While I had fiddled around with BASIC and shell scripting, I didn't really get into programming, or the concepts of computer science until I learned Java which was taught in CS101 at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. I found Java to be ideal. The syntax is nearly identical to C/C++, yet many tasks are simplified, such as memory management. It's a great language for object oriented programming, it's cross-platform (duh), and it finds your stupid mistakes very well with excellent compile-time and run-time checking. And Java makes a great transition if you wish to eventually learn C or C++. ----
White Castle should trademark their one-of-a-kind steam-grilled odor. Then the millions of White Castle Consumers would unintentionally be advertising the trademark everywhere they go for days after eating there. Mmmmmm... ----
IE is not one big application. Nor is Konqueror, nor is Nautilus, nor Evolution. IE, for example, is made up of hundreds of smaller programs, components, glued together in a shell. Component technology is extremely powerful, efficient, and sweet.:) ----
This is because the fundamental rule of KDE (and Gnome) development is "We hate Microsoft, but we copy their every move anyway."
From what I've read, and from talking with a few developers, it's more that they use the good ideas from Microsoft, Apple, other free desktop projects, etc. A level-headed person will admit that Microsoft has had a lot of good ideas (and a lot of ideas that weren't their own but that they put together in a good way). ----
Take, for example, the question of religion. I am an atheist; I firmly believe that there is no God. However, you'll note that I don't state "There is no God," but rather "I believe that there is no God." It is not for me to know at this time whether there is a God, and thus it is not for me to casually dismiss anyone who believes in God as wrong. Their belief is just as valid as mine, in this case, since the actual existence of God is unknowable.
While either belief may be "valid" in the sense that they are conclusions correctly derived from their respective premises, they cannot both be correct. Either there is a God or there isn't. When all the evidence and every factor is taken into account (which can't really be done, but if it could...), there would only be one truly valid conclusion regarding the existence of God. Of course, the agnostics would argue that no matter how much evidence you gather, it is an unknowable, indeterminable thing. I happen to believe quite the contrary; that the universe is quite knowable, and that the creation reflects the creator, whether you believe the "creator" to be God, blind chance + time, or anything else.
As is often said, the only absolute is that there are no absolutes.
I would argue quite the opposite. The very fact that we are discussing, arguing, debating, here on/. gives intellectual assent to the fact that we all ascribe to the concept of absolute truth. It's always humourous to here someone arguing vehemently that there are no absolutes, absolutely. You contradict them, and they yell, "no, you're wrong!" It's a delightful scene, which bemuses me. We may not be able to come to an agreement on whether or not there is a God, for example, but absolutely, there either is or there isn't. ----
I think RMS's behavior suggests his views and rigorous support of those views are based on what he perceives as overal good for the society, not some literal interpretations of anything.
Everyone begins with basic prima facie, the starting point and assumptions they make. The rest of their belief system is derived from those first principles, either loosely or rigidly. Stallman states his as follows:
I think of right and wrong as based on how what we could do affects other people--the implications of imagining ourselves in the situation of the people our actions affect.
I would say his rigorous beliefs are direct literal deductions from his basic beliefs, so by your definition he would be a "fundamentalist." ----
Of course he could. I mean, the man can build a modem out of a toaster; reprogramming the audience's Palm Pilots with his Infrared Hacker Vision would be a walk in the park. ----
I don't think so. I mean how hard can it be to type "mount/mnt/cdrom"? Also, you can set up KDE and GNOME to automatically mount cdrom & floppy when you click on the desktop icon. You then have to right-click it and click unmount to unmount it.
It isn't that it's hard, it's just annoying. Why do it if you don't have to. Yeah, clicking on an icon is pretty easy. But what if I'm not in X? I should be able to just access/mnt/floppy and have it work. SuperMount is one more step towards helping users not familiar with Unix-like systems join in the fun. I remember a time a few months ago when over the phone I had to describe to my sister how to mount and unmount floppies in Linux (she hadn't really used Linux for that purpose yet, just for web browsing, email, and games). She saw it as a deficiency of Linux that you had to type the commands just to get to the point where you can read the floppy. And then when she changes to a different floppy she has to unmount and then remount the new one. All she could think is, what a pain! ----
A lot of people talk about the differences between Redhat and Mandrake, so I thought I'd highlight some of the major points, so those who haven't tried both can get a feel for what they're in for.
KDE vs. Gnome: While both distributions include both desktop environments, Mandrake puts most of their effort into developing KDE and writing configuration tools using the KDE framework. Redhat, on the other hand, writes most of their tools nowadays using the Gnome Framework, and works primarily on making their Gnome desktop useable. The upshot of this is that if you prefer KDE, you might prefer Mandrake, but if you prefer Gnome, you'd likely want to go with RedHat.
