I like to think of myself as a reasonably competent CPU user
What the hell does that even mean? Do you mean computer?
Reminds me of the Chronicles of George -- at least this user isn't says that his "cp is running slow ever since his cp had cp dump" (apparently a portmeanteau of "CPU" and "PC")
I'm wondering if the issue is that it seems like 30pages of RIPs, and there is no fundraiser details yet, it's only mentioned in the thread title... will wait and see I guess.
Fair, but then story should have read "A fundraiser is being considered...stay tuned", or somesuch:-)
Bye bye gnome, bye bye kde, awesome / xfce / ratpoison are the way to go.
Nooo! Put the bottle of ratpoison dow....oh...I see....and you say that's a window manager?
*shakes head*
All these young'ns with their confusing softamaware names. Next I'll see a wm called "; rm -rf/" and by golly I'll probably try to apt-get install that sucker.
(One of my man claims to fame is having RMS himself tell me I'm not into OSS enough because I use a Mac -- even though I've led several OSS projects, and contributed to a dozen more. Oh well, can't please everyone I suppose).
I'm pretty certain that RMS didn't tell you that you aren't into OSS enough. He probably told you that you aren't enough into Free Software, or at the very least F(L)OSS.
I know a lot of really neat people who are very smart hackers who continue to throw money at Apple. They'll laugh and make akward apologies about Apple's take-no-prisoners corporate behavior, and some of them even "really hate" (their words) Apple's aggressive patent suits and are really frustrated about Apple's locked-down computing platforms, but I haven't seen one of them put their money and their hardware choices where their mouth is. A lot of them talk about how much they like OSS, but none of them talks about how much they like Free Software.
Supporting FOSS or OSS projects is great -- and developing/leading those projects is even better, but I've come to realize that I can't just sit back and pat people on the back and tell them what a good job they're doing when they're still supporting (and evangelizing -- if only by walking around and showing off their hardware) a company like Apple.
I'm not telling you that you can't buy Apple hardware, I'm just asking that you take your smart noggin and be willing to call Apple out when you disagree with their policies. Some of us make the decision to not buy from them, but for those who do continue to patronize them, please give them a piece of your mind when they step over the line and infringe on our privacy or our ability to use our computing devices freely and without restriction (you know, the way that computers are supposed to work). My cousin who buys a MacBook or an iPad doesn't understand the issues well enough to write that letter, but I think that you do.
"Nerds like to say that people care about choice at that level. Nerds are wrong. Nerds care about choice, and nerds are such a tiny minority of people that nobody else much cares what the hell they think
If you actually go to the page, they specifically say it was inspired by Google Summer of Code. so they give credit where credit is due.
What? You want me to RTFA?:-)
Anyhow, if they say that it was inspired by GSoC, doesn't that mean that they realize that they're capitalizing on the name?
In regards to the viewer comment, 99.9% of space launches put up satellites for practical purposes. So to say that viewers aren't necessary for those organizations in actually wrong.
Now you're just puting words in my mouth -- when did I say that viewers/data visualization tools aren't useful for the ESA? I think the ESA has a great idea here, and both a number of FOSS projects, the ESA, and a number of space-related organizations can benefit from the result. The whole point I was making is that the name portrays this as putting stuff (code?) up in space, and all of the links I clicked on didn't show that.
Being able to visualize where your satellite could impact given a worst case scenario is considered when developing these satellites. Additionally, visualizing the trajectories of 1000 other satellites is also important. There's a lot of space junk up there.
Sure, that's helpful, but it seems more of a "mission control" piece than an "in space" piece.
Finally, not everything is a viewer.
Perhaps I was too general in my depiction of the stated projects. It was my understanding, based on clicking on a half-dozen links, that the planned projects were to be used as either visualizers of data on the ground (not in any kind of active tracking, etc..), or as general mapping/modeling tools. Everything looked ground-based.
