Oh really? If creating a kernel is sooo damned easy, then why didn't anyone, you know, ACTUALLY DO IT? Right now, Linux can and does exist without any GNU involved - ever heard of, you know, Android?
Yep! You replace the GNU userland with Android userland because the Linux kernel needs a userland. Like I said, if it hadn't utilized the GNU userland it wouldn't have taken off, no one would have used it, it would still be in development. Android didn't exist and BSD was in a legal mire, besides BSD has a nice kernel already, why would anyone have adopted a rough around the edges new kernel (Linux)? Man, it's like I'm explaining logic to a child... Whelp, my code's compiling and the coffee's brewing so here goes:
Why didn't anyone else invent the Light Bulb? Oh, except they did. Edison came along and figured out which gas (argon) to put in the bulb, others were doing this work as well. Yet most folks wrongly attribute Edison with the invention of the incandescent bulb, despite vacuum incandescent bulbs being patented for years prior. For me the reason why I didn't create a kernel first was because I didn't have free time, I was only 12 at the time and only learning how to create TSR (terminate stay resident) programs for DOS while going to school and doing chores, being a kid -- I hadn't found out about Unix or GNU at that time. I did have an inkling to make an OS since I used DR DOS, and MS DOS, and several BASIC ROM systems, and thought that was something I wanted to try, and now I have, and I'm trying new and different things, like using separate call and data stacks, arranging code and data with gaps in the virtual memory to catch overruns, you know, stuff that you can only do in a nimble small project, that if they work out might just get adopted by bigger projects, like BSD or Linux. Regardless of whether I use Linux, I can still think it sucks that the license is unchangeable / non upgradeable. It's not just Linus's code in there, there's lots of contributors, I'm not the only one that share's this sentiment, but not even Linus can change the license now because there's been too many contributors under the license without the "at your option" clause to track them all down -- Being fine with that is fine, but I say it sucks, and suspect he might have wanted to allow it to be changed at some point, from some debates over the matter before it was seen as outright impossible -- Perhaps Linus isn't immune to a bit of revisionism WRT his firm stance?
Let's think back, OK, so Linus was 21 when he started Linux and in university, he'd been there for some time, got some classes out of the way. He sort of dilly dallied around a bit, so he did have a lot more time at Helsinki than most: He Spent ~9 years, he says, in Universtiy, was even a teacher's assistant for a while... So, he's been exposed to Unix and GNU, and can't afford Unix for his PC, but wants it for running projects on his own hardware, and realizes there's only the kernel left to build with the GNU project and has lots of time to tinker, so he takes the opportunity and makes it. From the very beginning there were collaborators to help him and spread the word, so GNU/Linux takes off because it's the first PC Unix clone, at the right place in the right time. Simple, eh? That enough why?
Let's face it, there's not a whole ton of interesting difference between one monolithic kernel and the next, so there's no real reason to switch to a new monolithic kernel. I'm just saying, it could have been anybody, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to keep the filaments from burning out -- You can either vacuum out the air or add a non-flamable gass -- Linus made the simplest kernel design there is and we're still running with it... The reason we're not using HURD / HIRD is that it's got a problem in its design: Since any fs module can provide a different mapping for "..", instead of having an overarching path manager, it means some things can mess with the paths. It's also a lot mor
You jest, but that's exactly what many folks have done, investigate the prior link. Tellingly: You don't need to make your new kernel compatible with "the linux kernel" to get driver support, nope, you just implement ELF and use GNU gcc, and bootstrap a host of other GNU code. Hey, but don't take my word for it smart guy, click that link in my post. Wow, already done. Even sooner than your 2 week deadline. Do I get a fucking cookie now? Seriously, The Pedestal Is Too Tall.
I find your comment pretty damn silly considering the link I provided you with many examples of OSs that have done exactly what you ask, as if it's hard to do or hasn't been done... Maybe that's why it's modded funny? Surely it couldn't be ignorance of the mods who thought your failed attempt at sarcasm actually had teeth?
Goatsects is still around in various forms. What's primarily happened is that hosting your persona stuff has been subsidized by advertising and data aggregation instead of being a bit more private (if you use a proxy registrar contact) and hosting your own servers. That's still possible, but there's less demand for it now.
I think it's a shame really, because we do need our own publicly/privately accessible servers to stream "our" stuff (music, video, pics, ramblings, etc) to us. With the rise of consumption centric devices I think we might see a rise in both online hosting services for more of your stuff at the cost of more privacy (social graph sites), and home-server and paid hosting solutions for the more privacy conscious. It's kind of silly that Facebook, G+, etc. don't have an API for adding a remote friend -- Where the social site would scrape my private server that implements a public API (RSS anyone?) so that users of their services can get updates from folks outside the service. You can sort of cobble together something with G+ & Google Reader, but it's not nearly as integrated with the social stuff, and RSS has no "bueno" button.
