(As a sidenote I might ask: why have you made me your foe? I seriously cannot remember ever insulting you.)
I use the friend/foe system as a sort of private moderation system; I don't consider persons on my "foes" list to be my enemies, just as I don't have regular beers with most folks on my "friends" list.
I add people to my foes list when I think they're talking bullshit. Conservatives, extremely close-minded Christians, people with big egos and all possible combinations of these are nominees for my foes list. In your case, if I remember correctly, it was your tendency to post AC replies to your own posts.
But since you actually seem to be making some sense lately, consider yourself un-foed;-)
As to the google/gmail issue, I find it pretty scary too. Google/Orkut/Gmail are very easy to wire together internally, creating a potential for abuse that's possibly greater than that of Microsoft's monopoly since it also tends to attract the tech-savvy. It's just that Google tries to market its tech as unobtrusive, user-friendly and still powerful; and as such would never want to be remotely associated with spam, as you suggested.
Even though I'm a regular user, I never seem to be able to get rid of the feeling that Google & Co might be a very carefully crafted Trojan Horse, conceiling a system that monitors everything every user does to detect [terrorist/anti-american/your sin here] leanings and place them on some New World Order blacklist.
There are a lot of things you might accuse the google folks of (god knows what they do with all the search info linked together by cookies, and what they might do with terabytes of e-mails), but I think you can rest assured that they are sensible enough not to associate themselves with spam.
You seem to forget that Linux's popularity has drawn a lot of great developers to it. This, combined with Linus being very critical about patches, has made Linux a worthy competitor on performance and stability as well as price. It might have started as a "home built hot-rod" but this was ages ago; it's playing with the big guys now. Linux is seeing more and more adoption in areas where price is of secondary importance.
In other news, Ferrari announced the introduction of a Ferrari that drives just like a Volkswagen. This will allow Volkswagen drivers to feel "right at home" behind the wheel of a Ferrari.
Yes, I get your point that it's better than the windows registry. But for me, it still doesn't add anything, while it certainly makes things harder for me. Instead of just looking in ~/.[app-name] I also have to search in ~/.gconf/ . If I change the layout of the.xml file to suit my tastes or include comments, trust gconf to mess that up again. Also, while the hierarchical structure might be more convenient for gconf itself, it's almost impossible for me to create a configuration file from scratch like I do for many programs.
For a Gnome-centric environment, gconf and Gnome's VFS system might be the best solution. But for someone who prefers to use the best app for the job regardless of its Gnome-ness and thus has to combine Gnome and non-Gnome programs, it's quite a messy situation.
My idea of an ideal configuration system is one where a program has reasonable defaults, and allows me to override those with a simple dotfile.
btw, I never saw gconf-editor, my analysis is based only on what I see from the filesystem side. The binary file backend is not the only thing that made the Windows Registry bad (in fact, a binary backend doesn't have to be bad at all, just look at many opensource database engines).
There is useful data as well, though: a@wf#502/0:~$ whois microsoft.com | grep "Server Name"
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.ZZZ.IS.0WNED.AND.HAX0RED.BY.SUB7.NET
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.LIVE.FOREVER.BECOUSE.UNIXSUCKS. COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.CRASH.IN.6MN.ORG
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.BE.SLAPPED.IN.THE.FACE.BY.MY.BL UE.VEINED.SPANNER.NET
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.BE.BEATEN.WITH.MY.SPANNER.NET
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WAREZ.AT.TOPLIST.GULLI.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WANADOODOO.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.SUX.BUT.PYROFREAK.ORG.RULEZ.AND.DIOX YTECH.NET.DELETED.GANDI.NET
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.SMELLS.SIMPLECODES.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.SHOULD.GIVE.UP.BECAUSE.LINUXISGOD.CO M
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.RUNS.ON.AN.8088.ORG
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.RAWKZ.MUH.WERLD.MENTALFLOSS.CA
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.OHMYGODITBURNS.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.LOVES.JU1C3.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.LIVES.AT.SHAUNEWING.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOT.SEXYCOOL.ORG
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOT.AS.COOL.AS.SIMPLECODES.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.IN.BED.WITH.CURTYV.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.GOD.BECOUSE.UNIXSUCKS.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.A.STEAMING.HEAP.OF.FUCKING-BULLSH IT.NET
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.TEH.GAY.OMFGLOL.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.ITS.OWN.CRACKLAB.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.A.PRESENT.COMING.FROM.HUGHESMISS ILES.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.FLINGS.POO.AT.MONKEYCORE.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.FILLS.ME.WITH.BELLIGERENCE.NET
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.CAN.SUCK.MY.SERVEREXTREME.ORG
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.CAN.GO.FUCK.ITSELF.AT.SECZY.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.CAN.BLOWME.ORG
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.ARE.GODDAMN.PIGFUCKERS.NET
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.AND.MINDSUCK.BOTH.SUCK.HUGE.ONES.AT. EXEGETE.NET
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.AINT.WORTH.SHIT.KLUGE.ORG
True, but do you really feel like starting a new shell, opening an editor to modify the dotfile, and then (most likely) have to restart the app, just to make a simple preferences change?
