Linux-Advocacy Digest #729, Volume #27 Mon, 17 Jul 00 07:13:06 EDT
Contents:
Re: Linux is blamed for users trolling-wish. ("David Brown")
Re: Quickie Script for "Staircasing" Printers. (Andy Newman)
Re: Why my company will NOT use Linux (gLiTcH)
Re: I tried to install both W2K and Linux last night... (Jacques Guy)
Re: Linux is blamed for users trolling-wish. ("David Brown")
Re: which OS is best? (Tore Lund)
Re: Richard Stallman's Politics (was: Linux is awesome! (Stefaan A Eeckels)
Re: Richard Stallman's Politics (was: Linux is awesome! (Stefaan A Eeckels)
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? ("JS/PL")
Re: Star Office to be open sourced (Sam)
Re: C# is a copy of java (Donal K. Fellows)
Re: which OS is best? (DeAnn Iwan)
Re: Tinman digest, volume 2451743 (Tholen) (tinman)
Re: Tinman digest, volume 2451743 (Tholen) (Jacques Guy)
Re: C# is a copy of java (Donal K. Fellows)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "David Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.sad-people.microsoft.lovers,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: Linux is blamed for users trolling-wish.
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 10:45:02 +0200
Truckasaurus wrote in message <8knaas$fku$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>> >
>> >Oy, Nationalism... Nice going!
>> >
>>
>> Yannick is not American - I believe he was implying that it was
>typical for
>> an American company to make products whose only use is to suck money.
>
>Exactly!
>I do not distinguish a nationalist that says "your country is bad" from
>one who says "my country is better".
>
I always thought nationalism was all about saying "my country is better",
or, by extension, "all other countries are bad", without having any solid
reasoning for the bias. Disliking a specific country for specific reasons
is not, IMHO, nationalism. But this is beside the point, as Yannick was not
expressing a dislike for America, just for a particular business practice
that is common there (see Yannick's own reply).
>
>By the way:
>US drug barons make a lot of money too.
>They do it by breaking the law too.
>
>Are there Americans who think that drugdealers represent an ideal
>company?
>
I don't know - it wouldn't suprise me (although it would surprise me if they
were anything but a tiny minority). Much as I dislike ms's business
tactics, I would stop short of comparing them to drug barons. Much of ms's
success is based on reasonable products (on average - individually, their
software ranges from worse than useless through to a few very good products)
and excellent marketting - they just use illegal practices to get an extra
push. They would still be a large, successful software company even without
breaking the law.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Andy Newman)
Subject: Re: Quickie Script for "Staircasing" Printers.
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 09:53:25 +1000
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bloody Viking wrote:
>Happily I don't need to add a formfeed character to the print job. If I did, I
>would have had the script just cat it onto the end of the file before printing
>it.
No use pipes. Forget the temp file.
>I would have done the easy though fucked up thing of renaming lpr and
>name the script "lpr".
One way. Better to leave the original alone and put yours in a
directory closer to the head of your $PATH, e.g. ensure $HOME/bin
exists and is in the path and stick your wrapper around lpr in there
(the script has to use the absolute path of the real lpr of course).
>The way I would fix it is of course fucked up. The advantage is not having to
>dig for the config files. The drawback is that any future Admin would not know
>what to do in the event of swapping out the printer.
And consider someone who didn't want all those extra \r's whacked in
front of all the \n's in the carefully generated data they're sending
to the printer.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 04:14:53 -0500
From: gLiTcH <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Why my company will NOT use Linux
so this now brings up a good question, which is more immoral: having sex
before married, or Microsoft's business tactics?
"Javier Gostling D." wrote:
> > >David, go out with some girls and have sex.. its more fun than Windows
> > >computing.
> To be honest, it's also more fun than computing with Linux, notwithstanding
> how much you like Linux ;-)
>
> - Javier
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 09:17:47 +0000
From: Jacques Guy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: I tried to install both W2K and Linux last night...
Mike Marion wrote:
> Ah.. I was starting to miss Tim's posts.
