Day after day I read Slashdot and if you aren't posting an offtopic comment in every single story about how everyone should visit your site, you're throwing derogatory and unprofessional remarks in the general direction of some open source luminary or another.
Now, I don't know everything that occurred between VA Linux Systems, or any of the other open source mecca sites that have been gobbled up by them, but no matter how justified your ire is, your conduct is pathetically unprofessional.
I'm disappointed to see such bitterness going on in the open source community, but I suppose this sort of behavior is inevitable once big money comes into the picture. The ones who are just dying to get enough recognition so that they can sell out and get some stock options somewhere get jealous because they were late to the party.
Please, stop this nonsense. Journalists from all over visit slashdot.org for source material and quotes from the geek community, and one of them could make quite a smear campaign out of petty stuff like this. --
NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
I just stopped by to check responses and was shocked to see I got modded as offtopic... A well. Anyway, I'd have to agree with you on the Parappa title, it was a first... My point was that Sega spits that kinda quirky stuff out all the time. It'd be a shame to see a company that pushes the envelope die to a titan like Sony.:( --
NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
Unless I'm mistaken, they're going after sites that post news about pirated copies of games, not sites that just discuss Dreamcast news. --
NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
I don't know why the Dreamcast always gets such a bum wrap... They've been on the market for over a year now, while the PS2 isn't even in the US market yet, but even a year ago people were saying they didn't want to spend 200 bucks for the best system out at the time because the PS2 would beat it when it came out.
Besides, Sega tries stuff in the states that there's no way Sony would even think of doing... Seaman, for instance, is an awesome "game" that does some truly innovative stuff that sega took a chance with and released in the states.
Anyway, I'm not a huge console gamer, but if any next-gen console survives, I hope it's Sega's. --
NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
No, My point in that statement was just that you're calling us "customers" of slashdot, which isn't entirely the way the service works. They want to keep viewers, obviously, but I don't think we directly contribute monetary value to the site aside from the whatever value is added by intelligent user comments. Just pointing out that the traditional company/customer relationship rules don't quite apply here.
As for the condescending part, I think a lot of us geeks just come out that way without realizing it. I got into a long argument not long ago with a guy who treated me basically like crap and called me a GPL zealot when I suggested my sofwtare could be used in a project he was working on without conflicting with the GPL. He took the typically condescending attitude I see coming naturally for most of us, and I took offense. Meaningful communication was broken down because of this.
Most of us are involved in some way in the free software/open source movement, where communication is a critical component of a working business/development model, yet most of us have no idea how to effectively keep communication channels open. I think we need to start collectively thinking before we speak, as there's no excuse to come off unintentionally abrasive when we're dealing with the written word. We can review what we're about to say before we say it -- a luxury not available in most encounters. --
NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
For crying out loud, this got moderated *up*? The guy wrote the stuff 3 years ago, when Slashdot users could hardly have been referred to as customers. Heck, even now, I don't know that you can hold them to "Customer focus." Last I checked they weren't charging us anything to use slashdot, and weren't selling our data to anyone for profit. If you want to call loading a banner ad being a customer, then I guess...
But still, that's no reason for the demeaning tone of this post. I just love the way we geeks all tend to rip each other to shreds when we make stupid mistakes, and when we do so, the tone we take is almost always one of "I know everything -- I do no wrong." This should have been moderated as "Flamebait."
You had no moral obligation to inform the readers of anything. Slashdot folks are a pretty educated crew -- we're fully capable of drawing our own conclusions, thank you. --
NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
Is it just me, or is anyone else really annoyed by the way in every AOL press release or article that results from some information gleaned from AOL press releases always says that AOL has 90% marketshare with their AIM *and* ICQ message clients? I have no problem with the technical fact that they now have market dominance because they bought the market leader (heck, MS does this all the time), but the ratio of AIM to ICQ users is so out of whack that it's hardly fair for AOL to buy out ICQ then try to clump the ICQ userbase into the same numbers as the AIM one.... Darn marketing types.... --
NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
You're mistaken, and apparently those with moderator points are getting confused as well.... this article is about getting the "Work for hire" situation OUT of the picture. When a work is deemed a work for hire, then the individual or company that hired the work done owns the copyright to the results of said work.
