OK fine then, don't accept it. Waste your time and money fighting the inevitable, just so that you can be "right", when you could have spent less time and money cooperating on fixing the thing so that you can be "right" *AND* have more time and money in the end, and a better outcome all the way around.
Look, I don't love systemd; I quite dislike it in fact. But it should be pretty clear to any moron that it's already become entrenched and it's not going anywhere. So you can cry and try to take your ball and go play in your own ever shrinking room, or you can try to improve the bed that you are inevitably going to have to sleep in.
My advice was to wake up, wise up, and try to positively affect the ecosystem that you live in, instead of crying and living some kind of pipe dream that you'll be able to use Linux and not have to use systemd.
Specious argument. Nobody said you *have* to accept systemd. I said you *should* accept systemd, and I gave reasons why you should. You still have the freedom to disagree and do your own thing regardless of what I say.
I would have thought that were so obvious that it didn't even necessitate your reply, but since you've been modded "+5 Interesting" I guess lots of people also completely missed the point.
Whether you love, hate, or are ambivalent about systemd, I think you have to accept it at this point. If there are things you don't like about it, trying to use an alternate init mechanism is only going to cause you personal grief that will likely only increase in severity over time as it gets harder and harder to retrofit software packages to use other init systems as systemd further embeds itself into the Linux software world.
If there are things you don't understand about systemd, you should read as much as you can to try to figure it out for yourself, and if you can't, you should write up coherent questions and post them in the appropriate forum for help (what is the appropriate forum? I don't know - someone jump in here and help me out. I personally often have no idea where the best place is to ask questions about things like systemd).
If there are things you don't like about systemd, you should write up coherent bug reports or feature requests, and get them in front of the right people (once gain, someone jump in here and say who these people are and how to get these types of requests out there, I actually don't know). Or better yet, make the improvements to systemd yourself if you are capable of doing so.
Your goal should be to improve both systemd itself and your knowledge of how to use it to the point where it is something you are happy to use, not work around it. By hook and by crook, systemd has become the standard way of doing many things in a typical Linux system and it's time for all of us to just accept that and to make forward progress. It's too late to try to work against systemd; it's time to "embrace and extend".
If systemd is so onerous to you that you can't use Linux anymore, then I guess BSD is a possible solution for you. But who knows, maybe BSD will eventually adopt systemd as well?
I just think there's a difference between "caring that the government can track people via cell phones" and carrying a pager so that you can be paged, then decide to drive to some "neutral place" where you can make a call back, so that the government can't know where you were when you received the page. That's just a level of paranoia completely inconsistent with rational behavior, unless you have specific reason to believe that the government is targeting YOU with some elevated level of tracking and also are doing something that you believe the government will try to prosecute you for and for which your location when you receive phone calls will contribute to their case against you.
I mean, the government also sends swat teams out to break down people's doors when they are believed to be holed up in their house with weapons -- does that mean that we should all be ultra paranoid and build our doors out of 3 foot thick steel and sit in the far corner of the house worried that the swat team is going to descend at any moment?
No - that's absolutely unjustified paranoia. So is refusing to use a cell phone except via pager-initiated callbacks.
I guess it really comes down to what question is being asked.
I believe that most people think of "base" as the number of symbols that can be used in a "standard math system" using symbolic representations that can be written and operated on using the same "rules" as in base 10 math, but with a different number of symbols.
It is true that you can define the rules however you want, so we could even define a system where "base CmdrTaco" has meaning, because we could make the rules be whatever we want.
But nobody actually means that when they talk about "base N" because it's kind of pointless. Why even ask the question about what it would be like if we could have "base N" if the answer is, "it would be however you want it to be".
Therefore, I believe that you have misinterpreted the question, by applying the most liberal possible interpretation to the concept of "base".
I believe an analogy would be if someone asked you "who was the first president of the United States" and you answered "James Bond". And then you explained your answer by saying "Oh I assumed you were asking about who the first president of the United States was in the invented universe I made up in my mind". I mean sure, if we can interpret any question in the most liberal sense possible, then any answer is possible to any question, and that's kind of pointless.
You cannot because it's not possible. A 'base' is the number of unique symbols in the number system. You can't have partial symbols; you can have 3 symbols for base 3, and 4 symbols for base 4, but you cannot have 3.1415xxx symbols for base Pi.
