Linux-Advocacy Digest #953, Volume #29 Tue, 31 Oct 00 01:13:02 EST
Contents:
Re: Windoze 2000 - just as shitty as ever (spicerun)
Re: Newbie(?) Linux Question.... ("kosh")
Re: Ms employees begging for food ("Les Mikesell")
Re: Ms employees begging for food ("Les Mikesell")
Re: Ms employees begging for food ("Les Mikesell")
Re: Pros and Cons of MS Windows Dominated World? ("JS/PL")
Re: 2.4 Kernel Delays. ("Les Mikesell")
Re: Astroturfing ("JS/PL")
Re: Astroturfing ("JS/PL")
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From: spicerun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.destroy.microsoft,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Windoze 2000 - just as shitty as ever
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 03:51:51 GMT
"James E. Freedle II" wrote:
> "Spicerun" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > Ayende Rahien wrote:
> >
> > > Get the NT Option pack , nice little utility there called Kill.exe
> > > But 90% of the time you can make do with "net stop" or simply End Task
> from
> > > windows task manager
> >
> > What good will kill.exe do when the machine is totally locked up,
> unresponsive,
> > and you can't type in the kill command? Remember that the original poster
> was
> > complaining that all he could do was pull the power plug? Amazing just
> how
> > many Windows Gurus are always saying to run a program or just hit the task
> > manager no matter how many times a person is telling them that the machine
> is
> > completely unresponsive and that hitting alt-ctl-del will do absolutely
> nothing
> > when the machine is unresponsive. Makes me think that Windows Guru just
> can't
> > grasp what happens with system lockups. I wonder how long many of the
> Windows
> > Gurus wait for that Task Manager dialog on a locked up machine before they
> > themselves figure out that the machine is locked up?....(Even then, The
> Gurus
> > seem to freak whenever they can't get the Task Manager Dialog Box to
> Display).
> Windows 2000 does have small problems, but mostly on my machine it runs
> without a hitch. Of course it just could be a bad install. But I am no
> expert.
> >
> > > Hold power button for 6 seconds, it will turn itself off.
> > > It was build this was so you wouldn't accidently turn the computer off.
> >
> > Not every machine is an ATX machine and some ATX machines have the power
> button
> > suspend delay completely disabled in the bios, therefore pushing the power
> > button will immediately power done the machine. Non-ATX machines power is
> > never software controlled, so the power supply on the machine will power
> off as
> > soon as the switch is pressed....and no software will ever change this.
> Very
> > arrogant of you to assume that the power button is under any software
> control
> > on all computers.
> Well the original poster did say that hitting the power switch did nothing.
> Of course I guess that his machine does not have a reset button. That
> usually works for me.
> >
> >
> I know that Windows has problems, and of course ALL OPERATING SYSTEMS have
> problems, but just because you can program (I can) does not mean that you
> know how to design operating systems. IMHO If you have not any clue on
> Operating System theory and design, then you have no business mucking around
> in the source code for the Operating System. That does not mean that you
> cannot look at the code, you just have no business changing the code.
OK, How does the Power On/Off Switch which controls the power supply physically
on Non-ATX Machines relate to the Windows Software or Bios Software? How does
Operating System Theory force a finger-operated switch to press in? Answer:
It doesn't, It is a Hardware Implementation that software simply can't control.
On the majority of ATX Machines in the bios settings, the ATX bios can be set
to allow power-off at the instance of the Power Button Press. Perhaps Windows
can try to override this, but it is highly unlikely considering the sheer
number of machines Windows would need code to override every ATX bios function
in every model of Computer Board made on which Windows can run.....In fact, on
a lot of boards (including mine) the Press of the Power Button Triggers the
circuitry on the board to put the Processor in Suspend/Standby mode...part of
which is to slow down or disable the clocks to the Processor via Hardware.
This circuitry may or may not trigger an interrupt to the Processor depending
on the board's design. I'm sure Windows could try to put their 6 second delay
into the Interrupt Handler (provided it is in the right Interrupt Handler), but
I doubt this would be reliable. I simply don't believe that MS would go to
this much trouble to override any bioses on the board... so the Board/Processor
will follow whatever the bios is set up to do first (ie-if option set to power
down immediately or go into hardware suspend, the board will do it despite what
Windows may want to do). If the board is set in the standard button push and
is designed for something like Windows to insert their handler, then, yes, it
will wait that 6 seconds before powering down.
