[Novalug] Accessing BIOS

Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org
Thu Dec 17 12:16:39 EST 2009


Ya know, it's paragraphs like the second one in this post that just suck
the life out of any of us that provide answers, insights and other information
of our own, free time.  It really inhibits many of us to even bother wanting to
help, respond or otherwise -- _especially_ if we know of or even work with
some of the authors.  People complain we "take too many things personal,"
well, sometimes, it is a bit personal for us, because of such professional and
even personal relationships.  Times like this I really question why I bother
with such garbage when it helps no one.

I spent the last month or two largely lurking, then started to post on-list again.
I tried to make a similar point with a recent thread that, as I admitted to
people who sent supporting e-mails off-list, I should have taking it off-list
much sooner, letting the other person have the last word on-list (which I still
did, just should have done it posts earlier).  All I do is piss people off or,
worse yet, make myself look like the "center-point of contention" and the"
"scape goat" for the fact that other people just want to complain, dislike,
blame or -- in some cases -- even hate with a skewed set of virtues some
projects or even people.  All the meanwhile they've lost their own focus
that A) they started the non-sense, B) I didn't come in until later, C) I'm just
trying to point out their folly but D) the only thing I did wrong was keep it
going (yes, that's my fatal error).

So, shall we one last time?  I'll be brief ... please take these to heart ...

1)  DMI (acronym):  This is not a Linux created term.  It's a low-level, hardware
vendor's term.  So this "codeword" you speak of does _not_ come from Linux.

2)  dmi* (commands):  Named DMI to start because DMI is not a Linux term,
and _all_ other platforms refer to DMI as well (even Windows).  The "decode"
means "decode" the, quite binary, hardware-level, DMI information into a
textual format.  Again, this is what _all_ platforms do, with similar naming.

3)  Other options (e.g., GUI):  GNOME, KDE, etc... ship with hardware browsers
that report the DMI output _no_different_ than other platform GUIs as well.

4)  Stanek (author):  If you do any Windows commands, you've likely have
Stanek's books on your shelf.  Why?  A) Windows has _no_ "man" system
(it's help is pathetic in comparison, especially keyword searches), B) Windows
has _no_ standards (POSIX and GNU are 100x better on command names).
C) Microsoft changes them every 5 years, whereas POSIX is perpetual
(I just updated my MCSA/MCSE Windows Server 2000-2003 to MCITP on
Windows Server 2008 earlier this year, and I cannot believe the lack of
consistency, standards and acronym hell changes)  D) And don't even get me
started on the internals of NT (I've been dealing with them for 17 years -- yes,
before NT 3.1 came out).

So, what are you "comparing" Linux to here?  I'm just going back to lurking.
I've made my points, at the expense of the list, so it's time to leave them be.
Those who don't want to help themselves, and take every moment of naivity
and ignorant with a finger-point and slant at Linux are only going to never
learn.




----- Original Message ----
From: Alan Grimes <agrimes@speakeasy.net>

Aaron Porter wrote:
> You can find some (but not most) of what you're talking about with dmidecode.

GODDAMN!!!! I had no inkling of a clue that such a useful utility even
existed. I would never have found it through google and I can't imagine
any way other than overhearing this conceversation that I would ever
have known about such a thing.

Linux would be a hundred times more useful if its utilities weren't
named with codewords relating to things that most people have never
heard of. =(



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