During installation, a preconfigured image of a 500 megs (or so) partition would just be copied verbatim onto a partition on the user's hard drive.
Come to think of it, I honestly can't figure out why, during installation, thousands of files need to be individually decompressed and copied to their location, or even built by the installer. Why does it take about an hour to install Linux?
Linux can be a very successful system that "doesn't suck." It only takes a little bit of vision. Developers out there are so caught up in the details that they have lost sight of the forest for the leaves. Take a look at BeOS. Now here is an example of people who thought correctly. First and foremost, installation took 7 minutes when using a quick CD-ROM drive. (Probably 32X or something like that.) There weren't many questions or choices.
Of course, there were several big problems with BeOS:
Lack of applications for the home user.
Lack of widespread support by developers.
Lack of drivers for popular hardware.
Each of these problems contributed to the severity of the others. Lack of applications and drivers meant the userbase remained small. Lack of users kept developers from writing drivers and applications.
Fortunately, Linux doesn't have these problems. There are drivers for nearly everything. Hardware manufacturers that don't provide drivers are run by idiots. There is widespread support from big companies. (Just the other day, I read that a group of 40 companies, including Boeing, are building Linux clusters and running MSC computational fluid dynamics programs, yielding results faster and more cost effectively than on Cray supercomputers.) There is a huge user base. The user base is constantly growing as people become disenchanted with Microsoft. In short, Linux has a huge advantage.
Unfortunately, with systems being relatively hard to install, maintain and run (by NEWBIES--I'm not talking about experienced computer geeks), and with thousands of choices in applications and whatnot, Linux isn't offering a very good solution right now, and that's because the developers have lost sight of the forest, as I've said before.
Now back to my original topic: Why should the installer do so much work? If everything is prebuilt and placed in an image of a partition (a single file on the CD, rather than many files that need to be built during installation), leaving room for the user to expand, and this image is copied directly onto the user's hard drive during installation, the system wastes MUCH less time building inodes and performing file system housekeeping operations. It would be like copying a single file, rather than a ton of small files, and from experience, I can tell you that copying one 100 meg file takes far less time than copying 10,000 10k files. The result would be an installation that takes almost no time at all.
In case you're wondering, parts of the filesystem that aren't predetermined by the distro (like the/home directories) would be on a separate partition. The installer would first create the partitions. The predetermined one would be a predetermined size. All remaining available space would be on a separate partition for the use by the user.
I'm not saying this needs to be implemented. I'm just saying, "Think of the possibilities," and, "minimize the work." Oh well.
The biggest problem with Linux is, in my opinion, the fact that people try to solve all the problems of the world with a single solution. Red Hat is a worthwhile cause, but I don't think a single distro can handle every possible use of Linux. I thought Linux was about choice. In that case, there should be many smaller distributions aimed at specific (or at least more specific) purposes.
No, I'm not a luser, nor am I a newbie. I know that there are countless distros out there, which fit on a single floppy, six CDs, and everything in between. (I've purchased so many distributions for myself and for others that I'm drowning in Linux CDs.) But everybody and his uncle uses Red Hat. (I personally like SuSE a LOT better, because it is far better organized in my opinion.)
Many common problems make the file system layout and package management suck. I don't mean to start a flamewar, but this problem is far smaller on FreeBSD, where the file system layout is a lot better organized than that of a Red Hat Linux system. (It's even better organized than a SuSE system.) The ports and packages collection, which works through Makefiles, makes installation and removal of many programs very easy, with dependency checks. Unless I'm imagining things, it does find dependencies that you install manually, as long as they're where the system expects them. However, glitches still exist, mainly in the removal of software, that require user intervention to remove some remaining files and directories.
When it comes down to it, I think that package management systems--whether they're Debian's system, RPMs, or the *BSDs' ports and packages--are supposed to serve as a shortcut for the system administrator, who still knows how to manage programs manually. The Linux community seems to have forgotten this, and expect package management to be a flawless installation system for any user with any amount of experience. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and it would be extremely difficult, maybe impossible, to make such a system. I believe this doesn't matter.
Skilled admins need control and flexibility over their programs. This is especially true for critical servers, but also applies to workstations. If the setup they want can be achieved with a package manager, they'll use it. If not, they can opt to build the program from source, or, if this installation takes place often, they might make their own package, perhaps customizing paths or configuration files for site-specific purposes. A well-organized hierarchy is very important.
Novice users are very different. They just want to install this thing called Linux from the CD and surf the web or burn some MP3s. For them, the solution isn't a great package management system, because a novice user probably doesn't know where to obtain programs. In some cases, there are hundreds of similar programs to choose from--novices can't handle all that choice! The solution for them is a distro that supports a very specific set of programs, and supports them well:
Everything should be managed through clickable graphical dialogs. Enabling web serving or whatnot would take one click on a checkbox.
The installation would be extremely simple:
Where possible, there are no choices. You simply install the distro and get all the "standard" programs, precompiled, preconfigured and ready to use.
During installation, a preconfigured image of a 500 megs (or so) partition would just be copied verbatim onto a partition on the user's hard drive.
Another partition, taking up the remaining available space, would be mounted on/home.
