by outsider I meant someone who doesn't follow kernel development. So a user would count yes. And by my defintion of an outsider they are not discerning enough to know what they need.
And no, their concerns are not paramount. I don't give a damn what they say they want as its rarely what's best since by definition they don't understand the whole situation.
The end goals I do care about. I want good drivers as much as anyone, but I don't see the best way for that is a stable driver API.
Speaking of the flack RMS gets - I went to speech by him a few months ago. I hadn't heard him speak before for many years. He actually had some very good ideas and presented himself beautifully. Not the RMS I knew from 5 years ago.
When I was younger I loved downloading the next kernel, going through every single option, reading the help, and deciding if I want it.
Great fun:) Led to me contributing a tiny bit to the kernel (I have a 3 line patch in there still!:) )
I don't these days.. perhaps I should. Great for learning even if I don't produce a working kernel heh. It would be fun to play with SElinux and everything. I'm such a geek..;)
"So you're saying it's better to have major kernel APIs changing constantly and breaking third-party drivers (even open source ones that need to be tweaked) rather than coming up with a stable interface to expose to module developers? "
Yes. Nuff said. A frozen api hinders development, and hopefully disuades closed source drivers. (but that's another argument).
And there are technical reasons you can't just write an abstraction layer. At what layer would you put it? Have you seen the reworking in the last 5 years that has gone on for ide-scsi and usb for example? I don't think there's a way you could have come up with a good abstraction layer that would have allowed for the changes that the ide and scsi layers have gone through.
Btw, the philisophical argument is good enough just by itself, I think.:)
I doubt this is much different from Windows internally. No doubt they have quick hacks with incremental changes which is then released when ready. (or not, insert MS bash here if you want). It's just with linux it's all out in the open.
Hardware support has nothing to do with feature creep (directly anyway - indirectly they effect underlying device systems like usb,scsi,ide etc).
Seemless hardware support (HAL etc) is a new feature, so point there.
The inotify thing is a replacement for dnotify (I know you didn't mention it, but it was in the article) so doesn't add any features really, just fixes bugs.
The whole thing about relying less on chaining... I just didn't get. Can you give any example where something that used to be considered to be a user space problem is now kernel space? It's always been known that we need kernel notifications for hardware etc.
The 'chaining' thing will never go away - you'll always need kernel space talking to user space middle ware talking to user space apps. Nobody has ever thought otherwise, and unlikely anyone will ever think otherwise.
The 'whole units' bit only makes sense if you're a manager.
'did you ever try to configure a kernel these days?' - no, my distro does it for me.
I don't see what the problem is. My distro has all the drivers compiled for me. What use case do you have other than compiling your own kernel for the sake of it?
On a practical level, Linus has said many times that he won't do this because it would require freezing the internal kernel api. While this might sound good for an outsider, you only have to consider how much say the USB structure has been reorganised to realise how bad an idea it would have been if this was all frozen.
Oh just to reply to myself.. dnotify had this problem where if you watched a file say on a CD, it meant that file was 'opened' and hence the CD couldn't be ejected because it was being used..
Inotify is a replacement for dnotify. With both you can watch for a file for changes. You can even watch a directory for changes. However with dnotify you couldn't recursively watch a directory for changes. To do so required basically 'opening' each folder and quickly you use up the maximum number of files you can open.
With inotify it still doesn't directly support recursively watching a directory but example code for doing so is given and doesn't have the same problems. One distro uses this for watching/home recursively. I don't remember why or which.:)
As for the notification thing - that's part of HAL, and means usb pens, cameras, etc should be 'auto detected' and the user can be notified and asked what to do automatically.
I'm a PhD student but I go along to company talks. One of the talks had a group of lawyers that told us about this sort of thing, and they said that under the eu directives games were ruled as you couldn't make backups, but software you could. I'm fairly sure it was something like that.
'According to kinetic theory there would be no movement of individual particles at absolute zero, and thus any material at this temperature would be solid. This has been proven false and it's better to describe absolute zero as the temperature where no further energy may be extracted'.
Particle motion wouldn't cease because then it would be possible to know the position and velocity at the same time - impossible with quantum mechanics.
The example I use is gravity. Just because every time before you dropped a glass it fell to the floor doesn't mean we can prove that it will fall when I drop it now. It's just that all the overwhelming evidence points to that it will.
