Always wanted to see the burning man. Not to mention the pretty girls.
Nice engineering. We applaud you. Honest. I have to put up with the misery of walking around in the evening in this horrid climate of Athens Greece so (hey: let's wind up all the poor bastards in Chicago, London, Bristol and Calcutta).
But I have a deeply technical question. What do you do in your *day* job?
Yes, but the real reason for Fortran is lost on most programmers. They think that Physicists, Chemists et al really are too dumb to switch to *insert favourite language*.
No sir. If you know *anything* about numerical computations you know they are evil. Boundary errors (chuckles) . The NAG routines are perhaps the most debugged code on the planet. No way do I want to ever touch them . Numerics in Java (ouch). Sorry, even if it runs fast enough you can guess that I'll bite the bullet and stick with subroutine F96XX29. Hey, I'm really a coward. Just not an anonymous one.
Thanks. That's a real simple example. Even pre 8.a.m with a hangover I can see it feels better.
It's just that if you let some peverse little sick almost script kiddie lose with operator overloading you will feel very great pain. You're a disciple of pain right?
Oh No. No way. Back to that Pascal or even Java compiler you go. If Yannis the Questidis grows up and writes code *he* understands I'll let him stroke that bad dog called Python (with op overloads). But not C++ (shudders).
Serious answer - it's not the notation "+". That's the good thing. It's the *SIDE EFFECTS* man. How do you *know* it was overloaded 10 million lines of code away.
Marketting. Period. Believe me. I got stuck with the name "Gword" for a well known dictionary I did here in Greece a while ago. Still, even the hacker gets his revenge -
Little known easter egg (any greek friends out there) if you start my program with any two command params it doesn't put up that pesky splash bit map.
Oh boy. You *are* ignorant. "Dirac" is the physicist who came up with the idea of anti-matter. Not only that but he did his Bsc at Bristol University. Yeah Bristol south-west of england.
He didn't like it though. Don't know why, worked for me (splutters). I escaped that fine institution as a chemist (but I have spent far too many years playing with computers...).
Bristol is also where the BBC has some of it's more interesting people, like the wildlife unit.
Oh and Bristol Zoo. Which thanks to Alan Cox (cheers mate) used to have a penguin called Linus. If I wasn't stuck here in Rainy Athens (hey? I'm winding up the UK people ok..) I'd go kiss it right now.
Eh. Are we stroking ourselves vigourously here?
on
The System of the World
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Forgive me for injecting that memorable line from John Carpenters "Prince of Darkness" but it does somehow feel appropriate. Why is this post (which didn't make sense after two whole paragraphes of text here at all. Sorry, mod me down as a troll, but it doesn't feel right (there should be a mod mechanism like "lacks focus" I think).
Again sorry. If my brains were less fried I'd be more charitable. Bloody SP2 is causing really odd headaches on a friends machine.
If I've suddenly stumbled into a Lit Fi forum please let me know... Shit , it's 1.30a.m. and I'm considering how I work some more or sleep...
Imagine. You walk into his office. After being unnerved by the samurai shit (is that a former v.p's blood on that katana?) you sit down. Larry plays with that prop star trek phasor.
I'm already a nervous wreck.
Now he's going to have a ghost in his office saying "I'm sorry I can't do that Dave".
Thank heavens it's my friends name and not mine.
Yet another reason not to work for Oracle.
Slashcode bug: if you post as pure text and bracket it "" then it vanishes in preview.
Caught the "I love smell of napalm joke". But you see it gets better.
Consider: this closed source code is now *feared*. The mortals are *uncertain*. and with a little luck they'll have a whole boat load of *doubt*.
Zeus himself couldn't have delivered a nicer gift to all of the OSS people. Chuckle. Understand how much you should *doubt* those people at Cisco.
Gosh. Why would I want to put anything on my machine I can't look at the source of. Hey: Thank you for reminding me why I'd really rather prefer not having some of these products. One day I hope to have a choice. But for now I'm going to stay miserable and do my Marvin impression... (or at least until I can decide whether hhg2 release II beats doom3 (big grin)
How much do you think our evil friends at IBM paid them to do this one?
Conspiracy theories can be fun (so long as you know how to play the saxophone...).
and it's this. John wants perfection. Believe me he *wants* perfection. God damn it. He's written code that most of us only dream of writing.
But, he has EPIC (aka Unreal) biting his ass and his former CEO working for them.
