It started after WW2 when "overhead projectors" were going to revolutionize education.
It started (or, at least, had already started) thousands of years ago when making marks on clay tablets was going to revolutionize education, and has continued since. And, you know, the whole time technology has been revolutionizing education. Though, usually, it takes people quite a while from the introduction of a technology in education to develop the practices that actually allow it to revolutionize education.
Whining is pointless. If smart watches and Glass catch on, there's exactly two things developers can do.
Adapt or die.
...or continue to develop for other platforms (e.g., servers) which aren't directly threatened by a couple of new mobile form factors becoming popular.
It's one thing to build an app for smartphones and tablets â" but what if that app also needs to handle streams of data ported from a pair of tricked-out sunglasses or a wristwatch, or send information in a concise and timely way to a tiny screen an inch in front of someone's left eye?
Handling streams of data from glasses or a watch is no different than handling any other stream of data. So that problems mostly solved.
Sending data in a concise and timely way doesn't really depend on the size or location of the screen (unless its someplace that is hard to communicate with, e.g., deep underwater [making most broadcast mechanism troublesome] in a place where it is inconvenient to run a cable.)
UI, on the other hand, is going to need to be dealt with, and, yeah, there's going to be some interesting challenges in UI design for apps that interact through devices like Google Glass (either the glasses or the proposed watch.) But its not like either of these will become ubiquitous overnight. There'll be plenty of time to work on the UI issues and develop reasonable early UI paradigms when the devices are in very limited distribution, and then UIs will evolve with more experience just like they have with every other kind of device.
I would only make two models of printers: laser black and white and laser color.
So, are you going to just make compact desktop models, just high-end high-volume model, or just pick one-point in between? Are you just just going to make directly-connected models, or wired network models, or wifi models?
Or, along with color vs. black and white, are there multiple axes of variation you need to cover that are going to require more than one model of printer in each the "black and white" and "color" categories?
OOP has shown (in my experience) to be the most effective way to collaborate on large projects.
Object-oriented analysis and design may be important to collaboration on large projects, but OOA&D doesn't require class-based OOP at the language level.
if prototypical inheritance is so great, why does almost everyone write a class-like wrapper around it to make it useful?
Because almost everyone (really, almost everyone writing software) has spent lots of time working with class-based OO, and the "almost everyone" you refer to (which isn't anywhere close to almost everyone) wants to help the real almost everyone referred to previously by making things familiar for them.
And either doom the fork to incompatibility, or keep playing catch-up, while still being bound to Microsoft, like Mono.
Or the fork is more popular and displaces Microsoft's as the preferred implementation (this has happened in the open source world more than once.)
And Mono isn't really a good example, since its not a fork of an Open Source Microsoft-run project, its a reimplementation of a (partially) open specification, closed-source Microsoft project.
Right, exactly. Hence why it less free than licenses which are about that.
But that's the price it pays to make sure the code itself stays free.
No, its not. Its the price for compelling other people to make their source free. The source of a permissively licensed work doesn't stop being free just because someone makes a non-free derivative work. The free codebase may become less readily available if the free codebase doesn't attract interst (which is just as true with the GPL as with permissive licenses, though.) The price of keeping the free code available is building a strong and successful community around the free software, which can be done just as well around a permissively-licensed code base as it can be around a GPL code base.
Probably one of Go, Closure, Java (via GWT), or C (via NaCl), though I suppose one might see Python and (again) Java (this time, via AppEngine) as "replacements" for server-side JavaScript in the form of Node.js, though that's even a bigger stretch than the others. Dart is the only one that is actually an effort in the direction of a general JavaScript replacement, though.
For varying perspectives on what constitutes "free."
True. The Apache license is only "more free" than the GPL to the extent that "more free" means that the licensor is imposing less restrictive conditions on the licensee, and thus allowing the licensee more freedom.
Conversely, the GPL is "more free" in the sense that "more free" means that the licensor is imposing more restrictive conditions on the licensee, thus restricting the licensees freedom more.
