Shall I compare it to my corporation, instead? I still need to have - at the minimum - a net zero cash flow (or some expectation on paper that my cash flow will be positive to the extent I take out a loan). I purchase things for accounting that prevent me from purchasing things for drafting or engineering. I limit development in certain areas (say, Marketing - which brings in future work), to pursue other in house projects which will provide higher efficiencies. Whether the budget is $4x10^5, $4x10^8 or $4x10^12, there is much that is the same. We have fixed expenses which have to be met, debt service to pay, operating expenses, and discretionary spending.
Should we reduce the energy, cancer, or disease research in favor of space research? How about docking the national park system? Maybe the military should take a pay cut (that would be a popular move for a Democratic president)? Or perhaps you would prefer we go after entitlements like medicare or social security - having grandma eat cat food, or denying her medical care is a worthy humaitarian gesture.
My point was that many here at/. really, really support the space program, despite it being (mostly) a fancy perk of a well-heeled economy. Other parts of the population - who also happen to pay taxes (i.e. are "part of the family") would prefer more cancer research, better funding for our deteriorating national parks, better patrolling of our borders, or some other issue they care dearly about.
Again, on my high horse, I'd tax all annual income - in all forms - in excess of $1,000,000 at 80% at the federal level for any year in which a deficit is predicted by the OMB. You would be amazed how fast this budget would come into line. But just as the people at this bracket have enough clout to put pressure on the congress, they have enough clout to ensure that this kind of tax treatment would never come to pass. (FWIW, I prefer a simple uniform "gross receipts" tax rate for every TIN, personal and corporate, exempting only 2087 x Fed minimum wage for each wage earner, but I'm not holding my breath)
I'm honestly not sure. I thought the code development had been mostly abandoned back in the 80s by NASA, with MSC taking the code base and expanding it first, and others expanding it as well as producing GUIs (FEMAP was one of the first with a GUI and solver implementation for x86 processors under NT). Back when I worked with it, the cost to purchase a license - though expensive - was trivial in comparison to the effort required to create an input deck by hand. A single analysis job could be paid back in the cost of a $5000 license in manpower saved over full had coding and data reduction/review (we still hand coded input cases, esp. for random vibration, and spot checked the output data directly in those days). Again, I was a user, not a developer, and it was a tool - I didn't get into the politics.
Absolutely. I usually try to save some of my spending money for a couple of golf lessons. I don't see Butch Harmon every week.
NASA isn't being closed, it's being scaled back in light of the budget. Now, if you were to believe Ronald Reagan, all you have to do it let a few contracts go dark to save the money - they're contractors. Keep the real expertise in house and work on the projects you do have. That won't happen, of course - the expertise has mostly migrated to contractors, with managers keeping the seats warm at NASA (not everywhere, but in too many places).
I don't necessarily agree that scaling NASA back is a good idea, but there are too many programs for the current revenue. No matter how badly I need to replace my siding (and trust me - it needs it), it's not going to happen again this year. It's time for Congress to grow some balls and make some decisions.
If I were the president, I'd have taken the opportunity at the state of the union address to call out every single senator and congressperson to come up with 2.6 Billion dollars of federal spending in their state/district that had to be cut. If not, I would make the decision about which project gets cut. If you do the math, that's $1.4T. Sort of a Sophie's Choice for legislators. Even if you only got half of that, it would be an enormous victory. You could even make it cut-throat - for every $500M in your district you cut, you can choose $50M in any other district in the country to cut. Talk about some back room deals and serious game theory. But I digress...
If I made more money, I'd probably have a set of new golf clubs on my wish list for this spring. As it is, I don't have an unlimited budget, and there are other priorities which are higher, such as food, healthcare, and DirecTV. I mention that last one intentionally, by the way.
You see I could do without DirecTV and save myself enough to get a new set of golf clubs every year. Thing is my wife an daughter really like the programming. They don't begrudge me my greens fees or my high power rocket purchases. Each of us gets something from the family budget, though perhaps not all we want. We simply don't have the unlimited funds for that.
It's interesting what happens when you must have a balanced budget - certain choices have to be made.
The parent has given you the answer you don't want, but it is nonetheless the correct one. There are several intellicad based products which are fairly mature (BricsCAD, for example) which are also interoperable with commercial software to an extent. Still, they're even more limited than the commercial products - both in capability and in productivity.
