Linux-Advocacy Digest #668, Volume #29 Sun, 15 Oct 00 09:13:02 EDT
Contents:
Re: Claire Lynn (The Ghost In The Machine)
Re: Microsoft kicked off the Web! (The Ghost In The Machine)
Re: Need expert for info on troubleshooting Linux (The Ghost In The Machine)
Re: Space Station, Windows & Unix (The Ghost In The Machine)
Re: Need expert for info on troubleshooting Linux ("Nigel Feltham")
Re: Anybody want to test a widget?
Re: Suggestions for Linux (The Ghost In The Machine)
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Subject: Re: Claire Lynn
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 11:01:29 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote
on Sat, 14 Oct 2000 23:59:12 GMT
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>Whatever.
>
>Most of the Linvocates in this group can't advocate their collective
>ass's out of a paper bag. They may be technically astute, but their
>companies lock them away in rubber coding rooms far from the clients
>because they are so, well, geeky.
This is a generalization.
>
>They use a variety of tricks to worm and slither around an arguments.
>
>1.Change the subject.
>2.Don't even address the subject.
>3.Drag other topics into the subject.
>4. Play semantics.
>5.Offer absolutely no proof when they are contested.
>6. Out and out lie.
>7.Compare current Linux to version a of Windows 95.
>8. Resort to name calling when all else fails.
More generalizations and ad hominems.
>
>A pathetic bunch of geeks infest this group. But you do serve a
>purpose. You guys have absolutely no idea how much slap-stick
>entertainment you provide for so many folks just looking for a laugh.
Try the Three Stooges. As far as I know, they practically
invented the genre. Or perhaps Charlie Chaplin.
:-)
>
>Linux can be quite funny at times. Especially with a sorry bunch of
>fools advocating it.
Yeah, you're right, we should all fold in the towel and go
to Microsoft, begging for semitransparent menus and
non-standard Kerberos implementations. (Among other things.)
"Please, Microsoft, can we have some more?"
>
>This group is the biggest joke on the entire net. It gets mentioned in
>the trade rags all the time as well as in user groups, at least where
>I live. We think it is hysterical.
Who's this "we", paleface?
>
>You are your own worst enemies because people wander into this group,
>take a look around and say to themselves, "These Linux people are a
>miserable lot". And they are.
You're the miserable lot. Linux people are individuals.
Microsoft people apparently are Borg collective types.
As in:
We're all the same, we're lock step in step;
Use Microsoft or suffer the drip;
We are cool, we are good, we are cool with 2K;
In 128 Meg, with snazzy screensavers, oh yay!
(OK, so my writing of cadences is a little off. :-) )
>
>We got a guy who talks like Dr. Seuss.
What, you don't like rhyming words?
Of Linux and NT from certain nerds?
An OS is a useful tool;
who sees this not is merely a fool.
The OS wars are rather silly;
intended to titillate and maybe instruct.
Maybe one'll impress a nice young philly,
but as for discussion -- he's fucked.
:-)
(with apologies to Theodore Geisel's estate -- he was
better at this sort of thing than I ever hope to be)
>We got a guy who writes a dissertation to every question.
So I'm verbose. :-P
>We have a guy who can't use a spell checker.
I iz reel gud et sepling. (Come back Tim Palmer, we miss you!
Um.... On second thought...)
>Another one who just makes up "facts" as he goes along.
Well, I discount such observations as "Linux is the best OS
that ever was" (highly subjective), or "Windows NT is the
absolute lamest" (ditto) or "Windows NT crashes a lot" (ditto)
or such like.
To a true scientist (if such a concept makes any sense at all),
raw, repeatable data is the gist of the fact or theory.
It's not enough to say Windows crashed; one has to recreate
the state of the entire system at will, or at least enough of it
to reproduce the crash. Ditto for Linux, with the addendum that
"crash" in that case might be anything from "well, it did
something unexpected and put up a requester" to a core dump
to a kernel panic (fast fact: "Splunge!").
Computers and software are complex, and in some cases overly complicated.
(Looked at the Windows API lately? At least with Linux one has
a fighting chance, with fork() as opposed to
CreateProcessWithSoManyArgumentsOneLosesTrackOfWhatOneWasTryingToDoIn\
TheFirstPlace(...). :-) )
>A couple of Sci-Fi nuts with this Tholen thing that goes on forever.
