For those who hadn’t seen it and want to.
Category: General
There is a new initiative from the Canonical/Ubuntu Design Team to do a much better job communicating their thoughts, ideas and plans to the wider community. They have started a blog at http://design.canonical.com/ that I believe is worth reading regularly. Fire up your RSS feed reader and subscribe after taking a look at the wonderful foundation they have created to kick things off.
EDIT: I should mention that the main way that the Design Team communicates is via the ayatana mailing list. You can find it here:
This number will mean something if we can make it happen. I’m sold. Let’s do it!
I’m sitting in one of the first sessions of Ubuntu UDS for the upcoming 10.10 release listening to Mark Shuttleworth speak about the philosophy and future of the distribution. This is going to be an amazing release with a ton of new development and goodies. Since 10.04 LTS was just released and is a Long Term Support release, the focus was to release a version that could be supported for a long time and which had more of a focus on software options and sources that will be stable and consistent for two years. The focus on 10.10 will be innovation of a new foundation on which to build in preparation for the next LTS in 2010. More to come.
If you want to join in on a session, you may do so remotely and your participation is welcome.
I just received my copy of Ubuntu Up and Running. I had the privilege of being one of the tech reviewers, so consider this more of an announcement than a review (as well as an invitation to take a look and see if the book interests you–Robin Nixon is a good writer). It is similar in focus to another book that I have contributed to heavily, The Official Ubuntu Book; (5th Ed coming very soon!). Both are aimed at being an introduction of Ubuntu to people new to Linux, but each covers the topic differently and in differing depth and each has information that the other does not.
Just a quick reminder that you can still nominate somebody (that includes yourself) for the Regional Membership Boards EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) or Asia / Oceania until 12:00 UTC today. I have enjoyed my two years as a part of the EMEA board, but am not standing for reelection to make way for new people to participate.
(Abridged from the announcement on The Fridge)
The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Long-Term Support). Codenamed “Lucid Lynx”, 10.04 LTS continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.
We are also pleased to announce Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition, which is not a long-term support release.
Read more about the features of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS in the following press releases:
Desktop and Netbook editions http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-10.04-desktop-edition
Server edition http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-10.04-server-edition
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS will be supported for three years on desktops and five years on servers. Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition will be supported for 18 months.
Thanks to the efforts of the global translation community, Ubuntu is available in 29 languages. For a list of supported languages and detailed translation statistics for these and other languages, see:
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is also the basis for new 10.04 releases of Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, UbuntuStudio, and Mythbuntu:
Kubuntu http://kubuntu.org/news/10.04-lts-release
Xubuntu http://xubuntu.org/news/10.04-release
Edubuntu http://edubuntu.org/news/10.04-release
Mythbuntu http://mythbuntu.org/10.04/release
Ubuntu Studio https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/10.04release_notes
To Get Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
———————————-
To download Ubuntu 10.04, or obtain CDs, visit:
Users of Ubuntu 9.10 will be offered an automatic upgrade to 10.04 LTS via Update Manager. For further information about upgrading, see:
Users of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS may wish to wait for 10.04.1 LTS, due in July 2010, before upgrading.
As always, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge.
We recommend that all users read the release notes, which document caveats and workarounds for known issues. They are available at:
Find out what’s new in this release with a graphical overview:
I have read programming books for years. There was a time when I could write a “Hello World” program in each of seven or eight languages. That time has passed, mainly because I haven’t been intimately involved in any specific software project for many years. Still, I have this habit of reading programming books and enjoying them, perhaps in the hope or expectation that one of these days I’ll find myself with a project in front of me, time to work on it, and motivation to learn a new language or tool to make the project’s vision a reality. Well, here’s the newest book of programming foundational tips that I have read.
97 Things Every Programmer Should Know is a collection of short, two page essays, each by an experienced programmer. The book is a collection of tips and tricks for writing code that works, that is maintainable both by the author and by others, and that will best fit the situation. While the book doesn’t measure up to some of my all time favorites in the genre like The Art of Unix Programming or The Pragmatic Programmer, it wasn’t meant to. This is not an in depth guide to underlying philosophies of coding practices and standards, but quick hit and run articles that would be easy to fully grasp and absorb in short five minute bursts, such as during work or study breaks (which is how I read the book).
Some of the topics included in this book will seem obvious such as “Don’t Ignore That Error” and “Comment Only What The Code Cannot Say,” and some tips are going to serve only as reminders to best practices that are sometimes ignored (to our own peril) like “Check Your Code First Before Looking To Blame Others” and “Make Interfaces Easy To Use Correctly And Difficult To Use Incorrectly,” there are some real gems in the book that aren’t so obvious like one author’s instruction to “Read the Humanities” because they are a great tool to help programmers learn to effectively interact with people and not just software and the advice that says “Don’t Just Learn the Language, Understand Its Culture” so that you will write effectively and idiomatically within each language, rather than writing the same thing using different words.
I can’t say that this is a must-have book for experienced programmers, but anyone at the novice to intermediate levels would certainly benefit from what the book contains. I’ve enjoyed reading it.
Disclosures: I was given my copy of 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know free by O’Reilly as a review copy, I also write for O’Reilly.
The most basic definition of open government is the idea that people have the right to access the documents and proceedings of government. Being able to closely examine decisions, policies, and procedures is foundational to having the ability to make intelligent and informed decisions as a citizen, especially in a democracy where an informed electorate is vital if good choices are to be made by voters when selecting leaders or holding them accountable.
The Open Government movement is not officially organized as a group or party, rather it is a growing collection of concerned citizens who want to help create better government by increasing citizens’ access to information. It has been heavily influenced by the open source software movement and has similar aims: increased collaboration through making options available to any interested party willing to read and study, increased transparency by making source materials freely available for anyone to peruse and examine, and increased participation by eliminating closed systems wherever possible. While this idea was broadcast most widely in the campaign and early days of Barack Obama’s presidency, this is not a one-sided political issue as much as it is an Enlightenment era system of belief, enshrined in the United States’ Declaration of Independence and Constitution, now being updated for the digital era which is filled with technologies which could make those ideals more easily fulfilled.
Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice is a collection of 34 essays written by a wide variety of people who are interested in both promoting the philosophy of open government and in suggesting practical ways to implement procedures that will assist in applying that philosophy. The range of topics covered is diverse and interesting. Included are thoughts about governmental uses of information technology that currently limit openness and specific recommendations for remedying the problems, creating a wider variety of methods for people to access government data and increasing access across society, enabling greater innovation among those not directly connected to government such as through the creation of specific APIs so that outside research may be more easily accomplished using government collected data (paid for with public funds via taxes and therefore publicly owned data). We have essays that consider new and effective ways for current government officials to communicate more easily and directly with the people who elected them, discussions of how increased openness in government could decrease the influence of monied interests in governmental policy and could replace that with a greater influence by and for the electorate. There are clear and logical presentations on topics like why using open standards for data storage matters, especially with regards to publicly owned data as collected and used by governments, as well as some great arguments for the use of open source software to make government more efficient, transparent, and flexible in a rapidly changing world.
I greatly appreciate that this book exists. I would love for a copy to end up in the hands of every member of the government as well as any interested person planning to run for an office. These are policies that would greatly benefit the original intent of the founders of the United States (of which I am a citizen and where the book was written) and would be useful in any nation willing to carefully read and consider the ideas being proffered.
If this topic is of any interest to you, and I argue that it should be, this book would benefit you in your thinking. Go find a copy and read it.
Disclosures: I was given my copy of Open Government free by O’Reilly as a review copy, I also write for O’Reilly.