But now with SO MANY shared libs and other dependencies, it gets to be a major pain in the ass to get one package then have to go get 15 other libs to get it to work. RPM solves all that, and I've come to accept binary distributions as making sense...
That's what rsync is for. Don't like the "get one package and then have to get 15 others?" Use rsync to grab the whole mess (since, as w/ GNOME which I found to be my most frequently updated codebase and most annoying in the manner you describe) the many-dependancy-hydra projects tend to have most of the source available in one place (i.e. ftp.gnome.org).
MrC was heavily optimized for PPC by people who spent years working on it and not having to worry about any other architecture (except maybe m68k).
GCC is a large compiler projects w/ frontends for many languages and backends for an obscene # of platforms.
Over the years, both the frontends and backends of GCC have steadily improved. Just as Intel has contributed code or expertise for the x86 backend, certainly anyone who's worked on Apple's compilers is welcome to send patches to the GCC maintainers to improve PPC performance (though whether or not Apple lawyers would have something to say about that might complicate the issue).
And hey; if you feel so passionate about it, why don't you code up some test programs, compare the assembler output, and mail the code & generated results to the GCC team so that they know where improvement is needed: oh, but wait; it *is* much easier just to bitch on slashdot, isn't it?
On second thought, damn why can't all these volunteer programmers do a better job of making my life easier without any help from me...
If this really happened with a number of different types of graphics hardware -- and those used different video drivers -- then chances are good that the server, rather than the driver, was the source of the problem.
Thus it makes no difference in this case where the drivers are located, as long as the server is in userspace.
Problem with the idea is that this "community" actually has very little common ground aside from the fact that we all seem to have lots of time to read and type.
Why do issues involving senior citizens, such as Social Security and Medicare, get constant attention? Because senior citizens vote.
Right. Because they have the time to sit back and write their representatives. And they have the money to send to AARP to shlep all over the whorehouse commonly known as Capitol Hill.
And they have this time and money, and I don't, because I have to f**king work while they get to sit on their ass and collectively spend 14% of my income!
Dude, you have to learn to walk before you can run. Before information can be free, it must first simply be, and I for one have no doubt that that's truly at the hear of what it wants (achingly).
So, let me get this straight; you believe that it's acceptable for me to have to pay for two separate services any time I want to have some type of service (the neccessity of which you and I may disagree on) because of the fact that the first service provider's (unnegotiated-with-me) contract says that they can yank it for any reason at any time?
Do you believe that even if the service being offered isn't offered by any other provider under substantially different terms?
If so, how many redundant services do you believe I should be prepared to purchase, in the event that my backup service is subject to the similar terms? One? Five?
Do you believe that even if that service is telephone service? Electricity? Water? Heat? I can always buy a space heater or three to insure against the possibility that my heat provider capriciously turns the heat off in December, after all, right?
Who gets to draw the line that says that one service is essential? Does how one uses the service determine it's neccessity? For example, does it make a difference if I can't speak (to use the telephone) or go to the store, and the service is the connection I use to contact my online food shopping and devivery service, without which I can't eat?
I find your blithe response almost as offputting as the assertion that people who think that this type of bullying by one industry and kowtowing by another against the interests of their own customers is outrageous as evidence of their belief that bandwidth is an "inalienable right."
And terms of service or no, lest you forget, at issue here is punishment for an alleged illegal activity (copyright infringement) without the constitutionally guaranteed inalienable right of due process. That the law cleverly keeps the goverment out of direct involvement in the enforcement of the punishment and allows such bogus defenses "its the terms of service" makes the whole mess even more reprehensible.
"Rights" are an abstraction, no less so individual rights. The only natural right is the right to attempt to survive. Any other right is inherently a social construction.
I find it typical (so typical it has completely ceased being amusing) that the author of the opinion piece in question seems perfectly happy believing that property rights are great when they serve the interest of large corporations but not so important for the little guy -- aka "homeowner."
