Two separate points:
First, It is easy to say that survival depends on subscription fees, but the reality is that many people today choose either to pay for subscriptions or to view ads. For a technical magazine, it might make sense to make the content more open and attempt to increase subscribers and, through that, increase ad revenue. This might not be a viable model, but it serves your purpose well.
Second, sadly, even without piracy, tech articles can be easily duplicated, rewritten, or otherwise usurped. Tech articles have a short lifetime and I see very little value in print articles. Once the article appears online, I typically skip the later print versions. Relating this to piracy is simple: by the time someone has pirated the average tech article, it is old news. Dozens of aggregation websites exist that point people to the original article immediately. If it is "breaking" news, ads are the primary means of revenue generation. Frankly, most technically interested readers skip subscription serveries because they are becoming irrelevant in the tech news world.
I love the sentiment. For most meals, I totally understand this. My experience has been that the gadgets are not necessary but can be cool. I've cooked 7 course meals for 20 people without any of the devices I mentioned. When it comes to the geek kitchen, however, a bolometer IR thermometer is a truly useful addition to a kitchen. You do not NEED a device of this sort, but for quickly telling the temperature of everything on a stove, the IR thermometer is great once you understand how to use it. There are tons of gadgets out there that people use. Some gadgets are useful, others are for the sake of pushing the limits. My rice cooker does not cook better rice than I do on the stove top. What it does is allow me to do is prep the rice before I go to work and have freshly cooked rice ready 10 hours later for dinner. That is useful. Borrowing a FLIR IR camera and using it to cook steaks - now that is pushing the limits. It turns out to be quite useful as well. Oh, I do not own a toaster - I use the grill... I also bake all my own bread. I do all the prep and kneading by hand and use the IR thermometer to get the oven to the correct temperature. There are other ways to do it, I admit, but this way is fun and it works well. I also play with liquid nitrogen in the kitchen whenever I can get it. Nothing is simpler than Milk + sugar + vanilla + liquid nitrogen = ice cream!
Recently I've started to work on the geek kitchen concept. I'm working on the idea of an admin panel that tells the person cooking exactly the temperature of the oven, stovetop adventures, etc.
Going beyond this, I want to throw a few point-able IR thermometers/bolometers around the kitchen that are linked into this system. The creme de la creme of a geek temp monitoring system for a kitchen would be a couple of IR cameras (think FLIR-style temperature monitoring). This would also be point-able and could be used to monitor hotspots on grills or a cold marble slab if you are making candy or specialty ice cream.
The other awesome geek kitchen idea (for those who really like weird food prep) would be to incorporate a liquid nitrogen cooling slab. This is used for freezing weird liquids into a variety of shapes and is especially useful for desserts.
For my ultimate geek kitchen, automated storage is one of my goals. The first is an inventory system that is tied into a recipe db. I want to schedule meals and have a shopping list automatically generated. Not easy to build and probably not simple to maintain. That one is going to take some effort.
I'm also looking at automated small appliance storage and alternatives to the standard dishwasher. These are goals and I have no good solutions to offer right now.
The real question that’s been asked is whether @aol.com can ever be considered a sensible email address to have today. It shows an antiquated view of the internet, yes, but it also shows that the person did not sign up for Gmail as their first email address simply because they have to have an address on their resume. I have seen that many times.
Personally, I prefer my employees to have AOL addresses, check them regularly, and know how to use them rather than having their own domain name that their progeny configured and that they have no idea how to properly use.
If you are filtering based on domain name, you should really ask yourself what you are doing in the position of hiring manager. If I find someone with the right qualifications, I might ask them about something that stands out as an oddity such as an @aol.com email address, but I would only do so for someone who should definitely have superior email knowledge to compete in their profession.
On a related note, I personally give out an alternate email address on each resume I pass out – I never use my personal email address for anything business related.
There are several steps in getting a product to market, and it sounds as though you are well on your way. First, I want to emphasize that hardware design in inherently more risky than software design, so you should first learn about systems engineering from someone who has put a product such as this together. If you tell yourself that you can do the software, make sure you are equally confident that your team can put the hardware together. It has been my experience that the hardware itself can be one of the most challenging as well as one of the most expensive aspects of the system design process.
