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Command Line Life Partner Wanted

emj writes "Craiglist offers an interesting approach to finding a life partner , summmary: "There is a sad truth to the world today. I am part of a dying breed of people known as "shell users." ... Because there are fewer and fewer of us, I must help keep our lineage alive. I am looking for someone to help me do this. I need a woman (obviously) who is willing to raise a child with me in the method of Unix."."

503 comments

  1. hmmm... by hbean · · Score: 5, Funny

    grep -i 'single white female' /usr2/home/women/*

    --
    "Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
    1. Re:hmmm... by EvilMonkeySlayer · · Score: 5, Funny

      grep: /usr2/home/women/*: No such file or directory

      *Sniff*

    2. Re:hmmm... by oliderid · · Score: 5, Funny

      grep -i 'white female' /home/me/Desktop/women/*

      1256 pictures found.

    3. Re:hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      grep -i 'asian schoolgirl' /home/me/Desktop/women/*

      *error insufficient memory

    4. Re:hmmm... by ohtani · · Score: 5, Funny

      ohtani@darkstar:~$ man woman
      Segmentation fault (core dumped)

      --
      Pancakes. Oh I blew it.
    5. Re:hmmm... by somersault · · Score: 5, Funny

      basement# grep -i 'single white female' /usr2/home/women/*

      Your mom

      --
      which is totally what she said
    6. Re:hmmm... by Rob+Bos · · Score: 2

      That probably won't work - there's a limit to the number of files you can expand on the commandline with bash.

      You probably want to do something like 'find -type f /home/me/Desktop/women | while read i;do grep "white female" "$i";done'.

    7. Re:hmmm... by malkavian · · Score: 4, Funny

      root@SoupDragon:~/# man woman
      No manual entry for woman

      Which makes me wonder if the shell requirement is solely so he can make a Cron job and have automated entry?

    8. Re:hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      man woman


      Segmentation fault (core dumped)

    9. Re:hmmm... by rbowles · · Score: 5, Informative

      xargs does the trick nicely here (and most versions of find expect arguments after the pathname).

      # find ${SOMEPATH} -type f | xargs grep -i "${PATTERN}"

      --
      /* MAGIC THEATRE
      ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
      MADMEN ONLY */
    10. Re:hmmm... by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      Come on, man... you're a slackware user! Fire up valgrind and gdb and fix it!

    11. Re:hmmm... by ResidntGeek · · Score: 5, Funny

      Just a heads-up, it's generally considered improper to seek a wife from one's own home.

      Try /pub.

      --
      ResidntGeek
    12. Re:hmmm... by Wdomburg · · Score: 1

      See also:

      # find /home/me/Desktop/women -type f | xargs grep 'white female'

      or

      # find /home/me/Desktop/women -type f -exec grep 'white female' {} \;

    13. Re:hmmm... by Malevolyn · · Score: 2, Funny

      I know a girl named ALICE who's up for anything (as long as you've got the time to build some good training files). ;) And bonus, if you're freaky you can invite her cousin MegaHAL for a little two on one.

      --
      Your ad here.
    14. Re:hmmm... by cruff · · Score: 5, Funny

      I found this to be more correct:

      % man woman
      No manual entry for woman

    15. Re:hmmm... by operagost · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ok... this is exactly why you guys only have pictures of women.

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    16. Re:hmmm... by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well, essentially he is looking for a device..... something he can input sperm into and get a baby as output, so probably /dev would be the best place to look. Though I don't know how many women have usb 2.0 compatible vaginas.

    17. Re:hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't forget -print0 and -0 on those commands (respectively) so you can handle weird characters like spaces in the filenames.

      I mean, hypothetically.

    18. Re:hmmm... by Cerberus7 · · Score: 5, Funny

      You ran that as root? What are you, crazy? You might as well hand over your car keys and bank account numbers to her! Oh, wait, that happens anyway...

      --
      I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
    19. Re:hmmm... by SQLGuru · · Score: 2, Funny

      I think they prefer the mechanical entry.......bzzzzzzzz

      Layne

    20. Re:hmmm... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 0, Flamebait
      Depends on the operating system. With some UNIX flavours (HURD being the notable exception) there is a hard limit to the length of parameters you can pass to a process. This is imposed by the kernel, not the shell. In your example, xargs would hit this limit. The solution is to use a sane command line where wildcard expansion is in a standard library, not in the shell (as it would have been with UNIX if UNIX had supported shared libraries), so that the expansion can be done in the grep process where these memory constraints don't exist (or, better, accessed via an iterator in grep so that these constraints don't appear at all).

      UNIX: Because getting even something as simple as a command-line right is too hard.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    21. Re:hmmm... by rbowles · · Score: 5, Funny

      Pictures?!?!?
      I find a textual representation to be much more accurate and efficient. Certainly much easier to write an efficient parser for text than for a picture.

      --
      /* MAGIC THEATRE
      ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
      MADMEN ONLY */
    22. Re:hmmm... by melikamp · · Score: 1

      Oops, modded you wrong, was going for "Funny". Fixed it now.

    23. Re:hmmm... by pinchhazard · · Score: 1, Funny
      Pictures?!?!? I find a textual representation to be much more accurate and efficient. Certainly much easier to write an efficient parser for text than for a picture.

      Textual representation? I assume you're talking about ASCII art, rather than porn stories. Let's write a software for creating animated ASCII arts. I will supervise, you code. GO.

      --
      Do you love freedom??? Do you love freedom!!! DO YOU LOVE FREEDOM!!!!!!!!
    24. Re:hmmm... by rbowles · · Score: 1

      By default, xargs places limits on both total command-line length and the number of arguments (I've never seen it exceed any limits). Assuming this default is 100 args, given a million files, xargs would run grep 10,000 times (avoiding these kernel defined limits) Admittedly, "find BLAH | xargs CMD" does break on filenames with spaces, but that's the largest flaw here. "-print0" is a nice answer to this, but work in heterogeneous environments has taught me to avoid non-standard extensions.

      --
      /* MAGIC THEATRE
      ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
      MADMEN ONLY */
    25. Re:hmmm... by sharperguy · · Score: 1

      what does: #woman man give you then?

      --
      "sudo rm -rf your-face"
    26. Re:hmmm... by Jumphard · · Score: 2, Funny

      "grep -i 'single white female' /usr2/home/women/*"
      So what are you saying, women can only be in the home? You can't be a working woman? Women shouldn't be paid? Women are inferior?
      You should be ashamed.

    27. Re:hmmm... by simcop2387 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      its already been done, just take the video and play back with aalib or libcaca in mplayer!

    28. Re:hmmm... by hbean · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well, I learned after my college years that /pub was not a great place to look for women.

      --
      "Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
    29. Re:hmmm... by zippthorne · · Score: 2, Funny

      Ugh, does no one read the man pages any more? Do people think they're sexist or something?

      grep -r -i "${PATTERN}" ${SOMEPATH}

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    30. Re:hmmm... by ctzan · · Score: 1
      That isn't safe, as some finenames may have spaces.

      $ find "${PATH} -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep "${PATTERN}"

    31. Re:hmmm... by abescully · · Score: 1

      It sounds like you may be dealing with hardware failure. I get denied outright with "No manual entry for woman".

    32. Re:hmmm... by Jumphard · · Score: 1

      Instead you now look around in your home ;)

    33. Re:hmmm... by houghi · · Score: 1
      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    34. Re:hmmm... by Zwack · · Score: 1

      *SIGH*

      find ${SOMEPATH} -type f -exec grep -i "${PATTERN}" {} \;

      reduces the potential window for a "race condition" (unlikely with grep as the command, but...), removes the burden of passing a potentially large list of files to xargs which then has to execute grep individually on each one, and finally (and most importantly in my estimation) it can handle whitespace in the filenames...

      Z.

      --
      -- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
    35. Re:hmmm... by yoyhed · · Score: 1

      yoyhed@hell:~/# ./jackoff > /dev/null

      Easy cleanup!

      --
      WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
    36. Re:hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Though I don't know how many women have usb 2.0 compatible vaginas.

      Not many, I suppose. After all, the biggest selling point of USB 2.0 is greater speeds and I don't believe that any women looks forward to those.

    37. Re:hmmm... by dubbreak · · Score: 1

      Isn't he going about this the complicated way?

      I mean any competent unix user can fork some child processes on their own. If he has trouble with that maybe he should outsource the entire job.

      --
      "If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
    38. Re:hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I found this to be more correct:

      % man woman
      No manual entry for woman Actually, there is a manual for women. It's called the Don Juan Bible.
    39. Re:hmmm... by Lodragandraoidh · · Score: 1

      or more simply you could just execute:

      'find -type f /home/me/Desktop/women -exec grep "white female" {}\;'

      --

      Lodragan Draoidh
      The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
    40. Re:hmmm... by FireFury03 · · Score: 1

      grep -r -i "${PATTERN}" ${SOMEPATH}

      Only works if you're running the GNU grep. If you're stuck on something like Solaris there is no -r. (Which is one of the reasons why using Solaris feels like you're back in the 1970s - its userland really hasn't changed much since...)

    41. Re:hmmm... by Sillygates · · Score: 4, Funny

      grep -i 'asian schoolgirl' /home/me/Desktop/women/* grep: argument list too long
      --
      I fear the Y2038 bug
    42. Re:hmmm... by Minwee · · Score: 1

      That's what the woMAN pages are for.

    43. Re:hmmm... by Minwee · · Score: 1

      Do you think that she knows Anna? It looks like they have a lot in common.

    44. Re:hmmm... by evil_aar0n · · Score: 1

      # alias bullshit="male issues"

      Probably because it's less bullshit to deal with. All of the fun, none of the hassle. Can't blame 'em...

      --
      Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
    45. Re:hmmm... by evil_aar0n · · Score: 1

      When better women are made, Faber men will make them.

      --
      Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
    46. Re:hmmm... by glittalogik · · Score: 2, Funny

      I think it's ok as long as the MTBF is high enough.

    47. Re:hmmm... by imipak · · Score: 1
      xargs? huh?

      $ grep -iR ${expression} /home/imipak/

    48. Re:hmmm... by linguizic · · Score: 3, Funny

      yoyhed@hell:~/# ./jackoff > /dev/sock
      There, fixed that for you.
      --
      Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
    49. Re:hmmm... by yoyhed · · Score: 2, Funny

      Hahaha! Very clever, but no one likes using a crusty /dev/sock.

      --
      WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
    50. Re:hmmm... by Lennie · · Score: 1

      mplayer in Debian has libcaca support (read: to make ascii-art porn movies, just take a regular porn movie).

      --
      New things are always on the horizon
    51. Re:hmmm... by spatialguy · · Score: 5, Funny

      % make love
      no target to make love

    52. Re:hmmm... by kbahey · · Score: 2, Informative

      How did this get a +5?

      You can do:

      $ find ${SOMEPATH} -type f -exec grep -i "${PATTERN}" {} \;

      Or:

      $ grep -r -i "${PATTERN}"

    53. Re:hmmm... by revxul · · Score: 1

      You'd be surprised.

      --
      Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
    54. Re:hmmm... by QuoteMstr · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, modern versions of find (including GNU and OS X find) support this syntax. (Yes, it's standard.)


      find "$PATH" -type f /bin/some-program {} +


      Which works like the old print0/xargs -0 combination.

      Also, ${FOO} is the same as $FOO. If you want to not cause whitespace-separated chunks to expand to multiple words, you must put the variable reference in double quotes.

    55. Re:hmmm... by grumbel · · Score: 1

      And on the downside it can be quite a bit slower then the xargs version, since -exec starts a new process for each file, while xargs uses a single process for as many files as fit in the command line.

    56. Re:hmmm... by StarfishOne · · Score: 1

      That's not a problem; just make sure you don't sign her public key!

      http://xkcd.com/364/

      (And almost a Freudian typo slipped in.. yes, you betcha, pun intended in this sentence as well)

    57. Re:hmmm... by Reverend528 · · Score: 1

      find has this functionality built in: find ${SOMEPATH} -type f -exec grep -Hi "${PATTERN}" \{} \;

    58. Re:hmmm... by Al+Dimond · · Score: 1

      My brother and I used to joke that the correct behavior of man for any argument is to print "I don't need no damn instructions!" and quit. You'd instead use the program "woman" to get the manpage. It is, of course, very easy to set this up for your account and amuse your friends and co-workers.

    59. Re:hmmm... by really? · · Score: 1

      But, but ... isn't rooting the main point of the exercise? I mean, why else would you be searching a woman?

      --

      "Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
    60. Re:hmmm... by fractoid · · Score: 1

      grep -i 'single white female' /usr2/home/women/* But what about capitalisation, you case-insensitive clod?
      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
    61. Re:hmmm... by sma11s101 · · Score: 1

      Personally as a member of the Church of Later Day Saints, I know that searching shared directories usually comes up with some good results.

    62. Re:hmmm... by Guppy · · Score: 1

      Though I don't know how many women have usb 2.0 compatible vaginas. Ever hear of an anime series called "Hand Maid May"?
    63. Re:hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Liar! Linux never runs out of memory!

    64. Re:hmmm... by Anonymuous+Coward · · Score: 1
      Solaris does come with GNU grep (and it's installed by default with all of Sun Freeware, at least in the 'Solaris Express Developer' distro I'm using), it's just called ggrep.

      Of course, you have to have /usr/sfw/bin in the path.

    65. Re:hmmm... by Anonymuous+Coward · · Score: 1
      For a moderate load (hundreds of files) it will be much slower than the xargs version. Just try it.

      For many thousands of small files (as typical with large source codes) it will be two or three order of magnitude slower than the xargs version.

    66. Re:hmmm... by oliderid · · Score: 1

      if !women unload to /dev/null

    67. Re:hmmm... by ultranova · · Score: 1

      No, that won't work; it will choke on people with exotic characters in their names. You want:

      find ${SOMEPATH} -type f -print0 | xargs --null -r -n 1 grep -i ${PATTERN} --
      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    68. Re:hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      #woman man

      "What have you done for me lately?"
      "HALF!"
      and so on...
    69. Re:hmmm... by Anonymuous+Coward · · Score: 1

      On Debian that would probably be redirected to undocumented(7).

    70. Re:hmmm... by hesaigo999ca · · Score: 1

      And also, you cant be doing something wrong with text, where as pictures, you could go to jail...

    71. Re:hmmm... by @madeus · · Score: 1

      Or just use (GNU) find :-)

      > find $PATH -type f -exec grep -i "$PATTERN" {} \;

    72. Re:hmmm... by vistic · · Score: 1

      --
      Pancakes. Oh I blew it.
      Spam Honeypot [moufette.com]

      MST Poopie.
    73. Re:hmmm... by Zwack · · Score: 1

      Well, you could just use grep -rl which would avoid all of this needless xargs and find stuff... or use one of the two GNU find extensions...

      find -type f -execdir grep -l {} +

      Still no need for xargs as -exec + and -execdir + both do what xargs would...

      Z.

      --
      -- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
    74. Re:hmmm... by mscir · · Score: 1

      Why not posts about divorce, divorce court, lawyers, supporting your ex while she's with other guys, etc.

    75. Re:hmmm... by rolando2424 · · Score: 1

      So you're saying something like "mount /dev/man /dev/woman"?

      --
      Okay seriously I've just run out of pointless things to say.
    76. Re:hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      man woman
      Segmentation fault. Core dumped.

    77. Re:hmmm... by zojas · · Score: 1
      even better, to handle funky file names, including those with white space:

      # find ${SOMEPATH} -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -i "${PATTERN}"

    78. Re:hmmm... by renegadesx · · Score: 1

      Ugh, does no one read the man pages any more?

      I tried

      renegadesx@localhost:~$ man women
      No manual entry for women
      *sighs*
      --
      Make SELinux enforcing again!
  2. Unichs? by Wordsmith · · Score: 4, Funny

    Don't be silly. Unichs can't have children.

    1. Re:Unichs? by u-bend · · Score: 5, Funny

      They're asexual. They respawn when killed.

      --
      u-bend
    2. Re:Unichs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know about Unichs, but eunuchs are known to adopt children to bequeath their wealth to.

    3. Re:Unichs? by dreamchaser · · Score: 3, Funny

      That sound you just heard was the joke (a play on the words 'unix' and 'eunuchs') going WHOOOOOSH right over your Anonymously Cowardly head.

    4. Re:Unichs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hear that sound? That's the spelling Nazi sarcasm going over *your* head.

      Here's something for comparison: unichs and unix and eunuchs and unix.

    5. Re:Unichs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Hear that sound? That's the spelling Nazi sarcasm going over *your* head.
      wooooOOOOssshhSSSHHH
      Hear that sound? It's the sound of Godwin's law getting closer and closer

    6. Re:Unichs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean they fork() but don't fuck?

    7. Re:Unichs? by Brandybuck · · Score: 2, Funny

      Eunichs is a trademark of Ball Labs®

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    8. Re:Unichs? by StarfishOne · · Score: 1

      TeleFrag accidents are known

    9. Re:Unichs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He got the joke, you idiot.

    10. Re:Unichs? by Menelkir · · Score: 1

      8 months to respawn...

  3. One things for sure by clubhi · · Score: 5, Funny

    This kid will get all the chicks.

    1. Re:One things for sure by fbartho · · Score: 1

      negative overflow on probability?

      --
      Gravity Sucks
    2. Re:One things for sure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i use a unix-based OS, which means i only get laid as often as i have to reboot!

  4. I think I saw this movie... by The+Ultimate+Fartkno · · Score: 0

    ...when it was called "Pasty White Female."

  5. "dying breed"? by neiko · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not sure I agree that shell users are a dying breed. Being a young developer (25yo) I and most, if not all, my co-workers are using a shell to develop and run unit debug/trace in. I think the amount of computer users in general has gone up so merely the ratio of shell/gui users has gone down.

    1. Re:"dying breed"? by Mongoose+Disciple · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Eh, it probably depends on the language/environment. People who do a lot of *NIX work probably shell a lot more than people who work more on Macs or Windows machines. (I know, the Mac gives you a bad ass command prompt, but I only know one Mac owner out of many that uses it at all.) I've worked at a pretty wide variety of companies (I'm a consultant, mostly .NET or Java work lately) and I'd say the developers that I've met that used the shell are vastly in the minority. Not to say there weren't occasional tasks that most of those developers would use a shell for when necessary or that they didn't understand the shell, but for things that could reasonably be done with either the GUI or the shell, they used the GUI.

      I haven't actually seen someone debug or trace from a shell in the workplace ever, though I've certainly done it myself back in college or on personal projects since.

