Will someone please explain to me why we can't keep the shuttles running for another few years while we figure out how to replace them? Now that Obama has canceled the Constellation manned booster, and he granted a stay of execution to the Orion capsule (but it's still basically on life support) doesn't this leave the United States with no means to get humans into orbit? For several years? How is this give the United States any kind of strategic advantage?
Granted, the Constellation project was controversial within Nasa, but it's a science and engineering project and as we all know, engineering involves risks, trials, and redesigns. That's the way we got where we are today. Simply canceling it because we don't like spending some $6 billion a year to keep it going is ludicrous, given our willingness to pour literally hundreds of billions of dollars into nebulous goals like "stimulating" the economy or propping up banks that deserve to fail.
Even General Motors got some $18 billion in relief, talking about an organization that deserves to fail. Without GM, we'll still have a domestic car industry--Ford, Nissan, Toyota, and Honda are all operating in the U.S. and doing just fine--but without Constellation or the Shuttle, we'll have NO MANNED SPACE PROGRAM AT ALL. This seems like a strategic mistake in the extreme.
To make matters worse, we are planning to rely on our old sometime friends in Russia to get American astronauts into orbit, and we're hoping that private companies will take up the slack and, almost overnight, come out with systems that are certified for human space transport. Given that none of them has done even one manned flight so far, this seems rather premature.
Let's fund the Shuttle program for a few more years and restore Constellation to full funding. So, a few million people won't get free healthcare after all. Honestly, the economic benefits of the space program will more than make up for that. Eventually, tech spinoffs and the overall bigger economy will lift their boats--if they feel like working.
The U.S. can't just cede human space flight to other countries who are eager to take our place up there. We're not quitters; vote this fall and again in 2012 and throw out those who are.
PV technology can meet electricity demand on any scale. The solar energy resource in a 100-mile-square area of Nevada could supply the United States with all its electricity (about 800 gigawatts) using modestly efficient (10%) commercial PV modules.
A more realistic scenario involves distributing these same PV systems throughout the 50 states. Currently available sites—such as vacant land, parking lots, and rooftops—could be used. The land requirement to produce 800 gigawatts would average out to be about 17 x 17 miles per state. Alternatively, PV systems built in the "brownfields"—the estimated 5 million acres of abandoned industrial sites in our nation's cities—could supply 90% of America's current electricity.
It's probably not practical to build an 800 gigawatt solar plant, but we do have the distributed land and certainly the minimal technology to significantly supplement gas/coal/nuclear power generation without going into orbit.
TheKidWho explains the situation well. A lot of people simply don't understand basic economics and will impose their particular ideology on a situation in defiance of the very real and powerful financial incentives that actually drive business decisions.
Probably 15-year-olds shouldn't be working 15+ hours a day 7 days a week in grim prison-like conditions for miniscule pay. On the other hand, 15-year-olds shouldn't be watching TV 6+ hours a night 7 days a week, "hanging out" on street corners to look cool and show off their latest fashions, and eating a diet largely of fats, carbs, and chemicals that will induce obesity, coronary disease and type 2 diabetes in the near future.
Which population is going to build a great country? Not ours anymore. Back when Americans worked under those kinds of conditions, and when they didn't scramble to find some work, any work, they might well miss a few meals, at that time Americans built the world's most powerful industrial society that has dominated the globe for a century and counting.
I think it's likely the Chinese will become the predominant power in the world because of their work ethic. While we sit in our comfy air conditioned offices and whine about every little thing--I tell you it gets tedious listening to co-workers complain that the coffee isn't free or they got "cheated" out of a sick day and so forth--there are people out there making great sacrifices to get ahead and build a stronger economy.
Meanwhile we keep enacting unfunded entitlements for ourselves, and ask the Chinese to underwrite it on the basis of their sweatshop profits. Something's very wrong with this picture and we are in big trouble. Whenever someone writes an article about China's sweatshops, I wonder what has happened to the work ethic in the U.S. Ethics and morality aside, we should admire them for their industry and diligence.
Whatever one may think of the health insurance changes brought about by this bill, it is essentially a new tax on all Americans to pay for those who cannot afford it on their own. I think it will, long term, contribute to unemployment and higher budget deficits across the country.
Although there are provisions to protect the middle and lower income classes from higher taxation, there are also huge tax increases on higher income groups, and the effects will be felt by all Americans.
A high earning physician told me his tax load will increase by $100,000 per year when this bill is fully implemented. That has a nice populist sound to it--tax the rich, give it to the poor. But the people who won't see that money will be master carpenters and their assistants, automobile factory workers, boat builders, waiters and bus boys, and all those businesses that he would have spent the money on. Also, the money won't be invested into the stock market. Instead, it will go to a new bulked up government bureaucracy which will then redistribute some fraction of it to this new policy purpose.
The states that are doing things right, relatively speaking, will be punished and the states that are screwed up will be rewarded. That is, the states like Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and California, where overregulation has driven insurance costs sky high, will accrue the greatest benefits from this redistribution effort, while states that have allowed relatively free markets for high deductible, basic plans (Arizona health insurance premiums start at about $60 a month) will have to pay more.
The companies that exceed 50 employees on the full time payroll will be forced to pay a fine per employee for lack of health insurance coverage. Will this cause millions of small to medium businesses to budget for health insurance, if they don't already have it? I suppose those who can afford it may, but the incentive will obviously be to keep the payroll to under 50, and perhaps contract out when they need the extra help. We'll probably see an uptick in contracting and temp agencies, and we'll probably see less of a commitment to salaried career positions within medium companies. The incentive will be to stay under 50 head count, plain and simple. I would expect to see unemployment stay at a permanently high rate for the next few decades, probably in the 8-10% range, up from the 4-5% range it has been for about the past 15 years up until 2008.
Will this bill actually reform health care? One of the principles underlying this legislation is that physicians should work in larger offices in order to afford the required electronic medical record systems and other changes that favor hospitals and larger practices. Internists and family practice docs will find it much harder going forward to open a private or small practice. Does this benefit the patient? I doubt it. Larger practices do have economies of scale, and of course they can afford the large staff necessary to deal with expanded Medicaid and other funding systems. But the freedom to practice medicine independently will be lost, and I think we will see less connection between physicians and individual patients. Add to this the plan to mandate "best treatments" nationally, and the system will become more faceless, more cookie-cutter, and less flexible to the needs of each unique individual. Probably we'll see a lot more midlevels like physicians assistants and nurse practitioners playing the front line diagnostic role, and physicians with their much longer and more expensive training will retreat to specialties and consultative roles.
I don't see this as the best move for our nation, but then I could be wrong. It'll be interesting to watch what happens, anyway.
Back in the late 80s, Applied Materials thought of Japan as the new technology epicenter, and their chairman ordered hiring managers to bring in as many Japanese speakers as possible. They even moved their HQ to Japan. I learned all this from a job fair presentation and subsequent articles about them in the tech press at the time. Clearly, Applied Materials now considers China the new epicenter.
However, AMAT is just one company and does not necessarily represent a trend; they are just a company that is particularly focused on Asia. Significant technology R&D still happens in the U.S., notably around MIT and the Research Triangle in the east, Silicon Valley in the west, and various pockets elsewhere around the country (Seattle, Atlanta--anywhere there are clusters of universities and tech companies).
Obviously, China is going to either buy or grow the talent it needs to expand technology domestically. There is a trend for top Chinese scientists trained in the U.S. to relocate back to China to help their own country develop, or at least to land a more prestigious position more quickly than in the West. It's only a matter of time before China, like Japan before it, becomes self-sufficient in technology and starts to really contribute its own inventions rather than simply copying or building on others.
The way for America (and other countries) to compete is simply to make our country as competitive an environment as possible. Make small business loans as available as possible, and otherwise stay out of the way and let businesses incubate. We Americans tend to take business for granted, but like the flowers and grass in the yard, you have to pay attention or the plants you need and want will be overrun by weeds, or die from lack of water or fertilization.
