Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Arch Cache & cached archives

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Matthieu Moy <address@hidden>

    > Tom Lord <address@hidden> writes:

    > > It is strange, imo, to contemplate modifying tla to solve the
    > > problem you stated there.

    > Well, tla wouldn't be the first piece of software implementing a local
    > cache ... This feature is present in most respectable web browser and
    > IMAP mailers for example. Are they all doing the same mistake ?

Having not examined those systems in detail (thus validating or
invalidating your characterization of their caching behavior) ....

Yes, they are, it appears so far, from my partial (and mostly
disinterested perspective).

Have you noticed, incidently, that free software and (shudder) "open
source" browswers make greater and greater progress in the market the
more they (fairly recently) concentrate on slimming down?

People put lots of ignorantly targetted money behind complete crap and
that confuses the community of volunteer hackers, essentially
unforgivably.  As a pragmatic matter, I don't choose to focus my
attacks on that mistake specifically -- I pick a more indirect and
hopefully peaceful approach, although I am liberal with my incidental
criticism of the Chief Twits behind the current state of things.

Some of you may recall me attacking the Chief Twits saying they will
be leapfrogged.  Sun's recent VFS announcement, contrasted with Red
Hat's roadmap --- first shot of an interesting an upcoming war.
Perhaps they (RH) can hype the roadmap well enough to attract enough
volunteer labor to compete.....  "There's a sucker born every minute,"
the saying goes.

Someone recently said on this list that Sun has been "trying to go out
of business".  That's very funny and, afaict, completely wrong.  They
are in a financially secure position.  They are simply Taking _Their_
Time to make their shots.  That suggests they are very likely to Hit
The Target even as the bullets whistle (harmlessly) past their ears.

It's easy to fix and everyone in the f.s. community will be happy if
things go in the direction of fixing.   But the Chief Twits need to
own up to their increasingly apparent need for humility and subsequent
scrambling and hard work.  For the most part, the ones I've met at
least, are failed (or at least ceased) hackers who lack any deep
understanding of what the f it is they are administrating.

"Total cost of ownership" -- yeah, that was a real smart fight pick.
Not.  Here's a quote, which I'll redirect at the Chief Twits:

  http://www.jgk.org/rants/quality.html

  Quality

  You know what really ticks me off is shoddy products. It makes me
  mad when something isn't done well and i know that it wouldn't be
  much harder to do a good job. Of course there are always trade-offs;
  we have limited resources and not everything can be gold-plated. But
  i think most of the time that's not it. I think more often it's that
  people just don't give a shit about what they're doing, and they're
  just as happy to produce crap as something good. They have no pride
  in their work, and that's too bad.

  You can help. You can improve the situation. Don't buy crummy
  products. Vote with your feet and your wallet. Buy good products
  even if they're harder to get and cost a bit more. If you find
  something not done well, tell lots of people about it. Don't
  tolerate bullshit from people when you know they can do better. If
  someone you know is cutting corners and not doing their best, tell
  them to their face what you think about it. Quality products may
  cost a bit more, but they're worth it. Of course, just because
  something is more expensive doesn't mean it's better.



    > > The way to build a "smart cache" is top-down, not bottom up.
    > > Meanwhile, tla shouldn't have a built in "dumb cache" when it so easy
    > > to construct one externally to tla.

    > I don't think it is "easy" to make

Try harder.    I can only directly work with so many hackers to give
more specific advice than that, sorry.

Unashamedly arrogantly yrs,
-t