Linux-Advocacy Digest #202, Volume #34 Sat, 5 May 01 00:13:02 EDT
Contents:
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! (T. Max Devlin)
Re: bank switches from using NT 4 (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Linux has one chance left......... (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Another Windows pc gets Linux (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Microsoft standards... (was Re: Windows 2000 - It is a crappy product) (T. Max
Devlin)
Re: Performance Measure, Linux versus windows (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Performance Measure, Linux versus windows (T. Max Devlin)
Re: bank switches from using NT 4 (T. Max Devlin)
Re: I think I've discovered Flatfish's true identity... (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Linux has one chance left......... (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! ("JS PL")
Re: The Text of Craig Mundie's Speech ("Paolo Ciambotti")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 03:26:55 GMT
begin
Said Peter Köhlmann in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Fri, 4 May 2001
13:56:28 +0200;
>begin
>"JS PL" <the_win98box_in_the_corner> wrote:
>> Linux. The newsreaders especially suck. Half the no-name browsers are
>> somehow or for some stupid reason configured by default to display web
>
>
>Note that this will not be readable just as is by the sucking newsreader
>JS PL is using.
>
>Peter
>
>end
Hmmm... That seems very interesting. Sort of a voluntary killfile.
Does it really work?
end
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 03:26:56 GMT
Said Daniel Johnson in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Fri, 04 May 2001
>"T. Max Devlin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> Said Daniel Johnson in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Thu, 03 May 2001
>> >"Rick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>> >news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> >DR-DOS only looks good next to MS-DOS. It's junk
>> >next to Windows.
>>
>> Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
>>
>> Usually, Daniel, it is conventional for a troll to get further into his
>> message before saying something this incredibly stupid.
>
>Oh, like hell it is! :D
Yes, it is. Check out the trolls who have been around for a while.
You're just not going to last if you can't pull it off.
>Any troll who isn't frothing at the mouth in *sentence one*
>should hang his scaly head in *shame* and slink back under
>his bridge!
As should you.
[...200+ lines of trolling ignored...]
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 03:26:57 GMT
Said Greg Cox in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Fri, 04 May 2001 08:15:01
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>> Said Greg Cox in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Thu, 03 May 2001 06:56:37
>> >In article <z81I6.1998$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>> >[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>> >> "T. Max Devlin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>> >> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> >> > Word for Windows 1.0 was released
>> >> > simultaneously with Windows 3.0;
>> >>
>> >> I'm certain that Word for Windows 2 predated
>> >> Win3, and ran on Windows v2. I just don't know
>> >> if it ever ran on Windows v1.
>> >
>> >You made me curious so I looked for my special leather bound version of
>> >the Word for Windows 1.0 manual I received as a ship gift: Word for
>> >Windows 1.0 required Windows version 2.03 or later. If you didn't have
>> >Windows installed Word came with a special cut-down version of Windows
>> >so it could run without the full version being installed.
>>
>> Well, it might say that, but Word for Windows was not available until
>> Windows 3.0 was released. Your "special leather bound version" sounds
>> like a beta; I was up on all this stuff, since I was teaching courses in
>> it at the time, and I've never seen or heard of Word coming with the
>> run-time Windows. (Those weren't "cut-down" versions at all, BTW, they
>> were just the regular Win2 or Win286/386 (mostly the latter) that were
>> bundled with apps. It was called "run time", but it was simply Windows.
>>
>>
>
>Well, the only reason I received the book was because I was a developer
>on the Word for Windows 1.0 project. I received the book as a ship gift
>after RTM.
>
>The book states that the "special version" of Windows did not include
>the MS-DOS Executive so it was not a complete release of Windows.
The "MS-DOS Executive" was the 'shell', later called the 'program
manager', and then changed to the 'start menu'. The bundled app was set
as the 'shell' in the .ini file, is all. You'd start windows and it
would launch the desktop and the app, and when you quite the app it
would quit windows. Other than that, it was a complete release of
Windows, and you could just task-switch out of pagemaker and run the
file manager if you needed a shell. (You couldn't use a DOS prompt,
because at that time you could not launch a windows program with a DOS
command <apart from the bundled app, as I've described>.)
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 03:26:58 GMT
Said Greg Cox in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Fri, 04 May 2001 08:04:04
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>> Said Greg Cox in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Wed, 02 May 2001 23:15:52
>> >In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>> >[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>> [...]
>> >I don't know what you mean by "after BASIC was trashed" since ROM BASIC
>> >was shipped in every IBM PC and IBM XT box. Or are you talking about
>> >the MS-BASIC that shipped with every version of DOS?