"The web we lost" Bah, Humbug. What about the Internet we lost? Everything's caught up in the "web", which would be fine if it wasn't an overly complicated inefficient document rendering markup and stateless protocol, that people try to cobble into stateful online applications with a horribly inefficient scripting langauge... It's so bad that we're still waiting for HTML5 to be formalized, it's been over 12 years since HTML4.01 -- About half the age of the damn web. If we were serious about this thing, We'd be making a lower level glyph & vector graphics display system with a more efficient general purpose VM language (for great sandboxing justice) as the primary target. Every damn site is an application now, which means a kludge ridden mess. Simple Primitives, then work your way up, HTML + CSS + Active Code could compile down to lower level primitives such that we could innovate in the higher level stuff, or even scrap it while remaining compatible with old sites. Take a page from the CPU architectures. How many coding languages are there? They don't require a new platform each time. Starting off at the markup level and building such a platform there is kind of silly if you ask me. Java tried to save us, but they became too bloated and interested in Enterprise instead of a lean mean client side system -- Sun dropped the ball w/ Applets instead of splitting them out like they did J2ME stuff. Here we are, same damn web, hacking together features we want that it was never designed to support, then crying like babby who can't frigth back when it's more full of exploits than an AOL Punt tool.
if it weren't for Mr. Torvald's kernel, the GNU project would be still spinning its wheels.
Creating a kernel is easy. How long did it take Linus? Certainly not DECADES. Were it not for GNU, Linus's kernel wouldn't have done ANYTHING, and we'd STILL be waiting for him to get a decent compiler and userland tool suit running. Think about it. "I'm going to install the Linux Kernel!" "Why, it just sits there not doing a damned thing, doesn't even have a file system." Seriously. People make Monolithic Kernels all the damn time, it's not even hard. I wrote such a kernel and boot loader in x86 ASM in about two weeks worth of evenings for my toy OS. Linus' was just the first one to come along, and that's good enough for FLOSS. It sucks that GNU gets dropped from the name given how much MORE work was put into it than the dead simple kernel Linus wrote, and it really sucks that he didn't use the "at your option any future version" text in the license, -- I mean, he made it impossible to change the license why? It's not like commercial folks couldn't stay with GPL2 "at their option". I don't know man, you sound like you're putting Linus on a much higher pedestal than you need to. Great guy and all, but come on, what he did was and still is a TINY fraction of the work.
There is an enormous temperature differential, as well as pressure differential, between sea level air and high level atmospheric air. I've often thought that fact could be used to make a very efficient and cheap source of power.
The same temperature differential exists in the oceans. Very cold deep, and warmer near the surface. Unlimited free energy if you can harness it.
Where does this "heat" come from? Why not just harness it directly from there? You know, solar...
Obvious Observation, Misleading Conclusions.
on
Real World Code Sucks
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Yeah, they're right about the state of things, but they get the "why" part totally fucking wrong:
The most common reason for the existence of bad software is bad programmers.
NOPE! Bad software is a result of BAD Code, even good programmers can write bad code...
At the other end of the spectrum, many projects are sabotaged by developers who are “too good”
NOPE! Maybe those scare quotes are there for a reason, but "doing things the most complex way possible" is usually because coding is iterative and there was no way for you to know of the unforeseeable future requirements.
And then there’s “bad” laziness, the kind that leads programmers to cut corners or do things in the quickest possible way, rather than taking the three extra hours to do them right.
NOPE! You're assuming that the programmer WANTED to do things the quickest way possible...
If the system is working, almost no manager will pay just to have you recode a piece of it “the right way,” without adding any new functionality. There’s always something more important that needs to be done—until that quick-and-dirty fix blows up and (because it’s urgent) gets replaced by another quick-and-dirty fix.
BINGO! This. Everything, all of the other bullshit is due to Management. Not just not paying to have things done right (see: Fast, Good, Cheap), but also unrealistic schedules and deadlines, new features being promised by sales without consulting the programmers, etc. Deadlines exist. That's why even a good programmer hacks in a kludge ridden short cut instead of taking the time to do it the right way: There is no time to take! The most common reason for bad software isn't bad programmers, is bad management and terrible working conditions. See also: Getting what you pay for when you outsource the programming department. The outsourced workers will get it done cheaper in less time -- Cheap, FAST -- What's missing here, eh? GOOD Sadly to compete with the fast and cheap the goodness of the software must be sacrificed.
As mentioned above, C++, despite its superficial similarities to Java, is infinitely easier than Java to write impenetrable code in. And one language I’ve been warned about, though I’ve never had the opportunity to use it, is Haskell, an offshoot of ML. According to a friend in academia who’s studied it, it’s “the Taliban version of ML,” in which it’s all but impossible to write readable code.
Just stop talking noob.
In the real world, tight budgets, shortsighted managers, and unreasonable expectations from non-techies almost always conspire to make developers do things too quickly.
You mention this and yet you somehow fail to realize THIS, not Languages, not Laziness, not Ignorance, not Hubris, is what is really the root cause of all the damn evil?! Fuck you, man. You're part of the problem.
In conclusion: Bad software is primarily a result of GREED.
Brace position and spacing both are encompassed by the whitespace argument that I was referring to.
Except that a diff isn't going to ignore whitespace when broken across multiple lines, verses a one liner. See also: Python.
You're preaching to the choir, btw, but also you're making the wrong argument. Whitespace does matter, it just shouldn't matter how it's configured, just that it's consistently applied.
