No, the GPL just presumes to attempt to restrict what I do with my code that has no GPL code in it.
Um, no, that's simply not true. The GPL presumes to tell you what you can do my MY code. You are perfectly free to accept the license terms or not. Your own code is unaffected by anything other than your own decisions and their consequences. You're just not allowed to deny me the right to control what's done with *my* code. If you think you should have that right, you're certainly more corrupt and domineering than RMS.
Going to the Moon with chemical fueled rockets is like building computers with vacuum tubes. Both were done 40-50 years ago. Where would computing be now if we had relied on building better vacuum tubes rather than investing in the research the lead to the transistor?
Even more shocking, my car still has wheels. Roman chariots had wheels. You would think by now we'd have moved on to something better than a circular design for rolling things...
(The fact that something was done 40-50 years ago says nothing about how good an idea is to be doing so today.)
Whether or not the design is better is largely irrelevant to this debate; what is relevant is the DIRECT team are failing to take into account the overhead of switching projects and switching managers at this stage. Regardless of which was the better approach, DIRECT lost the debate some time ago, and revisiting it now (even if it results in a better vehicle in the long run) isn't going to make anything either cheaper or quicker.
"Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice." -- H. L. Mencken
Quotes prove nothing, of course, but I can't imagine what kind of state of mind has to be behind this statement: "Whether or not the design is better is largely irrelevant to this debate," especially coupled with "(even if it results in a better vehicle in the long run)". o.O
OF COURSE whether it's a better design and results in a better vehicle is relevant! Yeah, it may not make things quicker, or cheaper in the short-run, but it's pretty damn relevant regardless. One suspects you're taking an extremely narrow view of "this debate" to justify a silly view. It's true that if you confine your consideration to a narrow enough field of view that what you say is dead-on accurate. But confining the debate in that manner would be foolhardy. It's possible to say perfectly accurate things, but for what you're saying to still be quite stupid. "This debate" is only relevant in any respect due to how it fits into the big picture, and all things considered, these are incredibly relevant considerations.
Um, the Wikipedia article you link to mentions that the ICBM in question is suited for satellite launches, and even includes a link to the Minotaur article. What part of it were you reading that you thought didn't flatly contradict your assertion?
Interesting. The way I learned it was, an alpha test was in-house, a beta test was available to people outside the organization. And the joke was, the version you ship to paying customers is the gamma test, given that "potentially buggy" describes the software in all phases.;)
... We simply build generational ships and send them off to each star. In the hopes that one of them finds a habitable planet The ones that don't can keep looking indefinately (or turn back and return to Earth if it's still here).
If we've advanced to the point of being able to create generation ships, that is, we've advanced to the point of being able to live in space -- why do we care if there's a habitable planet at the destination? For that matter, why are we even going? You realize that whoever gets there will be an nth generation descendant of people who've never even seen one, and have lived for generations without one just fine. Descending back into a gravity well would be utterly pointless for them. The LAST thing they're going to give a rats ass about is where the nearest "habitable planet" is...
By the time comes, we won't need to move the earth. Hardly anybody will be living on it anyway, compared to the number of people living in space. Moving our space habitats will be a lot easier...
Ah, I think we were having semantic issues there. Yes, a scientist would be pretty dumb to say we should NEVER go into space. I do think it's not ignorant to say we should put it on hold until we get some things sorted out first.
Or until we have the right capabilities. Saying we should cross the ocean is all well and good. Diving in and attempting to swim across before you've invented ships is a bad idea.
Going into space is a good idea. Going into space now may not be.
Re:Simple shit you didn't know existed
on
Ubuntu Kung Fu
·
· Score: 1
Mostly, the information you want is in the man pages. 'man man' and 'man hier' to start.
cd/usr/bin
ls | xargs -n1 man
Very educational.:) Actually, this is more or less what I did back in 1987 first time I was given an account on a Unix-based machine in college. I didn't understand a lot of it, but I learned a lot. Of course I was coming from a DOS/CLI background, I just needed to know the actual commands, not grok the basic concepts. Or so I thought. As students of Rumsfeldian epistemology would say, I was reading the man pages because of my known unknowns but I had a lot of unknown unknowns that took longer to grasp. The Tao of Unix is not immediately apparent to the uninitiated.
