Linux-Advocacy Digest #238, Volume #28 Sat, 5 Aug 00 00:13:03 EDT
Contents:
Re: LINUX, OF COURSE!! (Matthew Gardiner)
Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary? ("Anthony D. Tribelli")
Re: Unix user 10yrs + says Linux is bollocks (R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ))
Re: Linux or Windows 2000 ???? ("Slava Pestov")
Re: AARON KULKIS...USENET SPAMMER, LIAR, AND THUG (Loren Petrich)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Matthew Gardiner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: LINUX, OF COURSE!!
Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2000 15:58:32 +1200
sonny, the detection of your hardware is dependent on the distribution
you intend to install and what kernel is being installed. I have
Caldera eDesktop and it detected my TNT2 Card and SB16 with out any
problems. So what are you harping on about?
Pete Goodwin wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Cihl) wrote in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> >No hardware support? Hah! Did someone ever tell you that Mightgosoft
> >hardly supports any hardware AT ALL!? You ALWAYS need vendor CD's.
> >YUCK! Install OS. Reboot. Detect hardware. Reboot. Put in CD 1.
> >Reboot. CD 2. Reboot. etc. etc. etc.
> >In Linux, you can ALWAYS pick your video card on install from a
> >HUMONGOUS list. You network card is ALWAYS supported. Sound cards
> >ALWAYS work. I ALWAYS write 'ALWAYS' with capital letters!
>
> Sound cards always work?
>
> My SB16 didn't work, first time.
>
> My ESS Allegro does not work now - no drivers.
>
> Your version of ALWAYS is in reality MAYBE.
>
> >Word class?! You mean Mightgosoft Orifice?! Dude! Do you ever write
> >anything that's more than one page? Try inserting a picture and see
> >what happens to the rest of your text!
>
> If you mean Microsoft Office, the text moves around it. Your problem?
>
> --
> Pete Goodwin
> ---
> Coming soon, Kylix, Delphi on Linux.
> My success does not require the destruction of Microsoft.
------------------------------
From: "Anthony D. Tribelli" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary?
Date: 5 Aug 2000 03:57:04 GMT
Perry Pip <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Anthony D. Tribelli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>You are not qualified to second guess the chief engineer. You were not
>>there. You did not work on the system. The system was also a test platform
>>not an operation one. We do not know the final design and implementation.
>
> Nonsense. I have every right to question the credibility of the chief
> engineer because he has every reason to lie: he's covering his
> ass. They have not given us the full details of the incident because
> they are hiding something. Plain and simple.
Odd that you don't apply the same standard of evidence to those that claim
WinNT crashed. Below where you attempt to offer evidence of WinNT crashing
you quote one person's email that begins with:
I don't know a lot about the specific incident.
And of course the confession was not part of your reference.
>>and the news agency that broke the story. The initial news
>>report you desparately cling to have been disconfirmed by the very people
>>who made it.
>
> Interesting. That URL you posted to an apology from a
> GCN editor:
> http://206.144.247.86/archives/gcn/1998/november23/20.htm
> which supposedly absolves NT has a link to this as the supposedly
> accurate account:
> http://206.144.247.86/archives/gcn/1998/november9/6.htm
>
> "The Yorktown uses dual 200-MHz Pentium Pro systems from
> Intergraph Corp. of Huntsville, Ala., to run NT over a
> fiber-optic, asynchronous transfer mode LAN."
>
> Dual P-pro's running NT on an ATM LAN. From the same URL:
>
> "The Yorktown last September suffered an engineering LAN
> casualty when a petty officer calibrating a fuel valve
> entered a zero into a shipboard database, officials
> said. The resulting database overload caused the ships
> LAN, including 27 dual 200-MHz Pentium Pro miniature
> remote terminal units, to crash, they said."
>
> 27 dual 200-MHz Pentium Pro's running Windows NT crashed. That's plain
> english. No semantics.
