- <title>Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 7 Jul 2012 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu</a> is a
-large collection of end user and school specific software. It is one
-of the packages not installed by default but provided in the Debian
-archive for schools to install if they want to, is a system to
-automatically plan the school time table using information about
-available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with the list of
-required courses and how many hours each topic should receive. The
-software is
-<a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
-graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
-result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
-both teachers and students. It is available both for
-<a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
-Windows</a>.</p>
-
-<p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
-feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
-
-<p><ul>
-
- <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
- You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
-
- <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
- (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
- (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
- (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
- (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
- (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
- sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
- (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
- </li>
-
- <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
- semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
-
- <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
- GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
-
- <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
- with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
-
- <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
-
- <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
- formats </li>
-
- <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
- and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
- non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
- (as separate sets)</li>
-
- <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
- (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
- percentage)</li>
-
- <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
- demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
- memory):
- <ul>
- <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
- <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
- <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
- <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
- <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
- <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
- <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
- <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
- <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
- <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
- students sets for each activity. (it is possible
- also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
- activity)</li>
- <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
- <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
- </ul></li>
-
- <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
- <ul>
- <li>Break periods</li>
- <li>For teacher(s):
- <ul>
- <li>Not available periods</li>
- <li>Max/min days per week</li>
- <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
- <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
- <li>Min hours daily</li>
- <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
-
- <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
- days per week</li>
- </ul></li>
- <li>For students (sets):
- <ul>
- <li>Not available periods</li>
- <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
- <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
- <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
- <li>Min hours daily</li>
- <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
-
- <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
- days per week</li>
- </ul></li>
- <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
- <ul>
- <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
- <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
- <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
- <li>Min/max days between them</li>
- <li>End(s) students day</li>
- <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
- <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
- flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
- <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
- <li>Not overlapping</li>
- <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
- <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
- </ul></li>
- </ul></li>
-
- <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
- <ul>
- <li>Room not available periods</li>
- <li>For teacher(s):
- <ul>
- <li>Home room(s)</li>
- <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
- <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
- </ul>
- </li>
-
- <li>For students (sets):
- <ul>
- <li>Home room(s)</li>
- <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
- <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
- </ul>
- </li>
- <li>Preferred room(s):
- <ul>
- <li>For a subject</li>
- <li>For an activity tag</li>
- <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
- <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
- </ul>
- </li>
-
- <li>For a set of activities:
- <ul>
- <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
- </ul>
- </li>
- </ul>
- </li>
-</ul></p>
-
-<p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
-planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it. If you
-need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
-manually, check it out.
-
-A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
-<a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
-blog post from MarvelSoft</a>. If you find FET useful, please provide
-a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
-<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
-section</a>.</p>
+ <title>ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2012 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Thanks to a blog post by
+<a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
+Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
+company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
+According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
+<a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
+and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
+sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information. To check if
+the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
+wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
+seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic. However, we
+don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
+matter".</p>
+
+<p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
+foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
+reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
+health of its users. This caused the company behind the product,
+Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
+the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
+to argue its side.</p>
+
+<p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
+deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly. Lets hope the
+<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
+effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
+
+<p>What is the harm, you might think. I suggest you take a look at
+<a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
+victims of detoxification</a>.</p>