Installation could happen in 5 minutes flat.
A single desktop environment would be present. Novice users shouldn't have to try ten different window managers and docking programs and whatnot. Choose something and put it on this distro. If you want to support multiple desktop environments, package multiple distros.
The same rule holds true for all programs that would come with the installation. Instead of making one huge distro that supports everything from 10,000 text editors to biological analysis programs, make 10 different distros. One would be for "Home" use and would include stuff like a word processor and spreadsheet, a banking program, web browser, email client, calendar program, MP3 player, video editing software, and whatever else you want to include. These don't even need to be 100% free software. Put some quality programs on the CD and charge for them.
To make a long story short, limit the user's exposure to problems. Every choice you present to the user is a possible problem. We're talking about people who don't know where the "any" key is for crying out loud.
Finally, I would recommend that in the spirit of giving back to the community, any admin who makes his own packages should submit them back to the developer for distribution to others. (Unless these packages are designed for site-specific purposes, of course.)
Oh yeah, and I almost forgot the obligatory "oh well."
It's a shame that so many Linux based companies have gone under or shifted focus because of the economic slump. However, the code isn't going anywhere, and when the economy begins to rise again, Linux will be there, and many new companies will form around it again.
The government has finally started to produce good solutions to society's problems, in a timely manner and on budget. I believe that such an email virus, which would obviously function only under quality Microsoft Windows operating systems and Microsoft Outlook products, presents such a simple, elegant and utterly unbreakable solution to our nation's crime problems that soon, all criminals will flee the country and go to Zimbabwe instead.
Of course, when I speak of "criminals" in the previous paragraph, I'm referring to none other than Microsoft Corporation.
I think the best way to go is to write all the time-critical portions of your program in Java. Then, write a Java VM in Perl. Then, write a Perl interpreter in BASIC. Then, write a BASIC interpreter in Python. Then, write a Python interpreter in shell. Then, write a shell interpreter in C++. Then, compile that C++ program and run it under an x86 simulator written in COBOL. Then, write a COBOL interpreter in Pascal. Then, write a Pascal interpreter in Prolog. Then, write a Prolog interpreter in Smalltalk. Then, write a Smalltalk interpreter in awk, and use M4 macros to convert that into a C program, which you compile and run natively on the machine.
Now remember, the previous paragraph applies only to the time-critical portion of your program. The other 99% of it should be hand-coded and highly optimized machine language.
Somebody out there must be busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest to be making up a hoax like this.
This is a big hoax. Bigger even than the hoax about the MIT operating system Cesium that's supposed to contain year 3,000 technology that nobody on the same floor of that building ever heard of.
On the other hand, can you give me his email address? I'd like to know how to watch movies on my Commodore.
Ok, let's say that Microsoft is allowed to settle this way. It should be allowed ONLY under the following circumstances:
The amount of money in question should be 2 billion.
Microsoft donates an amount of money chosen by the government to schools chosen by the government, in the form of grants for computer equipment.
The schools decide what to do with the money. For example, they could choose to purchase any model of computer and any piece of software on the market. Here's the catch: Microsoft must give the entire school district a free site license for unlimited installations of all of Microsoft's software products forever. In other words, the school may choose to purchase non-Microsoft products with the grant money, or they may choose to run any and all
Microsoft products free of charge, now in existance or at any point in time developed, for as long as Microsoft exists. And, if Microsoft buys out another company or their product, that product then falls under this category and the school district may use it free of charge. And if Microsoft sells off a product to another company, they must pay that company for the unlimited license on behalf of the school.
The item above must be worded such that Microsoft can in no way deduct the cost of their own non-tangible products from the grant amounts.
If all of those criteria are met, I would agree to such a settlement.
After reading the entire article, I have to agree with what they say in the end: That while metaphors may be a little helpful in learning how to use a computer, they really just get in the way after the first fifteen minutes.
I don't really like the idea of storing documents in rooms or galleries or whatever, like they discussed. If you want to solve the problem of wrangling with thousands of files, build a relational database into the file system and have the computer observe and record which files you access, in conjunction with which other files, how long you work on them, etc. But have that system stay the hell out of your way. Now, users can view files in a hierarchy, as they always have, or they can instantly view files based on their type, how recently they were accessed, their relationships to other files, etc. If such a system is properly built directly into the file system, files could be moved around in the hierarchy without corrupting the relational information. (Of course, some "soft link" method would be required for information located on other hosts.)
I'd like to congratulate Dare Obasanjo on his extensive comparison between Java and C#. After reading it, and my anti-Microsoft bias aside, I've come to the conclusion that C# is basically a rip off of Java, with a few extra features that might make it an interesting development platform. As always, I feel that Microsoft has implemented a system designed as an integrated part of Windows, to keep the development community (and, therefore, the user community) at Microsoft's mercy.
I say this for the following reasons (and, again, I'm trying my best to place my anti-Microsoft bias aside):
Java came first. C# came into existance only recently, and much of the code examples in the comparison look nearly identical, with differences in keywords or function names or something trivial like that.
I think that's just about it. (Please excuse me, I've had a few too many beers tonight.)