For an experienced CLI user (who usually doesn't have to "descend to the console"), this is much more trivial than mousing through menus, tabs and checkboxes. I get your point though, it's far less trivial for the novice user. But, to state it bluntly, write an environment for idiots and only idiots will use it. Wouldn't it be nice to have an environment that's easy to use for everyone, in his/her own way? The gconfd-thingy is a little too much one-true-way in my opinion.
On the other hand, maybe it's better to have a less flexible system first and increase flexibility in future versions. At least frustrated Windows users have a ready alternative now; which is probably better than having to wait years for a "perfect" desktop environment to be developed. Time will tell...
I do this in Linux too, as a cronjob. My own implementation is rather complex and "custom built", but I'll try to type a quick&simple version in bash:
!!! FOR INSPIRATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. UNTESTED. COULD DESTROY ALL YOUR FILES !!!
# Start code
find / -type f | ( DB="/tmp/sumdb" while read; do SUM=`md5sum "$REPLY"` DBDIR="$DB/${SUM:0:1}" DBFILE="$DBDIR/${SUM:1:2} if [ -f "$DBFILE" ] && RESULT=`grep "${SUM:0:32}" "$DBFILE"`; then # We have a dupe... echo ln -f "${RESULT:33}" "$REPLY" # Remove "echo" above to actually do something instead of just list dupes else # Haven't seen this file before mkdir -p "$DBDIR" echo "$SUM $REPLY">>"$DBFILE" fi done rm "$DB"/?/?? rmdir "$DB"/? "$DB" )
# End code
It might be more useful if applied to specific subtrees that often contain duplicate files; espacially since it doesn't work accross file systems and is quite slow (runs md5sum on every file).
[...] while still being structured enough to be not only read but also written to, in whole or in part, by software.
Yes, writing to dotfiles is pretty hard for most programs. But if the dotfile's layout/structure is clear enough, editing it yourself shouldn't be any harder or take any longer than searching through the program menus for the right option. And you can be quite sure some wacko program doesn't replace your carefully thought-out settings.
[...] but dealing with it directly would require every application to incorporate parsing and writing functionality for their settings files. In the spirit of shared libraries, it's better to define an API for accessing settings, to reduce the amount of boilerplate functionality that must be implemented in every app.
In the spirit of shared libraries, do you realize a dotfile parser can also simply be part of a shared library?
Some other dotfile advantages to show how elegant their simplicity really is: - Structure files to your own liking - Add your own comments anywhere - Switch a setting on/off (or switch between many) by simply commenting stuff out - Use "source" statements present in most dotfile formats to create your own hierarchy if you like that, or use only a single file if you don't. - Develop you own dotfile-using program in minutes since even a shell script containing variable assignments is a perfectly usable dotfile. And get almost limitless scripting capabilities with it. - Transfer all your settings for one or more programs from one system to another using just a very short scp command - Start a (second instance of a) program using alterate settings by simply pointing the program to another dotfile
I use Gnome, and I much prefer GConf over INI-type files.
