... The marketing types at Intel were probably jumping on the Ada bandwagon when they finally had silicon, but if you read Intel's own docs, the relationship (or hype) is there.
I won't debate that point. It may very well be so and is not worth researching just now.
And yes, Ada has been a market failure.
Hmm... I suppose one could say things like Lear Jets, Mercedes Benz autos and fancy yachts are market failures in the same sense. They do things out of the ordinary and require a deep pocket. (Of Ada, this is true of pre-1995 compilers and still true if one wants support, special features or just a validated (certified) compiler.
It is used in military applications because the government has dictated its use.
Not since 1995 or 1996. The US DoD did not extend the Ada mandate and in fact closed the AJPO in 1996. To repeat part of my original post, Ada has been in extensive use worldwide for aeronautics and astronautics (in fact my current knowledge is that every current airframe (civilian or military) runs on code written in Ada). The Paris Metro and part of the NYC Subway system runs on Ada code.
In the vast majority of commercial markets, where there is a choice of development languages, it is hardly ever used.
This may still be true, but I expect it to change.
Ada-95 is eminently suited for general commercial development as well as systems programs and since GNU Ada has been available there are less stats available on market share than there are on Linux deployment.
To the best of my knowledge, Ada is being taught as a first programming language in some 200+ universities around the world, including in the US Military Academies.
That isn't to say, it doesn't have some clever and/or valuable features,...
It's only the most readable modern language and the one that is most likely to catch programmer errors at compile-time. These two factors alone make it the most cost-effective language to use for any project of substantial size, and for any type of project from writing commercial off-the-shelf apps (short time-to-market) to software that will live for decades (high maintainability), including system apps (like an operating system).
Speaking of which, I am in the first stages of designing a new OS (*nix-like) in Ada targeted to Intel/AMD architecture processors. I expect to make an announcement here when there is more in writing, but anyone that wants to discuss it or work on it from the first may reach me at
toolmakr at buzco dot nyct.net.
The iAPX 432 was a 32-bit processor Intel developed starting in 1975 that embodied CISC technology to the max. It was innovative, but also expensive and slow, and targeted towards the Ada programming language, another market failure.
First, your statements above are contradictory, in 1975 there was no Ada programming language, only a spec (steelman ??) that described what the language should contain (and not contain).
Also, it is not clear whether you meant that the 432 or Ada was a marketing failure (or both). Certainly the 432 was. OTOH, from its first release in 1980 or so, the Ada language has been far from a "market failure", despite there being no low-cost compilers for it and despite the limitations required by the SteelMan spec. Virtually all aeronautics, astronautics or critical communications software (Military or civilian) and weapons control software for the last 20 years was written in Ada (and not just in the US).
In addition, several commercial SW firms also found, even w/ Ada-83, that it allowed them to ship w/ far fewer bugs left for customers to find that code written in (Ugh!) C, as well as allowing bug-fixes using less than 50% of the developer resources than to fix bugs in (Ugh!) C.
As of 1995 the Ada language is much more oriented towards general programming, as well as being much cheaper to use than it had been. There has been a FREE (GPL) Ada compiler available since 1995 or so, and it is now (since version 3.2) integrated into GCC.
For more info on how Ada is being used and why it should be used for all new projects, see My small Ada site or David Botton's Ada Power site.
This is in response to a quote from Ransom
Love in Mundie's speech, where Love was
expressing doubts about the use of open
source. Of course Ransom Love... isn't
making a whole lot of money selling GPL'd
software; the advantages of GPL'd software
go primarily to the users of such software,
not to the purveyors of it.
Actually, as RMS backed up with several
examples, the advantage can also go to the
purveyor of support (especially the author),
also there are some that are willing to pay
large money for free software that they are
unable to get (conveniently) any other way.
RMS claimed that when GNU emacs was
the only GNU software, he was
asking and getting $150/per copy for
it.
As an example of my own, a company
called Austen Code Works was
asking (and apparently getting)
similar prices for GNU software by
mail order.
What I know for sure is that they
were running full page ads month
after month in several programming
mags in the 80's (DDJ, Computer
Language, etc). Draw your own
conclusions.
RMS made the claim that after
sufficient copies of the burgeoning
GNU software had been distributed
(both directly by FSF and by
pass-along), that he asked (and got)
$500/hr to make specific changes to
his own code.
The rationale apparently being
(quoting from memory) that as the
author, he was more familiar with
the code and would require
significantly fewer hours to do the
work than an outsider hired or
contracted to do the same job.
Also per RMS, Cygnus Support was
doing quite well supporting Free
Software (mostly gcc) and paying
their programmers competitive
salaries until they "got greedy".
Conclusion: if you had as many people using
your software as M$ does, you might just be
able to operate on their scale using this
model.
In that sense,
Ransom Love is a lot closer to the Microsoft
viewpoint than the RMS viewpoint.
No company will become Microsoft-sized based
on GPL'd software. It remains to be seen if
the GPL will support even a Caldera-sized
company. But the GPL allows software
innovation to come from the grassroots users
rather than from Microsoft on high, and in
the end GPL'd software will provide more of
what users want.
And suppose you are a user (or a company w/
lots of users) and you want a feature and
don't have the ability (or perhaps simply
the will) to make the changes yourself.
What do you do?
If you want the changes bad enough, you will
pay some outside agency to do the work for
you.
As RMS daid in this regard, "If your want
some carpentry done, you can do it yourself
or hire a carpenter."
This further applies to plumbing, electrical
work, getting a car maintained, enhanced or
customized, etc.
"Similarly for software. You get someone to
quote you a price and a delivery date, tell
them to go ahead. If they fail to deliver on
time, they get no money and you get someone
else."
