When I built the house I am in now, I wired the hell out of it. Every room has 3 CAT5 drops and an RG-6 (coax) drop. My office has 6 CAT5 and 2 RG-6 (because at the time I had cable modem service, now I have DSL). Even my kitchen and dining room are wired with CAT5 drops (just in case). All of this wiring runs back to a central patch panel in the garage.
So am I set? Not really. It's funny how when you build a house, you think you know how you are going to use each room. Then you move in and change your mind. The room I designated as an office is fine, but it's right across from the bedroom and we get to listen to the hum of many fans as we drift off to sleep at night. There is a room downstairs that I later realized would make a great office, but it isn't wired with enough drops (because it was supposed to be just a sitting room).
I contracted out the network cabling through a company I used to work for, so I got exactly what I wanted and for cheap. The electrical wiring was done by a contractor hired by the builder, and I had much less control and had to make a lot of compromises (rather than spend a fortune in custom "upgrades"). As a result, I have only 8 outlets in my office, and they all run off the same circuit. All of my equipment in that room is powered by my APC 3000 UPS, with a power strip plugged into each of its 8 outlets. That UPS was modified to run on a 15A 120V circuit (basically by swapping out the 30A locking plug) and aside from a few lamps around the room, is the only draw on that line.
Right now, I've got the load at around 40% of the UPS's designed capacity, which is about 80% of the circuit's capacity. And that's with my rack of Cisco gear powered off. I power that rack up to do some lab work, and I am right at the max. I usually work in the dark, simply because I'm afraid that if I power on a lamp, I'll throw the breaker.
Moral of the story: even when you design for capacity and connectivity, you still run into brick walls eventually. I've actually given thought to the idea that the next house we build will not have wiring fished through the walls, but instead use this wiring raceway I saw on a home improvement show a couple of years ago. It is exposed and easily accessible to facilitate upgrades to power and cabling. Need another outlet? Just snap one in.
^ Here's one RHCE that won't be re-certifying, for that very reason. I'm done with Red Hat. Requiring RHCE's to recertify on RHEL was aggravating enough, but discontinuing the non-Enterprise product was the last straw for me. Red Hat can kiss my ass.
1. Six-plus hours of battery life is not always enough.
That's why they make car chargers, like the PowerPod from Griffin Technology. As long as I've got gasoline, I've got power for my iPod. As for flying, until someone makes an airline power adapter for the iPod, all you need is a laptop (PC or PowerBook will work) with an air adaptor and a free Firewire port to charge your iPod. If you have a layover, you can just use the iPod AC adaptor and leech off a wall outlet in the terminal.
2. Jogging with a hard drive-based player is not cool.
Jog? Sorry, I only run when I'm chased.
3. The iPod is expensive.
So is everything worth a crap. You get what you pay for.
4. You want to make high-quality digital recordings.
No, I don't. I want to listen to my freaking MP3's.
5. You want a choice in online music stores.
No, I don't. In my household, there are three Macs, two iPods, and zero iTunes Music Store audio files. Having an iPod does not mean you are automatically an iTMS customer. $0.99/song?? Yeah, right. Call when they hit a nickel a piece, and I'll think about it.
As long as the means to track your purchases is based on some non-personal identifier (such as a customer number on a store card). The "preferred shopper" cards that most supermarkets currently issue don't really care *who* you are, as much as *what* you are. Are you a 20-something single black female, or a 50-something married white male? The personal information (name, address, etc) is only useful for mailing out coupons and such, and most supermarkets don't market by direct mail, they use circular publications. I don't have a shopping card myself, but my wife has three or four of the things. In every case, she just filled out a little piece of paper with statistical information, and they gave her a card. They didn't check her ID or anything, so if you don't want them to know who you *really* are, just use a fake name and address.
So as long as I get an anonymous shopping card, who cares if the store wants to track purchasing trends, if it's going to make the shopping experience better (and I loath supermarkets - mainly because I can never find what I'm looking for without having to traverse half the store)?
The only issue I would have is if the store wants to keep my credit card info on file for some sort of "EZ Pay" system. No, thanks. I don't care if they know that some anonymous, 30 year-old, married, white male buys frozen lasagna and canned corn and mostly shops after 8pm on week nights, but I'm keeping my account numbers in my wallet. They can have their little wireless computer tell the automated checkout machine how much I owe, and then prompt me to swipe my card and enter my PIN, or feed cash into a bill scanner (for the ultimate in anonymity). As long as the anonymous purchasing information is kept separate from the personalized financial information, I fail to see a privacy issue with this concept.
No, let's not. I know it's a pipe dream but I'd much rather see some real, proper international cooperation, and I'm sure many of the scientists working in this area would love to see this as well. With all the great minds working in this area (after all, 3 nations have individually now put humans into space) imagine what could be achieved?
