Time he is wasting? It's a hobby, and I'm sure he thinks it's fun. I'm glad he's doing it, I hope it can shake things up a bit.
A hobby it may be, but how beneficial is it to create another schism from Lisp? Arc, whatever it may improve upon, will only serve to damage Lisp, and the Lisp community, by diluting it with yet another pointless dialect. Why doesn't pg use his time and skill to make ANSI Common Lisp better? Why does he have to go off, like a typical heretic, and bastardise the one true faith just because he wants to remake it in his own image?
From his website, it seems pg just wants his own version of Lisp, except with the syntax changed to look more like Perl. Perl with macros: so what? Why not implement Arc as some kind of library for Lisp? Not a library in the sense of Perl's modules or Java's API (they only supplement the language with some pre-written functions), but something better and much more powerful: a library that transforms the language itself into a new beast ready to take on some specific task, be it GUI writing, website development, numerical programming, or what not. This is exactly the sort of thing CLOS does for Lisp - it transforms Lisp into a language for writing programs in the OOP paradigm. That's infinitely more useful and productive than implementing your ideas as a whole new dialect.
The bottom line is that we already have a great starting point in the form of ANSI Common Lisp - no other language (or Lisp dialect) exceeds it. What we really need is for smart people like pg to help make Lisp better, not by breaking it into a thousand different dialects, but by promoting dialectical unity, implementing the extensive libraries that are sorely needed, evolving the ANSI specification to fix the flaws, and putting forth new specifications for language-transforming libraries as was done with CLOS.
History has shown that heretics do nothing good to help improve the one true faith; they only end up sending people on a wild goose chase. Arc will create more confusion in the Lisp world than it hopes to cure, just as Protestantism did in the world of Christendom.
At last, an explanation for the pages of drivel pg recently published as "What You Can't Say". For such a smart guy, I was agape with confusion as to how pg had gotten himself into the absurd position of arguing that heresy is "cool", and if you are not a heretic then "...Odds are you just think whatever you're told" - it was like reading the rants of some eloquent teenager, full of childish angst and rage toward authority.
The word heresy means to choose or to pick out, and libertarianism, which chooses the rights of the individual over the rights of the collective whole, is an apt example of how pg's much-advised heretical thought ends in useless, unoriginal crackpottery. Slowly, a heretic's monomania warps his mind, preventing him from seeing things in a universal sense, according to the whole, and I think it highly unfortunate to see pg slowly manifest these symptoms.
In the end, as G. K. Chesterton said, there is nothing more boring than a heretic, and pg has become exceedingly boring of late (of course, not quite to the standard of Mr. E.S. Raymond or Mr. R.M. Stallman), as evidenced by the content of his essays, and the time he is wasting by implementing another pointless dialect of ANSI Common Lisp. It would certainly benefit us all if there were at least one person with voice in the open source world who thought in a more catholic manner; then perhaps we would see some progress instead of good people being wasted, thinking unoriginal thoughts, and re-implementing old ideas.
...This would help a lot with the creation of graphical configuration tools for source packages....
How is a graphical configuration tool going to help anything? You want to pile another layer of crap onto an already burdened autoconf just so you can play with your mouse? What the hell is wrong with you? Don't be such a pussy: type './configure --help', figure out the options on the command line, and stop recommending open source programmers waste their time developing mere gimmicks. Do you work for Microsoft or something?
"...Nobel Prize for Literature? Now there's a life's challenge for the aspiring science writer."
A Nobel Prize for scientific literature is the
only way Dawkins stands a chance of winning a
real Nobel Prize. Aside from reiterating his
Darwinian fairytales like a broken record, the
man doesn't actually do any real science.
One thing I have noticed is that some of the spam in my Junk folder have 'From' names strangely similar to those of some private mails I have in my Inbox. For example, I have a private mail from a guy called "Peter Jeffery", and in my Junk folder today, there was a spam from someone called "Jeffery".
