I believe that all you need to do is write one line documenting the use of the opensource tarball. That one line covers the whole tarball, because its really *project* documentation at issue rather than programmer's source code documentation.
Ah, that might clear it up, thanks.
Evenso, I'm not sure I think the people in the interview were being a bit sensationalist. Then again, it makes for a fun topic!
You're right, of course. I think the way they measure this, though, is a little nebulous/sensationalist, and that was my beef above.
For example: If the OpenThingee source tarball is 75,000 lines of code, and I install it somewhere (in an undocumented way), does that mean I need to write 75,000 lines to get the ratio up to 50%?
Again, open source is not any more risky than any other kind of code. What is risky is not documenting your use of 3rd party code...here are some quick examples: OpenSSL, phpBB, xt:commerce
So what they're basically saying is that if you use OSS tools in your company, someone should probably be keeping track of them and patching them as needed.
Should this not hold for *all* software you've deployed? Few programs are immune to eventual obsolescence (including ongoing bugs and security problems), so if you think you're safe just because you're running a bought-and-paid-for solution that you've subsequently ignored, you're probably in trouble.
That being said, I wonder about this:...applications written within the last five years contain 50% or more open source code, by a line of code count
I get the impression that we're not getting the full story here. If their code audit showed that 50% of software X was copypasta from sourceforge, that would be something (you probably have crappy developers plus possible legal hell if there were copyright infractions).
On the other hand, if they figured "hey, your hello world program uses library Y, which is 2 million lines that we don't think is documented properly," then the "application" does not *contain* 50% or more open source code, but rather *references* a certain amount of open source code, which is probably a meaningless statistic.
I'm sure the technology is there, and with the proper legal pressure, maybe it's even feasible.
We all know how people like Amazon can charge you money for digitally downloading a (copy protected) e-book, but shouldn't we be as a society be looking for ways to provide a way for library patrons to "borrow" books using this technology? For free?
Opportunist: in some areas (South America? Africa?) copying is so widespread that artists can't really make a living off their music
It's that way in most of the world, really. I'd bet 99% of all musicians don't make a living off their music; they may look cool when they're playing in their bar band on Saturday night, but they're right back in the cubicle (or fishing boat, depending on your profession) with the rest of us on Monday.
We see and read about the rich musicians at the very top all the time, but they're a miniscule fraction of the entire music playing populace. It's obvious that the organizations responsible for all the copyright bruhaha are interested in protecting those few moneymakers at the top of the pile.
psychodelicacy: Re-working other people's material is not plagiarism, but a means of honouring one's predecessors, learning one's craft and encouraging creativity
This is a good point. The definition of plagiarism is subjective and like all things settled by litigation, usually favors the people with the most expensive lawyers (i.e. the top media/communications companies). It's been that way in pop music forever (a few good examples can be found in the book, Confessions of a Record Producer) -- one only has to look at the R&B (Black) music scene in the 1950s-70s to see how many ideas were illegally swiped and resold by people like Pat Boone.
As you say, there's no doubt these people are doing impressive things, but to anyone with experience dealing with e-commerce solutions (read: involving people's money), all of these measures will probably seem familiar.
The problems mentioned above about transactional integrity, backup/restore, availability, clustering, "five nines" uptime have all been largely addressed at places like Amazon, Bank of America, and so on.
Ok, probably a paid NVIDIA ad placement, but check TFA anyway (and even if you don't read, you gotta love the case). It looks like heat generation is one of the biggest problems--sweet.
I like this too:
The medical researchers ran some benchmarks and found that in some cases their 4000EUR desktop superPC outperforms CalcUA, a 256-node supercomputer with dual AMD Opteron 250 2.4GHz chips that cost the University of Antwerp 3.5 million euro in March 2005...
...and at 4000EUR, that comes to what (rolls dice, consults sundial) about $20000 American?
I'm late to the party, and there are certainly a ton of other good suggestions, but I just had to pipe in and cast another vote for YAML.
Even if you don't end up using it for this particular app, it definitely deserves a look. Although it'll never displace XML, it definitely answers at least some of the questions XML attempts to answer, reduces "tag bloat," and is easy on the eyes.
v1 (525388): I wonder really though just how much of those numbers are "real"? Marketing people are not necessarily geniuses at figuring out what works, but are geniuses at twisting numbers to make it look like it works.
