I'm the author of a package called GTKeyboard, located at http://opop.nols.com/gtkeyboard.html. It's an on-screen keyboard that allows users to type using only the mouse. The keystrokes can then be sent either to the regular text editing area in the application, or even to other applications, (such as typing shell commands into an rxvt or URLs into netscape and so on)
It comes with layouts for a bunch of different languages/keyboard styles.
I hope this will be useful to you or other people. I've gotten email from a bunch of people in the past that said they found it quite useful - among those were a stroke victim using linux, several people with ALS (Lou Gherig's disease) and cerebral palsy.
The good part is that if you can use a mouse and you have X, you can do anything a keyboard can do. Of course it's a bit slower than using the keyboard, (we've got some new features coming soon to address that) but one mouse and three buttons is never going to be able to compete with 10 fingers for speed.
IMHO this is not the place to start. I don't know you, so I don't know how comfortable you are with C, but I don't think this is the book to polish your C with.
Lots of people are familiar with C on one level, but not on others. Lots of people can write functions to do things like print to the screen, manipulate numbers, deal with dynamically allocated memory and such, but there are also other levels of C since it's so low level.
For example, do you know how to do bit manipulation? Do you know the difference between & and &&, between | and ||, and between ! and ^? I haven't looked into the kernel source too much, but if you don't know how to do that stuff, you may not enjoy the book. Also, there are other "conventions" in C that it helps to be familiar with, that don't make any sense until you get some experience under your belt. (Example there would be in C some functions rather than taking 20 boolean arguments, take 1 argument that is just a bunch of packed bits, and then checks that argument to see if a particular bit is set instead of taking an argument in that spot - X11 does this a lot, and when I first saw it, I thought it was pretty stupid. (Turns out its not)
I think in order to bone up on C again it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to first read some generic source code to something easy until you understand it all, and then tackle the kernel instead of starting back into C with kernel code.
I've also heard that certain parts of the kernel are extremely cryptic because they've been hand-optimized for speed, but I don't know how true that is. (It would make sense though) in cases like that, it may be difficult even for people who know C really well to grok that code.
At my university, there are several professors that require this book for the advanced operating system design class.
The class has been taught using linux since about version 1.something, before that it was MINIX I believe.
All of the students that have taken that class, (and read this book) have been very pleased with it, but I've heard many times that you shouldn't even bother looking at it unless you feel fairly comfortable with your C.
Seems that every time we have some major piece of anti-free software FUD, we almost immediately have somebody who is "famous" within the community weigh in on the issue with some form of rebuttal to let everyone know what their stance on it is.
It seems to me that sometimes, it's probably just better to let the FUD bury itself, and not even give it the honor of being discussed. Now, there are some times when this is NOT the case, but other times, you have to just let the FUD go, because there's already tons of it out there, and there's going to be more.
remember the "Linux Myths" thingy that MS put up? I can't remember if it was mandrake or somebody else who wrote some multipage rebuttal to MS' "Linux Myths". Guess what? You're preaching to the choir. The only case in which a rebuttal like that would be effective is if it was posted next to the linux myths column on microsoft.com, and if you think that's going to happen, think again.
Well, Bob young's article on ZDNet is a little bit better, since it stands to be seen by people other than those who already know that the article was full of untruths to begin with, but at the same time, I don't understand the motivation to write rebuttals like this. Sure, the original column that he's talking about was bullshit, but everybody knew that.
I'm trying not to be cynical, but all I can come up with in terms of the motivations for writing these rebuttals would be to demonstrate to the community that you are "pure of heart", or just to promote the popularity of linux.
IMHO, linux doesn't need either.
Course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.:)
Nah, it's not too bad. If you have PPP compression modules, and some of the TCP/IP modules they talk about how the software was developed and sponsored by Berkely at boot time.
There's nothing wrong with giving credit where credit is due. If ReiserFS wouldn't have existed without SuSE and MP3.com, I'm ok with watching their names scroll by. (quickly)
What's going to piss me off is if you have a message that says something like: (etc. etc.) Sponsored by MP3.com - visit mp3.com today for the latest in digital music - come see how the MP3 revolution allows garage bands to suck all over the world!
or some such advertising blurb.
