I've a father that is a CPA, but don't take tax advise from me, hire a CPA.
Tax law isn't something that is consistent and fair. It's a hodgepodge of well meaning laws all intended to do various things which will provide the goverment funding while not trying to destroy the economy at the same time.
That means a person may legally owe (depending on how he files) a whole range of taxes. If you choose to pay more, you're not a single bit more "legal" than if you pay the minimum. Add a few states into the mix, and some off-shore holdings, and I can mentally visualize the complexity of the problem growing.
As for the poor not paying enough taxes, well that's an opinion. But the lower taxing of the poor is a philosophical argument encoded in tax law. The argument is something along the lines of, well, if we tax them, then they'll never make it to middle class which is where we really make our money. Other arguements like, "big business is really what drives the economy, so they should get a tax break so they can do more business" are also philosophical in nature, but people tend to forget this.
As a result, you've got a lot of conflicting ideas on what is taxable, what is not, and how much. Just look at the relatively simple tax laws for food. There's literally cases where you can't know if an item is taxable until you lay down some sort of priority on which way you're going to interpert the laws.
Food is not taxable. Some snacks and candies are. Prepackaged food being consumed on the premises is. Beef jerky is a snack, yet it has a history of being a real food staple. Chewbacca lives on Endor. That means if the stop-and-go has a food court, then the beef jerky should be taxed, but if it lacks one, then no. It's not confusing because of political kick-backs, but because of political do-gooders who really tried to fix it on a case-by-case basis over the last 200 years.
Considering that Slashdot runs copyright stories multiple times a week, why does the submitter even question if parodies are fair use.
Among the very few things that are explictly proctected under fair use is parodies.
I know that there's a lot of RTFA going around, but how can people with exposure to the issues multiple times a week even ask such a question, unless:
1. It's obvious flamebait. 2. Nobody RTFAs or even bothers to understand the laws they are talking about.
Not that copyright law is great, but really, why question if it protects parody when the law explicitly states that copyright does not prevent reuse of the material in the case of parodies.
I could respect a director who makes a controversial film decision (Han shoots first) provided that the film is made well, and it doesn't look like a mistake (see my film because it's controversial trash)
I could respect a director who admits to making a mistake in a film (or believes that his greater vision was compromised at first release) and rereleases the film with corrections (Greedo shoots first) provided that the film is remade well, and it doesn't look like he's just caving into a compromised version of his vision.
But I can't respect this. Either Lucas is stating that his vision was for Han to be a chior boy in bad boy clothing, or that his vision wasn't important enough to stand by, or that he has no vision, he's just doing whatever the polls say.
After watching Kirosawa's "The Hidden Fortress", I am fully convinced that the success of Star Wars was part plagarisim and part mistake. Lucas's disneyland inspired lightening up of the film in it's theatrical re-relase was touted as being closer to his true "vision". Every improvement detracted from the story and lightened the tone of the film. I mean, Luke's family was just killed, and we're supposed to be laughing at visual gags when it's time to go find Han. "Empire Strikes Back" probably was saved due to the extra help he brought aboard. Help which he now eschews in the episode 1-3 films.
Let's face it. We'll never have a good Star Wars until the Master stops driving his Empire into the ground in the name of Profit.
Odds are good that your floppys sitting on your desk were manufactured over ten years ago.
Even if you buy "fresh" floppys off the shelf today, odds are good that those were manufactured ten years ago. The floppy market saw some revival with the introduction of colored cases, but you can only dress up a lost cause so much. Besides, it's only a matter of time before the competing technologies edge you out that way too.
I don't fault floppies for a 50% failure rate. After all, they were never meant to last for decades, and it's not like there's been enough demand to gurantee that even newly purchased floppys aren't ancient. If fault could be assigned, it's on the lack of retailers / producers to account for on shelf spoilage in their business practices.
Yes, he's totally skimming over the more imporatant issues.
RedHat isn't out to save computing from Microsoft, the Spanish Inquisition, Sun, or any other perceived demon. RedHat is out to survive, and it's going to selfishly do so by nurturing the market which allows it to thrive. RedHat will never bleed itself dry, but they will offer up a few dollars (sacrificially) to keep the open source movement going.
It's like fishers not overfishing so they have something to eat next year. Or farmers letting a field lie fallow so they don't destroy the soil. It's planned alturisim for the greater purpose of succeeding. Which (wearing the right kind of glasses) is a fancy way of promoting long term selfishness. Note that fishers can (and do) let anyone drop their hook, but those with little skill will soon see it's much cheaper to buy at the market price.
And that's a very good thing, since short term selfishness usually burns through all your resources (finiancial and physical) leaving you with the need to move into another domain.
Apart from the fact that your deliberatly imposing free (as in beer) upon licensces explicitly stating free (as in speech), let's look at the moral "requirement to contribute".
