It's a crappy video phone that was "given away" with a contract, and I got it from a thrift store for $8 or so. Turns out it's got a Linux SBC in it, so between some of my own hacking and others who had reverse-engineered it, I turned it into a video game of sorts.
Jonty, I'm mixing hacking and art and becoming increasingly aware of the self-segragation of creative work into either "art" or "hacking". Here in Vancouver, for example, we have "art" events (art crawls, galleries, etc.) and "maker" culture (maker faires, hackspaces, etc.) with almost zero crossover. The presumption is that art will be expressive, shown in public, and saleable, and hacking will be insular, self-funded, and have limited appeal outside other hackers.
I've exhibited technological work on a small scale to an art crowd and gotten a positive response, but I worry that going further on that side of things will be an uphill battle. The knee-jerk response may be "that doesn't belong here".
Have you encountered this kind of pigeonholing? If so, how have you approached it?
OpenX has been through many twists and turns. I started using it with my employer when it was called phpAdsNew; it then became OpenAds; then OpenX.
It gradually went from a passably supported and FOSS-minded project to a hybrid model, with the FOSS part atrophying very quickly. It became clear to us that this was a liability and we stopped using it. We're now actively avoiding hybrid models like this.
Finding a 7-month-old backdoor vindicates our suspicions.
Ever tried to use an iPhone with Linux? If you can't run iTunes you can't do *anything*.
iTunes is a tool Apple uses to avoid using standards and thereby maintain full control over the user's experience. They're tying themselves in knots trying to do it all within a single app, but the alternative -- things like allowing the phone to be used as a USB storage device, as pretty much every other vendor does -- is un-Apple. It's a wonder they even support PTP for photos.
I've happily gone over to Android, which does have its own quirks, but at least my Samsung phone hasn't been crippled by the vendor.
Obviously I'm biased, since I work on the project -- but have you seen Public Knowledge Project's "Open Journal Systems"? It's FOSS and its goal is to automate the management and workflow for publishing an academic-style journal. It wouldn't do your layout etc. for you, but it would help with submission management, peer review, and a lot of the associated stuff that needs doing. See http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs for the details.
Cheers, Alec Smecher Public Knowledge Project Team
Telus received the last dollar they'll ever see from me years ago. They operate with the complacency of a monopoly and the ruthlessness of the worst private operation.
Good data plans are hard to come by in Canada; at the moment, Rogers has a temporary high-limit package that looks relatively attractive (expires at the end of August). Cracks are showing in the data provider cartel's uniform high prices and it's only a matter of time before someone jumps in with a reasonable data package and forces the rest down. Until then, I'll wait. If it's Telus that cracks first, I'll wait.
Okay, okay, okay -- this sounds like McKitrick's bluster. I actually READ his book, I read his criticism of Mann's methodology, and I read a few rounds of responses. This doesn't make me educated on the subject, but it makes me more than educated enough to talk about McKitrick. His credentials on the subject are poor, his charges against Mann's work do not invalidate it, and having read his book, I cannot seriously believe that he is working in good faith.
There are valid criticisms of current climate science, and they are coming from within the scientific community, including the IPCC. The field of research is moving fast and the near-consensus from the people who know the most is that we're in trouble.
Did you read McKitrick's recommendations for climate science? Basically this: "Boy, math sure is hard, so let's all give it up and go home and have drinks with our friends." I really wish I was joking.
OK, so we all know that many comp sci grads lack skill or interest. Now that high-paying jobs aren't plentiful, there are fewer money-grubbers in comp sci. Is this news? Not really.
What really bothers me is that nobody is talking about the simultaneous drop in quality of comp sci education. The universities are just as guilty of going for the green as the students. At my university, the school of computing science began hiring from the very bottom of the barrel to keep up with demand, rather than limiting entry. As a result, they are graduating students by the hundred who are literally incapable of describing how a computer works.
The university is getting rich by raising fees in the schools of computing science and engineering and rushing students through. My degree has been cheapened to the point where I'm almost embarassed to mention it to employers.
How about "Ravenous"? Hilarity, gore, and cannibalism!
It's a horror/(accidental?) black comedy from 1999 with Guy Pearce, David Arquette and Robert Carlyle. Lasted all of two weeks in theatres and awaits discovery by cult-hunting film geeks such as yourselves.
Features an excellent parting line: "That was... really... sneaky..."
