Re:What functionality are we BSD users ...
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Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 1
Every possible combination will have supporters; how do you reconcile them?
It's called freedom (or liberty; take your pick). And not "freedom to force my choice on others" but freedom to live and let live. This is why I don't have problems with people choosing Apple or Microsoft, as long as they know there are other options available, and they don't ask me to support them. The other day, I had a conversation with a friend who is going to get an iphone as soon as his current contract on his blackberry expires. I asked him if he had heard about Android; he had, and said that he felt like there were more apps for Apple. I let him know that there are probably just as many for Android, and that just because Apple keeps a tight fist on their app store doesn't mean they don't get the occasional trojan or virus, and let it go at that. Live and let live.
What I *do* have a problem with is when companies like Microsoft and Apple try to strongarm others (customers, competitors, unrelated third parties, etc) into giving up their freedoms, all for a false sense of a "sleeker", "more secure" user experience. I have problems with companies when they sue or otherwise prevent open source developers from exercising their right to share the fruits of their labor with others. I really hate being lied to (aka, advertised to) when I've already tried a companies' products and found them wanting (see my sig). What I want is to be able to write my software on the platform of my choice without having to worry about whether it infringes on someones' patents. What I want is not to be beholden to any company who thinks they have a right to my data, my money or my time.
I may not entirely agree with the BSD folks, but they are the least of my worries; they are not trying to take away my freedoms.
First, just let me preface this by saying C++ is my bread and butter; I write about 90% of my code in it these days, mostly because I'm a maintenance programmer (but don't let that fool you; much of the stuff I "maintain" I have to re-write from scratch (or almost scratch) because the code is nowhere near clear).
To me, C++ has a lot going for it: it's pretty much as fast as C, and much more clear with powerful language constructs. I'm not much of an expert on other languages (I'm mostly a depth-first learner), but I've yet to see another language have something as powerful as templates/generics (besides Ada, which is where C++ got them from). The fact that you can do compile-time programming speaks volumes for the power of templates.
Now I'll grant you that it's not always clear what C++ does behind the scenes - but this is true of the other languages you listed, and is mostly a performance problem anyway. If a programmer understands an abstraction (and a programmer *should* understand the abstractions he or she uses), then it's not a problem. Two books I can highly recommend that not only clear up what C++ does behind the scenes, but teach a lot of good coding technique besides are "Thinking in C++" volumes one and two. Sure, they may be 1600 pages combined, but you learn a lot.
A bigger problem I see with C++ is that it is, to put it politely, a "federation of languages", and most people don't even realize it. I've heard that many shops end up picking just the pieces of the language their programmers are familiar with and forbidding the use of anything else, which is fine until someone stumbles on to something they don't understand.
Me, I learn what I use, and what I use is C++ because that's what the software I'm maintaining is written in. Perhaps one day I'll delve as deeply into another language as I have with C++, but I've already picked up a number of programming concepts I wasn't proficient with before (coming from C and Perl), so I have to at least defend C++ for being a powerful and fast language.
Many people have already recommended the Nokia N900, but I have to strongly concur. I do admin stuff from my N900 all the time; I have a caching, ad-filtering, anonymizing proxy on my home server, which I setup an encrypted tunnel to with SSH for a lovely VPN, even if I'm on clear-text Wi-Fi. Not to mention, it easily stays up with a "while true; do ssh -L 3128:myserver.com:3128 myserver.com; sleep 1; done" because the N900 has a shell out of the box (and Perl, plus you can install Python, and Emacs, and Vim, etc, etc). Also, since the N900 runs XOrg, you can easily forward your X apps, either to or from the N900, or use VNC if you prefer. Sure, some people are more "comfortable" with an iPhone or Android device, but the N900 Just Works for geeks like me, no jailbreaking or rooting required.
Unless you have a really good manager, all the evidence in the world won't convince him or her. If, on the other hand, you can at least talk to cost/benefit ratio and the manager will *listen*, have them think about this: can you build, test and package your code for distribution to your users with one button press (or the equivalent)? If it takes you more than 15 minutes after applying a bugfix to get it tested and packaged, you will almost certainly save money by automating, and this includes testing. I say *almost* because this is where the cost/benefit ratio comes in: how much will it cost to "fix" things? How often do you have to make changes?
I know the OP posted some of this already, but there's no simple answer and they need to do the thinking; the above is merely how I would think about it. The manager, if they are doing their job, will listen to cost/benefit ratio analyses; no manager wants to get fired for not pursuing something that will cut costs or raise profits.
