By Soulskill from
Slashdot's now-they-face-the-wrath-of-khan department:
OldHawk777 writes with news that
MITx, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's online learning initiative,
has opened free enrollment for its first course:
6.002x: Circuits and Electronics.
"Modeled after MIT’s 6.002 — an introductory course for undergraduate students in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) — 6.002x will introduce engineering in the context of the lumped circuit abstraction, helping students make the transition from physics to the fields of electrical engineering and computer science. ... 'We are very excited to begin MITx with this prototype class,' says MIT Provost L. Rafael Reif. 'We will use this prototype course to optimize the tools we have built by soliciting and acting on feedback from learners.' To access the course, registered students will log in at mitx.mit.edu, where they will find a course schedule, an e-textbook for the course, and a discussion board. Each week, students will watch video lectures and demonstrations, work with practice exercises, complete homework assignments, and participate in an online interactive lab specifically designed to replicate its real-world counterpart. Students will also take exams and be able to check their grades as they progress in the course. Overall, students can expect to spend approximately 10 hours each week on the course."Read Replies (0)
By Soulskill from
Slashdot's when-rights-fight-rights department:
An anonymous reader writes
"Jeffrey Rosen, Legal Affairs Editor for The New Republic, explains why the E.U.'s proposed data protection regulation known as the right to be forgotten is actually 'the biggest threat to free speech on the Internet in the coming decade.' In the Stanford Law Review Online (there's a shorter version in TNR), he writes: 'The right to be forgotten could make Facebook and Google, for example, liable for up to two percent of their global income if they fail to remove photos that people post about themselves and later regret, even if the photos have been widely distributed already. Unless the right is defined more precisely when it is promulgated over the next year or so, it could precipitate a dramatic clash between European and American conceptions of the proper balance between privacy and free speech, leading to a far less open Internet.' According to Rosen, the 'right' goes farther than previously thought, treating 'takedown requests for truthful information posted by others identically to takedown requests for photos I've posted myself that have then been copied by others: both are included in the definition of personal data as "any information relating" to me, regardless of its source.' Examples of previous attempts this might bolster include 'efforts by two Germans convicted of murdering a famous actor to remove their criminal history from the actor's Wikipedia page' and an 'Argentine pop star [who] had posed for racy pictures when she was young, but recently sued Google and Yahoo to take them down.'"Read Replies (0)
By Soulskill from
Slashdot's if-it's-not-one-thing department:
Last Friday, an article in Eurogamer about the Raspberry Pi's upcoming release threw a wrench in the mental gears of anyone hoping to soon order one of the long-awaited (and much anticipated) boards, which had been expected to be ready for orders sometime this month. The piece was based on
an interview with David Braben — since
picked up, and subsequently corrected, by others as well — and it gave the impression both that a sudden delay had cropped up in the schedule (so that the boards wouldn't be available for consumers until September), and that the price might rise as well. The Raspberry Pi site says that both of these were mistaken, and clarifies (with some bold print, even): "
You will be able to buy a Raspberry Pi from the end of February, from this website. The 'consumer release' that Eurogamer is talking about is actually the educational release, which, as you’ll be aware if you’ve been hanging out on our forums, will come with a kid-targetted software stack, a heap of written support materials, and a standard case." That educational version sounds like it's got enough value added to justify a higher price and a longer wait, but you can unwrench those gears if you're just interested in the plain (unboxed) board instead.
Read Replies (0)