I guess your not an emacs user? Well, neither am I, but it's in LISP.
On a more serious note though, I'm increasingly finding myself using functional-like contructs or desiring them. For instance, lambda functions would make C++'s foreach algorithm (part of the STL) infinitly more useful. Considering I don't use it at all right now, that would be nice.
/usr/local/ was used for EVERYTHING, hunting down where anything gets installed became a huge task even worse than redhats/opt/.
So first you say that/usr/local is used for EVERYTHING, then complain you don't know where ANYTHING is? Well, hmm, maybe it's in.../usr/local? Nah. Too simple. Docs? How about/usr/local/share/docs (or something similar).
BSD layout is simple,/usr/ for SYSTEM stuff, ie anything not in ports,/usr/local/ for everything else. And I use Debian at work (not by choice, I like software that isn't 3 years old). No easier to use in my opinion.
And babysit installs?? What on earth do you do to your installs? Really! I've never done anything to my installs other than modify some config files. Nice troll.
Nope, it certainly is computable, as far as theory of computation goes. Although you can certainly say that we don't have anything that can actually compute the game tree enough to *solve* chess. You can even hypothesis that it might not be physically possible to build such a computer no matter how advanced we are due to limitations of the universe itself. But it most certainly is theoretically computable. I can easily write an algorithm to compute it. It would simply not finish in a long long long time. And human's can't *solve* chess either, we simply have better heuristics (And ironcially, we don't know what those heuristics are).
Anyhow, chess is still not advanced as you might think. In some scientific studies they found that good chess players simply memorized different layouts and positions. They don't so much think creativly as they rely on tons of previous experience.
You do have a point there, and in many ways I feel sorry for the soldiers sent out to do some of the less savory tasks that the government creates.
But more on topic, I still think it's wrong to lure people into a very serious career by making a game out of it. War is not a game, and actually being in the Army is not like the America's Army game which conveniently leaves out the unpleasentness of the job. If people enter the Army, they should do so knowing full well what it is, what it means, what it does, and that it will not be *fun*.
I don't think anyone in there right mind would suggest that the army of any country be disbanded. But the job should also be treated with a seriousness and respect, and making a recruting game just reeks of sleazyness and trickery.
So these young kids enter the army because that think they will be "leet sniper d00d" just like in the game? That's not the right reason to join.
Yup... your country sure protected us from all those eeevil weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Your country also really really helped the people of Cambodia by helping the maniac Polpot into power. (I don't imagine your educated enough to know who Polpot was, let's just say he makes Saddam look like Santa and Hitler like the tooth fairy)
Your army did a great job training Osama bin Laden too! Although I must admit, you didn't train Saddam well enough. Yep, your country is full of saits! GO ARMY!
In all seriousness the US army has also done a lot of good, but that does not give you the right to go bashing others for wanting peace rather than war. And no, oil is not a good cause for war.
You just spew some shit that you want to steal MY work and use it in ways I NEVER intended. I own the software NOT you, and you either abide by my rules or dont use it at all. Fuckhead.
Judging by your language I figure your probably a 15 year old brat who's never written even a line of code, but I feel like responding out of the fun of it.
First, I never said I wanted to use your code. In fact, if you read my post again, you'll see that I said I did not want to you your code. So chill. I don't care if you want to release things as GPL, that's your business. In some cases it can make sense even.
But it's still a license that has very specific restrictions. What I have a problem with is this religous zeal associated with the license embodied by the 'Free' business. It's not free. If anything it's a form of barter.
And if you don't want certain people to use your end program, maybe you should have chosen a proprietary license? You really don't seem to be embracing your beloved license very well.
I think people have a problem with the GPL because it forces them to share, something we all learned was good when we were five and then forgot when we grew up and became selfish.
That is precisly the problem with the GPL. I don't want to be forced to share. It has nothing to do with being selfish though. I do create BSD licensed code, a very unselfish act. But I also create proprietary code. Why? Because I feel that some code is worth money. I'm not forcing people to buy code. Just as you don't share your thankgiving dinner with every homeless person who knocks on your door, you shouldn't be forced to share *all* your code.
