equalwings - Slashdot User

Australia Gets Its First Female Prime Minister 419

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday June 24, 2010 @12:27AM from the sheila-in-chief dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Julia Gillard has been elected unopposed to the Labor leadership, seizing power in a bloodless Parliament House coup after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd decided not to contest this morning's leadership ballot. Ms. Gillard will now be sworn in as Australia's first female prime minister. Emerging from this morning's meeting, she said she felt 'very honored' and said she would be making a statement shortly. Treasurer Wayne Swan now steps up as deputy prime minister. He was also elected unopposed."

Websites That Don't Need to Be Made Anymore 161

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 20, 2010 @01:47PM from the do-not-want dept.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but there is a finite number of social networking or selling websites that the world needs. Here is a collection of the eight kinds of websites that absolutely don't need to be made anymore. I'd add dating sites and anybody who uses pop-up ads myself, but I think that would eliminate half the Web.

Emulation For Preservation of Digital Artifacts 81

Posted by Soulskill on Friday April 23, 2010 @05:52PM from the sitting-at-his-virtual-desk dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Author Salman Rushdie donated his papers and notes to Emory University a while ago. Not surprisingly, many of Rushdie's original notes, drafts, and correspondence existed in electronic form. Rather than printing them out or converting them to other formats, archivists at the university created an emulated image of Rushdie's old computer, complete with old software. Researchers visiting the archive can read his email in Eudora and his Stickies notes, or read drafts of his books in ClarisWorks. When you leave your legacy to future generations, would you like a virtualized copy of your personal system to be included?"

Brain Training Games Don't Train Your Brain 151

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @03:03PM from the maybe-it-just-takes-more-than-6-weeks dept.

Stoobalou writes with this excerpt from Thinq.co.uk: "A new study has shown that brain training games do little to exercise the grey matter. Millions of people who have been prodding away at their Nintendo DS portable consoles, smug in the knowledge that they are giving their brains a proper work-out, might have to rethink how they are going to stop the contents of their skulls turning into mush."

Simple CMS For Mixed Mac/Windows Team? 119

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @02:23PM from the fire-everyone-else-problem-solved dept.

Quasar Sera writes "I am looking for a content and/or project management solution for a marketing research team using both Macs and PCs. Ideally it would support document sharing, metadata/tags, search capabilities, revision control, and the ability to share documents easily with people from outside the team without any software installation or login required. It may be tricky to configure (since I will be doing that) but must be dead simple to use for the rest of the team. We rely mostly on Word, Powerpoint, and Excel (all in their native file formats) for our work, so it would be a large number of fairly small files. Any and all advice would be appreciated."

Comment Kids want to explore (Score 2, Interesting) 122

by equalwings on Wednesday December 09, 2009 @01:12AM (#30374272) Attached to: Interactive Computer Exhibits For Ages 3-8?

Go for something with simple, well illustrated logic. Remember that kids of that age aren't supposed to be good at abstract thinking. Use clear boxes so they can see what's inside. Make it strong but not so it looks strong (clear is good for that). Have multiple terminals that can interact but do not need to for a good experience.

Comment Bend the rules (Score 1) 314

by equalwings on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @11:59PM (#27251527) Attached to: How To Get High-Schoolers Involved In Real Science?

If your object is for them to learn, then reinforcing what they've been taught already is a great path. (1) Get them to survey others' understanding of physics principles. (Direct, like at the mall, school or street or indirectly by web site) (2) Get them to develop physics demonstrations suitable for kindergarten students. Select the best and then actually do it as a group. (They'll likely have tried them on neighbors' kids anyway) Keep it simple, safe and positive. Cheers Don Australia

Odd Planet Confuses Scientists 142

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 08, 2008 @07:55PM from the that's-no-moon dept.

eldavojohn writes "While there's been a lot of debate about what is a planet, there is a recent discovery that has scientists even more confused. COROT (COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits) spotted an object that appears to be the size of Jupiter yet is 21.6 times more massive ... and orbits its star in a mere four days and six hours. Now, the other piece of the puzzle is that the star it orbits is more massive and only slightly larger than our Sun. But they can't describe this thing orbiting it. So far they think it is more likely to be a 'failed star' but have settled with 'member of a new-found family of very massive planets that encircle stars more massive than the sun' to describe it accurately."

Slashdot Top Deals