I won't go quite that far, but I've noticed that in interviews where my "give a damn" quotient and general interest in the position is low, I tend to get job offers. That might have something to do with the display of confidence,
An approach I've taken in the last couple interviews is somewhere between your (I suspect, overstated) example and the traditional "suit, tie, close shave, styled hair" look. Basically, it's a suit with a dress shirt, top button unbuttoned, no tie, casual shoes. The hair goes unbrushed (air dried - I keep it short) and the stubble is left there for around 12-24 hours or so, slightly more than "5 o'clock shadow" (so it's visible, but it's not quite unkempt - I suppose it'd vary depending on how quickly one's hair grows).
Given that it seems that most HR types are women these days, it works pretty well. I s'pose.
I've run into this time and time again. I've been mostly-unemployed (I'm told I should call this "self employed" or such) for the past year due to similar "shortcomings" which were either outside my ability to control (company layoffs shortly after starting) or, as you describe, resulting in a negative stigma.
My experience/training is more in IT than EE type work, but I've still not managed to escape the stigma. A friend, an animator, who has had a much more tumultuous employment history, with many more gaps, but has no problem picking up a new job whenever he wants one (and while he's talented, he's not a complete cut above the rest).
These are a couple guesses as to why this is happening to the both of us (and apparently many others):
1) Companies are very, very picky about hiring anyone for "computer related" jobs. The only thing I can figure is that HR types have been taught that IT/CS/EE = diploma mill hacks and shysters. 2) There really is a glut of IT/CS/EE graduates out there, for what the market can provide. Maybe, maybe not - but it seems to me that there are a lot of "entry level" IT/CS jobs which end up going to people with a fair amount of experience. I certainly think there are a lot fewer jobs out there right now than graduates, at least based on what I've heard from recruiters/etc. 3) HR types might just not know what they're looking at, or what they're looking for, when they look for technical people. They might prefer hiring someone with a more traditional degree who they think can "cut it". 4) Indian H1B workers. Who knows?
Let me provide a counter-example: I'm young, and I didn't have the good fortune to enter IT before the dotcom bust (I entered college in 2000). Finding work - reliable work in any guise - has been largely an exercise in futility.
Non-programming IT work seems to fall into two categories: you've used and maintained common desktops for a year or two and/or have an associates degree in a computer related field, or you're a seasoned professional of 5+ years, having performed system administration or higher for a medium sized company or larger. If you fall between those tracks, you're both over-qualified and under-qualified for 90%+ of the positions out there.
I was fortunate in that I had a couple admin type positions coming out of college, but at the same time, I also got shafted by an economic downturn and reorganization in my first two positions, losing them both withing 5 months of being hired. That's pretty much damned me, and I've been (essentially) unemployed/self-employed since the loss of the last job. I still don't have much more actual work experience than I did when I graduated, but I've also got the crutch of short-term employment keeping me back.
Now, had I done as a classmate of mine had done - dropped out of high school after his sophomore year and getting an IT mid-level administrator job with a larger company - as I was able to do, things would likely be different. The guy worked until he was 21 (2003) and advanced through his career, then went to school. His skills weren't all that intense, but he still made major bank. He now owns and runs a small computer/business supply store in a small town and enjoys life at a pretty slow clip, with a fairly sizeble income.
Yeah, but as a life long geek and software development major, I find that these kids are the best kind of competition. Seriously, I know a bunch of kids that just don't have a passion for CS, and I can run circles around them just from experiences I've had messing around as a kid.
Would you rather have easy competition, or a sure thing and increased pay?
A gain in college CS programs is not a net gain for the field of CS.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but most of the actual beneficial gains in CS have not been made due to substantially increased student CS populations, or even as a corollary. Yes, it's had it's part in small breakthroughs, but in my eyes a lot of those small breakthroughs haven't brought on strictly by academia, and a lot of the big breakthroughs have been pushed by corporations - again, not academia. Seems academia has been largely "me too, let's do what's hot in business" when it comes to CS for the past decade+.
