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James Turner

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1) Yes, we know the Javascript-based “click to expand” UI isn’t very friendly, we’re going to a full-size strip layout next week, we’re just waiting on some elfin design magic.

2) For some reason, the Tuesday strip disappeared from the new blog, the Tuesday and Thursday strips are up there now:

http://blogs.oreilly.com/wateringhole/

James Turner

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We’ve settled in to our new home and have posted the first new comic, thanks for the patience during the move. The new URL is:

http://blogs.oreilly.com/wateringhole/

And the new RSS feed is:

feed://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/wateringhole

Enjoy!
James and Randy

James Turner

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You may have noticed that Tuesday’s strip disappeared. We’re having problems with the old blogging system, so we’re going to hold off on posting new comics for a few days. Next week, we should be moving over to the brand new news.oreilly.com site. The production folks are just working out what the templates for the WH should look like. Stay tuned, and I’ll announce when new strips start running.

James

James Turner

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I may not have been physically injured by a loose curly-brace, but I’ve had some code go very strange for the lack of one in the right place…

James Turner

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Something weird happened and we lost this comic for a day or two after it was posted… Sorry folks. Mike Rowe hosts Dirty Jobs and narrates Deadliest Catch.

James Turner

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After torturing Randy with impossible-to-draw scripts for 63 strips, I thought it was only fair to let him vent his frustration…

No idea what comes next, as I’ve been in Austin all week and haven’t gotten next week’s scripts to Randy yet. Luckily, I’ve got 7 hours of plane rides tomorrow to work it out…

James Turner

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It’s always a good day when you can get a Prisoner Reference AND a BSG gag in the same strip….

Tricia Helfer, of course, plays the Baltar-tormenting Cylon, Number 6, in the current BSG.

James Turner

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Am I the only one who wondered why the Robinsons didn’t throw Dr. Smith out the airlock about 3 episodes into Lost in Space? The original Baltar was pretty much the same deal.

James Turner

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For you young whipper-snappers, before Starbuck and Boomer were women and Cylons looked like humans, there was the awesome spectacle that was Original Battlestar Galactica. For those of us who watched the original, massive sighs of relief were made when it became clear that Boxy and the Daggit got thrown out the airlock somewhere early in the first season of the new show.

And Edward James Olmos could kick Lorne Greene’s butt with one hand tied behind his back (and teach him Calculus too!)

James Turner

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Ruby’s safely back at the compound with goodies for all. She knows how much Pearl appreciates vintage computer equipment, and things have calmed down enough between them that she didn’t even make a snide remark about Pearl having been around when the Colossus was first in use, circa WW2…

James Turner

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You’ve heard of fat pipes? Well, meet the XXXL version of the Cat5 patch cable…

James Turner

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Since Microsoft insisted on promoting a document standard that’s joined to Office at the hip, I guess the guys at the CCC thought that OOXML should properly reflect the long, storied tradition of Office. And what would office be without Clippy?

James Turner

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When visiting foreign lands, Ruby can’t resist dropping in on the local Evil Geniuses to check out what’s new in world domination. Ask to see the photos of her ski vacation with Ernst Stavro Blofeld if you ever run into her.

James Turner

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It’s not widely known that Josie of “Josie and the Pussycats” is a big Open Source enthusiast. Alexandra is strictly a Windows gal, of course and Melodie is definitely going to go for a Mac.

James Turner

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If Ruby had looked carefully, she might have been able to see Randy and I waving up at her, as we both live in Derry. But who could resist the allure of such a tasty meal, especially compared to the unidentifiable substance wrapped in plastic that most folks get in coach these days?

James Turner

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What, you may be wondering, could possibly set off a metal detector on a naked Jackel? Well, you see, Ruby went through a rebellious phase in her youth, and .there was this piercing shop…

James Turner

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Ubuntu has already chosen the ‘I’ animal: Intrepid Ibex. If you look at the scorecard to date, we have yet to see a scavenger, and only one carnivore (the badger.) You kind of get the feeling that the Canonical crew are avoiding ‘mean’ animals and concentrating on the cuddly ones.

