I think "leeches on the skin" is a little strongly worded: geek celebrity has its price. If you GPL and give away and encourage downloading and bask in the recognition, you can't very well complain about users using, can you?
writing doc for others... I've thought about doing it, I'm good at it, but it doesn't get a lot of respect from people who don't write it themselves, so screw 'em. It's not like I do nothing instead, I still code, I just do it for more billable hours.
yes, you're right, the internet did grow out of innovations from the past, back when all unix machines were on the internet. the obstacle to the growth of the internet has been the wait for all the windows desktops to catch up. And, on the server side, since you are so into honesty, we'd be much farther along now if Microsoft devoted any effort to open standards and protocols and stopped trying to hide everything and force everyone else out. "Keep internet protocols free from walls and fences, and we won't need Windows and Gates" is clever because it's so true.
Unix has been successful directly because of its elegance and simplicity. It has needed little innovation for years, and it is most definitely not rotting from the inside out. It is what fresh young minds should learn (and they are, more about that later). Now, continuing with the honesty, NT on the other hand has required much innovation to get where it is technically. It was a bug-ridden, crash-prone dog for years and years. It is only now stable enough to run as a server, and it still does not scale reliably nor can a single server handle many tasks simultaneously. I'm not claiming that there is nothing there: Microsoft does hire a lot of smart people. But they are misdirected once they get there and waste a lot of resources cranking out fat bloated obtuse code whose purpose is to keep the competition down. Unix has its share of petty infighting and bitter debate, but it's about the code, not the monopoly.
I agree with a lot of what you say, but I do have some time and some inclination to code... and a lot of experience to offer. But the lack of documentation and planning and the nasty replies that you mention, along with the overly complex build systems the large projects create are daunting. I'd like to code for a week, not spend a week learning how to build something.
actually, while posting I was thinking about WINE. I'll hide behind the quibble that people may do it because they think there's money in it, or they want to kill NT. But, nobody's writing an open source clone of NT (like all of the unix clones) out of love for NT. Really: nobody.
NT's APIs are a giant hairy mess, and they don't work as documented. You need to spend hours searching through MSDN and if you are lucky you'll find a piece of sample code that you can use as a template because it'll have the magic undocumented combination of function calls that side-effect (if I have to explain side-effect I'd be wasting my time) enough of NT that the documented call will work. They've been talking about DDE, OLE, VBX blah blah for years and they've never delivered on the promises. Every hot windows app out there is filled with intricate little kluges to make it slick, otherwise you end up with some klunky "yup, it's a VB app" feel. I'm not against intricate little kluges that make an app slick, because end-user code reuse is the real goal, but I just wouldn't brag about the development environment: it's torture.
while you are right that there is a chicken-egg problem with any technology introduction, the early history of the PC was driven by demand from small offices hungry for spreadsheets, word processors, accounting packages, etc. All of them ultimately paper-based, ergo printing was a big deal.
If we believe Miguel's opinion of Linux vs. Windows development, Linux is going to lose. In fact, his argument is so strong that we can see that Linux won't even be today where it is because five years ago Windows was even farther ahead with more reusable code.
More evidence of Miguel's genius can be seen in his critique of Unix in general. Unix is not a platform of innovation. Take the biggest development in all software markets in the last five years: the internet. Unix could never have produced the innovation of the internet...
Miguel's a little confused.
It drives me nuts when people who are a little bit smarter like Miguel, start to think they are really smart, because while he can see problems, he is still not smart enough to see solutions. Allowing for many many window managers is not a mistake, it's the trend: think about skins. No, the problem is that the developers who are writing all the window managers keep starting from scratch, or pay little attention to the other window managers. For example, I like the focus to follow the mouse. I'd like to set that one time in one place, then experiment with different window managers to see which I like (today...:) But you see? That's a simple solution to a problem. There's no need to throw the baby away with the bathwater, which is what Microsoft did. Microsoft was a unix systems house back when they produced DOS, and many features of DOS were modelled from Unix. It took them years and years to reintroduce simple things like memory management and multitasking, and then they set off to create NT, an OS that nobody even wants to clone.