If you feel that there is such a requirement, pay back the community by paying someone who will pay back the community in code.
Buying RedHat (or SuSE, etc.) will fund the companies that currently hire programmers to work on Linux (and it's associated software suite). These companies don't hire these programmers out of altruisim, they do so because it's their team who's going to be struggling with the problems in debugging / integrating the applications.
It's remarkable that should you decide to take this mantle upon you own shoulders, you don't have to pay the price to them. But you will pay the price (internally), and if you feel that it's too great a burdon, I suggest you don't bother with software / computers at all.
Every action (and application) has a price, even those which are not purchased. The reason open source software will never die is because it's cheaper. You only pay the price of learning to live with the software you have, instead of first paying to get your hands on said software and then paying again to learn how to live with it.
Don't submit code back if it's not your cup of tea, just go out there and buy a copy from someone who does. If you feel no moral requirement to do this, then there's no reqirement at all. That's freedom, and it cuts both ways.
If you don't bother to use --checksig, then you've got a lot of security home work to do. I doubt that RedHat rolled such a package, checksig will allow you to verify the source of your packages (at the cost of collecting a few (trusted) public keys).
Query the package for a correct signature before installation, like so:
rpm -qp --checksig package.rpm
If there's no signature, or it's not a valid one, don't run the installation command.
Kitchen knives are used to cut. If you slice off your fingers due to inattentiveness / lack of training, it's hardly a security hole in the kitchen knife.
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is, "Never get involved in a land war in Asia", but only slightly less known is this: "Never go in with a consultant, when he's got an axe to grind!"
As far a rpm being slient, that's just because you didn't ask. The verbose flag is -v and for really verbose output try -vv.
Cross distro RPMS would allow you to do the same, except you gain:
1. The ability to build on one machine yet install on another. 2. The ability to build on one architecture yet install on another. 3. The ability to perform you compiles in one highly observed area instead of tracking down multiple remote compilations and debugging them from afar. 4. The ability to not worry about current compiler installation and build tools on all platforms, just the one you're developing / building on. 5. The savings in time by building once per distributiable instead of once per installation. 6. A guranteed uninstall path, even if the installation distributable is removed or damaged. 7. A database of installed files allowing mapping of a file to a package, listing of all files in that package, and what packages require and depend on this one. 8. Easier / automated patch application for those times developers have overlooked your particular platform. 9. The gurantee that two platforms with the same RPM have the same bugs / issues / configuration / etc. 10. The ability to see which (if any) files have been modified since the original installation.
So if your supporting that one computer at home which also doubles as your development box, and you're willing to waste away portions of your lifetime doing exactly what others have already done by fixing those compiler warnings / errors / learning someone else's source code better than them. Then, I guess, they are about equivalent solutions.
Unfortunately, that's exactly what every one of these "incompatiable" distros have and are doing.
Of course, you could enforce standards so tightly that there's only one implementation (yours). The real art is to create a standard flexible enough that I can do what I want (need) to without "breaking" your standard.
Mabye you don't want stuff in/opt, but I don't want to test a beta compiler by removing my stable version of the same in/usr/bin. If I couldn't override the installation directory, I couldn't have them both installed at the same time.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but similar problems exist in Windows, you just have to install more software. Nearly all vendors are consistent with themselves, but they do not agree with "the other guys" practices.
It may sound silly, but a stack is just that. It's a stack.
Whatever you put on top is the first thing you take off. (Think of a stack of plates)
Stacks come with two main operations, push (onto the top) and pop (off of the top). Some operations will pop a number of items and push the result back.
Since a stack is a general idea, it can be implemented in either hardware or software.
One classic example of using stacks can be found in the typical procedure call. When you "call" a procedure, a new frame is created and "pushed" onto the stack. During creation, the passed variables are initialized by the "calling" frame. Any declared variables live in this frame and when the frame is "poped" from the stack, they are gone. By using frames and stacks, you can gurantee that declared variables will only "live" in the scope of the procedure call.
Another implementation is that of a post-fix calculator, the HP calculators being the most famous examples. To multiply 5*6, you would type:
5 (enter) 6 (enter) *
Note that the "enter" was really nothing other than the stack operator "push"
Stack overflows occur when you call so many nested procedures that the language or computer cannot support the creation of another frame. If you're a student, you'll discover them soon enough:)
But if you do, you're assuming that companies never would look around the corner for cheaper solutions. That kind of assumption implies that nobody would make software faster, cheaper, better.
Even without open source (which started the whole computer revolution far before there were these things call Software Companies) companies would STILL be cost cutting, looking for better solutions, etc.
The reason most of these companies were wildly successful is because after they poured the initial effort into their products, they milked them for every dime they could get out of them. Lack of re-investment and re-invention eventually equates to a lot of cruft. It's cost effective right now to not redesign, but the interest on that immediate savings will be payed out over your company's lifetime.
