NT file usage is more complicated than on UNIX
geonik
<quote>
In an experiment to see if Windows NT file usage was appreciably
different from UNIX file usage, Vogels made measurements on files at
Cornell University (Vogels, 1999). He observed that NT file usage is
more complicated than on UNIX. He wrote:
/When we type a few characters in the notepad text editor, saving this
to a file will trigger 26 system calls, including 3 failed open
attempts, 1 file overwrite and 4 additional open and close sequences./
</quote>
No comment.
Kelsey Bjarnason
Does notepad at least make backup copies of the previously saved
version? I don't recall. If it did, one could accept the above as
almost sensible. If not, well...
Fingel
--
3A:29
Tony Manco
> Does notepad at least make backup copies of the previously saved
> version? I don't recall. If it did, one could accept the above as
> almost sensible. If not, well...
AFAIK, no...
--
Firefox 3.0.4 .::. Thunderbird: 2.0.0.17.::. Ubuntu 8.10
chrisv
>On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:37:26 +0200, geonik wrote:
>
>> A.S. Tanenbaum "Modern Operating Systems" 2nd edition <quote>
>> In an experiment to see if Windows NT file usage was appreciably
>> different from UNIX file usage, Vogels made measurements on files at
>> Cornell University (Vogels, 1999). He observed that NT file usage is
>> more complicated than on UNIX. He wrote: /When we type a few characters
>> in the notepad text editor, saving this to a file will trigger 26 system
>> calls, including 3 failed open attempts, 1 file overwrite and 4
>> additional open and close sequences./ </quote>
>> No comment.
>
>Does notepad at least make backup copies of the previously saved
>version?
No.
Kelsey Bjarnason
Maybe it does have undo/redo, but that's not a file operation. Why would
it need three failed open, an overwrite and four more open/close
sequences to do a simple open/write/close operation?
Ezekiel
"geonik" <geon...@ath.forthnet.gr> wrote in message
news:1227544646.64988@athprx04...
> No comment.
Comment - Notepad triggers more file system calls. A better test would be
to monitor the low level filesystem calls and see how many calls are needed
to open/close/write/append a file.
Hadron
> Kelsey Bjarnason wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:37:26 +0200, geonik wrote:
>>
>>> A.S. Tanenbaum "Modern Operating Systems" 2nd edition <quote>
>>> In an experiment to see if Windows NT file usage was appreciably
>>> different from UNIX file usage, Vogels made measurements on files at
>>> Cornell University (Vogels, 1999). He observed that NT file usage is
>>> more complicated than on UNIX. He wrote: /When we type a few characters
>>> in the notepad text editor, saving this to a file will trigger 26 system
>>> calls, including 3 failed open attempts, 1 file overwrite and 4
>>> additional open and close sequences./ </quote>
>>> No comment.
>>
>>Does notepad at least make backup copies of the previously saved
>>version?
>
> No.
Some would say this is a good thing.
Personally I hate editors "doing their own thing". Want backups? Use a
reliable version control system.
notepad is a quick and cheerful system editor. No more. No less.
>
>>I don't recall. If it did, one could accept the above as
>>almost sensible. If not, well...
>
And lets face it, so many people us notepad that the above paragraph is
really revealing .....
Ezekiel
"Hadron" <hadro...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:ggf0if$n1b$1...@reader.motzarella.org...
> chrisv <chr...@nospam.invalid> writes:
>
>> Kelsey Bjarnason wrote:
>>
>>>On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:37:26 +0200, geonik wrote:
>>>
>>>> A.S. Tanenbaum "Modern Operating Systems" 2nd edition <quote>
>>>> In an experiment to see if Windows NT file usage was appreciably
>>>> different from UNIX file usage, Vogels made measurements on files at
>>>> Cornell University (Vogels, 1999). He observed that NT file usage is
>>>> more complicated than on UNIX. He wrote: /When we type a few
>>>> characters
>>>> in the notepad text editor, saving this to a file will trigger 26
>>>> system
>>>> calls, including 3 failed open attempts, 1 file overwrite and 4
>>>> additional open and close sequences./ </quote>
>>>> No comment.
>>>
>>>Does notepad at least make backup copies of the previously saved
>>>version?
>>
>> No.
>
> Some would say this is a good thing.
>
> Personally I hate editors "doing their own thing". Want backups? Use a
> reliable version control system.
>
> notepad is a quick and cheerful system editor. No more. No less.
To me this is a very good thing. If I'm doing serious coding then notepad
is useless. But if I need to make a quick change to file then notepad is
great because it loads so fast on even the slowest of machines. I just
checked the footprint of notepad and it's 2.7 megs of memory usage and a VM
size of 876K bytes. That is *exactly* the fast, light editor I want for
doing quick edits.
Chris Ahlstrom
this bit o' wisdom:
Does Notepad also open a number of configuration files & plugins when it
starts, like vim does?
--
What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
-- WOP, "War Games"
Homer
> Maybe it does have undo/redo, but that's not a file operation. Why
> would it need three failed open, an overwrite and four more
> open/close sequences to do a simple open/write/close operation?
I could understand the failed "open" attempts if it were trying to
execute a file by trying various paths, but this is a data file, and
surely Notepad has already been told where it's being saved, so why
would it be searching paths for that?
As for four open/write/close ops; would one of those be something to do
with a fork for the metadata in the ADS (Alternate Data Stream)?
Anyway, who cares? The only thing about Windows that isn't a mystery, is
the fact that it's a bloated; inefficient; horribly broken mess. Do we
really need to know any more than that?
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "At the time, I thought C was the most elegant language and Java
| the most practical one. That point of view lasted for maybe two
| weeks after initial exposure to Lisp." ~ Constantine Vetoshev
`----
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.25.11-60.fc8
22:49:55 up 19 days, 6:32, 5 users, load average: 0.16, 0.18, 0.18
Roy Schestowitz
Hash: SHA1
____/ Tony Manco on Monday 24 November 2008 19:21 : \____
> Kelsey Bjarnason wrote:
>> Does notepad at least make backup copies of the previously saved
>> version? I don't recall. If it did, one could accept the above as
>> almost sensible. If not, well...
>
> AFAIK, no...
notepad hasn't caught up even with vim.
- --
~~ Best of wishes
Microsoft loves competition.
"Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I’m going to fucking bury that guy, I
have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to fucking kill
Google."
--Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
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Sinister Midget
Ah. Not that bad. I'm sure they have it up to 260 system calls for
Vista, including 10 failed open attempts, 24 overwrites, 72 addtional
open and close sequences, and 121 "Oh shit!"s.
--
Outdoors for me is walking from the car to the ticket desk at the airport.
-- Frank Zappa
Homer
> notepad hasn't caught up even with vim.
Comparing notepad to vim is like comparing a candle to a nuclear
reactor. Notepad is little more than a Sticky Notes application,
without the stickiness. Wordpad is a hairs-breadth better than
notepad, but frankly there simply isn't anything in Microsoft's
portfolio that's anything close to a real text editor.
There's the WYSIWYG stuff like the all-singing Word, of course,
that's bloated up to the hilt with crap designed to make Web pages
with miles of embedded; MSO-specific garbage, if someone should be
stupid enough to want to fire up that behemoth just to edit a source file.
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "At the time, I thought C was the most elegant language and Java
| the most practical one. That point of view lasted for maybe two
| weeks after initial exposure to Lisp." ~ Constantine Vetoshev
`----
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.25.11-60.fc8
01:21:26 up 19 days, 9:04, 5 users, load average: 0.24, 0.22, 0.18
The Ghost In The Machine
If one does a 'strace notepad' on Linux (with a
WinE install), things get a little strange. I'm not
sure which of these are because of WinE and which are
because of notepad; presumably the latter is a freeware
reimplementation, but then notepad on Windows is AFAIK
little more than a dual-widget encapsulator anyway (the
second widget being a file requester dialog) -- and not
a very bright one.
First, unlike gedit, notepad simply titles it "Untitled",
even if one specifies a (non-existent) filename in the
invocation line. gedit at least remembers the filename
while presenting the user with an empty window. kedit also
remembers the filename specified on its command line.
vi[m] doesn't have a display window (although one can use
gvim), but will create a buffer with "newfile.txt [New
File]" if one presses control-G. I don't have emacs but
strongly suspect it's hyperintelligent as well in that area
(if nothing else, to keep us vi guys quiet :-) ).
It turns out gvim titles the window correctly as well,
like everyone else -- *except* notepad.
Second, notepad, since it's forgotten what the filename is,
will present one with a file requester upon save; this
file requester does a fair number of strange things --
including counting the number of entries in subdirectories.
That's going to generate a bit of I/O.
Third, I have no idea how notepad actually *opens* the
file for write, for write(6,...) is preceded by a close(6),
which itself is preceded by open("..",O_DIRECTORY) = 6!
If the file *does* exist, the fid becomes 11 instead. (God
only knows where the other 5 fids are coming from.)
Clearly something a little weird is going on here between
the close() and the write(). There is the possibility that
WinE is doing something that strace can't quite catch, such
as wineserver (somehow) passing a file descriptor down.
Wonderful engineering, yes?
Oh, and just to be even more bizarre, someone's going
to have to explain to me why
open(".", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE)
is even remotely useful -- especially when replicated 8 times.
Granted, I can understand the open() -- apparently opendir()
translates into an open() call with the O_DIRECTORY flag -- but
said flag is conspicuous here by its absence.
Go fig.
As for backup copies...Linux file editors vary in that
respect. gedit in particular annoys me with its propensity
to create files appended with the '~' (tilde) character,
but one man's annoyance may be another's salvation if he
unexpectedly deletes his source code. I'd have to look to
see if vim has a backup file option; presumably it's
settable.
All in all, for file editing, Linux just Makes More
Sense(tm). ;-) The one thing Microsoft actually does
correctly in its pedantic way -- namely, handling of CR/LF
sequences -- annoys just about everyone else, but that's
a missive for another day.
Chris Ahlstrom
this bit o' wisdom:
> Second, notepad, since it's forgotten what the filename is,
> will present one with a file requester upon save; this
> file requester does a fair number of strange things --
> including counting the number of entries in subdirectories.
> That's going to generate a bit of I/O.
>
> Third, I have no idea how notepad actually *opens* the
> file for write, for write(6,...) is preceded by a close(6),
> which itself is preceded by open("..",O_DIRECTORY) = 6!
>
> If the file *does* exist, the fid becomes 11 instead. (God
> only knows where the other 5 fids are coming from.)
>
> Clearly something a little weird is going on here between
> the close() and the write(). There is the possibility that
> WinE is doing something that strace can't quite catch, such
> as wineserver (somehow) passing a file descriptor down.
>
> Wonderful engineering, yes?
Today, I'm in a virtual machine running Win 2K, and go to open a file
in Visual Studio. I click on the bar to open up the "current directory",
which is on the hard drive. I wait for it to pop up. In the interim, the
CD-ROM starts to spin up.
Why?
Nice stuff from the company whom someone here claimed was "incapable of
sustained error".
--
I marvel at the strength of human weakness.
DFS
> The only thing about Windows that isn't a mystery,
> is the fact that it's a bloated; inefficient; horribly broken mess.
> Do we really need to know any more than that?
Of course. You need to know why the OSS "community" of freeloaders and
theft-cloneware developers can't write better software than
Microsoft/commercial developers.
Roy Schestowitz
Hash: SHA1
____/ Homer on Tuesday 25 November 2008 01:21 : \____
>
>
> Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
>
>> notepad hasn't caught up even with vim.
>
> Comparing notepad to vim is like comparing a candle to a nuclear
> reactor. Notepad is little more than a Sticky Notes application,
> without the stickiness. Wordpad is a hairs-breadth better than
> notepad, but frankly there simply isn't anything in Microsoft's
> portfolio that's anything close to a real text editor.
>
> There's the WYSIWYG stuff like the all-singing Word, of course,
> that's bloated up to the hilt with crap designed to make Web pages
> with miles of embedded; MSO-specific garbage, if someone should be
> stupid enough to want to fire up that behemoth just to edit a source file.
