"Forgive me if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but do any of these "pundits" realize that the Hacker citizen-soldier army of America is second to none?"
Says who?
There are no "real programmers" in the rest of the world? Fascinating opinion. Do you have any evidence, or are you just claiming it because it 'feels right?'
I don't get it. Why are people installing beta software?
Beta should be for beta testers. If a company releases beta software and you're silly enough to install it, you should expect it to run...like beta software. For an OS, that means you should assume it will destroy your system and eat your data. Are you installing this on a disposable "test" machine?
Honestly, Given the sorry quality of released software, I can't understand why people are rushing to blow up their computers with _pre_release software.
There are a few differences. Consider that the yearbook and the newspaper aren't part of the teaching curriculum, aren't mandatory, and aren't time-critical (as you also suggest). They are, quite literally, extracurricular.
You're making so many assumptions that I'm hard pressed to list them all.
First of all, I'm not American, Secondly, I'm not in favour of the 'lower taxes, smaller goverment' mindset. Thirdly, I would say that/. is mostly split between the left-liberal and libertarian perspectives, neither of which are traditional right-wing/Republican points of view.
And talking about "slashdot's expectations" in relation to my comments is irrelevant./. has no expectations--only the various posters do; and back-applying the prevailing attitude of the site to an individual is false.
I'd say that this *IS* terrible, and that your response proves it.
Schools, first and foremost, shouldn't be a profit centre. Secondly, they shouldn't be even thought of in terms of profit/loss, or fiscal sustainability. If you're going to put financial terms on a school, then it is a cost centre, plain and simple. You put money into it because you need it, not in order to get money back out of it (directly).
Of course, you need to justify your costs. Boards are set up for that--"We need this much money for these educational tools and programs, and this is how it will get used." That's the price of living in a money-driven economy.
Putting ads on educational materials creates so many more inadvertent lessons: Society doesn't value education; your only important role in life is as a consumer; knowledge is only worthwhile if it has direct practical benefits; the list goes on.
"I don't mean full on advertising like blaring announcements between classes with videos to boot, but maybe corporate funded text books..."
There is no difference. There is NO DIFFERENCE between corporate funding of books, ads on exam papers, and non-stop ads over the PA system, except for volume.
The thing to keep in mind is that companies don't buy ad space out of the good of their hearts--they do it because they can make a profit, and the way they make a profit is by getting the viewer (i.e. the students or their parents) to buy their product.
Besides which, advertising in schools is generally illegal in the US--the vending companies have managed to circumvent it, as have the dirtbags at Channel 1. The result is that parents are fighting, and in some cases winning.
This is so utterly wrong that I honestly feel sick. If this is happening, then it means that society as a whole has failed at one of its three primary purposes. Capitalism has gone from a financial model to a political one, and now a societal one.
Dijkstra's comments were right on the mark, and fairly obvious to people outside of CS. They were only contentious within the field, for some odd reason.
The thing is, Computing Science should be approached in the same manner as most other science fields: A BSc in computing should be about theory, research, and pushing the state of the art. A modicum of programming is probably necessary to accomplish that, but programming should understood in the abstract--without the emphasis on 'this command, this language.' Learning to be a programmer (a) should be a division of computer engineering, or (b) probably not a degree at all. More like a one or two year college certificate.
Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Math, and so forth, are all degrees aimed at research and study, not commercial production. Why not computing?
Well judging from your posting history, you seem to be an idiot with a vendetta against books.
I remember News for Nerds. I also remember book reviews on/. before your user account # was created.
However, if, as you claim, the reviewer was actually paid for his article, then you're absolutely right! How did you find this bit of information out, though? I'm curious to see the trail.
Articles that point out what's wrong with Linux (or other OSes for that matter) invariably point out flaws in the interfaces or in the code. This one only falls partway into this trap, but still missed some stuff that can't be fixed by more programming.
