Linux-Advocacy Digest #165, Volume #26 Mon, 17 Apr 00 02:13:04 EDT
Contents:
Re: Linux for a web developer (Leslie Mikesell)
Re: Linux for a web developer (R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ))
Re: Linux for a web developer (Donovan Rebbechi)
Re: MICROSOFT IT THRU! MICROSOFT IS THRU! ("Christopher Smith")
Re: Become a Windows Registry Expert! (Andre Ervin)
Re: Mandrake is listening! It's "Da Bomb"! ("Charles Kerr")
Re: Become a Windows Registry Expert! (Jack Troughton)
Re: Become a Windows Registry Expert! (Jack Troughton)
Re: Windows 2000 has 63,000 bugs - Win2k.html [0/1] - Win2k.html [0/1] (The Ghost In
The Machine)
Re: THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING! Was (Re: MICROSOFT IT THRU! MICROSOFT
IS THRU! ("2 + 2")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Leslie Mikesell)
Subject: Re: Linux for a web developer
Date: 16 Apr 2000 23:34:16 -0500
In article <8ddh5s$15e$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Davorin Mestric <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> However, for the benefit of everyone else, I respond as follows:
>>
>> Yes, component programming can be done on UNIX.
>
>please specify how.
The traditional way has been to run the components as separate
processes connected by pipes. On a system where there is
low overhead to start a process this works well and is the
real reason that more complex mechanisms have not been
popular under unix. When this approach reaches its limit
(as it will when you do an artificial benchmark on a web
server with local clients), the next step is to compile
your component as a shared C library and link it dynamically
into anything that wants it. There is a well-defined interface
in apache to load additional code as a module. Php and mod_perl
are examples, and perl has a standard mechanism for loading
and accessing additional libraries. Most of the free useful
packages available in C are already available as perl modules
on CPAN. And, of course if you really want cross platform
interoperable objects you need CORBA.
>>Yes, database access is quite easy
>> on UNIX and all the buzzwords and acronyms in the world will not change
>that.
>
>but is it easier than using ADO?
I haven't seen what ADO does, but there are several layers of perl
modules from bare DBI (which will automatically load the right low
level DBD for the datasource requested) to general web or xml
translation interfaces. If the higher level interfaces do what
you want, ADO can't be much easier than that.
>> Yes, apache has built in support for XML and XSL.
>
>but can your perl use it? can you use it from php? thanks to COM when i
>install a new version of the XML library, all of the languages and tools can
>use it. something similar to this simply does not exist on unix.
Perl has pretty good XML support, so-so XSL, but as soon as there is
a free C library for XSLT I'm sure someone will wrap it for access
from perl.
>you can say whatever you want but web developers on windows hava a nicer,
>richer, more logical, more functionaly environment.
As long as you are willing to use single-vendor, non-standard,
non-portable tools on a platform with a history of instability.
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux for a web developer
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 04:44:55 GMT
In article <8ddh5s$15e$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
"Davorin Mestric" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Donovan Rebbechi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I'm not going to argue about stats.
> > They say whatever you want them to.
> > It's not true that one size fits all though.
>
> but those graphs really do look nice for
> COM as middleware, and bad for sun and ibm.
Actually, the middleware distributed component
would be DCOM. The Com would only be intrathread
based on DLLs and in-process components.
And yes, there are some very nifty COM components.
VBGraph is espcially impressive.
Of course, CORBA supports GNOME and KDE/QT components
such as real-time charting of multiple preperties,
There are a number of very interesting components for
which there are no practical Microsoft COM equivalents.
Wouldn't you like to know what they are :-)
Conversely, there are several Microsoft COM component
equivalents that weren't available under Java, that
ARE available under Linux.
> > Despite knowing next to nothing about
> > web development on UNIX, you seem
> > completely convinced that Windows
> > is a better choice, so I'm not going to
> > bother trying to convince you otherwise.
Donovan knows the paradigm he has been trained
to know and love. To Donovan, the key ingrediant
of a really good web page is the ActiveX control
that lets him put COM components into the client's
PC, complete with the ability to read, write, or
erase any file on the machine (Windows 95/98) or any
file accessible to the user.
Actually, for extending the capabilities of a server,
COM provides the ability write software using components
that can then be moved to other components.
Of course, with Microsoft making COM and DCOM an absolutely
necessary part of the MCSE and MSP exams, you absolutely must
know this material. On the other hand, you probably won't ever
find even one question on CORBA. Typically the only NT programmers
who really knew CORBA are those who must establish connectivity
between NT and UNIX or MVS.
