I didn't flame you; I flamed the idiot you're married to.
Lookit the name on the post of the guy you replied to the first time. Now lookit my name. I think we have found the root of your problem: you are unable to focus on any particular thing for a length of time, and hence this make you the ideal Ctrl-S presser...in fact, that's ALL you press! Yes, this explains a lot...
If there's no open source community, who the heck is it I keep going to conferences with? Who are the folks I am putting on the board of my newly formed open source organization? Who are the folks who keep volunteering to teach in my open source classes? Who is volunteering to work on my open source projects?
As far as I can piece it together, this is supposed to end like "A Beautiful Mind" where you wake up strapped to an electric bed with nurse Ratchet probing you and find out all the people you knew and places you went for the past ten years are just little gremlins in your head. Your project map is a bunch of yarn tangled up on the wall, you've actually been cramming Phil Collins CDs into your computer and trying to boot them because you thought they were some word you made up called "Knoppix", etc.
I found myself skimming after page two, and it still couldn't go by fast enough. Incredible, I think instead of learning anything from it, the page actually sucked knowledge out of my brain backwards through my eyeballs, so that now I think that there is no such thing as Linux at all, because there's nowhere for the distros to come from, because it denies the existence of an open source community. BECAUSE THESE MULES BELIEVE SOFTWARE COMES FROM THE FREAKING BLUE FAIRY GODMOTHER!
Gnarly. I explain patiently to someone how to do something, and get flamed about it. You call people idiots for not doing something that the computer is supposed to do all by itself, and get modded up insightful. I'll never believe in the Slashdot moderation system again.
Before I go to the detail of pointing out what a complete bastard you are, you need to get somebody to help you (because you're too fucking stupid to do this yourself) run the Emacs text editor on any Linux system. Have them create a file (with Ctrl-X Ctrl-F), name it, and begin typing away in it as fast as they possibly can without saving at all. While they are doing this, go around to the back of the machine and UNPLUG IT WITHOUT WARNING. Wait a few and plug it back in. When the machine has it's wits back and has auto-fscked the hard disk, go look for the file. You will find it by it's name with a '~' after it, showing the file as of the last auto-save. Open it up and look at it. You should have it up to within 100 characters or less of what was typed.
I know this works because I've had a power outage due to the house being hit by lightning in the middle of my work. An act of that God whom you say couldn't himself make a foolproof app (and whom was doubtless aiming at you), severe enough to weld two electrical cords into the sockets, fry my surge protector, blow up a transformer on my street and keep the neighborhood dark for half the day was not sufficient, when I brought my file back up, to cause one single character of my work to disappear.
Emacs was written in 1975. Doubtless, it's technology is still too cutting-edge to expect everywhere, right?
OK, that was funny as hell. I don't hate Macs, they're not as bad as the guy makes it out, but he's still funny. He'd be funnier if he was slamming Windows.
Well, if that's *all* it is is a hidden folder, it seems kind of ludicrous that there'd be any fuss at all. All operating systems have the concept of hidden files and folders where the system keeps important stuff. On Linux, that's a filename beginning with a dot (even called a "dotfile"), so "ls -a" in your home directory would show a.kde folder where all your desktop preferences are kept. Back on Windows it seemed half the system folders had the "hidden" and "archive" boxes checked in the properties dialog (if you ever got to see it, that is!). Sure enough, I remember all kinds of malware using tricks with this to hide itself on Windows boxes. Files and folders not shown in the normal course of operation so they can't be inadvertedly damaged is as old as OS/2 warp, at least.
How many more vulnerabilities and malware will it take for you braindead Windows users to wake up? Aren't you tired of the endless viruses, trojans, and "rootkits"? Either you control your computer or Bill Gates does. It's one or the other, people. Windows is not safe, PERIOD.
No, people, this is not Flamebait that our good friend anonymous posted. Look past your precious pride for a minute: he is telling you that you have a right to demand BETTER for yourselves! Of course, so have a gazillion others...
I always explained a rootkit thusly: Imagine if I secretly replaced all the locks on your house with special locks that open just by turning them without any key. Now, nobody needs a key in order to rob your house, nor do they have to break anything to leave evidence. I didn't *take* anything, mind you, but all security is defeated so that anybody who wants to will find it wide open. That's what a rootkit does to your computer. Generally, if you want to crack security on box "X" and you discover a rootkit on it, your day is made easier!
but don't tell me you never did such an error and then whished to have the data back?
