Linux-Advocacy Digest #245, Volume #26 Tue, 25 Apr 00 12:13:40 EDT
Contents:
Re: MS caught breaking web sites (Mike Marion)
Re: Where is PostScript support?? ("Bobby D. Bryant")
Re: Microsoft tries to scam its Insurance Company ("Bobby D. Bryant")
Re: Linux from a Windows perspective (JEDIDIAH)
Re: KDE is better than Gnome (abraxas)
Re: Government to break up Microsoft (Charlie Ebert)
Re: Linux kernel 2.4 ("Francis Van Aeken")
gnu/linux logos (graphics) (Darren Wyn Rees)
Re: Elian ("Francis Van Aeken")
Re: Adobe FrameMaker available on Linux (Gary Hallock)
Re: Government to break up Microsoft ("Otto")
Re: Government to break up Microsoft (Jen)
Re: Government to break up Microsoft (JEDIDIAH)
Re: Illegal to discount software - Linux is in trouble! (david parsons)
Re: Government to break up Microsoft ("Luke Olbrish")
Re: on installing software on linux. a worst broken system. (Christopher Browne)
Re: which OS is best? (Christopher Browne)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Mike Marion <[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
Subject: Re: MS caught breaking web sites
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 21:51:03 GMT
Robin wrote:
> REALLY? I guess I've really been screwing up these last couple years, what with all
> that checkbook balancing I've done on my NT desktop (although it sits *under* my
> desk, not on the *top*... does it still count?) As the "computer geek friend
Yeah it's getting to be a pain.. we need new classes: Tower, desktop,
laptop...etc. In the end, they're all just computers.
My mom still calls the whole case the CPU, I can't convince her that the CPU is
just the chip.
> everybody calls when they can't get their machine to work right" I'd recommend NT
> over 9x (no 2000 experience yet) to a home user in a heartbeat.
Unless playing any recent game is desired.
--
Mike Marion - Unix SysAdmin/Engineer, Qualcomm Inc.
ftp://127.0.0.1 ..... That site sucks. I've already got all of that stuff!
------------------------------
From: "Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Where is PostScript support??
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 15:38:06 -0500
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> There's just one thing that's really bugging me - none of them (AFAIK) seem to
> support postscript properly. Oh, they'll all allow an EPS file to be imported,
> and show a big blank square until it's sent to the printer; but this is barely
> adequate at best, and if one has a lot of inline graphics, pretty much useless.
LyX (which has a WYSIWYMean interface) shows a draft version of EPS figures in its
WYSIWYM display, and when you've got a decent draft ready you can use the menu
"View PostScript" option to generate a PS file from the draft and pop it up in a
PS viewer such as gv. I do this regularly for academic research, where I include
a lot of EPS diagrams and graphs in my reports.
Find LyX at www.lyx.org. (There are some screenshots showing what I'm talking
about right there on the font page, except it looks like they're viewing the
finished product in dvi format with xdvi, rather than ps with gv.)
> Does anybody know of any decent wordprocessor/desktop publishing application
> that can actually provide useful vector graphics filter/display capabilities?
Sorry, you're beyond me here. If you have the VG F/D stuff in an EPS file, then I
would expect LyX to handle it well.
Good luck,
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
------------------------------
From: "Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Microsoft tries to scam its Insurance Company
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 15:41:08 -0500
The Cat wrote:
> Kind of like trying to sue the firemen for getting your rugs dirty
> while they were trying to save your house from burning down.
More like suing your janitor for not going to jail for your crimes.
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
Subject: Re: Linux from a Windows perspective
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 21:52:40 GMT
On 24 Apr 2000 21:27:07 GMT, Ken Arromdee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>JEDIDIAH <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> You could pry open that wallet and try a $20 PCI soundcard or
>> $30 PCI SCSI2 card.
>
>What PCI soundcards also work well under real mode DOS? (Requiring a huge
>driver plus EMM386 is not 'work well'.)
