Personally, I was hoping that Slashdot would be the one place I would have a remote chance of avoiding this. Truth is that I mourn every day. I mourn the loss of Palestinian and Israeli lives. I mourn the regularly scheduled genocides in Angola. I mourn the more than 6000 "unintended" civilian deaths during the bombing of Afganistan. I mourn the millions of people all over the world dying of starvation or filthy water or lack of basic medical attention. And I honestly don't see why the fact that it happened in NYC makes it more important. Maybe someone can enlighten me. These people get their names read on TV all over the world and the others just simply die while people turn a blind eye. Makes me sick, actually. And when another terror attack takes place, I won't really be surprised. But enjoy your TV programs...
He's talking about the Mac OS 1.0 that came out in 1984 with the first MAC.
I understand that. But the sentence: "You want Unix but you want it to work just like an operating system designed in 1984?" seems to imply that he believes UNIX is more modern than a 1984 system. Otherwise, his point doesn't make much sense.
We all know that UNIX was around long before that.
Do we? That's good to hear. It seems that most people these days think that Linux was not only the origin of UNIX but of the entire Free Software movement as well.
You want Unix but you want it to work just like an operating system designed in 1984?
Umm... UNIX was around long before 1984. In fact, the UNIX you see in MacOS X today isn't much different (on the surface anyway) than what I was using around that time. Most of my code still compiles with little modification. Read some history people.
Thus, Juliet wasn't asking where Romeo was, but why did he have to exist
"Wherefore art thou Romeo?" is not really asking why he exists but rather "Why are you Romeo?". The problem with their relationship was that the love of her life belonged to the family of her father's enemy. Specifically, that he was Romeo.
So that I'm not totally off topic, I will suggest that a more appropriate title for this article might have been "Whither Hypercard?"
As seen on cryptome.org, on the 24th of this month there will be a public meeting of the Information Systems Technical Advisory Committee (ISTAC). One of the topics on the agenda is "changes to the mass-market encryption regulation". Anyone have any insight into this?
Wow. No flame intended, but I never expected to hear Knuth called "this guy". For those that don't know the name, here are a few others you might want to check out: Turing, Minsky, Church, Shannon, Chomsky. Of course, these are just the "theory" guys and I am sure others will add to that list. Seems to me any geek should have at least a Readers Digest knowledge of who these people are and what they've done for us.
Spelunking is a term popularized by the media and usually used by people that don't seriously venture underground. Caving is the preferred term. Since people that use the term spelunking are often found yelling for help with a burned out flashlight or at the bottom of a pit unable to climb the rope out, the difference in the two terms is generally illustrated by noting that "cavers rescue spelunkers".
"A lot of it comes down to the fact that consumer just don't feel secure using the Internet for their critical transactions," Douglas said. "Gates has realized that unless trust can be built into these systems, the ultimate abilities of the Internet are never going to be realized."
I don't see what any of this has to do with people trusting the internet for transactions. How can I trust my transactions any more than I can trust it now with an SSL based system? Ok, so under Palladium I would know that my Netscape binary has been reviewed and was trusted. But I pretty much believe that already. That's not the reason people don't trust internet transactions.
One thing I find interesting about this proposal is that it requires some level of code review before release of any software. All source would need to be submitted to a third party to ensure that the code can be trusted. That sounds like quite a mess to me.
I think the biggest challenge you face is changing the corporate culture. I was in a similiar situation a while back and moved into project management. And, you know, it just didn't matter much because the requests for the impossible still kept coming from above. The only difference was that I was responsible for delivering them. A company needs to have a culture of being realistic and that has to come from the top. Without that, I think it's unlikely you're going to change much in that respect.
On the other hand, the one thing you can change by becoming a project manager is making the lives of the people under you better. You can deflect the blame a bit more and give people the breaks and recognition they deserve. And that is certainly worth something.
In short, the closer you get to the metal and the more familiar you are with the code that is executing, the better your chances of producing error free programs. Takes longer to market, but...
