I've had Salon's technology section bookmarked for weeks; pretty good stuff, and excellent free/OS coverage. But this (Tuesday) morning, I'm seeing a bunch of broken links. (It was okay Monday, when they debuted the "new look".) Disappointing to say the least.
>... the ultimate problem with Open Source development: not enough formal engaged testing.
No less so with Open Source (or other free) software than with any other software... and no more so either. Consider: http://www.gnu.org/manual/ dejagnu/html_mono/dejagnu.html and then look at the gdb source, full of test suites. Cygnus Software has built a bunch of test suites for gcc and egcs, the GNU C/C++ compiler, and they're actively working on Java test suites.
It'll be interesting to see if the Open Source community picks up on Extreme Programming and its testing techniques. --PSRC
P.S.: Yes, I use Windows for e-mail. My first job here was porting some Windows software to Solaris.-)
P.P.S.: I tried using Outlook, but I ran into some problems with my appointments with the year 4500....-)
Slashdotters: The last comes from another article this guy wrote, about a bug he introduced into Outlook 97. He is a Microsoft developer, or once was. No, he's not Andrew Schulman of "Undocumented DOS" and "Unauthorized Windows 95" and "Windows 95 in a Nutshell" fame.
... "Red Hat" nothing shorter than "Red Hat GNU/Linux"? Am I failing to acknowledge Linus's work (and the work of the many other Linux developers, and the many FSF contributors) if I just say "Red Hat"?
Richard's and the FSF's contributions are worth acknowledging... but not in every breath I take.
Richard has a history of his own flavor of politically correct speech. See Confusing Words which You Might Want to Avoid ("because they imply an opinion that we hope you may not entirely agree with"): "Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as 'sharing information with your neighbor'" when discussing "piracy". After all, you wouldn't want to "imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnaping and murdering the people on them," would you? (*sigh*)
"Should John Katz be our ambassador to the masses?"
Our only ambassador? Of course not; just as neither RMS nor ESR nor TO'R should be the only ambassador to what "free" or "Open Source" software is.
Still, if there are guys saying, "This 'Web' thing won't last; eyeballs will return from the Net to TV and newspapers," John is participating in a necessary dialog. Sounds like he's not doing too bad a job.
Comment Display Mode is "thread", "thread", "flat", "nocomment", "nested". How do the first two differ? What's the difference between "thread" and "nested"?
Comment Posting Mode is "plaintext", "html", "plaintext", "exttrans". What's the difference between the two "plaintext" options? What exactly is "exttrans"? ("html tags to text", apparently; but what's it *mean*? Many HTML tags work even in plain text mode?)
>The day CDDB turns into some ugly corporate monster is the day I'm gone.
Check your calendar, Steve.
>CDDB is *free* for users, and will remain *free*.
In the sense of "free beer," not "free speech." (Yuchh, I hate quoting RMS.-) 6.a.ii specificaly requires player authors to restrict the actions of the player's users.
>The licensing agreement mostly seeks to ensure that CDDB is given credit for the fact that a CD lookup is being performed...
Then why does 4.a.i.8 prohibit CDDB players from using any other Internet-based databases?
This came up on the HPUX-DEVTOOLS mailing list. HP will not support DDD, or the emacs interface wrapper around gdb/wdb. On the other hand, the HP developers use both interfaces, and will be the first to be disappointed if they break.
The DDD folks have deprecated their support of xdb, HP's older debugger.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had Salon's technology section bookmarked for weeks; pretty good stuff, and excellent free/OS coverage. But this (Tuesday) morning, I'm seeing a bunch of broken links. (It was okay Monday, when they debuted the "new look".) Disappointing to say the least.
>I suspect a schism will eventually divide the happy Linux community ...
For a humorous take on this, see:
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990301.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990302.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990303.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990304.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990305.html
and http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990319.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990320.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990322.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990323.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990324.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990325.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990326.html
>... the ultimate problem with Open Source development: not enough formal engaged testing.
No less so with Open Source (or other free) software than with any other software ... and no more so either. Consider: http://www.gnu.org/manual/ dejagnu/html_mono/dejagnu.html and then look at the gdb source, full of test suites. Cygnus Software has built a bunch of test suites for gcc and egcs, the GNU C/C++ compiler, and they're actively working on Java test suites.
It'll be interesting to see if the Open Source community picks up on Extreme Programming and its testing techniques. --PSRC
P.S.: Yes, I use Windows for e-mail. My first job here was porting some Windows software to Solaris.-)
P.P.S.: I tried using Outlook, but I ran into some problems with my appointments with the year 4500....-)
Slashdotters: The last comes from another article this guy wrote, about a bug he introduced into Outlook 97. He is a Microsoft developer, or once was. No, he's not Andrew Schulman of "Undocumented DOS" and "Unauthorized Windows 95" and "Windows 95 in a Nutshell" fame.
Richard's and the FSF's contributions are worth acknowledging... but not in every breath I take.
Richard has a history of his own flavor of politically correct speech. See Confusing Words which You Might Want to Avoid ("because they imply an opinion that we hope you may not entirely agree with"): "Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as 'sharing information with your neighbor'" when discussing "piracy". After all, you wouldn't want to "imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnaping and murdering the people on them," would you? (*sigh*)
Our only ambassador? Of course not; just as neither RMS nor ESR nor TO'R should be the only ambassador to what "free" or "Open Source" software is.
Still, if there are guys saying, "This 'Web' thing won't last; eyeballs will return from the Net to TV and newspapers," John is participating in a necessary dialog. Sounds like he's not doing too bad a job.
Comment Display Mode is "thread", "thread", "flat", "nocomment", "nested". How do the first two differ? What's the difference between "thread" and "nested"?
Comment Posting Mode is "plaintext", "html", "plaintext", "exttrans". What's the difference between the two "plaintext" options? What exactly is "exttrans"? ("html tags to text", apparently; but what's it *mean*? Many HTML tags work even in plain text mode?)
>The day CDDB turns into some ugly corporate monster is the day I'm gone.
...
Check your calendar, Steve.
>CDDB is *free* for users, and will remain *free*.
In the sense of "free beer," not "free speech." (Yuchh, I hate quoting RMS.-) 6.a.ii specificaly requires player authors to restrict the actions of the player's users.
>The licensing agreement mostly seeks to ensure that CDDB is given credit for the fact that a CD lookup is being performed
Then why does 4.a.i.8 prohibit CDDB players from using any other Internet-based databases?
This came up on the HPUX-DEVTOOLS mailing list. HP will not support DDD, or the emacs interface wrapper around gdb/wdb. On the other hand, the HP developers use both interfaces, and will be the first to be disappointed if they break.
The DDD folks have deprecated their support of xdb, HP's older debugger.