That's what I was thinking. I would assume that would then mean Microsoft were the only ones doing it... Or they would be charging other firms that want to do the same, thus making a less attractive option. If Microsoft wants to patent being a douche, more power to them.
If the guy you hired to represent you did so falsely and possibly did more harm to your reputation in your local market than good, you need to let them know and dump them. I think you did the right thing by correcting the resume in the interview. Anything else would have been your lie, not "Zeke's."
This is anecdotal, but while I know many non-science types who are at least somewhat wary of anything dubbed "nuclear", I have yet to meet anyone who honestly believes what you describe. I know lots that are uncomfortable with public medicine, but none that fit your description. While some loud voices seem to cultivate this image, I don't think any more people actually believe it than the number that believe flouride in the drinking water is a government plot for mind-control.
And I do wonder if the public can finally move past it's fear of radiation and implement sane attitudes towards the nuclear industry. Nuclear has quietly been developing a very good safety record the last couple of decades, and yes, I'm wondering if people are starting to take note.
The Voyager missions were nuclear powered. We are still in communication with these probes, and they are twice as far from the sun as Pluto is! They each have nuclear batteries onboard, and are an example of engineering at its absolute best.
My question is, if we were to launch those probes today, and heavily publicize them, would the public stand for launching nuclear material into space? Or would there be so much irrational fear about "What if they come crashing down on earth and BLOW UP NEW YORK!! ZOMG!!"? I honestly don't know the answer, but I expect that nowadays there would be a much larger crowd shouting about it than there was in the 70s.
Nuclear car batteries would be a godsend if you ask me, and I think almost everyone would agree if they merely didn't know it was nuclear. Most people already have nuclear/radioactive devices in their homes and don't know it. (Smoke alarms). Others depend on the function of nuclear batteries for their lives (pacemakers, etc). But I question whether people would accept it if it were widely publicized.
Not a troll. Genuinely curious what people think. My experiences with people is that they are terrified of the words "nuclear" or "radioactive" and have extremely irrational fears associated with them.
Agreed on most points. However, there's one tidbit I believe you overstate:
He promised to improve relations with Iran, and yet Iran has said that Obama is worse than Bush. Yet, conversely, by giving creedence to Ahmadinejad, we have former (supposed) allies like France bashing us and calling us out.
I don't know who was the better negotiator with Iran. For all I know, Bush was better. But I know I wouldn't take Ahmadinejad's word for it. I don't trust Bush or Obama as far as I can throw them, but I'm pretty sure that Ahmadinejad is legitimately crazy. And while I don't know what goes on behind closed doors, I can't say I blame Obama for at least putting on a guise of talking to Iran, even if it pisses off France.
Back on topic, I voted for Obama hoping for the best. I can't say I've been disappointed, only because I had very low expectations for anything to actually change. Winning a Peace Prize is a joke.
First off let me say I agree with you. But, as far as I understand it, our abilities at finding exoplanets are generally limited to large Jupiter-sized planets with shorter periods. So... Aren't our results thus far effectively filtered to maybe FIND some of these anomalies that may exist? Why should we be surprised that we found something like this?
Me too. I actually once got in trouble for it! I had just started a new job and had been there about six weeks. I guess at that point, I had only "accrued" 1 day of sick time. Well, I got dreadfully ill, and spent two days laying on the couch sipping ginger ale with a fever. I had a roommate email my boss for me to let them know what the situation was. I showed up, still a little woozy, on the third day, and got REAMED because I took inappropriate time off. The second day ended up being a day of "unpaid leave" because it wasn't in the budget to give me a sick day yet... And some people on here wonder why people gripe about corporations and soulless HR folk...
Fair enough, harmless was a poor choice of words. But I think the point is that everyone tends to think glowing rods of pure plutonium when they think nuclear waste, when there are in fact different levels of waste, and the bulk of it is considered "low-risk" waste, and includes such things as radiation suits, used cooling pipes, etc, etc. These things pose a minor risk, and do not need to be stored for 20,000+ years.
Yes, we simply must reverse this policy if this country is ever going to take nuclear seriously. Much nuclear waste is still useful material, but we limit ourselves from reprocessing it to use it more completely. Another reason for inflated "nuclear waste" numbers is because, as I understand it, anything that comes out of secured areas is labeled "nuclear waste" and disposed of. So used radiation suits and other such harmless things are part of the total.
Quick link to back this up, I'm sure there are better sites...