>>
>> No, I was referring to the ROM BASIC, and so obviously I would be
>> talking about after the XT. That would be the AT, no?
>
>Yes, the AT followed the XT. What's your point?
That the AT was therefore "after BASIC was trashed", since ROM BASIC was
shipped in every IBM PC and IBM XT box. Get it? My point is that I
don't understand why you don't know what I meant to begin with.
>> >I wouldn't be that surprised if IBM got a flat fee license for ROM BASIC
>> >from Microsoft but I believe IBM always paid a (very low) royalty on
>> >each copy of IBM-DOS sold. You have to realize that Bill Gates wanted
>> >every contract for Microsoft products to be on some kind of royalty
>> >basis and all contracts for products Microsoft bought (QDOS for example)
>> >to be on a flat fee basis.
>>
>> No, he just wanted to monopolize; I doubt he has any strong feelings how
>> it's accomplished.
>
>This has got nothing to do with monopolizing or not monopolizing.
I'm sorry; I'm not that gullible.
>Is
>that just the explanation you pull out when you don't know what you're
>talking about?
No, it is the explanation I use when it is correct to use it. I would
not use it, for instance, to explain why someone bought a particular
brand of television, because there is no monopoly AFAIK in production or
sales of television sets.
>> >> >It was so cheap compared to what other OEMs paid for MS-DOS because IBM
>> >> >participated in the development of IBM-DOS/MS-DOS from the beginning
>> >> >through the development of OS/2 version 1.0.
>> >>
>> >> Such vague and obviously carefully neutral bullshit terms as
>> >> "participated in development" lead me to believe that you are unaware of
>> >> what really happened to begin with.
>> >
>> >Well, since Microsoft's development on DOS 1.0 occurred in the office
>> >across the hallway from my office I really do have a better idea than
>> >you do how it happened. By "IBM participated in the development of IBM-
>> >DOS/MS-DOS from the beginning through the development of OS/2 version
>> >1.0" I mean that IBM developers worked on parts of all versions of DOS
>> >and OS/2 1.0 while Microsoft developers worked on other parts with daily
>> >communication between them to coordinate development. It was completely
>> >a joint development effort.
>>
>> I did not know that. Are you sure they weren't just making sure that
>> PC-DOS worked?
>
>Yes, I'm very sure...
Without any more explanation, I'm afraid I must conclude you might every
well be mistaken, regardless of how sure you are.
>> [...]
>> >> Because MS-BASIC was in the PROM, according to the information I have.
>> >
>> >So what? The ROM BASIC was very limited and only used if you bought a
>> >PC without floppy drives or a hard drive and loaded BASIC programs
>> >through the built-in cassette tape port. As it turned out, virtually no
>> >IBM PCs were ever purchased in this configuration.
>>
>> Well, it wasn't my strategy; ask Bill Gates why he thought it would
>> work.
>
>It wasn't Bill Gates strategy - it was IBM's. Their hardware design,
>remember?
No, I wouldn't take that for granted. MS was championing (I would say
attempting to monopolize) the use of ROM BASIC quite strongly. Given
the unformed nature of the market, it would be naive to believe this was
'customer demand'. Its just the way microcomputers were done, at the
time, but from what I've heard IBM wasn't particularly inured to the
idea until Gates made it attractive with his predatory pricing.
>> >> I don't see what this has to do with my comment, though. Are you saying
>> >> having to select the cheapest from a list of three entirely unknown
>> >> alternatives means that DOS "competed"? You're a pretty incredulous
>> >> guy, you know that?
>> >
>> >Yea, right. No one ever heard of CP/M before it was released for the
>> >IBM PC.
>>
>> I used CP/M on the Commodore 128, though that was not "before it was
>> released for the IBM PC". Why does that mean it 'competed'? Are you
>> saying DOS made CP/M a forgotten memory because of competitive merits?
>
>Damn right they competed. What do you call it when customers in a
>market have products they can freely choose from?
A baseless assumption, unless they end up choosing freely. This would
not cause any kind of a 90% market share for the most inferior choice,
even if it is a bit cheaper. I refuse to check my brain at the door,
sorry. I will believe that consumers *can* choose freely only when they
*do* choose alternatives freely.
>The issue is you said that CP/M was an entirely unknown alternative.
All of the choices were entirely unknown; the PC was a new market, there
was no such thing as a 'consumer computer' before then, for the most
part. Yes, a vanishingly small percentage of customers had some
experience; this is not a cogent point, however.
>Anyone familiar with the small computer market would have known about
>CP/M. [...]