I more or less ignore those, myself. About as useful as
alt.syntax.tactical. :-)
>A couple of developers, why the hell they are here is beyond me?
Why not? Can't we argue about which API suits our needs better?
Oh, that's right, there is but one API, and its owner is Microsoft.
All praise be to Microsoft.
Feh.
>Some nasty folks.
Feh.
>People complaining when their 486 computer won't work.
Some of us value old machinery. I happen to have a *386* motherboard,
and AFAIK it is still functional. Useful? No. Why?
Good question, which probably has multiple answers. It would
probably cost me more in time to get that dinosaur up than to
get a brand new motherboard, CPU, memory, casing, disk storage,
power supply, etc., assemble it, load Linux on it, and go.
(Or go online and purchase already-built Linux-powered systems, if
one can find them; they do exist, though.) And of course
I'd get a faster system -- and hopefully as reliable as one.
So it sits in a bag on a shelf somewhere, in a closet.
Or, take what I'm actively using now, a pair of machines,
one a Pentium Pro 200 (64 MB, 29 Gb), one a Pentium 90
(16 MB, 4 GB). Not exactly state of the art, but I find
them useful, and probably will for many years. If I get
a new non-ix86 machine running Linux, I can port my stuff.
If I really wanted to, I could port it to many other Unixes,
including AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, and SCO Unix.
Can one say that about Windows? Thought so, unless one
develops an app with an eye to portability -- or goes in
there and removes all the MicroCrap. I've done that, for
a small application (a batch report generator), so it's doable.
(It was using MFC, too.)
Whether one values stability, newness, or what not, it's clear
that technology is a rapidly changing beast; adapt -- or die.
Microsoft has more or less adapted (and may have pushed the
technology, if only because their newest offerings require 64M (!!)
of memory just sitting there resting). Linux is forward in some
areas, backward in others; until Linux becomes accepted by the
mainstream, it will take second fiddle in some manufacturers,
as Microsoft -- the first fiddle -- always comes first.
We like winners; it's our nature.
In any event, when's the last time you saw a Model T? I do
see some on a rare occasion tootling around the city, here.
(Or maybe they're model A's; I'm not up on old cars, but
they are distinctive; most of the boxes on wheels running
around look about as exciting as mouldy cheese.)
Linux may be a Model T, but it also is a Mack Truck.
Metaphorically speaking, of course. I'm not sure what
Windows is; probably a cross between a Trabant and a
Ford Econoline van with custom airbrushing. :-) Looks
real pretty, anyway.
IMO, of course.
There's also another side to this debate. There's gold in them
thar machines -- and other such poisonous compounds. Discarding
them in a landfill is very environmentally unsound, and manufacturing
them requires tons (literally) of water, and a few carcinogenic
substances (LEDs in particular are gallium arsenide, if I'm not
mistaken; arsenic isn't exactly the friendliest of substances).
Having to "refresh" our equipment every few years makes me wonder
how environmentally damaging Microsoft's upgrades are.
Of course, such damage may be trifling compared to such things
as massive oil spills in the Arctic, or burning oil fields in
Kuwait, or chemical disasters such as Bhopal, or nuclear ones
such as Chernobyl.
But I do wonder.
To be fair, one has to counterbalance this with the power
requirements of older machinery. It would be unreasonable
to keep ENIAC running nowadays, even with transistorized tube
replacements, actively doing problems on, as I recall,
artillery firing, when such could probably be more easily done
on a HP-48 programmable calculator. Of course, this is an
extreme example, but I did see a VAX at one point going for
$1,000 or so, and I probably would have had to rewire my home
for 230V threephase just to run it and use 10 times the power
a comparable $1,000 PC would cost (the PC would be faster, too).
Power also pollutes, in most areas of the country -- remember the
haze that now permeates (unless they've sued it out of existence,
or put a scrubber on the smokestack) the Grand Canyon? Upwind power
plant; I forget the name thereof. Pretty damned visible, I'd think.
>People who like to dissect every word all the time ignoring the
>context of the statement.
Words are supposed to convey meaning. If I don't see the meaning,
I start dissecting. Where's my knife....? :-)
>You guys even have to kill filter your own advocates.
I kill file nobody, not even the 'MAKE MONEY FA$$$$$$T' idiots.
Of course, I don't pay much attention to them, either.