Meat who! Aye tale yew wot. Letts phownd the (shit,
couldn't think of a way of misspelling "the" HEEELP!!!!)
Tymm Trole Whizzerd Suss-eye-tee. Wye whyzerd? Beequoz
wee-zardz karst spayls an summ uv tham myss. Myss-spel?
Go tit?
------------------------------
From: "David Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.sad-people.microsoft.lovers,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: Linux is blamed for users trolling-wish.
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 11:26:55 +0200
Yannick wrote in message <5k3c5.392$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>
>If you want my personal opinion on the breakup... Windows 9x/Me/Whistler
price
>will increase if you want the system company to stay profitable. Office
price will
>decrease because there will be not need for Office to act as a cash cow for
windows & its
>surrounding technologies..
You mean people will get what they pay for, and pay for what they get? Is
that such a bad thing? Let people choose what they want - if customers want
to pay for Windows, let them do so. It won't be any more expensive than it
is now at retail prices - it is only the price to OEMs that will change.
The result will be far more sensible competition between different OS's -
OEMs will be able to offer a choice. At the lower end of the price market,
they could make machines with Linux pre-installed - if the user wants to
spend extra to get Windows on their machine, they are free to do so.
In the office suite market, the price might come down so that MS Office
actually starts to look like value for money. Without the OS / apps tying,
people will again be free to choose in the apps market, and if they do
choose Office they pay a more realistic price for it.
>As for the rest, we will lose the symbiosis between
>app developer and system developer that provides the exceptional richness
of the Windows
>UI.
Competition will inspire much greater "innovation" in both Windows and
Office than their current tying. The two halves of ms will still talk to
each other - they will just do it more openly, so that everyone can benifit
from advances to the Windows UI.
>So probably : statu quo for monopolies (Windows will stay alive while
Office is still
>on Windows only, and I personnaly think the difficulty of porting Office to
linux is
>dwarving the benefits, so...), and worse products.... Is that protecting
the end-user ?
>
It is all about choice. No one (except real fanatics) objects to Windows
being the most popular OS, or MS Office being the most popular office suite.
What people object to is being forced to use them whether they like them or
not. One of the effects of the split is that MS is going to have to fully
document and explain the Win32 API (if the court had ruled that the API was
to be reveiled without splitting the company, ms would have been able to
keep the documentation out-of-date - new versions of the API would only be
publically documented after they had already used it for new versions of
Office and other apps). This will allow the Wine developers to fill in the
gaps in Wine, so that users can run MS Office on Linux or any other UNIX (or
soon BeOS) system.
What do you mean "worse products"? Do you think the increasing
"integration" between the OS and apps actually improves the products? A lot
of users, when they have a free choice, choose other applications like Word
Perfect, Lotus Smartsuite, or whatever. A lot also choose Office freely,
but the point is that there is nothing so important or useful about the
integration that makes it essential when choosing applications.
The main "benifit" of the OS and apps mixing is in automation and scripting.
A few companies make use of these features to automate their workflow - but
no more so than other companies do with Lotus Smartsuite or other
applications. Quite litrally, the most common (in terms of the number of
computers running the scripts rather than the number of people writing them)
use of these features is for spreading viruses or other security breaches.
Emailed word viruses are the most commonly known problem, but it is
relatively easy to write an html page (either for a web site or for an html
email) which uses the dancing paperclip as an ActiveX control to gain full
access to the victim's PC. MS have even managed to make a clipart format
that can spread a virus (it has never been done, AFAIK, but it is possible).
Is this integration "protecting the end-user" ??
>Yannick.
>
>
------------------------------
From: Tore Lund <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,alt.flame.macintosh
Subject: Re: which OS is best?
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 09:38:17 +0200
"Colin R. Day" wrote:
>
> Tore Lund wrote:
>
> >
> > Some Unix programs are very efficient in terms of minimal finger
> > movement. However, as long as every program has a different set of
> > commands, this is inevitably cryptic and user-hostile. Add to this that
> > these programs lean heavily on the CTRL key, which is hardly usable with
> > its current position on the IBM keyboard. No wonder people prefer point
> > and click instead.
