One of Microsoft's most interesting and interesting blogs, Raymond Chen's Old New Thing, recently covers an analysis of the best-selling software for Windows 95-SoftRAM 95. There are also almost no courses on modern software.
What SoftRAM 95 claims to do is software memory compression—compress the data in RAM instantly so that your operating system has faster storage space available than without software. This crazy-sounding idea first appeared in Connectix's RAMdoubler in 1994, when Mac OS 7.1 was the latest (although it also applied to System 6). It is slightly easier on classic MacOS due to its very basic semi-manual memory management. In 1994, doubling the system's RAM sounded like a bargain, when the price of a 4MB SIMM was $170-today it is £230.
The working principle of memory compression is to introduce a second level of exchange to the operating system. There are two types of operating systems that support virtual memory: real physical RAM and virtual memory in disk files. Memory compression introduces a layer between them: it partitions the system memory block for compression. When the operating system runs low on RAM and swaps some content to disk, the memory compressor intercepts it, compresses the content using fast algorithms, but keeps it in RAM. It is very likely that the data will be needed again soon, and if so, the memory compressor will decompress it and put it back into main memory. This operation is much faster than retrieving from a hard drive-as far as the computer is concerned, it takes days instead of weeks.
RAM compression is still very important today. This feature is built into Windows 10 and has been in macOS since 10.9. Linux does not have one but two similar functions, but they are optional.
Back in the 90s, this was the most advanced thing. Mark Russinovich, who was Winternals at the time, but now he himself is Microsoftie, he analyzed SoftRAM 95, wrote a tool to test the feature, and declared it doesn't work. (We have linked to all three pages, because after 25 years, the page number button no longer works.) Interestingly, its two competitors did work, although the enthusiasm quickly disappeared.
SoftRAM does have some useful functions on Windows 3.1, which can be implemented for free by adjusting some configuration files anyway, but it does nothing at all on Windows 95. This caused a clown story at the time—even the famous scientific journal Christian Science Monitor mentioned it.
In case you think such things will not happen today, they will happen. Antivirus apps for iOS used to be an example, even iOS sandbox apps-so the app can't actually scan your phone.
A common one today is the "registry cleaner." The Windows registry does not need to be cleaned, and deleting entries may harm your PC. Want a cleaner computer? Run the built-in disk cleanup tool. Check all the boxes and click "OK". Then execute it again and press the "Clean up system files" button. Restart, this works fine. ®
China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has fined technology giants 43 times-Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent have been told to pay the price for failing to declare transactions deemed to be in violation of antitrust legislation.
According to the State Administration for Market Regulation, stricter anti-monopoly enforcement has led companies to submit more paperwork, sometimes about past transactions. SAMR's own investigation uncovered acquisitions that were not reported at the time.
These efforts resulted in 43 transactions conducted between 2012 and 2021 that violated China's 2008 anti-monopoly law. Each crime was fined 500,000 yen (78,300 U.S. dollars). The regulator stated that all of these were "assessed as not having the effect of eliminating or restricting competition."
VMware has removed its latest major vSphere version-version 7, update 3-from its download service on the grounds that driver interoperability issues may cause failures during the upgrade process.
This move was withdrawn last week after vSphere 7 Update 3b was found to have problems with high availability configuration and VMware described the following problems:
Pakistan has allowed TikTok to resume operations on its territory.
China has banned Chinese-made social networks four times on the grounds that it allows inappropriate content to be disseminated to citizens. Pakistan’s testing of appropriate content requires it to comply with “Pakistan’s religious, cultural, ethnic and national security sensitivities”. This language translates into a very low tolerance for content that ridicules Islam, a not optimistic view of political extremism (especially when it opposes government policies), and a sensitivity to obscene materials.
As always, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) posted its decision and its reasons on Twitter.
After discovering marijuana smuggling activities centered on e-commerce sites, the Indian Madhya Pradesh police have filed charges against Amazon India executives under the anti-drug law.
On November 14, the police said that the two captured men were holding 20 kilograms of marijuana and were using Amazon India to sell their products across states. Suppliers registered as sellers on Amazon advertised the product as a sugar substitute ingredient stevia leaf, but upon inspection, the product was a completely different and not very legal weed. The police believe that drug dealers have transferred approximately 1,000 kilograms of drugs, worth US$148,000, to Jeff Bezos’ digital master market.
