Dec 21, 2001

Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

That GNU-Darwin people decides not to link to proprietary libraries is, of course, a result of them using the GNU Public License so extensively—and now because of that decision the primary Darwin development platform is no longer supported in this project!

This makes me shake my head and wonder what the fuck? This project is not only shooting itself in the foot by choosing a platform not fully supported by the OS, but is also screwing over the real meat of Darwin's userbase: PowerPC owners. This move is akin to opening a car garage in America whose mechanics are all experienced in servicing American cars, and then changing policy months later, stating that the garage will only work on foreign models.

Where is the fucking logic?

Seriously, am I the only one who is wondering who the Hell is in charge at that project? Kool-Aid Man? This move makes so little sense I can't tell if the people at GNU-Darwin are really that stupid, or if I am waking up in alternate realities every damn morning. I almost kind of hope for the latter.

This is the GPL in action, Mac faithful. Get down on your knees and kiss Apple's butt for choosing creating the Apple Public Source License.

Dec 17, 2001

Is Mac OS X What I'm Looking For?

Dear Trollaxor:

I've been thinking of switching lately. I've used Windows my whole life, but recently began experimenting with Linux due to political ideologies. I like a lot of things from both operating systems, and now I want one package to offer me both a nice GUI and a command line UNIX. Is Mac OS X what I'm looking for?

Potential Switcher in Dayton

Dear Gentle Sir:

Dec 14, 2001

Losing Her to GNU

Dear Trollaxor,

My girlfriend has been hanging around the wrong sorts lately, and has been coming home talking about Linux and using a ton of buzzwords I know she barely understands. I'm a FreeBSD user and know better than to fall in with the GNU crowd. How can I convince my girlfriend, who is falling further and further into groupthink everyday, to see the light before it's too late?

Losing Her to GNU

Dec 5, 2001

The Linux Party

First, there was a plan: how to bring together the two different development groups at work? My boss said there was a sort of tension he thought could be eased by some social interaction. Not easy. Both the different development groups despised one another, each thinking its “art” was more important and eloquent than the others'.

First there was the XML group. They worked on our website, documentation and formatting, and simple configuration apps and some front-ends to Java stuff. They also did our web sites. They used CSS, HTML, XSL, JavaScript, and a bit of Java. They typically dressed casually, drank coffee and tea, and liked to work straight from the spec: no ”Learn XSL in 30 Days” books were to be found in their cubicle farm.

Then we had the Linux developers. They worked “special hours,” coming in at one and staying late, supposedly, until seven or eight at night. They enjoyed Bawls and had a penchant for ThinkGeek t-shirts and cracking jokes about Win32 API calls and the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. They all had beards or mullets or long, unwashed hair. Some had penguin or C code tattoos. Their cubicle farm was known for the bleating laughter that exploded when one of them found a silly bug on someone else's code, and for the rotten, fetid stench that could only be compared to three-day-old shit reeking from inside a rotting corpse's abdominal cavity.

Dec 3, 2001

The Open Source Mullet Revisited

Well it's been a few months and I have to say the Open Source Mullet is no longer the bleeting, sinister Linux zealot he was just months ago, and is now a valuable asset to our company. Things have certainly changed since I last wrote about him and I felt it was time to set the record straight. His nostrils no longer flare, and he no longer swears (as often as he used to), and the references to Open Source software have declined by a huge amount. I'd like to detail these changes in an effort to show the progress of a man reforming.

First off, he's stopped talking about Open Source solutions. No more mentions of the GIMP (I think my boss buying me Photoshop 6 did the trick there), no more talk of Linux on our $40,000 Sun box, no more bitching about Windows 2000 crashing (I think he finally realized that Windows 2000 drivers are a better choice than Windows NT 3.1 drivers under Windows 2000). This is such a refreshing pace, considering that there was an average of 6 Open Source/GNU options mentioned or discussed a day by my neck-blanketed hippie coworker.

Another factor in the calming of the Open Source Mullet is that my boss let him have an old PC under his cublicle to run Linux on. I think he may have promised to let Open Source Mullet run a proxy on Linux or something. It's a 200MHz non-MMX Pentium with 64 megs of RAM. Probly has a gigabyte hard drive too. So of course that quells his straining heart, and so his flared nostrils and Tourrette's-like outbursts, fueled spurts of testosterone and adrenaline, are a thing of the past. This is only a good thing.

Another factor in the calming of the Open Source Mullet is the downturn of his caffeine habit: when we worked downtown, we had an unlimited supply of coffee. He averaged 12 cups a day, often imbibed double-fisted. Since we moved to our current office, however, he has to ration himself to 8 cups a day so others can share in the java. Just that 2000mg of caffeine makes a huge difference in his disposition. No longer does he stand and exercise in the middle of the office (yes, he did this for quite a time). He now sits placidly in his chair, hunkered down over his laptop, all day long.

All in all I'd say the Open Source Mullet went from a knuckle-scraping, schwag-smoking, psychadelic Open Source hippie (Homo Sapiens Linucis) to a fine, obedient, slightly eccentric code-monkey (Homo Sapiens Eccentricis). To my boss goes the highest of kudos for manualy evolving the Open Source Mullet.