Linux-Advocacy Digest #577, Volume #33 Fri, 13 Apr 01 13:13:04 EDT
Contents:
Re: Blame it all on Microsoft (Thaddeus L Olczyk)
Re: Something like Install Shield for Linux? ("Kelsey Bjarnason")
Re: New directions for kernel development (ChromeDome)
Re: Communism, Communist propagandists in the US...still..to this day. (Mathew)
Re: Things Linux can't do! (Chad Everett)
Re: NT kiddies, don't try this at home (Dave Martel)
Re: Blame it all on Microsoft (The Ghost In The Machine)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thaddeus L Olczyk)
Crossposted-To: comp.theory,comp.arch,comp.object
Subject: Re: Blame it all on Microsoft
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 16:21:10 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Fri, 13 Apr 2001 01:15:45 -0700, "Felger Carbon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Jerry Coffin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>>
>> My personal belief is that the entire thing was done for a fairly
>> simple reason: until this came along, computer companies, software
>> companies in particular, were quite well known for remaining totally
>> Apolitical, and not contributing to lobbying efforts and such. Even
>> though our "representatives" in Washington can officially only
>> receive gifts of "nominal value" from lobbyists and such, the reality
>> is that they really receive a LOT of those gifts, and they bloody
>> well expect to receive their tribute from everybody who has enough
>> money to notice. Clinton and his henchmen decided they weren't
>> getting their unfair share, so they did any good protection racket,
>> and sicked their strongarm boys onto them to squeeze them for more
>> money.
>
>As a U.S. citizen, I wish I could be sure that the above is wrong, but...
>
In this case it's wrong. It's just Jerry "Ain't got a clue but got to
open my mouth anyway" Coffin blowing smoke out of his ass.
The investigation of Microsoft began under the Bush administration
not the Clinton administration. Initially it was undertaken there by
the FTC. The action stalled with a deadlock vote ( on whether to
proceed ) 2-2. This vote was deadlocked because one of the
commissioners refused to recuse himself even though he had ties to
Microsoft.
The investigation was sent over to Justice, where nothing much
happened. In 95 Microsoft and DOJ reached a consent decree.
The judge ( Sporkin ) at the time decided that the decree was not
tough enough on Microsoft. DOJ ( the same people who would later
turn around and sue Microsoft ) went the appeals court to defend
the decree, and the Judge was removed and Thomas Penfield Jackson
( the present judge ) was assigned the case.
Then in 97-98 DOJ decided that Microsoft had violated that consent
decree. After a year of back and forth in court, this case came into
being. At Microsofts request the states case was joined with DOJs
case. You can read more details in a piece in the New York Times
I believe Joel Brinkley was one of the authors.
When the findings of fact came down DOJ did their best to cave in to
Microsoft. It was the states that held fast and insisted on a harsh
remedy.
They choose breakup over structural remedies, not because they
inflicted maxmimum pain, but because they were the least intrusive.
Ask anyone who works for one of the companies derived from the
original "Ma Bell" AT&T whether they would choose breakup
or behavioural remedies for a solution. (Assuming that they are
choosing for a company they like. ) They would all choose breakup.
Behavioural remedies inflict constant scrutiny from the government
and cast a pall over the company.
Even the breakup itself is structured to be inflicted with as little
pain as possible.
All in all you see a pattern where the government bends over
backwards to accomadate Microsoft. Things would have gone much better
if the government had acted more forcefully in 1995 and
taken Microsoft head on. Microsoft would have been smaller and
the impact to the economy would have been less significant.
Further the software industry has been very lucky with little
regulation. That will change in large part thanks to Microsoft.
Of course there will be morons who constantly defend Microsoft no
matter what. If Microsoft were to start hiring hitmen tomorrow
to take out prinicple officers of competitors you know Jerry "kiss MS
ass" Coffin would be there defending their actions as legal.
would be arguing that it was
------------------------------
From: "Kelsey Bjarnason" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Something like Install Shield for Linux?
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 16:26:32 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Bob Hauck"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Apr 2001 05:03:31 GMT, Kelsey Bjarnason
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> Considering RPM's track record around here, it would be very difficult
>> to do even _as_ poorly as RPM, never mind worse.
>
> That comment rather reminds me of the way in which Creationists take
> disagreement among biologists about the mechanism of evolution as
> evidence that biologists disagree about whether evolution takes place.
