Re:Best to hold off until the bugs are worked out.
on
Send out the Clones?
·
· Score: 2
Mice can't even be cloned yet properly without a high percentage of them suddenly becoming morbidly obese upon reaching what would be the human equivalent of about 30.
And what's wrong with that? That's almost exactly how it works in this trailer park..
Anyway, giving Kremnik a copy of the program is very unfair especially if the copy includes the database of computer openings
Not really, given that grandmaster games tend to be catalogued, scrutinized, and generally public knowledge. Deep Blue (and its programmers) had access to many of Kasparov's old games. In fact there is the true story (really) of one 'normal' student-player who fought out a draw with a grandmaster. The GM wondered how the student was finding his moves so quickly, and it turned out that the GM had actually played the same game before and the student had memorized it:)
Wish I could remember the name of that GM, but then I couldn't waste more time trolling/.
If you want fair, then the programmers should have to make the computers build their own book
Many programs (including crafty, last I checked) can and do build their own opening books. (or you can feed it a pre-done one).. The positions are stored along with their evaluations and a move is selected accordingly (higher-evaluated moves being played more often)
Wouldn't it be possible, then, to simply have a program with enough memory
The short answer is that the amount of memory you're talking about is, um, *way* out there. Most better chess programs try to approximate that with an opening book and endgame databases. (Heh, I think that's actually cheating, morally speaking, but then I've never been a big fan of the 'same old opening'.. maybe that's why I lose so much)
shorting the time even a little bit between moves might give Vladimir Kramnik an advantage.
Incorrect. The less time a human has to think, the more prone they are to dumb mistakes. Given a fraction of a second the machine can generally come up with a move that doesn't suck *too* bad. You can verify this by hooking up to one of your favorite chess servers and checking out the respective lightning/blitz/standard chess ratings of a computer player.
Machine chess has advanced to the point where they are impossible to beat tactically; best to up the time and rely on the human's (hopefully) better evaluation and tree-pruning algorithms to create a better strategy.
One of the many ways kasparov was 'disadvantaged' (from a human POV) against deep blue was that he didn't have enough time.
Incidentally, what is up with all the 'deep' monikers? Yeah Deep Thought was a great name waybackwhen but it's gotten old. 'Shredder' is much cooler even though it reminds me of TMNT...
However, as something in their favour, the most 'vocal' critics of KDE shut up and started refining Gtk, which also runs on both platforms. I believe those people had and have the right to criticize KDE for their choices. Thankfully, as I perceive it, these are the most pragmatic people, and the ones now working the hardest on interoperability.
That's fair enough:) and something I didn't know. thx
I didn't know if the GPL is specific to Free Operating Systems, or that proprietary Unix vendors (eg Sun) can use Qt under the GPL as well. I understand from your words that this is the case?
"yes". Trolltech's website, if you'll look for "free edition", specifically mentions it being a Unix/X11 solution. (sorry for the marketspeak)..there's nothing in qt's license that prevents that, or the gpl for that matter. There is in fact a binary package for tru64 up at kde's website (no idea how well it works tho).
I'll assume that you're working with an expendable (read replacable) work force (it is not so in my division.. if we can get some brains out of you we typically don't care what weird problems you have..)
You have to balance the money lost from *potential* health problems with the cost of finding qualified, perfect personnel. I still believe the costs you cite are lost in the general noise of people not being perfect. You don't happen to smoke do you? If so, or you hire any employees who smoke, you're bleeding away sick days. That's expensive. Best to fire them immediately. And fat people too. Boy am I tired of looking at *those* walking heart attacks.
... in one paragraph you say:
And why should they be forced to do this? From the perspective of wealth creation, which is preferable? A handicapped employee that is going to cost way too much to keep around (in terms of special equipment, medical bills, etc.)
and in another you say:
I have hired many handicapped people based on their merits and that is how I will continue to handle things, because I believe that any other way is an insult to the handicapped population and their collective abilities.
.. so basically you're saying you'll hire a dude in a wheelchair, as long as he makes you enough money more than the other candidate to offset the cost (including hassle!) of that stupid ramp you had to have built?... hmmm. excellent point actually.
Ok, the fine line you are failing to discriminate (no particular reason for picking that word) here is that 20/20 vision is (quite) nescessary to perform the pilot's job. A tendency for CTS can be caught in the bud and mostly prevented.
