It's great that GNU has a LIMS candidate, but it would be nice if one could "try it out" or at least see some some screen shots. I feel GNU has such a deep marketing/branding issue -- case and point, the tryton framework which seemingly should be a Drupal/Django competitor doesn't ever seem to come into the conversation. I'm not trolling, I'm a big fan, just pointing out that by not concentrating on the "people use the software" problem they might be accelerating their path to obsolescence in areas where there's not a huge community that is essentially captive, e.g., GCC.
About 7 years ago, I moved from California to Argentina for work. I had a degree in CS and had worked professionally as a Java dev for three years. I couldn't get any work in the US so I decided to brush up on my spanish and see if I could find a job down there.
After arriving in Argentina, I translated my resume and started looking for work by finding the equivalent of Monster.com (bumeran.com). It took about 3 weeks, but I got interviews at both Sony and IBM. IBM wanted to send me to Canada for consulting because I spoke english:). Since that wasn't the goal, I went with Sony. Lots of the labor in these places is not actually employed by the large corporation, but by a "placement" service. This company paid me $600/month for full-time employment. I had been making around 70k in the US, but in argentina the 10x paycut was manageable. Indeed, I was making 1/2 of some of my coworkers - because I wasn't legally employed, the placement company paid me less, but paid me in cash.
The experience was fantastic. There, 9-5 actually meant 9-5 - very limited flexibility in terms of hours and what I could work on, but it was okay, I was doing it more for the concept. The engineers were all excellent and my American education didn't either disadvantage or help -- we all were pretty up on the lastest java techniques.
After about 4 months, I decided that this glimpse into the future was sufficient so I returned to the US to do a PhD.
First, as usual, the post makes an infirmed attempt at giving the user any help in actually understanding the issue. Second, oracle has really never been successful in giving end-users a reasonably effective piece of software. They make great software and horrible interfaces. Using open office, I think about how great it would be if shuttleworth got into it. It is not as good as word and i say that with regret.
Thats exactly what I thought.... seriously though, I don't know if I can deal with any more of these SCO stories. Can we have a new icon to represent these? Maybe like a festering wound, or feces?
I think the pdf was quite good, albeit repetitive. In any case, in the end, I think he makes an interesting point about abstraction:
On the surface this seems fairly innocuous; why not make some abbreviations so that
things can be said more economically? The problem is that definitions matter. They come from
aesthetic decisions about what distinctions you as an artist consider important. And they are
problem-generated. To make a definition is to highlight and call attention to a feature or
structural property.
Learning to make good abstraction when programming is a difficult challenge, the right choice can have huge downstream consequences. An educational system which allowed students to get comfortable with the exploration of different abstractions, as well as, the forestalling of notation and rigour until the right rigour was appropriate would be a huge win to reasoning across the board.
Okay since its your PhD thesis you should aim high. Try to come up with a new metaphor. The tired, oft-wrong, and certainly too-broad-to-have-any-real-value metaphor of the "building" or "house" as software needs to be retired. I don't really know many professional software engineers who also design skyscrapers, but I know that my architect friends aren't using software engineering terminology, such as, "no code dup" to reason about how many doors we might want to stick on their new projects.
The metaphor should be helpful. It should make us believe that the same principle which governs one domain is applicable in another domain where reasoning is often more difficult. The metaphor breaks down however when we try so hard to "fit" it to the second domain.
I am saying that the parts of the building metaphor which fit -- we get (that doesn't mean we design correctly). Its the parts that don't really fit that are interesting. This might be were software design is somehow different than building design.
I don't really think this embodies any culture's mindset - I think that this is just bad design. I really cannot imagine why 1.) you want this "virtual" screen - it is just annoying to have to pan around to see the whole window. It is like walking around with a ski-mask on and constantly having to adjust your ski-mask - you'd rather just take off the masks. 2.) why have the touchpad and the keypoard one and the same - they seem to have a fair amount of real estate in the middle to use.
I think it is just really bad on many levels - I imagine their target audience is people with limited experience on a computer.
Well, one small advantage of having your apps online is that you don't have to manage updates and patches. I admit with a good update system this might be a moot point, also you might argue that it is unfortunate that "you" cannot control your updates, however, I imagine for a large class of users this is a win.
Okay, I have read enough of these posts about what free is/is-not and who cares? The main issue between knol and wikipedia will be who is paying. Theoretically, wikipedia is funded publicly and thus no one major donor/group can affect the content in a way in-line with their wishes (think network tv / public television) .
Now, knol on the other hand, as many have pointed out will be funded by revenue from advertisers much like network television is funded; when push comes to shove if an advertiser is footing the bill they have some say in the content.