Heck. This guy loves games. If he wants to stop programming and do something else we will *still* love him. Hey, he's got a kid now. Go for it.
Coding is for kiddies. Come back and surprise us. We really think this. OK? But try not to embaress us all with this spaceship shit because your first name really isn't Burt ok? We don't want to pick the burning embers out of the desert.
We'd like you to embaress that dumb f**ker in Redmond ok. Please listen. OK I know he doesn't.
How does this explain the absence of a demo (the real answer is that doom 3 *is* the demo). Sorry. That's a fact. If John had had his way we would have seen this game around the same time as DNF. Say what? I mean Duke Nukem Forever.
Not that I want to (she's kinda cute) but let's face it John Carmarcks creations have always been a great way of testing a new machine. Gosh. I just happen to have one now (points at that machine which is going to be our server). So guess who's splendid code is going to burn it's sorry ass. It would have been climateprediction.net or even seti@home, but sorry guys
Your's regrettfully..
Andy Allen
(One day you owe me a beer my friend) (I don't want to ride your armadillo. No sir.)
I know the splendid folks at slashdot are hackers. Yeah verily they are our brethren. But please god how long do I have to live in this wilderness?
Yucky colours that are an affront to any civilized person. Yes. Mr. Hemo, CowboyWhatsist and the rest of you *FIX THE GODDAMMN CODE* so we don't have such really rather unpleasant examples of duff 60's art displayed as "how we should see slashdot".
Yours Seriously,
Fallen Andy (aka Andy Allen - no my middle initial isn't M ).
Mark me down to -999 if you like. I'll stick by this. I spend a lot of time here...
All right. I'll buy a survey of viruses vs. Linus (oops I meant Linux) from MSNBC. No. I am still not that intoxicated. You really think any of those children have a chance of 0wning a machine 0wned by the average slashdotter. Not really. Anyone that good is going to be working for one of us... Even when our guard slips we notice these things. Cough. (at least I hope I do). Squints at what my good friend Ethereal has just spat at me... (ok, guy's you know this stuff don't you).
Yey Bro. It sure is an interesting chemical. SO interesting in fact that if you go look in a serious university library you'll find a shelf + of books just called "water".
We don't understand why. Both O and H are pretty common, but H2O is darned weird. So darned weird I'd guess we'll *still* be writing books about it 1000 years from now.
I like the stuff myself (from a distance). My Cretan friend here Manolis loves it and insists on risking his life on a yacht. Personally I'm too damn scared. You can never drown on a nice sandy clay or chalky soil can you..
The debate about life using NH3 or HF is long dead. Hydrogen and Oxygen are about as common as anything you can imagine. So is Carbon . Even the astrophysicts (who disparingly refer to anything heavier than helium as metals much to this chemists disgust (we love these guys though...)) don't fantasize about worlds where life uses Boron and Fluorine (excuse me, where would they come from Mr. Sci Fi author?).
H2O is excellent stuff. Sometimes though even careful researchers forget that it can even dissolve glass - Oh yes, the big polywater fiasco.
Yeah. If we see the sig of *both* methane and oxygen then its pretty much a nobrainer there's life.
Methane on it's own, given mars' current atmosphere composition is just a teaser. Annnoying, real sexy, but geologic processes could be responsible.
I hope we see lots more surprises. Heck. we are just starting to play with this place. Its one big planet even though it looks small and I for one pray that no nasty stupid monkey hobnail boots it before we get to do serious science...
What's the big deal. I was porting OS's back in the early 80's and if by "BIOS" you mean that miserable piece of shit that lives in ROM it was mostly only capable of loading sector zero of the "whinnie" (which is exactly what we did when it didn't). (translation for newtimers: Winchester = hard disk. "whinnie or winnie = hard disk right?).
So, why in name would you stick this thing in a ROM? It could have always lived and been loaded off the friggin disk. Do it that way and you get the benefit of being able to update things for the future. Better still, you don't have *any* nightmares of that pesky little scuzzball Yannis Questidis hosing the flash...
Yes, he might be able to touch the HD, but any sensible OS implementor *knows* how to track that.
Hmm.
In any case what most of you PC "children" think of as a BIOS is really a truly sucky monitor program. Gosh TIM on a CBM Pet was almost as good. Oh god. I want to go back and port UCSD again... or even CP/M - 68k...
But, I'm going to calm down now. My doctor says I must consider the effect on my health.
