Open source
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Saturday, December 3rd, 2005So here is a question: if Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP is called a LAMP solution what would the same thing be called if based on OS X? Would it be XAMP? What if you considered that it was built on Darwin - DAMP? How about using Mac for the first letter - MAMP? What would you call such a solution. Leave a comment if you have an opinion.
I’m liking DAMP myself - it has a nice ring to it for a development technology and an innuendo at the same time!
Update: It looks like as much as I like DAMP a few people have pointed out that MAMP is the accepted standard. There is even a 1 click installer for these technologies that helps people get into development quickly.
The weekend begins
Friday, December 2nd, 2005The week is over and I’m ready to relax over the weekend. I got a number of good candidates out this week so I have a goof feeling of productivity. As much of a slump as I’ve been in productivity wise in the past month I think I’m back on the track for success.
I had planned on going to see the new Harry Potter movie again with my friend Scott tonight but his dad became ill and he had to cancel. I hope all goes well with his families health. I think I am going to use the suddenly free evening to relax and get started on some projects.
* * *
I’m now sitting on my couch as happy as a clam (what does that mean anyway). I have TNG season 2 (not my favorite season, but hey - it’s TNG) blaring on the TV, Skype at my side, a big half-eaten pizza in the kitchen, and a nearly finished website development project nearly done on my powerbook. Talk about geek heaven!
Yet again I have to comment with how impressed I am with Wordpress. I’m using it to do a quick redesign for my condo building. After selecting (then hacking to pieces) a great theme and setting up Wordpress I was able to get the whole thing online in a matter of hours.
In the days before easily customizable open source solutions like this would have taken days and been a complete pain. Now that Creative Commons, the GPL, and other online idea-sharing concepts have taken hold easy and quick technology use is within anyones grasp. Now that everyone can contribute their strengths everyone can benefit.
Firefox updates to 1.5
Wednesday, November 30th, 2005The great folks at Mozilla have made a pretty major update to the Firefox browser in releasing Firefox 1.5. I downloaded it and have been checking it out over the last couple of days and I like some of the modifications that they have made. It’s now much more “Mac-like” and they have made significant improvements to both it’s speed and memory footprint.
I still prefer Camino on the Mac, but see this as even more reason for anyone on the Windows platform to make the switch. Camino seems better integrated with the OS X look and feel, and is easily the fastest browser that I’ve ever used. I like the Firefox plugin architecture, but appreciate that Camino seems to integrate most of the features I would want in the base install - other than remembering tabs when I close the browser (or *gasp* the browser crashes).
Nethack, again
Monday, November 28th, 2005Today was a fairly normal day back to work. I must say that the four day weekend certainly was a nice break from normal life. Skype really enjoyed having me there the majority of the time and I got to reset myself from my work stress.
My co-worker Alissa turned me back on to an old favorite of a game: Nethack. It’s the classic adventure dungeon hack and slash and its filled with ASCII graphics goodness. Check it out - I dare you - you won’t be disapointed. I’m half tempted to install the OS X terminal version onto Minty and open up anon access so anybody can log in and play without installing it over SSH. Email me if you are interested in such a service.
It’s great to see such a fantastic game thriving with a healthy open source development community behind it on SourceForge. Now I just want to see the OSS community pick up Geometry wars and start making creative improvements to the best Xbox 360 launch title.
Microsoft: free software is a political manifesto
Friday, November 25th, 2005In another rather brazen move Microsoft has started to bully around a UN committee at the World Summit on the Information Society. Ars Technica reports that Microsoft is working to covertly change documents being presented to the UN to remove any references to free software or Linux. The original draft of the paper being presented to the UN contained the following statement:
Increasingly, revenue is generated not by selling content and digital works, as they can be freely distributed at almost no cost, but by offering services on top of them. The success of the free software model is one example.
It is clear that this is true due to the number of companies that have been able to be quite successful selling their services customizing Linux and other open source solutions for their clients, as well as using open source software as a platform to sell content legally. Microsoft argued that the reference to free software should be removed because:
The aim of free software is not to enable a healthy business on software but rather to make it even impossible to make any income on software as a commercial product.