Amen!! I naively took a job where the boss told me in the interview he was easy going, and fed me almost that exact same line of, "Work late every now and again, and just take off when times are slow from time to time, no biggie."
BIG lie. After a couple weeks, I was asked to come in every day over a long holiday weekend, and each day I was the only person there. Happened again just two weeks later (only it wasn't a holiday that time). In the down time between big projects, I was expected to sit at my desk and find something to do every day until 5. If I asked off, I'd get a long sideways look, and a bunch of questions, and I might get to go home.
I quit that job as soon as was possible, for a huge pay cut, and have been happy ever since.
As for OT pay, I now ask how often I will be expected to come in after hours/on weekends. If they assure me that will be rare, I tell them fine, I will just bill them for my weekends as a private consultant on that rare occasion. If they refuse to pay, I walk.
Most OT I've done has largely been because if I say something will take two weeks of dedicated time, they give me one, plus some other odd jobs. The way I see it, I shouldn't be the one to pay for that kind of nonsense.
I've timed it on one particularly bad system. For one friend's voicemail (not sure what service), it takes me 47 seconds of listening to that garbage before I get to the beep. If I have anything at all important to say other than, "Hey call me back", I'm probably on the hook for 2 minutes to leave a fifteen second message. So yes, it's annoying and costly. Not much, but multiply out by a few million customers and it's a nice hidden fee of sorts...
I used to work at LLNL on another project, but I'll give it my best shot from what I understood of NIF. I toured it once myself, if that means anything...
In a nuclear bomb, say, they would have several kilograms of nuclear fuel, and the catalyst for the reaction is usually another bomb of some kind. Very uncontrolled, just trying to make a big "boom". In this experiment, they are using very very tiny amounts of deuterium and tritium, and the catalyst is 192 lasers firing simultaneously. The energy output will have a very real ceiling that is theoretically well below what is needed to blow up the whole lab. (Still, it's probably bad to be in the room when it goes off...)
Their goal is actually to get as much energy out of this explosion as is possible, so if the lab did blow up, it would probably ironically be something of a success... Their real goal is to simply get more energy out than they inject via lasers in a controlled fashion. That would be a proof of concept for workable fusion powered reactors.
Note, this is NOT a power plant, and my comments should not be misconstrued to say "Hey, them there's a fusion power plant". We're still a long long way from that. Kay, thanks.
Maybe for some people, but this is wholly evident to me. When I was a grad student, part of the reason we got as much funding as we did was because we could do things at a fraction of the cost as a private lab. That was largely because there was no OSHA oversight, and we didn't adhere to a number of safety regulations. I got burned in an acetone explosion one time and had to do workman's comp. I took this all in stride and only after I started working in industry did I realize that we were even ignoring a lot of safety questions.
All the same, I still think OSHA goes overboard. I'd rather go back and work in that lab and be careful than have someone come in and tell me that the stepladder I'm using isn't safe...
I think the GP is talking about oncoming traffic, as in, passing in the oncoming traffic lane. Not sure how common this is in Europe or other places, but it's fairly commonplace in the US on more rural highways that only have one lane of traffic going each way. It is an already dangerous procedure, and for this kind of thing, you don't want your car trying to think for you...
I guess it all depends on how long it lets you speed, and how the override part of the mechanism really works.
No, it was my thought as well. But as a once long-time resident of Tucson, I can say that a functioning, efficient, high-speed passenger train service between these two cities is an excellent idea. These guys might be snake-oil salesmen, but even so, hopefully it wakes some other more serious people up.
I'm looking for the libraries, but I asked about the compiler because if the compiler was available, then the libraries would also presumably be there. The specific library I ran into problems with was libg2c. In any case, It's good to know they have no plans to continue with g77, but I do hope they bring back in some of the libraries that are unavailable through other packages... I was able to make it work in 8.10 by getting that library it from the hardy repository, but it screws up aptitude and makes it hard to update. Thanks for the info.
So, someone who has tried it out... Does it have support for g77? I have a bunch of legacy code that requires some of the old fortran 77 libraries and these are unavailable in 8.10. Gfortran is not an option for me... I love ubuntu, but if they keep it out I might have to switch distros... Honest question.
Since when is SolidWorks the industry standard, as opposed to (say) ProE?
Well, Solidworks may not be the only option out there, but most people I know use it. ProE seems to have fallen out of fashion lately. I'm certainly not defending or advertising for SolidWorks, I'm just reporting my experience. I am one person, so my experiences may not be a representative sample. Take it for what you will.
