Baldy’s Paradox

There is a distinct sub-culture in the Unix-type operating universe made up of gnarly old geekbeards who were raised up in the green-screen command-prompt era. They think X Window is for amateurs and any executable over 100K is bloatware. These are the wizened gurus who can touch-type 100 words per minute, remember every option for hundreds of commands, and who take pride at keeping antique hardware in service. Throw away an old 386 or 486? Never. Not when it makes a perfectly good firewall, printer server, Ethernet bridge, or network router.

Source: Tips and Tricks for Linux Admins: The State of the Tiny

One longstanding Unix tradition is best summed up thus: “Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together.” On a Linux machine, this philosophy is most clearly visible from the command line, where Unix hackers continue to provide simple, flexible tools that talk to one another and don’t have the huge overhead of a graphical user interface.

Source: Linux Audio Players, Tested and Graded

Before Vim 7.0 was released last May, I usually had six or seven xterms or Konsole windows open, each with a single Vim session in which I was editing a single file. This takes up a lot of screen space, and isn’t very efficient. With Vim 7.0, users now have the option of using tabs within Vim. With Vim’s tab features you can consolidate all your sessions into one window and move between files more easily.

Source: Vim tips: Using tabs

Novell on Monday reiterated support for unfettered Linux development — even as analysts hailed its controversial co-development pact with Microsoft, the freely distributed operating system’s archrival. The company trumpeted its role as a founding member of the Linux Foundation, a merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group. The two nonprofits have led in the promotion of Linux as an alternative to the predominant Microsoft Windows.

Source: Novell-Microsoft Deal Is Mixed Bag

Microsoft landed in the Wikipedia doghouse Tuesday after it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced Web encyclopedia site. While Wikipedia is known as the encyclopedia that anyone can tweak, founder Jimmy Wales and his cadre of volunteer editors, writers and moderators have blocked public-relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else perceived as having a conflict of interest from posting fluff or slanting entries. So, paying for Wikipedia copy is considered a definite no-no.

Source: Microsoft Offers Cash to Blogger for Wikipedia Edit

Microsoft has just released its ASP .NET AJAX 1.0, a free tool that lets developers create standards-compliant Web applications based on Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, or Ajax. The most ubiquitous Ajax-based applications, for example, are Google Maps and Gmail, which let users interact with them without requiring the full browser page to refresh while they’re in use. Microsoft’s Ajax entry, which was codenamed “Atlas” during development, primarily targets ASP .Net developers.

Source: Microsoft Late With Ajax - Still Anyone’s Game