Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Code.org Sends Mixed Messages on CS Job Opportunities

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "What's Wrong With This Picture?" Code.org asks of an infographic that suggests 1.4 million jobs await U.S. kids who are willing to study Computer Science. But next to the infographic is a Code.org Tweet lamenting the annual cap of 85,000 H-1B visas (certain organizations are exempt from the cap) that is limiting the number of international job-seekers who can come to the U.S. to fill these jobs. The linked-to article reports that the head of FWD.us, the PAC founded by Code.org backers Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, "lambasted current law regarding the cap structure of high-skill visas in an email to TechCrunch, calling the current set of regulations 'dysfunctional.' He went on to state that it is 'absolutely critical that House Republicans take action on immigration reform now to do right by American families and boost the American economy.'" Further muddying the CS job estimate waters, FWD.us cites an example elsewhere on its site that upping the cap would enable H-1B workers to fill 18,000 STEM jobs in South Dakota, perhaps some of the same jobs that are presented as job opportunities for SD kids at Code.org. While it jibes nicely with FWD.us's call for high-tech immigration reform and Microsoft's National Talent Strategy (the groups share many common supporters), could Code.org's advocacy for more H-1B visas raise concerns about future computer science job prospects, possibly discouraging CS study by U.S. kids?

Submission + - Jenny McCarthy: 'I Am Not Anti-Vaccine' 1

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Jenny McCarthy is claiming she has been misunderstood and is not anti-vaccine. In an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times, McCarthy tries to ignore everything she’s been saying about vaccines for years and wipe the record clean. “People have the misconception that we want to eliminate vaccines,” McCarthy told Time magazine science editor Jeffrey Kluger in 2009. “Please understand that we are not an anti-vaccine group. We are demanding safe vaccines. We want to reduce the schedule and reduce the toxins.” But Kluger points out that McCarthy left the last line out of that quotation: "If you ask a parent of an autistic child if they want the measles or the autism, we will stand in line for the f--king measles." That missing line rather changes the tone of her position considerably, writes Phil Plait and is a difficult stance to square with someone who is not anti-vaccine. As Kluger points out, her entire premise is false; since vaccines don’t cause autism, no one has to make the choice between measles (and other preventable, dangerous diseases) and autism." Something else McCarthy omitted from her interview with Kluger: "I do believe sadly it’s going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe," said McCarthy. "If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it’s their f*cking fault that the diseases are coming back. They’re making a product that’s sh*t. If you give us a safe vaccine, we’ll use it. It shouldn’t be polio versus autism." Kluger finishes with this: "Jenny, as outbreaks of measles, mumps and whooping cough continue to appear in the U.S.—most the result of parents refusing to vaccinate their children because of the scare stories passed around by anti-vaxxers like you—it’s just too late to play cute with the things you’ve said. " For many years McCarthy has gone on and on and on and on and on and on about vaccines and autism. "She can claim all she wants that she’s not anti-vax," concludes Plait, "but her own words show her to be wrong."

Submission + - Could Code.org's H-1B Advocacy Discourage CS Study?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Code.org is certainly sending out mixed signals to visitors to its What's Wrong With This Picture? page. Next to an infographic that promises a bottomless-cup-of-Computer-Science-jobs to U.S. kids is a Twitter feed with a Code.org Tweet lamenting a cap on H-1B visas that prevents international job-seekers from filling these jobs. In the linked-to article, TechCrunch reports that the head of FWD.us — the PAC founded by Code.org supporters and "CS teachers" Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates — "lambasted current law regarding the cap structure of [H-1B] high-skill visas in an email to TechCrunch, calling the current set of regulations 'dysfunctional.' He went on to state that it is 'absolutely critical that House Republicans take action on immigration reform now to do right by American families and boost the American economy.'" Elsewhere on its site, FWD.us suggests H-1B workers as the answer to filling 18,000 STEM jobs in South Dakota (due to the state's inability to produce a skilled workforce). It's unclear if some of those jobs are also counted as job opportunities for SD kids in Code.org's infographic. So, in the long run, could Code.org's advocacy for more H-1B visas, while it aligns nicely with FWD.us (common supporters of both organizations), actually wind up discouraging CS study by U.S. kids?

Submission + - Commenters to Dropbox CEO: Houston, We Have a Problem

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: On Friday, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston sought to quell the uproar over the appointment of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the company's board of directors, promising in a blog post that Rice's appointment won't change its stance on privacy. More interesting than Houston's brief blog post on the method-behind-its-Condi-madness (which Dave Winer perhaps better explained a day earlier) is the firestorm in the ever-growing hundreds of comments that follow. So will Dropbox be swayed by the anti-Condi crowd ("If you do not eliminate Rice from your board you lose my business") or stand its ground, heartened by pro-Condi comments ("Good on ya, DB. You have my continued business and even greater admiration")? One imagines that Bush White House experience has left Condi pretty thick-skinned, and IPO riches are presumably on the horizon, but is falling on her "resignation sword" — a la Brendan Eich — out of the question for Condi?