>
>(I really do need to know this, since I also have an ISA modem and if I ever
>upgrade to an Athlon, not a lot of Athlon motherboards have two ISA slots.)
I try to use MSDOS and it's hellspawn as little as possible.
Mebbe you could try running your DOS apps in VMWARE if you're
going to be throwing an Athlon at your problems.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (abraxas)
Crossposted-To: comp.windows.x.kde,tw.bbs.comp.linux
Subject: Re: KDE is better than Gnome
Date: 24 Apr 2000 22:06:31 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy JEDIDIAH <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> I run GNOME and KDE apps all the time without having either
>>> 'enviroment' loaded.
>>
>>You do not do it without either environment installed on your machine
>>however. They ARE there, and the programs you run do so nicely because the
>>libs and suchness that they require are actually present.
> That's true of any application, actually. Ever tried to sort out what
> libraries a Win32 binary wants? It really makes you yearn for a Win32
> of ldd.
>
No. I only use windows to play games actually, so the above is not actually
nessesary.
> Also, all the 'bloat' of the other 95% of GNOME or KDE is not present
> and bogging your system down if the extent of your GNOME-bloat-problem
> is a few extra shared libs and executables on your disk.
I must admit that I really dont notice the 'bloat' of gnome or KDE, you're
the one who brought it up.
> If it's not loaded into RAM, then it's not an issue.
My home linux box has 512 megs of ram. Its not an issue in either case.
>>
>>> Any app that cannot do that is broken
>>> by design. The problem lies with the individual application
>>> programmer and not with 'choice'.
>>
>>I really wish youd stop using linux. You're making the rest of us look
>>bad.
> You're the MORON not me. Whining about how you need to have 20 GNOME
> libraries sitting on your disk is hardly compelling these days.
I actually wasnt whining. You're getting me confused with the poster to
whom your original response was intended, which, infact, is not me. I dont
care about gnome or KDE bloat. I use windowmaker w/GTK widgets.
> Unless
> you can demonstrate just what is the issue present when running the
> GNOME panel or kfm all by their little lonesomes, then you are the
> fool potentially embarrassing Linux users everywhere.
Why should I want to do a thing like that? Again, this is your argument, not
mine.
And please, switch to windows. It really suits you better than linux does.
=====yttrx
------------------------------
From: Charlie Ebert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Government to break up Microsoft
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 22:41:39 GMT
<Deleted all>
Microsoft is prone to BUSINESS CANCER.
Linux is NOT.
Therefore, it's foolish to invest more resources in an operating system
which has no future.
They only HAD a future had Bill Gates been able to continue on with his
plans. Now that this is impossible, Linux will be ABLE to digest
these chunks very quickly.
Microsoft will ONLY be an applications company in the future.
So don't invest in Microsoft proprietary anything.
Remember, if it won't run on at least 2 operating systems,,,
THEN DON'T BUY IT!
It's your career. It's your business.
It's your future.
Charlie
------------------------------
From: "Francis Van Aeken" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux kernel 2.4
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 19:53:25 -0300
Donald West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> Anyone know when this kernel is being released? Has it
> been put back?
2.4 was supposed to come out in 1999. Then, it was put back
to the first quarter of 2000. Then, it was put back to summer
2000.
So, who knows, maybe it will come out this summer.
Francis.
N.B. The information in this post is based on mails from
Linus himself.
------------------------------
From: Darren Wyn Rees <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: gnu/linux logos (graphics)
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 07:25:19 +0100
is there a collection of linux/linux-related graphics
out there... as in all the identifiable LOGOS etc.
used by the various contributors to the gnu/linux system ?
--
Le biblioteche ci hanno dato il potere,
poi il lavoro č venuto e ci ha reso liberi.
Che prezzo ora, per un piccolo assaggio di dignitą...
