require major changes to farming practice (which, maybe, are needed).
Just one change, end monocultures. I think the root cause of monoculture farming is actually in how farming is financed - everything is pushed to the limits of "efficiency" only planting proven maximally profitable crops in the proven maximally profitable methods because to do anything less is to take even more risk of losing the farm due to a less than optimal harvest. The risks of monocultures are well known, but the U.S. agriculture industry continues to take those risks farther and farther.
If we, as a culture, were willing to pay 25 to 50% more for our basic food (grains, fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy), there would be no reason to take the risks of persistent pesticides and the other "necessities" of monoculture farming. It sounds like a big increase, but food is cheap and spending a little more for a diverse food supply will reap bigger savings in areas like nutritional health, and less bees killed on the highway.
More bee transport is leading to more bee crashes, but the root cause of increased transport (including flying bees in from Australia to the USA) is colony collapse disorder. And, if the conclusions drawn in the movie are correct, CCD stems from the use of persistent pesticides in the growing of corn, soy, cotton, wheat, etc. They go on to describe bans on these pesticides in Europe and how the bees have bounced back there.
10-20 balloons could cool the global climate by 2C.
If this is true, nobody is going to be able to stop a rogue state (probably located near the equator) from doing this - hell, some of the Pacific Islanders could probably pull it off with the money they make selling stamps to collectors.
Maybe we should get rid of the current loan system and instead plunge that money into providing a free (or cheep/subsidized) education at State schools.
The loan system was originally sold based on the idea that it is zero cost to the taxpayer. Of course, anytime the federal government does anything (including collecting taxes) it has a cost to the taxpayer.
Public opinion swung hard against Wikileaks after the accidental release of the un-redacted cables. That leak put many people in harm's way, including a lot of people trying to help overthrow oppressive regimes or criminal enterprises. If we are able to ask "who watchers the watchers?" we have to ask "who watches the watchers of the watchers?" and the answer is that, in Wikileaks' case, big problems of credibility exist.
And, still, his point is valid. It's not public opinion that's starving Wikileaks at the moment, it's small number of big finance companies that have cut them off. What he is asserting is that financial blockade is akin to setting up barriers at polling places - what remains to be seen is if the world will agree with him.
I suspect the majority popular vote would support Assange's assertion (financial blockade should not be used to suppress free speech), but the final decision will be against him.
A loan is a subsidy if the person taking the loan treats it as "free money" when making their choices. Most people aren't savvy enough to act on the true cost of borrowing, otherwise you'd see less financed cars on the road.
I got one of the earlier student loans in 1984-88. During those four years, tuition at my U cost $60K, $10K in 1984-5, then 13K, 17K, and finally 20K in 1987-8. We didn't have anything else to protest, so some (not me) marched on the president's office to protest tuition hikes. Me, personally, the U and the state were giving me scholarships that meant my out of pocket tuition costs dropped from $3K in 1984-5 down to 0 by 1988.
College costs will drop when employers start hiring people who didn't go to expensive colleges and giving them the same compensation as those who did. It doesn't matter if the Feds, or your church, or your great aunt Tillie is financing it, if there is a cost-benefit advantage, the cost will rise until there isn't.
The opposite side of Ron Paul's thinking would be to inject government cost controls on a select number of highly regarded universities (State schools?) and make a respectable, employable college education affordable as competition for the endowment based institutions that are fattening up their war chests with inflated tuition.
Yes, worked well. They are suits, what do suits care about? Money. Did they make money on the desktop? It worked for them, and therefore will guide their future actions. Can't blame them for doing what they know from desktop PCs and trying to make it work in the phone world - doesn't mean we have to like it, or choose it with our wallet, but I'd be surprised if they didn't try to do to phones what they did to PCs.
I cant help drawing parallels to the Novell agreement where Microsoft in practice paid Novell hefty sums to keep going in Microsofts direction, focusing on MS technologies and products.
Would anyone except Nokia keep churning WP7 phones out when it still, one year after release has not gotten more than 0,3% of the market? I strongly suspect Samsung, HTC etc in reality gets paid for using WP7 and dont pay a dime to use Android. Ofcourse on paper they pay Microsoft for licenses, but then they get that money and ten times more back in the form of marketing contributions for WP7.
Just as with Novell that is.
And, yet, here I sit using a Win7 machine to write this post (and, if you check the traffic stats on most websites, I'm not alone). So, in some measure, their methods work - technical excellence bedamned. Can't blame the suits for trying in the phone market what worked so well on the desktop.
still a GPS tracker should have been involved SOMEWHERE in the project. I mean it's not like it's new tech or anything.
