from:"perrin"

I'm setting up a new backup server using FreeBSD.  It will be used for
backing up laptops, which will not be connected to the network by any
kind of schedule, so backups will be initiated manually rather than by
cron or other scheduled procedures.  I'm trying to decide on what tools
to use for managing backups.  In the past I have used rsync, which has
worked reasonably well, but fails one of my desired criteria for the new
backup procedures, and is less than ideal for others.

My criteria for procedures are:

1. They should minimize the need for additional software beyond the base
system as much as reasonably possible.  This means not only that I do not
want to have to specify the installation of a bunch of stuff, but also
that I do not want a bunch of dependencies pulled in with something I
choose to install (if anything).  Ideally, I should be able to do this
with just the base system, though that seems unlikely at this point.

2. They should require only copyfree licensed or public domain tools --
no copyleft licensed tools, no proprietary licensed tools, no
noncommercial or nonderivative licensed tools, and no permissively
licensed tools where the license comes with annoying restrictions such as
the Apache License requirements for specific bookkeeping procedures.  I
might bend on the requirement for non-copyfree permissive licenses if I
have to, but I'd rather not; bending on any of the others would probably
involve just giving up and going back to rsync.

3. They should provide for incremental backups.

4. They should provide for the ability to quickly and easily test backup
integrity without restoring the backups anywhere, which most likely means
some kind of checksum comparisons akin to what rsync provides.

5. They should allow for transferring data from the system to be backed
up to the backup server via SSH.

6. They should use tools as simple as possible, preferably command line
tools.

7. There should be documentation somewhere out there for how to set
something like this up, someone willing to help me figure out how to get
it set up, or an obvious path to setting it up so that I do not spend a
week just figuring it all out, if at all possible.

8. They should preferably not require creating a local archive on the
laptop before copying to the backup server if it can reasonably be
avoided, so that a big chunk of empty HDD space will not need to be
maintained for backups to work.

Any help figuring out what tools would work for these purposes would be
appreciated.  I might be able to make exceptions for some parts of this
if there are suitable alternative approaches.

Thanks in advance for any help I can get in figuring this out.

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Re: Why Clang

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 08:28:17AM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
 
 biggest problem with what you propose, though, is that it would destroy
 the social factors in development of the FreeBSD system that make it what
 it is, and thus destroy FreeBSD itself, as far as I am concerned.
 
 I am not sure, as long as clients would be treated seriously!

I look at large corporate software vendors and see them treating
customers seriously maybe 2% of the time at best.  In this case, most of
the developers and project managers of FreeBSD are also customers,
which changes things significantly.


 
 I would have thought that even you should be able to understand that
 without help.

 another personal attack? I though i talk with adults.

1. It's a comment on your tendency to ignore substantive arguments from
other people, including probably half a dozen (so far) lengthy
explanations of factors you refuse to consider written by *me*.

2. You're a hypocrite, pretending you're an innocent victim of personal
attacks, given the way you go around making personal attacks on everyone
else with a broad brush.  I've commented on that, too, but -- like much
of the rest of what I've said -- you simply ignored it.


 
 Turning it into a commercial enterprise rather than an open source
 project would probably turn it into a project that is driven about 60% by
 corporate politics and 40% by marketing BS, with no room left over for
 quality except as needed to support the minimum credibility its CEO deems
 necessary to support those two concerns.

 It depends solely on development team.

I take it you don't know anything at all about how public corporations
manage their development teams.  That, or you're being disingenuous.

It depends on the development team, and the priorities they choose to
pursue first, right now.  Under the stewardship of a publicly traded
corporation, it would depend on the CEO, the board of directors,
marketing, PR, and the accounting department, and the priorities *they*
choose to pursue first, instead.


 
 For now - as we see - it's decision are driven by money.
 But not all users money but few selected large users.

It's not *just* a decision driven by money.  Money applies, certainly,
but not as much as it would if FreeBSD were a for-profit public
corporation rather than a community-driven open source project.  When you
say this, by the way, you ignore something like 90% of the perfectly
reasonable additional motivating factors that have been brought up.  I
suppose I should not expect any different by now, given the strong track
record you've managed to establish just in this one extended discussion.


 
 Worse based on a couple of very narrowly applicable metrics derived
 
 There will be IMHO soon good compiler available. it's highly
 probable that pcc would improve a lot, for now it is small, quick
 but doesn't produce good code for new CPUs. But it probably will
 improve.
 
 CLANG is already great bloat, and will be worse.

Binary size and minuscule benchmark variations are all you see.  It is
ludicrous to watch you close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears,
and shout lalalalalalalala so consistently to prevent any other factors
involved in compiler choice from entering your mind -- such as good
output from a compiler that will be stable and do what you expect.


 
 No amount of money will fix it, actually too much money will hurt.

. . . and yet you want to turn the FreeBSD project over to Microsoft (or
the equivalent).  You contradict yourself.

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Re: Why Clang

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 01:16:09PM +0200, Julian H. Stacey wrote:
 Chad Perrin wrote:
  On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 01:06:12PM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
   i already proposed (but not publically) to turn FreeBSD into
   commercial system.
   
   REALLY i would not see a problem to pay say 100$ per server licence.
  
  I would see a problem with that -- not because I don't think FreeBSD is
  worth it.  I do, and I think it is worth more than that, in fact.  The
  biggest problem with what you propose, though, is that it would destroy
 
 Hi Chad etc,
 I admire the perserverance, but maybe Don't feed the troll ?

Yeah. . . .

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Re: Why Clang

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 09:24:57AM -0500, Reid Linnemann wrote:
 On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 11:27 PM, Chad Perrin per...@apotheon.com wrote:
  I disagree with the assessment by others that FreeBSD is in some way
  effectively a subsidiary of its corporate users, but it does have
  corporate users, as well as non-corporate users.  Just as it must
  reasonably see to the needs of the individuals who use it, so must it
  also reasonably see to the needs of those corporate users, especially
  when some of those corporate users' employees are key developers for the
  base system (to the significant benefit of the rest of us).  Thus, saying
  that a particular set of conditions having an impact on commercial
  sponsors of FreeBSD has zero bearing on FreeBSD itself is just . . .
  incorrect.
 
 And I would like to stress on this point that, when I referred to
 corporate sponsorship in an earlier post, I was thinking specifically
 about the sponsorship of employing developers that keep the system
 moving forward, not necessarily monetary donations. The foundation
 does need money, but the software is doomed if no one is gainfully
 employed to maintain and enhance it. I think there is an altruistic
 fiction that many people subscribe to that free software is merely the
 result of the generosity of developers producing code of their own
 volition and on their own spare time and giving it away, and from
 that viewpoint the act of considering concerns of a sponsoring entity
 amounts to selling out. The reality is much different and much more
 complex, as you well know.

Indeed.  When I contribute to an open source project, as an individual, 
much the same factors apply.  I do not do it to help someone like Michel
Talon, or even Reid Linnemann; I do it to help myself, by improving
software I like, or to help people who in turn work to improve software I
like.  I have selfish goals that are served by my support of well-
designed copyfree software, whether that support is financial in nature,
a contribution of development effort, or something less direct.

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Re: backup tools

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 08:47:40PM +0200, Roland Smith wrote:
 On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 10:09:03AM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
  I'm setting up a new backup server using FreeBSD.  It will be used for
  backing up laptops, which will not be connected to the network by any
  kind of schedule, so backups will be initiated manually rather than by
  cron or other scheduled procedures.
 
 What are the laptops running?

FreeBSD, Debian, and/or Ubuntu.  There's at least one of each.  I
apologize for not mentioning that sooner.  I had a feeling I'd overlook
something.

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Re: backup tools

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 08:14:34PM -0500, Adam Vande More wrote:
 On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 11:09 AM, Chad Perrin per...@apotheon.com wrote:
 
  I'm setting up a new backup server using FreeBSD.  It will be used for
  backing up laptops, which will not be connected to the network by any
  kind of schedule, so backups will be initiated manually rather than by
  cron or other scheduled procedures.  I'm trying to decide on what tools
  to use for managing backups.  In the past I have used rsync, which has
  worked reasonably well, but fails one of my desired criteria for the new
  backup procedures, and is less than ideal for others.
 
 
 One's I use or have used:
 
 sysutils/rdiff-backup
 sysutils/tarsnap
 misc/amanda-server

Unfortunately, one of those is GPL, another is subject to proprietary
licensing, and the last has a bunch of (otherwise unnecessary on the
server) GNU project dependencies.

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Re: Why Clang

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 12:25:22AM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
 You're being paid to write a program for a customer. You
 
 i don't talk that case, but if i am hired to write some part of
 program as an employer in software company.

There are basically four circumstances that might apply here, as far as
I'm aware:

1. Your work is considered work for hire, where you are just a cog in
the corporate machine and the corporation is the creator or author of
record (and thus the default copyright holder).  This means you would
have to get permission (license) to use the work outside of your
function as an employee.

2. Your work can be used by the employer under exclusive license, which
means you cannot use the work yourself except under strictly limited
conditions specified in law.

3. Your work can be transfered to the employer, so that though you are
the default copyright holder an agreement (possibly an employment
agreement, but generally requiring a distinct agreement separate from the
employment agreement itself for this case) establishes the legal transfer
of copyright from you to the employer.

4. Your work is provided to the employer under a non-exclusive license,
which means you can then license it to others as well.

By far the most common case for a standard employment relationship is
case 1.

Pathological edge-cases may adjust these circumstances.  My assumptions
in writing this are based on my experience with US copyright law.  I am
not a lawyer, and this does not constitute legal advice, but only an
explanation of my understanding and perspective with regard to copyright
law.


 
 BUT - as everyone is free to obtain, modify and re-issue GPL
 source code, I'm not sure such a consensus could be reached.

 by creating a BSD licenced fork - constructed from parts written by
 all developers that - as you said - have personal right to their
 code.

This is pretty much exactly what happened with the Pentadactyl extension
for Firefox.  The people who had been doing the majority of development
work for the Vimperator extension for a while, but were not the project
owner, took the code they had created and rewrote (from scratch) any
additional code needed to make it work, creating the Pentadactyl project.
The original Vimperator project used a copyleft license (the GPL), and
the new Pentadactyl project used a copyfree license (I don't recall
which, probably either the Simplified BSD License or the MIT/X11
License).

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Re: CLANG vs GCC tests of fortran/f2c program

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 05:50:24AM -0400, Thomas Mueller wrote:
 Snippet from Wojciech Puchar woj...@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl:
 
  I successfully predicted the fall of linux (in quality point of view)
  years ago, then netbsd - after this and my prediction were good.
 
  Now i predict FreeBSD will fall within 2015 time frame.
  What i mean fall - that it would be better to use older version as long as
  possible because newer are worse.
 
  For now
 
  - FreeBSD 6 was an improvement
  - FreeBSD 7 was an improvement, except first releases but that's normal
  - FreeBSD 8 was a big improvement in performance and quality.
 
  FreeBSD 9 as for now:
 
  - have similar performance at most
  - have some improvement and important functionality like TRIM support.
  - have some useful functionality like softdep journalling, but risky.
  Still - forcing full check reveals some inconsistencies now and then.
 
  FreeBSD 10 will unlikely be better, but for sure slower unless you will
  force gcc build that MAYBE will work. possibly not.
 
 
 My experience with NetBSD suggests you may be right there, but Linux?
 
 I'll have to build a new Linux installation and see for myself!
 
 I'm still inclined to say FreeBSD 9.0 is an improvement over 8.2; I never got 
 to 8.3.

I can definitely vouch for his estimate of the quality of Linux-based
OSes, at least in the majority of cases.  I primarily used Debian for a
while, then went through a transitional period where I gradually phased
out Debian, until about half a dozen years was spent entirely Linux-free
(apart from the Linux kernel on a couple of embedded consumer devices),
during which time I used FreeBSD for everything.  Over the course of the
last -- well, more than a year, less than 1.5 years -- I have been
forced to use a Linux-based system again to get halfway decent graphics
support on a laptop I bought without checking hardware compatibility
carefully enough.

In the meantime, however, I have provided some support for other people
using Linux-based systems.  During that time, I had occasion to see a
Slackware installer hose an entire system (luckily with backups) that was
initially intended to be set up as a multi-boot with FreeBSD and MS
Windows; Ubuntu get cursed at great length with words like If I wanted
to deal with this crap, I'd use Windows!; and similar issues crop up.

Even so, installing Debian on my new laptop early last year (and trying
to install Arch Linux on it -- which didn't hose anything up, but did
fail to detect the free space on the hard drive, and thus failed to
install, before I decided it was easier to skip Arch) and using it since
then on a regular basis has been an eye-opener.  Myriad little
stupidities have crept into the system, including such wonders of
engineering brilliance as some documentation to the effect that basic
system network management tools were no longer guaranteed to work.

I have some pretty strong opinions about the way things are getting
broken in the Linux world, and some of the reasons this sort of problem
is growing, but they're increasingly off-topic for this venue.  Suffice
to say that I could write a short book about the subject, and still leave
a lot of problems unaddressed.

Anyway, switching from GCC to Clang has essentially nothing to do with
the kinds of problems we increasingly see in the Linux world.  In fact,
one of the biggest problems in the Linux world is the fact that GNU
projects have a tendency to degrade in quality over time and pretty
thoroughly undermine the Unix philosophy in egregious ways, which means
that the sooner we can divest ourselves of GNU tools (including GCC) the
better off we will probably be (though I would still advocate a measured
approach to replacing GNU tools, rather than a headlong rush without any
forethought).