>
> People argue about ways to make rpm better, and about problems with rpm,
> but few ever contemplate replacing it with the Windows way of handling
> installation.
I don't recall suggesting replacing it with anything. Further, if I was
going to suggest replacing it with "The WIndows way of handling
installation", that would be MSI, not InstallShield. So I'm not quite
sure what the point of the above was.
Personally, I'd be just as happy to see RPM or APT or some other
variation on the them which actually adopted some of the notions
underlying MSI.
One example would be application resiliency. User logs on, user does
something silly like deleting the application files or settings, or
otherwise buggering up the operation of the program. User attempts to
run the program, which is problematic because it isn't _there_ anymore.
No problem, MSI kicks in, reinstalls the missing bits, and as far as the
user is concerned, everything worked like normal, except for a couple of
extra seconds delay in launching the application.
As far as I can tell with RPM, you don't have that sort of functionality.
Oh, you can reinstall the product, assuming you can remember what the
base package was, or remember how to look it up, but let's remember that
one of the issues in computing is making life _simpler_ for end users;
your clients should _not_ need to know how to faff around with such
things.
I also don't see advertising as an option in RPM, yet it's a very handy
thing in MSI. If I'm rolling out a large product to 10,000 PCs, I don't need to
hammer the LAN into submission because I'm repeatedly copying 200Mb
distribuitions to each PC; instead I roll out a small (typically < 1Mb)
bit of packaging information, then each user, when the actually attempt
to _use_ the product, gets the necessary bits at that point; installation
is staggered. Even better, the staggered installations don't retrieve
the _whole_ product at that point, but only the bits they actually need
to get working.
Oh, let's go one step better than that. Let's create a few
organizational units - something like groups, but not quite. You have
10,000 desktop users and 50 laptop users? No problem. From your
management interface you can roll out that product to the 10,000 users as
above, but roll it out to the 50 laptop users - members of the "laptop
OU" - so that they, in fact, get the whole installed product when they
log on - so if they subsequently disconnect and go travelling, they don't
lose out on the use of the product. Oh, and you might set up an install
package on your FTP server so that if they do manage to muck things up,
they can still repair the damage.
As far as I can see, the only disadvantage to this is if your network
(and your FTP server) goes down. However, in the last three years, I've
seen this happen once. However, let's see what happens when the network
goes down. There are three basic scenarios:
1) The user hasn't logged on since you rolled out product X.
2) The user has logged on, but hasn't actually run product X, which is
advertised (or they have, but they've munged something, so they need to
repair the application).
3) The user has logged on, and has the whole product in working order.
In the first case, the user never sees that product X has been installed;
he has no icon for it, no application files for it, etc. From his
perspective, the product simply doesn't exist. Nothing breaks, he just
can't use that particular application.
In the third case, as long as the application itself doesn't require
network access, he simply runs it and does his thing. Everyone's happy.
In the second case, the product has been advertised but not yet run, and
the user tries to run it, he's going to get a message to the effect of
"Can't configure product for use" - unless, of course, you - as the
administrator - have actually decided that users being able to do their
work might actually be important and, say, set up an FTP server where
they can still retrieve the product modules from, in which case, the user
just has to wait a few seconds and voila, there it is. This applies to
application repair, too.
Now, let's see how RPM manages the following:
1) Roll out a product to 10,000 client machines
2) Do the rollout so that only the critical files - the main application
executable and library files necessary to run the main application - are
installed to the user's machine
3) Allow the user, simply by attempting to access some aspect of the
application (spell checking, for example) to - with no actual action on
his part other than attempting to use the feature - have the feature
automatically install and configure itself on his machine
4) Handle the case where the user has deleted the main application file
or some other file or setting necessary to its correct use
5) Be able to handle, without your run-time intervention or the user's
intervention, the case where the network is down, so it has to retrieve
the information from a secondary source
6) Allow you to apply a patch to the product and distribute the update
simply by having the users log into the domain (or something equivalently
simple, requiring no intervention by you or the user, at run-time, to
apply the patch)
7) Roll out an upgrade to the product such that it requires no run-time
intervention by you or the user to perform the upgrade
Now RPM may be good... but I don't think it's _that_ good. It offers
some benefits that InstallShield doesn't. It lacks some benefits that
InstallShield has (notably the ability to work under Windows :) ). But
they _both_ lack, as far as I can tell, a LOT of the functionality of
MSI, which, unlike both RPM and InstallShield, is not merely an
installation technology, but rather a product management and distribution
technology.