As for BRL-CAD, I will check it out, thanks for the tip. 3-D CAD modeling is the only application left keeping me with one toe in the windows world...
Just so you know, Blender is not a suitable alternative to SolidWorks for 3-D mechanical design. If there was an even halfway decent open-source project that had 3-D modeling capabilities that was halfway compatible with SolidWorks (industry standard), I'd switch in a heartbeat. This seems like a logical and good move on their part. They understand that if people get used to using their software, they might just buy a license down the road...
Also, if you know of an open-source alternative, please don't hold out. Let me know about it.
I agree in principle, and I also fail to see how it in any way violates privacy, if you are out and about in PUBLIC.
Red light cameras generally increase the safety of intersections, and I approve of their appropriate usage (That is, NOT messing with the timing to try to catch people, etc). But they do have some flaws. For example, I was stopped at an intersection late at night where I swear the light was BROKEN. That is, I waited well over two minutes, with no traffic anywhere, and the light stayed red. There was a camera on it. What was I supposed to do? Well, I ran it, and fortunately never heard anything. But I can see how sometimes the camera doesn't tell the whole story, where a good old fashioned patrol car might. The system isn't perfect, but I generally support it as long as judges are reasonable in listening to people protesting their tickets.
This is good news. Now the bad news is I have many scripts that run ffmpeg, and they might need to be updated... But really, a new stable release is a fantastic thing.
I personally don't care about being remembered more than I care about having food on my table. This may shock you, but my motive in life is not fame or money, but learning more about the world around us, and attempting to improve it.
If I give a net benefit to society in that role, I expect to be compensated, and not just altruistically being "remembered" as I starve to death. Even if what I bring to the table is simply a new idea that improves lives that is not a commercial product. I think that alone has "value" to society that is not valued by the free market, don't you?
I for one welcome the delay. I have a converter box and most of the time I find myself using the analog signal. Why? Because I only seem to get one channel on the digital signal, while with analog I can get most of them even if they're a bit grainy.
Oh yeah, I live in a downtown metropolitan area, so this "it's only the rural people" is total bunk as far as I'm concerned. But I'm just one lonely data point....
Slashdot Mirror
That's what I was thinking. I would assume that would then mean Microsoft were the only ones doing it... Or they would be charging other firms that want to do the same, thus making a less attractive option. If Microsoft wants to patent being a douche, more power to them.
... or does this posting say almost nothing? "We blew up a crater on the moon, and boy our data is great. Check back with you guys later."
Is this just NASA-speak for "We haven't analyzed the data yet but we wanted to make some sort of comment anyways"?
If the guy you hired to represent you did so falsely and possibly did more harm to your reputation in your local market than good, you need to let them know and dump them. I think you did the right thing by correcting the resume in the interview. Anything else would have been your lie, not "Zeke's."
This is anecdotal, but while I know many non-science types who are at least somewhat wary of anything dubbed "nuclear", I have yet to meet anyone who honestly believes what you describe. I know lots that are uncomfortable with public medicine, but none that fit your description. While some loud voices seem to cultivate this image, I don't think any more people actually believe it than the number that believe flouride in the drinking water is a government plot for mind-control.
And I do wonder if the public can finally move past it's fear of radiation and implement sane attitudes towards the nuclear industry. Nuclear has quietly been developing a very good safety record the last couple of decades, and yes, I'm wondering if people are starting to take note.
The Voyager missions were nuclear powered. We are still in communication with these probes, and they are twice as far from the sun as Pluto is! They each have nuclear batteries onboard, and are an example of engineering at its absolute best.
My question is, if we were to launch those probes today, and heavily publicize them, would the public stand for launching nuclear material into space? Or would there be so much irrational fear about "What if they come crashing down on earth and BLOW UP NEW YORK!! ZOMG!!"? I honestly don't know the answer, but I expect that nowadays there would be a much larger crowd shouting about it than there was in the 70s.
Nuclear car batteries would be a godsend if you ask me, and I think almost everyone would agree if they merely didn't know it was nuclear. Most people already have nuclear/radioactive devices in their homes and don't know it. (Smoke alarms). Others depend on the function of nuclear batteries for their lives (pacemakers, etc). But I question whether people would accept it if it were widely publicized.
Not a troll. Genuinely curious what people think. My experiences with people is that they are terrified of the words "nuclear" or "radioactive" and have extremely irrational fears associated with them.
He promised to improve relations with Iran, and yet Iran has said that Obama is worse than Bush. Yet, conversely, by giving creedence to Ahmadinejad, we have former (supposed) allies like France bashing us and calling us out.
