Linux-Advocacy Digest #628, Volume #34 Sat, 19 May 01 19:13:02 EDT
Contents:
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: Linux posts #1 TPC-H result (W2K still better) ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: Advice needed. ("Mart van de Wege")
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) (Chronos Tachyon)
Re: Microsoft - WE DELETE YOU! ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: Dell Meets Estimates ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: W2K/IIS proves itself over Linux/Tux ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: Linux posts #1 TPC-H result (W2K still better) ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: Linux Mandrake Sucks!!!! (Bob Hauck)
Re: Microsoft - WE DELETE YOU! (Bob Hauck)
Re: Linux posts #1 TPC-H result (W2K still better) (Bob Hauck)
Re: Advice needed. (Michael Vester)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <don'[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 21:40:07 +0200
"GreyCloud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> I think the SETI program is a farce! No offense to you, but I often
> wonder what good does it do them? Radio waves travel a little slower
> than the speed of light. And if the radio waves are coming from many
> million light years away I'd say it was very old news we would be
> receiving. But I doubt they will get anything from it as they advertise
> they are looking for. All I know is that the end user gets a block of
> data to crunch... do we really know what this data is? Could it be
> entirely something else?
Bah!
Get some lessons in physics first.
Radio waves and light are the same thing!
They travel at the speed of light, and unless some funky think happen, that
is the fastest thing around.
Yes, if it reached from any decent distance, then it's old news *where it
happened*, not here. Time isn't constant, it's flexible.
------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <don'[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux posts #1 TPC-H result (W2K still better)
Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 21:44:52 +0200
"Les Mikesell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:1%yN6.917$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> I don't think you've looked at PostgreSQL recently. It is too bad that
> MS and other commercial DB vendors prohibit publishing benchmarks
> that they don't control or you would probably know how well it compares.
Do you've any idea how *easy* it is to cheat in such a benchmark?
Twist one parameter, see how performance drop.
The only way you could have anything close to a fair benchmark is when each
DB company sumbit their highest results.
Something like TPC does.
------------------------------
From: "Mart van de Wege" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Advice needed.
Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 00:19:14 +0200
In article <WyyN6.612$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "David Kistner"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> 4. What programming language would you recommend to replace Visual
> Basic?
>
> Any additional advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm very very
> disillusioned with Microsoft and would like to escape to a better world
> - I' m hoping it's Linux.
>
>
>
Ok, this is the only one I can answer with some confidence: Try Python.
It is simple to learn, fully Object-Oriented, cross-platform, and it comes
with a wide range of libraries, among them some great networking classes
and DB interfaces. You can even download the Win32 extensions and access
COM objects to it, and people are already porting it to .NET, so even if
you decide not to go with Linux, you will have added another tool to your
toolbox.
Yes, I like Python. Check it out for yourself at:
http://www.python.org
HTH
Mart
--
Gimme back my steel, gimme back my nerve
Gimme back my youth for the dead man's curve
For that icy feel when you start to swerve
John Hiatt - What Do We Do Now
------------------------------
From: Chronos Tachyon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 22:23:21 GMT
On Sat 19 May 2001 05:03, Mart van de Wege wrote:
[Snip]
>
> You could look at it this way of course: if radio waves(==light) travel
> at .88c in an atmosphere, then they will travel at .88c in space as
> well, as there is no acceleration (of course assuming the radio waves
> originate from a planetary surface). I am applying simple Newtonian
> physics here, and I have a feeling that this would not be exactly right,
> but it sounds deceptively logical to me.
>
> Mart
>
Individual photons always travel exactly at c, no matter what medium they
are traversing. However, in a non-vacuum medium, the photons will be
constantly absorbed and re-emitted by the electrons of atoms that lie in
their path. This process slows the collective wave of light down. Of
course, this is just the common sense explanation and doesn't really touch
on quantum physics.
