"I don't really care if Joe Sixpack has a hard time."
I don't either, but I do care when I have problems.
I tried the dvdrtools approach, and had the first really hard lockup crash I can remember. dvdrecord -scanbus didn't find anything, there were a couple of console messages about hdd dma timeouts, and then a hard crash. I hadn't compiled magic sysrq in this kernel (2.6.11), and I might have missed whatever config option enables IDE CD writers or something, but that was just a painful experience.
I'm back to 2.4, entirely because of this cd burning problem.
One, because I wasn't going to get paid, ever. Actually, I think I was fired from that one, for complaining about not being paid. I was young and dumb, and at the time I really needed leisure time more than I needed money anyway.
Two, because I was asked by a manager to report hours worked on time sheets that were completely inaccurate. Turns out this is a crime. A Federal Crime. A Federal pound-me-in-the-ass-in-prison crime. The people who get upset about it are at the Social Security office, and they did not like what I was telling them. The company was Tandy corporation, the city was Dallas Texas, the year was 1986, and I'd put down the names of the people involved if I could remember them. Criminals, using me as a vehicle to commit tax fraud for Tandy's benefit. Some nerve.
I don't think you understand why the thing that bothers me, bothers me so much:
A driver that worked in 2.4 broke in 2.6, but it was never tagged in the config as "experimental" or "broken". (Not even after I reported it.)
It really upsets me to see things presented as "stable, ready for production" that are known to be broken.
You want to get political with ATI, and I just want hardware that's listed as compatable to work. If it can't work, then I don't want to see it on a compatability list, and I don't want to see it in the kernel config if I turn off "experimental." This is not an unreasonable request at this stage of the game, please.
Fine. But go to your nearest computer store, and count the number of ATAPI CDRW devices, then count the number of SCSI CDRW devices. Next, do an inventory of the PC's around you. How many have SCSI CDRW's and how many have IDE CDRW's?
I understand the technical reasons why SCSI is a better transport and ATAPI is just SCSI over IDE, but this doesn't matter to the end user one bit. All he wants is to write to the device, period, and it's too much to ask for this to be automatic.
>As a kernel hacker, what would you do?
I'd try to keep my dirty laundry off the end-user's console in a production system.
>He produces the best CD/DVD writing application >for linux
It's good when it works, which is usually. I just don't think it should be necessary to do as much diagnostic work as it is, and it should be much more obvious what arguments to give -scanbus when you want ATA, ATAPI, or ide-scsi support.
I can deal with this interface, but then I have more than 10 years experience with Linux. I would not want to explain cdrecord to a client, and I would not want to explain the little jab in the output of cdrecord, in a professional setting.
Ugly comments in the source code, and arguments on a developer list are one thing, but ugly comments in the console output of your application can undo credibility -- and open source credibility is not always easily gained.
"I am sick and tired of the next Kernel announcement talking about its support for some esoteric system or system that most of us don't use."
Two things have really bothered me, one was the fact that framebuffer console support for ATI Radeon cards was horribly broken in kernel releases that were supposed to be "stable, tested, for production". This went on forever. It started working again in 2.6.8, I think. It should have been flagged as experimental, if it didn't work. Without the framebuffer device, I can't use the system at all; it's essential to me. In fact, it's on the short list of things Linux will do, that Solaris, FreeBSD, and Windows will not do.
The other thing that bothered me, has to do with CD Writing. It seems that in kernel developer land, more people have SCSI CD Writers, and IDE CD Writers are unusual. But in the real world, IDE CD writers are far more common, and SCSI CD Writers are prohibitively expensive. But the whole CD Writing support treats IDE CD Writers like some kind of odd hardware from the top to the bottom, and the developer of the cdrecord client has been totally unprofessional about the whole thing.
If I'm doing audio recording or editing, I'm much more comfortable in Windows. This despite persistent assertions that Macs are superior for A/V production, or that Linux audio has arrived.
If I'm editing text in a text editor, I'm far more productive in a 100x37 linux framebuffer console running Vim and Screen, than any other environment. I realize I can have 100x37 xterms, or even RXVT's on windows, but it's not the same.
But if I'm working with Eclipse, I prefer it to be running on my X desktop, but I'll settle for Windows.
"The real challenge would to do this with a regular jigsaw puzzle, not a specially rigged one."
If it's precise enough it should be able to put the puzzle together by only looking at the back of the pieces, perhaps with intervention whenever two pieces happen to hash to the same shape. Otherwise you should not even need the picture.
I was trying not to mention Homestar Runner. The guy whose idea that was used to work in the art department at my company, and quit to do the website full time.
