Here's a simple challenge for you: try writing a functional network card driver for Linux over a weekend. Now try the same in FreeBSD.
It depends on which kernel you know best. If you're a Linux developer than writing one for Linux will be easier. If you're a FreeBSD developer then writing one for FreeBSD will be easier. It is not hard to write one for FreeBSD. It's a very clean architecture with plenty of readily accessible docs.
He's right on the lawsuit though. I remember that time at the very beginning of Linux. I remember people shaking their heads at having to reinvent the wheel just because AT&T got a bug up its butt. The source of Tannenbaum's sour grapes is that Linux stole his hobbyist marketshare. Remember the early days of Linux, and it was a hobbyist system. Use in real world production was exceedingly rare. On the other hand BSD *was* being used in real world production. It was because of that lawsuit that people chose to convert a hobbyist system to a production system.
That's only half of the story however. The other half isn't about the licensing either though, but the cultures. BSD had a very elitist culture that didn't give a rat's ass about the desktop. Even today that anti-desktop attitude persists in some BSD corners. By targeting off-the-shelf consumer hardware, Linux was able to run on more people's systems.
Google is an aberration. I work with many different companies, and the average age can vary greatly according to culture. Google has a very young average age, heck I think half the males there can't even shave yet. Startups also tend to be very young. But then go take a look at medical technology companies. A much higher average age. Animation studios: very young. Petroleum engineering: higher age. Financial trading: somewhere in between. Military contractors: much older. Other miscellaneous companies I've seen have also ranged from the very young to long in tooth.
I am talking about the SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS in these companies.
I think the two factors that push the average age downwards are: 1) The trendiness and hipness of the company. Kids want to go work for Apple and Google, and not for IBM or Oracle. Older workers shy away from these because they feel uncomfortable. Then there's 2) the cultures at software companies that emphasizes newer languages, technologies and platforms. "Newer" being relative of course.
I used to think that too, until week before last. I'm a literature major who couldn't make it past second semester calculus. Until week before last I never needed to do any math in programming beyond arithmetic.
Then I landed on a project involving OpenGL. There's a heck of a lot of math there, and a lot of math/graphics jargon. What makes it even more frustrating are all the tutorials for beginners that assume you've majored in math and never bother explaining homogeneous coordinates, frustrums, etc. Almost as annoying as they're assuming you already know the syntax to glsl. I am good at geometry, and could write very complicated POVray models, but OpenGL has been kicking my butt due to my lack of linear maths.
My big gripe is Konqueror always losing cookie policies. It seems that every time Konqueror crashes it loses all cookie policies. It's like it deletes the rc file on startup or something. This wouldn't be quite so bad if it were not the fact that Konqueror crashes ALL THE TIME! I don't care how crappy the page or the plugin is, crashing is an unacceptable response.
I should be able to reject all cookies from a site ONCE, instead of having to tell Konqueror over and over and over again.
Re:If you can't handle calculus, science isnt for
on
Help Me Get My Math Back?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Unfortunately, the problem with economics is that it has TOO MUCH math in it. Or rather, it has too much math misuse.
There should be a large amount of statistics, but little calculus. That's because we're dealing with human beings and their obstinate free will. So much of modern economics is about making assumptions so that you can start applying some math to the problem. But the assumptions are often unwarranted, like micro's assumption of "perfect knowledge" that can only exist in a fantasy land.
Yes, you're going to have to do a shitload of math to get a degree in economics. But you shouldn't have to. Economics is not a hard science like physics, and should not be treated as such.
I love government inefficiency. It slows down the works. It's the next best thing to gridlock. When it comes to infringing my rights, taking my money, regulating my conduct, and snooping into my affairs, I want the government to be as inefficient as possible.
Do you guys really want the USPTO cranking out fifty thousand patents a day?
I got modded down as a troll. I'm sorry. You're right. We should all do what our masters tell us to. Can someone please mod me back up? I won't question my city council's received wisdom ever again.
It's a complementary color scheme. It's hard to get right, but it's very common. Although purple and orange aren't complementary, bluish-purple and yellowish-orange are.
... the law requires 40% live ground cover, so they should be given a citation.
All hail the Supreme Wisdom of the local lawmakers! They are wiser than us! They are better able to live our lives than we are ourselves! Whatever they say we must do without question! Do not question authority, worship it!
