Right, my first thought, too. In fact TFA discusses the turmoil of this discovery on current hypotheses about planetary formation and migration.
My next thought, related, was "who says this planetary arrangement is stable?" Perhaps in a few million years, that system will be very different. Will the planets "capture" one another? Will one planet eject the other from the system, or perturb its orbit into a very eccentric (and perhaps more or less stable) one? Will one planet migrate inward and the other outward?
Too bad we probably can't observe for long enough to find out.
So the moral is, if you work, work only for cash. Landscaping, Construction, prostitution, drug dealing, human smuggling, and extortion/kidnapping, those kinds of things. I don't recommend hit jobs. They can be messy and sometimes they stab back.
For me, the third and fourth semesters of Calc were easier. These were actually Differential Equations, which are really straightforward and easy to memorize.
It was the second semester, which was all Integral forms, which was completely inscrutable. I was lucky to pass that with a C.
When I graduated 24 years ago, my GPA was the equivalent of a C-plus, but on my Senior year the on-campus recruiters looked at my transcript and saw that every lab class, even Chemistry and Psych, was A-plus, A-plus, A-plus. I got every interview that I wanted and got as many job offers as the valedictorian (who accepted a job in Sales btw). Most of them never asked about my GPA, and the ones that did were aware of how I stood out from my classmates, few of whom knew what to do with an oscilloscope or a logic analyzer.
And my 2.5 GPA has never come up in any job interview since.
2) Have fun. You're an entering freshman. You have no idea how little free time you're going to have come fall.
You'll have more free time than you think. A full time student takes 12 credit hours per semester. That's only 12 hours a week, probably 2 hours MWF, and 3 hours Tu&Th. And most of those are going to be bullshit prereqs that don't require any actual work.
That really depends on your school and your major. BSEE/CS programs like the one I finished at CU Boulder require a minimum of 126 Semester credit hours to graduate. If you want to graduate in four years, that's 15.75 credit hours per semester. The homework piles up quick, even as an undergrad. And it's usually not trivial HS level homework assignments. And if you're going to a top-tier school like MIT or CIT, the standards of quality and quantity are even higher.
Plus, most semesters include at least one laboratory class, if not two. As a BSCS major, one or both of those lab classes are going to be programming labs, which require a LOT of time outside of regular lecture/lab/recitation sessions in order to complete the assignments. I'm talking like 20 hours per week. But if you're planning on Software as a career, you need to be prepared for long hours.
I'm not trying to scare you off. It's work, but it's fun work. And it makes the time fly. If it doesn't, then switch majors/careers to something that does. Now's the time to find out.
Anyway, the original, on-topic point is: Right Now, All Your Time is Self-directed. Have fun, because it will be over soon. It will be a while before you can sleep in until 11am and hack code until 3am. Undergraduate study can be stressful, and Engineering schools tend to put weeder classes in the first two or three semesters to make the ones who aren't cut out for it switch to another major. You can probably handle it, but it's still stressful. I still wake up a few nights a year in a sweat thinking OMG, midterms are next week and I haven't finished my microprocessor lab project!!!
If you plan to do summer internships while in college, then I encourage you to do a thing YOU enjoy for your last summer off.
The bad: if you haven't already found an internship by June, you're not going to find one. Most internship programs start screening and interviewing applicants around January, or even earlier. I've been in aerospace and commercial engineering work for 30 years and I've never seen a summer internship program that didn't already have their candidates in for interviews by March or April at the latest. And by the time the term ends, lodging and all the other logistics are already worked out.
The good news is that most intern programs are looking for college students, not HS Grads, so you have four or five more chances to qualify. Join the ACM and IEEE chapters at your school and let them know you want to apply for summer internships.
At this point I recommend two things, not mutually exclusive, both of which have essentially been mentioned before:
1) Find a project to work on... either FOSS or just a homebrew thing. Something small enough that you can finish so as to demonstrate your development skills. But also push the envelope and pick a project that will force you to learn something new... one or two minor things. And then document what you learned by writing a report; 2 or 3 pages will suffice.
2) Have fun. You're an entering freshman. You have no idea how little free time you're going to have come fall. I recommend you blow off some steam and go do some fun things you've always wanted to do. It's going to be at least four years before you have a chance to do that again. You will not be criticized for doing that.
If you didn't know who Sean Partry really was all along, or at least suspect it, then you weren't reading very closely.
If you really wanted to film it to preserve the surprise, then you could have had the character pick up some art of disguise tips from-- oh, who was it? Enoch Root? Then you could have a classic scooby doo moment where Partry pulls of his mask and reveals himself to be....
