Posts by cmp 14 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Feb 2012
> Of course, now one could wonder why it was even necessary to replace the perfectly-functional DNS resolvers already in place, which were written by people who actually understand DNS.
Oooo I know this, if you go to http://suckless.org/sucks/systemd and follow the link for "pid 1 does DNS" it says:
"In contrast to the glibc internal resolver systemd-resolved is aware of multi-homed system, and keeps DNS server and caches separate and per-interface."
Happy to help.
> The article I mentioned destroys all the arguments currently being made as to the need for systemd
Not really, most of the arguments are strawmen "disproved" by weak or disingenuous arguments, for example Fallacy #5 which boils down to "you dont need the systemd rewrite of init to use $LINUX_SPECIFIC_FEATURES you can rewrite it yourself to use them!". #4.4 also comes down to "you can rewrite large chunks of init" as well. Not a highly persuasive argument.
Or Fallacy #2 "distributions aren't adopting systemd on its technical merits they're doing it because the Gnome develpoers adopted it on its technical merits" hmm.
#2.1 "Perhaps the most widely-deployed consumer GNU/Linux distribution by sales is ChromeOS, but ChromeOS uses Upstart" is nicely phrased to ignore Red Hat which is adopting Systemd
etc etc
> Are you also a fan of PulseAudio, another Poettering epic fail?
You're getting dangerously close to completly invaldating Fallacy #11 all by yourself.
> What does Uk.gov ever give back?
Reg:
All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?
Xerxes:
Brought peace!
(ok I'm fairly sure uk.gov has never given me a bath but you get the point...)
Don't ask what do microsoft get out of the nokia deal, ask what they dont lose and it probably makes more sense. Nokia have 80+% of the windows phone market and were losing money hand over fist, and have been doing so for long enough that they really had to change something very quickly or risk the handset division taking down the entire company. They've been in this position long enough to know that just crossing their fingers and hoping wasn't going to cut it.
Nokias options were basically to just close their handset division completely, start producing android phones (and hope they could compete with Samsung), or sell up. If they sold to someone like Lenovo you could pretty much guarentee that *they* would start producing Android phones. Pretty much all of these would be disasters for Microsoft's phone ambitions.
The alternative was for Micorsoft to spend some of their cash thats stuck in Europe by US tax rules, and buy WP the time to grow the market that Nokia can't afford to give it. MS can afford for their handsets to make a loss for the next 5+ years if it pays out in the end, Nokia couldn't. It'll annoy HTC and Samsung, but they're very minor players in the windows phone world compared to Nokia so who cares?
So, I wouldn't interpret this as a bold strategic move for MS, more a desperate move to prop up their phone ambitions that were about to collapse around their ears.
I don't understand the Skype purchase either though :)
Satellite was first released in 2001, long before Sun bought MySQL let alone the release of MariaDB, so its use of Oracle is a reflection on the state of open source databases 12 years ago. Back then both postgres and mysql were definitly not "enterprise ready" and Red Hat and Oracle were good buddys (it was long before OEL as well) so the choice of using the free (as in beer) edition of oracle seemed like a really good idea.
Things have changed quite a lot since then!
Support for Satellite on Postgres is in the works (Spacewalk already uses it), and I think you can be pretty sure the (rewritten from scratch) Satellite 6 will not have Oracle as an option...
> Which would be fine if the anti-common-sense Inquisition didn't spout these models as gospel and denounce all else as heresy.
>
> But they do. Which is not science, it's politics.
And the other half of the anti-common-sense inquisition (The Peoples Front Of Common-Sense?) spout every little issue with the model as if it completely invalidates everything ever said by any climate scientist anywhere and proves them all to be members of some communist-anarcho-environmentalist-lefty-pinko conspiracy to take us back to the stone age.
As you say politics not science
Given the many really obvious reasons why this is a really dumb idea (no app store, the need for hardware manufacturers to buy in, the 800lb gorillas of android and IOS, the patent minefield of the mobile sector etc), I can see two possibilities
1) Shuttleworth has decided he doesn't like being rich and is looking to go down in a blaze glory
2) Theres more to this then they've announced.
