At 02:47 PM 4/27/00 -0400, you wrote:

>Which is part of the reason that Windows users out number Unix
>users by about a hundred to one (at least). Given that Unix had
>a good decade lead on the Windows platform, you have to admit
>that perhaps Gates did something right, or Unix did something
>very, very, wrong.

Well I guess it depends on who the target audience was. Until Linux came
along I don't think anybody considered the average joe off the street a
target audience for unix. It still remains the domain of the sysadmin for
the most part. Now that linux is taking off there have been numerous
attempts at binary distribution products like RPM or APT all with varying
degrees of success. It's still a new thing for the unix world though. As
for myself I don't mind recompiling at all. I like the fact I can add or
delete parts or make changes to source code to meet my needs (if it's
possible). In a perfect world I would not need to recompile to do that but
I don't live in the perfect world.

>I gave up on Unix five or six years ago when the Unix community
>was unable to master the concept of "shared library" (Sun was
>able to implement them without understanding them, which was
>quite an accomplishment). VMS managed to figure them out
>by V3 and Gates got them right after one false start on OS/2 V1.

I was a VB developer for a long time (I still do quite a bit of access
developement) and judging by the amount of DLL-HELL I go through on a
regular basis I would say that nobody has gotten the "shared library" thing
right.

:wq
Tim Uckun
Due Diligence Inc. http://www.diligence.com/ Americas Background
Investigation Expert.
If your company isn't doing background checks, maybe you haven't considered
the risks of a bad hire.