The immediate actions concern safety (preventing the spacecraft from rolling, discharging the batteries, and depressurizing the propulsion system).
If the thing wasn't going to be launched for 5 years, why on earth was the propulsion system pressurized? Did they just happen to drop it during a propulsion test?
The trouble, of course, is that 90% of what the above tools do is, effectively, "system specific UI". Menus, dialogs, color/font/etc. selection, layout on screen, taking input from the user. All of
this is done in a system specific way. Yeah, there are cross-platform toolkits, and yeah, if you know from the start, you can write to minimize such stuff, but when you're putting a together a commercial product, you do the quickest, most reliable thing. And that's to use the native tools in the most efficient ways. Otherwise, you add a layer of abstraction that just interferes with what you're trying to accomplish.
There's little excuse for writing a text file mangler in anything except portable ISO C (assuming
you'd use C at all, of course). But unless one of the original requirements for a major GUI application is "multiple platforms", then
there's little justification for extra work.
In other words, you've worked around the flaws in the recursive make system by forcing an artificial structure on yourself. Which is not to say that some of your structure isn't a good idea by itself, but
the first time you forget to build something in the right order, you have a broken build. Or, you spend a lot of time building stuff that isn't immediately needed.
I can't over-emphasize how nice it is to be able to be able to type 'make foo' from anywhere in the source tree and be confident that what I'll get is
exactly what I need and correct. You simply can't
do this with a recursive make system - the global dependency relationships are not
available. The fact that it's also faster is just gravy.
Is it worth re-doing a big build system completely from scratch? Maybe not. But if you're starting something new, or already know that you're going to be doing significant work on an existing system, then I strongly suggest you read the article previously referenced. If nothing else, it will tell *why* your recursive makes aren't working reliably, and you'll be able to figure out the required work-arounds.
So I guess there's no really good reason sprinklers aren't in every new structure in the U.S. I'd guess that the only resistance comes from building developers, who see even a marginal increase in costs coming out of their bottom line.
That's one reason. The other is that sprinklers are damned ugly, and many people actually care about such things. If they could figure out some way to embed them in the ceiling, then perhaps they'd catch on for single family homes.
I dunno, though. Assuming I, my wife, and the dogs get out okay (hopefully the smoke alarms will
be sufficient for this), I'd almost rather the whole thing burnt to ground, rather than try to clean up and recover from the water mess. The books are toast either way, and that's all the property I really care about.
One thing I see is a lot of people referring to how
slow and unreliable recursive makes are, and they're
completely correct. However, you can make your life
a lot easier by using make but getting rid of the
recursion, using a make with an 'include' feature. See
Recursive Make Considered Harmful for nice write up on why recursive makes don't work, and how to do it correctly.
I converted our build system, and no-op builds went from a few minutes to about 5 seconds. Really. If I change one file, all the necessary stuff gets rebuilt, and none of the unnecessary. Every time. With a little gmake if-then-else (all in one place, not scattered around in a bunch of
files), the same Makefile and segments work on Linux, AIX, and Solaris. And while the organization of the files is a little unusual
for those who are used to the recursive style, they
are just makefiles, no new syntax.
The downside? It pretty much requires gmake, but since this particular product is proprietary, we control the build machines. I don't think you can use automake...but I consider that a positive:-). You could use autoconf -- just put all the config stuff in one makefile fragment, and include it into the master.
The theory: SCO owns the right to license Unix(tm). AIX is a Unix(tm) system. IBM needs a license from SCO in order to sell AIX. Therefore,
SCO can rescind IBM's Unix license,and thus IBM
can no longer sell AIX.
The reality: IBM is going to stomp SCO into a small, bloody puddle, and then piss in the puddle.
And as others have pointed out, so what? Any identical code could easily be from BSD. SysV is
hardly a pure single-source code base. That's one reason that the whole "We're gonna show people identical code under an NDA" show is completely bogus. SCO needs to demonstrate that not only does Linux have SysV code in it, but also that it could not have come from any other source. Good luck.
Well, I don't want to get into a "my distribution is better than yours" kind of thing (because it really is a matter of taste, and how you rank the good things and bad things about it), but I'll point out that my standard technique for doing package variants is basically this:
apt-get source foo
hack hack hack
dpkg-buildpackaage
dpkg -i foo*.deb
One can add steps like getting a new version of
the original source and applying the Debian diff, shoving the whole thing in CVS as a vendor branch, so I can appy my mods to new versions of the package, etc. etc. etc. Sure, it's a little different than
starting from a.tar.gz, but I don't think it's really any harder.