If you do want to give something away, why do you require repayment in the form of code or distribution? If someone merges your code into another program, it doesn't change the status of the code that you wrote. That code is still free. Now you are requiring someone elses code also be given out free. That is the nature of the GPL. You are not sharing, what you are doing is form of barter. "You can use my code, as long as you give me your code." Back before we had money, that was how business was done. It is in no way "Free" though. Stallmans 'Free' doctrine is very convincing, but it is ultimatly very misleading. He's managed to rename an old system of barter with the term 'Free', which has much positive meaning in our society. Unfortunatly, Stallman's 'Free' is not a dictionary word and therefore is ultimatly misleading.
The GPL is very much a contract that put restrictions on the code. You can call it 'Free' all you want, but it doesn't change what it is.
Wow. I don't know what to say. Nice religous speech.
Really, not everyone thinks like you. Why a proprietary end product? Because, I like to make money and if people pay for it, it's clearly worth the money I charge. The only exceptions to this rule are for companies that have monopolies.
As for lower level libraries, those are not that hard to make, and therefore probably should be free. But not the FSFs twisted version of free. Rather, the dictionary definition that the rest of the world goes on.
I'm sure you believe in your rightous morals, but honestly, the much of the rest of the world doesn't. When you say the software is free, people think free as in the dictionary word, or as in BSD or public domain style code.
In fact, this FSF version of free could be largely responsible for people not understanding the GPL and therefore not abiding by it. If you call it 'GPL' software, people might think twice about what they can do with it and will probably read the license.
With the GPL, the competition and customers either have to follow the rules and release the derivative works that they distribute with your code, or they have to come to you to buy a commercial license that lets them out of the GPL obligations.
Right, and this is why many people don't consider GPL code to be at all free, in any sense of the word. If I'm looking for some code to help me develop something faster and I see GPL code, I right away think, "Oh, this is GPL" rather than "Oh, this is free".
Personally, I'd sooner rewrite a basic library and release it BSD than use GPL software. Of course, this is probably because I prefer the middle ground of free basic software libraries, but commercial end programs. Of course, if an end program is fairly simple, then even that I figure should probably be BSD based.
Anways, I don't think people dislike the GPL becasue it is bad for companies, rather that the GPL is heralded as "Free Free Free" when it's really not.
True, but a basic understanding of electricity really doesn't equip one that well with working with wires. I know the first time that I tried to strip a wire it was quite difficult for instance. And if the wires are not spliced properly with some sort of protective covering (at least electrical tape) it could be a fire hazzard.
Theory and practise can be very different sometimes. Any geek that tries to rewire their house should definatly go read some material that explains the practical dos and don'ts.
Also, there are many regulations that need to be met. For instance I think the kitchen and stove needs an exclusive circuit or something. The bathroom also needs special outlets. In fact, there is a good chance that some of these apartments are wired illegaly if the stove can cause your the circiut that your computer is on to blow.
And finally, a geek who is renting (most students do) is probably not even *allowed* to go messing with the building's electricity and could get in some trouble if they do.
All in all, it's a pretty dangerous recommendation to make. I'd recommend that people talk to their land lord first. And *if* they are allowed to make modifications (and their land lord doesn't have to or won't), *then* make sure they read up on regulations, the practise of splicing wires, and really study the cirtuit layout. And adding a totally new circuit, well, I don't have any clue how one would go about doing that officially. I'm sure there must be rules.
So the moral of the story: when you don't have enough outlets, make more. As a geek you have a instinctive understanding of electricity.
Umm. This is a dangerous suggestion man. Geeks may have an understanding of electricity, but certainly not instinctive. Unless a geek is an engineer or physics major, they probably shouldn't go fooling with building circuitry.
Then again, if we rid the world of a bunch of geeks, then there will be less competition for those tech jobs eh?
I seem to remember reading about this. I think it was in the same ballpark as those new energy devices. As in not real science.
Fusion is undergoing serious research, and when we say fusion reactor, we mean a device which uses fusion to produce usable electricity. Regardless of whether these amature fusion devices actually fuse anything, the don't produce power and likely never will.
Hence, they are not fusion rectors in the normal sense.
Coincidence really. And the GPL tends to make selfish and/or anti-corporate types happy too.
Of course, if you mean "to the none geek crowd", then it's most definatly simply the fact that media picked up on Linux and not BSD. Therefore companies picked Linux instead of BSD in order to ride the free media hype.
