Hopper! Dude. I know we've butted heads on this before. I do not disagree with your comment regarding bad programming on the part of the kernel developers with respect to compiler incompatibilities. However, I do not agree with Red Hat simply repackaging a compiler under a misleading name. Educate your users, don't give them crutches. If RH really felt that calling a compiler kgcc would make it easier for the user, then create a "virtual" package that installs the compiler unders it's version name and create a symbolic link to it:
No misleading, no misunderstanding. No BS. The nice thing about Debian packages are their ability to use virtual packages and their dependencies to force package installation to perform certain tasks. If, for example, they found it necessary to package an older copiler for kernel compilation (which they didn't, BTW), they could include a "Depends:" line to the control file for the 'kernel-package' that looked something like this:
Depends: gcc2.72 | gcc ( < 2.95 )
Then, using apt-get:
bash# apt-get install kernel-package
IMHO, there are much cleaner ways of doing it than Red Hat's hack. Regardless, you cannot defend Red Hat's bad decisions in package policy by placing the blame on the Kernel developers. They didn't write the spec file. They didn't mislead the users.
Every major distribution has it's own kernel tree - no major distribution has ever shipped one of Linus's kernels.
Incorrect. Debian ships with the original Linus kernel tarball. There are some kernels that you can install with various patches applied, but everything is available as a *.deb or a *.[dsc,diff,orig.tar.gz].
In addition, Debian does not commit a Red Hat-ism and package such awful software renames like kgcc. Why not call it what it is, gcc-2.7.2. I mean, come on. Pull the wool over the lusers eyes, don't ya. "Yeah. Red Hat has a special compiler for the Kernel..." Whatever.
Another nice thing about Debian's kernel packaging is that the very tools the developers use are available to the average user.
ACPI Support
CONFIG_ACPI
ACPI/OSPM support for Linux is currently under development. As such, this support is preliminary and EXPERIMENTAL.
Advanced Powehttp://phobos.fs.tum.de/acpi/index.htmlr Management BIOS support
CONFIG_APM
APM is a BIOS specification for saving power using several different techniques.
WINE stands for "Wine is Not an Emulator". It is a clean-room implementation of the Windows API. WINE loads the program and links the native libraries in place of the Windows DLL's. When the program calls for a function, the NATIVE code is executed. There is no emulator involved here...
--
Re:Qualitative Analysis, not Quantitative...
on
Glasscode Released
·
· Score: 2
Actually, I do get it, and I disagree with "grading" a post. It is an over-simplistic approach that we have seen doesn't work on/., half-empty, and other similar systems. Why? Quality posts get ignored or graded down because people don't "like" them. People grade up or down based on what they "like." Differences of opinion should not be the criteria for "grading" a post. Remove the ability to "grade" a post "up/down", and you remove the bias. Remove the bias, and the pro/con arguments can be graded based on content.
Posts that get attention will be moderated. Posts that don't get attention will be unclassified. The way you filter the posts is determined on what you would like to read. Would you like to read the 'pro' arguments, the 'con' arguments. Comments that were 'pro' and 'interesting', or 'con' and 'troll'. +1 or +5 tells you nothing more than the idea that a number of people "liked" the post. Now your filters are subject to the general concensus of the population that uses the forum. If that population consists of a bunch of neo-nazis, their grading will reflect their personal biases. If they're a bunch of Windows-huggin users, the BSD-huggin users will likely get a consistently lower grade on their posts.
No. "Simple" grading schemes may be fast, but they're not effective.They are not useful. They are subject to the bias of the population of the forum. Frankly, I'm tired of them.
Open your mind a little further. You're only envisioning the first steps. Certainly being able to transist the database like a filesystem is an extremely powerful interface. Data integrity could be preserved by interacting with the shell the user is in while (s)he is trying to manipulate data. For example:
goober:$ cd USER_ID
goober:$ ls
11023 11025 11044 11055 11092
goober:$ rm 11023
Removing USER_ID 11023 will also remove the data for this user in the FIRST_NAME, LAST_NAME, TIMESTAMP, and AGE fields. Do you really want to do this? (Y/n) Yes
goober:$
Get the picture?;-) Essentially, the interface will have to understand how to translate a row into a hierarchical representation. Getting a useful and easy-to-understand interface this way may not be the easiest thing to do. Add the difficulty of resolving foreign key dependencies and such a CLI would get quite confusing. An interesting spin on this would be to bind canned queries to directory names. Still, it has a very limited scope. Complex queries would be difficult to attain through such a CLI.
