While I'm not a huge fan of her style, I must say that she writes a sex column; her crededentials are appropriate and well-suited for the job. On the other hand, the thought of associating Dvorak or Cringley with sex makes me run in terror.
If said scientist has been politically active and has positions on most of the issues of the day that I approve of then yes, I'll take a chance on letting him switch career tracks.
Ahh, I see that you found my real motiviation for starting this thread.
I also find that voting against his opponent is good motivation.
Elect scientists and engineers!
There's a contested race in CA's 11th congressional district where the challenger has a Ph.D. in mathematics and an engineering background in wind turbine technology.
Seriously--If someone were to roll a RAID array of flash drives could they replace a conventional HD on a regular computer? You could run a real computer off a RAID 1+0 or 5+0 array of these things if the performance is good enough?
I'm still waiting for cross-platform WYSIWYG vector graphics. I need to work with Windows users, and they use EMF vector graphics extensively; it's the only practical solution when using Office on Windows. The problem is that Mac version of Office blows chunks when you try to render anything with any significant complexity. When I open these documents on my Mac, I have to wait ages for Word or PowerPoint to render the graphics, only to find that the graphics have been completely butchered.
I'm still dreaming of cross-platform WYSIWYG vector graphics support in Office--either PostScript or SVG. Of course, I know that pigs will fly out of my ass before MS does anything that useful with a standard that they don't own. At the very least, they could allow me to open a PowerPoint document created in the Windows version of Office and have all the embedded EMF files display properly.
What other vendor? Us/.'ers can grasp of using alternatives like OSX and *nix, but what about the great unwashed masses of home users who only know windows and aren't comfortable with the concept of exploring another OS, even if OSX is ultimately easier to use. What about the great hordes of corporate Microsoft certified IT weenies? I don't see them seeking an alernate vendor.
The parent is absolutely correct. Much of the top level R&D work, even "6.1" work (DoD jargon for basic research) is contracted out. There are some DoD labs that still do cutting edge work. The NRL is one. The alternative is to work for one of the contractors. You don't need to work for a juggernaut like Raytheon or Northrup Grumman. There are plenty of small companies that do advanced research. You should take a look for companies that are winning SBIR awards in research areas that interest you. The great thing about looking for SBIR winners is that you aren't limited to DOD work. There's also money from NIH, NASA, etc.
Of course, there are pressures for project management and some of these programs need to turn into products. It's hard to get away from the fact that it's hard to get research funding unless you have an ultimate application and the money won't keep coming unless you have some success in your work. Even in the glory days of Bell Labs when there was some time and money avaiable for curiosity driven research, most of the work had an application. Academic research faces similar hassles. Your advisor might have shielded you from some of that, but a professer needs to pull in research grants, and if your proposals don't have an ultimate application, it's hard to get funding, especially when you're starting out. If you don't get funding as an assistant professor, you will find that once your start-up money runs out you can't recruit students. Furthermore, the speed of research will grind to a halt since your existing students must teach all the time and you can't afford new equipment. Professors in this situation don't get tenure. For the most part, the professors who get money for pure unapplied science have already established themselves as brilliant researchers who are leaders in their fields at top universities.
The risk tolerance for this money is extremely low and the time horizon is short. A money market with a 5% return will protect your money from inflation and make a small return on top of that.
Apple purchased processors from Motorola. Their processors couldn't keep up with competition. Every time Motorola had a promising new design, the processors started out like gangbusters and then went nowhere. Then Apple switched to IBM; their consumer processor efforts flopped. Now they're with Intel and look at what's happening.
Let's face it. There's no way in hell that the record labels will allow DRM free vendors to set up shop in France. This is not a victory for DRM hating ogg fans.
The space application doesn't guarantee immunity from a big time lag--just the opposite. If NASA wants to use this for missions to the Moon or Mars, there will be a lag, and it will be quite noticible irregardless of how much they pay for their bandwidth.
Slashdot Mirror
I just want to see Apple get in trouble with these guy.
I'm looking forward to the resolution of the next great controversy, the great Mars elbow, or is it really an elbow...
While I'm not a huge fan of her style, I must say that she writes a sex column; her crededentials are appropriate and well-suited for the job. On the other hand, the thought of associating Dvorak or Cringley with sex makes me run in terror.
Somebody should re-sell hollowed out Zune shells to MS employees so that they can slip their iPods inside when they go to work.
