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Education

All-You-Can-Eat College For $99-a-Month 272

Posted by Soulskill from the om-nom-nom dept.
theodp writes "Writing in Washington Monthly, Kevin Carey has seen the future of college education. It costs $99-a-month, and there's no limit on the number of courses you can take. Tiny online education firm StraighterLine is out to challenge the seeming permanency of traditional colleges and universities. How? Like Craigslist, StraighterLine threatens the most profitable piece of its competitors' business: freshman lectures, higher education's equivalent of the classified section. It's no surprise, then, that as StraighterLine tried to buck the system, the system began to push back, challenging deals the company struck with accredited traditional and for-profit institutions to allow StraighterLine courses to be transferred for credit. But even if StraighterLine doesn't succeed in bringing extremely cheap college courses to the masses, it's likely that another player eventually will."
Cellphones

Nokia Fears Carriers May Try To Undermine N900 307

Posted by Soulskill from the but-the-carriers-are-usually-so-helpful dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Nokia is worried that networks may reject selling the N900 because it won't allow them to mess with the operating system. Nokia has previously showed the N900 running a root shell and it appears to use the same interface for IM and phone functions. Meanwhile, Verizon is claiming that 'exclusivity arrangements promote competition and innovation.' Is it too late to explain to people why $99+$60/month is not better than $600+$20/month?"

Comment Mobile phone + Developing Nations = Opportunity ! (Score 5, Insightful) 54

by prayag (#28794189) Attached to: Mobile Phone Technology and Developing Nations
In most of the Developing economies mobile phones are the first and mostly the only computing devices people have. How much can they realize the potential of such devices is upto the developers and innovators. Having a computing device gives people a lot of leverage. The challenge to us as developers is, can we use it solve real world problems ? Can we make people's lives better with technology ? Or do we continue to waste time in iFarting and Pulling the Fingers ? Or in having a flame-war about OSes and Vi over Emacs ?

Kudos to Tata Teleservices.

Comment Re:First Post (Score 1) 61

by prayag (#27895245) Attached to: PlayStation-Based Mobile Handset a Possibility

It is logical to think, therefore, that a good game playing cell phone would sell, and if it did not, it would not be because it have too many features.

I agree with your point that there seems to be a good market for such phones, but I think you missed the point on "too many features". If its a well done phone, even if it has too many features people would use it just avoiding the features they don't want.

Comment The World doesn't care (Score 4, Insightful) 715

by prayag (#27730291) Attached to: RMS Says "Software As a Service" Is Non-free
RMS is right of course. Software as a service is not free and one should always be at guard while using them.

Having said that, it is also important to realize that general public does not care, if its free. If you just ask them, "Do not use it." It does not help the cause. Shouldn't you instead try to educate them and warn them of the pitfalls ?

The world is not black and white. And software as a service is here to stay. When would RMS realize that ?
PC Games (Games)

Does Professional Gaming Have a Future? 116

Posted by Soulskill from the fatal-one-thank-you dept.
mr_sifter writes "Three years ago, celebrity gamers such as Fatal1ty were bagging millions in prizes, and TV channels were queuing up to broadcast games on TV. Professional gaming looked set for the big time. It never happened, and in the current economic crisis, sponsors and media organizations are cutting costs, resulting in the closure of many pro gaming competitions (as we recently discussed) and a down-scaling in prize money. This feature looks at whether pro gaming can bounce back, and whether it will always be a PC sport, or if pro gaming on consoles is the future."
Programming

Web Browser Programming Blurring the Lines of MVC 303

Posted by kdawson from the extremely-thick-client dept.
lkcl tips his in-depth article up at Advogato on the difficulties for the MVC programming model that are introduced by Javascript and AJAX, and solutions for them. He writes: "This article outlines how the MVC concept is made incredibly awkward by the gradual but necessary introduction of Javascript and AJAX. A solution is found in the form of Javascript Compiler Technology such as GWT or Pyjamas (PyPy's JS backend or Rb2Js could be used, with some additional work). The article outlines how and why the traditional MVC patterns are fragmented by Javascript and AJAX, advocating that if a site is programmed purely in a high-level language that is then compiled to Javascript for the Web Browser sections, the same high-level source code can be executed either client-side on the browser, or server-side, or even both, depending on the requirements. The implications of this approach are discussed in depth."
Music

After 3 Years, Rockbox 3.0 Released 248

Posted by timothy from the adding-versatility dept.
DarkkOne writes "Rockbox version 3.0 is out. Three years in development, it marks the introduction of many new players since the 2.5 release and offers software-based playback allowing audio of nearly any commonly (or uncommonly) used format on a list of MP3 players by Apple, iRiver, Cowon, Archos, Toshiba and Sandisk. Beyond this it is FLOSS, under the GPL v2 license (or later), and includes a variety of plugins such as games and simple apps. 3.0 is the first official release for any players not made by Archos and more or less marks the beginning of a much more regular release cycle for the software."

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