Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 05:27:04 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: grog@lemis.com (Greg Lehey) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Microsoft brainrot (was: r-cmds and DNS and /etc/host.conf) Message-ID: <199709290527.WAA16066@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <19970929101327.45644@lemis.com> from "Greg Lehey" at Sep 29, 97 10:13:27 am
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> Well, 3 sounds almost right. But if you mention erroneous data there, > you should mention the corresponding ways to get erroneous data with > the other possibilities. I should make a distinction between "syntactically invalid" vs. "gramatically" invalid, in that case, to disarm your argument. > After about an hour on one particular machine, I finally located the > text-mode file which one particular part of the configuration editor > (for want of a more appropriate term) had updated. I found the bug > immediately, despite lack of knowledge: it had been introduced by the > configuration editor. This is why you were the teacher instead of the student: you were capable of problem solving already, and you were there to teach the students how to think more than anything else (IMO, that is the highest goal of a teacher, and has been my primary goal each time I've taught). > 1. Having lots of tiny windows, all different, doesn't obviate the > necessity for syntax. Yes. See my distinction above. > 2. Front ends of any kind may help when you know what you're doing, > but if you have trouble it still makes sense to have a text config > file you can look at. Your front end was broken in how it acted on the file; it introduced a syntax error, which should not have been possible for it to do; but I agree with the sentiment. > 3. The quality of GUI programming is inadequate to actually make > things easier. I disagree. This depends *entirely* on the quality of the UI programmer; it's a sad fact that many companies assign the UI tasks to new hires instead of experienced profesionals. I blame poor industry practice for your conclusion. I deny that there exists a problem so dificult that it can not eventually be solved. > > The only position I'm defending is "make something people would want > > to buy" instead of "make something people would want to buy, if only > > they knew better". > > I don't think that people "want to buy" Microsoft. They buy it > because of marketing, not because of any technical advantage. A wise man once provided the following definition of "zealot": Someone who knows what God would do, if only God were in posession of all the facts. This works for any type of religious zealotry, including OS or editor zealotry. In that context, the position I'm taking above is expedient, not religious. Sort of an agnostic pragmatism about "take a sample of what people are doing, then draw conclusions based on the sample data". 8-). [ ... embedded applications ... ] > There's a difference between running the OS and running an > application. What would be the difference to the situation if this > application were running on touch-screen based FreeBSD cash registers > or stations? I'm glad you asked. 8-). The difference would be that when an application crashed, you could restart it without restarting the system, because there are some resources that Windows does not track, and some memory regions that it does not protect. > > It's a perfect logical opinion for them to hold. > > > > Regardless, it's easier to configure DNS on NT than it is on FreeBSD. > > I can give you complete instructions in a page and a half for it. > > That's half a page more than my instructions for FreeBSD. > > > Or you can hit 'F1' any time uring the DNS setup. Can you do the > > same for FreeBSD? > > Sure. I can hit any key I want. But why would I want to take my > fingers off the keyboard? F1 is on the keyboard. 8-). And the instructions aren't necessary in the NT case; they are there for people who fail to grasp the obvious. > >> An ISDN RR? > > > > A variant reverse record? > > RR stands for "resource record". It's the basic unit of information > in DNS. > > > I assume your cache timeout everywhere is now one second, right? > > I don't know, do you? But I don't think you understood the question. I did. The point was that, given the current state of affairs with cache timeouts, it would do no good to assign an RR based on who called in on your transient point-to-point virtual cirvuit connection. So either "ISDN" was a red herring, or you want something that you can't have at this point in time anyway without an allocated IP address that belongs to the caller at all times. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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