There are several unaddressed issues. Can the thing be manufactured in quantity and for less than the cost of a traditional gas-powered car? What's the plan for the power distribution network and who is going to control it? Right now, there's nothing stopping you from buying gas from anyone you want and nothing stopping you from having your own tank. In other words, this is all well and good for urban uses but country folk will have a lot of trouble with this. And then there's the issue of what if one's transportation needs go beyond needing to carry one's heavy ass around the block to get coffee? Some of us haul heavy loads and drive off-road. Of course, one could argue that there's a deeper conspiracy element to electric cars and the lack of distribution and that is the desire of some environmentalists to contain the human population to the cities. And then there's the entire trucking industry. Electric vehicles have yet to deal with heavy transport.
This is great but I also want a completely power-loss tolerant file system that doesn't need any fscking on restart. If I'm building a true Linux-based appliance, not a general purpose computer, laptop or netbook, basic criteria would be fast boot and the ability to turn it off by disconnecting the power without telling it to shut down gracefully. Basic toggle switch control and no fancy hardware to keep power available while it's shutting down. This would be battery powered and an end-user should be able to pull the batteries and put in new ones without ill effects.
Worst case scenario. Take what you currently pay for health insurance. The most reliable figure would be for a plan you pay for yourself. In my case, a plain-vanilla 80/20 from Blue Cross costs me $344 a month. Multiply that by 12 and then by 300,000,000. That gives you 1,238,400,000,000. That's 1.2 trillion dollars PER YEAR!!! And that doesn't even cover 100%. Okay so they say roughly 42.6 million are uninsured. That alone would be 175,852,800,000. $175 billion. Every year. Forever. That works out to over $586 in extra taxes that all 300 million of us would have to ante up just to cover the uninsured. But that assumes that every American pays taxes which we all know they don't. You could probably safely double that number. Figure around $1000 in taxes JUST TO COVER THE UNINSURED. That's a pretty scary number to me and that doesn't include the inevitable fact that government programs always balloon way beyond their initial projections. So you do the math. How would you like it if someone came up to you and told you that you'd have to fork over an extra grand every year for life? Show me where in the Constitution it says that you are entitled to free health care and I'll then suggest you read the 10th Amendment.
What I mean is that the museum attack was not planned, ordered, or carried out by an organized group. One man who believes in his cause is not a terrorist per se. One man acting on the orders of a group is. By the same token, one fanatical animal rights whack job taking matters into his own hands is a criminal. In the past, terrorists motivations were political in nature attempting to affect government policy overall not of a specific ideal such as fur.
Those two guys were not a terrorist who by definition belong to an organized group (key word there) attempt to affect change through fear. The museum dirtbag was a neo-Nazi wannabe who had a habit of this sort of behavior. "Oh but we can rehabilitate him." Sure you can. Let me know how that goes. Oh wait, he killed a guy. Oopsie. And the slime that killed the doctor was delusional. Terrorists never operate on their own. There is always a training and brainwashing hierarchy behind them. Now as for the c*ckbreath who killed an American soldier in Arkansas, you could say the same thing if you don't deep into his background to find out if he had real ties to Al Qaeda. But certainly the mainstream media won't dig into it and I'll bet that a federal investigation will close the case without bothering.
But, IMHO, if you're an engineer, you probably don't care about the fancy math and the theory behind it, you need the results. Or you're more likely to need to know how to turn a formula into executable code. Beyond that, when I was in college, the debate was whether or not you should be allowed a formula sheet during an exam. IMHO, if you can't have one then the exercise is half about memorization and half about application. Once again, as an engineer, it's pretty rare that you have to remember a formula especially one you rarely use. Commonly used ones become memory with increasing use. Knowing what to do with the formulae is more important. Then the onus is on the teacher to create problems that aren't plug-and-chug but require you to think.
The solution is simple. Start treating geeks like royalty. Elevate them to rock-star status. Pay them humongous signing bonuses. FIRST Robotics is a good place to start.
Sh*t flows down hill and IT people/sys-admins are considered by the rest of the corporate food-chain to be at the bottom. You'll also find that you are given Herculean tasks and no money to accomplish them with. I recall when we got the first Canon CLC printer after years of working on crappy dog-slow color printers (it was a print design group). The unit was a demo/loaner to convince the powers that be to buy one. But the bean-counter Nazis refused to buy toner for it. So one Sunday morning (yes, Sunday MORNING) I get an irate phone call at home screaming that the CLC was out of toner and I "HAD TO FIX IT NOW!". "How did you get this number?" was followed by "So, you expect me to pull bottles of toner out of my a$$ and drive into work to load them?" "I DON'T CARE! I HAVE A DEADLINE ON MONDAY!"
