matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Is there some point to posting this Wikipedia entry? Is there new info or insight into the event? Do you think this is interesting? If so, why?

Please, before posting links to Wikipedia entries, give it some context!

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

You know, Burning Man used to have a drive-by shooting gallery. With guns, and cars, and is just as libertarian as this festival. The difference is, Burning Man encompasses much more than just libertarianism.

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Steve Yegge. Classic.

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Let me see: I came across a bug in adobe flash (I know, evil) on linux one day where it came down to a change in memcpy in glibc.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=638477

comment 129 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=638477#c129

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Quite frankly, I find your attitude to be annoying and downright stupid.

How hard can it be to understand the following simple sentence:

   THE USER DOESN'T CARE.

Pushing the blame around doesn't help anybody. The only thing that helps is Fedora being helpful, not being obstinate.

Also, the fact is, that from a Q&A standpoint, a memcpy() that "just does the right thing" is simply _better_. Quoting standards is just stupid, when there's two simple choices: "it works" or "it doesn't work because bugs happen".

Standards are paper. I use paper to wipe my butt every day. That's how much that paper is worth.

Reality is what matters. When glibc changed memcpy, it created problems. Saying "not my problem" is irresponsible when it hurts users.

And pointing fingers at Adobe and blaming them for creating bad software is _doubly_ irresponsible if you are then not willing to set a higher standard for your own project. And "not my problem" is not a higher standard.

So please just fix it.

The easy and technically nice solution is to just say "we'll alias memcpy to memmove - good software should never notice, and it helps bad software and a known problem".

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This is why Linus is widely considered a good steward, and Ulrich had to be removed from glibc.

Yes, they both had abrasive mannerisms, yes they sometimes said things that wouldn't pass fortune 500 HR policy.

The difference is: Ulrich seemed to care more about some kind of technical "correct-ness", and anything that didn't fit in his mental model was considered wrong, and nothing else mattered.

Linus deeply cares about the user experience. the kernel has a strict no-regressions policy for this reason. If it used to work before and now it doesn't, this needs to be fixed in the kernel

Like this case, most of the cases where Linus uses salty language comes down to various kernel developers not following this policy, then complaining when their patch doesn't get accepted.

Edited for formatting

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Never delete code. This is why you have git or svn, or whatever your tool of choice is. Never, ever delete code. You may think it's dumb, you may think it's crap, or useless or whatever, but in 2 years, you'll think. "Damn, I remember doing this already, don't I have some code in somewhere?" And you will.

You may look at it and rewrite huge chunks because you're a far better programmer now, but trust me, re-writing code is way easier than writing it from scratch

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

If it all works, it'll be pretty impressive

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Interesting perspective from esr on the rationale behind the takeover of Andover in the comments

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Fascinating insight into a bit of Jobs life that is mostly overlooked, except as a "He used to be a hippy" anecdote. Steve Silberman does a good job of teasing out the bits and assembling a better vision of Jobs's belief system, and how it informed his work at Apple and NeXT

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Google now will occasionally alert me to heavy traffic on the way home. That's about it.

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Why would you think calling to_a on an object would NOT turn that into an array?? That's what to_a does

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I think they missed an opportunity. They should have changed "master" to "mistress"...

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

SF can suck you in, but there are loads of people in SF that have nothing to do with Tech at all. When I lived there my friends included a guy who worked on the Bay Bridge, a Hotel Manager, a financial advisor, a set designer, and a couple of musicians. The only tech people I talked to were at work. Those people are easy to find if you look.

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Why does this remind me of:

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Mansion_Family

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

deignan's comment says it best here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7760080

If I were Chinese, the license of the software I was using would be far, far down my list of "Freedoms" that I was concerned about.

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

RMS, once again, missing the forest for the trees.

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Buddhist Massacre: Look up the end of the Civil War in Sri Lanka, where the Buddhist government pushed hundreds of thousands of Tamil refugees onto the Jaffna peninsula, and then bombed it to smithereens.

Hindus denying rights to women and allowing atrocities like rape and honor killings? Basically the BJP platform in India. Oh, and mass killings of Moslems in the 80s thrown in for good measure.

There is no Zoroastrian or Taoist state, but I'm sure if there was, there would be atrocities there.

Oh, and before anyone says that this is just an anti-religious rant: Pol Pot killed millions, and he was a nominal atheist.

People can and will kill and subjugate people for pretty much any reason. Usually they call it "The Greater Good"

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Wow, that just goes to show how ignorant Milton Friedman is...

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Most inter-city roads in Sweden were 2-lane roads, where to overtake, you needed to swerve into oncoming traffic, 2+1 roads means that even if you're stuck behind an RV or truck, it won't be long before you can safely overtake. At least that's my assumption...

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Why do people put random stuff from Wikipedia on HN? What is the point?

matt__rose

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Wow, between mojombo and his wife, the "Don't fuck up the culture" rant, and this woman, it seems like the world is teeming with clueless CEOs.

matt__rose

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