A huge pet peeve of mine is when university professors use academic journals to advertise for their company. I have read many papers from Dawson Engler's group, and they all seem to have the same outline. Vague outlines of the new analysis algorithms they use, heavy with statistics on how badly they broke various open source projects, and always a Coverity plug. The lack of repeatable results should be enough to reject them from any self respecting computer science journal, but they keep publishing.
i have been tracking dawson's work since the very beginning, and i agree with this assessment. apparently one good idea, an awful extension language and a lot of free grad help is a recipe for success, screw open source. what is even more amazing is that engler work remains unchallenged by oss equivalents...
has anyone responding to this post actually seen the research in question? i bet most posters to slash/dot are not regular readers of the particular journal where it was published, so all they have is the flimsy report of the research. please look at the study first before violently agreeing with it. just because it is called "research" and is published and happens to match some people's experience or expectations [see spolsky for a recent dose of the latter] does not make it good, accurate, or predictive.
this is the kind of thing foes of open-source want: more wasted energies of talented open-source engineers in replicating what already works, what is already free except in the minds of a few fanatics.
instead of wasting time on rewrites and forks, fsf should
look for people to do something that matters more
to computing than rehashing stuff already done
at great cost.
[this is so pitifully predictible, i now expect stallman to call for programmers to start rewriting a free version of solaris after it is open-sourced in june. maybe he will want to rename it to to gnu/solaris to ease the spectacular failure of creativity and vision]
obref: what amounts to a definitive dismantling
of pseudo-scientific ID arguments may be found in
young & edis why intelligent design fails. this is a surprisingly readable collection of essays that
should be accessible to anyone with an operating
brain and an
undergrad-level science understanding. very highly recommended to slash-dotters.
i kept searching for the promised comprehensive review. i must be missing somehow: all i find is a page of chatter. this is obviously ok for the average newbie who could not really care less and who needs to be told what to think, but for the opensource/computer science community that prides itself with a through approach to these sorts of things (at least on a
good day) it is insulting to even have it
on slashdot.
real pro photographers are people who earn a living with photography and have little time for hacking. I know several of them as close friends. they would use linux only if linux had something that made their livelihood much easier, such as a version of industry standard photoshop (for those that have switched to digital anway) that was unmatched elsewhere, or an image workflow environment second to none. obviously, such is not the case; in the arts world, the best work environment for a photographer with digital darkroom is a top of the line scanner, photoshop, mac/osX with a press-grade monitor and a mid-to-top level epson or better. [i happen to earn pocket change, not a living with photography i not only have this setup as mentioned, but also freebsd, solaris and linux around, and have the luxury to screw around with mediocre tools, gimp being the only exception. it is getting quite good...]
more information on dtrace may be found (not on google but) on
bigadmin [i realize this is not nearly as much
fun as playing guessing games and pissing on sun]
ESR declares: It [game of life] has fascinated hackers ever since.
There are some fascinating parts to game of life, but to claim that it has some special place for hackerdom is laughable at best. I can think of one recent good work on GOL worthy of hackerdom brownie points, and that is eppstein's searching for spaceships. Rest of hackerdom's fascination is negligible enough not to warrant the basis for this logo.
Why not the ship from ancient spacewar, which was the reason for Ken's hacking unix? Why not something
as imaginative as PJW face from Bell Labs? (oh no, bad suggestion: ESR may decide to deploy his own face as logo...)
Hm. I have been designing logos on and off since 1976. Hacking since 1978. I suppose I have learned a thing or two about both over the years.
Here is my somewhat educated assessment: I consider ESR's logo to be unimaginative, poorly balanced, devoid of energy, and not at all representative. In other words, It is really boring, one thing hacking is most certainly not. (one of my friends thought it was a stylized person sitting with his back against the wall, head down)
ESR should have had enough respect to
ask the community for input...
This missive contains a few blaring warning signs of a guy who has not learned best practices for Java programming, and indeed is very naive about the needs of enterprise software development.
people like Greenspun have their own preferred and well-internalized linguistic choices and practices that will not permit an easy entry to the best practices of any language. It is not particularly surprising, though unfortunate that he joins the
peanut gallery of axe grinding commentators,
alongside Paul Graham. (where is
erik naggum when we need him?)
a fresh point of view is a very rare thing. It is more
often found in the thoughts of (say) a bright first year student, than in the missives of opinionated old farts who have enough mastery of rhetoric to eloquently piss on anything that does not sit in the middle of their field of vision.
They just record the fact that someone claimed that something was theirs on such and such a date.
This is a practical matter, as apart from very bare minimum standards, there isn't a very good way to investigate the validity of a copyright application short of an adversarial proceeding.
this is a rather important point, but presumably not everyone understands what copyright registry does, and observe this for what it is: a cheap (as can be expected) publicity stunt for SCO, and a rather silly attempt at an appearence of legitimacy.
The real legal weight of this issue is elsewhere, probably in the documents signed between Novell and SCO, and noone except a few lawyers have seen it. [they will not be talking
anywhere except in a courtroom]
[now back to our trials and tribulations with regularly scheduled morons...]
