An assault on law enforcement has different symbolism that an assault (perhaps the same assault) on an individual. Law enforcement is part of socieity, and I'd argue an essential part of society (and too frequently, its deeply screwed-up). Thus attacking a policeman conveys a disrespect for society, at least on the surface.
Probably the law should be extended to all public servents, including fire fighters and social workers. As another poster commented, though, there is a perception issue with police. I don't think anyone thinks that shooting fire fighters could be part of a good game, and it's a bit pathetic that shooting police officers is considered part of a good game.
And if shooting police officers in games isn't an important part of those games, then perhaps game designers can leave such stupidity out of their games. For the Matrix games, for instance, I'd guess there would be many creative ways to avoid shooting police officers.
Have you ever seen a "two-ney"? It rocks. Gold and silver colored, with a cool border. Our quarters are lame in comparison. I've been told our mint doesn't have the right machines to even come close to the $2 Canadian coin.
And what happened to those new dollar coins we had here? I had two, and spent them. I haven't seen any more since, and that was quite a while ago.
We (Americans) don't have that many great presidents, either. But they still insist on putting them on the bills. Maybe this is because we're similarly impovrished w/r/t composers, artists, and scientists.;-) Can you imagine putting Werner von Braun's picture on a US bill? Or von Neuman's?
Actually, we do have some good scientists and artists, but Americans wouldn't recognize them anyway. OTOH, having Guass (and a bell curve *with* the expression) on a bill is way to cool for us luddites here.
US money was already thouroughly impregnated with symbols, including Masonic symbols among many others. You'd think the whole country was in on the "secret handshake" and strange ceremonies. If we were all issued those cute Shriners hats, the embarassment of the strange symbols might be worth it.
We're (Americans) also the disgrace of coin minting. The Canadians prooved it by creating a two-dollar (Canadian) coin so cool that the US has been unable to respond in kind.
Heh, that's a funny observation. On the other hand, With Coyote as a programmer, those cartoons would likely be somewhat dull. What would he send away for? ACME Pursuer-Evader Algorithm Libraries?
Wile E. Coyote, Software Genius.
Then again, they say that humor is just a small twist on mundane every-day life. Coyote as a programmer wouldn't be that far from real programmers. Just like real programmers, he'd be sure every one of his "creations" was a work of art, and expect it to work without adequate testing.
LOL. Thanks for reminding me of "Duck Season" "Rabbit Season". I agree that the Looney Toons and friends cartoons were funny when I was a kid, a teenager, and still now that I am an adult. They are very intelligent works.
Where things got stupid, IMO, is when the adults got stupid about cartoons. Everything started sliding when someone declared that Road Runner and Coyote cartoons were too violent. I'm quite certain that kids understand Coyote is his own worst enemy. I'm pretty certain it's clear that you can't push your brother off a cliff somewhere in a Southwestern desert, and expect him to live. The only people who have troubles with such distinctions are moronic do-gooding adults.
I suddenly figured that an example might be interesting. Suppose it were possible for the monkeys to create a doomsday weapon from their typewriteres, and that this weapon would destroy the entire universe. In this case, Kolmogorov's 0-1 law would not apply.
More realistically, suppose that the monkeys "learned" over time while typing, where "learn" means something like "the current actions are not independent of earlier actions". Again, Kolomogorov's 0-1 law wouldn't apply. Consider the silly situation where the monkeys happen to compose a few core English words. Suppose they find these words, for whatever reason, disagreeable because of some fundamental property that applies to all monkies. Suppose further that the monkies "learn" from this experience to never type these words again. In this case, no work of Shakespeare will ever be composed.
The problem, then would be that monkeys just aren't "random" in the "right" way. But to really understand what the previous sentence means requires a fair amount of background (at least some of which I don't have =-).
While I appreciate your point, I disagree that "probably" has no meaning in the context of inifinity. In fact, probability in the context of inifinity is very well defined due to a couple centuries of very hard work by mathematicians, statisticans, and many others.
Kolmogorov's Zero-One law is the closest thing to what you are suggesting, but note the rather interesting precondition necessary to apply this theorem. This theorem does not apply to just any type of event, nor to all inifnite sequences of random variables.