I don't know who was the better negotiator with Iran. For all I know, Bush was better. But I know I wouldn't take Ahmadinejad's word for it. I don't trust Bush or Obama as far as I can throw them, but I'm pretty sure that Ahmadinejad is legitimately crazy. And while I don't know what goes on behind closed doors, I can't say I blame Obama for at least putting on a guise of talking to Iran, even if it pisses off France.
Back on topic, I voted for Obama hoping for the best. I can't say I've been disappointed, only because I had very low expectations for anything to actually change. Winning a Peace Prize is a joke.
First off let me say I agree with you. But, as far as I understand it, our abilities at finding exoplanets are generally limited to large Jupiter-sized planets with shorter periods. So... Aren't our results thus far effectively filtered to maybe FIND some of these anomalies that may exist? Why should we be surprised that we found something like this?
Me too. I actually once got in trouble for it! I had just started a new job and had been there about six weeks. I guess at that point, I had only "accrued" 1 day of sick time. Well, I got dreadfully ill, and spent two days laying on the couch sipping ginger ale with a fever. I had a roommate email my boss for me to let them know what the situation was. I showed up, still a little woozy, on the third day, and got REAMED because I took inappropriate time off. The second day ended up being a day of "unpaid leave" because it wasn't in the budget to give me a sick day yet... And some people on here wonder why people gripe about corporations and soulless HR folk...
Fair enough, harmless was a poor choice of words. But I think the point is that everyone tends to think glowing rods of pure plutonium when they think nuclear waste, when there are in fact different levels of waste, and the bulk of it is considered "low-risk" waste, and includes such things as radiation suits, used cooling pipes, etc, etc. These things pose a minor risk, and do not need to be stored for 20,000+ years.
Yes, we simply must reverse this policy if this country is ever going to take nuclear seriously. Much nuclear waste is still useful material, but we limit ourselves from reprocessing it to use it more completely. Another reason for inflated "nuclear waste" numbers is because, as I understand it, anything that comes out of secured areas is labeled "nuclear waste" and disposed of. So used radiation suits and other such harmless things are part of the total.
Quick link to back this up, I'm sure there are better sites...
http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/EZRA/
Amen!! I naively took a job where the boss told me in the interview he was easy going, and fed me almost that exact same line of, "Work late every now and again, and just take off when times are slow from time to time, no biggie."
BIG lie. After a couple weeks, I was asked to come in every day over a long holiday weekend, and each day I was the only person there. Happened again just two weeks later (only it wasn't a holiday that time). In the down time between big projects, I was expected to sit at my desk and find something to do every day until 5. If I asked off, I'd get a long sideways look, and a bunch of questions, and I might get to go home.
I quit that job as soon as was possible, for a huge pay cut, and have been happy ever since.
As for OT pay, I now ask how often I will be expected to come in after hours/on weekends. If they assure me that will be rare, I tell them fine, I will just bill them for my weekends as a private consultant on that rare occasion. If they refuse to pay, I walk.
Most OT I've done has largely been because if I say something will take two weeks of dedicated time, they give me one, plus some other odd jobs. The way I see it, I shouldn't be the one to pay for that kind of nonsense.
I've timed it on one particularly bad system. For one friend's voicemail (not sure what service), it takes me 47 seconds of listening to that garbage before I get to the beep. If I have anything at all important to say other than, "Hey call me back", I'm probably on the hook for 2 minutes to leave a fifteen second message. So yes, it's annoying and costly. Not much, but multiply out by a few million customers and it's a nice hidden fee of sorts...
I used to work at LLNL on another project, but I'll give it my best shot from what I understood of NIF. I toured it once myself, if that means anything...
In a nuclear bomb, say, they would have several kilograms of nuclear fuel, and the catalyst for the reaction is usually another bomb of some kind. Very uncontrolled, just trying to make a big "boom". In this experiment, they are using very very tiny amounts of deuterium and tritium, and the catalyst is 192 lasers firing simultaneously. The energy output will have a very real ceiling that is theoretically well below what is needed to blow up the whole lab. (Still, it's probably bad to be in the room when it goes off...)
Their goal is actually to get as much energy out of this explosion as is possible, so if the lab did blow up, it would probably ironically be something of a success... Their real goal is to simply get more energy out than they inject via lasers in a controlled fashion. That would be a proof of concept for workable fusion powered reactors.