Yep, it's true that some areas of Unix are very weak, like printer drivers, but that's more a reflection of the culture: Unix isn't used on office desktops much. Windows has equally glaring deficiencies: think of how much Windows code gets "reused" every day by hackers exploiting the security holes:)
Nope, Miguel, you are not onto anything big, just another Dvorak in a different suit.
All credit cards participate in the several credit rating systems. To be a member of those systems, they must agree to sharing private information about the consumer with the credit rating networks. If they didn't participate in a large credit checking network they'd soon go out of business because all the leaches would gravitate to them.
Thus, there cannot be a credit card that will protect your privacy.
that is not a good point. that point could just as easily be made about assembly langauge, i.e. it's a point about the mind, not about perl. perl is an ugly unreadable language, moreso than many other languages.
it is possible that it's the price of power and expressiveness: perhaps nobody can invent a language that does as much that does not come out looking ugly and unreadable. But that does not alter the fact that Perl is ugly and unreadable.
Why isn't Perl regex code in a library usable by C++ users ?
oh good God, you are not cut out to be a Perl coder. Let me get this straight: in addition to readability/maintainability, portability, and performance, you value modularity and reusability? Just where do you get off questioning the great Larry Wall?
the ideas behind that post are brilliant, but it is cookbook econ 101 and applies to many products, technologies and industries. Think about VHS/Beta, internal combustion engines, whatever.
Jamie, back when you wrote the pieces about trying to influence the public library "censorware" decision, you accused the other side of being dishonest. Aren't you be somewhat dishonest here? Your beef is that you don't like censorware that works. You don't think there should be blocking software at all. So, to make a big deal about this bug is silly because you'd be making a big deal about it if it worked too. Or I'm I reading your opinion wrong?
Jamie is a lesser editor, IMHO, sort of a Jon Katz in training. Remember his tedious pieces about going to the library meetings? What is interesting and what should have been the entire focus of this is how such a weak exploit could have been left laying around for almost four years.
I think it's weird for everybody to snicker about this like it was the lamest thing that every happened. Software often has bugs, no big deal. I'll bet this filter blocked far more accesses than the 'sploit allowed through: that's the real story.
I don't buy the efficiency arguement, but if you think it's that important, add a compiler directive to allow undefined return values from functions, or use void. I'm not totally rigid about it, I just want the user to have the tools to accomplish functional programming. Specifically hat I was referring to was giving "if" and "while" return values which is something a user can't do on her own. Compilers could easily check to see if they were used and toss them out if not.
Hey, a drawback I learned the hard way: you can't "rescue" a ReiserFS system without a ReiserFS kernel, so if you use your non-Reiser distro to build one, don't screw it up!:)
I learned LISP early in my programming life but I don't think it "tainted" me. I've been a C (and C++ and Java and Perl (and awk and sh)) programmer for years too. I've always thought it would be useful to add "functionality" to C in the following way: every statement should be an expression and return a value. Why? Well, really the question is why not? It's incredibly useful to be able to use all of the richness of all the semantics all the time.
Furthermore, if every statement returns a value, you can start passing pointers to snippets of code (like in Perl). The C language semantically allows it anyway, but by forcing everything to be bundled into the function declaration syntax it becomes unnatural and non-orthogonal, not to mention awkward so you avoid it in many cases that would be useful.
You don't have to love LISP to learn and apply a few of the very smart things it (and especially Scheme) does.
this is a good idea, and it's been a long time since browsers worked this way. What does it need now? More buttons!
Since all the stupid shopping and search for shopping buttons are not there, that leaves room for some real buttons. There are a lot of options buried in the preferences dialog that I think of as dynamic, not static. Load images automatically, accept cookies, accept javascript, font, etc. I like to run pretty small and stripped down, but some pages are hard to read that way, so it would be nice to turn these features on and off quickly, and get a visual reminder of what mode it was in, because I forget while browsing.