That was when I redoubled my efforts outside of work to develop software to sell. I eventually left them in the dust and that group no longer exists. Crisis Management never works. Trouble is most people don't practice the Seven P's. Previous Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. Start by printing those words on giant posters and stick them up all over the office.
Okay so I watched the first episode of "How do you solve a problem like Maria?"...cute teen girls, folks. And at the end, Andrew Lloyd Webber himself calls up a couple of the girls that didn't make the first cut. All but one of them was very reserved and ultra polite. I thought that if that happened in America there would be so much bleeping in the audio and dog-level pitched screaming. So, if you meet an alien, take a cue from the Brits.
heh...funny you should mention Wal-mart. They announced last week that they're planning to hire 22,000 (yes, thousand) new people. Clearly they're seeing a pronounced increase in business or they wouldn't be doing that. People around here anyway are tightening their belts but they need staple goods. I get a chuckle from the stories of the U.N. Cafe in New York that lets customers decide what they're willing to pay for a meal. No surprise that the place is flat broke.
Point taken. I'll agree that tax increase are not the sole reason but they are the most obvious. It all boils down to the almighty dollar. If state-mandated health care costs suddenly shoot through the roof, that would raise a red flag too. So would dramatic increases in local energy costs. In addition, small increases in cost don't justify a major move. A company would have to look at just what it would cost to complete a move. In most cases, the company has been wooed by a prospective city and/or state with financial incentives. Case in point, Apple is building a major data center in North Carolina. Clearly they saw a major cost advantage to building it there instead of California and given that it's a data center, access to Research Triangle Park is probably not a factor.
What Ballmer is saying is that the billions in taxes they would have to pay by changing the rules and what they would get in return for it is more expensive than moved the entire company to Ireland or wherever. And you can bet that whatever country they're considering is going to bend over backwards to try to make it happen because they'll end up with more tax revenue either directly or indirectly due to a general increase in population and local spending by that new population.
"when a government has sufficient tax revenues, it lowers tax rates."
That doesn't happen too often. Depending on the philosophy of who's running the show at that time, you might see a non-recurring tax refund but usually you find the legislators saying "Cool, extra money! You know, I've had this idea for an awesome private library or a stadium built in my name. It would be really great if the government would fund it to ensure my legacy."
Lesson to you, sir (spelled with a C and U) is Don't Put Words In Other People's Mouths. I said NOTHING (read that again: NOTHING) about a VAT. Furthermore, all your so-called stats suggests is that a steady decrease in corporate taxes over the last 40 years is that THAT is the reason the U.S. standard of living and results of its ingenuity have been THE watershed for the way things get accomplished throughout the world. Name one thing that a socialist government has done to change the world for the better. Go ahead...I dare you. The point I was making is that whenever there is a rise in Federal corporate income taxes over a couple of years (not decades), there is a drop in tax revenue. This is more clear when you look at individual state corporate income taxes. If you were running a large business that files in one state and they jacked up your rate significantly say 25% in one year and a neighboring state didn't, what would you do especially when you have to answer to investors? You'd either A) raise your prices, B) cut overhead which usually means laying people off, or C) move to a more business-friendly environment.
And the lesson is thus: "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." The economy is rather like those torus/cylindrical water-filled balloon toys. If you squeeze one end (i.e. private corporations), the whole thing shoots out onto the floor (insert pre-teen sexual jokes all you want...heh heh heh he said 'insert'). Governments can never completely control businesses in the private sector because they usually have lots of money and are therefore mobile. If a state keeps jacking up its corporate income tax rates, eventually the company decides it's no longer worth doing business there. This is a large-scale example of that result. The FACT of the matter (and it is a FACT), is that the U.S. has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. It's no surprise that companies choose to do business elsewhere. Also, when you chart corporate tax rates with tax revenue, there is a direct correlation between lower rates and higher revenues. And don't give me that "correlation isn't causation" B.S. It happens every time.