You got that right--the pseudoscientists (aka "sociologists," aka "marketers,") seem to have everyone fooled. So fooled, in fact, that after pr0n, advertising is probably the biggest money maker on the internet.
I figure as long as I have the proper ad-blocking plugin installed, I'm immune to the stream of manipulative pap coming from the adservers, so if the gullible viagara customers out there want to subsidize google, they're more than welcome to do so.
I agree with you on the anti-intellectual trend. At one point having a sharp, reasonable mind was considered the ultimate asset. Today, it's regarded as the province of the weak, nerdy, the effeminate, etc.
Recently my boss (a man with no degree who obtained his position through good networking) asked me to help define a process for developing new software. I thought it over, and provided him several URLs covering basic project management. He regarded them disdainfully, saying "These look OK, but I wouldn't want to forward these to MY boss, what with all these big words in it, he might think I'm gay or something." Uhhh...ok, dude.
I felt I was *living* the movie Idiocracy, and I'm sure I'm not the only one with this kind of story.
When you think about it, the workplace is a lot like high school. The popular, often dumb (or popular because they're dumb) kids are *still* running the show (management, government) while those of us who couldn't give a rip (scientists, engineers) just want to do our thing in peace.
TFA links here, which is presumably a podcast of some Lotus Notes dude (insert obligatory Notes joke here) pushing the idea that "that collaboration tools such as e-mail, telephones and desktops will die at the hands of unified communications."
So, what's the angle? They're trying to tell us that since a whopping 20% of society has never used email, we should all sell our computers and buy a LotusBerry(tm)?
I didn't read all of the kerneltrap stuff, but isn't it true that the CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT folks have made some good headway here?
I don't believe the -rt patch is expected to perform well as a drop-in replacement everywhere, or on systems that have management interrupts, but I think for people interested in real-time programming, the rt patch is a good starting point.
These are good points--I'm sure there are people who have weaponized this kind of thing based on the hazards you describe.
I've been fascinated with this topic ever since my "Gamma World" days, where broadcast power was used to provide energy to remote robots, computers, machine-gun emplacements, etc.
And, as for effeciency, I always thought a directed form of energy would avoid the incredible waste you'd find with a pure broadcast-type of power (which would probably decrease in strength proportional to the cube of the distance away from the source).
If it's been a while, you might be pleasantly surprised: you can get a decent GNU/Hurd install going without too much trouble, there are things happening, development-wise (including possible "summer of code" participation) and so on.
I guess it's time to see if PostgreSQL's documentation and tools have managed to get any less user-hostile over the years.
I've been using PostgreSQL on-and-off for about 7 years now, and I have to say: it's *all* gotten a lot better.
In fact, feel free to check out (I think it's on Safari) how slick things have gotten, try Korry Douglas' book (forgot the title right now). I think it's a stellar example of book writing in general, and does a very good job of explaining a lot of the advanced features (like clustering, failover, etc).
O'Reilly is great, but I do think you gotta be careful; a lot of their books can, at times, seem to be mostly printouts of man pages (and other freely available documentation), as this reviewer notes:
If you expect the quality of the author's other books from this book, you'll be disappointed. It just lists system calls and their descriptions that you can find from man pages without any serious examples. It doesn't provide any insight or thorough coverage you can find from other books such as Steven's book.
Richard Stevens was definitely "the man" when it came to writing books like this; I'd recommend them to anyone. Anyone who attempts to cover the same ground (even years later) has a tough act to follow.
I've bought a lot of computer books over the years, and for my money, none have been as well-written and valuable as Stevens'.
In an era where we can communicate around the world with unprecedented ease and speed, shouldn't we be flying LESS?
I'm not thinking about social/pleasure travel, but business travel (which accounts for a large percentage of all flyers). If you work in IT, there are very few tasks you can't accomplish over the WWW, and it seems that most of one's travel obligation has more to do with proving to management that you actually exist. "Face time" is a crutch for managers who don't get it.
Did someone steal the balls of every American politician and ship them overseas or something?
Not quite. I believe the balls were probably sold to a large international corp. through a complicated but effective purchase (or maybe a rent-to-own) program.
