Month: December 2009

Fedora 13 name suggestions

After a recent release of Fedora 12, the attention is starting to focus on Fedora 13.  And, as it is usually, the work starts with the name.  Here are the suggested and approved names for the next release of Fedora distribution:

  • Botany
  • Gloriana
  • Goddard
  • Langstrom
  • Loana
  • Manfredi
  • Truro

The Fedora naming tradition says that the new name must be in some way related to the previous one. If you don’t know how any of these names are linked to “Constantine”, the name of the Fedora 12 release, here is a page with more information.

And if you want to learn more history of the Fedora release names, you should visit this page.

On Open Source

An excellent comment in regards to Open Source and SugarCRM.  Not one, but two awesome quotes.  One:

In my eyes (and those of the open source community), the “high value” stuff is the stuff you can improve, and the “low value” stuff is the stuff you cannot.

and two:

I should also correct John Mark’s perception that slashdot is the be-all, end-all center of gravity for open source development. The beauty of the open source model is precisely that there can be many centers that collectively interoperate. Thus, Red Hat and Fedora, as two separate centers, both draw strength and network effects from the centers that are GNOME and Mozilla and Python and of course, Project GNU. None of these projects needs to “own” the others in order to create true value within its own center. Red Hat chose a path of letting 1000 flowers bloom, and that strategic decision allowed both a richer field (for the community) and a greater harvest (for Red Hat). SugarCRM can be successful without creating a monopoly of open source development. But it can also fail if it divorces itself from the open source values that make it one of the best alternatives to other proprietary solutions today.

Statistics and perceptions

While catching up with recent Cyprus Mail articles, I came across the one about involvement of foreigners in serious crimes in Cyprus.  Quote:

FOREIGNERS are involved in 40 per cent of all serious crimes, and 30 per cent of road deaths in Cyprus, the House Human Rights Committee head yesterday.

Being both a foreigner and a local (after almost 14 years here), I know how a lot of Cypriots are concerned with crimes being related to foreigners.  A quote like the above would be music to their ears.  However, on the other hand, that quote could be easily turned inside out.  For example, like so:

CYPRIOTS are involved in 60 per cent (or a majority) of all serious crimes, and 70 per cent (an absolute majority) of road deaths in Cyprus […]

This now would be music to the ears of many foreigners who think that Cypriots are too crooked with all cabaret, real estate, and gambling activity going on, and who are also extremely incosiderate and undereducated while driving on public roads.

Now, which one sounds worse?

On citizen journalism

Cyprus Mail has an interesting article on the rising role and side effects of citizen journalism.

Throughout the social media – from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube – photos and film are posted every minute that breach codes of conduct, laws of copyright, personal privacy and government laws. From pornography to celebrity parties, from inside Guatanemo Bay to soldiers on the frontline telling it how it really is: images are escaping censorship and regulation.

I think that censorship is not an option anymore, at least in global scope.  Cameras are everywhere – cheap semi-professional equipment, camcorders, webcams built-in into every notebook, mobile phones, etc.  Also, free or cheap Internet access is pretty much everywhere.  And on top of that, technology got really simple – one doesn’t need a Computer Science degree and years of experience to capture a video, upload it to a social network and share it with the rest of the world.

And when the censorship option is gone, the only reasonable option that I can think of is education.  If governments, companies, parents, societies, etc. will start educating people, focusing on the “good” instead  of “bad”, if appreciating conducts, laws, and ethics will be encouraged, then we’ll see more of the “better” content.  Of course, nothing will prevent us from a few “bad apples”, but once the appropriate values will be set, a lot of people will follow.

In some sense, this issue is similar to tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption.   While there are certain legal issues – licensing, age limits, advertising, driving, etc – the major control over population’s behavior in regards to tobacco and alcohol is, IMHO, done via education.  It is when you show people over and over again what are consequences of tobacco smoking and alcohol abuse, when you educate them on the side effects, and so on and so forth, that’s when they start thinking and reacting in the way that you would want them to think and react.

Of course, legal consequences can be implemented to some degree.  For example, for showing the moment of death and such.  But those would be very difficult to enforce, due to the global nature of the Internet, digital media, and such.

Gambling is an old problem

A recent arrest in Cyprus proves that gambling is an old problem, as Cyprus Mail reports:

FORTY TWO women aged between 75 and 85, including a 95-year-old from Limassol, were shocked on Sunday when police raided their card game and confiscated their €100 in betting money.

Also, I have to disagree with a woman quoted in the same article:

The only thing police achieve by doing such raids is to ridicule women of a certain age

Not at all, no.  I think police only ridicule themselves, not the women of a certain age.