Slashback: Snapshots, Amends, Bazaarity

Slashback brings you some follow-ups tonight about Gartner's recommendation to dump IIS, Charles Connell vs. Eric S. Raymond on Open Source project management, xStore and the GPL, and (yes) the results of Deep Space 1's latest Final Mission.

Microsoft is just as secure as the competition, says Microsoft. Jon_E writes: "According to this article Microsoft is responding to the Gartner Report which recommends that enterprises drop IIS by claiming unfair targeting due to their popularity."

Whether because of better-trained or more vigilant administrators, or some other factors, the Apache servers running many web sites certainly haven't seen the devastating outages in the past month (Code Red, Nimda) as certain large IIS installations have.

If animated, this might make a really good Saturday cartoon. cconnell writes "Last September, slashdot published my critique of Eric Raymond's essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar. There was a lively (and sometimes scorching) discussion that followed. Here is Eric's reply to my critique, which Slashdot readers might enjoy. And here is my reply to Eric."

This was not faked in the same studio as the "lunar landings." mrsmalkav writes "Deep Space 1 has passed by Comet Borrelly within 1400 miles and took some very pretty pictures of the comet's core, all while collecting lots of data about said comet. NASA's press release discusses some of the details and findings of the flyby.

This is actually really impressive given that there was very little hope for this mission. From the Mission Logs on DS1's site, '[T]o be honest, DS1's visit with the comet simply is unlikely to work as well as we hope. Many mission logs have described the difficulty of keeping this aged and wounded bird aloft, and the encounter with Borrelly will present Deep Space 1 with the greatest challenge yet in its historic trek through the solar system.'"

Saint Aardvark writes "Space.com has an article about the images taken by DS-1, and they're stunning." And eldurbarn points to the NASA Images of comet Borrelly online at JPL.

How to satisfy customers with license objections, Part II brtb writes: "Soon after Slashdot posted my DiscZerver-GPL writeup last week, xStore added a link in their Download section for information about the use of GPL software in their products. Below is the e-mail I received in response (address changed to protect the spamless). Congratulations to xStore for supporting Free Software and bringing the DiscZervers into compliance with the GPL.

From: "Support" [support@xstoreonline.com]
To: "brtb" [slashdot@brtb.org]
Subject: "RE: GPL SOURCE CODE"

xStore is committed to complying to the full letter and spirit of the GPL. We are currently investigating the allegations of non-GPL compliance and communicating with the GNU.ORG and Free Software Foundation on this issue. We will produce a response to your request that is mutually acceptable to the copyright holders of the programs we have used that fall under the GPL and xStore itself. Due to the recent acquisition of this product, we are still in the process of preparing the required source code for distribution. xStore is commited to bring the DiscZerver product into GPL compliance, if it is indeed found to be not in compliance.

In the meantime, please provide xStore with information so that we can send you, the user of this product, the package that you are entitled to. Please provide the serial number of your DiscZerver product and the 'system page' with your response. The 'system page' is located at [http://your_Zerver_name_or_IP_address/admin-cgi/s ystem]. In addition, please send us a self addressed stamped envelope suitable for mailing a CD-ROM along with $14.95 to:

xStore, Inc.
Federal Highway Center
1200 North Federal Highway
Suite 200
Boca Raton, FL 33432

After we receive your written request along with the above items, we will process it and promptly send you the disc when it becomes available.

This thanks to the mostly behind-the-scenes work of people at the FSF. Congratulations to xStore for respecting the intent of the programmers whose work they're consolidating and packaging.

Comments

what does an ion engine do?

[ruebarb]

Just out of curiousity...how does this engine work...what principles of physics does this satellite use and what would it's benefits be?..first time I heard of one is when I found that's what powers TIE fighters

: ) - It's true...TIE = Twin Ion Engine

Re:what does an ion engine do?

[GreyPoopon]

Here's an interesting question. If you used something more massive than heavy stable gases, could you achieve greater acceleration? This is probably a poor example, but water can be polarized by sliding the hydrogen atoms and paired electrons away from the oxygen atom. This creates a charge imbalance. Could such be exploited in a similar matter, thus shooting the water out the back and creating thrust?

