Linux-Misc Digest #2, Volume #20 Fri, 30 Apr 99 21:13:15 EDT
Contents:
Re: GNU reeks of Communism (Don Bashford)
"locale not supported"-- what does it mean (Bill Unruh)
Re: IP masquarade & IP forwarding (Bill Unruh)
Re: GNU reeks of Communism (returning to %252522GNU Communism%252522) (Tesla Coil)
Re: Help choosing distribution (Chris Sherlock)
Re: GNU reeks of Communism (returning to %252522GNU Communism%252522) (Christopher
B. Browne)
Re: Open source on one CD (brian moore)
Re: Windows NT vs. Linux testing by mindcraft (brian moore)
Re: GNU reeks of Communism (returning to %252522GNU Communism%252522) (Craig Dowell)
FDisk help please (John Garrison)
Re: GNU reeks of Communism (returning to %252522GNU Communism%252522) (bob@nospam)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Don Bashford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.linux.advocacy,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: GNU reeks of Communism
Date: 30 Apr 1999 01:36:06 -0700
Jim Brooks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> GNU reeks of Commumism. I'll tell you why:
[ .... ]
> P.S. This is intended as humor (and a troll) ;-)
This is dead serious, and is intended as a provocation >:(
Although your reasons why are ridiculous, you are right that GNU is
communist. And there's something even worse: the writing of
software is an activity with very strong instrinsic communist
tendencies.
I'll tell you why, but first it's necessarty to say what
capitalism is (and isn't), and how that relates to communism.
The technological setting in which capitalism tends to develop is one
in which the methods of production require bringing together a lot of
labor in a coordinated effort to produce something, and the physicial
means of production are necessarily centralized. In other words, the
factory system of production.
Capitalism is charactarized by (1) private ownership of the means of
production (by the "capitalists"); (2) the use, by the capitalists, of
wage labor to work up inputs into products, using said means of
production; and (3) a market in which the captilists buy inputs,
including labor, and sell ouputs. Note that in this arrangement,
workers do not, at any point, own the materials they work up, the
tools they use, or the products they make. The worker does not so
much buy and sell commodities so much as he/she *is* a commodity; at
work he must do as he is told, so he cannot even be said to sell a
particular service, he just sells his general ability to work. The
large factory owned by a very wealthy businessperson employing
thousands of much less wealthy workers is the quintessential capatilist
situation.
On the other hand, the one-person shop is not a capitalist situation
although a may be a "market" situation. It lacks the key
characteristic of using wage labor to do the work and the separation
of ownership and labor. Instead, the owner/worker buys the inputs,
thus owning them, owns the tools used to make products, and continues
to own the products until the moment of sale. The old-fashioned shoe
maker would be an example. A one-person service business is also not
capitalistic, since the owner/worker remains his/her own boss, and
typically owns any tools used. These non-capitalist modes of
productin pre-date capitalism and are limited to small scales of
production. That is why the technological transition to factory
methods was coupled to the socio-economic transition to capitalism.
The term "capitalism" loses its power to describe the distinctiveness
between the modern era and early times if this sort of distinction is
not made.
Even in a society, such as ours, that is dominated by the capitalist
mode, there can be productive activities in non-capitalist modes (very
small businesses) or even non-market modes (e.g. cooking one's own meals,
caring for one's own children at home).
Communism, in its modern sense (as opposed to medieval communisms like
the Annabaptist rebellion in Muenster), centers on the idea that the
sort of large scale production currently carried out in the capitalist
mode, should instead be carried out in some way that does not place
workers in such a powerless position, and is more egalitarian in the
distribution of work to do, and products to enjoy. To this end,
communists typically call for the abolition of "capitalist private
property" (i.e. private ownership of the larger scale means of
production) and "wage slavery" (i.e. a wage labor market). The
organization of labor in the factory is to be done on some democratic
basis. On the distribution questions, they are even more hazy,
falling back on slogans like, "from each according to his ability to
each according to his needs."
Most Marxist-type communists believe that some sort of State control
is needed to take posession of factories, and organize production and
distribution, hopefully in a humane, democratic and egalitarian
way. (Hah hah!) They hope that eventually, the State will "wither
away". These might be called, the "state communists" But there are
other communists who reject the involvement of the State in
production, and even want to abolish the state altogether. They
believe the the workers are capable of spontaneously organizing
themselves and taking charge of production. These are the "anarchist
communists". As you might guess by now, GNU is anarchist communist.
Now think about software writing. There is the one-person shop,
owning a low-cost PC as the "means of production", but this is no more
capitalistic that a medieval shoemaker or tinker who owns his own
workbench and hammer. There is also the truly capitalistic
situation of the big software company, employing thousands of
programmers with some fabulously wealthy software capitalist lording
over them all. (You know who.)