But I think its pretty clear that the former sense is the sense that most people would understand "more free" in the sense of freedom of a license.
One could, perhaps, make an argument that licensing under the GPL does more to protect certain freedom for hypothetical sub-licensees if the direct licensee is disinterested in their freedom. (If the direct licensee is interested in their freedom, it does less, since the GPL prevents the direct licensee from offering sub-licensees licenses under more free terms, like that of the Apache License.)
Former Gov. Schwarzenegger tried to do exactly this, with his Free Digital Textbook Initiative. As far as I can tell, it had zero impact.
Well, zero impact on elementary school textbooks, maybe, but since that initiative is limited to High School textbooks, that's perhaps unsurprising. So, not exactly the same thing GP was calling for, after all.
I'm not super well-versed in my eBook formats, but I was under the impression that the common formats, such as ePub and MOBI/AZW, use combinations of XML (such as ePub's manifest files) and HTML.
Doesn't ePub uses a combination of XML and XML, requiring the "HTML" part to be XHTML.
From the summary, it sounds as if this is yet another eBook format we'll have to contend with, which won't be supported by the popular eReaders out there.
Why would you trust a Slashdot summary of a short LA Times article to provide much information about the content of a law?
What the law actually requires regarding format is that the open-source materials acquired under its authority:
are modular in order to allow easy customization, and are encoded in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) format, or other appropriate successor format, and are designed and delivered to achieve interoperability enabling the materials to be made available reliably and successfully on the widest possible range of platforms, such as the Internet, tablets, smartphones, print, or other platforms.
A politician waves his wand (or in this case, his pen) and declares that a particular product shall be created that not only is adequate to do the job but free as well... and it is supposed to magically happen?
While the LA Times uses the word "free", the actual law in question uses the term "open source".
Of course, once the State acquires open source textbooks, its pretty easy to also make copies available free-of-charge.
If the College were to shift to free books for the students, the school would lose out on the revenue stream that comes from all those students marching into the campus book store to pick up their copy, further compounding the funding problem for the schools.
From what I've heard, that "revenue stream" generally goes to (1) pay publishers for the books, and (2) pay the operating costs of the book store, and doesn't actually return much of anything to the school.
I'm tired of the government subsidizing something and calling it "reform" or "free."
It is the media (e.g., the L.A. Times in TFA) calling it "free". The government, in the actual law, calls it "open source", which, given the specific license requirements in the law, is entirely accurate.
The problem with textbooks isn't the price we have to pay, it's the price PERIOD.
If you are interested in textbook reform other than the move to acquire some open source textbooks (California SB 1052 and SB 1053 of this past session), you should probably look at the other textbook reform measures that California has recently passed (e.g., SB 1539, Chapter 151, Statutes of 2012), or has under consideration (e.g., SB 1328.) Just because this measure is the subject of a Slashdot posting doesn't mean its the only thing that has been done on the issue.
Why? Because you're not going to get professional-level copy and proofing for free.
And, even if you were, you probably wouldn't be able to verify that the books "conform to the most current, ratified standards under Section 508 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (29 U.S.C. Sec. 794d), as amended, and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines adopted by the World Wide Web Consortium for accessibility" without spending some money. Which the law at issue requires of the open source (not free) text books that it authorizes the State to acquire.
If these are "free textbooks," why does the legislature have to fund it?
As one might expect Slashdot users to know (well, maybe not) "free" is often used to refer to certain liberal licensing terms ("libre") rather than free-of-charge ("gratis").
Although -- no doubt much to Richard Stallman's chagrin -- the law itself actually uses the term "open source" rather than "free".
Professors might want to use the free books but the colleges/universities might not. They can't get a cut from the bookstore if the bookstore doesn't sell any books.
Open source -- which, not "free" in the sense of free-of-charge -- books don't stop the bookstore from selling printed copies, or even from doing so at a profit.
if I cant afford a $20 textbook, how can I afford a $60 internet bill for the e-books?