Qualitative Analysis, not Quantitative...
on
Glasscode Released
·
· Score: 3
Moderation systems are normally designed for the purpose of promoting the quality of a forum. It's interesting then, that the most prominent moderation system uses a method that assigns subjective opinion a quantitative value. "Scoring" a post "up" or "down" is inherently flawed in that you are allowing an individuals subjective opinion to 'grade' the post, rather than a more effectively classifying or categorizing a post.
Filtering these forums based on this flawed quantitive value will obviously result in quality posts being ignored. Slashdot does offer some kind of categorization of the post, but it still relies upon scoring to order and filter posts.
Another factor to consider in moderating systems is accountability. Slashdot, and many others, use an anonymous moderation system. kuro5hin does not follow this poor practice. Everyone can moderate, and everyone is accountable. You can view who has moderated your posts and view the value they selected.
So let's tie this together. We want a system that reflects a true subjective and qualitative analysis without the impedance of scoring. We want a system that is accountable. "Grading" a post becomes "Classifying" a post, and filtering becomes organizing. For example, let's say the categories to classify a post include the following:
Informative
Opinion
Off Topic
Troll/Flame
Pro
Con
If subjective categories such as "interesting" or "boring" are available, so be it. They are simply classifications. Opinion is important, but if we base our filtering on grades that do not accurately reflect content, we loose any advantage we gain through moderation.
So, what would a forum look like with this system? It could be displayed in exactly the same way we see/., but instead of showing a score, we provide a link to show the categories and number of people that moderated the post. For example:
The Ozone needs an fsck!
11 Jan 2001, ^chewie
Informative(11), Boring(1), Pro(1)
The Ozone is in serious need of repair! The US Department of...
...and so on. (Man, I hate mozilla keybindings...*sigh*). Thus, you have the system I propose as a base. Quantitative measurements are possible, but should only reflect actual physical facts about the post, such as size, number of links, number of moderations, etc.
I've been wondering when someone would figure this one out. Let's see. IRC may not have been the first information relay protocol, but it certainly one of the most tried and tested... Code reuse. What a concept!
This was a very nice document. Thanks for posting the link. It summarized the gopher services quite well. If a moderator sees this, please give a +Informative to the parent of this post.
I'm actually quite surprised that most of the responses to this thread have been an offhanded slight. The Gopher system is a very well designed system. It was a solidly built way to share files without opening your network to the security risks of NFS or ftp. It toted a heirarchical organization of information for network wide distribution. And it originated at the University of Minnesota (um..."gopher"... the University mascot?).
A couple links to throw your way before the rest of you start spewing all the grandios wonders of the ACL systems. BTW, NT's ACL lists don't fit the bill anyway. I've worked with them, and they're a pain in the behind.
I've got two to sell. Off topic, yes and no. This *CD deal is not enough to keep me with Sprint PCS service. They cannot provide me a good signal in my house, effectively making the cell phone useless for Long Distance calling from my residence or even answering pages. AT&Greed's mobile services will reach even my wee little hovel in the basement of a huge brick house. Sprint can't do that. Anyone in a SprintPCS city who lives on an above ground floor want a cell phone?
I'll keep this comment within the context of music, mp3's, and CD's, rather then venturing off to the related DVD discussion. Traditionally, we receive our own personal copies of music in the form of CD or tape. CD's are really the only choice as a source for converting said music to mp3's. So, if we receive or music in CD format, and we have computers at our disposal with great encoding tools like Lame, BladeEnc, and algorithms like mp3 or Ogg Vorbis, why should we worry about the RIAA?
Seriously, folks. I don't see CD's dying any time soon, and by legal precedence, we have a right to make copies for ourselves or our friends. If this means burning new CD's or encoding an MP3, we have the right. Distributing said MP3's over the Internet may be another discussion, but actually encoding a song to MP3 format is NOT breaking the law. The RIAA is making the same old argument it always has, "We want control." In the end, common sense will hopefully prevail and once again quell the tantrums of the gorilla sized child.
