I did a webcast on open source for TDWI and Pentaho last week (reg required). The topic was open source BI adoption, which I believe has gathered speed this year. If you go through the registration link you can download a PDF of the slides from the webcast page.

If you're already familiar with open source BI, there were probably not a lot of surprises in my part of the presentation. The general outline was a little about open source and the market to answer the "why now?" question, followed by some information about categories of organizations adopting it and why they are adopting, and a few notes about challenges people run into when adopting. It was only 35 minutes so there's not as much depth as I would have liked.

I think one fundamental point should be made about open source: it's just software. When …

Background Knowledge

For some reason or another the priority menu in the edit task panel is not wide enough and therefore it cuts off the priority names. This can be easily fixed by modifying some inline CSS. Yes I agree this should be done within the skin’s CSS file, however there is nothing present in the CSS file to alter that I could find.

Solution

Edit /taskfreak/include/html/xajax_panel_edit.php at line #18 by changing the width value of “40px” to “125px” or to what you desired width.

Code Before

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<td>< ?php
$objTemp = new ItemPriority();
$objTemp->qSelect('priority',($objTask->priority)?$objTask->priority:3,'','','style="width:40px"');
?></td>

Code After

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<td>< …

Background Knowledge

TaskFreak! presently does not have a means via the web interface to present a complete list of tasks for which the current user is the project leader. I will show you how to add “My Projects” list based on bpiper’s solution with a slight difference. My solution is almost identical to bpiper’s but with a different approach to continue support of the supported interface languages. To do this each supported language file will require to be edited.

Thanks to bpiper for posting your solution.

Solution

1. Edit /taskfreak/include/language/en/freak.php starting at line #15. Add in a new array key/value at any point you desire like so “‘my_projects’ => ‘My Projects’,” (without double quotes), see below for example.

   Note: Each interface language file will be …

I spoke at Montreal on Rails on Tuesday night. I think I had 5 slides, but spoke for about 45 minutes (so there's no point in uploading them). For those that missed it (or couldn't take notes fast enough), here's a transcript of the examples I showed with the world database:

# take a look at this query.  To start with, we have no indexes used:
EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 5000000 ORDER BY Name;

# First let's look at an index on population
ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX p (Population);

# is that index effective?
EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 5000000 ORDER BY Name;

# no it wasn't.  what happens if we modify the query just slightly:
EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 50000000 ORDER BY Name;

# time for the next index:
ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX c …

I spoke at Montreal on Rails on Tuesday night. I think I had 5 slides, but spoke for about 45 minutes (so there's no point in uploading them). For those that missed it (or couldn't take notes fast enough), here's a transcript of the examples I showed with the world database:

# take a look at this query.  To start with, we have no indexes used:
EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 5000000 ORDER BY Name;

# First let's look at an index on population
ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX p (Population);

# is that index effective?
EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 5000000 ORDER BY Name;

# no it wasn't.  what happens if we modify the query just slightly:
EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 50000000 ORDER BY Name;

# time for the next index:
ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX c …

Get it while it’s hot! The Fall 2008 issue of the MySQL Magazine is now available at http://www.mysqlzine.net. Issue 6 is chock full of 16 pages good stuff, including:

• “Decision Table”-Driven Development by Jonathan Levin
• Part I of a series on Transaction Time Validity in MySQL by Peter Brawley
• An Overview of Zmanda Recovery Manager by Pythian’s own Gerry Narvaja
• Keith Murphy, editor has a note about Drizzle.

Download the PDF directly or go to the MySQL Magazine page to download any and all of the 6 issues.

“Reminders work. At least on me.” I confessed in my previous CfP posting.

Well, guess what also works on me? Deadline extensions! I aim at making most (ehh, all) deadlines, but at times, I fail. And I have observed similar behaviour in others.

And therefore we have extended our CfP to 5 November 2008 (all fellow Europeans out there: “midnight 11/05/2008 PST” looks like mid May, but isn’t).

Some key points:

1. We’re looking at high quality presentations
2. We’re looking at innovation, i.e. *new* things
3. We’re looking at covering main areas of MySQL …

I’d say I normally don’t respond to idiots… but I think we all know that’s a lie. Our fine friends at Slashdot pointed out an “interesting” article which opines that the downturning Economy to Give Open-Source a Good Thumping. There’s a bit in the middle that points out that people still don’t get it.

The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren’t going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some “back end” revenue. “Free” doesn’t fill anyone’s belly; it doesn’t warm anyone up.

The disconnect seems to continue to be an idea that we’re doing the Free Software in hopes that it might turn a profit one day. The people who share this disconnect seem to think Free Software is a “gimmick” of some sort.