I disagree. I firmly believe that competition and discord drives progress, not cooperation. In the end, I suspect that it will be profit motive that will drive space exploration, just as it was profit motive that drove exploration of the New World beginning in the 1500's. However, like the exploration of the New World, it falls upon scientific interests and the financial investment of governments to take the initial exploratory steps, and to absorb the risk that comes with sailing off to the edge of the known world.
>foster some nationalistic pride in the US again
(bye bye karma....) This is not meant as flamebait, but I can't think of any other nation on earth that has as much nationalistic pride as the US - too much nationalistic pride in fact. By all means, be patriotic (I know I am), but when you're so patriotic that you blindly assume your way is right and won't listen to anybody else, then you have a problem.
Once again, I disagree. You're confusing arrogance for pride. The American people as a whole are patriotic to the point of putting a flag sticker on their bumper, and that's about it. For the most part, Americans are self-absorbed, pampered individuals who care little beyond keeping their SUV filled with fuel, and their cup filled with $8 coffee (and I am an American, so I say this not with glee, but with utter disappointment). The vast majority of Americans aren't interested in making their country a great place to live. They're only interested in making their own lives as comfortable as possible, and only raise an interest beyond that narrow focus when it comes to protecting the status quo.
In 1961, John F. Kennedy challenged the nation with, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." Today, that sentiment would either be met with open derision, or (more likely) a collective shrug. America has gotten used to being on top of the heap and standing unchallenged, and this has made us soft and complacent. We have begun to take power and prestige for granted.
My only hope is that fear or ego in the face of China's triumph, will drive America to retake it's position, not as a world *power*, but as a world *leader*.
Umm. No, it's not good to see. It's a horrible sight, actually. It's not the "spirit of adventure" by any means. It's more like the "desire of domination".
I see it more as a "desire of relevance" than anything malevolent. I think China is trying to regain some of the prestige it held in its less-than-recent history, and forge ahead as a strong nation in the future.
China is a country that has basically stagnated under Communist rule for the last 50 years, and I think they know that. China has been taking baby-steps towards capitalism in the last few years, and I think they are simply trying to become a marketable, technological power in the world.
I think you're confusing China with North Korea in their motivations and temperment.
That courage and the American spirit of adventure is alive and well... albeit in China. In the US, we're still wringing our hands and calling for an end to manned space flight, because we lost a shuttle and seven fine astronauts - along with our backbone as a people.
Kudos to the Chinese. It's about time we had some healthy competition in space. Let's get another Space Race started. Maybe that will get the US Congress and NASA off their collective asses and back into the game (and we might see a human on Mars inside of 10 years). Maybe we can drive a little rivalry to foster some nationalistic pride in the US again (but I doubt it).
I know this: if the Chinese lost a capsule, they'd bow their heads in homage for a moment of silence, then get to launching another one, two weeks later. That's the kind of resolve that allows a nation to succeed. The rest of the world should take note, unless they want to be following in the footsteps of the Chinese for the remainder of the 21st century, instead of leading the way.
Yes, I know of at least one honest headhunter. I've known him for years. He found me a good job as a sysadmin at a nice company a few years ago. He worked hard to get me there, but I ended up not taking the job (for reasons to complicated to go into). But even though he had put in a lot of time setting the deal up, he was very understanding when I turned it down.
What's more, he didn't hold a grudge. Six months ago when I was looking for a change of scenary, I applied for a job online. It turned out Vince was the headhunter, now working for a different company himself. He not only remembered me by name, but recommended me highly to the client (which turned out to be the same company he works for), and I ended up getting the job.
A month ago, a friend of mine was looking to get out of a sinking ship himself. I gave him Vince's number, and in three weeks Vince not only found him a job, but found him something that fit him well. In this economy? I was floored.
So yes, they are out there. You just have to look around a little.
Congratulations, sir! You've just failed American History. Other than that, a pretty decent post.
Correct. It was the Union that burned their way through the South, and one General's forces in particular, that being General William T. Sherman. General Sherman's "March to the Sea" was one of the most infamous campaigns of the American Civil War.
I would like to thank Dr. John Recktenwald, my 8th grade history teacher for that, and many other, useless bits of historical trivia that for 17 years have served no more useful purpose than to facilitate idle chitchat with mildly attractive, pseudo-intellectual women at boring countryclub cocktail parties.
So we shouldn't bother listening for extrasolar transmissions because... they are probably just the last transmissions of a race being bombarded by alien warmongers?
Here's a question: what fucking morons modded this post up as "Insightful"? Moderators, here's a suggestion: read the fucking post instead of skimming and modding on length. And tune up your bullshit detectors, because they are clearly out of calibration.
Man, I hope I get one of you knuckleheads in my metamod list today.
It's about having a system that's prepared for the _common_ and _expected_ tasks that a user might want to do and right out the box is prepared to do them without much fuss.
But this is where things get problematic. Whenever a developer tries to anticipate what the user expects and write around those expectations, they naturally have to impose some restraints upon the system. And the real problem is this: different users expect different things. Pretty soon, those restraints start getting in the way.