Note, this is NOT a power plant, and my comments should not be misconstrued to say "Hey, them there's a fusion power plant". We're still a long long way from that. Kay, thanks.
Maybe for some people, but this is wholly evident to me. When I was a grad student, part of the reason we got as much funding as we did was because we could do things at a fraction of the cost as a private lab. That was largely because there was no OSHA oversight, and we didn't adhere to a number of safety regulations. I got burned in an acetone explosion one time and had to do workman's comp. I took this all in stride and only after I started working in industry did I realize that we were even ignoring a lot of safety questions.
All the same, I still think OSHA goes overboard. I'd rather go back and work in that lab and be careful than have someone come in and tell me that the stepladder I'm using isn't safe...
I think the GP is talking about oncoming traffic, as in, passing in the oncoming traffic lane. Not sure how common this is in Europe or other places, but it's fairly commonplace in the US on more rural highways that only have one lane of traffic going each way. It is an already dangerous procedure, and for this kind of thing, you don't want your car trying to think for you...
I guess it all depends on how long it lets you speed, and how the override part of the mechanism really works.
Wish I had funny mod points... Best laugh I've had all morning.
No, it was my thought as well. But as a once long-time resident of Tucson, I can say that a functioning, efficient, high-speed passenger train service between these two cities is an excellent idea. These guys might be snake-oil salesmen, but even so, hopefully it wakes some other more serious people up.
I'm looking for the libraries, but I asked about the compiler because if the compiler was available, then the libraries would also presumably be there. The specific library I ran into problems with was libg2c. In any case, It's good to know they have no plans to continue with g77, but I do hope they bring back in some of the libraries that are unavailable through other packages... I was able to make it work in 8.10 by getting that library it from the hardy repository, but it screws up aptitude and makes it hard to update. Thanks for the info.
So, someone who has tried it out... Does it have support for g77? I have a bunch of legacy code that requires some of the old fortran 77 libraries and these are unavailable in 8.10. Gfortran is not an option for me... I love ubuntu, but if they keep it out I might have to switch distros... Honest question.
Since when is SolidWorks the industry standard, as opposed to (say) ProE?
Well, Solidworks may not be the only option out there, but most people I know use it. ProE seems to have fallen out of fashion lately. I'm certainly not defending or advertising for SolidWorks, I'm just reporting my experience. I am one person, so my experiences may not be a representative sample. Take it for what you will.
As for BRL-CAD, I will check it out, thanks for the tip. 3-D CAD modeling is the only application left keeping me with one toe in the windows world...
Just so you know, Blender is not a suitable alternative to SolidWorks for 3-D mechanical design. If there was an even halfway decent open-source project that had 3-D modeling capabilities that was halfway compatible with SolidWorks (industry standard), I'd switch in a heartbeat. This seems like a logical and good move on their part. They understand that if people get used to using their software, they might just buy a license down the road...
Also, if you know of an open-source alternative, please don't hold out. Let me know about it.
I agree in principle, and I also fail to see how it in any way violates privacy, if you are out and about in PUBLIC.
Red light cameras generally increase the safety of intersections, and I approve of their appropriate usage (That is, NOT messing with the timing to try to catch people, etc). But they do have some flaws. For example, I was stopped at an intersection late at night where I swear the light was BROKEN. That is, I waited well over two minutes, with no traffic anywhere, and the light stayed red. There was a camera on it. What was I supposed to do? Well, I ran it, and fortunately never heard anything. But I can see how sometimes the camera doesn't tell the whole story, where a good old fashioned patrol car might. The system isn't perfect, but I generally support it as long as judges are reasonable in listening to people protesting their tickets.
This is good news. Now the bad news is I have many scripts that run ffmpeg, and they might need to be updated... But really, a new stable release is a fantastic thing.
I personally don't care about being remembered more than I care about having food on my table. This may shock you, but my motive in life is not fame or money, but learning more about the world around us, and attempting to improve it.
If I give a net benefit to society in that role, I expect to be compensated, and not just altruistically being "remembered" as I starve to death. Even if what I bring to the table is simply a new idea that improves lives that is not a commercial product. I think that alone has "value" to society that is not valued by the free market, don't you?
Yes, I am a researcher.
I for one welcome the delay. I have a converter box and most of the time I find myself using the analog signal. Why? Because I only seem to get one channel on the digital signal, while with analog I can get most of them even if they're a bit grainy.
Oh yeah, I live in a downtown metropolitan area, so this "it's only the rural people" is total bunk as far as I'm concerned. But I'm just one lonely data point....