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Google Announces Summer of Code 2008 Projects 35

Posted by kdawson from the fifteen-point-eight-percent dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Google announced today it had accepted 1,125 students to work on 175 Free and Open Source Projects this summer. This represents an increase of almost 25% over last year. Nearly 7,100 applications were received. For those who weren't accepted, there is an offer to send Google Swag to any student who completes their project anyway."
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Google Announces Summer of Code 2008 Projects More

Google Announces Summer of Code 2008 Projects

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  • Is it wrong... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CSMatt ( 1175471 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2008 @03:03PM (#23162154)
    ...that I hate Google for their immense privacy violations, and yet can't help but get excited when the Summer of Code comes up?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by zappepcs ( 820751 )
      I understand your concerns over this. There is a very fine line between privacy violations and getting just enough data about user's activities to have useful data for developing other things that are immensely useful.

      When collected, if the data is stripped of any identifying information I believe that there are hundreds of useful ways to use that data. Google trends is one of those ways. So I teeter on the fence about Google's treatment of personally identifying information. I hope that the 'don't be evil'
    • Is Google really that much worse than any other major internet company? Compare to MSN/Live or Yahoo - I don't see any major difference in terms of privacy policies.

      Care to prove me wrong?

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Which Google service are you referring to? If you're referring to several, pick a few and share your concerns. I've heard so many people rattle on about "Google's immense privacy violations" but I've never heard anyone back it up with facts.

      • Re:Is it wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by nog_lorp ( 896553 ) * on Tuesday April 22, 2008 @05:18PM (#23163826)
        Parent is quite right in my opinion. The worst I've heard of from Google (in terms of privacy - Chinese relations are another issue) was analyzing emails and displaying apropos advertisements. Without logging them. To which I say, if you are embarrassed by computer programs reading your emails, talk to a psychiatrist. ~nog_lorp
        • Some people hate the email reading thing, but I find the ads on gmail sometimes extremely helpful at times I want to look at something new. For example I clicked on one the other day about booking flights relevant to where I actually wanted to go.

    • Re:Is it wrong... (Score:4, Informative)

      by nguy ( 1207026 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2008 @05:32PM (#23163988)
      ...that I hate Google for their immense privacy violations

      I'm sorry, but what are you referring to? You don't have to give them any personal information to use their services. Almost anything is opt-in with Google.

      Just about the only thing that's opt-out is their advertising and Google Analytics, but you can opt out of that fairly easily, too; Google doesn't try to track people who don't want to get tracked.

  • I wonder what improvements we'll see (Score:4, Interesting)

    by IBBoard ( 1128019 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2008 @03:27PM (#23162504) Homepage
    The interesting ones for me are:

    It'll be interesting to see how they are integrated and how big a change some of those items become at the other end of SoC.
    • There are a few that keep it from becoming a decent player -- namely, .ass and other subtitle rendering, and slow h264 decoding. Although I suppose that those problems are more of a problem with libavcodec -- thankfully ffmpeg is also part of the Summer of Code.
      • Not crashing Firefox + Noscript would also be fairly important for me, although tbh ive moved to mplayer as its pretty much like vlx but more modular (in installation anyway)

  • Google Summer of Code 2008 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by What Would NPH Do ( 1274934 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2008 @03:32PM (#23162566)
    This is the only real thing I'm interested in. http://code.google.com/soc/2008/ffmpeg/appinfo.html?csaid=9FD2BF705A5D5DBB [google.com]

    Title Generic frame-level multithreading support
    Student Alexander James Lloyd Strange
    Mentor kristian Jerpetjoen
    Abstract
    FFmpeg, while equalling or surpassing the speed of nearly all other codec implementations on a single CPU core, currently only has limited and specific support for multithreading. I will implement a frame-level multithreading system, which can efficiently speed up all uses of libavcodec. This will be based on the successful implementation in the x264 encoder[1], extended to support decoding and whatever synchronization will be required. [1] http://akuvian.org/src/x264/sliceless_threads.txt [akuvian.org], http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=442&pgno=0 [techarp.com]

  • Good luck! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Seakip18 ( 1106315 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2008 @03:36PM (#23162622) Journal
    Good luck guys! Don't forget the crucial "Ballmer Peak" when getting started. http://xkcd.com/323/ [xkcd.com]

    I had applied and got some very positive comments on my proposal but none of the project guys would mentor me due to time constraints or lack of knowledge in the area I was coding.

    Mentor organizations, in the future, if you have a idea page, make sure there is a mentor behind every item. It was a pain emailing/harassing everyone just to get an answer if they'd mentor me. Not fun when the deadline was a day or so away.

    I am glad to hear that there is free swag if I do work on it though, so perhaps I'll give it a go anyways.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by vrmlguy ( 120854 )

      Good luck guys! Don't forget the crucial "Ballmer Peak" when getting started. http://xkcd.com/323/ [xkcd.com]

      I've never noticed it while programming, but the peak definitely exists when I'm bowling or playing golf. Initially I stink, but after a couple of beers I can do no wrong. With more alcohol, however, I rapidly make my starting performace look like the work of a genius. The people I'm playing with joke that could turn pro if I could figure out how to get an IV past the rules committee.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ClamIAm ( 926466 )
        My mom claims the same type of peak exists when you're tired. She told me a story about her days on a late-night bowling team. She'd head over to the bowling alley after her 3-11 PM work shift. The first couple games she'd be awesome, then would rapidly become very bad.
  • Vim is there, but Emacs isn't!
  • I attribute my proposal [google.com] being accepted to the fact that I'm implementing a real-time web version of a game that makes my mentor (and probably other proposal-choosers for Portland State University) feel quite nostalgic.

    When I called him to initially discuss the idea, he actually cut me off mid-sentence and said--with Renee-Zellweger-like tearful joy in his voice--"You had me at 'Nomic'."

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