Linux-Advocacy Digest #807, Volume #27 Thu, 20 Jul 00 07:13:12 EDT
Contents:
Re: Linsux as a desktop platform
Re: [OT] intuitive (was Re: Hardware: ideal budget Linux box? (Re: I'm Ready! I'm
ready! I'm not ready.)) (Jonadab the Unsightly One)
Re: I just don't buy it ("David Brown")
Re: What happens when all the bit twiddlers are gone? (Loren Petrich)
Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary? ("Stuart Fox")
Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary? ("Stuart Fox")
Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary? ("Stuart Fox")
Re: one step forward, two steps back..
Re: Star Office to be open sourced (David Kastrup)
Re: Anti-Human Libertarians Oppose Microsoft Antitrust Action (was: Microsoft
Ruling Too Harsh ("Arthur L. Rubin")
Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary? ("Christopher Smith")
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? ("Christopher Smith")
Re: BASIC == Beginners language (Was: Just curious.... ("David Brown")
Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary? ("Christopher Smith")
Re: Will SUN be allowed to opensource? ("Adam Warner")
Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary? ("Christopher Smith")
Re: Just curious, how do I do this in Windows? ("David Brown")
Re: Linux = Yet Another Unix ("Martin Sinot")
Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary? ("Stuart Fox")
Re: [OT] intuitive (was Re: Hardware: ideal budget Linux box? (Re: I'm Ready! I'm
ready! I'm not ready.)) (Jonadab the Unsightly One)
Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary? ("David Brown")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ()
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linsux as a desktop platform
Date: 20 Jul 2000 05:08:28 -0400
On Tue, 11 Jul 2000 23:35:01 -0400, T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Quoting ZnU from comp.os.linux.advocacy; Tue, 11 Jul 2000 08:27:44 GMT
>>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>[...]The method used
>>> by the Mac puts whatever program is running in the foreground in charge
>>> of yielding to background programs[...]
>>
>>It's a nice theory, but it doesn't work in practice. The fact is that
>>_any_ app in Mac OS can grab control of the processor; a background app
>>can cause the foreground app to lock up, for example.
>
>Any app grabs control, and can screw it up royal you are correct, *when
>the foreground application yields*. All good foreground applications,
>of course, yield on a routine basis. But that only highlights the lack
>of necessity for pre-emptive multitasking, when it is assumed that all
>of the programs running on one computer are under the cognizance and
>control of one operator. In multi-user systems, obviously, this
>wouldn't work at all. But on a multi-tasking single user operating
>system, it does, in fact, make sense to put the user, rather than the
>software, in charge of what's important.
>
>> There's the flip
>>side as well. A foreground app will often hog the processor even when it
>>doesn't need it.
>
>Isn't it nice the way the design for what was intended to be an open
>application architecture platform encourages, no, demands, cooperation
>amongst all application programmers? I think the PC could benefit from
>this lesson; it would have made more sense for MS to follow this model
>than the one they did. For a desktop system, which isn't even being
>used as a workstation (though it might still be more appropriate, TBH)
>level box, it just doesn't make sense to do it the same way as a
>multi-user/host/server system.
They used to have the same type of multitasking as MacOS does. As
a result, I couldn't run MOD4WIN in the background and Netscape
in the foreground under Windows 3.11.
>> Typing something in a news readers uses what? 2% of the
>>CPU? Yet if you're decompressing something in the background, it will
>>get dramatically slower.
>Better something in the background gets slower than my typing into my
>newsreader, you betcha, damn right. Whatever *I* am interacting with
>should have absolute first shot at every cycle it needs.
What if you're playing an MP3 in the background? Will your typing
cause the MP3 to skip, pop, stutter, and do anything but sound
good, like my MODs did under Windows 3.11?
>I'm mostly thinking of Mac OS 4.2 and 6.00.004, as that's where the bulk
>of my Apple experience lies. I haven't used Macs much in the last five
>years, but my comments are still entirely valid, and will remain so even
>after everyone is using Linux on their desktop. It wouldn't surprise me
>if it was a Linux which allowed adjustment to just how pre-emptive the
>multi-tasking is.
It would be impossible for Linux to support non-pre-emptive multitasking,
because Linux programs almost never call sched_yield(), and therefore,
Linux without preemptive multitasking would only be able to run one
process at a time, like DOS.
--
Delete all files?
<Y>es, <S>ure, <A>bsolutely, <W>hy not :
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jonadab the Unsightly One)
Crossposted-To: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Subject: Re: [OT] intuitive (was Re: Hardware: ideal budget Linux box? (Re: I'm Ready!
