Linux-Advocacy Digest #676, Volume #25 Fri, 17 Mar 00 20:13:04 EST
Contents:
Re: Giving up on NT (Bob shows his lack of knowledge yet again) (David H. McCoy)
Re: Why not Darwin AND Linux rather than Darwin OR Linux? (was Re:Darwin or Linux
("Jonathan Hendry")
Re: Giving up on NT (Bob shows his lack of knowledge yet again) (David H. McCoy)
Re: Setuid and Linux threads (Kaz Kylheku)
Re: Why not Darwin AND Linux rather than Darwin OR Linux? (was Re:Darwin or Linux
(Koan Kid)
Re: Windows is a sickness. Unix is the cure. ([EMAIL PROTECTED],net)
pdmenu (Mark Swarbrick)
pdmenu (Mark Swarbrick)
Re: Why not Darwin AND Linux rather than Darwin OR Linux? (was Re:Darwin or Linux
(Koan Kid)
Re: Bsd and Linux (Victor Wagner)
Re: An Illuminating Anecdote (Bob Hauck)
Re: Why not Darwin AND Linux rather than Darwin OR Linux? (was Re:Darwin or Linux
(Koan Kid)
Re: A Linux server atop Mach? ("MJP")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: David H. McCoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Giving up on NT (Bob shows his lack of knowledge yet again)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 23:50:41 GMT
In article <38d2542b$1$yrgbherq$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jeff Glatt) said:
>
> >>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> >> Bryant Brandon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> >>
> >>>In article <38d091fc$2$yrgbherq$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> >>>[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >>
> >>>@David H. McCoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> >>>@
> >>>@>In article <38cf141b$1$yrgbherq$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> >>>@>[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
> >>>@>> David H. McCoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> >>>@>>
> >>>@>>
> >>>@>>
> >>>@>> HEY EVERYONE --- Standby for McCoy to tell us how the sex was with @>>
> >>>someones
> >>>@>> mother. Its his standard MO.
> >>>@
> >>>@>Weenie.
> >>>@
> >>>@
> >>>@McCoy you asshole, crawl back into the hole you came out of and this time
> >>>@stay
> >>>@there.
> >>>@
> >>
> >>> Maybe you should change your name to Hackfield?
> >>> Followups set.
> >>
> >>And your point is? -- McCoy is loony who jumps in and out of different news
> >>groups with nothing of value to state, and who, when he begins to lose the
> >>argument starts into a tirade about having sex the other fellows mother.
>
> >Ed Letourneau is a loony who jumps in with nothing of value to state, and
> >who, when he begins to lose the argument, starts into a bigotted tirade about
> >homosexuality
>
> Ah yes, glatt the aberrant mental buddy of McCoy. One talks of how he f**ks
> everyone's mother when he gets caught in another moron statement. The other
> (glatt), wants us to think his desire to stick his peepee in the butt of other
> men is normal and anyone who objects is a bigot -- and who for the life of
> him can't figure out that its his obnoxious personality that no one can stand.
>
>
> glatt, we haven't missed you in the past few days. In fact I was wondering if
> you had gone off working on the Darwin Award, but alas you're still here.
> Maybe you and McCoy can work together on it, eh.
What a weenie you are. I'm going to smack your mom tonight for having
you.
------------------------------
From: "Jonathan Hendry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.next.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Why not Darwin AND Linux rather than Darwin OR Linux? (was Re:Darwin or
Linux
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 17:51:47 -0600
Koan Kid wrote in message <8aufn0$hd3$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>In comp.sys.mac.advocacy JEDIDIAH <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> spake thusly:
>> I am free to 'do without', but that can hardly be considered
>> 'liberty' in any real sense. This sort of 'freedom' is no less
>> 'freedom' than beind 'free' to use WinDOS or 'do without'.
>
>That is the way the world works. If you want to play in their sandbox,
>you have to play by their rules. I don't really see how you are being
>compelled to use it. It is the same choice you have with any other
>consumer product. If I want to watch television, I must buy a TV (or
>some other receiver). Or do without.
And if you insist on buying a PAL TV, rather than NTSC, American broadcasters
have no obligation to broadcast in PAL just for you.
------------------------------
From: David H. McCoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Giving up on NT (Bob shows his lack of knowledge yet again)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 23:53:05 GMT
In article <38d1c80d$1$yrgbherq$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
> David H. McCoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
>
> >In article <38d091fc$2$yrgbherq$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> >[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
> >> David H. McCoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> >>
> >> >In article <38cf141b$1$yrgbherq$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> >> >[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
> >> >> David H. McCoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> HEY EVERYONE --- Standby for McCoy to tell us how the sex was with someones
> >> >> mother. Its his standard MO.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >>
> >> >Weenie.
