Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Quoth Oleg Goldshmidt on Wed, Mar 05, 2003: > Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > rsh (1) - remote shell > > Indeed, that's what linux man page says. Historically though (and > probably today on some platforms) rsh is/was "restricted", with > "remote shell" named remsh. On SysV. Remote shell first appeared in BSD, and was called rsh. Vadik. -- Any language that involves exposing private parts to friends is a tad suspect... -- Geoff Lane in the Monastery, about C++ = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Quoth Tzafrir Cohen on Wed, Mar 05, 2003: > On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Vadim Vygonets wrote: > > Seen it. Not so convenient, and *really* doesn't belong > > together. Nor do I see the point of having a mailer inside your > > browser. > > This is a work around a *problem* of the system/UI. I'm not saying that "browser | mail" is the right way to do it, but the browsers should run an external mailer (after all, if what you normally use is Outlook Express, why should you use IE's mailer when you click on a "mailto:"; link?). Vadik. -- I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike. -- Emile Henry Gauvreay = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On 2003-03-07, Ira Abramov wrote: > Quoting Beni Cherniavsky, from the post of Fri, 07 Mar: > > > all very nice and valid points, but why would you want to look at a > > > spreadsheet as a programming language, when it was never meant to be one > > > or replace it? > > > > > Well, because my mother has to use "applications" for insurance > > computation that are implemented in Excel and quite badly. They are > > so because you saw the failed attempt of a bad programmer using the > wrong tool to force Excell into submission as proof that the entire > concept of spreadsheets is basically wrong? > I saw a lot of these :-)... > talk about over-reaction... Guilty as charged. But my rant was not intended as a complaint against spreadsheets in general, only against the attempts to use them for big programming projects. Probably I got a little carried... > > > but A programming language it ain't. never meant to be. hence the need > > > to enhance it with VB and form macro generators. > > > > > Agreed. However, it could be enhanced in much better ways, to > > actually create something that is a reasonable tool for creating big > > applications. > > then go ahead and donate those ideas to OpenOffice, gnumeric or Kspread. > at the moment I don't see why there's a base for complaints. it's like > saying HTML is a bad programming language (it's a markup language) or my > car is a bad elevator (it only goes up 15 centimeters and stops, and > then the ride is bad). you get the point. > True point. But it doesn't currently scratch any itch badly enough to invest time into it. -- Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I'm too lazy to use GUI - why should I click all these things to get my job done? = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Quoting Dan Kenigsberg, from the post of Tue, 04 Mar: > > This reminds me of an ancient story about MS acquiring the English > language. (http://www.stokely.com/lighter.side/ms.english.html for > once) well, the BSA's bot is not the only busy one... and apperently ZX Spectrum games are illegal to offer online as well... http://theregister.co.uk/content/4/29646.html the author raises the (far out) idea that Java Games for the new cellulars are a good reason why the copyrights on these old games are rechecked. the apple 2 archives go next, I fear. -- Last of the Mohicans Ira Abramov http://ira.abramov.org/email/ This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On 2003-03-06, Ira Abramov wrote: > Quoting Beni Cherniavsky, from the post of Wed, 05 Mar: > > On 2003-03-05, Yedidyah Bar-David wrote: > > > > > For complex things, I usually find complex, sophisticated spreadsheets > > > much less maintainable than real programs (or scripts). I have heard > > > horror stories about thousands lines of macros that organizations > > > depend on and noone knows what's inside them. > > > > > Aghh, my favourite rant (-: come to think of what level of programming > > language is a spreadsheet: > > all very nice and valid points, but why would you want to look at a > spreadsheet as a programming language, when it was never meant to be one > or replace it? > Well, because my mother has to use "applications" for insurance computation that are implemented in Excel and quite badly. They are also copy-protected and code-view-protected and full of macros and forms. I'd never be annoyed by the existance of something that's not intended to be aprogramming language if people wouldn't use it as one (and force me to suffer the quality consequencesof this)... > The first electronic spreadsheet (Visicalc, I have it running on my > Apple //c, very probably available for any Apple ][ emulator you will > find online) was written by a guy from an economics class in CMU IIRC, > to emulate what he and his coleages have been doing for years on the > blackboard. VisiCalc (for Visual Calculator) was meant to be a > scriptable table. not even scriptable, more like auto-resolving. > "Blame" Lotus and Microsoft for trying to enhance it into a monster, > where people try to keep addressbooks and other stuff it was never meant > for. They ended up with a crazy bloatware that is way more than needed > for the original intentions and never good enough for all the new > "wrong" uses the users were using it for. Microsoft keeps on feeding the > beast and adding features to keep the people happy, but only because > they can afford it, not because the crowd really needs all that power in > a single product. > > as with Word and Access, Excell is also a product where only 2% of the > users really use over 10% of the functions (or even know what they're > for) > > but A programming language it ain't. never meant to be. hence the need > to enhance it with VB and form macro generators. > Agreed. However, it could be enhanced in much better ways, to actually create something that is a reasonable tool for creating big applications. -- Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I'm too lazy to use GUI - why should I click all these things to get my job done? = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 07:25:49PM +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 20:41, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> > On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Vadim Vygonets wrote:
> >
> > > Quoth [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Tue, Mar 04, 2003:
> > > > You remind me what I knew about using Windows before I arrived to my
> > > > current workplace. Outlook is not just a mail client but a (convenient!
> > > > IMHO) address book + calendar + notes + mail organizer. You can say they
> > > > don't belong together but the fact is that the integration is VERY
> > > > convenient.
> > >
> > > Seen it. Not so convenient, and *really* doesn't belong
> > > together. Nor do I see the point of having a mailer inside your
> > > browser.
> >
> > This is a work around a *problem* of the system/UI.
> >
> > On my system I simply:
> >
> > cat file [|possible pipe] | {mail|mutt} whatever
> >
> > cat file [|possible pipe] | lpr
>
> And you think it's more convenient than pressing the "Print" button?
> I've been there and moved on.
>
> (BTW, "cat file | program" is the most naive beginner mistake, if it's
> only one file then you can run "program < file", RTFM :-).
To put what Tzafrir said in other words:
Say you have
prog1 < file1 | prog2 | prog3 ...
and you want to put something between file1 and prog1. You have to:
move to the beginning, insert 'prog0 < file1', move on, then delete
'< file1'. If 'prog0' and 'prog1' are long awk/sed programs, and the
whole thing is more than, say, 2 lines, it's much more difficult and
error-prone than to simply insert '| prog0' after the 'cat'.
Since you are a Unix oldtimer you already know that ...
The reason I decided to reply to an off-topic thread is to point those
interested to a very nice article/book called
"In the beginning was the command line" (search google, or take
. Note the first result
is not very well formatted). It's not only or mostly about the "command
line", but does talk about it and offers some interesting ideas. It's
more about higher-level sociology of OSes and such stuff.
Sadly, it's rather long, but worth it - even if nothing in it is new to
you technically, it's very well written and entertaining.
Didi
>
> >
> > Mozilla, Explorer, and such are limited. They can't easily pipe their
> > output. So they need to be bloated with all that functionality.
> >
> > They need all that functionality embedded inside them.
> >
>
> I disagree about your conclusion. Just like pipes can be used to move
> streams of bytes between programs (unidirectionally!) so can
> remote-procedure-calls be used to call "plug-ins" from "main" programs
> (bidirectionally!).
>
> I used, managed and programmed UNIX since 1986 until 2000. I still
> like the power of scripting and such. But when it gets down to reading,
> e.g., this very mailing list I find it much more convenient to click
> buttons and have the right viewer used automatically embedded in my mail
> window as well as the textual data in the right encoding than start
> typing " " or "^X" and "Enter" and god knows what in a limited 80x40
> text-only screen. I also like the ability to click a URL and have the
> browser popped-up instead of having to copy-paste the address.
>
> If MS are so wrong about their integration stuff (I'm not familiar with
> MS jargon, but I think it's about COM and its descendants) then how come
> GNOME and KDE invest so much in imitating this and Linux sites keep
> showing off screen shots of these environments? (one claim against them
> is that they stole good ideas and implemented them very badly, but still
> I find their interface today more convenient to some tasks than the
> ASCII-alone world of pipes and command line).
>
> This elitist view that "if it's good enough for grandma then it's not
> good enough for me" looks simply pathetic to me.
>
> Just today someone who works on Mac OS X told me she has a great user
> interface but underneath it she can always open a tcsh window and start
> typing away (she's has a 2nd degree in CS from HUJI so she feels
> comfortable with tcsh).
>
> UNIX command line tools are great for some jobs, but the computer world
> haven't frozen 30 years ago when these concepts where first invented.
>
> The UNIX command line interface was invented within the limitations of
> the hardware and software technologies of the time, these limitations
> have been lifted long ago. I don't see the point of making this
> interface sacred just because two decades ago only geeks could use it.
>
> > >
> > > > I think you are mixing Outlook Express with Outlook.
> > >
> > > Maybe.
> > >
> > > > > Why are people so obsessed with spreadsheets? What do you use
> > > > > them for?
> >
> > Spreadsheets allow you to deal with *lots* of data.
> >
> > Unix scripts tend to be line-oriented, or record-oriented.
>
>
>
> =
> To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
> th
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Thu, 6 Mar 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 20:41, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> > On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Vadim Vygonets wrote:
> >
> > > Quoth [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Tue, Mar 04, 2003:
> > > > You remind me what I knew about using Windows before I arrived to my
> > > > current workplace. Outlook is not just a mail client but a (convenient!
> > > > IMHO) address book + calendar + notes + mail organizer. You can say they
> > > > don't belong together but the fact is that the integration is VERY
> > > > convenient.
> > >
> > > Seen it. Not so convenient, and *really* doesn't belong
> > > together. Nor do I see the point of having a mailer inside your
> > > browser.
> >
> > This is a work around a *problem* of the system/UI.
> >
> > On my system I simply:
> >
> > cat file [|possible pipe] | {mail|mutt} whatever
> >
> > cat file [|possible pipe] | lpr
>
> And you think it's more convenient than pressing the "Print" button?