This bothers me. It has happened too many times now to be mere coincidence. The only explanation I can think of is that Hotmail are purposefully leaking more than just Hotmail user address names.
I had previously considered the same issue you raise here, that perhaps it'd be too complicated to write a self-contained script that could handle the tarball installation over many different system layouts. Indeed, this is, apparently, the whole point of something like RPM. However, given that the aforementioned development tools are reasonably capable of dealing with differing system layouts, and considering that such layouts aren't in a high rate of flux, the target is not as difficult to hit as you seem to suggest.
It is wholly possible for Ximian to support other non-RPM/dpkg Unix derivatives with only a modicum of effort in comparison to their "Red Carpet" edeavour. The only reason they don't is, well, because they're a bunch of lamers.
Slackware support?
on
Ximian's Back
·
· Score: 1, Informative
It's been a couple of years now since the last Ximian release, and they still refuse to support Slackware, and any other non-RPM/non-dpkg based un*x derivatives.
Come on guys! How hard is it to make a simple install script for Linux/Unix systems that don't run RPM? With all the grandeur pumped into 'Red Carpet', you can't take a couple of days to make a shell script that'll install Ximian from tarballs?
"...This year, the Software Engineers at McMaster University designed a life sized Pac-Man board, thus answering the question of whether or not software engineering is in fact engineering."
I fail to see how the design of a massive Pac-Man board is, in any way, related to the *art* of designing good software.
So? How do you know it's not a separate species that happened to die out? There is no evidence to suggest members of this species went on to evolve into great apes, humans, or anything else. Using topological similarities as proof is absurd.
>As for the quote, nice one, but your orginal post (which included a one >word quote from Darwin..
No it didn't. It included a word frequently used by Darwin in his exposition "Descent of Man" for the purpose of stating Darwin believed the beings he called "savages" evolved from great apes. He clearly treats the evolution of "civilised nations" as being different. The quote I subsequently supplied clearly illustrates this, and if one were to continue reading "Descent of Man" from this point, it would become even more clear.
>>How can something "make creationism right?" > >Evidence.
Like what? Topological similarities between fossils?
>>You either accept and believe Creationism to be correct, > >And surrender your ability to think and reason.
This is a retarded claim. Am I not here thinking and reasoning against a flaky scientific theory?
>However, your slandering of those who you disagree with is duely noted.
For it to be slander, it must first be untrue. Nothing I have said about Darwin is untrue.
>and promotes, your Liberalist and hedonistic mind frame. > >If this wasn't so funny, I might be offended. Given that you have never >met me, and read (at most) only a tiny fraction of my thoughts, this is >one of the most stupid things you could writen.
Given my entire sentence was written in the second person plural, taking it as a personal statement about you is one of the most stupid things you could have done.
Well, whoever moderated me down, I wonder if you realise my point and can see things from the other side of the coin.
As Slashdot is the mouth-piece of the GNU/Linux hoarde, I seriously doubt anyone out there has balls enough to step up to the plate and criticise the community we're all part of. Unless we can put ourselves under the microscope, and scrutinise the things we do, ultimately we're going to continue in this cess pool of half-baked software written by a bunch of lamers.
>The installer also works on debian, solaris and (i think) HP-UX. You are MISINFORMED.
The only reason Ximian have gotten up off their lazy asses and supported Debian is because Debian lusers comprise a very large portion of GNU/Linux users - their target demographic.
The only reason why they support Slolaris is because Sun are the main corporate contributor, supporter, and user of the GNOME desktop. To not support Solaris is like giving Sun the finger, something that Mr. de Icaza wouldn't be too happy about.
Ximian only support these two non-rpm un*xes because they absolutely have to. It seems, as far as they are concerned, everyone else can fuck off and figure out how to install 200MB of shit from scratch.
As I have said in a previous post on the matter, and explained to one of the Ximian guys personally, all that's needed is a script that'll automate the retrieval and building of the sources for non-rpm systems. It doesn't even have to be a 30MB GUI app, just a shell script would do.
