You're exactly right about the purpose and design of the patent system in the US. What I can't figure out is how so many patent holders have been able to hide the existence or nature of a patent for so long. I'm all for the system as it was designed, but it seems like it's being abused more than being used properly today.
I suppose that Europeans treated the natives with respect and dignity in South and Central America, where there are still many Indians (or whatever politically correct term you prefer) today. Yes, many injustices have been done by settlers, but you can't simplify it to whities == evil and everyone else == victim.
By the way, were your ancestors the tyrannical Europeans or the Native American victims? If you are of Native American descent, I can respect your views about whether certain names are offensive or not. Otherwise, you don't speak with authority. I'd be amused if I heard of a team called the "Whities" or "Honks" or "Nerds," but I wouldn't be offended.
I must say, your superior, condescending style is highly entertaining. You must be a "system programmer re-writing the OS while it runs." I can just imagine you sneering at the moronic peons slaving away at their desktop toys, sending email and sharing files through the playthings they call servers and wiling away their time on that cute upstart called the web.
It seems to work fine with Sarien as mentioned in the shameless plug. In fact, everything was amazingly intuitive. I saw the post about Sarien, downloaded the source tarball, did "./configure && make", went to the directory of the game, ran sarien, and it was up and running.
Thank you for speaking the truth my brother. I now believe in the One True OS (which isn't so hot for watching TV).
I may check out FreeBSD some time. I'm sure I'll find many things I like, but I'll take you more seriously if you are able to admit that what is better or easier for you may not be for everyone on the planet.
I have one friend (who develops embedded software, lest you thing he's a n00b) who has used FreeBSD and OpenBSD in the past, but now prefers Gentoo, as he finds Portage easier to use. I have another friend who uses FreeBSD on his servers, but Windoze on his laptop, as he can't get XFree to work properly with his display hardware, though it works on GNU/Linux.
So, I won't look down on you for preferring *BSD if you won't look down on me for sticking with Gentoo for now. I'm interested in experimenting with more radical OSes, so I'm more likely to try GNU/Hurd or Plan 9 than another traditional (though excellent) *nix.
Well, I'll stop my complaining now... Yes Gentoo is a good distro by any measure, but I think it would be so much better if they would just do a little more bug testing. It would have saved me about two days of effort if they had just found the one bug that stopped me in my tracks. RedHat at least does testing on the more important and popular componets of the system, although some less popular components are often buggy and untested.
Yes, you should stop complaining on Slashdot and submit a bug report; that's what I do. You can be part of the "they" if you want to be. Gentoo does have more bugs than I've encountered in some other distros, but one of the reason I stick with it is that I feel like I can help to fix that. It's probably similar with other ones like Debian, but I didn't get into bug reporting when I was using it. Is FreeBSD easy to get involved with?
I'm sure FreeBSD is a great OS, but I have trouble with your attitude that it's superior to every GNU/Linux OS in every way except TV support. *BSD ports were the main inspiration for Portage. Are you saying that it's inherently inferior, or are you complaining about the lack of maturity of some of the ebuilds?
Hey, don't mock me. I just spent all night spastically jerking my mouse around and uploading all of my music to various FTP servers just to be able to eek 200MB from/dev/random. Now I just need to find a way sell it.
So, maybe you'll end up a Gentoo user after all. Here I thought you were saying it was much worse than all other OSes you'd used. It turns out you're saying that all OSes suck.
Of course, you are correct. You just have to find or build the one that sucks the least. It's a never ending struggle. My roommate was switching OSes every few months. He's stuck with Gentoo much longer, though he's reinstalled it from scratch several times. I'm less restless, though I've gone through several distros over the last few years.
I'm content for now, but who knows what's just over the horizon. I'll start using GNU/Hurd one of these days, which will require switching back to Debian or helping with the Gentoo port.
Not reusing a JVM may be the result of design decisions in the early '90s. Originally, Java was intended for embedded consumer electronics, not desktop machines. Also, this problem seems to exist for all high level runtimes, including Python and Perl. Those do far better than typical JVMs, but they still take a lot longer to start up than a typical C program.