Well, whatever. Forget it. I'll probably just get flamed by a bunch of people, and moderated as a troll or something. Oh well. My karma has been going down for the past few days because some really crappy stories have been posted on the front page, and when I read crappy stories, I write crappy comments. Or something like that. Oh well.
Your comment leads me to wonder something... if you code something in Java, or C++, or FORTRAN, or Perl, or sh, or any other language out there... Does the execution speed of your program necessarily say anything about the language you wrote it in?
I have a strong feeling that many programmers out there aren't very good at programming. Sure, some are geniuses and others are very good, but I think that most don't really have the level of respect for the hardware that I believe is required of a good programmer.
An example, off the top of my head: I once hired a programmer to write a compiler (and virtual machine) for a very simple language, used to operate a small embedded computer--the equivalent of a 486--for a piece of industrial machinery. After months of hard work and who knows how many thousands of lines of code (in C) later, a compiler was produced that could process about 300 lines per second (with about 40 characters in a line), and a virtual machine was produced that processed the compiled code so slowly that it couldn't keep up with mechanical equipment. After a lot of arguing, the programmer swore that it was impossible to make the code any faster.
Then I went in and started analysing the code. The thing that comes to mind first is a routine that, when given an ASCII character between 'A' and 'Z', tells you the number of the letter. For example, 'A' is 0, 'Z' is 25, and everything in between is something in between. A routine that was about 20 lines long was written for this purpose, where just about every string function imaginable was called. In C, this entire routine could be replaced by "string[index] - 'A';" (I don't remember the names, but that's the code.) And this code couldn't be made any faster?!
Yes, it was programmed in C. And C is supposed to be a fast language, right? Heh heh... the language has very little if anything to do with execution speed. It's the programmer's own code that accounts for 99% of the execution time. I rewrote the whole damn thing in six weeks and my implementation processed over 6,000 lines per second, and the code was written for readability with no emphasis on execution speed, and no optimizations. (The algorithm, on the other hand, was designed for speed.) My conclusion? If your banking app was painfully slow, maybe you didn't design or implement it correctly. On the other hand, maybe there was a bottleneck external to your application, like slow response times between you and some database backend. Whatever it was, I doubt that Java was at fault.
I suppose this just goes to show that no matter what kind of system is implemented, there will always be a way to break in. One of the biggest mistakes made by corporate management and government folks is mistaking some so-called technology for a proactive all-around security policy. Although HDCP is but a single detail in a sea of systems geared towards security, the same rule applies to any system: There is no such thing as perfection. This is why I get annoyed when I read an advertisement for some encryption software, firewall product or whatnot that claims to be 100% secure against intruders. It's just glossy marketspeak, and it doesn't cut it for me.
My personal rule of thumb, when it comes to security, is this: Security software is in many ways similar to the laws put in place by the government. Unless someone enforces those laws (or regularly maintains the computer system), the system can be circumvented. Obviously, there are vast differences in the actual work someone has to do, but the concept is the same. If only the PHBs understood that.
Even with a private network that isn't connected to the Internet, there is still at least one big security issue: A false sense of security. Government employees may think that because their private network is so secure and separate from the big bad Internet, they can relax and give computer security a low priority. What most folks don't understand is that computers are like any machine: They require constant maintainence for reliable operation. Security is a large part of that maintainence, and cannot be set aside while other things take place. On the contrary, security must proactively be part of everything that goes on in a computer and network. This is partly why a false sense of security is dangerous.
Besides, intruders could still access the network through such techniques as war-dialing, to name one example off the top of my head.
This is exactly what goes on in George Orwell's 1984. Information that is considered harmful to the government's control is thrown in memory holes, where it is taken by vacuum to huge furnaces (they burn a LOT of documents in 1984).
This kind of move will only take away from the average citizen's knowledge of his country, and won't take anything away from the terrorists. If they want to know something, they can find out with little or no trouble.
I say this: CENSORSHIP SUCKS. It is the responsibility of the PARENTS, not of the government, to decide what is and what is not suitable for their children, and to enforce that in their home. Parents need to talk to their children about "adult" matters, like drugs, alcohol, sex and crime. If the parents don't do this, then the parents are idiots. But it is the PARENTS', and ONLY the PARENTS' responsibility to handle this.
(I don't care if they pass a law that says that all "adult" materials need to have some sort of tag on them so that parental control software can be written to effectively block all "adult" websites, but a law prohibiting any "adult" materials in the first place is, quite frankly, a very stupid law.)
Let's put it this way. Many companies cheat when it comes to "demoing" their products. And benchmarks are, for pretty much all intents and purposes, a demo of the product being benchmarked. So they're cheating. OH WELL.
I personally don't like bash. For one thing, I don't like its syntax. Well, actually, that's pretty much the only thing. I like csh a lot better because it's easier to configure, easier to use, and has a syntax that I like a lot better. (Hey, I figure UNIX is programmed in C; why shouldn't it be used in C as well (or at least in something C-like).) It's too bad csh wasn't the de-facto standard for UNIX systems, instead of sh. OH WELL.