How the Ion Engine Works

[d.valued]

This is simple physics, boys and girls.

First things first, you need a spacecraft as light as possible. Anything not needed goes away. Basically, you're left with the instrumentation, the navigation, the cameras, solar panels, batteries, and a couple of sizeable tanks of xenon.

Yes. Xenon. The heaviest non-radioactive noble gas.

Now, xenon is normally inert like other noble gases. I mean, there are no natural compounds containing any noble gas because they have no natural need to enhance their electron shell configuration.

However, xenon is pretty large (as atoms go) and, given enough juice (courtesy our light and ability to live, the sun, hence the solar panels), you can ionize xenon. You can strip off an electron or two and it's useful (For example, the compound XeF6, xenon hexafloride. What it's good for? Dunno. Still doesn't change the fact it exists.) More importantly, it's charged and can be directed.

Then, it's a simple matter of a small aperture (which can be directed), a positively-charged grid, and the xenon leaves in the direction opposite the spacecraft goes.

Don't expect this to power any spacefighters, however. At full power, the force this produces will barely move a piece of paper in front of it. The beauty of ion engine, though, is that because in space, inertia isn't hampered except by collision or a gravity field, this little bit gets larger as time increases. It's not much force, but given time it gets zooming.

Re:How the Ion Engine Works

[Anonymous Coward]

Read Larry Niven. He does a lot of fiction that includes ion drives, Bussard ramscoops and long duration flights. Cool stuff!

connel vs raymond

[ksw2]

To me, it seems something is missing in this particular tennis match: cost of production. It would seem that the traditional management structure would be very difficult to adapt to a volunteer-based software project, whereas the CatB approach is perfectly suited.

How many beneficial software projects simply wouldn't exist without this sans-management stucture?

IIS Rewrite?

[hysterion]

"According to this article Microsoft is responding to the Gartner Report which recommends that enterprises drop IIS by claiming unfair targeting due to their popularity."

According to The Register, their reaction also includes the following:

Microsoft has been stung into action by Gartner security analyst John Pescatore's conclusion that businesses should ditch IIS - the Beast's own web server - for safer alternatives.

Redmond is telling its sales channel that a rewrite of IIS is underway for version 6.0, and will introduce interim security measures along the lines of the lock-down utility, because, it says, "we also realize customers cannot wait that long." (...)

The comments are in a bulletin sent to its sales staff and resellers, and seen by The Register. (...)

Face on The Comet

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one that sees half of a face in the released picture of Comet Borely?

This is the biggest image of it:

http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/img/borrelly_1.jpg

IIS! Ha!Worms dont happen to Mac web servers ever!

[Anonymous Coward]

Worms dont happen to Mac web servers running WebStar.

EVER.

Thats why no reports of ANY exploit has ever been published regarding the secure Mac OS. !

consult bugtraq if you doubt this.

This Gartner report is a sham unless it really discusses techical issues regarding the macs securuity as a web server.

C Language alone is not the sole reason but the types of STRINGs used in ANSI C libraries certainly adds risk.

Worms dont happen to Macs because Mac programmers rarely have buffer overrun problems because mac apps typically NEVER use null terminated strings and intead use "pascal" style strings that have a bounds of 255 and a marker in the front.

Additionally mac programmers tend to know that there is no false sense of security because all code is running at supervisor level so programs, like Webstar, are careful not to do foolish things.

Mac programs and executables NEVER can run merely from a data file named with a suffix such as .exe because macintoshes do not have file suffixes. The mac OS (9,x and older) uses a four byte file type designator that the user never sees and cannot be set carelessly.

A further reason macs are more secure than unix (hundreds of documented exploits) and Win NT (almost as many exploits documented over the years), is because the mac does not have a command line shell and has no path to hijack. No command line and a modern type of interprogram communication prevent the silly weaknesses in other OSs.

