Comment Re:Things to remember (Score 4, Insightful) 257
>Most of Japan is high rises
>Also, a lot of the buildings in the US are older than those in Japan
You've clearly never ever been to Japan.
Submission + - NASA Frees Their Robotics Software (mrfuture.com)
kremvax writes: CORRECTION: In reference to my slashdot article: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/ 20/2233224
Since I originally took both the headline and paraphrased quote directly from MrFuture.com, where I discovered the story, I think it might be better karma if I mention the link to their release, or at least have
MrFuture writes instead of kremvax writes, I'd hate for that to go uncredited, or unlinked. Thanks, Kremvax
"It's a field day for robotics hackers everywhere, as NASA releases the first installment of their CLARAty reusable robotic software framework to the public. According to the JPL press release, these modules contain everything from math infrastructure to device drivers for common motors and cameras, and computer vision, image, and 3D processing."
Submission + - Nasa Frees Their Robotics Software (mrfuture.com)
kremvax writes: It's a field day for robotics hackers everywhere, as NASA releases the first installment of their CLARAty reusable robotic software framework to the public. According to the JPL press release, these modules contain everything from math infrastructure to device drivers for common motors and cameras, and computer vision, image, and 3D processing.
Submission + - Citizendium: building a better Wikipedia
Encylopedia Internetica writes: Ars Technica is running a feature on Citizendium, Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger's attempt to build an online knowledge repository that avoids some the 'serious and endemic problems' Sanger has seen with Wikipedia. His decision to launch Citizendium came as a result of the issue with John Seigenthaler's Wikipedia entry. 'Sanger had hoped that Wikipedia would clean up its act, and he was all but certain that the encyclopedia would eventually put an expert review system in place. After Seigenthaler's call, Sanger found the Wikipedia community's response "completely unacceptable" and concluded that they were no longer able to change in important ways.' The feature also looks at the Citizendium 'expert' system as well as the editing and article approval process.
Submission + - Stable Open Source NTFS After 12 Years of Work
irgu writes: "Open source NTFS development started in 1995 by
Martin von Loewis
under Linux, which was
taken over
by Anton Altaparmakov in 2000.
Two years ago Apple hired Altaparmakov to work on Mac OS X and made a
deal with the team to
relicense the code
and return the new one, soonest
in the spring of 2008.
But the team also continued the work
and Szabolcs Szakacsits announced the
read/write NTFS-3G driver
for beta testing last year. Only half year passed and
NTFS-3G reached the stable status
and has been already ported to
FreeBSD,
Mac OS X,
BeOS, Haiku, 64-bit and big-endian architectures, and new CPU's!"
Submission + - How to Keep America Competitive
pkbarbiedoll writes: In a Washington Times column from this weekend, Bill Gates writes,
Interesting read, but this argument is not new and is based on a distortion of truth. If US companies simply offered fair pay, good benefits, and a general sense of job security to US citizens there would be no reason to insource labor from other countries. Mr. Gates implies that US workers are not willing to work IT anymore. He fails to mention why. Most college students do not wish to throw away 4 years of their lives (and thousands of dollars) on a career in an industry rife with outsourcing. Mr. Gates acknowledges that most US companies are not interested in offering competitive wages, so the only solution in his eyes is to import coders willing to work for a lot less (or, outsource). This has nothing to do with innovation and everything to do with creating downward pressure on IT costs.
This issue has reached a crisis point. Computer science employment is growing by nearly 100,000 jobs annually. But at the same time studies show that there is a dramatic decline in the number of students graduating with computer science degrees. The United States provides 65,000 temporary H-1B visas each year to make up this shortfall — not nearly enough to fill open technical positions. Permanent residency regulations compound this problem. Temporary employees wait five years or longer for a green card. During that time they can't change jobs, which limits their opportunities to contribute to their employer's success and overall economic growth.
Interesting read, but this argument is not new and is based on a distortion of truth. If US companies simply offered fair pay, good benefits, and a general sense of job security to US citizens there would be no reason to insource labor from other countries. Mr. Gates implies that US workers are not willing to work IT anymore. He fails to mention why. Most college students do not wish to throw away 4 years of their lives (and thousands of dollars) on a career in an industry rife with outsourcing. Mr. Gates acknowledges that most US companies are not interested in offering competitive wages, so the only solution in his eyes is to import coders willing to work for a lot less (or, outsource). This has nothing to do with innovation and everything to do with creating downward pressure on IT costs.
Sun Releases ODF plugin for Microsoft Office 50
Verunks writes "Microsoft Word users now can easily import and export to the OpenDocument Format. The StarOffice 8 Conversion Technology Preview, a plug-in for Microsoft Word 2003 that allows users of Microsoft Word 2003 to read, edit and save to the OpenDocument Format (ODF) is now available"
