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Friday, Feb 20
Friday, we set off for Chicago. We stayed overnight in the DoubleTree Club hotel so we could park our car their over the next week. We left the homestead shortly after lunch and arrived at the hotel around 4pm. It was early to bed Friday night. (By the way it was snowing)

Saturday, Feb 21
We had a (gasp) 2:15am wakeup call, so we could get to O’Hare Airport by 3:15am. From there, we went through the checkin for Ryan International Airlines in order to make a 5am flight. We arrived in Cancun between 8:15 and 8:30am (It was a wonderful 87° there). After going through customs, picking up our luggage and locating the Apple Vacations representative, we were on a van to the Gala Playacar resort (which is about 40 miles south of Cancun). We arrived at the resort at about 11:15, but our room wasn’t ready. We had been warned of this and had packed our swimsuits in our carry-on luggage, so we changed in the bathrooms and hit the beach! Around 4:10, after we had located Lin and Greg (who we had planned on meeting there) we checked in to our room.

Sunday, Feb 22
KC was keen to get her scuba certification; well actually a more advanced certification called open-water certification. She began in the pool with the club instructor and really had the time of her life. She has been talking about getting scuba certified for about 10 years and this was something she really looked forward to, getting PADI open-water certified. Me, I went on a half-day trip to Loma Bonita for their ATV Adventure - and it was a real adrenalin rush! The afternoon, KC went on an open-water dive (and loved every second of it!) and I just hung out at the beach.

Monday, Feb 23
KC continued in the pool with some of the open-water certification steps she had to go through. I just hung out at the beach in the morning. In the afternoon, the harbor was closed so KC could not go out on an open-water dive, so we went to a mini-mall called Plaza Playacar and began the quest for souvenirs.

Tuesday, Feb 24
The water got choppy, and the harbor was closed. That meant that KC had to wait to continue on the certification path. So, we used the time to go to Playa del Carmen’s 5th Avenue and do some mingling and shopping. They have a boatload of shops there and we continued on the quest for souvenirs. We were back before 1pm and found that the harbor would be closed all day; KC didn’t like that, but we ended up at the beach reading our books and getting some sun. I went into the water and found that fighting a 3-4 foot surf was quite a workout! It was really fun to get tossed about but very tiring!

Wednesday, Feb 25
Again, the water was choppy and KC was getting frustrated. This was the one thing she wanted to get from the vacation and things were looking dim. We went into Playa del Carmen and then took the ferry over to Cozumel, which is an island about 15 km east of Playa del Carmen in the Caribbean. We didn’t do too much in the afternoon, at least until late. It tried to rain about 2:30pm, but it only lasted about 5 minutes and just did enough to settle some of the sand. Then, about 4:30, I got up the nerve and went parasailing! The hardest part of the entire thing was getting out to the boat - they took us out on a jet ski and I just couldn’t seem to get the hang of going from the jet ski to the boat and fell off both! “Soy gringo estupido!” is what I said about myself getting a laugh out of the guys on the boat and on the jet ski. Anyway, parasailing is quite the rush! I’d advise it to anyone who isn’t deathly afraid of heights.

Thursday, Feb 26
We went to Xel-Ha on an all-day adventure. Xel-Ha is a snorkeling park. We checked in and were issued a snorkeling mask and tube (we got to keep the tube), a life jacket and fins. Then we were issued a locker and a towel. After filing everything into the locker and lathering up with biodegradable sunscreen (they take any sunscreen away from you that is NOT biodegradable) we hit the water. I took an entire camera full of pictures of all kinds of fish, including a barracuda and a couple of stingrays. While I didn’t much care for the tubing down the lazy river (I should have brought the snorkeling gear and done that) it was an excellent day. Both KC and I were tired. I think this is the day I got the top of my head sunburned a bit - the only day I didn’t wear a hat in the sun.

Friday, Feb 27
KC got a dive in in the morning and another in the afternoon and attained her PADI scuba certification. She was quite happy with herself. I pretty much hung out on the beach all day, going into the water a few times. Really there were no waves, so it wasn’t nearly as tiring. I finished my second book; I had brought down Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and finished them both while reading on the beach.

