That's the beauty of simplicity. If you can do all you need in 4k, why use 4GB and a fancy GUI? Not every computer should look/act like a desktop. Too many projects go for the big, bells & whistles, all-inclusive approach to software. Sometimes small and light and just enough is the better option. The ATM guys could learn something here. And maybe car manufacturers too.
Um, did you read the thread? Or even that particular comment? Sheesh, I know it's not cool to read the article, but I thought maybe you'd read the message you're replying to.
This is the attitude that makes commercial open-source so difficult. Until Redhat employ every developer whose code is used in their distro, you can accuse them of freeloading. Redhat contribute to a variety of core packages, including the kernel. That's enough to keep me happy. I'm not saying they're perfect, but they're not bad. The very existence of CentOS should show that they're sticking to the GPL. But you also have to remember is all those patches that go back upstream, and appear in Debian, SuSE and the rest.
I used purely Linux/Solaris for a few years, but in my current job I have a couple of apps that tie me to Windows. I hate it. I haven't found time yet to experiment with virtual machines, but it's on my list. How do they cope with 3D intensive apps? I need to run Solidworks and CST Microwave Studio. I think Solidworks is the real challenge here - does anyone know if it works?
I'm certainly not McAfee's biggest fan (what's with the burst of 100% CPU? why is it suddenly so urgent to scan everything?), but I've been running it at home and work for the past few years and haven't seen this daily reboot feature. Generally, it seems to work, and doesn't interfere too much.
You'd be surprised. Sometimes the half-clued user can be really difficult. They can see what you're asking won't work. They know they want their problem to work. So they can see there is no point typing something that won't work - they somehow assume you're wasting their time, or testing them, or something. I've also had the conversation:
me:Try X
user:It won't work
me: Yes, but I'd like to see the error message
user: But it won't work ...and, repeat...
I work a lot on hardware, and have a similar problem when things break (as they do, often). I ask the user 'what did you do?'. It still amazes me how many users try to cover their tracks. They assume I'm trying to apportion blame, even when I explain that I'm looking for help. I spend a week figuring out what they did, when they could have just told me. And then they'll deny it. Problems are often only tangentially related to what the user did (e.g. they swapped a cable, and happened to find a badly soldered connector), but knowing where they've been makes my life so much easier.
Isn't this the old argument about a Mac vs. a PC? Life is easier (predictable) for programmers when the hardware is restricted. But better (cheaper, more choice) for consumers when the hardware is open. There are far more people reading this on a PC than a Mac. Your company doesn't have to support Android - it is free to ignore a large customer base if it wants to. Currently I'd guess there are far more iPhones out there than Androids, but in five years time?
Well said. And lots of code is really important for a month, and then never used again. It's just a tool for getting something done. Sometimes abusing your tools to do something quick is perfectly valid. There really is no point writing a UML chart for a quick-and-dirty simulator, designed to check if your idea is crazy or not.
I remember seeing a derelict Loran-C station in Iceland. I was very excited to see it, but I don't think anyone else in my group had a clue what it was.
Sometimes I think the Movie and (espeically) the Music industries won't be content until the government outright introduces a "media tax"
The funny thing is we already have something like this in the UK with the TV license, used to fund the BBC. The thing is, it actually works rather well. When the BBC remember who they are, and stop trying to compete with low-grade commercial TV, they make some very good stuff - everything from News and current affairs (including a very strong web presence) through drama and comedy. And without commercials. Just so long as we give the cash to a bunch of people interested in making good media, rather than the money-grabbing lowlife who are currently destroying music and cinema, it could work well.
So if you'd like to contribute in other ways, pick a project that has something that you know a lot about or are passionate about and try to make small improvements submitted as patches. Good with embedded C? Try to help out the Firefox team in squeezing out cycles. Good with computer vision algorithms? Hit up OpenCV or even write some more script/extensions for the Gimp. What's your passion? The most important thing to remember is to not get discouraged when your patch gets rejected or deferred or sent back. Ask for feedback from the team and keep in mind you're there to support them. Firefox might be too closely knit of a project for you to break into but just perusing sourceforge or github will open up your eyes to who's out there looking for your help. A lot of these projects have wish lists.
Why is it so hard to understand that there are people out there who don't have hot coding skills (and no time or inclination to gain them), who think FLOSS is good, use FLOSS tools, and want to contribute? Go and read the original question again. Now explain how the above paragraph is helpful. How do you read I'm certainly not a talented enough programmer to help with development and manage to suggest Good with embedded C? Try to help out the Firefox team in squeezing out cycles. Oh, the smart, welcoming world of open source. I'm glad you helped.
This is only tangentially related to TFA, but lets have a go:
I can't read SDHC cards on any Windows PC I can find. I have one of those cheap USB readers. It used to work, then it stopped - I have no idea what changed. It's not hardware, because Linux machines will read it just fine. Yes, the card is >4GB, but as I said, Linux can read it, so this is not a hardware problem. Does anyone out there know how to fix this?
Good advice, I'll second that. Go to Oxford (not sure it counts as England either, but it's a fun place with good pubs) - regular bus or train from London. If you go, go and see the Pitt Rivers museum for a very random collection of all that is human.
