Linux-Advocacy Digest #31, Volume #35 Thu, 7 Jun 01 16:13:05 EDT
Contents:
Re: Why Linux Is no threat to Windows domination of the desktop ("Aaron R. Kulkis")
Re: Why homosexuals are no threat to heterosexuals ("Aaron R. Kulkis")
Re: UI Importance (Woofbert)
Re: Why Linux Is no threat to Windows domination of the desktop ("Edward Rosten")
Re: Why Linux Is no threat to Windows domination of the desktop ("Aaron R. Kulkis")
Re: UI Importance (Woofbert)
Re: UI Importance (Woofbert)
Re: UI Importance (Woofbert)
Re: UI Importance ("Robert Morelli")
Re: XP - what's for me? ("Erik Funkenbusch")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Aaron R. Kulkis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: soc.men,soc.singles,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: Why Linux Is no threat to Windows domination of the desktop
Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 15:02:14 -0400
The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
>
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Aaron R. Kulkis
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote
> on Mon, 21 May 2001 23:40:00 -0400
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> >"Vallely's Dirt in Boss King's Ditch.." wrote:
> >>
> >> Aaron's a homophobe,
> > ^^^^^^^^^
> >
> >You misspelled "person who finds buggery disgusting"
>
> Well, that's a start; "despise the sin but not the sinner" is
> a good Christian value -- although I for one have trouble drawing
> the boundary line, for we are what we do, although many aspire
> to do more.
>
> But how is "buggery" any more or less disgusting than:
>
> - murder?
> - drinking a woman's urine or eating her feces?
> - typing up a person and beating him or her with a whip?
> - highly orgasmic consensual sex which leaves a mess on the bed
> and both participants wishing to take a drink and a shower and
> launder the sheets because they sweated so much?
> - bathing in the Ganges, which is full of crap?
> - child molestation and abduction?
> - eating from a cow whose carcass has been killed, drained, dressed, aged,
> and ground up?
> - goose dung?
> - deliberatelly spraying or contaminating food or drugs with a
> pathogen (e.g., E. Coli) or chemical poison such as cyanide,
> strychnine, or even peanut oil (for those who are allergic to it,
> that can be deadly)?
> - razor blades in apples?
> - eating tainted food and throwing up?
> - eating too much food and throwing up (anorexia bulimia)?
> - living in a rat-infested hovel, some rats infected with fleas,
> some fleas infected with the pathogen responsible for bubonic plague?
> - flesh-eating bacteria, Ebola, smallpox?
> - blowing up a building, causing the deaths of 168 people, for no good
> reason other than to exact revenge for a botched government action
> 2 years ago?
> - embracing an enemy soldier, live and ticking grenade in hand? [*]
> - taking away a gun owner's legitimate right to own a weapon in order to
> defend his house and family against an overdespotic invader or government?
> - taking away a land owner's legitimate right to own property and use
> it as he sees fit, considerations of neighbors such as pollution,
> noise, overbuilding, and such permitting?
> - government-mandated taking from the rich and giving to the poor,
> "rich" and "poor" being defined by sightly idiosyncratic government
> procedures?
> - dying on the street because of no home, food, and money?
> - dying on the street because some bozo plays "shoot the target"?
>
> And, more to the point, which of these allegedly disgusting scourges
> should the government or citizenry (ideally, both!) attempt to
> spend money, energy, or other resources to eradicate, first?
They're ALL disgusting.
>
> Please be specific. (Bear also in mind that government is also a
> multilevel entity, from the city level to the county, state, and federal.)
>
> [rest snipped]
>
> [*] I have no idea whether grenades tick as their time-delay fuse
> runs out -- and I certainly can't say I want to find out the hard way.
>
> --
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
> EAC code #191 38d:05h:39m actually running Linux.
> Hi. I'm a signature virus.