Yet another reason the Mac is secure is vecause a mac program (either 68k or PowerPC) needs TWO files to execute and not one file. The second file is called the resource fork and it is genreally an invisible file kept tightly associated with a file. classic internet apps do not create or allow creation of these resource forks as side effects of merely storing data files. Macs are very secure from infiltration by dynamic creation of apps by rouge products on a server

Another reason macs have NEVER been broken into running the WebStar server is because the mighty Mac OS Webstar server, (which typically costs over 400 dollars unfortunately), avoids ever executing cgi code files from directories where they ought not to be. A clever set of directory and folder control prevent the webserver from being hijacked unlike earlier versions of apache.

The US army switched to Webstar webservers on macs when MS NT webservers kept getting hacked.

There are thousands of major webstar servers out there. I think many are colocated at reprahduce.com cages.

And mac NEVER get hacked. EVER. and NEVER have, even with public challenges and reward money.

Sure, there may be some defects that might get discoverred one day, and surely any mac not runnning mac os such as ppcLinux, or MAc OS X (freeBSD derivitive) are hackable.

But face it. Macs have NEVER been hacked and that is because of modern and sound design principles.

Myself and other mac programmers I know have NEVER shipped a product containing a single null terminated C string, and do lots of paranoid error checking as well.

Unix is hackable not because of open source, not because of popularity (both of which help) but because of all the things I mentioned here.

But I agree about the other OS's sucking. parts of the older Mac OS itself is written using pascal strings, in fact the original ROMs were written using only pascal compilers and some assembly, and no C. But string overruns alone are not the ONLY reasons mac servers have never been hacked, (command line, dual fork, no extensions, etc etc).

Wake up and quite being bigoted. "Never" is a good enough abosolute ajective for most logical people to draw up reasoned conclusions from.

While We're At It...

[Greyfox]

My Discordian sense of curiosity has kicked in again and I was wondering if we could use CSS in a clever way to encrypt Evil messages. From what I understand of how it works, a DVD is encrypted on several keys and the DVDs are loaded up with a key that should be able to decrypt the DVD. Can we create a DVD image such that most DVD players will play a burned image but one EXTRA SPECIAL DVD player mounted on the back of a camel will get extra subtitles? IE: One Extra Special key gets a bit more of the DVD than everyone else? It should be fairly easy to burn a firmware with an extra key and chuck it on to pretty much any commercial player, right?

Could we, in fact, turn a Disney DVD into a terrorist tool? Has it already been done? Should we be encouraging Congress to ban the CSS encryption scheme because it could have been used in such a way? Interesting questions, no?

Re:Microsoft's Response

[Sly Mongoose]

So kiddies, whatcha gonna hack? Commercial site or photos of mangy dogs.

Hey! My dog does _not_ have mange!

Code Red and Nimda did not attempt to hack commercial sites. They relied on large numbers of (poorly |un-)secured servers managed by sleeping administrators. Judging by a sample of the attacks that came my way, I'd say 80% of the machines were running servers that the admin didn't even know about.

And given the growing number of machines now equipped with an unnecessary webserver, matters are set to get worse.

At least all the admins I was able to contact (with one exception) stated that they were now considering a UNIX-based solution for public webservers!

Re:$14.95

[Wraithlyn]

Actually, the they switched everything over to .99 and .95 with the invention of the cash register, the idea being to force the cashier to open up the cash box to retrieve change, which makes it much harder for them to pocket the cash for themselves without anyone noticing.

Re:Relative abundance of server variants...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, most people (on cablemodems/dsl) that got hit with nimda are running a pirated copy of NT server. You see, legal home users would most likely be running 98/ME or NT workstation, since it's cheaper and they wouldn't get any benifits from nt server. But the warez kiddies are all running nt server, since they didn't pay for it. And they go through a full install, since they might as well have the whole thing on their 'puter (for bragging rights)...

Re:Graham Clueless strikes back...

[akh]

This is taken out of context - the quote refers specifically to the Hotmail hole that allowed the reading of a specific user's mail. The quote has nothing to do with IIS as the hole is due to the poor design of the CGI backend. In other words, the Hotmail hole would have existed irrespective of the underlying web server.

Re:Relative abundance of server variants...

