LulzSec's disabling of the CIA's website (CIA.gov) is currently being discussed on ZeroHedge:
LulzSec Takes Down Cia.gov
One thing is certain. The crackers in LulzSec are damned good, OR they have considerable "inside" help at the CIA and FBI. Or BOTH!!
buzzardsbay writes "For the past few years, we've heard a number of analysts and high-profile IT industry executives, Bill Gates and Craig Barrett among them, promoting the idea that there's an ever-present shortage of skilled IT workers to fill the industry's demand. But now there's growing evidence suggesting the "shortage" is simply a self-serving myth. "It seems like every three years you've got one group or another saying, the world is going to come to an end there is going to be a shortage and so on," says Vivek Wadhwa, a professor for Duke University's Master of Engineering Management Program and a former technology CEO himself. "This whole concept of shortages is bogus, it shows a lack of understanding of the labor pool in the USA.""
Honestly, I thought that I would never see Slashdot post such a story, and I never thought that Rob "Commander Taco" Malda himself would post it. Amazing. Perhaps liberals are capable of change, after all.
For more information on the specious "labor shortage," google on terms such as these:
Wasn't there another guy who used to do something like this? Called it something like SkillsMarket?
He used to link to it in his/. sig but then, about half a year ago, he announced that he wanted to "move on with his life" and would sell his code, site and related goodwill.
I think part of the deal was that he was going to open the source but I never heard any more about it. Anyone know if that happened?
SkillsMarket is apparently still in business, and Hilton is still trying to sell it.
There is another, similar site, whose URL I cannot remember right now.
Yes, Bricolage is an excellent CMS for news organizations (NO's, e.g., newspapers or magazines), but it has a well deserved reputation for being difficult to install, even on Debian, where an un-official Debian package is available to help ease the process. Even Bricolage's chief architect, David Wheeler, concedes this point.
The poster might be better off with SPIP, which is (I understand) equally powerful and possibly easier to install. One caveat with respect to SPIP is that, at one point, its interface and some of its documentation was mostly in French, but that may have changed by now. Otherwise, SPIP enjoys an excellent reputation.
Other CMS's that are designed for specifically for NO's include Cofax and Props, both of which have reputations for being immature as compared to Bricolage and SPIP.
As RSS [becomes] more known to the mainstream users and press, the bandwidth issue reported by many sites . . . related to feeds is becoming a reality. Stats from sites like Boing Boing are showing a real concern regarding feeds bandwidth usage. Possible solutions to this problem are emerging slowly, like RSScache (feed caching proxy) and KnowNow (even-driven syndication). RSScache seems to offer a realistic solution to the problem, but [will it] be enough . . . ?
Re:I do not pay much attention to Joel Spolsky
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· Score: 0, Troll
Well that would be great if you were interviewing them for a job developing web applications on Linux - however, since he [Joel Spolsky] writes most of his software for the Windows platform they would be pretty useless questions really wouldn't they?
In terms of intelligence, there is a huge difference between person X, who began using Linux (or *BSD) in 1993, and person Y, who waited until 2003 to do so. Person X is likely to be far smarter (unless person Y was, say, only 10 or 12 years old in 1993). In general, the earlier that a technologist understood the OSR and the longer that he has been using open source, the smarter that he is. Trust me, people such as Linus, Larry Wall, and Tim O'Reilly are damned smart.
And if you think that Windows has a future (as Joel apparently does), then you are probably an idiot. Indeed, if you think that Windows has a future, then why are you reading and posting to Slashdot at all? Slashdot is the most concentrated collection of Windows and M$ haters on the face of the planet.
I do not pay much attention to Joel Spolsky
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Joel On Software
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I do not pay much attention to Joel Spolsky because he seems to have a poor understanding of the most important trend in software today: the open source revolution (OSR). He rarely writes anything positive about OS (or, at least as of 18 months ago, he rarely did so), and his CMS software, CityDesk, is not open source software. Open source tends to improve more rapidly than proprietary software. If Joel understood that simple fact (and he does not), then he would release his software under an open source license. And he would move to Linux, abandoning M$ Windows.
Furthermore, Joel's "technical interview questions" are less than optimal. If you want to assess a prospective employee's intelligence, the first questions that you ask should be along these lines: "How long have you been using Linux or *BSD? How long have you been using Apache, Tomcat, Zope, mod_perl, PHP, gcc, etc.? What is the difference between TCP and UDP? What are the most salient differences between Linux distributions these days? Why do you use your particular distribution (of Linux, *BSD, etc.)? What do you know about package management?"
