Not only those, it is also reported that he borrowed from Elvish and Klingon, and a magical mystery language that the voices inside his head told him about.
's all right, I was just jesting, in case you're still reading this. But, dude, are you sure you undestand what you wrote in the following sentence:
...it's an issue of making effective use of time and deciding when it is ineffective to learn something that doesn't present itself with enough apparent benefit to be worth the cost in time to acquire that knowledge.
You know what the fun thing is? Parentheses are about the only syntatic "noise" characters in Lisp that are in your face, so to speak. And if you're an experienced lisper you just ignore'em when reading the code.
Now compare that with the plethora of $, @, % and what not scattered around here and there in your favourite toy language. Yeah, I know, once you get the hang of it it's OK, but how long does it take and most important: is it really necessary? --
Perhaps it's the Slackware guys who need to fix this by providing a decent package manager. They don't even have to invent one, they can just copy RPM or Debian's. --
Moderators, quick! The above is a gem and this guy seems to be the only one informed about the real origins of UN*X, of all the crowd of/. posters here.
Newbies and newbies who think they are 'leet haX0r d00dz: read the above and be enlightened. And follow Jon's suggestion and grab a copy of the book (or better yet, of UNIX's original manuals). --
I'm glad someone corrected the original poster on his naïve (marked insightful in a stroke of moderation genius) misconceptions about what POSIX really means, but I have one minor nitpick: I keep reading people refer to UNIX (TM) and its ilk as *nix and I get somewhat upset. The standard way to refer to it (from olden days) is UN*X, which bypasses the trademark, and has a humorous religious overtone (think Judaism here).
The "*nix" thing ranks right there with the accursed "virii" plague in my book: it looks like a regexp to match all the Unices you mentioned, but it really isn't.
Oops, now we'll have the obligatory flamewar about "virii"... --
Your long rant about Emacs is really painful to hear and pointless. I have presented people unfamiliar with Emacs, vi and UN*X in general to both editors and every time they favored Emacs. You launch it, you start typing, you save your files. Presto. No insert mode, Esc, command mode, Esc, which is a lot more confusing for learners. vi's interface is a poor design even for the standard terminals of the day (remeber, unlike most people think vi and Emacs are contemporaries).
Your problems can be summed up like this:
You want to be able to use Emacs from a terminal, but guess what, you can use both FSF Emacs and XEmacs for that! Why in heaven's name you don't want run X though, thus wasting your precious colour graphics monitor and grahics board is beyond me;
You want be able to use Emacs menus (can't have'em with XEmacs in a terminal), but you don't want learn how to do it. Great! That's like someone complaining about not being able to mark blocks in vi because they haven't learned how to do it;
You complain about Emacs "bloat" (Whatever that means to you), but guess what: you can install only the parts you need. Yep, that's right sir: don't want to be able to remotely edit files? Don't install efs. Don't want be able to merge diffs in files? Don't install ediff. Don't want therapy with M-x doctor? Don't install the damn games?
Now if you really want to go into therapy, be my guest and continue to use vi for large development tasks. --
Does anybody else see the pattern here? Some fool with moderator points decided to troll anonymously and moderate his anonymous self up so we get to see his inane trolling.
Boy, if that isn't pathetic, I don't know what else is... --
In keeping with my nitpicking nature, I feel the need to inform you that there was no queen of England at the time of India's independence. Nevertheless, I think your analogy was pretty cool. --
No, he didn't do it because of RH's marketing idiots. He claims to have done it because people kept comparing version numbers of Slack to other distributions, so he went and bumped its version number above RH's (and SuSE's, for that matter). A little childish, if you ask me, but then again that's just the mindset of the 'leet slacker.
Redhat doesn't artificially inflate their version numbers, as has been explained by bero-rh, they do it when some change in the new version prevents clean compilation of a package form a previous version.