But then another part of me doesn't even care. I'm not sure about the specific license on reiserfs, but for the vast majority of things that provide source code, if it bugs me I'll hack it out. I bet it's a 5 minute hack to get rid of that stuff. (remove a few kprintf's I believe - but maybe it's done some other way)
>I'm becoming more convinced by the day that >humans (at least Americans) simply don't truly >want freedom Sadly, I'd have to agree with you on that one. It seems like people needing their freedom swings like a pendulum - it's well known that in many arenas of politics the pendulum swings from one extreme to another. First, you've got a totally leftist radical culture, which gradually swings to a more centrist approach to more issues, which gradually swings to the conservative end of things. When people find out how much it sucks being in a despotic state, they start swinging back to the left, and eventually you start over with a revolution and leftist ideals abounding. I don't think americans want their freedom either, and that really is sad. Sometimes it takes people dying, and people being silenced and being thrown into prison before people realize that it truly is better to be uncomfortable and have to listen to that KKK member talk than it is to be stripped of your freedom of speech or other freedoms, and have to sit there and take it without having the ability to say anything. So maybe what linux users need is to get MASSIVELY FUCKED before they realize which sacrafices are appropriate and which are merely sellout attempts at popularity. I saw one post that ranted about how RMS was cramming "GNU/Linux" down everybody's throats, and how the poster thought that was evidence that RMS was hiding something or somehow inadequate as a hacker, because real hackers didn't have to hide behind terminology to see their software succeed. If that were true, then there wouldn't be an open source movement, hackers would realize that the temptation of popularity from a businessman isn't worth pursuing. If your software is good, they will come to you even if your software is free. We don't need a "rebranding" campaign, a "remarketing" campaign, or anything similar. People think that "Free Software" and "GNU/Linux" are terms that are "crammed down people's throats.". I say it is what it is, take it or leave it. If your code is GPL'd, then it is "Free Software". It happens to also be open source at the same time, but it is primarily free software. (If you doubt me, read your own license:). If you're using the SCSL, then you may have open source, but not necessarily Free Software. Enough rambling...
Seems kinda funny - after this article, people are all up in arms that we're just slapping nVidia on the wrist, and letting them get away with murder. A few weeks ago when there were one or two articles in succession about GPL violations, when the entire slashdot community jumped on the companys back with hatemail and flaming, people were saying that we need to tone it down so as not to scare any companies away from the great free software weenie roast.
Which is it going to be?
FTR, My personal opinion is that we demand they open the module immediately or face a lawsuit, because legal intimidation seems to be the only language large companies understand.
I don't really see them as being fanatical - I think it's a good idea. I'm a Debian/Red hat user (home/work) and I think it's a good idea. Sort of like the equivalent of preventative maintenance on the linux "image".
Do we really have to wait for it to become a problem before we talk about it? Why not address the issue now and try to 'nip it in the bud'? It is an issue for sure. IMHO debian is the best distro, and sometimes it bugs me how binaries for certain programs only run on the latest redhat.
Linux so far has been about shaping those around us in the commercial world. Why sit around and let the commercial world shape us into thinking that redhat is the One True Linux? Doing something about it now rather than waiting until redhat is the only "desktop viable" package because of corporate support sounds like a good idea to me.
I wouldn't mind judges being more efficient and getting more done. I don't mind that they use software. As it said in the article, if a lot of cases are just logic calls, then why not let a computer do that? That's what they're for.
The PROBLEM would come if judges start using this damn thing like people use a calculator. The reason most math profs hate calculators is because people blindly punch in the numbers, and write the answer down as if it had fallen from Jesus' lips, and never question why it is what it is, or how the answer was arrived at. The problem is with errnoeous input. I'm in a statistics class right now, and the professor will ask "What is the probability of event A and B and C happening?" and people come up with answers like "5.7" which is TOTALLY impossible, since 0 = probabilities = 1. Other math problems are similar, where people spit out impossible answers because their calculator told them that.
If the judge still uses his brain, and uses his power to "overrule" the computer extremely liberally, I don't see anything wrong with this. If they start using them like calculators, then I'm moving to Cuba, because at least I'll know that my rights will be violated by a human and with purpose, rather than just getting the shaft electronically.
These could be a tool. This could also massively suck. It's how you use it that makes the difference.
For anybody reading this troll's post, don't execute this. If you do, your life will suck. This is a weak shell version of a fork bomb. Here's two more. (Just to add some spice)
In C: #include #include
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){ while(1) fork(); }
Or how about in perl? How about a one liner???
perl -e 'while(1){ fork; }'
Can't beat that for space efficiency.
Oh, and BTW troll, it doesn't cause anything to segfault. Your machine just shits itself and runs out of resources unless you put ulimits on the user running that crap. You DID put ulimits on that user, didn't you?
>and situations where stability and predictability >are more important than unix's cornucopia of >applications and features.
Is this to lead us to believe that UNIX isn't stable or predictable?:)
Well, certainly, you can set it up that way, but UNIX has been pretty stable for me for a long time. Of course 'UNIX' is kinda vague, (and please don't start a 'linux-is-not-really-unix-because-it-isn't-part-of -the-trademark' flamewar, you know what I mean) but UNIX has been pretty good for me in terms of "stability" and "predictability".