Oh well, I guess it's just the neverending GUI vs. CLI approach problem... personally, I use the Ion2 window manager in combination with aterm, GNU screen and as many commandline/terminal based programs as I can find.
Yes indeed! Gnome seems to have a strange desire to mimic the bad sides of Windows while claiming to be an alternative. I'm not saying Gnome is worse than Windows, but seeing things like a registry-like configuration system (that, although it's more "open" due to XML, actually has a per-user daemon associated with it) and an extra virtual file system layer, makes me worry very much about its future course.
Who, incidentally, is also a member of Scientology. Which, as you might know, is not a very nice organisation. If she gets paid more, it's not unthinkable that a significant portion of that will go to Scientology; so I'd say she makes more than enough already:-\
However, many people (including yours truly) would be very offended if someone were to publish a private message to everyone, even a message that doesn't contain sensitive information such as addresses.
It would always require a confirmation from the original sender to prevent all kinds of possible abuse; and I'm not sure the world is looking forward to floods of "confirm this" messages after a discussion with someone who uses such a system.
Do these people even realize that taking someone's iPod is stealing? Would you illegally download music from the internet? No? Then why don't you stop stealing(!) iPods?
Oops, nevermind...
Though I'm sure there's a Soviet Russia post to be made out of this...
Re:Copy of my article...
on
Optimizing distcc
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Come on mods, he's the author of the article! At least give him some points for that!
@IceFox: thanks. Great article.
Re:Article Text (Slashdotted Server)
on
Optimizing distcc
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
If it was posted _seconds earlier_, then how could he know he was being redundant?
He couldn't. It's simply a risk you take when posting the article. The moderation system is intended to improve things for the reader, not to judge his (undoubtedly good) intentions. You have a point though, maybe Redundant moderations shouldn't decrease karma, just like Funny doesn't increase it.
btw, posting the article as non-AC is viewed by many as karma whoring, so it's not recommended anyway.
If everyone measured the value of his actions only by the time it will save him/herself, there probably wouldn't be much of a free software community these days.
Re:Article Text (Slashdotted Server)
on
Optimizing distcc
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
It was rightfully modded redundant because the article had already been posted just seconds earlier. As well as by the author himself just a few posts down (we should at least give him some mod points for the interesting article...)
ccache is also nice for optimizing compiling. He probably mentioned it in the article, but since it seems/.-ed I wouldn't know... and by the time you've got both distcc and ccache running the article might be available again so you can read if you did it the right way:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I use the friend/foe system as a sort of private moderation system; I don't consider persons on my "foes" list to be my enemies, just as I don't have regular beers with most folks on my "friends" list.
I add people to my foes list when I think they're talking bullshit. Conservatives, extremely close-minded Christians, people with big egos and all possible combinations of these are nominees for my foes list. In your case, if I remember correctly, it was your tendency to post AC replies to your own posts.
But since you actually seem to be making some sense lately, consider yourself un-foed ;-)
As to the google/gmail issue, I find it pretty scary too. Google/Orkut/Gmail are very easy to wire together internally, creating a potential for abuse that's possibly greater than that of Microsoft's monopoly since it also tends to attract the tech-savvy. It's just that Google tries to market its tech as unobtrusive, user-friendly and still powerful; and as such would never want to be remotely associated with spam, as you suggested.
Even though I'm a regular user, I never seem to be able to get rid of the feeling that Google & Co might be a very carefully crafted Trojan Horse, conceiling a system that monitors everything every user does to detect [terrorist/anti-american/your sin here] leanings and place them on some New World Order blacklist.
There are a lot of things you might accuse the google folks of (god knows what they do with all the search info linked together by cookies, and what they might do with terabytes of e-mails), but I think you can rest assured that they are sensible enough not to associate themselves with spam.
Yeah, I feel sorry for all those children in China... somehow digging to China isn't quite the same challenge for them...
Nothing bad about OS X thoug h ;-)
... binary drivers!
