...given that most Slashdot readers seem to be advocates of Open Source operating systems on commodity hardware, why the enthusiasm for encouraging people to switch to OSX - a closed source operating system made by the poster-child for locking people into overpriced hardware?
Pssst! It's because we wish to sounds divinely unprejudiced. This is a safe way of doing it while holding our defenses. *...dont tell anyone else*.
I did not (and still don't?) now have anything against MacOS X but that articles makes it sounds like everything is turned up side down. Really, I had the belief that Mac OS X is just about same as everything else *nix. However, this article did good work in convincing something else.
My question is: would you for example consider donating some hours to help a goodwill project - if you could do that from home. This is of interest to me, as I would like to be sure that the time we put into building co-operating with a big organization like UNITeS and others in the future is not wasted.
Based on the feedback, Yes - I will use time to proceed with the proposal to UNITeS. Also, there was a lot of feedback which helps me in this work. Also, I now know more about the weak points of this approach and can start thinking for answers to them. So, final thank you to all of you who used some brain cycles on thinking. I hope you will hear some good news regarding this co-operation within a couple of months. Thanks!
People have already proven at least a passive willingness with distributed computing projects. The next obvious step is to donate a little non-profit coding
Yes, think of it as donating your brain cycles, instead of CPU ones:)
...I must wiegh in on the side of posters who have mentioned starting in our own backyard. As a father of two, I am quite concerned, for example, about public schools and technology resources. Even in affluent areas, the resources available are poor, I can only imagine the need in the inner city.
Thanks for the comment! A clip from another thread.
"Exactly, schools, universities and other organisations like could also benefit - and we are trying to get them informed. If you know any, please feel free to spread the word. Actually, if you read the 'about openchallenge' page you will find a fairy tale tailored for universities.:)"
Anyone notice that for the last openchallenge there were only two entries in three months [openchallenge.org]? How is this local team going to be able to effectively use their own time when they can't count on the work they have "delegated" abroad being completed? Timing of component completion is essential when implementing a large project
Yeah. That's the reality. However, keep in mind that we have not spend any penny in marketing - and actually just started spreading the word. Anyway, since the beginning, the hitrate on the server has been exponential, and I hope that within next 6 months there is already real potential. It will take time, but there is no hurry. If people think it's a good thing, the word will spread. If not, nothing is lost.
I teach in an MIS degree at an Australian university. One of our ongoing tasks (although a minor one in my case, as I primarily teach coding) is to form arrangements with industry to give students real-world experience at developing information systems - a number of subjects are heavily project-based, so we need a lot of projects to provide our students with the design and implementation experience that they need.
Exactly, schools, universities and other organisations like could also benefit - and we are trying to get them informed. If you know any, please feel free to spread the word. Actually, if you read the 'about openchallenge' page you will find a fairy tale tailored for universities.:)
So I couldn't pay right away. So I accrued interest. I'd volunteer if uncle sam wiped the interest clean
Someone should suggest Uncle Sam that they should re-invent goods-trading economy on these issues. I am sure they have lots of software projects to which people like you could participate - and as result get your debts cleared in exchange:)
...But what about the organizations in the US-- Non-profits, schools, etc.-- that don't have enough money/know-how to set up a decent system.
Exactly. Organisations like this is another group we will try to get informed. If you know any that might benefit from openchallenge - please spread the word. For schools, fairy tale written in 'about openchallenge' might provide some hints on how to utilize it.
Well for what it is worth - I started something called VWDN (virtual web developers network) about six months ago. Here are the details: Volunteer Web Developers Network (VWDN) is a network of socially responsible individuals who provide free technology services to the nonprofit community
for the rest of the readers, we already exchanged emails - and will probably try and find ways for co-operation between VWDN and openchallenge..:)
Thanks for the quality comments, criticism, ideas and flames. There really was a lot of useful input and pointers. It will help me a great deal when appoaching UNITeS and other organisations. I will also steal your input to build a FAQ later on:))
if he can't READ that they are already doing this:
http://www.unites.org/html/unites/faq.htm#online [unites.org]
http://www.netaid.org/OV/ [netaid.org]
http://www.unites.org/html/news/n220502.htm [unites.org]
I know about netaid. I believe we can complement it. According to my (limited) knowledge, contributing through netaid poses quite many constraints and has some limitations - also it is targeting a much wider focus, software is not the key issue in it. Yes, it might be that in the end the co-operation will be with NetAid, instead of UNITeS. However, the matter is worth investing.
