Wootness!
Red Hat has finally opened up their RHN product. I guess they're finally taking that "we're a solutions company, not a software company" thing to heart. Good for them. I know this has been a large part of their revenue model since they started it, so releasing the code must not have been easy for them. I don't think it will hurt them in the long run and hopefully will help because now it would/could/should be possible to integrate stuff like puppet, cfengine, func, cobbler/koan and all sorts of other fun stuff.
Fun times ahead.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
obligatory iPhone post
Please excuse this mindless post while I futz around.
Also: packetshaper + steelhead = funky traffic data
Also: packetshaper + steelhead = funky traffic data
Monday, June 16, 2008
one step forward...
Things that rock: Documentation
Things that suck: Documentation in a Word .doc file that's 95% composed of mostly illegible screenshots.
Things that suck: Documentation in a Word .doc file that's 95% composed of mostly illegible screenshots.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
USENIX, LOPSA continue fight; Community looses
First, the various announcements about the lawsuit:
So, at this point you might be thinking "Huh?" so here's my attempt at providing some small bit of context to these current events:
This suit is one of the closing matters of that aborted process, namely, who should be paying the bill to Association Headquarters (aka: "AH" -- the management company that provides the business infrastructure for the organizations) for the time they spent with the pre-LOPSA organization during the failed separation process. AH started this suit in order to get payment on an outstanding account, AH looked at USENIX who's now pointing the finger at LOPSA. Who really is responsible for that payment can only truthfully be determined by looking at the aborted process and picking it apart. In court. With expensive lawyers. I also doubt that the legal proceedings would identify one specific organization as fully responsible either.
I can't imagine that the outstanding bill AH is holding is a substantial amount or that it is more than what the combined legal fees that AH, USENIX and LOPSA will have to incur just to deal with the legal proceedings of this suit. Why not just split the AH bill between USENIX and LOPSA and everyone pays their own legal fees? I suspect the out-of-pocket expense would still be less than the several years of litigation for this matter to be settled.
I beg all parties to not bring this issue further into the community, to sit down with cool heads and find a solution to this issue quickly.
This suit, its' exposure in the public, and the dialogue it has created does not help the members of the organizations, does not help the community at large, and does not help the practice, art, or science of System Administration. If anything, it paints us all as petulant children who can do nothing more constructive with their time then squabble and taunt each other. I've said before that the biggest hindrance to getting System Administration recognized and respected as a real honest-to-god profession is ourselves. The entire USENIX/SAGE/LOPSA drama, and this suit in particular, again underscores that sentiment. We're sabotaging ourselves. We need to get over it. We need to move forward.
And we need to do it now before the world writes us and our profession off as nothing more than a real life version of a Saturday Night Live sketch.
So, at this point you might be thinking "Huh?" so here's my attempt at providing some small bit of context to these current events:
Several years ago the small group within USENIX called SAGE (a system administration focused community) tried to break off from USENIX, ostensibly with the support of USENIX, to further its' own goals. Somehow, something went very wrong with the process. The break never happened and many people were left angry and hurt. From that aborted process LOPSA was born as a separate entity to replace what would have been the spun-off SAGE group while SAGE continued to exsist within USENIX as a special intrest group.I'll not link to the documents and email threads of the past that describe the details, because I think there's no clear series of well-documented events that chronicle everything. If you need to know Google is your buddy, as is the sage-members list archive, if it's still available publicly.
This suit is one of the closing matters of that aborted process, namely, who should be paying the bill to Association Headquarters (aka: "AH" -- the management company that provides the business infrastructure for the organizations) for the time they spent with the pre-LOPSA organization during the failed separation process. AH started this suit in order to get payment on an outstanding account, AH looked at USENIX who's now pointing the finger at LOPSA. Who really is responsible for that payment can only truthfully be determined by looking at the aborted process and picking it apart. In court. With expensive lawyers. I also doubt that the legal proceedings would identify one specific organization as fully responsible either.
I can't imagine that the outstanding bill AH is holding is a substantial amount or that it is more than what the combined legal fees that AH, USENIX and LOPSA will have to incur just to deal with the legal proceedings of this suit. Why not just split the AH bill between USENIX and LOPSA and everyone pays their own legal fees? I suspect the out-of-pocket expense would still be less than the several years of litigation for this matter to be settled.
I beg all parties to not bring this issue further into the community, to sit down with cool heads and find a solution to this issue quickly.
This suit, its' exposure in the public, and the dialogue it has created does not help the members of the organizations, does not help the community at large, and does not help the practice, art, or science of System Administration. If anything, it paints us all as petulant children who can do nothing more constructive with their time then squabble and taunt each other. I've said before that the biggest hindrance to getting System Administration recognized and respected as a real honest-to-god profession is ourselves. The entire USENIX/SAGE/LOPSA drama, and this suit in particular, again underscores that sentiment. We're sabotaging ourselves. We need to get over it. We need to move forward.
And we need to do it now before the world writes us and our profession off as nothing more than a real life version of a Saturday Night Live sketch.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
zombie meme
mindlessly following the meme:
> You are in a mall when zombies attack. You have:
> 1. One weapon
Flamethrower (I figure the fry-o-lators in the food court should provide plenty of ammo)
> 2. One song blasting on the speakers
It's a Small World (After All)
> 3. One famous person to fight along side you.
Jack Bauer (or if it has to be a *real* person, Keith Olberman)
> You are in a mall when zombies attack. You have:
> 1. One weapon
Flamethrower (I figure the fry-o-lators in the food court should provide plenty of ammo)
> 2. One song blasting on the speakers
It's a Small World (After All)
> 3. One famous person to fight along side you.
Jack Bauer (or if it has to be a *real* person, Keith Olberman)
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