Kinda sounds marketing fluffish. But if you're going to go that path, go all out.
QNX provides a world-class enterprise server based information technology solutions enabling people in all teirs of applications development rapid access to empowering decision making information in an Object Oriented (TM) framework built to provide the ultimate in flexibility.
So what if it's nothing but absurd lies? It moves product, particularly to PHB's.
AFAIK, yes, that is OK. After all, what is it that you're getting when you buy a 2 CD set of binary only Debian or RedHat? The difference, (which I'm not sure that Be has pointed out) is that the GPL is littered all over linux disks - it'd be pretty difficult to NOT know that the software was GPL'd if you went looking for the software's license. And of course, they'll provide the source whenever you ask them to. Seems like we don't have much information with this. Anybody want to let us in as to whether or not Be has made the consumer aware that the software is GPL'd?
Development is slow, but I don't think it's because people feel hopeless about it. I think of the HURD as a project that WILL happen. It might take a long time, (it already has) but there are a lot of very smart people who have invested a lot of time in the project, and I really think that it will become a viable alternative.
Not really hopelessness, but it may be that one of the things HURD is suffering from more is just the INTEREST in linux. Not that that's bad, but the number of people qualified to hack kernels is very finite, and if all of them are wrapped up in patching linux 2.3.x and so on they may be a little bit slower to decide to start from scratch and bone up on HURD source.
As to the differences, sometimes it seems like there are more differences between HURD and linux than there are similarities. Neither has a bad approach, just radically different approaches.
I am trying to bone up on mach and HURD to contribute to the project. I don't think many people realize what a TREMENDOUS amount of ass the HURD will kick upon completion.:)
I'm in the Richmond, VA area, and we have two mom&pop type stores - Unitek computers and NTK computers. Both of them sell the same hardware components that CompUSA sells, at generally about 5-10% less. They also specialize in hardware, and know something about it. The big chain retailers don't really know anything about computers outside what they're told they should know by microsoft. The people running and staffing the mom and pop tech shops do it because they love it and they're good at it, not because they're trying to push their stock price up.
Whenever possible, I buy from mom & pop hardware shops - there was one exception where I needed a certain drive NOW and they had to order it, I couldn't wait so I had to buy from comp usa, but in general, in my area you always get a more knowledgeable sales staff and a better price at the local non-corporate shops.
It really did have to happen, but it still kicks ass. They talk in the article about how the entire system is digital - i.e. you don't have a spinning disk or any mechanical pieces. You take out the mechanical pieces, and you've eliminated most of the reason drives fail. Not only that, but the whole reason hard drives are so slow as compared to say, processor registers or RAM is that they're rotational - they're mechanical and not digital.
Of course, ideally, you could have a mass storage unit that was several gigabytes of the same stuff that processor registers are made of, but I wouldn't even care to know how much one of those drives would cost.:) They say that the two characteristics of storage, speed and price, are roughly proportional - the less you pay the slower it is.
I'm just wondering how long it will take to get one of these to market. I wish Moore's law also applied to time-to-market.
"What so fucking cool about not talking about legal matters? You think the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were a breeze, unanimously agreed upon documents? "
Nothing's cool about not talking about legal matters. It's just that IANAL, so I don't try to act like one. And no, I seriously doubt the constitution/Declaration was a breeze, but then again, the people that wrote those knew what they were doing, and weren't just doing what they did to appear knowledgeable.
If you consider the fact that I don't enjoy reading legal "facts" that were obviously made up by the poster "elitism", then call me an elitist.
I'm not really worried about degrees, and it's not so much about IANAL or law advice, it's about the clueless speculation. If you're somebody who's honestly interested in law, and has actually studied it, then your opinion isn't clueless.
What I don't like is when I finish reading a post, and think to myself, "He made all that shit up!".
I think I'm supposed to be a good citizen of slashdot and denounce AC posts that don't toe the slashdot party line, but the more I read slashdot, the more I find myself only reading the troll posts (to see what new stuff they can come up with:) and ignoring the rest of the karma whoring fluff.
Think about it! When was the last time that you saw a high-rated comment that contained an opinion about free software or linux that was shocking or new? Now on the other hand, let's take a look at the trolls. They've given us all kinds of innovations - Natalie Portman, Grits, the flood-posting, OOG the caveman, nickname cloning, smargles, and all kinds of other things. Oh, and reading the flames full of righteous indignation is sometimes just too funny.
Of course I think I used to be someone who took slashdot seriously, but I think that stopped at about the time when it was sold.
"I would say the reason such opinions are read are because the legal field is, above all, an ongoing conversation among rational people"
I can go for long periods of time at work (where I write software) or with my friends without talking about legal matters. Some think that the carrion is best left to the jackals.
