Why do bloggers blog ?

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Step 1 is to create internal motivation to create a blog in the first place

Step 2 is to find what to write

Reasons Bloggers Blog-

Basic -Ranting


Examples- I hate Facebook Platform team treats me badly with waits, and breaks my code.

SAS Marketing wont give me  a big discount to make me look good in front of my boss.

Companies  wont give me their software for free- even though I will use it to make money (and not play X Box)

I want my vendors to be FOSS but my customers to switch to SaaS.

Google wont do this- Apple wont do that- Microsoft wont do those.

Revolution would give me 4 great packages but not the open source for RevoScaler (which only 300 people would understand in the first place)

Safety-

I better kiss the Professor and give a Turkey for dinner, as he sits on my thesis committee.

I will recommend Prof X’s lousy book in the hope he recommends my lousy book as a textbook too.

It is safe to laugh when the boss is making a joke-I should comment on her corporate blog, and retweet her.

Belonging-

I belong to this great online community of smart people. Let me agree to what they say.

I really believe in EVERYTHING that ALL the 2 MILLION members of the community have to say ALL the TIME.

I belong to this online community because all my friends are on my computer.

4 Egositic

My blog page rank is now X plus delta tau because of sugary key words (2004)

My technorati numbers rise (2005)

I was once on Digg (2007)

I have Z * exp N followers on Twitter and even more on Facebook (2008)

My Klout is increasing on twitter, My stack overflow reputation ‘s cup floweth over. (2009)

My Karma on Reddit is more important than my Karma in real life (2010)

Self Actualization-

I got time to kill- and I think I may learn more, meet intersting people and discover something wandering on the internet.

All those who wonder are not lost- Wikiquote

I got a story to tell, poems to write, code to give away. A free  Blog is something a Chinese , an Iranian  and a North korean really really know what the value is.

But after all that, WHY Do Bloggers Blog?

  • Because we are still waiting for Facebook to create the Blog Killer.
  • Its better than saying I am unemployed and a social loner
  • Reddit Karma feels good. Any Karma of any kind.

Libre Office Marketing Event FOSDEM

Things begin building up for LibreOffice- and here is the inaugural event.

Source- LibreOffice Wiki

 

LibreOffice at FOSDEM – Call for Papers

Contents

[hide]

Call for Papers

2011: Brussels, FOSDEM.(2011-02-05 – 2011-02-06).. Your first chance ever to give a talk for LibreOffice at this great open source event… obviously you don’t want to miss this!

Do you want to share your experience in starting to hack the code, or tell about the tweaks in your build environment, talk about the code changes you have done or those that you prepare, or do you want to share insight on your QA work? Simply submit your proposal at this page.

We really like you to share in the way that fits you best, be it 5, 10 or up to 30 minutes 🙂

It might well be that we’ll have to choose between the various proposals, after all FOSDEM is only two days 😉 So please give a clear description of your talk, goals and target audience. For details, see the outline that is provided at the wiki.

FOSDEM is a free conference to attend, and we will try to seek sponsorship. But funding is limited, so please only request it if you cannot attend otherwise, and we will try our best to support you.

Thanks a lot,
TDF Steering Committee

More info

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Events/Fosdem2011
For questions mail info@documentfoundation.org
Discussions with developers and code hackers take place on libreoffice@lists.freedesktop.org

 

Open Source’s worst enemy is itself not Microsoft/SAS/SAP/Oracle

The decision of quality open source makers to offer their software at bargain basement prices even to enterprise customers who are used to pay prices many times more-pricing is the reason open source software is taking a long time to command respect in enterprise software.

I hate to be the messenger who brings the bad news to my open source brethren-

but their worst nightmare is not the actions of their proprietary competitors like Oracle, SAP, SAS, Microsoft ( they hate each other even more than open source )

nor the collective marketing tactics which are textbook like (but referred as Fear Uncertainty Doubt by those outside that golden quartet)- it is their own communities and their own cheap pricing.

It is community action which prevents them from offering their software by ridiculously low bargain basement prices. James Dixon, head geek and founder at Pentaho has a point when he says traditional metrics like revenue need o be adjusted for this impact in his article at http://jamesdixon.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/comparing-open-source-and-proprietary-software-markets/

But James, why offer software to enterprise customers at one tenth the next competitor- one reason is open source companies more often than not compete more with their free community version software than with big proprietary packages.

Communities including academics are used to free- hey how about paying say 1$ for each download.

There are two million R users- if say even 50 % of them  paid 1 $ as a lifetime license fee- you could sponsor enough new packages than twenty years of Google Summer of Code does right now.

Secondly, this pricing can easily be adjusted by shifting the licensing to say free for businesses less than 2 people (even for the enhanced corporate software version not just the plain vanilla community software thus further increasing the spread of the plain vanilla versions)- for businesses from 10 to 20 people offer a six month trial rather than one month trial.