Or at least, it has more of a mainstream appeal. (Come on, the penultimate climax scene where Peter the Great, Isaac Newon, Baron Leibniz, and Daniel Waterhouse come together is epic.)
Rereading my post, these two sentences don't go together. I mean what I say in both, but the latter doesn't follow the former.
Mainstream Appeal = Eliza's beauty and intelligence and devotion... her courage and almost all of her scenes in Versailles... she's a great character for cinema. (Not sure if the scene with the sheep's intestine will make it past the ratings board but who knows.) Also, almost all of the chapters featuring Jack and Bob Shaftoe. Many of the Waterhouse chapters are not cut out for film, but then something's gonna have to be abbreviated for film.
Geek Appeal = All of the chapters featuring Newton and/or Leibniz. What geek wouldn't want to see a film dramatizing the rivalry between the two inventors of the calculus, especially with the kind of flourishes added by Stephenson?
Of all the Stephenson novels to be made into film, why Snow Crash?
Zodiac is perfect for cinema in terms of scope, relevance, and length. When I read it I thought, "this would lend itself to a screenplay."
Cryptonomicon. Just wow. It could be a cornerstone of 21st century cinema if it was done right.
And the Baroque Cycle. It would have to be a trilogy like LotR, but IMO it's far more easily adapted for the screen than Snow Crash. Or at least, it has more of a mainstream appeal. (Come on, the penultimate climax scene where Peter the Great, Isaac Newon, Baron Leibniz, and Daniel Waterhouse come together is epic.)
Finally. Diamond Age. If there was one C-Punk movie I could ask to be made into a film, by a devoted producer/director, it would be The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Really, it's like the Ender's Game of cyberpunk.
The only reason it's Snow Crash is because that title sold more copies. Pure and simple. Name recognition = box office sales. Nothing else matters in Hollywood these days.
What is the byproduct/waste product of the glucose after it's been harvested of its electrons? What are the effects of these byproducts in the CSF?
If there is significant glucose in the CSF as TFA states, why is it there? What effects could its depletion cause? How fast is it replenished? Is this fast enough to provide adequate continuous power for a [cochlear implant|pacemaker|mathcoprocessor|frikkin'laser]?
I'm not opposed to cybernetic implants powered by the beer and pizza I already consume, but I sure want to know that the researchers and engineers did their homework first.
I have a set of Sennheiser PC350 Gaming headphones. They're not cheap, but when I was wearing them 20 or 30 hours a week, it was worth every cent. The sound quality is excellent, and they're supremely comfortable.
If you use headphones like this with a Mac, you will need an external audio adapter. Good ones are inexpensive... but so are bad ones, so shop carefully.
I'll second the Sennheiser PX100's. I've purchased several pair over the past four or five years, and not because they wear out. (I left one pair on a plane, and my wife claimed another pair.)
These are on-ear headphones rather than over-ear. The audio quality is fantastic for the price, with rich bass and clear but not tweety trebles. They do not isolate much sound, but in some environments that's a benefit. I have not noticed that the audio is audible to other folks, and it's especially less than what I remember from cheap sony walkman headsets, in fact most folks assume that when I'm wearing these I can't hear them, but in fact, external sounds come thru quite clearly.
Another benefit is that they fold up and fit into a case for travel. It takes a little practice to stow them quickly, but the case certainly makes them far more portable and rugged than they would be without them.
If theres a real downside to the PX100s it's that they're not really suitable for active use. For that I recommend earbuds. (I have two pair of Lift Audio Icon series earbuds, they sound awesome and will change your mind about earbuds being unwearable for long periods... at Amazon they now sell for half of what I paid for them last year.)
I also have a pair of Sennheiser PC350 over-ear gaming headphones with Mic. Those have even better sound than the PX100s, far better than Bose headsets imo. They're a little tight but very comfortable for long raiding sessions, and I even use them when not on Vent if I want to block out the sounds of the TV or leafblowers or whatever.
I spent about 5 years exploring headphones and tried several different makes. Sennheisers won me over. Pick a Sennheiser set that appeals to you and you'll be happy.
If you've ever had a dog, you've learned why it's important to make your bed.
Dog owners: When your dog comes indoors all muddy and dirty, with shit on his paws, where's the first place he heads for as soon as he can sneak away?
Yep. Your bed. If the bed's not made, then you either have to clean the mud and shit out of it, or else sleep in mud and shit. And you can say "My dog's not allowed on the bed," but that makes the bed even more enticing to the dog.
