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Math

Submission + - Free Math manual for students in Portugal (niualeph.eu)

Submitted by Kaleidoscopio
Kaleidoscopio writes: With the current crisis facing Europe and Portugal, a group of teachers decided to make a free digital Math manual for Portuguese students.
The manual is aimed at those in the last year before University (12th grade).
Typical Math manuals at this level cost between 20€ and 35€, so this will be a great relieve to many who face growing costs to put kids through school.
They will also be providing aditional material in the form of guides for exam preparation, usage of Math calculators, etc.
I hope that this idea gains traction and starts a era of digital books in schools, hopefully much cheaper than the current ones. (I'm not expecting them to be free..)
Dead tree versions will also be available, with an estimated price of 18,35€.

Comment We just let it slip away, simple. (Score 1) 304

Most of our projects are irrealistic, so after a roll of preventive measures we just gave up...

Measures attempted:

New priority levels - We moved from 3 priority levels to 5. Everybody kept using the highest available...
Re-Evaluation of requests by an independent team - Time lost in the team = time lost in delivery...
Mandatory rule book for project requests, namely better designed requests - Administration kept ignoring the rules and we could do nothing about it...

And the list goes on.
EU

Submission + - Spanish Extremadura Moving 40,000 Desktops to Linu (europa.eu)

Submitted by
jrepin
jrepin writes: "The administration of Spain’s autonomous region of Extremadura is moving to a complete open source desktop, confirms the region's CIO, Teodomiro Cayetano López. The IT department started a project to install the Debian distribution on all 40,000 desktop PCs. "The project is really advanced and we hope to start the deployment the next spring, finishing it in December." The project makes it Europe's second largest open source desktop migration, between the French Gendarmerie (90,000 desktops) and the German city of Munich (14,000 desktops)."
Android

Submission + - App Inventor Code Released - But Still No Service (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: The way Google has treated the App Inventor community is probably the biggest negative mark against it in some time and yet few seem to care.
Google simply pulled the plug on the App Inventor servers at the end of December 2011 and MIT Is still months away from providing a replacement.
As a result, and despite warnings, some students had their projects locked up in the dead servers. We are now told that, due to some heroic work by Googlers, the projects have been recovered.
A more heroic action would have been to not turn the servers off until there had been a reasonable overlap between the old and the new service.
MIT has now announced that the source code is available for you to download. This is great news but most of the people wanting to use App Inventor for educational purposes don't want to or can't get involved in the technicalities of setting up App Engine servics and so on.
What this means is that at the moment the source code is open but the service is closed.
In a status update report we are told that MIT's efforts are going well and it is three weeks into its three-month project to get App Inventor up and running as a free service. This is astonishing. It isn't as if the transfer of App Inventor to MIT happened only three weeks ago.
Never mind getting excited about Raspberry Pi and other hardware bringing programming back to the masses — App Inventor is the sort of software that could do just that and Google can't even keep the servers running to provide continuity. What would it have cost them?
United Kingdom

Submission + - The Least Desirable Jobs in the UK (With The Be$t (adzuna.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With unemployment hitting 2.64 million in the UK this January and the economy looking gloomy for 2012, job seekers might have to get creative when looking for well-paid employment. Analysis of the salaries of thousands of current vacancies by job search engine Adzuna.co.uk shows that some of the least desirable jobs in Britain — such as Sewer Flushers and Embalmers — actually have some of the best pay. But would you be willing to take the danger or sheer unpleasantness involved in some of these roles?

The Worst Jobs in Britain — with the Best Pay

Job Title Average Salary on Adzuna
Private Security Contractor £90,000
Gastroenterologist £85,000
Oil Rig Worker £61,000
Sewer Flusher £45,000
Podiatrist £42,000
Embalmer £42,000
Deep Sea Fishermen £40,000
Chain Saw Operator / Tree Surgeon £37,000
IT Support Executive £31,000
Shot Girls / Guys £30-50 per hour

At an amazing £90k per annum on average, conflict zone Private Security Contractors top the high pay list. Understandable due to the obvious danger of the role, but that’s more than 5 times more than a private in the British army who would make just under £18,000 per year.

The least “sexy” medical professions come with a very generous pay packet. According to Adzuna, Medical professionals not afraid of ingrown toenails, bunions and colonoscopies can demand well in excess of £50,000 per year.

If you can deal with the stress of technical support and don’t mind the occasional “Computer says No” or angry customer, IT support executives out-do similarly qualified roles in other industries such as travel and retail and can expect to make over £30,000 per annum.

