Letters to the Editor

Brilliant! Absolutely loved it—“The two are merely coincidental.” This glimpse into a hacker's life is a big, unattended part of the mainstreaming of Linux. [“A Partner's Survival Guide”, Telsa Gwynne, February 1998]

—Arnim Littek arnim@digitech.co.nz

The article by Andy Vaught, “Introduction to Named Pipes” [September 1997] contains an error. Near the bottom of the first column on page 32 is the following command:

mkfifo pipe;  ls -l pipe1;  cat < pipe

The above is worthless, as pipe should in fact be pipe1. This error caused me no trouble, but it was not intended for me, rather for someone who has paid money for LJ and expects to learn and trusts LJ to be accurate. Now, “No finger pointing between LJ and Vaught”. I would just like to see the guilty party stand up and apologize to ALL the readers for the frustration they have caused someone trying to learn. As a publisher, you have an obligation to ensure that there are no errors. And, please, no excuses.

—August Gramm asursa@cris.com

You are correct: the commands should have read pipe1 in all three cases. You are also correct that LJ has an obligation to publish technically correct information. We are, however, not perfect. We would like to be, and we have at least four different people look at each article. We are continually surprised when mistakes like the one you mention get past us. The ultimate responsibility for mistakes lies with me—my policy has always been “the buck stops here”. I am sorry for any frustration caused by these typos. Yours was the only letter I received about this error and the September issue is quite old—perhaps even the newbies were able to figure out the right way to give the commands.

—Editor

Your piece on databases for Linux (“Databases”, February 1998) mentions a stealth, “in-house” port of Oracle for Linux, which we've apparently had “some time.” And Oracle refuses “to sell or support it”.

Where do these rumors get started? I've worked for Oracle for two years, and have been a Linux-head that whole time. If a version of Oracle written for Linux existed, I'd have noticed.

Oracle7 for SCO certainly does run on Linux under iBCS, and quite well. Maybe a misunderstanding of that fact somehow started the rumor.

No one here at Oracle has ever heard of an actual Linux port. If one does exist, perhaps it's being used to help reverse-engineer those captured UFOs at Area 51. That might explain the super secrecy.

—Steve Abatangle, Oracle Corporation sabat@us.oracle.com

At the 1994 Uniforum Conference, a man wearing an Oracle badge walked up to the Linux Journal booth and introduced himself as an Oracle developer to our publisher Phil Hughes. This man told Phil he had a working version of Oracle on Linux. Unfortunately, Phil has forgotten the man's name, though not the event.

—Editor

I am a long-time reader of LJ and have always been very pleased by your articles. Linux is finally getting some of the respect it so richly deserves, and it is great to see such a fine publication supporting the cause.

I do have a question, however. I'm an occasional kernel developer and long-time Linux user and I would like to see more articles (maybe one per issue) on Bleeding Edge Linux projects and ports. Articles detailing such relevant topics as MacLinux (Linux for Macintosh/m68k, http://maclinux.wwaves.com/), Linux/PMac, GGI, and other works in progress would definitely be a boon to your readers and allow for more people to become involved in these experimental projects. Now, in the true Linux fashion, I'm not going to suggest you do things without volunteering myself in the process and I would like to know if you accept articles from the user world and (if so) to whom can I send them?

—Joe Pranevich knight@wave.lm.com

We have had articles on the Macintosh and Linux in issue 31, issue 37 and issue 45. Reuven Lerner talks about CGI each month in “At the Forge”. I agree it would be nice to have bleeding edge articles each month, so we print them as we can. Yes, we do accept articles from the user world. Please send your ideas to ljeditor@linuxjournal.com. Author information can be found on our web site at http://www.linuxjournal.com/wanted.html.

—Editor