I believe this is because most modern operating systems are biased toward the runtime of their native language. Apple's efforts are trying to eliminate that bias against Java. I think any high level runtime could benefit from similar treatment. The DotNet approach may hold some benefits in that area. This may be a good reason to check out Mono or DotGNU.
As someone has pointed out, there are many kernel packages that are part of Gentoo. If one had a problem, it may be a bug in that package (a serious problem), but it's not "show-stopping," since you can just choose a different one. There is no default kernel. There is one "official" one, but during install, you can choose a vanilla one just as easily. It is called a meta distribution because many details are up to you instead of the packager. One often has to trade some stability for greater flexibility.
I still maintain that your problem was that you weren't comfortable with Gentoo. I'm not disparaging your knowledge, experience, or comfort level with GNU/Linux in general. It took me several months before I was comfortable with Gentoo and I had to learn more than I did with other distros, like Red Hat, Mandrake and Debian.
It's not that you couldn't handle Gentoo, it's just that you weren't willing to take the time to become really intimate. There's nothing wrong with that; you probably had better things to do with your time.
That's why I say Gentoo isn't for everyone. If you prefer to just run an installer and have a working system, go for something like Red Hat or Mandrake. If you want maximum flexibility and don't mind spending a lot of time understanding the details of the system, go with something like Gentoo.
Does it have bugs and problems? Certainly. I considered going back to Debian for a while when things were breaking quite often, but stability has improved greatly over the last few months.
Training is one of the main things the military does. They get troops for several years at a time and put large training investments into them. The military have their own ways of doing things and rarely conform to civilian standards. From talking with my roommate who was in the Army, it sounds like it's almost a self sufficient society.
I suspect choosing Microsoft products is more about standardizing within the Army (or lining somebody's pockets for the conspiracy theory view) than what goes on in the civilian world. If they can train men to kill with rifles, grenades and machine guns, can't they train them to select some files in Explorer or type "ls?"
I think it's always been Free Software, as has TeX. If you want details, go to the source. I believe Leslie Lamport just started writing some macros for structured documents in Donald Knuth's TeX text layout language.
I find it ironic that the original author of one of the most successful Free Software projects now works for a company that has publicly declared itself an enemy of copyleft.
I'm comfortable with any distro, but bugs in the kernel/drivers (I guess testing brooktree support isn't a high priority) and the dependency software have stood in my way (the latter shouldn't be a problem on gentoo, but the former prevents the latter from being of any use).
Obviously, you weren't comfortable with Gentoo, so get off your high horse. Are you blaming Gentoo for "bugs in the kernel/drivers?" You do know the difference between Linux and distribution of GNU/Linux, right Mr. EXPERT?
Like I said, Gentoo (or any specific distribution) isn't for everyone. You don't need to justify your bad experiences by bashing it. I didn't have a good experience when I tried OpenBSD, but I don't badmouth it. I acknowledge that I didn't spend enough time to fully understand it. I still consider Mandrake to be a good distribution, though I once had trouble with one of their kernels.
I've also been a Gentoo user for at least a year, so I certainly appreciate what Robbins and many others have done. I've also contributed a number of ebuilds. However, Robbins didn't come out smelling like a rose on this one. He sounded a little childish, boasting about his moral superiority without any support. After reading the rant and Robbins' reply, I'm not really sure what to think.
Clearly, there has been bad blood, probably fueled from both sides. However, the comments about how Gentoo is being managed at the top is cause for concern. I haven't gotten deeply enough involved to know how much of it is true, but I suspect some is.
I'm also concerned about the confusion between the business and public sides of Gentoo. There's nothing wrong with running a business based on Free Software, but the nature of Gentoo hasn't been made very clear.
Real Gentoo users (like me) know that flexibility is it's main benefit, not some undocumented (though probably existing) speed gains. Even though I'm quite happy using Gentoo, I'd never proselytize. It's not for everyone. It appeals to an even more select group than Debian or OpenBSD. After all, what matters is that we have choice. I hate to sound hedonistic, but I think in this case, it's appropriate: if it feels good, do it.