OK, so I'm a freak of nature. But, no, I've never never never never in my entire life ever deleted anything that I wasn't 999999% positively absolutely sure that I never wanted to see again under any circumstances. But I have (true story) physically beat a piece of hardware to death with my bare hands when it wouldn't stop asking me "ARE YOU SURE?" at every single individual keystroke and mouseclick.
Perhaps it's because I learned computers during an age when you asked for it and you got it right away, and the first assumption didn't always default to "User is randomly drooling into keyboard and shorting it out." At least on some operating systems, you have the possibility to turn confirmations off, and are then at least given the *chance* to actually have a system do what you tell it to do, just as if you knew what you were doing. And thankfully, I have found and now run exclusively those.
Why do I need to uninstall then run "really uninstall" to really uninstall it?
Makes about as much sense as clicking "Yes, dammit, I'm sure!" when you want to delete this file, then it doesn't delete it, it sends it to the recycle bin so you have to chase it there and re-delete it and answer "Yes, dammit, I'm sure!" again, doesn't it?
Re:Depends on the sense of dead
on
Spam is Dead
·
· Score: 1
It was supposed to mean dead as in "Look, mate, I know a dead parrot when I see one...and I'm looking at one right now!"
Oh, ye of little faith!
on
Spam is Dead
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· Score: 4, Funny
You're only still getting SPAY-UM because you LACK FAITH in the HEALING POWER of the Almighty Bill! BLEY-ESSED be his AH-HOLY NAY-UM! Yeah, he hath only to extend HIS HAND and take your blemishes away from your inbox! Now holds hands and UH-PAR-UYUH, PAR-AY with me brothers and sisters, that in this hour these doubting unbelievers will yet turn their hearts to the ONE TRUE FAITH, that they might be YET SAY-UVED from their hour of darkness!
I'm thrilled to not have to deal with all the overhead crap/marketspeak that comes with coding webapps.
I know just what you mean. With half of all web coding, I can't get rid of the suspicion, as I type it in, that about 2/3rds of what I have to do is just there because some air-headed suit thought it would be a good idea. Then you have the fact that you need five languages to do any one single thing just because languages larger than ten keywords will fall outside the attention span of a market-droid. Then absolutely every single language gets hyped like a Hollywood blockbuster, even if it does nothing whatsoever.
Congratulations! And with nine years to bask in your proud feat to the adoration of all, you are well-prepared to move forward to your next outstanding achievement!
Next, it goes Hollywood. BOFH's to get the "Harry Potter" treatment. "Eugene Strand and the Magic IDE Cable", "Phildon Poindexter and the Hard Drive of Secrets", "Wyeth Goldfarb and the Rootkit of Fire".
"Mummy! I wanna LART for Christmas!" "OK, here y'go!" *WHACK!*
'I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.'
- Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of the C++ programming language
Oh, I'm one Linux geek who's always admitted that Apple gives you something for your money. Had a job using Apple machines for a couple years, and I check out floor displays of Apples every time I wander by one. It's just that, to us Linux geeks who dumpster dive for 686 chips and 10-G drives and Dell shells behind dwellings of Windows lusers (who are chucking their old hardware like Kleenex), anything more expensive than "free" is pricey.
To be a Linux user is to see it *rain* perfectly good hardware every day! What, people go into stores and *pay* for these things? Heck, I gotta shovel 'em off the lawn!
Of course, open source fans would be wagging their tails with joy were Sun and Apple to combine forces. You have OS X on Apple and Open Solaris on Sun, Sun could get over it's paranoia and open up Java now that it had a Big Friend to make it feel secure, and you guys want your NextStep(sp? NeXtSTep? NExTStep? neXTstEP?) desktop back? No problem, we have the GNUStep WindowMaker we've been keeping maintained for you all along, it's all ready to go with all kinds of sexy modern improvements.
Ironic how I took a break from playing Go on Hikarunix just to come in here and read this article. Yes, join two lesser groups to make a stonger main group against a common stronger enemy! Joseki!!!