The reality of the situation is that if I reformat a 100 char line to be broken across lines with max 80 chars, and go back and forth doing this it thrashes the code repository. Diffs are general purpose, they don't understand code syntax, you've used them haven't you? Newlines are whitespace. They don't lexically parse code ignoring all whitespace, they work line by line. However, Compilers DO understand their own syntax! IMO, all compilers should have the option to lex & reformat inputs to whatever style you want based on an input rule sheet of some kind. Currently this is handled disparately in a non standardized way by IDEs, scripts, etc. In fact, many projects will have a script or program that you should run your code through before committing it. This allows you to code however you like, while giving the codebase a consistent and uniform look.
Any moron complaining about whitespace in code doesn't really belong in coding.
I find this statement moronic and/or ignorant. If you don't think that a uniformity and consistency help while reading and understanding text (including code), then you've never studied the human brain much at all. We're pattern matching machines. If the patterns change from page to page then it IS actually harder to read. The first thing I usually do when working on a new project is equip my editor/IDE with a style guide for the project to transform all code into my preferred style while editing. Then I can edit in the pattern than I'm most used to dealing with -- It's faster because that's how brains work. Being more efficient and taking advantage of my brain's natural tendencies isn't moronic, it's smart.
On save, or before commit the code is transformed into the project's style guide by an auto formatter. I think this is the best, because I have cognitive science research to back it up, repetition of tasks builds "muscle memory", etc. So, my use of whitespace rules is actually faster than adapting to each project. Now, given that we don't have all compilers with such option to transform data on the fly to our preferences, and we can't always rely on the other coders to be using IDEs that can do this, the next best thing is having a project wide coding standard, and that's exactly what we do. Seriously, what sort of experience do you have where you haven't run into this commonality yourself? What's more likely that everyone is wrong but you or that we've all been down the road before and have arrived at a common consensus? Level up your knowledge. To me you sound rather ignorant and quick to make assumptions, thus foolish.
There are companies who make real physical products that are counterfited by cheap knockoffs. These could have benefited from an anti counterfiting treaty. But Nooooooo. Hollywood hijacked the entire process, in secret, just to take away people's rights under the guise of alleged copyright infringement.
The real kicker is that when you make a knockoff of a digital item it's actually possible for the "counterfeit" item to be better than the original by providing other features -- Already small enough for your portable media player, or removed defective-by-design DRM... It would be as if you counterfeited money, and the bank actually prefers it to legal tender.
Don't even get me started on artificial scarcity of information. Let's sell Ice to Eskimos! No you fools, that's dumb! We won't make creating ice illegal. Let's sell Bits to folks with Computing Devices! Uhmm.. wait, isn't that the same thin-- Oh, fine, whatever, here's some laws against copying, now go away.
That always puzzled me as well. Stupid USB. Just have the female connector have 4 pins on both sides, the male connector with 4 pins on only one side. Hey look, it's a self orienting mechanical interconnect! Even cheaper than an 8 pin auto-orienter cable! Ah, but you couldn't prevent folks from duplicating the design so easily. Sometimes, it's like everyone's a moron but me.
Well thanks asshole. I can't even begin to express how comforting it was to not know there had been a remake. Why did you have to ruin my blissful ignorance?
Heh, damn I'm in the same boat. Well misery loves company, so: They made two Matrix movie sequels, and three Star Wars prequels (and Disney plans to make a bunch more). Lost in Space was remade too, oh, so was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Hmm, Oh! Battlestar Galactica rebooted, wasn't so bad except the latter half (oh, and who the hell was that BG prequel spinoff "Caprica" even for?). Not even Flash Gorden is sacred, (don't) see: 1980's remake. I'm sure you know about the Star Trek universe being completely forked due to Spock going back in time with that damn lava lamp shit, if not, you do now! Dr. Who never stops being re-remade. Do you recall Total Recall? Yup recalled. Terminator? Unterminated... Just when you think they're running out of classics to ruin, they go after "instant classics": Cowboy Bebop is rumored to have Keanu as Spike... Hopefully Firefly and Red Dwarf will stay under the radar for a while. I could go on for hours... but this one's a doozy: Somehow The X Files got a whole network as a remake: History Channel
Nah, just diffuse them. Don't ever launch them, outlaw that shit. Use 'em for powering space stuff or energy plants, never weapons. We've got other better more precision weapons. Think about Nuclear Retaliation... really? Even if fired on, or as a last ditch effort to win some war, wouldn't it be better not to launch a nuke? I mean, imagine you're now going to die... Soooo... what? You whip an Uzi out from under your death-bead pillow to take a few others down with you? FUCK THE LIVING! I'M DYING ANYWAY. I can't find much difference between this type of thinking and the mentality of those suicide bombers, or climate change denialists.
I installed Ubuntu for my father who is in his 80's. Not only does he know nothing about Linux, he doesn't even know that he is using Linux.
Yep, same experience here: I installed Ubuntu for my girlfriend to upgrade from XP when Windows 7 came out.
"Ubuntu"? Does that mean "Windows" in, like, African? OMG, I heard of something like this! You bought me the expensive African version to help out all those starving kids!::smooch::
I never had the heart to tell her it wasn't Windows.
Couldn't this serve to discourage ISPs from improving their infrastructure? If they let their infrastructure age, they'd be spending nothing on improvement, and would eventually be allowed to put data caps in place as bandwidth usage increases.