Like the other Asian players, the Chinese get this. Ever since Deng Xiaoping and the 4 Modernizations movement, business has been seen as the engine of growth and prosperity. We Americans would do well to learn from their example and get back to basics. We have a goose that lays golden eggs; let's feed it, not kill it. I would begin by upping civilian research, allowing more tax incentives for corporate R&D, and maybe push more math and science education down to the high school level.
So Facebook hits exceed Google Search hits. That's an interesting trend. But Facebook is a rather one dimensional tool, while Google represents practically everything people do on the Internet. They can't really be compared, in my opinion.
Millions of people (myself included) log onto Facebook several times a day to check their friends' status, and update their own status, and engage in banter with friends. It's a casual, superficial, but fun way to keep in touch with people that you'd otherwise have to compose an email to, which entails maintaining up to date contact information, keeping them out of your spam folder, etc. Facebook is a wonderful convenience but not a necessity.
Google is the internet. I can't imagine getting through the day without Google (well, I could but it wouldn't be pretty), whereas I could totally ditch Facebook if I had to. I suspect many if not most of FB's 300 million users feel similarly.
What's more, a lot of users seem to hate Facebook. Every time they change their privacy policy, for example, people become outraged and start passing around petitions telling FB to leave their personal info alone. In fact, every time they slightly rearrange the user interface, people get all up in arms. People's love for Facebook is skin deep. I imagine if a superior service came along that allowed us to quickly import our FB contacts, people would ditch FB in a minute, similarly to the way Myspace was abandoned a couple of years back.
It seems that Google can't win. Either they make a deal with the devil as SputnikPanic puts it, or they behave ethically and attract savage criticism from armchair quarterbacks everywhere.
Google has a corporate culture of idealism, no doubt fed by the youthfulness of its top executives and much of its staff. Beyond that, they have traditionally been a good corporate citizen, giving a lot of their work back to the community by open sourcing it.
They created the Android phone operating system to be an open alternative to the various proprietary systems. Anyone can take it and run with it. A whole menagerie of excellent smart phones has emerged with Google technology at their core.
Almost all of Google's apps--search, email, scholar, news, maps, voice, and on and on--are free to use, usually in exchange for mild ad text and aggregated use data.
Google gets it. They do things right. They reward innovation, they encourage creativity. They are the epitome of a great American company.
Therefore, to top off their greatness by refusing to deal with a censoring, dissident-hacking corrupt communist-only-in-name dictatorship is both admirable and gutsy and uniquely American. If only all American companies operated on principles rather than pure greed, think what a better society we would have, and a better world.
I feel duty-bound to support Google in whatever ways I can. Right now it's my Nexus One phone, my gmail, and when I have some spare cash I'll buy a few shares of stock. Go, Google! Show those arrogant turds that at least a few Americans still believe in freedom over profit.
great tip, spvo! It works. And as the AC below points out, the USAA android app does indeed have the Deposit@Mobile feature now. Boy am I glad I clicked on this story.
USAA lets me scan a check for instant deposit using a Windows browser, a Java applet and an attached scanner.
I'm a Linux kind of guy and, sadly, I have not found a way to make it work on my Ubuntu and Suse systems. But, it works great with my Windows laptop and it's simply the next best thing to direct deposit.
Obviously, a good secure app for smartphones (hopefully one is coming soon for Android but they've only announced for iPhone so far) will be a step beyond the scanner approach.
I kind of like the idea that someone hands me a check, and by the time they have closed their briefcase I have already made the deposit. No more canceling. It would be interesting to see if they can determine whether the check is good or not, and send instant feedback.
The next step is going to be depositing cash. I would love to be able to quickly scan my cash into my account, and then tear up the paper money (honors system). Hmm; gotta think that one through a bit more.
Fusiongyro, ESC research funding was cut off completely and entirely. No lab that accepted federal funding could do ESC, and they couldn't even use existing equipment for privately funded ESC if that equipment had been paid for in any way by federal funds. Effectively, the research was banned in every sense but the literal one.
Relevant to the article, which is a poorly written promotional piece of fluff, this clinic that is offering stem cell therapy should warn its patients that there is strong evidence of cancer resulting from stem cell injections. This is one of the main reasons stem cell therapy has not made it into mainstream medicine (it is being used in Brazil with some success).
Religious fundamentalism aside, there's a reason for caution in the approval of new treatments such as stem cell therapy. For example, tysabri is a promising new drug for treating multiple sclerosis, but after several human deaths it was discovered that it activates a normally dormant virus in the brain in a few people, killing them. It was taken off the market, then allowed back under stricter controls. Thalidomide was handed out all over the world in the 1950s, resulting in horrible birth defects. Fortunately, the FDA blocked its approval in the U.S., probably saving thousands of children from disfigurement.
I'm all for stem cell research, and I think the Bush Administration and the fundies were idiotic for blocking it, but we can't just approve every new treatment that comes along without some rigorous testing. On the other hand, if patients are adequately informed of the risks, and I'm not the one paying for the side effects they may encounter, more power to them.
The Apollo program cost about $145 billion in 2008 dollars (Wikipedia), and quite a lot more if you factor in the orbital programs (Mercury, Gemini) which led up to Apollo. That's not exactly peanuts. They only get about $18 billion a year right now.
If the President of the United States doesn't care about space exploration, as is apparently the case today, then NASA will be unable to fulfill its mission. Obama has had little interest in space from day one; his campaign plan even had a proposal to gut NASA's budget to pay for a nationalized day care system. Later this proposal was deleted, but Obama has really done nothing with the U.S. space program but cut its budget.
Shutting down the only manned space project on the horizon, Obama proposed to offload low orbital manned flights to the private sector. While the libertarian and free marketer in me loves the idea of a competitive market for space travel, I'm not convinced it's time yet for NASA to leave that arena.
Every manned launch is a huge, critical path project requiring hundreds of technicians and engineers to monitor every aspect of the situation. Is it really appropriate to dump all of these people and hope that several privately held companies (one hopes American ones) can step up to the plate and recreate all of that expertise and best practices almost from scratch? Even if they hired all of these soon-to-be-unemployed aerospace experts, they would still need to put in a few years to build up the kind of institutional memory and procedures, not to mention physical infrastructure, that are required for a complex project like this.
NASA was building the next generation Orion manned spacecraft and Obama announced that he may not fund it. Congress, ESPECIALLY one that gets a few more Republican members in the 2012 election cycle, can override him and restore funding, but realistically the President has the power and means to kill a program if he doesn't like it. He can appoint a schmuck to replace the executive director, for example, and he can argue that the money for NASA would be better spent on school lunch for poor kids, or building shelters for the homeless, or any number of similar but meaningless populist mouthings that make great TV sound bites.
We probably will have to wait for a change of government before we can get back to having a NASA with vision AND the backing to make it a reality. Sitting around, waiting for the "right technology" to be developed, and then saying we can finally think about realistically exploring Mars--that's not a bold vision, that's a cop-out.
I think the real question should be, how much should a paid subscription cost?
As a long time subscriber to online.wsj.com, the online version of the Wall Street Journal, I have watched my online subscription cost float up from around $75 promotional price to $155 on the latest bill. (I have a query in to customer support to find out why they were advertising a combined print + online deal for only $135 a month or two ago, yet they're sticking it to me.) Thus far, I have tolerated this annual fee in exchange for excellent content.
Once an online subscription exceeds about $25/year, you would expect it to have some substantial and unique value that compels you to pay. The WSJ has a tremendous volume of financial and business content, plus provocative commentary, active talk-backs, and broad news coverage. I can't get through it in a day, certainly not in 30 minutes over coffee at 7am, and tend to cherry-pick the interesting titles during little breaks throughout the day (and, now, on the bus/bathroom/in bed using a Nexus One android phone).
Unlike the WSJ, which is truly a national/international content provider, the NY Times has a regional quality to it that reflects its liberal, middle-to-upper class urban New York readership. Furthermore, all of the national and international news can be obtained from AP, Reuters, and BBC websites for free. Will someone in Boston, Toronto, Fresno, or Omaha feel as compelled to spend $25/month (i.e., $300/year) for such content?
