It is not a project by Google's engineers, it's an independent project hosted by Google.
The project is indeed sponsored by Google. See the last question in their FAQ.
Also, 5x speedup is insignificant. Psyco already provides speedups much larger than that, depending on the type of code (algorithmic code could be improved 60x or more).
You're saying it yourself: depending on the type of code. Psycho may achieve impressive speedups for certain algorithms, but the gains are not has high in general. These guys are aiming at speeding all Python code up by a factor of about five, which would be far from insignificant if they suceeded.
By the way, Pypy is much more ambitious than this one.
Pypy is an interesting project. Unfortunately, though, they are progressing very slowly.
And finally, their goals and timeframe seem a little bit unrealistic. I'd love to be proved wrong though...
Then, calling for ban of $random will always be easier than calling for actually doing something to fix the actual cause... which, in this (and probably most/all cases) is taking care of a psychologically sick kid decently, and/or kicking the parents for not taking the time to care for their child(ren)... sure, it's easier to let the TV and computer take care of them instead of spending time yourself...
Although I generally agree with your point of view, I notice you seem to think that the kid was just "psychologically sick" and the whole tragedy happened because his strange illness somehow moved him to wake up one day, take the bus to his old school, and kill 12 people there with a pistol.
I would rather say he was horribly bullied during the years he spent in that school, and this is what actually motivated him to do what he did. This is another problem that seems to be common in schools here in Germany, and that will also be utterly ignored by both media and politicians whenever such a discussion comes up.
Linux has an annoying security model, for one reason - it's not very unified between cmdline and GUI.
Can you be more specific? What gives you the impression that the security models are actually different?
1) Apps are labelled by task rather than name. I had to use google to find out that the "File Browser" was called "nautilus". Gee - could you label it using the app's name, or make it launchable by entering something like "file-browser" in the run box?
This sounds like a good idea. What about filing an Ubuntu bug for that?
2) No easy way to sudo GUI stuff. Often I have to open a terminal and use sudo to complete a task, which is annoying. Why can't there just be a button to kick me up to root for a minute or two?
3) Navigating folders is a PITA in the terminal.
Hmm, gksudo works fine here. That said, it is not recommended to run GUI applications as root, so avoid it if possible.
These fail:
[assorted cd commands deleted]
Would it hurt to be a little intuitive about where I wanted to go? Apparently so...
Would it hurt to spend some time trying to understand how the UNIX file system works? Apparently so...
This stuff is not intended for naive users; it never was. Still, the rules are very clear and not at all difficult to understand, but you have to put some effort into that.
4) More #2. It would be much easier to have a way to kick gedit up to root so I can save xorg.conf. That'd save me having to navigate to that folder, which took 10 minutes the first time.
I'm feeling generous today, I'll give you a formula:
cd/etc/X11 gksudo gedit xorg.conf
And, besides, what the heck are you doing with your system that you have to edit xorg.conf that often?
5) Argh. More #3. My Windows partitions often have folders about 8-20 deep. Navigating with the terminal is... horrible. I may have to resize my linux partition and just stick everything on it, because accessing stuff on a shared partition with good organization is such a huge PITA.
Is it better in Windows? Whenever I have to suffer a Windows command line, I find navigation deeply unnerving, but this is off-topic. Look, I've been using the Unix command line regularly since the early 90s. And you know what I do when I have to find my way arround a large file hierachy? I open a nautilus window (often issuing 'nautilus.' from the command line, so that it opens where I'm standing), and navigate to where I want to go. But, anyway, if you you are so adamant about doing everything from the command line, tab completion is your friend, use it!
6) Oh dear god. I made a shortcut to a file on an NTFS partition and put it on the desktop. The thing is, when I open it, I can't go "up" to the folder's parent folders - it takes me "up" (back) to the desktop. Great. I guess I'll get into the habbit of opening the terminal, typing "gksudo nautilus" in, then navigating manually to the folder I need on my NTFS partition, so that I can go "up" properly and copy stuff around...
'man bash' is your friend here, but, as I said, I'm feeling generous today:
set -P
will solve your problem. And, again, "gksudo nautilus"? Where does your obsession with running everything as root come from? Windows, maybe?
And btw, this only takes 1-3 seconds on Windows, because I have a modified run box that opens the correct folder based on the name and some simple heuristics. Why can't linux have a decent find feature? And for that matter, why can't Microsoft create one for Windows? Bleh. They both fail at finding - but at least I can navigate quicker under Windows thanks to brilliant third party coders.
What do you call "find feature" and what do you want to do with it? I would point you to the find and locate commands, but
You probably mean 8.10, which, by the way, stands for October 2008.
I was so frustrated with trying to get Ubuntu to just "run" that I was at my wits end. Problems with my monitor and graphics card.