It's limitation /by design/. There's no digital scarcity.
- --
~~ Best of wishes
"The collaborative, massively distributed development process behind the
Internet and Open Source projects is not your enemy. It is your friend, the
source of basic research that you can turn into your next generation of
products."
--Tim O’Reilly
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DFS
This is comp.os.linux.advocacy.
Where's High Plains Hypocrite quoting the FAQ and calling you a troll and
whining that your post is off-topic?
AZ Nomad
Trying to outdo yourself for the most idiotic coment made this week?
The Ghost In The Machine
> After takin' a swig o' grog, The Ghost In The Machine belched out
> this bit o' wisdom:
>
>
>
> > Second, notepad, since it's forgotten what the filename is,
> > will present one with a file requester upon save; this
> > file requester does a fair number of strange things --
> > including counting the number of entries in subdirectories.
> > That's going to generate a bit of I/O.
>
> > Third, I have no idea how notepad actually *opens* the
> > file for write, for write(6,...) is preceded by a close(6),
> > which itself is preceded by open("..",O_DIRECTORY) = 6!
>
> > If the file *does* exist, the fid becomes 11 instead. (God
> > only knows where the other 5 fids are coming from.)
>
> > Clearly something a little weird is going on here between
> > the close() and the write(). There is the possibility that
> > WinE is doing something that strace can't quite catch, such
> > as wineserver (somehow) passing a file descriptor down.
>
> > Wonderful engineering, yes?
>
> Today, I'm in a virtual machine running Win 2K, and go to open a file
> in Visual Studio. I click on the bar to open up the "current directory",
> which is on the hard drive. I wait for it to pop up. In the interim, the
> CD-ROM starts to spin up.
I have noticed the floppy gronking at odd times in Windows,
during similar operations. It would not surprise me
that the CD-ROM needs to be read for drive enumeration,
though one also wonders why Visual Studio really needs
to enumerate the drives anyway; can't Windows tell if
someone's inserted a new CD?
Well, there might be some hardware issues there. The Amiga
in particular modified the floppy connection -- it's
not standard WD1771 [*] -- to include the ability to
indicate whether a floppy was removed or not; I'd have
to look precisely how, but the AmigaOS also checked on a
periodic basis, resulting in a characteristic "clicking"
sound if the floppy drive is empty (the click was actually
a head step, which reported a status back to the OS if a
floppy was in the drive). I don't think the PC reports a
disk is changed until *after* the controller issues a read
attempt, but would have to look; it is also possible that
a head step on the PC reports a disk change, but DOS was
just too dumb (or lazy) to check before the user issued a
"DIR/W A:".
Of course DOS had the rather odd innovation of prompting
the user for "floppy B" if the user only had one drive
unit; the OS however emulated two more or less virtual
floppies, switching between the two as needed (or requiring
the user to switch). Heaven help the user if he inserted
the wrong floppy at the wrong time if he was doing
something like COPY A:*.* B:*.* !
At least now the floppies are finally going the way of the
dino, though I still do have a bunch of 5 1/4"s and
3 1/2" running around...
I don't know what issues DOS and/or Windows has with
CD changing, though thankfully MSCDEX.EXE is long buried,
and hopefully dead. [+]
>
> Why?
>
> Nice stuff from the company whom someone here claimed was "incapable of
> sustained error".
Microsoft does have the problem of being hobbled by its
own success, perhaps. IBM didn't fare much better, though
it tried with its ill-fated Microchannel to reclaim the
market it lost to the clones; unfortunately for IBM, by the
time IBM had gotten its patents on the MCA ready to go,
PCI swamped ISA (as well as swamping the VL-Bus as well)
in the marketplace.
Whoops.
And then there was OS/2, but I digress...
So Windows still has the "innovative" single-letter
drive prefixes long after they should have been shot,
buried, and (not) mourned. Even in the Amiga's heyday
(or the Mac's, if one prefers), multi-letter prefixes
were common, allowing more intelligent pathnames such as
"MyDataDisk:My Third Grade Report.document" [!] instead of
"A:MY3DGRPT.DOC". OK, maybe spaces aren't that bright
but they were at least tolerated.
(To be fair, Win95 did implement a rather crufty long name
extension, which also tolerates spaces, on top of FAT.
Dunno what NTFS does in that area, though suspect it's
also slightly mucky. Also, Win95 introduced the
rather old [$] concept of \\node\sharepath, but
not horribly consistently.)
* * *
[*] the Amiga's interface actually might have been called
a "Winfloppy", had such a concept existed at the time.
As it was, the Amiga had its blitter chip which easily
handled Manchester encoding, and presumably decoding
as well; the CPU therefore didn't need to get quite as
involved as it otherwise might have. Its formatting also
led to more storage space on the floppy; AmigaOS wrote a
track at a time, and got 880k where most contemporary PCs
only got 720k.
Sadly, this innovative concept never made it outside of the
Amiga world (Apple had its own ideas, among them variable
speed floppy drives; AFAIK Atari went straight WD1771),
and when Commodore died, it took such innovations along
for the ride into its grave.
[+] with my luck it's just been renamed in XP, though, and
*still* sitting in conventional memory.
[!] The Amiga also allowed physical drivenames, so one
could use "DF0:My Third Grade Report.document" if one
knew the relevant disc was in the first drive unit.
"DH0:" was used for the first partition of the first
hard drive; I don't remember the exact ordering scheme though
Commodore had a far more sophisticated partitioning mechanism
than the PC's simple table.
I forget precisely what old MacOS did here. Of course
MacOSX has its own ideas, being a Unix variant (AFAIK).
[$] Another dead machine: the Apollo DOMAIN series had
the more primitive //nodename/dir specification; the
system did not allow for a mapping from sharepoint to
directories arbitrarily placed on the volume, though
symbolic links could be used if need be. Ultimately,
they were swallowed by HP.
Sad, to contemplate what might have been.
Hadron
> After takin' a swig o' grog, The Ghost In The Machine belched out
> this bit o' wisdom:
>
>> Second, notepad, since it's forgotten what the filename is,
>> will present one with a file requester upon save; this
>> file requester does a fair number of strange things --
>> including counting the number of entries in subdirectories.
>> That's going to generate a bit of I/O.
>>
>> Third, I have no idea how notepad actually *opens* the
>> file for write, for write(6,...) is preceded by a close(6),
>> which itself is preceded by open("..",O_DIRECTORY) = 6!
>>
>> If the file *does* exist, the fid becomes 11 instead. (God
>> only knows where the other 5 fids are coming from.)
>>
>> Clearly something a little weird is going on here between
>> the close() and the write(). There is the possibility that
>> WinE is doing something that strace can't quite catch, such
>> as wineserver (somehow) passing a file descriptor down.
>>
>> Wonderful engineering, yes?
>
> Today, I'm in a virtual machine running Win 2K, and go to open a file
Sure.
> in Visual Studio. I click on the bar to open up the "current directory",
> which is on the hard drive. I wait for it to pop up. In the interim, the
> CD-ROM starts to spin up.
>
> Why?
>
> Nice stuff from the company whom someone here claimed was "incapable of
> sustained error".
Interesting that you post your, probably false, findings from a "virtual
machine".
And of course there are never any issues with CD Roms in Linux eh? My
sounds card wont work on XP any more ..... in the latest version of
VMWare that is. And no I havent tried hard to find the problem. But I
dont blame XP in this case.
But hold on! Visual Studio?!?!??!
Weren't you showing off recently about how Vim meets your "hardcore"
needs?
Why are you using this closed source "crapware" that you keep
complaining about?!?!?!
Whats wrong with CodeBlocks or something cross platform?
Oh! I know. You're a COLA hypocrite who makes his money by day using
Windows systems, writing Windows SW and you come here at night to big up
your Linux skills.
The Ghost In The Machine
A very strange comment from DFS, that...I for one would
like for him to explain it.
Unless he's referring to the Linux freeze-ups that he posts
here on an occasional basis (his latest one turned out to
be thermal, aka a hardware problem :-P ).
There *are* problems with Linux, mostly in the
configuration of certain items -- WiFi is the one that
comes to mind right now -- but I'm not sure such problems
are nearly as mysterious as to the contents of that Windows
registry... ;-)
Hadron
> On Nov 24, 7:40 pm, AZ Nomad <aznoma...@PremoveOBthisOX.COM> wrote:
>> On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:04:52 -0500, DFS <nospam@dfs_.com> wrote:
>> >Homer wrote:
>> >> The only thing about Windows that isn't a mystery,
>> >> is the fact that it's a bloated; inefficient; horribly broken mess.
>> >> Do we really need to know any more than that?
>> >Of course. You need to know why the OSS "community" of freeloaders and
>> >theft-cloneware developers can't write better software than
>> >Microsoft/commercial developers.
>>
>> Trying to outdo yourself for the most idiotic coment made this week?
>
> A very strange comment from DFS, that...I for one would
> like for him to explain it.
>
> Unless he's referring to the Linux freeze-ups that he posts
> here on an occasional basis (his latest one turned out to
> be thermal, aka a hardware problem :-P ).
Unless the drivers simply did not work.
>
> There *are* problems with Linux, mostly in the
> configuration of certain items -- WiFi is the one that
> comes to mind right now -- but I'm not sure such problems
> are nearly as mysterious as to the contents of that Windows
> registry... ;-)
Wireless for sure. Video is MUCH better. But as little as a year ago
getting ATI cards to work properly with OpenGL was a nightmare with some
distros.
Google will confirm.
NVidia can still screw over a Debian machine if you follow Liarnut's
advice and use the Nvidia installer.
JEDIDIAH
> chrisv <chr...@nospam.invalid> writes:
>
>> Kelsey Bjarnason wrote:
>>
>>>On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:37:26 +0200, geonik wrote:
>>>
>>>> A.S. Tanenbaum "Modern Operating Systems" 2nd edition <quote>
>>>> In an experiment to see if Windows NT file usage was appreciably
>>>> different from UNIX file usage, Vogels made measurements on files at
>>>> Cornell University (Vogels, 1999). He observed that NT file usage is
>>>> more complicated than on UNIX. He wrote: /When we type a few characters
>>>> in the notepad text editor, saving this to a file will trigger 26 system
>>>> calls, including 3 failed open attempts, 1 file overwrite and 4
>>>> additional open and close sequences./ </quote>
>>>> No comment.
>>>
>>>Does notepad at least make backup copies of the previously saved
>>>version?
>>
>> No.
>
> Some would say this is a good thing.
>
> Personally I hate editors "doing their own thing". Want backups? Use a
> reliable version control system.
...something else for the end user to have to worry about, install,
maintain and understand.
Given the target user, this is a BAD idea.
The VMS way would be very handy for the common end user. Given
current drive sizes, it wouldn't even be too much of a burden in
terms of extra "wasted" space.
>
> notepad is a quick and cheerful system editor. No more. No less.
>
>>
>>>I don't recall. If it did, one could accept the above as
>>>almost sensible. If not, well...
>>
>
> And lets face it, so many people us notepad that the above paragraph is
> really revealing .....
--
The social cost of suing/prosecuting individuals |||
for non-commercial copyright infringement far outweighs / | \
the social value of copyright to begin with.
Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
----------------------------------------------------------
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The Ghost In The Machine
Why would you think they are false? A reasonable setup
for a virtual machine would have the CD-ROM thereof be
piped through the emulator to the real device. (The
main issue there might be detecting changes to the media,
which confuses certain games.)
Another, rather contrived mechanism would pipe virtual
CD-ROM reads to a NFS-mounted .ISO image; the user
could sniff the packets thereto and monitor I/O, if he
so chooses.
>
> And of course there are never any issues with CD Roms in Linux eh?
There are many issues with CD burners in Linux. I suspect
that most of these are because of various hardware
extensions to the insufficient standard, somewhat like
IBM's BIOS of long ago fixing forever the video address in
paragraph A000:0000 because everyone bypassed the INT 10
calls, instead of the BIOS allowing something far more
intelligent.
