I'm talking about a book that takes you through the fundamentals of running a huge software project. Reasonable examples on how to use autoconf and automake. Descriptions of how to set up a CVS repository. How to get the most of out the gcc compiler. How to handle templates. There are plenty of books on how to program, and plenty on high level software management, but very few on using modern gnu tools to get the job done. That is what I want to see.
My boss is a chess player. He likes to win, but the thrill of winning is second only to the thrill of completely unnerving his opponent. I would never play chess with him, mainly because he is a poor winner and a poor loser. I think that this kind of attitude is pretty common in the chess world. Just look at the famous people who were good at it, like Bobby Fischer. You couldn't ask for a bigger Grade A asshole than him.
A perfect example of using different keywords on e-bay can be found on the auctions for Nikon FM2n cameras. This camera belongs to the FM2 family, but the only cosmetic difference is an 'N' in front of the serial number. The technology inside of the camera is slightly different, and allows for a 250th of a second flash sync instead of a 200th of a second sync. Unless you are a collector, the FM2n is more desireable to have. On e-bay several people sell FM2n's, but list them as FM2. The prices for these bodies are consistently lower than for their identical counterparts listed with the "correct" keywords. Check it out for yourself.
My girlfriend (now ex) intoduced me to Whiskeytown and Ryan Adams. They used to produce their albums with an independent label, but that label has since blown up. The last Whiskeytown album, Pneumonia, was produced through Lost Highway, which is a Universal Company. I was suprised when I went to make a copy on my parents Win98 machine and all sorts of crazy stuff popped up. I had a hard time making a copy with the software on their machine (I was visiting and didn't have access to any Linux machines). I downloaded cdrdao for Win32, and made a clean copy without any troubles. This sucks. I like Ryan Adams, and he tends to be pretty fan friendly. I make backups of my CDs because I truly trash them. I would rather abuse my copies than my originals, since the copies are much cheaper. I generally listen to independent music, and I won't buy any CDs that I can't copy. If this means that I can't listen to my favorite artist, then so be it.
Vertical is an unstable position. Take a CD, and lay it flat on your desk. It will just sit there, and not move unless some outside force moves it. Now try to stand that CD up on its end. If you can get it to stand it will topple with the slightest movement. By using drives with spinning parts in a horizontal configuration, the amount of wobble caused by gravity and outside forces is minimized. In a vertical configuration this is not the case, and the precise reading electronics are more likely to fail. That is just my simple, mechanics based explanation.
At the end of last year Kuro5hin went down. Part of the reason for this was a post in which one person detailed how easy it would be to whack a certain high ranking official in office right now. Soon after that post was made the Secret Service was banging on that guys door. The internet is not a secret place, it is not an anonymous place, and lots of people are interested in what happens on it. Don't delude yourself into thinking otherwise.
From Randall's own web site. I spent a lot of time there reading about the case. Granted, up not up to date on the most recent postings; it has been at least a year since I have read about it.
Randall Schwartz was doing some shit that Intel didn't like. It also happened to be illegal. Intel asked him to stop. They asked him nicely. He didn't, and Intel had him prosecuted. Randall Schwartz made his own bed.
Try Lyx. It is awesome. I wish that I had known about it when I prepared my thesis. It would have saved me a world of trouble (mostly from beating word into conforming to my thesis standards).
Ok, then tell me how I can use my PCI Modem with FreeBSD (no, it is not a winmodem). I've never been able to get it work work under BSD, and I haven't found any clear instructions on how to get it to work.
I think that you don't really understand the roots of regular expressions. However, you might be familiar with something called a finite state machine.
A finite state machine is essentially a set of rules that operates on a string. Given the current state and the input one travels to a new current state. The theory of finite state machines is integral to the development of computer science and has a very strong mathematical foundation. A computer language that can be represented by a finite state machine is called a regular language.
This is where regular expressions come in. They are essentially user constructed finite state machines. The input is the text, and the state is the curent symbol (or symbol set). If you match the current symbol, you move to the next. If you don't you go back to the beginning. If you reach the end of the symbol set, you have a match.
Regular expressions weren't made up to confound you, they were the implementation of a sound mathematical method that is very useful for text processing. However, regular expressions by themselves are not enough to form a Turing Machine, or even an approximation of a Turing Maching (which is what the computer sitting on your desk is).
Moving to more practical matters; regular expressions are not easy to read. You're working on raw characters, and you have to have lots of escaped to handle everything. They become easier with practice, and are very useful. The biggest problem with them is that every application (Perl, vi, emacs, grep, etc) use their own syntax for them, which means you have to shift gears every time you try to use them in a different application. But that is a problem with the implementation, and not the tool itself.
