we politely asked if we could obtain some sample code so we could adapt it to run under UNIX -- or, if not, the specifications for the interface so we could write something ourselves. We even offered to share the code we developed.
Closed hardware (well, and software) interface specifications are a very serious threat to all of us. It reinforces the Microsoft monopoly like nothing else. If only there were some way to get the antitrust settlement or penalty to address this. But I don't know that it can. It's not (always, only) Microsoft who's doing it, so how can you reach those who are?
As in the cases mentioned in the parent article, companies make proprietary hardware with a proprietary interface that only runs with their proprietary binary which only runs on Microsoft systems. The proprietor feels that its his property, and he's done what he wants with it to recoup is investment. I understand that. But the network effect strikes again, and we're screwed.
If no vendor could create hardware with complete closed specs and Microsoft-only code, this would help a lot. But I can't see that the current MS-DOJ case could require that, since it's not a penalty to be imposed on the Evil Empire. It's all the myriad little companies nursing off their teat that are doing this to us. I don't know what kind of mechanism to fix this there could be that wouldn't be too overreaching.
What ever happened to the Unix Pascal system?
on
FreeBSD at COMDEX
·
· Score: 3
The reps from Borland/Inprise -- whose booth was directly across from Walnut Creek's -- told me that they now had a Linux command-line compiler for Borland Pascal/Delphi. (This is a fantastic Pascal dialect which I'd love to use for UNIX projects. The GPLed "Free Pascal" simply can't compete in terms of code quality.) Unfortunately, despite the fact that recompiling and relinking a command-line compiler for BSD is nearly trivial, their PR people claimed that they weren't considering an implementation for FreeBSD. (This sounds like a company that's ripe for a bit of advocacy; there is NO reason why there should not be Delphi compilers for ALL of the BSDs.)
At university, we had two choices for Pascal system, either the very nicely integrated UCSD-Pascal systems on the Teraks (LSI-11s, I think), or else pi/pc/pix on Unix. I don't know what ever happened to any of them. UCSD pascal was what I think the Win/Mac people call an "IDE", despite the very tiny machine. It also taught people about p-code. And pi and kin were good demonstrators for why a program in a given language isn't interprete or byte-compiled/byte-interpreted or native compiled purely by definition: the source could be sent through a variety of execution processors.
I was just wondering whether anyone knows what happened to all those. BSD no longer seems to come with them by default. And at least on the open flavor of the same, I see no/usr/ports/lang/pascal directory.
Gosh, if machines keep getting faster, maybe we can reincarnate the old Symbolics machines, where everything including the operating system, is written in Lisp. It's just a bit hard on your TCP retries when the garbage collector fires up.:-)
Hey, wait a second. Isn't this what the Java folks keep waiting for?:-)/2
Er, um, technically speaking, unzip isn't very Unixy, more DOSlike. Even the Unix ports act very non-Unix-like in their noisiness. But of course, it wouldn't be as funny without it.
In time, I'll trouble myself to elaborate these themes into something even Windows people might chance to understand. Maybe then we'll have less Winix and more Unix. One can only hope.
It's kind of odd to see you belittle drones using CGI programs when most of those CGI programs invoke Perl programs.
Perl isn't about CGI. Unix isn't about Perl. And technology isn't about Bill Gates.
Got that? Good.
And while I'm at it, discussion isn't about argumentum ad hominem. Trolling at people just because they've got a name you recognize is an old sport, but hardly sporting.
You have a distinct style of changing the subject toward irrelevant strawmen, expecting people to waste time on something that wasn't even being discussed. Whether you're being an idiot or devious, it's a chump play. It takes no courage to do so as a coward. Use a real name next time, and maybe you'll get a real answer.
But in terms of the rest of your argument, about how we have to emulate undesirable aspects of Microsoft programming environments to get people to use our stuff, I think that's true to some degree. But I think it can be done with environments such as KDE and Enlightenment in such a way that we still have our command lines, our cron and our automated processing. In theory, that should give people the best of both worlds, right?
Well, that's the theory. It isn't working out that way though. These are all considerably less amenable to CLI interaction and text-based processing than Unix should be. And don't start in on documentation, or the Winix people will just come flaming me for expecting the same care in craftsmanship as we have grown to expect in that silly old stuff. They'll just remind me that I don't understand Winix at all. Nor care to.
The only way to counteract this is to encourage Unix in the desktop
I guess I need to add a new term to my us2them vocabulary list. Or maybe it shouldn't go there, but on some buzzword-bingo game. In any event, if you replace "the desktop" with "non-programmers' personal computing environments", your sentence makes much more sense to me. Why is that? Why do programmers who have never run anything but Unix on "the desktop" now hear "the desktop" being used in a completely foreign way?