------------------------------
From: "Francis Van Aeken" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.activism,alt.politics.communism,rec.games.video.misc,alt.destroy.microsoft,alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk,alt.fan.karl-malden.nose
Subject: Re: Elian
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 20:01:50 -0300
Ari Asikainen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> mlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> scripsit:
> >If you think about, look at the Amish, a group of Women together share
> >materials and help each other create quilts. The quilts can be given
> >away as gifts, or most likely sold for profit. The people share work for
> >their own common good. The whole community will build houses for each
> >other for free, but will charge each other for other services. It is not
>> etc, etc.
> I can confirm that Linus Thorvalds is a big fan of the Amish people.
Unfortunately I cannot confirm that they are great innovators. Innovation,
which is in a way a form of rebellion, is incompatible with their lifestyle.
They should be able to clone stuff, though. (make a better minix? ;-)
Francis.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 19:02:41 -0400
From: Gary Hallock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Adobe FrameMaker available on Linux
Doug Mast wrote:
> That worked for me. I only did something like
>
> mount /cdrom
> wine /cdrom/SETUP.EXE
>
> and installshield ran without trouble. I installed the program in
> a subdirectory of my home directory (on an ext2 partition, of course)
> and that worked too. Wine has come a long way!
>
> FWIW, this was on a Caldera 2.3 box with a fairly recent Wine
> (one of the precompiled binaries from late 1999, IIRC).
>
> Doug.
That is good news! I haven't tried installshield under wine in a while. It
had problems on previous releases of wine. I guess it's time to download the
latest wine and give it a try.
Gary
------------------------------
From: "Otto" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Government to break up Microsoft
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 23:03:24 GMT
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:8e1q5m$n8l$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> If, like me, you are concerned about the fact Microsoft has frozen
> progress in every software industry segment they have entered, here's
> good news:
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2076-2000Apr23.html
>
> Office will be broken up into a separate company. This company will
> be free to port Office to Linux, BeOS, PalmOS etc. Office, together
> with business applications written in Java will make all these
> alternative platforms viable.
To start with, this is just a proposal:
"The drafting of a breakup plan marks a dramatic moment in the two-year
lawsuit and only the first time since the 1974 antitrust lawsuit against
AT&T Corp. that the federal government has considered such a drastic
proposal for a corporate lawbreaker.
Microsoft has vowed to appeal the April 3 verdict that it broke federal
antitrust law. A spokesman for the company said yesterday that a breakup
remedy would go too far."
To continue, if MS Office is broken into a separate company they are also
free not to port to any other platforms. Evidently people like Microsoft so
much that they want to double their pleasure :). The two "new" CEO will be
Gates for one company and Ballmer is for the other compant. Yeah, that'll
make a lot of difference....
>
> Microsoft will no longer be able to leverage their monopoly in desktop
> operating systems to foreclose competition in productivity software.
> Neither will they be able to leverage their monopoly in productivity
> software to try and gain unfair advantage over competing platforms
> (like they are doing with PocketPC vs Palm today.) They will not be
> able to use their monopoly profits to subsidize weak products such as
> SQL Server to the detriment of fair competition in this industry.
You're wrong on couple of counts here. Windows is still better than any
other OSs for desktop and some respect servers also. SQL server can stand on
its own merritt, no need to subsidize it. Have you looked at the TPC-C
performance results lately?
http://www.tpc.org/new_result/ttperf.idc
>
> The proposal is well-thought-out. Here are some excerpts:
>
> The goal of a breakup proposal would be to tear down the barrier
> to competitors entering into competition with Windows, sources
> said. In his ruling U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson
> described the barrier as the absence of a cluster of companies
> willing to write the software programs, necessary to give a
> potential rival enough of a following to challenge Microsoft's
> Windows monopoly.
That's nice, software companies aren't willing to write programs for other
platforms and it is Microsoft's fault.
>
> This plan is meant to create one or two companies that could sell
> the bundle of software programs necessary to spur competition for
> the Windows operating system. The new company or companies could
> either become a competing personal computer operating system or
> license software to potential Windows rivals that now lack the
> programs necessary to compete with Microsoft's Windows.
Again, would that really make a difference? Would most of the user turn to
other platforms even if the software available for it? It is also
questionable that how soon those programs would become available and would
people want them.
