mincognito - Slashdot User

Submission + - OLPC a hit in remote Peruvian village (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by

mrcgran

on Sunday December 23, 2007 @08:20PM

mrcgran writes: "Chicago Tribune is running a story about the effects of OLPC on a remote village in Peru: "Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months ago. At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits. At night, they're dozing off in front of them — if they've managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines. Peru made the single biggest order to date — more than 272,000 machines — in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed." A detailed log has been kept and a youtube video is also available."

Submission + - OpenOffice vs MS Office 2007, a sad day for OO

Submitted by

NexTechNews

on Sunday April 29, 2007 @11:14PM

NexTechNews writes: "With advocates of OpenSource bashing on Microsoft Office 2007 for its high price tag and supposed bloatedness, one blogger decided to take the plunge and put the latest from Microsoft and the Latest from OpenOffice and put the 2 systems to the test. The most astonishing test was probably the simplest possible, just opening up some OOXML and ODF format files.

The result though might put some opensource viewers to shame as Microsoft Office not only opened the files 5 times faster than the opensource counterpart, it also managed to use 4 times LESS memory than open office 2.2 did. The reviews show that OpenOffice has definitly made leaps and bounds since its previous versions, but its in no way ready to outperform MS Office 2007.

This comes at a critical time as many offices are deciding whether the upgrade to MS office is worthwhile when free alternatives exist. But the review shows what many don't see, while office integrates a new ribbon and may look like its bloated microsoft managed to keep performance leaps ahead of its opensource competitor, while still including a rich UI with new things like the Citation Manager that OpenOffice 2.2 just flat out doesn't have a counterpart for."

Submission + - Tom's Hardware Guide acquired by Best of Media

Submitted by

Marco Polo

on Monday April 16, 2007 @05:03AM

Marco Polo writes: "From the horses mouth itself: TG Publishing, the company behind Tom's Hardware Guide, has been acquired by the independent French publisher Best of Media for an undisclosed sum, it has been announced this morning. The deal sees the Best of Media Group increase its revenues by 36% in 2006, with consolidated revenues of 10 million, and the company positioning itself as the only Pan-European alternative to Cnet Networks."

Feed Oz teen copyright vigilante dupes YouTube (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed on Monday April 16, 2007 @04:52AM

ABC clips pulled following letter from 'employee'

A 15-year-old Perth teenager persuaded YouTube to pull hundreds of clips by masquerading as an employee of state broadcasting outfit the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Reuters reports.

Submission + - Microsoft Urges Review of Google-DoubleClick Deal

Submitted by

zClintzK

on Monday April 16, 2007 @04:21AM

zClintzK writes: "From this article in the New York Times. Microsoft fears this will hurt competition. They are also worried that Google is trying to collect too much of our personal information. AT&T, another consumer advocacy group, has also joined Microsoft in this struggle."

Feed Teen Fakes Out Google With DMCA Notices On A Show Producers Were Happy To Have O (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed on Monday April 16, 2007 @03:52AM

With all the stories about TV execs trying to get their content off of YouTube, here's one that's a bit... different. Apparently, the makers of a TV show in Australia were perfectly happy with the free promotion they were getting from fans putting clips on YouTube. However, a teenager decided to take the matter into his own hands and sent a bogus DMCA takedown notice to Google -- who proceeded to pull the clips and warn those who uploaded them. This raises all sorts of issues. Filing a bogus DMCA takedown notice on content you don't own is against the law -- though, it seems unlikely anyone is going to go after this kid. Still, it does raise questions about the process by which Google follows through on a takedown notice -- and makes you wonder if anyone could just force them to take down just about any video. While some networks are recognizing that letting fans promote their shows for them helps build up a larger audience for the actual TV programming (and its ads), at some point you have to wonder if the networks that are too confused to figure this out will simply try to "help out" the other networks and pull their content for them -- especially if leaving it up on YouTube shows that their own strategy is backfiring.

Gary Kasparov Arrested Over Political Fight 427

Posted by Zonk on Saturday April 14, 2007 @07:26PM from the more-active-than-chess dept.

geddes writes "World chess champion turned opposition leader Gary Kasparov was arrested this morning while leading an march through Moscow in opposition to Russian President Vladamir Putin. Kasporov is a leader of the 'Other Russia' coalition which has been banned by the government from appearing on TV, and had been denied a marching permit. From the New York Times: 'Essentially barred from access to television, members of Other Russia have embraced street protests as the only platform to voice their opposition ahead of parliamentary elections in December and presidential elections next March. Early this month, Mr. Kasyanov's and Mr. Kasparov's Web sites were blocked, though it was unclear by whom.' Kasparov was later released from detention, though he was still fined for participating in the event."

Submission + - US, Asia, Europe Ceding Web Dominance

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 14, 2007 @07:24PM

An anonymous reader writes: A new study shows that US, Asian, and Western European web presence is strongly declining. Newly internet-empowered countries are booming; many geographical regions are showing exponential growth, including Eastern Europe and South America. Chris Harrison explains: "Countries that have never been able to place a website in the top 500 are now pushing dozens of established websites out of this prestigious list. This trend is both recent (within the last two years) and accelerating. Interestingly, Asia is seeing it's presence eroded the fastest, especially China. Without Germany, Western Europe is stagnant, and US domains appears to be on a gradual but constant decline. The big winners are Eastern Europe (boasting a 500% increase in the last year alone), South America and a eclectic assortment of international domains."

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