I think that phobia is based on a bit of introspective reasoning. Would we want to meet ourselves? Knowing how humans treat other humans, I think that the level of respect two alien cultures might have for one another is a bit suspect.
But we might be an abberation. The rest of the universe may be all "peace-groovy, brother" and we got saddled with the wingnuts. Probably not though.
You had to bring the Clinton sex scandal into it, didn't you? You know, if someone asks me in a public forum if I had my dick sucked, the answer is always "no". I don't care who you are.
The question to Clinton was inappropriate and completely immaterial to any investigation going on at the time. Everyone harps on Clinton for lying. But the real abuse of power was by the people directing the investigation into his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Was what he did wrong? I certainly don't think so. I don't think it was wrong for him to get his knob spit-shined by another adult. They were both consenting adults. The issue of adultery is a private matter between Hilary, Monica and him. And since I would respond similarly to the witch hunt, I don't hold his answers to the deposition against him.
Was it against the law? Sure. Was it the right thing to do? Yep.
Now, lying to convince the country to go to war, to satisfy some family fued, that's in a whole category unto itself.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of US companies that cannot store Canadian addresses in their databases. It is quite common for in-house software systems to expect numeric postal codes, and postal codes of exactly length 5.
Most people in the US tend to look at you funny the first time they hear you say "postal code" instead of "ZIP code".
Social engineering is concocting the "gay marriage" issue to distract from general incompetence, lies regarding WMD, a predisposition for a war we didn't need, distracting our military from the diligent pursuit of Osama, etc. You want to talk social engineering, talk to Karl Rove.
it's completely possible for most people at Lake Wobegone to be above (or below) average.
Garrison does not claim that most of the people to be above average. In Lake Wobegon, all of the children are above average. Oh, and if you didn't know, Lake Wobegon is fiction.
I'm beginning to think that part of the DDoS against Akamai was through the use of open HTTP proxies. A friend who uses Mandrake experienced a what appeared to be a DoS attack on his network Wednesday night and asked me to help. The cause was a bunch of bogus HTTP proxy requests from outside his network. Turns out Mandrake's apache2-mod-proxy module was installed and has proxying turned on by default in the config file. He was not aware HTTP proxying was enabled. He was getting a ton of obviously bogus requests directed at a number of the domains listed in the article.
As an aside, my Fedora servers have mod_proxy installed, but Fedora's Apache package does not turn on proxying by default. Mandrake should probably follow suite and disable proxying in their packaged config file.
I find mechanical computers very interesting. I was browsing the web a few days ago and some guy built a differentiator, integrator, and summer based on some pneumatic system. Very cool.
I find that creating seasons with a pnuematic device to be the single most amazing feat ever! The amount of energy required to make summer is truly staggering.
The thing is, Python is not really any easier than C++... it's just as verbose and irksome as C++
Ha! No one who has done any CORBA work with both of them can say that with a straight face. Python's CORBA bindings are far simpler than those for C++. And that is all due to the nature of those two languages. That same nature is reflected in many other programming domains.
I think that Bruce Eckel's commentaries on programming efficiency with C++, Java and Python are right on the money.
This is not to say that Python is the perfect language for all applications. I still rely on C++ for many chores. But to write an entire application in pure C++ these days seems pure folly in most cases.
I'm going to guess you haven't done much porting between non-unixlike systems, if you think autoconf is a good thing.
Quite true. The only systems that I have ever seen that work across UNIX and non-UNIX systems are all custom-made. The autotools work best at solving UNIX compatibility issues. And I think it does a fine job if that's the target.
I also agree that the gtk/gnome approach is better than some of the autoconf stuff. But it doesn't solve all of the problems that the autotools solve, such as determining the right compiler and compiler options to pass. And one minor nit I have is that not all of the *-config scripts use the same CLI options.
I too used to think that the autotools configuration was quite inpenetrable. But after I started learning and using them (I'm no expert, mind you), those tools make much more sense to me.
Al Franken isn't pretending to be fair and balanced in his book. Quite the opposite. And I agree with the OP. I have yet to see a better description of Colmes written.
Kudos for at least admitting FoxNews is right-wing though.
I'm sorry but i'm not sure you ever know what the problem is. In a perfect world you will only need to have the configure script in the package and it should build without having autoconf installed on the end-user's computer. In real world that is not the case...
Oh, I completely agree. Until a package is actually built on a platform, one may not know what sort of things really need to be checked for or changed by the configure script. It's also quite likely that all of autotools macros haven't been tested on the less widely available OSes. That's where the folks wishing to use open source software on less popular platforms bear some responsibility.
I don't for a minute think that it is easy, but it is what we've got. And the only way to make things easier is through standardization, and not with a new configuration tool.
Parent is not a Troll. This is actually a very sound statement. Build dependencies are just that: build dependencies.
"You want to build my cool new software package? OK, you'll need an ANSI C compiler; Bourne shell; libs X, Y and Z; and automake version A, autoconf version B and libtool version C."