See also file(1), magic2mime(1),/etc/magic,/usr/share/misc/magic, mailcap(5),/etc/mailcap, ~/.mailcap, metamail(1)
Don't take this the wrong way, but you sound like a desktop user who's not explored enough of a UNIX system from "console land" to know what tools are available for your disposal. Did you know that you can set up your own ~/.mailcap to specify what applications get run based on mimetypes? Did you know that you can figure out what type of file a given file is by using the file command?
I should be easier on you. What you're talking about isn't entirely off base with some of the advancements available in newer file systems. It is not inconceivable to store a magic number in the first 32bits of a file entry on the ReiserFS system. Doing so would allow applications like file much quicker access to file type signatures without having to actually open the file.
So your comment isn't too far off the mark with regards to the topic at hand, filesystems. Where your comment would have better application would be in reference to a unified approach to maintaining MIME-to-application lists. Just remember to look at the applications I suggested above.
DC's business model == give away hardware to drive business to website.
Competition provides same service
Because:CueCat hardware is used, Competition must be "stealing"
Do you think:CueCat has ever heard of a modem? Do you think that if USR and Motorola were to throw temper tantrums over their competition in the same manner that anyone would give them any serious business? Do you think that any Judicial representative (aka, Judge, Lawyer) would even consider such a lawsuit? Let's hope the judge presiding over this case throw it out for the childish temper tantrum it is.
This isn't a troll. This is just an observation. This particular "library", which you need special software to access, is not available for a large portion of the slashdot readers: the *NIX crowd. IOW, this doesn't concern us. Another boring post for slashdot...just what we need.
Monday, September 11, 2000. New York, NY. In an shocking move today, Napster-bane band, Metallica has filed a lawsuit against a major Internet backbone provider, UUNET. Metallica claims, "By providing Universities Internet access across the country, UUNET is contributing to the piracy of Intellectual Property and Copyrighted material." Their stance is that the Internet in and of itself is a direct violation to the ownership and absolute control of ideas, recorded performances, and other copyright protected works." Some speculate that Metallica and their lawyers have been smoking a little too much of the "happy leaf" lately.
An eyewitness reported to us from outside the law offices of Metallica's lawyers. "Maaan. I ain't never seen someone buy so much friggin' weed from me." The witness shook his head in disbelief, eyes glazed over in shock... "I, like, had to wheel it down 'ere in my son's Red Flyer wagon!" He added hysterically, "For one week straight!"
Why the police have not interveaned seemed a mystery, until we made a visit to the Chief of the controlling district around the law offices. To our surprise, the Chief looked like a 80's throwback. "Dude. Metallica, like, rocks! *cough cough*" He smiled stupidly and asked, "Want some weed?"
How far will Metallica go?! One can only speculate!
Well, here's what I did when I had to write test drivers for an 150-person class: In addition to automated tests for the TA's, I also wrote sanity tests that the students could run themselves. In other words, when you thought you had finished problem set 5, you typed:
verify ps5
DejaGnu is a framework for testing other programs. Its purpose is to provide a single front end for all tests. Beyond this,
DejaGnu offers...
It's manual can be found at this link. It's interesting that this came up in this thread, though it'll probably be largely ignored considering how deep it is in the thread and how many people have replied to this topic. I've been contemplating trying to get the crew at work to write their code with a number of tools that they're not using right now, such as DejaGnu, Nana (a nice library for assertion checking and logging), Autoconf and Automake, and perhaps even Autogen. I think it would give a good, standardized base from which to work, and force some of these half-assed coworkers to live up to the name "hacker"! Alas, the troubles of trying to convince coworkers of a "better way" is not the topic of this thread, but I thought the mention of the tools would relate well.
...make sure that your code provided the right interfaces (it's amazing how many people forget to capitalize function names), and so on...
*cringe* It sounds like you've enforced some coding style standards upon your students that are not "C-compliant". Yet another topic for discussion, "What stylistic standard is 'right' for C programs? C++ programs?" We've all got our preferences, and were I a student of yours, I'd cringe every time I wrote a capatalized function. *double-cringe*
Is that supposed to be an advantage? What you're saying is that I'm supposed to audit millions of lines of code if I want upgrade to a newer version of RedHat or pick-your-distro.
