Linux-Advocacy Digest #265, Volume #27 Fri, 23 Jun 00 00:13:06 EDT
Contents:
Re: Claims of Windows supporting old applications are reflecting reality or
fantasy?
Re: X can't be that slow
Re: It's all about the microsurfs (Gary Hallock)
Re: A contrived strstream performance test. (The Ghost In The Machine)
Re: Microsoft Ruling Too Harsh (Henry Blaskowski)
Re: Anti-Human Libertarians Oppose Microsoft Antitrust Action (was: Microsoft Ruling
Too Harsh (Henry Blaskowski)
Re: Microsoft Ruling Too Harsh (Henry Blaskowski)
Re: Why Jeff Szarka Has Zero Credibility When He Claims Problems With Linux (Leslie
Mikesell)
Re: Microsoft Ruling Too Harsh (Henry Blaskowski)
Re: Run Linux on your desktop? Why? I ask for proof, not advocacy lies.... (Terry
Porter)
Re: A contrived strstream performance test. (Donovan Rebbechi)
Re: Run Linux on your desktop? Why? I ask for proof, not advocacy lies....
(Terry Porter)
Re: Why Jeff Szarka Has Zero Credibility When He Claims Problems With Linux
(Donovan Rebbechi)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Claims of Windows supporting old applications are reflecting reality
or fantasy?
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 18:59:18 -0700
Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Welcome to the firefight. ;-)
>From my experience I recall the first laser printer available for use on
anything other than a mainframe or a mini being the HP LaserJet. It was
naturally a PCL printer, I don't recall encountering PostScript printers
until a couple of years latter. You are correct that it was possible to
develop you own driver to handle it. The hardware specs. and basic
documentation for the PCL was included right in the user manual. This was
standard for almost all printers in those days. HP also had a book that was
available in the book stores that gave detailed discussion of the PCL
including examples of how to program for it. Once PostScript came out in
mass all laser and many other printers contained support for bost PCL and
PostScript. Some had the support for both builtin others had built in
support for only one of them and through an addon could support the other.
The specifications of both PCL and PostScript were available to the public.
Anyone could write the drivers for them if they choose to. In the case of a
PostScript printer connected to a RS-232 serial port could be connected to a
dumb terminal or a computer running a terminal emulator and it would be
possible to run the printer like a computer that uses PostScript as its
shell.
Well before GhostScript, I recall hand coding PostSctipt fonts. I had a
PostScript program that would load the font and generate the AFM and other
data for the font. The program would send the data back through the serial
port and the terminal emulator would capture the data to disk.
Nathaniel Jay Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> I have been reading this thread with interest, but I think that the
> WinHardware person has missed some valid points, or at least steered
> clear of them.
>
> You mention that you think PCL printers are similar to WinHardware now.
> I do agree that in some ways there are similarities, but the point you
> seem to completely ignore is that PCL was a fairly open standard. You
> could at least find out from HP how to write a driver that correctly
> used PCL (hence, ghostscript). The WinHardware people are not creating
> open standards. They are completely closing off thier "standards" and
> making them Windows only. While you think that those lower prices are
> great now, they still make people think that other operating systems are
> broken because they don't recognize WinHardware. Even if Win98 does
> adress thier need properly, they are probably unaware that there even
> are alternatives. If they were sold real hardware, they would be able
> to try these alternatives as they are made aware of them. As it sits,
> they are locked into Windows unless they want to spend more money.
>
> As far as the argument that states Windows is a monopoly and therefore
> must remain a monopoly crap: I don't care. Microsoft is a monopoly,
> yes. People are forced (most of them are) to use Microsoft software.
> This is not a concious choice as you seem to believe. Some people don't
> even realize the alternatives exist. Hardware prices are constantly
> lowering. Microsoft software is constantly getting more expensive. In
> order to use the WinHardware, you must pay the Microsoft tax. This does
> not equal overall lower prices for consumers. If these WinHardware
> manufacturers either released drivers for alternate OSes, or released
> the specs of thier hardware so others could write the drivers, then it
> wouldn't be such a huge loss.
>
> As far as the performance hit. Give me a real modem over a WinModem any
> day. Even the ones that now work under Linux offer terrible performance
> compared to a real modem. Making people think that systems have to run
> poorly is just as bad as making them think that you must worship the
> Microsoft money god to use a system at all. It just isn't necissary.
>
> I'm ready with my flame-proof suite. Please, fire when ready.
>
> Nathaniel Jay Lee
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: X can't be that slow
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 19:35:03 -0700
Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
> I hear lots of trolls complaining about the speed of X. I have a p133
> with a Riva128 based card and have never noticed X to be slow.
