I'm not actually under an employment contract at all. Maybe it's because I'm an at-will employee, but I'm salaried, and don't recall signing anything at all stating conditions of employment. No nondisclosure, no IP stuff, etc. I *was* hired in a hurry, but it still amuses me.
Well, actually, I think they had one good point and one bad/silly point.. the good point being the relative cost-effectiveness being lower on the mainframe (although I wonder if they assume I/O or CPU is more important a measure of effectiveness) The bad/silly point was endianness -- apparently the mainframe is not little endian. It's amusing they didn't mention the name of the other kind, big-endian. If I recall correctly, SUN systems are also big-endian. And of course, I agree with you that endianness really is a non-issue.
Do you really think that one must be easy to
manage in order to be a great programmer? I've
seen a lot of really good coders who won't put
up with people making them miserable.. Of course,
I've also seen good coders who will.. the point is
that there probably isn't a correlation between
'easy to manage' and 'produces good code'.
I imagine this might appeal to some sort of
'revenge' urge, and perhaps might even work
to some degree with really lazy workers, but
I seriously doubt that proficient people really
work better when they're unhappy or uncomfortable.
You'll likely convince people to cut corners,
spreading bad attitude, or quit.
If I'm developing for Unix, let me have Unix
on the desktop, and don't make me use MS Office
or some other standard environment that means I need
to flip between two systems using a KVM. Be
responsive when I want to install vim, viewcvs,
and other tools that make me more productive.
Actually, my current boss is being quite good about
the second, it's just the first that's irritating me
I don't use windows, but I know plenty of people
who do. I also work for a small company, doing code
cleanup (mainly). It's true that these changes are
more effective if done from the beginning, but
at least some benefit can be attained by attempting
to clean afterwards...
I just have some complaints about Linux and where
it's going. Older versions of Redhat, like 4.x and
5.x were pretty nice. I like slackware, but I need
a solution that works on more hardware than x86.
I generally don't tend to be raving about OS's
anymore. When I was younger, I was an OS/2 user,
and did that then, but now I'm generally happy
with a simple, generic Unix with good hardware
support and little hassle compiling stuff myself.
Opensource is a plus. Linux used to be like that,
but it seems that the distributions I liked in
the past are becoming less to my liking as time
goes on. Will BSD ever go that way? I hope not --
if it does I'll move on if possible. I do, as
noted, like the way the linux kernel is configured. If someone had a crossplatform
Linux distro with a very minimal, nonintrusive
package system, very vanilla but up-to-date
pieces, I'd consider moving to it instead. If
you know of such a distro, tell me...
I'm not, at least in this message, talking about
windows. I just have some severe issues with
redhat's technical decisions and the way other
distributions reproduce said decisions.
Now now, I've used NeXTStep for a long time too.
It was pretty neat -- I liked the simple interface.
Some of the netinfo stuff was a bit difficult to
use, IIRC -- it was kind of hard to make DNS
work on it. I actually still have a NeXT slab
on my desk. I don't log into it much, but I love
the monitor... I hope that the GNUStep project
ends up a success -- I loved programming on NeXTStep
Depends on which kernel. As I said, I really like
the BSD userland stuff. The FreeBSD bootup driver
switching utility is quite impressive. But I like
the broader driver support that Linux has, and
the build tools to recompile the kernel on linux
are nice. If it wern't for those two features,
I probably would prefer the FreeBSD kernel, although
when it comes to userland features, I actually
prefer OpenBSD.
Imagine mixing steak and Jello. Sound good? Not
to me, anyhow. Often the same kind of thing happens
when you try to mix different systems together.
You get a mess of different APIs, all with different
ideas about what a string is or what kind of
API discipline is to be used. You also end up with
3 different look'n'feels, and a very complex
development learning curve.
Don't misunderstand -- I really love vim,
and use it all the time for work. I just don't
want it to launch when I type 'vi'. I usually
want to compile my own vim with all the
options I want (that is, I want 'vim -g' to work,
among other things). I don't want vi to go away
when I remove the vim package. Also, in recent
versions of redhat, vim as vi reads your.vimrc,
but it then complains when you have vim-specific
things in it (like 'syntax on'). I couldn't be
nearly as effective in my programming job without
vim, but I just don't want vi to be vim in
disguise.
Then I've found the Linux distro for me.
I've been starting to move my systems to
BSD to avoid the Redhat braindamage that seems
to be spreading to other linuces (xinetd, vi=vim,
and so on), but perhaps this might make me give
second thought... If only someone would mix
all of the BSD userland stuff with the Linux
kernel...
It's best to avoid processor-specific functionality
in large architectural decisions if you want to be
portable. Besides, it's nicer for modern systems
to have components that are layered better than
a cake, so that if I have two very important parts,
I know that they can't crash each other
accidentaly.