Google prides itself on fairness and "do no wrong," but out of all the private companies in the past how many put the proliferation of knowledge before the generation of capital?
Getting them to actually start developing code for one a step above that, and getting them to all agree on the same protocol/interface simply impossible.
This is wrong as evidenced by the fact that as soon as there was a usable API there were 6000 silly applications possibly none of which earned anyone who developed them any money. They probably developed them for the same reasons OSS developers write code.
What has been consistently true is that if you give people a platform and invite them to develop on that platform a small fraction of people will do so; increasing the value of that platform.
I think the OP has a goal which is noble. I don't think there are any technological challenges to surmount with facebook (as opposed to an open source Google) as many have pointed out. The success of any OSS venture would probably have to provide a way to suck all your content out of facebook, friendster, orkut, etc . before the thing even got off the ground .
Random that this post came just hours after I saw Kim Polese, CEO of SpikeSource who: "certifiy and support open source software" Ostensibly she was supposed to speak about: "the open source software movement", however what what she really did was talk about what her new company does, which is certify "open source software stacks" and service models for OSS. It was really insightful to see the way in which she framed the problem, ie. Companies have hoards of IT people running around frantically patching systems so we step in and do automatic patching.
It is interesting that companies do not see that the vendors (debian, redhat, microsoft) are at a massive advantage when it comes to automatically patching the systems... it seems like this should almost be a solved problem.
He doesn't claim that people wouldn't do what you describe. He just claims that those acting that way would ultimately hurt themselves.
In fact, he is probably correct that in the long-term these people would hurt themsleves, but he fails to consider that in the near term people could certainly benefit from the exploitation of OSS.
The GPL is important because it prevents these near term exploitations and fosters innovations/open-standards because private institutions are beholden to the community.
Now if the markets were perfect, ESR might have a more valid point, but just as economists loathed including anti-monoply clauses in law, it became necessary because the market is not perfect -
I think its really dissapointing when I read all of the flamebait on this thread.
I've been a loyal debian user for a while and I happen to like the system which they use to control the level of stability/upgradeability that your willing to tolerate.
Furthermore, its just on of the many models of Open Source. I think it is good to have diversity. I have a hard time believing that this many/. readers want to denigrate all of the hardwork that those at debian have been doing because the release cycle doesn't give them exactly what they want.
If its not what you want great, go elsewhere, but leave quietly not bitching about how it doesnt suit *your* needs.
The comment above, in my mind, is the clearest statement of the issues. As a community it is important that we push the ideals of OSS, however to the extent that we dont produce software that competes with the proprietary alternatives then our user base will diminish, which is the true threat to FOSS, not if OO.o decides to use Java.
At my office we use OO.o and I have used it as a selling point of Open Source in general - Now, if I pull that out from all of the users who are happy, and productive and say "not open source anymore... try abi-word." they are not going to go for it. To them it effectively evinces one of the strongest arguments against OSS: variable support and instability through versioning and releases.
Finally, Java is a language - it is not like they are bundling the jet database engine. The implementations of the gnu java compiler will only be spurred on by writing *parts* of OO.o in java, and then we have removed the dependency on Sun.
They also view themselves as Robin Hood figures -- pirating new software so it can be distributed freely over the Internet. They seek an Internet devoid of rules or law.
I have a b.s. in computer science and had worked for 5 years programming for various (failed) software outfits. Now I am back in school getting a degree in biostatistics. My decision was based on the observation that working at failed startups was less enjoyable than one might imagine. I think your decision should be based on what types of computing you would like to work on in the future. If you want to do sci-computing then you should definitely pick a rigourous field. I cant speak about the relative merits of getting an MBA, but you should ask yourself if you want to take classes in the chosen area (this is a whole lot more important than you might think) Also, I would say that a couple more years at work might not be a bad choice if it helps you better understand what it is you want to do.
It is only a passing observation but it seems that the rhetoric (obsessive usage of the word "freedom") is strikingly like the current US white house. I am not trolling here, I am only observing how an effective speaker like Stallman has to adapt to the climate in order to "sell" his ideas.
How do the password generators ensure more security? Are they very well dispersed over the set of the possibilities? Are there only a few widley used ones? Have intruders been documented to use these to generate random passwords.
Slashdot Mirror
LIMS is an acronym (Laboratory Information Management System) not a buzzword like web 2.0 or turnkey or full-stack ...