Nothing requires the textbooks to be provided to students exclusively electronically or, even when electronically, exclusively over the internet. And core textbooks are rarely $20 -- more like $60+.
Open source licensing means that the institutions (individually or together) can customize the books, and provide them free electronically and, if they want, have them printed and sell them to students at a cost that covers the cost of printing without any publisher markup.
Because "free" in the sense means "libre", not "gratis".
Actually, the new law doesn't say "free" at all, it says "open source" in general, and specifies the exact requirement as that the material be licensed under:
a creative commons attribution license that allows others to use, distribute, and create derivative works based upon the digital material while still allowing the authors or creators to receive credit for their efforts.
(Cal.Ed.Code, Sec. 66409(f)(1), as added by SB 1052.)
How free is that?
Exactly as "free" as is mandated by the required licensing conditions.
but it does bother me that he got noticed because of the video.
The video is the illegal act, not because of its content, but because conduct unrelated to the content, that is, him posting online without approval of his probation officer (which is probation terms required him to get before posting online), and his use of a pseudonym in association with it (his probation prohibited him using pseudonyms.)
So, a probation violator got noticed because of the act by which he violated his probation.
Slashdot Mirror
It started (or, at least, had already started) thousands of years ago when making marks on clay tablets was going to revolutionize education, and has continued since. And, you know, the whole time technology has been revolutionizing education. Though, usually, it takes people quite a while from the introduction of a technology in education to develop the practices that actually allow it to revolutionize education.
So, the three things a developer can do are...
Handling streams of data from glasses or a watch is no different than handling any other stream of data. So that problems mostly solved.
Sending data in a concise and timely way doesn't really depend on the size or location of the screen (unless its someplace that is hard to communicate with, e.g., deep underwater [making most broadcast mechanism troublesome] in a place where it is inconvenient to run a cable.)
UI, on the other hand, is going to need to be dealt with, and, yeah, there's going to be some interesting challenges in UI design for apps that interact through devices like Google Glass (either the glasses or the proposed watch.) But its not like either of these will become ubiquitous overnight. There'll be plenty of time to work on the UI issues and develop reasonable early UI paradigms when the devices are in very limited distribution, and then UIs will evolve with more experience just like they have with every other kind of device.
So, are you going to just make compact desktop models, just high-end high-volume model, or just pick one-point in between? Are you just just going to make directly-connected models, or wired network models, or wifi models?
Or, along with color vs. black and white, are there multiple axes of variation you need to cover that are going to require more than one model of printer in each the "black and white" and "color" categories?
Welcome to Slashdot.
Object-oriented analysis and design may be important to collaboration on large projects, but OOA&D doesn't require class-based OOP at the language level.
Because almost everyone (really, almost everyone writing software) has spent lots of time working with class-based OO, and the "almost everyone" you refer to (which isn't anywhere close to almost everyone) wants to help the real almost everyone referred to previously by making things familiar for them.
Or the fork is more popular and displaces Microsoft's as the preferred implementation (this has happened in the open source world more than once.)
And Mono isn't really a good example, since its not a fork of an Open Source Microsoft-run project, its a reimplementation of a (partially) open specification, closed-source Microsoft project.
Right, exactly. Hence why it less free than licenses which are about that.
No, its not. Its the price for compelling other people to make their source free. The source of a permissively licensed work doesn't stop being free just because someone makes a non-free derivative work. The free codebase may become less readily available if the free codebase doesn't attract interst (which is just as true with the GPL as with permissive licenses, though.) The price of keeping the free code available is building a strong and successful community around the free software, which can be done just as well around a permissively-licensed code base as it can be around a GPL code base.
Probably one of Go, Closure, Java (via GWT), or C (via NaCl), though I suppose one might see Python and (again) Java (this time, via AppEngine) as "replacements" for server-side JavaScript in the form of Node.js, though that's even a bigger stretch than the others. Dart is the only one that is actually an effort in the direction of a general JavaScript replacement, though.
True. The Apache license is only "more free" than the GPL to the extent that "more free" means that the licensor is imposing less restrictive conditions on the licensee, and thus allowing the licensee more freedom.
