It is "free as in beer." You can drink all the beer you want. What you can't do is set up a beer stand and sell the beer you got for free to passers-by. (You can, however, sell them the cup and give them the beer for free.)
Come now, I really expect better of you than to raise such a false argument as this. Choice is the fact that Kerberos is an open standard. You and without reservation, that is a Good Thing. That is the strength of free/open source software. That doesn't mean people can't use that freedom of choice to do bad things, such as fork it and break compatibility for their own selfish ends rather than add functionality and contribute that functionality back to the main tree, but the presence of choice itself doesn't make this a bad thing. I think most citizens of democracies (of whatever type) would agree that democracy is a good thing, even though politicians often use that freedom for their own selfish ends without regard to what's good for the nation as a whole, and people often make foolish and uniformed choices in the laws and/or leaders for which they vote. These lapses, however, do not make us regard democracy - that is, choice - as a bad thing.
We're getting a bit far afield here, but you need to define "choice." Standards are all about restricting choice. However, unless someone is standing over your shoulder with a gun, you're perfectly free to ignore the standard. So does choice still exist or not?
I certainly don't advocate that we enlist squads of armed goons to go out and ensure that all Linux desktops operate consistently. Rather, I say that we need a desktop standard, somewhat similar to the Linux Standards Base, that defines how a desktop Linux should look and feel following a default install. Necessarily, that will mean standardizing on KDE or Gnome. Choice for the user still exists. You can modify your desktop or choose another windows manager either during or post installation. Distributions are free to ignore the standard if they choose.
So do standards limit choice or not? It's a matter of semantics, and one you can argue either way. I don't particularly care how you see it, since the existence of the standard is the important part.
I think perhaps we need to define "desktop" here so that we better understand each other. It has come to take on the common meaning of "home user system" even though somebody's computer at work is also a desktop.
I'd disagree with your definition of the common meaning. I often see "desktop" used to include office as well as home desktops.
For myself, I define a "desktop" as a computer who's primary role is to run general purpose software for direct use by a user. This is opposed to servers, which primarily provide services to other systems on a network, and to workstations, which primarily run a limited set of special purpose applications. That's a quick and dirty definition, not meant to be comprehensive. You could undoubtedly expend megabytes of ASCII on the subject if you wished.
It's a lot less ready for the home user desktop, not only for reasons pertaining to ease of use (burning CDs on Linux is still far more complicated than doing the same on Win/Mac, although the 2.6 kernel will take care of those issues, and Konqueror in KDE 3.2 will support drag-and-drop CD creation) but for the same reason that Windows isn't really ready for that market either: the world of networked computing has become a very hostile place, far more than it used it be, and not only Windows but most Linux distributions as well, has a default install that is far to open for a computer that may be connected to the Internet directly, without even NAT standing between it and the blackhats. On this score in particular, I think Mac OS X is more ready for the desktop than any other system, but that doesn't surprise me. Macs have always been hard to crack, relative to most other platforms.
I have a hard time accepting this as an argument that Linux isn't ready for the desktop. You're not talking about anything inherent to Linux itself but merely critisizing the choice of the default security posture. Mandrake, which you seem to hold in contempt, ask the user what the role of the machine is to be and ada
I beg to differ. Choice is, in fact, always a good thing.
So you have no problem when Microsoft takes a protocol such as Kerberos and adapts it just enough that it doesn't work with most other implementations? After all, they're just exercising their choice in how they implement the protocol, and choice is ALWAYS a good thing.
I'd think you were an MS supporter trolling, except for the fact that you're conversant with terms like "window manager," so it would appear that you're actually a slightly misguided Linux supporter, thus you merit an answer:-)
I downloaded my first Linux distribution on a 14.4 modem. It was Yggdrasil (sp?) if I remember correctly, and consisted of around 15 or so floppy disk images. It took me almost two days to get them all from a BBS via zmodem. My first CD version was Slackware from Owl Creek. So I wasn't there quite at the beginning but I was definitely the first of the Johhny-come-latelys. I'm a long way from a *nix wizard but I compile my own kernels and use regular expressions in my perl scripts. I have a Debian box which runs qmail, mailman (I host a couple of mailing lists), apache and NATs my DSL connection to my home network. I used Debian unstable on my desktop for almost two years, but wanted something a little more up to date, so I switched to Mandrake about six months ago. I also run a Windows machine that I use for finances (because I can't wean the wife away from Quicken) and for games. In other words, I'm not a kernel hacker and there's undoubtedly more about Linux that I don't know than there is that I do know. But I'm not a Luser or a new comer either.