    2. Re:"dying breed"? by rucs_hack · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I'm not sure I agree that shell users are a dying breed.

      Neither do I.

      Over the last five years I've written just one non trivial GUI application. All my serious work is shell based. After all, who wants to waste precious clock cycles swapping out to refresh some widget?

      And who-ever it was who thought tying computationally costly operations to fancy clock cycle consuming progress bars was a good idea should be shot.

      Lastly, why does Vista take 45% of one CPU just to handle frequent console printfs?

    3. Re:"dying breed"? by y86 · · Score: 1

      I code data feeds that run from UNIX / LINUX boxes than run to and from an IBM mainframe. It's all shell/PERL/JCL.

      I don't see the IBM mainframe going away, and as the mainframe grows --- so does the TSO command line :-)

    4. Re:"dying breed"? by novakyu · · Score: 1
      I don't think he meant that ALL shell users are of a dying breed. It's a particular kind, mainly (FTFA):

      We are an old-fashioned bunch, preferring the warm glow of a green screen full of text over the cold blockiness of a graphical interface. i.e. He's too poor to afford a color LCD, or is allergic to red and blue for some reason. Or he may even be color-blind.

      Gosh, it's been a long time since I've seen a true "black and white" CRT with green for "white".
    5. Re:"dying breed"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know what is a dying breed? Grammatically correct sentences. Start with the difference between amount and number and get back to us.

    6. Re:"dying breed"? by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The vast majority of my programming over the years has been script and utility programming, so it's off to the CLI for that. Having been raised on old TRS-80s and Commodores, graduating into MS-DOS and Xenix, I'm afraid I find the GUI a bit of a pain. You use it because it's there, but if I want to do any non-trivial copying or the like, it's off to the command line.

      I can't imagine using *nix without sh or bash. I still prefer CLI apps as well. I use SLRN for my newsreader, because I find it faster, more streamlined and sensible.

      I don't think I'm right or wrong. It's the way I do it. I've seen guys that can use the GUI like a finely-tuned instrument, so all the power to them.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    7. Re:"dying breed"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed. I am 26, and I've been sticking on terminal screens since the age of 9.

    8. Re:"dying breed"? by smittyoneeach · · Score: 2, Insightful

      After all, who wants to waste precious clock cycles swapping out to refresh some widget?
      Nah, CPU/RAM/Video card improvements render this point moot.
      The real question is: Who wants to deal with vast amounts of UI library, tons of little form files, and intricate event models for managing all of the user state?
      It's the 20% of the app taking 80% of the time, in addition to making all of that sweet logic you wrote kinda hard to use on multiple platforms.
      UI stuff, while certainly important, can be some of the least fun parts of a project to work on. What's worse? Printing?
      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    9. Re:"dying breed"? by rk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And who-ever it was who thought tying computationally costly operations to fancy clock cycle consuming progress bars was a good idea should be shot.

      Probably someone who was tired of the computational expense of having something run halfway through umpteen times, only to have their users kill the program, because it was "hung". If you've got a progress bar that's consuming enough CPU that it is having an significantly adverse impact on an application's performance, it's either coded horribly wrong, or you're at the very limit of your hardware's maximum capability, and perhaps you should really consider upgrading.

      FWIW, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool shell scripting, C, Python and Perl programming command-line Unix elitist snob who uses X11 (or OS X for that matter) as little more than a fancy terminal manager, and have been for almost 20 years. But that doesn't mean I don't understand basic human factors.

      I can't help you with Vista, I'm apparently lucky to never have used it. XP is more than adequate for my current Windows needs.

    10. Re:"dying breed"? by rbowles · · Score: 1

      Exactly what is a bad "ass-command prompt"? **

      --
      /* MAGIC THEATRE
      ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
      MADMEN ONLY */
    11. Re:"dying breed"? by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      I'm barely 21. Shells aren't going away.

      By the same token, though, they're not exactly going to take over the world. I work with three guys who are about my age. I use vim and bash, they use Eclipse and MS Visual Studio, even though we're pretty much doing the same thing.

      Still, even in the darkest of MS-trampled workflows, we had a couple of batch files -- which implies a certain knowledge of the shell, albeit a horribly crippled one. And even in the most exciting of the bleeding-edge stuff we do (like Ruby on Rails), I find myself having to do Bash for them (although wrapped in Capistrano)

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    12. Re:"dying breed"? by Zach978 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think that to some extent we are a dying breed. I'm only 23, and I'm still old enough that when I first started using a computer all we had was shell (dos, apple II). So I was forced to use CLI and am more comfortable using it as a result. My little brothers have never seen a shell...for them problems on a computer are fixed with lots and lots of clicking in the "control panel".

      I'm not saying that CLI is going to fade away, because IMO it still has lots of advantages, just saying that only unix geeks will think to use it.

      --

      "I told you a million times not to exaggerate!"
    13. Re:"dying breed"? by theCoder · · Score: 2

      There are still some of us out there who use the command line and traces to debug. Partly because it's too much of a pain to compile everything debug and partly because I've never become proficient enough with dbx or gdb to make them my first choice.

      Personally, I see the command line as my way to talk to the computer. Without it, I'm just pointing and grunting like a caveman. And if that's all you want, I guess that's OK, but I prefer the eloquence and expressiveness of the command line.

      --
      "Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
    14. Re:"dying breed"? by geminidomino · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Amen.

      GUIs are for two things and two things only:

      1. A container for multiple shell windows (slrn, irssi, mutt, etc..)
      2. Using firefox to look at pictures of pretty women-type people.

    15. Re:"dying breed"? by Vellmont · · Score: 4, Insightful


      I'm not saying that CLI is going to fade away, because IMO it still has lots of advantages, just saying that only unix geeks will think to use it.

      I'd say that's because the CLI tools on windows aren't very good.

      If I want to copy a file from one computer to another, it's a million times easier to use scp than it is to open up a GUI tool, drag the files around, etc. Same thing for changing file ownership of an entire directory.

      Creating a user on the other hand is a lot easier using a GUI. I don't want to have to remember obscure, seldom used commands to assign the right groups, etc.

      The mistake people seem to make is that it's an either/or choice. Shell or GUI? No, shell AND GUI.

      --
      AccountKiller
    16. Re:"dying breed"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I take it you haven't been laid in a while either.

    17. Re:"dying breed"? by operagost · · Score: 1

      You used a pretty lousy example. Scp isn't built into Windows, but it's available for free and easily installed. If you don't need secure copying, XCOPY and Robocopy work well.

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    18. Re:"dying breed"? by rucs_hack · · Score: 1

      I can't help you with Vista, I'm apparently lucky to never have used it. XP is more than adequate for my current Windows needs.

      I'm having to use Vista, at least minimally. My open source project has more windows users than linux ones (which I find bizarre for a console program),and like it or not, that means Vista compatibility has to happen.

      I are not like it btw...

    19. Re:"dying breed"? by j-pimp · · Score: 1

      I know, the Mac gives you a bad ass command prompt, but I only know one Mac owner out of many that uses it at all.

      Hrm, when I was a unix admin myself, the unix programmer, and the CTO all made good use of the shell prompt. As a matter of fact if I didn't have access to a particular machine due to our ssh key prorogation script not working, the procedure was to call the CTO and allow my x session to accept commands from him machine. He would then send a root xterm to my iBook and I would go get ssh working, install our keys, and do whatever I originally needed to do on the machine. Of course if ssh wasn't on the machine it usually meant you could not get ssh on the machine.

      I think I just know better mac people than you.

      --
      --- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
    20. Re:"dying breed"? by rucs_hack · · Score: 1

      GUIs are for two things and two things only:

      1. A container for multiple shell windows (slrn, irssi, mutt, etc..)
      2. Using firefox to look at pictures of pretty women-type people.


      I believe you have those points in the wrong order.

      Assuming you were ordering by importance that is....

    21. Re:"dying breed"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "but I prefer the eloquence and expressiveness of the command line."

      Wow, that's some mighty fine B.S. you've got there. How do you deal with the smell?

      Let's be serious; there isn't anyting special about a command line and refering to GUI based tools as being akin to cavement grunting and pointing is pretty darn retarded. Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.

      If you prefer to use a text-based debugger; hey, great for you. Every professional programmer I've met who uses command line tools over GUI tools does it because they are working in an environment that lacks quality GUI tools (or because you really think it makes you 'l33t' - but that's really about as toolish of an attitude as I can imagine). How many Java/.Net developers do you who would choose a cmd window over something like Visual Studio? I've met zero. When you graduate from your toy computers, then you can rant with authority.

      If you working on an AS/400 and using a command line tool because THAT IS ALL YOU HAVE; then admit that you use it because it is what is available. But don't look down your nose at people who don't. How about having to access one of these from about 1,000 miles away through a remote connection while you're traveling through an airport on your way to figuring out why the customer's app keeps crashing?

      Even if that beast is running virtual machines to support a certain toy OS that can't scale worth a damn so you can get your toy GUI development environment up and running, there's no way you get a usable GUI through an SSH tunnel over a flaky wireless connection.
    22. Re:"dying breed"? by ndege · · Score: 1

      Sounds like Rat Poison might be perfect for you.

      --
      Sig Return: 204 No Content
    23. Re:"dying breed"? by router · · Score: 1

      Ok, I still read slashdot comments for just this....*cackle* Nicely done. Fscking rat poison.

      andy

    24. Re:"dying breed"? by multi+io · · Score: 1

      Smart programmers may use Eclipse and the command line at the same time, but not for the same things, so this is not an "either-or" issue or a "lack of better tools" issue. In my Java projects (developed with Eclipse) I use to use BeanShell, which, when used interactively, is run from the command line (which in turn is running inside Emacs...). You can run the Beanshell Console in the Eclipse console, but it's quite painful. Similarly, when grepping or analysing line-oriented log files created by your Eclipse-developed applications, there's hardly anything better than the Unix toolchest (I challenge you to show me an equally efficient set of tools inside the Eclipse or VStudio environment).

    25. Re:"dying breed"? by soliptic · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Er, what?

      Maybe YOU don't do any graphic design, video editing, audio production, etc; maybe all YOUR computer use is text-based stuff; I don't see how you can extrapolate that to a blanket statement of fact for the entire world.

      Unless you know any graphic designers who use command line photoshop? > photoshop -select 50,101,40,50 -addtextlayer font:helvetica size:17pt antialiasing:crisp text:"Hello" -addlayerstyle styletype:bevel Much better. Right?

      Or how about, say, ATC systems? I'm sure it's really easy to spot, at a glance, two planes getting too close for comfort when you're given an 80x25 screen full of numbers, as compared to a graphical representation.

      Er... no... doesn't really work, does it. So your +4 insightful is... well... not.

    26. Re:"dying breed"? by nuttycom · · Score: 1

      A container for multiple shell windows (slrn, irssi, mutt, etc..)


      You haven't heard of the astonishing productivity-enhancer that is screen?
    27. Re:"dying breed"? by Bombula · · Score: 1
      GUIs are for two things and two things only: 1. A container for multiple shell windows (slrn, irssi, mutt, etc..) 2. Using firefox to look at pictures of pretty women-type people.

      Maybe, but the thing is that the number of users who needs these two functions from their computers outnumber command-liners like yourself 100,000,000:1. In this case, the value is in the numbers.

      --
      A-Bomb
    28. Re:"dying breed"? by cnettel · · Score: 1

      After all, who wants to waste precious clock cycles swapping out to refresh some widget?
      Nah, CPU/RAM/Video card improvements render this point moot.
      The real question is: Who wants to deal with vast amounts of UI library, tons of little form files, and intricate event models for managing all of the user state?
      It's the 20% of the app taking 80% of the time, in addition to making all of that sweet logic you wrote kinda hard to use on multiple platforms.
      UI stuff, while certainly important, can be some of the least fun parts of a project to work on. What's worse? Printing?

      Consistent error handling? (Especially in a GUI...) And now, by consistent, I mean error handling that's just as good as the thing you did in the places where you really hit a bug during testing and had to check it, or where you expect a real error to happen. A big catch clause around everything dosen't count. You also need to report it to the user, making sense while also providing enough details to be useful in debugging.

      It's even more of a burden when you realize that some neat optimization (probably some kind of caching) will fail just due to the problem of stale info or false assumptions in the event of error somewhere, even when it will work 99.9 % of the time.

    29. Re:"dying breed"? by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      Sure have. I just like to have them all up at once.

    30. Re:"dying breed"? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Every professional programmer I've met who uses command line tools over GUI tools does it because they are working in an environment that lacks quality GUI tools Another factor is that you can use the command line anywhere. I used to use a couple of GUI debuggers a lot, but when I was debugging my code on a remote machine via ssh (which I do fairly often) I was completely lost. Now I use gdb on both machines and there is no sharp loss in functionality when I switch to the command line. I can now do everything I used to do with the GUI debuggers (and a few things I didn't) in both local and remote environments. Sure, I could have run a GUI debugger over remote X. I actually tried that a couple of times, but it was so slow I eventually gave up and learned gdb. When I'm in a graphical IDE I often use the graphical debugger because it's easier to access, but even then I find myself dropping to the command line when I can't make the GUI tell me what I want it to.
      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    31. Re:"dying breed"? by kc2keo · · Score: 1

      I don't think command line users are a "dying breed" either. I use the command line often. My 2 Debian servers at home are only command line. I know how to use the command line to do what I want. Its fast and efficient for me. However on my main machine I like to use a GUI. Personally, I think its very important to know how to use a shell. My command line skills helped me out many times. When my X server broke on me I had to use only the command line.

      So... the bottom line I think is the command line is here to stay. Also any experienced user who programs/administers/etc should know how to use a command line. Its not a MUST of course but its a plus. It should also give you preference to employers who seek *nix admins.

    32. Re:"dying breed"? by rpozz · · Score: 1

      Every professional programmer I've met who uses command line tools over GUI tools does it because they are working in an environment that lacks quality GUI tools (or because you really think it makes you 'l33t' - but that's really about as toolish of an attitude as I can imagine).

      For file management, a decent shell can often be substantially quicker than (for example) Explorer, especially for performing an operation with a set of files matching a filename pattern. If you wish to make a quick change to a file, it's much faster to just fire up Vi within a shell rather than go to the trouble of running a GUI-based editor.
      While IDEs are obviously superior for writing software with a large complex UI, when it comes to merely a command-line tool/daemon, most of those advantages are lost, and many people prefer the efficiency of a shell coupled with Emacs or Vi.
    33. Re:"dying breed"? by smittyoneeach · · Score: 1

      "caching"

      Oh state, you evil seductress, who offers improved performance in exchange for the occasional bout of madness...

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    34. Re:"dying breed"? by shoor · · Score: 1

      Maybe he has synesthesia and green sounds like gentle rain
      outside while other colors sound like fingernails on a blackboard.

      --
      In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
    35. Re:"dying breed"? by Bent+Mind · · Score: 1

      Maybe YOU don't do any graphic design, video editing, audio production, etc; maybe all YOUR computer use is text-based stuff; I can't say I've ever done any real graphic design work in a shell (excluding ASCII art and HTML). However, I do plenty of video and audio editing from the command prompt. It would be a major pain if I were stuck with a GUI to script cuts, fades, concatenations, mixing, conversations, normalization, etc. GUI interfaces are a poor choice for any batch processing.
      --
      Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
    36. Re:"dying breed"? by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      Well, I'm in favor of the CLI for the chief reason that it's the best way to get into a server from a remote location. It's one of the biggest shortfalls, in my opinion, to Windows that there has never been as much attention given to CLI administration. Sure, there's commands like NET, but it's a monster compared to what you'll find in *nix, which has nearly four decades in that environment.

      Windows simply fails at CLI admin. Because of its use of the registry, I can't do things like "mv smb.conf smb.conf.bak", screw around with a config from a remote SSH session, and then quickly restore it. Even the GUI and web-based *nix administrative programs don't make that terribly easy.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    37. Re:"dying breed"? by cbart387 · · Score: 1

      I agree. When I'm working on a project I'll use Anjuta just because it's very convenient for a lot of files being open. Also it has great syntax highlighting which helps immensely. (I know emacs can as well but I find it hard to look at). If I'm working on 3 or less files I tend to use emacs and do the whole suspend/foreground stuff. If it's a small change I'll choose pico or nano (depending on the environment).

      So yeah, as the task becomes less I tend to use the more lightweight tools (and I know emacs isn't that lightweight but it's the first editor I used). That's an interesting point that you brought up. I hadn't thought of it before.

      --
      Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
    38. Re:"dying breed"? by aztektum · · Score: 1

      1 is nullified by running screen

      --
      :: aztek ::
      No sig for you!!
    39. Re:"dying breed"? by RobDude · · Score: 1

      To me, it sounds like you prefered GUI tools over command line - but when you were put in a situation where you couldn't reasonable using GUI tools (remotely via SSH) you decided to adopt command line tools.

      And that makes perfect sense to me.

      But I'd hardly say that using a GUI tool makes you a caveman or that there is something eliquent about command line tools.

      If you are in a situation where you don't have VPN access + a local workstation configured for the job and GUI remoting tools like Remote Desktop aren't going to cut it...then sure, it sounds like you don't have much of a choice, so command line tools win by default.

      Lack of other options, and all that jazz.

    40. Re:"dying breed"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The command line is only superior for file management in certain situations. Globbing is a wonderful thing for certain cases, but there are things the GUI does better as well. I'm still waiting for the combined environment that lets me glob and click in the same window.

      Let's say I want to select 8 specific text documents out a folder that contains 20, and that those documents have no unifying naming convention or date scheme -- they are files related to individually named clients in a report request you received. From the command line this means typing 8 file names, or at least tab-completing them. From the GUI this means control-clicking 8 files.

      Or what if you wanted to select an image file that was mostly red out of a folder full of JPEGs? The GUI gives you in-line preview sufficient to determine "mostly red" whereas on the command line I'd have to open each file with some viewing utility.

    41. Re:"dying breed"? by cbart387 · · Score: 1

      I'll admit their CLI is pretty crappy for file manipulation. However they have a rich set of instructions for system administration. In particular, their Active Directory (AD) CLI commands are actually much more useful than any GUI they provide for it. Heck, I have a 400 page book all about Windows system administration through the CLI (here)

      That being said, I'm currently writing this on Fedora 8 so you should be able to guess my preference.