They have no incentive currently. In fact, applying data caps is how they decided to make more money instead of building out infrastructure to meet demand. Look, data caps don't help congestion at all (except, perhaps, through fear of using your service?) If the services are over-subscribed then at peak times the load is more than the bandwidth they advertise -- Think rush hour traffic. Would limiting the distance you could drive per month reduce the demand for car lanes during rush hour? Ni, ni and ni... That's just silly! Instead what you'd do is limit your over all use so that you were assured driving distance when you needed it. This means that there would be less Traffic on Off Peak Times -- When there is plenty of bandwidth available! This is also why metered bandwidth is a farce, unless they charge a lot more during peak times.
There has to be enough hardware in place to handle that peak load, the number of bits doesn't matter over a month -- It only matters during off peak times: The hardware is still there, it's just not being used. The Current doesn't matter, it's the Pressure / Voltage! The Wires have to be big enough for peak usage, not for total power used in a day, week or month, it's not like you use up the electrons and the wires have to be replaced... THINK MAN!
You must understand, it's more profitable in the short term to over sell bandwidth than to build out infrastructure. The data caps are merely an attempt to squeeze more money out of the system. WTF does it matter if you use netflix or bittorrent all night long when there is plenty of bandwidth to go around? The problem is that there are more folks trying to use the same sized pipe during peak times -- Not that the damn routers run out of bits!
Patents don't stifle innovation........ they protect innovation. If there were no patents, then companies would not invest huge amounts of money inventing and innovating.
I'm a scientist, so: PROVE IT
Oh, that's right you have no evidence to support your untested theory, because we have ZERO evidence that patents are beneficial at all. Ah, so the only logical thing to do would be to collect some evidence, eh? THEN we could settle this argument once and for all. I'm sure you'd agree, I mean, You're not one of those fools who shies away from The Scientific Method, are you? Well then, you can only agree that we must first abolish patents to see if they are beneficial at all. Not doing the experiment is pants-on-head retarding progress.
It's nearly 11am, tomorrow, in eastern Australia. No sign of the apocalypse yet.:)
If you're looking for a temporally bound EOL canary, you'll fine none better than Nukualofa, which is UTC+13 -- That's right, an hour ahead of anywhere else. For instance, if you're in a -12 UTC zone, then they're not one, but two days ahead of you for an hour each day.
Just ban all patents. What proof do we have that they are beneficial? None. We have ZERO evidence, no relevant control group w/o patents to examine -- Oh, wait, except for in certain markets, like Fashion and Automobiles; Neither are allowed design patents yet they excel in innovative designs. OK, so we have two half-assed control groups where patents aren't allowed, and yet they're more than innovative despite not having patent protections... For everything else? We have no proof whatsoever that patents are beneficial at all, and yet the system continues. It's just bad science.
It's not like we can't re-enact whatever crap laws we want later. I see all these folks asking for patent reform, NO. The only acceptable logical solution is to abolish patents until it can be proven that they're beneficial and without significant bad side effects, and investigation or recalls if some harm is discovered after we've approved the system. We don't allow new drugs on the shelves until they're PROVEN safe, why would any sane individual agree to apply the UNPROVEN HYPOTHESIS that "patents are good" to our economy?
No Scientist or Engineer would agree to be ruled this way: Brittan had them, so we should have them too! No study or test group required, let's apply it to the whole economy! This is completely asinine!
1) The Bayesian model assumes that events in the world are inherently uncertain and that the job of an intelligent system is to discover the probabilities.
2) The competing model, by contrast, assumes that events in the world are perfectly consistent and that the job of an intelligent system is to discover this perfection.
Then you have AI (machine intelligence) researchers like myself who realize that the world isn't persistent, perfect or consistent, and neither must intelligent systems be. It's plainly obvious that any sufficiently complex cybernetic (feedback loop) system is indistinguishable from sentience because that's what sentience is (your mind is merely a sentient cybernetic system). I have but to look at the hierarchical neural networks and structures of the human mind to realize it's only a matter of time before the artificial system complexity eclipses our own minds'. The true flaw is top-down thinking. That's not the way complex life was made, that's not the way we achieved sentience, that's not the way to cause it to happen artificially either... It's the bottom up approach that works. You can't design sentient intelligences outright, but you can create self organizing systems that have the capacity to acquire more complexity, and evolve more intelligence. Not all machine intelligence systems have an end to the training process -- These don't fit into your bullshit 1) and 2) classifications.
Also: The level of intelligence that emerges from any complex system is not artificial, it is real intelligence; That the medium is artificial is not important in terms of intelligence. I think "Artificial Intelligence" is a racist term used by chauvinists that think human intellect is far more special than it really is.
Want to see something funny? Ask an AI researcher if they believe in Intelligent Design. If they say "Yes" then say, "So you think yourself a god?" If they say, "No" then say, "What do you call yourself doing then?". Those working in emergent intelligence will happily reply that they're modeling the same processes that we already know work in nature, the others will be in quite a state!
About the same time we started calling antennae "aerials". For reference: It was around the time when we stopped calling the mathematicians who solved equations for the engineers upstairs "computers".
Slashdot Mirror
Oh really? If creating a kernel is sooo damned easy, then why didn't anyone, you know, ACTUALLY DO IT? Right now, Linux can and does exist without any GNU involved - ever heard of, you know, Android?
