In my opinion, comments are useful -- but literate programming is where it's at if you're looking for the best way to document your code.
Knuth did a lot of work in the area -- if I remember correctly, all of the sources to TeX are written in a style understood by the "web" literate programming tool.
There was also a good article by one of the Perl folks (Nathan Torkington? M.J. Dominus? Chromatic? I can't remember.) on POD, and how although POD wasn't literate programming, it was still useful. That article was great in that it showed a middle ground that may be more palatable to your non-LP-fanatic programmer.
That being said, I prefer full-on LP for large projects.
I program professionally, and so, I do what the paying customers want. Often that involves Windows. Don't worry, I am actively doing both x86 and ppc Linux stuff too.
Okay, you're missing my point entirely. Just because I didn't expect to see a result doesn't mean I have a problem with it -- it means that I didn't expect that so many people would be running Firefox on Windows. Does that make me somehow anti-Windows or something?
If you're looking to torque a Linux fanboy, look elsewhere.
Anonymous? No return address? How are you filing a tax return anonymously?
Okay -- first things, first, breathe. There you go. Oxygen to your brain will help you understand what I'm about to say.
And what are you putting as your address?
My correct address -- inside the envelope.
If you put a PO Box and you have a real address, you're actually breaking the law. And besides, when you signed up for that PO Box you were supposed to give them your address.
Not here in Canada it isn't. Also, do you think the people at Mailboxes, Etc. are going to spend a whole lot of time verifying addresses for ten dollar per month mailboxes? Not that it matters -- I don't have one.
It's just security through obscurity Mr. kjwcode@gmail.com.
Maybe you should learn what a term means before you use it. By the way, I'm thrilled you can read through Slashdot's email-obscuring-tactic-of-the-week. Has it occurred to you that people are supposed to be able to figure that out?
The most popular browser/OS combination to my sites is FireFox/WinXP too - but I'm the only one that uses them, so that information doesn't mean anything:)
For most of that time, I've used Mozilla on Solaris/x86 to access the sites.
Parent would be worthy of its Informative mod if there was some scope to its claim (I could mod as overrated but I'd rather actually find out what sort of number of people we're talking about here, because its pretty impressive if Firefox is the #1 browser on a decent-sized site!)
My original comment is overrated -- had I known it would be rated so highly, I would have put it in some context. Daily hits fluctuate between 50-500, and content page views between 40-300. Not a big site by any means. Monthly unique hosts is in the order of 500. About 40 TLDs are represented in each month's logs, and about 10% of the unique hosts can't be resolved back to a domain.
Well, when/if your Unix machine is down and you can't remember how to partition the new drive anymore you take what you can get, even if it means using Windows.
Actually, I really do have to thank you for your reply. I'm always on the lookout for article ideas, and that's a good one. Thank you, kind sir!
If any of the above three apply to someone, they have asked for a place in the public eye. I believe that personal information needs to be published about at least the former two types of people.
To be clear, I don't mean "here are pictures of their kids, their license plate numbers, and their last known trip to a public bathroom".
What I mean is that it is inane to have a place in the public view and expect that no one will talk about you.
Insofar as celebrity status meriting protection, can you imagine if Michael Jackson were able to wave his hand and have all discussion of his alleged improprieties vanish?
I guess this is how Google is going to get into the porn business.
Seriously, though -- when you're inviting people to upload a lot of something, how do you keep tabs on it? They are likely studying that as part of the experiment, but it would be great to see some sort of publically-announced result.
Of course it's unlikely to happen, but a guy can dream.
If they say that Windows is better than Linux, there's a shitstorm of comments. Ditto if they say Linux is better than Windows. But either my timing is good today, or no one has anything to say about them being equal.:P
Am I the only guy on the planet who doesn't seem to need more than about 80GB?
My MP3 collection fits happily on my 20GB player. Every project I work on fits easily in my 20GB home partition./usr is at well under 50% usage, and/var can probably handle the web logs for an average Slashdotting.
Frankly, short of gratuitously downloading porn and leaving dirty copies of the Mozilla source tree lying about, how does one fill up the kind of space that one of these drives would make available (without running a server of some sort, of course)?
I looked over their site and couldn't find hardware requirements documented.
One thing I love about open source operating systems is that the system requirements are right there, up front -- or at least you don't have to look hard to find them.
It claims to boot in 15 seconds, which I don't doubt. It would be great to use on a laptop for that very reason. However, will my poor little laptop be able to handle it? I'd love to know before I get my hopes up.
Somehow, I completely missed that. Thanks to you and iStewart for pointing that out. If I could divvy up the mod points wasted on my comment between the two of you, I would.
Thanks again -- I'll read more carefully next time!
One thing I don't get is how burning grass is not seen as having the same emissions problems as burning other organic material.
I'm no expert on American environmental regulations, but wouldn't a low-emission or zero-emission fuel source be considered more highly for North American use?
Slashdot Mirror
In my opinion, comments are useful -- but literate programming is where it's at if you're looking for the best way to document your code.
Knuth did a lot of work in the area -- if I remember correctly, all of the sources to TeX are written in a style understood by the "web" literate programming tool.
There was also a good article by one of the Perl folks (Nathan Torkington? M.J. Dominus? Chromatic? I can't remember.) on POD, and how although POD wasn't literate programming, it was still useful. That article was great in that it showed a middle ground that may be more palatable to your non-LP-fanatic programmer.
