Obama has made a clean break from the Bush legacy in his early going, undertaking a number of actions that the former President would never have considered. We’ve compiled a report documenting Obama’s record so far:
This week in gaming brought us the inauguration of the 44th president Barack Obama as seen from Fallout 3, the release of an unexpected first-person gem for the DS in Moon, and more industry drama as Microsoft and Sony trade words.
News of game developers slashing thousands of jobs this week and shutting down studios, seems to dispute the notion of a recession-proof video game industry. But video games are indeed recession proof, it’s the developers and publishers who aren’t.
Whether you love Windows 7 or hate it no one seems to be talking about one of its biggest problems. Many fancy business-friendly features are randomly tied to Windows Server 2008 R2 (also in beta) and won’t work even with older versions of Windows Server.
Earlier this month, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Raymond Odierno, issued a waiver allowing military to drink beer on Feb. 1 — a break from rules prohibiting alcohol that were established in light of occupying an Islamic country.
James Cho writes “Through a decade of painstaking reverse engineering, trucker John Coster-Mullen built the first accurate replica of the Hiroshima bomb. His work yielded a new history of the first nukes, ‘Atom Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man,’ with historian Robert Norris saying, ‘Nothing else in the Manhattan Project literature comes close.’ Philip Morrison, one of the physicists who helped invent the bomb, deemed it ‘a remarkable job.'”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The New York Times Magazine is running a story about the rise in political activism in Egypt through sites like Facebook, which allow citizens to gather and share ideas in ways they otherwise aren’t allowed. A state-of-emergency law has been active in Egypt since 1981, which, among other things, “allows the government to ban political organizations and makes it illegal for more than five people to gather without a license from the government.” As affordable internet access has spread throughout the country, the government is having a much harder time keeping wraps on the ideas of dissidents. Blocking access to the sites isn’t a good solution for the government, because many non-dissidents use it for mundane communications. As Harvard’s Ethan Zuckerman puts it, “…doing so would alert a large group of people who they can’t afford to radicalize.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Iain writes “I’m a teacher at a British ‘City Academy’ (ages 11-19) that is going to move into a new building next year. Management is deciding now on the IT that the students will use in the new building, as everything will be built from scratch. Currently, the school has one ICT suite per department, each containing about 25-30 PCs. My issue with this model is that it means these suites are only rarely used for a bit of googling or typing up assignments, not as interactive teaching tools. The head likes the idea of moving to a thin client solution, with the same one room per department plan, as he see the cost benefits. However, I have seen tablet PCs used to great effect, with every single classroom having 20-30 units which the students use as ‘electronic workbooks,’ for want of a better phrase. This allows every lesson to fully utilize IT (multimedia resources, Internet access, instant handout and retrieval of learning resources, etc.) and all work to be stored centrally. My question is: In your opinion, what is the best way for a school to use IT (traditional computer lab, OLPCs, etc.) and what hardware is out there to best serve that purpose? Fat clients for IT/Media lessons and thin client for the rest? Thin client tablets? Giving each student a laptop to take home? Although, obviously, cost is an issue, we have a significant budget, so it should not be the only consideration.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