Off topic, but I've got $20 in a Bank One account in Texas, but I don't live in Texas. Numerous calls to Bank One have done absolutely no good. I cannot close the account without taking the money out, and I cannot take the money out without going to Texas and doing it in person. But every 6 weeks, I get a letter from Bank One insisting that I have an account open, yadda yadda yadda. This has gone on for years.
I don't know what my point is, but the experience makes me not want to use Bank One at all.
Oh, they send me a new ATM card once in a while too. I don't like having this account, since I think it might be an ID theft exploit waiting to happen.
You misunderstand. I don't hold independent art to the same standards as commercial art which is delivered with advertising on a premium cable channel for instance.
A flute player on the street might get a generous tip from me in his hat. But I'd have an entirely different opinion of the same guy if I paid tickets at the price of James Galway and saw him instead.
This ATHF thing hits that nerve for me. It's cool, when the expectation is of an independent cartoon that some clown made for fun, but as an offering on a premium channel with all kinds of commercials and hype, it does not live up to the expectations that are created for it, and it does not return my investment sufficiently enough to remain interesting.
I did like the scene in the ride at the tar pits though.
"So being mainstream made it less funny? I don't get it..."
It's not that it's mainstream, I don't mind that. I watched it for a while and realized it's not of a production quality that deserves the airtime. As an independent work, a flash movie or something, it was outstanding, and the scarcity made it interesting. But as an offering on a premium cable channel, with extreme loads of advertising and a presentation as if it's the next coming of the Simpson's or whatever, it falls short of expectations.
"RTFA! He's MC Pee Pants from ATHF. If you don't know who that is, you just don't watch enough cartoons."
I first saw ATHF, as a collection of some mpg video a friend had. I thought it was some kind of underground thing, and I thought it was pretty funny. Later I realized it's in syndication and is aired on mainstream cable cartoon channels. I stopped caring at that point.
Doesn't seem like it at first glance. If a stop sign was some color other than red and some shape other than octagon, would you regard it as an official stop sign? In Quebec, a sign that is not in English and French is not regulation, and would not necessarily be construed as being official against the milieu of offical signs that do follow the regulation.
Now, without knowing the details, I can see where the argument may come from. You say she won the case? She prevailed upon people who were much more aware of the details than I am. I'll bet this turns out to be perfectly reasonable, one of those things where the summary seems so outrageous (like the H*t McD*n*lds C*ff** story), but upon closer reading, makes perfect sense.
"TRUE.COM's only advantage in the marketplace is the fact that they do background checks. Once this law passes, all online dating services will do background checks, and TRUE.COM will have lost whatever meager advantage they once had."
It would become routine to "perform a background check", thereby diluting the value of background checks in general, and doing a net disservice to society as a result.
"There is no law which requires this warning to be placed on cigarettes."
You could argue that the agreement itself, being a court-ordered instrument, is law.
But this dating-service disclaimer thing won't pass, and if it did pass, it would not be obeyed, it would be challenged on first amendment grounds at least, and probably from many other angles. Or the dating ads would find a way around it, by simply changing the format slightly so as not to be subject to the narrowly tailored law that would suppress them.
If the law were not narrowly tailored, it's got an even bigger problem. It must be a clear and narrow restraint which serves a compelling state interest, or else it's an unconstitutional restraint on speech. Don't give me this "personal" versus "commercial" crap, either. Prior restraint is prior restraint, and the legal idea in the story won't fly.
It's not news that some state rep from a backwoods district was persuaded to propose a bill.
"Perhaps you have the good fortune to work in a better environment than I do, or maybe you work more with user-interactive code."
Back-end business software, sales and bookkeeping stuff. Our goals are geared more toward reliability and successful deployment than any kind of optimization. I often wish I worked in an environment where performance mattered, because I know how to make processes more efficient and I enjoy doing that.
Slashdot Mirror
"I don't really care if Joe Sixpack has a hard time."
I don't either, but I do care when I have problems.
I tried the dvdrtools approach, and had the first really hard lockup crash I can remember. dvdrecord -scanbus didn't find anything, there were a couple of console messages about hdd dma timeouts, and then a hard crash. I hadn't compiled magic sysrq in this kernel (2.6.11), and I might have missed whatever config option enables IDE CD writers or something, but that was just a painful experience.
I'm back to 2.4, entirely because of this cd burning problem.
One, because I wasn't going to get paid, ever. Actually, I think I was fired from that one, for complaining about not being paid. I was young and dumb, and at the time I really needed leisure time more than I needed money anyway.