This doesn't surprise me a bit. John Bolton predicted this a week ago. "Oh, but they dismantled their nuke program!" Um, sure, the stopped trying to make fissile material because it's probably far cheaper to buy it from the Iranians. And I have no doubt that North Korea traded with Iran for the designs and other essential technology. So in fairly short order we'll have two extremist countries with nukes. WW3 is coming, folks, but keep believing you can talk them out of it.
While I'll wholeheartedly agree that there are too many physically incompetent people out there who have no clue how to change their own car's oil and then bitch and moan when Jip-me Lube screws them over for stuff they didn't need, being a skilled laborer does not lead to becoming a captain of industry. Quite the contrary, IMHO. What's needed is FAR FAR FAR less glorification of athletics and deification of a complete lack of musical talent and MUCH more encouragement towards scientific and engineering creativity for it's the latter that solves problems and builds strong economies. IMHO, the trend towards a service-based economy is troubling. To that end, I'd encourage a campaign to get the entire FIRST robotics season on mainstream television. Surely we can all live without yet another pointless reality TV series that glorifies the slimy, the manipulative, the talentless and elevates true brainpower to rock-star status.
What do you expect from a socialist government who, if it had been in power before and during the war, would have given in to Hitler's regime. These are the same morons who believe active intelligence (as opposed to passive) is uncouth. To them, preserving this watershed moment in history would be akin to glorifying war. It's no different than people who monday-morning-qb the dropping of the atomic bomb. To them I say that act saved more than a million lives because the Japanese were fully prepared for an Allied invasion.
I'll bet newly printed dollars that none of these Sierra Club boneheads have ever consulted a single engineer to find out if this is possible in a high-volume production environment. Sure, I've seen hand-tuned cars that get 100 MPG but you can't build them with any regularity.
Second, what these boneheads really want is everyone driving a Smart car which I wouldn't be caught dead in...actually, I'd probably end up as Spam-in-a-can. Extrapolate that out and you'll find that electric cars that aren't fuel-cell based require a source of power. That means you can't go too far from a developed area. Charging stations aren't likely to show up anywhere but cities so drivers will be restricted to the confines of a city. The Sierra Club would LOVE that. No more hoards of evil humans polluting their precious national parks. But I digress. The reality is that people will gravitate to buying more and more trucks because they will still have to run on fossil fuels (diesel) because nobody can pull off an electric utility truck or 18-wheeler.
Speaking from personal experience, I had neither the grades nor decent research experience from undergrad to garner me a decent job (or any job for that matter). All that changed during the course of my Masters. Employers like graduate degrees and are likely to pay you more and offer perks like covering moving expenses. I emerged in 1990 when the tech job market sucked. In two years time, things should be improving once the dust settles from the obscene corporate taxes and companies need people but are less willing to hire undergrads than they are grads.
Sounds to me like it's only a fishing expedition. If they haven't made you an offer, you've got nothing to consider except a hypothetical thought exercise and the existence of Megacorp is irrelevant. If you think they're going to buy you out and you'll get to keep working on what you're doing now or what you WANT to work on, forget it. Most corporations don't have a 3M mentality that encourages researchers to just invent stuff. if their real goal is to acquire your product once it's finished, you are no longer of much use. If they want your brain, then chances are they don't care about your product and want you to work on B.S. that their marketing flakes have come up with from some stupid focus group. If they want to buy you out to eliminate competition, the product is dead and you are of no further use to them. So, get enough money to retire on if you can. Typically, 3-4 times gross revenue for a company with existing products is what you can expect.
Figures a twit like Sanchez would pull something like this after engineering her own election. But I digress.
To blame a blog for Megan Meier's death is no different than blaming a bar owned for a drunk driver's death. Nobody forced her to read it. Nobody forced her to keep reading it. Quite frankly, I blame the parents for being that frackin' clueless about their daughter.
But as with most far-reaching legislation, protecting the poster-child is not the goal. The goal is to increase power and control over people. With gun-control, "protecting the innocent children" is the misdirection when the real goal is all out disarming of the people who will then be easily controlled. The Nazi's first started with registration. Once everyone dutifully followed the law and registered, they knew exactly where they were and who had them so they could confiscate them once private ownership of guns was outlawed. Remember, boys and girls, Adolf Hitler was ELECTED by the people of Germany. There wasn't a coup or similar blunt tactic. Witness Hugo Chavez cleverly guaranteeing that he will be in power for life. "Oh, but they'll just vote him out." Yeah right. In recent memory, there were cases of opposition votes against dictators being thrown in the trash. "Look! He won by a landslide." "What are all these ballots in this warehouse?" *blam* "Unidentified opposition supporters were horribly burned to death in a warehouse fire. The fire is reported to have been due to natural causes."