Anyway, let's look at this "familiarity" thing. Why are professional programmers and other power users in scientific, research, and academic situations more apt to use Unix than are people in non-technical positions? Once we dispense with the sound technical reasons, plain old familiarity is the remaining answer. Power users, professional programmers, and related geeks have historically been exposed during their critical, formative years to Unix systems at university. That's what we're used to, so that's what we're most productive with. And those are the sectors where we tended to land jobs, so that's what we brought with us. As we moved into purchasing roles, or even advisory ones, we knew what we wanted. The importance of how universities fostered the Unix mindset (tool-and-filter resuable component philososphy, simpler is better, separate privileges, infinite configurability and hookability, full source access, etc.) in this set of technologists cannot be understated. This customs and comforts of our original experiences with computers forged our utlimate worldview, one that as much rejected IBM and their drones then as it rejects Microsoft and their drones today.
In the early 80s, while I was first fiddling around with BSD running on PDP-11s and later VAX-11s (with complete source, mind you; what a difference that made!), those same computers at less research-oriented or technology-oriented institutions were still running their original proprietary DEC operating systems--as did my high school, where we had RSTS/E to play with. If you went to UW-Madison, you got DEC hardware running Unix. If you went to a smaller, more business-oriented school (or my high school; sigh) you got the same computers running closed systems instead. They were grooming aye-tee professionals, after all, not programmers.:-(
In the the boring, cravat-choked business world where once we had IBM, MVS, IBM mainframes, Cobol, and DP-drones doing 3270 screen layout, we now have in their respective slots Microsoft, WinXX, IBM PCs, BASIC, and IT drones doing CGI screen layout. Well, some things haven't changed all that much, eh?:-)
It concerns me to see students receiving degrees in MCS, ECE, and yes, even CS without anything but Microsoft experiences. Yes, it's really happening. I've seen schools, colleges, and even universities where that's all the students see.
The students produced have no under-the-hood experience. They don't have source code. They don't know how to go from a directory of C source code and turn that into an installed program. All they know about is buying "applications". They aren't used to rearranging their operating systems to suit their needs. They aren't used to remote administration or complete automation. They're used to using MS-this and MS-that, even for programming. They're used to pushing cutesy hieroglyphic happycons. They're used to traversing seventeen levels of menus vgrep-style in a futile hunt-and-peck. And of course, they're accustomed to doing repetitive tasks again and again and again redundantly and repetivively.
This is what they expect. This is what they want. This is what they demand. And if you expect to "win over their desktops", you'll have to give it to them. And thereby infernally frustrate the rest of us.
And these are next generation of so-called computer people. Be very afraid. I know I am. Go to your educational institutions, from junior high schools on, and show them Another Way. The Jesuits were right, and Bill Gates knows this.
(Didn't anyone every tell you it was rude to call someone by their first name when you don't allow them to return the familiarity, Miss A. Sunny Moo?
First of all, Perl is not a `product'. That's MBA talk. Perl is a program. Sometimes it's a toy. Sometimes it's a joy. Sometimes it's a way of life.:-)
What is seeping through around the edges is the same discomfort you would see if you stuck a quiet math major into a vat full of business majors or jocks.
As a kid, I always threw out the sports section and the business section of the paper, sight unseen. It was the science and technology sections, and magazine, which appealed to me. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I'd now find more the stuff about computers in the business section than the science section. And yes, I do keep the business section now -- it's got Dilbert on the front page.:-)
You'll find that amongst hard-core programmers--those for whom programming is a game, computers a toy, and who see computer science as having no more to do with computers than has astronomy to do with telescopes--the whole business thing is often an annoyance. Experience constantly shows that programmers as a group mistrust business people in general, especially marketing and sales types, whose job programmers perceive as lying. If you expect to be taken seriously by a programmer, you don't show up in a suit and tie. This strong mutual dislike makes it very hard to run certain kinds of business, but keeping engineering in a different building than marketing certainly helps.:-)
There are some folks who do computers because they're trying to make a buck. You know the types. "MIS majors", people who are on their way to MBAs. They seem computers as a means to an end: money. These are folks whose idea of a career in computers leads to some sales job or managerial position.
Real programmers also see computers as a means to an end. It's a complete different end. And most of us think it's just nifty that we get paid to do what we'd just be doing anyway for fun. Yes, the different end is to have fun programming. It's not something I expect business people to empathize with very much.
Remember the old joke:
The boss finds that one of the company's critical-path programs is taking way too long, and it's really cutting into the bottom line. So he calls in three different employees, each of whom is separately entasked with addressing the problem.
The computer engineer buys more memory and a bigger disk.
The computer scientist notices that a quartic algorithm is being used when a quadratic one would have sufficed.
The IT pro-fess-ion-al (you need to say that the way Scott Adams does) goes down to his closest Bill-in-a-Box superstore to see whether he can shell out some sheckels to pay for a beta release of W2K.
