elnblog: Electronic Lab Notebooks

RSS, Attention and Flocking Behaviour

Just noticed this post, which mentions a “Scanning for Patterns” behavior which is a good summary of how I use RSS/Atom/Blogs. There are about 15 feeds that I will read most articles, and then a few hundred other feeds which I will skim read when traveling. I generally only read a post from this group if it is something that’s especially relevant and/or is something that’s appearing in a number of postings.

In this way I can easily keep my “finger on the pulse” of a wide variety of communities - sure beats having to read dead-tree publications, go to conferences etc. Plus I get to do most of the skim-reading when on a plane, which turns out to be quite convenient.

RSS, Attention and Flocking Behaviour at D’Arcy Norman Dot Net: “Why scan so many feeds? To me, it’s about patterns. Keeping my peripheral vision (peripheral mind? is there such a thing?) pouring over more information than I could ever consciously absorb. And being able to pick up on subtle variations in the attention of the flock that I am a part of, as well as other related flocks.”

tecosystems: The Trouble with Binary Arguments

tecosystems: The Trouble with Binary Arguments: “binary arguments tend to obscure the fact that in many real world implementations, so-called oppositional technologies will compliment rather than annihilate each other. At the very least, they provide each other with the competition that drives innovation”

A very important point - almost all the analysis I’ve seen about ELN technologies is of the either/or variety, the truth is all successful ELN implementations involve a variety of technologies from a number of sources.

In the few cases where an organization has chosen to believe a vendor’s claim that they can provide everything, when you look at what happens on the ground, the end solution is still a series of integrated, complimentary tools from different sources. Interestingly, this is often done in an informal way and the ELN team may not even be aware of it.

Binary arguments are a useful analysis tool, but only that. For project implementation, better to recognize what’s going to happen anyway and run the project in a way that benefits from and supports diversity rather than constantly fight against the natural order of things.

Using financial theory to explain Open Source

This article on ONLamp uses financial theory to examine the difference between Open Source and proprietary software, concluding that:

Therefore, the major difference in worldview between open source advocates and proprietary software license advocates is explainable as a differing opinion on the correct value of the volatility of maintenance and upgrade pricing. People who believe that the pricing on maintenance is stable and unlikely to change see greater intrinsic value in the software. People who fear that the pricing is subject to large fluctuations see no intrinsic value in the up-front license; stripped of the options, the license value approaches $0.

For the open source movement, perhaps a better way to position the change that OSS is making is this: we’re converting warrants on future maintenance and enhancements into options, which means that instead of having a sole supplier (warrants), we have created a third-party market (options) of these derivatives.

What an interesting way to look at things…. and very powerful. What happens to Enterprise Software when purchasing departments begin to do these calculations?