It seems to me that using XML for general-purpose config files is extreme overkill (would every application need to submit a DTD?). Maybe for a general-purpose registry (like KDE is doing) it makes sense; one DTD for all apps. But I don't think we can expect a large number of applications to use such a complicated format as XML for config files.
On the other hand, a robust SGML library that can let applications manipulate DTDs and documents would be amazing! Linux would blow all other contenders away if it provided a full suite of SGML editors, publishers and architecture tools.
I'm also curious why everyone is focussing so much on XML. Wouldn't SGML be a more powerful solution?
First of all.. forget desktop computers. Motorola couldn't care less about PCs and desktop toys. They've always built superior chips but they still get slaughtered by Intel. In the grand scheme of things (at least from the industrial perspective), PCs will have been a passing fad and a battle that Motorola lost.
For years Motorola has been shipping boards with stock SVR4 and gcc. For better or worse (better to my mind) they've avoided forming strategic relationships with OS vendors (like Sun, MS, WindRiver, etc). They make hardware (very good hardware when you compare it to all the rest) and don't get fancy or "strategic" when it comes to the software that runs on it.
For the past year, they've been offering Linux with their PPC boards (and providing source for baseline drivers). Recently they formed a partnership with Caldera. For a number of technical, psychological and economic reasons, it made sense for them to embrace (exploit) Linux. This is A Good Thing.
Given this picture, there's nothing sinister in deciding that they want to "sexy" up their stock compiler by buying Metroworks. Sure Metroworks (the Edith Bunker of development tools) is junk but was Intel gonna let Motorola buy Cygnus?
Motorola is in no position to strong-arm (pardon the pun) other vendors (a la Intel & M$). Besides they've never done business that way.
It seems lately on Slashdot that the FUD flies from every direction...:-\
I just woke up so my mind isn't entirely engaged, but aren't the legendary source notes from Unix V6 in published form now (I can't remember the cute title they go by, but I've seen them everywhere). They include the kernel source and comments.
It finally became clear to me (after browsing the source files of Ritchie's compiler) why the implicit int existed in the language. I never bought the "lazy programmer" excuse but in looking at the bottom of the first source file, the reason is obvious. Without a preprocessor, an implicit int declaration was the most readable way to define manigest constants (or magic numbers).
I saw the presentation/demo of the linux port to the Psion 5 at the Ottawa Linux Symp. It's far from stable but it's working! It was the most memorable part of the show. The presenter even ran Perl on the Psion (about 2.5 secs to print "hello world"). They have no X server yet but the fbcons is working well. He said X client should work now (to display on a remote server) but that he's not installed the Xlibs to test it. They even have gcc running *on* the psion.
All in all it's a pretty impressive result for 1 year's worth of labour.
Speaking of the OLS, was anyone other than me as embarrased for the rebel.com and corel guys as I was? In a crowd of geeks and nerds they stood out as a group of out-of-touch losers. It was hard to watch. It angered me that they cut short Alan Cox's Q&A to bash Microsoft and show their "cool" promotional video. It was creepy.
Wasn't this the rock-opera that eventually became "Who's Next?". That would be spiffy if he could integrate Baba O'Reily (O'Reilly?) and WGFA into a story so I can finally know what they hell those songs were about.
Anyone see "Summer of Sam?" The best part in an otherwise flawed film was hearing Baba O'Reily full tilt during the climax.
Perhaps Apple is banking on being seen as the ultimate multimedia machines and they want to protect their competitive advantage. Given Apple's declining leverage in the market this seems to be a dangerous move. It seems to me their best way to compete is to build a good product and not frustrate their customers. The dream of Apple dominating the market has vaporized. For them to be a viable choice, customers will want a commitment to interoperability from them. Being overly-proprietary will not be a winning strategy for Apple.
I never managed a Netware site, but I _did_ manage a VINES site and never saw VINES marketed as a "server OS". The term wouldn't have made sense since everyone knew that the operating system running on VINES servers was UNIX. VINES was basically an app that ran on top of UNIX. Does that mean I can call samba or apache a "Server OS"?
I don't know what OS was running under Netware but considering Netware was really nothing more than a file server, it would have been deeply weird for anyone to call Netware a "Server OS".
