Said article also says "Join us in digging through the 700,000 documents of MPs' expenses". The 91996 is just what they've uploaded so far - that number crept up yesterday as more pages were uploaded. 700,000 documents means at least 700,000 pages. By that thinking they've only got 1/7th of the total so far...
I commend the idea and the effort. But there are 700,000 documents, each with how many pages each? It's an interesting idea but will the crowd's enthusiasm hold up?
I helped out in a school in Uganda that has ties with a school here in the UK, and they offer a Computing courses to their students. There are a number of problems open source faces that I could see:
1. The school teaches the UK curriculum; when I was last speaking with the person at the UK school who established the link with the Ugandan school, she'd said they'd had some new computers with Ubuntu installed on them shipped out but they didn't have the software expected by the board that set the curriculum they were teaching. Maybe that's the curriculum's fault, maybe it was a misunderstanding, either way, it doesn't solve the issue, even if it's a problem of perception and knowledge.
2. Related to the above, some people have the attitude "Everywhere else in the world runs Windows, surely teaching something else is a disadvantage?"
3. Few people knew how to use computers, and people usually have experience in Windows when you do find someone that's used computers. Finding someone to help with a computer is hard, finding someone who can help with Linux may be harder (though I guess the converse may be true where Linus is prevalent and Windows is not).
4. Lack of networks to search for help when things go wrong. We made an effort to take learning materials out with us, both for the kids and for the teacher to learn more (and not just about Linux), but it's difficult to provide enough documentation to cover every eventuality. Arguably Windows has the same issue but I don't think it has it to the same degree.
I was walking a fine line - on the one hand, I didn't want to treat the learning of the kids at the school as some sort of social/computing experiment to the degradation of their education, but on the other hand, I think open source could be a great thing in those sorts of situations.
I'll also add that for the time I spent there, I only saw a tiny part of Africa, so hopefully other people have more enlightening experiences to share!
"We need to move in the direction of what are known as 'open standards'- in effect, creating a common language for government IT. This technical change is crucial because it allows different types of software and systems to work side by side in government."
So I wonder if words have been mangled, because open source software and open standards are not one and the same.
I can see why the focus of the discussion here focusses on the software side, but I think open* standards are perhaps more important than the openess of the software. At government level, I really don't think saying "We're only using software of a certain software licence type" (closed or open) is feasible.
If everybody is using the same standards, it means it's the quality of the software that counts; it becomes a choice of "This software is better" rather than "This software is worse but it means I have access to my old data". From there, more use of open source software can, and hopefully will, follow.
*I do mean "open" in the sense that the/. crowd would use the word, not, for example, how MS would use it...
I'm not able to view the interview as I'm currently at work but the summary talks about a semi-public space. I think the implication is that people want the moon on a stick - a place they can easily share details about themselves without fear of comeback at a later date.
Then again, I wonder why selecting the option of only letting friends view your profile isn't sufficient, but perhaps I'm not down with the kids and their nonchalance to keeping some things private (using words like "nonchalance", I suspect I'm not down with the kids full stop).
I can understand that not everybody wants Flash and Java functionality when browsing the web. I hate sites that are all flash.
But it's not like the technologies can only be used for obnoxious means. Hooray for the flash game that'll kill 10 minutes here and there!
Not to mention that if FF wants to be taken seriously by the mainstream it needs to have the options that give it an edge (in this case, pop-up blocking) but support those technologies an average end-user expects from the web (rightly or wrongly!). Sitting their going "It's a third party issue!" is so much more damaging to the growth of FireFox than actually implementing a fix to work around that behaviour.
... are going to fight this, it'll be the American content producers. Many posts here have bemoaned the appalling treatment of shows, presumably this will give the Aussie TV networks less incentive to show stuff like this and then put on stuff they know will perform better instead.
Of course, they'll buy less and less content from abroad because those who want that stuff badly enough are going to download it. Who does that hurt? The people who rely on TV exports to make their money back/profit from making a show.
What I don't understand is why there aren't people rushing to at least try to make money on this. I'd love to be able to pay a set fee per month and download TV rather than wait for UK stations to pick things up. The TV show makers can be compensated from the funds that subscribers provide according to what shows are downloaded. As for current TV stations - the two methods of delivery are quite capable of co-existing! Television on a box isn't going anywhere for a while, this helps diversify productoin of shows as well help spread the risk - if stations see Show X performing well online, they can pick it up for broadcast on "normal" TV.
Was it just me or... wait, y'see, here's the... because... yeah, because I think...
