Distribution quotes of the week [LWN.net]

-jef"I don't always query network search providers when looking for files on my system which reference "wolf lure", but when I do, I ask Amazon for related tempting deals of the day"spaleta

-- Jeff Spaleta

Dear "root owning" overlords,

When using grep recursively I only get local results:

grep -R fish_t /home/noob/fish_game/*

/home/noob/fish_game/fish.h: struct fish_t {
/home/noob/fish_game/fish.c: struct fish_t eric_the_ fish;

or worse:

grep -R shark_t /home/noob/fish_game/*

/home/noob/fish_game/fish.h: struct shark_t {
/home/noob/fish_game/fish.c: struct shark_t_t mark_sw;

I declare this a bug for two reasons:

The output is boring.
The terminal has more than 2 lines!!! It's an unefficient use of my screenspace.

I believe the reason for this is that the grep command only searches locally for things I am actually looking for, I kind of expect the results I get from my codebase and as such it removes any sense of mystery or something new and exciting to spice up my dull geek existence. That's boring, grep -R should also search amazon, so I get more exciting results ...

-- akeane

to post comments

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Sep 27, 2012 5:38 UTC (Thu) by dirtyepic (guest, #30178) [Link] (1 responses)

Even better:

> yep, and <TAB><TAB> only gives:
>
> akeane@awesome-haX0r:~$
> Display all 2717 possibilities? (y or n)
>
> Should give:
>
> akeane@awesome-haX0r:~$
> Display all 3,141,596,254 results possibilities? (y or n)
> Do you feel lucky? (y)

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Sep 28, 2012 9:40 UTC (Fri) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link]

> Display all 3,141,596,254 results possibilities? (y or n)

Actually, there is a typo, it should have been 3,141,592,654

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Sep 27, 2012 19:51 UTC (Thu) by DavidS (guest, #84675) [Link] (11 responses)

Following the drama around that feature, I'm once again astounded by the temerity of people arguing against a company trying to make a buck.

You don't have to follow/install/use them if you don't agree. And if you'd like to say now "it's not that easy", then you're already out of a fundamental software freedom.

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Sep 27, 2012 23:53 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (6 responses)

I'm once again astonished by some bugreporters going all serious and snippy at people clearly using this bug to have a laugh (and the suggestions in this bug are pretty spluttersome). Some people seem to dislike laughter or think it is beneath their dignity or something like that. Clearly, from his contribution to the bug thread, Mark Shuttleworth is not among them.

Bugs in bugtrackers are not a limited resource: having one or two now and then for humour value is not harmful.

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Sep 28, 2012 2:53 UTC (Fri) by akeane (guest, #85436) [Link] (3 responses)

Nonsense, this so called "akeane" is just a troublemaker looking for a cheap laugh, he's wasted his time, your time and MY time.

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Sep 30, 2012 10:16 UTC (Sun) by gb (subscriber, #58328) [Link]

> Posted Sep 28, 2012 2:53 UTC (Fri) by akeane.

Man, you really good!

You, sir, are a gentleman

Posted Oct 2, 2012 14:49 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (1 responses)

Thanks for the laughs, and careful with that monocle! It tends to fall always on the most delicious dishes during dinner at the Embassy, I should know.

You, sir, are a gentleman

Posted Oct 10, 2012 21:42 UTC (Wed) by akeane (guest, #85436) [Link]

I agree, good heavens, I was once at an ambassadorial ball, and a young lady made a most inappropriate suggestion, I believe it involved her foolishness in believing that the threading model was preferable to a far superior process based model!!!

I was so astonished that both my monocles popped out straight into my truffle pie!

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Oct 29, 2012 12:18 UTC (Mon) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link] (1 responses)

Mark's --universe grep option is clearly the most visionary of the replies in the bug. However, I think the technical challenges with that to be indeed, quite challenging.

Due to communication lag over this long distances, I assume that the queries must be done asynchronously. I wonder whether the Ubuntu 3141.59 version of that time will still be backwards compatible to the query protocols of today and can the ancient return addresses of the replies still be routed to servers set up for processing & forwarding them... Is some trust fund being set up to guarantee that?

Receiving and buffering of the results can be problematic. After several millenniums of all Ubuntu machines sending out the queries [1], when larger amounts of the replies starts to arrive here from within our own galaxy, I think the amount and variety of them (even of just "Eh?" replies) may jam the near Earth communication devices.

For our children to be able to benefit but not to be overwhelmed by the returned information, I think the search could be limited by default to neighboring star systems.

Then there's the question of translation. Is there some blueprint about extending Ubuntu translation services to non-human languages, character sets and fonts or other forms of conveying similar information?

Finally, there's the actual question of monetizing this. It's a very long term plan with somewhat uncertain Return On Investment. But as it's certainly going to be advancing science of communication and state of the art in advertising, this should get government funding and other support for it. After the successful Mars rover mission, I think NASA needs something more ambitious, like this, to work on.

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Oct 29, 2012 12:28 UTC (Mon) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link]

> [1]

<from direction="future" year="3141" class="placeholder">
Sorry, this was supposed to be a link to the statistics on Andromeda's IP v7 adoption rate, but unfortunately the URL hasn't arrived yet.
</from>

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Sep 28, 2012 8:37 UTC (Fri) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (3 responses)

Ubuntu is not marketed as a company but as a community distribution.
At least Red Hat never tried to monetize Fedora.

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Sep 28, 2012 9:04 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

you have a short memory, RedHat did work to monitize it's home/personal/desktop version. They only created RHEL and abandoned that market to fedora after several years of not succeeding well enough.

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Sep 28, 2012 9:54 UTC (Fri) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562) [Link] (1 responses)

Fedora was created later than RHEL, so I don't really see your point.

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Sep 28, 2012 18:59 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

saying 'at least redhat never tried to monetize fedora' implies that redhat is somehow 'more virtuous' because it never tried to make money off of it's non-datacenter version of Linux.

While it is true that they have never tried to make money from "fedora", the implication that they never tried to make money from home users who could download things for free is defiantly false.

If RedHat had succeeded at monetizing it's home users, the RHEL/Fedora split may never have happened.