A nomenclature question: telling things from stuff

Post #45,417 by kmself 7/12/02 11:59:56 PM Reply	A nomenclature question: telling things from stuff So, we've got boxen, they run various services and/or more complex bundles of software. And bits of all of that are bundled into things we market and sell. So what do we call things? And how do we differentiate it from stuff? Boxen. I think these are systems. Or servers. Apache, qmail, BIND, etc. Services. Not servers. Things sold is pretty easy: that's product. Be interested to see how some of the documenting types around here handle this sort of thing, 'coz I keep tripping over the words. -- Karsten M. Self [link\|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com\|kmself@ix.netcom.com] [link\|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/\|[link\|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/\|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/]] What part of "gestalt" don't you understand? [link\|http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/\|TWikIWETHEY] -- an experiment in collective intelligence. Stupidity. Whatever. Keep software free. Oppose the CBDTPA. Kill S.2048 dead. [link\|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html\|[link\|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html\|http://www.eff.org/...a_alert.html]]
Post #45,509 by Ashton 7/13/02 11:34:15 PM Reply	Re: Sounds like an etymology (or entomology ;-) thing Packages, Parcels, Assemblies, (all variants on) Collections possessing Components. Haut Couture? Custom Modular Assemblies (Custom- being root of both customer and customized) overused everywhere. XXX Absolutely no variant! on ~ We don't sell computer materials - we sell Solutions (even if there might once have been a kernel of truth in that notion) I dunno - Marketing has fscked almost any decent descriptive words by freighting them with huge expectations.. rarely met (or en passant). Play to the cynicism (all well earned) ____'s unMarketed Working Collaborations.. Bare-Bones Luxury Bespoke Tailoring - just give us your inseam. Boxes-plus - It's All in the Cables and what goes through them. Smarter Collections than your average Box. {sigh} Ashton 'we had to insert bugs - to be sure our checker was really working'
Post #45,535 by static 7/14/02 7:42:17 AM Reply	Note on "box". I keep finding people to whom "box" to mean a server is an alien term. Generally the non-technical, but even techies can not have encountered the term before. So far, none have disliked it. :-) But you may have to explain it. "Boxen" is considerably more geeky, BTW. There are many techs who have not heard it. Wade. "Ah. One of the difficult questions."
Post #45,540 by wharris2 7/14/02 8:43:55 AM Reply	Hiring advice Never hire anyone who's never heard of "boxen". Famous last RPG quotes: "I'll just shoot this fireball down the dungeon passageway..."
Post #45,553 by Andrew Grygus 7/14/02 12:39:45 PM Reply	Most popular among my new clients . . . . has always been "the mainframe", even when they are referring to a 120-MHz minitower running NetWare 3.x or Win95. Generally I have them trained to say "server" pretty quickly. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #45,641 by boxley 7/15/02 12:07:07 PM Reply	stuff Hardware bundle (stuff you can kick) required 3rd party applications (Stuff that you can kick if you find them at a LISA conference) Product (stuff you can kick the guy down the hall for) hope it helps thanx, Bill ."Once, in the wilds of Afghanistan, I had to subsist on food and water for several weeks." W.C. Fields
Post #45,644 by drewk 7/15/02 12:13:23 PM Reply	Just to muddy the waters some ... Is your firewall a separate box, or is it a service that runs on your switch ... or hub ... or server ... or a module in your webserver ... How about that webserver? Do you mean "Apache webserver" or the box that Apache is installed on? Or is serving up HTML one of the services of your application server suite? IMO the only meaningful distinction is boxes vs. services. You may have some boxes that are single-serivce devices, and the name can refer to either. Ie: "the web server". Other than that, for clarity the name should always be followed by either "box" or "service". Ie: "The webserver service runs on the appserver box." It can sound awkward, but it's unambiguous. (Mostly ;) === Microsoft offers them the one thing most business people will pay any price for - the ability to say "we had no choice - everyone's doing it that way." -- [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=38978\|Andrew Grygus]
Post #45,671 by kmself 7/15/02 3:10:47 PM Reply	server & service I tend to be able to distinguish between these, but they're semantically close. So I'm casting around for a different term for one or the other. We've got enough trouble, on the tech side, keeping "VPN" and "VNC" straight. Yes, we know what both are, and if we think about it for a half a second, we get it right. But they're a little to close in both namespace and concept. -- Karsten M. Self [link\|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com\|kmself@ix.netcom.com] [link\|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/\|[link\|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/\|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/]] What part of "gestalt" don't you understand? [link\|http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/\|TWikIWETHEY] -- an experiment in collective intelligence. Stupidity. Whatever. Keep software free. Oppose the CBDTPA. Kill S.2048 dead. [link\|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html\|[link\|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html\|http://www.eff.org/...a_alert.html]]
Post #45,677 by Andrew Grygus 7/15/02 3:44:02 PM Reply	I use . . "Server" (always hardware) and "Software Service" or "Network Service" - unless my intent is to deliberately confuse (and if it is, I'll toss in a helpful explanation about how an X Server runs on the client machine). I explain that a "Server" is any computer that offers its "Resources" (disk drives, printers, modems) or "Services" (database, Web pages) to other computers on the network. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]

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