How about helping out Unemployed Programmers by paying us to write code. For example, buy some one-way tickets back home for H-1B job-hoggers. I am not a biggot: America should simply take care of its own family before taking care of the world.
1) I don't have money. 2) I believe many unemployed programmers would get work, if they could show that they have real life experience. You could understand participating in a goodwill project as education. I really believe, that if you are unemployed - by helping someone else, you are helping yourself.
Sounds like a concept similar to this. [geekcorps.org]
Thanks, I just realized that we have not yet talked with them about co-operation. Will do so. I believe same principles of co-operation could work with them as with UNITeS.
If someone from geekcorps is listening, let's see who acts faster:))
Hehe! I am glad atleast someone spotted it. And before some says "Haha, you will get sued by United Media".... yes, I asked Scott Adams for permission to do it. It seems he's a nice guy:)
but has it ever occured to you that your properties of hard work and endurance which have given you the lifestyle that you enjoy wouldn't mean squat if your country dissolved into a bloody civil war?
And if one day you were to find out that your country had dissolved into war or your economy had imploded into a gooey mess of corruption, wouldn't you be comforted by the hope that somewhere out there there might be smart, talented people who care about other human beings in real dire straits and for whatever reason use their powers and skills to help
Uh, you know I already wrote around one hundred lines in reply to your comment, until I noticed that there is no point in doing it.
Instead, I think all I have say to this is: Yes, we are insanely much better of than most of the other people living on this globe. No, I don't believe people in the lucky countries are interested enough in helping out those whose life is miserable. This is why I think we need ways to contribute to goodwill projects, which does not require complete rewrite of your life. For those that have huge amounts of excess money, donate some of that to an organisation that can find a good use for it. For those that have extra capacity in their head or skills (like programmers), donate some of your time to goodwill projects. For those that can build conrete things with their hands, participate in a such project. I think that there should be possibilities for helping by giving out a part of your excess resources, whatever it may be.
And the motivation for it? Who cares if the motivation was just getting a free GPS module? So what? Atleast I am just an average greedy person, and am interested in cool gadgets, good food, good TV shows. Sorry. There is no chance that I could ever devote myself to others like some other people do. However, I have decided that atleast for now, when I have extra resources left after running the simple survival process, I will put some of these extra resources atleast into thinking how these extra resources could help others. But yes, be warned - if a civil war starts in Finland, my first concern will not be keeping openchallenge.org up and running.
While I appreciate your noble intentions, I'm not 100% sure how software development would help most 3rd world and developing nations. Unless, I've really been living under a rock, most of the people in such nations who would benefit from such are high up the power ladder and have little to no interest in distributing down the ladder.
Yes, I know that I cannot fix the hunger problem by this approach. Also, I am too much a sissy to take real action of going in there to help. One excuse is that I want to stay safely at home with the kids:) Anyway, if we with openchallenge can give any contribution - it enables the local time to concentrate on other matters. Also, it might be possible to complete projects that were impossible before. Also, if you would make a contribution safely from your home, doing what you can do best (coding) - maybe the step of actually going there gets smaller when you are already more familiar with the work done there. Also, keep in mind that to fix the hunger problem, something needs to be fundamentally changed. Shipping in food and other resources is crucial but it only fixes the instant problem.
Otherwise, the final result will be that each country will have it's specifically censored index which will ultimately result into a mess which does not change anything but only makes
hypocrites feel good. There is not much you can do by applying local rules, and in the context of internet every corner of the globe is local. Ohh, and this is not a free speech campaign - IMHO, it is just stupid that even at this very exact moment tens or hundreds of people are wasting time & money trying fix the problem with the wrong approach. As the publisher of the site with racist content said:
It's really a French and German issue rather than a Google issue."