James Turner

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Hard to believe that a year has gone by since we launched this little venture. It’s always a high point in the week when I get the next batch of strips from Randy, and writing the scripts has been a real joy. I hope you all have enjoyed reading the strip half as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it!

James Turner

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Actually, Manuel just wants Google to think he’s working for them, he’s really working for Apple. Colonel Flagg would be proud!

James Turner

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Welcome to our new Thursday edition of The Watering Hole, now available twice a week!

James Turner

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Microsoft Kool-Aid comes in two flavors, Blue Screen of Death Berry and Rootkit Red Punch

James Turner

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This is our first view of Camp Ballmer, the portion of the O’Reilly compound where all the animals for the Microsoft books live. Looks like one of the happy citizens is trying to defect, though…

James Turner

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Pamela Jones (or PJ as we like to call her) has faithfully chronicled the ups and downs of the SCO campaigns from pretty much day one, and taken a lot of unwarranted and abusive flack for it. If you don’t read Groklaw, you’re missing some outstanding legal analysis of not only SCO & friends, but many other legal cases of interest to ‘the community’.

James Turner

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Let’s be honest, investing in SCO is just about as insane as dropping an infusion of cash into a well-known energy company depicted above.

James Turner

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Illuminati is one of the stranger ‘card-type’ games I ever had the pleasure to play. It is definitely the only game where you’ll hear a phrase like “The Bavarian Illuminati, aided by the Boy Sprouts, will attempt to take over the CIA…

James Turner

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Ah, nothing like the classics. For those of you that don’t get the reference, a guy works at the circus cleaning up after the elephants. One day, a friend comes and tells him he has found him a great desk job in the city, good pay and easy work. “What,” the man replies, “and give up show business?”

James Turner

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Unsolicited manuscripts are also known (somewhat) fondly by editors as The Slush Pile, especially fiction editors. A favorite pastime of editors is to trade around some of the more incredibly bad submissions they receive. This is done more out of a sense of sanity self-preservation then malice, going through the slush pile is thankless work.

This gag originally was going to run as Gwen’s introduction way back when, with Gwen as the poop scooper. It was decided by wiser heads that our first female lead character shouldn’t be introduced shoveling excrement, and so we bumped her a few notches up the food chain to marketing. In hindsight, it was absolutely the right decision, but the gag was worth recycling. Sometime, I’ll stick some of Randy’s concept art of Gwen as lowly intern up on the voting incentive…

James Turner

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One of the interesting results of the Linux kernel staying with GPLv2 is that it is unclear how distributions will be able to package up GPLv3 software moving forward. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe it’ll be a mess. Computers probably won’t explode, but stranger things have happened…

James Turner

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As much fun as it is to have the animals bash each other week in and out, it’s time to end the mayhem for now. That’s not to say that there won’t be the occasional dig, and there’s plenty of external foes to do battle with, but for now the gang at the Hole are going to model the behavior that they wish the real open source community would adopt…

James Turner

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In an interesting case of life imitating art, Do Wa Diddy has become a popular cadence used by military units when marching. Thank goodness they haven’t adopted other aspects of military discipline as practice by John Winger in Stripes, although I’m sure he’d have Osama Bin Laden in custody by now if given use of an urban assault vehicle. If you want to be impressed, by the way, check out the acting resume of Warren Oates, Sergent Hulka in Stripes. From the Twilight Zone to The Wild Bunch, he was involved in many influential film and television projects up until he died in 1982.

James Turner

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As the expression goes, you set a thief to catch a thief. So when you’re faced with underhanded evil, who better to turn to than Ruby? Thankfully, Ruby doesn’t feel bound by the same professional courtesy that keeps sharks from eating shipwrecked lawyers.

