Linux-Advocacy Digest #664, Volume #34 Mon, 21 May 01 10:13:05 EDT
Contents:
Re: Things that annoy me in Mandrake Linux (Roberto Alsina)
Re: Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 review ("~�~")
Re: Microsoft - WE DELETE YOU! ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: Linux posts #1 TPC-H result (W2K still better) ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: Microsoft - WE DELETE YOU! ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: Microsoft - WE DELETE YOU! ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) (Stephen Cornell)
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) ("Gary Hallock")
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! ("Edward Rosten")
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) (Eric Remy)
Re: Solaris 8 vs 7/2.x.... ("Donal K. Fellows")
anti-MS FUD: is there such a thing? Nope! (Donn Miller)
Re: Who to install a .gz.tar file? (Angry Bob)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Roberto Alsina)
Subject: Re: Things that annoy me in Mandrake Linux
Date: 21 May 2001 05:35:42 -0700
Mig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<9e9bfl$8pm$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> Roberto Alsina wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 20 May 2001 22:34:08 +0200, Mig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>Its about time some real Linux issues are debated here. I'll start with a
> >>few lousy things my favorite Linux distro does wrong.
> >>
> >>1) If you change the security settings to "high security" only root can
> >>play sound.
> >>Fix: chmod a+w /dev/dsp
> >>
> >>Now thats a stupid thing (or is it really??). Why is one not warned and
> >>has to waste long time on resolving this?
> >>We need a (G)UI to configure all kinds of small things like this!
> >
> > Ok, I am not using Mandrake, but when I saw similar problems,
> > the error message was something like "can not open /dev/dsp, check
> > permissions", and the GUI to fix it is the file manager ;-)
>
> Well mine was "Cannot open audio device. Another application may be using
> it" with RealPlayer. Noatun and XMMS just sat there and didnt say anything.
> It ment i had to start a browser and find the answer. No big deal but
> annoying nevertheless. I use KDE 2.1.1 and dont know if artsd has anything
> to do with the lack of messages.
Well, /dev/dsp *is* the audio device. I agree it's not quite clear.
> >>Ohhh... another thing that annoys me. Why do not all Unix editors have RE
> >>support built-in. I would feel that that is a natural feature.
> >
> > What is RE support? Just curious, since I maintain an editor.
>
> Regular Expressions - though it was a known term.
I usually see it as regexp or regex.
Anyway, the editor I maintain has it ;-)
> I would love to have that
> in quanta, Kedit, kwrite.
kwrite seems to have regular expressions. At least for searching.
Haven't checked on the others.
> Or maybe just a way to use ex commands with one
> of the above.
> Isnt there a RE lib?
Argh. ex commands? Use ex.
--
Roberto Alsina
------------------------------
From: "~�~" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 review
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 12:41:37 GMT
> > "Matthew Gardiner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > news:9e9ccl$291$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> I stand corrected. Aguements like, "Linux is more flexible" is based on a
> fact, however, "Linux is proven to be more secure" is based sole on a
> opinion. Yes, Linux can be is more secure in that if you were to shut down
> every service un required, you would less likely be hacked, however,
Windows
> is not the same, esp, with the latest IE, ActiveX, it is almost impossible
> to properly secure a Windows machine, unless you are willing to shell out
> money for a thrid party firewall.
You never seem to get the point. Or, perhaps you just choose to ignore it.
Allow me to reply in a grammatical 'style' that perhaps you can parse more
adequately.
As usual, your<sic> not stating facts, but, rather, spreading you're<sic>
brand of FUD.
Ports are controllable under win2K. Internet security is, under, control,
as, well.
ActiveX (which I don't, think, you, know, a, thing, about, any,way) is, and
has been controllable for quite some time. Given the fact, that windows is a
single, user computing paradigm, anyway, the user is left to administer the
computer, with no need to learn administration, in any event, one learns the
concepts, at least, of administration, using Linux from the get, go. This
brings attention to security issues, at the outset, of the user's
experience, not later, when it may be, too late.
You're more likely to be hacked on windows for several reasons. Oops,
forgot.
Your<sic> more likely to be hacked, on windows, for several, reasons.
An order of magnitudes more users of the OS.
An order of magnitudes more users of I.E.== a much bigger target.
The bigger the target, the bigger the bomb. Unless we're talking about
something else ...
