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Linux founder tells Intel to stop inventing 'magic instructions' and'start fixing real problems'



 
 
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  #31  
Old July 17th 20, 08:54 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
VanguardLH[_2_]
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Posts: 1,453
Default Linux founder tells Intel to stop inventing 'magic instructions' and 'start fixing real problems'

T wrote:

Also, the recent computer science grads I have come across make my
head spin. They know virtually nothing about computers or
programming. Seriously, they barely know what a mouse is. And they
are in debt up to the asses with student loans.


We'd get CSci university interns to help in Software QA. They were
trained to follow instructions, and nothing more (no intuition, no
imagination, no motivation). We had test procedures, but some were just
templates that had to get filled out when new features or changes showed
up in the software. They got the same training (classes and
instructional CDs) the rest of us got. The interns just had no grasp of
how to dig into software to test it, and how to document their testing
despite having an detailed template but which they had to fill in during
and after testing. Way too much handholding. The interns that got the
retro tests (for old functionality) where the procedure was completely
written did okay, because they didn't have anything to do but read
instructions. Yes, they were interns and had to learn, but they were
like 1st-year students instead of near-grads. No initiative, no talent
for testing, and poor writing skills.

I remember someone remarking that college isn't about training their
students for a particular job. It's to train them on how to learn. Not
evidenced by the interns that we got. I think we used interns for 6
months: the contract length. Never again thereafter. A failed
experiment trying to up the count of QA testers to shorten our testing
schedule which always got squeezed by Dev delivering late and Sales
arranging early deployment to customers. We ended up outsourcing some
retro tests (fully written on old functionality) to the Dev and Field
Support groups if some were available. Once we explained our test
scheduled and Sales wanted it shorter, we said either we don't test all
the old stuff and hope it works, or we get helpers to make their
schedule. Dev was hard to get, so we used Sales to pressure them.
Field Support was easy to get unless they were at a job site, plus they
were experienced on how customers used the product, not how Dev thinks
it should work per the Functional and Engineering Spec docs. Eventually
I wrote scripts for all the retro tests that did the setup, checked
dependency on the results of other tests, and logged results or alerted
on failed tests. The scripts became the tests with the doc template
just outlining what the scripts did.

Of course, our bad experience with interns could've been with the ones
we happened to get at that time. We paid our interns minimum wage.
They weren't allowed overtime (great for them that they could quit by
the clock while the rest of us were goal-oriented and left when we got
to a stopping point that provided a good resume point). They only
worked half days since they were still going to school. They had the
option to become employees at the end of their internship. They got
experience and a salary. We felt it unfair to exact manpower from
unpaid workers. They were [supposed to] help us, and we wanted to
reward them. We didn't care FLSA considers interns as not employees
which means interns don't have to get compensated
(https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fac...a-internships). We
were, um, lenient in our report to the college for our assessment of the
interns. We still wanted them to get academic credit.

There were no later experiments using interns to better gauge the
usefulness of that workforce source. Before the contract ended, my
manager asked for reviews on their performance. I told my boss that I'd
write scripts to do the work of the interns. I didn't get overtime, but
I did accrue flex time that I could add to my PTO. I took some long
vacations or extended weekends when QA wasn't in prep or crunch mode.
  #32  
Old July 17th 20, 09:10 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
VanguardLH[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,453
Default OT: Disable line wrap for long lines (was Linux founder tells Intel to stop ...)

Char Jackson wrote:

With some newsreaders, such as my old copy of Agent 2.0, brackets
aren't a workaround for a deficient client. They are simply markers
to let the composition window know that the configured line length
value should be ignored for text between the brackets.


Ah, it's a sender's client trick to prevent line breaks. Understood.
In my NNTP client, I don't need to do that for URLs as they kept intact
in one physical line; however, it does have a Word Wrap toggle that I
can click to insert a composition marker (not in the sent copy) to keep a long string from line wrapping. I use it occasionally, like for a wide data table where line wrapping makea it unintelligible. (I used it on this line as an example.)
It keeps the long string as one long physical line. The reader's client
might enforce line splitting at their configured line length. Nothing I
can do about that. My tricks sounds similar to your bracketing trick.

