It could make for an interesting project: get synaptic to work with yum. I have no idea how feasible it would be, but there are always people asking for an interesting contribution to make to free software...
Analysing the text content of an e-mail to put "appropriate" ads equals reading in my book. Why are you emmploying the term "statistical analysis"?
It is analysing the meaning of your mail, the semantics... it's equal to reading.
And I'm not paranoid, I didn't say Google would secretly channel the information to Homeland security or anything. I said it was a dangerous precedent that people wouldn't be ignoring if it was done by a less popular company than Google.
I really didn't say anything outrageous. And in fact I'm not outraged, but I'm worried.
Wow! Google always get a free pass on Slashdot, it seems.
"Privacy isn't a concern because, after all, *you* choose to give it up by using the service"? I think it's wrong. I think the facts that Gmail reads your incoming mail to choose which text ads it will show you is a very bad precedent. Isn't it the first time someone offers a communication service and they tell you that they will know the content of every message you get?
The fascination with the power of technology blinds the Google team it seems (like it blinds people on Slashdot), I wonder what Norvig thinks of this issue...
Until this "strategic partnership" I was following groove, hoping they would take a multiplatform aproach.
I don't know how succesful they are, but being Microsoft only and having close ties to US "Homeland security" is not a very good way to expand their worldwide marketshare.
Anyway, there's still waste (I just noticed it has resurfaced)
It seems to me none of the examples you give were caused by forking a project. It doesn't mean you're wrong about the problems with to many choices for the end-user.
You said it yourself: > Having one standard is often better.
I'm not sure having projects fork makes standard more difficult to achieve, even if it seems counterintuitive.
Obviously talking about the size of my head was intentional, see http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd03xx/EWD340. PDF
Yes, I haven't kept up, this is the point. Python's simplicity was it's single most useful feature. Judging from other comments, I'm not the only one to think the Python hackers are more keen to show their cleverness than to strive for simplicity.
Recently, I'm finding Ruby has more conceptual integrity.
"... at 591 pages, this is a major upgrade to the 366 page original. Furthermore, the Python language has undergone extensive improvements and additions in the last five years..."
Sadly, I think Python has grown to large recently. It has lost part of its cohesion because of this. The language has been getting fatter as fast as this book between editions (+60 % pages, I mean c'mon). It doesn't fit it my head like it used to.
Maybe they don't want to do everything like Photoshop. Maybe if they did people here would complain that "open source needs to innovate, not copy existing software"?
Plone is big, it's a full Intranet-in-a-box. If EZpublish is enough for your site, you don't need Plone.
But you should do this (I did it). Take one or two days and prepare 2 mock websites (a standard corporate site and a community/portal site). Download a few 'CMS' and try them with these sites. It seems obvious but you'll discover a lot not only about their capabilities but the way you're at ease with them or not.
If EZ Publish is too little you should check Drupal. But test Plone anyway, some people really love it.
Plone is cool when you begin to use it because it seems to work immediatly, has a ton of functionality and looks good. I don't doubt it's a fine piece of software but there are big problems with it.
First, Zope's internals are overly complex and sometime guided by ideological choices (the object database IMHO). It's a closed world with its own culture and logic. Its culture doesn't promote interoperability (again that's my feeling). It takes you out of the Web and into Zope Universe (after all this year, there are still problem when you want Apache and Zope to talk together, eg. Digest authentication).
Zope is often dubbed (I think Jon Uddel first said this) "Python's killer app" but I find it very non-Pythonic: overly complex, non-explicit and un-welcoming. Plone adds another layer on top of CMF, Zope, the object database... it is very difficult to understand.
I think that the best web setup is still a light and fast frontend (and PHP is good at that), a solid Database (PostgreSQL is better than a lot of people believe) and a third "business logic" tier which can be a separate application or shared between the frontend and stored procedure in the database. It's not the perfect theorical model but it's manageable, it stays simple (if you work hard enough to keep it simple) and you can evolve a simple website towards this model without restarting from scratch each time the requirements change ("embrace change", remember?).