Known problem: some hardware won't work as easily, or won't work at all. Unfortunately, it is impossible to create an operating system that runs on any random hardware, however rare, or new, or special it may be. I always buy my hardware with Linux compatibility in mind, but I can see that this is not necessarily an option for the casual user.
When I finally got it "working," I had no clue how to install programs. After calling a friend who is a Linux person, I got most of my rough spots smoothed out. But, without some outside help, it was hell. An issue I NEVER run into with Windows XP.
Interesting. I just typed "ubuntu installing programs" into Google (this was the first set of search terms that came to my mind) and the first result I got was this site, which contains a nice picture tour of Ubuntu software installation.
By the end, I really liked the package manager, but my (and my wife's) gaming habits and my use of Photoshop and Illustrator pulled me back to Windows. It was just way to (sic) different for someone without some help.An introduction video would have helped.
Indeed, an introductory video would help, but as your experiences and those of the TFA's author show, there would have to be a version of it aimed specifically at Windows power users. The problem is obviously not the package manager in itself, but the fact that Windows power users approach the system with a particular, technical mindset, which happens not too match linux at all. As a result, great frustration and confusion ensue.
Ironically, naive users often have a much easier time migrating, because, for them, the system just looks a bit different. The power user, on the other hand, is suddenly confronted with an entirely different beast, and he feels frustrated when he notices that his entire bad of tricks, learned over years, doesn't work any more. I wouldn't blame Ubuntu for this problem, but I agree that doing something to make it easier for expert users to migrate would be a good idea.
Regular users, which is most of the world don't want to deal with any arcane and esoteric commands.
Who is speaking about esoteric commands here? Ubuntu has two different GUI programs for installing software. One is accessible by opening the "Applications" menu (which is equivalent to Windows' "Start") and selecting the last option, aptly named "Add/Remove...". This one is intended for newbie users: it only presents user-level applications (system stuff and daemons are excluded) and reduces the list to one application for each particular task (e.g., only one instant messaging client will be offered, even if there are many available in the repository).
The second one, Synaptic, is placed under the "System|Administration" menu, and offers access to the full repository, through software categories, as well as a convenient search-as-you-type feature. This is the option I normally use, even despite of the fact that I have been using Unix systems since the early 90s and am well acquainted with the command line.
By the way, these two options are discussed in the TFA, including nice, color screenshots. 2002 came and went. Why are you still complaining about cryptic commands?
In order to get the software ahead of schedule. Ubuntu generally makes lots of small changes to make sure that software packages run properly inside the distribution. This integration work takes time and effort, and, obviously, requires testing. For this reason, new major releases of big distribution components, such as OO, get only released when Ubuntu itself is updated, that is, every six months.
Of course, you can often get updates for individual software packages before Ubuntu releases a whole distribution update, but, in this case, you have to go through the extra effort of activating a special repository. Otherwise, you just wait, and you'll get a distribution update offered in due time.
If they do all the hard work, how come so many people are installing Ubuntu instead of just plain Debian? Or, seen another way, if it's so easy to turn Debian into Ubuntu, why haven't Debian developers done that themselves?
Yes, the Debian guys do lots of valuable work, but they are far from being responsible for Ubuntu's success. Saying they are is just laughable.
Do you happen to have a link to what you mean by "a program should not have state"? Because, I mean, that seems antithetic to the nature of a program.
Of course there is a state, you're using a standard computer to run the program, so there must be a state somewhere. Still, the point is that even if the language implementation works by changing the computer's memory state, the abstraction you use to program isn't state-based. In a pure functional programming language, you don't program by manipulating a state, but by computing the results of functions.
Regarding the SICP book, like most functional programming languages, Scheme isn't a pure functional language. It contains constructs with side effects, which actually change the program state directly. Such constructs are available because there are problems that are very difficult (but not impossible) to handle with pure functional programming, so language designers end up making compromises.
This goes with the "There should be no actions on notifications" bullet point from the article. This leaves the user with no recourse other than to kill the notification agent in case a notification becomes stuck. While this is only the display agent, there should always be an "exit" for the user.
What makes you think that interactive notifications are less likely to get stuck than non-interactive notifications? This all boils down to the reliability of the notification daemon, not to the interaction style. If the daemon displaying an interactive notification suddenly hangs, you won't be able to interact with the notification anyway. You'll have to restart the daemon.
I would say that a daemon that can only display non-interactive notifications will probably be simpler, and, thus, more likely to be reliable. We'll see how Canonical's implementation fares in this regard.
No, we just understand that in c, the proper use of {} is to convert a multi-statement line syntactically into a single statement.