I found university was just yet again teaching me things. A PhD on the other hand is how to think.. well actually that's more on how to be disciplined and keep at something for 3 years despite getting no progress for months at end. Something I'm currently failing at:)
Btw I always used my computer (from 10 or so) primarily for coding and learning Linux. I didn't have an internet connection so I think that helped a lot. (I'm 23 now btw).
I moved out of my parents house when I was 18 to go to university, and spent the first 2 years in the dorms flinching when I heard a sound outside my door, worried that I'd done something wrong and was going to be hit. Even 2 years on from that I still find myself doing that from time to time.
Yeah - it basically says that they are allowed to joint license all your code under GPL and under a proprietry license that they use for StarOffice so that they can use your code in StarOffice.
I'm surprised people haven't mentioned the agreement as a barrier - i guess most just haven't even gotten that far:)
P.S. What does your sig mean? All 'laws' in physics are theories. Everything in physics is just a theory.
I think it's you that is thinking like a 5 year old.
Consider this: Say after many many years of discrimination, all the people in power are white, and all the poor people are black.
Now you remove the discrimination but you still have all the poor people are black, and all the people in power are white. Is it morally wrong to discriminate a bit in favour of black people for a while in order to try to get some black people into power, or is it morally better to just leave the system as it is, knowing that it is going to take an extremely long time for the blacks to work themselves up, along with all the social problems that will cause?
Stop thinking all issues are so clear cut, and that you can just shout 'discrimination is wrong' without thinking.
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by outsider I meant someone who doesn't follow kernel development. So a user would count yes. And by my defintion of an outsider they are not discerning enough to know what they need.
And no, their concerns are not paramount. I don't give a damn what they say they want as its rarely what's best since by definition they don't understand the whole situation.
The end goals I do care about. I want good drivers as much as anyone, but I don't see the best way for that is a stable driver API.
Speaking of the flack RMS gets - I went to speech by him a few months ago. I hadn't heard him speak before for many years. He actually had some very good ideas and presented himself beautifully. Not the RMS I knew from 5 years ago.
When I was younger I loved downloading the next kernel, going through every single option, reading the help, and deciding if I want it.
:) Led to me contributing a tiny bit to the kernel (I have a 3 line patch in there still! :) )
;)
Great fun
I don't these days.. perhaps I should. Great for learning even if I don't produce a working kernel heh.
It would be fun to play with SElinux and everything. I'm such a geek..
"So you're saying it's better to have major kernel APIs changing constantly and breaking third-party drivers (even open source ones that need to be tweaked) rather than coming up with a stable interface to expose to module developers? "
:)
Yes. Nuff said. A frozen api hinders development, and hopefully disuades closed source drivers. (but that's another argument).
And there are technical reasons you can't just write an abstraction layer. At what layer would you put it? Have you seen the reworking in the last 5 years that has gone on for ide-scsi and usb for example?
I don't think there's a way you could have come up with a good abstraction layer that would have allowed for the changes that the ide and scsi layers have gone through.
Btw, the philisophical argument is good enough just by itself, I think.
I doubt this is much different from Windows internally. No doubt they have quick hacks with incremental changes which is then released when ready. (or not, insert MS bash here if you want).
It's just with linux it's all out in the open.
I'm not sure what your post is saying.
Hardware support has nothing to do with feature creep (directly anyway - indirectly they effect underlying device systems like usb,scsi,ide etc).
Seemless hardware support (HAL etc) is a new feature, so point there.
The inotify thing is a replacement for dnotify (I know you didn't mention it, but it was in the article) so doesn't add any features really, just fixes bugs.
The whole thing about relying less on chaining... I just didn't get.
Can you give any example where something that used to be considered to be a user space problem is now kernel space? It's always been known that we need kernel notifications for hardware etc.
The 'chaining' thing will never go away - you'll always need kernel space talking to user space middle ware talking to user space apps.
Nobody has ever thought otherwise, and unlikely anyone will ever think otherwise.
The 'whole units' bit only makes sense if you're a manager.
'did you ever try to configure a kernel these days?' - no, my distro does it for me.
I don't see what the problem is. My distro has all the drivers compiled for me. What use case do you have other than compiling your own kernel for the sake of it?
On a practical level, Linus has said many times that he won't do this because it would require freezing the internal kernel api. While this might sound good for an outsider, you only have to consider how much say the USB structure has been reorganised to realise how bad an idea it would have been if this was all frozen.