Assuming by the above statement that you've already audited millions of lines of code for the current version, I'll give you a hint about a very effective tool used to point out the differences between versions of software, if the source code is available. You will find this software installed by default on most Linux distributions. Give up yet?
Although we may give the author a "thumbs up" for the effort, I believe he missed both his target audience, the PHB's and other "uninitiated" potential Linux users, as well as any audience in general.
One of the major elements missing from this document include footnotes, bibliographies, and general links of reference that allow the reader to delve into given subjects -- which in this case are organized into FUD rebuttals.
For example, when the author is describing the differences between multitasking and threading on given OS kernels, where are the links to the documentation describing this information? How has the author worked on substantiating his claims?
Frankly speaking, this document needs a LOT of work before it can be presented as a true anti-FUD document. No one will take it seriously in it's currrent state, and will write off the author, and unfortunately the Operating System he is trying to advocate.
FOOTNOTES
1. From Jargon File (4.2.0, 31 JAN 2000) [jargon]:
PHB/P-H-B/ [Usenet; common; rarely spoken] Abbreviation, "Pointy-Haired Boss". From the {Dilbert} character, the archetypal halfwitted middle-{management} type. See also {pointy-haired}.
2.From Jargon File (4.2.0, 31 JAN 2000) [jargon]:
FUD/fuhd/ n. Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering [Amdahl] products." The idea, of course, was to persuade them to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. See {IBM}. After 1990 the term FUD was associated increasingly frequently with {Microsoft}, and has
become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon.
John, thank you for contribution to this discussion. I really appreciate seeing the producer's side of the argument once and a while.
That finished, I'd like to say that I disagree with Id's recent release decisions with Q3, which I view in the same context that the software industry in general supports: it's lack of committment to simply proving a software licence indepenent of operating system platform. The very fact that Id charged money for each platform-specific release of Q3 rather than supplying three versions of the software in one package (take
Terminus for example), displays this very same capatilistic agenda.
Note that in the above paragraph, I referenced Id's release decisions in how they can be perceived by the public. It is obvious that from John's post here to Slashdot that he understands and addresseses these issues, a very nice thing to see. I don't want to belittle that point.
Continuing on with the discussion: why would software companies license their product in a platform-independent manner when they can make so much more money by forcing the user to license multiple copies?! It's a great money-making scheme that's not focused on the best interest of the consumer. We all really appreciate Id's commitment to contributing to the Open Source and Free Software communities by releasing the Doom and Quake code, but I would like to keep the context of this discussion to the recent release of Quake 3. (In other words, handing out candy while stealing money out of our pockets is not acceptable, even if we really like the candy.)
Certainly, it costs money to develop software for each platform, but the benefits of a larger market also open up. Will the costs of developing that software be recovered in its sale? Perhaps, but what will the costs of loosing customers because of this ridiculous licencing policy be?
As an avid fan of Id software -- having purchased and played each of the games since Wolfenstein 3D -- I am no slouch when it comes to dolling out another $40 for an excellent quality game. I did so for Quake 3. I rushed out and purchased the version of the game that came out first, Windows. However, as a Linux enthusiast, I'm working on removing any need to reboot into Windows for any reason. Games are the only thing tying me to Microsoft at the moment, and unfortunately for me, Quake 3 is in that category. Not because the Linux version isn't available, but because I'm not going to shell out yet another $40+ just to get the Linux binaries!
The fallback position is to just have hybrid CD?s. I?m pretty sure we can force our publishers to have a linux executable in an ?unsupported? directory. You would lose technical support, you wouldn?t get an install program, and you wouldn?t have anyone that is really dedicated to the issues of the product, but it would be there on day 1.
John, if only Id had done this in the first place, the company would be in a much better light amongst it's consumers than it currently is over this issue, including myself.
Slashdot Mirror
IMHO, there are much cleaner ways of doing it than Red Hat's hack. Regardless, you cannot defend Red Hat's bad decisions in package policy by placing the blame on the Kernel developers. They didn't write the spec file. They didn't mislead the users.
