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Education

Should Techies Trump All Others In Immigration Reform? 231

Posted by samzenpus from the front-of-the-line dept.
theodp writes "In an open letter on TechCrunch, Vivek Wadhwa calls on Congressman Luis Gutierrez to lift his 'hold on Silicon Valley' and stop tying immigration reform for highly-skilled STEM immigrants to the plight of undocumented immigrants. So, why should the STEM set get first dibs? 'The issues of high-skilled and undocumented immigrants are both equally important,' says Wadhwa, but 'the difference is that the skilled workers have mobility and are in great demand all over the world. They are getting frustrated and are leaving in droves.' Commenting on Gutierrez's voting record, Wadhwa adds, 'I would have voted for visas for 50,000 smart foreign students graduating with STEM degrees from U.S. universities over bringing in 55,000 randomly selected high-school graduates from abroad. The STEM graduates would have created jobs and boosted our economy. The lottery winners will come to the U.S. with high hopes, but will face certain unemployment and misery because of our weak economy.' So, should Gutierrez cede to Wadhwa's techies-before-Latinos proposal, or would this be an example of the paradox of virtuous meritocracy undermining equality of opportunity?"

Comment A world outside US (Score 2, Informative) 315

by codecracker007 (#32320058) Attached to: Fragmentation vs. Obsolescence In the Android Ecosphere
App developer should realize that there is a world outside the US [and Europe], where:
1. Phones are sold unlocked more as a rule than an exception.
2. Enthusiasts change phones frequently
3. There is a big market for cheaper and second hand/older gen. 'smart' phones.
Android fits in well for these market. This is also the exact reason for the abysmal sale of iPhone 3G/3GS in India and China.

Comment Obvious Missing Details (Score 3, Informative) 103

by codecracker007 (#30278916) Attached to: India Hanging Up On 25 Million Cell Phones
The article sadly doesn't seem to point the Government efforts to provide the non IMEI mobiles with a valid IMEI number. For the last few monthes, a person could have taken their el-cheapo Chinese phones to a designated centre and get a genuine IMEI number 'installed' on the phone for a sum of INR 199 [USD 4]. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/Chinese-mobile-handsets-to-get-Indian-identity/articleshow/5286535.cms

Comment Re:And will be unavailable anyplace else.... (Score 2, Interesting) 571

by codecracker007 (#27297593) Attached to: World's Cheapest Car Goes On Sale In India

1) car insurance is compulsory in India, covers the car, not the driver. Takes care of damages to the car as well as to the victims.
2) Safety standards exist, albeit for the typical India roads where the speed limits rarely exceed 50 km/hr [convert this to m/hr yourself , please].
3) Nano is compliant with Euro 4, the present European emission standards.
4) Gross mis-information, smacks of ignorance at best and racism at worst.
5) ....thus spoke the western overlord..go back to your bullock cart...you deserve not what you hath not?

and well the price of petrol [gasoline] has been hovering around the $4/gallon mark for last 4 years in India.
Graphics

Nvidia Claims Intel's Larrabee Is "a GPU From 2006" 278

Posted by Soulskill from the dem's-fightin'-woids dept.
Barence sends this excerpt from PC Pro: "Nvidia has delivered a scathing criticism of Intel's Larrabee, dismissing the multi-core CPU/GPU as wishful thinking — while admitting it needs to catch up with AMD's current Radeon graphics cards. 'Intel is not a stupid company,' conceded John Mottram, chief architect for the company's GT200 core. 'They've put a lot of people behind this, so clearly they believe it's viable. But the products on our roadmap are competitive to this thing as they've painted it. And the reality is going to fall short of the optimistic way they've painted it. As [blogger and CPU architect] Peter Glaskowsky said, the "large" Larrabee in 2010 will have roughly the same performance as a 2006 GPU from Nvidia or ATI.' Speaking ahead of the opening of the annual NVISION expo on Monday, he also admitted Nvidia 'underestimated ATI with respect to their product.'"
Moon

NASA Plans to Smash Spacecraft into the Moon 176

Posted by samzenpus from the hit-it-hard dept.
djasbestos writes "NASA is planning to smash a spacecraft into the Moon in order to look for hydrogen deposits in the poles. More notably, it will impact with significantly greater force (100x, per the article) than previous Moon collisions, such as by the Lunar Prospector and Smart-1 probes. Admiral Ackbar was unreachable for comment as to the exact location and size of the Moon's thermal exhaust port."
Robotics

