I'm not certain if Linux is quite at the 'teaching to normal people' stage yet, but it's nice to see that we're getting there with good people.
In my mind, there are several stages that a new system has to go through, and they increase in importance. First, you need a stable and well built system. Then you have to have a user-friendly system. Then you need good, complete documentation (actually, this may be #2, depending on the situation). Then you need to teach it.
The interesting thing, and possibly the biggest failing of many otherwise wonderful Linux geeks, is that each of these stages requires a different skillset, and probably different people. Kernel programmers are almost definitely going to be ROTTEN instructors. People who debug interfaces aren't going to be the best to write documentation. We need a set of resources who _aren't_ primarily developers to do the promotion, marketing, and education. (And it should be noted that good education is the best marketing of a superior product)
So to someone who actually teaches this stuff as a teacher rather than a geek, my hat is off to you. Kudos!
"And this one (guitar) I've never played. See--it's still got the tags on it"
"Wow, that's something..."
"Don't touch it!"
"I wasn't going to touch it."
"Well don't touch it. Nobody must touch this guitar. In fact, don't even look at it. Turn around."
I thought that most of the articles came from random word generators. They certainly read like it.
Now before some moderator with an itchy finger mods me down as flamebait, I want to explain my (only somewhat) facetious comment there.
(WARNING: The following has little to do with tonight's slashback, and is mostly a rant)
Three years ago or so, the LDP looked to be the ultimate collaborative project to complement the coming victory of open source software.
Unfortunately, something got lost along the way. There are "current" documents in the LDP that haven't been looked at since 1998. The articles are taken as submitted, and not even proofread for accuracy, let alone timliness, relevance, grammar, or spelling.
Furthermore, when I last offered to help, I got ignored. While I don't consider myself knowledgeable enough to write HOWTOs or the like, I would have been quite happy to do those annoying jobs--proofreading, editing, and the like. The responses I got were: "," "Thanks but no thanks--we don't need editors" and, "Editing would introduce technical errors."
Maybe things have changed recently, but for quite a few years the LDP was one of the biggest hinderances to Linux getting better accepted.
Now as far as the licensing issue goes, who CARES??? All of these stupid little fights over which license is better, how we can avoid infringing that license, etc. etc., are pointless and damaging. If someone infringes license "x", then it's up to the owner/creator of the license to prosecute. If there's no desire to prosecute and/or if there's no clearly no deliberate abuse, then there is no need to make any issue of this at all. The LDP authors don't need to be bothered. Period.
Actually, it's not a bad idea. It makes good sense to have a variety of things going on in your environment, and not be able to take down an entire company with a single exploit. HOWEVER, the costs associated, the time involved, and the incompatibility issues go up stupidly once you've done this. Different hardware platforms mean you can't swap parts from non-critical machines when you can't get a replacement in an hour. Having multiple admins doing different work but only using 50% of each one's time is a huge waste.
Mandating different systems is a great way to get people to ignore you completely, unfortunately. It just won't work in the real world.
Seriously folks, who hasn't seen the writing on the wall for at least the last 18 months about the dire straits of @home? Let's be generous, and say only since the "economic meltdown" (actual quote!); who didn't see this coming?
@home was a bad company with a bad business plan, hoping to get rich on a bunch of early high-speed subscribers. When that proved to be a disaster, they naturally dealt with it in the standard way--by lying until they could bail.
Why this is news, I'll never understand.
I don't know anything this laptop, but in general:
- Asus products are well designed, well built, and well priced. Oh yes, and well documented!
- Asus tech supports SUCKS! Their website is often down, they don't answer service calls, and they don't necessarily have consistent specs on their parts between different divisions.
I love Asus products, but until they reform they're NOT getting any more of my money!
Realistically, you'll have an extremely hard time getting a SA job without a degree in something science related. A BA in philosophy is roughly the equivalent of high school, in the eyes of most employers. That said, you've got a better chance in computing than almost any other technical field of getting a job without a relevant degree, so don't say 'no' yet. Learn as much Unix admin as possible--read usenet (still!) to find out about what constitutes 'real' admin rather than mere configuration. There are a lot of people out there who can read and tweak the system files on a box, and (wrongly) consider themselves admins.
