Basically, the release criterion for Emacs 22, as set by RMS, is to fix all the bugs that the Emacs developers know of. No other software project nowadays (gcc, firefox, etc.) has this kind of criterion. It's been pointed out to RMS, several times, that Emacs 22, when it is shipped, *will* contain bugs; and that the only bugs that ought to be worked on close to a release are critical regressions. He has rejected this idea, which is why the Emacs 22 codebase is pretty much stuck in a pre-release state, possibly forever.
The trouble is that RMS's ideas about software engineering are rooted in the old days when the number of Internet-connected Emacs users was small and user feedback was rare. Nowadays, basing a release on fixing *all the bugs you know about* is a recipe for stagnation.
The biggest advantage of Type Ahead Find is that it makes keyboard navigation practical. Type Ahead Find selects links preferentially, so you no longer have to tab through a zillion links to get to the one you want; just type the text of the link and you'll get there immediately.
Because we want to go. We don't need any other reason. We want to explore and colonize space, even if its inefficient.
I'd watch those royal we's if I were you. I suspect (though, like you, I offer no hard evidence) that most people don't really care about colonizing space. Most people would probably say that it would be nice if it happens, but I think they would not be bothered if it never happens. Some people care a great deal about colonizing space. Good for you; but I wouldn't say they were anything more than a very small fraction of the population.
Funny how these guys posted their paper to the cond-mat (condensed matter physics) section of the e-print archive, which, after all, has categories for computer science. The paper has nothing to do with condensed matter physics, aside from the fact that programmers are usually composed of solids and liquids.
This is more a historical work than anything else, as it documents the language of what Levy calls the "first generation hackers", the ones who worked in the AI labs at Stanford and MIT. Those communities died during in the 80s (which was, of course, the event that provided the impetus for the GNU project.) The Hacker's Dictionary has a genuine and honest flavor that the modern Jargon File lacks, which is probably inevitable, since the Jargon File covers the modern internet-based "hacker" community - a vaguely-defined entity that has even become confused over the meaning of the word "hacker". It's therefore not surprising that ESR feels he can get away with sprinkling the Jargon File with Raymondisms.
Re:ESR just couldn't resist...
on
OSI vs SCO
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· Score: 1
Because they are hackers. Why did he use that term? Well, he did write the book on it, so to speak.
Why wouldn't Microsoft be eyeing SCO for a buy-out?
That is exactly why SCO has been constantly cranking up the obnoxiousness level. They failed in their attempt to get bought by IBM, so now they're trying to get bought by Microsoft. Unfortunately, they need Microsoft much more than Microsoft needs them.
And the 4% mortality rate is probably inflated from the true mortality rate given modern medicine: the majority of the deaths occurred in the rural Chinese province from which the bug first emerged.
Hong Kong 970 (27) 2.8% Singapore 118 (9) 7.6% Canada 91 (10) 11.0%
These three countries have medical facilities on par with those in the United States. The numbers are too small to arrive at a precise mortality rate, but your hypothesis is clearly wrong.
I think the reason is that, unlike 10 years ago, many companies are now in the business of writing free software. There's no reason for the FSF to take donations to do something that businesses such as Red Hat are already doing. The FSF is going where it's needed - providing legal support to ensure that existing free software remains free, and providing hosting services for volunteer-run projects.
This is science we're talking about. We can answer the "How?" but have no clue on the "Why?" part.
People sometimes make this claim, but it's really a silly wanky thing to say. You're using a definition of "clue" that's so restrictive it's practically meaningless.
Science is perfectly capable of answering "why" questions. Granted, the answers that it provides are necessarily incomplete, pointing to deeper questions, but an incomplete answer is still an answer. There are NO complete answers to ANY question, inside or outside the realm of science.
Umm... the Spider-man movie was based on a comic book with the same themes and storylines, which first appeared in 1962. When did Star Wars come out again? 1977?
The bulk of early Marvel comics, well into the 1980's if not further, were highly sanatized due to the Code. Yes, they had some revolutionary stories, but they were 100% in compliance with the Code (or they wouldn't have gotten any decent distribution).
You're mostly correct (and Katz mostly wrong), but there was one exception that I know of. Spider-man #96-98 were rejected by the Comics Code Authority because of their allusion to drugs. Ironically, Stan Lee had written the story on the suggestion of the U.S. Department of Health in order to warn kids about the dangers of drugs. There are no other deviations from the code (no extreme violence, swearing etc.), but the story is one of the more memorable of the classic tales because of its topicality.
I don't think that people reject science because of a perceived lack of explanatory power. I certainly agree that there are many questions which science doesn't have the answers for (metaphysical questions, which cannot be attacked by the scientific method, as well as more prosiac mysteries such as what determines the mass of the electron.) But that isn't the problem. You might claim that it's the problem if, for example, the phenomenon of ESP has been convincingly demonstrated and yet cannot be explained by science. In reality, there is absolutely no good evidence in favor of ESP, UFOs, or any of the other staples of pseudoscience. Uri Geller has been videotaped surreptitiously bending spoons when he thought nobody was watching, yet some people still believe he possesses supernatural powers.