At least Barr has publicly apologized for several of his votes while sporting the R suffix. The insistence that the Libertarian Party only run immaculately conceived candidates is what keep them at the 0.5% of the vote level. When the Greens and Libertarians have a chance of winning office, then perhaps it's time to start worrying about their past lives. But until then a vote for McKinney or Barr would have sent a sent a message that the bozos the D and R parties put on the ballot are unacceptable.
Exposure to installed asbestos is safe. One time exposures to particulate asbestos is also reasonable safe. It is only repeated exposure to particulate asbestos that is a problem. People who have to deal with asbestos removal on a regular basis should be concerned, but if you're a homeowner who discovers asbestos in your textured ceiling, don't worry about it because you are safe.
Reading through the story, it appears that the culprit was patents not copyright. In other words no copyright license was violated. This is a much different kettle of fish than one would assume from the blurb. I've got no problem with pushing back against patents, but I am completely opposed to people using "free" software licenses as offensive legal weapons. That's what the proprietary goons do.
Any time you get funding through politics, your field will be politicized. It doesn't matter if it's homeless shelters, investment banks, or climate research.
So? If the copyright holders don't like being ruthlessly abused, they don't have to accept the money. No really, I'm serious! I know it's trendy to cop an lefty attitude about money being coercive, but there's nothing inherently mesmeristic about money. A few billion females manage to go through life without ever once prostituting themselves, so don't act like you don't have any choice when a dollar bill is waved in your face.
If you hate money so much, give all of yours to me.
There are negative rights, and positive rights. The former are negative because others cannot take them away, while the latter are "positive" because they must be provided by others. Government protects the former, but must compel or coerce the latter. Calling positive rights "rights" is a fairly new thing. For most of history they were called "privilege". Note that negative rights tend to be immaterial behaviors, while positive rights tend to be material provisions.
Negative rights: Life, liberty, association, speech, religion, commerce, etc.
Positive rights: Housing, living wage, healthcare, intertoobs, bread, circuses, etc.
Here's a simple challenge for you: try writing a functional network card driver for Linux over a weekend. Now try the same in FreeBSD.
It depends on which kernel you know best. If you're a Linux developer than writing one for Linux will be easier. If you're a FreeBSD developer then writing one for FreeBSD will be easier. It is not hard to write one for FreeBSD. It's a very clean architecture with plenty of readily accessible docs.
Ever hear of 386BSD? It ran on a, wait for it, i386!!!
He's right on the lawsuit though. I remember that time at the very beginning of Linux. I remember people shaking their heads at having to reinvent the wheel just because AT&T got a bug up its butt. The source of Tannenbaum's sour grapes is that Linux stole his hobbyist marketshare. Remember the early days of Linux, and it was a hobbyist system. Use in real world production was exceedingly rare. On the other hand BSD *was* being used in real world production. It was because of that lawsuit that people chose to convert a hobbyist system to a production system.
That's only half of the story however. The other half isn't about the licensing either though, but the cultures. BSD had a very elitist culture that didn't give a rat's ass about the desktop. Even today that anti-desktop attitude persists in some BSD corners. By targeting off-the-shelf consumer hardware, Linux was able to run on more people's systems.
Google is an aberration. I work with many different companies, and the average age can vary greatly according to culture. Google has a very young average age, heck I think half the males there can't even shave yet. Startups also tend to be very young. But then go take a look at medical technology companies. A much higher average age. Animation studios: very young. Petroleum engineering: higher age. Financial trading: somewhere in between. Military contractors: much older. Other miscellaneous companies I've seen have also ranged from the very young to long in tooth.
I am talking about the SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS in these companies.
I think the two factors that push the average age downwards are: 1) The trendiness and hipness of the company. Kids want to go work for Apple and Google, and not for IBM or Oracle. Older workers shy away from these because they feel uncomfortable. Then there's 2) the cultures at software companies that emphasizes newer languages, technologies and platforms. "Newer" being relative of course.
I used to think that too, until week before last. I'm a literature major who couldn't make it past second semester calculus. Until week before last I never needed to do any math in programming beyond arithmetic.
Then I landed on a project involving OpenGL. There's a heck of a lot of math there, and a lot of math/graphics jargon. What makes it even more frustrating are all the tutorials for beginners that assume you've majored in math and never bother explaining homogeneous coordinates, frustrums, etc. Almost as annoying as they're assuming you already know the syntax to glsl. I am good at geometry, and could write very complicated POVray models, but OpenGL has been kicking my butt due to my lack of linear maths.