It's been 10 years since I was in aerospace (NASA and Orbital Sciences, FWIW), but the big push at the time was Pro/Engineer. They were, back in the late 90s, where AutoCAD is today. The learning curve was difficult and the software expensive - but it was damned impressive, and it got the job done on several complex geometry products.
It sounds like you're not going to the moon, but rather are exploring funding options and sources for a startup who's ultimate goal is intended to be a moon landing. If you were going to the moon, I would suggest you start looking at FEM and CFD modeling software for the structures (my area of expertise), and the myriad custom software bits for each of the critical components. I believe NASTRAN is open source, though I'm not aware of a GUI front end (which you will dearly want). FLAGRO (Also a NASA project) should be open source for fracture mechanics analysis, but it was really in its infancy when I left NASA.
This will sound funny, but you might want to go check with the amateur rocket guys to see what they're using. RockSIM is the gold standard for 6DOF simulations for rockets traveling up to the edge of space, if you're on a budget, but it's not open source. There is an OSS project very similar to RockSIM - I think it's called RASaero.
There has been a lot of money invested in creating tools for much of what you want to do - you'll be better served in the long run to leverage the closed source options, focusing on keeping _your_ IP free for anyone to use - if that's your intent. You can always give away your CADD - and most packages have output/converters to fully defined - of not OSS - formats.
I wondered about that. At 100k each, 2M is only 20 vehicles. I sincerely hope they make it, though this certainly sounds like a bonehead move unless your sole purpose is to develop technology/demonstrations, and not actually go into production for anything.
Sure, I could google it, but it's more of a talking point than a question. France has a large number of reactors, yet I've never heard of them having problems with their radioactive waste products (then again, I don't read the French press, either).
Sure, we could build reactors which reuse more of their own waste, but presuming we will have some waste - what are other countries doing about it?
At the distances involved with practically all televised shots, there is almost no difference in view from right to left eye - i.e. we see the actual game as a 2D representation, even when live. 3D becomes more apparent inside about 20 feet (no cite, just experience), which is why in every 3D movie you can say "oooh - they put that right in my face for a cool 3D effect".
Wrestling? Okay - I can see some application there, as all the action is close up, but for almost all TV, I think it's a waste.
Really, at 100+MPH? If we assume your drivetrain is efficient at low speed, your mileage will decrease in proportion to the work (forcexdistance, where distance is 300 miles, and force = internal friction + wind resistance) Between 60mph and 100mph, your car will experience in increase in wind resistance to 270% of the value at 60mph. Most ultra-distance drivers end up averaging about 30-40mph to get the super results - and there's a reason for that.
I have no doubt you can get 400+ miles on a tank. I got over 500 on a tank in my wife's Dodge Gr. Caravan (19ish gallon tank) on a trip from VA to NC. But, again, even if you could use just 33% more fuel with an increase in aerodynamic work of over 100%, your vehicle is unusual in that it's designed for high efficiency. I haven't heard any Taurus, Camry, or Accord members chiming in here. Cars with 6 manual gears, or diesels with enormous fuel tanks (44 gallons; I thought my F150's tank was expensive to fill).
There was a disturbance in the force when Carly the Horrible 86'd the calculator line at HP, and collective sigh when they came back. I keep a sheet of 1/8" aluminum in the front of my HP48Gx soft case to protect the LCD when it's in there. I can't imagine engineering without it. I fully expect to have it buried with me when I die.
Nobody gets close working on work-related projects. It's the non-work things you have in common with people that makes them something other than their position. Unfortunately, you can't force this from the top, and your HR department can't be tasked with making everybody like each other*. You will need to get the ball rolling for extracurricular clubs. Note: this will cost company time, both when you set it up, and every time an event occurs. Golfers and bowlers will leave 10 minutes early to hit the links/lanes, and then waste another 20 minutes the next morning discussing the particulars of the event. It's worth it - worth every dollar.
Sports: Golf, bowling, flag football, (insert other sports as appropriate) Arts: Dinner/show clubs (you provide busses, if possible), singing groups (a holiday chorus that sings at local events or ret. homes) Environmental/Community Service groups Anything where you have a group of people that cuts across the company (i.e. - no correlation to work stuff) is good.
Help out with meeting space, minor cost items (weekly gift for lowest foursome, maybe a small trophy at the end, a room for group meetings or practices), but mostly leave them alone. If you meddle, it will backfire.