The problem is rather that people aren't taught to think critically. With rudimentary critical thinking skills, the vast majority of the silly claims that one comes across (especially on late-night TV) can be easily debunked. Without the ability to perform such critical evaluations, our natural tendency to favor florid and exciting stories takes over. That's how we get these little grey men from Sirius.
Critical thinking skills are generally useful, but especially so in science - the majority of proposed scientific theories are wrong, and a lot of the work of science goes into proving theorists wrong. However, even scientists aren't explicitly trained to think critically. We're expected to pick it up via osmosis, and some of us apparently fail to learn the lesson. For example, some of the more rabid endorsements of "psychics" have come from practicing scientists. Typically, these psychics refuse to perform in front of professional magicians; whenever they do, guess what? Their mysterious powers disappear. (Magicians are familiar with the methods of fooling people, and aren't easily fooled.)
That depends on the size of the asteroid. If it's big enough to end life on Earth, there obviously isn't much we can do to stop it. But if it's another Tunguska event, there is something we can do, i.e. don't go within a few hundred kilometres from the impact site.
I'm suggesting a viable way of dealing with it[the mis-release], to fix the problem by putting what was supposed to be final in place of the tarball which masquerades itself as a release, or rename it to DONT USE like 2.4.11.
The trouble with changing the 2.4.18 tarball on kernel.org is that having two different releases called 2.4.18 out there will lead to more confusion than it's worth. This is particularly important because kernel prepatches are distributed as diffs against the releases.
Linus, show this kid how to rectify an error and do it quickly.
Hmm... you know what? I think I see the reason you were "kiboshed". (Hint: it's not because of Marcelo's immaturity.)
While I'm not thrilled about the sudden fad of projects abandoning the GPL, there is one potential positive thing that can come of it...
Actually, Wine is currently licensed under an X11-style license. What's under consideration is a switch to a copyleft license such as the GPL or LGPL. See this thread for details.
Linux users tend to have this opinion, perhaps because UNIX is more based around the idea of small reusable components than other platforms.
The core of UNIX is based on small reusable components, but I don't think that's generally true for the userland tools, anymore. Just look at Perl, Emacs (no jokes please:-), X, KDE and GNOME, and (of course) Mozilla.
Unix was originally implemented on machines with very little memory, so it made sense to obey the "Unix philosophy" strictly. Nowadays, there's room for a little more flexibility.
For example, I occasionally see posts on Slashdot from "Unix purists", complaining that the GNU tools are way too bloated compared to their Unix counterparts. I find this amusing. In my experience, fractional improvements in performance and memory use are far outweighed by having more useful features. Like any other philosophy, the Unix philosophy taken to the extreme is bad for one's health.
Slashdot Mirror
These companies should know better than to bribe foreign government officials -- only the CIA is allowed to do that ;-)
Basically, the release criterion for Emacs 22, as set by RMS, is to fix all the bugs that the Emacs developers know of. No other software project nowadays (gcc, firefox, etc.) has this kind of criterion. It's been pointed out to RMS, several times, that Emacs 22, when it is shipped, *will* contain bugs; and that the only bugs that ought to be worked on close to a release are critical regressions. He has rejected this idea, which is why the Emacs 22 codebase is pretty much stuck in a pre-release state, possibly forever.
The trouble is that RMS's ideas about software engineering are rooted in the old days when the number of Internet-connected Emacs users was small and user feedback was rare. Nowadays, basing a release on fixing *all the bugs you know about* is a recipe for stagnation.
The biggest advantage of Type Ahead Find is that it makes keyboard navigation practical. Type Ahead Find selects links preferentially, so you no longer have to tab through a zillion links to get to the one you want; just type the text of the link and you'll get there immediately.
I'd watch those royal we's if I were you. I suspect (though, like you, I offer no hard evidence) that most people don't really care about colonizing space. Most people would probably say that it would be nice if it happens, but I think they would not be bothered if it never happens. Some people care a great deal about colonizing space. Good for you; but I wouldn't say they were anything more than a very small fraction of the population.
Funny how these guys posted their paper to the cond-mat (condensed matter physics) section of the e-print archive, which, after all, has categories for computer science. The paper has nothing to do with condensed matter physics, aside from the fact that programmers are usually composed of solids and liquids.
The pre-Raymond version of the Jargon File - the Hacker's Dictionary - is available here:
The Original Hacker's Dictionary.
This is more a historical work than anything else, as it documents the language of what Levy calls the "first generation hackers", the ones who worked in the AI labs at Stanford and MIT. Those communities died during in the 80s (which was, of course, the event that provided the impetus for the GNU project.) The Hacker's Dictionary has a genuine and honest flavor that the modern Jargon File lacks, which is probably inevitable, since the Jargon File covers the modern internet-based "hacker" community - a vaguely-defined entity that has even become confused over the meaning of the word "hacker". It's therefore not surprising that ESR feels he can get away with sprinkling the Jargon File with Raymondisms.
Actually, he didn't write the book; he stole it.