I'm fascinated by Zope and Plone because they do so much and frankly, I don't know if I'd be able to write such a piece of software. But I think it goes in the wrong direction: the application server direction. It tries to coerce the light, simple and stateless nature of the Web into the heavyweight transactional world of corporate applications, just like the Java world does (Java Server Faces seems to make it worse). It is difficult to make a good Web application, but it's even more difficult when you fight against the Web and the way it works.
1) We don't want to have to pay someone to tally all the votes. If its not computerized, someone has to count them all up. When there's around 100 million votes for president, that's a lot of minimum wage hours right there!
Are you serious? Are the people who count the votes not volunteers in the US?
I'm tired of these arguments, people keep saying them but it won't make them true.
Unix systems also had millions of dollars of engineering (strange measuring unit for engineering), X Window also...
Adobe doesn't (to the best of my knowledge) use secret algorithms, they have high quality standard and know how to leverage a few technological advantages to get a strong grip on the market.
Also, speaking as if Open Source or Free software was only written by hobbyists or students is a little ignorant, don't you think? Have you checked the eclipse project, for instance?
I think you're wrong. Patching defective software is necessary but it isn't an excuse for having shipped defective software in the first place.
The rate at wich Microsoft produces patches is itself a problem, you have to spend a lot of time tracking what's going on at windows update. This is not safe nor sane
Not to troll here, but are you seriously saying that you were interested in OpenBSD features but that the KVM was a show stopper? This is crazy, have you asked yourself how OpenBSD user do?
Slashdot Mirror
"grinding data into digestible chunks for his boss to use in extracting more money from an unsuspecting public"
this is good, you should write
The best PostgreSQL frontend I've ever used is... Ms Access.
I'm not joking PostgreSQL + Access makes a perfect combination.
It could make for an interesting project: get synaptic to work with yum. I have no idea how feasible it would be, but there are always people asking for an interesting contribution to make to free software...
Analysing the text content of an e-mail to put "appropriate" ads equals reading in my book. Why are you emmploying the term "statistical analysis"?
It is analysing the meaning of your mail, the semantics... it's equal to reading.
And I'm not paranoid, I didn't say Google would secretly channel the information to Homeland security or anything. I said it was a dangerous precedent that people wouldn't be ignoring if it was done by a less popular company than Google.
I really didn't say anything outrageous. And in fact I'm not outraged, but I'm worried.
Wow! Google always get a free pass on Slashdot, it seems.
"Privacy isn't a concern because, after all, *you* choose to give it up by using the service"? I think it's wrong. I think the facts that Gmail reads your incoming mail to choose which text ads it will show you is a very bad precedent. Isn't it the first time someone offers a communication service and they tell you that they will know the content of every message you get?
The fascination with the power of technology blinds the Google team it seems (like it blinds people on Slashdot), I wonder what Norvig thinks of this issue...
Microsoft made a $51 million investment in Groove. See: Groove's FAQ and Microsoft's press release
Until this "strategic partnership" I was following groove, hoping they would take a multiplatform aproach.
I don't know how succesful they are, but being Microsoft only and having close ties to US "Homeland security" is not a very good way to expand their worldwide marketshare.
Anyway, there's still waste (I just noticed it has resurfaced)
Thank you for your links. Most informative slashdot post in ages!
It seems to me none of the examples you give were caused by forking a project. It doesn't mean you're wrong about the problems with to many choices for the end-user.
You said it yourself:
> Having one standard is often better.
I'm not sure having projects fork makes standard more difficult to achieve, even if it seems counterintuitive.
Google? I got that. What do I do next?
Why do these kind of bullshit comment always get moderated up? Does anyone find it "interesting" or "insightful"?
"Get a bigger head."
. PDF
Obviously talking about the size of my head was intentional, see http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd03xx/EWD340
Yes, I haven't kept up, this is the point. Python's simplicity was it's single most useful feature. Judging from other comments, I'm not the only one to think the Python hackers are more keen to show their cleverness than to strive for simplicity.
