Hate to disappoint you, but working 2/3 of your paid hours isn't all that unusual. It may, in fact, be unusually high. I work for an electric utility in a (non-computer) engineering position, and 2/3 sounds about right. Of course, when things come in fast and furious, I work solid all day, while other days I may be lucky to work half of it.
One of the reasons (along with computers) that productivity is going up is because companies are getting better at checking to make sure workers are actually working. Obviously, though, they still have a lot of ground to cover
Ok, this is going to be a little off-topic, but Japanese authors need to be mentioned along with anime and manga.
First off, anything by Haruki Murakami. This includes "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" first and foremost, but also "A Wild Sheep Chase" and "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle", among others.
For Kafka lovers, check out Kobo Abe's surreal "The Woman in the Dunes", about an insect collector who becomes forced by a village to help keep them from being swallowed by an ever-encroaching desert.
Yukio Mishima is a must, essentially defining the first generation of post-WWII Japanese authors. Try "The Temple of the Golden Pavillion", especially.
Kensauro Oe is wonderful, especially his novella "The Catch" and novel "A Personal Matter". Some of his stuff tends towards the autobiographical.
Finally, Ryu Murakami has some more hard-edged stuff, especially "Coin Locker Babies" and "Almost Transparent Blue"
I wish that I could read the article in English on Babelfish, but my company has installed Cyberpatrol, which apparently blocks it! They also block Peacfire.org, Suck.com, TheOnion.com...
I meant the part of the article that talks about the fact that BeOS's stock barely moved in price after the IPO, in contrast to a lot of ".com" stocks that seem to float upward of their own volition. This is Be's "experience" with the stock market, so far.
I think that Be's experience shows that at least part of Wall Street is beginning to wake up to the fact that not everything with a ".com" after it will make oodles of money. Unfortunately, some worthwhile companies, with more to sell than a flash-in-the-pan idea and a web page, will also fall victim to this. Be and Red Hat could be among those.
Don't be fooled by the stock market into thinking that Linux and its associated companies are going nowhere. Even if the various Linux OSs do collectively fall on their face, the Open Source idea and movement are more than resiliant enough to just keep on trying and improving. The stock market doesn't make companies (though it can break them), and similarly the success or failure of a few Linuz companies won't doom everyone to the likes of M$.
I realize that the majority of those involved in the computer industry are male, but the articles seem to assume that all of them are, and that the girls are part of the "beer-guzzling, prom-dating" crowd that has mastered sexual relations. Furthermore, the one article encourages male programmers to treat all women sterotypically - buy them candy, etc. - EXPLICITLY in exchange for sex. They seem to miss the point that sex is part of a relationship with another person, and not a commodity to be bartered for with gifts. Even geek women, and those in CS classes, were often judged first and foremost on their attractiveness, and then maybe on their skills and personality.
The articles and responses show that the main problem for programmes and the computer world is not the lack of sex, but the lack of ability to deal with the opposite sex as anything but a vehicle for sex. Maybe if women were seen as people, with full personalities and interests of their own (sometimes including technical stuff), then everyone would get along better and be much happier, sexually and in other ways.
Nuclear power plants usually pay several million dollars a year [each] for insurance. GPU is still paying for TMI, and there are no cases of injury or death involved.
Also, civilian energy-producing plants are not used to create plutonium for bombs, and never were. The military has enough of its own reactors for those purposes. The early nuclear power industry did receive quite considerable subsidies from the U.S. government, but those are comparable to the support that other renewable energy sources have been receiving for decades now, with far fewer results than nuclear power so far. I agree with the support of these renewables, just as I agree with the early support of renewable nuclear power, as a good use of tax monies, to "kickstart" a civilian industry.
As I said above, certainty of accidents not being able to happen is what will cause them to happen. Nuclear plants in the U.S. have to prove more saftey, and more redundancy in their safety, than any other industry. New designs, which are currently being sold and built in Japan, Taiwan, and S. Korea, allow plants to shut down in the case of an accident with no operator action whatsoever. Safety is not assumed or "certain", it is planned, checked, and checked again.
