Moreover, it is really only the lemmings that believe the Yahoo!s of the internet are the internet that are in danger.
If one thinks Slashdot is the internet, that it is the only place worth going, so be it.
If one thinks AOL or Yahoo! is the only place worth going, I'm very sorry.
McGrath explained that because students have never had the right to use taxpayer-funded resources to access sexually explicit or personal material, taking such access away is legal.
Come again? What if I don't believe my taxpayer money should be used for subsidizing?
The problem is much greater. We have too much information, but not enough data.
The information exists in some form or another (php, asp, xml, html), but making it findable is extremely difficult as this Ask Slashdot defines.
I'd think a better solution would be to organize inforamtion from the get-go. Unfortunately, for something like this to work, there would need to be universal standards. XML might be able to bring this -- yet the compliance on one type of DTD is necessary.
Take press releases for example. Currently, it would be fairly easy to aggregate those as they are relatively standard to begin with. Add in product descriptions, datasheets, etc. And it becomes much more muddy.
Wouldn't it be great if information was categorized by those who know best (the author) and then aggregated later?
We want Microsoft to keep doing what it's doing -- go ahead and make MS Office as incompatible as possible and slowly and surely people will throw more support into cleaning up web document standards and forget about using MS Office formats.
Proprietary formats make it increasingly difficult for historians and people in general. Have you ever wanted to read your term paper you wrote in 1986 on MacWrite? Chances are you threw out the paper copy knowing you'd have the file on hand.
Project Gutenberg (for those who aren't aware, it is an effort to make copyright free texts such as Edgar Allan Poe's writings freely available) has considered the implications of any format into consideration.
Excerpt from Project Gutenberg:
"Suggestions to make them less readily available are not to be treated lightly. Therefore, Project Gutenberg Etexts are made available in what has become known as "Plain Vanilla ASCII," meaning the low set of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange: ie the same kind of character you read on a normal printed page-- italics, underlines, and bolds have been capitalized.
The reason for this is that 99% of the hardware and software a person is likely to run into can read and search these files.
Any other system of etext storage is going to fall short of an audience of 99%.
This does not mean there are not other valid mean of doing the etext business. ..after all, over half the computers are DOS, so one could address a wide audience by just doing DOS. Plain Vanilla ASCII, however, addresses the audience with Apples and Ataris all the way to the old homebrew Z80 computers, while an audience of Mac, UNIX and mainframers is still included.
Even an open standard poses a problem in regards to usability -- especially in the future -- more devices, programs, and a loss of backwards compatibility. What will ever be as universal as plain old text on paper?
And from a historian's point of view, reading what people wrote 15 years ago is becoming increasingly difficult.
I think I've opened a big can of worms...with a few more tangents which could be addressed.
The truth is, how much faster does the general population need to word process? They've tacked on spell checks, grammar checks, autocompletes, yadda, yadda, yadda. The last bit of the population don't need upgradability. They want to email, surf, write papers and manage finances.
It isn't all about "I can build a machine for 500." It is what works for people. Part of the untapped market needs cheaper machines - I agree.
The only thing that is differing machines anymore is how they look. After all, you a 56k modem can't saturate a cheap, modern microprocessor.
Think about the general folks. I personally wouldn't buy an iMac because I enjoy upgradability to the Nth. The minitower G3's though, have my need. Grandma and Aunt Flo don't care about adding another 30 gigs of HD space. Y'know those Christmas letters are going to suck up the drive space something fierce.;)
Source Code Alone Does Not Make it Open Source
on
Response to the APSL
·
· Score: 1
Oh, but it is open source. It isn't Open Source...
Slashdot Mirror
Moreover, it is really only the lemmings that believe the Yahoo!s of the internet are the internet that are in danger. If one thinks Slashdot is the internet, that it is the only place worth going, so be it. If one thinks AOL or Yahoo! is the only place worth going, I'm very sorry.
http://www.opencontent.org/
McGrath explained that because students have never had the right to use taxpayer-funded resources to access sexually explicit or personal material, taking such access away is legal.
Come again? What if I don't believe my taxpayer money should be used for subsidizing?
The information exists in some form or another (php, asp, xml, html), but making it findable is extremely difficult as this Ask Slashdot defines.
I'd think a better solution would be to organize inforamtion from the get-go. Unfortunately, for something like this to work, there would need to be universal standards. XML might be able to bring this -- yet the compliance on one type of DTD is necessary.
Take press releases for example. Currently, it would be fairly easy to aggregate those as they are relatively standard to begin with. Add in product descriptions, datasheets, etc. And it becomes much more muddy.
Wouldn't it be great if information was categorized by those who know best (the author) and then aggregated later?
Hotbot is part of the Lycos network. There are several other sites including Sonique, Tripod, Angelfire, Wired, Hotwired, etc. Take a gander.
We want Microsoft to keep doing what it's doing -- go ahead and make MS Office as incompatible as possible and slowly and surely people will throw more support into cleaning up web document standards and forget about using MS Office formats.
Proprietary formats make it increasingly difficult for historians and people in general. Have you ever wanted to read your term paper you wrote in 1986 on MacWrite? Chances are you threw out the paper copy knowing you'd have the file on hand.
Project Gutenberg (for those who aren't aware, it is an effort to make copyright free texts such as Edgar Allan Poe's writings freely available) has considered the implications of any format into consideration.
Excerpt from Project Gutenberg:
"Suggestions to make them less readily available are not to be treated lightly. Therefore, Project Gutenberg Etexts are made available in what has become known as "Plain Vanilla ASCII," meaning the low set of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange: ie the same kind of character you read on a normal printed page-- italics, underlines, and bolds have been capitalized.
The reason for this is that 99% of the hardware and software a person is likely to run into can read and search these files.
Any other system of etext storage is going to fall short of an audience of 99%.
This does not mean there are not other valid mean of doing the etext business. . .after all, over half the computers are DOS, so one could address a wide audience by just doing DOS. Plain Vanilla ASCII, however, addresses the audience with Apples and Ataris all the way to the old homebrew Z80 computers, while an audience of Mac, UNIX and mainframers is still included.
Even an open standard poses a problem in regards to usability -- especially in the future -- more devices, programs, and a loss of backwards compatibility. What will ever be as universal as plain old text on paper?
And from a historian's point of view, reading what people wrote 15 years ago is becoming increasingly difficult.
I think I've opened a big can of worms...with a few more tangents which could be addressed.
The truth is, how much faster does the general population need to word process? They've tacked on spell checks, grammar checks, autocompletes, yadda, yadda, yadda. The last bit of the population don't need upgradability. They want to email, surf, write papers and manage finances.
;)
It isn't all about "I can build a machine for 500." It is what works for people. Part of the untapped market needs cheaper machines - I agree.
The only thing that is differing machines anymore is how they look. After all, you a 56k modem can't saturate a cheap, modern microprocessor.
Think about the general folks. I personally wouldn't buy an iMac because I enjoy upgradability to the Nth. The minitower G3's though, have my need. Grandma and Aunt Flo don't care about adding another 30 gigs of HD space. Y'know those Christmas letters are going to suck up the drive space something fierce.
Oh, but it is open source. It isn't Open Source...