That's exactly what they're doing. Does anyone really think Microsoft is licensing the code because they want to be nice to SCO? Does anyone really think that SCO was ever gonna sue Microsoft over it's use of *nix code?
The question I have is: can SCO *really* sue Linux out of existence? Doesn't the GPL make that essentially impossible?
Re:3 days to a week to compile?
on
Gentoo Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
I didn't compile OO, I emerged the openoffice-bin package. Much quicker, and there's really not much to OpenOffice that demands a custom compile anyway.
I guess my suggestion is don't just believe it when you're told that XYZ is good or bad programming practice. Instead, make sure you understand why doing XYZ, is good or bad.
Of course that's half the problem. The article mentions two programming practices, and each of them have a grain of truth. The sync/unsync issue used to be true, and the other one, the use of the final delcaration, seems to make sense but it doesn't actually work that way. Hence the reason I suggest that people actually try something before accepting even a seemingly plausible explanation for what amounts to voodoo programming practice.
I knew that. I said *were* implying that this is no logner the case with VB programs.
Many VB programs, especially shareware, tend to be slow, also, because VB programmers tend to write sloppy code, which in any language will lead to slow programs. Not all VB programmers write sloppy code, of course, but since VB is the language that many n00b programmers start with, their coding techniques tend to be very naive and without regard to performance or bloat at all. BASIC as a language also tends to encourage this because it allows you to do sloppy things like not declare your variables before use. (And yes, I know some C programmers that do this as well, and yes even in C this sloppy, sloppy, sloppy)
I wonder to what extent this exists in other languages? For example, there is an oft-cited tip that says using persistent database applications with LAMP applications increases performance. I've found in actual practice that this depends on a lot of factors such as server load, amount of available memory, etc.
I remember in my Turbo Pascal programming days (heh) that a lot of people said that using Units would degrade performance. So I tried it both ways and it never really made a difference, for my applications anyways.
I'd say before taking someone's word for it on a performance enhancing technique, test it out. Because not everything you read is true, and not everything you read will apply to every environment or every application.
Re:3 days to a week to compile?
on
Gentoo Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
It depends on what you view as a 'complete system'. Compiling KDE along with some GNOME libs and a few others (my USE clause is long) took 12 hours on an Athlon XP 1800+ with 256 MB RAM on a 2Mb/s cablemodem connection.
Now if your idea of a complete system doesn't include a full desktop, complete with ALSA sound support, OpenGL and a whole bunch of goodies, and you started from a Stage 3, then I could see getting the system running in 4-5 hours, yeah.
Bear in mind that when I say 3 days, that's starting from Stage 1 tarball with a USE clause a mile long and all the goodies. Compiling large pieces of software like Mozilla or OpenOffice (as opposed to grabbing the binary-only packages) can take even longer.
Re:3 days to a week to compile?
on
Gentoo Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
I suppose my Athlon XP 1800+ is high-end compared to your K6/2 -- which was my previous box and the one I'm currently using as a firewall -- and I can say that on that box, a week to a week and a half for full-featured X11 system with KDE or Gnome. But browse the Gentoo forums and you'lll find that amongst most Gentoo users, my configuration is pretty typical.
That being said also, I think you'll find that you build decent mid-range Athlon system like mine for less than $500.
Well without seeing exactly what pictures these techs saw, one can't say for sure, but I think 99% of 'kiddie porn' accusations are nonsense. They don't involve, say, someone kidnapping 5 year olds and photographing their rape and torture.
Um, dude, I had a guy stay at my house who did, in fact, use my network to download photos of 5 year olds who kidnapped, raped, and tortured. The sick fsck. I *had* to turn him in to the police or risk being implicated myself, especially when you consider the existence of kiddie porn sting sites.
And, it turned out, the guy was abusing his own stepchildren. This guy was previously my best friend, and his wife had accused him of such things, but everyone I knew, including myself, thought of his wife as being just a bit mentally unstable and prone to making things up. Unfortunately, physical evidence said otherwise, and it turns out that this sick fsck actually WAS abusing children.
So I can't say I agree with you -- at all. What if these were pictures of YOUR children?
Granted, I can't tinker with Linux at work anymore (based on NDA/contract stuff), but I really enjoyed the opportunity to truly learn Linux with Gentoo rather than have my hand held like Mandrake does.
