Bad Linux Programmers

From: Alan Connor (zzzzzz_at_xxx.yyy)
Date: 05/28/05 

Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 05:19:07 GMT

No. I'm not knocking Linux in general, just some
of its code writers, and am grateful for their
work even while I complain about certain aspects of
it.

I was cleaning my computer last week and unknowingly
knocked my serial card loose. Not visibly so.

So I try to connect to the Internet later and this is
what I get:

pppd: started
ttyS3: LSR safety check engaged!
Connect script failed
pppd: Exit.

That's from /var/log/syslog. The same error
message was echoed to my console.

What the hell is an "LSR safety check"?
Took me an your to track it down, and I had to go
to the driver's SOURCE code in the kernel sources.

 * linux/drivers/char/serial.c
 *
 * Copyright (C) 1991, 1992 Linus Torvalds
 * Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997,
 * 1998, 1999 Theodore Ts'o
 *
 * Extensively rewritten by Theodore Ts'o, 8/16/92 -- 9/14/92.

Good thing I know a little C and was able to decipher
his comments.

It turns out that what that means is that the driver couldn't
find my serial card.

So why didn't the error message just SAY that!!!????
Why write error messages that only _programmers_ of
similar devices can understand!?

A newbie, who probably wouldn't have had the kernel sources
around and wouldn't have known to look there if he/she did,
would have been totally stray.

So I email him, asking him to correct this in the
master source, which he controls (it's hardly a big
job!) and any other similar error messages. I am very
polite and thank him for his excellent work.

My mail doesn't bounce, but I haven't received a reply
from him (I passlisted him quite thoroughly, writing a
filter recipe that would pass any mail with his name in
it and any mail from his domain and any mail with
a phrase that was part of my mail to him. I also checked
my logs....)

[No, trolls, I was not using the address below.]

So he is doubly a bad programmer, one of these elitists
who doesn't give a *** about the people who use his
programs, just that he get credit for writing it among
his peers and superiors in Academia.

Given a choice in the future, I will avoid any of his
programs.

AC 

-- 
alanconnor AT earthlink DOT net
Use your real return address or I'll never know you
even tried to mail me. http://tinyurl.com/2t5kp
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