Garbage; granted Resnet has strong firewall restrictions (no P2P without tunnels, for example) but JPlag is not blocked - I just visited the site in my browser from my room connected through Resnet
Timid about diving into the oceanic waters of open-source projects?
A few former Microsoft employees have launched a Web site that evaluates open-source projects. The site, called Ohloh, is not a reviews site, but instead a directory of open-source software, its co-founders said. Advertisement
"We collect from the infrastructure the open-source community uses to develop the software," Ohloh co-founder and CEO Scott Collison told CNET News.com. "It also serves as an open-source directory. You can find open-source projects and compare them, and gradually find one that's right for you."
The site could appeal to developers who are frustrated by the number of open-source projects that lack clear explanations. Ohloh also seeks to help developers make a build vs. buy decision by offering code analysis, said Collison, who along with co-founder Jason Allen, previously worked at Microsoft.
"A developer thinks, hey, maybe I want to develop this kind of project. Our formula takes into account what it costs to write the code, collect the requirements, write the specs, write the code, test that code and deploy it," he said.
Ohloh's database, searchable by project name or keyword, results in a list of suggested software. Each project has a profile, beginning with a brief synopsis of what the software does.
While other open-source databases offer this to some degree, many times developers are left wondering about licensing, Collison said. Accordingly, Ohloh also lists the licenses held for the open-source project, as well as a link to the full text of each license. (The name Ohloh refers to a cry of enlightenment in Buddhism and also the name of the first surfboard in Hawaii.)
In addition, the directory offers information such as when the project was started, how many developers are actively working on it, the languages it uses, links to the project's home page and a breakdown of current activities. Charts on the open-source project show how many lines of code have been removed or added and by whom. For those really unfamiliar with the open-source community, the profile even includes linked explanations of each open-source evaluation term.
Ohloh has been working on the directory for two years and plans to formally launch it next week. In the meantime, it has quietly rolled out its database in public beta. The database will remain free with an ad-based business model, but Ohloh plans to add services for companies looking for analysis and evaluation of their own in-house projects.
The company's investors include the two co-founders and former Microsoft executives Paul Maritz and Pradeep Singh. Collison said he and others at the company hit upon the idea for Ohloh while working at Microsoft.
"We worked on the communications pillar of Vista and Web services. While doing that, we met with a lot of corporate customers who were interested in open-source products and concepts but asked, 'How do I get an idea of how the software was made?'" Collison said. "We got so many questions from people who wanted more visibility into open-source that we thought it was a great place to start."
Cracking "The Da Vinci Code" could have been easier -- well, maybe -- if the characters had enlisted the Japanese lab which has "recreated" the voices of Leonardo and Mona Lisa.
Using methods employed in criminal investigations, the Japan Acoustic Lab says it has analyzed the skeletal structures of the historical figures' faces to replicate how their voices would have sounded.
"We believe we were able to create the voices that are very close to the real voices. Perhaps it was really how they really sounded," the lab's chief Matsumi Suzuki says on the website.
A former police engineer who specializes in audio analysis, Suzuki says he assumed the woman in the legendary famed Leonardo painting was 168 centimeters (5 foot, 6 inches) tall, giving her a relatively low tone for a woman.
"We cannot tell exactly how tall she was. So we analyzed the length of her right middle finger" and looked at the average height of Italian women, he said.
Suzuki says he gave Mona Lisa a slightly nasal tone because of her relatively large nose.
For Leonardo, Suzuki made his voice around the time when he was 60 years old to match his bearded face in the famous sketched portrait.
"Because the beard covers his jaws in his portrait, we could not tell his exact skeletal features. We assumed that he had a heavy-jowled face, giving him a nice, bass tone," Suzuki says.
Suzuki, who frequently appears in popular media, has used his skills in a variety of fields, such as analyzing voices in purported recordings of Osama bin Laden.
He also collaborated with Japanese toy maker Takara Co. to create the smash-hit Bowlingual, which is said to interpret dog language.
For the toy, Suzuki received the 2002 tongue-in-cheek IgNobel Prize in the field of peace for scientific achievement that "cannot or should not be reproduced."
This will result in a really slooooow restore when coming back after, say, 15 minutes. Actually this was set to false in 1.5 and true in 1.0, for this reason.
