90 days may have been something of a lowball, but the expectation was that dust would accumulate on the rover's solar cells, gradually reducing their power output. Turns out, the dust wasn't as sticky as they thought, and the wind will blow it off on clearer days. That's a genuine discovery, and the main longevity boost. NASA can and have happily paid for a lot more ground crew and radio time for the little ladies.
Because it was the first thing I wanted to know, Spirit's twin Opportunity is still going strong and puttering around a rock called Marqeutte Island. So regardless of how Spirit pans out, there's a really good shot at seeing year 8 of the Mars Rover 90 day mission.
Except then you're putting all your eggs in one basket if there's a landslide that drags them both down, a sandstorm that prevents solar charging, or a problem on landing.
Maybe if we sent up two identical rovers, but dropped them off independently at different points on the planet?
She *is* a mortuary science student, which makes statements like that harder to interpret. I mean, if a random engineering student starts talking about embalming therapy, that's disturbing. Maybe she just has an embalming class that she likes?
"I can't wait to get to the computer lab so I can kill from the console" might sound ominous if you didn't know anything about processes.
Cutting our energy usage by X% is at least as good as swapping x% of our power plants over from coal. Switching to flourescent lights, which would cut overall energy usage by something like 15%, has to be worthwhile.
Negawatts are real, and if something like this cuts out a power plant or two worth of usage, it's worthwhile on purely economic grounds.
Power generation won't change much until the economics change there. If coal is cheaper and carbon/pollution isn't taxed, it doesn't make much sense to switch to anything else, regardless of level of demand.
Without RTFA: 1 - Rocks and nearby puppies. 2 - Bacteria are asexual. These bacteria will, however, be able to spread an "asexual agenda" among native bacteria, who will begin to glow in the presence of other objects, like discarded cans, to look cool and "green." 3- Except for puppies, the bacteria are harmless. Unless you like eating gunpowder or landmines. 4- More landmines! No, wait, they'll be outbred by normal bacteria soon enough.
Easy enough to exclude google in your robots.txt
Google would take a huge PR hit if they started ignoring robots.txt or using new user agents specifically to get around these.
Did you just say anonymity should only be a right of whistleblowers (sure) and Politicians?
I mean, I can see the argument that maybe anonymity isn't a fundamental right. But saying that only politicians should be protected is nuts. By this "public position" logic, shouldn't anyone be protected if they don't want their boss to know they really like anime, or badmouthing people who make dancing cat videos?
I'd been thinking similar things. Venting gas would limit their ultimate height though. I wonder if they could:
Underinflate the balloon at ground level so it's got just enough bouyancy to get off the ground. Then the ballon inflates itself as the external pressure drops. It'd still pop eventually, but might last a good bit longer.
Carry a second (third? smaller?) balloon that inflates off the main ballon when the internal pressure gets high enough. I don't know how much a second balloon would weight things down on the way up, but at higher altitudes, it could double your bouyancy.
3-strikes makes it a crime to break the law too many times.
No, being accused of something isn't a crime. If there were trials and evidence and judges, this would be a whole different matter. This law punishes people who are accused too many times.
This idea of proxy racism is asinine. Believing in policies that help the poor (or rich) isn't racist just because there are more people of Foo race who are poor (or rich.) In particular, agreeing with policies that help *your* social/economic class isn't racist, it's just human nature.
Digging for reasons to point a finger and call people racist has never added to any political conversation, ever. Go jump off a bridge.
They're focusing on the iPod because Apple are the one's being sued for patent infringement.
Other MP3 players aren't useful as prior art, as they'd either be still covered by patents themselves, or got rolling after the patent squatters who're suing Apple.
No one is going to sue Creative Labs to milk their amazing windfall profits, so they don't get mentioned.
Basically, you can keep modifying claims, filing for extensions, etc for quite some time on a patent and only wrap up the process when: a) the technology is well entrenched in the market, b) you've tweaked the specific claims on your overly broad patent to match the market you're going after, and c) are ready to start suing.