DISCLAIMER: While I was at the talk, I don't
have a transcript and didn't take verbatim
notes. All "quotes" above are from memory
and may not be entirely accurate.
I was there too, and while
I have no transcript or direct quotes, I do
have four pages of notes which could be turned
into some 20.. 50 KB of HTML if desired.
BTW, the article that was posted is pretty
accurate and has some details that will not be
part of my writeup.
I exapect to be writing this up this evening.
If you want a link when it is ready, please send
me
email.
I will send the link directly to all the mail
me, and if I get enough requests I will post
that link as a reply to this.
I submitted the following "story" earlier this
evening, apperently just a little too late.
Someone else beat me to it and was on the queue
(210 items long) when I submitted mine.
New York, New York 2001-05-29 18:00 EDT
Courtesy of the
AnyNix Sig
Preliminary report on RMS talk at NYU.
RMS spoke from 10:15 to 12:00 today at NYU to
nearly a capacity crowd (only about twenty seats
vacant of about 250 capacity).
In general, RMS talked about the history and
philosophy of the GNU project, the GPL, and the
FSF; as well as their relation to Linux, other
free but not copylefted software, and non-free
"open source" software and the inclusion of
proprietary software on "Linux" Distros.
The last 30 minutes or so were about how Free
Software is good for business in general and
Software Developers in particular.
People started leaving sometime after 11:00
until about 2/3 of the original crowd remained.
All in all, this reporter thinks the whole thing went well.
RMS seemed to come across as a mild-mannered
zealot for software freedom, with well reasoned
and well presented arguments.
This reporter has no idea of how many of the
crowd were already users/advocates of "Free" or
"open source" software, but is of the opinion
that any who were not, but willing to "think"
rather than simply react were at least somewhat
moved toward his point of view.
Axtually, as someone else has already pointed out, it it just under
100 ft.
I could be misunderstanding this (and i certainly dont speak danish)
but I thought the largest gain would be through using this is long
distance transmission lines.
Partly true. The longer the line, the more you gain from reducing
the resistance. However, the load current also plays a a
large part in this (see below)
As i recall the loss in a cable is P=(v^2)/R so the lower the
resistance the lower the loss in the line. As the resistance of a
wire is proportional to it's length P=(v^2)/(al) so the greatest
losses are on long lines.
The formula is correct, but the v (or more properly e
for EMF) is the line drop, which is proportional to both the
current, the length, and the resiatance/length.
In this case, the more appropriate forumula would be P = I^2 * R,
where I is the load current and R is again proportional to
cable lenght.
Consider a local main that delivers 200A, is 1000 ft long (300M) and
has a resistance over its length of 0.01 Ohm. The drop in
each each leg ot the main will be 2V. So if the substation
feeding the main delivers 120V, only 116V will be seen at the other
end. Further line loss (which will be heating the main) will be 400W
in each leg of the main, or 800W.
(My reistance value may be way off, I have no real idea what the
resistifity of local power mains is.)
Long distance power lines are extremely high voltage (on the order
ot tens of KV) and carry relatively low current.
Local mains carry only 100.. 240 V and (relatively) more current.
Also, there are probably more miles (total) of local mains than of
long distance transmission lines.
Does anyone know how much these cables would save
(in the way of line loss)
over ordinary copper power mains?
Don't have a wire table handy and the answer should be generally interesting.
Re:Some people always want what they don't have ..
on
GPL FAQ
·
· Score: 1
So here's a question that's kind of rolling
around inside my head: how many of you have
actually looked at and modified the source
code of 2 or more open source products?
I have, twice (at least), but not recently
and not distributed.
Lynx had a fixed -> float and a
float -> fixed conversion
(unneeded and unused as Float) for
every character.
RCS has irritating behaviour
regarding acceptable flags and the
environment variable shared by all
the RCS programs.
I have long since lost the lynx patch, and
it may no longer be relevant;
but if anyone wants details on the RCS patch
(rationale and the actual patch), let me
know by
email
and I will post them on my website.
There may be a few other minor changes, but
if so I can't recall them offhand.
There have been quite a few other times that
I looked at the source but gave up on
doing anything because not only were they in
(ugh!!) C but the style is execrable. These
would take a complete rewrite (and
preferably in Ada) just to be readable.
It would be especially nice if these types were *not* considered, for
the sake of signatures, type-identical to counterpart size-variant
types, and if enums were also given a generic root type instead of being
int in signature.
I always wished that typedefs created new types, instead of behaving
like wimpy macros.
typedef int FOO;
typedef int BAR;
FOO f = 1;
BAR b = 2;
int i = 3;
f = b;// ILLEGAL TYPE MISMATCH!
b = i;// ILLEGAL TYPE MISMATCH!
i = f;// ILLEGAL TYPE MISMATCH!
How about this?
(pardon the formatting, <pre> is not allowed.)
type FOO is new integer;
type BAR is new integer;
function fiz( i : FOO ) return FOO;
function fiz( i : BAR ) return BAR ; -- Different, overloaded
function fizzle( i : FOO ) return FOO;
function frazzle( f : FOO ; b : BAR ) return integer ;
f : FOO:= 1;
b : BAR:= 2;
i : integer:= 3;
f:= b; -- ILLEGAL TYPE MISMATCH!
b:= i; -- ILLEGAL TYPE MISMATCH!
i:= f; -- ILLEGAL TYPE MISMATCH!
-- further:
f:= fiz( 5 ) ; -- first fix
b:= fiz( b ) ; -- second fiz
f:= fizzle( f ) ; -- legal
b:= fizzle( f ) ; -- ILLEGAL, TYPE MISMATCH
f:= fizzle( b ) ; -- ILLEGAL, TYPE MISMATCH
i:= frazzle( f, b ) ; -- All legal and proper
i:= frazzle( 7, b ) ; -- All legal and proper
i:= frazzle( f, 7 ) ; -- All legal and proper
i:= frazzle( 7, 7 ) ; -- All legal and proper
i:= frazzle( b, f ) ; -- ILLEGAL, 2 type mismatches
-- (operands reversed).