The author never addresses the fact implicit in his argument in favor of "returning property rights" associated with the lines to the telcos, and allowing competitors to build out their own competing infrastructure -- that homeowners will have a portion of their property subject to a "taking" in order to provide right-of-ways to every broadband competitor that wants to string a line across their front yard (or back pasture).
And hell, if we're going to allow telco's to do that, can we really tell nascent utilities that they can't dig up your yard to provide a new "free-market" water service? What about the new highway that RoadCo, Inc. wants to put on your land?
Face it, there are some things -- mostly those dealing with basic infrastructure which directly supports some aspect of the very act of living in a modern community (where there is real scarcity of things like natural resources and open space) -- that need to be born by the community.
The problem with your model is that you'd not just be putting your money toward what you want; you'd be confiscating my money at gunpoint to go toward what you want.
Right. And that would be wrong if and only if there were no general public benefit (like a strengthened economy) as a result.
Taxes are a fact of life in an organized society. Unless you have the financial resources to build all of your own roads, produce all of your own power, provide all of your own disaster relief and provide for your own defense, I suggest you stop the "gun to my head" whining.
Handy skirts around the main issues revolving around DRM technologies like CPRM and SDMI. He tries to portray them as separable from Free Software issues, when in reality, they are not.
Actually, Handy does not once make any reference at all to Free Software. Even when the questions specifically mentioned Free Software, Handy was careful to respond with references only to IBM's support of Open Source software.
Cantankerous libertarians on Slashdot can deride Stallman as a crank or a commie until the cows come home, but Handy's answers here clearly underscore the distinction that RMS is continually making between Open Source and Free Software.
IBM does not care one whit about "[providing] the end user complete and total control" over anything (hardware or software). For IBM, Linux and other Open Source software are a simply a technically sufficient product where the development costs are shared by other parties and the market already exists (as opposed to investing heavily in their own proprietary products and bearing all of the development costs plus the costs of creating a market); IBM simply sees Linux/Open Source as a low-cost, high-return development effort which has the favorable side effect of dampening their long standing -- and well deserved -- image as the IP-weilding, proprietary technology bully. Don't believe me? Reread Handy's answer to question 3.
That said, their contributions (if not neccessarily their motives), have been outstanding. I hope very much to see them continue. But let's not kid ourselves about any contradiction between IBM's Open Source work and their IP-protection work. For them, Linux is a product, not a philosophy.
Don't call requiring email confirmation 'double opt-in.' Built into that is the assumption that the person opting in is the person whose email address is entered.
This is precisely what email confirmation is designed to ensure.
Still think it's dumb? Wait 'til I go visit 400 websites and 'opt-in' using your email address.
Any reference implementation of any protocol, API, programming language or other computing system is primarly expressive.
That is, its primary purpose is to communicate to other humans one possible way to implement said system.
The fact that the code is often also effective in implementing the system is secondary. In fact, that secondary effectiveness may be required for the primary purpose, communication, to be fully effective -- how does it help you to implement my system if the method I've shown you doesn't work? So, in this case, the "functional" nature of the code is entirely subordinate to the "expressive" nature.
Wow. If your Perl code runs faster than your C++ you are either an amazing Perl programmer, or need to learn a little more about C++ (like how to use references for argument passing, etc).
The whole design principle behind all of the so called 'bloated' features in C++ was that you don't pay for them if you don't use them. Don't want the overhead of exceptions or RTTI? Don't use them. I have found this to be the case with most of the features. Even the cost of the features one does use has been consistently decreasing in many or most implementations as compilers improve (e.g. -fnew-abi in g++). There is more work to be done there, but serious, dedicated people are working on it, and it is but a matter of time until many of these issues are for the most part resolved.
At the risk of starting a language flame war, I think that C++ is the best of the low-level languages. I think that the two things which have really given it a bad rap are 1) lack of really high quality implementations, and 2) anemic standard libraries.
g++ has come a long way toward addressing the first (at least on those platforms that g++ supports well). This will hopefully address the latter.