It's only going to get worse as Blu-Ray takes hold,
especially if one wants to support external USB units.
But we'll see.
For its part Windows will most likely ignore the issue by
requiring the manufacturers to write drivers therefor.
> My
> sounds card wont work on XP any more ..... in the latest version of
> VMWare that is.
Linux fried it? Or what?
> And no I havent tried hard to find the problem. But I
> dont blame XP in this case.
>
> But hold on! Visual Studio?!?!??!
I doubt it's VS that's doing the gronking here. More likely
than not it's Windows' file requester.
>
> Weren't you showing off recently about how Vim meets your "hardcore"
> needs?
>
> Why are you using this closed source "crapware" that you keep
> complaining about?!?!?!
>
> Whats wrong with CodeBlocks or something cross platform?
Does CodeBlocks work with C# and .NET? C# is getting off to
a slow start, but Microsoft has far more money right now
than Sun can ever hope to see; they'll win.
Eventually.
Any time now.
Yessireebob, that standard C# is being accepted into the
freeware and payware communities even as we speak, and
everyone's writing in it, knowing all the ins and outs
thereof, supplanting those freeware also-rans such
as Python, Ruby, PHP, and Java.
And derivatives such as Silverlight are having everyone
seeing the light, right?
>
> Oh! I know. You're a COLA hypocrite who makes his money by day using
> Windows systems, writing Windows SW and you come here at night to big up
> your Linux skills.
Well, there you have it then; the ad hominem attack that
proves that Linux is unsuitable for most office tasks,
that Microsoft is pure perfection compared to, say,
Netscape/Mozilla, that Sesame Street's Cookie Monster was
involved in certain system hacks back in the 1970's (and
thereby proving Linux most insecure), that there really
was an invisible shooter on the grassy knoll, that the
Shroud of Turin is the genuine article, that Nostradamus
really did predict the end of the world on December 21,
2012 using the Mayan Calendar, and that Barack and Michelle
Obama are really space aliens born on Alpha Centauri III
who will kidnap your sons and daughters and carry them
away in disc-shaped spacecraft to eke out their lives in
slavery on an airless alien planetoid.
Or something like that. I'd have to Google the details.
The Ghost In The Machine
> The Ghost In The Machine <ewi...@earthlink.net> writes:
>
>
>
> > On Nov 24, 7:40 pm, AZ Nomad <aznoma...@PremoveOBthisOX.COM> wrote:
> >> On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:04:52 -0500, DFS <nospam@dfs_.com> wrote:
> >> >Homer wrote:
> >> >> The only thing about Windows that isn't a mystery,
> >> >> is the fact that it's a bloated; inefficient; horribly broken mess.
> >> >> Do we really need to know any more than that?
> >> >Of course. You need to know why the OSS "community" of freeloaders and
> >> >theft-cloneware developers can't write better software than
> >> >Microsoft/commercial developers.
>
> >> Trying to outdo yourself for the most idiotic coment made this week?
>
> > A very strange comment from DFS, that...I for one would
> > like for him to explain it.
>
> > Unless he's referring to the Linux freeze-ups that he posts
> > here on an occasional basis (his latest one turned out to
> > be thermal, aka a hardware problem :-P ).
>
> Unless the drivers simply did not work.
Correct; the drivers simply did not work. Of course,
expecting anything to work on a unit on the verge
of thermal runaway is a bit much anyway.
>
>
>
> > There *are* problems with Linux, mostly in the
> > configuration of certain items -- WiFi is the one that
> > comes to mind right now -- but I'm not sure such problems
> > are nearly as mysterious as to the contents of that Windows
> > registry... ;-)
>
> Wireless for sure. Video is MUCH better.
Video still has major problems, mostly because Linux does
not enforce DRM properly. (This is assuming anyone
really wants DRM anyway.)
> But as little as a year ago
> getting ATI cards to work properly with OpenGL was a nightmare with some
> distros.
ATI/OpenGL still doesn't work properly if one uses
the freeware drivers. Not that my laptop is
all that capable, mind you -- it's an nx9010 with
a built in 340M crap chip set -- but it can do
OpenGL,with a fair amount of problems, mostly
hash and snow.
(Actually, part of OpenGL; it doesn't support all
of the newest extensions.)
>
> Google will confirm.
>
> NVidia can still screw over a Debian machine if you follow Liarnut's
> advice and use the Nvidia installer.
No doubt. Of course Nvidia drivers aren't
exactly open source either.
Homer
> Ah. Not that bad. I'm sure they have it up to 260 system calls for
> Vista, including 10 failed open attempts, 24 overwrites, 72 addtional
> open and close sequences, and 121 "Oh shit!"s.
I could actually believe "Oh Shit" to be a real return code under Vista.
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "At the time, I thought C was the most elegant language and Java
| the most practical one. That point of view lasted for maybe two
| weeks after initial exposure to Lisp." ~ Constantine Vetoshev
`----
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.25.11-60.fc8
07:33:49 up 19 days, 15:16, 5 users, load average: 0.24, 0.27, 0.22
Homer
> On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:04:52 -0500, DFS <nospam@dfs_.com> wrote:
>> freeloaders and theft-cloneware developers
That's the history of the Vole in a nutshell, from those halcyon days of
dumpster diving and plagiarising the Apple Lisa, right up to copying OSX
in Vista, and KDE in "7".
>> can't write better software than Microsoft/commercial developers.
Well, since Microsoft doesn't actually /write/ anything (other than FUD,
of course) then it's rather a moot point, but in terms of the vast ocean
of assimilated products in Microsoft's swag-bag, whatever those products
were in the hands of the original developers has now been composted into
the Vole's shitpile, and as a result are now about as useful as a lorry-
load of wet toilet paper.
> Trying to outdo yourself for the most idiotic coment made this week?
As attack-vectors go, a Microsoft fanboi frothing about *plagiarism*, is
a very poor choice indeed, and more than a little ironic.
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "At the time, I thought C was the most elegant language and Java
| the most practical one. That point of view lasted for maybe two
| weeks after initial exposure to Lisp." ~ Constantine Vetoshev
`----
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.25.11-60.fc8
07:56:07 up 19 days, 15:38, 5 users, load average: 0.32, 0.16, 0.15
Hadron
> On 2008-11-24, Hadron <hadro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> chrisv <chr...@nospam.invalid> writes:
>>
>>> Kelsey Bjarnason wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:37:26 +0200, geonik wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> A.S. Tanenbaum "Modern Operating Systems" 2nd edition <quote>
>>>>> In an experiment to see if Windows NT file usage was appreciably
>>>>> different from UNIX file usage, Vogels made measurements on files at
>>>>> Cornell University (Vogels, 1999). He observed that NT file usage is
>>>>> more complicated than on UNIX. He wrote: /When we type a few characters
>>>>> in the notepad text editor, saving this to a file will trigger 26 system
>>>>> calls, including 3 failed open attempts, 1 file overwrite and 4
>>>>> additional open and close sequences./ </quote>
>>>>> No comment.
>>>>
>>>>Does notepad at least make backup copies of the previously saved
>>>>version?
>>>
>>> No.
>>
>> Some would say this is a good thing.
>>
>> Personally I hate editors "doing their own thing". Want backups? Use a
>> reliable version control system.
>
> ...something else for the end user to have to worry about, install,
> maintain and understand.
>
> Given the target user, this is a BAD idea.
I can agree with that.
>
> The VMS way would be very handy for the common end user. Given
> current drive sizes, it wouldn't even be too much of a burden in
> terms of extra "wasted" space.
I would prefer a "hidden" way. There's nothing worse than clutter for a
nOOb. It encourages messy work areas IMO.
Hadron
Because little of what Linonut posts is true.
>
> Another, rather contrived mechanism would pipe virtual
> CD-ROM reads to a NFS-mounted .ISO image; the user
> could sniff the packets thereto and monitor I/O, if he
> so chooses.
>
>>
>> And of course there are never any issues with CD Roms in Linux eh?
>
> There are many issues with CD burners in Linux. I suspect
> that most of these are because of various hardware
> extensions to the insufficient standard, somewhat like
> IBM's BIOS of long ago fixing forever the video address in
> paragraph A000:0000 because everyone bypassed the INT 10
> calls, instead of the BIOS allowing something far more
> intelligent.
Yes. I know.
>
> It's only going to get worse as Blu-Ray takes hold,
> especially if one wants to support external USB units.
> But we'll see.
>
> For its part Windows will most likely ignore the issue by
> requiring the manufacturers to write drivers therefor.
As its always done and has always been done.
>
>> My
>> sounds card wont work on XP any more ..... in the latest version of
>> VMWare that is.
>
> Linux fried it? Or what?
It works fine in Linux.
>
>> And no I havent tried hard to find the problem. But I
>> dont blame XP in this case.
>>
>> But hold on! Visual Studio?!?!??!
>
> I doubt it's VS that's doing the gronking here. More likely
> than not it's Windows' file requester.
>
>>
>> Weren't you showing off recently about how Vim meets your "hardcore"
>> needs?
>>
>> Why are you using this closed source "crapware" that you keep
>> complaining about?!?!?!
>>
>> Whats wrong with CodeBlocks or something cross platform?
>
> Does CodeBlocks work with C# and .NET? C# is getting off to
> a slow start, but Microsoft has far more money right now
> than Sun can ever hope to see; they'll win.
c# and .net are not cross platform. Liarnut claims to only write cross
platform open source SW.
> Eventually.
>
> Any time now.
>
> Yessireebob, that standard C# is being accepted into the
> freeware and payware communities even as we speak, and
> everyone's writing in it, knowing all the ins and outs
> thereof, supplanting those freeware also-rans such
> as Python, Ruby, PHP, and Java.
>
> And derivatives such as Silverlight are having everyone
> seeing the light, right?
I like Python I must admit. I recently played with an iPython competitor
"bpython". Not bad.
>
>>
>> Oh! I know. You're a COLA hypocrite who makes his money by day using
>> Windows systems, writing Windows SW and you come here at night to big up
>> your Linux skills.
>
> Well, there you have it then; the ad hominem attack that
> proves that Linux is unsuitable for most office tasks,
> that Microsoft is pure perfection compared to, say,
> Netscape/Mozilla, that Sesame Street's Cookie Monster was
No ad hominem attack about it. I am pointing out the reality compared to
his claims.
And nowhere do I say Linux is unsuitable for most office tasks. I do
think its unsuitable for SOME office tasks especially when heavy
scripting is in use. And nowhere do I say MS itself is better.
I use Debian for everything at the moment. I use no scripting in
documents.
I do all electronic communications using Gnus. All documents in OO
Writer. I dont like (Writer) it though. It's slow and missing that
"zing". I do all graphics with Gimp And Firefox 3 is my browser of
choice. Why the hell the COLA gang think I am anti "OSS" is anyones
guess. I think its generally because they take my derision for their
lies and MS hostility to be derision for Linux and OSS. It simply is not
so.
Chris Ahlstrom
this bit o' wisdom:
> On Nov 24, 8:37 pm, Hadron <hadronqu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Chris Ahlstrom <lino...@bollsouth.nut> writes:
>
>> > in Visual Studio. I click on the bar to open up the "current directory",
>> > which is on the hard drive. I wait for it to pop up. In the interim, the
>> > CD-ROM starts to spin up.
>>
>> > Why?
>>
>> > Nice stuff from the company whom someone here claimed was "incapable of
>> > sustained error".
>>
>> Interesting that you post your, probably false, findings from a "virtual
>> machine".
>
> Why would you think they are false?
Because Hadron is here only to troll. Also, he's quite daft,
suspicious-minded.
> A reasonable setup
> for a virtual machine would have the CD-ROM thereof be
> piped through the emulator to the real device. (The
> main issue there might be detecting changes to the media,
> which confuses certain games.)
>
>> And of course there are never any issues with CD Roms in Linux eh?
>
> There are many issues with CD burners in Linux.
Hadron (and you, frankly) are going of the trail here. The issue is not
some kind of driver issue. The issue is not even that Windows spins up
the CD drive before it is needed. The issue is that it delays displaying the
other parts of the file system, more likely to be needed, until the CD has
spun up.