Why do people who have such a poor understanding of the OSR (e.g., Joel, Steve Jobs) attract such attention, nay, adoration, from Slashdor readers? I simply do not understand it.
Paul, do you have any real world experience with openCMS?
Yes, quite a lot. I have been using it since Jan., 2003, nearly two years.
It seems [as if it were] the only other open source CMS that can publish out pages via FTP. Or maybe I [am] reading the features wrong.
I am not sure that OpenCMS (version 5.01, the current production release) can publish pages via FTP, but at least one open source CMS has this feature built-in: Bricolage, which is designed for use by newspapers and magazines. Bricolage is an excellent CMS, but it has a huge disadvantage: it is difficult to install and administer, even if you are installing it as a Debian package.
In OpenCMS, publishing is not called "publishing," but, rather, "static export." In the CMS field, this process of converting content (that lives in the RDBMS) into static HTML is often called "baking," which stands in contrast to "frying," serving content directly from the RDBMS without first converting it into static HTML.
I have been scared off a bit by my lack of Java skills.
Yes, knowing how to program in Java (JSP, at the very least) and how to administer a servlet container (e.g., Tomcat or Jetty) are both important skills if you want to experiment with OpenCMS. You do not need to be a Java expert, but, at the very least, you need to know (or be able to learn) JSP. And the more Java that you know, the more that you can do with OpenCMS.
Blogs were the first[,] and are the most deployed[,] apps to use CMS.
A blog is definitely not a CMS. A true CMS has certainfeatures, such as content "versioning" and support for workflow.
I'm aware of very few apps meant to make a web developer's life easier by allowing online editing as if it were an online Dreamweaver or what not.
To the contrary, many CMS's are evolving in precisely this direction. Increasingly, they are improving their user interfaces (UI) so that the CMS UI becomes, in effect, a WYSIWYG word processor. As an example, I cite the excellent UI in OpenCMS, which somewhat resembles MS Word. Adding content to OpenCMS can be just like editing in MS Word except that the OpenCMS UI still does not have quite as many features or the same ease-of-use -- yet. See also Bitflux and Xopus, which are WYSIWYG editors meant to be used with any CMS, not a particular CMS.
If you want KISS & need to add a lot of content, what is lacking in wikis?
Wikis can be be easy to install, administer, and use. But they lack a great deal.
There [are] way too many content management systems out there that focus too much on the content [sic; "community"] aspect. I found it hard to locate [a high] quality, open source CMS that wasn't trying to be Slashdot-like. Many people just want some[thing] for easily organizing lots of pages in a quick and easy manner.
I am going to assume that you meant to write "community" rather than "content" in the quoted text. If so, then I agree with your comment, and have elaborated on this issue before. There is a difference between CMS software and "community-ware" (CW), which is software that is designed to facilitate the building of an Internet community. The software that you lament is what I would call hybrid software, software that is one-half CMS and one-half CW. Such hybrids are often failures. They are neither good CMS's nor good CW. Examples of hybrids would be all of the 'nukes, including PostNuke, Xaraya, and Xoops. Drupal may also fall into the hybrid category.
Why do so many people misuse the label "CMS" to describe such hybrids? I do not know, but I suspect that it is because they have never used a true CMS, such as OpenCMS, Plone, or SPIP.
Thank you for taking the time to write such a lengthy and insightful reply. Your position as a hiring manager makes your perspective all the more valuable.
When I modified my resume this summer (early July, IIRC) to insert the offending paragraph, I was well aware that it might have the effect (on readers) that you describe, but thought that I had almost nothing to lose given the lousy response that my resume was generating at that time. I also thought that it might be a good idea to experiment with resume styles. I thought that one of the reasons that I was not getting calls from prospective employers (not even as to positions for which I was well qualified, e.g., CMS positions) was that employers simply were not drawing the inference that I wanted them to draw, to wit, that I am much, much smarter than average. Why? I do not know. As of July, I suspected that it was because they were not reading my resume closely enough and did not realize that I had been using Linux, Apache, and MySQL for years and years.
FWIW, the response that my resume drew in early September (shortly after changing my resume) was the best that I have had in years, so changing my resume may not have hurt. It is hard to say, however, because September is a huge "hiring month." A disproportionate amount of hiring takes place in September, so the increase in the interest from employers may have been due to merely seasonal factors.
For the time being, I shall leave my resume as it is, if only so that I can get additional feedback on what I can do to get employers to notice me. All other means of getting employers to notice me have failed. I am completely befuddled as to why they do not understand that someone who has been using open source for as long as I have is much, much smarter than average. If you have any thoughts on this matter, please let me know.