Finally, understand that there will be some people who completely separate work from play - they're there for a paycheck, and have no desire to interact. Offer them inclusion, but mostly let them be.
*The "company picnic" is about the worst function ever to try and engender camaraderie. You throw people together who interact in smaller groups, with interest completely apart from the activities you will provide.
The problem is that web developers work for the marketing arm, and nothing says success like shiny. All the demos and development, I'm certain, are run on large monitors with a local connection to the server. hey really ought to require all web developers to run on a 100kb connection with 150ms ping times, with a P-III-350 machine. Only then will you get a set of web pages which will be tolerable on smaller devices.
Take a look at Rainforest Cafe's website. If you don't have flash, they don't want you - period. No way to get restaurant locations or information (heaven forbid you should want to check that on your mobile) at all without flash. Look at any major website - NYT, eBay,/. - you're loading hundreds of kilobytes of css definitions before you even get to page contents.
I have the same rule today with my companies website I had 7 years ago when I started: Every page should load in 10 seconds or less on a 56k dialup connection. It won't be great on a mobile device, but its very viewable - and usable. People still complement me on my site, despite it being out of date, and I suspect it's because (1) it's pretty (2) everything is easy to find and (3) it loads almost instantly on just about any connection.
Actually, going 300+miles on a standard tank at 100+ mph is rather difficult, speeding tickets notwithstanding. Very few passenger vehicles have the combination of fuel efficiency and tank size which affords such a feat. Remember that at 100mph, you'll likely be burning fuel at a rate roughly double that at normal highway speeds (air resistance being dominant, and a with a squared relationship between speed and drag). If, say, you had a very fuel efficient car with 40mpg at 65, and 20mpg at 100mph, you'd need more than a 16 gallon tank (presuming you need 0.5 to 1.0 gallons in the system to avoid actually running out of gas - passenger cards don't use bladders). Most cars with that kind of mileage have tanks in the 10-14gallon range. Sure, bgger cars have 18-20 gallon tanks, but they also struggle to get 30-32mpg at 65mph, and would be lucky to see 15mpg at 100mph.
There are exceptions, but they're a very small percentage of the market.
If it's available in dead tree form (which amazon still lists) but not in kindle format, that's how you'll know. You can still buy it in dead tree form. This is a temporary spat between the two. I suspect the truly avid readers are going to be Kindle folks (or other eInk). The iPad folks will be casual readers, and will likely have far less volume.
This is extremely common in business. Fights between behemoths happen all the time - didn't Costco just have a fight with Coke that resulted in all Coke products being pulled. Coke is no lightweight, but look who won.
To paraphrase an old sex joke, sales are like air - it doesn't seem to be a big deal unless you're not getting any. Without Amazon, Macmillan will lose a pretty significant revenue stream. Realize, too, that the publishers probably aren't losing much - and likely gain a great deal - with esales. There is no inventory, no guessing on runs of books, lower preparation costs (even if only slightly), no shipping, and *this is key* no secondary sellers market. They just want more money - a valid business desire - for their intellectual property. Amazon has determined the "sweet spot" price to generate sales, and as the biggest player in the market is enforcing it. It works - my wife bought a Kindle after comparing costs of the Amazon and Sony stores. The books at Amazon (for what she would buy - mostly modern/new/mainstream fiction) were generally 20-40% cheaper. Market forces will work, and if Apple sees crappy sales on their iBooks compared to Amazon, you can bet they're going to be beating on publishers to drop prices.
I have several blu-ray discs, PowerDVD, a computer with the guts to play the format, and I've never played one on my PC. Every time I try to play a BR disc, PDVD always spends several minutes trying to download new "updates" (generally >48MB), and then usually fails with some error. Now, this is on a machine that has only a remote control, so doing anything mouse-centric or requiring KB input requires marching into a different room and plugging in a keyboard. If I download an mkv of the same movie from us...et (first rule and all that), the worst I have to do is run it through MKVtoolnix to get the english track as the default, since W7MC still doesn't quite understand the container can have multiple audio tracks. Half the time, I download the movie first, and if it's a "keeper," I buy it when it becomes available. I have the slysoft software to rip myself, but it's more work and the files are quite a bit larger. I own over 300 movies, and probably have 20 or so I haven't bought - most of those I haven't watched yet (just too busy). Getting a disc with the movie "in the clear" so I can load it onlo the media PC, and a pre-compressed version for the car/ipod would be great, but I'm not holding my breath.
