[GnomeMeeting-list] Re: Gnomemeeting not running over the net...

[Hugh Daniel <hugh road toad com>]

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  My sarcasm is based on frustration, I find things like gconf to be
overly complex while adding little to the value of the entire system
or at least programs like gnomemeeting.  This makes my system more
brittle, which I considder a bad thing.

  I am trying to simply run gnomemeeting on host A and have the
display come up on host B, nothing more.  It's not working and no one
has bothered to write a man page for any of this, the help and about
boxes are no use etc. etc. etc.

  It's too brittle.  It breaks too easily.  It's getting too dependent
on various unstable poorly thoughtout and sadly documented parts.

  It's just getting to me... :r)

  By 'it' I mean linux, RedHat, Gnome and only a bit gnomemeeting which
is at the long end of the chain being whipped about.


  FYI on the page you pointed me at is the 'answer' to my problem:
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/
 
  Under the section title (which no one would bother to tag so I can't
give you a direct link to...)):
"How do I log in from two machines at once?"

  Is the answer to my query.  Thanks!  Oh, don't bother to pass this
info on as it is completely useless, none of the files or commands
mentioned exist...  Trying the ones that seem likely fails, the error
messages never give me anything to work with etc.

  This is getting to be the EVERYDAY hell I fight in Linux land that
is almost making me want to go back to SunOS 3.5 or some such rot.
What good does it do me to have all the source in the world if none of
it works or is even fixable (due to it's bloat)?


  I was quite able to read your web page (and one of the best in our
community at that!), I was just unwilling to submit a bug report via
bugzilla or any web page portal.  I edit my bug reports in my local
editor and send them in via email.  I would be happy to take an ASCII
form and fill in a couple of fields used to sort the report.  Beyond
that I find the web bug reporting interfaces to be horrid.

  So I am pushing folks to have bugs probject address.  What if I did
NOT have a high speed line into the net but was only on the net via
UUCP?  Don't laugh (if you even know what that is, it's getting a bit
long in the tooth these days...) I have friends who are using UUCP and
sometimes FTP and thats it for access to the net.  Really.

  It's at least secure.  Inside their house they are using V4L for a
baby monitor though...


  I did not find the doc for GConf and ORBit because they are not in
the fricking system.  If they are not findable by "man -k THING" they
are not Unix programs and don't belong on my system.  Period.

  I _am_ serious, crazy as it sounds.  Unix IS learnable due to things
like the well thought out "information mapping" and permuted index
that make up the man pages.  Not the horror that is info pages or
HOWTO's, they are just easy ramps (the HOWTO's are useful in some few
cases where your trying to copy exactly what someone else has done on
the same hardware, with the same rev of the software, with the same
librarys, etc. etc. etc.) for some beginner hobbyists.

  For some reason Gnomemeeting uses Gconf and therefor your somewhat
responsible for it.  If you did not use it then I would be running the
test I wanted to run by now, not that it was any big deal in the first
place.


  Your PGP2 key is kept in a DNS MX RR?  What?  You have to be kidding
me!  Thats eaiser to do then finger?  Humm let me guess, convert the
at sign to a dot and lets try it!:

ahost$ dig dsandras.seconix.com MX

; <<>> DiG 9.1.3 <<>> dsandras.seconix.com MX
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 63909
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;dsandras.seconix.com.		IN	MX

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
seconix.com.		10800	IN	SOA	seconix. root.seconix.com. 4 604800 86400 2419200 604800

;; Query time: 141 msec
;; SERVER: 216.181.81.1#53(216.181.81.1)
;; WHEN: Mon Apr 22 23:22:16 2002
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 86

  Humm, no PGP2 key hiding there so I guess I screwed it up.
Rats... :r)

  If you use gpg (which is pretty useless I have to admit) then you
could use the one piece of data you have about me, my email address,
and get a key this way:

	finger hugh xisp net | CENSORED

  Opps, I allmost screwed up there as my Lord President has "decreed"
that I don't have Free Speach if it's crypto or crypto hole shaped if
I am talking to non-holy Americans or some such rot.  Well it should
be obvious from my sig at the bottom.