James Turner

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The quoted price is only a little more ridiculous than the $5,000 per song that the RIAA has been demanding at trial. How is Pearl going to get out of this one? Well, she already knows at least one person good at dealing with overly litigious pinheads…

James Turner

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Our poor cast of characters can’t seem to get away from Intellectual Property issues, can they…?

And of course Gwen plays D&D. She’s a geek, it’s in her blood. Although, if she was a real geek, she’d play GURPS instead. GURPS is the only FRPG I’ve ever played where you can spend multiple evenings just setting up your character!

James Turner

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Or, put another way, Ruby is just fighting fire with fire. But the intellectual property wars aren’t over yet, a new front opens up next week.

Happy New Year, everyone. Let’s hope that 2008 bring peace, love, hope and a version of Quicken that runs natively on Linux!

James Turner

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On behalf of Randy, I’d like to wish all of our readers all the best wishes for the New Year, and may all your bugs be small ones…

And Gwen’s gift is really full of yummy chocolates. That’s our story, and we’re sticking with it…

James Turner

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Culture reference link for the week, if you’re not familiar with the cited fairy tale. And even if you are, the site is a good example of how you can terminally overanalyze a simple story.

We’ll be taking a break from the storyline next week for a special strip, then back to this episode of Sebastopol Legal, where fire is fought with fire.

James Turner

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For those of you who think that something as basic as crossing a bridge wouldn’t make it through the US Patent and Trademark Office (the USPTO, pronounced us-ptoi!), I direct you to this gem of a patent. The second to last paragraph of the patent is especially entertaining…

James Turner

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Another media in-joke, this time to South Park. Philip is certainly mixing up his national affiliations, last week he stood in for a symbol of America, this week he’s subbing for a Canadian actor.

Next week, we’ll leave the world of pop culture and return to more geeky topics.

James Turner

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If you’re unfamiliar with the reference here, I really wanted to provide a link to the Colbert Report opening montage, where you can see Liberty the Eagle in all his/her glory. Unfortunately, there’s not a sign of it anywhere on the Comedy Central site or YouTube.

The problem with media-related humor is that, by its nature, you need to be familiar with the reference in order to get the joke. So for those of you in some far off land where the Colbert Report is unavailable, trust me that this strip is hilarious…

James Turner

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Ah, Gwen has acclimated nicely to the Watering Hole state of mind, where revenge is a dish best served with a baseball bat. Unfortunately, I’m not sure the kiddies are going to like what comes out of that particular Piñata

And thus concludes our first multi-month story arc. Rest assured that further character development awaits in future weeks, but we’ll be returning to the day-to-day silly for a while. Happy turkey day!

James Turner

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My guess is that if all the details came out for just about any survival situation, there would be plenty of unpleasant episodes that would be swept under the rug. Even on a show like SurvivorMan, you notice that he never discusses the difficulties of bathroom hygiene in the wild. But you gotta do what you gotta do. You just may not want to talk about it later…

James Turner

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Before you get all grossed out, you might want to take a look at this. Gwen may not have known it, but she was being treated to somewhat of a delicacy. Of course, you’re not usually so intimately connected to the source of your food…

James Turner

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King George Street is one of the main drags in Tel Aviv, for those who haven’t had the pleasure. One of the more annoying things about visiting Israel in 1972 was that I dislike hummus, which is a common topping for falafel, and falafel is the the Israeli equivalent of a fast food burger. It made for some challenging meals.

And oh my, what’s happened to Gwen? Will she be left to die in the desert? Will Pearl find something for her to drink? Will Bonita learn that Ruby is carrying Linus’s baby? You’ll just have to tune in next week to find out. Of course, our weekly dose of Linux news is ready today, right here

James Turner

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There has been a persistent rumor in the industry that Microsoft is sitting on a version of Office that will run natively on Linux, but won’t release it because it might hurt Windows sales. That, of course, is the peril of having the same vendor creating the operating system and the applications…

While you can’t get Office for Linux, there’s lots of other cool things you can do on Linux, and you can read about some of them in this week’s Linux Newsletter, here

James Turner

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You may be wondering where you can get your hands on the special Nutshell titles that our cast uses on a regular basis. You may recall “Revenge in a Nutshell” from one of our earliest strips. Unfortunately, due to legal liability issues, our lawyers refuse to let us issue the Evil Nutshell line. Obviously, the critters manage to sneak off with a copy every once in a while.