>> But hold on! Visual Studio?!?!??!
>
> I doubt it's VS that's doing the gronking here. More likely
> than not it's Windows' file requester.
Indeed.
What is interesting is that I can avoid a lot of speed issues by using, get
this, Cygwin.
>> Weren't you showing off recently about how Vim meets your "hardcore"
>> needs?
>>
>> Why are you using this closed source "crapware" that you keep
>> complaining about?!?!?!
>>
>> Whats wrong with CodeBlocks or something cross platform?
Poor Hadron, reduced to manufacturing a straw man.
For one thing, it's our standard dev environment, out-of-date as it is.
I've argued for migrating to a mingw dev environment, but no one wants to
pay for that work. They don't even want to pay for upgrading to a new
version of VS.
For another thing, I need it mainly for debugging. Normally, I edit the
source using vim from a Linux console. And, as the code I work on is
cross-platform, I can get a lot of debugging out of the way without ever
touching Windows.
So, I have no real incentive to set up a completely different dev env on
Windows. And I certainly don't care much about any kind of GUI IDE. I
simply don't need it, especially on the Linux side, where the stock tools
just generally kick the ass of any "integrated" dev env.
> Does CodeBlocks work with C# and .NET?
>
>> Oh! I know. You're a COLA hypocrite who makes his money by day using
>> Windows systems, writing Windows SW and you come here at night to big up
>> your Linux skills.
>
> Well, there you have it then; the ad hominem attack...
All Hadron has, Ghost, is irrelevant insult.
The man is a child. A vicious, baiting child. A true Usenet kook.
--
The best things in life are for a fee.
Chris Ahlstrom
this bit o' wisdom:
> On Nov 24, 9:01 pm, Fucknut <hadronqu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> NVidia can still screw over a Debian machine if you follow Liarnut's
>> advice and use the Nvidia installer.
>
> No doubt. Of course Nvidia drivers aren't
> exactly open source either.
I've never had an issue with the Nvidia installer. For me, it's been one of
the better commercial installers out there. Certainly better than VMware's
(though VMware admits they don't support Debian.)
As for "screw over", well, it's something that can be fixed by anyone with
sufficient savvy. I don't think Hadron is one of them.
--
You are fighting for survival in your own sweet and gentle way.
chrisv
>troll:
>>
>> (OSS) developers can't write better software than
>> Microsoft/commercial developers.
>
>Trying to outdo yourself for the most idiotic coment made this week?
The funny thing about the troll's comment is that Microsoft cannot
write better software than the hodgepodge OSS community, despite their
$billions and their (Hadron's wet dream) centralized planning.
Sandeep Kumar
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> ____/ Tony Manco on Monday 24 November 2008 19:21 : \____
>
>> Kelsey Bjarnason wrote:
>>> Does notepad at least make backup copies of the previously saved
>>> version? I don't recall. If it did, one could accept the above as
>>> almost sensible. If not, well...
>>
>> AFAIK, no...
>
> notepad hasn't caught up even with vim.
Why would it?Notepad was designed to edit config.sys,autoexec.bat and other
small text files that might have needed editing back in the early days of
Windows.It was never considered anything more than a toy.Comparing it to
real editors like vi or emacs or Brief is not a fair comparison.
Sandeep Kumar
In some fashion Linux is better.I give example of dual monitor display.If I
start VLC or gmplayer with Windows on one monitor then play a video and
drag it to the other monitor the video goes black and requires a pause or
restart to get it playing again.Does not happen with Linux versions of both
players.My board is an ATI.
Kelsey Bjarnason
> After takin' a swig o' grog, Kelsey Bjarnason belched out
> this bit o' wisdom:
>
>> On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:20:17 +0000, Fingel wrote:
>>
>>> On 2008-11-24, Kelsey Bjarnason <kel...@lgisp.net> wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:37:26 +0200, geonik wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> A.S. Tanenbaum "Modern Operating Systems" 2nd edition <quote> In an
>>>>> experiment to see if Windows NT file usage was appreciably different
>>>>> from UNIX file usage, Vogels made measurements on files at Cornell
>>>>> University (Vogels, 1999). He observed that NT file usage is more
>>>>> complicated than on UNIX. He wrote: /When we type a few characters
>>>>> in the notepad text editor, saving this to a file will trigger 26
>>>>> system calls, including 3 failed open attempts, 1 file overwrite and
>>>>> 4 additional open and close sequences./ </quote> No comment.
>>>>
>>>> Does notepad at least make backup copies of the previously saved
>>>> version? I don't recall. If it did, one could accept the above as
>>>> almost sensible. If not, well...
>>>>
>>> No way. But it does have undo and redo.
>>
>> Maybe it does have undo/redo, but that's not a file operation. Why
>> would it need three failed open, an overwrite and four more open/close
>> sequences to do a simple open/write/close operation?
>
> Does Notepad also open a number of configuration files & plugins when it
> starts, like vim does?
Wouldn't be relevant if it did; the measurement was for a save operation,
not for loading the app.
The Ghost In The Machine
Naturally. The dominant solution writes the rules.
>
>
> >> My
> >> sounds card wont work on XP any more ..... in the latest version of
> >> VMWare that is.
>
> > Linux fried it? Or what?
>
> It works fine in Linux.
>
>
>
Lightly baked it, then? ;-)
Of course VMWare doesn't talk directly to the sound card anyway;
it's a bit like the CD-ROM in that respect. I'd have to look
but I think QEMU likes to emulate an ancient SoundBlaster, for
example; those haven't been made in years.
(In fact, I can no longer play certain old games on
Windows, as it doesn't emulate what was once a dominant
solution on MS-DOS.)
>
>
> >> And no I havent tried hard to find the problem. But I
> >> dont blame XP in this case.
>
> >> But hold on! Visual Studio?!?!??!
>
> > I doubt it's VS that's doing the gronking here. More likely
> > than not it's Windows' file requester.
>
> >> Weren't you showing off recently about how Vim meets your "hardcore"
> >> needs?
>
> >> Why are you using this closed source "crapware" that you keep
> >> complaining about?!?!?!
>
> >> Whats wrong with CodeBlocks or something cross platform?
>
> > Does CodeBlocks work with C# and .NET? C# is getting off to
> > a slow start, but Microsoft has far more money right now
> > than Sun can ever hope to see; they'll win.
>
> c# and .net are not cross platform. Liarnut claims to only write cross
> platform open source SW.
C# and .NET are AFAIK true multiplatform solutions,
though some of the API supported in .NET is definitely
Windows-specific. However, Moonlight and Mono are showing
some interesting variants in this new environment (though
monodevelop remains slightly buggy in spots -- but then,
so is Eclipse :-) ).
Of course .NET/MSIL is probably optimized for x86, if only
because that's the dominant platform right now. However,
if one has ilasm (or ilasm.exe), and the proper libraries,
one can probably run programs such as those in
http://www.codeguru.com/csharp/.net/net_general/il/article.php/c4635
anywhere.
As for Linonut composing cross-platform software, I'll
have to defer to him on the details thereof, especially
since there are a very large number of options:
- C++, if done properly
- Java (yes, even J++, though one had to be very careful)
applets
servlets
Swing, if one can stand the GUI differences
SWT
- C#, again if done properly
- Objective-C (maybe)
- Python (can be used standalone or with Apache)
- Ruby/Squeak/Smalltalk
- PHP (can be used standalone or with Apache)
- Tcl/Tk, if one can stand Tcl's stupidity;
yes, there are Tclets!
- Perl or Perl/Tk
- Javascript (Spider, Rhino, etc.)
- XSLT (not quite algorithmic)
- SQL (specialized)
- Haskell
- LOGO (maybe)
- LISP (rare nowadays)
- COBOL (ugh)
- FORTRAN (AFAIK still widely used in the scientific realm)
And that's just off the top of my head!
In fact, the only options I can think of that do *not*
work would be along the lines of VBScript or JScript,
since those are Microsoft-specific, and Bash scripting,
unless one includes Cygnus or SFU in the Windows solution
supporting same.
>
> > Eventually.
>
> > Any time now.
>
> > Yessireebob, that standard C# is being accepted into the
> > freeware and payware communities even as we speak, and
> > everyone's writing in it, knowing all the ins and outs
> > thereof, supplanting those freeware also-rans such
> > as Python, Ruby, PHP, and Java.
>
> > And derivatives such as Silverlight are having everyone
> > seeing the light, right?
>
> I like Python I must admit. I recently played with an iPython competitor
> "bpython". Not bad.
>
python: interpretive language, with line mode interpreter
ipython: encapsulation of python; it gives me a shell-like prompt
and probably has a few enhanced debugging features
bpython: encapsulation of python with curses (which for some reason
Gentoo does not offer).
I would not say Python is useful for all things, but it
looks great for prototyping, if I could get my arms
around another language. (The fact that it's generally
Java-like isn't going to help; I'm too steeped in Java
to not get easily confused. Plus, Python's API is
Yet Another Library. The good news: Python can easily
run on Windows, as well as Linux, FreeBSD, and a whole
raft of other systems.)
>
>
> >> Oh! I know. You're a COLA hypocrite who makes his money by day using
> >> Windows systems, writing Windows SW and you come here at night to big up
> >> your Linux skills.
>
> > Well, there you have it then; the ad hominem attack that
> > proves that Linux is unsuitable for most office tasks,
> > that Microsoft is pure perfection compared to, say,
> > Netscape/Mozilla, that Sesame Street's Cookie Monster was
>
> No ad hominem attack about it. I am pointing out the reality compared to
> his claims.
>
So if we make money using Windows we lose all credibility.
OK, got it.
>
> And nowhere do I say Linux is unsuitable for most office tasks.
Linux (qua Linux) is horribly unsuitable for most office
tasks; it needs office software like OpenOffice or at
least at the minimum a good text editor, plus the usual
libraries, utilities, and tools, and possibly an X server
(which can be remote).
Might as well ask whether one can play Rachmaninoff with
naught but a wheel coaster, or one needs the rest of the
pieces to a Steinway or similar piano[forte], properly
assembled...
(OK, so I'm being pedantic.)
> I do
> think its unsuitable for SOME office tasks especially when heavy
> scripting is in use. And nowhere do I say MS itself is better.
MS is of course better for exchanging Word documents, right?
Or maybe not; the horror stories I hear on occasion -- the
one coming to mind is 95->97 -- suggest otherwise.
Also, one of OO's strengths is reading old Word documents.
As for scripting ... I'd like to know exactly how one
explains the need for document scripting. I can see
building an application using Excel (or Gnumeric or
OOCalc), which basically layers on top of a spreadsheet
and executes scripts to do common actions such as canned
cell updates -- but that's not a document.
One can also contemplate security issues that preclude
access to cells or formulas unless one types in a password,
but that's not a scripting need as such, really.
>
> I use Debian for everything at the moment. I use no scripting in
> documents.
>
Everything? You've already mentioned VMWare; one can get
rather philosophical about whether it's a machine or not,
but anything *in* VMWare is probably not considerable as
part of Debian proper.
Of course computers are odd anyway; John Conway's Game of
Life, in particular, was inspired by a desire to build a
self-replicating machine. Nowadays, one might be interested
by what patterns one can build therein, for example, glider
factories (and glider eaters), bombs (well, they sort of
act like bombs anyway), traffic lights, beehives, pulsars,
light weight space ships, etc.
I could mention modern animation techniques, using, well,
Gimp, or other such tools, presumably, to draw cels which
are then fed to an encoder, as opposed to doing it the
old fashioned way using ink on plastic sheets.
But to the computer, they're all just bits. Even numbers
are bits, despite computations such as finding/proving that
43,112,609 1's in a row (in binary, or 2^43112609 - 1 if
one prefers) is a Mersenne Prime being of academic interest.
(There's a number that would take more than 5 megabytes
just to *store*.)
Speaking of traffic lights -- there's more bits for you.