That is exactly why SCO has been constantly cranking up the obnoxiousness level. They failed in their attempt to get bought by IBM, so now they're trying to get bought by Microsoft. Unfortunately, they need Microsoft much more than Microsoft needs them.
That violates angular momentum conservation.
Nope. Figures for infection (death) from the latest BBC story on SARS:
Hong Kong 970 (27) 2.8%
Singapore 118 (9) 7.6%
Canada 91 (10) 11.0%
These three countries have medical facilities on par with those in the United States. The numbers are too small to arrive at a precise mortality rate, but your hypothesis is clearly wrong.
I think the reason is that, unlike 10 years ago, many companies are now in the business of writing free software. There's no reason for the FSF to take donations to do something that businesses such as Red Hat are already doing. The FSF is going where it's needed - providing legal support to ensure that existing free software remains free, and providing hosting services for volunteer-run projects.
This is science we're talking about. We can answer the "How?" but have no clue on the "Why?" part.
People sometimes make this claim, but it's really a silly wanky thing to say. You're using a definition of "clue" that's so restrictive it's practically meaningless.
Science is perfectly capable of answering "why" questions. Granted, the answers that it provides are necessarily incomplete, pointing to deeper questions, but an incomplete answer is still an answer. There are NO complete answers to ANY question, inside or outside the realm of science.
Your second sentence answers the first.
Not to mentioned gcc 3.1 being released a couple of days ago, and being buried in the Developers section...
Umm... the Spider-man movie was based on a comic book with the same themes and storylines, which first appeared in 1962. When did Star Wars come out again? 1977?
You're mostly correct (and Katz mostly wrong), but there was one exception that I know of. Spider-man #96-98 were rejected by the Comics Code Authority because of their allusion to drugs. Ironically, Stan Lee had written the story on the suggestion of the U.S. Department of Health in order to warn kids about the dangers of drugs. There are no other deviations from the code (no extreme violence, swearing etc.), but the story is one of the more memorable of the classic tales because of its topicality.
You can't write a proper lab report with Microsoft Word either. Try TeX.
I don't think that people reject science because of a perceived lack of explanatory power. I certainly agree that there are many questions which science doesn't have the answers for (metaphysical questions, which cannot be attacked by the scientific method, as well as more prosiac mysteries such as what determines the mass of the electron.) But that isn't the problem. You might claim that it's the problem if, for example, the phenomenon of ESP has been convincingly demonstrated and yet cannot be explained by science. In reality, there is absolutely no good evidence in favor of ESP, UFOs, or any of the other staples of pseudoscience. Uri Geller has been videotaped surreptitiously bending spoons when he thought nobody was watching, yet some people still believe he possesses supernatural powers.
The problem is rather that people aren't taught to think critically. With rudimentary critical thinking skills, the vast majority of the silly claims that one comes across (especially on late-night TV) can be easily debunked. Without the ability to perform such critical evaluations, our natural tendency to favor florid and exciting stories takes over. That's how we get these little grey men from Sirius.
Critical thinking skills are generally useful, but especially so in science - the majority of proposed scientific theories are wrong, and a lot of the work of science goes into proving theorists wrong. However, even scientists aren't explicitly trained to think critically. We're expected to pick it up via osmosis, and some of us apparently fail to learn the lesson. For example, some of the more rabid endorsements of "psychics" have come from practicing scientists. Typically, these psychics refuse to perform in front of professional magicians; whenever they do, guess what? Their mysterious powers disappear. (Magicians are familiar with the methods of fooling people, and aren't easily fooled.)
That depends on the size of the asteroid. If it's big enough to end life on Earth, there obviously isn't much we can do to stop it. But if it's another Tunguska event, there is something we can do, i.e. don't go within a few hundred kilometres from the impact site.
The trouble with changing the 2.4.18 tarball on kernel.org is that having two different releases called 2.4.18 out there will lead to more confusion than it's worth. This is particularly important because kernel prepatches are distributed as diffs against the releases.
Linus, show this kid how to rectify an error and do it quickly.
Hmm... you know what? I think I see the reason you were "kiboshed". (Hint: it's not because of Marcelo's immaturity.)
GNOME has contributors from Antarctica? Cooooool.
Actually, Wine is currently licensed under an X11-style license. What's under consideration is a switch to a copyleft license such as the GPL or LGPL. See this thread for details.
The core of UNIX is based on small reusable components, but I don't think that's generally true for the userland tools, anymore. Just look at Perl, Emacs (no jokes please :-), X, KDE and GNOME, and (of course) Mozilla.
Unix was originally implemented on machines with very little memory, so it made sense to obey the "Unix philosophy" strictly. Nowadays, there's room for a little more flexibility.
For example, I occasionally see posts on Slashdot from "Unix purists", complaining that the GNU tools are way too bloated compared to their Unix counterparts. I find this amusing. In my experience, fractional improvements in performance and memory use are far outweighed by having more useful features. Like any other philosophy, the Unix philosophy taken to the extreme is bad for one's health.
Well, looks like they forgot about space engrish.
Ah, it was the 50s actually. My bad.