But no. Ximian either don't care about non-rpm un*xes, or they are just a too frickin' lazy. Either way, they're still a bunch of lamers.
>However, rather than stupid arguements, Darwin's theory predicted >that a series of ancient proto-human apes lived. Given that evidence this >was only found in 1925, it's a pretty good prediction.
Alright, back to my original question which you seem to have ignored: how do you know this skull is an intermediate form?
>Creationism has absolutely nothing like this.
The reason why Creationism has "absolutely nothing like this" is because it's not a scientific theory. To assume Creationism is a scientific theory is absolutely wrong (and any Creationists out there arguing from a scientific standpoint are wasting their time).
>Oh, and by the way, nice try at slandering Darwin. Yes, he was a >man of his age, but just because he doesn't meet todays PC standards >(btw, you could have found real example of what he said rather than >mischaracterising his words)
Since you insist, I'll refrain from quoting the entire first part of "Descent of Man" and give you the following quote from the last chapter of the first part:
"Natural Selection as affecting Civilised Nations.- I have hitherto only considered the advancement of man from a semi-human condition to that of the modern savage. But some remarks on the action of natural selection on civilised nations may be worth adding." [Descent of Man, Ch 5]
>Even if Darwin beat up priests and sold poisoned milk to >schoolkids, it still wouldn't make creationism right.
How can something "make creationism right?" You either accept and believe Creationism to be correct, or you don't and opt for some half-baked theory due to a racist and a bad scientist that appeals to, and promotes, your Liberalist and hedonistic mind frame.
>Do you believe that all Linux distributions should use such a friendly >series of dialog boxes in order to attract more users to Linux?
No, but I believe that any company willing to create such a series of dialog boxes for the installation of their product should do so such that they work across all Linux distributions, instead of making them dependent on software like RPM that is not distro-universal.
The fact that Ximian's installer is still dependent on RPM shows how lame Ximian really are. What sort of company puts together a product and unnecessarily restricts the installer to one particular package system thereby immediately cutting off important Linux distros like Slackware, all of the *BSDs, and any other un*x not running RPM?
If the people at Ximian would actually pull their hands out of their asses and write a proper installer, then maybe their product would be worth considering.
>Given that Darwin himself predicted the past existance of a common ancestor between >humans and the great apes, the very article which you are posting about answers your question.
So how do you know this skull is an intermediate form?
I have a theory my house evolved from funny- looking ancient crustaceans. If I dig up a fossil of a funny-looking ancient crustacean in my backyard, could I class that as proof of my house evolving from funny-looking ancient crustaceans?
Oh, and by the way, Darwin predicted the past- existence of a common ancestor between "savages" and the great apes.
>Also, creation isn't much good as a theory because it's a wildcard explanation.
Oh right, and "The Theory of Evolution" isn't? When was the last time you read of someone using "The Theory of Evolution" to make a valid, provable prediction on the evolution of a species?
This article highlights once more the unavoidable effects of people using computers for things other than what they were originally intended to do.
The name itself, "Computer", implies someone or something used to compute solutions to mathematical problems. This indeed was the original intention of people like Babbage and Turing, to make a machine that can solve mathematical problems, and perform tedious, repetitive tasks in an automated fashion thus freeing humans to work on more important things. Clearly, their dream has been fulfilled.
However, the word "Computer", as the masses today use it, implies an electronic device used for a variety of worthless persuits such as projecting simulated, interactive death on to screens; perpetuating the distribution of grossly immoral images and texts for no purpose other than to corrupt and confuse the mind of man; undercutting institutions of business by illegally digitizing and distributing their products under the vain assumption that such things should be "free"; providing a veil behind which cowards and criminals can anonymously carry out their subversions and perversions as they plot to act out the will of Evil; and so on.
But of course, let's not forget about using computers to do your taxes, write your letters, play your music, watch television, design your Christmas cards, automatically detect and configure your new digital camera, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam.
If you have fallen into this trap of misappropriating computers, like the fellow in the article, then you will become stumped, disappointed, and filled with frustration when you start using an operating system designed for no purpose other than to make a computer able to perform tasks for which it was originally created.