> > However, for the benefit of
> > everyone else, I respond as follows:
> > Yes, component programming can be done on UNIX.
Actually, nearly all UNIX programming is done using several
popular types of components. These may be independent processes
connected using any of the numerous IPC mechanisms. CORBA is
one of several such mechanisms.
Windows 2000 programmers will soon be discovering the benefits
of memory managed components (forks in unix, MTS/Fabrics in NT)
and Message Passing. Pretty soon, Microsoft will "innovate"
pipelines.
> please specify how.
processes connected using pipelines, remote procedure calls, unix
domain sockets, odbc, CORBA, Java Beans and EJB (Beans with Corba).
You see, Microsoft "discovered" the concept of Components back in
about 1995, probably as a result of some of my numerous postings
discussing the advantages of components compared to COM objects
linked "in process".
Microsoft went to a great deal of effort to try and expose everybody
to DCOM exclusively. Microsoft knew about CORBA, and they knew
that CORBA could take control of the desktop away from Microsoft.
Pushing DCOM, which has many of the same elements as CORBA, prevented
Microsoft programmers from implementing back-end components, especially
servers, on CORBA.
Interestingly enough, Microsoft was able to protect COM programmers
from exposure to CORBA by offering the OMG a method of converting
DCOM invocations to CORBA servers.
> >Yes, debugging is easy in perl, and it has a debugger.
Let's see, you have perl, python, tcl, and perl to c converters.
Most of the time mod_perl can handle a pretty substantial amount
of traffic.
> yes, but what about debugging
> your other cgi scripts and programs?
Actually, debugging CGI is pretty easy too. All you have to do
is capture the command using a shell script, then you can feed
it into the CGI server. When you have the input and output
looking good, you debug it using CGI. Then, when you are really
comfortable with it, you put the server in mod_perl.
> > Yes, database access is quite easy
> > on UNIX and all the buzzwords and
> > acronyms in the world will not change
> > that.
>
> but is it easier than using ADO?
There are equivalents to ADO and DAO which are essentially
a combination of ODBC and CORBA.
> > Yes, apache has built in support for XML and XSL.
> but can your perl use it?
It's pretty simple for perl to generate XML from pretty
much any input source. Then it can feed to an XSL
parser if needed to convert to HTML.
Of course, perl can convert directly to the chosen
output format so easily that it is usually easier
to go directly from the database to the output format.
> can you use it from php?
> thanks to COM when i
> install a new version of the XML library,
> all of the languages and tools can
> use it. something similar to this
> simply does not exist on unix.
Actually, unix was designed so that components
could be plugged from one to the other. Linux
and UNIX applications are written to parse data
streams. In most cases, simple tagging can be
used, but if you want to get really sophisticated,
you can use a full-blown parser (yacc/bison) or
as trivial packed string format.
Remember, all of the complexity of CORBA was designed to
support multiple heterogenus platforms. It was neccessary
to be able to integrate big-endian, little-endian, ascii, ebcidec,
and unicode systems such that a mishmash of 20 different systems
could end up with Linux.
> you can say whatever you want but web
> developers on windows hava a nicer,
> richer, more logical, more functionaly environment.
If by nicer, you mean you have more pretty little pop-up paperclips
and cute little wizards dancing around the screen, you're probably
right.
Linux is pretty much a no-nonsense environment.
While there are definite advantages to a Graphical USER
Interface, anyone responsible for really large enterprise
level projects knows that GUI Programmer interfaces, especially
when this is the ONLY method of loading the system, actually
becomes a liability.
When you are dealing with hundreds, or even thousands of forms
and documents, and dozens of schemas, having an environment
that can only be implemented on one platform, in one programming
language, and on one graphical programming interface becomes
a huge operations problem.
--
Rex Ballard - Open Source Advocate, Internet
I/T Architect, MIS Director
http://www.open4success.com
Linux - 60 million satisfied users worldwide
and growing at over 1%/week!
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Subject: Re: Linux for a web developer
Date: 17 Apr 2000 00:56:32 -0400
On Mon, 17 Apr 2000 04:44:55 GMT, R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) wrote:
>Donovan knows the paradigm he has been trained
>to know and love. To Donovan, the key ingrediant
>of a really good web page is the ActiveX control
>that lets him put COM components into the client's
>PC, complete with the ability to read, write, or
>erase any file on the machine (Windows 95/98) or any
>file accessible to the user.