It's one of the most asinine parts of an already very asinine system.
Assuming you don't have any other relevant work experience, you should be looking for a full-time, entry level development position. I'm not going to tell you what software field to go into, you'll have to work that out on your own based on what you find interesting, and what the job market is like nearby.
Your Master's is unlikely to give you a leg up, especially if your BS is in an unrelated field. Personally, I'm more inclined to take a BSCS over a MSCS. At most schools, you can get a Master's faster (~1 yr vs 4,) with fewer CS classes (~30 semester units vs 80+), and with less breadth than is required in the Bachelor's. I've seen enough people that couldn't program their way out of a paper bag pick up a CS MS after getting their History degree to be wary. I'm not saying this applies to you, but those are the people you're lumped against.
You're not ready for a Senior position. You can't really learn at least half of the job without doing it. Extracting specifications, working in large teams, scheduling, testing methodologies, version control and branching, release cycles, build mechanisms, dealing with marketing and sales, making reliable estimates, those are among the skills you'll be challenged to learn in an entry-level position. A senior position will expect you to fully understand those, have defensible, reasoned opinions on them, be able to explain them to others, and be able to put structures to accomplish them in place. Ideally, a senior person has been at at least two places long enough to compare and contrast these development processes. It's a vital learning curve, and can't be skipped.
You'll want a full time position, ideally at a moderate-large sized company, on your resume. If you can do some contracting on the side, go for it. You need a position that shows you working as part of a team, in a structured development environment, with exposure to release cycles, etc. If you become a contractor, every company you contract for will have these processes (and pressures) in place, and you'll need to understand them. If you go on to another company, hopefully you've internalized enough to go for a senior position there. And, of course, you can get promoted to those positions at the company you start with as well.
I wouldn't recommend starting with a QA or IT position, unless you know you want to do test automation development. You're likely to start building up a skillset that puts you further and further from transfering into design/development, if that's what you want.
A few pieces of advice: Prepare for your job interview by writing simple C/Java/perl programs, going over basic data structures, and investigating the company's market. You're going to have to pass the "can this guy write a basic program" test before anyone starts asking you about ACID dbs, concurrency, OOP, MVC, TCP/IP, or whatever. Enough people are going to fail there that getting through that part smoothly and comfortably puts you ahead of the game.
Once you get a job, focus on learning and understanding the development process. That's where your skills are lacking. Investing time in learning about your company's test cases, build structure, release process, and project/product management is as valuable as time invested in learning new technology.
Again, when you have a job, keep track of, and follow up on, little side projects. Do a bit of research and send around a short e-mail, talk with the person who mentioned the idea, or see if someone who's assigned to work on it can use some help. Don't let this cut into your scheduled work, but in most places, getting your task done a few weeks ahead of the estimated schedule doesn't gain you much. But as those little projects start to grow, having a half dozen project managers asking your manager for a bit of your time is pure gold, even if he can't give it to them. Also, those small side projects are usually the sort of thing you can take the initiative on, and see through to fruition as a de-facto project leade
Those group assignments *start* to reflect the real world.
They still give you a reasonable specification that can be accomplished in the timeframe laid out.
No insane schedule pulled out of a hat, no sales guy who just told the customers it does something else, no need to design to change course halfway through, no marketing guy feeding you lies, no CEO deciding on a different direction.
I'd say those little group-work projects don't even touch on 3/4s of the actual things you need to learn about to become a productive developer.
Slashdot Mirror
90 days may have been something of a lowball, but the expectation was that dust would accumulate on the rover's solar cells, gradually reducing their power output. Turns out, the dust wasn't as sticky as they thought, and the wind will blow it off on clearer days. That's a genuine discovery, and the main longevity boost. NASA can and have happily paid for a lot more ground crew and radio time for the little ladies.
Because it was the first thing I wanted to know, Spirit's twin Opportunity is still going strong and puttering around a rock called Marqeutte Island. So regardless of how Spirit pans out, there's a really good shot at seeing year 8 of the Mars Rover 90 day mission.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status_opportunity.html
Except then you're putting all your eggs in one basket if there's a landslide that drags them both down, a sandstorm that prevents solar charging, or a problem on landing.
