Baslinux mailing list

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

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 22:09:31 +0000, Lee Forrest wrote:

>> That's alright. There is no compulsion on you to change to
>> Arachne.
> Or to consider it some kind of superior way of doing things.

Of course not. Since you have never tried it, it would be unfair
of us to expect you to have any opinion about it.

(Although you still do seem to have very fixed opinions about it,
don't you?)

And even if you had tried it, it is YOUR decision to use what YOU
consider to be most able to suit your needs.

> The monolithic approach is very much a windoze approach. It just takes
> it to the extreme.

As I said before, Arachne is NOT monolithic. It comes as a
package of many little segments, and a lot of them can be used
independently, and many can be modified or replaced at the whim
of the user.

If the user wishes, he/she can use the internal mail, ftp, and
browser software as supplied.

Otherwise it is not difficult to call external software from
within Arachne, as I have already done with a text editor, an ftp
client, lynx, and wget, among others.

>> But the later versions do have bug fixes and some extra features.
> And they always will because M$ will change things just when they think they
> are once again "advanced" and stable.

That is 100% correct. Unfortunately that is the way of the world.

We can make the choice to pretend it isn't happening and wait for
it all to go away, or we can try to make our systems compliant
with the changes, and do it without having to buy a new computer
and install the latest version of Windows as so many people think
they have to do.

>> 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.

> That "NEED" statement is garbage.

Only insofar as you could say that no-one needs internet access,
no-one even needs computers.

If I want to access my bank account by internet, for example,
then I 'need' browser software that is compliant with the stuff
the bank puts on its website. Or I can forget the whole thing and
do all my banking over the counter.

> No one "NEEDS" to send HTML mail or use the mail to send image files.

I agree. But so far I haven't managed to convince any commercial
organisations of that.

They send me HTML emails. Why? I have no idea -- possibly because
they can.

If I am to stay associated with that organisation I need to read
that mail . Or I have the choice of cutting my association with
them.

As for sending image files, I like to exchange photographs with
my friends on the other side of the world. We could send them by
snail mail, but since our email client software is capable of
sending and displaying them, we decide to do it that way.

It's not a "need", just a useful feature that we utilize.

It's not causing any grief to anyone within or outside of our
group. Why should we change?

> No one even _needs_ a computer at all. The human race got along
> fine without them for hundreds of thousands of years, and they
> are obviously _not_ making the world a better place.

Exactly! I trust you will take a strong stand against it and get
rid of all your computers, as a protest against this insidious
takeover of the world by so-called 'information technology'.

Please get someone to take a digital photo of you smashing your
machines, and email it to me.

> This is pointless. You think it arachne is wonderful and I think it isn't.
> You can use it and I won't.

Thank you for granting your permission. In return I grant you
permission to use it or not, as you see fit <GGGGG>

> And you can send all the attached images and HTML you want to someone ELSE.
> But you can't send them to me. Or rather, you can, but my filter will dump
> them.

Be assured I will never send HTML or attached images to you.

> I want substance from a mail, not eye-candy

Believe me, I would never send 'eye-candy' to anyone. My personal
photographs are sent to my friends only when they are of interest
to those people.

> and there are better ways to send image files than email.

Possibly there are although I can't think of any right now.

My friends and I find email a convenient way of swapping photos,
so we will continue to do it that way.

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