Keeping the surrounding communities safe? Hey, I don't know about you, but my father has worked there for a few decades, and I was born and grew up in Idaho Falls, and my second head here tells me that the high levels of radioactivity, while not with out unique benefits, probably aren't good for the long term health of the surrounding denizens. : )
Okay, well, maybe my second head doesn't tell me anything. Maybe I don't have a second head at all. Maybe I'm just pro-Yucca because I know how much worse all the interim sites are managed.
You think that the environmental impact can be controlled? Hardly... read on:
INEEL sits above 10% of the Snake River aquifer, the sole source of drinking water for much of Idaho. The Lost River disappears at the INEEL. The two largest earthquakes in the lower 48 states have occurred within 100 miles of INEEL. It is also an active volcanic area. The Atomic Energy Commission's conclusion in the 1960's, "Idaho is not suitable for any type of nuclear waste storage (due to the geological conditions, seismic activity & aquifer)."
In spite of this, here's what goes on there (summarized from info found at http://www.inel.gov and http://www.snakeriveralliance.org):
-52 total reactors, more in one place than anywhere else in the world.
-27 meltdowns, 16 were totally unintentional.
-In 1961 the first fatal nuclear accident sent a nuclear cloud into the Snake River Valley for thirty days. Three workers were killed and were so heavily contaminated with radioactivity that they had to be buried in sealed, lead-lined coffins.
-75% of all Dept. of Energy Transuranic (TRU) waste buried at INEEL (mainly contaminated with plutonium). 153,000 cubic meters of plutonium from DOD weapons projects were burried there between 1952 and 1970.
-367 separate EPA superfund cleanup sites.
-1955 a worker accidentally drilled a hole in one tank pipe, leaked for 25 years until caught, spewing sulfuric and nitric acid, plus about 13 pounds of plutonium and 1000 pounds of uranium.
-1974 Tank farm overflowed and broke.
-1975 Tank line leaked sending 14,000 gallons of waste into the ground. This leak was not discovered for two years.
-1988 Calcination Facility blew its stack of radioactive materials.
-13.5 million of curies released in atmosphere (1952-1989). One test of an experimental nuclear aircraft engine released 360,000 curies. There were a total of 28 tests. By contrast, the Three Mile Island accident released 15 curies.
-11 tanks currently, they are corroding a few centimeters a year. Designed to last twenty years, but they are forty years old.
-16 Billion gallons of radioactive waste was injected directly into the Snake River Aquifer from 1950 to 1972 (70,000 curies).
-Still use unlined ponds for the percolation of waste waters, these ponds were listed as SuperFund sites. ICCP puts 1 to 2.6 million gallons a day into their ponds.
-Plutonium particles buried have migrated 250 feet into the ground. The Snake River Aquifer is 500-600 feet below the surface.
-15% of the TRU waste stored above ground is in corroding barrels.
-Starting in 1969, 5 separate studies have dug up samples of buried waste to assess its condition. Almost all of the drums are heavily corroded, in some pits two thirds of the of the drums have been breached, and many of the drums are leaking free liquids (solvents, PCB's, etc.) into the ground. The overall conclusion is that the pits are quite hazardous to workers and must be excavated with remote handling equipment.
-The Blgd 603 pool is known to leak radioactive water. The spent fuel has been removed from the pools, but there is still radioactive sludge and water in the pool. The current plan is to leave the water in the pool for up to 8 years.
-Stored 1.3 million cubic feet of TRU. Buried million cubic feet of TRU, ceased in 1970, low level waste is still buried in the trenches. Floods in 1962, 1969, and 1982. 5 of the 20 pits were flooded and 3 of the 58 trenches were flooded.
So, tell me again how the accidents there have been managed safely? They don't even appear to be managing the intentional projects there with a very clean safety record.
Still, to get back on topic, it's places like this that Yucca Mtn. is supposed to allieviate. While the government's recommendation and site characterization of Yucca Mtn. is somewhat suspect, I'm not sure they could really do better anywhere else, and they could certainly do a whole lot worse.
NASA grasping at straws, trying to prove its relevance? Like NASA needs to prove anything? The proof is in the pudding, buddy. Just because the space program isn't as flashy as it was in the days of Mercury, Apollo, and Viking, doesn't mean NASA doesn't accomplish a heck of a lot. They don't just do space, you know. The avaiation industry greatly benefits from NASA's research,, as do many earth, oceanographic, environmental, material and manufacturing sciences. And don't foget the educational outreach programs, either. If you don't believe me, check out any of the following:
http://www.larc.nasa.gov/research/inside_pages/a er onautics.htm
http://www.larc.nasa.gov/research/inside_pages/e ar thscience.htm
http://www.larc.nasa.gov/research/inside_pages/s tr uctures.htm
http://edu.larc.nasa.gov/students.html
http://edu.larc.nasa.gov/educators.html
http://eos.gsfc.nasa.gov/
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
http://education.gsfc.nasa.gov/
http://nctn.oact.hq.nasa.gov/hotech.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/earth/earth_index.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/technology/technology_in de x.html
It really ticks me off when people discount the importance of pure research. Yes, product development cycles are long and it's often very hard to see the relevance of research when it can't directly answer "What does it do for me right now?" But you have to be awfully short-sighted, and ignorant of past successes, to think otherwise.