If I've got a car, a balloon, a styrofoam cooler, and a foxhunt transmitter, and I regularly do these kind of things, it's perfectly logical to use the kit I'm familiar with and give it a go, regardless of whether or not the petrol to run down the box costs more than a GPS would have.
There are devices that will stop working based on altitude alone. But, you won't find them on any of these flights.
With as many people as are doing this now, and with as little preparation as they put into sending a $200 camera into space, eventually one of them will send up a device that can't handle the altitude.
A little device to burst the balloon on command, how difficult can that be?
This is a cooler on a string tied to a balloon - the little device to burst the balloon, cut the string, whatever, would increase the technical complexity of the vehicle by an order of magnitude.
Personally, I'd like an autopilot guided glider to return the camera to my feet (which has been tried...), but that's a whole lot more project than HAM tracking a GPS signal and running it down wherever it may fall.
A computerized lesson would (presumably) be done in the competent manner.
Big presumption, I have seen plenty of crappy teaching software, and assuming that it is selected by the same time honored system that textbooks are chosen, we can assume that quality will have nothing to do with what is put on the school systems computers.
The kids in Silicon Valley are going to have plenty of tech exposure at home, they'll get engaged by it and pick it up for themselves without being taught how to do it. Learning without it in grammar school is going to broaden their skillset and their ability to pay attention to things that don't flash and beep.
I opted non-military in my college years, then spent 12 years at a medical company - the lack of security clearance has effectively locked me out of a BIG chunk of the available engineering jobs in Florida for the last 8+ years. If you might consider military service, consider how to work it in with your college education and do it just for the clearance. If I were going to do it, I'd go for one of the short grad-school programs (if they still have such things, enlist when you get your B.S., serve for 4 years and come out the other side with your M.S. in whatever they decided you should study.) It wasn't for me, but it was a good deal.
This is utter bullshit. SpaceX does not know what they want in 7 years. And you do not know what you want in 7 years.
Very true, but better to run in the best guess direction now than dork around for 7 years, get a degree in Business / Liberal Arts, and then open your eyes and discover that regardless of what you want to do now, you are SOL if you still want to work for SpaceX.
There's always time to change direction, at least until you've got a couple of years actual work experience, then you really are locked in.
The USA is in a long term serious decline for anything to do with science and engineering. These fields are moving to places like China which put a larger value on education. You'd be well advised to consider moving overseas, because the trend is clear: less and less of this kind of work happens in the United States. The aerospace industry here has been gutted since the 1960's. It still exists to some extent, but not nearly like it used to, and it's declining all the time.
Somebody needs to refill their mood stabilizer prescription, and/or get a grip on reality.
The US space industry is no worse off than anywhere else in the world, and if you think China would hire a US national from New York straight out of college to work anywhere near their national pride space program... maybe they'd snipe some disgruntled out of work NASA contractors, but a kid with no experience? They've got plenty of those already.
If you want to get into SpaceX or a similar company, start by asking SpaceX or a similar company - ask them if they take summer interns, ask them what schools they take their interns from. Ask them where the majority of their engineering staff went to school. Ask them what their projected staffing needs will be in 6 to 8 years.
The parent's advice about hobbies is also excellent, between two candidates, one with a 4.0 average and Masters' in Aerospace / M.E., and another with a 3.2 GPA, Bachelor's in Mechanical, and 6 years' history of pushing the envelope in hobby rocketry, me, personally, I'd hire the advanced hobbyist.
after being flooded with calls from German men saying they refused to take directions from a woman.
For real? Not only were these men pissed off about taking direction from a computerized woman's voice, but they also felt it necessary to call BMW to bitch about it. And then, BMW took these tools seriously enough to recall the cars? This just has to be a urban legend.
[runs off to check snopes]
This, from the country that wouldn't allow anything other than water, barley and hops into anything called Bier. Um, yes, they are rather stubborn about their traditions.
In Apple's case they need to relax a little, pull the stick out, and let the people toggle which voice they want, even MS allows that on their voice related functions.
Now that Steve is dead, in a few years, out of respect for his memory, they just might allow something like that - if it were tastefully done.
For the last 3 years I've been working in environments where 3 blades would fall under "rounding error" so when they say +3, I go... WHA? On the other hand..
This is a government job search site we're talking about, not something popular like LOLCATS.
Slashdot Mirror
require major changes to farming practice (which, maybe, are needed).
Just one change, end monocultures. I think the root cause of monoculture farming is actually in how farming is financed - everything is pushed to the limits of "efficiency" only planting proven maximally profitable crops in the proven maximally profitable methods because to do anything less is to take even more risk of losing the farm due to a less than optimal harvest. The risks of monocultures are well known, but the U.S. agriculture industry continues to take those risks farther and farther.
