Here's a bit of an email exchange with Ton of the Free Blender Fund:
--- Ton Roosendaal wrote: > Hi John, > > > Any knowledge of such efforts out there? > > You mean of other projects getting open sourced this > way? > Nope, I guess it's the first.:) > > -Ton-
Sorry to bug you via email, as I know you may be a little busy with tasks right now;) but I was thinking that the process you are going through now with the Free Blender project could be formalized as a software application similar to how SourceForge formalized open source development, or maybe even as an added feature of SourceForge.
Donators want to know that their donations are going to a good cause and are being used properly and honestly. The Free Blender site convinced me that it was a good cause and that it was run by honest people who meant well. Also, I assumed the financial records are open to peer review, so I felt safe in donating funds.
For specific, well-defined causes such as the Free Blender project, it was easy to see how my donating a few bucks, along with thousands of others doing the same, accomplishes a good thing. There are many other good open source projects out there that could really benefit from a similar funding model.
Any thoughts?
I'm going to post this to the relevant/. discussion.
More thoughts: The free and open source software communities can take advantage of the scale of the communities to easily fund worthy projects. Though I can't always help directly with development for interesting projects, I can easily spare $5 for a good cause.
Anyone else out there thinking along the same lines?
Coolio. This is a perfect example of why closed source IM is not a good idea, because you can run your own private IM server. We do so as well and it works great.
Elephant grass is Pennisetum Purpureum. Miscanthus is a different species, Miscanthus x giganteus. They resemble each other, but are sometimes confused. See http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/miscanthus/miscan thus.html for more information.
Well, one thing you can say for it: it's consistent. It's been the same design for about 4 years now.
There is a common misconception about the government being some sort of cohesive organization that has a common set of standards for managing data, both on dead wood and digital, when the truth of the matter is that most govt agencies are pretty autonomous of each other. When the WWW came along, each agency kinda struck out in its own direction as far as constructing websites went.
I think it would be better in the long run to establish some basic XHTML design standards for govt website design in that it would pave the way for the usage of common XML schemas for publish data like population stats, etc.
I'll bet the problem is that experienced designers are busy making more money elsewhere. Once the technology bubble on Wall St. deflates enough, you will see those experienced designers working for govt agencies and smaller businesses, which will then make an XML framework that the majority of people can benefit from.
Though Tuneprints efforts are still pretty much alpha at this point, the idea is to derive a database of fingerprints, or signatures, of music tracks using a hidden algorithm. The use of the term "fingerprint" is kinda misleading as to how it works, though I'm sure it is unintentional.
The problem of course, is that all pop music would have the same signature, since it pretty much sounds all the same anyway...:)
The signatures are not added as metadata to the songs, though I guess they could be. They are kept in a separate database that is near the analyzing portion of the solution where the results can be queried.
This is an interesting idea. I proposed something pretty similar to my co-workers a few months back when we were looking for a means of uniquely identifying recorded music, but I only received funny looks. Damn me and my laziness!:)
I think it may be pretty difficult to get this solution working well, considering that songs can contain samples/riffs from other songs and many other factors, etc. I think the minimum length of the analyzation sample would have to be fairly long, relative to the size of the song in order to get an accurate signature.
It is available for most operating systems (Mac, Win32, Unix, etc.) and has been in use for a few years, so there is a large developer community and lots of documentation out there.
Agreed. I had the same idea when I read the question. You didn't mention it, but "root" would apply equally well to this metaphor. I did a little research work with a friend back in school about 1990 who proposed the same metaphor. Guess he was thinking far ahead.
Try Wingspan. I just started up an account with them and they seem to have it together. It is backed by Bank One and they seem to have invested heavily into capturing this market.
The LinuxOne (LINX) IPO was discussed Monday, 1/4/00 at 4pm EDT on IPO Hardball, an IPO analysis audio program available on the web. They discuss LinuxOne starting about 28:30 into the webcast till about 32:50. The entire webcast is 01:14:02 (hh:mm:ss) long. Listen to the whole webcast if you want to establish their credibility.
The short of it is that they slam LinuxOne.
Quotes: "... strictly a play on the stupidity of people buying Linux names..."
"... if I were in that industry, I would really be unhappy with them (LinuxOne)for that, for coming public when they are, as it would really sour people on the future of Linux in that industry..."
"this is a manufactured deal"
The participants in this particular webcast do invite e-mail feedback. I urge you to listen to the archived webcast and send your thoughts to them. This is a good opportunity to share some of our knowledge with a few pundits on Wall Street.