U.S. nuclear plants, unlike the Russian RBMK (Chernobyl-type) design, have what is called a "negative power coefficient of temperature". This means that as the temperature in the core goes up, the water boils, and the chain reaction slows down and stops because the water is needed for moderation, or slowing neutrons down. RBMK-style reactors have a "positive power coefficien of temperature", which in effect meant that as the water boiled away at Chernobyl, more neutrons were available for reactions, speeding up the reaction and creating a "supercritical" situation which exponentially got out of hand. In the U.S.:
higher reaction rate --> higher core temperature higher core temperature --> water bolis water boils --> no moderation no moderation --> lower reaction rate lower reaction rate --> lower temperatures and reaction shuts down.
Note that control rods, which absorb neutrons, rendering them unable to be used to continue the chain reaction, are also inserted into the core, and reactors are also required to have three (3) INDEPENDENT means of replacing the cooling water in the core once the control rods are in the core.
In the case of a loss of on-site power, there are two (2) independent diesel generators that are required to come on-line in seven seconds, and to be able to power the site for forty-eight hours each. Also, the control rods in one type of reactor (PWR - Pressurized Water Reactor) are able to fall into the core under gravity alone in a loss of on-site power. The other kind of reactor in the U.S., BWRs (Boiling Water Reactors) use the diesel generators to drive their control rods up into the core.
As far as installing new fuel, this is only done while the reactor is shut down in the U.S., so a failure would have to include the reactor unexpectedly going critical with the control rods in place, etc.
TMI was a real wake-up call for the U.S. nuclear industry in terms of reactor design, safety systems, operator training, and computer modeling of accidents. The only was to run the reactors these days is literally safety first, otherwise the NRC will be on your @$$ so quickly it isn't funny. The Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any U.S. industry, and the only way that will continue is if people who operate and design the reactors continue to believe that accidents can happen if people aren't careful and attentive. Accidents will happen when the time comes that people think they can't, which is not the situation today.
Disclaimer: I am a Nuclear Engineering senior at Penn State, and welcome all e-mail in response to this at efm110@psu.edu
I got the same results, though you have to take into account the fact that these calculations are for in a vacuum... you have to take air resistance into account as well, which I don't know enough to do a back-of-the-envelope calcuation right now. 92 mph seems a bit high, though. Nothing against Cedar Point, of course, the greatest amusement park in the world!
Slashdot Mirror
Moderators, this one needs to be heard. Anyone who has mod points, use it here for someone who did his homework.
Hate to disappoint you, but working 2/3 of your paid hours isn't all that unusual. It may, in fact, be unusually high. I work for an electric utility in a (non-computer) engineering position, and 2/3 sounds about right. Of course, when things come in fast and furious, I work solid all day, while other days I may be lucky to work half of it.
One of the reasons (along with computers) that productivity is going up is because companies are getting better at checking to make sure workers are actually working. Obviously, though, they still have a lot of ground to cover
Ok, this is going to be a little off-topic, but Japanese authors need to be mentioned along with anime and manga.
First off, anything by Haruki Murakami. This includes "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" first and foremost, but also "A Wild Sheep Chase" and "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle", among others.
For Kafka lovers, check out Kobo Abe's surreal "The Woman in the Dunes", about an insect collector who becomes forced by a village to help keep them from being swallowed by an ever-encroaching desert.
Yukio Mishima is a must, essentially defining the first generation of post-WWII Japanese authors. Try "The Temple of the Golden Pavillion", especially.
Kensauro Oe is wonderful, especially his novella "The Catch" and novel "A Personal Matter". Some of his stuff tends towards the autobiographical.
Finally, Ryu Murakami has some more hard-edged stuff, especially "Coin Locker Babies" and "Almost Transparent Blue"
I wish that I could read the article in English on Babelfish, but my company has installed Cyberpatrol, which apparently blocks it! They also block Peacfire.org, Suck.com, TheOnion.com...
I meant the part of the article that talks about the fact that BeOS's stock barely moved in price after the IPO, in contrast to a lot of ".com" stocks that seem to float upward of their own volition. This is Be's "experience" with the stock market, so far.
I think that Be's experience shows that at least part of Wall Street is beginning to wake up to the fact that not everything with a ".com" after it will make oodles of money. Unfortunately, some worthwhile companies, with more to sell than a flash-in-the-pan idea and a web page, will also fall victim to this. Be and Red Hat could be among those.