>
>Yes we have it all here in COLA.
>
>It's just like a Circus, only better.
Well, you're easily amused. :-)
>
>I have to wonder how many are kids either in High School or College.
>It's quite obvious that some have never seen the inside of a glass
>house.
I *lived* in one as a kid (an Eichler), and the heating bills
were murder (according to Mom, and I can't blame her).
So there. :-P :-) (And that was back in the mid-70's. I finished
high school just before Reagan was elected.)
And yes, I built my own computer (an 1802 which is also sitting
somewhere in a corner gathering dust). Twice, in fact, if one
counts the time I totally rewired it to use a mix of TTL and CMOS.
I had a free summer, back before my college days.... :-) Sigh.
I also have two 1/2" tapes. How I'm going to read them in this DAT
world, I'm not sure. Oh well; at most, they've got 10 megs.
I can download that before breakfast. :-)
[rest snipped, though it's not much :-) ]
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random stone here
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Subject: Re: Microsoft kicked off the Web!
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 11:10:36 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Bob Hauck
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote
on Sat, 14 Oct 2000 18:43:44 GMT
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>On Sat, 14 Oct 2000 07:02:58 GMT, R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard )
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>Ironically, Microsoft has been killing it's own market. They
>>created checks that now make it impossible to develop server
>>software on workstation editions.
>
>Can you clarify what you mean by this? What sort of "checks" are done?
This generated some traffic a few months (years?) ago on this newsgroup.
Basically, the kernel for NT Workstation and NT server was identical,
except for a couple of registry entries and a daemon running
somewhere deep in NT to watch over them. Microsoft also
placed a limit of 10 socket connections in the EULA (I don't
know if that was (is?) enforced in the actual software or not) for
the Workstation product.
This is all from memory, so hopefully I got it more or less right. :-)
I don't know about product development being hampered, though.
(At the time, I was still working for a Unix shop.)
[.sigsnip]
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Subject: Re: Need expert for info on troubleshooting Linux
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 11:11:51 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote
on Sat, 14 Oct 2000 16:22:22 GMT
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>I was pissed off when I posted that message. UPS lost a package for
>the 3rd time this month and a client is not very happy about it and
>neither am I.
>
>Thank you for a civil and corrective reply to my somewhat uncivil
>post.
>
>For the record I retract what I said about Linux being junk and being
>fostered on the public I don't really believe that at all.
>
>Like you said, Linux is an alternative along with the other OS's.
>
>Sorry for the stupid post :(
You're welcome. :-)
[my stuff snipped for brevity]
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random corrective action here
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Subject: Re: Space Station, Windows & Unix
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 11:14:42 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Robert Love
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote
on 14 Oct 2000 20:38:59 -0500
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>I sat around today catching large portions of the mission. There was a
>brief time when the Windows laptop had to be rebooted. However, the
>laptops called PCSs that run the Station use Solaris and they had no
>problems today.
>
>Why trust critical systems to Windows? And yet I see that the USAF
>is switching Cheyenne mountain to Windows. Its almost criminal.
Which systems are they switching? If they're desktops or low-grade
"personal web servers", I'd not be too worried (although
Linux is probably a better -- and cheaper! -- alternative,
complete with auditable and freely available source code).
I doubt they're switching the satellite monitors (I assume
Cheyenne Mountain is an adjunct of NORAD or something, dedicated
to keeping our airspace clean of enemy missiles :-) ).
I'm not sure even Linux would be appropriate there.
In short -- Need More Info.
[.sigsnip]
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
------------------------------
From: "Nigel Feltham" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Need expert for info on troubleshooting Linux
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 12:11:20 +0100
>I was pissed off when I posted that message. UPS lost a package for
>the 3rd time this month and a client is not very happy about it and
>neither am I.
>
Guess they are running a windows based tracking program and your package has
been blue-screened away.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ()
Subject: Re: Anybody want to test a widget?
Date: 15 Oct 2000 08:18:10 -0400
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> spewed this
unto the Network:
>Seriously? It's a help widget designed to work similarly to the way
>online help works in the MS environment.
Does it rely at all on GNOME, or is it a straight GTK+ program?
--
SPELL.DLL carrup't. Yoosing PALMER.DLL instedd.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Subject: Re: Suggestions for Linux
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 12:18:57 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, unicat
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote
on Sat, 14 Oct 2000 16:15:48 -0400
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>At the risk of providing fuel for the Wintrolls, I am posting some
>friendly criticism of Linux and the Gnome/KDE GUIs.