[scooterbooter]

Okay, it's time to debunk the M$ admins are lazy myth a bit..

Here's my work environment -- the products that I'm supposed to install, after I've chosen the hardware for 700+ desktops, and maintain, after writing policies and ops documentation.

Exchange (10) Servers, IIS (7) Servers, MS-SQL 6.5 and 7 (5) servers, Metaframe/NFuse (4) servers, RAS, VPN, 45 NT servers for general ops of all this stuff, a couple of Debian boxes for internal DNS, FreeBSD running MRTG, Nessus, etc, perform 2nd level support for 8 clueless admins and 6 semi-knowledgable ones. Additionally, let's not forget the "uhh, how do I do a word merge", boss ranting about multicasting (for which I am going to modify configs on 12 cisco Routers and godonlyknows how many switches), write policy and operational documentation for all of this. Manage the "network consultants" than run DNS, e-Trust and FW-1, provide support and knowledgable comment towards a $2mil software app development process in terms of "net and O/S", deploy 2000 server *sigh* next month and ensure that everyone makes a backup occasionally. (play nice with audit, 20 mangers and two other organizations [1 that owns us, 1 that we own]).

If *ANY* of you suckers handle all that daily, and still have time to mess with patches on a regular basis, I'd love to see you in action. This seems to be quite a common scenario for a lot of mid/small size companies, in my experience.

I'd love to live in your dream world. People wonder why I'm an alcoholic. :-P Perhaps if I had a nice farm of 600 identical boxes, I'd be a perfect admin. This is life, folks. Get on with it without making the comments -- without understanding the other side of the fence.

I did realize about three months before codered that we were a screaming hole for IIS exploits. Do I have time to cull through 30+ patches and tinker with which are appropriate to apply? Nope. Result: Nimda runs rampant still this week because I've been stuck in innane meetings all day.

Now: Suppose your boss is used to having a mini-vax, and asked for CPU usage reports by dep't and individual last week. Do you see the uphill battle? We're young. Management in a small/midsize company isn't likely to even understand what they have running, less what should be paid attention to technically. Politics, Politics, Politics all day long. Yay! Well, I guess of the rest of the world got messed, it's okay that we did too.

Have fun admin'n your two Apache boxes. Good Night.

No troll indended, it's just a rant.

S.

How bout a different approach?

[Phrogman]

I have been thinking about this as well as one of the places I do contract work for is getting pounded daily with Nimda and Code Red I/II attacks as well. Since the box is running Linux, the attacks don't matter but I have been wondering if there is some way that a sysadmin could take advantage of these requests to stop the attacking system.

Various people have mentioned writing a white hat virus that would shut down the attacker and all that - but in reality that just puts you in the same boat as someone attacking their system - and its therefore illegal.But if someone's computer makes an http request for a file from my server, am I responsible if what they get is not what they might expect to get?

What if I was to create a file consisting of nothing but the letter X that was, say, 1Gb in size, and leave it on my linux webserver with a name like "root.exe"? It wouldn't take all that many requests for the attacking system to run out of HD space. Granted service on my server might suck for a bit, but eventually if enough linux admins did this the target systems would simply shutdown for lack of swap space or HD space or whathaveyou.

Or perhaps I tell Apache to treat .exe files as PHP files and process them accordingly. Then I create a PHP script that sends prints nothing but Xs or random numbers in a long string back to the requesting server (with the execution time limit for PHP turned off). It would be like 5 lines of code total.

After all, its my server, so presumeably I put the file there for my own purposes, indicated in robots.txt that I dont want it indexed etc. If some other system makes a request for that file which I have in no way indicated is present on my system, isn't there fault/problem if the file is too big, or causes problems at their end?

I am sure the clever folks at /. could think of other things that could be done in this manner.

Just food for thought, and I would love to see some suggestions...

VMS Cool and Unhackable At DEFCON

[Anonymous Coward]

Apache on VMS when you really want a locked down reliable server and can pay for it. A VMS Alpha survived Capture the Flag at this year's DEFCON. VMS at DEFCON We run VMS for web and database servers and laugh at the Microsoft worms. Reliablity and security sell.

