I think I understand the difference between/usr/bin,/usr/local/bin, and ~/bin as far as installing applications, but then I get the programs that insist on/opt/bin, or even/var/opt.
On my desktop system, for the things I'm not compiling from source that demand/opt, I've redirected them to/usr/local. Have I committed a great philosophical error, oh wise ones?
I lot of companies fear having developers work on opensource projects not because of the GPL license per se but their fear that you will look at the source code...then remember one of the algorithm you've seen in that code and implement it into a proprietary product (even if you didn't explicitly or intentionally copy the code)--thus requiring that if the algorithm is similar enough--your company to open source their product. SO, in many respects..I'd beware of looking in open-source for examples of how to code unless you employer is aware of your choice. 'This is the world we live in / (oh-oh-wo)'
I've got a few RedHat Enterprise linux servers and I wish we could get a satellite setup for the RedHat network updates. It's feasible but I understand that RedHat wants big $$. From what I understand, it seems SUSE may be a little nicer since you can probably set up your own YAST server, but seeing as I never have installed SUSE (RedHat at work, Debian at home, next on list is either SUSE or Gentoo. No advocacy meant here, just my current interest levels) I wouldn't know. Redhat's network updates and other features through the redhat network do make it easy to manage installs, but I still can't get over how difficult RPM's dependencies are in comparison to dselect / install.
Now, if it was easy/cheap to set up a transparent proxy (so that your grandma could do it) then ad/commercial boycotting could be so effective that you'd have to start swiping your credit card to surf a site (pay-per-page).
Like many others, I use Privoxy along with Squid so that I cache everything that is static non-ads.
I guess I always took 'scalable' in this case to mean someting closer to enterprisish capability.
What I mean by this is it is easier in java to organize and build a complex application by wrapping business logic and typical data access deep inside generic objects (beans)....then you can focus on the framework and organization and the modularity allows you to separate out tasks well.
This is not for every application, but for the big ones that handle lots of access points (procurement/supply chain/accounting/planning) and lots of function (messaging, transactions, forecasting, reporting) that is all part of one big system, then its probably easier for a lot of people to work together on the Java than it is for a bunch of perl/php scripts.
Then again, the chance of your company working on such a system is less likely then them buying into SAP or one of the other big ones.
For most small stuff, perl and php are fine. With the right programming group, perl and php can work on large projects too. But for the average large company, with a big system, Java seems to work well in architecture and implementation of the system. It will also probably take LONGER to implement. (expecially if you use beans to encompass all the real logic and jsp just for presentation and servlets just for the HTTP interface) YMMV.
I've written ASP run sites, Java Servlet run sites, currently working on a Perl CGI::APP + template toolkit site, and have messed around PHP and Zope/Python. As with anything else, its all about using the right tool FOR THE TEAM for the job.
Java, though, in lots of corporate development shops, seems to be given an unwarranted buzzword boost from managers who set it as a requirement across the board.
Haven't worked much with Solaris, but I've always heard that the VM on solaris has more ways to 'tweak' garbage collection and does pretty good threading. True? Not True?
Unfortunately standards are not usually able to break free from the force of mediocracy due to concerns about compatibility and current limited toolsets. Because of this, as soon as a standard is set, another cutting-edge technology will probably ignore the standard and introduce greater functionality at a reduced compatibility and with the burden of requiring a new toolset.
Take railroads for example....a quick google search on railroad standards will land you on this link which begins:
'The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used?'
The answer is funny. Who was it that said 'The problem with standards is that there are so many of them'. It seems as though everything past its initial burst of innovation is in the process of being standardized or restandardized.
This is all a necessary evil of course, but remember that there are lots of cases where standardizing shamed the technology because of the brutal impact of commitee decisions.
One concept I came across in some 'Team Leadership' class I took at work was that people tend to act predictably against thier personality preferences when under stress or conflict. The teacher would say Myers-Briggs types are your "at home with shoes off self".
I've found that to be an intersting theory--here's an example from one of the Myers-Briggs types: If you tend to look at the big picture (I) when under extreme stress or conflict you will tend to get TOO FAR into DETAIL! (and be unable to make decisions).
Each M-B personality experiences these 'paths' to other personalities predictably based on the NF/ST preferences.
I think it doesn't apply as much to E-I preference or the J-P preference as these tend to be more ingrained.