Also, consider this....on ATX machines, it does take the microprocessor to flip
the right bit to actually turn off the machine. If that processor is in a hard
software loop, or the processor had completely stopped due to hard/soft
failures (ie-trying to read memory that doesn't exist, running an instruction
it wasn't meant to run, etc.) then the ATX board will not power
down....Period. Your only choice is to pull the plug. This is what the
original poster was complaining about.
I can design, build prototypes, write the firmware, and program as
well....<and, by golly, I've even made a primitive OS in 16K of memory on an
embedded device>. No amount of Windows code will make a hard-wired
nonprogrammable Hardware power switch wait 6 seconds. You're still arrogant in
assuming that Windows can control the entire machine at all times.....Including
all of the hardware circuitry.
------------------------------
From: "kosh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Newbie(?) Linux Question....
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 20:53:28 +0700
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Hondo"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I question my status as newbie since I don't even have Linux yet but am
> seriously considering a change.
>
> I've made the progression (regression?) through Windows 3.11, 95, 98, Me
> and am fed up with MS Crashware.
>
> My question is this. I need suggestions on which commercial Linux
> version would be best suited for learning the OS? I just use my computer
> at home for the entertainment value. I derive my entertainment from
> researching on the web, email, mp3's and the most important value comes
> from learning new computer skills. I'm looking at either Linux Mandrake
> or Corel Linux as a starting point. Any suggestions would be most
> helpful.
>
> Ken McFelea [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Get Mandrake 7.2
It was just released so it might be a week before you can get a box set
of it from your local computer store but it will be well worth it. It
comes with KDE 2 which is the best desktop I have used so far. I used to
flop back and forth between kde and gnome a lot but kde 2 has ended that.
KDE2 has konqueror as part of it now which is a very nice and fast web
browser. KDE2 also comes with koffice. It is a pretty nice office
package and it is network transparent. Also kde2 seems to be aware of
urls. When I select a url a little window pops up to ask what it should
do with it. It does not grab focus so can be completely ignored and it
vanishes after a bit. However if you select konqeror from the list it
will download the file and give you the choice of what app to use if it
does not know by default.
All in all it is the best dist I have used so far. I started with
slackware about 3 years ago then used redhat for a while and switched to
mandrake when version 7 came out. I don't think I will ever go back to
anything else.
Linux does have a linux curve but I found it well worth it to learn. The
time I put into learning it has saved me a lot of time later. I am far
more productive on kde2 then I could ever be on windows. I have done
windows support and programming now for about 8 years and it is just not
as good as linux once you understand how linux works.
Linux is just a different way of doing things and some people just never
get it so it does not make sense. It is not just a matter of using it a
lot it is a matter of understanding the philosophy behind the operating
system. It seems strange but understanding the philosophy really helps. I
just helped another windows user switch over to linux. For about a week
he was really frustrated with it but he kept coming to me with his
probably and he started to learn. It was a really great feeling today
when the light when on in his head and he understood how the system is
designed to work. He got a lot down today and now finds most things
easier then windows.
Hope this helps.
Have fun with whatever you choose.
------------------------------
From: "Les Mikesell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.arch,comp.os.netware.misc
Subject: Re: Ms employees begging for food
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 04:08:35 GMT
"T. Max Devlin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Said Bernd Paysan in comp.os.linux.advocacy;
> [...]
> >There are certainly crude parts in the Unix interface; but at least the
> >free software community has successfully smoothed the edges. Unix is not
> >the best of all possible OS, but it is good enough. It is friendly
> >enough to programmers (though I don't understand why I have to open
> >sockets with htons and htonl instead of just
> >open("/ports/tcp/www.foo-bar.com/http");
>
> If I might contribute my perspective, it is because dealing with a
> socket within Unix's "everything is a file" paradigm would be a Bad
> Thing, because it would mask, without abstracting correctly, the fact
> that a socket is not strictly a system resource.
Huh? A socket is a file once you get past the magic of opening it.