Practically speaking, I know of almost no Unix admins who came from a computing background. I was once a chemist, my manager was a forestry something. We both were told at some point in our careers to 'make sure that machine keeps running' when the machine in question had a Unix controller. That's a very common scenario for admins.
My service is cheap. ($45 Cdn. including monthly DSL modem rental; no up/download limits)
My service is FAST! (I've never had even slight slowdowns which weren't remote server issues)
My service is reliable. (In five months, there hasn't been a single interruption that I'm aware of)
My service has great tech support (while they don't officially support linux, the installer told me, "Just call our support line--we all run it at home." Then he gave me a sheet with proper linux setup instructions)
My service has great server support (their news servers are legendary, locally)
My service is friendly. (See above)
I love my DSL which is through a local reseller of telco service. I spend 8hr/day on big computers with fast connections at work, and I can't imagine anything more I'd want in an ISP.
Live in Alberta? Get Nucleus. Tell 'em cbigam sent ya.
They're working at it. They've got most of their lines switched over and many of their servers, but they still use @home service, and will continue to do so until the second pile of systems is installed and pronounced "live" by Sun.
Sun has machines entirely built around the concept of virtual hosts. Of course, they stole the idea from the mainframe world, where this has been going on for decades. I don't know of any systems that currently allow splitting a single CPU between domains, but I honestly don't see it as much of a benefit.
Which is definitely not to say that it's a bad or late thing--it's nice to see Linux playing with the Big Boys (tm) now and again. Just don't think that it's ground-breaking technology.
You seriously know that many people who hate their tech jobs? Scary! I can't imagine spending a third of my life doing something I despise. I recommend that everyone you know get a new job, or possibly get a different life. Something is seriously wrong when you can't laugh at yourself or your life.
"The question asked for information about partitition schema, not file systems."
Actually, the question asked about filesystems, quite clearly. The headline asked about partition types. Who comes up with the headline--the poster, or Hemos?
This was the first turn-based wargame I played, back in 1982 (!), on the Atari 400. I don't know if modern games compare since I've not really kept up with wargames, but that one definitely _was_ a true strategy game. Not just resource management, not just racing to build up units (since you started with a fixed number of units at the beginning), but strategy. If I remember correctly, you could do such things as combining damaged same-type units together to make one good one, and so forth.
Anyways, great game. Chris Crawford sure could write 'em.
Why do you think that espionage is still a booming practice in the world? Because it's a great way for "them" to steal "our" technology! They've already got it, my friend!
Besides, Carnivore was never a secret from governments--just from citizens. What good purpose is there in keeping it secret from a country's own populace.
What part of "...in addition..." do you fail to understand?
General searching will still be free. Specialised organisations will pay for dedicated searches. It's not rocket science.
But that's just it--who, without their paycheque riding on it, is going to "pick that up and run with documenting and interfacing it?" Because it's not fun, it gets left behind. That's where discipline and central organisation tend to help a project.
That's right, open source software sucks at nearly everything it does![1]
Open Source as it stands today is great at bashing together a really "neat" program which gets the job done in a specific manner. Soon enough, lots of cool little features are added in, and before long you have a 'perpetual-beta application.'
Programming, however, requires some discipline which doesn't often get put towards OSS. Programs require good error handling (and error trapping, for that matter), usability (That means intuitive interfaces), and documentation. Oh yes, and freedom from bugs. However, these things are BORING to produce, compared to the original plan of bashing out a neat routine.
Ironically, the only way to achieve such things in a distributed and open development model, is to have a central administrative point. Without it, large projects are just impossible. Funny, eh?
[1]of course, so does commercial software, but in different ways)
Slashdot Mirror
Bravo, bravo, bravo!
I'm not certain if Linux is quite at the 'teaching to normal people' stage yet, but it's nice to see that we're getting there with good people.
In my mind, there are several stages that a new system has to go through, and they increase in importance. First, you need a stable and well built system. Then you have to have a user-friendly system. Then you need good, complete documentation (actually, this may be #2, depending on the situation). Then you need to teach it.
