Netscape integration

[Steve Lamb]

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On Wed, 30 Jun 1999 20:12:04 -0400 (EDT), Ralph Cohen wrote:

>proivde me with an editor that would fulfill 99.999% of my email needs.

    Your email needs.  Here people are talking powerful yet will settle for
crap in the editor.  I don't get it.

>The 'Add To Dictionary' button on the built-in speller as a solution to
>the contraction problems and many of the other word-not-found type
>problems.

    No, it is not.  A spell checker which recognizes contractions from the
root word and not as a seperate word unto itself is a solution.

>After just a little bit of use, a significant percentage of
>your vocabulary which is not found in the virgin dictionary will soon
>be recognized (and ignored) by the personalized one.

    And with Ispell and Aspell I've barely needed to add anything to the
personal dictionary, both are easily multi-lingual, they are faster, more
accurate, and, in the case of aspell, can be linked into PMMail for free.

    What was this again about "power"?  Settling for crap here, too.

>What happens when there's a problem with the spelling checker that
>causes the editor to crash?  Which author of which program is
>responsible?  Who's gonna fix it?  What number do you call?  Who do you
>email?

    "Who are you going to sue?"

    Wrong mentality to have.

    Well, guess what, GPG signatures crash the SDK.  I don't hear anyone
bitching about who to complain about the SDK!  I get 2-3 crashes a day for
it.  Who do I blame?  NAI.

    If they incorporated Aspell they WOULD HAVE THE CODE.  They could fix it.

    Who do you call/email?  Call bob/ike.  They can escelate it as needed.

    I mean, com'on people, this isn't rocket science.  All of Linux was built
on this premise and guess what, in less than a decade it is smaller, faster,
more feature rich, more robust, more stable, more reliable and easier to use
than Windows which is now going on 2 decades.  

    You're panicing over NOTHING.

    If you want to see it in action, take a look at Debian Linux.  They built
an entire distribution around other people's work.  When something breaks,
you file a bug with them, they escalate it as needed.  The time they saved by
not having to redo hundreds of thousands of man hours of programming more
than makes up for the few hours they spend with the bug tracking system.

>There's a lot to be said for the warm fuzzy feeling you get
>when only having one place you need to turn to when you have a problem
>or complaint.

    Is there.  So tell me, what has IBM done for you lately?  How about
Microsoft?  You can have your warm fuzzy feelings, I'll have a program that
works while you're sitting around waiting for something to *MAYBE* be done.
In every major network attack that affected Windows, OS/2 and the 'nixes, it
was the decentralized 'nixes which were patched first.  The commercial code
took up to a week to get patch.  In fact, teardrop, which took down all
three, was patched in Linux in hours.  Windows, OTOH, took 2 weeks.

>The widespread problems with finger-pointing between
>component software makers in years past had a tremendous amount to do
>with the current success of integrated programs.

    You call bug ridden, bloated, barely functional, useless feature laden
programs a "success"?  

- -- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
         ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
- -------------------------------+---------------------------------------------

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