They do have some other interesting analysis about how this affects the longer term future for Linux and other Internet related IPOs such as BUY.COM.
we have/usr/sbin/traceroute and the DNS to tip us off when there are large service (connectivity, power) outages around the world, which would cause DNS servers to stop talking to the Internet.
I haven't heard of any such major outages yet. What would be a good URL to use to monitor major network outages?
I'm sure you will agree that the reason for this particular forum was not to a "scientific" survey or an authoritative Y2K problem reporting forum. It was proposed in the idea of "fun".
Down here in Louisiana, we like to pass a good time, so I'll let that remark slide. But we also like to work hard, whether it is on a backhoe (yeah, I've done that) or detecting gravity waves (I'm going to the dedication today, just down the road).
And as a proud citizen of Louisiana, I challenge your lamer ass to a game of Dune2000. Weenie.
I agree with your comments. In fact, I was thinking that some Chinese hackers (programmers, developers, etc.) might see Linux as being "uncool" since the PRC approves it.
Definitely very strange happenings in the world today.
If the open-source community spent its time worrying about how it appears to the computer industry pundits, we'd have a crappy OS but a great marketing strategy. Er....
Those that want to make noise about Linux=Communism would do so anyway. It would be just as easy to turn this around and say that Western ideas of freedom and individualism are invading Chinese with the help of Linux. Getting a good OS in the hands of millions of Chinese will only make for a more secure world order, IMHO.
I can understand why you ask this, given all the news/hype over Linux lately. But just because there isn't a relative proportion of news/hype over *BSDs, this doesn't mean that the software is any less valuable.
I am using OpenBSD for security solutions for my clients and I am very impressed and satisfied with it. Also, because it is less crufty than a similar Linux configuration, it is ideal for dedicated Internet devices. The next decade will see an explosion of these.
"You have to look to the fringes to see where the center is going." - Stewart Brand I personally hope GNU/Linux/Open Source never goes entirely mainstream. Most of the computer using public have pretty mundane interests.
Needed feature: gyroscopically stablized camera
on
RoboFly
·
· Score: 3
The article mentioned that the tiny gyroscopes developed at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena will be used, but it didn't mention how.
I was imagining how the roboflies might be used and then realized that they must be able to train the camera focus on an image on the 'fly'. Having to make the r-fly hover, in order to get a quality image, would make the r-fly suspect to counter-surveillance techniques (flyswatters). And then there is the problem of maintaining stability in shifting air currents.
Real flies operate this way. Their eyes move independently of their bodies, so they can fly around an object while keeping their eyes on on the object.
This is very interesting technology. I had been musing over biomimetics for a few years, although I didn't have a term for it. I mean, take a look at an ant hill sometime. The heuristics of an ant colony sings fuzzy logic to me.
You're throwing away your vote. The only libertarians who are ever going to vote in Congress are going to be elected as Republicans, like Ron Paul (R-TX), who was previously the Libertarian candidate for President. If enough libertarians had his sense, they could actually accomplish something within the GOP.
And if enough people voted libertarian, they wouldn't be throwing away their vote.
I know we don't have a parliament, but tell me -what if the Presidential Vote was 30% Republican 30% democrat and 40% Ass-Biting Party in about 30 states? Well, we'd all get our asses bitten for at least four years.
Guess that depends on whose ass is getting bitten now, doesn't it? I understand your point, that most Americans are politically lazy and vote out of an emotional reaction rather than spending more than 5 minutes thinking about it. But a little ass-biting might actually make people a little more involved politically. I say let em elect a screwball if that is what the public wants. What you are proposing is rule by some self-described elite rather than rule by the people. The problem is that the people have gotten lazy but still want all the benefits of a democracy.
It also helps to keep the loony parties from getting seats.
Right. If you are going to bring up Nazis, then I'll bring up American revolutionaries being perceived as loonies by the Crown.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a bit of an email exchange with Ton of the Free Blender Fund:
:)
;) but I was thinking that the process you are going through now with the Free Blender project could be formalized as a software application similar to how SourceForge formalized open source development, or maybe even as an added feature of SourceForge.
/. discussion.
--- Ton Roosendaal wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> > Any knowledge of such efforts out there?
>
> You mean of other projects getting open sourced this
> way?
> Nope, I guess it's the first.
>
> -Ton-
Sorry to bug you via email, as I know you may be a little busy with tasks right now
Donators want to know that their donations are going to a good cause and are being used properly and honestly. The Free Blender site convinced me that it was a good cause and that it was run by honest people who meant well. Also, I assumed the financial records are open to peer review, so I felt safe in donating funds.