And it certainly can not help the CS graduates themselves. More CS graduates means lower wages. There's already a hardly any "computer science" related jobs out there, even in academia. Sure, there's business programming out in the corporate world, but those wages would also decrease
There are already too many people who want to work in IT/CS and have the degree, but are unable to do so due to the glut of IT workers. This is just going ot make it worse for recent grads.
Modular electronics will likely not manifest themselves significantly - for any price, nevermind a market viable one - in our lifetimes. The simple fact is that the trend has bee ngoing the other way (integration) for the past 40 years in a very big way, and there is no way to currently make modular devices for less than consolidated/integrated ones.
Modular devices are pretty useless when almost everything is available in a USB dongle, and handhelds get another interface/feature fairly often (Apple is pushing the envelope on this).
There are also a handful of different "sets" from Gumstix which are seemingly more similar to this BUGboard than the thing you posted (which has more similarity to a microPIC than anything usable and has a steep learning curve).
Gumstix has been for a while. Their hardware is the basis of many devices out there, noteably the Amazon Kindle, Sony E-ink reader, and the E-ink development board.
Thought I should add: it wasn't all that expensive, either. Only $320 out the door, IIRC - that was in 2002, before gold went up substantially, but still a reasonable price considering it was a complete "custom" piece of craftsmanship and not made on an assembly line.
My wife is pretty "geeky", though not the way most slashdotters are. Maybe more "geek-hip", or "geek-hippie"? Anyway: she doesn't like, or really wear, jewelry (or wear makeup, etc.). So the wedding (and engagement) ring had to be:
- Unobtrusive - Relatively inexpensive - Attractive - Demure... if I wanted her to wear it.
What I ended up doing was taking an old earring with a diamond in it (like.4 karat, old European cut - it belonged to my grandmother, given to her by her father - the other earring had been lost), and took it to a local honest-to-god jeweler (not just a jewel and gold shop, like most are). I drew him several profiles of what I wanted the ring to look like, as well as a 3D sketch, and specified the other characteristics of the ring.
End result: a beautiful white-gold ring with a tapered band and stones inlaid flush to the band face: the center diamond with two sapphires, one on either side. The whole ring face is smooth, so she can do (mostly) whatever she wants while wearing it, and it's only a single small band, so she doesn't have to worry about multiple wedding/engagement rings. She's very fond of it and gets compliments all the time.
I have one of those too. But it's not for me - it's for everyone who walks into the office. My code of ethics is stored in my head, and while it covers everything on the one posted on the wall, it also covers a lot more.
I haven't, and won't - consciously. I'm pretty new into my career, but the number of "important" passwords I've memorized simply through accident or frequent use is staggering. I've forgotten more than I can remember, and even that's a fairly high number.
Yup. I wonder how much of this percentage is due to how the questions were worded vs. how they're presented in the study abstract/results? IE, they might have asked something like, "After being laid off, did you maintain password access to the employer's systems?" Due to poor security practices, I can only assume this is a "yes" in several locations I've worked. I've never tried the credentials, but I've no reason to doubt at least one system-level account remained open to me.
And as I naturally memorized many of the passwords I used day-in and day-out, I "took them with me".
Blocking porn is just as much about trying to mitigate a workplace legal liability - if not more so - as it is about preventing people from wasting company time. IE, what happens when someone of the opposite gender, or someone with strong religious/moral/etc. convictions (one way or the other) views you viewing porn? Yeah, that can result in sexual harassment suits against the company.
Problem: most wind turbines in the US are hundreds of miles from anything which might be construed as a "mountain" or even a "large hill" due to the fact that it's necessary for wind power to be remotely located on a plain in order for it to be even remotely money/resource efficient.
Actually, that wasn't his point: he was simply using tax schedules and distribution as a means to get his point across, which was that NY is getting abused by the taxation which it, and a handful of other Red states, pushed through.
The funny thing is that NYers get taxed much, much more from their state than from the federal government. Costs in NY are so high largely due to these taxes.