I have noticed Netflix has fewer and fewer of the DVD's I want to watch; I have more in Saved than in my Queue. Am I the only one, or is netflix slowing down on DVDs?
You're not the only one; I've had several DVDs moved to my saved section, after being in my queue for years (I filled up my queue rather quick, then let it sit for a while; what can I say, I've been busy). For me, I currently don't have the bandwidth to stream, so I hope they don't neglect their DVD side.
1. Move away from America 2. Develop whilst simultaneously not caring about software patents. 3. Sales and profit. 4. Get sued in America 5. Don't turn up 6. Don't go to America (or South Korea) ever again.
I'll add one: Don't support IEEE (that is, don't be a member, and boycott their conferences). IEEE supports software patents.
Hey Comcast, want your users to have fast access to Google? You should start paying Google then. Or maybe AT&T will sign and your customers will go there, because everyone uses Google.
No, it's even simpler and less evil than that: any time anyone from an ISP even *implies* that "big Internet companies" will have to pay extra to get access to their users, Google should immediately put up a static web page concisely stating the problem, who is advocating it and include the phone, email and any other contact information of the company who advocates it. Then redirect *all* of the customers and requests from that company to that web page, until the company makes a full apology and signs a contract to never to advocate for a non-neutral net again. We'll see who can last longer without the other: Google or the idiot ISP:)
Of course, someone will whine about monopoly abuse, but the fact of the matter is that the ISP monopolies are the real abusers here, and there's nothing that we as individuals can do about it. Quite honestly, I don't trust Google and believe they probably are a little too powerful. But I *know* for a fact, as has been repeatedly shown through past actions, that the ISPs (such as Comcast and Verizon) are fucking evil greedy assholes who would screw over anyone they can get away with without a second thought. And they have quite a lot of power to screw people over with.
I think grouping processes by controlling TTY isn't a really sensible strategy in an age when a lot of our software doesn't even have any use for a TTY.
Perhaps; but what of the possibility of scheduling groups of processes, where "group" is defined differently? If nothing else, this patch could lead the way to being able to schedule "process groups" where the partitioning into groups is done differently (eg, background services vs user apps, foreground window vs background window, etc).
If Linus didn't really believe it was an improvement, then why did he eventually call on Ingo to write a very similar scheduler?
Maybe he did realize he was wrong; then there's always the consideration to be made that Ingo has been around for ever in the Linux kernel community, and Linus trusts him. Not to cast aspersions on Con, but if someone came to you with some "great idea" and just give it to you, would you take it? Especially for something as important as the scheduler, where use cases you can't even imagine are the norm. Use cases you can't imagine unless you've been developing one of the most widely used kernels, in applications from micro-embedded computers all the way to highly distributed clusters, for going on almost twenty years. The three years Con spent on the scheduler may sound like a lot, but it's nothing compared to the man-years that have been put in by the Linux kernel developers; and, yes, Linus has his favorites, because they have come through time and time again, and have been around forever.
Linus didn't want to admit he was a jerk who made a flippant personal decision rather than focusing on the best code.
Nobody's perfect. And it's obvious you haven't spent much time on LKML; people regularly flame and get flamed; it's part of the culture, and it's also a way to winnow out those who aren't willing to stick with it.
Actually Linus lost track of many such things because too self centered or ego driven (which happens to most of us when you such success and things to deal with but anyways)
Or, you know, maybe he gets so many patches that every once in a while, even a good one can slip through the cracks. I mean, you try dealing with the literally hundreds of people emailing their really "great" ideas to you every day for inclusion in a kernel that you not only rely on personally, but put your name and stake your reputation on. Now, I'm not going to claim that Con was some idiot, but most of the whining about his patch not being accepted that I've ever heard was from people who probably couldn't even tell the difference between C and C++. Or if they could, they were too busy bitching to write their own patch for inclusion in the kernel. As for Con? I have a lot of respect for him, because unlike the whiners, he sucked it up and started all over again. Linus isn't perfect; he's not a god, but he knows a damn sight more than anyone here bitching about him rejecting patches.
Kills random processes? As in kill -term? I've never seen that.