------------------------------
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 14:33:09 +0200
"Matthew Gardiner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:9e8994$dp1$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> SCO CEO interview prior to the released of Windows 2000. Read that, then
> come back.
URL?
------------------------------
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 14:43:36 +0200
"GreyCloud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Ayende Rahien wrote:
> >
> > "GreyCloud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> >
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > Ayende Rahien wrote:
> >
> > > > 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.
> > >
> > > I have Perl for windows too as well as for Sun. Under windows the
> > > #!/bin/sh/perl line isn't needed... the file extension of .pl is all
> > > that is needed. However, the Perl binary needs to be in the execution
> > > path. Not much difference.
> >
> > No, it doesn't need to be on the execution path, only if you do stuff
like:
> > perl hello.pl
> > from the command line.
> >
> > If you registered .pl files correctly, you could do this:
> > hello.pl, and it will run the perl's binary on its own.
> > I can post an explanation on how to do this, if you are interested.
>
> No, I'm using both. I'm currently studying from O'reilleys book and
> Visual for windows.
> I use the wordpad program under windows and it works pretty good.
> Under Solaris I just use the filename to get execution.
> Thanks tho for your offer.
D/L Komodo, I didn't like it very much, but it has a good perl IDE.
------------------------------
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 14:40:29 +0200
"GreyCloud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Ayende Rahien wrote:
> > Why don't you post to rec.arts.sf.science, this is not the place to
agrue
> > about physics.
>
> True... but the argument is bascially that SETI project is a hoax. When
> you download software to your personal computer and believe it is in a
> just cause to search for ET, one can only look at the absurdities of
> this research.
Well, duh! You didn't expect it to be *easy*, now did you?
It would be very hard to find *us* over couple of hundred of light years.
About the only thing that we spill out that can be detected far enough is
long range scanners (as used in cold wars to find nuclear missile). I
understand that some of the russian ones continued operation for quite some
time.
> There are possible alternatives to long range
> communications other than radio.
Name one that is better.
> The big complaint is the data that the
> end user of SETI receives. I can't even determine if this data is
> related to the search of ET. This data could very well be a derivative
> of CARNIVORE or some other project.
You can get the SETI's source and/or algortims, can't you?
> After all, this is an unmoderated ng.
Nevertheless, it is supposed to stay on subect.
------------------------------
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 14:28:06 +0200
"GreyCloud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Ayende Rahien wrote:
> >
> > "GreyCloud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> >
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > Ayende Rahien wrote:
> >
> > > > 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.
> > >
> > > Solaris does not have a registry. COM is in there albeit in a
different
> > > way. DirectX isn't in there. I suspect that directX is another word
> > > for direct ACCESS to the video hardware.
> >
> > No, it isn't.
> > DirectX is an abstraction layer from the hardware. It allows you to
write
> > games without needing to write to a spesific hardware.
> > It can emulate missing hardware if needed, too.
>
> That is nice to know... it is only a speculation from my part. Have not
> seen any direct X in the MSDN CD-ROM set... unless its in there..!
It's there, of course.
Go to MSDN->Index, type DirectX, and you'll see a list of subjects.
DirectX 3.0 was when it started to be stable enough for use. IIRC, that was
around 96 or so.
------------------------------
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 14:32:43 +0200
"Matthew Gardiner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:9e81s6$7bi$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > 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.
>
> They support open standards. Grab a SUN box, there will be OpenGL
In NT since 3.5, in 9x since 95 OSR2.
> , Java,
Not an open standard.
> Netscape,
Netscape? Standard? That isn't even funny as a joke.
> TCP/IP
In NT & 9x too.
>, NFS and numorous other open standards compliant add on's.
> Maybe instead of Microsoft re-inventing the wheel, the invest some of
their
> super normal profits into making a more stable OS.
You mean, like 4 Billions of them?
NFS is not applicable in a PC eviroment, there has been a talk about it
recently. If you have root on *your* machine, then you can have access to
everything on the NFS mounted directory.
Don't include the GNU utilities in Solaris, just the parts that Sun wrote.
------------------------------
From: Stephen Cornell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Date: 21 May 2001 14:27:14 +0100
> "Dr S.J. Cornell" wrote:
> > Electrons are quite happy moving at (near enough) c when they are
> > moving in normal, even very small, cables; they have very little
> > choice, because at some point the propagating EM field has to satisfy
> > boundary conditions with the outside world - not an issue when you're
> > _inside_ a waveguide.