The GUI partitioning tool in the later Mandrake installs is quite nice,.... who really needs to do low level editing of a partition table?
My experience is different. The partition table on my completely standard Western Digital 27 gig drive with RedHat linux on it, and spare partitions I originally created with the intention of putting a future OS upgrade on Mandrake 7.1 install managed to trash. You can duplicate the test: create with fdisk a disk that has two / parts, 1 swap, 1 extended, 2/vars, 2/usr's, etc, alternating. If you use mandrake's GUI (which something led me to believe is disk druid? Am I wrong about that?) you cannot rewrite the same partition table "boundaries" (to get Reiser) and suddenly, partitions that were not overlapping are overlapping. Furthermore, it screws you in the very first step where it says "need to save the partition table."
I completely agree that not everyone needs to edit partition tables, but there is no excuse for trashing existing disks without warning or recourse, and they provide no fdisk alternative. That's why I called it a piece of shit.
I go back to my point about why would you want to switch distros just to get a point release of a couple dozen apps? You could just as easilly download the latest release of those apps and install them -- or wait a month or so for the next release of the distro that you're using.
because I'm not interested in keeping track of what is in dozens of point releases, but I like to benefit from the bug fixes, and I like to upgrade as soon as possible when there are spec and format changes in config files and stuff like that. I find if I fall too far behind, an upgrade can become quite onerous because there are too many/etc files that have totally changed. Also, by getting good at it and streamlining the system build process, I live in less fear of trashing my system. I also get to experiment with many more distros and installs so I can make informed decisions about what choices to make next time.
for example, if I want to use Reiser, I wouldn't just have to ugrade the RedHat kernel on my system, I'd have to ugrade it on several systems, and remember that I'd need to upgrade it on any future installs, and merge in the other kernel features (e.g. ATA66) that I need. Using a complete distro is much cleaner, and the alternative is not "wait a month" but 3 or 4 months which can be a long time.
Well, if you go back and look, you'll see that the point that you concede is the original point I made. It's that simple.
So what's the rest of this been about? Your misinterpretation. One example from this most recent post:
Q: why draw this arbitrary distinction called "distribution"?
A:... The distinction is that computing resources are owned.
You keep answering the "how can one draw" question, not the "why" question. But since we are now in agreement, and this thread fades into obscurity, time to move on.:) Peace.
Mandrake's install might be a piece of cake for a new user, but it's a piece of shit for an advanced user upgrading because it uses diskdruid instead of fdisk, with no option. diskdruid is horrible.
I can't imagion why anyone would switch back and forth between RedHat and Mandrake
Since I pointed out why I switch back and forth, it's hard to grok how you can't imagine it. I'd much rather have the latest version of a tool over the i586 compilation of the old model.
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writing doc for others... I've thought about doing it, I'm good at it, but it doesn't get a lot of respect from people who don't write it themselves, so screw 'em. It's not like I do nothing instead, I still code, I just do it for more billable hours.
Unix has been successful directly because of its elegance and simplicity. It has needed little innovation for years, and it is most definitely not rotting from the inside out. It is what fresh young minds should learn (and they are, more about that later). Now, continuing with the honesty, NT on the other hand has required much innovation to get where it is technically. It was a bug-ridden, crash-prone dog for years and years. It is only now stable enough to run as a server, and it still does not scale reliably nor can a single server handle many tasks simultaneously. I'm not claiming that there is nothing there: Microsoft does hire a lot of smart people. But they are misdirected once they get there and waste a lot of resources cranking out fat bloated obtuse code whose purpose is to keep the competition down. Unix has its share of petty infighting and bitter debate, but it's about the code, not the monopoly.