But wait a minute. The big software company doesn't really involve a
technology in which the means of production is necessarily
centralized. And what exactly is the "means of production" that is to
be privately owned? It's not really the computers, it's the software.
Technologically a body of software, quite unlike an auto factory, can
be "possessed" and used by an infinite number of people without
diminishing its *technical* utility to anyone else. Software can be
"owned" in a meaningful sense only because of the peculiar (and fairly
recent) legal institution of "intellectual property." The GNU
philosphy, quite explicitly, calls for the abolition of copyright for
software, and thus, the abolition of "capitalist private property" in
the software field. That really is communist ... communist with
respect to software.
By the way, we are already a communist society with respect to
science, because scientific knowledge and ideas are generally not
patentable. But back to the subject at hand. I wanted to convince
you that software writing has intrinsic communist tendencies.
Although the big software company is indeed in the capitalist mode, it
is something of a forced fit, requiring special props from the law.
It is much easier for a programmer to take home a big chunk source
code than for a steelworker to take home a smelter. As the saying
goes, "information wants to be free." The technological tendency of
software to be to abolish anyone's "ownership" over it tends toward
the abolition of this form of capitalist privave property, with or
without a GNU movement. What's worse, the intellectual activity of
software writing seems to impel programmers (at least the better ones
who take pride in their code) to share bits of software with their
colleagues. Worse still, this feeling of collegiality seems not to be
bounded by company or even national borders. Horrors!
The phenominal technical success of free software has demonstrated
that programmers can spontaneously organize themselves to take on
projects that no one person could do. Thus, the anarchist communist
mode is a demonstrated success for software production. Distribution
can be just as anarchic, without any problems. This mode seems to be
a natural fit for software writing, just as the capitalist mode was a
natural fit for factory production.
So you see, GNU anarchist communism gonna get yo mama.
-Don
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bill Unruh)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
Subject: "locale not supported"-- what does it mean
Date: 30 Apr 1999 23:38:34 GMT
I have suddenly gotten the following error message from my system (I believe that I
recently upgraded
XFree, together with all of the other redhat upgrades for 5.1)
Warning: locale not supported by C library, locale unchanged
This comes when I run xterm from the command line.
What does this error mean, and how can I get rid of it?
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bill Unruh)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: IP masquarade & IP forwarding
Date: 30 Apr 1999 23:46:23 GMT
In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Matthew
Bafford) writes:
>On Fri, 30 Apr 1999 12:27:43 +0000, Bruce <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>lucked upon a computer, and thus typed in the following:
>[snip] what looks like (on quick examination) to be the right steps,
>except for the missing:
> echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
On RedHat, change the line in /etc/sysconfig/network to
FORWARD_IPV4="yes"
so that next time you boot up yo8u do not need to enter that in by hand.
------------------------------
From: Tesla Coil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.linux.advocacy,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: GNU reeks of Communism (returning to %252522GNU Communism%252522)
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 18:00:36 -0500
On 30 Apr 1999, Peter Seebach wrote:
> GNU software has a *HUGE* technological advantage over
> closed-source software; this has nothing to do with "capitalism"
> - we simply outnumber them.
That a closed-source software company has only so much capital
with which to employ developers who have access to that source
has nothing to do with capitalism? The absence of that limit is
why "we simply outnumber them."
------------------------------
From: Chris Sherlock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Help choosing distribution
Date: Sat, 01 May 1999 05:36:58 +1000
jik- wrote:
>
> Des Herriott wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, 19 Apr 1999 03:07:25 -0700, jik- <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > Well, why install all the extra crap if you don't want to use it?
> > > Besides, both RedHat and Debian use that idiotic SysV style (or
> > > whatever) rc setup with those insideous start/stop scripts which are 10
> > > times slower then simple runlevel files like Slackware has.
> >
> > Oh, please.
> >
> > The SysV method is better. Period. One script per service is just so
> > much saner than lumping everything in one file.
>
> First off, I know of no init setup that "lumps everything into one
> file".
>
> It makes adding
> > services easy,
>
> How so? You have to come up with a new script instead of simply adding
> an entry in the apropriate location.
>
> and it makes removing services easy.
>
> What is so hard about adding a # to the line you want to not do
> anything? Unless your using a SySV runlevel editor, you WILL need to
> open your text editor and edit a file.
>
> It makes
> > programmatic management of services easy and scriptable, and it makes
> > interactive services management easy. Take a look at chkconfig,
> > tksysv, kdesysv, for example, and tell me I'm wrong.