Now that Windows XP is here does that make Windows NT and Windows 2000 a legacy product?

Re:Some thoughts on IIS exploits

[vrt3]

You have a point, but I thought you wouldn't mind some suggestions:

And when you're typing a lot, having to switch from the keyboard to the mouse to activate a fuction tends to break your concentration more than if you can use the keyboard instead, as well as just being a pain in the arse.

I often find it faster to use the Alt + letter key combination to open a pulldown menu, and then either pressing a letter key or using the arrows to navigate to the desired function. Keyboard shortcuts are even faster, of course.

Or that double-clicking "My Computer" opens a single-pane window without any directory tree ...

That's why I never double-click it. Either I press Win+E which opens My Documents with a directory tree, or I right-click some folder and choose 'Explore'.
I also hate the fact that the default settings hide file extensions and don't display hidden files.

Re:Some thoughts on IIS exploits

[D Anderson n'Swaart]

Yeah, the alt- system can be useful, agreed, and I do occasionally use them; my only gripe is that it requires practise to memorise the combinations (my old boss, a sysadmin for my city council, was the master of alt commands), whereas keyboard shortcuts are a bit easier, as you say.

Yeah, I also learned Win-E from that boss :) Alternatively, you can go into Folder Options and edit the preferences for File/Folder so that "Explore" is set as default, instead of "Open" -- that way, double-clicking defaults to a directory tree.

You hit the nail on the head with file-extensions. That example beats the hell out of my off-the-cuff offerings any day. I can understand it for Win9x, because your average luser is gonna have a cow when he renames a file and it kicks the bucket because he didn't add an extension, but for WinNT/2k, it's an appallingly ill-conceived idea.

YES!!!! That is the point

[mikey504]

As I went from desk to desk here applying patches to our various IE versions, I began to fantasize about what this job would be like if the clients had a different operating system, one which I could start a remote shell on. It would be great if I could use one of the several scripting languages I know to write a script which would run from my machine and patch all of the clients. It would be great if I could trust the patch to run from a logon script. Maybe I will learn Visual Basic some day. I still don't think that will get me there, though, because I have no idea what many of the patches I apply are actually doing. I keep seeing security advisories on Microsoft's support site that say you can: a. Change the following three registry entries or b. Apply this 3 meg patch.

HTF can those be equivalent actions? What exactly am I turning on or off with these cryptic registry keys?

But life with Microsoft is not so easy, is it? They keep sending you patches that require you to physically sit at each machine and click your way through dialog boxes, and you don't have time for that.

Where your Apache admin, who has fewer machines to patch and fewer patches to apply, can write a PERL script to do the job for him, you have to sit at each IIS box, open the control panel for each site, and click your way through the changes. Wouldn't it be great if you could SSH in and apply patches or make configuration changes from home while you watch the ball game? Of course it would.

I feel your pain, because I am dealing with it every day. The hardest decision I ever made here was to sit down with my boss, put my reputation (and job) on the line, and get permission to bring in some free technology on a trial basis. After some testing and configuration, I have replaced three NT boxes with Linux. Samba and the smb_auth libraries have made it possible to replace many NT services completely transparently. The main difference is I no longer have to come in on the weekends for "maintenance reboots" or just to make sure everything is working. My current hurdle is figuring out how to replace Exchange in a way that won't irritate my users and/or bosses. Every NT box I pull the plug on reduces my workload. What are you doing about yours?

I am not trying to be combative, but you did mention that your boss has asked you for things that used to be easy to get from his old VAX cluster. Have you explained to him the limitations imposed by the decision to move from VMS or Unix (free or otherwise) to NT? What is NT giving you guys that other systems do not? Make sure your evalutation of NT includes an accurate picture of the increased administration effort it requires.

You sound like you are pretty high in the food chain over there-- politely ask for the tools you need to make your job easier. The push for better technology has got to come from our end-- management will not do it for us. As Linux and FreeBSD gain more market share, it forces Microsoft to evolve. Believe me, they have the resources. They aren't writing cheesy hacks because they can't do any better. They are writing chessy hacks because it pays a lot more than sweating the details does. Show them you won't settle for that and we can all go back to the good old days of sysadmins who had time for the occasional game of DOOM.