I don't see how a flat tax would solve anything, unless it's a flat percentage. If you're making $20k or less a year, paying $10k, 5k, or even 1k a year is a huge chunk out of your income and drastically impacts your ability to make ends meet. $1k or $5k is barely even noticeable for someone making over (say) $70k a year.
And I agree wholeheartedly re: federal collection/distribution of individual welfare. That should be state organized at best, and preferably assigned to cities and counties (and districts, in larger cities) by the state, not handled directly.
That's absolutely nothing wrong with that picture, within the guise of socialized government. Isn't the whole point of federally redistributed money to take from the haves and give to the have-nots, so that everyone is on a more even playing field?
NY is a very rich state. WY is not. That's how the socialized system is supposed to work, and was always intended to work. It's simply coincidence and the fault of the politicians at this point that the party distribution works the way it does: most Western and Midwestern states were pretty heavily Democrat not long ago.
You realize that the "dust bowls, depressions, and bank catastrophies" were largely caused by urban centers - and by the federal government making really fucking stupid policies, resulting in the wanton destruction of things of food during famine, right?
You also realize that the vast, vast majority of federal dollars go to things like roads and infrastructure, right? They don't go to some redneck's bling collection. They go to roads and little else.
You're correct, of course, but you're also missing a critical element: the food produced in the lesser populated states is substantially cheaper than it would be at actual market prices. Pretty much every food industry - at the agricultural level - is substantially subsidized by the government to defray costs.
This became necessary because the (mostly urban-located) processing facilities/companies which buy things like meat and grain to process into what we eat were not (and are not) paying what it costs to produce the food. Even with the government subsidies, US farmers and ranchers are producing food substantially cheaper than would realistically be possible due to efficiencies made to deal with low grain prices.
Overall, the inexpensive food enables people in urban centers to a) not starve to death and b) buy food very cheaply. Yes, it's a handout to "Republican" states: it's also the only thing keeping urban states from depopulating rapidly.
You're also overlooking the fact that there are a lot more people in red states making taxable income than in blue states, both in number and the percentage of the population. I've known a lot of families existing on less than $15k/year, and not suffering a whole lot for it.
You're not serious, are you? While a lot of concepts are first had in times of peace, it usually takes war to make any practical use of them.
Writing was originally 'developed' to store and transmit military/government secrets, such as important and sensitive tactical information over distance.
The industrial revolution wasn't "developed" - it was a natural result of the invention of the first (steam powered) engines. And it took steam engines around 3k years to get from "steam engine working concept" to something which could actually be used as a tool.
Internal combustion engine: technically first used by the Chinese (we know them as "rockets"), for war. After that, you've got gunpowder-powered water pumps in the 17th century.
Aeroplanes, as you call them and as I take you to mean "machines which fly" were originally conceived for military applications; the first flying vehicles of any practicality were all craft used for military purposes (first, balloons; later, airplanes). The Wright brothers were largely interested in getting a military contract for their craft once they got it off the ground to meet hteir expenses. Finally, aircraft did not actually catch on until after WWII - largely due to the many improvements made to aircraft during WWII which made commercial aircraft useful and viable....and vaccinations could arguably have been said to have been discovered/invented during wartime - granted, it was during a global war against pandemic infection and almost universal death, but it was war none the less.
The transistor was largely a culmination of many, many efforts taken during World War II to improve/create a computer.
The World Wide Web is the progeny of ARPANET, which was a project wholely funded by the United States Department of Defense and was largely used for military communications.
You got me on the light bulb, though - I think that was largely something which took off on its own as an organic improvement over fuel lamps.
On the other hand, a whole shit load of things we take huge advantage of today were intentionally developed/discovered for the purpose of war: nuclear reactions, super glue, appertization of food (you might know of it as canning), cryptography, electromagnetic shielding, metal hulled boats/ships, and so on and so forth.
At any rate: no, core ideas are not necessarily conceived during war, and original ideas are liekly in no higher proportion for war than at any other time/thing. However, war has a way of taking a crude and unrefined project or tool and then optimizing it to be useful. Only later does it become broadly accepted and useful to society as a whole.
Hell, just look where we'd be if ironclads had never been conceived. We'd still be killing trees by the trillions for boat construction, and trans-oceanic shipping would be non-existent by modern standards.