-- And so forth.
-- All arithetic, comparison, indexing, operations are inherited.
Each enumeration type is distinct (with its own namespace).
Enumeration types may be used for indexing and loop control, but not for
arithemtic.
Sound good?
For more info look here
or here
or here.
Did you study the source code at length? Check it personally that it
didn't have any back doors whatsoever? Hmmmm? Sure it wasn't a trojaned
source you downloaded (The server could have been hacked right?)
Just because you compiled from source, doesn't mean your newly-created
binaries are therefore perfect and couldn't *possibly* contain a trojan
of some sort.
No, unfortunately.
As I have been telling my LUG for years, I don't really trust any
program on my system. The list of untrusted (downloaded) programs that I
run as root starts with init and includes:
sh (linked to zsh, not bash)
cat
ls
ln
cp
mv
X
du
head
...
Eventually, I will have (and will publish) versions of at least these
(except X, and the shell)
that are written in Ada, not C, and are therefore somewhat more
auditable.
Unfortunately, even the Ada versions will depend on a lot of C code if
compiled using GNAT against the standard GNAT library.
The closest thing to a trustable system that I ever worked
on was written by some one hundred people with high security clearances.
It took some 3 years to write (from scratch) and ran on an IBM 360/65I.
Too bad we had no such thing in USA in 1995.
on
Eurorights Launched
·
· Score: 1
If we had, we might not have the DMCA now.
Have to think about this. It may be disirable to start such an orginization now.
On the other hand, what may be in order is simply more support to the EFF and the ACLU.
First a note on gender.
The name Ilana strikes me as feminine, so I will refer to the
author as she rather than he.
His essay was published on the web.
All can read it, save it, print it, give it away.
I think that pretty much means he has no IP rights to it. Except,
perhaps, that the National Post has it copyrighted by default, like
everything else.
I have pretty much taken that at face value.
Since the type was so tiny that I couldn't read it, I downloaded
and restyled the article.
The entire article, (minus the National Post cruft) is
(temporarily) online at
My site.
Warning, I am at the end of a low-bandwidth pipe. I can only handle
some 30.. 60 hits/minute.
I doubt that a haevy load would take the site down, but you might
have trouble getting through.
MODERATORS: please do not raise this above "2" to keep my load
down.
I suggest you contact him -- I'm more than willing to bet that he would
ask the National Post to release copyright on this one article.
Otherwise perhaps he would be willing to release it himself in a show of
good faith.
I have not contacted the authour since there was no clue in the
original as to how to do so.
If anyone knows how to do so, please write me!
You have the hostname, the username should be "websmith".
Because we're still hung up on the idea that your "bloodline" has any value? That your own genetics, in a sea of six billion other bags of dna, actually have any significance?
The urge to continue ones own bloodline, actually genetic line, is an urge
comon and basic to all living species.
Further, the argument that no-one is more important, more useful, or otherwise better than anyone else is the cry of those that are, themselves, of no importance, use to Society, etc.
One effect that I predict is that (since this is likely to be expensive), it will be limited to those who have in some way been successful and have some wealth or income. This will then pretty much guarantee that resources will be available to the resulting child to adulthood and also that it will be limited to those that have in some way already contributed to Society.
For many years the most technologically competent and knowledgeable people of the world have been using the Internet and before that Usentt.
Why not use that to improve the patent examination process?
Simply post the disclosure where anyone can read and comment on it in the areas of "obviousness", "prior art", or "current practice".
Respondents could give a reference to an old book, magazine or juurnal article, or simply a hyperlind as appropriate.
EG: the Amazon case would probably not have happened if the examiner had read Netscape's description of the purpose of cookies. All Amazon (and others) did was use cookies in the way in which they were intended!
Am hard pressed to come up with an analogy that wouldn't be totally silly. Perhaps someone else can.
Re:Linux: The Ultimate Appliance OS
on
Digital VCRs
·
· Score: 1
Ah, but DR-DOS can multitask.
Muxh as I like Linux for a lot of things, DR-DOS just might (or might not) be best for such a task.
No application should be able to crash a server, period. Even thought the port of apache may be crappy, it should, at worst, simply kill itself, never the whole operating system.
IMHO, that should be changed slightly.
No application should be able to crash an OS, period. Even thought[sic] the application may be crappy, it should, at worst, simply kill itself, never the whole operating system.
One of the reasons I am running Linux and have for years:-}
All I got (running NS 4.60 on Linux w/ java{,script} disabled) was a blank screen! Tried loading again, just to be sure (even though it took five minutes each time, mostly waiting).
So I took a look at the source. I would be ashamed to have such a page on my site. Lots of fancy garbage to do nothing. Has CSS (which doesn't seem to do a thing with any browser currently available) as well as a lot of font codes in the text (both size and face specified).
Several very long lines. Erratic indentation. Randomly placed comments. The fact that it depends on JavaScript doesn't say much for the mental brilliance of Forbes' readers -- IMHO no one with any sense trusts a public site to run unchecked code like that.
On 99-06-02 20:10 EDT webslacker (webmaster@webslacker.com) wrote:
If you read the bottom of the article, they said they're working on getting Linux support as soon as they can, so I don't think they're trying to snub Linux users (although, how hard can it be to support Linux?).
They also used the word "configuration" earlier. And with the (very welcome) influx of Linux Newbies these days, the percentage of home users of Linux dexktops that haven't a clue as to how to connect to DSL or cable will only increase. Most of the help requests here now are about PPP configuration.