--
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: "Aaron R. Kulkis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: soc.men,soc.singles,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: Why homosexuals are no threat to heterosexuals
Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 15:04:28 -0400
The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
>
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Ray Fischer
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote
> on Wed, 16 May 2001 22:30:16 GMT
> <9duuvt$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> >Robert W Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>And where is your evidence that people have no choice over their homosexual
> >>behavior?
> >
> >Yeah! You could choose to be interested in men so it's obvious that
> >homosexuals could choose to be interested in women.
> >
> >Right?
>
> One could mimic such behavior to avoid detection; such has been done
> in the past, as I understand it -- even to the point of a
> loveless, or at least sexless, marriage.
>
> This no more makes the homosexual a het, anymore than a woolen overcoat
> makes a wolf a sheep.
What part of "IT's the BEHAVIOR(*)," do you not understand?????
(*) not the desire
>
> [.sigsnip]
>
> --
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- "But Henry! What will the neighbors think?"
> -- Warner brothers unnamed (?) "mother bear"
> EAC code #191 38d:04h:33m actually running Linux.
> I'm here, you're there, and that's pretty much it.
--
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: Woofbert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: UI Importance
Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 19:03:11 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >No, vi is the only program *you* need to design web sites. The
> >popularity of good web design tools among profesisonal web site
> >designers is proof that GUI design tools are worth paying money for.
>
> Worth YOU paying money for. The relatively large proportion of master
> web site designers who disdain GUI design tools indicates this may be a
> question of naivete.
It's a question of what crappy code early WYSIWYG HTMLtools generated.
RageMill had a nice interface but generated awful read-only code.
Macromedia talked to web-site designers and created Dreamweaver with
their needs in mind. It is popular and getting more so. Good web site
design requires a good sense of esthetics as much as it does knowledge
of the nuts and bolts of HTML. Frequently hand-coding HTML is slower
than manipulating the resulting objects through a GUI. And to the extent
that hand-coding is necessary, Dreamweaver has am HTML view and close
integration with BBedit. My point is that it's the programmer's job to
provide tools that work the way the use works, not to restrict the
availability of the technology to people who meet some arbitrary
standard based mostly on how difficult some utility is to use.
> >And what's this vi crap? How DARE you use a screen-oriented text editor?
> >If your'e gonna be a REAL he-programmer, you should be using ed. }: )
>
> It is amazing how bad an outrageously efficient text editing system can
> be, and still be a de facto standard, don't you think? It is almost as
> if, once a few people learn something really well, they will consider it
> "the best". Is it simply an effort to avoid learning something better,
> or is it a rather important indication of just how useless the term
> 'better' is, when considering someone's preference in software. Almost
> as if it really mean 'familiar'.
Vi sucks, and many Unix programmers I've talked to agree that it sucks.
So why not get rid of it, I asked. Becuase it's everywhere and
everybody knows it. Even if there's no other text editor on a Unix
system, there's always vi.
This does not mean that vi is good, that people don't want to learn
anything else, or that anything else isn't sufficiently good to replace
vi. It simply means that vi's history and prevasiveness are what keep it
alive.
--
Woofbert: Chief Rocket Surgeon, Infernosoft
email <woofbert at infernosoft dot com>
web http://www.infernosoft.com/woofbert
------------------------------
From: "Edward Rosten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Why Linux Is no threat to Windows domination of the desktop
Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 21:06:25 +0100
> %%%% Hummmm-------I have bee hives and this is the first time I have
> heard
> it. Scratch-----scratch----scratch-----sniff,sniff-----Yep! Smells like
> bullshit to me!!!!! Male bees (drones) are raised from infertile eggs
So just because you have never seen it means it does not exist then? Have
you considered that it is acutally very rare and even if you keep bees,
the chances of you observing it are quite low even if you do spend the
whole time watching bees shag.