Remember Beanie Babies? Or Pogs? Or Magic Cards? Or Cabbage Patch Kids? Or any of hundreds of other things that became a huge fad for a about half a year, made their creators multimillionaires, and then disappeared? I hate it when companies "demand" that everybody waste their money on something. Especially when it's AOLTW.
Fads suck. Harry Potter is a fad. Therefore, Harry Potter sucks.
By the way, there are other things that SUCK as well. One example is Burger King. I HATE all fast food chains. They don't produce food. They produce garbage and dare to call it food. I had some food at a Burger King today and got sick. I'm not making this up either--I'm totally serious about this. Good thing I didn't eat their damn fries. So, like I said, Burger King SUCKS, and so do all the fast food chains.
I think it is the responsibility of a child's parents, not the government, to guide children onto a good road for their life. Bureaucracy never misses a chance to miss, and whenever bureaucrats try to gain control over something, it becomes a big, inefficient and ineffective mess.
What difference does it make that a video game or music CD says "Parental Guidance" or whatever? Most folks know that movies have a rating system, and I think most of the same folks don't know that there is a similar system for other forms of media. What is the government going to do, prevent children under 18 from purchasing video games? Newsflash: That doesn't work for cigarettes or alcohol. Why should it work for video games?
Besides, if the government tries to take control over video games, to protect our youth, then the next thing you know, they'll pass a law that makes it illegal for minors under 18 to play for more than an hour on a school day or something ridiculous like that. Again, don't you think the parents should decide what their children can and can't do? That's all I'm trying to say. I don't want to argue about details, like what some rule, law, regulation--or whatever you want to call it--says. I'm just saying that in most matters, parents should be responsible for teaching their children, and once they're old enough, the children should be responsible for themselves. We don't need the government sticking their noses into yet more aspects of our lives.
Oh yeah... and yes, I do know what this story is about. I'm just trying to say that it's ridiculous that most governments have this urge to waste inordinate amounts of time and money trying to control things that really don't matter anyway.
I wonder if this Cyclone makes programming "safer" by making it more difficult. What I mean by this is that some languages out there don't let you use pointers at all, or perform all sorts of checks on array bounds before each access. I like to call this "broken programming" simply because it isn't right in my opinion.
A programmer should have all tools available to him, and should choose the best tool for the job when solving any given problem. Taking away tools doesn't make programming safer--it makes programming messier.
I didn't read the article or the language description or anything, so I don't know if this is the case with Cyclone. But it certainly is with many languages. I thought this is what Lint is for. Lint is a program which performs source-level sanity checks on your code. You write your program in C and/or C++, and whenever you compile, you first run Lint to make sure everything's ok. Sure, it's not perfect, and probably won't find all problems, but it will find quite a few things wrong that you didn't even know about. (There are free and commercial implementations of various source-level things like this.)
I think that careful programming and use of a tool like Lint can make a better improvement than taking away some of the most powerful tools in programming just because some people don't know how to use them. Oh well.
If nanomachines are built that would actually go into the bloodstream or whatever, seek and destroy cancer cells, that would be one of the most amazing advances in human technology that will simultaneously benefit modern medicine and just about every field on Earth.
Maybe one day, they'll invent machines that go into your body, swim around and kill things like the flu. Or perhaps drill through plaque in peoples' arteries to prevent heart attacks. Or who knows what else.
Of course, then the military will start experimenting with nanomachines that wreak havoc on someone's body, and then it'll probably get copied by some other country, and as a result, our military will build nanomachines that seek out and destroy other nanomachines, and so will the other folks, and next thing you know, there are nanowars going on inside peoples' bodies.
Well, what can I say? There's an advantage and disadvantage to everything. Oh well.
How about this idea: If you're making a GPL'd program (or using a similar license), why not release your program on a CD? (I'm saying this in general, regardless of what the specific program was that we were talking about.)
Even if your program is a small utility, like, oh, sed. (That's just the first thing that came to mind. It could be any program.) Compile your program for every system it's designed to work under, and with the most common compile-time options for those systems (if any). Then, put all those binaries in a well organized hierarchy on a CD. In addition, put the "stable" sources (the ones the binaries were built from) on the CD, along with any required libraries, support files and whatever. Put some good documentation on the CD, in a bunch of different formats. Put "example" configurations, programs or whatever that use your program on the CD. Put "marketing" materials on the CD, such as project goals and mission statement, cast of characters (in alphabetical order, with a short bio, job description, etc--in all, a 500 Kbyte file), and whatever else you can think of. In short, even if the program is a 1 Kbyte binary, fill a CD to the brim with any materials you can dream of that are even remotely related to this program. Of course, things should be well organized so that the CD is a marketable, first class product.
The best part is that most of this can be done by non-programmers who want to get involved in a project. (Imagine if you put a list of 500 people on the CD for a program that took one guy two hours to write.)
Package this CD nicely in a nice glossy box (designed by a graphic artist whose name is in your credits), include a nice thick book (make a distribution deal with a publisher to distribute their well-written book with your program), include a Certificate of Authenticity (it doesn't have to be expensive like Microsoft's certificates but it should look reasonably professional) and a copy of the GPL (or whatever license), and charge $89.95 (US) for it.