It's great that GNU has a LIMS candidate, but it would be nice if one could "try it out" or at least see some some screen shots. I feel GNU has such a deep marketing/branding issue -- case and point, the tryton framework which seemingly should be a Drupal/Django competitor doesn't ever seem to come into the conversation. I'm not trolling, I'm a big fan, just pointing out that by not concentrating on the "people use the software" problem they might be accelerating their path to obsolescence in areas where there's not a huge community that is essentially captive, e.g., GCC.
About 7 years ago, I moved from California to Argentina for work. I had a degree in CS and had worked professionally as a Java dev for three years. I couldn't get any work in the US so I decided to brush up on my spanish and see if I could find a job down there.
:). Since that wasn't the goal, I went with Sony. Lots of the labor in these places is not actually employed by the large corporation, but by a "placement" service. This company paid me $600/month for full-time employment. I had been making around 70k in the US, but in argentina the 10x paycut was manageable. Indeed, I was making 1/2 of some of my coworkers - because I wasn't legally employed, the placement company paid me less, but paid me in cash.
After arriving in Argentina, I translated my resume and started looking for work by finding the equivalent of Monster.com (bumeran.com). It took about 3 weeks, but I got interviews at both Sony and IBM. IBM wanted to send me to Canada for consulting because I spoke english
The experience was fantastic. There, 9-5 actually meant 9-5 - very limited flexibility in terms of hours and what I could work on, but it was okay, I was doing it more for the concept. The engineers were all excellent and my American education didn't either disadvantage or help -- we all were pretty up on the lastest java techniques.
After about 4 months, I decided that this glimpse into the future was sufficient so I returned to the US to do a PhD.
can't sue mozilla - no benefit / no money.
I agree with this. very sad the fracture into Unity and Gnome3. I run 12.04 with gnome2 - not optimal, but comfortable, and not *that* buggy.
+1
First, as usual, the post makes an infirmed attempt at giving the user any help in actually understanding the issue. Second, oracle has really never been successful in giving end-users a reasonably effective piece of software. They make great software and horrible interfaces. Using open office, I think about how great it would be if shuttleworth got into it. It is not as good as word and i say that with regret.
The thing I don't understand is the reviewer said he was in the UK -- where did the sunlight come from?
Thats exactly what I thought .... seriously though, I don't know if I can deal with any more of these SCO stories. Can we have a new icon to represent these? Maybe like a festering wound, or feces?
I think the pdf was quite good, albeit repetitive. In any case, in the end, I think he makes an interesting point about abstraction:
On the surface this seems fairly innocuous; why not make some abbreviations so that things can be said more economically? The problem is that definitions matter. They come from aesthetic decisions about what distinctions you as an artist consider important. And they are problem-generated. To make a definition is to highlight and call attention to a feature or structural property.
Learning to make good abstraction when programming is a difficult challenge, the right choice can have huge downstream consequences. An educational system which allowed students to get comfortable with the exploration of different abstractions, as well as, the forestalling of notation and rigour until the right rigour was appropriate would be a huge win to reasoning across the board.
Okay since its your PhD thesis you should aim high. Try to come up with a new metaphor. The tired, oft-wrong, and certainly too-broad-to-have-any-real-value metaphor of the "building" or "house" as software needs to be retired. I don't really know many professional software engineers who also design skyscrapers, but I know that my architect friends aren't using software engineering terminology, such as, "no code dup" to reason about how many doors we might want to stick on their new projects.
The metaphor should be helpful. It should make us believe that the same principle which governs one domain is applicable in another domain where reasoning is often more difficult. The metaphor breaks down however when we try so hard to "fit" it to the second domain.
I am saying that the parts of the building metaphor which fit -- we get (that doesn't mean we design correctly). Its the parts that don't really fit that are interesting. This might be were software design is somehow different than building design.
I don't really think this embodies any culture's mindset - I think that this is just bad design. I really cannot imagine why 1.) you want this "virtual" screen - it is just annoying to have to pan around to see the whole window. It is like walking around with a ski-mask on and constantly having to adjust your ski-mask - you'd rather just take off the masks. 2.) why have the touchpad and the keypoard one and the same - they seem to have a fair amount of real estate in the middle to use.
I think it is just really bad on many levels - I imagine their target audience is people with limited experience on a computer.
Well, one small advantage of having your apps online is that you don't have to manage updates and patches. I admit with a good update system this might be a moot point, also you might argue that it is unfortunate that "you" cannot control your updates, however, I imagine for a large class of users this is a win.
Okay, I have read enough of these posts about what free is/is-not and who cares? The main issue between knol and wikipedia will be who is paying. Theoretically, wikipedia is funded publicly and thus no one major donor/group can affect the content in a way in-line with their wishes (think network tv / public television) .