Of course, I don't like Linux and think it's been waaaay over hyped, so I'm probably biased.
When the next Linux worm comes out you can be sure you'll here me say:
Because I hate OSS folk for being so arrogant and stuck up and *still* letting this happen.
Because I don't want an untested patch that could break my mission critical server, and I don't want to risk recompiling parts of a very complex system myself. There is *no evidence* that open source software is at all better than propietary software in real world applications.
Because I hate OSS zealots, period, they suck (and don't know basic grammar either).
Don't think it'll happen to Linux? Just wait till Linux gets the features of OSs like Windows and OS X. It's easy to secure a system with few features, but much much harder to secure a complex but flexible system with many many features.
It's people like you that give the OSS community a bad image, namely that of a snotty 15 year old brat.
Unless your referring to the incomplete Debian/NetBSD, it most certainly is not GNU/BSD. BSD has it's own userland binaries, unlike Linux distributions which contain mostly GNU based userland binaries.
I'm NOT an Apple zealot or apologist, I actually like Linux more than OS X (and don't like Windows at all) and have used Linux for far more than I used OS X.
Actually, from the above you sound a lot like a Linux Apologist. Grovelling in front of the community for daring to critise the holy Linux.
Actually, it's more like looking at a kit-car. Sure, it beats the original ford cars no problem. But since then ford has now got *automatic*, *awd*, etc etc.
That kit-car is now just getting awd, independent suspension, etc. But some of it is donated by the big companies, and it still doesn't have automatic or any sort of standards since anyone can put it together differently and sell it to you.
Linux is just not interesting. Nothing in Linux is at all new or different. All the big unix features it's getting are already around and have been for some time. So it's not *interesting*.
It may be functional, effecient, even well designed. But it just isn't new and interesting.
I think this is one of the most promising new OS (or OS varient if you want to be picky). Personally, I can't wait for the package management system to get set up. Eventually, you will be able to run DBSD with binary only upgrades and installs. Should be cool.
Ports are great, but damn does my p2 400 dislike hours and hours of compiling.:)
Well, first off, Darl McBride shows that he *completely* misses the distinction of free-as-in-speech Free Software and reduces the GPL to Free Beer.
Actually, I think he get's the idea of the GPL perfectly fine. Let me quote:
Giving away a UNIX-like OS for free isn't a problem. What is a problem is giving away UNIX or pieces of it when you don't own it.
So he has no problems with Free-beer style software. He has problems with the GPL. He also said that the GPL can be fine, "if it's modified to be more business freindly".
For some more insight into Darl let me again quote:
Roughly one million lines of code. 20% of the Linux kernel. BSD is in a clear legal environment. There are dozens of protected BSD files that have made there way into Linux.
He admits that BSD is in the clear legally, at least according to the original settlment. He also admits that some files in BSD remain protected. The copyright must still be associated with UNIX ware on these files. Did anyone notice the original copyright rule for BSD software? And did anyone notice that BSD software is also more 'business friendly'? Maybe these were necessary for the settlement.
At any rate, I think the above show that Darl has a much better understanding of the issues than most of the peanut gallery here at slashdot. As I've said all along, the court case could be interesting and worth paying attention to.
Well, code specific to a physics project is not likely to be reused anywhere since it's likely very specific to the project. And beowulf clusters are so overrated it's not even funny.
In real life people use MPI, PVM, or similar technologies to write parrallel programs for clusters. The cluster nodes can actually be running almost anything, even Windows, although no one really uses Windows.
I'm not aware of this NASA project related to Beowulf stuff, but I can tell you that I've the only time I've ever seen Beowulf stuff in research was when some grad student was using because he liked it. The general consensus from the other researchers was "yeah, he's doing... but I don't know what beowulf has to do with it".
Anyways, a lot of science software is open ource or at least free for use by nonacademics. It always has been. If anything, there is now a trend in science to *close* the source for things. Why? Researchers get IP rights these days, and selling software to companies can make them lots of money.
Besides, the original poster said Linux, not open source software. And my question was really about Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
hardy har har :)
I guess your not an emacs user? Well, neither am I, but it's in LISP.
On a more serious note though, I'm increasingly finding myself using functional-like contructs or desiring them. For instance, lambda functions would make C++'s foreach algorithm (part of the STL) infinitly more useful. Considering I don't use it at all right now, that would be nice.