"Have the users become more stupid, or has Microsoft just enabled stupid people to use their computers?"
My primary source for this comment is my father. He has remarked, unprompted, that back in the DOS days he had some idea what the computer was doing and how to manipulate it. Now he feels helpless and confused, and can't solve even simple problems like "where do downloaded files go?".
As far as broken things, I'm not suggesting we should leave them broken. But "broken" is a funny word in this context.
I believe the filesystem *is* understandable, just as the French language is understandable. However, if you didn't grow up speaking French, you'll have some work to do if you want to understand it. Thankfully, I believe the UNIX filesystem is far easier to understand than any natural language. And once you understand the basic ideas, quite nearly *everything* begins to make sense about how the system works.
So I'm unlikely to support any effort to make the UNIX filesystem understandable. I expect such efforts will end up just like Noah Webster's efforts at "simplifying" American English spelling -- in the end, nothing will make any sense at all because the original *design* (mostly latin for English vocabulary) will have been obscured.
"I fail to see how somebody who hasn't taken the time to learn the UNIX filesystem is \"lazy\""
Perhaps we have only a semantic difference here. I'd call anyone who wants to understand the UNIX filesystem, but doesn't care to apply the necessary effort, lazy.
When you say that most people like to use their computers, not figuring out how to use it, I have to agree. And that's why I believe general purpose computers are something only a small-ish handful of people really ought to have. Computing appliances, such as dedicated email/web devices, ought to be more advanced in the marketplace.
I think it is arguable that many of the dominant computing companies have been deliberately deceiving naive consumers in order to grow the market for their products. To me, this is just like selling snake oil and calling it medicine. The upside for me is that general purpose computing hardware has ridiculously low prices. The downside is all the "friends and family" tech support I end up doing.
I think everyone would agree that the "wisdom" is not in the specific names used in "standard" UNIX-ish heirarchies. My feeling is that the wisdom is that 3 letters is enough for top-level directories, and that admins and users can learn what these directories mean if they care to.
Microsoft has created a real problem with their "talk down to users" approach. Not only have their users become stupider than they were in the DOS days (well, I only have a few datapoints), but the users EXPECT themselves to stupid (again, I only have a few datapoints). Even worse, users think it is alright to be stupid.
If you can map the color red to stop, green->go, "Safeway"->"place to buy food", and "Start->shutdown->restart"->jump to the bios initialization code, then you can learn the basics of the UNIX filesystem heirarchy. I have no compassion for the lazy, and the genuinely disinterested should be using appliances rather than general purpose computers.
I just wanted to say thank-you for your lesson on tape and broadcast archiving. I'm sure it took quite a while to compose. This is the sort of thing that keeps me coming back to/. (though less frequently than in the "early" days).
Bullshit on your bullshit. I'm calling it like I see it. I studied mathematics because I like well-defined systems. Naming an operating system after a kernel is stupid.
I'm guessing that the "average Linux geek" probably can't tell you what "make mrproper" does, even generally. But that doesn't much apply to me, because I'm not an "average Linux geek". If anything, I'm an average GNU geek. You see, most of the time I don't give a damn about the kernel. I primarily interact with the userspace. Even Tru64 becomes tolerable once it is GNU-ified (but only barely tolerable). And Tru64 handles load a hell of a lot better than the Linux kernel. Linux is "good enough", but GNU is the "killer app" (OS) that makes Linux (or most any other kernel) tolerable.
I don't see why you feel so free to second guess my motives. I don't understand why you're so happy to lump me in with other posters. And I never told you how to speak. I presented an argument for why I thought GNU/Linux was both useful and sensible, and then you launched an ad hominem attack.
I think there is still some confusion about the GNU project in the parent post.
"And what did RMS or any of the other FSF members do so deserving to Linux(as a whole system) that deserve such a name change?"
The issue that is being pushed is that there was an operating system called GNU before Linux (the kernel) came out. However, GNU wasn't finished because it was missing a kernel. Then Linux (the kernel) arrived, people tossed it into GNU, and strangely decided to *rename* GNU because of the kernel. That just plain doesn't make sense.
