Well, perhaps he just isn't as good a programmer as these guys.
I think that there are many skills involved in running an open source project, one of which certainly is programming ability. But there are others, such as the ability to manage a project; PHBs aside, the ability to manage a project - recruit people to help, communicate with others, help out those working on the project - are all tough skills, and not everyone has them. The number of Dilbert cartoons and other jokes about PHBs are indicative of this. And these skills are even more important with volunteers.
I don't know the maintainer of LRP (great software, by the way; it gave the school division where I work cheap reliable routers out of surplus hardware), but it sounds from his note that he was the sole participant in the project, and was hoping it would turn into full time employment. I guess this is a good lesson for anyone wanting to manage/participate in a community project that you can't (and shouldn't) count on your involvement leading to a job. You need to make sure that you are able to feed/clothe/house yourself independent of your project work. You also need to be willing to recruit/use some volunteer help; running an entire project can be a daunting task.
I think your suggestions are quite reasonable. I don't know why anyone would use a WAN technology (DSL) within a single building. I especially encourage #6 (use squid) to guard your pipe.
Some additional suggestions:
* use managed switches so that the tenants cannot access each other's computers except by going through your gateway router.
* force everyone to use the cache by blocking TCP port 80 traffic except for traffic between the cache and your T1.
* considering how rabid the RIAA seems to be getting, you may need to consider blocking ports used by p2p file-sharing programs. If you are providing the internet service, they may see you as a target.
Sounds like a great project - good luck!
Best click over to amazon - if anyone would have grabbed the patent for "index technology" it would be them.
Seriously - Safari is fantastic. I quite often only need a few pages from a reference book for a limited amount of time, then I'm left with trying to find space for it on my crowded and sagging bookshelves. Safari rocks!
Or perhaps the more obvious answer is... cuz Linux has lots of cool games on it! Students at the school where I teach know about all the games, and they know how to switch to a different workspace when the teacher comes around (doesn't work on me - I run "top" as root and kill their games without even looking at their computers). I think this is good training for the real work-world!
I was waiting for the results of the NDP leadership vote here in Canada - my igloo has an ADSL connection, eh!;^)
Ironically, this article just happens to show up on O'Reillynet on the same day. That seems just a little too tidy to me; I smell a conspiracy (or a script kiddy with right-wing political leanings)
I should start by saying that I think this is a noble project. The shadow that humanity is casting across the earth threatens to leave all other species in oblivion, except for those we have genetically engineered or deemed economically beneficial.
A major technical problem, however, is trying to define the limits that constitute a species. This is sometimes tricky with animals, and in some families of plants, it is practically impossible. (If I remember my bio 101 correctly from all those years ago). The project sounds similar to what Lineus and the other naturalists were trying to do just before Darwin and the evolutionists bollixed everything up.
I only hope we leave enough other species around so that when we go, the cockroaches inherit a viable planet. And in case they are listening, "we salute you, our insect overlords". Or perhaps an inanimate carbon rod will save us all.
"Here you are, a nice shiny new computer. What do you do with it? Why, plug it in, of course". About the best learning software I've seen (and admittedly I haven't looked recently) was MathBlaster. Better tools and better training for the teachers is what is really necessary to make computers work in schools.
What absolute drivel!. I teach in a school division that has increased the student:computer ratio to about 2:1 over the past two years. MathBlaster and Reader Rabbit are nice cute diversions, but they are rarely used as part of a true educational curriculum. They are toys at best, that allow teachers a few moments to do some marking or other preparation work for which they do not get nearly enough time.
The best educational software I have seen is a combination of OpenOffice and Mozilla. I have heard of Grade 6 students using the presentation software to create stories (illustrated with pictures found online), then going into the grade 1 classroom to present their stories to the younger students using a data projector (after having the stories proofread and checked over by their teacher, of course). I do not think that it is a coincidence that both of these are free (both types) products; they don't have a large team of marketing trolls developing educational support materials so their products can be rammed down the gullet of a starving educational system! These programs are run on a *nix based system, including the use of LTSP to allow access to all terminals in the school in a very cost effective means. Maybe the first step to making computers useful educational tools is to install a linux distro, so that M$ and (it pains me to say) Apple, and all the educational software companies, can't get their claws into the schools
Oh my but I did have the good rant going there, didn't I?