This isn't quite true -- HURD has significant
innovation in the kernel that, with a few userland
changes, allows for significant changes in the
way the system is used. Check out
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/reference-manua l/ hurd_toc.html
Who cares what the tooth fairy or other farsical
beings might have to say about the issue?
In any case, what if someone demanded that if
you look at them, you pay them? If they walked
down the street, must people shell out money
in order not to be stealing? Your guideline
for what theft is is seriously broken.
Fortunately operator overloading is a standard
feature of the English language:)
When I think about the desktop, I don't need to
be bothered that my window manager doesn't actually
have any desk to corrispond to it:P
Oh, I didn't mean to assert that OSX lacks a
CLI. Having used various betas of it as well as
NeXTStep and release versions, I know that it has
a lot of Unixy goodness. WRT admin, I largely worry
that there will be settings that can only be managed
through Aqua, and as I have no interest in Aqua, I
don't want to have to deal with it. VNC is nice, but
it doesn't feel as integrated as X forwarding to me.
WRT the formatting, sorry, it's a habit of mine
that's not likely to change. If they make the text
field bigger, I'll probably fit more on a line:)
Your message seems kind of hostile. Did I offend
you somehow, or is it just the fire of advocacy?
I remember playing with OSX beta2 a lot, and
release versions a bit less. It certainly has
changed a lot, but I don't think it'd really be
suitable for someone like me who has no interest
in Aqua. Fink does sound nice, and I'll take a
look at it (hopefully it's like the BSD ports tree).
The thing that I remember about NeXTStep that I
didn't like was that much of its configuration data
was in formats that were unfriendly to hand-editing,
making you use their tools (UserManager.app,
NetInfoManager.app, and so on) for basic systems
tasks. That irritated me in that it made the
system both harder to script and difficult to
remotely administer. There's also the issue that
the DPS-based remote NeXTStep display was not
compatible with X11 remote display (something
not unlike Aqua). I consider remote display
to be very important, and having a box that
I need to walk over to in order to change
something is a pain.
Anyhow, I'm sure OSX is great for regular Mac
users, as well as people who would like to run
both Mac and Unix software. It's not for me --
I'm purely a Unixhead, and so I'm more likely to
run *BSD or Linux on whatever systems I have that
happen to be Macs.
Hehe. Yeah.
Actually, the thing it did was, yaboot needs a
HFS partition to install the bootloader on,
and their installer doesn't check to make sure
that that partition is formatted before it runs
ybin (yaboot installer) on it. ybin gives an
error, but the installer doesn't notice, and says
that everything is fine. Oh well. It might've had
to do with my making the partitions (but not
formatting them) in a previous install attempt,
instead of making them in that go.
I suppose to some degree it's a matter of what I
want in a system. I'm a very Unixy person, and
have no non Unix software that I want to run.
All my boxes are Unix, and I don't mind compiling
my software. OSX doesn't really fit well into
my personal Unix life -- I'd only likely use
XFree86 on it, and so it all comes down to
if I prefer the NeXTStep/Darwin CL stuff or the
Linux CL stuff. Having used NeXTStep, I remember
that managing it from the commandline was a
bother. So, to sum it up, Linux is more of a
generic Unix than OSX is, it's easier to manage
remotely, it fits in more easily into a Unix
network, and it doesn't include anything like
Aqua that I can't easily disable and wouldn't use.
OSX is an admirable effort to bring Unix to the
masses, but I prefer a more Unixy system.
I recently installed
YDL 2.1 on my iBook.
I've been overall pretty happy with the
distribution. It has its high points (nice
software included) and its low points (installer
didn't install yaboot properly, I had to fix it
myself). I'd recommend it to anyone wanting
to run Linux on their Mac...
Hard drives (more room is always welcome)
RAM (as is RAM)
Gamecube with smash bros and super monkey ball
A digital camera (Canon powershot G2?)
Gigabit router + gigabit ethernet cards (to make NFS faster)
Nice new set of computer speakers
A 24" monitor, or perhaps just another 21"
A nice old clickety IBM keyboard, cleaned (for people who don't want to spend much but can track things down)
One of those CD-MP3 players
plenty of blank CD-Rs
A new computer bag
I would suspect that companies/people who run
Unix would like that faster chip, as Unix is quite
portable. I have 2 Alphas, 3 PCs, a NeXT, and my
laptop is an iBook, all of them running Unix.
At work, I manage various flavors of Unix, many on
non-x86 hardware. But I digress..
Nationalism is yesterdays news
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 2
Why do you really care what country certain
industries are based? It's quite possible to
make games for it regardless of where the hardware
is made. There's no good reason that you should
choose to identify more with an american company
than a japanese one -- they're all just people.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not actually under an employment contract
at all. Maybe it's because I'm an at-will
employee, but I'm salaried, and don't recall
signing anything at all stating conditions of
employment. No nondisclosure, no IP stuff,
etc. I *was* hired in a hurry, but it still
amuses me.