This is clearly an injustice, as artists (the good ones anyway) have had their music bouncing around in their very being for years and just because some company offers to front them money so they can get their music to the public doesn't mean the company hired the actual creative process employed by the artist.
Well, that's my 2 cents anyway. --
NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
It's a wee tad condescending to lump all those who are anti-abortion together as xtian right wingers, too, don't you think? And offtopic to boot.
And the gist of what the original poster surmised is true. It is essentially about coolness, when you get right down to it.
Your post was simply well-disguised flamebait. I could have used a moderation point to express that but felt this justified a response instead. -- NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
That was a well-worded reply. I half expected to get flamed for asking these questions because without a physics background I may have been missing something obvious to my fellow geeks. Thanks for the informative response.:) -- NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
Yes, I read this, but the article doesn't explain what basis they really have to say that the other natural forces have a reason to be compared to gravity. As I said, I'm no scientist, but wouldn't they need some basis other than the old Sesame Street line of "One of these things is not like the other?" -- NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
So, in effect, the scientists have a problem with diversity.:) I mean, gravity isn't other forces. it's gravity. Show some respect for individuality.:) Seriously though, this is very interesting stuff, but I still don't understand why there's so much concern just because gravity is weaker than other natural forces. -- NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
After reading the article, that's basically their explanation too. I'm no physicist, but it just seems weird that we call gravity weak since we really don't have any yardstick to compare to to something else. I mean, in this universe, there's one set of rules for gravity. It isn't like we get to have our choice of many.:) -- NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
Could someone give me some background on what precisely makes gravity weak? I never thought of it as anything but normal before.:) -- NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
... That is pretty deep stuff. I have to agree with you about the feeling of power. In the past, we've had management that went about acting like blowhards all day long, excercising their power. Very little actually got done when these people were in control. They spent all day in mandatory meetings they had called, and the like. People who are actually getting stuff done don't have to "toot their horn" every step of the way -- others do it for them. -- NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
I found their discovery of ping -f -s (huge number) funny, and how they were pasting a wrapper shell script to the channel that included CREDITS! For crying out loud, it calls a single ping command! -- NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
I read this article yesterday... just recently got hooked on RootPrompt.org... Though their name is an obvious homage to rootshell.org, their content is quite original... Easily more enjoyable than the actual IRC logs shown are the descriptions of each day's activities:
Day 5, June 08 D1ck asks J4n3 to take out three systems for him. D1ck and his elite buddy Sp07 try to figure out how a sniffer works "umm doesnt it have to be the same network?".
Been doing sysadmin/security work for a while now, and I've gotta say, they pretty much hit the nail on the head with regards to how little knowledge the majority of the crackers out there really have. Not to say that all crackers are script kiddies -- far from it -- but a lot of them are, and I'd wager the majority of them are. People who take an interest in security and want to actually learn stuff generally find out they can learn much more by trying to fight the good fight and lock down a system than they can by downloading and running scripts... Even the more malicious types who have a clue tend to spend more time writing custom exploits and publishing them than actually cracking boxes themselves. These are the guys that security firms try to pick up -- they know how the cracker mindset works, but they are more mature than the typical script kiddie, and they REALLY know their stuff.
-- NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
True enough -- still, no matter how many users say that this is the case, when it comes down to it, if the maintainer says otherwise, then otherwise it is. In other words, if you feel that strongly about it, then by all means fork your own kernel, or perhaps simply publish your patches somewhere else. If they fall into common usage because they're better, then guess what -- they'll get included. As I said before, I'm not a kernel hacker, and understand that there are differences as you mentioned, but when you get right down to it, if most Linux developers disagree with the maintainer, then it's time to fork a project of their own and select a new maintainer. As you said, competition is good.:) -- NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
It seems to me that the issues above shouldn't even be referred to as political -- it can't really be compared to politics because a maintainer is granted absolute control over what's officially in a piece of software, he or she has to be in order to effectively do their job without a huge bureaucracy getting in the way of decisions being made in a timely manner. Since that involves making judgement calls based on one's own opinion (though hopefully taking other viewpoints into account!), there are bound to be cries of "unfair!" from the development community at times.