The success of Linux (or Unix in general) has nothing to do with the number of NT units sold (or, for that matter, shipments of MacOS, CP/M, or PalmOS). It seems that many pundits will only accept the success of Unix when Unix outsells NT in the "server OS" category. People: Microsoft _invented_ the term "server OS" to cover up the single-user-ness of their flagship product. Unix is an evolving technical solution for operating a tremendously wide variety of computers. NT is a toy operating system for a toy (fad?) architecture.
Think of what computers will be like 20 years from now. Can anyone honestly say that they can picture a Windows-based OS in their car? Or in ATMs? Or IP-based phone-switches? (Will we need to reboot your neighbourhood exchange when the phone company adds a new user?) Or in robotics? Of course not. Microsoft couldn't even maintain a PPC port of NT. Can you envision Linux/Unix in any of these applications? Most definitely.
If you stare hard at the technology Microsoft is banking on, its pretty evident that they are on shaky ground.
I can't imagine Windows being around in 20 years but I also can't picture Unix not being around in 20 years.
I wish someone would write a RAID-style filesystem that was distributed over multiple computers on the net. Preferably with an encryption and validation so that the data can't be destroyed until they hunt down several of the physical drives.
If we could distribute the "location" of data, we'd really mess up the lawyers who trying to apply 19th C laws to computers and networks.
LOL... oh god, I guess/. is next on JP's hit list.
"Greetings Anonymous Coward,
First of all let me say that I went to a great deal of trouble trying to locate the person in charge of www.slashdot.org. Now that I've found you, I'd like to draw your attention..."
IMHO, libel laws are silly. A very wise person once said:
"Sticks and stones may break my bones/ But [words/names] will never hurt me."
We all learned this in the first grade, but once people realize you can make money from being "libelled" this fundamental lesson in life gets forgotten. Threats are one thing but grown adults should be able to cope with being mocked and ridiculed.
On another front, this guy is fairly well-known in the security realm (mostly because of his own self-promotion) which makes me think that he is a "public figure" (at least within the community in question). Isn't it the law in the USA that public figures have less protection under these types of laws (libel/slander/etc)? Esp when the person attempts to make themselves very visible.
Also, what kind of "threats" could be stored on a webserver? Don't you have to inform the target of your evil intentions for it to become a threat? It looks like JP wasn't on out of the loop about http://packetstorm.harvard.edu/jp/ so no one was actually threating him...
I have no idea how US colleges are run so I can't comment on your response. But are you suggesting that a girl could get a CS scholarship with terrible marks?
You need two things to go to university: 1) the grades. 2) the money (in places like the US). If you have #2 but not #1, you can't get in.
Admission is based on merit. Whether you're a great basketball player or a teenaged girl who runs Plan9 on her Palm Pilot, if you don't have the grades you aren't getting in.
This might seem like heresy, but I'd like to advocate piracy. 99% of the artists in the world just want their music listened to and enjoyed. None of the musicians I know (some who are quite accomplished professionally) would care if you copied their CDs and gave them to other people to listen to.
The only artists the RIAA will help are the tiny fraction who have widespread commercial success. This is so blatantly obvious I can't believe that industry or govt is being sucked into their con.
So please make a musician happy. Share their music with the world.
If that's sexist than basketball scholarships are jock-ist. Let's face it: the compsci field is male dominated and there's a nerd culture that pushes females away from it. as a result we can't draw on half of the population in our search for the next knuth.
diversity is good. congrats and commendations to both of u.
As a contractor I've fallen into 3 separate projects over the last 5 years where Rose was the tool of choice. Never once have I heard anyone who has actually used to tool say anything good about it. IMHO, it's been an abysmal product from its inception. It crashes frequently (every version I've used does this and each time, Rational says that it will be fixed in the next version). The code generated (and it takes _months_ to tune to code generator to your existing infrastructure) is uninhabitable! The user-interface has always been frustrating and it doesn't integrate well with anything (eg. imake, cvs, SQL, etc.).
It is and always has been an unusable tool. It's frightening that it commands such a large market share. Shame on Rational for proferring snakeoil like this.
What we need is a good OS CASE tool for OO. I've seen a few attempts at starting one but (humorously) all I've found so far are web sites containing the development plans!
Re:Informal Logical Fallacies
on
RMS Responds
·
· Score: 1
There should be a new moderation category: "Touche!". Maybe it could replace "Insightful" which seems kinda out of place with the slashdot crowd =)
Touche, gleef!
