Rural - Slashdot User

Submission + - Freeing Mapping with Open Street Map (wired.com) 2

Submitted by teeks99 on Friday August 28, 2009 @08:13AM

teeks99 writes: Wired has an article on Open Street Map, which is a free mapping database, and can be accessed in a manner similar to google maps, but without the restrictions. It was built from so USGS data in the United States, and has been updated by users uploading GPS tracks from in car navigation devices.

Submission + - Do IT people like sports?

Submitted by SeminoleTom on Wednesday August 19, 2009 @08:27AM

SeminoleTom writes: So this is a question that was raised on a local sports talk show when one of the hosts said "Computer people do not like sports". As a huge sports fan I think it would be good to find out what my fellow 'geeks' think. Yes I am a geek but not all geeks are only into computers and science fiction. I play sports and watch on TV. I would love to hear what others have to say on this topic. Thanks.

Submission + - Is typing finally ruining my ability to spell?

Submitted by

NSN A392-99-964-5927

on Wednesday August 19, 2009 @05:59AM

NSN A392-99-964-5927 writes: "I shall try not to be pedantic about this subject, however my hand-writing abilities have deteriorated over the years.

Haven spoken to a few friends, this has also become apparent to them too; namely putting a real pen to paper, I am frustrated how to spell correctly, as I am so used to using a keyboard and where the letters are.

I have noticed that my grammer is also effected, and maybe this is because I have spent too much time on IRC and lowered mt standards.

Hand-written words are now becoming obsolete. There is no need to think about writing anymore or how something is spelled using computers, I wanted to know if other slashdoters have the same problem?

One should add that I am used to Telex machines; which should give you and indication of how old I am."

Submission + - Behind Menuet: an OS written entirely in assembler (goodgearguide.com.au)

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Wednesday August 19, 2009 @12:10AM

angry tapir writes: "MenuetOS is an operating system written entirely in assembly language. As a result it's extremely quick and compact (it can even fit on a floppy disk, despite having a GUI). It can run Quake. Two of the developers behind MenuetOS took time out to talk to us about what inspired them to undertake the daunting task of writing the operating system, the current state of the OS and future plans for it."

Submission + - World's only diesel-electric Honda Insight (redlightracing.org) 1

Submitted by

Jake Staub

on Tuesday August 18, 2009 @12:21AM

Jake Staub writes: "Just replaced the gasoline engine in a Honda Insight with a Diesel engine. On a 3,000 mile cross country shake down journey the car averaged 92mpg over 1,800 miles. Around a very hilly town in Northwest Washington the car is averaging 78mpg. These mileage averages are without the electric side of the vehicle fully functional. With a bit more tinkering on the electric side and through a slight gearing change through tire size it is anticipated that the car will likely average 100mpg. The build for the car has been documented on the web site and is as close to open source as my time allows. The car was built by two guys in a garage in Southern Maryland. If we can do it I don't see any reason why major auto manufacturers can't do it since we used their parts."

Submission + - Root any Android device with one click (ryebrye.com)

Submitted by cyanogen on Monday August 17, 2009 @11:16PM

cyanogen writes: Root your android phone in less than 30 seconds. (Previous methods could take more than an hour). Most phones can be done with one click, some phones require downloading an additional recovery.img to the SD card, typing the path to it + one click. This exploit will be patched VERY quickly — so it is important to act fast. This exploit is already patched in most custom ROMs, but an OTA update has not been released.

Submission + - Google Android is not so open after all (linuxjournal.com) 1

Submitted by

demiurg

on Tuesday August 11, 2009 @07:08PM

demiurg writes: "It looks like Google Anroid is neither fully open source nor fully open. The bulk of the Android telephony API cannot be easily accessed by 3rd party applications. There is a lot of important functionality in the com.android.internal.telephony package. For instance, the Phone application uses this internal API to make/answer a call and access the SIM. This API is not documented. It can and probably will change in the future, and generally, it is not intended for use by applications that are not part of the Android platform--so much for the "All applications are created equal" motto."

Submission + - GPL2 Libraries - Is there a point ?

Submitted by PiSkyHi on Monday August 10, 2009 @05:42AM

PiSkyHi writes: I understand that if I build an application that links with a library that is licensed under GPL2, I must also make my application GPL2. I can see that value in this for an application, but for a library, what's to stop me separating my program into a GPL2 compliant client app that talks to the rest of my (choose my own license) application ?

Submission + - Nano-Origami, another step to the Assembler? (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by wisebabo on Friday August 07, 2009 @12:02AM

wisebabo writes: Some researchers at Technische Universitaet Muenchen and Harvard have developed a way to make DNA "Origami" fold up into all sorts of desired nanoscale shapes. While done before, there seems to be much greater assortment of shapes that they can create. What's particularly interesting is that they've developed some software that can be used (presumably with a DNA assembler) that will create what you want; think of CAD/CAM on a molecular scale! From TFA:

"The toolbox they have developed includes a graphical software program that helps to translate specific design concepts into the DNA programming required to realize them. Three-dimensional shapes are produced by "tuning" the number, arrangement, and lengths of helices."

