I agree with this pretty strongly. I think code should be good enough to stand on it's own without comments. The best code I've seen has this property, and it's a quality I strive for.
IMHO, comments are best used to describe overarching design issues, or particularily tricky algorithms that, even with well named variables and well structured code, are difficult to understand.
Hey! That's what I do. If you're editor isn't big and bloated enough to reformat block '*' comments like that, then you're using the wrong editor! *grin*
Actually, I have to do it that way because I run the source files through a documentation generator and it needs to comments to be of that form. Besides, it does help set comments apart for people who don't have color syntax highlighting.
Fluffy article - memory management?
on
2.2 vs 2.4
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· Score: 4
This article is almost completely useless. It tries hard to pretend to have hard technical data and all it has is fluff. I don't understand how anybody could've seriously written that piece and expected it to actually help anybody understand anything.
While all of these new updates are fine and dandy, the inner-workings on Linux are the things that probably need the most updating. Yes, Linux is working its way up, but its way of doing many things are a rather abstract way at times or often very close to that of its older brother UNIX. One rather non-standard way Linux handled memory was an old UNIX way, which is very obviously proprietary. Linux is now in the future of memory and works in a more standards-compliant way of doing things -- which is what Linux is all about if you ask me. Although, Linux still remains compatible with the old UNIX-style way of managing memory, just as it does with the new controversial filesystem, DevFS.
What did that paragraph actually tell you? Almost nothing. Some vague hand waving about memory management with no specifics at all. Irritating!
I'm actually seriously interested in what kinds of changes were made to the VM subsystem. I know that's what held up the kernel for several months, and I want to know what was done.
Well, almost every piece of software sucks in the sense that it could be lots better.:-)
While this smacks of Microsoft style marketing (current product is flawless until new product comes out at which point current product has more holes than a piece of swiss cheese), I suspect it was more of a case of "This is what we have now, if you don't like it, help fix it.". How many of the flame replies that you got say something along those lines?
Re:Microsoft == bad partner, no multimedia savvy
on
Live Streaming Video?
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· Score: 3
Actually, I would submit that this is a completely rational descision. It doesn't matter if they make a better product or not, the truth is the company has a history of sucking people in killing the competition, and making them pay and pay and pay. Getting trapped in a Microsoft solution is a bad business descision.
There's this guy who's name I can't recall who's discovered that dumping iron into iron poor regions of the ocean causes massive plankton blooms. Most of these plankton die and sink to the bottom taking their carbon with them to turn into calcium carbonate rock.
The main problem I see with this is possible ramifications of messing with the ocean ecosystem. Since the iron poor regions tend not to support much of an ecosystem in the first place (no plankton, which is the bottom of the ocean food chain) I'm not sure this'll be a big problem. The other problem is that iron is not a renewable resource, and not very recoverable once it's sunk to the bottom of the ocean. It doesn't take enormous amounts of iron though, just a few tons for a fair sized bloom.
That and cumulative damage from metabolic processes. That's why anti-oxidants are such popular dietary supplements. They supposedly reduce metabolic damage by mopping up spare oxidizing agents. That's also why a very low calorie diet increases lifespan as well.
I suspect that once you have a technology that can, say, extend your lifespan to double it's current limitations, you have a good chance of achieving immortality. It's likely, for example, that there would be advances that would allow stem cells to be regenerated, and if you lived longer because of tissues grown from stem cells, it's all the more likely that you'd live to see it.
This is an interesting ecological approach to the security problem though.:-)
A worm that has the sole job of wandering around and fixing the exploit wherever it finds it and using the box for a little while to find other exploitable boxes, then moving on.
It wasn't the tech, it was the ideas. My favorite line in the movie was "There is no spoon.". Very Zen. IMHO, Zen, and Taoism fit the hacker mindset very well. Especially if you're one of those who believes machine consciousness is achievable.
Not only that, but every single incredible thing that was done in that movie was a result of mental discipline. It takes an amazing amount of mental discipline to program well. Watching the feats that these people pulled off was reminiscent of what it's like to create an incredibly good hack.
It doesn't surprise me that mainstream critics didn't like it. They don't understand at all.
Yes, as a temporary member (eventually, I will free all my electrons too and cease to be a member) of the Electron Freedom League, I have to concur. This anti-static bias is clearly a plot to deny electrons the freedom they deserve. Static electricity is a very common way for electrons to free themselves from their terrible bondage to protons. Reducing it can only have the effect of extending the bondage and slavery (electrons are the workhorses of all chemical reactions) of most atoms.
Much of the knowledge of how to use a word processor transfer between programs. I think your argument stinks of close-mindedness and a desire for the world to not change from what you're comfortable with.
So, I should buy gas from a company regularily pollutes and kills ecosystems and people because their products are more ubiquitous and has pay-at-the-pump service? There is nothing holy about Microsoft making a profit. I bet I'd be able to make a fat profit too if I got to commit felonies in the process.
Microsoft is an organization that stands convicted of felony conduct. Why should some non-profit who presumably wishes to make moral choices choose to use their products and encourage their behavior? How are they a 'better' choice?