My spouse has watched with amusement over the years as I have attempted my first task of the morning - making my espresso. It's a 50% shot if I can pull this off the first time, without forgetting to add water, add beans, turn on pot, plug pot in, get coffee cup, avoid cracking head on cupboard doors, etc. By the time I have espresso in cup in hand and I'm right-side up, I'm OK from there.
My theory is there's a boot-period for your brain just like a boot period when your computer turns on. The first five minutes after waking is POST, kernel module loading, login, starting the desktop...
And, unlike Perl, it's very easy to do complicated things in simple, legible code.
I just burned through the flamewall on this issue not three days ago. I use Python instead of Perl, love Python best of all languages currently, and may even like the book reviewed. But it is superstitiously ignorant to declare any language makes it "easier" to program in. Can we just once have a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses and merits and demerits of any language at all, instead of talking about it like it was a laxative? "Makes the code soft and it flows out smoothly!" No, it doesn't: nothing does; hard programs are hard to write, easy programs are easy to write. I'll even save the time and copy my closing argument from last time:
I know a secret. It's a secret you only find out after programming for a while. It's one you obviously don't know if you ask me which programming language is the "easiest".
There is this public perception, unanimous in user-land, and even permeating to the very depths of Slashdot, which goes: "Computers are only hard because evil computer programmers deliberately set out to make them hard." And the secret is: that that's a falsehood. Computers are not made artificially difficult. It does no good to tell you this; this is a special kind of secret that you can only learn through experience.
The experience of struggling to design a usable user interface for your own system. The struggle to overcome the barriers of closed systems, lack of documentation, and misinformation everywhere you turn. The exasperation of dealing with users who come to you with the attitude that your program broke on purpose, you should fix it without knowing what the error was, and it's too hard to learn anyway because you make it difficult, because you're "evil".
Programming experience erases that mental line drawn between user and programmer. You get experience on both sides of the fence, and eventually you see that there is no such thing as artificial complication. Interfacing with a machine upon which we have taught electricity to think and where we hope to make it sing and dance for us is inherently complicated TO START WITH, and the various tools we use to perform our tasks - why, each and every one was written by average people like you and me who also sat down with a clean file and furrowed their brow and wondered "How can I do this? How can I make it so people will use it?"
No, you still have that mental mindset that there are programmers who deliberatly design things to be difficult, that it's all in spite, that they're laughing at you. Who, except as a joke, would deliberately make a programming language "hard to learn"? To fail at your task and blame your tool is simply a form of denial so that you don't have to face the fact that you have given up on trying to use something (no matter if it's COBOL or Javascript or Perl or freaking TECO, even!) that hundreds of other people have used successfully.
There is no "easy". There is no "hard". There is only "Task".
Now, you want to talk about an "easy" language? Binary, of course! Binary has just two commands (one and zero) so it's the fastest to learn, has cross-platform compatibility built-in (all computers know binary!), is easiest to test (no compiler or interpretter required, just "Rite 'n' Run"!), is readily available everwhere (ALL programs are "open source" in binary!), and needs no extension libraries (Binary can do it all!). If you thought this paragraph was stupid, this is how stupid the rest of you sound to me when you hyperfocus on "easy" and act like there's no other aspect to programming.
Slashdot Mirror
I entertained doubt about it until you refuted it; now I know for SURE that it's true!
Lookit the name on the post of the guy you replied to the first time. Now lookit my name. I think we have found the root of your problem: you are unable to focus on any particular thing for a length of time, and hence this make you the ideal Ctrl-S presser...in fact, that's ALL you press! Yes, this explains a lot...
As far as I can piece it together, this is supposed to end like "A Beautiful Mind" where you wake up strapped to an electric bed with nurse Ratchet probing you and find out all the people you knew and places you went for the past ten years are just little gremlins in your head. Your project map is a bunch of yarn tangled up on the wall, you've actually been cramming Phil Collins CDs into your computer and trying to boot them because you thought they were some word you made up called "Knoppix", etc.
I found myself skimming after page two, and it still couldn't go by fast enough. Incredible, I think instead of learning anything from it, the page actually sucked knowledge out of my brain backwards through my eyeballs, so that now I think that there is no such thing as Linux at all, because there's nowhere for the distros to come from, because it denies the existence of an open source community. BECAUSE THESE MULES BELIEVE SOFTWARE COMES FROM THE FREAKING BLUE FAIRY GODMOTHER!
