Kojo - Slashdot User

Submission + - Your first steps into Virtual Reality (www.vsd.bz)

Submitted by

cbwan

on Saturday August 11, 2007 @06:15AM

cbwan writes: "This video shows an incredible device made by Virtual Space Devices. "The Omni-Directional Treadmill (ODT) is a revolutionary device for locomotion in large-scale virtual environments. The device allows its user to walk or jog in any direction of travel.""

Submission + - First music video to include entire banned book (youtube.com)

Submitted by

David Hume

on Saturday August 11, 2007 @06:13AM

David Hume writes: "The Stuck Mojo Open Season (Sex, Sharia Remix) music video is the first music video to include the entire contents of a suppressed book. Remix and extended version of the music video for the Stuck Mojo song "Open Season," dedicated to Mariwan Halabjaee, "the Salman Rushdie of Iraqi-Kurdistan." Mr. Halabjaee is the author of the book Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam . He was forced to flee Iraqi-Kurdistan and obtain political asylum in Norway because the Islamic League of Kurdistan issued a fatwa to kill him, and the Kurdistan Regional Government refused to offer him protection or to arrest those who threatened his life."

Submission + - A social network promoting peace by linking people (mypacis.com)

Submitted by

on Saturday August 11, 2007 @05:14AM

An anonymous reader writes: A new social network promotes peace by linking people. Open source, integrated, multilingual MyPacis.com offers free blogs, social bookmarks and other Web 2.0 services. The platform is open source based and distributed, so it can be used by other sites to promote peace and freedom of speech, especially in Europe and Asia.

The main difference with existing social network is that MyPacis.com is open source, integrates several Web 2.0 services and is available in Esperanto, Russian, German, Spanish, French, Bulgarian, Chinese, Japanase, Thai, Jewish, Arabic, Farsi, etc.

SOCIAL NETWORK FOR PEACE — MORE DETAILED INFORMATION

Let's get a bit more into details. http://www.mypacis.com/ is an integrated and multilingual social network. Right now, the services provided are standard open source solutions. They have great functionalities, and they deliver you many benefits. But there are still some additional steps we need to take to make sure our platform is suitable to serve our goals. BTW, we will never consider our platform fully ready, because challenges and needs changes, and also new version of the services use are released, and the integration/adaptation process starts again.

MyPacis is an integrated social network. With integrated we mean that it supports many functions (contact list, personal profile, bookmarks, news submission and rating, free blogs, etc.) ideally all under one userID. So, you login once, and you get all these services, which make communication easier. There are many sites (Delicious, Digg, Blogger, etc.) which provide the same services. But, usually, the rule is: one site = one service. If you want social bookmarks, you go on Delicious. But to digg news you go, well, on Digg.

One of the reason for this is that "one site = one service" mantra gives full visibility to the only service provided. Another reason is that these services, even if in their core components have been around for ages, in are still new in their current format. So, pioneering developers focused on getting one service right. Now that open source solutions are available to deliver the same benefits, it is time to integrate them and make easier for you to use Web 2.0 services.

MyPacis.com is multilingual because, in addition to main stream languages (English, German, French, etc.), it can be easily localized in every language. We aim to provide services in all European, and then Asian, languages. Once we achieved these goals, we will furtherly localize the site. Anyway, if you consider the languages spoken in these continents, by serving them, we also serve most of the world. Even if there are local version of languages, for example the Spanish spoken in Madrid is not the same spoken in Argentina (which has been influenced by Italian), users will still be able to use our site and decipher the few worlds which sound unusual to them.

Once our platform, which shares many features with http://www.smilegrid.com/ (the "hub" for the users' profile and social networking, owned by us and shared with other sites), reached a satisfactory level of scripting and languages quality, we want to offer it as open source software. Why should people download our platform, instead of just taking the original open source version? Well, two reasons are already stated above: scripts will be integrated into one suite, and made available in different languages. Other reasons include using a shared social network DB, where users of one site are reachable by the whole network. In this way, every new site created has already achieved critical mass for the success of its social network, because users profiles are pooled together.

