Linux-Advocacy Digest #998, Volume #29 Thu, 2 Nov 00 02:13:03 EST
Contents:
Re: Ms employees begging for food (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Why Red Hat is as bad as Microsoft ("Les Mikesell")
Re: A Microsoft exodus! (Caldera OpenLinux User)
Re: A Microsoft exodus! (Caldera OpenLinux User)
Re: Why Linux is great (Terry Porter)
Re: Solaris 2.6 boot floppy ("javaduke")
Re: I think I'm in love..... ("javaduke")
Re: A Microsoft exodus! ("Christopher Smith")
Re: Considering Linux for personal use ("javaduke")
Re: Oracle say's Microsoft no good! ("Chad Myers")
Re: Oracle say's Microsoft no good! ("Les Mikesell")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.arch,comp.os.netware.misc
Subject: Re: Ms employees begging for food
Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 00:45:26 -0500
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Said Weevil in comp.os.linux.advocacy;
[...]
>> >You seem to be making my point. "Someone on the other end" is not necessary
>> >for a socket to exist. For that matter, a physical network is not even
>> >necessary for a socket to exist. A socket is, to strip it to its barest
>> >essentials, a locally maintained data structure that is used by local
>> >applications for referencing incoming and outgoing data.
>>
>> From your perspective, yes. From anyone else's, no. You say, on the
>> one hand, that "someone on the other end" is not necessary for a socket
>> to "exist", but on the other hand you say it is used for referencing
>> incoming and outgoing data. One must presume that said data comes from
>> or goes to somewhere, for the abstraction of a socket to be relevant,
>> correct?
>
>My modem is for communicating with other modems. Whether I actually use it
>during a login session or not, it still exists. It *could* be used to
>communicate, and that is in fact what it's for, but I do not in fact use it
>every time I use my computer. Nevertheless, it exists whether it is used or
>not.
>
>When I create a socket in a program, its purpose is perfectly analogous to
>that of my modem: to communicate with another socket. Whether it *does*
>communicate with another socket during a particular run of the program is
>irrelevant to its existence. It exists whether the program flow in that
>particular execution leads to a connection or not.
But you don't seem to realize that being a "perfect analogy" makes a
socket an abstraction, not a physical object. Whether it exists before
you use it is entirely in the mind of the beholder. Thus, to you, a
programmer, it makes *absolutely no sense* that a socket doesn't exist
until there is a virtual connection established. But to someone with a
different mind-set, someone viewing the network, not the programs,
sockets come into existence when a program on one host executes a
connection to another. I know this doesn't help, because the
abstraction of a socket is so complete you don't even think of it in
terms of network connections, but function calls. But your question was
"why do I have to open a socket differently from opening a file". My
answer might seem downright obtuse and ignorant, but it does match the
circumstances. When your program wants to arrange all its thingies and
start 'opening' with your algorithmic sequences, it frankly isn't
*allowed* to treat a socket like any other local resource, which gets
treated like a file. It isn't really esoteric arcane language
constructs, is my theory; it is a result of operational efficiency.
A different perspective could, no doubt, conclude that it was just
because sockets were 'bolted on' to Unix. But why is it when things
work we want to attribute them to intelligent design, but we're not
willing to consider that maybe what we think of as a mistake was
actually a solution to a problem we don't see, because it was corrected.
The ultimate test of my flakey theory here is to "fix it", and build a
Unix where you open a socket just like opening a file. And then see why
it doesn't work so hot. My guess would be, its because you're trying to
treat network connections as if they were local resources, and that's
asking for trouble.
>A better analogy, and one that dovetails nicely with this conversation, is
>that of a file. It sometimes useful in a program to create and open a
>temporary file before it is even known whether it will be used. The user
>may not take the program in a path that makes use of this temporary file,
>but the file still exists. Even if it is destroyed at program exit, as
>sockets are, it still existed during program execution. It existed whether
>it was used or not.
>
>It is the same with sockets. And again, to be honest, I do not understand
>how this can even be in dispute.
