The other thing that would be nice is if the government would start making the datasets we paid good tax money for available for reasonable fees.
Agreed. A lot of other people think the same way. New Zealand just drastically reduced their digital base date prices: from $2 million to $1,500 for the nation wide set. While $1500 is not pocket change for a student or small company, at least it's reacheable. See this url for details.
You've funded a great deal of research and development to make this software component and all of a sudden, the government releases a similar component and allows anyone to make a product that competes with yours at a much lower cost than you had to expend. A good question, in general terms. However in this particular case, there is no "all of a sudden", GRASS has been around, and public, since 1982. Does anybody here know if any of the current big GIS players have used any of the PD GRASS code?
If Linux wasn't open source it might look like QNX.
QNX (pronounced q-nix) is a posix compliant, unix like, real time, networked operating system. At the moment it is probably technically superior to Linux, at least in the area of distributed network sharing and processes and scalabilty.
It is powerful. It is nimble. It is small. It is scalable. It is large. It runs on x86.
It has a small market share. It is relatively unheard of. It is expensive.
See the Free-IP Project. Free-IP is endeavouring to supply free (both beer & speech) cores for ASIC's and FPGA's (used in UARTS, CPUs, Ethernet Controllers, etc.). The website has only been up since July and already there are two cores available, Free-DES and and Free-6502. Free-IP cores are either patent free, or patented and released (similar to the copyleft idea).
And along similar lines there's the Freedom-CPU Prject which is developing a GPL'd 64 bit CPU and motherboard.
in a way analagous to opening the window to a smoky room. The breeze may be cold and a bit unpleasant, but the air is fresh and clarity is improved.
It's continually facinating to me that so many stories and interpretations come from a single set of words. Where you seem to have read:
Open source is like Communism.
Communism failed. Therefore, open source is doomed to failure.
my understanding of the same article was markedly different:
- Open source is very closely related to the scientific/academic communities.
- It suffers from many of the same maladies and shares many of the same strengths. - In communistic USSR, the scientific community was damaged by.... - In capitalistic US, the scientific community is damaged by... - Open Source is a powerful movement, but it is still young. Careful analysis of it's real strengths and weaknesses are necessary to fulfill and keep it's power.
Ahhh. Slashdot. Where you can read 10,000 unique news stories every day.:)
to asad's question, I know that you are on the board of directors at VA Linux, what does your job entail? a snippet of your answer was, This mainly involves nipping bad ideas in the bud, before they flower into something that would piss off the hacker community. I have not had to do this often.
which begs the question: What bad ideas have you had to nip?
1) A whole schwack of msgs re:Entrapment - was it or wasn't it? while his possession of kiddie porn is mentioned but not really discussed. Excepting the good question about the difference between porn and documentation. (My answer to this one would be context, of which I haven't seen enough evidence of in this story to judge for myself)
2) What's the relationship between the so-called 'stereotypical' computer geek who has problems socializing face to face with members of the other human species and sexually aberrant behaviour?
I'm surprised as well and I doubt it's the obsessive reloading bit either. I routinely reload more than 10 times a day and I've had a couple of kicks at the can.
This isn't an 'all of it' solution, but examine what Philip Greenspun has done with photo.net. Especially look at the Images chapter of his guide to web publishing and the source code.
Basically he's written a bunch tcl scripts to do his indexing/searching for him. The results are impressive and clean, dunno about the implementation.
I thought moderators weren't supposed to reveal their identities, although everyone seems to be 'breaking' this rule today so Rob, please don't bust me
I don't think that rule is still in place. I believe it was created when there was a "hand picked few" who did the moderating. Now that 'most anyone can do it, the rule doesn't make sense anymore.
I for one like it, now we have open discussions on what moderation is like from both sides of the equation. It's a better environment all round.
I have to agree, I want to know when I'm a moderator, and when not. When I've been granted moderator points, my attitude changes slightly. Sort of like being on your best behaviour when Grandma is over for supper you know?
It's accurate if you read the whole bulletin. MS is no longer developing for the Alpha chips (32 or 64bit) in order to concentrate resources on the ia64 (Merced) version of Windows.
The goal of the OHS Project is to build an open source Open Hyperdocument System (OHS) - the critical missing piece of the technology for enabling dynamic, distributed collective knowledge work. OHS is designed to be:
Open- provides vendor-independent access to hyperdocuments within and across work groups, platforms, and applications Navigable- provides flexible, bi-directional linking to any object in any multimedia file Customizable- allows users to select and create views of data best suited to task or preference Dynamic- end-user functionality automatically changes over time to accommodate new multimedia object formats and methods for viewing them Collaborative- enables users to synchronously and asynchronously create, use, and modify hyperdocuments and dialog about them. Platform-neutral- user interaction components are written in Java Interoperable- provides a unifying framework within which (future) multi-vendor applications can interoperate Reusable- knowledge stored in it can be used and shared across time, and across knowledge and organizational domains Extensible- new multimedia object types, means to interpret them, applications, views, and features can be added easily Standards-based- content formats are based on W3C XML standards
For those who don't know, Engelbart produced a working collaborative (network work groups), hypertext, point and click, and video conferencing system in 1968. See Doug Engelbart's Unfinished Revolution at Stanford.
Slashdot Mirror
The other thing that would be nice is if the government would start making the datasets we paid good tax money for available for reasonable fees.
Agreed. A lot of other people think the same way. New Zealand just drastically reduced their digital base date prices: from $2 million to $1,500 for the nation wide set. While $1500 is not pocket change for a student or small company, at least it's reacheable. See this url for details.