You might as well ask what it would be like to have a "base yellow" number system or a "base CmdrTaco" number system. Meaningless.
Can someone explain to me exactly what is so marvelous about what this dude can supposedly "see"?
A google search reveals a history of his story popping up from time to time - probably whenever he can find a venue to promote himself, and whenever sites like Slashdot get duped into posting about him - but I found nothing that describes anything that he's actually able to intuit about math since this injury other than a bunch of crap about how he can 'see mathematical patterns' now. Awesome - so how about parlaying that into any statement that demonstrates any extraordinary grasp of math? Because in all my searching, I haven't found this dude to have ever said anything that anyone couldn't easily just make up.
I also found this comical link to "End of Pi Found" on some Physics forum:
Not sure if it's the same guy but it was posted by a Jason Padgett who says he is a "math/physics student in Washington state", and the Jason Padgett in the article is supposedly from Tacoma, Washington. Note that the post was from 2008 and the article that Slashdot has linked to describes Padgett as a "sophomore in college". Some math genius - still a sophomore in college 6 years later!
Slashdot, why do you waste my time with this crap?
I swear, Slashdot editors are worse than the patent office; they don't do even he smallest amount of verification before rubber stamping what is presented to them and pushing it out.
There's a difference between caring about freedom, and being ridiculously paranoid about the government spying on your via your cell phone. Nice false dichotomy though!
I have always been a staunch supporter of RMS against those who attack him just because he holds so strictly to his values. You may not agree with him, but I think you have respect his tenacity in sticking to his position and the personal sacrifices he makes to do so.
That being said, how absolutely boring it is to read essentially the same message ("all software should be free and you should refuse to use any software that isn't free") repeated about 15 times with 15 minor variations. Surely RMS isn't this one-dimensional. I wish there had been some more interesting questions that weren't just prompts to repeat the free software mantra over and over again.
I met Stallman in 1999 or so, at a conference and went along with him and a bunch of his 'cronies' (people who seemed to know him well and defended him like rabid dogs) to dinner. I was honestly surprised to learn that he wouldn't use passwords on any of his computer accounts (somehow this topic came up when someone else asked him a question); I never learned exactly his feelings on the matter because when I tried to ask for some clarification I was immediately shouted down by his cronies who thought I was trying to hassle him or something (I assure you, I wasn't; I just wanted to understand his position better since I had never heard of someone refusing to use passwords and didn't understand why).
Now 15 years later I read his responses to these questions and it all feels very much the same. He's apparently super paranoid (worried about the government eavesdropping on your cell phone calls and tracking you? Wishing for a pager so that you could perfectly control how much tracking information you give when you answer your phone? Jesus christ, get over yourself!) and thinks everyone else should be too.
Honestly, my opinion of RMS was knocked down a notch or two by this interview. I can still appreciate in a sense someone who is so true to their values, but this level of one dimensionality is disappointing. Perhaps the questions are to blame though, they didn't give him alot of opportunity to talk about much else besides the FSF party line.
I don't get it. Do you, and just about everyone else who has posted in this discussion, only by chips that cost > $200? Because AMD is, and always has been, competitive with Intel in the sub $200 price range.
Sub $200 chips have, for a very long time, been very fine processors for the vast majority of desktop computer tasks. So for years now, if you're anything close to a mainstream computer user, there has been an AMD part competitive with an Intel part for your needs.
Of course, once you get to the high end, AMD cannot compete with Intel; but that's only a segment of the market, and it is, in fact, a much smaller segment than the sub $200 segment.
I personally have a Phenom II x6 that I got for $199 when they first came out (sometime in 2011 I believe) that was, at the time, better on price/performance than any Intel chip for my needs (mostly, parallel compiles of large software products) and absolutely sufficient for any nonintensive task, which is 99% of everything else I do besides compiling.
Anyway, if you only think of the > $200 segment, why stop there? I'm pretty sure that for > $10,000 there are CPUs made by IBM that Intel cannot possibly compete with.
I work all day long, on large projects, and manage just fine at work with 480 GB of SSD storage. My work is as a software developer with 6 - 8 40 GB source/build trees checked out at any one time.
So I for one don't run multi-disk systems. The headache of having to think about whether or not I should store something on 'fast' storage vs 'cheap bulk' storage is just not something I ever want to think about. I want it all fast, all the time.