I'm ready! I'm not ready.))
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 09:15:19 GMT
T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >Heck, *Windows* relies too much on the mouse for my convenience.
> >I would prefer if *everything* that could be done with the
> >mouse also had a keyboard equivalent. It ain't so.
>
> I would actually disagree with you there. Much of it is not as easy to
> do as it should be, and there are obvious exceptions for "how do you
> drag something without a pointer" preclude certain things which frankly
> aren't possible with a keyboard.
Pulling up a command prompt makes dragging operations easy,
no problem. That's not the sort of thing I'm talking about.
> But in the vast majority of cases, you
> can do anything with the keyboard with Windows. I've happily used a
> system for several days without even having a mouse connected. Well,
> maybe not 'happily', but easily. [...] I'm not thrilled with web
> browsers in the way of keyboard control myself, overall, but I've found
> some surprisingly effective ways to run Netscape without grabbing the
> mouse.
As long as there aren't any forms on the sites you want to visit,
perhaps. The minute you need a search engine... how do you
get it to follow a link when there's a form that captures TAB?
- jonadab
------------------------------
From: "David Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: I just don't buy it
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:12:50 +0200
Davorin Mestric wrote in message <8l4h61$9nh$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>your comments would make sense if i actually wrote: 'connect, write it,
>send'. since what i actually wrote was: 'write it, connect, send', your
>comment does not make sense.
>
You wrote "... what i (sic.) do today to send an email. write it, connect,
send". As far as I understand the implications of .NET, this will change to
"connect, write it, send".
>
>"David Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Davorin Mestric wrote in message <8l1s0i$h9d$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>> >> 2. Why would I want to log onto the internet everytime I want to write
>a
>> >> short letter or note?
>> >
>> > because you need the internet to send it. at least, this is what i
>do
>> >today to send an email. write it, connect, send. .NET development
tools
>> >will not change this one litte bit, only perhaps that the email client
>will
>> >be written with WinForms classes instead of MFC. .NET also simplifies
>> >writing standard applications, so it is not all 'the return mainframe
>> >model', as you are trying to imply, or as you incorrectly understood
.NET
>> >technologies.
>> >
>>
>> In the good old days of snail mail, everyone went down to the post office
>to
>> write letters ....
>> Do you get sponsorship from a telephone company? Most people write their
>> email offline, then log on for a few minutes at most to send it.
>
>
>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Loren Petrich)
Subject: Re: What happens when all the bit twiddlers are gone?
Date: 20 Jul 2000 09:12:14 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Aaron R. Kulkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Why are you so determined to deny that the Communist Party still has
>any power? For what reason are you so invested in this?
Just trying to set the facts straight. Present-day Russia is far
from being under the thumb of a centralized, autocratic party. For
example, some news-media executive got arrested some time ago, and there
was a big fuss about it in Russia. What is novel there is that this fuss
happened at all.
In the Brezhnev era, his counterpart would have got mysteriously
"reassigned" or whatever.
In the Stalin era, his counterpart would have "confessed" to
trying to spread lying imperialist propaganda.
>Is it your embarrassment of having invested so many years in supporting
>them, denying the traiterous acts of the Rosenbergs, Philby, etc.,
>only to have all of your denials refuted when the KGB opened several
>decades worth of files....
Thank you for describing your favorite obsessions. Just more
proof that you spend too much time in groves of (metaphorical) birch trees.
--
Loren Petrich Happiness is a fast Macintosh
[EMAIL PROTECTED] And a fast train
My home page: http://www.petrich.com/home.html
------------------------------
From: "Stuart Fox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary?
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:06:26 +0100
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:8l6db4$7e1$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In article <8l5uf3$3dr$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> "Adam Warner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > Frankly I'm dumbfounded.
> >
>
> yes, you can't believe the navy would make the same mistake twice (
> http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~steve/Spiro/stories/node75.html )
>
> I believe that any goverment should develop mission critical systems
> from the ground up. This will then ensure safety and make it very hard
> to penetrate. Now, you wait for a W2K bug, wait until somebody on a war
> ship surfs the net and you now have a golden oppertunity to gain access
> to the system.
>
> It might sound far fetched for some, but you must remember that every
> modern army these days have specialist that does nothing else each day
> then to penetrate other org's systems.
>
> Call me a nut - BUT - I believe I'm right...
>
> AND - you don't want a BSOD while dodging missiles and who knows what
> else.
>
It was an application problem. If the same application error had been coded
into the app running on say, a Solaris server, same result. Ship dead in
the water. I can't believe they put it live without testing it on land
first...