>
> Another suggestion from industry supporters of the government case
> is that such a company might decide to write programs for Linux,
> the free personal computer operating system available over the
> Internet. That could turn versions of Linux into a viable Windows
> competitor, some industry executives argue.
>
It's been suggested long time ego, but there were no takers.
Otto
------------------------------
From: Jen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Government to break up Microsoft
Date: 24 Apr 2000 18:15:26 -0500
Not to bother you with facts or anything but the title of your post is
entirely misleading and is a flat out lie. But what should we expect.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
Crossposted-To: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Government to break up Microsoft
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 00:11:07 GMT
On Mon, 24 Apr 2000 23:03:24 GMT, Otto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:8e1q5m$n8l$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> If, like me, you are concerned about the fact Microsoft has frozen
>> progress in every software industry segment they have entered, here's
>> good news:
>>
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2076-2000Apr23.html
>>
>> Office will be broken up into a separate company. This company will
>> be free to port Office to Linux, BeOS, PalmOS etc. Office, together
>> with business applications written in Java will make all these
>> alternative platforms viable.
>
>To start with, this is just a proposal:
>
>"The drafting of a breakup plan marks a dramatic moment in the two-year
>lawsuit and only the first time since the 1974 antitrust lawsuit against
>AT&T Corp. that the federal government has considered such a drastic
>proposal for a corporate lawbreaker.
>Microsoft has vowed to appeal the April 3 verdict that it broke federal
>antitrust law. A spokesman for the company said yesterday that a breakup
>remedy would go too far."
>
>To continue, if MS Office is broken into a separate company they are also
>free not to port to any other platforms. Evidently people like Microsoft so
They also may face stockholder lawsuits if they do so. The fate
of msoffice would no longer be diluted by it's assocation to the
other parts of the MS Borg cube.
>much that they want to double their pleasure :). The two "new" CEO will be
>Gates for one company and Ballmer is for the other compant. Yeah, that'll
>make a lot of difference....
>
>>
>> Microsoft will no longer be able to leverage their monopoly in desktop
>> operating systems to foreclose competition in productivity software.
>> Neither will they be able to leverage their monopoly in productivity
>> software to try and gain unfair advantage over competing platforms
>> (like they are doing with PocketPC vs Palm today.) They will not be
>> able to use their monopoly profits to subsidize weak products such as
>> SQL Server to the detriment of fair competition in this industry.
>
>You're wrong on couple of counts here. Windows is still better than any
>other OSs for desktop and some respect servers also. SQL server can stand on
No it isn't. NeXT and Macintosh have always been better as
desktops. What DOS and it's decendants claim is having the
most/all available applications. Depending on what you do
with your computer, this can be of dubious value.
>its own merritt, no need to subsidize it. Have you looked at the TPC-C
>performance results lately?
Yup. It depends heavily on clustering and it's competitor numbers
are a bit dated. Nevermind that this test doesn't measure those
things which typically drive the enterprise DBA: data integrity and
uptime.
>
>http://www.tpc.org/new_result/ttperf.idc
>
>>
>> The proposal is well-thought-out. Here are some excerpts:
>>
>> The goal of a breakup proposal would be to tear down the barrier
>> to competitors entering into competition with Windows, sources
>> said. In his ruling U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson
>> described the barrier as the absence of a cluster of companies
>> willing to write the software programs, necessary to give a
>> potential rival enough of a following to challenge Microsoft's
>> Windows monopoly.
>
>That's nice, software companies aren't willing to write programs for other
>platforms and it is Microsoft's fault.
Sure it is. Microsoft has done it's best to ensure that alternate
platforms don't take hold, sometimes actively sabotaging them.
This was addressed in the last DOJ action against M$ as well as
this one.
>
>>
>> This plan is meant to create one or two companies that could sell
>> the bundle of software programs necessary to spur competition for
>> the Windows operating system. The new company or companies could
>> either become a competing personal computer operating system or
>> license software to potential Windows rivals that now lack the
>> programs necessary to compete with Microsoft's Windows.