Same principle applies to cats who cough up hairballs and kids with grimy hands and feet.
The purpose of making the bed is to ensure that the parts you make intimate contact with for 6 to 8 hours will remain relatively clean when you're not in it.
Interview university seniors graduating with BSCS or Business programs that have an emphasis on computer programming. Be honest that you're filling sales positions. Make offers to the extroverted candidates that demonstrate the necessary social skills. Mentor them with experienced sales people. Have them sit in on engineering meetings and let them contribute ideas, and throw them an occasional development task so that they remain familiar with your products.
If you want a sales staff with technical proficiency, you're very likely going to have to groom them yourself. Perhaps you can hire them away from other companies that do the same thing, but I doubt you can depend on that.
THOMAS may only allow 1 bill at a time, but there are only so many bills before Congress. Download them one at a time and make an external database. Host that site yourself.
Now, I'm not one to casually toss off the latest jargon, but it seems to me that in this case, a Cloud solution is actually a reasonably good answer.
It's public data, so there's no security or privacy risk. It's large but not so large as to require any special development or infrastructure. There's probably already a front end somewhere that would serve the necessary web interface with just a little re-branding. It's even something that could be legislated as a "civic duty" and mandated on US companies that wish to sell Cloud services, and spreading around the duty would mean no one company need be trusted or burdened with the entire database.
I really don't see what the technical challenges are. Amazon, Google, Wikipedia, Monster, Lexis-Nexus and a bazillion other entities handle far more data than this. I could write the specification in an afternoon, and make it so obvious as to be non-controversial.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, my first thought, too. In fact TFA discusses the turmoil of this discovery on current hypotheses about planetary formation and migration.
My next thought, related, was "who says this planetary arrangement is stable?" Perhaps in a few million years, that system will be very different. Will the planets "capture" one another? Will one planet eject the other from the system, or perturb its orbit into a very eccentric (and perhaps more or less stable) one? Will one planet migrate inward and the other outward?
Too bad we probably can't observe for long enough to find out.
So the moral is, if you work, work only for cash. Landscaping, Construction, prostitution, drug dealing, human smuggling, and extortion/kidnapping, those kinds of things. I don't recommend hit jobs. They can be messy and sometimes they stab back.
For me, the third and fourth semesters of Calc were easier. These were actually Differential Equations, which are really straightforward and easy to memorize.
It was the second semester, which was all Integral forms, which was completely inscrutable. I was lucky to pass that with a C.
When I graduated 24 years ago, my GPA was the equivalent of a C-plus, but on my Senior year the on-campus recruiters looked at my transcript and saw that every lab class, even Chemistry and Psych, was A-plus, A-plus, A-plus. I got every interview that I wanted and got as many job offers as the valedictorian (who accepted a job in Sales btw). Most of them never asked about my GPA, and the ones that did were aware of how I stood out from my classmates, few of whom knew what to do with an oscilloscope or a logic analyzer.
And my 2.5 GPA has never come up in any job interview since.
2) Have fun. You're an entering freshman. You have no idea how little free time you're going to have come fall.
You'll have more free time than you think. A full time student takes 12 credit hours per semester. That's only 12 hours a week, probably 2 hours MWF, and 3 hours Tu&Th. And most of those are going to be bullshit prereqs that don't require any actual work.
That really depends on your school and your major. BSEE/CS programs like the one I finished at CU Boulder require a minimum of 126 Semester credit hours to graduate. If you want to graduate in four years, that's 15.75 credit hours per semester. The homework piles up quick, even as an undergrad. And it's usually not trivial HS level homework assignments. And if you're going to a top-tier school like MIT or CIT, the standards of quality and quantity are even higher.
Plus, most semesters include at least one laboratory class, if not two. As a BSCS major, one or both of those lab classes are going to be programming labs, which require a LOT of time outside of regular lecture/lab/recitation sessions in order to complete the assignments. I'm talking like 20 hours per week. But if you're planning on Software as a career, you need to be prepared for long hours.
I'm not trying to scare you off. It's work, but it's fun work. And it makes the time fly. If it doesn't, then switch majors/careers to something that does. Now's the time to find out.
Anyway, the original, on-topic point is: Right Now, All Your Time is Self-directed. Have fun, because it will be over soon. It will be a while before you can sleep in until 11am and hack code until 3am. Undergraduate study can be stressful, and Engineering schools tend to put weeder classes in the first two or three semesters to make the ones who aren't cut out for it switch to another major. You can probably handle it, but it's still stressful. I still wake up a few nights a year in a sweat thinking OMG, midterms are next week and I haven't finished my microprocessor lab project!!!
