Linux-Advocacy Digest #274, Volume #26 Wed, 26 Apr 00 16:13:17 EDT
Contents:
Re: Linux from a Windows perspective (JEDIDIAH)
Re: MS caught breaking web sites (JEDIDIAH)
Re: IBM dumping more shares of RedHat (Chris Lee)
Re: which OS is best? (JEDIDIAH)
Re: Time for the MS-rats to desert ("Chad Myers")
Re: IBM dumping more shares of RedHat ("Chad Myers")
Re: Linux v. BeOS (JEDIDIAH)
Re: "Technical" vs. "Non-technical"... (was Re: Grasping perspective...) (The Cat)
Re: IBM dumping more shares of RedHat (abraxas)
Re: Where is PostScript support?? (Stephen Cornell)
Re: Introduction to Linux article for commentary ("William Palfreman")
Re: Red Hat Linux Backdoor Password Vulnerability (Robert Heininger)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
Subject: Re: Linux from a Windows perspective
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 18:08:13 GMT
On Wed, 26 Apr 2000 00:40:32 -0700, Cyberia Internet Cafe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
>
>JEDIDIAH wrote:
>
>> Yeah right... like there are just millions of users out there
>> dying and trying to use crusty ISA soundcards and ISA SCSI
>> controllers.
>>
>> The system you are harping about is a relic that even I wouldn't
>> bother with & I only stopped using my VL 486 system ~ 18 mos. ago.
>>
>> You could pry open that wallet and try a $20 PCI soundcard or
>> $30 PCI SCSI2 card.
>>
>
>Exsqueeze me? I run both of those pieces of hardware in a handbuilt p233mmx.
>They both work well, and so far seem to perform better than the machine you would
>have someone
That's rather disputable.
ISA is a low performance, not-entirely PNP system.
Whereas the alternate hardware I suggested costs all of $50.
>shell out for. And as to the wallet situation, there are those who end up building
>their
>machines out of what they can beg, borrow, or cadge. I think I did damn good
>building the
>machine I have for $0.00, and being dirt broke at the time the price was right. And
>just to
There are also people who have to worry about where they are going
to get the money for their next meal too.
>review, how many people out there built their first linux box out of the scrap pile?
>Having to
You can either work from the bottom of the trash heap or the top.
The closer to the bottom you start from, the more problems you'll
have. It's unwise to be so cheap as to be scratching the bottom
of the PC hardware barrel.
[deletia]
This is true when comparing PC's in general against Macs.
This is true when comparing emachines to other PC's.
This is true when comparing the cheapest dregs of PC hardware
to anything else.
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: MS caught breaking web sites
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 18:09:35 GMT
On Wed, 26 Apr 2000 21:09:31 +0800, Graham Daniell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Do yourself a favour and look at both - Gnome is excellent, but not 100%
>stable yet. KDE is a bit boring, but as stable as a rock.
You might also want to try components of either by themselves
or mixed together in different combinations. Both GNOME and KDE
are collections of components that don't necessarily need to be
used together.
>
>If the US Justice Dept forces MS to make Office available for Linux, it
>will kill ALL desktop versions of Windust hands down.
>
>Graham Daniell
>----------------------------------------------------
>
>The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
>>
>> But NT + Office2000 makes a good desktop, from the standpoint
>> of convenience. (There are some issues with respect to interoperability
>> and reliability, though. Of course, desktops don't require great
>> reliability, although it does help -- the story of the DoD coffeepot
>> surviving a nuclear blast comes to mind for some reason. Interoperability
>> is because there are a lot of Unix boxes out there. :-) )
>>
>> Linux makes a good server OS, but the desktop convenience isn't
>> quite there yet. (To be fair, I haven't evaluated KDE and Gnome
>> recently; I'm an old Unix-head and use fvwm (not fvwm2-95) as a
>> window manager, :-) and I'm not up on BeOS -- which sounds like the
>> hottest thing since the Amiga, from a multimedia standpoint.)
>>
>> And Windows95/98 is good for....something. :-)
>>
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Chris Lee)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: IBM dumping more shares of RedHat
Date: 26 Apr 2000 18:12:09 GMT
In article <8e77ge$dvm$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>
>
>Buzzz, wrong again Chad. IBM is stepping up it's commitment to Linux.
>IBM may be dropping it's Redhat stock because they are supporting 3
>different distributions -- Caldera, Turbo Linux and Redhat.
They could be also selling their RedHat stock in order to make things more
difficult for an Microsoft appeal of the anti-trust case.
Microsoft:"See? IBM owns plenty of stock in Linux Companies!
IBM:"Say what?"
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: which OS is best?