You're right on the mark, sir! Compilers deal with this stuff quite easily, why should people have problems with it? You are showing us the True Way here: forget about improving programming languages or implementing sensible coding conventions. They just take time and cause too many unproductive flamewars in Slashdot. Instead, ask people to learn to parse code just like compilers do, without ever missing the lack of a semicolon, or misinterpreting indentation as syntactical scoping. This will get rid of all those pesky programming errors at once, and will probably eliminate world poverty and cure cancer as a side effect.
Now, the way you speak, I suppose you already taught yourself these incredible compiler-true-perfect-parsing abilities, didn't you? Would you mind to share your method with us? I, for one, am really interested...
And while that is sad for them, you cannot punish people for happening to trigger this, especially if it is impossible for them to have determined it.
First, this woman knew about the girl's condition. Second, according to the eggshell skull rule the sole fact that she performed a deliberately harming action which resulted in death (whether intended or not) would be enough to call this murder.
Mmmn, guess you're rediscovering economic theory here. Sure, money is intended to represent wealth. You trade the actual wealth you produce for money, and later you can trade that money back for wealth in some other form.
Still my point holds: the important part are the goods and the services, because those are the ones you can directly benefit from. In that sense, money is just a means to an end, not the end in itself.
Bitching and complaining about companies doing something that isn't nice is pointless. Its like tripping, breaking your ankle, and then complaining that gravity didn't shut of.
There's a big difference: gravity is ruled by the laws of nature, company behavior isn't. Actually, companies are nothing else than a bunch of people that have access to certain resources. If I deal with any of these people personally, I expect them to behave morally. Why should I accept that they behave otherwise when representing their company? Just because they have to serve some random stakeholders?
Many people seem to think that companies are autonomous beings, with a live and motivations of their own. They aren't. All actions of a company are, in reality, the actions of people working for the company. I'm sure that if those people were held accountable for what they do in the name of their companies as much as they are held accountable for their personal actions, this world would be much much better.
Nope, I won't say it with you. Goods and services bring well-being. They are the food that you eat, the house you live in, the clothes you wear, and the car you drive. They are the care you receive when you're ill, and the entertainment and culture you enjoy everyday. It is the availability of such goods and services that constitutes wealth, not money, which, in and by itself, is basically worthless.
Without a profit, there would be no goods and no company.
Sure, and that makes sense. But these profits should translate into a real net gain for society, and not simply into an increase in the balance account at the expense of other people's lifes or well-being.
And what good is money if you don't have any goods or services you can buy with it? Even if you are a soulless capitalist like many slashdotters seem to be, it is in your best interest that someone takes care of actually producing goods and offering services, because otherwise you won't have a lot to do with your loved money. Would you care explaining me how this is supposed to be sustainable if everyone concentrates on making money instead of on creating actual wealth?
I'm glad to see you got my point completely. Indeed, it is exactly this state of affairs you describe so well that worries me so deeply.
Anything that is not illegal is allowed and is expected to be done if it furthers the goal of making more money.
If I'm reading well, what you're implying here is that all ethical and moral concerns you may have about a particular action should be ignored as long as this action increases profits. This is, once again, the logic behind such tragedies as Union Carbide's disaster in Bhopal, India. I'm pretty sure Union Carbide's behavior was not illegal according to Indian law, but I'm also pretty sure many people inside the company knew what was going on, but didn't act on ethical grounds becase it was legal and would increase profits.
So, this way of thinking can kill people and ruin lifes. It is actually doing it as we speak. I thought capitalism was supposed to make us all prosperous and happy by making resources available where they are needed for wealth creation, and rewarding people according to the value of their contributions. I doesn't seem to me, however, that our current form of capitalism is doing any of these.
Nope, companies are there for offering goods and services, which means, they should concentrate on serving their customers, not their shareholders. If capitalist principles hold at all, a company that serves its customers well should of course make money, which, in turn, should result in higher returns for the shareholders.
Saying that companies are there only to serve their shareholders, that is, only to make profits, is just a justification for all sorts of dirty business practices. If all you have to do is increasing profits, it is then perfectly OK to release dangerous products, abuse your employees as much as possible under applicable legislation (and then maybe a bit more), harm the environment with your production methods, or risk people's life savings in absurd investment schemas, among many other horrors of modern life.
To live in the bleeding edge, of course. If you don't want to, just keep the LTS release, which is there to provide the stability many people need/want.
That said, I'm not keen to use a system that forces me to use somebody else's scheme for document storage and retrieval. In 25 years of using UNIX, I've developed (and continue to refine) my own filing schemes. I'm more than comfortable with the "files and folders" model and my understanding of the underlying (hierarchical) storage scheme serves me well.
Good for you. 99.9% of the general population are not as lucky, though. They don't have the level of understanding of the operating system you have, and aren't probably as organized (or as intelligent) as you are. They will appreciate a system that doesn't ask them to roll their own filing schemes, and that offers them something they can easily work with.
