I worked on the Doom code for about six months as part of TeamTNT's Boom engine effort, and I can definitely say it's both educational and fun. Many projects like mine will probably be converting to the GPL as well now too (we just passed on Carmack's educational license before.)
There is a link to the Source Ports page from the page the story links to (sorry, slashdotted right now or I'd link) that will get you versions of source for a wide variety of operating systems, including Linux, and with widely varying feature sets. I expect most, and nearly all the Linux versions, will go open source now.
I agree that colors and flowers *shouldn't* have sexual connotations, but in fact in our culture they do. If you did a study asking which of the two pages was more masculine and which more feminine I think you'd get close to a unanimous response.
Marketing people know what they're doing when it comes to things like that, and using such stereotypes strengthens them. Women are now comfortable wearing pants, but Dvorak still has insecurities about carrying a laptop that might be mistaken for a purse. Men are more afraid of sexual stereotypes than women. I can easily imagine a young girl with a "Hot Wheels" computer, I have a hard time imagining a young boy with a "Barbie" computer. This issue should be important to both sexes.
Perhaps more worrying is the difference in descriptions. The "Hot Wheels" computer will enable a boy to "go to the head of his class". The "Barbie" computer will help a girl "learn new things." There's a small but significant distinction between those. If you look at the software titles pre-installed on each you can also see a subtle bias, two math packages for the boys, one for the girls, etc.
Worst, IMO, is yet another victory of form over content. The color of a computer, and the decals on it's case are terrible reasons to select a computer for purchase. But that is obviously what this company expects will differentiate them from other boxes.
Well, naturally speaking, we're predators too. Perhaps we need better rituals to blood the children. Or maybe reason should prevail over instinct in rational beings?
I really don't see how you can consider males' attraction to cars intrinsic. I mean, there weren't a lot of cars around when we were evolving, you know. Nor many mechanical devices of any kind. It is just as bad to program little boys to love cars as it is to program little girls to be homemakers or fashion accessories. This is done by thousands of little signals of approval or disapproval by adults and peers that children are extremely sensitive to -- and which influence their choice of toys and careers.
Do we need computers for different races and gays too? Then what's so special about the differences between boys and girls?
The truth is that parents buy these computers, and that is where the gender bias is present and well formed. There was a study about Christmas toys about 10 years back that was quite interesting. They put a group of children in a room with several boxes containing all the greatest toys that year. After a few hours all the children, boys and girls, were having a blast with the boxes the toys came in and ignoring the toys completely. So much for the children's choice.
Well, to some extent the GPL *is* protection for the end user, not the developer. It has been criticized for not providing means of recompense for developers, while protecting end users. It's end users who benefit from free(beer) stable software. Any developer can choose to write free software freely distributed. Putting the GPL on it insures that a community of developers all mutually sharing code and debugging eyes will develop, to the benefit of the end user.
What you are speaking of I think is the sometimes intolerant attitude towards people who want easy solutions, or help with problems.
The intolerance is on both sides though. Plain ordinary users of free software have to realize that they don't have the same rights to whine and complain -- because they have no contractual arrangement with the software producer, unlike commercial software. This is *why* companies like RedHat will be successful. They provide that contractual arrangement. It is perfectly valid to whine to them after buying their distribution, and if they want to stay in business they will listen.
An excellent point, and I quite hope you are correct that is the direction we're headed.
Until this century it was thought that order could only be imparted from outside a system. We are learning that intricate order can arise intrinsically from what first appears as chaos, if there are simple rules governing interactions between elements of the chaos. This to me, is the bazaar when applied to open source, and a hope of a practical form of near anarchy politically. Not orderless anarchy, but an order that naturally arises from the way people interact, from the bottom up. Certainly there will be formalized rules, just as there are cultural taboos involved with open source. Whether they arise by consensus or fiat is the issue.
"An EFF-sponsored lawsuit by Professor Daniel Bernstein to determine whether the Professor has the right to teach about cryptography, and collaborate with his peers around the world. A major point is whether he can publish source code that foreigners might be able to access, or speak it directly to individual who might be foreign. The case rests on established First Amendment law and relies on the fact that computer source code is human-to-human communication protected by the First Amendment (in addition to anything else it might be useful for.)"
I hope very much this ruling is upheld, and source code remains protected speech.
I was just wondering what implications current encryption laws have in terms of controlling leaks from within the NSA. They can prosecute a leaker no matter what the law, but they might have a more difficult problem controlling the dissemination of the information after a leak if the information itself was legal. Scenario: NSA employee posts source to a invincible encryption method anonymously. Can they stop the information from spreading?
I'm violently opposed to censorship. But I don't consider Slashdot censorship, even if Andover was the government. Hence, this is the closest thing to a workable plan I've seen yet. And I believe that it may be a matter of we solve "the problem" or governments will do it for us. However, there are issues. The question should be, can they be solved?
The most serious concern is that a government could somehow piggyback on the system to implement effective censorship.
The issue of upstream filtering does not go away.
As described, this may just shift the battle from which pages should be banned, to which ratings groups should be banned.
As pointed out, many technical issues like bandwidth are involved.
