loncapa.org - offtopic but cool gpl'd bb replaceme
on
Dream Jobs of 2004
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· Score: 1
Anybody looking for an excellent, GPL'd replacement for Blackboard/WebCT should check out LON-CAPA. Excellent system with a networked content-sharing model that is very exciting.
The thing that I think most Portal Pushers miss is the difference between having content and pointing to content. New users eventually learn where the content is - even if it's just from having hundreds of bookmarks - even if they're not internet or computer savvy. By repetition even my grandma can now get to google for searching and the new york times website by typing "nyt.com" into the title bar. This is the same woman who calls me every power outage to figure out what button to push to get the "tv-part" back on. To make it work they need more than just the search engines, they need to provide the content. AOL, MSN, and the like just don't provide enough good, unique content to be worth it. IMO.
To make an excellent indexing, searching, and categorizing group (read: Portal) and top-notch content providers (read: everybody else) would be extremely difficult, very expensive, and kludgy/unwieldy. Most of the best content is started by hobbyists and is community-supported -- I can't see a huge company (read: microsoft) able to compete quality or quantity-wise with the current and emerging nice sites.
I've been using Gentoo's amd64 stuff for a little while on my new Shuttle Box. Things are generally good although there are still a lot of packages that are masked. KDE is also problematic which may be a turn-off for some people.
A colleague just got a new dual-opteron Workstation from Pogo and is running SuSE 9.0 pro for amd64 and is rather happy -- just about everything plays nicely.
Multimedia has significant problems on both systems. No flash player for 64-bit, mplayer and related multimedia requiring 32-bit codecs. Nvidia amd 64 drivers require some patching if they work at all, at least as of last wednesday.
Otherwise quite happy with all of these. Mandrake claims to have multimedia stuff working properly (see above link for info) but wants to eat my partition table so I haven't checked it out yet.
-- "Now you'll see why they call me the Velour Fog" --Zapp Brannigan, 25-star General & Cpt.
They're using a catalytic converter to draw the hydrogen out of readily available, pre-processed fuel -- probably still in the form of hydrocarbons instead of pure hydrogen. This is cheap. Seperating salt water into Hydrogen, Oxygen, Salt, and extraneous junk is expensive.
From the article:
"Scientists have known about the advantages of hydrogen fuel since they began using it to power rockets.
But super-cooled liquid hydrogen is difficult to store and move.
Thus, converting to widespread use would be expensive and take years, and would require creating an alternative to the world's trillion-dollar infrastructure.
But they realized there is already a lot of hydrogen in hydrocarbon fuel -- diesel fuel, jet fuel, gasoline. All they would have to do is invent a process that removes the carbon and sulfur and they could take advantage of the oil industry infrastructure."
Check out the Art Section of gnome.org. There are a half-dozen GTK themes there that mimic the look of OSX even down to the brushed-metal look of iTunes.
No way! My dream digital convergence is the Phone + PDA + Music player. Complete convergence can be bad for reasons listed above but there are some things that should be merged. By your argument:
A monitor is a monitor. A keyboard is a keyboard. A speaker is a speaker. which implies laptops are bad...?
Some things naturally fit together, especially things that have redundent or related parts. A PDA + Phone + Music player of appropriate size and cost (yes, that's key, I know) would steal the market.
The only important thing your phone does that your PDA doesn't is connect to another device using the cellular network... which some PDA's do... and contains a speaker and microphone.
The only important thing an iPod has that on a PDA in terms of functionality is basically (yes, I'm generalizing) the _Hard Drive_ in the iPod. The average PocketPC can play music, it just can't play very much.
Nobody complains that the PS2 plays DVDs. Yes, absurd convergence and combination is bad and being _FORCED_ to use said convergence devices is even worse. But if it's natural to combine functionality, great! And there are some people who don't ascribe to the "UNIX Way." My grandma, for one, likes her TV w/VCR & DVD player in it and single, easy to use remote... she'd adore an iMac if she weren't content with her 200mhz P1 for checking e-mail...
The problem here is the marketing. Young males (read: geeks) don't want a convergence device but (my) grandma does. Change your market focus oh corporate masters and let us poor geeks alone... unless you're giving me my iPod + PDA + Phone.
