Linux-Advocacy Digest #634, Volume #27 Wed, 12 Jul 00 23:13:05 EDT
Contents:
Re: Microsoft (R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ))
Re: Richard Stallman's Politics (was: Linux is awesome! (T. Max Devlin)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Microsoft
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 02:25:19 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (RealCea) wrote:
>
> Did you know that Microsoft's ".NET" project
> is nearly identical to a Netscape
> project in 1995 that was never finished
> (probably due to Microsoft) called Costellation.
Yup. Also looks very similar to X11R3 :-)
Of course it isn't near as functional, or near as secure,
but when has that ever stopped Microsoft from heaping more
bundleware on everybody.
> Back then Microsoft was fixing
> Windows 95's numerous bugs.
> (1997?)Microsoft threatens Gateway and
> others not to substitute Netscape for IE
> on shipped systems or it would not give
> them a resale license for Windows.
That's correct. Compaq actually turned over a copy
of a letter signed by Steve Alchin demanding that
Internet Explorer be put back in it's original location,
and demanding that the Netscape ICON be removed from the
desktop entirely. Later, Microsoft testified in court that
this did mean that Compaq could put Netscape in the
"accessories/internet" menu.
What made this particularly interesting is that Netscape
was willing to PAY Compaq for the placement on the desktop.
Netscape would have recovered the loss through advertising
on it's desktop.
> Isn't that the worst type of monopoly
> this country has ever seen?
No. The worst monopoly type of monopoly was what happened AFTER
they won the appeal overturning the judges contempt of court finding.
Microsoft claimed during the hearing that since AOL had purchased
Netscape, that Netscape's survival was assured. By the time the
appeal was filed, Microsoft had an agreement with AOL that not only
prevented them from including free copies of Netscape in their magazine
inserts, but also prevented them from spending any money on major
enhanncements. AOL was told that if they made any attempt to put
Netscape on their desktop, Microsoft would automatically remove the
auto-setup of AOL. Microsoft had the technology to remove that program
from the hard drive (or render it disfunctional) INCLUDING retroactive
removal from machines already sold.
During the Appeal hearing, Microsoft officials and executives knew
about this agreement, but argued in the appellate court that Netscape
had not been harmed in any way, and that the consumer had suffered
no lack of choice. Since part of the agreement with AOL was that they
weren't allowed to tell anyone, INCLUDING FEDERAL PROSECUTORS, about
this agreement, the DOJ did not have the information available to
counter Microsoft's argument.
THEN Microsoft decided to play hard ball with Windows 98. Not only
did Microsoft prevent the OEMs from installing Netscape, but they
also demanded contract terms that gave Microsoft exclusive control
of the boot sequence "From Power-up to First display of the desktop".
This prevented the OEMs from installing multiple partitions, boot
managers, Lilo, Netscape, or ANY OTHER THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONS.
But the greatest abuse of their monopoly was when they used their
preconfigured browser, which was preconfigured to select MSN or MSNBC
as the home page, was preconfigured to display automatic updates to
the MSN/MSNBC home page, and THEN proceeded to leak news of an illegal
wire tap of a private - previously anonymous citizen, followed by
detailed reports of an unconstitutional interrogation in which the
suspect had requested a lawyer and was intimidated into waving that
right, and then proceeded to publish rumors and innuendo which the
suspect was unable to respond to due to a limited immunity agreement
which prevented ANY public disclosure of ANY information.
What made this particularly interesting is that the information was
received as result from email sent from a Windows machine without the
owner's knowledge (a trivial task with ActiveX controls, VBScript, and
either an e-mail or a web page accessed from Internet Explorer).
Although Bill Clinton had the DOJ consolidate 20 separate lawsuits
AT MICROSOFT'S REQUEST, when the chips were down and DOJ prosecutors
began to expose perjury, fraud, and extortion by executive after
executive and witness after witness, MICROSOFT spared no effort
in diverting attention from it's own trial to a scandal that would
eventually lead to the impeachment of the President of the
United States of America. Effectively, Microsoft conspired to
overthrow the government of the United States. Now THAT's abuse
of monopoly power.
I'm no big fan of Bill Clinton, I disagree with most of his politics,
and I don't think much of how he treated most of the women he associated
with during his career as Governor or as President. However, he was
elected, and reelected by a population that was fully aware that he was
less than the "model husband".