Spell check on F7

[os2fan]

I am not going to flame you on this. Your points are valid, and are worthy of comment.

The "live" checking does not autofix it, but if you right click on it, it does give suggestions that will be put in if you select it. That's what makes the F7 key so stupid. Autofix actually is a hazard if you regularly use double caps eg "JSmith said ...". Tab is bound to something that most people find absolutely irritating. I know I have to fix their docs up.

Most of my typing is done straight in markup. That is, when I type this in bold, I go {control-B}this{control-B} or {b}this{/b}. Amipro had a clever idea of putting styles onto the function keys: so if I want a header, I press F7, and if I want a body, this is F2. The table is stored in the template.

With control-c, v, and x, the easy way to remember these is that x is sissors (cut), v is glue pen tip, and c is copy. That might help.

Spell checking a document, like printing it, is a separate activity, and not something you want activated on a wrong key stroke. Going Alt-T-S, especially if you watch the menus as you do it, is not a big ask, especially if the machine does a lot of paging as it does it.

As far as your data files go, I have found a way around this is to store them in one tree, and then create an icon with the command line "explorer.exe /n,/e,/root=d:\path,folder" does wonders for file management. You can change the icon view to "List", and arange by date to get the latest to the end. Whichever way, it's better than "Large icon". Also, the back space backs up the tree. Also counter intuitive, but consistant.

Re:Spell check on F7

[D Anderson n'Swaart]

Hmm, fair enough; it seems I was somewhat single-minded in my approach to the argument. I was considering my own computer (Athlon 900, 512 MB...doesn't tend to page a lot on menus...) and my own somewhat biased upbringing on Word (first for Mac, then 95, 97, 2000 and now XP so hell, I should have put a disclaimer methinks). However, there were a couple of things in your replies that I either felt needed at least the insertion of another viewpoint, or was confused about.

• Tab is bound to something that most people find absolutely irritating.

I'm not sure what you meant here. Tab isn't bound to anything; it's the tab key, which tabulates a document. It isn't used a lot, but it's sure useful (although I'd be the first to volunteer to design a better tab system for Word if I could). I can certainly understand dumb/ignorant (careful to distinguish, not wanting to sound bigotted against non-computer literate types like my dad, who is hardly dumb) people messing stuff up with it though. Maybe I misunderstood what you meant.

Autofix/correct...yes, a double-edged sword if ever there was one. I personally have become immensely lazy with the advent of this feature, because I find that being able to add autocorrections like "Tn" being corrected to "Tennyson" is very handy indeed. On the other hand, as you say, there are a number of instances where it becomes one hell of a pain, and backspace/ctrl-z is your bestest buddy. To be honest, I find autocorrect a lot more useful than a nuisance; there are a large number of typos that you make when you're doing 120 wpm, and if you can automatically cover them, you don't need to worry about breaking rhythm to fix the problem. As for stopping to address red-underlined words, well...I just ignore them and wait till I'm done, so I guess inline spellchecking becomes kinda pointless; I just like to know what words and phrases are considered bad I guess. I tend to spellcheck every few pages, since I discovered a while back that trying to run a spellcheck on a 130,000 word manuscript (ie, killed Windows, reinstalled, reinstalled Word, didn't save custom.dic) takes...well...erm...

Thanks for the hints about the editing function keys like ctrl-c; I never had a problem remembering them, but I'll pass them on to my mum :)

What you say about being able to right-click a red-underlined word is true, however once again, this is moving from the keyboard to the mouse. I also don't find that F7 is the most remarkably easy key to accidentally hit (actually I wish the function keys didn't have a plastic separater from the number keys, because I'd like to be able to hit them without stretching) but I guess it's more a matter of preference than any seriously debatable topic. I've always been grateful for F7, shift-F7 and F12 (as well as F3, F5 and F8 in Opera), because I am a keyboard freak, and consider the mouse an object of scorn until I load Quake ;)

Yeah, there're a lot of ways to get around that dir tree problem. I'm very fond of subdirs myself, since I am one of those must-categorise-everything-or-die types, but as you say. It all comes down to a shitty interface.