Yep! You replace the GNU userland with Android userland because the Linux kernel needs a userland. Like I said, if it hadn't utilized the GNU userland it wouldn't have taken off, no one would have used it, it would still be in development. Android didn't exist and BSD was in a legal mire, besides BSD has a nice kernel already, why would anyone have adopted a rough around the edges new kernel (Linux)? Man, it's like I'm explaining logic to a child... Whelp, my code's compiling and the coffee's brewing so here goes:
Why didn't anyone else invent the Light Bulb? Oh, except they did. Edison came along and figured out which gas (argon) to put in the bulb, others were doing this work as well. Yet most folks wrongly attribute Edison with the invention of the incandescent bulb, despite vacuum incandescent bulbs being patented for years prior. For me the reason why I didn't create a kernel first was because I didn't have free time, I was only 12 at the time and only learning how to create TSR (terminate stay resident) programs for DOS while going to school and doing chores, being a kid -- I hadn't found out about Unix or GNU at that time. I did have an inkling to make an OS since I used DR DOS, and MS DOS, and several BASIC ROM systems, and thought that was something I wanted to try, and now I have, and I'm trying new and different things, like using separate call and data stacks, arranging code and data with gaps in the virtual memory to catch overruns, you know, stuff that you can only do in a nimble small project, that if they work out might just get adopted by bigger projects, like BSD or Linux. Regardless of whether I use Linux, I can still think it sucks that the license is unchangeable / non upgradeable. It's not just Linus's code in there, there's lots of contributors, I'm not the only one that share's this sentiment, but not even Linus can change the license now because there's been too many contributors under the license without the "at your option" clause to track them all down -- Being fine with that is fine, but I say it sucks, and suspect he might have wanted to allow it to be changed at some point, from some debates over the matter before it was seen as outright impossible -- Perhaps Linus isn't immune to a bit of revisionism WRT his firm stance?
Let's think back, OK, so Linus was 21 when he started Linux and in university, he'd been there for some time, got some classes out of the way. He sort of dilly dallied around a bit, so he did have a lot more time at Helsinki than most: He Spent ~9 years, he says, in Universtiy, was even a teacher's assistant for a while... So, he's been exposed to Unix and GNU, and can't afford Unix for his PC, but wants it for running projects on his own hardware, and realizes there's only the kernel left to build with the GNU project and has lots of time to tinker, so he takes the opportunity and makes it. From the very beginning there were collaborators to help him and spread the word, so GNU/Linux takes off because it's the first PC Unix clone, at the right place in the right time. Simple, eh? That enough why?
Let's face it, there's not a whole ton of interesting difference between one monolithic kernel and the next, so there's no real reason to switch to a new monolithic kernel. I'm just saying, it could have been anybody, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to keep the filaments from burning out -- You can either vacuum out the air or add a non-flamable gass -- Linus made the simplest kernel design there is and we're still running with it... The reason we're not using HURD / HIRD is that it's got a problem in its design: Since any fs module can provide a different mapping for "..", instead of having an overarching path manager, it means some things can mess with the paths. It's also a lot mor
You jest, but that's exactly what many folks have done, investigate the prior link. Tellingly: You don't need to make your new kernel compatible with "the linux kernel" to get driver support, nope, you just implement ELF and use GNU gcc, and bootstrap a host of other GNU code. Hey, but don't take my word for it smart guy, click that link in my post. Wow, already done. Even sooner than your 2 week deadline. Do I get a fucking cookie now? Seriously, The Pedestal Is Too Tall.
I find your comment pretty damn silly considering the link I provided you with many examples of OSs that have done exactly what you ask, as if it's hard to do or hasn't been done... Maybe that's why it's modded funny? Surely it couldn't be ignorance of the mods who thought your failed attempt at sarcasm actually had teeth?
I click on the contract based programming link to know what the fuss is about and I get landed on a separate press release? Wtf?
Always read the fine print before you agree to follow a contract...
Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
Speaking of the "lost web", we no longer see as many offbeat websites
I dunno, we haven't lost Zombo.Com, there's even a HTML5 Zombo.com
Goatsects is still around in various forms. What's primarily happened is that hosting your persona stuff has been subsidized by advertising and data aggregation instead of being a bit more private (if you use a proxy registrar contact) and hosting your own servers. That's still possible, but there's less demand for it now.
I think it's a shame really, because we do need our own publicly/privately accessible servers to stream "our" stuff (music, video, pics, ramblings, etc) to us. With the rise of consumption centric devices I think we might see a rise in both online hosting services for more of your stuff at the cost of more privacy (social graph sites), and home-server and paid hosting solutions for the more privacy conscious. It's kind of silly that Facebook, G+, etc. don't have an API for adding a remote friend -- Where the social site would scrape my private server that implements a public API (RSS anyone?) so that users of their services can get updates from folks outside the service. You can sort of cobble together something with G+ & Google Reader, but it's not nearly as integrated with the social stuff, and RSS has no "bueno" button.