First, you must think from the system level about the product both in terms of the overall design specifications and the engineering required to meet your specification to meet a particular cost model. You will need someone to handle software (it sounds as though you have that covered), electronic design, mechanical design, PCB layout, sensor and optical system requirements, and how you will put it all together.
Since you asked about PCBs, it is absolutely necessary that you find an experienced PCB engineer, either by hiring one (the market is great for this right now, if you have the money to hire) or by finding someone with hardware design experience to work as a consultant and could select the components, layout the board, and then work with a mechanical engineer to package the system for the mass market. There are many companies that are more than happy to contract with you to do this, but beware that they have different focuses in terms of quantity, reliability, and, most importantly, cost.
The design process prior to going to a Chinese manufacturer will usually include a working prototype, a couple of design iterations, and a final (usually several copies) of the final test prototype for verification and comparison to the Chinese production model. Simply put, you donâ(TM)t want to order 50000 buggy boards. Express PCB will print the board itself, but you will need another shop to drop the components and solder them to the board. Iâ(TM)ve had luck with a couple of companies that are local to me and you will likely be able to find a shop that can provide you with PCB finishing services. Your PCB engineer will likely help you select components (probably from DigiKey) and whatever sensor you are using (likely directly from Kodak, depending on the sensor, or from a vendor that will give you a complete OEM camera (that is usually a better option if you have no sensor integration experience, but will typically cost more per unit, so if you are going to mass market the camera, youâ(TM)ll want to look into other options).
In summary, your team will need to work on the product design from different perspectives, both the systems/business/cost side and the design/fabricate/testing side.
I find the author obtuse...
He goes so far as to say that the best students do not become crooks, rather it is people who do poorly in school, which is obsurd. Similarly poor points are found throughout the article and it seems that everything the author says is unoriginal, regurgitated trash-talk.
If you look at the paper or the associated article you will see that a given system can only control a specific bandwidth of the EM spectrum. There would still be the possibility of being invisible in the standard visible light spectrum but to navigate utilizing radar or possibly infrared (depending on the width of the band for which the signal is hidden). Simply put, you can be invisible in one wavelength and see in another. If you are in an airplane you can navigate visually but be totally invisible to long range radar, something none of the stealth aircraft to date can boast (they have radar cross sections the size of bumblebees, but they still have cross sections).
Slashdot Mirror
Two separate points: First, It is easy to say that survival depends on subscription fees, but the reality is that many people today choose either to pay for subscriptions or to view ads. For a technical magazine, it might make sense to make the content more open and attempt to increase subscribers and, through that, increase ad revenue. This might not be a viable model, but it serves your purpose well. Second, sadly, even without piracy, tech articles can be easily duplicated, rewritten, or otherwise usurped. Tech articles have a short lifetime and I see very little value in print articles. Once the article appears online, I typically skip the later print versions. Relating this to piracy is simple: by the time someone has pirated the average tech article, it is old news. Dozens of aggregation websites exist that point people to the original article immediately. If it is "breaking" news, ads are the primary means of revenue generation. Frankly, most technically interested readers skip subscription serveries because they are becoming irrelevant in the tech news world.
I love the sentiment. For most meals, I totally understand this. My experience has been that the gadgets are not necessary but can be cool. I've cooked 7 course meals for 20 people without any of the devices I mentioned. When it comes to the geek kitchen, however, a bolometer IR thermometer is a truly useful addition to a kitchen. You do not NEED a device of this sort, but for quickly telling the temperature of everything on a stove, the IR thermometer is great once you understand how to use it. There are tons of gadgets out there that people use. Some gadgets are useful, others are for the sake of pushing the limits. My rice cooker does not cook better rice than I do on the stove top. What it does is allow me to do is prep the rice before I go to work and have freshly cooked rice ready 10 hours later for dinner. That is useful. Borrowing a FLIR IR camera and using it to cook steaks - now that is pushing the limits. It turns out to be quite useful as well. Oh, I do not own a toaster - I use the grill... I also bake all my own bread. I do all the prep and kneading by hand and use the IR thermometer to get the oven to the correct temperature. There are other ways to do it, I admit, but this way is fun and it works well. I also play with liquid nitrogen in the kitchen whenever I can get it. Nothing is simpler than Milk + sugar + vanilla + liquid nitrogen = ice cream!
