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Oracle Drops Sun's Commitment To Accessibility
An anonymous reader writes "What I feared has come true: after buying Sun, Oracle had a look at its accessibility group and made big cuts in it by firing the most important contributors to the Linux accessibility tools. This is a very sad day for disabled people, as it means we do not really have full-time developers any more." The coverage in OSTATIC has a few more details, including the caution: "This just shows that all too few companies are sponsoring a11y work. If one company laying off a couple of developers spells trouble for the project, then there were problems before that happened" (thanks to reader dave c-b for pointing this out).
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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Virtualizing a Supercomputer
bridges writes "The V3VEE project has announced the release of version 1.2 of the Palacios virtual machine monitor following the successful testing of Palacios on 4096 nodes of the Sandia Red Storm supercomputer, the 17th-fastest in the world. The added overhead of virtualization is often a show-stopper, but the researchers observed less than 5% overhead for two real, communication-intensive applications running in a virtual machine on Red Storm. Palacios 1.2 supports virtualization of both desktop x86 hardware and Cray XT supercomputers using either AMD SVM or Intel VT hardware virtualization extensions, and is an active open source OS research platform supporting projects at multiple institutions. Palacios is being jointly developed by researchers at Northwestern University, the University of New Mexico, and Sandia National Labs." The ACM's writeup has more details of the work at Sandia.
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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Study Says OOXML Unsuitable For Norwegian Government
angry tapir writes "Microsoft's XML-based office document format, OOXML, does not meet the requirements for governmental use, according to a new report published by the Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (DIFI). The agency wants to start a debate over the report as part of its work on standards in the Norwegian government. (As we discussed a week ago, Denmark has already decided to choose ODF over OOXML)"
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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Virus-Detecting "Lab On a Chip" Developed At BYU
natharward writes "A new development in nano-level diagnostic tests has been applied as a lab on a chip that successfully screened viruses entirely by their size. The chip's traps are size-specific, which means even tiny concentrations of viruses or other particles won't escape detection. For medicine, this development is promising for future lab diagnostics that could detect viruses before symptoms kick in and damage begins, well ahead of when traditional lab tests are able to catch them. Aaron Hawkins, the BYU professor leading the work, says his team is now gearing up to make chips with multiple, progressively smaller slots, so that a single sample can be used to screen for particles of varying sizes. One could fairly simply determine which proteins or viruses are present based on which walls have particles stacked against them. After this is developed, Hawkins says, 'If we decided to make these things in high volume, I think within a year it could be ready.'"
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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Google Shooting For Smartphone Universal Translator
nikki4 writes to tell us that in giving some major improvement tweaks to its existing voice recognition tool for the Smartphone, Google is aiming for new translator software that will provide instant translation of foreign languages. "The company has already created an automatic system for translating text on computers, which is being honed by scanning millions of multi-lingual websites and documents. So far it covers 52 languages, adding Haitian Creole last week. Google also has a voice recognition system that enables phone users to conduct web searches by speaking commands into their phones rather than typing them in. Now it is working on combining the two technologies to produce software capable of understanding a caller’s voice and translating it into a synthetic equivalent in a foreign language."
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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New Material Transforms Car Bodies Into Batteries
MikeChino writes "As battery manufacturers race to produce more efficient lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, some scientists are looking to make the cars themselves a power source. Researchers are currently developing a new auto body material that can store and release electrical energy like a battery. Once perfected, scientists hope the substance will replace standard car bodies, making vehicles up to 15 percent lighter and significantly extending the range of electric vehicles."
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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Verizon Blocking 4chan
An anonymous reader writes "According to 4chan's owner and administrator 'moot,' Verizon has explicitly blocked all traffic on their network from boards.4chan.org, where all of 4chan's boards are located. Moot explains that only traffic to and from port 80 is being dropped and they were able to confirm that it was intentional. 4chan's downtime for Verizon users has been in effect for at least 72 hours since Saturday, February 7."