Anyone interested in doing something along these lines, and avoiding M$'s protection racket ("y'know, for a few dollars a year per station, I could make sure that you don't get hassled by software license audits"), should check out k12ltsp.org. With corporate donation programs starting to pass along some decent hardware to schools, a kick-ass lab can be had for just the cost of the networking infrastructure.
"Actually, he spent a great deal of time at the Toronto Shakespeare Company..."
I had always heard that his time was at Stratford, which is not too far from Toronto. He was, in his time there, considered to be one of the great stars of the Stratford festival. If you watch his acting, it may look overstated and comical on television or in movies, but the way he delivers dialog is perfect for the characters he played in Shakespeare's plays. His Marc Antony was reputed to be spectacular. It might not work as T.J. Hooker, but try his stereotypical cadence with Marc Antony's eulogy: "Friends... Romans... Countrymen - lend me your ears." Ooooo, don't it just give you chills.
I have been a Mac user as long as there have been Macs. I fell in love with the first one I saw. I have been actively involved in 2 Mac User Groups.
But I can't justify paying the price differential anymore. I just purchased a laptop and I looked at iBooks and others. I ended up going with an Intel laptop because it gave me the features I need (CD burner, capacious 30 GB HD, and 256 Meg of RAM) for substantially less than an iBook. I'm downloading the disk images for Mandrake 9.0 right now, and by the end of the weekend I'll have a nice speedy little Linux laptop.
One other move on Apple's part that pissed me off - the conversion of iTools (free) to.mac (pay). "The Steve" tells us that it is because the era of free web services is over. I think it has a lot more to do with Apple looking for a new revenue stream. If Apple was willing to give Mac users some services in exchange for the extra price we pay for the machines, it would make the price difference more acceptable. But charging us more money for hardware, then charging for some of the services they use to promote and sell the hardware and OS makes them seem a lot like... well, I guess it makes them seem a lot like Micro$oft, doesn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
I think that there are many skills involved in running an open source project, one of which certainly is programming ability. But there are others, such as the ability to manage a project; PHBs aside, the ability to manage a project - recruit people to help, communicate with others, help out those working on the project - are all tough skills, and not everyone has them. The number of Dilbert cartoons and other jokes about PHBs are indicative of this. And these skills are even more important with volunteers.
I don't know the maintainer of LRP (great software, by the way; it gave the school division where I work cheap reliable routers out of surplus hardware), but it sounds from his note that he was the sole participant in the project, and was hoping it would turn into full time employment. I guess this is a good lesson for anyone wanting to manage/participate in a community project that you can't (and shouldn't) count on your involvement leading to a job. You need to make sure that you are able to feed/clothe/house yourself independent of your project work. You also need to be willing to recruit/use some volunteer help; running an entire project can be a daunting task.
I think your suggestions are quite reasonable. I don't know why anyone would use a WAN technology (DSL) within a single building. I especially encourage #6 (use squid) to guard your pipe. Some additional suggestions: * use managed switches so that the tenants cannot access each other's computers except by going through your gateway router. * force everyone to use the cache by blocking TCP port 80 traffic except for traffic between the cache and your T1. * considering how rabid the RIAA seems to be getting, you may need to consider blocking ports used by p2p file-sharing programs. If you are providing the internet service, they may see you as a target. Sounds like a great project - good luck!
Best click over to amazon - if anyone would have grabbed the patent for "index technology" it would be them.
Seriously - Safari is fantastic. I quite often only need a few pages from a reference book for a limited amount of time, then I'm left with trying to find space for it on my crowded and sagging bookshelves. Safari rocks!
Or perhaps the more obvious answer is ... cuz Linux has lots of cool games on it! Students at the school where I teach know about all the games, and they know how to switch to a different workspace when the teacher comes around (doesn't work on me - I run "top" as root and kill their games without even looking at their computers). I think this is good training for the real work-world!
1. In about a year or two, your parents marriage will begin to dissolve before your eyes. It will be ugly, but IT IS NOT YOUR PROBLEM!
2. Take more computer science classes in University, and learn C. And its worth learning as much as you can about emacs.
I think what we're suffering from here is a DSJ - Distributed Simpson's Joke - attack. Fer crying out loud, people - enough already ;^)
I agree - Ducasse easily had the best speech today. I hope that he is an MP after the next election!
