Linux-Advocacy Digest #767, Volume #26 Tue, 30 May 00 11:13:04 EDT
Contents:
Re: The Linux Fortress (Roberto Alsina)
Neologism of the day (mathew)
Re: OSWars 2000 at www.stardock.com (rj friedman)
Re: The Linux Fortress (Roberto Alsina)
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? (rj friedman)
Re: QB 4.5 in Win 2000 (T. Max Devlin)
Re: QB 4.5 in Win 2000 (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? (Leslie Mikesell)
Re: There is only one innovation that matters... (was Re: Micros~1 innovations)
(Chris Wenham)
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? (Seán Ó Donnchadha)
Re: OSWars 2000 at www.stardock.com (rj friedman)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Roberto Alsina <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The Linux Fortress
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 14:02:08 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Pete Goodwin) wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Roberto Alsina) wrote in <8gtq10$c4j$1
> @nnrp1.deja.com>:
>
> >Pay me $100, and you will have that in a week.
> >It's just two tiny python scripts and a kdelnk file, really.
>
> Why not do it for free?
Because I don't want to, of course.
I have two modes of operation.
a) I work for free on things I want to do, because I can.
b) I work for a pay on things I don't want to do, because those who
want them (say, you) can't do it themselves.
It's the good side of being smart and knowing how to do things.
After all, why should I spend my free time working for free on
things I don't like doing? That would be stupid.
Sometimes I get paid for things I want to do, but that's another
story.
> >Something like this:
> >
> >A script called addsmbshare, which asks for the password and adds the
> >share to smb.conf (which would have to be writable by some group,
> >so this is a VERY low security setting)
> >
> >A script called delsmbshare, which does the opposite.
> >
> >Those are really low tech text processing tasks.
> >
> >Associate both with the inode/directory mime type on KDE, so they
appear
> >on the RMB menu.
> >
> >Done.
> >
> >Not much than a couple hours work.
> >
> >The bad side, is that this allows (just like in windows) any user to
> >mess the sharing settings, maybe disrupting another user's, or for
that
> >matter, opening the whole computer! but for a single user system in
> >a private non-connected net it's not that nasty.
> >
> >It will never make it into the regular KDE distribution, though.
>
> Whyever not?
I gave the reasons above. It's an awfully insecure thing, and it
breaks the "multiuserness" of the system. It is not a good thing.
> Surely you would want to add ease of use features or is that a
> no-no?
I won't dignify such a stupid and disrespectful question with a specific
answer.
--
Roberto Alsina (KDE developer, MFCH)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
Crossposted-To: talk.bizarre,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (mathew)
Subject: Neologism of the day
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 14:10:45 GMT
'dozer (n, derog.): One who runs Windows; one who is so asleep that he
isn't aware of the other choices. {From "Windoze", common variant spelling
of the name of the alleged operating system.}
e.g. "I told him I edited it with iMovie, but he had no idea what I was
talking about; he's such a 'dozer."
mathew
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (rj friedman)
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.be.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: OSWars 2000 at www.stardock.com
Date: 30 May 2000 14:17:06 GMT
On Mon, 29 May 2000 21:15:26 Marty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
¯Did you even bother to read the prologue?
Operant conditioning in truly an amazing technique. They can
use it to teach a
RAT to type. Unfortunately, it does have its limitations -
they are unable to teach the RAT to think; nor have they
been able, so far, to get the RAT from bustling about the
newsgroups antagonistically butting in with its worthless
squeakings.
Nor have they been able to do anything about improving the
RAT's long term memory. The RAT forgets how it was punished
for antagonistic squeaking in the past. Sigh. How many
shocks will it take before the RAT learns his lesson?