"The web we lost" Bah, Humbug. What about the Internet we lost? Everything's caught up in the "web", which would be fine if it wasn't an overly complicated inefficient document rendering markup and stateless protocol, that people try to cobble into stateful online applications with a horribly inefficient scripting langauge... It's so bad that we're still waiting for HTML5 to be formalized, it's been over 12 years since HTML4.01 -- About half the age of the damn web. If we were serious about this thing, We'd be making a lower level glyph & vector graphics display system with a more efficient general purpose VM language (for great sandboxing justice) as the primary target. Every damn site is an application now, which means a kludge ridden mess. Simple Primitives, then work your way up, HTML + CSS + Active Code could compile down to lower level primitives such that we could innovate in the higher level stuff, or even scrap it while remaining compatible with old sites. Take a page from the CPU architectures. How many coding languages are there? They don't require a new platform each time. Starting off at the markup level and building such a platform there is kind of silly if you ask me. Java tried to save us, but they became too bloated and interested in Enterprise instead of a lean mean client side system -- Sun dropped the ball w/ Applets instead of splitting them out like they did J2ME stuff. Here we are, same damn web, hacking together features we want that it was never designed to support, then crying like babby who can't frigth back when it's more full of exploits than an AOL Punt tool.
if it weren't for Mr. Torvald's kernel, the GNU project would be still spinning its wheels.
Creating a kernel is easy. How long did it take Linus? Certainly not DECADES. Were it not for GNU, Linus's kernel wouldn't have done ANYTHING, and we'd STILL be waiting for him to get a decent compiler and userland tool suit running. Think about it. "I'm going to install the Linux Kernel!" "Why, it just sits there not doing a damned thing, doesn't even have a file system." Seriously. People make Monolithic Kernels all the damn time, it's not even hard. I wrote such a kernel and boot loader in x86 ASM in about two weeks worth of evenings for my toy OS. Linus' was just the first one to come along, and that's good enough for FLOSS. It sucks that GNU gets dropped from the name given how much MORE work was put into it than the dead simple kernel Linus wrote, and it really sucks that he didn't use the "at your option any future version" text in the license, -- I mean, he made it impossible to change the license why? It's not like commercial folks couldn't stay with GPL2 "at their option". I don't know man, you sound like you're putting Linus on a much higher pedestal than you need to. Great guy and all, but come on, what he did was and still is a TINY fraction of the work.
There is an enormous temperature differential, as well as pressure differential, between sea level air and high level atmospheric air. I've often thought that fact could be used to make a very efficient and cheap source of power. The same temperature differential exists in the oceans. Very cold deep, and warmer near the surface. Unlimited free energy if you can harness it.
Where does this "heat" come from? Why not just harness it directly from there? You know, solar...
YOU WAS PHONE!
Yeah, they're right about the state of things, but they get the "why" part totally fucking wrong:
The most common reason for the existence of bad software is bad programmers.
NOPE! Bad software is a result of BAD Code, even good programmers can write bad code...
At the other end of the spectrum, many projects are sabotaged by developers who are “too good”
NOPE! Maybe those scare quotes are there for a reason, but "doing things the most complex way possible" is usually because coding is iterative and there was no way for you to know of the unforeseeable future requirements.
And then there’s “bad” laziness, the kind that leads programmers to cut corners or do things in the quickest possible way, rather than taking the three extra hours to do them right.
NOPE! You're assuming that the programmer WANTED to do things the quickest way possible...
If the system is working, almost no manager will pay just to have you recode a piece of it “the right way,” without adding any new functionality. There’s always something more important that needs to be done—until that quick-and-dirty fix blows up and (because it’s urgent) gets replaced by another quick-and-dirty fix.
BINGO! This. Everything, all of the other bullshit is due to Management. Not just not paying to have things done right (see: Fast, Good, Cheap), but also unrealistic schedules and deadlines, new features being promised by sales without consulting the programmers, etc. Deadlines exist. That's why even a good programmer hacks in a kludge ridden short cut instead of taking the time to do it the right way: There is no time to take! The most common reason for bad software isn't bad programmers, is bad management and terrible working conditions. See also: Getting what you pay for when you outsource the programming department. The outsourced workers will get it done cheaper in less time -- Cheap, FAST -- What's missing here, eh? GOOD Sadly to compete with the fast and cheap the goodness of the software must be sacrificed.
As mentioned above, C++, despite its superficial similarities to Java, is infinitely easier than Java to write impenetrable code in. And one language I’ve been warned about, though I’ve never had the opportunity to use it, is Haskell, an offshoot of ML. According to a friend in academia who’s studied it, it’s “the Taliban version of ML,” in which it’s all but impossible to write readable code.
Just stop talking noob.
In the real world, tight budgets, shortsighted managers, and unreasonable expectations from non-techies almost always conspire to make developers do things too quickly.
You mention this and yet you somehow fail to realize THIS, not Languages, not Laziness, not Ignorance, not Hubris, is what is really the root cause of all the damn evil?! Fuck you, man. You're part of the problem.
In conclusion: Bad software is primarily a result of GREED.
Why did you climb the mountain oh Super Computer?
Because I can, man... Well, that and latency is a bitch, or I'd have telecommuted to work.
Brace position and spacing both are encompassed by the whitespace argument that I was referring to.
Except that a diff isn't going to ignore whitespace when broken across multiple lines, verses a one liner. See also: Python.
You're preaching to the choir, btw, but also you're making the wrong argument. Whitespace does matter, it just shouldn't matter how it's configured, just that it's consistently applied.