There actually is a big difference and it's all about timing.
See, different languages have different words and syntax and thus it can take varying amounts of time to say the same thing in Japanese and in English.
So, a dubbed film must fit all the voice acting into the same amount of time as the original meaning that you not only have to translate the text but you have to make it fit. So, if it takes 130 seconds to say the equivelant of "I love you" in Japanese, an English Dub will have to fill that space with something really horrible like "My heart is filled with the most [cheesy emotion] a man could feel."
However, a subtitled version can put the best, most meaningful translation on screen instead and keep it there long enough for you to read and understand. With all the differences in culture, idioms, etc a good dub is a lot harder than a good sub. A perfect dub is nigh impossible.
So yes, you're getting "an" interpretation of it in english... but it's really hard to fit the timing and stay true to the original meaning. Think back to the old school badly dubbed samurai flicks.
What's the big deal w/LoTR, eh? Where to begin...
The movies are based on one of the most popular works of fiction ever written. Most geeks have read or been read the dead-tree LoTR at least once in their lives -- my bed-time stories from age 3 - 4 were in fact the LoTR. As such, many people have huge emotional investment in the story. Watching the movies is like having your favorite childhood day-dreams turned almost-real.
Even without that, however, the movies are just gorgeous. Interesting technology used to simulate the massive battles, gorgeous locations, and an incredible sense of detail -- Bag End's door is round, green, doorknob in the center. Be you a fanboy or not, the movies (especially the Shire) are drop-dead gorgeous.
Then there's the acting. Gollum??? Amazing acting. Gandalf? Fantastic! The actual "drama" and acting in LoTR is just amazing. And here comes the flamebait... the Matrix just wasn't. Keanu's pretty and all but there's not much in the Matrix flicks that's even in the same ballpark
But, more to the point, the actual story. Yes, the ring is still there by the third movie. Know what? The Matrix is still there in the third Matrix flick. If you ask people to look beyond the superficial "whoah. I know kung-fu" aspect of the Matrix, you have to look beyond the superficial in LoTR.
What you end up with is four very small, very unimportant, very weak beings (hobbits) taking on an unimaginably difficult and dangereous task because somebody had to. Throught the story the most powerful people in the world are swayed and corrupted by the ring. Even Gandalf refused to touch it, fearing its power. But Frodo finds the courage and strength to bear the burden to the end... What you have is a story of average, normal people doing extraordinary things for the good of the many, knowing they will probably be sacrificing everything. The interest is in the people not the thing.
Then, of course, there are the many, many side-stories. The frustration and rebellion of Eowyn for being forced to live the stereotype of a woman. The sorrow and grief of a father forced to bury his child and continue with his life. The struggle of a younger son, trying to live up to his older brother in his father's eyes (Faramir) despite, at least in the book, having 'shown his quality,' a tortured soul learning friendship and betrayal (gollum), and on and on...
The Matrix asked lots of questions about the nature and perception of reality. Great. The Matrix was also a great movie. But what did the later movie(s) add? What more interesting questions? What new insights or revalations? If I want to see things blowing up and fight scenes, great. But the implication and promise was more of what made the Matrix special and many people, me included, just didn't see it in the second flick.
The LoTR has its own interesting premise and world but proceeds to ask lots of little questions and shows us many situations with true dramatic potential. "Hamlet" didn't provoke any life-altering questions about the state of reality... it's still a pretty darn good story.
So we have on the one hand, LoTR which is beautiful, detailed, great acting, and full of excellent drama. On the other hand we have the Matrix, which was great, asking interesting questions and having great effects... then we have its sequels which, again IMO, didn't really ask any new questions, provide any new insight, or have great acting. Sure, if I wanna see stuff blow up, digital orgasms, and middling fight scenes (go rent Drunken Master 2)... great. But if we're supposed to compare it to the original (which is the point I thought), the meat's just not there...
Unfortunately, budgetlinuxcds.com is selling the live evaluation disc, not the full distribution.
SuSE offers a live-evaluation disc image for free here. It's not a complete install but it'll give you an idea of what SuSE's all about.
You are allowed to do a full install via ftp (see instructions here). Sure it's not as easy but an FTP install will build some more of that character I'm always hearing about.