As a senior developer in a Java shop, one of the things I often ask interviewees is what they would miss most if forced to use C++ instead of Java. Anyone who answers anything other than 'the libraries' gets a big black mark next to their name in my book. This is really the only area where I think Java has a real advantage (not just a marketing advantage) over C++. If the latter language were to get decent standard abstractions for things like networking and and multi-threading (and the ever-increasing plethora of Java extensions), it would be much more attractive.
Of course, because of the nature of standards comittees, Java will likely have genericity and direct management of memory before this new standards process actually produces anything <sigh>. Thus I'll have to program in this crappy language for the forseeable future. Oh well.
I think you missed the point; 8 spaces and 1 tab are visually indistinguishable on Unix. The problem is when Joe does '>>' on his lines in vi (shifting over 8 spaces), but then I do 'tab' in mine when editing Joe's code. I can't see the difference. So I don't know that something's wrong until the interpreter chokes and informs me of the discrepancy. If I'm lucky, my additions to Joe's code will actually cause the interpreter to fail (i.e., it will cause a syntatic error).
If I'm unlucky, I will have just introduced a subtle bug that neither the interpreter, nor my own eyes, can catch (i.e., proper syntax, invalid semantics).
However, they should become a non-profit, fire all of their executive management + marketing staff, and become a purely technical and support company.
The Gnome Foundation could fund the lion's share of the development, as well as handling all marketing-like functions.
All of us principled free software adherents could then put our money where our mouths are and give (tax deductible) donations to help keep it afloat.
Of course, with this scheme, though Miquel and Andy could still pay themselves decent salaries, they wouldn't be able to become Internet Millionaires (TM), but I think we can all agree that that bubble has burst for good anyway...
Oh, and as far as PayPal goes, that's a recipe for bankruptcy. PayPal accounts can either be limited to recieving a grand a month (hardly enough to pay a bunch of developers and execs), or be a premium member, which means that anyone can bankrupt you by repeatedly sending you one penny (and causing you to pay 30 cents for each transaction).
What a great idea! A proprietary toll lane on the information super-highway!
Let's see: it's free to use if you aren't selling something, but if you are, then you'll have to pay metered fees. Shouldn't cost companies too much though, since the number of users who will download, install (and <cough> debug) the proprietary client plug-in will be negligle, so I guess the risk is minimal.
Oops, did we just invest 27 man-months and half a million dollars deploying a great new e-Commerce site entirely written in this thing?! And if we didn't want to go immediately out of business, we should have spent over twice as much deploying a non-Curl version of the site as well, and supporting both -- completely curtailing all of the so-called benefits?
And who's that I hear mumbling something about "separation of content and logic?"
Yeah, sounds like a winner to me. It's gonna fly like a lead balloon... but then again, that's what Keith Moon said to Jimmy Page, isn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
But now with SO MANY shared libs and other dependencies, it gets to be a major pain in the ass to get one package then have to go get 15 other libs to get it to work. RPM solves all that, and I've come to accept binary distributions as making sense...
That's what rsync is for. Don't like the "get one package and then have to get 15 others?" Use rsync to grab the whole mess (since, as w/ GNOME which I found to be my most frequently updated codebase and most annoying in the manner you describe) the many-dependancy-hydra projects tend to have most of the source available in one place (i.e. ftp.gnome.org).
Most mail server admins disable VRFY as an anti-spam measure.
MrC was heavily optimized for PPC by people who spent years working on it and not having to worry about any other architecture (except maybe m68k).
GCC is a large compiler projects w/ frontends for many languages and backends for an obscene # of platforms.
Over the years, both the frontends and backends of GCC have steadily improved. Just as Intel has contributed code or expertise for the x86 backend, certainly anyone who's worked on Apple's compilers is welcome to send patches to the GCC maintainers to improve PPC performance (though whether or not Apple lawyers would have something to say about that might complicate the issue).