I agree. I was a former Mandrake user, and my first distro was Slackware, and even then I can tell you, Gentoo makes you learn everything... maybe not quite as much as LFS, but then again, installign Gentoo is actually not unlike installing LFS. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me that Daniel Robbins based the whole project on LFS.
Linux is just plain fun. Sure, it's not great if you need to get a lot of work done, but it's an amazing teaching tool if you want to truly learn computers.
Yeah, I personally use two boxes -- one for tickering with Gentoo and one for production work on Gentoo. So that way I can do some good integration testing before going live with it. Using this system as worked out great for me, especially since the hardware is cheap enough.
3 days to a week to compile?
on
Gentoo Reviewed
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I've been a happy Gentoo User for almost a year now, and I can tell you that on my machine 2-3 days is a more accurate time estimate. I just totally rebuilt my machine from scratch a couple of days ago and it took me about 3 days working on it part time to get it going. If I had more time to devote to it, I could have got it up and running in 1-2 days.
One thing Pietrely (sp?) misses though: you need a high speed Internet connection to use Gentoo. If you're on dialup, Gentoo is gonna take a llllooonng time to complete the installation because, unless you're starting from a precompiled base system (GRP), you pretty much have to download everything -- from the kernel, GCC, bash, XFree, KDE, GNOME, whatever.
Also of note, there's very little in the way of GUI admin tools -- no Linuxconf, no graphical init system editor. You'd better get to loving modifying everything with a text editor. For me this was no problem as I'm an oldskool Unix sysadmin.;)
Anyways, I love gentoo. Emerge ROCKS! No more dependency hell! And the system is FAST! Way to go Gentoo!
Yeah, but the thing takes 5 times as long it would take you to vaccuum it yourself. It also doesn't know if the floor is clean or not, it just vaccuums the whole floor in one pass and doesn't go back over spots to get every last little bit. I think it needs a couple of generations to work out the bugs before it'll be truly viable for anyone but geeks who don't vaccuum anyways.;)
Yeah, but this is a rather outdated system by now. Nowadays you've got video cameras aimed right at the cashiers, so if they stuff money in their pocket, they're going to get caught. Not only that but you now have electronic cash registers or POS computers and every transaction gets recorded into a database. Stores generally have a policy that all items must be scanned (to ensure accuracy of pricing) so the cashier will be especially noticed if they're caught not scanning a product on tape.
And really, even with all of this in place, cashiers still make off with money, although at most places they DO get caught.
You know, the easiest way to get around this change problem is with technology, really. We're already headed towards a cashless society, let's just go the rest of the way, at least for most store transactions. Cash I think is still really needed for private transactions. Not everyone can afford a credit card processor, and there's too much fraud to force private individuals to use checks or whatever. In a truly cashless society, the cashier is almost not even necessary.
IE, WMP etc haven't done MS any good - and they're already at versions 6 and 9.
Internet Explorer hasn't done MS any good? Huh?
The entire purpose of Internet Explorer was to put Netscape out of business, and it did essentially that. Netscape made the mistake of touting its Communicator product, combined with its Web server software and Java and JavaScript technologies as an applications platform, rendering the underlying OS as being largely irrelevant. Microsoft responded with Internet Explorer and began the whole 'embrace and extend' strategy towards Internet standards and the rest is history.
As for Windows Media Player -- I'm not even sure what Microsoft's goals were for that.;)
PLEASE, THIS TRANSACTION REQUIRES ABSOLUTE CONFIDENTIALITY AND YOU WOULD BE EXPECTED TO TREAT IT AS SUCH UNTILL THE FUNDS ARE MOVED OUT OF THIS COUNTRY.
and
PLEASE, YOU WILL ALSO IGNORE THIS LETTER AND RESPECT OURTRUST IN YOU BY NOT EXPOSING THIS TRANSACTION, EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED. I LOOK FORWARD TO WORKING WITH YOU.
So you go ahead and post it on Slashdot! Like no one's gonna see it there! Sheesh! Remind me never to ask you for help moving my money out of the country! It's not like they send those e-mails to just ANYBODY ya know!
If you can't use the OMR/Sharpie, how are you going to use any other kind of voting system, other than "everyone who wants Candidate Foo, raise your hand!"?