However, I've seen those long strings in a long line include the angle
brackets. They might be a hint in the composition window in the
sender's client, but they were also included in the sent copy. As a
test, could you reply with a long string, like 200 characters, enclosed
in your non-wrap markers, so I could see if the submitted copy has the
non-wrap markers or not?
  #33  
Old July 17th 20, 09:35 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Andy Burns[_6_]
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Posts: 43
Default Linux founder tells Intel to stop inventing 'magic instructions'and 'start fixing real problems'

VanguardLH wrote:

I wonder how a car knows a gas sniffer is poking up its ahole. Oooh,
warm that up first before sticking it in. I suppose the car's computer
could notice the car wheels weren't rotating when the engine got revved
up and the steering wheel wasn't turning.


A bit more complex than that, but basically spotting conditions of the
standardised tests and switching into an alternate ECU mode

https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scandal_dieselgate

Jump to 57:00 if you just want the money shot, but the whole thing is
worth a watch ...
  #34  
Old July 17th 20, 09:55 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Andy Burns[_6_]
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Posts: 43
Default Linux founder tells Intel to stop inventing 'magic instructions'and 'start fixing real problems'

VanguardLH wrote:

Where's the impetus to port if Steam's Proton (variant of WINE) along
with using proprietary video drivers for Linux (if available) lets
Windows-only games run on Linux?

Any benchmarks showing performance differences (FPS, CPU/core
frequencies, video quality, temperatures, etc) between a ported Windows
game (making it a native Linux game) versus using Steam Proton and
proprietary video Linux drivers?


Can't point you to a specific video, but I daresay Wendell has one that
covers it with a gaming-targeted distro.

https://www.youtube.com/c/TekLinux/videos
  #35  
Old July 17th 20, 10:27 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Andy Burns[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 43
Default Linux founder tells Intel to stop inventing 'magic instructions'and 'start fixing real problems'

VanguardLH wrote:

From what I've seen of the WSL videos, and because the Linux "apps" are
lightweight images of Linux, what I see is running the Linux image dumps
you to a bash shell in terminal mode (aka command line aka console
mode). You don't get a GUI desktop, like Gnome or KDE.


Not this year (unless you install an X11 server within windows, or an
RDP server within windows) but they're working on it ...

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/the-windows-subsystem-for-linux-build-2020-summary/#wsl-gui
  #36  
Old July 17th 20, 10:50 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Andy Burns[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 43
Default Linux founder tells Intel to stop inventing 'magic instructions'and 'start fixing real problems'

Andy Burns wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

You don't get a GUI desktop, like Gnome or KDE.


Not this year (unless you install an X11 server within windows, or an
RDP server within windows) but they're working on it ...

^^^^^^^
Linux
  #37  
Old July 17th 20, 02:45 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Rene Lamontagne
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 187
Default Linux founder tells Intel to stop inventing 'magic instructions'and 'start fixing real problems'

On 2020-07-17 12:36 a.m., T wrote:
On 2020-07-16 14:04, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2020-07-16 1:35 p.m., T wrote:
On 2020-07-15 11:42, VanguardLH wrote:
Is Linus
even a gamer?Â* Oh wait, yeah, not that big a selection for Linux.

Linux is not tied with Windows for gaming.Â* Take
a gander at:

Fedora 31 | Features, Gaming, and New Daily Driver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P8oBlOTBho


You make joke, Yes?Â* :-)

Rene


Did you watch the video?



I think I slept through the best parts.

Rene

  #38  
Old July 17th 20, 03:28 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Jonathan N. Little
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Posts: 38
Default Linux founder tells Intel to stop inventing 'magic instructions'and 'start fixing real problems'

VanguardLH wrote:
"Jonathan N. Little" wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:
"Jonathan N. Little" wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:


snip

Steam Play (Steam for Linux) detects the platform for the game probably
via a manifest for the game specifying its native platform. If it's a
native Linux game, it just loads it in Linux. If a Windows game, it
uses its WINE variant (aka Proton) to run the Windows game in that
emulator running atop Linux.

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/2...ows-only-games


2 years old. The landscape is changing rapidly. Of the top 100 games 1/3
now ported. More will be in the future with new games.

https://www.protondb.com/


Where's the impetus to port if Steam's Proton (variant of WINE) along
with using proprietary video drivers for Linux (if available) lets
Windows-only games run on Linux?