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 18:15:46 GMT
On Tue, 25 Apr 2000 23:32:43 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On Wed, 26 Apr 2000 03:27:37 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>> Subpop <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> in article 8e5h9i$qv5$[EMAIL PROTECTED], Leslie Mikesell at
>>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> wrote on 4/25/00 7:37 PM:
>>> I wouldn't go as far as to say CLIs are useless, but there sure is a
>>lot
>>> more than can be done on modern GUIs if they are laid out right.. (of
>>> course, this leaves Windows out of the picture)..
>>
>>*NIX shells are (and always have been) much more than "just" a Command
>>Line Interpreter. They're a robust scripting language. We recently had
>>a domain name change where I work, and the MS-Exchange admins spent more
>>than fifty man-hours pointing-and-clicking to update our users' e-mail
>>addresses. I wrote a few quick lines of shell script, and did the same
>>thing to all my UNIX boxes in five minutes that it took the MSFT GUI
>>folks all day to implement.
>
>That's a function of how Exchange works, not necessarily a flaw in the
>operating system. If there was demand for it, a CLI-driven mail
>server could easily be made for NT.
...sure it's a flaw in the OS. The OS is pervasively visual.
It is an overriding design decision that complicates things
like automation. Although, if MS were really 'innovative'
they might have come up with a better AppleScript than
AppleScript and the GUI vs CLI shell distiction wouldn't be
an issue.
Mind you, the same people made the 'faulty application' as made
the 'faulty OS'. So, regardless of what part of the system is
labeled as 'faulty' the same organization is still responsible.
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------------------------------
From: "Chad Myers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.security,comp.os.ms-windows.networking.tcp-ip,alt.conspiracy.area51
Subject: Re: Time for the MS-rats to desert
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 13:15:06 -0500
"John Unekis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
[SNIP: Hateful ignorant blathering]
Is this what anti-MS people think? No real logical foundation, it's just
"hip" to hate MS because they're a big bad corporation? They're the
big-bad-corporation-to-hate-d'jour?
Man, you should go back on the medicine, you really have a problem.
> Remember all you Microserfs, the ones who bail first will get all the good
jobs
> down in Silicon valley, the stragglers will end up fetching them coffee....
Drats, now all those multi-millionaires are just millionaires!
If you don't think MS's stock will be back 10 fold in 5 years, you are sorely
mistaken. Seen AT&T and all the bells lately? What about Exxon or other oil
companies?
-Chad
------------------------------
From: "Chad Myers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: IBM dumping more shares of RedHat
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 13:18:33 -0500
"Chris Lee" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8e7bhp$6ph$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In article <8e77ge$dvm$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
> >
> >
> >Buzzz, wrong again Chad. IBM is stepping up it's commitment to Linux.
> >IBM may be dropping it's Redhat stock because they are supporting 3
> >different distributions -- Caldera, Turbo Linux and Redhat.
>
>
> They could be also selling their RedHat stock in order to make things more
> difficult for an Microsoft appeal of the anti-trust case.
>
> Microsoft:"See? IBM owns plenty of stock in Linux Companies!
>
> IBM:"Say what?"
Well, if that's true (which it isn't) it's nice to know that Microsoft's
competitors are colluding against them. And MS is anti-competitive?
-Chad
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
Subject: Re: Linux v. BeOS
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 18:22:39 GMT
On Wed, 26 Apr 2000 12:37:14 -0500, Ben <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Does anyone know how BeOS has set up its OS so that when you add a
>processor in SMP you get near double the performance without having to
>rewrite the applications or having to reinstall the OS? I've asked
>around, and from what I can tell, Linux does not have this
>capabilility. Is there anything fundamental stopping Linux from having
If you application has multiple execution contexts from the
beginning, then you wouldn't have to redesign your app
regardless of the situation.
BeOS has only ever had one form of execution context. Unix has
had several. As long as you use at least one of them to split
up the work, any one of them will yield performance gains on
multiple processors.
>this type of functionality? Are there any plans to add this
>functionality to Linux? Thanks for the input.
>
Linux has been able to exploit multiple CPUs for a long time.
Unix in general has been able to exploit multiple CPUs for
longer than threads have been in vogue.
--
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/ | \
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------------------------------
From: The Cat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: "Technical" vs. "Non-technical"... (was Re: Grasping perspective...)
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 18:28:29 GMT
I'm beginning to wonder if Terry is indeed an engineer/developer at
all.
All he seems to do is name call and on a rare occasion where he
actually addresses a technical issue, he puts his foot in his mouth
every time.