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Re: Why Clang

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 06:11:46AM -0400, Thomas Mueller wrote:
 Snippet from Antonio Olivares olivares14...@gmail.com:
 
  I have some friends that develop software.  They had released it under
  GNU umbrella.  Later on, other folks were taking advantage and not
  giving back as the license requires.  There was little to no way to
  enforce the license, he decided to  move to other license that
  protects his work and let others use it was well with little to no
  strings attached.  He know uses the CDDL which is also an Open Source
  License.  He can give you many reasons as to why the GPLv3 is the
  wrong way to go.  I can ask him for these and other reasons at your
  request.
 
 Yes, that would be a good idea, not so much for me as for others who
 want to better understand the licensing issues of GCC compared to
 Clang.
 
 That would help explain why FreeBSD is switching to Clang.

Related (perhaps somewhat indirectly):

Advancement Through License Simplicity
http://univacc.net/?page=license_simplicity

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Re: Why Clang

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:40:11AM +0200, Michel Talon wrote:
 Le 21 juin 2012 à 03:52, kpn...@pobox.com a écrit :
 
  
  All of this may seem stupid to a reasonable person outside of law. I'll 
  agree
  that it probably does look stupid. But it is also the reality of the legal
  systems we must live with today.
 
 I can only praise kpneal for this very well argumented post. However
 some remarks.  The whole argument revolves around FUD, fear,
 uncertainty and doubt. But there will never be any shortage of lawyers
 trying to spread FUD on any subject to please their clients, and if
 companies bend over instead of fighting FUD they will promptly be
 paralyzed.

It was actually a fairly sober assessment of legal conditions, especially
in light of the rather unreasonable expenses often attendant to legal
battles.  In any case, it pays to play things safe when your options are:

* Take the idiots on, head-on, over their copyleft licensing zeal, and
  see if you get sued.

* Play it safe by using a compiler built on a better architecture that
  provides better development features, more correct output, and other
  advantages, with a copyfree license instead of a copyleft license.



 Last time a company tried to use such tactic against Linux, it did not
 turn out a bright idea. Second, FreeBSD is not a commercial company,
 and while this argument may have a merit for commercial sponsors of
 FreeBSD, it has zero bearing on FreeBSD itself.

I disagree with the assessment by others that FreeBSD is in some way
effectively a subsidiary of its corporate users, but it does have
corporate users, as well as non-corporate users.  Just as it must
reasonably see to the needs of the individuals who use it, so must it
also reasonably see to the needs of those corporate users, especially
when some of those corporate users' employees are key developers for the
base system (to the significant benefit of the rest of us).  Thus, saying
that a particular set of conditions having an impact on commercial
sponsors of FreeBSD has zero bearing on FreeBSD itself is just . . .
incorrect.



 If FreeBSD appears as a subsidiary of some commercial company (say
 Juniper) i am not sure this will be good for its further development.
 This being said, i agree with you that the FreeBSD binaries will not
 see a big performance degradation through the use of clang, so, as long
 as gcc is in the ports to be used with performance critical stuff, it
 is no big deal. Anyways as a long time FreeBSD user i have seen clang
 presented as an experiment by two or three people, and then suddenly
 stuffed without any discussion in the base system, apparently for
 political reasons that i don't share (i mean this stupid obsession of
 GPL free system, which has replaced the previous focus on quality and
 performance).

How much were you around in the mailing lists and other relevant venues
for discussion of changes to the base system?  You are presumably aware
this list doesn't really count, being a general-questions list that is
not exactly the official place to discuss things like base system choices
of library and userland development (for instance), or even ports system
development.  It's possible all you saw of the discussion was the parts
that escaped into the wild, as it were; the more in-depth discussion of
the matter surely happened elsewhere.  This might give you a mistaken
impression that there was not much discussion of the matter.

. . . and thanks for calling the concerns of everyone who wants to be
able to use FreeBSD as the basis of other projects without having to deal
with problematic licensing restrictions as stupid and obsessed.
That's not very nice (or accurate).

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Re: Why Clang

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 01:06:12PM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
 for commercial sponsors of FreeBSD, it has zero bearing on FreeBSD itself. 
 If FreeBSD appears
 as a subsidiary of some commercial company (say Juniper) i am not sure this 
 will be good
 
 I think any project that size is actually a subsidiary and must be.
 
 I just don't like that it isn't stated openly! It is nothing wrong,
 unless one can feed using zero point energy, everyone needs money to
 stay alive.
 
 Wouldn't it be smarter to openly say Juniper request as to get rid
 o GPL as soon as we can because they are fed up with this shit and
 law mess. instead of personal attacks, messing with my (and others)
 sentences and posting evident lies just to explain the decision.
 
 It is a difference between honest people and fools.
 
 i already proposed (but not publically) to turn FreeBSD into
 commercial system.
 
 REALLY i would not see a problem to pay say 100$ per server licence.

I would see a problem with that -- not because I don't think FreeBSD is
worth it.  I do, and I think it is worth more than that, in fact.  The
biggest problem with what you propose, though, is that it would destroy
the social factors in development of the FreeBSD system that make it what
it is, and thus destroy FreeBSD itself, as far as I am concerned.
Eliminating the copyfree licensed, open source development model of
FreeBSD would undermine the majority of the technical benefits supported
by that development model.

I would have thought that even you should be able to understand that
without help.


 
 There is nothing to prevent giving source with system. Non-Free
 software doesn't have to be binary only.

Read-only source, or even modifiable but non-distributable source, does
not provide the social benefits of an open source development model that
encourage the kind of participation FreeBSD needs to remain FreeBSD,
rather than becoming Oracle Solaris or MS Windows Server 2010: Race
Condition Odyssey.


 
 For paying this i would like FreeBSD to be maintained with quality
 and performance being the only reason, not politics.

Turning it into a commercial enterprise rather than an open source
project would probably turn it into a project that is driven about 60% by
corporate politics and 40% by marketing BS, with no room left over for
quality except as needed to support the minimum credibility its CEO deems
necessary to support those two concerns.


 
 Every trendy or otherwise requested feature could be added
 separately or even charged separately, as long as it doesn't have
 any effects on base system. ZFS being example.
 
 Nothing against Juniper (the make truly good working hardware), but
 if they enforce decision because of their personal likes then it
 must be stopped.

You seem to think this is all about Juniper.  I wonder where you get that
idea.  Why didn't you pluck iXsystems out of thin air as your whipping
boy, or Yahoo, or some other corporate user?


 
 GPLv3 based C compiler does not prevent making closed source
 software like JunOS for example.

In most cases, this may be true, *if* the license exceptions apply as
described if/when tested in court.  There are some cases where even the
optimistic explanation of the license exceptions particular to GCC
mentions that the GPLv3 might apply to generated code.


 
 It is only i hate GNU type decision.

No, it's not only that.  It's *also* that, and with good reason.  Good
job ignoring a whole lot of information people have tried to bring to
your attention, including lengthy messages from me to which you have not
substantively responded.  Are you unable, or simply unwilling, to have an
honest discussion on the matter?   Ironically, your possibly dishonest
intention in this matter occurs even as you pretend that potentially
mistaken statements by one or two people make *everyone* into malevolent
liars who deserve your ire and insults.


 
 I hate too, and in spite of this am against removing gcc and
 replacing it with much worse product.

Worse based on a couple of very narrowly applicable metrics derived
from specific, very particular use case conditions, whose measures are of
negligible scale for most purposes, ignoring a shit-ton of additional
information about why Clang is better based on information that you have
not only admitted not knowing about but proclaimed you have no interest
in learning.  You *refuse* to educate yourself about some of the subject
matter that pertains to other benefits, then proclaim everyone else at
fault for the fact you cannot see past your nose to note that the whole
world does not revolve around some dubious benchmarks.

I doubt you're convincing anyone of anything you seem to think we should
all accept as gospel.

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Re: Why Clang

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 07:30:23PM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
 Because there's no reason to do that. It's an asinine suggestion.
 
 Clang is here to stay. Most of us are happy about that decision. GCC
 
 Because most that are not already stopped and ignored thing. and use GCC.
 
 Politics won.

Development benefits are not politics.

Easier distribution is not politics.

More responsive upstream developers are not politics.

You ignoring all of these points and more that have been brought up, some
by me, *is* evidently politics -- because you are seeking a political
capitulation to your willfully ignorant demands.  Politics *lose*, so
far, and for that I am grateful.

. . . but if it makes you feel better to whisper to yourself that all
opposition to your position (even when you ignore it and have not
bothered to actually read and understand it) is just politics, go
ahead, as long as it doesn't perpetuate this wholly unnecessary griping
on the mailing list.

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Re: CLANG vs GCC tests of fortran/f2c program

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 12:14:09PM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
 
 And why you think it's not better then gcc?
 
 because - as you already should know - test shows otherwise.

You just ignored everything Volodymyr Kostyrko said about the other
factors that are also important for a compiler being considered better.
Good job.  I have a hint to share with you, though:

Ignoring an argument does not make it wrong.



 As well as FreeBSD running predictable with gcc anyway.

. . . for some use cases, evidently including yours.  In my case, Clang's
stability and predictability is better than GCC's, and in some other
cases it may be *much* better.  In the cases where it isn't, that's a
case of standards-noncompliant code in a port causing problems, and it is
a problem that is being fixed prior to FreeBSD 10 release with Clang as
the sole compiler in the base system (last I heard).

This is what happens when you use a more standards-compliant compiler:
you get more stable and predictable behavior.

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Re: CLANG vs GCC tests of fortran/f2c program

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 02:16:43PM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
 speed estimates.

 there are a difference between speed estimate and actual speed - and
 i talk about the latter only.

You're talking about poorly managed benchmarks that are imprecise and
prone to fluctuation, applying only to very specific cases that are not
necessarily very broadly representative, but you are talking about them
as though they are perfectly representative of all cases.  That is, at
best, speed estimates.


 
 Besides, NetBSD and OpenBSD has already selected and using pcc
 now. And they are fine with that one.

 their problem.

No -- it's their solution.  It would be a problem only if the previous
statement said and they are *not* fine with that one.

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Re: Attaching a monitor via vga

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 07:27:33AM -0600, Warren Block wrote:
 
 Adding a new mode should not be needed for most monitors.  I do this
 to set up the external video:
 
   xrandr --output VGA --above LVDS
 
 That's to span a single desktop over both monitors.
 
 Some desktop environments have their own ideas about which monitors
 are attached and what part of the desktop is shown, and that must be
 changed in the DE's settings.

My use case involves putting everything on one monitor at a time -- the
larger desktop LCD when it's plugged in, and the laptop display when the
external monitor is *not* plugged in.  From the sound of the request,
that is the use case the orignial querent in this thread had in mind as
well.

Your tip could well be useful for some use cases, though.

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Re: Why Clang

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 10:06:31PM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
 I have some friends that develop software.  They had released it under
 GNU umbrella.  Later on, other folks were taking advantage and not
 
 isn't it that once you release your own work as GPL you don't really
 own this and even you cannot use it in closed source software?

When you license something, you still own the copyright.  You can then
release it under other licenses as well, and for versions you have
modified you can release it under another license *only* if you choose,
thus no longer having the GPL attached to those version.  The old
version's license, though, cannot be rescinded for those who have already
received it under those terms, which then allows them to pass it on to
others under the same license.

This means that you can simultaneously offer a piece of software for
which you own the copyright both under the GPL and as a paid-license
product for those who want different license terms than the GPL, so yeah,
you *can* use it in closed source software even when distributing it
under the GPL at the same time if *you* own the copyright or if you get a
separate license from whoever owns the copyright.  The people who are
restricted from using it in a closed-source project are those who do not
own the copyright, do not pay the copyright holder for a different
license, and acquire it under the GPL.  In short, the people most
restricted in such circumstances are the people who make up the open
source development community.

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Re: CLANG vs GCC tests of fortran/f2c program

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 10:07:09PM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
 email elided for purposes of courtesy wrote:
 Will i be able to compile FreeBSD base system with gcc after some time?
 not sure.
 
 Why is that so important for you?
 if you would read even less than carefully the topic you will get
 the answer.

I'll try to help out, here.

Christer Solskogen: I think the reason that is so very important to
Wojciech Puchar is the fact that he is incapable of imagining:

1. other concerns that might apply

2. that things appear highly likely to change

3. that a negligible performance difference is . . . negligible

I'm pretty sure he's not running compute clusters on FreeBSD, after all.

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Re: CLANG vs GCC tests of fortran/f2c program

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 08:40:56PM +0400, Евгений Лактанов wrote:
 20.06.2012 18:47, Mark Felder пишет:
  On Wed, 20 Jun 2012 09:43:14 -0500, Wojciech Puchar
  email address elided for purposes of courtesy wrote:
  [attribution lost by Wojciech Puchar and I'm too lazy to check]
 
  Why not make FreeBSD better for everyone by cooperating with the
  CLANG project?
 
  because we already have great compiler - GCC. In spite of using GPL
  licence.
 
  GCC performs well, but it is a very messy undocumented codebase which
  makes maintaining it a nightmare. Just ask Google -- you'll find many
  others saying the same thing. It would take MORE work to get FreeBSD
  devs up to speed on the GCC codebase to add the features we want than
  it is to cooperate with the CLANG community and help them make their
  compiler better than GCC in every test case.

 It is the classic developer/user argument. It is also stupid. The user
 side simply doesn't have the same needs, it can't understand how
 freaking hard it is sometimes to debug a large and complex program in a
 badly documented environment or worse with undocumented features. If it
 works faster ergo it is better - that is the only criteria to really
 have a meaning to a user.

It's bikeshed painting.  Someone who doesn't understand the many factors
that apply, and doesn't even *want* to know, picks one thing he thinks he
understands and argues about it in an attempt to make the entire project
change course.

