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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On Mon, 17 Oct 2011 10:15:31 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>> Fact: It doesn't matter how strong the authentication process is. This
>>> does not automatically mean that the data that follows is encrypted in
>>> any way at all.
>>
>> No, it doesn't
> 
> OK, now we agree on something.

We probably didn't disagree on that - I never asserted that 
authentication and encryption were the same thing.

>>>> Nope, 1200 packets, nothing in the clear.
>>>
>>> And how do you tell whether random binary data is encrypted or not?
>>
>> There's nothing "in the clear".  I connected to the system, opened a
>> CMD window, and listed directory contents.
> 
> Right. So it send a bunch of image bitmaps to you. And you can tell just
> from a hex dump that it was encrypted?

Amazingly enough, Wireshark can reassemble the payloads and tell you 
what's in it.  So yes, with the proper tools, you can in fact tell that 
it's not just streaming a bunch of JPGs to you.

>> That, plus the fact that it, you know, actually is *documented* to be
>> encrypted.
> 
> It's news to me that there /is/ any such documentation.

Well, I only pointed to the articles that documented it.

>> Yes, I do.  However, *weak* encryption is still, you know,
>> *encryption*.
> 
> Weak encryption is virtually no better than no encryption at all. If you
> want encryption, you want strong encryption.

You asserted "unencrypted", not "poorly encrypted".

>> But it's still encryption.  You asserted that it's not encrypted.  I
>> proved that it was.  Now, if you want to talk about encryption
>> *strength*, that's different than, you know, whether it's encrypted or
>> not.
> 
> If you're sending traffic over the Internet, it needs to have strong
> encryption. Since the debate is about whether you need to add additional
> security to RDP or not, it's kinda relevant.

Again, you asserted *no* encryption.

>>> Every Windows protocol I know of sends everything unencrypted by
>>> default, and most of them offer no possibility of adding encryption.
>>> I'd be rather surprised if RDP is different.
>>
>> Well, it's just documented as being enabled by default.  Like your VPN.
>> How do you know your VPN is actually encrypted?
> 
> I'm not saying that RDP isn't encrypted. I'm saying I'm extremely
> surprised that it's encrypted, given that none of the dozens of other
> Windows wire protocols offer any encryption at all.

You started off by saying that it wasn't encrypted, and when you were 
told it was, you refused to believe those of us telling you it is were in 
fact telling you the truth.

Jim

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On Mon, 17 Oct 2011 10:06:22 +0100, 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.

"I don't know of anybody who's using it yet."

I'm using it.  In a VM.  So there's one. ;)

>>>> Yeah, ultimately, you gave up without asking for help.  If you'd
>>>> asked for help, someone probably would've been able to help you.
>>>
>>> 1. You're assuming that it's /possible/ to fix this.
>>
>> I'm basing that assumption on years of experience in troubleshooting
>> Linux systems.
>>
>> You're giving up and assuming it's impossible to fix it, so why bother
>> even asking for help?
>>
>> *That's* absurd.
> 
> Ultimately, it's "possible" to fix anything. You could reimplement the
> entire OS, for example. (Isn't that how Linux came to exist in the first
> place?) But that's far beyond my level of skill. For all practical
> purposes, that's "impossible". Not every computer problem is solvable.

The reason one asks for help is when something is beyond one's skill 
level.  There's invariably someone with *more* experience and skill, and 
the purpose of asking for help is to learn from those with more 
experience.

When I'm giving technical interviews, you might recall, I ask questions I 
know the candidate doesn't stand a chance of asking.  The reason I do 
this is to find out how they learn beyond their current skill.

You seem to think there's no point in asking questions to learn more.  
That's troubling.  You *have* the ability to learn, and you seek out 
information when it suits you.  But at the same time, you declare 
something as "impossible" (remember the discussion we had a couple years 
ago about debugging a kernel?  You uncategorically declared it was 
impossible to do so, and I told you that I had actually *done* so myself, 
but you still refused to believe it was possible to use a kernel debugger 
to get anything useful out of a crash).

You need to revise your view on that kind of thing and admit that you 
don't know *everything*, but that there are people who know *more* than 
you do and that you could *learn* from them.

>>> 2. You're assuming that had I asked, somebody would have actually
>>> bothered to reply. And that their reply would have been helpful.
>>
>> Again, based on decades of experience in online forums.  Is there a
>> chance of a useless answer or no answer?  Sure.  But I guarantee you
>> you won't get an answer IF YOU DON'T FUCKING ASK.
> 
> My limited experience is that when you ask for help, you get no reply.
> Or you get a few replies from people who don't really know how to help
> you, but they try to offer you some kind of useful information anyway.

Your experience is limited; you need to gain more experience.

I've been answering technical questions in online forums for over 20 
years now.  I can assure you that your experience is not normal - because 
it it was, why on earth would I waste 20 years of my life doing exactly 
what you've said isn't helpful or useful?

>>> As I say, I can get Linux to /work/ OK. Indeed, my dad still uses it
>>> on a daily basis. It's just that one or two things - like getting the
>>> package manager to install just the packages I actually need - are
>>> annoyingly fiddly.
>>
>> If you asked for help in understanding it, you might just learn
>> something.
>>
>> Heaven forbid *that* should happen. ;)
> 
> What's to understand? Dependencies are tracked at a fairly coarse level.
> It is what it is. Just live with it...

So, there's absolutely nothing more you can learn about dependency 
tracking in Linux?

Some dependencies are very coarse, yes.  Some are not.  Your assumption, 
based on a high level understanding, is incomplete - and you certainly 
*could* ask for more information about it and possibly even contribute to 
making it better.

Or at least understand it better, instead of parroting an explanation 
that the MS-fanbois just love.

Jim

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On Sun, 16 Oct 2011 20:31:06 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 10/16/2011 20:18, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I cited a counterexample, and you changed the criteria.
> 
> Yes. I clarified.  Why, are we keeping score?

Not much point, just hard to debate when the criteria keep changing.

>> They do indeed.  I'm sure they could work out a licensing arrangement
>> for "approved by Microsoft" software if they wanted to, and take a cut
>> for distribution.
>>
>> Apple does, after all.
> 
> Well, as I said, so does Microsoft.
> 
> Say, here's an idea. Why don't you go work for Microsoft and explain to
> them why they're losing so much money? :-)  I mean, seriously, why are
> you arguing to *me* that Microsoft should be offering this service for a
> fee?

I think the likelihood of Microsoft hiring me is about equal to mine of 
seeking employment with them.

>> So, that can happen on both Linux and Windows.  I'm not sure what your
>> point is.
> 
> My point is that in spite of how I'm interpreting your claims, Windows
> does indeed have "software management elements" in their OS and
> supporting software.

I never said that they didn't have "software management elements" in the 
OS and supporting software.  I'm talking about those elements in a 
software distribution system.

Jim

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On 18/10/2011 12:08 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> 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. ;)
>

OMG A six foot guising penguin. I bet you won’t be dooking for Apples. ;-)


-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 03:57:57 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 18/10/2011 12:08 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 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. ;)
>>
>>
> OMG A six foot guising penguin. I bet you won’t be dooking for Apples.
> ;-)

I wouldn't take that bet. ;)

Jim

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