      --
      Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
    42. Re:"dying breed"? by Incadenza · · Score: 1

      If you've got a progress bar that's consuming enough CPU that it is having an significantly adverse impact on an application's performance, it's either coded horribly wrong, or you're at the very limit of your hardware's maximum capability, and perhaps you should really consider upgrading.
      Or you are running Mac OSX. But then even using the CLI won't save you - the amount of CPU power used by OSX for a simple scrolling terminal window is beyond belief.
    43. Re:"dying breed"? by RobDude · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Yes, because .Net and Java are 'toy languages' built for 'toy computers' and I'm not a real programmer unless I code in a dark room, drink Jolt, and type at a command line.

      A command line is better than a GUI, always.

      I'm not an elitist snob at all, I just prefer the eloquence and expressiveness of a command line. The command line is a magical thing to be worshiped. It is not just a tool that I use, because then other tools, some of which might be graphical could come along and be used by people too. Heck, most people are already using those, and I need to set myself apart and be different.

      I'll never say something stupid like, 'I use a command line for some tasks because it makes sense, but it is fundementally no better than a GUI and, in fact, a GUI might even be, generally, better for certain tasks.'

      No, I'll just say that anyone using a GUI is a caveman pointing and grunting! I'm superior! I'm *BETTER THAN YOU* because I use command line tools. Oh, and if you are a .Net developer, then you are a mere child playing on a toy computer.

      ---

      Seriously. I know this is slashdot and all, but that is pathetic, even for slashdot.

    44. Re:"dying breed"? by RobDude · · Score: 1

      If you feel that smart programmers use both, depending on their needs and options available then, I'm sure you'd take offense to someone saying...

      "Without it (command-line tools), I'm just pointing and grunting like a caveman. And if that's all you want, I guess that's OK, but I prefer the eloquence and expressiveness of the command line."

    45. Re:"dying breed"? by empaler · · Score: 1

      Even better, one with a color shift button for terminal use...

    46. Re:"dying breed"? by stm2 · · Score: 1

      "who wants to waste precious clock cycles"

      Maybe clock cycles are not precious anymore.

      --
      DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
    47. Re:"dying breed"? by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      I'll admit the AD manipulation tools are pretty comprehensive, but they're $#@!@$ complicated, and worse, you still don't have the ability to backup configurations the way you can so easily do in *nix. I still stack by my long-standing opinion that text files ought to be the preferred way to store configuration information. Registry and registry-like configuration systems are just plain horrible, and no, I don't think turning everything into XML makes things a bit better. I'll take a good ol' fashioned rc and conf file any day of the week.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    48. Re:"dying breed"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Nah, CPU/RAM/Video card improvements render this point moot.

      I wish people would stop repeating that crap. That is the reason software is bloated and slow. Nobody seems to realize that while they're waiting for hardware to make their code not suck, every other developer is doing the same thing.

    49. Re:"dying breed"? by Mongoose+Disciple · · Score: 1

      I think I just know better mac people than you.

      It's certainly possible. In retrospect, I mixed context a bit in my post because most of the Mac people I know aren't developers, so while I was thinking of them while writing that they really aren't relevant.

      No question, the Mac command prompt gives you a ton of power -- which I've both seen used to good and terrible effect.

    50. Re:"dying breed"? by spion666 · · Score: 1

      Who modded the GP troll? He is mostly right. By the way, GUI is irreplaceable for vector drawing applications, scientific data visualization, studying various subjects that involve visually represented elements (e.g. medicine) etc.

    51. Re:"dying breed"? by soliptic · · Score: 1

      Who modded the GP troll? He is mostly right. By the way, GUI is irreplaceable for vector drawing applications, scientific data visualization, studying various subjects that involve visually represented elements (e.g. medicine) etc. Thank you.

      That troll moderation is one of the most moronic moderations I've received. I point out that a text-based interface is superior when you mostly do text-based computing yourself, but this shouldn't lead to myopic overgeneralisation, quite clearly offering various specific examples where graphical presentation and/or allowing graphical manipulation is a superior interface. That's not a troll. It just shows whoever had mod points shared the same "my view == the only possible view" perspective. Laughable.
    52. Re:"dying breed"? by cbart387 · · Score: 1

      Agreed, my point was just that windows's doesn't get a failing grade. (Maybe a low C or D) ;)

      --
      Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
    53. Re:"dying breed"? by IdeaMan · · Score: 1

      Haha, I had to read the first couple of paragraphs of the inspiration for ratpoison before I figured out what it was talking about.

      --
      They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
    54. Re:"dying breed"? by felipekk · · Score: 1

      Why do Graphic Design? That's for GUI users!

    55. Re:"dying breed"? by multi+io · · Score: 1

      Sure. Use the right tool for each job, I say.

    56. Re:"dying breed"? by ucblockhead · · Score: 1

      Before we had progress bars, we had spinners. You displayed the following characters in rapid succession: \|/-

      You did it because it made users report that your program was faster even when it wasn't. Any movement on the screen makes users think that the machine is "doing something".

      --
      The cake is a pie
    57. Re:"dying breed"? by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      Maybe yours aren't.

    58. Re:"dying breed"? by fractoid · · Score: 1

      Do you work on embedded devices? Ultra-tight CPU and power consumption requirements? 'cuz if your progress bar uses more than 0.5% of your CPU time then there's something going wrong. The only clock cycles that are more precious than a well designed, responsive user interface are the ones ticking in a programmer's head. Processing power is cheap and plentiful compared to brainpower.

      Oh, and Vista takes up that much CPU because it's going through your personal folders and fapping to all your furry porn in the background. Don't use Vista.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
    59. Re:"dying breed"? by pisco_sour · · Score: 1

      It will fade away slowly with time, until only four old geezers in the entire world, many, many years from now, are the only ones who can master that age-old, legendary art.

      But then they will find an old nuclear missile satellite running on an old version of Unix which can only be hacked using CLI, and if it's not turned off (presumably right before Y2K38) it will launch a whole can of whopass and end the planet.

      So they will have to send the old geezers up into space to turn off the satellite. Hilarity ensues.

      I should probably write a movie script out of this. (Does that mean I should be on strike now?)

      --
      http://castorexmachina.wordpress.com - Filosofía, tecnología y cultura.
    60. Re:"dying breed"? by dmsuperman · · Score: 1

      Those of us who have processors faster than 300MHz. Which, sad to say for your philosophy, is most of us. Don't get me wrong, I know my way around the command line and definitely use it much faster and easier than some gui applications, but a lot of the time it's just easier and more convenient for it to be in GUI form.

      --
      :(){ :|:& };: Go!
    61. Re:"dying breed"? by Reality+Master+201 · · Score: 1

      That's odd, cause I use OSX every day at work, and typically keep several terminals open for hours at an end, doing a lot (most) of my work in them. And I've never seen the CPU usage jump for scrolling the terminal window.

      But maybe you're just an asshole.

    62. Re:"dying breed"? by AbRASiON · · Score: 1

      That's damn impressive, I'm 30 in a matter of days (kill me now) and when I went to school the GUI was already firmly taking its grip on things.
      We had C64's in primary school (19 years ago) and Apples, but within a year or two I was working with DOS 5.0, Lotus 123, only a year or two later we had 6.22, Win 311 and Works for Windows IIRC.
      (I myself stuck with 6.22 for ages, Windows offered me nothing that Ztree a dos prompt and my games couldn't do for me)

      The fact you're 7 years younger and even saw a CLI is pretty impressive.

    63. Re:"dying breed"? by geekoid · · Score: 1

      "After all, who wants to waste precious clock cycles swapping out to refresh some widget?"
      wow, 1990 called, they want there argument back. Unless you are an incompetents boob, this is a non-issue these days.

      "And who-ever it was who thought tying computationally costly operations to fancy clock cycle consuming progress bars was a good idea should be shot."
      OK, maybe you should upgrade from the Apple IIc you''ve been using sine 1984. Again, non-issue. Since, for any interface program A) It's not going to use all the clock cycle on any modern system, and B) It provides a real user friendly feature. Both is perception and information.

      You would need to be an idiot not to do that in a user rich environment. Again crappy programming could cause this to be an issue, but it would need to be real crappy. I would go so fr as to say it need to be done intentionally.

      "Lastly, why does Vista take 45% of one CPU just to handle frequent console printfs?"
      That has nothing to do with it being GUI, it's just very crappy architecture and programming. That can happen to command line apps.

      There is very little you can do in Vista by command line that can't be done faster with hot keys.
      Having had to write applications that need to bridge the gap from old school command line people and GUI application, I have studied this.

      Finally, no command line use isn't going away and has many good needs. Average user friendly user interface(i.e. most people) shouldn't need it for interface work.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    64. Re:"dying breed"? by putaro · · Score: 2, Funny

      Hand me my command prompt. It's the one over there that says "Bad Motherfucker" on it.

      bad_motherfucker>

    65. Re:"dying breed"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are some serious hardcore nutjobs moderating this story. It's unbelievable.

    66. Re:"dying breed"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or how about, say, ATC systems? I'm sure it's really easy to spot, at a glance, two planes getting too close for comfort when you're given an 80x25 screen full of numbers, as compared to a graphical representation.

      That reminds me of a fun game from the dawn of the PC erra called PATCO.

      Nothing but ASCII/IBM graphics characters and tinny music fanfares.

      It used simple 2 keystroke input to move the plane icons around--Function keys on the left like on the original 'clickety' Model M keyboard is a must to play this game 'properly'!

      At the top skill level, things got hard fast!

      It might still work in a DOS box on late model 'WinOS' like 2k, XP, or even Vista...

      Maybe somebody will rewrite it as a proper Windows app and I can play it again.... :)

    67. Re:"dying breed"? by kitgerrits · · Score: 1


      Or how about, say, ATC systems? I'm sure it's really easy to spot, at a glance, two planes getting too close for comfort when you're given an 80x25 screen full of numbers, as compared to a graphical representation.

      Isn't that what the 'Matrix' view is for?

      Only true ATC's can read the pure code.
      All they see is 747, learjet, Airbus...

      --
      "I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
    68. Re:"dying breed"? by Capt+James+McCarthy · · Score: 1

      "GUIs are for two things and two things only:"

      Actually, I think he wants to use the UNIX shell to make him GUI.

      --
      There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
    69. Re:"dying breed"? by mgiuca · · Score: 1
      x

      hello
    70. Re:"dying breed"? by mgiuca · · Score: 1

      Wow that fully was an accident.

      What I was trying to post:

      x <-- The joke

      ---"WHOOSH" >>>

      o <-- Your head
      |
      /\

      (Hey it was a hard thing to get right)

    71. Re:"dying breed"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah, the guys doing graphics design are all using macs, with a half-hour break every hour to cornhole each other.

    72. Re:"dying breed"? by mortonda · · Score: 1

      Unless you know any graphic designers who use command line photoshop?

      > photoshop -select 50,101,40,50 -addtextlayer font:helvetica size:17pt antialiasing:crisp text:"Hello" -addlayerstyle styletype:bevel Wait a minute... can you do that?! That would be awesome!

      Or, could that be what ImageMagick is for???

    73. Re:"dying breed"? by rucs_hack · · Score: 1

      "After all, who wants to waste precious clock cycles swapping out to refresh some widget?"
      wow, 1990 called, they want there argument back. Unless you are an incompetents boob, this is a non-issue these days.


      Really? I know quite a few programmers who would tend towards saying your statement is nonsense, myself included. Last I checked, widget libraries still need some processor input, unless you have a magic widget set that operates on l33tness alone.

      Just because processors are faster does not change the underlying problem, being that clock cycles spent on GUI related tasks are not being spent doing the important task at hand. If the processor is faster, you're still losing potential speed, just at a higher level. That's provided there is an important task at hand of course. I don't write software with much in the way of interaction, you set it up and off it goes. That's common to a great deal of scientific and system software, and many non trivial portions of interactive software.

      I wouldn't mind a gui program that had large non interactive portions if it would kill the gui (unload from memory) while the non interactive portion was occuring.

    74. Re:"dying breed"? by Kaukomieli · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure I agree that shell users are a dying breed. Being a young developer (25yo) I and most, if not all, my co-workers are using a shell to develop and run unit debug/trace in. I think the amount of computer users in general has gone up so merely the ratio of shell/gui users has gone down.

      Your _male_ co-workers... I have yet to see a woman use a shell in a way I would approve of.

  6. and people wonder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And people wonder why there's this stereotype that linux users don't have girlfriends........

  7. How they make children by ORBAT · · Score: 5, Funny

    who && gawk && uname && talk && date && wine && touch && unzip && strip && touch && finger && mount && fsck && more && yes; yes; more; yes; umount && make clean && sleep

    1. Re:How they make children by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just as long as they don't ctrl-C anytime after that.

    2. Re:How they make children by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      9 months later, fork() and spawn()

    3. Re:How they make children by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 5, Funny

      You forgot "head".

      --
      No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
    4. Re:How they make children by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 5, Funny

      who && gawk && uname && talk && date && wine && touch && unzip && strip && touch && finger && mount && fsck && more && yes; yes; more; yes; umount && make clean && sleep

      See, that's just laziness. What about parallel threads, exception handling, and race conditions? ;)

    5. Re:How they make children by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      See, that's just laziness. What about parallel threads, exception handling, and race conditions? ;)

      It's all the same color where it matters, you insensitive clod!

    6. Re:How they make children by The+Ultimate+Fartkno · · Score: 5, Funny

      > and race conditions

      How can you post something like that on MLK day?

      (I expect at least one mod point for not forcing a really clunky "I have a d-ram" joke...)

    7. Re:How they make children by Jesus_666 · · Score: 1

      What about [...] race conditions?
      No problem at all; the shell doesn't discriminate by skin color.
      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    8. Re:How they make children by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      ...and race conditions?
      They have drugs to treat premature ejaculations now I think...
    9. Re:How they make children by sqldr · · Score: 1

      Your girlfriend has been lying to you. You can't make children by doing head.

      --
      I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
    10. Re:How they make children by antibryce · · Score: 1

      that's what she said.

    11. Re:How they make children by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      parallel threads

      Premature optimization is the root of all evil. Code for threesomes when there's a chance in hell of getting one!

      exception handling

      That's what the && is. False means false, positive error code means stop... Of course, at more && yes; yes; you're not going to stop.

      race conditions

      It's not a race. Take your time...

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    12. Re:How they make children by kingcool1432 · · Score: 1

      Yes, that is indeed how you make children.

    13. Re:How they make children by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 1

      That's what the && is. False means false, positive error code means stop..

      Oh come on, you have to have a backup plan!!!

    14. Re:How they make children by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would doing a fsck while mounted lead to undesirable genetic code mutations?

    15. Re:How they make children by VinB · · Score: 1

      Parallel threads: Now that would be cool.
      Exception handling: Never had a problem before, but isn't that what Viagra is for?
      Race conditions: Haven't worried about that since I was 16.

    16. Re:How they make children by rbowles · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, this won't work. gawk, without arguments, returns a non-zero and halts termination of the scriptlet.

      Short answer, you don't make it past "gawking".

      --
      /* MAGIC THEATRE
      ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
      MADMEN ONLY */
    17. Re:How they make children by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Oh come on, you have to have a backup plan!!!


      That's is what her sister, Amanda, is for.
    18. Re:How they make children by oborseth · · Score: 1

      You had me at HELO

    19. Re:How they make children by ortzinator · · Score: 2, Funny

      Command failed at "talk"

    20. Re:How they make children by Tracy+Reed · · Score: 1

      You rush to fsck so fast. Few women will appreciate that. Try my technique:

      who; gawk; uname; talk; nice; date; wine; cd ~; grep; touch; unzip; finger; gasp; \
      suck; lyx; strip; slurp; uptime; mount; fsck; more; yes; gasp; umount; \
      make clean; make mrproper; sleep

    21. Re:How they make children by strength_of_10_men · · Score: 1

      PPS - I only set emacs mode for my ksh session. I only edit files using vi. Just wanted to clear that up. And I'm looking to raise the child(ren) as a dedicated couple...

      He's already alluded to the making of children function. But if I were a potential mate, I'd like to see his child(ren) function before marrying. What is REN that is being passed in and what is being returned?

      But seriously, unless SHELL is his passion, I think as a couple, he'd better off looking for another criterion for a mate. I've personally found that being too similar to my mate makes for a stale relationship in the long run. But that's just me. :)

    22. Re:How they make children by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      And "expand"... assuming at least one of the parties is male ;)

    23. Re:How they make children by iabervon · · Score: 2, Funny

      "I have a dream that my four children will one day run on a system where they will not be judged by the ID of their group but by the locks that they hold."

    24. Re:How they make children by t-twisted · · Score: 1
      You forgot "head".

      That doesn't make children....

      "Error Code: 0"

    25. Re:How they make children by Eli+Gottlieb · · Score: 1

      Actually, those of us with a decent package management system can do it much more simply. For example, on Gentoo Linux I just say: "emerge children".

    26. Re:How they make children by Memroid · · Score: 1

      The problem is, the dating always exits with an error, leaving no chance for anything else to run, ultimately resulting in sleep deprivation.

    27. Re:How they make children by rasputin465 · · Score: 1

      who && gawk && uname && talk && date && wine && touch && unzip && strip && touch && finger && mount && fsck && more && yes; yes; more; yes; umount && make clean && sleep

      You missed the climax and the relax:

      ... mount && fsck && more && yes; yes; more; yes; cat /dev/random; umount && make clean && hash && sleep

    28. Re:How they make children by Stone316 · · Score: 1

      He's most likely married......

      --
      "Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
    29. Re:How they make children by jammo · · Score: 1

      >make love Do not know how to make love. Stop.

    30. Re:How they make children by VGPowerlord · · Score: 1
      I thought the middle part was already done by invoking

      make love
      --
      GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
    31. Re:How they make children by KudyardRipling · · Score: 1

      All USA based female nodes were granted root privileges over spawning since 96595200 seconds into the epoch:

      # kill -9 $FETUS

      Who needs a Multicore Pentium? It runs best on an RU486.

      Downmodding proves veracity beyond question and lack of wit on the part of the moderator.

      --
      Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
    32. Re:How they make children by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Few women will like your 'slurping technique'.

    33. Re:How they make children by glitch23 · · Score: 0

      9 months later, fork() and spawn()

      I believe another, but different 'wine' occurs after the spawn().

      --
      this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
    34. Re:How they make children by alex4u2nv · · Score: 1

      This is why you all are having problems. Your logic isn't robust enough. For instance, what happens when mount returns : "mount: can't find her in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab" ? You don't want to have to revert to the manual, or redit your configs before you start again. ;p
      Instead take full advantage of the multitasking system you have in front of you.
      Throw in a couple loops/daemons and threads so that you have many robust options.

    35. Re:How they make children by Tracy+Reed · · Score: 1

      Why is that? Most seem to like a good slurp.