My recommendation to the New York Times is to keep the price low initially, then start to add premium features (more video, interactive stuff, discounted 3rd party deals, etc.) for subscribers only and try to build up your paid online readership. If you start out by gouging people who are used to a free NY Times online, most of them will simply jump ship to one of the dozens of other, free news services available. Hubris will get you nowhere.
Obama has never liked the space program, at least not since running for president. His campaign website actually had a proposal to create a nationalized pre-school/daycare program and fund it by cutting NASA's budget. Someone must have informed him that the space program is important for the United States, because this proposal was removed before the election. Some educators also called into question the need for such a pre-school program.
NASA has always had its ups and downs, perhaps more downs than ups lately. It helps to have a sympathetic President in office. Kennedy wanted a moon landing, and his successors honored his memory by following through. Nixon was lukewarm to the space program, and he used NASA as a diplomacy tool--during his time they had Skylab (somewhat useful) and the Apollo-Soyuz space linkup (pure entertainment).
Reagan was a space nut and an enlarged NASA fit into his SDI/Star Wars vision. Bush I spoke of a Mars mission, but left before he could really push it through. Clinton was lukewarm to space but lucked out with a temporary stock boom that filled the tax coffers, so NASA could keep rolling while he partied. Bush II liked space and authorized new missions. That brings us down to Obama who is the first president in my memory to shut down a manned space project.
NASA is a victim of politics and of poor leadership in the 1970s and 80s, leading up to the avoidable Challenger tragedy. To spread the wealth (and pain of cuts), NASA in the 1970s embarked on a decentralization project to spread out its facilities all over the country, thus maximizing Congressional support for its various missions. The unfortunate side effect as pointed out by many observers over the years was to dissipate engineering teams. Perhaps today in the new century, with our modern communications abilities, virtual teams can work almost identically to localized teams, but this was not so in the 1970s. Thus, the rugged and long lasting space ships of the 1960s such as the Pioneer which survived decades beyond anyone's expectations gave way to buggy, incomplete efforts such as the Shuttle and some of the planetary probes.
NASA's never been a perfect space agency but it has contributed hugely to improving the human condition through science and technology. It keeps hundreds of thousands of aerospace engineers and scientists employed, who would otherwise have gone to law school or some other less productive field. It keeps the U.S. at the forefront in aerospace technology which it needs in order to maintain its military edge. It promises great riches should we ever get self-sustaining stations online in near-Earth orbit or beyond--moon mining, asteroid mining, solar power, zero grav manufacturing, and all the scientific and engineering developments which will be a part of these efforts.
We simply can't afford to not go into space. The Constellation program has been harshly criticized by some dissident engineers--fine, that's what engineering is all about. You design something, find the flaws, fix them, and move on. It's an iterative process.
Simply walking away from billions of dollars of effort is not only a waste of time and money, it displays a distressing lack of vision by the current leadership. Obama obviously feels we can't afford a national space program, so he's sloughing it off on the private sector. Privatize it, he says. Indeed? Then the U.S. will no longer have a manned space exploration program at all, but only a very cautious and profit-oriented space tourism program. Others will pick up the slack and take over space exploration--the Chinese, the Japanese perhaps, the Russians, and the Europeans. Some day, we will sit in our yards and watch them through our Chinese-made telescopes. Look, Dad, there's the China Station! There's the European Station! There goes another Russian moon shot! And we can look back on this pivotal time in our history when we turned our back on the future and technological leadership.
Hm, I'm not sure why anyone would "hate" Google. I like using all their free stuff, and my Nexus One is the cat's pajamas.
I agree with you that it takes some big cajones to stand up to the PRC government, which is getting richer and scarier. But we have to remember a few historical facts.
China is currently the low cost acceptable quality manufacturer in the world. This will not hold forever. Remember when it was Taiwan and Korea, and before that Japan?
China will eventually face a situation where its cheap labor is a liability rather than an asset. They can't perpetuate this divide between the haves and have-nots forever. The cities will get richer, more expensive to live in, and knowledge worker wages will rise. Infrastructure needs will scream for more taxation, and cost of living will increase. Everyone will want a car, then two cars, then a house with a garage, etc. There's a price for moving to a consumption economy.
China's paranoid regime will spend more on expensive new military gear and, gradually, it will increasingly resemble a Western economy. They can "near-source" their manufacturing to the hinterland, e.g. Sichuan, Guangdong, Guangxi, etc. for a while longer but not forever.
Eventually, some other manufacturing region will become prominent--maybe parts of India, South America, or Africa, where wages are still very low and people are glad for any kind of work. Or, robotics and nanotech will finally kick in and remove the low wage advantage from the equation, and the U.S. may reemerge as a major manufacturer. A factory on every corner, with made-to-order consumer goods while you wait, for example.
As for the Google situation, it's not over yet. I suspect there will be some kind of win-win understanding between the two parties where Google will be relieved of censorship duties, but the PRC government will find some other way to effectively censor search results without either side admitting any concession.
Note that Google recovers $350 + $179 from T-Mo, which is identical to the retail cost of an unlocked phone, or $529.
T-Mobile recovers the $179 paid by the customer up front, plus $21 = $200, . Probably T-Mobile gives the $179 back to Google, and keeps $21 for itself as its little punitive termination fee.
Probably, Google/T-Mo came up with this policy to discourage people from buying the subsidized phone, then walking away from the contract in order to export or otherwise re-sell the phone for a profit. Frankly I don't see what all the hullabaloo is here. You either pay $529 up front, or you pay more than $529 on a subsidized plan, but a sale is still a sale.
The fact is, "free" phones end up costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars over time, even cheap little Nokia or Samsung basic handsets that cost $25 or $50 to actually build. It's the way U.S. carriers make their money back on the tower infrastructure. People don't realize that they are being taken for a ride and so when Google is more up front about its pricing structure, people squawk loudly.
[from the link referenced above:] You agree to pay Google an equipment subsidy recovery fee (the "Equipment Recovery Fee") equal to the difference between the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device if you cancel your wireless plan prior to 120 days of continuous wireless service. For example, if the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan was $529 USD and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device was $179 USD with a service plan, the Equipment Recovery Fee you pay will be $350 USD in the event you cancel within the first 120 days of carrier service. The Equipment Recovery Fee is equal to the line item in your confirmation email setting forth the discount on the full priced Nexus handheld device related to your carrier service plan activiation. You authorize Google to charge the Equipment Recovery Fee directly to your credit card, or other payment method used to purchase the Nexus handheld device, upon cancellation of your wireless plan. You will not be charged the Equipment Recovery Fee if you return your Nexus handheld device to Google within the 14 day Return Policy period as set forth below.
You agree that the Equipment Recovery Fee is not a penalty but is for liquidated damages Google will incur as a result of such cancellation. These damages may include, but are not limited to, loss of compensation and administrative costs associated with such cancellation or changing of wireless service provider(s), market changes, and changes in ownership. Please note that the Equipment Recovery Fee is imposed by Google and not your chosen carrier and is in addition to any early termination fees that may be charged by your chosen carrier in connection with termination of your wireless plan prior to fulfillment of your chosen carrier’s service agreement term.
I would love to mount one of these babies under the hood and use it as a killer car horn for those drivers who JUST. WON'T. MOVE. One blast from this thing and they'll never sit there texting at the green light again. Also handy for those clueless people who drive UNDER THE SPEED LIMIT in the leftmost lane. Can't take a hint? Can't see my lights flashing? Don't realize you're clogging up the expressway? BOOOOMMMMM. Imagine the satisfying feeling as they instinctively floor the accelerator while blood dribbles down from their ears! Ahhh.
I think an "infotainment" system for the car is fine for passengers, but if it tempts drivers to take their eyes off the road, it should be accompanied by a collision avoidance system that counteracts the increased distractability factor.
I think Volvo points the way with their low velocity laser/radar collision avoidance system (18 MPH). However I would like to see universal adoption of a high speed system that would at least make collisions more survivable, if not prevent them entirely.
