To many of us outside the US, the national obsession with firearms in that country looks like a bizarre mass psychosis. By any measure, the deadly proliferation of guns in that country is killing far more people than in any country on the planet.
Once upon a time I wondered if there could be a way to make people understand that it's a thing you need to let go of, but increasingly these days it's a case of sit back, grab some popcorn and watch the nation of gun nuts all kill each other.
"The book is pervasive its use of passive voice that can be annoying to many readers. It is hoped that the second edition of this book will be updated with the current tools of the time and a good re-editing of the text to ensure its readability doesn't suffer."
It is to be hoped that critiques of the use of the passive voice are not self conciously ironic.
Some years ago we set up all of our systems using RHEL with a paid support subscription. As a government agency we considered this the proper risk averse thing to do. When we had an actual issue that required technical support, we discovered that the people tasked with delivering the support were clueless and once the query was laboriously escalated up the chain, we found that we were met with apathy, not much more clue and no effort to dig into the issue.
So we changed to another distro, stopped paying for support, and on the occasions where we do run into something strange, a few minutes of web searching usually uncovers an answer.
It would be *very* hard to make a compelling case to us for paid support these days.
> I don't expect to see this service enabled for any country south of the equator, except Australia.
Well, here in Australia I click the 'Request an Invitation' link and I'm served this page:
http://music.google.com/music/usernotinvited
Which declares:
"We're sorry. Music Beta is currently only available in the United States"
No music soup for me.
My seven year old son says he'd *love* to have a job writing computer games. Some of the recent flash-based game sites where you 'design' the game that you then play have encouraged him and that's a good thing.
I have done 3D computer graphics at the CS Masters level, and I think it's worth pointing out that this stuff is *hard*. You need to have excellent skills in mathematics and physics (lots of matrices and vectors) and a strong foundation in computing. I applaud anyone who studies this stuff properly through the motivation of gaming, but as many other posters have said, don't make game development your only option.
Meanwhile, I'm getting the boy into computing by introducing the important concepts without a computer via http://csunplugged.org/
From TFA:
> "If the cost of assessing it was greater than the cost of the software, you would have to think twice."
We don't understand it. Do you understand it? This stuff is hard. Have you tried rebooting?
> "While open source software may reduce licensing costs, the cost of support could be an issue."
I was flipping burgers last week and now I are teh IT guy. Have you tried rebooting?
> "Centrelink, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and National Archives of Australia were known to use open source products; however, it was up to individual agencies to make procurement decisions, AGIMO said."
Yes, yes we do. And so do quite a few others. Betcha no-one in the proprietary software world knows who we all are. We're here though, and we're not going away.
Over at http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7439/ Chris Smart has a short article on the subject in which he publishes an interview with Linus Torvalds about this issue. Linus is generally in favour of including the Microsoft driver code.
The "where is my stuff?" problem is not trivial. My work desktop is an Ubuntu installation where I do my actual work with Windows XP running in Virtualbox to let me get to corporate legacy things (like my email). At home I have a Linux desktop main machine. I carry around a Linux netbook and an Android phone. There are a handful of servers lurking in datacentres around the world on which I have shell accounts and on which I have some of my 'stuff'. I have code hosted in various places.
My stuff is diverse. It's photos, blog posts, documents, music, videos, administrivia, code, email etc.
I have no idea just 'where' all of my stuff is.
Usually to read old media, you wouldn't start by building a PC. The first thing is the hardware that works with the media, for example a reel to reel tape drive, 8, 5 1/4 or 3 1/2 inch floppy drive, tape drive for old cartridge tape formats etc. Then you look at the interface needed to work that old hardware, then you look at what computer you need to host that interface, then an operating system, then the tools needed to get to and make sense of the data.
Luckily the OS part is pretty easy. Linux has support for all sorts of weird and wonderful interfaces right out of the box. It's also usually packaged with all manner of powerful tools good for getting data off old media.
It's getting old hardware to actually work that'll challenge you.
Re:KVM less of a surprise than you might think...
on
Ubuntu Picks Upstart, KVM
·
· Score: 2, Informative
So we have a kernel guy and his own take on Linux and virtual machines. This may prove hugely popular, though I hear that not too many turned up for Rusty's lguest tutorial at LCA08. Then again that may be because he scared us off with a "if you haven't done the homework, don't turn up!"
Nice to see that the comments thread on OOXML is shrinking as the debate matures. Of course that means that the usual trolls are either bored or on holidays but I think that we may collectively be starting to better understand what's going on.