Basically, city regions tie their traffic lights to a
common computer, which allows for more intelligent traffic
management. If the computer breaks down, the lights still
have enough brains to go on a timed or timed-interrupt
cycle of some sort; I'd have to look up the details.
If things get *really* futzed they'll just blink red,
and everyone treats that condition -- ideally -- as a
four-way stop until the police come by and direct traffic
while the Transit Authority repair team struggles to fix
the shiny metal box thingy or the central computer.
But if everything's working perfectly, the central computer
blips the lights at just the right time to allow clumps
of traffic to flow smoothly through.
And of course sci-fi stories are rife with the computer
considering humans to be an abstract problem, which should
be solved by extermination...exterminate...exterminate...
ex-ter-min-ATE!!!! (OK, so I watched a particular show
a little too much in my youth...but I digress.)
> I do all electronic communications using Gnus. All documents in OO
> Writer. I dont like (Writer) it though. It's slow and missing that
> "zing".
OOWriter is extremely problematic for me, mostly because
I'm a bit of a perfectionist. (Word's no better in this
respect, AFAIK.) Ideally, Writer would allow for the
generation of HTML documents with external style sheets
and pictures, and import HTML documents with external
style sheets and pictures. This might be a bit much; an
acceptable variant would allow for generating an *internal*
style sheet in an HTML document, which can be lifted out
later, but it's still not quite as easy as shipping a Word
document over Email...and having it infect your coworker's
machine... ;-)
> I do all graphics with Gimp And Firefox 3 is my browser of
> choice.Gimp works very well for me; Firefox is getting snappier.
> Why the hell the COLA gang think I am anti "OSS" is anyones
> guess. I think its generally because they take my derision for their
> lies and MS hostility to be derision for Linux and OSS. It simply is not
> so.
OK.
JEDIDIAH
...isn't that funny.
That's exactly one of the intended use cases for both vi and emacs.
--
My macintosh runs Ubuntu. |||
/ | \
The Ghost In The Machine
> After takin' a swig o' grog, The Ghost In The Machine belched out
> this bit o' wisdom:
>
>
>
> > On Nov 24, 8:37 pm, Hadron <hadronqu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Chris Ahlstrom <lino...@bollsouth.nut> writes:
>
> >> > in Visual Studio. I click on the bar to open up the "current directory",
> >> > which is on the hard drive. I wait for it to pop up. In the interim, the
> >> > CD-ROM starts to spin up.
>
> >> > Why?
>
> >> > Nice stuff from the company whom someone here claimed was "incapable of
> >> > sustained error".
>
> >> Interesting that you post your, probably false, findings from a "virtual
> >> machine".
>
> > Why would you think they are false?
>
> Because Hadron is here only to troll. Also, he's quite daft,
> suspicious-minded.
Not unreasonable with Windows....oh, look, a cute little
program! Can I take it home, can I, can I? Wait....OK,
what will it do if I click on it? Can I afford to
delouse my machine yet again if this turns out to be a
nasty virus as opposed to just a cute little program?
Better run it through the verifier.
They're all out to get me, every last one of them! AAAAAUGH!!!!
With Linux, it's: oh, look, a cute little program! Can I
take it home, can I, can I? Yes, you may; here you
go little fella, stay in your playpen and be a cute little
doggie....oh, naughty doggy, you've soiled your playpen.
I don't like you any more. *DELETE*
(OK, that's a little vicious -- but Unix has been
kill()ing programs since its inception sometime in
the late 60's. One gets somewhat immune...)
>
> > A reasonable setup
> > for a virtual machine would have the CD-ROM thereof be
> > piped through the emulator to the real device. (The
> > main issue there might be detecting changes to the media,
> > which confuses certain games.)
>
> >> And of course there are never any issues with CD Roms in Linux eh?
>
> > There are many issues with CD burners in Linux.
>
> Hadron (and you, frankly) are going of the trail here. The issue is not
> some kind of driver issue. The issue is not even that Windows spins up
> the CD drive before it is needed. The issue is that it delays displaying the
> other parts of the file system, more likely to be needed, until the CD has
> spun up.
Noted; you're correct. Ideally, of course, the spinup
would appear on a separate thread -- though in Linux's
case it's not as big an issue, really, as it's either not
considered as part of the file system, or, when mounted,
the CD-ROM is cached once read, so that the initial spinup
is costly but subsequent accesses, assuming sufficient RAM,
are not.
Also, when mounted, Linux likes to lock the door -- an
annoyance, but it also ensure that the OS has a clue
as to what's in there.
>
> >> But hold on! Visual Studio?!?!??!
>
> > I doubt it's VS that's doing the gronking here. More likely
> > than not it's Windows' file requester.
>
> Indeed.
>
> What is interesting is that I can avoid a lot of speed issues by using, get
> this, Cygwin.
I've had troubles with Cygwin, mostly because NTFS's access
is so slow that pressing double-tab to the '$' prompt means
it's time for a short coffee break. ;-) Not sure how much
of that is a path issue; I'd have to look, and I tend to
only use Windows only to change my Windows password every
3 months anyway (as mandated by our IT department).
And then I get to sit for 3 hours while it scans the
entire drive for non-existent viruses. (Hello, clue
phone for AV solution on Windows, line two.)
Other than that, and the inevitable hiccups one gets
in emulating a Unix environment in Windows, it's a very
workable solution for those that can't afford for whatever
reason to run native Linux.
>
> >> Weren't you showing off recently about how Vim meets your "hardcore"
> >> needs?
>
> >> Why are you using this closed source "crapware" that you keep
> >> complaining about?!?!?!
>
> >> Whats wrong with CodeBlocks or something cross platform?
>
> Poor Hadron, reduced to manufacturing a straw man.
>
> For one thing, it's our standard dev environment, out-of-date as it is.
> I've argued for migrating to a mingw dev environment, but no one wants to
> pay for that work. They don't even want to pay for upgrading to a new
> version of VS.
>
> For another thing, I need it mainly for debugging. Normally, I edit the
> source using vim from a Linux console. And, as the code I work on is
> cross-platform, I can get a lot of debugging out of the way without ever
> touching Windows.
>
> So, I have no real incentive to set up a completely different dev env on
> Windows. And I certainly don't care much about any kind of GUI IDE. I
> simply don't need it, especially on the Linux side, where the stock tools
> just generally kick the ass of any "integrated" dev env.
Especially since they generally just work. ;-) It's
not magic, just lots of text files of known,
standard formats.
>
> > Does CodeBlocks work with C# and .NET?
>
> >> Oh! I know. You're a COLA hypocrite who makes his money by day using
> >> Windows systems, writing Windows SW and you come here at night to big up
> >> your Linux skills.
>
> > Well, there you have it then; the ad hominem attack...
>
> All Hadron has, Ghost, is irrelevant insult.
>
> The man is a child. A vicious, baiting child. A true Usenet kook.
I've seen worse; at least he's vaguely intelligible. ;-) Some
of the sci.physics crowd make him look like a genius.
The Ghost In The Machine
> After takin' a swig o' grog, The Ghost In The Machine belched out
> this bit o' wisdom:
>
> > On Nov 24, 9:01 pm, Fucknut <hadronqu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> NVidia can still screw over a Debian machine if you follow Liarnut's
> >> advice and use the Nvidia installer.
>
> > No doubt. Of course Nvidia drivers aren't
> > exactly open source either.
>
> I've never had an issue with the Nvidia installer. For me, it's been one of
> the better commercial installers out there. Certainly better than VMware's
> (though VMware admits they don't support Debian.)
I can't say I've had that many problems with Nvidia either,
though Gentoo tends to take everything apart, fiddle with
it a bit, then sandbox it in their own rather unusual way.
Of course Nvidia is on my Athlon anyway, which I generally
don't use that much any more; my laptop is faster and
quieter, if not quite as capable GL-wise. I'm trying to
rebuild my Athlon (softwarewise) in fact, to get it back
up to date.
>
> As for "screw over", well, it's something that can be fixed by anyone with
> sufficient savvy. I don't think Hadron is one of them.
Hard for me to say. My main problems with Nvidia has mostly
been ABI incompatibility, since they tend to lag X, and
that not all that often.
Kelsey Bjarnason
> On 2008-11-24, geonik <geon...@ath.forthnet.gr> claimed:
>> A.S. Tanenbaum "Modern Operating Systems" 2nd edition
>><quote>
>> In an experiment to see if Windows NT file usage was appreciably
>> different from UNIX file usage, Vogels made measurements on files at
>> Cornell University (Vogels, 1999). He observed that NT file usage is
>> more complicated than on UNIX. He wrote: /When we type a few characters
>> in the notepad text editor, saving this to a file will trigger 26
>> system calls, including 3 failed open attempts, 1 file overwrite and 4
>> additional open and close sequences./
>></quote>
>> No comment.
>
> Ah. Not that bad. I'm sure they have it up to 260 system calls for
> Vista, including 10 failed open attempts, 24 overwrites, 72 addtional
> open and close sequences, and 121 "Oh shit!"s.
You forgot 14 UAC dialogs asking you to permit the system to open the
file, to use anything other than [a-z][0-9] in the name, to write to it,
to *actually* write to it, to close it, to flush it to disk, etc.
Erik Funkenbusch
>> The VMS way would be very handy for the common end user. Given
>> current drive sizes, it wouldn't even be too much of a burden in
>> terms of extra "wasted" space.
>
> I would prefer a "hidden" way. There's nothing worse than clutter for a
> nOOb. It encourages messy work areas IMO.
It's called Previous Versions, and if you enable it, it keeps backup copies
of all files. It's not as flashy as OSX's Time Machine, but very
analogous.
AZ Nomad
>Verily I say unto thee, that Sinister Midget spake thusly:
>> Ah. Not that bad. I'm sure they have it up to 260 system calls for
>> Vista, including 10 failed open attempts, 24 overwrites, 72 addtional
>> open and close sequences, and 121 "Oh shit!"s.
>I could actually believe "Oh Shit" to be a real return code under Vista.
They call it "situation normal."
OP code: snafu.
Chris Ahlstrom
this bit o' wisdom:
> On Nov 25, 4:27 am, Hadron <hadronqu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Because little of what Linonut posts is true.
Sorry Hadron. As much as you would like it to be so, to fit your paranoid
delusion, it is not so. Everything I write is true, to the best of my
knowledge.
And you left out C.
I use C++ mostly, with about 10% C.
A dash of Perl and Python.
>
>> I do all graphics with Gimp And Firefox 3 is my browser of
>> choice.Gimp works very well for me; Firefox is getting snappier.
>
>> Why the hell the COLA gang think I am anti "OSS" is anyones
>> guess. I think its generally because they take my derision for their
>> lies and MS hostility to be derision for Linux and OSS. It simply is not
>> so.
>
> OK.
No. How about this one:
Discussion subject changed to "Linux: impossible to use in ANY
professional situation" by Hadron
The actual post includes this Hadron gem (as an aside):
It's why I laugh so much when minimal users like Rick,
Koehlmann and Willy Poaster claim that it "works for them" and "all just
works".
Linux IS great WHEN you get to know it. Unfortunately most of the OSS
GUI apps are simply atrocious.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action/msg/b4dfb03393e946e6?hl=en&dmode=source
Hundreds of crap games. A few classic openGL ones such as UT2003, QIV
etc but really, not a lot. Gaming on Linux is decidedly retro.
Another aside:
Had the Linux community done more earlier to attract Games companies
then it might have been taken more seriously as an option for a home
OS. Unfortunately there is a hard core here who think gaming is for
pre-pubescent teenagers and not for far guys with beards who live in
their mother's basements
and
> a ton of open-source games, which are the sort most ideologically
Mostly complete crap.
I cant think of a single GUI OSS program "for free" which outperforms
its closed source retail counterpart. Not one.
> If OpenOffice is so clunky, why to use it? :P
Err, because it runs on Linux & I use Linux. Your point is what? Just
because I use it, it doesn't mean I have to lie to defend it. It's a
very nice piece of SW (for free), but not in the same league as office
for slickness and response.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.advocacy/msg/13ae67cf729ac8ea?hl=en&dmode=source
>> Alex Terekhov recently alluded to Munich buying Win2K licenses...