People being what they are, it might be far more common for people to moderate against pages that offend them, than for good pages to be promoted. Remember, people don't vote for important things, like national elections, and this is webpages.
Should this work like Slashdot, with only one group of raters chosen randomly, or by various groups with an agenda you can choose between (or both)? In the former case, you need attributes like Informative, Insightful, Troll, except they probably read more like Sexually Explicit, Rude Language, Violence, and Politically Subversive. Note those are all "negative". Finding a positive attribute set that would promote the right pages to the right people seems difficult. Also, summing attributes simply won't work, you need a complex filter that weighs the entire set thru a scheme controlled by the user. (Hey, this would be nice for slashdot too!)
It also leads to something of a privacy question in that it becomes trivial to determine a web publishers political views, by looking at their rating spectrum.
I think the authors should be encouraged to complete their proposal, and given feedback by all those concerned by the drawbacks. *If* a grass roots rating system that was impossible to abuse could be designed, it would be solution to a very important problem.
I don't think disappointment with those who are not praising Sun is appropriate here. SCSL freedom is like "don't ask, don't tell" freedom for gays. It makes a problem less obvious without solving it, maybe even slowing a true solution.
We've been thru the "if we politely point out the advantages of true open source, maybe they'll switch" business twice already with Java and StarOffice. If you read their page on the principles of the SCSL you'll see they know the difference quite well, and simply don't believe in the bazaar model of development. They want control over the specifications and interface, and the absolute right to prevent forking because they actually think it makes their product better.
In an abstract idealistic sense Sun may have made the world a little better by allowing people read access to their sources. However, IMO, this is outweighed by the obfuscation of the meaning of "open source" and the potential to draw developers away from really free OSes like Linux, *BSD, and Hurd.
Compromise is appropriate sometimes. Other things, like pregnancy or freedom, are more difficult to compromise on, either you are, or you aren't. I'm reminded of the 70's when long hair on males hit the mainstream and Nixon made peace signs. Co-option is the biggest threat to any popular movement.
I used COBOL exactly once in my lifetime too. But it is not a bad *idea*, just a terrible implementation. It tried to address the irritating disconnect between code and documentation thru the naive assumption that a natural language based compiler would be self-documenting. Knuth has spent much of his time on the same problem, and he may not have succeeded either.
Well, it also used to be considered very impolite to use the term "leg" in polite company, hence the euphemism "drumstick." Given that there are still individuals who feel this way somewhere should we all avoid discussing le... er limbs?
Besides, though the flame wars do not come to a conclusion, and never will, they still serve a useful purpose -- reminding both sides that the other still exists. When you avoid all uncomfortable or inflammatory issues people start believing that everyone agrees with them.
For example, I found the evolution in Kansas thread quite informative. Creationism has advanced significantly since I last encountered it, and was much better represented on slashdot than I ever could have imagined. I find this to be valuable information, even though I was shocked.
If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the thread.:)
If I thought that the ratio was due soley to lack of interest I wouldn't worry either.
However, all too often when this subject comes up on slashdot the conversation turns to dating, sex, and marriage. This is not the reason that women should participate in open source, to solve the lonely male geek problem.
It is tough to stand out in any crowd, and given the current situation, that is what happens to women who are brave enough to try. If male programmers could treat female programmers more like they do their male colleagues, *when appropriate*, I believe it would be more comfortable for those brave souls. This is not to say that compatible people should not seek each other's company, but let's try not to alienate women in the process.
One obnoxious claim I see repeated time after time seems to say that if *I* can't find an attractive female geek, they all must be ugly. First, even if it *were* true, so what? I never saw beauty as requirement for geekdom, and good thing -- or most of us would be in trouble! Second, accept responsibility for your own limitations, don't try to blame women for them.
This may even be harmful to open source. I have to wonder how much of the religious flame wars are testosterone based. My OS/toolkit/license is bigger than yours!
There is something wrong with any movement devoted to free choice that excludes half of the population, whether intentionally or not.
I think the author should have *said* what they meant. It's not like this is a new source of confusion.
But granted they meant beer as you think, then yes, Solaris might draw users. But it still would not draw developers any faster, and that's the heart and soul of Linux. I don't think Solaris would draw enough free developers even if it was SCSL with a zero price.
Anything short of putting Solaris under the BSD or GPL would, in my opinion, set the acceptance of Linux back significantly, but not derail it. People don't want to work on source code completely controlled by others, so eventually Linux still wins.
The conflict over books arises from the fact that there are two different kinds of worldviews, open and closed.
Book burners usually have a closed worldview, a strict and dogmatic set of beliefs believed to be stamped with the imprimatur of truth. Any information contradicting this worldview appears harmful to such a person. Attempts by satan to tempt the righteous from the true path, in some religious worldviews, e.g.
Those of us that hate censorship usually have open worldviews. These are admitted to be incomplete and partially incorrect. Always changing and growing as more input is acquired. New information, especially information challenging our beliefs, is often sought out rather than being shunned as harmful. This is the scientific worldview.
Both sides of this debate view the other as being evil or sick. There is no common ground on which a debate can be held, the groups do not agree on how truth is determined. Of course reality isn't so simple as everyone fitting neatly into one category or the other. Some religious people are open minded about many things, and some scientists are dogmatic about many things. But the debate tends to polarize into extremes.
