The removal of GIMP from the default installation of Ubuntu has raised quiet a stir. And as drawn quiet a bit of advertisement for Krita, as some people suggested the use of Krita instead, but for no good reasons, since Krita is not a good replacement for GIMP as a default installation.

You have to consider the use case of the default installation, since the Ubuntu people are trying to make is a distribution that is usefull for the average users, the default installation need to cover the need of the many. And what most people want to do with their picture is to classify them, do light weight retouching (for instance, adjust the brightness, remove red eyes) and then print the image or send it on the Internet. Surely, both Krita and GIMP can do it, but they have way more features than what is needed for most users. As Sven Neumann, one of the core GIMP developer, said GIMP is a high-end application for professionals, and so is Krita. Some might think that Krita has a GUI that is more friendly to the beginner, but that is not the problem, it is still packed with features that are of no interest to most users. And there are tools that are better suited to accomplish the task of those users, this is why a pictures collection management tool, such as F-Spot or Digikam is a much better choice, it covers the main usage of the majority of users. Even if Digikam is designed for professional photographer, I still think it scale nicely to average users. And when the user want to do more with images, he can just go to his favorite package manager, and install GIMP or Krita.

OpenGTL 0.9.12

Earlier today I made a new release of OpenGTL (download page), version 0.9.12, for that release 23 tasks were completed, the main changes are:

• Fixing thread safety issues at run time.
• Progress report.
• Many new mathematical functions for the Shiva standard library.
• Replacement of the Shiva kernels random functions.
• OpenGTL is now compiling and running on Mac OS X.

The first two points are important changes for krita, since the first one meant that with the previous releases we had to use mutex while executing Kernels, preventing to benefit from multi-core. The second one means the user can see something is happening in Krita when a filter is processed.

Random functions in Shiva

This new release also break the Shiva language compared to previous release, I try to prevent that, but since the language is still very young it was bound to happen. In previous releases I quickly introduced a rand() function, because I wanted to write a perlin noise generator. The problem with rand() is that it does not take a seed parameter, meaning that the function use the global seed, meaning that two consecutive call to ther perlin noise generator kernel gives two different results, without any kind of control. For graphics, we need to make sure that the result are reproductible, so now in 0.9.12, the function rand() has been replace by one that takes a seed parameter rand(output int seed).

Such a function is usefull at init time, to construct random structures, like those needed by the perlin noise. But this is not sufficient, we also need a random function that can be used while processing a pixel, and one that would always return the same value for a given pixel and a given seed, for instance to write a salt and pepper noise generator.

The problem of the rand(output int seed) function is that it works by incrementing the seed parameter, so that next time you call it, it gives a different result, so as long as the call are made sequentially it would work fine. But in case of Shiva (or Krita, for that matter), we cannot guarantee that those call will be made sequentially, and it is not possible to keep a value between the computation of two different pixels. Because we might just be interested in generating part of the image, or we might be executing the kernel in a multi-threaded environment. To solve this problem, about six monthes ago, in Krita, we developed an algorithm that takes the pixel coordinate and the seed, and return a pseudo-random number. For 0.9.12, I copied that algorithm in Shiva, giving birth to the second new function for random number generation, which is rand(int x, int y, int seed).

The code for the salt and pepper noise generator is:

kernel Noise
{
  void evaluatePixel(out pixel4 result)
  {
    int x = result.coord.x;
    int y = result.coord.y;
    for(int i = 0; i < 3; ++i)
    {
      result[i] = frand(x, y, 32);
    }
    result.setAlpha( 1.0);
  }
}


The code for the perlin noise generator is slightly more complicated and can be watch in the opengtl mercurial repository.

And the resulting images, salt and pepper noise on the left, and perlin noise on the right:

 

“Loose Change” was not easy for me to dismiss.  I watched it twice.  9/11 is an occurrence that is kind of hard to dismiss—especially if you were caught in the midst of it like me.  Three days after we received this assignment, I connected with a very dear, old friend via Facebook.  My friend lives in Nigeria.  On September 11, 2001, he lived in New York. 