I said in my post that choice was a great thing for geeks and power users. That includes both me and you. If Linux was dumbed down to the point where we could no longer choose our own windows manager, I don't know for certain that it would kill it but something precious would definitely have been lost.
I also said that I'm far from convinced that moving to the desktop is the way Linux should go. However, a great many people ARE convinced. And IF that's to happen, Linux needs a standard interface.
Yes, every distribution works out of the box. Both KDE and Gnome work fine. But they don't work the same as each other. I use KDE, and I get frustrated sometimes if I sit down at a Gnome machine. Things don't work the way I'm used to. Things are in a different place. It's not that one is better or worse than the other. It's just that they're different.
Your argument is that Linux has no place on the commercial desktop. I'm not absolutely convinced of that, but I certainly won't argue against you either.
However, if the forces that be decide to disregard your counsel, and if Linux is too carve out a niche for itself in the desktop world, it isn't sufficient that each distribution function in its own right. Rather, there needs to be standard desktop which defines the desktop Linux user experience. A user who uses Mandrake at work needs to be able to sit down at a Suse machine at home and be just as productive. There's certainly room for "geek" distros which don't follow the standard. You could still run Debian with Fluxbox (or whatever your WM of choice.) But the standard, commercial desktops need a consistent look and feel IF Linux is to succeed on the (non-geek) desktop.
You seem to be under the impression that choice is always a good thing. It isn't.
It doesn't really matter which side of the road you drive on. But it damned well would matter if it changed every time you crossed from one city to another.
The fact is that most users don't WANT to choose which windows manager they use. They want to be able to sit down at a machine and have it look and act in the same way they're used to it acting, whether it's their home machine, the machine on their desktop at work or the one at the corner Internet cafe. For power users and geeks, all this choice is a wonderful thing. For average users, it's a pain in the ass.
If we want Linux to move to the desktop (and that's a genuine "if" - it certainly isn't a given that that's necessarily the best future for Linux) but IF we want to move Linux to the desktop, it needs to be standardized. You can leave all the choices there, just as there's actually quite a bit of customization you can do to Windows if you get under the hood, but there needs to be a standard Linux "look and feel" that is a uniform default across distributions.
Who moderated this +1 insightful? How about -1 clueless?
Do you have any idea how much money IBM, Red Hat and other commercial companies have poured into Linux development? Exactly what do you think is going to replace that? If SCO were to win and Linux became illegal, Linux wouldn't dry up and blow away. But development would slow to a crawl, commercial support would wither and we'd sit back and watch the rest of the world leave us in the dust.
I agree. I picked up a leather back-pack at Sears for under $50.00. It's specifically designed for lap-tops. It has a removal, padded envelope that the laptop itself goes into, as well as a removable pouch for the power cord and several other pockets. I absolutely love it. My lap top is at home (posting from work) but I'll look up the brand as soon as I get home.
While I have no argument with any of the points you made, I personally wouldn't call those things "style" errors. I don't see not conforming to standards as a particular "style" of programming.
Java prevents you from making certain types of errors, yes. It does this by limiting your ability to perform certain kinds of tasks, and by taking over management of those tasks itself. There are cons to this approach as well as the pros of reducing certain types of bugs. (Asking which approach is "better" and which is "worse" is really rather meaningless, and depends a great deal on the particulars of the project in question.) Still, Java certainly doesn't prevent you from making errors, and there are a great many programming bugs that a code analysis can find in Java. Java code is by no means inherently "perfect."
Additionally, it's almost always invalid to compare this type of metric across language boundries. You can only compare the error rate of Java code to other Java code, not to C code or Pascal or any other language.
