Yeah, really. Once the subsidies get killed off like they did in the late 1970's, solar will once again be put back on the shelf and all those workers will be out of a job. Until the cost per watt is less than that of coal or natural gas (not including regulatory-based cost increases) solar will never be able to compete in the marketplace.
I've messed around with embedded ARM Linux boards from Technologic Systems. They claim sub-2.0 second boot times on most of their products. However, that's booting to Busybox. Okay, no big deal for an embedded system. But the big time hog is initializing the USB system. If you have devices plugged in on startup, I'm seeing boot times approaching 10 seconds.
What if there were an anti-hacking group actively monitoring the progress of the election and once they saw the effects of hacking they went in to the machines and corrected the error? But of course everyone knows that nobody but Republicans would engage in stealing elections.
If you read the book, you'd know that it's about a SVR defector who described all of this in great detail during his extensive debriefings. Nuclear winter theory as described by Carl Sagan was debunked in 1987.
The problem is fairly common. What works in the lab would at best be cost-prohibitive in the real world. Here's a classic example: In Solidworks, you can design anything but you can't build it because the tooling prevents it. You can also design stuff but it's impractical to assemble. You can design stuff that could be built but would cost so much that the market can't support the price tag.
Lab-based software rarely has a user-interface that works for the general population. Embedded systems are fairly easy to design and cheap to prototype but packaging it for production is a major expense. Making plastic molds is still cost prohibitive for very small quantities.
I highly recommend "Comrade J" by Pete Earley. http://www.amazon.com/Comrade-J-Pete-Earley/dp/B002BWQ5PY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311602623&sr=8-1 This book talks about the genesis of the SVR from the KGB. It also talks about how the whole concept of "nuclear winter" was invented by those agencies and fed to gullible westerners including Carl Sagan who steadfastly refused to believe it when NASA scientists debunked the whole thing. It also talks about what a colossal disaster the UN Oil for Food program was, who was duped, who profited from it, and more importantly who was pulling the strings. Bottom line is that foreign intelligence services don't need to do anything directly. There are plenty of idealists willing to do their dirty work.
Just as soon as I have perfected my system for harvesting and refining fairy farts and unicorn sprinkles. I'll just need about $50 million in grant money, half of which will go to procuring a 30,000 acre ranch in Wyoming where the fairies and unicorns will be grazing.
True, but companies shouldn't become totally marketing-driven or bottom-line. I used to work for a major toy company that was totally marketing driven. The toy designers would come up with some really cool toys but they would never see the light of day because if it wasn't 11.5 inches tall and had blond hair, the marketing flakes didn't want to know about it.
By contrast, you take a company like 3M that specifically encourages their brain-trust to try new product concepts and you have the solution for not only rescuing a company but for moving it forward and in new directions.
An MBA bean-counter is far more likely to look at a product concept and say "You'll never sell more than X of these" because they can't see beyond the numbers. While that may be true for a large company with tremendous overhead, that's not the case for a small company or a start-up.
All this being said, why Econ and Marketing 101 isn't part of freshman engineering is beyond me.
Right now, the trial bar and lawyers in general have a stranglehold on governments and they won't want to do anything that jeopardizes their revenue streams. Healthcare cost go up largely due to the lack of tort reform. Drugs are expensive in this country because the companies are building in the cost of a future lawsuit. OB-Gyn's have completely moved out of some cities because the malpractice insurance costs are stupid high. The "english" system of loser pays makes a lot of sense. That being said, what if the government controlled the legal fees just like some politicians want to control gas prices or other commodities? Maybe the EPA could declare lawyer-speak as toxic to the environment. Oooo....coool.
Lots of people are crying anti-trust but the question I have is who did the R&D for the components in question? Did Apple do the development and contract with the fabricator or did the component company have something cool and Apple said "Okay, we'll back you in exchange for the first production runs."? If Apple did the development work, I see no grounds for anti-trust. Even if it's the latter, so what? It's not like other companies can't do the same thing with other fabricators.
Fine. As long as China and India do the same. But they long ago gave the Kyoto Protocol the political middle finger. My point was that the U.S.'s output hasn't increased nearly enough to account for the hockey-stick graph whereas China's has tracked exactly. The political problem is that the so-called developing countries don't want to shoot themselves in the foot and have instead lobbied for and effectively got a total pass on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. If this is such a catastrophic issue, every country needs to do exactly the same thing.
I love how the global climate change believers are so quick to blame the U.S. on the grounds that the U.S. uses roughly 25% of the world's energy. Correlation does not equal causation. But if it did, why isn't the causation China's industrialization which exactly tracks the hockey-stick graph? It's not like they're going whole-hog on "green" energy.
