"...needs to setup a camera pointed at the sky in a part of the world with no light pollution..."
Um, that would be Chile. There are a whole bunch of internationally sponsored telescopes built on the crests of mountains on the coast of Chile. The prevailing winds have blown all the way across the Pacific Ocean, so it is has had lots of room for the turbulence to damp down. Hawaii is the second choice for constructing new optical light telescopes.
I never understood any real reason for Superman, Batman, Spiderman et al to have secret identities. Damon Wayans did a movie, about ten years ago, called "blankman" , that had a funny take on the whole secret identity thing.
This article is interesting in that it talks about "... surging white box volume" and the industry taken as an aggregate -- because Plexus' stated 150 units by themselves aren't going to impress anyone but Plexus -- is an ever-more-important market for components manufacturers and for customers in the position to consider alternatives.
Do Plexus's 150 computers represent evidence of the economy strengthening when you guesstimate the profit they earned? Margins are low for the white-box builders. What is the gross profit on your $600 computer? $100 maybe? And they built 150? That is only $15K.
"...the project managers have no programming experience of any sort. I'm of the opinion that project managers should understand the projects... As a result we are routinely told to skip testing or to implement the impossible, with an emphasis on how things look rather than how well things actually work. Has anyone else found the barrier to project management is their technical knowledge. How did you get past it?"
If your "managers" have no technical experience who writes the specifications that you aim to implement?
If they present you with some kind of brief, insufficient description of the project, you need to write out something more specific, that you can actually work too. You learned, as I learned, in cs 101, that you shouldn't start working on a problem until it has been clearly defined. You learned, as I learned, that if you start programming without a clear goal in mind, you won't know when you "finished".
So you write this description. Get your fellow team members, if you have any, on side. Then take it to your manager, and get them to read it, and sign off on it. If their original design has some impossible "feature" in it, maybe this is where you explain, in writing, where it is impossible. If it isn't really impossible, just very difficult, and in your technical opinion, of marginal utility, this is where you present your bosses with an honest prediction of the cost of their pet feature. If you explain to them that their pet feature will make the project take twice as long, or three times as long, will they really still want you to do it? Or will they say, "Oh shit, well in that case forget it."
If they really don't know what they are doing, then they will probably fear a paper trail that documents that you warned them the pet feature would double the time to implement.
If your boss is an asshole, and says something like, "If you can't do it I will get someone who can!" Or, "If you can't do it within this time constraint I will get someone who can!" Call his or her bluff. If their pet feature really is impossible to implement, they won't find anyone else who can do it.
Revise your document to reflect the choices they made.
Then work to this document.
If they wanted you to implement their pet feature, even though you explained it would double the time to implement, you have protected yourself against the complaint that you are behind schedule.
Document your work. Each time you complete one of the milestones in your original memo, refer back to your memo.
So, are you doing tasks which are really the job of the technical manager? Without getting a corresponding raise? Well, yes.
But you did, after all, want to move into management, didn't you?
If you do a good job implementing what you promised in your memo
will they reward you with a promotion, a raise?
I don't know. But you have acted with integrity.
If it comes time for your annual performance review, is this the time to explain that you have already been shouldering responsibilities that are really management responsibilities?
I remember reading that cell phones were used as assasination weapons in Israel. Replace your opponent's cell phones with one doctored, with explosives. Place a call to your target, if he answers himself, you send a signal that blows up the phone, and blows his head off.
This could be another reason why UBL avoided them.
It's in a company's best interest to pay workers as little as they can get away with. If said worker happens to be one of those quiet non-complaining sorts, it's easy to get lost in the paperwork and never see a raise.
I would suggest it is in the company's interest to provide the hard to replace worker with sufficiently good working conditions, including pay, that the worker isn't interested in jobs elsewhere. This includes paying a wage competitive with that received by his peers at other firms.
The fact that our hero received an offer that tempted him/her, and that they made a counter-offer, proves that they were not paying enough attention to keeping him/her happy.
