Re: GLOB_BRACE

[Rich Felker <dalias@aerifal.cx>]

On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 10:18:12AM -0500, Rob Landley wrote:
> On 09/23/2013 09:35:25 AM, Luca Barbato wrote:
> >On 23/09/13 16:08, Rob Landley wrote:
> >> systemd is the second coming of devfsd. A lot of us are waiting
> >for it
> >> to blow over.
> >
> >Given the economic and PR support it won't blow over easily if
> >alternatives on par on the PR side won't appear.
> 
> Exact same argument applied to Windows.

And Windows hasn't "blown over". It's become arguably irrelevant
percentage-wise because the scope of the 'market' has vastly grown,
but in terms of absolute numbers it's still there, and it's still
critical to most of the content-production that takes place.

It's fine if you want to say you don't care about this now-niche
market, but that doesn't solve the problem for people who are still
dependent on it (which is still a fairly large portion of the
computer-using population, even if only a small portion of the number
of computers).

> >Keep in mind that pigs can fly just nicely if propelled
> >adequately. The
> >landing could be problematic though.
> 
> Mainframe -> minicomputer -> microcomputer -> smartphone. Arguing
> about how Red Hat Enterprise does it today is like arguing over how
> the VAX did it circa 1991.
> 
> Linux on the desktop didn't happen. Past tense. There are a billion
> android devices in use today. The new iPhone is explicitly a desktop
> replacement with a 64 bit processor, support for bluetooth mice and
> keyboards, and airplay to put the display on any HDTV:
> 
>   http://www.cringely.com/2013/09/19/the-secret-of-ios-7/

The iPhone doesn't even have a model for storing data locally in a way
that's sharable between applications. Yes, we're moving in the
direction you describe, but it's going to (1) take a bit longer, and
(2) be full of really bad solutions from all the major commercial
players.

> Android's not far behind. All we have to do is prevent systemd from
> being adopted by Android and Lennart's Hairball can get kicked up
> into the server space with the previous generation of hardware like
> Cobol before it, where we don't have to care unless we want to be
> our generation's version of punched card job control wranglers for
> the money.

The problem is that we do care about server space. The naive version
of your analogy with "mainframe -> mini -> ..." breaks down in that
this time, it's not really the old technology and problems being
pushed up to the servespace. Instead, the serverspace is undergoing
its own major change to something new; in buzzword-space, this is
called "the cloud". Even if it's similar hardware to what was in use
on "the desktop" in the past (even this is debatable; the only
similarity is really the ISA, x86, and parts of the associated
peripheral architecture) the deployment model is vastly different.

Part of this is the pushing of the thin client model on devices, which
probably makes sense, from lots of standpoints: power-consumption,
avoiding malware, protecting data against device loss/theft, etc. But
it also means that development for mobile devices will probably
continue to entail development of corresponding server-side
components.

Rich