The solution for you, my friend, is to simply realise your role in today's "Computer Society". If you want your computer to organise your life and provide you with entertainment, then run an operating system designed to prey on your weakened state of mind, such as Microsoft Windows.
If, however, you want to use a computer to actually compute answers to mathematical questions, or automate tedious and dangerous tasks, then choose an operating system that best aids you, such as Unix or one of its clones.
Decide on which side of the fence you fall, and put all thoughts of "the grass being greener" out of your mind. No doubt, those among you who are of a weakened state of mind will find this almost impossible to do.
..One thing you dont have, which is quite evident in your last statement, is a simple respect for your peers.
I don't see how you can conclude Mr. Spolsky has no respect for his peers from a statement that is otherwise completely correct, as we shall see as I continue to comment on your post.
Do you hold on to an old 286, even though it could easily crash purely because of its old-hardware, just because it works? Do you hold on to a 1982 Toyota Corolla, just because it works? No.
I believe this is contrary to the point Mr. Spolsky made in the interview. Software is a different entity to hardware, it represents a method of doing something whereas hardware is just the means of executing this method. Thus, the hardware can be replaced relatively easily (and cheaply), whereas the software cannot.
As Mr. Spolsky made abundantly clear in the interview, if your company still uses some FORTRAN codes to successfully accomplish a task, then it makes sense to hold on to said codes rather than throwing them out purely for emotional reasons.
On the other hand, if it's costing too much to maintain the codes, and makes economic sense to rewrite them into C, then you have a very good reason to do it. If it's cheaper to hold on to the FORTRAN, then why spend money on fixing something that is not broken?
[...] It will probably be quite good until well over 200,000 connections. But we're rewriting it anyway.
You know, that's like someone saying, "Yes, my house holds 4 people, and it would probably handle about 8 people. But we're knocking it down and rebuilding it anyway." It doesn't make any sense, and is an invalid argument.
One of the points Mr. Spolsky is trying to make in the interview, and through the many articles on his site, is that it is almost *always* better to improve what you already have rather than spend the time and money on building it anew.
With your Bahamut IRCd project, it makes more sense to modify your existing code-base, rather than blowing it away and starting again just because you can't be bothered finding out what's wrong with the code and fixing it.
In my own personal opinion, it is through programmer arrogance, inexperience, and inability that the decision to scrap existing code and start over becomes a good idea. Such programmers find it too difficult to modify existing code and weed out the subtle bugs.
[...] Programming in *any* arena is not cut and dry. Programs are *never* "perfect",...
So what makes you think rewriting a program from the ground up is going to produce a more perfect program than the one you already have?
In the time it takes to start over and get your new code up to the same point as the old code, you could have fixed the old code and have it refactored into a form much superior than any new code. And that's a fact, my friend.
It really isnt suitable for handhelds which have low cpu (and storage?) resources available.
Perhaps you didn't notice this article, but the latest wave of mobile phones are all Java-enabled, a fact casting immediate doubt on your above claim.
[...] java was designed to be slower than other languages.
Bwa ha ha ha!!!!! Do you honestly think Bill Joy and pals sat down and wrote "Must be slower than other languages" into their Java design spec.? You moron. Don't you know Java was initially designed to execute on washing machine controllers, and set-top boxes?
The reason why Java is slow does not come from a specific design decision to make it such, rather, speed (or lack thereof) is a consequence of Java providing its own run-time environment with windowing API, class library, and a plethora of other useful programming toolkits.
Obviously, if you are running a Java Virtual Machine in a restricted embedded environment, you don't need the functionality for a complex desktop system. Thus, large parts of the Java virtual environment can be stripped away to leave a streamlined execution platform ideal for an embedded environment.
Take a look at Sun's J2 Micro Edition page, and learn something for yourself instead of regurgitating the same tired old nonsense perpetuated by idiotic anti-Java morons like you.