“Jobs at Sea” are seen as very dangerous with a study by Oxford University showing that 103 in every 100,000 fishermen died while working. This is 50 times higher than other workers. Such danger on fishing boats and offshore oil rigs results in salaries above £40,000.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Intranet solutions, what Soft/Tools (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Kaleidoscopio
Kaleidoscopio writes: At my company we have severall intranet applications.
The problem, is that most of them are cloned from a 12 year old ASP application, so basically we keep the same code and layout and adapt as well as we can.
We have been trying for years to change things, but my boss insists that we recycle since its faster than developing something new.
Our main problem at this point is that the code is pretty much garbage after years of changes by severall people and while developing something new is faster, maintenance of the old applications is nightmarish.
We decided to create in our own time, a new framework from which we can develop new applications for our Intranet, if we suceed we may finally enter the 21st century.
Problem is, what to build it on?
Our external supplier suggests Silverlight/Moonlight and .Net, our Java expert wants to build it all in Java while one of our IT guys wants a PHP/MySql solution.
What does the Slashdot crowd suggest?
Personally I'll go with anything as long as it will run in Linux and Windows clients (Server could be Unix or Windows) and will hopefully be around in 10 years time.
The Courts

Submission + - High Court Rules In Favor Of Top Gear Over Tesla S (dailytech.com)

Submitted by esocid
esocid writes: In 2008, BBC's "Top Gear" aired an episode featuring the Tesla Roadster. One of the show's car reviewers, Jeremy Clarkson, gave a less-than-flattering analysis of the vehicle, sparking a legal case with the automaker that doesn't seem to be working out in Tesla's favor.
Now, it looks as though Tesla is losing this battle after a full-day hearing yesterday at the high court in London. "In my judgment, the words complained of are wholly incapable of conveying any meaning at all to the effect that the claimant [Tesla] misled anyone," said Tugendhat. "This is because there is a contrast between the style of driving and the nature of the track as compared with the conditions on a public road [...] are so great that no reasonable person could understand that the performance on the [Top Gear] track is capable of a direct comparison with a public road." The hearing now continues on Tesla's claim that "Top Gear" made five other false accusations about the Roadster. Tugendhat has postponed judgment on Tesla's malicious falsehood claim, and is expected to deliver a verdict in the coming weeks.

Comment All of the above and more (Score 1) 314

by Kaleidoscopio (#37453812) Attached to: I tend to keep random notes most often ...
If I'm at my computer I'll create a txt file and save it to the desktop so I'll check it later (visible).
If I'm at home I'll write it down on the first piece of paper I can find.
If I'm with my wife she will hand me a proper piece of paper which she has tons of to keep notes.
If I'm on the street I'll just write a note on the phone.
If I'm on a random computer I just fire up GMail and write a draft or use google docs.
If I'm on a meeting I write things in my designated blank book (which people at meetings think its professional)
If I'm on a date with a hot girl I'll let her scribble her phone number on my body... :D
Privacy

Submission + - ID system may turn tide on data breaches (scmagazine.com.au)

Submitted by
mask.of.sanity
mask.of.sanity writes: "British researchers have developed a federated identity framework that could help to curb the string of recent data breaches by eliminating the need for websites to handle private user data.

The Trusted Attribute Aggregation Service validates identity credentials from institutions like banks, governments and universities. Users can choose what credentials to use, and click a box to deliver them via a one time password to a web site.

It's a hotly debated area, especially around the contentious area of trust. Because, at the end of the day, why would a bank want to take on responsibility of guaranteeing credentials?

You can see a short demo video of the system here, or contact its creator to see it for yourself."

Comment Wife is a teacher (Score 1) 310

by Kaleidoscopio (#36238186) Attached to: My current printer has printed ...
And so she prints lots of stuff on it, be it exercises for the kids or whatsoever.
Her school as printing facilities, but the people there are clueless, so she prints the originals at home and then just asks for copies.
The only things I ever print at home are vouchers for stuff bought online (planet tickets, hotel reservations, etc).

Comment Job Change FTW (Score 1) 247

by Kaleidoscopio (#35878188) Attached to: Promotion Or Job Change: Which Is the Best Way To Advance In IT?
Truly, job change has been the pivotal point in my career. Every time I change company (willingly) I get a promotion and a pay rise, only exception was when I delivered my resignation and my current company made me a generous counter-offer to keep me (I stayed). If I hadn't delivered my resignation I would still be doing the same thing for the same salary, few companies that I know promote inside people, most prefer to pick an outsider... :(

Comment Got a mail with new VPN passwords after I left (Score 1) 218

by Kaleidoscopio (#35232510) Attached to: 10% of IT Pros Can Access Previous Jobs' Accounts
Before leaving my company, I implemented a forward rule on my mail account so I would get any new mails untill the account was closed. I had lots of contacts and there is always someone who isn't aware that we left, that way I could warn anyone who mailed me.
To my complete surprise, 3 months after leaving I received a user and password for the VPN network which allowed me to log in to the corporate network and do whatever I pleased.
Why, you ask? Well they hired someone with the same name as me (first and last) and instead of deleting my account and creating a new one, they just reset the password and gave him my old account.
If I hadn't warned the IT Staff at my old company to remove the forward rule, I would still have access to everything...

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