Linux-Advocacy Digest #658, Volume #32 Mon, 5 Mar 01 15:13:03 EST
Contents:
Re: definition of "free" for N-millionth time (Ken Arromdee)
Re: Mircosoft Tax (Donovan Rebbechi)
Re: KDE or GNOME? (Roberto Alsina)
Re: Sometimes, when i run Windows ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Windows Owns Desktop, Extends Lead in Server Market ("Jon Johanson")
Re: Sometimes, when I run Windows... (Donn Miller)
Re: SSH vulnerabilities - still waiting [ was Interesting article ] ("Jon Johanson")
Re: Mircosoft Tax (Donovan Rebbechi)
Re: Seattle quake was caused by the GPL. (Shane Phelps)
Re: Sometimes, when I run Windows... (The Ghost In The Machine)
Re: Virus Alert : "A Virtual Card for You" + "An Internet Flower For You" (Brian
Langenberger)
Re: Windoze Domination/Damnation (Matthew Gardiner)
Re: Sometimes, when I run Windows... (Craig Kelley)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ken Arromdee)
Crossposted-To: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,misc.int-property
Subject: Re: definition of "free" for N-millionth time
Date: 5 Mar 2001 19:12:56 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Chris Ahlstrom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>It's amazing how many greedy bastards there are, who want to take and take,
>but never give. More incredibly, they view it as their right.
How can you possibly describe someone who uses a different free software
license as someone who wants to take and take, but never give? That was
my whole point: the GPL *doesn't* just keep the code away from people who
don't want to share. Someone using a GPL-incomtaible free software license
is certainly willing to give.
--
Ken Arromdee / [EMAIL PROTECTED] / http://www.rahul.net/arromdee
"Eventually all companies are replaced." --Bill Gates, October 1999
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Crossposted-To: alt.linux.sux,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: Mircosoft Tax
Date: 5 Mar 2001 19:19:07 GMT
On 5 Mar 2001 15:18:40 GMT, Perry Pip wrote:
>On 5 Mar 2001 00:26:43 GMT,
>Donovan Rebbechi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>IBM Visual Age for Java $2067
>>Borland JBUilder 4 Enterprise: $2985
>>Borland Delphi Enterprise $2589
>>Borland C++ Builder Enterprise $2489
>>
>>MS Visual Studio Enterprise: $1400 (list $1619)
>>
>>Corel Wordperfect Office 2000 Win95/NT $399
>>Microsoft Office 2000 Std 95/8/ME/NT $499
>
>In your previous post you said we were explicity disussing Win9x
>pricing. All of this is completely irrelevent to your claim that
>Microsoft did not fix prices for Win9x.
Yes, I agree that it's irrelevant to the original discussion. I was
addressing your off-topic reference to these. I suppose that's what
we call "topic drift".
>And FWIW the standard version of BCC builder is list $99 and is
>suitable for most home users.
I see VC++ Standard for $82 on Buycomp.com
Does the standard version have that annoying "disappearing box prompt"
problem" that Borland suggest you solve by using non-standard headers ?
At least VC++ can compile and run "hello world" without using nonstandard
functions.
BTW, for a lower cost version of VC++:
C++ how to program, Deitel and Deitel: $70-, includes VC++.
Great book, BTW.
Or "Visual C++ Starter Kit", Macmillian publishing. About $25-
If you want to criticise Visual Studio Enterprise, you need to compare
it with BCPP Enterprise, *not* BCPP standard.
> Star Office is free.
Yes, but you don't expect anyone to compete on price with GPL software, do
you ? Compared to other commercial products, MS are in the same price
ballpark.
IMO, it would hurt them to charge less than Word Perfect.
>>Win ME Upgrade: $49
>
>This only after the Judge said they should have charged this much for
>'98. Who should I believe, you or the courts?? See my other post where
>I quote the Judge's findings that clearly refute your claim.
What claim ?
I'd say they were having trouble selling upgrades. Remember the report
touted by all the Linux sites about how Turbo Linux had better sales
than the Win98 upgrade ? Selling upgrades is tricky, because you've
got to convince customers that the marginal worth of the new product,
that has essentially the same design justifies the upgrade price.
>>RH Deluxe Workstations: $78
>
>No, that's 'Workstation', i.e. singular not plural. If it's
Sorry, typo
--
Donovan Rebbechi * http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/ *
elflord at panix dot com
------------------------------
From: Roberto Alsina <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: KDE or GNOME?
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2001 16:18:42 -0300
Donovan Rebbechi wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Mar 2001 12:26:42 -0300, Roberto Alsina wrote:
>>Donovan Rebbechi wrote:
>>
>>>>So, how does CORBA stack up against DCOP?
>>>
>>> Well for one, CORBA is standard and DCOP is not.
