Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bu-cs!bzs
From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Help us defend against VMS!
Message-ID: <20597@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 13 Mar 88 22:00:56 GMT
References: <2814@enea.se>
Followup-To: comp.os.vms
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 75
In-reply-to: sommar@enea.se's message of 8 Mar 88 16:32:59 GMT



I always love when someone starts off all hell-in-blazes that they
are about to rip someone to shreds and then manages to fire their
blanks into the air...

From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
>Some of the "facts" are not just true, but Barry goes on as they were
>refutable. I shall comments some few points that I found wrong. (And,
>actually, I think Barry could make a good televangelist. :-)

Yeah, ok, we're waiting...

>>Unix systems are relatively bundled, beyond mere hardware
>Now, watch it here. A Unix system comes with a bunch of compilers
>that's true. VMS does not. But what about the quality of the compilers?

Are they bundled or not? I'm sorry you don't like the quality of the
compilers, they seem to serve quite a number of people fairly well. Is
this supposed to be a devastating refutation of my claim that Unix is
more bundled? Can you spell bullshit, I knew you could.

>And if you
>want other languages, Ada for instance, you'll have to buy that
>separately also for Unix.

No one said nothing was for sale for Unix, that every imaginable piece
of software was available on the dist tape, just that it was
*usefully* bundled. Can you spell bullshit, I knew you could.

>>The claim that Unix is somehow less secure than VMS is a red herring.
>Ah, good televangelist preaching!

Another devastating feat of logic, I'm humbled.

>But, hey, you argue for Unix for that yuo can keep the security because
>you can have the source code. But with the same arguments you use against
>the VMS privilieges, can be used against the code: Will you ever fully
>understand it? Zillions of line of code. (Zillion seems to mean 30+ here.)

Oh, I see, you fix security bugs in VMS by playing with the security
privilege bits. Can you spell bullshit, I knew you could.

>This is a damned lie!
>
>If I look up the man-page for the Pascal compiler on our machine I
>learn about the compiler, but for the langauge as such I am referred
>to a separate document, which is not on the machine, at least the man-
>page gives me no reference.

A lie? I dunno, it's on my machine in /usr/doc, go speak to your
vendor, or tell your sysadmins not to delete the docs. The pc command
should document the pc command, not the entire Pascal language. I
think you use the term "liar" a little freely.

>And this brings us on to another issue which Barry does not mention:
>Unix may have some clever tricks, but it's user interface is really
>arcane. One-letter options is certainly not state-of-the-art.

I don't mention it because I believe it's a chocolate/vanilla issue I
specifically said I would avoid. Or would you like to give us all a
good definition "arcane", with units preferably, perhaps something
like measured learning curves etc. Can you spell bullshit, I knew you
could.

>I could continue, but I shall not. I think a campus should have
>some Unix systems since they are quite frequent in the real world.
>They should also have some non-Unix systems, since Unix systems
>are so frequent in the real world. The student should get more than
>one view.

And if you bothered to read my note I said the same thing.
Devastating, truly, I hope you don't do this sort of thing for a
living.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University