Simply put, if an object has utility in war, it will be continually improved and replaced with superior objects which fulfill the roll better - sometimes made expediently, sometimes made in factories back home, but always improved upon. Nowhere other than in war can you see the overall relative advancement of a society's technology but in war.
I've got pictures of my grandparents' grandparents which were printed on whatever quality stock was available to people of blacksmith and laborer wages in the 1870s still - and they've been stored in shoe boxes and in un-laminated paper-backed photo albums for the past 120 years. They're still quite easy to distinguish the details of - even the ones which were originally of quality which would be inferior to an early 320x240 digital camera.
Don't worry about the medium. I guarantee you that, by the time your sons are of the age to appreciate porn, there'll be a lot more high-quality, likely even 3d, available porn. I know it's an important father-son bonding event to find one's father's porn under the bed, but I think you might just be going a bit overboard on this. Buy a couple magazines and be done with it.
Have you seen AA batteries lately? They typically have an expiration date of something like 2016. I've seen them last a fair period of time beyond the expiration, too - while in use.
If they're manufacturing AA battery devices in 5 years, they'll likely still be manufacturing AA batteries in 10 years; and its likely there'll still be a fair number floating around in a drawer, unused, a good 5-10 years after that. Though, I suspect AA-powered devices will be around much longer than that initial 5 years, too... (Cheap shit from China, TV remotes, vibrators, etc.)
And it's not like someone couldn't figure out how to duplicate the power output of a common AA with a little electrical background research in a matter of half an hour.
That's hardly unsurprising. As far as I understand it, Neanderthal had a larger brain. Larger brains require more protein to remain effective. That means they had higher animal protein requirements, ergo they had a lower threshold for things like famine.
From what I understand, it's more likely that they were actually -more- intelligent than we were due to their larger brain size to body size.
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I won't go quite that far, but I've noticed that in interviews where my "give a damn" quotient and general interest in the position is low, I tend to get job offers. That might have something to do with the display of confidence,
An approach I've taken in the last couple interviews is somewhere between your (I suspect, overstated) example and the traditional "suit, tie, close shave, styled hair" look. Basically, it's a suit with a dress shirt, top button unbuttoned, no tie, casual shoes. The hair goes unbrushed (air dried - I keep it short) and the stubble is left there for around 12-24 hours or so, slightly more than "5 o'clock shadow" (so it's visible, but it's not quite unkempt - I suppose it'd vary depending on how quickly one's hair grows).
Given that it seems that most HR types are women these days, it works pretty well. I s'pose.
I've run into this time and time again. I've been mostly-unemployed (I'm told I should call this "self employed" or such) for the past year due to similar "shortcomings" which were either outside my ability to control (company layoffs shortly after starting) or, as you describe, resulting in a negative stigma.
My experience/training is more in IT than EE type work, but I've still not managed to escape the stigma. A friend, an animator, who has had a much more tumultuous employment history, with many more gaps, but has no problem picking up a new job whenever he wants one (and while he's talented, he's not a complete cut above the rest).
These are a couple guesses as to why this is happening to the both of us (and apparently many others):
1) Companies are very, very picky about hiring anyone for "computer related" jobs. The only thing I can figure is that HR types have been taught that IT/CS/EE = diploma mill hacks and shysters.
2) There really is a glut of IT/CS/EE graduates out there, for what the market can provide. Maybe, maybe not - but it seems to me that there are a lot of "entry level" IT/CS jobs which end up going to people with a fair amount of experience. I certainly think there are a lot fewer jobs out there right now than graduates, at least based on what I've heard from recruiters/etc.
3) HR types might just not know what they're looking at, or what they're looking for, when they look for technical people. They might prefer hiring someone with a more traditional degree who they think can "cut it".
4) Indian H1B workers. Who knows?
Let me provide a counter-example: I'm young, and I didn't have the good fortune to enter IT before the dotcom bust (I entered college in 2000). Finding work - reliable work in any guise - has been largely an exercise in futility.
