I've been assimilated
Coinneach Fitzpatrick
Last month, on a whim, I sent a Memphis beta-tester application to M$. In
my reason for applying, I said that I want to take an active role in
reversing the downward trend in software quality.
Apparently, the weenies in Redmond lack active receptors for sarcasm...
I've been accepted. Got the tech-beta-3 CD last night.
I pondered for a while, thinking, "Installing beta software is Russian
Roulette, with worse odds. When it comes from Redmond, it's more like
roulette with a nuke."
Fuck it. I zipped up the important files, namely the porn and and band
stuff, then shoved them onto my backup drive, took a deep breath, and
jumped in.
ObBTW: The readme file very sternly warns testers "do *not* discuss this
beta on any other newsgroups" besides the Memphis groups on
betanews.microsoft.com. OFW.
Setup was, for better or worse, automatic. No hardware detection (this
would be a !peeve). There were no installed-software options; everything is
installed by default. Lame, lame, lame. Of course, *everyone* has a few
gigabytes of storage available for shit like AOL, MSN, Genie, Prodigy,
Outlook, IE4, etc ad nauseam.
Things actually went pretty smoothly. 30 minutes and four reboots later,
the system was up. I closed the IE4 taskbar or toolbar or whatever they're
calling it this month, then went to the system software area to yank all
the unnecessary crap off the system... only to find no way to uninstall
IE4. Bastards. Went to the shell and yanked the buggardly thing off
manually, with no ill effects. Everything else came off easily.
Helix Software's Bomb Shelter wouldn't load. Of course, since Windows is
uncrashable, it isn't necessary anyway.[1]
My desktop shortcut to Eudora was mysteriously deleted and replaced with
Outlook. Hmmm. The app itself was untouched.
Since I work in DOS mode occasionally, I have a multiple-boot setup. I can
go to Windows, DOS with extended memory, DOS with expanded memory, load my
low-level sound card drivers, or boot clean. Setup thoughtfully commented
out all the lines in autoexec.bat and removed my sound card's real-mode
plug-and-pray driver from config.sys.
For some reason, a 14MB swap file is in use, although the system has 64MB
of RAM, with some 40MB free at boot.
Some weird sound scheme was installed, although I had no system sounds
designated before.
And that's it. Everything else performed as unexpected; namely, it worked,
and worked well. The shell `improvements' are mostly cosmetic... gradient
colors in the title bars, for example. My MIDI apps worked fine, with no
latency. I haven't tested my OpenGL and DirectX games yet, but I expect to
see no real change.
?Peeve: Overall, I'd say M$ has taken one small step towards redeeming
themselves. At least, until Windows 2000...
--
"I got fired from my job the other day. They said my personality
was weird... That's okay. I have four more." --Bug-Eyed Earl in _Red Meat_
[1] That's sarcasm. Duh.
Pat Steppic
In article <01bd0b2d$8d052380$eb80...@c-fitzpatrick.cxo.dec.com>,
Coinneach Fitzpatrick <ken.fit...@digital.com> wrote:
>Last month, on a whim, I sent a Memphis beta-tester application to M$. In
>my reason for applying, I said that I want to take an active role in
>reversing the downward trend in software quality.
>
>Apparently, the weenies in Redmond lack active receptors for sarcasm...
...either that, or they're so finely-tuned that it becomes
indistinguishable from their normal prattle. Witness
yesterday's Seattle Times, which had a story about several
states' attorneys-general considering anti-trust litigation
against M$. Mentioned was the company's appeal of the ruling on
IE and Win95, and that one should not automatically be included
with the other.
As an aside: Peevers seem to be reasonable people, by and
large, and, by and large, computer-literate, so I'd like to ask:
Is there _anyone_ here who can see Microsoft's point, that a web
browser could _possibly_ be considered an integral part of an
operating system? I'm a little confused here. The analogy I
came up with is: a car manufacturer installs power windows on a
particular model of car, then runs a relay through the power
window circuit which controls the brakes, then calls the power
windows an integral and necessary part of the car, the removal
of which would significantly impair the vehicle's performance.
Am I way off base here, or is this a fair analogy?
Anyway, the article in the paper includes the following
paragraph, which made me laugh out loud:
"Microsoft asked for an expedited hearing on its appeal of
the order. The software giant said the order would
'irreparably injure Microsoft's reputation' by forcing the
company to license a dysfunctional product."
Anyway, I'm glad to hear that the next version of Windows
assumes that it knows even _more_ about what should and should
not go onto your computer than the current versions do.
>?Peeve: Overall, I'd say M$ has taken one small step towards redeeming
>themselves. At least, until Windows 2000...
*Snort* - given the nature of the market, we're more or less
bound to writing Windows software. The other day, I had to help
a customer who had configured his computer to have that damn
fucking IE4 interface, which, true to their Stalinist Essence,
M$ claims is the absolute latest and greatest.
We had to dick around with a few .dll's, but, since the software
developers know better what you should look at than you do,
they've hidden most of the files that actually _do_ anything.
In the "normal" interface, it's enough of a pain in the ass to
explain to point-and-droolers how to change the Windows
Explorer(tm) or File Manager(tm) so's they could actually get
anything done, but it's damn-near impossible with the "new and
improved" "active interface," and I'm not interested in spending
a week trying to figure it out.
So guess what? Open a DOS box, and (this is a particularly
tough one for some users), _actually_ _type_ _in_ _text_ to see
and change what's in certain directories. Use fifteen-year-old
technology to actually get things done.
By the way, yesterday was the fiftieth anniversary of Bell Labs'
invention of the transistor.
Pat "Coming soon: Microsoft invents 'Transistor 2000,' calls
penny-sized semiconductor 'the latest in hardware" Steppic
--
================================================================
Make the obvious changes in the above e-mail address to respond.
"If there exists any peaceful place in the world where a little
quiet contemplation can be had, sooner or later someone will
invent some "sport" that trashes it."
- badpenny@[127.0.0.1] (George Washington Hayduke)
"That Cat's Something
I Can't Explain"
Issac Merkle
>As an aside: Peevers seem to be reasonable people, by and
>large, and, by and large, computer-literate, so I'd like to ask:
>Is there _anyone_ here who can see Microsoft's point, that a web
>browser could _possibly_ be considered an integral part of an
>operating system?
I'm not sure that I actually count as a Peever, having merely lurked on the
NG for a couple of months, but I'll share my $.02 anyway...
I don't see how Microsoft can be legally prevented from including their web
browser with their OS. IMHO, they should be allowed to put as much or as
little functionality in their software as they so desire. How can that be
regulated? They're not charging more for the OS as a result of the
addition.
I realize that Netscape is a competitor, many people like Netscape, and that
including IE with the OS makes it more difficult to install and configure
Netscape properly...but, so what? Realistically, isn't that like saying
that they cannot include a CD-player utility because it competes with X
software that serves the same purpose?
I do agree with your analogy of the car with power windows, however...the
'Net isn't really an integral part of the OS, at least not yet.
(FYI, I am a sysadmin, and I do use IE 4.01, and like it quite well.)
Regards,
Issac.
Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide
Speaking of being assimilated, I tried FreeAgent and didn't care for it.
Sadly,
the next best thing to trn seems to be nutscrape news. Deal with it,
Bob.
Pat Steppic wrote:
> As an aside: Peevers seem to be reasonable people, by and
> large, and, by and large, computer-literate, so I'd like to ask:
> Is there _anyone_ here who can see Microsoft's point, that a web
> browser could _possibly_ be considered an integral part of an
> operating system? I'm a little confused here. The analogy I
> came up with is: a car manufacturer installs power windows on a
> particular model of car, then runs a relay through the power
> window circuit which controls the brakes, then calls the power
> windows an integral and necessary part of the car, the removal
> of which would significantly impair the vehicle's performance.
Well, that's about it. If you build a building with wiring and
fixtures that use proprietary plugs and which explode and burn
if you plug any non-proprietary appliances into them, you might
pull your head out of your ass long enough to state that it's
vital that the customer use only the proprietary appliances.
You're (not *you*, of course, Pat, but some other Seattlite) still
full of shit, though.
> Am I way off base here, or is this a fair analogy?
Quite fair - The whole thing is annoying beyond belief.
For an additional example, I installed Orifice 97 - as
a tech writer type, it contains a bunch of stuff I need
to have available. I chose the minimalist installation
to steer clear of MS "added value" wherever possible.
Well, it breaks Internet Exploder in a fundamental way.
Whenever IE40 finds a Mailto URL, it looks to its parent
software to find a mailer to invoke - Well, when you
install Orifice, it tells IE40 that MS Outlook (Outhouse)
is *the* mail software. Outhouse *really* wants to
use MSN as your mail server. (See the daisy chain of
assimilation at work?)
Somehow, MS manages to make IE40 come up and work a lot
faster than Nutscrape. I wouldn't be at all surprised to
find special code hidden somewhere that includes a series
of sleep() calls whenever Netscape software is running.
> Anyway, the article in the paper includes the following
> paragraph, which made me laugh out loud:
>
> "Microsoft asked for an expedited hearing on its appeal of
> the order. The software giant said the order would
> 'irreparably injure Microsoft's reputation' by forcing the
> company to license a dysfunctional product."
>
> Anyway, I'm glad to hear that the next version of Windows
> assumes that it knows even _more_ about what should and should
> not go onto your computer than the current versions do.
Somewhere back along the line, I inherited the mistaken notion
that computers were tools and inanimate objects, and existed
to serve the needs of their human owners. Clearly, they exist
to help me serve the needs of MS. This peeves me to no end.
> *Snort* - given the nature of the market, we're more or less
> bound to writing Windows software.
I'm getting a crash course in Linux, as I've been hired by Clackamas
Community College to teach *NIX to their students. Look for me to
be back on trn in short order. (If I can figure out how to configure
the @&*#*&@%^# ethernet card.)
JZ
David Wren-Hardin
On Thu, 18 Dec 1997 12:27:24 -0800, Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide <zursch@cyberhighway.
net> wrote:
>Speaking of being assimilated, I tried FreeAgent and didn't care for it.
>Sadly,
>the next best thing to trn seems to be nutscrape news. Deal with it,
Slrn. I've only been using it for a day now, but already like it a lot.
--
David Wren-Hardin | Now some people say that you shouldn't
dwre...@u.washington.edu | tempt fate...But I never learned nothing
http://weber.u.washington.edu | from playing it safe, I say fate should
/~dwrenhar/ | not tempt me. -Mary-Chapin Carpenter.
Olawanji Shausha
>I'm not sure that I actually count as a Peever, having merely lurked on the
>NG for a couple of months, but I'll share my $.02 anyway...
Welcome aboard. Hop into this here barrel and we'll be right with you.
>I don't see how Microsoft can be legally prevented from including their web
>browser with their OS. IMHO, they should be allowed to put as much or as
>little functionality in their software as they so desire. How can that be
>regulated? They're not charging more for the OS as a result of the
>addition.
Whizzed right over your head, did it? If you had even a modicum left
of the sense you were born with you'd have read the reports in the
press and discovered that instead of merely including Internet
Exploder, Micro$not were *requiring* manufacturers of Intel boxen to
load IE *in$tead of* $ome other brow$er. That's what we call Unfair
Restraint of Trade where I come from.
John S. Novak
>As an aside: Peevers seem to be reasonable people, by and
>large, and, by and large, computer-literate, so I'd like to ask:
>Is there _anyone_ here who can see Microsoft's point, that a web
>browser could _possibly_ be considered an integral part of an
>operating system?
Not me. The very idea scares me, to be perfectly honest.
Of course, anyone with a half a brain can tell that the point fo this
was to evade, and otherwise squirm free of, existing agreements and
regulations.
> "Microsoft asked for an expedited hearing on its appeal of
> the order. The software giant said the order would
> 'irreparably injure Microsoft's reputation' by forcing the
> company to license a dysfunctional product."
Sometimes, the needle wraps all the way around the peg.
Which reminds me, I really need to get my hands on an old analog meter
of any type, the next time I go to a ham fest. I will bend te needle
around the far peg, mount it in my office, and wait for people to ask.
>Pat "Coming soon: Microsoft invents 'Transistor 2000,' calls
> penny-sized semiconductor 'the latest in hardware" Steppic
A transistor with a GUI, no doubt.
"You just indicate with the mouse which state you want it to be in."
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cris.com
The Humblest Man on the Net
Olawanji Shausha
>Sometimes, the needle wraps all the way around the peg.
>Which reminds me, I really need to get my hands on an old analog meter
>of any type, the next time I go to a ham fest. I will bend te needle
>around the far peg, mount it in my office, and wait for people to ask.