GNU is an operating system. X is an app (well, that and goodies like xeyes). Linux is a kernel. So if you are talking about operating systems that contain all three, it doesn't seem unreasonable to include GNU. It does seem unreasonable, at least to me, not to even mention the principle operating system base for your operating system.
More importantly, GNU is a movement. It's philosophies are an important part of what makes GNU/Linux different than FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Linus Torvalds has very little to offer in the way of philosophy, because he just doesn't care. When people think of the "spirit" of GNU/Linux (the operating system), they are primarily thinking of GNU.
Nobody wants everything to be called GNU. However, RMS would appreciate it if *derivatives* of the GNU operating system included a reference to GNU. Think of it as a citation.
"AfterStep is a continuation of the BowMan window manager which was originally put together by Bo Yang. BowMan was based on the fvwm window manager, written by Robert Nation. Fvwm was based on code from twm."
So Afterstep is an fvwm descendent. Reading parts of the OpenStep page convinced me that OpenStep is *not* a descendent of fvwm. I'd guess that GNUstep being written in ObjC is a pretty good clue. =-)
And about configuring fvwm (and descendents): it does take time. But once you get it right, you don't need to mess with it. Furthermore, the config file is written in a simple text format, whereas the Sawfish config stuff looks like lisp and has almost no comments except a warning "do not edit by hand!". When did people become so unfriendly?
"OpenSource leaves behind the rotten philosophy and says..."
Likes like you your own bias, too. I think that bias is why you view Stallman's actions as "whining". There's no real way for me to tell.
Doesn't it seem strange to name an operating system after the kernel, which itself was named after a single developer of that kernel (though clearly the most important developer, in this case)? Take a complete GNU/Linux distrobution, such as Red Hat 8. It has 3 CDs full of stuff. The kernel is a tiny, tiny part of that. So why call Red Hat's product "a Linux distribution"? On the other hand, just about everything on those cds depends on gcc, glibc, and ld either directly or indirectly. The shells and command-line utilties are all from the GNU project. The dev toolchains are from the GNU project. The default application env (Gnome) is from the GNU project.
Yet RMS never asked anyone to call RH 8 "GNU/RH8". He isn't just going for a big land grab. He has a real point -- that what people call "Linux, the operating system" is in fact very nearly a GNU system, but with a non-GNU kernel. I agree that GNU/Linux is a bit unwieldy as far as names go, but most people can handle 4 syllables.
I agree with almost everything you wrote, except that the kernel is most important. The kernel really doesn't have that much to do with which software runs. I'd guess that the C library has a much great role. At any rate all of these things are fairly modular. That's why FreeBSD can run KDE, Gnome, and most other stuff that GNU/Linux folks use.
On the other hand, the kernel has a *lot* to do with what hardware can be reasonably controlled. For instance, getting a USB serial converter to work under FreeBSD (at least as of a few months ago) was nearly impossible. Under Linux you'll have better luck. Under a Windows kernel with vendor-supplied drivers, you may have even better luck.
If the software that runs is the determining factor, then there are a lot of GNU systems out there. Even the proprietary UNIX and BSD systems often offer GNU tools as an alternative to their own tools. On a GNU/Linux system, just about everything depends on GNU software at some point, whether through gcc, glibc, ld, bash/sh, or command-line tools. FreeBSD systems even depend in large part on GNU tools, but not nearly to the extent of GNU/Linux distributions.
Slashdot Mirror
An assault on law enforcement has different symbolism that an assault (perhaps the same assault) on an individual. Law enforcement is part of socieity, and I'd argue an essential part of society (and too frequently, its deeply screwed-up). Thus attacking a policeman conveys a disrespect for society, at least on the surface.
Probably the law should be extended to all public servents, including fire fighters and social workers. As another poster commented, though, there is a perception issue with police. I don't think anyone thinks that shooting fire fighters could be part of a good game, and it's a bit pathetic that shooting police officers is considered part of a good game.
And if shooting police officers in games isn't an important part of those games, then perhaps game designers can leave such stupidity out of their games. For the Matrix games, for instance, I'd guess there would be many creative ways to avoid shooting police officers.