Was I the only one who found the replies hard to parse in places? I get the feeling the MP3 will make more sense to me:)
On the Uni course I'm on, we started out on Python. I thought this was a nice language to get those who hadn't programmed before introduced to the basics before moving on to something else that did those basics in a more complicated fashion.
The htdp looks like it's a bit on the dull/hard side for newbies (admiteddly, that's after only a few clicks around but then the OP said that they fell at an early hurdle). I was going to suggest the free book "How to think like a computer scientist - learning with python" but after picking it up off my shelf I realised that though it's easy to me, that doesn't mean it's easy for anyone.
And that's not because I think I'm brilliant it's because I'm used to thinking a certain way; reading words and knowing what context they fit into; understanding the concepts already; "getting" in-jokes like "foo" and "bar" and so on.
I think my approach would be to find some material that's going to be good for a person who doesn't have a lot of experience with the technical aspects or computers. It's not just about learning how to do for and while loops, it's about why they're necessary. Unfortunately, I don't have any examples of books that are good for what I am suggesting...
HTML seems like a good way to go, it's easy, introduces some concepts that transfer to programming and it produces results that are more interesting that "Hello, World!"
JavaScript MAY be a good direction after this but it depends on how much your mum wants to know (JS can lead to some bad habits - true of most languages though and if she's not going to do much beyond HTML + JS, then what's the problem with a few bad habits?;). Is she going to start the next big, complicated project on SourceForge that makes you tea and toast whilst doing your accounts? If so, perhaps a language that isn't tied in with browser technology might be the way to go. If on the other hand, programming in C++, Java etc are not going to be of any use to her... why bother? Javascript ties in neatly with HTML so you can make web pages seem even "cooler." From what I've seen, some of the syntax looks tricky but then I've not learnt from the ground up.
You could substitute in PHP or Python for Javascript in the above paragraph I guess, but let's face it, they are all going to present their own problems.
It really is going to depend on how deeply she wants to get into it (which could be affected by how she is introduced to it etc etc). I'd say finding material that's going to treat her like a newbie is your best bet. Alternatively, give her Knuth's books and tell her to come back when she's taken it all in:)
Slashdot Mirror
Said article also says "Join us in digging through the 700,000 documents of MPs' expenses". The 91996 is just what they've uploaded so far - that number crept up yesterday as more pages were uploaded. 700,000 documents means at least 700,000 pages. By that thinking they've only got 1/7th of the total so far...
I commend the idea and the effort. But there are 700,000 documents, each with how many pages each? It's an interesting idea but will the crowd's enthusiasm hold up?
1. The school teaches the UK curriculum; when I was last speaking with the person at the UK school who established the link with the Ugandan school, she'd said they'd had some new computers with Ubuntu installed on them shipped out but they didn't have the software expected by the board that set the curriculum they were teaching. Maybe that's the curriculum's fault, maybe it was a misunderstanding, either way, it doesn't solve the issue, even if it's a problem of perception and knowledge.
2. Related to the above, some people have the attitude "Everywhere else in the world runs Windows, surely teaching something else is a disadvantage?"
3. Few people knew how to use computers, and people usually have experience in Windows when you do find someone that's used computers. Finding someone to help with a computer is hard, finding someone who can help with Linux may be harder (though I guess the converse may be true where Linus is prevalent and Windows is not).
4. Lack of networks to search for help when things go wrong. We made an effort to take learning materials out with us, both for the kids and for the teacher to learn more (and not just about Linux), but it's difficult to provide enough documentation to cover every eventuality. Arguably Windows has the same issue but I don't think it has it to the same degree.
I was walking a fine line - on the one hand, I didn't want to treat the learning of the kids at the school as some sort of social/computing experiment to the degradation of their education, but on the other hand, I think open source could be a great thing in those sorts of situations.
I'll also add that for the time I spent there, I only saw a tiny part of Africa, so hopefully other people have more enlightening experiences to share!
Reminds me of a joke one of my Indian colleagues told me: "In the UK, you drive on the left; in India, we drive on what's left."
"We need to move in the direction of what are known as 'open standards'- in effect, creating a common language for government IT. This technical change is crucial because it allows different types of software and systems to work side by side in government."
So I wonder if words have been mangled, because open source software and open standards are not one and the same.
I can see why the focus of the discussion here focusses on the software side, but I think open* standards are perhaps more important than the openess of the software. At government level, I really don't think saying "We're only using software of a certain software licence type" (closed or open) is feasible.