And hey; if you feel so passionate about it, why don't you code up some test programs, compare the assembler output, and mail the code & generated results to the GCC team so that they know where improvement is needed: oh, but wait; it *is* much easier just to bitch on slashdot, isn't it?
On second thought, damn why can't all these volunteer programmers do a better job of making my life easier without any help from me...
If this really happened with a number of different types of graphics hardware -- and those used different video drivers -- then chances are good that the server, rather than the driver, was the source of the problem.
Thus it makes no difference in this case where the drivers are located, as long as the server is in userspace.
Problem with the idea is that this "community" actually has very little common ground aside from the fact that we all seem to have lots of time to read and type.
Right. Because they have the time to sit back and write their representatives. And they have the money to send to AARP to shlep all over the whorehouse commonly known as Capitol Hill.
And they have this time and money, and I don't, because I have to f**king work while they get to sit on their ass and collectively spend 14% of my income!
Jebem ti mater.
Dude, you have to learn to walk before you can run. Before information can be free, it must first simply be, and I for one have no doubt that that's truly at the hear of what it wants (achingly).
Maybe the poster meant that the hand smells cheesy.
Do you believe that even if the service being offered isn't offered by any other provider under substantially different terms?
If so, how many redundant services do you believe I should be prepared to purchase, in the event that my backup service is subject to the similar terms? One? Five?
Do you believe that even if that service is telephone service? Electricity? Water? Heat? I can always buy a space heater or three to insure against the possibility that my heat provider capriciously turns the heat off in December, after all, right?
Who gets to draw the line that says that one service is essential? Does how one uses the service determine it's neccessity? For example, does it make a difference if I can't speak (to use the telephone) or go to the store, and the service is the connection I use to contact my online food shopping and devivery service, without which I can't eat?
I find your blithe response almost as offputting as the assertion that people who think that this type of bullying by one industry and kowtowing by another against the interests of their own customers is outrageous as evidence of their belief that bandwidth is an "inalienable right."
And terms of service or no, lest you forget, at issue here is punishment for an alleged illegal activity (copyright infringement) without the constitutionally guaranteed inalienable right of due process. That the law cleverly keeps the goverment out of direct involvement in the enforcement of the punishment and allows such bogus defenses "its the terms of service" makes the whole mess even more reprehensible.
"Rights" are an abstraction, no less so individual rights. The only natural right is the right to attempt to survive. Any other right is inherently a social construction.
The author never addresses the fact implicit in his argument in favor of "returning property rights" associated with the lines to the telcos, and allowing competitors to build out their own competing infrastructure -- that homeowners will have a portion of their property subject to a "taking" in order to provide right-of-ways to every broadband competitor that wants to string a line across their front yard (or back pasture).
And hell, if we're going to allow telco's to do that, can we really tell nascent utilities that they can't dig up your yard to provide a new "free-market" water service? What about the new highway that RoadCo, Inc. wants to put on your land?
Face it, there are some things -- mostly those dealing with basic infrastructure which directly supports some aspect of the very act of living in a modern community (where there is real scarcity of things like natural resources and open space) -- that need to be born by the community.
Taxes are a fact of life in an organized society. Unless you have the financial resources to build all of your own roads, produce all of your own power, provide all of your own disaster relief and provide for your own defense, I suggest you stop the "gun to my head" whining.
People who would actually use the phrase "should he be allowed to live?"
Cantankerous libertarians on Slashdot can deride Stallman as a crank or a commie until the cows come home, but Handy's answers here clearly underscore the distinction that RMS is continually making between Open Source and Free Software.
IBM does not care one whit about "[providing] the end user complete and total control" over anything (hardware or software). For IBM, Linux and other Open Source software are a simply a technically sufficient product where the development costs are shared by other parties and the market already exists (as opposed to investing heavily in their own proprietary products and bearing all of the development costs plus the costs of creating a market); IBM simply sees Linux/Open Source as a low-cost, high-return development effort which has the favorable side effect of dampening their long standing -- and well deserved -- image as the IP-weilding, proprietary technology bully. Don't believe me? Reread Handy's answer to question 3.