Saturday, Feb 28
5:45am wakeup call and a 6:30am bus to the Cancun airport. Got on the plane with no problems (after having my luggage searched once and my carry-on searched three times) for a 10:05am flight. Touched down in Chicago at about 1:15pm or so. Went through customs, got to the car about 3:00 and after a quick stop for lunch (the plane did serve something resembling food, but it was hardly lunch) hit the interstate and ended up back at the homestead about 7:15pm. Long day and all, I didn’t even bother powering up the computer, which is why I am now getting this stuff posted.

Some General Observations
Each day, on the beach there was volleyball and soccer as well as general swimming and boogie boarding. We could have taken catamaran lessons and gone sailing, but I chose not to do that. The “beach bar” was open each morning around 10am and closed around 5pm - because it was an all-inclusive vacation, we could order anything we wanted. Also, walking about a half-mile south on the beach there was the sign “Beach Nudista” - I didn’t go there (no one needs to laugh that hard!) but it was interesting that it was so close the the resort.

Also, there was a water sports pool where they had daily games of water basketball, water soccer and water polo. There was a general pool where kids of all ages could play. And, there was an adults-only pool where no kids were allowed - kind of nice to get away from the racket!

Each day, they served breakfast from 7am to 10am; lunch was served from noon to 3pm; supper was served from 7pm to 9pm. Each time there was an amazing buffet of just about any kind of food you would want. (Each meal I had a plate of slices of watermelon, cantelope, pineapple and mango.) Also, each buffet had a salad line, an entree line and a dessert bar. They had two buffet restaurants on the resort and we could eat at either one any time we wished. MAN! What a lot of food!

The club bar opened each day at 5pm and was open well into the night. It got pretty easy to say “Cerveza, por favor!” and have them bring me a beer! (Leon of course!) They had people working as bartenders that were straight out of the movie Cocktail as far as putting on a show!

One thing I’d do different is that I’d bring either a travel clock or a watch. We had neither and had to tune in to CNN as they were the only channel that displayed the time on screen. (We had HBO and Cinemax, but who had time to watch movies?!) Also, I would have packed differently - you know, not brought some things and brought others. Oh, well!

If you EVER want a great week in the fun and sun, I’d definitely recommend the Gala resort in the Playacar resort park. It was probably the best week-long vacation of my life! And now, “Una cerveza, por favor!”

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If you read my post on Operating Systems (written by Bix), you would know that I am a fan of Linux; not only because it is free from Microsoft’s methods and shortcomings, but because it has rock-solid performance. Well, Bix has kindly allowed me to publish another post of his (shorter this time) about the needs of enterprise computing:

Enterprise Ready Computing

Concerning “enterprise ready,” I believe Unix et al (including Linux) is ready for the enterprise and that Windows is not.

Somewhere we’ve lost touch with what the enterprise is.

That a Linux infrastructure requires skilled management and some customization is no barrier to its being “enterprise ready.”

The enterprise isn’t Joe consumer who buys a computer, takes it home and expects it to unpack itself, waddle over to the ‘phone line, jack itself in and dial up AOL.

Enterprise computing was built on Unix, VMS, IBM mainframe systems and their kin, not the relative ignorance of the modern consumer.

A retail store will spend thousands of dollars on custom counters and fixtures.

A larger company might spend a quarter of a million dollars per floor on buildout when they move into a building.

The enterprise needs a reliable, flexible IT infrastructure and that requires a substantial investment. Only recently has this been poorly understood.

The advantage gained by using commodity hardware and avoiding the costs of proprietary systems is lost when companies stop using commodity operating systems in favour of a broken, proprietary system.

Many pointy hairs bought the MS Party Line about “easy to install and manage” and their bald faced lies about security and reliability.

It never entered their empty little heads that inexpensive hardware breaks more often than do server grade systems and that the “network operating system” Microsoft hawks breaks more often than a Yugo. A mumbled “That’s the fault of the administrators” is the usual riff.

‘Course, when the “administrator” is untrained because “MS is easy to administer,” they really are in part to blame, but it is more the fault of marketroids, ignorant, “consumer grade” managers and the designers of the dysfunctional “NOS.”

