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Books

R. A. Montgomery, Creator of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" Books, Dead At 78 80

Posted by timothy from the your-codename-is-jonah dept.
Dave Knott writes Raymond Almiran Montgomery, original publisher and author of the incredibly popular "Choose Your Own Adventure" book series for children, the 4th bestselling children's series of all time, has died at the age of 78. In 1975, Montgomery founded a small press and when, in 1977, Ed Packard submitted an innovative book for young readers, "Sugarcane Island", Montgomery immediately saw it for what it was: a role-playing game in book form. He leapt at the chance to publish it, and launched a series, writing the second book, "Journey Under The Sea", himself. When Montgomery went through a divorce and sold his stake in the press to his ex-wife, he took the series, renamed as "Choose Your Own Adventure", to Bantam. The books went on to sell more than 250 million copies across 230 titles in 40 languages. Montgomery's interests also extended to new technology, adapting the series to the Atari console in 1984. He was also responsible for the Comic Creator software on Apple's Macintosh computers. Montgomery died on November 9th. The cause of death was not disclosed.
Education

Ask Slashdot: Programming Education Resources For a Year Offline? 223

Posted by timothy from the maybe-a-local-phrasebook dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I will be traveling to a remote Himalayan village for year and won't have access to the internet. What offline resources would you all recommend to help me continue to develop my coding skills? I think this would be a good time to get better at fundamentals, since I won't be able to learn any new frameworks or APIs. What about other, non-programming skills to practice and learn? Any ideas?" What would you bring?
Build

Video HYREL 3-D Printers Were Developed by 3-D Printer Users (Video) 55

Posted by Roblimo from the we-aren't-going-to-excited-by-a-printer-again-until-we-see-a-4d-one dept.
HYREL 3-D had a display Timothy spotted at last month's Maker Faire Atlanta. They're not trying to hustle Kickstarter donors; they exceeded their $50,000 goal by over $100,000. Their main pitch was (and still is) that they are making high-reliability 3-D printers that can run many hours without breaking. Project spokesperson Daniel Hutchison says he and other people he knows who were making prototypes and short-run parts in the Atlanta area were continually disappointed by the poor reliability of available 3-D printers, which is why they decided to make their own. Open Source? Somewhat, partially, kind of... but they have a bunch of proprietary secret sauce in their software, too. Daniel goes into this in more detail in the video, so there's no need for us to repeat his words when you can hear them (or read them in the transcript) for yourself. (Alternate Video Link)
Programming

Five Years of the Go Programming Language 82

Posted by timothy from the going-strong dept.
omar.sahal writes Go celebrates five years of its existence with this blog post recapping a little history, future and some philosophy. "Five years ago we launched the Go project. It seems like only yesterday that we were preparing the initial public release: our website was a lovely shade of yellow, we were calling Go a 'systems language,' and you had to terminate statements with a semicolon and write Makefiles to build your code. We had no idea how Go would be received. Would people share our vision and goals? Would people find Go useful?" The Go programming language has grown to find its own niche in the cloud computing word, having been used to code Docker and the Kubernetes projects. The developers also announced details of further projects to be released, such as a new low-latency garbage collector and support for running Go on mobile devices.
United States

Senate May Vote On NSA Reform As Soon As Next Week 127

Posted by samzenpus from the stop-looking-at-me dept.
apexcp writes Senate Majority Leader (for now) Harry Reid announced he will be taking the USA FREEDOM Act to a floor vote in the Senate as early as next week. While the bill, if passed, would be the first significant legislative reform of the NSA since 9/11, many of the act's initial supporters have since disavowed it, claiming that changes to its language mean it won't do enough to curb the abuses of the American surveillance state

Comment Thank ypou for your comments, fool! (Score -1, Informative) 132

by For a Free Internet (#48375923) Attached to: Drone Sightings Near Other Aircraft Up Dramatically

I am BOB, the lieuenant secretary and steady boy friend of LAURA, the great gran-marshall-for-life and shining light and inspiratiojn of the CAMPAIGN FOR A FREE INTERNET. We valiant partisans of the CAMPAIGN FOR A FREE INTERNET will not change our tune to please the passing moods of the wretched, blood-thirsty, small-minded idiot readership of Slashdort or its equally wretched, filthy, shit-eating moderators. We speak the truth, no matter what!
Education

Microsoft Losing the School Markets To iPads and Chromebooks 219

Posted by samzenpus from the falling-beyond dept.
dkatana writes Microsoft's licensing scheme, the high cost of support and difficult management of devices are the key factors making schools drop Windows for better alternatives as iPads and Chromebooks. Google is making a dent in the education market with Chromebooks. The internet giant has been promoting the use of Chrome OS with specific tools for schools to manage the devices, their apps and users. Its Chromebooks for Education program is helping schools deploy large numbers of devices with an easy management system. While Google is successful with Chromebooks as school laptops the clear winner on tablets is Apple. iPads are a the preferred platform for schools deploying tablets as digital learning devices.
Microsoft

Linux Foundation Comments On Microsoft's Increasing Love of Linux 162

Posted by samzenpus from the strange-bedfellows dept.
LibbyMC writes Executive Director Jim Zemlin writes, "We do not agree with everything Microsoft does and certainly many open source projects compete directly with Microsoft products. However, the new Microsoft we are seeing today is certainly a different organization when it comes to open source. The company's participation in these efforts underscores the fact that nothing has changed more in the last couple of decades than how software is fundamentally built."
The Media

What Happens When Nobody Proofreads an Academic Paper 170

Posted by Soulskill from the you-will-now-compulsively-check-this-post-for-typos dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Drafts are drafts for a reason. Not only do they tend to contain unpolished writing and unfinished thoughts, they're often filled with little notes we leave ourselves to fill in later. Slate reports on a paper recently published in the journal Ethology that contained an unfortunate self-note that made it into the final, published article, despite layers upon layers of editing, peer review, and proofreading. In the middle of a sentence about shoaling preferences, the note asks, "should we cite the crappy Gabor paper here?" When notified of the mistake, the publisher quickly took it down and said they would "investigate" how the line wasn't caught. One of the authors said it wasn't intentional and apologized for the impolite error.

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