Being able to treat the ports tree itself as a mere package would tend to indicate that the designers of the ports system have thought the whole problem through, and are applying the standard program-installation infrastructure that they themselves built to itself. It's a mark of a well thought-out system.
On the contrary, I think such a concept shows a lack of vision. There are over 8000 applications in the ports tree. Is it reasonable to assume that every admin, on every machine, would want to track every port? Rather, the ports system is designed so that the admin can decide to track a specific group of applications on a specific machine.
You use ports for most every app, but not the ports tree itself (and also not the base system).
I think you're missing the elegance of the system, and the beauty of the design. Ports are applications that are outside of the core, maintained OS. I can upgrade any port or combination of ports without worrying about dependency issues with the core system. I can upgrade the core system without worrying about breaking the ports. I can selectively synch specific parts of the ports or source trees. It is very flexible, but because of that flexibility there isn't a one-size-fits-all way of doing things (which is why cvsup comes with a collection of sample supfiles).
The best course of action when designing an app is to make the common tasks simple (ideally no further configuration needed), but give enough power and flexibility so that the uncommon ones too are possible (I'm not a fan of denying power to users).
Well, when you figure that one out, you should patent it.
Enthusiasm isn't the issue here. You detailed a long way to do something which Gentoo does with great ease, which you claimed to be "quite nice".
In case you hadn't noticed the red trim, this subject was regarding BSD. Not to mention that you seem familiar enough with Portage. Why would I need to go into some deep explanation of its mechanics? Are you looking for me to try to "prove" something? What exactly would be the point?:^)
Well if you don't take it out of context:
I (obviously) did not want to seem like a hypocrite.
I think you're taking this all a little too personally.:^)
Here's the way I see things:
Linux distributions have a tendency to do things in very distribution-specific ways, and tend to be rather inflexible in that regard. This is probably why there are so many Linux distributions. Every time someone wants to do things in a different way, they break the system, and up pops a new distribution. I feel reasonably assured in making this statement, as I have used Linux personally and professionally since 1995 and ran quite a number of different Linux distros (including Gentoo). I have seen the Linux distributions become more numerous, more convoluted, and more incompatible with each passing year (and I don't see this trend reversing itself anytime soon).
This is probably why there are relatively few BSD distributions. The BSDs tend to provide the core OS, and the tools to make things the way you want them to be, and that's it. The goal is to keep the system out of the admin's way. There is usually no need to fork the system, because the system is flexible enough to accomodate the needs and preferences of different admins. The system can be readily modified without breaking the fundamental mechanics.
So maybe you could understand why someone might prefer a system that requires a few additional steps to get rolling, if it means having a very personalized system. I still say it boils down to experience and background. Making 20-odd lines of commands is no big deal to me. It takes all of two minutes for me to set things up, because I'm familiar with the system. For someone unfamiliar with the system, it might seem like an awful lot to do, and a lot to know (or figure out). For that person, the single-command system is probably going to be a lot more attractive (it would be 20 times easier to learn).
But I don't think you can say that Portage is "better" simply because it requires less command syntax. It's really a matter of "does it do what I need it to do, with an amount of effort that seems reasonable to me". If it saves me labor, but doesn't accomplish what I need it to do, it isn't "better" for me. By that metric, it's reasonable to see how Portage might be better for you, and ports might be better for me.
Congrats. This answer however says nothing but "yes I have used it".
You asked if I have used Portage. I answered your question. Perhaps from the brevity of my response you should have inferred my level of enthusiasm about it...
And I'm really not interested in your gaming habits.
Then why did you tell me about your own...?
From your previous post: switched back to Linux because of the Nvidia driver situation back then (I NEED GAMES!)
Your methods may work, but they certainly are not "nice". Have you _used_ Gentoo Portage?
Yep. Sure have.:^)
(And yes I was a FreeBSD user for about a year, and it was great:-) switched back to Linux because of the Nvidia driver situation back then (I NEED GAMES!), but now that drivers are available I might give it another try soon)
Well, I'm not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination. Every once in a while I might get the itch to play a game or two, and for that I have a PS2 and a MAME box.
WORST example EVER. 2 lines in gentoo(cd to the ports dir, and make update) compred to 20 freaking lines you posted where you have to edit a file, make a directory and other crap that i don't want, or should have, to do.
I wasn't trying to show that FreeBSD ports was somehow *easier* than Portage (or anything else for that matter), simply that it was not very difficult at all, and it gets the job done nicely.
Personally, I don't see the problem with doing a little configuration to make the system behave exactly as I want. To me, that's a feature, not a flaw. Not to mention the fact that the 20 or so lines of command and code you seem to have a problem with, is a one-time setup task. After that, the system is a two-command process, one command if I create a simple shell script, no command if I add a cron job to do it once a week. This is just like your two-command process, except for the fact that *I* have dictated the mechanics of the process, rather than allowing a distributor to decide those mechanics for me.