Careful with those attributions, Rex. My Windows programming experience
amounts to clicking a few buttons in VB. I program in perl and C++ on Linux.
--
Donovan
------------------------------
From: "Christopher Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: MICROSOFT IT THRU! MICROSOFT IS THRU!
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 15:10:30 +1000
"David Steuber" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> "Christopher Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> ' I think it's gonna become like that navy ship story :).
>
> Except the USS Yorktown really _was_ dead in the water after a
> computer failure.
But not an NT failure. At least not that anyone can demonstrate.
------------------------------
From: Andre Ervin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Become a Windows Registry Expert!
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 05:19:48 GMT
In article <DGoK4.2402$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Shock
Boy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "Tim Mayer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:cPmK4.42707$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >
> > "James L. Ryan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > in article wukK4.42391$[EMAIL PROTECTED], Tim Mayer at
> > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 4/16/00 10:54 AM:
> > >
> > > > How does the Mac handle printing one document while you edit
> > > > another?
> > >
> > > Just fine! The document to be printed is placed in a print queue and
> while
> > > this queue is being serviced you are free to do whatever else you
> > > wish,
> > > including editing other documents or running other applications.
> > >
> >
> > Does it send the document to the queue in the background? (i.e. what if
> it's
> > a big document and takes a long time to be queued)
>
> With most adobe products, you can do nothing while it is being rendered
> and
> sent to the queue.. This is a direct result of their
> "superior" memory management, and lack of multiple instances and poor
> multi-threading.
>
> Many Mac users do not realize that this is a decrease in productivity..
> and
> can not even *concieve* of the idea of being able to continue work
> instead
> of just "waiting".
That's funny, my NT box at work behaves similarly, and we're talking
about simple *Word* files here...
--
dre http://home.earthlink.net/~dre77/picks/
------------------------------
From: "Charles Kerr" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mandrake is listening! It's "Da Bomb"!
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 00:33:09 -0600
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, The Cat
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The version of Pan I am using is 0.80 beta 5-1 which I believe was
> released on 4/14/00.
>
> It just freeze's on me with tasks running and a not able to connect to
> server message in the log. Sometimes it works ok other times not.
If you'd like to talk about this in mail I'll try to fix the problem.
Could you try starting up Pan from the command line with a
"--debug-socket" option so that we can see what's going on?
We're trying to stomp out all the bugs and end this beta cycle. :)
cheers,
Charles
(A Pan Developer)
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jack Troughton)
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Become a Windows Registry Expert!
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 04:50:34 GMT
On Sun, 16 Apr 2000 14:07:38, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michael J. Stango) wrote:
>In article
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]
on.net>,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jack Troughton) wrote:
>
>> >You still have to actually *touch* your PC to power it up? This is year
>> >2000? <g> Hell, in another few weeks I'll be turning lights and things on
>> >and off by voice commands to my Mac (right now I have to hit buttons on a
>> >remote for that stuff).
>>
>> Heh, you can do that _today_ with os/2. In fact, you've been able to
>> do that for about two years now with os2.
>
>Are you talking about the computer accepting voice commands? Try since 1994
>on the Mac. I don't know when the first scriptable X10 software was written
>for the Mac so appliances and lights could be controlled by voice, but it
>was certainly more than two years ago.
1996 for warp for voice commands as part of the system, so about four
years for warp. I was talking specifically about using voice control
for house control using X-10 devices. The X-10 application doesn't
have any specific voice features, but the voice control in warp can be
used to control any app via scripting.
>When I say, "in another few weeks," I mean, "when the stuff I've ordered
>arrives and I find the time to add it into my home automation system and
>write the voice command Applescripts." I don't mean, "I'm anxiously
>awaiting completion of the software so I can do it."
Ahhh... good for the mac, then.
Actually, it's kind of funny; there's another thread on the go about
document-centric vs. app-centric models; you CAN use a doc-centric
approach on a PC, just not with windows. In warp, having each 'doc' in
a separate window is the usual way of doing things, and personally
(having used and using windows extensively in my work life) I find the
document-centric approach far easier to learn and use. MDI is an
abomination in my opinion.
--
==========================================================
* Jack Troughton jake at jakesplace.dhs.org *
* http://jakesplace.dhs.org ftp://jakesplace.dhs.org *
* Montréal PQ Canada news://jakesplace.dhs.org *
==========================================================
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jack Troughton)
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Become a Windows Registry Expert!