    36. Re:How they make children by sma11s101 · · Score: 1

      penis | vagina

    37. Re:How they make children by The+One+and+Only · · Score: 1

      By that standard you can remove "finger", "make clean", and half the other commands too.

      --
      In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
  8. Saddening by autocracy · · Score: 1
    ... that there is no e-mail there since being on the front page of /., he now stands a registerable chance of having that answered ;)

    Any women in Maine for a 22 year old guy who also lives on the command line? I already know... no...

    --
    SIG: HUP
  9. They hope to do it. by killmofasta · · Score: 1

    In Ascii Animation. Call the kid Ski... Ahh, Ski.

    Da-bum.

    Just found the old codes to get light green on black.

    Love that stuff.
    ECHO (ESC)[10;0

    Too bad, Im looking for a GUI Girl

    1. Re:They hope to do it. by Excen · · Score: 0

      Too bad, Im looking for a GUI Girl

      Careful man, thats how you get viruses. . .

      --
      "No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
    2. Re:They hope to do it. by Corporate+Troll · · Score: 1

      Personally, I'd go for a GGG Girl ;-) (Yeah, I know, the last G already stands for Girl...)

    3. Re:They hope to do it. by PresidentEnder · · Score: 1

      Good, giving, and game? Where's 'girl' in that, man?

      --
      I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
    4. Re:They hope to do it. by Corporate+Troll · · Score: 1
    5. Re:They hope to do it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think she'd be pretty GUI by then.

    6. Re:They hope to do it. by Corporate+Troll · · Score: 1

      LOL! Good one!

  10. Craiglist offers an interesting approach by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    No it doesn't.

  11. Look for an OS X woman by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Deep down, even if she doesn't know it, she's got Unix underneath, and whatever shell of choice one wants to run.

    1. Re:Look for an OS X woman by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...not to mention hairy pits and an unkempt beaver that an elephant would have trouble wading through, in true hippie fashion.

  12. A UNIX relationship... by hitchhikerjim · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hmm... a relationship consisting of short, efficient and flexible commands that can be combined in interesting ways. Sounds pretty good to me. But I've only seen it work in the BDSM world.

    1. Re:A UNIX relationship... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed, in the real world soon or later we all know they will be on plan 9, plans 1-8 just good enough.

    2. Re:A UNIX relationship... by MonsterTrimble · · Score: 1

      It scares me this is +3,Insightful.

      --
      I call it 'The Aristocrats'
    3. Re:A UNIX relationship... by rhesuspieces00 · · Score: 1

      I read that as BSD world. For a second, I thought that comment might be offensive.

    4. Re:A UNIX relationship... by Cro+Magnon · · Score: 1

      I read that as BSD world


      Based on my experience with BSD, there's not much difference.
      --
      Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
  13. Hey baby... by Megane · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...wanna fork()?

    --
    #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    1. Re:Hey baby... by LordHatrus · · Score: 1

      Yeah baby let's do some unprotected forking, what's the worse that could happen? :(){ :|:& };:

    2. Re:Hey baby... by PinkyDead · · Score: 1

      Oh fsck off!

      --
      Genesis 1:32 And God typed :wq!
    3. Re:Hey baby... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      wanna fork() and then wait for the child to die?

    4. Re:Hey baby... by glitch23 · · Score: 0

      ...wanna fork()?

      Actually, you ever hear of spooning? I hadn't until a couple months ago when the woman I'm seeing told me about it. It sounded like something sexual but it wasn't, however I took that one step further and now we use a new term together: forking.

      --
      this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
    5. Re:Hey baby... by Megane · · Score: 1

      Actually, you ever hear of spooning?

      $ man spoon
      No manual entry for spoon

      There is no spoon.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  14. Bah! by Penguinisto · · Score: 2, Funny
    Just fork and init FFS...

    (what is this "mating" thing you speak of? It sounds as messy and inelegant as Visual Basic. Yuck).

    (come to think of it, this may explain why there are so few shell users left...)

    /P

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    1. Re:Bah! by Tom · · Score: 1

      Obviously, he's not using a bash or a C-shell, but rather a C++ shell. It's this OO thing where you have inheritence, and he's apparently talking about multiple-inheritence where your class has more than one parent class and inherits functions from both. Which is pretty gross when you think about it. Who wants a beer-drinking, nagging thing with both PMS and midlife crisis?

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  15. his kids will tame him or suffer by m0llusk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most people aren't command line geeks because they have no desire for that. If this person has kids and empowers them then they might become anything, but if this idea of spawning a kind of clone persists then the kids are likely to be constrained, unhappy, and ultimately failures at life.

    1. Re:his kids will tame him or suffer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      You must be a real hit at parties.

    2. Re:his kids will tame him or suffer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      You would know...if YOU ever got invited to one.

    3. Re:his kids will tame him or suffer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If this person has kids and empowers them then they might become anything, but if this idea of spawning a kind of clone persists then the kids are likely to be constrained, unhappy, and ultimately failures at life.

      His kids will fit in quite nicely here at Slashdot.

    4. Re:his kids will tame him or suffer by daviddennis · · Score: 2, Informative

      Perhaps he really does understand children as a sort of fork();? That call, as it happens, does create an identical child process!

      This is an age-old problem and is not confined to computer geeks. Many fathers who want to "pass on their own line" have had similar problems.

      Geeks tend to be more flexible than that, though - more so in practice than in theory. We're talking theory here so we can start as we want and then adopt to conditions.

      I have to say he is truly looking at a tiny number of females likely to understand his ad and want to respond, though. And that is not meant as an insult to the wonderful geek females around - they are just 10% of the geek population!

      D

    5. Re:his kids will tame him or suffer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      ...but if this idea of spawning a kind of clone persists then the kids are likely to be constrained, unhappy, and ultimately failures at life.

      And thus the parents will be successful in making clones of their contrained, unhappy, failure selves!

    6. Re:his kids will tame him or suffer by lysse · · Score: 3, Funny

      I think it's more that he tends to hit people at parties.

    7. Re:his kids will tame him or suffer by Jugalator · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hm, well I dunno... I read that thing as being written mostly tongue in cheek although he did seem to be looking for a girl on the geekier side who was interested in a dedicated relationship. But the rest seeming more like originality to stand out of the crowd. I don't think we should read too much into it, not that I'm a pro at analyzing these personal ads.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    8. Re:his kids will tame him or suffer by Stringer+Bell · · Score: 1

      What's a party? You mean like a fragfest?

    9. Re:his kids will tame him or suffer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You must be a real hit at parties.

      My DnD party loves me. I'm almost Lvl 10 and I'm soooo excited about my prestige class!
    10. Re:his kids will tame him or suffer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And share the same poor-piss hardware with them.

    11. Re:his kids will tame him or suffer by Eli+Gottlieb · · Score: 1

      eli-gottliebs-computer:~ eli$ say WOOSH
      WOOOOSH!

    12. Re:his kids will tame him or suffer by cp.tar · · Score: 1

      You must be a real hit at parties.

      My DnD party loves me. I'm almost Lvl 10 and I'm soooo excited about my prestige class!

      Well, Anonymous Blackleaf, your character is going to die.

      --
      Ignore this signature. By order.
  16. No graphical interface ... by StripedCow · · Score: 5, Funny

    Obviously, her looks are completely unimportant.

    --
    If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
    1. Re:No graphical interface ... by jovius · · Score: 2, Funny

      at least it's obvious she won't need to clean windows.

    2. Re:No graphical interface ... by niceone · · Score: 5, Funny

      Obviously, her looks are completely unimportant.

      Yeah, it's character based.

    3. Re:No graphical interface ... by PinkyDead · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but she must have a great rack with some open slots.

      Check it out!

      --
      Genesis 1:32 And God typed :wq!
    4. Re:No graphical interface ... by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      you are correct.

      only things that are important are execution speed, configuration options and quantity of output

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  17. Don't live in the dark ages! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    A modern computing system is not one that is run from the DOS commandline - it is a system that is tied in with the internet instead. Justhave a look at Vista with Aero for an example of this done right.
    You need the outlook to connect in with the mass of email flowing around us every day. And then there is document collaboration - the sharing of Wordfiles and Excels between users across state boundries! Voice over IP, internet enabled 'surface' computing, and voice command interfaces - all tied together with .NET and the Aero interface.
    The driving force behind this internet is the Microsoft Sharepoint Server - a central peice of systems software which connects all the send points together, in a synergistic kaleidoscope that achieves both balance and symmetry.
    The smart Vendors know that in order to get ahead in the future IT,that means integrating with the internet.
    And so, we will see more and vendors of the Linux remit their legalobligations to Microsoft, and then benefit by getting on board the .NET revolution.

    1. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by Keruo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      > A modern computing system is not one that is run from the DOS commandline

      Windows 2008 server core is not modern enough for you then? It is run from DOS(actually powershell) commandline.

      --
      There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
    2. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by msuarezalvarez · · Score: 4, Informative

      A modern computing system is not one that is run from the DOS commandline

      The DOS command line did not run a modern computing system not even when it was first released.

    3. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by Corporate+Troll · · Score: 1

      Windows 2008 server core is not modern enough for you then?
      We're on slashdot, dude! You're not supposed to praise anything Microsoft. ;-)
    4. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by Planesdragon · · Score: 1

      The DOS command line did not run a modern computing system not even when it was first released. Every command line I've ever seen has all of one real UI difference with the DOS commandline -- variable color. That's it.

      Now, there's a lot to be said for a keyboard-driven command window for general computer operation -- but showing feedback as slowly scrolling lines of text isn't it.
    5. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by Eternauta3k · · Score: 1

      Every command line I've ever seen has all of one real UI difference with the DOS commandline -- variable color. That's it.
      Command completion and searching for previous commands
      --
      Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
    6. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by msuarezalvarez · · Score: 1

      The DOS command line did not run a modern computing system not even when it was first released. Every command line I've ever seen has all of one real UI difference with the DOS commandline -- variable color. That's it.

      There is no way to say this kindly, so here it goes: if that's the only difference you know of between the DOS command line and, say, bash, then you are not qualified to compare command line shells.

    7. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      Let me count the limitations of the DOS commandline:

      • No history functions. Not even the up arrow to get the previous command.
      • The verb (command name) is limited to 8 characters, probably less.
      • It's intrinsically tied to a filesystem which is constrained by 8.3 names.
      • No multitasking.
      • No way to control GUI programs. Can be used to run them, but only if they bring their own video drivers.
      • Anything in the current working directory might be a command, so not safe to cd into directories you don't control.
      • No mouse support, for simple things like copy/paste. Cannot be run alongside a web browser from which to copy/paste examples, anyway.

      Now, maybe you meant the DOS box in Windows 9x, which is another animal entirely. There's still plenty to say about that one, though. Not very scriptable -- the only real way to make a function, if I remember, is to wrap it up in another batchfile. I'm not sure simple aliases were possible.

      I realize most of this is lost on you, but the original DOS commandline was a major step back from Unix, and it has improved since then -- Windows CMD.exe is an improvement, and PowerShell is probably a larger improvement (though I haven't used it).

      But there is more to UI than just what you see and touch directly. Example: tab-completion. I can now name directories and commands more verbosely, so that they are more readable, knowing that tab-completion means they're not really any harder to type.

      Better example: On my Linux shell, I can hit ctrl+z to suspend the current process, "bg" to background it, or ever "disown" it to detach it from the current shell entirely. If I don't disown, I can type "fg" to bring it back to the foreground. With the "jobs" command, and a little special syntax, I can actually multitask from a single commandline environment.

      If you don't think multitasking is a major UI difference, you need your head examined.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    8. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 1

      Every command line I've ever seen has all of one real UI difference with the DOS commandline -- variable color. That's it.

      There's one other little difference: If you know anything about using shells, CMD.EXE will make you want to tear your hair out within 30 seconds. (And COMMAND.COM would make you want to shoot yourself.) Real shells don't make you want to do those things.

    9. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by halivar · · Score: 1

      ...but WAIT! If you buy within the next fifteen minutes, we'll not only DOUBLE YOUR ORDER, we'll through in this Super Shammy(tm), a $19.99 value, FREE! Call now! Operators are standing by!

    10. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by Hatta · · Score: 1

      Wow you've haven't used DOS for very long have you? Try doing any sort of job control in DOS.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    11. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by darkvizier · · Score: 1

      Please correct me if I'm wrong, but Windows command line != DOS. The last Windows operating system to actually run on DOS was Win95. Since then, the Windows command line has maintained the original DOS syntax, but a true DOS layer is not present. Try running some old DOS games (Privateer anyone?) on your Windows 2008 box and let me know how that works out.

    12. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by cnettel · · Score: 1

      Let me count the limitations of the DOS commandline:

      • No history functions. Not even the up arrow to get the previous command.

      Has noone used DOSKEY? I've seen this in several threads now, and it's one aspect of DOS that is not true. Features introduced in MS-DOS 5 should be fair game. (And F3 worked to recall the latest command before that.)

    13. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      No history functions. Not even the up arrow to get the previous command. Really? I remember having history in DOS. It was loaded as a separate tool though (kind of like the UNIX philosophy of 'do one thing and do it well'

      The verb (command name) is limited to 8 characters, probably less. And how many UNIX commands do you regularly use that are longer than 8 characters?

      It's intrinsically tied to a filesystem which is constrained by 8.3 names. Shells in Windows NT and FreeDOS support longer file names, but this is true for MS-DOS.

      No multitasking. Multitasking available through TSRs. This was more a constraint of the hardware not supporting protected memory than of the OS. DR-DOR supported multitasking and Sidekick for DOS ran as a background task.

      No way to control GUI programs. Can be used to run them, but only if they bring their own video drivers. Also pretty much true of the UNIX command line. The only 'command line' I've seen that's a good counter to this is AppleScript.

      Anything in the current working directory might be a command, so not safe to cd into directories you don't control. True, although I've seen a few *NIX installs configured with . in $PATH.

      No mouse support, for simple things like copy/paste. Huh? DOS has supported mouse drivers (remember do one thing and do it well?) forever, and I had one that allowed copying and pasting text in the early '90s. You could also run the DOS shell in a GUI which allowed copying and pasting from the terminal; remember, mouse support is a feature of the terminal, not the shell.

      Cannot be run alongside a web browser from which to copy/paste examples, anyway. Now you're just grasping at straws.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    14. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by cnettel · · Score: 1

      Agreed! Everyone who failed to load ansi.sys and get a gloriously colored DOS prompt can turn his geek card back in. (Lifelong UNIX usage is a valid excuse, but that doesn't seem to be the case for the OP...)

    15. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by vux984 · · Score: 1

      Agreed! Everyone who failed to load ansi.sys and get a gloriously colored DOS prompt can turn his geek card back in. (Lifelong UNIX usage is a valid excuse, but that doesn't seem to be the case for the OP...)

      WHAT?!! Most self respecting geeks upon receiving their new DOS PC immediately edited config.sys to remove ansi.sys. Who needs an almost pointless 8k driver slurping up your precious RAM?!

    16. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by IdeaMan · · Score: 1

      Most self respecting geeks upon receiving their new DOS PC immediately edited config.sys to remove ansi.sys. Exactly! That was the first method of virus protection for Ansi bombs.
      --
      They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
    17. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      And how many UNIX commands do you regularly use that are longer than 8 characters?

      Let's see...

      • ec2-describe-instances
      • ec2-run-instances
      • ec2-* (lots more examples where that came from)
      • wineconfig
      • update-alternatives
      • dpkg-reconfigure

      Need I go on?

      Shells in Windows NT and FreeDOS support longer file names, but this is true for MS-DOS.

      In NT, they are no longer what I would call "DOS prompts".

      Also pretty much true of the UNIX command line. The only 'command line' I've seen that's a good counter to this is AppleScript.

      Unless they run X, where they don't need their own drivers. And I can do all kinds of fun things from the commandline, including feed arbitrary Javascript into my browser, change songs, etc.

      True, although I've seen a few *NIX installs configured with . in $PATH.

      The difference is, you can set $PATH to not include . on *NIX. Can't do that in DOS.

      You could also run the DOS shell in a GUI which allowed copying and pasting from the terminal; remember, mouse support is a feature of the terminal, not the shell.

      Not sure I'd call it strictly DOS, in that case. Goes for the web browser example, too.

      Regardless, even if all that's happened is better terminals, from your post, it seems you'd agree with me that progress in commandline environments does happen. That is the point I was trying to make.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    18. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by VGPowerlord · · Score: 1
      Note: I am not the grandparent.

      >> And how many UNIX commands do you regularly use that are longer than 8 characters?
      > Let's see...
      > * ec2-describe-instances
      > * ec2-run-instances
      > * ec2-* (lots more examples where that came from)
      > * wineconfig
      > * update-alternatives
      > * dpkg-reconfigure

      You use these on a regular basis? Funny, the commands I use on a regular basis are all shorter than 8:
      • ssh
      • aptitude (or apt-get when I forget about aptitude)
      • svn
      • ls
      • cd
      • cp
      • rm
      • mv
      • less
      • grep
      • fgrep
      • su / sudo
      • wc
      • tar
      • w
      • ps
      • kill
      • vi / nano
      • man
      • which
      ...in fact, the basic UNIX commands are all fairly short. Intentionally so. The Single UNIX Specification, Version 3, has two things to say about utility names:

      1. Utility names should be between two and nine characters, inclusive.
      2. Utility names should include lowercase letters (the lower character classification) and digits only from the portable character set.


      I can, in fact, only think of one core utility longer than 9 characters: traceroute.
      --
      GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
    19. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by Fireflymantis · · Score: 1

      Nice call on that. Just wanted to say thanks for reminding me of Privateer. It very well might have been my gateway to the world of the command line. Damn thing would refuse to run on my old 486Dx2 (mind you when I did get it to run, it felt like I was cheating the gameplay was so smooth) because the game "Required 564kb of Conventinal memory". I had hit the 640k limit hard. So I self-learned my way through the dark world of EMM386, Himem.sys, Autoexec.bat and Config.sys. Played with memmaker a lot and watched how it modified config.sys. Read through the help(man?) pages. and after what was loterally weeks of messing around, one time I typed priv.exe and by god it worked. And it was so worth it (Privateer is an awesome game, I highly recommend checking out the remake if interested). But since I somehow managed all that when I was 4-5 years old, I developed a keen intrest in the 'cool' things I could do with DOS. I eventually moved onto QBasic and got to play with things like screen modes. (13 is the funnest for making random screansaver type programs). When I first heard about this linux thing when I was 14 I was really interested and my science teacher thought it was kind of neat too and he let me set up a version of Corel Linux that I had bought at stables (this was before CD burners were common) on one of the classroom computers (I imagine this would be very rarely allowed today, if at all). Anyways, it was actually a pretty big hit with a fair slice of the school population, and getting to be able to use the 'penguin computer' was a treat. (No doubt also because it came with some pretty fun games). Anyways, just thought I would share in my little 'the root of how I became a shell user'. Thank you Privateer for being not just a great game, but for forcing me to learn the prompt. :)

    20. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      You use these on a regular basis?

