Norton Go Home! We don't want you!

[Tim Tsai]

In article <457 at bria> uunet!bria!mike writes:
>[ in the on-going assault on ol' Pete Norton and his DOS flunkies ... ]
>I am saying that the NU philosophy was developed by a group of DOS progammers
>trying to migrate to a "hot" market.  The DOS philosophy (if you can even
>say that DOS has a philosophy) has no place in the UNIX environment.

  Your reason are getting weirder and weirder..  From what I
  remembered, NU for DOS is a set of small utilities each doing one thing
  very well..  They may not interact well with each other, but that has
  more or less to do with the limitations of MS-DOS.  Have you actually
  ever used Norton Utilities on Dos??  Let's name a few of the Norton
  Utilities commands for DOS (prior to version 5.0, which is another
  thread):

	si:  report state of the system and do a simple benchmark
	ds:  sort disk directory
	fa:  display file attributes
	nuformat: format a disk
	ff:  file find
	plus various other commands

	Now tell me, how different is the NU philosophy from your so-called
	"UNIX philosophy"?

  And again, I have no inside information on who wrote NU for Unix, but
  Symantec specializes in Macintosh software, and most likely they
  contracted a group of *UNIX* programmers.

>NU is not a tool, it is a monolithic kludge.  A tool is a program that does
>_one_ thing _very_ well, and whose strength lies in the interaction with
>other tools.

  If that's how you wish to define tool..  My definition of tool is any
  program that helps me in accomplishing a task.
  See my paragraph above about "monolithic kludge"..  Again, NU is a set
  of tools, not A tool.

>And, no, I do not consider things like awk and perl to be
>tools in the strictest sense, although they are indeed very valuable.

  So you *COULD* consider NU very valuable, if not a tool.

>Naturally, ed has nothing to do with the innards of the operating system.
>I was trying to make my point two-fold: 1) up-and-coming sysadmins are 
>learning to walk with crutches instead of on their own two feet; 2) a lack of
>knowledge of UNIX basics (such as using ed) is becoming prevelant.  Note
>that this whole 'ed' thing started when you wondered if using 'vi'
>was an example of using a crutch.  My response was, yes, if that is _all_
>that he knows how to use.

  Again, that's what documentation is for..  I use vi almost
  exclusively, and if I ever need to use ed, I know where to look for
  the doc.  I guess that makes me useless if I ever become a sysadmin
  huh?

>My bottom line is this:  Use whatever you want; but as a sysadmin, you
>absolutely _must_ be able to survive without extraneous riff-raff, like
>NU.  You can have all of the bootable floppies and backup tapes you
>want ... something is gonna come down the pike that you don't expect.
>There is no gizmo that will substitute for knowledge about how things are
>done.  Plain and simple.

  I still don't see your logic..

	"There is no gizmo that will substitute for knowledge about how things
	are done"

  First, if a sysadmin has knowedge about how things are done, then
  using the "gizmo" only helps him does the job faster/easier.

  If a sysadmin has no knowledge of how things are done, using ed or
  whatever is not going to help any.

  Common sense is probably more important here.

>I don't think that address translation would fall in the domain of "virus
>like" behaviour.  Regardless, there _is_ something wrong when a foreign
>entity (ie: NU) attaches itself to my kernel, and induces it to lie about
>the number of free blocks on my system.  'Nuff said.

  Again, your definition of virus and mine differ.  Gee, I wonder how
  Sun's quota system works..  Do they actually rewrite the kernel or
  just patch the appropriate routines...  (for those not familiar with
  Sun's quota system, it keeps up with the space used by each user on
  a system call level, probably intercepts unlink(), ftruncate(), etc,
  not unlike Norton's undelete).  If Sun send you the "quota" feature as
  a patch and ask you to relink the kernel, would you call it a
  "monolithic kludge"?

  Look, the "freed" blocks are there if you need space.  If the hard drive
  system gets full, those "freed" blocks will get overwritten.  If you need
  to undelete a file, those "freed" blocks are restored..  Look at
  undelete as a copy command..  If you don't use it, the space is free.
  If you use it, extra space is used..  I don't see any problem.

>I'm glad you question my aguments; it would be a lousy world if everyone
>agreed.  So, okay, I'll admit it.  I am a UNIX purist.  Ah well, we all 
>have our faults. :-)

  You must use V7 exclusively then.  Modern Unices have tons of kludges
  glued in by various vendors.  I can't really name any, but the subject
  has be debated several times on the net.  Using any of these modern Unices
  would violate your "purist" principal, wouldn't it?

  I think we should probably drop this subject or take it to e.mail..
  The rest of the newsgroup is probably getting very very tired of both
  of our names now... :)

>-- 
>Michael Stefanik, MGI Inc., Los Angeles| Opinions stated are not even my own.
>Title of the week: Systems Engineer    | UUCP: ...!uunet!bria!mike
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Remember folks: If you can't flame MS-DOS, then what _can_ you flame?

-- 
  I'd never cry if I did find a blue whale in my soup...
  Nor would I mind a porcupine inside a chicken coop.
  Yes life is fine when things combine, like ham in beef chow mein...
  But Lord this time I think I mind, they've put acid in my rain. <Milo Bloom>