I still have a partition devoted to Windows. It's there for one reason and one reason only: a single solitary application requires Windows and won't run under WINE. Even so, I still only boot into Windows maybe once a month.
Re:thank god for FreeBSD
on
Red Hat Recap
·
· Score: 1
Additionally its just not logical to do on 25+ machines.
You don't do this on 25+ machines. That's just silly. Instead you "portupgrade --package" on one machine, and use the packages on the other 24+. If you're administering 25+ machines, then SURELY you know a tiny bit of shell scripting, and can push those new packages out to the other machines after you've tested them.
Re:$179? No problem.
on
Red Hat Recap
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· Score: 4, Funny
FreeBSD offers deep discounts to students as well. Last I checked (five minutes ago) it was zero dollars and zero cents. Commercial users will, unfortunately, have to pay twice as much.
ROX apps certainly do this. But non-ROX apps can as well, because ROX will set their paths as appropriate. The problem arises when you have stupid apps with hardcoded locations.
Then Microsoft got smart (too smart for their own good) and decided it was more "efficient" to use shared libraries and that all such libraries should be kept in the %SYSTEMROOT% folder.
This wasn't invented by Microsoft. They merely borrowed a good idea. Then goofed on parts of the implementation.
Shared libraries are a Good Thing(tm). It avoids unnecessary duplication of library code on both persistant storage and in memory, and enables the updating of code in one location.
You might think that with today's high speed networks, large harddrives and relatively cheap RAM, that this would no longer be a problem. Stop kidding yourself. At my work we build an embedded system where everything must be statically linked. We did an experiment once to see how much we would save if we switched to dynamically linked executables. The system went from around 500 MB down to about 125 MB. While these numbers are for a highly specialized system, that's still four times the HDD resources, and a similar hit to RAM resources, when using statically linked executables.
Microsoft's problem isn't shared libraries, it's shared libraries with shoddy versioning. The problem is exacerbated by third party software dropping their shared libraries any damned place they please.
Unfortunately in today's society there is a third group mucking around, business.
The topic at hand is "US Expands Fingerprint and Mugshot Program for Visitors". Businesses aren't doing this. Businesses CANNOT do this! For example, you want into Macy's and the manager stops you to get your fingerprints, you can say "screw that" and walk out. But do that at customs and you're thrown in jail. Business cannot make you do anything if you don't want to.
Let's look at big business, and use Microsoft as an example. I'm posting this with Konqueror running in FreeBSD. I have absolutely no fear that Microsoft will retaliate. There is nothing they can do to force me use Windows if I don't want to. They have zero power over me, despite the Slashdot wailing that the the DoJ did nothing to reign them in.
Government has armies, navies and police forces. The have a monopoly on the creation and enforcement of law. This power is far, far vaster than any "power" you might ascribe to business. While it is true that some businesses lobby for laws in their favor, it's only because government wields such enormous power that they even bother lobbying in the first place.
Are you serious? Every administration in the last 25 years increased the size of government. Some may not have grown it as fast as others, but none have decreased it. Clinton oversaw the smallest increase in federal employees, but he still oversaw an increase.
Democrats don't want a smaller government, they want a more efficient big government.
Does it make you feel better now to know the US is emulating countries it once surpassed in freedoms and liberties?
No, it does not make me happy. Not at all. But it's irksome to be told the US is a black kettle by a bunch of black pot Europeans.
The inhabitants of the US are worried about the state of the US. The inhabitants of Europe are worried about the state of the US. Which makes me wonder if there's anyone left to worry about the state of Europe!
The first thing you can do is to quit pretending that solution to big government is to elect more politicians who favor big government. If you're planning on voting Democrat or Green, you're part of the problem, because those two parties favor larger and more intrusive government.
A government that is given more power to do good is one that has just been given more power to do evil. The solution is to take back the power we the citizens gave them. Only vote for candidates who promise to reduce the power of government in all areas.
I know you mean well, but please do bear in mind that other countries had this policy for a while.
How dare you demonstrate that the US is not alone in its abuses of civil liberties! Are you new at Slashdot or something? Repeat the Slashdot political dogma after me: "US == Evil ; Any EU nation == Can do no wrong".
...the misconceptions and misinformation that they present to students.
This isn't a problem in just business schools. I'm currently taking a Linux device drivers class that the kernel license requires that all modules must be released under the GPL, and that the GPL requires all source code to be published.