This is a fundamental question that won't be settled by debate, it goes deeper than reason. So, we should concentrate on figuring out how these two extremes can live together peacefully. It is hopeless to try to change everybody into one sort or the other. My suggestion for some simple rules for living together:
1. No one should be forced to read a book. 2. No one should be prevented from reading a book.
As usual, handle the difficult case of minors by letting their guardians control their reading until they are of age.
I've had to do some reverse engineering. A modem was having problems with a third party communications package. A large customer used this package exclusively, and we needed to temporarily patch it for a demo for them. Since the modem used a rommed microcontroller, it had to be done in the software package to meet the demo date.
So first I used a protocol analyzer to figure out where the modem and package were going wrong. This was pretty easy, turned out to be a timing problem with one of the AT commands.
Then came the task of disassembling the package, which was written in Pascal. This part wasn't so easy, since there was no better way to find the spot that needed patching than to figure out what the code was doing until we happened upon the part in question. I used DOS's DEBUG.COM for the disassembly. It took 3 days of about 18 hours each to find the spot, and I ended up fully disassembling about a quarter of the program. The patch (1 byte change) worked, as did the demo, and all were happy, especially after the modem's rom got fixed.
In terms of skills, it helps a great deal if you have looked at a lot of assembly generated by high level compilers before. Then you can more easily see the ifs, fors, and cases instead of strange assembly sequences, and you're familiar with how parameters pass into and out of routines thru the stack. You also have to be pretty familiar with what the code is supposed to be doing to have much hope of recognizing the function of blocks once you've disassembled them.
It was a challenge, and kinda fun for that reason, but it's most certainly not something I'd like to do for extended periods of time. Most of it is very boring grunt work, with a rare "aha!" to lighten the mood. Some parts are *very* opaque when you only have numeric addresses and field offsets. Lots of things remain guesses for a long time, and you can easily go down blind alleys by assuming wrong things.
Another piece of reverse engineering that was much more fun was discovering the protocol and CRC generator polynomial used in another PC communication package, so I could write something that would file transfer with it from a VAX/VMS system. That was mostly a mathematical problem, and much more interesting. No code disassembly there, just probing with test blocks and watching the CRCs returned with a protocol analyzer.
"How can you RTFM if you can't FTFM? (Find The Fucking Manual)"
A reasonable point. One thing to do would be to turn the joke into reality and implement an RTFM command for real that gave an index to places to find help, on the local system and on the web. If you want to get fancy, allow keyword parameters for where to look for specific kinds of help. Not a help utility like man, but a help indexing utility. Then telling the clueless ones to RTFM might do some good.
Ok, this guy had an older version, and installation has improved a lot in the meantime, so that's a little unfair.
But most of what this guy complains about has something like a kernel of truth to it. Win9x does do a very impressive job of probing for hardware. When it gets it wrong, you are in real trouble, and it will take hours to fix it, if possible at all. But nearly all the time, it gets it right, and you have to give them some credit for that. If for any reason, you don't know what kind of hardware you have, things get tough in Linux installation.
Two examples personally, with RH5.2, both with video setup. Until recently I had been using a very ancient Mitsubishi monitor to which I had lost the little booklet. It happened to be one of those models with zillions of close relatives and it took me a flashlight and a magnifying glass to pull the actual monitor model number off a microprint label on the back of the monitor. The model wasn't on the compatible monitor list so I had to specify frequencies on my own. Eventually I found a web reference to the monitor that specified it's frequencies. Using those got my monitor setup, but it didn't quite work yet. Turned out the whole number horizontal frequency was *just* short of being sufficient for the resolution I desired, so I had to bump it up by.25 before it would play.
The other problem was with my video card, a Spider Tarantula. Spider is now out of business with no web page. Card is not mentioned in compatibility list, though I remembered it was an S3 964. My manual does not mention what kind of dot clock setup is on the card. So guessing time again. Eventually I guess right, and finally X starts.
In the process of getting X started I also had to learn Emacs (well, *learn* is a little strong ) to be able to edit the configuration file, after finding it in/etc. I also learned about "man" on the way. All in all a good experience because I wasn't expecting much different and I learned a lot. But to someone who has been protected from all knowledge of how computers work, and who could care less anyway, this is a nightmare. Sorry, but it is.
This doesn't mean Linux can't be used by everyday computer users. It just means that it is highly recommended that they buy a pre-installed system, or be ready to buy Linux compatible hardware before installing. At the least, get a geek friend to help. Microsoft is no different in this respect except having less unsupported hardware, and that is changing.
I suppose you're right ultimately, but don't underestimate the ingenuity of scammers.
Just for example, what if the first target they pick to sue is a shill that does everything possible to lose the case in court, won't accept co-defendants, and then refuses to appeal. What would happen then, is the patent upheld? Would that make it more difficult to overturn in future, or is each individual fee claim entitled to it's own trial?
Time after time we see the problems that arise when significant amounts of money and time are required to defend your rights against unreasonable claims or false charges. If it's cheaper to pay up, businesses will, so more scams will appear. It makes the law a club in the hands of the rich, powerful, or greedy. It's odd people talk about socializing medicine all the time and fail to mention law. I'm not necessarily advocating any such thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if law insurance became as common as medical insurance.