AppleCared: My Life Inside Apple and AppleCare By Adam Knight Posted on May 12, 2006 - 1:03am
You can only work in a technical service position for a limited amount of time before it loses its luster and shine, and you start to follow. Once you've performed a job for several years, you get into the groove and know how it's done. The knowledge is all there, somewhere, and it becomes routine to just look it up and spit it out on demand. You keep doing this, time and again, and eventually become a fixture: unchanging, unmoving, static.
The problems compound when this job involves the general public. Any technical job that involves helping masses of uncensored human beings understand technology will eventually wear the average man down, causing him to go bat-*** crazy and scream at the top of his lungs while trying to take out a swath of them with a surprise barrage of old SCSI cards. The largest catalyst for such violent behavior and general mental breakdown is best described by stating, simply, that most people exist at a significant intellectual delta from that burnt-out husk of a technology worker.
This doesn't have to pose a problem in an ideal world. In an ideal world, common people would be willing to accept advice from anyone capable of delivering it. In this real world, however, half of those that acknowledge that they need such assistance will turn violently against anyone they seek help from with such winning phrases as: "What do you think I am, stupid?" In most of the remaining cases, the user is a support vampire and that simply ruins those willing to try and help as badly as being berated for offering the answer. This behavior is evident in forums, mailing lists, in person, and most especially on the phone with technical support.
As a technical support agent, you develop mental calluses that help you move on and through the chaff and treasure the customers that are amiable, acknowledge that they need help, and are happy with the answer they're given. Genuinely happy. A good number of calls are actually like that and make the job bearable. A similar number are very, very far from it.
However, the core reason of why I recently quit my job in AppleCare is that in commodity technical jobs there's only so far you can go before you arrive at the end of the career path for the masses of technical agents and hit the lid where only five or ten pass upwards. Ever. When you get there, you have two choices for moving ahead: wait for the person in the cushy job you want to leave or die to make room and pray that it's you among the masses that applied that gets it, or move ahead elsewhere. After waiting for someone to bite it in a freak keyboarding accident for four years, it was time to go with Plan B.
So one day, when I had a life outside of the company set up and ready, I walked up to my manager and said: iQuit.
***man Begins I worked in Austin's AppleCare center for four and a half years as a desperation move after a programming gig decided they'd rather give it a go without me several months earlier and my severance and unemployment checks stopped paying the bills. I've used a Mac since I had control over my mousing finger, so performing remedial technical support for Macs was an obvious choice for some quick money. Mac OS X 10.1 had just come out a few months previous, which was the only free upgrade Apple has ever released for Mac OS X as it was mostly an apology to those that bought Mac OS X 10.0. The PowerBook Titanium was the king of the road, until you opened it the 333rd time and the hinge decided it was time to move on in life. There were other Apple products, but I didn't care because those were the two I was told I supported at the time.
The job was remarkably easy, but it had been a long time since I'd done phone support, so I had a lot to learn on the procedural side. They have a shortish training course that they put all new-hires through that taught them how to use iMovie, what an iPod was (the 5GB bricks, at the time), and how to troubleshoot
Rotten Effort Don Tennant Today's Top Stories or Other IT Management Stories
May 08, 2006 (Computerworld) -- It's bad enough when Microsoft strong-arms other software vendors into submission as a means of thwarting competition. But when it engages in underhanded tactics to intimidate users in order to land a software deal, we have a very disturbing situation on our hands. And someone needs to have the guts to speak out about it.
Fortunately, someone has. Last week, Dale Frantz, CIO at Auto Warehousing Co., brought to my attention an alarming business practice that shows Microsoft at its shoddy and arrogant worst.
AWC was contacted several weeks ago by Janet Lawless, a software asset management engagement manager at Microsoft, who claimed that "a preliminary review of [AWC's software licensing] information indicates that your company may not be licensed properly." Lawless urged AWC to "understand that the potential inconsistency in licensing is an urgent matter and needs immediate attention." She wanted to send a consultant to AWC to conduct an inventory of its installed software.
Frantz was stunned. He says he always errs on the side of caution with respect to software licenses. He does regular audits and maintains extensive records of purchases, license keys and registration codes. Frantz had no doubt that he was 100% compliant. When he told Lawless that, she ratcheted up the threatening tone of her e-mail correspondence.
