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Comment Re:paid to the canard? (Score 1) 151

by ScorpFromHell (#30144756) Attached to: MIT Grad To Make Digital "SixthSense" Open Source
The free dictionary tells me that " put paid to " means "to consider something closed or completed; to mark or indicate that something is no longer important or pending". And that " canard " means "An unfounded or false, deliberately misleading story." So am assuming the author wants to say that the opening up of SixthSense via an open source license will stop the false stories that open source does not lead to innovation.
Government

Submission + - Alan Turing Apology Campaign Grows

Submitted by chrb
chrb writes: Several British news sources have recently reported on the growing campaign that calls for an apology to Alan Turing for his persecution by the British government. The petition to the Prime Minister was started by John Graham-Cumming, who has also written to the Queen requesting a Knighthood for Turing, but admits that a pardon is "unlikely", saying "The most important thing to me is that people hear about Alan Turing and realise his incredible impact on the modern world, and how terrible the impact of prejudice was on him".
Programming

Submission + - Thousands call for Turing apology (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
ScorpFromHell
ScorpFromHell writes: "Alan Turing, a hero of most slashdot readers, was forced to die an inglorious death due to his sexual preferences. "In 1952 Turing was prosecuted under the gross indecency act after admitting to a sexual relationship with a man. Two years later he killed himself. ... Alan Turing was given experimental chemical castration as a "treatment" and his security privileges were removed, meaning he could not continue work for the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)."

BBC reports that now people want the government to give an apology & is asking the British crown to bestow a posthumous knighthood upon him.

The online petition can be found here [only British citizens or Residents]."
Books

Submission + - Alleged plagiarism in Chris Andersen's "Free&# (vqronline.org)

Submitted by
ScorpFromHell
ScorpFromHell writes: "Blogger Waldo Jaquith alleges in his blog that Chris Andersen of 'The Long Tail' fame & Wired magazine's editor-in-chief has apparently plagiarized content from various sources, predominantly Wikipedia, without attribution for his soon to be published book:

In the course of reading Chris Anderson's new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price (Hyperion, $26.99), for a review in an upcoming issue of VQR, we have discovered almost a dozen passages that are reproduced nearly verbatim from uncredited sources. ... Most of the passages, but not all, come from Wikipedia.

"
Microsoft

Submission + - Huge Twitter Campaign against Outlook '10 renderer (fixoutlook.org)

Submitted by
omnichad
omnichad writes: "The Email Standards Project just launched a massive Twitter campaign, begging Microsoft not to use the Word rendering engine in Outlook 2010. As it stands, Word 2010 will continue the tradition of painful HTML email design for those of us who create HTML emails for a living. Another several years of tables and almost no CSS support."

Comment 100MB for an OS+Browser+plugins!? (Score 1) 85

by ScorpFromHell (#27539859) Attached to: Leaked Pics of CrunchPad Elicit Progress Update
Is it only me who is surprised (because of ignorance) that the s/w footprint stands at 100MB, when evidently they just want to control the h/w & for an application they want only a browser? Well, for practical uses, the browser would need flash plugins, etc. and most obviously would need addons if the browser supports it. When a Linux distro like DamnSmallLinux provides much more than a browser in just 50MB why do these guys need double of that?!
Education

Submission + - Creating Mailers to educate laymen about FLOSS?

Submitted by
ScorpFromHell
ScorpFromHell writes: "As part of a series of activities of a FLOSS (Free/Libre & Open Source Software) based voluntary group to help propagate higher quality of education & discourage software piracy in the rural as well as urban areas of India, we came to a conclusion that the best way to garner more volunteers for our group would be educate the 40K + employees in our organization about FLOSS & its merits in general & in Education in particular.

That is when one of our colleagues who doesn't understand a bit of FLOSS but organizes a group that successfully helps many orphanages & old ages homes suggested us to first create awareness about FLOSS. He is a person who has garnered support from a huge percentage of the employees and knows their pulse unlike us 'nerds'. :)

His suggestion is to start a mail campaign within the organization that would explain the basics of FLOSS & then about its various benefits and finally how is it useful in education & why is it bad to pirate software, especially software like windows 98! Catch is that it should contain ateast 40% images he says. People don't want to read a lot he says & I believe him, because he uses images himself to reach out to the organization for more volunteers & contributions.