Because the alternative seems clearly problematic. Perhaps those who
"bolted" sockets onto Unix realized that it might be wise to discourage
treating them as things which could be so easily opened and abstractly
handled as temporary files which are never written to, but still exist.
Perhaps some good amount of networking software might work a bit better
if one only opened sockets once you knew they were going to be utilized.
The chance still exists, grimly enough, that these sockets you are
opening are not the sockets I'm referring to, but merely some
programmatic construct like a "register" or a "stack" or something.
This leads to the dawning realization that these sockets I point to
aren't much recognized in standard descriptions of how networks work.
The relationship between ports and sockets is something I've only seen
referenced one or two times, come to think of it. My apologies, but
I've obviously forgotten what its like outside my particular trenches;
I'd forgotten how reductionist these things get.
It may well be that sockets are a prime example of just the kind of
thing that ends up being a land-mine in the world of networking. Who
knows how many undiscernible problems alternately blamed on "the
network" or "the server" might be accounted for by the lack of
recognition for the nature of sockets behind the veil of the abstraction
they've been using. I'm even more anxious to find out more about your
end of things. Recognizing that it is possible to do things other than
typical things with sockets, what are the most typical uses, and how,
precisely, are they dealt with?
[...]
>I need make no presumptions about the existence of anyone, anywhere, in
>order to open a socket. I just open the socket. Simple. Whether a
>connection will be made at some later time need not be known. Actually,
>since programs are not psychic, it is impossible to know whether the socket
>will ever be used in a connection.
And how does the "use in a connection" work, then, if it does take
place?
>The same is true of a file, as I mentioned above. Neither I nor my program
>necessarily "knows" whether a file that I create/open will actually be used,
>but that doesn't prevent me from opening it, and it doesn't prevent the file
>from existing.
Yes, but the file is, truly, a local resource. If the socket is going
to be used, which you don't know or care you've stated, but if it is,
then it isn't strictly and solely a local resource, whether you control
and manipulate it autonomously or not.
>> But since you have to establish a reference for a
>> non-local resource (the other end, and data coming from or going to
>> there) in order to "open" a socket, once that's done, it doesn't matter
>> if there is another end, let alone whether somebody is there.
>
>You are definitely confused, here. You can, and very often do, "open" a
>socket without having any reference at all about the "other end". This is
>how servers work. A socket is opened, and the protocol driver is told that
>this socket wants to listen for incoming connections on a particular port.
>That's it. There is no guarantee that there will ever be a connection, and
>if there is one, there is no requirement that it be "non-local."
Yes, these are the sockets I am talking about. I'm going to have to
think about this. I do believe we may be on to something.
[...to be continued...]
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
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------------------------------
From: "Les Mikesell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Why Red Hat is as bad as Microsoft
Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 05:43:04 GMT
"." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8tpu3o$26c8$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
Roberto Alsina <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Any more specific pointers? You know, you are saying they did something
very
> wrong, perhaps something more than your word would give you credibility.
Look around, nitwit. Find a mandrake kernel, find a slackware kernel, do a
diff
on headers, read the magic.
Did they fix it so you can cross-compile modules for a different version
of the kernel than you currently have installed in the usual place?
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 22:45:35 -0800
From: Caldera OpenLinux User <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: A Microsoft exodus!
Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
> "Weevil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:r80M5.2717$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > news:hQTL5.5426$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > > news:39ff63ae$1$yrgbherq$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > > I don't know which vessel you are talking about, but the USS Yorktown
> > was
> > > dead
> > > > in the water and towed into port -- and YES -- it was NT that crashed.
> > >
> > > Look, NT was as much at fault in the yorktown as the OS that was used in
> > the
> > > Arianne 5 was responsible for it's crash.
> > >
> > > > >Trust me, Linux/Unix applications have errors too.
> > > >
> > > > They haven't sunk and billion dollar vesselsand killed the crew --
> which
> > > is
> > > > exactly what would have happened to the Yorktown in war time.