> >
>
> The XF86Config file has a line that allows one to swap CTRL and caps lock.
If I really believed that the CTRL key belonged in the slot to the right
of A, I'd join you in an uphill battle to move it back to that position.
However, there is something called touch typing, that really requires an
easily available Caps Lock key. On the other hand, there is no pressing
need for a CTRL key - unless one considers compatibility with historical
keyboards a pressing need, that is.
Unix people should learn to slaughter some of their holy cows once in a
while, the CTRL key being perhaps the holiest of them all.
--
Tore Lund <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Stefaan A Eeckels)
Crossposted-To: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Richard Stallman's Politics (was: Linux is awesome!
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 10:04:37 +0200
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jay Maynard) writes:
> On Mon, 17 Jul 2000 01:11:29 +0200, Stefaan A Eeckels
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>May I accept that you agree with my previous post, seeing that you
>>only had problems with the quoted paragraph?
>
> By no means. I simply feel that others have answered the other parts as well
> as I could, and am trying to not be *too* duplicative.
Oh my, my newsfeed must be grotty (it is :-), as I didn't see any
refutation of my arguments, not in this subthread, not in the
subthreads where John was doing his best not to answer my points.
OK. I guess that you don't agree, but without reason.
--
Stefaan
--
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Stefaan A Eeckels)
Crossposted-To: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Richard Stallman's Politics (was: Linux is awesome!
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 10:05:47 +0200
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Hyman Rosen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Phillip Lord wrote:
>> Wealth is created by production is what you are saying. Yes.
>> But those with large amounts of capital get the benefits of this
>> production, not the people who are responsible for that
>> production. "To those who have, shall more be given".
>
> Why are the people who supply capital for an enterprise any less
> responsible for production than the people who bang the nails?
> Why is granting the temporary use of one's body more noble than
> granting the temporary use of one's money?
Maybe because losing one's body is a tad more annoying than
losing one's money ;-)
--
Stefaan
--
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
------------------------------
From: "JS/PL" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 05:51:56 -0400
Reply-To: "JS/PL" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"Joseph" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> On Sun, 16 Jul 2000, JS/PL wrote:
> >"T. Max Devlin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >> You argue from an intentional position of ignorance. Its boring.
> >
> >No - a bunch of socialist personality types sitting around agreeing (and
> >insisting) that government should steer the design of their software is
> >boring.
>
> You don't even understand what's happened well enough to complain
> intelligently.
>
> MS is being broken up so the government does not have to get involved with
the
> design of software.
How naive are you? This ruling automatically assigns a team of government
employees with the task of enforcing this assinine ruling until the end of
time. If the ruling stands (*which most feel it won't) the United States
Government will be designing the OS in a MUCH greater sense than your
idiotic "so they won't have to get involved" foolishness.
------------------------------
From: Sam <[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: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 19:57:29 +1000
On Mon, 17 Jul 2000 02:59:09 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (phil
hunt) wrote:
>I've just read a news article linked from Linux Today that Sun are
>thinking of open-sourcing Star Office under the GNU GPL.
>
>Does anyone have any speculation as to why they might do this? Apart
>from hurting MS, of course?
>
>The article is at
><http://www.zdnet.com/sp/stories/news/0,4538,2604174,00.html>
They probably earn far less in sales then they spend in development
and support, so they may as well give it away just to piss MS off.
Maybe they can write it off as a tax loss ? It cost them heaps.
Sam
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donal K. Fellows)
Subject: Re: C# is a copy of java
Date: 17 Jul 2000 09:53:22 GMT
> Aaron Kulkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Jim Cameron wrote:
>>> You've been told several times now, TRIM YOUR DAMN .SIG!
>> Who here is working on a 1200 buad or less line?
>> Who here is working on a system with less than 50 MB of disk space?
Who here thinks the content of your .sig is worth the microcent it
costs us to access? Who here extrapolates this value from the .sig to
the person and the posts?
Aaron, your signature makes you look like an inconsiderate flaming
asshole. Whether or not the people you are flaming are worthless
genetic mistakes, it is not worth making yourself appear to be little
better than them over it.