Here we have a bill that purports to protect the children yet has the power to imprison ANY speech 'they' (that would be the royal 'they') deem dangerous or subversive. The sheep will say "oh, that's good idea...we have to keep another Megan Meier from happening." And then they'll find themselves dragged off in the middle of the night to a gulag because they spoke ill of Obama and years later they will wonder how it all happened. (source: a relative who grew up in Stalinist Russia and witnessed it firsthand).
If nothing else, remember this: The Second Amendment is the last hope for protecting all of the others.
One of my favorite lines from "From the Earth to the Moon" was uttered by Harrison "Jack" Schmidt.
"Find a teacher who can bring out the 'scientific mind' in all of them."
Speaking as someone who wasn't the best of students in high-school, I was a lousy regurgitator of facts and a terrible test-taker. But I had a physics teach who nurtured my "experimentalist" nature. I also had a math tutor who was able to get me to understand the material far better than the regular teacher. I've also had college professors whose method of teaching only worked if you already had a background in the material from some mysterious unknown class I should have taken before.
My point is that a teacher is effective if they are able to reach the student who is having trouble yet far too many teachers are willing to write off the ones that don't "get it". In the current system, teachers' goal is to get tenure which is just a euphemism for coasting. "I got tenure. You can't fire me and I don't give a damn anymore." Executive Order #57: Tenure doesn't exist. You will be evaluated on your ability to teach with special merit given to teaching the unteachable. If you suck at it, you're gone. Demerits will be given to those who foist their own dogma on students.
Couple questions: 1) Is 3% more than in previous administrations? 2) Why not more? and most importantly 3) Who decides what research will be funded and on what basis? Gut reaction? That's all you've got to go on if you don't understand something and it's almost always dangerously wrong. And believe me, politicians' misunderstanding and misinformation far far FAR outweighs what they do understand.
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There are several unaddressed issues. Can the thing be manufactured in quantity and for less than the cost of a traditional gas-powered car? What's the plan for the power distribution network and who is going to control it? Right now, there's nothing stopping you from buying gas from anyone you want and nothing stopping you from having your own tank. In other words, this is all well and good for urban uses but country folk will have a lot of trouble with this. And then there's the issue of what if one's transportation needs go beyond needing to carry one's heavy ass around the block to get coffee? Some of us haul heavy loads and drive off-road. Of course, one could argue that there's a deeper conspiracy element to electric cars and the lack of distribution and that is the desire of some environmentalists to contain the human population to the cities. And then there's the entire trucking industry. Electric vehicles have yet to deal with heavy transport.
This is great but I also want a completely power-loss tolerant file system that doesn't need any fscking on restart. If I'm building a true Linux-based appliance, not a general purpose computer, laptop or netbook, basic criteria would be fast boot and the ability to turn it off by disconnecting the power without telling it to shut down gracefully. Basic toggle switch control and no fancy hardware to keep power available while it's shutting down. This would be battery powered and an end-user should be able to pull the batteries and put in new ones without ill effects.
Worst case scenario. Take what you currently pay for health insurance. The most reliable figure would be for a plan you pay for yourself. In my case, a plain-vanilla 80/20 from Blue Cross costs me $344 a month. Multiply that by 12 and then by 300,000,000. That gives you 1,238,400,000,000. That's 1.2 trillion dollars PER YEAR!!! And that doesn't even cover 100%. Okay so they say roughly 42.6 million are uninsured. That alone would be 175,852,800,000. $175 billion. Every year. Forever. That works out to over $586 in extra taxes that all 300 million of us would have to ante up just to cover the uninsured. But that assumes that every American pays taxes which we all know they don't. You could probably safely double that number. Figure around $1000 in taxes JUST TO COVER THE UNINSURED. That's a pretty scary number to me and that doesn't include the inevitable fact that government programs always balloon way beyond their initial projections. So you do the math. How would you like it if someone came up to you and told you that you'd have to fork over an extra grand every year for life? Show me where in the Constitution it says that you are entitled to free health care and I'll then suggest you read the 10th Amendment.