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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A Reflection On Sun Executive Payouts For Failure
With the Oracle/Sun merger finally completing at the end of January, one former Sun worker has taken the time to reflect a bit on the extravagant compensation and golden parachutes that the former executives at Sun are receiving for failing at their jobs. "I think it's fair to say that, for all the miscues that eventually led to its demise, the company created many products and technologies of value along the way, enough so that Oracle thought it was worth it to acquire them and try to keep them going. However, I think that it's equally fair to conclude that, after years of running losses, including about $2 billion in fiscal 2009, so that a buyout was necessary to avoid looming bankruptcy, Sun's executives did nothing to deserve lavish rewards, by any conceivable meaning of the word 'deserve.' But what actually happened is by now a familiar story. [...] And here's a prediction that I feel quite certain of: if, against expectations and my hopes, Ellison drops the ball and things start going south for Oracle, it's the employees who will suffer for it, and he'll be doing just fine."
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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Turns Out You Actually Can Be Bored To Death
A study conducted by researchers at University College London shows that boredom can kill you. The researchers found that people who reported feeling a great deal of boredom were 37 per cent more likely to have died by the end of the study. Martin Shipley, who co-wrote the report said, "The findings on heart disease show there was sufficient evidence to say there is a link with boredom."
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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Cacti 0.8 Network Monitoring
GJdeBoer writes "The book is aimed at people who are managing a network and would like to get insight into the performance of that network. It covers the installation and configuration of the Cacti application. In the preface the book states that it's not necessary to be a Linux Guru to use the book and that exactly is the case. The book builds up your knowledge about Cacti and the necessary steps to configure it for your network, and it teaches you about Net-SNMP and RRDTool, the building blocks of Cacti." Read on for the rest of GJdeBoer's review.
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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What Are the Best Valentine's Day Stunts?
With the oh-so-dreaded Hallmark holiday on the horizon we are flooded with tips and tricks (mostly designed to sell us things our mates cannot live without) of how to please/capture/sedate the ones we care for. One writer even suggests ways to capture the interest of a geeky girl. That said, what are some of the crazier romantically inspired, geeky V-day stunts or activities that you or someone you know has executed to terrible success or failure?
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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SourceForge Removes Blanket Blocking
Recently there was much gnashing of teeth as SourceForge (who shares a corporate overlord with Slashdot) started programmatically blocking users in certain countries to comply with US export restrictions. Thankfully they didn't let it end there and have found a way to put the power back in the hands of the users. "Beginning now, every project admin can click on Develop -> Project Admin -> Project Settings to find a new section called Export Control. By default, we've ticked the more restrictive setting. If you conclude that your project is *not* subject to export regulations, or any other related prohibitions, you may now tick the other check mark and click Update. After that, all users will be able to download your project files as they did before last month's change."
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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Nexus One First Phone Linus Torvalds "Doesn't Hate"
SpuriousLogic writes "Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux kernel, has an absolute disdain for mobile phones. All of the ones he has purchased in the past, the man writes on his personal blog, ended up being 'mostly used for playing Galaga and Solitaire on long flights' even though they were naturally all phones run on open source operating systems. Things have changed now, he adds, now that he has caved and bought Google's Nexus One a couple of days ago."
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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Zero-Day Vulnerabilities On the Market
An anonymous reader writes "Zero-day vulnerabilities have become prized possessions to attackers and defenders alike. As the recent China-Google attack demonstrated, they are the basis on which most of the successful attacks are crafted these days. There is an underground market growing around these vulnerabilities, but there are also 'white markets' — set up by VeriSign, TippingPoint, Google — where they buy zero-day flaws and alert the companies so that they can patch their products before the vulnerabilities can be taken advantage of."
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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Mozilla Puts Tiger Out To Pasture
Barence writes "Mozilla is ready to exorcise support for Mac OS X 10.4 from Firefox's development code, closing the door on Apple's aging OS. The foundation stopped supporting 10.4, codenamed Tiger, in September 2009, but, according to Josh Aas, a Mozilla platform engineer, "we left much of the code required to support that platform in the tree in case we wanted to reverse that decision." We had come to a point where we need to make a final decision and either restore 10.4 support or remove this (large) amount of 10.4 specific code," he notes on the Mozilla developer planning forum."
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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NewsBone.com
Suggest a feed to syndicate here, or check out what I'm doing over at freshtao.