To say open source is causing these companies to fail is illogical. After all, there are plenty of successful water companies (Ozarka, Perrier, Avion, etc) who SELL water at a premium even in locations where it is FREE from cost.
The problem is most of these companies don't offer anything beyond version "2" of the same solution they sold to you last year, and they're hard pressed to create growth after their niche is saturated. They're making a more profitable X (meaning they'll probably put LESS work into it), and expecting you to buy it because it's cleaner and brighter. When they stand still long enough, eventually even non-companies can surpass their offerings.
Abiogenesis: Creation of life from non-living matter.
Actually, even the scientists believe in abiogenesis, it's just that their version of the story has to do with self arranging molecules. This is very understandable since even right now, your protein strands are arranging and rearranging themselves (folding) into the shapes they use to keep you living.
The "old school" reference of the word is entirely different. It refers to a time when scientists believed that pieces of mud spontaneously turned into frogs and parts of rotting meat spontaneously turned into maggots. It's an example of why science didn't go very far until the discovery of "the scientific method" and the "controlled experiment".
Sad thing is, that it's exactly by looking at the beauty of the "created" and searching for it's "perfection" that all of the scientific theories have been made, disproven, improved upon, and established.
If I follow the advice of "discovering the perfection of the Creator in witnessing the beauty of the created." Eventually I will come to the same conclusion:
These creatures are perfect because they have in them the inherit ability to change over time so they don't disappear from the face of the planet.
Some call it evolution, some call it "save yourself!", some call it natural selection, and others call it "he got what he deserved, the idiot." But your procedure for "illumine(ing) our knowledge of God" (ahem, illuminates?) is the same one that created the whole mess of understanding evolution in the first place.
Except that evolution isn't controlled by opportunity.
Evolution happens along at its OWN rate, population growth happens at a rate partially determined by competition. Also, in this case there's less "ecosystem" to populate, since much of the ecosystem has been destroyed.
Evolution has it's impacts, and we can more easily see those impacts when the population size is small, like on islands or other isolated groups. As a theoretical example, if you happen to have six fingers on an island with 20 other people, there's a bigger chance it could become an island of six fingered people than if you're the guy with six fingers in Paris, France or New York.
There's other factors which make the impact of evolution more visible, like having a shorter life span (more generations means more chances for change), etc. But it's not something that "happens", it's something that never stops.
Every once in awhile evolution gives out something that's a real gem, like a color that hides you from your predators. But usually it gives you something that either doesn't harm / help you (think a different eye color, or the human appendix). If you're really good at living in your environment, it will often give you something that's really bad (think hemophilia, the inability to make the blood clot).
Evolution is blind change; however, it's effects are often visible. Think back to that color which hides you from predators, it's going to be your children, with your "hide me" genes that don't get killed. If the predator never catches on, and that predator (whether it's cold or lions or posionous foods) kills off enough of the "other guys", your family's ability will become the dominant characteristic of the species. But that is what is called Adaptation, and unfortunately, there's few people who bother to see the difference.
Adaption is controlled by opportunity.
It has nothing to do with God, but it also has nothing to do with disproving the existance of God. So unless there's a clause in the Bible/Koran/Whatever saying, "Creatures never change from one generation to the next", and another clause saying "Creatures with differences never manage to do better or worse than other creatures", your religion has nothing against Evolution. If such a clause exists, then one has to ask, "We see whole species getting killed off, so why doesn't the planet eventaully run out of them?"
Whether it was all set up in 7 days or not is unimportant in deciding to accept or deny that evolution happens.
Design does matter. Usually it won't be noticable until some specific event, but when that event happens (and it will), you'll get burnt.
What you do after you get burnt is entirely up to you. Some change products, some deal with loss of information, some work to recover what they had, some didn't have data important enough to bother with anyway.
The more work you do to discover "why" the more you'll view MySQL's rationale as excuses instead of revolutionary minimalisim. Soon the banter of "work around the problem", "Not necessary if you do this and then that", "Bad for performance when you could just do this", etc. will come off as shallow excuses for fundamental problems that have been solved since the 1980's.
Lacking good design doesn't matter until failure. Good design is what you apply to prevent failure or at least mitigate it's effects. In the Ford Pinto's case, the car's inherit ability to turn into a ball of flame didn't matter until someone hit it from the rear.
Professionals (in any profession) are held to a higher standard. Arguing that a "good" design is wrong is one thing, arguing that a "good" design is irrelevant is tantamount to negligence. Compromises to "good" design should be made, but only when they are understood and "give" you something in return.
Choosing MySQL gives you little (speed) and asks for a lot (you do the work an RDBMS would in your code) in return. New DB people won't know the difference, until it's too late.
Considering the tone, the quote, and the imagined environment floating around in my head, I'd guess that he wasn't staying in his position much longer anyway.