1) Documentation. Linux documentation is STILL an unholy mess of inconsistent, incomplete, uneven snippets. They need to make the man pages complete and consistent. The docs HAVE to be updated consistently! There has to be quality control!
2) Compatibility. Both backwards and cross-platform, that is. The number of programs that require a specific version of package 'x' for no good reason is astounding. Similarly, the number of things written in a Linux environment that compile on the author's computer and NOTHING ELSE is ridiculous. One classic example was mplayer, which would (painfully) compile on other platforms, but the man pages would only format properly when using gnu-troff. Standard troff would have done fine, if the authors actually had a clue.
Another example: Burn bash into the ground, and hang the developers who made it incompatible with/bin/sh. ksh, zsh, ash, and others have managed to be feature-complete supersets of/bin/sh, but bash? No, it does not properly execute some sh scripts. (And before you start, legacy is at least as important as POSIX.)
3) attitude. It's not the fault of Linux, but the community that surrounds it. I can't be bothered with an OS if I have to wade through religious zealotry every time I want something done.
Linux is 17, going on 18. It's time for it to come of age and grow up into a mature OS.
OK, my first thought was that the/. post didn't even hint at who/what GenCon is or does. Then I thought, "be fair--they wouldn't do it for SCO or any other company that is part of the culture. Go RTFA, and you'll find out."
Well, I RTFA, and it doesn't even hint at it. A paragraph on/. is one thing, but writing an entire article about a company being bought without even mentioning what the company does or did? Sad.
reading this book is like reading through some really interesting source code. not everyone will like it..."
That's not a bad description, actually. The problem I generally have with Stephenson is that so much of the detail seems pointless. When I read his stuff, I spend a lot of time thinking, "well THAT chapter was a pointless waste of space, in the context of this book. Would have been interesting as an article outside this book, though."
In other words, just because something is interesting doesn't mean that it has to get crammed into a novel.
OK, aside from the fact that our friend Jack has finally been disbarred, this is the funniest thing I've read all day!
The most revealing comment...
on
Anathem
·
· Score: 1
"The first impression of this book is its heft---at 935 pages in the hardback edition"
OK, that's all I need to know. Apparently Stephenson still doesn't have an editor willing to rap his knuckles.
Everything I've read of his has been an example of someone who needs external discipline in his writing, but doesn't get it. They're full of endless clever asides which do nothing but show how clever the author is for thinking of them, which is frustrating because he's very inventive, and can write brilliantly at times.
If someone releases a "good parts version" of this novel, I might be interested. Until then, I'll pass.
Don't count on hearing anything in July. That's when the proceedings start. CAIP says they don't expect anything to come of it until at least 2010. Given the CRTC's recent track record, I expect them to make the wrong decision in 2012, after it's a moot point.
Here are things I see as relevant, and how they play at different 'ages' in the industry.
1) Problem-solving skills. They can't be taught or learned, but they can be honed over time. The good old guys have better problem solving skills than the good young guys, but both are so far ahead of those with weak problem solving skills (and yes, there are people around who can't rationally approach a problem after 25 years in the industry) that age isn't a determiner. 2) Patience. Old guys have more patience, almost universally. This can drive younger entrants NUTS, when things break and they want to go through endless diagnostics before fixing what is obviously the problem (except when it's not). 3) Cynicism/bitterness vs. eagerness. Part of the patience in #2 comes from eagerness being displaced by cynicism. This can lead to bitterness and mistrust of nearly everything--especially anything new. 4) Current knowledge. As an example, lots of 'old-timers' don't know much or give a rat's ass about Linux. Much of this is because Linux is the 'n'th operating system to come along that fixes everything and makes life easier for users. (until it doesn't). See #3, cynicism.
Both bring stuff to the table, and both are an asset. As a general sweeping statement, you'll probably find that younger staff bring new ideas to light, and get things done faster; whereas experienced people provide robustness, stability, and correctness. They'll also be less blinded by vendor's shiny toys.