Dude, if you have a 250 GB music collection you are in the like 1% of the 1% of computer users. Seriously. And virtual machine images? That's like 1% of the 1% of the 1%...
The vast majority of people are not ripping CDs to losslessly compressed files on their computers and/or ripping off artists by pirating music and movies.
I stand by my claim that the majority of users would do just fine with 250 GB.
You may not be in that majority, and so for you, yeah, you're just going to have to continue to live with spinning metal platter technology of the 1960's for a while longer...
Let me guess... you bought OCZ drives because they were cheap, and even though they kept failing, you kept buying more OCZ drives, and they failed too?
It's a common story. What I don't understand is, why *anyone* buys an OCZ drive after the first one fails.
Well if you really need 3 TB, then yeah, you have a hard choice to make.
The vast majority of people should, I believe, do just fine in 250 GB or less. I know I certainly can, and am more than happy to trade 2.5 TB of space I will never use for a drive that actually makes my computer fast instead of tying me to data storage speeds of the 1980s...
Of course, the vast majority of people aren't even buying PCs anymore, they're just buying phones and pads with flash storage already built in.
False. Your one anecdotal story does not negate the collective wisdom of the entire computer industry.
As far as anecdotal evidence goes, here's some more worthless info: I've owned 8 SSD drives going all the way back to 2009 and not a single one has ever failed. They're all currently in use and still going strong. I have:
- 32 GB Mtron PATA SLC drive from 2009 - 64 GB Kingston from 2010 (crappy JMicron controller but it was cheap) - 80 GB Intel G2 from 2010 - 80 GB Intel G3 from 2011 - 2x 80 GB Intel 320 from 2011 - 2x 240 GB Intel 520 in my work computer, it gets pretty heavily used, from 2012 - Whatever is in my Macbook Pro from 2012 - Just purchased a 250GB Samsung 840 Evo
Not a single failure on any of them, even the old 32 GB Mtron and the piece of crap JMicron controller Kingston.
But this evidence doesn't really matter; it's the broad experience of the industry as a whole that matters, and I assure you, SSDs have already been decided as ready for prime time.
For a recent example, linode.com, my data center host for like 10 years now, just switched over to all SSDs in all of their systems.
Something else I heard once was that the fastest land animal over 3 miles is actually the dog. I found it fascinating to think that a dog could beat a horse over that distance.
How many Calories would you expend on a bicycle to peddle it fast enough to go 60 MPH?
I found a chart that showed that a 180 lb person at 16 - 19 MPH cycling uses 981 Calories. Your efficiency figure is cut by almost half just going up to ~20 MPH. I suspect that a person pedalling at 60 MPH would actually be less energy efficient than "912 MPG", if it were even possible.
Companies aren't people and the "dessicated corpse of a company" is not something to cry about.
The good people are absorbed into the acquiring company, and the dead wood is cast off. The "company" is an illusion and it dissipates into the aether as it should.
Nothing to cry about, unless you're part of the dead wood I guess.
Interesting characterization. From the outside (5) & (6) don't seem that hard to me. Why are they so hard?
I "manage" my 6 and 7 year old kid every day, getting them to do what they need to do, getting them to meet schedules they don't want to meet, and that's got to be at least as hard as (5) & (6). And it's really not that hard at all. Frustrating at times - OK, well, most of the time, really - sure, but hard? No. Not in the way that 4 is hard.
I read what the executed person in this case did, and *that* turned my stomach. Knowing that he was executed had no visceral effect on me.
If somebody did what that guy did to anyone I cared for, I would not hesitate to end his life myself. Given that I feel that way, I think it would be hypocritical for me to deny others the same consideration.
Yes, but... should you really have to? What kind of container class implementation doesn't recognize the problems inherent in fragmentation and avoid them already?
p.s. Don't try to use it; I haven't maintained it for years, and I have no idea about the state of gccxml these days. But you can read the API docs for an idea of the kinds of reflection that it enabled.
Slashdot Mirror
OK fine then, don't accept it. Waste your time and money fighting the inevitable, just so that you can be "right", when you could have spent less time and money cooperating on fixing the thing so that you can be "right" *AND* have more time and money in the end, and a better outcome all the way around.