For the record, I too started with Slack in '94, but switched to RH in '96. Why would you switch to Mandrake (which is after all, a RH derivative) and not to RH? Mindless spite for the company? --
lilo is at 21.5. Emacs is at 21, but that's only because RMS realized there would never be a version 2.0 so he renamed "1.2" "12".
Bait swollen.
Actually there have been a few minor version bumps in the release history of the True One, namely because of jealousy of the even Truer One (M-x all-hail-emacs!). The current incarnation of It reached version 15 around 1984 (if my Info files tell the Truth, which of course they do). Apocryphal history has it that versions prior to 15 belonged to the ITS incarnation of the True One and are long forgotten in the hallowed halls of MIT.
My favourite version number scheme is that used by Prof. Don Knuth for TeX releases, but you'll have to do some research to know what I'm talking about... --
Almost the same here, except that I started with Slack in 1994, and switched to RH for good in late 1996. I still have an original 5.0 with Applix bundled.
About three months ago, I installed Debian on my home system and I'm seriously contemplating installing it on my machine at work.
Slackware => Redhat => Debian. Seems like a natural progression, but maybe that's just me. --
In fact, sometimes I just pick a point and argue it to see what people will say, it's a subtle form of trolling sometimes, [...]
It is not subtle, and it's not just a form of trolling. In fact, this is the essence of trolling, my friend. You may be naïve, living under a rock, or simply just lying (my guess) but all good trolls are based upon this principle: finding (or constructing) an argument about which enough people will care and then dilligently proceed to fan the ensuing flames.
There's no denying you have the dilligence. All that's lacking is a little subtlety and, quite frankly, a better writing style. --
Pray tell us, in what way does package management get in the way of upgrading if that's one of its main goals?
Unless, if what you mean by upgrading is remove all old stuff, and install all new stuff, I don't where you're coming from.
I too upgrade my system and individual packages quite frequently. I happen to like helix-update a lot, and I fail to see how easier it could be if didn't use packages. --
I would gladly concur with you WRT to E, but you are terribly mistaken about sawfish. It's improved a lot since the first sawmill releases, and the pace of development is stunning (even if most of it are bug fixes). And besides, you gotta love any piece of software that's customizable in Lisp (insert shameless plug to the One True Editor here...) --
Any only some of the Linux distros sport the features that FreeBSD has had for YEARS. FTP install-> Insert a boot floppy and FTP the rest over from a server
Most Linux distros have had that feature for years too, the only one that misses it is Slack, but it is far from mainstream now.
CVSUP upgrades. To upgrade the system make update then make world.
It's not like you've been able to do this with software that does not come from FreeBSD, like, say X, for quite a long time...
Slashdot Mirror
And it all shows in the end result.
--
Marcel Proust would have been proud.
--
You know what the fun thing is? Parentheses are about the only syntatic "noise" characters in Lisp that are in your face, so to speak. And if you're an experienced lisper you just ignore'em when reading the code.
Now compare that with the plethora of $, @, % and what not scattered around here and there in your favourite toy language. Yeah, I know, once you get the hang of it it's OK, but how long does it take and most important: is it really necessary?
--
If anything, you should tell him to go shove his head up Tom Christiansen's ass...
--
Man, that's horrible. Actually, the very first line of it was enough to make me puke
--
I have tried languages like CLU [...]
and summed it all up like:I tried to learn a clue but couldn't.
--
Eh^2? It's pretty obvious (at least to me) that Per waws talking about Qt, not Gtk-- in his post...
--
Perhaps it's the Slackware guys who need to fix this by providing a decent package manager. They don't even have to invent one, they can just copy RPM or Debian's.
--
Newbies and newbies who think they are 'leet haX0r d00dz: read the above and be enlightened. And follow Jon's suggestion and grab a copy of the book (or better yet, of UNIX's original manuals).
--
The "*nix" thing ranks right there with the accursed "virii" plague in my book: it looks like a regexp to match all the Unices you mentioned, but it really isn't.
Oops, now we'll have the obligatory flamewar about "virii"...
