On Mon, Aug 26, 2002 at 07:34:30AM +0530, Kingsly John poked the keyboard with his 
fingers and composed:
> +++ Sayamindu Dasgupta [2002-08-25 14:05:36]:
> 
> > On Sat, Aug 24, 2002 at 12:19:04AM +0530, Kingsly John poked the keyboard with a 
>stick and composed:
> 
> I dunno about the others but I use my fingers! ;-)
> 
> > basically, there *are* *nix drivers for winmodems, but the main problem 
> > of these drivers are that they are "non free" (as in free speech)
> > these drivers cause more harm than good IMO, and should be avoided
> > one cannot help if one already has a winmodem, but when buying a new
> > one, a winmodem is best avoided, simply because they do not have
> > non-free drivers
> 
> Does it really matter ?? Would you use M$FT products if they let you look at
> the code ??(for a price)
> 
> Have you actually gone through the source code of every single software that
> you use ??

no, but when a company provides closed drivers for GNU/Linux and try to
make people think that what they are doing is absolutely right, they are
best avoided


> 
> <linus>
>    And I personally refuse to use inferior tools because of ideology. In
>    fact, I will go as far as saying that making excuses for bad tools
>    due to ideology is _stupid_, and people who do that think with their
>    gonads, not their brains. 
> </linus>

<RMS>
Proprietary drivers are not a solution in the Free World.  Until these
modems have free drivers, we have to consider them *unsupported* by
the free GNU/Linux operating system.

The misunderstanding enters in the most basic question of all: what
are we trying to achieve here?  In fact, why did we develop the GNU
system?  So people can replace their proprietary software with free
software.  However, people who don't know this often think that the
point of the system is merely to please users and be successful.  Most
software projects are only intended to do a technical job; it's easy
to think that the GNU system also has no purpose higher than that.
The organizations that tell you that the system is Linux often don't
tell you about the purpose for which we developed it.

Innocent though the misunderstanding is, it has grave consequences.
This project tells the public that non-free drivers are ok, which is
exactly the opposite of what we need to tell them.  We need to teach
people to boycott companies that won't make free drivers, so that
companies such as PCTel will have to start providing free drivers, not
proprietary binaries.  Encouraging people to use non-free drivers is
not going to get us there.  It weakens the campaign that we need to
strengthen if we are to win our freedom.
</RMS>

> Ok,, I wouldn't say that winmodems are superior... but with CPU's clocking 
> Ghz... there isn't much of a difference in performance and as I had noted 
> earlier.. the Lucent winmodem worked better than my external modem on my 
> parents comp.
>

no, the problem also lies in quality
the drivers provided by the manufacturers have a lot of serious
problems. 
if they are GPLed, chances are that some hacker will be able to solve
the problems
in doze' winmodems usually work better due to low latency


> > and regarding the surge thing, i have seen some UPS with "surge
> > protection" for modems - dunno what they do 
> 
> I'm talking about surges through the phoneline... do these UPSs have
> RJ-11(???) jacks ?

the manuals say that the modems "are protected from surges in the phone line"
so, i guess that means they have such cable - did not investigate much

> 
> Kingsly
> -- 
> 


--
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