My understanding is that this stuff is supposed to augment the pilot's capabilities, not replace the pilot, nor replace the requirement that the pilot have a clue.
I never buy the service plans for computer hardware, but I always buy them for telephones.
Why? Because every phone I've ever bought dies after about 2 years (or really easy use, too, no abuse). Would you call me an idiot because I can't disassemble the phone, pull the stored numbers list out of flash via a hand-soldered interface, fix the busted memory, and re-download it all? Fuck that, I got better things to do with my time (like mess with a computer).
I bought one nice phone from Worst Buy, and when it died, I pulled out the service plan and got a free replacement. When that one crapped out, I did it again. It's damned annoying -- I'd much rather just pay for one phone that lasts for years -- but at least I don't keep having to actually buy the new phones over and over.
doesn't actually work. Not enough milkfat to make a decent cheese that people will willingly consume. (Yes, it's been tried, but not by me.)
How do I know this? I have friends with a net connection and way too much free time at work. Also, a deep and abiding love of dairy products ensures that any cheese-related trivia they send me will stick in my mind.
The pinnacle of something, anyhow
on
Word Up
·
· Score: 1
Apparently the grand champions of this game take it a little too seriously to be happy, but I suppose the same can be said of a lot of endevours.
(Here are some more words: like you, I use a hardware firewall for my home/office, but when I'm at the coffeeshop with my laptop, it's kinda hard to lug all that routing gear around.)
(And here are even more words for you: concrete, bouncy, superfluous, carrot, foobly, upwards. Not sure about foobly, though.)
Oh believe me, this point is well understood by the maintainers. Lots of traffic on this subject.:-)
The general consensus is that:
Very few people need to bootstrap from a bare metal system, or an intentionally crippled compiler.[*]
The people in the first situation are already familiar with chicken-and-egg scenarios, and the well-known steps to solve them.
Those in the second situation can start with GCC version (whenever we make the switch) - 1, which was written in C, and then use that to get to (whatever the current version is at the time).
Yes, #3 is a bit of a hassle, but it's a one-time hassle, and the hassle for a few people is outweighed by the benefits to the developers who have to work on the code every day.
[*]The two big examples of the situation you mention are Solaris and HP/UX. For the Solaris users who don't buy the WorkShop compiler, there are umpteen binary packages of GCC out there. For the HP/UX compiler, the full host compiler is so troublesome that H-P themselves distribute GCC binaries.
And if the idea of binary packages for C++ scare the hypothetical stranded user, then he can just get the C compiler and then do the double-bootstrap step above.
You're not completely right, and not completely wrong. The politics are exceedingly complicated, and I regret it every time I learn more about them.
RMS doesn't have dictatorial power over the SC, nor a formal veto vote.
He does hold the copyright to GCC. (Well, the FSF holds the copyright, but he is the FSF.) That's a lot more important that many people realize.
Choice of implementation language is, strictly speaking, a purely technical issue. But it has so many consequences that it gets special attention.
The SC specifically avoids getting involved in technical issues whenever possible. Even when the SC is asked to decide something, they never go to RMS when they can help it, because he's so unaware of modern real-world technical issues and the bigger picture. It's far, far better to continue postponing a question than to ask it, when RMS is involved, because he will make a snap decision based on his own bizarre technical ideas, and then never change his mind in time for the new decision to be worth anything.
He can be convinced. Eventually. It took the SC over a year to explain and demonstrate that Java bytecode could not easily be used to subvert the GPL, therefore permitting GCJ to be checked in to the official repository was okay. I'm sure that someday we'll be using C++ in core code. Just not anytime soon.
As for forking again... well, yeah, I personally happen to be a proponent of that path. But I'm keenly aware of the damange that would to do GCC's reputation -- beyond the short-sighted typical/. viewpoint of "always disobey every authority" -- and I'm still probably underestimating the problems.
What, you try to make common cause with me after outright attacking my friends and colleagues? Without an apology? You, "truth_revealed", are a liar and an asshole.
technically there was no vote on C++ - you're right. In the end the result is the same
So of course, lying about it, as if there had been a vote and the democratic process had somehow gone awry, is completely harmless. "Ends justify the means," or some other pisshead reasoning.
Pointing to an abandoned and unmaintained toy language and accusing unrelated coders of deliberately and maliciously breaking it to make your life difficult is just, what, a technique of rhetoric? We're supposed to... look past it and ignore the FUD? Read your mind? Hope the other/. readers know you're full of it?