While Pearl and Gwen fight the blistering desert heat, other things have been happening in the world, and you can read about the Linux stuff here

James Turner

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As someone who has had the opportunity (albeit at an early age) to ride on the back of a camel, let me assure you that it’s not as easy as it looks. And it doesn’t look that easy…

Where did Gwen get a complete T. E. Lawrence outfit in the middle of the desert? As you should remember from a previous strip, she has extra-dimensional luggage. Or we just though it would make a nice sight gag. Take your choice.

Now that the Linux News is produced in HTML, I can just provide this link, which will transport you magically to what’s new, OnLAMP-wise, this week.

James Turner

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We’ve all had that moment when our GPS betray us (or, more to the point, our mapping software) I’ve had my PDA insist, on several occasions, that the best route to take involved roads that a 4×4 would hesitate to try. Luckily, Gwen had at least one eye on the road, or it would have been Thelma and Louise Pt 2.

If you enjoy this comic, please use the voting, Digg and Stumble links under the comic. The more traffic we can draw, the more likely it is that we can go to 3 strips a week (and start to really tell some stories.)

Some more Linuxy stories on the other side of the link…

James Turner

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And thus ends our cowboy interlude. Will he return, or was he just a throwaway character? I’m not telling, you’ll just have to see.

Next week starts our fabled multi-month story arc, staring Gwen and Pearl. Stay tuned for ‘Leaving Las Vegas’, coming soon to a web page near you… Now, stay tuned for News of the Penguin, right after this mouse click.

James Turner

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Ok, a little bit of a cheap shot at Maine, but if you lived in NH like I do, you’d understand why we get annoyed with our Northern Neighbor sometimes. You see, New Hampshire has no income tax. People (such as I) who work in Massachusetts are used to paying Mass income tax, but Maine takes it one step further. If you work in Maine, they not only tax your income but your spouse’s income as well, regardless of whether they work in Maine or not. Now you may have a better understanding of why the location of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (claimed by both NH and Maine) was more than just trivia. There are tens of thousands of NH residents who work at the shipyard, and all of them get hit with the double-tax.

Hopefully, you won’t find the Linux News that follows taxing at all…

James Turner

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For they have horses and are good with knots…

Back on track this week, so you’ll be getting you dose of Linux news in the extended entry. Randy’s busily working on the next batch (we’re on strip 20 for those keeping score, and we have completed art through strip 22.) The next story arc after this one completes is going to start our first attempt at more than a 4 strip plot. This one will run a whopping 8 strips. Characters will be developed. Plots will unfold. Falafel jokes will be made!

James Turner

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The 19th century illustrations that O’Reilly use for the book covers give a sense of identity and branding that is known throughout the computer industry. Since most subjects aren’t associated with animals, the books themselves have frequently created mascots, such as the camel for Perl. In the cases where there’s an obvious choice, such as Python, the cover usually is what you’d expect. So the use of horses for Linux titles is a bit bizarre, to put it mildly. Now you know why, arctic habitat ain’t cheap.

Yet another week without Linux news, I’m still recovering from vacation and promise to have my act back together next week!

James Turner

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A quick and dirty note this week, as I’m still traveling in the DC area and am worn out from driving. There will also not be the customary Linux News reprint today (I’ll try to do it ASAP, it takes a fair amount of manual labor.)

This week’s in-joke is the reference to Laurel. Laurel (Ruma) has been one of the faithful production folks who makes sure that all the ONLamp (and other O’Reilly Network) articles end up looking perfect every week. I say was because she is moving on to bigger and better in an editorial capacity at O’Reilly, something that all of us who know Laurel are very happy about!.

