I buy a fair number of CD releases, and also occasionally purchase t-shirts from OSS organizations. I have no problem with forking over cash for the CDs, even if they are coasters after a few months. These folks must be making a better return on their CD sales than on things like t-shirts, since the cost of making CDs is chicken-feed. Buying the CD, I suspect, it a much more direct way of supporting folks like OpenBSD, Debian, etc.
Besides, I'm a bit of a completionist, so I like collecting the pre-fab CDs:)
Mind you, if you are a student or somesuch, I can see the value in getting the freebee.
Well, I could understand this story being posted under the heading of "toys" (for lego) or "star wars"... but is there a good reason it's posted under the topic "games"? Did someone forget to hit the "preview" button?:)
The calming blue colour was chosen in the hopes of mellowing out all the Soccer Mom's that were expected to otherwise beat the crap out of each other while jockeying for position to buy "little Johny's" Christmas present from Santa.
DHCP makes you safe? That's fairly humorous. As soon as you log onto IRC, some script kiddie has already done an/nslookup on you and started scanning your box looking for holes with some warscript.
I'm currently running an OpenBSD firewall and am pretty happy with it, altho my linux firewall previously did a fine job. The point is to do *something* to keep out the riff-raff.
Sure, the heavy-hitters won't be bothering to crack most DHCP boxes, but their are plenty of kiddies out there that are itching to crack *any* box and make a mess of it.
The Internet isn't some little town where you know everyone... you do *not* want to leave your front door wide open.
There are plenty of people that like to embark on such risky endeavours as base-jumping. The "Xtreme" crowd might be willing to pay top dollar to tool around with one of these things in remote areas.
Having said that, I think you are probably right about day-to-day personal transportation. I doubt too many governments would allow the average human to cruise around downtown in one of these things.
I was never much of a PacMan fan, so I won't claim to speak for players of that game, but certainly I and my friends would get some decent adrenaline buzzes off games from that era. Remember Robotron, or Defender? Remember when you were just getting good enough to get into the nastier screens in those games?
I recall being severely pumped after managing to get out of some hairy situations in those games. I'm sure many PacMan players must have had similar experiences. All those games had about the same quality of graphics, and they were all great games to play. Once you got going, you were immersed... the rest of the arcade just didn't exist.
In fact, if you jump ahead in the time stream, DOOM is another good example of this. The graphic rendering is pretty cheezy by todays standards, but it's still a damn good game. And really, I don't consider DOOM's progeny to be much better as games: slightly more complicated and much better graphics. Not really any better as games tho, IMO.
Now that I've gotten started, I can imagine decent arguments for more esoteric notions like M:TG, AD&D, and chess.
It's the quality of the game that makes it an immersive and long lasting game, not the graphics.
That said, if the graphics/playing-pieces/whatever looked like they were made by a 3rd grader, I probably wouldn't play the game in the first place:)
... this is largely crap. Not that it doesnt work, but the point is more that so many species become extinct every year, we can hardly keep track of them, little less keep up with reproducing them. Not to mention that this doesnt cover all the plant life that becomes extinct.
This is nteresting, and in some way good news, but this is hardly a good reason to stop worrying about destroying natural resources.
export restrictions make it tough to get OpenBSD if you're in the US (Which is why they are based in Canada)
Sorry, but you got that bit wrong. The fact that Theo distributes out of Canada makes it easy for the entire world to get OpenBSD. The only problem with exports is shipping encryption code out of the US. Although, it seems to me that some of those restrictions have recently been weakened. Not sure about that last bit though.
Try it yourself. Order up a copy from the website. If you live in the States or Canada you should have your very own copy in about a week. No hassles involved:)
I live in Houston. The A/C in my appartment drowns out almost any other noise. Hell, to watch TV I have to punch up the volume on my stereo to retarded levels just to to hear it over the A/C fan. Quiet computers are low on the list of "must haves" at the moment. If I ever move back to Canada that might change.
When I got my CD-RW, not long ago, I did installations of various linux and BSD distributions on my laptop, just because I could.
If you have never done a Mandrake install before, when you finally do you will wig out. Not only is it amazingly intelligent and simple, it *looks* really cool. I lent a copy of it to a friend at work, and the next day he came to my office positively freaking out about it.
They've done a nice job with 7.1 in general, particularly if you are into having things look ultra fancy (I'm not - I run blackbox on redhat and debian machines). I ran Mandrake for about a week until the debian folks fixed the pcmcia stuff that was, at the time, broken in potato. I was relatively impressed with Mandrake.
Install it. I think you'll have fun, even if it is *way* too easy:)
(disclaimer: i'm also an op on #linuxhelp (hi Vox!))
