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United States

Submission + - Sojourner Truth will Become the First Black Woman (associatedcontent.com)

Submitted by
KenHouston
KenHouston writes: "http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/412855/sojourner_truth_will_become_the_first.html In October of 2008, the National Congress of Black Women, Inc. (NCBW) will take Truth to the U.S. Capitol. United States Congress finally passed the bill to place the bust of Sojourner Truth in the Capitol. Under the original leadership of Dr. C. DeLores Tucker, NCBW began a campaign to add the bust of Sojourner Truth to the Portrait Monument along side Susan B. Anthony and others who'd also worked for women to get the right to vote — as she worked to abolish slavery — but that bill never passed."
Power

Submission + - Dr Bussard passes away, polywell fusion continues

Submitted by Vinz
Vinz writes: Dr Bussard, the man behind the Bussard Collector and inventor of the Polywell fusion device, passed away last Sunday in the morning. He leaves behins him a legacy of EM fusion devices, and a team determined to continue his efforts. The news of renewed funding for the construction of his WB-7 fusion devices made it to slashdot months ago (as well as his talk at google). They may be a serious candidate in the run to bring commercial fusion, and may work at lower scales than other projects.

Let's hope the project continues in good shape despite his departure.
Programming

Submission + - Current programming languages (datadyne.org) 1

Submitted by
RMDonna
RMDonna writes: "I've been out of programming for about 3 years and am wondering where to start to pick up my skills. In the past I was mainly working with Java 2, ASP 3 and Visual Basic 6. Most of my work these days focuses on database design and programming for pda's/smart phones with an off the shelf product. So Im wondering where do I start to continue my database development skills specifically and programming in general. Thanks"
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Important Geek-Friday Celebration Required

Submitted by WorthlessProgrammer
WorthlessProgrammer writes: A matter of importance. This is the first weekend that will not be wasted as a salaried slave in over 8 months; so myself, my dog, and my cat (the wife has chosen not to participate) will have a (somewhat) wild party in the high desert of Southwest Riverside county to commemorate:

1. The first official version of the Linux kernel, version 0.02, was released, in 1991. http://kerneltrap.org/node/14037

2. Monty Python's Flying Circus aired its first episode, in 1969.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python

3. Two good friends have returned safely from Iraq.

Among the important Activities will be (clouds permitting) first light for my just-finished 8 inch Newtonian, a six-pack of Ale, finally getting around to installing Debian 4.

Just simple reminder about what is important and that life is short. Woohoooo.
Unix

Submission + - UNIX V7 ported to i386 (nordier.com)

Submitted by
Seth Morabito
Seth Morabito writes: "Ever wanted to run the classic original AT&T UNIX V7, but just couldn't bring yourself to fire up that PDP-11 you have in your garage? Robert Nordier has recently announced a port of the V7 source to Intel. It supports ATA disks, ATAPI CD drives, 1.44M floppy disks, and standard PC serial ports. Robert describes the port as “stable and quite generally usable”. Fun for anyone wanting to play with a piece of UNIX history."
Spam

Submission + - Obama, Ospamma 2

Submitted by Moryath
Moryath writes: A couple days ago I submitted the a question in the politics area — I guess maybe it's better as an Ask Slashdot.

My spam traps (email addresses that exist solely to receive spam, for filtration's sake) and my real address have recently seen a ton of mail from the Barack Obama campaign. Their unsubscribe link does not work; email to the campaign asking them to remove my addresses was responded with a form letter thanking me for "joining" the campaign and asking me to donate money; and phone calls have all been hung up on.

Why is this allowed? And what response would Slashdotters suggest for a campaign that is obviously unwilling to respect my request NOT to receive their spam?

The last submission here sat "pending" for 3 days and then was rejected, presumably by a slashdotter who favors Obama. We'll see if this goes any better in this category. I'd really like to see the Obama campaign clean up their act, it's obvious they have bought a spammer list and are using it.
Censorship

Submission + - Howl Against Censorship

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: ""I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked," begins Allen Ginsberg's classic poem "Howl" now celebrating the 50th anniversary of a court ruling that found the poem had "redeeming social importance" and was thus not obscene. But Ginsberg, who died in 1997, might be surprised to learn that when Pacifica radio station WBAI considered broadcasting his poem to celebrate the anniversary, they decided against it fearing they could run afoul of the FCC's interpretation of indecency and incur bankrupting fines of up to $325,000 for every violation of its standards. "Since 2004 there's really been a sea change," said one first amendment lawyer. "The FCC made it clear it has a zero-tolerance policy for offensive language and images." In June the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled against the FCC in the Janet Jackson Superbowl case, but the FCC has indicated that it will appeal to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile Ginsberg's protege Lawrence Ferlinghetti noted that the trial judge in the original Howl obscenity case once wrote: "Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemism? An author should be real in treating his subject and be allowed to express his thoughts and ideas in his own words.""
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Top hot grits-eater gulps 21 pounds of stuff (libpipe.com)

Submitted by
mi
mi writes: "Yahoo! reports on the (hot) grits-eating contest held in Lousiana. The winner — Pat Bertoletti of Chicago — ate 21 pounds of stuff within 10 minutes. Together with the close second and third, they consumed 60 pounds of the Southern staple."
Education

Submission + - School Administrators Gone Wild 3

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Parents of public school kids in Oak Lawn (IL) are all a-titter as traditions like the annual Halloween Parade and Santa's Visit face elimination after complaints that the activities are offensive, particularly to Muslim students. School officials agreed earlier in the month to change the lunch menu to exclude items containing pork to accommodate Muslim students, including a Jell-O ban. And in nearby Oak Park, school administrators are busy cracking down on hugging and high-fives."
Television

Submission + - To LCD or Plasma, that is the question!

