Another reason why the maintainer might not be responding: It's August, and people are on vacation and otherwise doing family-related stuff. Most open-source projects are done as a hobby, and in general August is a terrible time to submit patches to these kinds of projects. Wait until September and try again.
Let me add to what you have said: Green beams can be obtained from solid-state infrared lasers (e.g., Nd:YAG) by using KTP or KDP crystals, which combine two photons into one (!) with twice the energy/frequency. The resulting beam is collimated and coherent - i.e., the same as the original and any other laser beam. The technique was first demonstrated in 1961, predating this new discovery by almost half a century. Green laser diodes are most definitely interesting and useful, but to suggest that the green lasers from before were "fake" is incorrect. The new part here is having green as the fundamental frequency from a solid-state laser.
Two UCLA researchers published a paper in the prestigious IEEE Transactions on Computers that describes a technique for p2p content poisoning targeted exclusively at detected copyright violators.
What's to prevent poisoning legal p2p? There are plenty of examples of copyrights being inappropriately asserted. The technology itself doesn't discriminate.
Nice straw man you've got yourself there. I never claimed that twittering would topple the Iranian government. The key role that the Internet has played in all this is in getting the information out where the traditional media have failed, and that is what makes it an important tech story. Insofar as peace is based on communication, these are important developments. As I noted in an earlier post, one gets the sense that more of us understand the people of Iran now than ever before. Although we are different, the basic differences don't seem so extreme. This is a very hopeful development.
Iran already has a democracy, so this isn't a democratic revolution.
That's crazy talk. Let's see what Wikipedia has to say about democracy: "Even though there is no universally accepted definition of 'democracy', there are two principles that any definition of democracy includes. The first principle is that all members of the society (citizens) have equal access to power and the second that all members (citizens) enjoy universally recognized freedoms and liberties." Iran fails miserably on both counts. Do you care to supply an alternative definition?
I think this is a bunch of reactionaries (in the west) supporting a cause just because it involves "the youth" etc. Mousavi is no better than Ahmadinejad, their policies are largely the same. Even Obama has stated this, which I give him a lot of credit for. For libertarians it should be even more clear cut. Only neocons and liberal idealists care if Iran has one mullah-supported leader over another.
I'm not so sure. Progress is often made in small steps. You could have said the same thing about Gorbachev back in the 1990s. He rose to the highest eschelon of the Communist Party, but ended up disassembling the Soviet machine.
Thanks for an interesting post. I guess that the question is "how do you make the good information rise to the top?". Although I agree that the mod system dramatically improves the signal-to-noise ratio, this post makes a strong argument that slashdot's relatively recent collectivist slant and increasingly trollish editors prevent a lot of the good stuff from being seen. There are a lot of valid comments on slashdot that are "ruthlessly suppressed" as you have described by mods with an agenda who use "-1 Troll" as "-1 Disagree".
Wow, you need to pay closer attention. Start with this Iran Update from Fark user Tatsuma, which has been gleaned (or so I understand) from reliable twitter sources on the ground in Iran. Very little of this information is coming out in the mainstream media. Other places like 4chan have been very active in setting up proxies to get the information out. This is a very important world and tech development.
Remember that this event is only a week old. The objective should not be to have a repeat of the bloody events of 1979, which is what you get when the situation evolves too rapidly.
Now that is interesting. The "free as in speech" folks have always argued that freedom of speech is a natural progression., Clearly, as our technology is progressing, this is becoming more and more true. Maybe this is just the first example of a changing world where speech is universally free?
We're getting there. The more avenues that people have to communicate, the better. I didn't understand the value of twitter before, but this whole event is a game changer. No matter how trivial a communications mechanism appears, it can make a contribution. More avenues are probably needed, so that the people can stay ahead of those that would shut communications down. If people can just talk, then we can understand each other. One gets the sense that more of us understand the people of Iran than ever before. Although we are different, the basic differences don't seem so extreme. This is a very hopeful development.
I always thought that Tim Berners-Lee deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for his invention of the World Wide Web. Communication so that we can understand each other is the key to peace, and few (if any) have made a contribution as significant as Tim to this area.
It is hard to fathom how the story of the year (also the tech story of the year) could be tagged "nomoreiranplease". Tech has played a critical role in this event. Who ever thought that twitter could actually be useful? The diaspora of communications technologies has proved very hard to shut down, and it will be interesting to see what new communications tech adds to this in the future.