You know, I really can't believe I wrote that. This is total bollocks
- electrons' speeds in conductors are typically very slow. However,
the *charge density waves* do have to move at the same speed as the EM
waves in the air (or whatever) outside the cable, in order to satisfy
boundary conditions for travelling waves. This speed is actually
nothing to do with the speed the electrons move at, because electrons
communicate via the EM field.
Moreover, the stuff I was getting at concerning waveguides will only
be important when the wavelength is comparable to the diameter of the
cable. Since VHF usually has wavelengths measured in metres rather
than centimetres (for 100MHz transmissions, it would be about 3
metres), this effect would not be enough to drop the group velocity
down to 0.88c. However, I can believe that this effect is the major
cause of dispersion in these cables (smearing of the signal due to
differing components travelling at different speeds). It would matter
for some microwave frequencies, but I guess you don't normally
transmit those down a coax cable.
GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
> Um... that isn't what the gov. funded accelerators show. The best one
> tried to accelerate an electron to near c speed and it was noted that
> this one electron was now the size of a baseball.
Well, if you accelerate an electron to 0.88c, its kinetic energy is
approximately equal to its rest energy(*), about 0.5 MeV. You would
have to accelerate your electron over about 500000 Volts (in free
space) before you got this kind of speed, so it's clearly not an issue
for UHF Electronics.
Regarding _size_, however: CERN's Large Electron Positron Collider
used bunches of electrons and positrons accelerated to within a
fraction of a percent of c, and these were constrained within a beam
only a few centimetres across.
> Adm. Grace Hopper was one of the people I met who harped on this
> subject a lot. What I think you are getting at is the perceived
> speed in copper... sort of like pushing peas thru a straw... fifo
> style. The actual electron will never go at c or even near it.
> Like I said, the NBS says its .88c.
I really can't grasp your `passing peas through a straw' analogy, but
the velocity certainly isn't the physical speed of the electrons.
However, it isn't a property of _copper_ either - the `0.88c' figure
is (almost certainly, since it's not due to waveguide dimensions) due
to the dielectric constant of the material in the cavity. Charge
density waves can travel over the surface of a copper wire at whatever
speed they want to, provided the EM field satisfies boundary
conditions with whatever is outside the wire.
(*) [(1-(0.88)^2]^{-1/2} = 2.10..., i.e. energy is approx 2.1 m_0 c^2
--
Stephen Cornell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel/fax +44-1223-336644
University of Cambridge, Zoology Department, Downing Street, CAMBRIDGE CB2 3EJ
------------------------------
From: "Gary Hallock" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 09:26:25 +0000
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
In article
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
"GreyCloud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Of c.
>
> Radio waves are not the same as light waves.
If that were true, it would be a major upset to all of physics. Where is
the evidence? What papers have been written about it. Has there been
the proper peer review?
Gary
------------------------------
From: "Edward Rosten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 15:36:03 +0100
> Sorry to interrupt you Erik, but I've done some 6502 assemly
> programming. The instructions may *execute* in a single cycle, but the
> architecture was horribly innefficient in that it had to do all its data
> processing in memory, thus spending a lot of cycles just fetching data.
> For example LDA
> #$ff, which would load the accumulator with the value FF would actually
> take 3 cycles to complete, according to the C64 reference manual. (IIRC,
> it could have been 2 cycles, but the point stands)
IIRC, every instruction toowk 2 cycles, minimum, one to fetch the
instruction, one to execute it, giving it 0.5 bogomips for the 1MHz
version
-Ed
--
(You can't go wrong with psycho-rats.) (u98ejr)(@)(ecs.ox)(.ac.uk)
/d{def}def/f{/Times-Roman findfont s scalefont setfont}d/s{10}d/r{roll}d f 5 -1
r 230 350 moveto 0 1 179{2 1 r dup show 2 1 r 88 rotate 4 mul 0 rmoveto}for/s{15
}d f/t{240 420 moveto 0 1 3 {4 2 1 r sub -1 r show}for showpage}d pop t
------------------------------
From: Eric Remy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 09:37:50 -0400
In article
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> > The speed of light has never been measured in a vacuum!
>>
>> It has. You can also calculate the speed of light without measuring it
>> directly.
>
>Ah, but there is the rub... All light speed measurements have so far
>been done in AIR!
So I supposed that air extends all the way out to the Pioneer spacecraft?