I suppose you think that the National Endowment for the Arts is also not important? Music, art, pure sciences? How does that help you, personally? Well, if you don't already know, crawl back in your hole and leave the rest of us to continue building towards the future.
With what we know about our current oil and environment situation, that is entirely unacceptable to me. In fact, that's really not acceptable in a regular car today, and I'm sure a flying car will require more energy. CNG, fuel cells, hybrid-electrics.... we should be demanding these types of solutions from manufacturers, not just waiting until they get around to it.
Some of those decisions suck? And how are you so high and mighty that you know all about the best components? You build computers as you job, you say? Judging by some of the half-assed techs I've met in various computer shops over the years, I'd hardly take that as a serious endorsement.:)
Anyways, about semiconductor life... heat does in fact have a major effect on the life of a device. And I'm not talking about heat levels that will fry the component, I'm talking about long term end-of-life failure modes. The basic building block of logic is the pn junction. This junction will suffer, over the course of its lifetime, from something called electromigration. This will cause the depletion region to decrease and eventually cease to function. The speed at which this happens (which is by no account very fast) is largely related to the junction temperature. Most chemial reactions follow this rule. It's been a few years, but I think it was called the Arrhenius effect.
My point here? Well, if you have an Intel and AMD chip running at the same speed, and using similar fabrication techniques (so that the pn junction profile is fairly similar), but the AMD chip is running at a higher temperature, the AMD chip will fail first.
But, like you say, this is a technicality. Both chips will last for years, and will have grown obsolete long before they suffer any pn junction breakdown. I'm not worried about it at all; I even buy AMD.
Even with a few of these puppies, I'd imagine that you'll outgrow them fairly quickly. A single Powderhorn will max out at 6000 tapes. I don't believe that they support Super DLT (100 GB/tape) or LTO Ultrium (110 GB/tape) drives, so the biggest (as in capacity per tape) drives you can get are the STK 9940 drives (60 GB/tape), which gives you 360 TB per silo. At 9 TB/day, you'll fill an entire silo in 40 days.
Something that could use the larger capacity tape drives would give you almost double the capacity per cartrige. Hitachi makes the Scalar 10k, which will hold around 9000 tapes, plus it supports LTO and SDLT, which gives you 990 TB, or 110 days. ADIC also makes the AML/J, which hold 5500 tapes and also supports LTO and SDLT drives (605 TB total).
As you can see, even a year's worth of data is going to fill a few of even the biggest silos, which is going to end up being very expensive. And I really don't think you'll find a cheaper solution. And not only will you need the silo, drives,and media, you'll need some big iron to push that much data through (SGI Origin, maybe) and a software solution to control everything (ADIC's AMASS or perhaps a SAN solution like Tivoli's Sanergy, both of which require a healthy-sized front-end RAID).
No, it's not silly. My father, for instance, has a PhD in EE and a MS in CS. He's worked for the US DoE for 30+ years. For perhaps half of that time he's been the senior engineer on any number of projects. Quite a number of times, he's been asked to be project manager. He has always refused. He is happy with his salary, and he's most happy when he gets to deal with technical issues, so he doesn't want the added hassle that management brings. His seniority, knowledge, and respect bring him enough pull in the office that he doesn't desire an official title making him the boss. Much like the author of the original question, I'm sure that he'd leave if he was ever forced into a management position.
Perhaps you want to be management, and that might be right for you. But don't assume that everyone wants to climb the corporate ladder to ever higher levels. Maybe their ultimate goal is to find a job their happy with.
Not true at all. Headhunters are often very up front about a lot of this stuff. Go over to eetimes.com and read the "Ask the Headhunter" columns, they've got some great advice, and often bring up the same points that my college career councilor made.
The way to get a raise is to do the work you are assigned to do, and do it well. I work for a large consulting firm, and our last raises were a paltry 3%. I simply went in, asked my boss for a raise, and gave him some examples of the work I had been doing recently. In the meantime, and unbeknownst to him, I shopped myself around, giving myself options if my boss didn't come through with what I though was a fair number.
But I got a raise, even more than what I considered to be my "minimum." And since then, the possibility of a promotion has been offered to me, and I'm currently in transition to my new position, which will include another raise shortly.
On the other hand, the last guy to attempt "resume blackmail" got his raise, too. But do you know what he's done this past year? The same stuff he's done since he started here almost 3 years ago. Prospects for promotion? Not likely. His loyalty to the company is now questionable, so why promote him into a more important position if he's just going to threaten to quit the next time he's unhappy? He's basically filling a space, and will be replaced when he leaves. So if you're planning on sticking around, resume blackmail is a decidedly bad tactic.
Of course, you can make valuable career moves when you job hop....that's how I got here in the first place, and it did result in a larger raise than most companies would be willing to give a current employee. But don't consider that your only option...there are advantages to sticking around (401k, leave acrual rates, intangibles such as seniority and percevied loyalty). If you deserve the raise, make sure you can point out why, and then make your case to your boss. As long as you don't work for an idiot, you'll probably do fine. It will only increase your value if you stick around, and when the time does come to move on, new employers will probably prefer someone with a stable job history over someone who obviously job-hops every year or two.