-Paul Komarek
That rocks!
Switzerland: Euler
Germany: Gauss
Serbia: Tesla
And in the US? Lying, cheating, stealing politicians like Andrew Jackson. At least Ben Franklin wasn't a president.
-Paul Komarek
Have you ever seen a "two-ney"? It rocks. Gold and silver colored, with a cool border. Our quarters are lame in comparison. I've been told our mint doesn't have the right machines to even come close to the $2 Canadian coin.
And what happened to those new dollar coins we had here? I had two, and spent them. I haven't seen any more since, and that was quite a while ago.
-Paul Komarek
We (Americans) don't have that many great presidents, either. But they still insist on putting them on the bills. Maybe this is because we're similarly impovrished w/r/t composers, artists, and scientists. ;-) Can you imagine putting Werner von Braun's picture on a US bill? Or von Neuman's?
Actually, we do have some good scientists and artists, but Americans wouldn't recognize them anyway. OTOH, having Guass (and a bell curve *with* the expression) on a bill is way to cool for us luddites here.
-Paul Komarek
If you don't mind cloth wallets, look at outdoor and travel stores. I've got a simple Eagle Creek wallet that handles US and UK currency well.
-Paul Komarek
US money was already thouroughly impregnated with symbols, including Masonic symbols among many others. You'd think the whole country was in on the "secret handshake" and strange ceremonies. If we were all issued those cute Shriners hats, the embarassment of the strange symbols might be worth it.
-Paul Komarek
We're (Americans) also the disgrace of coin minting. The Canadians prooved it by creating a two-dollar (Canadian) coin so cool that the US has been unable to respond in kind.
-Paul Komarek
Heh, that's a funny observation. On the other hand, With Coyote as a programmer, those cartoons would likely be somewhat dull. What would he send away for? ACME Pursuer-Evader Algorithm Libraries?
Wile E. Coyote, Software Genius.
Then again, they say that humor is just a small twist on mundane every-day life. Coyote as a programmer wouldn't be that far from real programmers. Just like real programmers, he'd be sure every one of his "creations" was a work of art, and expect it to work without adequate testing.
-Paul Komarek
If unemployement is so bad, you'd think Oregon justices would be brushing up on their Klingon on Fridays. ;-)
-Paul Komarek
The first time I heard the "boooong", I was afraid that something besides a 56K connection was being made. I didn't recognize it!
-Paul Komarek
LOL. Thanks for reminding me of "Duck Season" "Rabbit Season". I agree that the Looney Toons and friends cartoons were funny when I was a kid, a teenager, and still now that I am an adult. They are very intelligent works.
Where things got stupid, IMO, is when the adults got stupid about cartoons. Everything started sliding when someone declared that Road Runner and Coyote cartoons were too violent. I'm quite certain that kids understand Coyote is his own worst enemy. I'm pretty certain it's clear that you can't push your brother off a cliff somewhere in a Southwestern desert, and expect him to live. The only people who have troubles with such distinctions are moronic do-gooding adults.
-Paul Komarek
I suddenly figured that an example might be interesting. Suppose it were possible for the monkeys to create a doomsday weapon from their typewriteres, and that this weapon would destroy the entire universe. In this case, Kolmogorov's 0-1 law would not apply.
More realistically, suppose that the monkeys "learned" over time while typing, where "learn" means something like "the current actions are not independent of earlier actions". Again, Kolomogorov's 0-1 law wouldn't apply. Consider the silly situation where the monkeys happen to compose a few core English words. Suppose they find these words, for whatever reason, disagreeable because of some fundamental property that applies to all monkies. Suppose further that the monkies "learn" from this experience to never type these words again. In this case, no work of Shakespeare will ever be composed.
The problem, then would be that monkeys just aren't "random" in the "right" way. But to really understand what the previous sentence means requires a fair amount of background (at least some of which I don't have =-).
-Paul Komarek
While I appreciate your point, I disagree that "probably" has no meaning in the context of inifinity. In fact, probability in the context of inifinity is very well defined due to a couple centuries of very hard work by mathematicians, statisticans, and many others.