I agree with a lot of what you say, but I do have some time and some inclination to code... and a lot of experience to offer. But the lack of documentation and planning and the nasty replies that you mention, along with the overly complex build systems the large projects create are daunting. I'd like to code for a week, not spend a week learning how to build something.
actually, while posting I was thinking about WINE. I'll hide behind the quibble that people may do it because they think there's money in it, or they want to kill NT. But, nobody's writing an open source clone of NT (like all of the unix clones) out of love for NT. Really: nobody.
NT's APIs are a giant hairy mess, and they don't work as documented. You need to spend hours searching through MSDN and if you are lucky you'll find a piece of sample code that you can use as a template because it'll have the magic undocumented combination of function calls that side-effect (if I have to explain side-effect I'd be wasting my time) enough of NT that the documented call will work. They've been talking about DDE, OLE, VBX blah blah for years and they've never delivered on the promises. Every hot windows app out there is filled with intricate little kluges to make it slick, otherwise you end up with some klunky "yup, it's a VB app" feel. I'm not against intricate little kluges that make an app slick, because end-user code reuse is the real goal, but I just wouldn't brag about the development environment: it's torture.
That is simply not the history of Unix. XOR(XOR)
More evidence of Miguel's genius can be seen in his critique of Unix in general. Unix is not a platform of innovation. Take the biggest development in all software markets in the last five years: the internet. Unix could never have produced the innovation of the internet...
Miguel's a little confused.
It drives me nuts when people who are a little bit smarter like Miguel, start to think they are really smart, because while he can see problems, he is still not smart enough to see solutions. Allowing for many many window managers is not a mistake, it's the trend: think about skins. No, the problem is that the developers who are writing all the window managers keep starting from scratch, or pay little attention to the other window managers. For example, I like the focus to follow the mouse. I'd like to set that one time in one place, then experiment with different window managers to see which I like (today... :) But you see? That's a simple solution to a problem. There's no need to throw the baby away with the bathwater, which is what Microsoft did. Microsoft was a unix systems house back when they produced DOS, and many features of DOS were modelled from Unix. It took them years and years to reintroduce simple things like memory management and multitasking, and then they set off to create NT, an OS that nobody even wants to clone.
Yep, it's true that some areas of Unix are very weak, like printer drivers, but that's more a reflection of the culture: Unix isn't used on office desktops much. Windows has equally glaring deficiencies: think of how much Windows code gets "reused" every day by hackers exploiting the security holes :)
Nope, Miguel, you are not onto anything big, just another Dvorak in a different suit.
Thus, there cannot be a credit card that will protect your privacy.
whoops! of course, at a glance I saw the parenthesized word, not the alternative. sorry.
are you kidding? it's "affect", not "effect".
it is possible that it's the price of power and expressiveness: perhaps nobody can invent a language that does as much that does not come out looking ugly and unreadable. But that does not alter the fact that Perl is ugly and unreadable.
what don't you like about hungarian notation? I'll bet you don't even know it.
oh good God, you are not cut out to be a Perl coder. Let me get this straight: in addition to readability/maintainability, portability, and performance, you value modularity and reusability? Just where do you get off questioning the great Larry Wall?
dude, you're joking, right? Please tell me you're joking...
the ideas behind that post are brilliant, but it is cookbook econ 101 and applies to many products, technologies and industries. Think about VHS/Beta, internal combustion engines, whatever.
Jamie, back when you wrote the pieces about trying to influence the public library "censorware" decision, you accused the other side of being dishonest. Aren't you be somewhat dishonest here? Your beef is that you don't like censorware that works. You don't think there should be blocking software at all. So, to make a big deal about this bug is silly because you'd be making a big deal about it if it worked too. Or I'm I reading your opinion wrong?
I think it's weird for everybody to snicker about this like it was the lamest thing that every happened. Software often has bugs, no big deal. I'll bet this filter blocked far more accesses than the 'sploit allowed through: that's the real story.
are you saying that having 3 parents is not better than 2? I claim N+1 is best.