Seems to me that what is really needed, rather than a flood of complaining mail, or legal threats, is that some individual or group that has successfully connected Linux boxen to DSL or Cable put together a setup package that can be used by such vendors (with a little customization such as adding their own DNS IP's, etc).
Such a package would AFAIK include (but not be limited to):
Making sure that the kernel supports Ethernet in general and the NIC used in particular.
Make sure that DHCP is supported.
Modify configuration files to start the Ethernet and DHCP clients on boot.
Start the connection immediately (without rebooting, which should impress these M$ weenies no end).
Provide simple (WIMP + CLI) ways to connect or disconnect at the will of the user/admin of the system.
All of this should be as much as possible distro agnostic. That is, it should work equally well regardless of which distro has been installed. This is one more link in the case for standard configuration files for Linux, not the present fragmentation caused by distro vendors trying to differentiate themselves. "> Buz Cory at buzco.ddns.org "> write for FREE help with:
Installing/Configuring Linux
Getting started with the Ada Programming Language.
Find out what your computer can really do, Linux Now! Programmer? Drowned in bugs? Ada is the answer. NOTE:This is to be considered a temporary hostname. Not guaranteed to be available more than 12 months after this posting.
On 99-05-30 11:33 EDT Accipiter (shadSowfireP@hotAmail.cMom) posted:
... This pretty much reveals what companies are after. To hell with innovation, and the desire to create better products, and SCREW the consumer....We have to make our MONEY!
Actually, only a small percentage of companies are like that.
Calling such people Sharks, Wolves, or even Hyenas or Jackals is insulting the animals.
The new management of IPX seems to be that predatory type that has no real value to society. A bunch of litigious lawyers and "Venture Capitalists" who are out to accumulate (not make) money by any means they can. They are no better (indeed, no different) than the local extortionists that have always plagued us, demanding money (or earlier, goods) under threat of some sort of harassment while making no contribution to society themselves.
So, while such companies must be attacked vigorously and squashed with all ethical means available, don't make the mistake of putting all companies (or even all large companies) in this category. == Buz:)
Black background, tiny text, apparently meant to not work w/o Java. The second link mentioned gets one to a very blurry moving flame that I suppose some would consider "art".
On 99-05-27 23:19 EDT chris@0x7f.freebsd.co.uk posted:
It's a pretty good design.
Concur:=)
However, I believe the color scheme used on the site could definitely use some work, they don't go well together
Now here I disagree. I found the low-key design quite refreshing and that the colors worked quite well. Much better than most of the WWW sites I have seen, which tend to be garish and frequently very hard to read because of poor choices of text and background colors.
May be a difference of system setup. I am running NetScape-4.6 on Linux w/ the X-Free86-3.3 SVGA server on an S3-virge video card, 16bpp, and my Sony/Gateway monitor set so white is as bright as I can get it and black as close as I can get it to the blank space.
... they should use the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, which includes/opt, if they want their distro to be interoperable. Most of the distros are already doing this.
This is good news, if true. My experience is just the opposite.
A list, please. Or email me info on individual distros which comply (or don't) to the FHS and I will compile the list and post it.
For starters, RH seems to be ignoring the FHS entirely. All releases of GNOME RPMs that I have seen also ignore it. SuSE (from reports on this thread) seems to be complying at least partially, but I would like more data. Caldera (a year ago) was not complying, I have no later data. I have no real data on any other distros put out since the FHS (or even the original FSHS).
May Gates be missing from all your worlds, == Buz:) Buz Cory of BuzCo Systems -- New York NY USA write for FREE help with:
Installing/Configuring Linux
Getting started with the Ada Programming Language.
My world has no Gates (but it does have a little Penguin). Programmer? Overwhelmed with bugs? Ada is the answer.
At 0:49 EDT on 99-05-28 an Anonymous Coward wrote:
... Traditionally/local and/opt are for local and optional software installed by the user.
Try making that:
Traditionally/usr/local is for things created or modified locally (by the administrator or users) and/opt is for optional software not part of a
standard system.
IMHO, RedHat is doing it entirely wrong. This is one of the things I detest about them. The are doing a lot of things right, but building good distros is not one of them.
Most of what RH puts in/usr should be in/opt. This includes things like perl, python, tcl/tk, any language not native to the OS or required to compile anything in {,/usr}/{,s}bin. IMHO, even X really belongs in/opt, but long tradition puts it in/usr.
In other words,/opt/bin should be larger than/usr/bin, and probably/opt/lib (for such things as the various graphics and language libs) should probably be larger than/usr/lib. And both of them should consist entirely of symlinks pointing pack to the package directories. I even use this method in/usr for such thing that I build myself. Instead of copying or moving the executable or library to the installed location, I use symlinks.
Actually, there is just as big a problem w/ Caldera (as of early '98). Dunno about Debian, Yggdrasl or SuSE. Slackware had so many deficiencies in '94 (when I first started running Linux) that I have not even looked at it since.
Probably things like KDE, GNOME, window managers, etc should be under X (wherever it is, on my system it is a separate partition with symlinks to the standard locations). Am very displeased with the GNOME putting everything in/usr, especially with their inconsistent naming. If every GNOME app or utility started out gno... it would not be such problem, but they still should be in/opt and the desktop, WM, and libs in/X.
But what can I expect from the NSA and CIA, which were created to serve the national interest, note I said national interest and not public interest.
Please don't confuse the nation with the government.
The entire government of the US (or any other country, for that matter) could be overthrown and the nation could still exist and perhaps be in better shape.
So the above statement should read:
But what can I expect from the NSA and CIA, which were created to serve government interests? Note I said
government interest and not national interest.
There are a lot of things I could comment on, but I want to limit it to this (slightly off-topic) item.
