The biggest problem is most likely material and distance. Can I haul around my material including the finished project easily? And can you find a place that is centrally located yet has good enough roads to get there in less than an hour of drivetime?
That's the hard part. Keeping it liquid. Would be a bummer to arrive at mars, get ready to fuel up, and oops we don't have any gas to get home.
The other mysterious part is no mention of water / oxygen / nitrogen / food / medkits / spare parts / etc. You'd think a "supply cache" would have more than just fuel in it.
With everything being shrunk down to a few chips that can't really be altered this has radically changed. You can no longer pull apart your iPod, and expect to be able to fix basic problems with it, since most of the inner workings are on a few chips.
Most of the inner workings that have problems are headphone jacks, batteries, buttons/clickywheels, external case parts, and displays. I've replaced those. I've never heard of the chip inside breaking, although I'm sure someone out there has managed to break one.
Its easier now because there is really only one electronic part left, sorta, and it never breaks, and the rest is nice large easily manipulated mechanical parts.
I don't know why being creative in the "industrial arts" has gained hipster status...
Conspicuous display of money and spare time. The idea is cool, but around where I live, the cost to join a local hackerspace is about 1/4 an apartment rent per month (which makes sense if about ten people rent a medium size industrial building) and the closest one is 30 miles from my house. There's another one thats pretty big thats only 60 miles away.
Given $100/month to spend on hobbies, I tend to spend it at home on tools and gadgets. And being 30 miles away means I have to invest around an hour of windshield time every visit... I'd rather spend that hour holding a soldering iron in my basement, than a steering wheel.
There's only like ten people, so that "proves" there is not enough demand for a cheap one, or one nearby me. Yet, I think if one opened nearby me for a reasonable cost, I'd join.
One thing that's odd is that as far as I know the ham radio clubs and the hackerspaces do not mix, which is too bad as they'd seem to go well together with substantial overlap, and one club with 30 people is probably a lot more sustainable than two clubs with 15 people. I wonder what hackerspace types would think of hamfest flea markets... probably electrocute themselves trying to "circuit bend" an old vacuum tube linear amp...
I used to run one of the UK's most popular hackerspaces up until last year when the popularity of goat based experimentation made it quite clear that a goat-space would be a far more rewarding and popular event. Now my goatspace events attract a crowd twice as large, and the advances made in goat technology are fantastic. The only problem is that our webserver keeps getting hacked, but that is probably because it runs on Windows....
I think you need a web cam to provide security for your webserver. Then you could call it goat-see or maybe goatse for short. I've heard that is a name with a long and glorious reputation.
But, too many Ph.D.? Provided the challenges humanity is facing, I don't think so. However, I can accept the idea we have not yet found a way to take advantage of all of them.
If by "take advantage of all of them" you mean something like "pay them a living wage" then you are correct, we can not do that. There are simply too many.
What I've also wondered is how big of an antenna would we need to detect a communication from a near star, say 50ly. And how much power would it take to send a message that far? I've asked some astronomy majors about this and received only blank stares. Do they teach this kind of thing in astronomy? What are the calculations?
Clearly you didn't ask any "older" radio astronomers. The most interesting chapter of J.D. Kraus's (ancient?) classic "radio astronomy" book, was devoted to the theoretical radio astronomy of the Earth by aliens... complete with discussion of the effect of our ionosphere and the interstellar medium on various signals, etc.
Even newbie radio astronomer buddies should be able to answer the question, they were just blowing you off. Probably because your problem is not well characterized. Do you mean by "amateurs working at home" class of equipment like the ham radio and SETI guys, or about 100 dB further for the futuristic civilization with a "whole crater" dish on the far side of the moon, or a constellation of orbiting interferometers in Pluto's orbit? Or an interferometer with one leg here, and one at Alpha Centauri?
Its like asking an electrical engineer how much power a light requires, or an IT guy how many patches "windows" requires. It depends.