Non-programming IT work seems to fall into two categories: you've used and maintained common desktops for a year or two and/or have an associates degree in a computer related field, or you're a seasoned professional of 5+ years, having performed system administration or higher for a medium sized company or larger. If you fall between those tracks, you're both over-qualified and under-qualified for 90%+ of the positions out there.
I was fortunate in that I had a couple admin type positions coming out of college, but at the same time, I also got shafted by an economic downturn and reorganization in my first two positions, losing them both withing 5 months of being hired. That's pretty much damned me, and I've been (essentially) unemployed/self-employed since the loss of the last job. I still don't have much more actual work experience than I did when I graduated, but I've also got the crutch of short-term employment keeping me back.
Now, had I done as a classmate of mine had done - dropped out of high school after his sophomore year and getting an IT mid-level administrator job with a larger company - as I was able to do, things would likely be different. The guy worked until he was 21 (2003) and advanced through his career, then went to school. His skills weren't all that intense, but he still made major bank. He now owns and runs a small computer/business supply store in a small town and enjoys life at a pretty slow clip, with a fairly sizeble income.
Yeah, but as a life long geek and software development major, I find that these kids are the best kind of competition. Seriously, I know a bunch of kids that just don't have a passion for CS, and I can run circles around them just from experiences I've had messing around as a kid.
Would you rather have easy competition, or a sure thing and increased pay?
A gain in college CS programs is not a net gain for the field of CS.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but most of the actual beneficial gains in CS have not been made due to substantially increased student CS populations, or even as a corollary. Yes, it's had it's part in small breakthroughs, but in my eyes a lot of those small breakthroughs haven't brought on strictly by academia, and a lot of the big breakthroughs have been pushed by corporations - again, not academia. Seems academia has been largely "me too, let's do what's hot in business" when it comes to CS for the past decade+.
And it certainly can not help the CS graduates themselves. More CS graduates means lower wages. There's already a hardly any "computer science" related jobs out there, even in academia. Sure, there's business programming out in the corporate world, but those wages would also decrease
There are already too many people who want to work in IT/CS and have the degree, but are unable to do so due to the glut of IT workers. This is just going ot make it worse for recent grads.
Modular electronics will likely not manifest themselves significantly - for any price, nevermind a market viable one - in our lifetimes. The simple fact is that the trend has bee ngoing the other way (integration) for the past 40 years in a very big way, and there is no way to currently make modular devices for less than consolidated/integrated ones.
Modular devices are pretty useless when almost everything is available in a USB dongle, and handhelds get another interface/feature fairly often (Apple is pushing the envelope on this).
There are also a handful of different "sets" from Gumstix which are seemingly more similar to this BUGboard than the thing you posted (which has more similarity to a microPIC than anything usable and has a steep learning curve).
Gumstix has been for a while. Their hardware is the basis of many devices out there, noteably the Amazon Kindle, Sony E-ink reader, and the E-ink development board.
Thought I should add: it wasn't all that expensive, either. Only $320 out the door, IIRC - that was in 2002, before gold went up substantially, but still a reasonable price considering it was a complete "custom" piece of craftsmanship and not made on an assembly line.
My wife is pretty "geeky", though not the way most slashdotters are. Maybe more "geek-hip", or "geek-hippie"? Anyway: she doesn't like, or really wear, jewelry (or wear makeup, etc.). So the wedding (and engagement) ring had to be:
- Unobtrusive ... if I wanted her to wear it.
- Relatively inexpensive
- Attractive
- Demure
What I ended up doing was taking an old earring with a diamond in it (like .4 karat, old European cut - it belonged to my grandmother, given to her by her father - the other earring had been lost), and took it to a local honest-to-god jeweler (not just a jewel and gold shop, like most are). I drew him several profiles of what I wanted the ring to look like, as well as a 3D sketch, and specified the other characteristics of the ring.
End result: a beautiful white-gold ring with a tapered band and stones inlaid flush to the band face: the center diamond with two sapphires, one on either side. The whole ring face is smooth, so she can do (mostly) whatever she wants while wearing it, and it's only a single small band, so she doesn't have to worry about multiple wedding/engagement rings. She's very fond of it and gets compliments all the time.
