"...even if you *could* do everything in Notepad and a command line there's no reason to do so when the guy in the next cubicle doing the same stuff in in an IDE produces better stuff quicker than you do."
Using an IDE does not necessarily mean that you will produce the same stuff more quickly.
Your hardware analogy is more appropriate to using code libraries rather than implementing everything from scratch, which no-one is arguing against here, as far as I can tell.
"In the real world, you will probably end up using an IDE, because its a tool which increases your productivity by an order of magnitude and makes managing the complexity of non-trivial programming assignments *possible*."
Here, you are simply wrong. There is no way that just using an IDE makes someone that much more productive.
I've got a command-line, Unix background. I've also used Visual Studio, and currently use Eclipse (the latter being a great development environment, and Visual Studio is pretty good, too). It might make me 10%-20% more productive, nothing more (I'm talking about using it for Java here).
As for IDEs making the complexity of non-trivial programming assignments *possible*......I can't think of many things more complex that the Linux kernel. Now how do you think that was, and is, written ?
From the assertions you've been making, I'm curious as to your actual level of experience.
Not a dig at Python (I think it's a great language), but rather just making the point that however long you use something, there's always room to improve, and learn new techniques and styles of working. Looking at other peoples' code can often be instructive (assuming they know what they're doing).
This may sound a little partisan and controversial, but the problem is basically Tony Blair.
Since coming to power, he's increasingly become a control freak.
He's emasculated the house of lords, under cover of "reform", while seemingly trying to block the option (favoured by many MPs) of a largely-elected house of lords (because a largely-elected second chamber would be a legitimate "check and balance" on his authority, as compared to a set of nominated place-men). (See for example here).
He's also marginalised parliament - his government carries out the minimum of "debate" there now, merely using it as the place to anounce previously-decided policies. There was a big fuss recently, little reported, about the government trying to pass a law allowing them to change legislation at will, without any debate at all, under cover of "reducing red tape" (see here.
Even within the cabinet, he seems to fire anyone who seems remotely a threat or who disagrees with him in any way (with the exception of Gordon Brown, the chancellor (and probably the next Labour leader), who is powerful enough to be left alone).
Since he's been prime minister, there have been dozens of crime bills, making hundreds of new criminal offences (e.g. see here.
He's increasingly making noises about the criminal justice system being "out of touch" (i.e. not automatically just doing what he says), in a seeming bid to further curtail their powers. For what he's already achieved, see, for example, here.
He himself is becoming increasingly irrational and out-of-touch to the extent where his party are starting to think of him as a liability, let alone what the country now thinks of him. The more out of touch he gets, the determined to get his own way he becomes. He's done a lot or damage to this country's constitutional processes, a lot of damage to its reputation (via Iraq), and the sooner he goes, the better.
"...even if you tell them they don't need to care about anything outside their home directory, they still know it's there..."
Because we all know any OS which stored documents somewhere like C:\Documents and Settings\MyUserID\My Documents could never become popular on the desktop.
"The moment a user ever has to care about QT vs GTK+ and figure out why they are behaving a bit differently..."
What about all the programs on Windows that behave differently, or use different toolkits ? Yes, you were talking about MacOS X, but there's no denying that Windows is "popular" on the desktop. And presumably when people first start using a Mac, they manage to overcome the way it behaves a bit differently to the PC they used before.
Linux may not be there yet - but personally I think most of what is missing is an easy-to-use, comprehensive, integrated Control Panel equivalent.
"If they continue to do what they're allegedly doing, they might lose the case. If they relent a little, AMD its marketshare."
So not breaking the law is the same as getting screwed ? Nice logic. Not that Intel is necessarily breaking the law of course - the court case hasn't happened, so that hasn't been proved. But if they haven't been breaking the law, they shouldn't worry about losing the case.
"It is harder and harder to find anti-global warming facts not because there aren't any, but because people who know the facts are afraid to bring them to light."
Are your seriously claiming that genuine anti-global warming facts wouldn't immediately be jumped upon and publicised as widely as possible by those in the oil industry, motor industry, airline industry, current US administration, and other parties ?
Or that those parties (in particular) are afraid to "bring to light" facts that would support their points of view and economic interests ?
First you say "Laws won't change anything", then you say "If we want to change the system, we need to get these laws in front of the Supreme Court".
Why would you want to do this ? It can only be because "these laws" have changed something.
You say "we need to get these laws in front of the Supreme Court, over and over and over", then you say "What we need is a President who does nothing but veto, over and over and over". Both of these suggestions seem to completely ignore any concept of listening to other points of view, just blindly going on an on, trying to force your own point of view on others until you get your own way.