This might sound ridiculous, but believe me, when people pay good money for something (as long as you charge a fair price), they WILL respect and appreciate it much more than if they had gotten it for free. This is not a joke! It's a marketing fact. And if someone asks, "Why should I pay for something I can download for free?" You answer, "You get a book, a CD, and 1 year of email-based tech support. Besides, you support its further development, documentation, distribution, etc."
Apple claims they wish to work together with the Open Source software community. I believe the PNG format came to be as an alternative to GIF, which is patent-encumbered. Since this was created to help out the Open Source (or Free, if you wish) community, I think Apple should try and work out a reasonable deal with the developers. I don't know what this deal should be. That's up to the parties involved.
On the subject of software patents, I believe they should be allowed, although the patent office should closely scrutinize any such patents (as they should for any patents regardless), making sure that among other things, the invention is not a previously obvious solution to a problem (as originally intended), there is no prior art, and that the patent is extremely specific in its spirit and letter, so that a patent for any given technology will only affect people who are developing that specific technology and nothing else. The idea of patents is a good one. The problem is that the system is broken, and therefore, huge corporations abuse it.
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Come to think of it, I honestly can't figure out why, during installation, thousands of files need to be individually decompressed and copied to their location, or even built by the installer. Why does it take about an hour to install Linux?
Linux can be a very successful system that "doesn't suck." It only takes a little bit of vision. Developers out there are so caught up in the details that they have lost sight of the forest for the leaves. Take a look at BeOS. Now here is an example of people who thought correctly. First and foremost, installation took 7 minutes when using a quick CD-ROM drive. (Probably 32X or something like that.) There weren't many questions or choices.
Of course, there were several big problems with BeOS:
Each of these problems contributed to the severity of the others. Lack of applications and drivers meant the userbase remained small. Lack of users kept developers from writing drivers and applications.
Fortunately, Linux doesn't have these problems. There are drivers for nearly everything. Hardware manufacturers that don't provide drivers are run by idiots. There is widespread support from big companies. (Just the other day, I read that a group of 40 companies, including Boeing, are building Linux clusters and running MSC computational fluid dynamics programs, yielding results faster and more cost effectively than on Cray supercomputers.) There is a huge user base. The user base is constantly growing as people become disenchanted with Microsoft. In short, Linux has a huge advantage.
Unfortunately, with systems being relatively hard to install, maintain and run (by NEWBIES --I'm not talking about experienced computer geeks), and with thousands of choices in applications and whatnot, Linux isn't offering a very good solution right now, and that's because the developers have lost sight of the forest, as I've said before.
Now back to my original topic: Why should the installer do so much work? If everything is prebuilt and placed in an image of a partition (a single file on the CD, rather than many files that need to be built during installation), leaving room for the user to expand, and this image is copied directly onto the user's hard drive during installation, the system wastes MUCH less time building inodes and performing file system housekeeping operations. It would be like copying a single file, rather than a ton of small files, and from experience, I can tell you that copying one 100 meg file takes far less time than copying 10,000 10k files. The result would be an installation that takes almost no time at all.
In case you're wondering, parts of the filesystem that aren't predetermined by the distro (like the /home directories) would be on a separate partition. The installer would first create the partitions. The predetermined one would be a predetermined size. All remaining available space would be on a separate partition for the use by the user.
I'm not saying this needs to be implemented. I'm just saying, "Think of the possibilities," and, "minimize the work." Oh well.
The biggest problem with Linux is, in my opinion, the fact that people try to solve all the problems of the world with a single solution. Red Hat is a worthwhile cause, but I don't think a single distro can handle every possible use of Linux. I thought Linux was about choice. In that case, there should be many smaller distributions aimed at specific (or at least more specific) purposes.
No, I'm not a luser, nor am I a newbie. I know that there are countless distros out there, which fit on a single floppy, six CDs, and everything in between. (I've purchased so many distributions for myself and for others that I'm drowning in Linux CDs.) But everybody and his uncle uses Red Hat. (I personally like SuSE a LOT better, because it is far better organized in my opinion.)
Many common problems make the file system layout and package management suck. I don't mean to start a flamewar, but this problem is far smaller on FreeBSD, where the file system layout is a lot better organized than that of a Red Hat Linux system. (It's even better organized than a SuSE system.) The ports and packages collection, which works through Makefiles, makes installation and removal of many programs very easy, with dependency checks. Unless I'm imagining things, it does find dependencies that you install manually, as long as they're where the system expects them. However, glitches still exist, mainly in the removal of software, that require user intervention to remove some remaining files and directories.
When it comes down to it, I think that package management systems--whether they're Debian's system, RPMs, or the *BSDs' ports and packages--are supposed to serve as a shortcut for the system administrator, who still knows how to manage programs manually. The Linux community seems to have forgotten this, and expect package management to be a flawless installation system for any user with any amount of experience. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and it would be extremely difficult, maybe impossible, to make such a system. I believe this doesn't matter.
Skilled admins need control and flexibility over their programs. This is especially true for critical servers, but also applies to workstations. If the setup they want can be achieved with a package manager, they'll use it. If not, they can opt to build the program from source, or, if this installation takes place often, they might make their own package, perhaps customizing paths or configuration files for site-specific purposes. A well-organized hierarchy is very important.