Two, because I was asked by a manager to report hours worked on time sheets that were completely inaccurate. Turns out this is a crime. A Federal Crime. A Federal pound-me-in-the-ass-in-prison crime. The people who get upset about it are at the Social Security office, and they did not like what I was telling them. The company was Tandy corporation, the city was Dallas Texas, the year was 1986, and I'd put down the names of the people involved if I could remember them. Criminals, using me as a vehicle to commit tax fraud for Tandy's benefit. Some nerve.
Thanks for the info.
I don't think you understand why the thing that bothers me, bothers me so much:
A driver that worked in 2.4 broke in 2.6, but it was never tagged in the config as "experimental" or "broken". (Not even after I reported it.)
It really upsets me to see things presented as "stable, ready for production" that are known to be broken.
You want to get political with ATI, and I just want hardware that's listed as compatable to work.
If it can't work, then I don't want to see it on a compatability list, and I don't want to see it in the kernel config if I turn off "experimental." This is not an unreasonable request at this stage of the game, please.
I'll try dvdrecord.
"You don't need ide-scsi any more, since about 2.6.9, one of the release candidates. Just use
I could not make it work, tried several burners, and have reverted to 2.4 for this reason.
"ATI is not very supportive of Linux and we only have time to reverse engineer some of the propritory crap."
My frustration comes from the fact that the Radeon driver worked perfectly until 2.6, and then broke.
"Get a Nividia card for Linux."
Which one, and how can I be sure that I can get the kind of consoles I need?
"because they are
Fine. But go to your nearest computer store, and count the number of ATAPI CDRW devices, then count the number of SCSI CDRW devices. Next, do an inventory of the PC's around you. How many have SCSI CDRW's and how many have IDE CDRW's?
I understand the technical reasons why SCSI is a better transport and ATAPI is just SCSI over IDE, but this doesn't matter to the end user one bit. All he wants is to write to the device, period, and it's too much to ask for this to be automatic.
>As a kernel hacker, what would you do?
I'd try to keep my dirty laundry off the end-user's console in a production system.
>He produces the best CD/DVD writing application
>for linux
It's good when it works, which is usually. I just don't think it should be necessary to do as much diagnostic work as it is, and it should be much more obvious what arguments to give -scanbus when you want ATA, ATAPI, or ide-scsi support.
I can deal with this interface, but then I have more than 10 years experience with Linux. I would not want to explain cdrecord to a client, and I would not want to explain the little jab in the output of cdrecord, in a professional setting.
Ugly comments in the source code, and arguments on a developer list are one thing, but ugly comments in the console output of your application can undo credibility -- and open source credibility is not always easily gained.
"But, judging from your low
Takes one to know one number 2353.
"it's ok to give up some of my rights in these trying times, it's for the good of the country."
It is okay for you to give up your rights.
It stops being okay when you try to give up MY rights.
"I am sick and tired of the next Kernel announcement talking about its support for some esoteric system or system that most of us don't use."
Two things have really bothered me, one was the fact that framebuffer console support for ATI Radeon cards was horribly broken in kernel releases that were supposed to be "stable, tested, for production". This went on forever. It started working again in 2.6.8, I think. It should have been flagged as experimental, if it didn't work. Without the framebuffer device, I can't use the system at all; it's essential to me. In fact, it's on the short list of things Linux will do, that Solaris, FreeBSD, and Windows will not do.
The other thing that bothered me, has to do with CD Writing. It seems that in kernel developer land, more people have SCSI CD Writers, and IDE CD Writers are unusual. But in the real world, IDE CD writers are far more common, and SCSI CD Writers are prohibitively expensive. But the whole CD Writing support treats IDE CD Writers like some kind of odd hardware from the top to the bottom, and the developer of the cdrecord client has been totally unprofessional about the whole thing.
If I'm doing audio recording or editing, I'm much more comfortable in Windows. This despite persistent assertions that Macs are superior for A/V production, or that Linux audio has arrived.
If I'm editing text in a text editor, I'm far more productive in a 100x37 linux framebuffer console running Vim and Screen, than any other environment. I realize I can have 100x37 xterms, or even RXVT's on windows, but it's not the same.
But if I'm working with Eclipse, I prefer it to be running on my X desktop, but I'll settle for Windows.
"The real challenge would to do this with a regular jigsaw puzzle, not a specially rigged one."
If it's precise enough it should be able to put the puzzle together by only looking at the back of the pieces, perhaps with intervention whenever two pieces happen to hash to the same shape. Otherwise you should not even need the picture.
" ...and I bet you use a linux-based OS because it's 1337, too."
Don't you?
