I see what you did there!

Yes, this is cool, but I can't go out to Barnes and Noble and pick up a copy of this week's magazine and expect to find some fun electronics inside.

Entertainment Weekly is only producing 1,000 of these digital advertising-enhanced issues, so if you want a nearly free smartphone that, with a good deal of nudging, actually works, you better run, not walk, to your nearest newsstand.

More info from original source @ mashable

Note: please do mod this post up

Reminds me of the Chronicles of George -- at least this user isn't says that his "cp is running slow ever since his cp had cp dump" (apparently a portmeanteau of "CPU" and "PC")

I'm pretty sure that OP used to work for Verizon...

beyond just the license, the EFF might not feel especially warm feelings towards someone whose software 'phones home' without the user's permission.

...sounds like he was pretty involved in the game.

It also sounds like he was well-loved. Choice notes from the forum thread:

• He had some kind of horrible tattoo. A lot of people remember ribbing him for that :-)
• Gently caress
• Digital Ebola: "He died doing the job that he loved. He is missed."
• Arkhamina: "I remember mailing him music in the Green Zone. Friends sent him a headset mic when his was broken. Hard things to find in a war zone."

And probably my favorite:

Supercar Gautier:

Many goons have died, but few goons are destined to have their deaths fiercely politicized by the American media during an election year.

Through the bullshit media circus, we will know "That was Vilerat, and he was actually way awesome."

Fair, but then story should have read "A fundraiser is being considered...stay tuned", or somesuch :-)

is here.

(how did story get posted w/o a link?)

Nooo! Put the bottle of ratpoison dow....oh...I see....and you say that's a window manager?

*shakes head*

All these young'ns with their confusing softamaware names. Next I'll see a wm called "; rm -rf /" and by golly I'll probably try to apt-get install that sucker.

(emphasis mine)

I'm pretty certain that RMS didn't tell you that you aren't into OSS enough. He probably told you that you aren't enough into Free Software, or at the very least F(L)OSS.

I know a lot of really neat people who are very smart hackers who continue to throw money at Apple. They'll laugh and make akward apologies about Apple's take-no-prisoners corporate behavior, and some of them even "really hate" (their words) Apple's aggressive patent suits and are really frustrated about Apple's locked-down computing platforms, but I haven't seen one of them put their money and their hardware choices where their mouth is. A lot of them talk about how much they like OSS, but none of them talks about how much they like Free Software.

Supporting FOSS or OSS projects is great -- and developing/leading those projects is even better, but I've come to realize that I can't just sit back and pat people on the back and tell them what a good job they're doing when they're still supporting (and evangelizing -- if only by walking around and showing off their hardware) a company like Apple.

I'm not telling you that you can't buy Apple hardware, I'm just asking that you take your smart noggin and be willing to call Apple out when you disagree with their policies. Some of us make the decision to not buy from them, but for those who do continue to patronize them, please give them a piece of your mind when they step over the line and infringe on our privacy or our ability to use our computing devices freely and without restriction (you know, the way that computers are supposed to work). My cousin who buys a MacBook or an iPad doesn't understand the issues well enough to write that letter, but I think that you do.

Thanks,
- Q

Multicast!

let's fix you're spelling frist, then work on the spead of you're posting.

"Nerds like to say that people care about choice at that level. Nerds are wrong. Nerds care about choice, and nerds are such a tiny minority of people that nobody else much cares what the hell they think

Shit! Slashdot is so over!

If you actually go to the page, they specifically say it was inspired by Google Summer of Code. so they give credit where credit is due.

What? You want me to RTFA? :-)

Anyhow, if they say that it was inspired by GSoC, doesn't that mean that they realize that they're capitalizing on the name?

Now you're just puting words in my mouth -- when did I say that viewers/data visualization tools aren't useful for the ESA? I think the ESA has a great idea here, and both a number of FOSS projects, the ESA, and a number of space-related organizations can benefit from the result. The whole point I was making is that the name portrays this as putting stuff (code?) up in space, and all of the links I clicked on didn't show that.

Sure, that's helpful, but it seems more of a "mission control" piece than an "in space" piece.

Perhaps I was too general in my depiction of the stated projects. It was my understanding, based on clicking on a half-dozen links, that the planned projects were to be used as either visualizers of data on the ground (not in any kind of active tracking, etc..), or as general mapping/modeling tools. Everything looked ground-based.

After reading through a bunch of the other links (the "Selected mentoring organizations" page is super-dense), it looks like there are actually a number of software projects will make it to space (or at least high altitudes). Some, like OpenCube nano-satellite hardware/software stack describe the project in plain English, but some are very technical from the get-go, e.g. pyNastran with the tag line "Nastran BDF Reader/Writer, F06 Reader/Writer, OP2 Reader, OP4 Reader & GUI," but no description or link or About page giving us a hint about what 'Nastran', 'BDF', 'F06', 'OP2', or 'OP4' means. It would be really great to have a blurb about each project on the mentoring organizations page, just so that we could see at a glance the purpose of each project, and what specific tasks they were aiming to complete for SoCiS

The ESA funded a number of projects in various different areas. I just wish that they had chosen a more inclusive name so that both the projects that were going to space (hardware, software control, etc..) as well as the ground-based projects were both covered. "ESA Summer of Code" would have been short and descriptive. If they want to make it "in space," they should hire that sign painter from Kickstarter to paint a nice sign with a bold offset section for the "In Space!" portion of the sign.