Amen. I used to work in a Not Invented Here shop and we were heavily criticized during an outside review for having that attitude. Since then I've moved on to contract work in a bank where all they do it build on top of other software and I've got to say it's a total mess. Lots of finger pointing and no one finding solutions to what should be simple problems.
I have to disagree with your comment about it taking longer to roll your own, though. In my experience here, I've noted that it can take more than 400% longer to deal with other people's code due to 1) the learning curve and 2) the inability to get help when you find a bug. I've often thrown away code I'm supposed to use and written it from scratch to make a deadline.
I know this isn't the way it's supposed to be. People may argue that "well if it was written well then you wouldn't have that problem". The problem with that argument is that I live in the real world where it usually isn't written well. There are a hell of a lot of bad programmers out there and some of them are even writing APIs. There are some libraries I can depend on but most I can't.
I have also found that anti-aliased fonts are difficult to read. I think the reason is partly the "fuzziness" that you talk about. But the letters also look dimmer. Since the color is spread out over more pixels, there are fewer pixels that are actually solid black. Most pixels become some shade of grey and are harder for the eye to pick up. I am leaving it turned on for a while to see if I get used to it. But it's not a clear advantage.
Many years ago, as a university sys admin I remember getting a call from the music department for help. Their NeXT machine wouldn't boot at all. They had been "cleaning up" the disk space and - you guessed it - they removed that big "vmunix" file.
and government publications cannot be copyrighted. Isn't that the case?
Maybe if you're a pinko commie. But in America, we even have laws that are copyrighted. That's right. There are laws that you can't even publish on a web site without a license. God bless us every one.
Ah, memories. Back when C64's were actually modern, I attached a hardware UART to the bus and used it to drive a ham radio packet modem (at a whopping 1200 baud). I wrote enough of the IP layer in hand coded 6502 assembly language to get ping and basic routing working. Then I pinged our BSD 4.3 Tahoe machine at the university five miles away. This was in the mid-80s or so. Unfortunately, I never had time to continue up the TCP/IP stack. Glad to see these guys pushing the limits of that little box.
My FAA license has no photo and there is really no need for one since police aren't actually stopping me in the sky asking for it. In any situation where I would be asked to provide the license, there is plenty of time for verification through other means.
The photo on a drivers license is used by a police officer on the street to determine whether the license you provide is actually yours. Since this is done in enormous volume, it makes sense that there is a fast and efficient way to authenticate it.
But I don't understand how facial recognition data is going to add anything to the verification process. And I'm not sure that the photo verification process even has any serious flaws as it is. The ONLY real use for this information is if it's shared among other agencies for uses unrelated to driving.
So all this "driving is a priviledge" stuff is pretty off base. What we are talking about here really has nothing at all to do with driving.
I see nothing in the original post that indicates that he literally pulled an 87.3 out of his ass. I'm not even sure how one would do that. I'm guessing you meant figuratively?
My sister works for a company that sends out a lot of junk mail with postage paid envelopes. She said that they regularly get bricks, plywood, etc, returned to them. But they have a deal with the post office which limits the amount of postage they have to pay per month. The post office (your tax dollars) picks up the tab for the rest. So your technique may not be as effective as one would imagine.
I've had similar reservations. That's why my money goes to The Planetary Society (www.planetary.org). They attempt to push the envelope by building real spacecraft.
Not sure I fully understand the problem but you might want to look at Continuus. It's too complex for small teams (2-3 people) but not bad once you cross the 10 people mark.
Changes in Continuus are grouped into tasks. So a task might be "add a back button to the browser". Each developer in the group checks out the baseline code and works on his tasks. This environment is then protected from anyone elses work. When a task is completed, it is checked in as a group of file changes but does NOT immediately go to other developers. Instead, a build manager comes along at some later time and merges the tasks and verifies that they pass some quality assurance tests. Only then are the tasks available to the rest of the programmers in the group.
It doesn't need to be as rigid as I've described here. For example, I can include your task in my development even before the build manager approves it. Or I don't have to update my environment with the new tasks even if the build manager has approved them.