Frequently you'll see statements like this in the INSTALL documentation of an application: "I've tested this on the following OSes: Linux (Fedora Core 1), Solaris 9 (SPARC, not x86), OpenBSD, and Plan 9. I've had reports that it works on HP-UX and AIX 5L. If you get it working on UNICOS (and can let me know about it) drop me a line with your patches."
This is perfectly sensible. Heck, its even quite common to have multiple versions of autotools installed to deal with all of the build dependencies one has. (I have 3 automake versions installed on the workstation I now write from.) Nothing wrong with that, really.
I think the story submitter may think it's a problem to have multiple autotool versions installed, but I don't think he knows what the problem really is. Perl doesn't use the autotools, and if Cray want's to help support its users, it could provide a UNICOS build system for OSS developers to test on like IBM does/did with AIX 5L.
That beeing said, my gentoo servers pull a new autoconf version about once a month for some random unrelated update. Thats really a bit excessive.
I am starting to think the same thing. I completely understand why it is happening though. Every time behavior changes in a commonly used library or other common dependency (commercial or open source) managed by the autotools, those version changes must be reflected in the autotools.
The thing is, if you want the latest and greatest packages built from source, your common build dependencies are going to be the packages that change the most. And the tools that manage the complexity of build environments, the autotools, are the ones that will need the most frequent updating.
I wanted to compile cairo on my Mandrake 9.1 system. I couldn't until I edited the autoconf file to remove "new commands" and added phony files to make pkgconfig happy.
Unless I misunderstand the problem, autotools is not to blame for your woes. The way I interpret your complaint is that you did not have a build environment that satisfies the build dependencies of cairo.
Now, you might have a valid complaint that cairo does not adequately document its build requirements, or that it has build requirements that most users can not reasonably be expected to meet. (Both are common complaints of mine when dealing with bleeding-edge open source projects.) But to blame autotools for the problem is not quite fair.
The autotools are crutch for people who can't be bothered to actually learn the C language and library, or the difference between POSIX and what their current environment provides.
Yours is a rather myopic and provincial view of the problem, IMHO. The autotools are a necessary evil when one has more dependencies than just ISO C. What versions of libraries are installed? What odd bugs must I work around? Where are the headers for package foo located on this system? What compiler options should I pass?
It's real simple: you read the docs. You determine what the standard actually requires, not what your development system happens to do. And you program to that, then test.
What do the standards say about which version of libjpeg is installed and where its headers are? What about the version of Gnome? What if I want to support both Gnome and KDE if they are available? How do I determine that with Make?
I don't think you fully grasp the problems that the autotools actually do solve for developers.
In the business world, you are going to have to come up with a budget for your software projects. A project whose scope or length is not defined does not lend itself well to budget forecasting. And those project managers that cannot accurately forecast the time or cost of their projects are quickly without a job. And, oddly enough, many end up teaching at University.
I seem to recall learning some time ago that, back in the days of The Phone Company, it was "illegal" to hook up a phone not owned by TPC to a jack in your own house.
Yep. And during that time AT&T was a publicly sanctioned and heavily regulated monopoly. We could do the same thing for the MPAA. But then I'd want to extract the same level of benefit from the MPAA that the U.S. received from allowing AT&T to exist as a monopoly.
The only thing that keeps these sorts of "philosophical" debates alive is the tacit agreement between the participants to use the different meanings of the word "exist" in opposing arguments.
Slashdot Mirror
It took four people to come up with the idea that it was patentable. That's what was so fucking MS-Innovative(tm)!
But we might be an abberation. The rest of the universe may be all "peace-groovy, brother" and we got saddled with the wingnuts. Probably not though.
The question to Clinton was inappropriate and completely immaterial to any investigation going on at the time. Everyone harps on Clinton for lying. But the real abuse of power was by the people directing the investigation into his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Was what he did wrong? I certainly don't think so. I don't think it was wrong for him to get his knob spit-shined by another adult. They were both consenting adults. The issue of adultery is a private matter between Hilary, Monica and him. And since I would respond similarly to the witch hunt, I don't hold his answers to the deposition against him.
Was it against the law? Sure. Was it the right thing to do? Yep.
Now, lying to convince the country to go to war, to satisfy some family fued, that's in a whole category unto itself.
The GPL is an enticement to social responsibility.
In about the same way that a Boeing 747 is overkill as a suburban/city commuting vehicle.
If you run your own SMTP server, you can use mailbox aliases as described in the mail addressing FAQ.
Yes, but is it correct arithmetic?
Believe it or not, there are plenty of US companies that cannot store Canadian addresses in their databases. It is quite common for in-house software systems to expect numeric postal codes, and postal codes of exactly length 5.
Most people in the US tend to look at you funny the first time they hear you say "postal code" instead of "ZIP code".
Social engineering is concocting the "gay marriage" issue to distract from general incompetence, lies regarding WMD, a predisposition for a war we didn't need, distracting our military from the diligent pursuit of Osama, etc. You want to talk social engineering, talk to Karl Rove.