Spend the money on paying teachers a respectable salary instead.
Right now and for many years past, our "schools" have not been schools, but "mental health" clinics under the domination of the Psychiatrists.
So, how about for the first several years, where students should be concentrating on the "three R's", teachers of those levels be paid entirely based on how well their students did in those areas in the previous year.
Last years students can't read, can't spell, don't know that 80 + 20 = 100? This year you teach for free (or maybe minimum wage) or you don't teach here at all.
Your third grade students last year all know their alphabet backwards, forwards and inside out (literally); know their phonetics; are able to use a dictionary by themselves (and like to use it, not like some students I had a decade ago who thought that being told to use a dictionary was punishment!); can read Kipling, Milne, etc as well as modern equivalents and enjoy doing so; are able to spell phonetically and have a good start on the special cases; are able to add and subtract numbers of any size "in their heads" and are able to (at least) multiply any pair of numbers both in the range 0.. 20? Great! This year you get $100_000 for the year!
BTW, am not going to try to insert it into the above, but I neglected Grammar in the above exposition.
Of course, there are a few other things that should be taught at this level, like a little bit of Science, the ability to communicate ideas with pictures (no matter how poorly rendered, the point is the idea, not the rendering), some idea of music and musical structure (at least expose them to such things as "Peter and the Wolf", which in my experience most children love), and some idea of a discipline requiring formal body movement (doesn't really matter at this stage whether it is "Simon Says", ballet, Martial Arts, or Yoga. the idea is to build muscular coordination).
Concentrate on things like this in K-6, and you will have real students going into middle school. Then they can start learning how to really use computers as the tools they are.
What should not be done in the public schools is any attempt to indocrinate students with ethnic or cultural values. Nor, until the Psychiatrists are eliminated, should there be any attempt to teach morals or ethics. All recent attempts to do so have been harmful, as demonstrated at Littleton, and many other schools.
More to the point, a "computer on every desk" could be useful in the lower grades for such things as drilling (reading, spelling, arithmetic, etc). These machines need not be expensive (old i386sx boxen would do fine, with the right software). Maybe we should encourage High School students to write software for use by the lower grades and publish it to the Open Source community:=)
One other use would be for games that required the player to think.
Well, this got to be a little longer than I intended, and this is perhaps the wrong forum for it; but it needs to be said, and said often and loudly until these things happen; and on review I can't see anything that I could remove and still make my point.
== Buz:) Buz Cory -- New York NY USA write for FREE help with: Installing/Configuring Linux Getting started with the Ada Programming Language. Changing DOS/WinDog to Linux is like changing a WW-I Fokker for an F-14 Know Yourself! Know Life!
looks like the 1st part of the review was generated by reading the packaging (what apps are bundled etc).
Not hardly, he specifically states that the packaging contains almost no description of the contents. There was probably such a list inside, however. So what's wrong with copying it?
The rest is a pretty bland and dry review...nothing new.
Actually, the review (which is not of Linux in general or RH in general) is pretty much what such a review should contain.
What do you want here, some kind of highly creative description or new things that no-one else has written about, raves about features of Linux that have not been mentioned before? These things would not be appropriate for a review unless they first appeared in RH-6.0.
The main purpose of a review like this is to provide a basis for comparison against other, similar, releases of Linux. This he does very well (IMHO) "> Buz Cory at buzco.ddns.org "> write for FREE help with:
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I won't debate that point. It may very well be so and is not worth researching just now.
Hmm ... I suppose one could say things like Lear Jets, Mercedes Benz autos and fancy yachts are market failures in the same sense. They do things out of the ordinary and require a deep pocket. (Of Ada, this is true of pre-1995 compilers and still true if one wants support, special features or just a validated (certified) compiler.
Not since 1995 or 1996. The US DoD did not extend the Ada mandate and in fact closed the AJPO in 1996. To repeat part of my original post, Ada has been in extensive use worldwide for aeronautics and astronautics (in fact my current knowledge is that every current airframe (civilian or military) runs on code written in Ada). The Paris Metro and part of the NYC Subway system runs on Ada code.
This may still be true, but I expect it to change. Ada-95 is eminently suited for general commercial development as well as systems programs and since GNU Ada has been available there are less stats available on market share than there are on Linux deployment.
To the best of my knowledge, Ada is being taught as a first programming language in some 200+ universities around the world, including in the US Military Academies.
It's only the most readable modern language and the one that is most likely to catch programmer errors at compile-time. These two factors alone make it the most cost-effective language to use for any project of substantial size, and for any type of project from writing commercial off-the-shelf apps (short time-to-market) to software that will live for decades (high maintainability), including system apps (like an operating system).
Speaking of which, I am in the first stages of designing a new OS (*nix-like) in Ada targeted to Intel/AMD architecture processors. I expect to make an announcement here when there is more in writing, but anyone that wants to discuss it or work on it from the first may reach me at toolmakr at buzco dot nyct.net.
First, your statements above are contradictory, in 1975 there was no Ada programming language, only a spec (steelman ??) that described what the language should contain (and not contain).
Also, it is not clear whether you meant that the 432 or Ada was a marketing failure (or both). Certainly the 432 was. OTOH, from its first release in 1980 or so, the Ada language has been far from a "market failure", despite there being no low-cost compilers for it and despite the limitations required by the SteelMan spec. Virtually all aeronautics, astronautics or critical communications software (Military or civilian) and weapons control software for the last 20 years was written in Ada (and not just in the US).
In addition, several commercial SW firms also found, even w/ Ada-83, that it allowed them to ship w/ far fewer bugs left for customers to find that code written in (Ugh!) C, as well as allowing bug-fixes using less than 50% of the developer resources than to fix bugs in (Ugh!) C.
