Linux-Advocacy Digest #714, Volume #26 Sat, 27 May 00 07:13:03 EDT
Contents:
Re: Fun with Brain Dead Printers. ("Peter T. Breuer")
Copyright & GPL? (root)
Re: Goodwin's Law invoked - Thread now dead ("Paul 'Z' Ewande�")
Re: OSWars 2000 at www.stardock.com (2:1)
Re: Microsoft W2K lack of goals. (Beeg Fat Eddie)
PLAN9 O/S - - Upcoming Linux Competition ? ? ? (Beeg Fat Eddie)
Re: X Windows must DIE!!! (root)
What's wrong with StarOffice (2:1)
Re: QB 4.5 in Win 2000 (Giuliano Colla)
Re: PHP vs Java : JSP (Sam E. Trenholme)
Re: QB 4.5 in Win 2000 (Simon Scott)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Peter T. Breuer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.hardware
Subject: Re: Fun with Brain Dead Printers.
Date: 27 May 2000 09:12:13 GMT
In comp.os.linux.hardware [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
: On 26 May 2000 20:22:21 GMT, "Peter T. Breuer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
: wrote:
: I want to print. Very simple concept. Blank paper goes in this nice
: little tray and comes out with all of this writing on it.
: Very simple.
That's nice. Do you want everyone in the universe to be able to print,
or just you? Do you want to print to just that printer, or to others
too? Do you want to print postscript? Text? Graphics?
Your "print" concept is rather fuzzy. The truth is that you don't know
exactly what you want to do. That's normal.
What you need to do is configure your system to "print" to your printer
in a sense that you will later recognize. I suggest you read the
Printing-HOWTO and get to it!
:>Uh, no. Plug it in, windows prompts for a driver, you put in cd or
:>floppy, and windows says it can't find driver on cd or floppy. You
:>point it at exact file as nearly as you can guess, and it refuses.
:>So you try to choose some other nearly-right driver. After a few days
:>of this, it finally occurs to you that maybe the cd is out of date, or
:>your bios has tricked windows into a corner on something. OK. After a
:>bit more downloading and trialling, you disable the help installation
:>wizard by fauir means or foul, take charge of whatever the pnp thing was
:>trying to do to you, and tell it where it should put its damed irqs (the
:>pcmcia card manager was ON the irq it was trying to get me to use,
:>once!). Thereby freeing up an irq for what's needed. Then you get the
:>thing going partly, but you accidentally reboot, and windows loses
:>track of the thing .... After about a week you get to half way
:>understand the trick about "aggregate new hardware", enabling/disabling
:>the net from both sides of what windows insists is some kind of
:>ms network device, and you maybe also find the snuggling hidden option
:>in the printer setup that means "produce standards conformant
:>postscript" instead of the illegal MS stuff that needs dynamic font
:>downloads.
: Printers irq7, pretty standard.
Printers don't usually need an irq. The OS can poll for them. CPUs
are so fast and printers are so slow that checking a print buffer
every so often is no hassle.
: The Windows world does not speak Postscript, and judging by the size
: of Ghostscript for Windows, it's a good thing.
Then that's windows problem. The rest of the world has always spoken
the STANDARD page layout language. If you have a printer that does
not understand it, translate the postscript into what your printer does
understand using the appropriate filter. Ghostscript probably has it.
:>A lot. I remember my struggles with the 3c589 under windows. A 10s
:>operation in linux. As for the ne2000 I have currently stuck in the
:>slot, windows just tells me that the driver on the manufacturers floppy
:>won't do for it.
: Obviously I can't speak for your experiences, but mine have differed
: greatly.
Then you have no experience. Mine extends to hundreds of machines and
installations.
: Plug in card (Linksys PCI) and away it goes. Check off printer sharing
: and instant network.
Same in linux. Except somewhat faster, since you don't have to check
off printer sharing. That would already have been enabled in your
smb.conf. Or not. Look at ksamba and check it on if not.