Well, dammit, I *like* blue, and he can take his bucket of red paint home
with him to paint his *own* bikeshed.

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Re: Why Clang

2012-06-19 Thread Chad Perrin

You should really configure your email client to attribute quoted
commentary properly (or, as a first step, at all).


On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 06:51:00AM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
 be more exact.
 
 I believe Robert Bonomi (you didn't include attribution for the previous
 email, I notice) *was* more exact, in that the rest of his email
 explained what he thought of your glossing over the various factors that
 might contribute to binary size.
 
 I notice you ignored most of it in your response, too.
 
 or maybe missed. So please tell me finally what is wrong in
 measuring speed by measuring time of execution doing same things?
 What i should measure? time in heavens?

He didn't say anything about your measurement of time being faulty.  He
said your measurement of size was faulty.


 
 I can generally puzzle out what caused various GCC warning and error
 messages when trying to compile my own code, given comparison of what's
 
 strange but i don't have a problem - and i always set -Wall when
 using gcc as 99% of warnings are actually errors.

I guess you're either some kind of rare genius or suffering from
Stockholm syndrome.  Everyone I've encountered with something to say
about warning and error reporting with regard to Clang vs. GCC has
remarked about how much nicer it is with Clang.

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Re: Why Clang

2012-06-19 Thread Chad Perrin

On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 10:06:49PM +0200, Anonymous Remailer (austria) wrote:
 
  GPL protects the freedom of the programmer who licensed his
  code under those licenses: He wants it to be free for use,
  but not to be turned into closed source products.
 
 What a lying sonofabitch. That is not called freedom. That is called
 forcible, viral open source. I think we can all see the difference. Open
 your motherfucking eyes, communist goofball...

Give him a break.  His heart is in the right place, though his choice of
phrasing may have been imperfect in this case.  He was, it seems to me,
trying to take an even-handed approach to describing the positions of
both sides of a contentious matter, and letting the reader make up his or
her own mind about it.  In fact, if there's any bias showing in what he
said, I think it leans toward copyfree licenses like the various BSD
licenses, rather than toward copyleft licenses such as the various GNU
licenses.

There are better targets than Polytropon for your ire.


 
  A programmer who does not want to raise this barrier will
  typically use the BSD license which is more free.
 
 No, it's just plain free.

This would seem like a much more reasonable statement if it was not
preceded by your immediately prior invective.


 
  BSDL in opposite is often criticized a rape me license.
 
 No, it is not, except perhaps by lying atheist Marxist bastards and his
 religious adherents.

Yes, it is often criticized that way -- by people who, in my considered
opinion, have their heads up their asses -- and the fact that Polytropon
pointed out this simple fact does not make him a bad person.

It's also worth noting that a lot of the people who make such ridiculous
comments about copyfree licenses are often not atheists, Marxists, or
bastards.  They're often just nuts.

. . . and what's wrong with being an atheist?  I'm not an atheist (more
of an agnostic Taoist), but if someone wants to believe he or she has
absolute knowledge of the (non-)existence of any god, that's his or her
prerogative.  I would judge such a person no more harshly than a devoted
monotheist.  Your beliefs are your own affair; only your behavior, as it
affects other people, is of particular concern to me.  In the particular
venue of a FreeBSD mailing list, my interest narrows further to exclude
things that have nothing to do with FreeBSD and associated software,
community, and so on.  I don't see how atheist is a meaningful insult,
especially when we're talking about software, or how it can be gleaned
from someone's licensing preferences.


 
  It explicitely (!) allows creating derivates in a closed
  source manner. This means that parts of BSD licensed code
  can be a key component in a proprietary closed source
  product that is for sale (e. g. a firewall appliance),
  and nobody will find out about that fact.
 
 Now you got it! GPL is about forcing people to do what /you/ want and BSD is
 about letting them do what /they/ want. Let's see if you can guess which one
 of those licenses is about freedom. Hint: freedom is not defined as forcing
 people to do what you want.

This would probably be a better-received statement if the rest of your
commentary in the same email was not mostly about (probably entirely
inaccurate) insults flung at someone for failing to use the specific
phrasing you prefer when referring to the crazies who believe using
software distributed under a copyfree license is an act of pure evil.

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Re: Attaching a monitor via vga

2012-06-19 Thread Chad Perrin

On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 08:52:58PM -0400, David Tilbrook wrote:
 I have a thinkpad t61p running freebsd9.0.  The window size is 1680x1050
 -- a reasonable size -- but the screen itself is 38cm. (15) which is
 irritatingly
 small for my old eyes.
 
 So I want to attach an external monitor via a vga cable, which I have been
 doing with my RedHat thinkpad A31P for years.
 
 I tried attaching Asus VE228H (1920x1080) but it would display
 only part of the window (the top-left corner). I get a similar behaviour
 with a Samsung SyncMaster.
 
 When I tried to xinit with the monitor attached, it displays an even smaller
 part of the screen. (On my previous thinkpad with a Samsung, to get a
 reasonable full window I had to unplug the vga, start xinit, and then plug
 in the vga, but I can live with that.)
 
 My questions:
 
 1) What can I do to display the whole window on an external monitor?
 2) Is there a monitor out there that would better support such use?
 3) Would a Samsung T220HD 22 which claims to support 1680x1050
  work, and is there someone in Toronto who sells it and would let
  me test it? (Craigs list doesn't qualify).

You probably want to look into using the xrandr command to configure
output for connected monitors.  Try this first:

xrandr --auto

If that does not work, you may have to do something more sophisticated.
For instance, I have a shell script that looks like this for when I
connect my laptop to an external monitor:

#!/bin/sh
xrandr --auto
xrandr --output LVDS1 --off
xrandr --newmode 1680x1050_60.00  146.25  1680 1784 1960 2240  1050 1053 
1059 1089 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode VGA1 1680x1050_60.00
xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1680x1050_60.00
xli -onroot -border black -center /path/to/enso_16x9.png

You should use this to find out the name of the display you identify in
the --output line:

xrandr -q

You'll need to get information about your monitor's display parameters
for the --newmode line, and the --addmode and --mode lines uses the same
resolution string as in the --newmode line.  The xli line is there just
to re-apply my background image, because it gets a little out of whack
when I change monitors like that.

When I'm going to disconnect from the external monitor, I run xrandr
--auto before disconnecting to get the laptop to recognize my laptop's
built-in display again, then run xrandr --auto one more time after
disconnecting the external monitor to get it to forget about the settings
for the external monitor so my laptop display won't act funny because
it thinks there's a larger external monitor still attached.

I hope that helps.  Let me know if you want any more information about
how this works.

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Re: Why Clang

2012-06-18 Thread Chad Perrin

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 10:30:23PM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
 scratch and this resulted with thing 5 times larger,
 
 *YOUR* measurement of sizes was faulty.  grin
 
 be more exact.

I believe Robert Bonomi (you didn't include attribution for the previous
email, I notice) *was* more exact, in that the rest of his email
explained what he thought of your glossing over the various factors that
might contribute to binary size.

I notice you ignored most of it in your response, too.


 
 I'm sure that you _also_ are aware that a larger program size does *NOT*
 necessarily mean 'bloat'.
 
 of course. really i can write programs.
 
 and really - i don't understand all this fuss about better error
 reporting.
 
 Really i don't have problems to read gcc error messages when i
 compile my programs.

I can generally puzzle out what caused various GCC warning and error
messages when trying to compile my own code, given comparison of what's
going on in the messages with what's going on in my code and reasoning
through the connections between different parts of the code.  That sort
of thing is required probably 70% of the time, in my experience.

With Clang, by contrast, I find that's required only about 20% to 30% of
the time.  Otherwise, the warning and error messages tend to get me a lot
closer to the actual point of failure than GCC.

*That* is what all this fuss about 'better error reporting' is about.

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Re: Uptime [OT]

2012-06-15 Thread Chad Perrin

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 09:20:19PM -0600, Steve Bertrand wrote:
 I still have non-root access to a box from my old job... it is
 non-available and doing nothing, so updates are irrelevant:
 
 %uptime
  9:01PM  up 1142 days,  5:29, 1 user, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

Hmm.  My longest uptime system right now -- basically just an
SSH-accessible store of digital audio files ripped from CD and attached
to speakers in the living room -- is at 500 days uptime today.

My oldest build date on a running system is Sun May  7 04:32:43 UTC
2006.

Obviously, neither of these is set up for public access.  They're just
neglected single-purpose machines.

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Re: Uptime [OT]

2012-06-15 Thread Chad Perrin

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 07:49:49AM -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
 
 Heh. check out -this- one:
 
  % uname -a
  **  ***  ** *** Kernel #0: Thu Mar 20 
 16:40:01 CST 1997 :/usr/src/sys/compile/LOCAL  
 i386
 
 The build date _is_ accurate, the hardware it's running on is old enough to 
 vote.   wry grin
 
 It's publicly accessible on the Internet, 
 
 It's not quite as ridiculous as it looks, the (limited) apps running on it 
 _are_ up-to-date.
 
 Uptime is nothing to brag about -- no UPS, combined with 'unreliable' public
 utility power, does have an impact.

No power conditioning (implied by no UPS) is nothing to brag about.

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Re: Uptime [OT]

2012-06-15 Thread Chad Perrin

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 11:47:55PM +, David Brodbeck wrote:
 On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 4:00 PM, Chad Perrin per...@apotheon.com wrote:
  No power conditioning (implied by no UPS) is nothing to brag about.
 
 If your utility power is very -- common now in places with buried
 utilities -- a UPS of the non-enterprise variety can actually make
 reliability *worse*.  I've found that standby-type UPSs (like the
 popular APC BackUPS and SmartUPS units) will drop the load at the
 slightest power blip once the batteries go bad, while machines
 connected directly to utility power will often ride out short blips.
 It's especially insidious on the BackUPS units because the only way to
 test the battery is to hit the test button and see if the load drops.
 ;)

These bargain-basement throw-away UPSes you mention are not the kinds of
UPSes that give you power conditioning, and thus (I hope) obviously not
the kinds of UPSes I meant.


 
 When I lived in a place that had a power outage once a week, I used a
 UPS.  Now that I live in a place where I get maybe one power outage a
 *year*, I'm better off without out.

I don't consider the ability to stay up for a few minutes when there's a
brief blackout to be the most important function of a good UPS, even
though that's kinda the reason the things were invented in the first
place.  The most important function of such a thing is power
conditioning, which eliminates the problems of spikes and brownouts in
the supply of power from the utility company even when nothing dramatic
enough happens to actually crash a running machine right away.  Such
variability in power can be bad for both hardware and consistent, stable
running of software.

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Re: Is this something we (as consumers of FreeBSD) need to be aware of?

On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 07:23:20AM -0400, Jerry wrote:
 
 It is fairly easy to understand both sides in this discussion. When
 Microsoft supporters refer to open-source software as open-sore or
 socialist-software the FOSS community becomes enraged. However, when
 the open-source community retaliates it is considered acceptable. Quite
 frankly I read far more Microsoft based forums than open-source based
 ones and I can say without a doubt, at least in my experience,
 Microsoft proponents never attack open-source with the venomous hatred
 that open-source attacks Microsoft. In fact, the majority of Microsoft
 users that I know could not care less about what they consider an
 overly burdensome (geeky) open-source operating system.
 
 The whole argument can probably be boiled do to this:
 
 Disparaging other operating systems (Microsoft) and pointing out its
 failures is beneficial, constructive and therapeutic. Pointing out
 problems and failures regarding your own OS is destructive and flame
 bait.

Perhaps you're spending too much time in the community venues of open
source software projects.  In communities devoted to use of software
peddled by Microsoft, the reverse would be true, and this seems to me not
the least bit surprising, or even particularly inappropriate.  When you
stroll into a venue where it can reasonably be assumed there is a general
consensus position of favoring one thing over another (such as a sports
bar in Colorado, which would likely favor the Broncos over the Raiders),
then start loudly proclaiming the evils of the favored thing relative to
the unfavored (such as talking about how much better the Raiders are than
the Broncos, and how the Broncos fans are all a bunch of pansy whiners,
as you tend to do about open source software users and advocates while
you're hanging out here on a FreeBSD mailing list), what you are
contributing to the discussion may quite understandably be called
flamebait.  Expressing surprise that someone would apply such a label
in these circumstances is, in my estimation, at least disingenuous if not
wholly ludicrous, directly deceptive, and/or frankly dumb.

I, for one, generally try to avoid saying nonfactually disparaging things
about Microsoft or (especially) users of software peddled by Microsoft in
venues like this mailing list, in part because it's a bit
unsportsmanlike, and in part because it doesn't really contribute
anything positive.  It's kind of mind-boggling that people like you make
no evident effort to avoid saying disparaging things about FreeBSD and
its users in venues like this mailing list, where it's trollish, does not
contribute anything positive, and directly offends large numbers of
people subscribed to the list.

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Re: OT - enjoy it

On Fri, Jun 08, 2012 at 06:26:16AM +, jb wrote:
 Chinese advertising of soccer championship Euro 2012
 
 http://avaxnews.com/wow/Chinese_Advertising_UEFA_Euro_2012.html

That . . . was nuts.  What just happened?

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Re: Is this something we (as consumers of FreeBSD) need to be aware of?