What I mean is that the museum attack was not planned, ordered, or carried out by an organized group. One man who believes in his cause is not a terrorist per se. One man acting on the orders of a group is. By the same token, one fanatical animal rights whack job taking matters into his own hands is a criminal. In the past, terrorists motivations were political in nature attempting to affect government policy overall not of a specific ideal such as fur.
Those two guys were not a terrorist who by definition belong to an organized group (key word there) attempt to affect change through fear. The museum dirtbag was a neo-Nazi wannabe who had a habit of this sort of behavior. "Oh but we can rehabilitate him." Sure you can. Let me know how that goes. Oh wait, he killed a guy. Oopsie. And the slime that killed the doctor was delusional. Terrorists never operate on their own. There is always a training and brainwashing hierarchy behind them. Now as for the c*ckbreath who killed an American soldier in Arkansas, you could say the same thing if you don't deep into his background to find out if he had real ties to Al Qaeda. But certainly the mainstream media won't dig into it and I'll bet that a federal investigation will close the case without bothering.
Right winger voters, soldiers returning from Iraq, and people with Ron Paul bumper stickers because "we have to know who these people are!"
But, IMHO, if you're an engineer, you probably don't care about the fancy math and the theory behind it, you need the results. Or you're more likely to need to know how to turn a formula into executable code. Beyond that, when I was in college, the debate was whether or not you should be allowed a formula sheet during an exam. IMHO, if you can't have one then the exercise is half about memorization and half about application. Once again, as an engineer, it's pretty rare that you have to remember a formula especially one you rarely use. Commonly used ones become memory with increasing use. Knowing what to do with the formulae is more important. Then the onus is on the teacher to create problems that aren't plug-and-chug but require you to think.
And don't name it Obamium or AlGorium. GAH!!!!!!
The solution is simple. Start treating geeks like royalty. Elevate them to rock-star status. Pay them humongous signing bonuses. FIRST Robotics is a good place to start.
Sh*t flows down hill and IT people/sys-admins are considered by the rest of the corporate food-chain to be at the bottom. You'll also find that you are given Herculean tasks and no money to accomplish them with. I recall when we got the first Canon CLC printer after years of working on crappy dog-slow color printers (it was a print design group). The unit was a demo/loaner to convince the powers that be to buy one. But the bean-counter Nazis refused to buy toner for it. So one Sunday morning (yes, Sunday MORNING) I get an irate phone call at home screaming that the CLC was out of toner and I "HAD TO FIX IT NOW!". "How did you get this number?" was followed by "So, you expect me to pull bottles of toner out of my a$$ and drive into work to load them?" "I DON'T CARE! I HAVE A DEADLINE ON MONDAY!"
That was when I redoubled my efforts outside of work to develop software to sell. I eventually left them in the dust and that group no longer exists. Crisis Management never works. Trouble is most people don't practice the Seven P's. Previous Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. Start by printing those words on giant posters and stick them up all over the office.
Okay so I watched the first episode of "How do you solve a problem like Maria?"...cute teen girls, folks. And at the end, Andrew Lloyd Webber himself calls up a couple of the girls that didn't make the first cut. All but one of them was very reserved and ultra polite. I thought that if that happened in America there would be so much bleeping in the audio and dog-level pitched screaming. So, if you meet an alien, take a cue from the Brits.
heh...funny you should mention Wal-mart. They announced last week that they're planning to hire 22,000 (yes, thousand) new people. Clearly they're seeing a pronounced increase in business or they wouldn't be doing that. People around here anyway are tightening their belts but they need staple goods. I get a chuckle from the stories of the U.N. Cafe in New York that lets customers decide what they're willing to pay for a meal. No surprise that the place is flat broke.
Point taken. I'll agree that tax increase are not the sole reason but they are the most obvious. It all boils down to the almighty dollar. If state-mandated health care costs suddenly shoot through the roof, that would raise a red flag too. So would dramatic increases in local energy costs. In addition, small increases in cost don't justify a major move. A company would have to look at just what it would cost to complete a move. In most cases, the company has been wooed by a prospective city and/or state with financial incentives. Case in point, Apple is building a major data center in North Carolina. Clearly they saw a major cost advantage to building it there instead of California and given that it's a data center, access to Research Triangle Park is probably not a factor.