Novice users are very different. They just want to install this thing called Linux from the CD and surf the web or burn some MP3s. For them, the solution isn't a great package management system, because a novice user probably doesn't know where to obtain programs. In some cases, there are hundreds of similar programs to choose from--novices can't handle all that choice! The solution for them is a distro that supports a very specific set of programs, and supports them well:
Finally, I would recommend that in the spirit of giving back to the community, any admin who makes his own packages should submit them back to the developer for distribution to others. (Unless these packages are designed for site-specific purposes, of course.)
Oh yeah, and I almost forgot the obligatory "oh well."
It's a shame that so many Linux based companies have gone under or shifted focus because of the economic slump. However, the code isn't going anywhere, and when the economy begins to rise again, Linux will be there, and many new companies will form around it again.
The government has finally started to produce good solutions to society's problems, in a timely manner and on budget. I believe that such an email virus, which would obviously function only under quality Microsoft Windows operating systems and Microsoft Outlook products, presents such a simple, elegant and utterly unbreakable solution to our nation's crime problems that soon, all criminals will flee the country and go to Zimbabwe instead.
Of course, when I speak of "criminals" in the previous paragraph, I'm referring to none other than Microsoft Corporation.
I think the best way to go is to write all the time-critical portions of your program in Java. Then, write a Java VM in Perl. Then, write a Perl interpreter in BASIC. Then, write a BASIC interpreter in Python. Then, write a Python interpreter in shell. Then, write a shell interpreter in C++. Then, compile that C++ program and run it under an x86 simulator written in COBOL. Then, write a COBOL interpreter in Pascal. Then, write a Pascal interpreter in Prolog. Then, write a Prolog interpreter in Smalltalk. Then, write a Smalltalk interpreter in awk, and use M4 macros to convert that into a C program, which you compile and run natively on the machine.
Now remember, the previous paragraph applies only to the time-critical portion of your program. The other 99% of it should be hand-coded and highly optimized machine language.
You might consider some or all of the following steps, depending on how badly your current registrar has inconvenienced you:
Oh well.
Somebody out there must be busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest to be making up a hoax like this.
This is a big hoax. Bigger even than the hoax about the MIT operating system Cesium that's supposed to contain year 3,000 technology that nobody on the same floor of that building ever heard of.
On the other hand, can you give me his email address? I'd like to know how to watch movies on my Commodore.
Ok, let's say that Microsoft is allowed to settle this way. It should be allowed ONLY under the following circumstances:
If all of those criteria are met, I would agree to such a settlement.
After reading the entire article, I have to agree with what they say in the end: That while metaphors may be a little helpful in learning how to use a computer, they really just get in the way after the first fifteen minutes.
I don't really like the idea of storing documents in rooms or galleries or whatever, like they discussed. If you want to solve the problem of wrangling with thousands of files, build a relational database into the file system and have the computer observe and record which files you access, in conjunction with which other files, how long you work on them, etc. But have that system stay the hell out of your way. Now, users can view files in a hierarchy, as they always have, or they can instantly view files based on their type, how recently they were accessed, their relationships to other files, etc. If such a system is properly built directly into the file system, files could be moved around in the hierarchy without corrupting the relational information. (Of course, some "soft link" method would be required for information located on other hosts.)
Oh well.
I'd like to congratulate Dare Obasanjo on his extensive comparison between Java and C#. After reading it, and my anti-Microsoft bias aside, I've come to the conclusion that C# is basically a rip off of Java, with a few extra features that might make it an interesting development platform. As always, I feel that Microsoft has implemented a system designed as an integrated part of Windows, to keep the development community (and, therefore, the user community) at Microsoft's mercy.
I say this for the following reasons (and, again, I'm trying my best to place my anti-Microsoft bias aside):
Well, whatever. Forget it. I'll probably just get flamed by a bunch of people, and moderated as a troll or something. Oh well. My karma has been going down for the past few days because some really crappy stories have been posted on the front page, and when I read crappy stories, I write crappy comments. Or something like that. Oh well.
Your comment leads me to wonder something... if you code something in Java, or C++, or FORTRAN, or Perl, or sh, or any other language out there... Does the execution speed of your program necessarily say anything about the language you wrote it in?
I have a strong feeling that many programmers out there aren't very good at programming. Sure, some are geniuses and others are very good, but I think that most don't really have the level of respect for the hardware that I believe is required of a good programmer.
An example, off the top of my head: I once hired a programmer to write a compiler (and virtual machine) for a very simple language, used to operate a small embedded computer--the equivalent of a 486--for a piece of industrial machinery. After months of hard work and who knows how many thousands of lines of code (in C) later, a compiler was produced that could process about 300 lines per second (with about 40 characters in a line), and a virtual machine was produced that processed the compiled code so slowly that it couldn't keep up with mechanical equipment. After a lot of arguing, the programmer swore that it was impossible to make the code any faster.
Then I went in and started analysing the code. The thing that comes to mind first is a routine that, when given an ASCII character between 'A' and 'Z', tells you the number of the letter. For example, 'A' is 0, 'Z' is 25, and everything in between is something in between. A routine that was about 20 lines long was written for this purpose, where just about every string function imaginable was called. In C, this entire routine could be replaced by "string[index] - 'A';" (I don't remember the names, but that's the code.) And this code couldn't be made any faster?!