--
Incorrect. Debian ships with the original Linus kernel tarball. There are some kernels that you can install with various patches applied, but everything is available as a *.deb or a *.[dsc,diff,orig.tar.gz].
In addition, Debian does not commit a Red Hat-ism and package such awful software renames like kgcc. Why not call it what it is, gcc-2.7.2. I mean, come on. Pull the wool over the lusers eyes, don't ya. "Yeah. Red Hat has a special compiler for the Kernel..." Whatever.
Another nice thing about Debian's kernel packaging is that the very tools the developers use are available to the average user.
--
--
../linux/Documentation/Configure.help
Some links of interest:--
--
Posts that get attention will be moderated. Posts that don't get attention will be unclassified. The way you filter the posts is determined on what you would like to read. Would you like to read the 'pro' arguments, the 'con' arguments. Comments that were 'pro' and 'interesting', or 'con' and 'troll'. +1 or +5 tells you nothing more than the idea that a number of people "liked" the post. Now your filters are subject to the general concensus of the population that uses the forum. If that population consists of a bunch of neo-nazis, their grading will reflect their personal biases. If they're a bunch of Windows-huggin users, the BSD-huggin users will likely get a consistently lower grade on their posts.
No. "Simple" grading schemes may be fast, but they're not effective.They are not useful. They are subject to the bias of the population of the forum. Frankly, I'm tired of them.
Open your mind a little further. You're only envisioning the first steps. Certainly being able to transist the database like a filesystem is an extremely powerful interface. Data integrity could be preserved by interacting with the shell the user is in while (s)he is trying to manipulate data. For example:
Get the picture? ;-) Essentially, the interface will have to understand how to translate a row into a hierarchical representation. Getting a useful and easy-to-understand interface this way may not be the easiest thing to do. Add the difficulty of resolving foreign key dependencies and such a CLI would get quite confusing. An interesting spin on this would be to bind canned queries to directory names. Still, it has a very limited scope. Complex queries would be difficult to attain through such a CLI.
Moderation systems are normally designed for the purpose of promoting the quality of a forum. It's interesting then, that the most prominent moderation system uses a method that assigns subjective opinion a quantitative value. "Scoring" a post "up" or "down" is inherently flawed in that you are allowing an individuals subjective opinion to 'grade' the post, rather than a more effectively classifying or categorizing a post.
Filtering these forums based on this flawed quantitive value will obviously result in quality posts being ignored. Slashdot does offer some kind of categorization of the post, but it still relies upon scoring to order and filter posts.
Another factor to consider in moderating systems is accountability. Slashdot, and many others, use an anonymous moderation system. kuro5hin does not follow this poor practice. Everyone can moderate, and everyone is accountable. You can view who has moderated your posts and view the value they selected.
So let's tie this together. We want a system that reflects a true subjective and qualitative analysis without the impedance of scoring. We want a system that is accountable. "Grading" a post becomes "Classifying" a post, and filtering becomes organizing. For example, let's say the categories to classify a post include the following:
If subjective categories such as "interesting" or "boring" are available, so be it. They are simply classifications. Opinion is important, but if we base our filtering on grades that do not accurately reflect content, we loose any advantage we gain through moderation.
So, what would a forum look like with this system? It could be displayed in exactly the same way we see /., but instead of showing a score, we provide a link to show the categories and number of people that moderated the post. For example:
The Ozone needs an fsck!11 Jan 2001, ^chewie
Informative(11), Boring(1), Pro(1)
The Ozone is in serious need of repair! The US Department of...
...and so on. (Man, I hate mozilla keybindings...*sigh*). Thus, you have the system I propose as a base. Quantitative measurements are possible, but should only reflect actual physical facts about the post, such as size, number of links, number of moderations, etc.
I've been wondering when someone would figure this one out. Let's see. IRC may not have been the first information relay protocol, but it certainly one of the most tried and tested... Code reuse. What a concept!
"I need eggdrops. Lots of eggdrops."
This was a very nice document. Thanks for posting the link. It summarized the gopher services quite well. If a moderator sees this, please give a +Informative to the parent of this post.
