Recall reading the Wired article about the XBox, where they mention that its initial $300 dollar price will be driven down to around $100 as soon as possible.
Sorry about the low end of the computer market, but it'll be cool when you can drop a grand, pick up a ten-pack of them, and construct your Much-Ballyhooed Beowulf Cluster (MBBC).
Maybe one day/. itself could run on such an installation. Feel the irony.
Summary: everything is easy when you know how to do it.
Came into a project with a fairly green team; no version control. No budget. An old Compaq box. Aha! said I, this is a job for CVS.
RH 7.2 to installed nicely. Got a book on CVS. Chased my tail, because the book talked about configuring inetd, while RH 7.2 had xinetd running.
I guess I could save some time going to a user group, but it's fun to figure stuff out on your own, time permitting.
Yet, common sense in handling the environment
seems as much a best practice as common sense in software design.
The goal is to avoid the extremes of the Luddites and these SUV twits
who will not be satisfied until their chariot is the size of that Sand Crawler thing in Star Wars.
...but if you believe that technology is going to have a fundamental effect on human nature, I'm curious to hear what you think drives people. Here's a shot of wisdom that's been around a while:
All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled. (ECCL 6:7)
Technology has had 0 effect (nor will it) on the 'microcode' of the human.
Prediction: even in an "A Gift From Earth" (Niven) situation where life is extended surgically, or even full-on immortality through cloning/mind downloads, human behavior will not alter radically.
Is this an artificial problem, or what?
on
The LDP and Debian
·
· Score: 1
1. You have the code (comprised of source files) making a software product at some version point.
2. You have licenses.
3. You have one or more links between the two.
4. You have a database containing 1-3. Possibly maintained by the PTO.
The source code contains a hyperlink pointing to the appropriate license.
You can then opt to have all of yours source tarballs synchronize themselves with the licensing.
If the licenses are in a regular format, you could even query this hypothetical licensing database, to make sure you don't use any code not conforming to your particular extremist viewpoint.
Consider this utopia, where the legalistic...individuals...can apply Moore's Law to the hairsplitting endeavor
(roughly every 18 months the amount of convoluted pettifoggery in licenses doubles)
and those more focused on mission accomplishment can pursue getting a job done in peace, knowing the legal demon is contained, if not exorcised.
Nearly failed out of school on Civ.
Gave the CivII disk to a colleague who gamed, saying "Here: this will destroy your marriage".
Seem to be handling CivIII better. Maybe because of the way the AI just mops up the floor with me; maybe I've just matured.
Anything in life can consume you. Blame not external forces for internal weakness.
I get paid a healthy rate per hour. If I mentally pay myself for the effort of managing the books, outsourcing the bodily function of writing the out the checks seems worthwhile.
OTOH, good ol' fashioned bill paying might be a relaxing interlude for someone, in which case they certainly should eschew online payments.
I agree that computers are the means, not the end. Motive matters in this decision, as any other.
Not sure what they're fighting against. Sure, the technical issues; but the real challenge is the cultural one.
People just haven't gotten acclimated to the new ways of doing business. My credit union has a web bill paying service, and I'm just barely considering going through the hassle of setting it up.
The possibility exists that, for all of the technical feasibility and convenience, society may NEVER achieve full-on cyberpunk dysco-topia.
Sure, an IPv4 address is a 32-bit binary number, and provider information is contained nowhere therein.
My question has more to do with security management. If IP addresses are owned by someone, it at least SEEMS that there might be more chance of controlling nefarious activity.
Granted, the determined thug is simply going to find a means of corrupting an ISP anyway, so any perceived improvement in security by eliminating providerless IP addresses is exactly that.
...sound like open season for the DOS attack of the week. That's Denial of Service, not Disk Operating System.
Security and usability are two ideas in continuous tension. While providereless addresses would probably be a great thing for the Responsible Majority, the threat of Just One Jackass (JOJ) seems a little high here.
Reminds me of that George Carlin line (one of his bogus headlines) about a man in Florida committing mass murder, then saying, 'He was merely cleaning his weapon, when it accidentally went off'.
Either the fellow is telling any lie to save his skin,
he's been royally framed by another civilian,
or police ethics in Portland have gone by way of Clinton.
But the GPL is just as much an expression of power over users as any proprietary license.
Hello, RMS.
I like the project I'm working on. I want to share the source code, because I think a lot of other people might apply it in groovy ways that don't suggest themselves to me.
But YOUR viewpoint is brick for brick the same prison as the Redmond Institute for the Monopolistically Inclined.
Mr. O'Reilly, your moderate view is a breath of fresh air.
I want to discuss it with someone who understands that compromise is not always evil, that partial solutions can sometimes be better than no solutions
So often, the solution path is more of a curve than a step function.
The more I read about RMS, the more the opinion forms
that he is more an invaluable piece of the overall whole
than the whole itself.
Hats off to the voice in the wilderness, and would he step further back?
