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Submission + - New OpenOffice.org Writer Extension for Braille (aegis-project.eu)

Submitted by ChristopheS
ChristopheS writes: The Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven) has released an extension for OpenOffice.org Writer that enables users to save documents as Braille or to send them directly to a Braille embosser. "odt2braille" (http://odt2braille.sourceforge.net/) is a freeware extension for OpenOffice.org Writer.
odt2braille is available for Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista and Windows 7), and will later also become available for Mac OS X and Linux/Unix. The current version of odt2braille supports eight Braille embossers, and additional embossers will be added later. One of the supported embossers is the Elekul, which was developed at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven by Prof. Dr. Guido Francois, and which was the first system that could emboss Braille on both sides of the same sheet of paper.
odt2braille is being developed in the context of the AEGIS project, a research & development project supported by the European Commission. The AEGIS project develops software for persons with disabilities, covering the desktop platform, the Web (Rich Internet Applications) and mobile devices. In November 2009, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven released another OpenOffice.org extension in the context of the AEGIS project: odt2daisy (http://odt2braille.sourceforge.net/), an OpenOffice.org Writer extension that converts text documents to audio books in the DAISY format.

Comment Re:Too Slow, Slashdot (Score 1) 536

by whatajoke (#32931578) Attached to: US Gov't Orders 73,000 Private Websites Offline

The authorities ordered BurstNet to take the server offline for what appeared to be very, very serious violations.

Does it mean that authorities had a warrant from a judge? If they did, then I don't see what the hullo bullo is about. If they did not have a warrant and still were able to shut down the web site, then democracy in USA is screwed.

Comment Re:Hypocrasy (Score 1) 237

by whatajoke (#32807732) Attached to: A Look Back At Bombing the Van Allen Belts

The US nuclear arsenal has an unbelievable amount of safeguards and fail-safes - procedural, physical, and technical.

Really?
The Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha quietly decided to set the “locks” to all zeros in order to circumvent this safeguard. During the early to mid-1970s, during my stint as a Minuteman launch officer, they still had not been changed. Our launch checklist in fact instructed us, the firing crew, to double-check the locking panel in our underground launch bunker to ensure that no digits other than zero had been inadvertently dialed into the panel. SAC remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders. And so the “secret unlock code” during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War remained constant at OOOOOOOO.
From here

Comment Re:Hypocrasy (Score 4, Insightful) 237

by whatajoke (#32799500) Attached to: A Look Back At Bombing the Van Allen Belts
Manifest destiny is probably to blame here. Until americans do not get rid of their self-righteous crusadic attitude, it is difficult that they will realize how other countries see them.
Other countries make horrible mistakes too, like war. But members of public against these mistakes are not condemned as unpatriotic, or anti-national. Just look at how the movie Green Zone was branded unamerican. I don't know how americans starring in the movie must have felt about that insult. I would have been furious enough to rip somebody's head off on being called anti-naional.
Spam

Submission + - Debate on power users within Reddit.com (reddit.com) 2

Submitted by whatajoke
whatajoke writes: After the community shakedown (or not) of digg's power users, reddit.com seems to be going through the same phase right now. A "power" user nicked saydrah has been outed in this post as a social marketer and spam link promoter. Reposts on reddit.com's front page, as well as in subtopics have people debating how to go forward from here. Some have proposed preventing moderators from getting karma within their subreddits, while many others are calling for an ban on the offending power users. It will be interesting to see how reddit.com handles this compared to digg.com
The Internet

Submission + - U.K. bill would outlaw open Wi-Fi (zdnet.co.uk)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: The government will not exempt universities, libraries and small businesses providing open Wi-Fi services from its Digital Economy Bill copyright crackdown, according to official advice released earlier this week.

This would leave many organizations open to the same penalties for copyright infringement as individual subscribers, potentially including disconnection from the internet, leading legal experts to say it will become impossible for small businesses and the like to offer Wi-Fi access.

"This is going to be a very unfortunate measure for small businesses, particularly in a recession, many of whom are using open free Wi-Fi very effectively as a way to get the punters in.

Even if they password protect, they then have two options — to pay someone like The Cloud to manage it for them, or take responsibility themselves for becoming an ISP effectively, and keep records for everyone they assign connections to, which is an impossible burden for a small cafe" Lilian Edwards, professor of internet law at Sheffield University told ZDNet UK.

ZDNet : http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,40057470,00.htm

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