Links from 2012-01-28

Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split

You know how Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie created Unix on a PDP-7 in 1969? Well around 1971 they upgraded to a PDP-11 with a pair of RK05 disk packs (1.5 megabytes each) for storage. When the operating system grew too big to fit on the first RK05 disk pack (their root filesystem) they let it leak into the second one, which is where all the user home directories lived (which is why the mount was called /usr). They replicated all the OS directories under there (/bin, /sbin, /lib, /tmp…) and wrote files to those new directories because their original disk was out of space. Of course they made rules about „when the system first boots, it has to come up enough to be able to mount the second disk on /usr, so don’t put things like the mount command /usr/bin or we’ll have a chicken and egg problem bringing the system up.”

Relaunched: the 6502 microprocessor - The H Open Source: News and Features

The 6502 processor from the 1970s is alive once again – and as a proper 40-pin chip in a dual in-line package (DIP) housing, not just as an embedded core. Mouser Electronics has added the 8-bit classic, since modernised by WDC (Western Design Center), to its product range, making it available in the UK for £4.90.

‘Born to Die,’ Lana Del Rey’s Debut Album - NYTimes.com

The music is slow and full, a smoky mid-1960s cinema soundtrack, deployed pristinely, with crackling hip-hop drums setting the pace. It lulls and stirs and feels like one portent of doom after another. If it’s close to anything it’s to Portishead and the other gauzy British trip-hop of the early- to mid-1990s, which traded aggression for atmosphere, and leaned heavily on drama. On top of music like that, anything shy of full commitment would underwhelm, and over the course of this album, that’s just what happens.

Tagged as: delicious, links | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Samstag, 20120128, 04:05 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)