Slashdot Mirror
> In no particular order:
>
> Paul Graham (spam fighter, Lisp advocate)
Paul Graham doesn't actually write code anymore, he just writes about writing code.
A hobby it may be, but how beneficial is it to create another schism from Lisp? Arc, whatever it may improve upon, will only serve to damage Lisp, and the Lisp community, by diluting it with yet another pointless dialect. Why doesn't pg use his time and skill to make ANSI Common Lisp better? Why does he have to go off, like a typical heretic, and bastardise the one true faith just because he wants to remake it in his own image?
From his website, it seems pg just wants his own version of Lisp, except with the syntax changed to look more like Perl. Perl with macros: so what? Why not implement Arc as some kind of library for Lisp? Not a library in the sense of Perl's modules or Java's API (they only supplement the language with some pre-written functions), but something better and much more powerful: a library that transforms the language itself into a new beast ready to take on some specific task, be it GUI writing, website development, numerical programming, or what not. This is exactly the sort of thing CLOS does for Lisp - it transforms Lisp into a language for writing programs in the OOP paradigm. That's infinitely more useful and productive than implementing your ideas as a whole new dialect.
The bottom line is that we already have a great starting point in the form of ANSI Common Lisp - no other language (or Lisp dialect) exceeds it. What we really need is for smart people like pg to help make Lisp better, not by breaking it into a thousand different dialects, but by promoting dialectical unity, implementing the extensive libraries that are sorely needed, evolving the ANSI specification to fix the flaws, and putting forth new specifications for language-transforming libraries as was done with CLOS.
History has shown that heretics do nothing good to help improve the one true faith; they only end up sending people on a wild goose chase. Arc will create more confusion in the Lisp world than it hopes to cure, just as Protestantism did in the world of Christendom.
At last, an explanation for the pages of drivel pg recently published as "What You Can't Say". For such a smart guy, I was agape with confusion as to how pg had gotten himself into the absurd position of arguing that heresy is "cool", and if you are not a heretic then "...Odds are you just think whatever you're told" - it was like reading the rants of some eloquent teenager, full of childish angst and rage toward authority.
The word heresy means to choose or to pick out, and libertarianism, which chooses the rights of the individual over the rights of the collective whole, is an apt example of how pg's much-advised heretical thought ends in useless, unoriginal crackpottery. Slowly, a heretic's monomania warps his mind, preventing him from seeing things in a universal sense, according to the whole, and I think it highly unfortunate to see pg slowly manifest these symptoms.
In the end, as G. K. Chesterton said, there is nothing more boring than a heretic, and pg has become exceedingly boring of late (of course, not quite to the standard of Mr. E.S. Raymond or Mr. R.M. Stallman), as evidenced by the content of his essays, and the time he is wasting by implementing another pointless dialect of ANSI Common Lisp. It would certainly benefit us all if there were at least one person with voice in the open source world who thought in a more catholic manner; then perhaps we would see some progress instead of good people being wasted, thinking unoriginal thoughts, and re-implementing old ideas.
How is a graphical configuration tool going to help anything? You want to pile another layer of crap onto an already burdened autoconf just so you can play with your mouse? What the hell is wrong with you? Don't be such a pussy: type './configure --help', figure out the options on the command line, and stop recommending open source programmers waste their time developing mere gimmicks. Do you work for Microsoft or something?
This is indicative of the trustworthiness of such things.
Yes, one must wonder how trustworthy are such things if psychologists can be pressured to edit out a behaviour clearly aberrant and treatable:
http://www.stonewallrevisited.com/issues/marco1.ht ml
u ality/ho0039.html
http://www.narth.com/docs/alternative.html
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/homosex
There is if, like Dawkins, they claim to be scientists, and insist on vehemently arguing scientific theories in the academic/public arena.
A Nobel Prize for scientific literature is the only way Dawkins stands a chance of winning a real Nobel Prize. Aside from reiterating his Darwinian fairytales like a broken record, the man doesn't actually do any real science.