With about 38,000 people dying on the road every year in the U.S. alone, it's unfathomable that our leaders (and the voters) pay so little attention to collision survivability. For a while back in the '70s, they were forcing car makers to increase the force absorption ability of bumpers every few years. It got up to 5 mph, but then in the '80s, with high fuel prices and a deep recession, the standards were relaxed down to 2.5 mph to encourage more profits.
The technology today is light years beyond what we had in the '70s. We could put RF chips in the major roads (buried, or on the railings, or whatever) to help cars stay in their lanes, we could mandate Volvo-style (and airplane-style) collision avoidance systems that would automatically swerve cars out of collision paths, and we could probably increase the shock absorption abilities of passenger vehicles. It costs money, to be sure, but we should ask ourselves, would we rather pay an extra $500 a year in taxes or an extra $100 a month in car payments and live, or be wealthier and dead (or paraplegic or quadraplegic or whiplashed)?
We went to war over 3000 deaths on 9/11, yet we consider the 3000 deaths per month on the road as a normal hazard of our transportation system. Let's take off the blinders and fix this problem already.
my response to the no-coffee situation: I bought a stainless steel 34-ounce thermos and fill it with a pot of decaf from freshly ground beans brewed in my French press every morning before work. This gives me two huge, rich, delicious cups of java that are better than anything I've ever found in a Starbucks, much less an office kitchenette. The cost is about $0.25 a day (not counting amortization of the grinder, press, and thermos). This saves me about $4/day to purchase the watery brown gunk they call coffee downstairs in the cafeteria.
I am mixed about the free coffee thing. It's really nice to have coffee and tea, and in my opinion it is worth the expense to a company because it makes it a nicer and more comfortable place to work. On the other hand, I've worked in hellholes that had free coffee, too. Start-ups tend to be on a shoestring budget and everyone understands that; at some places I've worked, people bring in their own stuff and share it, and occasionally the founders spring for lunch on their dime. I think that's a more refreshing attitude than this entitlement attitude that the company should give us this and that.
I interviewed last year at a well known internet company that had a wonderful kitchen/dining area, with free continental breakfast--bagels, fruit, yogurt, coffee, tea, juice--and various other perks. However the interview process itself was silly and indeed this office had a rep for being generally chaotic and unpleasant.
I guess there's little correlation these days between comfort food and quality of work environment. Just suck it up and brew your own!
We're all just one failed experiment or innocent mistake away from being on the Darwin Awards list.
Sure, that guy who jumped over the barrier to relieve himself should have been more careful. But does that mean we need to celebrate his death?
That priest with the balloons--OK, he should have bailed earlier, or figured out his GPS in advance of his trip. Clearly he made some mistakes. But he was trying to do something for a charitable cause.
Lots of smart people make dumb mistakes; we're all only human. An old saying "There but for grace of God go I" seems to apply in many of these situations.
That DUI woman who drowned in the creek--she's a pathetic sort of person, obviously lacking in common sense. But not knowing the full story (the author speculated and extrapolated an awful lot in this case) I hesitate to condemn her as deserving of the Darwin awards.
All in all it was a mediocre set of awards this year. I've seen better.
Well, everyone's welcome to their opinion, but it's pretty well proven after decades of software engineering that code should be commented. The price of maintaining comment-free code is well known.
There is a school of thought among programmers who consider themselves hotshots that if you are not a hotshot you have no business touching their code. The problem with this attitude is that it has little to do with the real world, where people change jobs and programmers inherit someone else's code. If you want to write perfect, comment free code in your perfect little world, go right ahead, but don't expect to make a living at it most of the time.
It's surprising to me that someone has submitted this as a "news" item. News flash! Everything you know is wrong. Sorry I don't buy that. If you don't comment your code, I won't pay you for it. I'll inform the management that you neglected an important step and don't deserve a good reference. I won't be able to give you the benefit of the doubt when your code doesn't make perfect sense. I'll trash talk your code in front of your colleagues. Look at all the mistakes in this guy's work; I'll sure never recommend him if his resume crosses my desk. We may need to just rewrite this stuff because it's not maintainable as written.
What's really annoying is when they put comments that don't elucidate the code or their intent; they're just snide little messages from one know-it-all to another. They're too embarrassed to actually explain the code because that implies a level of insecurity they would rather not admit to. So instead they say things like:/* yeah, I don't like this either */ or # hack, to be fixed later
Wooooo, really helpful comments there. I've seen this sort of thing countless times in my career and most others I know have as well.
Handhelds such as the iPhone and Android family don't allow for touch typing. Netbooks allow touch typing and as such, they will always have a place as a laptop replacement.
The main thing that would dethrone netbooks would be an external bluetooth keyboard for a smartphone, and it's interesting to note that even the popular iPhone doesn't officially support one, though it can be done with a hack.
Also, netbooks generally run some flavor of Windows which allows people to have a laptop/desktop experience on the road. Handhelds don't quite replicate that experience, though as we move more of our data and applications online the local operating system will become increasingly irrelevant.
The bottom line is that for at least the near future, netbooks still have their place, mainly as a replacement for more fully featured laptops for most purposes, and eventually they will probably be themselves partially displaced by handhelds for most people.
They are essentially a mini-pc in your pocket, and I hardly need to extol the benefits of a PC to this crowd;)
Precisely, and it goes beyond that. I travel a lot these days, and I anticipate that my upcoming (probably Android) smartphone will replace the following devices I either own or need to get:
- a phone (my Nokia folding phone works great, admittedly, but not as fun to use) - 5 MP camera with flash (saves me $100 on the low end point-and-shoot that I need) - GPS with Google step-by-step voice directions (save me $100 on a much needed GPS) - PDA (replaces my Palm T3, which works but needs a new battery, and it's one less device in my pockets, and finally I can centralize my contact database) - Laptop/Netbook replacement (I travel a lot and would love to leave my laptop at home, and saves me $300 on a netbook) - Digital compass - I haven't even begun to think about the potential uses of this! - tether it to my laptop while traveling (I've heard it works with rooted Android devices) - MP3/movie player (doesn't really replace my 80GB iPod until inexpensive 64GB cards are available) - my livelihood (I'm learning Android programming)
Probably, there are people who would disagree with this list and have their own priorities. That's fine; it's a versatile platform, like the iPhone and other smart handhelds, and that's the beauty of it.
Regarding the cost, the big question is whether we will be able to circumvent the cell phone service completely and make pure VOIP calls in wi-fi hotspots using services like Google Voice and Skype. If so, then a minimal minutes and data plan would be sufficient for those of us who spend most of our time bathed in wifi. Why pay $60-80/month for a service you use only 20% of the time? Anyway, with free VOIP it does make more sense to buy an unlocked phone with no subscription, and just pay as you go or get the cheapest possible (usually unadvertised) plan from your GSM provider.
the op has it mostly right. There's little value in fancy show-off code that may earn a programmer some machismo points from like-minded colleagues but results in maintenance headaches down the line.
Elegance is often misused to mean terse, clever code, but that is really far from what elegance ought to mean.
I define good, elegant code to be code that is clear, well commented, self-explanatory, and easy to modify.
I'm dealing right now with some "object-oriented" Perl programs that are nearly comment-free. Sure, eventually it'll start to look familiar and I'll know where to go to fix stuff, but it pisses me off at the programmer.
I don't want people cursing and mocking my name after I've left a position, so I always strive to make my code as obvious as possible, at the cost of some high falutin' fanciness that just bogs people down and keeps a company from getting its business done efficiently.
To me, the highest compliment is when a newbie says "I just read your {Java|Perl|C++|SQL} program and I was surprised at how easy it was to understand. I just wanted to thank you for that."
If this microbe escaped from the lab, we'd all be in trouble. Can you imagine the headlines we'd start to see all over the world?
- Man electrocuted on toilet
- Tip for rainy weather: wear well-insulated boots when walking in mud
- Tomato fields plagued by ball lightning after manure fertilization
- In the 3rd world, muddy unpaved roads power electric scooters
The idea of dipping my iPhone into the nearest bucket of shit sickens me, and yet this may become the favored means of charging one's phone in a hurry.
