This article deals with the use of Open Source Software (OSS) at the primary and secondary level of education in Slovenia. The challenges and advantages of using OSS in educational processes are ...discussed. The main advantages of OSS are: economic freedom, stability, reliability and a possibility of making modifications but – on the other hand – the main problem for schools can be installation and support. The research carried out to determine the use of OSS in schools is described and the results are compared with the results of similar research studies in Germany, Sweden and UK. The results of both surveys show, that Linux and OpenOffice.org are the most popular OSS applications on computer desktops. The most important conclusion (according to our research) is that lack of knowledge prevents a faster introduction of OSS in education.
In this article a combined method for the solution to the general one-dimensional cutting stock problem (G1D-CSP) is proposed. The main characteristic of G1D-CSP lies in that all stock lengths can be ...different. The new approach combines two existing methods: sequential heuristic procedure (SHP) and branch-and-bound. The algorithm based on the proposed method leads to almost optimal solutions, which are substantially better than the solutions of known methods at the expense of slightly increased time complexity, which is still low. So, the new method is suitable for all sizes of the problem. A comparison with the SHP is presented.
This paper describes a method for solving one-dimensional cutting stock problem with usable leftover (CSPUL) in cases where the ratio between the average stock and average order length is less than ...3. The proposed method can solve general CSPUL where standard stock lengths, non-standard stock lengths, or a combination of both are cut in the exact required number of pieces. The solutions of sample problems are compared with other methods.
This article deals with the use of Free/Open Source Software at the primary and secondary level of education in Slovenia. The challenges and advantages of using FOSS in educational processes are ...discussed. The research (2007) carried out to determine the use of FOSS in schools is described. The results showing how FOSS is used in different areas of the educational field as well as the factors influencing the decision to use FOSS are presented. The motives, obstacles and suggestions of using FOSS are also discussed. The results obtained in this study are compared with the results of a similar research, conducted in 2004. Some interesting similarities and differences are discovered.
The article examines the procedure for optimisation of roll cutting in the clothing industry. The issue of roll cutting can be defined as a bicriterial multidimensional knapsack problem with side ...constraints. In general one may not find an optimal solution within reasonable time limits. For this reason we have found a solution through a combination of approximation and heuristics. On the basis of the achieved algorithm the computer program COLA has been developed. The article presents an example of the implementation of the program.
In recent years there has been a dramatic change in business environment resulting in reengineering of key business activities and processes. Among others, the role of information system (IS) has ...significantly increased as organizations have employed information technology (IT) to improve the capture, processing and distribution of information. Information became an important asset to the company, which is carefully monitored, planned and upraised. The paper presents the results of a survey on the strategic IS planning practices of Slovene companies. It highlights the participation, critical success factors and main benefits of strategic IS planning. The results show that comparing to similar studies very low number (50%) of responding companies were performing strategic IS planning. It is also interesting that in Slovene companies the leading initiator is top management (36%) whereas the role of IS management is surprisingly modest (23%). Main benefits of strategic IS planning from the Slovene business perspective are improved internal co-ordination, efficient and effective management of IS resources and improved productivity.
The main hypothesis of this article is that at the primary and secondary level of education the advantages of free/open source software (FOSS) on economic, educational and social field surpass its ...deficiencies so that the replacement of proprietary software would be reasonable. The most important findings of three internationally comparable survey researches are presented. The hypothesis is proven by results of the survey researches, scoring methodology and DEXi.
This paper presents an efficient enumerative approach to solve general linearly constrained optimization problems. This class of optimization problems includes fractional, nonlinear network models, ...quadratic, convex and non-convex programs. The unified approach is accomplished by converting the constrained optimization problem to an unconstrained optimization problem through a parametric representation of its feasible region. The proposed solution algorithm consists of three phases. In phase 1 it finds all interior critical points. In phase 2 the parametric representation of the feasible region is constructed to identify any critical points on the edges and faces of the feasible region. This is done by a modified version of an algorithm for finding the V-representation of the polyhedron. Then, in phase 3, the global optimal value of the objective function is found by evaluating the objective function at the critical points as well as at the vertices. For an illustration of the algorithm and a comparison with the existing methods small-size numerical examples are presented.
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