Almost every young developer joins the enterprise I work at and spends the first 6 months ranting about how bad everything is and how we could do things so much better with xyz or whatever. We wait, we educate, we leave them to come to the understanding that when you're in a business with billions in turnover, millions of customers, thousands of employees and hundreds of developers, what you learnt at university or building small side projects isn't enough to immediately judge and make changes. After about a year the good developers are proactively contributing good ideas that will actually work. It's not an environment that fits everyone, so we're fine when people decide to leave for somewhere smaller.
My favorite example of this is how Windows NT has had async IO forever, while also being notorious for having slower storage performance than Linux. And when Linux finally got an async API worth using, Microsoft immediately set about cloning it for Windows.
Theoretical or aesthetic advantages are no guarantee that the software in question will actually be superior in practice.
ASync I/O isn't limited to just storage, though. It's /all/ I/O.
And yes, the layered storage stack does have a performance penalty to it. But it's also infinitely more flexible, if that is what you need. Linux still lacks IOCP (which io_uring is not a replacement for).
Windows' VMM and OOM is also generally much better.
Pretty much what I was thinking of. My understanding from reading some commentary in this area is the Linux implementation is yet a little botched due to how it handles waiting threads.
What we need is actual, proper, mass-education about how computers work, with the goal of increasing their freedom of interaction. Not towards creating more working class peasants using a tool for work, but creating chaotically creative tinkerers using a tool to create whatever they want, more tools included.
Kids and their Parents learned it in the 80s and they had nothing but a manual. Either these people were massively more intelligent, or the same approach, using modern methods, would work again and again and again.
Considering the 1% rule of the internet (it's about the ratios, not the numbers!), shifting more people from the 90% to, at least, the 9%, seems to be one of the better courses of actions to take.
What we, MY FELLOW HUMANS [1], absolutely do not need is more people being optimized towards using a computer solely as a tool for someone else ... especially because AI can replace 99%+ of them anyway.
Yes, this times a thousand. If we treat people like slaves, they become slaves. Treat them as if they are smart, and they will become smart. It's as simple as that.
The article is not about UNIX, what's good and bad, but what's better for understanding Linux. And replacing SysVInit with systemd is, objectively, bad for understand the core of Linux. And this is the core of LFS.
Discussing whether UNIX is good or bad seems narrow-minded, as there is no solution to that. It's like discussing whether iOS is better than Android. We can always isolate some specific parts and discuss that, but just slashing the whole concept doesn't help anyone and rarely yields any meaningful results.
All of my Debian out of the box has systemd. On Gentoo it's OpenRC, which I find easier. But! There are some work-around packages that implement some stubs of systemd things because other packages are designed for systemd only world (one such stub is elogind)
It's "problem" unfortunately is that it happens to be the only major foss os. If there were other foss oses with good support and "better" models I'd gladly try them out. I know I personally would never switch to any non foss os after the user friendliness I have experienced. I would say that's the main reason many stick to it, including game theoretic arguments for commercial players also. Not because people like to stick to ancient models. It's not a ideal system obviously but going back to locked down crap is a no go for me and perhaps many others. BSDs are ok too but the suicidal licensing makes me less inclined.
Yes and much of it is sealed off and proprietary. The bsd oses got MacOS for all their hard work, a closed off system that they can't read or port back anything from. Someone would say linux or gpl projects also have been fucked over this way. I suppose if your house has been burgled, such a person would argue we must remove all protections rather than add more.
Why are you acting so strange and making up misinterpretations of what I wrote?
You depend on lawyers either way, whichever license you use, I fail to see how copyright law can be implemented and defended without lawyers.
The golden rule is simple, anyone can look it up, I really don't understand what difficulty you have that made you make up such a strange "not even wrong" theory about it. "do to others what you would have them do to you" , here it means you have benefited from countless man hours of work by other people, so you too should pass on any improvements you made to it just like they did to you.
