login
Search
The DSL monopoly (in the U.S.)
For the benefit of deekayen,
the following ways around the DSL monopoly exist:
I've never made a blog entry before in my life. Whee! This is fun!
In order not to earn a reputation as somebody who makes blog entries without content, I shall report that the latest CVS version of the DRI radeon driver (available here) fixes the texture problems that have made gaming on my laptop painful. Hooray! Unfortunately Neverwinter Nights still has big lighting problems.
Since I have this blog I guess I should put something here so.
After reading about the kernel summit on lwn, there are 2 things I miss that I have heard little about lately. Online resize of ext2/3, I have done this, on my desktop, using xfs for a while. And it's nice to be able to resize the filesystem just as easy as you resize the lvm volume. Now xfs was merged in 2.5 but ext2/3 rezise patches is not. I hope it will be soon.
Our new server is officially online and serving traffic. Kind thanks to Danube Technologies for donating the colocation services. And thanks again to all the KernelTrap readers that have donated more than $700 to help pay for our new server. For more information on the new server, please refer to the recently updated KernelTrap FAQ (consider it a work in progress). First question -- does it feel faster?
Until your DNS updates (for most, within twenty four hours), you'll be seeing http://216.218.244.58/ in your browser instead of http://kerneltrap.org/. If this causes you any problems, you can add '216.218.244.58 kerneltrap.org' to your hosts file as a temporary solution.
The migration to Drupal 4.2 is going well, though there's still more to be done. To begin your tour of the new functionality, please visit our new discussion forums: Linux forum (linux.kerneltrap.org), FreeBSD forum (freebsd.kerneltrap.org), OpenBSD forum (openbsd.kerneltrap.org), and more. Or, if you have a user account, test out our new chatbox. Leave comments here or in the forums, and please cast a vote. As additional functionality is enabled, I'll make note of it here.
I have a different view from Pierre about the kernel drift of
OLS. That view does not involve big companies like IBM or kernel being any "cooler". Simply put, userland is incomparably larger than the kernel, and it's well partitioned into applications. Therefore, userland hackers gravitate towards conventions where they can meet like-minded people, naturally. If one were a GNOME hacker who can only visit one conference in a year, would you go to OLS or GUADEC? Likewise, Andrew Hutton set out to create a gcc conference (OGS?). As application people are attracted to their own venues, kernel expands to fill OLS. Their program committee turns down competent papers every year, because they have no space.
I've been busy the past couple of months (photos linked within), but I'm home again for the duration. I hope to get back to updating KernelTrap within a week or so. For now, however, I'm focused on getting the new server up and running with the latest software. That's a thrill in itself -- compiling source code feels blazingly fast compared to this old desktop server I use!
If all goes as planned, I hope to have the new site up and running on the new server by the end of next week. New additions will include organized discussion forums, configurable comment moderation, an automatic term glossary, a chat room, and a (hopefully) more intuitive book-like organization to compliment the current Slashdot-style front page. Once things settle down, I'll head out looking for another round of kernel developer interviews...
In Ottawa for Kernel Summit and OLS.
Kernel Summit was interesting but nothing mind blowing. Linus said some stuff. 2.6 final in a few months. 2.7 starts in a few months. Not too sure what 2.7 needs, aside from the usual "fix the tty layer" bit. Still very fun -- I am glad we do these.
A friend took me to a Unitarian Universalist church service, and one of the things which I noticed about that particular service (I don't know how representative it is of all UU churches or services) was the notable lack of what I can only term as "trigger words" used in their worship service.
Perhaps the best way to describe it is by example. In my tradition, a very common pattern to start a prayer is for the worship leader to say, "The Lord be with you", to which the response (said by the entire congregation) is "And also with you", which in turn is followed by "Let us pray" and the actual prayer itself. This is a very common "design pattern", which is used in many different contexts; perhaps at least 2 or 3 times in every Sunday service. The response is so automatic that sometimes it is used at retreats or at church meetings to call a gathering of people to order. The worship leader need only to say, "The Lord be with you" loudly, and everyone will instantly stop talking and respond "And also be with you". These sets of phrases act almost like a post-hypnotic trigger, helping everyone to enter into the right frame of mind to begin a prayer.
The networking at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference seems to be up about half time, and down half the time. And when it's up, it's corrupting packets so frequently that ssh connections die after a few minutes, and imap-ssl download connections die after downloading 2-4 messages, thanks to checksum errors. LAME...