After reading through a bunch of the other links (the "Selected mentoring organizations" page is super-dense), it looks like there are actually a number of software projects will make it to space (or at least high altitudes). Some, like OpenCube nano-satellite hardware/software stack describe the project in plain English, but some are very technical from the get-go, e.g. pyNastran with the tag line "Nastran BDF Reader/Writer, F06 Reader/Writer, OP2 Reader, OP4 Reader & GUI," but no description or link or About page giving us a hint about what 'Nastran', 'BDF', 'F06', 'OP2', or 'OP4' means. It would be really great to have a blurb about each project on the mentoring organizations page, just so that we could see at a glance the purpose of each project, and what specific tasks they were aiming to complete for SoCiS
The ESA funded engineering projects that they believe are useful, not general computer science projects. There's a huge difference. Engineering is all about understanding a problem and finding a way to solve it. Viewers are for understanding your data.
The ESA funded a number of projects in various different areas. I just wish that they had chosen a more inclusive name so that both the projects that were going to space (hardware, software control, etc..) as well as the ground-based projects were both covered. "ESA Summer of Code" would have been short and descriptive. If they want to make it "in space," they should hire that sign painter from Kickstarter to paint a nice sign with a bold offset section for the "In Space!" portion of the sign.
ESA Summer of Code in Space 2012 (SOCIS 2012) is a program run by the European Space Agency. It aims at offering student developers stipends to write code for various space-related open source software projects. Through SOCIS, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers.
Let's see...
Are the students in space? No.
Is someone in space communicating with the students? No.
Is the coding going on in space? No.
Is this just trying to capitalize on Google Summer of Code and tack on "in space"? No....I mean, yes.
Is the code going to end up in space? Not really... -- most of the projects are viewersfordatahereonearth. I clicked on a bunch of them and I don't think any of them are trying to actually do dev work that will end up "In Space."
How about calling it "ESA Summer of Coding for Space Projects" or "ESA Summer of Code Destined for Space" (actually "Code for analyzing heavenly data" would be more accurate) or even go over the top and sound actually funny with "ESA Summer of Code: To Infinity and Beyond" ?
(of course, if you don't need to share files between others and new features, there is no reason to upgrade).
Don't forget #3) and you don't need tech support.
One thing that's ghastly to try to support is random old versions of software running on random old operating sytems running on random old hardware. You know, the machines that are probably stuck to the table because their little rubber feet have started to disintegrate in the heat, and that have a 1/4" of dust gracefully coating all of the surfaces that don't get touched in the normal operation of the machine.
I know how painful it can be for some people to adjust to new things -- especially new (if only slightly changed) interfaces on a new screen, using a new keyboard, and a new OS. They just want their stuff to work like it used to, and we have to explain to them why there isn't an open-apple key anymore, or why they can't store their documents on 3-1/2" floppies because none of the presentation machines has a floppy drive.
And for the applications, we'd really prefer to have them finding the same bugs (or different bugs) on LO 3.5 rather than WordPerfect 5.1, not only because I don't think I can get someone to patch WP5.1 for love or money (well, maybe a lot of money), but also because there are a lot of other people breaking the same things on LO 3.5, so its much more likely that a given bug will get fixed quickly -- or already has a fix pushed to master.
- Microsoft Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4 or higher), XP, Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8; - Pentium-compatible PC (Pentium III, Athlon or more-recent system recommended); - 256 Mb RAM (512 Mb RAM recommended);
It does say that it's an "alpha release", so perhaps we'll see local accounts or OpenID login in the future. Requiring a Facebook account to login to linux.org seems like it might alienate a number of people.
Sure, it would need to be finalized in a legal document, but the first draft can look something like this:
Canonical: Howdy, Partner. When we work together to bring a computer to market running Ubuntu and GPLv3'd GRUB, can you make sure that the end-user is able to install their own signing keys so they can install modified versions of GRUB, per the licensing terms?
Partner: Okay, how would we do that? I mean, how can we make sure that we meet the terms of the license?