> I've been there and moved on.
>
> (BTW, "cat file | program" is the most naive beginner mistake, if it's
> only one file then you can run "program < file", RTFM :-).
I'm used to "cat file |program", thank you.
That way it is much easier for me to add things in the pie, and to build
it incrementally, when needed.
As for the overhead of an extra cat: I can afford it.
"lpr" does a lot more ations. The extra "cat" is negligble.
If the cat is in a loop, it may be worth optimizin it away. But my typing
time also counts.
>
> >
> > Mozilla, Explorer, and such are limited. They can't easily pipe their
> > output. So they need to be bloated with all that functionality.
> >
> > They need all that functionality embedded inside them.
> >
>
> I disagree about your conclusion. Just like pipes can be used to move
> streams of bytes between programs (unidirectionally!) so can
> remote-procedure-calls be used to call "plug-ins" from "main" programs
> (bidirectionally!).
So let's examine what you can do with kmail/evolution and what you can do
with mutt and minimal helper scripts.
>
> I used, managed and programmed UNIX since 1986 until 2000. I still
> like the power of scripting and such. But when it gets down to reading,
> e.g., this very mailing list I find it much more convenient to click
> buttons and have the right viewer used automatically embedded in my mail
> window as well as the textual data in the right encoding than start
> typing " " or "^X" and "Enter" and god knows what in a limited 80x40
> text-only screen.
The fact is that nither kmail nor evolution provides me a powerful
command-line like vi, emacs and mutt. This means that I am basically
limited to the usage scenarios of the original designers. (pine misses suc
a feature as well).
Can you use ldap with kmail? Can you print Hebrew with mozilla? Can you
use NIS users list with either of those?
Can you work around their limitations?
Is there a program without limitations?
Is feature-bloat the only way around limitations?
> I also like the ability to click a URL and have the
> browser popped-up instead of having to copy-paste the address.
mutt, pine, and virtually and other decent non-html mail/news reader
supports launching a browser from links in the content of the message.
>
> If MS are so wrong about their integration stuff (I'm not familiar with
> MS jargon, but I think it's about COM and its descendants) then how come
> GNOME and KDE invest so much in imitating this and Linux sites keep
> showing off screen shots of these environments? (one claim against them
> is that they stole good ideas and implemented them very badly, but still
> I find their interface today more convenient to some tasks than the
> ASCII-alone world of pipes and command line).
>
> This elitist view that "if it's good enough for grandma then it's not
> good enough for me" looks simply pathetic to me.
But it's not. I've tried it. And it is *not* good enough for me. Whether
or not grandma likes it is irrelevant.
>
> Just today someone who works on Mac OS X told me she has a great user
> interface but underneath it she can always open a tcsh window and start
> typing away (she's has a 2nd degree in CS from HUJI so she feels
> comfortable with tcsh).
The analogy here would be "I've got a great mailer, but I can always pipe
messages to a command". Not.
Why doesn't any graphical mailer come with an equivalent to the "bounce"
of pine and mutt?
>
> UNIX command line tools are great for some jobs, but the computer world
> haven't frozen 30 years ago when these concepts where first invented.
So have unix tools
>
> The UNIX command line interface was invented within the limitations of
> the hardware and software technologies of the time, these limitations
> have been lifted long ago. I don't see the point of making this
> interface sacred just because two decades ago only geeks could use it.
The current terminal is far better than a terminal of the beginning of the
seventies. An xterm is resizable, and provides much better capabi
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 19:51, Ira Abramov wrote: > the point is, the right tool for the right job. I agree plugins are > great, and I agree the CLI pipeline is not too "smart" in many cases to > serve all the needs, but forking to a new process with several file > descriptors (not just the one) is a pretty good plugin interface, and > all you have left to do is decide on a protocol. the two ideas are not Agreed - when the input fits the interface and the final job at hand (like fgrep'ing/sed'ing/awk'ing my kern.log to find how many thousands of attempts were made to access my port 139 and where they came from). But why throw away a pretty functional graphic mail client which lets me view HTML and images nicely and give me mail address completion (because the address book is integrated in the mail client)? Just because it can work BOTH with a mouse as well as some keyboard input? And allows me multi-tasking because the compose window is separate so I can check dig the mail folder without getting out of the compose window? If you don't use it then why do you bother with X11 on your display at all? > THAT remote if you generalize plugins (SOAP?) and make commandline > piping stronger (two way or more). That's basically my point - it sounds like people are a bit fanatical about "CLI and pipes CAN do it all and therefore they MUST be used for everything and therefore GUI have no right to exist". I agree that basically pipes in CLI world fulfill similar function to plugins/RPC/whatever-it's-called-today in the GUI/integrated-interface world. I think I've even seen attempts with some esoteric shells or UNIX variants to enable two-way pipes (as well as tricks with named pipes, but it's never quite robust because of the business of possible deadlock), evidently it never took off. What I fail to understand is people's insistence on ignoring or even despising other ways to do things just because they are different from the CLI they learned. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Quoting [EMAIL PROTECTED], from the post of Thu, 06 Mar: > > cat file [|possible pipe] | lpr > > I find their interface today more convenient to some tasks than the > ASCII-alone world of pipes and command line). > > UNIX command line tools are great for some jobs, but the computer world > haven't frozen 30 years ago when these concepts where first invented. last time I heard that was from a Microsoft guy at an EDA confference. a guy got up in the audience (I later found out he was the head system guy at VAResearch) and explained that there was nothing wrong with this very natural model, it's the organic way to do things. people too have input (mouth), pipes (points to his stomach) and outputs! (turns points to his ass) the point is, the right tool for the right job. I agree plugins are great, and I agree the CLI pipeline is not too "smart" in many cases to serve all the needs, but forking to a new process with several file descriptors (not just the one) is a pretty good plugin interface, and all you have left to do is decide on a protocol. the two ideas are not THAT remote if you generalize plugins (SOAP?) and make commandline piping stronger (two way or more). -- Supreme being of leisure Ira Abramov http://ira.abramov.org/email/ This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Well hello there, Richard Stallman :) On Thu, 6 Mar 2003, Michael Rozhavsky wrote: > On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 05:50:37PM +0200, Alon Weinstein wrote: > > Care to list the alternative options? I can guess Lyx for document creation, > > GIMP for image manipulation, but that's where my list ends. What are the > > options to perform other common tasks: > > > > -- Email & Organizer (an only-email client is no replacement for Outlook or > > Evolution) > > emacs > > > -- Spreadsheet > > emacs and dismal > > www.gnu.org/software/dismal/ > > > -- Presentations > > emacs + latex > > > -- File and web-browsing (i.e Windows Explorer/Konquerer/Galleon) > > emacs > -- This message was sent by Alon Altman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ICQ:1366540 The RIGHT way to contact me is by e-mail. I am otherwise nonexistent :) -- -=[ Random Fortune ]=- The chains of marriage are so heavy that it takes two to carry them, and sometimes three. -- Alexandre Dumas = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Quoting Beni Cherniavsky, from the post of Wed, 05 Mar: > On 2003-03-05, Yedidyah Bar-David wrote: > > > For complex things, I usually find complex, sophisticated spreadsheets > > much less maintainable than real programs (or scripts). I have heard > > horror stories about thousands lines of macros that organizations > > depend on and noone knows what's inside them. > > > Aghh, my favourite rant (-: come to think of what level of programming > language is a spreadsheet: all very nice and valid points, but why would you want to look at a spreadsheet as a programming language, when it was never meant to be one or replace it? The first electronic spreadsheet (Visicalc, I have it running on my Apple //c, very probably available for any Apple ][ emulator you will find online) was written by a guy from an economics class in CMU IIRC, to emulate what he and his coleages have been doing for years on the blackboard. VisiCalc (for Visual Calculator) was meant to be a scriptable table. not even scriptable, more like auto-resolving. "Blame" Lotus and Microsoft for trying to enhance it into a monster, where people try to keep addressbooks and other stuff it was never meant for. They ended up with a crazy bloatware that is way more than needed for the original intentions and never good enough for all the new "wrong" uses the users were using it for. Microsoft keeps on feeding the beast and adding features to keep the people happy, but only because they can afford it, not because the crowd really needs all that power in a single product. as with Word and Access, Excell is also a product where only 2% of the users really use over 10% of the functions (or even know what they're for) but A programming language it ain't. never meant to be. hence the need to enhance it with VB and form macro generators. -- Livin' La Vida Loca Ira Abramov http://ira.abramov.org/email/ This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 20:41, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Vadim Vygonets wrote:
>
> > Quoth [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Tue, Mar 04, 2003:
> > > You remind me what I knew about using Windows before I arrived to my
> > > current workplace. Outlook is not just a mail client but a (convenient!
> > > IMHO) address book + calendar + notes + mail organizer. You can say they
> > > don't belong together but the fact is that the integration is VERY
> > > convenient.
> >
> > Seen it. Not so convenient, and *really* doesn't belong
> > together. Nor do I see the point of having a mailer inside your
> > browser.
>
> This is a work around a *problem* of the system/UI.
>
> On my system I simply:
>
> cat file [|possible pipe] | {mail|mutt} whatever
>
> cat file [|possible pipe] | lpr
And you think it's more convenient than pressing the "Print" button?
I've been there and moved on.
(BTW, "cat file | program" is the most naive beginner mistake, if it's
only one file then you can run "program < file", RTFM :-).
>
> Mozilla, Explorer, and such are limited. They can't easily pipe their
> output. So they need to be bloated with all that functionality.
>
> They need all that functionality embedded inside them.
>
I disagree about your conclusion. Just like pipes can be used to move
streams of bytes between programs (unidirectionally!) so can
remote-procedure-calls be used to call "plug-ins" from "main" programs
(bidirectionally!).
I used, managed and programmed UNIX since 1986 until 2000. I still
like the power of scripting and such. But when it gets down to reading,
e.g., this very mailing list I find it much more convenient to click
buttons and have the right viewer used automatically embedded in my mail
window as well as the textual data in the right encoding than start
typing " " or "^X" and "Enter" and god knows what in a limited 80x40
text-only screen. I also like the ability to click a URL and have the
browser popped-up instead of having to copy-paste the address.