Well, actually, I'm not speaking only from my experience. I'm also speaking from a number of other published articles and reports. Rational has a few out concerning Purify. Reasoning (who did the MySQL study) has a couple out as well. There have also been independent studies which confirm the (possibly biased) findings of the companies who write the software analysis suites. If you're really interested in the subject, Google is your friend.
There are no guarantees, in this business or any other. But in general, people who are meticulous in their coding tend to be meticuous in all areas. If they bother to run software analysis tools and correct the bugs there, they usually bother to spend time evaluating the design and looking for bugs there as well. They also tend to test their code once written, which helps to identify those errors in coding logic that a software analysis suite can't find.
And regardless of whether or not an unitialized pointer is an easy bug to find or not, if it exists in the code it's still likely to cause an application crash. Would you rather run code which has one of those type errors every seventeen hundred lines, or code which has one every eleven thousand one hundred lines?
While it's no different in principle, the test programs used by Reasoning are much more thorough than BoundsChecker or CodeWizard. They'll catch a great many errors that common lints will completely miss.
And this is a valid metric. Studies have shown a positive corelation between clean code and fewer errors. (Incidently, null pointers and the like ARE logic errors.)
I think it's rather difficult to make the claim that MySQL's code "doesn't do much." If you think otherwise, YOU write a database engine with all of the features MySQL has and see how many lines of code you have.
I'm not sure what you mean by "grammatical" or style errors. If you're talking about syntax errors, those should prevent the code from compiling. I'm not aware of how coding style can be an error (unless you're programming in Python).
The specific errors in MySQL were dereferencing null pointers, failure to deallocate memory (memory leaks), and use an uninitialized variable. These aren't the only bugs that such an analysis can find; they're the ones that were found in MySQL. And they're definitely errors in logic.
Certainly, there are bugs that such an analysis can't find. If you define PI as 3.15, your calculations are going to be off. If you create a function to determine the circumference of a circle as 2 * PI * Diameter, you've got a bug. I suspect that those are the types of errors in logic that you were referring to, and you're right that they will not be caught by a code analysis. However, that doesn't mean that comparing the frequence of the errors that CAN be caught between two programs is an invalid act. From my experience, programmers who make fewer of the former errors also make fewer of the latter. Analyzing catchable errors is a good metric for the frequency of errors in a given source tree, even if all errors aren't caught.
Yes, it's telling. You have a college student who's writing his own OS because he can't afford the money to purchase a commercial *nix. He'd like to make it comply to the standards, but he can't afford the money to buy the standard either. This is exactly why standards should be open in every sense of the word.
Copying and pasting has supposed to have been fixed. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Under Gnome 2, you can open a file manager, and drag and drop things into the folders. I don't believe you can drag and drop on the menus themselves. If so, that may be enough to convince me to switch from KDE.
I use Windows daily at work and use Mandrake 9.2 at home. As a power user, I frequently find myself frustrated with Windows insistence on getting in the way of doing things and simple inability to handle various things. (What I wouldn't give to have real, usable links in NTFS.) However, as a user, I frequently find myself frustrated by the Linux GUI's lack of polish. I'm not knocking Gnome or KDE, just noting that they aren't there yet.
When I can drag and drop programs to the menus rather than having to run a stupid config program to alter them, and when you can get cut-and-paste to work regularly and consistently across all programs, let me know and I'll give you a host of other problems to fix.
An atheist is simply someone who doesn't believe in God.
As for my moral compass, I believe you have the right to take any action you choose so long as you cause no harm to the person or property of others. You can take that as a rational argument or an emotional one. In truth, it has aspects of both. What rational argument can you bring against that to make me change my mind?
Which isn't to say that its not possible that I may change my mind in the future.? But the same is true of the religious person. There are a great many people who once had strong religious convictions which they later abandoned. Human beings change. It's the one constant. I don't know what my viewpoint will be tomorrow, but right now, I am absolutely certain of what is right and wrong. No religious person can truthfully claim any more.
And exactly how are these two different? If I "don't believe in God," then certainly I believe in His non-existence, unless you're of the opinion that I can simultaneously not believe in Him and believe in His existence.
"God? Oh, I believe He exists but I don't believe in Him." Huh?
No, you are missing the point. All you're talking about is the certainty that the believer places in his belief. Why can't I, as a libertarian atheist, be just as sure of my viewpoint as a Christian is of his? It isn't necessary for a philosophy to claim divine guidance for a follower to be sure of it.