That's not to say the EU gets off the hook, the fact this thing even came to a vote (narrowly losing 314-297) means its only a matter of time until it, or a more convoluted version of it, passes.
The old "melting pot" metaphor is really cool when you look at how different cultures appropriate, and adopt, music from other regions. Most of my favorite music (Blues, Reggae, Jazz) can be traced to this kind of activity.
Recently, for example, I've been digging Nyankol Mathaing (here's one link I just found). Awesome mash-up of euro-techno styles with microtonal, groovy Sudanese music.
The study of Music Theory is highly recommended (though I wouldn't recommend it for a career choice) for anyone of a technical nature who really wants to be challenged.
Beyond the simple technicalities of measure-by-measure analysis (what notes combine to find what chord? what notes form a pattern to yield what scale?) the body of known music as a whole forms a massive network of associations and references in the form of quotes, parody, mimesis, etc...it's almost as if music comments about other music.
This network, combined with various social and cultural studies, really provides a rich field of exploration (for example, the reason we concentrate on music by dead white europeans from 1700-1900 may include a cultural bias, not just technical).
The professional, academic fields of Music Theory, History, and Ethnomusicology are only now beginning to broaden the discussion, having been stuck in the early 1900s (I've known professors of music who will say, without irony, that there's nothing worth discussing since ca. 1915).
So, on your I-IV-V comment, it's true that there are about a zillion compositions that use this chord progression, so an interesting question would be "what makes each composition different in its use of this repetitive structure?"
The answers are always interesting, and can include discussions of different genres, barely-perceptible rhythmic features borrowed from other cultures, sound textures, audio effects, and on and on.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that all you need to do is write one line documenting the use of the opensource tarball. That one line covers the whole tarball, because its really *project* documentation at issue rather than programmer's source code documentation.
Ah, that might clear it up, thanks.
Evenso, I'm not sure I think the people in the interview were being a bit sensationalist. Then again, it makes for a fun topic!
You're right, of course. I think the way they measure this, though, is a little nebulous/sensationalist, and that was my beef above.
For example: If the OpenThingee source tarball is 75,000 lines of code, and I install it somewhere (in an undocumented way), does that mean I need to write 75,000 lines to get the ratio up to 50%?
The money shot:
...applications written within the last five years contain 50% or more open source code, by a line of code count
Again, open source is not any more risky than any other kind of code. What is risky is not documenting your use of 3rd party code...here are some quick examples: OpenSSL, phpBB, xt:commerce
So what they're basically saying is that if you use OSS tools in your company, someone should probably be keeping track of them and patching them as needed.
Should this not hold for *all* software you've deployed? Few programs are immune to eventual obsolescence (including ongoing bugs and security problems), so if you think you're safe just because you're running a bought-and-paid-for solution that you've subsequently ignored, you're probably in trouble.
That being said, I wonder about this:
I get the impression that we're not getting the full story here. If their code audit showed that 50% of software X was copypasta from sourceforge, that would be something (you probably have crappy developers plus possible legal hell if there were copyright infractions).
On the other hand, if they figured "hey, your hello world program uses library Y, which is 2 million lines that we don't think is documented properly," then the "application" does not *contain* 50% or more open source code, but rather *references* a certain amount of open source code, which is probably a meaningless statistic.
I'm sure the technology is there, and with the proper legal pressure, maybe it's even feasible.
We all know how people like Amazon can charge you money for digitally downloading a (copy protected) e-book, but shouldn't we be as a society be looking for ways to provide a way for library patrons to "borrow" books using this technology? For free?
Opportunist: in some areas (South America? Africa?) copying is so widespread that artists can't really make a living off their music
It's that way in most of the world, really. I'd bet 99% of all musicians don't make a living off their music; they may look cool when they're playing in their bar band on Saturday night, but they're right back in the cubicle (or fishing boat, depending on your profession) with the rest of us on Monday.
We see and read about the rich musicians at the very top all the time, but they're a miniscule fraction of the entire music playing populace. It's obvious that the organizations responsible for all the copyright bruhaha are interested in protecting those few moneymakers at the top of the pile.
psychodelicacy: Re-working other people's material is not plagiarism, but a means of honouring one's predecessors, learning one's craft and encouraging creativity
This is a good point. The definition of plagiarism is subjective and like all things settled by litigation, usually favors the people with the most expensive lawyers (i.e. the top media/communications companies). It's been that way in pop music forever (a few good examples can be found in the book, Confessions of a Record Producer) -- one only has to look at the R&B (Black) music scene in the 1950s-70s to see how many ideas were illegally swiped and resold by people like Pat Boone.