Well, actually, I think they had one good point
and one bad/silly point.. the good point being
the relative cost-effectiveness being lower on
the mainframe (although I wonder if they assume
I/O or CPU is more important a measure of effectiveness)
The bad/silly point was endianness -- apparently
the mainframe is not little endian. It's amusing
they didn't mention the name of the other kind,
big-endian. If I recall correctly, SUN systems are
also big-endian. And of course, I agree with you
that endianness really is a non-issue.
Do you really think that one must be easy to
manage in order to be a great programmer? I've
seen a lot of really good coders who won't put
up with people making them miserable.. Of course,
I've also seen good coders who will.. the point is
that there probably isn't a correlation between
'easy to manage' and 'produces good code'.
I imagine this might appeal to some sort of
'revenge' urge, and perhaps might even work
to some degree with really lazy workers, but
I seriously doubt that proficient people really
work better when they're unhappy or uncomfortable.
You'll likely convince people to cut corners,
spreading bad attitude, or quit.
If I'm developing for Unix, let me have Unix
on the desktop, and don't make me use MS Office
or some other standard environment that means I need
to flip between two systems using a KVM. Be
responsive when I want to install vim, viewcvs,
and other tools that make me more productive.
Actually, my current boss is being quite good about
the second, it's just the first that's irritating me
I don't use windows, but I know plenty of people
who do. I also work for a small company, doing code
cleanup (mainly). It's true that these changes are
more effective if done from the beginning, but
at least some benefit can be attained by attempting
to clean afterwards...
I just have some complaints about Linux and where
it's going. Older versions of Redhat, like 4.x and
5.x were pretty nice. I like slackware, but I need
a solution that works on more hardware than x86.
I generally don't tend to be raving about OS's
anymore. When I was younger, I was an OS/2 user,
and did that then, but now I'm generally happy
with a simple, generic Unix with good hardware
support and little hassle compiling stuff myself.
Opensource is a plus. Linux used to be like that,
but it seems that the distributions I liked in
the past are becoming less to my liking as time
goes on. Will BSD ever go that way? I hope not --
if it does I'll move on if possible. I do, as
noted, like the way the linux kernel is configured. If someone had a crossplatform
Linux distro with a very minimal, nonintrusive
package system, very vanilla but up-to-date
pieces, I'd consider moving to it instead. If
you know of such a distro, tell me...
I'm not, at least in this message, talking about
windows. I just have some severe issues with
redhat's technical decisions and the way other
distributions reproduce said decisions.
Is this really a troll in your eyes?
Now now, I've used NeXTStep for a long time too.
It was pretty neat -- I liked the simple interface.
Some of the netinfo stuff was a bit difficult to
use, IIRC -- it was kind of hard to make DNS
work on it. I actually still have a NeXT slab
on my desk. I don't log into it much, but I love
the monitor... I hope that the GNUStep project
ends up a success -- I loved programming on NeXTStep
Depends on which kernel. As I said, I really like
the BSD userland stuff. The FreeBSD bootup driver
switching utility is quite impressive. But I like
the broader driver support that Linux has, and
the build tools to recompile the kernel on linux
are nice. If it wern't for those two features,
I probably would prefer the FreeBSD kernel, although
when it comes to userland features, I actually
prefer OpenBSD.
Imagine mixing steak and Jello. Sound good? Not
to me, anyhow. Often the same kind of thing happens
when you try to mix different systems together.
You get a mess of different APIs, all with different
ideas about what a string is or what kind of
API discipline is to be used. You also end up with
3 different look'n'feels, and a very complex
development learning curve.
Don't misunderstand -- I really love vim, .vimrc,
and use it all the time for work. I just don't
want it to launch when I type 'vi'. I usually
want to compile my own vim with all the
options I want (that is, I want 'vim -g' to work,
among other things). I don't want vi to go away
when I remove the vim package. Also, in recent
versions of redhat, vim as vi reads your
but it then complains when you have vim-specific
things in it (like 'syntax on'). I couldn't be
nearly as effective in my programming job without
vim, but I just don't want vi to be vim in
disguise.
Then I've found the Linux distro for me.
I've been starting to move my systems to
BSD to avoid the Redhat braindamage that seems
to be spreading to other linuces (xinetd, vi=vim,
and so on), but perhaps this might make me give
second thought... If only someone would mix
all of the BSD userland stuff with the Linux
kernel...
It's best to avoid processor-specific functionality
in large architectural decisions if you want to be
portable. Besides, it's nicer for modern systems
to have components that are layered better than
a cake, so that if I have two very important parts,
I know that they can't crash each other
accidentaly.