A group of us are working on the Canadian government to follow suit. There's a petition at: http://members.home.net/freedata/. For some press see this article.
cheers,
-matt
You've funded a great deal of research and development to make this software component and all of a sudden, the government releases a similar component and allows anyone to make a product that competes with yours at a much lower cost than you had to expend. A good question, in general terms. However in this particular case, there is no "all of a sudden", GRASS has been around, and public, since 1982. Does anybody here know if any of the current big GIS players have used any of the PD GRASS code?
If Linux wasn't open source it might look like QNX.
QNX (pronounced q-nix) is a posix compliant, unix like, real time, networked operating system. At the moment it is probably technically superior to Linux, at least in the area of distributed network sharing and processes and scalabilty.
It is powerful.
It is nimble.
It is small.
It is scalable.
It is large.
It runs on x86.
It has a small market share.
It is relatively unheard of.
It is expensive.
Hi Crispy,
:)
I think I found your sig over at home cooking (aka 'burnt to a crisp'
cheers,
-matt
See the Free-IP Project. Free-IP is endeavouring to supply free (both beer & speech) cores for ASIC's and FPGA's (used in UARTS, CPUs, Ethernet Controllers, etc.). The website has only been up since July and already there are two cores available, Free-DES and and Free-6502. Free-IP cores are either patent free, or patented and released (similar to the copyleft idea).
And along similar lines there's the Freedom-CPU Prject which is developing a GPL'd 64 bit CPU and motherboard.
thanks!
(to both of you)
... without nuke and pave.
Is there such a thing?
It's continually facinating to me that so many stories and interpretations come from a single set of words. Where you seem to have read:
my understanding of the same article was markedly different:
Ahhh. Slashdot. Where you can read 10,000 unique news stories every day.
Fair enough. I was asking out of curiousity not malice. Thanks for taking the time to tell me you won't tell. :)
-matt
with regard to your subject heading:
As long as there is an -absence- of *real* legal advice and ruminations, there will be a -presence- of *wishful* legal thinking.
Everybody does their best with the tools and understanding they have.
cheers,
-matt
to asad's question,
I know that you are on the board of directors at VA Linux, what does your job entail?
a snippet of your answer was,
This mainly involves nipping bad ideas in the bud, before they flower into something that would piss off the hacker community. I have not had to do this often.
which begs the question: What bad ideas have you had to nip?
There are two missing threads in this discussion:
1) A whole schwack of msgs re:Entrapment - was it or wasn't it? while his possession of kiddie porn is mentioned but not really discussed. Excepting the good question about the difference between porn and documentation. (My answer to this one would be context, of which I haven't seen enough evidence of in this story to judge for myself)
2) What's the relationship between the so-called 'stereotypical' computer geek who has problems socializing face to face with members of the other human species and sexually aberrant behaviour?
Actually, why not make karma be an average of post moderations?
And what of the lurkers? Just because a person doesn't post doesn't mean they wouldn't make a good moderator.
Actually Rob, how many users are there who haven't posted, but still read regularily?
I'm surprised as well and I doubt it's the obsessive reloading bit either. I routinely reload more than 10 times a day and I've had a couple of kicks at the can.
This isn't an 'all of it' solution, but examine what Philip Greenspun has done with photo.net. Especially look at the Images chapter of his guide to web publishing and the source code.
Basically he's written a bunch tcl scripts to do his indexing/searching for him. The results are impressive and clean, dunno about the implementation.
-matt
I thought moderators weren't supposed to reveal their identities, although everyone seems to be 'breaking' this rule today so Rob, please don't bust me
I don't think that rule is still in place. I believe it was created when there was a "hand picked few" who did the moderating. Now that 'most anyone can do it, the rule doesn't make sense anymore.
I for one like it, now we have open discussions on what moderation is like from both sides of the equation. It's a better environment all round.
cheers,
-matt
...then I could simply recommend your post be up'ed one instead of replying with a silly one liner post like this one.
I don't know if it's been changed just because you posted the link or not, but that AC comment is now rated 1.
Aside from that though, you do still bring up an interesting question: Should the posters' identities be stripped when in moderation mode?
At first blush it sounds like it might be a good idea to me. What does everybody else think?
-matt
I don't know if it's been changed just because you posted the link or not, but that AC comment is now rated 1.
Aside from that though, you do still bring up an interesting question: Should the posters' identities be stripped when in moderation mode?
At first blush it sounds like it might be a good idea to me. What does everybody else think?
-matt
I have to agree, I want to know when I'm a moderator, and when not. When I've been granted moderator points, my attitude changes slightly.
Sort of like being on your best behaviour when Grandma is over for supper you know?
-matt
There is, go to your slashdot homepage.
Hmmm, I sense an RPG player, probably a GM... ;-)
Mostly just wanted to let you know somebody else saw the idea and liked it. Not being a moderator today, a short chatty post is the only way.
cheers,
-matt
Why so few comments to an important question like this?
Maybe it should be reposted. I simply don't believe there is so little interest in this question.
It's accurate if you read the whole bulletin. MS is no longer developing for the Alpha chips (32 or 64bit) in order to concentrate resources on the ia64 (Merced) version of Windows.
For those who don't know, Engelbart produced a working collaborative (network work groups), hypertext, point and click, and video conferencing system in 1968 . See Doug Engelbart's Unfinished Revolution at Stanford.
-matt