On 17/10/2011 10:06 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> I don't know how big the latest version of Windows is. I've never
>>> installed it. More to the point, I don't know of anybody who's using it
>>> yet.
>>
>> Windows 7.  You might have heard of it.
>
> I've heard of it, yes. What I *said* is that I don't know how big it is.
> And that I haven't seen anybody using it.

You said: "More to the point, I don't know of anybody who's using it yet."

o_O

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 10/17/2011 2:07, Invisible wrote:
> On 16/10/2011 11:58 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> On 10/10/2011 3:11, Invisible wrote:
>>> Every Windows protocol I know of sends everything unencrypted by
>>> default, and most of them offer no possibility of adding encryption.
>>
>> Actually, every internet protocol up to about the invention of SSL sends
>> everything unecrypted by default. Including the Windows protocols.
>>
>> Pretty much everything after SSL is encrypted.
>
> 1. Isn't it TLS now?

Yes. And TLS came after SSL, right?

> 2. There are Internet protocols *newer* than TLS? (OK, well I'm sure there
> are, but does anybody *use* them?)

Um, lots, yes.  You think there haven't been any new internet protocols 
since mid-1990's?

> 3. Since old versions of Windows send everything unencrypted, you would
> think that means that new versions have to send everything unencrypted too,
> for the sake of backwards compatibility.

Unless the protocol was invented after SSL, at which point there is no 
backward compatibility requirements with pre-encryption protocols.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?

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On 10/17/2011 2:06 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>>> A more appropriate comparison is latest against latest.
>>>
>>> I don't know how big the latest version of Windows is. I've never
>>> installed it. More to the point, I don't know of anybody who's using it
>>> yet.
>>
>> Windows 7. You might have heard of it.
>
> I've heard of it, yes. What I *said* is that I don't know how big it is.
> And that I haven't seen anybody using it.
>
Pretty much anyone that wants "usable" memory over 4GB, to get rid of 
BSDs, without reinstalling (I need that soon), and actually likes the 
idea of playing *any* modern game with DirectX10 or higher, including 
games as old as Halo 2, on their desktop. In short, anyone that isn't 
scared of upgrading. XP is as close to dead as you can get, without MS 
having shoved the corpse over the edge of the castle wall, at this 
point, and it wasn't in terribly good shape from birth. Win7... Is still 
from the same diseased line, but, it seems to be at least somewhat of an 
improvement over the parents.

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On 10/17/2011 2:20 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> Wait - YaST has documentation?
>>
>> Um, yes. man yast for starters.
>
> Surely that just tells you the command name and what switches it has?
>
>>>> OSS is big about community.
>>>
>>> That sounds very nice and all, but if I'm trying to quickly set
>>> something up, I don't really want to have to go onto the Internet and
>>> beg for help, and then spend a week or two hoping that somebody
>>> knowledgeable will just happen across my message and actually take the
>>> time to give me a helpful response. I want to read a manual that tells
>>> me how to do this RIGHT NOW.
>>
>> Right, you'd rather struggle with it for weeks and weeks and then bitch
>> about how difficult it is to do anything.
>>
>> Instead of asking a question and getting an answer within a couple of
>> days so you can actually use it.
>
> You're assuming that I'm just doing it wrong, and not that it's actually
> a poorly designed system.
>
>>>> I guess I imagined all those Technet articles that have the warning I
>>>> sited earlier about how editing the registry can screw your system up.
>>>> That must be it, because of course Microsoft would *never* recommend
>>>> you do something that might bork your system.
>>>
>>> The warning is partly there because if you're a clueless user who
>>> doesn't know how to work a computer properly, it's very easy to do a
>>> hell of a lot of damage using a registry editor. Personally, I have
>>> almost never borked my system by editing the registry. The only time
>>> it's happened is when I started deleting stuff at random in a desperate
>>> attempt to make something work. If you follow the instructions, it works
>>> fine.
>>
>> So, modifying it is dangerous. Or not. The warnings don't exist. Or
>> they do.
>>
>> Gotcha.
>
> FFS... Inexpert registry editing can screw up your system. Just like
> going into a random system folder and deleting files can screw up your
> system. If you're knowledgeable enough to not do things like that, then
> it's perfectly safe to edit the registry. (And yes, the documentation
> has warnings all over the place in case some random user types some
> stuff into Google and ends up on a technical information page telling
> you how to edit registry keys.)
>
Thankfully, you don't have to worry about this sort of thing, in the 
long run, because the lack of protections in the registry, the fact that 
everything is munged into one file, etc., pretty much makes it 
inevitable that the OS, or other products on the machine, will 
eventually edit it for you, into a state where everything stops working, 
and not even MS knows why. lol

