My TV would probably cost $40,000 a decade ago. My iPhone would be a $30,000 workstation in the 90s. The NAS in my living room is $900,000 worth of storage in 1998 dollars. To your contrary, I think people have a perfectly reasonable expectation of low and dropping prices.

More of this, please. Don't demoralize a new programmer who doesn't have the experience to choose well between two similar-sounding options.

Agreed, but with a reminder that "direct and concise" is different from "asshole". You can say "thanks for the patch, but it conflicts with our long-term design goals and we can't accept it" is not the same as "LOL nope".

It gets weird. Some FLOSS projects stop because the work is "done". I have such a project myself that does data conversions from one database to another, and several distro download counters say it has quite a few thousand installations worldwide. And yet, I only touch the code when a bug report comes in. Other than that, it's more or less finished. It does what the label says, quickly and reliably. Many people use it in production. There's just not a whole lot that can be done to improve it other than succumbing to featuritis and adding a lot of bells and whistles.

Few commercial projects would hit this point because most rely on upgrade sales. I don't, so there's no incentive to push ahead. I suspect that's the case with many FLOSS projects which have scratched their itch. Why keep scratching?

You're presuming a symmetrical link, which isn't a reasonable assumption for any nontrivial network setup. Your client may only have one path to the server, but the server may have a hundred load-balanced paths back. Or imagine a very asymmetric link like almost any cable or DSL connection. When you're dealing with milliseconds, these are practical questions and not hypothetical nitpicking.

Well, and those pesky little exceptions like the ACLU and EFF who file a constant stream of FOIA requests so they can verify that officials are obeying their promises and the law. But except for watchdog groups, other politicians, and lobbyists, no one is monitoring politicians. Oh, them and the State Department, who wanted to see both sides of email conversations that former Secretary of State Clinton was involved in.

But yes, other than watchdog groups, other politicians, lobbyists, and cabinet-level government departments, no one is actually checking these things. Well, those guys and...

I suspect that we could persuade those caches to flush to RAM, simply by exhausting the number of possible lines for that address - if the cache is set-associative. Of course modern processors have multiple levels of cache, so that makes it harder.

Hi AC,

This is sort of self-contradictory, so I don't really need to respond to it directly. I just want to point one thing out. I can't afford to work for any company as less than a C-level employee. It would be a salary cut from my current business.

Not to mention that I'd not like it.

An AC talking about balls. Pathetic.

Right. I didn't even bother responding to the taunts.

Coward really means coward. I am sorry for the folks who are afraid that their employer will take a dislike of what they post, but for them we have handles.

I can't say I'm happy about what's happened to Debian. Having Ubuntu as a commercial derivative really has been the kiss of death for it, not that there were not other problems. It strikes me that the kernel team has done better for its lack of a constitution and elections, and Linus' ability to tell someone to screw off. I even got to tell him to screw off when he was dumping on 'Tridge over Bitkeeper. Somehow, that stuff works.

IMO, don't create a happy inclusive project team full of respect for each other. Hand-pick the geniuses and let them fight. You get better code in the end.

This actually has something to do with why so many people hate Systemd. It turns out that Systemd is professional-quality work done by competent salaried engineers. Our problem with it is that we're used to beautiful code made by geniuses. Going all of the way back to DMR.

It really does look like Jomo did post this article, and it refers to another article of his.

What isn't to like about Ubuntu is that it's a commercial project with a significant unpaid staff. Once in a while I make a point of telling the unpaid staff that there really are better ways that they could be helping Free Software.

It's just that I object folks who would be good community contributors being lured into being unpaid employees instead.

Say how do feel about idiots working for corporations contractually enmeshed with the US military-industrial-surveillance complex. Why no spittle-laced hate for them?

The GNU Radio project was funded in part by a United States intelligence agency. They paid good money and the result is under GPL. What's not to like?

Keep all of the idiots that want to work for a millionare for nothing. Fire the others.

Anyone with sense has by now joined a non-profit project.

Ugh. I hate those legacy laptops with a hundred different connectors you have to manage every time you sit down to your desk or leave it, with one invariably falling behind the desk so that you have to go fishing. My favorite work environment was with a MacBook Air and a Thunderbolt Display. The display has one cable with two split ends that you plug into the laptop: one for power, and one for combined video / USB / Ethernet / audio. All of the permanent wiring like USB drives, Ethernet, etc. plugs into the monitor which acts like a hub for everything else.

I'd stake money that the next iteration will combine all of that into a single USB C cable. Get to work, unpack my laptop, plug in a single reversible jack, and sit down to all my wired accessories? Yes please.