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Comment Re:It's an Exclusionary Club (Score 4, Interesting) 606

Essentially this.

I had a prof who would do all his lectures & demos from the command line.
Need to write a short C program to demonstrate forking? Boom! Into vim and coding up a basic example in a minute or two.
Typo in his LaTeX slides? Boom! Switch over to fix it, then recompile the slides, and on with the lecture.
Student asks a question about a command line argument? Boom! Man pages up on the big screen.

It was a little intimidating to see this CLI master hopping around typing crazy little combinations of letters and making magic appear on the screen, but at the same time it was inspiring. It was an example of what we could aspire towards.
The Almighty Buck

Image Lifted From Twitter Leads to $1.2M Payout For Haitian Photog 242

magic maverick writes "A U.S. federal jury has ordered Agence France-Presse and Getty Images to pay $1.2 million to a Daniel Morel, Haitian photographer, for their unauthorized use of photographs, from the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The images, posted to Twitter, were taken by an editor at AFP and then provided to Getty. A number of other organizations had already settled out of court with the photographer."

Comment Photo Booth (Score 4, Interesting) 246

I made a photo booth which was installed inside of an old phone booth in a local cafe for a new-media art festival this past summer. I used a Raspberry Pi, a usb webcam, a big red button connected via GPIO, a coin slot connected via GPIO, and an ethernet cable running to the router in the back room. People would insert their dime or two nickles and the button would light up. Pressing the button would take a photo. The Pi then uploaded the photos to a website which looped through all of the photos taken during the festival. People could visit the website on their own devices, but there were also a few screens set up around the town in shop windows displaying the photos. The program to do all this was a simple python script with a loop.

You can still see the photos taken here: http://donttakemypicture.org/
The site uses javascript to keep checking for new photos and to change the photo displayed for you every few seconds.

Submission + - Slackware Linux 14.1 Released

An anonymous reader writes: The world's oldest Linux distribution currently being maintained has released yet another version! According to the official announcement, Slackware 14.1 includes the following: "Slackware 14.1 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.10.1, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and KDE 4.10.5, a recent stable release of the 4.10.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment." Installation ISOs can be found here.

Submission + - Slackware 14.1 Released

shadowknot writes: Patrick Volkerding announced the release of Slackware 14.1 today: "Yes, it is that time again! After well over a year of planning, development, and testing, the Slackware Linux Project is proud to announce the latest stable release of the longest running distribution of the Linux operating system, Slackware version 14.1!" The latest release features a 3.10.17 kernel as well as the KDE 4.10.5 and Xfce 4.10.1 desktop environments. Slackware 14.1 also marks the first major release to feature MariaDB in favor of MySQL in the light of ongoing licensing concerns with the latter.

Comment News for nerds? (Score 4, Interesting) 267

The Slashdot tagline used to be: "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters". I no longer see this on the front page, and it's not even in the page title. A conversation about what Slashdot is, what it used to be, and what it's becoming, notwithstanding, I would expect the 'Nerd' option to be the highest, as the site is (or at the very least, used to be) 'news for nerds'.

Submission + - ISS laptops switching from Windows XP to Debian

SgtKeeling writes: Dozens of Windows XP laptops on the International Space Station are being switched to Debian 6. A manager involved in the switch said, "We needed an operating system that was stable and reliable – one that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust or adapt, we could." The Linux Foundation provided two development courses to help with developing apps related specifically to the needs of the ISS.
In 2008 Slashdot noted a story about a virus on the ISS laptops which had come up on an astronaut's USB flash drive.

Submission + - Android Jelly Bean Hits 33% Adoption, ICS Falls To 25%, Gingerbread Still On 36%

An anonymous reader writes: Google today updated its Platform Versions Web page for Android, and it looks like the latest version is finally on its way to snatching first place. Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) and Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) are steadily growing and together have surpassed the 30 percent mark, while Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), and the rest of prior Android versions are either down or flat.
Mars

4-Billion-Pixel Panorama View From Curiosity Rover 101

A reader points out that there is a great new panorama made from shots from the Curiosity Rover. "Sweep your gaze around Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover is currently exploring, with this 4-billion-pixel panorama stitched together from 295 images. ...The entire image stretches 90,000 by 45,000 pixels and uses pictures taken by the rover's two MastCams. The best way to enjoy it is to go into fullscreen mode and slowly soak up the scenery — from the distant high edges of the crater to the enormous and looming Mount Sharp, the rover's eventual destination."
Space

Submission + - New Comet Discovered—May Become "One of Brightest in History" (nationalgeographic.com)

intellitech writes: From the article: 'If astronomers' early predictions hold true, the holidays next year may hold a glowing gift for stargazers—a superbright comet, just discovered streaking near Saturn. Even with powerful telescopes, comet 2012 S1 (ISON) is now just a faint glow in the constellation Cancer. But the ball of ice and rocks might become visible to the naked eye for a few months in late 2013 and early 2014—perhaps outshining the moon, astronomers say. The comet is already remarkably bright, given how far it is from the sun, astronomer Raminder Singh Samra said. What's more, 2012 S1 seems to be following the path of the Great Comet of 1680, considered one of the most spectacular ever seen from Earth.'

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