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Comment Varies (Score 1) 8

by pleasance (#38052226) Attached to: Ask /.: what is a nerd?
I've always thought of "geek" to be someone that has a passion for something, usually technology based, but sometimes other subjects. I think Steve Irwin was a geek, for just animals and not technology.

I think "nerd" has a different meaning, and being more like the genius type. Love to read anything and everything, love to understand, learn, etc. Just generally a borderline genius, and sometimes socially awkward.

I'm not sure of my meanings are "correct" or "accurate" -- but I think they suit the titles very well.

It seems the general population is confused on meanings, and just thinks they are both identical, and like you mentioned above: anyone with a few electronic devices is a geek, and/or nerd.
Microsoft

Lawsuit Claims WGA Is Spyware 360

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the advantage-microsoft dept.
twitter writes "Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), Microsoft's euphemistically named digital restrictions scheme, is the target of another spyware and false advertising lawsuit. 'Microsoft this week was sued in a Washington district court for allegedly violating privacy laws through Windows XP's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) copy protection scheme. Similar to cases filed in 2006, the new class action case accuses Microsoft of falsely representing what information WGA would send to verify the authenticity of Windows and that it would send back information [daily IP address and other details that could be used to trace information back to a home or user]. The complaint further argued that Microsoft portrayed WGA as a necessary security update rather than acknowledge its copy protection nature in the update. WGA's implementation also prevented users from purging the protection from their PCs without completely reformatting a computer's system drive.' There were at least two other lawsuits launched in 2006 over WGA. According to the Wikipedia article, none of them have been resolved. The system is built into Vista and Windows 7."

Schooling, Homeschooling, and Now, "Unschooling" 1345

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the everything-i-need-to-know-i-learned-from-quake dept.
ciaohound writes "The Baltimore Sun has a story about 'unschooling,' which is like homeschooling except, well, without the schooling. '...unschooling incorporates every facet of a child's life into the education process, allowing a child to follow his passions and learn at his own pace, year-round. And it assumes that an outing at the park — or even hours spent playing a video game — can be just as valuable a teaching resource as Hooked on Phonics.' If you have ever been forced to sit in a classroom where no learning was taking place, you may understand the appeal. A driving force behind the movement is parents' dissatisfaction with regular schools, and presumably with homeschooling as well. Yet few researchers are even aware of unschooling and little research exists on its effectiveness. Any Slashdotters who have experience with 'unschooling?'"
Communications

GMail Experiences Serious Outage 408

Posted by timothy from the works-here-never-mind dept.
JacobSteelsmith was one of many readers to note an ongoing problem with Gmail: "As I type this, GMail is experiencing a major outage. The application status page says there is a problem with GMail affecting a majority of its users. It states a resolution is expected within the next 1.2 hours (no, not a typo on my part). However, email can still be accessed via POP or IMAP, but not, it appears, through an Android device such as the G1." It's also affecting corporate users: Reader David Lechnyr writes "We run a hosted Google Apps system and have been receiving 502 Server Error responses for the past hour. The unusual thing about this is that our Google phone support rep (which paid accounts get) indicated that this outage is also affecting Google employees as well, making it difficult to coordinate."
Cellphones

Why the Google Android Phone Isn't Taking Off 745

Posted by kdawson from the know-thine-enemy-and-drive-him-nuts dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Farhad Manjoo writes in Slate that while the iPhone commands nearly 14 percent of smartphone sales and BlackBerry about 21 percent, Android has only 3 percent. And even though Android is far friendlier to developers, it has failed to attract anywhere near the number of apps now clogging the iPhone. Manjoo writes that Google went wrong by giving handset manufacturers and carriers too much control over the design and marketing of Android phones so there is no idealized 'Google phone' — instead, Android devices get names like the T-Mobile G1 or the myTouch 3G, and each is marketed separately and comes with its own distinct capabilities and shortcomings. 'Outside handset manufacturers lack ambition — -none of them even seems to be trying to match the capabilities of the iPhone, let alone to knock us down with features that far surpass those of Apple's device,' writes Manjoo. 'A smart handset manufacturer could build a top-of-the-line Android device that outshines Apple's phone in at least a few areas — better battery life, a much better Web browser, a brighter or bigger screen, faster or more functional controls... something that might help Android inspire gadget lust. But so far, that's not happening.' John Gruber echoes this advice and adds this advice to Android manufacturers: 'If Apple is BMW, you can be Porsche.'"
Unix