Submission + - Michael Bloomberg: You Can't Teach a Coal Miner to Code

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Gigaom reports tbat while speaking at the Bloomberg Energy Summit on Wednesday, former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he gives "a lot of money to the Sierra Club" to help close dirty coal plants, but added that as a society we have to "have some compassion to do it gently." Subsidies to help displaced workers are one option, said Bloomberg, while retraining is another option. But, in a slight to the tech industry's sometimes out-of-touch nature with workers outside of Silicon Valley, he said retraining needs to be realistic, "You're not going to teach a coal miner to code", argued Bloomberg. "Mark Zuckerberg says you teach them to code and everything will be great. I don't know how to break it to you ...but no."

Submission + - Google: Teach Girls Coding, Get $2,500. Teach Boys, Get $0.

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Public school teachers," reads the headline at Khan Academy (KA), "introduce your students to coding and earn $1000 or more for your classroom!" Read the fine print, however, and you'll see that the Google-bankrolled offer is likely to ensure that girls, not boys, are going to be their Computer Science teachers' pets. "Google wants public high school students, especially girls, to discover the magic of coding," KA explains to teachers. "You'll receive a $100 DonorsChoose.org gift code for every female student who completes the [JS 101: Drawing & Animation] course. When 4 or more female students complete it, we'll email you an additional $500 gift code as a thank-you for helping your students learn to code." While "one teacher cannot have more than 20 of the $100 gift codes activated on their DonorsChoose.org projects," adds KA, "if the teacher has more than 20 female students complete the curriculum, s/he will still be sent gift codes, and the teacher can use the additional gift codes on another teacher’s DonorsChoose.org project." So, is girls-are-golden-boys-are-worthless funding for teachers' projects incongruent with Khan Academy's other initiatives, such as its exclusive partnership with CollegeBoard to eliminate inequality among students studying for the SAT?

Submission + - Born to RUN: Dartmouth Throwing BASIC a 50th B-Day Party

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Still hanging on to a dog-eared copy of BASIC Computer Games? Back issues of Creative Computing? Well then, Bunky, mark your calendar for April 30th, because Dartmouth College is throwing BASIC a 50th birthday party that you won't want to miss! From the "invite" to BASIC at 50: "At 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, in the basement of College Hall, Professor John Kemeny and a student programmer simultaneously typed RUN on neighboring terminals. When they both got back correct answers to their simple programs, time-sharing and BASIC were born. Kemeny, who later became Dartmouth's 13th president, Professor Tom Kurtz, and a number of undergraduate students worked together to revolutionize computing with the introduction of time-sharing and the BASIC programming language. Their innovations made computing accessible to all Dartmouth students and faculty, and soon after, to people across the nation and the world [video — young Bill Gates cameo @2:18]. This year, Dartmouth is celebrating 50 years of BASIC with a day of events on Wednesday, April 30. Please join us as we recognize the enduring impact of BASIC, showcase innovation in computing at Dartmouth today, and imagine what the next 50 years may hold." Be sure to check out the vintage photos on Flickr to see what real cloud computing looks like, kids!

Submission + - Was California Law Broken in the Mozilla CEO Firestorm?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: While the rise and fall of Brendan Eich at Mozilla sparked a debate over how to properly strike a balance between an employee's political free speech and his employer's desire to communicate a particular corporate 'culture,' notes Brian Van Vleck at the California Workforce Resource Blog, the California Labor Code has already resolved this debate. "Under California law," Van Vleck explains, "it is blatantly illegal to fire an employee because he has donated money to a political campaign. This rule is clearly set forth in Labor Code sections 1101-1102". Section 1102 begins, "No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity." Corporate Counsel's Marlisse Silver Sweeney adds, "Mozilla is adamant that the board did not force Eich to resign, and asked him to stay on in another role. It also says that although some employees tweeted for his resignation, support for his leadership was expressed by a larger group of employees. And this is all a good thing for the company from a legal standpoint." As Eich stepped down, Re/code reported that Mozilla Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker said Eich's ability to lead the company had been badly damaged by the continued scrutiny over the hot-button issue. "It's clear that Brendan cannot lead Mozilla in this setting," Baker was quoted as saying. "I think there has been pressure from all sides, of course, but this is Brendan's decision. Given the circumstances, this is not surprising." Van Vleck offers these closing words of advice, "To the extent employers want to follow in Mozilla's footsteps by policing their employees' politics in the interests of 'culture,' 'inclusiveness,' or corporate branding, they should be aware that their efforts will violate California law."