You make it sound like the OSS world owes Microsoft something. From past behaviour, I think it's reasonable to be suspicious. I would love to believe that we're all moving towards harmony, but I think MS have to do the work, not us. This is a good step, but it's not the whole walk.
One of the greatest strengths of open source is the philosophy of 'using what works'. If that happens to be.NET under an Apache license, then use it. As with any other project component, you have to ask: is the license okay, does it do what I want, is it well supported? If you get three yeses, then go ahead. The more conservative will probably also ask does the project have a good history. I think that'll be the interesting question to watch.
I guess you keep weirder hours than I do. When I said your days coding, I was referring to the time most people spend at work. If you can demonstrate that your code was all written at home, not during time you were being paid for, without using your employers resources, and is unrelated to what you do at work, then sure, it's yours. If you spend your evenings coding and selling the same software that you write during the day, I think your employer may like to know about it.
I think this is the cultural difference between academia and industry. Sure, we all share lesson plans, copy each other, etc. Your university chooses to let you do this, for 'the greater good'. When you get a postdoc somewhere else, you take your knowledge with you (including lesson plans), and somebody else comes in to your old university with their own ideas. But try selling your lesson plan back to your old university and see what happens.
The issue only becomes an issue when somebody starts trying to sell something they don't technically own, rather than sharing it for free. It's not unlike the GPL, if a whole lot less formal.
I fail to see how this raises any questions too. The schools pay the teachers, the lesson plans belong to the school.
I work for a university. Any work-related ideas I come up with belong to the university. In exchange, I get paid, even when I'm not thinking of anything useful. If you write software for a living, you can't go home and sell your days coding, it belongs to your employer. It's not compulsory, it's an exchange where you get money to buy shiny things and your employer get whatever they pay you for. No different for teachers. Poor pay is a different story, and doesn't change this one.
Clearly if you're running Ubuntu you should switch, because it's only at version 9, but the best choice is obviously Fedora, because then you get v12. Easy, eh?
Maybe the real game is to try to disrupt those groups searching for balloons. Does DARPA still have enough control to stop groups forming and co-ordinating via twitter/mobile phones/etc? For every civilian team searching for balloons, there is a military team trying to stop them communicating? Watch this message disappear in a minute or two...
BTW, balloons make the perfect symbol because DARPA love The Prisoner.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the beauty of simplicity. If you can do all you need in 4k, why use 4GB and a fancy GUI? Not every computer should look/act like a desktop. Too many projects go for the big, bells & whistles, all-inclusive approach to software. Sometimes small and light and just enough is the better option. The ATM guys could learn something here. And maybe car manufacturers too.
Riight. Because only a paranoid schizophrenic would find this at all suspicious. Do you work for the FBI, or are you just naturally trusting?
Um, did you read the thread? Or even that particular comment? Sheesh, I know it's not cool to read the article, but I thought maybe you'd read the message you're replying to.
This is the attitude that makes commercial open-source so difficult. Until Redhat employ every developer whose code is used in their distro, you can accuse them of freeloading. Redhat contribute to a variety of core packages, including the kernel. That's enough to keep me happy. I'm not saying they're perfect, but they're not bad. The very existence of CentOS should show that they're sticking to the GPL. But you also have to remember is all those patches that go back upstream, and appear in Debian, SuSE and the rest.
True. But Redhat put a lot of work into Linux, and I'm happy for my company to help fund those coders, so I buy RHEL licences.
I used purely Linux/Solaris for a few years, but in my current job I have a couple of apps that tie me to Windows. I hate it. I haven't found time yet to experiment with virtual machines, but it's on my list. How do they cope with 3D intensive apps? I need to run Solidworks and CST Microwave Studio. I think Solidworks is the real challenge here - does anyone know if it works?
I'm certainly not McAfee's biggest fan (what's with the burst of 100% CPU? why is it suddenly so urgent to scan everything?), but I've been running it at home and work for the past few years and haven't seen this daily reboot feature. Generally, it seems to work, and doesn't interfere too much.
me:Try X
...and, repeat...
user:It won't work
me: Yes, but I'd like to see the error message
user: But it won't work
I work a lot on hardware, and have a similar problem when things break (as they do, often). I ask the user 'what did you do?'. It still amazes me how many users try to cover their tracks. They assume I'm trying to apportion blame, even when I explain that I'm looking for help. I spend a week figuring out what they did, when they could have just told me. And then they'll deny it. Problems are often only tangentially related to what the user did (e.g. they swapped a cable, and happened to find a badly soldered connector), but knowing where they've been makes my life so much easier.
Isn't this the old argument about a Mac vs. a PC? Life is easier (predictable) for programmers when the hardware is restricted. But better (cheaper, more choice) for consumers when the hardware is open. There are far more people reading this on a PC than a Mac. Your company doesn't have to support Android - it is free to ignore a large customer base if it wants to. Currently I'd guess there are far more iPhones out there than Androids, but in five years time?
Most science code is fairly short...