That said, their contributions (if not neccessarily their motives), have been outstanding. I hope very much to see them continue. But let's not kid ourselves about any contradiction between IBM's Open Source work and their IP-protection work. For them, Linux is a product, not a philosophy.
This is precisely what email confirmation is designed to ensure.
Still think it's dumb? Wait 'til I go visit 400 websites and 'opt-in' using your email address.
That is, its primary purpose is to communicate to other humans one possible way to implement said system.
The fact that the code is often also effective in implementing the system is secondary. In fact, that secondary effectiveness may be required for the primary purpose, communication, to be fully effective -- how does it help you to implement my system if the method I've shown you doesn't work? So, in this case, the "functional" nature of the code is entirely subordinate to the "expressive" nature.
To quote myself: "If the latter language were to get decent standard abstractions ..."
The whole design principle behind all of the so called 'bloated' features in C++ was that you don't pay for them if you don't use them. Don't want the overhead of exceptions or RTTI? Don't use them. I have found this to be the case with most of the features. Even the cost of the features one does use has been consistently decreasing in many or most implementations as compilers improve (e.g. -fnew-abi in g++). There is more work to be done there, but serious, dedicated people are working on it, and it is but a matter of time until many of these issues are for the most part resolved.
g++ has come a long way toward addressing the first (at least on those platforms that g++ supports well). This will hopefully address the latter.
As a senior developer in a Java shop, one of the things I often ask interviewees is what they would miss most if forced to use C++ instead of Java. Anyone who answers anything other than 'the libraries' gets a big black mark next to their name in my book. This is really the only area where I think Java has a real advantage (not just a marketing advantage) over C++. If the latter language were to get decent standard abstractions for things like networking and and multi-threading (and the ever-increasing plethora of Java extensions), it would be much more attractive.
Of course, because of the nature of standards comittees, Java will likely have genericity and direct management of memory before this new standards process actually produces anything <sigh>. Thus I'll have to program in this crappy language for the forseeable future. Oh well.
If I'm unlucky, I will have just introduced a subtle bug that neither the interpreter, nor my own eyes, can catch (i.e., proper syntax, invalid semantics).
However, they should become a non-profit, fire all of their executive management + marketing staff, and become a purely technical and support company.
The Gnome Foundation could fund the lion's share of the development, as well as handling all marketing-like functions.
All of us principled free software adherents could then put our money where our mouths are and give (tax deductible) donations to help keep it afloat.
Of course, with this scheme, though Miquel and Andy could still pay themselves decent salaries, they wouldn't be able to become Internet Millionaires (TM), but I think we can all agree that that bubble has burst for good anyway...
Oh, and as far as PayPal goes, that's a recipe for bankruptcy. PayPal accounts can either be limited to recieving a grand a month (hardly enough to pay a bunch of developers and execs), or be a premium member, which means that anyone can bankrupt you by repeatedly sending you one penny (and causing you to pay 30 cents for each transaction).
Let's see: it's free to use if you aren't selling something, but if you are, then you'll have to pay metered fees. Shouldn't cost companies too much though, since the number of users who will download, install (and <cough> debug) the proprietary client plug-in will be negligle, so I guess the risk is minimal.
Oops, did we just invest 27 man-months and half a million dollars deploying a great new e-Commerce site entirely written in this thing?! And if we didn't want to go immediately out of business, we should have spent over twice as much deploying a non-Curl version of the site as well, and supporting both -- completely curtailing all of the so-called benefits?
And who's that I hear mumbling something about "separation of content and logic?"
Yeah, sounds like a winner to me. It's gonna fly like a lead balloon... but then again, that's what Keith Moon said to Jimmy Page, isn't it?
And that is why Mexican schools are using Linux.
I thought the network was the computer?