At one time not so long ago the common wisdom was, jazz can't be taught, it is just something you have in you or not. Today, jazz is commonly taught by formal methods at schools like Julliard, producing many fine studio and live jazz musicians. So much for common wisdom.
Today, in computer science, it is commonly thought that there are star developers and there are normal developers, and that being a star developer is just something you have in you. Well. It smells like deja vu all over again.
You could also have mentioned that strcpy has no way to handle zeroes embedded in strings. The zero terminated string is arguably the leading candidate for single most idiotic design feature of C. Thankfully, C has few enough idiotic features that it is possible to list them.
Once a precondition has been checked once (on entry to whatever subsystem we're talking about) there is no need to re-check it all the time. You misread the OP I think. He meant check preconditions as in figure them out, which you seem to have taken to mean insert runtime checks. OP is right, that is exactly what kernel devs do.
The long and short of it is that Sony sacrificed profitability in their gaming division to wrest control of the HD media market. Probably good business on their part, but not necessarily in the best interest of the consumers. How is getting a powerful gaming machine/highdef player at below manufacturing cost not in the interest of the consumer? This consumer for one is perfectly pleased.
So it goes like this: 1. Add Blu-Ray to console 2. Be a year late to market, more expensive than competition, and overall the worst selling console 3. ??? 4. Dominate the HD market! A nice summary, but your ??? is in the wrong place, it is really more like:
1. Add Blu-Ray to console 2. Be a year late to market, more expensive than competition, and overall the worst selling console (but still sell millions) 3. Dominate the HD market! 4. ???
100+ MS related threads in the past 6 months and right at the top of every one is a stupid chair reference modded +5 That is because your chief executive threw a chair and got caught. Live with it.
If the atmosphere would just behave itself and lie there docilely, or at least move all in the same direction at the same time, airships would make sense from an engineering point of view. But since the wind is not this cooperative, it is essential to build an airshipstrong enough to withstand the atmospheric equivalent of a rogue wave, and strength is the enemy of lightness. Size magnifies the effect of shearing forces. Also, travelling through the air faster than a stately drift causes vortexes and standing waves on the surface of the structure, a poorly understood phenomenon that is counteracted in "heavy" aircraft by just making the surfaces strong. Again, strong is the enemy of light. To make matters worse, the vortex patterns are speed dependent. In simple terms, a fast moving airship will tear itself apart. That is why blimps have a top speed of not very much, and rigid airships (the rigid part is about keeping the envelope from collapsing as speed increases) have a top speed of not very much more.
Maybe one day when fluid dynamics is better understood and strength to weight ratios have improved enough to get the safety margins into the right zone, the age of the airship will truly return. We are nowhere close to either of those at the moment. The concept art shown here for the Aeroscraft in particular is just stupid. Look at the massive concentration of weight right at the stern. There are good reasons why the most successful airship designs place the engines below the craft, in the middle. This contributes to stability and reduces stress on the structure, which otherwise would have to be heavier. Also the lozenge shape may look good on a magazine cover, but it reduces volume of the lifting gas in relation to surface area. Less gas is the same as more weight.
I have a lot of trouble believing that the designs shown have been subjected to any kind of serious engineering analysis. This is more about convincing gullible people to go take a flyer on a grand venture. See the pretty pictures and send your money here thanks.
To be sure, Zepellins really are back, at least a small number of them. They fly low and slow over Berlin. The design is very traditional, a stubby cigar shape with a nacelle underheath to which the engines are attached. These aircraft are not really good for much other than the spectacle, which in my opinion justifies the effort but this is a far cry from commercial viability as a mode of transportation.
Care to list all the ext2/ext3 file corruption bugs that have existed in Linux over the past 5 years? Few and far between. I recall 2.4.15 was a dontuse because buffer flush to disk was completely broken, which broke all file systems. Oops. Fixed within hours, obviously never shipped by any Linux distribution. A few years earlier there was a corruption bug on file tails that could be triggered by certain access patterns, the only known example of which was inn (internet news). The 2.6.19 kernel was a dud release with a subtle dirty page bug that Linus personally tracked down and killed over a 10 day period. There were occasional bugs in ext3 that came up a few years back, mostly only triggerable by continuously hitting the power switch under heavy load. Nothing that fsck could not fix. In all my years of using Linux on lots of machines, hitting them hard, I never hit a single Ext3 bug myself. It's that stable.
perhaps you should refute his points with some gold-standard examples of Open Source innovation. Unfortunately, there really aren't any notable examples. Beowulf. Valgrind. BitTorrent. Netfilter. Lots of Linux kernel bits (why do you think it is so fast?) Snort. Perl. Python. Sendmail. The World Wide Web. Wiki. Wikipedia. XML. Need more? There are plenty more, but I would think this little list off the top of my head is already enough to allow me to cordially invite a retraction from you.
What war? It's just friendly rivalry. Sometimes. And all too often it gets personal and/or destructive, typically because of a territorial war, or sometimes because of financial interests. Open source development would progress considerably faster if we learned to make a point of stopping short of the destructive zone.
