User:Eric M Gearhart

Introduction/Background

Hello, and welcome to CZ! I am a recently Honorably discharged Soldier living in beautiful Tucson, Arizona.

Tucson mountain ranges, viewed from Mt. Lemmon

My "job" in the Army was as an Information Technology Specialist, which was great for me because I could "geek out" even though I was in the Army :)

I've always been passionate about and interested in technology in its myriad forms, from computers to Sci-Fi, since around age 12 (the "Age of Reason" as it were).

If you're so inclined, you can read my résumé at nixwizard.net.

What We're Doing Here

• Please see the video here for a description of what we're doing here & the future of knowledge in general, from "the horse's mouth," Dr. Larry Sanger himself.

• If there is any doubt on the necessity of this project, please see Wikitruth for all the (somewhat biased) convincing one could possibly need.

Call for Help

Please help out on the Computers Workgroup articles! The four or five of us that regularly edit articles there can't do it alone. You can see related changes in the Workgroup here.

Images on CZ

See Image_talk:MOS_6502.jpg for an interesting dialog between myself and constable Stephen Ewen about importing images from Wikipedia or Wikipedia Commons. Things are definitely not always what they seem to be.

Current Project(s)

We have a license! Hopefully this will help to convince all those fence-sitters and nay-sayers to get off their fences, stop nay-saying, and contribute!

Articles I'm collaborating on

The Unix / Linux / Open Source Software family:

•  Unix: A computer operating system originally conceived and developed by a group of researchers as an unofficial project while they were working at AT&T's Bell Laboratories. ^[e]
• Linux: Please do not use this term in your topic list, because there is no single article for it. Please substitute a more precise term. See Linux (disambiguation) for a list of available, more precise, topics. Please add a new usage if needed.
•  Open source software: Software where the source code is freely modifiable and redistributable. ^[e]
•  Berkeley Software Distribution: Free Unix distribution created by the University of California at Berkeley. ^[e]
•  Mac OS X: BSD-based, POSIX-compatible graphical Unix operating system made by Apple for use on Macintosh computers. ^[e]
•  Apache HTTP Server: An open source world wide web server software suite; currently the most popular HTTP server on the web. ^[e]
•  TUX web server: A high performance World Wide Web server that can be run partially inside the Linux kernel, in order to serve web pages faster than traditional web servers such as Apache. ^[e]
•  Software fork: Add brief definition or description

The Computer security family of articles:

•  Buffer overflow: In computers and computer security, occurs when more data is written to a memory buffer than can fit into the memory buffer. ^[e]
•  Hacker: An expert, a problem solver, and generally a brilliant programmer. In popular usage, those who illegally break into computer systems. ^[e]

The Commodore series of articles

• Jack Tramiel: Add brief definition or description
• Chuck Peddle: Add brief definition or description
•  MOS Technology: Semiconductor design and fabrication company based in Norristown, Pennsylvania, in the United States, famous for its 6502 microprocessor, and various designs for Commodore International's range of home computers. ^[e]

General Computer articles

•  Beowulf cluster: Distributed supercomputer cluster made from commodity hardware (e.g. PCs). ^[e]
•  Java platform: A bunch of programs needed for creating and running programs written in the Java programming language. ^[e]
•  Network topology: Defines the method in which a computer network is architected; topologies can be either physical (meaning how the actual hardware is interconnected) or logical (meaning how that network is implemented by protocols in software) ^[e]
•  Operating system: The main software of a computer system; controls the execution of applications and provides various services to them. ^[e]
•  OSI 7-layer model: Add brief definition or description
•  Virtualization: In computing, a broad term that usually refers to the abstraction of resources on a computer, using a container such as a "virtual machine" or several "virtual machines." Usually this is accomplished using either a virtual machine or an operating system that has tools to enable virtual environments to run inside it. ^[e]

Articles Approved
I Collaborated On

•  Tux: The name of the penguin, official logo and cartoon mascot for the Linux computer operating system. ^[e] - the first Computers Workgroup article to get approved!
  (Josh put a HUGE amount of work into this article. Great job folks!)