> >>
> >>
> >> McCoy you asshole, crawl back into the hole you came out of and this time stay
> >> there.
> >>
>
> >Strong words, weenie. The loudest rhetoric often comes from the most
> >cowardly of weenies.
>
> >Like you.
>
> McCoy you asshole, would you like me to re-post all of your messages where you
> talk about how good the sex was with someones mother? -- Get out of here you
> scumbag!
>
> _____________
> Ed Letourneau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
I hate to tell you weenie, but sex with your mother isn't all that good.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Kaz Kylheku)
Crossposted-To: comp.programming.threads
Subject: Re: Setuid and Linux threads
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 23:53:30 GMT
On Fri, 17 Mar 2000 14:16:59 -0500, Dima Volodin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Kaz Kylheku wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 17 Mar 2000 04:41:09 -0500, Dima Volodin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> >Kaz Kylheku wrote:
>> >> In Linux, the security context is changed only for the calling lightweight
>> >> process, I believe.
>> >
>> >What was the rationale for this feature?
>>
>> Something about ``threads the way God intented them to be'', attributed
>> to Linus Torvalds.
>
>Doesn't it suck when the Providence messes around with the OS design?
Yep. One problem is that God rarely needs to debug multithreaded programs, for
one thing, and certainly doesn't require useful core dump files. :)
------------------------------
From: Koan Kid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.next.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Why not Darwin AND Linux rather than Darwin OR Linux? (was Re:Darwin or
Linux
Date: 18 Mar 2000 00:08:01 GMT
In comp.sys.mac.advocacy JEDIDIAH <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> spake thusly:
> On Fri, 17 Mar 2000 19:42:52 GMT, Michael Paquette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>JEDIDIAH wrote:
>>> >The point you're missing is that it may not be Apple's to provide. (I'm
>>>
>>> Actually they do infact 'own' control of the codec.
>>>
>>
>>You don't know what you are talking about. It's OK, though.
>>'Ignorance is Strength' and all that.
>>
>>The Cinepak and Sorensen codecs are owned by other companies. The
> Sorenson is owned by Sorenson, but it's exclusively licenced
> to Apple. Thus, apple does infact 'own' control of it. This
> came up when Podlipec tried to get a licence from Sorenson.
So take the initiative. Open up negotiations with Apple to modify their
license with Sorenson. Perhaps you can win a victory for the entire
Free Software movement by negotiating a general non-commercial "right-to-
use" license. You never can tell. It worked for Phil Zimmerman...
KK
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED],net
Subject: Re: Windows is a sickness. Unix is the cure.
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 00:08:11 GMT
Excellent book!
I got a real kick out of that GreenBlatt guy.
Steve
On 17 Mar 2000 20:50:41 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (mr_organic)
wrote:
>For a good grounding, the curious reader should consult some
>background material: "Hackers", by Steven Levy, which covers the early
>days of SAIL and MIT's AI lab ; the Jargon File, maintained by Eric
------------------------------
From: Mark Swarbrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: pdmenu
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 00:14:00 GMT
I cannot seem to find a version of pdmenu that will run on Linux
Mandrake 6.0 on a 486 machine. Anybody know what I can use, or if this
won't work, another menu program from Linux? please email me at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: Mark Swarbrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: pdmenu
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 00:13:42 GMT
I cannot seem to find a version of pdmenu that will run on Linux
Mandrake 6.0 on a 486 machine. Anybody know what I can use, or if this
won't work, another menu program from Linux? please email me at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: Koan Kid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.next.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Why not Darwin AND Linux rather than Darwin OR Linux? (was Re:Darwin or
Linux
Date: 18 Mar 2000 00:15:44 GMT
In comp.sys.mac.advocacy Joe Ragosta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> spake thusly:
> In article <8as7e1$fev$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, John Jensen
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On the subject of Michael Paquette's commentary,
>> Koan Kid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>
>> : And just when I was beginning to think that I was the only person in
>> : the
>> : world who couldn't understand what the self-proclaimed "Free-Software
>> : Advocates" (not to be confused with the *real* free-sofware
>> : advocates--you
>> : know, the ones who actually contribute to the movement) were bitching
>> : about
>> : when someone refused to personally hand over a copy of their source to
>> : every script-kiddie and 3L3373 d00d just so they could burn it on to a
>> : CD-R
>> : for their "archives".