> > >
> > > The Yorktown is a non-combat vessel. But it's irrelevant since the
> fault
> > > was in the database software. The Database vendor even said that the
> > > problem would have never happened if the navy had not been running a
> beta
> > > version of their software.
> >
> > I'm not familiar with the details of this case. Did NT crash or not? If
> > so, then surely you're not blaming an application for it. If the OS
> > crashes, it is the fault of the OS. A buggy application should have no
> > effect on the OS, beyond perhaps keeping it busier than it should.
>
> Something you might want to read is this:
>
> http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/Yorktown.html
>
> No, NT did not crash. The "system" crashed, and specifically the database
> was corrupted do to an application failure. This caused a domino effect
> throughout the network, where systems that depended on valid data all
> crashed because they had no data validation or exception handling.
>
> Furthermore, the Yorktown was expected to fail, since it was an "X" project.
> It was taken out to shake it down and find out where the faults were. The
> basic idea of an "X" project is that if it doesn't fail, you're not testing
> it hard enough.
Oh Bullshit. These simple kinds of errors are failures. A domino effect that
results from a database error is POOR risk management and planning. If
someone had not figurted figured out the critical ness of the dtabase and
planned for that problem then I can understand why a unreliable PC OS was
used.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 22:49:49 -0800
From: Caldera OpenLinux User <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: A Microsoft exodus!
Christopher Smith wrote:
> "2:1" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > Neither does Outlook. The basic principle is identical - all you need
> to do
> > > is attach a shell script and convince someone to execut it it in a
> shell.
> > > Most mailers let you pipe attachments straight from the email to any
> program
> > > you want, so all you need is a message body that says something like:
> > >
> > > "Press |, then type /bin/sh and hit return to see Natalie Portman obey
> your
> > > every wish."
> > >
> > > And an attachment like:
> > > #!/bin/sh
> > > rm -rf /* > /dev/null &
> > > echo "Loading up, please wait...."
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > There's an easy way to protect yourself: run it in a chrooted system as
> > an ordinary user. The worst that can happen is that the guinea pig
> > user's files (which this attachment is probably the only one) gets
> > trashed. That's it.
> >
> >
> > Or, run it as a guinea pig user on a non chrooted system. Same goes:
> > nothing but the guinea pig gets trashed.
>
> There's an even easier way to protect yourself - don't run it at all.
> However, the point isn't whether or not it's easy to protect yourself -
> because it is - the point is that idiots on both platforms as just as
> vulnerable. A lot of people run as root, even those who know better.
People are never going to change so there's no merit in blaming people - if
there where merit in blaming people computer security would be a social
science.
There are more points of failure with Windows as MS has designed it -
integrated Data, apps and the OS. There is a greter risk due to the OS and
design. That's the computer science and engineering. "I LOVE YOU" is unique
to MS and it exploits public APIs some folk added to an OS without thinking
very deeply about the possibilities -these are design and techncial risks.
But by god MS has really captured a lot of the e-mail market by integrating
MS Outlook and MAPI into windows.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Terry Porter)
Subject: Re: Why Linux is great
Reply-To: No-Spam
Date: 02 Nov 2000 06:09:14 GMT
On Wed, 01 Nov 2000 17:42:11 GMT, George Richard Russell
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Terry Porter wrote:
>>On Tue, 31 Oct 2000 23:57:37 GMT, George Richard Russell
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>><snip>
>>
>>>Every few years, Unix gets another GUI. Its a shame the cli isn't
>>>replaced / improved as often.
>>>
>><snip>
>>
>>There are reasons for the cli George, low overhead making the remote
>>admin of Unix easy, is one.
>
>Easy? The cli maintenance of Unix is so easy we've seen dozens of
>frontends to it - Linuxconf, Webmin, COAS, SMIT and more.
Yes easy, the proliferation of front ends is common, even for easy tasks.
I looked at Linux conf, and Webmin, but all these things only do the functions
designed into them, whereas the basic telnet or SSH facility gives all the
functions of remote admin.