------------------------------
From: ChromeDome <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.development.system
Subject: Re: New directions for kernel development
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 16:28:16 GMT
Brent R wrote:
>
> Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Recently, I've been thinking a lot about where Linux development
<snip,snip,snip>
> > Thank you,
> > --Linus Torvalds
>
> ROFL.
>
> It's sad but true.
>
> --
> - Brent
And you felt compelled to quote the entire @!#$% message for that one
little inane comment? See signature below.
--
Homo Sapiens is a goal, not a description.
------------------------------
Crossposted-To:
misc.survivalism,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,soc.singles,alt.society.liberalism,talk.politics.guns
From: Mathew <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Communism, Communist propagandists in the US...still..to this day.
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 02:37:44 +1000
On Fri, 13 Apr 2001, Aaron R. Kulkis wrote:
> Mathew wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Aaron R. Kulkis wrote:
> >
> > > The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
> > > >
> > > > In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Aaron R. Kulkis
> > > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > > wrote
> > > > on Wed, 11 Apr 2001 13:35:28 -0400
> > > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> > > > >The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
> > > > >>
> > > > >> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, silverback
> > > > >> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > > >> wrote
> > > > >> on Wed, 11 Apr 2001 04:10:11 GMT
> > > > >> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> > > > >> >On Tue, 10 Apr 2001 19:22:56 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Sam A. Kersh)
> > > > >> >wrote:
> > > > >> >
> > > > >> >>Mathew <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > > >> >>
> > > > >> >>>
> > > > >> >>>
> > > > >> >>>On Tue, 10 Apr 2001, Aaron R. Kulkis wrote:
> > > > >> >>>
> > > > >> >>>> Goldhammer wrote:
> > > > >> >>>> >
> > > > >> >>>> > On Mon, 09 Apr 2001 13:33:15 -0400,
> > > > >> >>>> > Rob Robertson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > > >> >>>> >
> > > > >> >>>> > > Right. Fascism is characterized by the *state-directed* control of
> > > > >> >>>> > >the economy,
> > > > >> >>>> >
> > > > >> >>>> > Hmm. Sounds like communism.
> > > > >> >>>>
> > > > >> >>>> Precisely.
> > > > >> >>>>
> > > > >> >>>> Communism and Fascism are merely different sides of the same coin.
> > > > >> >>>
> > > > >> >>>And Capitalism has state-directed controls on the economy too.
> > > > >> >>
> > > > >> >>True capitalism is a laize faire proposition. And the prime rule is
> > > > >> >>buyer beware.
> > > > >> >
> > > > >> >and a totally unworkable system
> > > > >>
> > > > >> I will agree on this point, 100% pure capitalism (with no regulation)
> > > > >
> > > > >anarchic capitalism, yes.
> > > > >
> > > > >Libertarian capitalism, no.
> > > >
> > > > Assuming "libertarian" meaning "minimal enforcement to ensure everyone's
> > > > rights" or some such, I'd have to agree. But that's not lasseiz-faire,
> > > > as I understand it. (Then again, lasseiz-faire may require a minimal
> > > > level of enforcement as well, just to ensure no one gets swindled outright.
> > > > I'd have to dig deep to check this, though.)
> > >
> > > Considering that Jefferson was a laissez-faire advocate, and he
> > > wrote the constitution, which specifies minimal enforcement...
> > >
> > > The conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >> would lead to a very foul system indeed, as the top cats start
> > > > >> cutting sweetheart deals to shut out the lower echelons of society;
> > > > >> the lower echelons will in turn shut out even lower echelons, and
> > > > >> the poor will end up dead (pick your poison: air pollution, water
> > > > >
> > > > >Which is exactly what DOES happen in Communism.
> > > >
> > > > Yes, that is correct, and we have proof. Certain cities in the
> > > > Eastern part of Europe are blackened by decades of pollution.
> > > > (I've not seen proof firsthand, but I have seen pictures.)
> > >
> > > Generally, if you're in a big city of ANY former Warsaw Pact country,
> > > OR if you are in a place where the water supply comes from a river which
> > > is downstream from a big city in a Warsaw Pact country, then drinking
> > > the local tap water is hazerdous to your health, due to the massive
> > > volumes of pollution that the industries dump directly into the river.
> >
> > Yes, and as you have stated of the socialist environmental ,global
> > warming conspiracy,and these countries being the ones who started it.
