davidr What about companies who, instead of releasing specs for their products, release drivers in binary-only form? BTW, which products does Logitech not release specs for? Their mice seem to work just fine for me.
As long as we're all thinking and talking about certifications and trusts, I thought I'd share some of mine. :)
One of the big things that I think lots of folks miss out here is the dedication part of certifications. The dedication part can change, and when it does, the level you certify someone at can change. I think I'll go with a hypothetical example, since it's easier to make fit. Let's say that Joe was one of three people who were the leaders of an important software project. They each had areas where they helped contributors, and wrote lots of code themselves. They were working lots of hours on their software, and getting folks involved. I come along, and start dinking around with this software, asking questions, and come to know Joe, and that he's really pushing this project along. Since it's an important project, and I'm pretty familiar with Joe after a while, I certify him on Advogato as a free software "Master". Some time passes, and Joe decides that he's not going to work on that project anymore. Perhaps he takes a new job which doesn't permit him the time to work on free software, so he's only contributing in smaller ways now. Joe puts this sort of stuff into his advogato diary, and it's clear that he's not putting the same kind of time into free software as he was. Joe may still be just as competent a free software hacker as he was, but since he's not pushing an important project along, I decide that he's fufilling a role as a free software "Journeyer" now, and change his certification to represent this. This is the right thing to do if Advogato isn't a popularity contest, since it represents the role that Joe is playing at the moment. Joe won't be offended, he's just doing something else now. I know of quite a few people who have change how much they work on free software, but not many of them have ever had time for advogato.
So, as for the rankings... It seems to me that there is some inflation of the certifications, but I'm not sure where it comes from. Perhaps it's just based on people not thinking hard enough about how they certify someone. In my mind, "Master" is a pretty exclusive group. It's for somebody who's not only the driving force behind a free software project, but is the driving force behind a big one. So, Alan pushes along a big part of the kernel, and David Merril pushes along the LDP pretty well. They're both clearly "Masters" in my book, since both the kernel and the LDP seem to be large important projects to me.
I want to write some more on Journeyer, and perhaps Apprentice, but I'm tired, so it will wait until later.
Spelling! :)
From: Chris Byrne <chris@chrisbyrne.com> Subject: RE: [geeks] aw yeah. Date: 26 Apr 2002 02:01:15 +0100
I live in Ireland now. My spell checker does that sort of thing ;-)
Chris Byrne
> -----Original Message----- > From: geeks-admin@sunhelp.org [mailto:geeks-admin@sunhelp.org]On Behalf > Of Gregory Leblanc
> > the town. He testified for the defence in the Texas case. > > Defeat of de cat went over defence before detail? (sorry, just poking > fun!) > Greg
This is actually from 23 Oct 2001, I just forgot to post
it.
I read through that Linux Certification article I mentioned
yesterday. Pretty interesting to me, since I'm looking into
getting some certs. The CompTIA Linux+ looks to be about on
the same level as the last CompTIA exam I took. I'm A+
certified, and that exam was trivially easy. I might just
go down and take the Linux+ exam next week, since I won't
have to study for it (other than to edit a file with vi
again, I haven't done that for a couple of months). I
haven't finished reviewing the LPI and SAIR ones, but I
think that the LPI one will certainly be on my list of
things to get. I didn't realize that the RHCE was such a
broad exam, or I'd have looked at it a lot sooner. That one
is definately on my list, but I think I'll have to make sure
I'm prepared first.
Tomas Ogren is helping me to get "push-sync" set up for
ftp.gnome.org. This will mean that it gets updated
immediately whenever somebody puts a new release on
master.gnome.org, and we won't have so much trouble with
things being out of date. The old setup is much too slow.
We got the "install-module" mess cleaned up there, but no
further. install-module is the script that manages the ftp
site, making symlinks, diffs, and that sort of thing. It's
very slick, but we had a few dozen copies of it running
around. Now, just 1 real copy is left, making things much
simpler. Now we only have to keep track of a single copy,
and can set up that single copy to "trigger" the sync.
Hopefully we'll get this going to several machines soon, so
that ftp.gnome.org is a RR DNS.
We've got to get new DocBook tools on the gnome.org
webserver, but I haven't got time to do all of the research
required for this. Darn. I sent out mail asking for
volunteers to work on this, hopefully I'll get some
replies.
I spent some time with drake this evening, trying to
customize Norm's stylesheets a little bit. I think we
figured out how things were getting called, but we don't
have any clue how to customize it. Drake is going to email
docbook-apps, and I'm going to read the replies. :-) I
just found out that there's some XSL information in TDG, so
I'm going to try to read that tonight.
"Simplicty does not precede complexity, but follows it."
Great quote.
GNOME
I'm hacking on spec file today, and making some progress. I
got a bunch of the needed cleanup done on the gnome-vfs one,
although it's going to need a bit more hacking/cleaning.
I'm working on gnome-applets.spec.in right now, and it's
requireing a complete re-write (almost). Ick. At least I
know where some of the problems were coming from before.
the %configure macro is convient, but broken. Ah, well,
what can ya do?
I'm also playing with Jonathan's doc-i18n-tool, because
nobody else seems to be able to be bothered. I've got
enough stuff on my plate, but this is too important to let
slide. Well, playing with is a bit of a stretch. I
downloaded it, tried it out a bit, got on #i18n, and started
nagging people. :-) They're playing with it right now, and
I'm getting tired and ready for bed. OK, email sent with
some issues.
Here's a Tech Republic article on linux certs that I'm going
to read in the morning (well, later in the morning). Enjoy
http://click.online.com/Click?q=9c-xtXpQanxk_islEk2c9B3tOiR
OK, so I'm a complete moron. It's 12:50am on Saturday, which means that I leave for a group bike ride in 7.5 hours. I found my bicycle computer, and my bikes on the bus pass, which means that I can actually get to my ride. I also managed to swap the front tire on my bike twice tonight. I swapped first for a "spare" kevlar with a wire bead that I had around (it was giving me flats on the back, but I've determined that I need a steel-belted tire on the back to avoid that). As it turns out, that tire has "high" sidewalls, and was rubbing against the rivets that help hold my fender in place. I can't move the fender at all, so I guess I just need to stick with low-sidewall tires. Anyway, I'm using the tire from my track bike in the mean time. I think I'll put the original back on there. It looks a bit worn, but I've never had a flat on it. In fact, tonight was the first time that I've taken that tire off in the past 3 years. BTW, by worn I mean that it's slightly flat where it contacts the road, and it's got some tiny "cracks" in the rubber. From the inside, it looks perfectly fine, and there's still 3/32 of rubber left there, so I think it's probably safe.
Hmm, another quote, methinks
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering. -- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"
I miss Doctor Who. SciFi has some good stuff, but no Doctor Who.
It's fruit season, clearly. We've got a bushel of grapes in the kitchen waiting for us to finish cooking them, then straining them. The apples are ripe, and we need to figure out something to do with them. Not sure what we'll do yet. I'd prefer cider, but I've been unable to find a hand-powered cider press for a reasonable price, nor even a good set of plans to build one from scratch.
If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.
Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.
If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!
