This goes for many companies other than just Sun though.
Except that other companies aren't on a holy mission to save the world from Microsoft. There used to be others, but they either went out of business (Be) or watered down the religion (Apple). I always knew that the day would come when Sun would have to make the same choice. The bubble simply delayed that day, as VC-bloated dotcommers willingly paid a premium for Sun's kewler hardware.
I've been using SuSE for a while (currently 8.2), and I've had similar problem with the last couple of edition of SuSE when I was installing it on laptops. By default YaST doesn't configure 2 mice (touch pad + usb) set up, and only SaX does. But the problem is when I configure mice using SaX, YaST will overwrite the mice config file after reboot. If you ever need to reconfigure mice setup, NEVER use sax.
I've been burned every time I used Sax, on any distribution. I'd be particularly hesitant to use it on SuSE, which has a lot of ambitious admin tools of its own, which are bound to conflict with Sax.
But without those famous screenshots. Every time we get a link to MadPenguin, their system simply collapses under the Slashdotting. The editors really should keep a list of sites that do that and not accept stories on them.
...is just to get stuff written down. Which doesn't sound hard, and basically isn't. But you have to resist the temptation to make everything complete and correct. So if you're explaining task A and that turns out to rest on concepts B, C, and D, don't stop and explain about B, C, and D -- just add them to the list of things you need to write about. And don't worry about spelling or making sense -- that's easier to fix after the fact.
In other words, do it in small pieces, and don't try to do everything at once. Once you actually record all the stuff you need to talk about, you can think about structuring it so that people can find the specific facts they're looking for. And of course prettying it up so people won't think you're totally illiterate.
Of course, this is ass-backwards from the way you learned to write in Freshman English, where you start out by outlining your subject, and the actual writing consists of filling in the outline. Some people actually are able to write that way, but I never really cared for it. Sometimes I go through the motions, because the a document plan is something some companies like to see before you start writing. But even when I do write an outline, it's always obsoleted by stuff I learn along the way.
There's a second way to get your CMS documented: hire me.
I predict flamewars during the writing of the guide on a scale not seen since the Emacsian Jihad.
Which is precisely why this is a bad idea.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm a tech writer, and style guides are part of my professional toolset. But the point of a style guide is to get a bunch of disparate people writing with a common voice, so that the reader isn't distracted or confused by inconsistent usage. How could you possibly expect anything like a common voice from the odd assortment of volunteers that write Linux documentation?
Even though the basic problem seems to be with the mouse, the keyboard can be part of the problem. These bloated 102-key monsters force right-handed people to move their wrists at an awkward angle to get at the mouse. A good narrow keyboard helps there.
My keyboard of choice is the Goldtouch. I actually didn't switch to it for its ergonomic features, though these are very good. But my problem wasn't RSI, it was a tendency to hit the wrong cursor key. I saw a Goldtouch and was impressed by the unusual (but very logical) layout. However, Goldtouch didn't design the layout to make the keyboard klutz-proof -- they did it to move the mouse closer to the center of the keyboard.
Yes, it's 16-bit processor -- that's the size of its memory path, not its basic unit of memory. The Pentium CPU I'm using right now is a 32-bit processor -- but it still addresses RAM as 8-bit bytes.
I might be mistaken, but I think that SunPlus licenses its chip designs from Mips. Which still uses 8-bit bytes.
The pages you linked to say exactly what I just said: a char can be two bytes. That's a feature of the compiler, not the CPU.
Sounds like you had some legitimate beefs. But it also sounds like you were doing your best to make matters worse. Working as part of a team usually means accepting decisions you don't agree with. Like not using bytes or shorts -- maybe it's a dumb optimization, but what's the big deal? And INI files have been deprecated in Windows for years.
The strangest claim you make is that your boss insisted on using references because he "doesn't understand pointers". Since when were pointers harder to understand than references? I have to suspect that you were simply being stubborn about adopting new programming techniques.
OK, I misunderstood. And I have heard about byte sizes other than 8. But 16 sounds unlikely. The fact that your C compiler uses 16 bit chars is neither here nor there. C knows nothing about bytes -- chars are defined simply as values that are at least 8 bits wide. Possible explanations for using 16 bits:
Byte size is 16 bits. Very unlikely. I've heard of manufacturers adding or subtracting one or two bits from IBM's original 8-bit byte, but even such minor deviations are pretty rare these days.
Not a byte-oriented CPU. Not totally implausible -- they make microprocessors that are designed to run legacy code from old PDP-10s and other pre-byte machines. But these typically have much larger word sizes (36 bits for the PDP-10).
Your compiler is specifically designed to support double-byte character sets, such as Shift-JIS or UTF-16. This is the most common way to represent Asian languages. Is this compiler targeted at Japanese programmers, perhaps?
But I'm arguing in a vacuum. What is this processor we're talking about?
When I refer to byte-oriented addressing, I don't mean computers with small word sizes (like the 6-bit 1401). Nor do I mean computers that use bit fields to access data within a word -- these were sometimes called "bytes", but they were not the familiar byte we use today.