Kolmogorov's Zero-One law is the closest thing to what you are suggesting, but note the rather interesting precondition necessary to apply this theorem. This theorem does not apply to just any type of event, nor to all inifnite sequences of random variables.
-Paul Komarek
Wasn't this funded as art, not science?
-Paul Komarek
"Have the users become more stupid, or has Microsoft just enabled stupid people to use their computers?"
My primary source for this comment is my father. He has remarked, unprompted, that back in the DOS days he had some idea what the computer was doing and how to manipulate it. Now he feels helpless and confused, and can't solve even simple problems like "where do downloaded files go?".
As far as broken things, I'm not suggesting we should leave them broken. But "broken" is a funny word in this context.
I believe the filesystem *is* understandable, just as the French language is understandable. However, if you didn't grow up speaking French, you'll have some work to do if you want to understand it. Thankfully, I believe the UNIX filesystem is far easier to understand than any natural language. And once you understand the basic ideas, quite nearly *everything* begins to make sense about how the system works.
So I'm unlikely to support any effort to make the UNIX filesystem understandable. I expect such efforts will end up just like Noah Webster's efforts at "simplifying" American English spelling -- in the end, nothing will make any sense at all because the original *design* (mostly latin for English vocabulary) will have been obscured.
"I fail to see how somebody who hasn't taken the time to learn the UNIX filesystem is \"lazy\""
Perhaps we have only a semantic difference here. I'd call anyone who wants to understand the UNIX filesystem, but doesn't care to apply the necessary effort, lazy.
When you say that most people like to use their computers, not figuring out how to use it, I have to agree. And that's why I believe general purpose computers are something only a small-ish handful of people really ought to have. Computing appliances, such as dedicated email/web devices, ought to be more advanced in the marketplace.
I think it is arguable that many of the dominant computing companies have been deliberately deceiving naive consumers in order to grow the market for their products. To me, this is just like selling snake oil and calling it medicine. The upside for me is that general purpose computing hardware has ridiculously low prices. The downside is all the "friends and family" tech support I end up doing.
-Paul Komarek
Heck, originally there were no directories.
-Paul Komarek
I think everyone would agree that the "wisdom" is not in the specific names used in "standard" UNIX-ish heirarchies. My feeling is that the wisdom is that 3 letters is enough for top-level directories, and that admins and users can learn what these directories mean if they care to.
Microsoft has created a real problem with their "talk down to users" approach. Not only have their users become stupider than they were in the DOS days (well, I only have a few datapoints), but the users EXPECT themselves to stupid (again, I only have a few datapoints). Even worse, users think it is alright to be stupid.
If you can map the color red to stop, green->go, "Safeway"->"place to buy food", and "Start->shutdown->restart"->jump to the bios initialization code, then you can learn the basics of the UNIX filesystem heirarchy. I have no compassion for the lazy, and the genuinely disinterested should be using appliances rather than general purpose computers.
-Paul Komarek
I just wanted to say thank-you for your lesson on tape and broadcast archiving. I'm sure it took quite a while to compose. This is the sort of thing that keeps me coming back to /. (though less frequently than in the "early" days).
-Paul Komarek
Bullshit on your bullshit. I'm calling it like I see it. I studied mathematics because I like well-defined systems. Naming an operating system after a kernel is stupid.
I'm guessing that the "average Linux geek" probably can't tell you what "make mrproper" does, even generally. But that doesn't much apply to me, because I'm not an "average Linux geek". If anything, I'm an average GNU geek. You see, most of the time I don't give a damn about the kernel. I primarily interact with the userspace. Even Tru64 becomes tolerable once it is GNU-ified (but only barely tolerable). And Tru64 handles load a hell of a lot better than the Linux kernel. Linux is "good enough", but GNU is the "killer app" (OS) that makes Linux (or most any other kernel) tolerable.
I don't see why you feel so free to second guess my motives. I don't understand why you're so happy to lump me in with other posters. And I never told you how to speak. I presented an argument for why I thought GNU/Linux was both useful and sensible, and then you launched an ad hominem attack.
-Paul Komarek
I think there is still some confusion about the GNU project in the parent post.
