I'm not sure what kind of engineer you are, but software engineers (the type of people who are always ranting about how cool OOP is and who would never dare to write code in C) probably share your connotation of the word "hack."
The reason hackers think differently is because the reason that "clever hacks" are cool is that they are tend to be anything other than obvious and probably take a bit of thought to understand what's going on and why it works so well. Of course, software engineers don't give such code much respect because of the fact that their workings aren't completely transparent; this makes it more difficult to maintain because your average "programmer drone" isn't going to be able to comprehend it.
On the other hand, lots of hacks do sometimes tend to be overly specific. For instance, someone might write a program that's blazingly fast, full of lots of extremely cleverly written code. But, if they eventually want to add a new feature, it could involve a total rewrite.
Has anyone else noticed the animosity between hackers and engineers? Hackers typically value being able to sit down and code anything -- QUICKLY. Engineers value being able to stand up at a whiteboard and diagram and make EXTREMYLY insightful design choices. Hackers typically hate people who think about coding more than they actually code. Engineers tend to hate hackers who will code for days without thinking about how it fits into a project or how it will be maintained after they leave. (anyone who has tried to add features to 10 year old code written by an especially brilliant hacker has probably felt the pain of realizing that all those clever hacks are useless since everything will need to be rewritten to make it work with more modern systems.)
Anyhow, that rant was probably off topic -- we were talking about whether or not to dump the word hacker in favor of a newer term. I think not. Hacking is a very important part of our folklore. Also, although most people who call themselves hackers these days are nothing but "script kiddies," hackers have also always been interested in getting around obsticles. There will always be a (small) subset of true hackers who also happen to bend a few laws every now and then.
By the way, is there anyone here who think that the kind of person who will spend his/her free time trying to break copy protection schemes really has much in common with a w4r3z d00d? Back in the day (remember BBSes?) it was rare to find a person who ran a w4r3z board who also knew how to get around copy protection. The "crackers" who could do this were usually far more interested in the challenge of the crack than the game itself. I used to crack alot of games, but the only reason I even dealt with w4r3z d00ds was so that I could get my hands on the newest games so that I could be the first to figure out how to crack it. Hell, cracking a game is much more fun than actually playing them:)
Anyhow, I guess my point is mainly that the media's depiction of hackers isn't entirely incorrect. Hackers will always be people who enjoy solving difficult problems and getting rid of limitations. I, for one, would be pretty upset of the word "hacker" was thrown out. (wouldn't that kind of like that cliche having to do with a baby and some bath water?)
Does anyone think it might make sense to use make SGML the new standard format for manpages? It seems to solve nearly all of the problems associated with both troff and texinfo. With SGML, you can write manpages to be displayed as hypertext (convert it to HTML) on multiple pages or one long page (for searching). You can convert it to TeX/LaTex for attractively printed documents. I think I've even seen a filter to which convert from SGML to troff for use in a normal man page (I don't know if anyone's written anything to convert troff to SGML). Is this the kind of thing that you'd need to submit to POSIX if you wanted it to be considered for a standard?
I've heard some rumors that IBM had been building custom machines for the NSA that used all SRAM instead of DRAM. I can imagine that those things would be pretty darn fast... and expen$ive...
Why is it that EVERY time a benchmark comes out which claims that Linux doesn't perform as well as other OSes, people claim that it was because of biased testing? Perhaps people had justification for bashing Mindcraft's tests, but this evaluation seems to have been done very well.
Even Linus says that, thus far, Linux had been developed with stability and maintainance in mind, not necessarily raw performance. Also, for the most part, linux developers haven't had the resources to spend on enterprise class servers for use in performance testing and coding. This is probably why Linux always seems to be the best performer on relatively inexpensive machines -- it has been developed and tuned almost exclusively on them.
I think that most people agree that Linux has a long way to go before it will be the best (performance-wise). The fact that is is GPLed will certainly help, but we need people (companies) with the resources to spend on developing Linux with a goal of performance. It will probably take some time before linux coders stop playing catch-up (i.e. trying to support all the devices and functionality of other operating systems) and start working hard on optimizations.
Frankly, I'm not even sure that a "bazaar" model of development can support this goal. In many cases, when you are writing code (esp. systems code) with a goal of squeezing the best possibly performance out of it, some of the most effective optimizations are nearly incomprehensible to people who haven't spent months examining all of the subtle interactions which make the optimization so effective. Since I doubt that Linus want's a kernel filled with magic that only a few wizards understand, such optimizations may never make it into the kernel (unless the kernel forks). These are the things which turn into debugging nightmares later on. I'll bet that both the reason for the speed of NT compared to Linux as well as its notorious instability are because of this.