Submission + - Apple: Dumb as a Patent Trolling Fox on iPhone Prior Art? 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: GeekWire reports that a Microsoft researcher's 1991 video could torpedo Apple’s key "slide to unlock" patent, one of 5 patents that the iPhone maker cited in its demand for $40 per Samsung phone. Confronted with what appears to be damning video evidence of prior art that pre-dates its "invention" by more than a decade, Apple has reportedly arguied that the sliding on/off switch demoed by Catherine Plaisant is materially different than the slide to unlock switch that its 7 inventors came up with. Apple's patent has already been deemed invalid in Europe because of similar functionality present in the Swedish Neonode N1M.

Submission + - Should Microsoft Give Kids Programmable Versions of Office?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Over at Microsoft on the Issues, Microsoft continues to lament the computer programming skills gap of American kids, while simultaneously lobbying for more H-1B visas to fill that gap. Saying that states must do more to "help students gain critical 21st century skills," Microsoft credits itself and partner Code.org for getting 30,606,732 students to experience coding through the Hour of Code, claiming that K-12 kids have "written 1,332,784,839 lines of code" (i.e., dragged-and-dropped puzzle pieces), So, if it's concerned about helping students gain programming skills, shouldn't Microsoft be donating fully-functional desktop versions of MS-Office to schools, which would allow kids to use Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)? While Microsoft's pledge to give 12 million copies of its Office software to schools was heralded by the White House and the press, a review of the "fine print" at Microsoft suggests it's actually the online VBA-free version of Office 365 Education that the kids will be getting, unless their schools qualify for the Student Advantage program by purchasing Office for the faculty and staff. Since Microsoft supported President Obama's call for kids to "Don't Just Play on Your Phone, Program It", shouldn't it give kids the chance to program MS-Office, too?

Comment WSJ: Mozilla & Google Negotiating Search Deal (Score 1) 564

by theodp (#46676685) Attached to: Was Eich a Threat To Mozilla's $1B Google "Trust Fund"?

The WSJ reports that neither Mozilla nor Google would address the $1B elephant in the room: "Mozilla is negotiating with Google Inc. to renew a search contract that provides most of its revenue. Google is openly supportive of gay rights, so it may have been difficult to renew such a deal with Mr. Eich at the helm, said a former Mozilla insider. Mozilla and Google declined to comment on the negotiations."

Submission + - Facebook and Google's Race to Zero

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: As Facebook and Google battle to bring the Internet to remote locations, Alicia Levine takes an interesting look at the dual strategy of Zero Rating and Consolidated Use employed by Google's FreeZone and Facebook's 0.facebook.com, websites which offer free access to certain Google and Facebook services via partnerships with mobile operators around the world. By reducing the cost to the user to zero, Levine explains, the tech giants not only get the chance to capture billions of new eyeballs to view ads in emerging markets, they also get the chance to effectively become "The Internet" in those markets. "If I told you that Facebook's strategy was to become the next Prodigy or AOL, you'd take me for crazy," writes Levine. "But, to a certain degree, that's exactly what they're trying to do. In places where zero-rating for Facebook or Google is the key to accessing the Internet, they are the Internet. And people have started to do every normal activity we would do on the Internet through those two portals because it costs them zero. This is consolidated use. If Facebook is my free pass to the Internet, I’m going to try to do every activity possible via Facebook so that it's free." The race to zero presents more than just a business opportunity, adds Levine — it also presents a chance for tech companies to improve lives. And if Google and Facebook fall short on that count, well, at least there's still Wikipedia Zero.

Submission + - Was Eich a Threat to Mozilla's $1B Google "Trust Fund"? 2

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Over the years, Mozilla's reliance on Google has continued to grow. Indeed, in its report on Brendan Eich's promotion to CEO of Mozilla, the WSJ noted that "Google accounted for nearly 90% of Mozilla’s $311 million in revenue." So, with its Sugar Daddy having also gone on record as being virulently opposed to Proposition 8, to think that that Google's support didn't enter into discussions of whether Prop 8 backer Eich should stay or go seems, well, pretty much unthinkable. "It is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8," explained Google co-founder Sergey Brin in 2008. "We should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love." Interestingly, breaking the news of Eich's resignation was journalist Kara Swisher, whose right to marry a top Google exec in 2008 was nearly eliminated by Prop 8. "In an interview this morning," wrote Swisher, "Mozilla Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker said that Eich's ability to lead the company that makes the Firefox Web browser had been badly damaged by the continued scrutiny over the hot-button issue, which had actually been known since 2012 inside the Mozilla community." Swisher, whose article was cited by the NY Times in The Campaign Against Mozilla’s Brendan Eich, added that "it was not hard to get the sense that Eich really wanted to stick strongly by his views about gay marriage, which run counter to much of the tech industry and, increasingly, the general population in the U.S. For example, he repeatedly declined to answer when asked if he would donate to a similar initiative today." So, was keeping Eich aboard viewed by Mozilla — perhaps even by Eich himself — as a possible threat to the reported $1 billion minimum revenue guarantee the organization enjoys for delivering search queries for Google?

Slashdot Top Deals

Those who can, do; those who can't, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.

Close