One issue this brings up is the differences between the fark free-for-all comment system (including images!) versus slashdot's moderation. The contribution of fark to reporting what has been going on in Iran has been really impressive, and fark is essentially a news aggregator just like slashdot. Does the moderation system of slashdot prevent a similar thing from happening here? I had hoped to see a much more vigorous discussion from the slashdot community, but the real action is elsewhere. Part of this is due to the moderation system, I think, which effectively forces an end to conversations when the mods run out.
I'm not trying to be trollish, but think this is an interesting thing to think about. Slashdot used to feel like the center of the tech universe, but has been badly outdone on this topic by fark and others.
If I wanted to read about stuff like this, I wouldn't have disabled idle.slashdot.org in my preferences. This is neither "News for Nerds" nor "Stuff that Matters". And how exactly is this "Entertainment"? Please don't continue to ruin slashdot with this crap.
These licenses do not include an "or later version" clause. A project may declare that a given license or later version may be used, but is not required to do so. The linux kernel is the most famous example of a project that only allows v2 of the GPL.
Has anyone looked at Freshmeat lately (owned by the same corporate overlord as Slashdot)? It was a great site and now is completely unusable. Can Taco save./ from this fate?
The article doesn't mention that you can do functional programming in python. For someone who uses python already, is there any reason to try haskell etc (i.e., beside just the interest in learning another language)? Python use is pretty widespread these days.
StarOffice was open-sourced by Sun in the USA -- it was closed under German company StarDivision -- hence my attribution. You second point is well-taken, although I was responding to the GP's challenge regarding the origin of major open-source projects rather than the nationality.
Talk of Sun reminds me of another major project that I forgot:
My original question still stands: Can you prove by numbers and source that most large Open Source Projects originated in the US?
Sure, I'm game. Here is a list of some of the major F/OSS projects and
more-or-less where they originated. Feel free to add to it.
GNU toolset - USA
X11 - USA
KDE - Germany
Gnome - Mexico
MySQL - Finland
PostgreSQL - USA
Linux - Finland
BSD - USA
Gcc - USA
Python - Netherlands
perl - USA
php - Denmark
OpenOffice - USA
Firefox - USA
Apache - USA
Emacs - USA
vi - USA
Take off the last two, if you want. I couldn't resist.
Again, I am not trying to minimize or downplay the contributions made
around the world to F/OSS software. I simply object, as someone
from outside the USA, to the air of superiority projected by TFS and TFA.
I agree with your point that the federal governments in Europe seem more
interested in Open-Source, although there are examples of State
governments in the US stepping into the fray. However, your rant about
somehow considering English Copyright Law from 1710 in a discussion of
F/OSS is absurd.
All of which is compiled using gcc, written by Richard Stallman, an American. His Free Software movement predates most other significant open contributions.
Look, I get your point, and am not trying to run down the considerable contributions made around the world to F/OSS software. However, to subjectively declare that Europeans somehow care more about the source code than folks in the US is just plain silly.
How can this factual post be modded -1 troll? It is a clear case of moderator abuse if I ever saw one. My posting history shows that I do not troll.
So, what is the agenda here? Why suppress consideration that Free Software and most of the big F/OSS projects originated in the US? I'm not even from the US, yet it is plain obvious to me the enormous contribution that has been made by the likes of RMS, linus, etc in fostering awareness of the source-code access issue.
The discovery was made using the 8m diameter Gemini Telescope - North on Mauna Kea. It's doesn't have Hubble's advantage of being in space, and so a clever approach is employed to eliminate interference from atmospheric turbulence. A laser is used to induce fluorescence in the sodium layer left by meteors up around 80 km altitude. -- this is called a "guide star" -- and adaptive (i.e., deformable) optics in the telescope bring the guide star image into sharp focus, and the rest of the scene with it. A guide star is used for this process rather than an actual star because it is much easier to adaptively image a bright object (which can also be positioned where needed). Such a clear image would otherwise not have been possible.
Yeah, I agree. It does look different than a standard OS X app. Maybe even different from a typical Windows app. The pleasant surprise was that there were no hoops to jump through; i.e., no Wine install/configuration or anything like that. This was all completely transparent. As an OS X and linux user it's nice to finally be able to try out Chromium and see what all the chatter is about.
I just downloaded the Mac OS X version from the link in TFA, and am using it to submit this post. It works, although the response seems a little slow, particularly with scrolling and window resizing. The amazing thing is that I never would have known this was done under Wine -- there was nothing else to install beyond the browser package itself. Very impressive.
I personally believe budgets *should* be kept small, even if artificially. This *forces* innovation.