Understanding the low-level model of a UNIX file system plus a few commands (including the byzantine "find") allows an experienced user to do some of this, but that initial learning curve can be a bitch. So find ways to make that expressive power accessible to beginners and occasional users. And do so in ways that help them develop a useful mental model of what's going on, and facilitate the transition to power user status (for those who want it).
This sounds well meant, but won't work. The problem with the UNIX filesystem model is not that it is that complex by itself, but rather the opposite, it is too simple for many tasks. People like you or me (I've been using UNIX since the early 90s) can find a way to coerce information of almost any type into a file hierarchy. But this is not a simple task. Quite on the contrary, doing this requires a lot of ability, and a very special mindset.
Indeed, computer people excel at identifying simple rule systems that still make it possible to achieve a lot. We strive for conciseness and minimality, to the point that we call systems having these properties "elegant". But systems that are "elegant" to us are no less than a complete riddle for most people. Imagine you had never heard of chess. Someday someone comes and, in a few minutes, explains you the playing rules. Then he says "let me introduce you to Mr. Kasparov, he'll be playing by the same rules as you will, so, you should be able to beat him if you're any smart". Do you think this would be fair?
When dealing with the UNIX file system, you're some sort of Kasparov. But people like Kasparov are exceptional. This is why most people need help, and expecting them to practice until they learn to play within this very constrained set of rules is just not reasonable in most cases.
Isn't this a basic pattern seen in all sorts of systems?
Nope. Let me see:
If you want to get the most of your car, you learn race driving, train for years, and probably compete in races. Most of us just want to safely drive to the office or the supermarket, so we just go to the regular driving school for a few weeks and are done.
If you want the most of literature, you do an English major and dedicate to writing or literary criticism. Most of us just want to occasionally read a book, so we have enough with the reading we learned at school.
If you want to get the most of your computer, you learn about its inner workings, probably by studying computer science or some related field, as I personally did. This includes learning to use such arcane things as the command line interface. Most other people, though, just want to use their computers to write letters, chat with people, look at pictures, and so on. They shouldn't have to know how their computers work in order to do that.
Not a new idea, we call it ontologies. This is the stuff the semantic web is supposed to be made of, and probably also the reason why hasn't taken off: ontologies are very hard for users to grasp. Few people are adept to spend hours organizing abstract concepts in a complex graph until they arrive to a good representation of their knowledge. Those few who are so inclined are often programmers or mathematicians anyway, and read Slashdot.
Are you able to come up with a predefined list that covers everyone's needs for information classification? How long will that list be? How easy it'll be for people to find the right tags in that list? Will they be able to do it consistently, e.g., will two people arrive at the same tags if they are independently asked to classify the same information item?
Classifying stuff can be so difficult that some people dedicate to that professionally (think librarians, for example.) It is possible, but not something you shouild expect from regular computer users.
And this statement perfectly demonstrates why Linux is not now, and will not be for a very long time, a true Desktop OS.
I agree with you on most points you make here, but what makes you think that user Animaether (411575) from/. represents the Linux community as a whole? Linux is becoming a Desktop OS as we speak, it is only that the people making this happen are not recalcitrant, Slashdot-adept sysadmins. RTFA and follow the links, you'll see what I mean.
This is something that has bothered me about open source in general for a while now, why is that there is so much fragmentation? So many wheels that are being re-implemented for the sake of being re-implemented?
People who make arguments of this type seem to think that there is some sort of Linux Corporation doing all the work. If this were the case, it would make no sense to have the large number of competing projects we actually see in the Open Source community. The Corporation's upper management would decide which projects continue and which get killed, and that would be the end of the story.
In practice however, the Open Source community is a very heterogenous bunch of people, with no central control or source of founding, no common motivation, and no unified objectives. Some people contribute for altruistic reasons, some because they want interesting technical challenges, and some just get paid for doing it. Each participating company has its own reasons to be there, and companies doing Open Source software are often competing with each other.
Rather than thinking of Open Source as a single company working for a single objective, you should compare the Open Source community with the open market. There are often companies offering similar products and competing for the clients, and people usually see this as possitive, not negative. Indeed, the actual surprise is that there is so much collaboration around Open Source.
Slashdot Mirror
It is not a project by Google's engineers, it's an independent project hosted by Google.
The project is indeed sponsored by Google. See the last question in their FAQ.
Also, 5x speedup is insignificant. Psyco already provides speedups much larger than that, depending on the type of code (algorithmic code could be improved 60x or more).
You're saying it yourself: depending on the type of code. Psycho may achieve impressive speedups for certain algorithms, but the gains are not has high in general. These guys are aiming at speeding all Python code up by a factor of about five, which would be far from insignificant if they suceeded.
