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Comment: Re:Skils || Trades == Jobs (Score 4, Insightful) 310

by KernelMuncher (#43761657) Attached to: Bloomberg To HS Grads: Be a Plumber
A friend of the family was somewhat distraught when her son skipped college after HS and took a welding job. He was living the redneck life with a big pickup, wore a hardhat to work every day, etc. The years go by and this man goes from being an apprentice to a master welder. Then he decided to form his own welding crew with some coworkers from jobs he'd had from various jobs. Now the guy who everybody said was taking the wrong path owns his own business and makes absolutely gobs of $$. True story.

+ - Federal Appeals Court Says Police Can't Search Cell Phone Without Warrant->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "In a decision that's almost certainly going to result in this issue heading up to the Supreme Court, the Federal 1st Circuit Court of Appeals today ruled that police can't search your phone when they arrest you without a warrant. That's contrary to most courts' previous findings in these kinds of cases where judges have allowed warantless searches through cell phones."
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+ - Windows 8 Won't Become Business Standard: Forrester->

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes "Windows 8 won’t become the enterprise standard, according to a new report from research firm Forrester. “Most IT shops are still too focused on migrating to Windows 7 to bother with Windows 8 anytime soon, if at all,” read the summary of Forrester’s report, which could have several Microsoft executives reaching for the Valium this morning. “IT won’t set Windows 8 as a standard, but that won’t stop workers from using it.” The research firm suggests that an operating-system version only becomes the “enterprise standard” once 50 percent of corporate-owned PCs actually run it. While Windows 7 passed that milestone, Forrester doesn’t think Windows 8 will do the same anytime soon, thanks in part to lower enterprise interest and the prevalence of Apple’s iOS on tablets. “Early enterprise interest in Windows 8 is half that of Windows 7 prior to its release,” the summary suggested. “IT decision-makers don’t yet see the new Windows experience as an improvement.” The firm also doesn’t believe that Windows 8 “offers firms enough savings in operations to make it a top priority.” Microsoft’s upcoming update, Windows 8.1 (known for quite some time by its codename, “Windows Blue”) will—if rumors prove correct—reintroduce some features deleted between Windows 7 and 8, most notably the desktop Start button. Those reinsertions could help Windows 8 in the eyes of longtime Windows users who like things to stay familiar; but whether those tweaks boost Windows 8 adoption within the enterprise remains to be seen."
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+ - Rice Professor Predicts Humans Out Of Work In 30 Years-> 1

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes "Rice University professor Moshe Vardi has been evaluating technological progress in computer science and artificial intelligence and has recently concluded that robots will replace most, if not all, human labor by 2045, putting millions out of work. The issue is whether AI enables humans to do more or less. But perhaps the real question about technological unemployment of labor isn't "How will people do nothing?" but "What kind of work will they do instead?""
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+ - Irish judge orders 'the internetz' to delete video->

Submitted by edanto
edanto writes "A young Irish man wrongly accused of jumping from a taxi without paying the fare has secured a judgement from an Irish court ordering the video removed from the entire internet. Experts from Google, Youtube, Facebook and others must tell the court in two weeks if this is technically possible.
The thing is, the _video_ is accurate, it is only a comment that wrongly identified Eoin McKeogh as the fare-jumper in the video that is inaccurate. It's not clear if the judge has made any orders about the comment."
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+ - Cold Fusion Redux? EU to Host Meeting on Fleischmann Pons Effect->

Submitted by gigarello
gigarello writes "The European community Should become aware of the “state-of-the-art” of the studies on the Fleischmann-Pons Effect of the phenomenon and potential future perspectives in the field of Material Science and renewable, clean energy. Energy densities Measured During Fleischmann and Pons Effect (FPE) are Hundreds, Thousands Thousands and even tens of times larger than the maximum energy associated to any known chemical process.
[...]
All the collaborating institutions, after several years of scientific review process, do not question the existence of this very strong isotope effect as FPE Has Been Observed During the four experiments in laboratories . The proposed event, tries to present the “situation point” of this promising research field and even to design the future steps at EU and International level."
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+ - 10 Star Trek Technologies That Are Almost Here 1