I don't know that I'd classify him as "the best" but he was certainly one of the best and a pioneer in many, many ways.
Any collection of information, whether a magazine, a web site or an anthology, is almost always "stuff that interests the editor(s)." What would you recommend, that the editors in charge of selecting content go out searching for stuff that bores them to tears?
The Linux Development Platform might be better titled "The GNU Development Platform" since almost all of the tools discussed come from the FSF, and those that don't are nevertheless open source; as a result they will run on almost any Unix variety. You know that the 'Linux' in the title is almost just a marketing ploy, but we will forgive Prentice Hall and the authors. Certainly more people will buy this book to learn about using these tools under Linux than under any other *nix variety.
Almost all of the tools (command line utilities, not major user apps) in Linux come from the FSF. How should this book have been different if it was oriented purely for Linux users? What tools should have been included that were left out? If you can't answer that question, then how do you justify commenting on using the word "Linux" in the title as a marketing ploy? The point you make, that it's applicable to other *nix systems, is a side effect of how *nix works and of the goals of the FSF. It doesn't mean the book is really a generic *nix book that they're calling a Linux book.
Perhaps. It's a subtle issue and one that does not have a clear answer, although a great many people argue passionately for one side or the other.
Part of the answer depends on header files. Usually, you include header files to reference the functions you call which make up the API. However, many header files are more than simply declarations of extern functions. They include macros and inline functions, which are inserted into your code and remain there after compilation. Thus you have GPL'd code in your application.
Another part of the answer depends upon the definition of "derived work." If you write a program which is dependent upon, and only works with, my specific framework, then quite arguably it's a derivative work of my framework. If you write, for example, a POSIX compliant app which runs on multiple OS's or *nixes, then quite arguable it's NOT a derived work.
Slashdot Mirror
According to Michael Crichton, your belief is responsible for global warming.
It is "free as in beer." You can drink all the beer you want. What you can't do is set up a beer stand and sell the beer you got for free to passers-by. (You can, however, sell them the cup and give them the beer for free.)
Come now, I really expect better of you than to raise such a false argument as this. Choice is the fact that Kerberos is an open standard. You and without reservation, that is a Good Thing. That is the strength of free/open source software. That doesn't mean people can't use that freedom of choice to do bad things, such as fork it and break compatibility for their own selfish ends rather than add functionality and contribute that functionality back to the main tree, but the presence of choice itself doesn't make this a bad thing. I think most citizens of democracies (of whatever type) would agree that democracy is a good thing, even though politicians often use that freedom for their own selfish ends without regard to what's good for the nation as a whole, and people often make foolish and uniformed choices in the laws and/or leaders for which they vote. These lapses, however, do not make us regard democracy - that is, choice - as a bad thing.
We're getting a bit far afield here, but you need to define "choice." Standards are all about restricting choice. However, unless someone is standing over your shoulder with a gun, you're perfectly free to ignore the standard. So does choice still exist or not?
I certainly don't advocate that we enlist squads of armed goons to go out and ensure that all Linux desktops operate consistently. Rather, I say that we need a desktop standard, somewhat similar to the Linux Standards Base, that defines how a desktop Linux should look and feel following a default install. Necessarily, that will mean standardizing on KDE or Gnome. Choice for the user still exists. You can modify your desktop or choose another windows manager either during or post installation. Distributions are free to ignore the standard if they choose.
So do standards limit choice or not? It's a matter of semantics, and one you can argue either way. I don't particularly care how you see it, since the existence of the standard is the important part.
I think perhaps we need to define "desktop" here so that we better understand each other. It has come to take on the common meaning of "home user system" even though somebody's computer at work is also a desktop.
I'd disagree with your definition of the common meaning. I often see "desktop" used to include office as well as home desktops.
For myself, I define a "desktop" as a computer who's primary role is to run general purpose software for direct use by a user. This is opposed to servers, which primarily provide services to other systems on a network, and to workstations, which primarily run a limited set of special purpose applications. That's a quick and dirty definition, not meant to be comprehensive. You could undoubtedly expend megabytes of ASCII on the subject if you wished.