Byte addressing means that memory addresses are totally independent of word size. At the time, the main effect of byte addressing was to eliminate the long-standing distinction between "business" computers and "scientific" computers, which mainly had to do arithmetic precision. The long term effect was to make people think about data in more abstract ways. It was an important breakthrough.
This is the 40th anniversary of a mainframe: the System 360. The 360 was a darned important machine (amongst other things, it was the first computer with a byte-addressible memory), but it was hardly the very first mainframe. True computers had been around for about 25 years -- and technically speaking, all computers were mainframes before integrated circuitry made minicomputers and microcomputer feasible.
That's a hacker's toy, hardly suitable for most Internet users. And given the way Real keeps tweaking its codecs, I wouldn't expect Real Alternative to be functional for too long.
I personally have no problem using Real software. Well, not the current version, which isn't quite so buggy as older versions. But I know how to disable all the obnoxious features still left.
But that's not true for most people. Which is why no ethical content provider should require its listeners to deal with Real.
The sad fact is, the car guys have let themselves be bought off. Real is a little less obnoxious then before, but it's still not close to being acceptable. In particular, the click path to the free player is anything but "obvious". And letting Car Talk listeners have a special bypass solves nothing.
YMBNAH (You must be new around here). all developments raise new hope for Open Source, the immediate demise of Microsoft, the impending arrest of SCO management, and free wireless broadband for everyone!
That said, it does appear that Sun's corporate culture is beginning to lose some of its arrogance. Symptoms of this arrogance include not just the pointless holy war with Microsoft but the widespread belief that Sun (or even a particular unit within Sun) is the only true judge of The Right Way to Do Things. This attitude is why they don't want to open up Java -- they'd no longer have veto power over changes in the platform.
I see the rise of Jonathan Schwartz to Sun COO as a big step forward. He used to head a NextStep application/component development house called Lighthouse Design. When the NextStep market failed to materialize, Sun bought LD and turned it into the nucleus of a Java application/component development unit. Then that market failed to materialize, and Schwartz was cast adrift in the treacherous waters of Sun corporate politics.
Don't really know anything about this guy, or what he's been doing recently -- but his NextStep and Java experiences are not likely to leave him full of the HyperAttitude Sun has way too much of.
You assume that everybody at Microsoft has exactly the same agenda. That's not true of any company. You can lay down a corporate party line, but you have to give your employees some freedom of action.
The whole point of a PDA is convenience. I find it very handy to always have my basic databases in my pocket. But if you have to constantly protect your PDA from a hostile shop environment, you lose the convenience factor. And besides, if you only need the data in the shop, a PDA has more portability than you need.
What I'm getting at is that a hardened laptop would seem to be more appropriate to your needs.
All of which assumes that they're looking to make a portable electron-beam disc player. That's not at all what they're talking about. They specifically say that this is a tech for mastering discs. For playback, you'd use Blu-Ray or something similar. That would be more advanced than anything on the market now, but it's still just a plain old-fashioned laser.
Considering Novell wants to push Mono, I doubt they would want to piss off Ximian folks by telling them to drop Gnome at this point, but I would not bet my life on that..
Why should Novell worry about pissing of the Ximian people? They're the ones cutting the paychecks.
Considering Novell owns both SuSE and Ximian (maker of Ximian Desktop which runs perfectly well on SuSE) it would be natural to expect better GNOME support than in past SuSE releases.
If buying Ximian and buying SuSE was all part of a single coherent plan, you might expect them to do that. Probably that's the case, but it this crazy industry there are no guarantees. I wouldn't be horribly suprised if Novell told the Ximian people they had to rewrite everything to use Qt instead.
Given the facts you just mentioned, aninsightful reviewier of the SuSE beta would have written something like, "SuSE still doesn't have decent GNOME support, which means that Novell's distro still doesn't properly support Ximian Desktop, which also belong to Novell". This guy was not insightful. All he knew to talk about was whether SuSE supported his favorite desktop and browser.
And on what do you base these categorical statements? Are you asserting that no politician in either major party has ever acted against your stereotypes? Because they have. It isn't easy to make them do it, but it is possible.
Of course, that means thinking about politicians as individuals rather than convenient little categories. Lots of work, I admit.
The attitude of previous administration towards anti-trust was worlds away from what we've got now. Yeah, it still sucked, but even the difference between "sucks" and "sucks a lot" is worth fighting for.
The gaps in your logic are mond boggling. But I see no point in explaining them to you -- anything I say will just be further proof of my "liberal bias".
Was it my imagination, or were there some serious anti-trust actions against Microsoft four years ago? Which magically disappeared when the Justice Department changed bosses.
I'm not saying that you can't buy influence in Washington. But you can only buy so much. Individuals may not have as much influence as big corporations, but they have some. To simply give up and walk away is a cop out.
Slashdot Mirror
But without those famous screenshots. Every time we get a link to MadPenguin, their system simply collapses under the Slashdotting. The editors really should keep a list of sites that do that and not accept stories on them.
In other words, do it in small pieces, and don't try to do everything at once. Once you actually record all the stuff you need to talk about, you can think about structuring it so that people can find the specific facts they're looking for. And of course prettying it up so people won't think you're totally illiterate.
