Implicit in your assumption is that a mission is operated solely by NASA civil service employees, which is a handy assumption for your flip answer, but meanwhile, back in the real world, that's not the case. I'll grant that the people who will be affected have some warning, but I guarantee you Griffin and Co. are already planning on where to reallocate the extended mission money if and when they declare MGS dead. That money doesn't all go to NASA facilities. The science operations for the Mars Orbiter Camera goes to a small company and the Thermal Emission Spectrometer money goes to Arizona State's Mars Space Flight Facility, a place I worked for 4 years and personally witnessed several people get laid off in early '06 because of NASA reallocation for the new manned program and to pay for hurricane damages to NASA facilities.
Yeah, I'm sure the people who got laid off worked something out, and the people who will get laid off will work something out, too. You can continue to choose to "call shenanigans" all you want, but you asked a question, I answered, you didn't like the answer and decided to wave it away with flippant handwaving. This has effects on real people and your "rational ignorance" becomes willful ignorance if you choose to continue to deny it.
Um, actually, yeah. I have a couple friends who are probably going to be out of a job now. So, approve or disapprove of it, the fact remains somebody's going to miss it.
Actually, By the time Piltdown Man was revealed as a hoax, many anthropologists' models of human evolution were already regarding it as an aberration and disregarding it. I imagine quite a few of them blew sighs of relief when they heard it was a hoax. There were a few at the time of discovery believed it to be a hoax, too. I suppose time will tell on the global warming debate, too.
Certainly, but we must first productize new paradigms of scalable efficiencies to deliver best-of-breed solutions to both existing and emerging market segments.
I took the ASVAB in '85 and pretty much pegged it, too. 99%ile in every category except one category which I only scored 94%ile. At the time I didn't know the difference between wood and machine screw.:-)
I was seriously considering going into the Air Force, but didn't, largely because I was about 20 pounds over the weight limit for my height. The other forces weren't so picky about that, but they didn't have the programs that I was as interested in. Very much unlike now, however, my excess weight was muscle put on by tossing 100 pound chunks of steel down a chute on a construction job for 4 hours a day. I thought it silly to quit my job ($6 an hour when you're 17/18 in 1985 was good money!) for months before I went in so I could figure out how to lose muscle mass without gaining fat before I could go in, so I didn't. For all I know, I could've gotten an exception based on a physical or something, but I was young and dumb then and didn't think to ask.
Huh. I never really thought about it until now how much that decision affected my life. I would've gone to college later on, most likely woudl have never met my wife, would've had different jobs when I got out (assuming I would even want to have left). I would've missed a lot of really cool stuff I've seen and done, but I wonder what cool stuff I did miss taking this path instead.
Reservations? You can get reservations on the new restaurant they've built on the moon. I wouldn't bother, though. I hear that the food's okay, but there's no atmosphere.
"Stefan Boltzmann applies to a perfect blackbody. The Earth is not a perfect blackbody. In fact, not alot of things are. Doesn't it seem wrong to say that energy exposure always raises temperature to the same degree regardless of the object?"
I gathered from the article that he was referring to the Sun's energy output and its effect on Earth. The Sun is not a perfect blackbody, but it (like other stars) are close enough to not make a huge difference in the numbers.
Not re-de-de-bunking or anything, just partly making sure we're all talking about the same thing. He does sort of hand-wave at the math, and seems to want to use Boltzmann's personal issues as further indictment of mainstream scientific thought. I don't think many scientists disputed the existence of atoms by 1906 when Boltzmann killed himself. Someone willing to play fast and loose with something that can be refuted with basic fact checking isn't someone I'm going to rely on for information that requires more substantial work to verify.
You're right. Criminy, I've got about 10% of this much space on home file servers. 40TB was big 10 or maybe even 5 years ago. Not today, it isn't.
Granted, a terabyte on enterprise class hardware costs a bit more than consumer grade stuff, but still. The little newspaper I work for has almost that much in one chassis in one rack.