Re:Companies and Software
on
RMS Responds
·
· Score: 1
I work for a company that has a free breakfast buffet brought in everyday. I dunno about you but this is a strong motivation for me to come in to work b4 10am.
One of the developers is actually growing cucumbers but he has a window office. In general we prefer the catered breakfast.
Also, profits are up.
What twisted world do you livein?(Was:RMS & Co
on
RMS Responds
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· Score: 1
The fundamental freedom from which all other freedoms are derived is the freedom to communicate (aka. freedom of expression, free speech, etc.). The idea that "without property, there can be no other rights" is so absurd that one need to expand the concept of "property" to include ideas, expressions and beliefs.
I think RMS is advocating the most natural and normal form of human interaction. Humans like to create and have shown a tendency to share their creations. Humans also benefit from the work and ideas of others. In the entire span of human history, only in the last couple of centuries have we been deluded with fanciful concepts of "intellectual property" and convinced ourselves that the only driving force behind creativity is money. The entire history of humanity demonstrates otherwise.
I have no idea what you mean when you say that RMS is giving his property away (he still holds the copyright for his GPL'd stuff-- what property are you thinking of?) and when did he express a desire to "establish a system where everyone is obligated to give away their property"? You're making this stuff up as you go, aren't you.
It used to boggle me when people laughed at RMS and the FSF movement. RMS' point of view seemed so intuitive, natural and obvious. They aren't laughing anymore. Now many people are attempting to characterize the FSF+OS movements as evil (or worse.... "Communist!"). This is either paranoia, sloganism, or an inability to think critically. There is nothing sinister about all of this.
First they laughed, then they attacked. What's next?
Re:Agreeing with Christ != Being Christ
on
RMS Responds
·
· Score: 1
Actually I think he was referring to Cleopatra. I interpreted it as RMS == Cleopatra.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that using XML for general-purpose
config files is extreme overkill (would every
application need to submit a DTD?). Maybe for a general-purpose registry (like KDE is doing) it makes sense; one DTD for all apps. But I don't think we can expect a large number of applications to use such a complicated format as XML for config files.
On the other hand, a robust SGML library that can let applications manipulate DTDs and documents would be amazing! Linux would blow all
other contenders away if it provided a full suite of SGML editors, publishers and architecture tools.
I'm also curious why everyone is focussing so much on XML. Wouldn't SGML be a more powerful solution?
The distinction between server and desktop is transient: God help us if we are still sitting in front of keyboards 15 years from now.
...and it's only getting better.
Here's why Linux is ready for the "Big Time":
1) It runs on everything
2) It runs fast on everything
3) It runs everything
4) It costs nothing
5)
Hear! Hear!
Despite the fact that he's been writing columns for years, he always sounds like a computer novice.
This has to be the lamest anti-Linux tirade I've seen outside of comp.os.*.advocacy. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel....
First of all.. forget desktop computers. Motorola couldn't care less about PCs and desktop toys. They've always built superior chips but they still get slaughtered by Intel. In the grand scheme of
:-\
things (at least from the industrial perspective), PCs will have been a passing fad and a battle that Motorola lost.
For years Motorola has been shipping boards with stock SVR4 and gcc. For better or worse (better to my mind) they've avoided forming strategic relationships with OS vendors (like Sun, MS, WindRiver, etc). They make hardware (very good hardware when you compare it to all the rest) and don't get fancy or "strategic" when it comes to the software that runs on it.
For the past year, they've been offering Linux with their PPC boards (and providing source for baseline drivers). Recently they formed a partnership with Caldera. For a number of technical, psychological and economic reasons, it made sense for them to embrace (exploit) Linux. This is A Good Thing.
Given this picture, there's nothing sinister in deciding that they want to "sexy" up their stock compiler by buying Metroworks. Sure Metroworks (the Edith Bunker of development tools) is junk but was Intel gonna let Motorola buy Cygnus?
Motorola is in no position to strong-arm (pardon the pun) other vendors (a la Intel & M$). Besides they've never done business that way.
It seems lately on Slashdot that the FUD flies from every direction...
I just woke up so my mind isn't entirely engaged,
but aren't the legendary source notes from
Unix V6 in published form now (I can't remember
the cute title they go by, but I've seen them
everywhere). They include the kernel source and
comments.