Heh. Living as I do in the central part of California, surplus joints
abound. I have a metric buttload of miscellaneous meters, including
some pretty damned sensitive voltmeters around 5 inches in diameter.
Oh, by the way, I still have the Eico VTVM kit I built some 30 years
ago.
James Kew
In article <349987...@cyberhighway.net>,
"Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide" <zur...@cyberhighway.net> wrote:
>
> ... Orifice 97 ... Internet Exploder ... Outhouse ... Nutscrape.
Peeve: Cutesy tweaked nicknames for computer software. This is alt.peeves,
dammit, not some lame comp.advocacy newsgroup.
--
James Kew
SSA Softwright
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
Steve Daniels
>In article <349987...@cyberhighway.net>,
> "Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide" <zur...@cyberhighway.net> wrote:
>>
>> ... Orifice 97 ... Internet Exploder ... Outhouse ... Nutscrape.
>
>Peeve: Cutesy tweaked nicknames for computer software. This is alt.peeves,
>dammit, not some lame comp.advocacy newsgroup.
Well, you're right. It's not a lame comp.advocacy newsgroup. It
is a very astute comp.advocacy newsgroup, among other things.
Thank you for pointing this out.
--
Peevers would just as soon the rest of the world fucked off and died.
Which is okay--they're just being peevers.
Hank Blake, Aug '97
Bob O`Brien
Michael A. Atkinson <m-atk...@nwu.edu> wrote:
>
>Microsoft has been trying for decades
Really?
...well, okay, but *just barely*.
Bob O`Bob
--
"Dude, you can't quote Hillman in front of Jesus!" -from the Spirit of Peevemas
****Fee for reviewing unsolicited commercial mail: $500 minimum.****
I don't buy from spammers, and I don't reply to forged email.
ken.fit...@digital.com
In article <349976E4.5896@remove_this.eskimo.com>,
Pat Steppic wrote:
> As an aside: Peevers seem to be reasonable people, by and
> large, and, by and large, computer-literate, so I'd like to ask:
> Is there _anyone_ here who can see Microsoft's point, that a web
> browser could _possibly_ be considered an integral part of an
> operating system?
When I first saw that argument, my immediate response was a horrified
scream. The horror was due to two things:
1. M$ actually thinks the computer-literate will buy this;
2. The computer-illterate will.
Props to the judge who called bullshit. Finally, a lawyer with common
sense.
My belief, which goes back to when I started working on computers in
junior high, is that there are three distinct levels to any computer: the
hardware, the OS, and the apps. You _absolutely_do_not_ attempt to cross
the barriers. Calling a fucking web browser (and a piss-poor one, at
that) an `integral part of the operating system' is a bald-faced example
of bad programming.
I've been running Windows for over 2 years now without IE4. Therefore, it
very obviously is NOT critical to the operation of my system.
> Am I way off base here, or is this a fair analogy?
Works for me.
> "Microsoft asked for an expedited hearing on its appeal of
> the order. The software giant said the order would
> 'irreparably injure Microsoft's reputation' by forcing the
> company to license a dysfunctional product."
Like that's stopped them in the past?
> Anyway, I'm glad to hear that the next version of Windows
> assumes that it knows even _more_ about what should and should
> not go onto your computer than the current versions do.
Oh yeah. Try playing with the virtual memory settings and watch Memphis
shriek in horror. Try deleting c:\tempor~1 (the IE4 cache directory) and
boggle as Memphis says "You are trying to delete a Cookie!!" No shit, two
exclamation points.
> *Snort* - given the nature of the market, we're more or less
> bound to writing Windows software.
A peeve of epic proportions. I'm working on specs for a game based on the
Quake engine. I'd like to keep it in DOS, and maybe port it to *nix, but
every game reviewer in the world will bitch about it "not being
Windows-native." Fuck 'em.
> The other day, I had to help
> a customer who had configured his computer to have that damn
> fucking IE4 interface, which, true to their Stalinist Essence,
> M$ claims is the absolute latest and greatest.
Shit, I'm thinking about re-extracting explorer.exe off my Windows 95 CD
and replacing the "New!! and Improved!!" shell.
> but it's damn-near impossible with the "new and
> improved" "active interface," and I'm not interested in spending
> a week trying to figure it out.
First thing I did was turn off Active Desktop. I don't need my system to
think it's on the internet 24/7.
> So guess what? Open a DOS box, and (this is a particularly
> tough one for some users), _actually_ _type_ _in_ _text_ to see
> and change what's in certain directories.
Gasp! Heresy! I was unable to reset the system attribute bit on
c:\tempor~1, so I booted to DOS and whacked the directory from there.
> Use fifteen-year-old
> technology to actually get things done.
Like, uh, BSD?
ObOhYeah: My OpenGL games (Hexen 2 and Quake) either fail to start, or
hard-hang the machine. My DirectX games (Hellbender, MTM) work fine.
Coincidence?
ken.fit...@digital.com
> I don't see how Microsoft can be legally prevented from including their web
> browser with their OS.
M$ wanted to require OEMs to install IE4 by default, instead of allowing
the OEMs and their customers to decide for themselves which browser they
wanted. That was the core of DOJ's lawsuit. It was nothing to do with
trying to restrict M$' options, but rather, preventing them from
restricting others' options. You know, anticompetitive practice;
something the dorks in Redmond are justifiably (in)famous for.
>They're not charging more for the OS as a result of the addition.
Again, charging for it isn't the point. They tried to force their
software onto people who don't want it, which is just plain wrong.
> I realize that Netscape is a competitor, many people like Netscape, and that
> including IE with the OS makes it more difficult to install and configure
> Netscape properly...but, so what?
Holy shit. "So what," you say?
> Realistically, isn't that like saying
> that they cannot include a CD-player utility because it competes with X
> software that serves the same purpose?
No, that analogy is wrong. Check your facts, please: M$ didn't say
anything about preventing Navigator from being installed. They tried to
force OEMs to install IE4 by default, instead of offering the choice.
> I do agree with your analogy of the car with power windows, however...the
> 'Net isn't really an integral part of the OS, at least not yet.
Thank Glub for small favors.
> (FYI, I am a sysadmin, and I do use IE 4.01, and like it quite well.)
Uh... we talked a few weeks ago about sysadmins who blindly follow the M$
party line. Not flatteringly, either.
Coinneach Fitzpatrick
James Kew <j...@langley.softwright.co.uk> wrote in article
<882523001....@dejanews.com>...
> In article <349987...@cyberhighway.net>,
> "Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide" <zur...@cyberhighway.net> wrote:
> >
> > ... Orifice 97 ... Internet Exploder ... Outhouse ... Nutscrape.
>
> Peeve: Cutesy tweaked nicknames for computer software.
Peeve: "Cutesy." C'mon, James, those monikers all denote something about
the referenced software.
Internet Exploiter: Exactly what M$ wants to do.
Internet Exploder: I can't get IE* to stay running for more than an hour
before it crashes.
Nutscrape: Navigator versions up to and including 3.x were just as painful.
Nav4 is better, but still lacks.
Outhouse: Ever tried using Outlook? It induces intestinal cramps in Yours
Truly.
>This is alt.peeves, dammit, not some lame comp.advocacy newsgroup.
cmgroup comp.advocacy.sinclair-zx81. Any takers?
CF
Tim Mefford
In article <349976E4.5896@remove_this.eskimo.com>,
Pat Steppic <hpat@remove_this.eskimo.com> wrote:
>As an aside: Peevers seem to be reasonable people, by and
>large, and, by and large, computer-literate, so I'd like to ask:
>Is there _anyone_ here who can see Microsoft's point, that a web
>browser could _possibly_ be considered an integral part of an
>operating system?
This is a fairly easy one. Small n' Flacid *intended* that the
*explorer* product manage both file on the local computer and
resources on the web. It was their intention that this product
be fully functional long before Windows '97 was released. It will
take no measurable amount of observation to deduce that the people
in Redmond are not adept at realizing their intentions. However,
as their marketing campaigns, as well as their products, for that
matter, are more a matter of hopeful (good would definitely be
inappropriate here) intentions than any reality, you can see why
they'd be perfectly justified in suing anyone who failed to play
along buying patterns for the emperor's fall wardrobe.
ObPeeve: The Ice Storm--It was intensely mediocre. Two word
reaction: so what?
Would someone please buy a javastation and tell me if they can
do anything?
2nd query: In an effort to bring my attention span more in line
with that of my countrymen, I'm considering a magazine subscription.
Pros and cons of the following?
Harpers
Smithsonian
New Yorker
Utne
Republic
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Tim Mefford | "There are three kinds of lies:
| lies, damned lies, and statistics."
t...@teleport.com | - Benjamin Disraeli
________________________________________________________________
Lenore Levine
t...@user2.teleport.com (Tim Mefford) writes:
>Smithsonian
>New Yorker
I enjoy reading these two. Of course, with the New Yorker,
I skip the fiction.
>Utne
Utne used to be a good read, years ago. Now it's recycled
New Age and Looney Left fare that wasn't that great the
first time around. In other words: Literary vomit.
Bonus: A friend recently gave me a 1993 Mother Jones.
As I remembered, the magazine was actually entertaining
and funny. Whether or not I agreed with the positions
taken, they were thought-provoking.
Recent issues, though, have been deathly dull. I
stopped subscribing. Now I hardly look through the
damn thing on the newsstand.
DoubleBonus: New Age. Years ago, the magazine was
a critique of the community it served. Now, it's a puff
sheet for the community it serves.
Triple: The Whole Earth Review. Recently resurrected
from the dead, headed straight for zombiehood.
When did the mainstream left start playing things so
damn safe? It wasn't that way even seven years ago.
What happened?
Lenore Levine
Man Friday
In article <slrn69jot...@viking.cris.com>, quoth "John S. Novak"
<J...@viking.cris.com>:
>
>Sometimes, the needle wraps all the way around the peg.
>Which reminds me, I really need to get my hands on an old analog meter
>of any type, the next time I go to a ham fest. I will bend te needle
>around the far peg, mount it in my office, and wait for people to ask.
Had a bike once with a semibroken speedo - the needle went round like a
second hand, at a speed proportional to that of the bike. Amusing in its
own way, and it always passed the MOT, as they check the bike
stationary.
"Speed officer? I was doing about 45rpm"
----------------------------
Paul Friday
To reply remove the junk from the address.
"Smoking kills, and if you're killed, you've lost a very important
part of your life" - Brooke Shields.
Douglas G. Henke
Pat Steppic <hpat@remove_this.eskimo.com> writes:
> Is there _anyone_ here who can see Microsoft's point, that a web
> browser could _possibly_ be considered an integral part of an
> operating system?
I have yet to reach any understanding of the delu^H^H idea that user
interface should be part of, rather than orthogonal to, the OS.
(I also think your question suggests a certain lack of understanding
on your part of the difference between an operating system and an
application launcher.)
Peeve: A growing number of the applications I need to run (read: games)
require an extremely annoying application launcher (read: Windows 95).
!Peeve: Wasting less time on video games as a result.
Peeve: nethack.
--
Headers munged to avoid email spam. Mail to henke at phoenix dot net.
William Hamblen
On 19 Dec 1997 13:16:20 -0800, t...@user2.teleport.com (Tim Mefford)
wrote:
>New Yorker
Hasn't been the same since Harold Ross died.
Olawanji Shausha
In article <67eo74$i4j$1...@user2.teleport.com>, t...@user2.teleport.com (Tim Mefford) wrote:
[other stuff]
>2nd query: In an effort to bring my attention span more in line
>with that of my countrymen, I'm considering a magazine subscription.
>Pros and cons of the following?
[list snipped]
Wooden Boat, especially since you live in wooden boat country.
t_bag
My spies tell me that on 18 Dec 1997 22:45:34 GMT,
da...@petessun.psych.washington.edu (David Wren-Hardin) scribbled in
his secret diary:
>On Thu, 18 Dec 1997 12:27:24 -0800, Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide <zursch@cyberhighway.
>net> wrote:
>>Speaking of being assimilated, I tried FreeAgent and didn't care for it.
>>Sadly,
>>the next best thing to trn seems to be nutscrape news. Deal with it,
>
>Slrn. I've only been using it for a day now, but already like it a lot.
I thought FreeAgent was good. Then I shelled out for the real thing -
It's *much* better.
--
"Slide down my greasy pole of depravity and bring on the
chickens, that's what I say." - Fast Show
Alan Gore
>As an aside: Peevers seem to be reasonable people, by and
>large, and, by and large, computer-literate, so I'd like to ask:
>browser could _possibly_ be considered an integral part of an
>came up with is: a car manufacturer installs power windows on a
>particular model of car, then runs a relay through the power
>window circuit which controls the brakes, then calls the power
>windows an integral and necessary part of the car, the removal
>of which would significantly impair the vehicle's performance.