/usr/local/ was used for EVERYTHING, hunting down where anything gets installed became a huge task even worse than redhats /opt/.
/usr/local is used for EVERYTHING, then complain you don't know where ANYTHING is? Well, hmm, maybe it's in... /usr/local? Nah. Too simple. Docs? How about /usr/local/share/docs (or something similar).
/usr/ for SYSTEM stuff, ie anything not in ports, /usr/local/ for everything else. And I use Debian at work (not by choice, I like software that isn't 3 years old). No easier to use in my opinion.
So first you say that
BSD layout is simple,
And babysit installs?? What on earth do you do to your installs? Really! I've never done anything to my installs other than modify some config files. Nice troll.
Nope, it certainly is computable, as far as theory of computation goes. Although you can certainly say that we don't have anything that can actually compute the game tree enough to *solve* chess. You can even hypothesis that it might not be physically possible to build such a computer no matter how advanced we are due to limitations of the universe itself. But it most certainly is theoretically computable. I can easily write an algorithm to compute it. It would simply not finish in a long long long time. And human's can't *solve* chess either, we simply have better heuristics (And ironcially, we don't know what those heuristics are).
Anyhow, chess is still not advanced as you might think. In some scientific studies they found that good chess players simply memorized different layouts and positions. They don't so much think creativly as they rely on tons of previous experience.
You do have a point there, and in many ways I feel sorry for the soldiers sent out to do some of the less savory tasks that the government creates.
But more on topic, I still think it's wrong to lure people into a very serious career by making a game out of it. War is not a game, and actually being in the Army is not like the America's Army game which conveniently leaves out the unpleasentness of the job. If people enter the Army, they should do so knowing full well what it is, what it means, what it does, and that it will not be *fun*.
I don't think anyone in there right mind would suggest that the army of any country be disbanded. But the job should also be treated with a seriousness and respect, and making a recruting game just reeks of sleazyness and trickery.
So these young kids enter the army because that think they will be "leet sniper d00d" just like in the game? That's not the right reason to join.
Yup... your country sure protected us from all those eeevil weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Your country also really really helped the people of Cambodia by helping the maniac Polpot into power. (I don't imagine your educated enough to know who Polpot was, let's just say he makes Saddam look like Santa and Hitler like the tooth fairy)
Your army did a great job training Osama bin Laden too! Although I must admit, you didn't train Saddam well enough. Yep, your country is full of saits! GO ARMY!
In all seriousness the US army has also done a lot of good, but that does not give you the right to go bashing others for wanting peace rather than war. And no, oil is not a good cause for war.
You just spew some shit that you want to steal MY work and use it in ways I NEVER intended.
I own the software NOT you, and you either abide by my rules or dont use it at all. Fuckhead.
Judging by your language I figure your probably a 15 year old brat who's never written even a line of code, but I feel like responding out of the fun of it.
First, I never said I wanted to use your code. In fact, if you read my post again, you'll see that I said I did not want to you your code. So chill. I don't care if you want to release things as GPL, that's your business. In some cases it can make sense even.
But it's still a license that has very specific restrictions. What I have a problem with is this religous zeal associated with the license embodied by the 'Free' business. It's not free. If anything it's a form of barter.
And if you don't want certain people to use your end program, maybe you should have chosen a proprietary license? You really don't seem to be embracing your beloved license very well.
I think people have a problem with the GPL because it forces them to share, something we all learned was good when we were five and then forgot when we grew up and became selfish.
That is precisly the problem with the GPL. I don't want to be forced to share. It has nothing to do with being selfish though. I do create BSD licensed code, a very unselfish act. But I also create proprietary code. Why? Because I feel that some code is worth money. I'm not forcing people to buy code. Just as you don't share your thankgiving dinner with every homeless person who knocks on your door, you shouldn't be forced to share *all* your code.
If you do want to give something away, why do you require repayment in the form of code or distribution? If someone merges your code into another program, it doesn't change the status of the code that you wrote. That code is still free. Now you are requiring someone elses code also be given out free. That is the nature of the GPL. You are not sharing, what you are doing is form of barter. "You can use my code, as long as you give me your code." Back before we had money, that was how business was done. It is in no way "Free" though. Stallmans 'Free' doctrine is very convincing, but it is ultimatly very misleading. He's managed to rename an old system of barter with the term 'Free', which has much positive meaning in our society. Unfortunatly, Stallman's 'Free' is not a dictionary word and therefore is ultimatly misleading.