About a year ago, both my housemate and I were becoming interested in source based distributions. I happened on Gentoo. I can't remember who installed it first. I think it was me, but now, he's more of a rabid Gentoo head than I am.
Gentoo isn't for everyone. You complain about things not working right away. That's because it doesn't have an installer. It's not that something didn't work right, but that the thing isn't there at all. Yes, that is a significant shortcoming, which will probably be rectified eventually.
Gentoo does have a steep learning curve, which is why I'd never recommend it to someone unless he has significant experience with more than one distro already. I had used about three before I tried Gentoo and it still took a little while to get everything running smoothly.
Now, I am quite content, especially since I can use my existing configurations when setting up a new system. The main advantage compared to other distros is flexibility and configurability. I found it easier to start making and contributing my own packages than with other distros, though that may be my just my particular experience. Now, I cringe at the thought of installing a binary, though that attitude may be a little silly.
So, it comes down to choice. Use what you are most comfortable with or is most exciting. Choice is good, so I tend to think this fork will result in things being better on the whole, though it is doing harm right now.
Leslie Lamport wrote LaTeX (he's the La). Now, he works for the Beast. At least he's in research, so maybe he'll do some good. They do have great potential for innovation, they just need the pressure of real competition to bring it out. Or were you talking about the Debian package?
Well, that level of detail definitely inspires much more confidence. Out of curiosity, have you tried different versions of GCC and found significant differences in the speed of the results? Would you guess that your typical applications benefit from vector instructions more than typical floating point stuff?
Do you know if Apple is using some PowerPC code generation enhancements that will be made available in the future? I'm genuinely interested in comparisons and pleasantly surprised to hear from someone with real experience rather than speculations.
Did your problems result from differences between traditional Bourne shell and POSIX? Bash tries to conform to POSIX more than the traditional sh. Specifically, when invoked as "sh" it enters POSIX mode, so/bin/bash may actually be closer to traditional than/bin/sh. I don't have any experience with traditional Bourne shell, so I really don't know what the issues might be.
Slashdot Mirror
You're exactly right about the purpose and design of the patent system in the US. What I can't figure out is how so many patent holders have been able to hide the existence or nature of a patent for so long. I'm all for the system as it was designed, but it seems like it's being abused more than being used properly today.
I suppose that Europeans treated the natives with respect and dignity in South and Central America, where there are still many Indians (or whatever politically correct term you prefer) today. Yes, many injustices have been done by settlers, but you can't simplify it to whities == evil and everyone else == victim.
By the way, were your ancestors the tyrannical Europeans or the Native American victims? If you are of Native American descent, I can respect your views about whether certain names are offensive or not. Otherwise, you don't speak with authority. I'd be amused if I heard of a team called the "Whities" or "Honks" or "Nerds," but I wouldn't be offended.
I must say, your superior, condescending style is highly entertaining. You must be a "system programmer re-writing the OS while it runs." I can just imagine you sneering at the moronic peons slaving away at their desktop toys, sending email and sharing files through the playthings they call servers and wiling away their time on that cute upstart called the web.
It seems to work fine with Sarien as mentioned in the shameless plug. In fact, everything was amazingly intuitive. I saw the post about Sarien, downloaded the source tarball, did "./configure && make", went to the directory of the game, ran sarien, and it was up and running.
Thank you for speaking the truth my brother. I now believe in the One True OS (which isn't so hot for watching TV).
I may check out FreeBSD some time. I'm sure I'll find many things I like, but I'll take you more seriously if you are able to admit that what is better or easier for you may not be for everyone on the planet.
I have one friend (who develops embedded software, lest you thing he's a n00b) who has used FreeBSD and OpenBSD in the past, but now prefers Gentoo, as he finds Portage easier to use. I have another friend who uses FreeBSD on his servers, but Windoze on his laptop, as he can't get XFree to work properly with his display hardware, though it works on GNU/Linux.
So, I won't look down on you for preferring *BSD if you won't look down on me for sticking with Gentoo for now. I'm interested in experimenting with more radical OSes, so I'm more likely to try GNU/Hurd or Plan 9 than another traditional (though excellent) *nix.
