may the force be with you

"Blogs vaulted RSS into the limelight but are unlikely to be the force that sustains RSS as a communication medium. The biggest opportunities for RSS are not in the blogosphere but as a corporate communication channel. Even now, businesses that were initially reluctantly evaluating RSS are beginning to realize the power and benefit of the RSS information avenue. The inherent capacity for consumers to select the content they wish to receive will be the driving mechanism for keeping advertisements to a minimum and content quality consistent."

source:http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/20/1445221&tid=95

Is it time to revamp the periodic table?
By Jon Lackman
Posted Tuesday, July 19, 2005, at 5:15 AM PT

Click here to see a slide show.

Oxford ecologist Philip Stewart has designed a new periodic table of the elements, and it's a hit. American schools are placing orders daily for Stewart's table, and the Royal Society of Chemists recently sent a copy to every British secondary school. Stewart's is the only remake to achieve widespread adoption since Dmitri Mendeleev invented the original periodic table in a fit of brilliance in 1869.

Mendeleev's table, a celebrated example of the visual display of quantitative information, transformed chemistry (and triggered imitations cataloguing everything from breakfast cereals to sex positions to neo-nerds). The table inspired thinkers including Primo Levi and C.P. Snow. "I could scarcely sleep for excitement the night after seeing the periodic table," Oliver Sacks wrote in his 2001 memoir Uncle Tungsten.

What can we expect from Stewart's new version—and is it time to scrap Mendeleev's old one? Click here for a slideshow about the periodic table.

source: http://www.slate.com/id/2122919?nav=wp#ContinueArticle

"From the FAQ: 'One small step for Google... On July 20, 1969, man first landed on the Moon. A few decades later, we're pleased to cut you in on the action. Google Moon is an extension of Google Maps and Google Earth that, courtesy of NASA imagery (thanks, guys!), enables you to surf the Moon's surface and check out the exact spots that the Apollo astronauts made their landings.'"

source:http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/20/1153207&tid=217

"Following up on recent "Desktop Innovation" stories that have left some disappointed, I thought Pierre Dragicevic's exploration of Fold 'n' Drop warranted mention. Described as "a new interaction technique for seamlessly dragging and dropping between overlapping windows", Fold 'n' Drop allows the user to interact with layered or overlapping windows in a very intuitive manner. Refreshingly, Mr. Dragicevic provides both a sample implementation, in Java, and video demos. Mr. Dragicevic is a researcher in Human-Computer Interaction at Intuilab, Toulouse."

source:http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/20/003244&tid=189&tid=108&tid=185&tid=8

SEATTLE (AP) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) sued Google Inc. (GOOG) on Tuesday, accusing it of poaching a top executive the search engine company had wooed away to head a new research lab in China.

The Redmond-based software power also sued the executive, Kai-Fu Lee, whose appointment Google trumpeted in a news release announcing the lab's establishment.

In a complaint filed in King County Superior Court in Seattle, Microsoft accused Lee of breaking his 2000 employment contract, in part by taking a job with a direct competitor within a year of leaving the company.

Microsoft also accused Google of "intentionally assisting Lee."

"Accepting such a position with a direct Microsoft competitor like Google violates the narrow noncompetition promise Lee made when he was hired as an executive," Microsoft said in its lawsuit. "Google is fully aware of Lee's promises to Microsoft, but has chosen to ignore them, and has encouraged Lee to violate them."

Microsoft and Google, along with Yahoo Inc. (YHOO), are locked in a fierce battle to dominate search, both online and through programs that index computer hard drives so files can be instantly located. Google also has begun offering new services, including e-mail, that compete with Microsoft offerings.

Tom Burt, a lawyer for Microsoft, said Lee announced Monday that he was leaving for the Google job and had given no indication that he planned to honor an agreement not to work for a direct competitor for one year.

"To the contrary, they're saying, 'In your face,'" Burt told The Associated Press.