What Ballmer is saying is that the billions in taxes they would have to pay by changing the rules and what they would get in return for it is more expensive than moved the entire company to Ireland or wherever. And you can bet that whatever country they're considering is going to bend over backwards to try to make it happen because they'll end up with more tax revenue either directly or indirectly due to a general increase in population and local spending by that new population.
"when a government has sufficient tax revenues, it lowers tax rates."
That doesn't happen too often. Depending on the philosophy of who's running the show at that time, you might see a non-recurring tax refund but usually you find the legislators saying "Cool, extra money! You know, I've had this idea for an awesome private library or a stadium built in my name. It would be really great if the government would fund it to ensure my legacy."
Lesson to you, sir (spelled with a C and U) is Don't Put Words In Other People's Mouths. I said NOTHING (read that again: NOTHING) about a VAT. Furthermore, all your so-called stats suggests is that a steady decrease in corporate taxes over the last 40 years is that THAT is the reason the U.S. standard of living and results of its ingenuity have been THE watershed for the way things get accomplished throughout the world. Name one thing that a socialist government has done to change the world for the better. Go ahead...I dare you. The point I was making is that whenever there is a rise in Federal corporate income taxes over a couple of years (not decades), there is a drop in tax revenue. This is more clear when you look at individual state corporate income taxes. If you were running a large business that files in one state and they jacked up your rate significantly say 25% in one year and a neighboring state didn't, what would you do especially when you have to answer to investors? You'd either A) raise your prices, B) cut overhead which usually means laying people off, or C) move to a more business-friendly environment.
And the lesson is thus: "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." The economy is rather like those torus/cylindrical water-filled balloon toys. If you squeeze one end (i.e. private corporations), the whole thing shoots out onto the floor (insert pre-teen sexual jokes all you want...heh heh heh he said 'insert'). Governments can never completely control businesses in the private sector because they usually have lots of money and are therefore mobile. If a state keeps jacking up its corporate income tax rates, eventually the company decides it's no longer worth doing business there. This is a large-scale example of that result. The FACT of the matter (and it is a FACT), is that the U.S. has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. It's no surprise that companies choose to do business elsewhere. Also, when you chart corporate tax rates with tax revenue, there is a direct correlation between lower rates and higher revenues. And don't give me that "correlation isn't causation" B.S. It happens every time.
This doesn't surprise me a bit. John Bolton predicted this a week ago. "Oh, but they dismantled their nuke program!" Um, sure, the stopped trying to make fissile material because it's probably far cheaper to buy it from the Iranians. And I have no doubt that North Korea traded with Iran for the designs and other essential technology. So in fairly short order we'll have two extremist countries with nukes. WW3 is coming, folks, but keep believing you can talk them out of it.
While I'll wholeheartedly agree that there are too many physically incompetent people out there who have no clue how to change their own car's oil and then bitch and moan when Jip-me Lube screws them over for stuff they didn't need, being a skilled laborer does not lead to becoming a captain of industry. Quite the contrary, IMHO. What's needed is FAR FAR FAR less glorification of athletics and deification of a complete lack of musical talent and MUCH more encouragement towards scientific and engineering creativity for it's the latter that solves problems and builds strong economies. IMHO, the trend towards a service-based economy is troubling. To that end, I'd encourage a campaign to get the entire FIRST robotics season on mainstream television. Surely we can all live without yet another pointless reality TV series that glorifies the slimy, the manipulative, the talentless and elevates true brainpower to rock-star status.
What do you expect from a socialist government who, if it had been in power before and during the war, would have given in to Hitler's regime. These are the same morons who believe active intelligence (as opposed to passive) is uncouth. To them, preserving this watershed moment in history would be akin to glorifying war. It's no different than people who monday-morning-qb the dropping of the atomic bomb. To them I say that act saved more than a million lives because the Japanese were fully prepared for an Allied invasion.
I'll bet newly printed dollars that none of these Sierra Club boneheads have ever consulted a single engineer to find out if this is possible in a high-volume production environment. Sure, I've seen hand-tuned cars that get 100 MPG but you can't build them with any regularity.
Second, what these boneheads really want is everyone driving a Smart car which I wouldn't be caught dead in...actually, I'd probably end up as Spam-in-a-can. Extrapolate that out and you'll find that electric cars that aren't fuel-cell based require a source of power. That means you can't go too far from a developed area. Charging stations aren't likely to show up anywhere but cities so drivers will be restricted to the confines of a city. The Sierra Club would LOVE that. No more hoards of evil humans polluting their precious national parks. But I digress. The reality is that people will gravitate to buying more and more trucks because they will still have to run on fossil fuels (diesel) because nobody can pull off an electric utility truck or 18-wheeler.
