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Software

Submission + - Back to EE, stay in software, or go executive? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I've been happily working in a small team of great people on scientific research software, but our funding dried up. Then in the 11th hour, it seems I'm not being let go after all — for another year at least.

Assuming the worst, I went for interviews and had an offer — but not in the city where I have my small family. So when my old boss (himself a generous, if eccentric engineer trying to retire) offered me a gig making use of my fading EE skills, I accepted. Recently, he caught me by surprise — saying his small (< 10) business servicing the energy sector would do better if I represented it.

What does Slashdot think of jumping way outside your comfort zone by considering such a drastic (premature for late 20s?) career jump? His rationale is, "if I can do it, you can too". And what of research software vs industrial/EE?
NASA

Submission + - Audacity Visions Have The Power to Alter Mind States (youtube.com)

Submitted by
nagalman
nagalman writes: "There is a very powerful video out that takes the audio of words from Neil deGrasse Tyson, the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal receiver, and meshes it with powerful images of the history and successful outcomes of NASA. Through Penny4NASA, Dr. Tyson is pressing for the budget of NASA to be doubled from 0.5% to 1% of the federal budget in order to spur vision, interest, dreams, public excitement, and innovation into science and engineering. With Kansas stating that "evolution could not rule out a supernatural or theistic source, that evolution itself was not fact but only a theory and one in crisis, and that Intelligent Design must be considered a viable alternative to evolution", and in North Carolina's legislature there is a bill that basically refutes the scientific fact of global warming, maybe its time we start listening to experts who have a proven record of success, rather than ideology that has only been "proven" in the mind of elected politicians."
Android

Submission + - Linaro speeds up Android (liliputing.com)

Submitted by
Argon
Argon writes: "From the article:

"The folks behind the Linaro open source software project have put a little time into tweaking Google Android to use the gcc 4.7 toolchain. The result is a version of Android that can perform many tasks between 30 and 100 percent faster than the version of Android Google 4.0 Google currently offers through the AOSP (Android Open Source Project)."

Note that there are CPU optimizations only since they have only access to binary blobs for GPU code."
Microsoft

Submission + - History Will Revere Bill Gates, Forget Steve Jobs

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "PC Magazine reports that journalist Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Outliers, has stirred up quite a controversy in tech circles with his off-the-cuff remarks that history will remember Bill Gates fondly while Steve Jobs slips into obscurity, likening Gates' charitable work to the German armaments maker Oskar Schindler's famous efforts to save his Jewish workers from the gas chambers during World War II and adding that there will be statues of Gates across the Third World and because of Gates there's a reasonable shot we will cure malaria. "Gates, sure, is the most ruthless capitalist. And then he decides, he wakes up one morning and he says, 'Enough.' And he steps down, he takes his money, takes it off the table ... and I think, I firmly believe that 50 years from now, he will be remembered for his charitable work.," said Gladwell. ""And of the great entrepreneurs of this era, people will have forgotten Steve Jobs. Who's Steve Jobs again?" For all his dismissal of Jobs' legacy, however, Gladwell remains utterly fascinated with him. "He was an extraordinarily brilliant businessman and entrepreneur. He was also a self-promoter on a level that we have rarely seen," said Gladwell. "What was brilliant about Apple, he understood from the get-go that the key to success in that marketplace was creating a distinctive and powerful and seductive brand." Gladwell concludes that the most extraordinary moment in the biography of Jobs is when Jobs is on his deathbed and it's over and he knows it. ""And on, I forget, three, four occasions, he refuses the mask because he is unhappy with its design. That's who he was. Right to the very end, he had a set of standards. If he was going to die, dammit, he's going to die with the right kind of oxygen mask. To him it was like making him send his final emails using Windows.""

Submission + - Harmful effects of closed source software

Submitted by Drinking Bleach
Drinking Bleach writes: In a world with a few citizens that believe closed source/non-free software is unethical in all cases and make no leeway for any, it is curious what some of the more prominent members of the community believe. Eric Raymond, coiner of the term "open source" and founder of the Open Source Initiative, writes in detail of how to evaluate the effects of running any particular piece of closed source software and details the possible harms of doing so. Ranking limited firmware as the least kind of harm to full operating systems as potentially the greatest harms, he details his reasoning for all of them.

