Comment Expensive (Score 2, Interesting) 416
It's going to be really hard to convince average computer users who think their data will last forever that it won't. And after 50 years no one might even own dvd players.
Comment Re:OK, dumb question after reading the article (Score 1) 747
Although Stallman is out there in a lot of ways, he deserves a massive amount of respect for his dedication to freedom. Plus, I use many GNU programs everyday which I am always thankful for.
China Unblocks Wikipedia 213
ZZeta writes "Even though the information on the site is still scarce, Editor & Publisher is already publishing the scoop: Apparently, Wikipedia has been unblocked in China. From the article: 'Wikipedia reported on its site that it had received word from multiple users in the country on Chinese-forums.com that the site had been restored.'"
Windows Servers Beat Linux Servers 709
RobbeR49 writes "Windows Server 2003 was recently compared against Linux and Unix variants in a survey by the Yankee Group, with Windows having a higher annual uptime than Linux. Unix was the big winner, however, beating both Windows and Linux in annual uptime. From the article: 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Linux distributions from "niche" open source vendors, are offline more and longer than either Windows or Unix competitors, the survey said. The reason: the scarcity of Linux and open source documentation.' Yankee Group is claiming no bias in the survey as they were not sponsored by any particular OS vendor."
VMWare Rolls Out Their Largest Product Release 154
opieum writes "VMware has launched Virtual Infrastructure 3.0 today which includes ESX 3.0 and a number of management utilities." Relatedly Jane Walker writes "SearchOpenSource has two authors that try to show why VMware ESX Server is miles ahead of Xen and Virtual Server. Discover what to watch out for when running ESX Server and how to avoid sprawl in your virtual data center."
Freshman MIT Students Automate Dorm Room 290
Inessa writes "Two freshman MIT students have automated their dorm room, complete with a big red party button which generates an instant party. Their custom-engineered system is called MIDAS, the Multi-Function In Dorm Automation System. According to the MIT News office, "Gone are the light switches and glaring fluorescent lights of a typical dorm room. Zack Anderson and RJ Ryan's room has several lighting schemes, remote web access, voice activation, a security system, electric blinds and more ... With the touch of one red button, their dorm room becomes a rave. The lights go out, the blinds close, the displays read, "feel the energy" as a voice repeats the same phrase over a deep bass beat.""
Americans Not Bothered by NSA Spying 1322
Snap E Tom writes "According to a Washington Post poll, a majority (63%) of Americans 'said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism.' A slightly higher majority would not be bothered if the NSA collected personal calls that they made. Even though the program has received bi-partisan criticism from Congress, it appears that the public values security over privacy."
Comment They want to (Score 1) 1104
Being a senior in high school who has been programming/interested in computer usage other than simply using programs for a number of years, I believe that many of the problems amount to teachers not showing the interesting side of programming and computer science. In my high school there were three computer programming classes, two that used pascal and one that used visual basic. I took the first one before taking classes at the local university, and my experience with it was that mixed in with the serious students the teacher had students who were taking the class only because they needed an "arts" credit and didn't care. Thus, he never went into the details surrounding what we were doing and rather just had us do assignments that we never elaborated on. Later on, though, I realized that the man had a wealth of information and interesting ideas when I came up to him to expand on what we were doing. However, it's hard to expect students who don't know they might be interested in something to come up to a teacher and ask for more challenges or another way to solve a problem so that they might learn more than they have. There were kids in that class that did eventually take the higher classes, but not having any advanced classes (and no self-motivation to ask to take college courses), their knowledge in programming and computer science died out. A greater tragedy is that now my school doesn't even offer the classes, so there would be no way for a student to find out they might be interested in programming.
Thus I believe the reason so few kids are programming is because they don't know they can, or they don't know anything about it and no one is doing anything to help them. Not every kid can sit at home and read dry 1000 page manuals, it's the school's job to give them an opportunity to be taught and learn something they might find they love.
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