I'd agree that being locked into a packaging system is a bad idea. While I often build local packages just to get the book-keeping and un-install support, some software is just not amenable to an quick and dirty package, and it's nice to be able to throw the whole thing in/usr/local, and I'd have to say that I've never felt that the Debian packaging system got in the way. Although it's more Debian *policy* that makes this work: I know where Debian packages will put stuff, and more importantly, where they *won't* put stuff, Also, there's a diversion mechanism to
re-direct individual files from a package (if you just want to replace one binary, for example.)
Or save yourself several hundred dollars and pick up a copy of, say, Quickbooks Pro. No, it's not the same function as Quark, but neither is Photoshop, so I didn't think it mattered.
Assuming that by "source install" you mean that you've built and install some software outside the Debian dpkg system, but want that software to fulfill a dependency of another Debian package, the canonical way is to use the 'equivs' package. Basically, you provide a list of dependencies that your (local) software fulfills, and it builds and and installs a sort of psuedo package with the right control information to update the dpkg database. Yeah, you can lie to it, but it's a lot more controlled and traceable than a simple --force-depends.
But I hardly ever do that. See, the thing is you very rarely run across a Debian package for which it's difficult to find the appropriate dependee packages. If it's in the archive, the dependencies are met from the archive. If it's from somebodies private stash, either the dependencies are in the archive, or they've built them for their stash.
Even if you want package from unstable to run on your stable system, usually the
easiest thing to do is 'apt-get source foo/unstable', build it, and install the new package - certainly no harder than the
usual untar, configure, make sequence. No, it doesn't work for big infra-structure things like X or Gnome 2 or KDE, but it works most of the time.
It pisses me off when the man page says the actual manual is in info and then I run info to get a carbon copy of the man page.
Install the doc package, or there's something wrong with your info search path. What's happening is that info is looking for the "real" documentation, not finding it, and then "helpfully" loading the man page.
None of which is to say that info can't be irritating, but when the man page references info doc, there does exist, somewhere, a real info doc that isn't just copy of the man page.
Mckillip's "Riddle of Stars" trilogy (Riddlemaster of Hed, Heir of Sea and Fire and Harpist in the Wind) is terrific. Partly because it came out when fantasy was dominated by LOTR ripoffs (e.g. Shannara), but it holds up well after 20+ years. Or anything else by her. It's fantasy, rather than SF, but that's okay, since others have already referenced the CS Lewis trilogy.
I've been using them for a couple of years now, and
been very satisfied. Pretty much exactly what you
describe as your requirements, for $25/mo ("standard v-host"). They've got both Linux and BSD servers; I get the feeling that the admins prefer BSD, but I can't
see any difference in level of support.
Their admin tool is command line, rather than a web "control-panel", which means you need to ssh into your account (no telnet) to change stuff. That suits me, may not you.
You can't upload your site via ftp; I think the only supported ftp access is anoymous download -- i.e. you can run an ftp repository. Use scp or rsync over ssh to upload.
If humans were animals I'm sure that Africans and the Swiss would be classified as two different species. Every animal is different from every other animal, the only question is by how much.
But humans *are* animals, and yet we don't classify different races as different species. So your proposition is flawed, either through ignorance or a deliberate attempt to mislead. In either case,
I don't want to take the time read and comment on the rest of your post. (That I've taken time to comment at all seems rather pointless, now, so this
will be last. If you feel like it, you can post again and "win".)
No, you tried to imply that since Africans and Swiss are not different species, the general idea of species is bogus. Look up the term "strawman argument" for why such an argument isn't correct, or useful.
After that blunder, there's no point in reading the rest of your long rambling post.
Huh? How is borrowing something legally from the library, reading/listening to/viewing it, and then
returning it, anything at all like making illegal
copies? It's not whether the copyright owner makes money, it's whether or not you, personally, are doing something against the law.The library has paid for each copy in circulation. Each copy is in use by only one person (family, whatever) at a time.
OTOH, if you download from some file-sharing network, one original paid-for copy has spawned a multitude of duplicates. This is not even close to
fair use.
Now, if a person wants to object to copyright laws in general, making an illegal is copy is a valid first step, but it only counts as civil disobedience if you inform the public and the copyright holder what you done, in your own name. Otherwise it's just theft.
...for the part where you suggested he steal stuff: Don't buy CDs, download them or "burn and return"
Yes, the RIAA is completely out-of-line in its attempts to abolish fair use, and treat all its customers as criminals. None-the-less, what you suggest is not fair use by any stretch of the imagination.