Your points in the post to which I'm now responding are completely valid. Most, if not all, of the GCC maintainers would agree with them. Why you didn't just say so, instead of smearing us with lies, is something that I don't understand and that you've conveniently not mentioned. Don't bother now, I don't care, one more armchair judge in the killfile don't fash me none...
The very best trolls always start with a grain of truth. (LLVM is much easier to understand than GCC. The GCC infrastructure is very baroque, dating from a time when assuming the presence of an ANSI C bootstrap compiler was too much. One of the major LLVM guys has presented his toolchain work at the annual GCC Summit, and maintains close communication with the rest of the GCC team -- and we wish him well. All very true; no GCC hacker would say any less.)
The trolls then move on into wild exaggerations and complete lies. Such as:
and try their damnedest to obscure and change the programming API from release to release.
Pure malicious bullshit. RMS doesn't want proprietary backends to be able to read the GCC IR, and so we don't ever write it out in a machine-readable format. But we've never gone out of our way to obfuscate the internal API.
GCC recently voted down using C++ in their core code.
Again, a complete lie. We asked RMS whether we could make use of C++ in parts of the compiler. While a skilled and brilliant C and LISP hacker, RMS is a reactionary fuckhead when it comes to anything other than C or LISP. In his opinion, all GNU programs should be written in C, and only C, ever.
Cygwin basically adds a nice layer of POSIX functionality to the Win32 subsystem. (Don't even mention "Windows has POSIX" -- it's a seperate subsystem, it's broken and incomplete and not going to be fixed, MS just added enough to be able to say to the US government "yes, NT is POSIX" with a straight face, so that they qualify for defense contracts.)
It also adds bunch of other things (mount points, IPC, etc), but the POSIX/*nix features are the main part of the DLL.
The downside to the layer is that it's very slow. This is not always Cygwin's fault; some of the Win32 calls that have to be used to get correct Cygwin behavior are slower'n hell. One of our customers uses a GCC hosted on Cygwin, and it spends a lot of time in the Win32 code, just waiting.
The MinGW system is the same idea, but without the special DLL, without the layer, and therefore using only the features offered by native Windows. A lot of nice stuff is unvailable that way, but it's faster. After moving the customer's GCC to be MinGW-hosted instead, they reported serious speedups.
(There's also MSys, which is MinGW plus some other stuff; I'm not really sure what it does. It's all explained on their website.)
...a few months ago, there was a/. article roasting someone at an antivirus software company for suggesting that "JPEGs may open holes to viruses" and "we may have to give up the JPEG format."
Slashdot readers were waiting in line to flame the guy for suggesting that mere image files could have any possible security implications ("it's just a data file, it doesn't contain code, he's obviously clueless, unlike me and everyone who agrees with me"), and raising the spectre of having to abandon JPEGs because of a virus ("dumbass, we can fix anything, we're invulnerable").
The mockers were partly right, in that of course such a hole would be patched and we could all move on with out lives; nobody's suggesting today that PNG be abandoned, and if libjpeg were discovered to secretly transmit an email calling for the assassination of Ronald McDonald when asked to display an image of a taco, nobody sane would call for dropping JPEGs, either.
But hopefully some of the 10-year-olds flaming away then with "no simple data file can open a door to a virus or have any security effect, cuz the contents aren't executed as code, l00zer" will get a bit of an education today. You only hope the contents aren't executed as code...
I've used both Linux and Solaris for development for years. Was a sysadmin for both types of systems as well. And my dream operating system is something along the lines of GNU/Solaris.
Meaning it the same way that wackjob RMS means it: the GNU userspace utilities, with the Solaris kernel. I/really/ like some of the things that Solaris offers, but I vastly prefer the GNU command-line utils. Putting them together would make a nice, nice system.
Hell, play C&C: Generals, or any other decent RTS game, and the lesson about aircraft will eventually penetrate the skull of even the dumbest of strategists.
You should probably read the release notes; they explain it better than I did. Bash is not as goofy as you (apprently) think.
It bothers me greatly that you -- and many others -- think that minor version numbers are "tenths". They are not, and have never been. There is absolutely no implication that x.9 is 90% of the way to (x+1).0, and anyone who believes there is has badly misunderstood how software development should proceed. But that's offtopic for this artcle, so I'll stop talking now, cheers.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder what they had to change in GCC for this project. ARM chips are fairly well supported already.
I poked around briefly in their CVS repo, but didn't see anything obvious that looked like a set of patches to gcc backend source.
Training. Duh.
My understanding is that this stuff is supposed to augment the pilot's capabilities, not replace the pilot, nor replace the requirement that the pilot have a clue.