I am even more befuddled as to why the "natural course of things" is reversed in the sense that I know so much more than nearly every person with whom I have interviewed in the last two years. In the last two years, I have not met a single hiring manager who knew as much as I about the OSR. Indeed, the knowledge (of the OSR) of the typical hiring manager is but a tiny fraction of mine. To me, that is simply half-assed backwards. Why are those who know the least in the position of hiring? And why must those who know the most (e.g., people such as I) work so hard to find their next contract or gig?
Are there any sites that match FOSS projects with potential volunteers?
[snip]
I'm a lawyer
SourceForge (SF) has been doing this for years. And SF lets its open source projects advertise for volunteers who want to work on non-technical matters (such as software documentation), too. So a project could advertise its need for a lawyer as well as, say, a PHP coder or DBA.
I see very little demand for people who have a good understanding of the "open source revolution" (OSR) or who are smart. Look at the second paragraph of my resume:
EXCEPTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Recognize promising tools and methods long before most others. For example, have used Linux since 1997, Slashdot since 1998, Apache and MySQL since 2000, Tomcat since 2001, Debian since 2002, and OpenCMS since Jan. 2003. Highly proficient in finding and integrating open source tools and have excellent understanding of "open source revolution."
Member, Slashdot, since August, 1998 (userID 9907). See http://slashdot.org/~Paul%20Bain
I realize that many on Slashdot have been using Linux, Apache, and MySQL for longer than I, but I have been using them for far longer than most technologists.
Furthermore, my resume is filled with terms and phrases from the OSR. My resume all but screams, "OPEN SOURCE! OPEN SOURCE, OF COURSE!" On top of that, I live in an area that is supposedly one of the best for those seeking work in IT, the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area (I live in northern Virginia). Finally, I am an expert in content management systems (CMS's) generally, especially open source CMS's such as OpenCMS, which I have used for years.
How many headhunters and HR people do I have calling me, begging me to interview and promising me huge bonuses? Almost none. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of those with whom I interview know far less about the OSR than I, and some have not even begun to use Linux. In the last two years, I have not had a single job interview with anyone who knew anywhere near as much about the OSR as I. My experience strongly implies that employers have not yet begun to understand that technologists who began using Linux back in 1997 tend to be much smarter than those who waited until after, say, 2001.
Re:good RSS directories -- longevity of protocols
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Cool RSS Feeds?
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· Score: 1
Once a protocol hits critical mass, it is almost impossible to replace it, even if the substitutes are technically better.
Often, that is true. There a few reasons that this general rule does not apply in this case. First, RSS is far from having hit critical mass. Second, this inertia in the world of network protocols results from the difficulty in changing from an entrenched protocol to other, newer protocols. There will no such difficulty in changing from RSS to Atom. I cannot imagine why would it be difficult.
Third, let me enumerate two protocols that fell on hard times shortly after hitting critical mass:
Novell's IPX/SPX -- almost extinct.
Gopher, the predecessor to HTTP.
Finally, protocols often evolve. Look at the history of SMTP or NNTP; SMTP has evolved many times. The change from RSS to Atom will be more akin to an evolution rather than a revolution. That's one reason why the change from RSS to Atom will be easy, rather than difficult.
Two good RSS directories of which I am aware
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· Score: 4, Informative
Recently, on a mailing list (cms@lists.cms-forum.org), NewsIsFree was recommended as offering categorized RSS links, and Syndic8.com was also mentioned in this vein.
Keep in mind that it is increasingly likely that Atom will kick RSS's butt, at least as long as Dave "the Whiner" Winer continues to control RSS and to refuse to improve it. Indeed, the primarily reason that Atom exists is that Winer refused to allow any improvements to RSS. If I were you, I would investigate Atom (and Atom feeds) rather than spend time on that which is likely soon to become thrown into on the rubbish bin of history.
The poster, johnnyb, also asked this question on Advogato just a short time ago. It will be interesting to see the differences in the comments made there and the ones made here at Slashdot.
Hey, johnnyb, where else have you posted this question? When you get answers, will you analyze them and post your conclusions? It could be interesting.
This is an important question, and I am glad that you have asked it. I suggest, however, that you disabuse yourself of a few misconceptions first. You wrote:
we are looking at content management systems [CMS's] for knowledge base solutions such as TikiWiki or egroupware.
A CMS is not meant to help you manage knowledge, unless the CMS is hybrid software that is meant to be one-half CMS and one-half knowledge management system (KMS). I know a great deal about open source CMS's, and I do not know of any that are such hybrids. Furthermore, Wikis are generally not true CMS's, but, rather, one-half CMS and one-half "community-ware," software meant to faciliate the building of an on-line community. See my prior comment on the desirability of using such hybrid software.