I'm all for (voluntary) genetic testing. I'm not for employee screening based on potential 'risks'.
A business whose profits and wealth creation potential rely on having employees who do not have CTS
Very freakin' indirectly!
You're advocating employee screening based upon *incidental* genetic characteristics. Which incidentally is not what the company in question was trying to do. Getting a spinal column check before going to work for a moving company, I can see. Denying employment because of a long-term avoidable health risk is completely different.
Your premise taken to its conclusion is a mess. While we're at it why don't we just make sure and only hire the genetically perfect people? Much lower health insurance costs as you say. Shit wearing glasses is a drawback -- bigger chance they might decide to get an eye exam. Pale geek skin? Cancer risk. Throw in some healthy racial profiling and we're all set.
Even given that, I don't have a problem with a company asking nicely for certain tests. If they can help the employee. Hell I'd like an ergonomic keyboard. These guys 1) didn't ask and 2) threatened to fire a person in at least one case. 3) Did you *read* the *original* article? They only tested the employees that filed claims against them. That's... that's...
how is this type of a scenario any less objectionable than the "lemon laws" that used automobile dealers are forced to comply with
Yeah because I always get people confused with cars too. I thought I was cynical.
That's an easy one. Most of the core KDE team is employed by Trolltech nowadays, so KDE is being massively funded on the sale of proprietary software (Qt/Windows and Qt/Embedded).
Right and wrong. Right in the sense that kde gets a free toolkit funded by proprietary sales. In fact the only 'free software' companies I know turning a tidy profit today are companies that combine supporting free software with proprietary sales, namely Trolltech and Cygnus (probably a good reason RH just broke even). I heard Suse might be doing well but I'm going to guess that's because their customers don't generally have fat internet pipes.
Wrong in the sense that the kde core team is not employed by trolltech. 1) Many of the best kde people work for other companies (ex. dfaure/mandrakesoft) 2) Most of the trolltech guys, with the possible exception of the ghost of ettrich (kwin), are less active in the kde scene than they used to be. Which is not a slam, btw. 3) There are *way* too many important developers for you to lump them into a group like that. It's like saying that all the core gnome developers work for Ximian.. uh..
In fact some of the more fanatic anti-KDE crowd may have a point in continuously bringing up Qt's licensing issues (although the real pain is past now, with Qt/Linux being GPL).
Bah. They have no point. They are only showing that it's easier to bitch than to port qt to windows themselves. Which *can* be done, it took one guy (hi tor) to do the gtk/windows port! And you should have said Qt/Unix.
The practical difference between Trolltech and Eazel (as regards Linux) is, Trolltech's not currently going down the crapper, so they'll have a lot more opportunity to support free software.
I read this article and it got me thinking about
all the sh*t I went thru in high school. I think my
normal care-free personality just regressed 7 years
back. Thanks a lot jon katz.
Re:What determines what makes a release frontpage?
on
Bonobo 1.0 released
·
· Score: 1
How about plugging, say, only the initial releases of truly innovative software?
I know the perpertual-beta versioning most programs around here now use makes things a bit different.. I still find it quite ironic that you levy *this* complaint against a 1.0 release:)
What determines what makes a release frontpage?
the editors grabbing the first submission that coincides with their crack high, I think.
That would give the rest of us the chance to get slashdot attention.
However, this book is not available online in html format.
Maximum RPM A ten second google search turned that one up. Also try www.rpm.org, where you can get a latex version.
However, *some* of us dont use X windows,
Why not? You're crippling yourself to not run it long enough to print out a hardcopy.
and for us select few, we cant view it.
Try lynx.
I have however, converted it from that format to text, losing much of the styling and formatting.
Yes, that's what happens when you convert something to plaintext.
In the spirit of open source, dont you feel that it is completely BACKWARDS to have a open source tool, where the documentation that allows developers to package using it is proprietary, non-open,
Well, it's not like you can't redistribute it. For free. However it looks like you have to ask permission to modify it. Point granted.
and subject to licensing restrictions?!!?
As most licences are. See "GPL"
The man page doesnt even *mention* half the creation commandline options, and I think that was on purpose.
Perhaps in the interest of brevity? Are you annoyed that they didn't translate maximum rpm into a man page? I'm guessing most people want to know how to use it from a user's, not packager's, perspective. What you want would count as "too much information"
Compunding the issue is the fact that the book has not been updated in years, let alone since the coming of rpm4!
