MarcoF brings us his take on how to cultivate interest in open-source software to casual users who aren't interested in or necessarily aware of its existence. Many people simply have trouble leaving their comfort zone of older proprietary software; what's the best way to get them to look at an open-source alternative? "Since most people would rather die than write or study software source code, it is actually counterproductive to promote software 'because you can modify it yourself and be part of its community'. Look for really practical advantages which can be enjoyed every day by the person you want to convince. Start from the actual deep passions, beliefs, interests and practical needs of the people in front of you and go backwards from there, delaying the apparition of terms like 'source code', 'the four software freedoms', GPL, Gnu, Linux, etc."

An anonymous reader writes "The British government's educational IT authority has issued a report advising schools in the country not to upgrade their classroom or office systems to Windows Vista or Office 2007. According to this InformationWeek story, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency says costs for Vista and Office 2007 'are significant and the benefits remain unclear.' Instead, Becta is advising British schools to take a long look at Linux and open source suites like OpenOffice.org."

jfmiller call to our attention two professors emeritus of computer science at New York University who have penned an article titled Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow? in which they berate their university, and others, for not teaching solid languages like C, C++, Lisp, and ADA. The submitter wonders whether any CS students or professors would care to respond. Quoting the article: "The resulting set of skills [from today's educational practices] is insufficient for today's software industry (in particular for safety and security purposes) and, unfortunately, matches well what the outsourcing industry can offer. We are training easily replaceable professionals... Java programming courses did not prepare our students for the first course in systems, much less for more advanced ones. Students found it hard to write programs that did not have a graphic interface, had no feeling for the relationship between the source program and what the hardware would actually do, and (most damaging) did not understand the semantics of pointers at all, which made the use of C in systems programming very challenging."

trogador writes "Researchers are working to associate online avatars with physical bodies, connecting virtual reality robots with steel and software counterparts. The unification of software and mobility like this results in the so-called 'Ubibot' (ubiquitous robot), which the researchers predict is the future of interactive robotics. In the future, avatars on your pc/cell/pda screen may be able to bring you your tea or scratch your back. 'Two key components of the interface involve the sensor mapper and behavior mapper. The sensor mapper helps Rity get physical (ultrasound) sensor information from Mybot, enabling the virtual avatar to use physical information. The behavior mapper helps Rity actually perform physical behaviors using Mybot in a real environment, enabling the avatar to interact physically with human beings in real environments.'"

Spinlock_1977 writes "ComputerWorld is running a story about developers frustration with IE 7, and Microsoft's upcoming plans (or lack thereof) for it. From the article, "But the most pointed comment came from someone labeled only as dk. You all continue to underestimate the dramatic spillover effect this poor developer experience has had and will continue to have on your other products and services. Let me drive this point home. I am a front-end programmer and a co-founder of a start-up. I can tell you categorically that my team won't download and play with Silverlight ... won't build a Live widget ... won't consider any Microsoft search or ad products in the future.""

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists can't figure out why these rocks — weighing up to several hundred pounds each — slide across a dry lake bed. The leading theory proposes that wind moves the rocks after a rain when the lake bed consists of soft and very slippery mud.

ScentCone writes "The Telegraph covers a New Scientist report about two US cosmologists who suggest that, a la Schrodinger's possibly unhappy cat, the act of observing certain facets of our universe may have shortened its life . From the article: 'Prof Krauss says that the measurement of the light from supernovae in 1998, which provided evidence of dark energy, may have reset the decay of the void to zero — back to a point when the likelihood of its surviving was falling rapidly.'"

DaMan writes "ZDNet picks up on yesterday's Firefox 3 beta 1 review by comparing the memory usage of Firefox 2 against the latest beta. The results from one of the tests is quite interesting, after loading 12 pages and waiting 5 minutes, 2 used 103,180KB and 3 used 62,312KB. IE used 89,756KB.""

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's juggernaut against colleges, started in February of this year, seems to be having a bumpier and bumpier ride. The normal game is to call for a subpoena, to get the name and address of the students or staff who might have used a certain IP address. The normal game seems to be getting disrupted here and there. A Virginia judge threw the RIAA's motion out the window, saying that it was not entitled to such discovery, in a case against students at the College of William & Mary. A New Mexico judge denied the application on the ground that there was no reason for it to be so secretive, in a case involving University of New Mexico students. He ultimately required the RIAA to serve a full set of all of the underlying papers, for each 'John Doe' named, and to give the students 40 days in which to review the papers with counsel, and make a motion to quash if they chose to do so. In a stunning development, the Attorney General of the State of Oregon made a motion to quash the RIAA's subpoena on behalf of the University of Oregon, on grounds which are fully applicable to every case the RIAA has brought to date: the lack of scientific validity to the RIAA's "identification" evidence. The motion is pending as of this writing. Students have themselves made motions to vacate the RIAA's ex parte orders and/or quash subpoenas in over half a dozen cases. Much combat remains, but the RIAA's campaign is no longer a hot knife cutting through butter on the nation's campuses."

Al writes "A group from Newcastle University has released work that significantly improves the Draw-A-Secret method of creating passwords. The basic concept behind Draw-a-Secret is that humans excel at image recognition and memory, so 'passwords' should be designed to leverage that ability. The people behind the new work have refined the technique by parsing the shapes with a flexible grid and using existing images as a background to reinforce memory of the password. Imagine having your password be a graffiti-laden alteration of your favorite politicians campaign photo..."

"PC Gaming is dying," the analysts tell us. "The Massive genre is the only viable business model left," websites report. That they're off the mark is obvious to anyone that's actually played a PC game in the last few years; games like Sam and Max , Battlefield 2 , or any of the numerous puzzle titles available online prove the flexibility and strength of the PC platform. Then, every once in a while, you get an offering like the Orange Box. A value-packed storm of content from Valve, this single sku offers five complete games at an amazing price. That would be great, even if the games weren't any good ... but they are. They're very, very, very good. Read on for my impressions of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and (the cake is a lie) Portal.

Simon Night writes "Microsoft has entered the realm of brain machine interfaces, attempting to patent a method of classifying brain states from EEG input. 'Human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions,' the patent application notes, so reading directly from your brain is a preferred option."

alphadogg writes to mention that an Atlanta man is claiming an iPod Nano actually caught fire in his pants creating flames that lasted 15 seconds and reached up as far as his chest. Apple hasn't responded to the claims yet other than sending him a packet to return the iPod.

Xenographic writes "The OSI has identified two significant flaws in the Microsoft Permissive License, and is unlikely to approve it as an OSI license in its current state. Specifically, the OSI is worried about the way the MS-PL is incompatible with so many other OSI-approved licenses and how misleading that makes the term 'permissive' in the license's name. Now the ball is in Microsoft's court and they can choose to amend or withdraw it from consideration. From the article: 'The MPL is also particularly restrictive, and is uniquely incompatible with the maximum number of other open-source licenses, [president of OSI Michael Tiemann] said, noting that in its examination of license proliferation, the OSI had encouraged experimentation with license terms to encourage new ones to be written that were better than what currently existed.'"

Lund, Sweden refuses to work around a Vista bug, so people who live there must choose between Vista and internet access. It's nice to see the right people being held accountable for a change.