If you haven't known "IT pro-fess-ion-als" who were mindless drones, then you are a lucky, lucky man. We used to call them secretaries, librarians, or data entry clerks. Now they're "IT professionals". Give me a break.
I think you are right about this. BSD's have a head start in this space. BSDs just got bogged down from its AT&T roots. I do prefer Linux because it has all its own code. I think Linux is head and shoulders above BSDs to get on the desktop on intel and that is important for OSS otherwise it may all go down the drain. I tend to like any UNIX in general and I consider it a victory if BSDs win any battle.
You seem to be suffering from a couple misunderstandings, although your heart seems in a good place.
One of these misunderstandings is about "BSD's AT&T roots". I hope you understand that BSD doesn't have any AT&T code. You're thinking of the "bogging down" of the AT&T-fuelled FUD during the lawsuit days. What BSD does have is decades worth of highyl refined software engineering. You just don't have that in Linux, or most of it. Sometimes it shows. But time should smooth even those rough edges, and faster this time around.
The next misunderstanding is about the Linuxes having "all their own code". What they have, by and large, is rather new code. Sometimes this is good, and sometimes it isn't. And the part of their code which isn't new tends to derive from the BSD project, anyway.:-) And the Linux kernel, at least, certainly has Bell Labs roots: the API is still Unix, just like BSD and so many other operating systems variously loved and hated.
You're right in that it doesn't matter which flavor of Unix wins. Unix is Unix. Granted, I'd personally be a lot less happy stuck on AIX, Irix, or HP/UX than I would on BSD, Linux, or SunOS (in that order), but it would be infinitely better than any of the populist non-Unix systems that are out there. I'm sure we'd all agree on that.
But wait a second. Wins what? I'm trying to figure out what is meant by this whole "Battle of the Desktop" notion. Since I've always run nothing but Unix on my desktop, and so have my friends, and so do nearly everybody I nkow from the government, research, and educational labs in my immediate vicinity, this has a very odd sound.
What appears to be meant here by "desktop" is the desktop of people who don't program, people who by and large don't really understand or like computers. Certainly Unix provides a more programmer-friendly desktop environment, but a lot of folks aren't friendly with programmers. But it also provides a flexible substructure with which to apply idiot-friendly veneers. Of course, programmers have never seen much point in doing this. But idiots, users, and other non-(computer-)professionals have money, and so people who are trying to sell systems to idiots have a vested interest in doing this.
I'm not entirely sure what I think of this idea. I don't know about the real viability of this whole "make the masses use Unix" idea. I could argue most any direction on it. Yes, it's a better base. But Unix is a professional system, made by programmers for programmers. I'm not sure that non-programmers are ever going to be enamoured of our idiosyncratic charms.
But you know what? I don't really care all that much about what non-programmers are doing. Like most people, my initial concerns are for my own world. Is it something I'm familiar with? Can I get what I want to do done? Does it make me happy? Is there a risk of that going away? I'm sure the non-programmers feel the same way.
So when you say "the battle of the desktop", you're not talking about my desktop. I'm running Unix in various flavors there. I always have, and I can't imagine that changing. No, You're actually talking about the attempt to imitate a {non,anti}-Unix system enough to make non-programmers happy. To do that, you need to make sure that they can get done what they want to get done; you need to make something that they're familiar with, which means you have to copy Microsoft. I'm not very interested in that, but I can see why some people are, whether for economic or geek-ego reasons -- which, mind you, I'm not saying are bad.
Finally, as for "Linux having more for the desktop than BSD", I've no idea what you mean there. My only guess, which is probably wrong, is that you might mean "Linux is better at making non-programmers feel like their still running Microsoft stuff?". If so, I don't know why programmers care, so that must not be what you mean.
I've got both systems various BSDs and various Linuxes. Both classes of machine run exactly the same things. I don't know what you've got that runs on Linuxes that doesn't run on BSD, but it must not be something that I care about, because I've never noticed such a thing.:-)
For me, the BSD systems end up being a lot easier to manage (sidenote: nonprogrammers often can't even manage their own general-purpose computers, and issue that can't be underestimated) than the Linuxes are, and are in general a lot more comfortable for me personally. To my critical eye, they're more refined, robust, integrated, complete, and friendly. For me. I'm sure the Microsoft people say the same things about their systems. Familiarity is important, and I've been playing with BSD for longer than some of you have been alive. I've seen it develop and grow, evolve through decades of hard work by smart people constantly making it better. Because I've watched this happen, it's all very familiar to me. That may be the most dominating factor here.
So, I wonder, is DNS and e-mail the ultimate "killer apps" for Linux that will finally propel it into the IT departments across United States and the rest of the world?
I can't imagine why that would be the case. DNS and mail would have to run especially excellently on Linuxes, better than these would run on any other operating systems. This is certainly not the case, at least when you consider the other Unixes. Linuxes provide no particular advantage for those purposes over other Unixes, save perhaps for price, and even that matter evaporates when you consider that there are other free Unixes around, too. There are other Unixes with commercial support, too, just there are Linuxes with the same.