On 26 Apr 2000 11:09:56 -0600, Craig Kelley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Terry Porter) writes:
>
>> On Wed, 26 Apr 2000 03:44:04 GMT, s_Ea_DAag0n <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> >On Wed, 26 Apr 2000 02:30:38 +0000, Colin R. Day <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> >>sea_Dragon wrote:
>> >>
>> >><snip>
>> >>
>> >>>
>> >>> I have been compiling and installing new Linux kernels for 6.5 years and
>> >>> know what I am doing. I gave the correct root drive. I added the new
>> >>> kernel to MILO, and kept the old one, and neither would boot with the
>> >>
>> >>Isn't that LILO? Could explain the problem.
>> >>
>> >><snip>
>> >
>> >Oh dear. You must be ---***___EXTREMELEY___***-- new to Linux.
>> >
>> >IMHO, anyone posting on comp.os.linux.advocacy who doesn't what MILO is
>> >needs to be beaten with a cluestick. Badly.
>>
>> No, it's you who needs a clue. I have no idea what MILO is, other
>> than a popular chockolate drink.
>
>Put a sock in it.
>
>MILO is a boot loader for Linux/Alpha, and has been used by other
>archtiectures as well.
>
> [snip more ignorance]
>
>If you don't understand a term, perhaps you shouldn't rant on about
>it, hmmm?
TheCat (Steve)
"Agent under Wine and powered by Mandrake 7.0"
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (abraxas)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: IBM dumping more shares of RedHat
Date: 26 Apr 2000 18:55:15 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy Chad Myers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "Chris Lee" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:8e7bhp$6ph$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> In article <8e77ge$dvm$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>> >
>> >
>> >Buzzz, wrong again Chad. IBM is stepping up it's commitment to Linux.
>> >IBM may be dropping it's Redhat stock because they are supporting 3
>> >different distributions -- Caldera, Turbo Linux and Redhat.
>>
>>
>> They could be also selling their RedHat stock in order to make things more
>> difficult for an Microsoft appeal of the anti-trust case.
>>
>> Microsoft:"See? IBM owns plenty of stock in Linux Companies!
>>
>> IBM:"Say what?"
> Well, if that's true (which it isn't)
Well well well...looks like chad has some inside IBM information about exactly
why theyre selling their redhat stock.
Thats VERY interesting.
Care to enlighten us on the real reason, chad?
> it's nice to know that Microsoft's
> competitors are colluding against them. And MS is anti-competitive?
Lots of companies are anticompetative, microsoft just happened to break some
laws in the process.
=====yttrx
------------------------------
From: Stephen Cornell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Where is PostScript support??
Date: 26 Apr 2000 19:57:21 +0100
Lee Sau Dan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I've used TeX + xdvi for that purpose many many times. Simply say
> "\documentclass{slides}" and it generates nice looking slides, which
> can be printed onto transparencies or shown using a VGA projector.
> Xdvi does Antialiasing, and hence still looks very nice even on low
> resolution (but TrueColor) projectors. (I haven't tried this with
> pdfLaTeX yet, but it should be possible and would generate a PDF
> file for the slides.)
As I said in the original post, my next presentation will be done
using pdflatex/acrobat. It's not as fast, powerful, or easy to use as
Powerpoint, though I would agree that it looks better. Xdvi and
ghostscript are too slow.
However, LaTeX's forte is in producing paper documents with a uniform,
professional look, whereas the requirements for presentation slides
are somewhat different. Sometimes you want to add arrows between your
text and your graphics; sometimes you just want to resize the text box
so that the words wrap a little differently or to allow just a little
more text on one particular slide; sometimes you want to add a photo,
or position a picture or two by hand. Doing any of these things under
Latex has me reaching for the text book and spending the next half
hour or more tinkering.
> Why don't you blame windows for not supporting *Display Postscript*?
What's that got to do with it? Display Postscript is a commercial
product sold at a high price by Adobe, who are not interested in
developing it any more. Why not blame Adobe for the fact that it's
not available for Linux?
Anyway, who's blaming anybody? The fact is that Linux doesn't have a
popular, portable, vector graphics language with a decent, quick
rendering engine (Unices with Display Postscript do have this, but
Solaris's X-server doesn't support my graphics chip). This should be
a call to arms.
> Moreover, PowerPoint defaults to use a serif font --
> Times New Roman, which makes things even worse on low resolution
> displays. It's too common to see a broken lowercase letter "c" with
> PowerPoint presentations.
So use different fonts. There are lots of templates with sans-serif
fonts, and you can also create your own. Pretty straightforward in
Powerpoint (compare that with Latex...)
> What's wrong with Postscript, given that a *free* rendering program
> already exist?
Because the free rendering program (Ghostscript) doesn't render fast
enough. Postscript files are not always created with efficiency of
rendering in mind. Ghostscript also doesn't always look great; if you
choose antialiased fonts, you also get antialiased graphics, which can
sometimes look too fuzzy.