I suppose a welcome next step will be a second microbe that neutralizes the stench.
Slashdot Mirror
Will someone please explain to me why we can't keep the shuttles running for another few years while we figure out how to replace them? Now that Obama has canceled the Constellation manned booster, and he granted a stay of execution to the Orion capsule (but it's still basically on life support) doesn't this leave the United States with no means to get humans into orbit? For several years? How is this give the United States any kind of strategic advantage?
Granted, the Constellation project was controversial within Nasa, but it's a science and engineering project and as we all know, engineering involves risks, trials, and redesigns. That's the way we got where we are today. Simply canceling it because we don't like spending some $6 billion a year to keep it going is ludicrous, given our willingness to pour literally hundreds of billions of dollars into nebulous goals like "stimulating" the economy or propping up banks that deserve to fail.
Even General Motors got some $18 billion in relief, talking about an organization that deserves to fail. Without GM, we'll still have a domestic car industry--Ford, Nissan, Toyota, and Honda are all operating in the U.S. and doing just fine--but without Constellation or the Shuttle, we'll have NO MANNED SPACE PROGRAM AT ALL. This seems like a strategic mistake in the extreme.
To make matters worse, we are planning to rely on our old sometime friends in Russia to get American astronauts into orbit, and we're hoping that private companies will take up the slack and, almost overnight, come out with systems that are certified for human space transport. Given that none of them has done even one manned flight so far, this seems rather premature.
Let's fund the Shuttle program for a few more years and restore Constellation to full funding. So, a few million people won't get free healthcare after all. Honestly, the economic benefits of the space program will more than make up for that. Eventually, tech spinoffs and the overall bigger economy will lift their boats--if they feel like working.
The U.S. can't just cede human space flight to other countries who are eager to take our place up there. We're not quitters; vote this fall and again in 2012 and throw out those who are.
Your numbers seem a little off. From a Dept. of Energy website:
It's probably not practical to build an 800 gigawatt solar plant, but we do have the distributed land and certainly the minimal technology to significantly supplement gas/coal/nuclear power generation without going into orbit.
TheKidWho explains the situation well. A lot of people simply don't understand basic economics and will impose their particular ideology on a situation in defiance of the very real and powerful financial incentives that actually drive business decisions.
Probably 15-year-olds shouldn't be working 15+ hours a day 7 days a week in grim prison-like conditions for miniscule pay. On the other hand, 15-year-olds shouldn't be watching TV 6+ hours a night 7 days a week, "hanging out" on street corners to look cool and show off their latest fashions, and eating a diet largely of fats, carbs, and chemicals that will induce obesity, coronary disease and type 2 diabetes in the near future.
Which population is going to build a great country? Not ours anymore. Back when Americans worked under those kinds of conditions, and when they didn't scramble to find some work, any work, they might well miss a few meals, at that time Americans built the world's most powerful industrial society that has dominated the globe for a century and counting.
I think it's likely the Chinese will become the predominant power in the world because of their work ethic. While we sit in our comfy air conditioned offices and whine about every little thing--I tell you it gets tedious listening to co-workers complain that the coffee isn't free or they got "cheated" out of a sick day and so forth--there are people out there making great sacrifices to get ahead and build a stronger economy.
Meanwhile we keep enacting unfunded entitlements for ourselves, and ask the Chinese to underwrite it on the basis of their sweatshop profits. Something's very wrong with this picture and we are in big trouble. Whenever someone writes an article about China's sweatshops, I wonder what has happened to the work ethic in the U.S. Ethics and morality aside, we should admire them for their industry and diligence.
Whatever one may think of the health insurance changes brought about by this bill, it is essentially a new tax on all Americans to pay for those who cannot afford it on their own. I think it will, long term, contribute to unemployment and higher budget deficits across the country.
Although there are provisions to protect the middle and lower income classes from higher taxation, there are also huge tax increases on higher income groups, and the effects will be felt by all Americans.
A high earning physician told me his tax load will increase by $100,000 per year when this bill is fully implemented. That has a nice populist sound to it--tax the rich, give it to the poor. But the people who won't see that money will be master carpenters and their assistants, automobile factory workers, boat builders, waiters and bus boys, and all those businesses that he would have spent the money on. Also, the money won't be invested into the stock market. Instead, it will go to a new bulked up government bureaucracy which will then redistribute some fraction of it to this new policy purpose.
The states that are doing things right, relatively speaking, will be punished and the states that are screwed up will be rewarded. That is, the states like Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and California, where overregulation has driven insurance costs sky high, will accrue the greatest benefits from this redistribution effort, while states that have allowed relatively free markets for high deductible, basic plans (Arizona health insurance premiums start at about $60 a month) will have to pay more.
The companies that exceed 50 employees on the full time payroll will be forced to pay a fine per employee for lack of health insurance coverage. Will this cause millions of small to medium businesses to budget for health insurance, if they don't already have it? I suppose those who can afford it may, but the incentive will obviously be to keep the payroll to under 50, and perhaps contract out when they need the extra help. We'll probably see an uptick in contracting and temp agencies, and we'll probably see less of a commitment to salaried career positions within medium companies. The incentive will be to stay under 50 head count, plain and simple. I would expect to see unemployment stay at a permanently high rate for the next few decades, probably in the 8-10% range, up from the 4-5% range it has been for about the past 15 years up until 2008.
Will this bill actually reform health care? One of the principles underlying this legislation is that physicians should work in larger offices in order to afford the required electronic medical record systems and other changes that favor hospitals and larger practices. Internists and family practice docs will find it much harder going forward to open a private or small practice. Does this benefit the patient? I doubt it. Larger practices do have economies of scale, and of course they can afford the large staff necessary to deal with expanded Medicaid and other funding systems. But the freedom to practice medicine independently will be lost, and I think we will see less connection between physicians and individual patients. Add to this the plan to mandate "best treatments" nationally, and the system will become more faceless, more cookie-cutter, and less flexible to the needs of each unique individual. Probably we'll see a lot more midlevels like physicians assistants and nurse practitioners playing the front line diagnostic role, and physicians with their much longer and more expensive training will retreat to specialties and consultative roles.
I don't see this as the best move for our nation, but then I could be wrong. It'll be interesting to watch what happens, anyway.
Back in the late 80s, Applied Materials thought of Japan as the new technology epicenter, and their chairman ordered hiring managers to bring in as many Japanese speakers as possible. They even moved their HQ to Japan. I learned all this from a job fair presentation and subsequent articles about them in the tech press at the time. Clearly, Applied Materials now considers China the new epicenter.
However, AMAT is just one company and does not necessarily represent a trend; they are just a company that is particularly focused on Asia. Significant technology R&D still happens in the U.S., notably around MIT and the Research Triangle in the east, Silicon Valley in the west, and various pockets elsewhere around the country (Seattle, Atlanta--anywhere there are clusters of universities and tech companies).
Obviously, China is going to either buy or grow the talent it needs to expand technology domestically. There is a trend for top Chinese scientists trained in the U.S. to relocate back to China to help their own country develop, or at least to land a more prestigious position more quickly than in the West. It's only a matter of time before China, like Japan before it, becomes self-sufficient in technology and starts to really contribute its own inventions rather than simply copying or building on others.
The way for America (and other countries) to compete is simply to make our country as competitive an environment as possible. Make small business loans as available as possible, and otherwise stay out of the way and let businesses incubate. We Americans tend to take business for granted, but like the flowers and grass in the yard, you have to pay attention or the plants you need and want will be overrun by weeds, or die from lack of water or fertilization.
Like the other Asian players, the Chinese get this. Ever since Deng Xiaoping and the 4 Modernizations movement, business has been seen as the engine of growth and prosperity. We Americans would do well to learn from their example and get back to basics. We have a goose that lays golden eggs; let's feed it, not kill it. I would begin by upping civilian research, allowing more tax incentives for corporate R&D, and maybe push more math and science education down to the high school level.