Look, I don't love systemd; I quite dislike it in fact. But it should be pretty clear to any moron that it's already become entrenched and it's not going anywhere. So you can cry and try to take your ball and go play in your own ever shrinking room, or you can try to improve the bed that you are inevitably going to have to sleep in.
My advice was to wake up, wise up, and try to positively affect the ecosystem that you live in, instead of crying and living some kind of pipe dream that you'll be able to use Linux and not have to use systemd.
Also, all you anonymous cowards can kiss my ass.
Specious argument. Nobody said you *have* to accept systemd. I said you *should* accept systemd, and I gave reasons why you should. You still have the freedom to disagree and do your own thing regardless of what I say.
I would have thought that were so obvious that it didn't even necessitate your reply, but since you've been modded "+5 Interesting" I guess lots of people also completely missed the point.
Whether you love, hate, or are ambivalent about systemd, I think you have to accept it at this point. If there are things you don't like about it, trying to use an alternate init mechanism is only going to cause you personal grief that will likely only increase in severity over time as it gets harder and harder to retrofit software packages to use other init systems as systemd further embeds itself into the Linux software world.
If there are things you don't understand about systemd, you should read as much as you can to try to figure it out for yourself, and if you can't, you should write up coherent questions and post them in the appropriate forum for help (what is the appropriate forum? I don't know - someone jump in here and help me out. I personally often have no idea where the best place is to ask questions about things like systemd).
If there are things you don't like about systemd, you should write up coherent bug reports or feature requests, and get them in front of the right people (once gain, someone jump in here and say who these people are and how to get these types of requests out there, I actually don't know). Or better yet, make the improvements to systemd yourself if you are capable of doing so.
Your goal should be to improve both systemd itself and your knowledge of how to use it to the point where it is something you are happy to use, not work around it. By hook and by crook, systemd has become the standard way of doing many things in a typical Linux system and it's time for all of us to just accept that and to make forward progress. It's too late to try to work against systemd; it's time to "embrace and extend".
If systemd is so onerous to you that you can't use Linux anymore, then I guess BSD is a possible solution for you. But who knows, maybe BSD will eventually adopt systemd as well?
I just think there's a difference between "caring that the government can track people via cell phones" and carrying a pager so that you can be paged, then decide to drive to some "neutral place" where you can make a call back, so that the government can't know where you were when you received the page. That's just a level of paranoia completely inconsistent with rational behavior, unless you have specific reason to believe that the government is targeting YOU with some elevated level of tracking and also are doing something that you believe the government will try to prosecute you for and for which your location when you receive phone calls will contribute to their case against you.
I mean, the government also sends swat teams out to break down people's doors when they are believed to be holed up in their house with weapons -- does that mean that we should all be ultra paranoid and build our doors out of 3 foot thick steel and sit in the far corner of the house worried that the swat team is going to descend at any moment?
No - that's absolutely unjustified paranoia. So is refusing to use a cell phone except via pager-initiated callbacks.
Well thanks for the well though out response.
I guess it really comes down to what question is being asked.
I believe that most people think of "base" as the number of symbols that can be used in a "standard math system" using symbolic representations that can be written and operated on using the same "rules" as in base 10 math, but with a different number of symbols.
It is true that you can define the rules however you want, so we could even define a system where "base CmdrTaco" has meaning, because we could make the rules be whatever we want.
But nobody actually means that when they talk about "base N" because it's kind of pointless. Why even ask the question about what it would be like if we could have "base N" if the answer is, "it would be however you want it to be".
Therefore, I believe that you have misinterpreted the question, by applying the most liberal possible interpretation to the concept of "base".
I believe an analogy would be if someone asked you "who was the first president of the United States" and you answered "James Bond". And then you explained your answer by saying "Oh I assumed you were asking about who the first president of the United States was in the invented universe I made up in my mind". I mean sure, if we can interpret any question in the most liberal sense possible, then any answer is possible to any question, and that's kind of pointless.
You cannot because it's not possible. A 'base' is the number of unique symbols in the number system. You can't have partial symbols; you can have 3 symbols for base 3, and 4 symbols for base 4, but you cannot have 3.1415xxx symbols for base Pi.
You might as well ask what it would be like to have a "base yellow" number system or a "base CmdrTaco" number system. Meaningless.
Can someone explain to me exactly what is so marvelous about what this dude can supposedly "see"?