Depends. Are you posting on Slashdot? Can Microsofties read your words?
You don't get out much, do you?
Before I go to the detail of pointing out what a complete bastard you are, you need to get somebody to help you (because you're too fucking stupid to do this yourself) run the Emacs text editor on any Linux system. Have them create a file (with Ctrl-X Ctrl-F), name it, and begin typing away in it as fast as they possibly can without saving at all. While they are doing this, go around to the back of the machine and UNPLUG IT WITHOUT WARNING. Wait a few and plug it back in. When the machine has it's wits back and has auto-fscked the hard disk, go look for the file. You will find it by it's name with a '~' after it, showing the file as of the last auto-save. Open it up and look at it. You should have it up to within 100 characters or less of what was typed.
I know this works because I've had a power outage due to the house being hit by lightning in the middle of my work. An act of that God whom you say couldn't himself make a foolproof app (and whom was doubtless aiming at you), severe enough to weld two electrical cords into the sockets, fry my surge protector, blow up a transformer on my street and keep the neighborhood dark for half the day was not sufficient, when I brought my file back up, to cause one single character of my work to disappear.
Emacs was written in 1975. Doubtless, it's technology is still too cutting-edge to expect everywhere, right?
OK, that was funny as hell. I don't hate Macs, they're not as bad as the guy makes it out, but he's still funny. He'd be funnier if he was slamming Windows.
Well, if that's *all* it is is a hidden folder, it seems kind of ludicrous that there'd be any fuss at all. All operating systems have the concept of hidden files and folders where the system keeps important stuff. On Linux, that's a filename beginning with a dot (even called a "dotfile"), so "ls -a" in your home directory would show a .kde folder where all your desktop preferences are kept. Back on Windows it seemed half the system folders had the "hidden" and "archive" boxes checked in the properties dialog (if you ever got to see it, that is!). Sure enough, I remember all kinds of malware using tricks with this to hide itself on Windows boxes. Files and folders not shown in the normal course of operation so they can't be inadvertedly damaged is as old as OS/2 warp, at least.
No, people, this is not Flamebait that our good friend anonymous posted. Look past your precious pride for a minute: he is telling you that you have a right to demand BETTER for yourselves! Of course, so have a gazillion others...
*sigh* I don't wanna do this anymore: I'm bored.
I always explained a rootkit thusly: Imagine if I secretly replaced all the locks on your house with special locks that open just by turning them without any key. Now, nobody needs a key in order to rob your house, nor do they have to break anything to leave evidence. I didn't *take* anything, mind you, but all security is defeated so that anybody who wants to will find it wide open. That's what a rootkit does to your computer. Generally, if you want to crack security on box "X" and you discover a rootkit on it, your day is made easier!
OK, so I'm a freak of nature. But, no, I've never never never never in my entire life ever deleted anything that I wasn't 999999% positively absolutely sure that I never wanted to see again under any circumstances. But I have (true story) physically beat a piece of hardware to death with my bare hands when it wouldn't stop asking me "ARE YOU SURE?" at every single individual keystroke and mouseclick.
Perhaps it's because I learned computers during an age when you asked for it and you got it right away, and the first assumption didn't always default to "User is randomly drooling into keyboard and shorting it out." At least on some operating systems, you have the possibility to turn confirmations off, and are then at least given the *chance* to actually have a system do what you tell it to do, just as if you knew what you were doing. And thankfully, I have found and now run exclusively those.
Makes about as much sense as clicking "Yes, dammit, I'm sure!" when you want to delete this file, then it doesn't delete it, it sends it to the recycle bin so you have to chase it there and re-delete it and answer "Yes, dammit, I'm sure!" again, doesn't it?
It was supposed to mean dead as in "Look, mate, I know a dead parrot when I see one...and I'm looking at one right now!"
You're only still getting SPAY-UM because you LACK FAITH in the HEALING POWER of the Almighty Bill! BLEY-ESSED be his AH-HOLY NAY-UM! Yeah, he hath only to extend HIS HAND and take your blemishes away from your inbox! Now holds hands and UH-PAR-UYUH, PAR-AY with me brothers and sisters, that in this hour these doubting unbelievers will yet turn their hearts to the ONE TRUE FAITH, that they might be YET SAY-UVED from their hour of darkness!