Umm....okay, then. I guess I missed your initial supposition that EE majors end up writing code once they graduate. Given that vital point, it turns out that we agree completely.
That's why I have made it a point not to learn too much in the way of coding....I don't put it on my resume because I don't want to be hired by someone who wants me to write code. I'm a hardware freak and find software development tedious.
As for FORTRAN, I guess it depends on the class you take. I know that many universities offer seminar type classes that teach you the syntax of a particular language, assuming that you already have a sound programming foundation. But if that's all that's required for an EE, then of course they are going to be less-than-ideal programmers.
Yeah....well, sorry for the flame. I completely misinterpreted the gist of your post.
I must first admit to some bias. I'm an EE student. But I'm also a hacker; I learned BASIC on an AppleII when I was 7, and I've since learned a number of other languages. Not to say that I'm a good hacker though. I did most of my programming before I took formal classes, and most of them aren't very useful.
I will say that if one major is more likely to understand the other better, it's EE/CpE. Not only do we have to design hardware, but we also have to code for it. The EE studies more coding practices than a CS student studies hardware design. It is the nature of the profession to require both.
But, it doesn't mean that an EE is a great programmer. My passion is hardware, and writing software gets very tedious for me if it's large. I have some CS friends who often know more about a lot of hardware than I do. I even know a CS major that wired his yard with a variety of colored lights, built a hardware interface, wrote a PERL back end, and put up a web page where you can change the color of the xmas lights at his house from the his web page. The opposite example is my roommate, who is an EE, writes code for an airport in his spare time, and probably knows 20 different processors' assembly language (incidentally, he is mostly self-taught, and is getting his degree as a mostly formal matter...I hate him for knowing so much already).
The biggest issue I have is with the following statement: "The EE stuff you may need to know is not hard to pick up, whereas it can be hard to pick up coding when all you know is fortran."
Suddenly, you seem like an ignorant, self-agrandizing jerk. Do you really think so highly of CS and intend to dismiss EE out of hand like that? EE stuff is easy to pick up? Not quite. So what if you know a little about Ohm and Kirchoff and even a little RLC or gate logic? Beyond that, EE gets VERY tough. That's why mostly only those with a true passion for it manage to graduate.
As for programming, what does knowing FORTRAN have to do with whether or not you are any good? Plenty of good code was written in FORTRAN... that's why it's been around for so long. Are you so big a tool that you don't recognize that once you learn good programming methodology, the tools you use (i.e. language) are irrelevant? The first time I took a formal language class, it was taught in PASCAL, a useless language. However, once I learned good structured programming techniques, I was able to pick up FORTRAN, C, and PERL with little to no difficulty. You can hardly say the same for someone who understands basic network theory (electrical network, BTW) and is trying to learn about TTL or systems/signal representation.
...but I don't think I can. Seeing some of the laws that come out of the world's legislative bodies, I'm inclined to believe that any techie would be apt to regard much of it as utter nonsense.
Then I thought about it for a while. And remembered an ex-roommate's father. You see, he has a BSEE and MSEE, and then got his law degree. He is now a patent lawyer. In fact, my former roomie, a fellow BSEE, used to proofread the draft patent aplications for her father's firm (a good way to make some $$$ during the semester).
So now I'm not so sure. On the one hand, technology moves at a lightning fast pace, and even people in the industry need to work to keep abreast of current issues. On the other hand, I'm sure that many lawyers out there have similar backgrounds as that of my roomie's dad, and are more than up to the task.
Overall, I've got to go with the lawyers. I think they are more likely to end up with a better balance of understanding with regards to both technological and legal subtleties. And I think that techies are more likely to have a myopic view of the issues, being so passionate about them.
Or maybe we should all leave and establish a technocratic utopia somewhere else. Let's use all the IPO money to form the "Army of the Red Hats" or something and take over a small island, like Australia. Besides, it seems that those Aussies could use some governmental reform.
Okay, so I work for a data archiving center. Our customers are able to browse an online database for the products (different data sets)and order from there. We get the orders and transfer the requested information onto a variety of media, including CD-ROM. Granted, CDNow specifically states music, but that is only trivially different than what we do here. Hardly seems like a patentable process to me.
Is the key here the exact particular method that CDNow uses? If we were to draw up a flowchart of CDNow and compare that to a flowchart of a possible patent-infringing process, would smallish non-trivial differences between the two render the patent infringement claim untrue?
While there's no sign that his company will totter and fall anytime soon, one has the sense that the history of the Net and the Web are moving past the man. Microsoft and its software are still pre-eminent, but the company no longer seems to be at the heart of the action.