I have to make this really stupid comment. If I don't nobody else will. I once had the honour and priviledge of working with someone who lived and breathed compiler technology. It was a long time ago. It was Modula-2. So what? It was TDI (yes, those people in the old Atari ST days).
Now, my friend was a serious deep thinking man. When he came back from meeting Professor Wirth (yes that guy at ETHZ) he smiled a lot. You see, my old friend Mr. P.C. (not joking those *are* his initials) managed to do some very very pretty things for the code generation of the compiler we had from those splendid swiss people. John Coltrane would love that name though...
Foo. You people are mere virgins. GCC is a good compiler. Period. But that's like saying that my light is a good illumination source. Doesn't help. If you're so desperate are you in fact asking the wrong question?
But when RMS started his idea for the GNU project none of us believed he was anything except a hippy wacko. Honest. Without *his* input there would be no Linux, No GCC , No EMACS (some might like this) and
lord knows how many businesses couldn't have existed.
Before Richard , software could cost so much you'd
have to sell your grandmother.
Don't ask the price of a Fortran or C compiler. Yes.
This was the world of 1990. Not 1890.
We owe a great debt to Richard.
I for one have a fund specifically aimed at Beer
for said people. One day, I hope to buy RMS a brewery....Hey, it's going to take some time but
I figure that with a few helpful souls we could
imagine doing this...
A very long time ago a guy called P.J.Brown wrote
a delightful book about software development that
suggested that if you offered your customers a beer when they discovered a bug then they'd be motivated to find bugs. Don Knuth has a similar view with Latex (sorry about the absent subscript)
I like such people. Hey I'm a techie. Gosh I'm running (or is that ruining) a company. Ouch.
Honestly, there is no reason to get emotional about compilers. I used to have a friend who spat
this stuff in his sleep (and yes, he came back from meeting Nicky in Zurich with a very big smile
on his face). I have to say that in the real big
wild west out we live in it doesn't matter.
GCC is a good compiler. Period. It was a damn good
C compiler even when it was 2.x.something.
C++ (sigh). You want to play with that shit?
Sorry, at CMU,
who should know doesn't really like using it.
Above all, (and since it's been a long time and
most of you perhaps don't know) *DON"T PANIC*.
Yes, the hitchhikers guide is back *tomorrow* on
our very much beloved BBC. Have fun/.ers.
(don't slashdot them or I send my Greek friends
Italian friend who may or may not work for those
nice italian business people around to rearrange
your furniture).
Hey. I'm going to be real honest here. We're all
techies right? You would last 5 us or less (and yes that is microseconds) if GCC was a crap compiler.
RMS wouldn't forgive you. Your mother wouldn't forgive you. Shit. Don't even think of what Eric
(the raymond) would do. He packs serious firepower
(cowers under pine tree - hey at 2000+ miles even
he can't hit me unless he really did get that tactical nuke).
But, we know that the demons we love don't work this way. Honest. (checks the tactical nuke indicator ). Foo. Get a life. Or even an interest
in something like Python.
GCC is about the most seriously good compiler out there. It may not always make the most pretty code. It may not be friendly. But damn it. You know that if it breaks you can talk to the guy who
(god help him or her) broke it. You'll never get
that luxury with (cough) that compiler that is called CL.
If you need to understand what OSS is. I just told you. Is it the best? Hey if you need to shave that
extra something out then you ought to consider the
quaint old fashioned roll up my sleeves assembly
approach. Coughs and splutters (should really give up smoking) ---- I don't understand children that
are scared off this stuff. It wasn't bad for my
(oh serious pain in my chest here) H
E
A
L
Sorry, but the world doesn't revolve around a US centric view of things. Not even a US way of doing health. This is a whole fucking goddamn planet here. When I was *literally* homeless two years ago I rescued a book about US healthcare and business admin from the "recycling bin" (yeah: we are getting more environmental even here in disordered delightful Athens).
I didn't like it. Hey, I ended up *understanding* ER (eat your heart out George:-)) (plain description: The doctor is a *business* and the hospital is a service).
Ouch. I'm from England and whatever crappiness we have in our healthcare system doctors are people who fix illnesses. We don't let them become businesses because many many years ago the charlatans of the world hurt many many people.
Our quiet Canadian friends could educate you naive new world folks about this.
Not criticizing. Merely observing.