Yes, you should stop complaining on Slashdot and submit a bug report; that's what I do. You can be part of the "they" if you want to be. Gentoo does have more bugs than I've encountered in some other distros, but one of the reason I stick with it is that I feel like I can help to fix that. It's probably similar with other ones like Debian, but I didn't get into bug reporting when I was using it. Is FreeBSD easy to get involved with?
I'm sure FreeBSD is a great OS, but I have trouble with your attitude that it's superior to every GNU/Linux OS in every way except TV support. *BSD ports were the main inspiration for Portage. Are you saying that it's inherently inferior, or are you complaining about the lack of maturity of some of the ebuilds?
Hey, don't mock me. I just spent all night spastically jerking my mouse around and uploading all of my music to various FTP servers just to be able to eek 200MB from /dev/random. Now I just need to find a way sell it.
So, maybe you'll end up a Gentoo user after all. Here I thought you were saying it was much worse than all other OSes you'd used. It turns out you're saying that all OSes suck.
Of course, you are correct. You just have to find or build the one that sucks the least. It's a never ending struggle. My roommate was switching OSes every few months. He's stuck with Gentoo much longer, though he's reinstalled it from scratch several times. I'm less restless, though I've gone through several distros over the last few years.
I'm content for now, but who knows what's just over the horizon. I'll start using GNU/Hurd one of these days, which will require switching back to Debian or helping with the Gentoo port.
Not reusing a JVM may be the result of design decisions in the early '90s. Originally, Java was intended for embedded consumer electronics, not desktop machines. Also, this problem seems to exist for all high level runtimes, including Python and Perl. Those do far better than typical JVMs, but they still take a lot longer to start up than a typical C program.
I believe this is because most modern operating systems are biased toward the runtime of their native language. Apple's efforts are trying to eliminate that bias against Java. I think any high level runtime could benefit from similar treatment. The DotNet approach may hold some benefits in that area. This may be a good reason to check out Mono or DotGNU.
As someone has pointed out, there are many kernel packages that are part of Gentoo. If one had a problem, it may be a bug in that package (a serious problem), but it's not "show-stopping," since you can just choose a different one. There is no default kernel. There is one "official" one, but during install, you can choose a vanilla one just as easily. It is called a meta distribution because many details are up to you instead of the packager. One often has to trade some stability for greater flexibility.
I still maintain that your problem was that you weren't comfortable with Gentoo. I'm not disparaging your knowledge, experience, or comfort level with GNU/Linux in general. It took me several months before I was comfortable with Gentoo and I had to learn more than I did with other distros, like Red Hat, Mandrake and Debian.
It's not that you couldn't handle Gentoo, it's just that you weren't willing to take the time to become really intimate. There's nothing wrong with that; you probably had better things to do with your time.
That's why I say Gentoo isn't for everyone. If you prefer to just run an installer and have a working system, go for something like Red Hat or Mandrake. If you want maximum flexibility and don't mind spending a lot of time understanding the details of the system, go with something like Gentoo.
Does it have bugs and problems? Certainly. I considered going back to Debian for a while when things were breaking quite often, but stability has improved greatly over the last few months.
Training is one of the main things the military does. They get troops for several years at a time and put large training investments into them. The military have their own ways of doing things and rarely conform to civilian standards. From talking with my roommate who was in the Army, it sounds like it's almost a self sufficient society.
I suspect choosing Microsoft products is more about standardizing within the Army (or lining somebody's pockets for the conspiracy theory view) than what goes on in the civilian world. If they can train men to kill with rifles, grenades and machine guns, can't they train them to select some files in Explorer or type "ls?"
I think it's always been Free Software, as has TeX. If you want details, go to the source. I believe Leslie Lamport just started writing some macros for structured documents in Donald Knuth's TeX text layout language.
I find it ironic that the original author of one of the most successful Free Software projects now works for a company that has publicly declared itself an enemy of copyleft.
Obviously, you weren't comfortable with Gentoo, so get off your high horse. Are you blaming Gentoo for "bugs in the kernel/drivers?" You do know the difference between Linux and distribution of GNU/Linux, right Mr. EXPERT?