"And what did RMS or any of the other FSF members do so deserving to Linux(as a whole system) that deserve such a name change?"
The issue that is being pushed is that there was an operating system called GNU before Linux (the kernel) came out. However, GNU wasn't finished because it was missing a kernel. Then Linux (the kernel) arrived, people tossed it into GNU, and strangely decided to *rename* GNU because of the kernel. That just plain doesn't make sense.
GNU is an operating system. X is an app (well, that and goodies like xeyes). Linux is a kernel. So if you are talking about operating systems that contain all three, it doesn't seem unreasonable to include GNU. It does seem unreasonable, at least to me, not to even mention the principle operating system base for your operating system.
More importantly, GNU is a movement. It's philosophies are an important part of what makes GNU/Linux different than FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Linus Torvalds has very little to offer in the way of philosophy, because he just doesn't care. When people think of the "spirit" of GNU/Linux (the operating system), they are primarily thinking of GNU.
Nobody wants everything to be called GNU. However, RMS would appreciate it if *derivatives* of the GNU operating system included a reference to GNU. Think of it as a citation.
-Paul Komarek
Ah, found it. From the afterstep FAQ:
"AfterStep is a continuation of the BowMan window manager which was originally put together by Bo Yang. BowMan was based on the fvwm window manager, written by Robert Nation. Fvwm was based on code from twm."
So Afterstep is an fvwm descendent. Reading parts of the OpenStep page convinced me that OpenStep is *not* a descendent of fvwm. I'd guess that GNUstep being written in ObjC is a pretty good clue. =-)
And about configuring fvwm (and descendents): it does take time. But once you get it right, you don't need to mess with it. Furthermore, the config file is written in a simple text format, whereas the Sawfish config stuff looks like lisp and has almost no comments except a warning "do not edit by hand!". When did people become so unfriendly?
-Paul
"OpenSource leaves behind the rotten philosophy and says ..."
Likes like you your own bias, too. I think that bias is why you view Stallman's actions as "whining". There's no real way for me to tell.
Doesn't it seem strange to name an operating system after the kernel, which itself was named after a single developer of that kernel (though clearly the most important developer, in this case)? Take a complete GNU/Linux distrobution, such as Red Hat 8. It has 3 CDs full of stuff. The kernel is a tiny, tiny part of that. So why call Red Hat's product "a Linux distribution"? On the other hand, just about everything on those cds depends on gcc, glibc, and ld either directly or indirectly. The shells and command-line utilties are all from the GNU project. The dev toolchains are from the GNU project. The default application env (Gnome) is from the GNU project.
Yet RMS never asked anyone to call RH 8 "GNU/RH8". He isn't just going for a big land grab. He has a real point -- that what people call "Linux, the operating system" is in fact very nearly a GNU system, but with a non-GNU kernel. I agree that GNU/Linux is a bit unwieldy as far as names go, but most people can handle 4 syllables.
-Paul Komarek
I always thought that Afterstep was nice. IIRC, it's built on fvwm2. Is that true for OpenStep, too?
-Paul Komarek
Stallman has/had a nice retort about the GNU project and vi. See the biography "Free as in Freedom".
-Paul Komarek
I agree with almost everything you wrote, except that the kernel is most important. The kernel really doesn't have that much to do with which software runs. I'd guess that the C library has a much great role. At any rate all of these things are fairly modular. That's why FreeBSD can run KDE, Gnome, and most other stuff that GNU/Linux folks use.
On the other hand, the kernel has a *lot* to do with what hardware can be reasonably controlled. For instance, getting a USB serial converter to work under FreeBSD (at least as of a few months ago) was nearly impossible. Under Linux you'll have better luck. Under a Windows kernel with vendor-supplied drivers, you may have even better luck.
If the software that runs is the determining factor, then there are a lot of GNU systems out there. Even the proprietary UNIX and BSD systems often offer GNU tools as an alternative to their own tools. On a GNU/Linux system, just about everything depends on GNU software at some point, whether through gcc, glibc, ld, bash/sh, or command-line tools. FreeBSD systems even depend in large part on GNU tools, but not nearly to the extent of GNU/Linux distributions.
-Paul Komarek