If we, as a culture, were willing to pay 25 to 50% more for our basic food (grains, fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy), there would be no reason to take the risks of persistent pesticides and the other "necessities" of monoculture farming. It sounds like a big increase, but food is cheap and spending a little more for a diverse food supply will reap bigger savings in areas like nutritional health, and less bees killed on the highway.
There's at least one movie about it:
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Vanishing-of-the-Bees/70166291?trkid=438403
More bee transport is leading to more bee crashes, but the root cause of increased transport (including flying bees in from Australia to the USA) is colony collapse disorder. And, if the conclusions drawn in the movie are correct, CCD stems from the use of persistent pesticides in the growing of corn, soy, cotton, wheat, etc. They go on to describe bans on these pesticides in Europe and how the bees have bounced back there.
10-20 balloons could cool the global climate by 2C.
If this is true, nobody is going to be able to stop a rogue state (probably located near the equator) from doing this - hell, some of the Pacific Islanders could probably pull it off with the money they make selling stamps to collectors.
Had Assange and Co. behaved perfectly ethically, you would have seen much more defense of them throughout the time Wikileaks has been in the news.
Had Assange and Co. behaved perfectly ethically, you would not have seen them in the news.
Maybe we should get rid of the current loan system and instead plunge that money into providing a free (or cheep/subsidized) education at State schools.
The loan system was originally sold based on the idea that it is zero cost to the taxpayer. Of course, anytime the federal government does anything (including collecting taxes) it has a cost to the taxpayer.
Public opinion swung hard against Wikileaks after the accidental release of the un-redacted cables. That leak put many people in harm's way, including a lot of people trying to help overthrow oppressive regimes or criminal enterprises. If we are able to ask "who watchers the watchers?" we have to ask "who watches the watchers of the watchers?" and the answer is that, in Wikileaks' case, big problems of credibility exist.
And, still, his point is valid. It's not public opinion that's starving Wikileaks at the moment, it's small number of big finance companies that have cut them off. What he is asserting is that financial blockade is akin to setting up barriers at polling places - what remains to be seen is if the world will agree with him.
I suspect the majority popular vote would support Assange's assertion (financial blockade should not be used to suppress free speech), but the final decision will be against him.
A loan is a subsidy if the person taking the loan treats it as "free money" when making their choices. Most people aren't savvy enough to act on the true cost of borrowing, otherwise you'd see less financed cars on the road.
I got one of the earlier student loans in 1984-88. During those four years, tuition at my U cost $60K, $10K in 1984-5, then 13K, 17K, and finally 20K in 1987-8. We didn't have anything else to protest, so some (not me) marched on the president's office to protest tuition hikes. Me, personally, the U and the state were giving me scholarships that meant my out of pocket tuition costs dropped from $3K in 1984-5 down to 0 by 1988.
College costs will drop when employers start hiring people who didn't go to expensive colleges and giving them the same compensation as those who did. It doesn't matter if the Feds, or your church, or your great aunt Tillie is financing it, if there is a cost-benefit advantage, the cost will rise until there isn't.
The opposite side of Ron Paul's thinking would be to inject government cost controls on a select number of highly regarded universities (State schools?) and make a respectable, employable college education affordable as competition for the endowment based institutions that are fattening up their war chests with inflated tuition.
Yes, worked well. They are suits, what do suits care about? Money. Did they make money on the desktop? It worked for them, and therefore will guide their future actions. Can't blame them for doing what they know from desktop PCs and trying to make it work in the phone world - doesn't mean we have to like it, or choose it with our wallet, but I'd be surprised if they didn't try to do to phones what they did to PCs.
I cant help drawing parallels to the Novell agreement where Microsoft in practice paid Novell hefty sums to keep going in Microsofts direction, focusing on MS technologies and products.
Would anyone except Nokia keep churning WP7 phones out when it still, one year after release has not gotten more than 0,3% of the market? I strongly suspect Samsung, HTC etc in reality gets paid for using WP7 and dont pay a dime to use Android. Ofcourse on paper they pay Microsoft for licenses, but then they get that money and ten times more back in the form of marketing contributions for WP7.
Just as with Novell that is.
And, yet, here I sit using a Win7 machine to write this post (and, if you check the traffic stats on most websites, I'm not alone). So, in some measure, their methods work - technical excellence bedamned. Can't blame the suits for trying in the phone market what worked so well on the desktop.
I haven't read TFA, but I surmise that Russian overflight permission wasn't part of the plan...
still a GPS tracker should have been involved SOMEWHERE in the project. I mean it's not like it's new tech or anything.