The original version of this strip had a very different looking Laurel (with a much darker skin color!) That’’s because in the script I sent to Randy, Gwen was talking to people off-camera. He thought it would be more effective to have them in the forefront. All to the good, except that I hadn’t sent him any reference photos of Laurel, so he just used his imagination. He was a very good sport about redoing that panel once I sent him a photo of Laurel.

We have multiple Mikes at O’Reilly, so you are free to decide for yourself which Mike the male in the first panel doesn’t look like the most.

James Turner

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As you may know, it’s impossible to prove that something doesn’t exist. Therefore, there’s no way I can prove that there isn’t a cabal of elite geeks plotting world domination. But it is obviously highly unlikely. Just keep telling yourself that, are prepare to welcome your new wireless network mind controlling overlords…

There are no subliminal mind control messages TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO READ THE WATERING HOLE in this week’s Linux news, thankfully

James Turner

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FOO Camp is O’Reilly’s annual private get-together of movers and shakers in the industry. As mentioned last week, it stands for Friends of O’Reilly. It’s essentially a weekend of camping at the Sebastopole, CA headquarters, with informal talks by attendees and conversations that stretch on into the night.

While this strip takes it to an extreme, FOO Camp is definitely (from what I’ve been told, I haven’t been able to make one yet) the geekiest camp-out you’ll ever see. Laptops are in evidence all over the place and there’s WIFI as far as the eye can see. BTW, if you know the management structure of O’Reilly Media, there’s an in-joke this week. There’s another one coming in two weeks, watch for it!

Due to your humble editor spacing out this week, there’s no Linux Newsletter. Look for a double-edition in next week’s strip!

James Turner

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At long last, a recurring human character appears! Meet Gwen, O’Reilly’s new geeky marketeer. As originally envisioned, Gwen was a very different character with different job responsibilities. She got tweaked during concept development into the form you see her now. I’ll be sticking some of Randy’s original concept art under the voting button in a week or two.

Don’t worry that the animals are being abandoned though. Gwen is a part of the Watering Hole universe, but only one member of our extended cast. Besides, opposable thumbs come in useful sometimes… Like for clicking the link to see this week’s ONLamp news.

James Turner

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We all know that some models suffer from eating disorders. Unfortunately, poor Mycroft suffered from an eaten disorder…

You might get the idea from the strips to date that Ruby isn’t a very nice person (ok, not a very nice spotted jackel.) Trust me, under that cold, professional, knife-you-in-the-back exterior lies a gentle soul that likes butterflies and kittens. Fortunately, you won’t be seeing that side of her personality any time in the near future. Butterflies and kittens make for bad comedy (lolcats not withstanding…)

This week’s Linux news isn’t nearly so cute and cuddly, but it is free and available by reading on.

James Turner

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In the interest of full disclosure, I’m writing these words on a laptop using Windows Vista Ultimate. I’d use the Ubuntu partition on the same drive, but GoToMyPC runs better under Windows, and at the end of the day I’m a pragmatist. The right tool for the right job.

To be honest, the biggest two annoyances I’ve had so far with Vista is that it’s painfully slow to boot, and seems to practically need to ask my permission every time it paints a pixel on the screen. And that Second Life doesn’t run very well on it…

Hopefully, you won’t find any annoyances in the week’s Linux News, which follows.

James Turner

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Is there anything quite as disturbing as a close-up of a puckered-up camel?

This is the first time we’ve ever seen one of the animals actually doing their job. O’Reilly only publishes a few books a month, so the cover models have a lot of downtime. But as you can see, the photo-shoots can be brutal.

As I mentioned last week, Randy got me the first 4 strips with our new character, Gwen, last Friday. Gwen’s going to be our first regularly occurring human character, and you’ll see your first sight of her in 3 more weeks.

