There's been a lot of grumbling the past year or so about regressions in notebook/netbook power management which hurt battery life. Aside from that, I've generally had pretty good luck using Ubuntu Linux on laptops; but I haven't tried installing it on a new-ish laptop yet (all have been older HP/Compaq models).
More likely it'll create a whole new class of "expert witnesses" who are supposed to be able to tell whether a photo has been faked with this tech. So yeah, you can say "not me"... but to have a decent chance of getting away with it you'll probably need to pay an "expert" to testify on your behalf.
Sounds like a plan to me! Or at least enough of the OED that given enough time and computing power we can analyze his speech patterns and come up with a credible synthetic facsimile...:D
As with any other engineering field, don't pass up any opportunities to learn new shit. You're only as valuable to your prospective employer as your (perceived) skills and willingness/ability to learn new ones.
I didn't start out in aerospace. I thought I wanted to write video games, but ended up doing stints in telecom, finance, and at a US DOE research lab for most of my career. I eventually landed in aerospace/military. Vast majority of the aerospace jobs are with companies doing government (read: mostly military) contract work... just so you know, in case that's an issue.
Even if you don't get your dream job right out of school, stay focused. If you're genuinely interested in aerospace and have a clue, I think you will get there eventually.
Disclaimer: I'm old enough to be your dad... not sure if that's a plus or a minus in your book.:D
JEJ would be better than MF. IMO he comes off as both soothing and authoritarian at the same time. Hmm... that could actually be a pretty dangerous combination, if it falls into the wrong hands!
Hey, at least at Fry's you can buy oscilloscope probes, discrete LEDs, resistors, etc. Now that Radio Shack has morphed into a glorified cell phone store, it is good to have a B&M place to get that hard-core techie stuff when you need it NOW! (Well, they had that sort of stuff the last time I set foot in a Fry's ~3 years ago; not sure if they still have it today.)
I've got a love-hate relationship with the place. If you can imagine "Best Buy's computer/TV/camera department meets dingy flea market, with prices that are sometimes comparable to Newegg's (but usually just a bit higher, and occasionally lower), and highly variable customer service that will eventually drive you to drink" you've got a pretty good idea of the ambiance of the "new" CompUSA.
My most surreal (as opposed to frustrating... heh) experience there in recent memory was the time a year or two ago when I was standing in the checkout line, and skimming the heaps of random stuff in the "impulse buy" bins. Right next to the $10 no-name MP3 players, $3 thumbdrives, and highly caffeinated energy drinks was a pile of $100 AMD Phenom quad-core CPUs. W...T...F!
In name only. TigerDirect acquired the rotting corpse of CompUSA when they went tits-up and closed most (all?) of their stores a few years back. So CompUSA is effectively TigerDirect's B&M division now. They've been (re)opening CompUSA stores in a few areas (mostly Florida, Texas, and Illinois) over the past couple of years; the one near me used to be TigerDirect's Chicago-area outlet store (so they basically just changed the sign on the front from TigerDirect to CompUSA).
The store itself is actually kind of ghetto -- it tends to be disorganized, the customer service ranges from mediocre to awful, and some of the stuff they're selling is junk. But if you know what to look for (and what to avoid!) you can get some decent deals; they're also really handy for those "geek emergencies". The local one is on my way to/from work, so fairly convenient.
I just bought a 2 TB Hitachi at the local CompUSA outlet store for $69.99 earlier today. It wasn't listed on their web site at that price, but that's what the shelf tag said. Maybe they just hadn't gotten around to updating the shelf tag yet? It *did* in fact initially ring up for $10 more, but I got it for $69.99 after pointing out the discrepancy to the cashier...
I do run some multithreaded workloads and VMs, but I also realize 6 cores wouldn't be fully utilized most of the time. It is really more of a future-proofing move, so that I can wait out the 1st gen Bulldozer chips.
Note the part where I said "existing systems". If any of my existing systems already had Socket FM1 motherboards, I'd already have APUs in them.;-)
There's also the minor detail of the APUs not supporting ECC RAM. I generally use ECC RAM for any box that acts as a server (prefer it for desktops too, actually... but it is less of a "must have" and more of a "nice to have" for desktops).
I love CPU speed, but I also love to keep my wallet as full as possible. This is what AMD offers: "bang for your buck". AMD is interesting for anyone who wants to balance between spending money and reasonable performance.
Which is why this chip is not a good buy until they drop the price. Right now it is not a good "bang for your buck".
Looks like I will be putting Phenom II X6 chips in my existing systems and sitting tight for a year or two.
Well, you can argue that allowing the banking system to fail would've been the lesser of two evils. But I doubt I would believe you. Everything is too damn interconnected.