>>
>>If we are going to talk standards, GNOME should drop Bonobo. There *is* a
>>standard Corba Object Model, and Bonobo ain't it.
>
> Haven't used Bonobo, so I'll take your word for it.
The standard CORBA object model (a part of CORBA 3.0) is something derived
from Enterprise Javabeans.
>>DCOP is not dependent on X. DCOP depends on libICE. libICE doesn't require
>>a running X server. To build libICE you don't need any X sources.
>>
>>The only connection between libICE and X is that they are usually
>>distributed together.
>
> I see. Hence the confusion. I didn't realise that ICE didn't have anything
> to do with X.
>
>>There's also another thing. The method of error propagation when you code
>>C++ with CORBA is exceptions. That means that EVERY call to any function
>>that MIGHT go over CORBA had to be in a try/catch block.
>>
>>That made the code fucking ugly and dense.
>
> How else would one solve this problem though ? The problem seems
> intrinsic -- I mean, any call that might go over CORBA (or any replacement
> for CORBA) might also fail, and there needs to be a way to handle failure.
Suppose you have a function in your component to ask if the component
supports A. It can return true or false.
That function can't realistically fail. That function will not fail if your
component has even remotely decent code. Ok?
Now, using CORBA, that function still has to be wrapped in try/catch,
because CORBA itself can barf on it. The connection to the ORB may die, a
network connection may timeout (and you HAVE to handle network timeouts
even if you KNOW the component will never be remote!).
See, CORBA components take away any confidence you may have that your code
will not crash, because with CORBA components EVERY inter-component
communication is a critical point where failure means doom for the app.
Using CORBA you have all the sources of crashes you have with ordinary
apps, PLUS a whole lot of others, and each one can happen in half of the
function calls you do. It makes stability much harder to achieve.
With our current approach, it's just a plain old function call. If the
component is well written, it is stable. With CORBA, the component being
well written was just not enough.
--
Roberto Alsina
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Sometimes, when i run Windows
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2001 19:24:14 +0000
Aaron Kulkis wrote:
>
> Bobert Big Bollocks wrote:
> >
> > It crashes :)
>
> Only sometimes???
>
Aaron, try simply rebooting a windows machine every 30 seconds, it very
rarely has time to crash :)
--
http://www.guild.bham.ac.uk/chess-club
------------------------------
From: "Jon Johanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Windows Owns Desktop, Extends Lead in Server Market
Date: 5 Mar 2001 13:23:06 -0600
"2 + 2" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:97q2fu$aaj$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Win 2000 Server has grown less than expected.
Completely untrue. And I suspect you know it.
>
> Linux meanwhile has gained great momentum, and is being supported by IBM
and
> others as a prelude for greater growth in the future in all segments of
the
> market.
Yea yea, we'll believe it when it happens. Momentum? An object in motion
tends to stay in motion, that is a rule of physics - but it doesn't mean it
isn't slowing down.
>
> As a low cost alternative, the current slump can be expected to favor
Linux
> greatly.
Why do people just not get it? It's old news - the price of the OS is almost
insignificant to any serious server or computer company investment. PLUS the
few dollars you save "not buying" Linux you'll easily spend 3x over paying
to support it and the additional admins and programmers required to milk
usability from it. It's a known fact that unix OSes require more TCO to stay
usefull.
>
> For instance, Dell offers low cost servers, which come at no additional
> price for Linux. Load Win2000 Server and it costs extra.
Yep, true. So if you are into the bottom dollar application then I guess yer
right, linux is good for the cheap crowd.
>
> However, both Win 2000 Server and Linux will take market share in the
> current downturn, but Linux may well take the most.
>
you trust that crystal ball eh? well...we'll see, cause currently, W2K has
grown in marketshare FAR more than Linux has - and W2K is new...
------------------------------
From: Donn Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Sometimes, when I run Windows...
Date: 5 Mar 2001 13:22:00 -0600
Brent R <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Ok let me repeat myself again: you can get all those programs for
> Windows so it's a weak argument. You can even run them in a console
> shell with the Unix flags and all. Awk, sed, and grep are all available.
> Not that a Unix shell will work to it's a full ability on a Windows
> system. Piping needs to write out a temp file before the next command is
> performed on the output and also file permissions on Windows BASH (for
> example) are pretty meaningless. But I would never use Windows on a
> multi-user environment anyway.
Aye, there's the rub. Cygwin adds a bit of Unix niceness and flavor to
Windows, but that's about the extent of it. I say, why pretend to run nix on
Windows when you can run the real deal? Also, I will admit that I like to
run Cygwin bash.exe on Windows. However, try to run a whole bunch of
instances of bash or tcsh on Windows like you can in numerous xterm's and
VC's under Linux. It gets unmanageable with more than 2 instances of bash
under Doze!
Also, it's possible to hit alt+enter and run bash full-screen under Windows.
