Journal Journal: Pay the Fine and Get on with your Life.
I've gone after a lot of people for a lot of different reasons lately. Of course, most of that is just normal Slashdot, but this is a little different. It's kind of personal.
Submission + - Report: Special Skill Shortages Swell IT Salaries
Journal Journal: Migrating to Debian - RAID & LVM 9
First a thank you to rdewald, who gave me invaluable pointers to migrate to Linux.
Submission + - MIT Offering Free Copyright Course Online
IANAL writes: "MIT is offering Introduction to Copyright Law as a free online course. Interested Slashdotters might find it a good way to challenge their firmly held misconceptions about copyright law as it concerns fair use, Napster, Grokster, the GPL, and P2P filesharing, among other things. There's also an article about the course over on Groklaw."
Submission + - New Content and Mapping Patents from Google
PatPending writes: Google was granted new patents this week on a methods for estimating similarity between web pages and documents which may help to filter duplicate content, and upon a digital mapping system which appears to be the foundation for Google Maps, and has a number of related map-based patent applications in its wake.
http://searchengineland.com/070102-064435.php
http://searchengineland.com/070102-064435.php
Submission + - Best Office Prank Ever - 8ft Tall Cardboard House
Pippenz writes: "I got back from Boston today. When I entered work I found a complete 8-foot tall cardboard structure had been constructed over my desk. I saw the Google Tin Desk prank and this by far tops it! Complete pictures of construction and finished product!
Cardboard House Office Prank"
Submission + - Open Source Asset Management?
pat_trick writes: "I work for a small company that has about 130 computers installed as internet kiosks in various locations. All of them run on Windows XP. We're looking for a good Asset Management (read: equipment & problem tracking) tool that is web-based and allows us to more easily manage our inventory. Many of the current commercial packages available offer more than we need, which is just an Asset Management tool. Open Source is where we'd like to go, hopefully something that runs on a LAMP setup. What are your experiences with open source software in this area? What would you recommend, Open Source or otherwise?"
Submission + - The Art Institute, Censorship, and you.
An anonymous reader writes: The Art Institute of California, in San Francisco is one of those private schools that teach people the ins and outs of the art side of the video games industry... However, this article shows:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/ 01/04/BAG31NCF5E1.DTL
That they are actively censoring student work. Do you think this is wise to teach students that the First Amendment applies to certain people only a part of the time? Or that if you are a large company (In this case, Goldman Sachs) you can avoid California law, and the Consitution?
Does this also potential skew the quality of the artists coming out of these types of schools? If they are already accepting of censorship, will they be less inclined to be creative in the games industry?
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007
That they are actively censoring student work. Do you think this is wise to teach students that the First Amendment applies to certain people only a part of the time? Or that if you are a large company (In this case, Goldman Sachs) you can avoid California law, and the Consitution?
Does this also potential skew the quality of the artists coming out of these types of schools? If they are already accepting of censorship, will they be less inclined to be creative in the games industry?
Novel OS Drives the '$100 laptop' 174
jrwr00 writes with a link to a CNN story about the $100 laptop's unique operating system. We've discussed the OLPC's UI before but the article offers a few new piece of information on the project, which is expected to roll out this year. From the article: "The XO machines are still being tweaked, and [OLPC UI] Sugar isn't expected to be tested by any kids until February. By July or so, several million are expected to reach Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, Thailand and the Palestinian territory. Negroponte said three more African countries might sign on in the next two weeks. The Inter-American Development Bank is trying to get the laptops to multiple Central American countries."
Submission + - Jet powered wings
An anonymous reader writes: "Thanks to high technology and nerve, Yves Rossy has come closer than anyone to realising the ancient dream of soaring free, flitting through the sky, guided only by the body. As well as a crash helmet he wears a small pair of wings and four tiny jet engines."
Ref: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2523 783,00.html
Submission + - Planned to kill Bill Gates
An anonymous reader writes: The notoriuosly unreliable Swedish newspaper Expressen reports terrorist Shahawar Matin Sirajs planned to kill Bill Gates. Probably best to keep ones mouth shut.
Submission + - ICANN to turn private ?
Si writes: With ICANN about to lose government oversight, what prospects are there for the internet? Although this move has been planned since ICANN's inception, what changes might be seen once the government cedes all (or most) control to a private (and presumably profit-seeking) organisation?