Recently I've started to work on the geek kitchen concept. I'm working on the idea of an admin panel that tells the person cooking exactly the temperature of the oven, stovetop adventures, etc. Going beyond this, I want to throw a few point-able IR thermometers/bolometers around the kitchen that are linked into this system. The creme de la creme of a geek temp monitoring system for a kitchen would be a couple of IR cameras (think FLIR-style temperature monitoring). This would also be point-able and could be used to monitor hotspots on grills or a cold marble slab if you are making candy or specialty ice cream. The other awesome geek kitchen idea (for those who really like weird food prep) would be to incorporate a liquid nitrogen cooling slab. This is used for freezing weird liquids into a variety of shapes and is especially useful for desserts. For my ultimate geek kitchen, automated storage is one of my goals. The first is an inventory system that is tied into a recipe db. I want to schedule meals and have a shopping list automatically generated. Not easy to build and probably not simple to maintain. That one is going to take some effort. I'm also looking at automated small appliance storage and alternatives to the standard dishwasher. These are goals and I have no good solutions to offer right now.
The real question that’s been asked is whether @aol.com can ever be considered a sensible email address to have today. It shows an antiquated view of the internet, yes, but it also shows that the person did not sign up for Gmail as their first email address simply because they have to have an address on their resume. I have seen that many times. Personally, I prefer my employees to have AOL addresses, check them regularly, and know how to use them rather than having their own domain name that their progeny configured and that they have no idea how to properly use. If you are filtering based on domain name, you should really ask yourself what you are doing in the position of hiring manager. If I find someone with the right qualifications, I might ask them about something that stands out as an oddity such as an @aol.com email address, but I would only do so for someone who should definitely have superior email knowledge to compete in their profession. On a related note, I personally give out an alternate email address on each resume I pass out – I never use my personal email address for anything business related.
There are several steps in getting a product to market, and it sounds as though you are well on your way. First, I want to emphasize that hardware design in inherently more risky than software design, so you should first learn about systems engineering from someone who has put a product such as this together. If you tell yourself that you can do the software, make sure you are equally confident that your team can put the hardware together. It has been my experience that the hardware itself can be one of the most challenging as well as one of the most expensive aspects of the system design process. First, you must think from the system level about the product both in terms of the overall design specifications and the engineering required to meet your specification to meet a particular cost model. You will need someone to handle software (it sounds as though you have that covered), electronic design, mechanical design, PCB layout, sensor and optical system requirements, and how you will put it all together. Since you asked about PCBs, it is absolutely necessary that you find an experienced PCB engineer, either by hiring one (the market is great for this right now, if you have the money to hire) or by finding someone with hardware design experience to work as a consultant and could select the components, layout the board, and then work with a mechanical engineer to package the system for the mass market. There are many companies that are more than happy to contract with you to do this, but beware that they have different focuses in terms of quantity, reliability, and, most importantly, cost. The design process prior to going to a Chinese manufacturer will usually include a working prototype, a couple of design iterations, and a final (usually several copies) of the final test prototype for verification and comparison to the Chinese production model. Simply put, you donâ(TM)t want to order 50000 buggy boards. Express PCB will print the board itself, but you will need another shop to drop the components and solder them to the board. Iâ(TM)ve had luck with a couple of companies that are local to me and you will likely be able to find a shop that can provide you with PCB finishing services. Your PCB engineer will likely help you select components (probably from DigiKey) and whatever sensor you are using (likely directly from Kodak, depending on the sensor, or from a vendor that will give you a complete OEM camera (that is usually a better option if you have no sensor integration experience, but will typically cost more per unit, so if you are going to mass market the camera, youâ(TM)ll want to look into other options). In summary, your team will need to work on the product design from different perspectives, both the systems/business/cost side and the design/fabricate/testing side.
I find the author obtuse... He goes so far as to say that the best students do not become crooks, rather it is people who do poorly in school, which is obsurd. Similarly poor points are found throughout the article and it seems that everything the author says is unoriginal, regurgitated trash-talk.
If you look at the paper or the associated article you will see that a given system can only control a specific bandwidth of the EM spectrum. There would still be the possibility of being invisible in the standard visible light spectrum but to navigate utilizing radar or possibly infrared (depending on the width of the band for which the signal is hidden). Simply put, you can be invisible in one wavelength and see in another. If you are in an airplane you can navigate visually but be totally invisible to long range radar, something none of the stealth aircraft to date can boast (they have radar cross sections the size of bumblebees, but they still have cross sections).