>
>If you want a low overhead, easy admin system then something like
>Sambas swat or webmin is the way to go - no need for remotely invocable
>root shells and less of a security risk.
There is no risk, the internet has been using this methodology
since its inception.
>
>>Your lovely high overhead GUI's will always be less effective that way, (in
>>os's where remote admin is possible at all, this naturally includes any Windows
>>os except NT and Win2k, and the Mac) until we are all using 2000mhz cpus and
>>have fibre everywhere.
>
>The Unix cli needs an overhaul for reasons entirely unrelated to
>remote use.
>
>The best thing that happened to Unix cli tools was to be reimplemented
>by GNU. Sadly, it was mostly a clone job, so while some improvements
>were made ( long options ; help switches ; better output formatting)
>others were not - copying inconsistencies and downright bizarre
>options syntax. Used dd recently?
Yes I use it a lot.
> Its got very strange syntax.
I only use the simplest forms myself "dd if=/usr/local/src/image of=/dev/floppy"
> How
>abouit find vs locate?
Different apps, different synatx.
> Is it -R or -r for recursion in ls vs others?
Man ls.
>Some tools take switches , options and filenames in different
>orders.
So what ?
> Why does tar behave differently accross Unices?
Why does Windows 95 have a registry and Win 3.11 not ?
> Why is z used
>for gzip but I for bzip?
Different authors I spose ?
>(I guess they ran out of letters to options)
>Why does biff not have standard switch format but rather single letters?
>Can we please finally change shell syntax so filenames with spaces
>are not so awkward to deal with with escaped characters and all the
>rest.
Dunno, doubt it ? but you can deal with any characters in the Bash shell
by enclosing them in quotes ie ... rm "delete me.txt"
>
>Unix cli tools are full of odd special cases. It makes learning far
>harder and usage far less intuitive.
The same could be said for the english language, its not unique to Unix.
Sorry I dont agree, you need the tools, and a GUI isnt always the best way
to do things, in fact its sometimes the worst way to do things.
>
>George Russell
>Registered Linux user 61117
--
Kind Regards
Terry
**** ****
My Desktop is powered by GNU/Linux, and has been
up 2 weeks 4 days 22 minutes
** Registration Number: 103931, http://counter.li.org **
------------------------------
From: "javaduke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Solaris 2.6 boot floppy
Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 06:09:34 GMT
post the question on alt.os.solaris
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:8tno3p$nvc$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> My apologies for the off-topic posting, but this was the closest thing
> to a Solaris group I could find that's active.
>
> Could someone point me to a resource for downloading the boot files for
> Solaris 2.6?
>
> Thanks in advance...
>
> BC
>
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: "javaduke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: I think I'm in love.....
Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 06:11:01 GMT
clay shooting with CD'S, anythings worth ago at least once
javaduke
Ken McFelea <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Just installed Linux Mandrake 7.2. Read the manual for about an hour.
> Spent an hour installing it and it has already stolen my heart. Could be
> puppy love though. This is my first experience with a Linux type
> environment but I'm impressed.
>
> Now if I can just find some helpful people that like to shoot skeet.
> I've got a whole stack of MS CD's that we could use.
>
> Ken
------------------------------
From: "Christopher Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: A Microsoft exodus!
Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 16:14:43 +1000
"Caldera OpenLinux User" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Christopher Smith wrote:
>
> > There's an even easier way to protect yourself - don't run it at all.
> > However, the point isn't whether or not it's easy to protect yourself -
> > because it is - the point is that idiots on both platforms as just as
> > vulnerable. A lot of people run as root, even those who know better.
>
> People are never going to change so there's no merit in blaming people -
if
> there where merit in blaming people computer security would be a social
> science.
>
> There are more points of failure with Windows as MS has designed it -
> integrated Data, apps and the OS. There is a greter risk due to the OS
and
> design. That's the computer science and engineering.
You still haven't explained what you mean by "integrated data, apps and the
OS".