>
>Again, would that really make a difference? Would most of the user turn to
>other platforms even if the software available for it? It is also
Apple seems to manage. Despite the fact that there has been no
great inrush of end user applications, they seem to be experiencing
a renaisance of source. So apparently there are a good chunk of end
users that don't quite need or care about that other 95% of a CompUSA
or MicroCenter.
>questionable that how soon those programs would become available and would
>people want them.
>
>>
>> Another suggestion from industry supporters of the government case
>> is that such a company might decide to write programs for Linux,
>> the free personal computer operating system available over the
>> Internet. That could turn versions of Linux into a viable Windows
>> competitor, some industry executives argue.
>>
>
>It's been suggested long time ego, but there were no takers.
Actually, quite a few companies are taking up the challenge.
--
|||
/ | \
Need sane PPP docs? Try penguin.lvcm.com.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (david parsons)
Subject: Re: Illegal to discount software - Linux is in trouble!
Date: 24 Apr 2000 16:19:39 -0700
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
SeaDragon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>From the Techweb article on proposed Microsoft remedies:
>
>http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20000420S0016
>
>"Also, the software giant may have to open its APIs and stop discounting
>Windows to PC makers."
>
>Oh boy. So it's illegal to give a DISCOUNT on software? What is going
>to happen to Linux?
It's a boundary condition; if it costs $0, the whole idea of a discount
is meaningless.
>If it is illegal for Microsoft to give a discount
>of a few dollars, what are they going to do when they are giving away
>Linux for FREE???
Nothing. If Microsoft gives away Linux for free, it would be fairly
meaningless for them to offer discounts to vendors who don't ship
Netscape with their boxes.
____
david parsons \bi/ I didn't even know Microsoft had leapt on the Linux
\/ bandwagon yet.
------------------------------
From: "Luke Olbrish" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Government to break up Microsoft
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 20:28:04 -0400
> As far as "more userfriendly" goes: anything M$ has ever done
> has been to replicate someone else's work. Occasionally, they
> would even run out of business the original 'inventor'. Other
> times, the whole 'MS Hegemony' effect in the market would do
> it for them.
Even if that were so, I would rather use an operating system that took
the best features from the pack and implemented them together. Who
gives damn about where the original idea came, as long as the idea is
being used legally? If we did, everyone would be using some Xerox OS
and PC.
> > Windows2000 is the best Windows MS has every come up with, and is a
>
> Claiming that something is the best crap relative to some other
> crap, is hardly compelling.
Troll. Highly biased and unsubstatiated claims are a waste of my
reading time.
>
> > damn fine, stable, and advanced OS that competes with anything else
> > out there.
> >
> > Windows ME and Whislter are not far behind and bring even more
> > innovations and advancements.
> >
> >- Office Suite Software. The Office productivity market was
floundering
> > with old-fashioned poorly featured word processors and anemic
spreadsheets
> > until MS arrived. Lotus, Corel, as well as other less-known suites
like
>
> No it wasn't. The other office products were doing just fine. In
> certain respects, MS never caught up to some of them (like ~93
> AmiPro).
I worry about the fact that a word document seems to be becoming less of
a text file and more of a macro program. The problem is that it seems
like the entire Office Suite dept. is moving towards this.
> > ApplixWare and StarOffice have become better products because of
some of
> > the trends that MS has started. People compute in a whole
different way
>
> No they haven't. They've actually gotten worse from trying to
> emulate Microsoft practices.
See above. I like having good UI, but I like a word processor, not a
internet browser that does word processing. I agree that ms Office has
become somewhat of an untamed beast.
--
Luke Olbrish
([EMAIL PROTECTED])
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: on installing software on linux. a worst broken system.
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 00:58:49 GMT
Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Leslie Mikesell would say:
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>lets talk a little about the broken way of installing software on linux.
>>>
>>>it is most certinaly is a broken system now.
