Questions from naath and ghoti

[ewx]

1. Where does your LJ user name come from (because I am rubbish at figuring things out)?

I originally wanted to use my initials, ‘rjk’, but that was already taken. So I used the ROT13 version instead. I think at the time I was tending to see a lot more ROT13 on uk.misc (which I've since stopped reading) and also someone had pointed out that ‘greenend’ ROT13'd to the rather good ‘terraraq’ so it seemed a relatively natural thing to do.

2. What's your prefered ‘flavour’ of Linux?

Debian.

3. Why?

I initially tried it back in 1994 because IWJ was involved with it, and he was the Linux person I knew best; I think a lot of people in Cambridge have since used the same approach of picking something someone they knew used.

Since then I've mostly but not exclusively used it through habit and familiarity. I used Redhat while I was working at Zeus and it seemed to work but I didn't really find anything to recommend it over Debian. I've not used SuSE so I don't really have any basis for comparison.

4. What can I tell my brother to make him stop thinking that Windows is bestest?

I'm not sure I want to get into that kind of argument l-)

The most pressing problem with Windows is its poor security: it seems that most spam these days comes from hijacked Windows machines. An obvious response to this is to suggest that this is a merely a consequence of the large number of installations rather than anything to do with the properties of the software itself. I'm not convinced by this at all, I think it's fairly clear that Microsoft caught up with the notion that operating systems need to be secure by default, and security fixes shipped in a timely and automated manner, much later than the UNIX world.

Now I know that Windows XP, and perhaps earlier versions, is capable of tracking updates automatically, and this is good. But I was rather surprised when I last picked up a collection of updates that the certificate of the signing key apparently had an expiry date in the past, yet apparently was accepted anyway.

Going from the general to the specific a striking example of another kind of problem I have Windows arose at work lately; my software talks to various databases via ODBC, an interface invented by Microsoft, yet in some ways the free UNIX versions seem to meet the specification actually more accurately than the Microsoft implementation does (specifically there's a big table in the documentation of type supported type conversions, but if I'm foolish enough to believe it then I get errors under Windows but not Linux).

In the same project when debugging under Windows I've found the tools available much more painful than the UNIX ones. Obviously there is a question of familiarity here which will skew matters; but things like the dreadful copy and paste interface in the command prompt, and the rather exiguous information provided by the debugger, seem like relatively objective things. (In this particular case I had to guess which function the crash was in by staring hard at the disassembly.)

5. Who decided to call it ‘Greenend’ in a massive fit of unoriginality?

I went looking through old email to answer this l-)

The original idea was a month or three before actually moving in:

Subject: Domain names
Date: Fri, 10 May 96 14:35:05 +0100 (BST)

Guys,

Steve and I decided last night that it would be a good thing to have
our own domain name (and /24 network and ... but that's later).  We
provisionally chose the name greenend.org.uk though I don't see why
this should be cast in stone; indeed I think we could do better.

So timeplease, me, or both of us had the original idea, probably at or after a CUSFS meeting given that the date implies it was on a Thursday evening. At the same time Steve had been thinking of starting a company called Prismaxia (I think something to do with theatre lighting) and that name was mentioned in the ensuing email conversation but there doesn't seem to be any response to that idea. I have a feeling Steve may have wanted to keep it for the (still hypothetical) company instead.

Other than that none of the five of us came up with any alternatives, so greenend.org.uk it was. There was a theory that we could produce a UK-customized install of Debian under the Greenend name (for instance, preconfigured to connect to a choice of British ISPs), but this never actually happened.

...and I found that I'd half-answered some questions that ghoti asked a year and a half ago. Sorry for the delay; see ‘worst habit’ below!

1. If you could go back in time to one period, just as an observer, which would you choose?

Probably first century Jerusalem, to see what really happened.

2. Pornography; words or pictures? Why?

I think of myself as a fairly visual person but here words win out over pictures. More specifically (and this is also the "why", something that has a storyline is better than something that doesn't (which sneakily allows some pictures back in, if they form a narrative).

3. You're given a year of paid time to write a book. What do you write about?

Right now, I'd probably try and put the practices and idioms I use in programming into words. It'd be an odd book, ranging all the way from trivia like arguments about layout and indentation code up to broad design questions - hopefuly I could keep the practical and aesthetic points at least somewhat distinguished from one another but I expect you'd find both freely mixed together within every chapter.

Another thing that might be interested would be to take a sweep through history, 50% touching on the major events in each field and time and the other 50% related trivia. A year is probably kind of tight to do the idea justice and I think I've a few more years of churning through history books to go before I could produce a good outline though.

4. If you could learn one art or craft, which would it be?

Drawing. I can produce drawings that are recognizable as whatever I was trying to draw, but that's about it; certainly they aren't good enough to let other people see them.

5. What's your worst habit?

The one that annoys me most is not finishing things. Other people might have their own views l-)

Comments

[naath.livejournal.com]

Ask me?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

5. Who decided to call it ‘Greenend’ in a massive fit of unoriginality?

Wow, that was actually a really interesting answer :)

3. You're given a year of paid time to write a book. What do you write about?

Wow, good question. I think this one might be a meme all by itself...

[ewx.livejournal.com]

1. What do you see yourself doing five years from now? Ten years?

2. What do you think the result of the general election will be? (Answering after Thursday is cheating l-)

3. Describe yourself in exactly 100 words.

4. Pick any fiction author and explain why you like them.

5. Before, behind, between, above or below?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Go on then, what would you write?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, I have a folder full of ideas I don't have time to write so it doesn't apply so much :)

The latest was a novel-length extension of my short story http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~jv233/fic/saldini_a.rtf