I have run X on everything from a 386DX 20 Mhz to today's processors and
have never seen it to under perform Windows run on the same platform in
spite of the fact that often Windows was using special drivers to take
advantage of Windows acceleration in the adaptor.
> What is
> everyone doing to X which makes it crawl?
It would depend on which X server they are running, if compilation options
were used to build it that would slow it down, what other applications the
host is running, what window manager they are running, etc. There are many
ways to cripple performance when you want to.
I once was confronted with a test the proved that X was much slower than
Windows. When I verified the conditions of the test, I found these
conditions, the X server and the windows manager were compiled with -pg
and -O0 options. The X server was configured to disable all accelarations
and optimizations. Windows was running with a 640x480x8 screen resolution,
while X was runing with a 1024x768x32 screen resolution. The Windows test
was performed at 40Mhz while the X test was performed at 20Mhz.
I corrected the X problems and the tests were rerun and X blew Windows away.
>In my personal experience for
> ordinary desktop things it is so fast that I don't notice any delays.
Same thing here.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:07 -0400
From: Gary Hallock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: It's all about the microsurfs
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Sure the development geeks are running *nix (actually they have an
> SP/2 farm running AIX that is behind only a handful of other places
> including the national weather service, DOD, Los Alamos, and Boeing
> among others).
>
> And ask their secrateries, purchasing department, shipping and
> receiving, the elevator system, security system and so forth and they
> are running Windows.
>
> If you add them all up the Windows users will far outnumber the *nix
> users, all told.
>
> A quick tele in the AM will confirm this.
> I know a couple of folks at Intel.
You're still not seeing the big picture. But I doubt you ever will. I do pity you
Gary
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Subject: Re: A contrived strstream performance test.
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 03:00:49 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Donovan Rebbechi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote on 22 Jun 2000 22:55:35 GMT <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>On Thu, 22 Jun 2000 21:28:40 GMT, The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
>
>>Followup: Yes there is an sstream file, which contains the classes
>>basic_stringbuf<>, basic_istringstream<>, basic_ostringstream<>,
>>and basic_stringstream<>. Each of these classes takes the three
>>template arguments '_E' (usually a char), '_Tr', which defaults to
>>char_traits<_E>, and '_A',which defaults to allocator<_E>.
>
>What compiler do you have ? I only seem to have strstream.
>I have egcs-c++-1.1.2
This was on NT, not Linux, using VC++ 6.
(Is this standard? Hmm...it's from Microsoft... :-) )
>--
>Donovan
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
------------------------------
From: Henry Blaskowski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,misc.legal,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.economics
Subject: Re: Microsoft Ruling Too Harsh
Date: 23 Jun 2000 03:01:55 GMT
In talk.politics.libertarian Bob Hauck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>I quoted the text of the article. I don't have link, but you can find
>>it on site of Reason magazine, http://www.reason.com.
> Went and read it. There's a lot to disagree with there.
Finally, a reasoned response.... I'm impressed.
> 1. The author starts with the premise that "social choice" is the
> correct economic theory to use to evaluate anti-trust laws. According
> to the article, this theory assumes that government action is driven by
> whichever interest groups have access to the government. Apparently it
> is not possible for the government to actually do anything on behalf of
> the public good and government power is "bad" while corporate power is
> at least "not bad". It is not at all surprising then when he concludes
> that anti-trust actions are driven by the special interests that
> benefit from them.
I lean in this same direction, for a very simple reason. When in
doubt, leave people alone. That means, if two people or groups can
come to a voluntary, informed consent, it should take an overwhelming
burden of proof to overturn that, such as clear evidence of direct
harm. This is rarely if ever shown in anti-trust cases, and certainly
not in the MS case. Consumers have had many choices all along, even
in and industry that basically was built, in large part, on the labor
of the programmers at Microsoft. Yes, they are the leaders, but you
would expect that because they took many of the early risks. But
alternatives are readily available, and nobody has shown any use
of force or fraud.
> 2. The author states that few or no anti-trust actions have benefitted
> the consumer and that the only beneficiaries were the competitors of
> the company the action was taken against. However, this does not prove
> that the anti-trust actions in question were ineffective, since we
> cannot know what harm may have come to the consumer had the action not
> been taken. At the very least, he does not argue that these actions
> hurt the consumer and since competitors did benefit one could argue
> that there was indeed an indirect benefit to the consumer and to the
> market process even in the abscence of direct consumer benefits.
