If you had told me this over coffee, I would urge you to leave your job and find something you could be more enthusiastic about.
Saying that systemic problems are keeping you down is tantamount to giving up. If YOU wan't to change the computer games industry, change it by being successful in a new mode of game development and distribution. Of course, you must be aware of the success of ID, through Internet distribution and freebies. You allude to the "big game companies" with their "first person shooters" but look back five years and you won't see all those first person shooters, you'll see a few guys about to revolutionize an industry with a new type of game and a new form of distribution.
The bad news is that the situation you describe is true of the computer industry as a whole. The good news is that you get to decide: work for Microsoft, or work on free software, start a new company, or work at a bank.
I find it somewhat amusing that there is even a question as to weather or not Slashdot is journalism. Of course it is. Monolithic media conglomerates such as the NYTimes and The Mercury News don't see it as such, but this is the same reason why they just don't ring true in my ears, they've sold their journalistic souls to the sponsors, big-wigs, and advertisers.
I'm glad there is at least one voice on the net, that actually talks about 'stuff that matters.'
This seems unenforcable to me. How can they make you agree to certain terms for something you view after the damage is done, i.e., I've viewed it? It might be enforcable, if I performed some action indicating concent, but this is just an order from a body that has no authority over me, and where there is no opportunity for me to concent? Why would I listen.
Also, the part about not reproducing the output is just ridiculous. I cant do 'whois 2ad.com | mail john@2ad.com' or 'whois 2ad.com | lpr' ? That's a joke!
It's interesting, the "software darwinism" at Bell that Thompson refers to in the beginning of the interview, is very much like the open source movement. Some of it is good, and it trickles up to the top, some of it is lame and gets dumped (or not).
The critism that "a whole bunch of random people have contributed to this source, and the quality varies drastically" is right on the money. Any programmer would have to concede the bad code in many parts of Linux. There are many poorly written, or unfinished lines of software here! Its the truth.
The recent push to 'celo-wrap' Linux has raised the bar of expectations. And all Linux's dirty laundry is open for public consumption. Ultimately, this will be a good thing, as software darwinism ensures that better code will replace poor code. Linux has flaws, the community should admit it, remove them, and move forward.
Any benchmark or test should be validated before being taken as gospel. Be that as it may, and assuming the benchmark would survive scrutiny, several important factors are missing from this performance survey. First, NT performance and stability degrade consistently over time, eventually, and in every practical case I have seen, resulting in total system meltdown requiring reinstall. This is an especially important factor in filesystems, where NT shows significant degradation on the order of weeks. Next, the benchmark ignores the possibility of using Linux as an NFS file server, versus running an NT based NFS server. NFS is a significantly lighter protocol, not to mention the fact that there are NO decent NFS servers for NT. Moreover, the underlying NT filesystem can not support most of the permissions and case requirements to serve UNIX files, effectively.
Maybe Linux isn't a perfect surrogate for NT, but it is without a doubt a better solution overall.
Slashdot Mirror
If you had told me this over coffee, I would urge you to leave your job and find something you could be more enthusiastic about.
Saying that systemic problems are keeping you down is tantamount to giving up. If YOU wan't to change the computer games industry, change it by being successful in a new mode of game development and distribution. Of course, you must be aware of the success of ID, through Internet distribution and freebies. You allude to the "big game companies" with their "first person shooters" but look back five years and you won't see all those first person shooters, you'll see a few guys about to revolutionize an industry with a new type of game and a new form of distribution.
The bad news is that the situation you describe is true of the computer industry as a whole. The good news is that you get to decide: work for Microsoft, or work on free software, start a new company, or work at a bank.
It's your choice.
John
I find it somewhat amusing that there is even a question as to weather or not Slashdot is journalism. Of course it is. Monolithic media conglomerates such as the NYTimes and The Mercury News don't see it as such, but this is the same reason why they just don't ring true in my ears, they've sold their journalistic souls to the sponsors, big-wigs, and advertisers.
I'm glad there is at least one voice on the net, that actually talks about 'stuff that matters.'
John
This seems unenforcable to me. How can they make you agree to certain terms for something you view after the damage is done, i.e., I've viewed it? It might be enforcable, if I performed some action indicating concent, but this is just an order from a body that has no authority over me, and where there is no opportunity for me to concent? Why would I listen.
Also, the part about not reproducing the output is just ridiculous. I cant do 'whois 2ad.com | mail john@2ad.com' or 'whois 2ad.com | lpr' ? That's a joke!
John
It's interesting, the "software darwinism" at Bell that Thompson refers to in the beginning of the interview, is very much like the open source movement. Some of it is good, and it trickles up to the top, some of it is lame and gets dumped (or not).
The critism that "a whole bunch of random people have contributed to this source, and the quality varies drastically" is right on the money. Any programmer would have to concede the bad code in many parts of Linux. There are many poorly written, or unfinished lines of software here! Its the truth.
The recent push to 'celo-wrap' Linux has raised the bar of expectations. And all Linux's dirty laundry is open for public consumption. Ultimately, this will be a good thing, as software darwinism ensures that better code will replace poor code. Linux has flaws, the community should admit it, remove them, and move forward.
John
In my current project, this year I have removed more than 2500 lines of bad code, and replaced it with far fewer and more organized lines.
How does that rate on productivity?
John
Any benchmark or test should be validated before being taken as gospel. Be that as it may, and assuming the benchmark would survive scrutiny, several important factors are missing from this performance survey. First, NT performance and stability degrade consistently over time, eventually, and in every practical case I have seen, resulting in total system meltdown requiring reinstall. This is an especially important factor in filesystems, where NT shows significant degradation on the order of weeks. Next, the benchmark ignores the possibility of using Linux as an NFS file server, versus running an NT based NFS server. NFS is a significantly lighter protocol, not to mention the fact that there are NO decent NFS servers for NT. Moreover, the underlying NT filesystem can not support most of the permissions and case requirements to serve UNIX files, effectively.
Maybe Linux isn't a perfect surrogate for NT, but it is without a doubt a better solution overall.
John