      Yeah, most of them every day.

      Funny, the commands I use on a regular basis are all shorter than 8:

      Aside from aptitude, you've just described stuff that I might use several times per minute, or one after the other. (Except w.) These are things where it does help to have a shorter command name, and where I might alias one if it didn't exist already.

      Also, I cheated a bit, in a way which helps my point even when I show you the truth... ec2-describe-instances is also available as ec2din.

      Same for all the ec2-* commands. ec2-describe-images is ec2dim; ec2-run-instances is ec2run, and so on.

      It's not so much that I'm concerned of namespace conflicts, although there is that. I could certainly see having one 'ec2' command and following it up with an argument, like "ec2 describe-instances", although that doesn't always work (dpkg --reconfigure doesn't work; dpkg-reconfigure does).

      It's more that this verbosity makes things much more readable. If you know what an ec2 "instance" is, vs an "image", then just about any ec2-* command I run (especially if I use long arguments) will immediately make sense to you. This is especially true if I put them in scripts, where you see things like start-stop-daemon.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    21. Re:Don't live in the dark ages! by Sir_Uther666 · · Score: 1

      I was just wondering at which point we changed the subject from Unix to DOS (Disk Operating System - the precurser to MSDOS, DRDOS, Windows, etc... IE - C:\insert_dir_here ).??

  18. A woman overheard this wrong... by ProteusQ · · Score: 1

    and wondered if you needed a woman who was willing to raise a child with you in the method of eunuchs.

    She just muttered, "Geeks..."

  19. Worked for me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One of the very first things I did with my dad's computer as a child (of four years, mind you) was learn the Hayes/AT command set. Then I started dialing phone numbers with it. This was on a dumb terminal all without the burden of the Windows 3.1 Terminal app on our 386SX.

    Shortly after that I taught myself how to work with DOS on a 486DX. QuickBASIC came about two or three years later.

    Today I still have a bad habit of performing file operations through cmd.exe instead of Windows Explorer, have been programming in C# for a few years now, and can hold my own with (X)HTML and CSS.

    1. Re:Worked for me. by houstonbofh · · Score: 1

      Reminds me of a batch file I wrote. It would start with a given pager number, and dial the next 100 numbers with the target number and (911) behind it. DDOS the bill collectors. :) Now no one has pagers...

    2. Re:Worked for me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Today I still have a bad habit of performing file operations through cmd.exe..."

      Torture. Put Cygwin on that box.

  20. What?! by jandersen · · Score: 1

    What utter nonsense it this? The power and versatility of the UNIX shell(s) is exactly why I and many others choose to work with UNIX. In fact, I tend to work more and more in ksh - my X desktop is almost exclusively a handy way to have several xterms open. If I only had the gui, I would get next to nothing done.

  21. Do you "man bash"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you "man bash"?

    1. Re:Do you "man bash"? by ahodgkinson · · Score: 1

      Apropros: It's uncommon, but it does happen:

          http://fathersforlife.org/suicides/Allen_Wells/key_page.htm ..rather a sad story.

      --
      ---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
  22. Plan B by xactuary · · Score: 0
    Good luck Dude. If this little shell game of yours doesn't work out, there's always the Eunuchs environment.

    --
    Say hello to my little sig.
  23. sex in the command line by raffe · · Score: 2, Funny

    unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep.

    1. Re:sex in the command line by jammo · · Score: 1

      Tried it, just got "Kernal error, dumping core..." Biatch!

  24. OMG WTF by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    *facepalms*

  25. He almost had me going... by mr_gerbik · · Score: 5, Funny

    Until I read this: I've been known to actually turn down offers of "two chicks at the same time."

    Seriously though, I'd love to see the look on two girls' faces when this guy says, "Sorry ladies, I'm looking for a vi user, and you two look like you can't even use Word."

    1. Re:He almost had me going... by calebt3 · · Score: 3, Funny

      He didn't mention the cup.

    2. Re:He almost had me going... by Wdomburg · · Score: 1
      I'm somehow reminded of Monzy's pimping lemma:

      But you can keep your movie stars and your playboy bunnies,
      'Cause you know I only roll with hot computer science honeys.
    3. Re:He almost had me going... by SpinyNorman · · Score: 1

      Here's hoping that MC Hawking does a cover of that!

      http://www.mchawking.com/mp3s/

    4. Re:He almost had me going... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      [Shrug] I would have thought an offer like that was the perfect occasion for using tee.

    5. Re:He almost had me going... by OhHellWithIt · · Score: 1
      Or this:

      PPS - I only set emacs mode for my ksh session. I only edit files using vi.
      What woman is going to respect a man who is like that? Using EMACS mode in ksh is downright perverse!
      --
      "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
    6. Re:He almost had me going... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Until I read this: I've been known to actually turn down offers of "two chicks at the same time."

      You know... Unix IS supposed to be a multi-user operating system.
    7. Re:He almost had me going... by seralick · · Score: 1

      Apparently this is actually a turn off, whenever I mention to guys that I use vim I get given the eclipse or emacs argument. Luckily my husband is also a vi user, so I'm set.

      I think we've got this thread one-upped though. Screw the command line upbringing. We've already decided that we're going to raise our kids to count in binary. They are going to rock at counting in prep school, just think what they can count up to on their fingers :)

      Man, our kids are gonna be sooo screwed, luckily they'll have good looking genes to make up for their social inadequacies ;)

      --
      "If you never did, you should. These things are fun, and fun is good." Dr. Seuss
    8. Re:He almost had me going... by RESPAWN · · Score: 1

      Until I read this: I've been known to actually turn down offers of "two chicks at the same time."

      Seriously though, I'd love to see the look on two girls' faces when this guy says, "Sorry ladies, I'm looking for a vi user, and you two look like you can't even use Word." Truthfully, it's not as good as you think it will be. Oh! Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't turn it down if given another opportunity, but as a geek, I have a hard enough time interacting with one woman, let alone two.
      --

      If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.

  26. What a poser by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 5, Funny

    N.B. - on the issue of relocation. I live in a place where my income/expense ratio is proper (i.e., greater than 2:1). I'm willing to live anywhere in the world where this remains true.
    As if. A real Unix geek would use a symbolic link.
    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
    1. Re:What a poser by ben0207 · · Score: 1

      Oh god I wish I had mod points.

      --
      cmd-q.co.uk - some sort of stupid fucking internet bullshit
    2. Re:What a poser by aaronmcdaid · · Score: 1

      > A real Unix geek would use a symbolic link.

      That's what my boss said when I claimed out that I can't be in two places at once.

  27. The most Ironic thing by techpawn · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They admit to being part of a "dieing breed" yet he is still looking for a mate? Darwin is spinning in his grave...

    --
    Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
    1. Re:The most Ironic thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think that means what you think it means.

    2. Re:The most Ironic thing by __aaxwdb6741 · · Score: 1

      The very fact that survival of the fittest is most efficient in extreme conditions proves that this method is a true Darwinian approach: Do whatever you can to survive. If his (And by extension mine, for that matter) species survives this "downset" of "true CLI users", it means that we are fit enough to survive even the worst condition. This might even spawn a fork of our breed which produces a hyper-potent variation of us, to over-compensate for the previous near-extinction.

      Either way, the introduction of intelligence into "survival of the fittest" has changed the playing field drastically. If it wasn't for our intelligence, the most "fit" species to survive would not have been homo sapiens, but some weird virus which would in turn wipe our feces-smelling species out of existence.

      Also, Darwin won't be spinning in his grave for anything, as he is a scientist. A true scientist is happiest when his theory is disproven to be replaced by a more accurate perception of our world.

      Shit, I don't know when I last sounded so brainy.

    3. Re:The most Ironic thing by ampathee · · Score: 1

      What would the virus do when we were all wiped out? It wouldn't be a very good strategy to kill all your food (or resources, or whatever we are to viruses).
      Lions don't eat all the gazelles, because they need to leave some food for later. A lion-gene for gazelle-genocide would not spread, because its carriers would tend to starve.

      Closer to the topic, the CLI-using meme was able to spread prolifically when conditions suited (because there were plenty of CLIs and few to no GUIs available). Individuals who carried the meme were able to 'survive' to pass on the meme to others. However, when GUIs became widely available (MacOS etc), conditions changed. GUI-using meme carriers were more fit for the new conditions, and therefore they were more able to pass on their memes. CLI-using memes were less able to spread in the new conditions, as there were fewer CLIs available.

      There are still niches available where CLIs are in use, so the CLI-meme still survives there, where it is still fittest.. but most of the UI world is now GUI territory.

    4. Re:The most Ironic thing by __aaxwdb6741 · · Score: 1

      A virus is not commonly known to have restraint and reflect upon preserving resources for it's own benefit. Think of AIDS, for one thing.

      You fail to take into account that CLI-users, like sportsmen, have an upper edge on the average human in that they have a special ability which allows them to separate themselves from the rest of the pool, and thereby gain more beneficial advantages, like a higher-paying job. As long as we manage to keep graphical operating systems out of the server market (Just to mention one), there is a reason for other branches of our species ("The managers") to provide us with a more profitable employment - thereby increasing our chances of find a mate and pass on our genes and wisdom to the next generation.

      2030 will be the year of the CLI.

  28. Logo by tiny69 · · Score: 1

    Don't forget to teach them Logo.

    --
    Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
  29. Good luck raising that autistic kid by metamatic · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I figure two command line devotees will result in at least a case of the ass burgers.

    --
    GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
  30. reminds me of this by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Reminds me of this old column by Joab Jackson:

    Say you want to date a system administrator, or sysadmin for short. (And why wouldn't you? They rake in the phat bux for maintaining office computer networks.) The choice is clear: Go for someone specializing in Unix, not Windows. The Unix sysadmin may be slothful and go missing for entire weekends on a Dungeons and Dragons binge. But it's the Windows sysadmin who'll unwittingly hose you with a dangerous virus. And that's far worse.

    What, you might ask, could the operating system a person chooses to spend time with possibly reveal? Everything...Windows is designed for people who don't want to spend a lot of time fooling with their computers. It simplifies tasks, giving us pretty boxes to point and click at.

    ...

    Think about these qualities for a sec. Which would you rather have in a lover? Who would you rather have as an intimate -- someone who takes time to understand your quirks thoroughly, or someone who merely pushes your buttons whenever you malfunction? I'm not saying all Windows NT people are obedient, shallow half-wits driven only by desire for material gain. I'm just saying that if you want to fish a decent specimen from the dating pool, you might be better off starting on the Unix side.

    --
    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
    You cannot wash away blood with blood
  31. My wife and I have this fight all the time by Jeremy.DeGroot · · Score: 1

    I did not choose my mate based on her acceptance of the CLI lifestyle. We have no children yet, but when we do whether they are introduced to Windows or Linux computers first is going to be a protracted and difficult battle.

    1. Re:My wife and I have this fight all the time by maclizard · · Score: 1

      My wife and I came to the compromise that I would give her a kid to raise her way if she would give me a kid to teach computers to in my way... So far, it hasn't panned out.

    2. Re:My wife and I have this fight all the time by GoodNicksAreTaken · · Score: 1

      Compromise and start them in OS X [she'll fall for this] and then once she's away pull up the terminal. OS X is really slick. I knew nothing about it before starting my current job but have been messing with Linux since the early Slackware days. When stuff breaks in OS X for our communications department I just open a terminal and its almost completely familiar to me. Of course to them when I type "chmod blah blah" it is about the equivalent of my chopping the head off a chicken and shouting incantations at the screen. The black magic works though and for simple tasks you've got the same ease as Linux without having to poke around or try and figure out what the magic keyboard shortcut is. And if you really have to, Apples dual boot nicely or just run Windows in Parallels or similar VM. And if any of this actually works on a woman.......*mind explodes*

    3. Re:My wife and I have this fight all the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think it matters in the beginning. I have a nearly 6-month old and I sit with him, for only five minutes or so per day, at a computer using silly applications that react when he bangs on the keyboard. He pretty much instantly figured out the concept that when he touches keys (more like smashes them!) things happen on the screen.

      I don't think the Windows/Linux distinction is relevant to a little kid or even something they would perceive. It's probably like learning two native languages when both parents speak a different language. It looks hard to grown ups, but the kids do it without even thinking.

      I am still debating, with myself and my wife, how much and how quickly he should be exposed to computers. There isn't exactly much historical data or experience to go on. Something in the back of my mind tells me that overexposure to computers at too young an age might have some kind of ill effect, but I can't pin down what that would be, nor the reason for it.

    4. Re:My wife and I have this fight all the time by Eli+Gottlieb · · Score: 1

      Of course to them when I type "chmod blah blah" it is about the equivalent of my chopping the head off a chicken and shouting incantations at the screen. Just for once, I'd like to clear this up. Chopping the head off of a chicken and waving it around actually has nothing to do with pagan or magical practices. It's a penitence ritual called "kaparot" performed by ultra-Orthodox Jews.

      THE MORE YOU KNOW!
    5. Re:My wife and I have this fight all the time by sYkSh0n3 · · Score: 1

      I hope there aren't ill effects. My 6 year old uses Ubuntu better than my co-workers use windows. And her mother will only use linux. She LOATHS windows. Tho she isn't quite a geek, and has no idea how computers work. She just thinks Ubuntu is easier than XP.

    6. Re:My wife and I have this fight all the time by GoodNicksAreTaken · · Score: 1

      I don't think I said anything about it being pagan or magical. Just that that is what they gave me a look at. So really what you would be arguing is that no one believes it is magical. An argument which you seem to be to a given in your argument. Next time I'll make sure and say "sprinkled magic fairy dust" or something. Although to be fair, Wikipedia (for what it is worth given the reputation it has here at /.) talks about chicken blood and sacrifice in their article on Santeria and notes that animal sacrifice is not unique to Santeria.

      THE MORE YOU LOOK $h!T UP!

      In fact, chickens, a staple food of many African-descended and Creole cultures, are the most common sacrifice; the chicken's blood is offered to the orisha, while the meat is consumed by all. The practice of animal sacrifice was historically common in many religions, most notably Judaism and Islam.

    7. Re:My wife and I have this fight all the time by Eli+Gottlieb · · Score: 1

      You do realize that "wave a dead chicken over it" is such a common expression for "do something that shouldn't work but might" that it got entry to the Jargon File at one point? People use the expression to denote seemingly "magical", "occult" or (dare I say it?) "religious" practices that actually occasionally work due to just how fucked up some systems (COUGHWINDOZECOUGH) are.

      I actually know about the San Teria practice of offering chicken blood. The waving a dead chicken's whole body around is from kaparot, while the offering of blood is San Teria. I wasn't trying to make it exclusive or anything. I don't even know anyone who's done a kaparot sacrifice in their life; it's considered that extreme. I also don't know anyone who's ever sacrificed chicken blood to a god in a San Teria ritual, but then again I live in the wrong geographical region for that.

      Point is, you know what it means to sacrifice a chicken in hacker slang as well as I do. Now you just no the origins of different verbal formulations of the expression, including one for chicken blood and one for waving a dead chicken.

      Now go calm down before your anger boils over.

  32. Obvious Fake by lbmouse · · Score: 1

    C'mon, a unix admin even being offered "two chicks at the same time" is suspect. Him turning the offer down obviously makes this a fake.

    1. Re:Obvious Fake by Jellybob · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I know you're joking, but its time to fight the "geeks can't get laid" stereotype.

      I don't know if I'm just not in the truly geeky end of the spectrum, but certainly in the area of "professional geeks" (developers, sysadmins, network admins etc.) I know very few who are single, and most of the ones who are don't have much trouble finding women, they just can't really be bothered with the dating game.

      There was once a time when geeks were kinda freaky people you'd steer clear of, but that seems to have changed as more people get computers and an Internet connection, and start to find out that we were right about it being useful all along. Sure, it's still almost impossible to explain the job of a software developer to the average computer user, but then I can't comprehend what a professional accountant must do all day.

    2. Re:Obvious Fake by techpawn · · Score: 1

      Sure, it's still almost impossible to explain the job of a software developer to the average computer user, but then I can't comprehend what a professional accountant must do all day.
      My girlfriend and I do a lot of geeky things together, one of our favorites is Monty Python marathons. But, the one thing that's never discussed in great detail is our work lives. She's an artist and I'm an Admin. The most she knows about my work is "The system broke, I fixed it." and the most I know about her art is when I'm taken to gallery openings and what's hanging around the house.

      We have enough in common without our work lives having to be involved and I think it's better that way.
      --
      Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
    3. Re:Obvious Fake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...and most of the ones who are don't have much trouble finding women, they just can't really be bothered with the dating game... An outside observer would have difficulty understanding the subtleties of those two conditions. Also I might add that the latter almost inevitably leads to the former. You don't try, you don't get anything. That's what I've seen with my group of "geek" friends, and even with my own life. We're in our mid to late twenties now, I've known everyone for at least 5 years most longer than a decade, and two who grew up with me, and in that group of 9+me currently none are married, one is in a relationship, and only two have ever been in one. And if we're talking just about sex, I can't give perfectly accurate numbers, but at least half haven't.

      Representative sample? Hardly. A larger data set would inevitably water down the results, but I firmly believe you'd still be able to find a difference.
    4. Re:Obvious Fake by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      Lucky bastard... My SO is a history post-grad (with a focus on gender studies. JOY!). Like you, the most I talk about work is "It broke so bad I had to stay overnight to fix it" or, now that I code on top of adminning, such things as "Suffice it to say that I am going to hell for bringing that query into this world."

      She, on the other hand, isn't so kind. I constantly get roped into reading the rhetorical vomit that passes as her papers, usually wanting to cause her physical harm by the end of the first logic-torturing paragraph... That has GOT to be some sort of mental abuse...

    5. Re:Obvious Fake by Wdomburg · · Score: 1

      We apparently roll in very different circle. My corner of the geek world seems to have a pretty heavy overlap with the poly and kink communities. Plenty of sex, particularly at the various gatherings (conventions, SCA events, IRC parties and so forth). Lots or relationships, lots of marriages, sometimes both.