I have to say though, YaST is probably the best thing I've seen so far for a Migrating Windows User. It is powerful, flexible, and intuitive for anyone used to Control Panels. SuSE also automatically does some intelligent things like password protect single-user mode (unlike RedHat). IMHO, it's the best new user distribution. Sure, I use Gentoo on my machine but then I'm captivated by watching packages compile for 72 hours straight. -grin-
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Anybody looking for an excellent, GPL'd replacement for Blackboard/WebCT should check out LON-CAPA. Excellent system with a networked content-sharing model that is very exciting.
The thing that I think most Portal Pushers miss is the difference between having content and pointing to content. New users eventually learn where the content is - even if it's just from having hundreds of bookmarks - even if they're not internet or computer savvy. By repetition even my grandma can now get to google for searching and the new york times website by typing "nyt.com" into the title bar. This is the same woman who calls me every power outage to figure out what button to push to get the "tv-part" back on. To make it work they need more than just the search engines, they need to provide the content. AOL, MSN, and the like just don't provide enough good, unique content to be worth it. IMO.
To make an excellent indexing, searching, and categorizing group (read: Portal) and top-notch content providers (read: everybody else) would be extremely difficult, very expensive, and kludgy/unwieldy. Most of the best content is started by hobbyists and is community-supported -- I can't see a huge company (read: microsoft) able to compete quality or quantity-wise with the current and emerging nice sites.
I don't think the super-site is going to work.
For example:
I've been using Gentoo's amd64 stuff for a little while on my new Shuttle Box. Things are generally good although there are still a lot of packages that are masked. KDE is also problematic which may be a turn-off for some people.
A colleague just got a new dual-opteron Workstation from Pogo and is running SuSE 9.0 pro for amd64 and is rather happy -- just about everything plays nicely.
Multimedia has significant problems on both systems. No flash player for 64-bit, mplayer and related multimedia requiring 32-bit codecs. Nvidia amd 64 drivers require some patching if they work at all, at least as of last wednesday.
Otherwise quite happy with all of these. Mandrake claims to have multimedia stuff working properly (see above link for info) but wants to eat my partition table so I haven't checked it out yet.
--
"Now you'll see why they call me the Velour Fog" --Zapp Brannigan, 25-star General & Cpt.
They're using a catalytic converter to draw the hydrogen out of readily available, pre-processed fuel -- probably still in the form of hydrocarbons instead of pure hydrogen. This is cheap. Seperating salt water into Hydrogen, Oxygen, Salt, and extraneous junk is expensive.
From the article:
Check out the Art Section of gnome.org. There are a half-dozen GTK themes there that mimic the look of OSX even down to the brushed-metal look of iTunes.
No way! My dream digital convergence is the Phone + PDA + Music player. Complete convergence can be bad for reasons listed above but there are some things that should be merged. By your argument:
A monitor is a monitor.
A keyboard is a keyboard.
A speaker is a speaker.
which implies laptops are bad...?
Some things naturally fit together, especially things that have redundent or related parts. A PDA + Phone + Music player of appropriate size and cost (yes, that's key, I know) would steal the market.
The only important thing your phone does that your PDA doesn't is connect to another device using the cellular network... which some PDA's do... and contains a speaker and microphone.
The only important thing an iPod has that on a PDA in terms of functionality is basically (yes, I'm generalizing) the _Hard Drive_ in the iPod. The average PocketPC can play music, it just can't play very much.
Nobody complains that the PS2 plays DVDs. Yes, absurd convergence and combination is bad and being _FORCED_ to use said convergence devices is even worse. But if it's natural to combine functionality, great! And there are some people who don't ascribe to the "UNIX Way." My grandma, for one, likes her TV w/VCR & DVD player in it and single, easy to use remote... she'd adore an iMac if she weren't content with her 200mhz P1 for checking e-mail...
The problem here is the marketing. Young males (read: geeks) don't want a convergence device but (my) grandma does. Change your market focus oh corporate masters and let us poor geeks alone... unless you're giving me my iPod + PDA + Phone.
There actually is a big difference and it's all about timing .
See, different languages have different words and syntax and thus it can take varying amounts of time to say the same thing in Japanese and in English.
