As just one example, one of the nicest things about laptops is the ability to go to a cafe and hack. Since I, at least, tend to go out in the morning, do stuff all day, and then return at night, this entails carting the laptop around with me the rest of the day while I do other stuff (maybe you drive everywhere and can just stick it in your car, but I don't).
[Another common example might be college students.]
Also, another important issue (now that I think about it), is support -- there are quite a few large and well-known companies that will sell you support for linux, whereas I'm not aware of any (large, well-known) companies that will do so for a typical *bsd system.
[Companies with in-house support staff want to standardize on as few systems as possible, and since linux currently has a fairly hefty corporate mind-share advantage over freebsd, freebsd is likely to lose out in many cases.]
But I know and you know that larger companies aren't going to go for Linux because the "GPV" bothers them.
I certainly don't know that -- in my experience larger companies don't really care what OS it runs, as long as it runs their apps and gives the user experience they want (whether this is true for lindows or not, I have no idea, but linux and freebsd are probably comparable).
In many cases they like linux because it has a buzz (freebsd doesn't, really, despite OSX), and that makes them feel less nervous about it.
5 lbs may not cause most people to fall over and die, but if it's something you're carrying around all day, the less weight the better. Even a few pounds can quickly become annoying.
You're right that it illustrates how it's hard to get a big conservative company to change direction, once a decision has been taken.
I suspect that from a certain point of view, though, using stolen software is more acceptable than using free software -- it fits the old business model better, and no doubt they have more prior experience with it!
The problem is that Japanese companies are also very risk-averse, and Daryl's blathering is going to give ammunition to those who view linux as `too risky' or `too weird.'
I work at a large japanese chip-maker, and am actively involved in trying to get linux accepted (in my own pathetic way of course:-), and often when I explain what I'm doing it's clear that the listener is uncomfortable with the whole thing, and would jump at an excuse to bury their head in the sand. Though the company's bottom line is hardware sales (which linux availablity helps), they've traditionally made a few extra pennies here and there selling (usually pretty crappy) software too, and as there's a strong pressure for each division to justify its existance in hard-cash terms, they're loathe to give up even those pennies -- even if doing so might be better for the company overall.
People like that are not stupid, just very used to an old business model and wary of change. Daryl is aiming his FUD at them.
Andrew Morton is going to be the one to release 2.6.0
I hadn't noticed that, but wow, it's an excellent thing if true -- I think Andrew Morton is one of those rare people who not only has an immense clue, but is careful and thorough enough to release something that really will be stable. Maybe he's even better than Alan Cox in that respect...
Personally I'm looking forward to the 2.6 release because I'm the proud father of a new architecture in the 2.5 series -- the v850! Of course now I'm continually fretting over whether Linus applies enough of my patches to result in a usable port...
[Well, OK, so almost nobody actually uses the v850 processor, except maybe in their car's engine controller, but it's there! In the kernel! Hmmm, linux engine control...?]
Does this mean there'll be more or fewer gentoo zombies on slashdot? Well maybe that's too harsh, but you know what I mean -- on a subject with even the most peripheral connection to gentoo, there's always a few people posting 12-page screeds on how much they love gentoo.
Mozilla version 1.4.5.3.5.78b released?... `You know as soon as I saw that I "emerged" gentoo, and boy you know only 47 hours later, I see the new mozilla, and I can feel the 1% speed improvement I get by compiling from source, I don't know what I'd do without it, I'd just die, it's so great, boy you know, I just love gentoo!'
I can see it going two ways --
gentoo community wars among itself, spends all their effort doing that, less time for posting to slashdot. Yay!
competing gentoo sects feel an even greater need to evangelize, so they start non-stop posting screeds.... The horror...the horror...
Well I suppose you're right and some print matter will disappear as a viable (mass-market) business, but I predict that the `replacement' will be quite inadequate and will suck in many ways that people won't entirely appreciate until it's too late -- that's the way it always seems to happen.
Curling up in bed with the sunday edition on your ereader? GAh.
Well I never claimed it was, I just think the original poster's description of Japanese in general as being very `health concious' seemed flat-out bizarre.
However, I will say that while the majority of Americans wouldn't know healthy from a hole in the head, there's a large minority that actually do think (er, obsess...?) about health issues, and this group has had some effect on the general awareness. To be sure, the result is often twisted and bizarre (99% fat-free bags of sugar!), but well, at least smoking is on its way out (whereas smoking is still one of Japan's most offensive habits)...