It's also easy to draw conclusions of how cool Microsoft was early on, and how evil they are now. I do not recall a time when Microsoft was not evil. Eliminating the compiler competition by hiring away Borland's lead designers? Threatening to withhold Windows licensing unless IBM stopped promoting OS/2? Cutting off Netscape's air supply? Telling Apple to knife the Quicktime baby? MS Word issuing scary warnings when it found itself running on top of DR-Dos? The list goes on and on, and as far as I am concerned it goes back to the day Microsoft was incorporated.
Outside of my concern, he does impress me and depending on who works along side of him, something interesting might come out of this. Oh, I am impressed by the little scraps of information I have seen about him. I just am highly skeptical that an open source outsider is the right choice for CEO of a company that makes its living peddling support contracts for software developed by the open source community.
Matt himself is an outsider, he was brought in to develop a monetization model and build Red Hat as a sales organization, which he did remarkably well. Red Hat is a fine sales organization, no doubt about it, and the certification model on which Red Hat depends is pure genius. But that in itself is not enough to ensure long term success. Red Hat has to worry about its supply lines, and those supply lines are increasingly becoming alienated by and irritated with Red Hat. This has not hit Red Hat's bottom line yet, but it will.
how the hell is CentOS more a community project than Fedora? The entire goal is to produce an exact replica of Red Hat Enterprise, which has no direct community involvement. Fedora, on the other hand, has more packages maintained by the community than by Red Hat employees. One simple reason: Red Hat controls the board of the Fedora project. If Red Hat really believed in community it would let the community control the project. But Red Hat will never do that I assure you, because Red Hat at heart does not trust the community. In the long run, that is just too bad for Red Hat.
Here, is that better? Oh sure, an anonymous nick in place of a real name. Hint: my name is real, so are the names of quite a parade of developers who have left Red Hat to join companies with more of a clue about what the open source community is all about.
Um, too completely different goals? Fedora is cutting (sometimes bleeding) edge, CentOS/RHEL is conservative with a long support cycle. And if Fedora were really a community project then it most certainly would have a stable branch, which is exactly what CentOS is. But Red Hat controls Fedora, so Fedora will never have a stable branch, so the community built the CentOS project which is not controlled by Red Hat. See?
I want a CEO that can execute and grow the company. "Playing with the community" might get you some praise on usenet but it isn't going to be a blockbuster. Execute and grow while giving the cold shoulder to the community they depend on? Which is what you mean by not playing with the community I think. Certain death for and open source company. "Don't bite the hand that feeds you."
Red Hat hire good people. They by and large hire *from the community*, the ones passionate about it. And they back it all up with paid developer time. Red Hat is a revolving door for community people. A few stick, many find the dysfunctional management just too much to take.
One of the major reasons why Red Hat will soon become $1Bn+ revenue company is the fact that they invested so much into community through Fedora Project. Everybody and their dog bitch about RH product line discontinuation, forgetting that the code base has been split into two superior products, unparalleled in the Linux world. Slowly but steadily Fedora has largely been put back to community care Oh really? Red Hat appoints five members of the fedora board and only 4 are elected, assuring Red Hat of complete control over the project. Community, bah.
CentOS is there, too - another proof of how much Red Hat Inc. actually care. Why do you suppose CentOS would exist if Fedora is the be all and end all of community projects? Oh right, CentOS is not controlled by Red Hat.
They know what they are doing. If they say that James Whitehurst is culturally good fit, I believe them. Highly skeptical that an airline exec can learn the open source business. What Red Hat needs is somebody who can go play with the community. Now there is the claim he runs Linux and was once a programmer, OK, that is tech credentials of sorts. A far cry from participating in a tech organization or having a clue how the community off which Red Hat feeds works and works together. Who is going to teach him that? Matt? No sir. Matt is basically not there with the community. A few speeches, platitudes, lots of talk, very little walk. Has a bad habit of hiring managers with no open source credentials whatsoever, who busy themselves with laying waste to whatever community spirit Red Hat once had.
Actually, no, Red Hat revenue and profit are way up, 20% and 39% respectively, mea culpa. Somebody mod parent into oblivion please. Red Hat is still growing just fine.
Nothing hidden here I dont think. profits are up 12% this quarter per usual This company really has its stuff together IMO i hope it continues to without Szulik who was a big reason for the companys direction. Revenue up 12% you mean. That is a big warning sign, it is roughly the rate of growth of the server market as a whole, and a huge deceleration from the growth rate over the last few years. Numbers like this indicate a growth company moving into a mature phase, except Red Hat is way too young to be moving into a mature phase.