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On Sun, 16 Oct 2011 20:27:39 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 10/16/2011 20:12, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> And what expression would I give to grep to give me the list of
>>> document roots that Apache is serving on my machine right now?
>>
>> grep -ri documentroot /etc/apache2
> 
> I was under the impression that
>     <DocumentRoot>
>        /home/me/blah
>     </DocumentRoot>
> was a legal declaration of a document root, right?

Yes, but it's deprecated, and not often used.

> And that it's possible to include configurations from other files?

Sure, and those files are typically located in the same directory 
hierarchy.

> And that it's possible to put configuration files in /etc/apache2 which
> apache won't read?

Sure.

And I suppose it's possible to put stuff in the registry that IIS won't 
read, so I'm not sure what your point is with that...

Jim

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On Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:00:25 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>> The point being, if you want to store some binary data in the middle
>>> of a textual configuration file, you have to base64 encode it or
>>> something (which is less efficient). If you want to stick some binary
>>> data in the registry, you can just store it as binary.
>>
>> No, you don't have to encode it as base64.  It's perfectly legal to
>> create a file with text components and binary components.  Because it's
>> just a file.
> 
> It's perfectly *legal*, but nobody does it because then you wouldn't be
> able to just throw the file through grep or something and expect it to
> work.

I've seen it done.

And in fact, a binary file is perfectly acceptable for grep to parse.  
I've used that often enough myself.

Jim

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On Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:35:17 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>>>> Oh, tremendously. But they're still a PITA compared to Windows'
>>>>> explorer, methinks.
>>>>
>>>> Depends entirely on what you're used to.
>>>
>>> Not /entirely/, no. Many things are subjective, but not all of them.
>>
>> When it comes to user selection of tools, yes, they are.  If I find
>> something easy to use, who are you to tell me "no, that's not easy"?
> 
> If product A is lacking a major, important feature, and product B isn't,
> then which one is better? Clearly this is objective, not subjective.

Important to *whom*?  If it's important to you but not to me, then the 
opinion is in fact subjective.

> (The only way it becomes subjective is if the feature in question is
> only useful to some people.)

Bingo.

> I'll grant you *most* things in tool selection are quite subjective. I'm
> just saying that not *all* of it is.

And I'm not asserting that all of it is, either.  Though I suppose I 
haven't explicitly stated that - but it would be absurd to make an 
absolutist case for something that might even be frequently objective, 
wouldn't it?

Jim

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On Sun, 16 Oct 2011 20:31:13 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 10/16/2011 20:15, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> However, saying that using Explorer is easier than using find or locate
>> is ridiculous.  I type much faster than I use the mouse.
> 
> I didn't say everything. I just said some. Are you really going to argue
> that there's no improvement possible?

No, and I didn't say "everything" either - dealing in absolutes rarely 
achieves anything. :)

Jim

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On Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:58:51 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 08/10/2011 10:38 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Obviously you don't know many Linux users.  I know at least 5,000, and
>> many of them not only love and use the GUI, but tend to have religious
>> wars over which GUI is better.
> 
> That is another point against Linux. Why would I want to join a
> community of religious fundamentalists? Any day now I expect a knock on
> my door and open it to find two smartly dressed penguin missionaries.

I think you've just got my Halloween costume selected. ;)

Jim

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On Mon, 17 Oct 2011 10:20:57 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>> Wait - YaST has documentation?
>>
>> Um, yes.  man yast for starters.
> 
> Surely that just tells you the command name and what switches it has?

TRY IT.

That *is* in fact what documentation is, though, so yes - it has 
documentation, and it's included in the man page.

>> Right, you'd rather struggle with it for weeks and weeks and then bitch
>> about how difficult it is to do anything.
>>
>> Instead of asking a question and getting an answer within a couple of
>> days so you can actually use it.
> 
> You're assuming that I'm just doing it wrong, and not that it's actually
> a poorly designed system.

I'm assuming you can be taught.  You seem to have an aptitude for 
learning, but you also seem to think that if you believe something is 
impossible, then it damned well is impossible - and nothing anyone says 
is going to change your mind.