I'm the author of an open source project entitled NeoMail. As an aside -- yes, my real nick is Neo, not Bedemus, everyone started calling me that after I spent way too much on a Neo outfit for my work's halloween dress-up day and started wearing an ankle-length trenchcoat during the colder months -- I know, I'm a loser.:) When I set out to design NeoMail I had a certain audience in mind, essentially the same one as all open source authors when they start out -- myself.
Now, once I had something that worked pretty well for me (I had poured at least a month or so of effort into it at that point -- was taking on the project just to see if I could, teaching myself Perl in the process), I posted the code on the web and announced its release on Freshmeat. Immediately, the mails started pouring in -- some bug reports, which are always appreciated -- but more and more suggestions as to what people would like to see. Most of these suggestions were from non-programmers, and therefore included no patches or anything, just opinions as to where NeoMail should head.
I quickly realized that I'd better start narrowing the scope of NeoMail beforehand, otherwise I'd NEVER reach 1.0! A few things were decided up front:
NeoMail would require no extra software be installed, aside from the necessary Perl 5 distribution and included modules, a web server, and an MTA.
NeoMail would not be designed to do POP3, IMAP, etc. There were plenty of solutions doing this already, and it would have been easier to use Net::POP3 than to code local mbox spool handling myself, but it just wasn't the direction I wanted to head in. NeoMail served a certain niche quite well, and a chief benefit was that it didn't require users to even have access to a real system account for it to work.
Plenty more -- you get the idea. I'd list everything here but how do I know people have even read this comment this far?:)
Next, the arguments started. "Why don't you use thus-and-such module to add thus-and-such feature?" "Because NeoMail doesn't need that feature, and it'll make for a hairier install for admins having to hunt down additional modules to install." "Yes it does need that feature." "No it doesn't, and if it does, code it yourself -- that's why I made it open source!" "But I don't code, why don't you add the feature and just make it an option so it doesn't increase system requirements?" "Because I only have so much spare time, and after a while when you're dealing with an interpreted (yes, compiled before execution, but you know what I mean:)) language, extra features that aren't getting used just become bloat unless they're modularized, and I just don't want NeoMail to go there -- it adds complexity for the user." "Fine, then I'll be forced to go elsewhere for my webmail solution." (This one always floored me! Made it sound like I had a commercial interest in them using my software!) "That's your right, thanks for trying NeoMail anyway though." "Wait, I was just kidding -- PLEASE won't you add this feature?" And so on, ad nauseum.
Eventually, come arguments actually convinced me to add something, but only if I thought it would benefit the majority of users. I was writing a webmail solution for normal people, not geeks like me.:) When people started saying they wanted NeoMail to import and use their pine or mutt settings, I tried to explain that the vast majority of people that actually are using NeoMail aren't the admins installing NeoMail, but their users, who likely don't even know that pine's a mail client, not a tree. That's the problem when you release your work to a community of people like you -- eventually if you don't fight the urge to do it, your tool will become so big and complex that only people like you will be able to use it. That isn't always a good thing.
Now, I understand that filesystems are much more complicated than my humble webmail solution, but I think that what people need to realize is that just because someone is the maintainer of a piece of code that allows user contributions doesn't mean that the individual is morally obligated to include everything that comes across their desktops, no matter how well thought out or convincingly argued the matter is. The individual is, after all, the maintainer, and if you don't like it you're always free to add the feature for your own use -- that is, unless you're seeking to satisfy your own ego by getting your code included and a credit in the CHANGES file. The door swings both ways, you know.
I'd post more -- have a lot of thoughts on this -- but if I don't click "Submit" soon, I can almost guarantee nobody's going to read to the end of this little rant!
-- NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
No, I wasn't, and you know better too.:) I was really making a statement akin to the "a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't a square" kind of thing.
And I say that while good_programmer != good_computer_scientist, good_computer_scientist == good_programmer. So the argument still stands. Secondly, you're speaking for the previous individual who clearly sees the same truth, as he says that the goal of the university is to turn out people who aren't mediocre programmers, but great ones. The proof is in the program. If you're a computer scientist that works exclusively in pseudocode and chalkboard drawings, then you are indeed a scientist, and a mathemetician, but the word computer doesn't even belong in your major.