Conversely, the GPL is "more free" in the sense that "more free" means that the licensor is imposing more restrictive conditions on the licensee, thus restricting the licensees freedom more.
But I think its pretty clear that the former sense is the sense that most people would understand "more free" in the sense of freedom of a license.
One could, perhaps, make an argument that licensing under the GPL does more to protect certain freedom for hypothetical sub-licensees if the direct licensee is disinterested in their freedom. (If the direct licensee is interested in their freedom, it does less, since the GPL prevents the direct licensee from offering sub-licensees licenses under more free terms, like that of the Apache License.)
Well, zero impact on elementary school textbooks, maybe, but since that initiative is limited to High School textbooks, that's perhaps unsurprising. So, not exactly the same thing GP was calling for, after all.
I've posted the actual format require from the law in a separate response to GP, but "DocBook XML" isn't what it calls for.
Doesn't ePub uses a combination of XML and XML, requiring the "HTML" part to be XHTML.
Why would you trust a Slashdot summary of a short LA Times article to provide much information about the content of a law?
What the law actually requires regarding format is that the open-source materials acquired under its authority:
While the LA Times uses the word "free", the actual law in question uses the term "open source".
Of course, once the State acquires open source textbooks, its pretty easy to also make copies available free-of-charge.
From what I've heard, that "revenue stream" generally goes to (1) pay publishers for the books, and (2) pay the operating costs of the book store, and doesn't actually return much of anything to the school.
It is the media (e.g., the L.A. Times in TFA) calling it "free". The government, in the actual law, calls it "open source", which, given the specific license requirements in the law, is entirely accurate.
If you are interested in textbook reform other than the move to acquire some open source textbooks (California SB 1052 and SB 1053 of this past session), you should probably look at the other textbook reform measures that California has recently passed (e.g., SB 1539, Chapter 151, Statutes of 2012), or has under consideration (e.g., SB 1328.) Just because this measure is the subject of a Slashdot posting doesn't mean its the only thing that has been done on the issue.
Then I suggest you look at other
And, even if you were, you probably wouldn't be able to verify that the books "conform to the most
current, ratified standards under Section 508 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (29 U.S.C. Sec. 794d), as amended, and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines adopted by the
World Wide Web Consortium for accessibility" without spending some money. Which the law at issue requires of the open source (not free) text books that it authorizes the State to acquire.
As one might expect Slashdot users to know (well, maybe not) "free" is often used to refer to certain liberal licensing terms ("libre") rather than free-of-charge ("gratis").
Although -- no doubt much to Richard Stallman's chagrin -- the law itself actually uses the term "open source" rather than "free".
Actually, over $617 billion as of August. And the same place the U.S. government gets money from, despite being $16 trillion dollars in debt.
Open source -- which, not "free" in the sense of free-of-charge -- books don't stop the bookstore from selling printed copies, or even from doing so at a profit.
Nothing requires the textbooks to be provided to students exclusively electronically or, even when electronically, exclusively over the internet. And core textbooks are rarely $20 -- more like $60+.
Open source licensing means that the institutions (individually or together) can customize the books, and provide them free electronically and, if they want, have them printed and sell them to students at a cost that covers the cost of printing without any publisher markup.
Because "free" in the sense means "libre", not "gratis".
Actually, the new law doesn't say "free" at all, it says "open source" in general, and specifies the exact requirement as that the material be licensed under:
(Cal.Ed.Code, Sec. 66409(f)(1), as added by SB 1052.)
Exactly as "free" as is mandated by the required licensing conditions.
The video is the illegal act, not because of its content, but because conduct unrelated to the content, that is, him posting online without approval of his probation officer (which is probation terms required him to get before posting online), and his use of a pseudonym in association with it (his probation prohibited him using pseudonyms.)
So, a probation violator got noticed because of the act by which he violated his probation.
Why does this bother you?
Also because he posted it online without clearing it with his probation officer first, which also violated the conditions of his probation.