Where are you in Japan? I've lived near Tokyo for 5-6 years, and while lots of people drink coffee, I've almost never seen anyone drink it black, they're always pouring the most god-awful crap into it (e.g., `Creap'), and while I know lots of great places to buy coffee, I find it almost impossible to find decaf (either prepared or beans). Indeed the only reliable source I've found for decaf is Starbucks, and they're not exactly top-quality...
BTW, `image concious' seems closer to the mark than `health concious.'
Naw, Eric is completely full of shit on this particular issue.
The LKML is actually amazingly meritocratic, and really quite friendly to new faces -- if you have your shit together, and have done your homework.
However, like many programming lists, there's little facade of politeness, and if they look at your proposal and see problems, they'll call you on them, and in no uncertain terms. This sort of thing unnerves many people, especially those (like Eric) that want to develop their own little fiefdom and have it all merged with no questions asked and no changes made. It ain't going to happen, people are going to go over your code with a fine tooth comb, and questions will be asked.
On balance, I'd say it's actually much better than other similar lists I've observed, and I think the reason comes down to one thing -- Linus. If he likes what you've done, he'll merge it, even if everybody else disagrees, and by-and-large he's pretty good at paying attention to principals rather than personalities. This has a rather astonishing levelling effect, and it seems to prevent exactly the sort of ossification that Eric complains about.
I'm constantly amazed by the tales I hear about Nintendo's Australian operation. It's like they long ago lost contact with the parent organization, and have stopped trying to actually sell anything, spending their days getting drunk and figuring out new ways to taunt Australian Nintendo fans (`Hey, let's double the price and include free shards of broken glass in every box! New color: puke!').
I mean, I know Nintendo's pretty much focused on Japan, but this is ridiculous...
They've forgotten they're STORYTELLERS, not architects, generals, etc. Remember LOTR is a story that sold MILLIONS of copies with no special effects other than a nondescript painting on the cover of the book.
Jackson & company have done a bang-up job so far. Indeed, I think in many ways they've done a better job than Tolkien did -- I found myself actually caring about what happened to the characters in the movies, whereas many of the same characters in the books are stiffly drawn and end up seeming bloodless and interchangeable despite the elaborate genealogies. For all his strengths, Tolkien was really not a particularly good writer...
Re:Linus' stuff?
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Settling SCOres
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· Score: 5, Interesting
What's interesting is that the scheduler seems one of the least likely places for such code-pollution to occur -- as one of the most central parts of the kernel, it's also one of the most scrutinized and well understood by many people.
I'm also under the impression that the `traditional' linux scheduler (before the rewrite by Ingo Molnar in 2.5) is one of the oldest parts of linux, predating any involvement by IBM or any other large company with access to SCO source. [but this is just my impression from reading the LKML, not based on any research!]
Because the mechanisms involved are fairly implementation-specific, it's also very unlikely that anyone could just copy a few random functions from SCO, unless they were very generic. Since SCO is by all accounts very old and crufty, it's unlikely you'd even want to.
By far the most likely place for copied code is in obscure device drivers that no one really looks at or understands very well besides the original author.
Of course what we really want to hear is the name of these functions! C'mon non-NDA guy, cough 'em up!
Perhaps it would be better to say that the key word is `testable.'
In order to be testable, something has to be at least somewhat well-defined, and since we've never encountered any aliens, it's very hard to say how one tests for `alienness' (10-point checklists in the National Enquirer notwithstanding!). Morever even the concept of `run by' used by most nutcases is pretty vague -- it includes `secretly holds the reins of power,' which again is one of those things that's very hard to nail down, and easy for the proponents to squirm away from any counter-evidence by claiming another level of conspiracy.
So the problem with disproving that the government is run by aliens is that it's too vague a statement; indeed it's so vague that I'd say it's simply meaningless. A fun thing to toss around while playing poker, but that's about it.
A good theory is one that can be tested, and if it's wrong, you can find out. This lets you gain confidence in its accuracy or lack thereof.
Conspiracy `theories,' though, simply define any negative evidence (or lack of positive evidence) as part of the conspiracy. IOW, they're sort of true-by-definition, regardless of any evidence; they sort of squirm around to avoid reality. That squirminess makes them fun (I think!), but not very useful for saying anything about the real world...
The point of large address spaces like this is not to use every address, or even come close, but rather to use the sparseness of the space to (greatly) simply the algorithms you can use for address space allocation, routing, etc.
[The same thing is true for CPU address spaces (at least when you have an MMU) -- which is why the inevitable comments about how you could never afford 64-bits worth of memory are rather silly.]
Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp
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Corn-Based Plastic
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· Score: 1
Most pro-hemp kids I run into don't understand the difference between legalizing hemp and legalizing THC-marijuana.