As you say, there's no doubt these people are doing impressive things, but to anyone with experience dealing with e-commerce solutions (read: involving people's money), all of these measures will probably seem familiar.
The problems mentioned above about transactional integrity, backup/restore, availability, clustering, "five nines" uptime have all been largely addressed at places like Amazon, Bank of America, and so on.
Ok, probably a paid NVIDIA ad placement, but check TFA anyway (and even if you don't read, you gotta love the case). It looks like heat generation is one of the biggest problems--sweet.
...and at 4000EUR, that comes to what (rolls dice, consults sundial) about $20000 American?
I like this too:
The medical researchers ran some benchmarks and found that in some cases their 4000EUR desktop superPC outperforms CalcUA, a 256-node supercomputer with dual AMD Opteron 250 2.4GHz chips that cost the University of Antwerp 3.5 million euro in March 2005...
I'm late to the party, and there are certainly a ton of other good suggestions, but I just had to pipe in and cast another vote for YAML.
Even if you don't end up using it for this particular app, it definitely deserves a look. Although it'll never displace XML, it definitely answers at least some of the questions XML attempts to answer, reduces "tag bloat," and is easy on the eyes.
v1 (525388): I wonder really though just how much of those numbers are "real"? Marketing people are not necessarily geniuses at figuring out what works, but are geniuses at twisting numbers to make it look like it works.
You got that right--the pseudoscientists (aka "sociologists," aka "marketers,") seem to have everyone fooled. So fooled, in fact, that after pr0n, advertising is probably the biggest money maker on the internet.
I figure as long as I have the proper ad-blocking plugin installed, I'm immune to the stream of manipulative pap coming from the adservers, so if the gullible viagara customers out there want to subsidize google, they're more than welcome to do so.
I agree with you on the anti-intellectual trend. At one point having a sharp, reasonable mind was considered the ultimate asset. Today, it's regarded as the province of the weak, nerdy, the effeminate, etc.
Recently my boss (a man with no degree who obtained his position through good networking) asked me to help define a process for developing new software. I thought it over, and provided him several URLs covering basic project management. He regarded them disdainfully, saying "These look OK, but I wouldn't want to forward these to MY boss, what with all these big words in it, he might think I'm gay or something." Uhhh...ok, dude.
I felt I was *living* the movie Idiocracy, and I'm sure I'm not the only one with this kind of story.
When you think about it, the workplace is a lot like high school. The popular, often dumb (or popular because they're dumb) kids are *still* running the show (management, government) while those of us who couldn't give a rip (scientists, engineers) just want to do our thing in peace.
TFA links here, which is presumably a podcast of some Lotus Notes dude (insert obligatory Notes joke here) pushing the idea that "that collaboration tools such as e-mail, telephones and desktops will die at the hands of unified communications."
So, what's the angle? They're trying to tell us that since a whopping 20% of society has never used email, we should all sell our computers and buy a LotusBerry(tm)?
Pfffffffft.
I didn't read all of the kerneltrap stuff, but isn't it true that the CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT folks have made some good headway here?
I don't believe the -rt patch is expected to perform well as a drop-in replacement everywhere, or on systems that have management interrupts, but I think for people interested in real-time programming, the rt patch is a good starting point.
Oh, I don't know...
There's a strong correlation between the libertarian/independent/freethinker community and the advocacy of Linux and other [F]OSS solutions.
And yet, doesn't every Linux kernel (2.6 or better) use SELinux [1] ?
That was truly a righteous remark, and worthy of some mod points!
It might be more like the standard inverse square law...
;)
Yeah, you're probably right. Maybe that's why I don't play Gamma World anymore
These are good points--I'm sure there are people who have weaponized this kind of thing based on the hazards you describe.
I've been fascinated with this topic ever since my "Gamma World" days, where broadcast power was used to provide energy to remote robots, computers, machine-gun emplacements, etc.