The problem isn't that too much information is available, it's that too much is being shoved in our faces, and that the purpose of this information is not to inform but deceive.
One effect of our ad-driven society is the disconnect between quality/price and number of sales. You see this in the number of shoddy products that have somehow emerged as leader in their field. Ads are breaking capitalism's feedback mechanism in the service of profiteering. It is no longer possible to pretend that the best product wins. It's the best marketed product that is functionally adequate.
Another is the ill-feeling towards progress pointed out by Katz. The ads show beautiful people in beautiful places doing quite wonderful things. This does sell product, else billions wouldn't be spent on it. But as much as they buy, people still don't get this wonderful life. Of course people conciously know that buying the product won't improve their quality of life significantly, but I believe there is subconcious resentment and dissatisfaction that expresses itself as general cynicism and anger towards our commercial society.
Many have bemoaned the fall of journalism, and indeed this is a scary sign in a democracy or republic. But what happened to it? News was repurposed to package advertising. This role reversal, ads being the message and news the carrier, is why quality journalism and investigative reporting are so rare. You don't need a quality news product, just something eye catching and entertaining... and cheap.
You seem to be interested in developing on a completely free platform as an expression of idealism. Noble enough goal and I can see how Delphi wouldn't impress you.
Others are interested in the actual capturing of majority or total market share by open source software. This is a different goal, it tolerates the expediency of closed software for a later good or special circumstance, but still maintains open is always better when possible. For these folks, Delphi is expedient, get a lot of converts to an open OS now, replace Delphi with completely free tools later.
For some, open software fits some needs, closed software fits others. They may be strong Linux advocates, but they are neutrals in the proprietary/open source/free software war. These people may be looking forward to Delphi as a long term tool, or at least until something better for their purpose is written.
The Linux commercial interests are mostly closed/open/free agnostic, they need help for their bottom line now, and never mind how. They will be very pleased by Delphi for Linux, because it means they have a tool as good or better than VB for quick in-house programming by high level programmers. This covers a lot of business programming. This might help GM believe that their VB apps might port in reasonable time for example.
Then there is Microsoft, who will not be pleased at all. One of their biggest problems right now is loss of developers, and having Delphi and C++ Builder waiting will mean that developers can switch to Linux, or *BSD probably and be productive immediately thru RAD development.
I don't think of any of these being "wrong" just different approaches to meet different goals.
Personally, it's my belief that open software is a scaling phenomenon. It works better the more people are involved with it. Makes for more testing, shallower bugs, more new ideas, more developers working at once, more common software to draw on, and better ability to beg driver support for new hardware. So I'm in the camp that is wanting to expand open software's marketshare, even if it takes closed software to do it. When you've got positive feedback on your side, you need to take advantage of it, not hold back waiting. There are elements out there who are actively trying to shut down open software, or ridicule it into oblivion. Time matters, unfortunately.
Marion Zimmer Bradley was a force. Her voice for tolerance, one that spoke loudly long before it became popular or even acceptable, will be missed. So will be her eagerness to impart her skill and experience to younger authors. To be remembered fondly, by all those she influenced, and all who have and will yet read her books is a fine legacy. We were fortunate to have her.
I'd say that you're correct, about modularity's importance to large projects and why.
We shouldn't lose sight of the fact though that sometimes modularity must cut across the grain of a program. Sometimes with very complex software everything really is closely related to everything else, and you have to cut modules where it would be better to leave things whole. Modularity is something programmers are forced to do -- sometimes you get lucky and it also models the problem you're trying to solve -- but not always.
Well, I'm 47 and do not have a printer. I got tired of wondering what to do with 3 ft high stacks of paper back before recycling was easy. But I'm a big fan of paper for some things.
My eyes aren't great, and reading on a 14" screen for hours is out, it gives me headaches. So I bought a 21" screen and things are fine. But it's still too much strain to read for hours at a time for pleasure, for example a book, though I will if the book is good enough and not available offline. I'd rather have a printed book.
The other thing is documentation. I really, really prefer a printed manual containing the instruction set and processor architecture rather than having to browse some awful interface for the information. After you know where things are it's easier to open a book to exactly the right place than to click your way there, and you can still see what you were working on that caused the question in the first place. You can make notes and correct errors in a printed manual.
For mail, slashdot, usenet, regular news, I want hypertext and/or threads and that is very hard to get on paper. Some types of overview help are also better hyperlinked than printed. Each medium has it's uses, we don't *have* to choose one or the other. Let's just not create a demand for new tree farms, that's all.
Starting an open source project from nothing but people with a common interest is difficult. It's been my experience that it is very easy to founder with a bazaar approach to architecture and design. The issues tend to get confused with religious wars about toolkits and license choice, and just a lot of differing opinions about how to best structure a program, no one of which may be *obviously* better.
Is it essential for individuals to first create a working model, incomplete and buggy it may be, before applying bazaar development? Or what would you suggest in terms of managing a bazaar approach to creating programs from a bare idea?