But, try to run 2 instances of bash full-screen under Windows. It gets
cumbersome. It's nowhere as convenient as using multiple VC's under Linux.
> Because Windows has better apps.
> "The OS with the most apps wins" - Dr. Tom
True, true. But, the fact that so many companies have supported Windows for
so long is responsible for this. A lot of developers want to develop for Win
because it is so numerous and mainstream. It's a lot like the dilemma of
going out and voting. The person who doesn't vote has the attitude that,
well, one person isn't going to make a difference. Meanwhile, there are
1000's of others who are thinking the same thing! Also, you never know,
sometimes one vote DOES make a difference. The same is true of developing
for Windows. I'm sure there are lots of developers out there thinking "well,
I really don't like Windows, but it's so mainstream, and surely one developer
developing for Doze instead of Linux isn't going to make a difference."
Somewhere, we all have to make that choice to break the cycle of evil. For
every developer that decides to NOT develop for Linux, MS is feeding on
its own popularity. Granted, it doesn't have a large effect, but much like
in calculus, those infinittesimally small points eventually add up. 8-)
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------------------------------
From: "Jon Johanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: SSH vulnerabilities - still waiting [ was Interesting article ]
Date: 5 Mar 2001 13:30:07 -0600
"Aaron Kulkis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
>
> Mig wrote:
> >
> > Peter Köhlmann wrote:
> >
> > What about a bet?
> > Someone puts a machine on the net running SSH1 and Chad is given the
task
> > and permission to break in through the Internet.
> >
> > That should put an end to this silly discussion.
>
> Cool idea.
Kinda like the windows2000test.com box which no one was able to crack or
shutdown - guess we know that W2K is invulnerable therefore eh?
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Crossposted-To: alt.linux.sux,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: Mircosoft Tax
Date: 5 Mar 2001 19:36:41 GMT
On 5 Mar 2001 15:17:46 GMT, Perry Pip wrote:
>On 4 Mar 2001 23:45:51 GMT,
>Donovan Rebbechi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>And as I said, I was talking about whether the OS includes
>documentation or not, or whether you pay extra for it. Since you have
>to pay extra, it's relevent to what you get for your money when you
>pay for the OS.
Even with documentation, Linux is more challenging for the average user.
*This* is why Linux needs to ship with documentation.
>>>>FYI, Academic edition of Office : $150-
>>>>Academic version of Visual Studio Pro: I got it for $69-.
>
>And how is this relavant to Win9x prices?? It seems perfectly valid
>for you to 'topic drift' but god forbid anyone else do it. You really
>are an arrogant shit.
Great, when your false claims are refuted, you respond with insults.
The reason why I addressed your irrelevance is because you attacked me for
not doing so.
It looks like either way, you'll throw insults around, when I don't address
your irrelevant, false statements, I'm accused of "not having an
intelligent argument".
When I do address them, you throw tantrums.
>Irrelevent...by your standard for relavance.
My standard of relevance has already been attacked, and now you use
it in your defence. Hmmmmm ...
>>I don't understand what you mean (about doubling the price of the OS)
>
>Adding those tools doubled the cost you pay for the base OS. With some
>other OS's on the market they are free or next to free. But as you
>say, it's irrelevent.
Visual C++ is not free with any OS.
Cygwin, Bloodshed, et al are free on Windows.
>>So what ? The fact that they can sell it cheaper doesn't mean that
>>they have to.
>
>Well a Federal Judge said their prices for Win98 were too high. How
>can you tell me it's "unsubstantiated nonsense"?? Who should I
>believe, a Federal Judge or
What you "should believe" is irrlevant, because you'd believe what you
wanted to believe regardless of what the judge said (just as the Windows
crowd are dismissing the judge as ignorant.)
Was the judge referring to the OEM licenses or the box sets ? I agree
that the box sets were overpriced ($180- or so), but that is not where
most of their sales come from. Their monopoly based on preloads, and
their OEM licenses are not (and were not) $180.
I'd argue that they could give away the box sets and still make money --
because they aren't making that much money on their box sets anyway.
> a college student??
Let's get this straight -- senior PhD student, educator, and programmer.
Thank you.
>From the Judge Jackson's Finding of Fact clause 33:
>
> "Microsoft enjoys so much power in the market for
> Intel-compatible PC operating systems that if it wished to exercise
> this power solely in terms of price, it could charge a price for
> Windows substantially above that which could be charged in a
> competitive market.
this doesn't say that they *do*, it says that they *could*
> that the company could have charged $49 for an upgrade to Windows 98
> -- there is no reason to believe that the $49 price would have been
> unprofitable -- but the study identifies $89 as the revenue-maximizing
> price. Microsoft thus opted for the higher price."
Well, why is that a surprise ? Aren't companies supposed to choose the
profit maximising price ?