------------------------------
From: "Stuart Fox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary?
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:07:20 +0100
"David Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8l6a6j$goa$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
> Did you not hear of the first large ship the US Navy ran on NT? There
were
> several hundred NT machines running everything on board, all networked
> together. Shortly after leaving harbour, the network crashed and brought
> every single computer on board to a standstill. The ship was dead in the
> water for over two hours before they got essential services back online.
And
> the cause? It was traced back to someone entering a "0" in the wrong
place
> in a PC in the stores - the resulting "divide by zero" error killed the
> ship.
So do explain to us all how a poor app is NT's fault?
------------------------------
From: "Stuart Fox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary?
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:08:36 +0100
"Adam Warner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8l67vf$c0p$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Once when I was at the Wellington (New Zealand) airport quite a few of the
> arrival/departure television information terminals had crashed with a
> familiar Windows GPF. It's one thing if consumer information systems
crash,
> but it is an entirely different ballpark if an aircraft's operating system
> or applications crash.
>
I can't believe that they run the display system on Win95. I've seen
exactly the same thing at Wellington airport.
Stu
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ()
Subject: Re: one step forward, two steps back..
Date: 20 Jul 2000 06:13:36 -0400
On 19 Jul 2000 23:26:23 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On Sat, 15 Jul 2000 17:39:54 GMT, Cihl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>--
>> You have c+---------------------------------------+ail.
>>For +------------------------------------------+ _ O X |computer!
>> | - Microsoft LoseData _ O X |-------+
>> +------------------------------------------+ed |
> | Windows has detected an ext2 |l be |
> | partition on one or more of your | |
> | hard drives. | |
> | |> ] |
> | [ Delete It ] [ Delete Everything ] |-------+
>-- | [ Delete Partition Table ] |
>Micro| [ Delete All Partition Tables ] |
> +------------------------------------------+
--
Have you re-installed your operating system today?
------------------------------
From: David Kastrup <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Star Office to be open sourced
Date: 20 Jul 2000 12:22:39 +0200
Rich Teer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Mon, 17 Jul 2000, KLH wrote:
>
> > Sometimes I don't understand how anything as complex as UNIX can be as
> > stable.
>
> An interesting comment - one of the reasons why UNIX became popular
> in the first place was it's beautiful simplicity!
Everything is a file. The initial implementation of fork was
ingenious: it just swapped the process out and forgot to delete the
in-memory copy. Or was it that swap forked and then killed the
in-memory copy?
--
David Kastrup Phone: +49-234-32-25570
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fax: +49-234-32-14209
Institut für Neuroinformatik, Universitätsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany
------------------------------
From: "Arthur L. Rubin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,misc.legal,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Anti-Human Libertarians Oppose Microsoft Antitrust Action (was:
Microsoft Ruling Too Harsh
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 10:23:34 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> --
> Microsoft Windows: Now complete with a built-in BOFH!
BOFH?
------------------------------
From: "Christopher Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary?
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 20:33:32 +1000
"David Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8l6f00$ifj$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
> Christopher Smith wrote in message <8l631g$fa6$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> >
> >> I would have thought that the US Navy would at least use an open
> >> source/viewable source operating system that they could analyse for
> >suspect
> >> code, stability and potential security vulnerabilities.
> >
> >I don't agree with it, but the government would most certainly have a
> >source code license for such an important function, so the arguments of
> >"closed source" are moot.
> >
>
>
> MS does provide source code licenses to some extent, but there are great
> limitations. They are very unlikely to give out source code for all their
> software running on the machines - the Navy might get access to the
Windows
> code but not the Office code, for instance. The license will also be
> restricted to allowing only a few people to see it, and will not allow
them
> to change it even if they find bugs in the code.
I daresay the *US Government* might have a slightly less stringent licensing
agreement.
I'd also be wondering why they'd need the source to anything except the OS
in the first place.
> Additionally, the Windows
> source is not written with a view to being easily read or changed by
> others - it would take a huge amount of effort for outsiders to make much
> sense of the code. With an OS like FreeBSD or Linux, where the source is
> regularly inspected by many people, it is much easier for groups like the
> Navy to make use of the code.
I take it that you are one of the "few people" who have seen the Windows NT
source code, then ?
------------------------------
From: "Christopher Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It?
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 20:37:06 +1000
"Lennart Gahm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> On Thu, 20 Jul 2000 15:46:06 +1000, Christopher Smith wrote:
>
> >> ...and just what's so untested about configuration that
> >> is merely missing one of the components?