Ports in freebsd are cool. But updating packages installed, and updating the whole system, are two very cool things i would like to see.
All you have to do is look, it's all right there. CVSup will update your ports tree, your source tree, your docs, or a custom combination of all of the above. Portupgrade will update all of your ports with one command. As to updating the system, the system and the ports are kept separate *by design*. The system can be upgraded independently from the ports, and vice versa. Updating the system itself is as simple as a 'make buildworld', 'make kernel', 'make installworld', and reboot.
I dunno. Maybe this is just an "old school vs. new school" issue. "Old school" UNIX users and sysadmins simply see this as a reasonable means to get things done. "New school" Linux users (a lot of whom are migrating from the Windows world) seem to be looking for the command-line equivalent of clicking a button to get everything done. No work, and no knowledge of the system itself and how it operates, required.
... then update your src and ports...
#/usr/local/bin/cvsup -g -L 2/usr/local/etc/cvsup/sup/supfile
#/usr/local/bin/portupgrade -ra
Granted, you have to build a supfile, and tweak your/etc/make.conf a little first... But those are minor things, and in the case of cvsup, there are loads of good examples provided in/usr/share/examples/cvsup.
Secondly, I agree that you cannot buy a gun through a dealer without a background check, but I do not believe a similar law has been passed for gun shows (though I've heard of several bills being debated in both state and federal legislatures). Correct me if I'm wrong (and provide links, please).
The laws regarding private sale vary from state to state. For instance, in my home state of NC, a private citizen can sell a longgun to another private citizen without the exchange of a purchase permit (the acquisition of which requires a background check). However, the sale of a handgun between any parties does require that the buyer present a purchase permit. This is regardless of where the sale takes place.
Meanwhile, across the state line in SC, a private citizen can sell either a longgun or a handgun to another private citizen without requiring the purchaser to present a permit.
Of course, there are limits to such an exchange that are more or less uniform. For instance, the person receiving the firearm must be qualified to purchase that firearm (ie, 18+ for a longgun, 21+ for a handgun, no felony convictions, no history of mental illness, etc). The seller is not required to conduct a background check on the buyer, but knowingly providing a firearm to someone who is not legally entitled to possess a firearm is a felony in itself. It's also a felony to provide a firearm to someone if you have knowledge that they will commit a crime with it.
As for the links, you can find information regarding federal firearms laws by visiting either the NRA Institute website or the ATF's online firearms info page. For information regarding your state's firearms laws, most have that information on the state's website or on the website of the Public Health and Safety Board for your state. If in doubt, Google.
Assume that everyone has a gun in their house with a trained operator. What do the criminals do now? Do they give up their life of crime, turn towards crimes with less possibility of injury (shop-lifting, B&E unguarded stores, scams, etc.), or do they start an arms race? What do they do when there are no more easy targets?
Criminals are looking for easy money. They aren't interested in a profession where they will be shot at on every job, and as I explained before, robbery is a crime that relies on stealth and speed. Get in, take what you want, and then get out. The fewer people that notice, the better chance you have to get away. A criminal will not go to a home, engage in a firefight with the occupants, then engage in another firefight with the police and possibly the neighbors, in order to escape with a thousand dollars worth of portable merchandise. It just isn't worth the risk. Your "arms race" proposal just isn't realistic.
Do you know what the fastest growing crime in the U.S. is? IDENTITY THEFT. Why? Because it's easy to do, there is very little risk of getting caught, and it is very profitable. Why shoot it out with an armed homeowner for some jewelry or electronics, when you can steal that homeowner's identity and rack up $50,000 in credit card debt without ever coming in physical contact with that person? So that is exactly what criminals would do if everyone was armed: give up B&E and switch to the easier, more profitable crimes.
And there will always be easy targets, whether it's the unarmed woman who strolls alone through a parking lot at 2am, or the armed ex-marine who throws away those junk mail credit card applications without shredding them first.
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When I built the house I am in now, I wired the hell out of it. Every room has 3 CAT5 drops and an RG-6 (coax) drop. My office has 6 CAT5 and 2 RG-6 (because at the time I had cable modem service, now I have DSL). Even my kitchen and dining room are wired with CAT5 drops (just in case). All of this wiring runs back to a central patch panel in the garage.
So am I set? Not really. It's funny how when you build a house, you think you know how you are going to use each room. Then you move in and change your mind. The room I designated as an office is fine, but it's right across from the bedroom and we get to listen to the hum of many fans as we drift off to sleep at night. There is a room downstairs that I later realized would make a great office, but it isn't wired with enough drops (because it was supposed to be just a sitting room).
I contracted out the network cabling through a company I used to work for, so I got exactly what I wanted and for cheap. The electrical wiring was done by a contractor hired by the builder, and I had much less control and had to make a lot of compromises (rather than spend a fortune in custom "upgrades"). As a result, I have only 8 outlets in my office, and they all run off the same circuit. All of my equipment in that room is powered by my APC 3000 UPS, with a power strip plugged into each of its 8 outlets. That UPS was modified to run on a 15A 120V circuit (basically by swapping out the 30A locking plug) and aside from a few lamps around the room, is the only draw on that line.