<snip>
-Ed
--
(You can't go wrong with psycho-rats.) (u98ejr)(@)(ecs.ox)(.ac.uk)
/d{def}def/f{/Times-Roman findfont s scalefont setfont}d/s{10}d/r{roll}d f 5 -1
r 230 350 moveto 0 1 179{2 1 r dup show 2 1 r 88 rotate 4 mul 0 rmoveto}for/s 15
d f pop 240 420 moveto 0 1 3 {4 2 1 r sub -1 r show}for showpage
------------------------------
From: "Aaron R. Kulkis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: soc.men,soc.singles,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: Why Linux Is no threat to Windows domination of the desktop
Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 15:08:40 -0400
The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
>
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Aaron R. Kulkis
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote
> on Tue, 22 May 2001 18:39:32 -0400
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> >"David L. Moffitt" wrote:
> >>
> >> "." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> >> news:9eegjt$c6m$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >> > In comp.os.linux.advocacy Aaron R. Kulkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> >I was decorated 9 times in my first 3 years of service.
> >> > >> >what does that tell you
> >> > >>
> >> > >> You own some little ribbons you like to flaunt when you're among
> >> > >> other slaves of the system? I find that ritualistic behaviour
> >> > >> akin to baboon's exposure of erect penises as sign of authority.
> >> > >>
> >> >
> >> > > Commendation for work well done.
> >> >
> >> > > Work which I *CHOSE* to get into.
> >> >
> >> > See my other post. Aaron Kulkis recieved exactly zero commendations
> >> > in any branch of the US military. He is a raging liar.
> >>
> >> %%%% Serious question: How do you look up someone's commendations?
> >
> >He didn't.
> >
> >Otherwise, he would have found a whole slew of them.
>
> I for one don't know if "Aaron R. Kulkis" is your given name,
> or if it's something borrowed for the occasion. Not that
> I care all that much, but on Internet, no on has to know
> whether one's as handsome as, say, John Wayne, or as
> beautiful as Britney Spears. (No, she can't sing, but
> she's cute enough, depending on one's tastes. Personally,
> I prefer 'em a bit older.) There's even a commercial -- I
> believe it's selling a DSL service -- which has a guy and a
> gal trying to find each other by buffing their pectoids or
> replacing their body, electronically.
>
> Even with "Aaron R. Kulkis", I'd have to do some digging in .mil
> stuff -- and I'm not expert at it. Assuming that .mil websites
> publish commendations, which they may not for security reasons
> (suppose some nutter decides to play "harass the famous guy?").
>
If you look up the information PROPERLY, you will find that
I have been decorated over half a dozen times.
> [.sigsnip]
>
> --
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
> EAC code #191 38d:05h:44m actually running Linux.
> The EAC doesn't exist, but they're still watching you.
--
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: Woofbert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: UI Importance
Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 19:06:16 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Said Woofbert in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Tue, 05 Jun 2001 00:48:49
> [...]
> >> >>If you find that difficult to do, then you should consider
> >> >> selling your computer and taking up flower arranging.
> >
> >I think that the anti-GUI attitude illustrated by that snippet only
> >damages the user community. It encourages programmers to disrespect
> >their lay users.
>
> I think your position is ludicrously silly. Programming isn't a
> priesthood, and "lay users" aren't supplicants who deserve respect.
> You are taking the idea of a 'user community' to some hippy-dippy
> bullshit extreme, and as a nominal member of that community, I think
> that is silly.
>
> Programmers show respect by programming; non-programmer users are not
> "lay users", they are "real" users. Neither group should have any
> respect at all for the other, in an efficient community of developers
> and users. The other group is 'the enemy'. An anti-moron-luser bias
> on the part of a developer is not an "anti-GUI attitude", nor does it
> damage the user community. On the contrary; it is a pro-CLI
> attitude, and it strengthens both the user and the developer
> community.
>
> If you can't manage to remember a few command names, you should burn
> your computer and take up basket weaving. Certainly mastering the
> CLI is much more than just remembering a few commands, but that isn't
> the point.
