The Betacantrips Travelogue

Thanks Adam for the link. This is such a great point: many students want to study something with an impact.

The author argues that when intro computer science is taught using silly, simple examples, students just don’t see the potential power and relevance of the tool.  ”Even… pure mathematics has me counting and measuring planets and populations.”  He’s created an alternative set of examples that are much more socially relevant, involving for example voting systems (counting), pollution in the great lakes (2-d arrays), disaster evacuation (optimal paths), and drug interactions (databases).

Ooooooh. Apparently there’s a Red Dwarf movie coming out.

Logrusweaver writes “It looks like Red Dwarf is finally returning! Red Dwarf: Back to Earth is airing in 3 parts in the UK starting this Friday. It seems to be a 3-parter followed by a ‘Making Of’ special. Not trying to give away any more of the plot than the title does, but it does involve the crew finally returning to Earth. (Just hope it’s not a bombed out planet with ’space angels’ running around…)”

Just in case you didn’t see the other post I wrote: another LWN post.

The Linux Foundation recently announced the winners of the We’re Linux video contest. “The journey that begin during last football season with the realization that Microsoft paid Jerry Seinfeld $10 million for his appearance in their ads is almost over. The judging for the We’re Linux video contest has been completed and I’m pleased to announce the finalists. These videos reflect the best of what was truly a global community effort with videos being submitted from Asia, Europe, North America, the Middle East and South America. The response exceeded all of our expectations: frankly I was worried we’d get 20 entries, but we ended up getting over 90. We would like to thank all of the community members who took the time to submit videos. Many were smart, many were funny, all were creative.“

This is so cool — citizens funding journalism directly. Thanks Adam for the link.

These days, everywhere you look it seems that some newspaper is closing its doors, stopping its presses, or maybe just going online-only. This sea change is being heralded by some as the “death of journalism,” a transformation that has been brought about thanks to the web. But is the web really killing journalism? Or is it allowing an entirely new type of journalism to emerge?

David Cohn would probably argue it’s the latter. For five months now, his crowd-funded journalism project at Spot.us has been providing the means for local reporters to get paid while researching the stories the community wants to read.