You're saying the original Audio CD can only be played at 5:30 on Tuesday morning, and since you're not up that early you need to make a copy you can listen to later?
Re:standardized Linux configuration files...
on
Is RPM Doomed?
·
· Score: 1
You're still talking about every app out there being forced to write an interface layer to this 'standardized GUI.'
That's not realistic. No way is every finished and well-tested daemon and app going to be re-opened to paste something like that into it. 'Slowly-evolving' doesn't mean 'driven by any initiative that comes up to become more user-friendly.'
Possibly if the intelligence was contained in the GUI tool itself, but then you're basically talking about a GUI that parses all the text config files as they already exist, and people like Red Hat have been doing that with Python for years now. Nothing new there.
But clearly the mathematical foundations of software are understood.
Actually, 'Formal Specification' and strict mathematically provable software is very, very complex subject. Almost no 'practical' software in real use has been proven by formal methods.
It's very, very difficult. Think about an audit that runs through every layer, every factor that could come into play, from the microcode in the CPU up to the high level code. That includes all the driver code and possible states of any coprocessors, i.e. the controller in the hard drive, the controller in the video card. Think of the hundreds of thousands of permutations of possible states even for the simplest 'application' running on even the simplest system.
It's not a practical reality.
Re:standardized Linux configuration files...
on
Is RPM Doomed?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The other problem is, Linux is a Unix clone, and there is a long slowly-evolved configuration system for Unix that reaches back in history. It works, and it works well.
I don't run any Linux machines any longer, and I would be enraged if somehow the 'we must make it easy to use' Linux people started trying to force a big 'standardized' structure down the throats of the larger Unix community. I switched to NetBSD in part because it's cleaner, it follows a tradition (all those O'Reilly books I've been collecting for years actuall MEAN SOMETHING), and it always works. Rather than installing and learning 'new-widget-number-twentyseven' to accomplish some admin task, I just research the way it's always been done, and it works.
To put it another way: we're in trouble when things have gotten so crofted up that you can't start out researching a problem in AEleen Frish's 'Essential System Administration' and all the other O'Reilly classics.
The problem is, the NASCAR scene comes out of the fact that people can weld steel, they all know somebody who can do some machining. It's your basic metalwork, etc.
When a grassroots movement of actual software developers takes root, and kids are actually looked up at by their peers because they wrote the driver for the new sound card, what you propose might start to make sense.
As it is, the rednecks in the screwdriver shops are just plugging parts together. There are auto enthusiasts who do the same thing, but the NASCAR set knows more than how to handle a crescent wrench.
Back in the late 60's a book was published called 'The Student as Nigger.'
It talked about people assuming the role.
In a way, the title backfires on the New Left dude who wrote the book, if you think about it.
Nobody is a Nigger who doesn't choose to be one. Just like nobody is a Red Neck who doesn't choose to be one.
That's why I don't feel so bad when I notice stupid niggers out on the street doing the kind of things that will only keep themselves down. They're not niggers because of their race. They're niggers because they act like niggers. Lots of white people are niggers, too.
I have always maintained that the Anti Virus would create the need for their product if there wasn't already an inherent need.
But I've never had a virus infect my system and do any damage. Sure I've had a few viruses get 'detected' back when I ran binary newsgroup attachment grabbers for amusement awhile back.
And I've been online, for many years as a sysop, since before I bought my first DOS machine (I got PC-DOS 3.1 used at a swapmeet for my first XT clone)
Viruses only infest clueless people. Vendors have a way of extracting money from said clueless people.
I've been doing that with Adobe Acrobat (not the free reader) for about five years on Windows. The PDF creation is a 'virtual printer' so it's available to print in anything that has a print function.
It's not free with the OS, of course. I paid a good deal for it from Adobe. If it were free with Windows, people would probably scream at Microsoft for 'bundling so much/bloat' or whatever.
Light dimmers using variacs would generate NO amount of RFI.
You mean light dimmers that use SCRs (silicon controlled rectifiers).
You'd better get your story straight. If you could convince your neighbors to replace their cheap but noisy SCR-based dimmers with the more expensive Variac dimmers the interference would go away. But not if you don't have a clue what to tell them.
You viewed the test site with Eudora, which is a Windows/Mac email program?? On your Linux box?? When the vulnerability is clearly specified as being Mozilla-only?
Well, an IIS advocate (does such a critter even exist?) can say 'I tried the exploint running Apache and NCSA httpd and didn't see a problem.'
look for places to live in the inner cities.... all these will add to one's quality of life
Wow! What a clinker! I guess I'll go walk out in the trees near the field behind my 100 year old farm house, listen to the birds singing, and ponder on your pithy statement.