________________________________________________________
[RJ] OS/2 - Live it, or live with it.
rj friedman Team ABW
Taipei, Taiwan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To send email - remove the `yyy'
________________________________________________________
------------------------------
From: Roberto Alsina <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The Linux Fortress
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 14:09:25 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Pete Goodwin) wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Robert Heininger) wrote in
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> >Ease of use that compromises security (as explained above) is a BIG
> >no-no in my opinion. The key issue here is "compromise". When using
> >Linux as a multiuser server or even as a home Internet gateway /
router
> >/ firewall / desktop, security is a *paramount* issue. On the other
> >hand, a single user stand alone desktop doesn't need tight security,
and
> >Linux is widely used in both situations. Therefore, compromises must
be
> >made to achieve the best of both worlds. I think Linux is right where
it
> >needs to be as a very *versatile* cross between a server and desktop
OS.
>
> There's no reason why ease of use has to compromise security - Windows
2000
> way of doing sharing has permissions which set the level of access a
remote
> user has. Admittedly, it does hide these security settings, and the
default
> is wide open access (argh!), but if you move security to the first
window,
> a user should spot that.
>
> In any case, wide open systems used to be the norm.
And that changed, for very good reasons. Why go back?
[snip]
> I think the model Microsoft went for on Windows 9x is no security at
all;
> after all you can't login to it remotely,
Well, you can, if you have one of the popular backdoor software running.
And sharing C: with no password, as I see on offices, gets to be pretty
stupid once you add a modem.
[snip]
> But security issues should not blow away chances of getting a more
usable
> GUI in place!
But AFAICS, what you wanted is inherently less secure, for no gain
I specifically want. So, I leave it to others who do want it.
If those others can't hack it, pay me $100 ;-)
I consider those $100 a token of real interest. If it's not interesting
enough to gather $100, it's not interesting. Set up a cosource.com
task, if you don't want to hire me specifically.
--
Roberto Alsina (KDE developer, MFCH)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (rj friedman)
Crossposted-To:
comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It?
Date: 30 May 2000 14:24:03 GMT
On Tue, 30 May 2000 13:14:48 Seán Ó Donnchadha
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
¯>It has long been a contention of mine that the only people
¯>in the computing world who aren't absolutely repulsed by MS
¯>are the suckers and those who rely on the suckers to earn
¯>their silver. Thanks for helping me bear that out.
¯And it has long been a contention of mine that people who bash
¯Microsoft nonstop are nothing more than brainless lemmings who think
¯they're cool because their point of view is so trendy...
So does that put you in the category of sucker; or in the
category of vampire earning his living by taking advantage
of the suckers, "Seán"?
P.S. Why do you MS stooges always hide who you really are
behind those phony "ethnic sounding" names?
________________________________________________________
[RJ] OS/2 - Live it, or live with it.
rj friedman Team ABW
Taipei, Taiwan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To send email - remove the `yyy'
________________________________________________________
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.lang.basic,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: QB 4.5 in Win 2000
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 10:24:48 -0400
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Quoting budgie from alt.destroy.microsoft; Tue, 30 May 2000 13:37:00 GMT
>On Mon, 29 May 2000 23:45:02 -0400, T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>wrote:
>
>>Quoting budgie from alt.destroy.microsoft; Tue, 30 May 2000 01:20:58 GMT
>
>>>Prior to entering the PC-owner arena, I purchased an eight-bit
>>>machine. This purchase came after about six months of deliberation.
>>>I set out to NOT buy a C64 quite consciously. In the end that is what
>>>I bought because it had market share.
>>
>>It had market share because it was a superior platform.
>
>If you believe that then there is little hope for you and less hope
>for this discussion. The Z80 based machinery was far superior
>technically but lacked market share for the reasons stated. The only
>area where the c64 was a superior platform was in the integrated
>video/sound chips' capability. For general I/O it left an enormous
>amount to be desired.
