OpenSource
gregladen | July 15, 2017First, a word about Arduino and why you should care. An Arduino is what is called a "prototyping micro-controller" aka "really fun electronic gizmo toy."
Micro-controllers are everywhere. When you "turn on" a machine in your house, chances are there was already a micro-controller sitting there, running on a minute bit of juice from a built in battery, waiting for you to push a button. Then, you turned a dial or selected an option on your dishwasher, or changed the setting on your thermostat, or picked some alternative mode on your coffee pot, or shifted into a different gear using a "gear…
gregladen | May 11, 2017Automate the Boring Stuff with Python: Practical Programming for Total Beginners by super Python expert Al Sweigart is a pretty thick intermedia to somewhat advanced level programming book.
It covers how Python works, so someone familiar with programming languages can get up to speed. Then, the book tackles a number of key important tasks one may use a computer for. This includes working with Regular Expressions, file reading and writing, web scraping, interacting with Excel spreadsheets and PDF files, scheduling things, working with email, manipulating images, and messing around with the…
gregladen | February 1, 2017Your objective is to learn Python programming. Everybody has to learn Python.
You are looking for a book that will make that easier for you. One possibility, one that I'll recommend for most people in this situation, is Python Crash Course: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming.
To cut to the chase, there are two reasons I recommend this book. First, the specific programming projects used in the book are a good match for most people, because they are bare bones (but highly developed) exemplars that are fairly adaptable and together cover a wide range of applications and…
gregladen | January 14, 2017Ah yes, I remember it well.
"Hammurabi, Hammurabi, I beg to report to you,
In Year 1, 0 people have starved.
101 people came to the city
The population is now 124
We harvested 4.5 bushels per acre
We planted 998 acres of wheat
But rats at 300 bushels of wheat
You now have a surplus of 1443 bushels of wheat
How many acres do yo uwish to feed to the people?
How many acres do you wish to plant with seed?
Oh, and you have died of Cholera!"
Or, this one:
Remember?
I went to a special high school, in an era when individuals and high schools alike did not have computers, but we did. Since we were a…
gregladen | September 10, 2016The history of what we call "OpenOffice" is complex and confusing. It started as a project of Sun corporation, to develop an office suit that was not Microsoft Office, to use internally. Later, a version became more generally available known as Star Office, but also, a version called "OpenOffice" soon became available as well. The current histories say that Star Office was commercial, but my memory is that it never cost money to regular users. I think the idea was that large corporations would pay, individuals not. This was all back around 2000, plus or minus a year or two.
In any event,…
gregladen | September 10, 2013What if you went to drive to work one day and the highway on ramp was closed, and a big sign across it said "Highway is closed. Sorry for the inconvenience."
Well, you would find your way to a different highway entrance. But say that one was closed as well.Then, you check around and find out that all the highways in your state are closed because the state decided to close them. No more highways for you.
Or, one day you go to check the mail and there is a single post card, and nothing else, in your mail box. The post card reads "The United States Postal Service has permanently suspended…
gregladen | August 6, 2013Every year the federal government wastes tens of millions of dollars a year, possibly hundreds, supporting old versions of the Internet Explorer browser (below version 9).
Web development teams typically use 30%-40% of their time (or more) adapting sites to display properly in these browsers.
There is no good reason for the US to waste time and money supporting this old, flawed technology. Alternatives such as Firefox or Chrome, which render pages properly, are available at no cost and are easy to install. Citizens with older computers can be redirected to use these.
By publicly stopping…
gregladen | October 23, 2012Are you interested in software usability and open source? If so, my friend Jim would like your help. He is doing a study of usability in Open Source software. I'll post his entire request below along with a link to his blog. Also, he'll probably be doing some other interent based interolocution about this; I'll pass on to you whatever he passes on to me.
Here's the thing. Jim has been involved in Open Source software for a long time, and is the creator of FreeDOS, and it doesn't get much geekier than that. (I think the FreeDOS developers manual may be written in a dialect of Klingon.)…
gregladen | April 17, 2011Good news: The next version of Internet Explorer will only run on Windows 7. That should be the end of Internet Explorer.