By the way, Pypy is much more ambitious than this one.
Pypy is an interesting project. Unfortunately, though, they are progressing very slowly.
And finally, their goals and timeframe seem a little bit unrealistic. I'd love to be proved wrong though...
You may be right here. Only time will tell.
Then, calling for ban of $random will always be easier than calling for actually doing something to fix the actual cause ... which, in this (and probably most/all cases) is taking care of a psychologically sick kid decently, and/or kicking the parents for not taking the time to care for their child(ren) ... sure, it's easier to let the TV and computer take care of them instead of spending time yourself ...
Although I generally agree with your point of view, I notice you seem to think that the kid was just "psychologically sick" and the whole tragedy happened because his strange illness somehow moved him to wake up one day, take the bus to his old school, and kill 12 people there with a pistol.
I would rather say he was horribly bullied during the years he spent in that school, and this is what actually motivated him to do what he did. This is another problem that seems to be common in schools here in Germany, and that will also be utterly ignored by both media and politicians whenever such a discussion comes up.
Sad state of things, indeed.
Linux has an annoying security model, for one reason - it's not very unified between cmdline and GUI.
Can you be more specific? What gives you the impression that the security models are actually different?
1) Apps are labelled by task rather than name. I had to use google to find out that the "File Browser" was called "nautilus". Gee - could you label it using the app's name, or make it launchable by entering something like "file-browser" in the run box?
This sounds like a good idea. What about filing an Ubuntu bug for that?
2) No easy way to sudo GUI stuff. Often I have to open a terminal and use sudo to complete a task, which is annoying. Why can't there just be a button to kick me up to root for a minute or two?
3) Navigating folders is a PITA in the terminal.
Hmm, gksudo works fine here. That said, it is not recommended to run GUI applications as root, so avoid it if possible.
These fail:
[assorted cd commands deleted]
Would it hurt to be a little intuitive about where I wanted to go? Apparently so...
Would it hurt to spend some time trying to understand how the UNIX file system works? Apparently so...
This stuff is not intended for naive users; it never was. Still, the rules are very clear and not at all difficult to understand, but you have to put some effort into that.
4) More #2. It would be much easier to have a way to kick gedit up to root so I can save xorg.conf. That'd save me having to navigate to that folder, which took 10 minutes the first time.
I'm feeling generous today, I'll give you a formula:
cd /etc/X11
gksudo gedit xorg.conf
And, besides, what the heck are you doing with your system that you have to edit xorg.conf that often?
5) Argh. More #3. My Windows partitions often have folders about 8-20 deep. Navigating with the terminal is... horrible. I may have to resize my linux partition and just stick everything on it, because accessing stuff on a shared partition with good organization is such a huge PITA.
Is it better in Windows? Whenever I have to suffer a Windows command line, I find navigation deeply unnerving, but this is off-topic. Look, I've been using the Unix command line regularly since the early 90s. And you know what I do when I have to find my way arround a large file hierachy? I open a nautilus window (often issuing 'nautilus .' from the command line, so that it opens where I'm standing), and navigate to where I want to go. But, anyway, if you you are so adamant about doing everything from the command line, tab completion is your friend, use it!
6) Oh dear god. I made a shortcut to a file on an NTFS partition and put it on the desktop. The thing is, when I open it, I can't go "up" to the folder's parent folders - it takes me "up" (back) to the desktop. Great. I guess I'll get into the habbit of opening the terminal, typing "gksudo nautilus" in, then navigating manually to the folder I need on my NTFS partition, so that I can go "up" properly and copy stuff around...
'man bash' is your friend here, but, as I said, I'm feeling generous today:
set -P
will solve your problem. And, again, "gksudo nautilus"? Where does your obsession with running everything as root come from? Windows, maybe?
And btw, this only takes 1-3 seconds on Windows, because I have a modified run box that opens the correct folder based on the name and some simple heuristics. Why can't linux have a decent find feature? And for that matter, why can't Microsoft create one for Windows? Bleh. They both fail at finding - but at least I can navigate quicker under Windows thanks to brilliant third party coders.
What do you call "find feature" and what do you want to do with it? I would point you to the find and locate commands, but
I got Ubuntu 8.01 ... I think that's the one.
You probably mean 8.10, which, by the way, stands for October 2008.
I was so frustrated with trying to get Ubuntu to just "run" that I was at my wits end. Problems with my monitor and graphics card.
Known problem: some hardware won't work as easily, or won't work at all. Unfortunately, it is impossible to create an operating system that runs on any random hardware, however rare, or new, or special it may be. I always buy my hardware with Linux compatibility in mind, but I can see that this is not necessarily an option for the casual user.