As of 1995 the Ada language is much more oriented towards general programming, as well as being much cheaper to use than it had been. There has been a FREE (GPL) Ada compiler available since 1995 or so, and it is now (since version 3.2) integrated into GCC.
For more info on how Ada is being used and why it should be used for all new projects, see My small Ada site or David Botton's Ada Power site.Actually, as RMS backed up with several examples, the advantage can also go to the purveyor of support (especially the author), also there are some that are willing to pay large money for free software that they are unable to get (conveniently) any other way.
-
RMS claimed that when GNU emacs was
the only GNU software, he was
asking and getting $150/per copy for
it.
-
As an example of my own, a company
called Austen Code Works was
asking (and apparently getting)
similar prices for GNU software by
mail order.
What I know for sure is that they
were running full page ads month
after month in several programming
mags in the 80's (DDJ, Computer
Language, etc). Draw your own
conclusions.
-
RMS made the claim that after
sufficient copies of the burgeoning
GNU software had been distributed
(both directly by FSF and by
pass-along), that he asked (and got)
$500/hr to make specific changes to
his own code.
The rationale apparently being
(quoting from memory) that as the
author, he was more familiar with
the code and would require
significantly fewer hours to do the
work than an outsider hired or
contracted to do the same job.
-
Also per RMS, Cygnus Support was
doing quite well supporting Free
Software (mostly gcc) and paying
their programmers competitive
salaries until they "got greedy".
Conclusion: if you had as many people using your software as M$ does, you might just be able to operate on their scale using this model.And suppose you are a user (or a company w/ lots of users) and you want a feature and don't have the ability (or perhaps simply the will) to make the changes yourself. What do you do? If you want the changes bad enough, you will pay some outside agency to do the work for you.
As RMS daid in this regard, "If your want some carpentry done, you can do it yourself or hire a carpenter." This further applies to plumbing, electrical work, getting a car maintained, enhanced or customized, etc. "Similarly for software. You get someone to quote you a price and a delivery date, tell them to go ahead. If they fail to deliver on time, they get no money and you get someone else."
DISCLAIMER: While I was at the talk, I don't have a transcript and didn't take verbatim notes. All "quotes" above are from memory and may not be entirely accurate.
I was there too, and while I have no transcript or direct quotes, I do have four pages of notes which could be turned into some 20 .. 50 KB of HTML if desired.
BTW, the article that was posted is pretty accurate and has some details that will not be part of my writeup.
I exapect to be writing this up this evening. If you want a link when it is ready, please send me email. I will send the link directly to all the mail me, and if I get enough requests I will post that link as a reply to this.
I submitted the following "story" earlier this evening, apperently just a little too late. Someone else beat me to it and was on the queue (210 items long) when I submitted mine.
Axtually, as someone else has already pointed out, it it just under 100 ft.
Partly true. The longer the line, the more you gain from reducing the resistance. However, the load current also plays a a large part in this (see below)
The formula is correct, but the v (or more properly e for EMF) is the line drop, which is proportional to both the current, the length, and the resiatance/length. In this case, the more appropriate forumula would be P = I^2 * R, where I is the load current and R is again proportional to cable lenght.
Consider a local main that delivers 200A, is 1000 ft long (300M) and has a resistance over its length of 0.01 Ohm. The drop in each each leg ot the main will be 2V. So if the substation feeding the main delivers 120V, only 116V will be seen at the other end. Further line loss (which will be heating the main) will be 400W in each leg of the main, or 800W. (My reistance value may be way off, I have no real idea what the resistifity of local power mains is.)
Long distance power lines are extremely high voltage (on the order ot tens of KV) and carry relatively low current. Local mains carry only 100 .. 240 V and (relatively) more current.
Also, there are probably more miles (total) of local mains than of
long distance transmission lines.
Does anyone know how much these cables would save (in the way of line loss) over ordinary copper power mains?
Don't have a wire table handy and the answer should be generally interesting.
I have, twice (at least), but not recently and not distributed.
-
Lynx had a fixed -> float and a
float -> fixed conversion
(unneeded and unused as Float) for
every character.
-
RCS has irritating behaviour
regarding acceptable flags and the
environment variable shared by all
the RCS programs.
I have long since lost the lynx patch, and it may no longer be relevant; but if anyone wants details on the RCS patch (rationale and the actual patch), let me know by email and I will post them on my website.There may be a few other minor changes, but if so I can't recall them offhand.
There have been quite a few other times that I looked at the source but gave up on doing anything because not only were they in (ugh!!) C but the style is execrable. These would take a complete rewrite (and preferably in Ada) just to be readable.
You guys are just uisng the wrong language!
How about this? (pardon the formatting, <pre> is not allowed.)
type FOO is new integer ; ;
; ; := 1 ; := 2 ; := 3 ;
:= b; -- ILLEGAL TYPE MISMATCH! := i; -- ILLEGAL TYPE MISMATCH! := f; -- ILLEGAL TYPE MISMATCH!
:= fiz( 5 ) ; -- first fix := fiz( b ) ; -- second fiz := fizzle( f ) ; -- legal := fizzle( f ) ; -- ILLEGAL, TYPE MISMATCH := fizzle( b ) ; -- ILLEGAL, TYPE MISMATCH := frazzle( f, b ) ; -- All legal and proper := frazzle( 7, b ) ; -- All legal and proper := frazzle( f, 7 ) ; -- All legal and proper := frazzle( 7, 7 ) ; -- All legal and proper := frazzle( b, f ) ; -- ILLEGAL, 2 type mismatches
type BAR is new integer
function fiz( i : FOO ) return FOO
function fiz( i : BAR ) return BAR ; -- Different, overloaded
function fizzle( i : FOO ) return FOO
function frazzle( f : FOO ; b : BAR ) return integer ;
f : FOO
b : BAR
i : integer
f
b
i
-- further:
f
b
f
b
f
i
i
i
i
i
-- (operands reversed).