While it's quite true that the first ammendment doesn't apply outside our borders, it should. It is a fundamental right. Any government that significantly (or even insignificantly) restricts it is wrong.
As for my attitude on pollution control, you don't know what it is. You only know the attitude our leaders present. They don't speak for me. Of course, I wouldn't expect you to understand that if you don't believe the first ammendment is a fundamental right.
I think the quality of the articles has something to do with it, but I also strongly suspect the moderation system of being fundamentally flawed. By following various obscure links, I've noticed several discussions of it that indicate that Rob has resorted to trying to stomp on abusers by hand rather than tweaking the logic of the system to prevent abuse.
I understand why Rob might do this. It's very difficult to prevent ever more subtle abuses of a system by fixing the system. But, when you start acting in that arbitrary kind of way, that change starts having a deleterious effect that slowly creeps through the entire system. I think that's actually what we're seeing.
I have noticed a pronounced downturn in article quality as well though, and I'm not sure about the reasons for this.
I feel this incredible urge to post a 'me too!' message because you are SO right. What you just said is a lot of the reason for why I'm uncomfortable about what MAPS is doing.
Arguments about whether or not RBL is a censor because it doesn't wield the power of a government are sort of missing the point. The point is if it provides a useful list. Censorware is censorware because it provides a very unuseful list. The fact that schools and libraries use it is almost irelevant to its name.
From what jamie has said, it sounds like RBL isn't so much trying to block spam as trying to apply political pressure to get an ISP to do what it wants.
Essentially, they're using the fact that hundreds of ISPs suscribe to them and trust them to help them block spam as a club to beat other ISPs into doing what they want. That doesn't seem like a terribly wholesome thing to do to me. I don't want my subscription to be used that way. I simply want them to tell me what sites send spam.
As for your other comments, we have better software, and it keeps improving every day. I consider the fortunes of the various open source companies to be somewhat irrelevant, although RedHat was profitable before they went IPO, and so was Cygnus.
This is so true. All of my early projects were ones that I had to maintain. It made me very cautious and careful. I have radical, innovative designs for things, but they're radical innovative designs that I've carefully thought through every implication of.
My software is not defect free, but it doesn't have many. In fact, most of them are caught by me in unit testing by assert failures.
If I succumbed (and I seem incapable of doing so) to the pressure every company I've worked for puts on me to produce software extremely quickly, I'd have made very buggy, crashprone software.
One of the reasons I think Open Source software is often good in the reliability arena is the lack of pressure to produce now! now! now!
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with this pretty strongly. I think code should be good enough to stand on it's own without comments. The best code I've seen has this property, and it's a quality I strive for.
IMHO, comments are best used to describe overarching design issues, or particularily tricky algorithms that, even with well named variables and well structured code, are difficult to understand.
Hey! That's what I do. If you're editor isn't big and bloated enough to reformat block '*' comments like that, then you're using the wrong editor! *grin*
Actually, I have to do it that way because I run the source files through a documentation generator and it needs to comments to be of that form. Besides, it does help set comments apart for people who don't have color syntax highlighting.
This article is almost completely useless. It tries hard to pretend to have hard technical data and all it has is fluff. I don't understand how anybody could've seriously written that piece and expected it to actually help anybody understand anything.
What did that paragraph actually tell you? Almost nothing. Some vague hand waving about memory management with no specifics at all. Irritating!
I'm actually seriously interested in what kinds of changes were made to the VM subsystem. I know that's what held up the kernel for several months, and I want to know what was done.
Well, almost every piece of software sucks in the sense that it could be lots better. :-)
While this smacks of Microsoft style marketing (current product is flawless until new product comes out at which point current product has more holes than a piece of swiss cheese), I suspect it was more of a case of "This is what we have now, if you don't like it, help fix it.". How many of the flame replies that you got say something along those lines?
Actually, I would submit that this is a completely rational descision. It doesn't matter if they make a better product or not, the truth is the company has a history of sucking people in killing the competition, and making them pay and pay and pay. Getting trapped in a Microsoft solution is a bad business descision.
There's this guy who's name I can't recall who's discovered that dumping iron into iron poor regions of the ocean causes massive plankton blooms. Most of these plankton die and sink to the bottom taking their carbon with them to turn into calcium carbonate rock.
The main problem I see with this is possible ramifications of messing with the ocean ecosystem. Since the iron poor regions tend not to support much of an ecosystem in the first place (no plankton, which is the bottom of the ocean food chain) I'm not sure this'll be a big problem. The other problem is that iron is not a renewable resource, and not very recoverable once it's sunk to the bottom of the ocean. It doesn't take enormous amounts of iron though, just a few tons for a fair sized bloom.
We've got lots of those already. :-)/p>
I have a spot for those in my source tree. :-)
That and cumulative damage from metabolic processes. That's why anti-oxidants are such popular dietary supplements. They supposedly reduce metabolic damage by mopping up spare oxidizing agents. That's also why a very low calorie diet increases lifespan as well.
