Sunday 4 March 2007

Friday 2 March 2007

Thursday 1 March 2007

Cracks, pots and more

An old Chinese saying brings us the story of a woman who had two pots she used for carrying water from the fountain. One of them was new and shiny the other one was cracked. Every morning she used to put the pots on the two ends of a stick, she raised the stick on her shoulder and went to the fountain.

At the fountain she filled the pots equally and headed back home, but the cracked pot couldn't hold its water so by the time she arrived home it was only half full of water. Days were rushing by, but she never stopped to use the cracked pot, even if it kept only half the amount of water.

One day, at the fountain, the cracked pot couldn't bare its shame any more and said:
"I am so ashamed, but because of this crack I loose water all the way till home. I am not useful anymore, I am sorry."

The woman just smiled:
"Did you noticed that on _Your_ part of the road flowers grow? I noticed your crack so i planted flowers on that part of the road, so each day while going home we water those flowers so they grow in beautiful colors. And all because of you, because you have that crack our house is full of flowers and beauty. "

Wednesday 28 February 2007

Instant GNU/Linux time machine

Useful article from FSM, written by Anthony Taylor, on directions and tips of the earliest days of GNU/Linux.
"You never forget your first.

Whether it's your first car, or your first significant other, or your first day of college, they say you never forget your first. That's not always true, of course, but I do remember my first: Softlanding Linux Systems, one of the earliest GNU/Linux distributions, and progenitor of the Slackware distribution. It came on a few dozen floppy images, and took forever to install.

Jump into the Astonishing GNU/Linux Time Machine, and via the magic of qemu and iBiblio, you too can experience the earliest days of GNU/Linux. It'll only take an hour. I'll have you back by supper."

The rest follows @ the link above.

Sunday 25 February 2007

Open Access and Scientific information in the digital age

The recent conference "Scientific information in the digital age: Ensuring current and future access for research and innovation" hosted by the European Commission on 15-16 February 2007 in Brussels http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/07/190&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN
(press release)

It has been an important milestone in the policy debate on the scientific information system.

See the joint Communication on "Scientific information in the digital age: access, dissemination and preservation " , presented by J.Potočnik, Commissioner for Science and Research, and V. Reding, Commissioner for Information society and media, and adopted in February
2007.
http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/communication-022007_en.pdf

This Communication offers an entry point for discussion within the Council of Ministers, at the Member State level, and within funding bodies and intergovernmental research organisations. Issues to be addressed include dissemination and access strategies (e.g. Open Access), publishing business models (e.g. reader-pay, author-pay), and the relation between scientific publication and research excellence.

In such conference have been presented to Jan Potocnik more than 20.000 subscriptions to petition on OA: citizens from across Europe and around the world have signed the petition.

Furthermore has been stablished the EUA European University Association Working Group on Open Access.

On contrary front some Publishers (35) have presented a declaration against Open Access noted as Bruxelles Declaration on STM Publishing and dated 14 February 2007.

Saturday 3 February 2007

OpenSDE Handbook

The OpenSDE Handbook is now located a http://book.opensde.org and will be kept up to date with rsync. It is still very much under development, but at least it is there. Take a look.

P.S
The usage might change a bit or a lot.

Wednesday 31 January 2007

RFC

Oracle Unbreakable Linux is a support program that provides enterprises with industry-leading global support for Linux. For less than half the cost, Oracle's Basic Support is equivalent to Red Hat's best service level. And Oracle's Premier Support provides the same level of enterprise-class support that Oracle provides for its database product.

Oracle site