"Just because one is not a lawyer does not mean one cannot have a rational argument about a legal issue. To assume otherwise is just as preposterous as to assume that only programmers can have an opinion on whether a piece of software is of high quality or not."
In terms of the new computer users, I wasn't referring to people who express opinions on matters of software quality, I was talking about people that feign knowledge about a given subject. It's OK for people to talk about opinions of experiences they've had. What annoys others is when people with no experience in the field they are talking about give advice and act as if they knew what they were talking about. There's a difference between "For what it's worth, I think that software package sucks because it crashes a lot" and the comment "That software package sucks, because it keeps forgetting to release dynamically allocated memory causing heap corruption and loss of stack pointers". One is an opinion, and the other is an opinion propped up by completely fabricated "reasons".
How many times have you seen somebody post something on slashdot that said this-or-that WILL or WILL NOT happen, because of points X, Y, and Z? I've seen that a whole lot. But I have NEVER seen the justification for points X, Y, and Z when people talk about legal issues, and that's what annoys me.
"The more detailed and low-level the argument, the more professional expertise becomes an issue. Hence "IANAL" becomes a necessary disclaimer. "
I agree with this in spirit, but really, I feel that it should read "The more detailed and low-level the legal argument, the less likely it is to contain real, factual information".
This is not specific to you, Signal 11, since I don't know you, and because I'm guilty of what you're doing, but...
Why is it, that practically everybody on slashdot (I've done it too) always puts 'IANAL' in their posts,... and then proceeds to give legal advice or analysis? As far as I know, the real spirit of 'IANAL' is that since the person isn't a professional, their words should be taken with a grain of salt, and might even be total crap.
So we get a situation where the reader has been fully warned that the post may be full of crap, yet still we read it? And the output of unsolicited legal advice on slashdot is not only used and condoned, but promoted through moderation?
What I'm trying to get at is that many of the programmers on slashdot (if there are any left) are generally the type that really hate listening to a newbie spout off about technology and computing when the person has no idea of what they are talking about. (Case in point - I was outside the computer lab at my school the other day, and I heard somebody talking about XML capable talkback widgets - if that's not total bullshit I don't know what is). So where's the difference between the clueless newbie dropping buzzwords about a topic he doesn't understand and one of the slashdot elite dropping legalese and telling people how the MS appeal is *really* going to go, or what's *really* going to happen with DeCSS?
Somebody, please, either put the final crushing blow to my silly thought that slashdot isn't just full of arrogant posturing fools, or tell me what it is about unsolicited and totally uninformed legal advice that gives everybody here such a stiffy.
It would be neat to see MVS and OS/400 / OS/390 for intel architectures, but it'll never happen.
I think the main reason why is that it seems to me that most operating systems were written not to be huge moneymakers by themselves, but they were written to hawk hardware. Consider Solaris, and IBM, which both wrote operating systems, but essentially, what they're really selling you is hardware. (Solaris likes to sell sparcs, and IBM likes to sell big iron, and whatever it is that AIX runs, etc)
Now, I know solaris is already on x86, which may represent a move on their part to make the OS business more profitable for themselves rather than just keep it as a hardware selling mechanism, but particularly with the IBM big iron operating systems, they really were built to sell hardware.
I've also heard, (but I'm not an MVS expert, so take it with a grain of salt) that some of the mainframe OS's depend on hardware that has a LOT more of the work done in hardware rather than in software. E.g. they won't provide compression utilities because it's all done in hardware, and a lot of the other things that we use software for are hard coded into the metal. If that was the case, it would be much more than non-trivial to port those big-iron OS's to intel architectures. At least not without special intel hardware requirements out the wazoo so expensive that you wouldn't want to run it.
And it may be the case, as sad as it is to say, that some aren't portable without a complete rewrite. I can imagine that an operating system that's existed for 30 years, if not designed, implemented, and VERY carefully maintained, could get oftly crufty in those 30 years. There may be a point of critical cruft, where it gets so ugly inside, that porting isn't really an option.
What do you think about people who say that the web is for the most part a huge waste of bandwidth? There's a lot of people out there who really just want to revert to the primordial ooze of plain ASCII text gotten from archie/FTP or elsewhere, but the web is here to stay, complete with 300KB images that contain nothing but a picture of text that the web designer thought was in a cool (but browser-wise unavailable) font.
What's the most hideous use of bandwith-busting graphics that you've seen, and how do we avoid the brainless design decisions that lead us down such evil paths?:)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm the author of a package called GTKeyboard, located at http://opop.nols.com/gtkeyboard.html. It's an on-screen keyboard that allows users to type using only the mouse. The keystrokes can then be sent either to the regular text editing area in the application, or even to other applications, (such as typing shell commands into an rxvt or URLs into netscape and so on)
It comes with layouts for a bunch of different languages/keyboard styles.