>>>
>>>a simple example. I wanted to install some rpm package
>>>to try some application. ok, i do
>>>
>>> rpm -Uhv foo.rpm
>>>
>>>it tells me it needs 5 others packages that are missing or not
>>>to the right level.
>>
>>Red Hat <> Linux. On my Debian system, to install Mutt, I just type
>>"apt-get install mutt". It fetches and installs any depends. automatically.
>
>But do you expect your Debian system to install RedHat-built rpms?
>That is the situation here - a non-RedHat system that breaks
>the expected name conventions trying to install a RedHat rpm.
No, I don't expect a Debian system to _consistently_ install RPMs.
The fact that it is _comparatively_ easy for someone to become a
developer that can contribute packages to Debian means that, in the
long run, "open source" software that someone wants to use will very
likely get packaged for Debian.
To cope with at least _some_ of those packages where .deb packages are
_not_ available, there does exist the "alien" package translator,
which does an (admittedly shallow) conversion of .rpms to .deb form,
and vice-versa.
_Your_ argument would, I think, be more correctly targeted to suggest
that the use of RPM alone does not provide any "coherency." With
which I would certainly agree.
RPM is a perfectly good _package_ manager, but it is certainly _not_ a
potent enough tool to be presented as a _distribution_ manager.
The _disaster_ is in people trying to use RPM to manage distributions,
encoding dependancies manually within its functionality, when they
should have been building further "metatools" to have those
dependancies "compiled" at some higher level in the system.
Another problem that is quite rampant, amongst the RPM-based
distributions, at least, is that there is no agreement on a
"namespace" for package naming. SuSE names GNOME stuff "gncore",
"gnlibs", "gnnet", whilst RHAT names them "gnome-core", "gnome-libs",
..
To "fix" the problem would require two things:
a) For there to be some sort of common "registry" of package
information, notably recording unambiguous package names.
b) For there to be decent metatools for constructing not just _this
package,_ but also groups of packages, and indeed, the whole
distribution.
Caldera, RHAT, SuSE, TurboLinux and Mandrake are likely to be
sufficiently entrenched in their ways for this _not_ to happen.
Debian provides more tools in this regard, and a way of building
package repositories, that allows coherence.
It would be Very Interesting if a Linux distribution were to be built
based on the BSD Ports packages; that would provide access to a
well-known "package repository," possibly providing _more_ "coherency"
than any of the Linux distributions currently offer.
--
Last night I played a blank tape at full blast. The mime next door
went nuts.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christopher Browne)
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,alt.flame.macintosh
Subject: Re: which OS is best?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 00:58:53 GMT
Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Leslie Mikesell would say:
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>As for instructing someone how to do it over the phone? With Linux, I
>>>can just do it for them faster than I can explain, and then just tell
>>>them to take a look at what I did.
>>
>>Over the phone, with no network?
>>
>>I give up. We're obviously coming from two completely different
>>paradigms here.
>
>I've talked people who knew nothing but how to type through
>some fairly complex setups under unix and even dos. All you
>have to do is say the words and spell a few things and the
>person on the other end knows what key to hit. I never have
>mastered the art of describing mouse-motions such that a
>beginner could do something at the other end with a GUI, or
>even of interpreting their description of the screens and pointer
>positions. It's about like taking all the words out of your
>books and replacing them with pictures, then trying to read
>it over the phone.
Indeed.
Reading and spelling _words_ that are to be _typed_ is a
well-understood sort of thing to do.
There may be an "unfriendly" command line there, but if there is a
friendly administrator on the other end of the phone, it doesn't
_need_ to be frightening.
What's easier?
"Type what I tell you to type, and read what I tell you to read."
which takes benefit from the several thousand years worth of
development of written communications,
or
"I'm going to try to describe, via something like charades, the menus,
dialogs, icons, and other hieroglyphics, what you're supposed to do."
which benefits from the several dozen hours that the typical person
has spent playing charades.
--
"I once went to a shrink. He told me to speak freely. I did. The
damn fool tried to charge me $90 an hour."
-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jim Moore Jr)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
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