Subject: Re: help! absolute beginner From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1998/12/12 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3122431253724438@naggum.no> * gb@hugo.westfalen.de (Georg Bauer) | As I said, it is wrong to bash all OSS just because OSS doesn't deliver | in some particular area (and that happens to be the area oneself is | interested in). excuse me, but aren't _you_ knocking commercial products as such because you don't think some particular commercial product doesn't deliver in some particular area? why the hell should I take a doofus seriously who can't even get his principled arguments straight? go get lost, Georg Bauer. | And there are areas where I definitely would count on OSS instead on | proprietary software - one example being Firewall systems. Why should I | trust a system whose source is not available to me or trusted third | parties? Using the company that sells the firewall as that "trusted" | third party is something we in Germany call "den Bock zum Gärtner | machen". Another example is encryption software. I only trust | encryption software that is available for public review (and several | incidents around NTs "security" models only strengthen this believe). anyone who _trusts_ Microsoft is seriously in need of psychiatric care. I must wonder why you bring them up all the time. they are _not_ the only player in town. in fact, they are but _one_ player, and you don't need to deal with them at all. I never have, and I have been in this business since 1984. (I have helped people overcome their limitations when using Microsoft products, but I don't consider helping people out of burning buildings to be playing with fire.) if you are really raging against Microsoft, name them. it isn't a crime to be specific. it _is_ a crime to blame honest and good people for the crimes of the Microsoft corporation, which you do by implication. I don't think you have dealt with any other company, but that's just like raging and raving about low quality food if you only eat McDonald's stuff and then go on to raise your own cattle instead of discovering some of the many alternatives. only really stupid people would do such a thing, and, frankly, we don't _need_ stupid people to support free software. "just because you think you need steel-belted radial tires and the store only has polyglas-belted ones at present, is still no excuse for you going off in a corner and reinventing the travois." --Michael A Padlipsky (in "The Elements of Networking Style and other essays and animadversions on the Art of Intercomputer Networking". ISBN 0-13-268111-0.) #:Erik -- man who cooks while hacking eats food that has died twice.