[rescue] Small servers (was Re: WTT: 1.5G of PC2700 for 1G of PC100)

[Shannon Hendrix]

On May 4, 2008, at 16:22 , Joshua Boyd wrote:

>> Almost no living programers today would even know how to write code  
>> for a machine that was not based on 8/16/32/64-bit 2's compliment  
>> CPUs and not too many more have any idea how to deal with a machine  
>> that is not Intel based or running a video console.
>
> Writing code for 18 or 36bit  may be mostly a lost art.  But there  
> are many many programmers writing code for many platforms still.  I  
> see no end of work being done on both 8 and 32 bit chips, and I see  
> a lot of people working on non-x86 platforms with no graphics.
>
> I would imagine that the leading platforms are probably actually  
> ARM, PPC, x86, then MIPS.

All of those are the same type of CPU, and all of them have words  
which are 8-bit multiples, and they can address memory and registers  
on sub-word boundaries.

For most programmers, the only difference is the ISA and the compiler  
hides the majority of that unless they go a little above and beyond  
the norm in learning their hardware.

> I just saw an amazing example of that.  A box that should just be a  
> video appliance, but it requires an internet connection to verify  
> it's license with the manufactor every boot.  And this was a device  
> that is supposed to be going into flight packs and mobile trucks.   
> Is every news truck that the local station puts out really going to  
> supply an internet connection to a video processor?

For that matter, why should I constantly have to prove I am not a  
thief, and why should I be required to constantly expose my systems to  
security problems.  Why assume I have a network connection at all or  
that I want my end-user systems directly exposed to the net?

All of these and related assumptions are stupid and dangerous, and of  
course, how do I use my system when the remote system it depends on  
goes away?



-- 
Shannon Hendrix
shannon at widomaker.com