Who remembers the C++ episode in Linux 0.99? I think it changed from C++ between patch levels 12 and 13, and then back to C for patch level 14. (Of course, some people would argue that a change in the base language qualifies for more than a patch...)
The reason Perl is so hard to maintain isn't that it's written in C. It's that it's written in hard-to-maintain C. If someone were to rewrite it in C with the same clarity as, say, emacs or qmail or tcl, the problems that Chip alludes to would go away.
Hey, so what if some web sites go down. They're only web sites.
The date that worries me is January 2038, when time_t ticks over to a negative unsigned value and bad things happen to the large portion of the Internet that runs on Unix. I'm not sure how bad it'll be, but consider that
We're going to be relying more on the Internet for our everyday lives;
The problem is less intuitively obvious to people when the date isn't a round number;
With luck, 64-bit machines will be in widespread use by then, and so for those of us with source code, it'll just be a matter of upgrading the hardware and recompiling. But it could be pretty messy, nonetheless.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. Last September, my wife had a focused radiation treatment to her brain. The software ran on HP/UX machines (HP makes a very reliable Unix, although it isn't as pleasant to work with as GNU), and while I was chatting with the doctors, I noticed that the software version number was 4.0b3. BETA SOFTWARE? Well, it turned out that the beta test was just for an unimportant feature, but even so, it made me pretty nervous about it.
Later on, I found out how lucky we were to have the software running on Unix; there are stereotactic radiosurgery systems running under NT, which gives a whole new meaning to "blue screen of death".
Anyway, the question is this: would open source development benefit software that controls radiation machines? I don't think it would. Open source relies on the ability to make mistakes and correct them; medical software relies on not making them at all on live patients. That's why medical software goes through highly formal testing before it's released, and why open source software goes through alpha- and beta versions. However, that's not the whole story.
Especially in America, people are prepared to pay big bucks for anything related to health care. And the systems in use are reliable enough. Since open source development competes on the "cheap and reliable" ticket, I don't think it's going to make anything any better. However, it is definitely useful in two areas:
Infrastructure. Hospitals seem to want to use Microsoft Exchange and NT for server software, and the frequent failures make it harder for people to do their jobs. Open source could work well here.
In poor countries, open source software could compete on cost, but probably not for software that controls expensive equipment.
Bottom Line: Open source works better when there is a large developer base. I don't think that's the case for medical software, and I don't think it would work. I wish Stefan Harms all the best -- and he's chosen a project with a better than average chance of success -- but I don't think the medical profession would benefit from open source software.
AC: Most deaths are caused by sky-diving accidents.
PB: No, most deaths are caused by heart failure.
AC: Um, and just what do you think it is that sky-diving accidents do?
Let me repeat: most cancer isn't caused by viruses (although some is). The top two causes are smoking and diet, although people will claim that just about anything is a cause, including stress, premarital sex, and snakes.
Seems like we should be trying to eliminate cancer by changing what we put into our bodies and what we expose ourselves to, (Smoking, too much sun, overly processed food, etc), then start worrying about the other ways to fight it.
Sure, but that's cold comfort for people like my wife who was always careful, but still got cancer. Research needs to happen on both fronts; unfortunately, prevention is a lot less glamourous than cure.
The bottom line, as with most scary stories, is that the technology is going to happen anyway, and we might as well get used to it. If it helps to raise awareness of the issues that we really care about, so much the better.
Absolutely not! Cancer is caused by gene mutation, although the specifics aren't really understood.
There is work being done on cancer vaccines: the trick is to take tumor from the patient, combine a cancer cell with another cell designed to provoke an immune response, and then clone hell out of it. It's not clear at this stage how well it works, but the signs are pretty good.
I'm not planning to shed any tears over this one. Writing web applications under NAS is a long, laborious process. You have to jump through hoops just to get all the information you need to build a service, and even then, you have to work around a significant number of bugs in the server.
If you want to use server-side Java, at least use the Servlet API. There are plenty of open source implementations of it, and it means you'll be able to port your code to other web servers if you need to.
I'm not planning to shed any tears over this one. Writing web applications under NAS is a long, laborious process. You have to jump through hoops just to get all the information you need to build a service, and even then, you have to work around a significant number of bugs in the server.
If you want to use server-side Java, at least use the Servlet API. There are plenty of open source implementations of it, and it means you'll be able to port your code to other web servers if you need to.
"...they're paying Activestate to implement fork() on NT so that NT can become more like Unix (a slower buggier more crashprone Unix)."
You make it sound like it's a bad thing. I have to use NT at work, and anything that anyone does to make it better is good.
If you're going to apply standards to people, at least do it consistently. Open source development is good, whether it's on Linux or NT. I don't hear jeers when people add features to Perl to get around the incompatibilities of different flavours of Unix, or to prevent qsort() from crashing. But add a feature to the NT version of Perl, and you risk being stormed by a mob of angry students.