I'm sorry, you're arguing against a tautology. You may have defined
"superior" in different ways than the market, but the fact is that a
free market is a competitive one. The only thing that makes a certain
team "the best" is winning the competition, not having better stats than
every other team. The C64 sold very very well, possibly because the
integrated video/sound chips made it such a good game platform, and for
everything you could do on a microcomputer at the time, gaming was the
only thing that called for "general I/O". Otherwise, it is simple
computing and data processing, and you don't need much for that before
the processors of the period were swamped to begin with.
>> We assume this
>>to be true because there was active competition in the market.
>
>Oversimplificatuion not substantiated by anything but your opinion.
I disagree, for the reasons stated above. Personally, I agreed with the
opinion in the C64 case, though I will admit that a large installed base
was still a factor, as it is in the current non-competitive markets.
But a non-monopoly installed base means that we can, in fact, assume it
is true, independently of my opinion, and fully substantiated by the
facts, that the most popular platform can be considered "superior" to
the alternatives for at least as many people as denoted by market share.
Feel free to disagree with my opinion as to why; I've found it quite
instructive.
>>The guy
>>down the hall from me had an Atari (2600?), and it had a mouse and a GUI
>>and everything. And nowhere near the raw performance of the C64. When
>>you are playing games or loading apps from a 360K 5-1/4" floppy (well,
>>his had a 3.5", it's best feature, IMHO), raw performance has a meaning
>>incomprehensible to people who have supercomputers on their desk and
>>don't even know it.
>
>And to cap off its scintillating performance, the C64 had the slowest
>disk drive on mother earth. (sorry, stolen from a C64 mag of the day)
Now that you mention it, I do recall that a "fast loader cartridge" was
considered part of the mandatory kit for a C64 user. (Along with a
"disk notcher", which would punch a tab in the 5-1/4" floppies to make
them double sided.)
All I know is that the Atari had about twice to five times as long a
load time for a typical game; the Atari games had slicker graphics, but
then the game speed suffered. Maybe they just weren't loading as much,
or were loading it at less efficient times. This illustrates the point
I was trying to make in an earlier post: one can't judge the performance
of a system based on the performance of a single component. Maybe they
loaded things more intelligently because they knew the drive was a
bottleneck. The C64 wasn't a "speed demon", yet performance still
seemed superior. Still, I'm not claiming that this is what made it
"superior"; that is for an individual customer to judge, and I agree
with the original poster who said that one of the greatest draws was the
availability of existing games.
Ironically, I remember buying my first game after I got the C64. It was
called "Reach for the Stars", and the box blurb said "this game is so
good that it is a reason all by itself for buying a C64." I bought it,
and have never looked back. I played that game for years and years.
Still do, when I get the chance; about four years ago I finally found a
version for DOS. Alas, it won't run on NT, and about a year ago I found
out that Microsoft bought the game, but I've heard no word about a
Windows version.
--
T. Max Devlin
Manager of Research & Educational Services
Managed Services
ELTRAX Technology Services Group
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-[Opinions expressed are my own; everyone else, including
my employer, has to pay for them, subject to
applicable licensing agreement]-
====== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News ======
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------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.lang.basic,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: QB 4.5 in Win 2000
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 10:27:33 -0400
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Quoting Keith T Williams from alt.destroy.microsoft; Tue, 30 May 2000
07:15:24 -0400
>
>"T. Max Devlin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>[Snip]
>> > This is one of the reasons
>> >that OS/2 1.0 failed - very few legacy DOS apps ran correctly. One of
>> >the reasons NT sold so slowly at first was the same thing - non-support
>> >of many legacy DOS apps.
>
>OS/2 1.0 failed because:
>1. It only supported 1 DOS box
>2. It used variable size memory segments and swapped them, and spent half
>its time
> working in the swapfile moving segments around defragging it so that it
>could have room to
> write more out.
>3. You had to buy communications manager and database manager separately
>4. Microsoft was busy promoting Windows
>5. There was little or no app support outside IBM
The point is that OS/2 1.0 didn't "fail" at all. It wasn't anything but
a 1.0. If there was ever a 1.1 or a 2.0 (and there was), it can't be
considered to be a "failed" product, nor is it surprising that 1.0 had
some rather extreme limitations. Windows 1.0 was far more of a
"failure", and it took them more than 5 years to get to a functioning
3.0 that was worth the time to install.