Peter
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (root)
Subject: Copyright & GPL?
Date: 27 May 2000 09:21:59 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
If you make a program, text, or in my case a really cool pov-ray image (and a
not so cool xmms skin), you can put it under the FSF GPL(or is it the GNU GPL?)
But I want people to be able to edit it, but also have the following demands:
a) my name and e-mail adress as well as that of others may not be removed from de
document, and have to be put there in chronological order.
b) after you made some edits of the (in my case) pov-ray image, you have to re-post it
to me, so I can put it to a cenralized spot, So I can keep track of the image, and let
everyone enyoy the best image.
How do I put that in combination with the GPL or is there a separate Plublic Licence
for my case?
------------------------------
From: "Paul 'Z' Ewande�" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Goodwin's Law invoked - Thread now dead
Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 11:34:51 +0200
WickedDyno <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a �crit dans le message :
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> Eric Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Marty
> ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> > Spelling Camp. ;)
> >>
> >> How ironic, coming from the person who recently wrote: "Now it's
> >> time for Microsoft to puck blood."
> >
> >"puck blood" is a comp.sys.mac.advocacy inside joke.
>
> Posting for entertainment purposes again, Eric? I wonder what Cornell
> would think of this use of their network resources?
>
> > He spelled it correctly.
>
> Prove it, if you think you can.
Don't you know ? Now, puck blood !
Paul 'Z' Ewande
------------------------------
From: 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.be.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: OSWars 2000 at www.stardock.com
Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 10:28:09 +0100
In your list-of-os-that-should-be-included you didn't include any of the
UNIX os (such as FreeBSD, which some people swear by).
Brad wrote:
>
> After months of playing around with the various operating systems I've
> managed to complete OSWars 2000, the follow-up to OSWars '98.
>
> The article is at:
> http://www.stardock.com/stardock/articles/oswars2000.html
>
> The Topics included are:
>
> Macintosh:
> I didn't think it was fair to cover MacOS X (server) or the currently
> available desktop version of MacOS with Aqua coming out relatively soon. So
> I'll do a follow-on when MacOS X with Aqua is available as I think Mac users
> will like how that turns out. I think that MacOS X with Aqua has a good
> chance of luring many PC power users over to the Macintosh. I know as a
> software developer, the events on the Macintosh recently have been pretty
> exciting.
>
> Linux:
> I gave Linux the most space this time around because it's the hardest one to
> cover fairly. Linux has so many really incredible strengths but has many
> weaknesses that are, unfortunately, not clear cut. To some people, an OS
> that requires reasonably compotent computer users to operate is a good thing
> wheras to others it's a bad thing.
>
> Windows 2000:
> Windows 2000 got covered as it's the latest version of NT and it's actually
> turned out pretty well for the most part. It's the OS I am running as I
> type this. If Microsoft wasn't such a bastard I think they'd hear more
> people patting them on the back for their efforts.
>
> Windows 98:
> Well, this has to get covered as it's the most widely used desktop OS in the
> world sadly enough. The Big Mac is probably the world's best selling
> hamburger but probably not the world's best burger <grin>. Win98 is the big
> mac of OSes. It gets the job done for most people but not much else.
>
> OS/2 Warp:
> Some people might question including OS/2 in this at this point but my
> background is in OS/2 and I'm pretty fond of the operating system (I still
> run it on a few machines around here). Its main problem is that its parent
> wants it to go away and has made it increasingly clear that they want it to
> go away. But many of the users of OS/2 simply won't let it because it
> actually is a pretty terrific operating system even by today's standards.
>
> BeOS:
> Be was smart to release the personal edition. I don't cover BeOS a great
> deal though but I think it's a fine OS.
