Network Computing seems to be horribly worried about getting support staff. Two quick points:
Clueless "NT Admins" are a false economy. I doubt that finding truly useful NT admins is any easier than finding good Linux gurus. Paying big bucks, if need be, for competent system administrators is excellent value.
At least in my part of the world, a large proportion of the CS graduates are going to come out speaking fluent Linux. The IS graduates, for all I know, may well come out as clueless NT admins, but that's their loss...
Could we find a way to put the "qualified staff" misconception to bed? Or are there are large numbers of NT administrators ready for hire out there who can keep NT networks humming along without constant downtime, and a dire shortage of people who can answer a few questions on a menu and then type "make"?
At Melbourne University a couple of weeks ago, RMS gave a lecture on his views on copyright and IP (well, not really on IP - a concept he believes carries many assumptions he does not make).
His view was basically that copyright originally existed to promote the authorship and printing of books, rather than to protect property rights of authors. However, as has been obvious in recent times, copyright has been turned into a mechanism to protect large corporations (eg Disney, an example he enjoyed using repeatedly).
His view on software copyright is already known, of course, so I'll just explain his view on non-software works:
All restrictions on private, not for profit copying should be removed immediately.
Copyright should be restricted to a more realistic period - 10 years
Longer term, it might be worth examining micropayment and other emerging technologies to further reform copyright.
Undoubtedly in my attempt to briefly summarise his argument I've missed many of his key points.
With all these "open-source" code releases, it seems that companies, even those that like the idea of releasing source as a way of getting developers, are as a group uncomfortable with some aspects of current open-source/free licences. Current Free Software developers, however, are annoyed about all these confusing new licences that may or may not take away their freedom to use and develop the source code that is being released. Something needs to be done about this, from both groups' perspective.
What I'd like to see is a clear statement from one of the corporations releasing code under their own custom licence detailing their objections to the GPL and other existing open-source licences.
If this happened, we might be able to:
Allay their fears (unlikely, but possible - their IP lawyers probably haven't dealt with something like this before).
Arrange modifications to existing licences, provided such modifications don't compromise OUR priorities.
Motivate the creation of a new "Open-Source Paranoid Corporation License" which would at least eliminate the profusion of licences happening lately, and would hopefully be worded in such a way that maximised our freedom but gave corporations such protections as they require to be persuaded to free their source.
What about it, corporate types. Surely somebody in Apple or AT&T reads Slashdot?
While I disagree with some of his stances on, for instance, the APSL, and I think he is having trouble discriminating between unfair flamage and fair criticism, you can't ignore the MASSIVE contribution he's made to the culture.
Whilst his technical contributions are not insubstantial (people may scoff at fetchmail, but millions of people use it every day), it's probably his writings that have been most influential. He's edited the Jargon File, wrote Cathedral and the Bazaar and Homesteading The Noosphere (amongst many other writings). Just ONE of these, if done by anyone else, would reserve their place amongst hackerdom's Hall Of Fame.
If I can contribute a tiny fraction of what Eric has done for Free/ Open Source software, especially in bringing so many into the fold, I'll retire a contented soul.
Perhaps the most important lesson I learned in high school was simply:
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE AND WRITE ACCORDINGLY
Whilst I do enjoy articles on something other than kernel update 2.2.3ac93, Katz and this new guy don't seem to be able to apply this rule. In my experience, the hacker audience has the following characteristics:
They prefer their information dense-packed, but expressed explicitly and with clarity.
They are interested in philosophical discussion, but mostly don't have a background in it and are deeply sceptical of the "postmodernist/structuralist crap" coming out of Gen X writers and their own dippy liberal-arts acquaintances:), which often tends to go against charactistic 1, and
Have their own history and philosophy, and aren't terribly impressed with anyone who tries to preach to them without bothering to gain an understanding of it.
So, IMHO, if the less-technical writers who want to write here would like a more friendly response, they should take steps to address these points. As a starting point and an excellent introduction to hacker culture (though not, of course, a be-all and end-all), why don't they have a look at The Jargon File??
Was I the only one who interpreted Starship Troopers (the movie, haven't read the book) as a parody of Fascism?
The Federal logo, the anti-democratic sentiments in the school, their plasticised look, Doogie Howser's (whatever his real name is) uniform, their home town, the way the soldiers got younger and younger . . .
Better still, I'm still not convinced the cast were in on the joke.
Having a LALR(k) grammar means we can parse more complex grammars than yacc, which only supports LALR(1). This is a Good Thing, I suppose (but most languages can be parsed by LALR(1) easily enough).
But, if I remember rightly, the reason why we use LALR(k) over LR(k) is that LALR grammars require less time and memory to construct parsing tables for. This was a problem back in the 1970's when yacc was originally written, but is that still the case? Secondly, are the grammars that are LR(1) a subset of those that are LALR(k)?
I hope your tongue was firmly in your cheek when you said that CS/Maths majors don't care about clarity or sense . . .
CS and Maths majors' writing styles, in my experience, tend to be crystal-clear to the point of tedium. There is no choice when using an inexact medium (English) to convey precise meaning.
Secondly, for a touch typist, typing \emph takes less time than Control-B. I've generally found, however, that most Word users will use the mouse to format text - a far slower process. I'd say the LaTeX approach is pretty efficient, by comparison. Wouldn't you?