I can't help but think that the computer scientist who doesn't go near a computer is essentially more of a computer philospher, pretentiously making broad, sweeping statements about big-O notation and the like, but not knowing how things work in the real world. When I think of someone making the huge investment in their future that college entails, I generally think of someone planning on getting some marketable skill in return. Do a search of any job database for programming jobs, and you'll see that the people doing the hiring equate programming with CS as well. If you get through 4 years of CS and don't come out of it a programmer, or someone who wants to, then you've made an investment of your money that makes little sense to me. Doesn't make it wrong, just doesn't make much sense to me.
Well, I see I hit a nerve with my previous post, so I'll be brief, and hopefully this will sting a bit less.
Nobody said that you need to teach Perl, but rather that in the course of teaching the concepts, you use as a testbed for said concepts a language which doesn't obfuscate the concepts.
When a language causes your students to focus more on semantics of a language than on what they're actually accomplishing -- when a student spends more time trying to get the peculiarities of a given language's syntax down, rather than focusing on what they're really *trying* to do, then you've done your students a disservice. Much worse so, in fact, when in the end they've learned the semantics of a language that, while admirable in its structure, is not nearly so marketable as the same concepts taught using another language.
For instance, so long as an individual understands the concept of a linked list and how it can be employed to offer fine-grained control over an array of structures, does it matter that the user implements every array structure as a linked list rather than using a language that provides such basics as a builtin? I'm speaking abstractly here, really, the same argument could be employed for any number of other concepts.
In the end, while computer science may seem a complex science to you and some of your students, there is no reason to treat it as such a complicated subject. Programming, in fact, any act of creation, should above all be something enjoyed, either in the act itself, or after the creation is complete. Treating the subject as something so cut and dry (good_programmer = math + bigO_notation + algorithms + theory;) does a disservice to the occupation.
Finally, I and many others like me I'm sure find it insulting that you suggest that WVU wants only the people capable of writing the best programs. First, as worded, it makes it sound like you forget that your job is to take a person and make them the type of person who can program well. Second, your implication that a programmer who hasn't attended WVU (or any college, perhaps) is somehow *not* capable of writing a program to put your graduates/instructors to shame, is extremely narrow-minded.
There are individuals for whom such things come naturally, and your statements sound more like an advertisement or justification for your university's existence rather than any substantial reason why your program produces better programmers. Years of refinement or not, there is no best way to teach computer science to someone, no more so than there is any one best way to solve a particular programming problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Bowie,
Day after day I read Slashdot and if you aren't posting an offtopic comment in every single story about how everyone should visit your site, you're throwing derogatory and unprofessional remarks in the general direction of some open source luminary or another.
Now, I don't know everything that occurred between VA Linux Systems, or any of the other open source mecca sites that have been gobbled up by them, but no matter how justified your ire is, your conduct is pathetically unprofessional.
I'm disappointed to see such bitterness going on in the open source community, but I suppose this sort of behavior is inevitable once big money comes into the picture. The ones who are just dying to get enough recognition so that they can sell out and get some stock options somewhere get jealous because they were late to the party.
Please, stop this nonsense. Journalists from all over visit slashdot.org for source material and quotes from the geek community, and one of them could make quite a smear campaign out of petty stuff like this.
--
NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
I just stopped by to check responses and was shocked to see I got modded as offtopic... A well. Anyway, I'd have to agree with you on the Parappa title, it was a first... My point was that Sega spits that kinda quirky stuff out all the time. It'd be a shame to see a company that pushes the envelope die to a titan like Sony. :(
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
Unless I'm mistaken, they're going after sites that post news about pirated copies of games, not sites that just discuss Dreamcast news.
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
I don't know why the Dreamcast always gets such a bum wrap... They've been on the market for over a year now, while the PS2 isn't even in the US market yet, but even a year ago people were saying they didn't want to spend 200 bucks for the best system out at the time because the PS2 would beat it when it came out.
Besides, Sega tries stuff in the states that there's no way Sony would even think of doing... Seaman, for instance, is an awesome "game" that does some truly innovative stuff that sega took a chance with and released in the states.
Anyway, I'm not a huge console gamer, but if any next-gen console survives, I hope it's Sega's.