Microsoft provided just enough leaked information to make it seem that
Bill Clinton had somehow assualted Monica Lewinski, threatened harm
if she didn't comply, and that her testimony would have helped Paula
Jones win a bigger jury award. In reality, the conflict in testimony
required to press the perjury charges took 12 hours of unconstitutional
interrogation to get an unwilling and unwitting conflict in testimony,
which the Special Prosecutor then used as the only basis for a pejury
charge. Clinton was asked two very specific questions which both he
and the Paula Jones lawyers knew the Jury would understand to be a
confession of an affair with Monica Lewinsky (did you have direct
physical contact with the primary sexual organs for the purpose of
causing sexual arousal of your partner). Clinton had an underwear
fetish and wouldn't have enjoyed it if she weren't wearing panties.
He even used a cigar rather than risk direct physical contact.
The press release played over and over; "I did not have sex with that
woman" wasn't his testimony, it was merely a press release statement
made to the press when asked if he had been having sex with Lewinski.
The question was phrased specifically to cover sexual intercourse,
and Clinton could deny that. If Lying to the press was an
impeachable offence there wouldn't be a governer, president,
senator, or congressman sitting in office for more than 3 days
after the swearing in cerimony.
Keep in mind that it was MICROSOFT'S Microsoft/NBC (MSNBC) that
replayed that clip as many as 8 times an hour for nearly 9 months.
This nearly FORCED other stations to cover a "non-story" which forced
the Republicans to play out an incredibly weak hand. Unfortunately,
the full story did come out, with Monica Lewinski admitting that
she had to practically shove her naked tush in his face (but knowing
about his underwear fetish, she wore a thong) just to get him
interested. She had stalked him for quite some time, and numerous
records indicated that the White House staff was quite aware that
Ms Lewinski might be a problem. Appearantly Clinton had been
celebate for several years and was reluctant to get into the
an affair. This was radically different from the image painted
by MSNBC indicating that Bill Clinton was raping nearly any woman
wearing a skirt.
The abuse of power here is astonishing. To prevent loss in market
share, a drop in stock price, and a bit of negative publicity,
Microsoft attempted to manipulate the President, the Press, the
Congress, and the Supreme Court into an incredibly high-risk
attempt to overthrow the government. The very best the Republicans
could hope for was that Clinton would resign to prevent public
disclosures. What actually happened was the speaker of the house,
a number of senators, and a number of congressmen nearly had their
carreers distroyed by creating a precedent which eliminated all
decorum, all rules of disgression, and made any one night stand
with a $40 hooker "fair game".
> Their innovation is simply netscape's developments.
Keep in mind that Microsoft obtained Internet Explorer, Internet
Information Server, and nearly ALL of the established market for
both products directly from employees and executives at Netscape...
without their consent, against their explicit wishes, and in violation
of the contract under which the NCSA originally obtained most of
it's software base (the base which Microsoft obtained through an
11th hour agreement with some minority stake-holders who had formed
Spyglass for the purpose of selling the right to display ICONS in
the corner and TRADEMARKS on the title-bar).
The NCSA altered the original agreement, without consent of
the contributors, without approval of any legislative body,
and without the consent of the President or any cabinet member.
This effectively amounts to an ex-post-facto law in which
Marc Andreeson and a number of his companions in California
(Netscape) were deprived of nearly $1 trillion in revenue
that was diverted to Microsoft and it's affiliates over
the last 6 years.
To add insult to injury, most of the contributors who originated
the World Wide Web were committed to the proliferation of Open
Source, Linux, and UNIX. The Web Browser was merely a means of
giving underequipped Windows 3.1 users access to UNIX machines
using a subset of the available GUI interfaces.
> And, why are we still using BIOs/IRQ architecture?
Part of this is because we are still using a model based on a BIOS
that dealt with 1650 UARTs that were hard-wired to specific interrupts,
had no means of reporting the status of the buffer, and interrupt
controllers that required nearly 100 microseconds of "settling time"
between interrupts. The fact is that most modern modems have much
more sophisticated interfaces, support event driven models (report an
event, let each driver catch the signal and throw it to the next driver
if the interrupt was not expected), and many even support DMA directly
to the waveform (winmodem).