Don't be fooled by the stock market into thinking that Linux and its associated companies are going nowhere. Even if the various Linux OSs do collectively fall on their face, the Open Source idea and movement are more than resiliant enough to just keep on trying and improving. The stock market doesn't make companies (though it can break them), and similarly the success or failure of a few Linuz companies won't doom everyone to the likes of M$.
I realize that the majority of those involved in the computer industry are male, but the articles seem to assume that all of them are, and that the girls are part of the "beer-guzzling, prom-dating" crowd that has mastered sexual relations. Furthermore, the one article encourages male programmers to treat all women sterotypically - buy them candy, etc. - EXPLICITLY in exchange for sex. They seem to miss the point that sex is part of a relationship with another person, and not a commodity to be bartered for with gifts. Even geek women, and those in CS classes, were often judged first and foremost on their attractiveness, and then maybe on their skills and personality.
The articles and responses show that the main problem for programmes and the computer world is not the lack of sex, but the lack of ability to deal with the opposite sex as anything but a vehicle for sex. Maybe if women were seen as people, with full personalities and interests of their own (sometimes including technical stuff), then everyone would get along better and be much happier, sexually and in other ways.
Nuclear power plants usually pay several million dollars a year [each] for insurance. GPU is still paying for TMI, and there are no cases of injury or death involved.
Also, civilian energy-producing plants are not used to create plutonium for bombs, and never were. The military has enough of its own reactors for those purposes. The early nuclear power industry did receive quite considerable subsidies from the U.S. government, but those are comparable to the support that other renewable energy sources have been receiving for decades now, with far fewer results than nuclear power so far. I agree with the support of these renewables, just as I agree with the early support of renewable nuclear power, as a good use of tax monies, to "kickstart" a civilian industry.
As I said above, certainty of accidents not being able to happen is what will cause them to happen. Nuclear plants in the U.S. have to prove more saftey, and more redundancy in their safety, than any other industry. New designs, which are currently being sold and built in Japan, Taiwan, and S. Korea, allow plants to shut down in the case of an accident with no operator action whatsoever. Safety is not assumed or "certain", it is planned, checked, and checked again.
U.S. nuclear plants, unlike the Russian RBMK (Chernobyl-type) design, have what is called a "negative power coefficient of temperature". This means that as the temperature in the core goes up, the water boils, and the chain reaction slows down and stops because the water is needed for moderation, or slowing neutrons down. RBMK-style reactors have a "positive power coefficien of temperature", which in effect meant that as the water boiled away at Chernobyl, more neutrons were available for reactions, speeding up the reaction and creating a "supercritical" situation which exponentially got out of hand. In the U.S.:
higher reaction rate --> higher core temperature
higher core temperature --> water bolis
water boils --> no moderation
no moderation --> lower reaction rate
lower reaction rate --> lower temperatures and reaction shuts down.
Note that control rods, which absorb neutrons, rendering them unable to be used to continue the chain reaction, are also inserted into the core, and reactors are also required to have three (3) INDEPENDENT means of replacing the cooling water in the core once the control rods are in the core.
In the case of a loss of on-site power, there are two (2) independent diesel generators that are required to come on-line in seven seconds, and to be able to power the site for forty-eight hours each. Also, the control rods in one type of reactor (PWR - Pressurized Water Reactor) are able to fall into the core under gravity alone in a loss of on-site power. The other kind of reactor in the U.S., BWRs (Boiling Water Reactors) use the diesel generators to drive their control rods up into the core.
As far as installing new fuel, this is only done while the reactor is shut down in the U.S., so a failure would have to include the reactor unexpectedly going critical with the control rods in place, etc.
TMI was a real wake-up call for the U.S. nuclear industry in terms of reactor design, safety systems, operator training, and computer modeling of accidents. The only was to run the reactors these days is literally safety first, otherwise the NRC will be on your @$$ so quickly it isn't funny. The Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any U.S. industry, and the only way that will continue is if people who operate and design the reactors continue to believe that accidents can happen if people aren't careful and attentive. Accidents will happen when the time comes that people think they can't, which is not the situation today.
Disclaimer: I am a Nuclear Engineering senior at Penn State, and welcome all e-mail in response to this at efm110@psu.edu
I got the same results, though you have to take into account the fact that these calculations are for in a vacuum... you have to take air resistance into account as well, which I don't know enough to do a back-of-the-envelope calcuation right now. 92 mph seems a bit high, though. Nothing against Cedar Point, of course, the greatest amusement park in the world!