    6. Re:Obvious Fake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      28 year old network administrator. Single, never married. As inexperienced as it is possible to be with women. And I mean that; I've done nothing. I guess it's not really a stereotype since you couldn't tell by looking at me, and I am the only person like this that I know of (but if there's no way to tell, I can't know for sure). People are always so shocked when they find out, which I find mildly amusing.

    7. Re:Obvious Fake by techpawn · · Score: 1

      She, on the other hand, isn't so kind. I constantly get roped into reading the rhetorical vomit that passes as her papers, usually wanting to cause her physical harm by the end of the first logic-torturing paragraph... That has GOT to be some sort of mental abuse...
      She stopped asking my opinions because I gave them to her honestly and my concept of art is different than hers and her clients. I said to her once "This is why I don't have you debug my code. You do your thing that your good at and I do mine... People like what we do enough to pay us. I don't get paid for art and you don't get paid for code... Let's go buy manga and get coffee!"

      Ever since then the question of "how was your day" isn't asking about work and there's enough other stuff to talk about. If you don't want to read her papers, tell her man and tell her why. I know Slashdot is NOT the place for advice for relationships but someone with her education should respect the honesty of the whole thing. Then again, I'm not Dr. Phil and YRMV.
      --
      Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
    8. Re:Obvious Fake by Ilan+Volow · · Score: 4, Funny

      A real sysadmin would simply pipe one chick into the other.

      --
      Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
    9. Re:Obvious Fake by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      If you don't want to read her papers, tell her man and tell her why. I have. It leads to pouting. *facepalms* I gave up trying to win, now I just wait for death. :)
    10. Re:Obvious Fake by techpawn · · Score: 2, Funny

      Then admit you're just in it for the sex and suck it up little soldier!

      --
      Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
    11. Re:Obvious Fake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Clearly. Your friends sound far more well adjusted, or deviant. Six of one, half a dozen of the other...

      One sysadmin that I worked with told me that he had tried dating in his early twenties but found it too discouraging and stressful so he simply "Gave up". We had some more drinks and he eventually told me that he only just a year prior (at the age of 28) had sex for the first time after he decided he was just going to pay for it. He's good looking, and smart, very kind too but he's one of the loneliest people you could ever meet. He's a great guy, but just too shy and anxiety ridden to ever form a relationship. It's really heartbreaking if you were to meet him. And his situation isn't even the most extreme one I've ever heard (although it's the most severe I've seen in person).

      I've read page after page after page of similar life stories on different forums, and all of them horribly, horribly depressing. Which is nothing like what they have to actually go through, I'm sure.

    12. Re:Obvious Fake by p0tat03 · · Score: 1

      Work at it, that's all I can tell you. I started college without every having been in a real relationship, a hopeless geek in every way. Sex? Hah. But then I realized that being a "normal person" (i.e. not socially awkward, outgoing, etc) is not necessarily mutually exclusive from being an alpha geek, and so I spent a great deal of effort on it. Getting rid of my shyness, engaging in small talk (which I used to think was a waste of time), and finding some interests that DON'T involve sitting in front of a monitor all day. It paid off. My social skills have improved greatly, I have a girlfriend who's truly wonderful in every sense that matters, and even my career has been going better.

      If I can do it, anyone can.

    13. Re:Obvious Fake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      roflmao

    14. Re:Obvious Fake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ditto. I can think of several occasions where someone I knew in a sexually oriented forum only by their handle turned out later to be someone I knew in either in the SCA* or some other real world group. In fact, one of my dearest friends was someone I met online in a Linux forum.( a .edu focus forum, not .org so don't look to me for a definitive opinion in the OS holy wars) Shortly after her and I met in that arena, we quickly found several other close connections between us: 1) We were both in the SCA* 2) We both belonged to the same BDSM forum, in fact I had unwittingly answered a few queries of hers, whereas she had, on at least two occasions, punctured arguments I had been making. 3) We knew at least three people in common (one degree of separation), one in the BDSM forum, two in a sub-group of the SCA.** 4) We both belonged to the same diverse but sexually oriented club within a social site a few years back, but as she rarely posted to that group, I hadn't made the connection between that nick and the same nick when it appeared in the BDSM forum. 5) I had applied for a job where she was already working. Now, to address the GP's (and other's) point about geeks rarely getting laid. Aside from the usual years of teen angst where no matter how much sex you're getting it didn't seem like enough and NEVER seemed to be as copious as what the other guys were getting. I have to say I have made out pretty good. (pun intentional) Over the years, I have been fortunate enough to know a rather large number of women who liked me enough to want to have sex with me. Being a classic "Nice Guy" (schmuck) and nerd never seemed to stand in the way of nookie, it just seemed to make the women give me this speech: "I love you like a brother" or it's close relative "I think of you more as a friend" so any serious or long term relationship was out of the question. (rendering the concept of kids, station wagon and mortgage kind of a moot point.) What got me laid was two things. One, I had a lot of female friends, more so than the geek archetype. So on any given weekend, there was usually at least one woman was lonely, in the mood and more inclined to go for the "friends with benefits" route rather than try her luck meeting a guy at the bar or something. Two, I grew up in the LGBT community, and a lot of that open-mindedness rubbed off on me. As a sexually active adult, I maintained that mindset and joined a lot of different clubs, group and forums even if I had only the mildest of interest in it. I pursued sexuality as a intellectual hobby. In other words, you have your chess nerds, your A/V geeks, computer geeks and so on, well I was/am a sex geek. If you hang out in the right groups long enough, and generally sound like a mature, decent and all-round "with it" kind of guy, sooner or later you will get some mighty interesting offers.*** All that is left to do is buy some condoms and accept the offers that interest you. (posted anon for obvious reasons) *There are those in the Society for Creative Anachronism who sometimes claim that the acronym really stands for The Society for Consenting Adults. **Given the charter of this very un-official group, and it's desire for discretion, I won't be naming it here. ***Given *my* desire for discretion, I won't be relating any of those offers here either.

    15. Re:Obvious Fake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's just not possible for some people no matter how much they work at it or want to succeed. I actually do most of the stuff you mention already. I have no lack of general social skills, friends, or hobbies (that are not geek related) but that hasn't made a difference. There are people who don't get to have things like relationships and families, I accept that I'm probably one of those kinds of people.

      I'm sure you were being sincere, but your advice is useless at best and unintentionally condescending at worst.

    16. Re:Obvious Fake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you ask me accountants sit around all day drinking coffee and talking about how you need to spend less money >:( even though they are paid more than the developers!

    17. Re:Obvious Fake by kramulous · · Score: 1

      The most talented geeks I've met had long term girlfriends (if not married) and were good at sports. Well, they were actually good at just about everything they attempted. There are definitely those who don't have the time for a girlfriend, and the rest can't get a girlfriend because they just plain suck at life. You know this type, the ones that have great looking XP (Vista) themes and backgrounds and consider themselves to be computer geeks.

      --
      .
    18. Re:Obvious Fake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm in a similar situation and I'm glad you posted so I thought I'd reply with my take on it, FWIW.

      I think much the same as you most of the time: I'm a /bit/ weird (but only in positive/creative kind of ways, I think/I hope :) and a /bit/ geeky (I'm well-into science/tech/music/arts, and having a crack at any kind of difficult problem; but never really managed to enjoy programming much and I certainly couldn't tell you the first thing about the latest graphics cards ;), but looking around me, not enough that it ought to be a problem at all (I can think of at least one or two very geeky and/or very weird friends who for the most part manage just fine...). Likewise no particular lack of social skills (though obviously there's plenty of room for improvement and I'm working on that), I get dates, not very often at all (once or twice a year?), but somehow always with /far/ smarter and prettier girls than I expect - yet I still appear to be in the 'people who don't get to' category for reasons I can't really understand (just seem to get so-far time and again, and then for no apparent reason I totally blow it and generally come away just feeling even lower and having learned nothing).

      But the thing is, I also more or less realise in a fairly abstract sense that this sort of thinking is in one way or another 'broken' or faulty - perhaps a little like bad input and maybe a bit of negative feedback screwing up a program, or who-knows, maybe a bug that was in there to start with.

      I know my mind is broken, perhaps not enough to show up in day-to-day life (I manage to hold down a pretty highly paid consultancy job, companies I work for frequently ask me to come back and work for them again/all so far have offered a permanent role etc, and like you, the few friends I've talked to about this are as far as I can tell genuinely shocked), but now even if indirectly, it's almost certainly a big part of the reason I'm having these kind of issues (it's quite hard to be funny and a bit cheeky on date if your mind just keeps telling you you're not good enough for this, "and come on, especially not with this one; what are you doing man - totally out of your league"...), and yet it seems to me it's just that that's also stopping me from being able to fix it - pretty difficult to be able to fix something that's broken with only broken tools to hand.

      It's kind-of a classic bootstrapping problem :\

    19. Re:Obvious Fake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fascinating commentary. There are certainly some similarities between us, but just from your brief description I'd say you're better off than me. I didn't have to read any further (although I did) after, "I get dates..." to know that discrepancies between us constitute more a gulf than a gully. As you read previously, I am 28 years old and I have not been on anything that I, or anyone else for that matter, would describe as a date. So too did I mean that I am completely inexperienced physically. And that means everything that you think it does.

      I doubt you'll even be reading on but I'm going to reply further if for nothing else than my own self-edification, these thoughts are ever on my mind, they would serve others--better if there is some service to be done--if they are written down in some way.

      The self-defeating mental processes you described are also ingrained in my own personality to an extent. More a coping mechanism than some sort of masochistic self denial, but no less painful. Where as you question your, for a lack of a better word, "worthiness" to be dating this person across from you, I'm stopped from even allowing things to ever reach that point to begin with. With the constant maxim repeated over and over again, "This sequence of events will end badly." I've been able to avoid the risk taking behaviors that are, if they do not constitute it outright, part of dating and courtship as we know it today. This is not to say there have been no positive consequences. My professional life has flourished, I have an abundance of free time and income to spend as I choose but ever at the back of my consciousness is that biting nagging voice telling me that I'm something less than normal. It echoes society's opinion that being single, being a virgin, being completely inexperienced at my age makes me a pariah. I'm labeled a deviant, which is fine when you chose that life for yourself, but the problems that I contest with are not a result of free choice. And The loudness of that voice waxes and wains with time but steadily and evenly it's influence has increased and eventually you believe things about yourself that you once did not.

      It fades from an internalized assesment of yourself, "I am incapable of this."
      To the externalized judgment of society "Your life is fundamentally incorrect."
      Which leads to "You will be punished for this deviance."
      And as you pawn away aspects of your humanity in attempt to correct your life you recieve...nothing.
      "And that's what you deserve."

      Bootstraps, indeed. I'm not even wearing shoes.

      Perhaps it's a slow decent into madness where at last all reason and empathy and the capacity to see those in others is finally removed from the landscape of your mind. If that were true at least I'd take comfort in the knowing, it's the unknowns that make despair such a welcome house guest.

  33. I only see one problem... by Valar · · Score: 4, Funny

    I was quite sure that many women out there would find the ad very intriguing, until he got to the part about only using Vi. Seriously, why would you bring up your mental health conditions even before the first date?

    1. Re:I only see one problem... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At least he didn't say... ... nano - size doesn't matter, it is how you use it. ... emacs - can't tell a text editor from an OS ... emacs - overcompensating for something ... ed - hurt me. please.

    2. Re:I only see one problem... by Goldarn · · Score: 1

      Yeah, what woman would want a man that lacks Vim?

    3. Re:I only see one problem... by fonske · · Score: 1

      huh? That was the sexy part of the ad! At least it was for me when I saw my now-wife editing her calculation configs in vi during her phd. Or the times she was making fun of me when I was clumpsily editing my linux config files in vi...ok, ok,there was also a time where posts like this one drew a big sigh out of me...

    4. Re:I only see one problem... by Chemisor · · Score: 1

      > Seriously, why would you bring up your mental health conditions even before the first date?

      You wouldn't. That's why you don't admit to using emacs until the fourth date.

    5. Re:I only see one problem... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey - I'm a woman and *I* only use vi. When programming anyway.

      Although I have been known to use gvim in a graphical environment

  34. Intelligent atheist white man seeks sweetie by nuxx · · Score: 4, Funny

    Don't forget the other UNIX-y posting where an Intelligent atheist white man seeks sweetie.

    1. Re:Intelligent atheist white man seeks sweetie by linzeal · · Score: 1

      Stallmans! The Stallmans are coming!

    2. Re:Intelligent atheist white man seeks sweetie by mmkkbb · · Score: 1

      RMS definitely has moves.

      Check the URL there :\ Pube5Aynsls?

      --
      -mkb
    3. Re:Intelligent atheist white man seeks sweetie by Chemisor · · Score: 1

      Considering his previous efforts, it's no wonder he's still unsuccessful.

    4. Re:Intelligent atheist white man seeks sweetie by ggvaidya · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And in case you were wondering, yes, it's authentic.

  35. If he finds such a woman... by jollyreaper · · Score: 4, Funny

    He will have to propose. I wonder if he's going to go with diamond or a token ring?

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
    1. Re:If he finds such a woman... by vthokie69 · · Score: 1

      Regardless of which he chooses, I'm sure they will sign each other's public keys instead of wedding rings.

    2. Re:If he finds such a woman... by jimbojw · · Score: 1

      I believe it's spelled "Tolkien"

    3. Re:If he finds such a woman... by edge_gid · · Score: 1

      Wrong!

      Please hand in your geek card to the nearest admin, thank you.

    4. Re:If he finds such a woman... by dlb · · Score: 1


      You must not be married because you completely missed the joke.

  36. kill() by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Is this luser aware of the fact that in Unix, it is perfectly legal for a child to kill its parent?

    1. Re:kill() by Bob-taro · · Score: 1

      Is this luser aware of the fact that in Unix, it is perfectly legal for a child to kill its parent?

      But if it does that, it gets inherited by init, and init's such a taskmaster!

      --
      Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
  37. fork by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

    Sadly, if they are following the UNIX method, all they need to make children is 'fork'.

    1. Re:fork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So then there's no need to pipe semanage into cervisia?

  38. ...and "tail" by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Funny

    very important, that one...

    --
    No sig today...
    1. Re:...and "tail" by value_added · · Score: 1

      very important, that one...

      Head may be important, but if children are desired, he'll need fork.

    2. Re:...and "tail" by trolltalk.com · · Score: 1

      "Head may be important, but if children are desired, he'll need fork."

      "tail" works.

  39. Great! by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 1

    Maybe they can all make buggy whips for a hobby.

  40. It seems to me ... by sumiciu · · Score: 1

    ... that this guy is confused about the purpose of the CLI in women.

  41. New /. Service by The+Solitaire · · Score: 1

    So I hear Slashdot is rolling out a new dating service: SlashHeart. I personally predict it'll be a huge success, judging by the great ability most /.ers have at picking up chicks.

  42. And... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    /dev/null stared back across the room blankly at his ambiguous redirect.

    Was this just grep at first sight or was he really vi-ing for her?

    If only he'd promise not to bash her around anymore, settle down and stop chasing tail...

    Had he lost his head or was it really in /usr/bin after all?!?

  43. ONE child? by Jesus_666 · · Score: 5, Funny

    He wants ONE child? Okay, so either he doesn't want his family to go anywhere or his grasp of the Unix way is very light. Of course he needs MANY children, each good at one and only one thing:

    One child can read and write.
    One child can do math.
    One child knows how to operate a car.
    And so on.

    Then, in order to do anything useful he pipes together the children. That's the proper Unix way of founding a family.

    --
    USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    1. Re:ONE child? by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 1

      Then, in order to do anything useful he pipes together the children.

      I'm pretty sure that's illegal in most states where "y'all" is not a commonly used pronoun.

      http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Florence-yall.jpg

    2. Re:ONE child? by slashqwerty · · Score: 1
      http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Florence-yall.jpg

      The Wikipedia page associated with that image indicates it was just a cost saving measure.

  44. I have a suggestion... by Gamzarme · · Score: 1

    ...you know that girl (now woman..maybe) in the first Jurassic Park, the whole "I know this, this is a Unix shell". Well, considering the time when that movie was released as opposed to now, she might just be the right age. And even if she doesn't fall within the whole "23-43" thing, take it as a sign to expand your lifestyle and 'live a little'. Who knows? You might just be scraping the legal age. Good luck!

    --
    Pat
    1. Re:I have a suggestion... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Now woman, maybe? Do you mean that she might be dead? Because that movie came out fifteen years ago, and unless she is Peter Pan's Wendy, she is a woman now.

    2. Re:I have a suggestion... by darthflo · · Score: 1

      Judging from their names, Jurassic Park (1993) featured two women in somewhat significant roles; Laura Dern (*1967) as Dr. Ellie Sattler (26 years old when the movie was released, unlikely candidate) and Ariana Richards (*1979) in the role of Lex Murphy (that's 14 y/o at release; looks spot-on).
      As of 2006, Ms Richards was attending Western Oregon University and appears to have become a successful painter. With 28 years of age she fits neatly into the "23-43" thing and should, statistically speaking, have about the same life expectancy as the poster of TFAd (assuming he's 33 years old and both individual's lifespans match national averages of 75 and 81 years, respectively).

    3. Re:I have a suggestion... by celle · · Score: 1

      Now woman maybe, do you know how old the first Jurrassic Park movie is? No maybe about it. I'd seen her in movies before then too. She was in a mars invasion flick in the early nineties that was cute and funny. I pull it out once in a while along with The Iron Giant and At the Earth's Core, among others, for movie nights. I saw a bio on her a few years ago while searching for "oddball"(cheap,hilarious) movies to pickup. Guess she was a graphic designer at that time. Made me wonder about how some of these actors turn out in their regular lives(outside of acting, especially the younger set).

    4. Re:I have a suggestion... by kalidasa · · Score: 1

      Yes, Ms. Richards played the "I know this - it's UNIX" girl.

  45. How this could end up... by E-Lad · · Score: 5, Funny

    [daleg@home]~$ ./significant-other
    Reading configuration from ~/.sorc...
    Welcome to GNU Significant Other! It's Monday, January 21, 2008:

       -- It is trash night.
       -- It is recycling night.
       -- Fault in dishwasher water supply was detected on 1/19/2008. Please address by 1/23/2008
       -- "Poker Night" appointment in calendar observed. This conflicts with "Movie with kids"
       -- Snow is predicted tomorrow during the evening. Please ready sho
    ^Z
    [1]+  Stopped       ./significant-other
    [daleg@home]~$

    1. Re:How this could end up... by Alioth · · Score: 5, Funny

      [reiser@home]~$ kill -9 %1
      [1]+ Killed ./significant-other
      [reiser@home]~$ _

    2. Re:How this could end up... by turtledawn · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Tasteless. :)

      --
      Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
    3. Re:How this could end up... by geminidomino · · Score: 2

      But funny. :)

    4. Re:How this could end up... by miffo.swe · · Score: 1

      Im torn apart. Its very rude and tasteless but i cant stop my lunatic giggling.

