[GRLUG] Failing Firefox

[Ben Rousch]

----- "john-thomas richards" <jtr at jrichards.org> wrote:
> On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 07:59:38PM -0400, Jason Kisner wrote:
> > On 5/7/07, Jason Kisner <airplanejay at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >redid it, with *:* . Nothing happened.
> > 
> > 
> > Wow! Commands work now!
> 
> The default in the world of Linux commands is to not output messages
> unless the command failed.  In other words, when "nothing happened"
> something did happen and so you were not told that something broke. 
> In
> still more words, most commands will only indicate the command
> failed,
> and will indicate nothing if the command worked.
> 
> Wow.  Does that make any sense?
> -- 
> john-thomas
> ------
> The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every
> right
> that he claims for himself.
> Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899)
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It makes sense in the old Unix world where you know the programs you are using are well-written by competent programmers and will work most of the time. So in this case it makes sense to only let you know when something went wrong so you can quickly move on to other things.

In the Windows world you know that your programs are slapped together by the lowest bidder with Visual Basic and will almost never work as advertised. In this case it makes sense to let you know when things actually went right so you don't sit there waiting for the inevitable error message.

No, I'm not bitter about some of the Windows programs we use at work. Not at all.

-- 
- Ben Rousch