But that's the basic philosophy. Essentially, separate the development and quality assurance into two different jobs. This keeps environments clean until you can trust them enough to move along.
It is "incredibly wrong" to assume that it requires a majority Christian population to have a Christmas holiday.
I didn't make that assumption. You just chose the definition of "holiday" to be days sponsored by the state. Is Rosh Hashana not a holiday to a Jew living in Switzerland because it is not sponsored by the Swiss government? And is Christmas a holiday for this person? I think he/she would strongly disagree with your interpretation.
What I find truly interesting about all this is not just that they are measuring the velocity changes (the acceleration) of the Cassini probe, but that after getting back the information of the forces at work, they will have to somehow determine exactly where the gravitational waves are coming from.
It's not clear from your post that you understand the difference between gravity and gravity waves. They are not going to measure the effect of gravity on Cassini (well, they're doing that, too, but that wasn't the point). They are going to measure the expansion/contraction of space between us and Cassini caused by gravity waves. Gravity waves are ripples in the fabric of space itself that are caused by, for example, black holes orbiting around each or some other interesting event involving gravity. Gravity and gravity waves are as different as electrons and radio waves.
enjoying what most in the world (especially in America) would consider "the Holidays"
I'll give you the "in America" part but the "most in the world" part is incredibly wrong. While Christianity is the dominant religion in the world, it is no where near half. Most in the world today were working and trying to earn enough to feed their families like any other day.
Why is it that people dislike change (read: progress) so much ?
While most of the complaints that the Perl rewrite is generating do imply that it is the change that people dislike, I don't think that's entirely true. What I think you're actually seeing is the complexity of the language coming back to haunt.
Perl programmers have always seemed to take an odd kind of macho pride in making syntax as cryptic as possible. And a lot of people have bought into this over the years. They dug in and struggled to learn to read and understand this stuff in order to earn the right to wear the "Real Perl Programmer" emblems on their jackets.
But now Larry wants to throw that all up in the air. His ideas are creative and academically fascinating. And if you've got the time, the motivation, and the smarts to keep up, it may in fact make your programming life easier.
But, you know, most people just want to be able to easily read, understand, and maintain code so they can collect their paychecks and go home to the family at night. And they're kind of stuck now because they put in all that "learning curve" time thinking it would get them ahead. They didn't realize they were joining an academic exercise. And now they're afraid of what they bought into.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I was hoping that Slashdot would be the one place I would have a remote chance of avoiding this. Truth is that I mourn every day. I mourn the loss of Palestinian and Israeli lives. I mourn the regularly scheduled genocides in Angola. I mourn the more than 6000 "unintended" civilian deaths during the bombing of Afganistan. I mourn the millions of people all over the world dying of starvation or filthy water or lack of basic medical attention. And I honestly don't see why the fact that it happened in NYC makes it more important. Maybe someone can enlighten me. These people get their names read on TV all over the world and the others just simply die while people turn a blind eye. Makes me sick, actually. And when another terror attack takes place, I won't really be surprised. But enjoy your TV programs...
Devon
Agreed. Unfortunately, that's not what the original poster said.
The cluebat belongs on your head-- thers is more to OSX than "Unix".
When did I say or imply that there wasn't? This is, in fact, why I use MacOS X rather than some other flavor.
Sigh. Is it really too much to ask that people actually read the thread they are replying to?
Devon
I understand that. But the sentence: "You want Unix but you want it to work just like an operating system designed in 1984?" seems to imply that he believes UNIX is more modern than a 1984 system. Otherwise, his point doesn't make much sense.
We all know that UNIX was around long before that.
Do we? That's good to hear. It seems that most people these days think that Linux was not only the origin of UNIX but of the entire Free Software movement as well.
Devon
Umm... UNIX was around long before 1984. In fact, the UNIX you see in MacOS X today isn't much different (on the surface anyway) than what I was using around that time. Most of my code still compiles with little modification. Read some history people.