Yes, let's blow up a huge fucking bomb that releases toxic radiation in our only biosphere
We have a perfectly good moon right near by that needs considerable civil engineering to make habitable, and already is bathed in radiation anyway. If not our neighbors, we can pop near earth asteroids into dust.
Presupposing the energy from an atomic detonation is even detectable across interstellar distances, we'd still need to be extraordinarily lucky in terms of timing.
You forgot planetary rotation. Unless the Orion Star Empire or whatever surrounds our solar system, at least half the "transmitted signal" would have to pass thru the earths surface.
What would probably work as a signalling system would be setting one off precisely every 1/6 of an earth rotation... Yer average alien MIGHT detect the pattern.
I have no idea if anyone, SETI or AAVSO or whatever is looking for medium term variations in light level like that.
...and my scores have varied by 40 IQ. I know it's slightly off topic, but I have a hard time trusting something that can't decide if my IQ should be "quite smart" or "genius".
My kids had about the same variation. They seem to actually test the "compliance quotient" or "motivation quotient" or "obedience to authority quotient".
IF they rewarded kids by giving them their favorite M+Ms for each correct answer, I'm convinced at least my kids would gain 150 or so percentage points.
From my experience with standardized tests, in teenagers they mostly test the "rebelliousness quotient" and the "got a good nights sleep quotient".
Given to motivated adults whom actually care about the results, they MIGHT actually work, but as applied to anyone else they seem a waste of time.
Rather than modifying the one in the car, it would be way the heck more fun to create your own out of junkyard parts plus "some other things".
Personally, I'd give my car a virtual, invisible police car escort...
I'm curious how this thing would handle road hazards... water puddles on the road vs 6 foot deep water...
Who will be the first bleeding heart to sue the manufacturer when the car decides to run over a squirrel instead of (theoretically possibly) headon a concrete truck?
they may simply be bored and looking to travel just as we have people living in "developed" countries today who travel to various locations around the globe for benign purposes.
But, unfortunately, with only 42 dishes, the ATA was outclassed by other telescopes for most any purpose for which it was used. Even in SETI observation, the Arecibo telescope is more sensitive, and has a wider simultaneous field of view. The Green Bank Telescope also has a larger field of view covers, the same range of sky, and has about the same sensitivity.
I've had one foot each in two optical hobbies for a couple decades now, microscopy and telescopes.
The thing I always enjoyed about microscopy is people are cool and supportive with having a microscope purely for the sake of owning a microscope. Any "new" microscope is cherished and everyone cheers for everyone else's purchase and we microscopists all hold hands and sing campfire songs to each other with smiles on our faces and a giving spirit in our hearts; if someone needs to "borrow" a box of coverslips or an odd objective lens or we share and share alike with some really nice prepared slides. When we aren't hugging trees and each other, I mean.
On the other hand... In the astronomy world... you build a 61 mm reflector and all anyone can talk about is how the existing 60 mm is obsolete and may as well be scrapped because its worthless and everyone owning the smaller scope should be fired and only one can be the winner whom has any worth to humanity or progress toward the future for shame for shame for shame; now go build a 62 mm so as to trash talk the 61 mm guys...
Its just a cultural difference I've observed over the decades between these two optical hobbies. Perhaps because microscopists get a heck of a lot more sleep during the summer nights than telescopists, or something related to coffee consumption. Its not unique to this individual/. discussion by any means.
OK liquid nitrogen cooled LNAs... Err... I realize its been a couple years, but our pressurized waveguides only lasted a couple weeks between liq N2 dewar fills. Is the state of the art more than 6 months now? Or maybe their waveguide runs are much newer and shorter than ours (equals less leaks)
It's too early to call it closed, but the hibernation state can only last for 6 months or so before a full shutdown is necessary. Coming back from a full shutdown would be expensive.
Can anyone find the quote above anywhere other than/., and/or explain why?