(sigh) Look, this book was pretty good when I used it but I did not take it to be the end-all and be-all rpm bible forever and ever and I doubt redhat intended it to be. There are many various sources of documentation on rpm, I'm sure you can find one that's more up-to-date. Check www.rpm.org.
As a developer, I would love to hear why you dont want me to package using your system. The reasons outlined above lead me to that conclusion.
As a fellow developer, I can't think of a better documented system. On any OS. Which I know is begging for a counterexample, but I would be interested to know about it. Perhaps someone can send me the URL for 'Maximum Dpkg'.
My question was about the set of attitudes and practices that systematically ignore the most basic security principles and lead to frequent releases of software with gaping security holes. Note the difference: honest mistakes vs. deliberate adoption of poor doctrine and practices.
Occam's razor is going to dictate that some clueless wank(s) at microsoft didn't consider the consequences.
Also, you're going to have to give more examples of 'poor doctrine and practices', because I don't think anybody agrees on what qualifies. I'm sure ms is isoxxxx compliant. If you're talking about poor practice in general, I would refer you to linux-mandrake 7.2. They took a kde 2.0 beta and deliberately shipped it to meet an xmas deadline. They give a pretty good justification of it. (disclaimer: I use LM, but not 7.2)
If you're talking about security in particular, we could either talk about the long history of sendmail exploits, but how vendors shipped it anyway ("this time for sure!") or how several key linux distributors enabled (what turned out to be) remotely exploitable services by default with old releases, because *they didn't consider the consequences*. Even though in *retrospect* it seems obvious and suspect of some systemic flaw. Or to put it in your terms "poor doctrine and practices".
People screw up. You're living in a dream world. You've also incorrectly assumed that your priorities agree with everyone else's priorities.
He did not address the larger concern - and the thrust of my question - which was how such ill-designed software got out the door in the first place.
oh please. I could ask the same about redhat 6.0 and the should-have-been-beta version of gnome they shipped by default *and all the security flaws they didn't catch*. people make mistakes sometimes and being some big faceless monster corportation doesn't change that. either you're not a developer, or I'd really like to work for your company.
Anonymous cowards like you hurt the whole site. So why don't you shut the fuck up?
There's no time for us
There's no place for us
What is this thing that fills our dreams
Yet slips away from us?
There's no chance for us
It's all decided for us
This world has only one sweet moment
Set aside for us.
Who wants to live forever?
Who wants to live forever
Oh_______ when love must die?
Touch my tears
With your lips
Touch my world
With your fingertips
And we can have forever
And we can love forever
Forever....
Forever....
Forever... is our today.
Who wants to live forever?
Who wants to love forever?
Who dares to love forever?
Oh________
Who waits forever anyway?
(I would attribute this properly, but any self-respecting person should know it..)
Slashdot Mirror
And what's wrong with that? That's almost exactly how it works in this trailer park..
Or a game of russian roulette with all six chambers loaded.
Unless it turns out that chess doesn't work that way. As I recall, in a 'perfect' game of Connect Four the 2nd person to move always wins.
Not really, given that grandmaster games tend to be catalogued, scrutinized, and generally public knowledge. Deep Blue (and its programmers) had access to many of Kasparov's old games. In fact there is the true story (really) of one 'normal' student-player who fought out a draw with a grandmaster. The GM wondered how the student was finding his moves so quickly, and it turned out that the GM had actually played the same game before and the student had memorized it :)
Wish I could remember the name of that GM, but then I couldn't waste more time trolling /.
Many programs (including crafty, last I checked) can and do build their own opening books. (or you can feed it a pre-done one) .. The positions are stored along with their evaluations and a move is selected accordingly (higher-evaluated moves being played more often)
The short answer is that the amount of memory you're talking about is, um, *way* out there. Most better chess programs try to approximate that with an opening book and endgame databases. (Heh, I think that's actually cheating, morally speaking, but then I've never been a big fan of the 'same old opening' .. maybe that's why I lose so much)
Incorrect. The less time a human has to think, the more prone they are to dumb mistakes. Given a fraction of a second the machine can generally come up with a move that doesn't suck *too* bad. You can verify this by hooking up to one of your favorite chess servers and checking out the respective lightning/blitz/standard chess ratings of a computer player.
Machine chess has advanced to the point where they are impossible to beat tactically; best to up the time and rely on the human's (hopefully) better evaluation and tree-pruning algorithms to create a better strategy.