99% of the PC marketplace had no familiarity with the small computer
market, because there wasn't really a small computer market before the
PC. Just the microcomputer market, and that was entirely hobbyists,
because nobody was really able to accomplish much until the platform
developed rather substantially.
[...]
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: bank switches from using NT 4
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 03:26:59 GMT
Said GreyCloud in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Thu, 26 Apr 2001 23:29:01
-0700;
>Matthew Gardiner wrote:
>>
>> > The article says
>> >
>> > Halifax will start to replace parts of its NT and Unix infrastructure in
>> > July, and is aiming to complete the whole project by the end of the
>> > year.
>> >
>> > How do you get from this to "things get better and they never look
>> > back"?
>> >
>> > --
>> > Bruce R. Lewis http://brl.sourceforge.net/
>> > I rarely read mail sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>> My highschool, as one example, had an NT4 server, bloody unreliable,
>> over a period of two weeks, the performance and responsiveness of the
>> server went slowly downhill. Installed the latest service pack, still it
>> kept happening. Re-installed the whole OS cleanly w/ latest service
>> pack. A couple of months later they bought a copy of Novell Netware 5,
>> for the rest of the year, there wasn't one day of downtime.
>>
>> Matthew Gardiner
>> --
>> Disclaimer:
>>
>> I am the resident BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell)
>>
>> If you don't like it, you can go [# rm -rf /home/luser] yourself
>>
>> Running SuSE Linux 7.1
>>
>> The best of German engineering, now in software form
>
>Now that you mention it, while I was visiting my mother-in-law at the
>hospital, the hospital was running Win95 on the nursing stations. The
>stations were on a Novell 3.1 service and they were running StarOffice
>on some and Star Navigator on the rest.
>Staff complained about the three or four times a day of rebooting the
>stations.
This, in a fucking *hospital*.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux has one chance left.........
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 03:27:01 GMT
Said Ed Allen in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Fri, 04 May 2001 06:00:42
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>Hehe... Microsoft uses large version numbers as a marketing gimmick...
>>the bigger the number implying that it is much better. Sort of along
>>the same vein as "NEW AND IMPROVED!" I ask what was wrong with the
>>older one?
>>
> But it must not go above 4 because then it might be perceived as
> "just more of the same old crap" and that makes "NEW AND IMPROVED!"
> harder to sell.
>
> I was surprised they let Word get so high before the rename. They
> were probably stressing "incremental improvement" while slipping in
> some drastic changes and they hoped to keep people from staying away
> from code which would break most of their old stuff.
They just wanted to match WordPerfect's versioning, which was at 6.
When they realized they could never keep up, and had accidentally made
themselves vulnerable to competition, they quickly switched to
non-version-numbering.
> They seem to have decided that if they use the year in the name then
> they can have high numbers and the implied incremental improvement
> yet always be "current".
>
> Marketdroids are creaming themselves at the "genius" of it.
>
> Auto manufacturers have been using this "new MS innovation" for at
> least eighty years.
Oddly enough, we don't hear all that much about 'forced upgrades', in
the automotive industry.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Another Windows pc gets Linux
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 03:27:02 GMT
Said The Ghost In The Machine in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Fri, 04 May
>In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Pete Goodwin
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote
>on Fri, 4 May 2001 08:43:25 +0100
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>>[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>>
>>> MS uses a different communications mechanism: DCOM/COM+/ActiveX.
>>> It's not a direct comparison -- and the details look a bit ugly
>>> (to be fair, CORBA has an IDL which doesn't look pretty either),
>>> but it can be used for IPC, or perhaps ICC (inter-code communication;
>>> in some cases, the code is in another process).
>>
>>DCOM/COM across nodes is based on RPC. You can also use RPC directly if
>>you don't want COM.
>
>Interesting. Unless this is a different RPC (the one I'm familiar
>with is Sun-based), that makes life slightly bodgy, though. :-)
RPC is one of those Sun technologies that became a standard. Like Java
and 'yellow pages' and NFS and sbus.
It's essentially a 'null context' protocol; very bare-bones, designed
simply to get a 'procedure call' from any one system to any another. It
is used as a 'transport' for many things that were simply not originally
designed for network interoperability. Like Microsoft crapware. :-/
>>> NT (and presumably Win2K) also have named pipes, with a slightly
>>> peculiar (but perfectly logical) naming scheme: \\.\pipe\pipename.
>>> I suspect NT will have cross-system named pipes (also known as
>>> 'sockets' to those of us familiar with TCP/IP) Real Soon Now.... :-)
>>
>>Yep, NT has had pipes for ages. Not the same as the command line pipe,
>>but then NT doesn't need you to use a command line.