Yes, it was programmed in C. And C is supposed to be a fast language, right? Heh heh... the language has very little if anything to do with execution speed. It's the programmer's own code that accounts for 99% of the execution time. I rewrote the whole damn thing in six weeks and my implementation processed over 6,000 lines per second, and the code was written for readability with no emphasis on execution speed, and no optimizations. (The algorithm, on the other hand, was designed for speed.) My conclusion? If your banking app was painfully slow, maybe you didn't design or implement it correctly. On the other hand, maybe there was a bottleneck external to your application, like slow response times between you and some database backend. Whatever it was, I doubt that Java was at fault.
...made possible thanks to a few good beers. :-)
I suppose this just goes to show that no matter what kind of system is implemented, there will always be a way to break in. One of the biggest mistakes made by corporate management and government folks is mistaking some so-called technology for a proactive all-around security policy. Although HDCP is but a single detail in a sea of systems geared towards security, the same rule applies to any system: There is no such thing as perfection. This is why I get annoyed when I read an advertisement for some encryption software, firewall product or whatnot that claims to be 100% secure against intruders. It's just glossy marketspeak, and it doesn't cut it for me.
My personal rule of thumb, when it comes to security, is this: Security software is in many ways similar to the laws put in place by the government. Unless someone enforces those laws (or regularly maintains the computer system), the system can be circumvented. Obviously, there are vast differences in the actual work someone has to do, but the concept is the same. If only the PHBs understood that.
Even with a private network that isn't connected to the Internet, there is still at least one big security issue: A false sense of security. Government employees may think that because their private network is so secure and separate from the big bad Internet, they can relax and give computer security a low priority. What most folks don't understand is that computers are like any machine: They require constant maintainence for reliable operation. Security is a large part of that maintainence, and cannot be set aside while other things take place. On the contrary, security must proactively be part of everything that goes on in a computer and network. This is partly why a false sense of security is dangerous.
Besides, intruders could still access the network through such techniques as war-dialing, to name one example off the top of my head.
He will be sorely missed. I'll have to get me a copy of that book when it becomes available.
This is exactly what goes on in George Orwell's 1984. Information that is considered harmful to the government's control is thrown in memory holes, where it is taken by vacuum to huge furnaces (they burn a LOT of documents in 1984).
This kind of move will only take away from the average citizen's knowledge of his country, and won't take anything away from the terrorists. If they want to know something, they can find out with little or no trouble.
I say this: CENSORSHIP SUCKS . It is the responsibility of the PARENTS , not of the government, to decide what is and what is not suitable for their children, and to enforce that in their home. Parents need to talk to their children about "adult" matters, like drugs, alcohol, sex and crime. If the parents don't do this, then the parents are idiots. But it is the PARENTS' , and ONLY the PARENTS' responsibility to handle this.
(I don't care if they pass a law that says that all "adult" materials need to have some sort of tag on them so that parental control software can be written to effectively block all "adult" websites, but a law prohibiting any "adult" materials in the first place is, quite frankly, a very stupid law.)
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH WELL.
Let's put it this way. Many companies cheat when it comes to "demoing" their products. And benchmarks are, for pretty much all intents and purposes, a demo of the product being benchmarked. So they're cheating. OH WELL.
I personally don't like bash. For one thing, I don't like its syntax. Well, actually, that's pretty much the only thing. I like csh a lot better because it's easier to configure, easier to use, and has a syntax that I like a lot better. (Hey, I figure UNIX is programmed in C; why shouldn't it be used in C as well (or at least in something C-like).) It's too bad csh wasn't the de-facto standard for UNIX systems, instead of sh. OH WELL.
Remember Beanie Babies? Or Pogs? Or Magic Cards? Or Cabbage Patch Kids? Or any of hundreds of other things that became a huge fad for a about half a year, made their creators multimillionaires, and then disappeared? I hate it when companies "demand" that everybody waste their money on something. Especially when it's AOLTW.
Fads suck. Harry Potter is a fad. Therefore, Harry Potter sucks.
By the way, there are other things that SUCK as well. One example is Burger King. I HATE all fast food chains. They don't produce food. They produce garbage and dare to call it food. I had some food at a Burger King today and got sick. I'm not making this up either--I'm totally serious about this. Good thing I didn't eat their damn fries. So, like I said, Burger King SUCKS, and so do all the fast food chains.
Well, you know what I'm gonna do, right? If I ever get a car with On Star, that thing is coming off. Even before the smog stuff.
I think it is the responsibility of a child's parents, not the government, to guide children onto a good road for their life. Bureaucracy never misses a chance to miss, and whenever bureaucrats try to gain control over something, it becomes a big, inefficient and ineffective mess.
What difference does it make that a video game or music CD says "Parental Guidance" or whatever? Most folks know that movies have a rating system, and I think most of the same folks don't know that there is a similar system for other forms of media. What is the government going to do, prevent children under 18 from purchasing video games? Newsflash: That doesn't work for cigarettes or alcohol. Why should it work for video games?
