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Comment Re:It's easy, just think logically. (Score 2, Interesting) 1515

by punkrocher (#25614779) Attached to: Discuss the US Presidential Election & Education

Read "parents who care about education" as "Children who want to learn" and you've got it right.

As an adult who went to private school all my life with the exception of a state university, I can honestly say that is not the case. I knew PLENTY of kids who didn't give two shits about their education while in private school. The reason they stayed in? Money. Their parents threw money at the school, and the student stayed in. No matter where you go, there will always be motivated students willing to learn, and unmotivated students, who don't care. Private or public.
Image

Halloween Pumpkin Carving With CNC Robotics 73

Posted by samzenpus from the high-tech-carving dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A guy at Lumenlab has created a way to carve his face on a pumpkin using his DIY CNC gantry robot. I think this demonstration says a lot about the future ubiquity of the technology. I'm really looking forward to the day that I have one of these machines in my garage."
Science

New Evidence Debunks "Stupid" Neanderthal 505

Posted by timothy from the new-yorker-redrawing-decades-of-cartoons dept.
ThinkComp writes "In what could possibly be a major blow to a scientific consensus that has held for decades, recent research suggests that the traditional conception of Neanderthals being "stupider" than Homo sapiens may in fact be misleading. As articles about the research findings state, 'early stone tool technologies developed by our species, Homo sapiens, were no more efficient than those used by Neanderthals.' The data used in the study is available on-line along with a visual description of the process used."
Data Storage

What NAS To Buy? 621

Posted by CmdrTaco from the to-busy-to-build-your-own dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Currently, I'm running an old 4u Linux server for my private backup and storage needs. I could add new drives, but it's just way too bulky (and only IDE). For the sake of size and power efficiency I think about replacing it with a NAS solution, but cannot decide which one to get. The only requirements I have are capacity (>1.5TB) and RAID5. Samba/FTP/USB is enough. Since manufacturers always claim their system to be the best, I'd like to hear some suggestions from you Slashdot readers."
Businesses

Anatomy of a Runaway Project 326

Posted by kdawson from the off-the-tracks-and-ploughing-up-dirt dept.
JCWDenton recommends a piece by Bruce Webster revealing some insights into a failed multi-million-dollar IT project. "The following document is the actual text — carefully redacted — of a memo I wrote some time back after performing an IT project review; names and identifying concepts have been changed to preserve confidentiality (and protect the guilty). The project in question was a major IT re-engineering effort for a mission-critical system; at the time I did this review, the project had been going on for several years and had cost millions of dollars; it would eventually be canceled and the work products abandoned. The memo itself provides an interesting glimpse into just how a major IT project can go so far off the tracks that nothing useful is ever delivered."
Perl

perl6 and Parrot 0.5.2 Released 229

Posted by Zonk from the for-camels-with-time-on-their-hands dept.
mAriuZ writes "Bob Rogers just released Parrot 0.5.2. This monthly release includes a couple of interesting new features. First, we've bundled Patrick Michaud's Rakudo (thats the implementation of Perl 6 on Parrot) such that you can type make perl6 on Unixy platforms and make perl6.exe on Windows and get a working standalone Perl 6 binary. This is experimental and we hope to iron out some installation and deployment issues by next months release, but it was important to demonstrate our progress. The second new feature is a toolkit for starting your own compiler. Max Mohun built a prototype several months ago, and we've added a stripped-down version for now that builds the skeleton of a compiler for you using the Parrot Compiler Tools. I mentioned the LOLCODE compiler in What the Perl 6 and Parrot Hackers Did on Their Christmas Vacation; this is how Simon and Company were able to get LOLCODE up and running so quickly."
Portables

The Dying PC Market 307

Posted by CmdrTaco from the netcraft-confirms-nothing dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The PC's role in Japanese homes is diminishing, as its once-awesome monopoly on processing power is encroached by gadgets such as smart phones that act like pocket-size computers, advanced Internet-connected game consoles, digital video recorders with terabytes of memory NEC's annual PC shipments in Japan shrank 6.2 percent to 2.72 million units in 2006, and the trend is continuing into the first quarter of fiscal 2007 with a 14 percent decline from a year earlier. Sony's PC shipments for Japan shrank 10 percent in 2006 from a year earlier. "The household PC market is losing momentum to other electronics like flat-panel TVs and mobile phones," said Masahiro Katayama, research group head at market survey firm IDC. "Consumers aren't impressed anymore with bigger hard drives or faster processors. That's not as exciting as a bigger TV," Katayama said. "And in Japan, kids now grow up using mobile phones, not PCs. The future of PCs isn't bright.""
Networking

Google Caught in Comcast Traffic Filtering? 385

Posted by Zonk from the it's-the-craziest-thing dept.
marcan writes "Comcast users are reporting 'connection reset' errors while loading Google. The problem seems to have been coming and going over the past few days, and often disappears only to return a few minutes later. Apparently the problem only affects some of Google's IPs and services. Analysis of the PCAP packet dumps reveals several injected fake RSTs, which are very similar to the ones seen coming from the Great Firewall of China [PDF]. Did Google somehow get caught up in one of Comcast's blacklists, or are the heuristics flagging Google as a file-sharer due to the heavy traffic?"

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