I hope this will be useful to you or other people. I've gotten email from a bunch of people in the past that said they found it quite useful - among those were a stroke victim using linux, several people with ALS (Lou Gherig's disease) and cerebral palsy.
The good part is that if you can use a mouse and you have X, you can do anything a keyboard can do. Of course it's a bit slower than using the keyboard, (we've got some new features coming soon to address that) but one mouse and three buttons is never going to be able to compete with 10 fingers for speed.
Hope this helps.
Slashdot will have that thing DOS'd out of the sky by this evening, I'm sure.
IMHO this is not the place to start. I don't know you, so I don't know how comfortable you are with C, but I don't think this is the book to polish your C with.
Lots of people are familiar with C on one level, but not on others. Lots of people can write functions to do things like print to the screen, manipulate numbers, deal with dynamically allocated memory and such, but there are also other levels of C since it's so low level.
For example, do you know how to do bit manipulation? Do you know the difference between & and &&, between | and ||, and between ! and ^? I haven't looked into the kernel source too much, but if you don't know how to do that stuff, you may not enjoy the book. Also, there are other "conventions" in C that it helps to be familiar with, that don't make any sense until you get some experience under your belt. (Example there would be in C some functions rather than taking 20 boolean arguments, take 1 argument that is just a bunch of packed bits, and then checks that argument to see if a particular bit is set instead of taking an argument in that spot - X11 does this a lot, and when I first saw it, I thought it was pretty stupid. (Turns out its not)
I think in order to bone up on C again it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to first read some generic source code to something easy until you understand it all, and then tackle the kernel instead of starting back into C with kernel code.
I've also heard that certain parts of the kernel are extremely cryptic because they've been hand-optimized for speed, but I don't know how true that is. (It would make sense though) in cases like that, it may be difficult even for people who know C really well to grok that code.
At my university, there are several professors that require this book for the advanced operating system design class.
The class has been taught using linux since about version 1.something, before that it was MINIX I believe.
All of the students that have taken that class, (and read this book) have been very pleased with it, but I've heard many times that you shouldn't even bother looking at it unless you feel fairly comfortable with your C.
Seems that every time we have some major piece of anti-free software FUD, we almost immediately have somebody who is "famous" within the community weigh in on the issue with some form of rebuttal to let everyone know what their stance on it is.
:)
It seems to me that sometimes, it's probably just better to let the FUD bury itself, and not even give it the honor of being discussed. Now, there are some times when this is NOT the case, but other times, you have to just let the FUD go, because there's already tons of it out there, and there's going to be more.
remember the "Linux Myths" thingy that MS put up? I can't remember if it was mandrake or somebody else who wrote some multipage rebuttal to MS' "Linux Myths". Guess what? You're preaching to the choir. The only case in which a rebuttal like that would be effective is if it was posted next to the linux myths column on microsoft.com, and if you think that's going to happen, think again.
Well, Bob young's article on ZDNet is a little bit better, since it stands to be seen by people other than those who already know that the article was full of untruths to begin with, but at the same time, I don't understand the motivation to write rebuttals like this. Sure, the original column that he's talking about was bullshit, but everybody knew that.
I'm trying not to be cynical, but all I can come up with in terms of the motivations for writing these rebuttals would be to demonstrate to the community that you are "pure of heart", or just to promote the popularity of linux.
IMHO, linux doesn't need either.
Course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Nah, it's not too bad. If you have PPP compression modules, and some of the TCP/IP modules they talk about how the software was developed and sponsored by Berkely at boot time.
There's nothing wrong with giving credit where credit is due. If ReiserFS wouldn't have existed without SuSE and MP3.com, I'm ok with watching their names scroll by. (quickly)
What's going to piss me off is if you have a message that says something like:
(etc. etc.) Sponsored by MP3.com - visit mp3.com today for the latest in digital music - come see how the MP3 revolution allows garage bands to suck all over the world!
or some such advertising blurb.