On 9/11/2001, I got onto a chat with a friend of mine with whom I've had many discussions about the things wrong in the world. His first line to me was:
"Don't tell me you started without me."
You may or may not appreciate that form of humor, but some people do. My sense of humor is fairly dark, but I have another friend who has such a dark sense of humor some of his comments give me shivers. Interestingly enough, he works as a paramedic. I don't think that when he makes a joke about the carnage at a multi-car drunk driver-caused accident that he's endorsing drunk driving.
"How, exactly, can one 'unveil' a classified, secret project?"
I don't know how it works, but I used to get messages all the time like "Gaia's Stepdaughters have begun a secret project called 'The Self-Aware Colony'" and stuff like that. Maybe I just had good probe teams, and occasionally I was planetary governor.
You control: Desktops for Mac OS X. I use this at work and it's a really nifty program. It does chap my ass that I have to pay for something a decent OS should supply, but it's basically necessary software for me these days, even with dual monitors.
I have six desktops, and use four at home with my Linux box (IceWM). I need fewer at home because I do fewer context switches here.
At work, I have a desktop reserved for mail, too. The left monitor holds the email client, and the right I use for browser, editors, terminal windows, and/or IM on an "as needed" basis.
"I blew my interview with Google (I own up to this one - I fucked it up, badly. Should have let them reschedule it after they called an hour late and I ended up taking a nap while I waited. Doing an interview when groggy is never, -ever- advisable)"
If they call an hour late, you should tell them to reschedule. Even if it is Google.:-)
But I feel your pain. I did a phone screen with them in July 2005, and the first one went really well, but the second one I scheduled when I was off work a week doing house remodeling. Software and computers were about the furthest thing from my mind, and I'm sure I screwed that one up 'cause they said "thanks but no thanks!" after that. If they'd asked me about flooring, board cutting, and underlayment, I would've cold rocked 'em.;-)
Take heart, though. Google contacted me again just this last month wanting to do it all over again. Apparently, I did better than I thought because the guy who contacted me said "I'm not sure why you got dinged, because you did really well on both screens.". So, give it a year or so from the last one... they'll probably go for you again.
I don't normally respond to ACs for the same reason I don't let them post in my JEs, but I'll make an exception because you bring up some good points here.
"You were willing to work hard in the 20th century probably because you were young in the 20th century."
Who says I'm not willing to work hard? I still work as hard or harder as I ever did, and still spend time learning new things I think people will ask of me in the future, even though I'm in the last gleamings of my thirties. What's different is that I'm still a hard worker but I also have a clue or three now, and frankly, I expect that if someone wants to avail themselves of my experience, they have to put up a little more remuneration now. I'm not afraid of hard work, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to give it away, either. I get to do a lot of fairly cool things at my current job, I have my boss' respect and a lot of autonomy, and I'm paid fairly well for the region of the country I live in.
"Why not take a chance spending a few years going for the gold?"
There's not a thing in the world wrong with this. But is this position "going for the gold?" I'm not so sure. My risk taking now is not so much in my primary career path, but trying to get side ventures off the ground, some tech related, some not.
Truth, I am older, and I have a family, including a smart soon-to-be-fourteen year old son who will be going to college in a few short years. If it were just me, I could live in a cave, catching fish and growing turnips, as long as the cave had power and broadband.
"It can actually help accelerate your career too, even if the company isn't successful."
Why does a senior-level superstar engineer need career acceleration? This episode of "ask slashdot" wasn't asking about how to get some young guns on board my great new start-up venture. It's about getting senior level superstars on the team of a well-established brand. All I ask is "what are they offering?" Is it 85k/year in the Bay Area and halfsies on the Kaiser family healthcare plan? Doesn't sound like gold to me as a senior software guy, and though I think I'm smarter than the average bear, I don't consider myself anything remotely resembling a superstar. With that said, and if I can shed a bit of modesty for a bit, I've been an important player in projects that have received national recognition more than once, and I don't have much trouble getting interviews and offers from companies you read about all the time here on/.