The real point is: what gives Bill Clinton and his band of lezzie
lawyers the right to tell private software companies what features to
put in its operating systems?
I wish Bill Gates would just buy DC and put the place out of its
misery.
ag...@primenet.com | "Giving money and power to the government
Alan Gore | is like giving whiskey and car keys
Software For PC's | to teenaged boys" - P. J. O'Rourke
http://www.primenet.com/~agore
Alan Gore
>It used to be when a company got to a certain size (huge), they could
>exterminate their competition in various ways, take over the entire market
>for some product or service, and then jack up the price to their hearts'
>content. This is called a monopoly.
This situation can only occur if said business gets a government to
make it illegal for others to compete with its products. The best
example of a monopoly today is medicine. Laws against monopoly are not
directed at actual monopolies, because organizations like medical
boards have I'm-part-of-the-government-so-you-can-g-fuck-yourself
pull. Instead, the laws are directed against competitive business
that, unlike the federosaurus obesus, provide actual value for money.
Alan Gore
>Triple: The Whole Earth Review. Recently resurrected
>from the dead, headed straight for zombiehood.
Whole Earth was once a decent and thought-provokingmagazine when
Stewart Brand ran it. I got got the 'proposed resurrection issue'
published in a vain attempt to lure back fallen subscribers. My take:
A toxic waste dump of retro Seventies enviro-Luddism. And trees died
for this?
Bob O`Brien
In article <67epah$45q$1...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>,
Lenore Levine <lev...@orion.math.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>t...@user2.teleport.com (Tim Mefford) writes:
>
>>Smithsonian
>>New Yorker
>
>I enjoy reading these two. Of course, with the New Yorker,
>I skip the fiction.
>
So do I.
Which is why I haven't so much as picked a copy up
off the floor for about fifteen years.
Bob O`Bob
--
Caution: usage at distances less than three feet
may cause injury to soft body tissue.
H.Shrikumar
Issac Merkle <is...@icx.net> wrote,
in news:<67c0rv$b4i$1...@news1.icx.net> :
>They're not charging more for the OS as a result of the
>addition.
Peeve : people endlessly confusing value with price, price with
cost, cost with worth, and worth with what I will whimsically
wheedle out of you.
Peeve power two : people confusing cross-subsidies with
discount, discounts with promotions, and promotions with what I
will make you willingly waddle into.
Peeve power Peeve : Having to explain this over and over again.
(!Peeve : Opportunity. Heh heh.)
>(FYI, I am a sysadmin, and I do use IE 4.01, and like it quite well.)
We dont officially have a sysadmin for our research group
machines now. Our old sysadmin, who continues to have his office
in our lab for various other reasons, continues out of the
goodness of his heart to occasionally admin our syses. It
behooves us to try to help what we can.
None of us in our lab has voiced a demand for a full time
sysadmin. Perhaps it could be for a fear that we might end up
with some kid who secretly carries a candle for MSIE.
Just calling it as I see it, 'sall ...
-- //Shrikumar
sh...@cs.umass.edu
H.Shrikumar
Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide <zur...@cyberhighway.net> wrote,
in news:<349987...@cyberhighway.net> :
>> [analogy] a car manufacturer installs power windows on a
>> particular model of car, then runs a relay through the power
>> window circuit which controls the brakes, then calls the power
>> windows an integral and necessary part of the car, the removal
>> of which would significantly impair the vehicle's performance.
>
>Well, that's about it. If you build a building with wiring and
>fixtures that use proprietary plugs and which explode and burn
>if you plug any non-proprietary appliances into them, you might
>pull your head out of your ass long enough to state that it's
>vital that the customer use only the proprietary appliances.
Here they seemed to have built a building which will come
crashing down like a pack of cards if you unplug that free lava
lamp they placed on your dresser as a bonus. And then, they are
pulling the head of the DoJ out of its ass enough to laugh at
them to their face.
Microsoft is actually making the claim that if it were to do
what it is told and removes IE from Windoze 95, it will result
in the public being sold a completely hobbled OS, incapable of
even booting up, or running any other good apps, thereby said
public being cheated -- so it should not be asked to do what it
is being asked to.
Or something to that effect. [1].
Apparently, in the process of the "removal of IE", the removal
of the IE related DLLs along with it would prevent everything
else you paid for (incl. third party programs) from working. [2]
Ok, so dont remove the DLLs, just the EXE. Duh!
Peeve : Monies paid by you and me as federal taxes are being
very ineffectively spent in weilding the clue bat of what nuance
of the phrase "remove your stuff" applies here.
Peeve power two : While monies paid by you and (luckily not) me
to Microsoft are cleverly being used to stubbornly filibuster
that very clue bat.
Peeve power peeve : That some people still think, and still
argue -- nay harangue, that M$ is after all giving away stuff
free.
Argh.
-- //Shrikumar
sh...@cs.umass.edu
[1] http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/doj/12-16motion.html
http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/doj/integration.htm
[2] M$ splitting hairs over the word remove reminds me of
Dennis (of The Menace fame, from another era), plying paper
boats in an upside down umbrella, full of water from the
downpour -- "But, mommy said I could play in the rain if I used
an umbrella".
John S. Novak
On 20 Dec 97 23:45:23 GMT, H.Shrikumar <sh...@cs.umass.edu> wrote:
>Microsoft is actually making the claim that if it were to do
>what it is told and removes IE from Windoze 95, it will result
>in the public being sold a completely hobbled OS, incapable of
>even booting up, or running any other good apps, thereby said
>public being cheated -- so it should not be asked to do what it
>is being asked to.
The judge for this case, by my news reports, has taken a machine with
Windows and IE on it, and deleted IE with no adverse effects on the
operating system. "Why can't you smart computer people manage this?"
he asked.
If ever there was a moment when the words, "Don't fuck with me, geek
boys!" needed to find their way into an official court transcript, that
was it.
As far as I'm concerned, Gates should be hauled into the courtroom,
shot, and his body sodomized by pack of wild babboons. Ballmer
should be forced to watch and told, "That's the price of
non-compliance. Gonna stop fucking with the market, now?"
Nosy
< 2nd query: In an effort to bring my attention span more in line
< with that of my countrymen, I'm considering a magazine subscription.
Huh?
Look, ya wanna shorten yer a-ten-shun span to the 'Merican
standard, ya prolly gotta watch yer ObTeevee for 4 hours
a night.
< Pros and cons of the following?
< Harpers
Boring. Also predictable.
< Smithsonian
Generally very good. Get "Air & Space" with it as a bonus,
then one has the "things that are old" and "things that
fly" package.
< New Yorker
A great, vibrant, erudite magazine...when Ike was President.
< Utne
Boring AND tediously earnest. Not unlike listening to
someone's teetotaling aunt and uncle for an entire
Sunday afternoon reading from their church's newsletter.
< Republic
Boring and smug.
National Review is also boring and smug, but has
Florence writing on a regular basis. So go get a copy
at a newsstand, open the back cover & read the last
page.
How about a subscription to "Low Rider", instead?
Many of the discerning shoppers at the newsstand I frequent
seem to prefer it, along with a quart of Schlitz.
Terry Austin
J...@mariner.cris.com (John S. Novak) wrote:
>As far as I'm concerned, Gates should be hauled into the courtroom,
>shot, and his body sodomized by pack of wild babboons.
But not necessarily in that order.
---------------------------------
-- Terry Austin, Grand Inquisitor, Loyal Order of Chivalry & Sorcery
Hyperbooks Online http://www.hyperbooks.com/ Order by toll free phone call!
VDS (Vehicle Design System) by Greg Porter at BTRC
Chronicles, by John Darling... Not the same old thing.
Julian Macassey
In article <ATAYLOR.97...@zuse.nmsu.edu>,
Nosy <ata...@nmsu.edu> wrote:
><In article <67eo74$i4j$1...@user2.teleport.com> t...@user2.teleport.com (Tim Mefford) writes:
>
>< 2nd query: In an effort to bring my attention span more in line
>< with that of my countrymen, I'm considering a magazine subscription.
>
> Huh?
> Look, ya wanna shorten yer a-ten-shun span to the 'Merican
> standard, ya prolly gotta watch yer ObTeevee for 4 hours
> a night.
Yeah, 'merkin kultur is TV, despite the hundreds of fine
magazines. Mags are read by thousands. TeeVee is watched by
millions.
Many suggestions rejected.
> How about a subscription to "Low Rider", instead?
> Many of the discerning shoppers at the newsstand I frequent
> seem to prefer it, along with a quart of Schlitz.
Low Rider is a truly 'merkin mag. Personally, I prefer
Easy Rider.
The female skin pics have a wonderful low rent air to
them. The captions talking about "Fried egg titties" sort of
compliment the pictures.
For a good reading list, in no particular order, I
recommend:
The National Enquirer
Vanity Fair (National Enquirer for Yuppies)
The Economist
Easy Rider
Soldier of Fortune
Los Angeles Magazine
Upside
Linux Journal
--
Julian Macassey 920.208.8051
Julian Macassey
In article <67jbpk$d...@newsops.execpc.com>,
Julian Macassey <jul...@bongo.tele.com> wrote:
> For a good reading list, in no particular order, I
>recommend:
>
>The National Enquirer
In a brain fart, I forgot to mention:
The Skeptical Inquirer
The American Spectator
--
Julian Macassey 920.208.8051
Bob O`Brien
Julian Macassey <jul...@bongo.tele.com> wrote:
>>The National Enquirer
>snipped list.
>
> In a brain fart, I forgot to mention:
>
>The Skeptical Inquirer
>The American Spectator
I also subscribe to:
American Rifleman
Contract Professional
Unfortunately, these are in unrelated genres.
H.Shrikumar
Strayhorn <k...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote,
in news:<kes-181297...@strayhorn.dukecomm.duke.edu> :
>To top it off, I hit the MicroSloth tech support
:
>Since I refuse cookies, the site won't let me in. If
>you select the option for "if you refuse cookies"
>you don't get access, you get sent to a very
>condensending page that explains why you are
>guilty of thought crime, and why you should allow
>their little cookies, and, furthermore, why you
>should change browsers.
Time for the "Dont Ask, Dont tell." sanitation squad --
cp /dev/null ~/.netscape/cookies
chmod a-w ~/.netscape/cookies
Netscape -> Options -> Cookies -> Accept without confirm.
That be the modern incarnation of the indian rope trick --
crippling your memory lets you be reborn as a new person
everyday, rid of every vestige of your past karma, all set for a
whole new session of fun, frolic and reckless debauchery over
the net.
ObCompleteness : Equal air-time to other OS's.
To do this in windoze, oh I dont know -- you might need to play
footsie with the bios, and take the FAT table out to dinner.
If your apartment had Mess-windows, then each time you wanted a
splash of water from the faucet to wash your face, you would
have to run down to the basement to install a TSR, and then redo
the bathroom. In the case of MacOS, "it is really eeeesy" -- tug
twice at the shower curtain with your right hand while you flush
with your left, and the faucet promptly belts out a Patsy Cline
song.
But, what takes the cake is MSIE on Windows NT -- all you have
to do is to click on the water icon -- single, double it does
not matter, it is very forgiving. How simpler can it get, by
god, they have finally got it !
What then follows is all automated, and really very very
entertaining --
o. Download water object across the world wide wait (30 mins)
o. Determine we needs a pipe to render the water. (1 min)
o. Check with you if it should fetch said plumbing. [OK ?]
o. Much later, you stumble upon that [OK?] buried
under your mail on your living room couch. Click! (45 mins)
o. Download bucket across the world wide wait (20 mins)
o. Sternly admonish you that "The water you just downloaded
might be malicious, might upset your wee tummy and leave you
writhing on the floor with ebola. And therefore, all the bath
water, baby and all, is being discarded forthwith." [OK ?]
o. Again, you will find the [OK?] buried under the door mat, at
your back yard door, only much much later. (15 mins)
Need we wonder then, that the masses remain so unwashed.
-- //Shrikumar
sh...@cs.umass.edu
Pete Young
Tim Mefford <t...@user2.teleport.com> spluttered indignantly:
>Would someone please buy a javastation and tell me if they can
>do anything?
Got several. Did you have anything particular in mind?
--
____________________________________________________________________
Pete Young pete....@bt-sys.bt.co.uk Phone +44 1473 605525
"Just another crouton, floating on the bouillabaisse of life"
Charlie Stross
On 20 Dec 1997 13:21:00 -0700, Alan Gore
>
>The real point is: what gives Bill Clinton and his band of lezzie
>lawyers the right to tell private software companies what features to
>put in its operating systems?