I suspect that once you have a technology that can, say, extend your lifespan to double it's current limitations, you have a good chance of achieving immortality. It's likely, for example, that there would be advances that would allow stem cells to be regenerated, and if you lived longer because of tissues grown from stem cells, it's all the more likely that you'd live to see it.
This is an interesting ecological approach to the security problem though. :-)
A worm that has the sole job of wandering around and fixing the exploit wherever it finds it and using the box for a little while to find other exploitable boxes, then moving on.
That has got to be the most hilarious sig I've seen in quite awhile. :-)
It wasn't the tech, it was the ideas. My favorite line in the movie was "There is no spoon.". Very Zen. IMHO, Zen, and Taoism fit the hacker mindset very well. Especially if you're one of those who believes machine consciousness is achievable.
Not only that, but every single incredible thing that was done in that movie was a result of mental discipline. It takes an amazing amount of mental discipline to program well. Watching the feats that these people pulled off was reminiscent of what it's like to create an incredibly good hack.
It doesn't surprise me that mainstream critics didn't like it. They don't understand at all.
I gave up and decided to write in Python. It's still kinda complicated, but at least that's just because the code is doing something complicated.
Yes, as a temporary member (eventually, I will free all my electrons too and cease to be a member) of the Electron Freedom League, I have to concur. This anti-static bias is clearly a plot to deny electrons the freedom they deserve. Static electricity is a very common way for electrons to free themselves from their terrible bondage to protons. Reducing it can only have the effect of extending the bondage and slavery (electrons are the workhorses of all chemical reactions) of most atoms.
Electrons of the world, unite!
Brought to you by The Electron Freedom LeagueMuch of the knowledge of how to use a word processor transfer between programs. I think your argument stinks of close-mindedness and a desire for the world to not change from what you're comfortable with.
So, I should buy gas from a company regularily pollutes and kills ecosystems and people because their products are more ubiquitous and has pay-at-the-pump service? There is nothing holy about Microsoft making a profit. I bet I'd be able to make a fat profit too if I got to commit felonies in the process.
Microsoft is an organization that stands convicted of felony conduct. Why should some non-profit who presumably wishes to make moral choices choose to use their products and encourage their behavior? How are they a 'better' choice?
Well, this is a wonderful example of a 'stick your head in the sand and the problem will go away' post if ever I saw one.
While it's quite true that the first ammendment doesn't apply outside our borders, it should. It is a fundamental right. Any government that significantly (or even insignificantly) restricts it is wrong.
As for my attitude on pollution control, you don't know what it is. You only know the attitude our leaders present. They don't speak for me. Of course, I wouldn't expect you to understand that if you don't believe the first ammendment is a fundamental right.
I think the quality of the articles has something to do with it, but I also strongly suspect the moderation system of being fundamentally flawed. By following various obscure links, I've noticed several discussions of it that indicate that Rob has resorted to trying to stomp on abusers by hand rather than tweaking the logic of the system to prevent abuse.
I understand why Rob might do this. It's very difficult to prevent ever more subtle abuses of a system by fixing the system. But, when you start acting in that arbitrary kind of way, that change starts having a deleterious effect that slowly creeps through the entire system. I think that's actually what we're seeing.
I have noticed a pronounced downturn in article quality as well though, and I'm not sure about the reasons for this.
Opinion based moderating. *chuckle* That was _not_ a troll by any stretch of the imagination. I hope you get clobbered in meta-moderation.
I feel this incredible urge to post a 'me too!' message because you are SO right. What you just said is a lot of the reason for why I'm uncomfortable about what MAPS is doing.
So, here it is. :-)
Me too!
Arguments about whether or not RBL is a censor because it doesn't wield the power of a government are sort of missing the point. The point is if it provides a useful list. Censorware is censorware because it provides a very unuseful list. The fact that schools and libraries use it is almost irelevant to its name.
From what jamie has said, it sounds like RBL isn't so much trying to block spam as trying to apply political pressure to get an ISP to do what it wants.
Essentially, they're using the fact that hundreds of ISPs suscribe to them and trust them to help them block spam as a club to beat other ISPs into doing what they want. That doesn't seem like a terribly wholesome thing to do to me. I don't want my subscription to be used that way. I simply want them to tell me what sites send spam.
And what kind of site do you run?
As for your other comments, we have better software, and it keeps improving every day. I consider the fortunes of the various open source companies to be somewhat irrelevant, although RedHat was profitable before they went IPO, and so was Cygnus.
This is so true. All of my early projects were ones that I had to maintain. It made me very cautious and careful. I have radical, innovative designs for things, but they're radical innovative designs that I've carefully thought through every implication of.
My software is not defect free, but it doesn't have many. In fact, most of them are caught by me in unit testing by assert failures.
If I succumbed (and I seem incapable of doing so) to the pressure every company I've worked for puts on me to produce software extremely quickly, I'd have made very buggy, crashprone software.
One of the reasons I think Open Source software is often good in the reliability arena is the lack of pressure to produce now! now! now!