> >
> >So you think if I take a seatbelt out of a car its going to be anywhere
near
> >as safe ?
>
> So you think the removal of IE and Outlook from windows would make it less
> safe?
I think it would make it less functional.
> I think it is the opposite since IE/Outlook is the gateway for all sort
> of new nasty attacks on your computer.
------------------------------
From: "David Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: BASIC == Beginners language (Was: Just curious....
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 12:33:55 +0200
Donovan Rebbechi wrote in message ...
>On Wed, 19 Jul 2000 16:00:02 +0200, David Brown wrote:
>>
>
>>I would not consider Visual Basic for teaching, but there are a lot of
other
>>Basics that are much better. Call me old fashioned, but I think a BBC
Micro
>>with BBC Basic is still one of the best educational systems available.
>
>I've used some of the old basics and they were horrendous. They encourage
>bad practices such as the use of GOTOs, and writing directly to memory.
>They're not really "structured". They are certainly not "object oriented".
>
You haven't tried BBC Basic, have you? I normally used procedures,
functions, while-do and repeat-until loops rather than gotos, with neat
indented listings produced automatically. It was not object oriented, but
neither is VB. "Object oriented" needs to be designed into a language from
its conception, and it is only one of many possible programming models. OOP
is not normally suitable for a teaching language - you must learn to walk
before you can run.
------------------------------
From: "Christopher Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary?
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 20:41:38 +1000
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8l67k0$k1e$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
[chomp]
> A couple of years ago there was a report in the news of a new navel vessel
> that was run by computers dependent on Windows being incapacitated when
one
> computer executed a division by zero error caused the BSOD and it started
a
> ripple effect and the entire network crashed. The ship's systems were
dead
> for a few hours in a combat situation the systems would not have been
dead.
> The ship would have been dead and so would the personel on it and possibly
> so would have been any other else that was dependent on that ship being
> ready for action. The news reporters seemed to find that ammusing, and
> joked about it. I found nothing amusing about it at all.
There was no such thing. There was a report of a crash induced somewhere in
a system that just happened to have NT as its OS.
------------------------------
From: "Adam Warner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Will SUN be allowed to opensource?
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 22:04:56 +1200
> Microsoft would just kick and scream alot and try to throw their weight
> around. Then they would change the file format in the next release in a
way
> that would make staroffice look bad and their software would automatically
> and quietly convert any document it opens into the new format. Which
would
> tend to make staroffice and other software that may be using the old
format
> look flaky and too unreliable.
Wait, you forgot they would allow you to save a document as a previous
version of Word, but it would turn out to be only in Rich Text Format. Silly
me that would be too diabolical for even Microsoft to implement ;-)
Regards,
Adam
------------------------------
From: "Christopher Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary?
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 20:44:54 +1000
"Stephen S. Edwards II" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8l6763$3m6$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Christopher Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> [SNIP]
>
> : I don't agree with it, but the government would most certainly have a
> : source code license for such an important function, so the arguments of
> : "closed source" are moot.
>
> Perhaps so. However, I think that the prospect of
> what was told here, assuming that it's not just more
> journalistic blithering, is rather dangerous. I just
> can't see the feasibility of using any sort of PC
> hardware/software solution for anything that people's
> lives will depend on. I like WindowsNT very much, but
> I can honestly say that I would never fly in a plane
> that ran WindowsNT in the cockpit. That would be
> absurdly dangerous, IMHO.
It would be somewhat dependant on how mcuh modification it had undergone,
IMHO. Off the shelf NT is obviously a rather different proposition to
everything-but-the-essentials-stripped-out NT.
> * Stephen goes off on a wild tangent momentarily...
>
> Say Chris... maybe you can answer one of my piddly
> questions. I seem to recall that you are of British
> descent, yes?
Australian with English parents. So, yes, close enough :).
> A few weeks back, I was watching an episode of "Chef"
> (one of the few BBC programs we can see here in the US
> on PBS), and there was a comment about a "good cup" in
> conjunction with a vulgarity, to which Gareth
> (the main character) responds with mild panic.
>
> The fellow who spoke the vulgarity immediately
> apologizes, but then Gareth specifies that he wasn't
> referring to the vulgarity, but that he was
> referring to the "cup" comment, and that he didn't
> want people thinking that "he was taking the mickey".
>
> *BOGGLE!*
>
> I normally find European humor styles quite entertaining,
> but this one really has my brain on its side... what
> in the heck is "taking the mickey?" Any idea what
> the joke might have been, because I've missed it.
