Try SOFA (http://www.sofastatistics.com/) alongside R. SOFA (Statistics Open For All) focuses on making some of the most important statistical tests easy to use and understand. It also has attractive charting and report tables. There are also videos, on-line documentation, and direct support from the developer. Disclosure #1 - I am the lead developer of SOFA. #2 I already posted accidentally as AC
Non-statisticians are always going to be doing statistics. Perhaps from a purist point of view they shouldn't, but they will. They might be health researchers, business analysts etc, and their job requires the use of statistics. Unfortunately, many statistical packages assume people can be trusted to choose the right test and interpret it correctly. But that isn't enough, and even some of the more helpful wizards and documentation are inadequate. The open source SOFA (Statistics Open For All - https://sourceforge.net/projects/sofastatistics/) project is an attempt to provide the required guidance and tools and is looking for people to join the community.
Investigative journalism is dying; citizens need direct access to government data and the tools to analyse it themselves. We can't rely on the media to expose flaws in government policy any more so we need:
data
meta-data e.g. how to avoid obvious misinterpretations, errors etc
free tools for storing data (and running basic analyses) e.g. SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL etc
I've never understood why tech companies listened to the music industry in the first place. Perhaps I'm wrong but I was under the impression that the tech companies are far bigger in monetary value and hence far more powerful than the music industry in the first place so don't understand why these companies supported, rather than fought DRM from day one.
In the case of Microsoft, I don't think they needed their arm bent on this. Probably the opposite. DRM might be Microsoft's best strategy for beating open source OS alternatives.
If the battle is about technology, open source will probably win in the long run, but if the issue is the ability to use DRM as part of "trusted computing" etc, then Microsoft has the upper hand. If Vista becomes the only way people can use their computers to access media content then OSS could have a very hard time outside of a few niches. Especially if hardware manufacturers build with "trusted computing" and DRM in mind.
Most of the work required to make a journal is performed by academics and is unpaid by the publishers. The publisher do play an important part but they get all the money. They then restrict access to the information - and remember, it wasn't even written by them! None of this is in the best interests of society at large and the Internet makes dissemination and searching a straightforward proposition. Roll on the change.
My grandparents are using Ubuntu and are in their late 80s (can anyone top that for linux users?!). Why linux? Because they wanted to use the internet and setting them up with Windows would have resulted in lots of 60km support trips to clean out spyware, explain why they had to spend money on lots of security software etc etc etc. Their only concern is the slowness of their ancient computer (a free hand-me-down), which should be upgraded soon. But it should be a breeze doing a clean install of Dapper on a faster machine.
Use of placeholders ('?') and bound parameters is a must for secure SQL, but PHP doesn't
support them...
This statement is not correct. The mysqli extension (PHP5+ and MySQL 4.1+) allows parameter
binding and it has been available for a couple of years. E.g. $stmt = $mysqli->prepare("INSERT INTO
CountryLanguage VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?)");
PDO has already been mentioned, but the following is worth noting:
Prepared statements are so useful that they are the only feature that PDO will emulate for
drivers that don't support them. This ensures that you will be able to use the same data access paradigm
regardless of the capabilities of the database (http://nz.php.net/pdo)
Of course, it is one thing to provide developers with more secure ways of doing things - it is another
to compel them to use such methods. Some of the changes in PHP6 look promising in this regard but it is probably
good to keep up the pressure for security-oriented design.
Slashdot Mirror
Try SOFA (http://www.sofastatistics.com/) alongside R. SOFA (Statistics Open For All) focuses on making some of the most important statistical tests easy to use and understand. It also has attractive charting and report tables. There are also videos, on-line documentation, and direct support from the developer. Disclosure #1 - I am the lead developer of SOFA. #2 I already posted accidentally as AC
Non-statisticians are always going to be doing statistics. Perhaps from a purist point of view they shouldn't, but they will. They might be health researchers, business analysts etc, and their job requires the use of statistics. Unfortunately, many statistical packages assume people can be trusted to choose the right test and interpret it correctly. But that isn't enough, and even some of the more helpful wizards and documentation are inadequate. The open source SOFA (Statistics Open For All - https://sourceforge.net/projects/sofastatistics/) project is an attempt to provide the required guidance and tools and is looking for people to join the community.
Less embarrassing than having to explain the main OSS image program is called the GIMP
Microsoft has said it has no <rattle class='sabre'><strong>immediate</strong></rattle> plans to <rattle>sue</rattle>.
There, that's better.
Most of the work required to make a journal is performed by academics and is unpaid by the publishers. The publisher do play an important part but they get all the money. They then restrict access to the information - and remember, it wasn't even written by them! None of this is in the best interests of society at large and the Internet makes dissemination and searching a straightforward proposition. Roll on the change.
My grandparents are using Ubuntu and are in their late 80s (can anyone top that for linux users?!). Why linux? Because they wanted to use the internet and setting them up with Windows would have resulted in lots of 60km support trips to clean out spyware, explain why they had to spend money on lots of security software etc etc etc. Their only concern is the slowness of their ancient computer (a free hand-me-down), which should be upgraded soon. But it should be a breeze doing a clean install of Dapper on a faster machine.
This statement is not correct. The mysqli extension (PHP5+ and MySQL 4.1+) allows parameter binding and it has been available for a couple of years. E.g. $stmt = $mysqli->prepare("INSERT INTO CountryLanguage VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?)");
PDO has already been mentioned, but the following is worth noting:
Of course, it is one thing to provide developers with more secure ways of doing things - it is another to compel them to use such methods. Some of the changes in PHP6 look promising in this regard but it is probably good to keep up the pressure for security-oriented design.