What happened to their embracing of the Free SW lifestyle?
I guess they want a fixed, reliable OS that doesn't detect patches every
3 minutes.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.advocacy/msg/2ae6169c8cb0fa5c?hl=en&dmode=source
Rick is a "quality" poster? Even he would doubt that I suspect. Unless
posting "no, you smell" rejoinders to Snit now counts as "quality" in
COLA. Although it would explain why so many advocates think that all OSS
GUI apps are "high quality".
Now, to be fair (not sure why I bother), a contrary example:
Please define base system: I think the Linux base system is excellent
too. I am referring primarily to the GUI desktop applications.
By the way, along the way I found a wealth of unnecessary insults to all and
sundry. Some seemingly disconnected completely from the subjects
present in the post he made. The funniest was Hadron correcting Mark Kent's
"Digest":
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.advocacy/msg/e74fadeabdd6624b?hl=en&dmode=source
remove [News] - its redundant. Ditto for "Subject:" . Center subject text
with date underneath.
Hadron is quite full of himself. Seems to disklike just about everybody.
A major self-important asshole? No, it's far deeper than that.
--
A diplomatic husband said to his wife, "How do you expect me to remember
your birthday when you never look any older?"
The Ghost In The Machine
Eeek, so I did....*flips through excuse list but
can't find a usable one :-)*
>
> I use C++ mostly, with about 10% C.
>
> A dash of Perl and Python.
>
Java, SQL, XSL, Javascript, Perl, C, C++,
and a smattering of Python, PHP, Tcl/Tk, and
maybe Squeak in my spare time.
>
>
> >> I do all graphics with Gimp And Firefox 3 is my browser of
> >> choice.Gimp works very well for me; Firefox is getting snappier.
>
> >> Why the hell the COLA gang think I am anti "OSS" is anyones
> >> guess. I think its generally because they take my derision for their
> >> lies and MS hostility to be derision for Linux and OSS. It simply is not
> >> so.
>
> > OK.
>
> No. How about this one:
[rest snipped for brevity]
I'll let you two guys argue it out; I'm not about
to moderate. ;-) I will note that the given URLs
look a bit messed up, the ones that I checked;
however, I'll comment on
>* I cant think of a single GUI OSS program "for free" which outperforms
>* its closed source retail counterpart. Not one.
There's a fair number of issues here.
1. It's not a 1-1 correspondence. The Wintrolls love to
point out Linux's plethora of editors: vi, vim, gvim,
vile, elvis, emacs, xemacs, jed, joe, nano, pico, jedit,
notepad (part of WinE), gedit, and kedit; if one wants
to include Office-style writers kate, scribus, and
oowriter are easily added into the mix. Compared to
Notepad/Wordpad/Write, vi is not very guified, but it
scares the hell out of the tourists with its built-in
macro capability, bangfiltering, and highly flexible
keystroke-driven command system ('3dw' and 3 words
are deleted; presto!). And at that, vi is tiny in
capability compared to emacs, which can do all sorts of
things with its LISP builtins -- including reading news.
Graphics editors are also in plentiful supply, though
not quite as plentiful as their text counterparts.
GIMP is arguably the best known bitmap editor; for
structured graphics I like inkspace. However, dia,
xfig, and tuxpaint are also available, though tuxpaint
isn't all that usable except for the young. (Not
sure where xpaint wandered off too, and it's rather
old anyway.)
2. There are slight differences in emphasis. One of
the more interesting issues in Windows is that it is
apparently mostly written from the viewpoint of "single
user, own computer"; NT tried to get away from that but
didn't get all that far (though it is somewhat competent
as a server, but XP still doesn't allow 2 workspaces to
be open at once -- rdesktop will cause the main display
to lock if I log in as myself more than once). [*]
By contrast, Linux approached the issue much like Unix
did long ago, with an eye towards rigid allocation
of resources that are the province of the system
administrator -- over-rigid, in some cases, though
with some work (in the case of the CD-Rom, the system
adminstrator just needs to put the user in the cdrom
group, for example, and ensure that /dev/cdrom is owned
by that group) one can get one's work done.
The byproduct of these shifts is that Windows is
relatively easy to infect, as it values convenience;
Linux is a lot harder to bring down, although a
dumb user can destroy his own data readily enough.
3. "Performs" is awfully vague. Are we talking
raw I/O performance, number of words written per
minute, bytes churned through as the user tries
to type in his paper, number of autosaves, what?
4. Windows does have a reasonably nice archive format;
all Word documents can encapsulate OLE items, which
include pictures and arbitrary ActiveX widgets, if
I'm not mistaken. Ditto for spreadsheets. However,
I for one am not at all sure as to why we would even
want an animated thingy in a document, as opposed to
a static picture.
So now perhaps Hadron can counter?
* * *
[*] there is the issue that two sesssions of the same user
in Gnome might confuse some of the utility daemons.
I'll have to try it.
High Plains Thumper
> geonik wrote:
>
>> A.S. Tanenbaum "Modern Operating Systems" 2nd edition
>>
>> <quote> In an experiment to see if Windows NT file usage was
>> appreciably different from UNIX file usage, Vogels made
>> measurements on files at Cornell University (Vogels, 1999).
>> He observed that NT file usage is more complicated than on
>> UNIX. He wrote: /When we type a few characters in the
>> notepad text editor, saving this to a file will trigger 26
>> system calls, including 3 failed open attempts, 1 file
>> overwrite and 4 additional open and close sequences./
>> </quote>
>>
>> No comment.
>
>
> Where's High Plains Hypocrite
This is an example of an ad hominem attack:
http://tantek.pbwiki.com/TrollTaxonomy
[quote]
Ad hominem troll
Ad hominem troll at its simplest, will attack people personally,
rather than the merits of their statements or methodologies.
The ad hominem troll often has already lost a rational argument
about a topic, and thus its goal is to change the argument from
being about a topic, to being about the people opposed to the
troll (which could mean any/all rational person(s) in the
discussion), in the hopes of both discrediting people's ideas
indirectly by discrediting the people, and engendering an
emotional reaction from the people by attacking their egos /
self-image. The "getting a reaction out of" goal is common to
most troll types.
[/quote]
> quoting the FAQ and calling you a troll
This is an example of:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/
[quote]
7.6 Trespasser Disinformation Tactics
[6.] When your tactics are turned on you, call your opponents
trolls. Do not accept the fact that by calling someone using
your tactics a troll that makes you the real troll.
[/quote]
> and whining that your post is off-topic?
and
[quote]
10. Refuse to admit your errors. Never ever admit your errors
no matter how blatant they are. If you find no way out and have
to admit that you are wrong, phrase it so that you can accuse
your opponent of being wrong.
[/quote]
Discussion was related to operating systems, comparing disk
systems. Unix is related to Linux:
[quote]
8 Linux's BSD cousins.
Much of what is covered in this FAQ and Primer that is not too
Linux specific and is not COLA specific also applies to the other
free unixes such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Each of these
unix operating systems runs mostly the same software as Linux.
The user environment is mostly the same, with the exception of
some features of Linux that is not yet available on the BSD's.
Each of these other unix operating systems are similar to Linux
in many ways, so that often an ordinary non-root user, who is not
a programmer and is not involved in the lower systems level
operations would be hard pressed to know whether he is on a Linux
or a BSD host, unless it is a hardware platform that Linux
supports and the BSD's do not, or vice versa.
We are all friends, in fact many who run Linux also run a BSD. As
long as the fans and advocate of a BSD or other unix do not
behave as anti-Linux propagandists do, they are welcome in COLA,
as hopefully Linux advocates are just as welcome to visit their
newsgroups.
[/quote]
It was sufficiently "on topic".
--
HPT
Quando omni flunkus moritati
(If all else fails, play dead)
- "Red" Green
Gregory Shearman
> - XSLT (not quite algorithmic)
Hmmm... a *template* based solution? Not good. It works well for
transforming things ie search and match template, as in xml->html but
for programming? I don't think so.
--
Regards,
Gregory.
Gentoo Linux - Penguin Power
Hadron
> On 2008-11-25, Sandeep Kumar <deep839...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:27:54 +0000, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>> Hash: SHA1
>>>
>>> ____/ Tony Manco on Monday 24 November 2008 19:21 : \____
>>>
>>>> Kelsey Bjarnason wrote:
>>>>> Does notepad at least make backup copies of the previously saved
>>>>> version? I don't recall. If it did, one could accept the above as
>>>>> almost sensible. If not, well...
>>>>
>>>> AFAIK, no...
>>>
>>> notepad hasn't caught up even with vim.
>> Why would it?Notepad was designed to edit config.sys,autoexec.bat and other
>> small text files that might have needed editing back in the early days of
>> Windows.It was never considered anything more than a toy.Comparing it to
>> real editors like vi or emacs or Brief is not a fair comparison.
>
> ...isn't that funny.
>
> That's exactly one of the intended use cases for both vi and
> emacs.
Another great example of Jeb's knowledge.
Jeb : Emacs is built on it's own eLisp subsystem. It was not built to
edit config.sys. From day one it was envisaged as the customisable
editor.
Hence the ongoing joke about Emacs finally having an editor added to it.
Start here:
http://www.emacswiki.org/#toc1
--
"For example, user interfaces are _usually_ better in commercial software.
I'm not saying that this is always true, but in many cases the user
interface to a program is the most important part for a commercial
company..." Linus Torvalds <http://www.tlug.jp/docs/linus.html>
Chris Ahlstrom
this bit o' wisdom:
> On Nov 25, 3:23 pm, Chris Ahlstrom <lino...@bollsouth.nut> wrote:
>>
> Java, SQL, XSL, Javascript, Perl, C, C++,
> and a smattering of Python, PHP, Tcl/Tk, and
> maybe Squeak in my spare time.
Squeak? Ah.
Learning about new apps. That's one reason I like to hang out here in spite
of the cantankerous kooks.
> 4. Windows does have a reasonably nice archive format;
> all Word documents can encapsulate OLE items, which
> include pictures and arbitrary ActiveX widgets, if
> I'm not mistaken. Ditto for spreadsheets. However,
> I for one am not at all sure as to why we would even
> want an animated thingy in a document, as opposed to
> a static picture.
Perhaps Microsoft makes presentations using a series of flip-cards to
simulate animation?
> So now perhaps Hadron can counter?
Why not? He's a program manager.
--
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
-- Kahlil Gibran
JEDIDIAH
> JEDIDIAH <je...@nomad.mishnet> writes:
>
>> On 2008-11-25, Sandeep Kumar <deep839...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:27:54 +0000, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>>
>>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>>> Hash: SHA1
>>>>
>>>> ____/ Tony Manco on Monday 24 November 2008 19:21 : \____
>>>>
>>>>> Kelsey Bjarnason wrote:
>>>>>> Does notepad at least make backup copies of the previously saved
>>>>>> version? I don't recall. If it did, one could accept the above as
>>>>>> almost sensible. If not, well...
>>>>>
>>>>> AFAIK, no...
>>>>
>>>> notepad hasn't caught up even with vim.
>>> Why would it?Notepad was designed to edit config.sys,autoexec.bat and other
>>> small text files that might have needed editing back in the early days of
>>> Windows.It was never considered anything more than a toy.Comparing it to
>>> real editors like vi or emacs or Brief is not a fair comparison.
>>
>> ...isn't that funny.
>>
>> That's exactly one of the intended use cases for both vi and
>> emacs.
>
> Another great example of Jeb's knowledge.
...another great example of your lack of literacy.
>
> Jeb : Emacs is built on it's own eLisp subsystem. It was not built to
> edit config.sys. From day one it was envisaged as the customisable
> editor.
>
> Hence the ongoing joke about Emacs finally having an editor added to it.
>
> Start here:
>
> http://www.emacswiki.org/#toc1
>
--
vi isn't easy to use. |||
/ | \
vi is easy to REPLACE.
