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Bye Bye Bananas — the Return of Panama Disease 519

Posted by kdawson from the where-you-gonna-get-your-potassium dept.
Ant sends in a disturbing report in The Scientist on an imminent threat to worldwide banana production. "The banana we eat today is not the one your grandparents ate. That one — known as the Gros Michel — was, by all accounts, bigger, tastier, and hardier than the variety we know and love, which is called the Cavendish. The unavailability of the Gros Michel is easily explained: it is virtually extinct. Introduced to our hemisphere in the late 19th century, the Gros Michel was almost immediately hit by a blight that wiped it out by 1960. The Cavendish was adopted at the last minute by the big banana companies — Chiquita and Dole — because it was resistant to that blight, a fungus known as Panama disease... [Now] Panama disease — or Fusarium wilt of banana — is back, and the Cavendish does not appear to be safe from this new strain, which appeared two decades ago in Malaysia, spread slowly at first, but is now moving at a geometrically quicker pace. There is no cure, and nearly every banana scientist says that though Panama disease has yet to hit the banana crops of Latin America, which feed our hemisphere, the question is not if this will happen, but when. Even worse, the malady has the potential to spread to dozens of other banana varieties, including African bananas, the primary source of nutrition for millions..."
Software

Submission + - Text based UI: which one?

Submitted by JHWH
JHWH writes: I've been asked to design and implement a management software system with text based user interface as the replacement of an older one running on AS/400.
Despite my attempts towards a web UI, the customer is actually willing to have a text based UI.
The main reasons are the need for a very low bandwidth and the ability to run on serial terminals. All this in the 21st century!
Host systems will be Linux, the language will be C or C++.
I already thought about the use of text based browsers like lynx or links. But I fear user interaction could be less powerful that a plain text interface.
So now I have to wipe the dust away from my ncurses manual.
Or is there anyone suggesting something more effective?

The Microsoft Salary and Review System 375

Posted by Zonk from the who-doesn't-like-a-salary dept.
f1055man writes "If you can make it through the obvious bias, Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (WASHTECH) has put together a revealing article on Microsoft's salary and review system. 'Internal Microsoft documents obtained by WashTech News show that Microsoft salaries have been stagnant or nudged only slightly higher over the past two years. Comments from current and former employees about the company's compensation and performance review system suggest a growing level of frustration among rank-and-file workers.'"

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