There's also a POSIX standard for/bin/sh, but it doesn't prevent the Bash developer's team from extending, embracing, and slowly making it impossible to run Linux scripts on boxes without Bash installed. NEVER allow sloppy work to become acceptable. (sloppy work meaning badly written shell scripts that use Bash-only features but are supposedly 'cross platform.')
Well, if we're going to get competetive here: I have a retail boxed Windows app (In*a*vision from Micrografx) that comes bundled with a Windows 1.03 runtime version (it's one of the first Windows apps). Anybody can come up with a copy of Windows 1.03. (mine is complete, retail box with all cards and materials)
But my Microsoft Basic for CP/M manual is just a photocopy.:(
Bash is the extend/embrace/extinguish app for Unix hackers. If you mostly operate in a NetBSD environment, like I do, and don't even have Bash installed, you use/bin/sh to run scripts. People have slowly gotten into the habit of writing shell scripts assuming that everybody is using Bash. On most Linux systems, there isn't even a real/bin/sh binary on the drive, it's 'emulated' by Bash. So people write scripts with special Bash features in them, not necessarily even being aware that they are Bash-specific features, and over time those special Bash features creep into scriptspace and break on machines that use the standard/bin/sh.
And, uh, Bash, like GCC, considers itself a 'superset' of the standard, so as far as the maintainers are concerned there's no problem.
I have three Lord of the Rings books on my shelf too. But that's because it's a trilogy. Mine's a paperback set from about 1973. The ones with the 'respect for living author' thing about not buying any other unauthorized edition.
Slashdot Mirror
Your right to time shift?
You're saying the original Audio CD can only be played at 5:30 on Tuesday morning, and since you're not up that early you need to make a copy you can listen to later?
You're still talking about every app out there being forced to write an interface layer to this 'standardized GUI.'
That's not realistic. No way is every finished and well-tested daemon and app going to be re-opened to paste something like that into it. 'Slowly-evolving' doesn't mean 'driven by any initiative that comes up to become more user-friendly.'
Possibly if the intelligence was contained in the GUI tool itself, but then you're basically talking about a GUI that parses all the text config files as they already exist, and people like Red Hat have been doing that with Python for years now. Nothing new there.
But clearly the mathematical foundations of software are understood.
Actually, 'Formal Specification' and strict mathematically provable software is very, very complex subject. Almost no 'practical' software in real use has been proven by formal methods.
It's very, very difficult. Think about an audit that runs through every layer, every factor that could come into play, from the microcode in the CPU up to the high level code. That includes all the driver code and possible states of any coprocessors, i.e. the controller in the hard drive, the controller in the video card. Think of the hundreds of thousands of permutations of possible states even for the simplest 'application' running on even the simplest system.
It's not a practical reality.
The other problem is, Linux is a Unix clone, and there is a long slowly-evolved configuration system for Unix that reaches back in history. It works, and it works well.
I don't run any Linux machines any longer, and I would be enraged if somehow the 'we must make it easy to use' Linux people started trying to force a big 'standardized' structure down the throats of the larger Unix community. I switched to NetBSD in part because it's cleaner, it follows a tradition (all those O'Reilly books I've been collecting for years actuall MEAN SOMETHING), and it always works. Rather than installing and learning 'new-widget-number-twentyseven' to accomplish some admin task, I just research the way it's always been done, and it works.
To put it another way: we're in trouble when things have gotten so crofted up that you can't start out researching a problem in AEleen Frish's 'Essential System Administration' and all the other O'Reilly classics.
When WalMart starts selling volumes 3 and 8 of the O'Reilly X Window Systems Guide, I'll start hoping there's an inkling of a chance you're right.
Hell, barely anybody at all anywhere has those essential references.
The problem is, the NASCAR scene comes out of the fact that people can weld steel, they all know somebody who can do some machining. It's your basic metalwork, etc.
When a grassroots movement of actual software developers takes root, and kids are actually looked up at by their peers because they wrote the driver for the new sound card, what you propose might start to make sense.
As it is, the rednecks in the screwdriver shops are just plugging parts together. There are auto enthusiasts who do the same thing, but the NASCAR set knows more than how to handle a crescent wrench.
Back in the late 60's a book was published called 'The Student as Nigger.'
It talked about people assuming the role.
In a way, the title backfires on the New Left dude who wrote the book, if you think about it.
Nobody is a Nigger who doesn't choose to be one. Just like nobody is a Red Neck who doesn't choose to be one.