Why would you want free RAM?
on
The KDE Future
·
· Score: 2
Out of interest, how much of the allocated memory in KDE/Gnome was memory-resident program, and how much was cached disk pages? Linux tends to fill RAM pretty quickly, and uses it to speed up I/O access. Unfortunately, that's sometimes confusing to people who are used to other, less efficient operating systems.
Not only that, but who is more likely to report problems? Bored, overworked test engineers, or end-users who are trying to get Linux to work on their set-up?
Yes, and Howard Aiken, designer of the Harvard Mark One, predicted that the world would only need six computers. People get things wrong from time to time, especially when they're predicting the future, and I don't think there's any shame in that.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason Perl is so hard to maintain isn't that it's written in C. It's that it's written in hard-to-maintain C. If someone were to rewrite it in C with the same clarity as, say, emacs or qmail or tcl, the problems that Chip alludes to would go away.
The date that worries me is January 2038, when time_t ticks over to a negative unsigned value and bad things happen to the large portion of the Internet that runs on Unix. I'm not sure how bad it'll be, but consider that
With luck, 64-bit machines will be in widespread use by then, and so for those of us with source code, it'll just be a matter of upgrading the hardware and recompiling. But it could be pretty messy, nonetheless.
Later on, I found out how lucky we were to have the software running on Unix; there are stereotactic radiosurgery systems running under NT, which gives a whole new meaning to "blue screen of death".
Anyway, the question is this: would open source development benefit software that controls radiation machines? I don't think it would. Open source relies on the ability to make mistakes and correct them; medical software relies on not making them at all on live patients. That's why medical software goes through highly formal testing before it's released, and why open source software goes through alpha- and beta versions. However, that's not the whole story.
Especially in America, people are prepared to pay big bucks for anything related to health care. And the systems in use are reliable enough. Since open source development competes on the "cheap and reliable" ticket, I don't think it's going to make anything any better. However, it is definitely useful in two areas:
Bottom Line: Open source works better when there is a large developer base. I don't think that's the case for medical software, and I don't think it would work. I wish Stefan Harms all the best -- and he's chosen a project with a better than average chance of success -- but I don't think the medical profession would benefit from open source software.
AC: Most deaths are caused by sky-diving accidents.
PB: No, most deaths are caused by heart failure.
AC: Um, and just what do you think it is that sky-diving accidents do?
Let me repeat: most cancer isn't caused by viruses (although some is). The top two causes are smoking and diet, although people will claim that just about anything is a cause, including stress, premarital sex, and snakes.
The bottom line, as with most scary stories, is that the technology is going to happen anyway, and we might as well get used to it. If it helps to raise awareness of the issues that we really care about, so much the better.
There is work being done on cancer vaccines: the trick is to take tumor from the patient, combine a cancer cell with another cell designed to provoke an immune response, and then clone hell out of it. It's not clear at this stage how well it works, but the signs are pretty good.
If you want to use server-side Java, at least use the Servlet API. There are plenty of open source implementations of it, and it means you'll be able to port your code to other web servers if you need to.
I'm not planning to shed any tears over this one. Writing web applications under NAS is a long, laborious process. You have to jump through hoops just to get all the information you need to build a service, and even then, you have to work around a significant number of bugs in the server.
If you want to use server-side Java, at least use the Servlet API. There are plenty of open source implementations of it, and it means you'll be able to port your code to other web servers if you need to.
If you're going to apply standards to people, at least do it consistently. Open source development is good, whether it's on Linux or NT. I don't hear jeers when people add features to Perl to get around the incompatibilities of different flavours of Unix, or to prevent qsort() from crashing. But add a feature to the NT version of Perl, and you risk being stormed by a mob of angry students.
Out of interest, how much of the allocated memory in KDE/Gnome was memory-resident program, and how much was cached disk pages? Linux tends to fill RAM pretty quickly, and uses it to speed up I/O access. Unfortunately, that's sometimes confusing to people who are used to other, less efficient operating systems.
Not only that, but who is more likely to report problems? Bored, overworked test engineers, or end-users who are trying to get Linux to work on their set-up?
Well, there you go.
In the 80s, they said that free software was OK for simple stuff, but it would never come out with anything "production quality".
Then gcc came out, and it was production quality.
In the early 90s, they said that it would be limited to hacker tools, and nobody would ever make things for real users.
Then gimp, kde, enlightenment, gnome and the rest of them came out, and real users started using them.
Now they say free software will be limited to simple applications, and it'll never be able to make anything with more than a few features.
*yawn*. I'm off to hack Mozilla some more.
Yo! Taco! Check out what happened when the Motley Fool ran an April Fool last year. Some of the flamage they got (and posted) was just priceless...
The new system makes /. comments readable again. Thanks, Rob! Now I have my minimum score set to +2 so that I can't even read my own articles :)
Yes, and Howard Aiken, designer of the Harvard Mark One, predicted that the world would only need six computers. People get things wrong from time to time, especially when they're predicting the future, and I don't think there's any shame in that.
Remember, Microsoft denied their Java port until shortly after they canned it.