These machines boil the water and press the very hot steam through the grinded coffee beans. You can buy a super-duper-automatic machine for a lot of money. But a low cost machine is useable, too.
You absolutely don't "press very hot steam" through the coffee. In low-cost espresso machines the steam is used to force hot water through the coffee. In the best espresso machines, water at 85 C is driven though coffee either by a hand lever or by an electric motor.
Stallman writes simply, clearly, and in my experience almost always accurately. However, this time he gets something wrong:
When I ask people to call the system GNU/Linux, some of them respond with silly excuses and straw
men...
Stallman is not asking people to call the system GNU/Linux. He is telling them. He told me.
I gave him several reasons why I intend to stick to "Linux" when discussing the system with my readers -- I guess these must be his "silly excuses".
I don't think he would be able to say what my "excuses" were, though, because I get the strong impression that he doesn't listen as hard to you as he'd like you to listen to him.
He goes on:
But we probably haven't lost anything, because they were probably unfriendly to begin with.
In my case he's wrong here too. I was not just "friendly": I've spent much of my 20 years as an IT journalist rooting for free software and GNU. He hasn't lost that much -- shall continue to root. But the friendship side of things sure took a knocking.
Quoth the Associated Press
> Linux is an "open source" operating system
> that anyone can modify, as long as the
> modifications are made available for free
> on the Internet
Oh dear. Why do so many journalists write about this stuff without understanding it at all?
I've been writing as a professional journalist about software for 20 years now. Frankly I remember getting into software reviewing just so I could get my hands on lots of software.
But I've never "softened" a review in order to get more software. The idea is ludicrous. If you're a reviewer it's a full time job staving off the avalanche of software that comes your way -- whatever you write about it. No software manufacturer has _ever_ said "You wrote a lousy review so we won't send you any more software". They usually say something like: "OK, but we'll make sure you receive the next update, because you're really going to see an improvement." And you go: "Oh, shit".
What is at issue is the reader's attention span. A lengthy review berating some piece of junk just isn't very interesting, so the tendency is just not to write about it. And I suppose it's true that if I really like a particular product (Mandrake, say), I'm not going to get too hung up about any downside I come across, unless of course it's a show-stopper. I'll spend more time putting across the good points of the product and stand by for dealing with any problemettes from readers when they hit my mailbag.
There may be journalistic technical reasons for downplaying the downside, too. For example, I'm currently gearing up to enthuse in my PCW column about Lars Bernhardsson's very interesting window manager (http://www.fnurt.net/larswm). Yes, it has some problems, but 1) they're of absolutely no interest to anyone who isn't going to try out the software, and 2) they would actually be very hard to explain (many column inches) to non-users of what is a radically different window manager. So I don't expect them to loom nearly as large in the column as they have in my worktime.
No question, Thompson's "Reflections on Trusting Trust" ( http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95 ) was and remains a delicious thought experiment. Levy is right to remind us of it (and his exegesis is a model of clarity, if nearly as long as the original...), and Eric should certainly have taken it on board in sounding off about the automatic merits of Open Source when it comes to security.
But the Trusting Trust thought experiment is confined to a small world where (1) there's only one compiler -- Ken's -- for compiling the compiler; (2) the login program is immutable enough to guarantee recognition by Ken's compiler every time it is compiled; and (3) there are no other security checks outside the login program. I don't see this as a practically useful description of the free software world as it is today.
Even if there were only gcc, and login were carved in stone, I don't think Ken's diabolical backdoor would be applicable. If there's one person in this entire world you could trust not to do something ingenious and backhanded with passwords, it's the author of gcc.
And even if that we dispense with that previous "even if" and admit that free software has a fundamental Catch 22, it's still clearly a preferred route to any closed source alternative. The idea that the "bad hats" will always get there first is scaremongering -- unless you think that, for example, Mixter must be a "bad hat" by definition because he scripted and published proof-of-concept code that demo'd DDoS attacks.
Democracy certainly has it's own fundamental Catch 22s. If you think this is an argument for dusting off and resurrecting Mussolini, then you'll probably want to take Levy's warning very seriously indeed.
Er, yes, that is me, and I'm fine. Thanks for asking.
But I hope the point I was making about the GPL is rather more important than some rather old Doctor Who news, mission-critical though that show is to many of us.:-)
Bruce has the definitive answer on this one. But I think it's time we put a stop to this "viral" tag.
The GPL is not "viral". A virus requires a host and has no living existence outside that host. The relationship with the infected host is vital to its reproductive cycle because the virus is totally dependent on genetic material in the host.
This in no way at all describes the GPL, which "carries its own genetic material" and reproduces itself in much the same way that our genes do.
Unless you're prepared to describe your own genes as "viral", let's start calling the GPL "genetic".