It's amazing that GNU is 25 years old now. In 1984 I was using a TRS-80, and the latest thing I knew about proprietary versus nonproprietary software was that Radio Shack had given up on the idea that customers would only be able to buy software from Radio Shack -- they had finally come around to the point of view that it was OK for third-party software houses to sell applications that would run on their OS. How many people are as far ahead of their time as Stallman was in 1984?
A better question would be, how many were are seriously behind the times as Radio Shack? A tiny fraction of the software available for Apple IIs or IBM PCs in 1984 was from their respective manufacturers. And if Apple DTS (Developer Tech Support) wasn't already around in '84 already, they soon would be. I used to have vast volumes of programming and technical information from them, all provided for free at the time, to encourage as much development as possible for their platforms. (They eventually started to charge a yearly fee for DTS membership, but not until many years later.)
"While Linux Torvalds gets most of the plaudits nowadays for the Linux kernel, it was Stallman who originally posted plans for a new, and free, operating system."
Talk is cheap. A lot of people wrote about plans for flying, but the Wright Brothers get the credit for doing it.
That said, there is a lot more to an operating system than a kernel.
Yes, if you use Free Code in Your Code, Your Code becomes Free Code.
I would not regard this as intuitive...
Considering you decided to state it backwards, it's not surprising it doesn't sound intuitive. Try this instead: "If you're willing to make your code free, you're free to use my code that I've dedicated for that purpose."
At no point are you being forced to do anything, nor at any point does your code become anything other than exactly what you chose it to be.
And, more importantly, my code doesn't become anything other than what I chose it to be. I chose for it to be free code, and it remains free wherever it is used. The GPL gives me the freedom to make that choice. It doesn't give you the freedom to subvert it, of course, but you never had that right to begin with (it's not your code), so it in no way restricts your freedom.
OMG. This is no joke: I thought Richard Stallman and Eric S. Raymond were the same guy, for the last YEARS! I never thought that there would be two crazy bearded men loving weapons and GNU!
Really? I suspect half the population of/. fits that description (I do).:p
How old are all you/.ers saying you love Dr Who? Hardly anyone I know that's over 25 watches it, unless they watch it with their children.
Interesting. I have half a dozen old and dear friends between the ages of 39-42. Every last one of them watches the show religiously. Well, one of them is more likely to miss it than the rest of us -- that'd be the one with children. Couple of work-friends in their mid-thirties watch it too. One of my work friends does not -- he's 21.
Actually, if you only have to spend half a day doing that other stuff, and get a good half a day actually coding, that's an incredibly good day!
My last in-the-office 9-to-5 job, I put in a lot of (unpaid) overtime because it was practically the only time I could get of uninterrupted, deep-think coding. I eventually adjusted my schedule to come in at 11 and leave around 8pm. (Which generated a lot of friction, but I was the most experienced and senior IT guy in the company so I could get away with a lot, and took ruthless advantage of it.) XD
As hard as it is to get a job doing what you want to do, it's much harder keeping a job that you don't want to do. Finding a job you want to do is all about survival.
If you really want to work, then something is strange about you.
Perhaps, but then I know a lot of very strange people. (Of course, I already knew that...)
I enjoy helping other people out, but I'd rather not be plugging things in and restarting computers the rest of my life.
As a junior-level CS major, do you really think that's what CS grads typically do?
As someone who apparently read what he wrote, do you really think that's what he thinks? Reread, taking the whole context into account. "I've spent plenty of time working entry-level IT jobs doing various kinds of help desk type work, and so most of the exposure I've had to the field is related to support of other people's computers. I enjoy helping other people out, but I'd rather not be plugging things in and restarting computers the rest of my life." That's what he's doing right now, in the IT field but without a degree. He doesn't want to keep doing that for the rest of his life, and asking what to do when he gets the degree. At no point does he say anything to suggest that's what he thinks CS grads typically do.
Although the possibility is growing on me, I don't think I would particularly love to write code all day for a living either.
Then why are you majoring in CS?