No facts to back it up, but I doubt that having political opinions and expressing them in unrelated contexts (the interview, and likely the LUG) while holding a role of authority does little to advance the main purpose of the LUG: the promotion of Linux.
It's like a cycling club where to join, you need to both have a bicycle and a political point of view about immigration. Ridiculous. Any other political points of view will likely be irritated by long lectures on reasons why/why not.
On an unrelated note: the Mr. Smith reference confused me, I was thinking Mr. Smith goes to Washington. In which case, I'm all for the Mr. Smiths of Linux having their way!
Agreed, good programming is not easy, and many more of the avenues to enter the field should require more basis in theory (language design, automata, OS internals, compilers, underpinnings of good database design, etc.)
But good programming should be less complex now than it was before. That's the whole imperitus of language design. That's the reason that the last of the big languages to roll out is the same "simple" JAVA bashed in a few previous posts.
In a previous post, I couldn't fathom the divergence of thoughts that denounced JAVA as a language while espousing that he's really cool C++/OpenGL stuff out there. C++ has a syntax that's unwieldy and awkward, mastered by comparatively few, and full of "compatibility" weaknesses shared by it's older brother, C. It's almost like it was thrown in there subconsiously to say, "Look, I am an uber elite programmer. OpenGL and C++. Watch me whine as I use something that has a clean, clear syntax."
I'd hate to hear him gripe about PASCAL.
"Really cool work", can be done in any language, and the proliferation of languages shows that there's many solutions to the same problem.
His bashing the language for it's simplicity was as insightful as bashing good error checking, testing array boundaries, or enforcing garbage collection. Note that technological improvements can lessen the impact of these annoyances, but when the language design is flawed, only deep education of the masses (as in, don't do this, you'll regret it) can save the language.
It's suprisingly full of fluff. I admire the challenge to go somewhere new and interesting, but am equally appaled by lack of sense of direction in the article.
It's about as coherent as pointing out that theres 360 degress around you, and they are all hopeful and promising. Then asking you "Where do want to go today?", while reminding you that you're in your hometown.
The dismissal of open-source as a non-innovator is questionable, and the statments about programming itself not getting better keep me scratching my head. What do you mean by more innovative programming? Compilers won't accept any type of creative garbage, and personal expression in the language (aka Perl) has it's own limitations.
These guys should be motovational speakers, but problem is they don't have a large an audience as say, people with finiancial troubles, grumpy employees, or people with weight problems.
Lack of industry-redefining innovation is an indicator of maturity in computing science. Innovations become small steps forward, and are no longer the cataclysmic leaps that existed in the past.
Look at Gnome as (only one) example. They changed their default browsing mode to a spatially oriented one. It's innovative, but it's not going to be as big a leap as say, going from the command line interface to a windowing one. Arguing that it's not a big enough innovation to have real merit implies that their early pioneering breakthroughs elevate them to a kind of revered status as super-programmer.
It's easy to be innovative via discovery in a field that hasn't matured, it's a lot harder to be innovative via discovery when millions are working along side of you. I'm not trying to diminsh thier hard work and effort, not discount the magnimity of their accomplishemnts, but to stretch my analogy (a bit too far), claiming that nobody has discovered a new continent recently isn't the fault of less innovative map makers.
It is when you decide to include packages which are not available with the original CDs. And when you start repackaging the config files in servers to suit your purpose.
Linux uses the ELF (The Executable and Linking Format) which is available across all platforms.
However, you won't get that Intel code to run on a Motoral chip, but then again, you can't do this right now with Windows or OSX. So it's no loss to you.
The gcc compiler (and nearly all others) have flags which allow you to constrain your use of op-codes to those likely to run on a widely adopted chipset. Many use 386s as the base, as it is supported in all Intel/AMD CPUs. Others have moved to 586 as the base. Either way, you're not in as dire straits as you advertise.
I mean, other companies manage to sell close proprietary software in the Linux arena, implying that it's not impossible (and profitable in their cases).
As far as directory structure goes, etc. LSB addresses these issues. If you're looking for something that's found in two or three places (and not addressed by the LSB), write a friggn "switch" clause or a couple of "if" statments.
Non-phone based support might be one thing, but never underestimate the power of communication.
Yesterday, my stepfather had a problem with his email. From his end of the phone, he's not sure if the people trying to help him even understand what he was complaining about.
His resolution? He's now looking for a new ISP, and perhaps his own domain name so he won't rely on his ISP for email. Some things you can live without for a few days, but when you have a small business like his, ability to send and receive email is critical.
Slashdot Mirror
I've a father that is a CPA, but don't take tax advise from me, hire a CPA.
Tax law isn't something that is consistent and fair. It's a hodgepodge of well meaning laws all intended to do various things which will provide the goverment funding while not trying to destroy the economy at the same time.