But then another part of me doesn't even care. I'm not sure about the specific license on reiserfs, but for the vast majority of things that provide source code, if it bugs me I'll hack it out. I bet it's a 5 minute hack to get rid of that stuff. (remove a few kprintf's I believe - but maybe it's done some other way)
>I'm becoming more convinced by the day that >humans (at least Americans) simply don't truly >want freedom Sadly, I'd have to agree with you on that one. It seems like people needing their freedom swings like a pendulum - it's well known that in many arenas of politics the pendulum swings from one extreme to another. First, you've got a totally leftist radical culture, which gradually swings to a more centrist approach to more issues, which gradually swings to the conservative end of things. When people find out how much it sucks being in a despotic state, they start swinging back to the left, and eventually you start over with a revolution and leftist ideals abounding. I don't think americans want their freedom either, and that really is sad. Sometimes it takes people dying, and people being silenced and being thrown into prison before people realize that it truly is better to be uncomfortable and have to listen to that KKK member talk than it is to be stripped of your freedom of speech or other freedoms, and have to sit there and take it without having the ability to say anything. So maybe what linux users need is to get MASSIVELY FUCKED before they realize which sacrafices are appropriate and which are merely sellout attempts at popularity. I saw one post that ranted about how RMS was cramming "GNU/Linux" down everybody's throats, and how the poster thought that was evidence that RMS was hiding something or somehow inadequate as a hacker, because real hackers didn't have to hide behind terminology to see their software succeed. If that were true, then there wouldn't be an open source movement, hackers would realize that the temptation of popularity from a businessman isn't worth pursuing. If your software is good, they will come to you even if your software is free. We don't need a "rebranding" campaign, a "remarketing" campaign, or anything similar. People think that "Free Software" and "GNU/Linux" are terms that are "crammed down people's throats.". I say it is what it is, take it or leave it. If your code is GPL'd, then it is "Free Software". It happens to also be open source at the same time, but it is primarily free software. (If you doubt me, read your own license :). If you're using the SCSL, then you may have open source, but not necessarily Free Software. Enough rambling...
Seems kinda funny - after this article, people are all up in arms that we're just slapping nVidia on the wrist, and letting them get away with murder. A few weeks ago when there were one or two articles in succession about GPL violations, when the entire slashdot community jumped on the companys back with hatemail and flaming, people were saying that we need to tone it down so as not to scare any companies away from the great free software weenie roast.
Which is it going to be?
FTR, My personal opinion is that we demand they open the module immediately or face a lawsuit, because legal intimidation seems to be the only language large companies understand.
"Nix" is the name of an anti-lice shampoo in the states. :)
I don't really see them as being fanatical - I think it's a good idea. I'm a Debian/Red hat user (home/work) and I think it's a good idea. Sort of like the equivalent of preventative maintenance on the linux "image".
Do we really have to wait for it to become a problem before we talk about it? Why not address the issue now and try to 'nip it in the bud'? It is an issue for sure. IMHO debian is the best distro, and sometimes it bugs me how binaries for certain programs only run on the latest redhat.
Linux so far has been about shaping those around us in the commercial world. Why sit around and let the commercial world shape us into thinking that redhat is the One True Linux? Doing something about it now rather than waiting until redhat is the only "desktop viable" package because of corporate support sounds like a good idea to me.
I wouldn't mind judges being more efficient and getting more done. I don't mind that they use software. As it said in the article, if a lot of cases are just logic calls, then why not let a computer do that? That's what they're for.
The PROBLEM would come if judges start using this damn thing like people use a calculator. The reason most math profs hate calculators is because people blindly punch in the numbers, and write the answer down as if it had fallen from Jesus' lips, and never question why it is what it is, or how the answer was arrived at. The problem is with errnoeous input. I'm in a statistics class right now, and the professor will ask "What is the probability of event A and B and C happening?" and people come up with answers like "5.7" which is TOTALLY impossible, since 0 = probabilities = 1. Other math problems are similar, where people spit out impossible answers because their calculator told them that.
If the judge still uses his brain, and uses his power to "overrule" the computer extremely liberally, I don't see anything wrong with this. If they start using them like calculators, then I'm moving to Cuba, because at least I'll know that my rights will be violated by a human and with purpose, rather than just getting the shaft electronically.
These could be a tool. This could also massively suck. It's how you use it that makes the difference.
For anybody reading this troll's post, don't execute this. If you do, your life will suck. This is a weak shell version of a fork bomb. Here's two more. (Just to add some spice)
In C:
#include
#include
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
while(1) fork();
}
Or how about in perl? How about a one liner???
perl -e 'while(1){ fork; }'
Can't beat that for space efficiency.
Oh, and BTW troll, it doesn't cause anything to segfault. Your machine just shits itself and runs out of resources unless you put ulimits on the user running that crap. You DID put ulimits on that user, didn't you?
>and situations where stability and predictability
:)
f -the-trademark' flamewar, you know what I mean) but UNIX has been pretty good for me in terms of "stability" and "predictability".
>are more important than unix's cornucopia of >applications and features.
Is this to lead us to believe that UNIX isn't stable or predictable?