On being challenged by yours truly, he did back down from his assertion that everything that makes a system call to the Linux kernel must be released under the GPL.
It's not the price, it's the image. Godiva chocolates have a higher quality image than Russel-Stover chocolates. It's why people pay more for Acuras than Hondas.
You need a perception of high quality before you can risk bumping up your price. Otherwise Russel-Stover would be charging $25 for a five-piece sampler.
Soon it will be a "race back up to the surface for a gasp of air"...
Remember automobiles? The US auto industry got lazy and started putting out crappy cars at high prices. Japan then put out better cars at a cheaper price. So US makers raced to see who could outsource their manufacturing the fastest. Today, Japan builds automobiles in the US.
The same thing is happening in the US and European software industry. We put out crappy software at high prices. India started delivering good software at cheap prices. Now we're all in a rush to outsource to India.
It will balance out in the long run. Some stuff will stay there, some will come back, and other stuff might be re-outsourced elsewhere. One thing is for sure. $100K per year developers writing crappy sites that only work with Internet Explorer is a thing of the past.
Here's a secret few people know: users aren't any more omniscient than developers. Particularly when it comes to usability. Users don't want usability, they want familiarity.
This is especially true with OSNews reviews. This is the place where you get reviews from Mandrake users saying "Fedora sucks because it isn't Mandrake. And where you get reviews from Fedora users saying "Mandrake sucks because it isn't Mandrake."
Okay, it's two hours later and I've cooled off. Lesson learned, never take out your frustrations on a Slashdot post, especially when what's frustrating you is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand:-)
While I shouldn't have been so angry in my previous reply, it still irks me that random slashdot posters speak with authority about the future. If history teaches us anything at all, it's that the future is unpredictable. Another thing it teaches us is that progress occurs through evolution, with revolution being the very rare exception.
For some strange reason, the Gnome community seems obsessed with grand sweeping generalizations based on insufficient evidence. The prime example is Havoc's assumption of expertise in the area of usability. By his own account he is not an expert! So why are we expected to accept his inexpert advice as the gospel truth? Another example is Nat telling us that the future of software is.NET/Mono.
I'm really getting tired of being told that KDE is going to be left behind in the dust just because it's not jumping into the first available bandwagon the drives onto the scene. ericdfields ended his post with "Slashdot seems to be full of impulsive radicals who vehemently stick to their OS/DE/Apps of choice, and are quick to insult anyone or anything else that's not their favorite." But it seems to me that the statement applies to him as well.
In reality, the future linux user (and really all users) will only need to access files as items in a niche program like Rhythmbox or OpenOffice/AbiWord which specifically deal with a particular document type.
I am getting sick and tired of Gnome telling me how to use my computer. They didn't buy. They don't maintain it. They don't use it. So they need to get the fuck out of my life! You guys have a hard enough time running your own lives without interrupting it to run mine.
I don't give a shit about the theoretical future Linux user. You all sound like a bunch of pansy politicians worrying about how the poor people on the other side of the tracks are getting along, when in reality the poor people on the other side of the tracks are getting along just fine without you.
You can go mess up your own backyard all day long and I won't care. But I'm sick and tired of you coming over here, leaning over my fence, and telling me how to clean mine. Why don't you go get some play-do and create a bunch of tiny little men you can preach to? They'll sure be a lot more attentive than the rest of us.
p.s. I apologize to all of you innocents that had to read my rant. I recently stopped smoking and my patience evaporated along with the nicotine.
Double-middle-click (or double-right-click, I'm not sure)
Are you shitting me? Do you know how difficult an operation that is? Never in any desktop since the beginning at Xerox PARC has anyone had to double click with anything but their index finger. And even with the index finger was considered a usability mistake.
Frankly I think Gnome needs to sit Havoc and all the other usability "experts" down and have a long father-to-son talk with them about how they need to start living in the real world.
Another view mode would have been more intuitive, but what the heck.
While another view mode would have been more intuitive, it would not have followed the Gnome philosophy of a more intuitive interface. Now isn't that intuitive?
Seriously, when a desktop starts making things harder to use in an effort to make them easier, there's a serious disconnect.
I'm telling you about a major shift away from pictoral descriptions toward textual ones in the hardware design world.
In my company we do a lot of hardware. A heck of a lot. When it comes to programming the chips the do use compilers. But that doesn't do them a damned bit of good when they're laying out a couple hundred chips on a four layer PCB board.
We still use visual diagrams of all sorts on the hardware side. If there's a shift away, then it's definitely not universal.
