Seriously, "a 20mhz 486", presumably the 486SL/20, was introduced just 11 years ago. That's about the time it takes (give or take) a human to go from birth to puberty, so it's not exactly archaic.
The life cycle of a CPU is much shorter than a human life cycle. You don't say that an 11 year old dog is just hitting puberty, do you?
11 year old hardware is ancient, and there is no reason to keep backwards compatibility. We can have versions that do run on such hardware, but for the desktop to go forward and snatch more of today's users, we have to target tomorrow's hardware.
IANAL of course, hence the source of my confusion.
Can someone please explain to me what the legal system is waiting for before settling this lawsuit? Why is it dragging for so long? Why are hearings scheduled for 2005 and not any sooner? Why is SCO allowed to do all this crap?
I feel sorry for Linus. It must certainly be annoying to be stuck in this heap of rubbish.
The only downside to freedesktop.org's X server is that it will no longer run well on a 20mhz 486.
And this is a Good Thing (tm). It's about time we did this. XFree86 has been instrumental in the *nix world, and its benefits can't be overstated. But we have to move forward. We need something to take advantage of today's hardware. Worrying about backward compatibility with 30 year-old technology is crippling the Linux desktop.
Amen. Another pet peeve that I have, and which I don't believe that no one else but me noticed, is how focused buttons or menu items are indicated. Currently, most if not all *nix dekstops draw a dotted rectangle around the periphery of the button or the text within the button. This thing is UGLY! Just changing the background color instead will convey the idea, and will look much much nicer.
The real problem with X though is X itself. It has to go for Linux to get anywhere near Windows, let alone MacOS X.
Let me suggest that all linux app developers everywhere adopt a new license that is basically comprised of the GPL, with a small addendum stating something to the effect of:
This software may NOT be run on any computer that is running SCO software.
... as if anyone will ever need a 10GHz CPU. When will enough be, finally, enough?
We're still a long way away from there. One high-tech "leader" (driving so-called "innovation") once said:
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
Needless to say, he's been proven wrong (and in many more ways than one).
People want to render perfect-quality movies in real time; to have robots that can compute with near human intelligence; to compile Linux from scratch in a fraction of a second (at least *I* want to do all three:)
Faster CPUs only open up more avenues. Don't be too constrained with today's applications.
I often wondered what life would be for McBride et al after SCO? Sure they did make a quick buck with this legal fiasco, but what company would employ a man of McBride's integrity? More sinking ships?
The readability problem with Perl is a cultural one, not a language one. The language itself is very simple to read, with the possible exception of the more complex regular expressions.
I totally agree with you. Even in the case of regexps, the/x modifier is available and you can use it to add spaces and even comments to enhance your code's readability. So again, it boils down to the programmer and his/her preferred style.
The difficulty lies in the fact that it is possible to obfuscate Perl to such a degree, and that so many Perl hackers seem to think more obfuscation makes them look like a better programmer.
It IS quite easy to obfuscate Perl code, but I disagree that Perl hackers like to obfuscate more than others. Just lurk around comp.lang.perl.misc for a while and see the quality of code over there. You are bound to get crappy code in any language, but crappy code comes from crappy programmers.
There's even a contect that rewards this kind of thing.
As for the contest(sic) you mentioned, I'm not aware of any such contests. The only thing that I know of is the Perl Golf contest, and I have participated in all of the official ones, and I can tell you that I learnt much more about Perl there than in the last 5 years that I've been hacking Perl. The idea is not to obfuscate, but rather to shorten the code as much as possible to solve a given problem.
For real obfuscation, check out Damian Conway's Acme::Bleach module and Andrew Savige's Acme::EyeDrops module, both availabe from CPAN.
Do you think that knowledge about the origins of the universe will help help us identify the origins of intelligence and how to replicate it? If so, then how?
I lost around 10 pounds just by replacing my dinner-time coke with water (from ~195 lbs to ~185 lbs). I combined this with weekly soccer and raquetball practices, and I'm down to ~180 lbs.
The best part of this is that I can eat whatever I want (fast food has never been part of my diet to begin with)!
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The life cycle of a CPU is much shorter than a human life cycle. You don't say that an 11 year old dog is just hitting puberty, do you?
11 year old hardware is ancient, and there is no reason to keep backwards compatibility. We can have versions that do run on such hardware, but for the desktop to go forward and snatch more of today's users, we have to target tomorrow's hardware.
Can someone please explain to me what the legal system is waiting for before settling this lawsuit? Why is it dragging for so long? Why are hearings scheduled for 2005 and not any sooner? Why is SCO allowed to do all this crap?
I feel sorry for Linus. It must certainly be annoying to be stuck in this heap of rubbish.
The only downside to freedesktop.org's X server is that it will no longer run well on a 20mhz 486.
And this is a Good Thing (tm). It's about time we did this. XFree86 has been instrumental in the *nix world, and its benefits can't be overstated. But we have to move forward. We need something to take advantage of today's hardware. Worrying about backward compatibility with 30 year-old technology is crippling the Linux desktop.
Amen. Another pet peeve that I have, and which I don't believe that no one else but me noticed, is how focused buttons or menu items are indicated. Currently, most if not all *nix dekstops draw a dotted rectangle around the periphery of the button or the text within the button. This thing is UGLY! Just changing the background color instead will convey the idea, and will look much much nicer.
The real problem with X though is X itself. It has to go for Linux to get anywhere near Windows, let alone MacOS X.
This software may NOT be run on any computer that is running SCO software.
IANAL of course.
We're still a long way away from there. One high-tech "leader" (driving so-called "innovation") once said:
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
Needless to say, he's been proven wrong (and in many more ways than one).
People want to render perfect-quality movies in real time; to have robots that can compute with near human intelligence; to compile Linux from scratch in a fraction of a second (at least *I* want to do all three :)
Faster CPUs only open up more avenues. Don't be too constrained with today's applications.
Just curious ..
I totally agree with you. Even in the case of regexps, the /x modifier is available and you can use it to add spaces and even comments to enhance your code's readability. So again, it boils down to the programmer and his/her preferred style.
The difficulty lies in the fact that it is possible to obfuscate Perl to such a degree, and that so many Perl hackers seem to think more obfuscation makes them look like a better programmer.
It IS quite easy to obfuscate Perl code, but I disagree that Perl hackers like to obfuscate more than others. Just lurk around comp.lang.perl.misc for a while and see the quality of code over there. You are bound to get crappy code in any language, but crappy code comes from crappy programmers.
There's even a contect that rewards this kind of thing.
As for the contest(sic) you mentioned, I'm not aware of any such contests. The only thing that I know of is the Perl Golf contest, and I have participated in all of the official ones, and I can tell you that I learnt much more about Perl there than in the last 5 years that I've been hacking Perl. The idea is not to obfuscate, but rather to shorten the code as much as possible to solve a given problem.
For real obfuscation, check out Damian Conway's Acme::Bleach module and Andrew Savige's Acme::EyeDrops module, both availabe from CPAN.
Do you think that knowledge about the origins of the universe will help help us identify the origins of intelligence and how to replicate it? If so, then how?
The best part of this is that I can eat whatever I want (fast food has never been part of my diet to begin with)!