I don't buy the efficiency arguement, but if you think it's that important, add a compiler directive to allow undefined return values from functions, or use void. I'm not totally rigid about it, I just want the user to have the tools to accomplish functional programming. Specifically hat I was referring to was giving "if" and "while" return values which is something a user can't do on her own. Compilers could easily check to see if they were used and toss them out if not.
Hey, a drawback I learned the hard way: you can't "rescue" a ReiserFS system without a ReiserFS kernel, so if you use your non-Reiser distro to build one, don't screw it up! :)
I learned LISP early in my programming life but I don't think it "tainted" me. I've been a C (and C++ and Java and Perl (and awk and sh)) programmer for years too. I've always thought it would be useful to add "functionality" to C in the following way: every statement should be an expression and return a value. Why? Well, really the question is why not? It's incredibly useful to be able to use all of the richness of all the semantics all the time.
Furthermore, if every statement returns a value, you can start passing pointers to snippets of code (like in Perl). The C language semantically allows it anyway, but by forcing everything to be bundled into the function declaration syntax it becomes unnatural and non-orthogonal, not to mention awkward so you avoid it in many cases that would be useful.
You don't have to love LISP to learn and apply a few of the very smart things it (and especially Scheme) does.
Since all the stupid shopping and search for shopping buttons are not there, that leaves room for some real buttons. There are a lot of options buried in the preferences dialog that I think of as dynamic, not static. Load images automatically, accept cookies, accept javascript, font, etc. I like to run pretty small and stripped down, but some pages are hard to read that way, so it would be nice to turn these features on and off quickly, and get a visual reminder of what mode it was in, because I forget while browsing.
My experience is different. The partition table on my completely standard Western Digital 27 gig drive with RedHat linux on it, and spare partitions I originally created with the intention of putting a future OS upgrade on Mandrake 7.1 install managed to trash. You can duplicate the test: create with fdisk a disk that has two / parts, 1 swap, 1 extended, 2 /vars, 2 /usr's, etc, alternating. If you use mandrake's GUI (which something led me to believe is disk druid? Am I wrong about that?) you cannot rewrite the same partition table "boundaries" (to get Reiser) and suddenly, partitions that were not overlapping are overlapping. Furthermore, it screws you in the very first step where it says "need to save the partition table."
I completely agree that not everyone needs to edit partition tables, but there is no excuse for trashing existing disks without warning or recourse, and they provide no fdisk alternative. That's why I called it a piece of shit.
I go back to my point about why would you want to switch distros just to get a point release of a couple dozen apps? You could just as easilly download the latest release of those apps and install them -- or wait a month or so for the next release of the distro that you're using.
because I'm not interested in keeping track of what is in dozens of point releases, but I like to benefit from the bug fixes, and I like to upgrade as soon as possible when there are spec and format changes in config files and stuff like that. I find if I fall too far behind, an upgrade can become quite onerous because there are too many /etc files that have totally changed. Also, by getting good at it and streamlining the system build process, I live in less fear of trashing my system. I also get to experiment with many more distros and installs so I can make informed decisions about what choices to make next time.
for example, if I want to use Reiser, I wouldn't just have to ugrade the RedHat kernel on my system, I'd have to ugrade it on several systems, and remember that I'd need to upgrade it on any future installs, and merge in the other kernel features (e.g. ATA66) that I need. Using a complete distro is much cleaner, and the alternative is not "wait a month" but 3 or 4 months which can be a long time.
So what's the rest of this been about? Your misinterpretation. One example from this most recent post:
Q: why draw this arbitrary distinction called "distribution"?
A: ... The distinction is that computing resources are owned.
You keep answering the "how can one draw" question, not the "why" question. But since we are now in agreement, and this thread fades into obscurity, time to move on. :) Peace.
I can't imagion why anyone would switch back and forth between RedHat and Mandrake
Since I pointed out why I switch back and forth, it's hard to grok how you can't imagine it. I'd much rather have the latest version of a tool over the i586 compilation of the old model.