For specific, well-defined causes such as the Free Blender project, it was easy to see how my donating a few bucks, along with thousands of others doing the same, accomplishes a good thing. There are many other good open source projects out there that could really benefit from a similar funding model.
Any thoughts?
I'm going to post this to the relevant
More thoughts:
The free and open source software communities can take advantage of the scale of the communities to easily fund worthy projects. Though I can't always help directly with development for interesting projects, I can easily spare $5 for a good cause.
Anyone else out there thinking along the same lines?
I strongly suggest you consider "The Software Project Survival Guide" by Steve McConnell, and the info on swetok.org.
Coolio. This is a perfect example of why closed source IM is not a good idea, because you can run your own private IM server. We do so as well and it works great.
Your ICQ number is serially generated. Spammer W writes a script to send spam to all ICQ clients in range X-Y.
Elephant grass is Pennisetum Purpureum. Miscanthus is a different species, Miscanthus x giganteus. They resemble each other, but are sometimes confused. See http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/miscanthus/miscan thus.html for more information.
And we have more idiots per capita than any other country in the world! :)
As a pro-enviroment person, thanks for posting your rebuttal. It made me laugh out loud.
John
There is a common misconception about the government being some sort of cohesive organization that has a common set of standards for managing data, both on dead wood and digital, when the truth of the matter is that most govt agencies are pretty autonomous of each other. When the WWW came along, each agency kinda struck out in its own direction as far as constructing websites went.
I think it would be better in the long run to establish some basic XHTML design standards for govt website design in that it would pave the way for the usage of common XML schemas for publish data like population stats, etc.
I'll bet the problem is that experienced designers are busy making more money elsewhere. Once the technology bubble on Wall St. deflates enough, you will see those experienced designers working for govt agencies and smaller businesses, which will then make an XML framework that the majority of people can benefit from.
Though Tuneprints efforts are still pretty much alpha at this point, the idea is to derive a database of fingerprints, or signatures, of music tracks using a hidden algorithm. The use of the term "fingerprint" is kinda misleading as to how it works, though I'm sure it is unintentional.
:)
:)
The problem of course, is that all pop music would have the same signature, since it pretty much sounds all the same anyway...
The signatures are not added as metadata to the songs, though I guess they could be. They are kept in a separate database that is near the analyzing portion of the solution where the results can be queried.
This is an interesting idea. I proposed something pretty similar to my co-workers a few months back when we were looking for a means of uniquely identifying recorded music, but I only received funny looks. Damn me and my laziness!
I think it may be pretty difficult to get this solution working well, considering that songs can contain samples/riffs from other songs and many other factors, etc. I think the minimum length of the analyzation sample would have to be fairly long, relative to the size of the song in order to get an accurate signature.
It is available for most operating systems (Mac, Win32, Unix, etc.) and has been in use for a few years, so there is a large developer community and lots of documentation out there.
http://dev.scriptics.com/
old news or try searching for "matrix rumors" on google.com.
Agreed. I had the same idea when I read the question. You didn't mention it, but "root" would apply equally well to this metaphor. I did a little research work with a friend back in school about 1990 who proposed the same metaphor. Guess he was thinking far ahead.
Try Wingspan. I just started up an account with them and they seem to have it together. It is backed by Bank One and they seem to have invested heavily into capturing this market.
The LinuxOne (LINX) IPO was discussed Monday, 1/4/00 at 4pm EDT on IPO Hardball, an IPO analysis audio program available on the web. They discuss LinuxOne starting about 28:30 into the webcast till about 32:50. The entire webcast is 01:14:02 (hh:mm:ss) long. Listen to the whole webcast if you want to establish their credibility.
..."
..."
The short of it is that they slam LinuxOne.
Quotes:
"... strictly a play on the stupidity of people buying Linux names
"... if I were in that industry, I would really be unhappy with them (LinuxOne)for that, for coming public when they are, as it would really sour people on the future of Linux in that industry
"this is a manufactured deal"
The participants in this particular webcast do invite e-mail feedback. I urge you to listen to the archived webcast and send your thoughts to them. This is a good opportunity to share some of our knowledge with a few pundits on Wall Street.
They do have some other interesting analysis about how this affects the longer term future for Linux and other Internet related IPOs such as BUY.COM.
we have /usr/sbin/traceroute and the DNS to tip us off when there are large service (connectivity, power) outages around the world, which would cause DNS servers to stop talking to the Internet.