If MS are so wrong about their integration stuff (I'm not familiar with
MS jargon, but I think it's about COM and its descendants) then how come
GNOME and KDE invest so much in imitating this and Linux sites keep
showing off screen shots of these environments? (one claim against them
is that they stole good ideas and implemented them very badly, but still
I find their interface today more convenient to some tasks than the
ASCII-alone world of pipes and command line).
This elitist view that "if it's good enough for grandma then it's not
good enough for me" looks simply pathetic to me.
Just today someone who works on Mac OS X told me she has a great user
interface but underneath it she can always open a tcsh window and start
typing away (she's has a 2nd degree in CS from HUJI so she feels
comfortable with tcsh).
UNIX command line tools are great for some jobs, but the computer world
haven't frozen 30 years ago when these concepts where first invented.
The UNIX command line interface was invented within the limitations of
the hardware and software technologies of the time, these limitations
have been lifted long ago. I don't see the point of making this
interface sacred just because two decades ago only geeks could use it.
> >
> > > I think you are mixing Outlook Express with Outlook.
> >
> > Maybe.
> >
> > > > Why are people so obsessed with spreadsheets? What do you use
> > > > them for?
>
> Spreadsheets allow you to deal with *lots* of data.
>
> Unix scripts tend to be line-oriented, or record-oriented.
=
To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
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Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Quoting [EMAIL PROTECTED], from the post of Tue, 04 Mar: > In kde3.2 kmail and korganizer will be one software. Again I dont like > this, and I like things as thry are now. If I want to look at my > meetings I will not open my mail progaram. Outlook's consept is very nice, it sees itself as the comm center for a busy person at the office. saying the PIM and mail should not integrated in any way is saying the mail program should not handle it's own addressbook. mutt goes that way. at time to an extreme, but still some of the things remain (addressbook in, SMTP delivery out, for instance) I happen rather to like the integration of evolution, but miss the low milage my hurting wrists get from using keyboard shortcuts rather than the mouse, plus mutt can be run over slow SSH links. > Anyway, unix was not designed this way, one big program that does all. > But several programs which do one small thing good. This movement is > beeing copyied from Microsoft Windows. that's what I like about Qmail and hate about both Exim and sendmail. are you accusing sendmail of being un-Unixy in concept? me and DJB do, and yet it's been there for 15 years now as the undisputed mail server. > There are no good alternatives so we must use them, freedom is lost > again ,since there is one really usable program. Sad but true. well, there are many things that break. sadly, in the Free Sftware world, very little attention is given to keeping backwards compatability. this is good to remove the breaks off of progress, but on the other hand it leaves you stranded sometimes (see my rants about Gnome2 and why I am forced to stick to 1.4, not supported anymore) at the worst case, keep the current kmail RPM (or set it on hold if you use Debian) and keep your kmail when you upgrade to KDE 3.2 you're free to do that afterall too. -- Nature's masterpiece Ira Abramov http://ira.abramov.org/email/ This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Quoting Muli Ben-Yehuda, from the post of Tue, 04 Mar: > On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:14:07PM +0200, Eli Billauer wrote: > > > Because if you open KWord, you can't take it as anything else but a > > clone of MS-Word. It looks the same, it feels the same, and it has a > > So... don't open KWord! I don't use any Linux app which imitates the > (broken, IMHO) MS GUI interfaces. Neither KWord, nor evolution, nor > openoffice, nor name-your-favorite-MS-application-Linux-clone. I asked RMS what he had to say to all the critics that blame the Free Software movement of unoriginality, ripping off of ideas and GUIs. his answer can be summed up thus "We have not come to redesign the world, just free it. the only way to do it is change the existing pieces of the puzzle (luckily Unix was always modular), while keeping the PAIs, until the last block is converted and you have a fully free system." I think keeping the GUI is sort of "keeping the user-computer API", the I is for interface in both GUI and API afterall. once you finish a product you can use as a drop-in replacement for the one it immitates, you commoditise the market and start a real competition by differentiation. Excell could not start grabbing market before Excell was similar enough to Lotus 1-2-3 and MSWord surpassing Multiscribe and Macintosh Appleworks. the later throtteling of giants like WordPerfect was only possible once they reached a much higher percentage of the market. (To this day I miss Lotus AmםPro which became IBM WordPro and now may have been discontinued completely, same for Lotus Approach. They were supperior to MS' counterparts, but they weretoo small to innovate I guess.) So problem 1: you have to immitate so people start to migrate, only then you can innovate. Problem 2: good GUI requires a lot of understanding and research. Apple has such people. Microsoft has a few as well, but the good ones are rare and possibly expensive, none of them do Free Software other than in rare cases like Eazel, and we all know where they ended up :( http://eazel.com/ -- Former mouseketeer Ira Abramov http://ira.abramov.org/email/ This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal. pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Quite off-topic for this list, so... On Thu, 6 Mar 2003, Beni Cherniavsky wrote: > On 2003-03-06, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: > > > On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Beni Cherniavsky wrote: > > > * spreadsheets (following lotus 1-2-3 ?) provide "cell aliases" which are > > names to specific cells/blocks . In other words: variables. > > > Hidden in a dialog last time I checked... In lotus and quatro: indeed. In excel: click on the box of the cell's address. > How does a goto work in the context of spreadsheets? Please explain > (and also the gosub). Do you mean that you need to escape to "macros" > for it or is it something natural to the normal table-of-cells work? goto 'address' 'address' can be a "physycal" address or a block name. Naturally. This is what goto always does. Addresses in a spreadsheets are of cells and cell blocks. > > They are basically turing complete (except the obvious memory limitation). > > Implementing a turing machine in a spreadsheet is quite trivial. STFW for > > one. > > > First google hit (seems to be the only relevant one in the first 10): > > http://cs.oregonstate.edu/~burnett/Turing/TuringMachine.html > > This explains that while "comercial spreadsheet languages are not > Turing complete, it is possible for a language using the spreadsheet > programming paradigm to be Turing complete". To examplify that it > shows a language where cells can change their values during the run, > which is quite untypical for spreadsheets (you need things like Solver > to work around). Here is the first hit on my google search: http://members.tripod.com/mumnet/tools/tools002.htm I'd appreciate replies in private mail... -- Tzafrir Cohen mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On 2003-03-06, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: > On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Beni Cherniavsky wrote: > > > * Adresses are numerical (2D is irrelevant). That's about the first > > thing smart programmers stopped to do (e.g. with assemblers; stupid > > ones continued it surprisingly long, e.g. BASIC until late). > > Simply incorrect. > OK. I see you wrote a lot of strong arguments and I admit that I exaggerated somewhat :-) and also that I have only short spreadsheet experience. Still my main point is that the basic style of interaction is full of bad habits; it's like saying that you can do everything in BASIC (old style) or DOS batch files. I'm not saying spreadsheets are doomed to be evil but their reluctance to learn from advances in programming language design annoys me. > * spreadsheets provide you a smart cut&paste behaviour for cell addresses > in formulas, so copying formulas around should "just work". > True; this solves the relocation problem, except when you link to external spreadsheets, when they are inaccesible and so can't be updated. These things start to break when you index "arrays" which frequently involves mixed relative/absolute (A$3) addresses. > * spreadsheets (following lotus 1-2-3 ?) provide "cell aliases" which are > names to specific cells/blocks . In other words: variables. > Hidden in a dialog last time I checked... > > - Moving/copying code adjusts the addresses. Great idea, almost as > > good as a loader, except that it only works for refences inside > > the same program. A linker with alphabetic names is still > > missing. > > Read the docs. IIRC at least quaro-pro (4.0 for dos) and excell (5.0) and > above provide similar features . > That's an advance. Show me spreadsheet users who read the docs :-) (ok, I figure you do). > > It also discourages literate programming, which is easy to do > > but the documentation will then appear as part of the output of > > the progam. > > Note that there is no problem writing "commets": simply write a "label" > cell. The output *is* the program. > That *is* the problem I was hinting at. Of course this can also be argued a feature. > > * There is no code reuse beyond cut-and-paste, the single most > > condemned by any programmer way to reuse code. This stems from the > > fact that code is completely non-reentrant: a single piece of code > > can't be executed twice in the same run of the program. > > My knowledge of quatro-pro and lotus is quite rusty, but I recall a > "gosub" macro command (as opposed to "goto") which is intended to start a > function call. > "gosub" - Impressive :-). And you pass arguments by global values? > > - You can't write a subroutine that will be called from different > > places. I believe this already existed in Babbage's Analitical > > Engine in the 19th century (Ada Lovelace seems to be credited with > > inventing it). > > gosub 'block_name' > > > - You can't write a loop that will execute the same code many times. > > This too existed in Babbage's engine but algorithms were written > > expecting such an ability long before, for example Euclid's > > algorithm for finding the GCD of two numbers. How do you > > implement it in a spreadsheet? > > For this even a GOTO will do. > How does a goto work in the context of spreadsheets? Please explain (and also the gosub). Do you mean that you need to escape to "macros" for it or is it something natural to the normal table-of-cells work? > > The only way to implement loops is but unrolling them - an > > optimization excercise that should never be inflicted on a > > programmer in his source code - but with the extra requirement to > > unroll them *completely* which requires you to know the total > > number of iterations beforehand (or at least an upper bound). > > Why optimize? > No, here it's not an optimization; it's forced upon you. I was just refering to the fact that it's equivallent (more or less) to the loop unrolling operation that is originally an optimization - and optimizations are not pleasant for a human to do... > Do you optimize shell scripts? > Precisely - of course I don't but here I must and it's not more pleasant. > What you generally need to optimize is the write time, not the run time, > because it will be small enough. > > Originally [electronic] spreadsheets allowed to automate calculations, and > thus prevented many mistakes caused by typos and such. > True. But I don't imagine maintaining anything half-big in a spreadsheet format, without a lot of bugs creeping in, largely due to the encouragement of cut-and-paste. > > * Data behaves like in functional languages: the same variable can > > only be computed once and the binding can't be changed during the > > run of the program. > > > > - This actually leads to some elegant paradigms in functional > > languages. It's not a restriction there because you can > > dynamically create distin