Minimalism vs. Everything but the Kitchen Sink: Redhat has taken a fairly minimalistic approach to creating their distribution. They've cut some of the packages they used to include out of the distribution (moving them to the PowerTools CD, often). They focus on making sure the core packages that they do include work well together and form a solid base platform which can be extended. Mandrake, on the other hand, adds new packages with every release, packaging just about anything that desktop users frequently download and install themselves anyway. The upshot of this is that if you like a distribution that is basic and solid, you might want to go with RedHat. On the other hand, if you don't like downloading and installing software and you want as much as you can get on a CD, you might prefer Mandrake.
Older, tested packages, with compatibility from minor relase to minor release vs. Bleeding Edge.: Redhat is relatively consistent from minor relase to minor release. Many users complained that Redhat 6.2 didn't include the latest Enlightenment. This is because Redhat wanted their default Gnome/Enlightenment desktop to behave in a very consistent manor as 6.0 and 6.1 did. They didn't feel they could achieve this while including the latest Enlightenment package. With RH 7.0 being a major release, this won't be a factor any more. Redhat often waits for packages to become tried-and-true and tested before including them. With new major kernel releases, they usually wait until 4 or 5 updates before using it. Mandrake, on the other hand, usually includes the latest releases of every package on their distribution, sometimes even including pre-release or beta versions of packages. The upshot of this is that if you prefer stable, well-tested with time software, you will probably want to go with Redhat. If you want bleeding edge, flashy software with lots of new features, you'd probably want to go with Redhat. ----
Actually, my experience has been quite the opposite. Mandrake has been extraordinarily buggy the last few releases while Red Hat's product has been much, much better in terms of being a better tested product. Mandrake has really been rushing the release cycle. I would describe Mandrake as a distribution for those who like to stay on the "bleeding edge" and don't mind glitches. If you want a rock-solid, RPM-based distribution, Redhat 6.2 is an excellent choice. But I do like what I see in terms of features of Mandrake 7.1. ----
Virus is a Latin word. Viruses is not. The root is virus, Latin for poison, yes. But the plural is not viri. Check out this link for more information. Not every word ending in -us has -i in the plural. Virus is a defective noun. Even some Latin dictionaries have that wrong. ----
Actually, you proved my point. The reason the plural of virus is viruses, is because it's the only thing that makes sense in English. Viruses isn't a Latin word at all. The point is that the made-up "Latin" alternatives don't make sense. The Oxford English Unabridged lists "viruses" as the plural. ----
Precisely. Economics or Political agenda, which are closely bound, are key factors in scientfic advancement. The reason the lunar mission happened so quickly was due to the politics and economic relations with the former U.S.S.R. during the cold war. We acted out of fear largely. Likewise, if there was the economic and political insentive to go to Mars, we would likely be there by now. We have the "technology" right now for things like wireless broadband, videophones, cars that hover above the ground and drive themselves to the destination you name audibly, and intensely realistic virtual reality. But to get these technologies off the paper and into the factory, or even if prototypes exist, to get them into large-scale production, requires the right economic and political insentives. ----
It's really sad that people have to keep delaying the inevitable wall in processing power. I say scientists should just face it now and forget about working on.07 Micron microprocessors.
Yeah, I agree. I also think that we shouldn't have bothered to improve RAM storage capacity over the years. After all, 640K ought to be enough for anyone. ----
I used to help newbies on IRC all the time. They don't understand the concept of "real work" to get things up and running. They think everything should be point and click, and it shouldn't be. I am old school perhaps, but you should at least have some sort of conceptual model of the system (and a command line interface helps build that model).
I disagee. I personally want to know what is going on, the "conceptual model" as you put it, but there shouldn't be a mandate that all computer users have to grasp that. Some people simply do not want to understand what is going on. They use the computer as a tool, and often a very limited one, and they are content with that. There is nothing wrong with this type of user. If a computer user wants to browse the web a bit, and maybe do some word processing, and check their email, maybe occasionally play solitaire, and that is the extent of what they want to use their computer for, why shouldn't they be able to do that? Distributions such as Corel's give a user a free (beer and speech) alternative to Windows or MacOS.
The Open Source philosophy is about choice, freedom to do what you want with the resources provided for you by thousands of hackers. I think it fits right in line with this philosophy to have dumbed down distributions. ----
There seems to be a bit of confusion on exactly what Evolution is. Evolution is the mailer, contact manager, and calendar, and in general it will be able to be used to store and share many types of information; Evolution is much more than just an Outlook-like client. It's also a server, which can indeed replace Exchange. The mailing backend is Camel, and there is a Calendar backend as well.