Devon
I guess he forgot to add "... in America". You know, land of the free.
Devon
"Wherefore art thou Romeo?" is not really asking why he exists but rather "Why are you Romeo?". The problem with their relationship was that the love of her life belonged to the family of her father's enemy. Specifically, that he was Romeo.
So that I'm not totally off topic, I will suggest that a more appropriate title for this article might have been "Whither Hypercard?"
Devon
As seen on cryptome.org, on the 24th of this month there will be a public meeting of the Information Systems Technical Advisory Committee (ISTAC). One of the topics on the agenda is "changes to the mass-market encryption regulation". Anyone have any insight into this?
Devon
Wow. No flame intended, but I never expected to hear Knuth called "this guy". For those that don't know the name, here are a few others you might want to check out: Turing, Minsky, Church, Shannon, Chomsky. Of course, these are just the "theory" guys and I am sure others will add to that list. Seems to me any geek should have at least a Readers Digest knowledge of who these people are and what they've done for us.
Devon
Devon
I don't see what any of this has to do with people trusting the internet for transactions. How can I trust my transactions any more than I can trust it now with an SSL based system? Ok, so under Palladium I would know that my Netscape binary has been reviewed and was trusted. But I pretty much believe that already. That's not the reason people don't trust internet transactions.
One thing I find interesting about this proposal is that it requires some level of code review before release of any software. All source would need to be submitted to a third party to ensure that the code can be trusted. That sounds like quite a mess to me.
Devon
I think the biggest challenge you face is changing the corporate culture. I was in a similiar situation a while back and moved into project management. And, you know, it just didn't matter much because the requests for the impossible still kept coming from above. The only difference was that I was responsible for delivering them. A company needs to have a culture of being realistic and that has to come from the top. Without that, I think it's unlikely you're going to change much in that respect.
On the other hand, the one thing you can change by becoming a project manager is making the lives of the people under you better. You can deflect the blame a bit more and give people the breaks and recognition they deserve. And that is certainly worth something.
Devon
Amen. I used to work in a Not Invented Here shop and we were heavily criticized during an outside review for having that attitude. Since then I've moved on to contract work in a bank where all they do it build on top of other software and I've got to say it's a total mess. Lots of finger pointing and no one finding solutions to what should be simple problems.
I have to disagree with your comment about it taking longer to roll your own, though. In my experience here, I've noted that it can take more than 400% longer to deal with other people's code due to 1) the learning curve and 2) the inability to get help when you find a bug. I've often thrown away code I'm supposed to use and written it from scratch to make a deadline.
I know this isn't the way it's supposed to be. People may argue that "well if it was written well then you wouldn't have that problem". The problem with that argument is that I live in the real world where it usually isn't written well. There are a hell of a lot of bad programmers out there and some of them are even writing APIs. There are some libraries I can depend on but most I can't.
Devon
I have also found that anti-aliased fonts are difficult to read. I think the reason is partly the "fuzziness" that you talk about. But the letters also look dimmer. Since the color is spread out over more pixels, there are fewer pixels that are actually solid black. Most pixels become some shade of grey and are harder for the eye to pick up. I am leaving it turned on for a while to see if I get used to it. But it's not a clear advantage.
Devon
Many years ago, as a university sys admin I remember getting a call from the music department for help. Their NeXT machine wouldn't boot at all. They had been "cleaning up" the disk space and - you guessed it - they removed that big "vmunix" file.
Devon
Maybe if you're a pinko commie. But in America, we even have laws that are copyrighted. That's right. There are laws that you can't even publish on a web site without a license. God bless us every one.
Devon
Ah, memories. Back when C64's were actually modern, I attached a hardware UART to the bus and used it to drive a ham radio packet modem (at a whopping 1200 baud). I wrote enough of the IP layer in hand coded 6502 assembly language to get ping and basic routing working. Then I pinged our BSD 4.3 Tahoe machine at the university five miles away. This was in the mid-80s or so. Unfortunately, I never had time to continue up the TCP/IP stack. Glad to see these guys pushing the limits of that little box.