That means a person may legally owe (depending on how he files) a whole range of taxes. If you choose to pay more, you're not a single bit more "legal" than if you pay the minimum. Add a few states into the mix, and some off-shore holdings, and I can mentally visualize the complexity of the problem growing.
As for the poor not paying enough taxes, well that's an opinion. But the lower taxing of the poor is a philosophical argument encoded in tax law. The argument is something along the lines of, well, if we tax them, then they'll never make it to middle class which is where we really make our money. Other arguements like, "big business is really what drives the economy, so they should get a tax break so they can do more business" are also philosophical in nature, but people tend to forget this.
As a result, you've got a lot of conflicting ideas on what is taxable, what is not, and how much. Just look at the relatively simple tax laws for food. There's literally cases where you can't know if an item is taxable until you lay down some sort of priority on which way you're going to interpert the laws.
Food is not taxable. Some snacks and candies are. Prepackaged food being consumed on the premises is. Beef jerky is a snack, yet it has a history of being a real food staple. Chewbacca lives on Endor. That means if the stop-and-go has a food court, then the beef jerky should be taxed, but if it lacks one, then no. It's not confusing because of political kick-backs, but because of political do-gooders who really tried to fix it on a case-by-case basis over the last 200 years.
Considering that Slashdot runs copyright stories multiple times a week, why does the submitter even question if parodies are fair use.
Among the very few things that are explictly proctected under fair use is parodies.
I know that there's a lot of RTFA going around, but how can people with exposure to the issues multiple times a week even ask such a question, unless:
1. It's obvious flamebait.
2. Nobody RTFAs or even bothers to understand the laws they are talking about.
Not that copyright law is great, but really, why question if it protects parody when the law explicitly states that copyright does not prevent reuse of the material in the case of parodies.
A computer in a beer case is very dangerous. Shoot, I'd expect it could even be lethal under the right circumstances.
Image someone needing a beer really badly, then finding out that's it's just some underpowered PC.
I hope he's not in my state.
Let's see.
I could respect a director who makes a controversial film decision (Han shoots first) provided that the film is made well, and it doesn't look like a mistake (see my film because it's controversial trash)
I could respect a director who admits to making a mistake in a film (or believes that his greater vision was compromised at first release) and rereleases the film with corrections (Greedo shoots first) provided that the film is remade well, and it doesn't look like he's just caving into a compromised version of his vision.
But I can't respect this. Either Lucas is stating that his vision was for Han to be a chior boy in bad boy clothing, or that his vision wasn't important enough to stand by, or that he has no vision, he's just doing whatever the polls say.
After watching Kirosawa's "The Hidden Fortress", I am fully convinced that the success of Star Wars was part plagarisim and part mistake. Lucas's disneyland inspired lightening up of the film in it's theatrical re-relase was touted as being closer to his true "vision". Every improvement detracted from the story and lightened the tone of the film. I mean, Luke's family was just killed, and we're supposed to be laughing at visual gags when it's time to go find Han. "Empire Strikes Back" probably was saved due to the extra help he brought aboard. Help which he now eschews in the episode 1-3 films.
Let's face it. We'll never have a good Star Wars until the Master stops driving his Empire into the ground in the name of Profit.
Odds are good that your floppys sitting on your desk were manufactured over ten years ago.
Even if you buy "fresh" floppys off the shelf today, odds are good that those were manufactured ten years ago. The floppy market saw some revival with the introduction of colored cases, but you can only dress up a lost cause so much. Besides, it's only a matter of time before the competing technologies edge you out that way too.
I don't fault floppies for a 50% failure rate. After all, they were never meant to last for decades, and it's not like there's been enough demand to gurantee that even newly purchased floppys aren't ancient. If fault could be assigned, it's on the lack of retailers / producers to account for on shelf spoilage in their business practices.
Yes, he's totally skimming over the more imporatant issues.
RedHat isn't out to save computing from Microsoft, the Spanish Inquisition, Sun, or any other perceived demon. RedHat is out to survive, and it's going to selfishly do so by nurturing the market which allows it to thrive. RedHat will never bleed itself dry, but they will offer up a few dollars (sacrificially) to keep the open source movement going.
It's like fishers not overfishing so they have something to eat next year. Or farmers letting a field lie fallow so they don't destroy the soil. It's planned alturisim for the greater purpose of succeeding. Which (wearing the right kind of glasses) is a fancy way of promoting long term selfishness. Note that fishers can (and do) let anyone drop their hook, but those with little skill will soon see it's much cheaper to buy at the market price.
And that's a very good thing, since short term selfishness usually burns through all your resources (finiancial and physical) leaving you with the need to move into another domain.
Apart from the fact that your deliberatly imposing free (as in beer) upon licensces explicitly stating free (as in speech), let's look at the moral "requirement to contribute".
If you feel that there is such a requirement, pay back the community by paying someone who will pay back the community in code.
