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Programming

How To Encourage a Young Teen To Learn Programming? 1095

Posted by Soulskill from the electroshock dept.
Anonymous Hacker writes "I'm in a bit of a bind. My young teenage son is starting to get curious about computers, and in particular, programming. Now, I'm a long time kernel hacker (Linux, BSD and UNIX). I have no trouble handling some of the more obscure things in the kernel. But teaching is not something that I'm good at, by any means. Heck, I can't even write useful documentation for non-techies. So my question is: what's the best way to encourage his curiosity and enable him to learn? Now, I know there are folks out there with far better experience in this area than myself. I'd really appreciate any wisdom you can offer. I'd also be especially interested in what younger people think, in particular those who are currently in college or high school. I've shown my son some of the basics of the shell, the filesystem, and even how to do a 'Hello World' program in C. Yet, I have to wonder if this is the really the right approach. This was great when I was first learning things. And it still is for kernel hacking, and other things. But I'm concerned whether this will bore him, now that there's so much more available and much of this world is oriented towards point-n-click. What's the best way to for a young teen to get started in exploring this wonderful world of computers and learning how to program? In a *NIX environment, preferably." Whether or not you have suggestions for generating interest or teaching methods, there was probably something that first piqued your curiosity. It seems like a lot of people get into programming by just wondering how something works or what they can make it do. So, what caught your eye?
Hardware

The Joy of the Flash Drive 332

Posted by Zonk from the little-quiet-different dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A post to the C|Net site covers the numerous benefits of flash drives, such as speed, temperature, and battery consumption. The perk author Michael Kanellos is most fond of? The distinct lack of noise. 'The notebook I'm testing--a Dell Latitude D830 with a 64GB flash hard drive from Samsung--hasn't emitted a sound in three days. Flash drives, which store data in NAND flash memory, don't require motors or spinning platters. Thus, there are no whirring mechanical noises. Compare that with my T42 ThinkPad. It sounds like a guinea pig got trapped inside, particularly during the start-up phase. Vzoooot. Cronk, cronk, cronk. Zip, zip. (Pause.) Gurlagurlagurla...zweeee. '"
Earth

Submission + - Norway Formally Opens Arctic Doomsday Seed Vault 1

Submitted by DownTownMT
DownTownMT writes: The doomsday seed vault built to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters opened Tuesday deep within an Arctic mountain in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. Some decent pictures of the vault are included.
Space

Submission + - Giant Sheets Of Dark Matter Detected (discovery.com) 2

Submitted by
Wandering Wombat
Wandering Wombat writes: "The largest structures in the universe have been, if not directly found, then at least detected and pounced upon by scientists. FTA:


The most colossal structures in the universe have been detected by astronomers who tuned into how the structures subtly bend galactic light. The newfound filaments and sheets of dark matter form a gigantic features stretching across more than 270 million light-years of space — three times larger than any other known structure and 2,000 times the size of our own galaxy. Because the dark matter, by definition, is invisible to telescopes, the only way to detect it on such grand scales is by surveying huge numbers of distant galaxies and working out how their images, as seen from telescopes, are being weakly tweaked and distorted by any dark matter structures in intervening space.

By figuring how to spot the GIGANTIC masses of dark matter, hopefully we can get a better understanding of it and find smaller and smaller structures."
Moon

Earth's Moon is a Rarity 202

Posted by Zonk from the lucky-to-have-you-luna-old-sod dept.
Smivs writes "Scientists have concluded that moons like the Earth's are actually quite rare. Only 5-10% of planetary systems are likely to contain moons formed by planetary collisions. 'By the time the Earth's moon formed, when the Sun was 30 million years old, the planet formation process in our Solar System should have been approaching its end. In the latest study, Dr Gorlova's team looked at the heat signature of stars using the infrared. This allows astronomers to predict how much of that heat comes from the star itself and how much is re-emitted by dusty material encircling it.'"
Handhelds

