Just got back from Kings Island... I had a great time,
except that I missed the Vortex, and the Son of Beast
wasn't running. :-(
The new Face/Off ride was really cool. Also, the Beast and
Outer Limits are always a thrill.
It seems that a few people do read these diary entries. Hi Jonathan and Michael, glad to run across some familiar faces. Jonathan, thanks for the M4 info, I'll look into using it for the next batch of Aggregate web pages.
Speaking of which... On Saturday I spent about an hour rummaging around the web pages of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil trying to find a research project page from the past...and, no, I don't know Portuguese. Eventually I found it: they had made a "new" web site for their project, and only left behind those stupid 404 errors at their old web page. grrr... So I guess I'm wondering, is there some easy way to make an entire old web-page-heirachy not become 404's, but instead a pointer to the new site. If this was easier to do, there might be fewer broken/dead-end links out there.
The Sao Paulo page I was looking for was their reference to our work with the PAPERS project. I was looking for that, since I think the next update to The Aggregate site should be a pile of links to users of our technology. I know its out there in many places, but we've not been keeping track of how many people actually use our public domain technology.
Anyway, I guess my point/question is "Is there a non- invasive, ethical, easy, and regularly used method for tracking how many, and/or who, is using a particular free/open source software package?" I don't like the idea of making people fill out some form first before the can download our software. Especailly since that doesn't correlate to who actually uses it for anything. I have filled out those "registration forms" for a variety of open software packages, and yet, I'm not sure I still use, or ever actually used any of them beyond the first run or two. Including an annoying "Please don't forget to register your XYZ software" each time it is run is out of the question. I've had programs crash from broken registration-reminder features! Also, the idea of having a software package check in with its "authors" over the internet each time it's run is repulsive to me. I guess in the form of a feature to "automatically/periodically (with permission) check for the latest version of itself" might be a sensible way to measure the number of real users of said package. I guess you could even make it check in anonymously by default. Hmmm, I wonder if the recent spat of commercial software packages that have "auto-update" features are really serving the "demographics department" more than the user...
Probably the best thing I can do would be to put up a voluntary registration form for people who wish to be linked in as "part of the user community" for XYZ... hey, isn't that sort of what Advogato is doing!
I'm rambling... time for sleep.