Linux-Advocacy Digest #782, Volume #25 Thu, 23 Mar 00 20:13:07 EST
Contents:
Re: To all Windows 2000/98/95 Fans (George Richard Russell)
Re: Windows 2000 has 63,000 bugs - Win2k.html [0/1] - Win2k.html [0/1] (George
Richard Russell)
Re: Weak points ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Giving up on NT (Bob shows his lack of knowledge yet again) (josco)
Re: To all Windows 2000/98/95 Fans (JEDIDIAH)
Re: UNIX recruiters and MS Word resumes ("Robert Moir")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (George Richard Russell)
Subject: Re: To all Windows 2000/98/95 Fans
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 00:38:02 GMT
On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 20:04:49 GMT, JEDIDIAH <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 19:35:01 GMT, George Richard Russell
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>The underlying widget sets and GUI support is also immature. Qt, the
>>lib used by KDE, has recently entered its second major release, and
>>has gained things like Unicode support. GTK is still in its 1.2.x
>
> ...which is something not universally available in Windows
> toolkits either.
No, but to a greater extent. Only recently has Linux bothered about
langauges such as Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew etc.
Microsoft, for all their other faults, have addressed translation quite
extensively, at least from Windows 95 and probably before.
They have also catered better for visually impaired users.
>>>as "Business as Usual". Most applications had auto-save features
>>>that protected users from losing all information entered since the
>>>previous crash.
>>
>>This auotsave feature was endemic on any home microcomputer, where
>>Unixms such as protected memory were not supported at the time.
>
> It's still quite useful in the current enviroment where
> protected memory is claimed but often not effective.
Its useful when your video driver, despite claims to the contrary, isn't too
stable, and when you want to have your work after power outages.
Until there are perfect OS's and Apps (some apps will stuff themselves so badly
they'll crash - never use Composer and browse at the same time) autosave is a
convienence.
>>>Microsoft was acutely aware of the fact that many Windows users
>>>were exploring Linux simply because it was more reliable. This was
>>>one of the primary reasons that they put so much effort into making
>>>sure that Windows 2000 was at least capable of MTBFs of at least
>>>300 hours (about 2 weeks), and recovery time of less than 5 minutes.
>>
>>Only recently, have MS actually deigned to notice the existance of
>>Linux. Its still not enough of a concern for their application
>>division to port their software to it.
>>
>>Oh yeah, and Linux was not chosen for reliability - OS/2 had that -
>>Linux was chosen for price, and usually for price alone. Of
>>course, the bundled software development tools and typesetting
>>systems may also have been a decider ;-)
>
> My first version of OS/2 was $20. My first Linux distro
> pack was also $20. Price really wasn't an issue there.
> Now, $437 for NeXT or Solaris is another matter entirely.
You could have bought, say, Coherent, I suppose.
At retail prices, Linux is much better value than OS/2
Although I once got OS/2 2.1 for 50pence UK.
>>>In the case of UNIX, I would create a process that would open a
>>>socket to the ticker feed, convert the feed to a stream, and push
>>>the stream to the standard output. I could then use PERL to parse
>>>the feed, and have PERL generate orderd pairs for GPLOT. I'd write
>>>a 20 line C program (using boilerplate code), and the remainder
>>>of the application becomes a 2 line shell script and a 20 line
>>>PERL program. I would then end up with a real-time graph.
>>
>>Or I'd use some cross platform technology, such as Java and have
>>the same code both platforms. The number of Java ticker applets is
>>already quite high - since Java allows both easy networking and
>>GUI development in an OO manner in a strongly typed language, with
>>the choice of RAD IDE's or CLI Unix tools.
>
> PERL is a cross platform technology. It takes less of a
> performance hit as well. The RAD IDE is less a function
> of the language than it is 3rd party tools. Although, a
> small project and a sensibly designed language should not
> really need RAD tools. The language itself should be a RAD
> tool.
Is perl faster than Java? For what? GUI's? Using what Java compiler /
interpreter? a JIT or just the Blackdown port? I suspect perl is faster for
string handling, and faster than *some* java systems at some tasks. Since both
can approach the speed of C for some tasks, its hard to say what is faster.
Interestingly, Java is being added to GCC as a language compilable to native
binaries via the GCC backend.
Is there a Perl IDE? Other than Emacs, anyway. Perl is not a sensibly designed
langauge - its more evolved than designed. Python is designed (and nice, too)
>>The HTML CGI is quite possilbe on Windows as well, and itsnot like
>>Perl is tied to Unix - there is a Win32 port of this, and Python,
>>and Tcl, and bash....
>
> True, however Unix is an OS designed from the ground up to
> be a symphony of small tools. Windows tries to be that but
Unix *was* a symphony of small tools, and then creaping featuritis occurred.
Too many unix utils have too many inconsistent command options. Why is it
tar -xIvf filename for bzipped and xzvf for gzipped? Tar can determine the
filetype for itself, rather than gratuitously bloat its options.
Perl is not a small tool - its an all encompassing, multipurpose tool - no
do one thing and do it well, but do many, as well as possible. It was written
to unify awk, sed, and misc unix tools features into one tool.
Emacs is likewise not a single purpose tool - even at its most minimalistic,
its still both a texteditor and lisp interpreter. Add the rest of the
functionality, and well, some Unix users may never see the CLI again - and
not miss it.
> instead uses component technology more as a replacement for
> shared libraries than to expose a collection of small
> efficient components that can work well together.
It does reduce the overhead and messy error prone programming of parsing text
streams, though.
Its preferable to to have a single backend library, than a CLI tool to which
you feed input and read output from. Thats why we have libcdaudio, and multiple
CD playing programs using it, rather than exec("cdcd play 1") . Its also the
same for licq - one backend, many frontends. GUI and CLI. Its why there is
libmikmod, rather than simply fronting the mikmod cli client - although some
do it this way as well.
George Russell
--
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
Lord of the Rings, J.R.R.Tolkien
Hey you, what do you see? Something beautiful, something free?
The Beautiful People, Marilyn Manson
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (George Richard Russell)
Subject: Re: Windows 2000 has 63,000 bugs - Win2k.html [0/1] - Win2k.html [0/1]
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 00:38:03 GMT
On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 22:06:41 GMT, JEDIDIAH <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 21:11:22 GMT, SetMeUp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> Besides, for the price of an NT5 licence you can replace the
>>> mouse and the printer and still have money left over for self
>>> help guides or pizza.
>>
>> Well, may be the telephone cost of browsing to be able to
>>get, configure and test Linux software let you buy Windows 2000
>>and several software packages.
>
> You are quite out of touch with reality.
Depends where in reality you are. European phone costs are extortionate, and
ISP's (decent ones, anyway) tend not to be free (www.uklinux.net is!).
And for Students, Educators and the untroubled warez doodz, NT is cheap.
You can get Win9* && NT && Office && Visual* (C++ and J++ i think) for about
£40 UK. (£10 for warez doodz). Educational use only, though.
Equivalent functionality, under Linux, is just as expensive (SuSE's Linux
Office 99, Corel Linux Deluxe, Redhat + Applixware)
George Russell
--
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
Lord of the Rings, J.R.R.Tolkien
Hey you, what do you see? Something beautiful, something free?
The Beautiful People, Marilyn Manson
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Weak points
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 00:45:29 GMT
On Fri, 24 Mar 2000 00:12:42 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
wrote:
>On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 23:19:00 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>On 23 Mar 2000 23:00:51 GMT, Brian Langenberger
>><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>>SetMeUp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>:> You can't possibly
>>>:> be serious about the "suck"ness of Postscript printers.
>>>:> The price is higher in some cases, but so is the quality
>>>
>>>: Exactly, higher enough that home users prefer other
>>>: printers just like Canon, HP, Epson, ... no postscript,
>>>
>>>So what "sucks" about them, except for a modest increase
>>>in price?
>>
>>I don't call a couple of hundred dollars, to essentially perform the
>>same function ie:print, a "modest" increase in price.
>
> For a serious printer, a couple hundred dollars really
> isn't much of an added cost. Fortunately, your assertion
> that only postscript printers are supported under linux
> is a LIE. It is fortunate for those of us that have been
> using non-PS printers for years.
So you won't spend $89.00 for a real, working, supported in mass
operating system but you will blow a couple of hundred EXTRA dollars
on a printer that doesn't do anything better than any other $99.00
printer on the market.
Makes a lot of sense to me :(
>>
>>
>>> Linux does support a wide range of non-Postscript
>>>printers, but why would I settle for some nonstandard
>>>printer (with no guarantee to work with different hardware
>>>or OS) when I can get a standards-compliant Postscript or
>>>HP PCL one?
>>
>>Because you want to waste your money maybe?
>
> I can get a PCL laser printer for $300 or a PCL
> deskjet for $100. You're talking out your ass
> as usual, when it comes to this subject.
PCL and PS are 2 different animals.
PS is supported almost entirely. PCL is better than not supported but
not to the level of PS under Linux yet.
Start setting up 15 print que's for all of those paper sizes,
resolutions and so forth.
>>
>>
>>
>>>: now tell me that printers as are easy to configure at
>>>: Linux that at Windows ... and I'll tell you lier.
>>>
>>>Assuming a network printer, on the printer side it's just
>>>a matter of setting the IP (in my case on the front
>>>LCD panel - just a few button presses). On the computer
>>>side, Printtool just needs me to:
>>
>>
>>
>>Yawn.. Assuming you have a PS printer and assuming Ghostscript or
>>appsfilter has an entry for it and it supports different trays, paper
>>sizes, resolutions. But of course you could spend all day setting up
>>filters and different print que's to do the above.
>
> I would do that under Windows anyways just for simplicity's
> sake so that whenever I print I don't have to futz with all
> the printer options again.
Yawn. Another Lino piece of mis-information.
I am printing a web page and I don't want to waste ink.
Windows version:
File->print>box with all kinds of options(resolution,papersize,tray
etc) appears->select what you desire and hit ok.
Done.
Works like this with every printer including Network printers I have
ever used.
Linux version? God only knows. Depends on your printer and for the
ones I have used (Canon 4400 and IBM X24E antique) I had to create 10
different que's and pick the correct one. I never did get the Canon
printing under kde or StarOffice for that matter.
>>
>>Under Windows? Pick a printer. Any printer. You can choose from $99.00
>>variety inkjets all the way up to top of the line HP' laser printers
>>and beyond. They all work and they allow you to use all the features
>>you paid for easily.
>
> You can do the same for Linux. You just have to shop wisely.
> That's a good idea anyways, so you don't get crap.
No you have to waste money....
>[deletia]
>>
>>Not when you want features. Nozzle cleaning, diagnostics,change print
>>resolution,change paper size and tray, and so forth. All on a $99.00
>>printer.
>
> You're not going to have multiple trays on a $100 printer.
> The rest is quite achieveable with apsfilter or ghostscript.
Envelopes vs Sheet feed....
Try again jedi... You are losing badly once again.....
>[deletia]
>>>As for similar behavior, the whole point of having different
>>>window managers is to manage windows differently. One size
>>>definately does not fit all. I don't want my manager acting
>>>like the default Windows behavior, that much I'm sure of.
>>>Your window manager should adapt to suit how *you* want your
>>>windows to act - you shouldn't have to adapt to its way of
>>>doing things.
>>
>>I want things to act easily and consistently and to have undergone
>>ergonomic testing to determine what qualifies as the above.
>>Windows, in my case fits the "Bill".
>
> Then run "ErgoDesk". That's rather the whole point of having
> distinct choices. We don't have to be subject to a tyranny
> of a peasant majority.
Ah yes. The highly subjective, evasive lino argument that is totally
void and fact less. Omit the true data and make some seemingly deep
statement which in effect is a circular explanation that depends upon
itself for validity.
When all else fails, blame the establishment.
>[deletia]
>
> Mind you, the notion that Windows has undergone serious
> HID work is laughable...
Mind you the notion that Linux is a serious competitor to the Windows
desktop is a farce at best.
Steve
------------------------------
From: josco <[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: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 16:48:45 -0800
On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, George Marengo wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 10:55:47 -0800, josco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
> >On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, George Marengo wrote:
> >
> >> On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 03:33:11 GMT, Joseph <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>
> >> >Having OS/2 as the installed OS is forcing customers to have OS/2.
> >> >
> >> >Since IBM lacked monopoly power in the PC OS market, IBM was
> >> >unable to force all PC buyers to pay for a OS/2 license.
> >>
> >> Because nobody wanted it.
> >
> >Say it 10 times facing the east every morning.
> >
> >We can now invalidate IBM's anti-trust testimoy and the facts the Judge
> >established which run contrary to your declaration.
> Is Apple still around?
How ironic. MS bought 150 million dollars of Apple stock to prop up the
company. But the Apple Mac is not part of the courts definition of the
market in which OS/2 and Windows competed. duh
>From the Table Of Contents of the finding of fact:
"A .Microsoft Has Monopoly Power In The Market For Operating Systems For
Intel-Compatible Personal Computers
1.Operating Systems For Intel-Compatible Personal Computers Constitute A
Relevant Antitrust Market."
> Is Linux getting more popular? IBM gave up on
> OS/2, and that's ultimately why it failed.
No more than bleeding to death from a gun shot wound is the fault of the
person for bleeding.
"CONCLUSION"
The Court should conclude that Microsoft has violated Sections 1 and 2 of
the Sherman Act and proceed to consider the appropriate remedy."
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
Subject: Re: To all Windows 2000/98/95 Fans
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 00:51:22 GMT
On Fri, 24 Mar 2000 00:38:02 GMT, George Richard Russell
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 20:04:49 GMT, JEDIDIAH <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 19:35:01 GMT, George Richard Russell
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>
>>>The underlying widget sets and GUI support is also immature. Qt, the
>>>lib used by KDE, has recently entered its second major release, and
>>>has gained things like Unicode support. GTK is still in its 1.2.x
>>
>> ...which is something not universally available in Windows
>> toolkits either.
>
>No, but to a greater extent. Only recently has Linux bothered about
>langauges such as Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew etc.
...in something other than Unicode. Even Windows developers
would rather develop in Unicode. So point at Linux toolkits
and laughing at them for just getting it is rather
disengenuous.
>
>Microsoft, for all their other faults, have addressed translation quite
>extensively, at least from Windows 95 and probably before.
Some might have wished that they decided to do it right rather
than do it sooner.
[deletia]
>>>>Microsoft was acutely aware of the fact that many Windows users
>>>>were exploring Linux simply because it was more reliable. This was
>>>>one of the primary reasons that they put so much effort into making
>>>>sure that Windows 2000 was at least capable of MTBFs of at least
>>>>300 hours (about 2 weeks), and recovery time of less than 5 minutes.
>>>
>>>Only recently, have MS actually deigned to notice the existance of
>>>Linux. Its still not enough of a concern for their application
>>>division to port their software to it.
>>>
>>>Oh yeah, and Linux was not chosen for reliability - OS/2 had that -
>>>Linux was chosen for price, and usually for price alone. Of
>>>course, the bundled software development tools and typesetting
>>>systems may also have been a decider ;-)
>>
>> My first version of OS/2 was $20. My first Linux distro
>> pack was also $20. Price really wasn't an issue there.
>> Now, $437 for NeXT or Solaris is another matter entirely.
>
>You could have bought, say, Coherent, I suppose.
I never saw hide nor hair of it actually. Mind you, my
college bookstore sold SCO Wordperfect and HP and Sun
workstations. I could even find GEM. Everything else,
including NeXT and Solaris x86 were difficult just to
find...
>At retail prices, Linux is much better value than OS/2
>Although I once got OS/2 2.1 for 50pence UK.
>
>>>>In the case of UNIX, I would create a process that would open a
>>>>socket to the ticker feed, convert the feed to a stream, and push
>>>>the stream to the standard output. I could then use PERL to parse
>>>>the feed, and have PERL generate orderd pairs for GPLOT. I'd write
>>>>a 20 line C program (using boilerplate code), and the remainder
>>>>of the application becomes a 2 line shell script and a 20 line
>>>>PERL program. I would then end up with a real-time graph.
>>>
>>>Or I'd use some cross platform technology, such as Java and have
>>>the same code both platforms. The number of Java ticker applets is
>>>already quite high - since Java allows both easy networking and
>>>GUI development in an OO manner in a strongly typed language, with
>>>the choice of RAD IDE's or CLI Unix tools.
>>
>> PERL is a cross platform technology. It takes less of a
>> performance hit as well. The RAD IDE is less a function
>> of the language than it is 3rd party tools. Although, a
>> small project and a sensibly designed language should not
>> really need RAD tools. The language itself should be a RAD
>> tool.
>
>Is perl faster than Java? For what? GUI's? Using what Java compiler /
>interpreter? a JIT or just the Blackdown port? I suspect perl is faster for
>string handling, and faster than *some* java systems at some tasks. Since both
>can approach the speed of C for some tasks, its hard to say what is faster.
Without a good JIT, java is going to get nowhere near the speed
of C. That's it's great achilles heel and essential design flaw.
There should have been java->native compilers available from day
one.
>
>Interestingly, Java is being added to GCC as a language compilable to native
>binaries via the GCC backend.
>
>Is there a Perl IDE? Other than Emacs, anyway. Perl is not a sensibly designed
>langauge - its more evolved than designed. Python is designed (and nice, too)
>
>>>The HTML CGI is quite possilbe on Windows as well, and itsnot like
>>>Perl is tied to Unix - there is a Win32 port of this, and Python,
>>>and Tcl, and bash....
>>
>> True, however Unix is an OS designed from the ground up to
>> be a symphony of small tools. Windows tries to be that but
>
>Unix *was* a symphony of small tools, and then creaping featuritis occurred.
>
>Too many unix utils have too many inconsistent command options. Why is it
>tar -xIvf filename for bzipped and xzvf for gzipped? Tar can determine the
>filetype for itself, rather than gratuitously bloat its options.
Creeping featuritus != inconsistent command options.
[deletia]
>
>> instead uses component technology more as a replacement for
>> shared libraries than to expose a collection of small
>> efficient components that can work well together.
>
>It does reduce the overhead and messy error prone programming of parsing text
>streams, though.
Code reuse can accomplish the same thing.
>
>Its preferable to to have a single backend library, than a CLI tool to which
>you feed input and read output from. Thats why we have libcdaudio, and multiple
>CD playing programs using it, rather than exec("cdcd play 1") . Its also the
That's just another variant on the small tool.
>same for licq - one backend, many frontends. GUI and CLI. Its why there is
>libmikmod, rather than simply fronting the mikmod cli client - although some
>do it this way as well.
[deletia]
They're functionally equivalent and both relatively simple.
--
So long as Apple uses Quicktime to effectively |||
make web based video 'Windows only' Club, / | \
Apple is no less monopolistic than Microsoft.
Need sane PPP docs? Try penguin.lvcm.com.
------------------------------
From: "Robert Moir" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: UNIX recruiters and MS Word resumes
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 22:16:19 -0000
"Donn Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> You've got to love how they want your resume in MS Word format. I
> hate Word and Windows, but yet some of these UNIX recruiters will
> bitch and moan unless you email your resume in Word format. Oh well,
> I guess I'm gonna have to download Corel WP and Applix demo. :-) From
> there, I can try to export my resume to Word format.
>
> This one recruiter was really whiney: "But I don't _LIKE_ resumes in
> text format". I guess saying "You'll take it and like it" isn't an
> option. Why do recruiters in the UNIX field always want resumes in
> Word format?
Probably because they are just using whats on their desktop, and are just
interested in selling a service (i.e. introducing people with talent to
people who need talent) and don't give a flying f*** at a rolling donut
about advocating anything except why you should sign up with their agency?
Come on, the cluelessness of some recruitment agency drones has long been a
staple diet in sysadmin and bob legends.
Obviously this is a problem for you if you cannot export to word from
$YourFavourateWordProcessor but they probably don't know the problem exists,
so they don't even have a chance to not care about your problem. As someone
else said, use Rich Text, for all we can sit here and complain about this
and that on our various preferred word processors, they should all speak
that and the guy at the other end is unlikely to see the difference. Heck as
word associates itself with everything in site you can be sure they'll even
see the same pretty word icon for your document regardless of whether you
send it as a Word DOC file or as RTF.
Rob Moir
------------------------------
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