In summary, Evolution will be a general solution for information-sharing, first with the mail, calendar, and contact sharing mechanism, but also providing a framework for developing and extending this to other applications. You'll be able to see the Evolution server at work when the Gnome hackers set up the gnome.org Evolution server which will contain all the gnome hackers' contact information. ----
The entire point of the article posted was to answer questions like yours. It might be useful to read the article before posting a comment like yours. ----
If I remember correctly, it was never "promised." Linus has always been reluctant to swear by any release schedule. And as Alan has said, these dates are goals, or targets, if you miss the goal, it's not the end of the world, but if you never set goals, you'll never get finished. ----
Slashdot Mirror
While I had fiddled around with BASIC and shell scripting, I didn't really get into programming, or the concepts of computer science until I learned Java which was taught in CS101 at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. I found Java to be ideal. The syntax is nearly identical to C/C++, yet many tasks are simplified, such as memory management. It's a great language for object oriented programming, it's cross-platform (duh), and it finds your stupid mistakes very well with excellent compile-time and run-time checking. And Java makes a great transition if you wish to eventually learn C or C++.
----
White Castle should trademark their one-of-a-kind steam-grilled odor. Then the millions of White Castle Consumers would unintentionally be advertising the trademark everywhere they go for days after eating there. Mmmmmm...
----
Apparently you haven't run 1.2 yet. ;) Give it a try.
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IE is not one big application. Nor is Konqueror, nor is Nautilus, nor Evolution. IE, for example, is made up of hundreds of smaller programs, components, glued together in a shell. Component technology is extremely powerful, efficient, and sweet. :)
----
Evolution is the new Outlook-killer, part of the groupware suite that Helix Code is developing.
----
From what I've read, and from talking with a few developers, it's more that they use the good ideas from Microsoft, Apple, other free desktop projects, etc. A level-headed person will admit that Microsoft has had a lot of good ideas (and a lot of ideas that weren't their own but that they put together in a good way).
----
While either belief may be "valid" in the sense that they are conclusions correctly derived from their respective premises, they cannot both be correct. Either there is a God or there isn't. When all the evidence and every factor is taken into account (which can't really be done, but if it could...), there would only be one truly valid conclusion regarding the existence of God. Of course, the agnostics would argue that no matter how much evidence you gather, it is an unknowable, indeterminable thing. I happen to believe quite the contrary; that the universe is quite knowable, and that the creation reflects the creator, whether you believe the "creator" to be God, blind chance + time, or anything else.
As is often said, the only absolute is that there are no absolutes.
I would argue quite the opposite. The very fact that we are discussing, arguing, debating, here on /. gives intellectual assent to the fact that we all ascribe to the concept of absolute truth. It's always humourous to here someone arguing vehemently that there are no absolutes, absolutely. You contradict them, and they yell, "no, you're wrong!" It's a delightful scene, which bemuses me. We may not be able to come to an agreement on whether or not there is a God, for example, but absolutely, there either is or there isn't.
----
Everyone begins with basic prima facie, the starting point and assumptions they make. The rest of their belief system is derived from those first principles, either loosely or rigidly. Stallman states his as follows:
I think of right and wrong as based on how what we could do affects other people--the implications of imagining ourselves in the situation of the people our actions affect.
I would say his rigorous beliefs are direct literal deductions from his basic beliefs, so by your definition he would be a "fundamentalist."
----
Of course he could. I mean, the man can build a modem out of a toaster; reprogramming the audience's Palm Pilots with his Infrared Hacker Vision would be a walk in the park.
----
It isn't that it's hard, it's just annoying. Why do it if you don't have to. Yeah, clicking on an icon is pretty easy. But what if I'm not in X? I should be able to just access /mnt/floppy and have it work. SuperMount is one more step towards helping users not familiar with Unix-like systems join in the fun. I remember a time a few months ago when over the phone I had to describe to my sister how to mount and unmount floppies in Linux (she hadn't really used Linux for that purpose yet, just for web browsing, email, and games). She saw it as a deficiency of Linux that you had to type the commands just to get to the point where you can read the floppy. And then when she changes to a different floppy she has to unmount and then remount the new one. All she could think is, what a pain!
----
Which version(s) of Redhat were released with a pre-release of the kernel? I don't recall any.
----
KDE vs. Gnome: While both distributions include both desktop environments, Mandrake puts most of their effort into developing KDE and writing configuration tools using the KDE framework. Redhat, on the other hand, writes most of their tools nowadays using the Gnome Framework, and works primarily on making their Gnome desktop useable. The upshot of this is that if you prefer KDE, you might prefer Mandrake, but if you prefer Gnome, you'd likely want to go with RedHat.