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
No, My point in that statement was just that you're calling us "customers" of slashdot, which isn't entirely the way the service works. They want to keep viewers, obviously, but I don't think we directly contribute monetary value to the site aside from the whatever value is added by intelligent user comments. Just pointing out that the traditional company/customer relationship rules don't quite apply here.
As for the condescending part, I think a lot of us geeks just come out that way without realizing it. I got into a long argument not long ago with a guy who treated me basically like crap and called me a GPL zealot when I suggested my sofwtare could be used in a project he was working on without conflicting with the GPL. He took the typically condescending attitude I see coming naturally for most of us, and I took offense. Meaningful communication was broken down because of this.
Most of us are involved in some way in the free software/open source movement, where communication is a critical component of a working business/development model, yet most of us have no idea how to effectively keep communication channels open. I think we need to start collectively thinking before we speak, as there's no excuse to come off unintentionally abrasive when we're dealing with the written word. We can review what we're about to say before we say it -- a luxury not available in most encounters.
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
For crying out loud, this got moderated *up*? The guy wrote the stuff 3 years ago, when Slashdot users could hardly have been referred to as customers. Heck, even now, I don't know that you can hold them to "Customer focus." Last I checked they weren't charging us anything to use slashdot, and weren't selling our data to anyone for profit. If you want to call loading a banner ad being a customer, then I guess...
But still, that's no reason for the demeaning tone of this post. I just love the way we geeks all tend to rip each other to shreds when we make stupid mistakes, and when we do so, the tone we take is almost always one of "I know everything -- I do no wrong." This should have been moderated as "Flamebait."
You had no moral obligation to inform the readers of anything. Slashdot folks are a pretty educated crew -- we're fully capable of drawing our own conclusions, thank you.
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
Is it just me, or is anyone else really annoyed by the way in every AOL press release or article that results from some information gleaned from AOL press releases always says that AOL has 90% marketshare with their AIM *and* ICQ message clients? I have no problem with the technical fact that they now have market dominance because they bought the market leader (heck, MS does this all the time), but the ratio of AIM to ICQ users is so out of whack that it's hardly fair for AOL to buy out ICQ then try to clump the ICQ userbase into the same numbers as the AIM one.... Darn marketing types....
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
Hi,
You're mistaken, and apparently those with moderator points are getting confused as well.... this article is about getting the "Work for hire" situation OUT of the picture. When a work is deemed a work for hire, then the individual or company that hired the work done owns the copyright to the results of said work.
This is clearly an injustice, as artists (the good ones anyway) have had their music bouncing around in their very being for years and just because some company offers to front them money so they can get their music to the public doesn't mean the company hired the actual creative process employed by the artist.
Well, that's my 2 cents anyway.
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
It's a wee tad condescending to lump all those who are anti-abortion together as xtian right wingers, too, don't you think? And offtopic to boot.
And the gist of what the original poster surmised is true. It is essentially about coolness, when you get right down to it.
Your post was simply well-disguised flamebait. I could have used a moderation point to express that but felt this justified a response instead.
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
That was a well-worded reply. I half expected to get flamed for asking these questions because without a physics background I may have been missing something obvious to my fellow geeks. Thanks for the informative response. :)
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
Yes, I read this, but the article doesn't explain what basis they really have to say that the other natural forces have a reason to be compared to gravity. As I said, I'm no scientist, but wouldn't they need some basis other than the old Sesame Street line of "One of these things is not like the other?"
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
So, in effect, the scientists have a problem with diversity. :) I mean, gravity isn't other forces. it's gravity. Show some respect for individuality. :) Seriously though, this is very interesting stuff, but I still don't understand why there's so much concern just because gravity is weaker than other natural forces.
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
After reading the article, that's basically their explanation too. I'm no physicist, but it just seems weird that we call gravity weak since we really don't have any yardstick to compare to to something else. I mean, in this universe, there's one set of rules for gravity. It isn't like we get to have our choice of many. :)
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
Could someone give me some background on what precisely makes gravity weak? I never thought of it as anything but normal before. :)
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
... That is pretty deep stuff. I have to agree with you about the feeling of power. In the past, we've had management that went about acting like blowhards all day long, excercising their power. Very little actually got done when these people were in control. They spent all day in mandatory meetings they had called, and the like. People who are actually getting stuff done don't have to "toot their horn" every step of the way -- others do it for them.