Likewise, Richard Stallman, founder of GNU and the Free Software Foundation, writes about a much more limited scope, Nonfree DRM'd games on GNU/Linux, in which he takes the firm stance that non-free software is unethical in all cases but concedes that running non-free games on a free operating system is much more desirable than running them on a non-free operating system itself (such as Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X).
Your Rights Online

Submission + - Pictures of the June 9 Anti-ACTA Protests Surfacing (zeropaid.com)

Submitted by Dangerous_Minds
Dangerous_Minds writes: ZeroPaid reported yesterday that June 9 would be a global day of action against ACTA. Today, ZeroPaid is gathering numerous links to galleries of the protests. The cities involved include Göteborg, Mannheim, Frankfurt, Kassel, and Brussels. Are you aware of any other cities that took part where pictures are surfacing as well?
China

Submission + - China Plans Manned Space Mission in June 2012 (yahoo.com)

Submitted by jamstar7
jamstar7 writes: From Yahoo News:

China will launch three astronauts this month to dock with an orbiting experimental module, and the crew might include its first female space traveler, a government news agency said Saturday.
A rocket carrying the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft was moved to a launch pad in China's desert northwest on Saturday for the mid-June flight, the Xinhua News Agency said, citing an space program spokesman. The three-member crew will dock with and live in the Tiangong 1 orbital module launched last year, Xinhua said. The government has not said how long the mission will last.

China, the only non-partner of the ISS, plans to see if its Shenzhou 9/Long March 2F system can get the job done like the Falcon9/Dragon system can. They plan on two missions this year to dock with their Tiangong 1 module launched in September 2011. Their eventual plans include building a full tilt space station by 2020, though one of only about 60 tons, compared to the ISS's 450ish tons.
Android

Submission + - Developer's notes about OpenGL ES programming (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
diamond3
diamond3 writes: "Here I want to share our humble experience in programming OpenGL ES 2.0 applications for Android. Following the link in this article you will learn about common performance pitfalls and optimization tricks in OpenGL ES, and our trial and error way of learning OpenGL. The article describes the common ways of optimizing rendering process, shader optimizations, texture compression concerns and problems with different GPUs. Everything is based on real applications available on Android Market."
Businesses

Submission + - Rovio Considers Moving To Ireland (irishtimes.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Rovio, the Finnish company behind Angry Birds, is considering moving its headquarters to Ireland, chief executive Mikael Hed has said. Rovio employs approximately 400 people, mostly in Finland, but Rovio is in contact with IDA Ireland about establishing headquarters here. The reason for the move would be corporation tax rate, which in Finland is 24.5%, while Ireland’s rate is 12.5%. Companies such as Google and Facebook have also set up European headquarter operations in Dublin for the same reason. Hed said that if the decision was made to move to Ireland, the company would then decide exactly what elements of its operations would move. 'If we did make that decision then it would be a natural thing to do to have some production [in Ireland] also.'
Microsoft

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How should I gain project management experience? 4

Submitted by ivonic
ivonic writes: I worked for Microsoft for a year as a Windows 7 trainer, finished my degree in computer science, then took a good job outside of IT as that was the best thing available.

How do I stop myself from de-skilling in IT, and gain the experience needed to be a project manager (or Program Manager) whilst working full-time in an unrelated industry?

I don't just want to halve my salary and go back into a server admin job to 'work my way up', but I can't afford to do huge courses in project management. What should I do?
IT

Submission + - Valuation Comparison: Skilled Admins vs Contributing Supervisors

Submitted by HappyDude
HappyDude writes: Sorry about the long-winded post. I think a little background might help.

I've been asked to manage a department in our IT group. It's comprised of UNIX, VMWare, Citrix, EMC and HP SAN Admins, Technicians and Help Desk personnel. The group covers the spectrum in years of experience.

I am a 20-year Admin veteran of Engineering and Health Care IT systems including UNIX, Oracle DBA, Apache HTTP/Tomcat, WebSphere, software design plus other sundry jack-of-all-trades kinds of stuff. Although I consider myself a hack at most of those trades, I'm reasonably good at any one of them when I'm submerged.

I also have 10 years of Project Management experience in Engineering and Health Care related IT organizations. I do have formal PM training, but haven't bothered to seek credentialing.

I'm being told that I'll be worth less to the organization as a supervisor than what I'm making now, but the earning potential is greater if I accept the management position. Out of the kindness of their hearts, they're offering to start me in the new position at the same wage I'm currently making.