Now, knol on the other hand, as many have pointed out will be funded by revenue from advertisers much like network television is funded; when push comes to shove if an advertiser is footing the bill they have some say in the content.
Google prides itself on fairness and "do no wrong," but out of all the private companies in the past how many put the proliferation of knowledge before the generation of capital?
I hope I am wrong.
Getting them to actually start developing code for one a step above that, and getting them to all agree on the same protocol/interface simply impossible.
This is wrong as evidenced by the fact that as soon as there was a usable API there were 6000 silly applications possibly none of which earned anyone who developed them any money. They probably developed them for the same reasons OSS developers write code.
What has been consistently true is that if you give people a platform and invite them to develop on that platform a small fraction of people will do so; increasing the value of that platform.
I think the OP has a goal which is noble. I don't think there are any technological challenges to surmount with facebook (as opposed to an open source Google) as many have pointed out. The success of any OSS venture would probably have to provide a way to suck all your content out of facebook, friendster, orkut, etc . before the thing even got off the ground .
Random that this post came just hours after I saw Kim Polese, CEO of SpikeSource who: "certifiy and support open source software" Ostensibly she was supposed to speak about: "the open source software movement", however what what she really did was talk about what her new company does, which is certify "open source software stacks" and service models for OSS. It was really insightful to see the way in which she framed the problem, ie. Companies have hoards of IT people running around frantically patching systems so we step in and do automatic patching.
... it seems like this should almost be a solved problem.
It is interesting that companies do not see that the vendors (debian, redhat, microsoft) are at a massive advantage when it comes to automatically patching the systems
He doesn't claim that people wouldn't do what you describe. He just claims that those acting that way would ultimately hurt themselves.
In fact, he is probably correct that in the long-term these people would hurt themsleves, but he fails to consider that in the near term people could certainly benefit from the exploitation of OSS.
The GPL is important because it prevents these near term exploitations and fosters innovations/open-standards because private institutions are beholden to the community.
Now if the markets were perfect, ESR might have a more valid point, but just as economists loathed including anti-monoply clauses in law, it became necessary because the market is not perfect -
I think its really dissapointing when I read all of the flamebait on this thread.
/. readers want to denigrate all of the hardwork that those at debian have been doing because the release cycle doesn't give them exactly what they want.
I've been a loyal debian user for a while and I happen to like the system which they use to control the level of stability/upgradeability that your willing to tolerate.
Furthermore, its just on of the many models of Open Source. I think it is good to have diversity. I have a hard time believing that this many
If its not what you want great, go elsewhere, but leave quietly not bitching about how it doesnt suit *your* needs.
The comment above, in my mind, is the clearest statement of the issues. As a community it is important that we push the ideals of OSS, however to the extent that we dont produce software that competes with the proprietary alternatives then our user base will diminish, which is the true threat to FOSS, not if OO.o decides to use Java.
... try abi-word." they are not going to go for it. To them it effectively evinces one of the strongest arguments against OSS: variable support and instability through versioning and releases.
At my office we use OO.o and I have used it as a selling point of Open Source in general - Now, if I pull that out from all of the users who are happy, and productive and say "not open source anymore
Finally, Java is a language - it is not like they are bundling the jet database engine. The implementations of the gnu java compiler will only be spurred on by writing *parts* of OO.o in java, and then we have removed the dependency on Sun.
They also view themselves as Robin Hood figures -- pirating new software so it can be distributed freely over the Internet. They seek an Internet devoid of rules or law.
...
and who are we
This is a Knuth quote. "Programs are meant to be read by humans and only incidentally for computers to execute".
I have a b.s. in computer science and had worked for 5 years programming for various (failed) software outfits. Now I am back in school getting a degree in biostatistics. My decision was based on the observation that working at failed startups was less enjoyable than one might imagine. I think your decision should be based on what types of computing you would like to work on in the future. If you want to do sci-computing then you should definitely pick a rigourous field. I cant speak about the relative merits of getting an MBA, but you should ask yourself if you want to take classes in the chosen area (this is a whole lot more important than you might think) Also, I would say that a couple more years at work might not be a bad choice if it helps you better understand what it is you want to do.
It is only a passing observation but it seems that the rhetoric (obsessive usage of the word "freedom") is strikingly like the current US white house. I am not trolling here, I am only observing how an effective speaker like Stallman has to adapt to the climate in order to "sell" his ideas.
I think he could have used some more rain protection.
How do the password generators ensure more security? Are they very well dispersed over the set of the possibilities? Are there only a few widley used ones? Have intruders been documented to use these to generate random passwords.