Trim your .sig, as its taking over valuable pixels on my display, and
it takes me more moments than I care to think about to scan past it
when I'm reading news.
The Ghost In The Machine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Who here has to pay by the minute, or the megabyte?
[...]
> (For the record: I'm from the US and am not quite so unfortunate. :-) )
I'm from the UK and get unlimited access, but it *still* annoys.
Especially after the 30th time you've seen it...
> --
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- whatever happened to the 4x80 convention?
It's still there, as it gives us something to flame assholes over when
the astroturfers are lying low...
Donal.
--
Donal K. Fellows http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- I may seem more arrogant, but I think that's just because you didn't
realize how arrogant I was before. :^)
-- Jeffrey Hobbs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
------------------------------
From: DeAnn Iwan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,alt.flame.macintosh
Subject: Re: which OS is best?
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 06:02:15 -0400
A_Customer_at_an_easyEverything_Cybercafe wrote:
> ....
>
> You're trying to tell me that a command based structure would really
> help?
>
When you want to point-click-open your word processor or tax[ assistant or
3D-shooter, it does not matter whether or not there is a command line interface that
you can reach. Win9x and Linux, for example, will work equally well here (at opening
the document, not at staying up and supporting it).. But when you are trying to
secure your box from on-line attackers or set up a long run with data circulating
through multiple programs, then you discover that no one has built that little icon
for you to click on to do your job. That is when you want a CLUI.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (tinman)
Crossposted-To:
comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Tinman digest, volume 2451743 (Tholen)
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 06:19:52 -0400
In article <IDvc5.36603$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Here's today's Tinman digest:
>
> 1> Not at all, what you mean is quite a mystery.
>
> Of course, as I expect from someone like you.
Writing problems, Dave?
> 1> What alleged "meaning"?
>
> See what I mean?
No, else I would not have asked.
> 1> You really don't know what that word means, do you Dave?
>
> I do know what the word means, Tinman. That's how I'm able to determine
> that you're engaging in it.
Yet you insist on using it incorrectly.
> 1> On the contrary.
>
> Typical pontification.
Another example.
> 1> In what sense?
>
> Still missing the meaning, despite there only being one. No surprise
> there.
I see you failed to answer my question, Dave.
> 1> Why should I any more than you?
>
> You entered the discussion before I did.
Irrelevent.
> 1> Unclear, as you haven't specified what response you mean.
>
> Your first one in this thread, as should be obvious.
Also irrelevent.
> 1> How so?
>
> Read it again.
Read what again, Dave.
> 1> What alleged "lies"?
>
> The ones you snipped from your follow-up.
Where, Dave?
> 1> I always seek not only truth,
>
> Incorrect.
On the contrary.
> 1> but entertainment.
>
> Obviously.
Indeed.
> 1> Which newsgroup, Dave?
>
> The one I'm reading.
Which one is that, Dave?
> 1> You're posting on four in this thread.
>
> I'm only reading one of those.
Irrelevent, you're posting on four.
> 1> Then why do you persist in responding to my posts?
>
> As I already told you, to counter the FUD, bias, illogic, and
> unfairness.
What alleged "FUD, bias, illogic, and unfairness"?
> 1> In that I am currently emulating you, of course. ("
>
> Incorrect.
On the contrary.
> 1> But CSMA doesn't want you to go away, you are a source of great
> 1> entertainment.
>
> On what basis do you speak for the entire newsgroup?
Experience.
> 1> Illogical.
>
> Incorrect.
On the contrary.
> 1> Dave, you fail to recognize that your actions fan the flames.
>
> What flames? It's all entertainment to you.
The flames you specified, Dave.
> 1> If you didn't respond to virtually every post with your name in
> 1> it, this game wouldn't be any fun.
>
> So, you want to spread your lies with impunity. No surprise there.
What alleged "lies," Dave?
--
______
tinman
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 10:47:27 +0000
From: Jacques Guy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Tinman digest, volume 2451743 (Tholen)
tinman wrote:
>
> In article <IDvc5.36603$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[snip]
> Writing problems, Dave?
