The internet is responsible for this biological change.

This article talks more about the feelings and emotions of experts rather than referring to any changes that have occurred physically with the brain so I categorize this into whatever mental file folder I archive topics concerning 'exaggerated digital age hysteria' as I was always a skimmer just like this woman, and when I say always it means the majority of my life that was pre-internet. Just like this woman, I had difficulty immersing myself into a book as I defaulted to skimming. This wasn't an adaptation caused by the internet, this was how my brain always worked.

Certainly I utilize this now to skim Slashdot in seconds to determine if I want to click further, just as I'm sure plenty of other higher functioning readers do, and as such I don't see this as a detriment or a negative byproduct of the internet.

Thank you. I read the summary and then re-read the summary many times thereafter and wasn't entirely sure if they figured it out or didn't figure it out. "Scientists figured it out..." "... but then they realized that what they figured out didn't make a difference."

It seems submitters and moderators aren't actually summarizing but rather, they're cutting up quotes and links in ways that don't jive with the post title.

"When I grow up, I want to cure world hunger!" The coal will still exist, people will still find coal, people will still want coal, etc., etc.

... which is obvious to Windows users?

In other news, a high school co-op student 'working' for Slashdot has racked up an undisclosed amount of semester time designing a new beta site, a site heavily criticized by any user that's pushed into it. Many users are attempting to pool their resources to create an alternative Slashdot site as they feel the owners of Slashdot.com aren't listening to their criticisms since the current site is fine the way it is and doesn't need any the horrid beta design.

... because I expect I'll enthusiastically agree with you, especially after reading "If you don't leave "Classic" Slashdot as a default option, there is a good chance that I will not read the site anymore." One of the reasons I come to Slashdot is the condensed nature of the site, the efficient design, and the ability to see snippets of other news sites on the side.

I'm rather angry with you for encouraging me to use this beta site more than I want to.

Perhaps this is a basic level computer class design project and it's leading up to a long buildup April fools joke?

There's nothing positive I have to say about this layout. It's not because I don't like change or 'new things', rather I hate when something good is replaced with something foul. This site is losing an extremely efficient design that scaled well regardless of the device I viewed it on and replacing it with a gigantic ugly page that I'll be avoiding once it changes.

This is the Windows 8 of Slashdot... and that's being generous to Slashdot. Perhaps Titanic will be more apt after the change is instituted...?

Yes, Cisco also does this and the necessity to call them, pleading for an up-to-date firmware when your brand new Cisco unit has a 2 year old ASA bin, ASDM and VPN which won't work with your client's newer Internet Explorer. This is also why it's common amongst IT people to say "screw you Cisco" and share firmware on secret yet publicly hosted HTTP sites made available through one service contract for one device.

If there's one thing you can credit Seagate for, it's consistency - since the 90's the (R) for refurb on their drives has been the kiss of death, guaranteeing another failure within 3 months of receiving the replacement. While it's great they have a clearly understandable domestic RMA team, they often send you a broken drive to replace your defective drive so you now have to pay to ship two drives back.

If you politely ask them to send you a new drive since they keep sending you bad drives, they'll politely tell you they can't guarantee you a healthy drive. Typically with our servers we're guaranteed a bad Seagate SAS 10k drive with a bank of 10 drives and we're pretty much at a 100% failure rate with RMA drives and many times the RMA drives they send us are broken. Seagate (R) drives should never be installed in a server or anything reliable... heck, I'd keep Seagate drives out of anything you want to remain reliable.

Clearly there's a job opening for a grammer nazi in my life.

I often interact with large companies' IT departments and the general ID is to completely block all Amazon EC2 servers to prevent spam, malware attacks and access to filter bypass services like Ultrasurf, regardless of the possibility of legitimate sites hosted on Amazon. Occasionally they'll make exceptions for port 80 but the idea is basically, "since Amazon is complicit in hosting so much malicious or nefarious crap on the internet, just block Amazon."

I'm guessing he's never been to one of the aforementioned performer's party since he's talking out of his ass.

As a middle aged IT person that's contractually in high demand with a large number of companies, I interact regularly with older IT personnel (my age or slightly older) and many companies that have turfed many of their IT staff in general.

With the former I often encounter a lack of knowledge on new topics, older people that have grown too comfortable with their idea of 'current' technology without expanding their knowledge while a young guy will come in and say, "oh you guys need this and this and this to solve this problem!" The young guy might be overzealous and his idea might crash and burn, yet he was willing to provide solutions where plenty of older IT people come off as either too unwilling to explore alternative solutions or simply lacking the knowledge to solve difficult problems.

It's also important to keep in mind that as many companies move their services "to the cloud", I've seen a decreased demand for local IT and as this happens I've seen plenty of IT people blame "executive bonuses" or "replaced with young people" when the truth of the matter is that there's less demand for their skillset.

... and quite frankly, there's far too many IT people in the industry that skirt by with limited ability because they're surrounded by other people with limited abilities, so when some new people come along that actually know a thing or two, they can bring to management's attention that their IT departments are lacking in skill.

I'd mod you up if I could, since I grew up without technology, introduced to it later in life and I'm successfully working in IT. I have childhood memories of adventure in exploring the environment around me rather than memories of trying to beat some video game. I remember when Canadian roads were filled with kids playing street hockey, yet these days there's no kids to be seen. Where are the children?