Regarding freedoms, let us take this scenario. Your small company depend on a complex bsd library thats hard to replicate. It gets the attention of a much larger company, they fork it make various changes to make it much better and keep it closed, their product kills yours. While, if it was GPL (or AGPL as its needed today), the company either has to redevelop it inhouse if they wish to serve it as product to the public without releasing its sources, or they do the same thing as in the bsd case, they make a much improved version...and you have equal access to the same sources, you can take that and pivot upon it instead of your company dying. Its very simple, more or less mathematical game theory. Nobody can force anyone to choose a license, its your choice. Again, Mac OS is not a very encouraging example of the overall outcome of BSD licensing. No freebsd/openbsd/whatever person is permitted to read or use Apple's "fork" now. Apple took the hard work of others and instead of paying it back in like, it doesn't take a single cent of money, "paying" back here simply means doing the same the others did, they generously provided you their work as foss, you pass back your delta to it as foss. Thus raising the high water mark of the entire ecosystem. Think academic research. Its usually released in open, so any improvements made by one team are available for others to use and further improve upon. That's it. Nothing more. Nothing less. How does GPL "force" anyone to do anything? They can either choose to follow the license, or choose another library or home grown an alternative if they dislike the terms.
> You depend on lawyers either way, whichever license you use
No, in fact I don't. Indeed, I go far out of my way to avoid these parasites entirely, and anyone who depends on them. I don't give a damn what anyone does with my software. I don't need the attorneys to do anything.
For accusing me of "misinterpreting" what you wrote, you seem to be quite confused yourself. What part of "public domain" don't you understand? The means I don't give a shit what you do with the code. You can decide for yourself. You know, the mature, unselfish approach. Busybodies and control freaks hate this one simple trick.
> Regarding freedoms, let us take this scenario.
Here we go, lol. We're headed down the rabbit hole straight to the juicy caramel center of your flawed thinking.
> Your small company depend on a complex bsd library thats hard to replicate. It gets the attention of a much larger company, they fork it make various changes to make it much better and keep it closed, their product kills yours.
Sounds like you had a very poor business model. Probably because you have no idea what you're doing. Your monetization strategy failed. Pick yourself back up and try again.
The solution is not Big Brother and his machine guns to force others to comply with your dictates. (i.e. the lawyers and legal system, if I have to spell it out for you.)
> While, if it was GPL (or AGPL as its needed today)
AGPL is strongly avoided by almost everyone, for good reason. It's even more of a cancer than the GPL.
> the company either has to redevelop it inhouse if they wish to serve it as product to the public without releasing its sources, or they do the same thing as in the bsd case, they make a much improved version...and you have equal access to the same sources, you can take that and pivot upon it instead of your company dying.
...or they just decide to develop their own version from scratch instead, keep it closed source from day one, and you get nothing at all. Happens all the time.
If you were truly a shit-hot developer you would not be concerned about anyone ripping you off. You'd know you're so creative and putting out so much quality effort on a consistent basis that you'd never worry about being surpassed by anyone.
Big company thought of a good idea to add to your big pile of good ideas? No problem. Copy that and come out with another good idea or two for him to steal. If they're always imitating you, then that means you're the industry leader, doesn't it?
If you're not the industry leader however, because you really only had one good idea and Big Company has more, then what right do you have to try and Stop Progress just for your own selfish ends? That's what this all boils down to: selfishness, due to insecurity.
Your mentality is completely foreign to a true winner, but oh-so-common among the insecure midwits. They're always deathly afraid that their One Thing will get ripped off and they will be left with nothing.
It's a scarcity mentality. That's the problem. It's all in your head.
You're a squirrel with one little nut that you cling to desperately, in hopes that nobody else will grab it. You make all your life about protecting that nut at all costs. You're so glad that Big Brother offers you his machine guns to help you protect it. You don't care about the harm that comes from bringing thugs with guns into the picture to push people around. You're just desperate to protect Your Thing, so you will accept anything that you believe will help this end. It's the same broken mentality that manifests itself everywhere else besides software also. Nothing new under the sun.
Do not pretend that I don't understand you far better than you know yourself, or that I am misinterpreting you in some way. I've seen ten thousand of your type if I've seen one. You're everywhere, especially on HN. I'm well aware of what your mentality is. The root of the problem is your insecurity.
> Its very simple, more or less mathematical game theory.
You don't have a clue about how economics actually works--which is typical for those of your loudly expressed opinions. But you think of yourself as some enlightened game theorist. Not quite.
The bottom line is, you can't FORCE people to behave how you want through your favorite legal fiction or any other, and you damn sure should never try, as it's a fool's errand that only leads to tears. One of the basic laws of the universe.