Anyone who makes a crack about brains and beauty never occurring in the same person should look into the life of Hedy Lamarr. Oh, there a pictures too. Ms Lamarr was one of the patent holders of an important ww2 patent. She also sued Corel for using an uncredited likeness of her on the cover of one of their flagship software products.
I am posting AC because bloody/. won't accept my smartcard login.
Come on moderators, this is funny.
Re:The problem is not a failure of the market
on
Homogenized Music
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· Score: 2
I prefer the British system (and I am biased) where some of the RF spectrum is reserved for public radio (The BBC). This has some varied, and quality stuff. There is also commercial space, with the more homogonized genres. It is probably more workable over here, as we have a comparatively small geographic area.
Geographic size has nothing to do with. The system here in Canada is similar to what you describe in Britain. cbc.ca
...1 percent of users use 30 percent of capacity.Rogers announced plans for a two tier system about two months ago. Low bandwidth high speed users would pay a rate comparable to dialup. High bandwidth high speed users would pay about four times a competitors dialup rate. Is this "Bandwidth and Usage tax" a more recent development?
FWIW Rogers cited the statistic that 30% of users used 70% of capacity. The newspaper article that quoted Rog
Okay, the last episode kind of sucked, but does that mean we aren't interested in dissecting it?
It had this explanation for the black oil. Life on Earth was seeded by meteorites from Mars. Well, this is an old idea, called Panspermia. You don't have to be a conspiracy nut to give it consideration.
The Mars inoculation of life on Earth came with an "Alien Virus". Excuse me? If the inoculant for all life on Earth came from from Mars, and the virus is also from Mars, how is it any more alien than any other life on Earth?
I agree. I found "The Lone Gunmen" to be one of the most intelligent
shows on TV. I thought it was as good as or better than the best
X-files episodes.
I particularly liked that the super-intelligent chimps were housed at the "Boulle Primate Research Center". Pierre Boulle, was the author of the novel that was eventually made into the
movie Planet of the Apes. He wrote the novel that was made into Bridge over the River Kwai as well.
Maybe they are talking about... having a big funky heatsink on the outside which you could fry an egg on...
I wondered about this too. So, how about that quantum-cooled fridge? I didn't imagine that radiator being hot
enough to fry an egg. I imagined it hot enough to start a fire,
degrade the drywall it was backed up against, melt lead, melt steel.
But maybe if each individual level is microscopic, instead of a single
wafer with all the elements on it, your quantum fridge or quantum air
conditioner is has a pair of panels with dozens of smaller quantum
cooling wafers scattered, at intervals, so the heat load wasn't too
high at any particlar point.
Solar panels at the sea locations provide the energy, albeit slowly, to electrolyze the water to the gaseous components. H 2 and O2.
I think if you re-read the original article you will see that hydrolysis is powered by wave energy, you know, ocean waves, not light waves.
Also, may I point you at a simple explanation of how fuel cells work? It has this cool animated gif, displaying the process. Note: no turbines.
There is this really cool tool on the web, called google, it is a search engine. You can use it to look things up, before you post stuff, preventing you from looking like a complete dope. You should try it out!
What did an 8086 cost in 1976? $1,000? $500? Even with the hassle and expense of tracking them down, and cannibalizing, is it possible they might be paying less now than they did then?
Very expensive though - "36 LED bulb...comparable to a 30 watt incandescent bulb" costs $190.
They claim the light lasts for 100,000 hours. And an ordinary bulb lasts, what, 600 hours? Do you think the price is so high because they are supposed to be comparable in price to a regular bulb?
If there is one thing that can describe the Russian space program, it is serious loss of life throughout its existance...most of it officially undocumented.
Of course they didn't have a device to prevent political "corrections" like the severe beatings Gargarin was given after his flight was over (and there are in fact photos of him with his face beaten in).