Seriously, there has to be a basic literacy requirement to vote. You have to be able to read the ballot, and you have to be smart enough and have enough manual dexterity to make SOME kind of mark, hole punch, etc. Actually, at least in Michigan, the poll workers will help you fill out your ballot if you're really *that* incapable, but then if you're really *that* incapable you won't know if the poll worker is actually cheating you.
In Michigan, a state-wide ballot form is used in all elections, and all districts use electronic vote counting machines as mandated by state law. The Michigan ballots are counted by Scantron-type machine and have been since (I believe) the 1992 presidential election.
Several U.S. states already use electronic vote counting, including Michigan. The ballots are filled out exactly as described, much like a Scantron(tm). The twist is *you* are the one who inserts the ballot into the counting machine, so *you* know that your ballot got counted. The machine will immediately notify the poll administrator who's supervising you whether or not there was any kind of read error and inform you that you must darken in your lines better or erase stray marks, etc.
Yeah, but they all do it, and it isn't strictly video board manufacturers either. That '80 GB' hard drive you just bought isn't 80 GB, it's (depending on the manufacturer) either a 80,000,000,000 byte hard drive or a 80,000 MB hard drive...either way it isn't by any stretch of imagination 80 GB. That Ultra DMA 133 hard drive, BTW, can't really do a sustained 133 MB/s transfer rate either, that's the burst speed and you'll probably NEVER actually achieve that transfer rate in actual use. That 20" CRT you just bought isn't 20", it's 19.2" inches of viewable area. A 333 MHZ FSB isn't 333 MHZ, it's 332-point-something mhz, and even then it isn't really 333 MHZ because it's really like 166 mhz and doubled because DDR memory allows you to read and write on the high and low side of the clock. That 2400 DPI scanner you just bought is only 2400 DPI with software interpolation. Your 56K modem can really only do 53K due the FCC regulations requiring them to disable the 56K transfer rate. The list goes on.
The LZH case was different, the owner of the ip never gave permission to use it in gpl programs, and thus the person who first distributed it under the gpl (not those persons who distributed it further) would be liable.
Ermm, that would be LZW compression. (Liv-Zempel-Welch). LZH is the file extension that LHarc used. You must be one of those old veterans like me.;)
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So, like, when do the divorce proceedings begin? How could he DO that to poor Silica?
That's exactly what they're doing. Does anyone really think Microsoft is licensing the code because they want to be nice to SCO? Does anyone really think that SCO was ever gonna sue Microsoft over it's use of *nix code?
The question I have is: can SCO *really* sue Linux out of existence? Doesn't the GPL make that essentially impossible?
I didn't compile OO, I emerged the openoffice-bin package. Much quicker, and there's really not much to OpenOffice that demands a custom compile anyway.
I guess my suggestion is don't just believe it when you're told that XYZ is good or bad programming practice. Instead, make sure you understand why doing XYZ, is good or bad.
Of course that's half the problem. The article mentions two programming practices, and each of them have a grain of truth. The sync/unsync issue used to be true, and the other one, the use of the final delcaration, seems to make sense but it doesn't actually work that way. Hence the reason I suggest that people actually try something before accepting even a seemingly plausible explanation for what amounts to voodoo programming practice.
I knew that. I said *were* implying that this is no logner the case with VB programs.
Many VB programs, especially shareware, tend to be slow, also, because VB programmers tend to write sloppy code, which in any language will lead to slow programs. Not all VB programmers write sloppy code, of course, but since VB is the language that many n00b programmers start with, their coding techniques tend to be very naive and without regard to performance or bloat at all. BASIC as a language also tends to encourage this because it allows you to do sloppy things like not declare your variables before use. (And yes, I know some C programmers that do this as well, and yes even in C this sloppy, sloppy, sloppy)
Remember the DOS days? Was was GWBASIC so slow? Why were QuickBASIC programs so slow? Why, later, were Visual Basic programs so slow?
Because those versions of BASIC were all, essentially, interpreted.
Java is essentially an interpreted language, despite JITs and JNIs and whatever.
Interpreted languages are slow. That's why no one writes full-blown applications in BASH.
I wonder to what extent this exists in other languages? For example, there is an oft-cited tip that says using persistent database applications with LAMP applications increases performance. I've found in actual practice that this depends on a lot of factors such as server load, amount of available memory, etc.