As for the "digital copy" - I haven't even tried it. From the description on the front, it looks like you can just copy the file to your device. From the back you realize that it's practically useless unless you don't mind installing something from Macrovision (never to be trusted) and only to very specific devices. No thanks - that's way to much F***ing with my well-honed, efficient system.
Apple restricts things to make them easier. Period. Most people - and even those of us who like to tinker but don't have the time - are willing to get a device that works "well enough" in trade for a perfectly customized experience. Most people don't give a shit about computers or what goes on behind the monitor - they use it like a knife. Most people pay very little attention to alloys, but I'm sure there are metalurgists out there who really care about the alloy in their cutlery, the rest of us just want it to chop carrots when we take it out of the drawer.
Mr. Anderson, what good is 4G connectivity if there's no way to connect it?
Seriously, the limit isn't the mobile devices - it's easy to build a $500 device with better b/w. It's much harder to upgrade tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure to support it. Especially when most* of the country has no data service whatsoever.
It was stated incorrectly. If the majority of homeschoolers have parents with degrees, and the majority of public school kids have parents without degrees, there is an unequal footing for comparison.
The correct comparison would be to look at publically schooled children who are (predominatly) white, have annual household incomes in the top 25% (or whatever the hs avg is), single breadwinner housholds, professional & degreed parents, and parents who participate actively in no less than 2 extra-curricular activities per student (or, again, whatever the hs avg is). Those kids almost always succeed in life because they have the resources and parental support.
Now, there are exceptions to every class, but to compare the exceptional circumstances of homeschooling with the population at large is an inaccurate one. My daughter is in public school (hers happens to be very good), and I am just amazed at how uninvolved most of the parents are. Homeschoolers care about their kids and take an active role in their learning - that's 80% of the battle right there, even if they sent their kids to a public school.
$130 is the standard price for just about any 3G add on to a netbook/laptop (at least that's what Dell charges, and I think that may be only with a plan purchase). $4/GB for a reliable SSD seems to be about retail, about $3/GB at discount, Dell charges $5.10/GB for an SSD in their laptops. This is closer to $6.75/GB. Not really a huge premium over another integrator, given that this is a "hot" product.
You should be. indeed, be modded down as troll. I'm about the last person you'd find defending Apple, but the pricing really isn't far off from what should be expected. Feel free to argue about how annoying it is that you can't add the memory yourself, or change he battery, or that they didn't bother to include 3G/GPS out of the box. You could say they did, and for less than the rumored $999. They just offered a cheap, stripped down version like Dell does. You know, for the metrosexuals who are out of a job right now.
Flash omission does seem like a pretty big miss for a couch-surfer. The reason you won't see clones too quickly is that there isn't an OS for them. Until/unless Google updates android for the bigger devices and gets serious about an "app store," any other device will flounder without a major UI design team to make the device useful. MS has effectively written off the consumer market in the tablet arena (no decent finger-based UI in any of their products, including winmobile).
Until everyone unwrites their sites for flash (a good thing, imho), surfing "for real" on a flashless device is going to be frustrating.
You're dead on. It's not going to be a great ebook reader because of the screen, but even in the stock config it would be nice for lounging about the house surfing the net (which I do about 10:1 over TV watching). The lack of flash is going to really get under the skin of all those FB users who want to play games, though, along with having missing parts of a lot of websites. That's the real fail here. Otherwise, it's a cool device in it's niche.
Not with an LCD screen it's not an eReader. There's a world of difference between an eInk display and a backlit LCD. The LCD can do so much more, so much better, but eInk still takes the cake for readability and power consumption. Which is why the Kindle goes 2 weeks on a charge vs 10 hours.
I did notice that they compared the $500 (min) iPad to the $280 Kindle, instead of the $489 Kindle DX. That's natural, as the DX has the exact same size screen (9.7") as the iPad, so the comparison wouldn't be quite as stark.
No, Jobs won't allow his new baby to stutter, and multi-tasking is just asking for a less brilliant user experience. 1GHz on an ARM is going to be necessarily limited in horsepower, and dividing that between several apps is going to lead to poor input response. Besides, he doesn't want to hear you complaining that your 10 hour iPad only lasts for 2 hours because you left your folding-at-home app running in the background.:-)
I'm kind of amazed it doesn't have a gps. Google maps is going to suck.
Slashdot Mirror
No, not the Dirty Jobs guy, the one who got MikeRoweSoft.com taken away from him.