In reality, the enterprise needs Mack trucks, IBM or comparable servers, Snap On tools, decent shelving, durable carpet et cetera.

Cheap doesn’t cut it. There are many sayings such as “the easy way out” and “the path of least resistance.” There’s a reason for that, and MS is the “easy way out.”

People expect to expend no effort, and indeed do expend very little effort up front.

Then come SQLSlammer, MSBlast et cetera. Then comes a clogged registry and “old Windows disease.” Then come weekly patches which frequently break things. Then comes Windows Hell.

The enterprise needs to get off its collective duff and remember that it gets what it pays for, and that to get things done right it needs to do them itself.

Read the above as “a real IT infrastructure and the expertise to make it work,” rather than so-called “easy to use” crapware and toweringly ignorant “engineers.”

Being a EE I can say that. Software “engineers” and MCSEs frequently operate in an environment free of accountability.

I operate in an environment of accountability. If I screw up, a building might burn down and a thousand people die.

That’s what being an engineer is.

Reliability is not optional, and those who would sacrifice security and reliability in favour of convenience deserve none of the above.

Cheers,

Bix

I have to say, I agree with the point Bix is making here. We use Linux and Unix at work for our mission critical applications and processes. We use Windows for our office users who THINK their stuff is mission critical. I continue to add my 2¢ worth at work to make a push towards Linux. I know that it is an uphill battle, but I believe it is one that needs to be “fought” and won. We are going through a number of changes at work with our networking infrastructure and all of the changes make our system more Unix-like.

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Hmmm…

I’m going to treat your original post with respect despite your expressed contempt for anyone who’s been ’round the block more than once. I’ll do you the favour of believing your snapping to be in response to what was a pretty rude reply to a sensible question. The user he is responding to made some personal attack remarks against the poster, known as Bix. These attacks were directed at Bix but were actually retaliation to another poster (not me, either!).

To start with, Unix and derivatives such as Linux are inherently far more secure than Windows because security was built in from the start rather than being a poorly implemented afterthought.

What I did in college was not Unix, by the way, but minicomputers running a proprietary OS called RSTS/e. Coincidentally, one of the runtime systems under that OS - RSX by name, an RTS based upon a full OS by the same name - is a spiritual ancestor of Windows NT and descendents thereof.

We “Unix and mainframe bigots” are nothing of the kind. A bigot is someone who’s prejudiced against something or someone based upon irrational fears, generalizations and the like. We oldsters who dislike Windows do so for valid, provable reasons.

By the way, age and college experience have little to do with anything. There are many older “Gates groupies,” and the Linux community claims a large cumber of 20-somethings who often as not had access only to Microsoft stuff in school. The camp in which one finds oneself is based more upon intrinsic philosophical maturity and intuition than upon age or upbringing.

Many Microsoft boosters are indeed bigots, and claim any dislike of MS or their products to be based upon envy of Bill Gates’ fortune, Communist economic ideals et cetera.

I’ve not used anything from MS - other than supporting others or at work - since ‘94 and I haven’t lived with my parents since ‘81.

That said, I’m familiar with Windows programming and actually quite good at it. I vastly prefer working with and developing for Unix.

I’m going to attempt to dispel a few myths you seem to hold dear.

“Windows is popular because it’s best.”

This is a common theme as to why many people believe Windows is the best operating system.

Windows isn’t popular at all. People have had it rammed down their throats with little choice in the matter.

First and foremost, Windows did not get to a position of prominence by any technical merit, but rather by strong-arm tactics which have been consistently applied since the early eighties. That’s right - over 20 years.

Let me relate a story or two, sonny. I started designing and building my first computer one transistor at a time (that’s right - I designed and built the CPU itself) when I was 10, in 1972. It first ran a simple memory test programme in ‘74, a couple weeks before my 12th birthday.

This was about the same time as the introduction of the first PC as such, the MITS Altair. This box cost a few cents under $400, was based upon the Intel 8080 and sported lights, switches and 256 bytes of RAM. That’s right; 1/4096 of a meg.