>
> The point is that CLIs are more efficient, effective, expedient, and
> productive once you learn how to use them. GUIs are a useful
> technique, but getting hung up on them is an excuse for stupidity,
> not a matter of efficiency.
I disagree with your opinions and find parts of them self-contradictory.
That is a result of how Iook at the role of computers and software
engineers. You have different assumptions and thus it is conceivable
that what strikes me as balderdash may even make sense to you. I htink
it's pointless for us to continue arguing this subject.
--
Woofbert: Chief Rocket Surgeon, Infernosoft
email <woofbert at infernosoft dot com>
web http://www.infernosoft.com/woofbert
------------------------------
From: Woofbert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: UI Importance
Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 19:07:25 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Josiah Fizer
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Thu, 07 Jun 2001 12:52:04 +0100, drsquare <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
> >On Thu, 07 Jun 2001 00:10:21 GMT, in comp.os.linux.advocacy,
> > (Woofbert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>) wrote:
> >
> >>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, drsquare
> >><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >>> >And if you don't, you'll search for the info. Point of the
> >>> >excersize completed. If you don't search for the info, then
> >>> >another point of the excersize was completed. You aren't fit to
> >>> >be a programmer.
> >>>
> >>> What's the point in the exercise at all if you have to search for
> >>> everything afterwards?
> >>
> >>What's the point of man pages?
> >
> >To find out things about things?
>
> admin@Trillian ~> man things No manual entry for things.
>
> Seems to not work.
You can't find something unless you know where it is.
--
Woofbert: Chief Rocket Surgeon, Infernosoft
email <woofbert at infernosoft dot com>
web http://www.infernosoft.com/woofbert
------------------------------
From: Woofbert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: UI Importance
Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 19:09:48 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, drsquare
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I don't see how you're supposed to search for something like what you
> typed. I doubt typing "i[intArray]" into google would yield too many
> results.
Ithink 4,240 results qualifies as "too many."
Never underestimate Google. }: )
--
Woofbert: Chief Rocket Surgeon, Infernosoft
email <woofbert at infernosoft dot com>
web http://www.infernosoft.com/woofbert
------------------------------
From: "Robert Morelli" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: UI Importance
Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 01:16:40 -0600
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Nick Condon"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>>Wouldn't it be great if people from the Linux/UNIX world had the kind
>>>>of common sense and competence that Windows programmers like the
>>>>author of this article has.
>>> What any of them? Just one? How about this one: A Tribute to KDE
>>> http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/log/e_kde.shtml
>>This is just a short tribute to the KDE project with no specific content
>>about UI design.
> Correct.
>
>>It's not even comparable to the 9 chapter article this thread is about.
> You don't think it shows any "common sense and competence"? You said
>>>>Wouldn't it be great if people from the Linux/UNIX world had the kind
>>>>of common sense and competence that Windows programmers like the
>>>>author of this article has.
> You didn't say: "Anyone know where there is a good 9 chapter article
> about UI design?".
This is the kind of goof answer to which I wouldn't usually bother to
respond. However, as boggling as it is to the mind, I fear you might
actually believe the two articles really do have comparable value.
This most likely means you never looked at the article this thread
is about. Perhaps you didn't look at it because through
ignorance you think you have nothing to learn from Windows
programmers. Sadly, I think that's the kind of insularity
that allows UNIX people to go on believing that the UNIX software
world is still technologically on par with the Windows world. You lock
yourself in a bomb shelter and you go on believing the world hasn't
changed since the day you locked the door.
The article this thread is about is by a seasoned programmer who once
worked on the Excel team at Microsoft. It has 9 chapters and is full
of simple but nontrivial observations about UI design. The article you
cite is by a naive teenage kid just learning to program. It is just a
short note of praise with no real content. Unfortunately, it's rare to
see an article from the Linux camp that is much beyond the level of
a naive teenage kid.