Maybe if we sent up two identical rovers, but dropped them off independently at different points on the planet?
She *is* a mortuary science student, which makes statements like that harder to interpret. I mean, if a random engineering student starts talking about embalming therapy, that's disturbing. Maybe she just has an embalming class that she likes?
"I can't wait to get to the computer lab so I can kill from the console" might sound ominous if you didn't know anything about processes.
And pets.com, and webvan, ...
Actually, I suspect CA is a big enough market that all manufacturers will meet the requirements and no one will notice the difference.
Cutting our energy usage by X% is at least as good as swapping x% of our power plants over from coal. Switching to flourescent lights, which would cut overall energy usage by something like 15%, has to be worthwhile.
Negawatts are real, and if something like this cuts out a power plant or two worth of usage, it's worthwhile on purely economic grounds.
Power generation won't change much until the economics change there. If coal is cheaper and carbon/pollution isn't taxed, it doesn't make much sense to switch to anything else, regardless of level of demand.
It's good to see support on slashdot for California's giant Monorail!
Sing it!
Without RTFA:
1 - Rocks and nearby puppies.
2 - Bacteria are asexual. These bacteria will, however, be able to spread an "asexual agenda" among native bacteria, who will begin to glow in the presence of other objects, like discarded cans, to look cool and "green."
3- Except for puppies, the bacteria are harmless. Unless you like eating gunpowder or landmines.
4- More landmines! No, wait, they'll be outbred by normal bacteria soon enough.
Easy enough to exclude google in your robots.txt Google would take a huge PR hit if they started ignoring robots.txt or using new user agents specifically to get around these.
Did you just say anonymity should only be a right of whistleblowers (sure) and Politicians? I mean, I can see the argument that maybe anonymity isn't a fundamental right. But saying that only politicians should be protected is nuts. By this "public position" logic, shouldn't anyone be protected if they don't want their boss to know they really like anime, or badmouthing people who make dancing cat videos?
I'd been thinking similar things. Venting gas would limit their ultimate height though. I wonder if they could:
Underinflate the balloon at ground level so it's got just enough bouyancy to get off the ground. Then the ballon inflates itself as the external pressure drops. It'd still pop eventually, but might last a good bit longer.
Carry a second (third? smaller?) balloon that inflates off the main ballon when the internal pressure gets high enough. I don't know how much a second balloon would weight things down on the way up, but at higher altitudes, it could double your bouyancy.
The linked PDF has a few more companies listed (~10% more) and says there are around 500 more companies in the long tail.
God's patents have expired, he hasn't filed any in the last 17 years.
Suck it, God!
3-strikes makes it a crime to break the law too many times.
No, being accused of something isn't a crime. If there were trials and evidence and judges, this would be a whole different matter. This law punishes people who are accused too many times.
Bah!
This idea of proxy racism is asinine. Believing in policies that help the poor (or rich) isn't racist just because there are more people of Foo race who are poor (or rich.) In particular, agreeing with policies that help *your* social/economic class isn't racist, it's just human nature.
Digging for reasons to point a finger and call people racist has never added to any political conversation, ever. Go jump off a bridge.
They're focusing on the iPod because Apple are the one's being sued for patent infringement.
Other MP3 players aren't useful as prior art, as they'd either be still covered by patents themselves, or got rolling after the patent squatters who're suing Apple.
No one is going to sue Creative Labs to milk their amazing windfall profits, so they don't get mentioned.
That'll teach me to RTFA.
No point in doing it now I guess.
That 9 year delay was probably intentional:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_patent
Basically, you can keep modifying claims, filing for extensions, etc for quite some time on a patent and only wrap up the process when:
a) the technology is well entrenched in the market,
b) you've tweaked the specific claims on your overly broad patent to match the market you're going after, and
c) are ready to start suing.