I've spent a substantial number of years tangentially involved with production telecom microwave dishes and also ham radio microwave stuff. I don't know of any inherent technological limitation relating to 6 months... Maybe they mean something calendar based, like no snow removal in October means the dishes have to come down before they smashed down? Its not like lichen will colonize the LNAs or the support arms grow like untrimmed trees or any other inherent technological limitation. Maybe the next site rent payment (real rent or property tax) is due in 6 months and its pay up or hit the streets.
I'll tell you something funny, and slightly on-topic: I am currently a terrorism suspect.
Are you still being granted the privilege of being able to fly on airplanes? You may very well be permanently grounded now by virtue of the no fly list.
because if we aren't willing to take the innocent ones
Why not? We blew up their country, hung their leader, took their oil, destroyed their economy, killed a bunch of their family and friends. Last but by no means least, they're innocent, which you can't say for the illegals living here.
The non-self service clerks have a handy paper flip-book that they can use (though they seem to remember almost all of them without looking them up).
I can assure you thru extensive personal experience, having worked my way thru school at a retail grocery store, that 99% of all produce dept sales come from 1% of the products. Bananas, Apples, lettuce, cucumbers, grapes, peppers, mushrooms, that's about it. Things like kiwi fruit are stocked for the "ambiance", virtually no one buys them, and they get tossed out as a decorative expense when they start looking bad. Ditto the coconuts, star fruit, etc. Furthermore, there may be 12 slightly different kinds of apples, all with very slightly different prices, but very often the same code will be used by lazy clerks. Finally, many produce depts operate on something remarkably like the salad bar model of you can buy as much as you want at a couple bucks per pound. I worked at a place that did crude unofficial audits of inventory using a flat rate per pound assumption... Also they trained us when receiving shipments from the warehouse to not waste time adding up values, but to go based on a typical dollar value per pallet. If it came from produce, ring it up as apples and you're pretty much close enough that no one will ever complain, neither management nor customers. Produce is not at all like the meat dept where you have a dynamic range of about 20 dB, from 25 cent/pound bones for dogs right next to 25 dollar/pound prime beef tenderloin...
Secondly, when I put my backpack on the bagging shelf before I start scanning anything, zero the bagging scale at that point and let me load my scanned items directly into my backpack.
Training people to put stuff on the shelf without paying for it is probably a bad habit to encourage. The other problem has to do with reliability... Those scales are dramatically less accurate than you probably think. Fundamentally, they act as lie detectors where they only pose a security threat to those who really believe in them. So your algorithm is pretty complicated, do you take the max seen or the min seen or... And how do you "really" know your zero is not drifting if you don't enforce at least some minimal time interval of enforced zero?
1/2 of the people in the USA make money, the other 1/2 spend whatever they can get from the productive half. I'm guessing the numbers are not all that different in.nz so I'm not surprised the ratio worked out that way.
The non-productive half who sponge off the productive half probably see it as getting the middleman out of they way... From each according to their ability, to each according to their need, etc.
Alternately it might be a mapping of peer pressure, 1/2 will zombie like copy whatever they see other people doing, and the half who are actually alive will think about what they're doing.
Then you get into weird religious interpretations, that non-adherents are more honest than the general population, thus the high 50% payment rate (doesn't matter if they're celebrating the good friday religion or the earth day religion?)
Ok. So I will most likely not get rich. Who cares? I don't.
I work to live. You live to work. Someone else is in control of my life for 40 hours a week. In exchange I live, excellently, somewhat extravagantly, by my rules for 128 hours a week.
Sounds like you want to be very happy for 40 hours, and miserable for 128 hours.
I prefer being tolerable OK, really not all that bad, for 40 hours, and very happy for 128 hours. By any game theory analysis, I'm coming out ahead here.
Also "not caring about being rich" sounds heroic and adventurous when you're 19 and single. But when you're older, and have responsibilities, all of a sudden its not such a respectable plan anymore.
Students and education are not factory systems into which you can blindly invest capital with a rational expectation of getting more money out the other end. It may happen, but it's not of a very high nor reliable return.