No it ain't. The real point is: what gives Bill Gates and his band
of merry MBAs the right to dump product on the desktop until it drives
the competition into bankruptcy (so Bill can later start charging for
the extras)?
Clue: no playing field can be level when at one end of it there's an
eight hundred pound gorilla whose idea of fair play is to bite the heads
off the competition, one at a time.
-- Charlie
Getting a SCSI chain working is perfectly simple if you remember that there
must be exactly three terminations: one on one end of the cable, one on the
far end, and the goat, terminated over the SCSI chain with a silver-handled
knife whilst burning *black* candles.
-- Anthony DeBoer
Charlie Stross
On 20 Dec 1997 13:29:01 -0700, Alan Gore
>
>This situation can only occur if said business gets a government to
>make it illegal for others to compete with its products. The best
>example of a monopoly today is medicine.
Wrong. Medicine is a profession, membership of which is controlled by statute;
this is true virtually everwhere, and for good reason. (Does the term "quack"
mean anything to you?)
>Laws against monopoly are not
>directed at actual monopolies, because organizations like medical
>boards have I'm-part-of-the-government-so-you-can-g-fuck-yourself
>pull.
A medical board (or something like the BMA) isn't a monopoly; it's a
government inspectorate. Nobody's stopping you becoming a doctor --
all you have to do is spend a few years studying, pass the appropriate
exams, and hand over your membership fees. Of course, once you become
one, you have to abide by certain laws, passed many years ago to ensure
you don't off your customers negligently. (That's the whole _point_ of
professional regulation.) Now you may disagree with the degree or type
of regulation, or indeed with the whole concept in general -- but
saying medicine is a monopoly is ridiculous.
>Instead, the laws are directed against competitive business
>that, unlike the federosaurus obesus, provide actual value for money.
Micro$oft provides value for money? That's news to me ...
-- Charlie (whose computers are Microsoft-free zones -- and cheaper, more
reliable, and faster as a result)
Charlie Stross
On 19 Dec 1997 00:40:11 -0600, Douglas G. Henke
>I have yet to reach any understanding of the delu^H^H idea that user
>interface should be part of, rather than orthogonal to, the OS.
I blame Steve Jobs.
(A UI is to let a user make use of the facilities offered by the OS, which
is there to make sense of the resources provided by the underlying hardware,
okay? Trying to offer the whole lot only makes sense, I suppose, if it's
all in ROM. The Mac concept probably started that way, but rapidly took
leave of its senses, with consequences that became apparent by, oh,
System 6 or thereabouts.)
>Peeve: A growing number of the applications I need to run (read: games)
>require an extremely annoying application launcher (read: Windows 95).
ObBOFH: well don't do that, then.
-- Charlie
Ayse Sercan
sh...@cs.umass.edu (H.Shrikumar) wrote:
>
>Time for the "Dont Ask, Dont tell." sanitation squad --
>
> cp /dev/null ~/.netscape/cookies
> chmod a-w ~/.netscape/cookies
> Netscape -> Options -> Cookies -> Accept without confirm.
At least for the systems I use regularly, substitute "ln" for "cp."
--
ay...@netcom.com
"Life is too important to take seriously." -- Corky Siegel
Ayse Sercan
ag...@primenet.com (Alan Gore) wrote:
>The real point is: what gives Bill Clinton and his band of lezzie
>lawyers the right to tell private software companies what features to
>put in its operating systems?
The real point is: What gives Bill Gates and his band of typing monkeys
the right to tell private hardware companies what software they can and
cannot install on systems they sell, just because they happen to install
BillyWare on the same system?
M Holmes
Charlie Stross (cha...@develop-1.demsys.org) wrote:
: On 20 Dec 1997 13:21:00 -0700, Alan Gore
: >
: >The real point is: what gives Bill Clinton and his band of lezzie
: >lawyers the right to tell private software companies what features to
: >put in its operating systems?
: No it ain't. The real point is: what gives Bill Gates and his band
: of merry MBAs the right to dump product on the desktop until it drives
: the competition into bankruptcy (so Bill can later start charging for
: the extras)?
He's not holding anybody at gunpoint to buy the product is he?
: Clue: no playing field can be level when at one end of it there's an
: eight hundred pound gorilla whose idea of fair play is to bite the heads
: off the competition, one at a time.
Clue: The game is over and the fans trashed the pitch. Bill won and the
gummint is as usual trying to rig the result in favour of the losers
(the ones you call "competition").
The IT industry has done reasonably well without government interference
and it's a bad sign that they've decided to start now. Even Bill Gates
doesn't have the wherewithal to fuck up as badly as governments do.
: -- Charlie
FoFP
--
"The point is that it clearly is society's view, because of the lack of
any evidence that it isn't."
-- Logic according to David Boothroyd
M Holmes
Charlie Stross (cha...@develop-1.demsys.org) wrote:
: On 20 Dec 1997 13:29:01 -0700, Alan Gore
: <ag...@primenet.com> wrote:
: >This situation can only occur if said business gets a government to
: >make it illegal for others to compete with its products. The best
: >example of a monopoly today is medicine.
: Wrong. Medicine is a profession, membership of which is controlled by statute;
"Whoosh". What do you think "if said business gets a government to
: >make it illegal for others to compete with its products" means if not
the government regulating who can be in the group selling the products?
: this is true virtually everwhere, and for good reason. (Does the term
"quack" : mean anything to you?)
It means someone you might not want to treat you. If you don't you can
always refuse on the basis that you only get treated by members of the
professional association of your choice. You're the customer after all.
: >Laws against monopoly are not
: >directed at actual monopolies, because organizations like medical
: >boards have I'm-part-of-the-government-so-you-can-g-fuck-yourself
: >pull.
: A medical board (or something like the BMA) isn't a monopoly; it's a
: government inspectorate.
When the government then says that only members of the BMA can dispense
services it becomes a state mandated monopoly.
: Nobody's stopping you becoming a doctor --
: all you have to do is spend a few years studying, pass the appropriate
: exams, and hand over your membership fees.
Why? If a patient is willing to hire you on the basis that you claim to
have been divinely inspired as a healer then that's between them and
you. What the hell has the BMA or the government got to do with it?
They've simply stitched up a deal to restrict supply and shore up wages.
: Of course, once you become
: one, you have to abide by certain laws, passed many years ago to ensure
: you don't off your customers negligently.
Why can't you offer cheap "no negligence claims" services at a discount?
It's down to the customers surely?
: (That's the whole _point_ of
: professional regulation.) Now you may disagree with the degree or type
: of regulation, or indeed with the whole concept in general -- but
: saying medicine is a monopoly is ridiculous.
Indeed, it's so obviously accurate it's ridiculous to have to even claim it.
: -- Charlie (whose computers are Microsoft-free zones -- and cheaper, more
: reliable, and faster as a result)
FoFP
B.Y.
[legit gripes about Micro$oft, deleted ...]
Except that Netscape isn't exactly so great ... talk about bloat ...
3:27am up 3 days, 2:52, 4 users, load average: 0.22, 0.13, 0.04
97 processes: 77 sleeping, 2 running, 18 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 13.9% user, 8.8% system, 22.5% nice, 77.5% idle
Mem: 256964K av, 252256K used, 4708K free, 44332K shrd, 76676K buff
Swap: 522992K av, 0K used, 522992K free 26540K cached
PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT LIB %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
422 root 13 0 32172 31M 900 R 0 15.6 12.5 85:20 X
440 root 2 0 928 928 684 S 0 3.5 0.3 1:01 fvwm
450 root 2 0 548 548 400 R 0 1.9 0.2 69:42 top
23607 root 1 0 90208 88M 5500 S 0 1.5 35.1 95:32 netscape
This is a box that usually has a couple of hundred megabytes
(actually 256) because I am running stupidly space-consuming programs
(searchs and operations on very large groups ...) and on a day when I
had NOTHING running ... guess I was right to leave some swap ...
Mind you, it's a good idea that I am not using windows ...
--
Hello, BayPeevers, look forward to seeing you guys in mid-Jan ...
Terry Austin
Ayse Sercan <ay...@netcom.com> wrote in article
<ayseELL...@netcom.com>...
> The real point is: What gives Bill Gates and his band of typing monkeys
> the right to tell private hardware companies what software they can and
> cannot install on systems they sell, just because they happen to install
> BillyWare on the same system?
>
Most likely, copyright law, coupled with aggressive use of contract law.
Terry Austin
Julian Macassey
In article <67meo5$5...@netnews.ntu.edu.tw>,
B.Y. <yan...@math.ntu.edu.tw> wrote:
>Except that Netscape isn't exactly so great ... talk about bloat ...
>
> 3:27am up 3 days, 2:52, 4 users, load average: 0.22, 0.13, 0.04
>97 processes: 77 sleeping, 2 running, 18 zombie, 0 stopped
>CPU states: 13.9% user, 8.8% system, 22.5% nice, 77.5% idle
>Mem: 256964K av, 252256K used, 4708K free, 44332K shrd, 76676K buff
>Swap: 522992K av, 0K used, 522992K free 26540K cached
>
> PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT LIB %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
>
Netscape wastes more resources than an inner city welfare
programme.
It is pretty though - I run Netflake 4.0 on my Linux box.
--
Julian Macassey 920.208.8051
Charlie Stross
On 22 Dec 1997 16:09:51 GMT, M Holmes
>
>: No it ain't. The real point is: what gives Bill Gates and his band
>: of merry MBAs the right to dump product on the desktop until it drives
>: the competition into bankruptcy (so Bill can later start charging for
>: the extras)?
>
>He's not holding anybody at gunpoint to buy the product is he?
Ahem: apparently he _is_. That's what the contempt of court case is
all about; something nasty in the small-print contracts Microsoft is
offering to OEMs, that effectively gives 'em a choice of (a) buy
BillyWare+MSIE and put it on all the PCs they sell, or (b) not buy
and re-sell BillyWare. As the great hoi polloi run screaming at the
mere idea of a computer that doesn't come with Microsoft(R) Barney(TM)
pre-installed, this would rapidly cause said OEMs to go out of business.
>: Clue: no playing field can be level when at one end of it there's an
>: eight hundred pound gorilla whose idea of fair play is to bite the heads
>: off the competition, one at a time.
>
>Clue: The game is over and the fans trashed the pitch. Bill won and the
>gummint is as usual trying to rig the result in favour of the losers
>(the ones you call "competition").
Um, I opted out of that particular game, as far as my machines go: they
run faster and better without paying the price of admission. But that's
just my admittedly linux-bigotted opinion.
>The IT industry has done reasonably well without government interference
>and it's a bad sign that they've decided to start now. Even Bill Gates
>doesn't have the wherewithal to fuck up as badly as governments do.
The IT industry has successfully reached a state where the market-dominating
"word processor" (sic) occupies 200Mb of disk space, takes 32Mb of RAM to
run, and still can't kern or track properly. All this for £250 a copy,
when for £0 you can get a workable copy of LaTeX. And you think the gummint
can fuck up *worse* ?!?!
(Well, maybe. But they haven't been trying for twenty five years.)
Charlie Stross
On 22 Dec 1997 16:16:55 GMT, M Holmes
>
>: >This situation can only occur if said business gets a government to
>: >make it illegal for others to compete with its products. The best
>: >example of a monopoly today is medicine.
>
>: Wrong. Medicine is a profession, membership of which is controlled by statute;
>It means someone you might not want to treat you. If you don't you can
>always refuse on the basis that you only get treated by members of the
>professional association of your choice. You're the customer after all.
Look, the whole point is to ensure that if you go to someone who puts
the title "Doctor" in front of their name, you can be reasonably certain
that they know what they're talking about (or that they're an unemployed
aerospace industry contractor, but that's another matter).
So maybe in Libertopia things'd be better if the BMA hired the Ancient
and Honourable Guild of Assassins to deal with posers who take the name
of the holy stethoscope in vain: and then again, maybe not. But we don't
live in Libertopia, and I'll take the next-best solution within the
current framework, which is to make it illegal to pose as a medical doctor
or a pharmacist or a lawyer without actually passing some exams and
signing a form promising to act responsibly.
You're being ridiculous, Mike. Go find another target of opportunity --
there're plenty in the field.
Nosy
<In article <67m92q$a...@news.acns.nwu.edu> m-atk...@nwu.edu (Michael A. Atkinson) writes:
< Alan Gore <ag...@primenet.com> wrote:
< >>It used to be when a company got to a certain size (huge), they could
< >>exterminate their competition in various ways, take over the entire market
< >>for some product or service, and then jack up the price to their hearts'
< >>content. This is called a monopoly.
< >This situation can only occur if said business gets a government to
< >make it illegal for others to compete with its products.
< Horseshit. Monopolies have occurred many times without governmental
< connivance.