The ISPs I know all use some BSD flavor for their mail and DNS services. I just can't imagine some Linux flavor ever standing head and shoulders above all other contenders in this area.
(Maybe someday I'll figure out what this funny "IT" thing means. I think it's what we used to call what the mindless data-processing drones did, and whom we all despised. It's certainly no more related to computer science than my cat is. Sounds like some kind of business degree, or sentence.)
It is fascinating because nearly everyone (except Tom Christiansen apparently) uses or has used MS software and everyone (including Tom) has an opinion about it.
My goodness! Has it really gotten that bad?
[pause for brief spotchecks with hitherto untainted colleagues in the programming field]
Nope, it's not just me. Whew. You had me scared for a minute.
The Evil Empire does not make software for me, nor for the likes of me. As they have nothing for me, and I want nothing from them, this makes my untarnished condition remarkably simple. And pleasant.
When people hear that a person, even a programmer of all people, can not only live but flourish and prosper and take daily pleasures in the joys of programming in a pristine world where the creeping shadow out of Redmond holds no power, they always remark longingly, "Boy, you sure are lucky." Perhaps, but I don't think of it that way. Luck is an accident. This is no accident.
You make your own heaven, your own hell. It's true that you can never return to a state of MS-virginity any more than can a heroin addict return to that unblemished state of never having shot up, but he doesn't have to keep doing it, either. You can establish your own sanctuary, a Microsoft-free zone. I'm told that I emanate such a field (7th Level Unix Wizard Spell: Protection from Microsoft, 10-yard radius). This is because people's MS-crudola always likes to blow up when I'm around. Then again, my bets are it would have blown up if I hadn't been there, too.:-)
You see, maintaining a certain, well, "purity of spirit" if you would, is really not so much a matter of luck, as it is one of will.
Yes, brother, you too can "Just say no" to the Bill! The first step to recovery is to admit your addiction.:-) Become the master of your own destiny. Know what you want, and live life on your own terms. You'll be a lot happier.
Maybe I lead an uncommon life. I don't know. I don't have television either, although my opposition there is significantly less vociferous. Heck, I just got back from a movie (at the cinema). But I can no more see myself turning to the Dark Side--or even being forcibly coerced into it by an imminently ex employer--than do I see myself becoming a TV ad shyster hawking hamburgers from MacDonalds (those who know me will know how truly impossible that would be).
When you start from a false premise -- as you are doing -- any conclusion you pretend to reach is meaningless. You can repeat your lie till the cows come home, and it still remains a self-serving deception that does more harm than good.
But since you choose to automumble the mad mantras we've all heard before, it's clear you can't think for yourself, so I have no more time for such trolling. Whack the Mole is not a very satisfying game.
Think of it this way: it makes no more sense to provide documentation for a GUI solely through that GUI than would it make sense to provide documentation on how to use a Braille reader only using Braille-encoded "print". In fact, it makes considerably less sense. The Winix kids have forgotten a lot of the power of Unix. Or maybe they just never learned it. Irrespective of the cause, all of us are diminished.
This will all be in an essay one of these days, and increasingly soon. I'm not sure what my essay will be called...
The Dumbing Down of Unix
Unix in the Post-Literate Age
Did Cavemen Have Windows?
(Winix = Unix) =~ s/Literacy//
The Grey Wall of the Priesthood Reincarnates in the Digital Age
Happycons Versus the Written Word: Who Wins, Who Loses
On Care and Craftsmanship in Operating Systems, or why Linux operating systems fall far short of any other Unix operating system, and how this must inevitably change.
All have their tastinesses. Meanwhile, you should read my Redhat buglist. Or the Stevenson or Scoville essays.
Do we really have to listen to this idiocy anymore? It's pure sophistry; or, if you prefer, and artful lie. It serves no useful purpose to propagate the deceipt.
As for a properly installed and completely integrated online man system, there is absolutely no reason not to do it. It precludes nothing.
I can give you a list of incoherent inanities in this regard in any Linux operating system you can name that will make you blanche. Please stop dodging the issue of carelessness and lack of craftsmanship. Just fix it. It's easy.
Gee Linux is not posix compliant, why should a Desktop Environment be?
That's a very, very poor excuse. Perhaps you are trying to retroactively justify the abominable state of Linux documentation. Why do I say that? Just because every Linux operating system I've ever looked at has had the most abyssmal and embarrassing manpage setup known to Unix.
I'll save up my essay on why this is a very very very bad thing for later. You might trick the Windows people into becomes Winix folks, but Unix people can only regard this shoddy disinterest and utter hodgepodgeness in abject horror.
I love it when the Linux apologists come out in droves to defend their sloppiness. I wish they'd spend 1/10 that much energy in cleaning up the mess they've made.