Right now, I've got the load at around 40% of the UPS's designed capacity, which is about 80% of the circuit's capacity. And that's with my rack of Cisco gear powered off. I power that rack up to do some lab work, and I am right at the max. I usually work in the dark, simply because I'm afraid that if I power on a lamp, I'll throw the breaker.
Moral of the story: even when you design for capacity and connectivity, you still run into brick walls eventually. I've actually given thought to the idea that the next house we build will not have wiring fished through the walls, but instead use this wiring raceway I saw on a home improvement show a couple of years ago. It is exposed and easily accessible to facilitate upgrades to power and cabling. Need another outlet? Just snap one in.
^ Here's one RHCE that won't be re-certifying, for that very reason. I'm done with Red Hat. Requiring RHCE's to recertify on RHEL was aggravating enough, but discontinuing the non-Enterprise product was the last straw for me. Red Hat can kiss my ass.
1. Six-plus hours of battery life is not always enough.
That's why they make car chargers, like the PowerPod from Griffin Technology. As long as I've got gasoline, I've got power for my iPod. As for flying, until someone makes an airline power adapter for the iPod, all you need is a laptop (PC or PowerBook will work) with an air adaptor and a free Firewire port to charge your iPod. If you have a layover, you can just use the iPod AC adaptor and leech off a wall outlet in the terminal.
2. Jogging with a hard drive-based player is not cool.
Jog? Sorry, I only run when I'm chased.
3. The iPod is expensive.
So is everything worth a crap. You get what you pay for.
4. You want to make high-quality digital recordings.
No, I don't. I want to listen to my freaking MP3's.
5. You want a choice in online music stores.
No, I don't. In my household, there are three Macs, two iPods, and zero iTunes Music Store audio files. Having an iPod does not mean you are automatically an iTMS customer. $0.99/song?? Yeah, right. Call when they hit a nickel a piece, and I'll think about it.
"Jesus, Bob! Are you just going to sit around all day drinking coffee?"
"Back off, man! I'm busting my ass transferring a 2.5GB file over here!"
Another thought: would hiring fat people give you more bandwidth?
As long as the means to track your purchases is based on some non-personal identifier (such as a customer number on a store card). The "preferred shopper" cards that most supermarkets currently issue don't really care *who* you are, as much as *what* you are. Are you a 20-something single black female, or a 50-something married white male? The personal information (name, address, etc) is only useful for mailing out coupons and such, and most supermarkets don't market by direct mail, they use circular publications. I don't have a shopping card myself, but my wife has three or four of the things. In every case, she just filled out a little piece of paper with statistical information, and they gave her a card. They didn't check her ID or anything, so if you don't want them to know who you *really* are, just use a fake name and address.
So as long as I get an anonymous shopping card, who cares if the store wants to track purchasing trends, if it's going to make the shopping experience better (and I loath supermarkets - mainly because I can never find what I'm looking for without having to traverse half the store)?
The only issue I would have is if the store wants to keep my credit card info on file for some sort of "EZ Pay" system. No, thanks. I don't care if they know that some anonymous, 30 year-old, married, white male buys frozen lasagna and canned corn and mostly shops after 8pm on week nights, but I'm keeping my account numbers in my wallet. They can have their little wireless computer tell the automated checkout machine how much I owe, and then prompt me to swipe my card and enter my PIN, or feed cash into a bill scanner (for the ultimate in anonymity). As long as the anonymous purchasing information is kept separate from the personalized financial information, I fail to see a privacy issue with this concept.
Looks more like tool marks than "carvings" to me. I think this is just a bunch of archeologists seeing what they want to see.
>Let's get another Space Race started.
....) This is not meant as flamebait, but I can't think of any other nation on earth that has as much nationalistic pride as the US - too much nationalistic pride in fact. By all means, be patriotic (I know I am), but when you're so patriotic that you blindly assume your way is right and won't listen to anybody else, then you have a problem.
No, let's not. I know it's a pipe dream but I'd much rather see some real, proper international cooperation, and I'm sure many of the scientists working in this area would love to see this as well. With all the great minds working in this area (after all, 3 nations have individually now put humans into space) imagine what could be achieved?
I disagree. I firmly believe that competition and discord drives progress, not cooperation. In the end, I suspect that it will be profit motive that will drive space exploration, just as it was profit motive that drove exploration of the New World beginning in the 1500's. However, like the exploration of the New World, it falls upon scientific interests and the financial investment of governments to take the initial exploratory steps, and to absorb the risk that comes with sailing off to the edge of the known world.