The GPL is very much a contract that put restrictions on the code. You can call it 'Free' all you want, but it doesn't change what it is.
Wow. I don't know what to say. Nice religous speech.
Really, not everyone thinks like you. Why a proprietary end product? Because, I like to make money and if people pay for it, it's clearly worth the money I charge. The only exceptions to this rule are for companies that have monopolies.
As for lower level libraries, those are not that hard to make, and therefore probably should be free. But not the FSFs twisted version of free. Rather, the dictionary definition that the rest of the world goes on.
I'm sure you believe in your rightous morals, but honestly, the much of the rest of the world doesn't. When you say the software is free, people think free as in the dictionary word, or as in BSD or public domain style code.
In fact, this FSF version of free could be largely responsible for people not understanding the GPL and therefore not abiding by it. If you call it 'GPL' software, people might think twice about what they can do with it and will probably read the license.
With the GPL, the competition and customers either have to follow the rules and release the derivative works that they distribute with your code, or they have to come to you to buy a commercial license that lets them out of the GPL obligations.
Right, and this is why many people don't consider GPL code to be at all free, in any sense of the word. If I'm looking for some code to help me develop something faster and I see GPL code, I right away think, "Oh, this is GPL" rather than "Oh, this is free".
Personally, I'd sooner rewrite a basic library and release it BSD than use GPL software. Of course, this is probably because I prefer the middle ground of free basic software libraries, but commercial end programs. Of course, if an end program is fairly simple, then even that I figure should probably be BSD based.
Anways, I don't think people dislike the GPL becasue it is bad for companies, rather that the GPL is heralded as "Free Free Free" when it's really not.
True, but a basic understanding of electricity really doesn't equip one that well with working with wires. I know the first time that I tried to strip a wire it was quite difficult for instance. And if the wires are not spliced properly with some sort of protective covering (at least electrical tape) it could be a fire hazzard.
Theory and practise can be very different sometimes. Any geek that tries to rewire their house should definatly go read some material that explains the practical dos and don'ts.
Also, there are many regulations that need to be met. For instance I think the kitchen and stove needs an exclusive circuit or something. The bathroom also needs special outlets. In fact, there is a good chance that some of these apartments are wired illegaly if the stove can cause your the circiut that your computer is on to blow.
And finally, a geek who is renting (most students do) is probably not even *allowed* to go messing with the building's electricity and could get in some trouble if they do.
All in all, it's a pretty dangerous recommendation to make. I'd recommend that people talk to their land lord first. And *if* they are allowed to make modifications (and their land lord doesn't have to or won't), *then* make sure they read up on regulations, the practise of splicing wires, and really study the cirtuit layout. And adding a totally new circuit, well, I don't have any clue how one would go about doing that officially. I'm sure there must be rules.
So the moral of the story: when you don't have enough outlets, make more. As a geek you have a instinctive understanding of electricity.
Umm. This is a dangerous suggestion man. Geeks may have an understanding of electricity, but certainly not instinctive. Unless a geek is an engineer or physics major, they probably shouldn't go fooling with building circuitry.
Then again, if we rid the world of a bunch of geeks, then there will be less competition for those tech jobs eh?
Weasly idea. Good one.
I seem to remember reading about this. I think it was in the same ballpark as those new energy devices. As in not real science.
Fusion is undergoing serious research, and when we say fusion reactor, we mean a device which uses fusion to produce usable electricity. Regardless of whether these amature fusion devices actually fuse anything, the don't produce power and likely never will.
Hence, they are not fusion rectors in the normal sense.
Ah, sarcasm is hard to determine with just text. :)
I'm glad there are others who see the OSS community for what it really is.
Coincidence really. And the GPL tends to make selfish and/or anti-corporate types happy too.
Of course, if you mean "to the none geek crowd", then it's most definatly simply the fact that media picked up on Linux and not BSD. Therefore companies picked Linux instead of BSD in order to ride the free media hype.
Of course, I don't like Linux and think it's been waaaay over hyped, so I'm probably biased.