Buying RedHat (or SuSE, etc.) will fund the companies that currently hire programmers to work on Linux (and it's associated software suite). These companies don't hire these programmers out of altruisim, they do so because it's their team who's going to be struggling with the problems in debugging / integrating the applications.
It's remarkable that should you decide to take this mantle upon you own shoulders, you don't have to pay the price to them. But you will pay the price (internally), and if you feel that it's too great a burdon, I suggest you don't bother with software / computers at all.
Every action (and application) has a price, even those which are not purchased. The reason open source software will never die is because it's cheaper. You only pay the price of learning to live with the software you have, instead of first paying to get your hands on said software and then paying again to learn how to live with it.
Don't submit code back if it's not your cup of tea, just go out there and buy a copy from someone who does. If you feel no moral requirement to do this, then there's no reqirement at all. That's freedom, and it cuts both ways.
Cheers.
How is this informative?
If you don't bother to use --checksig, then you've got a lot of security home work to do. I doubt that RedHat rolled such a package, checksig will allow you to verify the source of your packages (at the cost of collecting a few (trusted) public keys).
Query the package for a correct signature before installation, like so:
rpm -qp --checksig package.rpm
If there's no signature, or it's not a valid one, don't run the installation command.
Kitchen knives are used to cut. If you slice off your fingers due to inattentiveness / lack of training, it's hardly a security hole in the kitchen knife.
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is, "Never get involved in a land war in Asia", but only slightly less known is this: "Never go in with a consultant, when he's got an axe to grind!"
As far a rpm being slient, that's just because you didn't ask. The verbose flag is -v and for really verbose output try -vv.
Cross distro RPMS would allow you to do the same, except you gain:
1. The ability to build on one machine yet install on another.
2. The ability to build on one architecture yet install on another.
3. The ability to perform you compiles in one highly observed area instead of tracking down multiple remote compilations and debugging them from afar.
4. The ability to not worry about current compiler installation and build tools on all platforms, just the one you're developing / building on.
5. The savings in time by building once per distributiable instead of once per installation.
6. A guranteed uninstall path, even if the installation distributable is removed or damaged.
7. A database of installed files allowing mapping of a file to a package, listing of all files in that package, and what packages require and depend on this one.
8. Easier / automated patch application for those times developers have overlooked your particular platform.
9. The gurantee that two platforms with the same RPM have the same bugs / issues / configuration / etc.
10. The ability to see which (if any) files have been modified since the original installation.
So if your supporting that one computer at home which also doubles as your development box, and you're willing to waste away portions of your lifetime doing exactly what others have already done by fixing those compiler warnings / errors / learning someone else's source code better than them. Then, I guess, they are about equivalent solutions.
Unfortunately, that's exactly what every one of these "incompatiable" distros have and are doing.
/opt, but I don't want to test a beta compiler by removing my stable version of the same in /usr/bin. If I couldn't override the installation directory, I couldn't have them both installed at the same time.
Of course, you could enforce standards so tightly that there's only one implementation (yours). The real art is to create a standard flexible enough that I can do what I want (need) to without "breaking" your standard.
Mabye you don't want stuff in
Sorry to burst your bubble, but similar problems exist in Windows, you just have to install more software. Nearly all vendors are consistent with themselves, but they do not agree with "the other guys" practices.
It may sound silly, but a stack is just that. It's a stack.
:)
Whatever you put on top is the first thing you take off. (Think of a stack of plates)
Stacks come with two main operations, push (onto the top) and pop (off of the top). Some operations will pop a number of items and push the result back.
Since a stack is a general idea, it can be implemented in either hardware or software.
One classic example of using stacks can be found in the typical procedure call. When you "call" a procedure, a new frame is created and "pushed" onto the stack. During creation, the passed variables are initialized by the "calling" frame. Any declared variables live in this frame and when the frame is "poped" from the stack, they are gone. By using frames and stacks, you can gurantee that declared variables will only "live" in the scope of the procedure call.
Another implementation is that of a post-fix calculator, the HP calculators being the most famous examples. To multiply 5*6, you would type:
5 (enter)
6 (enter)
*
Note that the "enter" was really nothing other than the stack operator "push"
Stack overflows occur when you call so many nested procedures that the language or computer cannot support the creation of another frame. If you're a student, you'll discover them soon enough
But now how are you going to show off all of your radical DOMINO programming skills?
Sure you could blame open source.
But if you do, you're assuming that companies never would look around the corner for cheaper solutions. That kind of assumption implies that nobody would make software faster, cheaper, better.
Even without open source (which started the whole computer revolution far before there were these things call Software Companies) companies would STILL be cost cutting, looking for better solutions, etc.
The reason most of these companies were wildly successful is because after they poured the initial effort into their products, they milked them for every dime they could get out of them. Lack of re-investment and re-invention eventually equates to a lot of cruft. It's cost effective right now to not redesign, but the interest on that immediate savings will be payed out over your company's lifetime.