"Simply commenting on your licensing environment does not address our concerns in a tangible, proven manner," she wrote. "We continue to believe that Auto Warehousing may not be licensed properly. Since this is a compliance issue, I am obligated to notify an officer of Auto Warehousing of the situation and the significant risk your organization may be subject to by not resolving this situation in a timely manner."
At that point, Frantz got his corporate attorney involved. The attorney suggested that an olive branch be proffered to avoid legal action, so Frantz offered to send Lawless detailed records of all purchases of Microsoft software in the past five years. But Lawless blew that off as well. She seemed determined to get a consultant into the IT bowels of AWC.
"Thank you for your offer to send your purchase records to me," she wrote, "however our Software Asset Management (SAM) program is the only unbiased way to create an accurate baseline and resolve this matter."
That did it. Frantz informed Lawless that he wasn't going to waste anymore time with her, and he left the matter with his attorney. The attorney, suspecting that Lawless' actions were part of an elaborate sales effort, basically told her to back off.
Indeed, according to Microsoft's Web site, the responsibility of someone with Lawless' title of "engagement manager" is to "perform as an integrated member of the account team, drive business development and closing of new services engagements in targeted accounts." So why was someone in a sales position leaning so hard on AWC about a supposed licensing compliance concern?
When I phoned Lawless to find out, she referred me to Microsoft's PR machine. The responses I got through that channel stressed that Microsoft's aim is to help customers navigate the complexities of software licensing and that one of the roles of engagement managers is to assist in that effort by informing customers of a potential licensing risk. I was told to attribute the responses to Lawless.
The fact is, if Microsoft really has reason to believe that a company is using unlicensed copies of its software, it sics the Business Software Alliance on the company. It doesn't turn the matter over to one of its sales managers.
The folks at Microsoft should have done their homework. They would have realized that trying to intimidate Dale Frantz would be a fruitless effort. And what a rotten fruitless effort it was.
Slashdot Mirror
IE has the same problem - RTFA
Garbage; granted Resnet has strong firewall restrictions (no P2P without tunnels, for example) but JPlag is not blocked - I just visited the site in my browser from my room connected through Resnet
and Lancaster University UK provides essays via the student union
why does everyone call it Office, rather than Microsoft Office - there are other office software out there - OpenOffice, Corel Office, AbiOffice, ...
http://browserfun.blogspot.com/
Timid about diving into the oceanic waters of open-source projects?
A few former Microsoft employees have launched a Web site that evaluates open-source projects. The site, called Ohloh, is not a reviews site, but instead a directory of open-source software, its co-founders said.
Advertisement
"We collect from the infrastructure the open-source community uses to develop the software," Ohloh co-founder and CEO Scott Collison told CNET News.com. "It also serves as an open-source directory. You can find open-source projects and compare them, and gradually find one that's right for you."
The site could appeal to developers who are frustrated by the number of open-source projects that lack clear explanations. Ohloh also seeks to help developers make a build vs. buy decision by offering code analysis, said Collison, who along with co-founder Jason Allen, previously worked at Microsoft.
"A developer thinks, hey, maybe I want to develop this kind of project. Our formula takes into account what it costs to write the code, collect the requirements, write the specs, write the code, test that code and deploy it," he said.
Ohloh's database, searchable by project name or keyword, results in a list of suggested software. Each project has a profile, beginning with a brief synopsis of what the software does.
While other open-source databases offer this to some degree, many times developers are left wondering about licensing, Collison said. Accordingly, Ohloh also lists the licenses held for the open-source project, as well as a link to the full text of each license. (The name Ohloh refers to a cry of enlightenment in Buddhism and also the name of the first surfboard in Hawaii.)
In addition, the directory offers information such as when the project was started, how many developers are actively working on it, the languages it uses, links to the project's home page and a breakdown of current activities. Charts on the open-source project show how many lines of code have been removed or added and by whom. For those really unfamiliar with the open-source community, the profile even includes linked explanations of each open-source evaluation term.
Ohloh has been working on the directory for two years and plans to formally launch it next week. In the meantime, it has quietly rolled out its database in public beta. The database will remain free with an ad-based business model, but Ohloh plans to add services for companies looking for analysis and evaluation of their own in-house projects.
The company's investors include the two co-founders and former Microsoft executives Paul Maritz and Pradeep Singh. Collison said he and others at the company hit upon the idea for Ohloh while working at Microsoft.