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes "'The 23rd century may seem a long way off, but you'd be surprised by how much of the future predicted by Star Trek is already here. We already have handheld communicators (smartphones), sassy voice-driven computers (Siri), Geordi La Forge-like vision (Google Glass), and at least 4.5 billion Earth-like planets to choose from. (Whether any of them contain green-skinned alien babes in gold bikinis is still to be determined.) As for warp drives, transporters, phasers, and the rest? It will be here sooner than you think. Join us as we boldly go on a tour of Trek tech.'"

+ - Scientist Warns against Bringing Mammoths Back from the Dead ->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "A renowned archaeologist has said people must start considering the ethical issues surrounding bringing extinct animals back to life as scientists are "on the brink" of doing so.

Dr Alice Roberts, an archaeologist and professor who has also appeared on several TV shows, says the dilemmas in bringing animals back from the dead should be "grappled with" as scientists begin to make further breakthroughs."
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+ - Ask Slashdot: Do You Trust When a Vendor Tells You to Buy New Parts?->

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes "Roughly 85 percent of IT managers polled by Forrester said they would hold onto networking infrastructure longer, but vendors retire products prematurely in an effort to force customers to upgrade. In a response that may seem familiar to anyone who’s ever been pressured into buying a maintenance contract—either by an enterprise vendor or a major electronics retailer—over 80 percent of the 304 respondents said they don’t like the misrepresented cost savings, new fees, and inflexible pricing models—but buy the products anyway. One of the survey’s interesting points is that IT decision makers aren’t willing to contradict the vendor. The uncertainty seems to come from the fact that the vendor may in fact be right—and a customer who contradicts what they’re saying may end up shouldering the blame if the equipment goes south. It’s the “you never got fired for buying IBM” argument, applied to the networking space. The problem, of course, is that the vendor often works for its own agenda. Do you upgrade when the vendor (or reseller) suggests you do so? Or do you stick to your own way of doing things?"
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Comment: Re:So... they get eaten by the salt vampire? (Score 2) 147

by KernelMuncher (#43676911) Attached to: New 'Academic Redshirt' For Engineering Undergrads at UW
If the university lowered graduation standards for some students, there would be a taint on the degree. But this case is just the opposite - it's holding the standards high but giving extra help to talent students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. All of the graduates will still have passed the same courses as in previous years.

Comment: Re:So... they get eaten by the salt vampire? (Score 1) 147

by KernelMuncher (#43676853) Attached to: New 'Academic Redshirt' For Engineering Undergrads at UW
What makes these people more deserving ? Let's say a good high school school sends 100 students to a university and a really bad one sends 5. Who would you rather have - student 101 from the top high school or the 6th best student from the other ? I'd say it shows a lot more talent to be the top of your class in bad circumstances than to be in the middle of the pack when you've got everything going for you.

+ - Becoming programmer at 40 1

Submitted by fjsalcedo
fjsalcedo writes "Hi! I've read many times, here at Slashdot and elesewhere, that programming, especially learning how to program professionally, is a matter of young people. That programmers after 35 or so begin to decline and even loose their jobs or at least part of their wages. Well, my story is quite the contrary. I've never made it after undergraduate level in Computer Science because I had to begin working. I've always worked 24x4 in IT environments, but all that stoped abruptly one and a half years ago when I was diagnosed with a form of epilepsy and my neurologist did forbid me from working shifts and, above all, nights. Fortunately enough, my company didn't fire me, instead they gave me the oportunity to learn and work as a web programmer. Since then, in les than a year, I've had to learn Java, Javascript, JSTL, EL, JSP, regular expressions, Spring, Hibernate, SQL, etc. And, you know what?? I did. I'm not an expert, of course, but I'm really interested in continue learning. Is my new born career a dead end or do I have a chance of becoming good at programming?"

Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar without his duck ...

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