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

[Craig Southeren <craigs equival com au>]

Hugh,

  Whilst I share some of your opinons of gconf, and don't use
GnomeMeeting myself, I think your extended rant is completely off-topic
for this list. 

   Comments on Damien's PGP keys, email address availability, the
availability of free speech, whether you should go back to BSD/SunOS,
the use of XML, and descriptions of other such diverse topics, complete
with obscenities and outrageous claims, whilst presumably fascinating
and highly interesting to you, are of negligible interest to anyone else.
Except, as of cource, as an excellent example of how to violate
netiquette and make yourself look like a complete idiot.
  
  You seem to be a member of that strange group of people who feels that
the Open Source community owes you something. Somehow you think that
just because you decided to use a program that you paid nothing for,
have contributed nothing to, and have nothing good to say about, that
you are entitled to demand at the top of your ugly little voice that the
world should stop and fix your petty little problems.

  Reality check: nobody cares if you really did help invent hypertext.
You are either part of the solution, part of the problem, or part of the
landscape. 

  If you feel something is wrong, and no-one seems able to help you,
then you have the right to fix it yourself, or stop using the program.
No-one is holding a gun to your head and making you use Gnomemeeting.
Use it, or fix it, or help us fix it, or take your attitude elsewhere.

   Craig

BTW: Who am I? I helped write the OpenH323 library that GnomeMeeting
uses, and I happen to think that Damien has done a good job. He does not
deserve this sort of crap.

On Tue, 23 Apr 2002 00:57:18 -0700
Hugh Daniel <hugh road toad com> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
>   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!
> 
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: 2.6.3ia
> Charset: noconv
> Comment: For the matching public key, finger the Reply-To: address.
> 
> iQCVAwUBPMUT11ZpdJR7FBQRAQEG2gQAgntNRtg2GcbrDcQp3Ihmcwcm1XiycymB
> Jhmd+ggw/Zyq53C4ROkMiVLTamD+4g+YUKukkj5msB0Y/Ryptlv7ohfRg3l7D1xy
> 7UNipabbVgadQJ0JeT0M0dIevxMNnPkEwY5NG2bLWFiVFhCjRiHAVkOM6HKYeLfl
> 0X4mcuubJvM=
> =/JGS
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> Gnomemeeting-list mailing list
> Gnomemeeting-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnomemeeting-list

-------------------------------------------
 Craig Southeren, 
 Managing Director, Equivalence Pty Ltd
 Director, MicroTelco Gateway, Quicknet Technologies, Inc. 
 Voice: +1 415 864 5225 x 700    Fax:   +61 2 4367 3140        
        +61 2 4365 4666          H.323: phone.craig.southeren.com    
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