Slashdot Mirror
This is indeed good news. :)
I worked on the Doom code for about six months as part of TeamTNT's Boom engine effort, and I can definitely say it's both educational and fun. Many projects like mine will probably be converting to the GPL as well now too (we just passed on Carmack's educational license before.)
There is a link to the Source Ports page from the page the story links to (sorry, slashdotted right now or I'd link) that will get you versions of source for a wide variety of operating systems, including Linux, and with widely varying feature sets. I expect most, and nearly all the Linux versions, will go open source now.
I agree that colors and flowers *shouldn't* have sexual connotations, but in fact in our culture they do. If you did a study asking which of the two pages was more masculine and which more feminine I think you'd get close to a unanimous response.
Marketing people know what they're doing when it comes to things like that, and using such stereotypes strengthens them. Women are now comfortable wearing pants, but Dvorak still has insecurities about carrying a laptop that might be mistaken for a purse. Men are more afraid of sexual stereotypes than women. I can easily imagine a young girl with a "Hot Wheels" computer, I have a hard time imagining a young boy with a "Barbie" computer. This issue should be important to both sexes.
Perhaps more worrying is the difference in descriptions. The "Hot Wheels" computer will enable a boy to "go to the head of his class". The "Barbie" computer will help a girl "learn new things." There's a small but significant distinction between those. If you look at the software titles pre-installed on each you can also see a subtle bias, two math packages for the boys, one for the girls, etc.
Worst, IMO, is yet another victory of form over content. The color of a computer, and the decals on it's case are terrible reasons to select a computer for purchase. But that is obviously what this company expects will differentiate them from other boxes.
Well, naturally speaking, we're predators too. Perhaps we need better rituals to blood the children. Or maybe reason should prevail over instinct in rational beings?
I really don't see how you can consider males' attraction to cars intrinsic. I mean, there weren't a lot of cars around when we were evolving, you know. Nor many mechanical devices of any kind. It is just as bad to program little boys to love cars as it is to program little girls to be homemakers or fashion accessories. This is done by thousands of little signals of approval or disapproval by adults and peers that children are extremely sensitive to -- and which influence their choice of toys and careers.
Do we need computers for different races and gays too? Then what's so special about the differences between boys and girls?
The truth is that parents buy these computers, and that is where the gender bias is present and well formed. There was a study about Christmas toys about 10 years back that was quite interesting. They put a group of children in a room with several boxes containing all the greatest toys that year. After a few hours all the children, boys and girls, were having a blast with the boxes the toys came in and ignoring the toys completely. So much for the children's choice.
Well, to some extent the GPL *is* protection for the end user, not the developer. It has been criticized for not providing means of recompense for developers, while protecting end users. It's end users who benefit from free(beer) stable software. Any developer can choose to write free software freely distributed. Putting the GPL on it insures that a community of developers all mutually sharing code and debugging eyes will develop, to the benefit of the end user.
What you are speaking of I think is the sometimes intolerant attitude towards people who want easy solutions, or help with problems.
The intolerance is on both sides though. Plain ordinary users of free software have to realize that they don't have the same rights to whine and complain -- because they have no contractual arrangement with the software producer, unlike commercial software. This is *why* companies like RedHat will be successful. They provide that contractual arrangement. It is perfectly valid to whine to them after buying their distribution, and if they want to stay in business they will listen.
An excellent point, and I quite hope you are correct that is the direction we're headed.
Until this century it was thought that order could only be imparted from outside a system. We are learning that intricate order can arise intrinsically from what first appears as chaos, if there are simple rules governing interactions between elements of the chaos. This to me, is the bazaar when applied to open source, and a hope of a practical form of near anarchy politically. Not orderless anarchy, but an order that naturally arises from the way people interact, from the bottom up. Certainly there will be formalized rules, just as there are cultural taboos involved with open source. Whether they arise by consensus or fiat is the issue.
"An EFF-sponsored lawsuit by Professor Daniel Bernstein to determine whether the Professor has the right to teach about cryptography, and collaborate with his peers around the world. A major point is whether he can publish source code that foreigners might be able to access, or speak it directly to individual who might be foreign. The case rests on established First Amendment law and relies on the fact that computer source code is human-to-human communication protected by the First Amendment (in addition to anything else it might be useful for.)"
I hope very much this ruling is upheld, and source code remains protected speech.
I was just wondering what implications current encryption laws have in terms of controlling leaks from within the NSA. They can prosecute a leaker no matter what the law, but they might have a more difficult problem controlling the dissemination of the information after a leak if the information itself was legal. Scenario: NSA employee posts source to a invincible encryption method anonymously. Can they stop the information from spreading?
I'm violently opposed to censorship. But I don't consider Slashdot censorship, even if Andover was the government. Hence, this is the closest thing to a workable plan I've seen yet. And I believe that it may be a matter of we solve "the problem" or governments will do it for us. However, there are issues. The question should be, can they be solved?
The most serious concern is that a government could somehow piggyback on the system to implement effective censorship.
The issue of upstream filtering does not go away.
As described, this may just shift the battle from which pages should be banned, to which ratings groups should be banned.
As pointed out, many technical issues like bandwidth are involved.