I'm actually quite surprised that most of the responses to this thread have been an offhanded slight. The Gopher system is a very well designed system. It was a solidly built way to share files without opening your network to the security risks of NFS or ftp. It toted a heirarchical organization of information for network wide distribution. And it originated at the University of Minnesota (um..."gopher"... the University mascot?).
Interesting Links
- Gopher RFC
- UMN's Gopher Info site
- UMN's ftp gopher directory
So, if you'd like to see how we did it in the "old days", take a look.A couple links to throw your way before the rest of you start spewing all the grandios wonders of the ACL systems. BTW, NT's ACL lists don't fit the bill anyway. I've worked with them, and they're a pain in the behind.
EROS has some serious potential, folks! And if you want serious Linux security, look into LIDS...
I've got two to sell. Off topic, yes and no. This *CD deal is not enough to keep me with Sprint PCS service. They cannot provide me a good signal in my house, effectively making the cell phone useless for Long Distance calling from my residence or even answering pages. AT&Greed's mobile services will reach even my wee little hovel in the basement of a huge brick house. Sprint can't do that. Anyone in a SprintPCS city who lives on an above ground floor want a cell phone?
I'll keep this comment within the context of music, mp3's, and CD's, rather then venturing off to the related DVD discussion. Traditionally, we receive our own personal copies of music in the form of CD or tape. CD's are really the only choice as a source for converting said music to mp3's. So, if we receive or music in CD format, and we have computers at our disposal with great encoding tools like Lame, BladeEnc, and algorithms like mp3 or Ogg Vorbis, why should we worry about the RIAA?
Seriously, folks. I don't see CD's dying any time soon, and by legal precedence, we have a right to make copies for ourselves or our friends. If this means burning new CD's or encoding an MP3, we have the right. Distributing said MP3's over the Internet may be another discussion, but actually encoding a song to MP3 format is NOT breaking the law. The RIAA is making the same old argument it always has, "We want control." In the end, common sense will hopefully prevail and once again quell the tantrums of the gorilla sized child.
See also file(1), magic2mime(1), /etc/magic, /usr/share/misc/magic, mailcap(5), /etc/mailcap, ~/.mailcap, metamail(1)
Don't take this the wrong way, but you sound like a desktop user who's not explored enough of a UNIX system from "console land" to know what tools are available for your disposal. Did you know that you can set up your own ~/.mailcap to specify what applications get run based on mimetypes? Did you know that you can figure out what type of file a given file is by using the file command?
I should be easier on you. What you're talking about isn't entirely off base with some of the advancements available in newer file systems. It is not inconceivable to store a magic number in the first 32bits of a file entry on the ReiserFS system. Doing so would allow applications like file much quicker access to file type signatures without having to actually open the file.
So your comment isn't too far off the mark with regards to the topic at hand, filesystems. Where your comment would have better application would be in reference to a unified approach to maintaining MIME-to-application lists. Just remember to look at the applications I suggested above.
blee, testing, ignore, troll it, whatever
Do you think :CueCat has ever heard of a modem? Do you think that if USR and Motorola were to throw temper tantrums over their competition in the same manner that anyone would give them any serious business? Do you think that any Judicial representative (aka, Judge, Lawyer) would even consider such a lawsuit? Let's hope the judge presiding over this case throw it out for the childish temper tantrum it is.
Will these be stackable block devices??? WE REALLY NEED STACKABLE BLOCK DEVICES!!! ;-)
This isn't a troll. This is just an observation. This particular "library", which you need special software to access, is not available for a large portion of the slashdot readers: the *NIX crowd. IOW, this doesn't concern us. Another boring post for slashdot...just what we need.
An eyewitness reported to us from outside the law offices of Metallica's lawyers. "Maaan. I ain't never seen someone buy so much friggin' weed from me." The witness shook his head in disbelief, eyes glazed over in shock... "I, like, had to wheel it down 'ere in my son's Red Flyer wagon!" He added hysterically, "For one week straight!"
Why the police have not interveaned seemed a mystery, until we made a visit to the Chief of the controlling district around the law offices. To our surprise, the Chief looked like a 80's throwback. "Dude. Metallica, like, rocks! *cough cough*" He smiled stupidly and asked, "Want some weed?"