>
> The full article is pretty lengthy. You can email me any questions or
> comments to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or to my personal address
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] BTW, my opinions reflect my own and not of my
> employer, this is purely for the enjoyment of my fellow OS fanatics. ;)
>
> Again:
> http://www.stardock.com/stardock/articles/oswars2000.html
>
> Brad
--
The day of judgement cometh. Join us O sinful one...
http://fuji.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/cult/index.html
------------------------------
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Microsoft W2K lack of goals.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Beeg Fat Eddie)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 09:33:53 GMT
>
> W2K is slower than NT as well as it still
> blue screens.
>
> And at the same time have provided the public
> with no improvements to the desktop.
>
I'm no big fan of Micro$loth, but at least I can
say truthfully that Winders 2000 is a vast
improvment over the patchwork that was called
Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 6. I have to use
Win2K at work every day for office and miscellaneous
stuff (otherwise it's Linux-based WWW, FTP, and file
servers). As for blue screen issues, properly
configured quality hardware goes a long way to
eliminate such incidents -- including Linux kernel
panics.
------------------------------
Subject: PLAN9 O/S - - Upcoming Linux Competition ? ? ?
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Beeg Fat Eddie)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 09:51:22 GMT
Well maybe not that new, but this interview I read back around
January with Ritchie (or was it Kernigan) -- one of those UNIX / C
grandaddies... was all bent out of shape about how Linux has
developed over time. It seems he mentioned "lack of focus" and
"anarchy" a well as a few other dispariging remarks towards Linux,
like "old technology all over again". He also mentioned working
on an operating system technology for some time now that will be
(or is) going to be released sometime in the near future called
Plan9.
Was this all a bunch hogwash? It basically seemed like this
guy was promising a big open system dogfight somewhere down
the proverbial road (2002...?) between Plan9 O/S and Linux for the
technical achievemnet crown or whatever.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (root)
Subject: Re: X Windows must DIE!!!
Date: 27 May 2000 09:59:11 GMT
Well, I am comletely in favor of X, but I have to agree with some negative points on
it:
If linux isn't working all the times, at least it's consistent: Either it works
completely not or it works completely well. (as opposed to w9x, wich I denied from
because from one day to another, my "compatible network protocols" couldn't be found,
so I couldn' accass the internet, without having fucked the w9x thing).
On the other hand, X does like 'random' errors. For example, I have a thing I call the
X Flash: 5 1/2 vertical beams on my screen, with the pc totally struck (not even
responding to the poweroff butt, for about 5 secs, then normal, and then struck for 5
secs with just normal vision, and after that, everything is normal
the inconsistent in this is that it is doing it more often lately, and lately it even
stays struck. It has to be something with a filling-up logfile or so, but I don't now
that yet.
On Tue, 23 May 2000 01:57:20 GMT, Christopher Browne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Kaz Kylheku would say:
> >On Thu, 27 Apr 2000 16:11:48 GMT, bytes256 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>Am I the only one here who thinks that X Windows is crap?
> >>X Windows is extremely archaic, ridiculously bloated,
> >>way too slow, and extremely hard to install.
> >
> >X is smaller and faster than all other mainstream windowing systems.
> >
> >X was once considered to be bloated and slow---yes, by users running hardware
> >like ancient Sun workstations with 68020 processors running at 25 megahertz or
> >thereabouts, with somewhere between 4 and 8 megs of RAM. More recently, people
> >ran XFree86 on 386 based Linux boxes with 40 meg hard drives and 4 megs of RAM.
> >
> >Anyway, not all X servers are the same. Are you talking about XFree86? Or all
> >flavors of X, proprietary or not?
>
> The other entertaining part is that the overall X "environment" gets
> bloated in three main ways:
>
> a) It bloats when you add in libraries to provide the "fuzzy dice" and
> such to make it "really pretty." For instance, people have found
> GTK Themes to get Pretty Expensive.
>
> Of course, GTK Themes on any _other_ graphics substrate could
> become _JUST AS EXPENSIVE_. Blaming GTK's bloat on X is fairly
> silly.