In other news, Ferrari announced the introduction of a Ferrari that drives just like a Volkswagen. This will allow Volkswagen drivers to feel "right at home" behind the wheel of a Ferrari.
For a Gnome-centric environment, gconf and Gnome's VFS system might be the best solution. But for someone who prefers to use the best app for the job regardless of its Gnome-ness and thus has to combine Gnome and non-Gnome programs, it's quite a messy situation.
My idea of an ideal configuration system is one where a program has reasonable defaults, and allows me to override those with a simple dotfile.
btw, I never saw gconf-editor, my analysis is based only on what I see from the filesystem side. The binary file backend is not the only thing that made the Windows Registry bad (in fact, a binary backend doesn't have to be bad at all, just look at many opensource database engines).
There is useful data as well, though:T . COML UE.VEINED.SPANNER.NET
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WAREZ.AT.TOPLIST.GULLI.COMX YTECH.NET.DELETED.GANDI.NETO MH IT.NETS ILES.COM. EXEGETE.NET
a@wf#502/0:~$ whois microsoft.com | grep "Server Name"
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.ZZZ.IS.0WNED.AND.HAX0RED.BY.SUB7.NE
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.LIVE.FOREVER.BECOUSE.UNIXSUCKS
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.CRASH.IN.6MN.ORG
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.BE.SLAPPED.IN.THE.FACE.BY.MY.B
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.BE.BEATEN.WITH.MY.SPANNER.NET
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WANADOODOO.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.SUX.BUT.PYROFREAK.ORG.RULEZ.AND.DIO
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.SMELLS.SIMPLECODES.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.SHOULD.GIVE.UP.BECAUSE.LINUXISGOD.C
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.RUNS.ON.AN.8088.ORG
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.RAWKZ.MUH.WERLD.MENTALFLOSS.CA
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.OHMYGODITBURNS.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.LOVES.JU1C3.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.LIVES.AT.SHAUNEWING.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOT.SEXYCOOL.ORG
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOT.AS.COOL.AS.SIMPLECODES.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.IN.BED.WITH.CURTYV.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.GOD.BECOUSE.UNIXSUCKS.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.A.STEAMING.HEAP.OF.FUCKING-BULLS
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.TEH.GAY.OMFGLOL.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.ITS.OWN.CRACKLAB.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.A.PRESENT.COMING.FROM.HUGHESMIS
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.FLINGS.POO.AT.MONKEYCORE.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.FILLS.ME.WITH.BELLIGERENCE.NET
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.CAN.SUCK.MY.SERVEREXTREME.ORG
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.CAN.GO.FUCK.ITSELF.AT.SECZY.COM
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.CAN.BLOWME.ORG
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.ARE.GODDAMN.PIGFUCKERS.NET
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.AND.MINDSUCK.BOTH.SUCK.HUGE.ONES.AT
Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.AINT.WORTH.SHIT.KLUGE.ORG
For an experienced CLI user (who usually doesn't have to "descend to the console"), this is much more trivial than mousing through menus, tabs and checkboxes. I get your point though, it's far less trivial for the novice user. But, to state it bluntly, write an environment for idiots and only idiots will use it. Wouldn't it be nice to have an environment that's easy to use for everyone, in his/her own way? The gconfd-thingy is a little too much one-true-way in my opinion.
On the other hand, maybe it's better to have a less flexible system first and increase flexibility in future versions. At least frustrated Windows users have a ready alternative now; which is probably better than having to wait years for a "perfect" desktop environment to be developed. Time will tell...
I do this in Linux too, as a cronjob. My own implementation is rather complex and "custom built", but I'll try to type a quick&simple version in bash:
!!! FOR INSPIRATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. UNTESTED. COULD DESTROY ALL YOUR FILES !!!