Oh just to reply to myself.. dnotify had this problem where if you watched a file say on a CD, it meant that file was 'opened' and hence the CD couldn't be ejected because it was being used..
inotify fixes this.
(waiting 2 mins between posts... sigh)
Just for those not in the know..
/home recursively. I don't remember why or which. :)
Inotify is a replacement for dnotify. With both you can watch for a file for changes. You can even watch a directory for changes. However with dnotify you couldn't recursively watch a directory for changes. To do so required basically 'opening' each folder and quickly you use up the maximum number of files you can open.
With inotify it still doesn't directly support recursively watching a directory but example code for doing so is given and doesn't have the same problems. One distro uses this for watching
As for the notification thing - that's part of HAL, and means usb pens, cameras, etc should be 'auto detected' and the user can be notified and asked what to do automatically.
I'm a PhD student but I go along to company talks. One of the talks had a group of lawyers that told us about this sort of thing, and they said that under the eu directives games were ruled as you couldn't make backups, but software you could. I'm fairly sure it was something like that.
'Then somebody with more capital than creativity comes in and strip-mines your idea in ways that were beyond your reach (say, making it into a movie)'
And this is bad? The movie wouldn't have been made otherwise.
Right, and we are disappointed most of the time - and so create open formats - OASIS, OGG, etc.
I've been chatting to the kde pdf viewer (kpdf) author about doing exactly what you say.
Hmm, I thought that act was overridden by EU law which says you can backup music and software cd/dvd's, but not games. (So similiar)
From the linked wikipedia page:
'According to kinetic theory there would be no movement of individual particles at absolute zero, and thus any material at this temperature would be solid. This has been proven false and it's better to describe absolute zero as the temperature where no further energy may be extracted'.
Particle motion wouldn't cease because then it would be possible to know the position and velocity at the same time - impossible with quantum mechanics.
The distinction is blurred. Being in constant fear that you might make a mistake ...
Ah, the religious loonies.
The example I use is gravity. Just because every time before you dropped a glass it fell to the floor doesn't mean we can prove that it will fall when I drop it now. It's just that all the overwhelming evidence points to that it will.
I found university was just yet again teaching me things. A PhD on the other hand is how to think.. well actually that's more on how to be disciplined and keep at something for 3 years despite getting no progress for months at end. Something I'm currently failing at :)
Btw I always used my computer (from 10 or so) primarily for coding and learning Linux. I didn't have an internet connection so I think that helped a lot. (I'm 23 now btw).
I moved out of my parents house when I was 18 to go to university, and spent the first 2 years in the dorms flinching when I heard a sound outside my door, worried that I'd done something wrong and was going to be hit. Even 2 years on from that I still find myself doing that from time to time.
Physical discipline can fuck up a kid.
Yeah - it basically says that they are allowed to joint license all your code under GPL and under a proprietry license that they use for StarOffice so that they can use your code in StarOffice.
:)
I'm surprised people haven't mentioned the agreement as a barrier - i guess most just haven't even gotten that far
P.S. What does your sig mean? All 'laws' in physics are theories. Everything in physics is just a theory.
Fry: "You're a robot, why do you need to drink?"
;)
Bender: "I don't need to drink! I can quit any time I want!"
It's not as funny without the voices..
This could be tested by seeing if bisexuals like girl-on-girl.
:)
Personally I doubt your reasoning. Guy-on-girl gets boring, and it's good to spice things up
I think it's you that is thinking like a 5 year old.
Consider this: Say after many many years of discrimination, all the people in power are white, and all the poor people are black.
Now you remove the discrimination but you still have all the poor people are black, and all the people in power are white.
Is it morally wrong to discriminate a bit in favour of black people for a while in order to try to get some black people into power, or is it morally better to just leave the system as it is, knowing that it is going to take an extremely long time for the blacks to work themselves up, along with all the social problems that will cause?
Stop thinking all issues are so clear cut, and that you can just shout 'discrimination is wrong' without thinking.
> Humans (from the West) today don't really care about that
:)
Yes, with 6 billion people on this planet, our last worry is underpopulation. Funny that.
P.s. I had a pair of gay rabbits
I did see the film. My girlfriend dragged me along because it had will smith naked in the shower at the start. The same reason most women saw it.