review is flamebait ?
on
Hacker Culture
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
> Slashdot readers are no doubt familiar with the fact that Mac OS X is not much more than an "aqualicious" -- and expensive -- wrap of FreeBSD.
fact ? eh ? If the whole of OS X is not much more than a wrap of FreeBSD then how come the good GNUstep folks are still struggling to complete a workalike after nearly a decade ?
There is a heck of a lot more to OS X than just Darwin you know , just like there is a whole lot more to GNU than just linux.
As long as your definition of "works like a charm" doesn't include running multiple X-Servers on the same console and using multiple pointing devices and XVideo overlays.
Weird setup ? For sure - but my TNT card will cause an X lockup at least once a day using this configuration and NVidia drivers, and there is nothing I can do about debugging it because there is no source. Last time I buy one of their cards.
Certainly it works great with Quake3. But 3-D gaming isn't exactly the main focus of my linux desktop system.
Eh? perl does have operator overloading (although not really that similar to C++). Java doesn't (although the + operator is used to concatenate strings).
I guess you just have a bizarre and rarefied sense of humour.
I don't think they are in it for the long haul. As I understand it they haven't been doing so well of late.
Maybe its because I'm English and see more of Murdoch - but I think he's as sociopathic a megalomaniac as Gates is. I think you can read a lot into a corporation from its chief controlling founder's personality. I tend to see AOL/TW/Case as just more of your everyday (very successful) capitalists just following the megacorporation-HOWTO.
Gates + Murdoch I find a bit scary as personalities. All just my opinions of course , and all total conjecture.
The huge inevitable megacorp war as to who owns all the content/networks/eyeballs/mindshare/money/world is going to be Microsoft/Gates VS News Corp/ Murdoch.
I don't understand your "got burnt".
The "backwards sequence counters after crash" bug has been present throughout all 7.1.* releases. "General Weirdness" sounds a little bit handwavy to me. Are you sure you actaully know what you are talking about here? I have been actively developing against some BIG databases with postgresql-7.2 since its Beta releases and have yet to see any significant production problems with 7.2x. Postgresql official releases are usually of very high quality.
Well you're right in many ways about the speed of the project, but have you tried it recently ? Its been gaining a lot of momentum the last year or so and a few userspace apps are getting quite impressive, especially GNUMail.app
However, I wasn't really trying to suggest that it was a feature match with Cocoa (or even OpenSTEP), I implied as much in my comment when I mentioned waiting for them to catch up. My point was purely in response to a comment saying that Objective-C the language would restrict your target platform. Forgetting OSX and OpenSTEP for a second if you just want to code stuff in Objective-C - gcc and the GNUStep non-gui classes are here,useful and portable today.
Limit your platform !?
Don't forget GNUStep. Also , notice that NEXTSTEP's and Apple's and GNUStep's (and pretty much the defacto) Objective C compiler is gcc. So you're saying that Objective-C limits your platform to anywhere gcc is ported ! Thats not really what I would call a portablility issue !
Now if you had pointed out that making use of High level Cocoa classes would restrict you pretty much to Apple until GNUStep caught up then you might have had a point. But Objective-C ? gcc and GNUStep-Foundation look pretty damn portable (and Free) to me, mate.
Huge NEXSTEP fan that I am I still feel compelled to point out that Display Postscript was Adobe's tech,and licensed by NeXT, and also that Sun NeWS was doing this before Display Postscript.
Line 4 , near "&&}",eh? - well "&&}" looks plain wrong anyway - grepping the code for this clause points me to the map{/^r/&&} fragment . Now && is the C-style "short-circuit" logical "and" operator - so there should be a right hand side there - lets try just losing the && altogether
Ok - I get it its a JAPH - and this guy has obviously cut and pasted
it from somewhere and something has munged his code - presumably the
slashdot form - hmmm -if he's posting HTML and there was to be a line
input operator pair there < > then they wouldn't display
properly in the browser. Wonder what the filehandle name could be - well
the only thing in scope inside that map { } block is the implicit $_
coming from the %p elements on the RHS of the map statement - lets try
that
Each letter appearing after a certain delay - hey , thats quite cute !
This took me lest than a minute to run debug and fix - without even
analysing the core algorithm there - just responding to the helpful
diagnostic messages emitted by the perl interpreter and fixing the
obvious syntax error ( with a little lateral guesswork ). Bear in mind
that (i)I am no perl guru , by any means and (ii) this
is a JAPH - its supposed to be a cute obfuscated bit of code
for people to have fun decoding and figuring out. So no, I don't
accept your point at all - would you judge the quality of the C
programming language based on the entries from the annual Obfuscated C
contest. No ? I'd also wager it would take you (or me) a damn sight
longer than two minutes to debug one of those beauties based
on someone elses poor transcription.
506 $ lynx -source -head http://slashdot.org | grep X-
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000
X-Bender: There's nothing wrong with murder, just as long as you let Bender whet his beak.