[snip]
> No, else I would not have asked.
[snip]
> Yet you insist on using it incorrectly.
[snip snip snip snip snip snip snip]
Behold, the TinBot is risen! All hail to
to TinBot!
Soon, these newsgroups are going to consist of
nothing but messages from bots and to bots. Raw
bots, rough bots, tin bots, tholen bots
(those with a speech impediment). I wish
they'd post the source code.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donal K. Fellows)
Subject: Re: C# is a copy of java
Date: 17 Jul 2000 09:39:47 GMT
In article <8k09gu$p3l$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> If you don't like those features of the language, then don't use
> them. I am not a proponent of the use of arcane constructs of C or
> C++. However, I don't shrink from using them if that is what is
> required to get the job done; expecially when the alternate might be
> even less portable through the use of assembler. I can't even begin
> to count how many times I have had to write functions in assembler
> code to give other languages functionality that C has built right
> into the language.
This is all very well, until you get into the business of porting and
maintaining code. I have code I have to support across both 32- and
64-bit word sizes, both endiannesses, and both RISC and CISC
instruction architectures. C and C++ are just about bearable, but not
good. Assembly language is right out. For all their faults,
languages like Java tackle this sort of problem domain quite well.
> There is nothing wrong with "cute address arithmetic" or other
> arcane constructs of the C programming language. If a program is
> targeted for a particular architecture and the best way for the
> program to function as required is through these methods, so be it.
> Just try to isolate that code that is architecure specific and be
> sure to document that fact that it is architecture specific.
The problem is that it is often difficult to isolate platform
dependant code (e.g. multiple people working on a single project, and
takeover of other people's code) and it is often surprising just how
much is actually platform dependant. IRIX64 is a horrible environment
to work in, compared to both Solaris and Linux...
> Saving a few bytes or a little execution time may be very important
> factor that determines if a program will be able to perform its job
> or not. This is what is know as optimization. When you are a real
> time applications or other time limited code, this is nessary. You
> can not always depend on your compiler to provide the optimal
> optimization of your code.
However producing code that runs fast is *not* the most important
thing. I would say that getting the right answer has a much higher
priority (I can write wrong code that executes very quickly indeed!)
Being able to make sure that the project can keep going for the whole
of its several years running time and that any problems detected in
that period can get fixed is also vital.
Getting a program to run fast by nasty hacks is probably a non-optimal
tactic, given Moore's Law. I can remember when 1MB was a *lot* of
memory, and when clock speeds were a few MHz, with many instructions
taking several cycles. Now, I write source files that wouldn't even
fit on the first computer I owned...
[ example of just how bad some compilers are omitted; if a compiler
claims to optimise but doesn't, you shouldn't resort to assembler to
work around it, but either fix the compiler (if it is OSS) or toss
it on the digital scrapheap (otherwise!) ]
Just to throw in an example about why complex memory mungling schemes
are harmful, consider the following scenario. You want to maintain a
stack of structures whose size is only known at runtime (it depends on
the problem given to the program, and in a non-trivial fashion) as the
final element is actually an array of integers (though each element on
the stack is the same size, thankfully!) Do you realize that this
code is extremely likely platform-dependant already? Other code I've
seen was a recommended idiom on some platforms, and cause of horrific
stack corruption on others. The lack of consistent standard library
implementations is another feature of C, as seen in practise.
Frankly, the whole language is for the birds.
And with C++, you get a misimplemented class hierarchy and the
marvellous obscurity of operator overloading and over-powerful
templates. Maybe it can be used in a sane fashion, but I'd rather
take clarity, cleanliness and maintainability over visual cuteness.
[...]
> P.S. My two cents worth about C#, if Java is based on the
> constructs of C then C# is Java restated as a language based on the
> contructs of Pascal.
Ah, Pascal. I have fond memories of my first proper programming
language...
Donal.
--
Donal K. Fellows http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- I may seem more arrogant, but I think that's just because you didn't
realize how arrogant I was before. :^)
-- Jeffrey Hobbs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
------------------------------
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