When I finally got it "working," I had no clue how to install programs. After calling a friend who is a Linux person, I got most of my rough spots smoothed out. But, without some outside help, it was hell. An issue I NEVER run into with Windows XP.
Interesting. I just typed "ubuntu installing programs" into Google (this was the first set of search terms that came to my mind) and the first result I got was this site, which contains a nice picture tour of Ubuntu software installation.
By the end, I really liked the package manager, but my (and my wife's) gaming habits and my use of Photoshop and Illustrator pulled me back to Windows. It was just way to (sic) different for someone without some help.An introduction video would have helped.
Indeed, an introductory video would help, but as your experiences and those of the TFA's author show, there would have to be a version of it aimed specifically at Windows power users. The problem is obviously not the package manager in itself, but the fact that Windows power users approach the system with a particular, technical mindset, which happens not too match linux at all. As a result, great frustration and confusion ensue.
Ironically, naive users often have a much easier time migrating, because, for them, the system just looks a bit different. The power user, on the other hand, is suddenly confronted with an entirely different beast, and he feels frustrated when he notices that his entire bad of tricks, learned over years, doesn't work any more. I wouldn't blame Ubuntu for this problem, but I agree that doing something to make it easier for expert users to migrate would be a good idea.
Regular users, which is most of the world don't want to deal with any arcane and esoteric commands.
Who is speaking about esoteric commands here? Ubuntu has two different GUI programs for installing software. One is accessible by opening the "Applications" menu (which is equivalent to Windows' "Start") and selecting the last option, aptly named "Add/Remove...". This one is intended for newbie users: it only presents user-level applications (system stuff and daemons are excluded) and reduces the list to one application for each particular task (e.g., only one instant messaging client will be offered, even if there are many available in the repository).
The second one, Synaptic, is placed under the "System|Administration" menu, and offers access to the full repository, through software categories, as well as a convenient search-as-you-type feature. This is the option I normally use, even despite of the fact that I have been using Unix systems since the early 90s and am well acquainted with the command line.
By the way, these two options are discussed in the TFA, including nice, color screenshots. 2002 came and went. Why are you still complaining about cryptic commands?
In order to get the software ahead of schedule. Ubuntu generally makes lots of small changes to make sure that software packages run properly inside the distribution. This integration work takes time and effort, and, obviously, requires testing. For this reason, new major releases of big distribution components, such as OO, get only released when Ubuntu itself is updated, that is, every six months.
Of course, you can often get updates for individual software packages before Ubuntu releases a whole distribution update, but, in this case, you have to go through the extra effort of activating a special repository. Otherwise, you just wait, and you'll get a distribution update offered in due time.
If they do all the hard work, how come so many people are installing Ubuntu instead of just plain Debian? Or, seen another way, if it's so easy to turn Debian into Ubuntu, why haven't Debian developers done that themselves?
Yes, the Debian guys do lots of valuable work, but they are far from being responsible for Ubuntu's success. Saying they are is just laughable.
Do you happen to have a link to what you mean by "a program should not have state"? Because, I mean, that seems antithetic to the nature of a program.
Of course there is a state, you're using a standard computer to run the program, so there must be a state somewhere. Still, the point is that even if the language implementation works by changing the computer's memory state, the abstraction you use to program isn't state-based. In a pure functional programming language, you don't program by manipulating a state, but by computing the results of functions.
Regarding the SICP book, like most functional programming languages, Scheme isn't a pure functional language. It contains constructs with side effects, which actually change the program state directly. Such constructs are available because there are problems that are very difficult (but not impossible) to handle with pure functional programming, so language designers end up making compromises.
Just my 2 (Euro) cents
This goes with the "There should be no actions on notifications" bullet point from the article. This leaves the user with no recourse other than to kill the notification agent in case a notification becomes stuck. While this is only the display agent, there should always be an "exit" for the user.
What makes you think that interactive notifications are less likely to get stuck than non-interactive notifications? This all boils down to the reliability of the notification daemon, not to the interaction style. If the daemon displaying an interactive notification suddenly hangs, you won't be able to interact with the notification anyway. You'll have to restart the daemon.
I would say that a daemon that can only display non-interactive notifications will probably be simpler, and, thus, more likely to be reliable. We'll see how Canonical's implementation fares in this regard.
Despite what you may have heard, we Americans are not as unsophisticated as you might think. Even those of us that are Conservatives.
I'm from Colombia and can speak three languages fluently. Should we conclude that all Colombians are polyglots?
Soy colombiano y hablo tres idiomas fluidamente. Deberiamos concluir entonces que todos los colombianos son poliglotas?
Ich bin Kolumbianer und kann fliessend drei Sprachen sprechen. Sollten wir dann zum Schluss kommen, dass alle Kolumbianer mehrsprachig sind?
