[sf-lug] looks like the 1s have it - OOOUUUCCCHHHH!!!!

[Rick Moen]

Quoting vincent polite (vpolitewebsiteguy at yahoo.com):

> After trying to read that, I think I pulled a groin while sitting down.

Well, I hope I didn't scare anybody:  The software-tinkertoys routine I
described is part of configuring an Internet _server_, I should stress.
That's always a good bit more complicated than just _using_ Linux as a 
regular user who's not publishing network services to benefit the global
Internet community.

To extend the favourite metaphor of Red Hat's Bob Young, we're not 
just talking, here, about how to drive a car, but getting into the
nitty-gritty details of automobile construction.


And, in case anyone's curious, "MTA" in my post meant "mail transfer
agent", which is jargon for SMTP mail-server software.

"Second System Effect" is a term invented by author Fred Brooks, 
manager of the System/360 software project for IBM:  He saw a frequent 
syndrome among software architects, where they try to cram into their
_second_ iteration of an idea all the (questionable or otherwise) 
ideas that practical considerations had forced them to drop from the
first one -- leading to an outcome where the "second system" ends up
bloated, overfeatured, and late.

See:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_system_effect
(If anyone here hasn't yet read "The Mythical Man-Month", you should fix
that.)

A "CGI [script or program]" is an external program invoked from within
an http daemon (Web server) via its Common Gateway Interface to perform
some function the Web server itself cannot do.

See:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface

"Scarlet Chapeau" is a jocular term referring to a possibly recognisable
enterprise Linux distribution whose sponsoring firm been known to make
bogus, toothless (but frightening to many) trademark-based legal threats
against people who cite its name, even in entirely non-commercial
projects, e.g., CentOS (http://www.centos.org/):

   CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources
   freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise
   Linux vendor.  [...]