GreyCloud, you're wrong. Completely. The speed of light in vacuum is
known to tremendous precision. If it wasn't, NASA wouldn't be able to
track spacecraft light hours away nor use radio ranging systems to
measure distances.
>In air or media like glass or water, yes ... contains photons. But in a
>vacuum???
>An experiment in space someday will answer that question.
Been there, done that. Or perhaps you think that the various detectors
we've been flying in space for 40 years aren't sensitive to detect
single photons?
Or that the detectors mounted in ultra-high-vacuum chambers that friends
of mine use can't detect single photons?
--
Eric Remy. Chemistry Learning Center Director, Virginia Tech
"I don't like (quantum mechanics), | How many errors can
and I'm sorry I ever had anything | you find in my X-Face?
to do with it."- Erwin Schrodinger |
------------------------------
From: "Donal K. Fellows" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.solaris.x86,comp.unix.solaris,staroffice.com.support.install.solaris,comp.unix.advocacy,alt.os.unix,alt.unix
Subject: Re: Solaris 8 vs 7/2.x....
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 14:58:17 +0100
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Then you might want to look into a NetApp box, instead of wasting time
> making each machine an island unto itself. Network Appliance boxes, or
> even the cheaper Sun Cobalt boxes, can give NFS access time of ~5ms!
>
> There's a reason for filesystems like NFS.
Doesn't mean SPIT when the network is saturated, something which happens
embarrasingly often despite the distributed nature of our local network
(keeping most traffic off most of our internal network links.) But then
we're much bigger than most commercial installations, and the whole
institution's networking must be an even bigger nightmare (though I
suppose they won't be stuck with grotty old FDDI as a background
infrastructure; I've not checked for several months...)
The problem is not the server, especially given that most common files
(/usr, /opt, etc.) are really served by sub-servers, and not the main
one (which is reserved for /home and, IIRC, mailboxes) so replacing it
with NetApp boxes wouldn't make much difference. Getting optic fibre
to all of our desktops would be better, but much more expensive. :^(
Donal.
--
Donal K. Fellows http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- Actually, come to think of it, I don't think your opponent, your audience,
or the metropolitan Tokyo area would be in much better shape.
-- Jeff Huo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 10:03:39 -0400
From: Donn Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: anti-MS FUD: is there such a thing? Nope!
Don't you think it's a little ridiculous to call anti-MS crusades
"FUD"? I mean, Microsoft is a company with endless financial resources,
and Linux is clearly the underdog. It's like hurling pebbles against a
giant. OTOH, anti-Linux propagandists are the ones whose FUD hurts the
most, because Linux is a free operating system, is maintained (mostly)
by volunteers working in their spare time, and has a very weak hold on
the desktop market. Furthermore, I have turned down a lot of jobs that
involved MS products, because of my belief in Linux, unix, and open
source in general. MS by far so extremely dominant, why would MS
supporters even bother to call anti_MS crusades "FUD"? I mean, if MS is
so dominant, they have such a stronghold on the desktop market, and have
such huge monetary wealth, and furthermore, if they are such a great
company with supposedly high-quality products, then would there be such
a thing as anti-MS FUD? I say it's impossible.
Or, is MS a company built on a house of straws, ready to be toppled by
far superior operating systems for the money, i.e., Linux, BSD, and
unix? I sat the latter, and MS advocates are scared out of their wits
that their cute wittle precious MS operating systems are about to be
toppled by a "hacker OS" written by "geeks in their parents' basements."
The irony of this is that anti-Linux propagandists (such as UberDork and
Penis Badlose) could very well be the ones hurling pebbles at a towering
giant.
====== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News ======
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------------------------------
From: Angry Bob <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
linux.redhat.misc,comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.redhat,comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Who to install a .gz.tar file?
Date: 21 May 2001 14:01:18 GMT
What would you like to read? [comp.os.linux.setup or *?]
This is a Mladen Gogala <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> scroll! it says:
> Make sure that you do not burn copyrighted music to your CDs as it is
> bad for your soul and for the recording industry profits.
When you're downloading mp3z, you're downloading communism!
--
AngryBob Systems Consultant - http://www.trellisinc.com
"It is ridiculous claiming that video games influence children. For
instance, if Pac-man affected kids born in the eighties, we should
by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms
and eat pills while listening to monotonous electronic music."
-- Joachim Lous
------------------------------
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