I remember in my Turbo Pascal programming days (heh) that a lot of people said that using Units would degrade performance. So I tried it both ways and it never really made a difference, for my applications anyways.
I'd say before taking someone's word for it on a performance enhancing technique, test it out. Because not everything you read is true, and not everything you read will apply to every environment or every application.
It depends on what you view as a 'complete system'. Compiling KDE along with some GNOME libs and a few others (my USE clause is long) took 12 hours on an Athlon XP 1800+ with 256 MB RAM on a 2Mb/s cablemodem connection.
Now if your idea of a complete system doesn't include a full desktop, complete with ALSA sound support, OpenGL and a whole bunch of goodies, and you started from a Stage 3, then I could see getting the system running in 4-5 hours, yeah.
Bear in mind that when I say 3 days, that's starting from Stage 1 tarball with a USE clause a mile long and all the goodies. Compiling large pieces of software like Mozilla or OpenOffice (as opposed to grabbing the binary-only packages) can take even longer.
I suppose my Athlon XP 1800+ is high-end compared to your K6/2 -- which was my previous box and the one I'm currently using as a firewall -- and I can say that on that box, a week to a week and a half for full-featured X11 system with KDE or Gnome. But browse the Gentoo forums and you'lll find that amongst most Gentoo users, my configuration is pretty typical.
That being said also, I think you'll find that you build decent mid-range Athlon system like mine for less than $500.
Well without seeing exactly what pictures these techs saw, one can't say for sure, but I think 99% of 'kiddie porn' accusations are nonsense. They don't involve, say, someone kidnapping 5 year olds and photographing their rape and torture.
Um, dude, I had a guy stay at my house who did, in fact, use my network to download photos of 5 year olds who kidnapped, raped, and tortured. The sick fsck. I *had* to turn him in to the police or risk being implicated myself, especially when you consider the existence of kiddie porn sting sites.
And, it turned out, the guy was abusing his own stepchildren. This guy was previously my best friend, and his wife had accused him of such things, but everyone I knew, including myself, thought of his wife as being just a bit mentally unstable and prone to making things up. Unfortunately, physical evidence said otherwise, and it turns out that this sick fsck actually WAS abusing children.
So I can't say I agree with you -- at all. What if these were pictures of YOUR children?
Granted, I can't tinker with Linux at work anymore (based on NDA/contract stuff), but I really enjoyed the opportunity to truly learn Linux with Gentoo rather than have my hand held like Mandrake does.
I agree. I was a former Mandrake user, and my first distro was Slackware, and even then I can tell you, Gentoo makes you learn everything... maybe not quite as much as LFS, but then again, installign Gentoo is actually not unlike installing LFS. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me that Daniel Robbins based the whole project on LFS.
Linux is just plain fun. Sure, it's not great if you need to get a lot of work done, but it's an amazing teaching tool if you want to truly learn computers.
Yeah, I personally use two boxes -- one for tickering with Gentoo and one for production work on Gentoo. So that way I can do some good integration testing before going live with it. Using this system as worked out great for me, especially since the hardware is cheap enough.
I've been a happy Gentoo User for almost a year now, and I can tell you that on my machine 2-3 days is a more accurate time estimate. I just totally rebuilt my machine from scratch a couple of days ago and it took me about 3 days working on it part time to get it going. If I had more time to devote to it, I could have got it up and running in 1-2 days.
;)
One thing Pietrely (sp?) misses though: you need a high speed Internet connection to use Gentoo. If you're on dialup, Gentoo is gonna take a llllooonng time to complete the installation because, unless you're starting from a precompiled base system (GRP), you pretty much have to download everything -- from the kernel, GCC, bash, XFree, KDE, GNOME, whatever.
Also of note, there's very little in the way of GUI admin tools -- no Linuxconf, no graphical init system editor. You'd better get to loving modifying everything with a text editor. For me this was no problem as I'm an oldskool Unix sysadmin.
Anyways, I love gentoo. Emerge ROCKS! No more dependency hell! And the system is FAST! Way to go Gentoo!
Right. Sorry. :)
It'll make a cashier's job much much easier. They'll be able to stand there and look stupid all day instead of counting change.