Google shot back with a statement saying: "We have reviewed Microsoft's claims and they are completely without merit. Google is focused on building the best place in the world for great innovators to work. We're thrilled to have Dr. Lee on board at Google. We will defend vigorously against these meritless claims."

Efforts to reach Lee were not successful. He did not have a listed phone number.

Google publicized Lee's hiring in a news release that called him a "respected computer scientist and industry pioneer" who will "lead the operation and serve as president of the company's growing Chinese operations." The news release, though mentioning that Lee had previously worked for Microsoft, did not mention the lawsuit or any noncompete clause.

Google said the research and development center Lee was hired to run, the company's first in China, would open in the third quarter of 2005.

At Microsoft, Lee oversaw development of the company's MSN Internet search technology, including a desktop search service released earlier this year. More recently, he has served as corporate vice president of the company's Interactive Services Division.

In its lawsuit, Microsoft said it was seeking a court order forcing Lee and Google to abide by terms of confidentiality and noncompetition agreements that Lee signed at Microsoft.

The company said it wants Lee barred from disclosing any Microsoft trade secrets or other confidential information.

It also wants a judge to order Lee to return any documents, files or reports he obtained from Microsoft and to forbid him from destroying any documents related to Microsoft and Google's move to hire him.

Companies in every industry hire people away from their competitors, but Burt said it usually doesn't happen unless the company the employee is leaving negotiates an agreement with the worker that typically requires that the new job not overlap with the old one.

That didn't happen in this case, Burt said.

"What makes this a particularly egregious violation," Burt said, "is that he's been hired to work in a position that's absolutely in direct competition with the work he was doing at Microsoft."

source:http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050719/D8BEO5480.html

Not the guy with a pocket protector, but a middle-aged minority woman

Pop quiz: Which schools produced the most degrees in computer science in 2001? MIT? Carnegie Mellon? Georgia Tech?

If you guessed any of these, you’re wrong: try Strayer University and DeVry Institute of Technology.

And what kind of student is most likely to take up computer science at Strayer or DeVry?

If you guessed a young geeky guy with a pocket saver, guess again: try a 35-year-old African American or Hispanic woman who already has a full-time job at a company where information technology (IT) skills are a key to advancement.

She’s the one taking the night courses at one of the for-profit institutions like Strayer or DeVry that have a wide variety of locations, and offer courses in the early morning and evening, as well as on-line courses.

“We were so blown away by this,” remarked Dr. Shirley Malcom, director of Education and Human Resources at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and one of the authors of the report, “Preparing Women and Minorities for the IT Workforce: The Role of Nontraditional Educational Pathways.”

Overall, less applications
The researchers came up with an interesting — yet disturbing — conclusion. While adults, many of them women and minorities, are realizing they have to go out and obtain degrees in computer science to advance or just keep up at the workplace, the “traditional” young students in four-year colleges are increasingly deciding not to major in computer science.

In fact, as the technology-dependent United States struggles to stay ahead of the Bangalores of the world, the Higher Education Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles found significantly fewer students at the college level — 60 percent fewer — wanted to study computer science in 2004 as opposed to the year 2000.

And what is even more alarming are the low numbers of young women pursuing computer science at the college level — current numbers are the same as in the 1970’s. Yet in terms of demographics, women comprise more than half of the current college population.

Not just for geeks
Part of the problem, Malcom says, is that “we’ve backed ourselves into thinking that computer science is a ‘geek’ culture, and this is preventing us from tapping into the level of diversity we have in our population and our schools.”

When the report’s authors interviewed young college students, most thought computer science was all about writing code in a lonely cubicle. And many young women and minorities were intimidated since they had never done “programming” before.

However, their research indicated that once young people were exposed to computer science courses, their perceptions overwhelmingly changed.

“Many of [the students] were now interested in designing games, going into graphics for industries such as the movies, designing automobiles, doing architectural design work … they just didn’t know there were so many interesting careers in computer science,” said Eleanor Babco, executive director of the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology and one of the report’s co-authors.