If you plan to do summer internships while in college, then I encourage you to do a thing YOU enjoy for your last summer off.
I have bad news and good news for you.
The bad: if you haven't already found an internship by June, you're not going to find one. Most internship programs start screening and interviewing applicants around January, or even earlier. I've been in aerospace and commercial engineering work for 30 years and I've never seen a summer internship program that didn't already have their candidates in for interviews by March or April at the latest. And by the time the term ends, lodging and all the other logistics are already worked out.
The good news is that most intern programs are looking for college students, not HS Grads, so you have four or five more chances to qualify. Join the ACM and IEEE chapters at your school and let them know you want to apply for summer internships.
At this point I recommend two things, not mutually exclusive, both of which have essentially been mentioned before:
1) Find a project to work on... either FOSS or just a homebrew thing. Something small enough that you can finish so as to demonstrate your development skills. But also push the envelope and pick a project that will force you to learn something new... one or two minor things. And then document what you learned by writing a report; 2 or 3 pages will suffice.
2) Have fun. You're an entering freshman. You have no idea how little free time you're going to have come fall. I recommend you blow off some steam and go do some fun things you've always wanted to do. It's going to be at least four years before you have a chance to do that again. You will not be criticized for doing that.
This is a "feature", not a "bug".
Obviously. With all of the face-eating zombies in the news lately, Samsung thoughtfully permits you to unlock your phone with a backup of your face.
If you didn't know who Sean Partry really was all along, or at least suspect it, then you weren't reading very closely.
If you really wanted to film it to preserve the surprise, then you could have had the character pick up some art of disguise tips from-- oh, who was it? Enoch Root? Then you could have a classic scooby doo moment where Partry pulls of his mask and reveals himself to be....
Or at least, it has more of a mainstream appeal. (Come on, the penultimate climax scene where Peter the Great, Isaac Newon, Baron Leibniz, and Daniel Waterhouse come together is epic.)
Rereading my post, these two sentences don't go together. I mean what I say in both, but the latter doesn't follow the former.
Mainstream Appeal = Eliza's beauty and intelligence and devotion... her courage and almost all of her scenes in Versailles... she's a great character for cinema. (Not sure if the scene with the sheep's intestine will make it past the ratings board but who knows.) Also, almost all of the chapters featuring Jack and Bob Shaftoe. Many of the Waterhouse chapters are not cut out for film, but then something's gonna have to be abbreviated for film.
Geek Appeal = All of the chapters featuring Newton and/or Leibniz. What geek wouldn't want to see a film dramatizing the rivalry between the two inventors of the calculus, especially with the kind of flourishes added by Stephenson?
Of all the Stephenson novels to be made into film, why Snow Crash?
Zodiac is perfect for cinema in terms of scope, relevance, and length. When I read it I thought, "this would lend itself to a screenplay."
Cryptonomicon. Just wow. It could be a cornerstone of 21st century cinema if it was done right.
And the Baroque Cycle. It would have to be a trilogy like LotR, but IMO it's far more easily adapted for the screen than Snow Crash. Or at least, it has more of a mainstream appeal. (Come on, the penultimate climax scene where Peter the Great, Isaac Newon, Baron Leibniz, and Daniel Waterhouse come together is epic.)
Finally. Diamond Age. If there was one C-Punk movie I could ask to be made into a film, by a devoted producer/director, it would be The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Really, it's like the Ender's Game of cyberpunk.
The only reason it's Snow Crash is because that title sold more copies. Pure and simple. Name recognition = box office sales. Nothing else matters in Hollywood these days.
As long as it's not Free Chocolate Rain.
Really? I thought the suggestion "let me pound your cervix into jelly" was a pretty good closing line...
Or am I thinking of the wrong c-punk novel? I could be. All those Nineties/Aughties novels blur together now.
It's OK. I'll take the cookie anyway.
I'm gonna need it to power my cybernetics.
Diabetics can have their fuel cells implanted in their bladders.
TFA leaves some important questions unanswered.
What is the byproduct/waste product of the glucose after it's been harvested of its electrons? What are the effects of these byproducts in the CSF?
If there is significant glucose in the CSF as TFA states, why is it there? What effects could its depletion cause? How fast is it replenished? Is this fast enough to provide adequate continuous power for a [cochlear implant|pacemaker|mathcoprocessor|frikkin'laser]?