(The bad news is that never ever have a heart op in this part of the world - because unless everybody chips in your'e out of luck big time)
I wince when people put business and health into the same arena. Don't you *care* if people get well? I sure do. Maybe it's *why* I could never be a doctor. At least my beta tests won't kill anyone...
You mean (gasp) triodes and things. We remember them. They are still fun. But don't let anyone here know I said that. Shit, I even had some of the US mil's educational stuff - damn good too. Taught me a lot of electronics that my somethinghood of the confused found useful in subverting your stinking US. hegemony (no Mr. Hemo, if you didn't empty your bladder I just helped you).
My father lost his father when he was a mere 9 years old to TB. I don't understand why people treat this as "someone elses problem" - it isn't a SEP. It *will* bite you. You'll never have to worry about new diseases because the old ones are doing nicely...
The irony with TB is that people think they are getting well, and stop taking the drugs (which are making them feel ill). End result: great selection pressure to make resistant bugs).
I for one pray that we can stamp out that big disease called ignorance (hey, look at what happened in Nigeria with that dumb fuck (who cares what religion?) and Polio). Damn. I had a friend with scars from hell and calipers when I was a kid and I'm a mere 45 year old. I never want to see such things, not even in my nightmares...
Here's a (I think I'm typical of the hackers out here) way of rewording your request:
You *WANT* someone to 0wn your machine? Be careful. Before you know the nanny state from hell is going to decide that censoring the Simpsons (obscenity, full frontal nudity, graphic imagery) or "The Rights of Man" (by my soulmate from Norfolk UK Tom Paine) is good for you.
Think before you wish for things - the real world is a lot nastier than the "Twilight Zone" !!
The internet is a mere tea party in comparison to my friends the collared doves in a local park here (chuckles).
As for spam. Er. I very rarely see any. Yahoo does a pretty good job on that email account, and if your're real careful you won't subscribe to so many listserv things that your brain explodes.
Slashdot Mirror
Always wanted to see the burning man. Not to mention
the pretty girls.
Nice engineering. We applaud you. Honest. I have to
put up with the misery of walking around in the evening in this horrid climate of Athens Greece so
(hey: let's wind up all the poor bastards in Chicago,
London, Bristol and Calcutta).
But I have a deeply technical question. What do you do in your *day* job?
Yes, but the real reason for Fortran is lost on most
programmers. They think that Physicists, Chemists et
al really are too dumb to switch to *insert favourite
language*.
No sir. If you know *anything* about numerical computations you know they are evil. Boundary errors (chuckles) . The NAG routines are perhaps the most
debugged code on the planet. No way do I want to ever
touch them . Numerics in Java (ouch). Sorry, even
if it runs fast enough you can guess that I'll bite
the bullet and stick with subroutine F96XX29.
Hey, I'm really a coward. Just not an anonymous one.
Thanks. That's a real simple example. Even pre 8.a.m
with a hangover I can see it feels better.
It's just that if you let some peverse little sick
almost script kiddie lose with operator overloading
you will feel very great pain. You're a disciple of
pain right?
Oh No. No way. Back to that Pascal or even Java compiler you go. If Yannis the Questidis grows up
and writes code *he* understands I'll let him stroke that bad dog called Python (with op overloads). But not C++ (shudders).
Serious answer - it's not the notation "+". That's
the good thing. It's the *SIDE EFFECTS* man. How
do you *know* it was overloaded 10 million lines of code away.
Marketting. Period.
Believe me. I got stuck with the name "Gword" for
a well known dictionary I did here in Greece a while
ago. Still, even the hacker gets his revenge -
Little known easter egg (any greek friends out there)
if you start my program with any two command params
it doesn't put up that pesky splash bit map.
Oh boy. You *are* ignorant. "Dirac" is the physicist
who came up with the idea of anti-matter. Not only that but he did his Bsc at Bristol University. Yeah
Bristol south-west of england.
He didn't like it though. Don't know why, worked for
me (splutters). I escaped that fine institution as
a chemist (but I have spent far too many years playing with computers...).
Bristol is also where the BBC has some of it's more
interesting people, like the wildlife unit.
Oh and Bristol Zoo. Which thanks to Alan Cox (cheers mate) used to have a penguin called Linus.
If I wasn't stuck here in Rainy Athens (hey? I'm
winding up the UK people ok..) I'd go kiss it right now.
