What do you feel about the Maker movement and Makerspaces in general?

It seems to me as the Maker/tinkerer is the new equivalent to the electronics hobbyist. Do you believe new project designs need to keep this in mind? (i.e, present the design of an entire gadget instead of just the electronics)?

...and look up!

If you want to go and live in space, develop the tech to do so right now, before you lose the last of the know-how on how to do this. If you want to lust after pics of distant worlds forever unreachable to you, then divert your resources to robotic missions. Or better yet, just create the worlds in Maya and release them to the public -- it's not like they'll ever be able to verify.

The truth is, we care about space because some of us want to go there. In our lifetimes. This is technologically within reach. Keep taking pictures of distant rocks (instead of sending some humans to tough it out and settle them) and you will find all your money diverted to social media and more wars.

mod parent up!

"CEOs, like Yahoo's Marissa Mayer and Apple's Steve Jobs, think that a central office fosters more innovation and productivity. I think they're wrong." ...but how is your own multi-million company doing with your remote workers?

Less sarcastically, are there any LARGE companies out there which are mostly comprised of remote workers and have both innovation and productivity? (I know some small ones do exist)

I think it's time for a crowdsourced patent challenge web site run by the USPTO where there would be a period of public comment for each patent about to be awarded in order to help underpaid (and I imagine under-resourced) examiners find Prior Art.

A lot fewer patents might be awarded, but ones that are would be genuinely new -- this might also save the world billions of dollars.

I've won several hundred dollars and some hardware in various hackathons. They are generally fun, let you meet like minded individuals, and force you to think about problems you might not have considered.

Even though they might not make sense from an hourly rate standpoint, you will pretty much get something just for showing up and make valuable contacts. I haven't had a corporation steal anything I've done yet (even when I won).

Hackathons are much more about proofs of concept and getting feedback from the group than anything else...if I were to follow through on anything I created for one, I am sure I'd re-do it with a different API. I don't quite see what the huge deal is....

mod parent up

It's actually better than that. There are quite a few technologies which will interpolate the "in between" views from several cameras (google "Novel View Synthesis"). Don't forget that lightfield capture technologies like the Lytro Camera also exist.

I've seen projection based glasses free 3D systems that are also quite impressive, such as Holografika.

I really do wish this 3D Hate would end...

I was not and am not an Apple Fanboy.

However, after an exhaustive search I've settled on:

iPad 2 WiFi 16 GB (cheapest available -- around $370 at Fry's)
Goodreader (Around $5 -- most definitely worth it)
Dropbox
Adonit Jot stylus (get the $30 version -- you don't need the pressure sensitive BlueTooth version for this). Do NOT get anything cheaper -- you can't write on the margins with your fingers or with cheaper styli.

I sync various folders of papers in dropbox, annotate them (usually with Dropbox and the stylus), and sync the back to my PC for printing and viewing with annotations.

I thought this would be a poor substitute, but it has the advantage over paper that you can zoom in on the figures.

The only thing I miss about paper is tearing a paper apart and looking at the references at the same time as the content as I read it. I usually have my laptop open for this purpose (opened to the end of the same paper) and to perform any fast googling necessary for comprehension of the paper.

You need to have a base level of education in a society where people elect the decision makers. While I believe voting should be universal, I believe we have a DUTY to at least attempt to educate future voters in the basics of Science and the Humanities.

Not doing this in the most powerful country in the world could easily lead to the destruction of everything -- by raising a generation of ignorant people who put one of their own in charge who make destructive and uninformed policies which will affect us all. You can already see this in the glorification of willful ignorance that's so prevalent today.

Someone who has never taken chemistry or physics will do things like try to roll down windows on airplanes, be easily persuaded to deny scientific results inconvenient to a moneyed few, and support obviously destructive policies without having even a smidgen of understanding about their consequences until it's too late.

(I might be a science geek, but I think having a fundamental grasp of why Western Civilization is the way it is, what brought it here, what common failure of societies are, etc. are just as important. We have 12 years of mandatory education -- let's continue to put it to good use!)

Being 30+, I get similar questions about being too old to be in grad school, etc.

I tell people that the only thing I'm too old for around this age is to train as an Olympic Gymnast!

That being said, if software isn't fun for you, STOP NOW. Software development, more than any other engineering field I know, requires that you love what you do in order to have any chance of success -- the concentration demands are too great otherwise. This, in my opinion, is the main reason older people leave -- they have more interesting things to do.

If you are _willing_ to learn new tech, don't fret anything. Just get in there and figure it out -- pick a project to finish in technology X and finish it. Take a class or work through a book if necessary.

But as an older developer make sure you do the following:

1) Be sure to know WHAT the latest technologies are
2) Be sure to have skills in more than one technology -- I would recommend branching out from MS-Only technologies (for 'street cred,' if nothing else)

(You need the items above to be competitive)

3) Dress and act mature -- and present yourself as having insight into technology integration, team dynamics, and what it takes to complete a project -- this is your edge!

Whether you do management or coding, I believe these things will help.

There are two things you can do which will matter

1) Don't disincentivize -- If an employee is willing to put in 55 hours, pay immediately for 55 hours of work. Don't make it "bounty pay" or "year end bonus" or some other form of unpaid overtime or delayed reward. This is rare and a great boon for a motivated developer.

2) Do a variant of what Google does -- allow people to work on prototypes and proofs of concept (of their own choosing, perhaps vetted by the company) either on company time or their own time. Provide a wide (and serious) audience for such demonstrations (a monthly "demo pitch" meeting for the whole company, perhaps). We would MUCH rather do something that might matter than read (or write on) Slashdot. It's the promise of achieving something larger than themselves which keeps the more interesting developers going. (The ones doing it solely for the paycheck are unlikely to be good. If they are, see #1). While the main purpose of this would be to keep your employees interested and focused on your company, you are bound to end up with several interesting and worthwhile projects in the end -- projects which you could NOT have bought with money alone.
(One of the most valuable experiences I've had in my career was such an opportunity given to us by a forward thinking company owner).

These guys have been around for quite a while:

http://www.telemed.lt/main_en.htm

While I agree that tablets are currently consumption devices, the Pages (MS Word Equivalent) and Keynote (PPT Editor) are actually quite mature and tailored for the tablet. Add GoodReader to that (PDF editor/annotator) and you can do a LOT of day to day viewing and minor editing.

That being said, I'm typing this on my Windows laptop :)

Mod this up. The "it's just like the naturally produced thing" argument is complete BS -- there are quite a few "naturally produced" plants which are poisonous. You also have absolutely no way to know which mods were made to the organisms.

In either case, if it's such a great thing, just label it and I might still buy the GMO product -- but leave me the choice.