If code is law, as Professor Lawrence Lessig (of Stanford Law School) has stated, then the real question we face is: who should control the code you use--you, or an elite few? We believe you are entitled to control the software you use, and giving you that control is the goal of Free Software.
Code is a means to describe information flow in a system. Currently binary in some sort of chip confection.
To the extent both code and law describe systems, the analogy is not complete hogwash. Law seems to pertain to socio-economic interactions, whereas software is bounded by imagination, if not taste.
Attempting to say ( code == law ) seems to be in questionable taste.
10 year prediction:
The Free Software movement results in a market spectrum with adequate, free stuff meeting modest requirements, and higher performance, proprietary stuff for those with pesos and performance requirements.
We still enjoy the polar opposites of Stallman and Gates, but neither extreme can eradicate the other.
Gates is still the poster child for Blatant Monopolists'R'Us.
Stallman sounds more like Karl Marx.
Think of the perverse offspring of Quake and your favorite word processor. Now, that memo literally blows the reader away in 3D, with anatomically correct visual effects!
It's a step in the right direction, certainly, but in spite of the hype, Java is still way behind the field on this one. The major functional programming languages are probably in the lead, and C++ is still the next most serious contender I know of by quite some distance.
Not sure I'd fault the Sun folks for taking their time and doing it correctly...we certainly have enough examples of the opposite approach in the industry...
By "major functional languages" I presume you're referring to LISP? What else? Are these languages employed much beyond academic settings and Emacs macros? This is a straight question: I simply haven't encountered them to speak of.
Notwithstanding the brutal learning curve and arcane compiler messages, C++ has the least-worst set of usability/performance/feature tradeoffs I've encountered. It really only loses outright to Java in discussions of portability. The ultimate question is, in what tool have you invested your time?
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Recall reading the Wired article about the XBox, where they mention that its initial $300 dollar price will be driven down to around $100 as soon as possible. /. itself could run on such an installation. Feel the irony.
Sorry about the low end of the computer market, but it'll be cool when you can drop a grand, pick up a ten-pack of them, and construct your Much-Ballyhooed Beowulf Cluster (MBBC).
Maybe one day
Summary: everything is easy when you know how to do it.
Came into a project with a fairly green team; no version control. No budget. An old Compaq box. Aha! said I, this is a job for CVS.
RH 7.2 to installed nicely. Got a book on CVS. Chased my tail, because the book talked about configuring inetd, while RH 7.2 had xinetd running.
I guess I could save some time going to a user group, but it's fun to figure stuff out on your own, time permitting.
Yet, common sense in handling the environment
seems as much a best practice as common sense in software design.
The goal is to avoid the extremes of the Luddites and these SUV twits
who will not be satisfied until their chariot is the size of that Sand Crawler thing in Star Wars.
...but if you believe that technology is going to have a fundamental effect on human nature, I'm curious to hear what you think drives people. Here's a shot of wisdom that's been around a while:
All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled. (ECCL 6:7)
Technology has had 0 effect (nor will it) on the 'microcode' of the human.
Prediction: even in an "A Gift From Earth" (Niven) situation where life is extended surgically, or even full-on immortality through cloning/mind downloads, human behavior will not alter radically.
1. You have the code (comprised of source files) making a software product at some version point.
2. You have licenses.
3. You have one or more links between the two.
4. You have a database containing 1-3. Possibly maintained by the PTO.
The source code contains a hyperlink pointing to the appropriate license.
You can then opt to have all of yours source tarballs synchronize themselves with the licensing.
If the licenses are in a regular format, you could even query this hypothetical licensing database, to make sure you don't use any code not conforming to your particular extremist viewpoint.
Consider this utopia, where the legalistic...individuals...can apply Moore's Law to the hairsplitting endeavor
(roughly every 18 months the amount of convoluted pettifoggery in licenses doubles)
and those more focused on mission accomplishment can pursue getting a job done in peace, knowing the legal demon is contained, if not exorcised.
Nearly failed out of school on Civ.
Gave the CivII disk to a colleague who gamed, saying "Here: this will destroy your marriage".
Seem to be handling CivIII better. Maybe because of the way the AI just mops up the floor with me; maybe I've just matured.
Anything in life can consume you. Blame not external forces for internal weakness.
I get paid a healthy rate per hour. If I mentally pay myself for the effort of managing the books, outsourcing the bodily function of writing the out the checks seems worthwhile.
OTOH, good ol' fashioned bill paying might be a relaxing interlude for someone, in which case they certainly should eschew online payments.
I agree that computers are the means, not the end. Motive matters in this decision, as any other.
PayPal has had to fight to get as far as it has
Not sure what they're fighting against. Sure, the technical issues; but the real challenge is the cultural one.
People just haven't gotten acclimated to the new ways of doing business. My credit union has a web bill paying service, and I'm just barely considering going through the hassle of setting it up.
The possibility exists that, for all of the technical feasibility and convenience, society may NEVER achieve full-on cyberpunk dysco-topia.