>
> Your wrong, I tried those interfaces,...sure I can shut services off and
> turn them back on, but can I add a new one that never existed before?
> No.
> >
> > 10 times slower? When you can supply some empirical data to support
> > that, I'll agree that your claim is not just pure hyperbole.
>
> Well, I can sit and watch the thing slowly boot,...10x maybe not, but
> definately NOTICABLE slower....I for one do not need any "empirical
> data" to support this claim as I can simply use my head and judge.
> Hmmm...look it is taking at least twice as long to boot this time now
> that I am using this SySV init....lets see if one of the other distros
> is better...oops nope they are not....not too hard to simply judge by
> watching. Slackware has the only competent init setup as far as I am
> conserned.
> >
> > Insidious? Explain what you mean by that, or is that just empty
> > rhetoric, as I strongly suspect?
>
> As in spagetti code scripts scattered to the ends of the earth. Instead
> of having one file of related services you now have 20 all of which are
> entirely unnecisary.
Oh come on now! That's like saying all configuration data should be in
the one repository... hang on, that's how Windoze does things. Silly me.
Chris S.
[deletia]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christopher B. Browne)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.linux.advocacy,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: GNU reeks of Communism (returning to %252522GNU Communism%252522)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 22:24:03 GMT
On 30 Apr 1999 13:39:06 -0700, bob@nospam <bob@nospam> posted:
>MS software is based on capitalism ideas (make software to make money
>only).
Apparently some people need to refresh their understanding of the
definition of capitalism.
One could argue that Microsoft's software production is based on
capitalism in that they treat the software as a "good" whose
distribution is controlled by the owners of Microsoft's capital. That
goes along with one of the major aspects of the definition of capitalism.
One could *counterargue* that Microsoft acts in ways that reject the
notion of there being "free" trade on an open market for computer
software, and is thus the antithesis of a capitalistic organization.
"Make software to make money" is a principle that would be more
closely associated with one of the following concepts:
- Mercantilism
- Trade
- Greed
--
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
-- Henry Spencer <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - "What have you contributed to free software today?..."
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (brian moore)
Subject: Re: Open source on one CD
Date: 30 Apr 1999 23:50:46 GMT
On Fri, 30 Apr 1999 17:00:23 -0600,
GNUware <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> We're looking to promote Linux and related open-source software in an
> easy-to-use format. I'm curious to see what sort of response people might
> have to a CD that held hundreds of programs for Linux. Rather than trying
> to access all the software from off the Internet, we've designed a CD
> containing a large variety of free Linux programs that makes installation
> quick and easy. It comes with a handy interface for browsing the contents
> via a javascript-enabled browser.
> We're looking to make this product accessible to customers with slow
> connections and who would like to try out Linux. We expect something
> like this to be of great assistance to customers overseas who have slow
> connections to the Internet but are eager to try out all the lastest
> Linux software.
> The site is rather new still, but we're hoping to improve. We are also
> planning in the near future on offering CDs containing the same software
> only in rpm and deb format.
> You can check out the CD's content and peruse the site at:
> http://www.gnuware.com/
> Let me know what you think.
Well, in short: it's been done.
Perhaps not in that format (with a java client), but instead with glint
or whatever. But such things certainly exist. RH, for one, sells
their "Power Tools", a collection of stuff for which there wasn't enough
room on the regular CD's. Bunches of places sell CD's full of Metalab
and other sites files.
Does that mean it's a bad thing? Nope: you may have an easier/prettier
installer which will help sales, or a better ability to get it into "the
channel" and onto shelves, or just better customer service and faster
delivery, or even "our cd's our fresher!".
It will mean that you'll have to keep your prices low: there's a lot of
competition in that area, and some places like Cheapbytes sell a huge
volume and thus get pretty good rates on CD duping, as well as the added
"cream" revenue from people buying books, t-shirts, stuffed penguins,
etc. You almost certainly want to sell that stuff as well, and it
should be pretty easy to add to your product line (especially the
books) without adding too much overhead.
It won't be a make-tons-o-money-overnight business, but it can certainly
make tons of money with a lot of work. (I don't think Cheapbytes, for
example, is doing bad at all: they're probably making good money, but
they're also not just waiting for the checks to pour in and do a lot of
work for their money.)
--
Brian Moore | "The Zen nature of a spammer resembles
Sysadmin, C/Perl Hacker | a cockroach, except that the cockroach
Usenet Vandal | is higher up on the evolutionary chain."