Like I said, Gentoo (or any specific distribution) isn't for everyone. You don't need to justify your bad experiences by bashing it. I didn't have a good experience when I tried OpenBSD, but I don't badmouth it. I acknowledge that I didn't spend enough time to fully understand it. I still consider Mandrake to be a good distribution, though I once had trouble with one of their kernels.
While you're at it, patent your spelling of the word. You could sue every time someone hit the "t" one too many ttimes. ;)
I've also been a Gentoo user for at least a year, so I certainly appreciate what Robbins and many others have done. I've also contributed a number of ebuilds. However, Robbins didn't come out smelling like a rose on this one. He sounded a little childish, boasting about his moral superiority without any support. After reading the rant and Robbins' reply, I'm not really sure what to think.
Clearly, there has been bad blood, probably fueled from both sides. However, the comments about how Gentoo is being managed at the top is cause for concern. I haven't gotten deeply enough involved to know how much of it is true, but I suspect some is.
I'm also concerned about the confusion between the business and public sides of Gentoo. There's nothing wrong with running a business based on Free Software, but the nature of Gentoo hasn't been made very clear.
At least we don't have ZachNix or RobbinUx. By the way, Gentoo is a type of penguin, so it's somewhat original.
Now I know I'm getting tired. The last sentence should be: I can't believe I used "it's" when I should have used "its." I'll stop posting now.
Nuts! I'm going to have to correct my own post. I can't believe "it's" when I should have used "its."
Real Gentoo users (like me) know that flexibility is it's main benefit, not some undocumented (though probably existing) speed gains. Even though I'm quite happy using Gentoo, I'd never proselytize. It's not for everyone. It appeals to an even more select group than Debian or OpenBSD. After all, what matters is that we have choice. I hate to sound hedonistic, but I think in this case, it's appropriate: if it feels good, do it.
About a year ago, both my housemate and I were becoming interested in source based distributions. I happened on Gentoo. I can't remember who installed it first. I think it was me, but now, he's more of a rabid Gentoo head than I am.
Gentoo isn't for everyone. You complain about things not working right away. That's because it doesn't have an installer. It's not that something didn't work right, but that the thing isn't there at all. Yes, that is a significant shortcoming, which will probably be rectified eventually.
Gentoo does have a steep learning curve, which is why I'd never recommend it to someone unless he has significant experience with more than one distro already. I had used about three before I tried Gentoo and it still took a little while to get everything running smoothly.
Now, I am quite content, especially since I can use my existing configurations when setting up a new system. The main advantage compared to other distros is flexibility and configurability. I found it easier to start making and contributing my own packages than with other distros, though that may be my just my particular experience. Now, I cringe at the thought of installing a binary, though that attitude may be a little silly.
So, it comes down to choice. Use what you are most comfortable with or is most exciting. Choice is good, so I tend to think this fork will result in things being better on the whole, though it is doing harm right now.
Leslie Lamport wrote LaTeX (he's the La). Now, he works for the Beast. At least he's in research, so maybe he'll do some good. They do have great potential for innovation, they just need the pressure of real competition to bring it out. Or were you talking about the Debian package?
Now I have an excuse to put my commas outside the quotes when it makes more sense. As an American, that's always bothered me.
Yes, I can certainly see how that would be a problem. Bash needs the equivalent of -Wall and -Werror.
Well, that level of detail definitely inspires much more confidence. Out of curiosity, have you tried different versions of GCC and found significant differences in the speed of the results? Would you guess that your typical applications benefit from vector instructions more than typical floating point stuff?
Do you know if Apple is using some PowerPC code generation enhancements that will be made available in the future? I'm genuinely interested in comparisons and pleasantly surprised to hear from someone with real experience rather than speculations.
Did your problems result from differences between traditional Bourne shell and POSIX? Bash tries to conform to POSIX more than the traditional sh. Specifically, when invoked as "sh" it enters POSIX mode, so /bin/bash may actually be closer to traditional than /bin/sh. I don't have any experience with traditional Bourne shell, so I really don't know what the issues might be.