Examples, please?
Art Walker
On Mon, 22 Dec 1997 17:06:58 +0000, Charlie Stross
<cha...@develop-1.demsys.org> wrote:
>As the great hoi polloi run screaming at the mere idea of a computer that
>doesn't come with Microsoft(R) Barney(TM) pre-installed, this would rapidly
>cause said OEMs to go out of business.
And this is somehow Microsoft(R)'s fault?
Ayse Sercan
zapspa...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes) wrote:
>: this is true virtually everwhere, and for good reason. (Does the term
>"quack" : mean anything to you?)
>
>always refuse on the basis that you only get treated by members of the
>professional association of your choice. You're the customer after all.
I think you've missed something. Not all people who dispense medical
information and treatment are doctors.
<shock sweeps over the audience>
Yes, it's true. There's something called "Alternative Care," and through
alternative care you can see herbalists, acupuncturists, and all other
kinds of alternative practioners of medicine. Most of them belong to
professional regulatory groups.
You can be treated by these people in the US, at least; dunno about the
UK. Go to Mexico, and the "cures" become more ... ah ... creative.
>Why? If a patient is willing to hire you on the basis that you claim to
>have been divinely inspired as a healer then that's between them and
>you. What the hell has the BMA or the government got to do with it?
I know a faith healer. She once tried to cure a nasty cough I'd had for a
week. Gave me hiccups, that laughing fit did.
--
ay...@netcom.com
"I like my men like I like my coffee: Strong, with lots of milk and sugar
and a touch of that Torani caramel syrup."
Ayse Sercan
The idiocy of the American consumer is not Microsoft's fault. But they
are responsible for behaving within the law, given that they have an
effective monopoly on operating systems. And anti-competitive practises
from an effective monopoly are illegal.
Julian Macassey
In article <67m3cf$8...@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,>: On 20 Dec 1997 13:21:00 -0700, Alan Gore
>: <ag...@primenet.com> wrote:
>: >
>: >The real point is: what gives Bill Clinton and his band of lezzie
>: >lawyers the right to tell private software companies what features to
>: >put in its operating systems?
>
>: of merry MBAs the right to dump product on the desktop until it drives
>: the competition into bankruptcy (so Bill can later start charging for
>: the extras)?
>
>He's not holding anybody at gunpoint to buy the product is he?
According to a recent peek at the Trade Press. Yes, he
is.
The word is that Windoughs-95 won't boot if you strip out
the Microsnot Browser.
So, the gun point is. You gotta have the Microsnot
Browser to run the Microsnot Booter. If ya got the Microsnot
Browser, the Netflake Browser won't run right.
I think that's called "Restraint of Trade". I am also
happy to call it fucking with the clueless punters.
In my opinion, they buy Billyware, they deserve
everything they get.
You mean I can have something besides Windoughs-95 or a
Mac? No, say it isn't so.
--
Julian Macassey 920.208.8051
Geoff Miller
Strayhorn <k...@acpub.duke.edu> writes:
> Since pictures of nekkid chix don't do anything for me,
> Wooden Boat is as close as I come to reading porno.
Check out _PassageMaker_ sometime -- trawler porn at its finest.
It's twice the price of the other boating magazines, but it has
five times the content.
Geoff
--
"There are two advantages men have over women: They can piss standing up,
and they can fuck dead people."
John S. Novak
On 23 Dec 1997 11:18:38 -0600, Julian Macassey <jul...@bongo.tele.com> wrote:
> The word is that Windoughs-95 won't boot if you strip out
>the Microsnot Browser.
Then, when I get home, I need to do a little more exploration on my
machine. I was quite sure I had stripped all the IE crap off my box,
long ago. Yet, when I turn on the machine, it still boots.
Peeve: I've let a perfectly good machine be corrupted with '95 for a
good seven months, now.
!Peeve: Two weeks vacation around the holidays. More than enough
time, once I get back from visitting the ObFamily, to get a decent
version of Linux running on that box. I've been putting this off for
_way_ too fucking long.
Peeve: The ObFamily.
Peeve^2: Digressions.
> So, the gun point is. You gotta have the Microsnot
>Browser to run the Microsnot Booter. If ya got the Microsnot
>Browser, the Netflake Browser won't run right.
> I think that's called "Restraint of Trade". I am also
>happy to call it fucking with the clueless punters.
It's also, assuming that I am wrong and have merely hidden the IE crap
rather than doing away with it entirely, intentional incompetence.
How can anyone be so massively stupid as to write an application,
without which, the whole operating system will not run?
I think the simpler answer is that it's just a lie, and Billy hopes
the Judge will buy it. Which he apparently does not.
Go, McNealy, go.
Anyone who goes on public record with comments addressed to "Ballmer
and Butthead," is a man I want to buy a drink.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cris.com
The Humblest Man on the Net
Ayse Sercan
J...@viking.cris.com (John S. Novak) wrote:
>Then, when I get home, I need to do a little more exploration on my
>machine. I was quite sure I had stripped all the IE crap off my box,
>long ago. Yet, when I turn on the machine, it still boots.
It's only the OEM Windows 95 version B that theoretically won't boot,
although that's bull. It's not that stripping IE means your machine won't
boot, as the judge has proven. It's much more insidious.
IE removes DLLs when it uninstalls. DLLs other programs are using.
Which the Registry *should* prevent, but doesn't. So you lose functions
you paid for in other software, because you don't want to waste space on
that crappy piece of bloatware that is IE.
>Peeve: I've let a perfectly good machine be corrupted with '95 for a
>good seven months, now.
The uptime on my Windows 95 box before I had a COM port problem caused by
uninstalling IE: 3 months, 5 days (now 4 days). The uptime on the Mac on
my desk: 32 minutes. The uptime on the Unix box next to me: 1 day, four
hours. It's really all in the configuration. You can set up any machine
to run like crap. Within its confines, Windows 95 is a decent application
launcher on a decent OS, and it doesn't have to be as unstable as a
teenager on speed.
Peeve: I need to use Microsoft Word for work because I need *every* one of
it's functions in a word processor. Yes, indeed, I do. It's hard to
believe it, but despite the fact that 90 percent of Word users never even
change the default font, there's *nothing* in that package that I haven't
used to make myself more productive. So why the fuck is there no Word (or
comparable package) for Unix, for Gawd's sake?
No, don't even talk to me about FrameMaker, or I will scream. Don't talk
about WordImPerfect, which was once God's Own Word Processor and has been
thoroughly corrupted. I don't want emacs, I don't want Pongo or whatever
the fuck that stupid program is called. I want the features I use with no
compromises.
Ga-rump.
Peeve: Lousy desk chairs. Those who commented on my desk chair at home
should see the one I have at work. The one they gave me *after* I
complained about the last one (known as "Chair of Death" for its habit of
tossing me backwards on a whim).
Bob O`Brien
Ayse Sercan <ay...@netcom.com> wrote:
>J...@viking.cris.com (John S. Novak) wrote:
>>Then, when I get home, I need to do a little more exploration on my
>>machine. I was quite sure I had stripped all the IE crap off my box,
>>long ago. Yet, when I turn on the machine, it still boots.
>
>It's only the OEM Windows 95 version B that theoretically won't boot,
>although that's bull. It's not that stripping IE means your machine won't
>boot, as the judge has proven. It's much more insidious.
>
>IE removes DLLs when it uninstalls. DLLs other programs are using.
>Which the Registry *should* prevent, but doesn't. So you lose functions
>you paid for in other software, because you don't want to waste space on
>that crappy piece of bloatware that is IE.
IME, that's the root of the problem. Letting MicroSnot decide
how to UNinstall the browser. So just install Netscape, or
whatever you wish to, then remove the InternetExploder executable file.
You'll have a meg or two of unnecessary stuff, but you'll also
keep the critical few K of necessary stuff.
I just bought a new IBM, I'll get back to you folks if I find
a better way. Novak probably did it right, by hand.
[Ayse needs a !Word that does what Word does]
>No, don't even talk to me about FrameMaker, or I will scream. Don't talk
>about WordImPerfect, which was once God's Own Word Processor and has been
>thoroughly corrupted. I don't want emacs, I don't want Pongo or whatever
>the fuck that stupid program is called. I want the features I use with no
>compromises.
I used to be an expert with InterLeaf. I have no idea how
good newer versions are, but ten years ago, not only was it
The Good Shit, but it preferred unix anyway. Interleaf Publisher
was, for me, the catalyst for a three-button mouse epiphany.
Dwight Wilcox
In article <349EB3...@acpub.duke.edu>,
Strayhorn <k...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
<Snip ... Wooden Boats in print>
>
>Anyone who thinks a trophy wife is alot of time and
>trouble hasn't tried to keep up a wooden anything.
I thought the point of the trophy wife was to help keep up a
wooden something.
-DW
--------
All that e-mailing she does appears to have caused her to forget how
to write more than four consecutive paragraphs at a time.
Joseph Nocera reviews Esther Dyson's writing style
--
--------
All that e-mailing she does appears to have caused her to forget how
to write more than four consecutive paragraphs at a time.
Joseph Nocera reviews Esther Dyson's writing style
Kenneth R. Crudup
In article <67pbd0$9mv$1...@shell3.ba.best.com>,
ob...@best.com (Bob O`Brien) says:
>I used to be an expert with InterLeaf.
?Peeve: Interleaf, if you like(d) them.
I have seen the source code, and the build method (contracted for them last
year), and It Is Not Pretty. When my time ran out, they were in the middle
of moving to wintel, and were having tough times migrating because of it.
-Kenny
--
Kenneth R. Crudup, Unix & OS/2 Software Consultant, Scott County Consulting
ke...@panix.com CI$: 75032,3044 +1 617 524 5929/4949 Home/Office
16 Plainfield St, Boston, MA 02130-3633 +1 617 983 9410 Fax
"Oh my God! They killed Kenny!" - Stan, "South Park"
Julian Macassey
In article <slrn6a03o...@viking.cris.com>,
John S. Novak <J...@viking.cris.com> wrote:
>On 23 Dec 1997 11:18:38 -0600, Julian Macassey <jul...@bongo.tele.com> wrote:
>
>> The word is that Windoughs-95 won't boot if you strip out
>>the Microsnot Browser.
>
>machine. I was quite sure I had stripped all the IE crap off my box,
>long ago. Yet, when I turn on the machine, it still boots.
Further reading seems to show that the "latest and
greatest" Windoughs will not do it. They are all called
Windows-95, but the one that will run without IE is the old
version.
PC Builders have been told to use the old WIN-95.
--
Julian Macassey 920.208.8051
Paul F Austin
Charlie Stross wrote:
> No it ain't. The real point is: what gives Bill Gates and his band
> of merry MBAs the right to dump product on the desktop until it drives
>
> the competition into bankruptcy (so Bill can later start charging for
> the extras)?
>
> Clue: no playing field can be level when at one end of it there's an
> eight hundred pound gorilla whose idea of fair play is to bite the
> heads
> off the competition, one at a time.
Let's see, Netscape gives away Crockagator is a fine, entrepreneurial
bunch and MS gives away Expoder and is a predatory-pricing,
crypto-robber baron. Yep, got it.
The point is that the consumer software biz is a low cost of entry, high
velocity market that doesn't lend itself to people trying to do a corner
and screw the marks. The products change too fast for the notion of A
Monopoly to have much meaning. Think Wordpefect and Packrat if you want
to consider object lessons in control of market segments. Now,
_workstation_ software pricing on the other hand.... I've not been able
to generate much sympathy for the Sun/Oracle attempt to re-invent
attempt TSO and sell a bunch of crippled near-terminals as Net-PCs.
--
Conscience is that quiet little voice that says "Someone may be
watching."
Paul F Austin
pau...@digital.net
Paul F Austin
Charlie Stross wrote:
> On 20 Dec 1997 13:29:01 -0700, Alan Gore
> <ag...@primenet.com> wrote:
> >
> >This situation can only occur if said business gets a government to
> >make it illegal for others to compete with its products. The best
> >example of a monopoly today is medicine.
>
> Wrong. Medicine is a profession, membership of which is controlled by
> statute;
> this is true virtually everwhere, and for good reason. (Does the term
> "quack"
> mean anything to you?)
Bad example, Charlie. The Med-Biz licensing law were written by the
'Merkin Magicians Association and are administered so as the implement
the 30th amendment to the US Constitution: "Each MD shall recieve a
minimum Gross Income that places him in the upper 1% by income.
AMA manages Med school admissions and training regimes to control the
supply of doctors. There is no other reason on earth why medical
residents would be required to work 100+ hour weeks except as a rite of
passage. It certainly doesn't reflect any legitimate pedagological end
and I _sure_ don't want a doctor who's had 16 hours sleep in the last
week to play lifeies and deathies with me as a game counter.