C: It's not that difficult. Basically y'all just need to make sure that the end-user can change the set of signing keys listed in the firmware. The Free Software Foundation wrote a whitepaper about it. You can also contact them via email if you have any questions!
P: Wow. That's really difficult to understand, too bad we don't have any engineers on staff who can figure....awww... I'm just kidding with you, of course we have skilled engineers and lawyers on staff. We even have people who know how to write emails. We should be all set!
C: Awesome, Partner. Before you actually ship hardware with an Ubuntu-Certified sticker on it, why don't you send one of the pieces of hardware to us so that we can manually test to make sure that end users can install their own signing keys. We'll use my son jimmy, 'cause we want to make sure it's so easy a kid can do it.
P: Okay, sounds great on my end. Glad that we had this conversation. I was worried it would take all day, but it really just took 15 minutes of my time.
C: Yep. Now remember: If you do ship some hardware with GRUB installed and you make a mistake so that users can't install their own signing keys, you're going to have to make a firmware update or otherwise make this problem right. Understand?
P: Isn't that what we have to do when we break the license of any of the pieces of software that we ship on our devices?
C: Yes. But I just wanted to make sure that we stated it explictly so that you wouldn't try to push the mistake off on us.
P: Fair enough.
C: Great to talk. We'll put all of this down in the formal contract when our lawyers draw it up. Have your engineers call our engineers about any kernel bugs. We should be able to get this hardware out by Q1 of 2013. So long!
P: Bye!
---------------
I mean, seriously, what's The Big Deal here? Just make some contracts with your hardware partners and hold them to the terms of the contracts like every other business deal that has ever happened. Why does Canonical think this is so difficult?
...I have ADD and can only retain information for.....wait, what were we talking about? It's Independence Day today, right? Let's go set off some fireworks!
One option would be to boot your system off a usb key/external drive
This is very unlikely to be acceptable to the employer. If they require OP to be present and are therefore paying him, it seems quite likely they might need him at short notice (consider, for example, a call center environment with sharp peaks in demand). Rebooting his machine is likely to take too long to be an acceptable delay.
Sure. That's why I listed that as one of the downsides in the same paragraph...
"One option would be to boot your system off a usb key/external drive...The problem with this approach is that you're still using your work hardware, and it's harder for you to switch between your company's OS/software and your own."
A number of us have flexibility in this arena because we've been working for the same employer for a while, or we're in charge of a department, or because we're consultants/independent contractors. I'd often play video games at work after the end of the work day, and that was fine with everyone because the work got done.
Unfortunately a number of employers are implementing increasingly draconian policies regarding software and hardware use, and rules about what is/isn't appropriate policy, even after work has let out for the day, or even if your fun side programming projects could make you a more skilled and more productive employee. Some of these policies and rules even govern the work that you do when you aren't at work, even if you do it on your own hardware.
One option would be to boot your system off a usb key/external drive. This would allow you to run Ubuntu 12.04 (or something) and hack around using Python, Ruby, Java, Processing, or pretty much anything else you can dream of. This is a really cheap solution (A 16GB usb key is about $10 online). The problem with this approach is that you're still using your work hardware, and it's harder for you to switch between your company's OS/software and your own. Also, if your company has a problem with you installing software, they might get all upset about you booting from external media, too.
If you can pick up an old laptop for cheap (maybe ask friends if they have an old one they aren't using?) then you can throw something like lubuntu or just stock debian on there, and then you'll have a great little dev machine that you can use to program up a storm. You don't need a big hard drive, and if you're using it plugged-in, the battery doesn't even need to work.
If you start to work on a project that you actually want to release, ask your boss if it's okay for you to hack on things at the office. Even if it's just a small side project released under a FOSS license, you're technically on the clock and so it's best to get an okay ahead of time.
Slashdot Mirror
Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/927/
Note: please do not mod this post up.
Note: please do mod this post up
What the hell does that even mean? Do you mean computer?