  I am not at all worried about FreeS/WAN, I am quite worried about
the Linux situation in general though and if it's all going to be at
all useful in a few years.

  I would hate to have to chuck all the Free & Open Source Linux code
and go back to *BSD because everyone in Linux land has Bill envy to
the point where they don't even want to try to understand why Unix is
so winning that Linux is a copy of it.

  Every time I hear that the kernel does not need working Makefile's
my blood goes down 10 deg C in tempture.  Everytime someone like the
OpenBSE SSH folks claim that shipping a GPL version is more important
then script compatibility for thousands of lines of installed base my
hope for the future take a nose dive.

  I am pushing you folks (the Linux Community), and begining to push
HARD, to understand that just copying MS to get MS-GNU is _NOT_ good
enough, no MS-GNU software is going to be in the computers of my
starship (should I be so lucky...).  We have to do _better_ then both
the greddy fools at MS _and_ better then the Unix folks.  We should be
aspiring to what the Smalltalk folks could do, and even better.

  The Unix folks and the Smalltalk folks have DECADES on us, we have
our work cut out for us, both to understand what came before and to
create new that is as solid, robust, useful and flexable as what they
have done before us.

  The real world is not using Linux yet, why?  Well lets go for an
example.  I have been pushing my team real hard to use Gnomemeeting
rather then RAT as gnomemeeting is being worked on (ie theres hope
that it will get better, RAT is dead and I don't have time to fix it
myself).  When we use gnomemeeting we have to give up and use the
phones about 60% of the time.

  Even when we use it it's like using a phone in the 1930's, tough.
Now thats in the middle of the night on VERY high speed lines (T1's or
better even for the ends) and just going a few hundreds of kilometers.

  Now I have a few ideas how attack the problem (and I will be in
Europe for 6 weeks where it seems you folks are), but most folks are
just giving up and (very sadly) using MS-shit.  If we are lucky they
end up on Apple...

  We really have to think, design and then code beyond the current
limits of MS-design and even our own users expectations.  Otherwise
folks will just believe what Gates marketdroids tell them on the boob
tube and we will fade away or go down via some fascist laws about
'security'.

  So far we have been living off the capital of the brilliance of Unix
and the hate of MS-everything, but both will fade in time and we will
be left to our own devices and our own reputations.


  Oh, no.  Why did I go look into my .gconf dir...  XML to save a few
state variables that could be (need tobe...) command line arguments?
What?

  Each time stamped?  The user is just a name and not even hashed to
make it somewhat unique!  Your burning 84 kibibytes of my disk to save
less then a single kibibyte of data?  Most of the data is repeating
the schema string again and again!

  Maybe nautilus needs this hell, but something like gnomemeeting
should not.  Was it really that much easyer to use gconf then to parse
a foo=bar file?  Eighty four times easier?  Times every user out
there?

  Yea I know XML is the "promised land", and I was one of the people
who fucking INVENTED hypertext, but I am not seeing so much a
wonderful future of XML heaven as I am seeing an infinite hell like
the mid-east with XML growing over everything like cancerous
cataracts...


  Well you don't need this shit from me.  I have maybe three ideas to
make VoIP more useful and would be interested in passing them on at
some point while I am in Europe.  Maybe I could just write them up,
but if any of you folks are going to be at RIPE or SANE I would be
happy to buy you a bheer (me a fruit smoothie, California you know...)
and bounce them off one of you.

  Good luck with gnomemeeting, it and the web site are least very
visually slick!

		||ugh Daniel
		hugh freeswan org

			Systems Testing & Project mis-Management
			The Linux FreeS/WAN Project
			http://www.freeswan.org

PS: Opps, correction, a new version of RAT just came out!


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