      --
      HTTP/1.1 400
    5. Re:How this could end up... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Terrible.... just terrible. =)

    6. Re:How this could end up... by imipak · · Score: 1

      Really, Hans, please do take your meds and settle down or we'll have to get Nurse Ratchett back again.

  46. I can just hear it now! by techpawn · · Score: 5, Funny

    Because there are fewer and fewer of us, I must help keep our lineage alive. I am looking for someone to help me do this. I need a woman (obviously) who is willing to raise a child with me in the method of Unix."."
    Mom: There's something billy wants to say to you dear...
    Dad: What is it son?
    Son: Well, ever since I was young I knew I was different... Not like the other boy you wanted me to play with and...
    Dad: Billy? Are you telling us you're gay?
    Son: No! Not that dad...
    Dad: Well son what is it?
    Son: I've been dual booting XP for weeks now! I want to use a GUI!
    Dad: WHAT?!! I have no son!
    --
    Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
    1. Re:I can just hear it now! by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Yes training a child a birth to use a command line is no promise they will grow up using it... Especially growing up and realizing the GUI have some major advantages over command lines for Many uses.... The reason for the command line was the fact that a GUI environment took to much work to create, and needed much more expensive gear to accomplish. Now it is not an Issue, and in cases of modern video cards a GUI environment runs faster then command line, for dealing with a lot of data.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:I can just hear it now! by xtracto · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes training a child a birth to use a command line is no promise they will grow up using it... Especially growing up and realizing the GUI have some major advantages over command lines for Many uses....

      The problem with GUIs is that they are not practical, at least not the ones that are created. I just have had to calculate about 500 Shapiro-Wilk statistics and p-values using R (statistical analysis package), I use Rkward GUI because it make things a whole lot easier, however, it would be plainly stupid to try to calculate all those values (from series with about 1000 samples) by importing, and selecting the statistics via a menu, it would have taken hours.

      Instead, a simple Bash script using awk, sed, grep and a custom prgoram to run R scripts allowed me to make it automatically *and* to format the results in a way I liked.

      GUIs are *easy* to use, but they are very impractical. It would be a nice argument to prove if all of them are like that or if it is only that GUIs are usually made that way (i.e., the irfanView batch converting is really good! and easy compared to some linux command line equivalents... and there is no Linux GUI equivalent of that).

      --
      Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
    3. Re:I can just hear it now! by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      I Didn't state Command Lines don't have there advantages... But GUI has many too. Saying GUI sucks means you are missing a lot of good and timesaving features.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    4. Re:I can just hear it now! by RealGrouchy · · Score: 1

      I don't know about you, but I know I'd have gone mad if I grew up in a house without Windows.

      Or a backdoor.

      - RG>

      --
      Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
    5. Re:I can just hear it now! by hesaigo999ca · · Score: 1

      Sorry, but I NEED MY GUI, I dont know of one person using WoW without a GUI, if you find one, send him my email, I want to know how he does it, and btw my WoW presence blankets, your *nix presence anyday.

    6. Re:I can just hear it now! by xtracto · · Score: 1

      sorry, but I NEED MY GUI, I dont know of one person using WoW without a GUI, if you find one, send him my email, I want to know how he does it, and btw my WoW presence blankets, your *nix presence anyday.

      It is called MUD you whippersnapper, and get out of my lawn!

      --
      Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
  47. *ALL* unix professionals use the shell by Viol8 · · Score: 1

    yes I know , its a tongue in cheek article , but to be serious for a second - I personally have never come across a unix developer or admin or support person who didn't use the shell. If you really need to manhandle the OS beyond playing with a few desktop toys you have little alternative. So while no doubt shell (if you can call cmd.exe a shell) users in Windows are a dying breed, in Unix/Linux they're very much alive and well.

  48. Binary Babe! by Dareth · · Score: 1

    No, some chicks most definitely look hotter than others in raw binary!

    --

    I only look human.
    My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
  49. Re: Good at only one thing by Dareth · · Score: 3, Funny

    reading and writing is definitely more than one thing.

    You would need a whole team of children to operate a car, and even then you should avoid "race conditions"!

    --

    I only look human.
    My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
  50. Sid, Is that you? by Technician · · Score: 2, Funny
    --
    The truth shall set you free!
  51. In The Beginning Was The Command Line by ahodgkinson · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.spack.org/wiki/InTheBeginningWasTheCommandLine
    And somebody help me find the essay about the command line vs. GUI environments, where the author rants about how inefficient GUIs are for development work. It may have been written by Larry Wall or somebody like him.

    --
    ---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
    1. Re:In The Beginning Was The Command Line by pnuema · · Score: 1

      It was Neal Stephenson.

    2. Re:In The Beginning Was The Command Line by ahodgkinson · · Score: 1

      Uhm no. The link I gave was indeed a text 'In the Beginning Was the Command Line', by Neal Stephenson (and I knew that already). That's not what I'm looking for.
      I'm looking for a much shorter essay written by a programmer which focuses specifically on the virtures of the command line (and especially the keyboard) vs. GUI/mouse based systems.

      --
      ---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
    3. Re:In The Beginning Was The Command Line by mvdwege · · Score: 1

      Do you perhaps mean this one?

      Mart
      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
    4. Re:In The Beginning Was The Command Line by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    5. Re:In The Beginning Was The Command Line by geekoid · · Score: 1

      That's not true anymore for any modern IDE.
      Of course, you need to learn the hot keys. OTOH, you would need to learn the command line strokes as well.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    6. Re:In The Beginning Was The Command Line by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I remember reading this GUI vs CLI article some 10 years ago (is that possible?)...I thought was written by Tom Christensen or one of the higher Perl Gods...but I've searched it a few times (including now again), and just can't find the article anymore...

      It was a really good one indeed...wish I could find it again too...

    7. Re:In The Beginning Was The Command Line by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      nope...the such article covered the implications of thought processing under the different interfaces,aside fomr advantages ,etc...and was for sure authored from one of the perl gods.

  52. Vista has a great command prompt by LM741N · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Shift-Right click will bring up a shell anywhere, even on the desktop. I've been using it to install the Enthought Tool System (ETS) and it works great. I know there used to be a Powertoy that did this but I don't think it was as powerful.

    I also use the prompt for burning bootable DVD's. I download Server Tools and use the dvdburn.exe utility. Shells are on their way back.

    1. Re:Vista has a great command prompt by garnetlion · · Score: 4, Funny

      I feel so, so dirty envying a Vista feature. I'm sure I could configure Gnome to do the same, but I don't feel good about myself right now.

    2. Re:Vista has a great command prompt by Paranoid+times · · Score: 1

      It shows something of how Linux and Windows play off of each other. One thinks of something cool, and the other steals it. Though I think Windows has the advantage in this situation. As taking open source ideas causes rather little shame. The reverse doesn't tend to be so simple.

  53. constrained, unhappy, ultimately failures at life by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In other words, the kid will be a command line geek?

  54. Feminist Unix command by InterGuru · · Score: 4, Funny

    man bash

  55. Command Line Users: The new Amish? by dreamchaser · · Score: 4, Funny

    I can see it now...colonies of geeks will spring up all over that are only allowed to marry each other and can't use any computer technology developed after 1986.

    1. Re:Command Line Users: The new Amish? by value_added · · Score: 1

      I can see it now...colonies of geeks will spring up all over that are only allowed to marry each other and can't use any computer technology developed after 1986.

      You're thinking about the Windows command interpreter.

      The default still-smells-like-DOS Windows command-line tools, among other things, could indeed be characterised as old technology. What you find on any *nix system is very different.

    2. Re:Command Line Users: The new Amish? by dreamchaser · · Score: 1

      I was actually referring to the fact that X11 was released in 1987...I also don't use CMD.EXE when I work on my Windoze boxen. I use bash or powershell depending upon what I am doing.

      Then again, bash didn't see daylight until '87 as well...and powershell wasn't even a glimmer in Microsoft's eye. ANYways...it was a joke :P

    3. Re:Command Line Users: The new Amish? by Google85 · · Score: 1

      There were GUIs in 1986 (The 'Macintosh' was released in 1984 for example, Apple released the 'Lisa' before it)

      The the first Xerox PARC based system was the 'Xerox 8010 Star Information System' in 1981.

  56. Two Girls... by Edward+Teach · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ok, so the only reason he turned down two girls is because they only had one cup between them...

    --

    Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.

  57. I've actually started training the gf ... by cnewmark · · Score: 1

    Started simply, with ipconfig release/renew, using that as a gateway drug, I mean, command.

  58. A Unixy Wife by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So this guy needs a UNIXY woman... a UNIQUE, SEXY woman...

  59. Re: Good at only one thing by Jesus_666 · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but you need one to do the other anyway. It's a bit of a compromise.

    --
    USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
  60. oops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As if. A real Unix geek would use a symbolic link.

    ln -s /usr/bin/man girl

    Hmm.. I'm not into such thing.

  61. I AM THE CLI COMMANDER!!! by otis+wildflower · · Score: 1

    I am the master of the CLI! Remember this fucking face, whenever you see CLI you'll see this fucking face!! I make that shit work, it does whatever the fuck I tell it to.. No one rules the CLI like me...

  62. Geek Dating Service ... Requirements? by cavac · · Score: 1

    Hmm, just thought: It wouldn't be hard to set up a geek dating service online.

    Post your requirements and i'll see what i can do :-)

    Some obvious requirements:
    Anonymity, Messaging, Searching by typical geek attributes (using geek-code and such as basis for the categories?)

    What about RSS-Feeds and email notification?

    --
    Look, this thing is totally safe! Built it myself, you know. You just press that button like this and then turn that lev
    1. Re:Geek Dating Service ... Requirements? by mattwarden · · Score: 3, Funny

      Please add the following requirements:

      * Women

      This will be the toughest feature to implement.

  63. Not the stupidest way to find a spouse by Qbertino · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Two people accustomed to often using the Unix CLI for their work/passion are likely to have a lot in common, as using the CLI a) really isn't that common and b) requires a measurable amount of intelligence and mental flexibility combined with precision and foresight.
    A specialty like unix cli usage really isn't the worst measurement for finding a partner for life. It definitely holds more water that looks or brand of car.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
    1. Re:Not the stupidest way to find a spouse by geekoid · · Score: 1

      "b) requires a measurable amount of intelligence and mental flexibility combined with precision and foresight"

      BWAHAHAHAHahahha.. nice opinion of yourself. In my experience it requires no such thing. It doesn't preclude it, but you don't need it.

      I can't tell you how many times I have seen a 'command line' guy stick up his nose to a faster, more accurate, and easier to use command line solution.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  64. Yep, a perfect plan by earlymon · · Score: 1

    My parents had big ideas on how I would turn out, too. Even tried to raise me so.

    Can't say that worked out too well for them.

    --
    Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
  65. LOL by MrDERP · · Score: 1

    LOL nice social engineering to find yourself a girlfriend that actually gives a shit about what you do; specifically. Those are hard to find, usually they don't want to hear about "all that computer stuff" but you need to listen to them and there project runway bs. Kudos if it works !

  66. Hate to say it, but by HermMunster · · Score: 1

    Thank goodness for evolution. Dying breeds should be allowed to die. This particular dying breed was killing Linux. It could have been a significiantly more successful product had we been able to weed out this dying breed 2-4 years earlier.

    --
    You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
    1. Re:Hate to say it, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uh, this particular dying breed wrote Linux.

  67. !getalife by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anyone who tagged this 'getalife' is hypersensitive to the aspects of being a geek, even the funnier ones, and needs to lighten up.

  68. makes me thing of weird science by fuzzylollipop · · Score: 1

    (weird science) Plastic tubes and pots and pans Bits and pieces and Magic from the hand Were makin (weird science) Things Ive never seen before Behind bolted doors Talent and imagination (weird science) Not what teacher said to do Makin dreams come true Living tissue, warm flesh (weird science) Plastic tubes and pots and pans Bits and pieces (and) Bits and pieces (and) Chorus (bits of) my creation--is it real? Its my creation--i do not know No hesitation--no heart of gold Just flesh and blood--i do not know From my heart and from my hand Why dont people understand My intentions . . . . oooh, weird . . . . Weird science!! (weird science) Magic and technology Voodoo dolls and chants Electricity Were makin (weird science) Fantasy and microchips Shooting from the hip Something different Were makin (weird science) Pictures from a magazine Diagrams and charts Mending broken hearts (and makin) (weird science) Something like a recipe Bits and pieces . . . . Bits and pieces . . . .

  69. I already have this. by pclminion · · Score: 1

    I can say from experience that having a programming and shell-using wife is a great thing, but we don't exactly sit around for hours shooting the breeze about technology. After working an entire day writing code neither of us really want to discuss it in our free time, and although we both have serious web addictions, we never cross paths with each other online. Our relationship is purely here in the real world.

    It's great, but it's not the universe defining nucleus of our marriage or anything like that.

  70. Could be hard to procreate using the Unix cmdline by nodrogluap · · Score: 1

    % man sex
    No manual entry for sex.
    % man sex > woman
    % ./woman ./woman: Permission denied.

  71. When I had kids, I really tried getting the wife by way2trivial · · Score: 3, Interesting

    to agree to allow me to teach them binary math first.. I wanted to teach them how to count to 1023 on their fingers (4, 128, and 132 are a scream)
    I gotta lotta hell no.. but imagine it-- if your kids intuitively knew binary-- or hex-- imagine the abilitys for a future programmer..

    --
    every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
  72. at least he's not a poseur by CranberryKing · · Score: 1

    they are notoriously bad spellers.

  73. How did he post it in the first place? by jameskojiro · · Score: 1

    If he used VI, how could he.

    I mean unless he uses Lynx to surf.

    --
    Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
    1. Re:How did he post it in the first place? by cp.tar · · Score: 1

      Actually, there is a Firefox extension allowing you to use vi from within Firefox.

      --
      Ignore this signature. By order.
  74. Re:Could be hard to procreate using the Unix cmdli by mindwanderer · · Score: 2, Funny

    %make love
    Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

    % sleep with me
    bad character

    % man: why did you get a divorce?
    man:: Too many arguments.

    From gnu.org.

    --
    :wq
  75. Re: Good at only one thing by azgard · · Score: 1

    Maybe you should dynamically link them with a "standard library" child.

  76. stay away from those Unix sluts! by imyy4u1 · · Score: 1

    I don't know if he really should be going after a Unix woman. I hear the real Unix sluts allow men to 'finger' and 'touch' them on the first date! And the really bad ones even allow 'mounting'! He had better grep for a Windows woman, ASAP. They're far more prude. You can't finger, touch, or mount them. Unfortunately they tend to crash hard at the end of the night, and tend to carry virii...that is if you ping em enough :-)

    --
    "Know but never fear the consequences of your actions."
  77. hopping in... by hummassa · · Score: 1

    Depends on the operating system. With some UNIX flavours (HURD being the notable exception) there is a hard limit to the length of parameters you can pass to a process. This is imposed by the kernel, not the shell. In your example, xargs would hit this limit. Nope. 'xargs' breaks the input in pieces manageable by the command-line.

    --
    It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
  78. Five Chinese brothers by dallaylaen · · Score: 1

    The "Five Chinese brothers" fairy tale comes to mind. Each brother posessed a supernatural ability, and they all looked alike.

    --
    WYSIWIG, but what you see might not be what you need
  79. two chicks at the same time by CranberryKing · · Score: 1

    Amen, brother! I have that problem too. I had these two latina chicks over the other night and they wanted to reverse sandwich me (whatever that is), but one was a win98 type and the other runs Leopard. So I said, "Sorry bitches.."

  80. SUDO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    **Copied from xkcd.com**

    "Make me a sandwich."
    "What? Make your own sandwich."
    "Sudo Make me a sandwich."
    "Ok"

  81. Re:hmmm... Doesn't matter to them... by davidsyes · · Score: 2, Funny

    They are still living in a shell. (wink)

    --
    Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
  82. The shell ain't dead! by Terminus32 · · Score: 0

    I use the command line all the time, and light window managers...makes things run alot faster! And I often choose Lynx over Firefox/Swiftfox for browsing.

    --
    http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
  83. All OS's Suc @$$ by GHynson · · Score: 1

    There was nothing wrong with punch cards. And there was always a paper trail.

  84. +1 Optimist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Too bad there is no such modifier in the /. system.

  85. Cluster? by LordZardoz · · Score: 1

    I still want to have a Beowulf cluster executing these commands in parallel.

    END COMMUNICATION

  86. UI isn't the "modern" part by mstahl · · Score: 1

    DOS had many deficiencies that modern shells lack, like for instance its lack of multitasking and, more specifically, the need for terminate-and-stay-resident calls to emulate (inefficiently) multitasking of a kind. This led to all kinds of interesting problems where the OS was not really meant for multiple processes, so had memory which was not partitioned (i.e., no virtual memory to keep programs' memory separated from each other). So there were all kinds of hacks where you could have a background process that runs, sorta, and edits the memory of the running process. Many of these were beneficial third-party things just meant to make DOS usable as an OS.

    Another clear distinction is that DOS was not merely a shell, but a whole OS. Modern OS command lines are actually shells like bash or tcsh, which are very rich with features like tab completion and command history, as well as a more useful batch scripting facility. I can actually do most of my work in a pure command-line environment with bash, vim, and a couple of other programs. I could never do that in DOS ever because it's just not nearly as powerful as a POSIX shell.

  87. 2:1 income vs expenses by griffinme · · Score: 1

    He claims to have 2:1 income vs. expenses. Man + Wife + Child != 2 Hell, it doesn't even equal three. I think he is in for a rude awakening.

    --
    Is he strong? Listen bud, He's got radioactive blood.
  88. He had me at vi... by t-twisted · · Score: 2, Funny

    He had me at vi.

  89. Also, make sure they dont grow features ... by Schtroumpf42 · · Score: 1

    That's the unfortunate thing with your so-called child(8) processes ... when time comes, if they are like your common Windows childrens, they may grow older, and more feature-full
    For example, some of them may learn to both do Math AND read ... this leads to unexpected side-effects, such as growing gray matter

    How to cope with that ? Any well behaved Unices's parents will induce a multiple personality 'disorder'. In this manner, each and every personality trait will be confined in its own nerve cell, producing a more stable kid, with fewer chances of Core Dump...