As a big Linux fan, and past developer of RTLinux, I can tell you that the OOM (Out Of Memory) killer does exist. The algorithm isn't really "random" (least not the last time I looked at it), but it will terminate with extreme prejudice a memory hog if the whole system runs out of memory. Let me repeat that though: *if* the *whole system* *runs out of memory* (including swap), the Linux kernel *will kill the biggest memory user*. This falls into the "well, duh, what should it do? sit there and jack off while hoping that somebody's misbehaving app will just politely stop using RAM?". I mean, honestly, this isn't a problem with Linux; it's a problem either with the app developer or the system administrator (and if you are the only user of a computer, *you* are the sysadmin and should know better; either get more RAM or stop using such shitty apps).
This suggests that religion is not the defining factor.
Religion/per se/ may not be the problem, but I can tell you as an American, that religion in this country is most *definitely* against science. You need look no farther than the creationists (aka, intelligent design proponents) and those against stem cell research to see just how strongly religion opposes science in America. It doesn't help that anti-intellectualism has been ascendant in America for (at least) the last three decades. Even ignoring the flat out obvious real world examples, all religions posit to have the answers. Why perform research or experiments when you already "know" the answers by faith?
Someone here suggested that "people need to get over being seen naked". I can't find that comment to respond to it because it has (rightfully) been modded into oblivion, so I'll post this as a general response: some of us don't care about being seen naked. Hell, if people are so concerned that I might be smuggling a bomb under my penis (it's not *that* big), I'd go naked all the time; I don't care. The only thing that would bother me is the cold. What *does* bother me is that there are serious health concerns with the scanning machines. I don't know about you, but I've known cancer patients. I've seen some die. It's not pretty, and we shouldn't have to sacrifice our liberty or our health just to FEEL "safe". If anyone needs to "get over" something, the original poster needs to grow a pair and stop being so scared that he's willing to sell out his own country and sacrifice his health to FEEL "safe".
Person B does not care about Person A, and instead selfishly only wants the gifts that they want and as such ignores the feelings/beliefs of person A
I can sympathize with this sentiment, but let's turn that around and see how it works in some cases you perhaps have not thought about:
Person B is a non-Christian (Muslim, Jew, atheist, etc) and person A is an evangelical; A sends B a five foot tall cross, or a huge picture of Jesus. Should person B keep the gift out of "respect" for person A's beliefs, or should he find a way to get rid of it?
Person B has a small house, doesn't like to own many things, etc. Person A sends them something that won't fit in the house and/or person B has no use for. Would it be insulting to reject that gift?
The problem I have with comparing Linux to Windows on the desktop is that I think Windows stinks on the desktop.
Agreed.
I want an operating system to run applications.
Seconded.
It should be a kernel, drivers, codecs and the base API, with a singular update manager, and text configuration files.
The word you are looking for is "Debian". Seriously, I just switched back from Ubuntu to Debian on my main laptop, and it's so nice to be rid of the bloat, the stupid UI tweaks, the indecipherable decisions to break what already works well. I will grant you that the default desktop install of Debian installs GNOME, but you can easily install LXDE ('sudo tasksel install lxde-desktop') or XFCE ('sudo tasksel install xfce-desktop') or Fluxbox, Openbox, wmii, ratpoison, etc.
I remember a discussion a year or two ago here on Slashdot how X was badly in need of replacing. Sounds to me like Canonical have the right idea, and the impetus to make it happen.
People have been saying X was in need of replacing shortly after it was created (and yes, that was before I was born). Does X have issues? Sure. Are they dealbreakers? Obviously not, otherwise X would have been dropped instead of being forked those many years ago.
I've not had a look at Wayland, but it sounds to me like the same-old, same-old whining by "end users" and "gamers", specifically "waaah! my 3D isn't fast enough!". As for the speed, 90% of users don't care how fast it is (which I might add, X is not that slow; *by far* faster than VNC and RDP over the network, and none to shabby with accelerated drivers on the local machine). As for the complexity, 90% of programmers are using a toolkit that eliminates the difficulties in programming for X. And X has it's benefits (such as network transparency, which *will* become more important in the future; this whole "network isn't important, we should optimize it out" thing is a fad).
The thing that bothers me about Wayland is that it seems to want to enforce policy and have it's own windowing system built in. I *like* the fact that there is no One True Desktop for Linux (or X); I can pick a different desktop any time I please, and still run graphical applications from my headless servers. And no, VNC and RDP don't come close; I don't want to have to dedicate a desktop just to run a single GUI app from my servers, and wait for the horribly slow refresh. I also like the fact that X is lightweight enough to run on my netbook and my smartphone. Which also means I can run graphical apps to or from either of those, and from my aforementioned headless server.
