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Comment Re:No more downtime (Score 5, Informative) 117

Ok, so here's the simple answer. Note: I'm generalizing a lot to make this simple.

All functions have a known entry point which you can think of a name that you can call like
print("hello world"); -- calls "print" so it knows where "print" is.

Somewhere in the memory was loaded the function print(). There's also a symbol which allows everyone who wants to call print() to know where it is.

The livepatch loads a new function into memory. Let's call it print2(). It then goes over and makes the symbol that used to let everyone know where print() is point to print2(). Anyone that comes after this patch will still think they are calling print() but in fact will be calling print().

The stop_machine() is part of how ksplice (the proprietary-vendor method does it). That is not part of kernel live patch (klp).

What klp does is ensure that a process is in a "good point" to be messed with, and then changes its pointer to e.g. print().

That allows no changes to affect the process until that pointer to print() is changed at which point any subsequent call to print() will run print() instead.

Ehud
P.S. I have some code from the early 1990s where we used to do this on VMS/OpenVMS. We literally patched the running kernel (much as is done here) and allowed a system to run for years with newer kernel code.

Comment Seiki +2 (Score 4, Informative) 330

I also second the Seiki 39". Got mine from Amazon.com when it was $400. Now it's 2/3 of that.

On my NUC it actually uses the 4K resolution but I rarely use it as a monitor because of the low refresh rate (15Hz) at that resolution.

It is an AWESOME TV!!! I have it hooked up to
- Roku3
- Google Chromecast
- Amazon Fire Stick

If I had to find downsides it would be
- no "discrete code" to switch to a particular input. One selects "source" then scrolls up or down from the current source to the eventual source input. This makes things tougher for scene-remotes.

Ehud

Comment 68th to 22nd and there are many to go (Score 5, Insightful) 192

All new languages start out at the bottom, as Swift did.
In time, the ones that don't get used fall down.

Swift has gotten up to 22nd, but the rest of the climb past the stragglers won't ever happen.

However, to be "the most popular language" is clearly no contest worth winning.
Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are most popular compared to Steven Hawking and Isaac Asimov.
Being popular doesn't mean better, useful, or even of any value whatsoever. It just means
someone has a better marketing-of-crap department.

There's a time to have popularity contests. It's called high school.

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Comment Nobody should trust these scammers (Score 5, Insightful) 80

Who would trust them?

First this: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/ed...
(bitcoin trust)

Then this: http://www.investopedia.com/ar...
(bitcoin payment system)

Now this thing... ("regulated" exchange that can't leave the US for an international virtual decentralized currency...)

Perhaps they just didn't get that memo about their relevance having tanked somewhere after they wanted to
renege on their FB settlement and go for a do-over uh-gain:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Their fifteen minutes of fame is up. The harder they try and bring themselves
into relevance the funnier it gets. The bell has rung. Time to get off the stage little boys.

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Comment Fear solves nothing (Score 1, Interesting) 161

You can be afraid or not but that has nothing to do with this.

The "summary" doesn't make things sound worse than they are. READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE!

ISPs now MUST forward notices. They did not have to before.
ISPs now MUST share subscriber name and address and info with the complaintant. They did not have to before.

What kind of a moron would think any of this is a good thing? Of course, purchased politicians and the MAFIAA who bought them.

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Comment FAA has sole jurisdiction (Score 4, Insightful) 68

In the United States the Federal Aviation Administration is the entity with jurisdiction over all airspace SURFACE to SPACE*

This has been discussed on slashdot so many times in the last year wrt drones and FAA authority that it's beating a dead horse.

NY Councilmen can posture and mumble and pass laws all day long but they have no authority over the air.

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* Note that this includes surface to 400ft which some people believe is magically exempt from regulation... except the FAA has recently shown it's not.

Comment Re:Hope he doesn't lose power (Score 1) 56

No, I'm afraid not. (And these are name-brand Class-10 cards).

When the corruption hits the Pi won't boot at all. No grub no kernel no initrd no monitor sync.
A fresh card fixes things. Restoring the image to the old card fixes it too.

We have near 100 of these in the field and while I've bench-powerfailed them to no avail,
out in the real world they die due to fs corruption.

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Comment Hope he doesn't lose power (Score 2) 56

Pis are great.
But when the power drops.the filesystem on the SDcard is corrupt.
Then the Pi is dead with no hope of doing anything unless you brought a spare SDcard or something to mount/fsck/correct it with.

If I was going into space I'd take a Droid or an iPhone. That way I can play
Angry Birds In Space in space.

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Comment MODS ARE DICKS (Score 1) 234

Just check - every thread about "nextweb" and its analysis that this blog is incorrect is modded 0 points.

This thread is modded 0 points.

Your note is modded 0 points.

Apparently "sharing the real facts" and "debunking the hysteria" is modded down.
Discussions about how Google/Android are bad, permissions aren't granular, uber is bad, uber has a German name so they must be worse still, etc... those are modded 4-5.

Happy thanksgiving.
Mods - go meta-mod your "peers". They are out of control.

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