"Taking the mickey" is like "taking the piss" or "pulling your leg".
Dunno about that cup joke, though - I'd have to hear it.
------------------------------
From: "David Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Just curious, how do I do this in Windows?
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 12:44:16 +0200
Perry Pip wrote in message
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>On 20 Jul 2000 14:33:31 +1000,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>Alternatively, you could fix it to do endianness changes, by changing
>>"& 1" to "& 0xff", ">>=1" to ">>=8" and "<<=1" to "<<=8".
>
>Thanks. I was sleeping when I wrote that.
>
>>Lastly, for performance reasons, it is probably a bad idea to do all
>>this work on *word --- which the compiler cannot assume much about, and
>>thius has to be overly careful with. Instead, you should have a second
>>local temp variable. and only at the end of things assign its value to
>>*word. That will allow the compiler to use a register for it (as it knows
>>that the variable's address has never been used, and that thus it knows
>>every possible access to it).
>
>Wouldn't a good optimizing compiler reckognize it's in a loop and do
>that anywhays?
>
Many people believe that C (or C++) is an efficient language and can compile
to tight machine code. They also think that "good optomizing C compilers"
will produce what, to an assembly language programmer, is the obviously most
efficient code. In fact, the C language is extremly poor for optomizing in
general, as there is so little it can assume while remaining strictly
compliant (many good compilers offer switches to let the compiler be more
sloppy and make better code - that is sometimes why code compiled with high
optomisations does not always work).
The most common example of this is aliasing - the compiler does not know
when a pointer points to another variable. Optomisation in a loop like
yours is hampered as the compiler does not know if "word" points to the
memory allocated to "temp" (or even "i"). To be strictly correct, it cannot
take the chance and must follow the code explicitly.
------------------------------
From: "Martin Sinot" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.alpha
Subject: Re: Linux = Yet Another Unix
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 10:42:46 GMT
Guys,
Will you please take this war of you elsewhere?
This newsgroup is dedicated to Linux running on Alphas,
and this thread has nothing to do with that.
Thanks,
--
Martin Sinot
Nijmegen, Netherlands
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: "Stuart Fox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary?
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:43:49 +0100
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8l67k0$k1e$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
> A couple of years ago there was a report in the news of a new navel vessel
> that was run by computers dependent on Windows being incapacitated when
one
> computer executed a division by zero error caused the BSOD and it started
a
> ripple effect and the entire network crashed.
>From what I read, the application crashed, not the OS. The app contained a
coding error, which was nothing to do with the OS
Stu
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jonadab the Unsightly One)
Crossposted-To: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Subject: Re: [OT] intuitive (was Re: Hardware: ideal budget Linux box? (Re: I'm Ready!
I'm ready! I'm not ready.))
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 10:59:40 GMT
> "Simply?" "Control?" "Graphics cursor?"... you get the idea.
>
> You *emulate* a mouse with a keyboard,
I've not seen such an emulator of any quality. That
doesn't mean it isn't theoretically plausible, but
I've never seen it -- and you'd have to pick keys
that don't have other important uses. Maybe the
windows key could be held down in combination with
the arrows for movement and home/end for the buttons,
or something of that nature. You'd have to do
acceleration, though, or it'd be horribly tedious.
> I've never tried a track ball for any length of time; it might get as
> familiar as a mouse.
The mechanics of a trackball are sufficiently similar to a
mouse that one is substitutable for the other in most cases.
A glidepad is somewhat different, and certain kinds of
functionality (most notably right-dragging) is hampered
as a result.
> But I think there is something specific about
> WIMP; without the mouse, it just doesn't work.
WIMP doesn't work nearly as well without a pointing
device as with one, that's for sure.
- jonadab
------------------------------
From: "David Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary?
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 12:48:12 +0200
Stuart Fox wrote in message <8l6j3t$jfr$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>
>"David Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:8l6a6j$goa$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>>
>> Did you not hear of the first large ship the US Navy ran on NT? There
>were
>> several hundred NT machines running everything on board, all networked
>> together. Shortly after leaving harbour, the network crashed and brought
>> every single computer on board to a standstill. The ship was dead in the
>> water for over two hours before they got essential services back online.
>And
>> the cause? It was traced back to someone entering a "0" in the wrong
>place
>> in a PC in the stores - the resulting "divide by zero" error killed the
>> ship.
>
>So do explain to us all how a poor app is NT's fault?
>
A poor app is not NT's fault - that a poor app is able to crash the machine
it is running on, never mind the whole network, is NT's fault.
------------------------------
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