Xthlc - Slashdot User

When Teachers Are Obstacles To Linux In Education 1589

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @06:46AM from the height-of-ignorance dept.

jamie found this blog post up on the HeliOS Project, which brings Linux to school kids in Austin, TX. It makes very clear some of the obstacles that free software faces in the classroom. It seems a teacher came upon a student demonstrating Linux to other kids and handing out LiveCDs. The teacher confiscated the CDs and wrote an angry email to HeliOS's founder, Ken Starks: "Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. ... This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older version of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them..." Starks pens an eloquent reply, which contains a factoid I have not seen mentioned before: "The fact that you seem to believe that Microsoft is the end all and be-all is actually funny in a sad sort of way. Then again, being a good NEA member, you would spout the Union line. Microsoft has pumped tens of millions of dollars into your union. Of course you are going to 'recommend' Microsoft Windows."

Chemical Pollution Is Destroying Masculinity 773

Posted by kdawson on Monday December 08, 2008 @09:05AM from the lower-your-voice-and-say-that dept.

myrdos2 writes "A host of common chemicals is feminizing males of every class of vertebrate animals, from fish to mammals, including people. Many have been identified as 'endocrine disruptors' or gender-benders because they interfere with hormones. Communities heavily polluted with gender-benders in Canada, Russia, and Italy have given birth to twice as many girls as boys, which may offer a clue to the mysterious shift in sex ratios worldwide. And a study at Rotterdam's Erasmus University showed that boys whose mothers had been exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with dolls and tea sets rather than with traditionally male toys. It also follows hard on the heels of new American research which shows that baby boys born to women exposed to widespread chemicals in pregnancy are born with smaller penises and feminized genitals. It is calculated that 250,000 babies who would have been boys have been born as girls instead in the US and Japan alone. And sperm counts are dropping precipitously. Studies in more than 20 countries have shown that they have dropped from 150 million per milliliter of sperm fluid to 60 million over 50 years."

FCC Considering Free Internet For USA 502

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday December 01, 2008 @12:45PM from the yeah-that'll-happen dept.

jbolden writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, the FCC is considering a plan to provide free wireless internet. The plan would involve some level of filtering, but might allow adults to opt out. CTIA has argued that this business model has traditionally failed (see Slate magazine's analysis as to why)."

Google Terminates Lively 186

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday November 20, 2008 @10:33AM from the we-hardly-knew-ye dept.

FornaxChemica writes "In a surprise move, Google announced today, both on-site and in its blog, that it will permanently shut down its 3D virtual world, Lively, by the end of the year. This makes Lively one of Google's few scrapped products, and one of the most short-lived, too, barely lasting 6 months. No official reason was given, only that Google wants to 'prioritize [its] resources and focus more on [its] core search, ads and apps business.' Lively might have taken too much and given back too little, even by Google's standards."

Comment Chinese. (Score 3, Interesting) 1021

by Xthlc on Monday July 07, 2008 @07:06PM (#24091381) Attached to: Learn a Foreign Language As an Engineer?

I am a computer scientist working for a major industrial research lab.

English is still the primary language for technology research publications, and will continue to be so for the near future. So don't worry about needing to read foreign journals. Yes some French or German or Japanese might help you find a few more obscure things, but generally if the work is worthwhile it eventually gets published in English.

However, personally I think you should learn Mandarin Chinese. Why?

1) There's a gigantic pool of IT research talent in China that we're only beginning to tap. They publish primarily in English, but their spoken English is generally poor with some exceptions. It's a tremendous benefit to know at least some Chinese in order to be able to socialize with your Chinese colleagues at a conference or when visiting. And I'm fairly certain that if you make a career in research in the next 50 years, you will be visiting and possibly living in the PRC at some point.

2) Research isn't for everyone. If you discover this at an awkward time in your career, it helps to have other skills to fall back on. Being able to speak Chinese is already a significant career asset, and this is likely to continue.

3) Spoken Chinese is a great language to learn, because it challenges a native-English-speaker's conceptions of grammar and meaning. It forced me to think about language in a whole new way, similar to how Prolog completely broke my brain as a sophomore CS undergrad.

All that said, Chinese fluency requires 8+ years of intensive education and immersion to develop; you will most likely never become as proficient in it as you might in a Western language.

China's Cyberwar Against India 227

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday May 05, 2008 @08:40AM from the no-no-we're-cool-promise dept.

An anonymous reader writes "China's cyber warfare army is marching on, and India is suffering silently. Over the past one and a half years, officials said, China has mounted almost daily attacks on Indian computer networks, both government and private, showing its intent and capability."

DOS 5 Upgrade Video 373

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @10:33AM from the god-i-love-this dept.

Every now and then I stumble on something so ridiculous that I have to share it. This is a promotion video to upgrade to DOS 5 obviously made in a different era. Promoting features like mouse support, a graphical shell, and freeing up at LEAST 45k of memory, well, Gimme 5! Did I mention that it's all set to a hip beat? You'll love it. And by "Love" I mean "Stick forks in your eyes".

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