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I must say I’m not suprise to learn that Microsoft has announced a product to compete with Google’s planned offerings of online office suites and advanced web applications.

Unfortunately for Google, who’s plan included OpenOffice (a project for which they’ve just hired a bunch of developers, because it sucks), Microsoft will most likely base their idea off of Word, Outlook, and Excel, condensed down to ActiveX controls. This is good for users, because users know Office. This is good for Microsoft, because ActiveX only works in Internet Explorer. And anything that’s good for Internet Explorer is bad for FireFox.

The new Windows Live(tm) Beta is available here: http://www.live.com.
Lord only knows how much they paid for that domain name.

I’m not sure what the fascination with /usr/local/ is on Linux distros. Perhaps it stems from a deep-rooted love for all things Microsoft, and the C:\Program Files\ directory, and God help you if you install software somewhere else. However, with the “Open Source” mentality behind Linux, one would think that custom (logical) installation directories might exist, besides /usr/local/.

Personally, I like to keep custom compiled software as far away from /usr/local/ as possible, avoiding any confusion with an RPM based installation. Don’t get me wrong, RPM’s are great for install a package like named or samba. However, for people who want to build a web server (as I often do), you’re going to want to compile Apache, PHP, and possibly even MySQL from source.

I like to keep the custom configurations in /srv/ (logical to me, “srv” = “server”). Perhaps I am a bit anal retentive, but RedHat’s default Apache directory is /etc/httpd/. Come on, that just doesn’t make sense. What better invitation to rogue web developers to screw up a system configuration file in /etc/ than putting the Apache home dirctory inside it?

Keeping your custom installations in a separate top-level location is just a good idea. It will keep you organized, and keep those custom files at your fingertips.

Use Ctrl-U from the BASH command line to erase everything you’ve typed at the prompt. Easier than backspacing when you don’t have a mouse.