It finally became clear to me (after browsing
the source files of Ritchie's compiler) why
the implicit int existed in the language. I
never bought the "lazy programmer" excuse but
in looking at the bottom of the first source
file, the reason is obvious. Without a preprocessor, an implicit int declaration was
the most readable way to define manigest constants
(or magic numbers).
Neat =)
I saw the presentation/demo of the linux port
to the Psion 5 at the Ottawa Linux Symp. It's far from stable but it's working! It was the most memorable part of the show. The presenter even
ran Perl on the Psion (about 2.5 secs to print
"hello world"). They have no X server yet but the fbcons is working well. He said X client should work now (to display on a remote server) but that he's not installed the Xlibs to test it. They even have gcc running *on* the psion.
All in all it's a pretty impressive result for 1 year's worth of labour.
Speaking of the OLS, was anyone other than me as embarrased for the rebel.com and corel guys as I was? In a crowd of geeks and nerds they stood out as a group of out-of-touch losers. It was hard to watch. It angered me that they cut short Alan
Cox's Q&A to bash Microsoft and show their "cool"
promotional video. It was creepy.
I *had* ATBCHCE on CD a couple of years ago
but it was stolen when my apartment got robbed.
So it *was* available here (Canada) at least.
Wasn't this the rock-opera that eventually
became "Who's Next?". That would be spiffy
if he could integrate Baba O'Reily (O'Reilly?)
and WGFA into a story so I can finally know
what they hell those songs were about.
Anyone see "Summer of Sam?" The best part in an
otherwise flawed film was hearing Baba O'Reily
full tilt during the climax.
We'd love you if you would create a HOWTO for
setting this up =)
Perhaps Apple is banking on being seen as the ultimate multimedia machines and they want to protect their competitive advantage. Given Apple's declining leverage in the market this seems to be a dangerous move. It seems to me their best way to compete is to build a good product and not frustrate their customers. The dream of Apple dominating the market has vaporized. For them to be a viable choice, customers will want a commitment to interoperability from them. Being overly-proprietary will not be a winning strategy for Apple.
I never managed a Netware site, but I _did_ manage a VINES site and never saw VINES marketed as a "server OS". The term wouldn't have made sense since everyone knew that the operating system running on VINES servers was UNIX. VINES was basically an app that ran on top of UNIX. Does that mean I can call samba or apache a "Server OS"?
I don't know what OS was running under Netware
but considering Netware was really nothing more than a file server, it would have been deeply weird for anyone to call Netware a "Server OS".
The success of Linux (or Unix in general) has nothing to do with the number of NT units sold (or, for that matter, shipments of MacOS, CP/M, or PalmOS). It seems that many pundits will only accept the success of Unix when Unix outsells NT in the "server OS" category. People: Microsoft _invented_ the term "server OS" to cover up the single-user-ness of their flagship product. Unix is an evolving technical solution for operating a tremendously wide variety of computers. NT is a toy operating system for a toy (fad?) architecture.
Think of what computers will be like 20 years from now. Can anyone honestly say that they can picture a Windows-based OS in their car? Or in ATMs? Or IP-based phone-switches? (Will we need to reboot your neighbourhood exchange when the phone company adds a new user?) Or in robotics? Of course not. Microsoft couldn't even maintain a PPC port of NT.
Can you envision Linux/Unix in any of these applications? Most definitely.
If you stare hard at the technology Microsoft is banking on, its pretty evident that they are on shaky ground.
I can't imagine Windows being around in 20 years but I also can't picture Unix not being around in 20 years.
I wish someone would write a RAID-style filesystem
that was distributed over multiple computers on
the net. Preferably with an encryption and validation so that the data can't be destroyed until they hunt down several of the physical drives.
If we could distribute the "location" of data, we'd really mess up the lawyers who trying to apply 19th C laws to computers and networks.
LOL... oh god, I guess /. is next on JP's hit list.
"Greetings Anonymous Coward,
First of all let me say that I went to a great
deal of trouble trying to locate the person
in charge of www.slashdot.org. Now that I've
found you, I'd like to draw your attention..."
IMHO, libel laws are silly. A very wise person
once said:
"Sticks and stones may break my bones/
But [words/names] will never hurt me."
We all learned this in the first grade, but once
people realize you can make money from being
"libelled" this fundamental lesson in life gets
forgotten. Threats are one thing but grown adults
should be able to cope with being mocked and
ridiculed.