How about this suggestion instead:
Don't buy CDs, books, and movies: get a library card, and use it.
And once again it's got the fsking scroll wheels
right where there should be a button. ONLY a button.
It's great that all you folk out there like
your scroll wheels. I've no desire to take them away from you. But I've been up and down the rows at the various stores, and I've STFW, and real three-button mouse have become pretty much impossible to find at a reasonable price - for the very obvious reason that MS Windows supports wheelies and doesn't have any use for the third button.
Oh, and by real I mean one that shaped more-or-less like a standard mouse, and has three equal-size, equal-height, equal-effort buttons at the top front, where I can press them. No scrolly wheel, no side buttons, no fancy software. Under $30 would be nice.
You're not going to get an entire university to drop MS completely from the school for measly 2.4 million.
Instead, try for a more narrow target. Something like "funds for the engineer school, if no engineering classes use MS products for classwork." Substitute
for "engineering school" and "classwork" until you get a balance that is acceptable to both the donor and the school.
Since my only knowledge of "Volunteer Management Systems" is what I just read on your eBase link, I won't make any guarantees, but it's possible that TUTOS
will be reasonable match. It's a fairly generic CRM system, and while its terminology may not be an exact match for what your people use, it can do most of the stuff that eBase claims. The only thing that I noticed specific about eBase was it's Evaluate the cost-effectiveness of campaigns as you move donors and volunteers up the "ladder of engagement"; if that's simply marketing speak for "match donations to the mailout that provoked them", I suspect a little wrangling with the TUTOS projects, installations, and invoices could provide a similar report. Try asking more specifically about your needs on the TUTOS mailling list.
Of course, TUTOS is just one of the many OS CRM systems, maybe another would be better starting point. Trying googling for "Linux CRM" rather than
"Volunteer Management".
I hope Slashdot got paid for this advertisement. I mean, it's one thing to have a little info-post about a unusual or useful free project, but this
is pretty much a straight-up ad for a commercial
product. Why this one, and not any of the other umpteen-jillion "press releases" that are published everyday?
I don't think Schneier's book is the best place to start. It's a fine book, no doubt, but it says very little about real cryptology from a theoretical standpoint, or from the point of view of teaching you to develop or break codes."
Uh, are we all talking about the same "Scneier's
Book"? Applied Cryptography is exactly about real cryptology, etc. Are you referring to Secrets and Lies, perhaps?
Slashdot Mirror
From the article:
NOAA-N Prime is planned for launch in 2008.
and
The immediate actions concern safety (preventing the spacecraft from rolling, discharging the batteries, and depressurizing the propulsion system).
If the thing wasn't going to be launched for 5 years, why on earth was the propulsion system pressurized? Did they just happen to drop it during a propulsion test?
There's little excuse for writing a text file mangler in anything except portable ISO C (assuming you'd use C at all, of course). But unless one of the original requirements for a major GUI application is "multiple platforms", then there's little justification for extra work.
In other words, you've worked around the flaws in the recursive make system by forcing an artificial structure on yourself. Which is not to say that some of your structure isn't a good idea by itself, but the first time you forget to build something in the right order, you have a broken build. Or, you spend a lot of time building stuff that isn't immediately needed.
I can't over-emphasize how nice it is to be able to be able to type 'make foo' from anywhere in the source tree and be confident that what I'll get is exactly what I need and correct. You simply can't do this with a recursive make system - the global dependency relationships are not available. The fact that it's also faster is just gravy.
Is it worth re-doing a big build system completely from scratch? Maybe not. But if you're starting something new, or already know that you're going to be doing significant work on an existing system, then I strongly suggest you read the article previously referenced. If nothing else, it will tell *why* your recursive makes aren't working reliably, and you'll be able to figure out the required work-arounds.
That's one reason. The other is that sprinklers are damned ugly, and many people actually care about such things. If they could figure out some way to embed them in the ceiling, then perhaps they'd catch on for single family homes.
I dunno, though. Assuming I, my wife, and the dogs get out okay (hopefully the smoke alarms will be sufficient for this), I'd almost rather the whole thing burnt to ground, rather than try to clean up and recover from the water mess. The books are toast either way, and that's all the property I really care about.
One thing I see is a lot of people referring to how slow and unreliable recursive makes are, and they're completely correct. However, you can make your life a lot easier by using make but getting rid of the recursion, using a make with an 'include' feature. See Recursive Make Considered Harmful for nice write up on why recursive makes don't work, and how to do it correctly.