Possibly because he's interested in Computer Science? Perhaps he even wants to become an actual computer scientist, rather than just using the degree to get a high-paying coding job.
If you're really, truly interested in CS, you really need to get a post-graduate degree as well. Best advice, get the Ph.D. and a good professorship somewhere. Most of the real computer scientists I know are absolutely atrocious programmers, but luckily that's not their job, and they frankly have a lot more fun than most coders...
Frankly, software development is severely overrated. Getting a CS degree and going off to do it is sort of like watching some episode of Nova dealing with some science topic lending some interest to whatever scientific branch that is involved but then when you get that chemistry degree you realize a monkey could work at a lab eventually (think Darwin).
Heh. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astrophysicist. Then in Jr. High, I found out what the job is actually like. For those professional astrophysicists out there, I salute you, but I don't envy you. You guys do all the boring, painstaking crud work, and I'll read the exciting results in a book or magazine later, thanks.:)
...done on your "own time" or on your "own equipment" it doesn't matter if you're an exempt employee.
Depends. Assuming I'm not stealing code or secrets from my employer, anything done on my own time on my own equipment is mine, by Minnesota law. If my contract with my employer says otherwise, my employment contract is simply invalid and unenforceable.
We're at the beginning of the Second Great Depression....
I'm guessing you're either very young, or have a short memory. I'm not old enough to remember the Great Depression, but I am old enough to remember economies far worse that this. Wake me up when the unemployment rate gets into the teens. It still won't be at Depression levels, then, but at least it will be more than a mild downturn compared to the ones I've lived through before...
Conventional wisdom is that an economic downturn is the best time to start a new enterprise. If you can succeed in a down economy, you're golden. Initial success in an up economy may prove to be illusory, which leaves you far more screwed when it finally goes belly up.
Slashdot Mirror
No, the GPL just presumes to attempt to restrict what I do with my code that has no GPL code in it.
Um, no, that's simply not true. The GPL presumes to tell you what you can do my MY code. You are perfectly free to accept the license terms or not. Your own code is unaffected by anything other than your own decisions and their consequences. You're just not allowed to deny me the right to control what's done with *my* code. If you think you should have that right, you're certainly more corrupt and domineering than RMS.
Going to the Moon with chemical fueled rockets is like building computers with vacuum tubes. Both were done 40-50 years ago. Where would computing be now if we had relied on building better vacuum tubes rather than investing in the research the lead to the transistor?
Even more shocking, my car still has wheels. Roman chariots had wheels. You would think by now we'd have moved on to something better than a circular design for rolling things...
(The fact that something was done 40-50 years ago says nothing about how good an idea is to be doing so today.)
Whether or not the design is better is largely irrelevant to this debate; what is relevant is the DIRECT team are failing to take into account the overhead of switching projects and switching managers at this stage. Regardless of which was the better approach, DIRECT lost the debate some time ago, and revisiting it now (even if it results in a better vehicle in the long run) isn't going to make anything either cheaper or quicker.
"Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice." -- H. L. Mencken
Quotes prove nothing, of course, but I can't imagine what kind of state of mind has to be behind this statement: "Whether or not the design is better is largely irrelevant to this debate," especially coupled with "(even if it results in a better vehicle in the long run)". o.O
OF COURSE whether it's a better design and results in a better vehicle is relevant! Yeah, it may not make things quicker, or cheaper in the short-run, but it's pretty damn relevant regardless. One suspects you're taking an extremely narrow view of "this debate" to justify a silly view. It's true that if you confine your consideration to a narrow enough field of view that what you say is dead-on accurate. But confining the debate in that manner would be foolhardy. It's possible to say perfectly accurate things, but for what you're saying to still be quite stupid. "This debate" is only relevant in any respect due to how it fits into the big picture, and all things considered, these are incredibly relevant considerations.
Um, the Wikipedia article you link to mentions that the ICBM in question is suited for satellite launches, and even includes a link to the Minotaur article. What part of it were you reading that you thought didn't flatly contradict your assertion?
...we could have the presidential blimp. :D
Gecko is large and unwieldy compared to Webkit. ... It trails in many ways and seems like a far less agile project compared with Webkit and Opera...