>foster some nationalistic pride in the US again
(bye bye karma
Once again, I disagree. You're confusing arrogance for pride. The American people as a whole are patriotic to the point of putting a flag sticker on their bumper, and that's about it. For the most part, Americans are self-absorbed, pampered individuals who care little beyond keeping their SUV filled with fuel, and their cup filled with $8 coffee (and I am an American, so I say this not with glee, but with utter disappointment). The vast majority of Americans aren't interested in making their country a great place to live. They're only interested in making their own lives as comfortable as possible, and only raise an interest beyond that narrow focus when it comes to protecting the status quo.
In 1961, John F. Kennedy challenged the nation with, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." Today, that sentiment would either be met with open derision, or (more likely) a collective shrug. America has gotten used to being on top of the heap and standing unchallenged, and this has made us soft and complacent. We have begun to take power and prestige for granted.
My only hope is that fear or ego in the face of China's triumph, will drive America to retake it's position, not as a world *power*, but as a world *leader*.
Umm. No, it's not good to see. It's a horrible sight, actually. It's not the "spirit of adventure" by any means. It's more like the "desire of domination".
I see it more as a "desire of relevance" than anything malevolent. I think China is trying to regain some of the prestige it held in its less-than-recent history, and forge ahead as a strong nation in the future.
China is a country that has basically stagnated under Communist rule for the last 50 years, and I think they know that. China has been taking baby-steps towards capitalism in the last few years, and I think they are simply trying to become a marketable, technological power in the world.
I think you're confusing China with North Korea in their motivations and temperment.
That courage and the American spirit of adventure is alive and well... albeit in China. In the US, we're still wringing our hands and calling for an end to manned space flight, because we lost a shuttle and seven fine astronauts - along with our backbone as a people.
Kudos to the Chinese. It's about time we had some healthy competition in space. Let's get another Space Race started. Maybe that will get the US Congress and NASA off their collective asses and back into the game (and we might see a human on Mars inside of 10 years). Maybe we can drive a little rivalry to foster some nationalistic pride in the US again (but I doubt it).
I know this: if the Chinese lost a capsule, they'd bow their heads in homage for a moment of silence, then get to launching another one, two weeks later. That's the kind of resolve that allows a nation to succeed. The rest of the world should take note, unless they want to be following in the footsteps of the Chinese for the remainder of the 21st century, instead of leading the way.
I talked to Vince, and he was cool with posting his info:
Vince Helmintoller
Venturi Partners
vhelmintoller@venturipartners.com
Yes, I know of at least one honest headhunter. I've known him for years. He found me a good job as a sysadmin at a nice company a few years ago. He worked hard to get me there, but I ended up not taking the job (for reasons to complicated to go into). But even though he had put in a lot of time setting the deal up, he was very understanding when I turned it down.
What's more, he didn't hold a grudge. Six months ago when I was looking for a change of scenary, I applied for a job online. It turned out Vince was the headhunter, now working for a different company himself. He not only remembered me by name, but recommended me highly to the client (which turned out to be the same company he works for), and I ended up getting the job.
A month ago, a friend of mine was looking to get out of a sinking ship himself. I gave him Vince's number, and in three weeks Vince not only found him a job, but found him something that fit him well. In this economy? I was floored.
So yes, they are out there. You just have to look around a little.
I would think the flood pants would have blown his cover, anyway...
The Star Wars Kid lost some weight...
Great film!
Congratulations, sir! You've just failed American History. Other than that, a pretty decent post.
Correct. It was the Union that burned their way through the South, and one General's forces in particular, that being General William T. Sherman. General Sherman's "March to the Sea" was one of the most infamous campaigns of the American Civil War.
I would like to thank Dr. John Recktenwald, my 8th grade history teacher for that, and many other, useless bits of historical trivia that for 17 years have served no more useful purpose than to facilitate idle chitchat with mildly attractive, pseudo-intellectual women at boring countryclub cocktail parties.
As announced here. It's written in Java.
That's the client. I believe the porting they are referring to is for the server component.
So we shouldn't bother listening for extrasolar transmissions because... they are probably just the last transmissions of a race being bombarded by alien warmongers?
Here's a question: what fucking morons modded this post up as "Insightful"? Moderators, here's a suggestion: read the fucking post instead of skimming and modding on length. And tune up your bullshit detectors, because they are clearly out of calibration.
Man, I hope I get one of you knuckleheads in my metamod list today.
So what does does the ports collection do that Portage doesn't?
:^)
I dunno, work on FreeBSD?
It's about having a system that's prepared for the _common_ and _expected_ tasks that a user might want to do and right out the box is prepared to do them without much fuss.
But this is where things get problematic. Whenever a developer tries to anticipate what the user expects and write around those expectations, they naturally have to impose some restraints upon the system. And the real problem is this: different users expect different things. Pretty soon, those restraints start getting in the way.
Being able to treat the ports tree itself as a mere package would tend to indicate that the designers of the ports system have thought the whole problem through, and are applying the standard program-installation infrastructure that they themselves built to itself. It's a mark of a well thought-out system.
