One of the reasons you won't get modern CPUs to work on hand-made boards is the length of connections. With the z80, you can trim wires by hand and it'll still work quite happily; with faster CPUs, though, you need to be far more precise with the length of the wires / tracks connecting the CPU to memory and the like. At speeds of over a few MHz, even a mm difference is more than enough to screw things up...
Most OSX users are retards who can't use computers (hey, they can only handle one mouse button). It's easy for competent people, but remember we are talking about artists and homosexuals here...
The source-based thing isn't even why most people use gentoo. According to a recent poll on the gentoo-user mailing list, most people like it because of Portage (the package management system), with Customisation / Control coming in second (performance was third). Portage rocks. Even with the compiling, it takes less time to install some stuff (eg nmap) than it would take to locate the relevant.rpm. Of course, kde's a different matter, but with distcc compiling doesn't take too long.
Having said that, it looks like the guys doing the testing got their CFLAGS wrong. Gentoo's performance should never be worse than Mandrake -- I reckon they forgot omit-frame-pointer. Also, the kernel compile is unfair, because gentoo-sources includes a whole load of patches that Mandrake and Debian don't.
Finally, what's with measuring compile times? How is that a fair way of measuring performance? Hey, look, my distcc + ccache + lots of CPUs system with gcc3.2 can compile stuff faster than your single CPU gcc2 system... It's like comparing chalk and oranges.
Yet more interference. As it is any time anyone uses a wireless phone (2.4GHz), bluetooth device (2.4GHz), radio headphones (2.4GHz) or microwave (everything) my 802.11b (2.4GHz) connection dies...
Posted by timothy on Friday August 01, @01:15PM from the worth-the-wait dept. A long, long time ago, you asked lobbyist Reed Morgan questions about lobbying, undue industry influence on United States laws as they apply to the tech sector, the future of internet taxation, and more. Reed, in the meantime, has switched jobs: he's now working for the Association for Competitive Technology (as he candidly and lightheartedly acknowledges, "the enemy" to many Slashdot readers, since they lobby for large software corporations, notably Microsoft), and is finally free to answer your questions. Read on for about as inside a viewpoint as you can find on how you can affect your elected representatives, from someone whose job is to do just that.
Advice by Maskirovka
If you could give one piece of advice to this group, what would it be?
Morgan Reed: An opening note about/. And Washington:
Many of the posts here throw out statements like "Washington is bought"; and it reminds me how little slashdot readers understand about the U.S. government.
People tend to avoid and denigrate subjects they don't fully understand or feel comfortable with. I am certain every reader can think back to an example of having a non-tech person make a disparaging, off-the-cuff comment about something of which they clearly don't grasp. Quotes like "empty suits" and "crooks" signify a response steeped in discomfort due to lack of knowledge.
Most Slashdot readers prize themselves on being knowledgeable, especially about tech issues. Many readers depend on knowledge for their income. Yet on issues involving the government, these same "knowledge workers" treat politics like the technophobes treat computers.
Fortunately or unfortunately, (and I believe fortunately) the US allows all people (over the age of 18), even those who aren't paying attention, to vote.
I would suggest that before any reader makes a blanket statement about either party or any bill or any political issue, that you take the time to think "how much do I really know about this bill?" Am I reading the full text, or am I being spun?
Be aware that much of what you read on the editorial page of the newspaper, or what you hear on talk radio, is spin. Read the byline of the author carefully (also understand in many cases he/she is not really the author, just a respected person whose name is being used to promote a position).
Finally, imagine that the people making the decisions are overworked folks getting massive quantities of information and trying to adequately represent the voters who put them in office.
I can tell you from here on the inside, I have rarely met any Member of Congress, of EITHER party, that was really a bad person. Members are all just trying to represent the voters and win re-election.
Your JOB as a US citizen is to select a representative who will adequately represent your views. It is essential that you not turn off from politics. Instead, take the time to embrace it for a few weeks, learn what you can, then check your gut. Don't be the kind of person you hate to meet who attacks your work, or calls it trivial, because they don't understand it, and are slightly fearful that they will look ignorant. Is it really too much to ask?