Yet again you are falsely equating "LAN" and "terminals" with WinNT. The
above does not say that WinNT crashed or contributed to the incident, and
it does not contradict the chief engineer, the software developer, and the
news agency that broke the story who all say WinNT was not the problem. As
with the original GCN article you are reading in things that are not
there, you are making a leap of faith that a "LAN console" or a "remote
terminal" crash is a WinNT crash. The console/terminal runs a dedicated
app, if that app crashes the console/terminal is unusable and will be
often be referred to as "crashed". If I run a SVGA game on my Linux box
and it locks up the console and I have to hit the reset switch should we
call that a Linux crash? Using your logic we would have to.
> The GCN editor in his editorial is just trying to appeal to his
> readership: mostly Governemnt people. And too many people, including
> higher Government officials, are gullable to the fallacy that when an
> app crashes an OS, it's not the OS's fault at all. Thus they fall for
> the claim that "NT is not the culprit" when in reality "NT is not the
> only culprit".
Please provide a credible reference to the app crashing WinNT in this
incident. Nothing you have offered shows WinNT itself had crashed.
> Need more references? Let's start with some quotes of Government
> officials from the original GCN article. Note GCN has NOT refuted
> in any way the claims of these Government officials:
> http://www.gcn.com/archives/gcn/1998/july13/cov2.htm
>
> "But according to DiGiorgio, who in an interview said
> he has serviced automated control systems on Navy ships
> for the past 26 years, the NT operating system is the
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> source of the Yorktowns computer problems."
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You are quoting the original GCN article that GCN later disconfirmed:
Early speculation was that the problem lay in the Navys use of
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 ... But it turns out the problem was bad
software design ...
DiGiorgio's statements are debatable. His description of the incident does
not match those who were there. He talks in general about WinNT but when
he refers to the actual incident he describes an application failure NOT
an OS failure as the problem that stopped the computers, "stopping" in the
sense that they could not perform their intended role:
If you understand computers, you know that a computer normally
is immune to the character of the data it processes, he wrote
in the June U.S. Naval Institutes Proceedings Magazine. Your
$2.95 calculator, for example, gives you a zero when you try
to divide a number by zero, and does not stop executing the
next set of instructions. It seems that the computers on the
Yorktown were not designed to tolerate such a simple failure.
WinNT does not stop executing when an app divides by zero, WinNT
terminates the app, the app stops executing. DiGiorgio is describing an
application not the OS.
> "Ron Redman, deputy technical director of the Fleet Introduction
> Division of the Aegis Program Executive Office, said there
> have been numerous software failures associated with NT
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> aboard the Yorktown."
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> "Refining that is an ongoing process", Redman said. Unix is a
> better system for control of equipment and machinery, whereas
> NT is a better system for the transfer of information and data.
> NT has never been fully refined and there are times when we
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> have had shutdowns that resulted from NT.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Is he refering to the WinNT operating system specifically or the switch
from a UNIX environment to a WinNT environment? These statements are
unclear and from reading the entire article as a whole and in context it
seems to refer to the switch to a WinNT environment. For example the above
individual also says:
If we used Unix, we would have a system that has less of a
tendency to go down.
So either we have Unix crashing also or these people are speaking of an
entire system not one specific component of the system which is the OS.
> "The Yorktown has been towed into port several times because of
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> the systems failures, he said."
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Reinforces my argument above, a system problem, not an OS problem. A
system has many components of which an OS is merely one.
> "Because of politics, some things are being forced on
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> us that without political pressure we might not do,
> like Windows NT," Redman said.
> ^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Because of politics, Anthony, that's why the chief engineer and the
> software developer are lying. Exactly what time of the day yesterday
> were you born??
Politics forced a shift from Unix to WinNT, OK, but that's a different
issue. You have offered no evidence that they are lying. Oh and don't
forget the news agency, you accuse them as well. Hell you can't prove they
are lying because you still have yet to show that WinNT itself crashed
rather than a system built around WinNT stopped functioning. You ask us to
accept your second generation guesses against the engineer, the developer,
and the news agency.