>>
>> : *sigh*
>>
>> : Pardon my rant.
>>
>> Of course you are pardoned, when you rant politely. (I've said "pardon
>> me
>> while I go off", and some people still had the poor taste to complain ;-)
>>
>> I think I read the Paquette post on two levels. On the surface it is an
>> obvious statement, that begging or demanding anything is silly-at-best
>> and
>> demeaning-at-worst, and that the most straightforward thing to do is
>> write
>> some code.
>>
>> I couldn't help think though, that there was another level below the
>> surface of that essay. The strong feeling Paquette feels towards some
>> who
>> might share QuickTime code might be overdone. Especially in light of the
>> open source software being consumed in the creation of MacOS X.
>>
>> If you'll pardon my rant, it is as if "We've got our BSD, we've got our
>> Mach, we've got our GNU tools ... but don't come around with your hat in
>> your hand asking what we can do for you. We're Apple and we don't go for
>> all that commie stuff."
> That's nonsense.
> Apple has open sourced the core of its OS. What other commercial OS
> vendor has done that?
Sun, to name one. With Solaris 8. :)
KK
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Victor Wagner)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.x,comp.os.linux.development.apps
Subject: Re: Bsd and Linux
Date: 17 Mar 2000 07:37:09 +0300
Donovan Rebbechi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
: On Wed, 15 Mar 2000 16:43:37 GMT, Pjtg0707 wrote:
: Yawn. An obligatory BSD troll.
:>The network and server aspects of BSD is better than Linux, IMHO.
:>BSD is derived from BSD4.4Lite release, and it is very stable.
:>Alot of developers work in BSD partly because it is BSD code and
:>partly to get away from the Gnu licensing. Linux's network
:>code is also derived from BSD, but not as mature.
: Getting away from Gnu licensing, huh ? What compiler do the BSDs ship with ?
Changing only a kernel doesn't abolish you from GNU license. Especially,
if it is Debian/GNU FreeBSD (such a beast exists or at least is being
developed. Check www.debian.org)
Even commercial BSDI system ships with GCC.
BSD vs Linux is not licensing issue, it is architecture and development
model issue. BSD is basicaly cathedral, while Linux is bazaar.
If it let Linux to achieve great success in eyes of unqualified people,
that very success makes qualified people to think about drifting away.
Too many new features which can break things, too many low-quality programs,
too many security holes. I know people who say (and have arguments to
back this opinion up) that properly admninstered NT 4.0 is more stable
than modern Linuxes, like RedHat 6.1.
I don't like BSD with its BSDish rc scripts and its scheduler, which
seems to be unfriendly to X users. So if I am to abandon Linux, I'll
probably go for Solaris, or True64 (if I can afford later - Alpha
hardware is not cheapest thing in the world). But total costo of
ownership of OpenBSD server (if it is able to do everything you want
from it) is less then of Linux server.
--
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Hauck)
Subject: Re: An Illuminating Anecdote
Date: 18 Mar 2000 00:22:13 GMT
Reply-To: bobh{at}slc{dot}codem{dot}com
On Fri, 17 Mar 2000 16:15:56 -0600, Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Bob Hauck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> Well, I guess I'm not up to your standards as a programmer, because
>> frankly it is hard for me to think of what gcc ought to do when it runs
>> out of memory.
>
>While giving up and exiting your app might be appropriate for something like
>a C++ compiler, where you can simply run it over your source again when you
>have more memory without issues. It's not appropriate for a GUI where if it
>fails, it takes down all the apps running under it and losing all the work
>in progress. Even though those apps might not need any additional memory.
Borland's old app framework used to reserve a hunk of memory so that if it
ran out you would be able to put up a dialog to let the user know and try
to shut down cleanly. That was a reasonable strategy for an application to
take I think. Maybe X servers could do something like that. I have no
idea how feasible that is.
I do know that Borland's scheme wasn't perfect either. It had to be
tweaked for how your app used memory and if you got it wrong you could
crash on out of memory or end up allocating big hunks that never got used.
This was a big issue on DOS since there wasn't much memory to begin with.
>> I find it interesting that you think Unix is worse than other systems in
>> this regard because you looked at the code of some free applications.
>
>I personally believe that the OS should be held to a higher standard than
>apps.
Yeah, so do I, but so what? He's looking at a couple of free Unix apps
but no Windows apps at all and saying that this "investigation" proves
that Unix programmers don't care about memory errors.
So lets go look at the Linux or FreeBSD source and compare to Win2k. Is
it cleaner or uglier than that of Win2k. What? You mean you can't look
at Win2k source without lots of dollars and an NDA saying you won't reveal
anything about it? Well, then I guess there's no way to prove things one
way or the other.