The next day, the police summoned local Amazon executives to explain their role in the smuggling operation. A senior police officer pointed out that Amazon has strong artificial intelligence capabilities, so it should have been able to kill criminal activities in the bud, thereby defending this action.
IBM has warned owners of POWER8 servers that their upgrade options are about to become limited.
A direction statement issued last week stated that Big Blue "plans to announce its withdrawal from the MES upgrade marketing of the IBM POWER8 system in January 2022."
The MES upgrade covers items such as memory, adapters, and internal storage.
Some Tesla drivers who wanted to go for a ride on Saturday were unable to do so after an update to the car's companion app caused a server error.
Tesla does not use traditional keys. Instead, they need to have a remote control key, key card, or authenticated mobile phone app that connects to the electric car via Bluetooth. This is obviously easier and/or more convenient than keys or other things. Oops, with Bluetooth, everything is better, right?
The driver who used the app to start the car reported that it was unable to complete the job and instead generated an error message.
In short, during the COVID-19 pandemic, contract lawyers continue to work from home and therefore increasingly work under the control of facial recognition software.
Judging from the "Washington Post" interviews with more than 20 American lawyers, this technology is nothing. To ensure that these contract lawyers who undertake short-term jobs work as expected and properly handle sensitive information, their every move is tracked by a webcam.
The monitoring software is authorized by its employer to control access to legal documents that need to be reviewed. If the system believes that someone else is viewing files on the computer, or the device is set to record information from the screen, the user will be activated.
Earlier this year, a federal judge dismissed a proposed class action lawsuit accusing retail brokerage firm Robinhood of colluding with trading company Citadel Securities to prevent people from buying GameStop and other so-called meme stocks.
Shares of companies such as GameStop, AMC Entertainment Holdings, Blackberry and Nokia Oyj soared in January. Internet traders used the Robinhood app to raise prices in an attempt to prevent Wall Street financial institutions from shorting securities.
Robinhood users started buying stocks frantically, and as prices got higher, the company suddenly prevented customers from buying more stocks on its app. Users were only allowed to sell, so the market value of companies such as GameStop began to plummet.
Most modern chat systems are completely proprietary: a proprietary client, which communicates a proprietary protocol with a proprietary server. There is no need to do this: for this kind of system, there are free open standards for one-to-one and one-to-many communications, and some respected customers are still much stronger than you remember.
But just like today, if you need to use multiple chat systems at the same time, the official method is to install their client app, which means multiple clients-or at most open multiple tabs in your web browser . In any case, most of these "clients" are JavaScript web applications running in Electron, an embedded single-site browser based on Chromium. This is great, but Chrome is notoriously memory hungry.
There is a brute force method to solve this problem: Have an application embed many separate Electron instances in the tabs. There are a few of these-RamBox first, and Franz second. Both use the "freemium" model: there is a fully functional free client, as well as subscriptions for additional features. If you want to avoid this, both services have free forks: Franz's Ferdi and RamBox's Hamsket. A new competitor is still Station.
After canceling its controversial Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract tender in July, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) promised to provide a follow-up request for proposals to provide cloud services for the defense, referred to as Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (Joint Warfighter). Cloud Capability). JWCC).
The Pentagon said at the time that its $10 billion JEDI cloud contract-which was awarded to Microsoft that triggered a fierce legal dispute and accusations of political favoritism by its spurned competitor Amazon-no longer meets its needs. But it added that its JWCC tender will be a “multi-cloud/multi-vendor indefinite delivery-indefinite (IDIQ) contract” and assured Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) that it will seek Companies, because every company can meet its needs.
The Department of Defense has gone further, offering less successful cloud companies the hope of recurring defense revenue. It teased it "will immediately engage with the industry and continue its market research to determine whether any other ultra-large-scale [cloud service providers] located in the United States can also meet the requirements of the Department of Defense."
MediaTek launched what may be the first Armv9-based chip, which is ARM's first architecture upgrade in ten years.
Dimensity 9000, as MediaTek CEO Rick Tsai said before, is the company's "entry into the flagship field." This chip is also the company's first chip for expensive smartphones.
Mediatek's chips are mainly used in low-end Android smartphones. Dimensity 9000 will compete with top smartphones, which means that in addition to Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 888 chip, customers in the high-end market may have more choices. Qualcomm will release a new flagship chip before the end of the year.
The Register-Independent news and opinions from the technical community. Partial situation release
Hand biting IT © 1998–2021