Otherwise inetd would be unable to start programs that know
nothing about sockets with sockets as their stdio connections.
Taking a bit more of the magic out of opening one by using
standard string representations as their names would allow
all languages that know about opening named files to use them,
and thus makes exactly as much sense as adding named pipes
which does the same thing for pipe i/o.
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: "Les Mikesell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.arch,comp.os.netware.misc
Subject: Re: Ms employees begging for food
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 04:34:55 GMT
"T. Max Devlin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >The 10% (I thought 30?) maximal nominal use is a malicious
> >misinterpretation of one of the more interesting papers on ethernet.
>
> The phrase "maximal nominal" does not parse. I know the 30% number
> you're referring to, and that is, indeed, related to my placement of
> "nominal throughput" at 10%. CSMA/CD does have a "logarithmic response
> curve" under shared-media load. But the question can be asked "so you
> can rely on 30% bandwidth; fine. Now, *which* 30%?"
The 10% number is a figment of your imagination. The 30% number
came from a much publicized IBM paper based on a flawed
model of how the collision avoidance actually works, and was
refuted later by people who knew better and actually had
ethernets running at 60% with no delays (as they all will if
you stay within the specs). IBM was trying to sell token ring
at the time based on such claims when in fact ethernet would
generally outperform it.
> Another reason I would call 10% *nominal throughput*, in contrast to
> that 30% figure, is the observation that at the time of the creation of
> Ethernet, microcircuit components for LAN-style transceivers generally
> used a cost/performance break point of 1 to 2.5 Megabits per second. In
> contrast, the CSMA/CD method required very fast transmission bit rate,
> and the components became much more expensive. Yet, with the
> logarithmic response curve, shared media ethernet wasn't expected to
> reach even 50% utilization. It appears that in order to ensure a
> nominal throughput on the order found in similar designs, a 10 Megabit
> NIC and media were necessary.
Is there supposed to be some point here?
> Well, if it didn't, then why did everyone go to switched Ethernet just
> about as fast as they could afford to?
I don't recall any big rush for switched 10Meg. Some places used
it to fix their out-of-spec shared nets, but I would never have called
it popular. Switched 100Meg is almost a requirement because
you can't cascade hubs and it is cheap enough that you don't have
to worry about alternatives.
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: "Les Mikesell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.arch,comp.os.netware.misc
Subject: Re: Ms employees begging for food
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 04:45:14 GMT
"Terje Mathisen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > > Or, it appears, certain end-user/developers. What you did was bind
the
> > > > software client/server connectivity to the logical packet routing
(IPX)
> > > > connectivity. This is essentially just what prevents Netware from
> > > > dumping IPX and using IP to begin with.
> > >
> > > Absolutely, but it was still the correct decision, _at that point in
> > > time_.
> >
> > Only if you think that bad design decisions are appropriate when
> > supporting the correct one is slightly harder. It was a decision that
> > even at the time clearly steered them toward irrelevance as soon
> > as typical hardware had a few bytes more RAM available.
>
> First of all, who is the 'them' in 'steered them toward' in the previous
> sentence?
The well known company whose name was once synonymous with
networking but is now just associated with a historically interesting
protocol.
> Second, I'd like know if there's anyone here who hasn't ever written any
> tactical code, i.e. code to solve a problem _now_, as opposed to waiting
> for a better solution to become available? :-)
Of course. IPX had it's advantages for dos and the 640k memory
barrier. The advantage was over when Windows-for-Workgroups
introduced 32-bit drivers running natively in extended memory. That
seems like a century ago.
> (Remember, there was no tcpip stack on those Dos machines!)
There were some, but the correct ones didn't leave much room
for applications. The issue is not about dos or the initial versions
of Netware, it is about why it wasn't possible to drop IPX as
soon as a reasonable memory model was available and it was
clear that most of the world was going to interconnect.
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: "JS/PL" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Pros and Cons of MS Windows Dominated World?
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 23:43:43 -0500
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:8tkptg$tmp$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> X-Newsreader: ProNews/2 Version 1.00
>
>
>
>
> Good polling can and should be very crafty at working its way
> over, under and around such stances, as might be assumed by a
> potential voter. The sequence of the questions as well as the
> rapid-fire delivery is crucial to success, much as with
> lie-detector proceedure. Not that I place much faith in, or
> accept the constitutionality of lie-detecting, but for the
> process to be at all effective a robust execution is required.