After all of the pleasantries, he went on to tell me via our Facebook exchange, “isn’t it wild, but my fondest memory of you occurred on 9/11”.  Now, that’s a hell of thing to remember about a person.  What my friend Michael is referring to has to do with him connecting with me via AOL instant messenger.  Through AOL, I found out my friend was alive, and as a result I was able to let his family in Washington, DC and in Nigeria know the same. 

There was no “truthiness” in that, only truth.

For me, “Loose Change” only widens the gap of not knowing what happened that day.  If “truthiness” is the term used to define the “Loose Change” documentary, okay I guess I like the other hundreds of thousands of people I will have to go with it.  Do we really want to know what happened that day?  Adding insult to injury, if the journey into Wikipedia is much more complicated then 9/11, we’re really in trouble, aren’t we? 

As I have said in previous posts, Wikipedia is a collaborative effort.  Don’t get me wrong, like the idea of crowd-souring knowledge into one large encyclopedia, but we have to draw the line somewhere.  We should all trust Wikipedia enough to quench our curiosities, but know we can’t stop there.   Besides from what I’ve learned, Wikipedia’s “truthiness” might be to our detriment—just ask newsman John Seigenthaler.

Here’s my truth, I am more inclined to trust Encyclopedia Britannica over Wikipedia.  Perhaps, it’s generational, or maybe it’s because I know encyclopedias have been around longer, for the most part are proven, and have expert oversight.  Attempting to make Wikipedia an expert-led encyclopedia at this point in time defeats its original purpose.  If we invite the experts in, what happens to the crowd? 

Damn, just one more thing to haggle over.

Crowd-sourcing isn’t isolated to techies, retailers, and academicians; it’s also used by the faith community.  Faith leaders and churches around the country have moved towards crowd-sourcing as a means to develop and promote their print and online media, engage readership, and deliver messages of faith to the masses. 

Rick Warren, one of America’s most influential religious leaders and guest speaker at President Obama’s inauguration employed the services of 99 designs to run an open source contest to solicit graphic designs for the cover of his new book entitled “The Hope You Need:  From the Lord’s Prayer“.  Ministers like Warren see crowd-sourcing not just as a means to solicit ideas from gifted and talented people, but also believe it has the potential to facilitate meaningful collaborations between the religious community and the secular community.  In short, religious leaders now realize that if they want religion to remain in the forefront of mainstream society, they have to engage mainstream tools and concepts.

In addition, crowd-sourcing has become a practice of many local churches around the country.   Instead of a pastor solely developing the content for a Sunday service, many of them now solicit input from their congregants and the community-at-large.  By engaging the “crowd”, some pastors believe they have been able to reach populations of people like Baby Boomers and younger people who might not otherwise participate in traditional organized religious activities.  As a result of engaging crowd-sourcing to develop content for sermons, congregations around the country have reported exponential growth in their memberships because the congregants seem to enjoy having input into their church doctrine.

I think it was pretty ingenuous of Rick Warren to use crowd-sourcing as a means to not only get a new cover design for his book, but to also reach people who might need spiritual guidance.  Likewise, I applaud the churches that have veered towards crowd-sourcing as a way to expand their congregations.  Maybe, the faith community is on to something.     

After all, if we can come together to design t-shirts, decide the name of a  new mascara, and even help Saturday Night Live writers drum up scripts, what’s the harm in forming a crowd to help spread the gospel?

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Notepad++ is an open source software which lets you edit many programming language files like perl,php and many many more…
Its free so get it HERE..

Segundo uma pesquisa feita pela consultoria norte-americana IDC o mercado de softwares de código aberto crescerá 22% até 2013. E é esperado que o segmento conquiste receita de US$8,1 bilhão.

