Linux-Advocacy Digest #72, Volume #27 Wed, 14 Jun 00 12:13:03 EDT
Contents:
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? (Leslie Mikesell)
Re: Simon MUST be in TROUBLE ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Why Linux should be #1 choice for students! (Matthias Warkus)
Re: Why Linux should be #1 choice for students! (Matthias Warkus)
Re: G4 in space! (2:1)
Re: Run Linux on your desktop? Why? I ask for proof, not advocacy lies....
(Nathaniel Jay Lee)
Re: G4 in space! (2:1)
Re: Free WWW Proxy Server Kills Ads, Cookies, etc. - was: NYC LOCAL: GNU/Linux/Free
BSDs and other Free OSes... ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Leslie Mikesell)
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It?
Date: 14 Jun 2000 10:53:58 -0500
In article <BRy15.468$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Daniel Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>[snip]
>> >> The
>> >> display window size negotiation is part of the telnet protocol
>> >> and most (non-microsoft) versions allow on-the fly resizing
>> >> which most unix character-mode screen apps understand.
>> >
>> >Well, if you say so- this is news to me. However, this has nothing
>> >to do with vt100 emulation.
>>
>> Right - it is in the telnet protocol. We are talking about
>> a telnet program here. Or what is supposed to be a telnet program.
>
>Okay. So what is a vt100 emulator supposed to do about it?
If the window is resized (MS-windows is windows-aware, right?) a
telnet program should notify the other end of the new size
via the telnet protocol.
>> It has nothing to do with terminals or terminal emulation.
>
>Wasn't your original complaint that the vt100 emulation was
>broken?
That too, but I haven't really investigated the breakage so
I'm willing to blame DEC for giving us a dozen different
things call vt100's for this part, although these days
everyone should just match up with what xterm does. Fixing
the terminal emulation can be done from the host side
by using a matching termcap/terminfo description for the
broken operations. However, you can't fix a broken telnet
protocol without source, so it is hopeless. Interestingly,
the win2k telnet looks new, and just as broken.
>> >> It is not in Microsoft's interest to make it easy for you
>> >> to use unix systems, and their telnet certainly doesn't.
>> >
>> >Make Unix easy to use a very difficult task. :D
>>
>> Unix has an elegant simplicity.
>
>That is not the same thing as being easy for you to use.
Yes it is, because there is an underlying consistancy
that is mostly possible to understand. Windows seems
to take the approach that the system is impossible to
understand and must be hidden from the operator. This
is fine when everything works and they have anticipated
what you want to do. It is not so fine when you try to
combine things in an unanticipated way or you have to
try to troubleshoot anything.
>> No, it is not a complete telnet implementation. Try running CRT
>> or netterm, or several others that get it right. It isn't just
>> the terminal emulation that makes the difference.
>
>Those may be better telnet programs, but so far what I've
>heard from you is that MS's telnet's problem is that it
>can't do anything better than a lousy vt100.
You could work around that, but there is no excuse for a
windows program not doing the correct thing when resized.
>[snip]
>> If it were just one bad program I might agree, but since the big
>> picture is that virtually *every* Microsoft program has annoying
>> flaws that make correct interoperation with any non-Microsoft
>> product difficult (FrontPage extensions, J++, compilers that
>> encourage use of MFC, Outlook's different treatment of LDAP, service
>> packs that break samba passwords, non-standard HTML additions and
>> on and on...), I can't believe it is just simple stupidity.
>
>Well, what you call "annoying flaws" other people call "useful
>features", for the most part. Things like frontpage extensions are
>not comparable to the limitations in MS's telnet.
Yes they are. Anything that intentionally locks you into
running only MS products or makes you put up with problems
when something else is on the other end is all the same.
>> All
>> of these cleverly make the competition look bad compared to using
>> an all-Microsoft solution when in fact it is the Microsoft code
>> that is incorrect, non-portable, non-standard and causes the problems
>> that you see.
>
>They do make non MS products look bad, and I think that is
>the point.
Of course it is the point: you don't really think that it
is impossible or even difficult to transfer files to
a remote machine without Frontpage's extensions, do you?
The 'problems' they claim are solved by their non-standard
extensions don't really exist until you bring in the
MS program that creates them. The standards bodies aren't
dead - if the problems were real they would have been
addressed years ago.
>But failure to stick to the limitations of Unix is not 'incorrect'
>in my book.
OK then, how about annoying your customers unless they give
up using any other vendors products?