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 12:59:46PM -0400, Jerry wrote:
 On Mon, 11 Jun 2012 10:11:11 -0600 Chad Perrin articulated:
 
 On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 07:23:20AM -0400, Jerry wrote:
  
  It is fairly easy to understand both sides in this discussion. When
  Microsoft supporters refer to open-source software as open-sore or
  socialist-software the FOSS community becomes enraged. However,
  when the open-source community retaliates it is considered
  acceptable. Quite frankly I read far more Microsoft based forums
  than open-source based ones and I can say without a doubt, at least
  in my experience, Microsoft proponents never attack open-source with
  the venomous hatred that open-source attacks Microsoft. In fact, the
  majority of Microsoft users that I know could not care less about
  what they consider an overly burdensome (geeky) open-source
  operating system.
  
  The whole argument can probably be boiled do to this:
  
  Disparaging other operating systems (Microsoft) and pointing out its
  failures is beneficial, constructive and therapeutic. Pointing out
  problems and failures regarding your own OS is destructive and flame
  bait.
 
 Perhaps you're spending too much time in the community venues of open
 source software projects.  In communities devoted to use of software
 peddled by Microsoft, the reverse would be true, and this seems to me
 not the least bit surprising, or even particularly inappropriate.
 When you stroll into a venue where it can reasonably be assumed there
 is a general consensus position of favoring one thing over another
 (such as a sports bar in Colorado, which would likely favor the
 Broncos over the Raiders), then start loudly proclaiming the evils of
 the favored thing relative to the unfavored (such as talking about how
 much better the Raiders are than the Broncos, and how the Broncos fans
 are all a bunch of pansy whiners, as you tend to do about open source
 software users and advocates while you're hanging out here on a
 FreeBSD mailing list), what you are contributing to the discussion may
 quite understandably be called flamebait.  Expressing surprise that
 someone would apply such a label in these circumstances is, in my
 estimation, at least disingenuous if not wholly ludicrous, directly
 deceptive, and/or frankly dumb.
 
 Your paranoia is kicking in again isn't it Chad. Anyway, to address
 your sports analogy, if I walk into a NY City bar and enter into a
 discussion regarding the pros and cons of the Jets VS Giants, which in
 itself is ridiculous since neither is actually located in NY, and
 blatantly scream out that the (Jets of Giants -- you pick) are a bunch
 of mother-fucking, wife beating pedophiles, I think you would agree,
 unless you happen to belong to that group, that I have gone way over
 the top in my team assessment. There is a major difference between
 criticizing and defamation. Perhaps someday you will learn the
 difference. For the record, I have never heard of anyone using the term
 mafia while referring to the FOSS. Then again, the Mafia is a
 highly organized operation. I might also add that many people of
 Italian descent consider the term mafia offensive.

I'm going to actually ignore your completely irrelevant and hilariously
unfounded attempt at psychiatric diagnosis beyond this sentence, and get
to the point:

Ignoring for the moment http://linuxmafia.com it is true that I have
generally not heard of open source software or its community referred to
as mafia, but I have heard of such things referred to as being
socialist, fascist, or otherwise pejoratively accused of inapplicable
political, criminal, or generally objectionable (in at least someone's
eyes) character.  Three guesses who comes first to mind as having made
such statements, and the first two guesses don't count.


 
 I, for one, generally try to avoid saying nonfactually disparaging
 things about Microsoft or (especially) users of software peddled by
 Microsoft in venues like this mailing list, in part because it's a bit
 unsportsmanlike, and in part because it doesn't really contribute
 anything positive.  It's kind of mind-boggling that people like you
 make no evident effort to avoid saying disparaging things about
 FreeBSD and its users in venues like this mailing list, where it's
 trollish, does not contribute anything positive, and directly offends
 large numbers of people subscribed to the list.
 
 When was this election held Chad? I am referring to the one that
 appointed you list spokesperson. In any case, you make an interesting
 statement without offering any documentation. Are you a politician
 Chad? I was inquiring because you seem to like making sound bites sans
 substance.

I referred to no election.  I am not list spokesperson, nor do I pretend
to be or act as one, any more than you are the spokesperson for
capitalism.  I'm simply pointing out that you are an insufferable,
trollish jackass, initially in a polite manner.  The fact you avoid
actually engaging my

Re: Is this something we (as consumers of FreeBSD) need to be aware of?

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 02:46:49PM -0400, Jerry wrote:
 On Mon, 11 Jun 2012 11:44:11 -0600 Chad Perrin articulated:
 On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 12:59:46PM -0400, Jerry wrote:
  
  Your paranoia is kicking in again isn't it Chad. Anyway, to address
  your sports analogy, if I walk into a NY City bar and enter into a
  discussion regarding the pros and cons of the Jets VS Giants, which
  in itself is ridiculous since neither is actually located in NY, and
  blatantly scream out that the (Jets of Giants -- you pick) are a
  bunch of mother-fucking, wife beating pedophiles, I think you would
  agree, unless you happen to belong to that group, that I have gone
  way over the top in my team assessment. There is a major difference
  between criticizing and defamation. Perhaps someday you will learn
  the difference. For the record, I have never heard of anyone using
  the term mafia while referring to the FOSS. Then again, the
  Mafia is a highly organized operation. I might also add that many
  people of Italian descent consider the term mafia offensive.
 
 I'm going to actually ignore your completely irrelevant and hilariously
 unfounded attempt at psychiatric diagnosis beyond this sentence, and
 get to the point:
 
 Ignoring for the moment http://linuxmafia.com it is true that I have
 generally not heard of open source software or its community referred
 to as mafia, but I have heard of such things referred to as being
 socialist, fascist, or otherwise pejoratively accused of inapplicable
 political, criminal, or generally objectionable (in at least someone's
 eyes) character.  Three guesses who comes first to mind as having made
 such statements, and the first two guesses don't count.
 
 I love the way you make a statement, then add a qualifier to the
 statement making it virtually impossible to attack as well as giving
 yourself a way out. I'll explain further in my reply near the end of
 this post.

This is interesting coming from someone whose immediately preceding
comment was an Internet diagnosis of paranoia coupled with a hypocritical
accusation of inappropriate phrasing directed at a third party.


 
  I, for one, generally try to avoid saying nonfactually disparaging
  things about Microsoft or (especially) users of software peddled by
  Microsoft in venues like this mailing list, in part because it's a
  bit unsportsmanlike, and in part because it doesn't really
  contribute anything positive.  It's kind of mind-boggling that
  people like you make no evident effort to avoid saying disparaging
  things about FreeBSD and its users in venues like this mailing
  list, where it's trollish, does not contribute anything positive,
  and directly offends large numbers of people subscribed to the list.
  
  When was this election held Chad? I am referring to the one that
  appointed you list spokesperson. In any case, you make an interesting
  statement without offering any documentation. Are you a politician
  Chad? I was inquiring because you seem to like making sound bites
  sans substance.
 
 I referred to no election.  I am not list spokesperson, nor do I
 pretend to be or act as one, any more than you are the spokesperson for
 capitalism.  I'm simply pointing out that you are an insufferable,
 trollish jackass, initially in a polite manner.  The fact you avoid
 actually engaging my points, in favor of simply bleating about
 transgressions I haven't even made, does a fairly good job of
 supporting my statements.
 
 As stated above in my latest response, it is difficult to counter a
 statement by you since you don't really state anything. You say, I
 have heard of such things referred to as being socialist,
 fascist, ... (truncated by me) etcetera. Well who the hell hasn't.
 News flash --  that isn't one. Then you add the (in at least someone's
 eyes) qualifier making it impossible to argue with. A good
 politician's trick by the way. Are you sure you are not into politics?
 If it were not for your paranoia, you could probably be a good one. You
 say nothing and speak volumes. Seriously, look over your postings for
 the past year. Your transgressions I haven't even made and similar
 statements are reproduced in an alarming number of them.

The obvious implication here is that you are one of those people who
makes comments insinuating (or outright claiming) socialist or fascist
ethics dominating open source communities.  I make no bones about the
fact I made implicative reference to you in that statement, so you don't
need to play dumb and pretend you don't know I was pointing out your own
hypocrisies.

The at least in someone's eyes parenthetical remark was in reference to
the presumably pejorative character of some remarks people like you often
make.  Nice job pretending I meant something else with that parenthetical
remark, though.  Your tendency to (intentionally, I think) misrepresent
the context of my statements when you fail to find a concrete argument to
present proves you're a real class act.  What

Re: Is this something we (as consumers of FreeBSD) need to be aware of?

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 04:53:11PM -0400, Jerry wrote:

 . . .

You obviously aren't serious.  I can't believe I let you string me along
with this fantasy for so long.

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Re: Is this something we (as consumers of FreeBSD) need to be aware of?

2012-06-09 Thread Chad Perrin

On Wed, Jun 06, 2012 at 11:42:37PM +0200, Damien Fleuriot wrote:
 
 On 6 Jun 2012, at 21:52, Dave U. Random anonym...@anonymitaet-im-inter.net 
 wrote:
 
  Polytropon free...@edvax.de wrote:
  
  On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 11:47:11 +0100, Matthew Seaman wrote:
  Having to pay Verisign instead of Microsoft makes no difference: the
  point is why should I have to pay anything to a third party in order to
  run whatever OS I want on a piece of hardware I own?
  
  It's time to dump the Intel/Microshaft mafia forever. FreeBSD, OpenBSD,
  NetBSD, and even Linux have ports to many platforms. Why stay on Intel? It's
  an overgrown ugly mess.
  
  We need to stop buying Intel mafiaware with preinstalled Microshaft mafiware
  and run a free (or in the case of Linux apparently free) OS on free
  hardware.
  
  There are increasing numbers of SBCs and plenty of used servers on
  Ebay. They're all built better than commodity Intel mafiaware. Good
  riddance!
  
 
 You have no idea what you're talking about.
 
 This kind of religious propaganda post is neither constructive nor
 helpful.

It should be noted that your tone is neither constructive nor helpful, to
say nothing of your contentless response.  Do you have anything useful to
say in response to what Dave U. Random contributed -- perhaps a
thoughtful refutation of some specific point(s)?  I hope you have more of
value to contribute than your obvious disdain for people who disagree
with you about something (without even specifying on what points you
disagree).

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Re: Is this something we (as consumers of FreeBSD) need to be aware of?

2012-06-06 Thread Chad Perrin

On Wed, Jun 06, 2012 at 02:23:20PM +0200, Damien Fleuriot wrote:
 
 I agree with the whole post except that last bit about ICANN Matthew.
 
 The US already has enough dominance as is, without involving ICANN, a
 supposedly neutral body (yeah right...) any further.

Indeed.  The last thing we need is some self-appointed authority
purporting to have the last word on what qualifies as secure.  There is
no need for a third-party certification of secure booting.  If there is
need for such a secure booting mechanism at all, it is a need for the
ability of end-of-chain device owners to be able to set their own keys,
without the involvement of any third parties, and an out-of-band key
verification mechanism.  Once again, I feel it incumbent upon me to point
to examples like OpenPGP's keyserver network as the counter-proposal to a
cetifying authority charging money to allow people to control their own
system security in what amounts to a vacant lot scam.

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Re: Is this something we (as consumers of FreeBSD) need to be aware of?]

2012-06-06 Thread Chad Perrin

On Wed, Jun 06, 2012 at 03:05:00PM -0400, Jerry wrote:
 
 I don't know of any user personally who purchased a new PC and then
 threw FreeBSD on it. Most users that I have come into contact with use
 2+ year old units that have been replaced by shiny new Windows units. I
 don't see that changing anytime soon.

I have immediately installed FreeBSD on the last four or five laptops I
purchased, and I get most of my laptops direct from Lenovo.  While my
Significant Other has been installing Debian on her laptops, also
acquired from Lenovo, she is probably going to start using FreeBSD
instead next time.  I know several other people who install FreeBSD on
their new primary-use systems when they get them, including a couple of
developers who do MS Windows development (among other things).  This
doesn't even take into account the servers many of us use, which are even
more likely to get FreeBSD installed, and none of this has anything to do
with corporate accounts or bulk purchases.

Yes, my evidence is anecdotal, but I think your notions of the frequency
of FreeBSD use other than in a corporate setting are also based on
anecdotal observations, so we're even.

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Re: UFS Crash and directories now missing

2012-05-11 Thread Chad Perrin

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 06:29:05PM -0700, Edward M wrote:
 On 05/10/2012 03:45 PM, Alejandro Imass wrote:
 Regarding Nemeth's I am undecided between the 4th (Unix  Linux) or
 the 3rd. Please advise.
 
 i purchased the third edition because I took a look  in the 4th
 the table of contents
  and it appears  anything   FreeBSD related   was remove and it
 only focuses on: Solaris
 Linux( red hat ubuntu) and AIX. However third edition mentions BSDs

From the index of my copy of the third edition, I see these entries:

4.4BSD 2
. . .
BSD (Berkeley UNIX) 2
. . .
FreeBSD 4

From the index of my copy of the fourth edition, I see these entries:

BSD Printing 1054-1065
see also printing
architecture 1054-1055
configuration 1059-1065
lpc command 1057-1059
lpd daemon 1056
lpq command 1056-1057
lpr command 1056
lprm command 1057
printcap file 1059-1065
PRINTER environment variable 1054
BSD UNIX 8, 12, 1268-1273
. . .
FreeBSD 8
. . .
NetBSD 8
. . .
OpenBSD 8

Page 8 of the fourth edition mentions various BSD Unix systems in the
section Friction Between UNIX and Linux.

Page 12's mention of BSD Unix in the fourth edition appears to correspond
to page 3's un-indexed mention of FreeBSD in the third edition
(specifically FreeBSD 3.4), in reference to the example Unix OSes they
chose to use when discussing various OSes, though FreeBSD is not
mentioned specifically in the fourth edition on that page and BSD Unix is
largely referred to in a historical context.  This appears to be a
legitimate case of BSD Unix being phased out of part of the text as a
relevant OS, but it is not a section that actually says anything of
specific technical value.

