Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Advertising

Should Wikipedia Just Accept Ads Already? 608

Posted by CmdrTaco from the or-gimme-a-tote-bag dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Large images of Jimmy Wales have for weeks dominated each and every page on Wikipedia, making Wales arguably the single most visible individual on the planet. Now Molly McHugh writes that Wikipedia is once again pleading for user donations with banners across the top of its site with memos from purported authors and this week, Wales stepped up the shrillness of his rallying cry by adding the word 'Urgent' to his appeal. Wales attempted the same request for donations last year, and failed to meet the company's goal until Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar donated $2 million and Google stepped in with another $2 million gift to the foundation. This time around the foundation is approximately $7 million short of its 2010 fundraising goal, and Wikipedia analysts are saying the site would be better off with a marketing scheme as Alex Konanykhin of WikiExperts explains that the donations-only, no-commerce model restricts Wikipedia to relying exclusively on free volunteers, losing opportunities to involve qualified professionals who charge for their time in addition to the thirty staff members already on the Wikimedia payroll. 'Advertising is not cool. You're not as cool if you have advertising. But you know what else is not cool? Begging,' writes Jeff Otte. 'We do not care if there is advertising on Wikipedia, so long as it is not ridiculously invasive. So please, replace your sensitive mug with a Steak 'n' Shake ad or something, and start making advertisers pay for people to have stuff for free and not feel bad about it. It's the Internet's way.'"
Software

BitTorrent Client Offers P2P Without Central Tracking 218

Posted by timothy from the nodist-colony dept.
Shiwei writes "While BitTorrent is the most popular P2P protocol, it still relies on several centralized points for users to find the files they are looking. There have been several attempts at making BitTorrent more decentralized, and the latest Tribler 5.3 client is the first to offer the BitTorrent experience without requiring central trackers or search engines. Tribler offers some very interesting technologies; the latest version enables users to search and download files from inside the client. Plenty of other clients offer search features, including the ever-popular Torrent, but Tribler's results come from other peers rather than from a dedicated search engine. Users can search and download content without a server ever getting involved; everything is done among peers, without the need of a BitTorrent tracker or search indexer."
Power

Video Shows Why Recharging Kills Batteries 111

Posted by timothy from the batteries-all-suck dept.
sciencehabit writes with this except from Science: "You may not give a lot of thought to what happens inside the battery of your laptop or cell phone, but to judge from this video, it's not a dull place. The battery in question is a miniature rechargeable lithium-ion device, and the clip shows what happens when it is charged. As lithium ions flow from the positively charged cathode into the 200-nanometre diameter wires of tin oxide that make up the negatively charged anode, the nanowires writhe and bulge, causing them to expand up to 2.5 fold. The wires also change structure from a neatly ordered crystal to a disordered glassy material. These distortions may explain why such batteries ultimately wear down. Knowing more about the process may help researchers develop longer lasting, and perhaps much smaller, batteries in the future."
Government

USDA Services Moving To the Microsoft Cloud 146

Posted by samzenpus from the you-got-microsoft-all-over-my-government dept.
JoltinJoe77 writes "Not to be outdone by Google, who recently announced an e-mail deal with the GSA, Microsoft is pressing forward with a migration of its own. 'The US Department of Agriculture is ready to go live with Microsoft's cloud services. In the next four weeks, the agency will move 120,000 users to Microsoft Online services, including e-mail, Web conferencing, document collaboration, and instant messaging.'"
Censorship

Is Twitter Censoring Wikileaks Trends? 191

Posted by CmdrTaco from the or-just-sick-of-it dept.
comforteagle writes "There are suspicions coming to the surface this morning that Twitter may be censoring WikiLeaks-related tweets from forming a trending topic. Why is still unclear at this point, as during Iranian protests a short while ago Twitter appeared to be in the fray of helping to spread the word. As of this morning it appears that Twitter may have some explaining to do. One of Twitter's engineers has chimed in over the weekend, but some aren't convinced."
Cellphones

Keeping Google's Consumer OS Options Straight 97

Posted by timothy from the who-would-ever-want-local-storage dept.
According to Engadget, among others, Google is expected to show off the state of the Chrome OS on Tuesday of this week, and perhaps even to show off a netbook running the cloud-centric system. Since many of the things that Chrome OS does are also within the scope of Google's other consumer OS, Android, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has written a guide to the differences, as he sees them, between Android and Chrome OS.

Comment Re:They're artificial limitations. That's the prob (Score 1) 1634

by DieNadel (#30935692) Attached to: iPad Is a "Huge Step Backward"

It only works when the average consumer is knowledgeable and educated.

The case here is that the people who are not buying this, because they do not agree with the artificial restrictions Apple has wrapped around their product, don't constitute a large enough number to hurt Apple.

And since the money is flowing to they coffers anyway, the industry gets a kind of green light to go and cripple more products.

"Vote with your money" only works when a large number of people know and care enough to actually buy an alternative product (assuming there is an alternative product available.)

Comment Re:He deserves it (Stallman) (Score 5, Insightful) 541

by DieNadel (#30174752) Attached to: Linus Torvalds For Nobel Peace Prize?

My thoughts exactly. I once saw Stallman talking about what he envisions for GPL and freedom of software in the future, and it really looks like he's aiming at a more collaborative and free society. Not only that, but he has taken positive and large steps in getting there, by turning copyright against itself and actively advocating free software and its benefits.

Genius indeed.

I see it as unfortunate that he doesn't get the recognition he deserves. If he were more "accepted", his ideas would probably have an even stronger impact.

Comment Re:Cool (Score 1) 513

by DieNadel (#28956149) Attached to: Goodbye Apple, Hello Music Production On Ubuntu

For any really specific job you will need to customise Linux. Yes I know this is beyond the capabilities of most simpletons but if it is done (by someone else perhaps) it will result in far superior performance and results. The ability to customise Linux into either a general purpose or highly specialised OS is the strength of Linux.

And here Ubuntu Studio comes in handy. On a plain vanilla Ubuntu, one can simply apt-get ubuntustudio packages and get every customization done for them. It installs the main applications (audio-wise it's great) and even configures a real-time kernel.
Games

Unusual Physics Engine Game Ported To Linux 117

Posted by Soulskill from the three-cheers dept.
christian.einfeldt writes "Halloween has come early for Linux-loving gamers in the form of the scary Penumbra game trilogy, which has just recently been ported natively to GNU-Linux by the manufacturer, Frictional Games. The Penumbra games, named Overture, Black Plague and Requiem, are first-person survival horror and physics puzzle games which challenge the player to survive in a mine in Greenland which has been taken over by a monstrous infection/demon/cthulhu-esque thing. The graphics, sounds, and plot are all admirable in a scary sort of way. The protagonist is an ordinary human with no particular powers at all, who fumbles around in the dark mine fighting zombified dogs or fleeing from infected humans. But the game is remarkable for its physics engine — rather than just bump and acquire, the player must use the mouse to physically turn knobs and open doors; and the player can grab and throw pretty much anything in the environment. The physics engine drives objects to fly and fall exactly as one would expect. The porting of a game with such a deft physics engine natively to Linux might be one of the most noteworthy events for GNU-Linux gamers since the World of Goo Linux port."

Slashdot Top Deals

UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver lightning with a laserbeam kicker. -- Michael Jay Tucker

Close