> Microsoft's plug and play would work a lot better
> with something from beyond the dark ages.
Actually, Linux works quite well with hardware from the dark
ages. Nearly a year before Microsoft had plug and play, Yddragasil
had Plug-n-Play (TM) Linux. This version of Linux could establish
the optimal configuration of the typical hardware of that time (ISA,
EISA, or VLB motherboards, 16450 or 16550 UART/Modems, IDE hard drives,
and SVGA, VEGA, S3, or Targa Video cards, and PS/2 or serial mouse).
In fact, the big problem in those days is that Linux users would
often push the limits of the CRT monitors. It was possible to
get 1100 by 780 graphics by pushing the sweep frequency of the
monitor, but on some monitors (the 8514 for example) pushing the
sweep for too long could actually cause the monitor flyback
transformer to catch fire. Keep in mind we were taking a monitor
designed to support 800x600 interlaced at 70 mhz and pushing it
to 1100x780 interlaced at 70 mhz with a very flyback period. This
would be like driving your care at 80 mph in second gear.
> It would be
> relatively simple for them to develop windows for
> an advanced PNP architecture.
Microsoft has worked very hard to kill nearly all other
public PnP configurations. They killed SCSI before anyone
had even heard of PnP. When IDE drives reached 500 megabytes,
the existing IDE specification, combined with the geometry of the
drive had nearly everybody assuming that Microsoft and the PC
industry would be switching to SCSI (which is geometry
independent). SCSI provided PnP technology for not only hard
drives, but also printers, scanners, tape drives, and video capture
systems. Even basic SCSI allowed transfer speeds of 4 megabytes per
second, and SCSI-II allowed transfer speeds of nearly 40 megabytes
per second (10 mhz transfer speed with 32 bit wide bus). The ZIP
drive was about the only really successful SCSI device to catch on
in the Microsoft Market.
> All I see is a lucky man who got his OS (MS-DOS)
> on all of IBM's PC's.
What makes this particularly amusing is that it appears that IBM
originally thought they were going to get Xenix. Microsoft had
already been selling Xenix on the Tandy computer and they had
announced an 8086 version (Tandy Xenix ran on the 68000). Gates
gave them a price that was very low-ball, but then sold them a
"pig in a poke".
What makes the whole thing even more interesting is that they
created PC-DOS/MS-DOS from Q-DOS (Quick and Dirty OS) which
they purchased from Seattle Computer Company who had purchased
it from Digital Research as CP/M-80 with the right to build it
using an 8086 assembler and deploy it in embedded systems.
Microsoft paid SCC $100,000 cash, with no contractural mention
of any further payment. This money was used to pay off some
creditors and pay a legal retainer. DRI threatened to sue, but
when SCC showed them their financial statements, 3 employees
living in rented 1 bedroom apartements, and barely enough assets
left to cover legal costs, they settled out of court. About
3 years later Paul Allen paid the remaining owners $900,000 in
cash and gave them all VP level positions at Microsoft. DRI was
never able to prove that the $1 million package was part of a total
agreement.
> And that was not even developed by him!!!
Again, net only was it not developed by any employee working
for Microsoft in 1981-2, but it was actually developed by Digital
Research Incorporated. Microsoft used DRI code to exclude DRI from
the market it originally created. Keep in mind that DRI had
established a huge market for desktop computers which not only
threatened the 3270 terminal market, but ALSO threatened the
Series 1 minicomputer market and the System-360 market.
CP/M, MP/M and Novell Netware had already taken a number of large
Series 1 accounts and CP/M-86 which was both multi-user and
multitasking threatened to take thousands of System 360 customers.
Furthermore, IBM knew that the eventual acceptance of multi-user
multitasking microcomputers and minicomputers would eventually cut
into the market for System 370 upgrades. IBM postponed the inevitable
for nearly 8 years but in 1992, the combination of Windows 3.1, UNIX
and a whole series of MVS 4.0 upgrades realized IBM's worst fears.
The stock lost nearly 50% of it's value, the revenues dipped sharply,
nearly 1/2 the work-force had to be laid off, and even contractors
became hard to obtain. It wasn't until Lou Gerstner, an outsider
with a background in marketing to consumers, broke up the inbred
practice of telling customers what they had to buy, and started
asking customers what they wanted to buy.
