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What about Smoots?

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Psssh 'ed'? Real men use TECO ;-)

More info on TECO for those who care.
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TecoEditor
http://almy.us/teco.html

I just checked with Netcraft and it's true. It's time for a new law. I vote for Sturgeon's Law because it is a universal constant. Take this post (and my next 8) for example.

Pagan Meetup Group...All I can say is WTF?

Uhhh...

• this,
• this,
• this, and
• this

Next is a vegan meetup group with a whole 3 members. I see no interest in meeting with people based on what I eat. What's next? A steak eaters group?

I like to meet other vegans: swap recipies, talk about retaurants, where to find good non-leather shoes, etcetera. But more importantly, I prefer to date vegetarian women. :-)

I'd rather just hang with normal people, TY.

How boring. I prefer the company of interesting people, stimulates the brain.

Pagan Meetup Group...All I can say is WTF?

Uhhh...

• this,
• this,
• this, and
• this

Next is a vegan meetup group with a whole 3 members. I see no interest in meeting with people based on what I eat. What's next? A steak eaters group?

I like to meet other vegans: swap recipies, talk about retaurants, where to find good non-leather shoes, etcetera. But more importantly, I prefer to date vegetarian women. :-)

I'd rather just hang with normal people, TY.

How boring. I prefer the company of interesting people, stimulates the brain.

Please shed some light on this.

If you want an answer to a question, it's better to waste a computer's time by getting it to answer you than to waste peoples time by getting them to answer you.

You can literally type "why shouldn't I use root?" into Google, and the very first hit explains why.

This isn't meant as an insult, it's just that some people seem to be unable to find out information on their own, and they end up drowning out the people who have legitimate problems or questions.

You might think that it's harmless, but I used to answer a hell of a lot of questions for people over a period of years for various open-source projects and technical Usenet groups. Eventually I got fed up with people like you who didn't do a damn thing to help themselves, and stopped doing it. I saw dozens of other experts burn out in exactly the same way. Now those support forums and newsgroups are full of people asking questions and nobody to answer them.

Please read How To Ask Questions The Smart Way.

No. If you can't imagine the use for more processing power and why there is the drive that perpetuates Moore's Law, perhaps you've forgotten about Gates's Law.

No. If you can't imagine the use for more processing power and why there is the drive that perpetuates Moore's Law, perhaps you've forgotten about Gates's Law.

Eric Raymond has a GCC3 compatible version here:
http://catb.org/~esr/vms-empire/

It's not the original VMS Empire (which was about 5k lines of Fortran, if memory serves), but close.

Character maps on terminals, natch - none of that sissy 3D textured animated raytraced stuff.

Drilling a hole in the earth's crust might let the magic smoke out!

What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains more and more market share, and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

And why isn't this thing being released in September?

Golf clap for the Eternal September reference.

Crunchly meets the Water-Powered Computer:

Crunchly meets the Water-Powered Computer:

Crunchly meets the Water-Powered Computer:

Crunchly meets the Water-Powered Computer:

Crunchly meets the Water-Powered Computer:

Crunchly meets the Water-Powered Computer:

Crunchly meets the Water-Powered Computer:

Crunchly meets the Water-Powered Computer:

Crunchly meets the Water-Powered Computer:

Crunchly meets the Water-Powered Computer:

Crunchly meets the Water-Powered Computer:

September that never ended
All time since September 1993. One of the seasonal rhythms of the Usenet used to be the annual September influx of clueless newbies who, lacking any sense of netiquette, made a general nuisance of themselves. This coincided with people starting college, getting their first internet accounts, and plunging in without bothering to learn what was acceptable. These relatively small drafts of newbies could be assimilated within a few months. But in September 1993, AOL users became able to post to Usenet, nearly overwhelming the old-timers' capacity to acculturate them; to those who nostalgically recall the period before, this triggered an inexorable decline in the quality of discussions on newsgroups. Syn. eternal September.

Is this just a popular phrase to spell with hex?

we have panels for everyone from the beginner to the l33t h4x0r

Based on my experience, those considering themselves "l33t h4x0rs" are beginners.

That is, of course, true. However, I think it was meant to be a light hearted reference for people who remember when goofballs talked like that and meant it. I'm reasonably sure these guys know the difference between "h4xx0r" and hacker. :)

actualy you can do that now (sorta.)

there's an easter-egg in most (all?) versions of minesweaper that turns the top-left pixel of your screen black or white to signal "mine" or "no mine"


type xyzzy then click[ENTER]and click the right [shift]button.

Here is an entry on it in TNHD:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/X/xyzzy.html

Also note that mono is meant for Visual Fred not Visual Basic.

to boot

Besides, in addition. For example, It rained every day and it was cold to boot, or He said they'd lower the price of the car by $1,000 and throw in air conditioning to boot. This expression has nothing to do with footwear. Boot here is an archaic noun meaning "advantage," and in the idiom has been broadened to include anything additional, good or bad. [c. a.d. 1000] (emphasis added)

troll

1. v.,n. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. (emphasis added)

I've used whitespace-blocked programming languages (MUMPS, anyone?) and they blow. They blow so hard, they suck.

Someone (I think it may have been Stroustrap) said (and I paraphrase), "The restrictions of the language translate to restrictions in the programming solution." I find white-space blocking restrictive and somewhat... arbitrary.