Which seems to be just the problem with the current US situation over intellectual property in the first place - people with a different point of view to your own, and the ability to enforce it, doing just that in their own self-interests.
Not that I don't agree with you that the current US IP situation is badly in need of reform, and also, sadly, looking unlikely to get it in any meaningful way.
I think there is a distinction between two different uses of DRM.
Firstly, it can be used to "protect" copyrighted content - films, music, etc. I would agree that this could be a legitimate use for DRM, because it is "protecting" something which the people who created the content in question want protecting (arguments about who really "owns" the content notwithstanding).
But secondly, it can also be used to ensure that program code cannot be run on particular hardware unless it has been properly signed (or whatever). This prevents modification of what could otherwise be open source or free software. The distinction in this case is that the people using open source or free software in this way are not the people who created it. They are merely using it, and presumably profiting from it, in a way that the original authors may not have agreed with. It is not their content they are protecting - they are taking something which was written to be open to inspection and modification, and using it in such a way that modification is no longer possible.
I believe it is this second use of DRM that GPL version 3 is attempting to address. Of course it would be perfectly possible for people to use differently-licences software on DRM-locked devices, software which the original authors were happy to be used in this way, or even to write it themselves (I believe a large company near Redmond has had some success with this approach of writing their own software).
Laws against murder? Great idea. Btw, let's next outlaw Hurricanes from destroying properties.
Yes, one is a man made problem, the other one a natural catastrophe (albeit some might argue whether man made it worse... not the topic now), the problem is the same. You can make the law, but you cannot execute it.
You want the instigator? Good luck. If he has half a brain, the murder weapon is not his, and he used a hitman. If he has no brain, all you accomplish is to execute Darwin's law: Survival of the best.
You want the knife-owner, the person who's kitchen knife was stolen to commit the murder? Well, while this does have my full support, you can already hear the outcry from survivalist illiterates who fell for the marketing hype around the kitchen and "how easy it is to cut up food and cook for yourself", only to realize now that if they don't have a clue what their kitchen utensils could really do in the hands of someone else, they're now with one foot in jail when they even go out to shop.
However, I suspect that some of the things the EU is doing are due to pressure from the US government (things like biometric passports, for instance).
But this doesn't apply to everything, and the current UK government, in particular, seems to have a paranoia about recording everything its citizens do - as well as creating over 600 new criminal offences (almost 100 new ones per year). Mr. Blair seems a little overly keen on telling other people what to do - even by the normal standards of politicians.
"3) Vandals will always exist -- whether they are 12 year-olds getting giggles or Congressional staffers applying spin. The difference is that they will get bored and leave while people who care about Wikipedia will stay."
Unfortunately, I think the opposite is more likely to be true. "12 year-olds getting giggles" ? Yes, you may have a point. But I think the opposite is true when comparing people who "care about Wikipedia" putting more effort into correcting what may be relatively obscure political subjects / individuals with people who are paid money to spend their working time with the sole purpose of portraying the individuals concerned in as positive a light as possible.
"You do know Opera had tabbed browsing before Firefox don't you?"
I think you missed the words "Opera and" in the post you're replying to. But maybe I'm being too critical - after all, he used a whole TWO sentences, taking up a massive TWO lines of text.
Slashdot Mirror
"...even if you *could* do everything in Notepad and a command line there's no reason to do so when the guy in the next cubicle doing the same stuff in in an IDE produces better stuff quicker than you do."
Using an IDE does not necessarily mean that you will produce the same stuff more quickly.
Your hardware analogy is more appropriate to using code libraries rather than implementing everything from scratch, which no-one is arguing against here, as far as I can tell.
"In the real world, you will probably end up using an IDE, because its a tool which increases your productivity by an order of magnitude and makes managing the complexity of non-trivial programming assignments *possible*."
Here, you are simply wrong. There is no way that just using an IDE makes someone that much more productive.
I've got a command-line, Unix background. I've also used Visual Studio, and currently use Eclipse (the latter being a great development environment, and Visual Studio is pretty good, too). It might make me 10%-20% more productive, nothing more (I'm talking about using it for Java here).
As for IDEs making the complexity of non-trivial programming assignments *possible*......I can't think of many things more complex that the Linux kernel. Now how do you think that was, and is, written ?
From the assertions you've been making, I'm curious as to your actual level of experience.
Good post.
Just one comment.
(I haven't atually finished learning python yet).
Hopefully, you never will.