I don't like the doc format kwm installs" != "kwm is undocumented". If you gonna gripe, gripe in ways that can be reasonably understood.
What you aren't understanding is that to a Unix person, if the documentation is GUI-accessible only, it doesn't count. There are very good reasons for this, and I'm not going to take the time to go into them right now, but that's just the way it is. And it's in violation of the standard not to do it.
Winix is evil in the Jargon File sense:
Evil: adj. Both evil and rude, but with the additional connotation that the rudeness was due to malice rather than incompetence. Thus, for example: Microsoft's Windows NT is evil because it's a competent implementation of a bad design; it's rude because it's gratuitously incompatible with UNIX in places where compatibility would have been as easy and effective to do; but it's evil and rude because the incompatibilities are apparently there not to fix design bugs in UNIX but rather to lock hapless customers and developers into the Microsoft way. Hackish evil and rude is close to the mainstream sense of `evil'.
If there's a manpage for kwm, it must be installed if kwm is installed. I don't care that it's SGML-generated; that's what I did for Enlightenment, and sent the patch back in so it's part of the standard distribution and installation. And there really needs to be at least a remedial manpage, although it certainly need not be a fully-fledged tutorial, for which other and quite possibly better venues exist. See POSIX for more details on this simple and minimal requirement. Anything else is ridiculous and leads right back to the Winix quagmire.
The point on the keybinding is that only a Windows user would guess it. It rewards previous Windows experience rather than previous Unix experience. Hence Winix.
That said, window ring bindings are hardly standard, so I don't imagine there was a particulary obvious choice. Maybe the FRONT key, although that should probably just be raise, or raise-lower toggle.
Say *what*? I love getting moderated down for doing nothing wrong. Apparently some people don't understand how the karma system works. It's not my fault that I'm +2, and I should not be penalized for this.
Hmmm...you've got some good points in that post (as I would expect you, being, as you are, you, to have:)*
Was there a footnote there that I missed?
certain segment of the population who one feels would have been much happier if GUIs had never been invented
Perhaps those people exist, but I'm certainly not amongst them. I'm a big fan of screen real estate and innovative use of the same.
Then again, I really do wish that the idea of caveman-style point-and-grunt wordless happycons with no textual alternative or perspective had never been invented. It's like extolling hieroglyphics and ideograms over text. How do I search a happycon? How do I sort/alphabetize them? Ever tried to look up a word in a Chinese dictionary? Not fun at all, and I think you can see why. Being forced to learn a new set of random squiggly hieroglyphics for each program is hardly what I call would call progress. It's anti-progress, but I guess that should come as little surprise in this post-literate society.
And yes, I know that a happycon is supposed to be language neutral. Guess what? It often isn't, and even if it should be language-neutral, it's virtually never culturaly neutral. Tell me, how do you do message catalogues for happycons? See the problem? You could do it for text. It's not just for the disabled, unless of course you consider those whose first language isn't English to be disabled.:-)
That's actually rather important, since that is one area in which Windows literally kicks X's ass in a very literal way, making Unix geeks look like a bunch of unenlightened shitheads. It's embarrassing.
Well, you're assuming that X==Unix. I'd say that Unix itself is highly friendly toward the, oh what's the way I'm supposed to say this now?, "differently enabled", I imagine. Think Braille, message catalogues, etc.
I really do think it was Card who said that of Wolfe, but I have no idea where I read it, so of course could be engaging in, um, fabular reconstruction.:-)
I can imagine you taking glee in the confusion of new students as they first try to use those Sparc machines running twm.
And what confusion would that be? If they want Windows, they know where to find it. If they want MTV, they know where to find that. And if they want epilepsy-triggering fugues on a theme by Wired Magazine, doubtless they know where to find that as well, 'though for my sanity, it's something I strenuously avoid. Why would I want to inflect such misery on the unwary? What did they do to deserve the pain?
Slashdot Mirror
As in the cases mentioned in the parent article, companies make proprietary hardware with a proprietary interface that only runs with their proprietary binary which only runs on Microsoft systems. The proprietor feels that its his property, and he's done what he wants with it to recoup is investment. I understand that. But the network effect strikes again, and we're screwed.
If no vendor could create hardware with complete closed specs and Microsoft-only code, this would help a lot. But I can't see that the current MS-DOJ case could require that, since it's not a penalty to be imposed on the Evil Empire. It's all the myriad little companies nursing off their teat that are doing this to us. I don't know what kind of mechanism to fix this there could be that wouldn't be too overreaching.
I was just wondering whether anyone knows what happened to all those. BSD no longer seems to come with them by default. And at least on the open flavor of the same, I see no /usr/ports/lang/pascal directory.
Hey, wait a second. Isn't this what the Java folks keep waiting for? :-)/2
Er, um, technically speaking, unzip isn't very Unixy, more DOSlike. Even the Unix ports act very non-Unix-like in their noisiness. But of course, it wouldn't be as funny without it.