You need to look into the federally guaranteed student loan system. You can't discharge those loans in bankruptcy, and if by some miracle you lose anyway, the govt will make you whole. Also the rates the students pay are pretty high, at least compared to something like T-bills.
Yes the students lives are ruined as they're turned into debt serfs, but the destruction of the middle class has always been the purpose of govt, right?
Ever wonder why an education bubble is brewing? Why tuition goes up 15% per year, every year, for decades?
"The average _____ that I encounter expresses bitterness about (a) low pay, (b) not getting enough credit or references to his or her work, (c) not knowing where the next job is coming from, (d) not having enough money or job security to get married and/or have children"
Same could be said substituting "teacher", or many others.
At least w/ respect to (c) I can safely assume you don't know any teachers. Teachers job hop like any other field for a couple years, until they get a "real job" at the district and level they want, and then union seniority kicks in and they pretty much have a guaranteed job until retirement. Its very much like the police/fireman situation. Lately with the second great depression, they've been whittling away at the lower seniority teachers... my sister in law is now one of the lowest seniority / youngest teachers at her school... everyone hired after 2000-ish has been downsized. That means a demographic collapse in the school system when "everyone retires at once" and the district transitions from all senior citizens with 30+ years of experience to all total newbies.
That reasoning has always been specious. It's trivial to compile a list of published steganographic methods and engineer some check for them. The method must involve some form of key and encryption to make the check unlikely to succeed.
The way the check might fail is by finding random weirdness. Right off the top of my head, a graph of file length vs frags is probably going to be distorted by this storage mechanism... Also a graph of filesystem age or filesystem size vs frag level is probably going to show this mechanism as an outlier.
Since fragmentation is not random, hiding anything using it is going to be very tricky... Plenty of room for honest error and/or snake oil and/or back doors.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always thought a great business would be a complete machine shop and wood working shop, along with a small supplies type place.
in other words "techshop"
http://techshop.ws/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TechShop
The biggest problem is most likely material and distance. Can I haul around my material including the finished project easily? And can you find a place that is centrally located yet has good enough roads to get there in less than an hour of drivetime?
Cryogenic
That's the hard part. Keeping it liquid. Would be a bummer to arrive at mars, get ready to fuel up, and oops we don't have any gas to get home.
The other mysterious part is no mention of water / oxygen / nitrogen / food / medkits / spare parts / etc. You'd think a "supply cache" would have more than just fuel in it.
With everything being shrunk down to a few chips that can't really be altered this has radically changed. You can no longer pull apart your iPod, and expect to be able to fix basic problems with it, since most of the inner workings are on a few chips.
Most of the inner workings that have problems are headphone jacks, batteries, buttons/clickywheels, external case parts, and displays. I've replaced those. I've never heard of the chip inside breaking, although I'm sure someone out there has managed to break one.
Its easier now because there is really only one electronic part left, sorta, and it never breaks, and the rest is nice large easily manipulated mechanical parts.
I don't know why being creative in the "industrial arts" has gained hipster status...
Conspicuous display of money and spare time. The idea is cool, but around where I live, the cost to join a local hackerspace is about 1/4 an apartment rent per month (which makes sense if about ten people rent a medium size industrial building) and the closest one is 30 miles from my house. There's another one thats pretty big thats only 60 miles away.
Given $100/month to spend on hobbies, I tend to spend it at home on tools and gadgets. And being 30 miles away means I have to invest around an hour of windshield time every visit... I'd rather spend that hour holding a soldering iron in my basement, than a steering wheel.
There's only like ten people, so that "proves" there is not enough demand for a cheap one, or one nearby me. Yet, I think if one opened nearby me for a reasonable cost, I'd join.
One thing that's odd is that as far as I know the ham radio clubs and the hackerspaces do not mix, which is too bad as they'd seem to go well together with substantial overlap, and one club with 30 people is probably a lot more sustainable than two clubs with 15 people. I wonder what hackerspace types would think of hamfest flea markets... probably electrocute themselves trying to "circuit bend" an old vacuum tube linear amp...