How far will Metallica go?! One can only speculate!
Great comment! Please moderate #125 up!
This sounds very much like the DejaGnu:
It's manual can be found at this link. It's interesting that this came up in this thread, though it'll probably be largely ignored considering how deep it is in the thread and how many people have replied to this topic. I've been contemplating trying to get the crew at work to write their code with a number of tools that they're not using right now, such as DejaGnu, Nana (a nice library for assertion checking and logging), Autoconf and Automake, and perhaps even Autogen. I think it would give a good, standardized base from which to work, and force some of these half-assed coworkers to live up to the name "hacker"! Alas, the troubles of trying to convince coworkers of a "better way" is not the topic of this thread, but I thought the mention of the tools would relate well.
*cringe* It sounds like you've enforced some coding style standards upon your students that are not "C-compliant". Yet another topic for discussion, "What stylistic standard is 'right' for C programs? C++ programs?" We've all got our preferences, and were I a student of yours, I'd cringe every time I wrote a capatalized function. *double-cringe*
Assuming by the above statement that you've already audited millions of lines of code for the current version, I'll give you a hint about a very effective tool used to point out the differences between versions of software, if the source code is available. You will find this software installed by default on most Linux distributions. Give up yet?
Although we may give the author a "thumbs up" for the effort, I believe he missed both his target audience, the PHB's and other "uninitiated" potential Linux users, as well as any audience in general.
One of the major elements missing from this document include footnotes, bibliographies, and general links of reference that allow the reader to delve into given subjects -- which in this case are organized into FUD rebuttals.
For example, when the author is describing the differences between multitasking and threading on given OS kernels, where are the links to the documentation describing this information? How has the author worked on substantiating his claims?
Frankly speaking, this document needs a LOT of work before it can be presented as a true anti-FUD document. No one will take it seriously in it's currrent state, and will write off the author, and unfortunately the Operating System he is trying to advocate.
FOOTNOTES
1. From Jargon File (4.2.0, 31 JAN 2000) [jargon]:
2.From Jargon File (4.2.0, 31 JAN 2000) [jargon]:
John, thank you for contribution to this discussion. I really appreciate seeing the producer's side of the argument once and a while.
That finished, I'd like to say that I disagree with Id's recent release decisions with Q3, which I view in the same context that the software industry in general supports: it's lack of committment to simply proving a software licence indepenent of operating system platform. The very fact that Id charged money for each platform-specific release of Q3 rather than supplying three versions of the software in one package (take Terminus for example), displays this very same capatilistic agenda.
Note that in the above paragraph, I referenced Id's release decisions in how they can be perceived by the public. It is obvious that from John's post here to Slashdot that he understands and addresseses these issues, a very nice thing to see. I don't want to belittle that point.
Continuing on with the discussion: why would software companies license their product in a platform-independent manner when they can make so much more money by forcing the user to license multiple copies?! It's a great money-making scheme that's not focused on the best interest of the consumer. We all really appreciate Id's commitment to contributing to the Open Source and Free Software communities by releasing the Doom and Quake code, but I would like to keep the context of this discussion to the recent release of Quake 3. (In other words, handing out candy while stealing money out of our pockets is not acceptable, even if we really like the candy.)
Certainly, it costs money to develop software for each platform, but the benefits of a larger market also open up. Will the costs of developing that software be recovered in its sale? Perhaps, but what will the costs of loosing customers because of this ridiculous licencing policy be?
As an avid fan of Id software -- having purchased and played each of the games since Wolfenstein 3D -- I am no slouch when it comes to dolling out another $40 for an excellent quality game. I did so for Quake 3. I rushed out and purchased the version of the game that came out first, Windows. However, as a Linux enthusiast, I'm working on removing any need to reboot into Windows for any reason. Games are the only thing tying me to Microsoft at the moment, and unfortunately for me, Quake 3 is in that category. Not because the Linux version isn't available, but because I'm not going to shell out yet another $40+ just to get the Linux binaries!
John, if only Id had done this in the first place, the company would be in a much better light amongst it's consumers than it currently is over this issue, including myself.
Chad Walstrom
"CDR drives are a wonderful thing..."