The interesting thing, and possibly the biggest failing of many otherwise wonderful Linux geeks, is that each of these stages requires a different skillset, and probably different people. Kernel programmers are almost definitely going to be ROTTEN instructors. People who debug interfaces aren't going to be the best to write documentation. We need a set of resources who _aren't_ primarily developers to do the promotion, marketing, and education. (And it should be noted that good education is the best marketing of a superior product)
So to someone who actually teaches this stuff as a teacher rather than a geek, my hat is off to you. Kudos!
"And this one (guitar) I've never played. See--it's still got the tags on it"
"Wow, that's something..."
"Don't touch it!"
"I wasn't going to touch it."
"Well don't touch it. Nobody must touch this guitar. In fact, don't even look at it. Turn around."
Sorry. Flashbacks.
I thought that most of the articles came from random word generators. They certainly read like it.
Now before some moderator with an itchy finger mods me down as flamebait, I want to explain my (only somewhat) facetious comment there.
(WARNING: The following has little to do with tonight's slashback, and is mostly a rant)
Three years ago or so, the LDP looked to be the ultimate collaborative project to complement the coming victory of open source software.
Unfortunately, something got lost along the way. There are "current" documents in the LDP that haven't been looked at since 1998. The articles are taken as submitted, and not even proofread for accuracy, let alone timliness, relevance, grammar, or spelling.
Furthermore, when I last offered to help, I got ignored. While I don't consider myself knowledgeable enough to write HOWTOs or the like, I would have been quite happy to do those annoying jobs--proofreading, editing, and the like. The responses I got were: "," "Thanks but no thanks--we don't need editors" and, "Editing would introduce technical errors."
Maybe things have changed recently, but for quite a few years the LDP was one of the biggest hinderances to Linux getting better accepted.
Now as far as the licensing issue goes, who CARES??? All of these stupid little fights over which license is better, how we can avoid infringing that license, etc. etc., are pointless and damaging. If someone infringes license "x", then it's up to the owner/creator of the license to prosecute. If there's no desire to prosecute and/or if there's no clearly no deliberate abuse, then there is no need to make any issue of this at all. The LDP authors don't need to be bothered. Period.
Nope, sorry. Bad idea. Won't work.
Actually, it's not a bad idea. It makes good sense to have a variety of things going on in your environment, and not be able to take down an entire company with a single exploit. HOWEVER, the costs associated, the time involved, and the incompatibility issues go up stupidly once you've done this. Different hardware platforms mean you can't swap parts from non-critical machines when you can't get a replacement in an hour. Having multiple admins doing different work but only using 50% of each one's time is a huge waste.
Mandating different systems is a great way to get people to ignore you completely, unfortunately. It just won't work in the real world.
I just thought it was funny that an article on "How to make software projects fail" followed immediately after an article related to OS/2.
Seriously folks, who hasn't seen the writing on the wall for at least the last 18 months about the dire straits of @home? Let's be generous, and say only since the "economic meltdown" (actual quote!); who didn't see this coming?
@home was a bad company with a bad business plan, hoping to get rich on a bunch of early high-speed subscribers. When that proved to be a disaster, they naturally dealt with it in the standard way--by lying until they could bail.
Why this is news, I'll never understand.
Spraypainting sidewalks? Spraypainting
This is simple vandalism. What's the question?
It's entirely irrelevant. I mean, ENTIRELY irrelevant, which means, 'who cares?'
Or alternatively, it might mean, "fuck 'em all."
I don't know anything this laptop, but in general:
- Asus products are well designed, well built, and well priced. Oh yes, and well documented!
- Asus tech supports SUCKS! Their website is often down, they don't answer service calls, and they don't necessarily have consistent specs on their parts between different divisions.
I love Asus products, but until they reform they're NOT getting any more of my money!
Realistically, you'll have an extremely hard time getting a SA job without a degree in something science related. A BA in philosophy is roughly the equivalent of high school, in the eyes of most employers. That said, you've got a better chance in computing than almost any other technical field of getting a job without a relevant degree, so don't say 'no' yet. Learn as much Unix admin as possible--read usenet (still!) to find out about what constitutes 'real' admin rather than mere configuration. There are a lot of people out there who can read and tweak the system files on a box, and (wrongly) consider themselves admins.
Practically speaking, I know of almost no Unix admins who came from a computing background. I was once a chemist, my manager was a forestry something. We both were told at some point in our careers to 'make sure that machine keeps running' when the machine in question had a Unix controller. That's a very common scenario for admins.