To say open source is causing these companies to fail is illogical. After all, there are plenty of successful water companies (Ozarka, Perrier, Avion, etc) who SELL water at a premium even in locations where it is FREE from cost.
The problem is most of these companies don't offer anything beyond version "2" of the same solution they sold to you last year, and they're hard pressed to create growth after their niche is saturated. They're making a more profitable X (meaning they'll probably put LESS work into it), and expecting you to buy it because it's cleaner and brighter. When they stand still long enough, eventually even non-companies can surpass their offerings.
Good April Fool's Joke!!!
Hahahaha!!! That's halarious!
Oh, wait....
For those without the vocabulary:
Abiogenesis: Creation of life from non-living matter.
Actually, even the scientists believe in abiogenesis, it's just that their version of the story has to do with self arranging molecules. This is very understandable since even right now, your protein strands are arranging and rearranging themselves (folding) into the shapes they use to keep you living.
The "old school" reference of the word is entirely different. It refers to a time when scientists believed that pieces of mud spontaneously turned into frogs and parts of rotting meat spontaneously turned into maggots. It's an example of why science didn't go very far until the discovery of "the scientific method" and the "controlled experiment".
Sad thing is, that it's exactly by looking at the beauty of the "created" and searching for it's "perfection" that all of the scientific theories have been made, disproven, improved upon, and established.
If I follow the advice of "discovering the perfection of the Creator in witnessing the beauty of the created." Eventually I will come to the same conclusion:
These creatures are perfect because they have in them the inherit ability to change over time so they don't disappear from the face of the planet.
Some call it evolution, some call it "save yourself!", some call it natural selection, and others call it "he got what he deserved, the idiot." But your procedure for "illumine(ing) our knowledge of God" (ahem, illuminates?) is the same one that created the whole mess of understanding evolution in the first place.
I can create a spherical triangle, as a matter of fact, you can too!
(A spherical triangle is a triangle that is contained within the surface of a sphere)
I'm sure God could do it too, if he took spherical geometry.
Except that evolution isn't controlled by opportunity.
Evolution happens along at its OWN rate, population growth happens at a rate partially determined by competition. Also, in this case there's less "ecosystem" to populate, since much of the ecosystem has been destroyed.
Evolution has it's impacts, and we can more easily see those impacts when the population size is small, like on islands or other isolated groups. As a theoretical example, if you happen to have six fingers on an island with 20 other people, there's a bigger chance it could become an island of six fingered people than if you're the guy with six fingers in Paris, France or New York.
There's other factors which make the impact of evolution more visible, like having a shorter life span (more generations means more chances for change), etc. But it's not something that "happens", it's something that never stops.
Every once in awhile evolution gives out something that's a real gem, like a color that hides you from your predators. But usually it gives you something that either doesn't harm / help you (think a different eye color, or the human appendix). If you're really good at living in your environment, it will often give you something that's really bad (think hemophilia, the inability to make the blood clot).
Evolution is blind change; however, it's effects are often visible. Think back to that color which hides you from predators, it's going to be your children, with your "hide me" genes that don't get killed. If the predator never catches on, and that predator (whether it's cold or lions or posionous foods) kills off enough of the "other guys", your family's ability will become the dominant characteristic of the species. But that is what is called Adaptation, and unfortunately, there's few people who bother to see the difference.
Adaption is controlled by opportunity.
It has nothing to do with God, but it also has nothing to do with disproving the existance of God. So unless there's a clause in the Bible/Koran/Whatever saying, "Creatures never change from one generation to the next", and another clause saying "Creatures with differences never manage to do better or worse than other creatures", your religion has nothing against Evolution. If such a clause exists, then one has to ask, "We see whole species getting killed off, so why doesn't the planet eventaully run out of them?"
Whether it was all set up in 7 days or not is unimportant in deciding to accept or deny that evolution happens.
Design does matter. Usually it won't be noticable until some specific event, but when that event happens (and it will), you'll get burnt.
What you do after you get burnt is entirely up to you. Some change products, some deal with loss of information, some work to recover what they had, some didn't have data important enough to bother with anyway.
The more work you do to discover "why" the more you'll view MySQL's rationale as excuses instead of revolutionary minimalisim. Soon the banter of "work around the problem", "Not necessary if you do this and then that", "Bad for performance when you could just do this", etc. will come off as shallow excuses for fundamental problems that have been solved since the 1980's.
Lacking good design doesn't matter until failure. Good design is what you apply to prevent failure or at least mitigate it's effects. In the Ford Pinto's case, the car's inherit ability to turn into a ball of flame didn't matter until someone hit it from the rear.
Professionals (in any profession) are held to a higher standard. Arguing that a "good" design is wrong is one thing, arguing that a "good" design is irrelevant is tantamount to negligence. Compromises to "good" design should be made, but only when they are understood and "give" you something in return.