A senior superstar doesn't need CV padding, or they wouldn't be a senior superstar. Even a decently above average senior guy has got more of a problem of "what do I take off of my CV that's least relevant", rather than what to put on it.
How much is the pay? A lot of places who have (or think they have) cool points seem to think that those are a substitute for cash. I recently got a job offer from one of those cool places (you've heard of it, I'm sure) in the Bay that paid a paltry 16% more than I make in nowheresville, South Carolina. It hurt, because the job, was indeed cool as all hell, but I've got a family to look after.
Sure, you can talk about the wonderful things I can do in the Bay Area, but after paying the rent, all that would change is that I'm a lot closer to the things
that I still can't do because now I can't afford it.
Personally, I'd like to live in a place where I've got at least a ghost of a chance of buying a decent 3 bedroom plus an office house without needing a galactic-scale interest only ARM.
The job offer reads "willing to travel frequently" to I presume Fremont. Does that mean they're willing to pay for that travel, too?
Working insane hours for low pay because the job is "cool" is so 20th century. I think most of us have played on that roller coaster once or twice and don't want to do it again. Maybe you can sell that to fresh graduates, but the senior people have learned these lessons already.
"Isn't that the only movie still available on Betamax?
Yes... from the first printing, no less! They were going to play it non-stop in Camp X-ray but even Alberto Gonzales said "Whoa, that's kinda hardcore, don't you think?"
Slashdot Mirror
"You too can have "it" if you peddle just a little harder!!"
I like the wordplay: "pedal/peddle". Did you intend it, or was it just one of those happy accidents?
Implicit in your assumption is that a mission is operated solely by NASA civil service employees, which is a handy assumption for your flip answer, but meanwhile, back in the real world, that's not the case. I'll grant that the people who will be affected have some warning, but I guarantee you Griffin and Co. are already planning on where to reallocate the extended mission money if and when they declare MGS dead. That money doesn't all go to NASA facilities. The science operations for the Mars Orbiter Camera goes to a small company and the Thermal Emission Spectrometer money goes to Arizona State's Mars Space Flight Facility, a place I worked for 4 years and personally witnessed several people get laid off in early '06 because of NASA reallocation for the new manned program and to pay for hurricane damages to NASA facilities.
Yeah, I'm sure the people who got laid off worked something out, and the people who will get laid off will work something out, too. You can continue to choose to "call shenanigans" all you want, but you asked a question, I answered, you didn't like the answer and decided to wave it away with flippant handwaving. This has effects on real people and your "rational ignorance" becomes willful ignorance if you choose to continue to deny it.
Um, actually, yeah. I have a couple friends who are probably going to be out of a job now. So, approve or disapprove of it, the fact remains somebody's going to miss it.
Actually, By the time Piltdown Man was revealed as a hoax, many anthropologists' models of human evolution were already regarding it as an aberration and disregarding it. I imagine quite a few of them blew sighs of relief when they heard it was a hoax. There were a few at the time of discovery believed it to be a hoax, too. I suppose time will tell on the global warming debate, too.
Sorry, Mom!
Certainly, but we must first productize new paradigms of scalable efficiencies to deliver best-of-breed solutions to both existing and emerging market segments.
I thought it was just called the GNU/L-Aid.
I took the ASVAB in '85 and pretty much pegged it, too. 99%ile in every category except one category which I only scored 94%ile. At the time I didn't know the difference between wood and machine screw. :-)
I was seriously considering going into the Air Force, but didn't, largely because I was about 20 pounds over the weight limit for my height. The other forces weren't so picky about that, but they didn't have the programs that I was as interested in. Very much unlike now, however, my excess weight was muscle put on by tossing 100 pound chunks of steel down a chute on a construction job for 4 hours a day. I thought it silly to quit my job ($6 an hour when you're 17/18 in 1985 was good money!) for months before I went in so I could figure out how to lose muscle mass without gaining fat before I could go in, so I didn't. For all I know, I could've gotten an exception based on a physical or something, but I was young and dumb then and didn't think to ask.