So Facebook hits exceed Google Search hits. That's an interesting trend. But Facebook is a rather one dimensional tool, while Google represents practically everything people do on the Internet. They can't really be compared, in my opinion.
Millions of people (myself included) log onto Facebook several times a day to check their friends' status, and update their own status, and engage in banter with friends. It's a casual, superficial, but fun way to keep in touch with people that you'd otherwise have to compose an email to, which entails maintaining up to date contact information, keeping them out of your spam folder, etc. Facebook is a wonderful convenience but not a necessity.
Google is the internet. I can't imagine getting through the day without Google (well, I could but it wouldn't be pretty), whereas I could totally ditch Facebook if I had to. I suspect many if not most of FB's 300 million users feel similarly.
What's more, a lot of users seem to hate Facebook. Every time they change their privacy policy, for example, people become outraged and start passing around petitions telling FB to leave their personal info alone. In fact, every time they slightly rearrange the user interface, people get all up in arms. People's love for Facebook is skin deep. I imagine if a superior service came along that allowed us to quickly import our FB contacts, people would ditch FB in a minute, similarly to the way Myspace was abandoned a couple of years back.
Oops, gotta go check my facebook now.
It seems that Google can't win. Either they make a deal with the devil as SputnikPanic puts it, or they behave ethically and attract savage criticism from armchair quarterbacks everywhere.
Google has a corporate culture of idealism, no doubt fed by the youthfulness of its top executives and much of its staff. Beyond that, they have traditionally been a good corporate citizen, giving a lot of their work back to the community by open sourcing it.
They created the Android phone operating system to be an open alternative to the various proprietary systems. Anyone can take it and run with it. A whole menagerie of excellent smart phones has emerged with Google technology at their core.
Almost all of Google's apps--search, email, scholar, news, maps, voice, and on and on--are free to use, usually in exchange for mild ad text and aggregated use data.
Google gets it. They do things right. They reward innovation, they encourage creativity. They are the epitome of a great American company.
Therefore, to top off their greatness by refusing to deal with a censoring, dissident-hacking corrupt communist-only-in-name dictatorship is both admirable and gutsy and uniquely American. If only all American companies operated on principles rather than pure greed, think what a better society we would have, and a better world.
I feel duty-bound to support Google in whatever ways I can. Right now it's my Nexus One phone, my gmail, and when I have some spare cash I'll buy a few shares of stock. Go, Google! Show those arrogant turds that at least a few Americans still believe in freedom over profit.
great tip, spvo! It works. And as the AC below points out, the USAA android app does indeed have the Deposit@Mobile feature now. Boy am I glad I clicked on this story.
USAA lets me scan a check for instant deposit using a Windows browser, a Java applet and an attached scanner.
I'm a Linux kind of guy and, sadly, I have not found a way to make it work on my Ubuntu and Suse systems. But, it works great with my Windows laptop and it's simply the next best thing to direct deposit.
Obviously, a good secure app for smartphones (hopefully one is coming soon for Android but they've only announced for iPhone so far) will be a step beyond the scanner approach.
I kind of like the idea that someone hands me a check, and by the time they have closed their briefcase I have already made the deposit. No more canceling. It would be interesting to see if they can determine whether the check is good or not, and send instant feedback.
The next step is going to be depositing cash. I would love to be able to quickly scan my cash into my account, and then tear up the paper money (honors system). Hmm; gotta think that one through a bit more.
Fusiongyro,
ESC research funding was cut off completely and entirely. No lab that accepted federal funding could do ESC, and they couldn't even use existing equipment for privately funded ESC if that equipment had been paid for in any way by federal funds. Effectively, the research was banned in every sense but the literal one.
Relevant to the article, which is a poorly written promotional piece of fluff, this clinic that is offering stem cell therapy should warn its patients that there is strong evidence of cancer resulting from stem cell injections. This is one of the main reasons stem cell therapy has not made it into mainstream medicine (it is being used in Brazil with some success).
Religious fundamentalism aside, there's a reason for caution in the approval of new treatments such as stem cell therapy. For example, tysabri is a promising new drug for treating multiple sclerosis, but after several human deaths it was discovered that it activates a normally dormant virus in the brain in a few people, killing them. It was taken off the market, then allowed back under stricter controls. Thalidomide was handed out all over the world in the 1950s, resulting in horrible birth defects. Fortunately, the FDA blocked its approval in the U.S., probably saving thousands of children from disfigurement.
I'm all for stem cell research, and I think the Bush Administration and the fundies were idiotic for blocking it, but we can't just approve every new treatment that comes along without some rigorous testing. On the other hand, if patients are adequately informed of the risks, and I'm not the one paying for the side effects they may encounter, more power to them.
The Apollo program cost about $145 billion in 2008 dollars (Wikipedia), and quite a lot more if you factor in the orbital programs (Mercury, Gemini) which led up to Apollo. That's not exactly peanuts. They only get about $18 billion a year right now.
If the President of the United States doesn't care about space exploration, as is apparently the case today, then NASA will be unable to fulfill its mission. Obama has had little interest in space from day one; his campaign plan even had a proposal to gut NASA's budget to pay for a nationalized day care system. Later this proposal was deleted, but Obama has really done nothing with the U.S. space program but cut its budget.
Shutting down the only manned space project on the horizon, Obama proposed to offload low orbital manned flights to the private sector. While the libertarian and free marketer in me loves the idea of a competitive market for space travel, I'm not convinced it's time yet for NASA to leave that arena.
Every manned launch is a huge, critical path project requiring hundreds of technicians and engineers to monitor every aspect of the situation. Is it really appropriate to dump all of these people and hope that several privately held companies (one hopes American ones) can step up to the plate and recreate all of that expertise and best practices almost from scratch? Even if they hired all of these soon-to-be-unemployed aerospace experts, they would still need to put in a few years to build up the kind of institutional memory and procedures, not to mention physical infrastructure, that are required for a complex project like this.
NASA was building the next generation Orion manned spacecraft and Obama announced that he may not fund it. Congress, ESPECIALLY one that gets a few more Republican members in the 2012 election cycle, can override him and restore funding, but realistically the President has the power and means to kill a program if he doesn't like it. He can appoint a schmuck to replace the executive director, for example, and he can argue that the money for NASA would be better spent on school lunch for poor kids, or building shelters for the homeless, or any number of similar but meaningless populist mouthings that make great TV sound bites.
We probably will have to wait for a change of government before we can get back to having a NASA with vision AND the backing to make it a reality. Sitting around, waiting for the "right technology" to be developed, and then saying we can finally think about realistically exploring Mars--that's not a bold vision, that's a cop-out.
I think the real question should be, how much should a paid subscription cost?
As a long time subscriber to online.wsj.com, the online version of the Wall Street Journal, I have watched my online subscription cost float up from around $75 promotional price to $155 on the latest bill. (I have a query in to customer support to find out why they were advertising a combined print + online deal for only $135 a month or two ago, yet they're sticking it to me.) Thus far, I have tolerated this annual fee in exchange for excellent content.
Once an online subscription exceeds about $25/year, you would expect it to have some substantial and unique value that compels you to pay. The WSJ has a tremendous volume of financial and business content, plus provocative commentary, active talk-backs, and broad news coverage. I can't get through it in a day, certainly not in 30 minutes over coffee at 7am, and tend to cherry-pick the interesting titles during little breaks throughout the day (and, now, on the bus/bathroom/in bed using a Nexus One android phone).
Unlike the WSJ, which is truly a national/international content provider, the NY Times has a regional quality to it that reflects its liberal, middle-to-upper class urban New York readership. Furthermore, all of the national and international news can be obtained from AP, Reuters, and BBC websites for free. Will someone in Boston, Toronto, Fresno, or Omaha feel as compelled to spend $25/month (i.e., $300/year) for such content?
My recommendation to the New York Times is to keep the price low initially, then start to add premium features (more video, interactive stuff, discounted 3rd party deals, etc.) for subscribers only and try to build up your paid online readership. If you start out by gouging people who are used to a free NY Times online, most of them will simply jump ship to one of the dozens of other, free news services available. Hubris will get you nowhere.
