Monday, December 31, 2007

mini-rant

I like hot wings. When I go to B-Dubs I get two of the three hottest sauces. It depends on how I feel that day. So when I heard that KFC was doing hot wings without the sauce, I wanted to try them.

Got a 6pack today. Popeye's spicy chicken is hotter than the crap-things I was served at KFC.

KFC.... If you are advertising hot wings, could you at least make them a little hot?

Sunday, December 30, 2007

A word, what it means, and how the world accepts it.

One thing that bothers me. People who go and say your using the wrong word. I'm guilty on this as well, but have finally given up and use the right word for the right time. I'll let others try to figure out the context.

Example 1: Hacker.
Originally meant person who makes things of wood, using a hatchet. In computers, it meant a person skilled with computers and can make them do more than an average user. Then the media came along. Instead of using the word Cracker to mean people who break into computers and networks they used the word hacker. This created the mind share (how the world accepts it) of hacker meaning computer criminal. No matter how hard you try to change that perception, the criminal themselves call themselves hackers and the word will always be associated that way. Regardless of how the purists (real hackers and computer security people) feel about it.

Example 2: Windows
I think you can get the original idea. If not, look outside from within your living space. In computers, it's used as a blanket term associated with the current operating system of Microsoft. Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11 for work groups, Windows 95 / NT / 98 / ME / XP / Vista.

Example 3: Linux
Originally it meant just the kernel itself. All it does is the talk between the Operating System and the Hardware. The OS would be GNU/Linux, since it's usually paired with the GNU tools set. Then a distro would be a distribution, a collection of tools, beyond the GNU tools. However that is not the mind share The mind share treats all three as one interchangeable word.

Like the concept of Windows and Hacker, the word is lost, and all you do is make the rest of us look small and petty when you try to assert the way it should be.

Ubuntu and Linux

So to get the show started, I'm going to do a post along the lines of a comment I made on another blog earlier.

It seems that some people are thinking that because Ubuntu is the one that everyone talks about lately that it will become synonymous with Linux. They are taking offense to people posting comments or doing articles talking about or focusing on Ubuntu.

My response to this: I see the sky is falling again.

First some history. 10 years 3 months ago I installed my first Linux box. I came from a BSD work environment, and was going to go with that. This was before I became an admin. However a couple of friends recommended this thing called linux. At the time, my choices were Redhat, Slackware, and Debian. I went with Debian. Bounced around a few other choices, like Corel Linux (debian based) Progeny, and the like.

Back in the days I first got into it. Everyone was talking about Redhat. Redhat in business, Redhat on the personal computer, Redhat on the laptop. If someone said Linux, the first words or thoughts that came up was Redhat. And Redhat had a good marketing department behind it. I took a training class on Linux Administration from the great guys over at Linux Certified. In fact the guys there in California told me I was their first paid customer. With the class you got a free laptop. Their poison of choice for an os was Redhat. For a 2 day boot camp it worked really well... But again, it added to the whole REDHAT REDHAT REDHAT mind share. People were arguing that there was more to Linux than Redhat.

Some of the arguments made, because Redhat had such mind share and were a valid business, was that Redhat was the Microsoft of Linux. You had the Hatters and the Non-Hatters.

Flash forward today. Rehat, has split into 2 groups. Fedora, and Redhat. They are still popular on the server, and have lots of distros based off of them. Hello CentOS. You also have other vendors in the server game too. Novell's SUSE, and Ubuntu.

Ubuntu came out and was very new user (noob) friendly. It has built on Klaus Knopper's Knoppix live cd system (as I understand it Knoppix was the first, if not, at least one of the first). It's improved hardware support, and created a great user community to get help. It comes with your choice of Desktop Managers (KDE, Gnome, XFCE). The distro has taken quite a bit of the guess work out of setting up a system. Most things work, or you can get decent free advice fairly quickly, less than a Google search away.

Because of this, Ubuntu has become a bit of a name. It makes an option available to those stuck with Microsoft. The typical user, can't even work email consistently, and the people in the Linux Blogsphere (the ones complaining today) forget, most users don't have a clue on how to install an OS. Also remember people on a whole, do not like change. So which are they going to do? Are they going to take the geek route (the route I went; learn Unix, shell scripting, and then Linux. Climb up to it from there, and spend the next 10 years learning a system that isn't as ubiquitous as Microsoft Windows), or are they going to get something that will most likely work when they put it in their Optical Disk Drive (Like a Microsoft install CD)?

Remember kids, distros come and go. They rise to the majority of the mind share and sink back down again. Here it is, 10 years later, and I'm seeing people making a big deal on one Distro getting more mind share. Am I going to see this again in another 10 years? Sadly I think I will.

Ramble with me.

Welcome to my blog. They are are many like it, but this one is mine.

I decided to make this one, in part to reply to other blogs I see.

Here I will talk about:
Politics - I created a students for peace and justice group in college, and it is still going strong. I've been on several panels, in college, discussing international politics and international relations.
Computers - I work full time as a Network Engineer, which includes computer and network security, Unix / Linux administration, VOIP, SAN, and Windows server administration.
Other rambles - Whatever catches my eye, I think would be cool to post. I have interests in Anthropology, Archaeology, Astronomy, Physical and Mental Rehab, exercising, Marital Arts (I study Tang Soo Do) and scuba diving.

I have a degree in Computer Information Systems, and a degree in General Studies with a focus on Anthropology.

I'll try to keep it interesting, but please bare with me on the early posts. I'm still learning the system.

Oh yeah and I have a parrot, Sun Conure, named Captain Blood.