In summary, Mozilla is becoming a dinosaur...
Interesting. The way I learned it was, an alpha test was in-house, a beta test was available to people outside the organization. And the joke was, the version you ship to paying customers is the gamma test, given that "potentially buggy" describes the software in all phases. ;)
Actually, we don't quite know who Shakespeare is. But we do know his works and pseudonym quite well.
Does it matter what his real name was? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet...
If we knew for sure what it was, we wouldn't know him any better, we'd just know a bit of trivia about him.
I know I'd rather have given NASA 700 billion than the banks. At least we'd get something for our tax dollars in the end.
So, you're expecting the complete and total collapse of the banking system?
... We simply build generational ships and send them off to each star. In the hopes that one of them finds a habitable planet The ones that don't can keep looking indefinately (or turn back and return to Earth if it's still here).
If we've advanced to the point of being able to create generation ships, that is, we've advanced to the point of being able to live in space -- why do we care if there's a habitable planet at the destination? For that matter, why are we even going? You realize that whoever gets there will be an nth generation descendant of people who've never even seen one, and have lived for generations without one just fine. Descending back into a gravity well would be utterly pointless for them. The LAST thing they're going to give a rats ass about is where the nearest "habitable planet" is...
By the time comes, we won't need to move the earth. Hardly anybody will be living on it anyway, compared to the number of people living in space. Moving our space habitats will be a lot easier...
Ah, I think we were having semantic issues there. Yes, a scientist would be pretty dumb to say we should NEVER go into space. I do think it's not ignorant to say we should put it on hold until we get some things sorted out first.
Or until we have the right capabilities. Saying we should cross the ocean is all well and good. Diving in and attempting to swim across before you've invented ships is a bad idea.
Going into space is a good idea. Going into space now may not be.
Mostly, the information you want is in the man pages. 'man man' and 'man hier' to start.
cd /usr/bin
ls | xargs -n1 man
Very educational. :) Actually, this is more or less what I did back in 1987 first time I was given an account on a Unix-based machine in college. I didn't understand a lot of it, but I learned a lot. Of course I was coming from a DOS/CLI background, I just needed to know the actual commands, not grok the basic concepts. Or so I thought. As students of Rumsfeldian epistemology would say, I was reading the man pages because of my known unknowns but I had a lot of unknown unknowns that took longer to grasp. The Tao of Unix is not immediately apparent to the uninitiated.
It's amazing that GNU is 25 years old now. In 1984 I was using a TRS-80, and the latest thing I knew about proprietary versus nonproprietary software was that Radio Shack had given up on the idea that customers would only be able to buy software from Radio Shack -- they had finally come around to the point of view that it was OK for third-party software houses to sell applications that would run on their OS. How many people are as far ahead of their time as Stallman was in 1984?
A better question would be, how many were are seriously behind the times as Radio Shack? A tiny fraction of the software available for Apple IIs or IBM PCs in 1984 was from their respective manufacturers. And if Apple DTS (Developer Tech Support) wasn't already around in '84 already, they soon would be. I used to have vast volumes of programming and technical information from them, all provided for free at the time, to encourage as much development as possible for their platforms. (They eventually started to charge a yearly fee for DTS membership, but not until many years later.)
"While Linux Torvalds gets most of the plaudits nowadays for the Linux kernel, it was Stallman who originally posted plans for a new, and free, operating system."
Talk is cheap. A lot of people wrote about plans for flying, but the Wright Brothers get the credit for doing it.
That said, there is a lot more to an operating system than a kernel.
Yes, if you use Free Code in Your Code, Your Code becomes Free Code.
I would not regard this as intuitive ...
Considering you decided to state it backwards, it's not surprising it doesn't sound intuitive. Try this instead: "If you're willing to make your code free, you're free to use my code that I've dedicated for that purpose."
At no point are you being forced to do anything, nor at any point does your code become anything other than exactly what you chose it to be.
