Slashdot Mirror

Pfhorrest writes "The Times Online reports, "A supply teacher has been told not to return to one primary school after she told a class of seven-year-olds that Santa Claus did not exist. Children at Blackshaw Lane Primary School in Oldham were talking about Christmas when the teacher came out with the news. Father Christmas was not responsible for delivering their presents on Christmas Eve, the pupils were taught. The teacher, who had been drafted in for just the day, has now been told not to come back. Parents complained to the school after their children returned home to recount what they had learned in lessons that day." With all the contention about teaching religion (or the lack thereof) in schools these days, what do you all think about similar issues regarding more frivolous popular folklore like Santa Claus?" And what about Cthulhu? Should a 7-year-old be forewarned that he will eventually exist in a world of sublime madness at the whim of the ancient ones?

jbc writes: "As discussed over at use Perl, the Perl community is attempting to raise US$55K in donations to support Perl überhacker Damian Conway for a year so he can devote himself to worthwhile pursuits related to Perl development. Thanks to a large donation from an as-yet-unnamed corporate donor, they're apparently already more than halfway there." Update: 10/15 11:31 PM by H : To actually give, go to the YAPC site.

jbc writes "The O'Reilly Network is running a debate between Tim O'Reilly and Patent Office Director Q. Todd Dickinson. Among the highlights is Tim's call for a Slashdot-like forum to serve as a means of identifying prior art." A bare-knuckled debate, not as in-depth as I'd have liked, but it's good to know Dickinson's perspective. Someone else mentioned a list of educational patents on computer assisted instruction techniques some of which go back to the 1960s.

jbc writes "According to Guido, DARPA has accepted an initial version of a proposal called Computer Programming for Everybody. The idea is to use government money to develop and promote a Python-centered curriculum for high schools and colleges. He defends the choice of Python, as opposed to languages like Perl, Tcl, or Visual Basic, because the latter are, in his view, 'too cluttered with idiosyncracies' to be effectively taught to beginners. " This is actually something I've been peripherally involved with. My CS teacher and I have been talking with Guido about this (I go to Yorktown, one of the schools mentioned in the proposal) - I can tell you firsthand that C++ is just too difficult for first-year CS students in high school, whereas Python is quite simple and elegant. Hopefully, this program will serve as a nice intro for students so that they can get started in programming and perhaps move on to other languages as they become more and more accustomed to the practices of programming.

jbc writes "In the latest Ask Tim piece at the O'Reilly Web site, Tim O'Reilly gives his views on the likely impact of big money on the Open Source movement. Among other points, he says Red Hat's pre-IPO invitation is a good start, but doesn't do enough to promote future Open Source development. " At this point, I just wanna see how the market responds to RHAT.

jbc writes "Linux Journal's cover story for May was an interview with Larry Wall, which is now online. Some good stuff on the future of Perl, whether or not Open Source is a passing fad, and why Activestate is not necessarily evil. "

jbc writes "USA Today has an article on O'Reilly's animal cover art. If you're like me, and are an obsessive collector of these books, you'll find it interesting. If not, you probably won't. "

jbc writes "Here's an opinion piece from O'Reilly's web site titled The Chameleon and the Virus: More Thoughts on Java's Community License. Gist: The viral, coercive GPL has retarded acceptance of open source software. Java's more flexible license can help bring more people into the movement. "

A new monthly column Brave GNU World has started, with the mission to inform everybody about new GNU software. Apparently dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda does not completely delete the contents of you hard-drive. You should use shred instead. Paul Smith wrote in to plug a Free lecture by Richard Stallman which is going to be held tomorrow - Tuesday 23 March at 7pm at the Commonwealth Institute in London. Finally, jbc wrote in with "In his latest 'Ask Tim' piece, Tim O'Reilly talks about the differences between himself and RMS in terms of how they view OSS/FSF licensing issues." null -> zero (*blush*)

dylan durst writes "Either someone is trying to cash in on Truman or the coolest thing to happen live on the net is really gonna happen." Check out this story to read about the first birth to be broadcast on the net. And prepare to tremble in fear, for the future of media is upon us *grin*.