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 04:58:32 GMT
On Sun, 16 Apr 2000 19:43:33, Marty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Jack Troughton wrote:
>>
>> Yeah, but it's still way more robust than the registries are, and
>> since each app is quite capable of having it's own, you minimize the
>> risk of a badly written app toasting the system's ini files, instead
>> of just itself.
>
>Yes and no. It is very good that we can use the same system API calls to
>access our own private INI files. However, the structure of those INI files
>is quite simplistic. The Windows registry is hierarchical and can go "n"
>levels deep. The OS/2 INI format just has 2 levels of hierarchy: application
>and key. You can only assign values to app/key pairs and you can't go any
>deeper than that. Personally, I've never needed more than that, but it is
>less flexible in this way than the Windows registry.
As I understand it, the design decision was made to sacrifice
flexibility for reliability in this instance; it's a lot easier to
recover data from a non-hierarchical system than a hierarchical one,
and that the system along with the file system would supply hierarchy
by allowing more than one ini file. I read that one some time ago on a
web page somewhere, but it was quite a ways back, so I would have no
idea where to reference that. The main idea was that it was a lot
easier to repair a flat database than a hierarchical one...
BTW- I've read your mention of a new app coming from you using MGL...
can you tell us some more about it? I'm curious... ;)
--
==========================================================
* Jack Troughton jake at jakesplace.dhs.org *
* http://jakesplace.dhs.org ftp://jakesplace.dhs.org *
* Montréal PQ Canada news://jakesplace.dhs.org *
==========================================================
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.redhat
Subject: Re: Windows 2000 has 63,000 bugs - Win2k.html [0/1] - Win2k.html [0/1]
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 05:44:27 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, David Steuber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote on Mon, 17 Apr 2000 03:00:01 GMT
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (abraxas) writes:
>
>' > Fucking GOTO's all over the place.
>'
>' Have you looked at the source for the linux kernel?
>
>david@Interloper:> pwd
>/usr/src/linux
>david@Interloper:> find . -name '*.c' -exec grep ' goto ' {} \; | wc
> 580 2212 19404
>
>Color me surprised. Some of those are in comments, BTW. This is the
>2.2.14 kernel from kernel.org.
A slight quibble.
On a 2.2.13-5 kernel (Red Hat 6.0), I used a slightly different query,
and got far more:
bash$ find . -name '*.c' | xargs grep '\<goto\>' | wc
6553 21194 267319
bash$
(the \< ... \> construct means that goto must be delimited by
non-word characters, which means things like abcgotoabc won't match :-) )
This kind of surprises me too, although a number of these might
be in the device drivers. Or in the comments, as stipulated above.
Also, I think the 'xargs' construct is a tad more efficient, mostly
because the constructed grep command line will have more than one file
argument.
bash$ find . -name '*.c' | xargs grep -i '\<goto\>' | wc
6554 21199 267357
indicates that there's one goto out there with upper case. :-)
For what it's worth. Now...can we get rid of these GOTOs? Would it
be worth it?
[.sigsnip]
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
------------------------------
From: "2 + 2" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.security,comp.os.ms-windows.networking.tcp-ip,alt.conspiracy.area51
Subject: Re: THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING! Was (Re: MICROSOFT IT THRU!
MICROSOFT IS THRU!
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 01:47:39 -0400
Oops, I didn't mean to make an accidental comment on the stock market.
Sorry.
2 + 2
2 + 2 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
<8db0g2$gt$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!
>
>Uhmmmm . . .
>
>Am I repeating myself?
>
>No matter.
>
>THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!
>
>Ahhhh. BTW, this is not directed at those who have LOST MONEY in the stock
>market.
>
>And please don't jump.
>
>This is more in the astronomical news.
>
>Or the aerospace news. For the defense contractors who might get the
>contract to PROP the sky up.
>
>2 + 2
>
>
>Charlie Ebert wrote in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>>MICROSOFT IS THRU!
>>MICROSOFT IS THRU!
>>MICROSOFT IS THRU!
>>MICROSOFT IS THRU!
>>MICROSOFT IS THRU!
>>MICROSOFT IS THRU!
>>
>>
>>TELL EVERYONE!
>>
>>Microsoft has been forced to admit they created secret back doors to every
>>computer
>>system they sold out the DOOR!
>>
>>This MEANS to the STUPID and IGNORANT that the U.S. Government has ACCESS
>>to every MS equipped machine in the world and therefore they
>>CAN NOT BE TRUSTED ANYMORE!
>>
>>Charlie
>>
>>
>
>
------------------------------
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