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Class Teaches Nerds Social Skills 639

Posted by samzenpus from the geeks-need-love-too dept.
PeterAitch writes "According to Reuters, Potsdam University in Germany is now teaching social skills as part of their IT courses. This is intended to 'ease entry into the world of work'. The 440 students enrolled in the master's degree course will learn how to write flirtatious text messages and emails, impress people at parties and cope with rejection(s)." The class is taught by a superficial model, who will fall in love with the nerdiest student at the end of the semester after realizing that he is beautiful on the inside.
Censorship

Submission + - Czech EU Presidency a Disaster for the Internet? (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "The first details of the tech priorities of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union have emerged — and they don't look good. As well as "protecting" intellectual monopolies, the Czechs want to push through the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), build on the efforts of the preceding French Presidency (such as "Three Strikes and You're Out") and — of course — shield children from "illegal" content online. Could this be the worst EU presidency for the Internet so far?"
Microsoft

Submission + - Xbox 360 boots Ubuntu Linux

Submitted by curry684
curry684 writes: After a security hole was uncovered last month, it was only a matter of time before someone would succeed in booting a Linux distro on the system:

That's Ubuntu, running our favorite Mozilla Firefox web browser in the Gnome desktop environment, and a console window dumping the system's processor info, showing a sweet total of 3 Xenon CPUs running at an approximated 3192Mhz.
Video and screenshots are supplied for your leisure.
Novell

Submission + - De Icaza Pleads for Cooperation Between Mono, .Net

Submitted by
suka
suka writes: "In a recent interview with the online edition of the Austrian daily Newspaper "DER STANDARD", Mono project-lead Miguel de Icaza pleads for a cooperation between Mono and Microsofts .Net: 'I think that the deal should include a technical Mono/.NET collaboration, and even go as far as Microsoft recommending Mono for all of their developers looking at migration'. The whole interview has some other interesting bits, like de Icazas thoughts on an open sourced java and infos about upcomping versions of Mono."
Power

Submission + - Saudi oil production in trouble

Submitted by IamTheRealMike
IamTheRealMike writes: As one of the worlds most prolific producers of oil, Saudi Arabian production is of vital importance to maintaining our standard of living in the west. A new analysis from Stuart Staniford appears to show large, fast declines in production throughout 2006 that are uncorrelated with price, world events or OPECs own announced production cuts (in fact, no evidence for those cuts occurring is found at all). Given that the apparent steep decline (8%/year) matches the rates seen in other areas where horizontal drilling and water injection were used, and high prices give the Kingdom every incentive to produce, is this the beginning of the end for Saudi oil?
The Internet

Submission + - Book Publishers Agree to Online Browsing

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Random House & HarperCollins have agreed to allow book browsing and searching on all their books. From the article, "Book publishers are to trying to update their businesses as more young readers consume media via the Web, a trend that already has affected the music, movie and newspaper industries." Although this is a good step forward, I still have no way of searching the thomes of Robert Jordan (Tor) or any of the many standards of Penguin Classics. I am definitely looking forward to more publishers following suit. It's not that far of a stretch to imagine a person searching for a book, finding something else and then buying both books."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Making NetBSD Multiboot-Compatible

Submitted by
jmmv
jmmv writes: "The Multiboot Specification defines a protocol between boot loaders and operating systems' kernels with the basic aim to allow any compliant boot loader to launch any compliant OS. This simplifies the boot loader's tasks by reducing the amount of knowledge it must have of foreign OSes and, as a side effect, it also removes the burden of writing a custom boot loader for each OS. A while ago I modified the NetBSD's kernel to support this specification, which means that the upcoming 4.0 release will be easier to boot on any dual-boot system with Linux installed (assuming it uses GRUB). I've written an article, titled Making NetBSD Multiboot-Compatible, that provides an introduction to The Multiboot Specification and outlines the steps I took to adapt the NetBSD's kernel to follow it. This can give you enough interest and clues to modify your favourite operating system to also support this protocol."
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedia's Wales reverts himself on problem admin

Submitted by
ToiletDuck
ToiletDuck writes: "Wikipedia co-founder Jimbo Wales appears to have changed his mind concerning Essjay, the administrator who was caught lying about his academic credentials. Wales issued a statement today on his User Talk page requesting that EssJay voluntarily step down from his Wikipedia roles normally reserved for trusted users. Wales defended his earlier comment about EssJay, claiming 'I only learned this morning that EssJay used his false credentials in content disputes...I want to make it perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on.' Wales did not comment on whether EssJay would continue to serve in his paid position at Wikia, the for-profit cousin of Wikipedia."
GNOME

Submission + - 50 000 GNOME Linux desktops in Brazil

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: BitWay Computadores, EnabledPeople and IMTECH Brazil companies today announced that they made large PC desktops deployments for Computers for All Brazil federal government program. Ready PC solution provided by Bitway includes preinstalled Linux XP Desktop operating system developed by EnabledPeople and supported by IMTECH. Estimated month deployment is about 10000 desktops with 50000 desktops already delivered.

Full press release
The Internet

Submission + - The Pirate Bay launches 'Oscartorrents'

Submitted by gloom
gloom writes: After turning legal threats into entertainment and trying to create a new pirate state, what do you do next? You go for the gold of course. The Pirate Bay has launched oscartorrents.com — an easy-to-use torrent-site for finding good versions of this years Oscar nominees.

In their own words: "You haven't beaten us, so why not join us? Think of a new business model that doesn't involve overpriced pieces of plastic and skanky cinemas hawking cheap carbohydrates while relying on $6/hr projectionists who can't keep a film in focus — not to mention insulting your audiences by (to pick a few examples) surveilling us with nightvision glasses, searching bags, 30 minutes of commercials and bombarding us with ridiculous anti-piracy propaganda. Take a look at yourselves. Is it really any wonder we're winning?"

No lack of cohones in Sweden, that's for sure.

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