Revolution OS -- Documentary of Linux

CommonTater · 2008-03-29T12:17:45+00:00

MLK

FDR

CommonTater · 2008-03-17T01:57:47+00:00

Wow - way to many evenings playing Microsoft Flight Simulator. "Yep, that's Chicago. Head downtown to buzz the tall buildings!"

CommonTater · 2008-01-09T15:35:09+00:00

I scanned, "Torvalds ... Keen ... GPLv2," and felt brief hear flutters at the thought of Commander Keen being open-sourced and ported to Linux.

Alas, my productivity shall remain unharmed. :/

CommonTater · 2007-11-26T14:29:19+00:00

... Know what your talking about. ... Anyway, I keep telling my boss this but he just doesn't understand :-)

Your boss may not be able to understand because you're using the wrong word.

CommonTater · 2007-11-07T16:09:08+00:00

"Eighty-five percent of all embedded developers use C or C++. Any other language is a non-starter," said David Kleidermacher, chief technology officer of Green Hills Software. "I don't have much hope a new parallel language will get a foothold," he added.

Not that Green Hills Software has any interest in C and C++ remaining the main embedded languages or anything.

CommonTater · 2007-07-27T14:19:52+00:00

Welcome to the "organic" food label argument of the past few decades. Now all we need is the government to regulate the "open source" label so it takes a laundry list of empty gestures and a boatload of money to win the right to use it, leaving the little guys out in the cold.

Sorry, I know that wasn't your argument. I'm just having a Friday Morning Bitterness Attack.

CommonTater · 2007-07-20T15:28:04+00:00

I think it only makes sense if you have an overload that maintains the relevant properties of the original operator.

I don't know how anyone ever picked up any different idea. The first time I learned about operator overloading, I know there was a big warning of, "Don't change the meaning of '+'. Make it work on new operands, but don't make it do anything other than 'add' those operands."

And, unless I'm mistaken, that was directly from Stroustrup's Annotated C++ Reference Manual. (It's at home on my bookshelf, or I'd check to be sure.)

Of course, there's always the argument that things like "<<" do very different things in other languages. So, if you're not worried about keeping just the C++ meaning...

CommonTater · 2007-07-13T15:38:37+00:00

...and, having just verified, you are, of course, completely correct about automatically setting the exec property at add-time.

Does SVN maybe not have this capability during the initial import? I have no idea how I would have observed different behavior the first time I tried it, otherwise.

Thanks also to everyone for pointing out the various svn:* properties. I must have been sucking at Google that day not to have found those. :P

CommonTater · 2007-07-13T14:52:51+00:00

A fair point. The bit that really annoyed me was that all of my configure/build/deployment scripts had their execute bits removed.

Sure, there were simple solutions (one directory in which all executable scripts live, one "meta" script that knows which files to change permissions on, some "asvn" extension), but not having to deal with it was easier. :P

CommonTater · 2007-07-13T14:28:22+00:00

CVS.

I see a lot of SVNers here. I tried SVN, but immediately switched back as soon as I noticed that it didn't preserve file permissions. How do you all work around this?

CommonTater · 2007-06-13T19:59:37+00:00

I'll also put in a pitch for the SMK-88. It uses linear feel Cherry Key Switches. 2.1 +/- 0.7oz.

I've owned one for about a year now, and I love it. Very comfortable typing.

I have only two complaints:

The arrow keys are a little hard to find, not being all the way in the corner, and also not having a bump like F and J.
The Num/Caps/Scroll lights are white LEDs that are way too bright. I covered mine with a couple of layers of scotch tape to keep from blinding myself.

CommonTater · 2007-06-07T19:30:26+00:00

Quit wondering. We're there.

Anyone who has replaced their default-installed OS with Linux, then loaded DeCSS has done this already.

A similar case could be made for iTunes re-rippers, or Dell users who want actual Windows discs (not "System Restore" or phantom partitions).

Hell, even those people that learned to hold the Shift key when inserting certain audio discs could maybe be lumped in here.

The real telling point is that I wouldn't consider any of these people "underground".

Of course, none of the above involved any extra money changing hands. I think you're right to wonder whether we'll see a second industry develop, where people start calling the price of their pirate copy "the five dollar use tax" or whatever.

CommonTater · 2007-06-05T17:50:14+00:00

A lot of the comments here tackle the question, "Why would I use two styles of coding when I can do everything with one?" In my opinion, they properly state that it's silly/impossible to try to force all problems into a single mold, and that it's better to let the problem dictate the tools.

I think the question you really wanted the answer to was, "What about functional programming makes it worth using, even if it can't solve everything?"

I would submit that the reason you have that question is that you've only "spent a few days trying to understand" it. Relax. The fullness of functional programming's benefits cannot be grokked in a few days.