There's either a X-Fry or an X-Bender with a random quote each page.
Ooh , well said sir. Seldom have I seen a clueless slashdot pontificator put in his place so eloquently. Having said that , I'm no fan of the majority of self-professed software engineers. Anyone I've ever worked with who walks around spouting the "I'm a software engineer not just an implementor / programmer " line , (and I've worked with a few ) tends to be vastly inexperienced and not have any practical understanding of either discipline.
But still, bravo. I wish I had some mod points.
Many people actually thought that by the time the MessagePad reched the 2000 series the handwriting recognition was pretty danm good and certainly far from sucky.
Mud sticks and the 100 series recognition was pretty bad - this saddled the whole product line with a reputation of poor interface - this is because it was released too early to match the massive PDA Hype flying around. Apple scrapped the recogniton software and did it again for the later Models and the 2000 / 2100 / eMates actually worked quite amazingly if you were prepared to spend a little time with it and let it "learn" your writing .
"Slightly skeptikal Open Source Software Educational Society
This page is devoted to the research of the Open Source Software (OSS) phenomena without rose-colored glasses. I am convinced that we need to understand both strong and weak points of OSS and the former is impossible without the latter. Both exists. This page neither promotes an OSS euphoria nor the cynical pessimism of some commercial developers."
The main site of the bloke that wrote that reasonably high profile critique of CatB a while ago. There is mountains of stuff here in the same vein, and to my mind it makes interesting reading, if a little over laboured at times. A few spelling mistakes and technical errors but I don't think English is the chaps native tongue.
Well they allow the Aqua mozilla themes to be used for OSX as well as the Aqua QT "skins". Seems to me their main problem is with Aqua copyists on other platforms.
Strikes me they might let it be if it were to be distributed for OS X use alone
Slashdot Mirror
fact ? eh ? If the whole of OS X is not much more than a wrap of FreeBSD then how come the good GNUstep folks are still struggling to complete a workalike after nearly a decade ?
There is a heck of a lot more to OS X than just Darwin you know , just like there is a whole lot more to GNU than just linux.
500 quid would buy you a pretty sucky intel laptop.
Project Builder doesn't.
As long as your definition of "works like a charm" doesn't include running multiple X-Servers on the same console and using multiple pointing devices and XVideo overlays. Weird setup ? For sure - but my TNT card will cause an X lockup at least once a day using this configuration and NVidia drivers, and there is nothing I can do about debugging it because there is no source. Last time I buy one of their cards. Certainly it works great with Quake3. But 3-D gaming isn't exactly the main focus of my linux desktop system.
Java doesn't (although the + operator is used to concatenate strings).
I guess you just have a bizarre and rarefied sense of humour.
Maybe its because I'm English and see more of Murdoch - but I think he's as sociopathic a megalomaniac as Gates is. I think you can read a lot into a corporation from its chief controlling founder's personality. I tend to see AOL/TW/Case as just more of your everyday (very successful) capitalists just following the megacorporation-HOWTO.
Gates + Murdoch I find a bit scary as personalities. All just my opinions of course , and all total conjecture.
Microsoft/Gates VS News Corp/ Murdoch.
Mark My Words.
I don't understand your "got burnt". The "backwards sequence counters after crash" bug has been present throughout all 7.1.* releases. "General Weirdness" sounds a little bit handwavy to me. Are you sure you actaully know what you are talking about here?
I have been actively developing against some BIG databases with postgresql-7.2 since its Beta releases and have yet to see any significant production problems with 7.2x. Postgresql official releases are usually of very high quality.
However, I wasn't really trying to suggest that it was a feature match with Cocoa (or even OpenSTEP), I implied as much in my comment when I mentioned waiting for them to catch up. My point was purely in response to a comment saying that Objective-C the language would restrict your target platform. Forgetting OSX and OpenSTEP for a second if you just want to code stuff in Objective-C - gcc and the GNUStep non-gui classes are here ,useful and portable today.
Don't forget GNUStep. Also , notice that NEXTSTEP's and Apple's and GNUStep's (and pretty much the defacto) Objective C compiler is gcc. So you're saying that Objective-C limits your platform to anywhere gcc is ported ! Thats not really what I would call a portablility issue !
Now if you had pointed out that making use of High level Cocoa classes would restrict you pretty much to Apple until GNUStep caught up then you might have had a point. But Objective-C ? gcc and GNUStep-Foundation look pretty damn portable (and Free) to me, mate.
[ahem]
"Thru the darkness
of Future Past
the magician longs to see
one chants out
between two worlds
File - walk with me."
Sorry.
I'm such a cynic.
He didn't say that python isn't mature, he said it wasn't as mature as perl.