Reminds me of the Chronicles of George -- at least this user isn't says that his "cp is running slow ever since his cp had cp dump" (apparently a portmeanteau of "CPU" and "PC")
$0.74/gig is very different from $0.0074/gig...
I'm pretty sure that OP used to work for Verizon...
I would say Laminar Research needs to get EFF on the phone but I don't know if they would help defend a commercial product.
beyond just the license, the EFF might not feel especially warm feelings towards someone whose software 'phones home' without the user's permission.
...sounds like he was pretty involved in the game.
It also sounds like he was well-loved. Choice notes from the forum thread:
And probably my favorite:
Supercar Gautier:
I'm wondering if the issue is that it seems like 30pages of RIPs, and there is no fundraiser details yet, it's only mentioned in the thread title... will wait and see I guess.
Fair, but then story should have read "A fundraiser is being considered...stay tuned", or somesuch :-)
is here.
(how did story get posted w/o a link?)
Bye bye gnome, bye bye kde, awesome / xfce / ratpoison are the way to go.
Nooo! Put the bottle of ratpoison dow....oh...I see....and you say that's a window manager?
*shakes head*
All these young'ns with their confusing softamaware names. Next I'll see a wm called "; rm -rf /" and by golly I'll probably try to apt-get install that sucker.
(emphasis mine)
(One of my man claims to fame is having RMS himself tell me I'm not into OSS enough because I use a Mac -- even though I've led several OSS projects, and contributed to a dozen more. Oh well, can't please everyone I suppose).
I'm pretty certain that RMS didn't tell you that you aren't into OSS enough. He probably told you that you aren't enough into Free Software, or at the very least F(L)OSS.
I know a lot of really neat people who are very smart hackers who continue to throw money at Apple. They'll laugh and make akward apologies about Apple's take-no-prisoners corporate behavior, and some of them even "really hate" (their words) Apple's aggressive patent suits and are really frustrated about Apple's locked-down computing platforms, but I haven't seen one of them put their money and their hardware choices where their mouth is. A lot of them talk about how much they like OSS, but none of them talks about how much they like Free Software.
Supporting FOSS or OSS projects is great -- and developing/leading those projects is even better, but I've come to realize that I can't just sit back and pat people on the back and tell them what a good job they're doing when they're still supporting (and evangelizing -- if only by walking around and showing off their hardware) a company like Apple.
I'm not telling you that you can't buy Apple hardware, I'm just asking that you take your smart noggin and be willing to call Apple out when you disagree with their policies. Some of us make the decision to not buy from them, but for those who do continue to patronize them, please give them a piece of your mind when they step over the line and infringe on our privacy or our ability to use our computing devices freely and without restriction (you know, the way that computers are supposed to work). My cousin who buys a MacBook or an iPad doesn't understand the issues well enough to write that letter, but I think that you do.
Thanks,
- Q
Multicast!
...so I can first post mote quickly!
let's fix you're spelling frist, then work on the spead of you're posting.
Shit! Slashdot is so over!
What? You want me to RTFA? :-)
Anyhow, if they say that it was inspired by GSoC, doesn't that mean that they realize that they're capitalizing on the name?
In regards to the viewer comment, 99.9% of space launches put up satellites for practical purposes. So to say that viewers aren't necessary for those organizations in actually wrong.
Now you're just puting words in my mouth -- when did I say that viewers/data visualization tools aren't useful for the ESA? I think the ESA has a great idea here, and both a number of FOSS projects, the ESA, and a number of space-related organizations can benefit from the result. The whole point I was making is that the name portrays this as putting stuff (code?) up in space, and all of the links I clicked on didn't show that.
Being able to visualize where your satellite could impact given a worst case scenario is considered when developing these satellites. Additionally, visualizing the trajectories of 1000 other satellites is also important. There's a lot of space junk up there.
Sure, that's helpful, but it seems more of a "mission control" piece than an "in space" piece.
Finally, not everything is a viewer.