This bothers me. It has happened too many times now to be mere coincidence. The only explanation I can think of is that Hotmail are purposefully leaking more than just Hotmail user address names.
>
> Guessing everything the computer's running is hard.
Isn't that what automake and autoconf are for?
I had previously considered the same issue you raise here, that perhaps it'd be too complicated to write a self-contained script that could handle the tarball installation over many different system layouts. Indeed, this is, apparently, the whole point of something like RPM. However, given that the aforementioned development tools are reasonably capable of dealing with differing system layouts, and considering that such layouts aren't in a high rate of flux, the target is not as difficult to hit as you seem to suggest.
It is wholly possible for Ximian to support other non-RPM/dpkg Unix derivatives with only a modicum of effort in comparison to their "Red Carpet" edeavour. The only reason they don't is, well, because they're a bunch of lamers.
Come on guys! How hard is it to make a simple install script for Linux/Unix systems that don't run RPM? With all the grandeur pumped into 'Red Carpet', you can't take a couple of days to make a shell script that'll install Ximian from tarballs?
I fail to see how the design of a massive Pac-Man board is, in any way, related to the *art* of designing good software.
So? How do you know it's not a separate species
that happened to die out? There is no evidence to
suggest members of this species went on to evolve
into great apes, humans, or anything else. Using
topological similarities as proof is absurd.
>As for the quote, nice one, but your orginal post (which included a one
>word quote from Darwin..
No it didn't. It included a word frequently used
by Darwin in his exposition "Descent of Man" for
the purpose of stating Darwin believed the beings
he called "savages" evolved from great apes. He
clearly treats the evolution of "civilised nations"
as being different. The quote I subsequently
supplied clearly illustrates this, and if one were to
continue reading "Descent of Man" from this point,
it would become even more clear.
>>How can something "make creationism right?"
>
>Evidence.
Like what? Topological similarities between fossils?
>>You either accept and believe Creationism to be correct,
>
>And surrender your ability to think and reason.
This is a retarded claim. Am I not here thinking
and reasoning against a flaky scientific theory?
>However, your slandering of those who you disagree with is duely noted.
For it to be slander, it must first be untrue.
Nothing I have said about Darwin is untrue.
>and promotes, your Liberalist and hedonistic mind frame.
>
>If this wasn't so funny, I might be offended. Given that you have never
>met me, and read (at most) only a tiny fraction of my thoughts, this is
>one of the most stupid things you could writen.
Given my entire sentence was written in the second
person plural, taking it as a personal statement
about you is one of the most stupid things you
could have done.
Yeah, maybe in your "church", you Satan-worshipping
moron.
Well, whoever moderated me down, I wonder if you
realise my point and can see things from the other
side of the coin.
As Slashdot is the mouth-piece of the GNU/Linux
hoarde, I seriously doubt anyone out there has
balls enough to step up to the plate and criticise
the community we're all part of. Unless we can
put ourselves under the microscope, and scrutinise
the things we do, ultimately we're going to continue
in this cess pool of half-baked software written
by a bunch of lamers.
>book 'On the Origin of Species'.
So, I'll ask you: How do you know this skull
is "an intermediate form"?
The only reason Ximian have gotten up off their
lazy asses and supported Debian is because Debian
lusers comprise a very large portion of GNU/Linux
users - their target demographic.
The only reason why they support Slolaris is
because Sun are the main corporate contributor,
supporter, and user of the GNOME desktop. To not
support Solaris is like giving Sun the finger,
something that Mr. de Icaza wouldn't be too happy
about.
Ximian only support these two non-rpm
un*xes because they absolutely have to. It seems,
as far as they are concerned, everyone else can
fuck off and figure out how to install 200MB of
shit from scratch.
As I have said in a previous post on the matter,
and explained to one of the Ximian guys personally,
all that's needed is a script that'll automate the
retrieval and building of the sources for non-rpm
systems. It doesn't even have to be a 30MB GUI app,
just a shell script would do.