>>> My point remains: It's very uncommon to /need/ to touch the registry
>>> in the first place. Whereas under Unix, the text configuration files
>>> are the first port of call, not the last. That's just the difference
>>> in design mentality.
>>
>> Unless you use YaST, webmin, or one of a myriad of other Linux
>> configuration tools.
> 
> In my experience:
> 
> 1. The user-friendly front-ends tend to be quite fragile. If something
> breaks, you still need to go edit the underlying text file by hand.

My experience with the supposed 'fragility' of those tools is different. 
<shrug>  Maybe 10 years ago it was, but not today.

> 2. The user-friendly tools are completely different for every distro. If
> you know how to edit the Apache configuration files, you can configure
> Apache on any system. If you only know how to do it with YaST, you're
> going to have a heck of a lot of trouble setting up Apache on Debian.

And if you learn how to do it with the config files, then you're good for 
most crossplatform applications.  So you have to decide - do you want to 
learn it on a specific distro, or do you want to generalise?

Or do you want to accept that there are different tools, and which one 
you use depends on what you know - and take the time to actually learn 
the tools if you switch from Fedora to openSUSE?

> Whether different distros should be considered "different products" is
> an open question, of course. But lots of people seem to think that you
> can "know Linux", and that means you can work any variant of Linux.

Which means you work with the raw config files.

Or you use Webmin, which actually *does* (a) work the same regardless of 
distribution, and (b) can manage the services on multiple distributions.

I mean really - I used it to manage configuration on SunOS, exactly the 
same way I used it on RedHat and SUSE.

But of course, you want to believe that doing so is impossible, so I 
must've imagined it, right?

>>>> Obviously you don't know many Linux users.  I know at least 5,000,
>>>> and many of them not only love and use the GUI, but tend to have
>>>> religious wars over which GUI is better.
>>>
>>> And yet, the vast majority of all Linux software is strictly CLI-only,
>>> and developers always seem to expect somebody /else/ to build the
>>> pretty front-end for it.
>>
>> That's just incorrect.  But since you believe it is, it must be true,
>> regardless of evidence to the contrary.
> 
> I haven't seen much "evidence to the contrary". The entire Unix
> philosophy seems to revolve around doing everything from the command
> line. That's why they have powerful shells (plural), sophisticated text
> processing tools, and so forth. From what I've experienced, all the
> flashy new GUI tools are just thin skins over an OS which essentially
> hasn't changed since the days when "TTY" was a commonly-used acronym.

If you haven't seen much evidence to the contrary, you haven't been 
looking.  Really, you haven't.  I talk to Linux developers fairly 
regularly, and to application developers on occasion who work on OSS 
applications for Linux.  Banshee isn't just a front-end to CLI tools.  
Neither is F-Spot.  Neither is Photivo.  Neither is OpenOffice.  Neither 
is [...] - the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on and ON.

>>> JET is no match for an enterprise database engine, sure. But it's more
>>> transactional than a flat file.
>>>
>>> Also, I'm not completely sure that the registry is actually JET. It
>>> might be, but I didn't think it was. For one thing, registry files
>>> grow as needed, but never shrink. I don't think JET has that
>>> limitation.
>>
>> FFS, *Active Directory* is (was) JET.  Maybe they moved to something
>> else now, but I know from personal discussions with AD architects at
>> Microsoft that it is/was JET.
>>
>> JET has been MS' solution for simple database storage for a number of
>> years, possibly decades.
> 
> Wikipedia concurs that AD is definitely Jet. (Jet Blue, in fact. MS
> Access is Jet Red.) I can find no mention of Jet on the registry page.
> (Which may just indicate that the page is incomplete.)
> 
> At any rate, I didn't say that the registry *is not* Jet. I said I don't
> *think* it's Jet. I explicitly said I'm not 100% sure on this point. I
> think it pre-dates Jet, but I might be mistaken.

It may well pre-date JET, or it might've been migrated.

>>> Admitting you're wrong is one thing. But they did something illegal;
>>> where is the *financial* pain for that?
>>
>> Obviously you missed the fact that they paid fines to the EC for their
>> illegal activities.
> 
> Yes, I completely missed that part. Tell me, did these fines amount to
> more than 0.001% of their annual profits?

As I recall, it was seen as an appropriate punishment.

>> And they had to reengineer some things
> 
> Right. That actually costs money. OOC, what did they have to change?

As I recall, they have a specific release of Windows for the EU that 
allows IE to be removed (completely, IIRC).

Jim

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