>
>Unix has had named pipes for quite some time as well.
How much you want to bet they actually work, and NT's don't?
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Microsoft standards... (was Re: Windows 2000 - It is a crappy product)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 03:27:03 GMT
Said Chad Myers in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Fri, 04 May 2001 02:39:20
[...]
>Donn:
>Several of the guys I work with are Bash and Emacs lovers. I tried
>using Bash for two days straight. I had only used it whenever I had
>to configure something on a Linux or Solaris box, but was never forced
>to use it as my primary shell. I had to say, I was quite disappointed
>with it after hearing so many good things about it from so many people.
>
>Sure, the scripting is good, I'll give it that. But as far as just a
>basic shell, it's really not that great. Simple editing on the command
>line for long commands isn't terribly easy. HOME and END don't work, you
>have to use CTRL+A and CTRL+E (IIRC) which is much less intuitive.
>It doesn't have a pop-up command history like cmd.exe (the F7 key), it
>doesn't have very good TAB completion (in cmd, subsequent hits of TAB
>cause cycling of files in the dir that meet the search criteria).
<*cough*>
Try man bash, trollboy; some of this is configurable, IIRC. As for
command history (use the arrow keys - Doh!) and tab completion, it is
obvious you chose these 'pseudo-examples' specifically because they suck
so much, and so infamously and notoriously, on Windows.
[...]
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Performance Measure, Linux versus windows
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 03:27:04 GMT
Said Mikkel Elmholdt in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Fri, 4 May 2001
>"Paolo Ciambotti" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
><snip>
>> This is only the first in a series of articles. This one is interesting
>> only for the fact that subsequent benchmarks will have to take into
>> account the poorer response times for WinNT. The rest of the series
>> should be more entertaining. BTW, that "IBM guy", as you referred to him,
>> is IBM's product guru in charge of MSFT, not Linux. I'm expecting bias
>> in a different direction than you.
>
>OK, maybe this thread has taken a bad turn. I was not really objecting to
>the article as such (and I apologize for the dismissive "IBM guy" term). I
>was more after the poster, who believed that the test described said
>something about the relative performance of Linux versus WinNT.
It was a comparison of performance. Why wouldn't it describe something
about the relative performance?
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Performance Measure, Linux versus windows
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 03:27:04 GMT
Said Charles Lyttle in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Fri, 04 May 2001
>Benchmarks on the whole are crap. I
>can rig benchmarks to prove anything.
The first statement does not follow from the second, I'm afraid.
Benchmarks on the whole are not absolute proof of anything, because
nothing, on the whole, is absolute proof of anything.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: bank switches from using NT 4
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 03:27:05 GMT
Said Chad Myers in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Fri, 04 May 2001 02:30:21
>"Jon Johansan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:3af18c41$0$37286$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>>
>> "Greg Copeland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> >
>> > You need to be A LOT more informed. This is a CPU function and has
>> > NOTHING to do with the BIOS. When you disable it in BIOS, the BIOS
>> > simple issues the needed instructions to turn it off.
>>
>> I know this.
>>
>> Likewise, any
>> > OS during boot can choose to turn it back on.
>>
>> True - but Windows does not do this.
>>
>> > This was well established
>> > by Intel when it first came out. In short, if you think you have ANY
>> > protection by turning it off in BIOS, you have been horribly mislead.
>>
>> It gives DEFAULT protection. If I turn it off in BIOS then I know the ONLY
>> way it's back on is if something *I* installed turns it back on.
>>
>> > My
>> > understanding is that even a properly written application could do this
>> > (turn it on and back off) if it had proper permission to access the CPU.
>>
>> Sure, but ONLY if *I* install such an application. I think it's quite
>> paranoid and stupid to think that MS would do such a thing that is so easily
>> detected and suffer the fallout of this sort of privacy breech. I think this
>> is a non-issue.
>
>It's quite easy to detect, as well, right? I mean if it's a software switchable
>thing, then just install a base copy of Windows *.*, write a piece of software
>which monitors the setting every couple seconds and then just use the computer
>for a couple days for browsing, etc without installing any other apps. If the
>setting ever changes, than its Microsoft's doing. If it doesn't, than you've
>proven MS doesn't change it.
I guess everyone else has you killfiled, Myers, so its left to me to
laugh at you in public. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha.
It isn't a 'setting that changes'. The software can simply get the CPU
ID; 'changing' the BIOS setting, retrieving the value, and 'changing'
the setting back are all one action, effectively. Doh!
