marathon06.org

Saturday, February 5, 2005

A collaboratively-developed operating system kernel known as GNU Hurd has been made bootable using the L4 microkernel, which provides room for significant speed improvements over an existing implementation using the Mach microkernel. The newer architecture also has a more lively developer community.

Developer Marcus Brinkmann made the historic step and finished the process initialization code, which enabled him to execute the first software on Hurd-L4. In a message to the L4 port of GNU Hurd mailing list, Brinkmann wrote, “We can now easily explore and develop the system in any way we want. The dinner is prepared!”. [1] However, the kernel’s current feature set is very limited. “With my glibc port, I can already build simple applications, but most won’t run because they need a filesystem or other gimmicks (like, uhm, fork and exec), and I only have stubs (dummy functions which always return an error) for that now,” he added in a later posting. [2]

Compared with Linux and BSD Unix’s monolithic kernel architecture, a microkernel based operating system provides developers greater modularity and isolation from hardware, a big win with L4 already being available for a large number of hardware varieties.

There is a cost in speed for such abstraction, and this cost was higher on Mach, at around 15%, compared with only around 5% on L4 and it’s predecessor L3, both developed by Dr. Jochen Liedtke. [3]

The greater modularity and abstraction of a microkernel approach means that the microkernel itself does not need constant modification as is seen in the Linux kernel today, since it provides only the very minimum of services, and does so very carefully. Thus, the fact that L4 was developed in 1996 is seen as exemplifying this stability — rather than showing its age — since few, if any, improvements in approach have been imagined in the meantime.

However, the Mach kernel first developed ten years earlier at Carnegie Mellon University is seen as a flawed first implementation, with the lessons learned being implemented in microkernels like L4, known as second-generation microkernels.

The GNU Hurd forms the base of the GNU operating system, much of which has been widely adopted by users of other Unix-like operating systems, including Linux. The GNU Project has been developing the Hurd since 1983. In 1990, the GNU Project decided to use the Mach kernel, rather than writing their own. [4] The Hurd is released as free software under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

The Hurd kernel is an experiment which aims to surpass existing Unix kernels in functionality, security, and stability, while remaining largely compatible with them. It currently runs on Intel IA32 machines. According to the GNU Hurd project, “The Hurd should, and probably will, be ported to other hardware architectures or other microkernels in the future” [5].

`Hurd’ stands for `Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons’. And, then, `Hird’ stands for `Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth’ – perhaps the first software to be named by a pair of mutually recursive acronyms.

A limited port of Linux already runs on L4, known as L4Linux.

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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

In the past two months, Parker Somerville, a videographer for the website TMZ.com, transitioned from an average guy leading an ordinary life, to living in an extraordinary voyeuristic existence, and back again to the beginning. Simply put, it was a transition from reality to reality, with a two-week detour in reality television. Somerville was a former contestant on the CBS reality TV staple Big Brother, currently in its ninth installment.

Evicted on Day 14, Somerville hoped to have another chance to play the game, but came in second in the special “America’s Choice” poll to bring back a former HouseGuest (the poll results were eventually not used at all and nobody was brought back). Now freed from a three-week sequester, Somerville was interviewed by Wikinews reporter Mike Halterman and he discussed his thoughts on Big Brother, how he and his fellow HouseGuests were portrayed and received, and what he plans to do now that his experience is, for the most part, over.

Somerville will return to Big Brother on finale night in five weeks. Please check your local listings for time and channel. Big Brother airs on CBS in the United States, Global in Canada, and E4 in the United Kingdom.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Buffalo, New York — According to scanner frequencies of the Buffalo, New York fire department, smoke was reported on at least five floors at the northeast side at One HSBC Center in downtown Buffalo. The call came in around 10:50 p.m. (Eastern Time) on Friday January 18, not long after the ending of the NHL hockey game: the Sabres versus the Atlanta Thrashers which was held at HSBC Arena, a few blocks away from the tower.

According to firefighters communications the people that were on the 22nd floor made it out of the building safely. Firefighters saw “white smoke of varying intensities, believed to have been electrical” on floors 9 through 13. The source of the smoke was not identified, but the first alarm was on the 13th floor, followed by the 10th then the 9th.

Because of the cold temperatures and wind chills in the 10’s, workers at the tower were allowed back into the first floor, which has been cleared by firefighters earlier in the call.

At 11:41 p.m., firefighters gave the all clear to begin packing up with no conclusion as to where the smoke originated. They used ventilation fans to clear the floors of smoke and then shut them off to see if anymore smoke would reappear, which it did not. Remaining employees and personnel have since been allowed back to work. No damage is reported.

The tower, built in 1970, is the tallest in Buffalo and is home several agencies including the Consulate General of Canada. HSBC currently occupies 75% of the tower which has 40 floors. It stands at 529 feet (161.2 meters) tall.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Three people were killed and a further six were wounded on Wednesday after a building collapsed in the Zamoskvorechiye district of Moscow, Russia.

The building, which was a four-story house located at 71/80 Sadovnicheskaya Naberezhnaya, collapsed at around 16.45 local time after workers had damaged a supporting wall in the basement.

Three people managed to escape from the rubble, and another three were rescued. Three more still remain underneath debris.

A criminal investigation has been prompted after the collapse of the building, with city officials claiming that the building’s owner hadn’t received permission to redevelop it.

The house was protected under law as an historical landmark. It must now be completely demolished, as well as a neighbouring building, to protect other buildings in the vicinity, announced Vladimir Resin, the City Hall construction chief. Municipal housing will be constructed in the newly vacated lots.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

United States President Barack Obama has nominated retired Air Force Lieutenant General James Clapper to be the new director of National Intelligence. The position had been left vacant when the previous director of national intelligence was forced to leave due to a series of security failures. James Clapper now awaits confirmation by the US Senate.

Barack Obama has requested a quick confirmation from the Senate. Both US Democratic Party and Republican Party senior representatives in the Senate Intelligence Committee have publicly expressed their reservation about the nomination. According to to the Associated Press, Republican senator Kit Bond doubted Clapper’s ability to command among some of the intelligence community personalities. “I don’t think Clapper’s the right person for the job,” he said. The Associated Press, informed by senior congressional staff, reported that the Republican senator had not been invited to discuss the nomination and is considering asking his Republican support to block the nomination.

Previous director of national intelligence Dennis C. Blair quit two weeks ago in the sequence of a series of security failures, including the Fort Hood shooting incident.