In time, I'll trouble myself to elaborate these themes into something even Windows people might chance to understand. Maybe then we'll have less Winix and more Unix. One can only hope.
Unix isn't about Perl.
And technology isn't about Bill Gates.
Got that? Good.
And while I'm at it, discussion isn't about argumentum ad hominem. Trolling at people just because they've got a name you recognize is an old sport, but hardly sporting.
You have a distinct style of changing the subject toward irrelevant strawmen, expecting people to waste time on something that wasn't even being discussed. Whether you're being an idiot or devious, it's a chump play. It takes no courage to do so as a coward. Use a real name next time, and maybe you'll get a real answer.
Anyway, let's look at this "familiarity" thing. Why are professional programmers and other power users in scientific, research, and academic situations more apt to use Unix than are people in non-technical positions? Once we dispense with the sound technical reasons, plain old familiarity is the remaining answer. Power users, professional programmers, and related geeks have historically been exposed during their critical, formative years to Unix systems at university. That's what we're used to, so that's what we're most productive with. And those are the sectors where we tended to land jobs, so that's what we brought with us. As we moved into purchasing roles, or even advisory ones, we knew what we wanted. The importance of how universities fostered the Unix mindset (tool-and-filter resuable component philososphy, simpler is better, separate privileges, infinite configurability and hookability, full source access, etc.) in this set of technologists cannot be understated. This customs and comforts of our original experiences with computers forged our utlimate worldview, one that as much rejected IBM and their drones then as it rejects Microsoft and their drones today.
In the early 80s, while I was first fiddling around with BSD running on PDP-11s and later VAX-11s (with complete source, mind you; what a difference that made!), those same computers at less research-oriented or technology-oriented institutions were still running their original proprietary DEC operating systems--as did my high school, where we had RSTS/E to play with. If you went to UW-Madison, you got DEC hardware running Unix. If you went to a smaller, more business-oriented school (or my high school; sigh) you got the same computers running closed systems instead. They were grooming aye-tee professionals, after all, not programmers. :-(
In the the boring, cravat-choked business world where once we had IBM, MVS, IBM mainframes, Cobol, and DP-drones doing 3270 screen layout, we now have in their respective slots Microsoft, WinXX, IBM PCs, BASIC, and IT drones doing CGI screen layout. Well, some things haven't changed all that much, eh? :-)
It concerns me to see students receiving degrees in MCS, ECE, and yes, even CS without anything but Microsoft experiences. Yes, it's really happening. I've seen schools, colleges, and even universities where that's all the students see.
The students produced have no under-the-hood experience. They don't have source code. They don't know how to go from a directory of C source code and turn that into an installed program. All they know about is buying "applications". They aren't used to rearranging their operating systems to suit their needs. They aren't used to remote administration or complete automation. They're used to using MS-this and MS-that, even for programming. They're used to pushing cutesy hieroglyphic happycons. They're used to traversing seventeen levels of menus vgrep-style in a futile hunt-and-peck. And of course, they're accustomed to doing repetitive tasks again and again and again redundantly and repetivively.
This is what they expect. This is what they want. This is what they demand. And if you expect to "win over their desktops", you'll have to give it to them. And thereby infernally frustrate the rest of us.
And these are next generation of so-called computer people. Be very afraid. I know I am. Go to your educational institutions, from junior high schools on, and show them Another Way. The Jesuits were right, and Bill Gates knows this.
First of all, Perl is not a `product'. That's MBA talk. Perl is a program. Sometimes it's a toy. Sometimes it's a joy. Sometimes it's a way of life. :-)
What is seeping through around the edges is the same discomfort you would see if you stuck a quiet math major into a vat full of business majors or jocks.
As a kid, I always threw out the sports section and the business section of the paper, sight unseen. It was the science and technology sections, and magazine, which appealed to me. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I'd now find more the stuff about computers in the business section than the science section. And yes, I do keep the business section now -- it's got Dilbert on the front page. :-)
You'll find that amongst hard-core programmers--those for whom programming is a game, computers a toy, and who see computer science as having no more to do with computers than has astronomy to do with telescopes--the whole business thing is often an annoyance. Experience constantly shows that programmers as a group mistrust business people in general, especially marketing and sales types, whose job programmers perceive as lying. If you expect to be taken seriously by a programmer, you don't show up in a suit and tie. This strong mutual dislike makes it very hard to run certain kinds of business, but keeping engineering in a different building than marketing certainly helps. :-)
There are some folks who do computers because they're trying to make a buck. You know the types. "MIS majors", people who are on their way to MBAs. They seem computers as a means to an end: money. These are folks whose idea of a career in computers leads to some sales job or managerial position.
Real programmers also see computers as a means to an end. It's a complete different end. And most of us think it's just nifty that we get paid to do what we'd just be doing anyway for fun. Yes, the different end is to have fun programming. It's not something I expect business people to empathize with very much.