Any benchmarks showing performance differences (FPS, CPU/core
frequencies, video quality, temperatures, etc) between a ported Windows
game (making it a native Linux game) versus using Steam Proton and
proprietary video Linux drivers?


Well I can say that with the ported game Borderlands 2 and Pre-Seaquel
on this laptop with "Enhanced" Intel GPU was unplayable with Windows 10.
Now have Ubuntu 16.04 and they are quite playable, albeit not with maxed
out graphics settings.


If there's no or little performance impact, can't see game authors
spending the time and resources to port from Windows with 88%
marketshare to Linux with a 2% marketshare.


Well the refinements to Proton only recently narrowed the performance
gap, many ported games can perform better on Linux than Windows. Also
when Windows OS becomes SAAS and folks will have to subscribe to use
Linux will be come more attractive. Linux allows more system resources
to be applied to the application at hand and to to telemetry and
advertisers... For gamers performance is paramount, so now the last
holdout nVidia is beginning to cooperate and get onboard so as Windows
bloats as Linux performs gamers will go with the performance.


protondb.com is a database of Windows-only games that have been
user-reported as compatible by using Proton (don't know if proprietary
Linux video drivers were used, though, or if Vulkan is solely relied on
to retain video performance). Is there a toggle or view there showing
how many Proton-compatible Windows-only games have been ported to Linux
hence eliminating the need for Proton? Games played on Linux using
Proton are not ported games.


That has the green bar for native...that's the ported game percentage.

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com
  #39  
Old July 17th 20, 03:31 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_3_]
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Posts: 24
Default General ramblings (with some Linux flavouring). (Was: Linux founder tells Intel to stop inventing 'magic instructions' and 'start fixing real problems')

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 at 22:35:33, T wrote:
On 2020-07-16 21:47, VanguardLH wrote:

[]
When schools are predominatly training students in an OS then the
market
penetration goes up. The students take with them what they learned.
Microsoft learned that long ago. So did Apple. With so many Linux


And, before that, Bell labs with UNIX; when I was at uni., it was pretty
universal on the mainframes (this was around 1980, when home computers,
inasmuch as they existed, were all incompatible, mostly running
[incompatible versions of] BASIC); I understood that Bell let academic
institutions for a peppercorn fee, for that very reason.

variants and only a few commercial vendors (e.g., Redhat), free is not a
sufficient reason for mass migration to Linux. Get a gradually larger


For the vast majority of home users (including a large proportion of
those who use their computer in their profession), Windows is seen as
"free" anyway - in that it comes with the computer. Sure, it's an
element of the price, but I've not seen it listed separately since the
days when people had their PC made to their spec. - which for the (vast
I think) majority of users, is decades ago. [The same applies to other
OSs - Apple, Chrome, etc.; the price of the OS is not shown, any more
than that of the case, mobo, HD (or SSD), memory ... in _most_ of the
places people buy computers these days.]

I'm speaking of the UK, but I _think_ it's the same in the USA. Here,
the main "High Street" (US: Main Street) or mall places where computers
are on sale are the larger supermarket branches, and specialist shops -
and of the latter, we sadly only have one now.
[]
For well-rounded computer eduction, students should really be
exposed to
multiple operating systems. Learn 'em, and let 'em choose.


Ideally, yes. In practice, even if hardware/licensing etc. weren't a
problem, time is. (As well as all the other pressures on a teacher.)

However, businesses and even schools need support from the OS
vendor.
Free doesn't include technical support. Those institutions don't look
firstly at the cost of a license. They look for support and its cost.


There, of course, the fact that Windows _isn't_ free makes the
difference: MS provides support to schools (in both the UK and US
meaning of "schools"), whereas "Linux" doesn't (for both cost reasons
and that it isn't a single entity).

Not having robust support is costly. In-house training still has costs
and adds delay to acquire expertise. Like buying a printer, you figure
the Cost of Ownership is in the rate of use of the consumables (paper,
ink), and lastly consider the cost of the printer. The cost of OS


You _should_, but looking at what people buy, I think few do! (Not
helped by most stores _not_ showing the cost of a set of cartridges by
each printer.) [Not to mention the recent abomination - IMO - of "ink as
a service".]
[]
died off. Same for Fortran nowadays ($80K/year average base salary).


