In a world full of fancy development tools and sites, the kernel project’s dependence on email and mailing lists can seem quaintly dated, if not positively prehistoric. But, as Greg Kroah-Hartman pointed out in a Kernel Recipes talk titled “Patches carved into stone tablets”, there are some good reasons for the kernel community’s choices. Rather than being a holdover from an older era, email remains the best way to manage a project as large as the kernel.
A kernel is the first layer of computer, it controls everything on how the computer will work. The Linux Kernel is the most popular kernel in use today, powering over 1.5 billion Android devices, millions of Chromebooks, and millions of devices that are in use everyday (things from wireless routers to smartwatches). This doesn’t include all of the web services we depend on every day that run some version of Linux. You’re probably using something that requires Linux every day.
So what does that have to do with email? With Kernel development which involves thousands of developers around the world, email is the only technology that has proven itself to manage the process of Linux kernel development. Even if email seems old fashion, I like to point out to students that almost every service they use relies on email for account maintenance.
Son won’t turn off his video game? Daughter obsessed with “likes” on Instagram? It may not be entirely their fault. Like the high-octane sugar in a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and that irresistible chemical spice in Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, the ingredients in social media, video games, apps, and other digital products are carefully engineered…
She’d laid out the assignment clearly, but student after student was calling her over for help. They were all getting the same error message: The program couldn’t find their files. Garland thought it would be an easy fix. She asked each student where they’d saved their project. Could they be on the desktop? Perhaps in…
Libraries are repositioning themselves as cultural and learning centers for the digital age. Many lend out mobile hotspots, often for weeks at a time. Others offer classes in the latest tech, such as 3D printing and music-editing software. And libraries have some of the savviest social media editors around. Source: Libraries go high-tech to stay…
Don’t let your spare USB drives go to waste! Use them to prepare for disaster and turn them into toolkits that might one day save your neck. USB jump drives are a dying breed. As the process of transferring data becomes increasingly wireless, many are left with underutilized USB drives crammed into drawers. That is,…
On the one hand, it might seem like laptops have improved the classroom experience. Everything is in one spot, you can back up your notes, typing doesn’t hurt your hands as much, and you could argue that you use less paper[1]. But do you learn more? Both students and teachers can benefit from a bunch of new psychology…
First off, there’s pretty firm evidence to suggest that some forms of gaming are correlated with high scores in conventional IQ tests. For example, researchers at the University of York found that adults who play online strategy games (particularly those involving team cooperation) score highly on standard intelligence tests. Source: Science Says Gamers Are Smarter Than Non-Gamers – Armchair Arcade…