Let me see if I understand what you are suggesting. Are you saying that even though Gragarin's missions seemed successful to the rest of the world, he did something that displeased his masters, and they had him beaten up, and allowed photos of him with the marks of these beatings still on him?
This is all news to me. But I remember during the buildup to the main attack in the Gulf War, a number of pilots were shot down. When the Iraqis allowed pictures of these airmen, there was a lot of speculation in the press that they too had been beaten. Then I heard someone less charged with emotion who said that being bounced around during a really rough landing could leave bruises on an airmen's face that looked like those one might get from being beaten up. This sounds reasonable to me, so I am going to assume, unless you can muster up more evidence, that any facial bruising you see in photos of Gragarin was due to a really rough landing.
"...and massive improvements in crew survivability."
why is this necessary?
The Soviet Buran, which was not a knockoff of the American Shuttles, had ejection seats for a certain number of crew members. Were the lives of Soviet Cosmonauts more valuable than those of American Astronauts?
Mr Gates has argued during three days of testimony that the states' proposals were cobbled together by its corporate rivals, and that the states have not thought through the proposals' feasibility or implications.... in an attempt to show that reasonable business behaviour would be banned under the states' remedies, and that consumers would suffer.
Wait a second, is there a single slashdot reader who wouldn't agree that writing modular software is a good thing? Is there a single person who passed Computer Science 101 who wouldn't agree that modular software, with clearly defined interfaces isn't easier to debug and maintain?
If Microsoft's software is not modular, it is not for technical reasons. Its monolithic nature is not an attempt to "serve the consumer". The monolithic nature of microsoft software has proven extremely costly to consumers. Gates cites "reasonable business behaviour"? Translation: "Screw the consumer. Hook 'em. Gut 'em. Hang 'em up to dry. And tell them to like it."
Let's examine some of Microsoft's design decisions.
MS-DOS, MS-Windows 3.x, orginal Windows 95, did not initiate a fsck, or its DOS equivalent. How come? I am sure slashdot readers who are old enough have had the same experience that I had back then. Naive computer users who ask for our help, because "they have been hit by a virus". What makes them think they have been hit by a virus? Some of their files have become corrupted, or disappeared. Initiate a scandisk, and what did you find? Dozens or hundreds of file fragments, leftover and never repaired from when Windows crashed on them. How much has all this disk corruption cost consumers? My estimate? At least ten billion dollars.
Or consider macro viruses? People used to ask, "can I get a virus through e-mail?" And we used to be able to tell them "no", unless they chose to open an executable attachment. E-mail macro viruses, Word macro viruses, are only possible due to really stupid design decisions on the part of Microsoft. How costly has that been?
Hopefully... because of the ease in which anybody can record a very clear conversation with considerable ease...
Here is that link the original commenter made to a bunch of regular user reviews. Note particularly how keen these regular users were to try it out with their cordless phones. If these regular users were concerned with eavesdropping, they wouldn't be using cordless phones, would they?
Slashdot Mirror
Um, that would be Chile. There are a whole bunch of internationally sponsored telescopes built on the crests of mountains on the coast of Chile. The prevailing winds have blown all the way across the Pacific Ocean, so it is has had lots of room for the turbulence to damp down. Hawaii is the second choice for constructing new optical light telescopes.
I never understood any real reason for Superman, Batman, Spiderman et al to have secret identities . Damon Wayans did a movie, about ten years ago, called "blankman" , that had a funny take on the whole secret identity thing.
Do Plexus's 150 computers represent evidence of the economy strengthening when you guesstimate the profit they earned? Margins are low for the white-box builders. What is the gross profit on your $600 computer? $100 maybe? And they built 150? That is only $15K.
If your "managers" have no technical experience who writes the specifications that you aim to implement?
If they present you with some kind of brief, insufficient description of the project, you need to write out something more specific, that you can actually work too. You learned, as I learned, in cs 101, that you shouldn't start working on a problem until it has been clearly defined. You learned, as I learned, that if you start programming without a clear goal in mind, you won't know when you "finished".