Vox is right, a bit of patience pays off. Not only is this because of working hours, but because of time zone issues. We have ops who live in the UK, and ops that live in New Zealand. Don't give up if you dont get what you need right away. We do give a shit, and we do try to do our best when we are around.
If you are in North America, evening hours are generally the best time to find someone with a clue, op or otherwise.
I would also suggest, especially if you have a particularly strange problem (i.e. you've read the relevant HOWTO, manpages, and info pages, and it still isn't covered or it still doesnt make sense) Look for these folks:
Vox Kuma longword Spamaps
(longword being the channel guru. if longword says it won't work, it wont fucking work. dont ask twice)
Oh yeah, don't use my form of language in channel or you will get berated... I don't necessarily agree with the language criteria, but I generally honour it in channel. If you don't honour it too, you will get your butt kicked one way or another.
The washington post says/. is full of robust yeastiness. I had a g/f with that problem... I'm not sure of the connection to/., but I'm sure it must mean something;)
You are, of course, correct. However, OSS doesnt suffer as much as the closed source community from time constraints. Sure, OSS maintainers are harrassed by users for new versions and bug fixes, but in general, the maintainer's livelihood doesn't depend on releasing a new version. This gives OSS, in it's current form, a much bigger chance to produce better maintained code that most closed source software, as long as the oportunity to do so is utilized.
Mind you, maintainers will probably have to put up with a lot of crap from users while they reorganize and reimpliment;)
While I agree with everything you said, a reply to your post's title is probably worth a comment.
It took you a long time to figure out. You were probably doing it instinctively before figuring out whatever everyone else's problem with maintenance was. Fair enough. I, on the other hand, learned proper maintenance through a gradual progression, and during that journey learned to recognize the shortcomings (and strong points) on others when it came to maintenance and design.
However, I think the significance of this paper is that it actually addresses some solutions to problems rather than just explaining the problems, and thereby, hopefully, promoting and explaining useful maintenance and design techniques.
This article is one of the few times that I've seen this. For example, I've read "Anti-Paterns", which is sited in the article, and quite frankly, I was rather less than impressed. It points out problems, but it's only suggestion, usually, is "rewrite". Not much of a help to the newcomer to programming. On the other hand, anyone that has been coding for any length of time, will find the symptoms that this book points out, and (obvious) solutions, as a waste of reading time.
The posted article, however, I thot made some useful points through analogy that I think might actually help some newcomers to programming understand some of the issues. I particularly was impressed by the section on "shearing". The project I'm currently working on deals with this issue particularly well, and I've used the concept since (unfortunately, I didnt design the system, and therefore cant take credit for it's chameleon-like design). This article relates the issue of shearing quite well.
So, in summary, [0] you are right, [1] this article is important because it actually shows *why* you are right.
Now, if I can just get management to read this and agree. (yeah, right)
Since yours was the most sane reply to my post, I'll tack my reply to the end of yours.
I think you are missing my point. The original article is about getting vendors to support linux distros other than redhat. Therefore, we are talking about companies porting their *own* software to different distros. This fool, "mr", is suggesting that it's ok to advocate distro compatability at source level, but for every other platform that wants linux binary compatibility, we should advocate that app vendors, not the OS vendors, should provide compatibility for linux binaries.
My point is that companies providing linux applications *clearly* have the source to their own programs, and we should be advocating that they port their software to as many platforms as possible. We should *not* be advocating that they port to some non-existant "linux compatibility binary standard".
Yes, I checked that site that mr quoted. There's almost nothing there. It hardly qualifies as defining a standard of any kind.
Look, I have nothing against solaris, bsd, or sco (I dont deal with sco, but I do work with solaris and bsd), but whining that they should be binary compatible with linux is like whining that cp/m should be binary compatible with linux.
Better, yet, should we be of the opinion that windos should be binary compatible with linux? Nonesense. You know *that* will never happen either. Much better to impress upon vendors the importance of cross-platform source compatibility. Even if they dont release the source, at least their binaries will be useable on a variety of platforms. Yes, I realize that they will have to distribute multiple binaries (one for each platform), but tough luck. That's what closed source distribution is all about.
As for the bit about compute farms, that's a bit of a red herring. Developement houses can easily cut deals to get cheap machines with most of the OS vendors. Sure, it doesnt help the dude banging away in his basement, but that's not really what we are talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
I buy a fair number of CD releases, and also occasionally purchase t-shirts from OSS organizations. I have no problem with forking over cash for the CDs, even if they are coasters after a few months. These folks must be making a better return on their CD sales than on things like t-shirts, since the cost of making CDs is chicken-feed. Buying the CD, I suspect, it a much more direct way of supporting folks like OpenBSD, Debian, etc.
:)
Besides, I'm a bit of a completionist, so I like collecting the pre-fab CDs
Mind you, if you are a student or somesuch, I can see the value in getting the freebee.
