Eric Bergen

For four years I have been leaving work through the same door. A few years ago I noticed a brown box mounted at the top of the door. Every once in a while I see it again and wonder what it’s for. Today I came into a work and heard “ding dong”. It turned out that brown box is the door dinger. It’s been dead for over 4 years because nobody bothered to change the battery.

This is in response to Robert Jaquez’ article Linux security is a ‘myth’, claims Microsoft.

“Who is accountable for the security of the Linux kernel? Does Red Hat, for example, take responsibility?”
Nick’s Answer: “It cannot, as it does not produce the Linux kernel. It produces one distribution of Linux.”
My Answer: Yes infact Redhat can take responsibility for the Linux kernel sent out in it’s own distribution and often does. Second they frequently submit patches on the Linux kernel mailing list. These patches are passed on to all distributions that use the kernel.

“In Microsoft’s world customers are confidant that we take responsibility. They know that they will get their upgrades and patches.”
I’m confident that my vendor will get me patches for security updates without having to wait weeks or even months for a “Service Pack.”

“Most customers look for more than just a product from their vendors. They need a solution that comes with the appropriate levels of support and service. This is where Linux is becoming more challenged as people expect more from Linux.”
Red hat has offered support for quite some time. If you don’t feel comfortable relying on a linux only company maybe you would like to be backed by Novell.

“Linux is not ready for mission-critical computing. There are fundamental things missing. For example, there is no single development environment for Linux as there is for Microsoft, neither is there a single sign-on system.” There are many development environments for Linux. This is the power of choice that Microsoft seems to be missing. I fail to see how a login system keeps Linux from being ready for mission-critical computing. XDM is the standard graphical login system for most desktop environments.

[Update - 1/13/05 - Wes Maldonado has corrected my ignorance about Linux single sign-on. Thanks ]

“There are bits of the Linux software stack that are missing. These are factors that are holding back Linux.” What’s missing?

Robert, I understand that you are just publishing an interview but maybe you can help your readers out a bit by shining some light on what you are being given from the Microsoft marketing engine instead of just regurgitating it. As far as I can tell you didn’t even try. I spent a grand total of about 20 minutes researching for this post.

Recently my iBook got sick with power problems. Back on the 24th I played the typical ignorant customer and took it into the AppleStore without an appointment. They were very nice and sent me back to the Genius Bar. No, it doesn’t have beer, I asked. After a few minutes a guy emerged from the back room and asked me a few questions. He took my iBook telling me that I would have it back in 7-10 days. “That’s good enough for me” I said and left.

I’m typing this post on my iBook. It was delivered earlier today, the 26th. Just two days later. Amazing. With this kind of service and a great OS I will be a dedicated Apple customer for many years to come.

Recently I have been trying to get people from work to go to a near by sushi bar. So far there has only been one taker and he loved it. We have been back since then at his suggestion. The most common reason for not going has been, “I don’t like raw fish.” To which I respond, “Have you ever had it from a sushi bar?” The response is always, “No.”

Sushi does not mean raw fish. It’s a style of cooking that is more centered around rice then fish. My experience has been that the raw to cooked fish dishes is about 50/50. The two sushi bars I have been to clearly mark which items are cooked and which aren’t.

One other common misconception about raw fish is that it smells ‘fishy’. A good sushi bar will never smell fishy. Some dishes such as the american invented ‘California Roll‘ contain no fish.

One of my personal favorites is Nigiri which is a bed of sushi rice covered with a thin slice of raw fish. The main reason I like this so much is because of the little wasabi suprise ball in the center of the rice. This gets the new guys every time. Seymour likes to call these ‘The Snails” because they are slightly curved and salmon has very distinct stripes in the meat making it look like a snail shell.

The whole point behind this rant is, don’t be afraid to try something new. If you don’t like it at least you know. Chances are you will find something you like and be able to enjoy it for many years down the road.

While doing research for my desktop environment post I decided to install Fedora Core 3. In my opinion Redhat has always had a clean Gnome setup. My burner has been on the fritz for a few months now so I have been using my iBook for all my burning needs. Well it is also sick so I can’t burn anything to install Fedora. After a bit of research I found some docs describing how to do a Fedora install with the ISOs on a different partition and booting off of a USB drive. This beats the pants off of the old days of switching out 4 different floppy disks. I did run into one small problem. SELinux doesn’t support reiserfs. No big deal. The second problem is the installer won’t allow the partition containing the ISOs to be /. I’m sure they did this so people wouldn’t format the partition that containted the ISOs but the installer wouldn’t let me just assign that partition to be mounted as root.

Tonight I will swap around some partitions and have another go at it.

Orbitz has been trying to get people to spend money they don’t have for a few months now. They have come out with this marketing campaign that basically says “You don’t have any excuses for not traveling somewhere”. The commercials go something like this:
*music* Don’t think twice!
*voice* But I just maxed out all of my credit cards
*music* Don’t think twice!
*voice* I’m going to Hawaii!
(I don’t remember the destination but the credit card part is from an actual commercial)
I’m not sure where they are going with this type of advertising, but if anybody just maxed out all their credit cards the last thing they should be trying to do is take a vacation. I understand that some people do have problems with credit cards but, what kind of company actually encourages them to put themselves further in debt to make a few bucks?

I suppose if the only purpose of their advertising is to get their brand stuck in people’s brains then they have certainly succeeded.

Quest For The Perfect Working Environment. This is the first entry into a disorganized series called “Quest For The Perfect Working Environment”. It will consist of several installments of things I am trying in order to find my perfect developing environment. This will attempt to cover everything from text editors to office desks and coffee intake. Really anything I can come up with that effects the way I work. The first installment “Desktop Environments” is coming soon.

Like many of the things I discover only to find out that somebody else thought of it first is a handy way of blocking out large portions of code for testing.

Continue reading ‘Block Comments.’ »

I have added a new category called ‘SODCD’ which means “Stepping Over Dollars Chasing Dimes”. Picture a greedy person running down the sidewalk drooling chasing one rolling dime while it’s bouncing over stacks of money. I see so many decisions now with the intention of saving a few dollars that actually end up costing much more in the long run.

Tabbed browsers have made the target=_new _blank or _top style links annoying and useless. In the old days these links allowed visitors to easily return to your site after viewing a few pages of off site content. Now they are a sneaky surprise that shows up like a hand grenade for those of us that use modern tabbed browsers. There is nothing worse than a link that pops up a new window covering up my existing neatly organized tabs. After reading a few links in this new window I start creating new tabs in it. This leads to having my normal sites open multiple times. What a pain. A good link will give me enough information to decide if I want to choose to open it in a new tab or over the existing one. Having multiple browser windows open is a thing of the past.

Apologies to all of you IE users that have no clue what I’m talking about. It’s time.