xp_fetchbeer - Slashdot User

Submission + - $2,400 "Introduction to Linux" course will be free and online this summer

Submitted by kc123 on Saturday March 08, 2014 @06:19PM

kc123 writes: Earlier this week, The Linux Foundation announced that it would be working with edX, a non-profit online learning site governed by Harvard and MIT, to make its “Introduction to Linux” course free and open to all. The Linux Foundation has long offered a wide variety of training courses through its website, but those can generally cost upwards of $2,000. This introductory class, which usually costs $2,400, will be the first from the Linux Foundation to run as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).

Submission + - Einstein's 'Lost' Model Of the Universe Discovered 'Hiding in Plain Sight'

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com on Friday March 07, 2014 @11:35AM

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Dick Ahlstrom reports that Irish researchers have discovered a previously unknown model of the universe written in 1931 by physicist Albert Einstein that had been misfiled and effectively “lost” until its discovery last August while researchers been searching through a collection of Einstein’s papers put online by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “I was looking through drafts, but then slowly realised it was a draft of something very different,” says Dr O’Raifeartaigh. “I nearly fell off my chair. It was hidden in perfect plain sight. This particular manuscript was misfiled as a draft of something else.” In his paper, radically different from his previously known models of the universe, Einstein speculated the expanding universe could remain unchanged and in a “ steady state” because new matter was being continuously created from space. “It is what Einstein is attempting to do that would surprise most historians, because nobody had known this idea. It was later proposed by Fred Hoyle in 1948 and became controversial in the 1950s, the steady state model of the cosmos,” says O’Raifeartaigh. Hoyle argued that space could be expanding eternally and keeping a roughly constant density. It could do this by continually adding new matter, with elementary particles spontaneously popping up from space. Particles would then coalesce to form galaxies and stars, and these would appear at just the right rate to take up the extra room created by the expansion of space. Hoyle’s Universe was always infinite, so its size did not change as it expanded. It was in a ‘steady state’. “This finding confirms that Hoyle was not a crank,” says Simon Mitton. “If only Hoyle had known, he would certainly have used it to punch his opponents." Although Hoyle’s model was eventually ruled out by astronomical observations, it was at least mathematically consistent, tweaking the equations of Einstein’s general theory of relativity to provide a possible mechanism for the spontaneous generation of matter. Einstein's paper attracted no attention because Einstein abandoned it after he spotted a mistake and then didn’t publish it but the fact that Einstein experimented with the steady-state concept demonstrates Einstein's continued resistance to the idea of a Big Bang, which he at first found “abominable”, even though other theoreticians had shown it to be a natural consequence of his general theory of relativity.

eBay Urges Rethink On EU Plan's "Brick and Mortar" Vendor Requirement 139

Posted by timothy on Friday February 19, 2010 @03:30PM from the them-as-has-gits dept.

mernil writes with this snippet from Reuters: "According to a draft regulation drawn up by the European Commission and seen by Reuters, suppliers may be allowed to require that distributors have a 'brick-and-mortar' shop before they can sell online. The proposed rules would replace existing guidelines exempting companies from strict EU competition rules under certain circumstances. Those rules expire at the end of May."

Comment Re:Run For Your Life. Now. (Score 1) 474

by xp_fetchbeer on Thursday June 18, 2009 @10:51AM (#28374073) Attached to: Getting Beyond the Helldesk

Daniel_Staal is correct. Get out now before you are trapped. Idiot users who call you now are a pain to deal with. Wait until you are dealing directly with their bosses. I've worked in nearly every role since college from help desk, to developer, to database administration and finally to management several years ago. My experience has been that things only get worse. Get out now! At least get away from the law firm environment. Attorneys will never view you as more than a pool boy or gardener, and they are physically incapable of acknowledging that someone without a juris doctorate could be intelligent.

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