--
Chronos Tachyon
Guardian of Eristic Paraphernalia
Gatekeeper of the Region of Thud
[Reply instructions: My real domain is "echo <address> | cut -d. -f6,7"]
------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <don'[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.destroy.microsoft,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Microsoft - WE DELETE YOU!
Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 01:18:11 +0200
"Roy Culley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In article <9e655f$6k1$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> "Ayende Rahien" <don'[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >
> > "Matthew Gardiner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > news:9e5v0u$idd$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >> > > Yes, they do, or they are not code reviews.
> >> >
> >> > Wow, suddenly, reviewing code isn't a code review simply because it
> >> doesn't
> >> > review every line in a program. Do you have any idea how long it
would
> >> take
> >> > to review 35 million lines of code?
> >>
> >> Had they got it right the first time, they wouldn't need to review 35
> >> Million lines of code.
> >
> > Nice rethorics, now show me the > 15KLOC that "they got it right the
first
> > time".
> > Hell, wu-ftpd is 8KLOC, and they *still* didn't got all the bugs out.
> >
> >> Also, they would have programmed more efficiently,
> >> and it wouldn't have bloated to 35 Million lines of code vs. the 6 or
so
> >> million Solaris 8 04/01 has.
> >
> > What does Solaris comes with? Please refer to only those 6 - 8 MLOC that
you
> > talked about.
> > (BTW, can't they count? 6 to 8 is pretty big gap)
>
> What does W2K come with out of the box that Solaris doesn't? I'm eager
> to know.
DirectX, registry, COM (I know that Solaris has it, how can it compare to
Windows' COM?), DCOM, COM+ (This is equilent to J2EE system + Solaris. How
many KLOC does WebSphere has?).
Just a couple of things of the top of my head.
------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <don'[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,misc.invest.stocks
Subject: Re: Dell Meets Estimates
Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 01:19:35 +0200
"cjt & trefoil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Jon Johansan wrote:
> >
> <snip>
> > 2.. A 32-way Unisys ES7000 running the SAP Sales and Distribution
> > benchmark achieved 18,500 SD users. This compares to the best Sun result
of
> > 23,000 SD users on a 64-way E10000. The Sun E10000 is at the end of its
> > product life, while Unisys expects to further enhance the ES7000 with
900
> > MHz processors in the very near future.
> <snip>
>
> Bingo. The successor to the E10000 will be along soon, and I expect it to
> outperform the machine it replaces. So what was your point?
It isn't here yet? Windows 2002 would be here soon too, you won't hear
anyone talking about its performance, now do you?
------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <don'[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 01:24:21 +0200
"Mart van de Wege" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Gary Hallock"
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > In article
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> > "GreyCloud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> The National Bureua of Standards has measured it to be about 88% of c.
> >> It does not travel at the speed of light. Neither do electrons in a
> >> copper wire.
> >
> > Radio waves are light. The speed of light, including radio waves,
> > varies depending on the medium. However, usually when one refers to the
> > speed of light without specifying the medium, the speed of light in a
> > vacuum is assumed. The speed of radio waves in a vacuum is the same as
> > light. Perhaps the the 88% of c is the speed of radio waves in the
> > earth's atmosphere. However, since interstellor space is very close to
> > a vacuum, the speed of radio waves coming from a distant star would be
> > traveling at very close to the speed of light in a vacuum (until, of
> > course, it hits the earth's atmosphere).
> >
> > Gary
>
> You could look at it this way of course: if radio waves(==light) travel
> at .88c in an atmosphere, then they will travel at .88c in space as
> well, as there is no acceleration (of course assuming the radio waves
> originate from a planetary surface).
That is not true.
First, C (speed of light in vacuum) is the top limit of speed.
The speed of light in any medium is a different matter, there has been
experiments where "Light stopped on its tracks".
I suggest that you would ask in rec.arts.sf.science, should be able to get a
more coherent answer. My physics are in a different language, and probably
in another measurement scale as well, so I don't think that I'll be able to
explain well.