Ironically, IBM quickly learned that while customers still liked
the System 370 MVS systems for financial transactions, they wanted
UNIX, UNIX compatibility, and the ability to interface to PCs via
a UNIX interface. Eventually, IBM even put UNIX into OS/390, making
it possible to front-end MVS systems with UNIX Application Programmer
interfaces.
IBM also discovered that people didn't really think much of Windows
for Enterprise systems. Windows workstations were unreliable and
bulky, software propagation was a nightmere, and even when thick
clients COULD be deployed, they usually had a nasty habit of crashing
with the release of subsequent Microsoft Service Packs. What the
customer really liked was those stupid web browsers. I literally mean
web browsers with the most basic FORMS and HTTP Put/Get interfaces.
Even Java, ActiveX, and JavaScript/Jscript/VBScript was a pain when
you were coding for 100,000 users, each of whom had preferences for
different web browsers depending on needs. In fact, because deaf
workers could interact with text-only applications, many companies
even had to support Lynx because the text from the lynx browser
could be piped into a voice synthisiser. Simply put, you had to
support really basic functions and you mostly ignored most of the
bells and whistles.
> This is just an example of innovations
> that did not happen because of
> Microsoft's lack of innovation.
Let's go over the list. A multitasking multiuser operating system
(OS/9, CP/M 86, Zdos, Xenix, Venix, BSD 2.4, BSD 4.1...) was
available as early as 1981, but Microsoft prevented it's acceptance
by demanding per-processor licenses of BASIC-IN-ROM. Later they
demanded per-processor licenses of MS-DOS or PC-DOS. Compared to
industrial strench systems like MVS, System V, and BSD 4.2, these
systems were mere toys, but compared to MS-<CTL-ALT-DELETE>-DOS
they were solid as a rock.
Windowing graphical interfaces were available as early as 1980
(smalltalk 80, Lisa, Mac, DRI GEM, AutoDesk, X11R3, and X11R4 all
came out before Windows 3.1 was released).
> With someone else leading who knows were we
> would be today? Mars?
Actually, I don't think we would have made it too Mars. The main
thing is that Microsoft is just the latest in as series of monopolies.
IBM tried pushing people around with OS/2 and Microchannel. AT&T
tried pushing people into metered WAN service (10 cents/kilopacket,
about 40 cents/megabyte).
The fact is that Ed Gosling probably did more to alter the course
of history than any other human being on earth. You see, when Ed
took Richard Stallman's EMACS from a public domain archive on
simtel-20 and began making proprietary enhancements that made
Stallman's EMACs users call him at all hours of the night and day,
and Gosling refused to even recognize Stallman's rights as the
original author, Richard Stallman went onto the uucp news net
net.legal and asked if there was a way to protect his software
from proprietary enhancements. Within a few days, nearly 40
laywers, a number of publishers, and a number of writers, including
people trained in theater law, music law, and performance law began
drafting what would eventually become the first Public License.
This would eventually be known as the General Public License, and
would be later modified to become Stallman's GNU Public License.
Nearly all subsequent Open Source projects, including most of the
infrastructure of the Internet, most of the infrastructure of
the World Wide Web, and most of the infrastructure of Linux
is protected by variations of the General Public License agreement.
While the CCITT conspired to make the OSI stack a proprietary
and NDA exclusive stack, with documentation costing nearly $50,000
per programmer, not including any usable or functional code, members
of the UNIX community, working under the GPL, contributed nearly 500
million bytes of source code (50 million lines), nearly 1 billion bytes
of documentation, and nearly 1 billion lines of promotional information
to support TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, and a collection of GPL software
now known as the Linux distribution. Keep in mind, although Linux
is actually a trademark used to describe a particular operating system
kernel, it is also very intentionally and directly associated with a
huge array of Open Source software. Even though much of it is covered
specifically by the GNU Public License, much of it are covered under
the broader and more flexible terms of the General Public License and
it's variants.
> So, as the story goes. While it is smart
> to buy a good idea and make a killing off of it.
Generally, an idea, without the resources to implement it is useless.