Of course, this is ass-backwards from the way you learned to write in Freshman English, where you start out by outlining your subject, and the actual writing consists of filling in the outline. Some people actually are able to write that way, but I never really cared for it. Sometimes I go through the motions, because the a document plan is something some companies like to see before you start writing. But even when I do write an outline, it's always obsoleted by stuff I learn along the way.
There's a second way to get your CMS documented: hire me.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm a tech writer, and style guides are part of my professional toolset. But the point of a style guide is to get a bunch of disparate people writing with a common voice, so that the reader isn't distracted or confused by inconsistent usage. How could you possibly expect anything like a common voice from the odd assortment of volunteers that write Linux documentation?
My keyboard of choice is the Goldtouch. I actually didn't switch to it for its ergonomic features, though these are very good. But my problem wasn't RSI, it was a tendency to hit the wrong cursor key. I saw a Goldtouch and was impressed by the unusual (but very logical) layout. However, Goldtouch didn't design the layout to make the keyboard klutz-proof -- they did it to move the mouse closer to the center of the keyboard.
I might be mistaken, but I think that SunPlus licenses its chip designs from Mips. Which still uses 8-bit bytes.
The pages you linked to say exactly what I just said: a char can be two bytes. That's a feature of the compiler, not the CPU.
The strangest claim you make is that your boss insisted on using references because he "doesn't understand pointers". Since when were pointers harder to understand than references? I have to suspect that you were simply being stubborn about adopting new programming techniques.
That's very nice. But you assume that anybody can master abstract math if they put their minds to it. Simply not true.
But I'm arguing in a vacuum. What is this processor we're talking about?
Byte addressing means that memory addresses are totally independent of word size. At the time, the main effect of byte addressing was to eliminate the long-standing distinction between "business" computers and "scientific" computers, which mainly had to do arithmetic precision. The long term effect was to make people think about data in more abstract ways. It was an important breakthrough.
You're confusing bytes and words.
This is the 40th anniversary of a mainframe: the System 360. The 360 was a darned important machine (amongst other things, it was the first computer with a byte-addressible memory), but it was hardly the very first mainframe. True computers had been around for about 25 years -- and technically speaking, all computers were mainframes before integrated circuitry made minicomputers and microcomputer feasible.
I personally have no problem using Real software. Well, not the current version, which isn't quite so buggy as older versions. But I know how to disable all the obnoxious features still left.
But that's not true for most people. Which is why no ethical content provider should require its listeners to deal with Real.
The sad fact is, the car guys have let themselves be bought off. Real is a little less obnoxious then before, but it's still not close to being acceptable. In particular, the click path to the free player is anything but "obvious". And letting Car Talk listeners have a special bypass solves nothing.
That said, it does appear that Sun's corporate culture is beginning to lose some of its arrogance. Symptoms of this arrogance include not just the pointless holy war with Microsoft but the widespread belief that Sun (or even a particular unit within Sun) is the only true judge of The Right Way to Do Things. This attitude is why they don't want to open up Java -- they'd no longer have veto power over changes in the platform.
I see the rise of Jonathan Schwartz to Sun COO as a big step forward. He used to head a NextStep application/component development house called Lighthouse Design. When the NextStep market failed to materialize, Sun bought LD and turned it into the nucleus of a Java application/component development unit. Then that market failed to materialize, and Schwartz was cast adrift in the treacherous waters of Sun corporate politics.
Don't really know anything about this guy, or what he's been doing recently -- but his NextStep and Java experiences are not likely to leave him full of the HyperAttitude Sun has way too much of.
You assume that everybody at Microsoft has exactly the same agenda. That's not true of any company. You can lay down a corporate party line, but you have to give your employees some freedom of action.
No, but only because everybody who tried it didn't read the Evil Overlord list.
Inquiring minds want to know more about your system!
What I'm getting at is that a hardened laptop would seem to be more appropriate to your needs.
All of which assumes that they're looking to make a portable electron-beam disc player. That's not at all what they're talking about. They specifically say that this is a tech for mastering discs. For playback, you'd use Blu-Ray or something similar. That would be more advanced than anything on the market now, but it's still just a plain old-fashioned laser.
Given the facts you just mentioned, aninsightful reviewier of the SuSE beta would have written something like, "SuSE still doesn't have decent GNOME support, which means that Novell's distro still doesn't properly support Ximian Desktop, which also belong to Novell". This guy was not insightful. All he knew to talk about was whether SuSE supported his favorite desktop and browser.
Of course, that means thinking about politicians as individuals rather than convenient little categories. Lots of work, I admit.
The attitude of previous administration towards anti-trust was worlds away from what we've got now. Yeah, it still sucked, but even the difference between "sucks" and "sucks a lot" is worth fighting for.
The gaps in your logic are mond boggling. But I see no point in explaining them to you -- anything I say will just be further proof of my "liberal bias".
I'm not saying that you can't buy influence in Washington. But you can only buy so much. Individuals may not have as much influence as big corporations, but they have some. To simply give up and walk away is a cop out.