Garrison does not claim that most of the people to be above average. In Lake Wobegon, all of the children are above average. Oh, and if you didn't know, Lake Wobegon is fiction.
This is why artistic license is a useful concept.
As an aside, my Fedora servers have mod_proxy installed, but Fedora's Apache package does not turn on proxying by default. Mandrake should probably follow suite and disable proxying in their packaged config file.
I find that creating seasons with a pnuematic device to be the single most amazing feat ever! The amount of energy required to make summer is truly staggering.
Ha! No one who has done any CORBA work with both of them can say that with a straight face. Python's CORBA bindings are far simpler than those for C++. And that is all due to the nature of those two languages. That same nature is reflected in many other programming domains.
I think that Bruce Eckel's commentaries on programming efficiency with C++, Java and Python are right on the money.
This is not to say that Python is the perfect language for all applications. I still rely on C++ for many chores. But to write an entire application in pure C++ these days seems pure folly in most cases.
Quite true. The only systems that I have ever seen that work across UNIX and non-UNIX systems are all custom-made. The autotools work best at solving UNIX compatibility issues. And I think it does a fine job if that's the target.
I also agree that the gtk/gnome approach is better than some of the autoconf stuff. But it doesn't solve all of the problems that the autotools solve, such as determining the right compiler and compiler options to pass. And one minor nit I have is that not all of the *-config scripts use the same CLI options.
I too used to think that the autotools configuration was quite inpenetrable. But after I started learning and using them (I'm no expert, mind you), those tools make much more sense to me.
Kudos for at least admitting FoxNews is right-wing though.
I wouldn't complain to loudly, dude. Testing FC2 on the VIA C3 was *your* job.
Oh, I completely agree. Until a package is actually built on a platform, one may not know what sort of things really need to be checked for or changed by the configure script. It's also quite likely that all of autotools macros haven't been tested on the less widely available OSes. That's where the folks wishing to use open source software on less popular platforms bear some responsibility.
I don't for a minute think that it is easy, but it is what we've got. And the only way to make things easier is through standardization, and not with a new configuration tool.
Frequently you'll see statements like this in the INSTALL documentation of an application: "I've tested this on the following OSes: Linux (Fedora Core 1), Solaris 9 (SPARC, not x86), OpenBSD, and Plan 9. I've had reports that it works on HP-UX and AIX 5L. If you get it working on UNICOS (and can let me know about it) drop me a line with your patches."
This is perfectly sensible. Heck, its even quite common to have multiple versions of autotools installed to deal with all of the build dependencies one has. (I have 3 automake versions installed on the workstation I now write from.) Nothing wrong with that, really.
I think the story submitter may think it's a problem to have multiple autotool versions installed, but I don't think he knows what the problem really is. Perl doesn't use the autotools, and if Cray want's to help support its users, it could provide a UNICOS build system for OSS developers to test on like IBM does/did with AIX 5L.
I am starting to think the same thing. I completely understand why it is happening though. Every time behavior changes in a commonly used library or other common dependency (commercial or open source) managed by the autotools, those version changes must be reflected in the autotools.
The thing is, if you want the latest and greatest packages built from source, your common build dependencies are going to be the packages that change the most. And the tools that manage the complexity of build environments, the autotools, are the ones that will need the most frequent updating.
Unless I misunderstand the problem, autotools is not to blame for your woes. The way I interpret your complaint is that you did not have a build environment that satisfies the build dependencies of cairo.
Now, you might have a valid complaint that cairo does not adequately document its build requirements, or that it has build requirements that most users can not reasonably be expected to meet. (Both are common complaints of mine when dealing with bleeding-edge open source projects.) But to blame autotools for the problem is not quite fair.
Yours is a rather myopic and provincial view of the problem, IMHO. The autotools are a necessary evil when one has more dependencies than just ISO C. What versions of libraries are installed? What odd bugs must I work around? Where are the headers for package foo located on this system? What compiler options should I pass?
It's real simple: you read the docs. You determine what the standard actually requires, not what your development system happens to do. And you program to that, then test.
What do the standards say about which version of libjpeg is installed and where its headers are? What about the version of Gnome? What if I want to support both Gnome and KDE if they are available? How do I determine that with Make?
I don't think you fully grasp the problems that the autotools actually do solve for developers.
Thus illustrating some maxim or another...
Yep. And during that time AT&T was a publicly sanctioned and heavily regulated monopoly. We could do the same thing for the MPAA. But then I'd want to extract the same level of benefit from the MPAA that the U.S. received from allowing AT&T to exist as a monopoly.
The only thing that keeps these sorts of "philosophical" debates alive is the tacit agreement between the participants to use the different meanings of the word "exist" in opposing arguments.
Q.E.D. Most armchair philosophers are wankers.
You mean unlike today, where anything we build now will be payed for by our grandchildren. :-)