As for those saying that Wayland will probably have support for X11 "much as Windows and Mac do", I say to them, the way Windows and Mac "support" X is one of the reasons I don't run Windows or Mac.
Re:21st Century started in 1958?
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Land of Lisp
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· Score: 4, Informative
I find it amazing that, contrary to popular belief, the 21st century started in 1958. Seriously, guys, who in their right mind believes there have been no major advances in programming languages since Lisp?
Some quitenotablehackers believe that everything since LISP has simply reinvented the wheel. The more I study programming languages, the more I'm inclined to believe them.
In your hypothetical 45-44-11 scenario, if the group with 44 can sway just 2 percent of the 11 to their side, they win and the 45 group loses. That is a strong incentive to force the 45 and 44 to behave the way the 11 want.
People always try to swing it as "throwing away your vote by voting for a third party", but I think your post has helped me to see it the other way around. Fuck all the partisans who always vote straight ticket one way or another; there's nothing you can do to change their minds, and I have nothing but disgust and pity for such unthinking wastes of a vote. But me, hey I'm not registered with any party. My vote could go any which way. So I'm locked out of primaries (actually, recently primaries have been opened up to third party voters); guess what? No matter who your primary picks, they will have to cater to *me* and people like me to get our votes, and those are the only things that will make a difference and that they have any chance of getting. So by keeping my options open, my vote becomes more important than all the registered republicans and democrats. The only ones throwing their votes away are the ones who are too stubborn or stupid to think about it and change their mind.
And yes, I *do* still write, phone, fax and email my representatives, even if they are the ones I voted for.
I would argue that in a world of high technology, where people rely on GPSes and nukes to keep them safe, it is very dangerous to have people handling things which they don't quite understand. Am I arguing for absolute comprehension at every level? Certainly not. However, the popularity of lotteries, and the constant examples of people getting screwed on loans leads me to believe we aren't teaching enough of the *necessary* subjects.
Others here have already gone into how higher math has given them another perspective and expanded their minds. Still others here have gone over how those in power don't necessarily want people better educated (about anything, not just math) because it wouldn't benefit those in power (probably be detrimental to their power). I will say this: you have to realize that people (even smart people) only have so many hours in the day and so many months in their life, they can't learn everything. You have to pick and choose. Would I say drop higher math altogether? No. Would I be in favor of swapping statistics, probability and logic for calculus? Definitely.
In the days before RS-232 we had current loop, which was basically the same idea, but used "current flow"/"no current flow" instead of RS-232 +15V/-15V to signal zeros and ones.
MIDI 1.0 is a current loop serial port that runs at a bizarre baud rate 31250 bps. Yet it uses a nice standard async protocol of 8N1 just like a serial port.
Depending on the peculiar non-standardness of your serial port, it might, with minimal hacking, be made to work MIDI.
Take a UART chip, add a RS-232 level shifter like a MAX-232 or those ancient 1489 1488 level shifters, add a DB-25 and you've got a RS-232 port. Take the same UART chip, add some optoisolators and resistors, wire to a 5 pin DIN jack, and you're got a MIDI port. Not as different as you'd think. The software is a bit different of course.
Or working the other way around, on the Atari ST, the MIDI ports could be connected in a "MIDI null modem"-ish cable, and you could play multiplayer games, although I never owned a ST.
This. *So totally this*. This is/exactly/ what I come to slashdot for; not to hear some asshole tell other people he sucks at FPS's; or to hear some fanboy spout that his platform doesn't suck, you suck; or to hear someone say you suck for voting for a republicat/demoplican. This kind of comment is what keeps me coming back and friending people so they will get a +6 modifier and I will see every comment they make, even at filter level 5. Only I already have 400 friends and foes. Dammit slashdot! Oh, BTW, thanks for the post! You're fucking awesome!
I've recently been playing around with Org-Mode for Emacs, and it's wonderful. Of course, I like Emacs, YMMV. As for syncing and keeping history, Git is amazing. Automated merges make life so easy, plus the default distributed mode means I just pull from wherever I was working last and I have everything up-to-date; I actually use Org-Mode and Git on both my Debian Laptop and Nokia N900 (running Maemo).