We don't. Fry's seems to be a strictly Left Half of Country operation. I wish they'd hurry up and expand out this way.
I never buy the service plans for computer hardware, but I always buy them for telephones.
Why? Because every phone I've ever bought dies after about 2 years (or really easy use, too, no abuse). Would you call me an idiot because I can't disassemble the phone, pull the stored numbers list out of flash via a hand-soldered interface, fix the busted memory, and re-download it all? Fuck that, I got better things to do with my time (like mess with a computer).
I bought one nice phone from Worst Buy, and when it died, I pulled out the service plan and got a free replacement. When that one crapped out, I did it again. It's damned annoying -- I'd much rather just pay for one phone that lasts for years -- but at least I don't keep having to actually buy the new phones over and over.
doesn't actually work. Not enough milkfat to make a decent cheese that people will willingly consume. (Yes, it's been tried, but not by me.)
How do I know this? I have friends with a net connection and way too much free time at work. Also, a deep and abiding love of dairy products ensures that any cheese-related trivia they send me will stick in my mind.
Apparently the grand champions of this game take it a little too seriously to be happy, but I suppose the same can be said of a lot of endevours.
Laptops.
(Here are some more words: like you, I use a hardware firewall for my home/office, but when I'm at the coffeeshop with my laptop, it's kinda hard to lug all that routing gear around.)
(And here are even more words for you: concrete, bouncy, superfluous, carrot, foobly, upwards. Not sure about foobly, though.)
Oh believe me, this point is well understood by the maintainers. Lots of traffic on this subject.
The general consensus is that:
Yes, #3 is a bit of a hassle, but it's a one-time hassle, and the hassle for a few people is outweighed by the benefits to the developers who have to work on the code every day.
[*]The two big examples of the situation you mention are Solaris and HP/UX. For the Solaris users who don't buy the WorkShop compiler, there are umpteen binary packages of GCC out there. For the HP/UX compiler, the full host compiler is so troublesome that H-P themselves distribute GCC binaries.
And if the idea of binary packages for C++ scare the hypothetical stranded user, then he can just get the C compiler and then do the double-bootstrap step above.
Starting positions only. After all, you want some spaces left to move around in.
Yep. Most of the maintainers would agree with you.
Remember, in Free Software, you have the freedom to do anything you want -- except disagree with RMS.
You're not completely right, and not completely wrong. The politics are exceedingly complicated, and I regret it every time I learn more about them.
RMS doesn't have dictatorial power over the SC, nor a formal veto vote.
He does hold the copyright to GCC. (Well, the FSF holds the copyright, but he is the FSF.) That's a lot more important that many people realize.
Choice of implementation language is, strictly speaking, a purely technical issue. But it has so many consequences that it gets special attention.
The SC specifically avoids getting involved in technical issues whenever possible. Even when the SC is asked to decide something, they never go to RMS when they can help it, because he's so unaware of modern real-world technical issues and the bigger picture. It's far, far better to continue postponing a question than to ask it, when RMS is involved, because he will make a snap decision based on his own bizarre technical ideas, and then never change his mind in time for the new decision to be worth anything.
He can be convinced. Eventually. It took the SC over a year to explain and demonstrate that Java bytecode could not easily be used to subvert the GPL, therefore permitting GCJ to be checked in to the official repository was okay. I'm sure that someday we'll be using C++ in core code. Just not anytime soon.
As for forking again... well, yeah, I personally happen to be a proponent of that path. But I'm keenly aware of the damange that would to do GCC's reputation -- beyond the short-sighted typical /. viewpoint of "always disobey every authority" -- and I'm still probably underestimating the problems.
What, you try to make common cause with me after outright attacking my friends and colleagues? Without an apology? You, "truth_revealed", are a liar and an asshole.
So of course, lying about it, as if there had been a vote and the democratic process had somehow gone awry, is completely harmless. "Ends justify the means," or some other pisshead reasoning.
Pointing to an abandoned and unmaintained toy language and accusing unrelated coders of deliberately and maliciously breaking it to make your life difficult is just, what, a technique of rhetoric? We're supposed to... look past it and ignore the FUD? Read your mind? Hope the other /. readers know you're full of it?
Your points in the post to which I'm now responding are completely valid. Most, if not all, of the GCC maintainers would agree with them. Why you didn't just say so, instead of smearing us with lies, is something that I don't understand and that you've conveniently not mentioned. Don't bother now, I don't care, one more armchair judge in the killfile don't fash me none...
