[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Quoting Greg Twyford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
David Guest wrote:
> Ross
I think this highlights one of the problems for Argus Support. You keep
your domain knowledge all in-house. One cannot ask one's mate for help
because he got the same answer and gave up on Argus because it all
seemed too hard.
As I said before I think you need to build an on-line community. It will
make things much easier for you.
snip
And they often need support when they try to do thing they don't yet
understand and get into trouble.
Hi Greg
I'm on hols too. As such I've been playing around with stuff, e.g. wifidog,
ewrt, openwrt, Rails, Turbogears (The eggs doesn't appear to compile on Badger
with gcc 4, Tim), postgresql 8, apache2 and a whack of other stuff as well. I
didn't really know what I was doing so I broke a lot of the software toys and
even managed to brick a wrt54g. It's been terrific fun.
The great thing about it is that there's a ton of stories out there about how to
do stuff. What works. What doesn't. There are archives, mailing lists, irc, the
wikipedia and increasingly very helpful blogs. I got some nice mails back from a
couple of the Portland Oregon ewrt developers when I complained that there was
no room on the jffs /opt directory for my customised home page. They pointed me
to a prerelease version of their software which had some experimental binaries
removed and hence more room.
So, as near as I can tell, there appear to be about a hundred million people out
there talking to each other about how to use computers to do stuff. That seems
like a good idea. A hundred million people can't be wrong.
Sadly, what Ross offers will suit techies when they first encounter Argus,and
most non-do-it-yourselfers will rely on them as well. If Argus is to remain
freeware then providing technical support and project management for a fee is
their best source of potential revenue. Can it be had both ways? I doubt it.
In my view there are two problems with Argus (four if you include java and HeSA
:-). Firstly it's a grey box. It's not black in that you can get an idea of
where they've been by seeing their 18 month old source code. (Aside - I thought
this was supposed to be six months.) However, it is hard enough attracting
developers to work on open source code let alone archival versions. Secondly
they need to talk more. Talk to their users. Talk to the techie support. They
need to get some Argus buzz happening and grow a community that's at least
partially self supporting. There's only one point in having the same
conversation a hundred times over.
I got my first MedObjs letter this morning so the window of opportunity may be
closing for Argus.
ps. I haven't looked at Pitiful yet.
Leave it a week. I am rewriting it.
Holidays are just that.
Yep. :-)
David
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David,
I'm pleased that you're enjoying your holidays playing with stuff. Time
and family commitments create pressures. I enjoy it when I have time to
do these sorts of things, but I try to be as focussed as possible on
what I think is likely to have the biggest return. I'm intending to
follow Zimbra as soon as possible, as it could meet a real Division need.
My other observation that you haven't commented on, is the needs of the
majority of your colleagues who aren't enchanted with learning more
about the technology. They are the group I overwhelmingly deal with in
both my Division role and my support/consulting business on the side.
They will only ever benefit in a highly distilled way from what goes on
in the list, valuable as it is for the likes of us.
My constant frustration is that there is so much to do for these guys,
one source of the vulnerability/fragility I referred to. Getting them
into more safe practices and technologies is a long-haul job with little
opportunity for cutting-edge stuff. Distilling out solid stuff like
Smoothwall, hardware-based IPSEC VPNs, OpenOffice, Firefox, Knoppix for
data rescue, and even Argus, has been rewarding though.
The holy grail of secure clinical messaging is still a very long way off
for the majority, unfortunately. But keep playing with the toys, as some
of them will become tomorrow's solid stuff.
Greg
--
Greg Twyford
Information Management & Technology Program Officer
Canterbury Division of General Practice
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ph.: 02 9787 9033
Fax: 02 9787 9200
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