So you write this description. Get your fellow team members, if you have any, on side. Then take it to your manager, and get them to read it, and sign off on it. If their original design has some impossible "feature" in it, maybe this is where you explain, in writing, where it is impossible. If it isn't really impossible, just very difficult, and in your technical opinion, of marginal utility, this is where you present your bosses with an honest prediction of the cost of their pet feature. If you explain to them that their pet feature will make the project take twice as long, or three times as long, will they really still want you to do it? Or will they say, "Oh shit, well in that case forget it."
If they really don't know what they are doing, then they will probably fear a paper trail that documents that you warned them the pet feature would double the time to implement.
If your boss is an asshole, and says something like, "If you can't do it I will get someone who can!" Or, "If you can't do it within this time constraint I will get someone who can!" Call his or her bluff. If their pet feature really is impossible to implement, they won't find anyone else who can do it.
Revise your document to reflect the choices they made. Then work to this document. If they wanted you to implement their pet feature, even though you explained it would double the time to implement, you have protected yourself against the complaint that you are behind schedule. Document your work. Each time you complete one of the milestones in your original memo, refer back to your memo.
So, are you doing tasks which are really the job of the technical manager? Without getting a corresponding raise? Well, yes. But you did, after all, want to move into management, didn't you?
If you do a good job implementing what you promised in your memo will they reward you with a promotion, a raise?
I don't know. But you have acted with integrity.
If it comes time for your annual performance review, is this the time to explain that you have already been shouldering responsibilities that are really management responsibilities?
This could be another reason why UBL avoided them.
I would suggest it is in the company's interest to provide the hard to replace worker with sufficiently good working conditions, including pay, that the worker isn't interested in jobs elsewhere. This includes paying a wage competitive with that received by his peers at other firms.
The fact that our hero received an offer that tempted him/her, and that they made a counter-offer, proves that they were not paying enough attention to keeping him/her happy.
I vote with the others who say take the new job.
Anyone who makes a crack about brains and beauty never occurring in the same person should look into the life of Hedy Lamarr. Oh, there a pictures too. Ms Lamarr was one of the patent holders of an important ww2 patent. She also sued Corel for using an uncredited likeness of her on the cover of one of their flagship software products.
Come on moderators, this is funny.
Geographic size has nothing to do with. The system here in Canada is similar to what you describe in Britain. cbc.ca
FWIW Rogers cited the statistic that 30% of users used 70% of capacity.
The newspaper article that quoted Rog
Here is an article with pictures, about Guatemalen Jade. No pictures of the bus sized nuggets though.
It had this explanation for the black oil. Life on Earth was seeded by meteorites from Mars. Well, this is an old idea, called Panspermia. You don't have to be a conspiracy nut to give it consideration.
The Mars inoculation of life on Earth came with an "Alien Virus". Excuse me? If the inoculant for all life on Earth came from from Mars, and the virus is also from Mars, how is it any more alien than any other life on Earth?
Somebody should mod this up.
I particularly liked that the super-intelligent chimps were housed at the "Boulle Primate Research Center". Pierre Boulle, was the author of the novel that was eventually made into the movie Planet of the Apes. He wrote the novel that was made into Bridge over the River Kwai as well.
I wondered about this too. So, how about that quantum-cooled fridge? I didn't imagine that radiator being hot enough to fry an egg. I imagined it hot enough to start a fire, degrade the drywall it was backed up against, melt lead, melt steel.
But maybe if each individual level is microscopic, instead of a single wafer with all the elements on it, your quantum fridge or quantum air conditioner is has a pair of panels with dozens of smaller quantum cooling wafers scattered, at intervals, so the heat load wasn't too high at any particlar point.
I think if you re-read the original article you will see that hydrolysis is powered by wave energy, you know, ocean waves, not light waves.