Not a dig at Python (I think it's a great language), but rather just making the point that however long you use something, there's always room to improve, and learn new techniques and styles of working. Looking at other peoples' code can often be instructive (assuming they know what they're doing).
This may sound a little partisan and controversial, but the problem is basically Tony Blair.
Since coming to power, he's increasingly become a control freak.
He's emasculated the house of lords, under cover of "reform", while seemingly trying to block the option (favoured by many MPs) of a largely-elected house of lords (because a largely-elected second chamber would be a legitimate "check and balance" on his authority, as compared to a set of nominated place-men). (See for example here).
He's also marginalised parliament - his government carries out the minimum of "debate" there now, merely using it as the place to anounce previously-decided policies. There was a big fuss recently, little reported, about the government trying to pass a law allowing them to change legislation at will, without any debate at all, under cover of "reducing red tape" (see here.
Even within the cabinet, he seems to fire anyone who seems remotely a threat or who disagrees with him in any way (with the exception of Gordon Brown, the chancellor (and probably the next Labour leader), who is powerful enough to be left alone).
Since he's been prime minister, there have been dozens of crime bills, making hundreds of new criminal offences (e.g. see here.
He's increasingly making noises about the criminal justice system being "out of touch" (i.e. not automatically just doing what he says), in a seeming bid to further curtail their powers. For what he's already achieved, see, for example, here.
He himself is becoming increasingly irrational and out-of-touch to the extent where his party are starting to think of him as a liability, let alone what the country now thinks of him. The more out of touch he gets, the determined to get his own way he becomes. He's done a lot or damage to this country's constitutional processes, a lot of damage to its reputation (via Iraq), and the sooner he goes, the better.
"...even if you tell them they don't need to care about anything outside their home directory, they still know it's there..."
Because we all know any OS which stored documents somewhere like C:\Documents and Settings\MyUserID\My Documents could never become popular on the desktop.
"The moment a user ever has to care about QT vs GTK+ and figure out why they are behaving a bit differently..."
What about all the programs on Windows that behave differently, or use different toolkits ? Yes, you were talking about MacOS X, but there's no denying that Windows is "popular" on the desktop. And presumably when people first start using a Mac, they manage to overcome the way it behaves a bit differently to the PC they used before.
Linux may not be there yet - but personally I think most of what is missing is an easy-to-use, comprehensive, integrated Control Panel equivalent.
Fuck you NASA, for destroying my dreams of manned lunar settlements and a trip to Mars."
Grow up.
But I suspect your family member was not a huge multi-national company able to afford really good lawyers to put their case.
"If they continue to do what they're allegedly doing, they might lose the case. If they relent a little, AMD its marketshare."
So not breaking the law is the same as getting screwed ? Nice logic. Not that Intel is necessarily breaking the law of course - the court case hasn't happened, so that hasn't been proved. But if they haven't been breaking the law, they shouldn't worry about losing the case.
"...while China and India (which are already heavy polluters, and which release far more CO2 per dollar GDP than the US or EU)..."
Why do you measure pollution in terms of "per dollar GDP" ? Isn't pollution "per person" a fairer measure ?
"Personally, if global warming is happening, we need to prepare for it, and not waste our energy trying to change it."
Perhaps if we stopped wasting our energy we could help change it ?
"It is harder and harder to find anti-global warming facts not because there aren't any, but because people who know the facts are afraid to bring them to light."
Are your seriously claiming that genuine anti-global warming facts wouldn't immediately be jumped upon and publicised as widely as possible by those in the oil industry, motor industry, airline industry, current US administration, and other parties ?
Or that those parties (in particular) are afraid to "bring to light" facts that would support their points of view and economic interests ?
"I was reminded how painful Linux is and seriously wondered how I managed these four years as a Linux-only user. Windows is paradise in comparison."
And this got +5 Insightful on Slashdot ? With no other moderations (at the time of writing this comment) apart from Insightful ?
Remember this, next time someone claims Slashdot is only full of Linux fanboys.
First you say "Laws won't change anything", then you say "If we want to change the system, we need to get these laws in front of the Supreme Court".
Why would you want to do this ? It can only be because "these laws" have changed something.
You say "we need to get these laws in front of the Supreme Court, over and over and over", then you say "What we need is a President who does nothing but veto, over and over and over". Both of these suggestions seem to completely ignore any concept of listening to other points of view, just blindly going on an on, trying to force your own point of view on others until you get your own way.
Which seems to be just the problem with the current US situation over intellectual property in the first place - people with a different point of view to your own, and the ability to enforce it, doing just that in their own self-interests.