Robot Becomes One of the Kids 186

Posted by kdawson from the everybody-say-awwww dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers have found that toddlers treat a small robot as a peer rather than a toy. A team from the University of California, San Diego, placed Sony's QRIO in a classroom of kids aged 18 months to 2 years and watched them interact. Over time the children grew to treat the robot as one of them — playing games with the robot, hugging it, and covering it up with a blanket when its batteries ran down."
Google

The Man Behind the Google Phone 95

Posted by Zonk from the and-his-wonderful-toys dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The New York Times is running a story about Andy Rubin, Google's resident gadget guru, and one of the primary architects of the gPhone. You won't find any new technical details about the gPhone in the story, (Google is planning an announcement on Monday about its future mobile plans.) but the story about Rubin gives some clues that indicate that Google plans to do more than merely develop an operating system for cellular phones. One clue to the gPhone is that after Rubin left Apple he joined General Magic, the company co-founded with Mac pioneers Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld that developed Magic Cap in the 1990s, a PDA precursor years ahead of its time that included a cell phone and email. The Times speculates that Google may also be planning to replay the strategy that Microsoft used to bulldoze Netscape in the mid-1990s by 'cutting off' Microsoft's air supply by giving the gPhone away to handset makers and to put Microsoft Windows Mobile out of business. If the strategy works, it will be because Rubin and his team have successfully developed a vision of the smartphone of the future and a strategy for getting it accepted by the public and by the carriers."
Handhelds

Man Claims iPod Set His Pants Aflame 270

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the lighter-and-gasoline-in-his-pocket-had-nothing-to-do-with-it dept.
alphadogg writes to mention that an Atlanta man is claiming an iPod Nano actually caught fire in his pants creating flames that lasted 15 seconds and reached up as far as his chest. Apple hasn't responded to the claims yet other than sending him a packet to return the iPod.

GNU Coughs Up Emacs 22 After Six Year Wait 500

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the hopefully-worth-waiting-for dept.
lisah writes "After keeping users waiting for nearly six years, Emacs 22 has been released and includes a bunch of updates and some new modes as well. In addition to support for GTK+ and a graphical interface to the GNU Debugger, 'this release includes build support for Linux on AMD64, S/390, and Tensilica Xtensa machines, FreeBSD/Alpha, Cygwin, Mac OS X, and Mac OS 9 with Carbon support. The Leim package is now part of GNU Emacs, so users will be able to get input support for Chinese, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, and other languages without downloading a separate package. New translations of the Emacs tutorial are also available in Brasilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, simplified and traditional Chinese, Italian, French, and Russian.'"
Networking

Submission + - India to offer free broadband by 2009

Submitted by codecracker007
codecracker007 writes: The Government of India is planning to introduce free 2 mbps broadband for all resident Indians by 2009. The expected service shall be launched by the government owned telecom operators BSNL and MTNL. Quoting from the article:
The government proposes to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed broadband connectivity by 2009, through the state-owned telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL. While consumers would cheer, the move holds the potential to kill the telecom business as we know it.
Here is an an editorial comment on the news. It must be mentioned that the Indian government and its autonomous regulatory bodies are very proactive in holding the consumer interests above the operators', managing to reduce the long distance and wireless tariffs by a up to factor of 20 in less than 7 years.

Feed World's "only" PowerFest '94 SNES cartridge up for auction (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Gaming

We have to admit, we've seen some pretty zany stuff in the Nintendo realm this month, but this one probably takes top honors. For the fanboys and girls, the words "PowerFest '94" and "Nintendo World Championships II" immediately incite fits of giddiness, and for those sulking in the uninformed camp, here's the skinny: just 32 of these brutally ugly and oversized cartridges were ever manufactured, and after the round of tournaments played with them in 1994, all but one was reportedly "given back to Nintendo and reused for parts." The cart itself housed Level 1-1 of Super Mario Lost Levels, five laps around the first track on Super Mario Kart, and a home run derby from Ken Griffey Jr. Winning Run, all of which were set to a timer and channeled out to other systems to monitor the scores of everyone involved. Needless to say, owning this prized possession could indeed fetch a pretty penny, and if you've ever wondered just how much a one of a kind SNES cart would run you, we'll give you 25,000 or so guesses. Click on through for a few more snapshots.

[Thanks, Casey]

Continue reading World's "only" PowerFest '94 SNES cartridge up for auction

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