Also you are extremely naive if you don't think there is politics at work
on both sides here.
> Wired Magazine:
> http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,13987,00.html
>
> "Sunk by Windows NT"
>
> "crashing the entire network and causing the ship to lose control
> of its propulsion system"
>
> '"The simple root of the problem on Yorktown was that politics
> were played in the assigning of the contract -- there was
> not a discussion of engineers, it was just a very small
> group of people pitching for it," said an engineer close to the
> project, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.'
Again, no one says the OS crashed, rather a system built around an OS
crashed. This article also seems related to the original GCN article which
contained the early speculation about WinNT which the authors later
disconfirmed.
These articles are throwing around words pretty losely and you making big
assumptions.
> No semantic's please:
> http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~steve/Spiro/stories/node75.html
>
> "crash all Lan Consoles and miniature remote terminal units"
Again, no one says the OS crashed, rather a system built around an OS
crashed. From this very article:
the Yorktown suffered a systems failure during maneuvers off the
coast of Cape Charles, VA., apparently as a result of the failure
to prevent a divide by zero in a Windows NT application
> And from your own reference:
> http://www.sciam.com/1998/1198issue/1198techbus2.html
>
> "A major computer crash...."
Again, no one said the OS crashed. Again, words being tossed about rather
loosely.
> "some insiders groused that political pressures
> had forced the Microsoft operating system onto the ship"
OK.
> And what do you do when an NT system crashes??
> http://jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/Yorktown.html
>
> "out of service for half an hour or so while the
> NT system was restarted"
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
System, not OS, see earlier arguments. In addition Pournelle's comments on
DiGiorgio's original article contradict your assumptions about WinNT
crashing:
DiGiorgio's point was not that the Yorktown OS is wrong,
but that NavSea doesn't really understand what it is doing.
Again, we see the system is the problem not the OS itself. A bad system
can be built around Unix as well.
> "NT seems to have moved far too much of itself out of the
> totally protected areas in into areas where applications
> can mess things up"
You greatly distort things by taking the above out of context.
The accurate quote:
Serious indeed. Division by zero isn't precisely a new problem.
NT seems to have moved far too much of itself out of the totally
protected areas in into areas where applications can mess things up.
The writer is obviously under the mistaken impression that divide by zero
takes WinNT down. This is known to be false.
> "an NT system blew up"
System, not OS, see earlier arguments, and again you greatly distort
things. This is a reader's general characterization of the incident.
This same reader starts his email with:
I don't know a lot about the specific incident.
This is what you consider evidence that WinNT crashed, an offhand comment
by someone who starts off admitting they don't really know a lot about
what happened? Please compare this standard of evidence with what you use
against the people who were actually there.
Also in context this person's email has a much different tone:
Now, getting your engineering system's panties in a knot and having to
be towed back home is embarrassing, but hardly the end of the world,
especially when your charter is to go out there and try your best to
break your best ideas to see if they hold up.
I know that a lot of the interest in this specific incident is because
an NT system blew up and there are people who take great joy reading
about NT systems blowing up. I can guess what's behind that, of course,
and I certainly don't need to take up your time with that.
For me, the "smart ship" program is one of the most exciting things
we're doing today. It is an honest effort to get the Admirals and the
bureaucrats out of the way and let a crew and some engineers prove they
really do know how to make it work better. It looks to me like they're
on to something, even if not everything they do works as they would
like.
Again, it seems that politics comes in both pro and anti flavors.
> It seems theirs alot more press out there suggesting NT crashed
> despite the attempted cover up by the Navy Engineers you so blindly
> believe.
The press is interested getting readers not providing accurate
information. And you have yet to offer something showing that WinNT
crashed. All you shown are reports of a "terminals" crashing or a
"systems" failing.