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 05:50:37PM +0200, Alon Weinstein wrote: > Care to list the alternative options? I can guess Lyx for document creation, > GIMP for image manipulation, but that's where my list ends. What are the > options to perform other common tasks: > > -- Email & Organizer (an only-email client is no replacement for Outlook or > Evolution) emacs > -- Spreadsheet emacs and dismal www.gnu.org/software/dismal/ > -- Presentations emacs + latex > -- File and web-browsing (i.e Windows Explorer/Konquerer/Galleon) emacs > > > > Alon. > > > = > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command > echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Michael Rozhavsky Senior Software Engineer MRV International Tel: +972 (4) 993-6248 Fax: +972 (4) 989-0564 http://www.mrv.com = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Beni Cherniavsky wrote: > On 2003-03-05, Yedidyah Bar-David wrote: > > > For complex things, I usually find complex, sophisticated spreadsheets > > much less maintainable than real programs (or scripts). I have heard > > horror stories about thousands lines of macros that organizations > > depend on and noone knows what's inside them. > > > Aghh, my favourite rant (-: come to think of what level of programming > language is a spreadsheet: > > * Adresses are numerical (2D is irrelevant). That's about the first > thing smart programmers stopped to do (e.g. with assemblers; stupid > ones continued it surprisingly long, e.g. BASIC until late). Simply incorrect. * spreadsheets provide you a smart cut&paste behaviour for cell addresses in formulas, so copying formulas around should "just work". * spreadsheets (following lotus 1-2-3 ?) provide "cell aliases" which are names to specific cells/blocks . In other words: variables. > > - Moving/copying code adjusts the addresses. Great idea, almost as > good as a loader, except that it only works for refences inside > the same program. A linker with alphabetic names is still > missing. Read the docs. IIRC at least quaro-pro (4.0 for dos) and excell (5.0) and above provide similar features . > It also discourages literate programming, which is easy to do > but the documentation will then appear as part of the output of > the progam. Note that there is no problem writing "commets": simply write a "label" cell. The output *is* the program. > > * There is no code reuse beyond cut-and-paste, the single most > condemned by any programmer way to reuse code. This stems from the > fact that code is completely non-reentrant: a single piece of code > can't be executed twice in the same run of the program. My knowledge of quatro-pro and lotus is quite rusty, but I recall a "gosub" macro command (as opposed to "goto") which is intended to start a function call. > > - You can't write a subroutine that will be called from different > places. I believe this already existed in Babbage's Analitical > Engine in the 19th century (Ada Lovelace seems to be credited with > inventing it). gosub 'block_name' > > - You can't write a loop that will execute the same code many times. > This too existed in Babbage's engine but algorithms were written > expecting such an ability long before, for example Euclid's > algorithm for finding the GCD of two numbers. How do you > implement it in a spreadsheet? For this even a GOTO will do. > > The only way to implement loops is but unrolling them - an > optimization excercise that should never be inflicted on a > programmer in his source code - but with the extra requirement to > unroll them *completely* which requires you to know the total > number of iterations beforehand (or at least an upper bound). Why optimize? Do you optimize shell scripts? What you generally need to optimize is the write time, not the run time, because it will be small enough. Originally [electronic] spreadsheets allowed to automate calculations, and thus prevented many mistakes caused by typos and such. > > * Data behaves like in functional languages: the same variable can > only be computed once and the binding can't be changed during the > run of the program. > > - This actually leads to some elegant paradigms in functional > languages. It's not a restriction there because you can > dynamically create distinct variables to be bound in any amount > that you need. > > - Since you can't do that in spreadsheets, I can't escape the > conclusion that spreadsheets are not Turing-complete. Need I say > more?!? They are basically turing complete (except the obvious memory limitation). Implementing a turing machine in a spreadsheet is quite trivial. STFW for one. Yet another place where "turing-complete" is quite meaningless :-) > > * All the modern ways to structurize and modularize code and data are > absent: > > - There are no data structures. If you want to treat several > variables in a related way, you can - but there is nothing to help > you. Even self-respecting assemblers allow you to declare > structs. There are "blocks". Also keep in mind that "cells" can contain various data types. They can also be made into pointers, with minimal hackery. There is a "NULL" value, for instance. > Summary: a spreadsheet is a very low-level language, certainly below > assembler and in some senses below machine code, not turing-complete, > with hostile development tools. It's quite shocking to realize that > this is/was one of the most selling kind of applications and users > are happy with it. OK. So maybe a spreadsheet is not the perfect Object Oriented Porgramming System (OOPS). But it can get the job done. And take a look at http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/spreadsheet_20os for a silly idea :-) -- Tza
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Vadim Vygonets wrote:
> Quoth [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Tue, Mar 04, 2003:
> > You remind me what I knew about using Windows before I arrived to my
> > current workplace. Outlook is not just a mail client but a (convenient!
> > IMHO) address book + calendar + notes + mail organizer. You can say they
> > don't belong together but the fact is that the integration is VERY
> > convenient.
>
> Seen it. Not so convenient, and *really* doesn't belong
> together. Nor do I see the point of having a mailer inside your
> browser.
This is a work around a *problem* of the system/UI.
On my systemm I simply:
cat file [|possible pipe] | {mail|mutt} whatever
cat file [|possible pipe] | lpr
Mozilla, Explorer, and such are limited. They can't easily pipe their
output. So they need to be bloated with all that functionality.
They need all that functionality embedded inside them.
>
> > I think you are mixing Outlook Express with Outlook.
>
> Maybe.
>
> > > Why are people so obsessed with spreadsheets? What do you use
> > > them for?
Spreadsheets allow you to deal with *lots* of data.
Unix scripts tend to be line-oriented, or record-oriented.
--
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir
=
To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On 2003-03-05, Arie Folger wrote: > On Wednesday 05 March 2003 15:59, Beni Cherniavsky wrote: > > - You can't write a loop that will execute the same code many times. > > This too existed in Babbage's engine but algorithms were written > > expecting such an ability long before, for example Euclid's > > algorithm for finding the GCD of two numbers. How do you > > implement it in a spreadsheet? > > > > The only way to implement loops is but unrolling them - an > > optimization excercise that should never be inflicted on a > > programmer in his source code - but with the extra requirement to > > unroll them *completely* which requires you to know the total > > number of iterations beforehand (or at least an upper bound). > > Not correct nowadays. I did complex using solver and table plugins in Excel > (StarOffice didn't have them then, and didn't have the possibility to > incorporate arbitrary programming languages, only starbasic). Depending on > the model, I did or did not know the number of iterations ahead of time. > Annoying was that the spreadsheet refreshed itself after every iteration, > which is extremely slow, but that can be overriden in some spreadsheets. > If you mean that you iterated "in place" (changing the value in the same cell many times), that's nice but it can't provide for cases where the *output* needs to be of variable length. OK, I admit that most spreadsheets contain enough complex tools that allow to escape most limitations if you are determined enough; in particular my claim that spreadsheets are not turing complete is very easy to break. Nevertheless, the limitations I described apply to the normal model of working upon which spreadsheets are based; neing able to escape this model (e.g. by "macros") is no excuse for basing everything on it. -- Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I'm too lazy to use GUI - why should I click all these things to get my job done? = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Quoth [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Tue, Mar 04, 2003: > You remind me what I knew about using Windows before I arrived to my > current workplace. Outlook is not just a mail client but a (convenient! > IMHO) address book + calendar + notes + mail organizer. You can say they > don't belong together but the fact is that the integration is VERY > convenient. Seen it. Not so convenient, and *really* doesn't belong together. Nor do I see the point of having a mailer inside your browser. > I think you are mixing Outlook Express with Outlook. Maybe. > > Why are people so obsessed with spreadsheets? What do you use > > them for? > > Anyway - just because you don't have or want > to use an application doesn't mean it's illegitimate for others to use > it. There are many applications, and some of them even have legitimate uses, but I don't see why spreadsheets are so special to almost everyone out there. A sound player that can play three Microsoft WAV (or better, Ogg Vorbis) files simultaneously, at different levels and speeds, including backwards, is more useful to me. > > Sure. And the usability of Windows programs is higher than that > > of most competing Linux software. But your claims that the only > > thing OSS people can do WRT GUI is rip MS's interface make me > > want to come over and rip KDE/Gnome from under your feet, so you > > see real UNIX inside, however ugly it may be. > > I think many people who despise MS (me among them) admit that they are > kings when it comes to GUI design and usability for non-technical users. No. UNIX *is* ugly, but Windows is also quite far from perfection (although XP seems to be better on most fronts than earlier versions of Windows). > Just because some program looks like MS doesn't mean it's bad ..or good. > - many > times it's an interface which matured through a long time of user > feedback and enhancements and besides it might help immigrants from MS > world to feel more comfortable. My point was that the claim that UNIX GUI designers can only rip UI off MS is false. However, I don't claim that UNIX GUI doesn't suck, or is otherwise reasonable, let alone perfect. Vadik. -- ( Forth ) base dup @ swap hex dup @ 2 swap over + * over ! 