OSCOMAK update
Paul D. Fernhout
I just spent a half-hour or so dealing with damage to OSCOMAK from wikispam.
At least someone is using it. :-)
The dedicated Semantic MediaWiki has been a bust as far as spending some
significant money on it to support heavy usage. It's been a learning
experience -- mostly learning I don't want to babysit a server, especially
one designed by someone else for different ends (I felt that already, but
it's a reminder). Also, I have not been confident enough in it to promote it
-- both in terms of maintaining a Semantic MediWiki or in paying for a
dedicated server year after year.
I plan to take down that server as it is soon (it was paid for through
April) and do something else based on a distributed social semantic desktop
I'm working on, trying to implement some of Doram's suggestions (as
interpreted by me :-) about collaborative groups that are like forums and
that can tag information after it is published (as opposed to email). A link
for that project on sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pointrel/
The latest code is in SVN there (in Java), but it's not really useable right
now. Anyway, thanks Doram, for the suggestions and ideas.
At least a distributed approach will be cheaper. :-)
Anyway, I'm still interested in OpenVirgle ideas, I've just been posting to
the Open Manufacturing list and now am doing some Java coding on that
desktop idea. I hope to build OpenVirgle like software and content on top of
that Pointrel SSD platform.
--Paul Fernhout
Doram
the time for the SKDB to rise to prominence is coming soon, because
all of these projects need to start sharing resources as they were
initially meant to do, especially with the retirement of the Wiki. My
only comment on that would be to be sure to archive the contents of
the wiki to be used later, once the SKDB is ready. Also, see what can
be done to combine the semantic desktop work, and the SKDB work. Don't
forget that part of the point of this is to work together. You may
have solutions to each other's problems.
Other than that, I'd say that the web site should be updated,
especially considering all of the other projects that have spun up
since it was written. Paul/Brian, if you don't want to do it
yourselves, get me some links and info about the projects, and I will
see what I can do.
Keep up the good work, guys, and my thoughts are with you. I may be
learning some distributed computing stuff, amongst a couple of new
languages, for the bachelors degree I'm working on, so I may return in
a year's time a more useful member. Wish me luck.
Doram
On Feb 6, 7:54 pm, "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernh...@kurtz-fernhout.com>
wrote:
Paul D. Fernhout
It's good to hear from you.
Perhaps my biggest regret about the OSCOMAK server is setting it up at all
instead of giving the money to you to do some more work on OpenVirgle
content. :-( Sorry. The server in the end wasn't worth it.
There are indeed lots of projects going on. I'm finding this site pretty
informative these days:
http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Open
I'm not sure it makes sense to just duplicate that at this point. You might
want to poke around there and see what they have or what you might want to add.
Yes, I have an archive of the site and hopefully I will be putting what
content fits into the new distributed Pointrel Social Semantic Desktop
system as it matures.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pointrel/
Over the past six months, Bryan, I, and others have mostly been
collaborating via discussing ideas on the "open manufacturing" list.
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing
Bryan's SKDB (which is focused on packages like Debian) still seems to have
a different emphasis than the Pointrel System (which is focused on a finer
grain of information spanning a lot of domains). But I'm sure the two could
be made to interoperate as various plans firm up into code.
Bryan's been busy with a new fab lab and other things, so there is a lot
going on there in Texas as well.
Anyway, thanks again for your previous comments on forums and so on, which
sparked a lot of ideas in my own work. :-) Example (very crude at this
point, but a proof-of-concept):
"SimpleTaggedMessagesApplication.java"
http://pointrel.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/pointrel/trunk/Pointrel20090201/org/pointrel/pointrel20090201/examples/SimpleTaggedMessagesApplication.java?view=log
Best of luck with your studies.
--Paul Fernhout