What is the purpose of a CMS? To make it possible for a non-technical user to build and maintain a web site by herself without the help of a web professional such as a web designer or web developer. The purpose of a true, non-hybrid CMS is to help you manage content, not knowledge. Content contains knowledge , of course, but groupware (see below) stores and re-uses that knowledge in a completely different way.
Note that some types of groupware (software that faciliates collaboration) include excellent KM, especially Lotus Notes. The KM in MS Exchange, the leading competitor to Notes, is much weaker.
In summary, all too often, people confuse these types of web software applications: CMS, KMS, "community-ware," Document Management systems, and groupware. Furtheremore, hybrid software often fails because a hybrid often tries to do too much. A software designer maximizes his chances of producing good software by not trying to do too much and by aiming at attainable goals. In general, a designer should design his CMS to manage content, not also to facilitate the building of an on-line community or to facilitate collaboration.
I am posting an email that I sent to a mailing list devoted to CMSes, cms@lists.cms-forum.org, a few weeks ago:
At +0200Monday 5/31/04 01:52 AM, Khan wrote:
I'm looking for CMS that have great administration part. I'm not
interested in site displaying, speed, HTML standards or anything like
that. I just need stable administration part with modules:
- News with archives;
- Blogs;
- Some users Can be administrators of blogs;
- Link directory;
- Navigation with multiple categories and subcategories;
- Different news for different parts of my web site;
Web site will be very large and it will have almost any module that you
can find these days:)
I like XOOPS. I also have my eye on Mambo. A friend of mine told
me that Drupal has best community and if not drupal that I should
check [out] EZ.
Khan,
Keep in mind that the 'nukes (e.g., PHPnuke, PostNuke, Xaraya, Xoops, etc.) are not true CMS's because they are "hybrids," one-half CMS and one-half "community-ware," software that facilitates the building of web communities. For a lengthy discussion of Xoops (probably one of the better 'nukes), see the June, 2004 issue of Linux Journal (page 14). I call this line of software "the 'nukes" because they are nearly all "descended from," or forks of, PHPnuke. For example, PostNuke was founded by disgruntled users of PHPnuke who forked the source code of PHPnuke.
Also remember that CMS's and community-ware (e.g., phpBB) have different purposes, and software that tries to accomplish _both_ purposes almost always fails to do _either_ well. The 'nukes exemplify that failure. The 'nukes are neither good CMS's nor good community-ware.
For an example of Drupal in actual usage, see www.DebianPlanet.org.
Decide whether your primary purpose is to facilitate the management of web content or, instead, to build a web-based community. If your primary purpose is the former (rather than the latter), then you should probably choose a _true_ CMS, rather than hybrid software that tries to do both. The following are often cited as being among the best of the open source (OS) CMS's:
1) Plone -- written in Python and requires Zope, an application server.
2) OpenCMS -- based on J2EE (mostly servlets, including JSP) and XML, requires a servlet container (e.g., Tomcat).
3) Bricolage -- not a general-purpose CMS because it is best suited for newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals. Written in Perl and requires mod_perl, an Apache module.
4) Typo 3
FWIW, the amount of "buzz" that Plone is generating now in the OS community astounds me. I have been following OS for years now (I have been using Linux since '97), and I have _never_ seen an OS software go from inception to "red-hot" so damned fast (with the possible exception of Jabber, an XML router). Heck, Plone is generating more buzz than OpenCMS notwithstanding that Plone did not make its debut until 2002, years after OpenCMS. In the OS community, Plone seems to be generating as much "buzz" as Linux did back in 1995. That amount of buzz indicates that Plone is probably the OS CMS to watch, at least in the category of general-purpose CMSes.
It is interesting that, on Slashdot, so damned many non-political stories are turned into political ones, and that the liberal participants here on/. frequently use undesirable, non-political events (or facts) as a means to attack conservatives. Does anyone really believe that conservatives are responsible for ID theft, or that they are trying to perpetuate ID theft?
Even more interesting is that the comment above was once rate "+4, interesting." I would rate it simply "Ridiculously overrated." Why do liberal moderators feel compelled to "moderate up" comments such as the parent?
US consular folks . . . have a separate category for [American] ex-[patriates] who had to leave the US because they could no longer lead normal lives after ID theft. [US Consulate employees] call [these ex-patriates] "Forced Economic Migrants" or something similar. In France and England, the number is in the tens of thousands. That's just the number of people who bothered to register with the local embassies.
This reads just as fiction does. I find these numbers (10's of thousands) very hard to believe. Please provide some evidence as to these numbers.
I don't think any of the others have WYSIWYG, browser-based editing.