Incidentally, no flames please. I've been running Linux exclusively on my machine for a couple years now; that means none of that "well, I still boot Windows occasionally to run games" crap either. I just think that we should takes examine these published benchmarks for valid points and see what we can to do improve our scores. This doesn't necessarily mean benchmark specific tuning (which is what most companies do) either. Its only that just screaming "FUD!!!" doesn't accomplish anything. Hopefully, in a couple years, Linux will be so ripped that it will be difficult for someone to de-tune Linux to make other OSes appear better.
Well, we have 2 x86 chip makers now, but we should be getting AT LEAST 2 more pretty soon (Rise and Transmeta).
And anyway, this doesn't really matter THAT much. x86 is nearly dead and you can run linux on just about any chip you want. Merced (intel) and Mckinley (HP) will be out in a couple of years. Eventually, you might even see some of those Elbrus (sp?) chips around here. And maybe Compaq will start to drop prices for the Alpha:).
Are there any promising chips that I missed? And don't even bother mentioning the *Sparc or MIPS....
(Off topic) Open Source Software is one thing, but wouldn't it be great if chip manufacturers would _finally_ be a bit more open about their designs, 'Open Datasheets'? Pffw...
Somehow, I think that's probably a bad idea. Open Source works well because compilers are cheap (free for most of us) and its easy for just about anyone to write new software. Also, people can still make money adding additional features to Open Source projects for companies that are willing to pay for it.
But, at least until chip fabrication is cheap enough for a small business to afford, the only thing "open source" chips would do is eliminate the jobs of lots of computer engineers or cut their salaries in half... and you know what that means... more engineers going back to school for their MBAs!
If kids see a big hunk of metal in the shape of Alan Turing, perhaps they'd be intrigued enough to find out some more information about the guy. If you spark interest in the right kids, you just might end up with better candidates for college scholarships than without the statue. Just a thought.
Over the past few days, people here on/. have been sympathizing with the kids who murdered 13 people in Columbine on account that they were systematically ridiculed because they were geeks. Some posters have said that the massacre could have been prevented had fellow students been more compassionate towards them. I'm really not sure I agree.
Do you really think that the primary reason for the ostracism of these two kids was because they were especially intelligent or geeky? How many geeks do you know of who are car theives? How many Nazi geeks do you know of? Even if you knew a car-stealing-racist-Nazi-geek, do you think you would be especially compassionate towards them? I try to be compassionate to everyone, but for kids such as these, I don't think I could even muster that. There had been reports of these kids walking down halls yelling "nigger" at any black person they saw. If I was faced with this (I am black), I have little doubt that I would be downright hostile towards them. I was ridiculed for many things back in highschool, but whenever someone insulted me because of my race, I could always count on 99 percent of the rest of the school to stand behind me in my defense. Although the students of Columebine HS probably regret it now, I'll bet that many of them acted similarly.
I seriously doubt that these kids were really geeks. I find it pretty odd that so many of you here consider them as such merely because they played Doom and had a home page on AOL; even my mom has played a few video games and is working on a homepage on AOL -- of course her page isn't likely to be filled with death threats, pentagrams, and/or swasticas. So many people here have objected to the fact that the schools are now (after the killing) "cracking down" on geeks because they think they may have homicidal/suicidal tendencies. I'm sure I don't have to remind any of you here, but geeks tend to have FAR more self resect than that. Despite the ridicule geeks receive daily, most geeks I know carry a huge amount of dignity with them; some are even a little egotistical. As far as I can tell, these killers hated both themselves and everyone around them. A person who is confident in their ability to eventually succeed isn't going to shoot up their schoolmates and kill themselves. If you want the schools (both the administration and other students) to stop scapegoating geeks, you should emphatically remind them that geeks have absolutely NOTHING in common with someone who is capable of amassing a stockpile of weapons, walking into a crowded room, and shooting anyone present.
These two killers have been described by other students as being "freaks." Only the media has tried to portray them as "geeks." Which account do you believe?
If I'm not mistaken, the NPL also requires that the source code of any derived products be made available. And yet... I don't see code anywhere on their web site. What's up?
SAP is the second Largest Software company in the world, right behind IBM
Umm... Maybe I've missed something, but I could have sworn that Microsoft was the largest software company in the world. SAP *used* to be no. 2, but (at least according to their TV adds) I think that Oracle has the number 2 spot now. That would put SAP at number three, if even that high.
And IBM? I really don't know where they fall in the Top Ten List of software companies. I'll check with Letterman...