On the contrary, I think such a concept shows a lack of vision. There are over 8000 applications in the ports tree. Is it reasonable to assume that every admin, on every machine, would want to track every port? Rather, the ports system is designed so that the admin can decide to track a specific group of applications on a specific machine.
You use ports for most every app, but not the ports tree itself (and also not the base system).
I think you're missing the elegance of the system, and the beauty of the design. Ports are applications that are outside of the core, maintained OS. I can upgrade any port or combination of ports without worrying about dependency issues with the core system. I can upgrade the core system without worrying about breaking the ports. I can selectively synch specific parts of the ports or source trees. It is very flexible, but because of that flexibility there isn't a one-size-fits-all way of doing things (which is why cvsup comes with a collection of sample supfiles).
The best course of action when designing an app is to make the common tasks simple (ideally no further configuration needed), but give enough power and flexibility so that the uncommon ones too are possible (I'm not a fan of denying power to users).
Well, when you figure that one out, you should patent it.
Enthusiasm isn't the issue here. You detailed a long way to do something which Gentoo does with great ease, which you claimed to be "quite nice" .
:^)
:^)
In case you hadn't noticed the red trim, this subject was regarding BSD. Not to mention that you seem familiar enough with Portage. Why would I need to go into some deep explanation of its mechanics? Are you looking for me to try to "prove" something? What exactly would be the point?
Well if you don't take it out of context:
I (obviously) did not want to seem like a hypocrite.
I think you're taking this all a little too personally.
Here's the way I see things:
Linux distributions have a tendency to do things in very distribution-specific ways, and tend to be rather inflexible in that regard. This is probably why there are so many Linux distributions. Every time someone wants to do things in a different way, they break the system, and up pops a new distribution. I feel reasonably assured in making this statement, as I have used Linux personally and professionally since 1995 and ran quite a number of different Linux distros (including Gentoo). I have seen the Linux distributions become more numerous, more convoluted, and more incompatible with each passing year (and I don't see this trend reversing itself anytime soon).
This is probably why there are relatively few BSD distributions. The BSDs tend to provide the core OS, and the tools to make things the way you want them to be, and that's it. The goal is to keep the system out of the admin's way. There is usually no need to fork the system, because the system is flexible enough to accomodate the needs and preferences of different admins. The system can be readily modified without breaking the fundamental mechanics.
So maybe you could understand why someone might prefer a system that requires a few additional steps to get rolling, if it means having a very personalized system. I still say it boils down to experience and background. Making 20-odd lines of commands is no big deal to me. It takes all of two minutes for me to set things up, because I'm familiar with the system. For someone unfamiliar with the system, it might seem like an awful lot to do, and a lot to know (or figure out). For that person, the single-command system is probably going to be a lot more attractive (it would be 20 times easier to learn).
But I don't think you can say that Portage is "better" simply because it requires less command syntax. It's really a matter of "does it do what I need it to do, with an amount of effort that seems reasonable to me". If it saves me labor, but doesn't accomplish what I need it to do, it isn't "better" for me. By that metric, it's reasonable to see how Portage might be better for you, and ports might be better for me.
Congrats. This answer however says nothing but "yes I have used it".
You asked if I have used Portage. I answered your question. Perhaps from the brevity of my response you should have inferred my level of enthusiasm about it...
And I'm really not interested in your gaming habits.
Then why did you tell me about your own...?
From your previous post:
switched back to Linux because of the Nvidia driver situation back then (I NEED GAMES!)
Your methods may work, but they certainly are not "nice". Have you _used_ Gentoo Portage?
:^)
:-) switched back to Linux because of the Nvidia driver situation back then (I NEED GAMES!), but now that drivers are available I might give it another try soon)
Yep. Sure have.
(And yes I was a FreeBSD user for about a year, and it was great
Well, I'm not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination. Every once in a while I might get the itch to play a game or two, and for that I have a PS2 and a MAME box.
WORST example EVER. 2 lines in gentoo(cd to the ports dir, and make update) compred to 20 freaking lines you posted where you have to edit a file, make a directory and other crap that i don't want, or should have, to do.
I wasn't trying to show that FreeBSD ports was somehow *easier* than Portage (or anything else for that matter), simply that it was not very difficult at all, and it gets the job done nicely.
Personally, I don't see the problem with doing a little configuration to make the system behave exactly as I want. To me, that's a feature, not a flaw. Not to mention the fact that the 20 or so lines of command and code you seem to have a problem with, is a one-time setup task. After that, the system is a two-command process, one command if I create a simple shell script, no command if I add a cron job to do it once a week. This is just like your two-command process, except for the fact that *I* have dictated the mechanics of the process, rather than allowing a distributor to decide those mechanics for me.
Ports in freebsd are cool. But updating packages installed, and updating the whole system, are two very cool things i would like to see.