I have one of those too. But it's not for me - it's for everyone who walks into the office. My code of ethics is stored in my head, and while it covers everything on the one posted on the wall, it also covers a lot more.
I haven't, and won't - consciously. I'm pretty new into my career, but the number of "important" passwords I've memorized simply through accident or frequent use is staggering. I've forgotten more than I can remember, and even that's a fairly high number.
Yup. I wonder how much of this percentage is due to how the questions were worded vs. how they're presented in the study abstract/results? IE, they might have asked something like, "After being laid off, did you maintain password access to the employer's systems?" Due to poor security practices, I can only assume this is a "yes" in several locations I've worked. I've never tried the credentials, but I've no reason to doubt at least one system-level account remained open to me.
And as I naturally memorized many of the passwords I used day-in and day-out, I "took them with me".
Blocking porn is just as much about trying to mitigate a workplace legal liability - if not more so - as it is about preventing people from wasting company time. IE, what happens when someone of the opposite gender, or someone with strong religious/moral/etc. convictions (one way or the other) views you viewing porn? Yeah, that can result in sexual harassment suits against the company.
Yep: it doesnt matter if the Intel technology is akin to something nVidia was doing 2 - or 10 - years ago. What matters
Hell, Microsoft has made that their primary means of income for the past 20 years through superior marketing and underhanded business practices.
Problem: most wind turbines in the US are hundreds of miles from anything which might be construed as a "mountain" or even a "large hill" due to the fact that it's necessary for wind power to be remotely located on a plain in order for it to be even remotely money/resource efficient.
Actually, that wasn't his point: he was simply using tax schedules and distribution as a means to get his point across, which was that NY is getting abused by the taxation which it, and a handful of other Red states, pushed through.
The funny thing is that NYers get taxed much, much more from their state than from the federal government. Costs in NY are so high largely due to these taxes.
I don't see how a flat tax would solve anything, unless it's a flat percentage. If you're making $20k or less a year, paying $10k, 5k, or even 1k a year is a huge chunk out of your income and drastically impacts your ability to make ends meet. $1k or $5k is barely even noticeable for someone making over (say) $70k a year.
And I agree wholeheartedly re: federal collection/distribution of individual welfare. That should be state organized at best, and preferably assigned to cities and counties (and districts, in larger cities) by the state, not handled directly.
That's absolutely nothing wrong with that picture, within the guise of socialized government. Isn't the whole point of federally redistributed money to take from the haves and give to the have-nots, so that everyone is on a more even playing field?
NY is a very rich state. WY is not. That's how the socialized system is supposed to work, and was always intended to work. It's simply coincidence and the fault of the politicians at this point that the party distribution works the way it does: most Western and Midwestern states were pretty heavily Democrat not long ago.
That's funny. Since when have blue states produced preferentially employable college graduates?
You realize that the "dust bowls, depressions, and bank catastrophies" were largely caused by urban centers - and by the federal government making really fucking stupid policies, resulting in the wanton destruction of things of food during famine, right?
You also realize that the vast, vast majority of federal dollars go to things like roads and infrastructure, right? They don't go to some redneck's bling collection. They go to roads and little else.
You're correct, of course, but you're also missing a critical element: the food produced in the lesser populated states is substantially cheaper than it would be at actual market prices. Pretty much every food industry - at the agricultural level - is substantially subsidized by the government to defray costs.
This became necessary because the (mostly urban-located) processing facilities/companies which buy things like meat and grain to process into what we eat were not (and are not) paying what it costs to produce the food. Even with the government subsidies, US farmers and ranchers are producing food substantially cheaper than would realistically be possible due to efficiencies made to deal with low grain prices.
Overall, the inexpensive food enables people in urban centers to a) not starve to death and b) buy food very cheaply. Yes, it's a handout to "Republican" states: it's also the only thing keeping urban states from depopulating rapidly.