Speaking from personal experience, I had neither the grades nor decent research experience from undergrad to garner me a decent job (or any job for that matter). All that changed during the course of my Masters. Employers like graduate degrees and are likely to pay you more and offer perks like covering moving expenses. I emerged in 1990 when the tech job market sucked. In two years time, things should be improving once the dust settles from the obscene corporate taxes and companies need people but are less willing to hire undergrads than they are grads.
Sounds to me like it's only a fishing expedition. If they haven't made you an offer, you've got nothing to consider except a hypothetical thought exercise and the existence of Megacorp is irrelevant. If you think they're going to buy you out and you'll get to keep working on what you're doing now or what you WANT to work on, forget it. Most corporations don't have a 3M mentality that encourages researchers to just invent stuff. if their real goal is to acquire your product once it's finished, you are no longer of much use. If they want your brain, then chances are they don't care about your product and want you to work on B.S. that their marketing flakes have come up with from some stupid focus group. If they want to buy you out to eliminate competition, the product is dead and you are of no further use to them. So, get enough money to retire on if you can. Typically, 3-4 times gross revenue for a company with existing products is what you can expect.
Figures a twit like Sanchez would pull something like this after engineering her own election. But I digress.
To blame a blog for Megan Meier's death is no different than blaming a bar owned for a drunk driver's death. Nobody forced her to read it. Nobody forced her to keep reading it. Quite frankly, I blame the parents for being that frackin' clueless about their daughter.
But as with most far-reaching legislation, protecting the poster-child is not the goal. The goal is to increase power and control over people. With gun-control, "protecting the innocent children" is the misdirection when the real goal is all out disarming of the people who will then be easily controlled. The Nazi's first started with registration. Once everyone dutifully followed the law and registered, they knew exactly where they were and who had them so they could confiscate them once private ownership of guns was outlawed. Remember, boys and girls, Adolf Hitler was ELECTED by the people of Germany. There wasn't a coup or similar blunt tactic. Witness Hugo Chavez cleverly guaranteeing that he will be in power for life. "Oh, but they'll just vote him out." Yeah right. In recent memory, there were cases of opposition votes against dictators being thrown in the trash. "Look! He won by a landslide." "What are all these ballots in this warehouse?" *blam* "Unidentified opposition supporters were horribly burned to death in a warehouse fire. The fire is reported to have been due to natural causes."
Here we have a bill that purports to protect the children yet has the power to imprison ANY speech 'they' (that would be the royal 'they') deem dangerous or subversive. The sheep will say "oh, that's good idea...we have to keep another Megan Meier from happening." And then they'll find themselves dragged off in the middle of the night to a gulag because they spoke ill of Obama and years later they will wonder how it all happened. (source: a relative who grew up in Stalinist Russia and witnessed it firsthand).
If nothing else, remember this: The Second Amendment is the last hope for protecting all of the others.
One of my favorite lines from "From the Earth to the Moon" was uttered by Harrison "Jack" Schmidt.
"Find a teacher who can bring out the 'scientific mind' in all of them."
Speaking as someone who wasn't the best of students in high-school, I was a lousy regurgitator of facts and a terrible test-taker. But I had a physics teach who nurtured my "experimentalist" nature. I also had a math tutor who was able to get me to understand the material far better than the regular teacher. I've also had college professors whose method of teaching only worked if you already had a background in the material from some mysterious unknown class I should have taken before.
My point is that a teacher is effective if they are able to reach the student who is having trouble yet far too many teachers are willing to write off the ones that don't "get it". In the current system, teachers' goal is to get tenure which is just a euphemism for coasting. "I got tenure. You can't fire me and I don't give a damn anymore." Executive Order #57: Tenure doesn't exist. You will be evaluated on your ability to teach with special merit given to teaching the unteachable. If you suck at it, you're gone. Demerits will be given to those who foist their own dogma on students.
Couple questions: 1) Is 3% more than in previous administrations? 2) Why not more? and most importantly 3) Who decides what research will be funded and on what basis? Gut reaction? That's all you've got to go on if you don't understand something and it's almost always dangerously wrong. And believe me, politicians' misunderstanding and misinformation far far FAR outweighs what they do understand.