It's a lot less ready for the home user desktop, not only for reasons pertaining to ease of use (burning CDs on Linux is still far more complicated than doing the same on Win/Mac, although the 2.6 kernel will take care of those issues, and Konqueror in KDE 3.2 will support drag-and-drop CD creation) but for the same reason that Windows isn't really ready for that market either: the world of networked computing has become a very hostile place, far more than it used it be, and not only Windows but most Linux distributions as well, has a default install that is far to open for a computer that may be connected to the Internet directly, without even NAT standing between it and the blackhats. On this score in particular, I think Mac OS X is more ready for the desktop than any other system, but that doesn't surprise me. Macs have always been hard to crack, relative to most other platforms.
I have a hard time accepting this as an argument that Linux isn't ready for the desktop. You're not talking about anything inherent to Linux itself but merely critisizing the choice of the default security posture. Mandrake, which you seem to hold in contempt, ask the user what the role of the machine is to be and ada
I beg to differ. Choice is, in fact, always a good thing.
:-)
So you have no problem when Microsoft takes a protocol such as Kerberos and adapts it just enough that it doesn't work with most other implementations? After all, they're just exercising their choice in how they implement the protocol, and choice is ALWAYS a good thing.
I'd think you were an MS supporter trolling, except for the fact that you're conversant with terms like "window manager," so it would appear that you're actually a slightly misguided Linux supporter, thus you merit an answer
I downloaded my first Linux distribution on a 14.4 modem. It was Yggdrasil (sp?) if I remember correctly, and consisted of around 15 or so floppy disk images. It took me almost two days to get them all from a BBS via zmodem. My first CD version was Slackware from Owl Creek. So I wasn't there quite at the beginning but I was definitely the first of the Johhny-come-latelys. I'm a long way from a *nix wizard but I compile my own kernels and use regular expressions in my perl scripts. I have a Debian box which runs qmail, mailman (I host a couple of mailing lists), apache and NATs my DSL connection to my home network. I used Debian unstable on my desktop for almost two years, but wanted something a little more up to date, so I switched to Mandrake about six months ago. I also run a Windows machine that I use for finances (because I can't wean the wife away from Quicken) and for games. In other words, I'm not a kernel hacker and there's undoubtedly more about Linux that I don't know than there is that I do know. But I'm not a Luser or a new comer either.
I said in my post that choice was a great thing for geeks and power users. That includes both me and you. If Linux was dumbed down to the point where we could no longer choose our own windows manager, I don't know for certain that it would kill it but something precious would definitely have been lost.
I also said that I'm far from convinced that moving to the desktop is the way Linux should go. However, a great many people ARE convinced. And IF that's to happen, Linux needs a standard interface.
Yes, every distribution works out of the box. Both KDE and Gnome work fine. But they don't work the same as each other. I use KDE, and I get frustrated sometimes if I sit down at a Gnome machine. Things don't work the way I'm used to. Things are in a different place. It's not that one is better or worse than the other. It's just that they're different.
Your argument is that Linux has no place on the commercial desktop. I'm not absolutely convinced of that, but I certainly won't argue against you either.
However, if the forces that be decide to disregard your counsel, and if Linux is too carve out a niche for itself in the desktop world, it isn't sufficient that each distribution function in its own right. Rather, there needs to be standard desktop which defines the desktop Linux user experience. A user who uses Mandrake at work needs to be able to sit down at a Suse machine at home and be just as productive. There's certainly room for "geek" distros which don't follow the standard. You could still run Debian with Fluxbox (or whatever your WM of choice.) But the standard, commercial desktops need a consistent look and feel IF Linux is to succeed on the (non-geek) desktop.
You seem to be under the impression that choice is always a good thing. It isn't.
It doesn't really matter which side of the road you drive on. But it damned well would matter if it changed every time you crossed from one city to another.
The fact is that most users don't WANT to choose which windows manager they use. They want to be able to sit down at a machine and have it look and act in the same way they're used to it acting, whether it's their home machine, the machine on their desktop at work or the one at the corner Internet cafe. For power users and geeks, all this choice is a wonderful thing. For average users, it's a pain in the ass.
