newspeak

Used to be called Cirrus Computing and is a fairly magnificent effort to give choice to all. I have not tried the apps or package; just read much of the descriptions. Which are long and detailed. Be interested in learning how others use it, test it.

Source: HelpWiki

Venky alerted me to this site. We were discussing options for students in India that worked and he pointed me to this project, which is popular and obviously well designed. I’m still investigating it but would be interested in learning what others have discovered.

A spoken tutorial is a an audio-video tutorial that explains an activity performed on the computer. An expert explains the working of a software, by demonstrating it on the screen, along with a running commentary.

Source: Home | spoken-tutorial.org

To my surprise, I had missed this fine series by Dave Neary, among others. I suppose I’d add more of an historical context to the evolving role of an open source community manager—and a somewhat pessimistic desire that the name be changed to distinguish what we do and what, say, a social media community manager does. Huge differences and lots of confusion. And that’s not even taking into account the “community manager” who is in charge of organising events for seniors living in gated communities. Sigh.

 

In August 2015, George Zhao of Huawei, formerly the OpenDaylight release manager, was assigned to be OpenDaylight community manager full time, a role that I had been filling on a part-time basis since October 2014. To help him ramp up as a first-time community manager, I agreed to mentor George. In the course of working together, I have had the opportunity to structure some of the things I have learned in my career, and pass them on to him.This series of articles, resulting from my conversations with George, is a collection of personal thoughts and analysis on community management, which I hope will be useful to others.(Check out Part 1 in this series.)

Source: Tales of a First-Time Community Manager — Red Hat Open Source Community

A really good argument that unmasks fatuous claims on behalf of unikernels: Good both in form and in substance.

 

Whether people feel that unikernels are wrong-headed and are looking for supporting detail or are unikernel proponents and want to know what the counter-arguments could possibly be, there is clearly a desire to hear the arguments against running unikernels in production.

Source: Unikernels are unfit for production – Blog – Joyent

Essentially, the more cities require independent reviews and community meetings to develop land, the more income-segregated the city becomes. Density restrictions also cause wealthy enclaves, regardless of whether they mandate minimum or maximum density in an area. Even if your city mandates high density housing (or creates special zones for low-density, single-family homes), it won’t necessarily solve the problem of income segregated neighborhoods. Finally, in an interesting twist, it turns out that the more local government and citizens groups control development, the more segregated its wealthiest members become.

Source: Data analysis reveals that US cities are segregating the wealthy | Ars Technica

It’s been so secret so long.

Source: Read the TPP

The motive is unclear at this point. Could be a defensive tactic, and the patent claim is yet liable to refinement, narrowing of scope. Likely still have a constricting effect above and beyond any defensive posture. Interestingly, the putatively defensive move could be too late. See the Quora answers to the question, “Is there an open source Khan Academy platform?”: http://bit.ly/1NbJmlI

Source: Explaining Khan Academy’s patent application for A/B testing in education

Easily the best monitor for intellectual property issues worldwide. Superb summaries of often recondite issues whose power lies in their obscurity.

Original news and analysis on international IP policy

Source: Intellectual Property Watch – Original news and analysis on international IP policy

In the USA, laws passed in 1976 and 1998 ensure that virtually nothing ever enters the public domain, but it’s a different story in the rest of the world — for now, at least.

Source: Public Domain Day outside the USA: what Canada and the rest of the world get today / Boing Boing

The most important story of the year? Surely the continued glutting of the oil market by the Saudis. It’s had catastrophic effect on many nations, especially those emerging economies that had banked their present and also future wealth on the oil they could extract and sell at ever rising costs.

Why has this received such little press? Yes, we know what is going on. But why? An internal power play by the new king? An effort to vanquish the US shale oil industry (and also the Canadian tar sands)? To show just how much strength the Saudis have? What is happening to oil prices of course benefits the commuter and many others dependent on oil for energy, so it’s hard to complain about. One doesn’t get on a soapbox to declaim against cheap gas; one doesn’t demonize the oil barons for putting money in the consumer’s pocket and effectively giving them all the raise their bosses refused.

But this continued–and even intensifying action is extraordinary and will have serious consequences; it already does. And the effects of the market’s decimation are arguably worse than the opposite, an oil embargo. At least, sharp, sustained falls have been held at least contributory to the fall of governments and empires.

Saudi Arabia continued to squeeze non-OPEC producers by increasing the crude oil supply glut, pumping out 10 million barrels daily in October.

Source: Stubborn Saudi sees crude exports rise in October to a four-month high