Corruption of democracy by imipak
As is widely known (and apparently accepted), corporations buy off legislators in the USA through 'campaign contributions' or 'soft money' or various other apparently legal means.
There are also many commercial firms of "lobbyists", who are openly making money from influencing law making. (I must admit that I am unsure of the detail of how this works, whether cash is involved, or of it's legality.)
It seems to me that this is simply organized corruption. We see the results every day in the DMCA and similar broken laws. In your opinion, is this really democracy? At what point should a nominally democratic system be seen as a facade?
What the fuck have you been smoking? The only thing that incoherent is, erm, oh yeah, a dirty mac hippie fanboy. Okay, never mind, get back to your one button mouse.
You'll need a bios update for booting off USB on T, A and R series ThinkPads. Should be available on any TP with built-in USB ports (doesn't work if you're going via CardBus). I can boot off any USB stuff on a T30 (hit F12 at boot, Removable Devices -> Whatever).
I believe it's called Ruby. Incidentally, Hunt and Thomas also wrote the Ruby Book, where they say Ruby is pretty much what they had in mind when they wrote Pragmatic Programmer:
As Pragmatic Programmers we've tried many, many languages in our search for tools to make our lives easier, for tools to help us do our jobs better. Until now, though, we'd always been frustrated by the languages we were using.
I've been using perl pretty much constantly since the Pink Camel, and believe me, Perl 5 is an extremely good language for quick scripting things. That's what it was designed for. Sure, you can do big projects in it, but it's not exactly ideal. Recently I've started using Ruby as well, and I intend to move my department over to it instead of wasting time with Perl 6.
One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thank you very much).
The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.
Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.
On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?
I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.
Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD^H^H^H^H Perl is dying.
produce a load of products that do all that kinda thing for you. Expensive, but then you could always employ a bunch of monkeys, erm, summer students to do the same stuff manually...
Nope. Everything on IBM's internal network is still in 9-space. Having said that, in a few development places there are routers that switch 9 to 10 and back again just to keep Global Services happy:)
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like the editors are on that cheap $2 crack again... Remind me again why I gave them money?
You're retarded.
Welcome to my foes list.
The word is fuck, not ----. Please use it.
One of the reasons you won't get modern CPUs to work on hand-made boards is the length of connections. With the z80, you can trim wires by hand and it'll still work quite happily; with faster CPUs, though, you need to be far more precise with the length of the wires / tracks connecting the CPU to memory and the like. At speeds of over a few MHz, even a mm difference is more than enough to screw things up...
Most OSX users are retards who can't use computers (hey, they can only handle one mouse button). It's easy for competent people, but remember we are talking about artists and homosexuals here...
What did trolls evolve from?
Tell us when it actually *works*, mkay? Until then, we don't care.
You've got it all wrong. They're not trolling, you're just retarded. HAND.
No, because an AS/400 isn't a mainframe.
alias e sudo emerge. I win.
The source-based thing isn't even why most people use gentoo. According to a recent poll on the gentoo-user mailing list, most people like it because of Portage (the package management system), with Customisation / Control coming in second (performance was third). Portage rocks. Even with the compiling, it takes less time to install some stuff (eg nmap) than it would take to locate the relevant .rpm. Of course, kde's a different matter, but with distcc compiling doesn't take too long.
Having said that, it looks like the guys doing the testing got their CFLAGS wrong. Gentoo's performance should never be worse than Mandrake -- I reckon they forgot omit-frame-pointer. Also, the kernel compile is unfair, because gentoo-sources includes a whole load of patches that Mandrake and Debian don't.
Finally, what's with measuring compile times? How is that a fair way of measuring performance? Hey, look, my distcc + ccache + lots of CPUs system with gcc3.2 can compile stuff faster than your single CPU gcc2 system... It's like comparing chalk and oranges.
Ah, right. Let me guess... You're a MIT student, and you need to justify your hording of an entire class A block.
Yet more interference. As it is any time anyone uses a wireless phone (2.4GHz), bluetooth device (2.4GHz), radio headphones (2.4GHz) or microwave (everything) my 802.11b (2.4GHz) connection dies...