Am looking forward for ideas, suggestions & resources which we could use to create the mailers. Have you ever created such campaigns to educate laymen about FLOSS & its benefits?"
Data Storage

Submission + - Dell Plans to Acquire EqualLogic (techluver.com)

Submitted by
Tech.Luver
Tech.Luver writes: "Dell has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire EqualLogic, a leading provider of high-performance iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions uniquely optimized for virtualization. The acquisition will strengthen Dell's product and channel leadership in simplifying and virtualizing IT for customers globally. iSCSI SAN technology represents the fastest growing part of the storage business. "Our customers will be dealing with the largest increase in data we have seen in our history over the next few years," said Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO, Dell. "Leading the iSCSI revolution will help Dell accelerate IT simplification and virtualization and will drive the Dell value proposition into more areas of the enterprise storage business," Mr. Dell said. ( http://techluver.com/2007/11/05/dell-plans-to-acquire-equallogic/ )"
Education

Submission + - Cheap Linux Laptops Challenge OLPC (itworld.com)

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "Analysts warn that falling prices of commercial Linux-based laptops may lure buyers away from One Laptop Per Child's (OLPC's) XO laptop, which will cost $200 when it launches Nov. 12. 'People like the standard stuff, and if you can get it for nearly the same price, why go with the de-featured product?' says Roger Kay, founder and president with Endpoint Technologies Associates.

Responding to questions about price competition, Walter Bender, president of software and content at OLPC said, 'OLPC's goal is to get connected laptops to kids, not particular connected laptops to kids. If the commercial sector will provide those tools, more power to them.'"
Education

Submission + - Tips for a techie entering social work (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
ScorpFromHell
ScorpFromHell writes: "I have been dabbling with FLOSS (the L is for the Europeans) for about 9-10 years now and am an ardent supporter of it.

Driven by a few reports I read while doing some research for my blog post "Satyagrah for Swatantra Software in India", I have decided to start a corps of FLOSS enthusiasts within my employer's organization who would help the rural & urban poor of India via ICT & FLOSS to educate the children & make them self dependant.

We are called "Prajña : Cognizant FLOSS Corps". Prajña, in Sanskrit, stands for wisdom, intelligence which we try to impart & also comes closest to the translation of Cognizant. Cognizant, btw, is my employer & this corps is also aimed at contributing efforts to fulfil our Corporate Social Responsibility.

There are groups who are involved in feeding the kids to keep them alive, but I wanted to make a difference to the future of those kids who will manage to live. I believe that the greatest charity we can do in this day & age is to give somebody a job or teach a job, so that they are self sufficient as well as strive to provide employment to others too. And this self sufficiency is what will provide actual freedom to all our poor.

I have been a techie all along & this is the first time I am entering into social work. What will you suggest a techie newly turned into a social worker/activist?"
Microsoft

Submission + - OOXML won't get fast-track ISO standardization (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by realdodgeman
realdodgeman writes: International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) recently held an internal poll to determine the position that the United States should take on Microsoft's request for Office Open XML (OOXML) approval. With eight votes in favor, seven against, and one abstention, the group was one vote short of the nine votes required for approving OOXLM ISO standardization. This will mean a huge slowdown to the standardization to the OOXML format.
Security

Submission + - Facebook wants to collect users' email passwords

Submitted by ScottSCY
ScottSCY writes: It seems that Facebook has added a new feature that allows users to find friends in their email address books who have accounts on Facebook. The only thing you have to do is provide them your email address (they take gmail, yahoo, msn, aol, and more) and your email account password. They will then retrieve your address book. Clearly this is a huge security issue, but don't worry, Facebook says "Facebook won't email anyone without your permission, and we won't store your email or password." Well that's a relief.

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