The reality of the situation is that if I reformat a 100 char line to be broken across lines with max 80 chars, and go back and forth doing this it thrashes the code repository. Diffs are general purpose, they don't understand code syntax, you've used them haven't you? Newlines are whitespace. They don't lexically parse code ignoring all whitespace, they work line by line. However, Compilers DO understand their own syntax! IMO, all compilers should have the option to lex & reformat inputs to whatever style you want based on an input rule sheet of some kind. Currently this is handled disparately in a non standardized way by IDEs, scripts, etc. In fact, many projects will have a script or program that you should run your code through before committing it. This allows you to code however you like, while giving the codebase a consistent and uniform look.
Any moron complaining about whitespace in code doesn't really belong in coding.
I find this statement moronic and/or ignorant. If you don't think that a uniformity and consistency help while reading and understanding text (including code), then you've never studied the human brain much at all. We're pattern matching machines. If the patterns change from page to page then it IS actually harder to read. The first thing I usually do when working on a new project is equip my editor/IDE with a style guide for the project to transform all code into my preferred style while editing. Then I can edit in the pattern than I'm most used to dealing with -- It's faster because that's how brains work. Being more efficient and taking advantage of my brain's natural tendencies isn't moronic, it's smart.
On save, or before commit the code is transformed into the project's style guide by an auto formatter. I think this is the best, because I have cognitive science research to back it up, repetition of tasks builds "muscle memory", etc. So, my use of whitespace rules is actually faster than adapting to each project. Now, given that we don't have all compilers with such option to transform data on the fly to our preferences, and we can't always rely on the other coders to be using IDEs that can do this, the next best thing is having a project wide coding standard, and that's exactly what we do. Seriously, what sort of experience do you have where you haven't run into this commonality yourself? What's more likely that everyone is wrong but you or that we've all been down the road before and have arrived at a common consensus? Level up your knowledge. To me you sound rather ignorant and quick to make assumptions, thus foolish.
There are companies who make real physical products that are counterfited by cheap knockoffs. These could have benefited from an anti counterfiting treaty. But Nooooooo. Hollywood hijacked the entire process, in secret, just to take away people's rights under the guise of alleged copyright infringement.
The real kicker is that when you make a knockoff of a digital item it's actually possible for the "counterfeit" item to be better than the original by providing other features -- Already small enough for your portable media player, or removed defective-by-design DRM... It would be as if you counterfeited money, and the bank actually prefers it to legal tender.
Don't even get me started on artificial scarcity of information. Let's sell Ice to Eskimos! No you fools, that's dumb! We won't make creating ice illegal. Let's sell Bits to folks with Computing Devices! Uhmm.. wait, isn't that the same thin-- Oh, fine, whatever, here's some laws against copying, now go away.
It's a start to the end of greed.
There is no end to greed. Even those who become selfless crave more and more of it...
You should also wear a Guy Fawkes mask, but if folks ask who you are, stick with the voice and use the "I'm Batman" line.
That always puzzled me as well. Stupid USB. Just have the female connector have 4 pins on both sides, the male connector with 4 pins on only one side. Hey look, it's a self orienting mechanical interconnect! Even cheaper than an 8 pin auto-orienter cable! Ah, but you couldn't prevent folks from duplicating the design so easily. Sometimes, it's like everyone's a moron but me.
Well thanks asshole. I can't even begin to express how comforting it was to not know there had been a remake. Why did you have to ruin my blissful ignorance?
Heh, damn I'm in the same boat. Well misery loves company, so: They made two Matrix movie sequels, and three Star Wars prequels (and Disney plans to make a bunch more). Lost in Space was remade too, oh, so was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Hmm, Oh! Battlestar Galactica rebooted, wasn't so bad except the latter half (oh, and who the hell was that BG prequel spinoff "Caprica" even for?). Not even Flash Gorden is sacred, (don't) see: 1980's remake. I'm sure you know about the Star Trek universe being completely forked due to Spock going back in time with that damn lava lamp shit, if not, you do now! Dr. Who never stops being re-remade. Do you recall Total Recall? Yup recalled. Terminator? Unterminated... Just when you think they're running out of classics to ruin, they go after "instant classics": Cowboy Bebop is rumored to have Keanu as Spike... Hopefully Firefly and Red Dwarf will stay under the radar for a while. I could go on for hours... but this one's a doozy: Somehow The X Files got a whole network as a remake: History Channel
Nah, just diffuse them. Don't ever launch them, outlaw that shit. Use 'em for powering space stuff or energy plants, never weapons. We've got other better more precision weapons. Think about Nuclear Retaliation... really? Even if fired on, or as a last ditch effort to win some war, wouldn't it be better not to launch a nuke? I mean, imagine you're now going to die... Soooo... what? You whip an Uzi out from under your death-bead pillow to take a few others down with you? FUCK THE LIVING! I'M DYING ANYWAY. I can't find much difference between this type of thinking and the mentality of those suicide bombers, or climate change denialists.
I agree. I think we should base all our decisions on 50-year old fictional movies.
Ohhh, THEM!
Clearly, we should be irradiating as much wild life as possible. These giant mutant creatures would feed millions!
Yeah! Screw food.. Ill live off the decaying corpses of the malnourished!
I got dibs on the brains!
I installed Ubuntu for my father who is in his 80's. Not only does he know nothing about Linux, he doesn't even know that he is using Linux.
Yep, same experience here: I installed Ubuntu for my girlfriend to upgrade from XP when Windows 7 came out.
I never had the heart to tell her it wasn't Windows.