I used to run one of the UK's most popular hackerspaces up until last year when the popularity of goat based experimentation made it quite clear that a goat-space would be a far more rewarding and popular event. Now my goatspace events attract a crowd twice as large, and the advances made in goat technology are fantastic. The only problem is that our webserver keeps getting hacked, but that is probably because it runs on Windows....
I think you need a web cam to provide security for your webserver. Then you could call it goat-see or maybe goatse for short. I've heard that is a name with a long and glorious reputation.
But, too many Ph.D.? Provided the challenges humanity is facing, I don't think so. However, I can accept the idea we have not yet found a way to take advantage of all of them.
If by "take advantage of all of them" you mean something like "pay them a living wage" then you are correct, we can not do that. There are simply too many.
What I've also wondered is how big of an antenna would we need to detect a communication from a near star, say 50ly. And how much power would it take to send a message that far?
I've asked some astronomy majors about this and received only blank stares. Do they teach this kind of thing in astronomy? What are the calculations?
Clearly you didn't ask any "older" radio astronomers. The most interesting chapter of J.D. Kraus's (ancient?) classic "radio astronomy" book, was devoted to the theoretical radio astronomy of the Earth by aliens... complete with discussion of the effect of our ionosphere and the interstellar medium on various signals, etc.
Even newbie radio astronomer buddies should be able to answer the question, they were just blowing you off. Probably because your problem is not well characterized. Do you mean by "amateurs working at home" class of equipment like the ham radio and SETI guys, or about 100 dB further for the futuristic civilization with a "whole crater" dish on the far side of the moon, or a constellation of orbiting interferometers in Pluto's orbit? Or an interferometer with one leg here, and one at Alpha Centauri?
Its like asking an electrical engineer how much power a light requires, or an IT guy how many patches "windows" requires. It depends.
Yes, let's blow up a huge fucking bomb that releases toxic radiation in our only biosphere
We have a perfectly good moon right near by that needs considerable civil engineering to make habitable, and already is bathed in radiation anyway. If not our neighbors, we can pop near earth asteroids into dust.
Presupposing the energy from an atomic detonation is even detectable across interstellar distances, we'd still need to be extraordinarily lucky in terms of timing.
You forgot planetary rotation. Unless the Orion Star Empire or whatever surrounds our solar system, at least half the "transmitted signal" would have to pass thru the earths surface.
What would probably work as a signalling system would be setting one off precisely every 1/6 of an earth rotation... Yer average alien MIGHT detect the pattern.
I have no idea if anyone, SETI or AAVSO or whatever is looking for medium term variations in light level like that.
...and my scores have varied by 40 IQ. I know it's slightly off topic, but I have a hard time trusting something that can't decide if my IQ should be "quite smart" or "genius".
My kids had about the same variation. They seem to actually test the "compliance quotient" or "motivation quotient" or "obedience to authority quotient".
IF they rewarded kids by giving them their favorite M+Ms for each correct answer, I'm convinced at least my kids would gain 150 or so percentage points.
From my experience with standardized tests, in teenagers they mostly test the "rebelliousness quotient" and the "got a good nights sleep quotient".
Given to motivated adults whom actually care about the results, they MIGHT actually work, but as applied to anyone else they seem a waste of time.
Rather than modifying the one in the car, it would be way the heck more fun to create your own out of junkyard parts plus "some other things".
Personally, I'd give my car a virtual, invisible police car escort...
I'm curious how this thing would handle road hazards... water puddles on the road vs 6 foot deep water...
Who will be the first bleeding heart to sue the manufacturer when the car decides to run over a squirrel instead of (theoretically possibly) headon a concrete truck?
they may simply be bored and looking to travel just as we have people living in "developed" countries today who travel to various locations around the globe for benign purposes.
AKA "sex tourism"?