Pages 1268-1273 in the fourth edition correspond to the bulk of the
section A Brief History of System Administration in the back of the
book.  The third edition's equivalent is the end of page 2 and a little
over half of page 3, The Sordid History of UNIX.

The fourth edition's index mentions jail, chroot which, when
investigated in the text, has nothing at all to do with FreeBSD jails;
it's just about chroot.  The third edition also contains information
about chroot, but does not mention it under the J section of the index.

It looks to me like the fourth edition probably presents quite a bit more
historical information particular to BSD Unix systems than the third
edition, judging by the index.  In the table of contents, I see that the
third edition has a section set aside for BSD printing, despite lack of
mention in the index.  It looks like the table of contents section for
BSD and AIX printing in the fourth edition (the first edition to
include coverage of AIX, apparently) goes into a fair bit more detail
about what's in the equivalent section.

It looks to me, at a glance, like the fourth edition probably kept all of
the BSD Unix related stuff from the third, probably updated slightly but
not expanded outside of historical information.  While a failure to
expand technical information on BSD Unix systems would result in a
reduction of the percentage of the book that covers BSD Unix technical
matters, given the growth in size between third and fourth editions, the
quantity of technical information about BSD Unix systems does not appear
to have shrunk at all, from what I've seen.  Of course, I might easily
have overlooked something.

Is there something else I should try to find in the index or table of
contents that would be in the third edition but not the fourth?  Can you
give me some examples of the sorts of things you'd expect to find in the
table of contents that is lacking in the fourth edition but present in
the third?

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Re: UFS Crash and directories now missing

2012-05-11 Thread Chad Perrin

On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 12:11:48PM -0700, Edward M wrote:
 
So far I think I found a few that may make a difference.
 According to  the table of contents in the 4th edition in the
 chapter called Booting and shuting down it
only shows entries for: red hat, HP-UX, AIX, SUSE,Ubuntu. However
 in the third edition, show entries for FreeBSD's Booting and shuting
 down process.
And another  example is in the 4th edition the chapter called
 Adding new users, only mentions how to add users for:
 SUSE, Redhat Solaris HP-UX and AIX. However in the 3rd edition,
 explains how to add users on  FreeBSD  and
 how FreeBSD's master.passwd file, login.conf. work,etc  The
 third edition's chapter called
 Drivers and the kernel shows how to build a freebsd kernel,
 create a BSD config file, tuning the freebsd kernel, add freebsd
 device  drivers,etc.
 I  was not able  to  find those entries in the the 4th editions
 Drivers and the kernel. chapter.the 3rd editions  TCP/IP
 chapter shows network config for freebsd.
However in the table of contents of the 4th edition does not.
 I'm searching for a website that contains  the 3rd edition table of
 contents so one can compare between
 the  two editions for better judgement.
  unfortunate,  those were a few examples i have time to point
 out. I think may make a great difference.

Okay, thanks.  You've provided a pretty good representative selection, I
think.  I guess there are two problems: the third edition index is
woefully incomplete, and the fourth edition text has for some reason
basically traded FreeBSD for AIX -- which makes little sense to me.

I appreciate the time you put into this.

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Re: UFS Crash and directories now missing

2012-05-01 Thread Chad Perrin

On Tue, May 01, 2012 at 12:58:10AM -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
 
 Reading _both_ of McKusick's  Design of .. books, and the 'Unix System 
 Admininstration Handbook', by Nemeth, et al.  is a good _start_.

Both?  I'm aware of at least three (FreeBSD, 4.3BSD, and 4.4BSD) that
are probably within the realm of what you're talking about (learning
about the workings of a BSD Unix system), all of which seem a little
redundant -- just different editions of the same book, from the look of
it.  What do you mean by both of McKusick's books?

I think there's an answer book for at least one of those, too.  Do you
perhaps mean the main book and the answer book?  Do you mean to include
the general-purpose open source book as one of the books (Open Sources:
Voices from the Open Source Revolution)?


 
 Having a bunch of the books from O'Reilley  Assoc. (http://www.ora.com),
 especially for 'standard' tools that you need to get the most out of, is
 also highly recommended.  
 
 Disclaimer:  I know a lot of the authors of those books, persoally.

If you have a decent ebook reader, I recommend just getting on the
O'Reilly mailing list for its periodic announcements of ebook discount
deals and picking up an occasional good book from those deals.  It's easy
to get far more excellent books than you have time to read that way, for
really good prices.  In fact, O'Reilly has a 50% off deal for a few
ebooks about C programming right now:

http://shop.oreilly.com/category/deals/c-programming.do

O'Reilly's ebook deals are about the only way I've found to get good
technical books from a major publisher in digital formats at a reasonable
price, considering most of the publishing world still thinks it's okay to
charge more for ebooks than for hardcopy books for some asinine reason.

O'Reilly is, in fact, pretty far ahead of competitors on its handling of
ebooks.  For instance, if you have a hardcopy O'Reilly book, you can
register it by ISBN with O'Reilly, then get an ebook copy of it for about
five bucks.  By contrast, The Pragmatic Bookshelf (which produces very
high quality books as well) at *best* gives you the opportunity to get a
hardcopy book plus a PDF book at the same time for about 150% of the
cover price of the hardcopy alone, *only* if you buy them together from
the Pragmatic website itself, and if you only have the ebook or the
hardcopy book you have no way to get a discount on the other; you have to
pay full price.  Pragmatic does offer ebooks at slightly lower price than
hardcopy, which is at least better than the standard industry practice
for science fiction, but it's a ridiculous price for a bundle of bits in
a digital file.

O'Reilly offers some kind of discount on hardcopies for people who have
the ebooks, too, I think.  I'm not sure -- I've never taken advantage of
that discount, because I only started collecting ebook copies of O'Reilly
books after getting an e-ink reader, which I find every bit as good for
many (though not all) reading purposes as a physical dead tree format
book.  Your mileage may vary, I suppose.

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Re: editor that understands CTRL/B, CTRL/I, CTRL/U

2012-04-30 Thread Chad Perrin

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 12:23:47PM +0200, Polytropon wrote:
 On Sun, 29 Apr 2012 17:01:56 -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
  On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 08:01:13AM +0200, Polytropon wrote:
   On Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:36:13 -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 06:00:51PM -0400, Jerry wrote:
 
 I have been told by several people in HR that the trend to give
 preference to those all ready working as opposed to the unemployed is
 based on the philosophy that if no one else will hire them, then why
 should we. While we could argue whether that logic is flawed, it is
 never-the-less presently in use. However, it doesn't really pertain to
 entry level openings. With the glut of individuals entering the job
 market, for an applicant to not be proficient in the skills being
 advertised for by the prospective employer is just a waste of time. If
 the employer is looking for skill A and B, crying to him/her that
 you have skill C is just a waste of both your times.

It *does* pertain to entry level positions, because (from what I have
seen) most entry level positions come with an experience requirement 
of
at least two years.
   
   But then this would invalidate ENTRY level. How exactly is
   an applicant supposed to get a job from that entry level pool
   when he doesn't have previous experience because he simply wants
   to ENTER that field of profession?
  
  Yes -- that is *exactly* the question that comes up.  These are not jobs
  that are entry level in terms of requirements, even if they are entry
  level in terms of pay and actual skill required to do the job to a
  reasonable level of competence.  Consider examples like first-level call
  center jobs that require a college degree and a couple years expericence,
  as pretty much the canonical example.
 
 Seems to exactly that way in Germany. I did talk to a HR guy
 last week and he explained that those requirements are typical.
 I think he wasn't honest about the reasons. One may be the
 continuous degrading of school education and the recent loss
 of quality in university education (due to european processes).

This may be an honest reason, but it is not a good reason.  It's the
thinking that if schools are worse, you have to require more schooling to
get the same effect -- and schools *are* getting worse, in large part to
satisfy the demand for more formal education to get even the most
mundane and easiest of skilled jobs, resulting in a vicious circle.
People may honestly believe increasing the education requirement is a
good answer to a bad problem, so that the problem is not their honesty
but rather their reasoning.  Obviously, if autodidacts with degrees are
much better than anti-intellectual lumps on a log with degrees (and they
are), autodidactism is of great value.  In many cases, that value greatly
outstrips the value of the degree itself, so that autodidacts without
degrees are better than anti-intellectual lumps on a log with degrees.
The approach to hiring that says we must require ever-more diploma
carrying education on the resume selects for anti-intellectual lumps on
a log quite often.



 Another reason might be that companies need to be _certified_
 theirselves in order to get orders from other companies, and
 for that kinds of certification, it seems they have to show
 that they employ lots of highly qualified personnel in order
 to justify their prices.

I have never seen a company that lists all of its tech support people and
their degrees.  In fact, the most I've ever seen for people in entry
level positions is that they have CompTIA A+ Tech certifications, or
something equivalent, which is easily acquired with a heavy weekend
course and a single test.  For autodidacts, you don't even need the
coursework -- just get a $40 book and some practice test software.  This
might be worth some marketing, when a company can say all its support
people are certified experts or specialists of some sort, but it's a
heckuva lot less onerous than demanding bachelor's degrees in computer
science just to get a twelve dollar per hour job answer the telephone and
reading from a script, and more prone to selecting for autodidactism
skills.  Offer people flexible schedules if they want to take college
classes while they're working, and you're even more likely to get people
who can think critically, learn quickly, and do good work, because people
who try to pay their way through college while working in a technical
field are far more likely to be good at such jobs than people who breezed
through college on a sports scholarship or parental support and have
never really learned anything on their own.

In fact, I'm generally of the opinion (based on my experience and what
I've observed in others) that the only way to really learn anything
useful in college is to be an autodidact, doing the coursework mostly to
get a piece of paper and get ideas of *what* stuff to learn on your own
time, rather

Re: editor that understands CTRL/B, CTRL/I, CTRL/U

2012-04-29 Thread Chad Perrin

On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 08:01:13AM +0200, Polytropon wrote:
 On Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:36:13 -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
  On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 06:00:51PM -0400, Jerry wrote:
   On Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:33:29 -0700 David Brodbeck articulated:
   
   Again, this is one of the reasons credit scoring is becoming so
   popular -- it's an almost automatic way to narrow down the pile.
   Another method in common use right now is to throw out applications
   from anyone who's currently unemployed, and only look at ones who
   already have a position and are looking to change jobs.
   
   I have been told by several people in HR that the trend to give
   preference to those all ready working as opposed to the unemployed is
   based on the philosophy that if no one else will hire them, then why
   should we. While we could argue whether that logic is flawed, it is
   never-the-less presently in use. However, it doesn't really pertain to
   entry level openings. With the glut of individuals entering the job
   market, for an applicant to not be proficient in the skills being
   advertised for by the prospective employer is just a waste of time. If
   the employer is looking for skill A and B, crying to him/her that
   you have skill C is just a waste of both your times.
  
  It *does* pertain to entry level positions, because (from what I have
  seen) most entry level positions come with an experience requirement of
  at least two years.
 
 But then this would invalidate ENTRY level. How exactly is
 an applicant supposed to get a job from that entry level pool
 when he doesn't have previous experience because he simply wants
 to ENTER that field of profession?

Yes -- that is *exactly* the question that comes up.  These are not jobs
that are entry level in terms of requirements, even if they are entry
level in terms of pay and actual skill required to do the job to a
reasonable level of competence.  Consider examples like first-level call
center jobs that require a college degree and a couple years expericence,
as pretty much the canonical example.

In some cases, these jobs may simple be advertised this way so hiring
managers can use the lack of qualified applicants to help justify
offshoring jobs.  In other cases, this is just an example of how HR best
practices have gotten ridiculously out of control, where everybody tries
to copy what everyone else is doing because if everyone else is doing it
you can't get in trouble for doing the same thing.  The end result, of
course, is that you only get people with experience who nobody else wants
to hire or people who lie well -- but on paper it looks like you went to
great lengths to hire the right person, and thus you (hopefully) can't
be blamed for hiring turkeys.


 
  You speak as though you think they're correctly identifying the skills
  they actually need from their employees.  A big part of this entire
  discussion has been about the fact that many responsible parties in the
  hiring process are utterly without capacity for correctly identifying the
  skills they actually need to optimally fill the open positions.
 
 Correct, at least that's my experience. To give you _few_ examples
 which are more the norm than exceptions:
 
 good MS standart knowledge
 (Yavoll mein Hare Heiny Standart-Leader von Sowercrowd!)
 
 programming knowledge in established programming languages, e. g. OS2
 (cc hello.os2, and it's OS/2 with slash)
 
 modern Microsoft operating systems (Windows 98 and XP)
 (yes, _very_ modern and current; hey, it's more than 10 years old!)
 
 extended basic knowledge
 (so what, basic or extended?)
 
 autonomous team-oriented working
 (maybe as a one man team!)
 
 It's funny when you encounter job offers by recruiters and HR
 services who _fail_ to properly spell our native language, but
 think they are in a positition to place _you_ (as a professional)
 into a good job! Okay, it's NOT funny. It's also not funny if you
 have to explain to such a senior consultant permanent placement
 how to open a PDF file containing your application documents, and
 it's even worse when they try to trick you to do their work, e. g.
 enter all your data again into their (!) HR database.
 
 As I said, the problem of the unclear expression _what_ skills
 actually are needed can make it hard to properly apply for a job.
 This problem isn't only present for written application, it's also
 there if you get invited to an interview and the guy across the
 table is simply asking the wrong questions, or unable to understand
 your answers.