But no. Ximian either don't care about non-rpm un*xes,
or they are just a too frickin' lazy. Either way, they're still
a bunch of lamers.
>that a series of ancient proto-human apes lived. Given that evidence this
>was only found in 1925, it's a pretty good prediction.
Alright, back to my original question which you
seem to have ignored: how do you know this skull
is an intermediate form?
>Creationism has absolutely nothing like this.
The reason why Creationism has "absolutely nothing
like this" is because it's not a scientific theory.
To assume Creationism is a scientific theory is
absolutely wrong (and any Creationists out there
arguing from a scientific standpoint are wasting
their time).
>Oh, and by the way, nice try at slandering Darwin. Yes, he was a
>man of his age, but just because he doesn't meet todays PC standards
>(btw, you could have found real example of what he said rather than
>mischaracterising his words)
Since you insist, I'll refrain from quoting the
entire first part of "Descent of Man" and give you
the following quote from the last chapter of the
first part:
"Natural Selection as affecting Civilised Nations.- I have hitherto
only considered the advancement of man from a semi-human condition
to that of the modern savage. But some remarks on the action of
natural selection on civilised nations may be worth adding."
[Descent of Man, Ch 5]
>Even if Darwin beat up priests and sold poisoned milk to
>schoolkids, it still wouldn't make creationism right.
How can something "make creationism right?" You
either accept and believe Creationism to be correct,
or you don't and opt for some half-baked theory
due to a racist and a bad scientist that appeals
to, and promotes, your Liberalist and hedonistic
mind frame.
>series of dialog boxes in order to attract more users to Linux?
No, but I believe that any company willing to
create such a series of dialog boxes for the
installation of their product should do so such
that they work across all Linux distributions,
instead of making them dependent on software like
RPM that is not distro-universal.
The fact that Ximian's installer is still dependent
on RPM shows how lame Ximian really are. What sort
of company puts together a product and unnecessarily
restricts the installer to one particular package
system thereby immediately cutting off important
Linux distros like Slackware, all of the *BSDs,
and any other un*x not running RPM?
If the people at Ximian would actually pull their
hands out of their asses and write a proper
installer, then maybe their product would be
worth considering.
>humans and the great apes, the very article which you are posting about answers your question.
So how do you know this skull is an intermediate
form?
I have a theory my house evolved from funny-
looking ancient crustaceans. If I dig up a fossil
of a funny-looking ancient crustacean in my
backyard, could I class that as proof of my house
evolving from funny-looking ancient crustaceans?
Oh, and by the way, Darwin predicted the past-
existence of a common ancestor between "savages"
and the great apes.
Can you provide me a reference to the paper in which the above story's "intermediate form" was predicted?
Oh right, and "The Theory of Evolution" isn't? When was the last time you read of someone using "The Theory of Evolution" to make a valid, provable prediction on the evolution of a species?
The name itself, "Computer", implies someone or something used to compute solutions to mathematical problems. This indeed was the original intention of people like Babbage and Turing, to make a machine that can solve mathematical problems, and perform tedious, repetitive tasks in an automated fashion thus freeing humans to work on more important things. Clearly, their dream has been fulfilled.
However, the word "Computer", as the masses today use it, implies an electronic device used for a variety of worthless persuits such as projecting simulated, interactive death on to screens; perpetuating the distribution of grossly immoral images and texts for no purpose other than to corrupt and confuse the mind of man; undercutting institutions of business by illegally digitizing and distributing their products under the vain assumption that such things should be "free"; providing a veil behind which cowards and criminals can anonymously carry out their subversions and perversions as they plot to act out the will of Evil; and so on.
But of course, let's not forget about using computers to do your taxes, write your letters, play your music, watch television, design your Christmas cards, automatically detect and configure your new digital camera, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam.
If you have fallen into this trap of misappropriating computers, like the fellow in the article, then you will become stumped, disappointed, and filled with frustration when you start using an operating system designed for no purpose other than to make a computer able to perform tasks for which it was originally created.