Something to keep in mind, though, is that you probably don't want to keep track of *everything* (or if you do, you probably want to reduce/distill it to more usable formats). One solution to this is Pre-Deleting Cruft. Try asking yourself, what is important in life? What are the Big Rocks? Once you've identified the big and medium rocks, identify what you can automate so you don't even have to think about it.
This reminds me of an amusing text I read a while back, Academic Programmers - A Spotter's Guide, particularly the Unix Macro Magician. That being said, I think far too many people are far too willing to reinvent the wheel and wallow in complexity. It's as if some people think they won't be taken seriously or not be considered valuable if they create simple systems from pre-existing components. I always like to point out that Physicists get paid to make models as simple as possible; that's why they make some of the best coders.
I'd have to say, well, no. Android is better than iOS and all, but it still doesn't feel quite like a fully fledged Linux to me. Windows Phone 7 isn't even an option, IMHO. Maemo, OTOH, is basically Debian for MIDs and smartphones. I'm not entirely happy that they basically dropped the Debian part of Maemo in favor of the Redhat part in MeeGo, but I'm also not fond of the idea of only writing apps in Java for Android. Especially when I have a pretty decent language selection out of the box on Maemo. Anyone know what languages, toolkits and frameworks are available on Android? Can I write and run software on Android without another computer? How about Emacs, can I get that for Android?
I probably should start playing around with the Android SDK, and I'm fairly certain that Android will crush, first and foremost, MeeGo. But I have an N900, and Maemo works pretty darn well for me.
Sounds like a win-win to me. I don't see the problem.
Maybe this time. I'm actually very surprised T-Mobile didn't just have their legal department send him a cease and desist or outright sue him, or even possibly get him charged with some ridiculous law. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it turned out for the better, but how often do you think that happens?
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It's called freedom (or liberty; take your pick). And not "freedom to force my choice on others" but freedom to live and let live. This is why I don't have problems with people choosing Apple or Microsoft, as long as they know there are other options available, and they don't ask me to support them. The other day, I had a conversation with a friend who is going to get an iphone as soon as his current contract on his blackberry expires. I asked him if he had heard about Android; he had, and said that he felt like there were more apps for Apple. I let him know that there are probably just as many for Android, and that just because Apple keeps a tight fist on their app store doesn't mean they don't get the occasional trojan or virus, and let it go at that. Live and let live.
What I *do* have a problem with is when companies like Microsoft and Apple try to strongarm others (customers, competitors, unrelated third parties, etc) into giving up their freedoms, all for a false sense of a "sleeker", "more secure" user experience. I have problems with companies when they sue or otherwise prevent open source developers from exercising their right to share the fruits of their labor with others. I really hate being lied to (aka, advertised to) when I've already tried a companies' products and found them wanting (see my sig). What I want is to be able to write my software on the platform of my choice without having to worry about whether it infringes on someones' patents. What I want is not to be beholden to any company who thinks they have a right to my data, my money or my time.
I may not entirely agree with the BSD folks, but they are the least of my worries; they are not trying to take away my freedoms.
First, just let me preface this by saying C++ is my bread and butter; I write about 90% of my code in it these days, mostly because I'm a maintenance programmer (but don't let that fool you; much of the stuff I "maintain" I have to re-write from scratch (or almost scratch) because the code is nowhere near clear).
To me, C++ has a lot going for it: it's pretty much as fast as C, and much more clear with powerful language constructs. I'm not much of an expert on other languages (I'm mostly a depth-first learner), but I've yet to see another language have something as powerful as templates/generics (besides Ada, which is where C++ got them from). The fact that you can do compile-time programming speaks volumes for the power of templates.
Now I'll grant you that it's not always clear what C++ does behind the scenes - but this is true of the other languages you listed, and is mostly a performance problem anyway. If a programmer understands an abstraction (and a programmer *should* understand the abstractions he or she uses), then it's not a problem. Two books I can highly recommend that not only clear up what C++ does behind the scenes, but teach a lot of good coding technique besides are "Thinking in C++" volumes one and two. Sure, they may be 1600 pages combined, but you learn a lot.
A bigger problem I see with C++ is that it is, to put it politely, a "federation of languages", and most people don't even realize it. I've heard that many shops end up picking just the pieces of the language their programmers are familiar with and forbidding the use of anything else, which is fine until someone stumbles on to something they don't understand.
Me, I learn what I use, and what I use is C++ because that's what the software I'm maintaining is written in. Perhaps one day I'll delve as deeply into another language as I have with C++, but I've already picked up a number of programming concepts I wasn't proficient with before (coming from C and Perl), so I have to at least defend C++ for being a powerful and fast language.