And, as for effeciency, I always thought a directed form of energy would avoid the incredible waste you'd find with a pure broadcast-type of power (which would probably decrease in strength proportional to the cube of the distance away from the source).
I've tried contributing code, but they're stuck in a cathedral and won't acknowledge me.
I hear ya...I've better luck with the Debian Hurd project, give them a shot:
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/
If it's been a while, you might be pleasantly surprised: you can get a decent GNU/Hurd install going without too much trouble, there are things happening, development-wise (including possible "summer of code" participation) and so on.
Good luck.
I guess it's time to see if PostgreSQL's documentation and tools have managed to get any less user-hostile over the years.
I've been using PostgreSQL on-and-off for about 7 years now, and I have to say: it's *all* gotten a lot better.
In fact, feel free to check out (I think it's on Safari) how slick things have gotten, try Korry Douglas' book (forgot the title right now). I think it's a stellar example of book writing in general, and does a very good job of explaining a lot of the advanced features (like clustering, failover, etc).
I won't miss MySQL one bit--PG rules!
...if the amazon reviews are accurate.
O'Reilly is great, but I do think you gotta be careful; a lot of their books can, at times, seem to be mostly printouts of man pages (and other freely available documentation), as this reviewer notes:
If you expect the quality of the author's other books from this book, you'll be disappointed. It just lists system calls and their descriptions that you can find from man pages without any serious examples. It doesn't provide any insight or thorough coverage you can find from other books such as Steven's book.
Richard Stevens was definitely "the man" when it came to writing books like this; I'd recommend them to anyone. Anyone who attempts to cover the same ground (even years later) has a tough act to follow.
I've bought a lot of computer books over the years, and for my money, none have been as well-written and valuable as Stevens'.
RIP, Richard.
You can choose from phantom fears
And kindness that can kill
I will choose a path thats clear
I will choose free will!
--oblig.
In an era where we can communicate around the world with unprecedented ease and speed, shouldn't we be flying LESS?
I'm not thinking about social/pleasure travel, but business travel (which accounts for a large percentage of all flyers). If you work in IT, there are very few tasks you can't accomplish over the WWW, and it seems that most of one's travel obligation has more to do with proving to management that you actually exist. "Face time" is a crutch for managers who don't get it.
Seriously, folks.
I have definitely worked with people who possessed negative programming skills.
I have not found them to be rare.
Too bad I don't have mod points--this is spot-on.
Did someone steal the balls of every American politician and ship them overseas or something?
Not quite. I believe the balls were probably sold to a large international corp. through a complicated but effective purchase (or maybe a rent-to-own) program.
That's not to say the EU gets off the hook, the fact this thing even came to a vote (narrowly losing 314-297) means its only a matter of time until it, or a more convoluted version of it, passes.
I'd love to hear that Beatles cover. Got a link?
The old "melting pot" metaphor is really cool when you look at how different cultures appropriate, and adopt, music
from other regions. Most of my favorite music (Blues, Reggae, Jazz) can be traced to this kind of activity.
Recently, for example, I've been digging Nyankol Mathaing (here's
one link I just found). Awesome mash-up of euro-techno styles with microtonal, groovy Sudanese music.
The study of Music Theory is highly recommended (though I wouldn't recommend it for a career choice) for anyone of a technical nature who really wants to be challenged.
Beyond the simple technicalities of measure-by-measure analysis (what notes combine to find what chord? what notes form a pattern to yield what scale?) the body of known music as a whole forms a massive network of associations and references in the form of quotes, parody, mimesis, etc...it's almost as if music comments about other music.
This network, combined with various social and cultural studies, really provides a rich field of exploration (for example, the reason we concentrate on music by dead white europeans from 1700-1900 may include a cultural bias, not just technical).
The professional, academic fields of Music Theory, History, and Ethnomusicology are only now beginning to broaden the discussion, having been stuck in the early 1900s (I've known professors of music who will say, without irony, that there's nothing worth discussing since ca. 1915).
So, on your I-IV-V comment, it's true that there are about a zillion compositions that use this chord progression, so an interesting question would be "what makes each composition different in its use of this repetitive structure?"
The answers are always interesting, and can include discussions of different genres, barely-perceptible rhythmic features borrowed from other cultures, sound textures, audio effects, and on and on.
Fun times.