-- And so forth.
-- All arithetic, comparison, indexing, operations are inherited.
Each enumeration type is distinct (with its own namespace). Enumeration types may be used for indexing and loop control, but not for arithemtic.
Sound good? For more info look here or here or here.
No, unfortunately.
As I have been telling my LUG for years, I don't really trust any program on my system. The list of untrusted (downloaded) programs that I run as root starts with init and includes:
Eventually, I will have (and will publish) versions of at least these (except X, and the shell) that are written in Ada, not C, and are therefore somewhat more auditable. Unfortunately, even the Ada versions will depend on a lot of C code if compiled using GNAT against the standard GNAT library.
The closest thing to a trustable system that I ever worked on was written by some one hundred people with high security clearances. It took some 3 years to write (from scratch) and ran on an IBM 360/65I.
If we had, we might not have the DMCA now.
Have to think about this. It may be disirable to start such an orginization now.
On the other hand, what may be in order is simply more support to the EFF and the ACLU.
First a note on gender. The name Ilana strikes me as feminine, so I will refer to the author as she rather than he.
I have pretty much taken that at face value. Since the type was so tiny that I couldn't read it, I downloaded and restyled the article. The entire article, (minus the National Post cruft) is (temporarily) online at My site. Warning, I am at the end of a low-bandwidth pipe. I can only handle some 30 .. 60 hits/minute.
I doubt that a haevy load would take the site down, but you might
have trouble getting through.
MODERATORS: please do not raise this above "2" to keep my load down.
I have not contacted the authour since there was no clue in the original as to how to do so. If anyone knows how to do so, please write me! You have the hostname, the username should be "websmith".
== Buz :)
Further, the argument that no-one is more important, more useful, or otherwise better than anyone else is the cry of those that are, themselves, of no importance, use to Society, etc.
One effect that I predict is that (since this is likely to be expensive), it will be limited to those who have in some way been successful and have some wealth or income. This will then pretty much guarantee that resources will be available to the resulting child to adulthood and also that it will be limited to those that have in some way already contributed to Society.
For many years the most technologically competent and knowledgeable people of the world have been using the Internet and before that Usentt.
Why not use that to improve the patent examination process?
Simply post the disclosure where anyone can read and comment on it in the areas of "obviousness", "prior art", or "current practice".
Respondents could give a reference to an old book, magazine or juurnal article, or simply a hyperlind as appropriate.
EG: the Amazon case would probably not have happened if the examiner had read Netscape's description of the purpose of cookies. All Amazon (and others) did was use cookies in the way in which they were intended!
Am hard pressed to come up with an analogy that wouldn't be totally silly. Perhaps someone else can.
Muxh as I like Linux for a lot of things, DR-DOS just might (or might not) be best for such a task.
No application should be able to crash an OS, period. Even thought[sic] the application may be crappy, it should, at worst, simply kill itself, never the whole operating system.
One of the reasons I am running Linux and have for years :-}
So I took a look at the source. I would be ashamed to have such a page on my site. Lots of fancy garbage to do nothing. Has CSS (which doesn't seem to do a thing with any browser currently available) as well as a lot of font codes in the text (both size and face specified).
Several very long lines. Erratic indentation. Randomly placed comments. The fact that it depends on JavaScript doesn't say much for the mental brilliance of Forbes' readers -- IMHO no one with any sense trusts a public site to run unchecked code like that.
Seems to me that what is really needed, rather than a flood of complaining mail, or legal threats, is that some individual or group that has successfully connected Linux boxen to DSL or Cable put together a setup package that can be used by such vendors (with a little customization such as adding their own DNS IP's, etc).
Such a package would AFAIK include (but not be limited to):
- Making sure that the kernel supports Ethernet in general and the NIC used in particular.
- Make sure that DHCP is supported.
- Modify configuration files to start the Ethernet and DHCP clients on boot.
- Start the connection immediately (without rebooting, which should impress these M$ weenies no end).
- Provide simple (WIMP + CLI) ways to connect or disconnect at the will of the user/admin of the system.
All of this should be as much as possible distro agnostic. That is, it should work equally well regardless of which distro has been installed. This is one more link in the case for standard configuration files for Linux, not the present fragmentation caused by distro vendors trying to differentiate themselves. "> Buz Cory at buzco.ddns.org"> write for FREE help with:
- Installing/Configuring Linux
- Getting started with the Ada Programming Language.
Find out what your computer can really do, Linux Now!Programmer? Drowned in bugs? Ada is the answer. NOTE: This is to be considered a temporary hostname. Not guaranteed to be available more than 12 months after this posting.
Calling such people Sharks, Wolves, or even Hyenas or Jackals is insulting the animals.
The new management of IPX seems to be that predatory type that has no real value to society. A bunch of litigious lawyers and "Venture Capitalists" who are out to accumulate (not make) money by any means they can. They are no better (indeed, no different) than the local extortionists that have always plagued us, demanding money (or earlier, goods) under threat of some sort of harassment while making no contribution to society themselves.
So, while such companies must be attacked vigorously and squashed with all ethical means available, don't make the mistake of putting all companies (or even all large companies) in this category. :)
== Buz
Black background, tiny text, apparently meant to not work w/o Java. The second link mentioned gets one to a very blurry moving flame that I suppose some would consider "art".
May be a difference of system setup. I am running NetScape-4.6 on Linux w/ the X-Free86-3.3 SVGA server on an S3-virge video card, 16bpp, and my Sony/Gateway monitor set so white is as bright as I can get it and black as close as I can get it to the blank space.
May your world be without Gates, :)
== Buz
A list, please. Or email me info on individual distros which comply (or don't) to the FHS and I will compile the list and post it.