--
Your problems can be summed up like this:
- You want to be able to use Emacs from a terminal, but guess what, you can use both FSF Emacs and XEmacs for that! Why in heaven's name you don't want run X though, thus wasting your precious colour graphics monitor and grahics board is beyond me;
- You want be able to use Emacs menus (can't have'em with XEmacs in a terminal), but you don't want learn how to do it. Great! That's like someone complaining about not being able to mark blocks in vi because they haven't learned how to do it;
- You complain about Emacs "bloat" (Whatever that means to you), but guess what: you can install only the parts you need. Yep, that's right sir: don't want to be able to remotely edit files? Don't install efs. Don't want be able to merge diffs in files? Don't install ediff. Don't want therapy with M-x doctor? Don't install the damn games?
Now if you really want to go into therapy, be my guest and continue to use vi for large development tasks--
Boy, if that isn't pathetic, I don't know what else is...
--
In keeping with my nitpicking nature, I feel the need to inform you that there was no queen of England at the time of India's independence. Nevertheless, I think your analogy was pretty cool.
--
Or perhaps we should start using Spanish, which has no such semantic limitations.
--
Here, here teacher, I know the answer:
Speach is the genetic combination of spinach and peaches.
Bet you thought I was going to make fun of your spelling right?
--
Redhat doesn't artificially inflate their version numbers, as has been explained by bero-rh, they do it when some change in the new version prevents clean compilation of a package form a previous version.
For the record, I too started with Slack in '94, but switched to RH in '96. Why would you switch to Mandrake (which is after all, a RH derivative) and not to RH? Mindless spite for the company?
--
Bait swollen.
Actually there have been a few minor version bumps in the release history of the True One, namely because of jealousy of the even Truer One (M-x all-hail-emacs!). The current incarnation of It reached version 15 around 1984 (if my Info files tell the Truth, which of course they do). Apocryphal history has it that versions prior to 15 belonged to the ITS incarnation of the True One and are long forgotten in the hallowed halls of MIT.
My favourite version number scheme is that used by Prof. Don Knuth for TeX releases, but you'll have to do some research to know what I'm talking about...
--
About three months ago, I installed Debian on my home system and I'm seriously contemplating installing it on my machine at work.
Slackware => Redhat => Debian. Seems like a natural progression, but maybe that's just me.
--
In fact, sometimes I just pick a point and argue it to see what people will say, it's a subtle form of trolling sometimes, [...]
It is not subtle, and it's not just a form of trolling. In fact, this is the essence of trolling, my friend. You may be naïve, living under a rock, or simply just lying (my guess) but all good trolls are based upon this principle: finding (or constructing) an argument about which enough people will care and then dilligently proceed to fan the ensuing flames.
There's no denying you have the dilligence. All that's lacking is a little subtlety and, quite frankly, a better writing style.
--
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
And it didn't struck me as particularly subtle or ingenious.
--
Unless, if what you mean by upgrading is remove all old stuff, and install all new stuff, I don't where you're coming from.
I too upgrade my system and individual packages quite frequently. I happen to like helix-update a lot, and I fail to see how easier it could be if didn't use packages.
--
I imagine there must have been a sudden rush of female employees to the copier machine after that was sent...
Whoever has mod points here, plz mod this up. If it's true it is a gem...
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No, the actual quote is: less(1) is more(1), more or less...
--
I would gladly concur with you WRT to E, but you are terribly mistaken about sawfish. It's improved a lot since the first sawmill releases, and the pace of development is stunning (even if most of it are bug fixes).
And besides, you gotta love any piece of software that's customizable in Lisp (insert shameless plug to the One True Editor here...)
--
FTP install-> Insert a boot floppy and FTP the rest over from a server
Most Linux distros have had that feature for years too, the only one that misses it is Slack, but it is far from mainstream now.
CVSUP upgrades. To upgrade the system make update then make world.It's not like you've been able to do this with software that does not come from FreeBSD, like, say X, for quite a long time...
--