FOSS

FOSS is an awesome philosophy that I inherently disdain, but in this particular field, I'm down with it! Free Open-Source Software is three parts. Free is self defining and most people know what Software is too. Open-source is a little foreign to most though. Every program, every script, every operating system (including windows) has what is called in the developer world "source code." It is the basic code that the programmers write each day at their jobs as they work towards whatever it is they are developing for their company. Linux is based on this philosophy.

Now, I am a libertarian. I'm a big believer in as much limitation of government as possible, privitization of as much of society as possible, and as much individual rights and ownership as possible. This is something of an paradox for me. For the reason of furthering technology in society, I applaud and support the idea.

"But, but but..???" I hear that WAY too much. "You can't do Microsoft!" is one that I hear often as well. The truth is you can. I ask why you would want to and that seems to get people confused. At that point, I try to explain a little bit of this blog. I'm not sure why, but people are so hesitant to change that they want to blindly defend Windows. I don't mind too much if someone wants to run windows. I really don't! I went Microsoft free for a while with success. I now run one windows box simply because a couple pieces of software that I consider essential were written natively in the windows environment. The box is scaled WAY down to run a simple and secure workstation. I run about 4 programs, one of which does NOT run off of the Linux box. The network environment is mixed and runs perfectly fine. But I would encourage you to
try Ubuntu or Fedora at the very least for a month and see how you like it. It's different, yes. But there is a joke among Linux developers - "You're running into virus problems? What's a Virus?"

Here's the inspiration: http://conversasdobruno.blogs.sapo.pt/372067.html

My week - productive

Monday was a big day for me. I got the file server online and one-sat my climbing project. The file server is for the law firm. I wanted to start working with Linux and the two solutions just fit together. Victory #1: learning how to configure Samba! It took me about 2 hours to learn about the details, but it works now. It authenticates and they can write/save things to a 300+GB networked hard drive. It didn't come back up the next morning, so I had to work with it a bit more. But I got the bugs out and it's operational as of Wednesday. Makes me happy. Now, I want to get it away from my work area. So, I'll grab a wireless card and move it into their main work area (or maybe their closet). I networked my USB external as a backup to the server for the time being. After I get that done, I'm gonna setup a workstation with Ubuntu on it for the paralegal to write briefs, do email, and the other easy stuff that she does so that she will start working with linux. I really want them to trend away from Microsoft. They have spent way too much money on software that they could have downloaded for free and had it work better than their methods now.

Then, I went climbing that night! Sean was not around so I just ran a few routes on top-rope. My current project is harder than most of my routes in the past. I've only climbed this hard a couple of times in my life and it's been at least 3 years. I want it. I've climbed one 5.12 in Denver. I worked one here in teh fort. And now, I have one that I can physically do. Last week, I worked it out and figured out most of the beta. I wanted the next goal - the "one-fall." It signifies that you are capable of cleaning the route, given that it is doable by a human. Victory #2: one fall on the orange 5.12. I'll throw this in too! Victory #3: leading the roof. I have a pretty big mental block about leading out the roof. It is very intimidating for me. That's why my hardest lead (5.11+ on the roof) was such a huge deal to me. I still remember hearing the final *snap* of the carabiner gate. What a relief! I collapsed off of the route with a loud shout. I had a beer that night!

I'm glad that Heather made me do it on Tuesday night. I felt good overall, but I needed some pushing into it. Sean was nice enough to belay me for it. I'm working with Heather on lead belaying so that I can get on the roof a lot more often. I want to climb Drop Zone this summer and I'll need some phenomenal footwork to do it.

Some links to encourage mom about the move to linux...
Grandma can use linux too!
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9889681-16.html
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9867494-16.html
http://www.linux.com/feature/125799

haha, too funny

I was talking to a buddy's wife a couple weeks ago about my current affairs. She's a very established account auditor for a firm in Denver. I mentioned that I'm doing some work with a Linux server and she scowled. "Why would you do that? You don't have any way of doing [Microsoft] Word documents! You don't have compatibility with the internet!" I laughed and told her about Wine and Samba. I knew that Google was running on linux. However, I did NOT know that Yahoo! and Facebook ran on Linux servers!

http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/03/10/microsofts-new-play-for-linux-lovers/

thank you very much!