Hold the bashing! What about Busybox?
on
Lineo near Death
·
· Score: 1
Hang on... How many of you embedded systems people have used Busybox? How about Tinylogin? I found these apps to be invaluable, and Lineo was pitching a large development effort for them.
I, for one, will miss Lineo - and I hope that the Lineo developers will get the respect (and reparations) they are due. They have made great contributions to the use of Linux in the embedded market.
I've been using JBoss for a little over a year, and my experience has been very good. It's fast, reliable, and seems to keep quite up-to-date with developing standards.
This kind of project is exactly what the free software world needs - usable, cutting-edge, and easily comparable with competing proprietary products.
This project has cemented my opinion on Java on Linux as a server platform, and when combined with PostgreSQL, it forms a complete and surprisingly robust setup.
I wish the JBoss team the best of luck and fully intend to keep using and recommending their software.
I'm feeling much the same way myself - I'm in 3rd year Comp Sci and working full-time for a high tech company.
Don't blame CS on your burnout - Blame IT. First, IT is BORING. It's repetitive, it's bland, but it's the bread and butter of the industry.
Second, the manner in which universities teach IT - at least the manner in which SFU teaches IT - is deplorable. The profs are sessionals who I can only surmise are teaching because they couldn't hold a job in the industry. The curriculum is half-baked because universities really don't understand software engineering.
Get a job, and try something more interesting like maybe embedded systems. Keep up with the degree, but consider finishing it part-time.
I'm a Java developer by day and a C programmer by night, and I think the pair would make an extremely powerful teaching combination - Java for high-level and OO, C for low-level algorithms, pointers, and speed.
Maybe universities should look at requiring students to learn both these languages (each in a different course) - It's not like students aren't going to have to learn a few extra languages anyway at some point.
This would solve a few problems I've seen at university - such as being forced to write low-level file I/O in a Software Design course that was supposed to focus on higher-level design. However, you'd still be able to write low-level algorithms such as those for balanced binary trees if the algorithms course used C.
It would also avoid the confusion a lot of people face when trying to differentiate between OO and traditional programming in the same language (C++)!
Slashdot Mirror
This one was kind of fun:
http://cassettepunk.com/large-projects/phonetendo/
It's a crappy video phone that was "given away" with a contract, and I got it from a thrift store for $8 or so. Turns out it's got a Linux SBC in it, so between some of my own hacking and others who had reverse-engineered it, I turned it into a video game of sorts.
Jonty, I'm mixing hacking and art and becoming increasingly aware of the self-segragation of creative work into either "art" or "hacking". Here in Vancouver, for example, we have "art" events (art crawls, galleries, etc.) and "maker" culture (maker faires, hackspaces, etc.) with almost zero crossover. The presumption is that art will be expressive, shown in public, and saleable, and hacking will be insular, self-funded, and have limited appeal outside other hackers.
I've exhibited technological work on a small scale to an art crowd and gotten a positive response, but I worry that going further on that side of things will be an uphill battle. The knee-jerk response may be "that doesn't belong here".
Have you encountered this kind of pigeonholing? If so, how have you approached it?
OpenX has been through many twists and turns. I started using it with my employer when it was called phpAdsNew; it then became OpenAds; then OpenX.
It gradually went from a passably supported and FOSS-minded project to a hybrid model, with the FOSS part atrophying very quickly. It became clear to us that this was a liability and we stopped using it. We're now actively avoiding hybrid models like this.
Finding a 7-month-old backdoor vindicates our suspicions.
A grenade implanted in the palm, obviously.
Ever tried to use an iPhone with Linux? If you can't run iTunes you can't do *anything*.
iTunes is a tool Apple uses to avoid using standards and thereby maintain full control over the user's experience. They're tying themselves in knots trying to do it all within a single app, but the alternative -- things like allowing the phone to be used as a USB storage device, as pretty much every other vendor does -- is un-Apple. It's a wonder they even support PTP for photos.
I've happily gone over to Android, which does have its own quirks, but at least my Samsung phone hasn't been crippled by the vendor.
Hi Bruce!
Obviously I'm biased, since I work on the project -- but have you seen Public Knowledge Project's "Open Journal Systems"? It's FOSS and its goal is to automate the management and workflow for publishing an academic-style journal. It wouldn't do your layout etc. for you, but it would help with submission management, peer review, and a lot of the associated stuff that needs doing. See http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs for the details.
Cheers,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team
Great, finally there's a way to get these damn lobsters off my crops!