I converted our build system, and no-op builds went from a few minutes to about 5 seconds. Really. If I change one file, all the necessary stuff gets rebuilt, and none of the unnecessary. Every time. With a little gmake if-then-else (all in one place, not scattered around in a bunch of files), the same Makefile and segments work on Linux, AIX, and Solaris. And while the organization of the files is a little unusual for those who are used to the recursive style, they are just makefiles, no new syntax.
The downside? It pretty much requires gmake, but since this particular product is proprietary, we control the build machines. I don't think you can use automake...but I consider that a positive :-). You could use autoconf -- just put all the config stuff in one makefile fragment, and include it into the master.
The theory: SCO owns the right to license Unix(tm). AIX is a Unix(tm) system. IBM needs a license from SCO in order to sell AIX. Therefore, SCO can rescind IBM's Unix license,and thus IBM can no longer sell AIX.
The reality: IBM is going to stomp SCO into a small, bloody puddle, and then piss in the puddle.
And as others have pointed out, so what? Any identical code could easily be from BSD. SysV is hardly a pure single-source code base. That's one reason that the whole "We're gonna show people identical code under an NDA" show is completely bogus. SCO needs to demonstrate that not only does Linux have SysV code in it, but also that it could not have come from any other source. Good luck.
Well, I don't want to get into a "my distribution is better than yours" kind of thing (because it really is a matter of taste, and how you rank the good things and bad things about it), but I'll point out that my standard technique for doing package variants is basically this:
One can add steps like getting a new version of the original source and applying the Debian diff, shoving the whole thing in CVS as a vendor branch, so I can appy my mods to new versions of the package, etc. etc. etc. Sure, it's a little different than starting from a .tar.gz, but I don't think it's really any harder.
I'd agree that being locked into a packaging system is a bad idea. While I often build local packages just to get the book-keeping and un-install support, some software is just not amenable to an quick and dirty package, and it's nice to be able to throw the whole thing in /usr/local, and I'd have to say that I've never felt that the Debian packaging system got in the way. Although it's more Debian *policy* that makes this work: I know where Debian packages will put stuff, and more importantly, where they *won't* put stuff, Also, there's a diversion mechanism to
re-direct individual files from a package (if you just want to replace one binary, for example.)
Okay, I'll shut up now...
Or save yourself several hundred dollars and pick up a copy of, say, Quickbooks Pro. No, it's not the same function as Quark, but neither is Photoshop, so I didn't think it mattered.
Yeah, I know, late, but just FYI...
Assuming that by "source install" you mean that you've built and install some software outside the Debian dpkg system, but want that software to fulfill a dependency of another Debian package, the canonical way is to use the 'equivs' package. Basically, you provide a list of dependencies that your (local) software fulfills, and it builds and and installs a sort of psuedo package with the right control information to update the dpkg database. Yeah, you can lie to it, but it's a lot more controlled and traceable than a simple --force-depends.
But I hardly ever do that. See, the thing is you very rarely run across a Debian package for which it's difficult to find the appropriate dependee packages. If it's in the archive, the dependencies are met from the archive. If it's from somebodies private stash, either the dependencies are in the archive, or they've built them for their stash.
Even if you want package from unstable to run on your stable system, usually the easiest thing to do is 'apt-get source foo/unstable', build it, and install the new package - certainly no harder than the usual untar, configure, make sequence. No, it doesn't work for big infra-structure things like X or Gnome 2 or KDE, but it works most of the time.
It pisses me off when the man page says the actual manual is in info and then I run info to get a carbon copy of the man page.
Install the doc package, or there's something wrong with your info search path. What's happening is that info is looking for the "real" documentation, not finding it, and then "helpfully" loading the man page.
None of which is to say that info can't be irritating, but when the man page references info doc, there does exist, somewhere, a real info doc that isn't just copy of the man page.
Good to hear that the Riddle-Master is back in print. I've got Fool's Run, but had never heard of the other two, thanks for the pointer.
I can't think of a McKillip that I thought was less than "pretty good".
Mckillip's "Riddle of Stars" trilogy (Riddlemaster of Hed, Heir of Sea and Fire and Harpist in the Wind) is terrific. Partly because it came out when fantasy was dominated by LOTR ripoffs (e.g. Shannara), but it holds up well after 20+ years. Or anything else by her. It's fantasy, rather than SF, but that's okay, since others have already referenced the CS Lewis trilogy.