I think this is a symptom of the resiliance of the market. Yes,
we get over these bad decisions and go on, but again, it seems that
the burden of proof should weigh heavily on those who wish to interfere
with voluntary peaceful consensual agreements, because otherwise, there
really is nothing off limits.
> 3. The author states that government-regulated monopolies (e.g. phone
> companies, utilities) aren't to be counted in the success vs failure of
> anti-trust legislation. Yet that is exactly the way that many
> monopolies have been regulated. They weren't often government
> sponsored at the start after all, they were brought under regulation
> later. Therefore not counting them skews the real results.
All true monopolies are government sponsored/enforced. The free
market dominance that is often called a monopoly just means the
competitors are having trouble understanding the market. But they
are there, waiting in the wings, just as they are in the MS case.
That's no a monopoly, just knowing the industry.
> He also makes some mis-statements of history. For instance, he says
> that Standard Oil had eight competitors at the time it was broken up.
> This is true, but it also technically had competitors during it's whole
> history. They split 20% of the market amongst themselves so I have a
> hard time seeing Standard Oil as "not a monopoly" as our author would
> like us to.
20% is 1 in five. That is a lot of competitors. It is not a monopoly.
hblask
------------------------------
From: Henry Blaskowski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,misc.legal,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.economics,alt.society.liberalism
Subject: Re: Anti-Human Libertarians Oppose Microsoft Antitrust Action (was: Microsoft
Ruling Too Harsh
Date: 23 Jun 2000 03:03:26 GMT
In talk.politics.libertarian Mark S. Bilk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> Hmm ... you know, I don't recall any Ford dealer
>> that sells new Chevys too. Could it be that MS
>> was simply following a common business practice ?
> These are computer *hardware* vendors being coerced, not
> Microsoft Software stores.
> That's illegal, and with good reason.
What reason? What coercion? Being offered a discount is coercion?
I'll remember that next time I'm at the grocery store.
------------------------------
From: Henry Blaskowski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,misc.legal,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.economics
Subject: Re: Microsoft Ruling Too Harsh
Date: 23 Jun 2000 03:06:07 GMT
In talk.politics.libertarian Joseph T. Adams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I will concede that many other large corporations in the U.S. as well
> as the government itself practice fraud with impunity; however, the
> wrongful actions of one entity do not justify those of another.
So do you think that business in the US should just be shut down,
destroying the economy? Because that is the result of a fair
implementation of the policy that is being used to harass MS.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Leslie Mikesell)
Subject: Re: Why Jeff Szarka Has Zero Credibility When He Claims Problems With Linux
Date: 22 Jun 2000 22:03:18 -0500
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Jeff Szarka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On 23 Jun 2000 08:17:06 +0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Terry
>Porter) wrote:
>
>>>"hangup on install, scsi problem?"
>>Did you email them, and find out what they did ?
>
>I don't care what they did. Mandrake 7 would not install on my system
>unless I used the expert install mode. This data makes it clear... you
>must be an expert to install Linux.
Since you've known the solution all along, why even mention
the problem? And how do you like Mandrake 7.1?
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: Henry Blaskowski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,misc.legal,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.economics
Subject: Re: Microsoft Ruling Too Harsh
Date: 23 Jun 2000 03:15:22 GMT
In talk.politics.libertarian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>I know you think this an obvious fact, but I have yet to see anything
>>that MS did that differs significantly from what every other
>>successful business in the US does. Feel free to 'rehash' this
>
> Who else has been able to effect end user choice on such
> a wide scale? Who else has such an "essential facility"
Proctor & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Barne's & Noble, to name a few.
>>This is a new claim. Are you saying that Dell didn't know what
>>Microsoft was offering? That their lawyers couldn't figure out
>>the terms of the deal? Do you have evidence of this?
> It would be more accurate to call what Microsoft did extortion.
> They exploited the inherent qualities of software to pressure
> those that did not act as they wanted. This makes Microsoft's
> position rather unusual.
When you go apply for a job, do you have a certain salary in mind,
such that an offer below that will mean you turn down the job? Would
you call that extortion? It's a similar issue: party 1 offers party 2
a product/service at a certain price, party 2 is free to take it
or leave it.
>>Because it's not fraud. MS customer's knew exactly what they were
>>getting. That's not fraud.
> They did after enough people actually bought the product and were
> able to communicate amongst themselves what it was that Microsoft
> had actually produced. The fact remains that Microsoft quite often
> promises and doesn't quite deliver.
This is the nature of the software market. It is not unique to MS.
Shall we prosecute all software companies?