Not that I don't agree with you that the current US IP situation is badly in need of reform, and also, sadly, looking unlikely to get it in any meaningful way.
"While neither region is able to take on the US militarily or culturally"
Militarily I can understand.
But culturally? Surely, you jest?
I'm not one of those who says the US has no culture, but saying that neither Europe nor Asia can take on the US culturally is quite a statement.
Yeah, I heard.
She wants them to get hitched, but he's not ready yet.....
This confirms Yahoo! wants to be a serious me-too, following-not-leading, damn-why-didn't-we-think-of-that-first company.
I think there is a distinction between two different uses of DRM.
Firstly, it can be used to "protect" copyrighted content - films, music, etc. I would agree that this could be a legitimate use for DRM, because it is "protecting" something which the people who created the content in question want protecting (arguments about who really "owns" the content notwithstanding).
But secondly, it can also be used to ensure that program code cannot be run on particular hardware unless it has been properly signed (or whatever). This prevents modification of what could otherwise be open source or free software. The distinction in this case is that the people using open source or free software in this way are not the people who created it. They are merely using it, and presumably profiting from it, in a way that the original authors may not have agreed with. It is not their content they are protecting - they are taking something which was written to be open to inspection and modification, and using it in such a way that modification is no longer possible.
I believe it is this second use of DRM that GPL version 3 is attempting to address. Of course it would be perfectly possible for people to use differently-licences software on DRM-locked devices, software which the original authors were happy to be used in this way, or even to write it themselves (I believe a large company near Redmond has had some success with this approach of writing their own software).
Laws against murder? Great idea. Btw, let's next outlaw Hurricanes from destroying properties.
Yes, one is a man made problem, the other one a natural catastrophe (albeit some might argue whether man made it worse... not the topic now), the problem is the same. You can make the law, but you cannot execute it.
You want the instigator? Good luck. If he has half a brain, the murder weapon is not his, and he used a hitman. If he has no brain, all you accomplish is to execute Darwin's law: Survival of the best.
You want the knife-owner, the person who's kitchen knife was stolen to commit the murder? Well, while this does have my full support, you can already hear the outcry from survivalist illiterates who fell for the marketing hype around the kitchen and "how easy it is to cut up food and cook for yourself", only to realize now that if they don't have a clue what their kitchen utensils could really do in the hands of someone else, they're now with one foot in jail when they even go out to shop.
Your argument is ridiculous.
You make a good point.
However, I suspect that some of the things the EU is doing are due to pressure from the US government (things like biometric passports, for instance).
But this doesn't apply to everything, and the current UK government, in particular, seems to have a paranoia about recording everything its citizens do - as well as creating over 600 new criminal offences (almost 100 new ones per year). Mr. Blair seems a little overly keen on telling other people what to do - even by the normal standards of politicians.
This, however, is wonderful.
Someone hit on the idea of photographing people as they were shown goatse for the first time.
The poor, poor souls........
Ah, but didn't you know that Morrissey is a terrrorist ?
...that they forgot to bomb
I mean, read some of his lyrics:
This is the coastal town
That they forgot to close down
Armageddon - come armageddon!
Come, armageddon! come!
In the seaside town
Come, come, come - nuclear bomb
This man is calling for nuclear terrorism against the west. He must be stopped, and stopped quickly.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, he's got 10,000 maniacs following his every word.
I looked up your name on Wikipedia ;)
"Let me tell you: No, it is not. It is not ethical for people to censor and edit their lives."
What if I was to describe you as some-one who eats babies ?
You, or someone who knows you (i.e. has a "vested interest"), would deserve the right to correct or at least address that statement.
Assuming, of course, that you don't actually eat babies...
"3) Vandals will always exist -- whether they are 12 year-olds getting giggles or Congressional staffers applying spin. The difference is that they will get bored and leave while people who care about Wikipedia will stay."
Unfortunately, I think the opposite is more likely to be true. "12 year-olds getting giggles" ? Yes, you may have a point. But I think the opposite is true when comparing people who "care about Wikipedia" putting more effort into correcting what may be relatively obscure political subjects / individuals with people who are paid money to spend their working time with the sole purpose of portraying the individuals concerned in as positive a light as possible.
"Maturity = sadness."
I suspect you do not know what you are talking about.
"You do know Opera had tabbed browsing before Firefox don't you?"
I think you missed the words "Opera and" in the post you're replying to. But maybe I'm being too critical - after all, he used a whole TWO sentences, taking up a massive TWO lines of text.