I've always thought that companies might donate "employee time" more than cold-hard-cash.
For instance, if its in the interest of say, EDS, that Tomcat continues to be developed as a reference implementation of a java servlet engine so that they can take that code and repackage it as part of a bigger more customized package (health care web app) of some sort, then they might have a programmer involved in developing Tomcat.
That's prolly where a lot of these non-profit projects get thier support...and even hardware....
I love it when the news media expecially on the internet writes articles and title's them differently everytime they add a paragraph and update the report. You start reading beyond the first paragraph and you realize it is yesterday's article. I guess that's the easy way to provide the relevant story along with the updates, but sometimes it can seem pretty cheesy. Similarly, I remember watching one cable news station when the inditement against Martha Stewart broke, and they had they guy on camera skimming through the 13 page document and reading areas that sounded interesting and going back to him every 2 minutes, not giving him enough time to say anything worthwhile. Funny Stuff.
Apparently, according to Forbes the latest update is that they have now "revoked" the Unix license officially. Here's the text.
Re:I apologize in advance for this one...(as do i)
on
Settling SCOres
·
· Score: 1
I would think thats a common view...but I'm not sure what it is based upon. I think it mostly just due to the prominence of hollywood and other american media. Alas, this is getting pretty offtopic though.
Isn't France the capital of fashion? And Germany makes its share of fancy cars...in the post industrial/globalization/free trade/capitalism world the western cultures are part of, it's hard to argue materialism is a bigger ideal in America than elsewhere--assuming just stashing up cold hard cash is also called materialism.
Capitalism/free trade in itself feeds on successful consumerism and extreme consumerism is materialism. I think the view of America as materialistic really stems from the fact that we have very wide ranging free trade and a more capitalistic society than most, however, it's a stretch to me to say that we are more "materalistic" in general.
Materialism connotes a love of just having expensive things and/or cash. Which goes back to my point that the love of power or money is a trap that any human in susceptable to, regardless of country of origin...and many red-blooded americans are not materialistic, and are just working hard everyday to feed thier families, but yet they are still consumers.
Most of the people in America probably just are trying to own a house, have daily transportation, and get thier kids through college... I would not call that materialism.
I'm not syaing materialism does not exist in america, that would be foolhardy. I'm just not sure the average american is more "materialistic" in NATURE than the average human...
I would tend to argue that it has nothing to do with culture and maybe more to do with opportunity. Greed is a trait that can make its mark on any human--we are all vunerable to it to some extent; money is power and power often corrupts. I don't think anyone is perfect, my friend. Not everyone in america is materialistic, however in america there is more opportunity to be materialistic in some sense.
Otherwise, why is there such a battle for power among citizens of third-world countries? Admit it, we are flawed beings in an imperfect world, that it the human condition.
Be also careful not to fall into the trap of judging a whole culture, in America, there are many daily battles being waged on many issues pertaining to individual freedom vs. morality and social effects.
I have a G70, and after an 11-hr day of programming if you touch the top, you'll quickly draw your hand away. I don't recommend stacking any papers up there.
I assume thats how it is with any monitor, though.
In Soviet Russia, there is no need to worry, begauze even if you burn your monitor, you can always binge yourself on Vodka at McDonalds.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt Two Towers could have been more than jsut endless battles...then again, the book is similar. I can remember rushing to get to the third book...then you find out the suspense ends halfway through the third book and you wish you would not have rushed so quickly. I think mebbe EP3 might have some surprise we are not expecting...you can only wish. But then what would be the point in throwing a whole twist in without doing 7th or 8th movie.
I think every computer scientist worth thier pay should realize that language advocacy stinks. Every language has its niche--a reason for why some guy sat back and said, "I need to write a shortcut language to do this" or "wouldn't it be great if I could have a better correlation between the way I think/design and the language I write in" and it evolves from there. Perl was designed as a glue language heavily modeled after awk/sed and other unix tools and the concept of following natural language and "having more than one way to do/say it" so you need to have a good feel for the language pieces as you do when you become a master of english and understand different connotations and methods of stating something.
That being said, it is unfortunate that because there are large groups of people who either A) get religious about the language they choose or B) choose not to learn other languages to a point of knowing thier true niche we take every language and bloat it out and take it out of its scope. And in turn that makes it that much harder to grasp each new languages niche because you have to sort through a bunch of crap that trys to make every language the universal language.