Choosing MySQL gives you little (speed) and asks for a lot (you do the work an RDBMS would in your code) in return. New DB people won't know the difference, until it's too late.
Considering the tone, the quote, and the imagined environment floating around in my head, I'd guess that he wasn't staying in his position much longer anyway.
No facts to back it up, but I doubt that having political opinions and expressing them in unrelated contexts (the interview, and likely the LUG) while holding a role of authority does little to advance the main purpose of the LUG: the promotion of Linux.
It's like a cycling club where to join, you need to both have a bicycle and a political point of view about immigration. Ridiculous. Any other political points of view will likely be irritated by long lectures on reasons why/why not.
On an unrelated note: the Mr. Smith reference confused me, I was thinking Mr. Smith goes to Washington. In which case, I'm all for the Mr. Smiths of Linux having their way!
Agreed, good programming is not easy, and many more of the avenues to enter the field should require more basis in theory (language design, automata, OS internals, compilers, underpinnings of good database design, etc.)
But good programming should be less complex now than it was before. That's the whole imperitus of language design. That's the reason that the last of the big languages to roll out is the same "simple" JAVA bashed in a few previous posts.
In a previous post, I couldn't fathom the divergence of thoughts that denounced JAVA as a language while espousing that he's really cool C++/OpenGL stuff out there. C++ has a syntax that's unwieldy and awkward, mastered by comparatively few, and full of "compatibility" weaknesses shared by it's older brother, C. It's almost like it was thrown in there subconsiously to say, "Look, I am an uber elite programmer. OpenGL and C++. Watch me whine as I use something that has a clean, clear syntax."
I'd hate to hear him gripe about PASCAL.
"Really cool work", can be done in any language, and the proliferation of languages shows that there's many solutions to the same problem.
His bashing the language for it's simplicity was as insightful as bashing good error checking, testing array boundaries, or enforcing garbage collection. Note that technological improvements can lessen the impact of these annoyances, but when the language design is flawed, only deep education of the masses (as in, don't do this, you'll regret it) can save the language.
Well, I took the bait and read it.
It's suprisingly full of fluff. I admire the challenge to go somewhere new and interesting, but am equally appaled by lack of sense of direction in the article.
It's about as coherent as pointing out that theres 360 degress around you, and they are all hopeful and promising. Then asking you "Where do want to go today?", while reminding you that you're in your hometown.
The dismissal of open-source as a non-innovator is questionable, and the statments about programming itself not getting better keep me scratching my head. What do you mean by more innovative programming? Compilers won't accept any type of creative garbage, and personal expression in the language (aka Perl) has it's own limitations.
These guys should be motovational speakers, but problem is they don't have a large an audience as say, people with finiancial troubles, grumpy employees, or people with weight problems.
Lack of industry-redefining innovation is an indicator of maturity in computing science. Innovations become small steps forward, and are no longer the cataclysmic leaps that existed in the past.
Look at Gnome as (only one) example. They changed their default browsing mode to a spatially oriented one. It's innovative, but it's not going to be as big a leap as say, going from the command line interface to a windowing one. Arguing that it's not a big enough innovation to have real merit implies that their early pioneering breakthroughs elevate them to a kind of revered status as super-programmer.
It's easy to be innovative via discovery in a field that hasn't matured, it's a lot harder to be innovative via discovery when millions are working along side of you. I'm not trying to diminsh thier hard work and effort, not discount the magnimity of their accomplishemnts, but to stretch my analogy (a bit too far), claiming that nobody has discovered a new continent recently isn't the fault of less innovative map makers.
It is when you decide to include packages which are not available with the original CDs. And when you start repackaging the config files in servers to suit your purpose.
A bit misinformed.
Linux uses the ELF (The Executable and Linking Format) which is available across all platforms.
However, you won't get that Intel code to run on a Motoral chip, but then again, you can't do this right now with Windows or OSX. So it's no loss to you.
The gcc compiler (and nearly all others) have flags which allow you to constrain your use of op-codes to those likely to run on a widely adopted chipset. Many use 386s as the base, as it is supported in all Intel/AMD CPUs. Others have moved to 586 as the base. Either way, you're not in as dire straits as you advertise.
I mean, other companies manage to sell close proprietary software in the Linux arena, implying that it's not impossible (and profitable in their cases).
As far as directory structure goes, etc. LSB addresses these issues. If you're looking for something that's found in two or three places (and not addressed by the LSB), write a friggn "switch" clause or a couple of "if" statments.
Non-phone based support might be one thing, but never underestimate the power of communication.
Yesterday, my stepfather had a problem with his email. From his end of the phone, he's not sure if the people trying to help him even understand what he was complaining about.
His resolution? He's now looking for a new ISP, and perhaps his own domain name so he won't rely on his ISP for email. Some things you can live without for a few days, but when you have a small business like his, ability to send and receive email is critical.