Shall I compare it to my corporation, instead? I still need to have - at the minimum - a net zero cash flow (or some expectation on paper that my cash flow will be positive to the extent I take out a loan). I purchase things for accounting that prevent me from purchasing things for drafting or engineering. I limit development in certain areas (say, Marketing - which brings in future work), to pursue other in house projects which will provide higher efficiencies. Whether the budget is $4x10^5, $4x10^8 or $4x10^12, there is much that is the same. We have fixed expenses which have to be met, debt service to pay, operating expenses, and discretionary spending.
Should we reduce the energy, cancer, or disease research in favor of space research? How about docking the national park system? Maybe the military should take a pay cut (that would be a popular move for a Democratic president)? Or perhaps you would prefer we go after entitlements like medicare or social security - having grandma eat cat food, or denying her medical care is a worthy humaitarian gesture.
My point was that many here at /. really, really support the space program, despite it being (mostly) a fancy perk of a well-heeled economy. Other parts of the population - who also happen to pay taxes (i.e. are "part of the family") would prefer more cancer research, better funding for our deteriorating national parks, better patrolling of our borders, or some other issue they care dearly about.
Again, on my high horse, I'd tax all annual income - in all forms - in excess of $1,000,000 at 80% at the federal level for any year in which a deficit is predicted by the OMB. You would be amazed how fast this budget would come into line. But just as the people at this bracket have enough clout to put pressure on the congress, they have enough clout to ensure that this kind of tax treatment would never come to pass. (FWIW, I prefer a simple uniform "gross receipts" tax rate for every TIN, personal and corporate, exempting only 2087 x Fed minimum wage for each wage earner, but I'm not holding my breath)
I'm honestly not sure. I thought the code development had been mostly abandoned back in the 80s by NASA, with MSC taking the code base and expanding it first, and others expanding it as well as producing GUIs (FEMAP was one of the first with a GUI and solver implementation for x86 processors under NT). Back when I worked with it, the cost to purchase a license - though expensive - was trivial in comparison to the effort required to create an input deck by hand. A single analysis job could be paid back in the cost of a $5000 license in manpower saved over full had coding and data reduction/review (we still hand coded input cases, esp. for random vibration, and spot checked the output data directly in those days). Again, I was a user, not a developer, and it was a tool - I didn't get into the politics.
Absolutely. I usually try to save some of my spending money for a couple of golf lessons. I don't see Butch Harmon every week.
NASA isn't being closed, it's being scaled back in light of the budget. Now, if you were to believe Ronald Reagan, all you have to do it let a few contracts go dark to save the money - they're contractors. Keep the real expertise in house and work on the projects you do have. That won't happen, of course - the expertise has mostly migrated to contractors, with managers keeping the seats warm at NASA (not everywhere, but in too many places).
I don't necessarily agree that scaling NASA back is a good idea, but there are too many programs for the current revenue. No matter how badly I need to replace my siding (and trust me - it needs it), it's not going to happen again this year. It's time for Congress to grow some balls and make some decisions.
If I were the president, I'd have taken the opportunity at the state of the union address to call out every single senator and congressperson to come up with 2.6 Billion dollars of federal spending in their state/district that had to be cut. If not, I would make the decision about which project gets cut. If you do the math, that's $1.4T. Sort of a Sophie's Choice for legislators. Even if you only got half of that, it would be an enormous victory. You could even make it cut-throat - for every $500M in your district you cut, you can choose $50M in any other district in the country to cut. Talk about some back room deals and serious game theory. But I digress...
If I made more money, I'd probably have a set of new golf clubs on my wish list for this spring. As it is, I don't have an unlimited budget, and there are other priorities which are higher, such as food, healthcare, and DirecTV. I mention that last one intentionally, by the way.
You see I could do without DirecTV and save myself enough to get a new set of golf clubs every year. Thing is my wife an daughter really like the programming. They don't begrudge me my greens fees or my high power rocket purchases. Each of us gets something from the family budget, though perhaps not all we want. We simply don't have the unlimited funds for that.
It's interesting what happens when you must have a balanced budget - certain choices have to be made.
The parent has given you the answer you don't want, but it is nonetheless the correct one. There are several intellicad based products which are fairly mature (BricsCAD, for example) which are also interoperable with commercial software to an extent. Still, they're even more limited than the commercial products - both in capability and in productivity.