The history of the Net, moving past the man? Hmm...the history of the Net. ArpaNET....no MS involvement. Internet...first time I ever had access was on a VAX....no MS. The WWW.... a friend showed this to me in 1993 on a SGI Indy, using Mosaic...no MS. It took the incredible success of Netscape for MS to even notice the Internet. Even now, I believe the majority of non-dialup hosts are *NIX servers. The only part of the Net where MS software seems pre-eminent is the realm of dialup access, and that is only a very recent development of the past few years. It seems that someone here is confusing the Internet with desktop/home computing. While the incredible popularity of the Net has contributed to vast increases in home computing, and while MS might dominate home computing, MS is still a far cry from dominating the Net.
It's interesting to note how much someone's perspective of the Net gives away. Especially in the mainstream media (Jon still seems to be strugling in his attempts to become a 'counterculture geek' writer as opposed to a mainstream tech writer who only has half a clue).
I am truly amazed at all the rave reviews, especially the ones here on/. - I had presumed that most geeks would be more critical of this movie. Perhaps it's just my own inability to allow myself to be submersed in the film? After all, I arrived late and we ended up sitting in the third row. With all the unstable camera shots, perhaps those sitting further back didn't have to concentrate so hard on just taking everything in? I also went in with the (unfounded) knowledge that the director had dropped these three actors off in the woods with instructions to film everything and then started screwing with them. That's how he got such realistic performances from them. Maybe this ruined it for me right from the start.
I didn't like the ending. It had potential, but they didn't take advantage of it. It was kind of a dud. It looked like Mike was just taking a leak, and Heather just kept getting hysterical. I don't know about you, but it just doesn't frighten me to see people get hysterical and bumble around with a camera. Again..maybe sitting too close to the screen caused this. Or maybe my foreknowledge about the way the film was made didn't allow me to suspend my disbelief. After all, isn't that what movies are about, suspension of disbelief?
Also, understand that I go camping a lot. I wanted to be sympathetic to the characters because I have been there before. Admittedly, for me it was all in my head, but sometimes things just get creepy and you get spooked and rational though goes out the window. But, as someone has already pointed out, they seemed to have a combination of outdoorsman smarts, and city-folk naivete. Knowing enough to lay a tarp down, but not bothering to follow the stream out, or managing to go around in a circle even though they had a compass? Overall, I had the impression that this was way too contrived. Once again, my foreknowledge of the movie might have had some influence.
So, by now you've probably gathered that I didn't care much for the movie. And I've given some reasons that probably influenced why I felt that way. But the funny thing is, the audience seemed to agree with me. The audience seemed restless the entire movie. More than a few people left early, one even saying "Man, forget this" as he walked out. Bored like me? Presumably so. Sickened by the shaky camera movement? Perhaps. Too scared to go on? Doubtful. And at the end of the movie, there were boos and other forms of derision, and most of the conversation I heard on the way out seemed to be in agreement with my opinion of the movie - disappointment. Not a single member of the group I was with had good things to say about the movie. Hence my surprise that the general consensus on/. is overwhelmingly positive.
To each, his own, I suppose. But am I the only one not into this film?
I'm sitting at work right now, and I've been reading all these articles about Littleton, nd I really wish I had my own little cubicle because I'm a bit teary-eyed right now. I guess I developed my own little persecution complex during my time in school and so I identify with what many of the kids are going through right now. For a long time, I was a major part of the KJHS and KHS "nerd herd", and it took a few years to learn how to deal with that. Sure, in the end we turned out fine but how many kids never get to that point? I had a distinct advantage: my high school had a well-developed fine arts program, so those of us in drama, music, and the like had a large peer group that was mostly left to its own devices by the more traditional cliques (jocks, preps, etc). It still took some work...who doesn't want to be popular? But you eventually learn that only the opinions that matter are those of people who matter to you, and people whom you matter to. Don't worry about the rest. I know, easier said than done, but it's something to keep in mind.
Why am I telling anyone this? To be honest, I don't really know. I guess I just wanted to offer one more testamonial to the fact that most of us turn out okay. I grew up playing D&D, listening to heavy metal sometimes (even stuff like Slayer and beyond, for a while), playing violent computer games (it's not like they're new...even my old Atari had shoot-em-up games....it's just that back then, people didn't blame crazy shit on them). In school, I got fairly good grades, was a member of many of the school bands (clarinet, sax, and drums), a member of some of the competing teams (JETS, Engineering Design Team, etc), and didn't have a girlfriend until 10th grade. I was picked on, teased, all the regular stuff that we all have come to expect. But you come through on the other end a better person. You learn who you can rely on. You learn to rely on yourself, and those few rare souls that you connect with during those dark years.
Eventually you will see the light at the end of the tunnel. It might be high school, it might be college, it might be when you enter the work force, but the day will come. Just keep trying to make yourself a better person, make youself someone that YOU can be proud of and don't worry about the others.
Yeah, well, that felt mostly pointless. : ) Well at least I got my $0.02 in. Hopefully someone can take something from what I've written.
At 58mm x 85mm x 17mm, or about the size of a calling card (a pretty thick calling card, no less), the Yepp is pretty small....but perhaps not as small as the u-fi. Too bad it isn't quite available yet. Check out the pictures! This thing is sweet....worth waiting for, I think.