"We worked on the communications pillar of Vista and Web services. While doing that, we met with a lot of corporate customers who were interested in open-source products and concepts but asked, 'How do I get an idea of how the software was made?'" Collison said. "We got so many questions from people who wanted more visibility into open-source that we thought it was a great place to start."
No, frankly - there is nowhere near the flexibility available with IE and Firefox
http://promotion.msn.co.jp/davinci/voice.htm
Cracking "The Da Vinci Code" could have been easier -- well, maybe -- if the characters had enlisted the Japanese lab which has "recreated" the voices of Leonardo and Mona Lisa.
Using methods employed in criminal investigations, the Japan Acoustic Lab says it has analyzed the skeletal structures of the historical figures' faces to replicate how their voices would have sounded.
The voices are part of the intense promotion of the Hollywood film on Microsoft's Japanese site at http://promotion.msn.co.jp/davinci/voice.htm.
"We believe we were able to create the voices that are very close to the real voices. Perhaps it was really how they really sounded," the lab's chief Matsumi Suzuki says on the website.
A former police engineer who specializes in audio analysis, Suzuki says he assumed the woman in the legendary famed Leonardo painting was 168 centimeters (5 foot, 6 inches) tall, giving her a relatively low tone for a woman.
"We cannot tell exactly how tall she was. So we analyzed the length of her right middle finger" and looked at the average height of Italian women, he said.
Suzuki says he gave Mona Lisa a slightly nasal tone because of her relatively large nose.
For Leonardo, Suzuki made his voice around the time when he was 60 years old to match his bearded face in the famous sketched portrait.
"Because the beard covers his jaws in his portrait, we could not tell his exact skeletal features. We assumed that he had a heavy-jowled face, giving him a nice, bass tone," Suzuki says.
Suzuki, who frequently appears in popular media, has used his skills in a variety of fields, such as analyzing voices in purported recordings of Osama bin Laden.
He also collaborated with Japanese toy maker Takara Co. to create the smash-hit Bowlingual, which is said to interpret dog language.
For the toy, Suzuki received the 2002 tongue-in-cheek IgNobel Prize in the field of peace for scientific achievement that "cannot or should not be reproduced."
This will result in a really slooooow restore when coming back after, say, 15 minutes. Actually this was set to false in 1.5 and true in 1.0, for this reason.
And Firefox 2 will have spell checking
AppleCared: My Life Inside Apple and AppleCare
By Adam Knight Posted on May 12, 2006 - 1:03am
You can only work in a technical service position for a limited amount of time before it loses its luster and shine, and you start to follow. Once you've performed a job for several years, you get into the groove and know how it's done. The knowledge is all there, somewhere, and it becomes routine to just look it up and spit it out on demand. You keep doing this, time and again, and eventually become a fixture: unchanging, unmoving, static.
The problems compound when this job involves the general public. Any technical job that involves helping masses of uncensored human beings understand technology will eventually wear the average man down, causing him to go bat-*** crazy and scream at the top of his lungs while trying to take out a swath of them with a surprise barrage of old SCSI cards. The largest catalyst for such violent behavior and general mental breakdown is best described by stating, simply, that most people exist at a significant intellectual delta from that burnt-out husk of a technology worker.
This doesn't have to pose a problem in an ideal world. In an ideal world, common people would be willing to accept advice from anyone capable of delivering it. In this real world, however, half of those that acknowledge that they need such assistance will turn violently against anyone they seek help from with such winning phrases as: "What do you think I am, stupid?" In most of the remaining cases, the user is a support vampire and that simply ruins those willing to try and help as badly as being berated for offering the answer. This behavior is evident in forums, mailing lists, in person, and most especially on the phone with technical support.
As a technical support agent, you develop mental calluses that help you move on and through the chaff and treasure the customers that are amiable, acknowledge that they need help, and are happy with the answer they're given. Genuinely happy. A good number of calls are actually like that and make the job bearable. A similar number are very, very far from it.
However, the core reason of why I recently quit my job in AppleCare is that in commodity technical jobs there's only so far you can go before you arrive at the end of the career path for the masses of technical agents and hit the lid where only five or ten pass upwards. Ever. When you get there, you have two choices for moving ahead: wait for the person in the cushy job you want to leave or die to make room and pray that it's you among the masses that applied that gets it, or move ahead elsewhere. After waiting for someone to bite it in a freak keyboarding accident for four years, it was time to go with Plan B.