I've been using them for a couple of years now, and been very satisfied. Pretty much exactly what you describe as your requirements, for $25/mo ("standard v-host"). They've got both Linux and BSD servers; I get the feeling that the admins prefer BSD, but I can't see any difference in level of support.
Their admin tool is command line, rather than a web "control-panel", which means you need to ssh into your account (no telnet) to change stuff. That suits me, may not you.
You can't upload your site via ftp; I think the only supported ftp access is anoymous download -- i.e. you can run an ftp repository. Use scp or rsync over ssh to upload.
Here's your exact words:
If humans were animals I'm sure that Africans and the Swiss would be classified as two different species. Every animal is different from every other animal, the only question is by how much.
But humans *are* animals, and yet we don't classify different races as different species. So your proposition is flawed, either through ignorance or a deliberate attempt to mislead. In either case, I don't want to take the time read and comment on the rest of your post. (That I've taken time to comment at all seems rather pointless, now, so this will be last. If you feel like it, you can post again and "win".)
No, you tried to imply that since Africans and Swiss are not different species, the general idea of species is bogus. Look up the term "strawman argument" for why such an argument isn't correct, or useful.
After that blunder, there's no point in reading the rest of your long rambling post.
Huh? How is borrowing something legally from the library, reading/listening to/viewing it, and then returning it, anything at all like making illegal copies? It's not whether the copyright owner makes money, it's whether or not you, personally, are doing something against the law.The library has paid for each copy in circulation. Each copy is in use by only one person (family, whatever) at a time.
OTOH, if you download from some file-sharing network, one original paid-for copy has spawned a multitude of duplicates. This is not even close to fair use.
Now, if a person wants to object to copyright laws in general, making an illegal is copy is a valid first step, but it only counts as civil disobedience if you inform the public and the copyright holder what you done, in your own name. Otherwise it's just theft.
...for the part where you suggested he steal stuff: Don't buy CDs, download them or "burn and return"
Yes, the RIAA is completely out-of-line in its attempts to abolish fair use, and treat all its customers as criminals. None-the-less, what you suggest is not fair use by any stretch of the imagination.
How about this suggestion instead:
Ah, probably old stock of a discontinued model. Don't bother...
Link, please. I just looked on www.ibm.com->products->accessories->mice, and there were no plain 3-button mice, optical or otherwise.
And once again it's got the fsking scroll wheels right where there should be a button. ONLY a button.
It's great that all you folk out there like your scroll wheels. I've no desire to take them away from you. But I've been up and down the rows at the various stores, and I've STFW, and real three-button mouse have become pretty much impossible to find at a reasonable price - for the very obvious reason that MS Windows supports wheelies and doesn't have any use for the third button.
Oh, and by real I mean one that shaped more-or-less like a standard mouse, and has three equal-size, equal-height, equal-effort buttons at the top front, where I can press them. No scrolly wheel, no side buttons, no fancy software. Under $30 would be nice.
You're not going to get an entire university to drop MS completely from the school for measly 2.4 million. Instead, try for a more narrow target. Something like "funds for the engineer school, if no engineering classes use MS products for classwork." Substitute for "engineering school" and "classwork" until you get a balance that is acceptable to both the donor and the school.
Since my only knowledge of "Volunteer Management Systems" is what I just read on your eBase link, I won't make any guarantees, but it's possible that TUTOS will be reasonable match. It's a fairly generic CRM system, and while its terminology may not be an exact match for what your people use, it can do most of the stuff that eBase claims. The only thing that I noticed specific about eBase was it's Evaluate the cost-effectiveness of campaigns as you move donors and volunteers up the "ladder of engagement"; if that's simply marketing speak for "match donations to the mailout that provoked them", I suspect a little wrangling with the TUTOS projects, installations, and invoices could provide a similar report. Try asking more specifically about your needs on the TUTOS mailling list.
Of course, TUTOS is just one of the many OS CRM systems, maybe another would be better starting point. Trying googling for "Linux CRM" rather than "Volunteer Management".
I hope Slashdot got paid for this advertisement. I mean, it's one thing to have a little info-post about a unusual or useful free project, but this is pretty much a straight-up ad for a commercial product. Why this one, and not any of the other umpteen-jillion "press releases" that are published everyday?
I don't think Schneier's book is the best place to start. It's a fine book, no doubt, but it says very little about real cryptology from a theoretical standpoint, or from the point of view of teaching you to develop or break codes."
Uh, are we all talking about the same "Scneier's Book"? Applied Cryptography is exactly about real cryptology, etc. Are you referring to Secrets and Lies, perhaps?