Slashdot Mirror
Keeping the surrounding communities safe? Hey, I don't know about you, but my father has worked there for a few decades, and I was born and grew up in Idaho Falls, and my second head here tells me that the high levels of radioactivity, while not with out unique benefits, probably aren't good for the long term health of the surrounding denizens. : )
Okay, well, maybe my second head doesn't tell me anything. Maybe I don't have a second head at all. Maybe I'm just pro-Yucca because I know how much worse all the interim sites are managed.
You think that the environmental impact can be controlled? Hardly... read on:
INEEL sits above 10% of the Snake River aquifer, the sole source of drinking water for much of Idaho. The Lost River disappears at the INEEL. The two largest earthquakes in the lower 48 states have occurred within 100 miles of INEEL. It is also an active volcanic area. The Atomic Energy Commission's conclusion in the 1960's, "Idaho is not suitable for any type of nuclear waste storage (due to the geological conditions, seismic activity & aquifer)."
In spite of this, here's what goes on there (summarized from info found at http://www.inel.gov and http://www.snakeriveralliance.org):
-52 total reactors, more in one place than anywhere else in the world.
-27 meltdowns, 16 were totally unintentional.
-In 1961 the first fatal nuclear accident sent a nuclear cloud into the Snake River Valley for thirty days. Three workers were killed and were so heavily contaminated with radioactivity that they had to be buried in sealed, lead-lined coffins.
-75% of all Dept. of Energy Transuranic (TRU) waste buried at INEEL (mainly contaminated with plutonium). 153,000 cubic meters of plutonium from DOD weapons projects were burried there between 1952 and 1970.
-367 separate EPA superfund cleanup sites.
-1955 a worker accidentally drilled a hole in one tank pipe, leaked for 25 years until caught, spewing sulfuric and nitric acid, plus about 13 pounds of plutonium and 1000 pounds of uranium.
-1974 Tank farm overflowed and broke.
-1975 Tank line leaked sending 14,000 gallons of waste into the ground. This leak was not discovered for two years.
-1988 Calcination Facility blew its stack of radioactive materials.
-13.5 million of curies released in atmosphere (1952-1989). One test of an experimental nuclear aircraft engine released 360,000 curies. There were a total of 28 tests. By contrast, the Three Mile Island accident released 15 curies.
-11 tanks currently, they are corroding a few centimeters a year. Designed to last twenty years, but they are forty years old.
-16 Billion gallons of radioactive waste was injected directly into the Snake River Aquifer from 1950 to 1972 (70,000 curies).
-Still use unlined ponds for the percolation of waste waters, these ponds were listed as SuperFund sites. ICCP puts 1 to 2.6 million gallons a day into their ponds.
-Plutonium particles buried have migrated 250 feet into the ground. The Snake River Aquifer is 500-600 feet below the surface.
-15% of the TRU waste stored above ground is in corroding barrels.
-Starting in 1969, 5 separate studies have dug up samples of buried waste to assess its condition. Almost all of the drums are heavily corroded, in some pits two thirds of the of the drums have been breached, and many of the drums are leaking free liquids (solvents, PCB's, etc.) into the ground. The overall conclusion is that the pits are quite hazardous to workers and must be excavated with remote handling equipment.
-The Blgd 603 pool is known to leak radioactive water. The spent fuel has been removed from the pools, but there is still radioactive sludge and water in the pool. The current plan is to leave the water in the pool for up to 8 years.
-Stored 1.3 million cubic feet of TRU. Buried million cubic feet of TRU, ceased in 1970, low level waste is still buried in the trenches. Floods in 1962, 1969, and 1982. 5 of the 20 pits were flooded and 3 of the 58 trenches were flooded.
So, tell me again how the accidents there have been managed safely? They don't even appear to be managing the intentional projects there with a very clean safety record.
Still, to get back on topic, it's places like this that Yucca Mtn. is supposed to allieviate. While the government's recommendation and site characterization of Yucca Mtn. is somewhat suspect, I'm not sure they could really do better anywhere else, and they could certainly do a whole lot worse.
I didn't like Delirium Tremens.
Chimay is good, but I like Duvel best lately.
NASA grasping at straws, trying to prove its relevance? Like NASA needs to prove anything? The proof is in the pudding, buddy. Just because the space program isn't as flashy as it was in the days of Mercury, Apollo, and Viking, doesn't mean NASA doesn't accomplish a heck of a lot. They don't just do space, you know. The avaiation industry greatly benefits from NASA's research,, as do many earth, oceanographic, environmental, material and manufacturing sciences. And don't foget the educational outreach programs, either. If you don't believe me, check out any of the following:
a er onautics.htm
e ar thscience.htm
s tr uctures.htm
n de x.html
http://www.larc.nasa.gov/research/inside_pages/
http://www.larc.nasa.gov/research/inside_pages/
http://www.larc.nasa.gov/research/inside_pages/
http://edu.larc.nasa.gov/students.html
http://edu.larc.nasa.gov/educators.html
http://eos.gsfc.nasa.gov/
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
http://education.gsfc.nasa.gov/
http://nctn.oact.hq.nasa.gov/hotech.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/earth/earth_index.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/technology/technology_i
It really ticks me off when people discount the importance of pure research. Yes, product development cycles are long and it's often very hard to see the relevance of research when it can't directly answer "What does it do for me right now?" But you have to be awfully short-sighted, and ignorant of past successes, to think otherwise.