That's why I don't feel so bad when I notice stupid niggers out on the street doing the kind of things that will only keep themselves down. They're not niggers because of their race. They're niggers because they act like niggers. Lots of white people are niggers, too.
I have always maintained that the Anti Virus would create the need for their product if there wasn't already an inherent need.
But I've never had a virus infect my system and do any damage. Sure I've had a few viruses get 'detected' back when I ran binary newsgroup attachment grabbers for amusement awhile back.
And I've been online, for many years as a sysop, since before I bought my first DOS machine (I got PC-DOS 3.1 used at a swapmeet for my first XT clone)
Viruses only infest clueless people. Vendors have a way of extracting money from said clueless people.
My point is it's about as innovative as Microsoft bundling a defrag utility with DOS 6.
Wow! A textbook example of a flamer.
I didn't think your sort ever left the alt.* groups on Usenet.
Yeah, that's cool.
I've been doing that with Adobe Acrobat (not the free reader) for about five years on Windows. The PDF creation is a 'virtual printer' so it's available to print in anything that has a print function.
It's not free with the OS, of course. I paid a good deal for it from Adobe. If it were free with Windows, people would probably scream at Microsoft for 'bundling so much/bloat' or whatever.
Light dimmers using variacs would generate NO amount of RFI.
You mean light dimmers that use SCRs (silicon controlled rectifiers).
You'd better get your story straight. If you could convince your neighbors to replace their cheap but noisy SCR-based dimmers with the more expensive Variac dimmers the interference would go away. But not if you don't have a clue what to tell them.
Jack D. Ripper here also seems to agree.. calling them 'our precious bodily fluids.'
Or something.
The FCC guidelines say this is an unregulated band. That means:
WiFi can grow in an unregulated and free fashion.
Light bulb use can grow in an unregulated and free fashion.
If you propose the FCC stepping in, look for them to start licensing the WiFi hubs.
Of course, 'not broadcasting your own' means someone like AOL/Time-Warner, etc. etc. takes care of that part of the operation for you.
Did I just hear some hype about 'freedom' fizzle away?
You viewed the test site with Eudora, which is a Windows/Mac email program?? On your Linux box?? When the vulnerability is clearly specified as being Mozilla-only?
Well, an IIS advocate (does such a critter even exist?) can say 'I tried the exploint running Apache and NCSA httpd and didn't see a problem.'
look for places to live in the inner cities.... all these will add to one's quality of life
Wow! What a clinker! I guess I'll go walk out in the trees near the field behind my 100 year old farm house, listen to the birds singing, and ponder on your pithy statement.
Why kill the Macintosh out of spite for Microsoft?
'Hey, it worked in IE. How was I supposed to know?'
heh
There's also a POSIX standard for /bin/sh, but it doesn't prevent the Bash developer's team from extending, embracing, and slowly making it impossible to run Linux scripts on boxes without Bash installed. NEVER allow sloppy work to become acceptable. (sloppy work meaning badly written shell scripts that use Bash-only features but are supposedly 'cross platform.')
It's almost the same problem.
Well, if we're going to get competetive here: I have a retail boxed Windows app (In*a*vision from Micrografx) that comes bundled with a Windows 1.03 runtime version (it's one of the first Windows apps). Anybody can come up with a copy of Windows 1.03. (mine is complete, retail box with all cards and materials)
:(
But my Microsoft Basic for CP/M manual is just a photocopy.
In 1988 I would hazard to say that a hell of a lot of the Unix community was still logging on with greenscreen terminals.
I guess green is a color.
But really, my main point is: what does color have to do with anything we've been discussing?
Bash is the extend/embrace/extinguish app for Unix hackers. If you mostly operate in a NetBSD environment, like I do, and don't even have Bash installed, you use /bin/sh to run scripts. People have slowly gotten into the habit of writing shell scripts assuming that everybody is using Bash. On most Linux systems, there isn't even a real /bin/sh binary on the drive, it's 'emulated' by Bash. So people write scripts with special Bash features in them, not necessarily even being aware that they are Bash-specific features, and over time those special Bash features creep into scriptspace and break on machines that use the standard /bin/sh.
And, uh, Bash, like GCC, considers itself a 'superset' of the standard, so as far as the maintainers are concerned there's no problem.
I have three Lord of the Rings books on my shelf too. But that's because it's a trilogy. Mine's a paperback set from about 1973. The ones with the 'respect for living author' thing about not buying any other unauthorized edition.
The GNU Manifesto applies to a segment of the 'Open Source' software out there, but also not to a lot of it.
Further, with much 'Open Source' software there's a license. The only exception to that is Public Domain software.