In other words, this story gives anybody on anyside of any of/.'s favorite issues an excuse to rant and flame, and nothing else.
well, slashdot is the largest teapot this side of the atlantic, and what we observe
is the modus operandi of this venerable
institution. since the identities are hidden
and the possibility of an eternal archivist (
unlike usenet, say, where idiotic commentary
comes to haunt one forever) is sadly
lacking, there is no incentive for anyone to take
the time to be
reasonable, logical, technically sound, ethically consistent, honest
or sane.
sigh.
... nous
Toshidoshi ya
Saru ni kisetaru
Saru no men -- basho
> Who do you expect to implement
> compartmentalization and Mandatory Access
> Control first, OpenBSD or Linux?
is "compartmentalization" your word for type
enforcement that is available on some firewalls?
[not too hard to implement in OpenBSD precisely
because its architecture is stable and well understood.]
unfortunately, that technology is patented, so
anything like it can get into trouble...:(
we haven't even had a musing from ESR on this topic yet!
all poking aside, as anyone who ever stared at mozilla's innards knows, its death would only improve the state of our profession, and deepen our appreciation for software engineering, all those sleepy eyeballs notwithstanding.
talk to someone at EFF. Do NOT discuss your version publicly until you have done the consultation. if i recall, there are some funky rules regarding disclosure of prior art. <p> ...<b>nous</b>
i thought most thinking hackers were opposed to patents, for reasons well-expressed over and over again, by FSF, EFF and others.
but, now one of "ours" has a patent, people are already looking for a way to justify it. gee, maybe it is a good thing after all.
we can even muse about how patents are a natural part of open source philosophy as patents are of course intended to share inventions while protecting the interests of the inventor.
hmm. i don't know why my stomach is churning.
winter whiteness -- in the distance a screech of patents.
this is strange. it does not have the telltale signs of a flagship product, something to shake the trees, and write home to mom about. it seems more like something HP did not know what to do with, and decided to throw into the open-source arena to see if anything would come off it. and some publicity does not hurt. but hey, my eyeball time is limited, and very precious. it looks like time better spent elsewhere, like fixing all the damned bugs in linux and *bsd.
Let us see if anyone is watching us - if we get caught, we apologise, else we win. Sooner or later they will get tired of watching
i guess you have never worked for a large software company. it does not work that way. in the last two decades, i have never met a single software development manager who have ever uttered anything so stupid. if anything, many companies are overly cautious in this regard. they write their own instead of using free software.
But Sun is a legal entity and they should be prepared to take the criticism for any actions that they as a company make.
So it has, and apologized. the point has to do with the idiotic commentary regarding sun's evil intentions. Criticism should work with facts, not fiction.
It's not like some crazy guy in engineering started printing press releases on the office copier and Sun didn't know about it
engineering understands the value of open software, and would not do something so stupid. alas, not all of sun gets to review press releases before hand to catch this kind of slipups.
you know, a company like sun does have its share of doofuses, mostly in business suits. the technologists within the company are livid about this screw up. sun does not need to take anyone else's work. but it is trying to work with the open-source community, and that takes some getting used to, especially for the non-technologists.
remember, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
also, the actions of a few should not be seen as representative of the entire company, any more than the postings of a few excited newbies on these sorts of discussions should be seen as the general attitude of "open source people."
regarding IBM: it seems to me that it needs all the help it can get in the OS arena, just like SGI and perhaps others to follow. They are not scared, they are desparate, and it is easier to hug an appearent winner than to keep trying...
Slashdot Mirror
quality of service instead of amateurish, stubborn preoccupation with the hyped-up framework of the month. congratulations to twitter for growing up.
-- nous
i have been tracking dawson's work since the very beginning, and i agree with this assessment. apparently one good idea, an awful extension language and a lot of free grad help is a recipe for success, screw open source. what is even more amazing is that engler work remains unchallenged by oss equivalents...
nous
has anyone responding to this post actually seen the research in
question? i bet most posters to slash/dot are not regular readers
of the particular journal where it was published, so all they have
is the flimsy report of the research. please look at the study first
before violently agreeing with it. just because it is called "research" and
is published and happens to match some people's experience or expectations
[see spolsky for a recent dose of the latter] does not make it good,
accurate, or predictive.
-- nous
this is the kind of thing foes of open-source want: more wasted energies of talented open-source engineers in replicating what already works, what is already free except in the minds of a few fanatics.
instead of wasting time on rewrites and forks, fsf should look for people to do something that matters more to computing than rehashing stuff already done at great cost.[this is so pitifully predictible, i now expect stallman to call for programmers to start rewriting a free version of solaris after it is open-sourced in june. maybe he will want to rename it to to gnu/solaris to ease the spectacular failure of creativity and vision]
nous
obref: what amounts to a definitive dismantling of pseudo-scientific ID arguments may be found in young & edis why intelligent design fails. this is a surprisingly readable collection of essays that should be accessible to anyone with an operating brain and an undergrad-level science understanding. very highly recommended to slash-dotters.