False. OpenCMS has such an editor, provided that you use MS IE. OpenCMS is released under the LGPL. Furthermore, I understand that WYSIWYG editing (for OpenCMS) is available in Mozilla, too, provided that you buy a proprietary, third-party software.
I try to protect my parents from the forces of evil by installing . . . virus checkers
Getting Windows (XP, at least) to automatically update itself and then apply the updates is fairly easy, once you know which registry key to edit and the values needed for the fields in that key. But I have had no such luck with respect to Symantec's Norton Anti-virus (NAV).
Shortly after I configured most of the Windows XP PC's in our office to update XP automatically at 4 AM every day, I realized that Symantec LiveUpdate (the software that handles the updating of NAV executables and NAV virus definitions) was also updating NAV every day at that very time by downloading the latest virus definitions. I cannot determine whether NAV actually recognizes and applies the downloaded definitions, however, due to a discrepancy in NAV itself. The discrepany arises between a NAV data file and the NAV GUI.
After making the automatic downloads, Symantec LiveUpdate updates a file whose name I cannot remember exactly -- "defn.dat" or something similiar. I also cannot remember the directory in which this file lives -- something like "C:\Application Data\Symantec\Common Files\VirusDef\". A date in that file matches the date on which the most recent definitions were downloaded (suggesting that NAV recognizes the most recent definitions), but when I execute the GUI part of NAV (by double-clicking on the NAV icon), the GUI part indicates that NAV does not recognize the latest definitions or has not applied them.
Does anyone know how to determine for sure that NAV recognizes and applies the latest definitions it has automatically downloaded? Is the information in the GUI part merely buggy?
BTW, nothing in the NAV documentation states that NAV would automatically download definitions if Windows were configured to make automatic Windows updates. Apparently some undocumented features are desirable after all.
Is this [story] a joke? . . . Or is it a bug in/.?
I am fairly certain that it is a bug in Slashdot because I did not see this story until nearly 24 hours after it was posted (I first saw it on Wednesday at about 8:15 PM (U.S. Eastern Time)) notwithstanding that I visited Slashdot at least twice between the time that this story was posted and the time that I first saw this story.
Slashdot editors, could you please re-post this story? This topic is of great interest to many of us.
Slashdot Mirror
LulzSec's disabling of the CIA's website (CIA.gov) is currently being discussed on ZeroHedge: LulzSec Takes Down Cia.gov One thing is certain. The crackers in LulzSec are damned good, OR they have considerable "inside" help at the CIA and FBI. Or BOTH!!
Honestly, I thought that I would never see Slashdot post such a story, and I never thought that Rob "Commander Taco" Malda himself would post it. Amazing. Perhaps liberals are capable of change, after all.
For more information on the specious "labor shortage," google on terms such as these:
SkillsMarket is apparently still in business, and Hilton is still trying to sell it.
There is another, similar site, whose URL I cannot remember right now.
Search Engine Watch
Search Engine Showdown
They have both been dispensing reliable information for years, and they appear to be the best in this category of websites.
Yes, Bricolage is an excellent CMS for news organizations (NO's, e.g., newspapers or magazines), but it has a well deserved reputation for being difficult to install, even on Debian, where an un-official Debian package is available to help ease the process. Even Bricolage's chief architect, David Wheeler, concedes this point.
The poster might be better off with SPIP, which is (I understand) equally powerful and possibly easier to install. One caveat with respect to SPIP is that, at one point, its interface and some of its documentation was mostly in French, but that may have changed by now. Otherwise, SPIP enjoys an excellent reputation.
Other CMS's that are designed for specifically for NO's include Cofax and Props, both of which have reputations for being immature as compared to Bricolage and SPIP.
Finally, this issue was discussed here on Slashdot about 17 months ago in a story whose title was "A College Online Newspaper Suite as Open Source?" Another relevant discussion took place on OpenSourceCMS.com just three months ago.
Slashdot user GaryM posted a related question elsewhere about 20 months ago. At that time, in that forum, commenters dismissed his proposed solution, the use of NNTP, on the grounds that NNTP is deficient, but others continue to see NNTP as a possible solution nevertheless.
In terms of intelligence, there is a huge difference between person X, who began using Linux (or *BSD) in 1993, and person Y, who waited until 2003 to do so. Person X is likely to be far smarter (unless person Y was, say, only 10 or 12 years old in 1993). In general, the earlier that a technologist understood the OSR and the longer that he has been using open source, the smarter that he is. Trust me, people such as Linus, Larry Wall, and Tim O'Reilly are damned smart.