That being said, I prefer full-on LP for large projects.
No, it was more a realisation that gibberish in usually leads to gibberish out. :)
I've seen a DVD or two with an overly-long commercial at the beginning that likens copying movies to stealing cars or purses, etc.
All that's missing from the BSA now is some sort of analog to this.
Using patented algorithms (as obvious as some are) is like...
I forecast 42 million dollars in the first day. :P
You have your work cut out for you!
Just kidding. :)
Of course I have an address -- "Under the Mackenzie Highway overpass near kilometre 312, west side". :P
Okay, you're missing my point entirely. Just because I didn't expect to see a result doesn't mean I have a problem with it -- it means that I didn't expect that so many people would be running Firefox on Windows. Does that make me somehow anti-Windows or something?
If you're looking to torque a Linux fanboy, look elsewhere.
Okay -- first things, first, breathe. There you go. Oxygen to your brain will help you understand what I'm about to say.
And what are you putting as your address?My correct address -- inside the envelope.
If you put a PO Box and you have a real address, you're actually breaking the law. And besides, when you signed up for that PO Box you were supposed to give them your address.Not here in Canada it isn't. Also, do you think the people at Mailboxes, Etc. are going to spend a whole lot of time verifying addresses for ten dollar per month mailboxes? Not that it matters -- I don't have one.
It's just security through obscurity Mr. kjwcode@gmail.com.Maybe you should learn what a term means before you use it. By the way, I'm thrilled you can read through Slashdot's email-obscuring-tactic-of-the-week. Has it occurred to you that people are supposed to be able to figure that out?
For most of that time, I've used Mozilla on Solaris/x86 to access the sites.
Parent would be worthy of its Informative mod if there was some scope to its claim (I could mod as overrated but I'd rather actually find out what sort of number of people we're talking about here, because its pretty impressive if Firefox is the #1 browser on a decent-sized site!)My original comment is overrated -- had I known it would be rated so highly, I would have put it in some context. Daily hits fluctuate between 50-500, and content page views between 40-300. Not a big site by any means. Monthly unique hosts is in the order of 500. About 40 TLDs are represented in each month's logs, and about 10% of the unique hosts can't be resolved back to a domain.
Hope that helps.
I would love to, but there's this little problem that brings up later in the process... :P
A HP48GX and a #2 pencil. Straight into the envelope.
It's slower than an e-file, but far more anonymous, providing you don't put a return address on the envelope.
Agreed. I personally use Unix for both server and workstation duties, so it's easy to forget that not everyone does.
Actually, I really do have to thank you for your reply. I'm always on the lookout for article ideas, and that's a good one. Thank you, kind sir!
I said "Unix", not "Eunuchs".
The most popular browser/OS combination to my sites (which are Unix-oriented) is Firefox/WinXP.
Firefox/Linux is actually in second place. IE of various flavours on Win32 is third.
Certainly not what I expected to see before starting the sites, that's for sure -- but it's roughly the same mix on each one.
If any of the above three apply to someone, they have asked for a place in the public eye. I believe that personal information needs to be published about at least the former two types of people.
To be clear, I don't mean "here are pictures of their kids, their license plate numbers, and their last known trip to a public bathroom".
What I mean is that it is inane to have a place in the public view and expect that no one will talk about you.
Insofar as celebrity status meriting protection, can you imagine if Michael Jackson were able to wave his hand and have all discussion of his alleged improprieties vanish?
I guess this is how Google is going to get into the porn business.
Seriously, though -- when you're inviting people to upload a lot of something, how do you keep tabs on it? They are likely studying that as part of the experiment, but it would be great to see some sort of publically-announced result.
Of course it's unlikely to happen, but a guy can dream.
If they say that Windows is better than Linux, there's a shitstorm of comments. Ditto if they say Linux is better than Windows. But either my timing is good today, or no one has anything to say about them being equal. :P
Just one problem with this kind of research...
For the first year I'll be up every two hours all night, tending to the system.
Actually, that may be better than just being up all night, like I am now.
On SlashMark? Namely, how many seconds does it take to compile the Linux kernel? :P
The 640KB comment was in reference to RAM -- does that mean you still run DOS? Or ROM BASIC? If so, you are far more patient than I. :)
Am I the only guy on the planet who doesn't seem to need more than about 80GB?
My MP3 collection fits happily on my 20GB player. Every project I work on fits easily in my 20GB home partition. /usr is at well under 50% usage, and /var can probably handle the web logs for an average Slashdotting.
Frankly, short of gratuitously downloading porn and leaving dirty copies of the Mozilla source tree lying about, how does one fill up the kind of space that one of these drives would make available (without running a server of some sort, of course)?
I looked over their site and couldn't find hardware requirements documented.
One thing I love about open source operating systems is that the system requirements are right there, up front -- or at least you don't have to look hard to find them.
It claims to boot in 15 seconds, which I don't doubt. It would be great to use on a laptop for that very reason. However, will my poor little laptop be able to handle it? I'd love to know before I get my hopes up.
Somehow, I completely missed that. Thanks to you and iStewart for pointing that out. If I could divvy up the mod points wasted on my comment between the two of you, I would.
Thanks again -- I'll read more carefully next time!
One thing I don't get is how burning grass is not seen as having the same emissions problems as burning other organic material.
I'm no expert on American environmental regulations, but wouldn't a low-emission or zero-emission fuel source be considered more highly for North American use?