Btw...how long do you think this conversation could go on for before we're killed due to archiving? I seem to recall from some misty recess in my wee brain that articles are archived after a week, but it may have been two...it would probably be pretty sad if we were still debating by then though...

Re:Spell check on F7

[os2fan]

> Tab is bound to something that most people find absolutely irritating.

The default install is for "Tab" and "Shift Tab" to shift the left indent. Tools|Options|Edit.

>Btw...how long do you think this conversation could go on for before we're killed due to archiving?

Over a week, I should imagine. I have another discussion going on at slashdot as well at this same time.

The trouble about using one word processor or OS is that you never get to see how the other guys do it. I have become a more capable Windows and Word user for having OS/2, AmiPro and Describe. It's not that these people make better products that MS, but they do things differently. Hey, yes this I,can be done. When you use other word processors, you get to see entirely different layouts, some of which are quite good. Here's a sample.

• Amipro bound its style sheets to the function keys. This means that you can change the paragraph style as you type.
• Describe has a tree of styles. This means that one style inherits its formats from another, eg chaning the font in the base style changes the font in dependant styles as well.
• Describe allows styles for less than paragraphs. For example, you can create a style for "Head word" in a dictionary style entry.

  There is a lot of things that MS still sadly lags in. For example, selecting a range is a single action, not a mulitple action. You can't drop an anchor, then go somewhere else, and drop an "end selection range". This allows for the selection of a range over a large area.

  You can't easily adjust a selected range by nudging an end. You have to unselect the range, and make a new one. I know, the idea is silly idea, but when you start fiddling around with big areas, you will see its advantages. Can be done as an Edit Menu option. For example the Alt-Edit-Anchor/Select-Drop/Move/Clear woulddo the trick. The selected range is from Anchor to Select. The Drop and Clear sets and clears the end. The nudge moves it with the cursor and enter.

  But by the time you want to fiddle the document to that sort of level, it's probably better looking at TeX.

  The problem with computers is not that they're not capable of doing it, but communicating this to the user. For example, Describe's style sheet would be much harder to understand were it not shown in a dir style tree.

  The problem with Microsoft is that they change the language on every version. You can reconfigure it easily, but there are lots of easy strokes, and it's hard to find the right "easy". This is what the main point of my arguement is.

Re:Spell check on F7

[D Anderson n'Swaart]

Ah yes, Tab setting the left indent. I remember now; I disabled that so long ago (I use a saved Normal.dot) that I had completely forgotten about it, but you're right, it is one hell of a pain.

Your point about text selection is well-taken, don't worry. I have, on many occasions, wished for something like what you describe when editing chapters etc, and Word is sadly lacking in this area. It seems that there a huge number of features in Word that no one ever uses, but ones that would really come in handy are lacking. Certainly the average person writing letters to his grandma wouldn't take advantage of the kind of features you and I would like, but hey, you and I would, and I'm willing to bet there're a large number of others out there who would too.

Pity Microsoft isn't in the habit of learning from other people, instead of stealing from them. Amipro and Describe sound neet.

Re:Spell check on F7

[os2fan]

The one "redeeming" feature of Word is that it can be trained to use the keys differently. I trained it to emulate the Amipro function keys.

But, unfortunately, its desire to run macros on load has been its biggest pain. "Word Macro" viruses are at the moment, a big pain. And unlike the old viruses under DOS, they're so painful to detect. In my sysadmin days, these trashed a lot of useful documents. A lot of hours suffering.

"Sorry, miss. Your document has been trashed. So you worked on it for two weeks. Oh well. Don't call us, because you use it at your own risk. Must be a hardware fault [Printer tables in Word are the biggest document trashers]. Anyway, thanks for the $600."

Amipro and Describe had features that irritate as well. They are less configurable. But the dodgy nature of word processing is making me drift towards QBasic, a home grown markup language and rtf output. Sad, really.