[Nottingham] [Social] *Tomorrow* Tuesday 19/01/2010 YO! Sushi 'n' beer

[Joshua Lock]

On 2 February 2010 13:12, Martin <martin at ml1.co.uk> wrote:
> There were various comments about GUIs that I've forgotten. For anyone
> who's seen Avatar (see the 3d version!), there were some nice GUI
> gesture ideas shown for their graphics tablets and 3d displays. I still
> think we've made little GUI progress since the early ideas published by
> Xerox Palo Alto in the 1970's...

For gesture interfaces Oblong are doing interesting (Minority Report
inspired) things: http://oblong.com/

>
> (BTW: Avatar was rendered on a Linux farm...)
>
> Good brief comment about RAID and btrfs and filesystems. I rather like
> the idea of btrfs intelligently taking over RAID functionality and so
> avoiding blindly replicating vast tracts of unused storage area as is
> done at present by device level RAID. That is, only live file data and
> metadata are replicated by btrfs. (Note: btrfs is still 'experimental'
> where certain bits are known not to work yet...) Perhaps we need the
> flash inspired "TRIM" command for device level RAID? Also, there was
> agreement (by two of us that is) that /application level/ data
> redundancy/replication is the way to go as is practised by Google.
>
> After further thoughts and investigation, I follow Linus' opinion that
> we shouldn't need to do anything 'special' in the OS or fs to
> accommodate using flash storage. The fs should simply be a fs with at
> most optional tuning for the elevator for the obvious access
> optimisations for HDD vs SSD. However, I seem to have killed a flash
> memory stick with just three months of use for a "/var" :-(

Similarly, I killed a Kingston SSD which I was using in my laptop in
about the same amount of time, although admittedly my usage is
atypical.

It ended up being a pleasant excuse to re-do my personal computing
environment "right" (for me), but that's an aside.

>
> OS: Operating System
> fs: filesystem
> GUI: Graphical User Interface (such as your computer desktop)
> RAID: Random Array of Inexpensive/Independent Disks

Redundant Array of Inexpensive (Independent) Disks

> btrfs: A new filesystem

B*-TRee File System/BeTteR FileSystem/BuTteR FileSystem

> HDD: Hard Disk Drive
> SSD: Solid State Drive (such as flash memory "disks")
> BTW: By The Way
>
> Abbreviations and acronyms we are!

-- 
Joshua Lock