Experts such as Malcom and Babco think some colleges should “take a page” off the for-profit, client-based institutions such as Strayer and DeVry, and make computer science more accessible, practical and less intimidating, to get more 18 year-olds to major in computer science.

“In reaching out to adult learners, we had to figure out what their needs were … if we talk about a ‘widget’ in our class, the adult learner will say ‘that’s great, but how can I use it at the office?’” said Jim McCoy, Vice President of Campus Operations at Strayer University, which has locations primarily around the Virginia-Maryland-DC area, to explain how they tailor their curriculum to the needs their students.

Demographic shift
Although young women and minorities have shied away from studying computer science at traditional colleges, it is a different story once they reach the workplace and enroll in the for-profit schools.

At Strayer, over half the student body is comprised of women and minorities, and according to McCoy, the number of Latino students has been rising significantly.

In fact, according to new data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the two universities that produced the most minority computer science degrees in 2004 were DeVry (California campus) and Strayer University.

But not all the for-profit schools that cater to adults have the accreditation of Strayer and DeVry. More importantly, some employers interviewed for the report admitted they did not see a degree from a for-profit school in the same way as one from a four-year college.

Therefore, the authors of the IT report urged companies and professional societies to create voluntary standards that would provide prospective students with information about the “quality, structure and reputation of programs” to help them make the right choices, whether it be at a for-profit or non-profit university.

Make a national priority
At the same time, the authors urged traditional four-year colleges to increase the numbers of their IT students, especially women and minorities, by designing more flexible schedules and remote-learning that accommodates those who cannot attend school full-time.

In addition, since an increase in IT workers is a “national need,” the authors of the study recommended more public and private grants to allow more Americans to study the subject —even on a part-time schedule.

At the moment, the Advancement of Science report stated that many grants and funding mechanisms flowed to the “traditional” schools. Currently, Strayer’s McCoy said that about half of their predominantly adult students accessed government loans, and some were eligible for Pell Grants or some forms of scholarships.

With the pace of technology keeps increasing and young Americans not exactly flocking to earn computer science degrees, perhaps high school guidance counselors, as well as college counselors, should urge students to forego old assumptions about computer science and realize that programming experience and pocket savers are not needed.

Students shouldn’t wait until they are 35 and in an office cubicle to realize that they should have taken those computer classes in college. After all, who doesn’t think the IT folks in their office are the most valuable of the bunch?

source:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8420734/page/2/

In a wide-ranging discussion Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates offered his views on the decline in government funding for computer science research, hiring in the industry, solving hard IT problems and bringing more women into the field, among other issues.

At the sixth annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., headquarters, Gates and Princeton University Dean of Engineering and Applied Science Maria Klawe sat down for a chat on the issues facing the industry overall and the research community.

Speaking on the decline in federal government funding for research in computer science, Gates said, "It's kind of a crime that as computer science is about to solve some of the most interesting problems…and is becoming the toolkit for all the sciences," the government should pull back on some of its funding.

Gates said that although much of the funding from Defense Department and classified agencies has been reduced, he would expect other sectors of the government, such as the National Institutes of Health, to pick up the slack. Meanwhile Defense-related funding "has become shorter-term or more focused," Gates said.

"We want to be as strong an advocate as we can be that the government is making a mistake here," Gates said, noting that computer science "is the change agent of the time."

Are investors betting on .Net? Click here to read more.

Moreover, Gates said there are two barriers the U.S. high tech industry "must be very clever about." One is the boundary between academia and commercial research, and the second is the barrier within companies between their research groups and their product groups.

Gates cited the example of Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research Center and all the technology it spawned, which helped Microsoft and Apple Computer Inc. and a host of other companies.

"We're saying to companies 'You ought to invest more in R&D,' this is our competitive edge," he said. "If you look at our competitors—put aside IBM, they're sort of a special case—the investment [in R&D] is pretty small."

Indeed, Microsoft is concerned about staffing its research and product groups, Gates said.

