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Education

Open Textbooks Win Over Publishers In CA 216

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-put-them-in-a-wiki dept.
Unequivocal writes "Recently California's Governor announced a free digital textbook competition. The results of that competition were announced today. Many traditional publishers submitted textbooks in this digital textbook competition in CA as well as open publishers. An upstart nonprofit organization named CK-12 contributed a number of textbooks (all free and open source material). 'Of the 16 free digital textbooks for high school math and science reviewed, ten meet at least 90 percent of California's standards. Four meet 100 percent of standards.' Three of those recognized as 100% aligned to California standards were from CK-12 and one from H. Jerome Keisler. None of the publisher's submissions were so recognized. CK-12 has a very small staff, so this is a great proof of the power of open textbooks and open educational resources."
Handhelds

Palm Pre Is Out, Time For Discussion 283

Posted by timothy from the post-pre-is-later dept.
caffiend666 writes "Palm Pre is out, let's discuss the status and compare stories. The first day seems to have gone as well as expected, with many selling out before noon. I bought the second at the local Sprint store, and so far I like it. Much more one-hand friendly than the iPhone. I haven't gotten the main apps to sync with Linux, but the media portion functions much like a thumb-drive with my Fedora-8 Linux system. For the Pre-verts out there, here's some Palm Pre dismantling pictures."

Comment Re:Why would my Mom upgrade to Snow Leopard? (Score 1) 256

by Corrado (#27921833) Attached to: Apple Freezes Snow Leopard APIs

Well, with past major versions of Mac OS X we at least got some newfangled toys to play with (the Dock, Spotlight, Spaces, etc.) But with SL, we get APIs and back end stuff. That may be neat and all but it doesn't do much for me, immediately.

Now granted it will be faster and more stable, which is a good reason to upgrade, but I'm not sure its a good enough reason to pay $100. Even the "enterprise" features wont do much for the average person. I guess Apple is just using SL to get a foot into the corporate world, what with all the "enterprise" features and all. Oh well.

BTW: This "My Mom" argument may be moot after all if SL can't run on PowerPC machines. Her computer is only 2 years old and is probably one of the last PPC iMac they offered. It would suck royally if they left the PPC out in the cold so soon. :(

Comment Why would my Mom upgrade to Snow Leopard? (Score 2, Interesting) 256

by Corrado (#27920431) Attached to: Apple Freezes Snow Leopard APIs

My biggest problem with this upgrade is that it seems more like a Windows Service Pack than a true Mac OS X upgrade. Are we going to have to pay for "new APIs" and "multi-core processing"?

How does all this help the average user (i.e. my Mom)? WooHoo! They are building a YouTube app and you can record directly off the screen! Big whoop. You can do that today without too much trouble with third party applications. Is the Mac OS X user interface and built-in apps already so perfect that they can't find things to improve?

I'm usually a pretty big Mac fan-boy but I just can't seem to get excited about this one. Hell, I'm even thinking (seriously) about ditching my iPhone and getting a Palm Pre. sigh...how the world is changing. Has Apple lost it's Mojo?

Comment Re:Couldn't agree more (Score 1) 397

by Corrado (#25942079) Attached to: iPhones, FStream and the Death of Satellite Radio

I agree with most of your comments and am in the same boat with regard to time in my car. Our new Honda mini-van came with a free 3 month subscription and it was nice to have on our yearly summer vacation. But we most definitely had to listen to commercials during our drive and that really bothered me. Its kinda like watching 20 minutes of commercials before the movie I paid $12 to watch starts. I just feel "cheated" by having to pay *and* listen to commercials.

The other issue is quality, or lack there of. I don't know if it is just the built-in Honda receiver or what but the quality of the music coming out of satellite radio is just not up to par. It sounds like its been compressed out the a$$! Does everyone hear this or is it just me? :)
Software

Submission + - US Court Rules Software Patents Invalid (itexaminer.com) 1

Submitted by
Corrado
Corrado writes: "WooHoo!! It looks like software patents may be a thing of the past, at least most of them. A story over at IT Examiner has a great overview of how there will be specific testing procedures to determine how patentable a process is and how this decision is almost a complete reversal of the State Street Bank judgement of 1998. Of course, more details can be found over at Groklaw. I'm guessing Amazon is not real happy right about now — One Click Purchasing anyone?"

Feed Engadget: iPod touch 2G - first hands-on (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video


digg_url = 'http://digg.com/apple/iPod_touch_2G_first_hands_on'; We just got some hands-on time with the new iPod touch, and we're really feeling this one. Jury's still out on the new nano, but the second-gen touch is a marked improvement over the first gen model. The WiFi antenna looks much better integrated, the speaker doesn't sound like complete trash despite not even having any speaker holes, and the thing is crazy thin. Like, really, really thin.

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Security

Submission + - Yubikey (yubico.com)

Submitted by
Corrado
Corrado writes: "Yubico has developed a hardware based security token that looks very promising. Its essentially a single key USB keyboard with a built-in RSA generator. Plug it into your USB port, touch the top "button" and it will output a 48 byte string that contains a unique ID + some random data. This is sent to a server (initially inside Yubico) to be decoded and converted into a security token that can be used in various ways. As of right now it allows you to log into Windows, ActiveDirectory and various Web 2.0 applications including OpenID. But there is an SDK and you can hook it into your own apps. The most exciting news by far is that the entire thing is completely open source and you can run your own Yubikey server if you wish!"
Businesses

Submission + - Priming the markets for tomorrow's big crash (harpers.org)

Submitted by
Corrado
Corrado writes: "Harper's Magazine has a great article on the financial "bubbles" of the past, present, and future. It starts off explaining how the Great Depression was started and how it relates to the Internet Bubble of 2000 and the current Housing troubles. I'm not a finance type of person and yet I was able to understand the content of this article and it really helped me to realize the trouble we're in. If you don't quite know whats going on today and you want to be informed about tomorrow this article is your friend."

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