I fear the Apocalypse may be here. No, don't worry; this has nothing to do with our recent Presidential election. Many others have already opined on that, from all perspectives, and I'll leave any further discussion about it to them. No, what struck a nerve with me is something that drew much less attention: a U.S. university has given out what is believed to be the first varsity scholarship for esports. That's crazy, right? We know what college sports are, and they're not esports. Are esports even sports? Why would a university be giving out athletic scholarships in them?...
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10 Tips for Making Your Documentation Crystal Clear
So you've some written excellent documentation. Now what? Now it's time to go back and edit it. When you first sit down to write your documentation, you want to focus on what you're trying to say instead of how you're saying it, but once that first draft is done it's time to go back and polish it up a little. One of my favorite ways to edit is to read what I've written aloud. That's the best way to catch awkward phrasing or sentence structure that might not stand out when you're reading it to yourself. If it sounds good when you read it aloud, it probably is. If your documentation happens to include instructions, you can watch someone try to follow them...
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Bringing DevOps to the Classroom
As coordinator for the Minnesota State Digital Curricula Initiative, Charles Betz faces a unique challenge: How to teach DevOps (agile, relentless, fast) in an academic context (inflexible, deliberate, slow)? But Betz has found a way—and it's been successful enough that he's ready to share it. He'll do just that at this year's DevOps Enterprise Summit during his presentation, "Influencing Higher Education to Create the Future DevOps Workforce." Betz, an instructor at the University of St. Thomas spoke with Opensource.com about working with the next generation of student programmers...
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What Software Documentation Can Learn from Tabletop Gaming
Do you remember Monopoly and Life and Clue, and all those old classic board games you played as a kid because sometimes you were just that bored? Do you recall ever reading the instructions? Probably not, because nobody reads the instructions for those games. We all had a friend who kinda knew how to play the game, so they taught us how to play, and that was good enough. (Seriously, go back and re-read the instructions for Monopoly; I'll bet you Internet money that you've never played the actual game.) If you ever did try to read the instructions, you found that they'd been written back in 1962, and read almost identically to the repair manual to the General Electric Refrigerator. They were just as detailed, just as complete, and just as interesting...
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Internet Archive Turns 20, Gives Birthday Gifts to the World
On May 12, 1996, like a benevolent mad scientist, Brewster Kahle brought the Internet Archive to life. The World Wide Web was in its infancy and the Archive was there to capture its growing pains. Inspired by and emulating the Library at Alexandria, the Internet Archive began its mission to preserve and provide universal access to all knowledge. On October 27, 2016, the Internet Archive celebrated its 20th birthday with a party at its beautiful headquarters in San Francisco. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, over 600 people gathered to pay their respects and hear about the latest projects and features of the Archive...
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Not Just a Game
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What is Patient and Family Engagement?
I recently participated in a nationwide (not the United States) healthcare IT planning effort and one recommendation was universal availability of patient portals. Several reviewers commented that patient portal is a loaded term - it implies that clinicians control the data and patients are given a view into it. One person said, “that’s so 10 years ago.” BIDMC has been working with patient/family shared medical records, Open Notes and various consumer-facing apps since 1999. Over that time we've discovered that patients typically do not want raw data, they want something actionable - the tools necessary to assist their navigation through the healthcare process...
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Open Is A Means, Not A Movement
In the humble beginnings of the GNU and Linux projects, open source was a primitive and narrowly defined idea. It applied only to programming, and was a largely legal designation that sought to guarantee that source code remained available to users even as others augmented it through subsequent contributions. Now, thirty years later, "open" is sweeping the enterprise. On top of "open source," we also have "open data," "open management," "open design," "open organizations,"—and even just "open," which we often take to imply something vague about a progressive policy. This has all gotten a little confusing, and I believe it would be useful to step back and consider what "open" really means.
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'Open Source' Is Not 'Free Software'
In the open source universe, using terms such as FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) is common and represents a casual conflation of the terms open source and free software, which are often used interchangeably. I would be remiss if I didn't also admit that I have been guilty of same. I won't be doing that anymore—or at least I'll try not to—for a simple reason: Using the terms interchangeably is dangerous to the goals of free software and open media advocates (read "anti-DRM"). To continue this practice is to undermine beliefs that are fundamental to free software and associated movement...
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6 Ways to Use Open Tools to Better Support Indian Languages
India is a large and a populated country that makes up a large base of Google consumers. So in recent years, Google's widened support of world languages for its various products has been a blessing. It has specifically helped Indian people grow their use of and participation on the Internet. For one, Google Summer of Code helps students experiment with and build prototypes that enhance language-based software. Another way is through Google Translate, a web and app-based platform that provides machine translation from one language to another. It is predominantly maintained and serviced by volunteer contributionss...
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Georgia State Government Earns National Recognition for Web Accessibility
The state of Georgia was nationally recognized last month by the National Association of State CIOs for its Accessible Platform Initiative. The initiative is the first step in Georgia's drive to improve access to all its digital properties. It updated code and designs on the state's enterprise web platform to meet modern accessibility guidelines in a move that impacted nearly 80 state websites. The national recognition for this initiative is not only a feather in Georgia's cap, it's yet another win for open source software and a testament to the benefits of an enterprise web platform. Opensource.com has published articles in the past about Georgia's enterprise platform as a service, as well as the product strategy for the platform...
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