>>Talk to the designers. The console is just a computer running an
>>application. I believe that part of the design is that control does not
>>have to occur at a particular console, merely at one of the many spread
>>around the ship. Manual controls are probably elsewhere, say the engine
>>room.
>
> With years of experience in embedded control systems design and
> development I can tell you IMHO it it totally unreasonable to make
> critical equipment controls entirely dependent on "smart system" using
> an external database, without any other capability whatsoever to
> intervene and command the equipment. Simply put, it's not even an OS
> issue ...
You are preaching to the choir here, I have worked on real-time
fault-tolerant embedded systems. No one has said such a design
is a good one. My arguments have always been that the OS is irrelevant.
That if Unix had been used with such naive server and client applications
the ship would have still been dead in the water. That the OS was
irrelevant and that attempting to blame things on WinNT is erroneous.
I suppose I could add that there seems to be a political element to
blaming WinNT. :-)
> ... If you want a system to be the most reliable, you have to
> expect components to fail and be ready for it, no matter what
> OS/hardware you use. Othewise, it's not a "smart" system at
> all. Hell...even the fscking controls for air conditioning systems at
> shopping malls have some sort of manual overide. This is why I believe
> the Navy is hiding something from the public.
Where are you getting this notion that there are no manual controls?
The fact that there are these terminals spread around the ship and that
they want to use any one of these to control equipment does not mean
there are no manual controls. In fact you need to read your own citations
more carefully. They refer to captains locking the crew out of the engine
room during automated runs, no need to do so if there are no controls
in there.
Tony
==================
Tony Tribelli
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Unix user 10yrs + says Linux is bollocks
Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2000 03:53:25 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
trem <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> This is my second PC that I can't get
> Linux to work on. This time cos
> I've got a UDMA66 controller. This
> doesn't trouble Mickeysoft. Win98
> is working fine, but I work with
> Unix so I need Unix at home.
comp.os.linux.advocacy isnt' the best place to post a request for
help. I could suggest linux.redhat.install, comp.os.linux.setup,
and several others.
Clipped from another source:
Hello,
Tuesday, August 01, 2000, 19:05:22 zulu, Ramesh wrote:
RM> I ran into the UATA66 disk problem with both RedHat 6.1
RM> and 6.2. Finally gave up and installed Mandrake Linux 7.0.
RM> Didn't have any problems with UATA66 disk or controller.
RM> Ramesh
same here: Mandrake (and FreeBSD) do that out of the box
Rex> As noted elsewhere and SuSE, Mandake 7.0 and SuSE
Rex> handle Ultra66 pretty well.
I recently built a machine for my kids with Ultra66 and installed
Mandrake from the start. I had to look to find the problem. Red
Hat will likely integrate this into it's next release.
> Linux is frustrating the shit out of me.
I hope you are using commercial distributions, and asking for
the help you've paid for. In most cases, the distributors can
help you fix your problem in a few minutes. I've ended an hour
of "head-bashing" with a 5 minute phone call to the distributor
support provider. Mandrake is supported by LinuxCare. They are
very good.
--
Rex Ballard - I/T Architect, MIS Director
Linux Advocate, Internet Pioneer
http://www.open4success.com
Linux - 42 million satisfied users worldwide
and growing at over 5%/month! (recalibrated 8/2/00)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: "Slava Pestov" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux or Windows 2000 ????
Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2000 14:00:24 +1000
In article <8mcnt6$ego$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> I have heard a lot of things about Linux.
Not all of them true, as this post indicates.
> I'm running happily W2K and now I'd like to know a valid reason for
> switching from Windows 2000 to Linux? Why? What advantage does the
> person gain running Linux? Can some of you qeniuses tell me ???
Better hardware support, uses less resources, faster, more customizable,
has a lot of nifty software.
> Because Linux is a stable ?? Yes, I believe that, but so is W2K.