The people who created GPL knew this from day 1. That's exactly why they created it to be the way it is. Irt was an act of sabotage. This knowledge is currently far above your level however, and is likely to remain so for a long time to come; probably forever.
The world is not falling and BSD is winning the license war for good reason. End of discussion. It's all over but your crying.
>If you're not the industry leader however, because you really only had one good idea and Big Company has more, then what right do you have to try and Stop Progress just for your own selfish ends? That's what this all boils down to: selfishness, due to insecurity.
How the fuck is a GPL library stopping progress? Why does Big Company feel tied up due to a library being GPL? You said it yourself, they could redo it inhouse? If they were such hot shit they'd do it and continue the march of progress anyways.
Its very simple, its so simple I am not even sure I am talking to a functional level of iq: do you think more progress is made from less eyes on an idea? If the changes made by Big Co were available to the public, that's a much larger pool of engineers to take it in all sorts of directions. You are so fucking dumb its beyond words.
>...or they just decide to develop their own version from scratch instead, keep it closed source from day one, and you get nothing at all. Happens all the time.
You again seem very confused. Its exactly the same as they closing up a bsd fork. So how is the outcome or incentive any different? With bsd they can do that without any effort, with gpl at least they have the friction and may deem it too much of a friction. Google's fuchsia attempt failed despite its behemoth size, Android is still linux.
How exactly is it a sabotage? You are again making up utter absolute fucking crap out of thin air and acting retarded making up an entire fantasy universe in your head.
Since you are such a smartass wanker, tell me this, how is the other company being forced to release their changes making the market less competitive? On contrary, this makes it more competitive, since everyone is forced to compete to this level now, they themselves will have to keep developing something better, and again paying the inhouse cost if they wanna be jealous.
AGPL is strongly avoided by...yes companies who live off of turning existing libraries into websites...who'd have thought, hardly a surprise why and who avoids it.
Big company can add a good idea, but big company has big resources. I am telling you that you can now pivot on their changes and putting them under the pressure cooker again: more competition. Competition is nice.
How the fuck is a simple license that nobody is forced to use a "sabotage", are you really even thinking? How much fucked in the head can someone be to think a completely legal and simple license is a "sabotage"? A "sabotage" against what or whom? If its a sabotage, then protest whatever legal framework allowed it. Do you disagree with copyright, is that what you are saying?
If you disagree with copyright, then I hope you have no problem with taking the source code of competitors by any means. After all, if licenses are bad, and government enforcement of copyright is bad, why should copying and releasing a company's internal sources be bad?
If this is a "scarcity" mentality, then the entire history of Mathematics for the past few centuries is a scarcity mentality. If you are man enough to follow through, then say it out right in the reply that you believe Mathematics is a scarcity mentality.
I mean if I wanted to win at all costs, why shouldn't I steal your code and release it and make life harder for you. Or if I wanted to be a real winner, why don't I go and shoot you.
Tell me again moron, how the fuck does a license "force" you, who the fuck is "forcing" you to use gpl if you dislike gpl? I don't even know how deep a level of mental illness one can have to imagine someone with guns is coming out to kill you and rape you and force you to use GPL programs and libraries. Are you even thinking man? This is literal violent paranoid psychosis level of insanity. You are fucked in the head beyond repair.
You seem to be unaware of the basic fact that government--laws and legal systems--is men with guns.
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." - George Washington
It's difficult to have a conversation with someone so profoundly ignorant of reality. Do some research and stop wasting our time with your angry rantings.
You are the one who chimped out with a long rant to a perfectly calm explanation man. You are still acting mentally ill. Yeah duh, govt is men with guns. And where in all this are you seeing this supposed "sabotage" of you being forced to use GPL? If you don't like GPL, don't use GPL software. Very simple. Nobody pressured you to. Since government enforcement of copyright is not something you like, I think it's a perfectly fine sentiment to have. I hope you don't mind people releasing all the materials of competitors to the public then. Tell me again , I am not sure its any point trying to reach the skull of someone this mentally ill but I'll still try. If I release something as GPL, whos coming in to your house with guns blazing forcing you to use my library? You choose to not use it, its simple. The government will use violent force to enforce any law, but in this case its easy since you already dislike GPL, just don't use it, government will have no interest in killing you. What a fucking brain dead moron, man.