I was trying not to mention Homestar Runner. The guy whose idea that was used to work in the art department at my company, and quit to do the website full time.
Off topic, but I've got $20 in a Bank One account in Texas, but I don't live in Texas. Numerous calls to Bank One have done absolutely no good. I cannot close the account without taking the money out, and I cannot take the money out without going to Texas and doing it in person. But every 6 weeks, I get a letter from Bank One insisting that I have an account open, yadda yadda yadda. This has gone on for years.
I don't know what my point is, but the experience makes me not want to use Bank One at all.
Oh, they send me a new ATM card once in a while too. I don't like having this account, since I think it might be an ID theft exploit waiting to happen.
You misunderstand. I don't hold independent art to the same standards as commercial art which is delivered with advertising on a premium cable channel for instance.
A flute player on the street might get a generous tip from me in his hat. But I'd have an entirely different opinion of the same guy if I paid tickets at the price of James Galway and saw him instead.
This ATHF thing hits that nerve for me. It's cool, when the expectation is of an independent cartoon that some clown made for fun, but as an offering on a premium channel with all kinds of commercials and hype, it does not live up to the expectations that are created for it, and it does not return my investment sufficiently enough to remain interesting.
I did like the scene in the ride at the tar pits though.
"So being mainstream made it less funny? I don't get it..."
It's not that it's mainstream, I don't mind that. I watched it for a while and realized it's not of a production quality that deserves the airtime. As an independent work, a flash movie or something, it was outstanding, and the scarcity made it interesting. But as an offering on a premium cable channel, with extreme loads of advertising and a presentation as if it's the next coming of the Simpson's or whatever, it falls short of expectations.
Hey, did you know that Denny Laine was in another band before Wings????
"Then I fired off a letter to all of those institutions about why I wouldn't bank there and one to my current bank about why I did."
Are you going to name these banks or do you expect everyone else to duplicate your research?
"Turns out the Lab assistant that installed the lock thought it'd be cool if any card he pulled out of his wallet would open the door."
How in the hell did they get him to admit that?
"RTFA! He's MC Pee Pants from ATHF. If you don't know who that is, you just don't watch enough cartoons."
I first saw ATHF, as a collection of some mpg video a friend had. I thought it was some kind of underground thing, and I thought it was pretty funny. Later I realized it's in syndication and is aired on mainstream cable cartoon channels. I stopped caring at that point.
>Major illogic Boggle, en?
Doesn't seem like it at first glance. If a stop sign was some color other than red and some shape other than octagon, would you regard it as an official stop sign? In Quebec, a sign that is not in English and French is not regulation, and would not necessarily be construed as being official against the milieu of offical signs that do follow the regulation.
Now, without knowing the details, I can see where the argument may come from. You say she won the case? She prevailed upon people who were much more aware of the details than I am. I'll bet this turns out to be perfectly reasonable, one of those things where the summary seems so outrageous (like the H*t McD*n*lds C*ff** story), but upon closer reading, makes perfect sense.
"5215 N. O'Connor, Suite 1600 Irving, TX 75039 1.866-583-TRUE"
Las Colinas. If that's not the Initech Building from Office Space, it's in the same neighborhood.
"TRUE.COM's only advantage in the marketplace is the fact that they do background checks. Once this law passes, all online dating services will do background checks, and TRUE.COM will have lost whatever meager advantage they once had."
It would become routine to "perform a background check", thereby diluting the value of background checks in general, and doing a net disservice to society as a result.
"There is no law which requires this warning to be placed on cigarettes."
You could argue that the agreement itself, being a court-ordered instrument, is law.
But this dating-service disclaimer thing won't pass, and if it did pass, it would not be obeyed, it would be challenged on first amendment grounds at least, and probably from many other angles. Or the dating ads would find a way around it, by simply changing the format slightly so as not to be subject to the narrowly tailored law that would suppress them.
If the law were not narrowly tailored, it's got an even bigger problem. It must be a clear and narrow restraint which serves a compelling state interest, or else it's an unconstitutional restraint on speech. Don't give me this "personal" versus "commercial" crap, either. Prior restraint is prior restraint, and the legal idea in the story won't fly.
It's not news that some state rep from a backwoods district was persuaded to propose a bill.
How could this kind of law possibly stand up to even the most cursory first amendment test?
"Perhaps you have the good fortune to work in a better environment than I do, or maybe you work more with user-interactive code."
Back-end business software, sales and bookkeeping stuff. Our goals are geared more toward reliability and successful deployment than any kind of optimization. I often wish I worked in an environment where performance mattered, because I know how to make processes more efficient and I enjoy doing that.