~Created Mon Feb 8 23:10:22 2010
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Battery "Bug" Caused by Batteries, Not by Windows 7
The past few weeks or so, there's been a lot of interest in a supposed battery status report bug in Windows 7. After installing Windows 7, some users reported seeing "consider replacing your battery"-warnings in systems that appeared to be operating just fine on Windows XP or Vista. After extensive research, Steven Sinofsky has now explained on the Engineering 7 blog that the fault is not with Windows 7 - it really, really is your battery.
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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AMD Reveals Fusion CPU+GPU, To Challege Intel in Laptops
"The 'Llano' processor that AMD described today in an ISSCC session is not a CPU, and it's not a GPU - instead, it's a hybrid design that the chipmaker is calling an 'application processor unit', or APU. Whatever you call it, it could well give Intel a run for its money in the laptop market, by combining a full DX11-compatible GPU with four out-of-order CPU cores on a single, 32nm processor die."
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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Concept: Stream Adaptive Computer System, Locus OS
Developed by industrial designer Barton Smith, the Stream Adaptive Computer System is an interesting take on making computing easier and more adaptable to suit the user's current needs. Today, he also unveiled the operating system and user interface that would run on Stream. It's... Amazing.
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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Power7: Big Blue Eye on UNIX
"The scuttlebutt is that IBM seemed perfectly content to wait until May to launch the Power7-based Power Systems servers, but something changed and compelled the company to move up the announcement of its first machines using the eight-core processor to today. Big Blue is not in a habit of explaining its motives or its timing for product launches, but it seems clear that IBM wanted to get out in front of a whole lot of processor and systems launches that are expected between now and the summer."
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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Dropping Mac OS X 10.4 Support in Gecko 1.9.3
Mozilla has announced that they are going to drop support for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger definitively. "Mac OS X 10.4 was released in April of 2005 and a lot has changed since then," Josh Aas writes, "We would like to take advantage of more modern technologies on Mac OS X and 10.4 support has been a hindrance. Where we can work around supporting 10.4, doing so consumes valuable time and effort. Neither Chrome nor Safari has to deal with this."
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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*Some Changes to OSNews Features and Information Display*
We've been working on an "OSNews version 5" upgrade for several months, and with several months to go, we decided to make some incremental changes to OSNews on the existing codebase. The major change, as you probably already noticed, is that we've removed the "Page1/Page2" tabs and instead have OSNews stories with original content and commentary in one column, and news, items on OS-related topics gleaned from other sources in the other. Read on for more details on the changes we've implemented. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article...
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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Introducing Pinta, a Gtk+ Clone of Paint.NET
You may remember that back in November last year, I wrote about the lack of a decent Paint.NET-like application for Linux (or, more specifically, for Gtk+ distributions, since Qt has Krita). As it turns out, this compelled Novell employee Jonathan Pobst to code a Paint.NET clone in Gtk+ using Cairo. Version 0.1 is here, and it's remarkably advanced for something so young.
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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Windows Phone 7: No Multitasking, Stricter Microsoft QA
Later this month, Microsoft will most likely unveil Windows Mobile 7 Windows Phone 7 at the Mobile World Congress. Rumours abound, and the latest set of rumours paint a rather dramatic turnaround for Microsoft's mobile platform - no more multitasking, application distribution limited to official channels, and a whole lot more.
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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Microsoft To Patch 17-Year-Old Computer Bug
"The ancient bug was discovered by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy in January 2010 and involves a utility that allows newer versions of Windows to run very old programs. Mr Ormandy has found a way to exploit this utility in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as well as Windows Vista and Windows 7. The patch for this vulnerability will appear in the February security update. Five of the vulnerabilities being patched at the same time allow attackers to effectively hijack a Windows PC and run their own programs on it."
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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OGG in Silverlight, MS Join SVG, Flash Improvements, WebGL
A quick round up of various web-related news items. First up, a new open source product entitled the "Highgate media suite" will bring OGG video decoding to Silverlight. Microsoft have just joined the SVG working group (arguably 10 years late, but it's better than nothing). Adobe promise significant improvements in Flash 10.1, including Core Animation rendering on OS X and lowered CPU usage. Finally, CoperLicht--a WebGL JavaScript 3D engine (Quake in JS will be here one day)
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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Zucker Misses the Mark, Wrongly Accuses Boxee of Stealing
In a way, it's kind of sad. The old media squealing and squirming, trying pathetically to hold on to a time that has long been lost to the sands of... Well, time. Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of NBC, made such a pathetic attempt before a US Congress committee yesterday, claiming Boxee stole Hulu's content.