Only it's at the college level rather than grade school.
You forgot the fun part. It needs to be fabricated from pure unadulterated unobtanium.
Elect scientists and engineers! There's a contested race in CA's 11th congressional district where the challenger has a Ph.D. in mathematics and an engineering background in wind turbine technology.
Seriously--If someone were to roll a RAID array of flash drives could they replace a conventional HD on a regular computer? You could run a real computer off a RAID 1+0 or 5+0 array of these things if the performance is good enough?
Please contact us. We have employment opportunities for people who think like you do.
Sincerely,
The Soylent Corporation
Didn't Karen Carpenter set the standard for the minimum mass of a star?
I'm still waiting for cross-platform WYSIWYG vector graphics. I need to work with Windows users, and they use EMF vector graphics extensively; it's the only practical solution when using Office on Windows. The problem is that Mac version of Office blows chunks when you try to render anything with any significant complexity. When I open these documents on my Mac, I have to wait ages for Word or PowerPoint to render the graphics, only to find that the graphics have been completely butchered.
I'm still dreaming of cross-platform WYSIWYG vector graphics support in Office--either PostScript or SVG. Of course, I know that pigs will fly out of my ass before MS does anything that useful with a standard that they don't own. At the very least, they could allow me to open a PowerPoint document created in the Windows version of Office and have all the embedded EMF files display properly.
What other vendor? Us /.'ers can grasp of using alternatives like OSX and *nix, but what about the great unwashed masses of home users who only know windows and aren't comfortable with the concept of exploring another OS, even if OSX is ultimately easier to use. What about the great hordes of corporate Microsoft certified IT weenies? I don't see them seeking an alernate vendor.
The parent is absolutely correct. Much of the top level R&D work, even "6.1" work (DoD jargon for basic research) is contracted out. There are some DoD labs that still do cutting edge work. The NRL is one. The alternative is to work for one of the contractors. You don't need to work for a juggernaut like Raytheon or Northrup Grumman. There are plenty of small companies that do advanced research. You should take a look for companies that are winning SBIR awards in research areas that interest you. The great thing about looking for SBIR winners is that you aren't limited to DOD work. There's also money from NIH, NASA, etc.
Of course, there are pressures for project management and some of these programs need to turn into products. It's hard to get away from the fact that it's hard to get research funding unless you have an ultimate application and the money won't keep coming unless you have some success in your work. Even in the glory days of Bell Labs when there was some time and money avaiable for curiosity driven research, most of the work had an application. Academic research faces similar hassles. Your advisor might have shielded you from some of that, but a professer needs to pull in research grants, and if your proposals don't have an ultimate application, it's hard to get funding, especially when you're starting out. If you don't get funding as an assistant professor, you will find that once your start-up money runs out you can't recruit students. Furthermore, the speed of research will grind to a halt since your existing students must teach all the time and you can't afford new equipment. Professors in this situation don't get tenure. For the most part, the professors who get money for pure unapplied science have already established themselves as brilliant researchers who are leaders in their fields at top universities.
The risk tolerance for this money is extremely low and the time horizon is short. A money market with a 5% return will protect your money from inflation and make a small return on top of that.
They needed to reproduce their results!
So you're stuck with our crummy OS. Want to buy some protection?
I agree, groupthink is a dangerous thing. I'll bet all of your co-workers argee with you too. Let's all stomp out groupthink!
Apple purchased processors from Motorola. Their processors couldn't keep up with competition. Every time Motorola had a promising new design, the processors started out like gangbusters and then went nowhere. Then Apple switched to IBM; their consumer processor efforts flopped. Now they're with Intel and look at what's happening.
Let's face it. There's no way in hell that the record labels will allow DRM free vendors to set up shop in France. This is not a victory for DRM hating ogg fans.
I wonder if there might have been some pressure to support Red Star Linux at home?
How does this stop the hordes of zombies on home broadband accounts with the default password for their SMTP sever stored in their e-mail client?
You need a sperm sample to get su access? And we wonder why there are so few women in IT!
How about data analysis software geared for scientists such as Matlab or my favorite, Igor Pro?
The space application doesn't guarantee immunity from a big time lag--just the opposite. If NASA wants to use this for missions to the Moon or Mars, there will be a lag, and it will be quite noticible irregardless of how much they pay for their bandwidth.