– but adjust the pricing to much more realistic levels compared to competing software. Make enterprise software pay a real value.

That’s the only way to earn respect. as well as a few dollars more.

As for SAS, it is time it started ridiculing Python now that it has accepted R.

Python is even MORE powerful than R in some use cases for stat computing

Dixon’s Pentaho and the Jaspersoft/ Revolution combo are nice _ I tested both Jasper and Pentaho thanks to these remarks this week 🙂  (see slides at http://www.jaspersoft.com/sites/default/files/downloads/events/Analytics%20-Jaspersoft-SEP2010.pdf or http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/news-events/free-webinars/2010/deploying-r/index.php )

Pentaho and Jasper do give good great graphics in BI (Graphical display in BI is not a SAS forte though probably I dont know how much they cross sell JMP to BI customers- probably too much JMP is another division syndrome there)

Open Source's worst enemy is itself not Microsoft/SAS/SAP/Oracle

The decision of quality open source makers to offer their software at bargain basement prices even to enterprise customers who are used to pay prices many times more-pricing is the reason open source software is taking a long time to command respect in enterprise software.

I hate to be the messenger who brings the bad news to my open source brethren-

but their worst nightmare is not the actions of their proprietary competitors like Oracle, SAP, SAS, Microsoft ( they hate each other even more than open source )

nor the collective marketing tactics which are textbook like (but referred as Fear Uncertainty Doubt by those outside that golden quartet)- it is their own communities and their own cheap pricing.

It is community action which prevents them from offering their software by ridiculously low bargain basement prices. James Dixon, head geek and founder at Pentaho has a point when he says traditional metrics like revenue need o be adjusted for this impact in his article at http://jamesdixon.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/comparing-open-source-and-proprietary-software-markets/

But James, why offer software to enterprise customers at one tenth the next competitor- one reason is open source companies more often than not compete more with their free community version software than with big proprietary packages.

Communities including academics are used to free- hey how about paying say 1$ for each download.

There are two million R users- if say even 50 % of them  paid 1 $ as a lifetime license fee- you could sponsor enough new packages than twenty years of Google Summer of Code does right now.

Secondly, this pricing can easily be adjusted by shifting the licensing to say free for businesses less than 2 people (even for the enhanced corporate software version not just the plain vanilla community software thus further increasing the spread of the plain vanilla versions)- for businesses from 10 to 20 people offer a six month trial rather than one month trial.

– but adjust the pricing to much more realistic levels compared to competing software. Make enterprise software pay a real value.

That’s the only way to earn respect. as well as a few dollars more.

As for SAS, it is time it started ridiculing Python now that it has accepted R.

Python is even MORE powerful than R in some use cases for stat computing

Dixon’s Pentaho and the Jaspersoft/ Revolution combo are nice _ I tested both Jasper and Pentaho thanks to these remarks this week 🙂  (see slides at http://www.jaspersoft.com/sites/default/files/downloads/events/Analytics%20-Jaspersoft-SEP2010.pdf or http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/news-events/free-webinars/2010/deploying-r/index.php )

Pentaho and Jasper do give good great graphics in BI (Graphical display in BI is not a SAS forte though probably I dont know how much they cross sell JMP to BI customers- probably too much JMP is another division syndrome there)

Scoring SAS and SPSS Models in the cloud

Outline of a cloud containing text 'The Cloud'
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An announcement from Zementis and Predixion Software– about using cloud computing for scoring models using PMML. Note R has a PMML package as well which is used by Rattle, data mining GUI for exporting models.

Source- http://www.marketwatch.com/story/predixion-software-introduces-new-product-to-run-sas-and-spss-predictive-models-in-the-cloud-2010-10-19?reflink=MW_news_stmp

——————————————————————————————————–

ALISO VIEJO, Calif., Oct 19, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Predixion Software today introduced Predixion PMML Connexion(TM), an interface that provides Predixion Insight(TM), the company’s low-cost, self-service in the cloud predictive analytics solution, direct and seamless access to SAS, SPSS (IBM) and other predictive models for use by Predixion Insight customers. Predixion PMML Connexion enables companies to leverage their significant investments in legacy predictive analytics solutions at a fraction of the cost of conventional licensing and maintenance fees.

The announcement was made at the Predictive Analytics World conference in Washington, D.C. where Predixion also announced a strategic partnership with Zementis, Inc., a market leader in PMML-based solutions. Zementis is exhibiting in Booth #P2.

The Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) standard allows for true interoperability, offering a mature standard for moving predictive models seamlessly between platforms. Predixion has fully integrated this PMML functionality into Predixion Insight, meaning Predixion Insight users can now effortlessly import PMML-based predictive models, enabling information workers to score the models in the cloud from anywhere and publish reports using Microsoft Excel(R) and SharePoint(R). In addition, models can also be written back into SAS, SPSS and other platforms for a truly collaborative, interoperable solution.

