white_owl - Slashdot User

Mozilla Rolls Out Firefox 3.6 RC, Nears Final 145

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 12, 2010 @11:34AM from the onwards-and-upwards dept.

CWmike writes "Mozilla has shipped a release candidate build of Firefox 3.6 that, barring problems, will become the final, finished version of the upgrade. Firefox 3.6 RC1, which followed a run of betas that started in early November, features nearly 100 bug fixes from the fifth beta that Mozilla issued Dec. 17. The fixes resolved numerous crash bugs, including one that brought down the browser when it was steered to Yahoo's front page. Another fix removed a small amount of code owned by Microsoft from Firefox. The code was pointed out by a Mozilla contributor, and after digging, another developer found the original Microsoft license agreement. 'Amusingly enough, it's actually really permissive. Really the only part that's problematic is the agreement to "include the copyright notice ... on your product label and as a part of the sign-on message for your software product,"' wrote Kyle Huey on Mozilla's Bugzilla. Even so, others working on the bug said the code needed to be replaced with Mozilla's own."

Comment Re:As Clifford Stoll Said (Score 1) 290

by white_owl on Sunday January 03, 2010 @10:36PM (#30636824) Attached to: Is Early Childhood Education Technology Moving Backwards?

And how many kids that did not play Oregon Trail know that people ever got in wagons and had a hard time getting to the West. (Where is the West anyway? Why didn't they just fly or take the bus?) I do not suggest that Oregon Trail was great for teaching history. It was not. But it did teach some history.

Civilization is a better example. I have run programs that used Civilization with close to realistic maps and poor middle school kids. Did they become historians - No. But did they have a better idea of the map of the world and how technology changed with different era's in world history. Well Yea. Did they find it hard to learn. Surprisingly yes.

I guess it depends on where you are, what looks like progress?

Sharp Rise In Jailing of Online Journalists; Iran May Just Kill Them 233

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 08, 2009 @10:20AM from the your-ethics-may-vary dept.

bckspc writes "The Committee to Protect Journalists has published their annual census of journalists in prison. Of the 136 reporters in prison around the world on December 1, 'At least 68 bloggers, Web-based reporters, and online editors are imprisoned, constituting half of all journalists now in jail.' Print was next with 51 cases. Also, 'Freelancers now make up nearly 45 percent of all journalists jailed worldwide, a dramatic recent increase that reflects the evolution of the global news business.' China, Iran, Cuba, Eritrea, and Burma were the top 5 jailers of journalists." rmdstudio writes, too, with word that after the last few days' protest there, largely organized online, the government of Iran is considering the death penalty for bloggers and webmasters whose reports offend it.

The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday November 22, 2009 @11:59AM from the take-your-pick dept.

igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."

Comment Re:We need free books first - California (Score 1) 265

by white_owl on Monday November 16, 2009 @11:15AM (#30115588) Attached to: Free Software For All Russian Schools In Jeopardy

We talked about the California free textbook program And there is some followup

Comment Re:Paparazzi Project (Score 1) 259

by white_owl on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @04:06PM (#28099997) Attached to: Best Way To Build A DIY UAV?

Another open source Avonics system is from the Portland State Aerospace Society. http://psas.pdx.edu/AvionicsTeamHome/

Probably not as relevant as the Paparazzi team since they tend to fly straight up and straight down :) But if you are looking for alternative architectures (distributed processing) this might be of interest.

Comment Re:Too young (Score 1) 136

by white_owl on Thursday March 05, 2009 @05:04PM (#27082433) Attached to: Good Robot Projects For K-5?

We (DANEnet) did several robotics groups in mandatory summer school a couple of years ago. We started kids off with Robosapiens. That is a controller based pre built robot. This was good for 1-2 sessions. Then we moved them onto the great Robodance program (free software to do visual programming on a pc using a USB wireless remote to control the Robosapiens). Another couple of sessions. Finally we went to Lego Robotics based program.

We lost some kids at each step. The step to Lego Robotics was particularly hard for these kids. One of the best groups was a mix of bilingual and solely Spanish speaking kids. Shades of the undocumented high school students that won a national college robotics competition http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html

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