All you have to do is look, it's all right there. CVSup will update your ports tree, your source tree, your docs, or a custom combination of all of the above. Portupgrade will update all of your ports with one command. As to updating the system, the system and the ports are kept separate *by design*. The system can be upgraded independently from the ports, and vice versa. Updating the system itself is as simple as a 'make buildworld', 'make kernel', 'make installworld', and reboot.
I dunno. Maybe this is just an "old school vs. new school" issue. "Old school" UNIX users and sysadmins simply see this as a reasonable means to get things done. "New school" Linux users (a lot of whom are migrating from the Windows world) seem to be looking for the command-line equivalent of clicking a button to get everything done. No work, and no knowledge of the system itself and how it operates, required.
I, for one, prefer the old school way.
Finally someone that understands that I shouldn't have to work to make things easy. They should just be easy.
So just buy a freakin' Mac already... With that kind of attitude, why are you even messing around with BSD (or Linux for that matter)?
I gotta chime in here: /usr/ports
/usr/ports/net/cvsup-without-gui /usr/ports/sysutils/portupgrade
/usr/local/etc/cvsup/sup /usr/share/examples/cvsup/refuse /usr/local/etc/cvsup/sup
... tweak /etc/make.conf ...
... create /usr/local/etc/cvsup/sup/supfile ...
... then update your src and ports ... /usr/local/bin/cvsup -g -L 2 /usr/local/etc/cvsup/sup/supfile /usr/local/bin/portupgrade -ra
/etc/make.conf a little first... But those are minor things, and in the case of cvsup, there are loads of good examples provided in /usr/share/examples/cvsup.
It really pisses me off that FreeBSD does not let you (by default)
cd
make update
I dunno, I think cvsup and portupgrade do the deed quite nicely.
# cd
# make install && make clean
# cd
# make install && make clean
# mkdir -p
# cp
CFLAGS= -O -pipe
COPTFLAGS= -O -pipe
NOPROFILE= true
USA_RESIDENT= YES (if you are)
*default host=cvsup2.freebsd.org
*default base=/usr/local/etc/cvsup
*default release=cvs tag=RELENG_5_1 (or your version)
*default delete use-rel-suffix
*default compress
src-all
ports-all tag=.
doc-all tag=.
#
#
Granted, you have to build a supfile, and tweak your
Secondly, I agree that you cannot buy a gun through a dealer without a background check, but I do not believe a similar law has been passed for gun shows (though I've heard of several bills being debated in both state and federal legislatures). Correct me if I'm wrong (and provide links, please).
The laws regarding private sale vary from state to state. For instance, in my home state of NC, a private citizen can sell a longgun to another private citizen without the exchange of a purchase permit (the acquisition of which requires a background check). However, the sale of a handgun between any parties does require that the buyer present a purchase permit. This is regardless of where the sale takes place.
Meanwhile, across the state line in SC, a private citizen can sell either a longgun or a handgun to another private citizen without requiring the purchaser to present a permit.
Of course, there are limits to such an exchange that are more or less uniform. For instance, the person receiving the firearm must be qualified to purchase that firearm (ie, 18+ for a longgun, 21+ for a handgun, no felony convictions, no history of mental illness, etc). The seller is not required to conduct a background check on the buyer, but knowingly providing a firearm to someone who is not legally entitled to possess a firearm is a felony in itself. It's also a felony to provide a firearm to someone if you have knowledge that they will commit a crime with it.
As for the links, you can find information regarding federal firearms laws by visiting either the NRA Institute website or the ATF's online firearms info page. For information regarding your state's firearms laws, most have that information on the state's website or on the website of the Public Health and Safety Board for your state. If in doubt, Google.
Assume that everyone has a gun in their house with a trained operator. What do the criminals do now? Do they give up their life of crime, turn towards crimes with less possibility of injury (shop-lifting, B&E unguarded stores, scams, etc.), or do they start an arms race? What do they do when there are no more easy targets?
Criminals are looking for easy money. They aren't interested in a profession where they will be shot at on every job, and as I explained before, robbery is a crime that relies on stealth and speed. Get in, take what you want, and then get out. The fewer people that notice, the better chance you have to get away. A criminal will not go to a home, engage in a firefight with the occupants, then engage in another firefight with the police and possibly the neighbors, in order to escape with a thousand dollars worth of portable merchandise. It just isn't worth the risk. Your "arms race" proposal just isn't realistic.
Do you know what the fastest growing crime in the U.S. is? IDENTITY THEFT. Why? Because it's easy to do, there is very little risk of getting caught, and it is very profitable. Why shoot it out with an armed homeowner for some jewelry or electronics, when you can steal that homeowner's identity and rack up $50,000 in credit card debt without ever coming in physical contact with that person? So that is exactly what criminals would do if everyone was armed: give up B&E and switch to the easier, more profitable crimes.
And there will always be easy targets, whether it's the unarmed woman who strolls alone through a parking lot at 2am, or the armed ex-marine who throws away those junk mail credit card applications without shredding them first.