I attended the UNSW Cyberlaw centre forum on OOXML http://www.cyberlawcentre.org/2007/ooxml/ as an interested observer and I liked what I saw. Smart people engaged in a positive discussion. Yes, the viewpoints were polar, but the words were civil and a real exchange of ideas took place.
Our use of the OpenDocument format will be quite important, but it's only one facet of what we do. The Xena software has been developed with a plugin architecture that lets us use various external helpers to 'normalise' or convert to open formats any data objects in our care. For each data object, we use Xena to create a base64 encoded copy so that we can embed some metadata with it, and separately for a conversion to an open format. Much of the data ends up as XML, while images for example are png or jpg. We're currently investigating open audio formats. Xena is also used to 'present' data objects that it normalises.
Until now, Xena has made use of OOo 1.1.x for the normalising of office documents into flat XML. Other development priorities have kept the move to OOo2 in the background. I must stress that we have not yet released Xena with OOo2 support, there is more testing to be done and we feel that the release must be accompanied by good user and developer documentation.
The 'current' binary of Xena available at sourceforge is waaaaay out of date and will shortly be replaced by a much sleeker and more intuitive version. For the curious, anonymous cvs is pretty up to date. If you have a java 1.5 sdk and apache ant, check out a pile of modules and go nuts. Anyone who wishes to become involved in the development effort is more than welcome.
Dang. While Mr Microsoft was next door, I was sitting at the OpenOffice miniconf at LCA just 60 metres away. I wonder if he knew that the Forces For Good were gathered so close by.
I'm glad someone mentioned the NAA and the use of OOo. For the purposes of Digital Preservation, openly documented formats are essential. XML is good, but XML that you have to sign up for? C'mon Mr MS, who are you kidding?
At the NAA, we're about keeping records for long after we're all dead. Digital records *must* be stored in publicly documented formats. Your grandkids won't be keen to sign an agreement to use those records.
Slashdot Mirror
To many of us outside the US, the national obsession with firearms in that country looks like a bizarre mass psychosis. By any measure, the deadly proliferation of guns in that country is killing far more people than in any country on the planet.
Once upon a time I wondered if there could be a way to make people understand that it's a thing you need to let go of, but increasingly these days it's a case of sit back, grab some popcorn and watch the nation of gun nuts all kill each other.
"The book is pervasive its use of passive voice that can be annoying to many readers. It is hoped that the second edition of this book will be updated with the current tools of the time and a good re-editing of the text to ensure its readability doesn't suffer."
It is to be hoped that critiques of the use of the passive voice are not self conciously ironic.
This lot sound like they should all be on the Golgafrincham B ark: http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Golgafrincham
Some years ago we set up all of our systems using RHEL with a paid support subscription. As a government agency we considered this the proper risk averse thing to do. When we had an actual issue that required technical support, we discovered that the people tasked with delivering the support were clueless and once the query was laboriously escalated up the chain, we found that we were met with apathy, not much more clue and no effort to dig into the issue.
So we changed to another distro, stopped paying for support, and on the occasions where we do run into something strange, a few minutes of web searching usually uncovers an answer.
It would be *very* hard to make a compelling case to us for paid support these days.
> I don't expect to see this service enabled for any country south of the equator, except Australia.
Well, here in Australia I click the 'Request an Invitation' link and I'm served this page: http://music.google.com/music/usernotinvited
Which declares: "We're sorry. Music Beta is currently only available in the United States"
No music soup for me.
Sanity on Slashdot? What do you think you're doing?
Um, yeah we are. We're an accountability agency, administered under the FMA and an executive agency under Prime Minister and Cabinet.
http://naa.gov.au/about-us/director-general/index.aspx
"The census will become the first time the open standards are used by an Australian Federal Government agency."
Really?
http://xena.sourceforge.net/
I have done 3D computer graphics at the CS Masters level, and I think it's worth pointing out that this stuff is *hard*. You need to have excellent skills in mathematics and physics (lots of matrices and vectors) and a strong foundation in computing. I applaud anyone who studies this stuff properly through the motivation of gaming, but as many other posters have said, don't make game development your only option.
Meanwhile, I'm getting the boy into computing by introducing the important concepts without a computer via http://csunplugged.org/
From TFA:
> "If the cost of assessing it was greater than the cost of the software, you would have to think twice."
We don't understand it. Do you understand it? This stuff is hard. Have you tried rebooting?
> "While open source software may reduce licensing costs, the cost of support could be an issue."
I was flipping burgers last week and now I are teh IT guy. Have you tried rebooting?
