Funk Babblings

Lately I've been noticing a lot of cases where the successor to a given instance of web technology (specifically within the so-called "LAMP" stack of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python) isn't necessarily the next version of that instance, but rather something different. "Say what?" Let me explain with the specifics:

( Web Server: Apache 1.3 -> LightTPD )

( Programming Language: PHP4/Perl5 -> Ruby (On Rails) )

( Database Server: MySQL4 -> PostgreSQL ? )

( Operating System: Linux 2.4 -> FreeBSD ? Not much. )

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.