I asked the developers of one commercial presentation program for Unix
(Ovation), which uses Display Postscript on some platforms, why the
Linux version didn't use Ghostscript. The answer was because of
performance (plus some bugs). Ghostscript (and Postscript, for that
matter) was not designed for this kind of thing - though it is very
good at doing what it _was_ designed for. There is a Display
Ghostscript that is part of the GNUStep project, but given their lack
of progress it's clear that writing a quick, efficient postscript
renderer is not trivial.
--
Stephen Cornell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel/fax +44-1223-336644
University of Cambridge, Zoology Department, Downing Street, CAMBRIDGE CB2 3EJ
------------------------------
From: "William Palfreman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.linux,alt.os.linux,uk.comp.os.linux
Subject: Re: Introduction to Linux article for commentary
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 16:26:43 +0100
JEDIDIAH <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> On Mon, 24 Apr 2000 23:37:58 +0100, William Palfreman
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >JEDIDIAH <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> >news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >> On Sat, 22 Apr 2000 00:18:21 +0100, William Palfreman
> ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >JEDIDIAH <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message >
> >> >> Fallacy: We only want what is good for business.
> >> >> Fallacy: We are not willing to make tradeoffs that are bad for
> >business.
> >> >>
> >> >> Both of these are reflected in the caselaw of most civilized nations
> >> >> that put limits on commerce based on some public interest. The more
> >> >> extreme examples would be racketeering, gambling, prosititution, and
> >> >> the narcotics trade.
> >> >
> >> >So? You aren't seriously claiming that there in any public interest
in
> >> >drugs, gambling and prostitution being against the law, are you? What
> >you
> >>
> >> Such laws are typically justified ONLY by notions of public interest.
> >
> >Such as?
>
> The interests or the laws?
>
> >
> >>
> >> >do is your own business, so long as you aren't harming anyone else,
and
> >when
> >> >you are harming someone else (by doing something to them that they
didn't
> >> >agree to, like bashing them over the head) then and only then does it
> >> >becomes an issue for law. There is no public interest involved in my
> >> >playing cards or for that matter smoking heroin in my own home.
> >>
> >> That's very much a minority viewpoint.
> >
> >No, its a fact. Lighting up ones opium pipe in ones own home is an
entirely
> >private matter. Bashing someone over the head is not, as it involves
doing
>
> What PLANET are you from, nevermind what country.
>
> This nation (USA) was founded by religious busybodies.
Surprising as this may seem, Usenet extends beyond the US. This nation
wasn't founded by anyone as such, it just sort of evolved into existance.
Posting onto uk.* newsgroups does sort of imply a non-US angle to things.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Robert Heininger)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Red Hat Linux Backdoor Password Vulnerability
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 20:07:09 GMT
On 26 Apr 2000 11:02:39 -0600,
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> `Craig Kelley' wrote:
>"Eddie Dubourg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> The Ghost In The Machine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>> > >|
>> > >|Not -any- idiot. IIRC, Jim Seymour wrote some years
>> > >|back about walking into a number of Unix shops that
>> > >|left the root password set to the installation default.
>> > >|
>> > >|Anyone could login as root (it might not have been Jim
>> > >|Seymour who wrote this; it was some time ago)
>> > >|
>> > > Actually, aren't most distributions of Linux set to put the default
>> > >password of root to nothing? In other words, what's the difference? If
>> you
>> > >are too foolish to change the password, you get what you sow.
>> >
>> > I can't speak for any other distros (nor can I speak *for* RedHat),
>> > but RedHat requires the installer to type in some sort of a root password.
>> > At least as of 6.0 (maybe 5.0!), and I doubt they've changed it in 6.2.
>> >
>> > I don't know if it will accept carriage return (an empty password)
>> > or not.
>> >
>> > Of course, this is the main system password; I'm not sure what the
>> > piranha password issue is, not having 6.2 installed.
>>
>> I've used RedHat since v4.0, they all required you to type in a root
>> password (non zero length, but other than than anything goes), but RedHat as
>> of 6.1 still allowed you at the Lilo prompt to type "linux 1" and enter
>> single user mode as root - my prime reason to switch to Debian, which if you
>> try this insists on the root password (which makes it hard to restore a
>> system if you've forgotten the root password, but I'd rather have this
>> possibility than finding my system deleted.....)
>
>That's the only reason you switched to Debian? For a false sense of
>security that any floppy can destroy? Don't misunderstand me, I like
>Debian quite a bit -- but I wouldn't change over to it just becase it
>requires the root password for single-user mode.
Uhhhh. . HEY! I thought you guys were "experts" at Linux. I'm a still a
newbie, and even *I* know what "/sbin/sulogin" is used for. ;-)
--
Robert Heininger [ Powered by: Linux 2.2.5-15 ]
"What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight -
it's the size of the fight in the dog." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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