I’ll be posting next week’s strip from OSCON, spirits willing and the dam don’t break. Hopefully, the promised Internet connectivity in the hotel will really be there. It may post a bit earlier than the normal midnight time, because I’ll be on west coast time and don’t feel like waiting until 3AM.

Don’t stay up too late yourself checking out this week’s Linux News, which follows.

James Turner

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It’s a good thing that Cat5 cable and pythons aren’t cross-fertile, otherwise you might end up with wiring that spontaneously reconnected itself whenever it felt bored. Not to mention trying to strangle the sysadmins when they walk by.

Randy has promised me I’ll be seeing the first strips with Gwen on Friday. Who’s Gwen? Wouldn’t you like to know… You’ll have to wait until early August to find out, because we have 3 more strips to work through before we get to them.

If you come to OSCon, you’ll get a chance to try to get me drunk and weedle hints out of me. You’ll also be able to pick up some cool Watering Hole swag, including bookmarks and coasters. And there will be 7 Watering Hole T-shirts to give away (out of only 11 total that exist in the entire world.) Look for me wearing one of the other 4…

There’s no information about Gwen in this week’s Linux news, but there’s enough other goodies to keep you happy. Read on for all the details.

James Turner

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Sonoma County is not only the corporate home of O’Reilly, but also one of the world’s most famed wine regions. It’s a bit of hyperbole to say that they never get storms, but the climate tends to be quite mild.

In reality, the state of the wiring closet with Pye tangled up in it is a pretty good representation of most closets I’ve seen without a python tangled up in them. Every closet starts out nice and neat, everything labeled and all the wires in channels and twist-tied. This lasts about a day, until the first change, at which point expediency always overrides order

While we wait for Pye to make his moves of a sexy bunch of LAN cabling, here’s some equally sexy Linux News

James Turner

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Good thing for Ruby that the WH universe is connected through a wormhole to the Dudely Do-Right one.

This week’s strip include a big shout-out to my main man, Illiad, over at UserFriendly. As all good webcomic aficionados should know, Columbia Internet (and it’s long-suffering tech support slave, Greg) is the setting for UserFriendly. I’ve been lucky enough to do business with Illiad when I was Senior Editor over at LinuxWorld Magazine, I arranged to reprint UF strips in the magazine. If this strip ends up being one tenth as funny as UF, I’ll be a contented man.

If contentment has slipped out of your fingers, maybe a dose of this week’s news from around the OFOW will help

James Turner

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If you’re wondering what a steam locomotive is doing running through the center of the O’Reilly compound in Sebastopole, CA; the answer is simple. a wizard did it.

For those of you interested in pre-ordering Revenge in a Nutshell, it will be published on April 1st, 2008. However, be aware that possession of this book has been classified as a class-B felony in seven states.

Will Ruby escape her terrible fate? Will we manage to consistently spell Pearl’s name right from week to week? Will Watering Hole doodads be available at the O’Reilly booth at OSCON? For the answers to none of these questions, check out this week’s Linux News

James Turner

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Poor Pearl, first she’s attacked by Congressmen, now she’s getting snide backhanded compliments from a vain jackal. And to think she gave up a role in The Mummy Returns for this…

I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I’m anti-Ruby or something, based on the character of Ruby being a stuck-up, conceited publicity junkie. In fact, I like Ruby (and Ruby on Rails), I recently created a system to manage all the articles I have out being written, built on RoR in under a day. But Ruby is definitely the Hot Thing of the Moment, and like all Hot Things, it is suffering from a bit of overhype. It’s easy to see how Ruby could consider herself the center of the universe.

If Linux, Open Source, Databases or Sysadmin are the center of YOUR universe, the week’s ONLamp news follows.

James Turner

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Looks like a new neighbor moved in while Pearl was visiting Our Nation’s Capital. And there’s nothing like the fear of becoming obsolete to bond former enemies together. I’m sure that given time, the old timers will learn to get along with Ruby. Of course, I’m also sure that we’ll see the Chicago Cubs win a World Series in my lifetime, so you may want to take that prediction with a grain of salt. While Pearl unpacks her luggage, enjoy this week’s Linux News!