nous
i kept searching for the promised comprehensive review. i must be missing somehow: all i find is a page of chatter. this is obviously ok for the average newbie who could not really care less and who needs to be told what to think, but for the opensource/computer science community that prides itself with a through approach to these sorts of things (at least on a good day) it is insulting to even have it on slashdot.
nousaround, and have the luxury to screw around with mediocre tools, gimp being the only exception. it is getting quite good...]
nous
[i realize this is not nearly as much fun as playing guessing games and pissing on sun]
hope this helps...(but hope springs eternal)
nous
There are some fascinating parts to game of life, but to claim that it has some special place for hackerdom is laughable at best. I can think of one recent good work on GOL worthy of hackerdom brownie points, and that is eppstein's searching for spaceships. Rest of hackerdom's fascination is negligible enough not to warrant the basis for this logo.
Why not the ship from ancient spacewar, which was the reason for Ken's hacking unix? Why not something as imaginative as PJW face from Bell Labs? (oh no, bad suggestion: ESR may decide to deploy his own face as logo...)
Hm. I have been designing logos on and off since 1976. Hacking since 1978. I suppose I have learned a thing or two about both over the years. Here is my somewhat educated assessment: I consider ESR's logo to be unimaginative, poorly balanced, devoid of energy, and not at all representative. In other words, It is really boring, one thing hacking is most certainly not. (one of my friends thought it was a stylized person sitting with his back against the wall, head down)
ESR should have had enough respect to ask the community for input...
(a remedial course on logo design may also help)
nous.
people like Greenspun have their own preferred and well-internalized linguistic choices and practices that will not permit an easy entry to the best practices of any language. It is not particularly surprising, though unfortunate that he joins the peanut gallery of axe grinding commentators, alongside Paul Graham. (where is erik naggum when we need him?)
a fresh point of view is a very rare thing. It is more often found in the thoughts of (say) a bright first year student, than in the missives of opinionated old farts who have enough mastery of rhetoric to eloquently piss on anything that does not sit in the middle of their field of vision.
nous
Diane Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA
University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226851753.
I hope Diane now writes the second edition in light of the current disaster.
nous
this is a rather important point, but presumably not everyone understands what copyright registry does, and observe this for what it is: a cheap (as can be expected) publicity stunt for SCO, and a rather silly attempt at an appearence of legitimacy.
The real legal weight of this issue is elsewhere, probably in the documents signed between Novell and SCO, and noone except a few lawyers have seen it. [they will not be talking anywhere except in a courtroom]
[now back to our trials and tribulations with regularly scheduled morons...]
nous
well, slashdot is the largest teapot this side of the atlantic, and what we observe is the modus operandi of this venerable institution. since the identities are hidden and the possibility of an eternal archivist ( unlike usenet, say, where idiotic commentary comes to haunt one forever) is sadly lacking, there is no incentive for anyone to take the time to be reasonable, logical, technically sound, ethically consistent, honest or sane.
sigh.
> Who do you expect to implement
> compartmentalization and Mandatory Access
> Control first, OpenBSD or Linux?
is "compartmentalization" your word for type enforcement that is available on some firewalls?
[not too hard to implement in OpenBSD precisely because its architecture is stable and well understood.]
unfortunately, that technology is patented, so anything like it can get into trouble... :(
-- nous
we haven't even had a musing from ESR on this topic yet!
all poking aside, as anyone who ever stared at mozilla's innards knows, its death would only improve the state of our profession, and deepen our appreciation for software engineering, all those sleepy eyeballs notwithstanding.
- nous (a suitably insulting haiku escapes me)
talk to someone at EFF. Do NOT discuss your
version publicly until you have done the
consultation. if i recall, there are some funky
rules regarding disclosure of prior art.
<p>
...<b>nous</b>
but, now one of "ours" has a patent, people are already looking for a way to justify it. gee, maybe it is a good thing after all.
we can even muse about how patents are a natural part of open source philosophy as patents are of course intended to share inventions while protecting the interests of the inventor.
hmm. i don't know why my stomach is churning.
winter whiteness --
in the distance
a screech of patents.
-- nous
i guess you have never worked for a large software company. it does not work that way. in the last two decades, i have never met a single software development manager who have ever uttered anything so stupid. if anything, many companies are overly cautious in this regard. they write their own instead of using free software.
-- nous
So it has, and apologized. the point has to do with the idiotic commentary regarding sun's evil intentions. Criticism should work with facts, not fiction.
It's not like some crazy guy in engineering started printing press releases on the office copier and Sun didn't know about it
engineering understands the value of open software, and would not do something so stupid. alas, not all of sun gets to review press releases before hand to catch this kind of slipups.
-- nous
remember, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
also, the actions of a few should not be seen as representative of the entire company, any more than the postings of a few excited newbies on these sorts of discussions should be seen as the general attitude of "open source people."
regarding IBM: it seems to me that it needs all the help it can get in the OS arena, just like SGI and perhaps others to follow. They are not scared, they are desparate, and it is easier to hug an appearent winner than to keep trying...
-- nous