However, I'm willing to bet that the Win2k source is at least as crufty as
that of any of the popular free Unixen. There is no reason at all to
suspect that programmers working for MS are better programmers overall
than the ones working on, say, FreeBSD or XFree86 or Linux. In fact,
there are good reasons to suspect the opposite.
>> >Even the X Windows server does not properly handle failed allocations,
>> >and simply exits (bringing down the entire desktop along with it) when
>> >the condition occurs.
>>
>> Again, what _should_ it do? Kill a couple of apps at random?
>How about cancel the operation? If X is up and running and then fails
>later, it should fail the operation. If X is in the middle of
>initialization and is not fully up and running, then exiting would be fine.
Ok, so it cancels the operation. What if the operation was related to
saving your work in an app (maybe an app was trying to open a "save"
dialog)? Now, instead of you losing your work because the X server
segfaulted, you get squirrley behavior in the apps leading to lost data.
Ok, so we add code to the app to detect that this failed operation is A
Bad Thing and go into some sort of safe mode. Hmm, it is sounding less
trivial to do.
Now we also have to deal with the fact that the X server and app may not
be running on the same machine. There could be a network involved and not
one but two different sets of possible ways to run out of memory. So how
do we pop up a dialog to tell the user why his app is acting funny? Is
that going to be the job of the X server or the client app? Hmm, things
are getting less trivial all the time here.
My point is that there are lots of scenarios to be considered and things
are not as simple as they seem. Handling "out of memory" in large systems
is just not a simple thing. Regardless of what Terry thinks, it _is_ hard
to do it right. And no matter what you do, things are sometimes going to
fail in undesireable ways because the system has exhausted an important
resource. Recovery is often impossible and even shutting down cleanly may
be quite difficult. Which is not to say the programmer shouldn't make an
effort to handle this condition though.
Maybe better choices can be made than what have been made in particular
cases. Fine, I can agree with that. However, in no way does this prove
that Unix programmers or Windows programmers are any more cavalier about
it than the other group. Which is what Terry was trying to "prove" with
his original post.
>While X isn't technically part of the OS, it's an OS-like component
>because so many apps depend on it to run.
And you know what? It is very rare that it fails. I can count the times
a installed and working X server has crashed on me in the last five years
on the fingers of one hand.
--
-| Bob Hauck
-| Codem Systems, Inc.
-| http://www.codem.com/
------------------------------
From: Koan Kid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.next.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Why not Darwin AND Linux rather than Darwin OR Linux? (was Re:Darwin or
Linux
Date: 18 Mar 2000 00:23:06 GMT
In comp.sys.mac.advocacy JEDIDIAH <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> spake thusly:
> On Fri, 17 Mar 2000 19:42:45 GMT, Michael Paquette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>John Jensen wrote:
>>> I think I read the Paquette post on two levels. On the surface it is an
>>> obvious statement, that begging or demanding anything is silly-at-best and
>>> demeaning-at-worst, and that the most straightforward thing to do is write
>>> some code.
>>>
>>> I couldn't help think though, that there was another level below the
>>> surface of that essay. The strong feeling Paquette feels towards some who
>>> might share QuickTime code might be overdone. Especially in light of the
>>> open source software being consumed in the creation of MacOS X.
>>
>>No, no. Nothing like that. I've never been good at multi-level
>>writing or subtle undertones. (Me? subtle? Hah!) I just get
>>tired of all the 'gimme, gimme, gimme' noise around the edges of the
>>Open Source community.
> That has nothing to do with this.
> It's more "treat me like a real customer, with a shelf
> full of completely licenced commercial applications"
> or quit clogging up a shared resource (the web) with
> your vendorlock crap.
Have they not fulfilled their end of the license as stated in the
agreement? Does your software not work on the specified platform?
Does the media content not work with the software? I fail to see
your point. What else to they owe to you and why do you thinks so?
KK
------------------------------
From: "MJP" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.next.advocacy
Subject: Re: A Linux server atop Mach?
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 18:31:13 -0600
"J. B. Moreno" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> MJP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think what he's trying to say is that real users don't really care
> about application "portability" they care about /document/ "portability"
> (in fact they normally have their own application preferences for a
> particular platform and just want to use that while sharing the document
> with someone else).
Document portability is what's driving SGML/XML acceptance en masse.
> BTW -- if you were using a decent newsreader like Xnews, the above text
> from Chuck wouldn't have been messed up.
MJP
------------------------------
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