Minimalism vs. Everything but the Kitchen Sink: Redhat has taken a fairly minimalistic approach to creating their distribution. They've cut some of the packages they used to include out of the distribution (moving them to the PowerTools CD, often). They focus on making sure the core packages that they do include work well together and form a solid base platform which can be extended. Mandrake, on the other hand, adds new packages with every release, packaging just about anything that desktop users frequently download and install themselves anyway. The upshot of this is that if you like a distribution that is basic and solid, you might want to go with RedHat. On the other hand, if you don't like downloading and installing software and you want as much as you can get on a CD, you might prefer Mandrake.
Older, tested packages, with compatibility from minor relase to minor release vs. Bleeding Edge.: Redhat is relatively consistent from minor relase to minor release. Many users complained that Redhat 6.2 didn't include the latest Enlightenment. This is because Redhat wanted their default Gnome/Enlightenment desktop to behave in a very consistent manor as 6.0 and 6.1 did. They didn't feel they could achieve this while including the latest Enlightenment package. With RH 7.0 being a major release, this won't be a factor any more. Redhat often waits for packages to become tried-and-true and tested before including them. With new major kernel releases, they usually wait until 4 or 5 updates before using it. Mandrake, on the other hand, usually includes the latest releases of every package on their distribution, sometimes even including pre-release or beta versions of packages. The upshot of this is that if you prefer stable, well-tested with time software, you will probably want to go with Redhat. If you want bleeding edge, flashy software with lots of new features, you'd probably want to go with Redhat.
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This is the Mandrake way of doing things. They attract users who want flashy, bleeding edge systems and don't mind some glitches as a result.
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For professional environments, now shipping ReiserFS, a new journalized file system.
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Actually, my experience has been quite the opposite. Mandrake has been extraordinarily buggy the last few releases while Red Hat's product has been much, much better in terms of being a better tested product. Mandrake has really been rushing the release cycle. I would describe Mandrake as a distribution for those who like to stay on the "bleeding edge" and don't mind glitches. If you want a rock-solid, RPM-based distribution, Redhat 6.2 is an excellent choice. But I do like what I see in terms of features of Mandrake 7.1.
----
Virus is a Latin word. Viruses is not. The root is virus, Latin for poison, yes. But the plural is not viri. Check out this link for more information. Not every word ending in -us has -i in the plural. Virus is a defective noun. Even some Latin dictionaries have that wrong.
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Actually, you proved my point. The reason the plural of virus is viruses, is because it's the only thing that makes sense in English. Viruses isn't a Latin word at all. The point is that the made-up "Latin" alternatives don't make sense. The Oxford English Unabridged lists "viruses" as the plural.
----
Precisely. Economics or Political agenda, which are closely bound, are key factors in scientfic advancement. The reason the lunar mission happened so quickly was due to the politics and economic relations with the former U.S.S.R. during the cold war. We acted out of fear largely. Likewise, if there was the economic and political insentive to go to Mars, we would likely be there by now. We have the "technology" right now for things like wireless broadband, videophones, cars that hover above the ground and drive themselves to the destination you name audibly, and intensely realistic virtual reality. But to get these technologies off the paper and into the factory, or even if prototypes exist, to get them into large-scale production, requires the right economic and political insentives.
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Yeah, I agree. I also think that we shouldn't have bothered to improve RAM storage capacity over the years. After all, 640K ought to be enough for anyone.
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Then don't use x86. There are other platforms such as Sparc, Alpha, etc. These chip technologies won't just affect x86.
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:) I'm glad you like it. There are actually several references to the name, "Skeezix," such as the Gasoline Alley character, and the character from the game, "Uncle Wiggily." I first heard reference to this in a song by Tourniquet called "The Skeezix Dilemma".
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I disagee. I personally want to know what is going on, the "conceptual model" as you put it, but there shouldn't be a mandate that all computer users have to grasp that. Some people simply do not want to understand what is going on. They use the computer as a tool, and often a very limited one, and they are content with that. There is nothing wrong with this type of user. If a computer user wants to browse the web a bit, and maybe do some word processing, and check their email, maybe occasionally play solitaire, and that is the extent of what they want to use their computer for, why shouldn't they be able to do that? Distributions such as Corel's give a user a free (beer and speech) alternative to Windows or MacOS.
The Open Source philosophy is about choice, freedom to do what you want with the resources provided for you by thousands of hackers. I think it fits right in line with this philosophy to have dumbed down distributions.
----
In summary, Evolution will be a general solution for information-sharing, first with the mail, calendar, and contact sharing mechanism, but also providing a framework for developing and extending this to other applications. You'll be able to see the Evolution server at work when the Gnome hackers set up the gnome.org Evolution server which will contain all the gnome hackers' contact information.
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The entire point of the article posted was to answer questions like yours. It might be useful to read the article before posting a comment like yours.
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If I remember correctly, it was never "promised." Linus has always been reluctant to swear by any release schedule. And as Alan has said, these dates are goals, or targets, if you miss the goal, it's not the end of the world, but if you never set goals, you'll never get finished.
----