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: I think I've discovered Flatfish's true identity...
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 03:27:06 GMT
Said Bobby D. Bryant in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Thu, 03 May 2001
22:03:39 +0600;
>Terry Porter wrote:
>
>> True, but what's the point of a knowledgable Linux user pretending to be
>> ignorant here ?
>
>Maybe an überzealot trying to make MS supporters look bad?
Nah; he's just a childish troll. The MS/Linux thing is just convenient,
because it is a heated debate, but not a violently heated one, as
religious or cultural trolling is.
>I have long suspected that some of this is going on here, due to the
>absolutely ridiculous stances taken by some of the trolls from time to
>time.
That's the sock puppets; Erik Funkenbusch, JS PL, maybe Chad Myers.
Flathead is just a troll, like Jackie Pokemon.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux has one chance left.........
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 03:27:08 GMT
Said [EMAIL PROTECTED] in comp.os.linux.advocacy on 4 May 2001
>T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>>[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
>>>>In the DAW world the WDM drivers have reduced the Sound Card latency
>>>>to 2ms or less which allows real time input monitoring including
>>>>effects etc.
>
>>>What's the latency of an mmap()ped sound buffer, really? A lot less than
>>>2ms, that much is sure...
>
>>What the hell does all that stuff mean?
>
>[ Note: I have a nagging suspicion that you were writing that in a mocking
> tone of voice. Oh well, on the off chance that you weren't: ]
I wasn't, but I did mean the question rhetorically, to point out the
relatively lack of value to the general audience in such arcane details.
>Sound latency is the time your sound sample spends in the sound driver
>between the moment the app submits it and the moment it gets played.
So flathead is crowing about how they've managed to remove Windows
sufficiently that the monopoly crapware is not the bottleneck it has
always been in the past?
>Generally, large buffers in the drivers (or on the actual hardware) are
>good --- playing back an MP3, for example, it's nice to have half a second
>or so buffered and ready to go for those times when your CPU is needed
>for heavy real work, and the MP3 decoder might not get cycles quite as
>easily as normally.
So it is effectively impossible for a non-real-time version of Linux to
provide perfectly glitch-free playback, unless it has a very large
amount of fast memory for buggers, is that it?
>On the other hand, pulling the trigger in Quake, and hearing the "Swoosh"
>of the rocket launcher half a second later is not really appropriate. So
>for anything interactive, you want the sound latency to be low. Of course,
>that means that you have to give the sound driver new data all the time;
>The shorter the latency, the harder for the app (and OS) to guarantee that
>data won't run out at any point. Also, when taken to extremes, the overhead
>of calling the driver hundreds if not thousands of times a second can become
>significant.
But flatheads comments didn't concern DirectCrap gaming performance, did
it?
>Linux' sound drivers can be mmap-ed. This means that the actual buffer from
>which the sound card is playing back appears as memory in the app's address
>space. This allows the app to use fairly large buffers, and still be able
>to insert that "swoosh" in a place where it will get played back right away.
>It's very hard to talk about quantitative values for the latency in that
>case.
>I would have expected Window's sound system to provide similar functionality;
>However, it appears as if there are at least 2, probably 3 different APIs
>aimed at low-latency sound reproduction, and none of them works satisfactorily
>across a wide range of hardware. Oh well :)
It all just reminds me too much of Intel's effort years ago to develop
hardware-based signal processing.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: "JS PL" <the_win98box_in_the_corner>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 23:30:29 -0400
Rick wrote in message
>> I'll keep it around despite some of the cosmetic flaws. It is worthy of
my
>> limited hardware resources.
>
>I am moving towards having it as my main OS. Apple threw a wrench in the
>works with incorporating BSD. Now I have to decide if I want to move to
>BSD on the laptop and ditch Linux.
>
>--
>Rick
I'm going to keep one machine running it "in waiting" for my eventual -
always on, semi-permanent ip address. Whenever they get around to bringing
me one here in Bumbfuck, Egypt.
------------------------------
From: "Paolo Ciambotti" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The Text of Craig Mundie's Speech
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 20:38:02 -0700
In article <9ctgi2$7fa$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Interconnect"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That article made me sick! How greedy and rapacious can a company be.
Only one news service seemed to carry any of the audience reaction at all,
and that was the Associated Press (AP). They reported one of the students
heavily sighing "That's not true" in response to one of Mundie's
statements during the question and answer period, and Mundie becoming
demonstrably aggravated several times over some of the questions.
Maybe there's hope after all for the next generation of PHBs; $DEITY knows
the current generation is completely clueless.
------------------------------
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