Really? Most hemp advocates I've run into talk endlessly about exactly that point (e.g., how very-low-THC varieties could be grown).
I gotta admit, they talk a good talk; I'm looking forward to the all-hemp utopia in our future...:-)
If Wal-Mart is so bad, why are they *always* extremely busy, even very late at night?
A couple of possibilities come to mind:
Lots of people go there because they can save a penny per pound on something -- though they have to drive 30 miles extra to do it, and have their soul sucked out at the door.
Walmart's put every other store out of business (see 1).
Ithink the problem is that unless you use the same source base, it actually is something of a pain to get all the niggling details right -- and that usually includes lots of behavior that reasonable people think of as braindead.
E.g., if passing 04523 as the second argument to an open syscall causes the process to start goose-stepping all over the disk in Real Unix, well, you've got to do that too! Ha ha ha, no of course it doesn't make any sense, but it's certified!
Er, well. Silly as the name `Open Group' is, it follows in the grand late-'80s/early-'90s computing industry tradition of prepending the word `open' to just about anything, regardless of actual openness -- hence `OpenGL,' `Open Software Foundation,' `OpenVMS.'
In some cases, like OpenGL, it followed an attempt to create an industry standard, and was in some sense actually sort of open, but most of the time it really seemed to mean something like `open to everybody that pays us ten million dollars.'
Nothing to do with term `open source' I think (and predates it).
Take everything he says with a grain of salt. Hell, take everything anyone says with a grain of salt. (Except maybe Linus himself. All hail Linus.)
Actually one of Linus's more charming traits is that after arguing voraciously for his point, and calling everybody else idiots and morons for believing otherwise, he'll quickly and cheerfully admit he was wrong once someone shows that to be the case. [to tell the truth, RMS also has this property -- if you make a convincing case -- something which I think few people appreciate]
I think both RMS and ESR can be `trying,' but RMS's contribution to free-software (and yes, even open-source) is about 1000x much as ESR.
It seems pretty clear that RMS's GPL caused something of a sea-change in the way people think about software; certainly the ideas it embodied existed before in some form, but the effect of the GPL and his software using it was pretty dramatic -- it caused things to gel in a way I never would have thought possible prior to it happening. While ESR's main claim to faim (the Cathedral...) is good writing, it's at best an interesting explanation of something that already existed.
On top of that, RMS is as true an uber-hacker as you're ever going to get; what little hacking ESR's done (fetchmail &c) looks downright pathetic by comparison.
I think in my mind the main point is this: If ESR's contributions to the world were suddenly deleted, there would be little real effect, but if RMS's were, what we know of as free-software/open-source would change utterly.
[Another thing which I've noticed is that RMS started out crazy, and has progressively been mellowing out (I guess as age and fame get to him), but ESR seems to just get nuttier and nuttier...]
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I was always fond of `Cattlecar Badactica'...
As just one example, one of the nicest things about laptops is the ability to go to a cafe and hack. Since I, at least, tend to go out in the morning, do stuff all day, and then return at night, this entails carting the laptop around with me the rest of the day while I do other stuff (maybe you drive everywhere and can just stick it in your car, but I don't).
[Another common example might be college students.]
Also, another important issue (now that I think about it), is support -- there are quite a few large and well-known companies that will sell you support for linux, whereas I'm not aware of any (large, well-known) companies that will do so for a typical *bsd system.
[Companies with in-house support staff want to standardize on as few systems as possible, and since linux currently has a fairly hefty corporate mind-share advantage over freebsd, freebsd is likely to lose out in many cases.]
But I know and you know that larger companies aren't going to go for Linux because the "GPV" bothers them.
I certainly don't know that -- in my experience larger companies don't really care what OS it runs, as long as it runs their apps and gives the user experience they want (whether this is true for lindows or not, I have no idea, but linux and freebsd are probably comparable).
In many cases they like linux because it has a buzz (freebsd doesn't, really, despite OSX), and that makes them feel less nervous about it.
5 lbs may not cause most people to fall over and die, but if it's something you're carrying around all day, the less weight the better. Even a few pounds can quickly become annoying.
Er, no actually I wasn't aware of that.
You're right that it illustrates how it's hard to get a big conservative company to change direction, once a decision has been taken.
I suspect that from a certain point of view, though, using stolen software is more acceptable than using free software -- it fits the old business model better, and no doubt they have more prior experience with it!
[All hypothetically speaking, of course...]
The problem is that Japanese companies are also very risk-averse, and Daryl's blathering is going to give ammunition to those who view linux as `too risky' or `too weird.'