James Turner

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Poor Pearl, she would have been better off claiming to work for the cigarette industry. Although there are certainly any number of open-source-friendly legislators in Washington, there are also any number that keep the interests of their deep-pocketed corporate campaign contributing corporations in mind. Richard Stallman’s recent trip to Cuba probably didn’t help Pearl’s cause much, nor did the fact that she’s clearly of Middle-Eastern extraction…

Thankfully, you can sit safe at home, free from Congressional witch-hunts, and read this week’s ONLamp news!

James Turner

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Just as The Godfather and The Sopranos have forever associated Italian-Americans with organized crime, Joe Camel has put a stain on all honest, hard-working ungulates. Pearl, of course, would never condone smoking for anyone, especially children. For one thing, it can mucks up hard disk drives, especially those old Century Data removables. But I’m dating myself…

I’ll be at the first Ignite! Boston on Thursday the 31st of May. Drop by and say hi if you’re a fan of the strip. And now, on to this week’s ONLamp news…

James Turner

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Welcome to week three of The Savanna-Wide Wrestling Federation The Watering Hole. Believe it or not, next week plot is actually advanced! We’ve got the story arc written and drawn out through week 14 now, so I can say with authority that there’s some fun stuff ahead, IMHO.

If you happen to be in the Boston area, I’ll be at Ignite! Boston on the 31st of May, 2007. I’ll be the guy in the Watering Hole t-shirt (gotta love Cafe Press…) Of course, once The Watering Hole takes its place among the greats of the webcomic world, they’ll probably be available through O’Reilly. Hubris, what’s that?

Click on Read More for your dose of ONLamp news for the week

James Turner

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Welcome to week two of The Watering Hole, and an introduction to some of our cast. Pearl went to the trouble of introducing herself, you should know her from one of the most famous O’Reilly covers; the bird is Philip, the PHP eagle; and the snake is Pye, the Python… well, python. Specifically, an African Rock Python. Also appearing is Cecilia the Cow, one of the old-timers like Pearl, who graces the C Pocket Reference

I’ve always thought that it’s kind of unfair that Linux, Apache and MySQL all get a letter to themselves, while all three of the “p” languages have to compete for the last letter. If you’ve ever been in a room with a bunch of passionate p[ython|erl|hp] programmers, you’ll have no trouble recognizing the spirit of impassioned advocacy that is symbolized in the third panel.

Next week, peace? If the Protestants and Catholics can get along in Northern Ireland, maybe these three have a chance as well. As always, click on “Continue Reading” to read this week’s ONLamp Linux Newsletter

James Turner

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Hello and welcome to The Watering Hole. Randy and I are glad you dropped in, and hope you’ll make this a regular stop! At the moment, the schedule is to update the strip every Thursday, you can subscribe to the RSS link on this page to be notified of new strips.

For those of you who might not know, Sebastopol, California is the location of O’Reilly’s corporate headquarters, right in the middle of the Sonoma County wine country. It’s a pretty campus, with buildings spread out rather than up, nothing is over 2 stories high, as I recall.

Elsewhere around ONLamp, there’s a lot of good stuff to see, as usual For more, here’s this week’s Linux Newsletter!

Good evening Mister and Missus Open Source, and all the ships at sea. This is your plucky Linux reporting, bringing all the news of the day (or at least all of it that happened in the ONLamp Family of Websites.) We begin our panorama of stories with three fast-breaking articles in the news this week.

DATELINE: Washington. The House Committee on irresponsible network administrators opened a hearing today into lax DNS practices. Those testifying could have used a look at Ron Aitchison’s article on ‘Five Basic Mistakes Not to Make in DNS’. From making sure to reverse-map your private address space to checking your domain for lame delegation, this article can serve as a model to domains everywhere!

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/sysadmin/2007/04/26/5-basic-mistakes-not-to-make-in-dns.html