    I, for one, envy the happy parents, as when I tried to raise the little buggers in this way, flawed peoples did take all my processes, and really chroot(2)'ed me ... Now, I even come to doubt the real benefits of this whole Unixen fork(3)-ing ...

    --
    Posted from the Maximally Flawed Security Facility, under Redmond,WA
    Where I am sentenced to create some stable OSes for some shady firm
    .. have access to top-notch hardware, but I fear this is not the ideal position for experimenting a real-life fork(3), though :-)

    1. Re:Also, make sure they dont grow features ... by Jesus_666 · · Score: 1

      So essentially you propose letting the children multithread? Are they capable of that? Does the human brain have Hyperthreading built in? Is it even superscalar? Men are said to be multicore, but given the size of two of the cores I think they're Synergistic Processing Units at best.

      There are many questions regarding that approach. Perhaps it's be best to go with a microkernel approach - just take one body and add servers (heads) servers as needed. This kind of approach was developed in Thailand, I think, but only with two servers.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
  90. User of Free Website Makes Forced Joke! by Lulu+of+the+Lotus-Ea · · Score: 1

    News at 11.

  91. Correction on the find. by rockhome · · Score: 2, Funny

    # find ${SOMEPATH} -type f -exec grep -i "${PATTERN}" {} \;

  92. You think you unix folks have it hard? by ClioCJS · · Score: 1

    Try being someone who uses a command-line almost exclusively under Windows. Good luck finding your woman then! Seriously... Mousing sucks, but not as much as recompiling a kernel.

    --
    -Clio
    Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
    Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
  93. Obl: Lord of the Rings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And one child to rule them all,
    one child to find them,
    one child to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

  94. Unix girls... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unix girls have nicer slashies.

    // I much prefer '/' to '\'.

  95. To achieve this feat..... by RatPh!nk · · Score: 1

    you must have impressive uptime.

    --
    Argh. The laws of science be a harsh mistress.
  96. Something they won't say... by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 2, Funny

    "When we first met we just clicked."

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  97. fork by kcbanner · · Score: 1

    He simply needs to read man fork to learn how!

    --
    Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
  98. Re:MOD PARENT DOWN by Nimey · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hans, settle down.

    --
    Hail Eris, full of mischief...

    E pluribus sanguinem
  99. Not again by Cheesey · · Score: 2, Informative

    Don't fuck a mounted filesystem, or you will fsck everything up! For fsck's sake, call umount before fucking.

    --
    >north
    You're an immobile computer, remember?
  100. grep has a "recursive" option... by Non-Huffable+Kitten · · Score: 1

    grep -iR "female" /home/me/

    will a geek girl love me now? please? :( ;)

    --
    Medium cat is MEDIUM.
  101. Well, obviously... by NoOnesMessiah · · Score: 1

    unzip|strip|touch|finger|mount|fsck|more|yes|grep|awk|awk|awk|sync|umount|sleep;

    It's an old old old old old joke but what the heck, I'm an old old old old old unix hack.

    And I'm a shell user of many years as well. Unfortunately, I believed http://www.adminspotting.org/ long before it was ever posted. And no, I'm not going to give you a prettified link to click on to go find it. That's called hubris. If you'd ever bothered to read about the BOFH you'd know that. It's a skill our kind all cultivate, like a Jedi Knight pulling his light sabre into his hand using only his mind.

    "...Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last on some miserable newsgroup, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up lusers Gates spawned to replace the computer-literate."

    We are a dying breed.

    And as the dumb-assed thumb-tribes continue to neglect the technologies that will serve the next generation, they empower the very organizations who will lord it over them for a life-time. Is it any wonder that large companies like Time-Warner, ComCast, and AT&T can afford to be audacious pecker-heads if they so choose? If you don't understand it, you'll just have to pay the bill and pray that it keeps working. Or you could read MAKE Magazine and the Anarchists Cookbook and build your own light sabre....

    And just for the record; MAKE Magazine is a pale and shallow comparison to the homebrew and amateur radio scenes of the late Seventies and early Eighties.

    Now if you'll excuse me, I'm old. I have to go yell at those damned kids to get them off of my lawn.

  102. This is resonse to... by ab_iron · · Score: 1

    Obviously, this is in response to the Stallman - best of craigslist ab_iron

  103. Linux sex by gringer · · Score: 4, Funny

    I need a woman (obviously) who is willing to raise a child with me in the method of Unix. Here's one way to do it on Linux:

    gawk; chat; look; nice; date; wine; grep; touch; play; unzip; strip; touch; expand; screen; finger; screen; latex; tangle; mount; fsck; more; yes; yes; yes; yes; screen; yes; yes; yes; more; yes; yes; umount; sleep
    --
    Ask me about repetitive DNA
  104. Shells are still cool by kellyb9 · · Score: 1

    This guy sounds like a total loser, but I still use shells for a bunch of reasons. When I'm at the library, I'd always bring up a shell and type in bullshit commands to hold my computer so nobody would touch it. Other than that, when I'm working in a shell, I like to think people might assume I'm hacking into some top-secret pentagon database.

    Either way... this guy is definitly a huge loser.

  105. Dying breed? by Elentari · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't necessarily say so. My boyfriend and I are both 18-year-old shell users. I don't know how many girls my age are into the kinds of things I am, though, but I see he's after a slightly older woman, so that might increase his odds. By a negligible amount.

  106. CLI vs. GUI by stewbacca · · Score: 1

    Sometimes (or many times) CLI is just faster than futzing around with a confusing GUI. This is especially true when the GUI is awful, much like older builds of Solaris (my last experience was in the late 90s).

    1. Re:CLI vs. GUI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sometimes (or many times) GUI is just faster than futzing around with a confusing CLI. This is especially true when the CLI is awful, much like older builds of Windows.

      I'll go ahead and add on to the mockery of your post that the above is also true when the GUI is great. There are lots of things that can simply be done faster if you know what you're doing in a modern GUI like OS X or KDE.

    2. Re:CLI vs. GUI by stewbacca · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure you used mockery correctly (or I misunderstand your point?) I'm an OSX user and 99.9% GUI guy, so I think you misread my posts. I'm not defending CLI. I'm just saying that some GUIs are so bad that the CLI is just easier and faster (10 years ago, using Sun OS, for example). I understand the sentiment of the CLI guys, but think they have mostly just been passed by. But, there are probably thousands of guys right now that could point me to an OSX terminal and show me how to do a bunch of stuff really fast and easy.

  107. Find a religious gal... (subservient women)... by neurocutie · · Score: 1

    It would seem that it would be easier to find a woman who would be entirely subservient to whatever you want, or however you want your child to be raised...
    Between all the various religions and cults that believe the woman should be subservient to the husband (fundamentalist Christians: "the man is the head of the house", Muslims, etc, etc), it should be easy to find one of those... easier than finding a woman who understands #!/bin/sh...

    then wifey will do whatever you say... (ain't too much difference between those cults and the cult of /bin/sh is there ?)

    1. Re:Find a religious gal... (subservient women)... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      this man knows what he is talking about.

  108. Close... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If only he wasn't so set on having children. I could even forgive him for the ksh thing, but I just can't convince myself that I want progeny.

    Sorry, guy, it could've been a wonderful partnership. Nevertheless, keep your search alive! Your motives are admirable and the world needs more shell people who are altruistically interested in perpetuating our particular genetic predispositions.

    Sincerely,
    single, <30 female, command-line addict, vi aficionada extraordinaire.

  109. Re: _____ World by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 1

    Can the BSD operating system be tuned here?

    --
    My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
  110. See attached photo by Chris+Pimlott · · Score: 1

    See attached photo:

              @

  111. I think this proves it... by xystren · · Score: 1

    Unix is not just an operating system.... It's a way of life...

    Need I say more?

    Cheers,
    Xyst

  112. Re:MOD PARENT DOWN by afabbro · · Score: 1
    Hans, settle down.

    Best three-world response on Slashdot ever.

    --
    Advice: on VPS providers
  113. this is... by sentientbrendan · · Score: 2, Funny

    >PS - yes, this is for real.

    I'm sorry, but this is the stupidest thing I have ever seen. Wanting more people to use the command line is not a suitable justification for bringing a new human being into the world. It certainly is not the basis for a healthy relationship.

    It's true that all sorts of people who aren't qualified to reproduce do so anyway. Just be aware that you are in that group.

    Also, no, just knowing what KSH is doesn't guarantee you have prime genetic material.

  114. Get out of your $hell by h3rb3v0r3 · · Score: 1

    we all know you've been abusing all that hard pore Korn.

    And that excuse of having better forearm strength from using all 10 fingers aint getting any better.

  115. Command line and software development by iosdaemon · · Score: 1

    All software should be developed in a manner that allows full command line use - the UNIX way - . The GUI should be the frosting, although some of us eat cake without it. Does this posting imply that development has become half-hazard?

  116. +6 Funny by __aawkdb2598 · · Score: 2

    I've given up moderation in this discussion, solely to say that there should be a +6 Funny reserved for posts like this. :D

  117. Dear Mr. Waterhouse by emj · · Score: 1

    See Cryptonomicon for solution...

  118. It figures... by jvollmer · · Score: 1
    If you're both eunichs, good luck having those children!

    If it's not Consolidated Lint, it's just fuzz!

  119. A closely related ad on Craigslist by billstewart · · Score: 1
    A similar ad on Best-of-Craigslist.

    And this one avoids many of the jokes about the other ad, because GNU's Not Eunuchs.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  120. My opinion by mergy · · Score: 1

    db d8b db db db .d8b. d888888b .d8b.
    88 I8I 88 88 88 d8' `8b `~~88~~' d8' `8b
    88 I8I 88 88ooo88 88ooo88 88 88ooo88
    Y8 I8I 88 88~~~88 88~~~88 88 88~~~88
    `8b d8'8b d8' 88 88 88 88 88 88 88
      `8b8' `8d8' YP YP YP YP YP YP YP

    db .d88b. .d8888. d88888b d8888b. db
    88 .8P Y8. 88' YP 88' 88 `8D 88
    88 88 88 `8bo. 88ooooo 88oobY' YP
    88 88 88 `Y8b. 88~~~~~ 88`8b
    88booo. `8b d8' db 8D 88. 88 `88. db
    Y88888P `Y88P' `8888Y' Y88888P 88 YD YP

  121. Re:When I had kids, I really tried getting the wif by dbIII · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure I did different bases in grade 5 and I'm certainly no genius. I just had a good teacher that liked to bring out some of the simpler Martin Gardener puzzles to stop us getting bored with mathematics.

  122. Re:When I had kids, I really tried getting the wif by Danny+Rathjens · · Score: 1

    They'd be vulnerable to a Snow Crash, though!

  123. "Do you always look at it encoded?" by Guppy · · Score: 1

    I just look at the code and see, "Blonde, Brunette, Redhead..."

  124. CLI and GUI about equally as fast. by geekoid · · Score: 1

    I rally can't think of a modern system where you can't use the command line. In fact, most developers I work will drop to the command line from time to time.
    However if you learn the hot keys, you can move through windows faster then a command line can do anything, usually.
    Example to get to the explore it's just 2 key strokes. Plus I get a nice overall view of the directory tree;which is better then Dir.

    This person is just a myopic dinosaur that refuses to adept. I wonder if he even know 10 hot key commands for his chosen OS GUI.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    1. Re:CLI and GUI about equally as fast. by stewbacca · · Score: 1
      I tend to agree, but I still see the value in some CLI entries. I can't remember the details, but it was far easier to type in a few commands to do something with permissions in Solaris than it was to go dig through the GUI for user accounts.

      "Hot keys" are an aspect of the GUI that can be really bad. Windows is a perfect example. Completely arbitrary at times (Alt+F4 is a prime example), changes from application to application, and requires two different "hot" keys.

      A good example for the CLI (and this is because of a bad GUI) is the calculator in Windows. Run-type "calc". I know, you can just put a calc shortcut on the desktop, but every build of Windows I've ever used seems to have the original calculator executable in a different place, or the Start menu is configured differently. Small, I know, but still a pain and still the type of little details that collectively makes Windows suck from a GUI aspect.

      I've been a Mac OS X user from day one and can't really think of a good example of CLI being better than the GUI, but then again, I don't do a lot of power user/networking stuff, just light personal stuff at home. The GUI is good enough that I've never needed the CLI. I 'think' I had to run a CLI once to make something in the trash delete or something similar.

  125. Imagine yourself a beowolf of ... by freaker_TuC · · Score: 1

    Yea, imagine yourself a beowolf cluster of children .. or .. would that be called slavery? ;)

    --
    --- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
  126. just wondering by alxkit · · Score: 0

    will this couple be willing to adopt a fully grown 30 year old "child"?

  127. Turing Test by EdIII · · Score: 1

    "I've been known to actually turn down offers of "two chicks at the same time""

    Come on guys. This is obviously not a human being. Whether or not a guy goes after pie or pickles, he NEVER, EVER, refuses them 2 at a time. Heck, the greatest moves in the biz REQUIRE 2 pies or pickles minimum.

    I'm no John Holmes, or Ron Jeremy, and I would be nervous as hell if 2 or more chicks tried to do it with me.... but I would give a good shot at it with some serious elbow grease. No would not even be an option to consider.

    So I am going to go with, "What is a Turing Test Alex".

  128. CONFIG_INPUT_JOYSTICK by bumby · · Score: 1

    CONFIG_INPUT_JOYSTICK

    --
    Hey! That's my sig you're smoking there!
  129. Yeah, try to get a zealot to see the facts by heinousjay · · Score: 0, Troll

    It's like trying to get a Christian to admit that Jesus is an interesting character in a few chapters of a very disjointed fairy tale and nothing more. You'd achieve more punching a wall.

    --
    Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
    1. Re:Yeah, try to get a zealot to see the facts by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Not quite your analogy is quite off. Moving a Zealot to Moderation is different then moving a Moderate to becoming a Zealot or worse one from of Zealot to the opposing form for Zeal. What would be more apt analogy would be more like try to get a christian to realize there is a possibility that their religion could be completely wrong, but not have them believe it. Or have radicle christian believe that parts of the bible are to be taken as metaphor not actual, and much of the information has been lost over centuries of word of mouth stories, and many translations.

      You wonder why Atheists are discriminated against. They demand tolerance towards their belief in the universe, but they are unwilling to tolerate the people they want toleration from. You need to remember there is still no solid proof that God does or Does Not exits. In order to prove the state of God you will need to find a way of giving a solid proof of testing gods existence, not just stating that facts in a religion is wrong.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:Yeah, try to get a zealot to see the facts by techpawn · · Score: 1

      Wait... wait... you lost me... can you use a car analogy? Like You can't turn a red Ford into a blue Chevy, but a VW Bug with the right body kit...

      --
      Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
  130. Awesome post!! by ramyakrishnan · · Score: 1

    Atlast someone looking for shell scripting skills... Life rocks with sed, awk, grep, scp, ssh, ls...

  131. A child? In the manner of Unix? by SteeldrivingJon · · Score: 1

    I have a hunch that "small pieces loosely joined" is not going to be healthy for the child.

    --
    September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
  132. TMTOWTDI by spudnic · · Score: 1

    for i in `find ${SOMEPATH} -f`; do grep -i $i; done;

    --
    load "linux",8,1
  133. I worked it out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    touch woman
      uniq woman
      sort woman
      paste woman

  134. don't be so sensitive by General+Lee's+Peking · · Score: 1

    The joke is about someone with absurdly specific interests. It's no different than the classified ad by the maritally inclined bachelor farmer seeking ``a lady with a tractor. Please send picture of tractor.''

  135. where is this guy? by rose_kennedy · · Score: 1

    The thing that sucks about this craigslist post is there is no contact info.

    Linux girls need love too!

    Dangling love pointers are bad!

  136. "Great" - thanks to a shortcut? by krischik · · Score: 1

    A short cut to start the command prompt makes it "great" - is that really all what got improved.

    Well, for me it takes more to a great command prompt - but then I use 4NT ever since MS-Dos 3.11 (at that time called 4Dos or NDos). Have a look for your self of what a great command prompt can do for you:

    http://www.jpsoft.com/

    Martin

  137. How to CONSTRUCT a child by bbtom · · Score: 1

    # I thought I would express the desire of a geek to shack up with another
    # geek and make babies through the expressive power of a SPARQL CONSTRUCT
    # query. Just run it through your favourite query processor and savour the
    # result (the kid will end up drinking coffee if you use the Java processor)

    # Namespaces omitted. Code is released under the GNU General Public License.
    # TODO: add divorce inference mode for v. 2

    CONSTRUCT
    {
       ?me :hasOffspring ?it .
       ?it a :Offspring;
        :hasFather ?me .
    }
    WHERE
    {
       ?me :hadSexWith :spouse .
       ?spouse foaf:gender "female";
        :objectiveBeautyRating ?rating;
        :textEditorPreference ?pref.
       ?it :hasFather :me;
        :hasMother ?spouse .
    }
    FILTER ( ?rating > 7 ) .
    FILTER ( ?pref != "emacs" ) .

    --
    catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
  138. Um... by ebbomega · · Score: 1

    You don't use notepad to browse in Windows do you?

    --
    Karma: Non-Heinous
  139. Re: Multithreaded childrens ... by Schtroumpf42 · · Score: 0

    Well, actually, there seems to be a bug in the men(8) firmware, as while they actually have two brains (one behind the eyeballs, and the other around the middle of the body), they seem to cause multiple failures when operated simultaneously ...
    That seems not to be a problem for single geeks, through they are not reproducing fast enough :)

    However, there seem to be a distinct specie, namely "women", which seem to be able to do casual multi-tasking ... the unfortunate thing here is that they seem not to be designed for useful multi-tasking, such as real discussions, anything computer-related, reproduction, or plain old friendship (actual studies are a bit difficult to conduct in a laboratory setting, due to the innate instability of said subjects ... and our legal department's strong stance on subject's dissection for further analysis)

    Still conducting (scientific) studies on a strange activity when mixing men and women (seemingly night-activated & light-sensitive) :-)

  140. That won't help him by infonography · · Score: 1

    grep -i 'asian schoolgirl' /home/me/Desktop/women/*

    *error insufficient memory Remember this guy is a command line user. Maybe this will help;

    rep -i 'asian schoolgirl' /home/me/.stuff/ascii/women/*

    S A I L O R _ M O O N
     
                                |/:) | | '.' | | (
                                Segmentation Fault (core dumped)
    --
    Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23