Most of any budget goes toward funding people, either directly or indirectly. Small budgets result in innovators spending most of their time completing tasks that would otherwise be looked after by others, and this distracts from innovation. Artificially small budgets don't force innovation -- they create demoralizing conditions that stifle it.
Slashdot Mirror
Another reason why the maintainer might not be responding: It's August, and people are on vacation and otherwise doing family-related stuff. Most open-source projects are done as a hobby, and in general August is a terrible time to submit patches to these kinds of projects. Wait until September and try again.
Let me add to what you have said: Green beams can be obtained from solid-state infrared lasers (e.g., Nd:YAG) by using KTP or KDP crystals, which combine two photons into one (!) with twice the energy/frequency. The resulting beam is collimated and coherent - i.e., the same as the original and any other laser beam. The technique was first demonstrated in 1961, predating this new discovery by almost half a century. Green laser diodes are most definitely interesting and useful, but to suggest that the green lasers from before were "fake" is incorrect. The new part here is having green as the fundamental frequency from a solid-state laser.
What's to prevent poisoning legal p2p? There are plenty of examples of copyrights being inappropriately asserted. The technology itself doesn't discriminate.
Nice straw man you've got yourself there. I never claimed that twittering would topple the Iranian government. The key role that the Internet has played in all this is in getting the information out where the traditional media have failed, and that is what makes it an important tech story. Insofar as peace is based on communication, these are important developments. As I noted in an earlier post, one gets the sense that more of us understand the people of Iran now than ever before. Although we are different, the basic differences don't seem so extreme. This is a very hopeful development.
That's crazy talk. Let's see what Wikipedia has to say about democracy: "Even though there is no universally accepted definition of 'democracy', there are two principles that any definition of democracy includes. The first principle is that all members of the society (citizens) have equal access to power and the second that all members (citizens) enjoy universally recognized freedoms and liberties." Iran fails miserably on both counts. Do you care to supply an alternative definition?
I'm not so sure. Progress is often made in small steps. You could have said the same thing about Gorbachev back in the 1990s. He rose to the highest eschelon of the Communist Party, but ended up disassembling the Soviet machine.
This cuts to the heart of the problems of late on slashdot. It would be nice to reclaim "News for nerds, stuff that matters".
Thanks for an interesting post. I guess that the question is "how do you make the good information rise to the top?". Although I agree that the mod system dramatically improves the signal-to-noise ratio, this post makes a strong argument that slashdot's relatively recent collectivist slant and increasingly trollish editors prevent a lot of the good stuff from being seen. There are a lot of valid comments on slashdot that are "ruthlessly suppressed" as you have described by mods with an agenda who use "-1 Troll" as "-1 Disagree".
Wow, you need to pay closer attention. Start with this Iran Update from Fark user Tatsuma, which has been gleaned (or so I understand) from reliable twitter sources on the ground in Iran. Very little of this information is coming out in the mainstream media. Other places like 4chan have been very active in setting up proxies to get the information out. This is a very important world and tech development.
Remember that this event is only a week old. The objective should not be to have a repeat of the bloody events of 1979, which is what you get when the situation evolves too rapidly.
We're getting there. The more avenues that people have to communicate, the better. I didn't understand the value of twitter before, but this whole event is a game changer. No matter how trivial a communications mechanism appears, it can make a contribution. More avenues are probably needed, so that the people can stay ahead of those that would shut communications down. If people can just talk, then we can understand each other. One gets the sense that more of us understand the people of Iran than ever before. Although we are different, the basic differences don't seem so extreme. This is a very hopeful development.
I always thought that Tim Berners-Lee deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for his invention of the World Wide Web. Communication so that we can understand each other is the key to peace, and few (if any) have made a contribution as significant as Tim to this area.
It is hard to fathom how the story of the year (also the tech story of the year) could be tagged "nomoreiranplease". Tech has played a critical role in this event. Who ever thought that twitter could actually be useful? The diaspora of communications technologies has proved very hard to shut down, and it will be interesting to see what new communications tech adds to this in the future.
One issue this brings up is the differences between the fark free-for-all comment system (including images!) versus slashdot's moderation. The contribution of fark to reporting what has been going on in Iran has been really impressive, and fark is essentially a news aggregator just like slashdot. Does the moderation system of slashdot prevent a similar thing from happening here? I had hoped to see a much more vigorous discussion from the slashdot community, but the real action is elsewhere. Part of this is due to the moderation system, I think, which effectively forces an end to conversations when the mods run out.
I'm not trying to be trollish, but think this is an interesting thing to think about. Slashdot used to feel like the center of the tech universe, but has been badly outdone on this topic by fark and others.