I suppose you think that the National Endowment for the Arts is also not important? Music, art, pure sciences? How does that help you, personally? Well, if you don't already know, crawl back in your hole and leave the rest of us to continue building towards the future.
With what we know about our current oil and environment situation, that is entirely unacceptable to me. In fact, that's really not acceptable in a regular car today, and I'm sure a flying car will require more energy. CNG, fuel cells, hybrid-electrics.... we should be demanding these types of solutions from manufacturers, not just waiting until they get around to it.
Some of those decisions suck? And how are you so high and mighty that you know all about the best components? You build computers as you job, you say? Judging by some of the half-assed techs I've met in various computer shops over the years, I'd hardly take that as a serious endorsement. :)
Anyways, about semiconductor life... heat does in fact have a major effect on the life of a device. And I'm not talking about heat levels that will fry the component, I'm talking about long term end-of-life failure modes. The basic building block of logic is the pn junction. This junction will suffer, over the course of its lifetime, from something called electromigration. This will cause the depletion region to decrease and eventually cease to function. The speed at which this happens (which is by no account very fast) is largely related to the junction temperature. Most chemial reactions follow this rule. It's been a few years, but I think it was called the Arrhenius effect.
My point here? Well, if you have an Intel and AMD chip running at the same speed, and using similar fabrication techniques (so that the pn junction profile is fairly similar), but the AMD chip is running at a higher temperature, the AMD chip will fail first.
But, like you say, this is a technicality. Both chips will last for years, and will have grown obsolete long before they suffer any pn junction breakdown. I'm not worried about it at all; I even buy AMD.
Even with a few of these puppies, I'd imagine that you'll outgrow them fairly quickly. A single Powderhorn will max out at 6000 tapes. I don't believe that they support Super DLT (100 GB/tape) or LTO Ultrium (110 GB/tape) drives, so the biggest (as in capacity per tape) drives you can get are the STK 9940 drives (60 GB/tape), which gives you 360 TB per silo. At 9 TB/day, you'll fill an entire silo in 40 days.
Something that could use the larger capacity tape drives would give you almost double the capacity per cartrige. Hitachi makes the Scalar 10k, which will hold around 9000 tapes, plus it supports LTO and SDLT, which gives you 990 TB, or 110 days. ADIC also makes the AML/J, which hold 5500 tapes and also supports LTO and SDLT drives (605 TB total).
As you can see, even a year's worth of data is going to fill a few of even the biggest silos, which is going to end up being very expensive. And I really don't think you'll find a cheaper solution. And not only will you need the silo, drives,and media, you'll need some big iron to push that much data through (SGI Origin, maybe) and a software solution to control everything (ADIC's AMASS or perhaps a SAN solution like Tivoli's Sanergy, both of which require a healthy-sized front-end RAID).
No, it's not silly. My father, for instance, has a PhD in EE and a MS in CS. He's worked for the US DoE for 30+ years. For perhaps half of that time he's been the senior engineer on any number of projects. Quite a number of times, he's been asked to be project manager. He has always refused. He is happy with his salary, and he's most happy when he gets to deal with technical issues, so he doesn't want the added hassle that management brings. His seniority, knowledge, and respect bring him enough pull in the office that he doesn't desire an official title making him the boss. Much like the author of the original question, I'm sure that he'd leave if he was ever forced into a management position.
Perhaps you want to be management, and that might be right for you. But don't assume that everyone wants to climb the corporate ladder to ever higher levels. Maybe their ultimate goal is to find a job their happy with.
Not true at all. Headhunters are often very up front about a lot of this stuff. Go over to eetimes.com and read the "Ask the Headhunter" columns, they've got some great advice, and often bring up the same points that my college career councilor made.
The way to get a raise is to do the work you are assigned to do, and do it well. I work for a large consulting firm, and our last raises were a paltry 3%. I simply went in, asked my boss for a raise, and gave him some examples of the work I had been doing recently. In the meantime, and unbeknownst to him, I shopped myself around, giving myself options if my boss didn't come through with what I though was a fair number.
But I got a raise, even more than what I considered to be my "minimum." And since then, the possibility of a promotion has been offered to me, and I'm currently in transition to my new position, which will include another raise shortly.
On the other hand, the last guy to attempt "resume blackmail" got his raise, too. But do you know what he's done this past year? The same stuff he's done since he started here almost 3 years ago. Prospects for promotion? Not likely. His loyalty to the company is now questionable, so why promote him into a more important position if he's just going to threaten to quit the next time he's unhappy? He's basically filling a space, and will be replaced when he leaves. So if you're planning on sticking around, resume blackmail is a decidedly bad tactic.
Of course, you can make valuable career moves when you job hop....that's how I got here in the first place, and it did result in a larger raise than most companies would be willing to give a current employee. But don't consider that your only option...there are advantages to sticking around (401k, leave acrual rates, intangibles such as seniority and percevied loyalty). If you deserve the raise, make sure you can point out why, and then make your case to your boss. As long as you don't work for an idiot, you'll probably do fine. It will only increase your value if you stick around, and when the time does come to move on, new employers will probably prefer someone with a stable job history over someone who obviously job-hops every year or two.
