Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 19:15:51 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: gpalmer@FreeBSD.ORG (Gary Palmer) Cc: jgrosch@superior.mooseriver.com, tlambert@primenet.com, mike@smith.net.au, wheelman@nuc.net, steve.a@cableinet.co.uk, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: A Little Cancer Patient need Your Attention Message-ID: <199807021915.MAA25347@usr06.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <27390.899354406@gjp.erols.com> from "Gary Palmer" at Jul 2, 98 00:40:06 am
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> > > And people wonder why I fight for "the right thing" in favor of "the > > > expedient thing"... it's because I expect to have to live with my > > > decisions for a long, long time. > > > > Yes, but think about it Terry, if everything was done in an expedient manor > > instead of the proper manor and you lived for a very long time you would > > have the joy of saying "I told you so" to legions of clueless bozos. > > Could someone PLEASE tell me what this has to do with FreeBSD, and why > we have now gone >>5 rounds with this spam? Can it please end? Well, this is -chat, for one, so it doesn't really have to be about FreeBSD, technically. It's a place to drag off-topic discussions. You need to read the subtext of the irony to get what he was saying in response to what I was saying. In this particular case, it comes down to standards and practice in software engineering, vs. standards and practice that is employed by the FreeBSD developement effort. The medical angle is relevent in that I personally fully expect to have to live with the consequences of my engineering for a long time; by 2028, a strict linear projection has human life expectancy increasing at the rate of one year per year. I also fully expect to have to, in the future, program systems which are massively more complex than a simple multiprocessor Intel box with kernel threads and realtime. Call FreeBSD "cutting our teeth". A lot of engineering is done expediently, and "damn the consequences (we'll deal with them later, when we are forced to)". CV: the Y2K problem. This type of engineering is wrong. It is the engineering equivalent of "crisis management". There is an engineering soloution to this engineering problem, but no one in authority over the organizational architecture is willing to countenance it; it involves loss of individual power, which is antithetical to the strange attractors which formed the organization in the first place. This can all be modelled mathematically; the models are easy to understand with no more than a 4th year undergraduate understanding of partial differential equations (ie: "math 452"). You don't need an understanding of games theory (though if you had one, the consequences of the math would be obvious to you). In any case, the net upshot should be "do the right thing the right way", or as Seneca, the stoic philosopher from the 4th decate AD stated in his _Letters From A Stoic_: Never substitute activity for action. If you expect to have to live with the consequences of your actions, then these are words to live by. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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