If I wanted to read about stuff like this, I wouldn't have disabled idle.slashdot.org in my preferences. This is neither "News for Nerds" nor "Stuff that Matters". And how exactly is this "Entertainment"? Please don't continue to ruin slashdot with this crap.
These licenses do not include an "or later version" clause. A project may declare that a given license or later version may be used, but is not required to do so. The linux kernel is the most famous example of a project that only allows v2 of the GPL.
Has anyone looked at Freshmeat lately (owned by the same corporate overlord as Slashdot)? It was a great site and now is completely unusable. Can Taco save ./ from this fate?
The article doesn't mention that you can do functional programming in python. For someone who uses python already, is there any reason to try haskell etc (i.e., beside just the interest in learning another language)? Python use is pretty widespread these days.
StarOffice was open-sourced by Sun in the USA -- it was closed under German company StarDivision -- hence my attribution. You second point is well-taken, although I was responding to the GP's challenge regarding the origin of major open-source projects rather than the nationality.
Talk of Sun reminds me of another major project that I forgot:
Java - USA
I'm sure there are many others I have omitted.
Sure, I'm game. Here is a list of some of the major F/OSS projects and more-or-less where they originated. Feel free to add to it.
GNU toolset - USA
X11 - USA
KDE - Germany
Gnome - Mexico
MySQL - Finland
PostgreSQL - USA
Linux - Finland
BSD - USA
Gcc - USA
Python - Netherlands
perl - USA
php - Denmark
OpenOffice - USA
Firefox - USA
Apache - USA
Emacs - USA
vi - USA
Take off the last two, if you want. I couldn't resist.
Again, I am not trying to minimize or downplay the contributions made around the world to F/OSS software. I simply object, as someone from outside the USA, to the air of superiority projected by TFS and TFA.
I agree with your point that the federal governments in Europe seem more interested in Open-Source, although there are examples of State governments in the US stepping into the fray. However, your rant about somehow considering English Copyright Law from 1710 in a discussion of F/OSS is absurd.
All of which is compiled using gcc, written by Richard Stallman, an American. His Free Software movement predates most other significant open contributions.
Look, I get your point, and am not trying to run down the considerable contributions made around the world to F/OSS software. However, to subjectively declare that Europeans somehow care more about the source code than folks in the US is just plain silly.
My bad. Linus is obvious Finnish. I'm a little outraged that my original post got modded troll...
How can this factual post be modded -1 troll? It is a clear case of moderator abuse if I ever saw one. My posting history shows that I do not troll.
So, what is the agenda here? Why suppress consideration that Free Software and most of the big F/OSS projects originated in the US? I'm not even from the US, yet it is plain obvious to me the enormous contribution that has been made by the likes of RMS, linus, etc in fostering awareness of the source-code access issue.
Free Software, and its ideals, essentially originated in the US. Most of the big projects have too.
Nothing to see here, move along.
The discovery was made using the 8m diameter Gemini Telescope - North on Mauna Kea. It's doesn't have Hubble's advantage of being in space, and so a clever approach is employed to eliminate interference from atmospheric turbulence. A laser is used to induce fluorescence in the sodium layer left by meteors up around 80 km altitude. -- this is called a "guide star" -- and adaptive (i.e., deformable) optics in the telescope bring the guide star image into sharp focus, and the rest of the scene with it. A guide star is used for this process rather than an actual star because it is much easier to adaptively image a bright object (which can also be positioned where needed). Such a clear image would otherwise not have been possible.
Yeah, I agree. It does look different than a standard OS X app. Maybe even different from a typical Windows app. The pleasant surprise was that there were no hoops to jump through; i.e., no Wine install/configuration or anything like that. This was all completely transparent. As an OS X and linux user it's nice to finally be able to try out Chromium and see what all the chatter is about.
I just downloaded the Mac OS X version from the link in TFA, and am using it to submit this post. It works, although the response seems a little slow, particularly with scrolling and window resizing. The amazing thing is that I never would have known this was done under Wine -- there was nothing else to install beyond the browser package itself. Very impressive.
libidOS, the "linux-based integrated desktop OS". Does it come with the milfs filesystem?
I personally believe budgets *should* be kept small, even if artificially. This *forces* innovation.
Most of any budget goes toward funding people, either directly or indirectly. Small budgets result in innovators spending most of their time completing tasks that would otherwise be looked after by others, and this distracts from innovation. Artificially small budgets don't force innovation -- they create demoralizing conditions that stifle it.