Telus received the last dollar they'll ever see from me years ago. They operate with the complacency of a monopoly and the ruthlessness of the worst private operation.
Good data plans are hard to come by in Canada; at the moment, Rogers has a temporary high-limit package that looks relatively attractive (expires at the end of August). Cracks are showing in the data provider cartel's uniform high prices and it's only a matter of time before someone jumps in with a reasonable data package and forces the rest down. Until then, I'll wait. If it's Telus that cracks first, I'll wait.
Okay, okay, okay -- this sounds like McKitrick's bluster. I actually READ his book, I read his criticism of Mann's methodology, and I read a few rounds of responses. This doesn't make me educated on the subject, but it makes me more than educated enough to talk about McKitrick. His credentials on the subject are poor, his charges against Mann's work do not invalidate it, and having read his book, I cannot seriously believe that he is working in good faith.
There are valid criticisms of current climate science, and they are coming from within the scientific community, including the IPCC. The field of research is moving fast and the near-consensus from the people who know the most is that we're in trouble.
Did you read McKitrick's recommendations for climate science? Basically this: "Boy, math sure is hard, so let's all give it up and go home and have drinks with our friends." I really wish I was joking.
OK, so we all know that many comp sci grads lack skill or interest. Now that high-paying jobs aren't plentiful, there are fewer money-grubbers in comp sci. Is this news? Not really.
What really bothers me is that nobody is talking about the simultaneous drop in quality of comp sci education. The universities are just as guilty of going for the green as the students. At my university, the school of computing science began hiring from the very bottom of the barrel to keep up with demand, rather than limiting entry. As a result, they are graduating students by the hundred who are literally incapable of describing how a computer works.
The university is getting rich by raising fees in the schools of computing science and engineering and rushing students through. My degree has been cheapened to the point where I'm almost embarassed to mention it to employers.
Argh!
pHalec
How about "Ravenous"? Hilarity, gore, and cannibalism!
It's a horror/(accidental?) black comedy from 1999 with Guy Pearce, David Arquette and Robert Carlyle. Lasted all of two weeks in theatres and awaits discovery by cult-hunting film geeks such as yourselves.
Features an excellent parting line: "That was... really... sneaky..."
Hang on... How many of you embedded systems people have used Busybox? How about Tinylogin? I found these apps to be invaluable, and Lineo was pitching a large development effort for them.
I, for one, will miss Lineo - and I hope that the Lineo developers will get the respect (and reparations) they are due. They have made great contributions to the use of Linux in the embedded market.
Bah, I've got an old Pentium with some faulty memory that crashes on a regular basis.
It's been reliably packet-forwarding for me for over a month with a kernel-oops on screen.
I've been using JBoss for a little over a year, and my experience has been very good. It's fast, reliable, and seems to keep quite up-to-date with developing standards.
This kind of project is exactly what the free software world needs - usable, cutting-edge, and easily comparable with competing proprietary products.
This project has cemented my opinion on Java on Linux as a server platform, and when combined with PostgreSQL, it forms a complete and surprisingly robust setup.
I wish the JBoss team the best of luck and fully intend to keep using and recommending their software.
...and every time you make fun of a khaki-wearing dot-commer on a scooter, an angel bursts into flames.
I'm feeling much the same way myself - I'm in 3rd year Comp Sci and working full-time for a high tech company.
Don't blame CS on your burnout - Blame IT. First, IT is BORING. It's repetitive, it's bland, but it's the bread and butter of the industry.
Second, the manner in which universities teach IT - at least the manner in which SFU teaches IT - is deplorable. The profs are sessionals who I can only surmise are teaching because they couldn't hold a job in the industry. The curriculum is half-baked because universities really don't understand software engineering.
Get a job, and try something more interesting like maybe embedded systems. Keep up with the degree, but consider finishing it part-time.
pHalec
I'm a Java developer by day and a C programmer by night, and I think the pair would make an extremely powerful teaching combination - Java for high-level and OO, C for low-level algorithms, pointers, and speed.
Maybe universities should look at requiring students to learn both these languages (each in a different course) - It's not like students aren't going to have to learn a few extra languages anyway at some point.
This would solve a few problems I've seen at university - such as being forced to write low-level file I/O in a Software Design course that was supposed to focus on higher-level design. However, you'd still be able to write low-level algorithms such as those for balanced binary trees if the algorithms course used C.
It would also avoid the confusion a lot of people face when trying to differentiate between OO and traditional programming in the same language (C++)!