Well said. And lots of code is really important for a month, and then never used again. It's just a tool for getting something done. Sometimes abusing your tools to do something quick is perfectly valid. There really is no point writing a UML chart for a quick-and-dirty simulator, designed to check if your idea is crazy or not.
Some of us want to type our passwords on different language keyboards. #$#% are amongst the first to move (y's and z's are bad too).
I remember seeing a derelict Loran-C station in Iceland. I was very excited to see it, but I don't think anyone else in my group had a clue what it was.
Sometimes I think the Movie and (espeically) the Music industries won't be content until the government outright introduces a "media tax"
The funny thing is we already have something like this in the UK with the TV license, used to fund the BBC. The thing is, it actually works rather well. When the BBC remember who they are, and stop trying to compete with low-grade commercial TV, they make some very good stuff - everything from News and current affairs (including a very strong web presence) through drama and comedy. And without commercials. Just so long as we give the cash to a bunch of people interested in making good media, rather than the money-grabbing lowlife who are currently destroying music and cinema, it could work well.
OpenOffice.org is your TEXT EDITOR? Oh boy.
So if you'd like to contribute in other ways, pick a project that has something that you know a lot about or are passionate about and try to make small improvements submitted as patches. Good with embedded C? Try to help out the Firefox team in squeezing out cycles. Good with computer vision algorithms? Hit up OpenCV or even write some more script/extensions for the Gimp. What's your passion? The most important thing to remember is to not get discouraged when your patch gets rejected or deferred or sent back. Ask for feedback from the team and keep in mind you're there to support them. Firefox might be too closely knit of a project for you to break into but just perusing sourceforge or github will open up your eyes to who's out there looking for your help. A lot of these projects have wish lists.
Why is it so hard to understand that there are people out there who don't have hot coding skills (and no time or inclination to gain them), who think FLOSS is good, use FLOSS tools, and want to contribute? Go and read the original question again. Now explain how the above paragraph is helpful. How do you read I'm certainly not a talented enough programmer to help with development and manage to suggest Good with embedded C? Try to help out the Firefox team in squeezing out cycles. Oh, the smart, welcoming world of open source. I'm glad you helped.
This is only tangentially related to TFA, but lets have a go:
I can't read SDHC cards on any Windows PC I can find. I have one of those cheap USB readers. It used to work, then it stopped - I have no idea what changed. It's not hardware, because Linux machines will read it just fine. Yes, the card is >4GB, but as I said, Linux can read it, so this is not a hardware problem. Does anyone out there know how to fix this?
It's an obvious lie. Nobody here has a friend with a girlfriend.
Good advice, I'll second that. Go to Oxford (not sure it counts as England either, but it's a fun place with good pubs) - regular bus or train from London. If you go, go and see the Pitt Rivers museum for a very random collection of all that is human.
Am I really the only person looking at this and thinking 'it's a graph'?
The rest is all visual design and auto-updating.
You make it sound like the OSS world owes Microsoft something. From past behaviour, I think it's reasonable to be suspicious. I would love to believe that we're all moving towards harmony, but I think MS have to do the work, not us. This is a good step, but it's not the whole walk.
.NET under an Apache license, then use it. As with any other project component, you have to ask: is the license okay, does it do what I want, is it well supported? If you get three yeses, then go ahead. The more conservative will probably also ask does the project have a good history. I think that'll be the interesting question to watch.
One of the greatest strengths of open source is the philosophy of 'using what works'. If that happens to be
I guess you keep weirder hours than I do. When I said your days coding, I was referring to the time most people spend at work. If you can demonstrate that your code was all written at home, not during time you were being paid for, without using your employers resources, and is unrelated to what you do at work, then sure, it's yours. If you spend your evenings coding and selling the same software that you write during the day, I think your employer may like to know about it.
I think this is the cultural difference between academia and industry. Sure, we all share lesson plans, copy each other, etc. Your university chooses to let you do this, for 'the greater good'. When you get a postdoc somewhere else, you take your knowledge with you (including lesson plans), and somebody else comes in to your old university with their own ideas. But try selling your lesson plan back to your old university and see what happens.
The issue only becomes an issue when somebody starts trying to sell something they don't technically own, rather than sharing it for free. It's not unlike the GPL, if a whole lot less formal.
I fail to see how this raises any questions too. The schools pay the teachers, the lesson plans belong to the school.
I work for a university. Any work-related ideas I come up with belong to the university. In exchange, I get paid, even when I'm not thinking of anything useful. If you write software for a living, you can't go home and sell your days coding, it belongs to your employer. It's not compulsory, it's an exchange where you get money to buy shiny things and your employer get whatever they pay you for. No different for teachers. Poor pay is a different story, and doesn't change this one.
Clearly if you're running Ubuntu you should switch, because it's only at version 9, but the best choice is obviously Fedora, because then you get v12. Easy, eh?
Maybe the real game is to try to disrupt those groups searching for balloons. Does DARPA still have enough control to stop groups forming and co-ordinating via twitter/mobile phones/etc? For every civilian team searching for balloons, there is a military team trying to stop them communicating? Watch this message disappear in a minute or two... BTW, balloons make the perfect symbol because DARPA love The Prisoner.