(excuse the lack of diacritics/special letters, being an American website, Slashdot still doesn't handle them properly...)
No, we just understand that in c, the proper use of {} is to convert a multi-statement line syntactically into a single statement.
You're right on the mark, sir! Compilers deal with this stuff quite easily, why should people have problems with it? You are showing us the True Way here: forget about improving programming languages or implementing sensible coding conventions. They just take time and cause too many unproductive flamewars in Slashdot. Instead, ask people to learn to parse code just like compilers do, without ever missing the lack of a semicolon, or misinterpreting indentation as syntactical scoping. This will get rid of all those pesky programming errors at once, and will probably eliminate world poverty and cure cancer as a side effect.
Now, the way you speak, I suppose you already taught yourself these incredible compiler-true-perfect-parsing abilities, didn't you? Would you mind to share your method with us? I, for one, am really interested...
And while that is sad for them, you cannot punish people for happening to trigger this, especially if it is impossible for them to have determined it.
First, this woman knew about the girl's condition. Second, according to the eggshell skull rule the sole fact that she performed a deliberately harming action which resulted in death (whether intended or not) would be enough to call this murder.
Mmmn, guess you're rediscovering economic theory here. Sure, money is intended to represent wealth. You trade the actual wealth you produce for money, and later you can trade that money back for wealth in some other form.
Still my point holds: the important part are the goods and the services, because those are the ones you can directly benefit from. In that sense, money is just a means to an end, not the end in itself.
Bitching and complaining about companies doing something that isn't nice is pointless. Its like tripping, breaking your ankle, and then complaining that gravity didn't shut of.
There's a big difference: gravity is ruled by the laws of nature, company behavior isn't. Actually, companies are nothing else than a bunch of people that have access to certain resources. If I deal with any of these people personally, I expect them to behave morally. Why should I accept that they behave otherwise when representing their company? Just because they have to serve some random stakeholders?
Many people seem to think that companies are autonomous beings, with a live and motivations of their own. They aren't. All actions of a company are, in reality, the actions of people working for the company. I'm sure that if those people were held accountable for what they do in the name of their companies as much as they are held accountable for their personal actions, this world would be much much better.
say it with me now...PROFIT.
Nope, I won't say it with you. Goods and services bring well-being. They are the food that you eat, the house you live in, the clothes you wear, and the car you drive. They are the care you receive when you're ill, and the entertainment and culture you enjoy everyday. It is the availability of such goods and services that constitutes wealth, not money, which, in and by itself, is basically worthless.
Without a profit, there would be no goods and no company.
Sure, and that makes sense. But these profits should translate into a real net gain for society, and not simply into an increase in the balance account at the expense of other people's lifes or well-being.
And what good is money if you don't have any goods or services you can buy with it? Even if you are a soulless capitalist like many slashdotters seem to be, it is in your best interest that someone takes care of actually producing goods and offering services, because otherwise you won't have a lot to do with your loved money. Would you care explaining me how this is supposed to be sustainable if everyone concentrates on making money instead of on creating actual wealth?
I'm glad to see you got my point completely. Indeed, it is exactly this state of affairs you describe so well that worries me so deeply.
Anything that is not illegal is allowed and is expected to be done if it furthers the goal of making more money.
If I'm reading well, what you're implying here is that all ethical and moral concerns you may have about a particular action should be ignored as long as this action increases profits. This is, once again, the logic behind such tragedies as Union Carbide's disaster in Bhopal, India. I'm pretty sure Union Carbide's behavior was not illegal according to Indian law, but I'm also pretty sure many people inside the company knew what was going on, but didn't act on ethical grounds becase it was legal and would increase profits.
So, this way of thinking can kill people and ruin lifes. It is actually doing it as we speak. I thought capitalism was supposed to make us all prosperous and happy by making resources available where they are needed for wealth creation, and rewarding people according to the value of their contributions. I doesn't seem to me, however, that our current form of capitalism is doing any of these.
Nope, companies are there for offering goods and services, which means, they should concentrate on serving their customers, not their shareholders. If capitalist principles hold at all, a company that serves its customers well should of course make money, which, in turn, should result in higher returns for the shareholders.
Saying that companies are there only to serve their shareholders, that is, only to make profits, is just a justification for all sorts of dirty business practices. If all you have to do is increasing profits, it is then perfectly OK to release dangerous products, abuse your employees as much as possible under applicable legislation (and then maybe a bit more), harm the environment with your production methods, or risk people's life savings in absurd investment schemas, among many other horrors of modern life.
Why upgrade an existing system to this release?
To live in the bleeding edge, of course. If you don't want to, just keep the LTS release, which is there to provide the stability many people need/want.