It is also a bit disingenuous to whine about the bailout, but completely ignore the things which made it necessary. A system which allowed the MBS debacle and "too big to fail" banks is clearly a broken system.
See, here's where you're wrong. No one was forced to invest in mortgage backed securities. Anyone who did obviously deserved to lose their asses.
Forced, no. But definitely misled: Those securities were fraudulently rated AAA -- the highest investment grade -- by ratings agencies who were effectively being paid off by the bond issuers. This disconnect between the bond rating and actual investment risk was a major contributing factor to the ensuing train wreck. I don't see how this can be described as anything other than fraud, motivated by greed, and facilitated by a lack of oversight.
You're a Gold Bug, right? I think I've gotten pretty good at spotting them...;-)
Your 2% inflation over 100 years reduced the value of a dollar roughly seven-fold. The Mortgage Backed Securities scam foisted upon us by the Wall Street investment banks was leveraged to the hilt (I've seen figures as high as 35x), and this happened over a period of just a few years, not a century. This effectively pumped billions of "fake" dollars into the economy without our government needing to mint a single extra cent. Of course like any Ponzi scheme, it had to collapse eventually; the current economic pain is the ongoing result of what was effectively a massive reset.
Greed was the motivation. Excessive leverage facilitated by lax regulation of the banking an investment industries allowed it to happen.
So the protesters have it half right, in that they are blaming Wall Street. But they're also asking the very people who were complicit in creating this mess -- our government officials and banking regulators, many of whom are from Wall Street -- to fix it. Some of the demands coming out of the movement are also far enough out there to ensure that they will not be taken seriously (though the list from the "Occupy Chicago" faction seems to be mostly reasonable...)
These people are pissed off -- and justifiably so! -- at the current system. And like the Tea Party, they shed more heat than light and don't have any practical suggestions regarding how to actually *fix* things.
If you think Bitcoins are going to put a dent in the current system, you're incredibly naive. It's like expecting a BB gun to put a dent in an M1 tank.
Slashdot Mirror
There's been a lot of grumbling the past year or so about regressions in notebook/netbook power management which hurt battery life. Aside from that, I've generally had pretty good luck using Ubuntu Linux on laptops; but I haven't tried installing it on a new-ish laptop yet (all have been older HP/Compaq models).
More likely it'll create a whole new class of "expert witnesses" who are supposed to be able to tell whether a photo has been faked with this tech. So yeah, you can say "not me"... but to have a decent chance of getting away with it you'll probably need to pay an "expert" to testify on your behalf.
Once we've also got the ability to render realistic 3D models of real people we're going to be in big trouble.
Sounds like a plan to me! Or at least enough of the OED that given enough time and computing power we can analyze his speech patterns and come up with a credible synthetic facsimile... :D
Umm... James Earl Jones, the topic of this sub-thread?
.
.
.
Step 5: Profit!
OK, seriously...
As with any other engineering field, don't pass up any opportunities to learn new shit. You're only as valuable to your prospective employer as your (perceived) skills and willingness/ability to learn new ones.
I didn't start out in aerospace. I thought I wanted to write video games, but ended up doing stints in telecom, finance, and at a US DOE research lab for most of my career. I eventually landed in aerospace/military. Vast majority of the aerospace jobs are with companies doing government (read: mostly military) contract work... just so you know, in case that's an issue.
Even if you don't get your dream job right out of school, stay focused. If you're genuinely interested in aerospace and have a clue, I think you will get there eventually.
Disclaimer: I'm old enough to be your dad... not sure if that's a plus or a minus in your book. :D
JEJ would be better than MF. IMO he comes off as both soothing and authoritarian at the same time. Hmm... that could actually be a pretty dangerous combination, if it falls into the wrong hands!
How about we just use James Earl Jones for everything? I think I'd be fine with that...
Hey, at least at Fry's you can buy oscilloscope probes, discrete LEDs, resistors, etc. Now that Radio Shack has morphed into a glorified cell phone store, it is good to have a B&M place to get that hard-core techie stuff when you need it NOW! (Well, they had that sort of stuff the last time I set foot in a Fry's ~3 years ago; not sure if they still have it today.)
I've got a love-hate relationship with the place. If you can imagine "Best Buy's computer/TV/camera department meets dingy flea market, with prices that are sometimes comparable to Newegg's (but usually just a bit higher, and occasionally lower), and highly variable customer service that will eventually drive you to drink" you've got a pretty good idea of the ambiance of the "new" CompUSA.