>(Notice to Microsoft, you can't copyright any of these ideas,
>I am hereby copyrighting c2000
>them and placing them in the public domain)
>
>Linux will never complete its dominance of the computing world
>if we are simply striving to be "as good as" Windows. We must set
>our sights on an OS that is not just more reliable, but much much
>easier to use than MS if we are going to see continued adoption of Linux
>
>on the desktop. Along these lines, here are some suggestions:
>
>1) We need to kill off the "Cult of UNIX" mentality.
> There are too many Linux advocates who are old-line UNIX
> gurus, who believe in the "users should have to earn the right to
> use a computer" ethic. You can see this in the LPI and Redhat
> certification, where the text command line rules supreme. The
> attitude seems to be "If you really want to use Linux, we'll force
> you to learn the bourne shell -bwah-hah-hah-hah!" This anti-social
> elitist mindset is CRIPPLING linux, and we desperately, desperately
> need to eliminate it!
Quick, which is easier,
command-line [lots-of-options] [lots-of-arguments]
or a GUI with lots of widgets?
The answer? It Depends. Command lines can be spelled over
the phone to support types ("emm vee ay eff eye ell eee space
dot dot slash bee dee eye arr"), whereas GUIs have to be
described ("click on this widget, and a form will pop up,
then type in the 'Name' field -- oh, wait, you're German,
that would be 'Namen' and the field's over there instead --
then fill in your age and social security number -- what do
you mean, you don't have an SS number? Oh, right, German again...").
However, novice users prefer forms; they're self-documenting.
The closest thing to a self-documenting command line I've ever seen
is a very old Mentor product (actually, a suite of tools
with a more-or-less common look and feel) which allowed the
user to type in part of a command, then press
control-question-mark. The tool would then insert label/prompts
in the command line itself; these prompts were not
processed as part of the command, but were a visual aid.
Mentor's 8.0 framework (ca. 1991 or so, IIRC) kinda ruined it.
Oh well, old news.
VMS wasn't too bad either, at least as of 3.7; the help
was useful, although our particular computer had problems
when one asked for help on CC options. (But that was
probably a bug in their help files.)
>2) We need to completely eliminate the command line interface.
> That's right. Get rid of it. Anything that can't be done from a
> GUI isn't worth doing. Remove ed,vi,emacs,vim, telnet, rlogin, rsh,
> and especially getty from the distribution package completely.
> Run ppp on all serial lines by default. PCs are cheaper than VT100s,
Oh puh-leaze. How the hell are you going to script anything
without command lines?
Even NT has command lines!
Maybe if Applescript or something similar existed as a standard
on Unix boxes (not just Linux), this might be feasible.
Apple's gone farther along this route than Linux is likely to
(and NT, for that matter). But I rather doubt it.
(Besides, there's that old Unix Cult that you don't like.
We're still out there. And we manufacture and own the black
helicopters which automatically fly out to one's house... :-) )
There's also the question of bandwidth. In this world of
56k modems, it still takes time to draw a form. In that time,
one could just as easily type in a command line. In fact,
a good typist could probably type in a bunch of command lines.
This may be remedied in the future, of course, as bandwidth speeds
continue to increase -- CNN just showed on the "Science and
Technology Week" an optical-optical switch, for example, that
would allow light-routing, increasing bandwidth on the
server side; at some point, we'll all get light pipes in our houses,
not unlike electrical wiring, I would guess. Then watch out!
But until then...I do wonder why all this anathemia towards
the poor command line. :-)
>
> and we can use X-windows over ppp instead of curses. To
> replace telnet and rlogin, use an http link and HTML pages that
> use cgi to run commands.
Oh sure. And you were going to identify yourself exactly how, again?
Oh, right. Cookies! Or maybe Kerberos tickets. (Wow, Microsoft
invented something new, there. Not.)
BTW, you did notice that CGI is old news. You probably want
php4 and possibly Java servlets, as well. php is a neat
environment, what little I've played with it; one might call
it "server-side Javascript".