A google search reveals a history of his story popping up from time to time - probably whenever he can find a venue to promote himself, and whenever sites like Slashdot get duped into posting about him - but I found nothing that describes anything that he's actually able to intuit about math since this injury other than a bunch of crap about how he can 'see mathematical patterns' now. Awesome - so how about parlaying that into any statement that demonstrates any extraordinary grasp of math? Because in all my searching, I haven't found this dude to have ever said anything that anyone couldn't easily just make up.
I also found this comical link to "End of Pi Found" on some Physics forum:
http://lofi.forum.physorg.com/...
Not sure if it's the same guy but it was posted by a Jason Padgett who says he is a "math/physics student in Washington state", and the Jason Padgett in the article is supposedly from Tacoma, Washington. Note that the post was from 2008 and the article that Slashdot has linked to describes Padgett as a "sophomore in college". Some math genius - still a sophomore in college 6 years later!
Slashdot, why do you waste my time with this crap?
I swear, Slashdot editors are worse than the patent office; they don't do even he smallest amount of verification before rubber stamping what is presented to them and pushing it out.
There's a difference between caring about freedom, and being ridiculously paranoid about the government spying on your via your cell phone. Nice false dichotomy though!
I have always been a staunch supporter of RMS against those who attack him just because he holds so strictly to his values. You may not agree with him, but I think you have respect his tenacity in sticking to his position and the personal sacrifices he makes to do so.
That being said, how absolutely boring it is to read essentially the same message ("all software should be free and you should refuse to use any software that isn't free") repeated about 15 times with 15 minor variations. Surely RMS isn't this one-dimensional. I wish there had been some more interesting questions that weren't just prompts to repeat the free software mantra over and over again.
I met Stallman in 1999 or so, at a conference and went along with him and a bunch of his 'cronies' (people who seemed to know him well and defended him like rabid dogs) to dinner. I was honestly surprised to learn that he wouldn't use passwords on any of his computer accounts (somehow this topic came up when someone else asked him a question); I never learned exactly his feelings on the matter because when I tried to ask for some clarification I was immediately shouted down by his cronies who thought I was trying to hassle him or something (I assure you, I wasn't; I just wanted to understand his position better since I had never heard of someone refusing to use passwords and didn't understand why).
Now 15 years later I read his responses to these questions and it all feels very much the same. He's apparently super paranoid (worried about the government eavesdropping on your cell phone calls and tracking you? Wishing for a pager so that you could perfectly control how much tracking information you give when you answer your phone? Jesus christ, get over yourself!) and thinks everyone else should be too.
Honestly, my opinion of RMS was knocked down a notch or two by this interview. I can still appreciate in a sense someone who is so true to their values, but this level of one dimensionality is disappointing. Perhaps the questions are to blame though, they didn't give him alot of opportunity to talk about much else besides the FSF party line.
I don't get it. Do you, and just about everyone else who has posted in this discussion, only by chips that cost > $200? Because AMD is, and always has been, competitive with Intel in the sub $200 price range.
Sub $200 chips have, for a very long time, been very fine processors for the vast majority of desktop computer tasks. So for years now, if you're anything close to a mainstream computer user, there has been an AMD part competitive with an Intel part for your needs.
Of course, once you get to the high end, AMD cannot compete with Intel; but that's only a segment of the market, and it is, in fact, a much smaller segment than the sub $200 segment.
I personally have a Phenom II x6 that I got for $199 when they first came out (sometime in 2011 I believe) that was, at the time, better on price/performance than any Intel chip for my needs (mostly, parallel compiles of large software products) and absolutely sufficient for any nonintensive task, which is 99% of everything else I do besides compiling.
Anyway, if you only think of the > $200 segment, why stop there? I'm pretty sure that for > $10,000 there are CPUs made by IBM that Intel cannot possibly compete with.
No one uses SSDs in servers? You have no clue. None.
I work all day long, on large projects, and manage just fine at work with 480 GB of SSD storage. My work is as a software developer with 6 - 8 40 GB source/build trees checked out at any one time.
So I for one don't run multi-disk systems. The headache of having to think about whether or not I should store something on 'fast' storage vs 'cheap bulk' storage is just not something I ever want to think about. I want it all fast, all the time.
Dude, if you have a 250 GB music collection you are in the like 1% of the 1% of computer users. Seriously. And virtual machine images? That's like 1% of the 1% of the 1% ...