Conversely, resources committed to reinventing the same wheel everyone
else is using is also of very limited value. It is when a good leader
marshals the combination of good ideas and resource managers into action
that produces unique and original results that are then promoted and
brought to market that the world is transformed.
Gutenburg created the printing press. He was a butcher, and had none of
the qualifications of a great leader, a great king, he wasn't even of
the nobility. He just realized that he could press a block of wood onto
a pad of ink and then press it to a piece of paper and create hundreds
of copies of something as simple as leaflets.
When Gutenburg's press was used to print an entire book (the Bible),
history was altered in an extraordinary way. Suddenly you had nearly
everone learning to read, learning to write, and learning to read
the bible (as opposed to having single verses recited, followed by
20 minutes of interpretation). The printed bible eventually led to
the reformation, the spread of science, liturature, history, art,
music, and culture itself across all 7 continents. Did that
meat-cutter realize that carving his name into a butcher block and
using the blood of the meat to mark the paper realize that he had
just altered history and completely destroyed the feudal structure of
the Inquisition? And who's to say that Gutenburg was the first man
to put his mark on a paper using initials carved in a butcher block.
It's quite likely that Gutenburg merely extended a practice that
had been going on for years. Possibly a practice started by one
idiot who carved his name into a butcher block during a slow day.
The Internet, based on a bunch of freebie software that most system
administrators had banned from "serious computers" managed to find
it's way into a computer designed to run Windows 3.1, but with an
operating system based on software developed by someone who liked
Tannenbaum's book but wanted to experiment with the 386 memory model.
In 1991, Linus Torvalds altered history when he used FTP to place a copy
of his new kernel on TSX-11 and posted a note to usenet news
(comp.os.unix) asking anyone interested to take a look at his kernel.
Three months later, one of those who did take a look sent a message
to a UNIX lover who wanted to make a TCP/IP server that could support
dial-up connections and would cost less than $1000. That UNIX lover
eventually went to Dow Jones and joined a mailing list that eventually
grew to nearly 8000 publishers under his guidence. They were learning
how to publish the sum of the world's knowledge over the internet and
make the most interesting (to each user) information available to each
of millions of users in a matter of seconds.
There were thousands of people who had far more to do with the success
of the Internet than Bill Gates. However, Bill Gates gave many
developers the motivation to adopt Linux, UNIX, TCP/IP, HTML, and the
rest of the IETF standards and Open Source Software instead of waiting
for Microsoft to starve them out of existance. Many people move toward
possibility, but many move away from threats. For many, the threat
of having Bill Gates take total control of the information processing
industry, with the ability to sell any information about anybody to the
highest bidder (the one who could provide the greatest benefit to
Microsoft), was worse than the possibility that a guy who dressed
like Jesus, wore a hard drive platter like a halo, and looked like
a hippie from the 1960s might actually have written the most valuable
piece of intellectual property written in the last 200 years (since the
Declaration of Independence) and made it available for free.
Thomas Jefferson wrote the paper, but George Washington had to
back it up with rifles, bullets, and blood. Washington had to
enter some strange alliances, take some incredible risks, endure
numerous losses, and even endure numerous successes, before making
the ultimate sacrifice which led to the stability of the new
Repubublic now known as the United States. George Washington
had to resign from the highest office in the land after only 8
years. In the height of his popularity, with no one willing to
openly oppose him, and nearly unanimous respect even in disagreement,
George Washington set the precedent that the president should step
down after 8 years. This would not be violated until FDR, in the
midst of a war in which he depended on a totalitarian ally, faught
3 totalitarian enemies, and sought a third term to become known
as "King Franklin". After that, Congress passed an amendment that
explicitly limited the terms of Presidents.
Today's "George Washington" fights much like his predecessor, as
a guerilla, with his troops popping up from behind trees, ambushing
the regiment, an the greener militia dropping back while the crack
sharp-shooters fired accurate rifles dropping back to the bayonette
equipped veterans.
The "George Washington" of the Internet deals with Microsoft
from within the internet, providing inspiration to "troops"
who go out and promote open source, Linux, and the proliferation
of information that will disempower the Monopoly power of
Microsoft. This is distinct from attempting to destroy Microsoft.
The goal is merely to bring them to the point where they are
willing to discontinue their offensive activities and allow us
the liberty of making our own choices. The Continental Army
didn't destroy England, they did however force them to withdraw
to Canada.