I don't even have a CDRW drive myself, but I do know that 30-40 rewrites is way too little. If I were you I think I would blame the drive. Bad laser maybe? Without knowing much, I assume you could also try changing your burner SW it would seem logical that you can either conserve the disk or torture it by the SW - maybe you could for example extend the life and get more bang per $$ by not utilizing each disk 100%. This way, the burner could burn it with a significantly different pattern every time.... Or then again, maybe everything I guessed is utter crap:)
is here. It has much more interesting content, including some specifications, the fact that they have filed 330 related patent applications, some info about the process of making the displays and finally some images:) Now someone who wants to ride around and avoid breaking any of the 330 patents will have to be very careful. Infact, some might think that Sharp is actually slowing down the development with this invention and making it harder for others to enter the market.
I was visiting the Vancouver site a couple of months ago when they were assembling it. It looks sweet. A nice big array of Dual Athalons. The system is being linked together over CA*Net 3, a nation wide OC192 fibre network.
The article does not seem to mention whether they use a ready made grid/distributed computing platform or are they whipping up it themselves? Or am I blind? Does anyone know more about this? And what do they mean by:
"The computers will be linked by the Internet, but involve a simple networking system, Lu said. Keeping the linkage as simple as possible was the goal."
Based on the article I would assume that they have made a custom tailored system (if not kludge) for one specific purpose ("for calculating energy shifts as two molecules are manipulated around 3-D space") - and not a platform which could be easily tailored and managed to solve different kinds of tasks with different kinds of relationships between the tasks.
..so why do they make policy statements like this, then:
"Covered entities under the ADA are required to provide effective communication, regardless of whether they generally communicate through print media, audio media, or computerized media such as the Internet. Covered entities that use the Internet for communications regarding their programs, goods, or services must be prepared to offer those communications through accessible means as well."
I did not think ADA would apply to web, but this policy ruling hints that atleast DoJ thinks it should ??
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, OS X sounds like Unix. I was not flaming OSX, I was flaming the article, which gave a hysterical view to the situation.
Pssst! It's because we wish to sounds divinely unprejudiced. This is a safe way of doing it while holding our defenses. *...dont tell anyone else*.
I did not (and still don't?) now have anything against MacOS X but that articles makes it sounds like everything is turned up side down. Really, I had the belief that Mac OS X is just about same as everything else *nix. However, this article did good work in convincing something else.
Based on the feedback, Yes - I will use time to proceed with the proposal to UNITeS. Also, there was a lot of feedback which helps me in this work. Also, I now know more about the weak points of this approach and can start thinking for answers to them. So, final thank you to all of you who used some brain cycles on thinking. I hope you will hear some good news regarding this co-operation within a couple of months. Thanks!
Yes, think of it as donating your brain cycles, instead of CPU ones :)
Thanks for the comment! A clip from another thread. "Exactly, schools, universities and other organisations like could also benefit - and we are trying to get them informed. If you know any, please feel free to spread the word. Actually, if you read the 'about openchallenge' page you will find a fairy tale tailored for universities. :)"
ps. I am also a father of two :)
Yeah. That's the reality. However, keep in mind that we have not spend any penny in marketing - and actually just started spreading the word. Anyway, since the beginning, the hitrate on the server has been exponential, and I hope that within next 6 months there is already real potential. It will take time, but there is no hurry. If people think it's a good thing, the word will spread. If not, nothing is lost.
Exactly, schools, universities and other organisations like could also benefit - and we are trying to get them informed. If you know any, please feel free to spread the word. Actually, if you read the 'about openchallenge' page you will find a fairy tale tailored for universities. :)
Someone should suggest Uncle Sam that they should re-invent goods-trading economy on these issues. I am sure they have lots of software projects to which people like you could participate - and as result get your debts cleared in exchange :)
Exactly. Organisations like this is another group we will try to get informed. If you know any that might benefit from openchallenge - please spread the word. For schools, fairy tale written in 'about openchallenge' might provide some hints on how to utilize it.
for the rest of the readers, we already exchanged emails - and will probably try and find ways for co-operation between VWDN and openchallenge.. :)
Thanks for helping!
I know about netaid. I believe we can complement it. According to my (limited) knowledge, contributing through netaid poses quite many constraints and has some limitations - also it is targeting a much wider focus, software is not the key issue in it. Yes, it might be that in the end the co-operation will be with NetAid, instead of UNITeS. However, the matter is worth investing.