I hate to disappoint you, but the Sparc chips SUCK. Can you say "Register Windows?" At least Intel chips seem to scale to faster clock speeds pretty well.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure what kind of engineer you are, but software engineers (the type of people who are always ranting about how cool OOP is and who would never dare to write code in C) probably share your connotation of the word "hack."
:)
The reason hackers think differently is because the reason that "clever hacks" are cool is that they are tend to be anything other than obvious and probably take a bit of thought to understand what's going on and why it works so well. Of course, software engineers don't give such code much respect because of the fact that their workings aren't completely transparent; this makes it more difficult to maintain because your average "programmer drone" isn't going to be able to comprehend it.
On the other hand, lots of hacks do sometimes tend to be overly specific. For instance, someone might write a program that's blazingly fast, full of lots of extremely cleverly written code. But, if they eventually want to add a new feature, it could involve a total rewrite.
Has anyone else noticed the animosity between hackers and engineers? Hackers typically value being able to sit down and code anything -- QUICKLY. Engineers value being able to stand up at a whiteboard and diagram and make EXTREMYLY insightful design choices. Hackers typically hate people who think about coding more than they actually code. Engineers tend to hate hackers who will code for days without thinking about how it fits into a project or how it will be maintained after they leave. (anyone who has tried to add features to 10 year old code written by an especially brilliant hacker has probably felt the pain of realizing that all those clever hacks are useless since everything will need to be rewritten to make it work with more modern systems.)
Anyhow, that rant was probably off topic -- we were talking about whether or not to dump the word hacker in favor of a newer term. I think not. Hacking is a very important part of our folklore. Also, although most people who call themselves hackers these days are nothing but "script kiddies," hackers have also always been interested in getting around obsticles. There will always be a (small) subset of true hackers who also happen to bend a few laws every now and then.
By the way, is there anyone here who think that the kind of person who will spend his/her free time trying to break copy protection schemes really has much in common with a w4r3z d00d? Back in the day (remember BBSes?) it was rare to find a person who ran a w4r3z board who also knew how to get around copy protection. The "crackers" who could do this were usually far more interested in the challenge of the crack than the game itself. I used to crack alot of games, but the only reason I even dealt with w4r3z d00ds was so that I could get my hands on the newest games so that I could be the first to figure out how to crack it. Hell, cracking a game is much more fun than actually playing them
Anyhow, I guess my point is mainly that the media's depiction of hackers isn't entirely incorrect. Hackers will always be people who enjoy solving difficult problems and getting rid of limitations. I, for one, would be pretty upset of the word "hacker" was thrown out. (wouldn't that kind of like that cliche having to do with a baby and some bath water?)
Does anyone think it might make sense to use make SGML the new standard format for manpages? It seems to solve nearly all of the problems associated with both troff and texinfo.
With SGML, you can write manpages to be displayed as hypertext (convert it to HTML) on multiple pages or one long page (for searching). You can convert it to TeX/LaTex for attractively printed documents. I think I've even seen a filter to which convert from SGML to troff for use in a normal man page (I don't know if anyone's written anything to convert troff to SGML).
Is this the kind of thing that you'd need to submit to POSIX if you wanted it to be considered for a standard?
I've heard some rumors that IBM had been building custom machines for the NSA that used all SRAM instead of DRAM. I can imagine that those things would be pretty darn fast... and expen$ive...
If you want to map a memory region to a file, check out the manpage for mmap(2).
Why is it that EVERY time a benchmark comes out which claims that Linux doesn't perform as well as other OSes, people claim that it was because of biased testing? Perhaps people had justification for bashing Mindcraft's tests, but this evaluation seems to have been done very well.
Even Linus says that, thus far, Linux had been developed with stability and maintainance in mind, not necessarily raw performance. Also, for the most part, linux developers haven't had the resources to spend on enterprise class servers for use in performance testing and coding. This is probably why Linux always seems to be the best performer on relatively inexpensive machines -- it has been developed and tuned almost exclusively on them.
I think that most people agree that Linux has a long way to go before it will be the best (performance-wise). The fact that is is GPLed will certainly help, but we need people (companies) with the resources to spend on developing Linux with a goal of performance. It will probably take some time before linux coders stop playing catch-up (i.e. trying to support all the devices and functionality of other operating systems) and start working hard on optimizations.