Agreed. If Sun had the option of OBP on x86, I wouldn't care so much about the processor, but they haven't done it. (They could, with openfirmware--they just haven't).
The thing is, this is the beginning of the end of Sparc-based computers. If my desktop doesn't run on a Sparc, then I can't compile for our servers. Besides, enterprise capabilities are becoming unimportant on computers, thanks to paranoid and mostly stupid bureaucrats. ("I don't care if it has three power supplies and only needs two, you can't replace one without shutting down the server--the risk is too great! Damn it, I'm getting rid of these things and replacing them with appliances!")
OK, Unix on the desktop (i.e Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, AIX, etc.) is dead. OpenSolaris may live, but only through (a) being open source and (b) running on commodity hardware. MacOS will survive through (a) being Mac, and (b) running on commodity hardware. However, the days of non-x86 desktops are over.
A desktop is about one thing: The "user experience." That has always been a matter of performance and interface. Now that a small and cheap computer is eminently capable of most workstation tasks (audio, video, graphics, modelling, etc.) the need to spend $25k on a workstation is eliminated. It doesn't matter if a Power system or a SPARC is faster than an x86 (and on the desktop end, that's rarely the case), because the x86 is fast _enough_. At that point, the software developers will write desktop apps for Linux or Windows, and the software-driven need for workstations is eliminated.
The writing for workstations has been on the wall for _ages_. Sun is getting out of low-end SPARC systems as well--the official announcement will probably be within a year. HP got rid of their HP-UX workstations a while ago, and they want to eliminate HP-UX from their vocabulary entirely.
Before long, if it ain't a server, it'll be x86 running a 'consumer' OS (Windows, Linux, MacOS, OpenSolaris). The corner cases are almost all gone now.
(disclaimer: I'm writing this on a Sun Ultra40 workstation. Ironic much?)
It's a tough call. My "sleaze" threshold is very low, and gets lower as I get older. 25 years ago (ugh, when did I get so old?) I predicted that western-style capitalism and democracy as practiced in the late 20th century would eventually collapse or be replaced by something else, as every political and economic system before them had. Now I'm starting to think I'll see it happen in my lifetime, and while it won't be comfortable, I'll welcome the change on some level.
However, here's why I call the various social websites sleazy: They do their utmost to distract you from their purpose, and make you believe that they exist for your benefit. The idea with some (i.e. facebook) that it's "free" is misleading; and the idea that you get the benefit from it is downright disingenious. They don't say, "we provide this service by selling aggregated information to our clients" (which may or may not be sleazy in and of itself), but rather say "free free free! Sign up now, don't forget your birthdate and annual gross income."
That's sleazy, in my mind. Being aware of it, you can make your own choices--but trying to keep people from being aware of it is sleazy.
Well, you could look at it in a number of ways--some might say "has there ever been a time when advertising hasn't been evil?" I'm not a big fan of ads, but I can't really agree that all advertising is evil--and I never claimed that it was. In fact, my very next statement was, "No big deal, although it does bear repeating now and then."
I just wanted to remind people that the social websites are a means to someone else's end.
OK, bla bla bla, social networking, bla. Classmates.com, facebook, myspace, and everything else like it exist for two purposes: Selling advertising, and collecting aggregate data. We all know this. All pretense of "keeping in touch" is nothing more than the carrot to collect your information. No big deal, although it does bear repeating now and then.
However, the people behind classmates.com have gone one step farther--they're actively lying to get people to (a) sign up, and (b) pay for a "premium" membership. This is absolutely clear fraud on their part, and I hope they get kicked to the curb for it. Being a sleazy company operating within the law just wasn't enough for them.
Hopefully "eCrush" is next. The fact that they keep getting in trouble and keep popping back up with the same crap is reason enough to throw them in jail.
Slashdot Mirror
"Forgive me if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but do any of these "pundits" realize that the Hacker citizen-soldier army of America is second to none?"
Says who?