It's been 10 years since I was in aerospace (NASA and Orbital Sciences, FWIW), but the big push at the time was Pro/Engineer. They were, back in the late 90s, where AutoCAD is today. The learning curve was difficult and the software expensive - but it was damned impressive, and it got the job done on several complex geometry products.
It sounds like you're not going to the moon, but rather are exploring funding options and sources for a startup who's ultimate goal is intended to be a moon landing. If you were going to the moon, I would suggest you start looking at FEM and CFD modeling software for the structures (my area of expertise), and the myriad custom software bits for each of the critical components. I believe NASTRAN is open source, though I'm not aware of a GUI front end (which you will dearly want). FLAGRO (Also a NASA project) should be open source for fracture mechanics analysis, but it was really in its infancy when I left NASA.
This will sound funny, but you might want to go check with the amateur rocket guys to see what they're using. RockSIM is the gold standard for 6DOF simulations for rockets traveling up to the edge of space, if you're on a budget, but it's not open source. There is an OSS project very similar to RockSIM - I think it's called RASaero.
There has been a lot of money invested in creating tools for much of what you want to do - you'll be better served in the long run to leverage the closed source options, focusing on keeping _your_ IP free for anyone to use - if that's your intent. You can always give away your CADD - and most packages have output/converters to fully defined - of not OSS - formats.
I wondered about that. At 100k each, 2M is only 20 vehicles. I sincerely hope they make it, though this certainly sounds like a bonehead move unless your sole purpose is to develop technology/demonstrations, and not actually go into production for anything.
Sure, I could google it, but it's more of a talking point than a question. France has a large number of reactors, yet I've never heard of them having problems with their radioactive waste products (then again, I don't read the French press, either).
Sure, we could build reactors which reuse more of their own waste, but presuming we will have some waste - what are other countries doing about it?
At the distances involved with practically all televised shots, there is almost no difference in view from right to left eye - i.e. we see the actual game as a 2D representation, even when live. 3D becomes more apparent inside about 20 feet (no cite, just experience), which is why in every 3D movie you can say "oooh - they put that right in my face for a cool 3D effect".
Wrestling? Okay - I can see some application there, as all the action is close up, but for almost all TV, I think it's a waste.
Really, at 100+MPH? If we assume your drivetrain is efficient at low speed, your mileage will decrease in proportion to the work (forcexdistance, where distance is 300 miles, and force = internal friction + wind resistance) Between 60mph and 100mph, your car will experience in increase in wind resistance to 270% of the value at 60mph. Most ultra-distance drivers end up averaging about 30-40mph to get the super results - and there's a reason for that.
I have no doubt you can get 400+ miles on a tank. I got over 500 on a tank in my wife's Dodge Gr. Caravan (19ish gallon tank) on a trip from VA to NC. But, again, even if you could use just 33% more fuel with an increase in aerodynamic work of over 100%, your vehicle is unusual in that it's designed for high efficiency. I haven't heard any Taurus, Camry, or Accord members chiming in here. Cars with 6 manual gears, or diesels with enormous fuel tanks (44 gallons; I thought my F150's tank was expensive to fill).
There was a disturbance in the force when Carly the Horrible 86'd the calculator line at HP, and collective sigh when they came back. I keep a sheet of 1/8" aluminum in the front of my HP48Gx soft case to protect the LCD when it's in there. I can't imagine engineering without it. I fully expect to have it buried with me when I die.
RPN FTW!
Nobody gets close working on work-related projects. It's the non-work things you have in common with people that makes them something other than their position. Unfortunately, you can't force this from the top, and your HR department can't be tasked with making everybody like each other*. You will need to get the ball rolling for extracurricular clubs. Note: this will cost company time, both when you set it up, and every time an event occurs. Golfers and bowlers will leave 10 minutes early to hit the links/lanes, and then waste another 20 minutes the next morning discussing the particulars of the event. It's worth it - worth every dollar.
Sports: Golf, bowling, flag football, (insert other sports as appropriate)
Arts: Dinner/show clubs (you provide busses, if possible), singing groups (a holiday chorus that sings at local events or ret. homes)
Environmental/Community Service groups
Anything where you have a group of people that cuts across the company (i.e. - no correlation to work stuff) is good.
Help out with meeting space, minor cost items (weekly gift for lowest foursome, maybe a small trophy at the end, a room for group meetings or practices), but mostly leave them alone. If you meddle, it will backfire.