I think a far worse problem than the failure to understand what skills
are needed is the failure to understand things like

1. what skills can be learned easily in a very short period of time so
that focus on other necessary skills already existing can be employed in
selecting candidates

2. why disqualifying candidates for stupidities that have nothing to do
with their skills and other actually suitable qualities for the job is
counterproductive

Re: editor that understands CTRL/B, CTRL/I, CTRL/U

On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 06:43:06PM -0400, Jerry wrote:
 On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:52:56 -0600
 Chad Perrin articulated:
 
 On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 02:45:53PM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
  
  Generic skills aren't recognized because they're hard to judge and
  test for.  People want quantifiable, objective things to weed out
  applicants.  This is also why credit scoring has become so popular --
  sure, someone's credit score may not tell whether they'd be a good
  employee or not, but it's a convenient, objective way to throw out a
  bunch of resumes.
 
 Indeed -- and the employer who bucks this trend does him/her self a
 huge service, because large numbers of very skilled and/or talented
 people are being rejected on entirely arbitrary criteria that have
 little or no correlation to their ability to do the job.  People who
 use such critera are forcing themselves to compete with everyone else
 in the industry using the same criteria, leaving a glut of job
 candidates who would be great at the job waiting for someone else to
 give them a chance.
 
 Wouldn't it be far easier for this glut of job applicants to either
 become proficient in the skills stated in the job description for which
 they are applying or do what everyone else does; i.e. lie on their
 résumé. If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to
 the mountain.

1. Pretty much every employer has a slightly different list of keywords.
I guess you think all these job candidates should learn every skill in
the world.

2. Lying is bad.  Go fall in a hole, now.

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Re: editor that understands CTRL/B, CTRL/I, CTRL/U

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 10:32:24AM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
 On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 06:43:06PM -0400, Jerry wrote:
  On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:52:56 -0600 Chad Perrin articulated:
  On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 02:45:53PM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
   
   Generic skills aren't recognized because they're hard to judge and
   test for.  People want quantifiable, objective things to weed out
   applicants.  This is also why credit scoring has become so popular --
   sure, someone's credit score may not tell whether they'd be a good
   employee or not, but it's a convenient, objective way to throw out a
   bunch of resumes.
  
  Indeed -- and the employer who bucks this trend does him/her self a
  huge service, because large numbers of very skilled and/or talented
  people are being rejected on entirely arbitrary criteria that have
  little or no correlation to their ability to do the job.  People who
  use such critera are forcing themselves to compete with everyone else
  in the industry using the same criteria, leaving a glut of job
  candidates who would be great at the job waiting for someone else to
  give them a chance.
  
  Wouldn't it be far easier for this glut of job applicants to either
  become proficient in the skills stated in the job description for which
  they are applying or do what everyone else does; i.e. lie on their
  résumé. If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to
  the mountain.
 
 1. Pretty much every employer has a slightly different list of keywords.
 I guess you think all these job candidates should learn every skill in
 the world.
 
 2. Lying is bad.  Go fall in a hole, now.

I appear to have forgotten about point 3.

3. This was about employers going to the mountain, by the way, so your
point is null and void in any case.

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Re: editor that understands CTRL/B, CTRL/I, CTRL/U

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 01:57:10PM -0400, Jerry wrote:
 On Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:32:24 -0600 Chad Perrin articulated:
 On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 06:43:06PM -0400, Jerry wrote:
  On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:52:56 -0600 Chad Perrin articulated:
  On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 02:45:53PM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
   
   Generic skills aren't recognized because they're hard to judge and
   test for.  People want quantifiable, objective things to weed out
   applicants.  This is also why credit scoring has become so
   popular -- sure, someone's credit score may not tell whether
   they'd be a good employee or not, but it's a convenient,
   objective way to throw out a bunch of resumes.
  
  Indeed -- and the employer who bucks this trend does him/her self a
  huge service, because large numbers of very skilled and/or talented
  people are being rejected on entirely arbitrary criteria that have
  little or no correlation to their ability to do the job.  People who
  use such critera are forcing themselves to compete with everyone
  else in the industry using the same criteria, leaving a glut of job
  candidates who would be great at the job waiting for someone else to
  give them a chance.
  
  Wouldn't it be far easier for this glut of job applicants to either
  become proficient in the skills stated in the job description for
  which they are applying or do what everyone else does; i.e. lie on
  their résumé. If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must
  go to the mountain.
 
 1. Pretty much every employer has a slightly different list of
 keywords. I guess you think all these job candidates should learn
 every skill in the world.
 
 No, I think they should learn the one(s) most sought after in their
 chosen field. If 90% of the potential openings in a specific field are
 requesting proficiency with MS Word, what do you think any legitimate
 applicants should become proficient in?

Right -- because all the keywords you need will always be Microsoft Word.

Admit it: you're just making up half-baked excuses to disagree now.


 
 2. Lying is bad.  Go fall in a hole, now.
 
 Yes, but it is never-the-less the norm on way too many resumes. I have
 read where it is estimated that 1 out of every 3 is either a gross over
 statement of fact or just a complete fabrication. My own (original)
 resume, written by a professional resume writer many years ago,
 absolutely astounded me. I had no idea I was as proficient and skilled
 in so many areas. As the writer explained, it is not what you say
 but how you say it. Just because I once wrote a two page article that
 got published in a cheap magazine does not mean that I am an
 accomplished author with numerous credits to my name -- or does it?

No, it doesn't.  Maybe an accomplished author with one credit to your
name.  Amusingly, that'll turn out to be a great way for employers to
notice you're exaggerating with that accopmlished author bit, too.
Only by lying (numerous credits) can you allay suspicions for a moment
in those credulous enough to not ask for samples (which absolutely does
not make it okay).

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Re: editor that understands CTRL/B, CTRL/I, CTRL/U

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 04:46:52PM -0400, Jerry wrote:
 
 Now you are being naive. There are numerous examples of people in both
 corporate and government jobs that have made out right lies as to
 their education, etcetera. Some of those frauds have gone undetected
 for years. The majority of resumes for entry level jobs are rarely if
 ever given more than a perfunctory look.

You say that as though I somehow argued that people don't lie, or that
all people who lie get caught.  I made no such statements.  If you're
going to argue against things I didn't say, you should just send the
emails to yourself and leave both me and the rest of the mailing list out
of the discussion.


 
 The bottom line is if you want a job, you either learn or acquire the
 criteria required for the job, or find a way to BS your way into it
 and hope you can pull it off. No legitimate employer is going to change
 his criteria to accommodate your skills.

Good job completely bypassing my actual statements to make a point about
something else entirely.  Congratulations on your irrelevance.

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Re: editor that understands CTRL/B, CTRL/I, CTRL/U

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 06:00:51PM -0400, Jerry wrote:
 On Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:33:29 -0700 David Brodbeck articulated:
 
 Again, this is one of the reasons credit scoring is becoming so
 popular -- it's an almost automatic way to narrow down the pile.
 Another method in common use right now is to throw out applications
 from anyone who's currently unemployed, and only look at ones who
 already have a position and are looking to change jobs.
 
 I have been told by several people in HR that the trend to give
 preference to those all ready working as opposed to the unemployed is
 based on the philosophy that if no one else will hire them, then why
 should we. While we could argue whether that logic is flawed, it is
 never-the-less presently in use. However, it doesn't really pertain to
 entry level openings. With the glut of individuals entering the job
 market, for an applicant to not be proficient in the skills being
 advertised for by the prospective employer is just a waste of time. If
 the employer is looking for skill A and B, crying to him/her that
 you have skill C is just a waste of both your times.

It *does* pertain to entry level positions, because (from what I have
seen) most entry level positions come with an experience requirement of
at least two years.

You speak as though you think they're correctly identifying the skills
they actually need from their employees.  A big part of this entire
discussion has been about the fact that many responsible parties in the
hiring process are utterly without capacity for correctly identifying the
skills they actually need to optimally fill the open positions.

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Re: editor that understands CTRL/B, CTRL/I, CTRL/U

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 02:33:29PM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
 On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 2:52 PM, Chad Perrin per...@apotheon.com wrote:
  Indeed -- and the employer who bucks this trend does him/her self a huge
  service, because large numbers of very skilled and/or talented people are
  being rejected on entirely arbitrary criteria that have little or no
  correlation to their ability to do the job.
 
 Keep in mind in today's job market, and given Internet methods of
 advertising positions, the problem isn't in finding qualified people
 -- the problem is in whittling down the couple thousand or so resumes
 you get to a manageable pile.  You can afford to reject some qualified
 applicants in that process because there are always more looking.

That's not exactly true.  The problem is cutting out the people who only
*claim* to be qualified, and end up with the best candidate for the job
(or to get as close to that as possible).  The fact that most
organizations' responsible parties in the hiring process just punt on
that and go straight toward I don't care if he's good at the job -- I
only care that I do things in a way that ensures I don't get blamed for
any failures does not change that fact.

That also completely ignores the fact that many employers complain that
they can't find qualified candidates, ever, for skilled technical
positions.


 
 Again, this is one of the reasons credit scoring is becoming so
 popular -- it's an almost automatic way to narrow down the pile.
 Another method in common use right now is to throw out applications
 from anyone who's currently unemployed, and only look at ones who
 already have a position and are looking to change jobs.

. . . which just reinforces the point that most organizations are
optimizing for finding people who land around the fiftieth percentile in
terms of a good fit for the job, when they could benefit much more from
getting somewhere up around the range of the ninety-eighth percentile.
Luckily for those who buck the trends, it's a lot easier to get someone
in that range than it should be, because many employers are cutting a lot
of those candidates out of their job searches based on essentially
arbitrary criteria.

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Re: editor that understands CTRL/B, CTRL/I, CTRL/U

2012-04-26 Thread Chad Perrin

On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 02:45:53PM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
 
 Generic skills aren't recognized because they're hard to judge and
 test for.  People want quantifiable, objective things to weed out
 applicants.  This is also why credit scoring has become so popular --
 sure, someone's credit score may not tell whether they'd be a good
 employee or not, but it's a convenient, objective way to throw out a
 bunch of resumes.

Indeed -- and the employer who bucks this trend does him/her self a huge
service, because large numbers of very skilled and/or talented people are
being rejected on entirely arbitrary criteria that have little or no
correlation to their ability to do the job.  People who use such critera
are forcing themselves to compete with everyone else in the industry
using the same criteria, leaving a glut of job candidates who would be
great at the job waiting for someone else to give them a chance.

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Re: FreeBSD's backwards webdesign / corporate identity

2012-04-09 Thread Chad Perrin

On Sun, Apr 08, 2012 at 10:16:49AM -0700, Devin Teske wrote:
 On Apr 8, 2012, at 5:40 AM, Tony wrote:
 
  http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/
 
 It's like a punch-line almost.
 
 I admit to enjoying the Helvetica Trailer video linked-to above.
 
 I even admit to liking the proposed motto's.
 
 But I disagree with any sentiment that designcouncil.org.uk embodies
 the same clean lines and well-thought-out design that is being
 encouraged here. Most egregious is the mishmash of serif with
 sans-serif and misaligned content areas.

I thought maybe you were just being snarky here, but then I took a look
at the site.

I actually had a minimal education in design, once upon a time, and the
first thing I think when I see the Design Council site is Was that thing
designed by children?  It is nothing like what Tony suggests would be a
good approach to the design of the FreeBSD site, which is actually a good
recommendation for the design he suggests for the FreeBSD site.

Gawd, it's comically bad for something called the Design Council,
unless you take the name as an ironic reference to the idea that design
by committee is a horrible idea.

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Re: Links the command line browser

2012-04-05 Thread Chad Perrin

On Thu, Apr 05, 2012 at 09:33:43AM -0400, Fbsd8 wrote:
 My mouse works as expected for copy and paste function on the xterm
 console. But when I launch the links command line browser the
 mouse pointer is OVER active. I move the mouse a hair and the
 pointer on the links browser screen moves 2 inches. Is there some
 way in links to control the mouse pointer sensitivity?

I haven't used links in a long time, so I'm not sure, but it sounds
like there is.

You may want to have a look at other console based browsers as
alternatives, if links does not behave as you prefer.  Have you tried
w3m or one of its enhanced brethren?

/usr/ports/www/w3m
/usr/ports/www/w3m-img
/usr/ports/www/w3m-m17n
/usr/ports/www/w3m-m17n-img

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Re: Vivaldi Tablet

2012-03-28 Thread Chad Perrin

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 09:05:19PM -1000, Open Slate wrote:
 
 I position a tablet as a consumer device. Web surfing, watching video, a
 little texting. A student slate must support creativity, especially
 writing. At the same time I see the qwerty keyboard as an obstacle, hard to
 learn, impossible to use while holding the slate. I want HWR as good as the
 Newton, and buttons for a chording keyboard along the bottom on both sides.
 Buttons support two handed use or one handed, either side. For those who
 prefer classic keyboard, plug in a USB model.

I think learning a chording keyboard is going to be much more of an
obstacle than using a QWERTY keyboard, considering you can hunt-and-peck
on a QWERTY keyboard, but you have to know the chords to do anything on a
chording keyboard.

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Re: Vivaldi Tablet

2012-03-28 Thread Chad Perrin

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 04:24:51PM -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
 On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 09:19:54AM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
  
  I think learning a chording keyboard is going to be much more of an
  obstacle than using a QWERTY keyboard, considering you can hunt-and-peck
  on a QWERTY keyboard, but you have to know the chords to do anything on a
  chording keyboard.

   i dont have a clue what a chording keybd is; will google
   after a long nap1  also, i have lost track of who posted the
   'fentek' page, but that is where i got my present mine.