> > Hehe
>
> You really can't see the big fucking picture, can you, twit.
>
>
> Yes...the Communists believe in LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of environmental
> regulations on industry, with all of the economic burden which results
> FOR ***OTHER*** COUNTRIES....MORON.
Well name these countries,please.
>
>
> >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > >
> > > > I did not bring up this scenario to exclude communism; as far as
> > > > I am concerned, sans regulation, both will end up at the same
> > > > (bad) end. (And I must ask the question: why the ruble? In a
> > > > pure communistic system, a monetary unit appears unnecessary.)
> > > >
> > > > Ideally, we wouldn't have to worry about it. Of course, ideally,
> > > > we wouldn't have to worry about eating, drinking, defecating,
> > > > moving from point A to point B, the high cost of energy used during
> > > > flying [*], etc.
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >> pollution, ground soil pollution, radioactivity, drive-by shootings
> > > > >> by caring individuals using Tommy guns, ... :-) ). Ultimately, one
> > > > >> will get a set of communes, each one a separate business, cartel, or trust.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> This is not to say communism is better; it leads to its own problems.
> > > > >> The ideal system is a mix. A gasoline engine (standard 4-stroke,
> > > > >> 2-stroke, jet turbine, whatever) cannot run on pure fuel or pure air;
> > > > >> the trick is to adjust the mix in the combustion chamber for
> > > > >> optimum throughput.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> Similarly with economies. The trick is to get the mix right.
> > > > >> (It's actually a lot more complicated than that, with issues such
> > > > >> as overshoot and ringing being thrown into the mix -- an overreactive
> > > > >> regulatory system can "flood the engine", or lead into an oscillatory
> > > > >> motion of the economy as the gain of the "amplifier" is too high,
> > > > >> depending on which metaphor one desires. :-) I am of the opinion
> > > > >> that the Fed needs to be more reactive and more precise, although
> > > > >> I'm not sure how the Fed can accomplish same without a lot more
> > > > >> economic data, reported more frequently that it is now.)
> > > > >>
> > > >
> > > > [.sigsnip]
> > > >
> > > > [*] I'm referring to bird flight here. Birds have light air-filled bones
> > > > and heavier musculature in their torsos than we do. We are
> > > > still discovering some of their secrets (one interesting one is
> > > > the creation of vortices by the flapping wing of a bird or moth,
> > > > increasing the lift.
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
> > > > EAC code #191 6d:10h:05m actually running Linux.
> > > > We are all naked underneath our clothes.
> > >
>
> --
> Aaron R. Kulkis
> Unix Systems Engineer
> DNRC Minister of all I survey
> ICQ # 3056642
>
> L: This seems to have reduced my spam. Maybe if everyone does it we
> can defeat the email search bots. [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> K: Truth in advertising:
> Left Wing Extremists Charles Schumer and Donna Shalala,
> Black Seperatist Anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan,
> Special Interest Sierra Club,
> Anarchist Members of the ACLU
> Left Wing Corporate Extremist Ted Turner
> The Drunken Woman Killer Ted Kennedy
> Grass Roots Pro-Gun movement,
>
>
> J: Other knee_jerk reactionaries: billh, david casey, redc1c4,
> The retarded sisters: Raunchy (rauni) and Anencephielle (Enielle),
> also known as old hags who've hit the wall....
>
> I: Loren Petrich's 2-week stubborn refusal to respond to the
> challenge to describe even one philosophical difference
> between himself and the communists demonstrates that, in fact,
> Loren Petrich is a COMMUNIST ***hole
>
> H: "Having found not one single carbon monoxide leak on the entire
> premises, it is my belief, and Willard concurs, that the reason
> you folks feel listless and disoriented is simply because
> you are lazy, stupid people"
>
> G: Knackos...you're a retard.
>
>
> F: Unit_4's "Kook hunt" reminds me of "Jimmy Baker's" harangues against
> adultery while concurrently committing adultery with Tammy Hahn.
>
> E: Jet is not worthy of the time to compose a response until
> her behavior improves.
>
> D: Jet Silverman now follows me from newgroup to newsgroup
> ...despite (C) above.
>
> C: Jet Silverman claims to have killfiled me.
>
> B: Jet Silverman plays the fool and spews out nonsense as a
> method of sidetracking discussions which are headed in a
> direction that she doesn't like.
>
> A: The wise man is mocked by fools.
>
>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Chad Everett)
Subject: Re: Things Linux can't do!
