Category: Uncategorized

Like most people, I thought POOP was an acronym for People Order Our Patties, but it seems it’s really Perl Object-Oriented Persistence… Who knew?

LinuxQuestions.org has a poll to choose the 'Editor of the Year' so if you’re a fan of vi, emacs, or like myself, jEdit, go cast a vote. (You do have to register, but it’s a quick and easy process.)

We recently went to out to eat, which is something we don’t do much of, and in the old days, when you had to wait, you would give the hostess-type person your name, and they’d call it out when a table was ready. Not anymore! They handed us this big blue coaster with an LED inside of it. Oh, it had a lot of LED’s but only one was lit up. You hold onto this coaster and when it’s your turn the thing lights up like a christmas tree and starts to vibrate. Yes, it’s the Coaster Call from the folks at LRS.

I was actually surprised they didn’t take it a step further, and sell advertising space on the coaster call, because the first thing I thought when I saw “COOL BLUE” was that it was some kind of alchoholic berverage. Those guys at Long Range Systems might be missing out on a goldmine…

What Microsoft says:

We haven’t talked to a single user who’s said they’re using [open source] because it’s better.

What Microsoft means:

We’ve never talked to a user who does not worship Microsoft.

I’m sure if I ask around I can find people who use open-source because it’s better. Apache? Perl? MySQL? Mozilla? jEdit? I use these things because they are better than what Microsoft has. Now, “better” is surely a relative term, and Microsoft seems to think that:

…it is more a case of sheer frustration with licensing and Microsoft’s poor relationship with its customers over the last few years – or simply the perceived cost benefits of open source – driving users to migrate.

Well, one part of “better” is that I don’t have to deal with Microsoft’s poor relationship with customers, or
frustration with licensing. That’s all a part of the “better” you get with open-source. I do tend to think that the applications I use are often better than Microsoft’s offerings, but besides all that, I do think that Microsoft makes some good software, and if it fits into your needs (close-source, Windows platform, etc.) then by all means use it.

Just don’t complain to me the next time some virus or spyware decides to ch0wn you…

I’m not one of those politiko people, but I know that what matters most about a candidate is the platform they’re running on. So I thought I should investigate a little bit…

I’ve heard a lot of buzz about a guy named Dean, and Cam seems to think Clark is a good choice, and of course there’s that Bush fellow, but how are they really running things?

Let’s take a look…

• The site www.deanforamerica.com is running Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.6.5 OpenSSL/0.9.6e ApacheJServ/1.1.2 mod_fastcgi/2.2.10 on FreeBSD [via Netcraft]
• The site www.clark04.com is running Apache/1.3.28 on Linux [via Netcraft]
• The site www.georgebush.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000 [via Netcraft]

Dean appears to be running on a platform of Apache and FreeBSD. We all love Apache, and plenty of people are fans of FreeBSD, but I’ve got to wonder why he’s running an old version of Apache? And while I used to use FreeBSD, I’m pretty much a Linux-on-the-server sort of guy nowadays… Dean does get some points for diversity, using ApacheJServ and mod_fastcgi.

Clark seems to be running Apache (a more up-to-date version than Dean) and Linux. Obviously this is what most people expect from a serious campaign. Sure, there are a lot of diehard FreeBSD users, but Linux gets the popular vote nowadays… Oh, I also heard that Clark uses Scoop, which relies on Perl and MySQL, which I think we can agree all US citizens should have at their disposal.

Last but not least… ok, well, last and least, is that other guy, who appears to be using… uh, IIS and Windows? Does anyone take this guy seriously?

(I think I’ll be voting for anarchy come election time…)