Well, it's human nature I guess. Easy to point out as a problem but not easy to fix...but remember that the next time you are about to tell your coworker that they should "write that in _____" instead of answering thier question. Or, be careful when you complain that "____ is bloated or is too hard to understand" because you are just adding fuel to the fire my friend. It is better by far to state why you chose a certain language on a certain project than to be a universal advocate of "_____".
True, but in some lights having a backup at all is insecure. But, if you have confidential information, I would not imagine you would choose this as your solution---I would envision that this would be more for stuff along the lines of personal photographs and other nostalgia...and perhaps term papers...in other words, the set of stuff that is not confidential and is not something like videos and mp3s that everyone wants to share. I guess for truly confidential data , your best security is locking your computer in a room, and your only backup would be that USB drive you carry around your neck, under your shirt, next to your gun.
I've had a variety of IBM thinkpads...so its hard to keep track. I did have a 600e and if i used the battery, I always let it run completely out on the battery before plugging it back in...and I never had any problems with it. I've carried that practice on from the early days of laptop computing...where batteries had a memory of sorts that if oyu kept recharging them when they were halfway full you'd end up with the 50% of the battery being the active aprt, and the other 50% would be forgotten about, and un rechargable. I'm not sure if that is still the case in the newer thinkpads like the 600e though. Just an old habit. Anyone an expert on battery types?
Slashdot Mirror
I think I understand the difference between /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, and ~/bin as far as installing applications, but then I get the programs that insist on /opt/bin, or even /var/opt.
/opt, I've redirected them to /usr/local. Have I committed a great philosophical error, oh wise ones?
On my desktop system, for the things I'm not compiling from source that demand
I lot of companies fear having developers work on opensource projects not because of the GPL license per se but their fear that you will look at the source code...then remember one of the algorithm you've seen in that code and implement it into a proprietary product (even if you didn't explicitly or intentionally copy the code)--thus requiring that if the algorithm is similar enough--your company to open source their product. SO, in many respects..I'd beware of looking in open-source for examples of how to code unless you employer is aware of your choice. 'This is the world we live in / (oh-oh-wo)'
I'm not writing them off...I'm investing in them. But I'd wish people would stop using the 'Sun Rises' play on words.
Maybe they mean that IBM packages some of their main software releases for linux as RPMs.
I've got a few RedHat Enterprise linux servers and I wish we could get a satellite setup for the RedHat network updates. It's feasible but I understand that RedHat wants big $$. From what I understand, it seems SUSE may be a little nicer since you can probably set up your own YAST server, but seeing as I never have installed SUSE (RedHat at work, Debian at home, next on list is either SUSE or Gentoo. No advocacy meant here, just my current interest levels) I wouldn't know. Redhat's network updates and other features through the redhat network do make it easy to manage installs, but I still can't get over how difficult RPM's dependencies are in comparison to dselect / install.
For your Occupation, choose 2 of the following three:
1) Fun
2) Well-paying
3) Legal
This guy probably was legal up to the point of threatening Google. I guess that the fine line between the criminal mind and normal everyday greed.
Privoxy makes it pretty easy to boycott ads...
Now, if it was easy/cheap to set up a transparent proxy (so that your grandma could do it) then ad/commercial boycotting could be so effective that you'd have to start swiping your credit card to surf a site (pay-per-page).
Like many others, I use Privoxy along with Squid so that I cache everything that is static non-ads.
It's little gems like that that keep me coming back to slashdot.
:\\\); else echo :\\\(; fi\`][\$(date \
+%H%M)][\u@\h:\w] "
:\\\); else echo :\\\(; fi\`] "
:)
An now for a useful example
export PS1="[\`if [ \$? = 0 ]; then echo
will work, but:
export PS1="[\$(date \ +%H%M)][\u@\h:\w][\`if [ \$? = 0 ]; then echo
will not since the $? is examing the output of the last 'command', which in the latter case is 'date +%H%M' and not the last command you entered.
I heard a story once about people bleaching the current $1 bills and printing $20 faces on them.
I guess I always took 'scalable' in this case to mean someting closer to enterprisish capability.