> "I LOVE YOU" is unique
> to MS and it exploits public APIs some folk added to an OS without
thinking
> very deeply about the possibilities -these are design and techncial risks.
Which APIs do you have in mind ?
And, again, there's nothing inherent in Unix that _prevents_ an equivalent
to "I LOVE YOU".
> But by god MS has really captured a lot of the e-mail market by
integrating
> MS Outlook and MAPI into windows.
Just how is Outlook "integrated" into Windows any more than any other email
client could "integrate" itself into Windows (or any other program could
into any other decent OS shell) ?
------------------------------
From: "javaduke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Considering Linux for personal use
Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 06:16:23 GMT
All that talking of CLI's and mininal requirements gives me a warm fuzzy
feeling in inside, and not because I had extra hot curry for dinner :)
javaduke
C. Nolan McKinney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:6HLL5.12845$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> I have always been a big fan of DOS. I used a 286 computer for ten years
> before i broke down and bought a 586 winbox, I expected a quantum leap,
but
> the new computer is way slower. I am disappointed with Windows98, I think
I
> just don't like graphical interfaces, I especially hate that the mouse
> (dirty rat!) has to be used all the time. I also have a 386 laptop that I
> use to type and email when I'm away from home. I'm thinking about
switching
> both computers to linux just to get away from Microsoft, because as far as
> microsoft is concerned, my laptop doesn't even exist. I have heard that
> linux uses a lot less computing power than windows so I am very
interested.
>
> I would like both computers to boot up to something like a DOS shell, a
> simple menu where I can scroll to the program I want to use and hit enter
> and be there. Can I do this? Is there linux software that will do word
> processing and email lightning fast on my 386 laptop? Will it be harder
to
> set up than a DOS shell? unfortunately my knowledge of the inner workings
of
> computers is limited.
>
> Thanks,
> Nolan
>
>
>
> --
> _____________________________________
> C. Nolan McKinney
> http://home.att.net/~c.nolan.mckinney/
>
>
------------------------------
From: "Chad Myers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Oracle say's Microsoft no good!
Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 02:20:11 GMT
"Tim Kelley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Tim Smith wrote:
>
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > >Laugh all you want. Microsoft have lost the server market. Linux is
> > >making inroads on the desktop. Now that they have been hacked (and not
> >
> > The Linux inroads on the desktop are not very big. Linux is a better OS
> > than any version of Windows, but Microsoft has a much better graphical
> > shell than anything available for Linux.
>
> I am getting so sick of hearing this. What makes the windows explorer
> shell soooo much better than KDE or GNOME? What? Name ONE THING, and don't
> resort to application availability issues, because that has nothing to do
> with the graphical shell.
Hmm... one thing huh? How 'bout "It Works"?
Or:
It's more aestheticly pleasing to the average user
It's more consistent
It's been usability tested by usability engineers
Its security is customizable; you can disable certain menus and options
It's what KDE is 99% based on, and the original is much better, KDE is a cheap
knock-off
>
> Both KDE and GNOME are superior UI's to anything micros~1 has produced.
Says you, unfortunately, you're opinion is so far in the minority, it's
not even considered a minority.
> The windows shell is one of the worst UI's ever concieved.
Odd that you say that since 100% of KDE is ripped from Windows Explorer,
although it only exhibits 25% of the functionality.
-Chad
------------------------------
From: "Les Mikesell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Oracle say's Microsoft no good!
Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 07:08:40 GMT
"Chad Myers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:vb4M5.30313$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > The windows shell is one of the worst UI's ever concieved.
>
> Odd that you say that since 100% of KDE is ripped from Windows Explorer,
> although it only exhibits 25% of the functionality.
>
> -Chad
Put a bunch of commands in a fold on the desktop in kde. Drag the folder
onto the bottom taskbar. Note that you get a nice pop-up of the folder
contents - about the handiest way to access a related collection of
things. Which version of Windows had that to rip off? About the
only thing close is if you cram way to much stuff in the little panel
on the left bottom of win98 the little chevron-marked chunk pops
up the same way.
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
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