Month: October 2007

I recently mentioned on the Fresh Ubuntu podcast how I liked the write support for NTFS partitions that comes pre-installed and how the first thing I did with it was to use it to maintain a common set of profiles for Firefox and Thunderbird between my Windows XP and Gutsy installations. Basically, what this means is that I now have to configure new email accounts, extensions/add-ons, etc., one time. When I boot into the other OS, I get the same exact configuration. Continue reading “Dual Boot Your Firefox and Thunderbird on Ubuntu 7.10 Guty Gibbon”

Today’s rant will focus on something that really ticks me off: poor pronunciation. I don’t mind when someone has trouble pronouncing a difficult word, but some of these are just inexcusable.

• McAfee – People say this “MAC-afee,” with the emphasis on the “MAC.” First off, it’s not even “Mac,” it’s “Mc,” which is pronounced so as to rhyme with “stick,” not “crack.” Speaking of that, why do they sell a “Big Mac” at McDonald’s? Shouldn’t it be a “Big Mc?” Oh, and it’s sure as hell not “Macafree.”
• Asterisk – Okay folks, this one is just plain inexcusable. I’ve heard the name of the popular open-source telephony server pronounced “as-ter-iks,” and “as-ter-ik.” Hello? When did an ‘s’ which preceeds a ‘k’ become silent in this language? And since when do we swap their places so that “sk” sounds like “ks?” Unless you be talkin’ ebonics, where we “axe” you a question, asterisk is pronounced “as-ter-isk.”
• Linux – This one is sort of flexible. Since it’s a mix of “Linus” (as in Torvalds) and “Unix,” one could pronounce it “LINE-ooks” which rhymes with the American English pronounciation of “Linus.” However, in Europe, the name is usually pronounced “LIN-oos,” so calling it “LIN-ooks” works too. However, if you do this, you should pronounce his name “LIN-oos” instead of “LINE-oos” to be consistent. Oh, an to the math teacher in Randolph, Vermont who called it “Lan-X,” I have no idea where you got that.
• Debian – Take the names “Deb” and “Ian”, and put then together to get “deb-e-an.” Not “deeb-e-an” and not “deb-e-on.”
• Suse – To get the pronounciation of a German Linux distro, I consulted an authority – a German. She said you would say Suse as “Soo-seh.” It doesn’t rhyme with (Dr.) Seuss, or “Sooza” and sure does not sound like “Susie.”
• Ubuntu – To pronounce a word from an African language, I decided to check with someone from Africa. How about we ask, say, Mark Shuttleworth, the guy who started Canonical and Ubuntu? It’s “oo-BOON-too” (with each syllable rhyming). Not “yoo-boon-too, “”oo-BUN-too,” and surely not “yoo-bun-too.”
• PostgreSQL – “Post-gres-que-elle.” You don’t say the “Postgre” portion without the “SQL,” so there’s nothing that sounds like “postgray.”

That’s it for now. More to come, I’m sure.

Excellent article on how to pronounce Ubuntu. I couldn’t have said it better myself. I started a post on this and other things a while back, but never finished it. Maybe I will soon.

I’ve been using Copernic’s desktop search program for the last several weeks as part of my ongoing effort to wean myself from Google. It’s not going too well. Unfortunately, Copernic just doesn’t find my stuff when I look for it. Furthermore, on the occasion when it does find some data (that which I have forcibly made it index and verified that it’s there), it takes a lot longer than Google Desktop Search to return my results.
Previously, I tried Microsoft’s new search, and dropped it within a few hours because it is hideously slow and a system resource pig. I also tried the desktop search from Ask.com, but since it only indexes Outlook emails, not Thunderbird, that isn’t an option.
So, I’m uninstalling that and moving on the the next candidate. Perhaps I’ll suck it up and try X1. I suppose if it works as well as Google’s desktop search, then it would be worth purchasing.

Okay, I didn’t really spend the entire weekend with Gutsy, I spent it with my wife, vacationing in Maine. I really only spent a few hours with Gutsy the morning before we left, and one late night when I couldn’t sleep because I had strong tea with dinner.
Anyway, after a somewhat frustrating Thursday, where I was not able to install Gutsy due to server timeouts, as of Friday morning, all of my installations and downloads were ready to complete. Continue reading “A Weekend With Gutsy Gibbon”