Trolltech GPLs Qtopia Phone Edition 78

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the all-the-cool-kids-are-doing-it dept.
Provataki writes "Trolltech has announced that they are releasing the new version of Qtopia Phone Edition under the GPL along with a port on the FIC Neo1973 smartphone. Trolltech also continues to support Greenphone as a reference platform for mobile development within the company and through its partners. Benoit Schillings, CTO of Trolltech (also of BeOS fame as one of the original Be, Inc. engineers) commented on the news."
Space

Ancient Star Found, Estimated at 13.2 Billion Years Old 377

Posted by Zonk from the insert-your-mom-joke-here dept.
raguirre writes "An article on Physorg.org reports that a newly found star may be as old as the universe itself. Recent studies have concluded that the Big Bang occurred somewhere in the neighborhood of 13.7 Billion years ago. The star, a heavy-elements laden fossil labeled HE 1523-0901 on charts was probably born right around the same time; approximately 13.2 Billion years ago. 'Today, astronomer Anna Frebel of the the University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory and her colleagues have deduced the star's age based on the amounts of radioactive elements it contains compared to certain other "anchor" elements, specifically europium, osmium and iridium.'"
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Battlestar Galactica To Continue

Submitted by turboflux
turboflux writes: According to executive producer David Eick, Battlestar Galactica is still an open-ended adventure and it will not be ending after the 4th season as previously reported. Evidently Edward James Olmos jumped the gun on confirming the show would be ending while attending the Saturn Awards this month. Eick goes on to say that the fourth season would actually be 22 episodes (2 more than prior seasons) rather than the reported 13 episode order.
NASA

Submission + - World Wind Java SDK Released

Submitted by AnswerIs42
AnswerIs42 writes: NASA World Wind Java which debut at JavaOne this week and was demoed in a lab yesterday is now officially released as a Early Access release 0.2.0 SDK, this is NOT a full blown application but an API that can be used in other applications. There are demos in the SDK zip file and there is a link for a WWJava demo that is launched from the web page. For more information you can check the World Wind Central wiki page for WWJava, and the forums. A video of the live presentation opening day of JavaOne can be found here and these two blogs have multiple posts on the WWJava release.
Media

Submission + - Does Wikipedia Suck on Science Stories?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An editor from Wired writes on his blog that Wikipedia sucks for science stories — not because they are inaccurate, but because of what he calls the "tragedy of the uncommon": Too many experts writing about subjects in ways that no non-expert can understand. Would this be the dumbing-down of Wikipedia — or would it be a better resource for everyone?
Science

Ceiling Height May Affect Problem-Solving Skills 279

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the how-low-can-you-go dept.
An anonymous reader writes to mention that a recent University of Minnesota study suggests that ceiling height may affect problem-solving skills. "'When people are in a room with a high ceiling, they activate the idea of freedom. In a low-ceilinged room, they activate more constrained, confined concepts.' Either can be good. The concept of freedom promotes information processing that encourages greater variation in the kinds of thoughts one has, said Meyers-Levy, professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota. The concept of confinement promotes more detail-oriented processing."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Optimizing Daily Habits

Submitted by Anonymous Westley
Anonymous Westley writes: Mike Elgan shows you how to Save 5 Hours a Day, the Geek Way. For example:

If you read news magazines and newspapers, and also exercise, you can combine them to gain at least an hour in your day. The secret is to replace current-events reading with podcasts, and listen while you're walking or jogging or lifting weights. Chances are, the publications you read have podcast versions. Also, try BBC programs, major TV and radio news channels offerings, as well as Slate and other online zines. By switching to podcasts, you'll save money, help the environment, and cut time spent reading (because you can listen while you're doing other things).

I've been listening to entire courses for more than a year now (thanks, Teaching Company!), plus all kinds of podcasts and even text-to-speech'ed emails. It makes even jogging almost bearable. How do you optimize your time?

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