> Although, any of that is really PR after the fact to deflect attention
> from the fact that for most users the purchase of Microsoft was never
> a choice. It was either the only option available or one necessary to
> ensure the ability to effectively compute due to network effects.
It was a choice for EVERY purchaser. The product didn't even exist til
around 20 years ago, so NOT buying it is a choice. Or buying a Mac, or
Linux, or a Sun, etc, etc. It is a choice. The propensity of buyers
to not seriously consider all their options tells me two things:
first, that the MS product is good enough that people don't feel
like looking any more, and second, that people tend to be lazy and
settle for the easiest choice. Why this makes MS worthy of federal
prosecution is the part I'm still trying to get explained to me.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Terry Porter)
Subject: Re: Run Linux on your desktop? Why? I ask for proof, not advocacy lies....
Reply-To: No-Spam
Date: 23 Jun 2000 11:31:11 +0800
On Wed, 21 Jun 2000 21:56:15 -0400,
Gary Hallock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>> Ever try root canal?
Yep, done expertly, I felt ZERO pain and it was a interesting experience.
>>
>> Given the choice of being subjected to using tex or having root canal
>> I would choose the root canal.
Hahahahah, "Steve/Heather/Amy/Keys88/simon777" always chooses the hard
and possibly most unrewarding soultion. Perhaps thats why he is still a
WinShrill ?
>
>Hey, I'd pay to watch you have root canal!!! But only if you have to
>stay awake with no pain killers.
Hey watching someone re install Windows is just as gruesome!
>
>Gary
>
--
Kind Regards
Terry
--
**** To reach me, use [EMAIL PROTECTED] ****
My Desktop is powered by GNU/Linux, and has been
up 1 week 2 days 16 hours 53 minutes
** Registration Number: 103931, http://counter.li.org **
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Subject: Re: A contrived strstream performance test.
Date: 23 Jun 2000 03:40:16 GMT
On Fri, 23 Jun 2000 03:00:49 GMT, The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
>>What compiler do you have ? I only seem to have strstream.
>>I have egcs-c++-1.1.2
>
>This was on NT, not Linux, using VC++ 6.
>
>(Is this standard? Hmm...it's from Microsoft... :-) )
Well most of the C++ books I've seen, including Strousop's ( spelling ? )
say that it's sstream. The member functions are also a little different
from the UNIX ones ( they are slightly different contractions of the
same words , much like sstream ~ string stream ~ strstream )
--
Donovan
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Terry Porter)
Subject: Re: Run Linux on your desktop? Why? I ask for proof, not advocacy
lies....
Reply-To: No-Spam
Date: 23 Jun 2000 11:41:57 +0800
On Thu, 22 Jun 2000 08:50:44 -0500,
Nathaniel Jay Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Gary Hallock wrote:
>>
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>
>> > Ever try root canal?
>> >
>> > Given the choice of being subjected to using tex or having root canal
>> > I would choose the root canal.
>>
>> Hey, I'd pay to watch you have root canal!!! But only if you have to
>> stay awake with no pain killers.
>>
>> Gary
>
>Hey man, I'll chip in on that. What do ya say gang?!? Let's take up a
>collection. When we hit about 100,000 dollars I say we make him go
>through with it.
No need, "Steve/Heather/Amy/Keys88/simon" suffers quite enough, just being
himself, he doesnt need our help.
>
>Nathaniel Jay Lee
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Kind Regards
Terry
--
**** To reach me, use [EMAIL PROTECTED] ****
My Desktop is powered by GNU/Linux, and has been
up 1 week 2 days 16 hours 53 minutes
** Registration Number: 103931, http://counter.li.org **
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Subject: Re: Why Jeff Szarka Has Zero Credibility When He Claims Problems With Linux
Date: 23 Jun 2000 03:43:52 GMT
On Thu, 22 Jun 2000 20:56:32 -0400, Jeff Szarka wrote:
>On 22 Jun 2000 20:34:21 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
>wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 22 Jun 2000 16:14:48 -0400, Jeff Szarka wrote:
>>
>>>>The _latest_ versions of redhat (6.0 - 6.2) are buch better re: hardware
>>>>detection. Try one, instead of a 3 year old version.
>>>
>>>
>>>Uh... I tried this one 2-3 years ago.
>>
>>I guess you were ahead of your time. Redhat 6.0 was released April 1999
>
>I was talking about Redhat 5.2
Read the included post and tell me if it looks like you were talking
about Redhat 5.2.
By the way, RH 5.2 was released November '98. You're still ahead of
your time !
--
Donovan
------------------------------
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