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Comment Courseware Comes And Goes (Score 1) 16

Yeah, this is one of the many elearning authoring tools I've used over the last 30 years. None of them has lasted. They are dependent on whatever OS or browser they are delivered in. We just harvest the content and rebuild in the authoring package du jour. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Books

Ask Slashdot: Composing an e-Book With a Couple of Bells and Whistles 148

Posted by samzenpus from the a-little-help-from-strangers dept.
A new submitter writes: I want to edit an e-book, a scientific textbook to be distributed on the Kindle tablet to be exact. The book is written. For that I used LibreOffice.
It comes complete with index, drawings, pictures, formulae and its present look and feel is no different from the majority of scientific text, you might be accustomed to browsing. I need advice for the next step, which consists in making this digital pile of data suitable for an e-book.. with a slight twist. The e-book should allow for:
— picture zoom-in in pop-ups on screen
— allow in-text basic interactivity, e.g. when in a exercise, multiple answers are proposed, each answer when clicked should display "Right" or "Wrong" (for instance).
Can you recommend, if not a commercial package that allows such features right out of the box, then at least and preferably open-source technology needed for me to achieve what I want ? I am willing to get down to moderate programming to use your suggested solution. I am conversant in C, C++ and getting there with Python.
Australia

Mystery of the 'Chupacabra' May Be Solved 94

Posted by timothy from the letting-it-live-on-in-my-heart dept.
rhettb writes "The mystery of the legendary chupacabra, a beast said to drain the blood of domestic animals at night, has been solved, according to a University of Michigan scientist. Biologist Barry O'Connor says that most chupacabra sightings are probably linked to coyotes with mange, a disease caused by the same species of mite that triggers scabies in humans. Severe cases of mange cause hair loss and thickening of skin in wild dogs and can lead to bacterial skin infections that produce a foul odor characteristic of the 'chupacabra.' Wombats and squirrels are also susceptible to mange, suggesting that chupacabra are found in trees and Down Under."
Image

Medieval Copy Protection 226

Posted by samzenpus from the thou-shall-write-your-own-book dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In medieval times a 'book curse' was often included on the inside cover or on the last leaf of a manuscripts, warning away anyone who might do the book some harm. Here's a particularly pretty one from Yale's Beinecke MS 214: 'In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. In the one thousand two hundred twenty-ninth year from the incarnation of our Lord, Peter, of all monks the least significant, gave this book to the [Benedictine monastery of the] most blessed martyr, St. Quentin. If anyone should steal it, let him know that on the Day of Judgment the most sainted martyr himself will be the accuser against him before the face of our Lord Jesus Christ.'"
Sci-Fi

Churchill Accused of Sealing UFO Files, Fearing Public Panic 615

Posted by samzenpus from the truth-is-out-there-in-that-filing-cabinet dept.
Newly released secret files show that Winston Churchill ordered a cover-up of an alleged encounter between a UFO and a RAF bomber because he feared public panic. From the article: "Mr Churchill is reported to have made a declaration to the effect of the following: 'This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic among the general population and destroy one's belief in the Church.'"
Games

How Game Gimmicks Break Immersion 228

Posted by Soulskill from the they-can't-all-be-portal dept.
The Moving Pixels blog has brief discussion of how gimmicky game mechanics often break a player's sense of immersion, making it painfully obvious that he's simply jumping through carefully planned hoops set up by the developers. The author takes an example from Singularity, which has a weapon that can time-shift objects between a pristine, functional state and a broken, decayed state. Quoting: "The core issue with this time control device is that it's just not grand and sweeping enough. It doesn't feel like it's part of a world gone mad. Instead it's just a gameplay tool. You can only use it on certain things in certain places. You can 'un-decay' this chalkboard but not that desk. You can dissolve that piece of cover but not most of the walls in the game. The ultimate failure of such cheap tricks is that they make the game world less immersive rather than more compelling. The world gets divided into those few things that I can time shift, that different set of things I can levitate, and that majority of things that I can't interact with at all. ... I'm painfully aware that all that I'm really doing is pushing the right button at the right place and time. Sure, that's what many games are when you get down to it, but part of the artistry of game design comes from trying to hide this fact."

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