As previsões positivas do mercado têm origem devido a maior aceitação dos programas de código aberto pelas grandes corporações no último ano. Outro fator apontado pelo IDC para o crescimento é o cenário econômico. (Outro fator é a mancada da Microsoft com a porcaria do Windows Vista)

Para o vice-presidente do grupo de soluções corporativas da IDC, Michael Fauscette, o mercado de código aberto se beneficiou durante o lançamento do Vista a crise econômica mundial. De acordo com Fauscette, as companhias encaram o segmento como estratégia empresarial.

Plus économique, plus moderne, plus réactif, un logiciel Open-Source est à l’informatique ce qu’un médicament générique est à l’industrie pharmaceutique.
Aujourd’hui, les logiciels Open-Source ne sont plus réservés aux seuls informaticiens, alors pourquoi ne pas vous y mettre maintenant?

Direction Commerciale et Marketing

Avec SugarCRM, vous optimisez votre activité commerciale : depuis les campagnes marketing de détection d’intérêt jusqu’aux affaires signées en passant par les relances de prospects, la gestion de vos rendez-vous… Et il vous est possible de personnaliser afin qu’il soit au plus près de votre problématique métier.

Direction générale, financière

Avec JasperReports, vous disposez de tableaux de bord synthétiques de votre activité : la suite décisionnelle de JasperReports inclut des états traditionnels (tableaux, graphiques…) mais aussi un puissant moteur d’analyses multidimensionnelles.

Direction Informatique

Avec Talend, vous pouvez réellement utiliser un outil entièrement graphique pour décrire et construire les échanges de données entre les différentes applications de votre Système d’Information…

Czy ewolucja zmierza, w kierunku tworzenia się społeczności wolnego oprogramowania ?

Będąc dzieckiem ma się wrażenie, że świat dorosłych próbuje ustalić swojego prawa. Ale czy to ma sens ?

Trochę historii o dwóch sympatycznych OSah, bzzzzzzzzzz

O que é Maven?

Maven é uma ferramenta da Apache Software Foundation usada para gerenciamento e automação de projetos em Java. Com ele você consegue gerenciar com mais facilidade as dependências do seu projeto. Ele é similar ao Ant, também da apache porém é mais fácil de configurar.

O Maven centraliza as informações do projeto em um arquivo chamado pom.xml (Project Object Model). Neste arquivo são descritos dados como: nome do projeto, informações dos desenvolvedores, dados do repositório e sistema de controle de versão, dependências de bibliotecas externas entre outros…

Instalando o Maven

Para instalar o maven em seu ambiente de trabalho digite o seguinte comando no console:

sudo apt-get install maven2

Ao instalar o maven2, ele cria um repositório em sua máquina que pode ser acessado através do comando:

cd ~/.m2/repository

Neste repositório ele colocará todas as bibliotecas que você declarar nos pom.xml das suas aplicações. O interessante é que estas aplicações ficam minúsculas no controle de versão, já que as bibliotecas estão centralizadas no maven e não precisam mais acompanhar os fontes dos projetos.

No maven, toda vez que você compila a aplicação ele executa o download daquelas libs declaradas que não constam no repositório local e, por isso, se você baixar os fontes do projeto em outra máquina, basta instalar o maven e ele resolverá todas as dependências para você.

Agora que o ambiente está preparado, vamos criar a pasta do projeto?

Crie e acesse a pasta que receberá nosso projeto maven. ex:

mkdir helloworld
cd helloworld

O que são archetypes?

O Maven trabalha com archetypes ou arquétipos que tem por significado, segundo o site http://www.eon.com.br/unilae/unil351.htm, padrão original ou modelo, a partir do qual outras coisas da mesma natureza são feitas. Protótipo Ideal das coisas, idéia que serve de modelo em relação a outras. Ou seja, você cria projetos utilizando modelos pré-definidos segundo a necessidade e  o archetype se encarrega de organizar toda a estrutura inicial. Para um projeto web, por exemplo, o archetype montaria a seguinte estrutura de pastas:

• /pom.xml
  • src
    • main
      • java
      • resources
      • webapp
    • test
      • java
      • resources
      • webapp
• readme.txt
• license.txt

Esta estrutura é um padrão para projetos java web. Dentro da pasta raiz ‘/’ não deve existir nada além do pom.xml, o src, o readme.txt e o license.txt. Todas as classes java devem ficar dentro de /src/main/java. Todos os arquivos relativos a web (jsp, html, xhtml) devem ficar dentro de /webapp e os demais arquivos, como os .properties, devem ficar dentro de /resources.