Obama has never liked the space program, at least not since running for president. His campaign website actually had a proposal to create a nationalized pre-school/daycare program and fund it by cutting NASA's budget. Someone must have informed him that the space program is important for the United States, because this proposal was removed before the election. Some educators also called into question the need for such a pre-school program.
NASA has always had its ups and downs, perhaps more downs than ups lately. It helps to have a sympathetic President in office. Kennedy wanted a moon landing, and his successors honored his memory by following through. Nixon was lukewarm to the space program, and he used NASA as a diplomacy tool--during his time they had Skylab (somewhat useful) and the Apollo-Soyuz space linkup (pure entertainment).
Reagan was a space nut and an enlarged NASA fit into his SDI/Star Wars vision. Bush I spoke of a Mars mission, but left before he could really push it through. Clinton was lukewarm to space but lucked out with a temporary stock boom that filled the tax coffers, so NASA could keep rolling while he partied. Bush II liked space and authorized new missions. That brings us down to Obama who is the first president in my memory to shut down a manned space project.
NASA is a victim of politics and of poor leadership in the 1970s and 80s, leading up to the avoidable Challenger tragedy. To spread the wealth (and pain of cuts), NASA in the 1970s embarked on a decentralization project to spread out its facilities all over the country, thus maximizing Congressional support for its various missions. The unfortunate side effect as pointed out by many observers over the years was to dissipate engineering teams. Perhaps today in the new century, with our modern communications abilities, virtual teams can work almost identically to localized teams, but this was not so in the 1970s. Thus, the rugged and long lasting space ships of the 1960s such as the Pioneer which survived decades beyond anyone's expectations gave way to buggy, incomplete efforts such as the Shuttle and some of the planetary probes.
NASA's never been a perfect space agency but it has contributed hugely to improving the human condition through science and technology. It keeps hundreds of thousands of aerospace engineers and scientists employed, who would otherwise have gone to law school or some other less productive field. It keeps the U.S. at the forefront in aerospace technology which it needs in order to maintain its military edge. It promises great riches should we ever get self-sustaining stations online in near-Earth orbit or beyond--moon mining, asteroid mining, solar power, zero grav manufacturing, and all the scientific and engineering developments which will be a part of these efforts.
We simply can't afford to not go into space. The Constellation program has been harshly criticized by some dissident engineers--fine, that's what engineering is all about. You design something, find the flaws, fix them, and move on. It's an iterative process.
Simply walking away from billions of dollars of effort is not only a waste of time and money, it displays a distressing lack of vision by the current leadership. Obama obviously feels we can't afford a national space program, so he's sloughing it off on the private sector. Privatize it, he says. Indeed? Then the U.S. will no longer have a manned space exploration program at all, but only a very cautious and profit-oriented space tourism program. Others will pick up the slack and take over space exploration--the Chinese, the Japanese perhaps, the Russians, and the Europeans. Some day, we will sit in our yards and watch them through our Chinese-made telescopes. Look, Dad, there's the China Station! There's the European Station! There goes another Russian moon shot! And we can look back on this pivotal time in our history when we turned our back on the future and technological leadership.
Hm, I'm not sure why anyone would "hate" Google. I like using all their free stuff, and my Nexus One is the cat's pajamas. I agree with you that it takes some big cajones to stand up to the PRC government, which is getting richer and scarier. But we have to remember a few historical facts. China is currently the low cost acceptable quality manufacturer in the world. This will not hold forever. Remember when it was Taiwan and Korea, and before that Japan? China will eventually face a situation where its cheap labor is a liability rather than an asset. They can't perpetuate this divide between the haves and have-nots forever. The cities will get richer, more expensive to live in, and knowledge worker wages will rise. Infrastructure needs will scream for more taxation, and cost of living will increase. Everyone will want a car, then two cars, then a house with a garage, etc. There's a price for moving to a consumption economy. China's paranoid regime will spend more on expensive new military gear and, gradually, it will increasingly resemble a Western economy. They can "near-source" their manufacturing to the hinterland, e.g. Sichuan, Guangdong, Guangxi, etc. for a while longer but not forever. Eventually, some other manufacturing region will become prominent--maybe parts of India, South America, or Africa, where wages are still very low and people are glad for any kind of work. Or, robotics and nanotech will finally kick in and remove the low wage advantage from the equation, and the U.S. may reemerge as a major manufacturer. A factory on every corner, with made-to-order consumer goods while you wait, for example. As for the Google situation, it's not over yet. I suspect there will be some kind of win-win understanding between the two parties where Google will be relieved of censorship duties, but the PRC government will find some other way to effectively censor search results without either side admitting any concession.
The terms of sale for a subsidized Nexus One are pretty clearly spelled out.
Note that Google recovers $350 + $179 from T-Mo, which is identical to the retail cost of an unlocked phone, or $529.
T-Mobile recovers the $179 paid by the customer up front, plus $21 = $200, . Probably T-Mobile gives the $179 back to Google, and keeps $21 for itself as its little punitive termination fee.
Probably, Google/T-Mo came up with this policy to discourage people from buying the subsidized phone, then walking away from the contract in order to export or otherwise re-sell the phone for a profit. Frankly I don't see what all the hullabaloo is here. You either pay $529 up front, or you pay more than $529 on a subsidized plan, but a sale is still a sale.
The fact is, "free" phones end up costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars over time, even cheap little Nokia or Samsung basic handsets that cost $25 or $50 to actually build. It's the way U.S. carriers make their money back on the tower infrastructure. People don't realize that they are being taken for a ride and so when Google is more up front about its pricing structure, people squawk loudly.
[from the link referenced above:] You agree to pay Google an equipment subsidy recovery fee (the "Equipment Recovery Fee") equal to the difference between the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device if you cancel your wireless plan prior to 120 days of continuous wireless service. For example, if the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan was $529 USD and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device was $179 USD with a service plan, the Equipment Recovery Fee you pay will be $350 USD in the event you cancel within the first 120 days of carrier service. The Equipment Recovery Fee is equal to the line item in your confirmation email setting forth the discount on the full priced Nexus handheld device related to your carrier service plan activiation. You authorize Google to charge the Equipment Recovery Fee directly to your credit card, or other payment method used to purchase the Nexus handheld device, upon cancellation of your wireless plan. You will not be charged the Equipment Recovery Fee if you return your Nexus handheld device to Google within the 14 day Return Policy period as set forth below. You agree that the Equipment Recovery Fee is not a penalty but is for liquidated damages Google will incur as a result of such cancellation. These damages may include, but are not limited to, loss of compensation and administrative costs associated with such cancellation or changing of wireless service provider(s), market changes, and changes in ownership. Please note that the Equipment Recovery Fee is imposed by Google and not your chosen carrier and is in addition to any early termination fees that may be charged by your chosen carrier in connection with termination of your wireless plan prior to fulfillment of your chosen carrier’s service agreement term.
I would love to mount one of these babies under the hood and use it as a killer car horn for those drivers who JUST. WON'T. MOVE. One blast from this thing and they'll never sit there texting at the green light again. Also handy for those clueless people who drive UNDER THE SPEED LIMIT in the leftmost lane. Can't take a hint? Can't see my lights flashing? Don't realize you're clogging up the expressway? BOOOOMMMMM. Imagine the satisfying feeling as they instinctively floor the accelerator while blood dribbles down from their ears! Ahhh.
I think an "infotainment" system for the car is fine for passengers, but if it tempts drivers to take their eyes off the road, it should be accompanied by a collision avoidance system that counteracts the increased distractability factor.
I think Volvo points the way with their low velocity laser/radar collision avoidance system (18 MPH). However I would like to see universal adoption of a high speed system that would at least make collisions more survivable, if not prevent them entirely.
With about 38,000 people dying on the road every year in the U.S. alone, it's unfathomable that our leaders (and the voters) pay so little attention to collision survivability. For a while back in the '70s, they were forcing car makers to increase the force absorption ability of bumpers every few years. It got up to 5 mph, but then in the '80s, with high fuel prices and a deep recession, the standards were relaxed down to 2.5 mph to encourage more profits.