Drawing schematics (or UML diagrams) is very time consuming and you have to question whether or not you're getting any increased productivity for the time spent - I contend you aren't.
At the level Rational "recommends", you aren't. It's simply overkill. Their view seems to be to design it down to such a low level that you never need to write any code. They also seem to want to to put everything into one humongous diagram. That's ridiculous. The best way to use UML is to keep it high level. Just like writing a function, if a diagram won't fit on one sheet of paper, break it up.
Why not just use XML in the first place?
Because XML is not easily readable by mortals. XML is not an end product, no matter what the glassy eyed disciples at xml.org tell you. It's middle-ware. You render, transform, process, fold, spindle and mutilate XML, but you do not read it. And you certainly don't give it to your partner saying "here's the design".
Rational (among others) seems to think of UML as a code generation tool. They're nuts in my opinion. I, the software developer, am the code generation tool! With UML we're still at the analysis and design phase. We don't start implementing until much later.
PHB's want pretty pictures to look at.
So does everyone else. Well, maybe not you. But most everyone else does. The pretty pictures should definitely not be the only documenation, but they make a fine addition to it.
It's much easier to get a grasp of a complex software construct with a couple of pages of UML then it is with fifty pages of monospaced XML.
There are two kinds of tools. One is a drawing tool. Great for diagrams you have to drop into documentation. dia is a great example of this. The other kind generates the code for you, but the diagramming is more primitive. Umbrello and Argo are examples of this.
I personally hate things that try to generate code for me, so I prefer the former style of tool.
Slashdot Mirror
I still have a partition devoted to Windows. It's there for one reason and one reason only: a single solitary application requires Windows and won't run under WINE. Even so, I still only boot into Windows maybe once a month.
Additionally its just not logical to do on 25+ machines.
You don't do this on 25+ machines. That's just silly. Instead you "portupgrade --package" on one machine, and use the packages on the other 24+. If you're administering 25+ machines, then SURELY you know a tiny bit of shell scripting, and can push those new packages out to the other machines after you've tested them.
FreeBSD offers deep discounts to students as well. Last I checked (five minutes ago) it was zero dollars and zero cents. Commercial users will, unfortunately, have to pay twice as much.
(shrink wrap and box are sold separately)
ROX apps certainly do this. But non-ROX apps can as well, because ROX will set their paths as appropriate. The problem arises when you have stupid apps with hardcoded locations.
Then Microsoft got smart (too smart for their own good) and decided it was more "efficient" to use shared libraries and that all such libraries should be kept in the %SYSTEMROOT% folder.
This wasn't invented by Microsoft. They merely borrowed a good idea. Then goofed on parts of the implementation.
Shared libraries are a Good Thing(tm). It avoids unnecessary duplication of library code on both persistant storage and in memory, and enables the updating of code in one location.
You might think that with today's high speed networks, large harddrives and relatively cheap RAM, that this would no longer be a problem. Stop kidding yourself. At my work we build an embedded system where everything must be statically linked. We did an experiment once to see how much we would save if we switched to dynamically linked executables. The system went from around 500 MB down to about 125 MB. While these numbers are for a highly specialized system, that's still four times the HDD resources, and a similar hit to RAM resources, when using statically linked executables.
Microsoft's problem isn't shared libraries, it's shared libraries with shoddy versioning. The problem is exacerbated by third party software dropping their shared libraries any damned place they please.
Unfortunately in today's society there is a third group mucking around, business.
The topic at hand is "US Expands Fingerprint and Mugshot Program for Visitors". Businesses aren't doing this. Businesses CANNOT do this! For example, you want into Macy's and the manager stops you to get your fingerprints, you can say "screw that" and walk out. But do that at customs and you're thrown in jail. Business cannot make you do anything if you don't want to.
Let's look at big business, and use Microsoft as an example. I'm posting this with Konqueror running in FreeBSD. I have absolutely no fear that Microsoft will retaliate. There is nothing they can do to force me use Windows if I don't want to. They have zero power over me, despite the Slashdot wailing that the the DoJ did nothing to reign them in.
Government has armies, navies and police forces. The have a monopoly on the creation and enforcement of law. This power is far, far vaster than any "power" you might ascribe to business. While it is true that some businesses lobby for laws in their favor, it's only because government wields such enormous power that they even bother lobbying in the first place.