Se o seu projeto for utilizar mais de uma linguagem de programação, como por exemplo, Java e Ruby, você deve criar uma pasta para os códigos ruby no mesmo nível da pasta Java. ex:

• /pom.xml
  • src
    • main
      • java
      • ruby
      • resources
      • webapp
    • test
      • java
      • ruby
      • resources
      • webapp
• readme.txt
• license.txt

A pasta test contém a mesma estrutura da pasta main, mas, como o próprio nome sugere, é utilizada apenas para testes.

Quando você compila um projeto no maven com o mvn compile, ele cria uma pasta target no nível do /src para publicar a aplicação, por isso, quando for remeter seu projeto para o repositório do controle de versão, não envie esta pasta, execute o comando mvn clean e ele limpará o projeto deletando os arquivos desnecessários.

Agora que você conhece o archetype crie o projeto Maven através do comando:

mvn archetype:generate

Este comando, archetype:generate, irá iniciar um wizard para a criação do projeto. O processo é muito intuitivo basta apenas entender o que significam os termos que serão solicitados durante a criação. São eles:

groupId :  domínio do fabricante ex: br.com.fabriciojf;
artifactId :  nome do projeto ex: helloworld;
versao :  versão do projeto. O maven utiliza o padrão ‘1.0 SNAPSHOT‘ para a versão corrente em desenvolvimento, por isso, é bom utilizarmos o mesmo para o nosso projeto;
package :  nome do pacote java que deverá ser gerado inicialmente ex: br.com.fabriciojf.helloworld;

Após esses passos, serão listados os archetypes disponíveis no repositório oficial do maven. Você deve escolher a opção desejada e pressionar Y. Pronto, o projeto já está criado. Agora podemos acrescentar suas dependências no pom.xml e criar os arquivos da aplicação em sua ide de preferência, respeitando a hierarquia de pastas descrita acima. O interessante é que o projeto criado pelo maven já é reconhecido pelo Netbeans e pelo Eclipse, por isso, não é necessário criar um novo projeto com fontes existentes basta abri-los normalmente.

Se você não encontrou um archetype que sirva às suas necessidades, baixe-o de outro repositório, basta descobrir sua url e informá-la para o archetypeCatalog. Ex:  Para baixar um archetype JSF/JSP de outro repositório, digite na linha de comando:

mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeCatalog=http://myfaces.apache.org

Onde -D é o atributo que define o novo valor para a variável archetypeCatalog. Este comando altera o catálogo do maven apenas neste momento, após sua execução ele retornará ao repositório default.

Bem pessoal, esta é minha primeira matéria sobre Java aqui no portal. Espero ter ajudado aqueles que ainda não utilizam sistemas de gerenciamento e automação de projetos.

Por: Fabrício S Costa
Informações Técnicas e Revisão: Fernando Souza

Apache Geronimo is a fully certified Java EE 5 Open Source applicationserver.
http://geronimo.apache.org/

It’s out there, you’ve read it, you’ve seen it, you’re living it and I bet you are just tired of it. It’s the “world-wide bankruptcy” that seems to be falling upon us. Well, here is another blog about this so-called “credit crunch”, but this time, it’s focused on technology, more specifically, open source. 

It’s my opinion that open source is the way to help, not only individuals, but also big, multi-national companies, and even developing countries, get back on their feet.