The acquisition of knowledge may take work but knowing what to do with it is IMHO an innate quality. Lots of people are able to regurgitate facts and figure but can't create anything or apply that information in a practical way. It reminds me of one of the big story elements of Cities in Flight. A device allows you to quickly acquire knowledge but student still have to attend classes to learn how to use it.
The trustees of a prominent university want to find out if their professors know their stuff. So they come up with a question: What's 2 plus 2? Math professor: Oh, that's easy. Four. Physics professor: Oh, it's 4.000000000 with an uncertainty of another place. Engineering professor: Just a minute while I get out my handbook. Accounting professor: *looks around to make sure nobody can hear* What do you want it to be?
That's no different than Nixon saying to David Frost "When the President does it, it's not illegal." It's no different than the Hugo Chavez's of the world saying "We've reviewed the election process and guess what? The people unanimously want us to stay in power forever!! WOOHOO!!! See? We told you so." *facepalm*
How in hell this can be definitively attributed to "global warming" is beyond the pale. It's much more likely that the lack of whaling activity would eventually lead to increase in population and hence migration.
I love how the TSA says that they reviewed the case and gave a pass to their own people. IMHO, there needs to be an independent review board for bullsh*t like this. That aside, I think the woman should have put a plastic turd in there just to piss them off (you know, because a real one would be gross).
Question: Is Steve Jobs to blame for all of this or is Randy Ubillos? In Steve's defense, a recently published article talks about him coming into a meeting about MobileMe and saying "Can someone explain to me what MobileMe is supposed to do?" After receiving a satisfactory explanation he said "So why the f*ck doesn't it do that?"
So, everyone likes to point the finger at (or give the finger to, as the case may be) Steve but Randy Ubillos heads up the video department in the company so IMHO, he's the one that should be held accountable. Right now, I'll bet Steve is tearing Randy a new a$$hole.
That being said, I have the same feelings for Intuit and Quickbooks/Quicken. These products aren't getting better. Case in point: I recently upgraded Quickbooks Premiere Manufacturing from 2008 to 2011. In three years, they still haven't implemented Bill of Materials features which I would consider a core capability to a Manufacturing version. Intuit seems hell-bent on running things in the cloud so they can bill people every month for their use.
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Yeah, really. Once the subsidies get killed off like they did in the late 1970's, solar will once again be put back on the shelf and all those workers will be out of a job. Until the cost per watt is less than that of coal or natural gas (not including regulatory-based cost increases) solar will never be able to compete in the marketplace.
I've messed around with embedded ARM Linux boards from Technologic Systems. They claim sub-2.0 second boot times on most of their products. However, that's booting to Busybox. Okay, no big deal for an embedded system. But the big time hog is initializing the USB system. If you have devices plugged in on startup, I'm seeing boot times approaching 10 seconds.
What if there were an anti-hacking group actively monitoring the progress of the election and once they saw the effects of hacking they went in to the machines and corrected the error? But of course everyone knows that nobody but Republicans would engage in stealing elections.
If you read the book, you'd know that it's about a SVR defector who described all of this in great detail during his extensive debriefings. Nuclear winter theory as described by Carl Sagan was debunked in 1987.
The problem is fairly common. What works in the lab would at best be cost-prohibitive in the real world. Here's a classic example: In Solidworks, you can design anything but you can't build it because the tooling prevents it. You can also design stuff but it's impractical to assemble. You can design stuff that could be built but would cost so much that the market can't support the price tag.
Lab-based software rarely has a user-interface that works for the general population. Embedded systems are fairly easy to design and cheap to prototype but packaging it for production is a major expense. Making plastic molds is still cost prohibitive for very small quantities.
Guess that whole "created or saved" thing is out the window now. Funny how people thought it was important to save car companies that A) make crap and B) couldn't survive without taxpayer subsidies yet manned spaceflight which has a wealth of benefits isn't worth it. http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/01/11/is-space-exploration-worth-the-cost-a-freakonomics-quorum/
I highly recommend "Comrade J" by Pete Earley. http://www.amazon.com/Comrade-J-Pete-Earley/dp/B002BWQ5PY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311602623&sr=8-1
This book talks about the genesis of the SVR from the KGB. It also talks about how the whole concept of "nuclear winter" was invented by those agencies and fed to gullible westerners including Carl Sagan who steadfastly refused to believe it when NASA scientists debunked the whole thing. It also talks about what a colossal disaster the UN Oil for Food program was, who was duped, who profited from it, and more importantly who was pulling the strings. Bottom line is that foreign intelligence services don't need to do anything directly. There are plenty of idealists willing to do their dirty work.
*rimshot*
Because it's about trading value for value, not goods for identical goods.
Well said, sir. Political correctness be damned.
LET'S SHIP IT!!!
Just as soon as I have perfected my system for harvesting and refining fairy farts and unicorn sprinkles. I'll just need about $50 million in grant money, half of which will go to procuring a 30,000 acre ranch in Wyoming where the fairies and unicorns will be grazing.