Frankly, I'm not even sure that a "bazaar" model of development can support this goal. In many cases, when you are writing code (esp. systems code) with a goal of squeezing the best possibly performance out of it, some of the most effective optimizations are nearly incomprehensible to people who haven't spent months examining all of the subtle interactions which make the optimization so effective. Since I doubt that Linus want's a kernel filled with magic that only a few wizards understand, such optimizations may never make it into the kernel (unless the kernel forks). These are the things which turn into debugging nightmares later on. I'll bet that both the reason for the speed of NT compared to Linux as well as its notorious instability are because of this.
Incidentally, no flames please. I've been running Linux exclusively on my machine for a couple years now; that means none of that "well, I still boot Windows occasionally to run games" crap either. I just think that we should takes examine these published benchmarks for valid points and see what we can to do improve our scores. This doesn't necessarily mean benchmark specific tuning (which is what most companies do) either. Its only that just screaming "FUD!!!" doesn't accomplish anything. Hopefully, in a couple years, Linux will be so ripped that it will be difficult for someone to de-tune Linux to make other OSes appear better.
-nooM
Well, we have 2 x86 chip makers now, but we should be getting AT LEAST 2 more pretty soon (Rise and Transmeta).
:).
And anyway, this doesn't really matter THAT much. x86 is nearly dead and you can run linux on just about any chip you want. Merced (intel) and Mckinley (HP) will be out in a couple of years. Eventually, you might even see some of those Elbrus (sp?) chips around here. And maybe Compaq will start to drop prices for the Alpha
Are there any promising chips that I missed? And don't even bother mentioning the *Sparc or MIPS....
Somehow, I think that's probably a bad idea. Open Source works well because compilers are cheap (free for most of us) and its easy for just about anyone to write new software. Also, people can still make money adding additional features to Open Source projects for companies that are willing to pay for it.
But, at least until chip fabrication is cheap enough for a small business to afford, the only thing "open source" chips would do is eliminate the jobs of lots of computer engineers or cut their salaries in half... and you know what that means... more engineers going back to school for their MBAs!
If kids see a big hunk of metal in the shape of Alan Turing, perhaps they'd be intrigued enough to find out some more information about the guy. If you spark interest in the right kids, you just might end up with better candidates for college scholarships than without the statue. Just a thought.
Over the past few days, people here on
Do you really think that the primary reason for the ostracism of these two kids was because they were especially intelligent or geeky? How many geeks do you know of who are car theives? How many Nazi geeks do you know of? Even if you knew a car-stealing-racist-Nazi-geek, do you think you would be especially compassionate towards them? I try to be compassionate to everyone, but for kids such as these, I don't think I could even muster that. There had been reports of these kids walking down halls yelling "nigger" at any black person they saw. If I was faced with this (I am black), I have little doubt that I would be downright hostile towards them. I was ridiculed for many things back in highschool, but whenever someone insulted me because of my race, I could always count on 99 percent of the rest of the school to stand behind me in my defense. Although the students of Columebine HS probably regret it now, I'll bet that many of them acted similarly.
I seriously doubt that these kids were really geeks. I find it pretty odd that so many of you here consider them as such merely because they played Doom and had a home page on AOL; even my mom has played a few video games and is working on a homepage on AOL -- of course her page isn't likely to be filled with death threats, pentagrams, and/or swasticas. So many people here have objected to the fact that the schools are now (after the killing) "cracking down" on geeks because they think they may have homicidal/suicidal tendencies. I'm sure I don't have to remind any of you here, but geeks tend to have FAR more self resect than that. Despite the ridicule geeks receive daily, most geeks I know carry a huge amount of dignity with them; some are even a little egotistical. As far as I can tell, these killers hated both themselves and everyone around them. A person who is confident in their ability to eventually succeed isn't going to shoot up their schoolmates and kill themselves. If you want the schools (both the administration and other students) to stop scapegoating geeks, you should emphatically remind them that geeks have absolutely NOTHING in common with someone who is capable of amassing a stockpile of weapons, walking into a crowded room, and shooting anyone present.
These two killers have been described by other students as being "freaks." Only the media has tried to portray them as "geeks." Which account do you believe?
If I'm not mistaken, the NPL also requires that the source code of any derived products be made available. And yet... I don't see code anywhere on their web site. What's up?
I can't believe they got SPRITES to work under X11. This is some incredible technology.
Umm... Maybe I've missed something, but I could have sworn that Microsoft was the largest software company in the world. SAP *used* to be no. 2, but (at least according to their TV adds) I think that Oracle has the number 2 spot now. That would put SAP at number three, if even that high.
And IBM? I really don't know where they fall in the Top Ten List of software companies. I'll check with Letterman...
I hate to disappoint you, but the Sparc chips SUCK. Can you say "Register Windows?" At least Intel chips seem to scale to faster clock speeds pretty well.