Julian Macassey
In article <ayseEL...@netcom.com>, Ayse Sercan <ay...@netcom.com> wrote:
>So why the fuck is there no Word (or
>comparable package) for Unix, for Gawd's sake?
There is. Applix words for one. There is also Star
Office.
HTH
--
Julian Macassey 920.208.8051
John S. Novak
On 23 Dec 1997 13:45:04 -0800, Bob O`Brien <ob...@best.com> wrote:
>I just bought a new IBM, I'll get back to you folks if I find
>a better way. Novak probably did it right, by hand.
Well the fucker wouldn't _let_ me just toss it in the
tra^H^H^H^Hrecycling bin. I can't remember the smarm it put across my
screen, but it refused to leave my desktop.
"Well, fuck this!" Said I.
So I went into DOS and beat the hoary motherfucker into submission.
Charlie Stross
On Tue, 23 Dec 1997 22:39:06 -0500, Paul F Austin
<pau...@digital.net> wrote:
>
>Let's see, Netscape gives away Crockagator is a fine, entrepreneurial
>bunch and MS gives away Expoder and is a predatory-pricing,
>crypto-robber baron. Yep, got it.
There's a big difference: Netscape ain't in the OS business, they're in
the Application business. Microsoft are in the OS _and_ Application
businesses. Not to put too fine a point on it, they dominate one of
them. And now they're trying to leverage that dominance into control
over the other field.
I'll begin worrying about Netscape when they release (a) an operating
system and (b) something like Broadway/X11R6.3 so that they can embed
their OS desktop in the browser. Got it?
>The point is that the consumer software biz is a low cost of entry, high
>velocity market that doesn't lend itself to people trying to do a corner
>and screw the marks. The products change too fast for the notion of A
>Monopoly to have much meaning. Think Wordpefect and Packrat if you want
>to consider object lessons in control of market segments.
I _am_. Er, who do you think pushed Wordperfect and t'other guys off the
throne? And does the name "Microsoft" feature anywhere in the picture?
>Now,
>_workstation_ software pricing on the other hand.... I've not been able
>to generate much sympathy for the Sun/Oracle attempt to re-invent
>attempt TSO and sell a bunch of crippled near-terminals as Net-PCs.
Well, agreed there. There's only a couple of software companies I've got
much time for, in fact: try Red Hat Software as an example. (ObPrediction:
within two years Red Hat will probably be bigger than SCO.)
-- Charlie
Charlie Stross
On Tue, 23 Dec 1997 22:45:48 -0500, Paul F Austin
<pau...@digital.net> wrote:
>
>AMA manages Med school admissions and training regimes to control the
>supply of doctors. There is no other reason on earth why medical
>residents would be required to work 100+ hour weeks except as a rite of
>passage.
Er, there _is_ in the UK, but it's a Bad Reason. See, all doctors training
in the UK do about three years in a hospital as a house officer, learning
the ropes. During which time, well, they get expected to work stupid amounts
of overtime. 'Cause in the NHS, which ultimately means 98% of the hospitals
in the UK, they get overtime pay at _one_third_ their normal hourly rate.
Not time-and-a-third, but one-third. Ergo, instant incentive for a cash-
strapped service to force its house officers to work as much overtime as
possible with as little relief as is feasible.
(They're trying to change this, but the NHS administrators don't like it
much.)
BTW, you might be surprised how little doctors earn in the UK. On the other
hand they don't have to pay the GDP of a middling third-world country in
insurance fees every year, so what they earn they mostly get to keep.
Rev. Feorag NicBhride
<!--
Ayse Sercan<ay...@netcom.com> wrote (in article <ayseEL...@netcom.com>):
>uninstalling IE: 3 months, 5 days (now 4 days). The uptime on the Mac on
>my desk: 32 minutes. The uptime on the Unix box next to me: 1 day, four
Ah, so that's where he's been. Over the last four-and-a-bit years I've
discovered one Golden Rule: never, ever, let Charlie anywhere near a
Macintosh. If you do, it will stop working.
In truth, I've worked out what he does. I get back to my machine and find
half a ton of useless crap - shared libraries which are only needed on
PowerMacs, for example, or on machines which don't have an FPU, or on
machines even more elderly than this. The boy appears not to have noticed
the wee "Custom install" button to be found in the installer of most
software.
I find it quite strange given that he's so bothered about bloatware on his
precious Linux boxes, and the amount of time he puts into fine-tuning them
so they run just right.
Still, he hasn't been near the Mac since he installed an X-thingie (which
doesn't work as far as I can tell, and isn't really needed because PINE
and slrn don't use X. We've already got a web proxy so I can use the Mac
version of Netscape anyway). The machine is behaving beautifully and the
only thing which crashes it these days is Netscape (surprise, surprise). I
installed a shareware program to optimise the startup process and I don't
know if it's any good or not.
Peeve: the proxy set-up is such that I can't use that delightful WebFree
program someone mentioned a while back.
DoublePlusPeeve: A couple I know have just installed Windows 95 on their
ageing 486. I'm not sure why they chose to do this, but they did. They
both work with PCs (one hardware, one software) yet even they can't get
the machine working properly. They've had to re-install software which
allegedly runs under both 3.1 and 95 (presumably they do different
installs for the two versions) and a lot of their stuff simply refuses to
work at all at the moment. No doubt I'll get the latest installment of
this particular soap opera tonight.
!peeve: she already knows and likes Unix; he would like to learn about it.
We'll have Linux on the thing within a few months, mark my words.
bb
Feorag
-->
feorag at nospam.antipope.org "Bung some barley-sugar in hot water, spice
it up with a close relative of cannabis, and
*** allow it to go mouldy. Drink the result."
Paul F Austin
Charlie Stross wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Dec 1997 22:45:48 -0500, Paul F Austin
> <pau...@digital.net> wrote:
> >
> >AMA manages Med school admissions and training regimes to control the
>
> >supply of doctors. There is no other reason on earth why medical
> >residents would be required to work 100+ hour weeks except as a rite
> of
> >passage.
>
> Er, there _is_ in the UK, but it's a Bad Reason. See, all doctors
> training
> in the UK do about three years in a hospital as a house officer,
> learning
> the ropes. During which time, well, they get expected to work stupid
> amounts
> of overtime. 'Cause in the NHS, which ultimately means 98% of the
> hospitals
> in the UK, they get overtime pay at _one_third_ their normal hourly
> rate.
> Not time-and-a-third, but one-third. Ergo, instant incentive for a
> cash-
> strapped service to force its house officers to work as much overtime
> as
> possible with as little relief as is feasible.
It's much the same here. Hospitals _do_ benefit from slave labor but the
point is that the capacity limitations on Med school admissions and the
length of the training regime are aimed more at supply control than
quality control. Med School curriculum and teaching methods are
organized around a master-'prentice model that is quite inefficient. One
consequence of the training model is that doctors are trained to think
of themselves as tin gods and resist management to promote efficient use
of resources and labor.
An example: my mother-in-law is a hopeless hypochondriac. She checks
into the local hospital with a racing pulse (for the fifth time this
year). The hospital admits her (you don't fool around with 78 year olds
with funny-acting hearts).
Internist lays on a Thallium stress test. Day one passes. Day two dawns
and the radiologist and anesthetist consult with her about the upcoming
test. On the afternoon of day two, run the test. By noon of day three,
the films are hand delivered to the radiologist for analysis. The film
is generated from a data base from the scanner. He dictates his notes
which are transcribed over night. By noon of day four, the films and
notes are hand delivered to the cardiologist. _He_ reviews the films and
analysis and dictates a discharge recommendation. On day five, she's
discharged.
What's wrong with this picture: because of the cast system and the fact
that doctors _like_ dealing with film rather than looking at a CRT, no
one can arrange a teleconference five minutes after the test is complete
to review the images, confer and get her out of the hospital three days
early. Can't do that, it infringes on the prerogatives of doctorhood.
Doctors whine about attempts to manage medical treatment. It's been my
experience that managed care (mit profit motive) is better care. Under
fee-for-service, customers are responsible for managing all the med
types they visit. Foggies are especially vulnerable since they see lots
of doctors who _don't_ compare notes and _don't_ coordinate medication.
Managed care systems _require_ a single point of contact doctor who gets
all reports from all the doctors you see. It reduces costs (profit) but
it improves the care.
> BTW, you might be surprised how little doctors earn in the UK. On the
> other
> hand they don't have to pay the GDP of a middling third-world country
> in
> insurance fees every year, so what they earn they mostly get to keep.
Malpractice insurance costs is one of those press-invented bugbears.
Doctors _hate_ the malpractice bar and snivel a lot about the iniquities
of it all but according to Economist, in 1993 the _average_ malpractice
insurance premium in the US was $16K. That's not a dominant pole the
finances of health care.
ken.fit...@digital.com
In article <slrn6a1s8s...@antipope.demon.co.uk>,
feorag wrote:
> Ah, so that's where he's been. Over the last four-and-a-bit years I've
> discovered one Golden Rule: never, ever, let Charlie anywhere near a
> Macintosh. If you do, it will stop working.
When I worked in Apple's tech pool, the test machine (some mutant
PowerPC) didn't need any particular reason to die; it just did. System 7
had to be reloaded several times per shift.
ObIrony: This was the computer that tested the logic on the freshly
minted mainboards.
ObIrony2: The physical-side testbed was an HP3070 running HP-UX. I didn't
see the thing crash once.
> In truth, I've worked out what he does. I get back to my machine and find
> half a ton of useless crap - shared libraries which are only needed on
> PowerMacs, for example, or on machines which don't have an FPU, or on
> machines even more elderly than this. The boy appears not to have noticed
> the wee "Custom install" button to be found in the installer of most
> software.
Charlie isn't alone in this case, and it's certainly not restricted to
the Mac arena. I just went digging through my hard drive here, and found
the tattered remnants of IE4, which I installed and immediately "removed"
some two months ago.
Sometimes, yeah, the user is the problem. Sometimes it's the developers.
Peeve: The continuing trend towards feature-heavy and stability-light
software. Back In My Day, I ran Wordstar on an 8086 with 512KB of RAM and
2 5.25" floppy drives, and by Ghod, it *worked*.
> DoublePlusPeeve: A couple I know have just installed Windows 95 on their
> ageing 486. I'm not sure why they chose to do this, but they did.
Probably they don't know either. A sure sign of brainwashing, methinks.
When they see how much better their system runs(*), they'll understand
the slogan: "Windows 95: Bringing your Pentium back to its 386 roots!"
?Peeve: I can't uninstall Memphis, since I converted to FAT32. Looks like
FFR-time this weekend. Perhaps I'll rename all the ObBand's stuff to 8.3
and go back to DOS/Win3.x.
Peeve: Under 3.x, my brand-monkeyspanking-new Matrox M3D, as well as my
OpenGL games, are useless.
Peeve: The minilinux distribution I got from Sunsite won't load. "Kernel
panic: vfs" it sez. Feh.
> They
> both work with PCs (one hardware, one software) yet even they can't get
> the machine working properly. They've had to re-install software which
> allegedly runs under both 3.1 and 95 (presumably they do different
> installs for the two versions) and a lot of their stuff simply refuses to
> work at all at the moment.
Most software that claims to run under 3.1 and 95 is actually 3.1-based.
The developers simply close their eyes and pray that 95's thunking layer
does its job. If not, too bad.
> !peeve: she already knows and likes Unix; he would like to learn about it.
> We'll have Linux on the thing within a few months, mark my words.
Just make damn sure you wipe the disk first. I had a rather bitter
experience trying to get Slackware and Windows to run side-by-side.
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
Charlie Stross
Paul F Austin<pau...@digital.net> wrote
(in article <34A10C5D...@digital.net>):
>
>Malpractice insurance costs is one of those press-invented bugbears.
>Doctors _hate_ the malpractice bar and snivel a lot about the iniquities
>of it all but according to Economist, in 1993 the _average_ malpractice
>insurance premium in the US was $16K. That's not a dominant pole the
>finances of health care.
Ahem: in the UK, the NHS doesn't use insurance -- if it fucks up, it
foots the bill out of petty cash. (A fifty billion dollar a year budget
and a lack of ambulance chasers lets you do that.) Hence, average malpractice
insurance premium for doctors in the UK in '93 was about 200 quid ...
I think this is a !Peeve: after all, the insurance industry in the USA
is fundamentally a parasite upon the medical industry. All that money
going into insurance company profits and paying the actuaries could be
going on actual * health * * care * ...