>
> I doubt that many naiive pollees can so conciously direct their
> responses as you seem to believe. Inevitably the gratuitous
> responses will pile up in such a fashion as to nullify
> themselves.This, of course, presumes the highest level of
> political science/statisticalanalysis is practiced, an assumption
> not easily made today. E.g. this morning's news: 'W' *leading* @
> 43%, AlGore@42%, poll accuracy +/- 3% - what a crock! Old
> man Gallup, who knew his stuff, now turns in his grave.
I was a pollster once, back in 1980. I can testify from actually witnessing
the process, don't trust polls taken by low paid workers in a practically
unsupervised environment. I answered about 99.9% of the questions myself,
sitting on my couch, eating and watching TV, instead of walking door to door
with the huge printout of registered voters I was given. I also had the
feeling I wasn't the only one in the group with the same idea.
<dink wad snipped>
------------------------------
From: "Les Mikesell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: 2.4 Kernel Delays.
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 05:29:40 GMT
"Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:iAbL5.5023$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >
> > There are a few interesting statistics here:
> >
> > (A) Multiple servers per IP in a load balanced environment.
> > (B) Multiple IPs/Host names per server.
> >
> > There is no real evidence that the ratio of A to B varies across OS. So
> > one these are irrelevant.
>
> Take a look at the typical Linux site, then compare that to the typical
IIS
> site.
>
> How many multi-server load balanced Linux sites can you come up with?
> Google is a good one, but it's a rarity.
Deja, slashdot, sourceforge.... I don't know if algore.com is more than
one box but he can probably afford it, etoys.
> Meanwhile, Look at sites like microsoft.com, barnesandnoble.com, ebay,
> NASDAQ, and hundreds of other major ebusiness sites that all run mutiple
IIS
> hosts on a single site.
That just suggests to me that IIS is not robust enough to count on one
machine staying up, but I don't see much of a point here.
> Linux seems to run several "domain squatter" sites, where they register
> hundreds or thousands of domains and direct them to the same server.
How did you discover that? Why do you think it is a statistically
relevant number compared to other systems?
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: "JS/PL" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Astroturfing
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 00:42:02 -0500
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>When you get a full set of working brains and stop carrying grudges around,
comeback.
This is getting to be a habit with you. You need to come up with a different
line. Everyone you disagree with ends up accused of being "Just pissed about
losing an argument, and carrying a grudge".
Please, think up something else.
------------------------------
From: "JS/PL" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Astroturfing
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 00:52:35 -0500
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:39fe1a71$2$yrgbherq$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, on 10/30/00
> at 03:37 PM, chrisv <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
>
> >[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> >>>Ummm why don't you go to deja.com/usenet and prove this Ed. The whole
> >>>discussion was about the hardware caching and nothing more, any other
> >>>tangents were irrelevant. We weren't talking about a whole system and
only
> >>>dishonest assholes that lost on that point tried to take it somewhere
else.
> >>>Now weren't you going to put me in you're "twit filter" or are you
lying
> >>>again?
> >>
> >>
> >>I decided to hang around and see how mad you get. Looking at your last
message
> >>you are so angry that you can't see straight
>
> >You're the one who looks angry.
>
> >You're the one who is wrong.
>
> >You're the one making a total ass of himself on front of all readers of
this
> >thread.
>
> Really. I repeat, he is the asshole who keeps bringing up the same point
time
> after time after time, in conversation with other people -- now like or
not,
> what is going on here is that Jason is not a rational mind at work -- he
is
> petty little asshole out to get even because he has a grudge.
There you go AGAIN with the "grudge" argument!
This caused me to do a little search at deja.com for the keywords
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" and "grudge"
My fricking god!!!! 500 matches include both those keywords!!!
I'd predict that if deja hadn't turned retarded there would probably be
10,000 matches.
http://www.deja.com/dnquery.xp?[EMAIL PROTECTED]+grudge&ST=MS&svcclass
=dnserver&DBS=1
------------------------------
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