Chris Ahlstrom
this bit o' wisdom:
> On 2008-11-26, Hadron <hadro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> JEDIDIAH <je...@nomad.mishnet> writes:
>>> On 2008-11-25, Sandeep Kumar <deep839...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Notepad was designed to edit config.sys,autoexec.bat and other
>>>> small text files that might have needed editing back in the early days of
>>>> Windows....
>>>
>>> That's exactly one of the intended use cases for both vi and
>>> emacs.
>>
>> Another great example of Jeb's knowledge.
>
> ...another great example of your lack of literacy.
>
>> Jeb : Emacs is built on it's own eLisp subsystem. It was not built to
>> edit config.sys. From day one it was envisaged as the customisable
>> editor.
Notice how Hadron twists Jed's words? He turns
"that's exactly /one/ of the intended use cases for both vi and emacs"
into
"that's the /only/ intended use case for both vi and emacs"
Hadron tends to pare down complex thoughts into their most simple form --
while completely stripping them of their original meaning.
Deliberate lying, or mental defect?
--
Try to divide your time evenly to keep others happy.
chrisv
Both. Quack does that all that time - intentionally misinterprets
what someone says, and then calls them stupid or unreasonable, based
on his straw-man interpretation.
The Ghost In The Machine
wrote:
> On 2008-11-25, The Ghost In The Machine <ewi...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > - XSLT (not quite algorithmic)
>
> Hmmm... a *template* based solution? Not good. It works well for
> transforming things ie search and match template, as in xml->html but
> for programming? I don't think so.
It may depend on what one means by the term "programming".
One problem with computers -- if one can call it such --
is that they can do so many things:
- data moving around (e.g., XSLT, realtime gaming, some SQL)
- data summarization (various report packages, some SQL)
- data presentation visualization
* 2D colorization/pixelization
* graphs (line, bar, etc.)
* 2-independent 1-dependent (3D) graphs
- data synthesis/modeling (realtime gaming, predictions)
Other obvious functions include:
- data acquisition (lab equipment, roadway inductive loops)
- control functions (traffic signals, alerts/alarms)
though these generally require external hardware
such as sensors, indicators, relays or power
transistors, etc. etc.
As can readily be seen here, many of these center around
"data", which itself might be a rather ill-defined term
since it could be anything from scientific measurements
taken from an instrument to the addresses stored in any
street directory to the position and direction of every
particle in a block of iron. Admittedly, in the last
case one might get into certain issues regarding quantum
effects. ;-)
Or one can attempt a dichotomy between "data" and
"information". I'm frankly not quite sure where to begin,
though "information" is probably what "data" is turned
into through study, careful thought, analysis, instruction,
training, etc.
And then there are "facts", "knowledge", and "learning",
but I digress...in any event, the computer stores a bunch
of bits [*], some of which might be interpreted as numeric,
others as character sequences, still others as skipped over
or nothing at all (e.g., unused RAM pages or disk sectors).
I will briefly mention framing; TCP/IP packets in
particular contain at least three headers (Ethernet, IP,
TCP) which do not depend on data content except maybe the
data length. Disk sectors are encoded (see Manchester
encoding) and there's a header involved so that the disk
electronics can find the start of the sector.
I will briefly mention execution. As one might have
guessed, data can mean computer instructions; one of the
more important innovations back in the late 40's was to
allow programs to be stored in modifiable media (prior
to that programs were either wired or stored on card or
tape stock). Does a file contain data, or instructions?
A useful reminder, perhaps, in today's world of Trojans,
infectious viruses (which treat programs as data to
propagate themselves), and phishing. Note that a file
is associated with more framing: namely, the file name,
date of modification, data block location, etc.
Directories are almost *all* framing, unless one
counts the files they contain.
(And yes, I'm old enough to know of computers without file
systems. A favorite back in my high school days was the
HP 2114B, which had all of 16 kilowords of ferrule-core
memory, and at least back then no disk storage, though
one could attach a paper tape and a magnetic tape unit
thereto. One might also contemplate pre-floppy
Apple ][ units, or IBM PCs with nothing but their
internal BASICA.)
Programming [!], in the classical sense (or perhaps IMO),
is the implementation of an algorithm in a language
the computer can understand; it is therefore a bridge,
imposing human will on a machine mind (if one can call
it that), or one can simply consider it a new form of
language, far more structured and restrictive than our
usual linguistic efforts: English, German, Chinese,
French, Slovak, Swahili, etc., which both the human and
the computer hopefully understand, ideally unambiguously.
And even then, many if not most programming languages have
facilities which are completely ignored by the computer,
meant for human consumption -- namely, comments. [+]
And of course many of the more interesting programming
problems or algorithms involve -- you guessed it -- data.
Personally, I'm not all that enthusiastic about
XML and XSL, though it serves its purpose: the
problem with XML is that it has an awful lot of
framing, especially if the element names
get overlong: <TAGYOUAREIT a1=".." ...>...</TAGYOUAREIT>
However, it is very standard by now.
As a side segue into the original topic: many computers
are also generally responsible for data storage; a
file system is responsible (partly) for translating the abstract
notion of reading a file to the concrete instructions
necessary to extract data blocks from the disk drive.
In NTFS's case the translation is at best less
well-documented than it arguably should be, at least to
outsiders; ext2 et al have the advantage that one can
analyze certain existing implementations at the source
code level (said implementations having been incorporated
into the Linux kernel, among many many other things,
as C source). Of course one might disassemble, legally
or no, the NTFS implementation module used in Vista or
XP; the result is a fairly raw form of machine code,
which is closer to machine understanding than to humans.
It's a bit like comparing the high-level description of
a computer to a transistor-to-transistor wiring diagram.
* * *
[*] unless one is discussing analog units, which presumably
are still around when a digital one is clearly
overkill.
[!] "programming" and "computing" also have
other meanings -- one might use the synonym
"scheduling", for example, in the TV or radio
genres. "Computing" is still what a computer
does, though pre-Electronic Age a computer
would be a poor overworked peon with a pen
and, if he's lucky, an abacus, a table of logarithms,
and a nearby lamp.
[+] modern languages such as Java and C# also include
metadata, which is a bit hard for me to describe
but which is readable by both human, compiler, and
runtime; there are also programs which will process
source code with specially formatted comments and
render human-consumable output; the ones coming most
readily to mind are Javadoc and Doxygen.
And then there are very odd programs/languages such
as FORTH, which are self-modifying. Makes life
interesting, I suppose.
Sinister Midget
> Notice how Hadron twists Jed's words? He turns
>
> "that's exactly /one/ of the intended use cases for both vi and emacs"
>
> into
>
> "that's the /only/ intended use case for both vi and emacs"
>
> Hadron tends to pare down complex thoughts into their most simple form --
> while completely stripping them of their original meaning.
>
> Deliberate lying, or mental defect?
A mental defect that makes him deliberately lie.
--
Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.
-- Frank Zappa
Ezekiel
"Gregory Shearman" <ZekeG...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:slrngipugr.8t...@netscape.net...
> On 2008-11-25, The Ghost In The Machine <ewi...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> - XSLT (not quite algorithmic)
>
> Hmmm... a *template* based solution? Not good. It works well for
> transforming things ie search and match template, as in xml->html but
> for programming? I don't think so.
>
What a stupid statement. Of course XSLT is considered programming.
* It supports a set of native data types (boolean, number, string,
node-set) as well as external objects.
* It supports both operations and flow control (<xsl:template>,
<xsl:sort>, <xsl:output>, <xsl:if>, <xsl:for-each>, <xsl:choose>, etc, etc.)
* Advanced queries can be run via the XPath syntax to return structured
results.
Obviously it's not generic low-level programming as you would do in C/C++
but it's hardly different from SQL. XSLT is certainly able to input data,
process the data and output a meaningful and deterministic result. Therefore
it *IS* programming and it's stupid to think otherwise.
The Ghost In The Machine
> After takin' a swig o' grog, The Ghost In The Machine belched out
> this bit o' wisdom:
>
> > On Nov 25, 3:23 pm, Chris Ahlstrom <lino...@bollsouth.nut> wrote:
>
> > Java, SQL, XSL, Javascript, Perl, C, C++,
> > and a smattering of Python, PHP, Tcl/Tk, and
> > maybe Squeak in my spare time.
>
> Squeak? Ah.
>
> Learning about new apps. That's one reason I like to hang out here in spite
> of the cantankerous kooks.
Not sure how new Squeak is...it's basically warmed
over Smalltalk in a visual cage. Within that cage,
its capabilities aren't bad, if a bit unusual; one can
examine any object/widget/window and garner its properties,
for example. There's no separate window manager as such,
though.
>
> > 4. Windows does have a reasonably nice archive format;
> > all Word documents can encapsulate OLE items, which
> > include pictures and arbitrary ActiveX widgets, if
> > I'm not mistaken. Ditto for spreadsheets. However,
> > I for one am not at all sure as to why we would even
> > want an animated thingy in a document, as opposed to
> > a static picture.
>
> Perhaps Microsoft makes presentations using a series of flip-cards to
> simulate animation?
I wonder. The Amiga had an impressive capability
which among other things implemented sprites (movable
hardware-supported icons) and BOBs (blitter objects; these
are basically drawn on the screen using Amiga's hardware
blitter), and can move and cycle through successive frames.
The classical demo, which I can't seem to find using
Google, involved individuals walking back and forth in a
surreal cityscape; the individuals included a dog and a
fireplug (which reacted when the dog walked by). All of
these were implemented using BOBs.
GL requires one to reconstruct the display list (although
one can store and reuse display sublists) every frame,
if one wants to show animations.
Or, one can simply draw a series of bitmap pictures in
quick succession, if one has sufficient bandwidth.
Hadron
> On 2008-11-26, Chris Ahlstrom <lin...@bollsouth.nut> claimed:
>
>> Notice how Hadron twists Jed's words? He turns
>>
>> "that's exactly /one/ of the intended use cases for both vi and emacs"
>>
>> into
>>
>> "that's the /only/ intended use case for both vi and emacs"
>>
>> Hadron tends to pare down complex thoughts into their most simple form --
>> while completely stripping them of their original meaning.
>>
>> Deliberate lying, or mental defect?
>
> A mental defect that makes him deliberately lie.
or the opposite.
Listen up dickheads : "intended use" implies it was one of the design
focuses. Otherwise was can say the "intended use" of gedit is to "edit a
text file".
Get it?
Probably not.
Jeb was talking tosh and you know it.
--
"Vista actually requires more ram than a 32bit cpu can
address."
-- A Z Nomad in comp.os.linux.advocacy
Hadron
> After takin' a swig o' grog, The Ghost In The Machine belched out
> this bit o' wisdom:
>
>> On Nov 25, 3:23 pm, Chris Ahlstrom <lino...@bollsouth.nut> wrote:
>>>
>> Java, SQL, XSL, Javascript, Perl, C, C++,
>> and a smattering of Python, PHP, Tcl/Tk, and
>> maybe Squeak in my spare time.
>
> Squeak? Ah.
>
> Learning about new apps. That's one reason I like to hang out here in spite
> of the cantankerous kooks.
Nonsense. COLA rarely if ever mentions "new apps". You are telling lies
to suck up to Ghost. I know it. You know it. And Ghost knows it.
>
>> 4. Windows does have a reasonably nice archive format;
>> all Word documents can encapsulate OLE items, which
>> include pictures and arbitrary ActiveX widgets, if
>> I'm not mistaken. Ditto for spreadsheets. However,
>> I for one am not at all sure as to why we would even
>> want an animated thingy in a document, as opposed to
>> a static picture.
>
> Perhaps Microsoft makes presentations using a series of flip-cards to
> simulate animation?
You should know. You use MS Office.
>
>> So now perhaps Hadron can counter?
>
> Why not? He's a program manager.
Non sequitur as usual.
--
"Its obvious Micoshaft sponsored frauds and net stalkers are now attacking individuals directly in organised gangs in linux advocacy newsgroups as predicted since it is known micoshaft is failing in the market place."
7, COLA Linux "advocate" and nutjob.