When all you have is HTML/CSS/JS/AJAX, everything looks like a webpage.
My big gripe is Konqueror always losing cookie policies. It seems that every time Konqueror crashes it loses all cookie policies. It's like it deletes the rc file on startup or something. This wouldn't be quite so bad if it were not the fact that Konqueror crashes ALL THE TIME! I don't care how crappy the page or the plugin is, crashing is an unacceptable response.
I should be able to reject all cookies from a site ONCE, instead of having to tell Konqueror over and over and over again.
Unfortunately, the problem with economics is that it has TOO MUCH math in it. Or rather, it has too much math misuse.
There should be a large amount of statistics, but little calculus. That's because we're dealing with human beings and their obstinate free will. So much of modern economics is about making assumptions so that you can start applying some math to the problem. But the assumptions are often unwarranted, like micro's assumption of "perfect knowledge" that can only exist in a fantasy land.
Yes, you're going to have to do a shitload of math to get a degree in economics. But you shouldn't have to. Economics is not a hard science like physics, and should not be treated as such.
Okay, if the NSA is necessary, then we can get rid of the CIA, right?
Wouldn't it just be easier to abolish the NSA?
I love government inefficiency. It slows down the works. It's the next best thing to gridlock. When it comes to infringing my rights, taking my money, regulating my conduct, and snooping into my affairs, I want the government to be as inefficient as possible.
Do you guys really want the USPTO cranking out fifty thousand patents a day?
I got modded down as a troll. I'm sorry. You're right. We should all do what our masters tell us to. Can someone please mod me back up? I won't question my city council's received wisdom ever again.
It's a complementary color scheme. It's hard to get right, but it's very common. Although purple and orange aren't complementary, bluish-purple and yellowish-orange are.
All hail the Supreme Wisdom of the local lawmakers! They are wiser than us! They are better able to live our lives than we are ourselves! Whatever they say we must do without question! Do not question authority, worship it!
At least Barr has publicly apologized for several of his votes while sporting the R suffix. The insistence that the Libertarian Party only run immaculately conceived candidates is what keep them at the 0.5% of the vote level. When the Greens and Libertarians have a chance of winning office, then perhaps it's time to start worrying about their past lives. But until then a vote for McKinney or Barr would have sent a sent a message that the bozos the D and R parties put on the ballot are unacceptable.
Exposure to installed asbestos is safe. One time exposures to particulate asbestos is also reasonable safe. It is only repeated exposure to particulate asbestos that is a problem. People who have to deal with asbestos removal on a regular basis should be concerned, but if you're a homeowner who discovers asbestos in your textured ceiling, don't worry about it because you are safe.
Reading through the story, it appears that the culprit was patents not copyright. In other words no copyright license was violated. This is a much different kettle of fish than one would assume from the blurb. I've got no problem with pushing back against patents, but I am completely opposed to people using "free" software licenses as offensive legal weapons. That's what the proprietary goons do.
Any time you get funding through politics, your field will be politicized. It doesn't matter if it's homeless shelters, investment banks, or climate research.
So where does El Niño fit into all of this? Doesn't El Niño better explain this current weather variation?
God forbid that someone should give some money to someone else (without organized crime taking a cut).
FIFY
God forbid that someone should give some money to someone else!
Just think. With a quarter of that money he could have gotten a car that wasn't an oil burning beater.
So? If the copyright holders don't like being ruthlessly abused, they don't have to accept the money. No really, I'm serious! I know it's trendy to cop an lefty attitude about money being coercive, but there's nothing inherently mesmeristic about money. A few billion females manage to go through life without ever once prostituting themselves, so don't act like you don't have any choice when a dollar bill is waved in your face.
If you hate money so much, give all of yours to me.
But Samsung is not the copyright holders. They can release a LGPL fork, but they cannot touch the license on the original trunk.
There are negative rights, and positive rights. The former are negative because others cannot take them away, while the latter are "positive" because they must be provided by others. Government protects the former, but must compel or coerce the latter. Calling positive rights "rights" is a fairly new thing. For most of history they were called "privilege". Note that negative rights tend to be immaterial behaviors, while positive rights tend to be material provisions.
Negative rights: Life, liberty, association, speech, religion, commerce, etc.
Positive rights: Housing, living wage, healthcare, intertoobs, bread, circuses, etc.