(Side point: I do agree with getting rid of telnet and rlogin,
but for different reasons. Both transmit in the clear;
they should both be replaced by ssh, or perhaps with variants
which are encryption-aware. There's also the issue that
http also transmits in the clear, and because of our wonderful
governmental policies regarding encryption, which are only
now being changed to something more reasonable -- 'scuse whilst
I toss *my* cookies -- https is only now getting to be an
alternative that people will start to implement and use on
a personal basis.)
>3) We need to add superior functionality to the Linux GUI, like
> the "Halflife" game, with openGL and 3-D icons for linux functions-
>
> a) A restaurant. F'rinstance, you boot linux, and you see a first
> person view of yourself walking into a restaurant. You sit at a
>table,
> and tux the penguin walks over and hands you a menu. The menu has
> linux programs grouped on pages with clickaable tabs. You click a
>tab for
> say, graphics, and a page turns to all the graphics programs . You
>click
> on a menu selection to start up the corresponding function.
> b) An office building. You find yourself walking down a hallway,
> each door leads to either a room or another hallway. Rooms are
> directories with representational 3-D icons for files (like a TV
>for viewing
> animations, or a filing cabinet full of documents, each of which is
>
> a spearate manilla folder). Hallways are directories of
>directories.
> We could produce a tool like a .wad file editor to allow users to
> customize the 3-D environment.
You've got to be kidding me.
I've fantasized (and did little else) regarding a DOOM-type environment
which would allow one to walk into various rooms (directories) and
pick up stuff (files) and drop them in other directories, or into
executable rooms. Read-only directories would have all the crates
locked down; directories without search capability would cage the
user so that he can see, but not explore; directories without read
capability would have the lights turned off, but the user would
have a Thingy that would allow him to type in the name of an
object; symbolic links are transporters or strange-looking
crates with whirly effects (broken links kill you or are a nasty-looking
dark pool in a crate); executables are doors to little rooms with a
display (an X server) on one wall and a few controls on another
("RESTART PROCESS", perhaps); to manipulate the windows on that
display, use the mouse on the display wall; to type, point the mouse
at the keyboard, then start typing on your keyboard.
Or one can shoot the keyboard, display, or control area with
a handgun, a shotgun, or a rocket launcher, which kills the process
with various signals and kick one back into the central process
dispatch area, which is a special room, probably /proc, or maybe
/proc/processes if anyone ever gets around to implementing that.
Keyboard gun shoot = SIGINT;
control gun shoot = SIGQUIT;
display gun shoot = XKillClient();
shotgun blast = SIGTERM;
rocket blast = SIGKILL.
Hope your benefits are paid up! :-)
The mountpoints might be in open sky, in a nice green, grassy field,
maybe with a bunny rabbit's head staked in the ground. :-)
Or one can start in the dungeons at one's home directory, which would
be a different color perhaps to distinguish it. A nice homey yellow,
maybe, with a clock on the wall and a little doggie, and a desk
in one corner with an "In" and "Out" basket. (Anyone remember BOB?)
Others have actually implemented (rather silly, IMO) DOOM-type "games"
where each process is mapped into a sergeant (complete with
floating PID); to kill a process, one shoots the sergeant. One
drawback is that the DOOM code occasionally has sergeants shooting
at each other. It's a bug.
Still others -- Xerox? -- have had hypothetical concepts such as
hanging directory trees, movable walls, and such for a while;
these might be nice visual aids, but that's about it.
To all this, I say "What's the point?" What's really happening are
magnetic domains -- or, if you prefer, bits -- are being moved around
in an organized way. Maybe I'm old school, but I prefer
"mv afile ../bdir"
to
"go into that room there, walk to the crate with the 'afile' sticky on it,
and click on it, opening it. Now grab it.
You now have it in your inventory. Now go back to the lift
and push the 'Up' button. You should see another room; locate
the door named 'bdir', walk though it. Now drop the 'afile' crate there."
More intuitive, perhaps, but it gets tedious after awhile, I would think!
Although it might appeal to the gaming set, especially if there's
a wandering Glitch monster which zaps things at random.
(Yeah, that'll really help the seccy get *her* work done!)
There's also the issue of grabbing a door. Hmm...what's wrong
with this metaphor, eh? :-)
If one wants a superior GUI, I for one would start with the basics.
List widgets which actually work, for example. (Not that Linux
list widgets don't, actually). Buttons that click properly. (X
makes this pretty easy; mouse buttons are automatically
springloaded.) Toggles that toggle. Everything keyboard mappable
(this gets tricky; GTK has some bad deficiencies IMO here) so
that power typists can hit TAB TAB TAB with their left pinkies instead
of moving their hands away from 'ASDFJKL;', the home position.
