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Comment Functioning computer museum (Score 1) 23

There is a functioning computer museum near Pittsburgh - New Kensington, where a very mad bunch of people have a collection of working mainframes and PCs of various vintages, from an early PDP8 onwards. Its called the Large Scale System Museum, and its only open by appointment but, wow, the stuff they have AND IT WORKS !
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China Built the World's Largest Telescope, But Has No One To Run It (arstechnica.com) 122

Posted by msmash from the other-side-of-the-coin dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: China has built a staggeringly large instrument in the remote southern, mountainous region of the country called the Five hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST. The telescope measures nearly twice as large as the closest comparable facility in the world, the US-operated Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. According to the South China Morning Post, the country is looking for a foreigner to run the observatory because no Chinese astronomer has the experience of running a facility of such size and complexity. The Chinese Academy of Sciences began advertising the position in western journals and job postings in May, but so far there have been no qualified applicants. One reason is that the requirements are fairly strict: The candidate must have at least 20 years of previous experience in the field, and he or she must have taken a leading role in large-scale radio telescope project with extensive managerial experience. The candidate must also hold a professorship, or equally senior position, in a world-class research institute or university. Nick Suntzeff, an astronomer at Texas A&M University who helped lead the discovery of dark energy and is involved with construction of the optical Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile, said there are probably about 40 or so astronomers in the world who would qualify for such a job. Compared to other astronomy disciplines, radio astronomy is a relatively small field. "I am sure they will find someone," he said. "But most astronomers in the United States do not like to work abroad. It was hard to get people to apply to work in La Serena, something I could never understand, considering how beautiful it is and how nice the Chilean people are." Among the western community of astronomers there are also questions about the scientific purpose of the FAST telescope. As part of a recent National Science Foundation review of its facilities, US officials placed the similar Arecibo radio telescope near the bottom of its priorities list.

Comment Scale (Score 4, Informative) 136

by SteveAstro (#53847437) Attached to: Four of Iceland's Main Volcanoes Are All Preparing For Eruption

From WikiPedia

The flood discharge at the peak of an eruption in 1755 has been estimated at 200,000–400,000 m3/s (7.1-14.1 million cu ft/sec), comparable to the combined average discharge of the Amazon, Mississippi, Nile, and Yangtze rivers (about 266,000 m3/s (9.4 million cu ft/sec)).

THAT is a lot of warm water.

Comment Re:Illegal Age-ism Admitted in the Press! (Score 3, Insightful) 244

DAMN I wish I had karma to give you. I am by far the oldest member of my R+D team, and by far the most innovative and risk averse.

James Dyson is an asshole. He bleats about wanting more engineers, but he only want the cheap young ones he can pay as little as possible and toss aside. He isn't even a qualified engineer himself. People like Dyson say we need more engineers, but when the UK starting salary for grad engineers is between 26- 30K GBP , they are too cheap. Until we can make a real scarcity of engineers that isn't going to change

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