I've also noticed that most people who use Word for their theses/dissertations don't use it effectively. They will spend hours at a time propagating formatting changes that should have been encapsulated in a style. If they're not even using the tool they have in an efficient manner, how can they even evaluate whether the alternative would be better?
By the way, you might want to have a look at LyX - a tool that promises to combine the best of LaTeX and a WYSIWIG word processor.
Many years ago (very early 80's), my father worked at Xerox and had a Star workstation on his desk. It had a GUI, some kind of WYSIWIG word processor, intra-office networking, and various other cute little doodads, apparently. It couldn't have been too bad, if my father could be persuaded to use it . . .
They also invented a pile of other stuff - the mouse, for instance. Unfortunately, according to a couple of books I've read on the topic, Xerox management at the time was particularly clueless and let everybody else get rich exploiting technologies they invented.
Slashdot Mirror
Network Computing seems to be horribly worried about getting support staff. Two quick points:
Could we find a way to put the "qualified staff" misconception to bed? Or are there are large numbers of NT administrators ready for hire out there who can keep NT networks humming along without constant downtime, and a dire shortage of people who can answer a few questions on a menu and then type "make"?
At Melbourne University a couple of weeks ago, RMS gave a lecture on his views on copyright and
IP (well, not really on IP - a concept he believes carries many assumptions he does not make).
His view was basically that copyright originally existed to promote the authorship and printing of books, rather than to protect property
rights of authors. However, as has been obvious in recent times, copyright has been turned into a mechanism to protect large corporations (eg Disney, an example he enjoyed using repeatedly).
His view on software copyright is already known, of course, so I'll just explain his view on non-software works:
realistic period - 10 years
micropayment and other emerging technologies to further reform copyright.
Undoubtedly in my attempt to briefly summarise
his argument I've missed many of his key points.
What I'd like to see is a clear statement from one of the corporations releasing code under their own custom licence detailing their objections to the GPL and other existing open-source licences.
If this happened, we might be able to:
What about it, corporate types. Surely somebody in Apple or AT&T reads Slashdot?
While I disagree with some of his stances on, for instance, the APSL, and I think he is having trouble discriminating between unfair flamage and fair criticism, you can't ignore the MASSIVE contribution he's made to the culture.
Whilst his technical contributions are not insubstantial (people may scoff at fetchmail, but millions of people use it every day), it's probably his writings that have been most influential. He's edited the Jargon File, wrote Cathedral and the Bazaar and Homesteading The Noosphere (amongst many other writings). Just ONE of these, if done by anyone else, would reserve their place amongst hackerdom's Hall Of Fame.
If I can contribute a tiny fraction of what Eric has done for Free/ Open Source software, especially in bringing so many into the fold, I'll retire a contented soul.
Whilst I do enjoy articles on something other than kernel update 2.2.3ac93, Katz and this new guy don't seem to be able to apply this rule. In my experience, the hacker audience has the following characteristics:
So, IMHO, if the less-technical writers who want to write here would like a more friendly response, they should take steps to address these points. As a starting point and an excellent introduction to hacker culture (though not, of course, a be-all and end-all), why don't they have a look at The Jargon File??
Was I the only one who interpreted Starship Troopers (the movie, haven't read the book) as a parody of Fascism?
The Federal logo, the anti-democratic sentiments in the school, their plasticised look, Doogie Howser's (whatever his real name is) uniform, their home town, the way the soldiers got younger and younger . . .
Better still, I'm still not convinced the cast were in on the joke.
Yes.
Not to mention all those free speech cases the EFF has been involved in - or the inevitable courtroom test of the GPL . . .
There was an extensive thread about this in
one of the kernel-lists, apparently. You might be able to dig it up.
Having a LALR(k) grammar means we can parse more complex grammars than yacc, which only supports LALR(1). This is a Good Thing, I suppose (but most languages can be parsed by LALR(1) easily enough).
But, if I remember rightly, the reason why we use LALR(k) over LR(k) is that LALR grammars require less time and memory to construct parsing tables for. This was a problem back in the 1970's when yacc was originally written, but is that still the case? Secondly, are the grammars that are LR(1) a subset of those that are LALR(k)?
Anybody out there savvy on this stuff?
Well, actually, I believe they did this so that they could drive the TV output of the same clock crystal as the processor . . .
About $70 US at the moment, I think.
CS and Maths majors' writing styles, in my experience, tend to be crystal-clear to the point of tedium. There is no choice when using an inexact medium (English) to convey precise meaning.
Secondly, for a touch typist, typing \emph takes less time than Control-B. I've generally found, however, that most Word users will use the mouse to format text - a far slower process. I'd say the LaTeX approach is pretty efficient, by comparison. Wouldn't you?
I've also noticed that most people who use Word for their theses/dissertations don't use it effectively. They will spend hours at a time propagating formatting changes that should have been encapsulated in a style. If they're not even using the tool they have in an efficient manner, how can they even evaluate whether the alternative would be better?
By the way, you might want to have a look at LyX - a tool that promises to combine the best of LaTeX and a WYSIWIG word processor.
They also invented a pile of other stuff - the mouse, for instance. Unfortunately, according to a couple of books I've read on the topic, Xerox management at the time was particularly clueless and let everybody else get rich exploiting technologies they invented.