Forgive me for injecting that memorable line from
John Carpenters "Prince of Darkness" but it does somehow feel appropriate. Why is this post (which
didn't make sense after two whole paragraphes of text
here at all. Sorry, mod me down as a troll, but it
doesn't feel right (there should be a mod mechanism
like "lacks focus" I think).
Again sorry. If my brains were less fried I'd be more charitable. Bloody SP2 is causing really odd headaches on a friends machine.
If I've suddenly stumbled into a Lit Fi forum please let me know... Shit , it's 1.30a.m. and I'm
considering how I work some more or sleep...
Imagine. You walk into his office.
After being unnerved by the samurai shit (is that
a former v.p's blood on that katana?) you sit down.
Larry plays with that prop star trek phasor.
I'm already a nervous wreck.
Now he's going to have a ghost in his office saying
"I'm sorry I can't do that Dave".
Thank heavens it's my friends name and not mine.
Yet another reason not to work for Oracle.
Slashcode bug: if you post as pure text and bracket it "" then it vanishes in preview.
Caught the "I love smell of napalm joke". But you
see it gets better.
Consider: this closed source code is now *feared*.
The mortals are *uncertain*. and with a little luck
they'll have a whole boat load of *doubt*.
Zeus himself couldn't have delivered a nicer gift
to all of the OSS people. Chuckle. Understand how
much you should *doubt* those people at Cisco.
Gosh. Why would I want to put anything on my machine I can't look at the source of. Hey: Thank you for reminding me why I'd really rather prefer not having some of these products. One day I hope to have a choice. But for now I'm going to stay miserable and do my Marvin impression... (or
at least until I can decide whether hhg2 release II
beats doom3 (big grin)
How much do you think our evil friends at IBM paid
them to do this one?
Conspiracy theories can be fun (so long as you
know how to play the saxophone...).
and it's this. John wants perfection. Believe
me he *wants* perfection. God damn it. He's written
code that most of us only dream of writing.
But, he has EPIC (aka Unreal) biting his ass and his former CEO working for them.
Heck. This guy loves games. If he wants to stop
programming and do something else we will *still*
love him. Hey, he's got a kid now. Go for it.
Coding is for kiddies. Come back and surprise us.
We really think this. OK? But try not to embaress
us all with this spaceship shit because your first
name really isn't Burt ok? We don't want to pick
the burning embers out of the desert.
We'd like you to embaress that dumb f**ker in Redmond ok.
Please listen. OK I know he doesn't.
How does this explain the absence of a demo
(the real answer is that doom 3 *is* the demo).
Sorry. That's a fact. If John had had his way
we would have seen this game around the same time
as DNF. Say what? I mean Duke Nukem Forever.
I for one know I won't live that long.
Not that I want to (she's kinda cute) but let's
face it John Carmarcks creations have always been
a great way of testing a new machine.
Gosh. I just happen to have one now (points at that
machine which is going to be our server). So guess
who's splendid code is going to burn it's sorry ass.
It would have been climateprediction.net or even seti@home, but sorry guys
Your's regrettfully..
Andy Allen
(One day you owe me a beer my friend)
(I don't want to ride your armadillo. No sir.)
I know the splendid folks at slashdot are hackers. Yeah verily they are our brethren. But please god how
long do I have to live in this wilderness?
Yucky colours that are an affront to any civilized
person. Yes. Mr. Hemo, CowboyWhatsist and the rest of
you *FIX THE GODDAMMN CODE* so we don't have such
really rather unpleasant examples of duff 60's art
displayed as "how we should see slashdot".
Yours Seriously,
Fallen Andy (aka Andy Allen - no my middle initial
isn't M ).
Mark me down to -999 if you like. I'll stick by this. I spend a lot of time here...
Only on sundays.
Thank you. That's made me almost asphyixate you bastard. Metaxa + good jokes clearly don't mix.
I hope your wife (if you have one) makes you rot in hell.
Sorry. I'm trying to breath O2 again.
Good joke my friend. Really good joke.
All right. I'll buy a survey of viruses vs. Linus (oops I meant Linux) from MSNBC. No. I am still not
that intoxicated. You really think any of those children have a chance of 0wning a machine 0wned by the average slashdotter. Not really. Anyone that good
is going to be working for one of us... Even when our
guard slips we notice these things. Cough. (at least I hope I do). Squints at what my good friend Ethereal
has just spat at me... (ok, guy's you know this stuff
don't you).