-- Charlie
When you say `I wrote a program that crashed Windows', people just stare
at you blankly and say `Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*'
-- Linus Torvalds
>> To reply: remove NOSPAM and anagrams, or see http://www.antipope.org/ <<
Olawanji Shausha
>Strayhorn <k...@acpub.duke.edu> writes:
>
>> Since pictures of nekkid chix don't do anything for me,
>> Wooden Boat is as close as I come to reading porno.
>
>
>Check out _PassageMaker_ sometime -- trawler porn at its finest.
>It's twice the price of the other boating magazines, but it has
>five times the content.
Yeah. That mag gives me a dripping stiffy every time I caress
it at the neighborhood rack. That classic boating rag from
Blighty comes a close second.
Olawanji Shausha
>In article <349EB3...@acpub.duke.edu>,
>Strayhorn <k...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
>>
>>Anyone who thinks a trophy wife is alot of time and
>>trouble hasn't tried to keep up a wooden anything.
>
>I thought the point of the trophy wife was to help keep up a
>wooden something.
The wife ain't no trophy, no matter how good she looks or licks,
unless she's willing to get down in the bilges as necessary or
scrape bottom paint or any of the myriad other tasks associated
with a wooden hole in the water into which one pours vast sums
of Fylthie Lucre.
Peeve: I didn't get one.
!Peeve: two acquaintances of mine landed theirs. The wives are
damned good racing skippers, as well as handy with a variety of
hand tools.
David A. Guidry
In article <67pv8e$6...@newsops.execpc.com>,
Julian Macassey <jul...@bongo.tele.com> wrote:
>In article <ayseEL...@netcom.com>, Ayse Sercan <ay...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>So why the fuck is there no Word (or
>>comparable package) for Unix, for Gawd's sake?
>
> There is. Applix words for one. There is also Star
>Office.
While I have never used the s/w, some of the professors here seem to
like Island Write, Draw, Paint. YMMV
They are apparently working on putting a version 6 demo on the web site
for dl, but I've gotten demoware from them before (1 month license, buy
the full package and you only have to update the license).
--
David A Guidry CAS Networking
Systems and Network Administrator Northwestern University
Alan Gore
cha...@develop-1.demsys.org (Charlie Stross) wrote:
>On 20 Dec 1997 13:21:00 -0700, Alan Gore
><ag...@primenet.com> wrote:
>>
>>The real point is: what gives Bill Clinton and his band of lezzie
>>lawyers the right to tell private software companies what features to
>>put in its operating systems?
>No it ain't. The real point is: what gives Bill Gates and his band
>of merry MBAs the right to dump product on the desktop until it drives
>the competition into bankruptcy (so Bill can later start charging for
>the extras)?
Your right to seek alternative product, that's what. You can get OS/2
cheap and several popular versions of Unix FOR FREE. If the Gatester
was as evil as claimed, hordes of users would be loading these OS'es
onto their boxes. But no - some of would rather whine about Microsoft
products being "too cheap."
ag...@primenet.com | "Giving money and power to the government
Alan Gore | is like giving whiskey and car keys
Software For PC's | to teenaged boys" - P. J. O'Rourke
http://www.primenet.com/~agore
Alan Gore
>The IT industry has successfully reached a state where the market-dominating
>"word processor" (sic) occupies 200Mb of disk space, takes 32Mb of RAM to
>run, and still can't kern or track properly. All this for £250 a copy,
>when for £0 you can get a workable copy of LaTeX. And you think the gummint
>can fuck up *worse* ?!?!
And in what way is the existence of Bill Gates preventing you from
doing exactly that?
Alan Gore
cha...@develop-1.demsys.org (Charlie Stross) wrote:
>A medical board (or something like the BMA) isn't a monopoly; it's a
>government inspectorate. Nobody's stopping you becoming a doctor --
>all you have to do is spend a few years studying, pass the appropriate
>exams, and hand over your membership fees. Of course, once you become
>one, you have to abide by certain laws, passed many years ago to ensure
>you don't off your customers negligently. (That's the whole _point_ of
>professional regulation.) Now you may disagree with the degree or type
>of regulation, or indeed with the whole concept in general -- but
>saying medicine is a monopoly is ridiculous.
Certification of personnel could just as easily be provided by
competing private organizations, as Underwriters Labs and Novell do in
other fields. When you give one certifying orgnization the legal right
to an exclusive lock on the field, presto - you have a monopoly.
It gets a lot worse. There are medical boards that determine how many
hospital beds there shall be in each town. There are boards that limit
the number of MRI machines and CAT scanners and operating theaters,
just to keep the prices up. I think people should be tied to car
bumpers and dragged screaming down the freeway for doing that.
Alan Gore
cha...@nospam.antipope.mapson.org (Charlie Stross) wrote:
>I think this is a !Peeve: after all, the insurance industry in the USA
>is fundamentally a parasite upon the medical industry. All that money
>going into insurance company profits and paying the actuaries could be
>going on actual * health * * care * ...
Notice that people (Americans at least) don't need to spend hundreds
of dollars a month on "computer insurance" so that when the need
arises they can go out and buy the latest hardware and software.
Because, and only because, the computer business is totally
unregulated, the stuff we buy gets better and cheaper every year
If we want health care to work the same way, all we need to do is rip
out the governmental control boards and let the market rip. I have a
feeling that now that my generation is reaching critical-medical-need
age, we won't show any more respect for the AMA than we once showed
for Lyndon Johnson.
And if you wait long enough, the benefits of this change will even
filter down to Europeans.
Alan Gore
m-atk...@nwu.edu (Michael A. Atkinson) wrote:
>Alan Gore <ag...@primenet.com> wrote:
>>>It used to be when a company got to a certain size (huge), they could
>>>exterminate their competition in various ways, take over the entire market
>>>for some product or service, and then jack up the price to their hearts'
>>>content. This is called a monopoly.
>>This situation can only occur if said business gets a government to
>>make it illegal for others to compete with its products.
>Horseshit. Monopolies have occurred many times without governmental
>connivance.
Can you favor us with a single example?
>Again: horseshit. Were Rush Prudential or any other HMO, PPO, hospital, or
>insurance company to be the only folks allowed or able to practice
>medicine, you'd be correct. The fact is that anybody who can hack medical
>school can be a doctor, and can set up a clinic on the corner on the South
>Side of Chicago if that's what they want to do. Medicine is a regulated
>profession, but it is not a monopoly in any country I know about.
Not so. There is a board that limits the hospital room count, and the
equipment therein. It has just been discovered, for example, that MRI
is effective for early diagnosis of breast cancer. But since the
medicrats long ago forecast the total amount of usage MRI machines
could get, and limited the number of machines so only this demad could
be satisfied, thereby making the machines too expensive to be used for
mammography.
Should women be perhaps concerned about this?
Paul F Austin
Alan Gore wrote:
> m-atk...@nwu.edu (Michael A. Atkinson) wrote:
>
> >Alan Gore <ag...@primenet.com> wrote:
>
> >>>It used to be when a company got to a certain size (huge), they
> could
> >>>exterminate their competition in various ways, take over the entire
> market
> >>>for some product or service, and then jack up the price to their
> hearts'
> >>>content. This is called a monopoly.
>
> >>This situation can only occur if said business gets a government to
> >>make it illegal for others to compete with its products.
>
> >Horseshit. Monopolies have occurred many times without governmental
> >connivance.
>
> Can you favor us with a single example?
A monopoly occurs if and only if the costs of entry into a market are
high enough to exclude other players. Those costs may be levied by
government regulation and examples range from the Honorable East India
Company through the Bell System (pre Carterphone).
Cost-of-entry can also be technological, through patent protection. Drug
manufacturing and Intel are examples here.
Microsoft doesn't play in either kind of market. The consumer software
market has very low price of entry and with many distribution channels,
anyone with a better code can reach his customers.
>
>
> >... The fact is that anybody who can hack medical
> >school can be a doctor, and can set up a clinic on the corner on the
> South
> >Side of Chicago if that's what they want to do. Medicine is a
> regulated
> >profession, but it is not a monopoly in any country I know about.
>
First, you've got to get _into_ a (licensed) medical school. It's
through enrollment limits that the AMA controls the supply of doctors.
Secondary control of licensing of foreign doctors completes the set.
> Not so. There is a board that limits the hospital room count, and the
> equipment therein. It has just been discovered, for example, that MRI
> is effective for early diagnosis of breast cancer. But since the
> medicrats long ago forecast the total amount of usage MRI machines
> could get, and limited the number of machines so only this demad could
>
> be satisfied, thereby making the machines too expensive to be used for
>
> mammography.
We here in sunny Florida are swimming in MRIs. The first went into the
big Regional Hospital here with lots of publicity. Now every
three-doctor med corporatin has gone into hock to buy its own and there
are five in a city of 65,000.
Charlie Stross
Alan Gore<ag...@primenet.com> wrote
(in article <680oqf$j...@nntp02.primenet.com>):
>>The IT industry has successfully reached a state where the market-dominating
>>"word processor" (sic) occupies 200Mb of disk space, takes 32Mb of RAM to
>>run, and still can't kern or track properly. All this for £250 a copy,
>>when for £0 you can get a workable copy of LaTeX. And you think the gummint
>>can fuck up *worse* ?!?!
>
>And in what way is the existence of Bill Gates preventing you from
>doing exactly that?
There are enough bozos out there who believe "everyone uses Microsoft"
that I regularly have to deal with business-related email containing such
abominations as Powerpoint presentations or Word documents. And Microsoft's
inability to (a) conform to industry-wide open standards (instead of
inventing their rwn weird secret and proprietary shit) and (b) their
refusal to build working copies of their applications for competing
operating systems means that I _can't_ ignore their existence, as I
would prefer.
So you could say, Bill Gates prevents me from devoting all of my working
time to earning a living.
This is a micro-scale example. Multiply by several million, though,
and you have a Problem.
Clear enough?
Charlie Stross
Alan Gore<ag...@primenet.com> wrote
(in article <680oml$j...@nntp02.primenet.com>):
>cha...@develop-1.demsys.org (Charlie Stross) wrote:
>
>Your right to seek alternative product, that's what. You can get OS/2
>cheap and several popular versions of Unix FOR FREE. If the Gatester
>was as evil as claimed, hordes of users would be loading these OS'es
>onto their boxes. But no - some of would rather whine about Microsoft
>products being "too cheap."
Ahem: there are _no_ Microsoft products on any of my machines. That's
because I'm a linux bigot. (Besides, I've been working with/on UNIX
kit for the past eight years and I see no reason to change now.)
And you might be surprised by the growth estimates for Linux use. Some
time in '98 it's probably going to overtake MacOS as the alternative
platform of choice ...
-- Charlie
"The reason MS needs to advertise is that, left to their own devices,
most companies wouldn't buy their products."
-- ajac...@freenet.columbus.oh.us
Bob O`Brien
Charlie Stross <> wrote:
>And you might be surprised by the growth estimates for Linux use. Some
>time in '98 it's probably going to overtake MacOS as the alternative
>platform of choice ...
Is that Linux specifically, or free unix versions in general?
I note that there are quite a few flavors.
Given my current choice of net access, I plan to put FreeBSD on
an "obsolete" 486 box some time next year.
Terry Austin
cha...@nospam.antipope.mapson.org (Charlie Stross) wrote:
>And you might be surprised by the growth estimates for Linux use. Some
>time in '98 it's probably going to overtake MacOS as the alternative
>platform of choice ...
>
Is that because of growth for Linux, decline for MacOS, or a
combination of both?
---------------------------------
-- Terry Austin, Grand Inquisitor, Loyal Order of Chivalry & Sorcery
Hyperbooks Online http://www.hyperbooks.com/ Order by toll free phone call!
VDS (Vehicle Design System) by Greg Porter at BTRC
Chronicles, by John Darling... Not the same old thing.
Thomas Womack
Douglas G. Henke (he...@rocza.krall.org) wrote:
: Pat Steppic <hpat@remove_this.eskimo.com> writes:
: > Is there _anyone_ here who can see Microsoft's point, that a web
: > browser could _possibly_ be considered an integral part of an
: > operating system?
I suspect they use 'operating system' to mean what others would tend to call
'user environment'; I'd not be astounded to see Word 2000 appearing as part
of Windows 2000.
: I have yet to reach any understanding of the delu^H^H idea that user
: interface should be part of, rather than orthogonal to, the OS.
I suspect the two are; the VC5 manuals take care to talk about the
shell as distinct from the OS. The underlying NT operating system
isn't too bad (that is, the virtual memory is reasonably managed and
the tasks switched efficiently; the networking layers do something
almost like networking, the device drivers drive their devices ...).
Indeed, the VC manuals are quite good guides to what exactly this monstrosity
is trying to do, and why it does it its way. They do not explain the function
of the 1903 .DLL files cluttering up C:\, though ... which is a pity, since
some of them look more than somewhat useful.