Are you serious? Every administration in the last 25 years increased the size of government. Some may not have grown it as fast as others, but none have decreased it. Clinton oversaw the smallest increase in federal employees, but he still oversaw an increase.
Democrats don't want a smaller government, they want a more efficient big government.
Does it make you feel better now to know the US is emulating countries it once surpassed in freedoms and liberties?
No, it does not make me happy. Not at all. But it's irksome to be told the US is a black kettle by a bunch of black pot Europeans.
The inhabitants of the US are worried about the state of the US. The inhabitants of Europe are worried about the state of the US. Which makes me wonder if there's anyone left to worry about the state of Europe!
Republicans: Say they want smaller government during the campaign, but afterwards do the opposite.
Democrats: Say they want bigger government during the campaign, and do their best afterwards to keep their promise.
Either way, both major parties are equally at fault for the steady erosion of our liberties (economic, civil and political).
but what?
The first thing you can do is to quit pretending that solution to big government is to elect more politicians who favor big government. If you're planning on voting Democrat or Green, you're part of the problem, because those two parties favor larger and more intrusive government.
A government that is given more power to do good is one that has just been given more power to do evil. The solution is to take back the power we the citizens gave them. Only vote for candidates who promise to reduce the power of government in all areas.
I know you mean well, but please do bear in mind that other countries had this policy for a while.
How dare you demonstrate that the US is not alone in its abuses of civil liberties! Are you new at Slashdot or something? Repeat the Slashdot political dogma after me: "US == Evil ; Any EU nation == Can do no wrong".
...the misconceptions and misinformation that they present to students.
This isn't a problem in just business schools. I'm currently taking a Linux device drivers class that the kernel license requires that all modules must be released under the GPL, and that the GPL requires all source code to be published.
On being challenged by yours truly, he did back down from his assertion that everything that makes a system call to the Linux kernel must be released under the GPL.
It's not the price, it's the image. Godiva chocolates have a higher quality image than Russel-Stover chocolates. It's why people pay more for Acuras than Hondas.
You need a perception of high quality before you can risk bumping up your price. Otherwise Russel-Stover would be charging $25 for a five-piece sampler.
When I was in school there was no mention of Microsoft in textbooks. There were a few mentions of DEC and AT&T though...
Soon it will be a "race back up to the surface for a gasp of air"...
Remember automobiles? The US auto industry got lazy and started putting out crappy cars at high prices. Japan then put out better cars at a cheaper price. So US makers raced to see who could outsource their manufacturing the fastest. Today, Japan builds automobiles in the US.
The same thing is happening in the US and European software industry. We put out crappy software at high prices. India started delivering good software at cheap prices. Now we're all in a rush to outsource to India.
It will balance out in the long run. Some stuff will stay there, some will come back, and other stuff might be re-outsourced elsewhere. One thing is for sure. $100K per year developers writing crappy sites that only work with Internet Explorer is a thing of the past.
The year is 2104. The system is SuSE 99.1. Here is the conversation:
Joe: "Why is there only a single choice of application in every category?"
Bob: "Because we've always done it that way!"
Joe: "But why have we've always done it that way? There must be a reason."
Bob: "Because new users of Linux systems want simple defaults."
Joe: "New users? What new users? We've had in-utero Linux training for twenty years now! The average age of LCSEs is six!"
Bob: "They might want to thaw Ballmer out of cryo someday, and then we would have a new user."
Joe: "Ballmer? Isn't that the guy who invented the phrase 'having a single choice is important'?"
Here's a secret few people know: users aren't any more omniscient than developers. Particularly when it comes to usability. Users don't want usability, they want familiarity.
This is especially true with OSNews reviews. This is the place where you get reviews from Mandrake users saying "Fedora sucks because it isn't Mandrake. And where you get reviews from Fedora users saying "Mandrake sucks because it isn't Mandrake."
True, Redhat *sells* boxes of software. But what you're getting for your money is the support that comes with it. Right?
Only if you're an enterprise. Of course, not even Microsoft or Sun have managed to provide worthwhile inexpensive support for the SOHO market.
Okay, it's two hours later and I've cooled off. Lesson learned, never take out your frustrations on a Slashdot post, especially when what's frustrating you is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand :-)
.NET/Mono.
While I shouldn't have been so angry in my previous reply, it still irks me that random slashdot posters speak with authority about the future. If history teaches us anything at all, it's that the future is unpredictable. Another thing it teaches us is that progress occurs through evolution, with revolution being the very rare exception.