A chording keyboard is a keyboard or other button-press interface with
fewer keys so it can fit on a smaller device, where many keycodes are
gotten by way of combining presses of multiple keys rather than a single
key as on a standard QWERTY keyboard.  Thus, for instance, where on a
QWERTY keyboard you get a capital A by holding the Shift key and pressing
the A key, you might on a chording keyboard also get a lower-case A by
holding down some key and pressing another key.  This works for keyboards
with fewer keys because there are many potential combinations of keys
that could be used; if all keycodes are achieved by a two-button chord,
all the keys on a standard 101-key keyboard, plus all Alt-, Shift-, and
Ctrl-chord keycodes, could be simulated by a mere twenty keys.

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Re: Vivaldi Tablet

2012-03-27 Thread Chad Perrin

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 02:37:49AM +0200, Polytropon wrote:
 On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:21:45 -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
  how about the eee-701s?  they are no mo' but used to have a
  70% of full size keyboard.  my eee-900A had All the std
  keys.  do we really need the F[n] keys?
  
  
  anyway, if not a  tiny kybd, maybe a small one.  
 
 Maybe I can suggest the Happy Hacking keyboard here?
 It's small in size and popular amnong hackers. It does
 not have PF keys (those can be emulated by Fn+number,
 comparable to Alt+number on early 3270's). Its dimensions
 are about 11 x 4.5 x 1.5 at less than 1.5Lb weight.
 
 However, this is an external (USB2) keyboard.

I was thinking of mentioning the Happy Hacking keyboard, but I see you
beat me to it.  I have not used one for more than a few minutes once,
though.  Does the Fn+number work with Ctrl+Alt+Fnumber combination to
move around between TTY consoles?

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Re: Vivaldi Tablet

2012-03-27 Thread Chad Perrin

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 03:54:03AM +0200, Polytropon wrote:
 On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:48:34 -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
  
  I was thinking of mentioning the Happy Hacking keyboard, but I see you
  beat me to it.  I have not used one for more than a few minutes once,
  though.  Does the Fn+number work with Ctrl+Alt+Fnumber combination to
  move around between TTY consoles?
 
 As far as I remember, it does. I don't have a HHK here to check.
 From what I know, the keyboard generates the proper codes
 internally, so Fn+number is equivalent to PF number in
 any regards, and therefore any combination with Ctrl and/or
 Alt should also work as expected. To the computer, it should
 be no difference from a real keyboard.

My concern in this regard would be whether the keyboard knows that the
Fn key is supposed to be applied to the Fnum key, and not to the Ctrl
or Alt key.  If neither the Ctrl or Alt key is modifiable by the Fn key,
I guess that might be a non-issue, but I'm pretty sure that (for
instance) the Fn key on a ThinkPad is meant to be used with only one
other key at a time.  It's just not meant to make up for the lack of
standard keyboard keys, so there isn't any conflict.

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Re: Vivaldi Tablet

2012-03-26 Thread Chad Perrin

On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 07:21:51PM -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:

Considering that FreeBS positions itself 'primrily' as a _server_ OS,
I would suggest that it is 'unlikely'.

I suppose iXsystems and the PC-BSD project might be a place to send out
feelers as well, being more interested in end-user stuff than the pretty
server-sysadmin heavy crowd here. There are a lot of people in this
community interested in more than just servers, though, so I don't see
why the fact FreeBSD is good for servers should be an impediment to
seeking out people with an interest in tablet ports.

*I*, for one, would hope that porting to the 'Rasberry Pi' has higher
priority.

So would I. If someone decided to tackle the Vivaldi platform, though, I
wouldn't complain.

Now, if somebody in the 'Vivaldi' community wants to gather up _all_
the relevant 'technical data' for configuring/accessing/programming *ALL*
the included hardware, and -publish- it in one EASILY ACCESSIBLE place,
that would be a good start.

This might be a start:

http://opentablets.org/page/index.html/_/news/makeplaylive-sparknow-vivaldi-zenithink-c71-r13

If such a somebody were to _also_ provide 'funding' for a porting project,
that would undoubtedly move such a project to a high position on the 'to do'
list'.

Otherwise, Skippy, you, -YOURSELF-. will need to find a 'guru' with the
appropriate knowledge/skills *and* enough interest' in the project to
tackle it.

I think the point of the initial email to start this thread was to see if
there were people in the community with an interest in working on this
project, and might actually be a fairly logical step toward an effort to
find a 'guru' to work on it.

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Re: Vivaldi Tablet

2012-03-26 Thread Chad Perrin

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 09:07:25AM +1000, Da Rock wrote:
 On 03/27/12 01:42, Chad Perrin wrote:
 
 I think the point of the initial email to start this thread was to see if
 there were people in the community with an interest in working on this
 project, and might actually be a fairly logical step toward an effort to
 find a 'guru' to work on it.

 Actually I think the point of the email was to prop up the member
 numbers on the site. The platform itself is just an ordinary aPad
 which can be hacked. As for the open source community interest, well
 it already runs linux natively- android- so not entirely sure what
 the fuss is about (might explain the population there).

Android is not the same as a full-featured Unix-like OS.  It's a
miserably underpowered half-measure, whose only redeeming feature is that
it's not Apple iOS or MS WP7.  There's a bit of a difference, there.

. . . not that I much care about tablets per se, right now, though it
would be nice if I could get a ThinkPad X-series tablet-laptop working
with FreeBSD.  I just wouldn't equate Android with a general-purpose
Unix-like OS, even if that OS uses a Linux kernel and gets most of the
userland subtly wrong.


 
 If anyone was interested in porting FreeBSD to tablets there are
 plenty of dev kits out there to play with; and if the cost is
 excessive then grab an aPad off eBay for $50.

I'm not sure how that disputes what I said.


 
 To explain the major hurdle in porting to a tablet, you'd need to
 probably find an alternative windowing solution then Xorg (low
 memory, especially in vivaldi)- I'm not 100% sure what iOS and
 Android use. Might be interesting...

Yeah, there could be some real challenges there.  The question is whether
someone with the wherewithal to do the work would find the challenge
attractive.

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Re: Suggestion

2012-03-12 Thread Chad Perrin

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 12:14:39PM -0400, Allen wrote:
 
 I'd like BeOS to come back, but I'm quite happy with BSD and Linux.

Give the Haiku project a look.  It's meant to be some kind of inheritor
of the BeOS legacy.

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Re: Suggestion

2012-03-12 Thread Chad Perrin

On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 10:20:03AM -0500, Chris wrote:
 ... One word that is rampant... Alligations

Is that where someone makes a claim that someone else is an alligator?

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Re: Which compiler compiled system?

2012-03-12 Thread Chad Perrin

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 04:49:38PM -0400, Pierre-Luc Drouin wrote:

 If Java is broken, then you know FreeBSD was compiled with clang...

It's probably more accurate to say If Java is not broken, it's almost
certainly built with GCC.  If it's broken, it could go either way.

(No offense to the Java maintainers at the FreeBSD project, of course.
They do a great job of making it possible to get working at all.)

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Re: Raspberry Pi

2012-03-09 Thread Chad Perrin

On Fri, Mar 09, 2012 at 03:48:17PM +, Arthur Chance wrote:
 On 03/09/12 15:08, Bernt Hansson wrote:
 2012-03-08 19:46, Chad Perrin skrev:
 
 That helps me get sort of a timeline in mind, I think.
 
 The production is halted.
 
 http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/781
 
 The key sentence is:
 
   There may now be a slight delay in later batches if there’s a problem
   sourcing enough magnetic jacks (we’ve got teams hunting them down
   already); all the stock of jacks we believed we had in place and
   ready to turn into the ethernet ports on your Raspberry Pis turn out
   not to be the correct part, so we’re having to start again and move
   through the negotiating/ordering/delivery cycle as fast as we can.
 
 Somewhat more conditional than a simple halted to my eyes. That
 could be me being optimistic but I hope not.

The way it looks to me, it's something like The first batch will be a
bit late; later batches may be more expensive, or may not happen, or
maybe they'll just be a little late -- or maybe we'll have enough of a
windfall of good fortune to get back on schedule.  Obviously, I'm hoping
for one of the latter two, rather than the former two.

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Re: Suggestion

2012-03-09 Thread Chad Perrin

On Fri, Mar 09, 2012 at 01:56:25AM -0300, Bruno Comerci wrote:
 
 Hi guys.
 
 Instead of wasting your time and man power, why wont you join to the
 ReactOS project?  It would be more beneficial to the internet community
 and to the users around the world who wants a free OS with similar
 looking and functions than Windows, if you just throw away your FreeBSD
 and join forces with the ReactOS team to accelerate their process.
 
 Actually there isnt any single free OS that can be fully trusted, but
 ReactOS seems to be that one that we all are wating for.
 
 Sincerely,
 Common world's citizen who dont have money to pay Windows and dont
 trust Linux and any other Unix-based OS.

That had to be the weakest troll attempt I've ever seen.

I actually think that ReactOS, if run by people who weren't tied down by
some unfortunate misconceptions, might have been a really good idea --
not as a great OS in its own right, but rather as a gateway drug for
Unix-like OSes.  Alas, that was not to be.  Instead, it looks like it
will just be a never-was (and occasional grist for some very weak
trolling).

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Re: Raspberry Pi

2012-03-08 Thread Chad Perrin

On Thu, Mar 08, 2012 at 08:51:03AM +, Arthur Chance wrote:
 On 03/07/12 21:40, Chad Perrin wrote:
 
 If anyone has more information about planned BSD Unix ports to Raspberry
 Pi, or comes up with more in the next few weeks, I'd appreciate it if
 someone would let me know (perhaps with URIs or contact information for
 people and projects working on this).
 
 There was a discussion about it over on hackers@ last November. The
 thread starts at
 
 http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2011-November/036742.html
 
 TL;DR summary: some are wildly in favour of it, others are
 completely negative. I.e. the usual network response to anything :-}

I'm curious about the reasoning for the negative.  I'll have to go skim
that thread.  Thanks for pointing it out to me.


 
 Unless someone capable and willing to do the port managed to get one
 of the first production batch, the next lot won't be available for
 7-8 weeks at the earliest. My order is currently expected to be
 delivered the second week in May.

That helps me get sort of a timeline in mind, I think.

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Re: Raspberry Pi

2012-03-08 Thread Chad Perrin

On Thu, Mar 08, 2012 at 11:11:53AM -0500, Jeremy Faulkner wrote:
 The freebsd-arm@ list is where it is being discussed and progressing,
 don't think anybody has the hardware yet.

That's another place for me to look for discussion of it.  Thanks.

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Raspberry Pi

2012-03-07 Thread Chad Perrin

Has there been any movement toward getting BSD Unix systems running on
the Raspberry Pi platform?  I've been searching for information along
those lines, but so far have seen nothing.

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Re: Raspberry Pi

2012-03-07 Thread Chad Perrin

On Wed, Mar 07, 2012 at 04:35:47PM -0500, Sean Cavanaugh wrote:
 People have not had a chance to get their hands on to even start on it yet.
 The few boards out in public before last week were developer boards that
 were really hard to get a hold of. Most current devel is based on linux due
 to the binary blob.

Okay, that makes sense.  Thanks.

If anyone has more information about planned BSD Unix ports to Raspberry
Pi, or comes up with more in the next few weeks, I'd appreciate it if
someone would let me know (perhaps with URIs or contact information for
people and projects working on this).

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Re: which FF ad blocker?

2012-02-29 Thread Chad Perrin

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 06:55:44PM -0800, Gary Kline wrote:
 
   agree with noscript. i dont recall the other one, but i was
   blocking just too much and opened everything up. i'll try  
   'add block plus'

I'm pretty sure the extension you want is called Adblock Plus, not Add
Block Plus.

It has been a little bit since I've dealt with these extensions, though,
because I started using another browser that offers things like plugin
and JavaScript whitelisting as a core feature.  Take my memory of it for
what it's worth.

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Re: Why is this Symbol in the front of your website. A humble request.

2012-02-26 Thread Chad Perrin

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 11:09:13AM +0700, Erich Dollansky wrote:
 
 always these complicated things. This is why life here is so much more
 exiting.
 
 We do not need sysctl.

I guess that depends on your definition of sysctl, and I rather like it.

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Re: Software Development using Freebsd.

2012-02-06 Thread Chad Perrin

On Mon, Feb 06, 2012 at 04:37:37PM -0600, Jorge Biquez wrote:
 
 I am helping a non profit organization and giving some classes to
 prepare students so they can be prepared and try to get a job (they
 are students also and have the basics concepts already)

That's admirable.  I hope that works out.


 
 Anyway, I am interested in teach them to develop some simple
 applications. From simple ones to destktop ones that access a
 database, desktop ones that use internet to connect to a remote
 database and web based ones with a database behind. We have 6 months
 and the idea is to work a lot remotely. Thin is that I do not want
 to use any kind of Microsoft products. Some of them do not have
 modern machines but until now, in previous classs, we could install
 Freebsd, text mode, and work from there.
 
 Now we will try to have a graphical mode in Freebsd. With that we
 would like to be able to develop graphical applications for Windows
 (we all know that's the market and here some companies is what they
 are looking), so maybe sound crazy but I am looking to develop
 applications for Windows without using WIndows or Microsofot
 products at least.

What kind of experience do you want these students to have when they
leave?  Do you just want them practiced in doing some general programming
with cross-platform tools, including database access and simple GUI work?
Do you want them to specifically work with commodity tools that will fit
in with mainstream job posting requirements on a resume?  Do you want
them to work with tools that will enable them to most easily expand their
experience on their own once they get done with the course of instruction
so they can more rapidly approach general competence and create useful
projects of their own very quickly, figuring they can then move on to
other tools and technologies as they decide which direction they want to
take their professional pursuits?  Do you just want it to be as easy as
possible?

Your top priority should probably help you make this decision.