Remember the old joke:
If you haven't known "IT pro-fess-ion-als" who were mindless drones, then you are a lucky, lucky man. We used to call them secretaries, librarians, or data entry clerks. Now they're "IT professionals". Give me a break.One of these misunderstandings is about "BSD's AT&T roots". I hope you understand that BSD doesn't have any AT&T code. You're thinking of the "bogging down" of the AT&T-fuelled FUD during the lawsuit days. What BSD does have is decades worth of highyl refined software engineering. You just don't have that in Linux, or most of it. Sometimes it shows. But time should smooth even those rough edges, and faster this time around.
The next misunderstanding is about the Linuxes having "all their own code". What they have, by and large, is rather new code. Sometimes this is good, and sometimes it isn't. And the part of their code which isn't new tends to derive from the BSD project, anyway. :-) And the Linux kernel, at least, certainly has Bell Labs roots: the API is still Unix, just like BSD and so many other operating systems variously loved and hated.
You're right in that it doesn't matter which flavor of Unix wins. Unix is Unix. Granted, I'd personally be a lot less happy stuck on AIX, Irix, or HP/UX than I would on BSD, Linux, or SunOS (in that order), but it would be infinitely better than any of the populist non-Unix systems that are out there. I'm sure we'd all agree on that.
But wait a second. Wins what? I'm trying to figure out what is meant by this whole "Battle of the Desktop" notion. Since I've always run nothing but Unix on my desktop, and so have my friends, and so do nearly everybody I nkow from the government, research, and educational labs in my immediate vicinity, this has a very odd sound.
What appears to be meant here by "desktop" is the desktop of people who don't program, people who by and large don't really understand or like computers. Certainly Unix provides a more programmer-friendly desktop environment, but a lot of folks aren't friendly with programmers. But it also provides a flexible substructure with which to apply idiot-friendly veneers. Of course, programmers have never seen much point in doing this. But idiots, users, and other non-(computer-)professionals have money, and so people who are trying to sell systems to idiots have a vested interest in doing this.
I'm not entirely sure what I think of this idea. I don't know about the real viability of this whole "make the masses use Unix" idea. I could argue most any direction on it. Yes, it's a better base. But Unix is a professional system, made by programmers for programmers. I'm not sure that non-programmers are ever going to be enamoured of our idiosyncratic charms.
But you know what? I don't really care all that much about what non-programmers are doing. Like most people, my initial concerns are for my own world. Is it something I'm familiar with? Can I get what I want to do done? Does it make me happy? Is there a risk of that going away? I'm sure the non-programmers feel the same way.
So when you say "the battle of the desktop", you're not talking about my desktop. I'm running Unix in various flavors there. I always have, and I can't imagine that changing. No, You're actually talking about the attempt to imitate a {non,anti}-Unix system enough to make non-programmers happy. To do that, you need to make sure that they can get done what they want to get done; you need to make something that they're familiar with, which means you have to copy Microsoft. I'm not very interested in that, but I can see why some people are, whether for economic or geek-ego reasons -- which, mind you, I'm not saying are bad.
Finally, as for "Linux having more for the desktop than BSD", I've no idea what you mean there. My only guess, which is probably wrong, is that you might mean "Linux is better at making non-programmers feel like their still running Microsoft stuff?". If so, I don't know why programmers care, so that must not be what you mean.
I've got both systems various BSDs and various Linuxes. Both classes of machine run exactly the same things. I don't know what you've got that runs on Linuxes that doesn't run on BSD, but it must not be something that I care about, because I've never noticed such a thing. :-)
For me, the BSD systems end up being a lot easier to manage (sidenote: nonprogrammers often can't even manage their own general-purpose computers, and issue that can't be underestimated) than the Linuxes are, and are in general a lot more comfortable for me personally. To my critical eye, they're more refined, robust, integrated, complete, and friendly. For me. I'm sure the Microsoft people say the same things about their systems. Familiarity is important, and I've been playing with BSD for longer than some of you have been alive. I've seen it develop and grow, evolve through decades of hard work by smart people constantly making it better. Because I've watched this happen, it's all very familiar to me. That may be the most dominating factor here.
The ISPs I know all use some BSD flavor for their mail and DNS services. I just can't imagine some Linux flavor ever standing head and shoulders above all other contenders in this area.
(Maybe someday I'll figure out what this funny "IT" thing means. I think it's what we used to call what the mindless data-processing drones did, and whom we all despised. It's certainly no more related to computer science than my cat is. Sounds like some kind of business degree, or sentence.)
[pause for brief spotchecks with hitherto untainted colleagues in the programming field]
Nope, it's not just me. Whew. You had me scared for a minute.
The Evil Empire does not make software for me, nor for the likes of me. As they have nothing for me, and I want nothing from them, this makes my untarnished condition remarkably simple. And pleasant.