Good luck!
Why is it that every time I read a quote from Gates, Ballmer, or Mundie that I get heartburn?
Lying evil sacks of shit. They deserve to end up as winos living on the street.
...but I find that whenever I go to type BSM (into a search engine, whatever), my fingers want to type BDSM.
My service is cheap. ($45 Cdn. including monthly DSL modem rental; no up/download limits)
My service is FAST! (I've never had even slight slowdowns which weren't remote server issues)
My service is reliable. (In five months, there hasn't been a single interruption that I'm aware of)
My service has great tech support (while they don't officially support linux, the installer told me, "Just call our support line--we all run it at home." Then he gave me a sheet with proper linux setup instructions)
My service has great server support (their news servers are legendary, locally)
My service is friendly. (See above)
I love my DSL which is through a local reseller of telco service. I spend 8hr/day on big computers with fast connections at work, and I can't imagine anything more I'd want in an ISP.
Live in Alberta? Get Nucleus. Tell 'em cbigam sent ya.
Just so you know...
Shaw ain't away from @home yet.
They're working at it. They've got most of their lines switched over and many of their servers, but they still use @home service, and will continue to do so until the second pile of systems is installed and pronounced "live" by Sun.
Sun has machines entirely built around the concept of virtual hosts. Of course, they stole the idea from the mainframe world, where this has been going on for decades. I don't know of any systems that currently allow splitting a single CPU between domains, but I honestly don't see it as much of a benefit.
Which is definitely not to say that it's a bad or late thing--it's nice to see Linux playing with the Big Boys (tm) now and again. Just don't think that it's ground-breaking technology.
You seriously know that many people who hate their tech jobs? Scary! I can't imagine spending a third of my life doing something I despise. I recommend that everyone you know get a new job, or possibly get a different life. Something is seriously wrong when you can't laugh at yourself or your life.
Fair points, but consider this:
Why not journal? What could you possibly lose by running a filesystem that protects the integrity of your data better, and runs faster?
As an aside, if he's exclusively serving data out, then the filesystem should be explicitly mounted read-only. Security and safety all at once!
"The question asked for information about partitition schema, not file systems."
Actually, the question asked about filesystems, quite clearly. The headline asked about partition types. Who comes up with the headline--the poster, or Hemos?
Partition is a verb. AND partition is a noun. It's not a difficult concept. Nor is it new.
This was the first turn-based wargame I played, back in 1982 (!), on the Atari 400. I don't know if modern games compare since I've not really kept up with wargames, but that one definitely _was_ a true strategy game. Not just resource management, not just racing to build up units (since you started with a fixed number of units at the beginning), but strategy. If I remember correctly, you could do such things as combining damaged same-type units together to make one good one, and so forth.
Anyways, great game. Chris Crawford sure could write 'em.
In a word, BULLSHIT!
Why do you think that espionage is still a booming practice in the world? Because it's a great way for "them" to steal "our" technology! They've already got it, my friend!
Besides, Carnivore was never a secret from governments--just from citizens. What good purpose is there in keeping it secret from a country's own populace.
What part of "...in addition..." do you fail to understand?
General searching will still be free. Specialised organisations will pay for dedicated searches. It's not rocket science.
But that's just it--who, without their paycheque riding on it, is going to "pick that up and run with documenting and interfacing it?" Because it's not fun, it gets left behind. That's where discipline and central organisation tend to help a project.
That's right, open source software sucks at nearly everything it does![1]
Open Source as it stands today is great at bashing together a really "neat" program which gets the job done in a specific manner. Soon enough, lots of cool little features are added in, and before long you have a 'perpetual-beta application.'
Programming, however, requires some discipline which doesn't often get put towards OSS. Programs require good error handling (and error trapping, for that matter), usability (That means intuitive interfaces), and documentation. Oh yes, and freedom from bugs. However, these things are BORING to produce, compared to the original plan of bashing out a neat routine.
Ironically, the only way to achieve such things in a distributed and open development model, is to have a central administrative point. Without it, large projects are just impossible. Funny, eh?
[1]of course, so does commercial software, but in different ways)
Hmm. Implying that open source software will never reach the same quality or build standards as professional software.