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Comment Re:Bruce, I know why u r disappointed. Let me expl (Score 1) 187

So, I see this as rationalization.

The fact is, you took a leadership position, and later turned your coat for reasons that perhaps made sense to you. But they don't really make sense to anyone else. So, yes, everyone who supported you then is going to feel burned.

You also made yourself a paid voice that was often hostile to Free Software, all the way back to the SCO issue. Anyone could have told you that was bound to be a losing side and you would be forever tarred with their brush.

So nobody is going to believe you had any reason but cash, whatever rationalization you cook up after the fact. So, the bottom line is that you joined a list of people who we're never going to be able to trust or put the slightest amount of credibility in.

And ultimately it was for nothing. I've consistently tried to take the high road and it's led to a pretty good income, I would hazard a guess better than yours, not just being able to feel good about myself.

Comment Re:A rather empty threat (Score 1) 555

The problem is that some factions in the non-systemd camp are pursuing systemd "emulation" by using shims and forks. That way you just get a second rate systemd, and it will remove any motivation from upstream projects to support anything else than system. Using Ubuntu's "logind" is a short term gain, but a strategic failure for the non-systemd camp. They need their own implementation of needed infrastructure, not just copying or emulating systemd.

It sounds a lot like the non-systemd camp have no idea what they are actually for, they only know what they are against. So this kind of thing is not surprising to hear.

The "UNIX philosophy" is an empty slogan that switches people's brains off. It sounds great, until you try and build a real system with the features modern users demand, and then it turns in to an exploding nightmare of combinatorial complexity as every program tries to abstract itself from every other program in the name of political correctness. As already noted elsewhere, the programs people use serverside Linux to actually run barely resemble the UNIX command line tools and that's for good reasons ...

Submission + - Help stamp out CVS and SVN in our lifetime (ibiblio.org)

mtaht writes: ESR is collecting specifications and donations towards getting a new high end machine to be used for massive CVS and SVN repository conversions, after encountering problems with converting the whole of netbsd over to git.

What he's doing now sort of reminds me of holding a bake sale to build a bomber, but he's well on his way towards Xeon class or higher for the work.

What else can be done to speed up adoption of git and preserve all the computer history kept in source code repositories?

Comment Re: Moral Imperialism (Score 5, Interesting) 475

Is there really someone so stupid that they cannot tell the difference between a cartoon drawing and a real child?

There appears to be an entire united kingdom whose legal system is populated with such people.

Just FYI, the rule against illegal cartoons exists in the USA too. The Supreme Court struck down attempts to use CP laws in this way as being obvious nonsense, so Congress just went ahead and amended the law to make it explicitly illegal as opposed to implicitly illegal.

Unfortunately a lot of crap like this ends up being brought into otherwise sane legal systems thanks to pressure from the USA to "upgrade" national laws to meet the "latest standards". Japan has been pressured for years to tighten its CP laws, being publicly named and shamed etc - the primary justification for not doing so was fear of false positives. Like this one. And like the notorious cases where two teenagers can legally have sex but not photograph themselves doing it.

Fact is, politicians love being able to say they made the law tougher on paedophiles. It's a sure popularity winner. So it's inevitable you end up with idiocy like this.

Submission + - The woman who should have been the first female astronaut.

StartsWithABang writes: We like to think of the Mercury 7 — the very first group of NASA astronauts — as the "best of the best," having been chosen from a pool of over 500 of the top military test pilots after three rounds of intense physical and mental tests. Yet when women were allowed to take the same tests, one of them clearly distinguished herself, outperforming practically all of the men. If NASA had really believed in merit, Jerrie Cobb would have been the first female in space, even before Valentina Tereshkova, more than 50 years ago. She still deserves to go.
OS X

If You're Connected, Apple Collects Your Data 313

fyngyrz (762201) writes It would seem that no matter how you configure Yosemite, Apple is listening. Keeping in mind that this is only what's been discovered so far, and given what's known to be going on, it's not unthinkable that more is as well. Should users just sit back and accept this as the new normal? It will be interesting to see if these discoveries result in an outcry, or not. Is it worse than the data collection recently reported in a test version of Windows?

Comment Re:WHO owns the property rights? (Score 2) 102

Just shows what big pharma actually does for the money they get. Not much it seems.

Why would Big Pharma waste time trying to cure Ebola? It's a disease that affects a relatively tiny number of people in (mostly, until the past month) Third World nations. It is only notable due to the terrifyingly (and unusual) high mortality rate, but there is absolutely no financial incentive to go after it right now.

Comment Re:Why the hell... (Score 4, Informative) 195

The JVM is very language specific. For example it has op codes for allocating java objects. A truly cross language virtual machine doesn't have anything anywhere near that high level or specific to a particular language.

Whuuu? The JVM does not have opcodes for allocating "java" objects unless you use a very strange definition of the term - if it worked that way then how could other languages target it? The JVM has opcodes for allocating objects and calling methods on them, including opcodes like invokedynamic that exist purely to support non-Java languages like Javascript, Python, Ruby, etc.

The JVM has a really large variety of languages that target it. It's impressive. There are static languages like Java, Scala, Kotlin, Ceylon etc, there are dynamic scripting languages like JS (using the new Nashorn engine it's only about 2-3x slower than V8), there are Lisp like languages, there are implementations of Erlang and so on. And thanks to the fairly well specified "least common denominator" type system Java provides, code written in these languages can all interop pretty nicely.

If you think the JVM is language specific then I'd suggest looking at Ruby and Kotlin, two very different languages that are not much like Java, yet nonetheless both can run on top of the JVM.

Robotics

Robot SmackDowns Wants To Bring Robot Death Matches To an Arena Near You 82

Business Insider profiles Andrew Stroup, Gui Cavalcanti and Matt Oehrlein, who are trying to get off the ground a robot competition league, called Robot SmackDowns. The idea, as you might guess from the name, is to showcase violence and drama to draw on the crowd-appeal of wrestling, NASCAR, and monster truck rallies: this is definitely not Dean Kamen's FIRST — it's giant mechanical beasts shooting at and otherwise trying to destroy each other. And it's not quite right to call them robots in the usual sense; they're more like mecha: "In a MegaBots battle, a two-member team sits inside the bot's upper torso, where the controls systems are housed. Although the co-founders assure me that the pilot and gunner are well protected inside, the situation presents a heightened suspense. Each 15,000-pound robot is equipped with six-inch cannons inside its arms that fire paint-filled missiles and cannon balls at 120 miles per hour. Good aim can cause enough damage to jam its opponent's weapons system or shoot off a limb." They'll be launching a Kickstarter campaign soon; according to the article, "Assuming it raises enough money to build a fleet, [the company's] plan is to take the bots on the road. They will tour the country, face off in epic battles against other MegaBots, and build a fan base. Stroup says (without giving specifics) networks have reached out and will closely watch how MegaBot, Inc.'s upcoming Kickstarter campaign performs. The possibilities for distribution seem endless, though the team is tight-lipped about the exact direction it's headed."

Comment Re:The science is settled, stop doing science! (Score 1) 350

Not at all. His message is, if you think it's real, then start doing science! He doubts it's real because the people who claim it is refuse to even try actual science -- you know, that thing where you document experiments and publish with sufficient levels of detail that allow the results to be independently verified.

Even if you think it's real, you have to admit that what they're doing is not science. Or at least, you have to admit that if you're honest and know what "science" is. It might be invention, but it absolutely isn't science.

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