(sorry, couldn't resist bringing that up)
But, unfortunately, with only 42 dishes, the ATA was outclassed by other telescopes for most any purpose for which it was used. Even in SETI observation, the Arecibo telescope is more sensitive, and has a wider simultaneous field of view. The Green Bank Telescope also has a larger field of view covers, the same range of sky, and has about the same sensitivity.
I've had one foot each in two optical hobbies for a couple decades now, microscopy and telescopes.
The thing I always enjoyed about microscopy is people are cool and supportive with having a microscope purely for the sake of owning a microscope. Any "new" microscope is cherished and everyone cheers for everyone else's purchase and we microscopists all hold hands and sing campfire songs to each other with smiles on our faces and a giving spirit in our hearts; if someone needs to "borrow" a box of coverslips or an odd objective lens or we share and share alike with some really nice prepared slides. When we aren't hugging trees and each other, I mean.
On the other hand ... In the astronomy world ... you build a 61 mm reflector and all anyone can talk about is how the existing 60 mm is obsolete and may as well be scrapped because its worthless and everyone owning the smaller scope should be fired and only one can be the winner whom has any worth to humanity or progress toward the future for shame for shame for shame; now go build a 62 mm so as to trash talk the 61 mm guys...
Its just a cultural difference I've observed over the decades between these two optical hobbies. Perhaps because microscopists get a heck of a lot more sleep during the summer nights than telescopists, or something related to coffee consumption. Its not unique to this individual /. discussion by any means.
OK liquid nitrogen cooled LNAs... Err... I realize its been a couple years, but our pressurized waveguides only lasted a couple weeks between liq N2 dewar fills. Is the state of the art more than 6 months now? Or maybe their waveguide runs are much newer and shorter than ours (equals less leaks)
It's too early to call it closed, but the hibernation state can only last for 6 months or so before a full shutdown is necessary. Coming back from a full shutdown would be expensive.
Can anyone find the quote above anywhere other than /., and/or explain why?
I've spent a substantial number of years tangentially involved with production telecom microwave dishes and also ham radio microwave stuff. I don't know of any inherent technological limitation relating to 6 months... Maybe they mean something calendar based, like no snow removal in October means the dishes have to come down before they smashed down? Its not like lichen will colonize the LNAs or the support arms grow like untrimmed trees or any other inherent technological limitation. Maybe the next site rent payment (real rent or property tax) is due in 6 months and its pay up or hit the streets.
I'll tell you something funny, and slightly on-topic: I am currently a terrorism suspect.
Are you still being granted the privilege of being able to fly on airplanes? You may very well be permanently grounded now by virtue of the no fly list.
because if we aren't willing to take the innocent ones
Why not? We blew up their country, hung their leader, took their oil, destroyed their economy, killed a bunch of their family and friends. Last but by no means least, they're innocent, which you can't say for the illegals living here.
The non-self service clerks have a handy paper flip-book that they can use (though they seem to remember almost all of them without looking them up).
I can assure you thru extensive personal experience, having worked my way thru school at a retail grocery store, that 99% of all produce dept sales come from 1% of the products. Bananas, Apples, lettuce, cucumbers, grapes, peppers, mushrooms, that's about it. Things like kiwi fruit are stocked for the "ambiance", virtually no one buys them, and they get tossed out as a decorative expense when they start looking bad. Ditto the coconuts, star fruit, etc. Furthermore, there may be 12 slightly different kinds of apples, all with very slightly different prices, but very often the same code will be used by lazy clerks. Finally, many produce depts operate on something remarkably like the salad bar model of you can buy as much as you want at a couple bucks per pound. I worked at a place that did crude unofficial audits of inventory using a flat rate per pound assumption... Also they trained us when receiving shipments from the warehouse to not waste time adding up values, but to go based on a typical dollar value per pallet. If it came from produce, ring it up as apples and you're pretty much close enough that no one will ever complain, neither management nor customers. Produce is not at all like the meat dept where you have a dynamic range of about 20 dB, from 25 cent/pound bones for dogs right next to 25 dollar/pound prime beef tenderloin...