I understand these are my opinions, and others feel differently. Python looks like it might have been a good language for me if it wasn't for the pain of whitespace blocking. But you know what? It doesn't matter, because Python is there for those that like rules and restrictions, and Perl is there for those that thrive in chaos, and Forth is there for those who like to invent their language to fit the solution every time.

Lisp is there for those that like lots of tiny little chunks of things. C is there for those who aren't man enough for assembler. C++ is there for those who like pain (those are called masochists, right?). Objective-C is there for those who can't *quite* commit to Smalltalk. COBOL is there for the clearly insane obsessive-compulsive.

Java is there for those who used to listen to marketing hype. C# is there for those who grew disillusioned with the old marketing hype, and who listened to the *new* marketing hype.

That's the great thing, even about sucky languages like Python. Everyone has their place.

Mine is INTERCAL.

Linus left Transmeta in mid-2003 and now works at the Open Source Development Labs. Here is ESR's unofficial Linux FAQ

here

That's nonsense. There have been hackers longer than there have been computers. Even the Jargon File gives multiple definitions, most not specific to programming. It's much more of an inclusive term than an exclusive one.

I wonder if that applies in a lesser way to FOS-equipped software, because the incentive to "hack" (as in "use computers creatively") makes for mor intelligent use patterns?

Blackbox is extremely stable, has no footprint...

No footprint? That's about as amazing and cool as write-only memory!

What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks ever deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

...that the "hacking" in "Hacking Mac OS X" is referring to "hacking" in the traditional sense, not "cracking".

And for more on mach_inject, referred to in the summary, see Jonathan Rentzsch's website...and an interesting list of mach_inject and mach_override users.

As for the Finder, it may be true it was a "compromise" of sorts between the NeXT world and the Mac OS world. But it wasn't necessarily the social compromise between "personalities" within Apple it's pained to be; it was likely more of a technical one. It's not perfect, and it's woefully inadequate for some tasks that involve managing thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of files. But it's still more than sufficient, and there's no reason to completely junk it: it can continue to evolve and be improved upon.

...that the "hacking" in "Hacking Mac OS X" is referring to "hacking" in the traditional sense, not "cracking".

And for more on mach_inject, referred to in the summary, see Jonathan Rentzsch's website...and an interesting list of mach_inject and mach_override users.

As for the Finder, it may be true it was a "compromise" of sorts between the NeXT world and the Mac OS world. But it wasn't necessarily the social compromise between "personalities" within Apple it's pained to be; it was likely more of a technical one. It's not perfect, and it's woefully inadequate for some tasks that involve managing thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of files. But it's still more than sufficient, and there's no reason to completely junk it: it can continue to evolve and be improved upon.

A long time ago, I realized something that was also stated in the Jargon File - all nouns can be verbed.

Try the jargon file glossary

another useful resource is the jargon file

Hmmm... these definitions disagree with you. I think pretty much anybody would take the word of esr and wikipedia against you.

You lose. Thanks for playing.

Hi bigbloggingbuggar, I believe RTFA is a related term to RTFM. I prefer to think of it as "read the fine article". ;) I try to be polite at most of the places that I post (WebmasterWorld, Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch forums, etc.), but RTFA is a well-established piece of lingo at Slashdot, used to encourage people to review the basic facts presented in the submitted story. As part of blending in, also look for me to slip in references to Cowboy Neal, Soviet Russia, Natalie Portman, grits, etc. etc. I've been reading Slashdot for years, but I've only had the GoogleGuy handle on Slashdot since Jan 19th.

Web designers should have been worrying about 56k speeds all along. Not everybody happens to have broadband yet, and even if they do, why should you bleed it all away with huge flash files, etc. If you have to add splash and flash, perhaps your message isn't as good as it could be.

So there goes an orgy of flash, animated crap and javascript.

-- Feh! I shout from the back. "Dazzle to hide the absence of content" (there was **NO** content).

He turns around slowly and squints at me, meaning "And I suppose that YOU've got content???"

-- Oh, you want content? I throw him the URL of my website (I won't bother here, because it's all in french so it would be useless for y'all yankees), a website I've been working on since 1993 (and which looks horrible because I never redid the older parts as I change the way I work on it as time goes).

20 minutes later, they were still reading from the website, and he was so impressed that everytime I go to that christmas party, he keeps telling me how much stuff there is on it...

Eric S. Raymond Explains How To "Get" Girl

Same deal here. I've been a Mac user since the Mac Plus, and that was one of only two machines (all Macs) I've owned since that have ever gotten a virus. I don't ever recall what that one was but it was pretty easily fixed.

The only virus I've gotten in anything resembling "recent" times was the SevenDust virus I got on an old Performa sometime back in the mid-late 90's or so... That one would have been a bitch to get rid of, if I hadn't have had a bootable system CD with recent antivirus software on it.

Aside from those two cases, antivirus software on the Mac has been in my experience a complete waste of time. And both times, the viruses only spread because I got an valid executable file from someone I know (on floppy back on the plus, online with SevenDust) who happened to have been infected by somehow he knew, etc. None of this spread-through-exploits crap or social-engineering malware spam. Just good, old-fashioned sex.

...is a "bodge".

See http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/bodge.html

Bah, I'd think those would be good to keep around. Otherwise someone might actually flip the magic switch or drop the ball on getting a sane implementation.

Actually fixing the problems may be more work than its worth, let the community do their job...