I'm not opposed to cybernetic implants powered by the beer and pizza I already consume, but I sure want to know that the researchers and engineers did their homework first.
I have a set of Sennheiser PC350 Gaming headphones. They're not cheap, but when I was wearing them 20 or 30 hours a week, it was worth every cent. The sound quality is excellent, and they're supremely comfortable.
If you use headphones like this with a Mac, you will need an external audio adapter. Good ones are inexpensive... but so are bad ones, so shop carefully.
I'll second the Sennheiser PX100's. I've purchased several pair over the past four or five years, and not because they wear out. (I left one pair on a plane, and my wife claimed another pair.)
These are on-ear headphones rather than over-ear. The audio quality is fantastic for the price, with rich bass and clear but not tweety trebles. They do not isolate much sound, but in some environments that's a benefit. I have not noticed that the audio is audible to other folks, and it's especially less than what I remember from cheap sony walkman headsets, in fact most folks assume that when I'm wearing these I can't hear them, but in fact, external sounds come thru quite clearly.
Another benefit is that they fold up and fit into a case for travel. It takes a little practice to stow them quickly, but the case certainly makes them far more portable and rugged than they would be without them.
If theres a real downside to the PX100s it's that they're not really suitable for active use. For that I recommend earbuds. (I have two pair of Lift Audio Icon series earbuds, they sound awesome and will change your mind about earbuds being unwearable for long periods... at Amazon they now sell for half of what I paid for them last year.)
I also have a pair of Sennheiser PC350 over-ear gaming headphones with Mic. Those have even better sound than the PX100s, far better than Bose headsets imo. They're a little tight but very comfortable for long raiding sessions, and I even use them when not on Vent if I want to block out the sounds of the TV or leafblowers or whatever.
I spent about 5 years exploring headphones and tried several different makes. Sennheisers won me over. Pick a Sennheiser set that appeals to you and you'll be happy.
I had a chance to buy DIII the weekend before Launch for $5. I declined.
Instead, I'm playing NetHack. It's infinitely replayable, at zero cost. And I didn't have to upgrade my graphics card to play it.
Specifically, the Junethack Tournament.
But the real event will come in October.
If you've ever had a dog, you've learned why it's important to make your bed.
Dog owners: When your dog comes indoors all muddy and dirty, with shit on his paws, where's the first place he heads for as soon as he can sneak away?
Yep. Your bed. If the bed's not made, then you either have to clean the mud and shit out of it, or else sleep in mud and shit. And you can say "My dog's not allowed on the bed," but that makes the bed even more enticing to the dog.
Same principle applies to cats who cough up hairballs and kids with grimy hands and feet.
The purpose of making the bed is to ensure that the parts you make intimate contact with for 6 to 8 hours will remain relatively clean when you're not in it.
You know, some days I can hardly remember a name to save my life.
But things like this I will never, ever forget.
And hopefully, some day, I may even get to use it.
Yes, but our instruments are not yet sensitive enough to detect the effects.
Interview university seniors graduating with BSCS or Business programs that have an emphasis on computer programming. Be honest that you're filling sales positions. Make offers to the extroverted candidates that demonstrate the necessary social skills. Mentor them with experienced sales people. Have them sit in on engineering meetings and let them contribute ideas, and throw them an occasional development task so that they remain familiar with your products.
If you want a sales staff with technical proficiency, you're very likely going to have to groom them yourself. Perhaps you can hire them away from other companies that do the same thing, but I doubt you can depend on that.
Maybe it's simply because you have a 4-digit UID.
but it gets a bit kinky later where they're detecting themselves...
It's not kinky at all. They all do it, most of them nearly every day, but few of them admit it.
Kinky is two of them detecting each other...
THOMAS may only allow 1 bill at a time, but there are only so many bills before Congress. Download them one at a time and make an external database. Host that site yourself.
Now, I'm not one to casually toss off the latest jargon, but it seems to me that in this case, a Cloud solution is actually a reasonably good answer.
It's public data, so there's no security or privacy risk. It's large but not so large as to require any special development or infrastructure. There's probably already a front end somewhere that would serve the necessary web interface with just a little re-branding. It's even something that could be legislated as a "civic duty" and mandated on US companies that wish to sell Cloud services, and spreading around the duty would mean no one company need be trusted or burdened with the entire database.
I really don't see what the technical challenges are. Amazon, Google, Wikipedia, Monster, Lexis-Nexus and a bazillion other entities handle far more data than this. I could write the specification in an afternoon, and make it so obvious as to be non-controversial.
Clemens was right. Congress = !Progress.