Well, certainly, you can set it up that way, but UNIX has been pretty stable for me for a long time. Of course 'UNIX' is kinda vague, (and please don't start a 'linux-is-not-really-unix-because-it-isn't-part-o
Kinda sounds marketing fluffish. But if you're going to go that path, go all out.
QNX provides a world-class enterprise server based information technology solutions enabling people in all teirs of applications development rapid access to empowering decision making information in an Object Oriented (TM) framework built to provide the ultimate in flexibility.
So what if it's nothing but absurd lies? It moves product, particularly to PHB's.
AFAIK, yes, that is OK. After all, what is it that you're getting when you buy a 2 CD set of binary only Debian or RedHat? The difference, (which I'm not sure that Be has pointed out) is that the GPL is littered all over linux disks - it'd be pretty difficult to NOT know that the software was GPL'd if you went looking for the software's license. And of course, they'll provide the source whenever you ask them to. Seems like we don't have much information with this. Anybody want to let us in as to whether or not Be has made the consumer aware that the software is GPL'd?
Development is slow, but I don't think it's because people feel hopeless about it. I think of the HURD as a project that WILL happen. It might take a long time, (it already has) but there are a lot of very smart people who have invested a lot of time in the project, and I really think that it will become a viable alternative.
:)
Not really hopelessness, but it may be that one of the things HURD is suffering from more is just the INTEREST in linux. Not that that's bad, but the number of people qualified to hack kernels is very finite, and if all of them are wrapped up in patching linux 2.3.x and so on they may be a little bit slower to decide to start from scratch and bone up on HURD source.
As to the differences, sometimes it seems like there are more differences between HURD and linux than there are similarities. Neither has a bad approach, just radically different approaches.
I am trying to bone up on mach and HURD to contribute to the project. I don't think many people realize what a TREMENDOUS amount of ass the HURD will kick upon completion.
I'm in the Richmond, VA area, and we have two mom&pop type stores - Unitek computers and NTK computers. Both of them sell the same hardware components that CompUSA sells, at generally about 5-10% less. They also specialize in hardware, and know something about it. The big chain retailers don't really know anything about computers outside what they're told they should know by microsoft. The people running and staffing the mom and pop tech shops do it because they love it and they're good at it, not because they're trying to push their stock price up.
Whenever possible, I buy from mom & pop hardware shops - there was one exception where I needed a certain drive NOW and they had to order it, I couldn't wait so I had to buy from comp usa, but in general, in my area you always get a more knowledgeable sales staff and a better price at the local non-corporate shops.
It really did have to happen, but it still kicks ass. They talk in the article about how the entire system is digital - i.e. you don't have a spinning disk or any mechanical pieces. You take out the mechanical pieces, and you've eliminated most of the reason drives fail. Not only that, but the whole reason hard drives are so slow as compared to say, processor registers or RAM is that they're rotational - they're mechanical and not digital.
:) They say that the two characteristics of storage, speed and price, are roughly proportional - the less you pay the slower it is.
Of course, ideally, you could have a mass storage unit that was several gigabytes of the same stuff that processor registers are made of, but I wouldn't even care to know how much one of those drives would cost.
I'm just wondering how long it will take to get one of these to market. I wish Moore's law also applied to time-to-market.
SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!
AC, you are my AMBASSADOR of Quan!
"What so fucking cool about not talking about legal matters? You think the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were a breeze, unanimously agreed upon documents? "
Nothing's cool about not talking about legal matters. It's just that IANAL, so I don't try to act like one. And no, I seriously doubt the constitution/Declaration was a breeze, but then again, the people that wrote those knew what they were doing, and weren't just doing what they did to appear knowledgeable.
If you consider the fact that I don't enjoy reading legal "facts" that were obviously made up by the poster "elitism", then call me an elitist.
I'm not really worried about degrees, and it's not so much about IANAL or law advice, it's about the clueless speculation. If you're somebody who's honestly interested in law, and has actually studied it, then your opinion isn't clueless.
What I don't like is when I finish reading a post, and think to myself, "He made all that shit up!".
Right on brother.
:) and ignoring the rest of the karma whoring fluff.
I think I'm supposed to be a good citizen of slashdot and denounce AC posts that don't toe the slashdot party line, but the more I read slashdot, the more I find myself only reading the troll posts (to see what new stuff they can come up with
Think about it! When was the last time that you saw a high-rated comment that contained an opinion about free software or linux that was shocking or new? Now on the other hand, let's take a look at the trolls. They've given us all kinds of innovations - Natalie Portman, Grits, the flood-posting, OOG the caveman, nickname cloning, smargles, and all kinds of other things. Oh, and reading the flames full of righteous indignation is sometimes just too funny.
Of course I think I used to be someone who took slashdot seriously, but I think that stopped at about the time when it was sold.