Secondly, when I put my backpack on the bagging shelf before I start scanning anything, zero the bagging scale at that point and let me load my scanned items directly into my backpack.
Training people to put stuff on the shelf without paying for it is probably a bad habit to encourage. The other problem has to do with reliability... Those scales are dramatically less accurate than you probably think. Fundamentally, they act as lie detectors where they only pose a security threat to those who really believe in them. So your algorithm is pretty complicated, do you take the max seen or the min seen or... And how do you "really" know your zero is not drifting if you don't enforce at least some minimal time interval of enforced zero?
1/2 of the people in the USA make money, the other 1/2 spend whatever they can get from the productive half. I'm guessing the numbers are not all that different in .nz so I'm not surprised the ratio worked out that way.
The non-productive half who sponge off the productive half probably see it as getting the middleman out of they way ... From each according to their ability, to each according to their need, etc.
Alternately it might be a mapping of peer pressure, 1/2 will zombie like copy whatever they see other people doing, and the half who are actually alive will think about what they're doing.
Then you get into weird religious interpretations, that non-adherents are more honest than the general population, thus the high 50% payment rate (doesn't matter if they're celebrating the good friday religion or the earth day religion?)
Does it discuss the continuous changes in the "information security and the law, and governance" areas?
Are the book editions updated and released faster than the politicians and judges can make it obsolete?
Ok. So I will most likely not get rich. Who cares? I don't.
I work to live. You live to work. Someone else is in control of my life for 40 hours a week. In exchange I live, excellently, somewhat extravagantly, by my rules for 128 hours a week.
Sounds like you want to be very happy for 40 hours, and miserable for 128 hours.
I prefer being tolerable OK, really not all that bad, for 40 hours, and very happy for 128 hours. By any game theory analysis, I'm coming out ahead here.
Also "not caring about being rich" sounds heroic and adventurous when you're 19 and single. But when you're older, and have responsibilities, all of a sudden its not such a respectable plan anymore.
Students and education are not factory systems into which you can blindly invest capital with a rational expectation of getting more money out the other end. It may happen, but it's not of a very high nor reliable return.
You need to look into the federally guaranteed student loan system. You can't discharge those loans in bankruptcy, and if by some miracle you lose anyway, the govt will make you whole. Also the rates the students pay are pretty high, at least compared to something like T-bills.
Yes the students lives are ruined as they're turned into debt serfs, but the destruction of the middle class has always been the purpose of govt, right?
Ever wonder why an education bubble is brewing? Why tuition goes up 15% per year, every year, for decades?
"The average _____ that I encounter expresses bitterness about (a) low pay, (b) not getting enough credit or references to his or her work, (c) not knowing where the next job is coming from, (d) not having enough money or job security to get married and/or have children"
Same could be said substituting "teacher", or many others.
At least w/ respect to (c) I can safely assume you don't know any teachers. Teachers job hop like any other field for a couple years, until they get a "real job" at the district and level they want, and then union seniority kicks in and they pretty much have a guaranteed job until retirement. Its very much like the police/fireman situation. Lately with the second great depression, they've been whittling away at the lower seniority teachers... my sister in law is now one of the lowest seniority / youngest teachers at her school... everyone hired after 2000-ish has been downsized. That means a demographic collapse in the school system when "everyone retires at once" and the district transitions from all senior citizens with 30+ years of experience to all total newbies.
That reasoning has always been specious. It's trivial to compile a list of published steganographic methods and engineer some check for them. The method must involve some form of key and encryption to make the check unlikely to succeed.
The way the check might fail is by finding random weirdness. Right off the top of my head, a graph of file length vs frags is probably going to be distorted by this storage mechanism... Also a graph of filesystem age or filesystem size vs frag level is probably going to show this mechanism as an outlier.
Since fragmentation is not random, hiding anything using it is going to be very tricky... Plenty of room for honest error and/or snake oil and/or back doors.