, C#, Java, Python, Ruby, Pike..etc)
- Secure coding
- Networking
- Electronics (design and simulation)
- Security (attacks and countermeasures)
- Web development (especially Ruby and Perl)
- Unix systems
- Win32 development
- Databases
- Computer Architecture
- Infrastructure (Think national level)
- Computer industry business management
These are my desired topics for the next 8 months or so, and I would like to immerse myself into said topics in different methods.
So what do you think is the best book for the aforementioned categories in terms of being a (de facto standard/ Hidden Gem/ Interesting Read)?
Hopefully this submission passes through, being so useful to me, young engineers and developers. Thanks in advance!"
Some books are de facto standards in a certain technology field, others can be classified as Hidden Gems, while others are Interesting Reads (like GUI Bloopers). Therefore, I would love to hear what is everybody's book recommendation in the following fields:
- Programming (C++, C#, Java, Python, Ruby, Pike..etc)
- Secure coding
- Networking
- Electronics (design and simulation)
- Security (attacks and countermeasures)
- Web development (especially Ruby and Perl)
- Unix systems
- Win32 development
- Databases
- Computer Architecture
- Infrastructure (Think national level)
- Computer industry business management
These are my desired topics for the next 8 months or so, and I would like to immerse myself into said topics in different methods.
So what do you think is the best book for the aforementioned categories in terms of being a (de facto standard/ Hidden Gem/ Interesting Read)?
Hopefully this submission passes through, being so useful to me, young engineers and developers. Thanks in advance!"
Computer For a Child? 556
jameswing writes "I am thinking of buying a UMPC, such as an Eee PC or a Wind for my son, and wanted to get input from Slashdot. He is almost 2 and really curious about our computers, and anything electronic. I want to foster this in him, without having him on my desktop or laptop. I also don't really like the idea of getting one of those cheap 'Learning Laptops' that have a tiny screen and are really limited.
Does anybody have one that they use with their children? How sturdy is it? Will it stand up to a 2-year-old? If not, what are good alternatives?
What are your thoughts? Suggestions?"
Japanese Begin Working On Space Elevator 696
thebryce writes "From cyborg housemaids and waterpowered cars to dog translators and rocket boots, Japanese boffins have racked up plenty of near-misses in the quest to turn science fiction into reality. Now the finest scientific minds of Japan are devoting themselves to cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all: the space elevator. Man has so far conquered space by painfully and inefficiently blasting himself out of the atmosphere but the 21st century should bring a more leisurely ride to the final frontier. Japan is increasingly confident that its sprawling academic and industrial base can solve those issues, and has even put the astonishingly low price tag of a trillion yen (£5 billion) on building the elevator. Japan is renowned as a global leader in the precision engineering and high-quality material production without which the idea could never be possible."
Peru To Be First To Put Windows On OLPC Laptop 292
Da Massive writes "The government of Peru will run the first ever trial of the One Laptop Per Child association's XO laptop running Windows XP. This puts the nation at the heart of a software controversy that has been raging for years between those who advocate making software and its source code free, such as Linux OS developers, and those who charge for software and keep the development recipes secret, such as Microsoft."
Comment Re:h.264 and patent licencing (Score 1) 311
First UK software patent - March 2008.
after the UK IPO appealed against the EU patent office and lost in the high court. Slashdot missed this one (I submitted a story but it was ignored).
