Baslinux mailing list

["Greg Mayman" <gmone AT tpg.com.au>]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 04:10:01 +0000, Lee Forrest wrote:

> Have to say that doesn't interest me a bit. I don't like monolithic
> apps like that. I want my web browser to be a web browser and my email
> client to be an email client and my internet connections to be done by
> a seperate utility. The html-rendering part I'd like to be a seperate
> utility, as well as the image-displaying part.

That's alright. There is no compulsion on you to change to
Arachne.

But those of us who do use it find the integration of the
functions to be very useful. For example, we can click on a URL
in an email and have it open up without having to go to another
application.

And as for HTML rendering, and image rendering, they are is
almost essential in a browser. And with more and more people
sending their email as HTML, and with images attached, it is very
handy to have those facilities in the email client.

But each to his own. Arachne is just my preference.

> Nor am I interesting in letting myself being dragged around by M$
> web browser and web-page designers.

Which is one more reason why the arachnaphiles like Arachne.

> Arachne is, it says above, very advanced. But it won't be if it isn't 
constantly
> changing for the above reasons.

It is NOT changing. People who want to stay with the old versions
are under no compulsion to do otherwise. Those versions will
continue to work just as they did when they were first released.

But the later versions do have bug fixes and some extra features.

> I'm sick of it. Links is a good browser. If I go to a page that doesn't make
> sense in it, or has most of the text embedded in images, or that requires 
> one
> to install an executable, etc, etc, that site is _history_.

That's your choice, of course. There are other people who really
want -- or NEED -- to get data that is on pages that links can't
handle.

> There's a hundred
> others that have the same information but don't squander resources like 
> that.

I wish....  But it is NOT so for many sites.

Just as one example, how does links handle eBay? Can you view
the stuff on offer? Can you place bids with it?

>> > My first OS was XP.
>>    Oh, bummer !
> It's wonder I wasn't frightened away from computers altogether, isn't it?

So very true!

> The more I explored it, the more I discovered that they were _deliberately_
> obscuring its mechanics from me, and that really pissed me off.

Of course!

> They didn't want you playing with the internals of _their_ OS.

It was written for people who have NO expertise with what goes on
inside the boxes, so they had to do everything they could to
prevent them from fiddlin' in places they shouldn't be going to.

> And that MicroSoft Knowlege Base was a complete waste of time.
> All I ever accomplished there was becoming more confused, and it
> soon became obvious that this was what they wanted: "You are just
> a stupid consumer. This stuff is way over your head. Go play some
> video games and leave this to people with brains and specialized
> college degrees".

You got it! That's the Micro$not maxim in a nutshell.

.   ,-./\
.  /     \     from Greg Mayman, in Adelaide, South Australia
.  \_,-*_/     "Queen City of The South"    34:55 S  138:36 E
.       v