Submitted by
Mr.Fork
Mr.Fork writes: "I've sent the reviews, I've read reports, but there are pros and cons for each. Seeing how us nerds are generally technophiles as well, I'd like to know which is superior. I'm about to purchase a new hi-def TV soon — or should I say, I'm being forced into purchasing one of these behemoths with the change to digital being forced down the tubes (pun intended). Or is there something elose that is up and coming that we could hold out for like OLed screens? What to do as a slashdotter?"
Biotech

Submission + - Scientists link Autism to Digestive System (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by rla3rd
rla3rd writes: Compounds produced in the digestive system have been linked to autistic-type behaviour in laboratory settings, potentially demonstrating that what autistic children eat can alter their brain function, say scientists from the University of Western Ontario.
Announcements

Submission + - Muslim constitution bans all "wrong" thoug (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: This, unfortunately, is not a joke

The constitution proposed to president Karzai of Afghanistan as part of a "peace initiative" forbids thought and mandates fighting -jihad- as a duty for every muslim, including every last Afghan. Bans all other constitutions and laws as un-islamic.

The Taliban has published a shadow Afghan constitution outlining an alternative hardline government to that of President Hamid Karzai.

On freedom of speech the Taliban charter, which is written in Pashto and Dari, is clear: "Every Afghan has the right to express his feelings through his views, writings or through other means in accordance with the law."

However "un-Islamic thought" is strictly forbidden and "violators will be punished according to sharia" — under the Taliban's strict interpretation of Islamic teachings.

The document also stresses the importance of jihad as an obligation for every citizen. It offers the Taliban's support for the United Nations and upholds human rights — "until it is contrary with the teachings of Islam".

Source
Graphics

Submission + - GIMP 2 for Photographers

Submitted by
Jon Allen
Jon Allen writes: "Gimp 2 for Photographers
Book review by Jon Allen (JJ)
Book homepage: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1933952032/

A glance through any photography magazine will confirm that Adobe Photoshop is the accepted standard image editing software, offering almost unparalleled power and conrol over your images. However, costing more than many DSLR cameras, for non-professionals it can be a very hard purchase to justify (and of course for Linux users this is a moot point, as Photoshop is not available for their platform).

Luckily, the free software community has provided us with an alternative. The GIMP, or Gnu Image Manipulation Program, offers a huge amount of the power of Photoshop but is available at no cost. Additionally GIMP is cross-platform, available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix.

The one downside to using GIMP is that most magazines and photography books use Photoshop in their articles and tutorials, so if you do choose GIMP there's a bit more of a learning curve. Now once you're used to GIMP you'll find that many of Photoshop's features have equivalents, albeit with a different user interface, but getting that inital level of experience and familiarity with the software can be rather difficult. The GIMP does come with a manual, but it is really more of a reference guide and while very comprehensive it is not particuarly friendly for new users.

GIMP 2 for Photographers aims to rectify this.

Written clearly from a photographer's point of view (the author is a photographer who also teaches image editing), this book takes a task-oriented approach, looking at the types of editing operations that a photographer would require and then showing how to perform each task in the GIMP.

Rather helpfully, the GIMP software (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) is included on the book's accompanying CD. This means that you can follow each tutorial using the exact same version of software as the author, which really helps to build confidence that you're doing everything right.

I already have GIMP installed on OS X, so to test out the instructions in the book I performed an installation from the CD on a clean Microsoft Windows XP machine.

The exact filenames of the installation packages on the CD differ slightly from those in the accompanying README file, but the instructions in the book do list the correct files and after following this procedure the installation went without a hitch. The setup files do not ask any overly 'techy' questions, so it literally took less than 5 minutes to set up a fully working system.

As well as the GIMP application, the CD also includes all of the sample images used in the book, and for each editing tutorial the "final" image is provided so you can check your own work against the expected result.

Even more usefully, the CD contains an electronic copy of the complete book as a PDF file, so you can keep it on your laptop as a reference guide, invaluable when editing images on location (or on holiday!).

I'd have to say that this is without a doubt the most useful CD I've ever recieved with a book. Providing the applications and example files is good, giving readers instant gratification without needing to deal with downloads and websites (which may well have changed after the book went to press). But including the complete book on the CD as well is nothing short of a masterstroke, and something I'd love to see other publishers adopt.

So, the CD gets full marks but what about the book itself?

After showing how to install the software, the author takes us through basic GIMP operations — opening and saving files, cropping, resizing images, and printing. Once these basics are out of the way, the book moves on to a series of examples based on "real-life" image editing scenarios.

These examples are very well chosen, both in the fact that the vast majority of the technques shown are genuinely useful, but also in the way that they are ordered. Each example introduces a new feature of the software, building up your knowledge as you work through the book. By the end you can expect to be skilled not only in "standard" editing — adjusting colour balance, fixing red-eye, removing dust spots, and so on — but also in compositing, perspective correction, lighting and shadow effects, and building panoramic images.

Between the examples there is a good amount of more "reference" type material, with detailed descriptions of the various menus, toolbars, and dialogs you will encounter while using the software. Combined with lots of well-labelled screenshots this strikes a very good balance, ensuring that even after going through all the tutorials you'll still get value from the book as something to refer back to.

Overall the quality of the writing and general production standard is very high indeed. There are some points where it is noticable that the book was originally published in German, but this never becomes a stumbling block to the reader's understanding. Most importantly though, the author employs the "show, don't tell" philosophy throughout which is key to successful teaching.

In conclusion, I would have no hesitation in recommending GIMP 2 for Photographers to anyone with more than a passing interest in improving their photos. And even if you already use image editing software, the book is well worth a read — I have been using GIMP for several years and still learned a great deal. The accompanying CD is the icing on the cake, making GIMP 2 for Photographers a simply essential purchase."

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