I've bought at least one cd per release since 2.4 and that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
:)
I've had the 2.8 CD on preorder since the release date was announced. Now, that's warm fuzzies.
Well, I could understand this story being posted under the heading of "toys" (for lego) or "star wars" ... but is there a good reason it's posted under the topic "games"? Did someone forget to hit the "preview" button? :)
Then I guess it's a good thing that I only get a couple hours of sleep each night, right? Maybe that's why I don't have carple tunnel syndrom yet ... :)
The calming blue colour was chosen in the hopes of mellowing out all the Soccer Mom's that were expected to otherwise beat the crap out of each other while jockeying for position to buy "little Johny's" Christmas present from Santa.
DHCP makes you safe? That's fairly humorous. As soon as you log onto IRC, some script kiddie has already done an /nslookup on you and started scanning your box looking for holes with some warscript.
... you do *not* want to leave your front door wide open.
I'm currently running an OpenBSD firewall and am pretty happy with it, altho my linux firewall previously did a fine job. The point is to do *something* to keep out the riff-raff.
Sure, the heavy-hitters won't be bothering to crack most DHCP boxes, but their are plenty of kiddies out there that are itching to crack *any* box and make a mess of it.
The Internet isn't some little town where you know everyone
There are plenty of people that like to embark on such risky endeavours as base-jumping. The "Xtreme" crowd might be willing to pay top dollar to tool around with one of these things in remote areas.
Having said that, I think you are probably right about day-to-day personal transportation. I doubt too many governments would allow the average human to cruise around downtown in one of these things.
They're doing it for the children!!!!
*cough* *cough* *cough*
I think this guy must be trying to get a job at Sony.
His "art" Looks Like Barf.
I was never much of a PacMan fan, so I won't claim to speak for players of that game, but certainly I and my friends would get some decent adrenaline buzzes off games from that era. Remember Robotron, or Defender? Remember when you were just getting good enough to get into the nastier screens in those games?
... the rest of the arcade just didn't exist.
:)
I recall being severely pumped after managing to get out of some hairy situations in those games. I'm sure many PacMan players must have had similar experiences. All those games had about the same quality of graphics, and they were all great games to play. Once you got going, you were immersed
In fact, if you jump ahead in the time stream, DOOM is another good example of this. The graphic rendering is pretty cheezy by todays standards, but it's still a damn good game. And really, I don't consider DOOM's progeny to be much better as games: slightly more complicated and much better graphics. Not really any better as games tho, IMO.
Now that I've gotten started, I can imagine decent arguments for more esoteric notions like M:TG, AD&D, and chess.
It's the quality of the game that makes it an immersive and long lasting game, not the graphics.
That said, if the graphics/playing-pieces/whatever looked like they were made by a 3rd grader, I probably wouldn't play the game in the first place
... this is largely crap. Not that it doesnt work, but the point is more that so many species become extinct every year, we can hardly keep track of them, little less keep up with reproducing them. Not to mention that this doesnt cover all the plant life that becomes extinct.
This is nteresting, and in some way good news, but this is hardly a good reason to stop worrying about destroying natural resources.
I think Lucas has been taking lessons from the IOC. :P
export restrictions make it tough to get OpenBSD if you're in the US (Which is why they are based in Canada)
:)
Sorry, but you got that bit wrong. The fact that Theo distributes out of Canada makes it easy for the entire world to get OpenBSD. The only problem with exports is shipping encryption code out of the US. Although, it seems to me that some of those restrictions have recently been weakened. Not sure about that last bit though.
Try it yourself. Order up a copy from the website. If you live in the States or Canada you should have your very own copy in about a week. No hassles involved
Last time I wrote to him, his email address was rusty@kuro5hin.org
In case you are a bit confused at this point, Dylan Griffiths' K5 nick is "Inoshiro", not "Iroshiro". Sorry, Emet. Erm, I mean, Emmett :)
I live in Houston. The A/C in my appartment drowns out almost any other noise. Hell, to watch TV I have to punch up the volume on my stereo to retarded levels just to to hear it over the A/C fan. Quiet computers are low on the list of "must haves" at the moment. If I ever move back to Canada that might change.
When I got my CD-RW, not long ago, I did installations of various linux and BSD distributions on my laptop, just because I could.
:)
If you have never done a Mandrake install before, when you finally do you will wig out. Not only is it amazingly intelligent and simple, it *looks* really cool. I lent a copy of it to a friend at work, and the next day he came to my office positively freaking out about it.
They've done a nice job with 7.1 in general, particularly if you are into having things look ultra fancy (I'm not - I run blackbox on redhat and debian machines). I ran Mandrake for about a week until the debian folks fixed the pcmcia stuff that was, at the time, broken in potato. I was relatively impressed with Mandrake.