An interesting link you might like: C++ is Good for the Economy, It Creates Jobs!.
Many people have already recommended the Nokia N900, but I have to strongly concur. I do admin stuff from my N900 all the time; I have a caching, ad-filtering, anonymizing proxy on my home server, which I setup an encrypted tunnel to with SSH for a lovely VPN, even if I'm on clear-text Wi-Fi. Not to mention, it easily stays up with a "while true; do ssh -L 3128:myserver.com:3128 myserver.com; sleep 1; done" because the N900 has a shell out of the box (and Perl, plus you can install Python, and Emacs, and Vim, etc, etc). Also, since the N900 runs XOrg, you can easily forward your X apps, either to or from the N900, or use VNC if you prefer. Sure, some people are more "comfortable" with an iPhone or Android device, but the N900 Just Works for geeks like me, no jailbreaking or rooting required.
Unless you have a really good manager, all the evidence in the world won't convince him or her. If, on the other hand, you can at least talk to cost/benefit ratio and the manager will *listen*, have them think about this: can you build, test and package your code for distribution to your users with one button press (or the equivalent)? If it takes you more than 15 minutes after applying a bugfix to get it tested and packaged, you will almost certainly save money by automating, and this includes testing. I say *almost* because this is where the cost/benefit ratio comes in: how much will it cost to "fix" things? How often do you have to make changes?
I know the OP posted some of this already, but there's no simple answer and they need to do the thinking; the above is merely how I would think about it. The manager, if they are doing their job, will listen to cost/benefit ratio analyses; no manager wants to get fired for not pursuing something that will cut costs or raise profits.
You're not the only one; I've had several DVDs moved to my saved section, after being in my queue for years (I filled up my queue rather quick, then let it sit for a while; what can I say, I've been busy). For me, I currently don't have the bandwidth to stream, so I hope they don't neglect their DVD side.
I'll add one: Don't support IEEE (that is, don't be a member, and boycott their conferences). IEEE supports software patents.
No, it's even simpler and less evil than that: any time anyone from an ISP even *implies* that "big Internet companies" will have to pay extra to get access to their users, Google should immediately put up a static web page concisely stating the problem, who is advocating it and include the phone, email and any other contact information of the company who advocates it. Then redirect *all* of the customers and requests from that company to that web page, until the company makes a full apology and signs a contract to never to advocate for a non-neutral net again. We'll see who can last longer without the other: Google or the idiot ISP :)
Of course, someone will whine about monopoly abuse, but the fact of the matter is that the ISP monopolies are the real abusers here, and there's nothing that we as individuals can do about it. Quite honestly, I don't trust Google and believe they probably are a little too powerful. But I *know* for a fact, as has been repeatedly shown through past actions, that the ISPs (such as Comcast and Verizon) are fucking evil greedy assholes who would screw over anyone they can get away with without a second thought. And they have quite a lot of power to screw people over with.
Perhaps; but what of the possibility of scheduling groups of processes, where "group" is defined differently? If nothing else, this patch could lead the way to being able to schedule "process groups" where the partitioning into groups is done differently (eg, background services vs user apps, foreground window vs background window, etc).
Maybe he did realize he was wrong; then there's always the consideration to be made that Ingo has been around for ever in the Linux kernel community, and Linus trusts him. Not to cast aspersions on Con, but if someone came to you with some "great idea" and just give it to you, would you take it? Especially for something as important as the scheduler, where use cases you can't even imagine are the norm. Use cases you can't imagine unless you've been developing one of the most widely used kernels, in applications from micro-embedded computers all the way to highly distributed clusters, for going on almost twenty years. The three years Con spent on the scheduler may sound like a lot, but it's nothing compared to the man-years that have been put in by the Linux kernel developers; and, yes, Linus has his favorites, because they have come through time and time again, and have been around forever.
Nobody's perfect. And it's obvious you haven't spent much time on LKML; people regularly flame and get flamed; it's part of the culture, and it's also a way to winnow out those who aren't willing to stick with it.