Microsoft was founded soon thereafter to supply the Altair community with BASIC interpreters of every type. Note that there was no OS as such - people wrote their own code and built their own interfaces to use cassette tape, paper tape, floppies (much later) et cetera.

The first real OS for any PC was CP/M, and it ruled the roost ’til IBM introduced their PC and businesses standardized on it because “noone ever got fired for buying IBM.”

The IBM PC ran MS-DOS, which by the way included a lot of stolen CP/M code. CP/M-86 was another OS for the IBM PC, and after MS was found guilty of theft Digital Research (the CP/M people) were granted the right to sell their own (much better) version of MS-DOS, by name DR-DOS.

MS did not sell IBM or anyone else the right to use MS-DOS. Rather, they licensed computer manufacturers to provide MS-DOS with computers they sold. These licenses required that the manufacturers provide an MS-DOS license with every computer - and pay MS for every such license - and that they could not use or provide any competing product else MS would yank their license.

These terms were highly illegal, but because to lose your MS-DOS license was to be out of business the manufacturers complied and kept quiet.

MS started the Interface Manager (later renamed Windows) project in ‘81, producing a barely viable product eight years later.

MS then required manufacturers to provide Windows with each machine else MS would yank their DOS license. Again illegal, but Windows spread.

That was Windows 3.0, by the way. The tactics have continued for every new variant - along with even more insidious tricks.

Once a large user base depended upon Word, for instance, MS started orphaning document formats so that to be able to exchange documents with others people all needed similar versions of Word, which in turn drove the upgrade cycle with Windows because newer versions of Word won’t install on older versions of Windows.

Competing OS products never had a chance because of similar tactics, such as refusing any support to a vendor who develops for anything other than Windows.

This applies to hardware. If a device is not Windows certified, the install will produce dire warnings. Hence, manufacturers wish to have their network, video and other adapters certified so they’ll sell. If a vendor provides drivers for Linux, OS/2 et cetera or (even lets on about hardware intrinsics so folks can write their own drivers) they’re not so likely to get Windows certification and it’s certain to take a lot longer.

There’s much more to tell on that line, but hopefully you get the idea. Were Windows intrinsically superior to anything else MS’d not need a billion dollar PR budget, a multi-billion dollar legal budget and mafia-like tactics to get it onto the desktop.

“All OSs are insecure.”

Another common misconception is that Linux has the same security model as Windows. Of course, this argument has changed; bashers used to say that Windows was more secure because Linux’s source code is available for all to see and write viruses for where Windows’ code is a secret. Since there are many more viruses and exploits that occur in Windows, this is now the mantra.

All right… security.

Imagine a house in which to move from room to room required a key, no two doors can be open simultaneously in any one room, there’s video surveillance et cetera. This house will be exceedingly difficult to burgle.

Meet Unix and all similar operating systems.

Now imagine a house in which the owner is not permitted to change the setting on the thermostat but the milkman is. This house has automatic doors which open when approached with no authentication - even the doors to the outside.

Further, there are numerous entrances and passages about which one does not have details but which are used regularly by the blokes who built the place.

Meet Windows.

There are many facets of Windows which trust every Thom, Dick and Harry on the ‘net more than the poor sod at the keyboard, and this is a real problem. This makes e-mail a little easier to read and a sound a little easier to include in a text document, but the price is far too high.

You see, for the sake of convenience Windows is insecure by design. This results in an “easy to use” but hard to maintain and protect system.

While some of this can be fixed by the user, doing so is far beyond the capability of most users and the installation defaults for Windows are simply not sensible.

To make Unix insecure would require far more that a crappy root password. To make it behave like Windows one’d need to add many buffer overrun holes, open up every network protocol to allow remote root login, remove all the checks and walls built in (such as a firewall, running mail and other daemons as their own user-level processes) make applications insinuate themselves into the OS et cetera.

This last is quite important. Well designed operating systems don’t go belly up whan an application crashes. Windows does.

Why? To continue the house metaphor, Windows applications are like built-in appliances, only that when you install a Windows stove, refrigerator or such you have to take out a load bearing wall and place the appliance where the wall used to be. If the application caves in, so does the whole OS.

Linux et cetera not only doesn’t do this but doesn’t really permit it.