Install it. I think you'll have fun, even if it is *way* too easy
It is a sad day
Moderators smoke bad crack
Damn, I got no points.
Silly slashdotter
Pike was a cripled captain
Don't you watch Star Trek?
(disclaimer: i'm also an op on #linuxhelp (hi Vox!))
... I don't necessarily agree with the language criteria, but I generally honour it in channel. If you don't honour it too, you will get your butt kicked one way or another.
:)
Vox is right, a bit of patience pays off. Not only is this because of working hours, but because of time zone issues. We have ops who live in the UK, and ops that live in New Zealand. Don't give up if you dont get what you need right away. We do give a shit, and we do try to do our best when we are around.
If you are in North America, evening hours are generally the best time to find someone with a clue, op or otherwise.
I would also suggest, especially if you have a particularly strange problem (i.e. you've read the relevant HOWTO, manpages, and info pages, and it still isn't covered or it still doesnt make sense) Look for these folks:
Vox
Kuma
longword
Spamaps
(longword being the channel guru. if longword says it won't work, it wont fucking work. dont ask twice)
Oh yeah, don't use my form of language in channel or you will get berated
Happy linuxing
The washington post says /. is full of robust yeastiness. I had a g/f with that problem ... I'm not sure of the connection to /., but I'm sure it must mean something ;)
You are, of course, correct. However, OSS doesnt suffer as much as the closed source community from time constraints. Sure, OSS maintainers are harrassed by users for new versions and bug fixes, but in general, the maintainer's livelihood doesn't depend on releasing a new version. This gives OSS, in it's current form, a much bigger chance to produce better maintained code that most closed source software, as long as the oportunity to do so is utilized.
;)
Mind you, maintainers will probably have to put up with a lot of crap from users while they reorganize and reimpliment
While I agree with everything you said, a reply to your post's title is probably worth a comment.
It took you a long time to figure out. You were probably doing it instinctively before figuring out whatever everyone else's problem with maintenance was. Fair enough. I, on the other hand, learned proper maintenance through a gradual progression, and during that journey learned to recognize the shortcomings (and strong points) on others when it came to maintenance and design.
However, I think the significance of this paper is that it actually addresses some solutions to problems rather than just explaining the problems, and thereby, hopefully, promoting and explaining useful maintenance and design techniques.
This article is one of the few times that I've seen this. For example, I've read "Anti-Paterns", which is sited in the article, and quite frankly, I was rather less than impressed. It points out problems, but it's only suggestion, usually, is "rewrite". Not much of a help to the newcomer to programming. On the other hand, anyone that has been coding for any length of time, will find the symptoms that this book points out, and (obvious) solutions, as a waste of reading time.
The posted article, however, I thot made some useful points through analogy that I think might actually help some newcomers to programming understand some of the issues. I particularly was impressed by the section on "shearing". The project I'm currently working on deals with this issue particularly well, and I've used the concept since (unfortunately, I didnt design the system, and therefore cant take credit for it's chameleon-like design). This article relates the issue of shearing quite well.
So, in summary, [0] you are right, [1] this article is important because it actually shows *why* you are right.
Now, if I can just get management to read this and agree. (yeah, right)
Cheers.
Since yours was the most sane reply to my post, I'll tack my reply to the end of yours.
I think you are missing my point. The original article is about getting vendors to support linux distros other than redhat. Therefore, we are talking about companies porting their *own* software to different distros. This fool, "mr", is suggesting that it's ok to advocate distro compatability at source level, but for every other platform that wants linux binary compatibility, we should advocate that app vendors, not the OS vendors, should provide compatibility for linux binaries.
My point is that companies providing linux applications *clearly* have the source to their own programs, and we should be advocating that they port their software to as many platforms as possible. We should *not* be advocating that they port to some non-existant "linux compatibility binary standard".
Yes, I checked that site that mr quoted. There's almost nothing there. It hardly qualifies as defining a standard of any kind.
Look, I have nothing against solaris, bsd, or sco (I dont deal with sco, but I do work with solaris and bsd), but whining that they should be binary compatible with linux is like whining that cp/m should be binary compatible with linux.
Better, yet, should we be of the opinion that windos should be binary compatible with linux? Nonesense. You know *that* will never happen either. Much better to impress upon vendors the importance of cross-platform source compatibility. Even if they dont release the source, at least their binaries will be useable on a variety of platforms. Yes, I realize that they will have to distribute multiple binaries (one for each platform), but tough luck. That's what closed source distribution is all about.
As for the bit about compute farms, that's a bit of a red herring. Developement houses can easily cut deals to get cheap machines with most of the OS vendors. Sure, it doesnt help the dude banging away in his basement, but that's not really what we are talking about.