The user interface is implemented rather more closely than X, though
not too far, I suspect, from an X which you can't escape and which you
are forced into from startup ('you will log in through xdm, and in no
other way shall ye log in').
I think Microsoft would claim that LaTeX was an integral part of RedHat.
They wouldn't be *right*, but they'd claim it anyway.
Tom
Charlie Stross
Terry Austin<tau...@hyperbooks.com> wrote
(in article <34a55097...@news.artnet.net>):
>cha...@nospam.antipope.mapson.org (Charlie Stross) wrote:
>
>>And you might be surprised by the growth estimates for Linux use. Some
>>time in '98 it's probably going to overtake MacOS as the alternative
>>platform of choice ...
>>
>Is that because of growth for Linux, decline for MacOS, or a
>combination of both?
I figure on growth for Linux. MacOS isn't in actual decline -- it just
looks that way, in an industry where 20% compound growth is the baseline
definition of "normal" and standing still therefore looks like
contraction.
There was an interesting editorial in one of the workstation 'zines a
few months ago. If I remember correctly, their observation was that in
1996, UNIX workstations sold about 700,000 units, NT boxes sold about
250,000 units, and Linux PCs sold about 100,000 units. However, they
projected that in 1997, the final figures would be UNIX workstations:
750,000, NT workstations: 1 million, and Linux PC's: about 500,000. On
which growth curve, Linux overtakes the entire UNIX workstation market
in number of units sold some time in 1998, and by late '98 is nipping at
NT's heels -- possibly overtaking NT, if NT 5.0 is delayed any further
(snort).
Now when you consider that for every PC sold specifically to _run_ Linux
and nothing else, there's probably ten that run it occasionally or
regularly, the picture gets rather interesting ...
I like Macs -- hell, I own a few -- but I don't think Steve Jobs did
Apple the best of favours when he kicked over Amelio's conservative but
rational market recovery plans and went into full reality-distortion
overdrive. Hence my prediction: Apple will stagnate. It takes a long
time for a company that size to go tits-up, but Jobs is doing his best.
-- Charlie "pundit" Stross
Charlie Stross
Bob O`Brien<ob...@best.com> wrote
(in article <683po0$s5c$1...@shell3.ba.best.com>):
>Charlie Stross <> wrote:
>
>>And you might be surprised by the growth estimates for Linux use. Some
>>time in '98 it's probably going to overtake MacOS as the alternative
>>platform of choice ...
>
>Is that Linux specifically, or free unix versions in general?
>I note that there are quite a few flavors.
Linux specifically; it's the most popular choice of the free unices.
Not necessarily the best, technically, and I'm told FreeBSD scales
better for heavy-duty server work ... but if it runs on a free UNIX,
an application is almost bound to run on Linux. And there's one hell
of a lot of momentum, now. (Guess coming: in three to five years
time, given the new binary compatability standard the Intel/UNIX
people are thrashing out, the only difference between a FreeBSD box
and a Linux box will be the kernel.)
>Given my current choice of net access, I plan to put FreeBSD on
>an "obsolete" 486 box some time next year.
Heh. 486's are handy. In a few months, I'm going to rev my kit: the
P133 on my desk will be replaced by a P266. Meanwhile, it goes up the
road to replace the 486/66 sitting in a cupboard on a leased line
(aka public.antipope.org). Which probably comes home and turns into
a firewall/router for the house network, running diald over ISDN and
masquerading for everything else in the place.
486's may not be great for running the latest 3D shoot-em-ups, but
they make fine low-throughput servers and routers.
-- Charlie
Alan Gore
cha...@nospam.antipope.mapson.org (Charlie Stross) wrote:
>There are enough bozos out there who believe "everyone uses Microsoft"
>that I regularly have to deal with business-related email containing such
>abominations as Powerpoint presentations or Word documents. And Microsoft's
>inability to (a) conform to industry-wide open standards (instead of
>inventing their rwn weird secret and proprietary shit) and (b) their
>refusal to build working copies of their applications for competing
>operating systems means that I _can't_ ignore their existence, as I
>would prefer.
What "industry-wide open standard" is there for word processing
documents and slide presentations except for HTML itself? You can use
the proprietary Word Perfect document standard, you can use the
proprietary MS Word document standard, or you can use Word to write
open-standard HTML documents. I do exactly this all day long, for huge
corporations. I can move freely among Microsoft tools, Corel tools,
and tools developed by small companies like Sausage, as I feel the
need. I can write my CGI scripts in C when I want to and Visual Basic
when I want to. I can write platform-standard front ends in Java and
run them on a Mac, or an X box, or on a PC using Netscape, if the bugs
in IE4 offend me.
This situation is the total opposite, in every way, of a monopoly. May
the "Justice" department keep its goddamn greasy fingers out of our
industry. Look how it "fixd" the railroads!
Alan Gore
cha...@nospam.antipope.mapson.org (Charlie Stross) wrote:
>And you might be surprised by the growth estimates for Linux use. Some
>time in '98 it's probably going to overtake MacOS as the alternative
>platform of choice ...
In fact, I'm making a similar choice on my home LAN. For the last 7
years, my NT development system has been a 486 local-bus system with
32M RAM and 1.5G of disk space. It cost me $5,000 new. I am now
replacing it for NT development with a dual-processor Pentium II with
128M RAM and 8.4G of disk acreage. This is costing me $3,000.
So now the quandary is what to do with the old system. I am going to
throw Red Hat on it and run it as a local Web server, so I can get a
"Unix scond opinion" on my intranet development work. Red Hat 5
includes a SQL engine, so I have an alternative to my SQL Server work
on NT. The last time I used Unix was AT & T System V on 3B2's, so I
will be interested in finding out what Unix is up to these days.
Bob O`Brien
Alan Gore <ag...@primenet.com> wrote:
>
>What "industry-wide open standard" is there for word processing
>documents and slide presentations except for HTML itself?
RTF[M]
Bob O`Brien
>>an "obsolete" 486 box some time next year.
>486's may not be great for running the latest 3D shoot-em-ups, but
>they make fine low-throughput servers and routers.
Low-throughput?
You haven't tried a 486dx50 with a good VL-bus-mastering SCSI-II card.
John S. Novak
On 28 Dec 1997 11:17:02 -0700, Alan Gore <ag...@primenet.com> wrote:
>cha...@nospam.antipope.mapson.org (Charlie Stross) wrote:
>What "industry-wide open standard" is there for word processing
>documents and slide presentations except for HTML itself?
What the _fuck_ are you babbling about?
When did HTML become a word-processing standard?
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cris.com
The Humblest Man on the Net
Charlie Stross
Alan Gore<ag...@primenet.com> wrote
(in article <68652u$5...@nntp02.primenet.com>):
>
>What "industry-wide open standard" is there for word processing
>documents and slide presentations except for HTML itself?
I'll name two:
For document processing: SGML.
For presentations/web stuff: HTML or XML.
ObClue: SGML is an ISO standard. It's also phenomenally powerful.
Although HTML is an SGML application, you shouldn't confuse the
two. Interestingly, M$ market an SGML-aware and capable version
of Word -- but about double the price and do their damndest not
to promote it.
-- Charlie
Charlie Stross
Bob O`Brien<ob...@best.com> wrote
(in article <68671a$ccl$1...@shell3.ba.best.com>):
>Alan Gore <ag...@primenet.com> wrote:
>>
>>What "industry-wide open standard" is there for word processing
>>documents and slide presentations except for HTML itself?
>
> RTF[M]
RTF ain't an open standard. It's published, true, but it's still defined
by Microsoft -- and they move the goal posts whenever they feel like
it. As witness RTF 3.0 (introduced in Word 6) which ain't readable by
many earlier 'RTF-compatible' products.
-- Charlie
When you say `I wrote a program that crashed Windows', people just stare
at you blankly and say `Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*'
-- Linus Torvalds
>> To reply: remove NOSPAM and anagrams, or see http://www.antipope.org/ <<
Charlie Stross
Hugh Davies<huge@axalotl_nospam.demon_nospam.co.uk> wrote
(in article <68d9if$6...@axalotl.demon.co.uk>):
>>
>>For document processing: SGML.
>>
>>For presentations/web stuff: HTML or XML.
>
>Err, not really. Since HTML is an SGML DTD, the same comments apply to
>HTML as to SGML.
Err, depends on your definition of standards. HTML is an _application_
of SGML, it's true, but to all intents and purposes it's a distinct
standard, established by W3O; the fact that it's expressed in terms of
an SGML DTD no more indicates that it's part of SGML than the fact
that UNIX in expressed in C means that it's part of the C programming
environment.
'Course, this is mere hair-splitting ...
>As I recall (and I haven't worked with SGML seriously for about 7
>years(*)), the standards guys were bashing away on presentation
>languages. I suspect that the popularity of the WWW and HTML has
>diverted attention away from all that. They're probably too busy trying
>to recover from the damage caused by Microsoft and Netscape trying to
>pervert HTML to their own ends.
XML is the new hot thing; a workable subset of SGML that has the
flexibility and simplicity to replace HTML as a document markup language
while adding most of the useful SGML features (like ability to define
new DTDs) that the web has lacked. In addition, there's CSS, which AFAIK
depends on implementations of DSSSL (if you're doing it properly).
Separate the visuals from the document structure but allow 'em to
operate on one-another, that's how I read it. But then, I know nothing;
the largest document collections I ever worked on only had a quarter
million or so files or a similar number of links.
Alan Gore
huge@axalotl_nospam.demon_nospam.co.uk (Hugh Davies) wrote:
>In article <68652u$5...@nntp02.primenet.com>, ag...@primenet.com (Alan Gore) writes:
>>What "industry-wide open standard" is there for word processing
>>documents and slide presentations except for HTML itself?
>HTML has *NOTHING* to do with word processing.
But what other publishing format do we have that's as universally
supported across many platforms?
Glen Quarnstrom
cha...@nospam.antipope.mapson.org (Charlie Stross) wrote:
>Hugh Davies<huge@axalotl_nospam.demon_nospam.co.uk> wrote
>(in article <68d9if$6...@axalotl.demon.co.uk>):
>>>
>>>For document processing: SGML.
>>>
>>>For presentations/web stuff: HTML or XML.
>>
>>Err, not really. Since HTML is an SGML DTD, the same comments apply to
>>HTML as to SGML.
>
>Err, depends on your definition of standards. HTML is an _application_
>of SGML, it's true, but to all intents and purposes it's a distinct
>standard, established by W3O; the fact that it's expressed in terms of
>an SGML DTD no more indicates that it's part of SGML than the fact
>that UNIX in expressed in C means that it's part of the C programming
>environment.
>XML is the new hot thing; a workable subset of SGML that has the
>flexibility and simplicity to replace HTML as a document markup language
>while adding most of the useful SGML features (like ability to define
>new DTDs) that the web has lacked. In addition, there's CSS, which AFAIK
>depends on implementations of DSSSL (if you're doing it properly).
What this newsgroup needs is a BOA.
--
gl...@cyberhighway.net
http://www.cyberhighway.net/~glenq/
Andrew Frederiksen
In article <68ebqd$g...@nntp02.primenet.com>,
Alan Gore <ag...@primenet.com> wrote:
[HTML is Not a Publishing Language]
>But what other publishing format do we have that's as universally
>supported across many platforms?
TeX/LaTeX, ferinstance.
Although supporting them in a word processor would be quite a trick...
--
-- Andrew Frederiksen, fred...@unixg.ubc.ca aka an...@geop.ubc.ca
-- http://www.geop.ubc.ca/~andyf
Charlie Stross
Andrew Frederiksen<fred...@unixg.ubc.ca> wrote
(in article <68grsa$r...@interchg.ubc.ca>):
>
>TeX/LaTeX, ferinstance.
>
>Although supporting them in a word processor would be quite a trick...
Ever met LyX? Or TeXtures?
-- Charlie "I know Knuth-ing!" Stross
Natural Born Cereal Killer
ag...@primenet.com (Alan Gore) writes:
>>HTML has *NOTHING* to do with word processing.
>But what other publishing format do we have that's as universally
>supported across many platforms?
Is 7-bit ASCII not sufficient to convey your words?
--
* Dan Sorenson DoD #1066 ASSHOLE #35 BOTY 1997 vik...@probe.net *
* Vikings? There ain't no vikings here. Just us honest farmers. *
* The town was burning, the villagers were dead. They didn't need *
* those sheep anyway. That's our story and we're sticking to it. *
Robert Crawford
On 31 Dec 1997 14:01:01 -0700, Alan Gore <ag...@primenet.com> wrote:
>But what other publishing format do we have that's as universally
>supported across many platforms?
TeX