Just in case...
/. And Washington:
Posted by timothy on Friday August 01, @01:15PM
from the worth-the-wait dept.
A long, long time ago, you asked lobbyist Reed Morgan questions about lobbying, undue industry influence on United States laws as they apply to the tech sector, the future of internet taxation, and more. Reed, in the meantime, has switched jobs: he's now working for the Association for Competitive Technology (as he candidly and lightheartedly acknowledges, "the enemy" to many Slashdot readers, since they lobby for large software corporations, notably Microsoft), and is finally free to answer your questions. Read on for about as inside a viewpoint as you can find on how you can affect your elected representatives, from someone whose job is to do just that.
Advice
by Maskirovka
If you could give one piece of advice to this group, what would it be?
Morgan Reed: An opening note about
Many of the posts here throw out statements like "Washington is bought"; and it reminds me how little slashdot readers understand about the U.S. government.
People tend to avoid and denigrate subjects they don't fully understand or feel comfortable with. I am certain every reader can think back to an example of having a non-tech person make a disparaging, off-the-cuff comment about something of which they clearly don't grasp. Quotes like "empty suits" and "crooks" signify a response steeped in discomfort due to lack of knowledge.
Most Slashdot readers prize themselves on being knowledgeable, especially about tech issues. Many readers depend on knowledge for their income. Yet on issues involving the government, these same "knowledge workers" treat politics like the technophobes treat computers.
Fortunately or unfortunately, (and I believe fortunately) the US allows all people (over the age of 18), even those who aren't paying attention, to vote.
I would suggest that before any reader makes a blanket statement about either party or any bill or any political issue, that you take the time to think "how much do I really know about this bill?" Am I reading the full text, or am I being spun?
Be aware that much of what you read on the editorial page of the newspaper, or what you hear on talk radio, is spin. Read the byline of the author carefully (also understand in many cases he/she is not really the author, just a respected person whose name is being used to promote a position).
Finally, imagine that the people making the decisions are overworked folks getting massive quantities of information and trying to adequately represent the voters who put them in office.
I can tell you from here on the inside, I have rarely met any Member of Congress, of EITHER party, that was really a bad person. Members are all just trying to represent the voters and win re-election.
Your JOB as a US citizen is to select a representative who will adequately represent your views. It is essential that you not turn off from politics. Instead, take the time to embrace it for a few weeks, learn what you can, then check your gut. Don't be the kind of person you hate to meet who attacks your work, or calls it trivial, because they don't understand it, and are slightly fearful that they will look ignorant. Is it really too much to ask?
Corruption of democracy
by imipak
As is widely known (and apparently accepted), corporations buy off legislators in the USA through 'campaign contributions' or 'soft money' or various other apparently legal means.
There are also many commercial firms of "lobbyists", who are openly making money from influencing law making. (I must admit that I am unsure of the detail of how this works, whether cash is involved, or of it's legality.)
It seems to me that this is simply organized corruption. We see the results every day in the DMCA and similar broken laws. In your opinion, is this really democracy? At what point should a nominally democratic system be seen as a facade?
(D
What the fuck have you been smoking? The only thing that incoherent is, erm, oh yeah, a dirty mac hippie fanboy. Okay, never mind, get back to your one button mouse.
You'll need a bios update for booting off USB on T, A and R series ThinkPads. Should be available on any TP with built-in USB ports (doesn't work if you're going via CardBus). I can boot off any USB stuff on a T30 (hit F12 at boot, Removable Devices -> Whatever).
Wrong! I wrote the above ages ago and posted it here. The RubyGarden post was a copy of that.
One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thank you very much).
The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.
Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.
On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?
I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.
Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD^H^H^H^H Perl is dying.
produce a load of products that do all that kinda thing for you. Expensive, but then you could always employ a bunch of monkeys, erm, summer students to do the same stuff manually...
That is so retarded. What's next? Scanning in hand-written text and sending that?
Uhm, wtf are articals? Welcome to my foes list.
Nope. Everything on IBM's internal network is still in 9-space. Having said that, in a few development places there are routers that switch 9 to 10 and back again just to keep Global Services happy :)