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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LLVM: Clang Successfully Self-Hosts!
"Today, Clang completed its first complete self-host! We built all of LLVM and Clang with Clang (over 550k lines of C++ code). The resulting binaries passed all of Clang and LLVM's regression test suites, and the Clang-built Clang could then build all of LLVM and Clang again. The third-stage Clang was also fully-functional, completing the bootstrap."
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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Virtio: An I/O Virtualisation Framework for Linux
With all the virtualization schemes running on top of Linux, how do they exploit the underlying kernel for I/O virtualization? The answer is virtio, which provides an efficient abstraction for hypervisors and a common set of I/O virtualization drivers. Discover virtio, and learn why Linux will soon be the hypervisor of choice.
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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Mono Project Delivers Moonlight 3.0 Preview
"The Mono Project releases the first preview of Moonlight 3.0, giving application developers a first look at the open-source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight 3 technology for the Linux platform." Sadly, it's still Firefox-only.
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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Fusion Garage: Market Big Enough for iPad and Joo Joo
Finally something we can work with. While both the iPad and the Joo Joo are technically still vapourware, people have at least had the opportunity to play with the former, while the latter remained somewhat illusive. Now that the device has been set to ship at the end of this month, Ars Technica finally had some time to play with the Joo Joo and talk to Fusion Garage's CEO, Chandra Rathakrishnan. There's good news, and there's (potentially) bad news.
OSNews
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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NewsBone.com
Suggest a feed to syndicate here, or check out what I'm doing over at freshtao.
~Created Mon Feb 8 21:49:13 2010
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Episode 82 - StackOverflow
Joel and Jeff sit down with Mac developer Daniel Jalkut to discuss Mac development and the new iPad.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Scott Lemon, Ben Galbraith, Dion Almaer - iPad Thoughts
Recorded the day after Apple's announced the iPad, the group discusses the new device, based on their initial impressions. They applaud certain visual and usage aspects, but also talk about why they were disappointed with it. They also assess the iPad's value as a book reader, particularly in comparison to Amazon's Kindle.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Michael Calabrese - The Myth of Spectrum Scarcity: Opportunistic Access to the Airwaves
Michael Calabrese argues that the FCC's apportioning of the airwave spectrum gives a false impression of scarcity. The government's spectrum apportioning doesn't take into account the capabilities and accuracy of today's digital radio equipment, carving unnecessarily wide detours around both federal and commercial properties, and ignoring low-power opportunities. The recent DTV shift freed 18 channels, netting $2B at auction. More can be done to optimize spectrum use.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Episode 81 - StackOverflow
Joel and Jeff discuss the value of Deep Blue, the Five Whys process, and whether programmers should blog.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Salman Khan - YouTube Teaching as Guerrilla Public Service
Sal Khan's response to the crisis in education is Khanacademy.org, a site that lists a vast and growing collection of his YouTube video lessons in math, physics, chemistry, biology, and economics. In this conversation he discusses his teaching philosophy and methods with host Jon Udell, and explains why he abandoned a career in financial services to become a new kind of teacher.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Dacher Keltner, Jason Marsh - The Science of Human Goodness
Dr. Moira Gunn talks with UC Berkeley Psychology Professor, Dacher Keltner and the editor of Greater Good magazine, Jason Marsh, about how humans are naturally programmed to be good and what separates those who are from those who are not.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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John Culberson - Congress and Social Media
Congressman John Culberson R-TX is TWL - Tweeting While Legislating. Espousing the power of the "fun" of "town meetings and tea parties," he's committed to bringing the real-time, blow-by-blow of Congressional deliberations to his subscribers. This moderated speech and discussion with Tim O'Reilly draws a loose analogy between technological innovation and government, asking: Are transparency and open access always compatible with deliberative process or innovative development?