The technology today is light years beyond what we had in the '70s. We could put RF chips in the major roads (buried, or on the railings, or whatever) to help cars stay in their lanes, we could mandate Volvo-style (and airplane-style) collision avoidance systems that would automatically swerve cars out of collision paths, and we could probably increase the shock absorption abilities of passenger vehicles. It costs money, to be sure, but we should ask ourselves, would we rather pay an extra $500 a year in taxes or an extra $100 a month in car payments and live, or be wealthier and dead (or paraplegic or quadraplegic or whiplashed)?
We went to war over 3000 deaths on 9/11, yet we consider the 3000 deaths per month on the road as a normal hazard of our transportation system. Let's take off the blinders and fix this problem already.
my response to the no-coffee situation: I bought a stainless steel 34-ounce thermos and fill it with a pot of decaf from freshly ground beans brewed in my French press every morning before work. This gives me two huge, rich, delicious cups of java that are better than anything I've ever found in a Starbucks, much less an office kitchenette. The cost is about $0.25 a day (not counting amortization of the grinder, press, and thermos). This saves me about $4/day to purchase the watery brown gunk they call coffee downstairs in the cafeteria.
I am mixed about the free coffee thing. It's really nice to have coffee and tea, and in my opinion it is worth the expense to a company because it makes it a nicer and more comfortable place to work. On the other hand, I've worked in hellholes that had free coffee, too. Start-ups tend to be on a shoestring budget and everyone understands that; at some places I've worked, people bring in their own stuff and share it, and occasionally the founders spring for lunch on their dime. I think that's a more refreshing attitude than this entitlement attitude that the company should give us this and that.
I interviewed last year at a well known internet company that had a wonderful kitchen/dining area, with free continental breakfast--bagels, fruit, yogurt, coffee, tea, juice--and various other perks. However the interview process itself was silly and indeed this office had a rep for being generally chaotic and unpleasant.
I guess there's little correlation these days between comfort food and quality of work environment. Just suck it up and brew your own!
We're all just one failed experiment or innocent mistake away from being on the Darwin Awards list.
Sure, that guy who jumped over the barrier to relieve himself should have been more careful. But does that mean we need to celebrate his death?
That priest with the balloons--OK, he should have bailed earlier, or figured out his GPS in advance of his trip. Clearly he made some mistakes. But he was trying to do something for a charitable cause.
Lots of smart people make dumb mistakes; we're all only human. An old saying "There but for grace of God go I" seems to apply in many of these situations.
That DUI woman who drowned in the creek--she's a pathetic sort of person, obviously lacking in common sense. But not knowing the full story (the author speculated and extrapolated an awful lot in this case) I hesitate to condemn her as deserving of the Darwin awards.
All in all it was a mediocre set of awards this year. I've seen better.
Well, everyone's welcome to their opinion, but it's pretty well proven after decades of software engineering that code should be commented. The price of maintaining comment-free code is well known.
There is a school of thought among programmers who consider themselves hotshots that if you are not a hotshot you have no business touching their code. The problem with this attitude is that it has little to do with the real world, where people change jobs and programmers inherit someone else's code. If you want to write perfect, comment free code in your perfect little world, go right ahead, but don't expect to make a living at it most of the time.
It's surprising to me that someone has submitted this as a "news" item. News flash! Everything you know is wrong. Sorry I don't buy that. If you don't comment your code, I won't pay you for it. I'll inform the management that you neglected an important step and don't deserve a good reference. I won't be able to give you the benefit of the doubt when your code doesn't make perfect sense. I'll trash talk your code in front of your colleagues. Look at all the mistakes in this guy's work; I'll sure never recommend him if his resume crosses my desk. We may need to just rewrite this stuff because it's not maintainable as written.
What's really annoying is when they put comments that don't elucidate the code or their intent; they're just snide little messages from one know-it-all to another. They're too embarrassed to actually explain the code because that implies a level of insecurity they would rather not admit to. So instead they say things like: /* yeah, I don't like this either */
or
# hack, to be fixed later
Wooooo, really helpful comments there. I've seen this sort of thing countless times in my career and most others I know have as well.
Handhelds such as the iPhone and Android family don't allow for touch typing. Netbooks allow touch typing and as such, they will always have a place as a laptop replacement.
The main thing that would dethrone netbooks would be an external bluetooth keyboard for a smartphone, and it's interesting to note that even the popular iPhone doesn't officially support one, though it can be done with a hack.
Also, netbooks generally run some flavor of Windows which allows people to have a laptop/desktop experience on the road. Handhelds don't quite replicate that experience, though as we move more of our data and applications online the local operating system will become increasingly irrelevant.
The bottom line is that for at least the near future, netbooks still have their place, mainly as a replacement for more fully featured laptops for most purposes, and eventually they will probably be themselves partially displaced by handhelds for most people.
They are essentially a mini-pc in your pocket, and I hardly need to extol the benefits of a PC to this crowd ;)
Precisely, and it goes beyond that. I travel a lot these days, and I anticipate that my upcoming (probably Android) smartphone will replace the following devices I either own or need to get:
- a phone (my Nokia folding phone works great, admittedly, but not as fun to use)
- 5 MP camera with flash (saves me $100 on the low end point-and-shoot that I need)
- GPS with Google step-by-step voice directions (save me $100 on a much needed GPS)
- PDA (replaces my Palm T3, which works but needs a new battery, and it's one less device in my pockets, and finally I can centralize my contact database)
- Laptop/Netbook replacement (I travel a lot and would love to leave my laptop at home, and saves me $300 on a netbook)
- Digital compass - I haven't even begun to think about the potential uses of this!
- tether it to my laptop while traveling (I've heard it works with rooted Android devices)
- MP3/movie player (doesn't really replace my 80GB iPod until inexpensive 64GB cards are available)
- my livelihood (I'm learning Android programming)
Probably, there are people who would disagree with this list and have their own priorities. That's fine; it's a versatile platform, like the iPhone and other smart handhelds, and that's the beauty of it.
Regarding the cost, the big question is whether we will be able to circumvent the cell phone service completely and make pure VOIP calls in wi-fi hotspots using services like Google Voice and Skype. If so, then a minimal minutes and data plan would be sufficient for those of us who spend most of our time bathed in wifi. Why pay $60-80/month for a service you use only 20% of the time? Anyway, with free VOIP it does make more sense to buy an unlocked phone with no subscription, and just pay as you go or get the cheapest possible (usually unadvertised) plan from your GSM provider.
the op has it mostly right. There's little value in fancy show-off code that may earn a programmer some machismo points from like-minded colleagues but results in maintenance headaches down the line.
Elegance is often misused to mean terse, clever code, but that is really far from what elegance ought to mean.
I define good, elegant code to be code that is clear, well commented, self-explanatory, and easy to modify.
I'm dealing right now with some "object-oriented" Perl programs that are nearly comment-free. Sure, eventually it'll start to look familiar and I'll know where to go to fix stuff, but it pisses me off at the programmer.
I don't want people cursing and mocking my name after I've left a position, so I always strive to make my code as obvious as possible, at the cost of some high falutin' fanciness that just bogs people down and keeps a company from getting its business done efficiently.
To me, the highest compliment is when a newbie says "I just read your {Java|Perl|C++|SQL} program and I was surprised at how easy it was to understand. I just wanted to thank you for that."
If this microbe escaped from the lab, we'd all be in trouble. Can you imagine the headlines we'd start to see all over the world?
- Man electrocuted on toilet
- Tip for rainy weather: wear well-insulated boots when walking in mud
- Tomato fields plagued by ball lightning after manure fertilization
- In the 3rd world, muddy unpaved roads power electric scooters
The idea of dipping my iPhone into the nearest bucket of shit sickens me, and yet this may become the favored means of charging one's phone in a hurry.
I suppose a welcome next step will be a second microbe that neutralizes the stench.