To paraphrase a great American statesman, “People who give up essential security for a little temporary convenience deserve neither security nor convenience.”

“Were Linux popular it’d get hacked just as often as Windows.”

This is another common myth. Since Linux doesn’t control the desktop computer market it isn’t the target. It is pretty lame, as Bix proceeds to show.

Bullshit. First or all, Linux runs the vast majority of the internet. Were it a viable target we’d see kids bringing down large pieces of the ‘net and gaining instant status. They don’t because they can’t. Only MS servers fall prey with any frequency, and on the ‘net they are in a distinct minority.

There are also 26 million Mac users in the US, many of whom now run a Unix variant with complete convenience and good security. That’s a significant percentage of the market, not the 3% or whatever that people bandy about. They by and large do all right as well, largely because their OS doesn’t bend over for all comers.

There are very few legitimate reasons for a programme to require root privilege, and Unix makes good use of this fact.

With Windows things are akin to your having to leave a book of blank cheques tacked to your fron door because all mail is COD and if someone steals some cheques, tough luck Charlie.

One must remember that Windows NT was not “new technology” at all, but rather new to Microsoft. NT was based on a heap of old 16 bit (early) OS/2 code, and MS never really got it working correctly. Many of the intrinsics are similar VMS, derived from RSX, in turn derived from TOPS - an OS developed in the 60s. ‘Course, MS never implemented “VMS on Intel,” but rather hired some old DEC people to make NT work. NT’s not all that new, really.

Today if you attempt to copy files to your C drive from a damaged CD, you’ll get the error “Cannot copy file XXX: Invalid MS-DOS function.”

And we’re supposed to believe this is all cleanly developed, well audited code…? Yeah, right.

“Noone uses Linux.”

This is another common claim. It goes hand-in-hand with the previous erroneous statement.

My numerous Linux boxes and those of my family and many friends contribute to the Linux user statistics by one Redhat CD I bought, but contribute to the “MS installed base” by the number of CPUs we have as they mostly sold with Windows at one time or another. Yes, some of ‘em are “beige boxes” I stuffed, but the cases were bought used and used to be assemblers boxes which came with Windows.

My case is hardly unique, so don’t swallow every statistic you read.

“Linux is hard to use.”

Ten years ago, even five years ago this claim might have been true; now it is simply a lie. The new graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for Linux are every bit as functional and easy-to-use as Windows.

Hardly true, especially for what most people do with a PC. There are numerous friendly environments which run under Linux. The most “windows-like,” KDE, is “windows-like” because it’s based on HPs CDE which MS used as the base for the Windows 95 and subsequent interfaces.

Hell with it. I was going to write this great essay on Unix versus NT but I’m tired of writing and you’re probably not all that interested anyway.

There are plenty of good resources on the ‘net, but were you interested you’d likely have read those instead of parroting the Gates Groupie party line.

I’m sorry someone called you a dullard but simply stated, Windows is broken as designed and that’s unlikely to change. While Unix isn’t perfect it’s actually evolving, is designed around standards, security and respect for the user, and has always actually worked.

Lastly, software written by people who do it for fun is likely to be really good because we actually pay attention rather than daydreaming of Miller Time. Furthermore many of us have a sense of working for the higher good rather than to meet deadlines, and are doubly careful.

Think about it, eh?

Cheers,

Bix

I’d have to agree with Bix on all his points. I tend to use my Linux partition more and more and my Windows partition less and less. In the next month or so I am going to save all data off KC’s computer and put Linux only on it as a test for her. If she can figure out Linux I believe anyone can. Not that she is stupid, she is just tolerant of computers and not a power user or guru, a title I get a lot.

If you want freedom - freedom of ideas, freedom of thought, freedom of source code, freedom from viruses, freedom from exploits - the easiest way to go is Linux. It isn’t perfect, but it is light years ahead of Windows. To check out just how easy it can be without doing ANYTHING to your precious data, check out Knoppix. Knoppix will boot from a CD and run in memory and not change any of your hard drive; however, you will get a taste of Linux. (Note that running from a CD is going to be slower than running from a hard drive.) Who knows? You may not want to go back to Windows after that first taste.

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