If we want Linux to move to the desktop (and that's a genuine "if" - it certainly isn't a given that that's necessarily the best future for Linux) but IF we want to move Linux to the desktop, it needs to be standardized. You can leave all the choices there, just as there's actually quite a bit of customization you can do to Windows if you get under the hood, but there needs to be a standard Linux "look and feel" that is a uniform default across distributions.
Who moderated this +1 insightful? How about -1 clueless?
Do you have any idea how much money IBM, Red Hat and other commercial companies have poured into Linux development? Exactly what do you think is going to replace that? If SCO were to win and Linux became illegal, Linux wouldn't dry up and blow away. But development would slow to a crawl, commercial support would wither and we'd sit back and watch the rest of the world leave us in the dust.
I agree. I picked up a leather back-pack at Sears for under $50.00. It's specifically designed for lap-tops. It has a removal, padded envelope that the laptop itself goes into, as well as a removable pouch for the power cord and several other pockets. I absolutely love it. My lap top is at home (posting from work) but I'll look up the brand as soon as I get home.
While I have no argument with any of the points you made, I personally wouldn't call those things "style" errors. I don't see not conforming to standards as a particular "style" of programming.
Java prevents you from making certain types of errors, yes. It does this by limiting your ability to perform certain kinds of tasks, and by taking over management of those tasks itself. There are cons to this approach as well as the pros of reducing certain types of bugs. (Asking which approach is "better" and which is "worse" is really rather meaningless, and depends a great deal on the particulars of the project in question.) Still, Java certainly doesn't prevent you from making errors, and there are a great many programming bugs that a code analysis can find in Java. Java code is by no means inherently "perfect."
Additionally, it's almost always invalid to compare this type of metric across language boundries. You can only compare the error rate of Java code to other Java code, not to C code or Pascal or any other language.
Well, actually, I'm not speaking only from my experience. I'm also speaking from a number of other published articles and reports. Rational has a few out concerning Purify. Reasoning (who did the MySQL study) has a couple out as well. There have also been independent studies which confirm the (possibly biased) findings of the companies who write the software analysis suites. If you're really interested in the subject, Google is your friend.
There are no guarantees, in this business or any other. But in general, people who are meticulous in their coding tend to be meticuous in all areas. If they bother to run software analysis tools and correct the bugs there, they usually bother to spend time evaluating the design and looking for bugs there as well. They also tend to test their code once written, which helps to identify those errors in coding logic that a software analysis suite can't find.
And regardless of whether or not an unitialized pointer is an easy bug to find or not, if it exists in the code it's still likely to cause an application crash. Would you rather run code which has one of those type errors every seventeen hundred lines, or code which has one every eleven thousand one hundred lines?
While it's no different in principle, the test programs used by Reasoning are much more thorough than BoundsChecker or CodeWizard. They'll catch a great many errors that common lints will completely miss.
And this is a valid metric. Studies have shown a positive corelation between clean code and fewer errors. (Incidently, null pointers and the like ARE logic errors.)
I think it's rather difficult to make the claim that MySQL's code "doesn't do much." If you think otherwise, YOU write a database engine with all of the features MySQL has and see how many lines of code you have.
I'm not sure what you mean by "grammatical" or style errors. If you're talking about syntax errors, those should prevent the code from compiling. I'm not aware of how coding style can be an error (unless you're programming in Python).
The specific errors in MySQL were dereferencing null pointers, failure to deallocate memory (memory leaks), and use an uninitialized variable. These aren't the only bugs that such an analysis can find; they're the ones that were found in MySQL. And they're definitely errors in logic.
Certainly, there are bugs that such an analysis can't find. If you define PI as 3.15, your calculations are going to be off. If you create a function to determine the circumference of a circle as 2 * PI * Diameter, you've got a bug. I suspect that those are the types of errors in logic that you were referring to, and you're right that they will not be caught by a code analysis. However, that doesn't mean that comparing the frequence of the errors that CAN be caught between two programs is an invalid act. From my experience, programmers who make fewer of the former errors also make fewer of the latter. Analyzing catchable errors is a good metric for the frequency of errors in a given source tree, even if all errors aren't caught.