[Where do I sign up? Though I imagine my skills - Fortran IV, send off a
coding form and get back a pile of punched cards and some printout,
1970s - are a bit rusty ... (-:]
[]
I have a sneaking suspicion that Microsoft is planning a migration
to a
Linux/Windows hybrid kernel with a Windows GUI. After all, Windows NT,


You might be right.

and up, which had an NT-based kernel still carried along the familiar
desktop GUI from the 9x/DOS frankenjob GUI. First it was Linux in their


I remember when NT gradually took over: NT4 had the 9x/XP GUI, but
NT3.51 had (more or less) the Windows 3.1 (or 3.11) GUI, and held on for
quite a while: at my employers, NT3.51 systems were not replaced by NT4
as a matter of course.

[Long chunk that's beyond me here. (I'm sure mostly correct.)]
[]
And my current experience with small business I have
constantly tried to figure out how to get folks on
Linux. It is virtually impossible, as the apps they
need only run in Windows.

It is the apps the customer cares about. They could
care less if they were run int Flying Zucchini OS, if
it ran their apps.


Indeed. Same for a lot of home users: as long as it does browsing,
email, and (mostly via the browser) social media, and in some cases word
processing, they don't care (or in a _few_ cases even _know_) what OS
they have. And this is _not_ a put-down of such users - they can be
quite intelligent, just not _interested_. The car analogy is imperfect
but relevant.
[]
Also, the recent computer science grads I have come
across make my head spin. They know virtually nothing
about computers or programming. Seriously, they barely
know what a mouse is. And they are in debt up to the
asses with student loans.


I feel the same (more in next post), though to be fair they probably
_do_ know more about _some_ things than you (and I) do. The fact that
_we_ may consider those things less important is of (endlessly arguable
and probably not productively so) relevance.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"... all your hard work in the hands of twelve people too stupid to get off jury
duty." CSI, 200x
  #40  
Old July 17th 20, 03:47 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 24
Default Linux founder tells Intel to stop inventing 'magic instructions' and 'start fixing real problems'

On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 at 02:54:22, VanguardLH wrote:
T wrote:

Also, the recent computer science grads I have come across make my
head spin. They know virtually nothing about computers or
programming. Seriously, they barely know what a mouse is. And they
are in debt up to the asses with student loans.


We'd get CSci university interns to help in Software QA. They were

[]
instructional CDs) the rest of us got. The interns just had no grasp of
how to dig into software to test it, and how to document their testing

[]
like 1st-year students instead of near-grads. No initiative, no talent
for testing, and poor writing skills.


I remember - I _think_ it was in the last decade, but it might have been
more - being startled when I spoke to a young computing graduate, to
find he'd never done any assembler. At that time, after my initial
double-take, I thought to myself: the field is big enough, that there'll
be plenty of room for him, and in practice he'll probably never have any
trouble finding interesting and well-paid employment.

I remember someone remarking that college isn't about training their
students for a particular job. It's to train them on how to learn. Not


That is certainly part of it, especially if they hadn't picked that up
at school (UK meaning). It's also - at _some_ levels - when the brain is
at peak ability: I remember holding two conversations at once, something
I'm not sure I could do to the same extent now. (In contrast, my now
slower brain has more _experience_. And that combines with my
"generalist" outlook.)

evidenced by the interns that we got. I think we used interns for 6
months: the contract length. Never again thereafter. A failed


Why did you use them in the first place - was it because of some form of
state subsidy, of about that duration?
[]
Field Support was easy to get unless they were at a job site, plus they
were experienced on how customers used the product, not how Dev thinks
it should work per the Functional and Engineering Spec docs. Eventually


(-: [Users constantly amaze you in the ways they use things. (Doesn't
just apply to software, of course.) Occasionally, it's very innovative!]
[]
were, um, lenient in our report to the college for our assessment of the
interns. We still wanted them to get academic credit.


You were, in short, decent guys.

There were no later experiments using interns to better gauge the
usefulness of that workforce source. Before the contract ended, my
manager asked for reviews on their performance. I told my boss that I'd
write scripts to do the work of the interns. I didn't get overtime, but
I did accrue flex time that I could add to my PTO. I took some long
vacations or extended weekends when QA wasn't in prep or crunch mode.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"... all your hard work in the hands of twelve people too stupid to get off
jury
duty." CSI, 200x
 




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