Recently, I'm finding Ruby has more conceptual integrity.
"... at 591 pages, this is a major upgrade to the 366 page original. Furthermore, the Python language has undergone extensive improvements and additions in the last five years..."
Sadly, I think Python has grown to large recently. It has lost part of its cohesion because of this. The language has been getting fatter as fast as this book between editions (+60 % pages, I mean c'mon). It doesn't fit it my head like it used to.
Maybe they don't want to do everything like Photoshop.
Maybe if they did people here would complain that "open source needs to innovate, not copy existing software"?
The main difference is scope.
Plone is big, it's a full Intranet-in-a-box. If EZpublish is enough for your site, you don't need Plone.
But you should do this (I did it). Take one or two days and prepare 2 mock websites (a standard corporate site and a community/portal site). Download a few 'CMS' and try them with these sites. It seems obvious but you'll discover a lot not only about their capabilities but the way you're at ease with them or not.
If EZ Publish is too little you should check Drupal. But test Plone anyway, some people really love it.
Plone is cool when you begin to use it because it seems to work immediatly, has a ton of functionality and looks good. I don't doubt it's a fine piece of software but there are big problems with it.
First, Zope's internals are overly complex and sometime guided by ideological choices (the object database IMHO). It's a closed world with its own culture and logic. Its culture doesn't promote interoperability (again that's my feeling). It takes you out of the Web and into Zope Universe (after all this year, there are still problem when you want Apache and Zope to talk together, eg. Digest authentication).
Zope is often dubbed (I think Jon Uddel first said this) "Python's killer app" but I find it very non-Pythonic: overly complex, non-explicit and un-welcoming. Plone adds another layer on top of CMF, Zope, the object database... it is very difficult to understand.
I think that the best web setup is still a light and fast frontend (and PHP is good at that), a solid Database (PostgreSQL is better than a lot of people believe) and a third "business logic" tier which can be a separate application or shared between the frontend and stored procedure in the database. It's not the perfect theorical model but it's manageable, it stays simple (if you work hard enough to keep it simple) and you can evolve a simple website towards this model without restarting from scratch each time the requirements change ("embrace change", remember?).
I'm fascinated by Zope and Plone because they do so much and frankly, I don't know if I'd be able to write such a piece of software. But I think it goes in the wrong direction: the application server direction. It tries to coerce the light, simple and stateless nature of the Web into the heavyweight transactional world of corporate applications, just like the Java world does (Java Server Faces seems to make it worse). It is difficult to make a good Web application, but it's even more difficult when you fight against the Web and the way it works.
Are you serious? Are the people who count the votes not volunteers in the US?
I'm tired of these arguments, people keep saying them but it won't make them true.
Unix systems also had millions of dollars of engineering (strange measuring unit for engineering), X Window also...
Adobe doesn't (to the best of my knowledge) use secret algorithms, they have high quality standard and know how to leverage a few technological advantages to get a strong grip on the market.
Also, speaking as if Open Source or Free software was only written by hobbyists or students is a little ignorant, don't you think? Have you checked the eclipse project, for instance?
I think you're wrong. Patching defective software is necessary but it isn't an excuse for having shipped defective software in the first place.
The rate at wich Microsoft produces patches is itself a problem, you have to spend a lot of time tracking what's going on at windows update. This is not safe nor sane
You must be kidding, look at the tpc performance results and see who's on top
SQL Server has a lot of issues but performance is not one of them.
Is that my Koan, sensei?
Not to troll here, but are you seriously saying that you were interested in OpenBSD features but that the KVM was a show stopper? This is crazy, have you asked yourself how OpenBSD user do?
...But not all zip files are jar files
You could start here:
Oreilly Network ONDotNet
The colours are artificial. Landsat doesn't take photographs.
This is exactly what I experienced: had Mozilla, kept using IE, tried Phoenix, switched.
Part of it may be the default keyboard shortcuts are the same as IE (Alt-D, Shift+Click on link...).