:-), and often when I explain what I'm doing it's clear that the listener is uncomfortable with the whole thing, and would jump at an excuse to bury their head in the sand. Though the company's bottom line is hardware sales (which linux availablity helps), they've traditionally made a few extra pennies here and there selling (usually pretty crappy) software too, and as there's a strong pressure for each division to justify its existance in hard-cash terms, they're loathe to give up even those pennies -- even if doing so might be better for the company overall.
I work at a large japanese chip-maker, and am actively involved in trying to get linux accepted (in my own pathetic way of course
People like that are not stupid, just very used to an old business model and wary of change. Daryl is aiming his FUD at them.
Andrew Morton is going to be the one to release 2.6.0
I hadn't noticed that, but wow, it's an excellent thing if true -- I think Andrew Morton is one of those rare people who not only has an immense clue, but is careful and thorough enough to release something that really will be stable. Maybe he's even better than Alan Cox in that respect...
Personally I'm looking forward to the 2.6 release because I'm the proud father of a new architecture in the 2.5 series -- the v850! Of course now I'm continually fretting over whether Linus applies enough of my patches to result in a usable port...
[Well, OK, so almost nobody actually uses the v850 processor, except maybe in their car's engine controller, but it's there! In the kernel! Hmmm, linux engine control...?]
Mozilla version 1.4.5.3.5.78b released? ... `You know as soon as I saw that I "emerged" gentoo, and boy you know only 47 hours later, I see the new mozilla, and I can feel the 1% speed improvement I get by compiling from source, I don't know what I'd do without it, I'd just die, it's so great, boy you know, I just love gentoo!'
I can see it going two ways --
Curling up in bed with the sunday edition on your ereader? GAh.
So, how is that different from America?
Well I never claimed it was, I just think the original poster's description of Japanese in general as being very `health concious' seemed flat-out bizarre.
However, I will say that while the majority of Americans wouldn't know healthy from a hole in the head, there's a large minority that actually do think (er, obsess...?) about health issues, and this group has had some effect on the general awareness. To be sure, the result is often twisted and bizarre (99% fat-free bags of sugar!), but well, at least smoking is on its way out (whereas smoking is still one of Japan's most offensive habits)...
Where are you in Japan? I've lived near Tokyo for 5-6 years, and while lots of people drink coffee, I've almost never seen anyone drink it black, they're always pouring the most god-awful crap into it (e.g., `Creap'), and while I know lots of great places to buy coffee, I find it almost impossible to find decaf (either prepared or beans). Indeed the only reliable source I've found for decaf is Starbucks, and they're not exactly top-quality...
BTW, `image concious' seems closer to the mark than `health concious.'
Naw, Eric is completely full of shit on this particular issue.
The LKML is actually amazingly meritocratic, and really quite friendly to new faces -- if you have your shit together, and have done your homework.
However, like many programming lists, there's little facade of politeness, and if they look at your proposal and see problems, they'll call you on them, and in no uncertain terms. This sort of thing unnerves many people, especially those (like Eric) that want to develop their own little fiefdom and have it all merged with no questions asked and no changes made. It ain't going to happen, people are going to go over your code with a fine tooth comb, and questions will be asked.
On balance, I'd say it's actually much better than other similar lists I've observed, and I think the reason comes down to one thing -- Linus. If he likes what you've done, he'll merge it, even if everybody else disagrees, and by-and-large he's pretty good at paying attention to principals rather than personalities. This has a rather astonishing levelling effect, and it seems to prevent exactly the sort of ossification that Eric complains about.
I'm constantly amazed by the tales I hear about Nintendo's Australian operation. It's like they long ago lost contact with the parent organization, and have stopped trying to actually sell anything, spending their days getting drunk and figuring out new ways to taunt Australian Nintendo fans (`Hey, let's double the price and include free shards of broken glass in every box! New color: puke!').
I mean, I know Nintendo's pretty much focused on Japan, but this is ridiculous...
They've forgotten they're STORYTELLERS, not architects, generals, etc. Remember LOTR is a story that sold MILLIONS of copies with no special effects other than a nondescript painting on the cover of the book.
Jackson & company have done a bang-up job so far. Indeed, I think in many ways they've done a better job than Tolkien did -- I found myself actually caring about what happened to the characters in the movies, whereas many of the same characters in the books are stiffly drawn and end up seeming bloodless and interchangeable despite the elaborate genealogies. For all his strengths, Tolkien was really not a particularly good writer...
What's interesting is that the scheduler seems one of the least likely places for such code-pollution to occur -- as one of the most central parts of the kernel, it's also one of the most scrutinized and well understood by many people.