Hadron
What are you talking about here Ghost? Some special variety? Animations
are almost always done be drawing to a double buffered bitmap memory and
then switched in. Alternatively in the old days you render as much as
possible during horizontal and vertical scanbacks,
>
>>
>> > So now perhaps Hadron can counter?
>>
>> Why not? He's a program manager.
>>
>
--
Hadron
> Sinister Midget <fardb...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On 2008-11-26, Chris Ahlstrom <lin...@bollsouth.nut> claimed:
>>
>>> Notice how Hadron twists Jed's words? He turns
>>>
>>> "that's exactly /one/ of the intended use cases for both vi and emacs"
>>>
>>> into
>>>
>>> "that's the /only/ intended use case for both vi and emacs"
>>>
>>> Hadron tends to pare down complex thoughts into their most simple form --
>>> while completely stripping them of their original meaning.
>>>
>>> Deliberate lying, or mental defect?
>>
>> A mental defect that makes him deliberately lie.
>
> or the opposite.
>
> Listen up dickheads : "intended use" implies it was one of the design
> focuses. Otherwise was can say the "intended use" of gedit is to "edit a
> text file".
>
> Get it?
>
> Probably not.
>
> Jeb was talking tosh and you know it.
And, incidentally, emacs and vi both preceded config.sys and
autoexec.bat.
The Ghost In The Machine
> The Ghost In The Machine <ewi...@earthlink.net> writes:
>
>
>
> > On Nov 26, 5:01 am, Chris Ahlstrom <lino...@bollsouth.nut> wrote:
> >> After takin' a swig o' grog, The Ghost In The Machine belched out
> >> this bit o' wisdom:
[snip for brevity]
> >> Perhaps Microsoft makes presentations using a series of flip-cards to
> >> simulate animation?
>
> > I wonder. The Amiga had an impressive capability
> > which among other things implemented sprites (movable
> > hardware-supported icons) and BOBs (blitter objects; these
> > are basically drawn on the screen using Amiga's hardware
> > blitter), and can move and cycle through successive frames.
>
> > The classical demo, which I can't seem to find using
> > Google, involved individuals walking back and forth in a
> > surreal cityscape; the individuals included a dog and a
> > fireplug (which reacted when the dog walked by). All of
> > these were implemented using BOBs.
>
> > GL requires one to reconstruct the display list (although
> > one can store and reuse display sublists) every frame,
> > if one wants to show animations.
>
> > Or, one can simply draw a series of bitmap pictures in
> > quick succession, if one has sufficient bandwidth.
>
> What are you talking about here Ghost? Some special variety? Animations
> are almost always done be drawing to a double buffered bitmap memory and
> then switched in. Alternatively in the old days you render as much as
> possible during horizontal and vertical scanbacks,
>
You are correct up to a point. The OpenGL programming API,
however, can be used to animate; in fact, it's fairly
simple. The main problem is maintaining a consistent
animation across machines with different capabilities
(and therefore different frame rates). One might simply
read the system clock and use its value to compute the
position of a moving item, for example.
I strongly suspect Direct3D can also be used to animate,
though I don't know the specifics.
[rest snipped]
Hadron
There is "however". At the end of the day the gfx are rendered onto a
bit map display. And the displays are switched. Some even employ triple
buffering.
JEDIDIAH
...yeah, but not their Unix cousins.
Besides, if we're going to fixate on MS-DOS startup scripts then
we might as well acknowledge the original MS-DOS equivalent here which
oddly enough is very much like a LISP interpreter that masquerades as
a text editor... <chuckle>
--
The best OS in the world is ultimately useless |||
if it is controlled by a Tramiel, Jobs or Gates. / | \
Cork Soaker
> On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:20:17 +0000, Fingel wrote:
>
>> On 2008-11-24, Kelsey Bjarnason <kel...@lgisp.net> wrote:
>>> On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:37:26 +0200, geonik wrote:
>>>
>>>> A.S. Tanenbaum "Modern Operating Systems" 2nd edition <quote> In an
>>>> experiment to see if Windows NT file usage was appreciably different
>>>> from UNIX file usage, Vogels made measurements on files at Cornell
>>>> University (Vogels, 1999). He observed that NT file usage is more
>>>> complicated than on UNIX. He wrote: /When we type a few characters in
>>>> the notepad text editor, saving this to a file will trigger 26 system
>>>> calls, including 3 failed open attempts, 1 file overwrite and 4
>>>> additional open and close sequences./ </quote> No comment.
>>> version? I don't recall. If it did, one could accept the above as
>>> almost sensible. If not, well...
>>>
>
> Maybe it does have undo/redo, but that's not a file operation. Why would
> it need three failed open, an overwrite and four more open/close
> sequences to do a simple open/write/close operation?
>
Maybe it's a triple-check to make sure the file does not exist?
Excessive but...
Cork Soaker
> Does Notepad also open a number of configuration files & plugins when it
> starts, like vim does?
>
Nope, it's very simple. For a Windows app, it's one of the best - very
simple.
Hadron
> On 2008-11-26, Hadron <hadro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hadron <hadro...@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Sinister Midget <fardb...@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 2008-11-26, Chris Ahlstrom <lin...@bollsouth.nut> claimed:
>>>>
>>>>> Notice how Hadron twists Jed's words? He turns
>>>>>
>>>>> "that's exactly /one/ of the intended use cases for both vi and emacs"
>>>>>
>>>>> into
>>>>>
>>>>> "that's the /only/ intended use case for both vi and emacs"
>>>>>
>>>>> Hadron tends to pare down complex thoughts into their most simple form --
>>>>> while completely stripping them of their original meaning.
>>>>>
>>>>> Deliberate lying, or mental defect?
>>>>
>>>> A mental defect that makes him deliberately lie.
>>>
>>> or the opposite.
>>>
>>> Listen up dickheads : "intended use" implies it was one of the design
>>> focuses. Otherwise was can say the "intended use" of gedit is to "edit a
>>> text file".
>>>
>>> Get it?
>>>
>>> Probably not.
>>>
>>> Jeb was talking tosh and you know it.
>>
>> And, incidentally, emacs and vi both preceded config.sys and
>> autoexec.bat.
>
> ...yeah, but not their Unix cousins.
>
> Besides, if we're going to fixate on MS-DOS startup scripts then
I didnt. You did. Nice try.
> we might as well acknowledge the original MS-DOS equivalent here which
> oddly enough is very much like a LISP interpreter that masquerades as
> a text editor... <chuckle>
What are you talking about?
Chris Ahlstrom
this bit o' wisdom:
> Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
It's a weird editor. It can handle Unicode files, but not files with UNIX
line endings.
Go figure.
--
"I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass."
- Senator Barry Goldwater, when asked what he thought of Jerry Falwell's
suggestion that all good Christians should be against Sandra Day O'Connor's
nomination to the Supreme Court
Ezekiel
"Chris Ahlstrom" <lin...@bollsouth.nut> wrote in message
news:juSXk.1138$M01....@bignews3.bellsouth.net...
> After takin' a swig o' grog, Cork Soaker belched out
> this bit o' wisdom:
>
>> Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
>>
>>> Does Notepad also open a number of configuration files & plugins when
>>> it
>>> starts, like vim does?
>>
>> Nope, it's very simple. For a Windows app, it's one of the best - very
>> simple.
>
> It's a weird editor. It can handle Unicode files, but not files with
> UNIX
> line endings.
>
> Go figure.
Good point. If there was one gripe that I have with Notepad then this would
be it. Otherwise Notepad.exe is extremely light and extremely quick but it
*does* get confused if files in my ~/ directory were edited from the Unix
world.
JEDIDIAH
> JEDIDIAH <je...@nomad.mishnet> writes:
>
>> On 2008-11-26, Hadron <hadro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hadron <hadro...@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> Sinister Midget <fardb...@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> On 2008-11-26, Chris Ahlstrom <lin...@bollsouth.nut> claimed:
>>>> Probably not.
>>>>
>>>> Jeb was talking tosh and you know it.
>>>
>>> And, incidentally, emacs and vi both preceded config.sys and
>>> autoexec.bat.
>>
>> ...yeah, but not their Unix cousins.
>>
>> Besides, if we're going to fixate on MS-DOS startup scripts then
>
> I didnt. You did. Nice try.
>
>> we might as well acknowledge the original MS-DOS equivalent here which
>> oddly enough is very much like a LISP interpreter that masquerades as
>> a text editor... <chuckle>
>
> What are you talking about?
...just fell off the turnip truck yesterday I see.
--
Metallica is not worth the ruination of someone |||
who has pirated their music / | \
Chris Ahlstrom
this bit o' wisdom:
> "Chris Ahlstrom" <lin...@bollsouth.nut> wrote in message
> news:juSXk.1138$M01....@bignews3.bellsouth.net...
>>
>> It's a weird editor. It can handle Unicode files, but not files with
>> UNIX line endings.
>
> Good point. If there was one gripe that I have with Notepad then this would
> be it. Otherwise Notepad.exe is extremely light and extremely quick but it
> *does* get confused if files in my ~/ directory were edited from the Unix
> world.
I tell people to fire up WordPad, instead.
WordPad probably covers about 80% of all use cases for a "word processor"
(well, a large percentage, anyway).
--
It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline.
Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
Chris Ahlstrom
this bit o' wisdom:
> On 2008-11-28, Hadron <hadro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> What are you talking about?
>
> ...just fell off the turnip truck yesterday I see.
Lettuce, turnip, and pea.
--
Time goes, you say?
Ah no!
Time stays, *we* go.
-- Austin Dobson
Ezekiel
"Chris Ahlstrom" <lin...@bollsouth.nut> wrote in message
> After takin' a swig o' grog, Ezekiel belched out
> this bit o' wisdom:
>
>> "Chris Ahlstrom" <lin...@bollsouth.nut> wrote in message
>> news:juSXk.1138$M01....@bignews3.bellsouth.net...
>>>
>>> It's a weird editor. It can handle Unicode files, but not files with
>>> UNIX line endings.
>>
>> Good point. If there was one gripe that I have with Notepad then this
>> would
>> be it. Otherwise Notepad.exe is extremely light and extremely quick but
>> it
>> *does* get confused if files in my ~/ directory were edited from the
>> Unix
>> world.
>
> I tell people to fire up WordPad, instead.
>
> WordPad probably covers about 80% of all use cases for a "word processor"
> (well, a large percentage, anyway).
It's not 'people' - it's actually me. Notepad is small, light and fast
and it basically starts instantly. For some unsubstantiated reason I have
this belief that Wordpad is much larger and slower but it really isn't.
(But I keep thinking that it is.) Looking at tasklist I see that Wordpad is
taking 5.5 Megs of memory with a VM footprint of 1.2 Megs. And it handles
Unix style line terminators so maybe I can train myself to use it more
often. Because right now if I need to make a quick-edit to a Unix style
file then I'll fire up emacs which is way, way bigger than Wordpad.
Chris Ahlstrom
this bit o' wisdom:
> It's not 'people' - it's actually me. Notepad is small, light and fast
> and it basically starts instantly. For some unsubstantiated reason I have
> this belief that Wordpad is much larger and slower but it really isn't.
> (But I keep thinking that it is.) Looking at tasklist I see that Wordpad is
> taking 5.5 Megs of memory with a VM footprint of 1.2 Megs. And it handles
> Unix style line terminators so maybe I can train myself to use it more
> often. Because right now if I need to make a quick-edit to a Unix style
> file then I'll fire up emacs which is way, way bigger than Wordpad.
On Windows, I use gvim almost exclusively (except for Unicode, though I'm
sure there's a vim way to edit 'em.)
That is, when I'm not in cygwin. There, I use the command-line vim.
--
* gxam wonders if all these globals are really necessary
<Knghtbrd> most of them at the moment yes
<Knghtbrd> we REALLY need to clean them up at some point
<Knghtbrd> gxam: the globals will have to go away as we migrate towards
modularity and madness (ie, libtool)
William Poaster
A lying mental defect.
--
Most people are sheep.
Microsoft is very effective
at fleecing the flockers.