Slashdot Mirror
Hasn't anybody heard about the Phillips Machine, used for computing national economies?
r ai ns.shtml
The BBC has just done a radio program on Bill Phillips' invention. You can still hear it on
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/electronicb
--
el bid
The Coffee HowTo is dangerously ill-informed:
These machines boil the water and press the very hot steam through the grinded coffee beans. You can buy a super-duper-automatic machine for a lot of money. But a low cost machine is useable, too.
You absolutely don't "press very hot steam" through the coffee. In low-cost espresso machines the steam is used to force hot water through the coffee. In the best espresso machines, water at 85 C is driven though coffee either by a hand lever or by an electric motor.
--
el bid
I gave him several reasons why I intend to stick to "Linux" when discussing the system with my readers -- I guess these must be his "silly excuses".
I don't think he would be able to say what my "excuses" were, though, because I get the strong impression that he doesn't listen as hard to you as he'd like you to listen to him.
He goes on: In my case he's wrong here too. I was not just "friendly": I've spent much of my 20 years as an IT journalist rooting for free software and GNU. He hasn't lost that much -- shall continue to root. But the friendship side of things sure took a knocking.
Quoth the Associated Press > Linux is an "open source" operating system
> that anyone can modify, as long as the
> modifications are made available for free
> on the Internet
Oh dear. Why do so many journalists write about this stuff without understanding it at all?
I've been writing as a professional journalist about software for 20 years now. Frankly I remember getting into software reviewing just so I could get my hands on lots of software.
But I've never "softened" a review in order to get more software. The idea is ludicrous. If you're a reviewer it's a full time job staving off the avalanche of software that comes your way -- whatever you write about it. No software manufacturer has _ever_ said "You wrote a lousy review so we won't send you any more software". They usually say something like: "OK, but we'll make sure you receive the next update, because you're really going to see an improvement." And you go: "Oh, shit".
What is at issue is the reader's attention span. A lengthy review berating some piece of junk just isn't very interesting, so the tendency is just not to write about it. And I suppose it's true that if I really like a particular product (Mandrake, say), I'm not going to get too hung up about any downside I come across, unless of course it's a show-stopper. I'll spend more time putting across the good points of the product and stand by for dealing with any problemettes from readers when they hit my mailbag.
There may be journalistic technical reasons for downplaying the downside, too. For example, I'm currently gearing up to enthuse in my PCW column about Lars Bernhardsson's very interesting window manager (http://www.fnurt.net/larswm). Yes, it has some problems, but 1) they're of absolutely no interest to anyone who isn't going to try out the software, and 2) they would actually be very hard to explain (many column inches) to non-users of what is a radically different window manager. So I don't expect them to loom nearly as large in the column as they have in my worktime.
el bid
No question, Thompson's "Reflections on Trusting Trust" ( http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95 ) was and remains a delicious thought experiment. Levy is right to remind us of it (and his exegesis is a model of clarity, if nearly as long as the original...), and Eric should certainly have taken it on board in sounding off about the automatic merits of Open Source when it comes to security.
But the Trusting Trust thought experiment is confined to a small world where (1) there's only one compiler -- Ken's -- for compiling the compiler; (2) the login program is immutable enough to guarantee recognition by Ken's compiler every time it is compiled; and (3) there are no other security checks outside the login program. I don't see this as a practically useful description of the free software world as it is today.
Even if there were only gcc, and login were carved in stone, I don't think Ken's diabolical backdoor would be applicable. If there's one person in this entire world you could trust not to do something ingenious and backhanded with passwords, it's the author of gcc.
And even if that we dispense with that previous "even if" and admit that free software has a fundamental Catch 22, it's still clearly a preferred route to any closed source alternative. The idea that the "bad hats" will always get there first is scaremongering -- unless you think that, for example, Mixter must be a "bad hat" by definition because he scripted and published proof-of-concept code that demo'd DDoS attacks.
Democracy certainly has it's own fundamental Catch 22s. If you think this is an argument for dusting off and resurrecting Mussolini, then you'll probably want to take Levy's warning very seriously indeed.
Er, yes, that is me, and I'm fine. Thanks for asking.
:-)
But I hope the point I was making about the GPL is rather more important than some rather old Doctor Who news, mission-critical though that show is to many of us.
Bruce has the definitive answer on this one. But I think it's time we put a stop to this "viral" tag.
The GPL is not "viral". A virus requires a host and has no living existence outside that host. The relationship with the infected host is vital to its reproductive cycle because the virus is totally dependent on genetic material in the host.
This in no way at all describes the GPL, which "carries its own genetic material" and reproduces itself in much the same way that our genes do.
Unless you're prepared to describe your own genes as "viral", let's start calling the GPL "genetic".