>
> b) It bloats when you toss in large numbers of TrueType and Type1
> fonts.
>
> The environments that do not thus "bloat" are environments that
> provide _NO_ fonts.
>
> [I am exaggerating only slightly.]
>
> c) It bloats when you expect it to work with huge quantities of
> graphical data that inherently consumes a lot of memory.
>
> Thus, if you install a graphics card with 32MB of "on-the-card"
> RAM, it is reasonably likely that the processes required to _feed_
> that will consume a reasonably considerable amount of RAM.
>
> I would contend that any environment that would claim to provide
> _relatively_ comparable functionality would be similarly bloated under
> similar conditions.
>
> >>Let's get rid of it completely.
> >
> >What do you mean by getting rid of it? Do you propose to erase any X window
> >related binaries or source from every machine in the world, including X window
> >terminals?
> >
> >I think that what you are asking for is for X to be *superseded* by something.
> >
> >In order for X to be superseded, there has to be a superior alternative which
> >includes all the useful functionality of X that current X users rely on. As
> >well, there has to be a migration path: people will probably want their
> >favorite X applications ported to the new thing.
> >
> >So start hacking! The development platform is free, and you can share drivers
> >with XFree86, so what excuse do you have? :)
>
> See URL below for links to would-be superseders of X.
>
> Not that it is realistic that this will truly _happen_...
> --
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] - <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/xbloat.html>
> The human race will decree from time to time: "There is something at
> which it is absolutely forbidden to laugh."
> -- Nietzche on Common Lisp
------------------------------
From: 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: What's wrong with StarOffice
Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 11:00:04 +0100
Star office if about OK for what it does. Some of you claim it's bloated
or slow, others think it's OK for processing simple stuff, but I've
finally found what's really wrong with it. I am writing a document in
LaTeX and wanted to have a pretty looking chard in. I did the chart in
StarOffice and found that there was no way of exporting it in a format
usable by anything other than star office.
I tried printing it as a postscript file, then including that, but it
didn't work.
The problem with Staroffice is that it's designed as one big monolithic
app, where everything is self contained. Iy you ever want to take
something out of the app, it's very hard[1]. Why on earth could they not
just include a little "export as an EPS file" which would have made my
life a *lot* easier.
It would be nice if they made a little effort to adapt the Linux vesion
a bit to the UNIX philosophy[2] so that it integrates with existing apps
using existing mechanisms (eg EPS files for exporting complex graphics,
and ability to save things as formats that are more common under linux
(eg Latex, etc)).
Comments?
-Ed
[1]
It seems that the problem is that SO is designed for windows. i'm not
saying that there is anything inherently wrong with windows (so the
likes of Simon777 can go ayaw now), it's just that the design id
different. Windows makes use of the OLE system, which linux doesn't. In
SO, the only way to `export' things is via OLE, which is very bad for
linux.
[2]
Lots of seperate apps that do 1 job very well, as opposed to one *huge*
app (eg SO) which does no jobs well, but does do many jobs.
--
The day of judgement cometh. Join us O sinful one...
http://fuji.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/cult/index.html
------------------------------
From: Giuliano Colla <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.lang.basic,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: QB 4.5 in Win 2000
Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 12:24:55 +0200
"T. Max Devlin" wrote:
>
> Quoting Jeremy Crabtree from alt.destroy.microsoft; 27 May 2000 05:28:53
> >As an interesting data point...when I built my current PC, I didn't
> have to
> >even bother telling Linux that the HD and cards are now sitting on a different
> >motherboard, I simply plugged in the HD and booted up.
> >
> >(Heck! I didn't have to tell it when I put it on a different HD, simply copied
> > it over and installed the bootloader. :-)
>
> I've never understood why Windows seems to care about the details of the
> motherboard, given the whole concept of the PC architecture. Isn't
> that, as well as the hard drive, the purpose of a BIOS?