My point was, that there’s plenty of ancient things we plod along with, even though they’re not perfect. Many have tried to improve upon them but few have stuck.
You are so vague in your attack on Unix approach that it's borderline trolling. What are your problems with it? Modularity and minimalism have been working perfectly and that systemd does not follow them is a bad thing.
But that book is a waste. It is just MIT dunning-krugerites who were salty that LISP machines never took off. When it comes to real life, the bell labs approach won, and for several good reasons. Not "worse is better" (another dunning-krugerite cope), but "less is more."
From your perspective, what would be an "OS done right"? I have a running list of things I would change in Unix, but replacing sysvinit with systemd's one-ring-to-rule-them-all would not be on it.
But your comment is a waste. It is just HN dunning-krugerites who were salty that the UNIX way never took off. When it comes to real life, the Poettering approach won, and for several good reasons.
The UNIX way is still doing fine on OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Alpine, Gentoo... Poetteringware only won on the distros selling support contracts. "Fixing" what wasn't broken is great for those businesses.
Believe it or not it’s a question on the pre-clearance form for travel to the US: ”are you or have you ever been a member of a terrorist organisation” - I always wondered what the rationale for that was
No, being a member of a “terrorist organization” and the government allows itself latitude in defining that. It’s much easier to associate someone with an organization than to show personal acts of terrorism.
Right but to demonstrate that you lied about X they have to demonstrate X. So by the time you're deporting someone for the lie you could just as easily have deported them for the thing itself.
But the method of due process may be different, and the standard of proof to meet may be different. Revoking a visa is easier for the executive branch to accomplish.
Having formerly been a member of a terrorist group is different from currently being in one - it may not be illegal, but lying about it is a deportable offence.
You're making assumptions the thing they lied about and the thing they are being deported for are the same, and quite often the thing you're actually being deported for is not a reason to deport anyone at all.
You come to the US and make a social media post saying Trump is a big fat dummy head.
You get deported for lying about being in a terrorist organization.
This pattern of government behavior is everywhere. One common one is the yellow sheet (form 4473) for buying a firearm in the US.
Here is an example of a question
> “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”
No matter the state law, federal law says it's illegal.
So, what happens. At some point you buy a gun in Colorado. Then lets say you get on the news and talk about legalization, or you talk about anything that catches social media popularity and someone in the government doesn't approve of. Well, you better not have any record of a marijuana purchase anywhere, or pictures of you doing it because you've just committed a federal crime and the ATF/FBI can kick down your door as they please.
But is insulting the president evidence of being in a “terrorist organisation” ?
I thought free speech was the one principle that is untouchable in the US
Member of a terrorist organization. Did you protest for Palestine action? Then you're a member of a terrorist organization, and they don't have to prove you did any terrorism or planned any terrorism. It's a form of thoughtcrime.
> I always wondered what the rationale for that was
One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. An easy way to keep communists out of the country.
And we've seen how easy it is to expand that list with "antifa" groups just recently, with antifa groups in Germany having to deal with their banks closing their accounts because the banks were afraid of getting hit with retaliation in their US business.
It could probably be part of the premise for a gag in a hypothetical Liar Liar 2 after Jim Carrey haphazardly finds himself mixed up in one 30 minutes earlier in the movie, so there's that.
In Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 a space odyssey, in the book, he describes a flat handheld device that is used for reading the New York Times. He can’t remember the exact details but the ergonomics he describes perfectly encapsulate the tablet devices we have today. I’m pretty certain he wrote it before the 1969 moon landing.
The movie itself predates the moon landing - it came out in 1968.
It's astonishing to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey today and reflect on how well the production design has aged. That movie is coming up on 60
years old now!
The portrayal of AI has held up extraordinarily well too.
There is also a reading device with a single page in the 1961 Lem novel "Return from the Stars":
> Lem predicts the disappearance of paper books from the society. Lem even describes a reading device very much like a tablet computer that the main character Hal Bregg gets familiar with when he tries to find paper books and newspapers.
The tablets that bridge officers were signing reports on from Star Trek TOS, which started airing in 1966, precedes that. They were boxier but clearly electronic.
Waaaaahhhhhhhh
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