Illbay - Slashdot User

Mormons Solicit Open Source Software Projects-> 0

Submitted by Illbay on Wednesday October 15 2008, @11:58AM

Illbay writes "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints ("The Mormons"), headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, has relied on in-house software and web applications development ongoing for some time. Now, however, they have opened up the development to the general membership, asking for volunteers with "time and talents" to contribute to open software project development.

The Church has a tradition of lay leadership, and nearly all the offices and assignments within the Church from local to the worldwide administration are filled by volunteers who are "called" to their work. So it isn't surprising that development of software to streamline the Church's operations would also be done on a volunteer basis.

The LDSTechWiki currently has projects listed to assist in Home Teaching, where assigned congregation members are responsible to act as liaison between members and the congregational leadership, and applications for multimedia distance learning. The portal also solicits ideas for development projects."
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Spain to Extend Full Human Rights to Apes 0

Submitted by

Illbay

on Thursday June 26 2008, @10:11AM

Illbay writes "Following the decision by the Pope to recognize the possibility that evolution may have led to establishment of humankind, the Spanish parliament is set to recognize the rights of "freedom and liberty" to all great apes:

Spain's parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.

Parliament's environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.

"This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity," said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project.
One must conclude that, given the very strong hate speech laws in place in Europe, it will no longer be allowed to say "!Consigue tus manos frente a mí, maldito mono sucio!" ("Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!")"