When people hear that a person, even a programmer of all people, can not only live but flourish and prosper and take daily pleasures in the joys of programming in a pristine world where the creeping shadow out of Redmond holds no power, they always remark longingly, "Boy, you sure are lucky." Perhaps, but I don't think of it that way. Luck is an accident. This is no accident.
You make your own heaven, your own hell. It's true that you can never return to a state of MS-virginity any more than can a heroin addict return to that unblemished state of never having shot up, but he doesn't have to keep doing it, either. You can establish your own sanctuary, a Microsoft-free zone. I'm told that I emanate such a field (7th Level Unix Wizard Spell: Protection from Microsoft, 10-yard radius). This is because people's MS-crudola always likes to blow up when I'm around. Then again, my bets are it would have blown up if I hadn't been there, too. :-)
You see, maintaining a certain, well, "purity of spirit" if you would, is really not so much a matter of luck, as it is one of will.
Sheer,
indominable,
unyielding,
uncompromising,
pervicacious
will!
Yes, brother, you too can "Just say no" to the Bill! The first step to recovery is to admit your addiction. :-) Become the master of your own destiny. Know what you want, and live life on your own terms. You'll be a lot happier.
Maybe I lead an uncommon life. I don't know. I don't have television either, although my opposition there is significantly less vociferous. Heck, I just got back from a movie (at the cinema). But I can no more see myself turning to the Dark Side--or even being forcibly coerced into it by an imminently ex employer--than do I see myself becoming a TV ad shyster hawking hamburgers from MacDonalds (those who know me will know how truly impossible that would be).
Not on my watch, Captain.
But since you choose to automumble the mad mantras we've all heard before, it's clear you can't think for yourself, so I have no more time for such trolling. Whack the Mole is not a very satisfying game.
This will all be in an essay one of these days, and increasingly soon. I'm not sure what my essay will be called...
- The Dumbing Down of Unix
- Unix in the Post-Literate Age
- Did Cavemen Have Windows?
- (Winix = Unix) =~ s/Literacy//
- The Grey Wall of the Priesthood Reincarnates in the Digital Age
- Happycons Versus the Written Word: Who Wins, Who Loses
- On Care and Craftsmanship in Operating Systems, or why Linux operating systems fall far short of any other Unix operating system, and how this must inevitably change.
All have their tastinesses. Meanwhile, you should read my Redhat buglist. Or the Stevenson or Scoville essays.As for a properly installed and completely integrated online man system, there is absolutely no reason not to do it. It precludes nothing.
I can give you a list of incoherent inanities in this regard in any Linux operating system you can name that will make you blanche. Please stop dodging the issue of carelessness and lack of craftsmanship. Just fix it. It's easy.
I'll save up my essay on why this is a very very very bad thing for later. You might trick the Windows people into becomes Winix folks, but Unix people can only regard this shoddy disinterest and utter hodgepodgeness in abject horror.
I love it when the Linux apologists come out in droves to defend their sloppiness. I wish they'd spend 1/10 that much energy in cleaning up the mess they've made.
Winix is evil in the Jargon File sense:
"They refuse to listen"? How odd. All it takes is a simple demonstration of Cantor's diagonalization approach, and there you have it.
The point on the keybinding is that only a Windows user would guess it. It rewards previous Windows experience rather than previous Unix experience. Hence Winix.
That said, window ring bindings are hardly standard, so I don't imagine there was a particulary obvious choice. Maybe the FRONT key, although that should probably just be raise, or raise-lower toggle.
Say *what*? I love getting moderated down for doing nothing wrong. Apparently some people don't understand how the karma system works. It's not my fault that I'm +2, and I should not be penalized for this.
Then again, I really do wish that the idea of caveman-style point-and-grunt wordless happycons with no textual alternative or perspective had never been invented. It's like extolling hieroglyphics and ideograms over text. How do I search a happycon? How do I sort/alphabetize them? Ever tried to look up a word in a Chinese dictionary? Not fun at all, and I think you can see why. Being forced to learn a new set of random squiggly hieroglyphics for each program is hardly what I call would call progress. It's anti-progress, but I guess that should come as little surprise in this post-literate society.
And yes, I know that a happycon is supposed to be language neutral. Guess what? It often isn't, and even if it should be language-neutral, it's virtually never culturaly neutral. Tell me, how do you do message catalogues for happycons? See the problem? You could do it for text. It's not just for the disabled, unless of course you consider those whose first language isn't English to be disabled. :-)
Well, you're assuming that X==Unix. I'd say that Unix itself is highly friendly toward the, oh what's the way I'm supposed to say this now?, "differently enabled", I imagine. Think Braille, message catalogues, etc.I really do think it was Card who said that of Wolfe, but I have no idea where I read it, so of course could be engaging in, um, fabular reconstruction. :-)