Its pretty clear that some hardware manufactures are worried by the level of control Google has over their software sack, plus the purchase of one of their major competitors (Motorola), that everybody and their dog produce almost identical android phones, and they need a way of differentiating themselves from the android masses. So I'm guessing that Cannonical have someone like Samsung on board already. Or possibly Samsung have Cannonical on board.
Cannonical have been doing custom engineering for hardware companies for years so It wouldn't surprise me at all to find the roots of this are Samsung approaching Cannonical about producing an android rival.
It would explain why they seem so confident in the 2014 date for hardware, and why such a small company with no reputation amongst the all important carriers, and no budget to buy into the market feels able to take on the near limitless resources, "household name" status', and industry connections of google/apple/microsoft/RIM.
Unity on phone actually looks like it might be a pretty nice interface. Its hard to tell without using it obviously but with a small screen and all apps running full screen I think many of the things people complain about will either go away or just make more sense, and at least no one will be able to bitch about how much they prefered gnome 2 on their smart phone. Couple that with decent hardware and they could have something significantly better then android on their hands.
Of course the history of computing is littered with things that were better then their rivals but still not "better" enough to be worth switching for.
This will be an interesting one to watch.
> No, possibly the main thought in their minds was on addressing a Ruby conference, and who were the acknowledged experts able and willing to speak.
Probably. Except of course theres no evidence for the "able and willing to speak" part. If the organisers had invited a diverse range of speakers and only the white male ones were able to make it you might of thought they would have mentioned it in their defence rather then just pulling the conference. If they'd considered people but not invited them because they didn't think they'd come (or the expenses budget didn't stratch to flying people internationally for example) then they might have mentioned that as well.
Instead they seem to have without thinking about it organise a speakers list that made no attempt to reflect the community it was meant serve, then cancelled it when they were called on that. Its all a bit of a shame.
>"Everything" might actually have more to do with Ruby than with someone's apparently baseless accusation of sexual and racial discrimination.
I think you (deliberately?) miss my point, it doesn't matter if the accusations are baseless (I agree they probably are) what matters is how the conference is perceived by the outside world (both potential attendees and sponsers). If people look at the speaker list and think the conference is not a place they would be comfortable attending because of their race or gender then the organisers intentions dont matter, the perception of discrimination has done the damage.
The risk is then that the perception of the Ruby community is that it is white male only, and so non-white males dont get involved in it, which leads to the community actually becoming white male only. This is a thing no one wants.
>So, in your opinion, what would have been the "proper" proportion of sexual and racial diversity at the conference?
At what point do you think the proportions are out of whack with the community? At what point would you start to think that the organisers should have made a bit more effort? Would you be at all happy with someone looking at the speaker list and feeling that the conference was not the sort of place they would fit in because of their race or gender?
I dont really think anyone is accusing the organisers of any form of bias but they also dont seem to have made any effort to reflect the community or to even thought about the issue of how thie speaker list would look to the outside world. Avdi Grimm seems to have had no problem coming up with a list of non-white-dude potential speakers but the organisers seem not to have even tried. If they had considered the issue and decided it wasn't important, or invited people who said no this really wouldn't be a story.
You cant blame the organisers if they ask the ruby world for volunteers and only white-dudes propose talks, but the point is they *invited* 15 speakers and they only *invited* white-dudes and while the reality is probably that they hadn't even thought about it, the perception is not great and the perception matters.
Not talking about racism only works if people aren't being racist, but when they are then not talking about it is to tacitly accept it.
I dont know. Its one thing for a conference to only includes white male speakers if the community is exclusivly white male (although I'd be a little worried about any IT community that was such a mono-culture, but tats a different arguement) but if you can with relatively little thought come up with a list on non-white-male potential speakers then the fact that none of them appeared in the list of those invited is, well, unfortunate to say the least
If you invite a diverse bunch of speakers and only the white male ones want to come then thats a different thing entirely, but not to even invite a diverse range of speakers certainly doesn't encourage a diverse, open, and vibrant community.
note: I'm not saying any of this was deliberate on behalf of the organisers, I suspect they just hadn't thought about it, but this is one of those things where perception is everything
of course gritting costs per mile of road if you can go from gritting 30 times a year because "it might be icey" to 5 times a year when "it almost certainly will be icey" your local council could use the money save to either
a) grit the side roads so you can get out or
b) cut your council tax.
So a nice new super computer for the met office will make yor life better \o/
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