[AUUG-Talk]: Conference Update

[Leon Brooks]

On Wednesday 26 September 2007 20:51:46 Dave Horsfall wrote:
> I confess to preferring the BSD licence over the GNU licence;
> the latter is restrictive in that one is compelled to do certain
> things, and this does not exactly come across to me as "free".

True. The Golden Rule often strikes people as non-Free, but
that doesn't seem to stop it being both functional & worthwhile.

Sometimes, the GPL strikes me as being a tad restrictive, but
in general it's a pragmatically good balance between completely
public-domain Free & GiveItAllToMeNow commercial greed.

One of the key principles of law systems that actually work is
that they apply to absolutely everyone.

>>> Correct; they promote a Windoze replacement, complete
>>> with glitzy & useless Gooey that's attractive to the
>>> drooling masses. 

>> Hmmm. The Ubuntu I'm facing sports GNOME by default, which
>> doesn't look at all like MS-Windows. In fact, it looks more like
>> Mac than any other mainstream interface.

> Err, I said "glitzy & useless Gooey", not "[a] MS-Windows
> [Gooey]". 

Not true. You called it "a Windows replacement." (-:

> I've yet to find something that I can do in a Gooey that I
> can't do with a plain WM (and in a pinch, with "screen" I can
> even do away with the latter, and have).

Well, a long as you're not running "we threw the command line
away" MicroSloth junk, yes. Er... generally freehand graphics are
not so good in text-mode. (-:

> you are condemned to using the Gooey, just like M$ :-)  Now,
> try doing that over a slow modem...

Hah, don't bother. OpenSSH & the -C option are your friend.

>> level, and VMS's DCL tried to be a Unix shell at a higher level
>> (& was in reality more of a CoBOL trying to be a LISP
>> replacement, hi Major :-).

> If that's the "Major" I know (Pyramid Melbourne), say "hi" to him for me.

Hmmm. AFAIK, this Major, although in Pyramid for a while, stuck
to Perth, WA. Could be wrong in that. Nee MCD.

However, he did work (with Dean Elsner) on an RSX LISP
interpreter (sorta, Major & Dean got into some cunning
optimisation stuff. hard-earned from breaking everything down
to & including STB on BASIC-PLUS-TWO programs for der
obergruppenfuhrer -- & you *know* it's serious if even STB
chokes on it) named "Labia" after temporarily being called
"Lips" as a kind of subterfuge to hide the fact that they were
doing real work instead of running in circles with an OO-ish
programme called Machiavelli.

Cheers; Leon