2004-10-02

rfunk: (phone)
2004-10-02 02:50 pm

Namespace clashes

I'm sitting here at the Hyatt Regency Columbus at the second Ohio LinuxFest, and so far the most interesting talk was about Security-Enhanced Linux. But it wasn't interesting only for the obvious reasons; it was also interesting because it reminded me of some mildly annoying namespace clashes in technology:

When someone mentions "MAC", it could be a reference to:
- An Apple Macintosh
- Medium Access Control on an ethernet network, or the hardware address used in that protocol
- Mandatory Access Control security

Then we also have:
- eMacs, the type of Apple computers
and
- Emacs, the "extensible, customizable, self-documenting real-time display editor."


I've also learned enough about FreeBSD here that I might give that another try; the last time I tried it was in the late 90s with version 3.something.