The vast majority of people are not ripping CDs to losslessly compressed files on their computers and/or ripping off artists by pirating music and movies.
I stand by my claim that the majority of users would do just fine with 250 GB.
You may not be in that majority, and so for you, yeah, you're just going to have to continue to live with spinning metal platter technology of the 1960's for a while longer ...
Let me guess ... you bought OCZ drives because they were cheap, and even though they kept failing, you kept buying more OCZ drives, and they failed too?
It's a common story. What I don't understand is, why *anyone* buys an OCZ drive after the first one fails.
Well if you really need 3 TB, then yeah, you have a hard choice to make.
The vast majority of people should, I believe, do just fine in 250 GB or less. I know I certainly can, and am more than happy to trade 2.5 TB of space I will never use for a drive that actually makes my computer fast instead of tying me to data storage speeds of the 1980s ...
Of course, the vast majority of people aren't even buying PCs anymore, they're just buying phones and pads with flash storage already built in.
False. Your one anecdotal story does not negate the collective wisdom of the entire computer industry.
As far as anecdotal evidence goes, here's some more worthless info: I've owned 8 SSD drives going all the way back to 2009 and not a single one has ever failed. They're all currently in use and still going strong. I have:
- 32 GB Mtron PATA SLC drive from 2009
- 64 GB Kingston from 2010 (crappy JMicron controller but it was cheap)
- 80 GB Intel G2 from 2010
- 80 GB Intel G3 from 2011
- 2x 80 GB Intel 320 from 2011
- 2x 240 GB Intel 520 in my work computer, it gets pretty heavily used, from 2012
- Whatever is in my Macbook Pro from 2012
- Just purchased a 250GB Samsung 840 Evo
Not a single failure on any of them, even the old 32 GB Mtron and the piece of crap JMicron controller Kingston.
But this evidence doesn't really matter; it's the broad experience of the industry as a whole that matters, and I assure you, SSDs have already been decided as ready for prime time.
For a recent example, linode.com, my data center host for like 10 years now, just switched over to all SSDs in all of their systems.
I just bought a Samsung 840 Evo 250 GB drive for like $150. I believe that the 500 GB was under $300.
That is eminently affordable.
Thanks for the fun and interesting post.
Something else I heard once was that the fastest land animal over 3 miles is actually the dog. I found it fascinating to think that a dog could beat a horse over that distance.
How many Calories would you expend on a bicycle to peddle it fast enough to go 60 MPH?
I found a chart that showed that a 180 lb person at 16 - 19 MPH cycling uses 981 Calories. Your efficiency figure is cut by almost half just going up to ~20 MPH. I suspect that a person pedalling at 60 MPH would actually be less energy efficient than "912 MPG", if it were even possible.
Who cares. The good people go elsewhere and more good product is made under a different name.
Also I dispute that anyway. Many good people may stay on indefinitely because they like their position in the new company. It happens.
Companies aren't people and the "dessicated corpse of a company" is not something to cry about.
The good people are absorbed into the acquiring company, and the dead wood is cast off. The "company" is an illusion and it dissipates into the aether as it should.
Nothing to cry about, unless you're part of the dead wood I guess.
Interesting characterization. From the outside (5) & (6) don't seem that hard to me. Why are they so hard?
I "manage" my 6 and 7 year old kid every day, getting them to do what they need to do, getting them to meet schedules they don't want to meet, and that's got to be at least as hard as (5) & (6). And it's really not that hard at all. Frustrating at times - OK, well, most of the time, really - sure, but hard? No. Not in the way that 4 is hard.
I read what the executed person in this case did, and *that* turned my stomach. Knowing that he was executed had no visceral effect on me.
If somebody did what that guy did to anyone I cared for, I would not hesitate to end his life myself. Given that I feel that way, I think it would be hypocritical for me to deny others the same consideration.
Yes, but ... should you really have to? What kind of container class implementation doesn't recognize the problems inherent in fragmentation and avoid them already?
Runtime reflection - I added it to C++ a long time ago:
http://www.ischo.com/xrtti/
But nobody cared ...
p.s. Don't try to use it; I haven't maintained it for years, and I have no idea about the state of gccxml these days. But you can read the API docs for an idea of the kinds of reflection that it enabled.