There are no "real programmers" in the rest of the world? Fascinating opinion. Do you have any evidence, or are you just claiming it because it 'feels right?'
I don't get it. Why are people installing beta software?
Beta should be for beta testers. If a company releases beta software and you're silly enough to install it, you should expect it to run...like beta software. For an OS, that means you should assume it will destroy your system and eat your data. Are you installing this on a disposable "test" machine?
Honestly, Given the sorry quality of released software, I can't understand why people are rushing to blow up their computers with _pre_release software.
There are a few differences. Consider that the yearbook and the newspaper aren't part of the teaching curriculum, aren't mandatory, and aren't time-critical (as you also suggest). They are, quite literally, extracurricular.
You're making so many assumptions that I'm hard pressed to list them all.
First of all, I'm not American, Secondly, I'm not in favour of the 'lower taxes, smaller goverment' mindset. Thirdly, I would say that /. is mostly split between the left-liberal and libertarian perspectives, neither of which are traditional right-wing/Republican points of view.
And talking about "slashdot's expectations" in relation to my comments is irrelevant. /. has no expectations--only the various posters do; and back-applying the prevailing attitude of the site to an individual is false.
I'd say that this *IS* terrible, and that your response proves it.
Schools, first and foremost, shouldn't be a profit centre. Secondly, they shouldn't be even thought of in terms of profit/loss, or fiscal sustainability. If you're going to put financial terms on a school, then it is a cost centre, plain and simple. You put money into it because you need it, not in order to get money back out of it (directly).
Of course, you need to justify your costs. Boards are set up for that--"We need this much money for these educational tools and programs, and this is how it will get used." That's the price of living in a money-driven economy.
Putting ads on educational materials creates so many more inadvertent lessons: Society doesn't value education; your only important role in life is as a consumer; knowledge is only worthwhile if it has direct practical benefits; the list goes on.
"I don't mean full on advertising like blaring announcements between classes with videos to boot, but maybe corporate funded text books..."
There is no difference. There is NO DIFFERENCE between corporate funding of books, ads on exam papers, and non-stop ads over the PA system, except for volume.
The thing to keep in mind is that companies don't buy ad space out of the good of their hearts--they do it because they can make a profit, and the way they make a profit is by getting the viewer (i.e. the students or their parents) to buy their product.
Besides which, advertising in schools is generally illegal in the US--the vending companies have managed to circumvent it, as have the dirtbags at Channel 1. The result is that parents are fighting, and in some cases winning.
This is so utterly wrong that I honestly feel sick. If this is happening, then it means that society as a whole has failed at one of its three primary purposes. Capitalism has gone from a financial model to a political one, and now a societal one.
Well 112599 isn't prime, but it's at least happy! Can't say that about 5849.
Dijkstra's comments were right on the mark, and fairly obvious to people outside of CS. They were only contentious within the field, for some odd reason.
The thing is, Computing Science should be approached in the same manner as most other science fields: A BSc in computing should be about theory, research, and pushing the state of the art. A modicum of programming is probably necessary to accomplish that, but programming should understood in the abstract--without the emphasis on 'this command, this language.' Learning to be a programmer (a) should be a division of computer engineering, or (b) probably not a degree at all. More like a one or two year college certificate.
Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Math, and so forth, are all degrees aimed at research and study, not commercial production. Why not computing?
Bah! Showoff! :-)
"Last week, the net was all abuzz with speculation that SCO was finally gone and done for."
s/speculation/hope/
Well judging from your posting history, you seem to be an idiot with a vendetta against books.
I remember News for Nerds. I also remember book reviews on /. before your user account # was created.
However, if, as you claim, the reviewer was actually paid for his article, then you're absolutely right! How did you find this bit of information out, though? I'm curious to see the trail.
Articles that point out what's wrong with Linux (or other OSes for that matter) invariably point out flaws in the interfaces or in the code. This one only falls partway into this trap, but still missed some stuff that can't be fixed by more programming.