>> Yes, it will be interesting to see if the pattern of subtle
>> breakage is repeated in the unix add-on pack for w2k. It
>> was a touch of brilliance to make the posix subsystem
>> for NT unusable for any normal networking programs so
>> people wouldn't be able to easily use it to write
>> portable code and escape their vendor-lock. Have they
>> done it again?
>
>I assume so. The idea of using POSIX on NT was very silly
>to start with; intended, I think, to check a checkbox on somebody
>list and no more.
It wasn't silly at all, it was a brilliant marketing ploy. Making
it unusable was equally brilliant. And evil.
>But I think it is a good example of the limitations of Office Standards;
>MS has adhered to the letter of the (basic) POSIX API, well, you
>know what came out.
>
>POSIX is just the minimum that the Unix vendors could agree
>to, and as such it is almost completely useless by itself.
That's not true at all. Many programs could be done using
only ansi-C standard functions and posix specified routines.
The ones that can't can generally have the system/device-specific
operations encapsulated in a library so it can be ported to
anything with equivalent functionality without touching the
bulk of the code.
>To make it useful what you need to a Unix clone, pretty much all the
>way- and not just POSIX.
No, the usability of the posix subsystem is broken in a very
specific way. I have enough faith in the MS engineers to
think it could have been usable if they had wanted it to be.
>Fortunately, MS has declined to go that route.
There is nothing fortunate about it. They are just manipulating
their customers.
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Simon MUST be in TROUBLE
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 16:00:30 GMT
That's pretty funny!
It could be like one of those 1950's sci-fi flicks where the computers
take over.
I think lost in space had an episode like that.
On Tue, 13 Jun 2000 22:41:29 -0500, "Bobby D. Bryant"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>lwm wrote:
>
>> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>
>> <Highly insightful comments deleted for brevity>
>>
>> I couldn't agree with you more simon. You're intellegence will just
>> never allow to operate anything slightly more complicated than a
>> toaster. But that's OK. Windows will always be around for you.
>
>LOL.
>
>I just had a vision earlier this evening, of a world where WinCE (or
>whatever they've been calling it since the latest attempt to sucker
>someone in to using it) actually worked, and was widely accepted on
>appliances. And which, of course, had a custom variant of Clippy
>running on each and every device.
>
>Imagine living in an appartment full of appliances obnoxiously
>chattering away at you, or to each other if you tuned them out. Like
>the toaster on Red Dwarf, except everything in the whole darn building
>was behaving that way.
>
>It would be great for a comic SciFi movie, but I wouldn't want to live
>there.
>
>Bobby Bryant
>Austin, Texas
>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Matthias Warkus)
Subject: Re: Why Linux should be #1 choice for students!
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 17:37:51 +0200
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
It was the Wed, 14 Jun 2000 00:17:14 GMT...
...and [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> <snip>
>
> Actually, Linux should be the number 1 choice for students because you
> never stop learning. <shudder>
>
> In all seriousness, you're going to have a hard time convincing the
> average person who doesn't need to do any tricky formatting that it's
> better to write reports with LaTex than with Word. Bugginess with
> templates and macros notwithstanding, Word's a pretty decent program if
> all you need to do is write a double-spaced, Times 12, footnoted and
> endnoted, page-numbered report using two different styles (one for body
> text, one for quoted text), which I'm willing to bet is all the average
> non-science-oriented person would need to do for their thesis.
What about floating figures?
What about references?
What about automatic numbering of chapters and subsections?
What about the bibliography?
Does Word provide any kind of automatisation to handle all that?
mawa
--
vi (the editor to use when bringing up emacs)
-- Michael Meisner
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Matthias Warkus)
Subject: Re: Why Linux should be #1 choice for students!
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 17:43:40 +0200
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
It was the Wed, 14 Jun 2000 00:04:19 GMT...
...and [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> In article <8hh3o5$31l$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> Mig Mig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > One could or even Emacs.. but one also could use Lyx (www.lyx.org) or
> Klyx.
> > Once youve tryed doing some major work with Word and failed...you
> learn to
> > appreciate Latex.
>
> Curious. What did you try and fail to do in Word?