The very best trolls always start with a grain of truth. (LLVM is much easier to understand than GCC. The GCC infrastructure is very baroque, dating from a time when assuming the presence of an ANSI C bootstrap compiler was too much. One of the major LLVM guys has presented his toolchain work at the annual GCC Summit, and maintains close communication with the rest of the GCC team -- and we wish him well. All very true; no GCC hacker would say any less.)
The trolls then move on into wild exaggerations and complete lies. Such as:
Pure malicious bullshit. RMS doesn't want proprietary backends to be able to read the GCC IR, and so we don't ever write it out in a machine-readable format. But we've never gone out of our way to obfuscate the internal API.
Again, a complete lie. We asked RMS whether we could make use of C++ in parts of the compiler. While a skilled and brilliant C and LISP hacker, RMS is a reactionary fuckhead when it comes to anything other than C or LISP. In his opinion, all GNU programs should be written in C, and only C, ever.
There was no vote.
Cygwin basically adds a nice layer of POSIX functionality to the Win32 subsystem. (Don't even mention "Windows has POSIX" -- it's a seperate subsystem, it's broken and incomplete and not going to be fixed, MS just added enough to be able to say to the US government "yes, NT is POSIX" with a straight face, so that they qualify for defense contracts.)
It also adds bunch of other things (mount points, IPC, etc), but the POSIX/*nix features are the main part of the DLL.
The downside to the layer is that it's very slow. This is not always Cygwin's fault; some of the Win32 calls that have to be used to get correct Cygwin behavior are slower'n hell. One of our customers uses a GCC hosted on Cygwin, and it spends a lot of time in the Win32 code, just waiting.
The MinGW system is the same idea, but without the special DLL, without the layer, and therefore using only the features offered by native Windows. A lot of nice stuff is unvailable that way, but it's faster. After moving the customer's GCC to be MinGW-hosted instead, they reported serious speedups.
(There's also MSys, which is MinGW plus some other stuff; I'm not really sure what it does. It's all explained on their website.)
This is the same bug that occurs in native Windows 95, I believe. I think it's fixed in newer Cygwin DLLs.
From the article:
And "our" refers to "USA's," not just "HP's". The article gives reasons for it as well.
Keep this mind next week, when /. trots out its regularly-scheduled "all the American programming jobs are going away, panic!" article.
...a few months ago, there was a
Slashdot readers were waiting in line to flame the guy for suggesting that mere image files could have any possible security implications ("it's just a data file, it doesn't contain code, he's obviously clueless, unlike me and everyone who agrees with me"), and raising the spectre of having to abandon JPEGs because of a virus ("dumbass, we can fix anything, we're invulnerable").
The mockers were partly right, in that of course such a hole would be patched and we could all move on with out lives; nobody's suggesting today that PNG be abandoned, and if libjpeg were discovered to secretly transmit an email calling for the assassination of Ronald McDonald when asked to display an image of a taco, nobody sane would call for dropping JPEGs, either.
But hopefully some of the 10-year-olds flaming away then with "no simple data file can open a door to a virus or have any security effect, cuz the contents aren't executed as code, l00zer" will get a bit of an education today. You only hope the contents aren't executed as code...
I've used both Linux and Solaris for development for years. Was a sysadmin for both types of systems as well. And my dream operating system is something along the lines of GNU/Solaris.
Meaning it the same way that wackjob RMS means it: the GNU userspace utilities, with the Solaris kernel. I /really/ like some of the things that Solaris offers, but I vastly prefer the GNU command-line utils. Putting them together would make a nice, nice system.
...wait for it...
Lemur's Game
Hell, play C&C: Generals, or any other decent RTS game, and the lesson about aircraft will eventually penetrate the skull of even the dumbest of strategists.
Like the old aphorism says: find a job that you love, and you'll never work a day in your life.
Even those of us with functioning limbs will be wanting this on our computers.
Mouse and cursor focus is ALWAYS where I'm looking at, dammit. :-)
You should probably read the release notes; they explain it better than I did. Bash is not as goofy as you (apprently) think.
It bothers me greatly that you -- and many others -- think that minor version numbers are "tenths". They are not, and have never been. There is absolutely no implication that x.9 is 90% of the way to (x+1).0, and anyone who believes there is has badly misunderstood how software development should proceed. But that's offtopic for this artcle, so I'll stop talking now, cheers.
Set about 100 years or so into the Fourth Age, with some unrest in Gondor and things creeping around Mordor. He got bored with it quickly and gave up.
The plan was to introduce new features in sub-versions like
As opposed to most open source software, which releases x.0 as soon as it compiles, and only then starts working out the stability bugs.