OK. I'll chuckle. But nobody else here will.
Yey Bro. It sure is an interesting chemical. SO interesting in fact that if you go look in a serious university library you'll find a shelf + of books just called "water".
We don't understand why. Both O and H are pretty common, but H2O is darned weird. So darned weird
I'd guess we'll *still* be writing books about it
1000 years from now.
I like the stuff myself (from a distance). My Cretan
friend here Manolis loves it and insists on risking his life on a yacht. Personally I'm too damn scared. You can never drown on a nice
sandy clay or chalky soil can you..
The debate about life using NH3 or HF is long dead. Hydrogen and Oxygen are about as common as anything you can imagine. So is Carbon . Even the
astrophysicts (who disparingly refer to anything heavier than helium as metals much to this chemists disgust (we love these guys though...))
don't fantasize about worlds where life uses Boron
and Fluorine (excuse me, where would they come from Mr. Sci Fi author?).
H2O is excellent stuff. Sometimes though even careful researchers forget that it can even dissolve glass - Oh yes, the big polywater fiasco.
God. I'm showing my age aren't I...
Yeah. If we see the sig of *both* methane and
oxygen then its pretty much a nobrainer there's
life.
Methane on it's own, given mars' current atmosphere
composition is just a teaser. Annnoying, real sexy, but geologic processes could be responsible.
I hope we see lots more surprises. Heck. we are just
starting to play with this place. Its one big planet even though it looks small and I for one pray that no
nasty stupid monkey hobnail boots it before we get
to do serious science...
What's the big deal. I was porting OS's back in the
early 80's and if by "BIOS" you mean that miserable
piece of shit that lives in ROM it was mostly only
capable of loading sector zero of the "whinnie"
(which is exactly what we did when it didn't).
(translation for newtimers: Winchester = hard disk.
"whinnie or winnie = hard disk right?).
So, why in name would you stick this thing in a ROM? It could have always lived and been loaded off the friggin disk. Do it that way and you get the
benefit of being able to update things for the future. Better still, you don't have *any* nightmares of that pesky little scuzzball Yannis Questidis hosing the flash...
Yes, he might be able to touch the HD, but any sensible OS implementor *knows* how to track that.
Hmm.
In any case what most of you PC "children" think of as a BIOS is really a truly sucky monitor program. Gosh TIM on a CBM Pet was almost as
good. Oh god. I want to go back and port UCSD again... or even CP/M - 68k...
But, I'm going to calm down now. My doctor says I must consider the effect on my health.
I have to make this really stupid comment.
If I don't nobody else will. I once had the honour
and priviledge of working with someone who lived
and breathed compiler technology. It was a long time
ago. It was Modula-2. So what? It was TDI (yes, those
people in the old Atari ST days).
Now, my friend was a serious deep thinking man. When
he came back from meeting Professor Wirth (yes that
guy at ETHZ) he smiled a lot. You see, my old friend
Mr. P.C. (not joking those *are* his initials) managed to do some very very pretty things for the code generation of the compiler we had from those
splendid swiss people. John Coltrane would love
that name though...
Foo. You people are mere virgins. GCC is a good
compiler. Period. But that's like saying that
my light is a good illumination source. Doesn't help. If you're so desperate are you in fact asking the wrong question?
But when RMS started his idea for the GNU project none of us believed he was anything except a hippy wacko. Honest. Without *his* input there would be no Linux, No GCC , No EMACS (some might like this) and lord knows how many businesses couldn't have existed. Before Richard , software could cost so much you'd have to sell your grandmother. Don't ask the price of a Fortran or C compiler. Yes. This was the world of 1990. Not 1890. We owe a great debt to Richard. I for one have a fund specifically aimed at Beer for said people. One day, I hope to buy RMS a brewery....Hey, it's going to take some time but I figure that with a few helpful souls we could imagine doing this... A very long time ago a guy called P.J.Brown wrote a delightful book about software development that suggested that if you offered your customers a beer when they discovered a bug then they'd be motivated to find bugs. Don Knuth has a similar view with Latex (sorry about the absent subscript) I like such people. Hey I'm a techie. Gosh I'm running (or is that ruining) a company. Ouch. Honestly, there is no reason to get emotional about compilers. I used to have a friend who spat this stuff in his sleep (and yes, he came back from meeting Nicky in Zurich with a very big smile on his face). I have to say that in the real big wild west out we live in it doesn't matter. GCC is a good compiler. Period. It was a damn good C compiler even when it was 2.x.something. C++ (sigh). You want to play with that shit? Sorry, at CMU, who should know doesn't really like using it. Above all, (and since it's been a long time and most of you perhaps don't know) *DON"T PANIC*. Yes, the hitchhikers guide is back *tomorrow* on our very much beloved BBC. Have fun /.ers.