My last CS thesis I would never even have dared to try to write with
Word... it features:
- decent document style
- decent two-sided printing
- kerned fonts
- automatic hyphenation
- decent paragraph layout
- automatically numbered proofs
- automatically numbered examples
- automatically numbered theorems
- automatically numbered chapters
- decent math
- automatically numbered formulas
- footnotes
- Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams
- C source listings read from external files by a single statement
each
- a figure done with XYpic
- automatically floated and numbered figures
- automatically floated and numbered tables
- automatic handling of document-internal references
- automatic handling of literature references
- automatically generated indices (table of contents, table of
figures, table of listings, ...)
- automatically generated bibliography
And mind you: all this happened without me ever placing a single
figure by hand or typing a single numeric reference... I could
relocate an entire chapter and all the numbers and references would
change accordingly at once.
Try to do that with Word.
(Hint: *I* used LaTeX. And LaTeX is free.)
mawa
--
vi (the editor to use when bringing up emacs)
-- Michael Meisner
------------------------------
From: 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: G4 in space!
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 17:02:07 +0100
Jim wrote:
>
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
> > > Sounds like this StrongARM processor of yours is the right answer,
> > > regardless of the question or if it has already been answered. Coming
> > > from a non-UK address, it would have sparked my interest. From an UK
> > > address, it is perfectly understandable.
> >
> > Actually, I don't (and,. unfortunately probably won't) own a strong arm
> > based computer. Mabey the processor will start to spread a bit now INTeL
> > is behind it.
>
> That's nice to know. Certainly makes it's name appropriate.
LOL!
Hopefully intel won't onion-skin it and end up producing the worlds
largest RISC processor
-Ed
>
> --
> Jim Naylor
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
The day of judgement cometh. Join us O sinful one...
http://fuji.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/cult/index.html
------------------------------
From: Nathaniel Jay Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Run Linux on your desktop? Why? I ask for proof, not advocacy lies....
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 11:01:24 -0500
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
[snipped for brevity]
> Run Windows and come home to the family......
You know, this sounds eerily like something else I heard. I know, the
family is what Manson called his little group isn't it?
Once again, 90% of people are idiots. Even those that aren't complete
idiots are easily led to believe things if they are just force fed the
same information over and over and over and over.
But, coming into a Linux advocacy group, and trying to force feed this
information to the few people of the population that actually know what
they are doing and do understand the subject will get you nowhere. I
suggest that you spout off this constant diatribe of crap on some news
show, or ask Billy for some air time during his next commercial. And
remember, innovation is the one word that you have to use a hundred
times over.
Microsoft came from nothing at one time. If you had told people when
they started that they would one day own more than 90% of the market,
people would have laughed in your face. Now, as it was bound to happen,
changes are occurring. I'm not saying Linux will gain 90% market share,
it probably never will. But it will help shake up Microsoft's
stranglehold. Linux+BSD+AtheOS+countless other OSes are all growing in
user base. And each user that starts using these other OSes are not
using Windows. Slowly the market will break apart into a more open
solution. Linux won't dominate 90% of the market, but it will help
bring Microsoft down to the level of just one competitor in the market.
This will happen eventually. Probably not tomorrow, probably not the
day after that, but some day.
Before I get flamed into oblivion by the Winvocates for "making promises
and never following through" remember: Windows NT is a better Unix than
Unix, and it has yet to actually have Unix like features. Microsoft
constantly promises and fails to follow through. I'm saying some day in
a very abstract way here because everyone has to agree that MS won't
last forever. They won't completely dissappear, but they won't always
be the #1 player in the computer world. Even Gates has said that
eventually something will come along that is better than MS products and
they will be pushed back down, I have seen this stated in countless
interviews with him (and on the show Revenge of the Geeks, or something
like that on Public TV). It is only a matter of time. And some people
are going to be there working on alternatives. MS can do what they want
as far as I'm concerned. I'd much rather watch them fail on technical
merits than on legal ones. But the thing is that there are always going
to be people working on alternatives. It doesn't matter how loud you
scream it from the rooftops that MS is god, they aren't. They may rule
the market at the moment, but there are always going to be people out
there that want something different. The same thing would happen with
any OS. No matter who is in charge, there will be those that want
something different. As long as there are development tools that are
available to people, those people will actually use them to create what
they want. Small as those groups of people may be, they will always
exist.