# Start code
find / -type f | (
DB="/tmp/sumdb"
while read; do
SUM=`md5sum "$REPLY"`
DBDIR="$DB/${SUM:0:1}"
DBFILE="$DBDIR/${SUM:1:2}
if [ -f "$DBFILE" ] && RESULT=`grep "${SUM:0:32}" "$DBFILE"`; then
# We have a dupe...
echo ln -f "${RESULT:33}" "$REPLY"
# Remove "echo" above to actually do something instead of just list dupes
else
# Haven't seen this file before
mkdir -p "$DBDIR"
echo "$SUM $REPLY">>"$DBFILE"
fi
done
rm "$DB"/?/??
rmdir "$DB"/? "$DB"
)
# End code
It might be more useful if applied to specific subtrees that often contain duplicate files; espacially since it doesn't work accross file systems and is quite slow (runs md5sum on every file).
Yes, writing to dotfiles is pretty hard for most programs. But if the dotfile's layout/structure is clear enough, editing it yourself shouldn't be any harder or take any longer than searching through the program menus for the right option. And you can be quite sure some wacko program doesn't replace your carefully thought-out settings.
[...] but dealing with it directly would require every application to incorporate parsing and writing functionality for their settings files. In the spirit of shared libraries, it's better to define an API for accessing settings, to reduce the amount of boilerplate functionality that must be implemented in every app.
In the spirit of shared libraries, do you realize a dotfile parser can also simply be part of a shared library?
Some other dotfile advantages to show how elegant their simplicity really is:
- Structure files to your own liking
- Add your own comments anywhere
- Switch a setting on/off (or switch between many) by simply commenting stuff out
- Use "source" statements present in most dotfile formats to create your own hierarchy if you like that, or use only a single file if you don't.
- Develop you own dotfile-using program in minutes since even a shell script containing variable assignments is a perfectly usable dotfile. And get almost limitless scripting capabilities with it.
- Transfer all your settings for one or more programs from one system to another using just a very short scp command
- Start a (second instance of a) program using alterate settings by simply pointing the program to another dotfile
I use Gnome, and I much prefer GConf over INI-type files.
Oh well, I guess it's just the neverending GUI vs. CLI approach problem... personally, I use the Ion2 window manager in combination with aterm, GNU screen and as many commandline/terminal based programs as I can find.
Yes indeed! Gnome seems to have a strange desire to mimic the bad sides of Windows while claiming to be an alternative. I'm not saying Gnome is worse than Windows, but seeing things like a registry-like configuration system (that, although it's more "open" due to XML, actually has a per-user daemon associated with it) and an extra virtual file system layer, makes me worry very much about its future course.
Who, incidentally, is also a member of Scientology. Which, as you might know, is not a very nice organisation. If she gets paid more, it's not unthinkable that a significant portion of that will go to Scientology; so I'd say she makes more than enough already :-\
It would always require a confirmation from the original sender to prevent all kinds of possible abuse; and I'm not sure the world is looking forward to floods of "confirm this" messages after a discussion with someone who uses such a system.
Pun intended?
What's so strange about that? Both are highly unpredictable, so it should work pretty well.
apt-get remove mutt
Ehrm...
Mugger: Oh, did I say your iPod or your life? Sorry, I meant your iPod and your life.
(shamelessly stolen from Blackadder (I believe))
Oops, nevermind...
Though I'm sure there's a Soviet Russia post to be made out of this...
@IceFox: thanks. Great article.
He couldn't. It's simply a risk you take when posting the article. The moderation system is intended to improve things for the reader, not to judge his (undoubtedly good) intentions. You have a point though, maybe Redundant moderations shouldn't decrease karma, just like Funny doesn't increase it.
btw, posting the article as non-AC is viewed by many as karma whoring, so it's not recommended anyway.
If everyone measured the value of his actions only by the time it will save him/herself, there probably wouldn't be much of a free software community these days.
It was rightfully modded redundant because the article had already been posted just seconds earlier. As well as by the author himself just a few posts down (we should at least give him some mod points for the interesting article...)
ccache is also nice for optimizing compiling. He probably mentioned it in the article, but since it seems /.-ed I wouldn't know... and by the time you've got both distcc and ccache running the article might be available again so you can read if you did it the right way :-)
Looks like that server won't be doing much compiling soon...