--
T. Max Devlin
Manager of Research & Educational Services
Managed Services
ELTRAX Technology Services Group
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-[Opinions expressed are my own; everyone else, including
my employer, has to pay for them, subject to
applicable licensing agreement]-
====== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News ======
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
======= Over 80,000 Newsgroups = 16 Different Servers! ======
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Leslie Mikesell)
Crossposted-To:
comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It?
Date: 30 May 2000 09:25:34 -0500
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Seán Ó Donnchadha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>It has long been a contention of mine that the only people
>>in the computing world who aren't absolutely repulsed by MS
>>are the suckers and those who rely on the suckers to earn
>>their silver. Thanks for helping me bear that out.
>>
>
>And it has long been a contention of mine that people who bash
>Microsoft nonstop are nothing more than brainless lemmings who think
>they're cool because their point of view is so trendy. In reality they
>know squat about software and only make themselves look even more
>stupid by talking out the wrong end all the time. Thanks for helping
>me bear that out, RJ.
I only bash Microsoft about things that have caused problems for
me, especially when trying to interoperate with anything else
(even different versions of the same Microsoft product). But
there is enough of that to do it nonstop, trendy or not...
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.sys.be.advocacy,comp.os.unix.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: There is only one innovation that matters... (was Re: Micros~1
innovations)
From: Chris Wenham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 14:39:48 GMT
Charlie Ebert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Microsoft's Windows 2000 is the slowest operating system known to
> mankind.
>
> No-one can challenge this statement.
The JVM :-)
Regards,
Chris Wenham
------------------------------
From: Seán Ó Donnchadha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It?
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 10:43:15 -0400
On 30 May 2000 14:24:03 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (rj friedman) wrote:
>
>¯And it has long been a contention of mine that people who bash
>¯Microsoft nonstop are nothing more than brainless lemmings who think
>¯they're cool because their point of view is so trendy...
>
>So does that put you in the category of sucker; or in the
>category of vampire earning his living by taking advantage
>of the suckers, "Seán"?
>
It puts me in the category of people knowing "RJ Friedman" for the
clueless moron that he is, despite his laughable attempts to seem
intelligent by hopping on the anti-Microsoft bandwagon. The most
ironic thing is that imbeciles like you actually believe your
incessant bashing represents some kind of superior reasoning. In
reality, you and your butt buddies couldn't come up with an original
thought to save your lives. Is it any wonder why you all sound exactly
the same, or that your anti-Microsoft FUD has gotten so stale?
>
>P.S. Why do you MS stooges always hide who you really are
>behind those phony "ethnic sounding" names?
>
Heh. The good old you-must-be-part-of-the-astroturf-campaign argument.
Is that what passes for creative thinking in your little lemming club?
As someone else has pointed out, you know you've got 'em by the 'nads
when they start talking like that.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (rj friedman)
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.be.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: OSWars 2000 at www.stardock.com
Date: 30 May 2000 14:44:08 GMT
On Mon, 29 May 2000 16:37:14 "Brad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
¯I am not sure you would know what a business user is, RJ.
The truth is, Wardell, that you have absolutely nothing to
base that statement on - yet it is the first thing out of
your mouth. Typical. Just another in the series of Brad
Wardell "full-of-shit" debate tactics. Someone has the
effrontery to oppose you? Well, you'll show him, won't you.
Let's start off by playing the character assassination card.
I have to admit you're gettin a bit more subtle from the
days when anyone who opposed you was a "kook" and a
"lunatic", though.
________________________________________________________
[RJ] OS/2 - Live it, or live with it.
rj friedman Team ABW
Taipei, Taiwan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To send email - remove the `yyy'
________________________________________________________
------------------------------
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