The thing that I like about Slackware is that it lets me hold on to the belief that computers are deterministic.
Take my recent struggle. I've been working on building a RedHat kernel in the official manner. Sometimes rpmbuild creates its directories -- sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it adds a / to relative paths, turning them absolute -- and sometimes it doesn't.
BUT IT NEVER WORKS. Maybe that's the real constant.
See, this way lies madness. This, in a nutshell, is why people don't trust computers. You can say that they're complex but deterministic, but trying to figure out the system's like trying to reconstruct a book after someone's burned it and stirred the ashes.
*sigh* I exaggerate, of course. I fully expect to get this working.
Take my recent struggle. I've been working on building a RedHat kernel in the official manner. Sometimes rpmbuild creates its directories -- sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it adds a / to relative paths, turning them absolute -- and sometimes it doesn't.
BUT IT NEVER WORKS. Maybe that's the real constant.
See, this way lies madness. This, in a nutshell, is why people don't trust computers. You can say that they're complex but deterministic, but trying to figure out the system's like trying to reconstruct a book after someone's burned it and stirred the ashes.
*sigh* I exaggerate, of course. I fully expect to get this working.
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