I think their rational is crap, the primary reason behind their valuation being that I have no leadership experience. I would be a "rookie" supervisor with no more value than a 4-year grad coming in off the street. It seems a couple things are missing from their calculations.

One is that they don't give me credit for the "global" projects I've led to complete success (completed on time, under budget, all goals met, blah, blah, blah). Apparently PM doesn't have anything to do with leadership in their eyes. My current employer doesn't actually understand what PM is and has no one with the skills I have who actually practices it other than me.

How would you recommend I "educate" our HR department about what real PM is all about and convince them that it sure as hell does satisfy their leadership experience requirement?

The other thing missing (in my mind) is a fair valuation of my current skills, or of the worth of a supervisor skilled in almost all of the trades I'll be managing. They use "market" analysis data from a 3rd party when gauging salaries, probably like most employers do ... but I know individuals in my field who wouldn't even talk to these folks for a starting wage less than 25% greater than what I'm currently making.

HR suggested if I could provide adequate data that contradicts or adequately augments theirs, they would reconsider.

How would I go about gathering that kind of data, from reputable sources, that would even stand a chance of these people's paradigms?

As a final request, can you please provide me with first-hand knowledge of salary ranges for the two positions described? Maybe I'm all wet, but I think I'm a steal at wage I'm being paid right now. This whole thing kinda pisses me off!

Cheers, All.

Submission + - Open Source eBook Kiosk for the Disconnected

Submitted by
N8F8
N8F8 writes: "The book industry is so focused on the web-connected ebook market that I haven't been able to find a SINGLE product or service that allows eBook lending for communities that aren't connected to the web all the time. Is anyone aware of a eBook kiosk system that caches eBooks locally? Or a Open Source software that would allow users to plug a USB eBook reader into a kiosk, browse through a catalog and download the eBook to the reader? Also, is anyone aware of a major book publisher or book distributor that would allow such a system or at least bulk eBook license?"
EU

Submission + - After Modifications, Google Street View Approved For Switzerland (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Since Google began collecting Street View data in Europe a few years ago, many countries have taken it the company to court in order to settle privacy concerns. The NY Times reports that the last challenge to Street View's basic legality has been resolved. Switzerland's top court accepted that Google could only guarantee they would blur out 99% of faces, license plates, and other identifying markers, but also imposed some additional restrictions. 'Those conditions would require Google to lower the height of its Street View cameras so they would not peer over garden walls and hedges, to completely blur out sensitive facilities like women’s shelters, prisons, retirement homes and schools, and to advise communities in advance of scheduled tapings.'

Submission + - Need Advice on Microscopes

Submitted by OceanMan7
OceanMan7 writes: My 7-year-old son is getting very interested in microscopic things — from bacteria to parameciums (paramecia?) Not being a biologist, I would appreciate advice on what type of microscope to get. I'd be operating it and he viewing with supervision.

I'd like something better than a toy and plan to buy it used, if possible. Extra points if it's stereo and also allows me to view opaque objects at low magnification.

Thanks very much in advance for your collective wisdom.
Windows

Submission + - X11 7.7 Released (freecode.com)

Submitted by Jizzbug
Jizzbug writes: The X Window System made release X11 7.7 last night on this 9th of June, 2012: "This release incorporates both new features and stability and correctness fixes, including support for reporting multi-touch events from touchpads and touchscreens which can report input from more than one finger at a time, smoother scrolling from scroll wheels, better cross referencing and formatting of the documentation, pointer barriers to control cursor movement, and synchronization fences to coordinate between X and other rendering engines such as OpenGL."
Space

Submission + - The Venus Transit and Hunting for Alien Worlds (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "Forget simply detecting a slight "dip" in brightness as an exoplanet transits in front of its star, soon we'll be able to image the event. What's more, by doing this we'll see that exoplanetary transits look exactly like the historic Venus transit that wowed the world on Tuesday. This is according to astronomer Gerard van Belle, of Lowell Observatory near Flagstaff, Ariz., who hopes to use an interferometer to carry out the mind-blowing goal of capturing the silhouettes of exoplanets drifting in front of distant stars. But that's not all, this whole effort may help us track down the first bona fide Earth-like alien world."
Censorship

Submission + - An HTTP Status Code for Censorship? (shkspr.mobi)

Submitted by Tryfen
Tryfen writes: UK ISPs are being forced to block The Pirate Bay. One is using "HTTP 403 Forbidden" to tell users that they cannot access the site. So, should there be a specific HTTP status code to tell a user that they are being censored?

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