> "Centrelink, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and National Archives of Australia were known to use open source products; however, it was up to individual agencies to make procurement decisions, AGIMO said."
Yes, yes we do. And so do quite a few others. Betcha no-one in the proprietary software world knows who we all are. We're here though, and we're not going away.
"Microsoft Finally Open Sources Windows 7 Too!" And I wondered whether anyone would care if they did.
Over at http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7439/ Chris Smart has a short article on the subject in which he publishes an interview with Linus Torvalds about this issue. Linus is generally in favour of including the Microsoft driver code.
The "where is my stuff?" problem is not trivial. My work desktop is an Ubuntu installation where I do my actual work with Windows XP running in Virtualbox to let me get to corporate legacy things (like my email). At home I have a Linux desktop main machine. I carry around a Linux netbook and an Android phone. There are a handful of servers lurking in datacentres around the world on which I have shell accounts and on which I have some of my 'stuff'. I have code hosted in various places. My stuff is diverse. It's photos, blog posts, documents, music, videos, administrivia, code, email etc. I have no idea just 'where' all of my stuff is.
Usually to read old media, you wouldn't start by building a PC. The first thing is the hardware that works with the media, for example a reel to reel tape drive, 8, 5 1/4 or 3 1/2 inch floppy drive, tape drive for old cartridge tape formats etc. Then you look at the interface needed to work that old hardware, then you look at what computer you need to host that interface, then an operating system, then the tools needed to get to and make sense of the data.
Luckily the OS part is pretty easy. Linux has support for all sorts of weird and wonderful interfaces right out of the box. It's also usually packaged with all manner of powerful tools good for getting data off old media.
It's getting old hardware to actually work that'll challenge you.
And if the virtualisation waters weren't already muddy enough, we have kernel hacker Paul http://www.rustyfacts.com/ Rusty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Russell Russell coming up with lguest http://lguest.ozlabs.org/lguest .
So we have a kernel guy and his own take on Linux and virtual machines. This may prove hugely popular, though I hear that not too many turned up for Rusty's lguest tutorial at LCA08. Then again that may be because he scared us off with a "if you haven't done the homework, don't turn up!"
To check out the futurama headers you might also try: curl -I http://slashdot.org/ #that's curl minus capital i
Nice to see that the comments thread on OOXML is shrinking as the debate matures. Of course that means that the usual trolls are either bored or on holidays but I think that we may collectively be starting to better understand what's going on.
I attended the UNSW Cyberlaw centre forum on OOXML http://www.cyberlawcentre.org/2007/ooxml/ as an interested observer and I liked what I saw. Smart people engaged in a positive discussion. Yes, the viewpoints were polar, but the words were civil and a real exchange of ideas took place.
Pia Waugh was an organiser of the event and had this to say about it: http://tinyurl.com/32zfsr
Roll on the BRM in Geneva and may reasoned debate rule over Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
--
digipres, a No voter
Our use of the OpenDocument format will be quite important, but it's only one facet of what we do. The Xena software has been developed with a plugin architecture that lets us use various external helpers to 'normalise' or convert to open formats any data objects in our care. For each data object, we use Xena to create a base64 encoded copy so that we can embed some metadata with it, and separately for a conversion to an open format. Much of the data ends up as XML, while images for example are png or jpg. We're currently investigating open audio formats. Xena is also used to 'present' data objects that it normalises.
Until now, Xena has made use of OOo 1.1.x for the normalising of office documents into flat XML. Other development priorities have kept the move to OOo2 in the background. I must stress that we have not yet released Xena with OOo2 support, there is more testing to be done and we feel that the release must be accompanied by good user and developer documentation.
The 'current' binary of Xena available at sourceforge is waaaaay out of date and will shortly be replaced by a much sleeker and more intuitive version. For the curious, anonymous cvs is pretty up to date. If you have a java 1.5 sdk and apache ant, check out a pile of modules and go nuts. Anyone who wishes to become involved in the development effort is more than welcome.
For anyone else, keep an eye on the http//xena.sourceforge.net/ for the upcoming binary release.
Dang. While Mr Microsoft was next door, I was sitting at the OpenOffice miniconf at LCA just 60 metres away. I wonder if he knew that the Forces For Good were gathered so close by.
I'm glad someone mentioned the NAA and the use of OOo. For the purposes of Digital Preservation, openly documented formats are essential. XML is good, but XML that you have to sign up for? C'mon Mr MS, who are you kidding?
At the NAA, we're about keeping records for long after we're all dead. Digital records *must* be stored in publicly documented formats. Your grandkids won't be keen to sign an agreement to use those records.