Biography
Blog
April 04 2008
Sometimes it may seem like a well-kept secret, but ONLamp has (and has had for just about a year) a comic strip that has run once a week, The Watering Hole. I'm happy to announce that as of this week, we've shifted... read moreMarch 25 2008
In my (painfully) long career as a software engineer, I've often run across the attitude that code has intrinsic value. You see this frequently in the industry when 'code reuse' is used as a metric of efficiency. At several companies I've worked... read moreMarch 10 2008
Back in December, I was one of the 170,000 eager Linux geeks who forked out $400 for the privilege of getting my hands on a One Laptop Per Child XO. To be honest, my initial impression was not great. For one thing,... read moreLeast Appropriate Uses of Perl You've Seen
January 04 2008
I’ve been asked to put together an article for someone on the most inappropriate (and appropriate) uses of Perl. My editor would like some real-life “Oh my god, you wrote WHAT in Perl” annecdotes. So if you’ve ever run across a use of Perl that made your skin crawl (in… read moreSysadmin Week for the Perl Survey
September 10 2007
Kirrily Robert has written to let me know that he’s declared this week to be “Sysadmin Week” over at the Perl Survey. If you’re a sysadmin, help out the Perl community by letting them know how you use it, it only takes around 5 minutes. read moreAugust 10 2007
As reported first on Groklaw, it appears that Judge Kimball has ruled in summary judgment on the major point of the SCO vs Novell case, that of who actually owns Unix. Not surprisingly, the answer to that question is not SCO. While IANAL, a brief reading of the juicy parts seems… read moreA View of Linux from the Land of Suits
July 31 2007
CIO Magazine just ran an article looking at how one CIO coped with going cold-turkey from Windows in a corporate environment. Although there were the usual glitches with proprietary corporate software, it is on the whole a very positive look at the practicality of bringing da Penguin into enemy territory.… read moreMay 24 2007
I try to get out to the Consumer Electronics SHows (CES) in Las Vegas every January. As I’ve blogged about on other sites, there’s actually a ton of Linux-based devices there, almost anything with an embedded OS runs Linux. One of my standard activities has been to go to the… read moreLooks like Microsoft is ramping up for Son of SCO
May 14 2007
You know all those nice things I said about the Microsoft Development environment a couple of weeks ago? Well, I still stand by them as a realistic opinion of the quality of the platform for developers. However, today’s news brings the major reason you should run away from depending on… read moreYour Turn to Play Stump the Author...
May 08 2007
Thought I'd pass along this note I received, that may be of interest to the MySQL addicts out there: >> Sasha Pachev, whose book Understanding MySQL Internals was released >> last month by O'Reilly, is leading an online seminar at... read moreWelcome to The Watering Hole (The Comic Strip Launches!)
May 03 2007
I’ve been hinting and offering teasers about it practically since day 1, but at long last the comic strip is here! We plan to publish every Thursday for the time being. You already know who I am. Randy Silverman is, in addition to being a friend, a talented comic book… read moreThe ONLamp Ombudsman Wants YOU
April 29 2007
I mentioned a new ONLamp feature in last week’s Linux Newsletter (and if you don’t get the newsletter, full of my sparkling wit and charm, as well as a summary of the articles and blogs for the week, why don’t you?). The ONLamp Ombudsman will work to resolve those pesky… read moreApril 24 2007
Two useful indicators of the increasing viability of Linux on the desktop; one personal, one public. The public one is the imminent announcement of preinstalled Linux on Dell Desktop machines, combined with the news that Vista is foundering enough for OEMs to fall back to XP. The other, more personal, is… read moreApril 24 2007
I’m probably not saying anything that hasn’t been said before here, but I thought I’d share a few thoughts on why people seem to be drawn to the Microsoft Way. I recently did something at the ‘day job’ that I’ve thought about doing for a long time, but never quite… read moreIn Praise of the Electron, and Keeping Your Powder Dry
April 05 2007
The electron, smallest of the three particles that make up the atom, how often do we take this plucky little lepton for granted? But let them stop flowing through the wires leading into our computers, and we quickly realize just how dependent we are on them. This lesson was brought… read more