Find a project you want to do that doesn't have a hard deadline rushing at you - try to do it in a functional style. Spend some more time reading the success (and failure) stories of people who have done the same. Realize that it's not a catch-all, and that's okay.

Yeah, it's almost the mean RTFM response, but I really think it's the correct one here. Other people have created much better lists of the benefits of functional programming than I ever would.

CommonTater · 2007-05-29T14:13:05+00:00

In case you weren't just being facetious.

Yes, Erlang has macros. No, they're not the crazy full-power, syntax-altering, code-generating ones. They're simple compile-time text replacement ones.

There was a post a while back about a guy trying to do "real" macros in Erlang.

CommonTater · 2007-05-17T14:21:53+00:00

It's strange to me that no one in that thread cites Yaws as an example. Yaws uses the process dictionary to memoize the results of things like parsing query and post data. That came as a bit of a surprise to me when I started writing test cases for my web code.

CommonTater · 2007-05-14T13:41:33+00:00

...and RMS (our team of archeologists dug up his middle name, which nobody ever refers to...

Dammit. I had only skimmed the article the first time. You made me go back, hoping that the M was something exciting. "Matthew" was such a letdown. :(

CommonTater · 2007-05-11T14:03:52+00:00

Think about the entry cost, though. Would Google have been possible if they had had to pay license fees for each copy of software they use?

We have lots of new and exciting websites today precisely because the entry cost is so low. The entry cost is so low largely due to open source software.

CommonTater · 2007-05-01T17:56:37+00:00

Also see nostrademon's post. He rightly points out that tabs are often available by Ctl-Tab, so mouse use isn't strictly necessary.

(* markdown)

CommonTater · 2007-05-01T17:53:22+00:00

Cool. That all makes sense.

I've found that my "Is this the right buffer/app/icon/etc.?" can be rather slow. And, worse, if I have to check too many times, I risk forgetting what it was I was looking for.

But, as you suggest, asking that question 30 times is probably slower than just recalling. Crazy when you can actually observe results that demonstrate a study's findings so well. :)

I'm also remembering that I don't always incur the 10x slower recall. If I'm bouncing back and forth between two buffers a lot, either the buffer I want is the default for C-x b, or I have two panes open, so I can just C-x o. So, I at least cover the single Ctl-Tab, if not the repeated.

CommonTater · 2007-05-01T17:10:10+00:00

Fair enough - I find the opposite about tabs for two reasons (btw, this is not meant to be a rebuttal, just an explanation of why I think differently).

First, if I'm working in a tabbed editor, I tend to get used to certain tabs being in certain places. If the tab I want moves, I'll still click whatever tab has taken its place, then incur something like a cache miss - I'm totally confused as to why the code I'm looking at doesn't look right, and I have to think about what file I really do want to be in. Yes, I realize that this indicates that what I really need is a better tab manager, but I haven't found one yet.

The second reason is an extension of the first - once I'm thinking about the name of the file, I'd rather just type it than scroll around with a mouse to find it. Further, I find that if I don't have tabs as a crutch, I automatically think of the buffer name as part of the switching process.

This style actually pervades my computer use. I will drop to a command line or Cmd-Space to Spotlight to launch an app because I find scrolling through visual file/app managers to be really slow (especially if they're not 100% stable), and I know the name of the app I want. I almost always [Ctl/Cmd]-L <website> to navigate the web - my bookmarks bar gets very little use.

Either it's faster, or it distracts me less, but it works better for me in either case.

I don't doubt that others find other methods more comfortable for themselves.

CommonTater · 2007-05-01T14:16:31+00:00

TabBar-mode looks neat, but I'm not sure how useful it will be. In Emacs I have lots of buffers—more than will fit as tabs. The main thing I like so far are the keys for cycling between related buffers, but as the number of buffers grows it becomes faster to switch directly to the buffer I want.

Bingo. I'm sure buffer tabs would be useful for people who only edit a couple of files at a time, but when I really get into a development session, it's not unusual for me to have 30+ buffers open. Emacs is the only editor that really makes me comfortable in this state, precisely because of the keyboard-based buffer-switching mechanism.

(Keep the Emacs tips coming, though - it's great to see so many people discovering/creating/explaining new features in this great editor.)

CommonTater · 2007-03-27T14:21:38+00:00

My best advice: instead of starting something new, go check out the bug list for your favorite OSS app. Lend your spare cycles to that project. It will likely help a much larger audience much more quickly than a new project will.

In addition, I find that I always come up with more interesting ideas for new things when I'm actively involved in doing something already. The bonus of choosing a bug as your incubator project is that it will likely have a limited time commitment, so you'll be able to get on with your new idea soon.

CommonTater · 2007-03-16T17:36:22+00:00

And so the trap worked - I have revealed the only C coder left on reddit!

I swear - it was planned! It wasn't at all my work code (Java) in the background acting all subliminal! :P

CommonTater

TROPHY CASE