On another front, this guy is fairly well-known
in the security realm (mostly because of his own
self-promotion) which makes me think that he
is a "public figure" (at least within the
community in question). Isn't it the law in the
USA that public figures have less protection under
these types of laws (libel/slander/etc)? Esp
when the person attempts to make themselves
very visible.
Also, what kind of "threats" could be stored on
a webserver? Don't you have to inform the target
of your evil intentions for it to become a threat?
It looks like JP wasn't on out of the loop about
http://packetstorm.harvard.edu/jp/ so no one was
actually threating him...
That .history log was a hoot but towards the
end I started to doubt its plausibility.
"write robbie ha ha i nuked him"?
Does that sound like something _anyone_ would
type (except in a work of fiction)?
I have no idea how US colleges are run so I can't comment on your response. But are you suggesting that a girl could get a CS scholarship with terrible marks?
You need two things to go to university: 1) the grades. 2) the money (in places like the US).
If you have #2 but not #1, you can't get in.
Admission is based on merit. Whether you're a
great basketball player or a teenaged girl who
runs Plan9 on her Palm Pilot, if you don't have
the grades you aren't getting in.
This might seem like heresy, but I'd like
to advocate piracy. 99%
of the artists in the world just want their
music listened to and enjoyed. None of the
musicians I know (some who are quite accomplished
professionally) would care if you copied their
CDs and gave them to other people to listen to.
The only artists the RIAA will help are the
tiny fraction who have widespread commercial
success. This is so blatantly obvious I can't
believe that industry or govt is being sucked
into their con.
So please make a musician happy. Share their music with the world.
If that's sexist than basketball scholarships are jock-ist. Let's face it: the compsci field is male dominated and there's a nerd culture that pushes females away from it. as a result we can't draw on half of the population in our search for the next knuth.
diversity is good. congrats and commendations to
both of u.
As a contractor I've fallen into 3 separate
projects over the last 5 years where Rose was
the tool of choice. Never once have I heard
anyone who has actually used to tool say anything
good about it. IMHO, it's been an abysmal
product from its inception. It crashes frequently
(every version I've used does this and each time, Rational says that it will be fixed in the next version). The code generated (and it takes _months_ to tune to code generator to your existing infrastructure) is uninhabitable!
The user-interface has always been frustrating and it doesn't integrate well with anything (eg. imake, cvs, SQL, etc.).
It is and always has been an unusable tool. It's frightening that it commands such a large market share. Shame on Rational for proferring snakeoil like this.
What we need is a good OS CASE tool for OO. I've seen a few attempts at starting one but (humorously) all I've found so far are web sites containing the development plans!
There should be a new moderation category: "Touche!". Maybe it could replace "Insightful"
which seems kinda out of place with the slashdot
crowd =)
Touche, gleef!
I work for a company that has a free breakfast
buffet brought in everyday. I dunno about you
but this is a strong motivation for me to come
in to work b4 10am.
One of the developers is actually growing cucumbers but he has a window office. In general
we prefer the catered breakfast.
Also, profits are up.
The fundamental freedom from which all other freedoms are derived is the freedom to communicate (aka. freedom of expression, free speech, etc.). The idea that "without property, there can be no other rights" is so absurd that one need to expand the concept of "property" to include ideas, expressions and beliefs.
I think RMS is advocating the most natural and normal form of human interaction. Humans like to create and have shown a tendency to share their creations. Humans also benefit from the work and ideas of others. In the entire span of human history, only in the last couple of centuries have we been deluded with fanciful concepts of "intellectual property" and convinced ourselves that the only driving force behind creativity is money. The entire history of humanity demonstrates otherwise.
I have no idea what you mean when you say that RMS is giving his property away (he still holds the copyright for his GPL'd stuff-- what property are you thinking of?) and when did he express a desire to "establish a system where everyone is obligated to give away their property"? You're making this stuff up as you go, aren't you.
It used to boggle me when people laughed at RMS and the FSF movement. RMS' point of view seemed so intuitive, natural and obvious. They aren't laughing anymore. Now many people are attempting to characterize the FSF+OS movements as evil (or worse.... "Communist!"). This is either paranoia, sloganism, or an inability to think critically. There is nothing sinister about all of this.
First they laughed, then they attacked. What's next?
Actually I think he was referring to Cleopatra.
I interpreted it as RMS == Cleopatra.