My most surreal (as opposed to frustrating... heh) experience there in recent memory was the time a year or two ago when I was standing in the checkout line, and skimming the heaps of random stuff in the "impulse buy" bins. Right next to the $10 no-name MP3 players, $3 thumbdrives, and highly caffeinated energy drinks was a pile of $100 AMD Phenom quad-core CPUs. W...T...F!
In name only. TigerDirect acquired the rotting corpse of CompUSA when they went tits-up and closed most (all?) of their stores a few years back. So CompUSA is effectively TigerDirect's B&M division now. They've been (re)opening CompUSA stores in a few areas (mostly Florida, Texas, and Illinois) over the past couple of years; the one near me used to be TigerDirect's Chicago-area outlet store (so they basically just changed the sign on the front from TigerDirect to CompUSA).
The store itself is actually kind of ghetto -- it tends to be disorganized, the customer service ranges from mediocre to awful, and some of the stuff they're selling is junk. But if you know what to look for (and what to avoid!) you can get some decent deals; they're also really handy for those "geek emergencies". The local one is on my way to/from work, so fairly convenient.
I just bought a 2 TB Hitachi at the local CompUSA outlet store for $69.99 earlier today. It wasn't listed on their web site at that price, but that's what the shelf tag said. Maybe they just hadn't gotten around to updating the shelf tag yet? It *did* in fact initially ring up for $10 more, but I got it for $69.99 after pointing out the discrepancy to the cashier...
I do run some multithreaded workloads and VMs, but I also realize 6 cores wouldn't be fully utilized most of the time. It is really more of a future-proofing move, so that I can wait out the 1st gen Bulldozer chips.
Note the part where I said "existing systems". If any of my existing systems already had Socket FM1 motherboards, I'd already have APUs in them. ;-)
There's also the minor detail of the APUs not supporting ECC RAM. I generally use ECC RAM for any box that acts as a server (prefer it for desktops too, actually... but it is less of a "must have" and more of a "nice to have" for desktops).
I love CPU speed, but I also love to keep my wallet as full as possible. This is what AMD offers: "bang for your buck". AMD is interesting for anyone who wants to balance between spending money and reasonable performance.
Which is why this chip is not a good buy until they drop the price. Right now it is not a good "bang for your buck". Looks like I will be putting Phenom II X6 chips in my existing systems and sitting tight for a year or two.
It is working now. When I posted my previous comment I was getting a 404 error.
Well, you can argue that allowing the banking system to fail would've been the lesser of two evils. But I doubt I would believe you. Everything is too damn interconnected.
The linked lkml thread has disappeared.
It is also a bit disingenuous to whine about the bailout, but completely ignore the things which made it necessary. A system which allowed the MBS debacle and "too big to fail" banks is clearly a broken system.
See, here's where you're wrong. No one was forced to invest in mortgage backed securities. Anyone who did obviously deserved to lose their asses.
Forced, no. But definitely misled: Those securities were fraudulently rated AAA -- the highest investment grade -- by ratings agencies who were effectively being paid off by the bond issuers. This disconnect between the bond rating and actual investment risk was a major contributing factor to the ensuing train wreck. I don't see how this can be described as anything other than fraud, motivated by greed, and facilitated by a lack of oversight.
You're a Gold Bug, right? I think I've gotten pretty good at spotting them... ;-)
Your 2% inflation over 100 years reduced the value of a dollar roughly seven-fold. The Mortgage Backed Securities scam foisted upon us by the Wall Street investment banks was leveraged to the hilt (I've seen figures as high as 35x), and this happened over a period of just a few years, not a century. This effectively pumped billions of "fake" dollars into the economy without our government needing to mint a single extra cent. Of course like any Ponzi scheme, it had to collapse eventually; the current economic pain is the ongoing result of what was effectively a massive reset.
Greed was the motivation. Excessive leverage facilitated by lax regulation of the banking an investment industries allowed it to happen.
So the protesters have it half right, in that they are blaming Wall Street. But they're also asking the very people who were complicit in creating this mess -- our government officials and banking regulators, many of whom are from Wall Street -- to fix it. Some of the demands coming out of the movement are also far enough out there to ensure that they will not be taken seriously (though the list from the "Occupy Chicago" faction seems to be mostly reasonable...)
...and you're claiming Bitcoins are that strategy? I don't think so.
If you believe that inflation is the cause of the current mess, you're almost as far out in left field as the post I originally responded to.
These people are pissed off -- and justifiably so! -- at the current system. And like the Tea Party, they shed more heat than light and don't have any practical suggestions regarding how to actually *fix* things.
If you think Bitcoins are going to put a dent in the current system, you're incredibly naive. It's like expecting a BB gun to put a dent in an M1 tank.