You're also overlooking the fact that there are a lot more people in red states making taxable income than in blue states, both in number and the percentage of the population. I've known a lot of families existing on less than $15k/year, and not suffering a whole lot for it.
You're not serious, are you? While a lot of concepts are first had in times of peace, it usually takes war to make any practical use of them.
Writing was originally 'developed' to store and transmit military/government secrets, such as important and sensitive tactical information over distance.
The industrial revolution wasn't "developed" - it was a natural result of the invention of the first (steam powered) engines. And it took steam engines around 3k years to get from "steam engine working concept" to something which could actually be used as a tool.
Internal combustion engine: technically first used by the Chinese (we know them as "rockets"), for war. After that, you've got gunpowder-powered water pumps in the 17th century.
Aeroplanes, as you call them and as I take you to mean "machines which fly" were originally conceived for military applications; the first flying vehicles of any practicality were all craft used for military purposes (first, balloons; later, airplanes). The Wright brothers were largely interested in getting a military contract for their craft once they got it off the ground to meet hteir expenses. Finally, aircraft did not actually catch on until after WWII - largely due to the many improvements made to aircraft during WWII which made commercial aircraft useful and viable. ...and vaccinations could arguably have been said to have been discovered/invented during wartime - granted, it was during a global war against pandemic infection and almost universal death, but it was war none the less.
The transistor was largely a culmination of many, many efforts taken during World War II to improve/create a computer.
The World Wide Web is the progeny of ARPANET, which was a project wholely funded by the United States Department of Defense and was largely used for military communications.
You got me on the light bulb, though - I think that was largely something which took off on its own as an organic improvement over fuel lamps.
On the other hand, a whole shit load of things we take huge advantage of today were intentionally developed/discovered for the purpose of war: nuclear reactions, super glue, appertization of food (you might know of it as canning), cryptography, electromagnetic shielding, metal hulled boats/ships, and so on and so forth.
At any rate: no, core ideas are not necessarily conceived during war, and original ideas are liekly in no higher proportion for war than at any other time/thing. However, war has a way of taking a crude and unrefined project or tool and then optimizing it to be useful. Only later does it become broadly accepted and useful to society as a whole.
Hell, just look where we'd be if ironclads had never been conceived. We'd still be killing trees by the trillions for boat construction, and trans-oceanic shipping would be non-existent by modern standards.
Simply put, if an object has utility in war, it will be continually improved and replaced with superior objects which fulfill the roll better - sometimes made expediently, sometimes made in factories back home, but always improved upon. Nowhere other than in war can you see the overall relative advancement of a society's technology but in war.
I've got pictures of my grandparents' grandparents which were printed on whatever quality stock was available to people of blacksmith and laborer wages in the 1870s still - and they've been stored in shoe boxes and in un-laminated paper-backed photo albums for the past 120 years. They're still quite easy to distinguish the details of - even the ones which were originally of quality which would be inferior to an early 320x240 digital camera.
Don't worry about the medium. I guarantee you that, by the time your sons are of the age to appreciate porn, there'll be a lot more high-quality, likely even 3d, available porn. I know it's an important father-son bonding event to find one's father's porn under the bed, but I think you might just be going a bit overboard on this. Buy a couple magazines and be done with it.
Have you seen AA batteries lately? They typically have an expiration date of something like 2016. I've seen them last a fair period of time beyond the expiration, too - while in use.
If they're manufacturing AA battery devices in 5 years, they'll likely still be manufacturing AA batteries in 10 years; and its likely there'll still be a fair number floating around in a drawer, unused, a good 5-10 years after that. Though, I suspect AA-powered devices will be around much longer than that initial 5 years, too... (Cheap shit from China, TV remotes, vibrators, etc.)
And it's not like someone couldn't figure out how to duplicate the power output of a common AA with a little electrical background research in a matter of half an hour.
That's hardly unsurprising. As far as I understand it, Neanderthal had a larger brain. Larger brains require more protein to remain effective. That means they had higher animal protein requirements, ergo they had a lower threshold for things like famine.
From what I understand, it's more likely that they were actually -more- intelligent than we were due to their larger brain size to body size.