For starters, RH seems to be ignoring the FHS entirely. All releases of GNOME RPMs that I have seen also ignore it. SuSE (from reports on this thread) seems to be complying at least partially, but I would like more data. Caldera (a year ago) was not complying, I have no later data. I have no real data on any other distros put out since the FHS (or even the original FSHS).
May Gates be missing from all your worlds, :) Buz Cory of BuzCo Systems -- New York NY USA
== Buz
write for FREE help with:
- Installing/Configuring Linux
- Getting started with the Ada Programming Language.
My world has no Gates (but it does have a little Penguin).Programmer? Overwhelmed with bugs? Ada is the answer.
Try making that:
IMHO, RedHat is doing it entirely wrong. This is one of the things I detest about them. The are doing a lot of things right, but building good distros is not one of them.
Most of what RH puts in /usr should be in /opt. This includes things like perl, python, tcl/tk, any language not native to the OS or required to compile anything in {,/usr}/{,s}bin. IMHO, even X really belongs in /opt, but long tradition puts it in /usr.
In other words, /opt/bin should be larger than /usr/bin, and probably /opt/lib (for such things as the various graphics and language libs) should probably be larger than /usr/lib. And both of them should consist entirely of symlinks pointing pack to the package directories. I even use this method in /usr for such thing that I build myself. Instead of copying or moving the executable or library to the installed location, I use symlinks.
Actually, there is just as big a problem w/ Caldera (as of early '98). Dunno about Debian, Yggdrasl or SuSE. Slackware had so many deficiencies in '94 (when I first started running Linux) that I have not even looked at it since.
Probably things like KDE, GNOME, window managers, etc should be under X (wherever it is, on my system it is a separate partition with symlinks to the standard locations). Am very displeased with the GNOME putting everything in /usr, especially with their inconsistent naming. If every GNOME app or utility started out gno... it would not be such problem, but they still should be in /opt and the desktop, WM, and libs in /X.
May you all have no Gates in your future, :) (Buz as Installer)">Buz Cory of BuzCo Systems -- New York NY USA
== Buz
">write for FREE help with:
- Installing/Configuring Linux
- Getting started with the Ada Programming Language.
My world has no Gates (but it does have a little Penguin).Programmer? Overwhelmed with bugs? Ada is the answer.
Please don't confuse the nation with the government.
The entire government of the US (or any other country, for that matter) could be overthrown and the nation could still exist and perhaps be in better shape.
So the above statement should read:
== Buz :)
Right now and for many years past, our "schools" have not been schools, but "mental health" clinics under the domination of the Psychiatrists.
So, how about for the first several years, where students should be concentrating on the "three R's", teachers of those levels be paid entirely based on how well their students did in those areas in the previous year.
Last years students can't read, can't spell, don't know that 80 + 20 = 100? This year you teach for free (or maybe minimum wage) or you don't teach here at all.
Your third grade students last year all know their alphabet backwards, forwards and inside out (literally); know their phonetics; are able to use a dictionary by themselves (and like to use it, not like some students I had a decade ago who thought that being told to use a dictionary was punishment!); can read Kipling, Milne, etc as well as modern equivalents and enjoy doing so; are able to spell phonetically and have a good start on the special cases; are able to add and subtract numbers of any size "in their heads" and are able to (at least) multiply any pair of numbers both in the range 0 .. 20? Great! This year you get $100_000 for the year!
BTW, am not going to try to insert it into the above, but I neglected Grammar in the above exposition.
Of course, there are a few other things that should be taught at this level, like a little bit of Science, the ability to communicate ideas with pictures (no matter how poorly rendered, the point is the idea, not the rendering), some idea of music and musical structure (at least expose them to such things as "Peter and the Wolf", which in my experience most children love), and some idea of a discipline requiring formal body movement (doesn't really matter at this stage whether it is "Simon Says", ballet, Martial Arts, or Yoga. the idea is to build muscular coordination).
Concentrate on things like this in K-6, and you will have real students going into middle school. Then they can start learning how to really use computers as the tools they are.
What should not be done in the public schools is any attempt to indocrinate students with ethnic or cultural values. Nor, until the Psychiatrists are eliminated, should there be any attempt to teach morals or ethics. All recent attempts to do so have been harmful, as demonstrated at Littleton, and many other schools.
More to the point, a "computer on every desk" could be useful in the lower grades for such things as drilling (reading, spelling, arithmetic, etc). These machines need not be expensive (old i386sx boxen would do fine, with the right software). Maybe we should encourage High School students to write software for use by the lower grades and publish it to the Open Source community :=)
One other use would be for games that required the player to think .
Well, this got to be a little longer than I intended, and this is perhaps the wrong forum for it; but it needs to be said, and said often and loudly until these things happen; and on review I can't see anything that I could remove and still make my point.
== Buz :) Buz Cory -- New York NY USA
write for FREE help with:
Installing/Configuring Linux
Getting started with the Ada Programming Language.
Changing DOS/WinDog to Linux is like changing a WW-I Fokker for an F-14
Know Yourself! Know Life!
What do you want here, some kind of highly creative description or new things that no-one else has written about, raves about features of Linux that have not been mentioned before? These things would not be appropriate for a review unless they first appeared in RH-6.0.
The main purpose of a review like this is to provide a basis for comparison against other, similar, releases of Linux. This he does very well (IMHO) "> Buz Cory at buzco.ddns.org
"> write for FREE help with:
- Installing/Configuring Linux
- Getting started with the Ada Programming Language.
Find out what your computer can really do, Linux Now!Programmer? Drowned in bugs? Ada is the answer. NOTE: This is to be considered a temporary hostname. Not guaranteed to be available more than 12 months after this posting.