And if you think that Windows has a future (as Joel apparently does), then you are probably an idiot. Indeed, if you think that Windows has a future, then why are you reading and posting to Slashdot at all? Slashdot is the most concentrated collection of Windows and M$ haters on the face of the planet.
I do not pay much attention to Joel Spolsky because he seems to have a poor understanding of the most important trend in software today: the open source revolution (OSR). He rarely writes anything positive about OS (or, at least as of 18 months ago, he rarely did so), and his CMS software, CityDesk, is not open source software. Open source tends to improve more rapidly than proprietary software. If Joel understood that simple fact (and he does not), then he would release his software under an open source license. And he would move to Linux, abandoning M$ Windows.
Furthermore, Joel's "technical interview questions" are less than optimal. If you want to assess a prospective employee's intelligence, the first questions that you ask should be along these lines: "How long have you been using Linux or *BSD? How long have you been using Apache, Tomcat, Zope, mod_perl, PHP, gcc, etc.? What is the difference between TCP and UDP? What are the most salient differences between Linux distributions these days? Why do you use your particular distribution (of Linux, *BSD, etc.)? What do you know about package management?"
Why do people who have such a poor understanding of the OSR (e.g., Joel, Steve Jobs) attract such attention, nay, adoration, from Slashdor readers? I simply do not understand it.
Yes, quite a lot. I have been using it since Jan., 2003, nearly two years.
I am not sure that OpenCMS (version 5.01, the current production release) can publish pages via FTP, but at least one open source CMS has this feature built-in: Bricolage, which is designed for use by newspapers and magazines. Bricolage is an excellent CMS, but it has a huge disadvantage: it is difficult to install and administer, even if you are installing it as a Debian package.
In OpenCMS, publishing is not called "publishing," but, rather, "static export." In the CMS field, this process of converting content (that lives in the RDBMS) into static HTML is often called "baking," which stands in contrast to "frying," serving content directly from the RDBMS without first converting it into static HTML.
Yes, knowing how to program in Java (JSP, at the very least) and how to administer a servlet container (e.g., Tomcat or Jetty) are both important skills if you want to experiment with OpenCMS. You do not need to be a Java expert, but, at the very least, you need to know (or be able to learn) JSP. And the more Java that you know, the more that you can do with OpenCMS.
A blog is definitely not a CMS. A true CMS has certain features, such as content "versioning" and support for workflow.
To the contrary, many CMS's are evolving in precisely this direction. Increasingly, they are improving their user interfaces (UI) so that the CMS UI becomes, in effect, a WYSIWYG word processor. As an example, I cite the excellent UI in OpenCMS, which somewhat resembles MS Word. Adding content to OpenCMS can be just like editing in MS Word except that the OpenCMS UI still does not have quite as many features or the same ease-of-use -- yet. See also Bitflux and Xopus, which are WYSIWYG editors meant to be used with any CMS, not a particular CMS.
Wikis can be be easy to install, administer, and use. But they lack a great deal.
I am going to assume that you meant to write "community" rather than "content" in the quoted text. If so, then I agree with your comment, and have elaborated on this issue before. There is a difference between CMS software and "community-ware" (CW), which is software that is designed to facilitate the building of an Internet community. The software that you lament is what I would call hybrid software, software that is one-half CMS and one-half CW. Such hybrids are often failures. They are neither good CMS's nor good CW. Examples of hybrids would be all of the 'nukes, including PostNuke, Xaraya, and Xoops. Drupal may also fall into the hybrid category.
Why do so many people misuse the label "CMS" to describe such hybrids? I do not know, but I suspect that it is because they have never used a true CMS, such as OpenCMS, Plone, or SPIP.
Thank you for taking the time to write such a lengthy and insightful reply. Your position as a hiring manager makes your perspective all the more valuable.
When I modified my resume this summer (early July, IIRC) to insert the offending paragraph, I was well aware that it might have the effect (on readers) that you describe, but thought that I had almost nothing to lose given the lousy response that my resume was generating at that time. I also thought that it might be a good idea to experiment with resume styles. I thought that one of the reasons that I was not getting calls from prospective employers (not even as to positions for which I was well qualified, e.g., CMS positions) was that employers simply were not drawing the inference that I wanted them to draw, to wit, that I am much, much smarter than average. Why? I do not know. As of July, I suspected that it was because they were not reading my resume closely enough and did not realize that I had been using Linux, Apache, and MySQL for years and years.
FWIW, the response that my resume drew in early September (shortly after changing my resume) was the best that I have had in years, so changing my resume may not have hurt. It is hard to say, however, because September is a huge "hiring month." A disproportionate amount of hiring takes place in September, so the increase in the interest from employers may have been due to merely seasonal factors.