1) I don't have money. 2) I believe many unemployed programmers would get work, if they could show that they have real life experience. You could understand participating in a goodwill project as education. I really believe, that if you are unemployed - by helping someone else, you are helping yourself.
Thanks, I just realized that we have not yet talked with them about co-operation. Will do so. I believe same principles of co-operation could work with them as with UNITeS. If someone from geekcorps is listening, let's see who acts faster :))
Hi Jussi, Sure, you can use it.
Not a long reply though ;)))
And if one day you were to find out that your country had dissolved into war or your economy had imploded into a gooey mess of corruption, wouldn't you be comforted by the hope that somewhere out there there might be smart, talented people who care about other human beings in real dire straits and for whatever reason use their powers and skills to help
Uh, you know I already wrote around one hundred lines in reply to your comment, until I noticed that there is no point in doing it.
Instead, I think all I have say to this is: Yes, we are insanely much better of than most of the other people living on this globe. No, I don't believe people in the lucky countries are interested enough in helping out those whose life is miserable. This is why I think we need ways to contribute to goodwill projects, which does not require complete rewrite of your life. For those that have huge amounts of excess money, donate some of that to an organisation that can find a good use for it. For those that have extra capacity in their head or skills (like programmers), donate some of your time to goodwill projects. For those that can build conrete things with their hands, participate in a such project. I think that there should be possibilities for helping by giving out a part of your excess resources, whatever it may be.
And the motivation for it? Who cares if the motivation was just getting a free GPS module? So what? Atleast I am just an average greedy person, and am interested in cool gadgets, good food, good TV shows. Sorry. There is no chance that I could ever devote myself to others like some other people do. However, I have decided that atleast for now, when I have extra resources left after running the simple survival process, I will put some of these extra resources atleast into thinking how these extra resources could help others. But yes, be warned - if a civil war starts in Finland, my first concern will not be keeping openchallenge.org up and running.
Yes, I know that I cannot fix the hunger problem by this approach. Also, I am too much a sissy to take real action of going in there to help. One excuse is that I want to stay safely at home with the kids :) Anyway, if we with openchallenge can give any contribution - it enables the local time to concentrate on other matters. Also, it might be possible to complete projects that were impossible before. Also, if you would make a contribution safely from your home, doing what you can do best (coding) - maybe the step of actually going there gets smaller when you are already more familiar with the work done there. Also, keep in mind that to fix the hunger problem, something needs to be fundamentally changed. Shipping in food and other resources is crucial but it only fixes the instant problem.
It's really a French and German issue rather than a Google issue."
tar -c myself && dis locate work->home.
I don't even have a CDRW drive myself, but I do know that 30-40 rewrites is way too little. If I were you I think I would blame the drive. Bad laser maybe? Without knowing much, I assume you could also try changing your burner SW it would seem logical that you can either conserve the disk or torture it by the SW - maybe you could for example extend the life and get more bang per $$ by not utilizing each disk 100%. This way, the burner could burn it with a significantly different pattern every time.... Or then again, maybe everything I guessed is utter crap :)
is here. It has much more interesting content, including some specifications, the fact that they have filed 330 related patent applications, some info about the process of making the displays and finally some images :) Now someone who wants to ride around and avoid breaking any of the 330 patents will have to be very careful. Infact, some might think that Sharp is actually slowing down the development with this invention and making it harder for others to enter the market.
Ohh, that explains it. Thanks for the info!
"The computers will be linked by the Internet, but involve a simple networking system, Lu said. Keeping the linkage as simple as possible was the goal."
Based on the article I would assume that they have made a custom tailored system (if not kludge) for one specific purpose ("for calculating energy shifts as two molecules are manipulated around 3-D space") - and not a platform which could be easily tailored and managed to solve different kinds of tasks with different kinds of relationships between the tasks.
Ohh, I could also link my grid computing links.
"Covered entities under the ADA are required to provide effective communication, regardless of whether they generally communicate through print media, audio media, or computerized media such as the Internet. Covered entities that use the Internet for communications regarding their programs, goods, or services must be prepared to offer those communications through accessible means as well."
I did not think ADA would apply to web, but this policy ruling hints that atleast DoJ thinks it should ??