Umm....okay, then. I guess I missed your initial supposition that EE majors end up writing code once they graduate. Given that vital point, it turns out that we agree completely.
That's why I have made it a point not to learn too much in the way of coding....I don't put it on my resume because I don't want to be hired by someone who wants me to write code. I'm a hardware freak and find software development tedious.
As for FORTRAN, I guess it depends on the class you take. I know that many universities offer seminar type classes that teach you the syntax of a particular language, assuming that you already have a sound programming foundation. But if that's all that's required for an EE, then of course they are going to be less-than-ideal programmers.
Yeah....well, sorry for the flame. I completely misinterpreted the gist of your post.
I must first admit to some bias. I'm an EE student. But I'm also a hacker; I learned BASIC on an AppleII when I was 7, and I've since learned a number of other languages. Not to say that I'm a good hacker though. I did most of my programming before I took formal classes, and most of them aren't very useful.
:)
I will say that if one major is more likely to understand the other better, it's EE/CpE. Not only do we have to design hardware, but we also have to code for it. The EE studies more coding practices than a CS student studies hardware design. It is the nature of the profession to require both.
But, it doesn't mean that an EE is a great programmer. My passion is hardware, and writing software gets very tedious for me if it's large. I have some CS friends who often know more about a lot of hardware than I do. I even know a CS major that wired his yard with a variety of colored lights, built a hardware interface, wrote a PERL back end, and put up a web page where you can change the color of the xmas lights at his house from the his web page. The opposite example is my roommate, who is an EE, writes code for an airport in his spare time, and probably knows 20 different processors' assembly language (incidentally, he is mostly self-taught, and is getting his degree as a mostly formal matter...I hate him for knowing so much already).
The biggest issue I have is with the following statement: "The EE stuff you may need to know is not hard to pick up, whereas it can be hard to pick up coding when all you know is fortran."
Suddenly, you seem like an ignorant, self-agrandizing jerk. Do you really think so highly of CS and intend to dismiss EE out of hand like that? EE stuff is easy to pick up? Not quite. So what if you know a little about Ohm and Kirchoff and even a little RLC or gate logic? Beyond that, EE gets VERY tough. That's why mostly only those with a true passion for it manage to graduate.
As for programming, what does knowing FORTRAN have to do with whether or not you are any good? Plenty of good code was written in FORTRAN... that's why it's been around for so long. Are you so big a tool that you don't recognize that once you learn good programming methodology, the tools you use (i.e. language) are irrelevant? The first time I took a formal language class, it was taught in PASCAL, a useless language. However, once I learned good structured programming techniques, I was able to pick up FORTRAN, C, and PERL with little to no difficulty. You can hardly say the same for someone who understands basic network theory (electrical network, BTW) and is trying to learn about TTL or systems/signal representation.
Now it's time for me to be a pedantic ass:
Solder. Soldering iron.
Have a nice day.
...but I don't think I can. Seeing some of the laws that come out of the world's legislative bodies, I'm inclined to believe that any techie would be apt to regard much of it as utter nonsense.
Then I thought about it for a while. And remembered an ex-roommate's father. You see, he has a BSEE and MSEE, and then got his law degree. He is now a patent lawyer. In fact, my former roomie, a fellow BSEE, used to proofread the draft patent aplications for her father's firm (a good way to make some $$$ during the semester).
So now I'm not so sure. On the one hand, technology moves at a lightning fast pace, and even people in the industry need to work to keep abreast of current issues. On the other hand, I'm sure that many lawyers out there have similar backgrounds as that of my roomie's dad, and are more than up to the task.
Overall, I've got to go with the lawyers. I think they are more likely to end up with a better balance of understanding with regards to both technological and legal subtleties. And I think that techies are more likely to have a myopic view of the issues, being so passionate about them.
Or maybe we should all leave and establish a technocratic utopia somewhere else. Let's use all the IPO money to form the "Army of the Red Hats" or something and take over a small island, like Australia. Besides, it seems that those Aussies could use some governmental reform.
Okay, so I work for a data archiving center. Our customers are able to browse an online database for the products (different data sets)and order from there. We get the orders and transfer the requested information onto a variety of media, including CD-ROM. Granted, CDNow specifically states music, but that is only trivially different than what we do here. Hardly seems like a patentable process to me.
Is the key here the exact particular method that CDNow uses? If we were to draw up a flowchart of CDNow and compare that to a flowchart of a possible patent-infringing process, would smallish non-trivial differences between the two render the patent infringement claim untrue?
While there's no sign that his company will totter and fall anytime soon, one has the sense that the history of the Net and the Web are moving past the man. Microsoft and its software are still pre-eminent, but the company no longer seems to be at the heart of the action.