1) Documentation. Linux documentation is STILL an unholy mess of inconsistent, incomplete, uneven snippets. They need to make the man pages complete and consistent. The docs HAVE to be updated consistently! There has to be quality control!
2) Compatibility. Both backwards and cross-platform, that is. The number of programs that require a specific version of package 'x' for no good reason is astounding. Similarly, the number of things written in a Linux environment that compile on the author's computer and NOTHING ELSE is ridiculous. One classic example was mplayer, which would (painfully) compile on other platforms, but the man pages would only format properly when using gnu-troff. Standard troff would have done fine, if the authors actually had a clue.
Another example: Burn bash into the ground, and hang the developers who made it incompatible with /bin/sh. ksh, zsh, ash, and others have managed to be feature-complete supersets of /bin/sh, but bash? No, it does not properly execute some sh scripts. (And before you start, legacy is at least as important as POSIX.)
3) attitude. It's not the fault of Linux, but the community that surrounds it. I can't be bothered with an OS if I have to wade through religious zealotry every time I want something done.
Linux is 17, going on 18. It's time for it to come of age and grow up into a mature OS.
OK, my first thought was that the /. post didn't even hint at who/what GenCon is or does. Then I thought, "be fair--they wouldn't do it for SCO or any other company that is part of the culture. Go RTFA, and you'll find out."
Well, I RTFA, and it doesn't even hint at it. A paragraph on /. is one thing, but writing an entire article about a company being bought without even mentioning what the company does or did? Sad.
reading this book is like reading through some really interesting source code. not everyone will like it..."
That's not a bad description, actually. The problem I generally have with Stephenson is that so much of the detail seems pointless. When I read his stuff, I spend a lot of time thinking, "well THAT chapter was a pointless waste of space, in the context of this book. Would have been interesting as an article outside this book, though."
In other words, just because something is interesting doesn't mean that it has to get crammed into a novel.
Well, OK. As long as it's a free-range puppy, raised in a healthy and loving environment.
OK, aside from the fact that our friend Jack has finally been disbarred, this is the funniest thing I've read all day!
"The first impression of this book is its heft---at 935 pages in the hardback edition"
OK, that's all I need to know. Apparently Stephenson still doesn't have an editor willing to rap his knuckles.
Everything I've read of his has been an example of someone who needs external discipline in his writing, but doesn't get it. They're full of endless clever asides which do nothing but show how clever the author is for thinking of them, which is frustrating because he's very inventive, and can write brilliantly at times.
If someone releases a "good parts version" of this novel, I might be interested. Until then, I'll pass.
Don't count on hearing anything in July. That's when the proceedings start. CAIP says they don't expect anything to come of it until at least 2010. Given the CRTC's recent track record, I expect them to make the wrong decision in 2012, after it's a moot point.
Here are things I see as relevant, and how they play at different 'ages' in the industry.
1) Problem-solving skills. They can't be taught or learned, but they can be honed over time. The good old guys have better problem solving skills than the good young guys, but both are so far ahead of those with weak problem solving skills (and yes, there are people around who can't rationally approach a problem after 25 years in the industry) that age isn't a determiner.
2) Patience. Old guys have more patience, almost universally. This can drive younger entrants NUTS, when things break and they want to go through endless diagnostics before fixing what is obviously the problem (except when it's not).
3) Cynicism/bitterness vs. eagerness. Part of the patience in #2 comes from eagerness being displaced by cynicism. This can lead to bitterness and mistrust of nearly everything--especially anything new.
4) Current knowledge. As an example, lots of 'old-timers' don't know much or give a rat's ass about Linux. Much of this is because Linux is the 'n'th operating system to come along that fixes everything and makes life easier for users. (until it doesn't). See #3, cynicism.
Both bring stuff to the table, and both are an asset. As a general sweeping statement, you'll probably find that younger staff bring new ideas to light, and get things done faster; whereas experienced people provide robustness, stability, and correctness. They'll also be less blinded by vendor's shiny toys.