I'm also under the impression that the `traditional' linux scheduler (before the rewrite by Ingo Molnar in 2.5) is one of the oldest parts of linux, predating any involvement by IBM or any other large company with access to SCO source. [but this is just my impression from reading the LKML, not based on any research!]
Because the mechanisms involved are fairly implementation-specific, it's also very unlikely that anyone could just copy a few random functions from SCO, unless they were very generic. Since SCO is by all accounts very old and crufty, it's unlikely you'd even want to.
By far the most likely place for copied code is in obscure device drivers that no one really looks at or understands very well besides the original author.
Of course what we really want to hear is the name of these functions! C'mon non-NDA guy, cough 'em up!
Perhaps it would be better to say that the key word is `testable.'
In order to be testable, something has to be at least somewhat well-defined, and since we've never encountered any aliens, it's very hard to say how one tests for `alienness' (10-point checklists in the National Enquirer notwithstanding!). Morever even the concept of `run by' used by most nutcases is pretty vague -- it includes `secretly holds the reins of power,' which again is one of those things that's very hard to nail down, and easy for the proponents to squirm away from any counter-evidence by claiming another level of conspiracy.
So the problem with disproving that the government is run by aliens is that it's too vague a statement; indeed it's so vague that I'd say it's simply meaningless. A fun thing to toss around while playing poker, but that's about it.
The key word is `disprove' (not `prove').
A good theory is one that can be tested, and if it's wrong, you can find out. This lets you gain confidence in its accuracy or lack thereof.
Conspiracy `theories,' though, simply define any negative evidence (or lack of positive evidence) as part of the conspiracy. IOW, they're sort of true-by-definition, regardless of any evidence; they sort of squirm around to avoid reality. That squirminess makes them fun (I think!), but not very useful for saying anything about the real world...
The point of large address spaces like this is not to use every address, or even come close, but rather to use the sparseness of the space to (greatly) simply the algorithms you can use for address space allocation, routing, etc.
[The same thing is true for CPU address spaces (at least when you have an MMU) -- which is why the inevitable comments about how you could never afford 64-bits worth of memory are rather silly.]
Most pro-hemp kids I run into don't understand the difference between legalizing hemp and legalizing THC-marijuana.
:-)
Really? Most hemp advocates I've run into talk endlessly about exactly that point (e.g., how very-low-THC varieties could be grown).
I gotta admit, they talk a good talk; I'm looking forward to the all-hemp utopia in our future...
A couple of possibilities come to mind:
Ithink the problem is that unless you use the same source base, it actually is something of a pain to get all the niggling details right -- and that usually includes lots of behavior that reasonable people think of as braindead.
E.g., if passing 04523 as the second argument to an open syscall causes the process to start goose-stepping all over the disk in Real Unix, well, you've got to do that too! Ha ha ha, no of course it doesn't make any sense, but it's certified!
Er, well. Silly as the name `Open Group' is, it follows in the grand late-'80s/early-'90s computing industry tradition of prepending the word `open' to just about anything, regardless of actual openness -- hence `OpenGL,' `Open Software Foundation,' `OpenVMS.'
In some cases, like OpenGL, it followed an attempt to create an industry standard, and was in some sense actually sort of open, but most of the time it really seemed to mean something like `open to everybody that pays us ten million dollars.'
Nothing to do with term `open source' I think (and predates it).
Take everything he says with a grain of salt. Hell, take everything anyone says with a grain of salt. (Except maybe Linus himself. All hail Linus.)
Actually one of Linus's more charming traits is that after arguing voraciously for his point, and calling everybody else idiots and morons for believing otherwise, he'll quickly and cheerfully admit he was wrong once someone shows that to be the case. [to tell the truth, RMS also has this property -- if you make a convincing case -- something which I think few people appreciate]
I think both RMS and ESR can be `trying,' but RMS's contribution to free-software (and yes, even open-source) is about 1000x much as ESR.
...) is good writing, it's at best an interesting explanation of something that already existed.
It seems pretty clear that RMS's GPL caused something of a sea-change in the way people think about software; certainly the ideas it embodied existed before in some form, but the effect of the GPL and his software using it was pretty dramatic -- it caused things to gel in a way I never would have thought possible prior to it happening. While ESR's main claim to faim (the Cathedral
On top of that, RMS is as true an uber-hacker as you're ever going to get; what little hacking ESR's done (fetchmail &c) looks downright pathetic by comparison.
I think in my mind the main point is this: If ESR's contributions to the world were suddenly deleted, there would be little real effect, but if RMS's were, what we know of as free-software/open-source would change utterly.
[Another thing which I've noticed is that RMS started out crazy, and has progressively been mellowing out (I guess as age and fame get to him), but ESR seems to just get nuttier and nuttier...]