 
 I have been looking for this for months. First case using Windows
 but not Microsoft products. I found some options BUT they all were
 expensive on the deployment. The runtimes were not free and the
 amount of money to pay was not a good option. Others provide  real
 free excutables for runtimes but the products were expensive. I am
 now trying to, If possible, have FreeBSD running graphically and
 then use open source software to develop graphical windows
 applications.
 
 Maybe I am wrong but until now I think my only option is to use
 Phyton. Is that correct? For what I have searched Python will let me
 create executables and will let me create Graphical solutions even
 for other platforms (Mac or LInux or whatever runs Python).
 
 Talking with friend, he believes that my best bet is to teach them C
 or C++ and use some of the options for developing graphically ( I am
 not a C or C++ expert but I can learn alone).

Depending on your goals, anything from Ruby to C could be an excellent
choice.  LLVM/Clang is a great compiler suite for C; the mainstream Ruby
implementation will get you far; both can use platform-independent
graphical toolkits and database access libraries.  PostgreSQL is a great
DBMS distributed under a copyfree license, and it is well supported for
both these languages.  They're sorta on opposite ends of a spectrum,
though, so some kind of narrowing down of goals should be done before
arriving at any conclusions.


 
 I was wondering if you could give some advie and comments on this.
 
 Are you developing commercial applications (including Windows ones)
 using FreeBsd as your platform? Or Maybe any Linux Distribution?

I've written C, C++, Ruby, Perl, and PHP on FreeBSD, for deployment in a
wide range of platform circumstances.  Some of my development has been
commercial, some of it just for fun, some to solve my own personal
problems. . . .

There's nothing wrong with FreeBSD as a development platform for most
purposes, especially if you want to work on portable software
development.  In fact, I think that for purposes of writing portable
code, it's difficult to do worse than FreeBSD, because it's probably
easier to move code from FreeBSD to Linux distributions, Apple MacOS, and
MS Windows due to social factors involved than the other way around.


 
 Would you do that with Python or something else?

I personally am not the world's biggest Python fan, but my choice would
depend on the specific goals involved.  If you're leaning toward the
Python end of the spectrum, though, I (personally; your mileage may
differ) would probably choose Ruby instead.

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Re: Software Development using Freebsd.

2012-02-06 Thread Chad Perrin

On Mon, Feb 06, 2012 at 07:36:46PM -0800, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
  DDa == Da Rock writes:
 
  Would you do that with Python or something else?
 
 DDa Depending on what you really need to solve decides your
 DDa language. Others have offered advice here, but may I suggest Perl?
 DDa For most data and its proven ability to handle/match string data it
 DDa is very useful. And using tk it will run on windows as well.
 
 At this point, there's absolutely nothing that Python can do that Perl
 can't, and very likely vice versa.
 
 However, from personal experience, I know that Larry Wall understands
 Object Oriented Programming, and Guido definitely doesn't get it.
 Obviously, other people have worked on both languages, but keep that in
 mind.  I can present my evidence of how Guido doesn't get it in a longer
 post, if prompted.

I'm definitely curious.  If you don't think this is the place for it, I'd
love to see your explanation in private email or by other means.

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Re: uname ?

2012-02-02 Thread Chad Perrin

On Thu, Feb 02, 2012 at 03:09:00PM +0800, joeb1 wrote:
 It looks to me that the  uname -m  and  uname -p  always have the same
 value, such as i386.
 
 Is there some fine-grained difference or some un-documented difference
 between them
 or some combination were the values would be different?

I don't have one handy, so I don't have any way to test this right now,
but I wonder if an AMD machine might give a different answer to one of
those than an Intel machine, given a 32-bit 386 instruction set processor
for both.

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Re: Unable to upgrade packages on FreeBSD

2012-01-31 Thread Chad Perrin

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 01:52:19AM +0100, Polytropon wrote:
 On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:40:50 -0500, David Jackson wrote:
  On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 5:49 PM, Polytropon wrote:
  
   Other things to keep in mind are language settings. One example is
   OpenOffice which needs to have the language setting at compile
   time, especially if you're not using the english language.
 
  You could compile a version of that for each language and I think
  thats what Ubuntu does, or, just compile maybe top 1 or 2 most
  commonly used language version and then other versions could be user
  compiled.
 
 There are, I think... at least 10 languages available, and combine this
 with Gnome, KDE and CUPS support OFF or ON, and you have 10*2*2*2 = 80
 packages, and still no scheme to name them. :-)

Don't forget compiling for multiple architectures.  That adds more
options -- and, unlike some of those other options, compiling for
different architectures is often actually a mutually-exclusive option
set.

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Re: Unable to upgrade packages on FreeBSD

2012-01-30 Thread Chad Perrin

You talk a lot about how easy it is to maintain a binary package system.
I would like you to convince me that it is easy, keeping in mind that it
should remain compatible with the ports system.  I am willing to be
convinced.

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Re: Horrible installer

2012-01-23 Thread Chad Perrin

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 07:30:57PM +0100, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
 I first touched FreeBSD around 2005. The current insteller is much more
 appealing and useful. All the people displaying elitist attitude toward the
 arcaic installer which infact DID push people away from FreeBSD, I don't
 understand you.
 so may i explain you:
 
 Those who cannot install things without fancy interfaces are not
 ever able to manage that system afterwards. This is not a toy but
 best performing unix system.

Thank you for (inadvertently?) making people with a legitimate need for
the functionality of sysinstall look like intolerant elitists by
association with you in the minds of those who don't understand their
needs, just because you seem to agree with them.

I miss your silence.

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Re: Horrible installer (was: Re: FreeBSD 9)

2012-01-23 Thread Chad Perrin

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 07:25:03PM +0100, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
 
 And IMHO sysinstall should not exist, while good documentation about
 installing BY HAND should be there.

I agree with the part of that sentence following the comma.  That is all.


 
 Someone that cannot install it him/herself will not be able to ever
 manage it after so why waste time.
 
 Do not forget that FreeBSD is for unix users, contrary to linux
 which is for windoze haters.
 
 
 Again i propose removing sysinstall altogether.

Automation is good, provided it does not eliminate useful options and
flexibility.  You seem unaware of this fact in the general case, for some
reason.

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Re: Clang - what is the story?

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 07:06:04PM +1000, Da Rock wrote:
 On 01/22/12 17:45, Chad Perrin wrote:
 
 A couple years ago, it looked like a race between PCC and TenDRA, but
 Clang seemed to just come out of nowhere and steal all the attention.
 All three of them had a lot to recommend them, but then the TenDRA
 modernization project evaporated and everybody jumped on the Clang wagon.
 At least, that's how it looked to me.

 Wow! I'm going to have to do some more research on compilers- I've
 never heard of these until now...
 
 I sound pretty stupid don't I? :P

Nah.  TenDRA was pretty obscure except in certain circles related to DRA,
I think -- and DRA (Defense Research Agency), something like a UK
equivalent to the US DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency),
ceased to exist in the mid-1990s, making it and anything related to it
even more obscure since then.  I don't know whether DERA (which replaced
DRA) did anything with TenDRA.

I almost forgot that in addition to the TenDRA project, there was also
the Ten15 project; TenDRA had forked somewhere along the way.  As far as
I'm aware, Ten15 was farther out of date and less actively developed at
the time I was talking to TenDRA developers and offering a little bit of
help with that project.  I never really got involved with Ten15 at all,
so my knowledge of it is *really* scant.

PCC (Portable C Compiler), meanwhile, spent many years essentially unused
except in some of the dustier corners of Unix user communities before
being actively developed again as more and more people started wanting a
copyfree C compiler alternative to the very copyleft GCC.  PCC was a big
deal for a while, and I think most C compilers were based on it to some
extent in the early '80s, but its influenced waned enough that GCC
replaced it pretty much everywhere by about the same time DRA went away.

As things stand now, I don't think anyone is actively developing TenDRA
(and in fact I wonder if all the more recent work on it has been lost),
but the modern PCC project reached 1.0 release last year and is reputedly
building OpenBSD kernels without a hitch.  There has been some talk of it
being the GCC replacement for OpenBSD and maybe even NetBSD, though I
seem to recall Theo de Raadt doesn't consider replacing GCC a very urgent
requirement right now (which might be part of the reason AerieBSD
explicitly prioritizes rejecting copyfree software after it forked from
OpenBSD, though that's just speculation by me, based in part on the fact
it appears PCC is in the AerieBSD base system).

Another option that hasn't been mentioned -- and I don't think it was
ever really considered for FreeBSD as a GCC-replacement, but I don't
actually know that for sure -- is The Amsterdam Compiler Kit, sometimes
called TACK or ACK.  It, too, uses a BSD license, as does PCC and as did
TenDRA.  TACK is the base system (I'm not sure they use that word,
really) for MINIX3, I think.  Beyond that, and the fact it was originally
available only under commercial license, I don't really know anything
about it.

The reason I started writing this email was just to mention that this
stuff has all been pretty obscure compared to the much higher profile
Clang and GCC projects.  That common thread should, I hope, be clear in
my descriptions of the various projects I mentioned, so no -- I don't
think you sound pretty stupid for not knowing about them.  In fact, to
reach the level of stupid, I think you'd have to be one of the
dismaying number of people in the Linux world who kludge together C code
and apparently aren't aware there are any C compilers available that
don't come from the GNU Project or Microsoft, or the craptons of Visual
Studio developers who have never realized C can be compiled without
Visual Studio.

(Clarification: I'm not saying all Linux-based C hackers are stupid, nor
even that all coders who use Visual Studio are stupid.  There are a lot
of smart people in both groups.  I just don't know of anyone who doesn't
realize there's more than one or two C compilers currently maintained
except for some members of the above-mentioned groups.)

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Re: Clang - what is the story?

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 05:37:48AM -0700, Chad Perrin wrote:
 
 There has been some talk of it being the GCC replacement for OpenBSD
 and maybe even NetBSD, though I seem to recall Theo de Raadt doesn't
 consider replacing GCC a very urgent requirement right now (which might
 be part of the reason AerieBSD explicitly prioritizes rejecting
 copyfree software after it forked from OpenBSD, though that's just
 speculation by me, based in part on the fact it appears PCC is in the
 AerieBSD base system).

Correction: s/copyfree/copyleft/

AerieBSD favors copyfree software and chooses to reject copyleft software
as much as it reasonably can.  It does *not* reject copyfree software.

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Re: Clang - what is the story?

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 10:55:18PM +1000, Da Rock wrote:
 On 01/22/12 22:37, Chad Perrin wrote:
 
 PCC (Portable C Compiler), meanwhile, spent many years essentially unused
 except in some of the dustier corners of Unix user communities before
 being actively developed again as more and more people started wanting a
 copyfree C compiler alternative to the very copyleft GCC.  PCC was a big
 deal for a while, and I think most C compilers were based on it to some
 extent in the early '80s, but its influenced waned enough that GCC
 replaced it pretty much everywhere by about the same time DRA went away.

 According to wiki it was the compiler for unix- particularly bsd
 up to 4.4 (FreeBSD's parent prior to becoming opensource).

Yeah, that's pretty much the case.


 
 As things stand now, I don't think anyone is actively developing TenDRA
 (and in fact I wonder if all the more recent work on it has been lost),

 According to wiki there was one person on the job and has grown to a
 team now- how many I don't know :)

As far as I'm aware, there was a team for a while, and a fork in the
effort, and now both forks have basically died (see my above
explanation).  After a glance at the Wikipedia article about TenDRA, I
think it was only referring to the pre-death period and not now for
when there is/was a team.

 
 Well. Consider me enlightened... ;)

I'm glad I could help.

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Re: Clang - what is the story?

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 01:13:49AM +1000, Da Rock wrote:
 On 01/23/12 00:38, Robert Bonomi wrote:
 Da Rockfreebsd-questi...@herveybayaustralia.com.au  wrote:
 
 I personally had no idea this was going on; my impression was gcc grew
 out of the original compiler that built unix, and the only choices were
 borland and gcc. The former for win32 crap and the latter for, well,
 everything else.
 Once upon a time, there were _many_ alternatives for C compilers.
 Commercial -- i.e. 'you pay for it', or bundled with a pay O/S  -- offerings
 included (this is a _partial_ list, ones _I_ have personal knowledge of):
 
PCC  -- (the original one0 medium-lousy code but the code-generator was
 easily adapted to new/diferent hardwre
Green Hills Softwaware  (used by a number of unix hardare manufacturers)
Sun Microsystems developed their own (acc)
Silicon Graphics, Inc
Hewlett-Packard
Symantic   (Think C -- notable for high-performance on early Apple Mac's,
significantly better than Apple's own MPW)
Manx Software   (Aztec C -- a 'best of breed' for MS-DOS)
Microsoft
Intel
CCS
Watcom
Borland
Zortech
Greenleaf Software
Ellis Computing (specializing in 'budget' compilers, circa $30 pricetags)
Small C
tcc -- the 'tiny C compiler
 Wow... I have some research to do...

Maybe not.  It depends on what you want to learn.

PCC was already mentioned.  Watcom C's license is overly complex and
probably legally problematic.  Small-C Compiler is a compiler for the
Small-C language, which is only a subset of C.  The Tiny C Compiler is
copyleft licensed, so not as ideal a choice as Clang, PCC, and TenDRA
have been at various points in time when choosing a new C compiler for a
BSD Unix base system.  If I'm not mistaken, everything else on that list
is not even open source software.

If you just want to know about C compilers, it's fun to read about all
this stuff.  If you specifically want to know about options that might be
suitable for use as GCC-replacement in BSD Unix systems, there's far less
to read.

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Re: Clang - what is the story?