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
I found their discovery of ping -f -s (huge number) funny, and how they were pasting a wrapper shell script to the channel that included CREDITS! For crying out loud, it calls a single ping command!
--
NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
I read this article yesterday... just recently got hooked on RootPrompt.org... Though their name is an obvious homage to rootshell.org, their content is quite original... Easily more enjoyable than the actual IRC logs shown are the descriptions of each day's activities:
Day 5, June 08
D1ck asks J4n3 to take out three systems for him. D1ck and his elite buddy Sp07 try to figure out how a sniffer works "umm doesnt it have to be the same network?".
Been doing sysadmin/security work for a while now, and I've gotta say, they pretty much hit the nail on the head with regards to how little knowledge the majority of the crackers out there really have. Not to say that all crackers are script kiddies -- far from it -- but a lot of them are, and I'd wager the majority of them are. People who take an interest in security and want to actually learn stuff generally find out they can learn much more by trying to fight the good fight and lock down a system than they can by downloading and running scripts... Even the more malicious types who have a clue tend to spend more time writing custom exploits and publishing them than actually cracking boxes themselves. These are the guys that security firms try to pick up -- they know how the cracker mindset works, but they are more mature than the typical script kiddie, and they REALLY know their stuff.
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
True enough -- still, no matter how many users say that this is the case, when it comes down to it, if the maintainer says otherwise, then otherwise it is. In other words, if you feel that strongly about it, then by all means fork your own kernel, or perhaps simply publish your patches somewhere else. If they fall into common usage because they're better, then guess what -- they'll get included. As I said before, I'm not a kernel hacker, and understand that there are differences as you mentioned, but when you get right down to it, if most Linux developers disagree with the maintainer, then it's time to fork a project of their own and select a new maintainer. As you said, competition is good. :)
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
I'm the author of an open source project entitled NeoMail. As an aside -- yes, my real nick is Neo, not Bedemus, everyone started calling me that after I spent way too much on a Neo outfit for my work's halloween dress-up day and started wearing an ankle-length trenchcoat during the colder months -- I know, I'm a loser. :) When I set out to design NeoMail I had a certain audience in mind, essentially the same one as all open source authors when they start out -- myself.
Now, once I had something that worked pretty well for me (I had poured at least a month or so of effort into it at that point -- was taking on the project just to see if I could, teaching myself Perl in the process), I posted the code on the web and announced its release on Freshmeat. Immediately, the mails started pouring in -- some bug reports, which are always appreciated -- but more and more suggestions as to what people would like to see. Most of these suggestions were from non-programmers, and therefore included no patches or anything, just opinions as to where NeoMail should head.
I quickly realized that I'd better start narrowing the scope of NeoMail beforehand, otherwise I'd NEVER reach 1.0! A few things were decided up front:
- NeoMail would require no extra software be installed, aside from the necessary Perl 5 distribution and included modules, a web server, and an MTA.
- NeoMail would not be designed to do POP3, IMAP, etc. There were plenty of solutions doing this already, and it would have been easier to use Net::POP3 than to code local mbox spool handling myself, but it just wasn't the direction I wanted to head in. NeoMail served a certain niche quite well, and a chief benefit was that it didn't require users to even have access to a real system account for it to work.
- Plenty more -- you get the idea. I'd list everything here but how do I know people have even read this comment this far?
:)
Next, the arguments started."Why don't you use thus-and-such module to add thus-and-such feature?"
"Because NeoMail doesn't need that feature, and it'll make for a hairier install for admins having to hunt down additional modules to install."
"Yes it does need that feature."
"No it doesn't, and if it does, code it yourself -- that's why I made it open source!"
"But I don't code, why don't you add the feature and just make it an option so it doesn't increase system requirements?"
"Because I only have so much spare time, and after a while when you're dealing with an interpreted (yes, compiled before execution, but you know what I mean
"Fine, then I'll be forced to go elsewhere for my webmail solution." (This one always floored me! Made it sound like I had a commercial interest in them using my software!)
"That's your right, thanks for trying NeoMail anyway though."
"Wait, I was just kidding -- PLEASE won't you add this feature?"
And so on, ad nauseum.