The history of the Net, moving past the man? Hmm...the history of the Net. ArpaNET....no MS involvement. Internet...first time I ever had access was on a VAX....no MS. The WWW.... a friend showed this to me in 1993 on a SGI Indy, using Mosaic...no MS. It took the incredible success of Netscape for MS to even notice the Internet. Even now, I believe the majority of non-dialup hosts are *NIX servers. The only part of the Net where MS software seems pre-eminent is the realm of dialup access, and that is only a very recent development of the past few years. It seems that someone here is confusing the Internet with desktop/home computing. While the incredible popularity of the Net has contributed to vast increases in home computing, and while MS might dominate home computing, MS is still a far cry from dominating the Net.
It's interesting to note how much someone's perspective of the Net gives away. Especially in the mainstream media (Jon still seems to be strugling in his attempts to become a 'counterculture geek' writer as opposed to a mainstream tech writer who only has half a clue).
I am truly amazed at all the rave reviews, especially the ones here on /. - I had presumed that most geeks would be more critical of this movie. Perhaps it's just my own inability to allow myself to be submersed in the film? After all, I arrived late and we ended up sitting in the third row. With all the unstable camera shots, perhaps those sitting further back didn't have to concentrate so hard on just taking everything in? I also went in with the (unfounded) knowledge that the director had dropped these three actors off in the woods with instructions to film everything and then started screwing with them. That's how he got such realistic performances from them. Maybe this ruined it for me right from the start.
/. is overwhelmingly positive.
I didn't like the ending. It had potential, but they didn't take advantage of it. It was kind of a dud. It looked like Mike was just taking a leak, and Heather just kept getting hysterical. I don't know about you, but it just doesn't frighten me to see people get hysterical and bumble around with a camera. Again..maybe sitting too close to the screen caused this. Or maybe my foreknowledge about the way the film was made didn't allow me to suspend my disbelief. After all, isn't that what movies are about, suspension of disbelief?
Also, understand that I go camping a lot. I wanted to be sympathetic to the characters because I have been there before. Admittedly, for me it was all in my head, but sometimes things just get creepy and you get spooked and rational though goes out the window. But, as someone has already pointed out, they seemed to have a combination of outdoorsman smarts, and city-folk naivete. Knowing enough to lay a tarp down, but not bothering to follow the stream out, or managing to go around in a circle even though they had a compass? Overall, I had the impression that this was way too contrived. Once again, my foreknowledge of the movie might have had some influence.
So, by now you've probably gathered that I didn't care much for the movie. And I've given some reasons that probably influenced why I felt that way. But the funny thing is, the audience seemed to agree with me. The audience seemed restless the entire movie. More than a few people left early, one even saying "Man, forget this" as he walked out. Bored like me? Presumably so. Sickened by the shaky camera movement? Perhaps. Too scared to go on? Doubtful. And at the end of the movie, there were boos and other forms of derision, and most of the conversation I heard on the way out seemed to be in agreement with my opinion of the movie - disappointment. Not a single member of the group I was with had good things to say about the movie. Hence my surprise that the general consensus on
To each, his own, I suppose. But am I the only one not into this film?
I'm sitting at work right now, and I've been reading all these articles about Littleton, nd I really wish I had my own little cubicle because I'm a bit teary-eyed right now. I guess I developed my own little persecution complex during my time in school and so I identify with what many of the kids are going through right now. For a long time, I was a major part of the KJHS and KHS "nerd herd", and it took a few years to learn how to deal with that. Sure, in the end we turned out fine but how many kids never get to that point? I had a distinct advantage: my high school had a well-developed fine arts program, so those of us in drama, music, and the like had a large peer group that was mostly left to its own devices by the more traditional cliques (jocks, preps, etc). It still took some work...who doesn't want to be popular? But you eventually learn that only the opinions that matter are those of people who matter to you, and people whom you matter to. Don't worry about the rest. I know, easier said than done, but it's something to keep in mind.
Why am I telling anyone this? To be honest, I don't really know. I guess I just wanted to offer one more testamonial to the fact that most of us turn out okay. I grew up playing D&D, listening to heavy metal sometimes (even stuff like Slayer and beyond, for a while), playing violent computer games (it's not like they're new...even my old Atari had shoot-em-up games....it's just that back then, people didn't blame crazy shit on them). In school, I got fairly good grades, was a member of many of the school bands (clarinet, sax, and drums), a member of some of the competing teams (JETS, Engineering Design Team, etc), and didn't have a girlfriend until 10th grade. I was picked on, teased, all the regular stuff that we all have come to expect. But you come through on the other end a better person. You learn who you can rely on. You learn to rely on yourself, and those few rare souls that you connect with during those dark years.
Eventually you will see the light at the end of the tunnel. It might be high school, it might be college, it might be when you enter the work force, but the day will come. Just keep trying to make yourself a better person, make youself someone that YOU can be proud of and don't worry about the others.
Yeah, well, that felt mostly pointless. : ) Well at least I got my $0.02 in. Hopefully someone can take something from what I've written.
Cheers...
At 58mm x 85mm x 17mm, or about the size of a calling card (a pretty thick calling card, no less), the Yepp is pretty small....but perhaps not as small as the u-fi. Too bad it isn't quite available yet. Check out the pictures! This thing is sweet....worth waiting for, I think.