Also, may I point you at a simple explanation of how fuel cells work? It has this cool animated gif, displaying the process. Note: no turbines.
There is this really cool tool on the web, called google, it is a search engine. You can use it to look things up, before you post stuff, preventing you from looking like a complete dope. You should try it out!
What did an 8086 cost in 1976? $1,000? $500? Even with the hassle and expense of tracking them down, and cannibalizing, is it possible they might be paying less now than they did then?
They claim the light lasts for 100,000 hours. And an ordinary bulb lasts, what, 600 hours? Do you think the price is so high because they are supposed to be comparable in price to a regular bulb?
Let me see if I understand what you are suggesting. Are you saying that even though Gragarin's missions seemed successful to the rest of the world, he did something that displeased his masters, and they had him beaten up, and allowed photos of him with the marks of these beatings still on him?
This is all news to me. But I remember during the buildup to the main attack in the Gulf War, a number of pilots were shot down. When the Iraqis allowed pictures of these airmen, there was a lot of speculation in the press that they too had been beaten. Then I heard someone less charged with emotion who said that being bounced around during a really rough landing could leave bruises on an airmen's face that looked like those one might get from being beaten up. This sounds reasonable to me, so I am going to assume, unless you can muster up more evidence, that any facial bruising you see in photos of Gragarin was due to a really rough landing.
Because the Buran program is interesting? Yes, Buran does come up ever six months or so here. I learned quite a few things during those discussions.
I didn't know that the Burans had considerably larger payloads than the American shuttles. I didn't know that the Buran crew had ejection seats.
I hadn't really realized that the main reason the Buran program was stalled was that the Soviet Union totally ran out of rubles.
Here are some of those previous slashdot threads.
Russia Revives Buran Space Shuttle
Own Your Own Russian Space Shuttle
The Soviet Buran, which was not a knockoff of the American Shuttles, had ejection seats for a certain number of crew members. Were the lives of Soviet Cosmonauts more valuable than those of American Astronauts?
I recently read about your harrassment of Tom Murphy, the young graphic designer at Carnegei Mellon University.
Frankly the attempts of large companies to usurp the rights of the rest of us disgusting.
Let me strongly urge you to issue a full, public apology to Mr Murphy.
I am pretty sure that while revision B of windows 95 does this the original revision A doesn't.
Wait a second, is there a single slashdot reader who wouldn't agree that writing modular software is a good thing? Is there a single person who passed Computer Science 101 who wouldn't agree that modular software, with clearly defined interfaces isn't easier to debug and maintain?
If Microsoft's software is not modular, it is not for technical reasons. Its monolithic nature is not an attempt to "serve the consumer". The monolithic nature of microsoft software has proven extremely costly to consumers. Gates cites "reasonable business behaviour"? Translation: "Screw the consumer. Hook 'em. Gut 'em. Hang 'em up to dry. And tell them to like it."
Let's examine some of Microsoft's design decisions.
MS-DOS, MS-Windows 3.x, orginal Windows 95, did not initiate a fsck, or its DOS equivalent. How come? I am sure slashdot readers who are old enough have had the same experience that I had back then. Naive computer users who ask for our help, because "they have been hit by a virus". What makes them think they have been hit by a virus? Some of their files have become corrupted, or disappeared. Initiate a scandisk, and what did you find? Dozens or hundreds of file fragments, leftover and never repaired from when Windows crashed on them. How much has all this disk corruption cost consumers? My estimate? At least ten billion dollars.
Or consider macro viruses? People used to ask, "can I get a virus through e-mail?" And we used to be able to tell them "no", unless they chose to open an executable attachment. E-mail macro viruses, Word macro viruses, are only possible due to really stupid design decisions on the part of Microsoft. How costly has that been?
Here is that link the original commenter made to a bunch of regular user reviews. Note particularly how keen these regular users were to try it out with their cordless phones. If these regular users were concerned with eavesdropping, they wouldn't be using cordless phones, would they?