I know just what you mean. With half of all web coding, I can't get rid of the suspicion, as I type it in, that about 2/3rds of what I have to do is just there because some air-headed suit thought it would be a good idea. Then you have the fact that you need five languages to do any one single thing just because languages larger than ten keywords will fall outside the attention span of a market-droid. Then absolutely every single language gets hyped like a Hollywood blockbuster, even if it does nothing whatsoever.
Congratulations! And with nine years to bask in your proud feat to the adoration of all, you are well-prepared to move forward to your next outstanding achievement!
"Mummy! I wanna LART for Christmas!" "OK, here y'go!" *WHACK!*
'I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.'
- Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of the C++ programming language
Oh, I'm one Linux geek who's always admitted that Apple gives you something for your money. Had a job using Apple machines for a couple years, and I check out floor displays of Apples every time I wander by one. It's just that, to us Linux geeks who dumpster dive for 686 chips and 10-G drives and Dell shells behind dwellings of Windows lusers (who are chucking their old hardware like Kleenex), anything more expensive than "free" is pricey. To be a Linux user is to see it *rain* perfectly good hardware every day! What, people go into stores and *pay* for these things? Heck, I gotta shovel 'em off the lawn!
Ironic how I took a break from playing Go on Hikarunix just to come in here and read this article. Yes, join two lesser groups to make a stonger main group against a common stronger enemy! Joseki!!!
My theory is there's a boot-period for your brain just like a boot period when your computer turns on. The first five minutes after waking is POST, kernel module loading, login, starting the desktop...
The period begins 28 characters into the sentence, though...
To the rest of us, your working at NASA is your uber-geek badge! Even to those of us who dual-boot everything...
I just burned through the flamewall on this issue not three days ago. I use Python instead of Perl, love Python best of all languages currently, and may even like the book reviewed. But it is superstitiously ignorant to declare any language makes it "easier" to program in. Can we just once have a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses and merits and demerits of any language at all, instead of talking about it like it was a laxative? "Makes the code soft and it flows out smoothly!" No, it doesn't: nothing does; hard programs are hard to write, easy programs are easy to write. I'll even save the time and copy my closing argument from last time:
I know a secret. It's a secret you only find out after programming for a while. It's one you obviously don't know if you ask me which programming language is the "easiest".
There is this public perception, unanimous in user-land, and even permeating to the very depths of Slashdot, which goes: "Computers are only hard because evil computer programmers deliberately set out to make them hard." And the secret is: that that's a falsehood. Computers are not made artificially difficult. It does no good to tell you this; this is a special kind of secret that you can only learn through experience.
The experience of struggling to design a usable user interface for your own system. The struggle to overcome the barriers of closed systems, lack of documentation, and misinformation everywhere you turn. The exasperation of dealing with users who come to you with the attitude that your program broke on purpose, you should fix it without knowing what the error was, and it's too hard to learn anyway because you make it difficult, because you're "evil".
Programming experience erases that mental line drawn between user and programmer. You get experience on both sides of the fence, and eventually you see that there is no such thing as artificial complication. Interfacing with a machine upon which we have taught electricity to think and where we hope to make it sing and dance for us is inherently complicated TO START WITH, and the various tools we use to perform our tasks - why, each and every one was written by average people like you and me who also sat down with a clean file and furrowed their brow and wondered "How can I do this? How can I make it so people will use it?"
No, you still have that mental mindset that there are programmers who deliberatly design things to be difficult, that it's all in spite, that they're laughing at you. Who, except as a joke, would deliberately make a programming language "hard to learn"? To fail at your task and blame your tool is simply a form of denial so that you don't have to face the fact that you have given up on trying to use something (no matter if it's COBOL or Javascript or Perl or freaking TECO, even!) that hundreds of other people have used successfully.
There is no "easy". There is no "hard". There is only "Task".
Now, you want to talk about an "easy" language? Binary, of course! Binary has just two commands (one and zero) so it's the fastest to learn, has cross-platform compatibility built-in (all computers know binary!), is easiest to test (no compiler or interpretter required, just "Rite 'n' Run"!), is readily available everwhere (ALL programs are "open source" in binary!), and needs no extension libraries (Binary can do it all!). If you thought this paragraph was stupid, this is how stupid the rest of you sound to me when you hyperfocus on "easy" and act like there's no other aspect to programming.