22a s51u1t sw3alw vr20io vqo5mc ux1z4w wb72ve wb72v7 :noname 2dup - swap dup - do begin dup while 74 /mod swap emit repeat drop loop ! ; execute = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Wednesday 05 March 2003 15:59, Beni Cherniavsky wrote: > - You can't write a loop that will execute the same code many times. > This too existed in Babbage's engine but algorithms were written > expecting such an ability long before, for example Euclid's > algorithm for finding the GCD of two numbers. How do you > implement it in a spreadsheet? > > The only way to implement loops is but unrolling them - an > optimization excercise that should never be inflicted on a > programmer in his source code - but with the extra requirement to > unroll them *completely* which requires you to know the total > number of iterations beforehand (or at least an upper bound). Not correct nowadays. I did complex using solver and table plugins in Excel (StarOffice didn't have them then, and didn't have the possibility to incorporate arbitrary programming languages, only starbasic). Depending on the model, I did or did not know the number of iterations ahead of time. Annoying was that the spreadsheet refreshed itself after every iteration, which is extremely slow, but that can be overriden in some spreadsheets. Arie -- It is absurd to seek to give an account of the matter to a man who cannot himself give an account of anything; for insofar as he is already like this, such a man is no better than a vegetable. -- Book IV of Aristotle's Metaphysics = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On 2003-03-05, Yedidyah Bar-David wrote: > For complex things, I usually find complex, sophisticated spreadsheets > much less maintainable than real programs (or scripts). I have heard > horror stories about thousands lines of macros that organizations > depend on and noone knows what's inside them. > Aghh, my favourite rant (-: come to think of what level of programming language is a spreadsheet: * Adresses are numerical (2D is irrelevant). That's about the first thing smart programmers stopped to do (e.g. with assemblers; stupid ones continued it surprisingly long, e.g. BASIC until late). - Moving/copying code adjusts the addresses. Great idea, almost as good as a loader, except that it only works for refences inside the same program. A linker with alphabetic names is still missing. - Since addresses are numerical, you have to allocate space for your code/data by hand, and explicitly move it when you want to resize something. Again, programmers did it automatically since they have assemblers. - The layout of the code is directly tied to the layout of the data, including the layout of input and output data (although the later can be decoupled with extra work). I can't tell you when programmes got free of such limitations because they never occured to them in first place... This leaves very little freedom to arrange your code in readable ways but who needs readability anyway, when the typical development tool can't show more than one of line of your code at the same time? Instead you are expected to edit your code by the memory dump after its execution. The very ability to do so should suprise any programmer; most of the restrictions listed here are essential for this but that's no excuse. It also discourages literate programming, which is easy to do but the documentation will then appear as part of the output of the progam. * There is no code reuse beyond cut-and-paste, the single most condemned by any programmer way to reuse code. This stems from the fact that code is completely non-reentrant: a single piece of code can't be executed twice in the same run of the program. - You can't write a subroutine that will be called from different places. I believe this already existed in Babbage's Analitical Engine in the 19th century (Ada Lovelace seems to be credited with inventing it). [Can somebody give me a link to her Notes on the Engine, or anything other that describes the actual design instead of repeating in general words their role in history of computing? That's all I found so far (and their biographies) but I can't believe there is nothing technical on it online...] - You can't write a loop that will execute the same code many times. This too existed in Babbage's engine but algorithms were written expecting such an ability long before, for example Euclid's algorithm for finding the GCD of two numbers. How do you implement it in a spreadsheet? The only way to implement loops is but unrolling them - an optimization excercise that should never be inflicted on a programmer in his source code - but with the extra requirement to unroll them *completely* which requires you to know the total number of iterations beforehand (or at least an upper bound). * Data behaves like in functional languages: the same variable can only be computed once and the binding can't be changed during the run of the program. - This actually leads to some elegant paradigms in functional languages. It's not a restriction there because you can dynamically create distinct variables to be bound in any amount that you need. - Since you can't do that in spreadsheets, I can't escape the conclusion that spreadsheets are not Turing-complete. Need I say more?!? * All the modern ways to structurize and modularize code and data are absent: - There are no data structures. If you want to treat several variables in a related way, you can - but there is nothing to help you. Even self-respecting assemblers allow you to declare structs. - There are no general-purpose pointers. The builtins allow you to manipulate and index arrays but these are of little use since the values of the array must be statically associated with some fixed code. - All variables are global. Without subroutines, there is no need for local variables, right? - There is no concept of publishing interfaces between parts of the code. Without subroutines, one can't usefully expose any interface except public data, anyway. Exposing public data is hard because the interface will have to be by numerical addresses, resizing the data leads inavoidably leads to change of addresses and the linking tools only help with the relocation if the interfacing parts are in the same sheet. See, it all
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On 2003-03-05, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: > > > Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > > Isn't rsh with an empty password a good replacement for Outlook? :-( > > > > No. The "r" in rsh stands for "restricted"... > > > rsh (1) - remote shell Indeed, that's what linux man page says. Historically though (and probably today on some platforms) rsh is/was "restricted", with "remote shell" named remsh. I certainly meant to add a smiley in my posting, but apparently forgot. I was making fun of Outlook that can do so much more damage than rsh (even remote) to your system, not trying to correct you or anything. Sorry for the misunderstanding. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On 2003-03-05, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: > Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Isn't rsh with an empty password a good replacement for Outlook? :-( > > No. The "r" in rsh stands for "restricted"... > rsh (1) - remote shell The one that is a big security hole even with a password... -- Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I'm too lazy to use GUI - why should I click all these things to get my job done? = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Isn't rsh with an empty password a good replacement for Outlook? :-( No. The "r" in rsh stands for "restricted"... -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
You have your expectations mixed - innovation is not the point of GNU\Linux. Freedom is. I'm not saying this just to sound like Stallman, it's important to understand that innovation/variety/interest is always built on the basic platform of freedom. Innovation is the first thing that goes when there is no freedom, because it is easier for the top feeders to optimize their techniques for herding and feeding off the masses when they all act the same. Whether we're talking about MS, the electricity company or Stalin doesn't matter. Linux does give you freedom. It gives also innovation, but indirectly. Remember that the great majority of people prefer to be sheep most of the time, at least in some issues. I have a very strange mail client, but I read articles in xpdf, and browse in Mozilla. The base platform common to a free place is bound to be almost as boring as your 1984 lunch, or Hollywood movie. If you want innovation, by definition, you'll have to look for it yourself, off the beaten path. Or you can follow me into the rabbit hole, at www.squeak.org ;-) Daniel Shoshannah Forbes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What I wrote before (and on this list itself) is the fact that where > linux has the chance to really innovate and create something new and > great (when it comes to UI), way to many application writers prefer to > copy whatever see know from other OS (MS Windows, MacOS...), including > all the legacy "baggage" those UIs have, and that can be rid of. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Tue, 4 Mar 2003 21:44:21 +0200 (IST) Stanislav Malyshev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > EB>> Whatever I think about IP laws, I can't escape the bare fact > EB>> that KWord violates quite a few of them. (EB) declares his hypothesis a fact :-) > When _I_ think about IP laws, I can't help thinking it is basically wrong > to give people ownership of ideas. This concept have gone way too far. If > someone discovered the fact that humans like menues on top of the text and > not on the bottom - why he should own this fact? How at all one can own a > fact? The term IP is a bit misleading. The "property" they own is a time limited monopoly (~18 years in the US, not sure in Israel) on the use of the fact/algorithm/idea/whatever. Quoting myself about 3 months ago: Although IANAL, AFAIK Copyrights and Patents do not say the given item (be it software or an art creation) is the *property*. They just give the author some control about either the distribution of his work (copyrights) or the duplication of his "invention" (patents). The representatives of the media and software houses like a lot to call these "IP" as this term reinforces the (false) analogy to property and other similar terminology (e.g: thieves) Needless to say I share your feelings about the crazy path those IRR (Intelect Restriction Rights) are taking in the last years. Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron Code Red, Blue or Green there all a symptom of a far more pervasive and insidious virus, it costs around $200. -anonymous = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 05:50:37PM +0200, Alon Weinstein wrote: > > > Because if you open KWord, you can't take it as anything else but a > > > clone of MS-Word. It looks the same, it feels the same, and it has a > > > very related name. Every little item on the window's outline > > just happen > > > to be exactly where MS-Word put it. This can't be mistaken. > > > > So... don't open KWord! I don't use any Linux app which imitates the > > (broken, IMHO) MS GUI interfaces. Neither KWord, nor evolution, nor > > openoffice, nor name-your-favorite-MS-application-Linux-clone. > > > > Care to list the alternative options? I can guess Lyx for document creation, > GIMP for image manipulation, but that's where my list ends. What are the > options to perform other common tasks: In addition to what others said (some of which I agree, some of which I use myself): > > -- Email & Organizer (an only-email client is no replacement for Outlook or > Evolution) > -- Spreadsheet 1. There are some old-fashioned unix spreadsheets - sc and oleo for terminals, xspread, and of course the more modern kspread, gnumeric and others. 2. I personally think that spreadsheets are useful (in terms of being "the right tool for the job") only in very specific uses. For simple things, I usually use only text files, and awk+grep+sed to do things on them (including most things people usually do with a spreadsheet). For complex things, I usually find complex, sophisticated spreadsheets much less maintainable than real programs (or scripts). I have heard horror stories about thousands lines of macros that organizations depend on and noone knows what's inside them. > -- Presentations While I am personally not convinced that you actually need a specific tool for presentations (rather than whatever you use for "normal" writing), I can recommend prosper. It's a latex package that is both easy to use (for latex users), and creates presentations that are both good-looking and allow some of the interaction people expect from a presentation tool (when you use Acrobat Reader on its output. Haven't tried xpdf). For the GUI people, there is also an interface between it and LyX, which I haven't yet looked at, but I hope is good, at the famous homepage of Dekel Tzur. > -- File and web-browsing (i.e Windows Explorer/Konquerer/Galleon) While I personally use only the shell and its completion for file- browsing, and lynx (and lately the very recommended skipstone) for web browsing, no one can say there is lack of stuff for this, some with radically experimental UIs, such as xcruise (for file browsing) and lavaps (for process management - "Task manager"). And for the Norton commander people (one of which I never was), there are at least mc and git (together with more than 15 Debian packages that have "file manager" in their one-line description - some even seem interesting from the description). > > Those are the first things that pop to my head, I'm sure there are other > areas in which most OSS alternatives are merely imitating MS's or any > commercial vendor's products. Well, I think I made my point. There _are_ programs with good UIs that do not imitate Mac/MS. Most of them are not the "common", but that's life. > > > Alon. > > > = > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command > echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Didi = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Stanislav Malyshev wrote: SF>> Mac OS9 is one of the best UI out there for "your grandma". OSX does a And so on, and so on - if you catch me in a good moment, I can go on for a good hour on how the "best GUI ever" is only the best for one who was trained to use it for years but is outright confusing and weird to anyone looking from the outside. Obviosly we do not agree on this issue. However, this is not the point (and anyway, a Linux mailing list is the last place for a debate about Mac vs. MS Windows UI). What I wrote before (and on this list itself) is the fact that where linux has the chance to really innovate and create something new and great (when it comes to UI), way to many application writers prefer to copy whatever see know from other OS (MS Windows, MacOS...), including all the legacy "baggage" those UIs have, and that can be rid of. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