So is this a major step to the holy grail of nano-technology, the self-replicating Assembler? If you can make the "twisty" difficult parts of a nano-machine out of DNA, combine it with some nano-motors and some nano-logic (and some nano-grippers and sensors ok ok this won't happen tomorrow), you could conceivably make a nano-machine capable of replicating itself from the basic LEGO (tm) blocks of the universe, atoms. Of course, once you've got a nano-assembler capable of atom-by-atom construction, you'd probably want to replace the fragile DNA (which are heat and PH sensitive) with some stronger structures but you get the picture.

Wonder when they're going to release the software? It would be fun to make a couple of trillion little "springs" for example. Would add a bit of bounce to your day! *ducks*

Submission + - Favourite input peripheral

Submitted by Cougem on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @04:48AM

Cougem writes: Favourite input peripheral?

Keyboard
Mouse
Microphone
Tablet
Trackball
Touchscreen
Light pen
Cowboy Neal's punchards
Breasts

Submission + - A short history of Btrfs

Submitted by

diegocgteleline.es

on Friday July 31, 2009 @11:45AM

diegocgteleline.es writes: "Valerie Aurora, a linux filesystem developer and ex-ZFS designer, gives in this article a great insight on how Btrfs, the filesystem that will replace Ext4, was created and how it works: "You probably have heard of the cool new kid on the file system block, btrfs. But you might not know much about it beyond a few high-level keywords — copy-on-write, checksums, writable snapshots — and a few sensational rumors and stories — the Phoronix benchmarks, btrfs is a ZFS ripoff, btrfs is a secret plan for Oracle domination of Linux, etc [...] In this article, we'll take a behind-the-scenes look at the design and development of btrfs on many levels — technical, political, personal — and trace it from its origins at a workshop to its current position as Linus's root file system"

Submission + - emacs 23 has been released (blogspot.com)

Submitted by djcb on Thursday July 30, 2009 @05:38AM

djcb writes: After only 2 years since the previous version, now emacs 23 (.1) is available. It brings many new features, of which the support for anti-aliased fonts on X may be the most visible. Also, there is support for starting emacs in the background, so you can pop up new emacs windows in the blink of an eye. There are many other bigger and smaller improvements, including support for D-Bus, Xembed, and viewing PDFs inside emacs. And not to forget, M-x butterfly. You can get emacs 23 from ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/ or one of its mirrors; alternatively, there are binary packages available, for example from Ubuntu PPA.

Submission + - Is $250K-a-Year for a Computer Consultant Normal? 1

Submitted by

theodp

on Thursday July 30, 2009 @04:14AM

theodp writes: "After expressing astonishment that little-known consulting firm Future Technology Associates — which has no offices and not much of a website — was on the verge of being handed a new $95 million contract by the New York City Department of Education, the NY Daily News' Juan Gonzalez follows up with a report that taxpayers shelled out an average of $250,000 last year for each of FTA's 63 computer geeks, which is equal to the salary of Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, the city's highest-paid executive. Several company employees received considerably more than Klein — state records indicate FTA's not-to-exceed-hourly-rates range from $104.90 to $409.11. DOE officials defended the price of FTA's consultants. 'Their rates are better than competitive,' said Photeine Anagnostopoulos, the DOE's chief operating officer, adding that in corporate America, a quarter million a year for a computer consultant is normal. Ms. Anagnostopoulos may not be concerned, but NYC taxpayers might find it interesting to know that in 2008, FTA declared fair wages for the 12 H-1B consultants it sought to place in Brooklyn would be somewhere between $48,152 and $69,576."

Submission + - CentOS Project Administrator Goes AWOL

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30, 2009 @04:12AM

An anonymous reader writes: Lance Davis, the main project administrator for CentOS, a popular free "rebuild" of Red Hat's Enterprise Linux, appears to have gone AWOL. In an open letter from his fellow CentOS developers, they describe the precarious situation the project has been put in. There have been attempts to contact him for some time now, as he's the sole administrator for the centos.org domain, the IRC channels, and apparently, CentOS funds. One can only hope that Lance gets in contact with them and gets things sorted out.

Submission + - Civil rights activists champion Google book deal (idg.com.au)

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Thursday July 30, 2009 @01:19AM

angry tapir writes: "A proposed settlement allowing Google to digitize millions of books will have huge benefits for minority populations and their access to valuable information, according to a group of civil rights leaders and educators, including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and the National Federation of the Blind. (Previously: EFF Urges Pressure On Google Over Book Search.)"

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