Agreed. If Sun had the option of OBP on x86, I wouldn't care so much about the processor, but they haven't done it. (They could, with openfirmware--they just haven't).
The thing is, this is the beginning of the end of Sparc-based computers. If my desktop doesn't run on a Sparc, then I can't compile for our servers. Besides, enterprise capabilities are becoming unimportant on computers, thanks to paranoid and mostly stupid bureaucrats. ("I don't care if it has three power supplies and only needs two, you can't replace one without shutting down the server--the risk is too great! Damn it, I'm getting rid of these things and replacing them with appliances!")
OK, Unix on the desktop (i.e Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, AIX, etc.) is dead. OpenSolaris may live, but only through (a) being open source and (b) running on commodity hardware. MacOS will survive through (a) being Mac, and (b) running on commodity hardware. However, the days of non-x86 desktops are over.
A desktop is about one thing: The "user experience." That has always been a matter of performance and interface. Now that a small and cheap computer is eminently capable of most workstation tasks (audio, video, graphics, modelling, etc.) the need to spend $25k on a workstation is eliminated. It doesn't matter if a Power system or a SPARC is faster than an x86 (and on the desktop end, that's rarely the case), because the x86 is fast _enough_. At that point, the software developers will write desktop apps for Linux or Windows, and the software-driven need for workstations is eliminated.
The writing for workstations has been on the wall for _ages_. Sun is getting out of low-end SPARC systems as well--the official announcement will probably be within a year. HP got rid of their HP-UX workstations a while ago, and they want to eliminate HP-UX from their vocabulary entirely.
Before long, if it ain't a server, it'll be x86 running a 'consumer' OS (Windows, Linux, MacOS, OpenSolaris). The corner cases are almost all gone now.
(disclaimer: I'm writing this on a Sun Ultra40 workstation. Ironic much?)
It's a tough call. My "sleaze" threshold is very low, and gets lower as I get older. 25 years ago (ugh, when did I get so old?) I predicted that western-style capitalism and democracy as practiced in the late 20th century would eventually collapse or be replaced by something else, as every political and economic system before them had. Now I'm starting to think I'll see it happen in my lifetime, and while it won't be comfortable, I'll welcome the change on some level.
However, here's why I call the various social websites sleazy: They do their utmost to distract you from their purpose, and make you believe that they exist for your benefit. The idea with some (i.e. facebook) that it's "free" is misleading; and the idea that you get the benefit from it is downright disingenious. They don't say, "we provide this service by selling aggregated information to our clients" (which may or may not be sleazy in and of itself), but rather say "free free free! Sign up now, don't forget your birthdate and annual gross income."
That's sleazy, in my mind. Being aware of it, you can make your own choices--but trying to keep people from being aware of it is sleazy.
Well, you could look at it in a number of ways--some might say "has there ever been a time when advertising hasn't been evil?" I'm not a big fan of ads, but I can't really agree that all advertising is evil--and I never claimed that it was. In fact, my very next statement was, "No big deal, although it does bear repeating now and then."
I just wanted to remind people that the social websites are a means to someone else's end.
OK, bla bla bla, social networking, bla. Classmates.com, facebook, myspace, and everything else like it exist for two purposes: Selling advertising, and collecting aggregate data. We all know this. All pretense of "keeping in touch" is nothing more than the carrot to collect your information. No big deal, although it does bear repeating now and then.
However, the people behind classmates.com have gone one step farther--they're actively lying to get people to (a) sign up, and (b) pay for a "premium" membership. This is absolutely clear fraud on their part, and I hope they get kicked to the curb for it. Being a sleazy company operating within the law just wasn't enough for them.
Hopefully "eCrush" is next. The fact that they keep getting in trouble and keep popping back up with the same crap is reason enough to throw them in jail.
Ah, excellent. So all of these translations are definitively correct (including 21 different English-language editions)?
I'm so glad that the Word of God is so clearly defined.