One of the many ways kasparov was 'disadvantaged' (from a human POV) against deep blue was that he didn't have enough time.
Incidentally, what is up with all the 'deep' monikers? Yeah Deep Thought was a great name waybackwhen but it's gotten old. 'Shredder' is much cooler even though it reminds me of TMNT...
That's fair enough :) and something I didn't know. thx
I didn't know if the GPL is specific to Free Operating Systems, or that proprietary Unix vendors (eg Sun) can use Qt under the GPL as well. I understand from your words that this is the case?
"yes". Trolltech's website, if you'll look for "free edition", specifically mentions it being a Unix/X11 solution. (sorry for the marketspeak) ..there's nothing in qt's license that prevents that, or the gpl for that matter. There is in fact a binary package for tru64 up at kde's website (no idea how well it works tho).
You have to balance the money lost from *potential* health problems with the cost of finding qualified, perfect personnel. I still believe the costs you cite are lost in the general noise of people not being perfect. You don't happen to smoke do you? If so, or you hire any employees who smoke, you're bleeding away sick days. That's expensive. Best to fire them immediately. And fat people too. Boy am I tired of looking at *those* walking heart attacks.
and in another you say: I have hired many handicapped people based on their merits and that is how I will continue to handle things, because I believe that any other way is an insult to the handicapped population and their collective abilities.
I'm all for (voluntary) genetic testing. I'm not for employee screening based on potential 'risks'.
A business whose profits and wealth creation potential rely on having employees who do not have CTS
Very freakin' indirectly! You're advocating employee screening based upon *incidental* genetic characteristics. Which incidentally is not what the company in question was trying to do. Getting a spinal column check before going to work for a moving company, I can see. Denying employment because of a long-term avoidable health risk is completely different.
Your premise taken to its conclusion is a mess. While we're at it why don't we just make sure and only hire the genetically perfect people? Much lower health insurance costs as you say. Shit wearing glasses is a drawback -- bigger chance they might decide to get an eye exam. Pale geek skin? Cancer risk. Throw in some healthy racial profiling and we're all set.
Even given that, I don't have a problem with a company asking nicely for certain tests. If they can help the employee. Hell I'd like an ergonomic keyboard. These guys 1) didn't ask and 2) threatened to fire a person in at least one case. 3) Did you *read* the *original* article? They only tested the employees that filed claims against them. That's ... that's...
how is this type of a scenario any less objectionable than the "lemon laws" that used automobile dealers are forced to comply with
Yeah because I always get people confused with cars too. I thought I was cynical.
Right and wrong. Right in the sense that kde gets a free toolkit funded by proprietary sales. In fact the only 'free software' companies I know turning a tidy profit today are companies that combine supporting free software with proprietary sales, namely Trolltech and Cygnus (probably a good reason RH just broke even). I heard Suse might be doing well but I'm going to guess that's because their customers don't generally have fat internet pipes.
Wrong in the sense that the kde core team is not employed by trolltech. 1) Many of the best kde people work for other companies (ex. dfaure/mandrakesoft) 2) Most of the trolltech guys, with the possible exception of the ghost of ettrich (kwin), are less active in the kde scene than they used to be. Which is not a slam, btw. 3) There are *way* too many important developers for you to lump them into a group like that. It's like saying that all the core gnome developers work for Ximian.. uh..
In fact some of the more fanatic anti-KDE crowd may have a point in continuously bringing up Qt's licensing issues (although the real pain is past now, with Qt/Linux being GPL).
Bah. They have no point. They are only showing that it's easier to bitch than to port qt to windows themselves. Which *can* be done, it took one guy (hi tor) to do the gtk/windows port! And you should have said Qt/Unix.
The practical difference between Trolltech and Eazel (as regards Linux) is, Trolltech's not currently going down the crapper, so they'll have a lot more opportunity to support free software.
crap.
(snip)
that the pyrotechnic circuits work.
I know the perpertual-beta versioning most programs around here now use makes things a bit different.. I still find it quite ironic that you levy *this* complaint against a 1.0 release :)
What determines what makes a release frontpage?
the editors grabbing the first submission that coincides with their crack high, I think.
That would give the rest of us the chance to get slashdot attention.
That's what freshmeat is for.