I haven't heard of any such major outages yet. What would be a good URL to use to monitor major network outages?
I'm sure you will agree that the reason for this particular forum was not to a "scientific" survey or an authoritative Y2K problem reporting forum. It was proposed in the idea of "fun".
Now go party yer ass off and quit moaning.
Hey, I have a sense of humor.
Down here in Louisiana, we like to pass a good time, so I'll let that remark slide. But we also like to work hard, whether it is on a backhoe (yeah, I've done that) or detecting gravity waves (I'm going to the dedication today, just down the road).
And as a proud citizen of Louisiana, I challenge your lamer ass to a game of Dune2000. Weenie.
I agree with your comments. In fact, I was thinking that some Chinese hackers (programmers, developers, etc.) might see Linux as being "uncool" since the PRC approves it.
Definitely very strange happenings in the world today.
You idiot.
If the open-source community spent its time worrying about how it appears to the computer industry pundits, we'd have a crappy OS but a great marketing strategy. Er....
Those that want to make noise about Linux=Communism would do so anyway. It would be just as easy to turn this around and say that Western ideas of freedom and individualism are invading Chinese with the help of Linux. Getting a good OS in the hands of millions of Chinese will only make for a more secure world order, IMHO.
I can understand why you ask this, given all the news/hype over Linux lately. But just because there isn't a relative proportion of news/hype over *BSDs, this doesn't mean that the software is any less valuable.
I am using OpenBSD for security solutions for my clients and I am very impressed and satisfied with it. Also, because it is less crufty than a similar Linux configuration, it is ideal for dedicated Internet devices. The next decade will see an explosion of these.
"You have to look to the fringes to see where the center is going." - Stewart Brand I personally hope GNU/Linux/Open Source never goes entirely mainstream. Most of the computer using public have pretty mundane interests.
The article mentioned that the tiny gyroscopes developed at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena will be used, but it didn't mention how.
I was imagining how the roboflies might be used and then realized that they must be able to train the camera focus on an image on the 'fly'. Having to make the r-fly hover, in order to get a quality image, would make the r-fly suspect to counter-surveillance techniques (flyswatters). And then there is the problem of maintaining stability in shifting air currents.
Real flies operate this way. Their eyes move independently of their bodies, so they can fly around an object while keeping their eyes on on the object.
This is very interesting technology. I had been musing over biomimetics for a few years, although I didn't have a term for it. I mean, take a look at an ant hill sometime. The heuristics of an ant colony sings fuzzy logic to me.
Nope on *BSD for your first time, unless you like it really *rough*. :)
I'd recommend RedHat, Mandrake or Caldera for your first open source OS. Multi-boot with these are much easier to setup than the *BSD releases.
But why not try em all? Check out Cheapbytes and order the CDs. Probably about $30 for the ones I mentioned.
Oh. Backup your data. Win98 doesn't like to share partition tables with other operating systems.
Just dl'd it and installed. Very neat! Thanks!
*humbled*
That was about the time that I first saw Colossus: The Forbin Project!
:)
Is it just me or is consensual Reality becoming more weird as the Internet evolves?
I mean, 5 years ago, the idea of the Queen surfing the Web in 1999 would have seemed like something out of Bruce Sterling's head.
Don't get me wrong, TIAGT (This is a Good Thing). I say we should push for even more weirdness!
Vote Weird!
You're throwing away your vote. The only libertarians who are ever going to vote in Congress are going to be elected as Republicans, like Ron Paul (R-TX), who was previously the Libertarian candidate for President. If enough libertarians had his sense, they could actually accomplish something within the GOP.
And if enough people voted libertarian, they wouldn't be throwing away their vote.
I know we don't have a parliament, but tell me -what if the Presidential Vote was 30% Republican
30% democrat and 40% Ass-Biting Party in about 30 states? Well, we'd all get our asses bitten for
at least four years.
Guess that depends on whose ass is getting bitten now, doesn't it? I understand your point, that most Americans are politically lazy and vote out of an emotional reaction rather than spending more than 5 minutes thinking about it. But a little ass-biting might actually make people a little more involved politically. I say let em elect a screwball if that is what the public wants. What you are proposing is rule by some self-described elite rather than rule by the people. The problem is that the people have gotten lazy but still want all the benefits of a democracy.
It also helps to keep the loony parties from getting seats.
Right. If you are going to bring up Nazis, then I'll bring up American revolutionaries being perceived as loonies by the Crown.