For some strange reason, the Gnome community seems obsessed with grand sweeping generalizations based on insufficient evidence. The prime example is Havoc's assumption of expertise in the area of usability. By his own account he is not an expert! So why are we expected to accept his inexpert advice as the gospel truth? Another example is Nat telling us that the future of software is
I'm really getting tired of being told that KDE is going to be left behind in the dust just because it's not jumping into the first available bandwagon the drives onto the scene. ericdfields ended his post with "Slashdot seems to be full of impulsive radicals who vehemently stick to their OS/DE/Apps of choice, and are quick to insult anyone or anything else that's not their favorite." But it seems to me that the statement applies to him as well.
In reality, the future linux user (and really all users) will only need to access files as items in a niche program like Rhythmbox or OpenOffice/AbiWord which specifically deal with a particular document type.
I am getting sick and tired of Gnome telling me how to use my computer. They didn't buy. They don't maintain it. They don't use it. So they need to get the fuck out of my life! You guys have a hard enough time running your own lives without interrupting it to run mine.
I don't give a shit about the theoretical future Linux user. You all sound like a bunch of pansy politicians worrying about how the poor people on the other side of the tracks are getting along, when in reality the poor people on the other side of the tracks are getting along just fine without you.
You can go mess up your own backyard all day long and I won't care. But I'm sick and tired of you coming over here, leaning over my fence, and telling me how to clean mine. Why don't you go get some play-do and create a bunch of tiny little men you can preach to? They'll sure be a lot more attentive than the rest of us.
p.s. I apologize to all of you innocents that had to read my rant. I recently stopped smoking and my patience evaporated along with the nicotine.
Double-middle-click (or double-right-click, I'm not sure)
Are you shitting me? Do you know how difficult an operation that is? Never in any desktop since the beginning at Xerox PARC has anyone had to double click with anything but their index finger. And even with the index finger was considered a usability mistake.
Frankly I think Gnome needs to sit Havoc and all the other usability "experts" down and have a long father-to-son talk with them about how they need to start living in the real world.
Another view mode would have been more intuitive, but what the heck.
While another view mode would have been more intuitive, it would not have followed the Gnome philosophy of a more intuitive interface. Now isn't that intuitive?
Seriously, when a desktop starts making things harder to use in an effort to make them easier, there's a serious disconnect.
I'm telling you about a major shift away from pictoral descriptions toward textual ones in the hardware design world.
In my company we do a lot of hardware. A heck of a lot. When it comes to programming the chips the do use compilers. But that doesn't do them a damned bit of good when they're laying out a couple hundred chips on a four layer PCB board.
We still use visual diagrams of all sorts on the hardware side. If there's a shift away, then it's definitely not universal.
Drawing schematics (or UML diagrams) is very time consuming and you have to question whether or not you're getting any increased productivity for the time spent - I contend you aren't.
At the level Rational "recommends", you aren't. It's simply overkill. Their view seems to be to design it down to such a low level that you never need to write any code. They also seem to want to to put everything into one humongous diagram. That's ridiculous. The best way to use UML is to keep it high level. Just like writing a function, if a diagram won't fit on one sheet of paper, break it up.
Why not just use XML in the first place?
Because XML is not easily readable by mortals. XML is not an end product, no matter what the glassy eyed disciples at xml.org tell you. It's middle-ware. You render, transform, process, fold, spindle and mutilate XML, but you do not read it. And you certainly don't give it to your partner saying "here's the design".
Rational (among others) seems to think of UML as a code generation tool. They're nuts in my opinion. I, the software developer, am the code generation tool! With UML we're still at the analysis and design phase. We don't start implementing until much later.
PHB's want pretty pictures to look at.
So does everyone else. Well, maybe not you. But most everyone else does. The pretty pictures should definitely not be the only documenation, but they make a fine addition to it.
It's much easier to get a grasp of a complex software construct with a couple of pages of UML then it is with fifty pages of monospaced XML.
We're talking software here, not hardware. If you have some objections to UML, please state them in software terms.
p.s. There are valid objections to UML, it's just that your analogy isn't one of them.
p.p.s. And no matter how many valid objections you come up with, management likes to see UML, so it's all pointless.
There are two kinds of tools. One is a drawing tool. Great for diagrams you have to drop into documentation. dia is a great example of this. The other kind generates the code for you, but the diagramming is more primitive. Umbrello and Argo are examples of this.
I personally hate things that try to generate code for me, so I prefer the former style of tool.