SF>> Mac OS9 is one of the best UI out there for "your grandma". OSX does a Maybe for grandma, I don't know, had no chance to ever teach my grandma computers... But as for me, the mac OS appeared to me first very much unusable. The concept of "one application per system" is rather confusing - where are the others? What happened to them? Oh, I have to look at that strange symbol on the screen to see them, thank you. The concept of one-button mouse that has click, double click, triple click and long click lacks only one brilliant idea - to remove the keyboard and replace it with the Morse key. To avoid confusing users with a lot of buttons, of course. And the magnificent modifier key with symbol on it that has no name and impossible to describe without waving your hands and making faces and saying phrases "this thing that looks like whatever - you just will know it's it because there's nothing else like this". That's so that the imaginary grandma would have easier time - as we all know, grandmas are illiterate and couldn't read if on the key there would be actually some writing - so the designers decided to use the approach one sees in the kindergartens - "you, Mike, put your closes where there's an apple, and you, Peter, put your closes where there's a dog". And to make life yet easier, they invent own symbols so that nobody could effectively communicate key sequences to strangers. And so on, and so on - if you catch me in a good moment, I can go on for a good hour on how the "best GUI ever" is only the best for one who was trained to use it for years but is outright confusing and weird to anyone looking from the outside. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] \/ There shall be counsels taken Stanislav Malyshev /\ Stronger than Morgul-spells phone +972-50-624945/\ JRRT LotR. whois:!SM8333 = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Quoth [EMAIL PROTECTED]: > Not recently. In fact I can't remember when I actually used a Mac. > My clearest memory is circa Apple IIc and Mac 1 (Marc - it's when we > first met - do you remember what year it was?) Certainly before '85. Probably before '83. Possibly around 81-82. -- ---MAV Linguists do it cunningly Marc A. Volovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 22:05, Shoshannah Forbes wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I think many people who despise MS (me among them) admit that they are > > kings when it comes to GUI design and usability for non-technical users. > > I guess you never used a Mac then... Not recently. In fact I can't remember when I actually used a Mac. My clearest memory is circa Apple IIc and Mac 1 (Marc - it's when we first met - do you remember what year it was?) > > Mac OS9 is one of the best UI out there for "your grandma". OSX does a > fine job as well, althugh the unix under it still tends to pop up a bit > to often for a "no nothing" user (althugh it is getting better, and it > is one of the best UIs out there). Could very well be - it doesn't exclude the idea the MS still know how to design GUI's, even if others might do it better in some corners (but MS were probably smart enough to invest in developer tools :). In any case - putting aside some relatively recent developments in the Linux GUI world (KDE 3.1 springs to my mind), I still think MS applications have some more coherancy than, let's say, xterm + evolution + mplayer or something like that living on the same screen. And that's a long way from Motif or Xaw which was what you had to put up with back as late as the mid-90's (the X Athena Widget set was created just to test the widget infrastructure and stayed around far too long simply because there was no other free and generally accepted alternative for years). > > Some of MS applications are quite good, but they are by no means best > when it comes to the UI (those horrible tabbs in Office's prefrences, > anyone?) = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On 2003-03-04, Vadim Vygonets wrote: > Quoth Alon Weinstein on Tue, Mar 04, 2003: > > Care to list the alternative options? I can guess Lyx for document creation, > > GIMP for image manipulation, but that's where my list ends. What are the > > options to perform other common tasks: > > > > -- Email & Organizer (an only-email client is no replacement for Outlook or > > Evolution) > Isn't rsh with an empty password a good replacement for Outlook? :-( -- Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I'm too lazy to use GUI - why should I click all these things to get my job done? = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think many people who despise MS (me among them) admit that they are kings when it comes to GUI design and usability for non-technical users. I guess you never used a Mac then... Mac OS9 is one of the best UI out there for "your grandma". OSX does a fine job as well, althugh the unix under it still tends to pop up a bit to often for a "no nothing" user (althugh it is getting better, and it is one of the best UIs out there). Some of MS applications are quite good, but they are by no means best when it comes to the UI (those horrible tabbs in Office's prefrences, anyone?) = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 18:38, Vadim Vygonets wrote: > Quoth Alon Weinstein on Tue, Mar 04, 2003: > > Care to list the alternative options? I can guess Lyx for document creation, > > GIMP for image manipulation, but that's where my list ends. What are the > > options to perform other common tasks: > > > > -- Email & Organizer (an only-email client is no replacement for Outlook or > > Evolution) > > Replacement for Outlook? What are you talking about? Some of us > used e-mail before Microsoft had an IP stack in their basic OS > distributions. You remind me what I knew about using Windows before I arrived to my current workplace. Outlook is not just a mail client but a (convenient! IMHO) address book + calendar + notes + mail organizer. You can say they don't belong together but the fact is that the integration is VERY convenient. > Organizers should run on PalmOS anyway ;) Seriously though, it's > not a job of an MUA to organize files, it's not a browser's job > to read news, and the only reasonable mail + news reader in one > piece I ever heard of is Gnus. I think you are mixing Outlook Express with Outlook. > > > -- Spreadsheet > > Why are people so obsessed with spreadsheets? What do you use > them for? To keep records of numbers (e.g. flight log books, simple money tracking), graphs (our club's flying priority graph is printed automatically with excel). Anyway - just because you don't have or want to use an application doesn't mean it's illegitimate for others to use it. > > > -- Presentations > > TeX, as Muli said. > > > -- File and web-browsing (i.e Windows Explorer/Konquerer/Galleon) > > Netscape (or Mozilla) did *not* rip MSIE's interface, they both > ripped it from Mosaic. You're forgetting that MS is a newcomer > on the Net. > > > Those are the first things that pop to my head, I'm sure there are other > > areas in which most OSS alternatives are merely imitating MS's or any > > commercial vendor's products. > > Sure. And the usability of Windows programs is higher than that > of most competing Linux software. But your claims that the only > thing OSS people can do WRT GUI is rip MS's interface make me > want to come over and rip KDE/Gnome from under your feet, so you > see real UNIX inside, however ugly it may be. I think many people who despise MS (me among them) admit that they are kings when it comes to GUI design and usability for non-technical users. Just because some program looks like MS doesn't mean it's bad - many times it's an interface which matured through a long time of user feedback and enhancements and besides it might help immigrants from MS world to feel more comfortable. > > Vadik. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
EB>> Whatever I think about IP laws, I can't escape the bare fact EB>> that KWord violates quite a few of them. When _I_ think about IP laws, I can't help thinking it is basically wrong to give people ownership of ideas. This concept have gone way too far. If someone discovered the fact that humans like menues on top of the text and not on the bottom - why he should own this fact? How at all one can own a fact? But leaving that aside - I do not believe Microsoft may make move as stupid as to claim unique ownership on common windows look-n-feel. In the meantime they always did exactly the opposite - promoted the common l&f so that as many applications as possible would look "similiar" on windows. The reason, of course, is simple - to attract developers and users. Now, it would be very weird if any law would allow anyone to have MS-like l&f as long as it runs on MS OS, but made the same code illegal as soon as it uses any other OS to load. Do you know about such a law? EB>> First and foremost, the fact that open source programmers see MS EB>> applications as a model to imitate. This applies for many GUI EB>> applications that we see lately: They smell MS without being MS. EB>> (GNOME & KDE included) Well, Windows XP smells KDE without being KDE. Not that I like wither XP or KDE too much, but I can't help thinking of similiarity :) EB>> Linux and GNU has the vast advantage, that it doesn't have to be EB>> popular to survive, so we can do things the Right way. Why are Yeah, yeah. I know one project that does OS "the right way" for how long? Twenty years? Anybody used that OS? Anybody did something productive on it? Can I use it as my home OS? My workplace OS? Face the reality - to survive and prosper, the project *has* to have strong backup by either money or public - and it better to be both. EB>> And the other sad thing, is that Linux is risking its legitimate EB>> status by offending laws of intellectual property. And for no EB>> reason at all. If anyone is stupid enough to link Linux 'legitimate status', whatever this could be, to the fact that some program looks like some other program - I really could not care less what this dude thinks about Linux - or anything else, for that matter. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] \/ There shall be counsels taken Stanislav Malyshev /\ Stronger than Morgul-spells phone +972-50-624945/\ JRRT LotR. whois:!SM8333 = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
"Nadav Har'El" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > And about "looking like MS-Word", do you also say that Mazda cars (say) > stole something from Ford, because Ford had the concept of a car, with > four wheels and an engine, before Mazda? Since when is honestly producing > competing products to successful products illegal, or even immoral? 1) What a singularly unfortunate example: AFAIK, Ford owns a good chunk of Mazda... ;-) 2) IIRC, M$ won a landmark look-and-feel lawsuit filed by Apple... 3) The thread at large: BSA used a really lousy regexp, were informed of the mistake, apologized... -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