It appears that with Windows the best attitude is to follow
the old saying:
never ask questions if you don't want get lies!
Speaking seriously, I gave a look to Linux kernel source
code, and there's a lot of testing and guessing in order to
figure out if what BIOS tells is correct, how to interpret
it and so on. There is also a lot of workarounds for known
and undocumented BIOS bugs. MS didn't take the pain. That's
what makes a big difference between an OEM pre-installed
Windows, and an installation from off the shelf Windows CD.
Unfortunately BIOS specs come from the same source of
Wincrap and are consequently not much better.
The most notable thing I experimented was with an Award BIOS
Y2k bug.
January first 2000 it decides it to be january first 1994.
At each power on, it reverts to 1994. Tried to install
Linux, same problem. Only I got a warning which made me read
the man page for clock setting. Here is it:
--badyear
Indicates that the Hardware Clock is incapable
of storing years outside the range 1994-1999.
There is a problem in some BIOSes (almost
all Award BIOSes made between 4/26/94 and 5/31/95)
wherein they are unable to deal with years
after 1999. If one attempts to set the year-of-cen�
tury value to something less than 94 (or 95
in some cases), the value that actually gets set is
94 (or 95). Thus, if you have one of these
machines, hwclock cannot set the year after 1999 and
cannot use the value of the clock as the true
time in the normal way.
To compensate for this (without your
getting a BIOS update, which would definitely be prefer�
able), always use --badyear if you have one of
these machines. When hwclock knows it's working
with a brain-damaged clock, it ignores
the year part of the Hardware Clock value and instead
tries to guess the year based on the last
calibrated date in the adjtime file, by assuming that
that date is within the past year. For
this to work, you had better do a hwclock --set or
hwclock --systohc at least once a year!
Though hwclock ignores the year value when it
reads the Hardware Clock, it sets the year value
when it sets the clock. It sets it to
1995, 1996, 1997, or 1998, whichever one has the same
position in the leap year cycle as the true
year. That way, the Hardware Clock inserts leap days
where they belong. Again, if you let the
Hardware Clock run for more than a year without setting
it, this scheme could be defeated and you
could end up losing a day.
hwclock warns you that you probably need
--badyear whenever it finds your Hardware Clock set to
1994 or
1995.
So I added the --badyear flag in the initial script, and
that's all.
Any attempt to get an updated BIOS from Award has failed up
to now. But under Linux we only need to set the clock once a
year. Under Windows we need to set the clock at each power
on. Well, it's an old machine, but does its job.
Small thing, maybe, but good sample of different approach.
--
Ing. Giuliano Colla
Direttore Tecnico
Copeca srl
Via del Fonditore 3/E
Bologna (Zona Industriale Roveri)
Tel. 051 53.46.92 - 0335 610.43.35
Fax 051 53.49.89
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Sam E. Trenholme)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: PHP vs Java : JSP
Date: 27 May 2000 03:38:58 -0700
>Thanks for your answer, but to be more specific now, I would like to know is
>PHP vs JSP. Which one is faster ?
[Newsgroups trimmed]
http://locus.apache.org/jyve-faq/Turbine/screen/DisplayQuestionAnswer/action/SetAll/project_id/1/faq_id/1/topic_id/24/question_id/87
- Sam
--
Please post, and not email, questions you have about my answers
Go to http://samiam.org/cgi-bin/mailme to get my email address
------------------------------
From: Simon Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.lang.basic,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: QB 4.5 in Win 2000
Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 18:59:42 +0800
Giuliano Colla wrote:
> <snip!>
> So I added the --badyear flag in the initial script, and
> that's all.
> Any attempt to get an updated BIOS from Award has failed up
> to now. But under Linux we only need to set the clock once a
> year. Under Windows we need to set the clock at each power
> on. Well, it's an old machine, but does its job.
> Small thing, maybe, but good sample of different approach.
>
> --
Did the same thing on my 486 server... works like a charm.
------------------------------
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