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 16:44:24 GMT
On Thu, 12 Apr 2001 23:48:57 -0700, GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Donn Miller wrote:
>>
>> "Aaron R. Kulkis" wrote:
>> >
>> > Donn Miller wrote:
>>
>> > > Of course X is capable of crashing a system, because it runs as root,
>> > > and accesses ports as root.
>> >
>> > Only if you're stupid enough to login as root.
>>
>> Actually, X always runs as root, even if you don't start X as root. If
>> you use startx to start X, then either X is run as suid root (bad), or a
>> wrapper (such as Xwrapper) executes the X server for you as root. xdm
>> also starts the X server as root.
>>
>> Do
>>
>> $ ps axcu | grep X
>>
>> on your system and see what I mean.
>
>I had to use a similar ps... no root process for Xsun.
>Its under the user that logged in.
>X does not run as root in UNIX.
>
Minor difference on Solaris. X is started by root with
dtlogin which spawns a X as the authenticated user.
root 269 0.0 1.0 5040 2336 ? S Mar 26 0:00 /usr/dt/bin/dtlogin
-daemon -server /etc/Xservers
root 273 0.0 1.1 5416 2632 ? S Mar 26 0:00 dtlogin <:0>
-daemon -server /etc/Xservers
------------------------------
From: Dave Martel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: NT kiddies, don't try this at home
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 10:48:30 -0600
On Fri, 13 Apr 2001 00:50:00 -0700, GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Bloody Viking wrote:
>>
>> Dave Martel ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
>>
>> : <http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/5/18265.html>
>> : Missing Novell server discovered after four years
>>
>> : "...the University of North Carolina has finally located one of its
>> : most reliable servers - which nobody had seen for FOUR years...One of
>> : the University's Novell servers had been doing the business for years
>> : and nobody stopped to wonder where it was until some bright spark
>> : realised an audit of the Campus network was well overdue...Attempts to
>> : follow network cabling to find the missing box led to the discovery
>> : that maintenance workers had sealed the server behind a wall."
>>
>> : Can you imagine an NT server running totally unattended for four
>> : years?
>>
>> In the computer world, that's tantamount to discovering the remains of
>> Pompeii. Except that it was still working! Now, the motive of discovery was
>> Microshit and software audits. Were it not for the BSA, that lone server would
>> have continued until the hardware died, humming away the years like the
>> Energiser Rabbit. That is some good uptime, 4 years entombed in a room that
>> was sealed off like the dead Pharohs of Old Egypt.
>>
>> --
>> FOOD FOR THOUGHT: 100 calories are used up in the course of a mile run.
>> The USDA guidelines for dietary fibre is equal to one ounce of sawdust.
>> The liver makes the vast majority of the cholesterol in your bloodstream.
>
>I don't think it was working sealed up like that. Our secretaries
>stuffed their PCs under their desks without any air flow paths, and
>about a month later they complained the computer died. Fried power
>supply.
If their cases are like mine, the fan's up high and on the back. I
imagine it would fry something to shove that right up against a desk's
modesty panel. If the fan and vents aren't obstructed I don't think my
system would have any problem at all in a small closet. Might heat it
up to 95 degrees in there but it still runs OK at that temperature.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Crossposted-To: comp.theory,comp.arch,comp.object
Subject: Re: Blame it all on Microsoft
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 17:09:49 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Chad Everett
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote
on 12 Apr 2001 17:09:51 -0500
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>On Thu, 12 Apr 2001 15:23:02 -0600, Jerry Coffin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>says...
>>
>>[ ... ]
>>
>>> Yes, and you can construct bad trees that require exponential time to
>>> search -- in reality it rarely happens [/me sticks his neck out on
>>> that assertation].
>>
>>You're not really sticking it out very far -- testing with
>>generational scavengers seems to agree quite closely.
>>
>>> If you view a program as a tree of objects,
>>> stemming from the root object, you would end up with a tree and not a
>>> list, albeit with circular references.
>>
>>Which is to say that it's a graph, not a tree. A tree would be an
>>acyclic graph, where this is a more general graph that may contain
>>cycles.
>
>A tree is an acyclic, connected graph, not just acyclic.
Pedant point: so is a DAG. :-)
A tree needs to include the requirement that nodes aren't entered
more than once (they can be exited as many times as required, however).
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
EAC code #191 7d:19h:59m actually running Linux.
This space for rent.
------------------------------
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