> A stagnant meglomothic computer software
> company who uses it's monopolistic powers
> to push around a young innovative company
> and develop it's innovations at the same time
> is simply why we have anti-trust.
Again, Microsoft isn't the first or the only Monopoly to be
constrained. IBM endured a war of attrition. Every time IBM
tried to "lock down the market" the DOJ was their, letting IBM
know they were watching. AT&T eventually agreed to split up the
local and long distance companies in exchange for the right to
enter the computer and digital communications market.
> The industry needs to remain fresh not stagnant.
> I would much rather have seen Netscape win
> the battle than Microsoft for that very reason.
The important thing here is that there are 15 browsers for Linux
and nearly 18 for Windows. Why should Microsoft be allowed to
demand the ISPs (many of whom run Linux or UNIX) use proprietary
extensions designed to disable all of the competitor products?
There are 8 major commercial distributions of Linux, 4 versions
of BSD, and several commercial versions of UNIX, all of which are
capable of running on PC hardware. Why should Microsfot be allowed
to demand that OEMs produce only proprietary hardware which only
operates under Microsoft Windows drivers protected by exclusive
Nondisclosure agreements designed to provide maximum benefit to
Microsoft and minimal short-term benefit to the OEMs.
> P.S. Internet Explorer was originally
> developed by Spyglass which was a
> derivative of Mosaic
Actually, Internet Explorer was an extension of Mosaic, which
Microsoft purchased Lock, stock, and barrel, including rights
Spyglass didn't gave permission to sell. The NCSA public license
of 1993 protected all contributions from proprietary expropriation
without the permission of the original contributor. In 1995, the
NCSA license was revised, giving NCSA the right to assign any and
all intellectual property rights to anyone it wanted to.
> (Netscape is also a derivative of Mosaic).
Actually, Marc Andreeson was the major contributor to both products,
but Andreeson was very careful not to use any of the Mosaic code
in Netscape. The specifications were identical (based on IETF
published specifications), but Netscape was based on a simpler GUI
API, a multithreaded/multitasking model, and a simplified TCP/IP
API. Netscape also included a number of HTML-3 and HTML-4
extensions which were contributed back to Mosaic (not vice-versa).
Netscape was also very careful to at least offer positions to
all contributors. I received offers 3 times. The first while
I was still at Dow Jones, the second shortly after leaving
McGraw-Hill, and the third just before starting with IBM. I did
get an "interview" (16 hours of unpaid consulting) with Microsoft,
after which I was told I "didn't have the Microsoft Religion"
(My NDA has expired :-).
--
Rex Ballard - Open Source Advocate, Internet
I/T Architect, MIS Director
http://www.open4success.com
Linux - 40 million satisfied users worldwide
and growing at over 5%/month! (recalibrated 7/2/00)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Richard Stallman's Politics (was: Linux is awesome!
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 22:40:03 -0400
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Quoting Austin Ziegler from comp.os.linux.advocacy; Wed, 12 Jul 2000
[...]
>> Of course, they'd have all the source code to all the software, so I'd
>> guess they've been well compensated.
>
>That's a wonderful fantasy when it comes to actually putting food on the
>table and a roof over one's head.
You aren't actually still playing the "let's have sympathy for
programmers" card, are you? I thought I'd ridiculed that sufficiently
below:
>> And I'm always for hiring more
>> doctors and others with real expertise, instead of program jockeys
>> working in cubicles, so I guess that's no problem. In fact, it will
>> make doctors lower their fees in the face of greater competition, and
>> hey, that's always a good thing.
>
>Are you *really* that stupid, or are you just paid to pretend to be so?
I have to trust my doctor. I only have to trust my programmer if he
keeps his code secret, and that is a very strong reason not to trust
him.
--
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! ======
------------------------------
** FOR YOUR REFERENCE **
The service address, to which questions about the list itself and requests
to be added to or deleted from it should be directed, is:
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
You can send mail to the entire list (and comp.os.linux.advocacy) via:
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Linux may be obtained via one of these FTP sites:
ftp.funet.fi pub/Linux
tsx-11.mit.edu pub/linux
sunsite.unc.edu pub/Linux
End of Linux-Advocacy Digest
******************************