>I am applying simple Newtonian
> physics here, and I have a feeling that this would not be exactly right,
> but it sounds deceptively logical to me.
No, Newtonian physics don't apply here.
------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <don'[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: W2K/IIS proves itself over Linux/Tux
Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 01:27:48 +0200
"Les Mikesell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:HdAN6.935$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> There is that MS commercial on TV about servers that haven't been
> touched in 'days' as though that should be a surprisingly long time.
> Real OS's run for years without any attention. And they don't
> pop up dialog boxes and stop and wait like IIS 5.0 does when
> an error occurs.
What is this pop-up dialog? What does it says? Who originate it?
------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <don'[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux posts #1 TPC-H result (W2K still better)
Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 01:32:38 +0200
"Les Mikesell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:RazN6.919$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
> "Ayende Rahien" <don'[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:9e5ndl$j69$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >
> > > > > > Perl & Python from activestate.com (free). C#, VB.NET comes with
> > .NET
> > > > > > beta, and there are also other languages that you can hook
there,
> I
> > > > > > believe.
> > > > >
> > > > > Sounds better than it was, though with UNIX, you can use an
> arbitrary
> > > > > executable as the interpreter.
> > > >
> > > > You can do the same in Windows, what is your point?
> > >
> > > How do you make a .bat file interpret itself with perl and pass some
> > > arguments as it starts? Under unix, making the first line:
> > > #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> > > would make perl execute it and turn on warnings.
> >
> > I'm not sure what you meant here. Can you be clearer?
>
> Unix looks for
> #!/path/to/interpreter args_to_interpreter
> at the top of an executable file so you can control
> which shell or other interpreter parses it and force
> it to always have certain arguments. This is a
> general facility that works with any program that
> reads from stdin. Any executable file can use this
> to automatically have itself read by any other program.
> For example:
> ===
> #!/bin/cat
> test
> ===
> as an executable file would invoke /bin/cat, which simply
> copies stdin to stdout and would thus print the file contents
> to your screen (just to show that no special concepts are
> involved for the program invoked).
>
> How do you do the same in Windows?
Usually, it's not needed, because you use extentions to mark where it should
go.
I suppose you can build an interaptor that would interapt the first line
without too much trouble, is should take only couple of minutes to do it in
C.
Again, that is now how you would do it in Windows.
The usual thing to do is to register an extention and put the
\path\to\interpreter args_to_interpreter as the openner of this file.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Hauck)
Subject: Re: Linux Mandrake Sucks!!!!
Reply-To: bobh = haucks dot org
Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 22:43:55 GMT
On Sat, 19 May 2001 01:49:47 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, 18 May 2001 22:11:12 GMT, wendy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
> >I tried to install Mandrake 8.0 on my Athlon based system and it
> >virtually destroyed all of my data.
> Have you been reading How-To's for the last 6 months or so?
How clever, responding to yourself like that.
--
-| Bob Hauck
-| To Whom You Are Speaking
-| http://www.haucks.org/
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Hauck)
Crossposted-To:
alt.destroy.microsoft,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Microsoft - WE DELETE YOU!
Reply-To: bobh = haucks dot org
Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 22:43:58 GMT
On Sat, 19 May 2001 19:14:17 +0200, Roy Culley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What does W2K come with out of the box that Solaris doesn't? I'm eager
> to know.
Something called "3D Audio" (according to Goodwin), fading menus, and a
drop shadow under the mouse pointer.
--
-| Bob Hauck
-| To Whom You Are Speaking
-| http://www.haucks.org/
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Hauck)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux posts #1 TPC-H result (W2K still better)
Reply-To: bobh = haucks dot org
Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 22:43:57 GMT
On 18 May 2001 20:30:11 -0500, Jan Johanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 16 R10000s (or whatevers) CPU are certainly making more heat than 8 PIIIs
Are you sure about that? Have you looked it up? Most CPU's use much
less power than a comparable Pentium. Half as much is not uncommon.
