20040729

Making Open Source Software Pay

While some home users, hackers and hobbyists have switched to Linux or other Open Source software, businesses seem to have been more cautious. What exactly is Open Source software? Are there issues with licensing and technical support?

20040728

Creating Games with Pygame

Python is an excellent language for rapid application development and prototyping. With Pygame, a wrapper built around SDL, the same can be true for games. In addition, because its built on top of Python and SDL, Pygame is highly portable. The only downside is it can be too slow for some computationally intensive types of games. If your game is too slow, the particular sub-routine(s) bringing down your execution speed can be rewritten in C/C++.

Opensource Biz Model

Dark Horse CRM
Hosted Edition
This edition comes with all core modules and is a true enterprise-class solution. It's an option for companies of all sizes to begin using a CRM online, while leaving the software maintenance and hardware infrastructure to a dedicated IT staff.
  • Allows organizations to set up as many users as they want.
  • No one-time license fees, pay by the number of users, per month.
  • No software or hardware to buy, install, maintain, or upgrade.
  • Each organization uses a unique URL that provides secure access to Dark Horse CRM.
  • Use any current web browser, on any platform (Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Safari).
Introductory 5-seat Hosted CRM installation at $9.95 per seat per month
Greater than 5-seat Hosted CRM installation at $29.95 per seat per month

Free Edition
You're welcome to a free, 5-seat binary (machine readable) edition of Dark Horse CRM. This edition comes with all core modules and is a true, enterprise-class solution. It's an option for companies watching every penny and for those who can live without support. It's also good for organizations wanting to thoroughly test Dark Horse CRM before moving up to a supported edition.

If you like having all of the necessary pieces already assembled and with an easy to use installation wizard, have us send you the CD. For the cost of shipping and handling you get a CD that contains the latest version of Dark Horse CRM and all of the open, companion components to make it work (e.g. Linux, Apache Tomcat, PostgreSQL, etc).

Setting Up Page Styles in OOo Writer

A little planning ahead will make your word processing tasks easier and keep your documents looking consistent as they grow.

Page styles are one of OpenOffice.org's strongest innovations. Together with text frames and integration with Draw, these features nudge OOo Writer out of the word processor category and into the lower reaches of desktop publishing...

20040727

Java 寫碼風格指南

Java Coding Style Guide

這份文件中所建議的寫碼慣例主要參考自下列文件:

Writing an AIM Client in Python

An introduction to writing an AIM client. In the process you will also create a bot and learn about using the Tkinter module, which allows you to create a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the user to interact with your client.

20040721

Power Python: Do More With Less Code

What's Power Python, you ask? It's the effective use of Python language features to get a lot of work done in fewer lines of code. The lambda, reduce, filter, map, and list comprehension constructs are some of the features that best fit this definition. This article examines each one in turn and highlights some of their strengths with simple code examples that illustrate the basic syntax and usage. It then delves into some related coding advantages that Python offers, such as the easy creation of callbacks and closures...

20040714

ERP5 (Python&Zope)

ERP5 is a full featured high end Open Source / Libre Software solution published under GPL license and used for mission critial ERP/CRM/MRP/SCM/PDM applications by industrial organisations and government agencies.

管理決策的制定與突破性科技

價值網絡──企業在此體系內辨識與回應客戶的需求、解決問題、取得輸入、回應競爭者與整取獲利。

價值網絡中各廠商間的競爭,決定了他們賺錢的方式。網絡決定了廠商必須提供何種產品與服務以回應客戶的問題,以及解決問題所需支付的成本。價值網路中的競爭與客戶需求決定了廠商的成本結構、維持競爭所需的經營規模以及必要的成長率。因此適於價值網絡外的管理決策,不一定適於價值網絡內的企業,反之亦然。

優秀的經理人只做合理的決策,而合理與否則尤其所處的價值網絡決定。

既有的企業在面對突破性科技科技變革時,絕對有能力研發必要的「科技」,但是,在與其他產品與科技研發提案共同競爭結果,突破性科技研發計畫通常只能分配到極少的資源,也使得這些計畫作後無以為繼。延續性科技計畫訴諸於企業主流客戶的需求,比起市場規模小、客戶需求不明的突破性科技,更容易取得大量的資源。

──Clayton M. Christensen《創新的兩難:企業面對新科技的掙扎與抉擇》(The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, New York: HBS,1997)台北:商周出版,2004年,73頁

A Transforming Experience for Content Management?

In XML-based CMS systems, XSLT provides the ability to select specific sections of one or more XML documents, and then return this data in any desired format, such as HTML, WML, PDF, or some other XML format for syndication. This is important, because XML doesn't describe how content appears, bur rather what it's about. You need XSLT to make your XML content human-consumable and sharable with others’ applications...

20040712

Embedding Python in C Applications

...Embedded Python provides a powerful object system and "macro" language for C applications. C code can extend Python in ways its developers did not or could not foresee...

UML Tutorial from Sparx System

The Unified Modeling Language has quickly become the de-facto standard for building Object-Oriented software. This short tutorial provides a very high level introduction to UML, and suggests some further reading...

Zen and the Art of Aspect-Oriented Programming

Aspects can greatly simplify design and maintenance of complex systems
Consider the life cycle of a typical e-commerce project. First, you might decide to architect your code around an object-relational (OR) mapping tool, such as Java Data Objects or Hibernate, and J2EE services, such as servlets and the Java Authentication and Authorization Service. Next, you create interfaces and classes representing business concepts such as a customer, SKUs, a shopping cart, inventory, and payment authorization. At this point, your code is clean and comprehensible...

20040702

How to create OpenOffice.org macros and automation

OpenOffice.org macros allow you to save a sequence of operations with a single name so you can do the same thing repeatedly. Automation is a first cousin to macros. It lets another application control OOo and make things happen without user intervention...

20040701

White Knights and Open Source business models

When we (a mid-sized German software company) started thinking about Open Source back in 1999, we thought long and hard about how we could use Open Source in our day-to-day projects and yet at the same time retain a good relationship with the community. For a company that was - to that point - 100% a build-custom-solutions-for-customers-and-get-paid firm, this was quite a revolutionary idea...