Actually, this is a good question. I'm a bit worried because Matthew is a "Linux person". I had the chance to meet him when he come to Bloomington and he has been with Red Hat since the mid 90s and has been a Linux user all this time. I doubt the same could be said for the Delta guy, but maybe not? Bringing in somebody who is not only has no open source credentials but no tech credentials at all? You can tell me all the head and shoulders stories you like, but this amounts to nothing more than another step in Red Hat losing the plot. The slide started years ago, however the rapid expansion of the Linux server market tended to keep Red Hat's missteps from translating immediately into poor financial performance. Now it is way too obvious to ignore. If you think for a moment I am sure you will remember a few of the more egregious community relations fiascos, hostile takeovers of community projects, burning the desktop community, etc. It is just those self inflicted wounds that are hurting Red Hat now, and what do they do? Bring in an airlines guy. Sheesh. It shows you just how far Red Hat management has drifted from reality. Remember the Pepsicola guy who ran Apple into the ground.
but lets break it down, besides some unknown reason why you didn't like Halo 2, what do you have against the third one? Personally, I'm not quite sure what you found "lame" about Halo 2 Stupid story line, uncompelling hero, lousy physics, ridiculous looking monsters, ugly blocky terrain, horrible vehicle control, linear levels, offensive game save system... just off the top of my head. The best I can say for it is, if you haven't been exposed to a decent shooter then maybe you could be impressed.
After buying Call of Duty, it was nearly impossible to go back to Halo 3, so I haven't. Halo 2 was lame so I did not bother with Halo 3. Funny though, how every major game site came out with a 9.something review.
Fortunately, in the real world people are too busy getting stuff done to mess with you so much. This applies to the corporate world as well as the military. Sorry, but that is just not true and I know that first hand.
Slashdot Mirror
At one time not so long ago the common wisdom was, jazz can't be taught, it is just something you have in you or not. Today, jazz is commonly taught by formal methods at schools like Julliard, producing many fine studio and live jazz musicians. So much for common wisdom.
Today, in computer science, it is commonly thought that there are star developers and there are normal developers, and that being a star developer is just something you have in you. Well. It smells like deja vu all over again.
You could also have mentioned that strcpy has no way to handle zeroes embedded in strings. The zero terminated string is arguably the leading candidate for single most idiotic design feature of C. Thankfully, C has few enough idiotic features that it is possible to list them.
1. Add Blu-Ray to console
2. Be a year late to market, more expensive than competition, and overall the worst selling console
3. ???
4. Dominate the HD market! A nice summary, but your ??? is in the wrong place, it is really more like:
1. Add Blu-Ray to console
2. Be a year late to market, more expensive than competition, and overall the worst selling console (but still sell millions)
3. Dominate the HD market!
4. ???
If the atmosphere would just behave itself and lie there docilely, or at least move all in the same direction at the same time, airships would make sense from an engineering point of view. But since the wind is not this cooperative, it is essential to build an airshipstrong enough to withstand the atmospheric equivalent of a rogue wave, and strength is the enemy of lightness. Size magnifies the effect of shearing forces. Also, travelling through the air faster than a stately drift causes vortexes and standing waves on the surface of the structure, a poorly understood phenomenon that is counteracted in "heavy" aircraft by just making the surfaces strong. Again, strong is the enemy of light. To make matters worse, the vortex patterns are speed dependent. In simple terms, a fast moving airship will tear itself apart. That is why blimps have a top speed of not very much, and rigid airships (the rigid part is about keeping the envelope from collapsing as speed increases) have a top speed of not very much more.
Maybe one day when fluid dynamics is better understood and strength to weight ratios have improved enough to get the safety margins into the right zone, the age of the airship will truly return. We are nowhere close to either of those at the moment. The concept art shown here for the Aeroscraft in particular is just stupid. Look at the massive concentration of weight right at the stern. There are good reasons why the most successful airship designs place the engines below the craft, in the middle. This contributes to stability and reduces stress on the structure, which otherwise would have to be heavier. Also the lozenge shape may look good on a magazine cover, but it reduces volume of the lifting gas in relation to surface area. Less gas is the same as more weight.
I have a lot of trouble believing that the designs shown have been subjected to any kind of serious engineering analysis. This is more about convincing gullible people to go take a flyer on a grand venture. See the pretty pictures and send your money here thanks.
To be sure, Zepellins really are back, at least a small number of them. They fly low and slow over Berlin. The design is very traditional, a stubby cigar shape with a nacelle underheath to which the engines are attached. These aircraft are not really good for much other than the spectacle, which in my opinion justifies the effort but this is a far cry from commercial viability as a mode of transportation.
Matt himself is an outsider, he was brought in to develop a monetization model and build Red Hat as a sales organization, which he did remarkably well. Red Hat is a fine sales organization, no doubt about it, and the certification model on which Red Hat depends is pure genius. But that in itself is not enough to ensure long term success. Red Hat has to worry about its supply lines, and those supply lines are increasingly becoming alienated by and irritated with Red Hat. This has not hit Red Hat's bottom line yet, but it will.
Actually, no, Red Hat revenue and profit are way up, 20% and 39% respectively, mea culpa. Somebody mod parent into oblivion please. Red Hat is still growing just fine.
busy getting stuff done to mess with you so much. This applies to
the corporate world as well as the military. Sorry, but that is just not true and I know that first hand.