--
Donovan Rebbechi * http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/ *
elflord at panix dot com
------------------------------
From: Shane Phelps <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Seattle quake was caused by the GPL.
Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 06:44:08 +1100
Tim Hanson wrote:
>
> "This earthquake demonstrates the destabilizing force that Linux and the
> Open Source software movement has on the earth. If people continue to
> support this type of software then natural disasters such as this
> earthquake will continue to occur," said Allchin.
>
> http://bbspot.com/News/2001/03/earthquake.html
> --
> Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your
> shoes.
> -- Mickey Mouse
...don't forget that Mickey uses octal :-)
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Subject: Re: Sometimes, when I run Windows...
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2001 19:50:19 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Aaron Kulkis
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote
on Sun, 04 Mar 2001 07:01:08 -0500
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
>
>Perry Pip wrote:
>>
>> Donn,
>>
>> I'll bet when you were in school you were smarter than other
>> students. Imagine if you were forced to take a course for the slower,
>> not as bright students when you should have been in the advanced
>> class. Is that how you feel when you use Windows?? Dumbed down??
>>
>> Special education classes for students who aren't very bright are a necessity
>> for those who need them, as is Windows for those who need it.
>
>This is what horrified me the first time I saw a Macintosh demonstrated
>at Purdue in August 1983.
>... you can only do what the BUTTONS let you do. UGH!!!
This isn't that big an issue per se; on the command line, one can only do
what the command line allows, as well.
One big issue, however, for the CLI, is that the /bin/bash command line
is ultra-flexible, because it not only can do simple parsing of control
constructs such as if, while, and case ... esac, but it can also
can subinvoke other programs, and other shell scripts. Each program
has its own argument requirements (e.g., mv's argument flags and
argument ordering are different from ifconfig's).
A GUI can't really compete with that.
On the other hand, a GUI is very good for inputting data such as
polygon points; were one to use a CLI-only version of a CAD program
inputting coordinate points by hand, one would get annoyed quickly.
(However, I am of the opinion that a CAD program should support coordinate
points on the command line, for scripting/replay purposes.)
A GUI is also good at presenting all possible options, using pulldown
menus and comboboxes. There's only one CLI that came even close to that,
and that's an obsolete set of Mentor tools (http://www.mentor.com)
that used to run on Apollo DOMAIN systems; if one typed in the command
(which could be more than one token), then hit control-question mark [*],
the prompt included display-only text which allowd the user to see what
options were in fact available for that command.
Unfortunately, Mentor 8.0 replaced that with a "prompt bar", which is
a straight GUI, although still a useful one, implementing most of the
ideas of the old CLI in a GUI form. And that was 10 years ago.
Retrofitting the old Mentor CLI model into Unix or Linux's CLI would be
impossible unless the kernel implemented some sort of option registration;
/bin/bash (or somebody) would have to know what options are available.
[rest snipped]
[*] a rough equivalent on /bin/bash would be the TAB key, but only for
command or filename completions. /bin/bash also doesn't support
multiple-token commands such as "SELect ARea" (which could be
abbreviated to "SEL AR"). Probably not a big deal today, though.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random reminiscence here
EAC code #191 28d:21h:08m actually running Linux.
The EAC doesn't exist, but they're still watching you.
------------------------------
From: Brian Langenberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Virus Alert : "A Virtual Card for You" + "An Internet Flower For You"
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2001 19:54:31 +0000 (UTC)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
<snip!>
:> Hell, it doesn't even harm Windows. There is no such article on cnn.com,
:> nor has there ever been. It's a hoax.
: That was meant to be sarcastic
Naturally. No flames intended. I just want to ensure people don't
think there's *yet another* godawful Windows-Email virus on the
loose.
The rest of us have to update sendmail filters to protect the Windows
users whenever one appears, and that gets old after awhile...
------------------------------
From: Matthew Gardiner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Windoze Domination/Damnation
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2001 20:05:19 GMT
Trying getting a blank computer from dell, not possible, I even said
they didn't have to give me a refund, but they insisted that I received
a computer with Windows 98SE! wtf is up with that?
Matthew Gardiner
Pete Goodwin wrote:
>
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>
> > The average Office-Depot shopping jerk cannot. And such comprise the
> > bulk of the consumer market.
>
> But that still doesn't stop them doing buying blank machines!
>
> --
> Pete
> All your no fly zone are belong to us
------------------------------
From: Craig Kelley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Sometimes, when I run Windows...
Date: 05 Mar 2001 13:03:03 -0700
Brent R <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
[snip synopsis of Windows 2000's cmd program]
>
> This looks like another example of MS taking something very simple and
> making it unnecessarily complicated.
Have you looked at the bash man page in a while?
--
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
Craig Kelley -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.isu.edu/~kellcrai finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP block
------------------------------
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