People being what they are, it might be far more common for people to moderate against pages that offend them, than for good pages to be promoted. Remember, people don't vote for important things, like national elections, and this is webpages.
Should this work like Slashdot, with only one group of raters chosen randomly, or by various groups with an agenda you can choose between (or both)? In the former case, you need attributes like Informative, Insightful, Troll, except they probably read more like Sexually Explicit, Rude Language, Violence, and Politically Subversive. Note those are all "negative". Finding a positive attribute set that would promote the right pages to the right people seems difficult. Also, summing attributes simply won't work, you need a complex filter that weighs the entire set thru a scheme controlled by the user. (Hey, this would be nice for slashdot too!)
It also leads to something of a privacy question in that it becomes trivial to determine a web publishers political views, by looking at their rating spectrum.
I think the authors should be encouraged to complete their proposal, and given feedback by all those concerned by the drawbacks. *If* a grass roots rating system that was impossible to abuse could be designed, it would be solution to a very important problem.
We've been thru the "if we politely point out the advantages of true open source, maybe they'll switch" business twice already with Java and StarOffice. If you read their page on the principles of the SCSL you'll see they know the difference quite well, and simply don't believe in the bazaar model of development. They want control over the specifications and interface, and the absolute right to prevent forking because they actually think it makes their product better.
In an abstract idealistic sense Sun may have made the world a little better by allowing people read access to their sources. However, IMO, this is outweighed by the obfuscation of the meaning of "open source" and the potential to draw developers away from really free OSes like Linux, *BSD, and Hurd.
Compromise is appropriate sometimes. Other things, like pregnancy or freedom, are more difficult to compromise on, either you are, or you aren't. I'm reminded of the 70's when long hair on males hit the mainstream and Nixon made peace signs. Co-option is the biggest threat to any popular movement.
If you're joking, my apologies for biting.
I used COBOL exactly once in my lifetime too. But it is not a bad *idea*, just a terrible implementation. It tried to address the irritating disconnect between code and documentation thru the naive assumption that a natural language based compiler would be self-documenting. Knuth has spent much of his time on the same problem, and he may not have succeeded either.
Well, it also used to be considered very impolite to use the term "leg" in polite company, hence the euphemism "drumstick." Given that there are still individuals who feel this way somewhere should we all avoid discussing le... er limbs?
:)
Besides, though the flame wars do not come to a conclusion, and never will, they still serve a useful purpose -- reminding both sides that the other still exists. When you avoid all uncomfortable or inflammatory issues people start believing that everyone agrees with them.
For example, I found the evolution in Kansas thread quite informative. Creationism has advanced significantly since I last encountered it, and was much better represented on slashdot than I ever could have imagined. I find this to be valuable information, even though I was shocked.
If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the thread.
If I thought that the ratio was due soley to lack of interest I wouldn't worry either.
However, all too often when this subject comes up on slashdot the conversation turns to dating, sex, and marriage. This is not the reason that women should participate in open source, to solve the lonely male geek problem.
It is tough to stand out in any crowd, and given the current situation, that is what happens to women who are brave enough to try. If male programmers could treat female programmers more like they do their male colleagues, *when appropriate*, I believe it would be more comfortable for those brave souls. This is not to say that compatible people should not seek each other's company, but let's try not to alienate women in the process.
One obnoxious claim I see repeated time after time seems to say that if *I* can't find an attractive female geek, they all must be ugly. First, even if it *were* true, so what? I never saw beauty as requirement for geekdom, and good thing -- or most of us would be in trouble! Second, accept responsibility for your own limitations, don't try to blame women for them.
This may even be harmful to open source. I have to wonder how much of the religious flame wars are testosterone based. My OS/toolkit/license is bigger than yours!
There is something wrong with any movement devoted to free choice that excludes half of the population, whether intentionally or not.
I think the author should have *said* what they meant. It's not like this is a new source of confusion.
But granted they meant beer as you think, then yes, Solaris might draw users. But it still would not draw developers any faster, and that's the heart and soul of Linux. I don't think Solaris would draw enough free developers even if it was SCSL with a zero price.
Anything short of putting Solaris under the BSD or GPL would, in my opinion, set the acceptance of Linux back significantly, but not derail it. People don't want to work on source code completely controlled by others, so eventually Linux still wins.
The conflict over books arises from the fact that there are two different kinds of worldviews, open and closed.
Book burners usually have a closed worldview, a strict and dogmatic set of beliefs believed to be stamped with the imprimatur of truth. Any information contradicting this worldview appears harmful to such a person. Attempts by satan to tempt the righteous from the true path, in some religious worldviews, e.g.
Those of us that hate censorship usually have open worldviews. These are admitted to be incomplete and partially incorrect. Always changing and growing as more input is acquired. New information, especially information challenging our beliefs, is often sought out rather than being shunned as harmful. This is the scientific worldview.
Both sides of this debate view the other as being evil or sick. There is no common ground on which a debate can be held, the groups do not agree on how truth is determined. Of course reality isn't so simple as everyone fitting neatly into one category or the other. Some religious people are open minded about many things, and some scientists are dogmatic about many things. But the debate tends to polarize into extremes.