Or, you know, maybe he gets so many patches that every once in a while, even a good one can slip through the cracks. I mean, you try dealing with the literally hundreds of people emailing their really "great" ideas to you every day for inclusion in a kernel that you not only rely on personally, but put your name and stake your reputation on. Now, I'm not going to claim that Con was some idiot, but most of the whining about his patch not being accepted that I've ever heard was from people who probably couldn't even tell the difference between C and C++. Or if they could, they were too busy bitching to write their own patch for inclusion in the kernel. As for Con? I have a lot of respect for him, because unlike the whiners, he sucked it up and started all over again. Linus isn't perfect; he's not a god, but he knows a damn sight more than anyone here bitching about him rejecting patches.
As a big Linux fan, and past developer of RTLinux, I can tell you that the OOM (Out Of Memory) killer does exist. The algorithm isn't really "random" (least not the last time I looked at it), but it will terminate with extreme prejudice a memory hog if the whole system runs out of memory. Let me repeat that though: *if* the *whole system* *runs out of memory* (including swap), the Linux kernel *will kill the biggest memory user*. This falls into the "well, duh, what should it do? sit there and jack off while hoping that somebody's misbehaving app will just politely stop using RAM?". I mean, honestly, this isn't a problem with Linux; it's a problem either with the app developer or the system administrator (and if you are the only user of a computer, *you* are the sysadmin and should know better; either get more RAM or stop using such shitty apps).
Religion /per se/ may not be the problem, but I can tell you as an American, that religion in this country is most *definitely* against science. You need look no farther than the creationists (aka, intelligent design proponents) and those against stem cell research to see just how strongly religion opposes science in America. It doesn't help that anti-intellectualism has been ascendant in America for (at least) the last three decades. Even ignoring the flat out obvious real world examples, all religions posit to have the answers. Why perform research or experiments when you already "know" the answers by faith?
or Intercal. No, definitely Malbolge. Yeah, that's the hot new programming language of 2010!
Someone here suggested that "people need to get over being seen naked". I can't find that comment to respond to it because it has (rightfully) been modded into oblivion, so I'll post this as a general response: some of us don't care about being seen naked. Hell, if people are so concerned that I might be smuggling a bomb under my penis (it's not *that* big), I'd go naked all the time; I don't care. The only thing that would bother me is the cold. What *does* bother me is that there are serious health concerns with the scanning machines. I don't know about you, but I've known cancer patients. I've seen some die. It's not pretty, and we shouldn't have to sacrifice our liberty or our health just to FEEL "safe". If anyone needs to "get over" something, the original poster needs to grow a pair and stop being so scared that he's willing to sell out his own country and sacrifice his health to FEEL "safe".
I can sympathize with this sentiment, but let's turn that around and see how it works in some cases you perhaps have not thought about:
Agreed.
Seconded.
The word you are looking for is "Debian". Seriously, I just switched back from Ubuntu to Debian on my main laptop, and it's so nice to be rid of the bloat, the stupid UI tweaks, the indecipherable decisions to break what already works well. I will grant you that the default desktop install of Debian installs GNOME, but you can easily install LXDE ('sudo tasksel install lxde-desktop') or XFCE ('sudo tasksel install xfce-desktop') or Fluxbox, Openbox, wmii, ratpoison, etc.
People have been saying X was in need of replacing shortly after it was created (and yes, that was before I was born). Does X have issues? Sure. Are they dealbreakers? Obviously not, otherwise X would have been dropped instead of being forked those many years ago.
I've not had a look at Wayland, but it sounds to me like the same-old, same-old whining by "end users" and "gamers", specifically "waaah! my 3D isn't fast enough!". As for the speed, 90% of users don't care how fast it is (which I might add, X is not that slow; *by far* faster than VNC and RDP over the network, and none to shabby with accelerated drivers on the local machine). As for the complexity, 90% of programmers are using a toolkit that eliminates the difficulties in programming for X. And X has it's benefits (such as network transparency, which *will* become more important in the future; this whole "network isn't important, we should optimize it out" thing is a fad).
The thing that bothers me about Wayland is that it seems to want to enforce policy and have it's own windowing system built in. I *like* the fact that there is no One True Desktop for Linux (or X); I can pick a different desktop any time I please, and still run graphical applications from my headless servers. And no, VNC and RDP don't come close; I don't want to have to dedicate a desktop just to run a single GUI app from my servers, and wait for the horribly slow refresh. I also like the fact that X is lightweight enough to run on my netbook and my smartphone. Which also means I can run graphical apps to or from either of those, and from my aforementioned headless server.