Devon
My FAA license has no photo and there is really no need for one since police aren't actually stopping me in the sky asking for it. In any situation where I would be asked to provide the license, there is plenty of time for verification through other means.
The photo on a drivers license is used by a police officer on the street to determine whether the license you provide is actually yours. Since this is done in enormous volume, it makes sense that there is a fast and efficient way to authenticate it.
But I don't understand how facial recognition data is going to add anything to the verification process. And I'm not sure that the photo verification process even has any serious flaws as it is. The ONLY real use for this information is if it's shared among other agencies for uses unrelated to driving.
So all this "driving is a priviledge" stuff is pretty off base. What we are talking about here really has nothing at all to do with driving.
Devon
I see nothing in the original post that indicates that he literally pulled an 87.3 out of his ass. I'm not even sure how one would do that. I'm guessing you meant figuratively?
Devon
My sister works for a company that sends out a lot of junk mail with postage paid envelopes. She said that they regularly get bricks, plywood, etc, returned to them. But they have a deal with the post office which limits the amount of postage they have to pay per month. The post office (your tax dollars) picks up the tab for the rest. So your technique may not be as effective as one would imagine.
Devon
I've had similar reservations. That's why my money goes to The Planetary Society (www.planetary.org). They attempt to push the envelope by building real spacecraft.
Devon
Changes in Continuus are grouped into tasks. So a task might be "add a back button to the browser". Each developer in the group checks out the baseline code and works on his tasks. This environment is then protected from anyone elses work. When a task is completed, it is checked in as a group of file changes but does NOT immediately go to other developers. Instead, a build manager comes along at some later time and merges the tasks and verifies that they pass some quality assurance tests. Only then are the tasks available to the rest of the programmers in the group.
It doesn't need to be as rigid as I've described here. For example, I can include your task in my development even before the build manager approves it. Or I don't have to update my environment with the new tasks even if the build manager has approved them.
But that's the basic philosophy. Essentially, separate the development and quality assurance into two different jobs. This keeps environments clean until you can trust them enough to move along.
Devon
I didn't make that assumption. You just chose the definition of "holiday" to be days sponsored by the state. Is Rosh Hashana not a holiday to a Jew living in Switzerland because it is not sponsored by the Swiss government? And is Christmas a holiday for this person? I think he/she would strongly disagree with your interpretation.
Devon
It's not clear from your post that you understand the difference between gravity and gravity waves. They are not going to measure the effect of gravity on Cassini (well, they're doing that, too, but that wasn't the point). They are going to measure the expansion/contraction of space between us and Cassini caused by gravity waves. Gravity waves are ripples in the fabric of space itself that are caused by, for example, black holes orbiting around each or some other interesting event involving gravity. Gravity and gravity waves are as different as electrons and radio waves.
Devon
I'll give you the "in America" part but the "most in the world" part is incredibly wrong. While Christianity is the dominant religion in the world, it is no where near half. Most in the world today were working and trying to earn enough to feed their families like any other day.
Devon
While most of the complaints that the Perl rewrite is generating do imply that it is the change that people dislike, I don't think that's entirely true. What I think you're actually seeing is the complexity of the language coming back to haunt.
Perl programmers have always seemed to take an odd kind of macho pride in making syntax as cryptic as possible. And a lot of people have bought into this over the years. They dug in and struggled to learn to read and understand this stuff in order to earn the right to wear the "Real Perl Programmer" emblems on their jackets.
But now Larry wants to throw that all up in the air. His ideas are creative and academically fascinating. And if you've got the time, the motivation, and the smarts to keep up, it may in fact make your programming life easier.
But, you know, most people just want to be able to easily read, understand, and maintain code so they can collect their paychecks and go home to the family at night. And they're kind of stuck now because they put in all that "learning curve" time thinking it would get them ahead. They didn't realize they were joining an academic exercise. And now they're afraid of what they bought into.
Just my little theory.
Devon