Huh. I never really thought about it until now how much that decision affected my life. I would've gone to college later on, most likely woudl have never met my wife, would've had different jobs when I got out (assuming I would even want to have left). I would've missed a lot of really cool stuff I've seen and done, but I wonder what cool stuff I did miss taking this path instead.
"Of course if the user is deaf and blind, I'm not sure how they are using a computer to begin with."
Pinball interface.
Actually, the point of puns is to strike those around them with lightening. :-)
Reservations? You can get reservations on the new restaurant they've built on the moon. I wouldn't bother, though. I hear that the food's okay, but there's no atmosphere.
"Stefan Boltzmann applies to a perfect blackbody. The Earth is not a perfect blackbody. In fact, not alot of things are. Doesn't it seem wrong to say that energy exposure always raises temperature to the same degree regardless of the object?"
I gathered from the article that he was referring to the Sun's energy output and its effect on Earth. The Sun is not a perfect blackbody, but it (like other stars) are close enough to not make a huge difference in the numbers.
Not re-de-de-bunking or anything, just partly making sure we're all talking about the same thing. He does sort of hand-wave at the math, and seems to want to use Boltzmann's personal issues as further indictment of mainstream scientific thought. I don't think many scientists disputed the existence of atoms by 1906 when Boltzmann killed himself. Someone willing to play fast and loose with something that can be refuted with basic fact checking isn't someone I'm going to rely on for information that requires more substantial work to verify.
You're right. Criminy, I've got about 10% of this much space on home file servers. 40TB was big 10 or maybe even 5 years ago. Not today, it isn't.
Granted, a terabyte on enterprise class hardware costs a bit more than consumer grade stuff, but still. The little newspaper I work for has almost that much in one chassis in one rack.
Some people have a dark sense of humor.
On 9/11/2001, I got onto a chat with a friend of mine with whom I've had many discussions about the things wrong in the world. His first line to me was:
"Don't tell me you started without me."
You may or may not appreciate that form of humor, but some people do. My sense of humor is fairly dark, but I have another friend who has such a dark sense of humor some of his comments give me shivers. Interestingly enough, he works as a paramedic. I don't think that when he makes a joke about the carnage at a multi-car drunk driver-caused accident that he's endorsing drunk driving.
"How, exactly, can one 'unveil' a classified, secret project?"
I don't know how it works, but I used to get messages all the time like "Gaia's Stepdaughters have begun a secret project called 'The Self-Aware Colony'" and stuff like that. Maybe I just had good probe teams, and occasionally I was planetary governor.
"(but of course that only applies to Linux)"
You control: Desktops for Mac OS X. I use this at work and it's a really nifty program. It does chap my ass that I have to pay for something a decent OS should supply, but it's basically necessary software for me these days, even with dual monitors.
I have six desktops, and use four at home with my Linux box (IceWM). I need fewer at home because I do fewer context switches here.
At work, I have a desktop reserved for mail, too. The left monitor holds the email client, and the right I use for browser, editors, terminal windows, and/or IM on an "as needed" basis.
"so this could be a straight-to-video release if we're lucky."
And if we're very lucky, perhaps the container ship bringing the disks to North America will sink in a typhoon.
Don't lend you my DS. :-)
"I blew my interview with Google (I own up to this one - I fucked it up, badly. Should have let them reschedule it after they called an hour late and I ended up taking a nap while I waited. Doing an interview when groggy is never, -ever- advisable)"
If they call an hour late, you should tell them to reschedule. Even if it is Google. :-)
But I feel your pain. I did a phone screen with them in July 2005, and the first one went really well, but the second one I scheduled when I was off work a week doing house remodeling. Software and computers were about the furthest thing from my mind, and I'm sure I screwed that one up 'cause they said "thanks but no thanks!" after that. If they'd asked me about flooring, board cutting, and underlayment, I would've cold rocked 'em. ;-)
Take heart, though. Google contacted me again just this last month wanting to do it all over again. Apparently, I did better than I thought because the guy who contacted me said "I'm not sure why you got dinged, because you did really well on both screens.". So, give it a year or so from the last one... they'll probably go for you again.