Finally, understand that there will be some people who completely separate work from play - they're there for a paycheck, and have no desire to interact. Offer them inclusion, but mostly let them be.
*The "company picnic" is about the worst function ever to try and engender camaraderie. You throw people together who interact in smaller groups, with interest completely apart from the activities you will provide.
The problem is that web developers work for the marketing arm, and nothing says success like shiny. All the demos and development, I'm certain, are run on large monitors with a local connection to the server. hey really ought to require all web developers to run on a 100kb connection with 150ms ping times, with a P-III-350 machine. Only then will you get a set of web pages which will be tolerable on smaller devices.
Take a look at Rainforest Cafe's website. If you don't have flash, they don't want you - period. No way to get restaurant locations or information (heaven forbid you should want to check that on your mobile) at all without flash. Look at any major website - NYT, eBay, /. - you're loading hundreds of kilobytes of css definitions before you even get to page contents.
I have the same rule today with my companies website I had 7 years ago when I started: Every page should load in 10 seconds or less on a 56k dialup connection. It won't be great on a mobile device, but its very viewable - and usable. People still complement me on my site, despite it being out of date, and I suspect it's because (1) it's pretty (2) everything is easy to find and (3) it loads almost instantly on just about any connection.
Actually, going 300+miles on a standard tank at 100+ mph is rather difficult, speeding tickets notwithstanding. Very few passenger vehicles have the combination of fuel efficiency and tank size which affords such a feat. Remember that at 100mph, you'll likely be burning fuel at a rate roughly double that at normal highway speeds (air resistance being dominant, and a with a squared relationship between speed and drag). If, say, you had a very fuel efficient car with 40mpg at 65, and 20mpg at 100mph, you'd need more than a 16 gallon tank (presuming you need 0.5 to 1.0 gallons in the system to avoid actually running out of gas - passenger cards don't use bladders). Most cars with that kind of mileage have tanks in the 10-14gallon range. Sure, bgger cars have 18-20 gallon tanks, but they also struggle to get 30-32mpg at 65mph, and would be lucky to see 15mpg at 100mph.
There are exceptions, but they're a very small percentage of the market.
Seems fair enough to me :-)
If it's available in dead tree form (which amazon still lists) but not in kindle format, that's how you'll know. You can still buy it in dead tree form. This is a temporary spat between the two. I suspect the truly avid readers are going to be Kindle folks (or other eInk). The iPad folks will be casual readers, and will likely have far less volume.
This is extremely common in business. Fights between behemoths happen all the time - didn't Costco just have a fight with Coke that resulted in all Coke products being pulled. Coke is no lightweight, but look who won.
To paraphrase an old sex joke, sales are like air - it doesn't seem to be a big deal unless you're not getting any. Without Amazon, Macmillan will lose a pretty significant revenue stream. Realize, too, that the publishers probably aren't losing much - and likely gain a great deal - with esales. There is no inventory, no guessing on runs of books, lower preparation costs (even if only slightly), no shipping, and *this is key* no secondary sellers market. They just want more money - a valid business desire - for their intellectual property. Amazon has determined the "sweet spot" price to generate sales, and as the biggest player in the market is enforcing it. It works - my wife bought a Kindle after comparing costs of the Amazon and Sony stores. The books at Amazon (for what she would buy - mostly modern/new/mainstream fiction) were generally 20-40% cheaper. Market forces will work, and if Apple sees crappy sales on their iBooks compared to Amazon, you can bet they're going to be beating on publishers to drop prices.
I have several blu-ray discs, PowerDVD, a computer with the guts to play the format, and I've never played one on my PC. Every time I try to play a BR disc, PDVD always spends several minutes trying to download new "updates" (generally >48MB), and then usually fails with some error. Now, this is on a machine that has only a remote control, so doing anything mouse-centric or requiring KB input requires marching into a different room and plugging in a keyboard. If I download an mkv of the same movie from us...et (first rule and all that), the worst I have to do is run it through MKVtoolnix to get the english track as the default, since W7MC still doesn't quite understand the container can have multiple audio tracks. Half the time, I download the movie first, and if it's a "keeper," I buy it when it becomes available. I have the slysoft software to rip myself, but it's more work and the files are quite a bit larger. I own over 300 movies, and probably have 20 or so I haven't bought - most of those I haven't watched yet (just too busy). Getting a disc with the movie "in the clear" so I can load it onlo the media PC, and a pre-compressed version for the car/ipod would be great, but I'm not holding my breath.