That said, I'm not keen to use a system that forces me to use somebody else's scheme for document storage and retrieval. In 25 years of using UNIX, I've developed (and continue to refine) my own filing schemes. I'm more than comfortable with the "files and folders" model and my understanding of the underlying (hierarchical) storage scheme serves me well.
Good for you. 99.9% of the general population are not as lucky, though. They don't have the level of understanding of the operating system you have, and aren't probably as organized (or as intelligent) as you are. They will appreciate a system that doesn't ask them to roll their own filing schemes, and that offers them something they can easily work with.
Understanding the low-level model of a UNIX file system plus a few commands (including the byzantine "find") allows an experienced user to do some of this, but that initial learning curve can be a bitch. So find ways to make that expressive power accessible to beginners and occasional users. And do so in ways that help them develop a useful mental model of what's going on, and facilitate the transition to power user status (for those who want it).
This sounds well meant, but won't work. The problem with the UNIX filesystem model is not that it is that complex by itself, but rather the opposite, it is too simple for many tasks. People like you or me (I've been using UNIX since the early 90s) can find a way to coerce information of almost any type into a file hierarchy. But this is not a simple task. Quite on the contrary, doing this requires a lot of ability, and a very special mindset.
Indeed, computer people excel at identifying simple rule systems that still make it possible to achieve a lot. We strive for conciseness and minimality, to the point that we call systems having these properties "elegant". But systems that are "elegant" to us are no less than a complete riddle for most people. Imagine you had never heard of chess. Someday someone comes and, in a few minutes, explains you the playing rules. Then he says "let me introduce you to Mr. Kasparov, he'll be playing by the same rules as you will, so, you should be able to beat him if you're any smart". Do you think this would be fair?
When dealing with the UNIX file system, you're some sort of Kasparov. But people like Kasparov are exceptional. This is why most people need help, and expecting them to practice until they learn to play within this very constrained set of rules is just not reasonable in most cases.
Isn't this a basic pattern seen in all sorts of systems?
Nope. Let me see:
If you want to get the most of your car, you learn race driving, train for years, and probably compete in races. Most of us just want to safely drive to the office or the supermarket, so we just go to the regular driving school for a few weeks and are done.
If you want the most of literature, you do an English major and dedicate to writing or literary criticism. Most of us just want to occasionally read a book, so we have enough with the reading we learned at school.
If you want to get the most of your computer, you learn about its inner workings, probably by studying computer science or some related field, as I personally did. This includes learning to use such arcane things as the command line interface. Most other people, though, just want to use their computers to write letters, chat with people, look at pictures, and so on. They shouldn't have to know how their computers work in order to do that.
Not a new idea, we call it ontologies. This is the stuff the semantic web is supposed to be made of, and probably also the reason why hasn't taken off: ontologies are very hard for users to grasp. Few people are adept to spend hours organizing abstract concepts in a complex graph until they arrive to a good representation of their knowledge. Those few who are so inclined are often programmers or mathematicians anyway, and read Slashdot.
Are you able to come up with a predefined list that covers everyone's needs for information classification? How long will that list be? How easy it'll be for people to find the right tags in that list? Will they be able to do it consistently, e.g., will two people arrive at the same tags if they are independently asked to classify the same information item?
Classifying stuff can be so difficult that some people dedicate to that professionally (think librarians, for example.) It is possible, but not something you shouild expect from regular computer users.
And this statement perfectly demonstrates why Linux is not now, and will not be for a very long time, a true Desktop OS.
I agree with you on most points you make here, but what makes you think that user Animaether (411575) from /. represents the Linux community as a whole? Linux is becoming a Desktop OS as we speak, it is only that the people making this happen are not recalcitrant, Slashdot-adept sysadmins. RTFA and follow the links, you'll see what I mean.
This is something that has bothered me about open source in general for a while now, why is that there is so much fragmentation? So many wheels that are being re-implemented for the sake of being re-implemented?
People who make arguments of this type seem to think that there is some sort of Linux Corporation doing all the work. If this were the case, it would make no sense to have the large number of competing projects we actually see in the Open Source community. The Corporation's upper management would decide which projects continue and which get killed, and that would be the end of the story.
In practice however, the Open Source community is a very heterogenous bunch of people, with no central control or source of founding, no common motivation, and no unified objectives. Some people contribute for altruistic reasons, some because they want interesting technical challenges, and some just get paid for doing it. Each participating company has its own reasons to be there, and companies doing Open Source software are often competing with each other.
Rather than thinking of Open Source as a single company working for a single objective, you should compare the Open Source community with the open market. There are often companies offering similar products and competing for the clients, and people usually see this as possitive, not negative. Indeed, the actual surprise is that there is so much collaboration around Open Source.