This is a fundamental question that won't be settled by debate, it goes deeper than reason.
So, we should concentrate on figuring out how these two extremes can live together peacefully. It is hopeless to try to change everybody into one sort or the other. My suggestion for some simple rules for living together:
1. No one should be forced to read a book.
2. No one should be prevented from reading a book.
As usual, handle the difficult case of minors by letting their guardians control their reading until they are of age.
I've had to do some reverse engineering. A modem was having problems with a third party communications package. A large customer used this package exclusively, and we needed to temporarily patch it for a demo for them. Since the modem used a rommed microcontroller, it had to be done in the software package to meet the demo date.
So first I used a protocol analyzer to figure out where the modem and package were going wrong. This was pretty easy, turned out to be a timing problem with one of the AT commands.
Then came the task of disassembling the package, which was written in Pascal. This part wasn't so easy, since there was no better way to find the spot that needed patching than to figure out what the code was doing until we happened upon the part in question. I used DOS's DEBUG.COM for the disassembly. It took 3 days of about 18 hours each to find the spot, and I ended up fully disassembling about a quarter of the program. The patch (1 byte change) worked, as did the demo, and all were happy, especially after the modem's rom got fixed.
In terms of skills, it helps a great deal if you have looked at a lot of assembly generated by high level compilers before. Then you can more easily see the ifs, fors, and cases instead of strange assembly sequences, and you're familiar with how parameters pass into and out of routines thru the stack. You also have to be pretty familiar with what the code is supposed to be doing to have much hope of recognizing the function of blocks once you've disassembled them.
It was a challenge, and kinda fun for that reason, but it's most certainly not something I'd like to do for extended periods of time. Most of it is very boring grunt work, with a rare "aha!" to lighten the mood. Some parts are *very* opaque when you only have numeric addresses and field offsets. Lots of things remain guesses for a long time, and you can easily go down blind alleys by assuming wrong things.
Another piece of reverse engineering that was much more fun was discovering the protocol and CRC generator polynomial used in another PC communication package, so I could write something that would file transfer with it from a VAX/VMS system. That was mostly a mathematical problem, and much more interesting. No code disassembly there, just probing with test blocks and watching the CRCs returned with a protocol analyzer.
"How can you RTFM if you can't FTFM? (Find The Fucking Manual)"
A reasonable point. One thing to do would be to turn the joke into reality and implement an RTFM command for real that gave an index to places to find help, on the local system and on the web. If you want to get fancy, allow keyword parameters for where to look for specific kinds of help. Not a help utility like man, but a help indexing utility. Then telling the clueless ones to RTFM might do some good.
Ok, this guy had an older version, and installation has improved a lot in the meantime, so that's a little unfair.
.25 before it would play.
/etc. I also learned about "man" on the way. All in all a good experience because I wasn't expecting much different and I learned a lot. But to someone who has been protected from all knowledge of how computers work, and who could care less anyway, this is a nightmare. Sorry, but it is.
But most of what this guy complains about has something like a kernel of truth to it. Win9x does do a very impressive job of probing for hardware. When it gets it wrong, you are in real trouble, and it will take hours to fix it, if possible at all. But nearly all the time, it gets it right, and you have to give them some credit for that. If for any reason, you don't know what kind of hardware you have, things get tough in Linux installation.
Two examples personally, with RH5.2, both with video setup. Until recently I had been using a very ancient Mitsubishi monitor to which I had lost the little booklet. It happened to be one of those models with zillions of close relatives and it took me a flashlight and a magnifying glass to pull the actual monitor model number off a microprint label on the back of the monitor. The model wasn't on the compatible monitor list so I had to specify frequencies on my own. Eventually I found a web reference to the monitor that specified it's frequencies. Using those got my monitor setup, but it didn't quite work yet. Turned out the whole number horizontal frequency was *just* short of being sufficient for the resolution I desired, so I had to bump it up by
The other problem was with my video card, a Spider Tarantula. Spider is now out of business with no web page. Card is not mentioned in compatibility list, though I remembered it was an S3 964. My manual does not mention what kind of dot clock setup is on the card. So guessing time again. Eventually I guess right, and finally X starts.
In the process of getting X started I also had to learn Emacs (well, *learn* is a little strong ) to be able to edit the configuration file, after finding it in
This doesn't mean Linux can't be used by everyday computer users. It just means that it is highly recommended that they buy a pre-installed system, or be ready to buy Linux compatible hardware before installing. At the least, get a geek friend to help. Microsoft is no different in this respect except having less unsupported hardware, and that is changing.
I think this is what you call a clue-by-four.
You could also use info[demon]stration if you like corrupting languages.
Well done, Stand! We'll laugh 'em right back under their rocks.
I suppose you're right ultimately, but don't underestimate the ingenuity of scammers.
Just for example, what if the first target they pick to sue is a shill that does everything possible to lose the case in court, won't accept co-defendants, and then refuses to appeal. What would happen then, is the patent upheld? Would that make it more difficult to overturn in future, or is each individual fee claim entitled to it's own trial?