Perhaps I was too general in my depiction of the stated projects. It was my understanding, based on clicking on a half-dozen links, that the planned projects were to be used as either visualizers of data on the ground (not in any kind of active tracking, etc..), or as general mapping/modeling tools. Everything looked ground-based.
After reading through a bunch of the other links (the "Selected mentoring organizations" page is super-dense), it looks like there are actually a number of software projects will make it to space (or at least high altitudes). Some, like OpenCube nano-satellite hardware/software stack describe the project in plain English, but some are very technical from the get-go, e.g. pyNastran with the tag line "Nastran BDF Reader/Writer, F06 Reader/Writer, OP2 Reader, OP4 Reader & GUI," but no description or link or About page giving us a hint about what 'Nastran', 'BDF', 'F06', 'OP2', or 'OP4' means. It would be really great to have a blurb about each project on the mentoring organizations page, just so that we could see at a glance the purpose of each project, and what specific tasks they were aiming to complete for SoCiS
The ESA funded engineering projects that they believe are useful, not general computer science projects. There's a huge difference. Engineering is all about understanding a problem and finding a way to solve it. Viewers are for understanding your data.
The ESA funded a number of projects in various different areas. I just wish that they had chosen a more inclusive name so that both the projects that were going to space (hardware, software control, etc..) as well as the ground-based projects were both covered. "ESA Summer of Code" would have been short and descriptive. If they want to make it "in space," they should hire that sign painter from Kickstarter to paint a nice sign with a bold offset section for the "In Space!" portion of the sign.
Let's see...
Are the students in space? No.
Is someone in space communicating with the students? No.
Is the coding going on in space? No.
Is this just trying to capitalize on Google Summer of Code and tack on "in space"? No....I mean, yes.
Is the code going to end up in space? Not really... -- most of the projects are viewers for data here on earth. I clicked on a bunch of them and I don't think any of them are trying to actually do dev work that will end up "In Space."
How about calling it "ESA Summer of Coding for Space Projects" or "ESA Summer of Code Destined for Space" (actually "Code for analyzing heavenly data" would be more accurate) or even go over the top and sound actually funny with "ESA Summer of Code: To Infinity and Beyond" ?
*shakes head*
Don't forget #3) and you don't need tech support.
One thing that's ghastly to try to support is random old versions of software running on random old operating sytems running on random old hardware. You know, the machines that are probably stuck to the table because their little rubber feet have started to disintegrate in the heat, and that have a 1/4" of dust gracefully coating all of the surfaces that don't get touched in the normal operation of the machine.
I know how painful it can be for some people to adjust to new things -- especially new (if only slightly changed) interfaces on a new screen, using a new keyboard, and a new OS. They just want their stuff to work like it used to, and we have to explain to them why there isn't an open-apple key anymore, or why they can't store their documents on 3-1/2" floppies because none of the presentation machines has a floppy drive.
And for the applications, we'd really prefer to have them finding the same bugs (or different bugs) on LO 3.5 rather than WordPerfect 5.1, not only because I don't think I can get someone to patch WP5.1 for love or money (well, maybe a lot of money), but also because there are a lot of other people breaking the same things on LO 3.5, so its much more likely that a given bug will get fixed quickly -- or already has a fix pushed to master.
I'd suggest that people run a more modern operating system than Win XP, but LibreOffice will even run on Windows 2000!
LibreOffice system requirements:
slashdot ate my last comment, so just check out the link
Oh wait, was this the article about spammers hiring better copyeditors so they could steal your data more better, or was it the other one?
It does say that it's an "alpha release", so perhaps we'll see local accounts or OpenID login in the future. Requiring a Facebook account to login to linux.org seems like it might alienate a number of people.
Sure, it would need to be finalized in a legal document, but the first draft can look something like this:
Canonical: Howdy, Partner. When we work together to bring a computer to market running Ubuntu and GPLv3'd GRUB, can you make sure that the end-user is able to install their own signing keys so they can install modified versions of GRUB, per the licensing terms?