For the time being, I shall leave my resume as it is, if only so that I can get additional feedback on what I can do to get employers to notice me. All other means of getting employers to notice me have failed. I am completely befuddled as to why they do not understand that someone who has been using open source for as long as I have is much, much smarter than average. If you have any thoughts on this matter, please let me know.
I am even more befuddled as to why the "natural course of things" is reversed in the sense that I know so much more than nearly every person with whom I have interviewed in the last two years. In the last two years, I have not met a single hiring manager who knew as much as I about the OSR. Indeed, the knowledge (of the OSR) of the typical hiring manager is but a tiny fraction of mine. To me, that is simply half-assed backwards. Why are those who know the least in the position of hiring? And why must those who know the most (e.g., people such as I) work so hard to find their next contract or gig?
SourceForge (SF) has been doing this for years. And SF lets its open source projects advertise for volunteers who want to work on non-technical matters (such as software documentation), too. So a project could advertise its need for a lawyer as well as, say, a PHP coder or DBA.
I see very little demand for people who have a good understanding of the "open source revolution" (OSR) or who are smart. Look at the second paragraph of my resume:
I realize that many on Slashdot have been using Linux, Apache, and MySQL for longer than I, but I have been using them for far longer than most technologists.
Furthermore, my resume is filled with terms and phrases from the OSR. My resume all but screams, "OPEN SOURCE! OPEN SOURCE, OF COURSE!" On top of that, I live in an area that is supposedly one of the best for those seeking work in IT, the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area (I live in northern Virginia). Finally, I am an expert in content management systems (CMS's) generally, especially open source CMS's such as OpenCMS, which I have used for years.
How many headhunters and HR people do I have calling me, begging me to interview and promising me huge bonuses? Almost none. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of those with whom I interview know far less about the OSR than I, and some have not even begun to use Linux. In the last two years, I have not had a single job interview with anyone who knew anywhere near as much about the OSR as I. My experience strongly implies that employers have not yet begun to understand that technologists who began using Linux back in 1997 tend to be much smarter than those who waited until after, say, 2001.
Often, that is true. There a few reasons that this general rule does not apply in this case. First, RSS is far from having hit critical mass. Second, this inertia in the world of network protocols results from the difficulty in changing from an entrenched protocol to other, newer protocols. There will no such difficulty in changing from RSS to Atom. I cannot imagine why would it be difficult. Third, let me enumerate two protocols that fell on hard times shortly after hitting critical mass:
Finally, protocols often evolve. Look at the history of SMTP or NNTP; SMTP has evolved many times. The change from RSS to Atom will be more akin to an evolution rather than a revolution. That's one reason why the change from RSS to Atom will be easy, rather than difficult.
Keep in mind that it is increasingly likely that Atom will kick RSS's butt, at least as long as Dave "the Whiner" Winer continues to control RSS and to refuse to improve it. Indeed, the primarily reason that Atom exists is that Winer refused to allow any improvements to RSS. If I were you, I would investigate Atom (and Atom feeds) rather than spend time on that which is likely soon to become thrown into on the rubbish bin of history.
Hey, johnnyb, where else have you posted this question? When you get answers, will you analyze them and post your conclusions? It could be interesting.
A CMS is not meant to help you manage knowledge, unless the CMS is hybrid software that is meant to be one-half CMS and one-half knowledge management system (KMS). I know a great deal about open source CMS's, and I do not know of any that are such hybrids. Furthermore, Wikis are generally not true CMS's, but, rather, one-half CMS and one-half "community-ware," software meant to faciliate the building of an on-line community. See my prior comment on the desirability of using such hybrid software.
What is the purpose of a CMS? To make it possible for a non-technical user to build and maintain a web site by herself without the help of a web professional such as a web designer or web developer. The purpose of a true, non-hybrid CMS is to help you manage content, not knowledge. Content contains knowledge , of course, but groupware (see below) stores and re-uses that knowledge in a completely different way.
As to knowledge management (KM), consider a prior Slashdot story and one of the best comments thereunder, which derides the whole notion of KMS's.
Note that some types of groupware (software that faciliates collaboration) include excellent KM, especially Lotus Notes. The KM in MS Exchange, the leading competitor to Notes, is much weaker.
In summary, all too often, people confuse these types of web software applications: CMS, KMS, "community-ware," Document Management systems, and groupware. Furtheremore, hybrid software often fails because a hybrid often tries to do too much. A software designer maximizes his chances of producing good software by not trying to do too much and by aiming at attainable goals. In general, a designer should design his CMS to manage content, not also to facilitate the building of an on-line community or to facilitate collaboration.