And, more importantly, my code doesn't become anything other than what I chose it to be. I chose for it to be free code, and it remains free wherever it is used. The GPL gives me the freedom to make that choice. It doesn't give you the freedom to subvert it, of course, but you never had that right to begin with (it's not your code), so it in no way restricts your freedom.
OMG. This is no joke: I thought Richard Stallman and Eric S. Raymond were the same guy, for the last YEARS! I never thought that there would be two crazy bearded men loving weapons and GNU!
Really? I suspect half the population of /. fits that description (I do). :p
How old are all you /.ers saying you love Dr Who? Hardly anyone I know that's over 25 watches it, unless they watch it with their children.
Interesting. I have half a dozen old and dear friends between the ages of 39-42. Every last one of them watches the show religiously. Well, one of them is more likely to miss it than the rest of us -- that'd be the one with children. Couple of work-friends in their mid-thirties watch it too. One of my work friends does not -- he's 21.
Actually, if you only have to spend half a day doing that other stuff, and get a good half a day actually coding, that's an incredibly good day!
My last in-the-office 9-to-5 job, I put in a lot of (unpaid) overtime because it was practically the only time I could get of uninterrupted, deep-think coding. I eventually adjusted my schedule to come in at 11 and leave around 8pm. (Which generated a lot of friction, but I was the most experienced and senior IT guy in the company so I could get away with a lot, and took ruthless advantage of it.) XD
As hard as it is to get a job doing what you want to do, it's much harder keeping a job that you don't want to do. Finding a job you want to do is all about survival.
If you really want to work, then something is strange about you.
Perhaps, but then I know a lot of very strange people. (Of course, I already knew that...)
I enjoy helping other people out, but I'd rather not be plugging things in and restarting computers the rest of my life.
As a junior-level CS major, do you really think that's what CS grads typically do?
As someone who apparently read what he wrote, do you really think that's what he thinks? Reread, taking the whole context into account. "I've spent plenty of time working entry-level IT jobs doing various kinds of help desk type work, and so most of the exposure I've had to the field is related to support of other people's computers. I enjoy helping other people out, but I'd rather not be plugging things in and restarting computers the rest of my life." That's what he's doing right now, in the IT field but without a degree. He doesn't want to keep doing that for the rest of his life, and asking what to do when he gets the degree. At no point does he say anything to suggest that's what he thinks CS grads typically do.
Although the possibility is growing on me, I don't think I would particularly love to write code all day for a living either.
Then why are you majoring in CS?
Possibly because he's interested in Computer Science? Perhaps he even wants to become an actual computer scientist, rather than just using the degree to get a high-paying coding job.
If you're really, truly interested in CS, you really need to get a post-graduate degree as well. Best advice, get the Ph.D. and a good professorship somewhere. Most of the real computer scientists I know are absolutely atrocious programmers, but luckily that's not their job, and they frankly have a lot more fun than most coders...
Frankly, software development is severely overrated. Getting a CS degree and going off to do it is sort of like watching some episode of Nova dealing with some science topic lending some interest to whatever scientific branch that is involved but then when you get that chemistry degree you realize a monkey could work at a lab eventually (think Darwin).
Heh. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astrophysicist. Then in Jr. High, I found out what the job is actually like. For those professional astrophysicists out there, I salute you, but I don't envy you. You guys do all the boring, painstaking crud work, and I'll read the exciting results in a book or magazine later, thanks. :)
...done on your "own time" or on your "own equipment" it doesn't matter if you're an exempt employee.
Depends. Assuming I'm not stealing code or secrets from my employer, anything done on my own time on my own equipment is mine, by Minnesota law. If my contract with my employer says otherwise, my employment contract is simply invalid and unenforceable.
We're at the beginning of the Second Great Depression. ...
I'm guessing you're either very young, or have a short memory. I'm not old enough to remember the Great Depression, but I am old enough to remember economies far worse that this. Wake me up when the unemployment rate gets into the teens. It still won't be at Depression levels, then, but at least it will be more than a mild downturn compared to the ones I've lived through before...
Conventional wisdom is that an economic downturn is the best time to start a new enterprise. If you can succeed in a down economy, you're golden. Initial success in an up economy may prove to be illusory, which leaves you far more screwed when it finally goes belly up.