So one day, when I had a life outside of the company set up and ready, I walked up to my manager and said: iQuit.
***man Begins
I worked in Austin's AppleCare center for four and a half years as a desperation move after a programming gig decided they'd rather give it a go without me several months earlier and my severance and unemployment checks stopped paying the bills. I've used a Mac since I had control over my mousing finger, so performing remedial technical support for Macs was an obvious choice for some quick money. Mac OS X 10.1 had just come out a few months previous, which was the only free upgrade Apple has ever released for Mac OS X as it was mostly an apology to those that bought Mac OS X 10.0. The PowerBook Titanium was the king of the road, until you opened it the 333rd time and the hinge decided it was time to move on in life. There were other Apple products, but I didn't care because those were the two I was told I supported at the time.
The job was remarkably easy, but it had been a long time since I'd done phone support, so I had a lot to learn on the procedural side. They have a shortish training course that they put all new-hires through that taught them how to use iMovie, what an iPod was (the 5GB bricks, at the time), and how to troubleshoot
Rotten Effort
Don Tennant Today's Top Stories or Other IT Management Stories
May 08, 2006 (Computerworld) -- It's bad enough when Microsoft strong-arms other software vendors into submission as a means of thwarting competition. But when it engages in underhanded tactics to intimidate users in order to land a software deal, we have a very disturbing situation on our hands. And someone needs to have the guts to speak out about it.
Fortunately, someone has. Last week, Dale Frantz, CIO at Auto Warehousing Co., brought to my attention an alarming business practice that shows Microsoft at its shoddy and arrogant worst.
AWC was contacted several weeks ago by Janet Lawless, a software asset management engagement manager at Microsoft, who claimed that "a preliminary review of [AWC's software licensing] information indicates that your company may not be licensed properly." Lawless urged AWC to "understand that the potential inconsistency in licensing is an urgent matter and needs immediate attention." She wanted to send a consultant to AWC to conduct an inventory of its installed software.
Frantz was stunned. He says he always errs on the side of caution with respect to software licenses. He does regular audits and maintains extensive records of purchases, license keys and registration codes. Frantz had no doubt that he was 100% compliant. When he told Lawless that, she ratcheted up the threatening tone of her e-mail correspondence.
"Simply commenting on your licensing environment does not address our concerns in a tangible, proven manner," she wrote. "We continue to believe that Auto Warehousing may not be licensed properly. Since this is a compliance issue, I am obligated to notify an officer of Auto Warehousing of the situation and the significant risk your organization may be subject to by not resolving this situation in a timely manner."
At that point, Frantz got his corporate attorney involved. The attorney suggested that an olive branch be proffered to avoid legal action, so Frantz offered to send Lawless detailed records of all purchases of Microsoft software in the past five years. But Lawless blew that off as well. She seemed determined to get a consultant into the IT bowels of AWC.
"Thank you for your offer to send your purchase records to me," she wrote, "however our Software Asset Management (SAM) program is the only unbiased way to create an accurate baseline and resolve this matter."
That did it. Frantz informed Lawless that he wasn't going to waste anymore time with her, and he left the matter with his attorney. The attorney, suspecting that Lawless' actions were part of an elaborate sales effort, basically told her to back off.
Indeed, according to Microsoft's Web site, the responsibility of someone with Lawless' title of "engagement manager" is to "perform as an integrated member of the account team, drive business development and closing of new services engagements in targeted accounts." So why was someone in a sales position leaning so hard on AWC about a supposed licensing compliance concern?
When I phoned Lawless to find out, she referred me to Microsoft's PR machine. The responses I got through that channel stressed that Microsoft's aim is to help customers navigate the complexities of software licensing and that one of the roles of engagement managers is to assist in that effort by informing customers of a potential licensing risk. I was told to attribute the responses to Lawless.
The fact is, if Microsoft really has reason to believe that a company is using unlicensed copies of its software, it sics the Business Software Alliance on the company. It doesn't turn the matter over to one of its sales managers.
The folks at Microsoft should have done their homework. They would have realized that trying to intimidate Dale Frantz would be a fruitless effort. And what a rotten fruitless effort it was.
VNC over dialup? But I thought he had problems downloading images...
Please use Google Toolbar spelling check first - artificial, not artifical