I was waiting for the results of the NDP leadership vote here in Canada - my igloo has an ADSL connection, eh! ;^)
Ironically, this article just happens to show up on O'Reillynet on the same day. That seems just a little too tidy to me; I smell a conspiracy (or a script kiddy with right-wing political leanings)
I should start by saying that I think this is a noble project. The shadow that humanity is casting across the earth threatens to leave all other species in oblivion, except for those we have genetically engineered or deemed economically beneficial.
A major technical problem, however, is trying to define the limits that constitute a species. This is sometimes tricky with animals, and in some families of plants, it is practically impossible. (If I remember my bio 101 correctly from all those years ago). The project sounds similar to what Lineus and the other naturalists were trying to do just before Darwin and the evolutionists bollixed everything up.
I only hope we leave enough other species around so that when we go, the cockroaches inherit a viable planet. And in case they are listening, "we salute you, our insect overlords". Or perhaps an inanimate carbon rod will save us all.
"Here you are, a nice shiny new computer. What do you do with it? Why, plug it in, of course". About the best learning software I've seen (and admittedly I haven't looked recently) was MathBlaster. Better tools and better training for the teachers is what is really necessary to make computers work in schools.
What absolute drivel!. I teach in a school division that has increased the student:computer ratio to about 2:1 over the past two years. MathBlaster and Reader Rabbit are nice cute diversions, but they are rarely used as part of a true educational curriculum. They are toys at best, that allow teachers a few moments to do some marking or other preparation work for which they do not get nearly enough time.
The best educational software I have seen is a combination of OpenOffice and Mozilla. I have heard of Grade 6 students using the presentation software to create stories (illustrated with pictures found online), then going into the grade 1 classroom to present their stories to the younger students using a data projector (after having the stories proofread and checked over by their teacher, of course). I do not think that it is a coincidence that both of these are free (both types) products; they don't have a large team of marketing trolls developing educational support materials so their products can be rammed down the gullet of a starving educational system! These programs are run on a *nix based system, including the use of LTSP to allow access to all terminals in the school in a very cost effective means. Maybe the first step to making computers useful educational tools is to install a linux distro, so that M$ and (it pains me to say) Apple, and all the educational software companies, can't get their claws into the schools
Oh my but I did have the good rant going there, didn't I?
Anyone interested in doing something along these lines, and avoiding M$'s protection racket ("y'know, for a few dollars a year per station, I could make sure that you don't get hassled by software license audits"), should check out k12ltsp.org. With corporate donation programs starting to pass along some decent hardware to schools, a kick-ass lab can be had for just the cost of the networking infrastructure.
I too would be willing to housesit, but only if there is a broadband connection. And no limit on traffic!!!
Better living through elasticity.
"Actually, he spent a great deal of time at the Toronto Shakespeare Company ..."
I had always heard that his time was at Stratford, which is not too far from Toronto. He was, in his time there, considered to be one of the great stars of the Stratford festival. If you watch his acting, it may look overstated and comical on television or in movies, but the way he delivers dialog is perfect for the characters he played in Shakespeare's plays. His Marc Antony was reputed to be spectacular. It might not work as T.J. Hooker, but try his stereotypical cadence with Marc Antony's eulogy: "Friends ... Romans ... Countrymen - lend me your ears." Ooooo, don't it just give you chills.
I have been a Mac user as long as there have been Macs. I fell in love with the first one I saw. I have been actively involved in 2 Mac User Groups.
But I can't justify paying the price differential anymore. I just purchased a laptop and I looked at iBooks and others. I ended up going with an Intel laptop because it gave me the features I need (CD burner, capacious 30 GB HD, and 256 Meg of RAM) for substantially less than an iBook. I'm downloading the disk images for Mandrake 9.0 right now, and by the end of the weekend I'll have a nice speedy little Linux laptop.
One other move on Apple's part that pissed me off - the conversion of iTools (free) to .mac (pay). "The Steve" tells us that it is because the era of free web services is over. I think it has a lot more to do with Apple looking for a new revenue stream. If Apple was willing to give Mac users some services in exchange for the extra price we pay for the machines, it would make the price difference more acceptable. But charging us more money for hardware, then charging for some of the services they use to promote and sell the hardware and OS makes them seem a lot like ... well, I guess it makes them seem a lot like Micro$oft, doesn't it?