"I would say the reason such opinions are read are because the legal field is, above all, an ongoing conversation among rational people"
I can go for long periods of time at work (where I write software) or with my friends without talking about legal matters. Some think that the carrion is best left to the jackals.
"Just because one is not a lawyer does not mean one cannot have a rational argument about a legal issue. To assume otherwise is just as preposterous as to assume that only programmers can have an opinion on whether a piece of software is of high quality or not."
In terms of the new computer users, I wasn't referring to people who express opinions on matters of software quality, I was talking about people that feign knowledge about a given subject. It's OK for people to talk about opinions of experiences they've had. What annoys others is when people with no experience in the field they are talking about give advice and act as if they knew what they were talking about. There's a difference between "For what it's worth, I think that software package sucks because it crashes a lot" and the comment "That software package sucks, because it keeps forgetting to release dynamically allocated memory causing heap corruption and loss of stack pointers". One is an opinion, and the other is an opinion propped up by completely fabricated "reasons".
How many times have you seen somebody post something on slashdot that said this-or-that WILL or WILL NOT happen, because of points X, Y, and Z? I've seen that a whole lot. But I have NEVER seen the justification for points X, Y, and Z when people talk about legal issues, and that's what annoys me.
"The more detailed and low-level the argument, the more professional expertise becomes an issue. Hence "IANAL" becomes a necessary disclaimer. "
I agree with this in spirit, but really, I feel that it should read "The more detailed and low-level the legal argument, the less likely it is to contain real, factual information".
This is not specific to you, Signal 11, since I don't know you, and because I'm guilty of what you're doing, but...
... and then proceeds to give legal advice or analysis? As far as I know, the real spirit of 'IANAL' is that since the person isn't a professional, their words should be taken with a grain of salt, and might even be total crap.
Why is it, that practically everybody on slashdot (I've done it too) always puts 'IANAL' in their posts,
So we get a situation where the reader has been fully warned that the post may be full of crap, yet still we read it? And the output of unsolicited legal advice on slashdot is not only used and condoned, but promoted through moderation?
What I'm trying to get at is that many of the programmers on slashdot (if there are any left) are generally the type that really hate listening to a newbie spout off about technology and computing when the person has no idea of what they are talking about. (Case in point - I was outside the computer lab at my school the other day, and I heard somebody talking about XML capable talkback widgets - if that's not total bullshit I don't know what is). So where's the difference between the clueless newbie dropping buzzwords about a topic he doesn't understand and one of the slashdot elite dropping legalese and telling people how the MS appeal is *really* going to go, or what's *really* going to happen with DeCSS?
Somebody, please, either put the final crushing blow to my silly thought that slashdot isn't just full of arrogant posturing fools, or tell me what it is about unsolicited and totally uninformed legal advice that gives everybody here such a stiffy.
It would be neat to see MVS and OS/400 / OS/390 for intel architectures, but it'll never happen.
I think the main reason why is that it seems to me that most operating systems were written not to be huge moneymakers by themselves, but they were written to hawk hardware. Consider Solaris, and IBM, which both wrote operating systems, but essentially, what they're really selling you is hardware. (Solaris likes to sell sparcs, and IBM likes to sell big iron, and whatever it is that AIX runs, etc)
Now, I know solaris is already on x86, which may represent a move on their part to make the OS business more profitable for themselves rather than just keep it as a hardware selling mechanism,
but particularly with the IBM big iron operating systems, they really were built to sell hardware.
I've also heard, (but I'm not an MVS expert, so take it with a grain of salt) that some of the mainframe OS's depend on hardware that has a LOT more of the work done in hardware rather than in software. E.g. they won't provide compression utilities because it's all done in hardware, and a lot of the other things that we use software for are hard coded into the metal. If that was the case, it would be much more than non-trivial to port those big-iron OS's to intel architectures. At least not without special intel hardware requirements out the wazoo so expensive that you wouldn't want to run it.
And it may be the case, as sad as it is to say, that some aren't portable without a complete rewrite. I can imagine that an operating system that's existed for 30 years, if not designed, implemented, and VERY carefully maintained, could get oftly crufty in those 30 years. There may be a point of critical cruft, where it gets so ugly inside, that porting isn't really an option.
Just some thoughts.
What do you think about people who say that the web is for the most part a huge waste of bandwidth? There's a lot of people out there who really just want to revert to the primordial ooze of plain ASCII text gotten from archie/FTP or elsewhere, but the web is here to stay, complete with 300KB images that contain nothing but a picture of text that the web designer thought was in a cool (but browser-wise unavailable) font.
:)
What's the most hideous use of bandwith-busting graphics that you've seen, and how do we avoid the brainless design decisions that lead us down such evil paths?