Check the title of the slashdot story again and think for a minute
yes - obvious as soon as I tried running it - lets see
perl -e '@P=split//,".URRUU\c8R";@d=split//,"\nrekcah xinU / lreP rehtona tsuJ";
sub p{@p{"r$p","u$p"}=(P,P);pipe"r$p","u$p";++$p;($q*
map{$P=$P[$f^ord($p{$_})&6];$p{$_}=/ ^$P/ix?$P:close$_}keys%p}p;p;p;p;p;
map{$p{$_}=~/^[ P.]/&& close$_}%p;wait until$?;map{/^r/&&}%p;$_=$d[$q];
sleep rand(2)if/\S/;print '
syntax error at -e line 4, near "&&}"
Line 4 , near "&&}"
perl -e '@P=split//,".URRUU\c8R";@d=split//,"\nrekcah xinU / lreP rehtona tsuJ";
sub p{@p{"r$p","u$p"}=(P,P);pipe"r$p","u$p";++$p;($q*
map{$P=$P[$f^ord($p{$_})&6];$p{$_}=/ ^$P/ix?$P:close$_}keys%p}p;p;p;p;p;
map{$p{$_}=~/^[ P.]/&& close$_}%p;wait until$?;map{/^r/}%p;$_=$d[$q];
sleep rand(2)if/\S/;print '
tl hnU ei hPkaecJua/ sterrnoxr
Ok - I get it its a JAPH - and this guy has obviously cut and pasted
it from somewhere and something has munged his code - presumably the
slashdot form - hmmm -if he's posting HTML and there was to be a line
input operator pair there < > then they wouldn't display
properly in the browser. Wonder what the filehandle name could be - well
the only thing in scope inside that map { } block is the implicit $_
coming from the %p elements on the RHS of the map statement - lets try
that
perl -e '@P=split//,".URRUU\c8R";@d=split//,"\nrekcah xinU / lreP rehtona tsuJ";
sub p{@p{"r$p","u$p"}=(P,P);pipe"r$p","u$p";++$p;($q*
map{$P=$P[$f^ord($p{$_})&6];$p{$_}=/ ^$P/ix?$P:close$_}keys%p}p;p;p;p;p;
map{$p{$_}=~/^[ P.]/&& close$_}%p;wait until$?;map{/^r/&& <$_>}%p;$_=$d[$q];
sleep rand(2)if/\S/;print '
Just another Perl / Unix hacker
Each letter appearing after a certain delay - hey , thats quite cute !
This took me lest than a minute to run debug and fix - without even
analysing the core algorithm there - just responding to the helpful
diagnostic messages emitted by the perl interpreter and fixing the
obvious syntax error ( with a little lateral guesswork ). Bear in mind
that (i)I am no perl guru , by any means and (ii) this
is a JAPH - its supposed to be a cute obfuscated bit of code
for people to have fun decoding and figuring out. So no, I don't
accept your point at all - would you judge the quality of the C
programming language based on the entries from the annual Obfuscated C
contest. No ? I'd also wager it would take you (or me) a damn sight
longer than two minutes to debug one of those beauties based
on someone elses poor transcription.
Not as often as I've seen
i++;
I'll admit
506 $ lynx -source -head http://slashdot.org | grep X-
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000
X-Bender: There's nothing wrong with murder, just as long as you let Bender whet his beak.
There's either a X-Fry or an X-Bender with a random quote each page.
Ooh , well said sir. Seldom have I seen a clueless slashdot pontificator put in his place so eloquently. Having said that , I'm no fan of the majority of self-professed software engineers. Anyone I've ever worked with who walks around spouting the "I'm a software engineer not just an implementor / programmer " line , (and I've worked with a few ) tends to be vastly inexperienced and not have any practical understanding of either discipline. But still, bravo. I wish I had some mod points.
$ emacs
esc
shift-X
doctor
you don't need the Shift. Just esc x doc (tab to autocomplete) will do.
Or use your meta key in place of esc, if you have one. Often mapped to L-alt on Linux distros.
Mud sticks and the 100 series recognition was pretty bad - this saddled the whole product line with a reputation of poor interface - this is because it was released too early to match the massive PDA Hype flying around. Apple scrapped the recogniton software and did it again for the later Models and the 2000 / 2100 / eMates actually worked quite amazingly if you were prepared to spend a little time with it and let it "learn" your writing .
"Slightly skeptikal Open Source Software Educational Society
This page is devoted to the research of the Open Source Software (OSS) phenomena without rose-colored glasses. I am convinced that we need to understand both strong and weak points of OSS and the former is impossible without the latter. Both exists. This page neither promotes an OSS euphoria nor the cynical pessimism of some commercial developers."
The main site of the bloke that wrote that reasonably high profile critique of CatB a while ago. There is mountains of stuff here in the same vein, and to my mind it makes interesting reading, if a little over laboured at times. A few spelling mistakes and technical errors but I don't think English is the chaps native tongue.
Whats wrong with this ?
Admittedly the split function can't work on individual characters as it needs an IFS but substr seems to work ok for me.
What about this
Or have I misunderstood ?
Expecting "Marketing Open Source for Sales Dummies " anytime soon