Once again, good points. People shouldn't always take the easy way out. It deprives them of learning, can be harmful to others, and often doesn't produce the desired result. However, if the end result it clear, if the damage to others is minimal, and the learning potential is minor, then why not take the easy way out? The point being: you can save your strength for when you will need it. You can use your time more productively. You can enlist the help of others and give them a chance to learn.
By now I hope that you realise that I consider the entire point to be moot (the documentation licences will be changed or the documents in question will be moved), but am enjoying the civil discourse, and the chance to play Devil's Advocate. Thank you, and good luck on resolving the difficulties.
More hypocrites than zealots in this world
on
The LDP and Debian
·
· Score: 2
It's easier to be a hypocrite. You make one of my points for me, though.
I think it had to happen sooner or later.
Yet, if you let it be later, you wouldn't be having this problem:
Yeah, it'll be a good deal of work for me, but that's nothing new, and David's been working his butt off contacting authors.
This sense of absolute right and wrong, black and white, has caused you trouble. But, at the end of the day, if you're happy with your decisions, efforts, and results, then nothing I or anyone else says really means a whole hell of a lot.
My opinion? You and David Merrill are fools
on
The LDP and Debian
·
· Score: 2
Everything was chugging along nicely, when David uncovered a concern. His conscience tugged at his mind and heart, and he reported it to you. That's fine, and in a strictly moral sense it was the right thing to do. However, look at the trouble it has caused. Do you doubt that you'll be able to resolve most of the license issues? Do you think that moving everything to non-free then back to free is going to be non-trivial or fun (you've already answered that one)? Perhaps taking a more ambiguous, more practical stance would have been the better path. The easier path. There are times where we should stand up for what we believe in, and fight to preserve our ethics and morals. There are times where we benefit so much more from keeping those ethics and morals in our sight, but taking a gentler path (yet less certain path) to the final goal. Just because you lose one battle, it doesn't mean that you will lose the war.
Having said all of that, and having called you a bunch of fools, let me say how much I admire the people who write, document, and maintain free software. Thanks for your effort helping to make Linux what it is today.
I tried, oh yes I did. I understand their position on freedom, but everything they do is so knee jerk and spasmatic they they hurt their position rather than help it. I imagine that the documents included in previous distributions were under the same questionable licenses? Why not deal with the issues in a thoughtful and controlled manner, rather than say "you have three days to correct this or we pull the plug?" Wow. Debian sounds friendly. Debian sounds understanding. Debian sounds like a distribution that I want to use.
Well good for the zealots. Good for the radicals. Good for the people that want to do the right thing. I'll just go on using my usable and friendly distributions, like SuSE.
Honestly, Debian has always held appeal for me. I just can't get beyond the chest tumping, the politics, and the general sense of rabid fanaticism that pervades the project.
One argument I've heard is that I can go get the projects and packages that I want and weren't included. But please, I'm tired of installing a distribution, then installing 10 or 20 new packages on top of that.
Enough rambling. I have important things to do now. Like drink. And moderate. But all in moderaton.
I graduated from college in 1997; I learned Java in 1996. Back then I heard all sorts of fun things about Java being the multiplatform language of the future. "Write once, run anywhere!" That was five years ago. People still hold onto to the Java Fantasy? The Java Lie?
I get more stable, portable code in C++ than in Java any day.
I used to work in the same group as Bill. He is one of the coolest guys that I've ever met. This posting is a shout out to Bill, Mac Genius Extrodinare.
Since my employers owe me over $5000 in back pay, I'm giving the gift of love this year. My family gets to see me over the holiday, and my friends get cards (prints that I'll be making in my darkroom). Oddly enough, this is the first Christmas where I feel good about my presents. I'm not expecting anything but the same in return. The economy being in the shitter has impacted everyone in my family, and in some cliched sense we are returning to the true spirit of Christmas.
However, my sister's kids are getting a Dreamcast with Samba de Amigo that I picked up several months ago. Really, it is more of a family gift (my mom loves that game), but I like to play the rich uncle who shamelessly spoils his niece and nephew (since their mother doesn't).
take out the fucking smart quotes
on
God's Debris
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Dear Slashdot crew,
You constantly rail against Microsoft, yet don't have the common sense to convert your story submissions to a form that doesn't have smart quotes!
It's not that hard to run your submissions through a filter that change ? to ' or ".
Hilbert came up with the formal axiomatic method of mathematics. I wanted to be able to show, without any doubt, and without any ambiguity, that there were certain mathematical truths that could not be violated. He wanted everything to be black or white. Godel ruined all of his fun by writing this down:
"This statement if unprovable."
