[LUAU] jwz on linux

[Jim Thompson]

So, the other day I made the mistake of running the software updater  
on the webcast machines. (FC4 yum.) I have a habit of doing this  
crazy thing, in the possibly-misguided hope that it will cause me to  
have the latest round of security fixes and prevent the script  
kiddies from running roughshod over my machines.

Yet, you may have noticed my use of the word "mistake", because this  
time it happened to update ALSA (which, laughably, stands for  
"Advanced" Linux Sound "Architecture".) Now what do you think often  
happens when ALSA gets updated? If you're guessing "something bad",  
well, you're right. In this case (and, I think, in every previous  
case) what it means is that they changed the names of all the  
parameters of my sound cards. This means something like, some  
teenager decided that where it said "EMU10K1" it should really have  
said "EMU10K1 PCM", or some shit like that. Why should I care about  
this? Well, I shouldn't. Except that this means that the previously- 
saved configuration file for my sound card NO LONGER WORKS because (I  
guess?) it has the old names in it. It spits out errors like the  
following, and doesn't make any music:

alsactl: set_control:894: warning: name mismatch (Music Playback  
Volume/Synth Playback Volume) for control #7
alsactl: set_control:896: warning: index mismatch (0/0) for control #7
alsactl: set_control:898: failed to obtain info for control #7  
(Operation not permitted)
So we lost saturday's webcast. Thank you, anonymous, incompetent  
teenager.

[...]

This is exactly the kind of time-wasting bullshit that caused me to  
give up on running Unix as my home desktop. I switched to MacOSX  
about four months ago, and I haven't regretted it for a second.

Why am I still running this halfassed teenager-ware called Linux on  
my servers, you might ask? Well, I believe that the sad thing is that  
(hardware support aside) I'd still have to run exactly the same  
halfassed teenager-ware on a Mac to make the webcasts work (e.g.,  
Icecast); it would just all be even less reliable, because it'd be  
running on a platform that none of the developers use.

[...]

http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2005/10.html#06

And, if you're asking "who is jwz, and why do I care?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski