Linux-Advocacy Digest #962, Volume #25 Wed, 5 Apr 00 12:13:09 EDT
Contents:
Group Calendar (Rick Kennett)
(Red) Hats up to Billy Gates? ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Windows 2000: nothing worse (Ken Kinder)
Re: Windows 2000 has "issues" (Dionysus)
Re: Windows 2000 has "issues" ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Scripting? Programming? Abraxas tells all (Craig Kelley)
Re: The Failure of Microsoft Propaganda -was- So where are the MS supporters.
("Rick Schaut")
Re: Group Calendar (Tim Kelley)
Re: So where are the MS supporters. (No Name)
Re: benchmark for speed in linux / windows (Craig Kelley)
Re: The Failure of Microsoft Propaganda -was- So where are the MS supporters.
(Damien)
Re: New research question, this time about Apache (Nix)
Re: Linux mail/news application questions (Christian Winter)
Re: 2000: Hammer blows to the Micro$oft machine! (Wolfgang Weisselberg)
Re: Why Linux on the desktop? ("John W. Stevens")
Re: Why Linux on the desktop? ("John W. Stevens")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Rick Kennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Group Calendar
Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 10:19:23 -0400
HELP! - We have recently hired an HR Director who fancies herself as a
technology Guru. We have taken great pains to avoid MS wherever possible
and are using Netscape 4.x as email and web client throughout the
organization. (Linux and Apache at the server side). She has started to
campaign for NT and Exchange (what she was used to from previous life).
I believe if I could deploy a web based calendar that could be used by
individuals or teams I could end this threat. Are there any good group
calendars that will work in our Linux / Apache environment. Appreciate
any suggestions.
Rick
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: (Red) Hats up to Billy Gates?
Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 14:14:19 GMT
Microsoft was found guilty of violating the antitrust laws. Do you agree
that the ruling will improve competition in the marketplace, as stated
in Red Hat?
http://www.DoSurvey.com/cgi-bin/showitem.cgi?surveyid=50000082
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: Ken Kinder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Windows 2000: nothing worse
Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 14:19:56 GMT
In article <8c3dm1$o8s$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
"Christopher Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> An OS owned by any publically traded company has to be profitiable,
AFAIK.
Learn more about business. The company has to be profitable, not all its
products. It's is profitible for a business to give away an OS in the
interest of selling applications on it.
--
Ken Kinder
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dionysus)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Windows 2000 has "issues"
Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 14:28:58 GMT
On 1 Apr 2000 00:34:24 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I do not know why you guys are making a big deal of this issue.
>
>If an ISP expects more than 51 connections to come in, they
>simply buy an additional copy of WIn2000 Server windows edition.
hmm.....why did they buy the initial copy if they didn't think it
would fix all their woes?
>
>The ISP needs to do their job, they need to montior
>how many IP's they use, and make sure they divide that
>number by 51. The resulting number is the number of win2000
>server windows edition they need to purshase from MS to meer
>their needs.
Oh.....so all they need to do is waste most of their time making sure
they don't go over 51 connections, rather than dealing with the other
details of running an ISP?.....has it ever occured to you that ISPs
don't have some kind of magical existance which allows them to fit 344
hours per week instead of the usual 172?...running an ISP takes enough
of a person's time without the necessity to check up to make sure that
everything is still functional all the bloody time.....
>
>I would say to also add 5% number of copies of win2000 server
>windows edition to be on the safe side.
I would say if you want to be on the safe side, get someone in to
configure a linux box. Don't get me wrong, i am far from being a linux
advocate - i have installed it 5 times and never got everything
working for the tasks i had in mind to assign the machine (tasks which
win95 did quite easily), but if I was after a machine that didn't
crash all the fucking time rather than one that was easy to set up and
had a huge amount of software available for it, there is no way i
would go for a windows box. Likewise, I would avoid mac's, as instead
of having microsoft's trait of crashing all the fucking time, they
have the problem of not being as functional as you could wish for, and
there being no goddamn software for the damn things.....
>
>MS can also sell the ISP's a program that will dynamically
>detect the number of IP's used approaching 51, say at around
>48 or 49, and this program will 'hot swap' the load of
>incomming connection to a copy of win2000 server windows
>edition whose number of IP's used is much less than 51.
you mean they can sell them a bug patch? cool. will the bug patch
work, or will they have to buy another bug patch for this software?
>
>If all the copies of win2000 server windows edition running
>have each used the 51 IP's they can use, this program can
>automatically send an SNMP alert message for the operator to
>install an additional copy of win2000 server windows edition.
i seriously hope you are just one of those individuals whose sarcasm
is somewhat harder to detect than most.....
>
>Each OS has its limitations in one way or the other. The
>beauty with windows is that you could always buy more copies
>to spread the load around.
and this is not a beauty of other, less bug-infested OSes?
>
>I would have real issue with MS with this issue if they limited
>the number to say 15 or 12. But I think 51 is a large enough
>number, and we should thank, not condem MS for this. If MS
>wanted to really produce something less than an excellence,
>they would have put the limit at 5 IP's. Then I would be
>the first to have an issue with this issue.
>
>Having only 51 IP's per win2000 server windows edition, is not
>a big issue. Learn to live with it.
and that, my friend, is why YOU are not running an ISP......
>
>bob
>
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Windows 2000 has "issues"
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 09:42:22 -0500
Apparently you don't understand sarcasm. The poster you were responding to
was not serious.
Dionysus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> On 1 Apr 2000 00:34:24 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > I do not know why you guys are making a big deal of this issue.
> >
> >If an ISP expects more than 51 connections to come in, they
> >simply buy an additional copy of WIn2000 Server windows edition.
> hmm.....why did they buy the initial copy if they didn't think it
> would fix all their woes?
> >
> >The ISP needs to do their job, they need to montior
> >how many IP's they use, and make sure they divide that
> >number by 51. The resulting number is the number of win2000
> >server windows edition they need to purshase from MS to meer
> >their needs.
> Oh.....so all they need to do is waste most of their time making sure
> they don't go over 51 connections, rather than dealing with the other
> details of running an ISP?.....has it ever occured to you that ISPs
> don't have some kind of magical existance which allows them to fit 344
> hours per week instead of the usual 172?...running an ISP takes enough
> of a person's time without the necessity to check up to make sure that
> everything is still functional all the bloody time.....
> >
> >I would say to also add 5% number of copies of win2000 server
> >windows edition to be on the safe side.
> I would say if you want to be on the safe side, get someone in to
> configure a linux box. Don't get me wrong, i am far from being a linux
> advocate - i have installed it 5 times and never got everything
> working for the tasks i had in mind to assign the machine (tasks which
> win95 did quite easily), but if I was after a machine that didn't
> crash all the fucking time rather than one that was easy to set up and
> had a huge amount of software available for it, there is no way i
> would go for a windows box. Likewise, I would avoid mac's, as instead
> of having microsoft's trait of crashing all the fucking time, they
> have the problem of not being as functional as you could wish for, and
> there being no goddamn software for the damn things.....
> >
> >MS can also sell the ISP's a program that will dynamically
> >detect the number of IP's used approaching 51, say at around
> >48 or 49, and this program will 'hot swap' the load of
> >incomming connection to a copy of win2000 server windows
> >edition whose number of IP's used is much less than 51.
> you mean they can sell them a bug patch? cool. will the bug patch
> work, or will they have to buy another bug patch for this software?
> >
> >If all the copies of win2000 server windows edition running
> >have each used the 51 IP's they can use, this program can
> >automatically send an SNMP alert message for the operator to
> >install an additional copy of win2000 server windows edition.
> i seriously hope you are just one of those individuals whose sarcasm
> is somewhat harder to detect than most.....
> >
> >Each OS has its limitations in one way or the other. The
> >beauty with windows is that you could always buy more copies
> >to spread the load around.
> and this is not a beauty of other, less bug-infested OSes?
> >
> >I would have real issue with MS with this issue if they limited
> >the number to say 15 or 12. But I think 51 is a large enough
> >number, and we should thank, not condem MS for this. If MS
> >wanted to really produce something less than an excellence,
> >they would have put the limit at 5 IP's. Then I would be
> >the first to have an issue with this issue.
> >
> >Having only 51 IP's per win2000 server windows edition, is not
> >a big issue. Learn to live with it.
> and that, my friend, is why YOU are not running an ISP......
> >
> >bob
> >
>
------------------------------
Subject: Scripting? Programming? Abraxas tells all
From: Craig Kelley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 05 Apr 2000 08:44:28 -0600
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (abraxas) writes:
> Jim Richardson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > since there are at least 2 C interpreters, (EIC and another one the name
> > of which escapes me) and compilers for python (the byte code compiler built
> > into the interpreter for one.) and for tcl.
>
> Simply compiling a script to binary does not make the original script
> a *program*, and thus writing it is not by nessesity *programming*.
Then please explain the *exact* differences found in Perl as opposed to
a real assemb^h^h^h^h^h^hprogramming language like C.
What is the fundamental difference between a "scripting" language and
a "programming" language?
--
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
Craig Kelley -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.isu.edu/~kellcrai finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP block
------------------------------
From: "Rick Schaut" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The Failure of Microsoft Propaganda -was- So where are the MS supporters.
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 07:40:45 -0700
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,alt.destroy.microsoft
fmc <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:AlBG4.37969$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> OF course I checked out the URL. That's how I knew there was no 99 version
> of PTax.
So, does PTax also compute your penalties for filing late?
> Who still does these things on paper? Let the computer do the things it's
> good at. I only use a pencil to do crossword puzzles.
Doing a crossword puzzle in anything but ink is cheating.
Regards,
Rick Schaut
------------------------------
From: Tim Kelley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Group Calendar
Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 09:54:16 -0500
Rick Kennett wrote:
>
> HELP! - We have recently hired an HR Director who fancies herself as a
> technology Guru. We have taken great pains to avoid MS wherever possible
> and are using Netscape 4.x as email and web client throughout the
> organization. (Linux and Apache at the server side). She has started to
> campaign for NT and Exchange (what she was used to from previous life).
> I believe if I could deploy a web based calendar that could be used by
> individuals or teams I could end this threat. Are there any good group
> calendars that will work in our Linux / Apache environment. Appreciate
> any suggestions.
> Rick
cyberscheduler:
http://www.crosswind.com
It is quite good, entirely web based and works fine with any web
server. It's somewhat expensive, though, considering what it
does ($30 a seat - I mean, c'mon, Exchange is only ~$30 a seat,
even if you also need an NT license - another $35 to go with
it). It integrates as one would expect with all the internet
standards you would expect it to.
Using this with an IMAP server, apache and plain ol' smtp pretty
much duplicates the Exchange groupware funtionality.
The only problem I have with piecing together different
applications is you lose the "single sign-on" that you get with
an integrated product such as exchange which can use NT domains
for authentication. People have trouble remembering their
passwords. That is really the only thing they will have to gripe
about.
I'm not sure if it is possible to use NIS with it; it uses its
own authentication system and it's been awhile and I'm not sure
that you can modify it.
--
Tim Kelley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (No Name)
Subject: Re: So where are the MS supporters.
Date: 5 Apr 2000 14:31:52 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Wed, 05 Apr 2000 12:06:43 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
>On 5 Apr 2000 12:22:43 +0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Terry
>Porter) wrote:
>
> <big deletia, including stuff about a Jedi...>
>
>You won't try it because you are afraid your bleoved Linux will fail,
>like it usually does.
This you know is not true, otherwise its use will not be growing.
>
>Same reason there are no TPC benchmarks for Linux.
I am tired of MS benchmarkitis.
Any person in the computer field worth her salt knows that one
can configure systems to perform nicely in benchmarks, I have
seen so many ways to make systems look good in
benchmarks that I just don't give any credibility to the people
that keep babling about them. They are at best a very rough
estimate about wich system could (*could*) solve a given
problem, but they are not a true indicative of the capacity
of a system.
The only benchmark that counts is the one for my particular
situation and need, not all the MegaSPecsTPC that somebody
reports for a system.
In an ideal world that would mean that the best OS eventually will
emerge thanks to its versatility for different tasks, in the MS world
bad luck for you because or you put up with whatever they spit
out every 2 years or you are an inferior been as many MS defenders
here would like to make us believe.
>
>>>
>>>Steve
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>On Tue, 04 Apr 2000 23:45:00 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Tue, 04 Apr 2000 22:11:42 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>>>On Tue, 04 Apr 2000 21:24:29 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
>>>>>wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> Actually, in those days, the hardware was considerably better.
>>>>>
>>>>>You're kidding right?
>>>>>How about CMI drives that self destructed in the original IBM AT.
>>>>
>>>> The MACINTOSH hardware, shillboy.
>>>>
>>>>[deletia]
>>>
>>
>>
>>--
>>Kind Regards
>>Terry
>
------------------------------
Subject: Re: benchmark for speed in linux / windows
From: Craig Kelley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 05 Apr 2000 09:05:49 -0600
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> So Windows find is faster and you call that inefficiency? You Linux
> guys have a strange way of thinking.
There is *no* way that Windows find is faster than locate.
[snip]
> I just did a find for the file slime.exe (no such file on my system)
> and it searched all files, drives and folders a total of about 46 gig
> of storage (12 gig of actual data) in 15 seconds. This is on my
> smaller, and slower system BTW.
$time slocate slime.exe
Command exited with non-zero status 1
0.76user 0.01system 0:00.78elapsed 98%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata
0maxresident)k0inputs+0outputs (353major+15minor)pagefaults 0swaps
Hmm, less than a second. It's true that I only have 9GB of data on
this machine, but let's try it on one of our servers which has 58GB:
$ time slocate slime.exe
Command exited with non-zero status 1
0.46user 0.01system 0:00.48elapsed 96%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (766major+14minor)pagefaults 0swaps
Even faster! :)
--
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
Craig Kelley -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.isu.edu/~kellcrai finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP block
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Damien)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: The Failure of Microsoft Propaganda -was- So where are the MS supporters.
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 05 Apr 2000 15:26:48 GMT
On Wed, 5 Apr 2000 03:42:48 -0500, in alt.destroy.microsoft,
Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
| Jim Richardson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
| news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
| > Kerberos and M$'s little "addition" (undocumented)
|
| And that undocumented addition is entirely standards compliant. The
| standard doesn't require the documentation of extension fields.
Basically, Microsoft has made additions to the standard that make it
impossible for a non MS server to server Kerberos tickets to an MS
client. Another cut and dry case of MS using embrace-and-extend
tactics to leverage their desktop OS monopoly into the server market.
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/kerberos-faq/general/section-62.html
------------------------------
From: Nix <$}xinix{$@esperi.demon.co.uk>
Crossposted-To: alt.linux,alt.os.linux,uk.comp.os.linux
Subject: Re: New research question, this time about Apache
Date: 05 Apr 2000 00:18:50 +0100
Chris Beauchamp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Tom Steinberg wrote:
> >
> > Woah, OK. Looks like I've managed to instigate a bit of a battle here.
> > Thanks for the comments, though. I will certainly work on modifying some
> > parts as a consequence. I should stress that when I talked about
> > professional software, I was thinking of profession in the monetary context,
> > like a professional sportsman.
> >
> Indeed, but the opposite of professional is amateur which has lots of
> negative connatations.
This very much depends on the field. Amateur astronomers are
emphatically *not* derided; if anything they have a higher `hit rate'
than the professionals :)
Personally I count `professional' to be a word almost without value
these days. It's been abused into destruction by idiots for whom it
means variously `soulless corporate drone' or `costs a lot'.
> > 3) Geographic/demographic info on the opensource community. I know it must
> > be pretty scarce, but it'd be interesting. After all, not many world beating
> > trends start in Finland.
> >
> I imagine the Finnish would disagree...
Further it didn't start in Finland. It started, well, everywhere, but
major starting points that I know of were MIT (FSF, Lisp...), Stanford
(SAIL and all that that implies, TeX, METAFONT), AT&T (Unix, C)...
... it's pretty much the history of the practical CS field, so, as such,
it started everywhere.
> GNU was around alot longer before 1991 - RMS
> left MIT in 1984! OK, so he probably didn't have critical mass, but the
> culture was there, and he was producing good code (we all know that
> EMACS is the perfect editor![Ducks to avoid the flame throwers]) The
> environment was there in MIT in microcosm.
GCC started a lot before 1991, and was usable long before then, as were
the binutils --- of course, or Linus would have had difficulty compiling
Linux ;)
GNU awk was sufficiently usable in '89 to be adopted as part of 4.4BSD.
TeX was usable in 1980.
Admittedly, these were all cathedral-style projects; all had some
feedback from outside, but at that point all were basically the work of
a few people. (Of course, in the case of TeX, when that person is Donald
Knuth you can make a few allowances. I'd guess Knuth's code is probably
better than, well, just about any other collection of people's, no
matter what the size ;) but then we can't all be geniuses.)
> I also think that all the coders were there already, and had been. The
> volume of coders hasn't changed, just the links between them have become
> bigger and better. The culture that mostly hung out in academia has
> found an online home.
Agreed. Vernor Vinge has been heard to say that the increasing density
of comms links between people on the net is turning them into something
like a very loose group mind where this sort of thing is concerned... so
the netted culture is probably more effective at what it does than the
academic culture ever was. The links are faster and their overall
latency is lower.
--
`Have you actually considered the quality of the average powerpoint slide?
It's like unto the average DIY table leg - except that the leg is ugly but
functional where the powerpoint slide is just ugly.' --- David Damerell
------------------------------
From: Christian Winter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.development.apps
Subject: Re: Linux mail/news application questions
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 14:20:10 +0200
[EMAIL PROTECTED] schrob:
> I'd love a mail program that can sort and search mail. One that can
> automatically place mail in folders based on simple rules.
I myself use fetchmail / procmail. The latter installed quite
well from the shipped rpm, just had to put a few lines in
~/.procmailrc like
MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail
DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/mbox
:0
* ^To:.*thepoet1
inbox
:0
* ^From:.*webform
webforms
> A contact
> list that integrates with the mail program so I only have to maintain
> one list of contacts/email addresses.
There are some programms providing this, like e.g. postoffice.
Think this will also be working in kmail with KDE2.
> The news reading programs are very weak. I simply want the ability to
> select what articles I want to download, tell it to download, and have
> it happen.
I'm doing this with leafnode, a newsserver designed for small sites
and dialup-machines. It is able to download only the headers and
get the bodies of marked/read headers in the next poll.
It also has a graphical configuration tool (keafnode) for kde.
> I'd also like the ability to have it automaticly combine
> and decode messages. Several windows programs, (outlook, agent, etc)
> have these abilities. I'm surprised Linux still doesn't.
Well, you pay for this abilities in Win with other bugs -
e.g. wrong char encoding or strange citing behaviour and
enourmous security leeks. The latter is IMHO the main cause,
why linux doesn't yet implement those features.
> Are there any modern applications in development that meet these
> needs?
There are some apps stepping into this direction, as I said above,
there is postoffice, then there's kfmail. But I'd rather
suggest not to use what we germans call
"the egg-laying-cotton-milk-pig".
I'm using a mail client and an extra news client (knode, which is
still quite beta, already able to show basic html, but no
uudecode/mimedecode up to now - I have integrated this myself,
but don't already have a system-independent solution working
stable, so this may still take some time. Yes, it also sends
mail-replies).
> Everytime I tried to search for an answer to this question, I
> found a lot of advice saying to use mail, trn, etc. Yeah, I used those
> programs for a while; but I didn't upgrade to linux to use the same
> text based programs I used 10 years ago.
At the moment there's a lot of development going on. Don't forget,
Linux is a rather "young" OS regarding the home-user segment.
So honest need for graphical apps only arose little more than
one or two years ago.
Now the point is, I don't want to force anyone to use Linux if
it doesn't fit his/her needs. If you're used to Win-Apps and
don't have honest problems with them, why change to Linux?
Also there's the possibility to boot to both OSes on one
machine, or even to run either both simultaneously (vmware)
or run win-apps (wine, does win98-Apps now including DirectX).
Regards
Christian
--
|~-_ /~~~~~ Free Linux Portal: http://www.linux-config.de ~~~~~\ _-~|
| // de.etc.schreiben.* - Usenet-Literatur im www: \\ |
| // http://www.usenet-autoren.de \\ |
|_||[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.thepoet1.de__||_|
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Wolfgang Weisselberg)
Crossposted-To: alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: 2000: Hammer blows to the Micro$oft machine!
Date: 5 Apr 2000 15:41:14 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Tue, 04 Apr 2000 23:41:21 GMT,
Leonard F. Agius <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[Editing the autoexec.bat]
> Not bragging in the least. That's my point. You and I don't think twice about
> doing something that scares the hell out of the average computer
> illiterate person. Can you imagine these people having to edit a line of code?
You don't let people drive cars without a permit (which,
theoretically proves that you can survive in traffic and know
most rules somewhat). So why in hell should you let people use
computers without even basic knowledge? Give them a typewriter
or a console game (and they'd be too complicated, too).
> Too many people who
> can't program the clock on their VCR are now the "driving force" behind the
> marketing decisions for a lot of software.
And you'd buy a car marketed by people who don't have any idea
about security?
> And that's exactly what the mass market wants: As easy to use as a toaster. If
> they have to think, in any way, FORGET IT. They don't want to make the effort.
Console games ARE to complicated, then. (not to mention ANY OS)
-Wolf"Now I understand why in the US judical system, common
sense is not assumed to exist"gang
------------------------------
From: "John W. Stevens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Why Linux on the desktop?
Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 09:42:20 -0600
The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
>
>
> But...where does the catnip fit into all this??? :-)
Uncaught single bit errors caused by computer catnip (IE, stray cosmic
rays)?
--
If I spoke for HP --- there probably wouldn't BE an HP!
John Stevens
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: "John W. Stevens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Why Linux on the desktop?
Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 09:53:05 -0600
Matthias Warkus wrote:
>
> It was the Tue, 04 Apr 2000 13:21:57 -0600...
> ...and John W. Stevens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Is your cat a computer?
>
> No. However, your argument is still pointless. Programming is creating
> the implementation of an algorithm,
Right. So, my argument isn't pointless.
What, after all, is an "Are you sure" dialog, other than an assertion
check?
(For the non-C programmer, and assertion is a statement you put into
your program to check to see if a precondition holds true before
attempting to perform processing dependent on those preconditions).
> that usually is then stored in and
> executed by a computer.
Ah. So you are extending your definition to require persistence? As
in: "It isn't a program if'n I don't save it?"
That doesn't sound like a meaningful or related condition, to me. All
that sounds like is: inefficient use of time.
> In your abovementioned example, would you care to explain where the
> algorithm is and how it is implemented, stored and executed?
Which example?
> Using a GUI involves executing an algorithm with your own *brain*,
So . . . the bits in the computer are actually being flipped by your
brain power!? Wow . . . and I mean, wow. You should contact your
nearest ESP researcher and volunteer to do some experiments.
> just like very much everything you do. You're trying to explain me
> that everything you do is programming if you do it to a computer.
No, I'm saying that the act of designing what you want the computer to
do, then telling it to do what you want it to do is programming. The
mere fact that you have to *REWRITE* a great number of the programs you
use on a GUI system (because you either didn't, or couldn't make them
persistent) does not change the fact that you designed, wrote then
executed the program.
The mere fact that the program is highly interactive, again, does not
mean that it isn't a program.
The fact that the subroutines you wish to execute, must be invoked by
clicking a mouse button, again, does not mean that you aren't executing
a program . . . in fact, that's exactly what's happening when you click
a mouse button on a GUI button: you are invoking a subroutine.
Deciding which subroutines to invoke, and in which order, is certainly
programming, right?
> Well, if that is so, why isn't it programming when I do it to a cat?
Is your cat a computer?
> > Hmm. Now, just what HP product do you own?
>
> A LaserJet IIIp. Very good machine.
Thank you. You are welcome. Part of HP's ability to produce high
quality products is our ability to recognize that people are part of the
system.
--
If I spoke for HP --- there probably wouldn't BE an HP!
John Stevens
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