Partner: Okay, how would we do that? I mean, how can we make sure that we meet the terms of the license?
C: It's not that difficult. Basically y'all just need to make sure that the end-user can change the set of signing keys listed in the firmware. The Free Software Foundation wrote a whitepaper about it. You can also contact them via email if you have any questions!
P: Wow. That's really difficult to understand, too bad we don't have any engineers on staff who can figure....awww... I'm just kidding with you, of course we have skilled engineers and lawyers on staff. We even have people who know how to write emails. We should be all set!
C: Awesome, Partner. Before you actually ship hardware with an Ubuntu-Certified sticker on it, why don't you send one of the pieces of hardware to us so that we can manually test to make sure that end users can install their own signing keys. We'll use my son jimmy, 'cause we want to make sure it's so easy a kid can do it.
P: Okay, sounds great on my end. Glad that we had this conversation. I was worried it would take all day, but it really just took 15 minutes of my time.
C: Yep. Now remember: If you do ship some hardware with GRUB installed and you make a mistake so that users can't install their own signing keys, you're going to have to make a firmware update or otherwise make this problem right. Understand?
P: Isn't that what we have to do when we break the license of any of the pieces of software that we ship on our devices?
C: Yes. But I just wanted to make sure that we stated it explictly so that you wouldn't try to push the mistake off on us.
P: Fair enough.
C: Great to talk. We'll put all of this down in the formal contract when our lawyers draw it up. Have your engineers call our engineers about any kernel bugs. We should be able to get this hardware out by Q1 of 2013. So long!
P: Bye!
---------------
I mean, seriously, what's The Big Deal here? Just make some contracts with your hardware partners and hold them to the terms of the contracts like every other business deal that has ever happened. Why does Canonical think this is so difficult?
...I have ADD and can only retain information for... ..wait, what were we talking about? It's Independence Day today, right? Let's go set off some fireworks!
Hold on there, Casanova. How many slashdotters do you think can just pick up women in a bar? Be sensitive to the other 99%, bro.
One option would be to boot your system off a usb key/external drive
This is very unlikely to be acceptable to the employer. If they require OP to be present and are therefore paying him, it seems quite likely they might need him at short notice (consider, for example, a call center environment with sharp peaks in demand). Rebooting his machine is likely to take too long to be an acceptable delay.
Sure. That's why I listed that as one of the downsides in the same paragraph...
Where have you been? Sullivan's been with the FSF for about a decade.
Seriously.
A number of us have flexibility in this arena because we've been working for the same employer for a while, or we're in charge of a department, or because we're consultants/independent contractors. I'd often play video games at work after the end of the work day, and that was fine with everyone because the work got done.
Unfortunately a number of employers are implementing increasingly draconian policies regarding software and hardware use, and rules about what is/isn't appropriate policy, even after work has let out for the day, or even if your fun side programming projects could make you a more skilled and more productive employee. Some of these policies and rules even govern the work that you do when you aren't at work, even if you do it on your own hardware.
One option would be to boot your system off a usb key/external drive. This would allow you to run Ubuntu 12.04 (or something) and hack around using Python, Ruby, Java, Processing, or pretty much anything else you can dream of. This is a really cheap solution (A 16GB usb key is about $10 online). The problem with this approach is that you're still using your work hardware, and it's harder for you to switch between your company's OS/software and your own. Also, if your company has a problem with you installing software, they might get all upset about you booting from external media, too.
If you can pick up an old laptop for cheap (maybe ask friends if they have an old one they aren't using?) then you can throw something like lubuntu or just stock debian on there, and then you'll have a great little dev machine that you can use to program up a storm. You don't need a big hard drive, and if you're using it plugged-in, the battery doesn't even need to work.
If you start to work on a project that you actually want to release, ask your boss if it's okay for you to hack on things at the office. Even if it's just a small side project released under a FOSS license, you're technically on the clock and so it's best to get an okay ahead of time.
Good luck!