It's one of the most asinine parts of an already very asinine system.
Assuming you don't have any other relevant work experience, you should be looking for a full-time, entry level development position. I'm not going to tell you what software field to go into, you'll have to work that out on your own based on what you find interesting, and what the job market is like nearby.
Your Master's is unlikely to give you a leg up, especially if your BS is in an unrelated field. Personally, I'm more inclined to take a BSCS over a MSCS. At most schools, you can get a Master's faster (~1 yr vs 4,) with fewer CS classes (~30 semester units vs 80+), and with less breadth than is required in the Bachelor's. I've seen enough people that couldn't program their way out of a paper bag pick up a CS MS after getting their History degree to be wary. I'm not saying this applies to you, but those are the people you're lumped against.
You're not ready for a Senior position. You can't really learn at least half of the job without doing it. Extracting specifications, working in large teams, scheduling, testing methodologies, version control and branching, release cycles, build mechanisms, dealing with marketing and sales, making reliable estimates, those are among the skills you'll be challenged to learn in an entry-level position. A senior position will expect you to fully understand those, have defensible, reasoned opinions on them, be able to explain them to others, and be able to put structures to accomplish them in place. Ideally, a senior person has been at at least two places long enough to compare and contrast these development processes. It's a vital learning curve, and can't be skipped.
You'll want a full time position, ideally at a moderate-large sized company, on your resume. If you can do some contracting on the side, go for it. You need a position that shows you working as part of a team, in a structured development environment, with exposure to release cycles, etc. If you become a contractor, every company you contract for will have these processes (and pressures) in place, and you'll need to understand them. If you go on to another company, hopefully you've internalized enough to go for a senior position there. And, of course, you can get promoted to those positions at the company you start with as well.
I wouldn't recommend starting with a QA or IT position, unless you know you want to do test automation development. You're likely to start building up a skillset that puts you further and further from transfering into design/development, if that's what you want.
A few pieces of advice:
Prepare for your job interview by writing simple C/Java/perl programs, going over basic data structures, and investigating the company's market. You're going to have to pass the "can this guy write a basic program" test before anyone starts asking you about ACID dbs, concurrency, OOP, MVC, TCP/IP, or whatever. Enough people are going to fail there that getting through that part smoothly and comfortably puts you ahead of the game.
Once you get a job, focus on learning and understanding the development process. That's where your skills are lacking. Investing time in learning about your company's test cases, build structure, release process, and project/product management is as valuable as time invested in learning new technology.
Again, when you have a job, keep track of, and follow up on, little side projects. Do a bit of research and send around a short e-mail, talk with the person who mentioned the idea, or see if someone who's assigned to work on it can use some help. Don't let this cut into your scheduled work, but in most places, getting your task done a few weeks ahead of the estimated schedule doesn't gain you much. But as those little projects start to grow, having a half dozen project managers asking your manager for a bit of your time is pure gold, even if he can't give it to them. Also, those small side projects are usually the sort of thing you can take the initiative on, and see through to fruition as a de-facto project leade
Those group assignments *start* to reflect the real world.
They still give you a reasonable specification that can be accomplished in the timeframe laid out.
No insane schedule pulled out of a hat, no sales guy who just told the customers it does something else, no need to design to change course halfway through, no marketing guy feeding you lies, no CEO deciding on a different direction.
I'd say those little group-work projects don't even touch on 3/4s of the actual things you need to learn about to become a productive developer.
I think you've summed up the basic premise of academic social science, yes.
Probably not much help, Fireball tops out at 10d6, I doubt a tenth level caster can manage "Black Hole".
"Black Hole" is 9th level, I'd guess, so the maxxed out fireball won't tell us more than we already know (that they're probably past 18th.)
You forgot to compile, noob! It's the *code*, not the executable.
./a.out
;)
try:
cc project_design_overview.ppt
I'm sure it'll work!
You mean a number which is the *sum* of all of its divisors except itself.
A number which is the product of all its divisors except itself is, well, any product of exactly two primes.