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Comment: Re:Team Up (Score 4, Interesting) 283

by Blrfl (#33869410) Attached to: Grad Student Looking To Contribute To Open Source

I think you completely misread what I'm suggesting. What I propose is that the OP, who describes himself as a neophyte when it comes to software, find someone with some experience in that field to be a mentor and help get him off to a good start.

Here's my rationale: I've been writing software for 31 years and have 25 years of industry experience. For the last seven years, I've been working for a company that is staffed mostly by electrical engineers who specialize in signal processing and are really, really good at it. A lot of what they write works, but software isn't their bailiwick, and it lacks the organization and forethought about how it might be used in the future that people who've been around the block tend to put into it.

By teaming up with someone in CS, the OP won't be figuring out how to do it right by trial and error and perhaps turning out ugly code in the first place, and he gets to spread some of the applied math gospel to the heathens over in CS. :-)

Comment: Team Up (Score 4, Insightful) 283

by Blrfl (#33867342) Attached to: Grad Student Looking To Contribute To Open Source

Don't take this the wrong way, but you're in math, not CS. Call the CS department, find someone who's willing to team up with you on this and work together on turning the mathematical end of your contributions into good code. You'll come out of it with a better understanding of how software should go together, your CS cohort will get some insight into applied math and both of you will be better for the experience.

Patents

Red Hat Settles Patent Case 76

Posted by Soulskill
from the making-it-go-away dept.
darthcamaro writes "Red Hat has settled another patent case with patent holding firm Acacia. This time the patent is US Patent #6,163,776, 'System and method for exchanging data and commands between an object oriented system and relational system.' While it's great that Red Hat has ended this particular patent threat, it's not yet clear how they've settled this case. The last time Red Hat tangled with Acacia they won in an Texas jury trial. 'Red Hat routinely addresses attempts to impede the innovative forces of open source via allegations of patent infringement,' Red Hat said in a statement. 'We can confirm that Red Hat, Inc and Software Tree LLC have settled patent litigation that was pending in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas.'"
Encryption

OpenSSH 5.4 Released 127

Posted by timothy
from the but-it's-secret dept.
HipToday writes "As posted on the OpenBSD Journal, OpenSSH 5.4 has been released: 'Some highlights of this release are the disabling of protocol 1 by default, certificate authentication, a new "netcat mode," many changes on the sftp front (both client and server) and a collection of assorted bugfixes. The new release can already be found on a large number of mirrors and of course on www.openssh.com.'"
Music

ASCAP Seeks Licensing Fees For Guitar Hero Arcade 146

Posted by Soulskill
from the understanding-is-too-much-effort dept.
Self Bias Resistor writes "According to a post on the Arcade-Museum forums, ASCAP is demanding an annual $800 licensing fee from at least one operator of a Guitar Hero Arcade machine, citing ASCAP licensing regulations regarding jukeboxes. An ASCAP representative allegedly told the operator that she viewed the Guitar Hero machine as a jukebox of sorts. The operator told ASCAP to contact Raw Thrills, the company that sells the arcade units. The case is ongoing and GamePolitics is currently seeking clarification of the story from ASCAP."
Input Devices

The Mice That Didn't Make It 202

Posted by timothy
from the does-anything-beat-a-logitech-marble-mouse? dept.
Harry writes "For every blockbuster of the mouse world (such as Microsoft and Logitech's big sellers) there have been countless mice that flopped, or never made it to market. Mice shaped like pyramids; mice shaped like Mickey; mice that doubled as numeric keypads or phones. Even one that sat on your steering wheel. I've rounded up some evocative patent drawings on twenty notable examples."

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