Don't think it'll happen to Linux? Just wait till Linux gets the features of OSs like Windows and OS X. It's easy to secure a system with few features, but much much harder to secure a complex but flexible system with many many features.
It's people like you that give the OSS community a bad image, namely that of a snotty 15 year old brat.
GNU/BSD?
Unless your referring to the incomplete Debian/NetBSD, it most certainly is not GNU/BSD. BSD has it's own userland binaries, unlike Linux distributions which contain mostly GNU based userland binaries.
I'm NOT an Apple zealot or apologist, I actually like Linux more than OS X (and don't like Windows at all) and have used Linux for far more than I used OS X.
Actually, from the above you sound a lot like a Linux Apologist. Grovelling in front of the community for daring to critise the holy Linux.
Actually, it's more like looking at a kit-car. Sure, it beats the original ford cars no problem. But since then ford has now got *automatic*, *awd*, etc etc.
That kit-car is now just getting awd, independent suspension, etc. But some of it is donated by the big companies, and it still doesn't have automatic or any sort of standards since anyone can put it together differently and sell it to you.
Linux is just not interesting. Nothing in Linux is at all new or different. All the big unix features it's getting are already around and have been for some time. So it's not *interesting*.
It may be functional, effecient, even well designed. But it just isn't new and interesting.
Go touch the core of your P2 when it's working and it'll talk through you. Its a very intense experience. ;)
I think this is one of the most promising new OS (or OS varient if you want to be picky). Personally, I can't wait for the package management system to get set up. Eventually, you will be able to run DBSD with binary only upgrades and installs. Should be cool.
:)
Ports are great, but damn does my p2 400 dislike hours and hours of compiling.
Well, first off, Darl McBride shows that he *completely* misses the distinction of free-as-in-speech Free Software and reduces the GPL to Free Beer.
Actually, I think he get's the idea of the GPL perfectly fine. Let me quote:
Giving away a UNIX-like OS for free isn't a problem. What is a problem is giving away UNIX or pieces of it when you don't own it.
So he has no problems with Free-beer style software. He has problems with the GPL. He also said that the GPL can be fine, "if it's modified to be more business freindly".
For some more insight into Darl let me again quote:
Roughly one million lines of code. 20% of the Linux kernel. BSD is in a clear legal environment. There are dozens of protected BSD files that have made there way into Linux.
He admits that BSD is in the clear legally, at least according to the original settlment. He also admits that some files in BSD remain protected. The copyright must still be associated with UNIX ware on these files. Did anyone notice the original copyright rule for BSD software? And did anyone notice that BSD software is also more 'business friendly'? Maybe these were necessary for the settlement.
At any rate, I think the above show that Darl has a much better understanding of the issues than most of the peanut gallery here at slashdot. As I've said all along, the court case could be interesting and worth paying attention to.
Hmm. Maybe. I guess it could be read that way.
Well, code specific to a physics project is not likely to be reused anywhere since it's likely very specific to the project. And beowulf clusters are so overrated it's not even funny.
... but I don't know what beowulf has to do with it".
In real life people use MPI, PVM, or similar technologies to write parrallel programs for clusters. The cluster nodes can actually be running almost anything, even Windows, although no one really uses Windows.
I'm not aware of this NASA project related to Beowulf stuff, but I can tell you that I've the only time I've ever seen Beowulf stuff in research was when some grad student was using because he liked it. The general consensus from the other researchers was "yeah, he's doing
Anyways, a lot of science software is open ource or at least free for use by nonacademics. It always has been. If anything, there is now a trend in science to *close* the source for things. Why? Researchers get IP rights these days, and selling software to companies can make them lots of money.
Besides, the original poster said Linux, not open source software. And my question was really about Linux.
Umm... care to tell us why moving to Linux has *anything* to do with science and R&D?
It has to do with politics and a sort of religion surely, but that won't help R&D one bit. And you only *suppose* the real research is worth it?
Are you sure you aren't trolling with that comment?
Oh, I think I misunderstood your question. You want to be able to mount images produced by dd?
:)
I guess DEAMON-tools doesn't do that? All the other stuff you just mentioned can be done with DEAMON-tools.
I don't seen why you'd need to be able to mount them RW though, read is enough for all that you mention.