Keep in mind that the 'nukes (e.g., PHPnuke, PostNuke, Xaraya, Xoops, etc.) are not true CMS's because they are "hybrids," one-half CMS and one-half "community-ware," software that facilitates the building of web communities. For a lengthy discussion of Xoops (probably one of the better 'nukes), see the June, 2004 issue of Linux Journal (page 14). I call this line of software "the 'nukes" because they are nearly all "descended from," or forks of, PHPnuke. For example, PostNuke was founded by disgruntled users of PHPnuke who forked the source code of PHPnuke.
Also remember that CMS's and community-ware (e.g., phpBB) have different purposes, and software that tries to accomplish _both_ purposes almost always fails to do _either_ well. The 'nukes exemplify that failure. The 'nukes are neither good CMS's nor good community-ware.
For an example of Drupal in actual usage, see www.DebianPlanet.org.
Decide whether your primary purpose is to facilitate the management of web content or, instead, to build a web-based community. If your primary purpose is the former (rather than the latter), then you should probably choose a _true_ CMS, rather than hybrid software that tries to do both. The following are often cited as being among the best of the open source (OS) CMS's:
FWIW, the amount of "buzz" that Plone is generating now in the OS community astounds me. I have been following OS for years now (I have been using Linux since '97), and I have _never_ seen an OS software go from inception to "red-hot" so damned fast (with the possible exception of Jabber, an XML router). Heck, Plone is generating more buzz than OpenCMS notwithstanding that Plone did not make its debut until 2002, years after OpenCMS. In the OS community, Plone seems to be generating as much "buzz" as Linux did back in 1995. That amount of buzz indicates that Plone is probably the OS CMS to watch, at least in the category of general-purpose CMSes.
Sincerely,
Paul Bain
It is interesting that, on Slashdot, so damned many non-political stories are turned into political ones, and that the liberal participants here on /. frequently use undesirable, non-political events (or facts) as a means to attack conservatives. Does anyone really believe that conservatives are responsible for ID theft, or that they are trying to perpetuate ID theft?
Even more interesting is that the comment above was once rate "+4, interesting." I would rate it simply "Ridiculously overrated." Why do liberal moderators feel compelled to "moderate up" comments such as the parent?
This reads just as fiction does. I find these numbers (10's of thousands) very hard to believe. Please provide some evidence as to these numbers.
False. OpenCMS has such an editor, provided that you use MS IE. OpenCMS is released under the LGPL. Furthermore, I understand that WYSIWYG editing (for OpenCMS) is available in Mozilla, too, provided that you buy a proprietary, third-party software.
Or you will do . . . what? Send some of your prison buddies after me? Yeah, you are right. I do not think that it would be wise to contradict you.
BTW, of what charges were you convicted? Are you still on parole?
Getting Windows (XP, at least) to automatically update itself and then apply the updates is fairly easy, once you know which registry key to edit and the values needed for the fields in that key. But I have had no such luck with respect to Symantec's Norton Anti-virus (NAV).
Shortly after I configured most of the Windows XP PC's in our office to update XP automatically at 4 AM every day, I realized that Symantec LiveUpdate (the software that handles the updating of NAV executables and NAV virus definitions) was also updating NAV every day at that very time by downloading the latest virus definitions. I cannot determine whether NAV actually recognizes and applies the downloaded definitions, however, due to a discrepancy in NAV itself. The discrepany arises between a NAV data file and the NAV GUI.
After making the automatic downloads, Symantec LiveUpdate updates a file whose name I cannot remember exactly -- "defn.dat" or something similiar. I also cannot remember the directory in which this file lives -- something like "C:\Application Data\Symantec\Common Files\VirusDef\". A date in that file matches the date on which the most recent definitions were downloaded (suggesting that NAV recognizes the most recent definitions), but when I execute the GUI part of NAV (by double-clicking on the NAV icon), the GUI part indicates that NAV does not recognize the latest definitions or has not applied them.
Does anyone know how to determine for sure that NAV recognizes and applies the latest definitions it has automatically downloaded? Is the information in the GUI part merely buggy?
BTW, nothing in the NAV documentation states that NAV would automatically download definitions if Windows were configured to make automatic Windows updates. Apparently some undocumented features are desirable after all.
I am fairly certain that it is a bug in Slashdot because I did not see this story until nearly 24 hours after it was posted (I first saw it on Wednesday at about 8:15 PM (U.S. Eastern Time)) notwithstanding that I visited Slashdot at least twice between the time that this story was posted and the time that I first saw this story.
Slashdot editors, could you please re-post this story? This topic is of great interest to many of us.