Unprovable is defined as not being able to prove using the axioms of Hilberts formal system. This was just the beginning of incompleteness. Turing followed up years later with the Turing Machine. He wanted to automate the Hilbert process, and proved the same results as Godel, known today as Turing Incompleteness.
Math as many know it is not absolute or complete. Most mathematicians chose to ignore that inconvenience and still plug away with Hilbert formalism.
p.s. My first post was a joke. Unfortunately, my login name and the absurdity of the whole thing didn't sink in. Kids these days.
Slashdot Mirror
In the Philip Eve love affair, who is the subbie and who is the domme? I want to know, dammit!
I'm talking about a book that takes you through the fundamentals of running a huge software project. Reasonable examples on how to use autoconf and automake. Descriptions of how to set up a CVS repository. How to get the most of out the gcc compiler. How to handle templates. There are plenty of books on how to program, and plenty on high level software management, but very few on using modern gnu tools to get the job done. That is what I want to see.
Isn't that what John Walker Lindh did? Look at how far it got him.
My boss is a chess player. He likes to win, but the thrill of winning is second only to the thrill of completely unnerving his opponent. I would never play chess with him, mainly because he is a poor winner and a poor loser. I think that this kind of attitude is pretty common in the chess world. Just look at the famous people who were good at it, like Bobby Fischer. You couldn't ask for a bigger Grade A asshole than him.
A perfect example of using different keywords on e-bay can be found on the auctions for Nikon FM2n cameras. This camera belongs to the FM2 family, but the only cosmetic difference is an 'N' in front of the serial number. The technology inside of the camera is slightly different, and allows for a 250th of a second flash sync instead of a 200th of a second sync. Unless you are a collector, the FM2n is more desireable to have. On e-bay several people sell FM2n's, but list them as FM2. The prices for these bodies are consistently lower than for their identical counterparts listed with the "correct" keywords. Check it out for yourself.
My girlfriend (now ex) intoduced me to Whiskeytown and Ryan Adams. They used to produce their albums with an independent label, but that label has since blown up. The last Whiskeytown album, Pneumonia, was produced through Lost Highway, which is a Universal Company. I was suprised when I went to make a copy on my parents Win98 machine and all sorts of crazy stuff popped up. I had a hard time making a copy with the software on their machine (I was visiting and didn't have access to any Linux machines). I downloaded cdrdao for Win32, and made a clean copy without any troubles. This sucks. I like Ryan Adams, and he tends to be pretty fan friendly. I make backups of my CDs because I truly trash them. I would rather abuse my copies than my originals, since the copies are much cheaper. I generally listen to independent music, and I won't buy any CDs that I can't copy. If this means that I can't listen to my favorite artist, then so be it.
Vertical is an unstable position. Take a CD, and lay it flat on your desk. It will just sit there, and not move unless some outside force moves it. Now try to stand that CD up on its end. If you can get it to stand it will topple with the slightest movement. By using drives with spinning parts in a horizontal configuration, the amount of wobble caused by gravity and outside forces is minimized. In a vertical configuration this is not the case, and the precise reading electronics are more likely to fail. That is just my simple, mechanics based explanation.
At the end of last year Kuro5hin went down. Part of the reason for this was a post in which one person detailed how easy it would be to whack a certain high ranking official in office right now. Soon after that post was made the Secret Service was banging on that guys door. The internet is not a secret place, it is not an anonymous place, and lots of people are interested in what happens on it. Don't delude yourself into thinking otherwise.
Too bad this comment was modded into oblivion. It's one of the funniest that I've read in ages.
From Randall's own web site. I spent a lot of time there reading about the case. Granted, up not up to date on the most recent postings; it has been at least a year since I have read about it.
Randall Schwartz was doing some shit that Intel didn't like. It also happened to be illegal. Intel asked him to stop. They asked him nicely. He didn't, and Intel had him prosecuted. Randall Schwartz made his own bed.
Flame on.
Try Lyx. It is awesome. I wish that I had known about it when I prepared my thesis. It would have saved me a world of trouble (mostly from beating word into conforming to my thesis standards).
Ok, then tell me how I can use my PCI Modem with FreeBSD (no, it is not a winmodem). I've never been able to get it work work under BSD, and I haven't found any clear instructions on how to get it to work.
A finite state machine is essentially a set of rules that operates on a string. Given the current state and the input one travels to a new current state. The theory of finite state machines is integral to the development of computer science and has a very strong mathematical foundation. A computer language that can be represented by a finite state machine is called a regular language.