This isn't quite true -- HURD has significanta l/ hurd_toc.html
innovation in the kernel that, with a few userland
changes, allows for significant changes in the
way the system is used. Check out
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/reference-manu
Who cares what the tooth fairy or other farsical
beings might have to say about the issue?
In any case, what if someone demanded that if
you look at them, you pay them? If they walked
down the street, must people shell out money
in order not to be stealing? Your guideline
for what theft is is seriously broken.
Fortunately operator overloading is a standard :)
:P
feature of the English language
When I think about the desktop, I don't need to
be bothered that my window manager doesn't actually
have any desk to corrispond to it
Not so. Mega and giga arn't metric terms when
used on bytes or collections of them.
Oh, I didn't mean to assert that OSX lacks a
:)
CLI. Having used various betas of it as well as
NeXTStep and release versions, I know that it has
a lot of Unixy goodness. WRT admin, I largely worry
that there will be settings that can only be managed
through Aqua, and as I have no interest in Aqua, I
don't want to have to deal with it. VNC is nice, but
it doesn't feel as integrated as X forwarding to me.
WRT the formatting, sorry, it's a habit of mine
that's not likely to change. If they make the text
field bigger, I'll probably fit more on a line
Your message seems kind of hostile. Did I offend
you somehow, or is it just the fire of advocacy?
I remember playing with OSX beta2 a lot, and
release versions a bit less. It certainly has
changed a lot, but I don't think it'd really be
suitable for someone like me who has no interest
in Aqua. Fink does sound nice, and I'll take a
look at it (hopefully it's like the BSD ports tree).
The thing that I remember about NeXTStep that I
didn't like was that much of its configuration data
was in formats that were unfriendly to hand-editing,
making you use their tools (UserManager.app,
NetInfoManager.app, and so on) for basic systems
tasks. That irritated me in that it made the
system both harder to script and difficult to
remotely administer. There's also the issue that
the DPS-based remote NeXTStep display was not
compatible with X11 remote display (something
not unlike Aqua). I consider remote display
to be very important, and having a box that
I need to walk over to in order to change
something is a pain.
Anyhow, I'm sure OSX is great for regular Mac
users, as well as people who would like to run
both Mac and Unix software. It's not for me --
I'm purely a Unixhead, and so I'm more likely to
run *BSD or Linux on whatever systems I have that
happen to be Macs.
Hehe. Yeah.
Actually, the thing it did was, yaboot needs a
HFS partition to install the bootloader on,
and their installer doesn't check to make sure
that that partition is formatted before it runs
ybin (yaboot installer) on it. ybin gives an
error, but the installer doesn't notice, and says
that everything is fine. Oh well. It might've had
to do with my making the partitions (but not
formatting them) in a previous install attempt,
instead of making them in that go.
I suppose to some degree it's a matter of what I
want in a system. I'm a very Unixy person, and
have no non Unix software that I want to run.
All my boxes are Unix, and I don't mind compiling
my software. OSX doesn't really fit well into
my personal Unix life -- I'd only likely use
XFree86 on it, and so it all comes down to
if I prefer the NeXTStep/Darwin CL stuff or the
Linux CL stuff. Having used NeXTStep, I remember
that managing it from the commandline was a
bother. So, to sum it up, Linux is more of a
generic Unix than OSX is, it's easier to manage
remotely, it fits in more easily into a Unix
network, and it doesn't include anything like
Aqua that I can't easily disable and wouldn't use.
OSX is an admirable effort to bring Unix to the
masses, but I prefer a more Unixy system.
I recently installed YDL 2.1 on my iBook. I've been overall pretty happy with the distribution. It has its high points (nice software included) and its low points (installer didn't install yaboot properly, I had to fix it myself). I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to run Linux on their Mac...
Hard drives (more room is always welcome)
RAM (as is RAM)
Gamecube with smash bros and super monkey ball
A digital camera (Canon powershot G2?)
Gigabit router + gigabit ethernet cards (to make NFS faster)
Nice new set of computer speakers
A 24" monitor, or perhaps just another 21"
A nice old clickety IBM keyboard, cleaned (for people who don't want to spend much but can track things down)
One of those CD-MP3 players
plenty of blank CD-Rs
A new computer bag
I would suspect that companies/people who run
Unix would like that faster chip, as Unix is quite
portable. I have 2 Alphas, 3 PCs, a NeXT, and my
laptop is an iBook, all of them running Unix.
At work, I manage various flavors of Unix, many on
non-x86 hardware. But I digress..
Why do you really care what country certain
industries are based? It's quite possible to
make games for it regardless of where the hardware
is made. There's no good reason that you should
choose to identify more with an american company
than a japanese one -- they're all just people.