I don't normally respond to ACs for the same reason I don't let them post in my JEs, but I'll make an exception because you bring up some good points here.
"You were willing to work hard in the 20th century probably because you were young in the 20th century."
Who says I'm not willing to work hard? I still work as hard or harder as I ever did, and still spend time learning new things I think people will ask of me in the future, even though I'm in the last gleamings of my thirties. What's different is that I'm still a hard worker but I also have a clue or three now, and frankly, I expect that if someone wants to avail themselves of my experience, they have to put up a little more remuneration now. I'm not afraid of hard work, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to give it away, either. I get to do a lot of fairly cool things at my current job, I have my boss' respect and a lot of autonomy, and I'm paid fairly well for the region of the country I live in.
"Why not take a chance spending a few years going for the gold?"
There's not a thing in the world wrong with this. But is this position "going for the gold?" I'm not so sure. My risk taking now is not so much in my primary career path, but trying to get side ventures off the ground, some tech related, some not.
Truth, I am older, and I have a family, including a smart soon-to-be-fourteen year old son who will be going to college in a few short years. If it were just me, I could live in a cave, catching fish and growing turnips, as long as the cave had power and broadband.
"It can actually help accelerate your career too, even if the company isn't successful."
Why does a senior-level superstar engineer need career acceleration? This episode of "ask slashdot" wasn't asking about how to get some young guns on board my great new start-up venture. It's about getting senior level superstars on the team of a well-established brand. All I ask is "what are they offering?" Is it 85k/year in the Bay Area and halfsies on the Kaiser family healthcare plan? Doesn't sound like gold to me as a senior software guy, and though I think I'm smarter than the average bear, I don't consider myself anything remotely resembling a superstar. With that said, and if I can shed a bit of modesty for a bit, I've been an important player in projects that have received national recognition more than once, and I don't have much trouble getting interviews and offers from companies you read about all the time here on /.
A senior superstar doesn't need CV padding, or they wouldn't be a senior superstar. Even a decently above average senior guy has got more of a problem of "what do I take off of my CV that's least relevant", rather than what to put on it.
How much is the pay? A lot of places who have (or think they have) cool points seem to think that those are a substitute for cash. I recently got a job offer from one of those cool places (you've heard of it, I'm sure) in the Bay that paid a paltry 16% more than I make in nowheresville, South Carolina. It hurt, because the job, was indeed cool as all hell, but I've got a family to look after.
Sure, you can talk about the wonderful things I can do in the Bay Area, but after paying the rent, all that would change is that I'm a lot closer to the things that I still can't do because now I can't afford it.
Personally, I'd like to live in a place where I've got at least a ghost of a chance of buying a decent 3 bedroom plus an office house without needing a galactic-scale interest only ARM.
The job offer reads "willing to travel frequently" to I presume Fremont. Does that mean they're willing to pay for that travel, too?
Working insane hours for low pay because the job is "cool" is so 20th century. I think most of us have played on that roller coaster once or twice and don't want to do it again. Maybe you can sell that to fresh graduates, but the senior people have learned these lessons already.
"Geek = biting the heads off live chickens. Not so good imo."
Why not, don't you know they taste like chicken?
"Isn't that the only movie still available on Betamax?
Yes... from the first printing, no less! They were going to play it non-stop in Camp X-ray but even Alberto Gonzales said "Whoa, that's kinda hardcore, don't you think?"
First the rootkit, then the PS3, and now giving away "Talladega Nights"... why does Sony hate us so?
Ah, but, presumably, these games all exist in the same universe. So, the Bood Elves exist in WoW, you just ain't seen 'em yet! :-)