Slashdot

An anonymous reader writes "The Telegraph newspaper reports that over-50s are invading sites like Facebook and MySpace in massive numbers. A recent study showed that nearly one third of Facebook users are aged between 35 and 54, and that this group also made up 41 percent of MySpace users. "Because the mind of an over-50 is likely superior to that of a drink-addled undergrad, at first there was uncertainty about whether older users would find the Facebook-led social-networking phenomena attractive." Looks like dad just turned up to the party."

openfrog writes "An inspired professor at University of Washington-Bothell, Martha Groom, made an interesting pedagogical experiment. Instead of vilifying Wikipedia as some academics are prone to do, she assigned the students enrolled in her environmental history course to contribute articles. The result has proven "transformative" to her students. They were no longer spending their time writing for one reader, says Groom, but were doing work of consequence in a "peer reviewed" environment, which enhanced the quality of their output."

certain death writes "Daniel Lyons of Forbes Magazine has admitted to being snowed by SCO, regarding their lawsuit over Linux and SCO code. He specifically mentions Groklaw's role in the case, and regrets his early articles giving the company the benefit of the doubt. 'I still thought it would be foolish to predict how this lawsuit (or any lawsuit) would play out. I even wrote an article called "Revenge of the Nerds," which poked fun at the pack of amateur sleuths who were following the case on a Web site called Groklaw and who claimed to know for sure that SCO was going to lose. Turns out those amateur sleuths were right. Now some of them are writing to me asking how I'd like my crow cooked, and where I'd like it delivered. Others in that highly partisan crowd have suggested that I wanted SCO to win, and even that I was paid off by SCO or Microsoft. Of course that's not true. I've told these folks it's not true. Hasn't stopped them. The truth, as is often the case, is far less exciting than the conspiracy theorists would like to believe. It is simply this: I got it wrong. The nerds got it right.'"

An anonymous reader writes that earlier this month, Sony received word of a lawsuit from a Newport Beach company called Parallel Processing. They've filed against the electronics giant alleging that the Cell processor, used in the PlayStation 3, infringes on a patent they own. They've made the somewhat outrageous demand that every infringing chip (and console) be 'impounded and destroyed'. From the article at Next Generation: "The patent, 'Synchronized Parallel Processing with Shared Memory' was issued in October 1991. It describes a high-speed computer that breaks down a program 'into smaller concurrent processes running in different parallel processors' and resynchronizes the program for faster processing times ... Parallel Processing said that Sony's alleged actions have caused 'irreparable harm and monetary damage' to the company."

An anonymous reader writes "I am currently completing my final year of secondary schooling, and in the next few weeks I need to submit my university (or college to all you Americans) preferences for processing. I've decided that I want a career in the IT industry, but am unsure of whether to apply for a Computer Science course or an Information Technology course. I understand the difference between the two courses (CS being the study of the principles and concepts involved in Computing at a more fundamental, and often more sophisticated level, and IT being a more practical, application based approach to computing), but would like to know from anybody who has studied either or both of the courses what kinds of careers each course would lead into and what would you recommend for someone such as myself, having a broad range of interests and wishing to dabble in everything before deciding where to specialise?"

* * Beatles-Beatles writes "http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#GPL

http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/0 6/gpl3"
Link To Original Source

tlockney writes "Next week at Microsoft's MIX, whurley will be leading a discussion on 'Open Source, the Web, Interoperability, and Microsoft'. To kick off a bit of pre-session discussion and enlist the help of others in putting Microsoft on the spot, whurley, king of all things open source at BMC has written an article entitled 'Seven Reasons Microsoft Loves Open Source'."

Roland Piquepaille writes "What happens when you compress water in a nano-sized space? According to Georgia Tech physicists, water starts to behave like a solid. "The confined water film behaves like a solid in the vertical direction by forming layers parallel to the confining surface, while maintaining it's liquidity in the horizontal direction where it can flow out," said one of the researchers. "Water is a wonderful lubricant, but it flows too easily for many applications. At the one nanometer scale, water is a viscous fluid and could be a much better lubricant," added another one."

anthemaniac writes "Professor Esmail Zanjani and colleagues at the University of Nevada-Reno have created sheep that are 15 percent human at the cellular level. Half the organs in the sheep are human. The idea, of course, is to harvest those organs to transplant into human patients. From the article: 'He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep.' One scientists worries, however, that the work could lead to new viruses that cross from animals to humans."

ICA writes "It appears after years of criticism, Diebold may be ready to withdraw from electronic voting entirely. The company is concerned that this relatively small and marginally profitable unit is hurting the company's overall image."

An anonymous reader writes "It's interesting when different people have different opinions. While I was searching for something on Intel's website, I came across an article on why Windows threads are better than Posix threads. Curiously, I also came across this article on why Posix Pthreads are better that Win32 threads. The thing is, both of these articles are written by the same author!

So who is right (metaphorically speaking?), or what has changed since the first article was written?"

You may recall the conversation we had at the end of last year, riffing off of a Retrogaming article on how Sega ruined Sonic. 1up has returned with a response, positing how the company can save their mascot from the death of ignominy. Their advice is simple: Go Fast, ditch Shadow, make fewer games. "Remember Blast Processing? It was a sham, sure, but the idea behind it was a perfect summation of what Sonic was about: A game so fast that the Genesis had to be specially programmed to keep up with it. Slowing down to drink in the ambiance or whatever is pretty much the exact opposite of Blast Processing. Being forced to, say, go fishing in a Sonic game is like buying a Ferrari so you can take naps in the backseat."