> 4) DWIM, or Do what I meant -
> Instead of setting up a user interface with the goal of outsmarting
>the user
> and finding clever ways to keep them from doing what they want, make
>the goal
> of the user interface to figure out and implement what the user
>"meant" to do.
> a) Have defaults for everything - paths, settings, verbosity, etc.
>and always fill in the
> defaults for anything the user forgets.
Not a bad idea, actually, especially for a GUI.
> b) Always warn the user about doing stupid things, like when they
>enter
> * and .txt as spearate files to be removed, when they meant *.txt
And the computer would know this how?
I suppose one could put in heuristics in some commands -- the ERASE/DEL
command prompted one with an "All files will be deleted! Are you
sure [Y/N]?" which was nice for interactive use, but played hob
with scripts -- but I do wonder how much energy one should put
into this, as opposed to being idiot proof in the first place
with such things as regular backups.
On the other hand, since no one ever seems to do regular backups.... :-)
One could in principle program rm to use -i as a default, so one would
see 'rm -b' (-b for -batch) in scripts or such. I'm not sure if that
would work or not (it would probably break a number of scripts).
Or one can code up a /usr/local/bin/rm that does what you want, and
adjust the search path to put /usr/local/bin first.
> c) Never ever ever ask the user to provide the same information twice
Examples?
>-
> keep everything they ever tell you in a KEYWORD=value file.
>standardize
> the use of keywords, and always check this file before asking the
>user for some fact.
You mean, like the Windows Central Registry? Oh, wait, that's binary.
Why didn't you say Binary Central Registry? Hmmm?
(If one were really serious about this sort of thing, I'd suggest
using Postgres, msql, or mysql. Of course, that would require
that everyone actually *install* Postgres, msql, or mysql....)
> d) Run a background process once an hour to check the integrity and
>consistency
> of all configuration files - and fix them so they work.
Automatically?
Can O' Worms. Not that it's a bad idea about warning about
config file inconsistencies...but fixing them? How does one
automatically fix a typo in a word the computer's never seen before?
Is the computer going to start guessing at directory pathnames?
("No, what you said was /var/log/massages, but what you
really wanted was /var/log/messages. I'll now delete /var/log/messages
for you.")
Besides, if a config file's inconsistent, the daemon will
start spitting messages into /var/log/messages. It might
behoove one to read it occasionally. :-) And the daemon
is the final arbiter anyway; one hopes it's intelligently written.
(Not every bug or security flaw ends up in Windows. :-) )
> e) The ten year old test - If 90% of ten year old kids can use an
>application
> without training - it's user friendly enough to be DWIM.
I take it "mv afile ../bdir" is far too complicated, then.
Oh well.
>
> 5) Put all files in an associative index which provides the user with
>date, owner, subject,
> occurence of a text string, and filetype clues for finding files,
>which can be used
> instead of a file path whenever a file must be located.
A new file system would be helpful, here. One thing I do like
about Macs is that their file system is actually a BTree with
the leafnames; this means that, in theory, if one wants to find the
file "AFooDopolis.txt", one doesn't have to know what directory
it's in.
Of course, one can also modify 'updatedb' and 'locate', if one
doesn't mind stale data on occasion ('updatedb' is only run
once every night, by default, but that's changeable).
As for putting occurrences of text strings into the associative
index -- what happens when the file changes? Overhead!
>
>Easy to do? No! But worth doing if we really want Linux to win!
Not necessarily all about winning, either. Linux is one of many,
and Linux is also a software product that's simple to maintain
because it consists of many small specialists, each of which
can operate more or less independently. At least in theory.
Linux is also maintained by individuals...although corporations
are also getting involved. These individuals are amateurs
who are also paid software professionals, in many cases (paid
for other work, in other words). The word "amateur" derives
from "love", although "pride" might be a better term.
In any event, we care!
I don't know if I want Linux to win. I want Linux to do what
I want to do. Call me a control freak if you like, but an OS
shouldn't get in the way of getting things done. :-)
If I don't like Linux, I can switch to FreeBSD, perhaps.
Or even write my own, using pieces from Linux. (Time?
What's that? Sigh.)
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