On Sunday 20 March 2005 07:24, Craig White wrote: [...] >Your comment about being 'MS Free' strikes me as rather > anti-Microsoft motivated. I see Macintosh users that won't give up > Microsoft Office despite their virulent anti-Microsoft charges. > I've seen people on this list like Gene who claims never to have > owned a Windows computer - but uses samba for networking at his > house. Mainly because the alternative everyone wants me to try, cannot be made to work, NFS. Any and all attempts to setup an NFS share have been met with a 'no permission' response from the server, this box, even though I am running as root for 99% of what I do. I come back to the list with exact copies of the files you request, and everyone goes away shaking their head because they don't have an answer as to why I cannot make it work here. Its supposed to Just Work(TM), but it doesn't. With all due respect, samba works for everything but level sensitive backups, and amanda or rsync steps up to the plate and makes a home run everytime. > I have seen people that claim to be 'Microsoft Free' but > save their documents in 'doc' format, 'xls' format. Install mplayer > and view Windows Media Player content via the w32 codecs. Once again, only because we have no control over the format much of the stuff we want to look at or listen to is published in that format. > I think > that many people have the perception of being MS Free only because > they ignore the reality - that they probably aren't. Not my choice, although it certainly would be if I could fix it. >Which really gets to the nub of the underlying point that I was > trying to make with Brian. Linux is NOT the Microsoft alternative - > it has to live in a technological world that is dominated by > Microsoft. Linux is Free / Open Source Software which has a > decidedly different design/production/distribution model than that > which the computing industry has commonly employed - closed > source/proprietary software. While there may be some people driven > to use Linux because it is not Microsoft and there may be some > people driven to use Linux because they don't have to open their > wallet to acquire it, the core reason for it's development and > growth is because of the open source model itself. Amen. >Lastly - since you referred to 'my vitriol' I will point out that > you nitpicked a statement that I made - that when considered in the > context that I made it - was absolutely irrefutable and even when > considered out of the context in which it was made - was arguable > only with a misrepresentation of facts such as you did. Let's see > how you react when someone does something like that to you. > >Craig Threads like this often will simmer down to a pissing contest which convinces neither party, and which wastes a considerable amount of the rest of us list readers time wading thru the diatribes to find that nuggat of wisdom we are all seeking for. FWIW, I think you are generally right, but I gave up trying to teach **** to sing about 66 years ago. It just annoys the **** according to my grandpa way back then. Thus it has always been, and thus it always will be. Sigh... -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) 99.34% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