As for the "digital copy" - I haven't even tried it. From the description on the front, it looks like you can just copy the file to your device. From the back you realize that it's practically useless unless you don't mind installing something from Macrovision (never to be trusted) and only to very specific devices. No thanks - that's way to much F***ing with my well-honed, efficient system.
Apple restricts things to make them easier. Period. Most people - and even those of us who like to tinker but don't have the time - are willing to get a device that works "well enough" in trade for a perfectly customized experience. Most people don't give a shit about computers or what goes on behind the monitor - they use it like a knife. Most people pay very little attention to alloys, but I'm sure there are metalurgists out there who really care about the alloy in their cutlery, the rest of us just want it to chop carrots when we take it out of the drawer.
Mr. Anderson, what good is 4G connectivity if there's no way to connect it?
Seriously, the limit isn't the mobile devices - it's easy to build a $500 device with better b/w. It's much harder to upgrade tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure to support it. Especially when most* of the country has no data service whatsoever.
*by area
It was stated incorrectly. If the majority of homeschoolers have parents with degrees, and the majority of public school kids have parents without degrees, there is an unequal footing for comparison.
The correct comparison would be to look at publically schooled children who are (predominatly) white, have annual household incomes in the top 25% (or whatever the hs avg is), single breadwinner housholds, professional & degreed parents, and parents who participate actively in no less than 2 extra-curricular activities per student (or, again, whatever the hs avg is). Those kids almost always succeed in life because they have the resources and parental support.
Now, there are exceptions to every class, but to compare the exceptional circumstances of homeschooling with the population at large is an inaccurate one. My daughter is in public school (hers happens to be very good), and I am just amazed at how uninvolved most of the parents are. Homeschoolers care about their kids and take an active role in their learning - that's 80% of the battle right there, even if they sent their kids to a public school.
$130 is the standard price for just about any 3G add on to a netbook/laptop (at least that's what Dell charges, and I think that may be only with a plan purchase). $4/GB for a reliable SSD seems to be about retail, about $3/GB at discount, Dell charges $5.10/GB for an SSD in their laptops. This is closer to $6.75/GB. Not really a huge premium over another integrator, given that this is a "hot" product.
You should be. indeed, be modded down as troll. I'm about the last person you'd find defending Apple, but the pricing really isn't far off from what should be expected. Feel free to argue about how annoying it is that you can't add the memory yourself, or change he battery, or that they didn't bother to include 3G/GPS out of the box. You could say they did, and for less than the rumored $999. They just offered a cheap, stripped down version like Dell does. You know, for the metrosexuals who are out of a job right now.
Flash omission does seem like a pretty big miss for a couch-surfer. The reason you won't see clones too quickly is that there isn't an OS for them. Until/unless Google updates android for the bigger devices and gets serious about an "app store," any other device will flounder without a major UI design team to make the device useful. MS has effectively written off the consumer market in the tablet arena (no decent finger-based UI in any of their products, including winmobile).
Until everyone unwrites their sites for flash (a good thing, imho), surfing "for real" on a flashless device is going to be frustrating.
You're dead on. It's not going to be a great ebook reader because of the screen, but even in the stock config it would be nice for lounging about the house surfing the net (which I do about 10:1 over TV watching). The lack of flash is going to really get under the skin of all those FB users who want to play games, though, along with having missing parts of a lot of websites. That's the real fail here. Otherwise, it's a cool device in it's niche.
Not with an LCD screen it's not an eReader. There's a world of difference between an eInk display and a backlit LCD. The LCD can do so much more, so much better, but eInk still takes the cake for readability and power consumption. Which is why the Kindle goes 2 weeks on a charge vs 10 hours.
I did notice that they compared the $500 (min) iPad to the $280 Kindle, instead of the $489 Kindle DX. That's natural, as the DX has the exact same size screen (9.7") as the iPad, so the comparison wouldn't be quite as stark.
No, Jobs won't allow his new baby to stutter, and multi-tasking is just asking for a less brilliant user experience. 1GHz on an ARM is going to be necessarily limited in horsepower, and dividing that between several apps is going to lead to poor input response. Besides, he doesn't want to hear you complaining that your 10 hour iPad only lasts for 2 hours because you left your folding-at-home app running in the background. :-)
I'm kind of amazed it doesn't have a gps. Google maps is going to suck.