It is more stable than W2k.
> It costs less, yes it's true. But I'm only buying W2K once, and am all
> set for at least 5 years if not more.
Are you suggesting that MS will not upgrade the OS for the next 5 years?
That's another reason to switch to Linux.
> Besided, time is money. I will
> lose more money by screwing around with a new system that I don't even
> know and that may not even support the hardware that Windwows does.
Of course learning a new system takes time, be it Windows, or Linux, or
MacOS. It all depends on if the effort pays off.
> What software am I going to run on it ???
Don't you know?
> All the world class software is written for Windows.
"world class"? What the hell is that supposed to mean? There is a lot
of high quality software for Linux.
> Hardly anything is ported to Linux.
Irrelevant, given that there is a large number of Linux- and Unix-native
applications out there, that do not need to be "ported".
> I'm a Windows developer, why should I spend 2 years of my life learning
> how to program a new ssytem, that may eventually die anyway ???
It doesn't take two years to learn to program on a new OS. And Windows
is just as likely to die as Linux.
> I can create a great application using Visual Basic or Visual C++ in a
> matter of few days.
Liar.
> I'm not sure if that's posible in Linux.
It isn't possible in Windows either.
> I haven't heard about any Visual development envir. for Linux ...
Glade, the upcoming Kylix, the Java IDEs...
> The only way they (companies) can defeat Microsoft is with the help of
> mom - Government.
Irrelevant, since Linux is not controlled by a company.
> That's the only way they can do it, they can't succeed
> on the merit alone. Sun Microsystems goes even so far as to get involved
> European Union. Now that's real abuse of government power. Here is the
> clear indication who is THE LOSER.
Sun has nothing to do with Linux.
> I can't wait to see your replies
Why not?
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Loren Petrich)
Crossposted-To:
misc.legal,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.libertarian,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,soc.singles
Subject: Re: AARON KULKIS...USENET SPAMMER, LIAR, AND THUG
Date: 5 Aug 2000 04:07:59 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Aaron R. Kulkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Donovan Rebbechi wrote:
>1. you have no right to Education.
>2. You have no right to health care.
>3. You have no right to law enforcement...BUT...the law
> enforcement agencies plus courts and jails are
> constitutionally mandated. And as long as the
> government is not kidnapping people to make them
> prison guards, police officers, or judges, then
> nobody's rights are violated here.
Thus, someone who mugs Mr. Kulkis is entitled to walk, on the
ground that nobody is entitled to protection against crime.
>Absolutely not. EVERYBODY is free to choose a path of self
>sufficiency. Those who choose to lollygag around at my expense
>are worthy of contempt, not compassion.
However, outside circumstances can interfere.
>True. It's still a lousy system, though. The reason is that
>it builds a great-affinity with freeloaders of all wealth levels.
The Kennedys and the Rockefellers Mr. Kulkis counts as
freeloaders because they had inherited their wealth -- the same Mr.
Kulkis who bleats about inheritance taxes.
>> (*) Most of the schools in Europe are better than most of the private
>> schools in the US.
>That's because they don't have a core of communist-agitating
>adherents who are doing anything possible to cause their
>societies to collapse from within. Conversely, there is a
>very active and aggresive campaign to cause US society to
>collapse from within by sabotaging the education system at
>all levels.
From a grove of birch trees it came.
I've yet to see any explicit evidence for such a conspiracy, let
alone a reasonable explanation for why it does not exist in Europe. In
fact, Europe would likely be a higher priority for the SU than the US.
Consider the dreaded fate of "Finlandization", in which Western European
nations would become extremely afraid of displeasing the SU.
>Name one Kennedy or Rockefeller who isn't a parasite.
They are no more parasitic than any other inheritor of old money.
--
Loren Petrich Happiness is a fast Macintosh
[EMAIL PROTECTED] And a fast train
My home page: http://www.petrich.com/home.html
------------------------------
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