It’s sad to see a company like Microsoft throwing their monopolistic ideas around in an effort to crush the future hopes of technology. For a company that openly refers to Linux as a cancer they obviously have a very short sighted view on the technology market. Open Source software (whether free, or for charge) is the future of the industry and the only way that an individual or organization can truly have confidence in the extensibility and long term stability of a technology solution.
I’m not sure how long Microsoft is going to continue to make efforts to drag their feet in the past and support closed source, crippled solutions. It might seem like a good idea from their dark and lonely Redmond citadel, but as more and more companies realize the power of being able to control, own, extend, and customize every aspect of their enterprise.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Thursday, November 24th, 2005Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Today is a day that the United States traditionally gives thanks for everything that has been a blessing in their life. I would like to list the following things that I am personally thankful for.
- My loving family who has been supportive of me and always shown me love and respect.
- Brien for being there for me through thick and thin.
- Skype who has changed me and my life more than anything else. There is nothing like coming home from a long stressful day to an energetic puppy who loves you.
- Good friends to hang out with and share lives little treasures with.
- Technology, and being born in an era where I can really see it evolve and improve day to day life for most of earths citizens.
- Creativity and all that it offers humanity. From writing to photography we as humans are capable of creating some amazing things.
- Great organizations such as the EFF, The FSF, and the ACLU other groups that are fighting for a better, more free tomorrow.
- Global communications technologies that are starting to bring together the world as a single cohesive unit. May the borders of nations one day drop and humanity join together in peace.
What are you thankful for? What do you hope for in the coming year? I’m off to the Henry household in a bit here to enjoy some fine wine, good turkey, and great friends!
O3 open source software magazine
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005Slashdot just pointed me to a cool new publication called O3 which is a magazine dedicated to open source software, implementations, and technologies. The first issue; which is available through bittorrent; covers Google honeypots and data security, lighttpd, and much much more.
A lot of the topics are not really applicable to a home enthusiast like me, but it’s really nice to see more and more information about open source getting out there for the enterprise.
Lighttpd looks the most interesting in this article to me. A light weight, security focused webserver would be perfect for home users (and my Mac Mini server). With MySQL and PHP or Ruby on Rails you could do some nifty things. I’m going to take a stab at setting it up this weekend.
A period of rest ahead
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005Today was not half bad at the office. I got a lot done, and the sales team took off early. It was very nice to get out of the office a few hours early and go home to snuggle up on the couch with Skype watching my new Star Trek: TNG collection. Skype certainly was glad to see me home so early as he has been alone longer and longer of late and has been relishing the time he gets to spend with me on weekends and evenings.
I’m struggling to keep up with the economy at work and I’ve been doing my best to avoid getting stressed out a little stress here and there is unavoidable. I’m glad that I’m going to have four days to kick back and relax.
I have over 150 hours of TNG content at my disposal and I plan to watch as much of it as possible. It makes for a great background distraction to some of the PHP stuff I’m working on. I’m continuing to tweak with Wordpress, and I’m also working on some web based applications to run on my mobile phone du jour.
Back to the puppy cuddles and soap opera in space!
Order is restored
Monday, November 21st, 2005I’m actually surprised at how painless the reinstallation of OS X and all my software was. It took about 3 hours including copying all of my data over from the background, installing all of the applications I use, and getting my PHP/MySQL development environment set up.
I’m again very glad that I use IMAP for everything. I didn’t even have to restore Thunderbird or my mail from a backup. I just pointed it at my mail server, clicked synchronize and poof - 45 minutes later all 4Gb of my mail was back and ready to go. Because I use WebDAV to store all my personal settings and spam filter training data I was even able to copy those back over. This combined with using IMAP for all of my mobile email has cemented my relationship with IMAP as a protocol.
It’s getting late and I should get to bed. I’m excited about getting to play with dev stuff tomorrow. I have a few projects in mind that should really get me back into things. I am halfway tempted to wait up for Brien to get back with his brand new Xbox 360, but given that he has to come from Lacey and stop at Fry’s for an HD cable he is probably going to be getting back way after my bedtime so I will have to check it out tomorrow morning.
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