Eventually, come arguments actually convinced me to add something, but only if I thought it would benefit the majority of users. I was writing a webmail solution for normal people, not geeks like me. :) When people started saying they wanted NeoMail to import and use their pine or mutt settings, I tried to explain that the vast majority of people that actually are using NeoMail aren't the admins installing NeoMail, but their users, who likely don't even know that pine's a mail client, not a tree. That's the problem when you release your work to a community of people like you -- eventually if you don't fight the urge to do it, your tool will become so big and complex that only people like you will be able to use it. That isn't always a good thing.
Now, I understand that filesystems are much more complicated than my humble webmail solution, but I think that what people need to realize is that just because someone is the maintainer of a piece of code that allows user contributions doesn't mean that the individual is morally obligated to include everything that comes across their desktops, no matter how well thought out or convincingly argued the matter is. The individual is, after all, the maintainer, and if you don't like it you're always free to add the feature for your own use -- that is, unless you're seeking to satisfy your own ego by getting your code included and a credit in the CHANGES file. The door swings both ways, you know.
I'd post more -- have a lot of thoughts on this -- but if I don't click "Submit" soon, I can almost guarantee nobody's going to read to the end of this little rant!
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NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
I guess we have different philosophies on what higher education is about, then.
:)
Yup.
No, I wasn't, and you know better too. :) I was really making a statement akin to the "a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't a square" kind of thing.
And I say that while good_programmer != good_computer_scientist, good_computer_scientist == good_programmer. So the argument still stands. Secondly, you're speaking for the previous individual who clearly sees the same truth, as he says that the goal of the university is to turn out people who aren't mediocre programmers, but great ones. The proof is in the program. If you're a computer scientist that works exclusively in pseudocode and chalkboard drawings, then you are indeed a scientist, and a mathemetician, but the word computer doesn't even belong in your major.
I can't help but think that the computer scientist who doesn't go near a computer is essentially more of a computer philospher, pretentiously making broad, sweeping statements about big-O notation and the like, but not knowing how things work in the real world. When I think of someone making the huge investment in their future that college entails, I generally think of someone planning on getting some marketable skill in return. Do a search of any job database for programming jobs, and you'll see that the people doing the hiring equate programming with CS as well. If you get through 4 years of CS and don't come out of it a programmer, or someone who wants to, then you've made an investment of your money that makes little sense to me. Doesn't make it wrong, just doesn't make much sense to me.
Agreed. I never said C++. :)
Nobody said that you need to teach Perl, but rather that in the course of teaching the concepts, you use as a testbed for said concepts a language which doesn't obfuscate the concepts.
When a language causes your students to focus more on semantics of a language than on what they're actually accomplishing -- when a student spends more time trying to get the peculiarities of a given language's syntax down, rather than focusing on what they're really *trying* to do, then you've done your students a disservice. Much worse so, in fact, when in the end they've learned the semantics of a language that, while admirable in its structure, is not nearly so marketable as the same concepts taught using another language.
For instance, so long as an individual understands the concept of a linked list and how it can be employed to offer fine-grained control over an array of structures, does it matter that the user implements every array structure as a linked list rather than using a language that provides such basics as a builtin? I'm speaking abstractly here, really, the same argument could be employed for any number of other concepts.
In the end, while computer science may seem a complex science to you and some of your students, there is no reason to treat it as such a complicated subject. Programming, in fact, any act of creation, should above all be something enjoyed, either in the act itself, or after the creation is complete. Treating the subject as something so cut and dry (good_programmer = math + bigO_notation + algorithms + theory;) does a disservice to the occupation.
Finally, I and many others like me I'm sure find it insulting that you suggest that WVU wants only the people capable of writing the best programs. First, as worded, it makes it sound like you forget that your job is to take a person and make them the type of person who can program well. Second, your implication that a programmer who hasn't attended WVU (or any college, perhaps) is somehow *not* capable of writing a program to put your graduates/instructors to shame, is extremely narrow-minded.
There are individuals for whom such things come naturally, and your statements sound more like an advertisement or justification for your university's existence rather than any substantial reason why your program produces better programmers. Years of refinement or not, there is no best way to teach computer science to someone, no more so than there is any one best way to solve a particular programming problem.