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Ricky Yuen - The Race to the "Next Big Thing" in Mobile Phones
Ricky Yuen of Qualcomm catalogs some of the OEM sensors currently or soon available in cell phones. He explains how they are being used, from enabling new UI such as in the Nintendo Wii, to improved navigation. He argues that they can be employed separately and together to improve handset applications ranging from games, to lifestyle, to life-saving.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Jaron Lanier - You Are Not a Gadget
Dr.Moira Gunn catches up with internet pioneer and author, Jaron Lanier to discuss his new book, You Are Not a Gadget...a Manifesto, where he discusses the technical and cultural problems that can grow out of poorly considered digital design.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Episode 80 - Stack Overflow - StackOverflow
Joel and Jeff discuss GitHub, the value of formal code documentation, and how to decide what features belong in the next version of your software.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Beth Noveck - A Conversation with Tim O'Reilly
In this audio interview from the 2009 Web 2.0 Expo in New York, O'Reilly Media founder and tech guru Tim O'Reilly speaks with Deputy CTO of the United States and Director of the Open Government Initiative Beth Noveck. The two discuss successes, challenges and a culture shift that is happening as a result of President Obama's mandate to make government more transparent, participatory and collaborative.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Brad Templeton - Suing AT&T for a Trillion Dollars While the President Tries to Stop You
Brad Templeton, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, talks about privacy issues, his company's wiretapping suit against AT&T, the history of anti-surveillance laws and judicial structure in the US, what it knows about current surveillance, the state of the suit today, and why privacy issues matter for the innovation of telephony.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Brian Dear - PLATO Turns 50
This year marks the 50th anniversary of PLATO, the pioneering educational courseware system that was also, for certain lucky individuals at certain universities, a preview of an online culture -- one that many others would not encounter for decades to come. In this conversation with host Jon Udell, PLATO historian Brian Dear recalls what it was like to experience an early distribution of a future that was, and in some ways still remains, unevenly distributed.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Jim Zemlin - What's the Deal with Linux on the Desktop?
Everyone uses Linux: if they use Google, trade on-line, or use ATMs. Linux is the most ubiquitous OS in everything from cell phones to TVs, precisely because, Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation argues, it is free. As convergence between connectivity and device happens, network carriers and device-makers scramble to control a new service-based distribution. Zemlin urges continued protection and support of open-source through the filing of 'defensive publications' with the USPTO, and participation in several open-source projects.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Mitch Ratcliffe - Booksahead.com
Tech journalist Mitch Ratcliffe discusses the future of books, reading, and publishing. He talks about how Booksahead.com is a platform to discuss authors and publishing, as well as news about the industry. Calling from the 2010 CES he also reviews new mobile devices, including E-Book readers and tablet computers, as well as the Sophie Project, open source software for writing and reading.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Mark Rolston - A White Box. A Vision of Our Evolving Mobile World.
At the 2009 eComm, Mark Rolston, Chief Creative Officer of Frog Design, talks about a new phase in design exemplified by the likes of Wii and the Android open OS. We currently live in two worlds, the real and the virtual, mediated by 'white boxes' less and less limited by functional distinction. Rolston ponders what we want to do next, what we'll be able to do next, and how the interface device, if there is one, will look and feel.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Episode 79 - StackOverflow
Joel and Jeff discuss open sourcing Markdown, the necessity of barriers on the open internet, and the importance of design in the software process.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Greg Wilson - Software Carpentry
For many years, Greg Wilson has taught a course called Software Carpentry: to scientists, to university students, and to working programmers. In this conversation with host Jon Udell, he discusses the digital and mental tools in the software carpenter's kit, and he reflects on how the course might be taught differently in an era of agile development and ubiquitous connectivity.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Jim Baller - U.S. Broadband Strategy
The FCC is scheduled to deliver a national broadband strategy to Congress in February 2010. Scott Mace and attorney Jim Baller discuss the FCC strategy, early-round stimulus funding, the role of municipalities, and success stories such as Bristol, Virginia's fiber-to-the-home service.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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Simon Wardley - Cloud Computing: Why IT Matters
Although the definition of cloud computing can seem somewhat cloudy, it's a good thing to understand for business. Canonical's Simon Wardley argues with humor that "the cloud" represents a natural marketing-cycle progression for IT; from innovation, to product, to service utility. Given the constant pressure toward commoditization, business must keep up, and consider offering cloud services. He introduces Eucalyptus, a tool to build, experiment, and test-deploy virtual enterprise cloud computing.
IT Conversations
~Created Mon Feb 8 18:30:51 2010
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