Why is it that Iran had thousands of replacement centrifuges? Thousands? Of Replacements?
True, but companies shouldn't become totally marketing-driven or bottom-line. I used to work for a major toy company that was totally marketing driven. The toy designers would come up with some really cool toys but they would never see the light of day because if it wasn't 11.5 inches tall and had blond hair, the marketing flakes didn't want to know about it.
By contrast, you take a company like 3M that specifically encourages their brain-trust to try new product concepts and you have the solution for not only rescuing a company but for moving it forward and in new directions.
An MBA bean-counter is far more likely to look at a product concept and say "You'll never sell more than X of these" because they can't see beyond the numbers. While that may be true for a large company with tremendous overhead, that's not the case for a small company or a start-up.
All this being said, why Econ and Marketing 101 isn't part of freshman engineering is beyond me.
Right now, the trial bar and lawyers in general have a stranglehold on governments and they won't want to do anything that jeopardizes their revenue streams. Healthcare cost go up largely due to the lack of tort reform. Drugs are expensive in this country because the companies are building in the cost of a future lawsuit. OB-Gyn's have completely moved out of some cities because the malpractice insurance costs are stupid high. The "english" system of loser pays makes a lot of sense. That being said, what if the government controlled the legal fees just like some politicians want to control gas prices or other commodities? Maybe the EPA could declare lawyer-speak as toxic to the environment. Oooo....coool.
Lots of people are crying anti-trust but the question I have is who did the R&D for the components in question? Did Apple do the development and contract with the fabricator or did the component company have something cool and Apple said "Okay, we'll back you in exchange for the first production runs."? If Apple did the development work, I see no grounds for anti-trust. Even if it's the latter, so what? It's not like other companies can't do the same thing with other fabricators.
Fine. As long as China and India do the same. But they long ago gave the Kyoto Protocol the political middle finger.
My point was that the U.S.'s output hasn't increased nearly enough to account for the hockey-stick graph whereas China's has tracked exactly. The political problem is that the so-called developing countries don't want to shoot themselves in the foot and have instead lobbied for and effectively got a total pass on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. If this is such a catastrophic issue, every country needs to do exactly the same thing.
I love how the global climate change believers are so quick to blame the U.S. on the grounds that the U.S. uses roughly 25% of the world's energy. Correlation does not equal causation. But if it did, why isn't the causation China's industrialization which exactly tracks the hockey-stick graph? It's not like they're going whole-hog on "green" energy.
The acquisition of knowledge may take work but knowing what to do with it is IMHO an innate quality. Lots of people are able to regurgitate facts and figure but can't create anything or apply that information in a practical way. It reminds me of one of the big story elements of Cities in Flight. A device allows you to quickly acquire knowledge but student still have to attend classes to learn how to use it.
The trustees of a prominent university want to find out if their professors know their stuff. So they come up with a question: What's 2 plus 2?
Math professor: Oh, that's easy. Four.
Physics professor: Oh, it's 4.000000000 with an uncertainty of another place.
Engineering professor: Just a minute while I get out my handbook.
Accounting professor: *looks around to make sure nobody can hear* What do you want it to be?
Effective or not, letting the TSA review itself is stupid.
That's no different than Nixon saying to David Frost "When the President does it, it's not illegal." It's no different than the Hugo Chavez's of the world saying "We've reviewed the election process and guess what? The people unanimously want us to stay in power forever!! WOOHOO!!! See? We told you so." *facepalm*
How in hell this can be definitively attributed to "global warming" is beyond the pale. It's much more likely that the lack of whaling activity would eventually lead to increase in population and hence migration.
I love how the TSA says that they reviewed the case and gave a pass to their own people. IMHO, there needs to be an independent review board for bullsh*t like this. That aside, I think the woman should have put a plastic turd in there just to piss them off (you know, because a real one would be gross).
Well, ya know, she might be trying to knit an Afghan. *rimshot*
Question: Is Steve Jobs to blame for all of this or is Randy Ubillos? In Steve's defense, a recently published article talks about him coming into a meeting about MobileMe and saying "Can someone explain to me what MobileMe is supposed to do?" After receiving a satisfactory explanation he said "So why the f*ck doesn't it do that?"
So, everyone likes to point the finger at (or give the finger to, as the case may be) Steve but Randy Ubillos heads up the video department in the company so IMHO, he's the one that should be held accountable. Right now, I'll bet Steve is tearing Randy a new a$$hole.
That being said, I have the same feelings for Intuit and Quickbooks/Quicken. These products aren't getting better. Case in point: I recently upgraded Quickbooks Premiere Manufacturing from 2008 to 2011. In three years, they still haven't implemented Bill of Materials features which I would consider a core capability to a Manufacturing version. Intuit seems hell-bent on running things in the cloud so they can bill people every month for their use.