Applied Indifference

Finally, something GOOD to write about.

Slackware 10 is out! Slackware 3.4 (or was it 3.3… have to dig it out) was the first linux distro I ever used (Kernel 1.9!).

Then there was Red Hat, and SuSE, and Debian, and…

But I’ve always held a special place in my heart for Slackware. Back in the good old days of dialup, and Walnut Creek (ftp.cdrom.com, now Digital River), and FLOPPY INSTALLS! Ahhh, memories.

So, I’ll probably buy it just to put my coin in to keep the project alive. You should too.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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Moore’s law, attributed to one Gordon Moore, founder of Intel states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every 18 months. Note, this has nothing to do with speed or power consumption, just the number.

Anyhow, a friend and I were discussing this last night. Intel’s problems with 90 nm lithography. TSMC’s difficulties even getting to 130 nm (0.13 micron). The reason this matters is simple - if you want to pack more transistors onto a device, you have to do something about the twin evils of power consumption and heat generation. Sure, you could (theoretically) make a Pentium4 with 55 million transistors on the same 1 micron technology that was used in the original Pentium. But it wouldn’t run at even 60 MHz without severe problems in power consumption, heat generation, etc.

So, the answers have traditionally been to shrink the “feature size” of devices on the chip. However, there are limitations that we run into very quickly. The primary on is not, as one might expect, physical. It is economical. We didn’t come up with a definitive answer, but we concluded that at some point it is going to cost too much to build a fab to make a chip to run that fast. Intel spent BILLIONS to make a 90nm process fab that runs on 300mm wafers. How many Prescotts do they need to make to break even?
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Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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Dan O’Dowd - CEO of Green Hills Software (makers of embedded operating systems) has this to say about Linux:

Now that foreign intelligence services and terrorists know that we plan to trust Linux to run some of our most advanced defense systems, we must expect them to deploy spies to infiltrate Linux. The risk is particularly acute since many Linux contributors are based in countries from which the U.S. would never purchase commercial defense software. Some Linux providers even outsource their development to China and Russia.

As usual, when peddling FUD, one tends to not let reality intrude. There are documented cases of closed-source software having back-doors intentionally built into them for malicious purposes, so non-open development methods are no guarantee whatsoever. And with the outsourcing craze in full swing, doesn’t he think that commercial software vendors are vulnerable to the same kinds of intrusions?

The NSA and DOD have been working on a hardened version of Linux for a while now. This is because they have the source code. Do you honestly believe that Microsoft or SCO is going to let NSA and DOD rummage around in their code? Would they let NSA release it to the public after doing so? I have a bridge to sell you if you do.

Any credibility that Mr. O’Dowd would have had went out the window at the bottom of the news article however, when he asserts that, of course, HIS company’s software is secure. Too bad we can’t test that theory.

Did I mention that I hate FUD?

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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OK. I only have 48 MB of RAM in the SPARCstation. So, the copy of Solaris 8 is out (it needs 64! MB) So, I downloaded a bootable image for Gentoo Linux/SPARC from Gentoo and installed it. It took just this side of forever to build the Kernel, but it worked.
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Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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OK, so I lied - no more blog posts from TCF. Here’s the update.

Got a Sun SPARCstation LX - with an external hard drive, CD-ROM, and QIC-150 tape drive, and all the SCSI cables - $45. Add $14 for the VGA adapter plug - instant computer. I’ve always wanted a SPARCstation - just so I can say “I have a SPARCstation” with a tone of feigned moral superiority. Who cares if it’s 50 MHz. It’s still cool.

Also picked up some computer parts. Was thinking of rebuilding the server with a 1 GHz P3 I have lying around. Don’t feel too motivated to tear it apart though. I might use the chip with the mobo I picked up to make a play computer.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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TCF - The Trenton Computer Festival. Held annually at the end of April in Trenton (show moved to Edison) New Jersey. When I first attended in 1988, it was a 1,000 table outdoor flea market with various workshops, demonstrations, and vendors of new goods inside. It was held at the Mercer County Community College. Two days of total geekdom.

Now, it’s held at the Raritan center, and there are more vendors of new goods than used, the flea market is much smaller, and it’s now the first week in May, instead of 2 weeks earlier like it used to be.

But, we are still here. Why? We are geeks. We are drawn to computer fairs and swap-meets like bees to pollen.

We shall see what geekdom we find this year. More news as events warrant.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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OK. Here’s one that’s good for a chuckle.

Customer has a terminal (remember those?) that’s locked. This is on a terminal server, so there’s no command to tell you what physical port the thing is connected to. We need to figure out what port it is plugged in to and reset that port. So, the site admin dutifully traces the wire from the terminal to the wall, and kills that port: #19.

Unfortunately, the terminal server is a 16 port unit.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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Bought some DVD-ROM drives from New Egg. Normally, these guys are top-notch. Hard-drives are packed sub-optimally, but they are in bubble wrap and peanuts, and in an anti-static bag. This

is ridiculous. No bags, nothing between the top of the box and the drives. Just the OEM foam tray on one side, and peanuts. At least they could have put the foam tray on top as well, ya think?

I’m sending a comment to New Egg about it. We’ll see what happens.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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Just in case you were wondering where I come down on the Microsoft issue.

As much as I think the EU are a bunch of sniveling snipes, Microsoft should expect that if they want to do business in Europe, they have to play by Eurpoe’s rules. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

I don’t think that software bundling in and of itself is harmful to competition, but exclusive contracts with hardware vendors, the repeated IP thefts, the proprietary non-standard implementations of standards - those ARE harmful.

The only explanation for why the US government went after MS for Internet Explorer, and not for the hundreds of technologies they “stole” (actually, they would get their engineers to look at stuff that other people developed, and either steal it outright, or clone it and give it away, sucking the value out of the original inventor’s hands) is that the government wanted a case where they could show that they were “doing something, damnit!”, but in actuality all they were doing was getting Microsoft to pay protection money to both political parties.

Now that it looks like MS is buying politicians like everyone else, people are surprised?

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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In case you hadn’t noticed, I wimped out and picked a default layout and style for the blog. Why? Because I have no clue. But I am learning about this Movable Type blog software. Very powerful stuff.

Notice the category list up there ^^

And in the archive list over there ->
I’ve added links to the category archives to both places. Edit one file, and bang!

This is how software should be. And Gutenberg would be proud.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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