What I mean by this is it is easier in java to organize and build a complex application by wrapping business logic and typical data access deep inside generic objects (beans)....then you can focus on the framework and organization and the modularity allows you to separate out tasks well.
This is not for every application, but for the big ones that handle lots of access points (procurement/supply chain/accounting/planning) and lots of function (messaging, transactions, forecasting, reporting) that is all part of one big system, then its probably easier for a lot of people to work together on the Java than it is for a bunch of perl/php scripts.
Then again, the chance of your company working on such a system is less likely then them buying into SAP or one of the other big ones.
For most small stuff, perl and php are fine.
With the right programming group, perl and php can work on large projects too.
But for the average large company, with a big system, Java seems to work well in architecture and implementation of the system. It will also probably take LONGER to implement. (expecially if you use beans to encompass all the real logic and jsp just for presentation and servlets just for the HTTP interface) YMMV.
I've written ASP run sites, Java Servlet run sites, currently working on a Perl CGI::APP + template toolkit site, and have messed around PHP and Zope/Python. As with anything else, its all about using the right tool FOR THE TEAM for the job.
Java, though, in lots of corporate development shops, seems to be given an unwarranted buzzword boost from managers who set it as a requirement across the board.
Haven't worked much with Solaris, but I've always heard that the VM on solaris has more ways to 'tweak' garbage collection and does pretty good threading. True? Not True?
One must learn the Tao of innovation.
Unfortunately standards are not usually able to break free from the force of mediocracy due to concerns about compatibility and current limited toolsets. Because of this, as soon as a standard is set, another cutting-edge technology will probably ignore the standard and introduce greater functionality at a reduced compatibility and with the burden of requiring a new toolset.
Take railroads for example....a quick google search on railroad standards will land you on this link which begins:
'The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used?'
The answer is funny. Who was it that said 'The problem with standards is that there are so many of them'. It seems as though everything past its initial burst of innovation is in the process of being standardized or restandardized.
This is all a necessary evil of course, but remember that there are lots of cases where standardizing shamed the technology because of the brutal impact of commitee decisions.
Grasshopper, beware!
One concept I came across in some 'Team Leadership' class I took at work was that people tend to act predictably against thier personality preferences when under stress or conflict. The teacher would say Myers-Briggs types are your "at home with shoes off self".
I've found that to be an intersting theory--here's an example from one of the Myers-Briggs types: If you tend to look at the big picture (I) when under extreme stress or conflict you will tend to get TOO FAR into DETAIL! (and be unable to make decisions).
Each M-B personality experiences these 'paths' to other personalities predictably based on the NF/ST preferences.
I think it doesn't apply as much to E-I preference or the J-P preference as these tend
to be more ingrained.
But I suppose everything could be up for renegotiation since PIXAR has a strong hand to play...
I've always thought that companies might donate "employee time" more than cold-hard-cash.
For instance, if its in the interest of say, EDS, that Tomcat continues to be developed as a reference implementation of a java servlet engine so that they can take that code and repackage it as part of a bigger more customized package (health care web app) of some sort, then they might have a programmer involved in developing Tomcat.
That's prolly where a lot of these non-profit projects get thier support...and even hardware....
I love it when the news media expecially on the internet writes articles and title's them differently everytime they add a paragraph and update the report. You start reading beyond the first paragraph and you realize it is yesterday's article. I guess that's the easy way to provide the relevant story along with the updates, but sometimes it can seem pretty cheesy. Similarly, I remember watching one cable news station when the inditement against Martha Stewart broke, and they had they guy on camera skimming through the 13 page document and reading areas that sounded interesting and going back to him every 2 minutes, not giving him enough time to say anything worthwhile. Funny Stuff.
Apparently, according to Forbes the latest update is that they have now "revoked" the Unix license officially. Here's the text.
17-Jun-2003 19:00 //Last Dance with Mary Jane.
I would think thats a common view...but I'm not sure what it is based upon. I think it mostly just due to the prominence of hollywood and other american media. Alas, this is getting pretty offtopic though.
Isn't France the capital of fashion? And Germany makes its share of fancy cars...in the post industrial/globalization/free trade/capitalism world the western cultures are part of, it's hard to argue materialism is a bigger ideal in America than elsewhere--assuming just stashing up cold hard cash is also called materialism.