Yes, it's telling. You have a college student who's writing his own OS because he can't afford the money to purchase a commercial *nix. He'd like to make it comply to the standards, but he can't afford the money to buy the standard either. This is exactly why standards should be open in every sense of the word.
Copying and pasting has supposed to have been fixed. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Under Gnome 2, you can open a file manager, and drag and drop things into the folders. I don't believe you can drag and drop on the menus themselves. If so, that may be enough to convince me to switch from KDE.
I use Windows daily at work and use Mandrake 9.2 at home. As a power user, I frequently find myself frustrated with Windows insistence on getting in the way of doing things and simple inability to handle various things. (What I wouldn't give to have real, usable links in NTFS.) However, as a user, I frequently find myself frustrated by the Linux GUI's lack of polish. I'm not knocking Gnome or KDE, just noting that they aren't there yet.
When I can drag and drop programs to the menus rather than having to run a stupid config program to alter them, and when you can get cut-and-paste to work regularly and consistently across all programs, let me know and I'll give you a host of other problems to fix.
An atheist is simply someone who doesn't believe in God.
As for my moral compass, I believe you have the right to take any action you choose so long as you cause no harm to the person or property of others. You can take that as a rational argument or an emotional one. In truth, it has aspects of both. What rational argument can you bring against that to make me change my mind?
Which isn't to say that its not possible that I may change my mind in the future.? But the same is true of the religious person. There are a great many people who once had strong religious convictions which they later abandoned. Human beings change. It's the one constant. I don't know what my viewpoint will be tomorrow, but right now, I am absolutely certain of what is right and wrong. No religious person can truthfully claim any more.
And exactly how are these two different? If I "don't believe in God," then certainly I believe in His non-existence, unless you're of the opinion that I can simultaneously not believe in Him and believe in His existence.
"God? Oh, I believe He exists but I don't believe in Him." Huh?
No, you are missing the point. All you're talking about is the certainty that the believer places in his belief. Why can't I, as a libertarian atheist, be just as sure of my viewpoint as a Christian is of his? It isn't necessary for a philosophy to claim divine guidance for a follower to be sure of it.
Not a point for point rebuttal, but I rather enjoyed what Michael Crichton had to say to the Commonwealth Club.
I don't know that I'd classify him as "the best" but he was certainly one of the best and a pioneer in many, many ways.
Any collection of information, whether a magazine, a web site or an anthology, is almost always "stuff that interests the editor(s)." What would you recommend, that the editors in charge of selecting content go out searching for stuff that bores them to tears?
The Linux Development Platform might be better titled "The GNU Development Platform" since almost all of the tools discussed come from the FSF, and those that don't are nevertheless open source; as a result they will run on almost any Unix variety. You know that the 'Linux' in the title is almost just a marketing ploy, but we will forgive Prentice Hall and the authors. Certainly more people will buy this book to learn about using these tools under Linux than under any other *nix variety.
Almost all of the tools (command line utilities, not major user apps) in Linux come from the FSF. How should this book have been different if it was oriented purely for Linux users? What tools should have been included that were left out? If you can't answer that question, then how do you justify commenting on using the word "Linux" in the title as a marketing ploy? The point you make, that it's applicable to other *nix systems, is a side effect of how *nix works and of the goals of the FSF. It doesn't mean the book is really a generic *nix book that they're calling a Linux book.
Perhaps. It's a subtle issue and one that does not have a clear answer, although a great many people argue passionately for one side or the other.
Part of the answer depends on header files. Usually, you include header files to reference the functions you call which make up the API. However, many header files are more than simply declarations of extern functions. They include macros and inline functions, which are inserted into your code and remain there after compilation. Thus you have GPL'd code in your application.
Another part of the answer depends upon the definition of "derived work." If you write a program which is dependent upon, and only works with, my specific framework, then quite arguably it's a derivative work of my framework. If you write, for example, a POSIX compliant app which runs on multiple OS's or *nixes, then quite arguable it's NOT a derived work.
See here for Linus' take on the issue.
Get Popfile. Perl-based Baysean filter that works on either Linux or Windows with any POP3 server.
No. It just means that you think they can shovel enough shit on the fire for the price to go up even more, and you can then unload at a profit.