(don't slashdot them or I send my Greek friends
Italian friend who may or may not work for those
nice italian business people around to rearrange
your furniture).
Hey. I'm going to be real honest here. We're all techies right? You would last 5 us or less (and yes that is microseconds) if GCC was a crap compiler. RMS wouldn't forgive you. Your mother wouldn't forgive you. Shit. Don't even think of what Eric (the raymond) would do. He packs serious firepower (cowers under pine tree - hey at 2000+ miles even he can't hit me unless he really did get that tactical nuke). But, we know that the demons we love don't work this way. Honest. (checks the tactical nuke indicator ). Foo. Get a life. Or even an interest in something like Python. GCC is about the most seriously good compiler out there. It may not always make the most pretty code. It may not be friendly. But damn it. You know that if it breaks you can talk to the guy who (god help him or her) broke it. You'll never get that luxury with (cough) that compiler that is called CL. If you need to understand what OSS is. I just told you. Is it the best? Hey if you need to shave that extra something out then you ought to consider the quaint old fashioned roll up my sleeves assembly approach. Coughs and splutters (should really give up smoking) ---- I don't understand children that are scared off this stuff. It wasn't bad for my (oh serious pain in my chest here) H E A L
Sorry, but the world doesn't revolve around a US centric view of things. Not even a US way of doing health.
:-))
This is a whole fucking goddamn planet here.
When I was *literally* homeless two years ago I rescued a book about US healthcare and business admin
from the "recycling bin" (yeah: we are getting more
environmental even here in disordered delightful Athens).
I didn't like it. Hey, I ended up *understanding* ER (eat your heart out George
(plain description: The doctor is a *business* and
the hospital is a service).
Ouch. I'm from England and whatever crappiness we
have in our healthcare system doctors are people
who fix illnesses. We don't let them become businesses because many many years ago the charlatans of the world hurt many many people.
Our quiet Canadian friends could educate you naive
new world folks about this.
Not criticizing. Merely observing.
(The bad news is that never ever have a heart op in this part of the world - because unless everybody chips in your'e out of luck big time)
I wince when people put business and health into
the same arena. Don't you *care* if people get
well? I sure do. Maybe it's *why* I could never
be a doctor. At least my beta tests won't kill
anyone...
You mean (gasp) triodes and things. We remember them.
They are still fun. But don't let anyone here know
I said that. Shit, I even had some of the US mil's
educational stuff - damn good too. Taught me a lot
of electronics that my somethinghood of the confused
found useful in subverting your stinking US. hegemony
(no Mr. Hemo, if you didn't empty your bladder I just helped you).
I hope you enjoy that warm feeling.
Lots of love from Athens.
My father lost his father when he was a mere 9
years old to TB. I don't understand why people
treat this as "someone elses problem" - it isn't a
SEP. It *will* bite you. You'll never have to worry about new diseases because the old ones are doing nicely...
The irony with TB is that
people think they are getting well, and stop taking
the drugs (which are making them feel ill). End result: great selection pressure to make resistant bugs).
I for one pray that we can stamp out that big disease called ignorance (hey, look at what happened in Nigeria with that dumb fuck (who cares
what religion?) and Polio). Damn. I had a friend
with scars from hell and calipers when I was a kid
and I'm a mere 45 year old. I never want to see
such things, not even in my nightmares...
Here's a (I think I'm typical of the hackers out here) way of rewording your request:
You *WANT* someone to 0wn your machine?
Be careful. Before you know the nanny state from hell
is going to decide that censoring the Simpsons (obscenity, full frontal nudity, graphic imagery)
or "The Rights of Man" (by my soulmate from Norfolk UK Tom Paine) is good for you.
Think before you wish for things - the real world is a lot nastier than the "Twilight Zone" !!
The internet is a mere tea party in comparison to
my friends the collared doves in a local park here
(chuckles).
As for spam. Er. I very rarely see any. Yahoo does
a pretty good job on that email account, and if your're real careful you won't subscribe to so many listserv things that your brain explodes.