Name/Alias: Cheezman
Age: 16
Grade: 11
Favorite Class(es): Basket-Weaving
Interest(s): Girls
Position(s) on team: just there to look good
Reason(s) for joining team: to make our team look good
Brief history of your self: I was born and now i am eye-candy for the ladies
Other(for anything else you want to say): if any hot girls wants a date, call me and i'll see if i can fit you in.
However, this book is not available online in html format.
Maximum RPM A ten second google search turned that one up. Also try www.rpm.org, where you can get a latex version.
However, *some* of us dont use X windows,
Why not? You're crippling yourself to not run it long enough to print out a hardcopy.
and for us select few, we cant view it.
Try lynx.
I have however, converted it from that format to text, losing much of the styling and formatting.
Yes, that's what happens when you convert something to plaintext.
In the spirit of open source, dont you feel that it is completely BACKWARDS to have a open source tool, where the documentation that allows developers to package using it is proprietary, non-open,
Well, it's not like you can't redistribute it. For free. However it looks like you have to ask permission to modify it. Point granted.
and subject to licensing restrictions?!!?
As most licences are. See "GPL"
The man page doesnt even *mention* half the creation commandline options, and I think that was on purpose.
Perhaps in the interest of brevity? Are you annoyed that they didn't translate maximum rpm into a man page? I'm guessing most people want to know how to use it from a user's, not packager's, perspective. What you want would count as "too much information"
Compunding the issue is the fact that the book has not been updated in years, let alone since the coming of rpm4!
(sigh) Look, this book was pretty good when I used it but I did not take it to be the end-all and be-all rpm bible forever and ever and I doubt redhat intended it to be. There are many various sources of documentation on rpm, I'm sure you can find one that's more up-to-date. Check www.rpm.org.
As a developer, I would love to hear why you dont want me to package using your system. The reasons outlined above lead me to that conclusion.
As a fellow developer, I can't think of a better documented system. On any OS. Which I know is begging for a counterexample, but I would be interested to know about it. Perhaps someone can send me the URL for 'Maximum Dpkg'.
Respectfully, buck
guess not.
My question was about the set of attitudes and practices that systematically ignore the most basic security principles and lead to frequent releases of software with gaping security holes. Note the difference: honest mistakes vs. deliberate adoption of poor doctrine and practices.
Occam's razor is going to dictate that some clueless wank(s) at microsoft didn't consider the consequences.
Also, you're going to have to give more examples of 'poor doctrine and practices', because I don't think anybody agrees on what qualifies. I'm sure ms is isoxxxx compliant. If you're talking about poor practice in general, I would refer you to linux-mandrake 7.2. They took a kde 2.0 beta and deliberately shipped it to meet an xmas deadline. They give a pretty good justification of it. (disclaimer: I use LM, but not 7.2)
If you're talking about security in particular, we could either talk about the long history of sendmail exploits, but how vendors shipped it anyway ("this time for sure!") or how several key linux distributors enabled (what turned out to be) remotely exploitable services by default with old releases, because *they didn't consider the consequences*. Even though in *retrospect* it seems obvious and suspect of some systemic flaw. Or to put it in your terms "poor doctrine and practices".
People screw up. You're living in a dream world. You've also incorrectly assumed that your priorities agree with everyone else's priorities.
buck
oh please. I could ask the same about redhat 6.0 and the should-have-been-beta version of gnome they shipped by default *and all the security flaws they didn't catch*. people make mistakes sometimes and being some big faceless monster corportation doesn't change that. either you're not a developer, or I'd really like to work for your company.
Anonymous cowards like you hurt the whole site. So why don't you shut the fuck up?
because he has a different take on it than you?
buck
..sigh..
There's no time for us
There's no place for us
What is this thing that fills our dreams
Yet slips away from us?
There's no chance for us
It's all decided for us
This world has only one sweet moment
Set aside for us.
Who wants to live forever?
Who wants to live forever
Oh_______ when love must die?
Touch my tears
With your lips
Touch my world
With your fingertips
And we can have forever
And we can love forever
Forever....
Forever....
Forever... is our today.
Who wants to live forever?
Who wants to love forever?
Who dares to love forever?
Oh________
Who waits forever anyway?
(I would attribute this properly, but any self-respecting person should know it..)
"What's that lump there? It looks like a red pill." .. "no, I think it's a blue pill..."
Whatever the hell that meant.
it's a simple concept actually. in unix terms, '> /dev/null'
I thought you were talking about napster users there for a second. (ducks)