Bad News: Google Video is done with. It will stop existing on April 29th. Well, I never used it so I don't really care personally, but this is why I once said that things like Amazon and Google should be taken over by the government and turned into utilities (you all hated me for saying that). This is exactly like having private companies build all the roads, then one company decides to unbuild its roads to use the asphalt for something else. If you happen to have…
gregladen | December 31, 2010When it comes to ease of use, there is no difference between a computer with Windows and a computer with Linux, assuming both systems are installed properly. That there is a meaningful difference is a myth perpetuated by Windows fanboys or individuals who have outdated experience with Linux. Also, the comparison that is often being made is unfair: One's experience with a computer purchased as Best Buy or supplied at work, with OEM Windows already installed (see below) is being compared with a self-install of Linux onto an about to be discarded computer.
When something "breaks" the two…
gregladen | July 31, 2010Item 1:
Linux has perfectly good fonts these days, and they are getting better.
Patents held by Apple Corporation did not allow basic technology (the Bytecode Interpreter)to be implemented in Linux fonts (without paying). FreeType (the Linux font system) worked around this and things were workable, but still, having the Apple technology would have been better. But now....
As of May 2010, those patents have expired and as of July 12 with version 2.4.0, Freetype ships with the Bytecode Interpreter enabled. Version 2.4.1 was released July 18 to address a small bug found in 2.4.0. Freetype is…
gregladen | June 15, 2010I like the idea of an edition of Ubuntu for scientists. I like the idea so much that I wrote a blog post about it a while back.
So I was very pleased to see that there is a project called Ubuntusci that is moving along nicely and that may fill in this niche.
But, when I went to look at the web site to find out more about it, I quickly discovered that there are two things wrong with the project that I'd like to suggest that they fix.
First, the distribution is committed to OpenSource Software (OSS). Well, so am I, as a person, but that does not mean that I use only OSS. Were that the case, I…
gregladen | June 1, 2010Possibly. Quite possibly:
Diaspora: Personally Controlled, Do-It-All, Distributed Open-Source Social Network from daniel grippi on Vimeo.
Hat tip: Ronja Addams-Moring
gregladen | May 2, 2010Wouldn't that be great? Hey, there's an Ubuntu Christian Edition, an Ubuntu Muslim Edition, and another Ubuntu Christian Edition. Why not an Atheistubuntu? Or a Skeptibuntu? or, more usefully, I would think, Sciencebunutu with Atheistic tendencies?
(And for those of you who like to cross certain boundaries there could be a Science Fiction Edition. Called, of course ....
... Cthulhubuntu!)
LOL
Anyway, how would a science edition of Ubuntu be different than plain old Ubuntu?
Well, three things. First, it would have a LOT of software automatically included that at present us sciency types…
gregladen | February 1, 2010The joys of markdown are many.
Markdown is a formatting “language” like HTML that you can use to specify the final appearance of text. When you use a “word processor” like Microsoft Word or Openoffice.org Writer, the text you generate is “marked up” (or “marked down” as it were) with formatting codes that determine how the text looks on a screen or when printed out. If you were to look inside a PDF file you would find commands that do this as well. And, a web page is rendered properly in your browser because of formatting codes in HTML. (If you want to see what the HTML guts of this web page…
gregladen | January 25, 2010Robert Gentleman and Donald Nickelson have joined the board of REvolution Computing. Gentleman is co-creator of this OpenSource statistical package which is widely used by researchers. The news was released moments ago, and here is a press release from the company:
REvolution Computing, the leading commercial provider of software and support for the open source "R" statistical computing language, announced the appointment of R co-creator Robert Gentleman and investment-banking veteran Donald Nickelson to its board of directors. Gentleman and Nickelson join directors Norman Nie and Basil…
gregladen | January 24, 2010Although if Microsoft wasn't the Gorilla in the Room example of Proprietary the contrast may not be as stark. Maybe....
JH at Linux in Exile discusses the anti-Google "bug" in IE that MS left in place for months.
gregladen | January 19, 2010Now that USB 3.0 is out, when will Linux get it?
Well, Linux has it. Windows does not. Mac does not.
Are you shocked? If so, you have just exposed a limitation on your own thinking. Linux supports more hardware (overall configuration and bits and piece) than any other system, by far. Linux is quicker to support hardware other than cases where proprietary drivers come out with the hardware from closed source companies, but Linux then ultimately tends to support those drivers sooner than other non-targeted OS systems do.
In fact, let me tell you just how bad your thinking was on this, if…
gregladen | January 15, 2010If you haven't seen, ah, heard it, you should check it out. Free sounds. For free.
The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focusses only on sound, not songs. This is what sets freesound apart from other splendid libraries like ccMixter. New to this site? Read the What is Freesound page to learn more!
Click here to see, ah, hear the free sound project.