If everybody is using the same standards, it means it's the quality of the software that counts; it becomes a choice of "This software is better" rather than "This software is worse but it means I have access to my old data". From there, more use of open source software can, and hopefully will, follow.
*I do mean "open" in the sense that the /. crowd would use the word, not, for example, how MS would use it...
It still won't ruin your appetite!
Are some replies missing the point?
I'm not able to view the interview as I'm currently at work but the summary talks about a semi-public space. I think the implication is that people want the moon on a stick - a place they can easily share details about themselves without fear of comeback at a later date.
Then again, I wonder why selecting the option of only letting friends view your profile isn't sufficient, but perhaps I'm not down with the kids and their nonchalance to keeping some things private (using words like "nonchalance", I suspect I'm not down with the kids full stop).
...
I'll get my coat.Or, as I like to call it: Billy and the Cloneasaurus.
... Nah, too obvious ;)
Writing music, selling songs, iTunes round the World!
...when he gets turned away my US immigration and has t oswim back home.
But it's not like the technologies can only be used for obnoxious means. Hooray for the flash game that'll kill 10 minutes here and there!
Not to mention that if FF wants to be taken seriously by the mainstream it needs to have the options that give it an edge (in this case, pop-up blocking) but support those technologies an average end-user expects from the web (rightly or wrongly!). Sitting their going "It's a third party issue!" is so much more damaging to the growth of FireFox than actually implementing a fix to work around that behaviour.
... are going to fight this, it'll be the American content producers. Many posts here have bemoaned the appalling treatment of shows, presumably this will give the Aussie TV networks less incentive to show stuff like this and then put on stuff they know will perform better instead. Of course, they'll buy less and less content from abroad because those who want that stuff badly enough are going to download it. Who does that hurt? The people who rely on TV exports to make their money back/profit from making a show. What I don't understand is why there aren't people rushing to at least try to make money on this. I'd love to be able to pay a set fee per month and download TV rather than wait for UK stations to pick things up. The TV show makers can be compensated from the funds that subscribers provide according to what shows are downloaded. As for current TV stations - the two methods of delivery are quite capable of co-existing! Television on a box isn't going anywhere for a while, this helps diversify productoin of shows as well help spread the risk - if stations see Show X performing well online, they can pick it up for broadcast on "normal" TV.
We're in for one hilarious omelette!
That explains why I get asked "why's my PC running so slow?" so much!
Even a 12 year old knows they can't be trusted!
Was it just me or... wait, y'see, here's the... because... yeah, because I think... Was I the only one who found the replies hard to parse in places? I get the feeling the MP3 will make more sense to me :)
The htdp looks like it's a bit on the dull/hard side for newbies (admiteddly, that's after only a few clicks around but then the OP said that they fell at an early hurdle). I was going to suggest the free book "How to think like a computer scientist - learning with python" but after picking it up off my shelf I realised that though it's easy to me, that doesn't mean it's easy for anyone.
And that's not because I think I'm brilliant it's because I'm used to thinking a certain way; reading words and knowing what context they fit into; understanding the concepts already; "getting" in-jokes like "foo" and "bar" and so on.
I think my approach would be to find some material that's going to be good for a person who doesn't have a lot of experience with the technical aspects or computers. It's not just about learning how to do for and while loops, it's about why they're necessary. Unfortunately, I don't have any examples of books that are good for what I am suggesting...
HTML seems like a good way to go, it's easy, introduces some concepts that transfer to programming and it produces results that are more interesting that "Hello, World!"
JavaScript MAY be a good direction after this but it depends on how much your mum wants to know (JS can lead to some bad habits - true of most languages though and if she's not going to do much beyond HTML + JS, then what's the problem with a few bad habits? ;). Is she going to start the next big, complicated project on SourceForge that makes you tea and toast whilst doing your accounts? If so, perhaps a language that isn't tied in with browser technology might be the way to go. If on the other hand, programming in C++, Java etc are not going to be of any use to her... why bother? Javascript ties in neatly with HTML so you can make web pages seem even "cooler." From what I've seen, some of the syntax looks tricky but then I've not learnt from the ground up.
You could substitute in PHP or Python for Javascript in the above paragraph I guess, but let's face it, they are all going to present their own problems.
It really is going to depend on how deeply she wants to get into it (which could be affected by how she is introduced to it etc etc). I'd say finding material that's going to treat her like a newbie is your best bet. Alternatively, give her Knuth's books and tell her to come back when she's taken it all in :)