This is where regular expressions come in. They are essentially user constructed finite state machines. The input is the text, and the state is the curent symbol (or symbol set). If you match the current symbol, you move to the next. If you don't you go back to the beginning. If you reach the end of the symbol set, you have a match.
Regular expressions weren't made up to confound you, they were the implementation of a sound mathematical method that is very useful for text processing. However, regular expressions by themselves are not enough to form a Turing Machine, or even an approximation of a Turing Maching (which is what the computer sitting on your desk is).
Moving to more practical matters; regular expressions are not easy to read. You're working on raw characters, and you have to have lots of escaped to handle everything. They become easier with practice, and are very useful. The biggest problem with them is that every application (Perl, vi, emacs, grep, etc) use their own syntax for them, which means you have to shift gears every time you try to use them in a different application. But that is a problem with the implementation, and not the tool itself.
By now I hope that you realise that I consider the entire point to be moot (the documentation licences will be changed or the documents in question will be moved), but am enjoying the civil discourse, and the chance to play Devil's Advocate. Thank you, and good luck on resolving the difficulties.
I think it had to happen sooner or later.
Yet, if you let it be later, you wouldn't be having this problem:
Yeah, it'll be a good deal of work for me, but that's nothing new, and David's been working his butt off contacting authors.
This sense of absolute right and wrong, black and white, has caused you trouble. But, at the end of the day, if you're happy with your decisions, efforts, and results, then nothing I or anyone else says really means a whole hell of a lot.
Everything was chugging along nicely, when David uncovered a concern. His conscience tugged at his mind and heart, and he reported it to you. That's fine, and in a strictly moral sense it was the right thing to do. However, look at the trouble it has caused. Do you doubt that you'll be able to resolve most of the license issues? Do you think that moving everything to non-free then back to free is going to be non-trivial or fun (you've already answered that one)? Perhaps taking a more ambiguous, more practical stance would have been the better path. The easier path. There are times where we should stand up for what we believe in, and fight to preserve our ethics and morals. There are times where we benefit so much more from keeping those ethics and morals in our sight, but taking a gentler path (yet less certain path) to the final goal. Just because you lose one battle, it doesn't mean that you will lose the war.
Having said all of that, and having called you a bunch of fools, let me say how much I admire the people who write, document, and maintain free software. Thanks for your effort helping to make Linux what it is today.
Well good for the zealots. Good for the radicals. Good for the people that want to do the right thing. I'll just go on using my usable and friendly distributions, like SuSE.
Honestly, Debian has always held appeal for me. I just can't get beyond the chest tumping, the politics, and the general sense of rabid fanaticism that pervades the project.
One argument I've heard is that I can go get the projects and packages that I want and weren't included. But please, I'm tired of installing a distribution, then installing 10 or 20 new packages on top of that.
Enough rambling. I have important things to do now. Like drink. And moderate. But all in moderaton.
I graduated from college in 1997; I learned Java in 1996. Back then I heard all sorts of fun things about Java being the multiplatform language of the future. "Write once, run anywhere!" That was five years ago. People still hold onto to the Java Fantasy? The Java Lie?
I get more stable, portable code in C++ than in Java any day.
However, my sister's kids are getting a Dreamcast with Samba de Amigo that I picked up several months ago. Really, it is more of a family gift (my mom loves that game), but I like to play the rich uncle who shamelessly spoils his niece and nephew (since their mother doesn't).
Dear Slashdot crew,
You constantly rail against Microsoft, yet don't have the common sense to convert your story submissions to a form that doesn't have smart quotes!
It's not that hard to run your submissions through a filter that change ? to ' or ".
I'll say again, it's not that hard!
Damn typing errors. The statement should read
"This statement IS unprovable."
I get stuck in american colonial style writing sometimes.
"Life, liberty, and the purfuit of happiness?"
"That's pursuit."
"Well all of your s's look like f's."
"It's the style, it's very in."
Hilbert came up with the formal axiomatic method of mathematics. I wanted to be able to show, without any doubt, and without any ambiguity, that there were certain mathematical truths that could not be violated. He wanted everything to be black or white. Godel ruined all of his fun by writing this down:
"This statement if unprovable."
Unprovable is defined as not being able to prove using the axioms of Hilberts formal system. This was just the beginning of incompleteness. Turing followed up years later with the Turing Machine. He wanted to automate the Hilbert process, and proved the same results as Godel, known today as Turing Incompleteness.
Math as many know it is not absolute or complete. Most mathematicians chose to ignore that inconvenience and still plug away with Hilbert formalism.
p.s. My first post was a joke. Unfortunately, my login name and the absurdity of the whole thing didn't sink in. Kids these days.