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Education

Ask Slashdot: Statistical Analysis Packages For Libraries? 146

HolyLime writes "I'm a librarian in a small academic library. Increasingly the administration is asking our department to collect data on various aspects of our activities, class taught, students helped, circulation, collection development, and so on. This is generating a large stream of data that is making it difficult, and time consuming, to qualitatively analyze. For anything complicated, I currently use excel, or an analogous spreadsheet program. I am aware of statistical analysis programs, like SPSS or SAS. Can anyone give me recommendations for statistical analysis programs? I also place emphasis on anything that is open source and easy to implement since it will allow me to bypass the convoluted purchase approval process."

Comment Re:I doubt it... (Score 1) 150

I rolled my own RHEL5 desktop cloud. If an engineer does something stupid, the VM he has reserved dies and he reserves a new one. He doesn't impact the other virtual desktops and the VM that he crashed gets rebuilt from a single master image. This is the benefit of isolation, and it can be extended to security if you plan it right. It all boils down to the competency of the admins.

Comment Re:Welcome to Canada? (Score 0) 624

Do you have something against being made accountable for your own words? I am free to say whatever I want whenever I want, but I am held accountable for those words. If my words encourage hatred towards a minority, I am committing a hate crime. If my words encourage suicide, I am complicit in their demise. Thats the only real implication.

Comment Welcome to Canada? (Score 2, Interesting) 624

In Canada, we do not have free speech in absolute terms like our southern counterparts. The difference between us and what those senators are suggesting is that we have a Charter of Rights which protects us from any attempt of gov't approved censorship. It can be annoying at times, but it keeps the holocaust deniers at bay.

Comment Re:Libertarianism cannot exist alone (Score 1) 692

Polygamy guarantees an excees of single men, much like the posters on slashdot. It must cast out the excess in order for the society to survive, and in order to be able to cast out the excess there must be a larger society with which to absorb these outcasts. Bountiful BC is an excellent example of this in action.

Comment Libertarianism cannot exist alone (Score 1) 692

By its very nature, be it libertarianism, objectivism, or even polygamy, cannot exist on it own and isolated from the larger society, as it is inherently parasitic. There is much it is incapable of addressing (such as welfare), so it deals with it by simply removing the "problem" from their faux society. So if they do manage to get this off the ground, expect to see a constant flow of people both coming and going just to maintain the untenable ideals of their utopian society.

Encryption

Pakistan Tries To Ban Encryption 185

An anonymous reader writes "Pakistan has a new Telecoms Law going into effect, which requires widespread monitoring of internet usage. In response, new reports are saying that the country is banning encryption, including VPNs, because it would interfere with the ability of ISPs to monitor internet usage."

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