(Replying to back out erroneous "Overrated" mod on your post.) As an over-50 software engineer I can attest I was able to find a position at my former salary within 3 weeks of a surprise layoff.

I don't usually go by my full, middle, and last name, but interestingly my M.S. Thesis from 1985 comes up. Nice to know it's still out there somewhere.

> If anything, one recent study suggests, the growth of immigrant workers in American companies helps younger American technical workers

Of course. Isn't that a basic law of economic theory? As the supply of labor increases so do salaries.

I have some doubts.

If you're serving up static pages you shouldn't need much in the way or resources. I've been hosting my heavily dynamic site (see sig) on Pair.com and have found them to be quite competent.

I don't know if this is any sort of indication about the popularity of Windows 8, but I got my daughter a new Acer laptop with Windows 8 for a graduation present. She asked my to put Ubuntu on instead. Interestingly, she prefers Mate to the default Unity desktop. Aside: boots in seconds because I put /boot and /usr on the SSD drive. Very nice.

I don't see technology as inhabiting much of the universe of effective teaching. A good teacher with deep subject understanding and good communication skills is always going to be better than a crappy teacher festooned with the latest IT.

I haven't been able to mount my new device running Jellybean because it uses MTP instead of the old Mass Storage, so this capability is welcomed.

A few nights ago my band was playing at one of the local Casino showrooms, and I noticed these new LOTR machines. I did a double take! Most of you probably do not frequent Casinos (nor would I, except for my gigs there), but they have all these movie-themed slot machines; Wizard Of Oz, Dirty Dancing, etc. But LOTR machines just seem really strange for some reason. Funny.... no Ocean's Eleven ones.

I use it daily for my work and the kid's machine runs it. I'll drop them some $$$ next time.

Both my wife and I changed companies within the last year and a half where we have better work environments and significantly better salaries. We're both software engineers.

I'm almost 54. Going strong and doing what I love. My wife is 45 and also a software engineer. I had a project end about 9 months ago and had to find a position within 4 weeks. Lots of work, even for a guy my age (Southern California).

Well, as a counter example, I was sick of ads on my Droid "Free" metronome app, so I wrote an ad-free one, and yes, it was produced via "Good Will". And unlike the ad-festooned apps, mine comes with both Cowbell and Fart sounds!

That's what JNI is for. Write your performance-critical code in C.

Things falling on people kill people. From the photos in TFA it looks like the're using unreinforced masonry. This is deadly in earthquake zones, but this situation has more to do with local building codes and enforcement than seismic potential.

In the current state of earthquake prediction, the actual prediction of *when* an earthquake will occur is not all that reliable. However the prediction of how much ground acceleration can be expected from potential seismic activity is reliable and building codes can be created accordingly.