Generalizing your remark, market acceptance
is a function of the total hours people spend
with the product.
Sure, an IPv4 address is a 32-bit binary number, and provider information is contained nowhere therein.
My question has more to do with security management. If IP addresses are owned by someone, it at least SEEMS that there might be more chance of controlling nefarious activity.
Granted, the determined thug is simply going to find a means of corrupting an ISP anyway, so any perceived improvement in security by eliminating providerless IP addresses is exactly that.
...'Providerless' IP addresses...
...sound like open season for the DOS attack of the week. That's Denial of Service, not Disk Operating System.
Security and usability are two ideas in continuous tension. While providereless addresses would probably be a great thing for the Responsible Majority, the threat of Just One Jackass (JOJ) seems a little high here.
This gadget looks to improve on my Kyocera 6035 in a number of ways:
-smaller form factor
-keyboard option
-simpler, sturdier design (earpiece only on the flip)
My personal challenge to all of these manufacturers is to support all major standards, so I can take the phone to Europe.
Quick! Get Greta Van Susteren in here to tell us what this means. Will there be a re-count?
Reminds me of that George Carlin line (one of his bogus headlines) about a man in Florida committing mass murder, then saying, 'He was merely cleaning his weapon, when it accidentally went off'.
Either the fellow is telling any lie to save his skin,
he's been royally framed by another civilian,
or police ethics in Portland have gone by way of Clinton.
But the GPL is just as much an expression of power over users as any proprietary license.
Hello, RMS.
I like the project I'm working on. I want to share the source code, because I think a lot of other people might apply it in groovy ways that don't suggest themselves to me.
But YOUR viewpoint is brick for brick the same prison as the Redmond Institute for the Monopolistically Inclined.
Mr. O'Reilly, your moderate view is a breath of fresh air.
What a tease: would you argue that the verdict of history supports Mill (my vote), or Kant?
I want to discuss it with someone who understands that compromise is not always evil, that partial solutions can sometimes be better than no solutions
So often, the solution path is more of a curve than a step function.
The more I read about RMS, the more the opinion forms
that he is more an invaluable piece of the overall whole
than the whole itself.
Hats off to the voice in the wilderness, and would he step further back?
The fundamental difference between 'Soft and 'nux in this case is the amount of green lining left in the user wallet.
If code is law, as Professor Lawrence Lessig (of Stanford Law School) has stated, then the real question we face is: who should control the code you use--you, or an elite few? We believe you are entitled to control the software you use, and giving you that control is the goal of Free Software.
Code is a means to describe information flow in a system. Currently binary in some sort of chip confection.
To the extent both code and law describe systems, the analogy is not complete hogwash. Law seems to pertain to socio-economic interactions, whereas software is bounded by imagination, if not taste.
Attempting to say ( code == law ) seems to be in questionable taste.
10 year prediction:
The Free Software movement results in a market spectrum with adequate, free stuff meeting modest requirements, and higher performance, proprietary stuff for those with pesos and performance requirements.
We still enjoy the polar opposites of Stallman and Gates, but neither extreme can eradicate the other.
Gates is still the poster child for Blatant Monopolists'R'Us.
Stallman sounds more like Karl Marx.
See you in 10.
Shhhhhhh!
The market depends on people eschewing simple
solutions using existing resources.
So, you're saying the security 'problem' has more
to do with the people-ware than the software.
Security people win if absolutely nothing happens.
Greater traffic == greater tendency for things to go awry.
Management, if it can be awakened, needs to step
in and restore balance between security and operational concerns.
I can't see the utility of a triangular window.
Polygons for all my friends!
Think of the perverse offspring of Quake and your favorite word processor. Now, that memo literally blows the reader away in 3D, with anatomically correct visual effects!
The other piece, besides the skill to which you allude, is source code availability.
It's a step in the right direction, certainly, but in spite of the hype, Java is still way behind the field on this one. The major functional programming languages are probably in the lead, and C++ is still the next most serious contender I know of by quite some distance.
Not sure I'd fault the Sun folks for taking their time and doing it correctly...we certainly have enough examples of the opposite approach in the industry...
By "major functional languages" I presume you're referring to LISP? What else? Are these languages employed much beyond academic settings and Emacs macros? This is a straight question: I simply haven't encountered them to speak of.
Notwithstanding the brutal learning curve and arcane compiler messages, C++ has the least-worst set of usability/performance/feature tradeoffs I've encountered. It really only loses outright to Java in discussions of portability. The ultimate question is, in what tool have you invested your time?
(e.g. Visual C++ lacks partial template specialisation amongst other useful features).
IMHO, this points at a global requirment for the market to punish vendors who produce non-standard-compliant products.
It makes perfect sense from the vendor viewpoint to increase lock-in and smoke the competition through extensions and incompatibilities.
Guard your wallet.
Isn't the STL, and the generic programming it introduces, one of the main features lacking in Java? Or will Java catch up in that area?