As for those saying that Wayland will probably have support for X11 "much as Windows and Mac do", I say to them, the way Windows and Mac "support" X is one of the reasons I don't run Windows or Mac.
Some quite notable hackers believe that everything since LISP has simply reinvented the wheel. The more I study programming languages, the more I'm inclined to believe them.
People always try to swing it as "throwing away your vote by voting for a third party", but I think your post has helped me to see it the other way around. Fuck all the partisans who always vote straight ticket one way or another; there's nothing you can do to change their minds, and I have nothing but disgust and pity for such unthinking wastes of a vote. But me, hey I'm not registered with any party. My vote could go any which way. So I'm locked out of primaries (actually, recently primaries have been opened up to third party voters); guess what? No matter who your primary picks, they will have to cater to *me* and people like me to get our votes, and those are the only things that will make a difference and that they have any chance of getting. So by keeping my options open, my vote becomes more important than all the registered republicans and democrats. The only ones throwing their votes away are the ones who are too stubborn or stupid to think about it and change their mind.
And yes, I *do* still write, phone, fax and email my representatives, even if they are the ones I voted for.
I would argue that in a world of high technology, where people rely on GPSes and nukes to keep them safe, it is very dangerous to have people handling things which they don't quite understand. Am I arguing for absolute comprehension at every level? Certainly not. However, the popularity of lotteries, and the constant examples of people getting screwed on loans leads me to believe we aren't teaching enough of the *necessary* subjects.
Others here have already gone into how higher math has given them another perspective and expanded their minds. Still others here have gone over how those in power don't necessarily want people better educated (about anything, not just math) because it wouldn't benefit those in power (probably be detrimental to their power). I will say this: you have to realize that people (even smart people) only have so many hours in the day and so many months in their life, they can't learn everything. You have to pick and choose. Would I say drop higher math altogether? No. Would I be in favor of swapping statistics, probability and logic for calculus? Definitely.
This. *So totally this*. This is /exactly/ what I come to slashdot for; not to hear some asshole tell other people he sucks at FPS's; or to hear some fanboy spout that his platform doesn't suck, you suck; or to hear someone say you suck for voting for a republicat/demoplican. This kind of comment is what keeps me coming back and friending people so they will get a +6 modifier and I will see every comment they make, even at filter level 5. Only I already have 400 friends and foes. Dammit slashdot! Oh, BTW, thanks for the post! You're fucking awesome!
I've recently been playing around with Org-Mode for Emacs, and it's wonderful. Of course, I like Emacs, YMMV. As for syncing and keeping history, Git is amazing. Automated merges make life so easy, plus the default distributed mode means I just pull from wherever I was working last and I have everything up-to-date; I actually use Org-Mode and Git on both my Debian Laptop and Nokia N900 (running Maemo).
Something to keep in mind, though, is that you probably don't want to keep track of *everything* (or if you do, you probably want to reduce/distill it to more usable formats). One solution to this is Pre-Deleting Cruft. Try asking yourself, what is important in life? What are the Big Rocks? Once you've identified the big and medium rocks, identify what you can automate so you don't even have to think about it.
This reminds me of an amusing text I read a while back, Academic Programmers - A Spotter's Guide, particularly the Unix Macro Magician. That being said, I think far too many people are far too willing to reinvent the wheel and wallow in complexity. It's as if some people think they won't be taken seriously or not be considered valuable if they create simple systems from pre-existing components. I always like to point out that Physicists get paid to make models as simple as possible; that's why they make some of the best coders.
I'd have to say, well, no. Android is better than iOS and all, but it still doesn't feel quite like a fully fledged Linux to me. Windows Phone 7 isn't even an option, IMHO. Maemo, OTOH, is basically Debian for MIDs and smartphones. I'm not entirely happy that they basically dropped the Debian part of Maemo in favor of the Redhat part in MeeGo, but I'm also not fond of the idea of only writing apps in Java for Android. Especially when I have a pretty decent language selection out of the box on Maemo. Anyone know what languages, toolkits and frameworks are available on Android? Can I write and run software on Android without another computer? How about Emacs, can I get that for Android?
I probably should start playing around with the Android SDK, and I'm fairly certain that Android will crush, first and foremost, MeeGo. But I have an N900, and Maemo works pretty darn well for me.
Maybe this time. I'm actually very surprised T-Mobile didn't just have their legal department send him a cease and desist or outright sue him, or even possibly get him charged with some ridiculous law. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it turned out for the better, but how often do you think that happens?