Capitalism/free trade in itself feeds on successful consumerism and extreme consumerism is materialism. I think the view of America as materialistic really stems from the fact that we have very wide ranging free trade and a more capitalistic society than most, however, it's a stretch to me to say that we are more "materalistic" in general.
Materialism connotes a love of just having expensive things and/or cash. Which goes back to my point that the love of power or money is a trap that any human in susceptable to, regardless of country of origin...and many red-blooded americans are not materialistic, and are just working hard everyday to feed thier families, but yet they are still consumers.
Most of the people in America probably just are trying to own a house, have daily transportation, and get thier kids through college... I would not call that materialism.
I'm not syaing materialism does not exist in america, that would be foolhardy. I'm just not sure the average american is more "materialistic" in NATURE than the average human...
I would tend to argue that it has nothing to do with culture and maybe more to do with opportunity. Greed is a trait that can make its mark on any human--we are all vunerable to it to some extent; money is power and power often corrupts. I don't think anyone is perfect, my friend. Not everyone in america is materialistic, however in america there is more opportunity to be materialistic in some sense.
Otherwise, why is there such a battle for power among citizens of third-world countries? Admit it, we are flawed beings in an imperfect world, that it the human condition.
Be also careful not to fall into the trap of judging a whole culture, in America, there are many daily battles being waged on many issues pertaining to individual freedom vs. morality and social effects.
mod parent up. funny stuff. mod this down, waste of bandwidth. -1 redundant or -1 overrated if you want to waste karma.
I have a G70, and after an 11-hr day of programming if you touch the top, you'll quickly draw your hand away. I don't recommend stacking any papers up there.
I assume thats how it is with any monitor, though.
In Soviet Russia, there is no need to worry, begauze even if you burn your monitor, you can always binge yourself on Vodka at McDonalds.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt Two Towers could have been more than jsut endless battles...then again, the book is similar. I can remember rushing to get to the third book...then you find out the suspense ends halfway through the third book and you wish you would not have rushed so quickly. I think mebbe EP3 might have some surprise we are not expecting...you can only wish. But then what would be the point in throwing a whole twist in without doing 7th or 8th movie.
I agree.
I think every computer scientist worth thier pay should realize that language advocacy stinks. Every language has its niche--a reason for why some guy sat back and said, "I need to write a shortcut language to do this" or "wouldn't it be great if I could have a better correlation between the way I think/design and the language I write in" and it evolves from there. Perl was designed as a glue language heavily modeled after awk/sed and other unix tools and the concept of following natural language and "having more than one way to do/say it" so you need to have a good feel for the language pieces as you do when you become a master of english and understand different connotations and methods of stating something.
That being said, it is unfortunate that because there are large groups of people who either A) get religious about the language they choose or B) choose not to learn other languages to a point of knowing thier true niche we take every language and bloat it out and take it out of its scope. And in turn that makes it that much harder to grasp each new languages niche because you have to sort through a bunch of crap that trys to make every language the universal language.
Well, it's human nature I guess. Easy to point out as a problem but not easy to fix...but remember that the next time you are about to tell your coworker that they should "write that in _____" instead of answering thier question. Or, be careful when you complain that "____ is bloated or is too hard to understand" because you are just adding fuel to the fire my friend. It is better by far to state why you chose a certain language on a certain project than to be a universal advocate of "_____".
Advocacy is a clear mark of inexperience.
True, but in some lights having a backup at all is insecure. But, if you have confidential information, I would not imagine you would choose this as your solution---I would envision that this would be more for stuff along the lines of personal photographs and other nostalgia...and perhaps term papers...in other words, the set of stuff that is not confidential and is not something like videos and mp3s that everyone wants to share. I guess for truly confidential data , your best security is locking your computer in a room, and your only backup would be that USB drive you carry around your neck, under your shirt, next to your gun.
I've had a variety of IBM thinkpads...so its hard to keep track. I did have a 600e and if i used the battery, I always let it run completely out on the battery before plugging it back in...and I never had any problems with it. I've carried that practice on from the early days of laptop computing...where batteries had a memory of sorts that if oyu kept recharging them when they were halfway full you'd end up with the 50% of the battery being the active aprt, and the other 50% would be forgotten about, and un rechargable. I'm not sure if that is still the case in the newer thinkpads like the 600e though. Just an old habit. Anyone an expert on battery types?