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OLPC needs high quality software on its machines, but the amount of abuse ladled out over OLPC's developer community is incredible. First they are called "terrorists", now it's "fundamentalists". In a new article, Negroponte suggests firing all of OLPC's existing GNU/Linux developers and replacing them with developers who can somehow make Sugar run on Windows. Any competent manager would realize this fanciful porting effort spells nothing but years of delay; Negroponte apparently exists in a dream world where Microsoft is a competent software company which both cares about the world's children and plays nicely with its smaller "partners". Email Nicholas Negroponte or OLPC's Board of Directors and let them know this time OLPC's gone too far!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080422/ap_on_hi_te/hundred_dollar_laptop

An anonymous reader writes "In a new article, Nicholas Negroponte says, "Eventually Windows might be the sole operating system" of the OLPC. With the recent departure of Walter Bender and Mary Lou Jepson, OLPC's board seems to have completely abandoned its "Free and Open Source" core principle. A recent post to OLPC's development list indicated that trouble with the current software stack was part of the problem: time to step up and code (if you can) or yell (if you can't) if you want to keep OLPC free! It's clear that the developers want to keep the stack free; how can we convince OLPC's management?"
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hXa0O9XLMsWfaqt-sI9FqFy2IewgD9074MH82

An anonymous reader writes "Google claims that it's motto is "Do No Evil" — but they sure have an evil NDA! In order to be considered for employment there, they require you to sign an agreement which forbids you to "mention or imply the name of Google" in public ever again. Further, you can't tell anyone you interviewed there, or what they offered you, and you possibly sign away your rights to reverse engineer any of Google's code ever. And this NDA never expires. Luckily, someone has posted the contents of the NDA before he signed it and had to say silent forever."

food4thought writes "Economic times is running an article where its reported that Google had an agreement with Mumbai police to improve the communication between Google and Mumbai police. Apparently this agreement came to light after some unfavorable remarks against the likes of Chhatrapati Shivaji , Dr. B R Ambedkar , and politician Bal Thackeray. According the article, Google will block forums and communities with defamatory or inflammatory content and will provide the IP addresses to the police from which the content was generated.

Their this new agreement with police raises few questions about free speech, Googles role in enabling free speech and their "Don't be evil" motto :

a)Is this the beginning of new service by Google i.e. Google Police, whereby instead of searching some text on web, Google has also started searching people which some country's police or politicians believe are criminals?
b)Isn't this against one of the basic assumptions of free speech of Web and also of a democratic country like India ?
c)Isn't this against Google's "Don't be evil" slogan. Or is this a slogan by Google for others action and not for Google's own action?
d)Is this the beginning of web censorship by Google in India, similar to what it's doing in China?"

Verunks writes "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today launched BadVista.org, a campaign with a twofold mission of exposing the harms inflicted on computer users by the new Microsoft Windows Vista and promoting free software alternatives that respect users' security and privacy rights.
"Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We'll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care", said FSF program administrator John Sullivan."

This Monday, I spent the day in or about my car.

I took a friend to Logan to fly to Florida. From there it was an immediate jump to Peabody to get my Cooper its first oil change.

First off... it was awesome. I handed him my key, and he put it on this thing and said, "You have 13433 miles on your car." I was unaware that my KEY carried that information around. GLEE!

Anyway, so it was two hours of waiting in the comfy chairs with the 60" plasma screen and the free coffee, soda, and wi-fi. :) Long wait because I had some light brake noise and needed an alignment.

So, they tell me the brake noise is probably a bit of rust on the rotors, nothing to worry about, and to clear it up I should so some high-speed ABS stops. Yes. That's right. Just lock the brakes at fifty.

Who couldn't love that? :)

--
EVAR.

Anyway, on the way home, I came up behind an ambulance that seemed to be weaving a bit. Keeping it in the lane, but not on a tight course. No one in the back, so not like the driver was fending off massive squirts of blood, or something.

As I passed, I glanced over to see the driver.
WATCHING.
A.
MOVIE.
On a flip-down 7" widescreen LCD.
WHILE.
DRIVING.

OMG.
WTF.
BBQ.

This is an emergency services vehicle. Presumably the driver was a trained EMT or paramedic. If I had been thinking clearly after witnessing this event, I would have grabbed the plate number, time, and company of the ambulance, and reported it.

Now, I answer the phone while driving. I have occasionally sent text messages while driving. I sometimes take pictures while driving. These are admittedly actions that take my attention from my driving. None of them, however, were performed in anything like highway traffic. Nor are any of them designed to require my full visual attention.

Gah!

skelter writes "I have been lamenting with friends in the industry about interviewing woes and the candidates that we find. Consider a hypothetical job candidate comes in after some how making it through screening. In the team technical interview they prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that not only is he (or she) not as adequate as he thinks he is, but has demonstrated that he is a danger to any code base. Do you tell them? Quietly step away, usher them out and say nothing? Play with them on the whiteboard the way your cat plays with injured mice? Should you leave them as their own warning to others? Is there any obligation to guide them to gaining real experience? Can you give them any advice or is it all liability?"

An anonymous reader writes "Adopt 10 good habits that improve your UNIX command line efficiency — and break away from bad usage patterns in the process. This article takes you step-by-step through several good, but too often neglected, techniques for command-line operations. Learn about common errors and how to overcome them, so you can learn exactly why these UNIX habits are worth picking up."

ueberbill writes "Tired of your neighbor's see-it-from-space nativity scenes? Don't understand what's up with those freakin blow-up Christmas displays? Fight back with your very own Flying Spaghetti Monster Christmas Light! The fine folks at BSAlert show the way: http://www.bsalert.com/artsearch.php?fn=2&as=1586& dt=1"

As hysterical as American media and politicians can get over 'violent' videogames, the folks making games in Germany have it a whole lot worse. Tim Partlett (a developer at Crytek) shared his experience with the Quarter to Three forums, describing what it's like to be raided for making a videogame. He describes what it's like to be hated for your job, and laments the attitude of the nation towards his chosen line of work. From the article: "At the time of the (2002 Erfurt school) shooting, we were already in development of Far Cry ... We were just across the state border from Erfurt in northern Bavaria. Tensions in the region were high ... In 2004 the Bavarian authorities sent in the state troopers... When the small tech team appeared to inspect our computers, they were accompanied by over one hundred flak-jacketed riot police, all armed with Heckler and Koch sub-machine guns. It was a total overreaction... They arrived first thing in the morning, and kicked down our doors. They even raided the nearby private residences ... I was caught just outside the office ... We were all shepherded into our Mo-Cap room, and there we were forced to remain until questioned, prevented from leaving by dozens of armed guards."

tekrat writes "We've had PC case mods aplenty. They are now boring unless they are really off the wall, but hey, what about your PC's accessories? Here's a guy that decided to modify the case to his new bluetooth optical mouse, and house it in something much more classy — a SUN type 3 optical mouse. Now all he needs to do is modify the keyboard as well. Not only is the link a decent hardware hack, it shows a bit of computing history as well. That optical mouse with the bright red LED in it you're using right now was invented before most of the people reading this story were born!"

jcoleman writes "Computerworld has confirmed a 2004 email in which Jim Allchin, Windows development chief, stated, "I would buy a Mac if I didn't work for Microsoft." Ouch. He attempts to excuse his comment in his blog. The email surfaced in the Iowa antitrust trial."