Another service we want to provide is hosted social networks. That enables you to create your own social network, hosted on our site. Once more, there are similar solutions available online. But usually there are in English, and not as comprehensive as an integrated social network.

Submission + - Vista SP1 and XP SP3 - Leaked by Microsoft? (neosmart.net)

Submitted by Mariam Hollander on Saturday August 11, 2007 @05:04AM

Mariam Hollander writes: Microsoft's two most awaited releases: Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP1. Betas for both leaked just days apart. A big coincidece or a Microsoft master plan?

NeoSmart's analysis of both the XP SP3 and Vista SP1 leaks is quite interesting: were these two builds leaked (unofficially) by Microsoft in an attempt to unofficially guage the response of the online community to these releases, fix some bugs before they officially even exist, and deliver a perfect service pack? Most importantly, is this Microsoft taking advantage of its last chance to save face and fix what has been the most-criticized version of Windows to date, before it gets out of hand?

[J]ust how likely is it that the two most valuable products still in development and without a single official release would leak to the internet just days apart? Especially when the Windows Vista build ships as a time-bombed release, it makes us wonder: Is Microsoft really in the practice of time-bombing internal development releases that only exist in the hands of people who have access to hourly builds?

Submission + - Choose not to go to uni. Choose an apprenticeship. (megt.com.au)

Submitted by

Linda Nall

on Saturday August 11, 2007 @04:21AM

Linda Nall writes: "Natalie and Daniel Hofmann started their Hunter region carpentry and building business with partner Simon Frewin in February this year.

They had big plans to grow the business, particularly in the environmental building disciplines. This is a time of high risk for any new venture. Many fail in the early years due to poor management practices. Ideas, dreams and hopes can be dashed in this critical period.

Natalie admits she was just learning about business management. There's payroll and taxation and awards to come to grips with as well as planning for growth you hope will happen.

"We just couldn't have grown without help from MEGT Group Training," says Natalie. "We needed the extra hands to cope with the workload, so hunted around for an apprentice.

"When Dan first said to me we are going to take on an apprentice my first question was, how can we do that and afford to? MEGT came around and explained the process and what was involved. It was a new game for me because I am a new employer myself and I am just learning. It took the risk out of making a mistake when employing someone else.

"We found out that MEGT could take care of all the apprenticeships needs we had. They found the right person, organised the right training and monitored it. They look after his pay, his superannuation, WorkCover — all the details involved in the building and construction industry.

"That allowed our company to grow faster at this early stage of our business and not have to wait until we had a bigger infrastructure. As we grow further, so too, I know we will be able to put on new apprentices to cope with that growth.

"While my husband is a qualified carpenter, I am the office manager and do the invoices, the letters, the debtors and suppliers. I am the first point of contact for any administration needs.

"It's our dream to build an extremely successful business.

"We are going down the line of energy efficiency because it is something we have a passion for. We believe that homes in the future will have to be retro fitted with energy efficiencies and we will be in the right place for that.

"My advice to people who are a bit older is not to think you are too old to be an apprentice. It is only four years to qualify for something that you will do for the rest of your life. Four years can pass fairly quickly when you are going to use it to start your own business as we have.""

Submission + - China copies iPhone; makes it even better (popsci.com)

Submitted by

on Friday August 10, 2007 @02:59AM

An anonymous reader writes: China duplicates a lot of well know products; now they are duplicating the iPhone. Yet apparently they are making it better. From the article "The miniOne looked just like Apple's iPhone, down to the slick no-button interface. But it was more. It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers." The cloned iPhone uses a Linux-based system. "The cloners hire a team of between 20 and 40 engineers to begin decoding the circuit boards. At the same time, coders start to develop an operating system for the phone with a similar feature set. (The typical cloner either uses off-the-shelf code, writes something entirely new, or modifies a publicly available Linux-based system.) "

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