Couldn't this serve to discourage ISPs from improving their infrastructure? If they let their infrastructure age, they'd be spending nothing on improvement, and would eventually be allowed to put data caps in place as bandwidth usage increases.
They have no incentive currently. In fact, applying data caps is how they decided to make more money instead of building out infrastructure to meet demand. Look, data caps don't help congestion at all (except, perhaps, through fear of using your service?) If the services are over-subscribed then at peak times the load is more than the bandwidth they advertise -- Think rush hour traffic. Would limiting the distance you could drive per month reduce the demand for car lanes during rush hour? Ni, ni and ni... That's just silly! Instead what you'd do is limit your over all use so that you were assured driving distance when you needed it. This means that there would be less Traffic on Off Peak Times -- When there is plenty of bandwidth available! This is also why metered bandwidth is a farce, unless they charge a lot more during peak times.
There has to be enough hardware in place to handle that peak load, the number of bits doesn't matter over a month -- It only matters during off peak times: The hardware is still there, it's just not being used. The Current doesn't matter, it's the Pressure / Voltage! The Wires have to be big enough for peak usage, not for total power used in a day, week or month, it's not like you use up the electrons and the wires have to be replaced... THINK MAN!
You must understand, it's more profitable in the short term to over sell bandwidth than to build out infrastructure. The data caps are merely an attempt to squeeze more money out of the system. WTF does it matter if you use netflix or bittorrent all night long when there is plenty of bandwidth to go around? The problem is that there are more folks trying to use the same sized pipe during peak times -- Not that the damn routers run out of bits!
MY PIPES! DE CAPS DO NOTHING!
Patents don't stifle innovation........ they protect innovation. If there were no patents, then companies would not invest huge amounts of money inventing and innovating.
I'm a scientist, so: PROVE IT
Oh, that's right you have no evidence to support your untested theory, because we have ZERO evidence that patents are beneficial at all. Ah, so the only logical thing to do would be to collect some evidence, eh? THEN we could settle this argument once and for all. I'm sure you'd agree, I mean, You're not one of those fools who shies away from The Scientific Method, are you? Well then, you can only agree that we must first abolish patents to see if they are beneficial at all. Not doing the experiment is pants-on-head retarding progress.
It's nearly 11am, tomorrow, in eastern Australia. No sign of the apocalypse yet. :)
If you're looking for a temporally bound EOL canary, you'll fine none better than Nukualofa, which is UTC+13 -- That's right, an hour ahead of anywhere else. For instance, if you're in a -12 UTC zone, then they're not one, but two days ahead of you for an hour each day.
Just ban all patents. What proof do we have that they are beneficial? None. We have ZERO evidence, no relevant control group w/o patents to examine -- Oh, wait, except for in certain markets, like Fashion and Automobiles; Neither are allowed design patents yet they excel in innovative designs. OK, so we have two half-assed control groups where patents aren't allowed, and yet they're more than innovative despite not having patent protections... For everything else? We have no proof whatsoever that patents are beneficial at all, and yet the system continues. It's just bad science.
It's not like we can't re-enact whatever crap laws we want later. I see all these folks asking for patent reform, NO. The only acceptable logical solution is to abolish patents until it can be proven that they're beneficial and without significant bad side effects, and investigation or recalls if some harm is discovered after we've approved the system. We don't allow new drugs on the shelves until they're PROVEN safe, why would any sane individual agree to apply the UNPROVEN HYPOTHESIS that "patents are good" to our economy?
No Scientist or Engineer would agree to be ruled this way: Brittan had them, so we should have them too! No study or test group required, let's apply it to the whole economy!
This is completely asinine!
1) The Bayesian model assumes that events in the world are inherently uncertain and that the job of an intelligent system is to discover the probabilities.
2) The competing model, by contrast, assumes that events in the world are perfectly consistent and that the job of an intelligent system is to discover this perfection.
Then you have AI (machine intelligence) researchers like myself who realize that the world isn't persistent, perfect or consistent, and neither must intelligent systems be. It's plainly obvious that any sufficiently complex cybernetic (feedback loop) system is indistinguishable from sentience because that's what sentience is (your mind is merely a sentient cybernetic system). I have but to look at the hierarchical neural networks and structures of the human mind to realize it's only a matter of time before the artificial system complexity eclipses our own minds'. The true flaw is top-down thinking. That's not the way complex life was made, that's not the way we achieved sentience, that's not the way to cause it to happen artificially either... It's the bottom up approach that works. You can't design sentient intelligences outright, but you can create self organizing systems that have the capacity to acquire more complexity, and evolve more intelligence. Not all machine intelligence systems have an end to the training process -- These don't fit into your bullshit 1) and 2) classifications.
Also: The level of intelligence that emerges from any complex system is not artificial, it is real intelligence; That the medium is artificial is not important in terms of intelligence. I think "Artificial Intelligence" is a racist term used by chauvinists that think human intellect is far more special than it really is.
Want to see something funny? Ask an AI researcher if they believe in Intelligent Design. If they say "Yes" then say, "So you think yourself a god?" If they say, "No" then say, "What do you call yourself doing then?". Those working in emergent intelligence will happily reply that they're modeling the same processes that we already know work in nature, the others will be in quite a state!
When did we start calling radio "wireless"?
About the same time we started calling antennae "aerials". For reference: It was around the time when we stopped calling the mathematicians who solved equations for the engineers upstairs "computers".