If I've got a car, a balloon, a styrofoam cooler, and a foxhunt transmitter, and I regularly do these kind of things, it's perfectly logical to use the kit I'm familiar with and give it a go, regardless of whether or not the petrol to run down the box costs more than a GPS would have.
There are devices that will stop working based on altitude alone. But, you won't find them on any of these flights.
With as many people as are doing this now, and with as little preparation as they put into sending a $200 camera into space, eventually one of them will send up a device that can't handle the altitude.
A little device to burst the balloon on command, how difficult can that be?
This is a cooler on a string tied to a balloon - the little device to burst the balloon, cut the string, whatever, would increase the technical complexity of the vehicle by an order of magnitude.
Personally, I'd like an autopilot guided glider to return the camera to my feet (which has been tried...), but that's a whole lot more project than HAM tracking a GPS signal and running it down wherever it may fall.
A computerized lesson would (presumably) be done in the competent manner.
Big presumption, I have seen plenty of crappy teaching software, and assuming that it is selected by the same time honored system that textbooks are chosen, we can assume that quality will have nothing to do with what is put on the school systems computers.
The kids in Silicon Valley are going to have plenty of tech exposure at home, they'll get engaged by it and pick it up for themselves without being taught how to do it. Learning without it in grammar school is going to broaden their skillset and their ability to pay attention to things that don't flash and beep.
I opted non-military in my college years, then spent 12 years at a medical company - the lack of security clearance has effectively locked me out of a BIG chunk of the available engineering jobs in Florida for the last 8+ years. If you might consider military service, consider how to work it in with your college education and do it just for the clearance. If I were going to do it, I'd go for one of the short grad-school programs (if they still have such things, enlist when you get your B.S., serve for 4 years and come out the other side with your M.S. in whatever they decided you should study.) It wasn't for me, but it was a good deal.
This is utter bullshit. SpaceX does not know what they want in 7 years. And you do not know what you want in 7 years.
Very true, but better to run in the best guess direction now than dork around for 7 years, get a degree in Business / Liberal Arts, and then open your eyes and discover that regardless of what you want to do now, you are SOL if you still want to work for SpaceX.
There's always time to change direction, at least until you've got a couple of years actual work experience, then you really are locked in.
The USA is in a long term serious decline for anything to do with science and engineering. These fields are moving to places like China which put a larger value on education. You'd be well advised to consider moving overseas, because the trend is clear: less and less of this kind of work happens in the United States. The aerospace industry here has been gutted since the 1960's. It still exists to some extent, but not nearly like it used to, and it's declining all the time.
Somebody needs to refill their mood stabilizer prescription, and/or get a grip on reality.
The US space industry is no worse off than anywhere else in the world, and if you think China would hire a US national from New York straight out of college to work anywhere near their national pride space program... maybe they'd snipe some disgruntled out of work NASA contractors, but a kid with no experience? They've got plenty of those already.
If you want to get into SpaceX or a similar company, start by asking SpaceX or a similar company - ask them if they take summer interns, ask them what schools they take their interns from. Ask them where the majority of their engineering staff went to school. Ask them what their projected staffing needs will be in 6 to 8 years.
The parent's advice about hobbies is also excellent, between two candidates, one with a 4.0 average and Masters' in Aerospace / M.E., and another with a 3.2 GPA, Bachelor's in Mechanical, and 6 years' history of pushing the envelope in hobby rocketry, me, personally, I'd hire the advanced hobbyist.
FTFS:
after being flooded with calls from German men saying they refused to take directions from a woman.
For real? Not only were these men pissed off about taking direction from a computerized woman's voice, but they also felt it necessary to call BMW to bitch about it. And then, BMW took these tools seriously enough to recall the cars? This just has to be a urban legend.
[runs off to check snopes]
This, from the country that wouldn't allow anything other than water, barley and hops into anything called Bier. Um, yes, they are rather stubborn about their traditions.
In Apple's case they need to relax a little, pull the stick out, and let the people toggle which voice they want, even MS allows that on their voice related functions.
Now that Steve is dead, in a few years, out of respect for his memory, they just might allow something like that - if it were tastefully done.
In Miami, they used to just let the drivers make the announcements: "muah mah me meraoh buah muah muah muah."
Although I like Leonard Nimoy much better, I - have - noticed - a - similar - style - in - his - delivery.
For the last 3 years I've been working in environments where 3 blades would fall under "rounding error" so when they say +3, I go... WHA?
On the other hand..
This is a government job search site we're talking about, not something popular like LOLCATS.