The solution for you, my friend, is to simply realise your role in today's "Computer Society". If you want your computer to organise your life and provide you with entertainment, then run an operating system designed to prey on your weakened state of mind, such as Microsoft Windows.
If, however, you want to use a computer to actually compute answers to mathematical questions, or automate tedious and dangerous tasks, then choose an operating system that best aids you, such as Unix or one of its clones.
Decide on which side of the fence you fall, and put all thoughts of "the grass being greener" out of your mind. No doubt, those among you who are of a weakened state of mind will find this almost impossible to do.
..One thing you dont have, which is quite evident in your last statement, is a simple respect for your peers.
I don't see how you can conclude Mr. Spolsky has no respect for his peers from a statement that is otherwise completely correct, as we shall see as I continue to comment on your post.
Do you hold on to an old 286, even though it could easily crash purely because of its old-hardware, just because it works? Do you hold on to a 1982 Toyota Corolla, just because it works? No.
I believe this is contrary to the point Mr. Spolsky made in the interview. Software is a different entity to hardware, it represents a method of doing something whereas hardware is just the means of executing this method. Thus, the hardware can be replaced relatively easily (and cheaply), whereas the software cannot.
As Mr. Spolsky made abundantly clear in the interview, if your company still uses some FORTRAN codes to successfully accomplish a task, then it makes sense to hold on to said codes rather than throwing them out purely for emotional reasons.
On the other hand, if it's costing too much to maintain the codes, and makes economic sense to rewrite them into C, then you have a very good reason to do it. If it's cheaper to hold on to the FORTRAN, then why spend money on fixing something that is not broken?
[...]
It will probably be quite good until well over 200,000 connections. But we're rewriting it anyway.
You know, that's like someone saying, "Yes, my house holds 4 people, and it would probably handle about 8 people. But we're knocking it down and rebuilding it anyway." It doesn't make any sense, and is an invalid argument.
One of the points Mr. Spolsky is trying to make in the interview, and through the many articles on his site, is that it is almost *always* better to improve what you already have rather than spend the time and money on building it anew.
With your Bahamut IRCd project, it makes more sense to modify your existing code-base, rather than blowing it away and starting again just because you can't be bothered finding out what's wrong with the code and fixing it.
In my own personal opinion, it is through programmer arrogance, inexperience, and inability that the decision to scrap existing code and start over becomes a good idea. Such programmers find it too difficult to modify existing code and weed out the subtle bugs.
[...]
Programming in *any* arena is not cut and dry. Programs are *never* "perfect",...
So what makes you think rewriting a program from the ground up is going to produce a more perfect program than the one you already have?
In the time it takes to start over and get your new code up to the same point as the old code, you could have fixed the old code and have it refactored into a form much superior than any new code. And that's a fact, my friend.
What a load of old rubbish!
Go read this. Perhaps someone should reassess your position at whatever handheld company you claim to hold a position at.
You are severely disillusioned, my friend.
It really isnt suitable for handhelds which have low cpu (and storage?) resources available.
Perhaps you didn't notice this article, but the latest wave of mobile phones are all Java-enabled, a fact casting immediate doubt on your above claim.
[...] java was designed to be slower than other languages.
Bwa ha ha ha!!!!! Do you honestly think Bill Joy and pals sat down and wrote "Must be slower than other languages" into their Java design spec.? You moron. Don't you know Java was initially designed to execute on washing machine controllers, and set-top boxes?
The reason why Java is slow does not come from a specific design decision to make it such, rather, speed (or lack thereof) is a consequence of Java providing its own run-time environment with windowing API, class library, and a plethora of other useful programming toolkits.
Obviously, if you are running a Java Virtual Machine in a restricted embedded environment, you don't need the functionality for a complex desktop system. Thus, large parts of the Java virtual environment can be stripped away to leave a streamlined execution platform ideal for an embedded environment.
Take a look at Sun's J2 Micro Edition page, and learn something for yourself instead of regurgitating the same tired old nonsense perpetuated by idiotic anti-Java morons like you.