Yeah, but the thing takes 5 times as long it would take you to vaccuum it yourself. It also doesn't know if the floor is clean or not, it just vaccuums the whole floor in one pass and doesn't go back over spots to get every last little bit. I think it needs a couple of generations to work out the bugs before it'll be truly viable for anyone but geeks who don't vaccuum anyways. ;)
Hmmm...ya know ... my Gentoo box has nano technlogy, but really, I prefer vim myself.
Yeah, but this is a rather outdated system by now. Nowadays you've got video cameras aimed right at the cashiers, so if they stuff money in their pocket, they're going to get caught. Not only that but you now have electronic cash registers or POS computers and every transaction gets recorded into a database. Stores generally have a policy that all items must be scanned (to ensure accuracy of pricing) so the cashier will be especially noticed if they're caught not scanning a product on tape.
And really, even with all of this in place, cashiers still make off with money, although at most places they DO get caught.
You know, the easiest way to get around this change problem is with technology, really. We're already headed towards a cashless society, let's just go the rest of the way, at least for most store transactions. Cash I think is still really needed for private transactions. Not everyone can afford a credit card processor, and there's too much fraud to force private individuals to use checks or whatever. In a truly cashless society, the cashier is almost not even necessary.
IE, WMP etc haven't done MS any good - and they're already at versions 6 and 9.
;)
Internet Explorer hasn't done MS any good? Huh?
The entire purpose of Internet Explorer was to put Netscape out of business, and it did essentially that. Netscape made the mistake of touting its Communicator product, combined with its Web server software and Java and JavaScript technologies as an applications platform, rendering the underlying OS as being largely irrelevant. Microsoft responded with Internet Explorer and began the whole 'embrace and extend' strategy towards Internet standards and the rest is history.
As for Windows Media Player -- I'm not even sure what Microsoft's goals were for that.
I thought Teri Lynn Land (or maybe it was Candice Miller) was talking about making the Scantron ballots statewide? That never happened?
and
So you go ahead and post it on Slashdot! Like no one's gonna see it there! Sheesh! Remind me never to ask you for help moving my money out of the country! It's not like they send those e-mails to just ANYBODY ya know!
If you can't use the OMR/Sharpie, how are you going to use any other kind of voting system, other than "everyone who wants Candidate Foo, raise your hand!"?
Seriously, there has to be a basic literacy requirement to vote. You have to be able to read the ballot, and you have to be smart enough and have enough manual dexterity to make SOME kind of mark, hole punch, etc. Actually, at least in Michigan, the poll workers will help you fill out your ballot if you're really *that* incapable, but then if you're really *that* incapable you won't know if the poll worker is actually cheating you.
In Michigan, a state-wide ballot form is used in all elections, and all districts use electronic vote counting machines as mandated by state law. The Michigan ballots are counted by Scantron-type machine and have been since (I believe) the 1992 presidential election.
Several U.S. states already use electronic vote counting, including Michigan. The ballots are filled out exactly as described, much like a Scantron(tm). The twist is *you* are the one who inserts the ballot into the counting machine, so *you* know that your ballot got counted. The machine will immediately notify the poll administrator who's supervising you whether or not there was any kind of read error and inform you that you must darken in your lines better or erase stray marks, etc.
Yeah, but they all do it, and it isn't strictly video board manufacturers either. That '80 GB' hard drive you just bought isn't 80 GB, it's (depending on the manufacturer) either a 80,000,000,000 byte hard drive or a 80,000 MB hard drive...either way it isn't by any stretch of imagination 80 GB. That Ultra DMA 133 hard drive, BTW, can't really do a sustained 133 MB/s transfer rate either, that's the burst speed and you'll probably NEVER actually achieve that transfer rate in actual use. That 20" CRT you just bought isn't 20", it's 19.2" inches of viewable area. A 333 MHZ FSB isn't 333 MHZ, it's 332-point-something mhz, and even then it isn't really 333 MHZ because it's really like 166 mhz and doubled because DDR memory allows you to read and write on the high and low side of the clock. That 2400 DPI scanner you just bought is only 2400 DPI with software interpolation. Your 56K modem can really only do 53K due the FCC regulations requiring them to disable the 56K transfer rate. The list goes on.
The LZH case was different, the owner of the ip never gave permission to use it in gpl programs, and thus the person who first distributed it under the gpl (not those persons who distributed it further) would be liable.
;)
Ermm, that would be LZW compression. (Liv-Zempel-Welch). LZH is the file extension that LHarc used. You must be one of those old veterans like me.