openSUSE 11.0 and KDE 4 June 28, 2008
Posted by metaverse in Linux, SUSE.9 comments
As you probably know already, openSUSE 11.0 is out, and undoubtedly doing magical things for users around the globe (if not for me just yet–that should happen in the next week or so).
The openSUSE development team was faced with a difficult dilemma with this release. The KDE 4.0 desktop environment was released in January, with an entirely new way of doing things. The Plasma desktop, Phonon multimedia framework, and Solid hardware framework represented some spectacular changes from the familiar KDE 3.x interface in place since 2002.
Unfortunately, some key pieces of the complete desktop (including the KOffice suite, Kontact personal information manager and Amarok multimedia player) had not yet migrated successfully to the new platform. So KDE 4.0 was defined, rightly so, as a work in progress, while v4.1 would be the more stable, mature platform.
Meanwhile, the openSUSE community had set itself the task of releasing new versions twice a year, making openSUSE 11 due in June 2008. The question loomed large early in the development cycle: Which KDE should be the default KDE desktop? The team decided to go with KDE 4, and worked hard to make it as usable as possible.
Since the release, there has been much controversy on the openSUSE lists about this decision. Benjamin Weber tries to put out the fires and clarify things in this post:
- openSUSE is not forcing people to switch to KDE4. Users can switch to KDE4 when they wish. Both are included on openSUSE 11.0.
- If you find bugs in or are missing functionality in KDE4 please file bug reports so it can be fixed.
- If you have an opinion regarding when the timescale for moving to KDE4 you are free to get involved and influence the decisions. You do not have to resort to insulting developers on the mailing lists to be heard, in fact insulting developers so is a good way to ensure that people disregard your opinion.
Fundamentally, this is the only fair solution
Writer River: A Social Media News Site for Technical Communicators June 12, 2008
Posted by metaverse in Technical Communication, Web Stuff.add a comment
Tom Johnson just can’t sit still, I guess. Tom is a technical communicator who hosts a blog and a podcast, is active in his Society for Technical Communication chapter, and Twitters pretty heavily as well.
Last week, we were both at the STC annual conference. I’m not sure whether he had as good a time as I did, but his review resonated with my experience at least to some degree. But he indicated that he was getting tired of the whole interview-based podcast thing, and wanted to do something different.
Being much more decisive than your humble correspondent, two days ago Tom launched Writer River: A Social Media News Site for Technical Communicators. It’s a Digg clone; using Pligg as its engine. You can learn more about how the site was built here. If you like a story you read here, Float it up the river till it hits the front page. If you don’t, you can Sink it too.
If you think technical writing is all about grammar arguments and Word vs. FrameMaker duels, you may be surprised by the site (even if an interview with Grammar Girl did make the front page on Day One). There’s a lot of material touching on Web 2.0 stuff, the business case for Twitter and assorted other tech topics. Fundamentally, what’s there will depend on its readers, of course. So if you find something interesting and relevant, submit it, or cast your vote.
Thanks, Tom. I think this is going to be a great service to our community.
Tags: WriterRiver, techcomm, digg
Howard Rheingold Connects With Technical Communicators June 9, 2008
Posted by metaverse in Conferences and such, Personal blatherings, Technical Communication, open source.5 comments
Last week I was in Philadelphia for my first national conference of the Society for Technical Communication. I had hoped to do some live blogging there, but the wireless connection in the convention center was somewhat haphazard. Thus, though lacking in the immediacy of the rapid notetaking, you’ll get a little more digested commentary.
Howard Rheingold was our opening keynote speaker (Richard Saul Wurman was the other keynoter, but I had to get to the airport), and I couldn’t have been more excited about that. I read The Virtual Community back in 1993 or ‘94, not long after I got my first Internet account, and it still has an honored place on my bookshelf. I joined Electric Minds (archive) almost as soon as I heard about it; while that didn’t last very long as a business, the community apparently lives on.
Rheingold focused his STC talk on his most recent work, the book and weblog called Smart Mobs. He wanted us “people who understand new technologies first and help others understand” to help him spread a new story about how humans get things done. What follows are a combination of my speech notes with a few editorial comments.
Today’s technology has lowered the threshold for collective action. Governments (in the Philippines, South Korea and Spain) have toppled, lives have been saved (in the Asian tsunami, Katrina, and several searches for missing individuals) and people have been changed as people have become more literate about media.
This isn’t the first time a change in media has led to a change in the larger world. Once we figured out how to make clay tablets, that enabled a new communication medium: Alphabetic writing. Eventually, writing became the property of the ruling class: scribes only people given access to the code — till Gutenberg cracked it.
You can make the argument that the Protestant Reformation was the first virtual community, because Luther’s theses, and perhaps more importantly, the Bible itself, spread from household to household from Gutenberg’s presses.
Rheingold didn’t mention it directly, but one of the first best sellers in the North American colonies was a little pamphlet called Common Sense. He did mention the first organizers for colonial rights, the Committees of Correspondence. Can you imagine the American Revolution without its documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers (batches of letters to the editor!)
Every time there is an explosion of new literacy, there arrives new ways to organize.
Today we are in the early days of a new explosion of literacy: Merger of mobile phone, computer and Internet.
Readers of this blog know that the open source movement was built without market incentives, or corporate bureaucracy. Now it represents the largest single revenue contributor for the very symbol of corporate bureaucracy (IBM).
What’s next? Rheingold looks ahead to new forms of collective action:
- Supercomputers linked at greater-than-broadband speeds.
- Platforms for Participation.
- Tech of Cooperation and Sharing Economies
While he had to rush through the end of his talk (the morning’s award ceremonies went on WAAAY too long!), he talked about his current projects (none of which appears to involve book-authoring):
- Cooperation Project: CooperationCommons.com
- Trying to teach rhetoric of blogging. socialtext.net/medialiteracy
- New way of looking at learning and teaching
What are the tasks of a technical communicator in the new age? Learn how to master the technologies of participatory media. Recognize that education on media literacy today happens outside school. These kids today are a self-guided population, but in need of guidance.
Ultimately, we have to remember: Don’t keep up with the technologies; keep up with literacies!
Good stuff.
One more personal note: Afterward, he signed books in the “trade show” area. I had a whole list of things I wanted to talk to him about (I’m especially curious what he thinks about Clay Shirky’s new book, Here Comes Everybody, that covers a lot of the same issues as Smart Mobs). As the second person in line, I probably could have chatted for awhile. But it’s so hard to engage with your heroes, so I just mumbled how great it was to meet him after all these years. Then I shut up. Arrgghh!
I’ll have more about the STC Conference coming up. It was an interesting week.