"I'm very worried about it," Gates said. "Microsoft is trying to hire every great college graduate that has computer science skills…"

Microsoft taps both native-born talent and foreign talent, but Gates said he is frustrated that more U.S. students are not going into computer science. "The fastest growing major is physical education," he said. "The Chinese are going to wake up and say we missed this opportunity," he joked.

In particular, Gates said finding recruits who have project management skills is difficult. Management overall is an area of need, he said. Indeed Gates said he welcomes students coming out of engineering management career tracks.

"We often have to push people into it," he said, noting that not so many programmers want to get involved in managing people. "We can promise people in this career path most of their work won't be coding."

Moreover, "the competition for somebody who's got the right background is phenomenal," Gates said.

In the '80s Microsoft looked at things a little differently when it came to hiring, Gates said. "We weren't looking for a specific skill, we wanted somebody who understood the field," he said.

"We look for people who have written reasonable programs—that gives us a sense of would they enjoy this for the long run," Gates said. "If they said they'd read 'The Art of Computer Programming' and they did all the problems, I'd hire them right away!"

Klawe chimed in: "So would I!"

Gates went on to say "What you're really teaching about design is pretty much the same information you used to teach 30 years ago… There may be some rich runtimes we could give the person to make them feel they are working with something cool and interesting."

Meanwhile, Gates said the industry now faces problems that need to be solved.

"We have an interesting dilemma coming up in that clock speeds are not going up much from 3 to 5 gigahertz," he said. "That turns out to be one of the great unsolved problems. We need brilliant people thinking about that problem" and others, Gates said.

One place to find new blood for the computer industry is among women. Klawe noted that "computer science is the only field in science and engineering where participation of women has gone down."

Klawe said computer science lags behind math, and "we're behind physics in some areas." And Klawe said Asia is not better in terms of numbers of women in the field.

In fact, the top two countries for women in computer science are Ireland and Turkey, Klawe said. "Part of that is this is the dominant economy in Ireland right now…and there is a lot of single-sex education there and girls find their way into particular programs."

In contrast, Klawe said the number of women in law and medicine has reached parity with men. Why? "I think there is a correlation with TV shows," that even when Klawe was a teenager, showed women happily at work in those fields. "I think computer science is a lot more creative than the jobs doctors and lawyers have," she said, asking why Hollywood doesn't do more with the IT field.

Replied Gates with a chuckle: "Say a bunch of movie cameras went over there to that Microsoft office building with cameras, it wouldn't be so exciting."

Klawe said she doubts the average law firm or medical practice would be so entertaining either.

Meanwhile, Gates touched on a few of his favorite Microsoft things. "Every student should have a Tablet," he said. Also, "the Xbox is sexy because it's a video game. The first year we knew we didn't have the credibility or the skill set to be the leader," but now Microsoft is in the thick of the game," he said.

Web search is another area Gates singled out. Web search "is an example of a competitor doing well and we have to catch them and get ahead of them."

In addition, "I've always had a small bias for the things we do that help people at work."

But Gates also spoke of how Microsoft technology helps make change in less developed countries in areas such as healthcare. He mentioned a doctor in Mozambique that uses an Access database to track the health history of people in the village where he works.

"This technology, because it's now very low-cost, high-volume stuff, can be used at a very low cost," Gates said.

Rick Rashid, senior vice president of research at Microsoft, said Microsoft is trying to "make sure computer science remains one of the top areas people want to go into." He said the past year has been a "really great year" for Microsoft Research," having published more than the division ever has before.

source:http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1838435,00.asp

"As Firefox moves swiftly towards 1.1 and Internet Explorer keeps trundling towards IE7, ZDNet UK has an interesting set of articles about Mozilla. Among other things, they look at the history of Firefox all the way from the pre-phoenix days, and have an interview with chief evangelist Asa Dotzler looking at what has driven the browsers success and why he thinks the release of IE7 will cause a massive boost in the uptake of Firefox."

source:http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/19/197226&tid=154&tid=1