From the individual point-of-view, it’s a no brainer. Open-source means not spending money to have the latest version of a program. Lets take word processing as an example. Office 2007 can cost you $150+, while the latest version of OpenOffice.org, which has the same functionality as Office 2007, will cost you exactly $0.  Sure, you can keep running Office XP that you bought a few years back, but not only are you missing the newest features, you are also missing the security fixes. That means that you are vulnerable to having your computer screwed up or giving others access to your personal files.

It’s not only word processing where you can save money. Almost any piece of software that you use will have an equivalent free alternative, right down to the operating system. Linux has been progressing a lot since it was first introduced more than 25 years ago. It is no longer for the geeks only. Anybody can download, test, install and start using any distribution of Linux out there (Ubuntu being my personal favorite) and before you know it, be using it just as you would be using your favorite operating system.

The same would apply to small businesses, as well as huge corporations, except their savings would be multiplied even more. Now for companies that make software, they can benefit from open source even more. By releasing their software to the public, they can save money on having to pay employees. Instead of having to pay hundreds of employees to build their programs, they can give the code to the world so that thousands of volunteers can modify it and make it even better, without costing the company as much. There are many examples of companies going the open-source way, IBM, Sun

Businesses everywhere are loosing anywhere from thousands to billions of dollars, depending on their size. By taking the open source approach, they can lower their budget or put that money where it is needed the most. 

But how about developing countries? Well, there’s plenty of ways that they can benefit. With the help of technology they can grow bigger, better, stronger and faster, and open source is the best way to do it. OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) is an organization that wants to take technology to the most remote and poorest of countries, offering a $200 laptop. But we can all do our share. Donating your used computer, installing Ubuntu on it, and handing it out to the most needed will have the same impact. Giving citizens access to technology can make their own economy grow, giving that country a fighting chance in the globalized economy. 

By using open-source software, and living in the open-source mentality, we can give the vast majority the same opportunities to a better future.  There are many ways to help without even knowing anything about writing computer programs. Find an open-source project that interests you and become an active volunteer. Help new comers fix issues that maybe you’ve experienced before. Report bugs that you’ve encountered to make a better product. Help translating that software to a different language that you might know. Just imagine how many Africans could benefit if you where to translate a program to Fula.

UPDATE: As ubuntucat has pointed out in the comments. OpenOffice.org does not have the same functionality as Office 2007. However, what OpenOffice.org does is more than enough for the above-average user. The same applies to any other open-source program. I personally use Ubuntu 95+% of the time, but there are still a couple of programs that I cannot run in Ubuntu, not even under Wine, but for the vast majority, Linux will meet all their needs.

Article by GoblinRFD

On the 27th September this year the GNU OS has its 25th aniversary.  Popular celebrity Stephen Fry has produced a short video encouraging the use of free software.  As usual he presents in a dignified and classy way, and great kudos need to go to Mr Fry for giving up his time for a great project.

I am sure that people wont need reminding that the Software Freedom Day is on the 20th of this month.

Now the all important links:

Click here for the FSF press release

Click here for the Stephen Fry Video (you can download it or stream)

There are a large number of applications that you can carry in your pen drive (USB DRIVE).Suppose you need a browser to access Internet in your office and Internet explorer is either block or unavailable.

To solve this problem ,you can simply copy Mozilla FireFox files from your hard disk and store it to your pen drive.Then you can start FireFox by simply clicking on firefox.exe(i.e. its executable file)and access the web in your office.

This is true for most open source applications .You can also have a portable media player on your pen drive ,most noteworthy among them are VLC PLAYERand MPLAYER.

Thus you can use open source applications(software) via your pen drive.In some cases you can use them for different versions of windows.This is due to the fact that open source software are not dependent on windows entirely …..

Installed Ubuntu 8.04 on my Dell laptop. Other than wifi most of the things are up and working. Feel really nice, seeing how mature the Linux has become in terms of installation and support from the open source community. There was a time where the linux installation was nightmare and needed a couple of tries to get it working. fine!!

Sources report that Facebook will open source its Platform this week.

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