You’ve got to love the “Berkeley way” of doing things. Not that citizens here think that they’ve really cornered some secret of how to live. They’re just very conscientious and considerate of their place in the world. They live well, but they also let live just as well. Here’s how some things go in Berkeley, and some of the local tips I’m learning as I’m getting myself set up.
SourceGear is a company that I’ve never heard (until now) that works on version control software. Eric Sink is the founder of SourceGear, and he has recently written and published the book Version Control by Example. I came to hear about it perhaps as many others who have seen it already would have — he is giving this book away for free (shipping costs covered), and as his FAQ page says, there are no string attached.
The book covers the history of Version Control Systems (VCS), the terminology and common feature sets, examples of each of those features (in Apache Subversion, Mercurial, Git, and SourceGear’s Veracity), a discussion of how to use a VCS effectively in practice, and details about how VCS’s work internally. Through following VCS’s throughout history, we are introduced to additional VCS features in a context that easily explains their motivations.
When evaluating Microsoft’s long-term strategic positioning of its core business over the past decade, it is clear to see the cracks that have been forming in a dominating mainstay of the computing world. And it is an instructive story, and one still in the making, about how fast things (businesses, trends, ideas, etc.) can be built and how they can erode just as fast.
And of course, part of the story includes Bill Gates’ decision to bow out, and the ascent of Steve Ballmer’s ascent, notwithstanding the antics, rages, utterances, and more antics. But one utterance I want to pick up on is the one that “Linux is a cancer”. Really?
After all of the work for a manual installation of WP, when revisiting the Ubuntu Comm. page on WP, I noticed Turnkey Linux, saw their website, and read this Linux Journal review about them. Granted, Ubuntu/Debian is as close to an “It just works” TM user-friendly Linux distro as you’ll find. And WordPress seems to dominate the blogging software scene, and they’ve certain done well to make the installation quite (brain)dead-simple. But it’s still not as simple as it is to install a Mac app.
Publishing the last post was quite an ordeal, and not because of anything related to the content. Installing WordPress on Ubuntu was a bit more challenging for me than I thought it would be. For those of you who may be running into the same issues I did, here is a run-down of what I did and what I had to change.
Sequenced Thoughts from C/S 