“Predixion’s investment in this PMML interface makes perfect business sense as the lion’s share of the models in existence today are created by the SAS and SPSS platforms, creating compelling opportunity to leverage existing investments in predictive and statistical models on a low-cost cloud predictive analytics platform that can be fed with enterprise, line of business and cloud-based data,” said Mike Ferguson, CEO of Intelligent Business Strategies, a leading analyst and consulting firm specializing in the areas of business intelligence and enterprise business integration. “In this economy, Predixion’s low-cost, self-service predictive analytics solutions might be welcome relief to IT organizations chartered with quickly adding additional applications while at the same time cutting costs and staffing.”

“We are pleased to be partnering with Zementis, truly a PMML market leader and innovator,” said Predixion CEO Simon Arkell. “To allow any SAS or SPSS customer to immediately score any of their predictive models in the cloud from within Predixion Insight, compare those models to those created by Predixion Insight, and share the results within Excel and Sharepoint is an exciting step forward for the industry. SAS and SPSS customers are fed up with the high prices they must pay for their business users just to access reports generated by highly skilled PhDs who are burdened by performing routine tasks and thus have become a massive bottleneck. That frustration is now a thing of the past because any information worker can now unlock the power of predictive analytics without relying on experts — for a fraction of the cost and from anywhere they can connect to the cloud,” Arkell said.

Dr. Michael Zeller, Zementis CEO, added, “Our mission is to significantly shorten the time-to-market for predictive models in any industry. We are excited to be contributing to Predixion’s self-service, cloud-based predictive analytics solution set.”

About Predixion Software

Predixion Software develops and markets collaborative predictive analytics solutions in the public and private cloud. Predixion enables self-service predictive analytics, allowing customers to use and analyze large amounts of data to make actionable decisions, all within the familiar environment of Excel and PowerPivot. Predixion customers are achieving immediate results across a multitude of industries including: retail, finance, healthcare, marketing, telecommunications and insurance/risk management.

Predixion Software is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California with development offices in Redmond, Washington. The company has venture capital backing from established investors including DFJ Frontier, Miramar Venture Partners and Palomar Ventures. For more information please contact us at 949-330-6540, or visit us atwww.predixionsoftware.com.

About Zementis

Zementis, Inc. is a leading software company focused on the operational deployment and integration of predictive analytics and data mining solutions. Its ADAPA(R) decision engine successfully bridges the gap between science and engineering. ADAPA(R) was designed from the ground up to benefit from open standards and to significantly shorten the time-to-market for predictive models in any industry. For more information, please visit www.zementis.com.

 

LibreOffice News and Google Musings

Tux, the Linux penguin
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Official Bloggers on LibreOffice- http://planet.documentfoundation.org/

Note- for some strange reason I continue to be on top ranked LibreOffice blogs- maybe because I write more on the software itself than on Oracle politics or coffee spillovers.

LibreOffice Beta 2  is ready and I just installed it on Windows 7 – works nice- and I somehow think open Office and Google needs an  example to stop being so scary on cautioning—— hey,hey it’s a  beta – (do you see Oracle saying this release is a beta or Windows saying hey this Windows Vista is a beta for Windows 7- No right?)-

see screenshot of solver in  LibreOffice spreadsheet -works just fine.

We cant wait for Chromium OS and LibreOffice integration (or Google Docs-LibreOffice integration)  so Google starts thinking on those lines (of course

Google also needs to ramp up Google Storage and Google Predict API– but dude are you sure you wanna take on Amazon, Oracle and MS and Yahoo and Apple at the same time. Dear Herr Schmidt- Last German Guy who did that ,  ended up in a bunker in Berlin. (Ever since I had to pay 50 euros as Airline Transit fee -yes Indian passport holders have to do that in Germany- I am kind of non objective on that issue)

Google Management is busy nowadays thinking of trying to beat Facebook -hint -hint-

-buy out the biggest app makers of Facebook apps and create an api for Facebook info download and upload into Orkut –maybe invest like an angel in that startup called Diaspora http://www.joindiaspora.com/) see-

Back to the topic (and there are enough people blogging on Google should or shouldnt do)

-LibreOffice aesthetically rocks! It has a cool feel.

More news- The Wiki is up and awaits you at http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation

And there is a general pow-wow scheduled at http://www.oookwv.de/ for the Open Office Congress (Kongress)

As you can see I used the Chrome Extension for Google Translate for an instant translation from German into English (though it still needs some work,  Herr Translator)

Back to actually working on LibreOffice- if Word and Powerpoint is all you do- save some money for Christmas and download it today from

Great article on Notepad++ and R in R Journal

 

Logo for R
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I really liked this article on Notepad++ integration with R,  I am a fan for anything like enhanced code editors and GUIs (and etc) which make R a more easier tool for the common man , and the little tech newbie.

Read it or glance through if you havent looked at the June version of R Journal, the article is on Page 62.