So, whether or not we use Unix/Linux today, or Windows today should be
up to the individual. And they should have that choice. If people want
to use any OS, it should be up to them. Coming in here saying that
there are no reasons to use Linux is just a bunch of crap. How about,
because we want to. Maybe that isn't a good reason to you, but it is to
us. See, it's a matter of opinion, not a matter of facts. No matter
how many facts you spout out, there will always be someone with a
different opinion. Now, technically, my opinion is that BeOS is the
best OS out there, but I don't currently use it much because it doesn't
allow me to accomplish what I want. I use Linux primarily and BSD the
rest of the time. Plus (as much as I hate to admit) Windows on one
machine for digital music recording (he, it was the cheapest way to
build a home "studio"). My opinion is that I feel restricted when
forced to use Windows. Does that mean I should say all users are
restricted, probably not. Some users are always going to want to be led
through everything as if they are a complete idiot. But for those that
don't, there are alternatives.
Now that I've wasted so much time typing this up, let me apologize to
the group. I realize that actually putting some thought into a post to
the group is in itself grounds for a nut sack clipping, but I've stated
my opinion. I think it's ridiculous for a Linux advocacy group to
constantly be told, "You are wrong for having an opinion different from
mine." Opinions can't be wrong. You have yours, completely different
from mine, and niether of us can be wrong. It is our opinion, so in our
minds it is right. Others may not agree, let them bring out a real
valid argument and maybe I would be swayed. But saying, 90% of people
can't be wrong is just plaing stupid.
Remember:
At one time everyone knew that the Earth was flat.
At one time everyone knew that the sun revolved around the Earth.
At one time everyone knew that the moon was made out of cheese.
At one time everyone knew (insert your favorite old time fable here).
Just because the majority of people believe something, that doesn't make
it right. And an opinion is an opinion. There is no way you can tell
me that Linux isn't right for me, and there is no way I can tell you
Windows isn't right for you. But why preach to those that aren't going
to listen to you? The only possible reasons are that you are being paid
to do it, or you are seriously so wacked out that you think of Windows
as a religion of sorts and feel that it is the one way to true
enlightenment.
I can't speak for the rest of the group, but I feel that this group is
interesting because of the progress you see being made in Linux. This
group can keep you up to date with new interesting developments, and
interesting points of view. I don't mind someone saying Windows is
better than Linux at XXXX job, and backing it up with some proof. But I
hate hearing some idiot proclaim that Linux sux and Windows rulz with no
proof at all. You are in the wrong place to do that. Go to the Windows
advocacy groups, and leave us out of it. It's that damn simple.
Nathaniel Jay Lee
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: G4 in space!
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 17:06:39 +0100
Jim wrote:
>
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
> > Jim wrote:
> > >
> [snip]
>
> > My chioce goes with domestic pigs. it seems that they can be very
> > intelligent.
>
> Pigs it is then.
Excellent, it's all falling in to place
[snip old stuff]
> > It sounds to me (a bit) that this is a publicity stunt for Apple,
> > therefore it does not need to use the *best* stuff, only stuff that will
> > put apple in a good light.
>
> Ok, that's a start. Now do you have some evidence that Apple are
> involved financially? Or does it just "sound like" you're spreading FUD?
Read the article _before_ calling me a fudster. Apple have agreed to
provide hardware and technical support.
> And can "a bit" properly modify "dim witted" without being (a bit of) an
> oxymoron?
What have you got against me saying a bit dim witted. To put an i86 in
space would be very dim witted. You can have degrees of dimwittedness.
-Ed
> --
> Jim Naylor
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
The day of judgement cometh. Join us O sinful one...
http://fuji.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/cult/index.html
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Free WWW Proxy Server Kills Ads, Cookies, etc. - was: NYC LOCAL:
GNU/Linux/Free BSDs and other Free OSes...
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 16:07:25 GMT
This sounds like something everyone could use.
Best of luck with it!
simon
On 14 Jun 2000 15:34:26 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mark S. Bilk) wrote:
>In article <8i7t0f$e3j$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>...
>>Configuration to make a GNU/Linux or *BSD computer secure against
>>intruders and invisible monitoring of "clicktrails" while surfing the Web
>>will be discussed.
>>
>>The Internet Junkbuster, a proxy server which can filter banner ads,
>>cookies and "web bugs" to protect privacy and improve download time when
>>surfing the Web, will be demonstrated.
>>
>>Sample configuration files for the Internet Junkbuster will be available
>>to attendees.
>
>Wow, this software does customizable table-driven
>modifications on every page your browser displays.
>And it's free and open under the GPL!
>
>The Internet Junkbuster Home Page
>http://www.internet.junkbusters.com/
>
>Thanks for the tip, LXNY!
>
------------------------------
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