Re: tlug: Re: djb [was: ibm.net with LINUX (Red Hat)]

[Karl-Max Wagner <karlmax@example.com>]

>     Karl-Max> It can be configured to be compliant with legacy style
>     Karl-Max> standards. He just discourages doing so.
> 
> By not providing a recipe.  This is not easy stuff; without a tried
> recipe to check my needs against I'd be risking hosing my own users.

You don't need any. Default configuration is fully legacy
compliant. You actually have to explicitly activate all those
new features.

> (a) RedHat is famous for glaring deficiencies.  (b) I don't see any

Right. But their mailserver works.

> C?  Guffaw!  I gather you have never done any IT (more precisely, IT
> management) yourself.  (I haven't either, really, but I have studied

No fortunately not. Or what they call IT management - makes my
hair stand up. There ain't anything more stupid than the average
IT manager.

> it.)  For interfacing to the legacy applications for which COBOL is
> used, technically it's a dead heat between C and COBOL.  The C

I know PERFECTLY. It would have forced them to start from the
ground up and saved lots of cost in the long term.

> programs individually might be more somewhat more maintainable (but
> see the Obfuscated C series), but the COBOL programs use a "common

Let's face it: if a programmer has no discipline, no amount of
effort will force it onto him. You can write good code in C.
Look at Linux.

> For replacing the legacy applications, yikes!  It's probably easiest
> to compile the COBOL to machine code, then use a "to C" disassembler.
> Remember, COBOL was sold as "self-documenting" and many programmers
> took the hype as gospel truth (somewhat for self-serving reasons, I'm
> sure).  :-P

Oh yes. I know that blabla. That7s for the IT managers. They
believe such trash.

> "Possible" == "funds, management, skilled professionals are available
> to do the work".  Where do they come from?

Counterquestion: Where do the experts maintaining COBOL in the
next century come from. A much tougher problem.
> 
>     Karl-Max> need won't go away. Just switching becomes more
>     Karl-Max> expensive every day. An often overlooked fact.
> 
> Arrogance incarnate.  It is rarely overlooked.

Do you think ? Apparently the US made that mistake and thus are
stuck with the mess of imperial measures because they failed to
switch to the metric system. With disastrous consequences. Just
look at an US wrench set and a metric wrench set. The US box is
three times as big and three times as expensive. This applies
also to other tools, nuts, bolts, machinery etc. etc. Cost ?
Enormous. Cost for switching today ? Enormous. 50 years ago ? A
lot less. But back then they didn't do it.....

> Well, let's be fair.  What you meant to say is that "the fact that
> `switching becomes more expensive the longer it is delayed' is rarely
> assigned sufficient priority by management," right?

Hmm.....but if that so they clearly haven't understood that this
is a skyrocketing cost factor - and this is a clear sign for
incompetence.

> They're already being discussed.  Read RFC 1123 and the various
> historical MIME docs and you'll see it's been discussed for quite a
> while.  QMTP is a registered protocol; I'm actually rather surprised
> to see that it's not an RFC (at least not up to 4/29/1997).

djb had some trouble with IETF bureaucracy there....

> And "just letting [a new, better idea] go its way is dangerous; good
> ideas need to be promoted or they won't be adopted, due to laziness ==
> budget constraints.

Sure ? Think what Netscape did. They simply created extensions
to HTML and forced the WWW consortium to get up to speed. After
a fact has been created it's actually difficult to get rid of it
again.

> The people who matter are out there writing RFCs and compiling Linux
> distributions.  They are not using things provided them without caring

Actually, djb did a check on a few thousand sites or so and
found that qmail is already in use at 10 % of the sites or so. I
wouldn't call that irrelevant !

> how or why they work.  They do their homework; to imply otherwise, and 
> you are doing so, is unfair.

Who cares for distributions ? All you use them is to get a basic
system up and a compiler running. Then you grab the sources of
what you want and compile the rest. That's at least what I do -
and it saves a lot of trouble. With binaries you never know
whether they have been compiled against the same configuration
as your system.

Iron rule of computing: Compile as much as possible from the
sources because that avoids a lot of trouble.

I rather get the impression that many distribution simply
contain stuff that is in widespread use without any further
thoughts whatsoever. But that's no problem, because you go
customizing your installation anyway and most probably you won't
follow any path beaten by a distribution creator ( and that guy
doesn't have any way knowing what you want anyway ).

                            Karl-Max Wagner
                            karlmax@example.com
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