<snip>
> Complete and utter garbage. Linux - as we hear so often on this group -
> is just the kernel, and what interactions does the user have with
> kernel? None. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of operating systems
> knows the kernel is enclosed in a shell, which assumes all the duties of
> user interaction. Only the shell deals with the user, and that's as true
> on Windows as in is in Unix. (including your favourite desktop, which of
> course is a shell).
You don't seem to understand the point. Let me try again. The computer
is useless without UI because UI is where you give the computer
instructions and where you receive results. It's true that much of the
software doesn't directly interact with the user. But if it does
anything useful, it interacts with something that interacts with
something that ... that interacts with the user. If there were no such
chain of interactions leading from the software to the user, the
software would have no effect on the observable behavior of the computer
and might as well not be there. In this sense UI is indispensible. In
the same sense the kernel is ultimately dispensible. You don't need
a kernel to use a computer. The earliest computers didn't have
operating systems at all, but every computer system must have
some form of UI.
>>I said UI because I meant UI. It happens that the GUI revolution of
>>1980's is the most important event in the history of the UI, and one of
>>the most important in software engineering in general, but in fact I
>>meant UI in a broad sense.
> Computer scientists divide UIs into three classes, the CLI, the GUI and
> the parametric interface (i.e. form-based). Your choice of UI is a trade
> off of flexibility versus learning-curve. The parameteric interface is
> the least flexible and the easiest to learn, the CLI is most flexible
> and the hardest to learn. The GUI falls somewhere between. You haven't
> mentioned CLIs and you haven't mentioned parameterics. All you're
> talking about is GUIs.
This is all nonsense. I assume you think of CLI as meaning an interface
based on character streams. Such an interface is useful because
character streams are a very primitive and fundamental data structure.
Some UNIX advocates argue that everything should be in terms of
character streams because more complex data structures are too
complicated to handle without software specialized to the purpose. I
think this idea works tolerably well in some cases, but certainly not all.
For instance, Emacs is still tolerable as a programmer's editor. Lacking
a good alternative under Linux, I use it myself, though I consider it
barbaric by present day UI standards. However, encoding many
kinds of data structures as character streams is extremely non-intuitive.
Image editing is a common application for which CLI is hardly ideal.
Of course, you can simulate a GUI with a CLI. This sort of thing
never got very sophisticated under UNIX, but it was once a high
art under DOS.
The point is that we shouldn't lock ourselves arbitrarily into one
paradigm or another, whether it's the 1970's paradigm UNIX uses,
or some other one. What's more useful is to be flexible about what
interface best serves the application at hand. If it's useful to deal
with character streams, include facilities for dealing with them. If you
need to deal with vector graphics, include something appropriate.
Etc.
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: XP - what's for me?
Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 14:17:42 -0500
"George P. Nelson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:vLLT6.286954
> > Nobody is spied upon. The question is irrelevant because it's not
> > true.
>
> You Do Not know that for sure any more than I do! Maybe you could
> explain to the world including China what an NSAKEY__ is doing buried
> in someMS OS update (Iforget the exact particulars on this).
Then perhaps you should look them up before making claims about it.
Here is one of the foremost and respected authorities in cryptography's take
on it (Bruce Schneier):
http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-9909.html#NSAKeyinMicrosoftCryptoAPI
> You are basicaly trusting in the word of Microsoft here! Before I Trust
> anybody's word I like to check their record on honesty.. looking at
> Judge Jackson's feelings after presiding over the antitrust trial Igot
> the feeling hey Might be A smidgen better than Bill Clinton!
Perhaps, but if MS is going to spy on you, they don't need activation to do
it. They have ample opportunity to add it to a service pack or Office or
any other product. Focusing on Activation as "spyware" is stupid, since MS,
or any other company, wouldn't be so stupid as to add it's spying to such a
controversial piece of software if it were to do it.
> It's not surprising that a LOT of people don't trust Microsoft,
> astheir track record is really pretty piss poor.
Except, as proven by you above, the vast majority of it is hearsay and
inaccurate.
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