Besides, if the government tries to take control over video games, to protect our youth, then the next thing you know, they'll pass a law that makes it illegal for minors under 18 to play for more than an hour on a school day or something ridiculous like that. Again, don't you think the parents should decide what their children can and can't do? That's all I'm trying to say. I don't want to argue about details, like what some rule, law, regulation--or whatever you want to call it--says. I'm just saying that in most matters, parents should be responsible for teaching their children, and once they're old enough, the children should be responsible for themselves. We don't need the government sticking their noses into yet more aspects of our lives.
Oh yeah... and yes, I do know what this story is about. I'm just trying to say that it's ridiculous that most governments have this urge to waste inordinate amounts of time and money trying to control things that really don't matter anyway.
I wonder if this Cyclone makes programming "safer" by making it more difficult. What I mean by this is that some languages out there don't let you use pointers at all, or perform all sorts of checks on array bounds before each access. I like to call this "broken programming" simply because it isn't right in my opinion.
A programmer should have all tools available to him, and should choose the best tool for the job when solving any given problem. Taking away tools doesn't make programming safer--it makes programming messier.
I didn't read the article or the language description or anything, so I don't know if this is the case with Cyclone. But it certainly is with many languages. I thought this is what Lint is for. Lint is a program which performs source-level sanity checks on your code. You write your program in C and/or C++, and whenever you compile, you first run Lint to make sure everything's ok. Sure, it's not perfect, and probably won't find all problems, but it will find quite a few things wrong that you didn't even know about. (There are free and commercial implementations of various source-level things like this.)
I think that careful programming and use of a tool like Lint can make a better improvement than taking away some of the most powerful tools in programming just because some people don't know how to use them. Oh well.
If nanomachines are built that would actually go into the bloodstream or whatever, seek and destroy cancer cells, that would be one of the most amazing advances in human technology that will simultaneously benefit modern medicine and just about every field on Earth.
Maybe one day, they'll invent machines that go into your body, swim around and kill things like the flu. Or perhaps drill through plaque in peoples' arteries to prevent heart attacks. Or who knows what else.
Of course, then the military will start experimenting with nanomachines that wreak havoc on someone's body, and then it'll probably get copied by some other country, and as a result, our military will build nanomachines that seek out and destroy other nanomachines, and so will the other folks, and next thing you know, there are nanowars going on inside peoples' bodies.
Well, what can I say? There's an advantage and disadvantage to everything. Oh well.
How about this idea: If you're making a GPL'd program (or using a similar license), why not release your program on a CD? (I'm saying this in general, regardless of what the specific program was that we were talking about.)
Even if your program is a small utility, like, oh, sed. (That's just the first thing that came to mind. It could be any program.) Compile your program for every system it's designed to work under, and with the most common compile-time options for those systems (if any). Then, put all those binaries in a well organized hierarchy on a CD. In addition, put the "stable" sources (the ones the binaries were built from) on the CD, along with any required libraries, support files and whatever. Put some good documentation on the CD, in a bunch of different formats. Put "example" configurations, programs or whatever that use your program on the CD. Put "marketing" materials on the CD, such as project goals and mission statement, cast of characters (in alphabetical order, with a short bio, job description, etc--in all, a 500 Kbyte file), and whatever else you can think of. In short, even if the program is a 1 Kbyte binary, fill a CD to the brim with any materials you can dream of that are even remotely related to this program. Of course, things should be well organized so that the CD is a marketable, first class product.
The best part is that most of this can be done by non-programmers who want to get involved in a project. (Imagine if you put a list of 500 people on the CD for a program that took one guy two hours to write.)
Package this CD nicely in a nice glossy box (designed by a graphic artist whose name is in your credits), include a nice thick book (make a distribution deal with a publisher to distribute their well-written book with your program), include a Certificate of Authenticity (it doesn't have to be expensive like Microsoft's certificates but it should look reasonably professional) and a copy of the GPL (or whatever license), and charge $89.95 (US) for it.
This might sound ridiculous, but believe me, when people pay good money for something (as long as you charge a fair price), they WILL respect and appreciate it much more than if they had gotten it for free. This is not a joke! It's a marketing fact. And if someone asks, "Why should I pay for something I can download for free?" You answer, "You get a book, a CD, and 1 year of email-based tech support. Besides, you support its further development, documentation, distribution, etc."
Oh well.
Apple claims they wish to work together with the Open Source software community. I believe the PNG format came to be as an alternative to GIF, which is patent-encumbered. Since this was created to help out the Open Source (or Free, if you wish) community, I think Apple should try and work out a reasonable deal with the developers. I don't know what this deal should be. That's up to the parties involved.
On the subject of software patents, I believe they should be allowed, although the patent office should closely scrutinize any such patents (as they should for any patents regardless), making sure that among other things, the invention is not a previously obvious solution to a problem (as originally intended), there is no prior art, and that the patent is extremely specific in its spirit and letter, so that a patent for any given technology will only affect people who are developing that specific technology and nothing else. The idea of patents is a good one. The problem is that the system is broken, and therefore, huge corporations abuse it.
Oh well.