Netscum, Bane of Elves. Peter Olson, Delphi Postmaster
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (brian moore)
Crossposted-To: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Windows NT vs. Linux testing by mindcraft
Date: 30 Apr 1999 23:57:34 GMT
On 30 Apr 1999 19:27:35 -0400,
Alexander Viro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Well, duh! Some of the later boxen were able to run SunOS ;-) Not
> to mention the fact that there were Unices on 8086. Never seen a
> 80808/Z80 one, though...
Heh... I have a version of Unix ("Micronix") for the Z80.
Was pretty slick: ran on Morrow S100 machines that had a nifty CPU board
that handled the memory management and even protection. Yep, "HLT" was
a privileged instruction and could only be executed by the kernel: it
did this with some horrible hardware hackery that would see the
instruction fetch (part of the *M1 cycle if I remember S100 right) and
substitute a nop for any HLT's fetched from RAM. It added a 'HLT HLT'
instruction (two consecutive HLTs) to be a system trap, as I recall.
It was 1983 or so: ran it in 64k of RAM on a 5M ST-506 and included
Whitesmith's C.
I believe I still have a copy of it around here somewhere, though I no
longer have working hardware to run it.
The scary thing: I thought it was screaming fast then. :)
--
Brian Moore | "The Zen nature of a spammer resembles
Sysadmin, C/Perl Hacker | a cockroach, except that the cockroach
Usenet Vandal | is higher up on the evolutionary chain."
Netscum, Bane of Elves. Peter Olson, Delphi Postmaster
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Craig Dowell)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.linux.advocacy,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: GNU reeks of Communism (returning to %252522GNU Communism%252522)
Date: 30 Apr 1999 23:58:28 GMT
Prins Olivier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>Craig Dowell wrote:
>
>>In that context, your "cutting corners" is not always a bad thing. You
>>may call it cutting a corner, someone else may call it a tradeoff or
>>product definition or design decision. Unix and Linux certainly weren't
>>built without any of this. Some people just like the result of the
>>tradeoffs and design decisions made for Unix better than those made for
>>Windows; and, of course, vice versa.
>
>What do you get for your tradeoff when using Windows???...
For the vast majority of just-plain-folks out there in consumer-land,
Windows works just fine. System bundles are cheap and convenient. Windows
software is everywhere. Devices to do almost anything you could ever want
to do are available. The cousins can come over t' the house and show you
how to run the dang thing. Junior can run his encyclopedia programs and
do his homework on it. Uncle Ralph can download porno with it. Mom can
print flyers for the local housewives' club. Dad can send faxes for the
NRA. Sissy can fill her address book and schedules with imaginary dates
with imaginary suitors. They turn it on when they want to use it and then
turn it off. It works fine for them. Kindof like that Ford Escort I
mentioned in my original post. It's a convenient, relatively inexpensive
and effective solution for them.
>The only advantage i could think would be that you'd have to pay less taxes,
>because you've got to pay money for windows....
Think harder or be more open minded. There are always tradeoffs, plusses
and minuses, advantages and disadvantages for any decision. If you don't
see them you're not looking very hard, or are not being very honest with
yourself.
------------------------------
From: John Garrison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: FDisk help please
Date: Sat, 01 May 1999 00:23:06 GMT
I need to install linux. I posted earlier saying it wasn't detected my
hardware right and was told if I use fdisk and go into expert mode I can
change the drive geometry and my hard drive will show up right.
FreeBSD says my drive has 24876 cyl. 16 heads and 63 sectors. When I
use this setup in FDisk it says that partitions 1 and 2 do not end on a
cylinder boundary. How can I correctly set the geometry of my drive?
I would use FreeBSD Fdisk, but I can't figure out how to make it do
anything but display partition info, then quit.
------------------------------
From: bob@nospam
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.linux.advocacy,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: GNU reeks of Communism (returning to %252522GNU Communism%252522)
Date: 30 Apr 1999 13:39:06 -0700
In article <TlnW2.2084$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>
>>If we allow ultra-capitalistic
>>free market politics to take over, then the quality of the product
>>will suffer.
>
>This is an unfounded assertion.
>
This how do you explain that windows, the more used commercial software,
sucks by any standard, while Gnu software is much higher quality?
>In fact, Linux is a beautiful example of capitalism and free-market politics.
>It is the answer of the free market to the problem of a monopolistic vendor of
>shoddy OS's; we replace them.
huh? you are trying to have your cake and eat it too?
MS software is based on capitalism ideas (make software to make money only).
and yet, you claim this idea will produce good software, yet in the same
breath, you are saying Linux came due to need to replace "shoddy" OS's that
you just said was unfounded assertion.
Do you always proof yourself wrong in your discussions? :)
Make up your mind.
Bob
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Misc Digest
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