ok, i see that you understand what I sayd before I malied it... sorry... > Again I agree, and that is why I fell in love with Linux. To extend my > previous point -- if there was some kind of a Graphics Interface > equivalent > to pipes so people could combine GUI-ed together as easily as doing > "find -name "whatever" | xargs cat ". it called embeding and I think it sucks, and does not look good. Every ptogram should have it's own window. Again this ismy opinion. - diego Quoting Alon Weinstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > Care to list the alternative options? I can guess Lyx for document > > > creation, > > > GIMP for image manipulation, but that's where my list ends. What > are > > > the > > > options to perform other common tasks: > > > > > > -- Email & Organizer (an only-email client is no replacement for > Outlook > > > or > > > Evolution) > > > -- Spreadsheet > > > -- Presentations > > > -- File and web-browsing (i.e Windows Explorer/Konquerer/Galleon) > > > > > > Those are the first things that pop to my head, I'm sure there are > > > other > > > areas in which most OSS alternatives are merely imitating MS's or > any > > > commercial vendor's products. > > > > then you failied to understand what is been talked about: > > A file manager and a web browser and a help viewer are three > > diferent programs. > > So it should stay, and I realy would like to see khtml in > > kdenetwork and not > > kdebaase, if I would like a web browser I would install kdenetwork. > > I agree. My intention was more tending towards a graphical file > browser > rather then a "files-web browser" > > > > > In kde3.2 kmail and korganizer will be one software. Again I dont > > like this, and > > I like things as thry are now. If I want to look at my meetings I > > will not open > > my mail progaram. > > IMHO the ideal situation would be if people could easily integrate > programs > to one another, so you could use KMail as a stand-alone email program > and I > could integrate KMail & KOrganizer if I found it more productive. > > > > > Anyway, unix was not designed this way, one big program that does all. > But > > several programs which do one small thing good. This movement is > > beeing copyied > > from Microsoft Windows. > > > > Again I agree, and that is why I fell in love with Linux. To extend my > previous point -- if there was some kind of a Graphics Interface > equivalent > to pipes so people could combine GUI-ed together as easily as doing > "find -name "whatever" | xargs cat ". > > > As to what you say: > > > > There are no good alternatives so we must use them, freedom is > > lost again ,since > > there is one really usable program. Sad but true. > > > > That is hardly what I said. On the contrary -- I genuinely asked for > information about alternative applications with different approaches > (and > got some -- I just got started with Lyx and LaTeX, and never thought to > use > them for presentations until people suggested it here) > so I, and others in my position who don't know a broad range of OSS > software > could use those applications. > > Alon. > > = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
> > Care to list the alternative options? I can guess Lyx for document > > creation, > > GIMP for image manipulation, but that's where my list ends. What are > > the > > options to perform other common tasks: > > > > -- Email & Organizer (an only-email client is no replacement for Outlook > > or > > Evolution) > > -- Spreadsheet > > -- Presentations > > -- File and web-browsing (i.e Windows Explorer/Konquerer/Galleon) > > > > Those are the first things that pop to my head, I'm sure there are > > other > > areas in which most OSS alternatives are merely imitating MS's or any > > commercial vendor's products. > > then you failied to understand what is been talked about: > A file manager and a web browser and a help viewer are three > diferent programs. > So it should stay, and I realy would like to see khtml in > kdenetwork and not > kdebaase, if I would like a web browser I would install kdenetwork. I agree. My intention was more tending towards a graphical file browser rather then a "files-web browser" > > In kde3.2 kmail and korganizer will be one software. Again I dont > like this, and > I like things as thry are now. If I want to look at my meetings I > will not open > my mail progaram. IMHO the ideal situation would be if people could easily integrate programs to one another, so you could use KMail as a stand-alone email program and I could integrate KMail & KOrganizer if I found it more productive. > > Anyway, unix was not designed this way, one big program that does all. But > several programs which do one small thing good. This movement is > beeing copyied > from Microsoft Windows. > Again I agree, and that is why I fell in love with Linux. To extend my previous point -- if there was some kind of a Graphics Interface equivalent to pipes so people could combine GUI-ed together as easily as doing "find -name "whatever" | xargs cat ". > As to what you say: > > There are no good alternatives so we must use them, freedom is > lost again ,since > there is one really usable program. Sad but true. > That is hardly what I said. On the contrary -- I genuinely asked for information about alternative applications with different approaches (and got some -- I just got started with Lyx and LaTeX, and never thought to use them for presentations until people suggested it here) so I, and others in my position who don't know a broad range of OSS software could use those applications. Alon. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Quoting Alon Weinstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > Because if you open KWord, you can't take it as anything else but > a > > > clone of MS-Word. It looks the same, it feels the same, and it has > a > > > very related name. Every little item on the window's outline > > just happen > > > to be exactly where MS-Word put it. This can't be mistaken. > > > > So... don't open KWord! I don't use any Linux app which imitates the > > (broken, IMHO) MS GUI interfaces. Neither KWord, nor evolution, nor > > openoffice, nor name-your-favorite-MS-application-Linux-clone. > > > > Care to list the alternative options? I can guess Lyx for document > creation, > GIMP for image manipulation, but that's where my list ends. What are > the > options to perform other common tasks: > > -- Email & Organizer (an only-email client is no replacement for Outlook > or > Evolution) > -- Spreadsheet > -- Presentations > -- File and web-browsing (i.e Windows Explorer/Konquerer/Galleon) > > Those are the first things that pop to my head, I'm sure there are > other > areas in which most OSS alternatives are merely imitating MS's or any > commercial vendor's products. then you failied to understand what is been talked about: A file manager and a web browser and a help viewer are three diferent programs. So it should stay, and I realy would like to see khtml in kdenetwork and not kdebaase, if I would like a web browser I would install kdenetwork. In kde3.2 kmail and korganizer will be one software. Again I dont like this, and I like things as thry are now. If I want to look at my meetings I will not open my mail progaram. Anyway, unix was not designed this way, one big program that does all. But several programs which do one small thing good. This movement is beeing copyied from Microsoft Windows. As to what you say: There are no good alternatives so we must use them, freedom is lost again ,since there is one really usable program. Sad but true. - diego = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
> On Tue, Mar 04, 2003, Eli Billauer wrote about "Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice > ftp sites of piracy]": > > But the problem is not that some people want a WYSIWYG word processor, > > or spreadsheets. Micro$oft doesn't have any rights on the WYSIWYG > > concept. But if you call an application KWord and make it look like > > MS-Word, you've made a statement about its origins. > > Excuse me? > M-w.com lists the phrase "word processor" as dating back to 1970, which is > a good 15 years before the first version of MS-Word I know of. Microsoft > has no copyrights on the generic English word "word", and while calling > a word processor, of all names, "Kword" may be strange - it is certainly > not illegal. This reminds me of an ancient story about MS acquiring the English language. (http://www.stokely.com/lighter.side/ms.english.html for once) If I recall correctly it was circulating exactly out of the fear that some time in the future, common generic words like Word or Project will become proprietary. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Gilad Ben-Yossef wrote: Eli Billauer wrote: > And the other sad thing, is that Linux is risking its legitimate status by offending laws of intellectual property. And for no reason at all. IANAL, but I think Linux is taking the very same risk Microsoft is - when they took the Mac OS look & feel from Apple. Apple filed suit and lost. Which is only fair because THEY took the idea of GUI from Xerox... Wrong. Apple sued MS because MS used a beta of the Apple Mac to base Windows on. They got that disguised as "we'll write you a spreadsheet app". Apple sued becuase MS violated an NDA, not because they copied the look and feel. As someone said once, to see far climb on the shoulder of giants. Gilad. -- Shachar Shemesh Open Source integration consultant Home page & resume - http://www.shemesh.biz/ = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003, Eli Billauer wrote about "Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]": > But the problem is not that some people want a WYSIWYG word processor, > or spreadsheets. Micro$oft doesn't have any rights on the WYSIWYG > concept. But if you call an application KWord and make it look like > MS-Word, you've made a statement about its origins. Excuse me? M-w.com lists the phrase "word processor" as dating back to 1970, which is a good 15 years before the first version of MS-Word I know of. Microsoft has no copyrights on the generic English word "word", and while calling a word processor, of all names, "Kword" may be strange - it is certainly not illegal. And about "looking like MS-Word", do you also say that Mazda cars (say) stole something from Ford, because Ford had the concept of a car, with four wheels and an engine, before Mazda? Since when is honestly producing competing products to successful products illegal, or even immoral? Next thing we know, MS will be chasing offices not using MS-Office, because, obviously "You can't call yourself an office if you don't run MS-Office!" :) -- Nadav Har'El| Tuesday, Mar 4 2003, 1 Adar II 5763 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |- Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Sign in zoo: Do not feed the animals. If http://nadav.harel.org.il |you have food give it to the guard on duty = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On 2003-03-04, Eli Billauer wrote: > Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote: > > >So... don't open KWord! > > > I had no choice. I had to see what Openoffice was, so I opened it. ;) > You are confused, I'm afraid. KWord is part of KOffice, which is part of KDE. OpenWriter is part of OpenOffice, OSS derivative of Sun's office suite. They are very different programs, though both smell of MS-imitation. OpenOffice seems actually more powerful that MS-Office and strives to be original, IIRC they even dropped the emulation of windows' open dialogs, start menu and widnow managment in the unix version :-). -- Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I'm too lazy to use GUI - why should I click all these things to get my job done? = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Eli Billauer wrote: > And the other sad thing, is that Linux is risking its legitimate status by offending laws of intellectual property. And for no reason at all. IANAL, but I think Linux is taking the very same risk Microsoft is - when they took the Mac OS look & feel from Apple. Apple filed suit and lost. Which is only fair because THEY took the idea of GUI from Xerox... As someone said once, to see far climb on the shoulder of giants. Gilad. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote: So... don't open KWord! I had no choice. I had to see what Openoffice was, so I opened it. ;) Otherwise, I'm a great fan of LaTeX. But the problem is not that some people want a WYSIWYG word processor, or spreadsheets. Micro$oft doesn't have any rights on the WYSIWYG concept. But if you call an application KWord and make it look like MS-Word, you've made a statement about its origins. BTW, I warmly recommend trying dia (type "dia" at command prompt). It's an example of a useful graphics tool, which remains true to the Gtk feel. And it produces nice EPS. Eli = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Quoth Shoshannah Forbes on Tue, Mar 04, 2003: > IANAL. > Said that, I am not sure that most of the "windows like" OSS is actaully > braking intellectual property laws. But this is OT... Apple say it is breaking intellectual property laws, Microsoft says (or at least *used* to say) it's not. Look around the GNU web site for details. Vadik. -- This is a test. This is only a test. Had this been a real emergency, you would all be dead by now. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Quoth Alon Weinstein on Tue, Mar 04, 2003: > Care to list the alternative options? I can guess Lyx for document creation, > GIMP for image manipulation, but that's where my list ends. What are the > options to perform other common tasks: > > -- Email & Organizer (an only-email client is no replacement for Outlook or > Evolution) Replacement for Outlook? What are you talking about? Some of us used e-mail before Microsoft had an IP stack in their basic OS distributions. Organizers should run on PalmOS anyway ;) Seriously though, it's not a job of an MUA to organize files, it's not a browser's job to read news, and the only reasonable mail + news reader in one piece I ever heard of is Gnus. > -- Spreadsheet Why are people so obsessed with spreadsheets? What do you use them for? > -- Presentations TeX, as Muli said. > -- File and web-browsing (i.e Windows Explorer/Konquerer/Galleon) Netscape (or Mozilla) did *not* rip MSIE's interface, they both ripped it from Mosaic. You're forgetting that MS is a newcomer on the Net. > Those are the first things that pop to my head, I'm sure there are other > areas in which most OSS alternatives are merely imitating MS's or any > commercial vendor's products. Sure. And the usability of Windows programs is higher than that of most competing Linux software. But your claims that the only thing OSS people can do WRT GUI is rip MS's interface make me want to come over and rip KDE/Gnome from under your feet, so you see real UNIX inside, however ugly it may be. Vadik. -- Fifth Law of Applied Terror: If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book. Corollary: If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 05:50:37PM +0200, Alon Weinstein wrote: > > So... don't open KWord! I don't use any Linux app which imitates the > > (broken, IMHO) MS GUI interfaces. Neither KWord, nor evolution, nor > > openoffice, nor name-your-favorite-MS-application-Linux-clone. > > Care to list the alternative options? I can guess Lyx for document creation, > GIMP for image manipulation, but that's where my list ends. What are the > options to perform other common tasks: LyX or your favorite text editor (I use xemacs) and LaTeX command line tools (I use tetex) for everything that requires typesetting (presentations through pretty printed code), and xemacs and plain text for everything else. I don't do image manipulation, but the one or two times that I had to, I used the gimp. > -- Email & Organizer (an only-email client is no replacement for Outlook or > Evolution) I use mutt with xemacs as the editor, and plain text files to organize everything I need. > -- Spreadsheet Don't use it, but when I did, I used gnumeric. > -- Presentations xemacs, LaTeX, xpdf. > -- File and web-browsing (i.e Windows Explorer/Konquerer/Galleon) mozilla. > Those are the first things that pop to my head, I'm sure there are other > areas in which most OSS alternatives are merely imitating MS's or any > commercial vendor's products. Most OSS alternatives might be imitating MS, but who cares? All I need is one alternative that isn't, and if none exists, I write my own. It's not that I hate MS, or their product. I just happen to think that the GUI metaphor they use, coupled with dumbing down the user, is condencending and plain uncomfortable to use. Therefore, I use something else. -- Muli Ben-Yehuda http://www.mulix.org pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
> > Because if you open KWord, you can't take it as anything else but a > > clone of MS-Word. It looks the same, it feels the same, and it has a > > very related name. Every little item on the window's outline > just happen > > to be exactly where MS-Word put it. This can't be mistaken. > > So... don't open KWord! I don't use any Linux app which imitates the > (broken, IMHO) MS GUI interfaces. Neither KWord, nor evolution, nor > openoffice, nor name-your-favorite-MS-application-Linux-clone. > Care to list the alternative options? I can guess Lyx for document creation, GIMP for image manipulation, but that's where my list ends. What are the options to perform other common tasks: -- Email & Organizer (an only-email client is no replacement for Outlook or Evolution) -- Spreadsheet -- Presentations -- File and web-browsing (i.e Windows Explorer/Konquerer/Galleon) Those are the first things that pop to my head, I'm sure there are other areas in which most OSS alternatives are merely imitating MS's or any commercial vendor's products. Alon. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
Eli Billauer wrote: Because if you open KWord, you can't take it as anything else but a clone of MS-Word. It looks the same, it feels the same, and it has a very related name. Every little item on the window's outline just happen to be exactly where MS-Word put it. This can't be mistaken. Just to clarify- the BSA letter was about OpenOffice, *not* KWord First and foremost, the fact that open source programmers see MS applications as a model to imitate. This applies for many GUI applications that we see lately: They smell MS without being MS. (GNOME & KDE included) Agreed And the other sad thing, is that Linux is risking its legitimate status by offending laws of intellectual property. And for no reason at all. IANAL. Said that, I am not sure that most of the "windows like" OSS is actaully braking intellectual property laws. But this is OT... = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:14:07PM +0200, Eli Billauer wrote: > Because if you open KWord, you can't take it as anything else but a > clone of MS-Word. It looks the same, it feels the same, and it has a > very related name. Every little item on the window's outline just happen > to be exactly where MS-Word put it. This can't be mistaken. So... don't open KWord! I don't use any Linux app which imitates the (broken, IMHO) MS GUI interfaces. Neither KWord, nor evolution, nor openoffice, nor name-your-favorite-MS-application-Linux-clone. > First and foremost, the fact that open source programmers see MS > applications as a model to imitate. This applies for many GUI > applications that we see lately: They smell MS without being MS. (GNOME > & KDE included) Not every open source programmer feels that way, and you have the obvious choice of not using the code of those that do. Remember Linux is spelled "freedom". -- Muli Ben-Yehuda http://www.mulix.org pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
I think this is quite sad. Not the BSA accusations, but the fact that they are right. Because if you open KWord, you can't take it as anything else but a clone of MS-Word. It looks the same, it feels the same, and it has a very related name. Every little item on the window's outline just happen to be exactly where MS-Word put it. This can't be mistaken. Whatever I think about IP laws, I can't escape the bare fact that KWord violates quite a few of them. And there are two sad points about this: First and foremost, the fact that open source programmers see MS applications as a model to imitate. This applies for many GUI applications that we see lately: They smell MS without being MS. (GNOME & KDE included) Linux and GNU has the vast advantage, that it doesn't have to be popular to survive, so we can do things the Right way. Why are we following the devil? And the other sad thing, is that Linux is risking its legitimate status by offending laws of intellectual property. And for no reason at all. So sad it is. Eli Shoshannah Forbes wrote: From RISKS Digest: :) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 08:57:38 -0600 (CST) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy It seems that some FTP sites that host OpenOffice are getting "cease and desist" e-mail from the BSA about their purported piracy of MS Office. Maybe their scripts should enhance their search criteria. Imagine the consequences if the BSA (or some other IP watchdog) had the authority to shut down "piracy" sites. [Maybe a browser string search on "MS" and "OFFICE" also results in women being asked to cease and desist if they are referred to as "MS." and happen to have the title "Corporate Executive OFFICEr". PGN] Here is an excerpt of the e-mail, which was posted at http://distribution.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=581265&listName=dev = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[Fwd: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy]
From RISKS Digest: :) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 08:57:38 -0600 (CST) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: BSA Accuses OpenOffice ftp sites of piracy It seems that some FTP sites that host OpenOffice are getting "cease and desist" e-mail from the BSA about their purported piracy of MS Office. Maybe their scripts should enhance their search criteria. Imagine the consequences if the BSA (or some other IP watchdog) had the authority to shut down "piracy" sites. [Maybe a browser string search on "MS" and "OFFICE" also results in women being asked to cease and desist if they are referred to as "MS." and happen to have the title "Corporate Executive OFFICEr". PGN] Here is an excerpt of the e-mail, which was posted at http://distribution.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=581265&listName=dev From: "Copyright Europe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Abuse" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 5:51 PM Subject: [NOC] Case ID 588853 - Notice of Claimed Infringement Wednesday, February 26, 2003 Westfaelische Wilhelms - Universitaet Roentgenstr. 9-13 Muenster, D-48149 DE DE Re: Unauthorized Distribution of the following copyrighted computer program(s): Microsoft Office Dear Sir/Madam: The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has determined that the connection listed below, which appears to be using an Internet account under your control, is operating an FTP server to offer unlicensed copies or is engaged in other unauthorized activities relating to copyrighted computer programs published by the BSA's member companies. Infringement Details: -- First Found: 24 Nov 2002 15:31:40 EST (GMT -500) Last Found: 24 Feb 2003 01:19:59 EST (GMT -500) IP Address: 128.176.191.21 IP Port: 21 Protocol: FTP FTP Login Name: anonymous FTP Login Password: [EMAIL PROTECTED] What was located as infringing content: -- Filename: /mandrake_current/SRPMS/OpenOffice.org-1.0.1-9mdk.src.rpm (199,643kb) Filename: /mandrake_current/i586/Mandrake/RPMS/OpenOffice.org-libs-1.0.1-9mdk.i586.rpm (35,444kb) The above computer program(s) is/are being made available for copying, through downloading, at the above location without authorization from the copyright owner(s). Based upon BSA's representation of the copyright owners in anti-piracy matters, we have a good faith belief that none of the materials or activities listed above have been authorized by the rightholders, their agents, or the law. BSA represents that the information in this notification is accurate and states, under penalty of perjury, that it is authorized to act in this matter on behalf of the copyright owners listed above. We hereby give notice of these activities to you and request that you take expeditious action to remove or disable access to the materials described above, and thereby prevent the illegal reproduction and distribution of pirated software via your company's network. As you know, illegal on-line activities can result in 50 million people on the Internet accessing and downloading a copyrighted product worldwide without authorization - a highly damaging activity for the copyright holder. We appreciate your cooperation in this matter. Please advise us regarding what actions you take. Please include the following CaseID in any response you send: Case ID 588853 Yours sincerely, Corinna Beck Business Software Alliance 1150 18th St NW Suite 700 Washington,DC 20036 http://www.bsa.org E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