Submission + - Judge Overturns 2007 Unix Copyright Decision (networkworld.com) 2

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "A federal appeals court has overturned a 2007 decision that Novell owns the Unix code, clearing the way for SCO to pursue a $1 billion copyright infringement case against IBM. In a 54-page decision, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals said it was reversing the 2007 summary judgment decision by Judge Dale Kimball of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, which found that Novell was the owner of Unix and UnixWare copyrights. SCO CEO Darl McBride called the decision a "huge validation for SCO.""
Government

One Crime Solved Per 1,000 London CCTV Cameras 404

Posted by kdawson from the ready-for-my-closeup-mister-demille dept.
SpuriousLogic writes "Only one crime was solved for each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city's surveillance network has claimed. The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals. In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers. David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: 'It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent.' He added: 'CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness. It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security. The Metropolitan Police has been extraordinarily slow to act to deal with the ineffectiveness of CCTV.'"
Spam

Anti-Spam Lawyer Loses Appeal, and His Possessions 237

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the know-when-to-fold dept.
Techdirt is reporting that one particularly rabid anti-spam fighter has not only lost his case, but most of his worldly possessions as well. James Gordon tried to set himself up as an ISP to get around the conventions of the CAN SPAM act in order to set up a litigation house designed to sue companies that spam. Unfortunately a judge did not take kindly to this trick and ordered him to pay $110,000 to the firm he was suing, a decision that was not only upheld on appeal but accompanied by some very unkind words trying to shut down litigation mills like his. "But, perhaps even more fascinating is that the guy, James Gordon, didn't just lose the lawsuit, it appears he lost most of his possessions as well. Remember that ruling telling him to pay the $110k to Virtumundo? He refused. The company sent the debt to a collections agency, but told Gordon they'd call off the collections agency if he dropped the appeal. Gordon didn't."
OS X

Submission + - Apple to Ship Mac OS X Snow Leopard on August 28

Submitted by okapi
okapi writes: Apple® today announced that Mac OS® X v10.6 Snow Leopard(TM) will go on sale Friday, August 28 at Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and that Apple's online store is now accepting pre-orders.
Graphics

Submission + - No Linux port for id's Tech 5 graphics engine 2

Submitted by DesiVideoGamer
DesiVideoGamer writes: John Carmack, the creator of id's Tech 5 graphics engine, does not plan on making a Linux port of his new engine. From his e-mail:

It isn't out of the question, but I don't think we will be able to justify the work.

. One of the reasons for not making a Linux port was due to the fact that the new engine "pushes a lot of paths that are not usually optimized" and that the Linux port would have to use the binary blob graphics driver in order to work. However, the MacOS port has not been cancelled yet.

Google

Submission + - Google Chrome gets 64-bit version, only for Linux (internetnews.com)

Submitted by Noam.of.Doom
Noam.of.Doom writes: The Google Chrome developers announced on August 19th the immediate availability of a new version of the Google Chrome web browser for Linux, Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Google Chrome 4.0.202.2 is here to fix a lot of annoying bugs (see below for details) and it also adds a couple of features only for the Mac platform. However, the good news is that Dean McNamee, one of the Google Chrome engineers, announced yesterday on their mailing list that a working port of the Chrome browser for 64-bit platforms was now available:

"The v8 team did some amazing work this quarter building a working 64-bit port. After a handful of changes on the Chromium side, I've had Chromium Linux building on 64-bit for the last few weeks. I believe mmoss or tony is going to get a buildbot running, and working on packaging."

Until today, Google Chrome was available on both 32- and 64-bit architectures, but it appears that the latter was running based on the 32-bit libraries. Therefore, starting with Google Chrome 4.0.202.2, 64-bit users can enjoy a true x64 version!
Image

Robots Are the Chefs In This Japanese Restaurant 3

Posted by samzenpus from the precise-cooking dept.
Singularity Hub writes "A Ramen restaurant has just opened in Nagoya, Japan that uses robots instead of humans as its chefs. It may not seem that amazing at first, but once you see the video it is hard not to be blown away. The robotic chefs work their gastronomic magic in a kitchen placed front and center in the middle of the restaurant, giving customers a front row seat on the action."
Handhelds

Palm Pulls the Plug On Palm OS 300

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the now-my-palms-wont-operate dept.
BobB-nw writes to tell us that Palm has decided to kill their PalmOS operating system and is instead betting their future on a still mostly unknown Palm webOS. Very little is known about the new Palm webOS, but it will supposedly support HTML5 and enable a local data store so that applications can be used both online and off. All of this is rolled into a Linux framework with a message bus based on JSON. Will be interesting to see where they take it.

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