Group items tagged

This is an article about the PostgreSQL development team has announced the release of PostgreSQL 9.3, the latest version of the world's leading open source relational database system.

Definitions of both primary and secondary sources as well as a thorough explanation of when to use a primary or secondary source.

Gives the definition of a Primary Source and how/when to use them! Plus it gives great examples of what a Primary Source actually is!

If you want to know about the highlighting moments in the history of Open Source, here it is.

The Russian Open Source software, Nginx by Igor Sysoev, that runs not only Wordpress but also sites like Netflix, now runs 15 percent of all websites.

Which is better, OSS or Proprietary Software? This article poses both sides of the arguments, mainly that OSS is lauded for it's "community" support, while Proprietary Software is backed by professional, tried and true support. The main conclusions were that OSS and Proprietary Software essentially match in content quality until the codes become longer. In that case, Proprietary Software comes out on top.

Good article, Casey, thanks!

Here's a recent article published in April about where people get their news.

That's useful, Milan, thanks. Note, though that it's not super-clear what "get" means in this context -- I'm sure a lot of people, like me, get their news from several of these sources. I get news from radio, the Web (including newspaper websites and Google News), and social media, and I'm not sure which of those sources is primary.

I'm pretty sure GMU subscribes to Office 365, which means that you can get Microsoft Office products for free while you're enrolled here. Quite a deal. Or you could use OpenOffice, the open source alternative.

I just checked up on this. The FAQ for GMU's Office 365 says the subscription only includes free access to the new Outlook and Calendar. I use OpenOffice on my computer, and apart from some formatting inconsistencies when working with people using Microsoft Office, it works great.

Multiple sources licensed under creative commons.

This list of hints for checking the credibility of sources for information can be useful to others who are struggling on what kind of source to use for their project.

I attended one of the events during Open Access Week about the future of libraries and Wikipedia. Jake Orlowitz, recipient of a Wikimedia Foundation Individual Engagement Grant, spoke about "The Wikipedia Library." The Wikipedia Library was a new project he founded in 2012 for the goal of connecting Wikipedia editors with the reliable information sources they need. In the first part of his presentation, he discussed much of what wikipedia is and how it is run. He basically summed up much of what most people don't know about wikipedia and a lot of assumptions that people make about how unreliable information on wikipedia is. Then he went on to discuss more about the wikipedia library and how it would benefit wikipedia editors with vital current reliable sources that they need to do their work. I thought the presentation given by the presenter was very informative and interesting. I learned more about wikipedia and how its more useful than I thought. The most interesting point he raised during his presentation were the benefits of the Wikipedia Library. The thought of connecting university libraries with the wikipedia library will present students and many others information that is reliable and easy to access. Many scholarly articles and information from databases we usually have to pay for will be available for universities to provide students at a much lower cost.

Thanks, Rebecca. I'll add 5 points to your Exam 2 grade.

It's a list composing of free accessible, open source software for different categories such as finance and even computer simulation.

researchers says that 0pen-source software projects need to improve vulnerability-handling practices,

Don't forget to add a comment that describes what's at the link, Milan. I'll give you credit this time, but not next time. That is clearly an *ancient* web page. If you do View Source on it, too, you can tell (at least I can) that it was hand-coded in HTML rather than generated by a CMS. And all the tags are written in capital letters, . No one does that anymore.

Plus, crews.org is a middle school. I don't really trust what they say about the Internet. :) Of course, if it's "just for fun" ...

This web page has an easy and detailed explanation about what a URL is and its three basic parts: the protocol, the server name, and the resource ID.

In theory that's a good resource, Jimin, except that it's wrong. :) The "server name" could be anything, and has very little to do with the domain name. It is true that you can usually log in to a server (a remote computer) by giving whatever program you're logging in with the domain name, but that doesn't mean that the server itself has the same name as the website. That page is also very, very wrong in calling the the top-level domain (.org etc.) the "domain name." It's important to note that that page was almost certainly written by a librarian, not a tech professional. (Of course, I'm an English PhD, not a tech professional myself, but still.) And when I looked at the source code, I could tell that it was hand-coded in HTML, which indicates to me that it's probably many years old. Wish there were a "dislike" button. :)

This gives a list (and short description) for 20 popular OSS platforms. This article includes examples given in class such as, WordPress (#1 on the list) and Mozilla Firefox (#3 on the list).

This piece of writing shows the difference between Google books and other digital content repositories, Mirlyn and Hathi Trust. And she also tells you the most efficient way to find the best sources by using all three repositories.

Great link, Jimin -- explains better than I did in class why HathiTrust is sometimes preferable to Google Books.

A more recent article (from 2011) reporting the results of a study showing that Wikipedia is indeed usually accurate. The author writes: "In this article, I review thousands of Wikipedia articles about candidates, elections, and officeholders to assess both the accuracy and the thoroughness of Wikipedia's coverage. I find that Wikipedia is almost always accurate when a relevant article exists, but errors of omissionare extremely frequent. These errors of omission follow a predictable pattern. Wikipedia's political coverage is often very good for recent or prominent topics but is lacking on older or more obscure topics."

Here is just an interesting timeline of video game consoles. It does not reference open source issues, but shows the companies that produces each console and when each console was discontinued.

Video about one person's take on what libraries will be used for in the future. Very interesting opinion.

Hmm, interesting. The service she describes where libraries sell books is fairly rare, still, although it's made possible by a thing called an Espresso Book Machine that prints copied of ebooks: http://www.ondemandbooks.com/ I hate when I can't figure out the date of things. I even looked at the source code to try to find out when that video was recorded, but I couldn't. I did discover that the girl in the video (I love her sweater!) is one of the co-hosts of another How Stuff Works podcast called "Stuff You Missed in History Class" at http://shows.howstuffworks.com/stuff-you-missed-in-history-class-podcast.htm -- that might be useful! Certainly relevant. :) Their latest episode is about an 18th-century "Vampire Panic" in New England. Sign me up.

I listen to that podcast all the time!