Time after time we see the problems that arise when significant amounts of money and time are required to defend your rights against unreasonable claims or false charges. If it's cheaper to pay up, businesses will, so more scams will appear. It makes the law a club in the hands of the rich, powerful, or greedy. It's odd people talk about socializing medicine all the time and fail to mention law. I'm not necessarily advocating any such thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if law insurance became as common as medical insurance.
The problem isn't that too much information is available, it's that too much is being shoved in our faces, and that the purpose of this information is not to inform but deceive.
One effect of our ad-driven society is the disconnect between quality/price and number of sales. You see this in the number of shoddy products that have somehow emerged as leader in their field. Ads are breaking capitalism's feedback mechanism in the service of profiteering. It is no longer possible to pretend that the best product wins. It's the best marketed product that is functionally adequate.
Another is the ill-feeling towards progress pointed out by Katz. The ads show beautiful people in beautiful places doing quite wonderful things. This does sell product, else billions wouldn't be spent on it. But as much as they buy, people still don't get this wonderful life. Of course people conciously know that buying the product won't improve their quality of life significantly, but I believe there is subconcious resentment and dissatisfaction that expresses itself as general cynicism and anger towards our commercial society.
Many have bemoaned the fall of journalism, and indeed this is a scary sign in a democracy or republic. But what happened to it? News was repurposed to package advertising. This role reversal, ads being the message and news the carrier, is why quality journalism and investigative reporting are so rare. You don't need a quality news product, just something eye catching and entertaining... and cheap.
You seem to be interested in developing on a completely free platform as an expression of idealism. Noble enough goal and I can see how Delphi wouldn't impress you.
Others are interested in the actual capturing of majority or total market share by open source software. This is a different goal, it tolerates the expediency of closed software for a later good or special circumstance, but still maintains open is always better when possible. For these folks, Delphi is expedient, get a lot of converts to an open OS now, replace Delphi with completely free tools later.
For some, open software fits some needs, closed software fits others. They may be strong Linux advocates, but they are neutrals in the proprietary/open source/free software war. These people may be looking forward to Delphi as a long term tool, or at least until something better for their purpose is written.
The Linux commercial interests are mostly closed/open/free agnostic, they need help for their bottom line now, and never mind how. They will be very pleased by Delphi for Linux, because it means they have a tool as good or better than VB for quick in-house programming by high level programmers. This covers a lot of business programming. This might help GM believe that their VB apps might port in reasonable time for example.
Then there is Microsoft, who will not be pleased at all. One of their biggest problems right now is loss of developers, and having Delphi and C++ Builder waiting will mean that developers can switch to Linux, or *BSD probably and be productive immediately thru RAD development.
I don't think of any of these being "wrong" just different approaches to meet different goals.
Personally, it's my belief that open software is a scaling phenomenon. It works better the more people are involved with it. Makes for more testing, shallower bugs, more new ideas, more developers working at once, more common software to draw on, and better ability to beg driver support for new hardware. So I'm in the camp that is wanting to expand open software's marketshare, even if it takes closed software to do it. When you've got positive feedback on your side, you need to take advantage of it, not hold back waiting. There are elements out there who are actively trying to shut down open software, or ridicule it into oblivion. Time matters, unfortunately.
Marion Zimmer Bradley was a force. Her voice for tolerance, one that spoke loudly long before it became popular or even acceptable, will be missed. So will be her eagerness to impart her skill and experience to younger authors. To be remembered fondly, by all those she influenced, and all who have and will yet read her books is a fine legacy. We were fortunate to have her.
I'd say that you're correct, about modularity's importance to large projects and why.
We shouldn't lose sight of the fact though that sometimes modularity must cut across the grain of a program. Sometimes with very complex software everything really is closely related to everything else, and you have to cut modules where it would be better to leave things whole. Modularity is something programmers are forced to do -- sometimes you get lucky and it also models the problem you're trying to solve -- but not always.
Well, I'm 47 and do not have a printer. I got tired of wondering what to do with 3 ft high stacks of paper back before recycling was easy. But I'm a big fan of paper for some things.
My eyes aren't great, and reading on a 14" screen for hours is out, it gives me headaches. So I bought a 21" screen and things are fine. But it's still too much strain to read for hours at a time for pleasure, for example a book, though I will if the book is good enough and not available offline. I'd rather have a printed book.
The other thing is documentation. I really, really prefer a printed manual containing the instruction set and processor architecture rather than having to browse some awful interface for the information. After you know where things are it's easier to open a book to exactly the right place than to click your way there, and you can still see what you were working on that caused the question in the first place. You can make notes and correct errors in a printed manual.
For mail, slashdot, usenet, regular news, I want hypertext and/or threads and that is very hard to get on paper. Some types of overview help are also better hyperlinked than printed. Each medium has it's uses, we don't *have* to choose one or the other. Let's just not create a demand for new tree farms, that's all.
Starting an open source project from nothing but people with a common interest is difficult. It's been my experience that it is very easy to founder with a bazaar approach to architecture and design. The issues tend to get confused with religious wars about toolkits and license choice, and just a lot of differing opinions about how to best structure a program, no one of which may be *obviously* better.
Is it essential for individuals to first create a working model, incomplete and buggy it may be, before applying bazaar development? Or what would you suggest in terms of managing a bazaar approach to creating programs from a bare idea?