--
-| Bob Hauck
-| To Whom You Are Speaking
-| http://www.haucks.org/
------------------------------
From: Michael Vester <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Advice needed.
Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 09:11:23 -0700
David Kistner wrote:
>
> I need advise.
>
> I am using Microsoft Frontpage 2000, Access 2000 and Visual Basic 6 to
> manage databases and develop/manage multiple database driven websites. I'm
> locked into the Microsoft world at work, but want to escape Microsoft for
> the sites I manage on my own from home. These sites are for non-profit
> groups and frankly I can't afford to keep up with Microsoft's prices for the
> web dev products.
>
> 1. I want to try Linux but am bewildered by the different Linux offerings.
> What Linux O.S. should I try?
I am a big fan of Suse. Easy install and included just about everything
you need to run a dynamic web site. Apache, PHP, mod Perl, MySQL are all
installed automatically if you wish.
>
> 2. What web tool could replace my Frontpage, or is there anything like
> this?
There are many html code generators out there. I prefer to hand code html
so I am not very familiar with them. Most of the code generators do a
crappie job. Frontpage is the worst. An html document edited a few times
by Frontpage is filled with opening and closing tags that do nothing
except consume bandwidth and disk space. Hardly an inovative feature in
the losedos world. I found that DreamWeaver to be the least objectionable
html code generator in the losedos world.
If you get into building dynamic web sites, you can use templates and code
to generate the html code. Some of my dynamic web sites do not have a
single static html document, everything is generated by scripts.
>
> 3. What database could replace my Microsoft Access 2000?
>
Any open source database will be superior to Access. Access was intended
to run on a workstation only. In a pinch, you can share Access databases
on a local area network with a few users. Even Microsoft does not
recommend using Access in a web environment. If your database needs are
mainly read only, MySQL is quite capable. If you need the extra features
found in the expensive database servers, try Postgres. Currently, I am
migrating a MySQL database over to Postgres. I need the transaction
features of Postgres. Postgres is coming very close to being a perfect
RDBMS.
> 4. What programming language would you recommend to replace Visual Basic?
>
Is Visual Basic really a programming language? The If (whatever) Then
drives me nuts. Why the "Then?" If you leave a line of code unfinished to
work on another part, you get an error. That is extremely annoying. The
IDE is mocking me, stating I am stupid because I left an unfinished line.
Often, I have ended up coding in notepad and then pasting the code into
the IDE to avoid having the IDE help me. A kind of Mr. Clippy for
programmers.
I found PHP to be a great language for building web sites. It is my
favorite and does not have a very steep learning curve. PHP was designed
from the very beginning to be a web page scripting language. With any
language in the Linux world, you are free to use any editor. I am learning
both Vi and Emacs. I am always impressed by Unix applications because they
share so many commands.
Perl is a more general purpose language. It can do dynamic web sites and
much, much more. Perl has a very steep learning curve. The way Perl
handles variables is very confusing. Data is scalar, array or hash not
char, int or boolean; the way you think a language should be. On the plus
side, Perl has a huge library of code and is widely used. Need more
speed, use mod Perl, an add on to Apache.
> Any additional advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm very very
> disillusioned with Microsoft and would like to escape to a better world - I'
> m hoping it's Linux.
Just setup any popular Linux distribution and play. That is how I managed
to leave the losedos world. Now I can make more money because I am not
competing with every paper trained MS Certified whatever working at
$12/hour. I am amazed at how many Linux/Unix opportunities there are these
days. Once again, computing is fun. Before I converted, I was not very
happy in a click and drool losedos world. I even thought of doing
something completely different career wise. I did not want to click and
drool, reboot or reinstall for $12/hour.
--
Michael Vester
A credible Linux advocate
"The avalanche has started, it is
too late for the pebbles to vote"
Kosh, Vorlon Ambassador to Babylon 5
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Advocacy Digest
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