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Businesses

Tech's Dark Secret, It's All About Age 602

Posted by CmdrTaco from the just-like-supermodels dept.
theodp writes "Universities really should tell engineering students what to expect in the long term and how to manage their technical careers. Citing ex-Microsoft CTO David Vaskevitch's belief that younger workers have more energy and are sometimes more creative, Wadwha warns that reports of ageism's death have been greatly exaggerated. While encouraging managers to consider the value of the experience older techies bring, Wadwha also offers some get-real advice to those whose hair is beginning to grey: 1) Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design; switch to sales or product management; jump ship and become an entrepreneur. 2) If you're going to stay in programming, realize that the deck is stacked against you, so be prepared to earn less as you gain experience. 3) Keep your skills current — to be coding for a living when you're 50, you'll need to be able to out-code the new kids on the block. Wadwha's piece strikes a chord with 50-something Dave Winer, who calls the rampant ageism 'really f***ed up,' adding that, 'It's probably the reason why we keep going around in the same loops over and over, because we chuck our experience, wholesale, every ten years or so.'"
Hardware

Submission + - USB 3.0: Everything You Need to Know

Submitted by
Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: "After a lengthy gestation period, the third generation of the Universal Serial Bus is making its way to the market. USB 3.0, also known as SuperSpeed USB, has throughput of up to 5 gigabits per second. That's even faster than the 3Gb/sec of SATA hard drives and 1Gb/sec. of high-end networking in the home, and USB 3.0: Everything You Need to Know goes into plenty of the techie details. But is it already obsolete — will LightPeak make USB 3.0 irrelevant?"
Space

Submission + - ESA's GOCE Satellite Provides Gravity Map of Earth (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by kaulike
kaulike writes: The European Space Agency's GOCE satellite, launched March 2009, has provided a spectacular highly detailed map of our favorite gravity well [BBC]. This map shows the normalized surface of the earth as defined by gravity, by showing the relative altitude differences from the average for each surveyed point. The article provides the helpful metaphor that a ball resting on this surface would not roll anywhere even though there would be visual slopes, as gravity is equalized across the globe. There is a fascinating deep area in the Indian ocean (-100M) and a high area near Iceland (+80M), proving conclusively that our world is not homogenous in terms of density (or practically any other measure). Does anyone know whether these anomalies correspond to any other known geographic phenomena? Deposits of heavy metals perhaps, or hotspots where the mantle is thinner? I know little about geodetic stuff, but I'm curious about reasons for wrinkles in the data set.
Education

Ocean-Crossing Dragonflies Discovered 95

Posted by samzenpus from the incredible-journey dept.
grrlscientist writes "While living and working as a marine biologist in Maldives, Charles Anderson noticed sudden explosions of dragonflies at certain times of year. He explains how he carefully tracked the path of a plain, little dragonfly called the Globe Skimmer, Pantala flavescens, only to discover that it had the longest migratory journey of any insect in the world."
Books

The "Copyright Black Hole" Swallowing Our Culture 278

Posted by Soulskill from the sanity-optional dept.
An anonymous reader writes "James Boyle, professor at Duke Law School, has a piece in the Financial Times in which he argues that a 'copyright black hole is swallowing our culture.' He explains some of the issues surrounding Google Books, and makes the point that these issues wouldn't exist if we had a sane copyright law. Relatedly, in recent statements to the still-skeptical European Commission, Google has defended their book database by saying that it helps to make the Internet democratic. Others have noted that the database could negatively affect some researchers for whom a book's subject matter isn't always why they read it."

The Mathletes and the Miley Photoshop 555

Posted by CmdrTaco from the look-what-i-can-do dept.
Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton's essay this week is about "A Tennessee man is arrested for possessing a picture of Miley Cyrus's face superimposed on a nude woman's body. In a survey that I posted on the Web, a majority of respondents said the man violated the law -- except for respondents who say they were good at math in school, who as a group answered the survey differently from everyone else." Continue on to see how.

Comment Re:People just don't understand Linux (Score 1) 833

by kaulike (#27553627) Attached to: Linux On Netbooks — a Complicated Story

It's not features, it's workflow. Seriously. I can get more done with photoshop 7 than with a with a current spanky version of gimp simply because my fingers know what they are doing and the UI provides no surprises. Workflow is the king behind what people refer to as "features".

Can my fingers learn a new game? Sure. But it is harder to learn a similar game than one that is truly new, and there must be motivation present. It's a mental game, not a technical one. Putting the responsibility on me as a user to resolve workflow issues is what keeps Linux in the Desktop doghouse.

FWIW, yes, I still use Photoshop 7. t is one of 3 remaining windows apps that bind me to a dual-boot system. I use Gimp when I can, but in a pinch, it is often faster for me to boot into windows and Just Do It. I am willing to go the extra mile to learn a new interface, but not to sacrifice productivity if it is necessary for my job.

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