So, a dubbed film must fit all the voice acting into the same amount of time as the original meaning that you not only have to translate the text but you have to make it fit. So, if it takes 130 seconds to say the equivelant of "I love you" in Japanese, an English Dub will have to fill that space with something really horrible like "My heart is filled with the most [cheesy emotion] a man could feel."
However, a subtitled version can put the best, most meaningful translation on screen instead and keep it there long enough for you to read and understand. With all the differences in culture, idioms, etc a good dub is a lot harder than a good sub. A perfect dub is nigh impossible.
So yes, you're getting "an" interpretation of it in english... but it's really hard to fit the timing and stay true to the original meaning. Think back to the old school badly dubbed samurai flicks.
What's the big deal w/LoTR, eh? Where to begin... The movies are based on one of the most popular works of fiction ever written. Most geeks have read or been read the dead-tree LoTR at least once in their lives -- my bed-time stories from age 3 - 4 were in fact the LoTR. As such, many people have huge emotional investment in the story. Watching the movies is like having your favorite childhood day-dreams turned almost-real. Even without that, however, the movies are just gorgeous. Interesting technology used to simulate the massive battles, gorgeous locations, and an incredible sense of detail -- Bag End's door is round, green, doorknob in the center. Be you a fanboy or not, the movies (especially the Shire) are drop-dead gorgeous. Then there's the acting. Gollum??? Amazing acting. Gandalf? Fantastic! The actual "drama" and acting in LoTR is just amazing. And here comes the flamebait... the Matrix just wasn't. Keanu's pretty and all but there's not much in the Matrix flicks that's even in the same ballpark But, more to the point, the actual story. Yes, the ring is still there by the third movie. Know what? The Matrix is still there in the third Matrix flick. If you ask people to look beyond the superficial "whoah. I know kung-fu" aspect of the Matrix, you have to look beyond the superficial in LoTR. What you end up with is four very small, very unimportant, very weak beings (hobbits) taking on an unimaginably difficult and dangereous task because somebody had to. Throught the story the most powerful people in the world are swayed and corrupted by the ring. Even Gandalf refused to touch it, fearing its power. But Frodo finds the courage and strength to bear the burden to the end... What you have is a story of average, normal people doing extraordinary things for the good of the many, knowing they will probably be sacrificing everything. The interest is in the people not the thing. Then, of course, there are the many, many side-stories. The frustration and rebellion of Eowyn for being forced to live the stereotype of a woman. The sorrow and grief of a father forced to bury his child and continue with his life. The struggle of a younger son, trying to live up to his older brother in his father's eyes (Faramir) despite, at least in the book, having 'shown his quality,' a tortured soul learning friendship and betrayal (gollum), and on and on... The Matrix asked lots of questions about the nature and perception of reality. Great. The Matrix was also a great movie. But what did the later movie(s) add? What more interesting questions? What new insights or revalations? If I want to see things blowing up and fight scenes, great. But the implication and promise was more of what made the Matrix special and many people, me included, just didn't see it in the second flick. The LoTR has its own interesting premise and world but proceeds to ask lots of little questions and shows us many situations with true dramatic potential. "Hamlet" didn't provoke any life-altering questions about the state of reality... it's still a pretty darn good story. So we have on the one hand, LoTR which is beautiful, detailed, great acting, and full of excellent drama. On the other hand we have the Matrix, which was great, asking interesting questions and having great effects... then we have its sequels which, again IMO, didn't really ask any new questions, provide any new insight, or have great acting. Sure, if I wanna see stuff blow up, digital orgasms, and middling fight scenes (go rent Drunken Master 2)... great. But if we're supposed to compare it to the original (which is the point I thought), the meat's just not there...
SuSE offers a live-evaluation disc image for free here. It's not a complete install but it'll give you an idea of what SuSE's all about.
You are allowed to do a full install via ftp (see instructions here). Sure it's not as easy but an FTP install will build some more of that character I'm always hearing about.
I have to say though, YaST is probably the best thing I've seen so far for a Migrating Windows User. It is powerful, flexible, and intuitive for anyone used to Control Panels. SuSE also automatically does some intelligent things like password protect single-user mode (unlike RedHat). IMHO, it's the best new user distribution. Sure, I use Gentoo on my machine but then I'm captivated by watching packages compile for 72 hours straight. -grin-