When I was working on my BS degree, I took a core graduate course without several of the pre-requesites. When it came to the first exam, it was easy and I finished in about 30 minutes. I was a bit nervous though because everyone else was working away and no-one had turned their exam in. Well, I spent another 10-15 minutes going back over my answers, wondering if I had missed a page or something. Finally, I turned it in and left the classroom. I hung around and saw people trickling out in another half hour...
Turns out I really did have a better handle on the material than anyone else. I got the high score...
By my calculations, the power difference between the Intel and AMD will make up the difference in the chip prices in about a month of continuous operation, at lease for Seattle electric rates (~$0.06/kWh)...
But make sure you get the completely sealed type of car battery. Most car batteries are designed to vent corrosive and toxic gasses during charging and discharge!!!
Try looking for a TeX to RTF converter that'll handle your documents. If you're as much of a TeX power-user as it sounds like you are though, probably nothing will convert cleanly. At least with RTF you can edit it by hand if worse comes to worst. Word can read/write RTF, so some of your hard-nosed editors may not even notice the difference...
Systems Engineering is supposed to be the group that makes the connections between Customer, Hardware, and Software. Certainly, that connection isn't always as good as you would like it to be. In my experience, it is usually the Program Manager who harps on the project schedule.
OTOH, with schedule pressure and penny pinching, I've seen the Systems Engineering group squeezed to the point that they really can't do their job...
Overall, my recommendation is to check out how it really works in the position you're looking at. This goes for any position...
The main difference between a Systems Engineer and a Software Engineer (at least in defense/aerospace) is the level of abstraction you're working at. A Systems Engineer works at a higher level of abstraction. They are the ones who right the high level requirements and make sure the design fits the customer requirements. They rarely get down to the code level.
A Software Engineer will be closer to the code, though in the defense industry there are software engineers who don't do alot of coding.
As far as career advancement, I don't see a whole lot of difference. It all depends on what you want to be doing....
It would be pretty easy to add something that would "phone home" when the laptop booted, but it would also be very easy to defeat any such protection. If nothing else, re-installing Windows from a bootleg CD would wipe out most such protections.
One possibility that comes to mind would be to modify the BIOS to include the phone home feature. That way even if the thief (or recipient of the stolen goods) would have to know to re-flash the BIOS to eliminate your watchdog...
As an engineer, my family thinks I should know everything about computers and how to make them work. But I certainly know that just because I can design the hardware that goes into it, that doesn't mean I know how the first thing about how to make Windoze, or even Linux, do what I want it to. I'm smart enough to figure out pretty much anything I need, but it's so much easier to grab a technician friend and let him fix in 5 minutes what would take me hours....
Well, in a 30 second test each of Google Maps and mpa24, the Google beta definitely came out the winner. map24 came up with two locations for my home address, about 5 miles apart. One of them was correct, but I couldn't see any reason it tried to show me the other. The other thing that impressed me about Google was that when I did a Local Search for grocery stores, it came back with a good listing of the stores in my area. Map24 only has fixed categories that don't seem to include grocery stores...
This law would incure the cost up front to make sure there is no incentive for people to dump them on the side of the road to avoid paying a disposal cost.
The fee is not a deposit, so it doesn't remove the incentive to dump stuff by the road. Given 10% government overhead (max allowed by the bill), about the same overhead for the grant-receiving agency, and $5 disposal cost (your best case), that leaves $10-1-1-5=$3 that the recycler could give you back. That assumes the recycler is a very efficient non-profit organization.
More likely, it is going to cost more than the $10 to recycle...
So, basically right now, only full systems seem to be called "a computer" (i.e. your standard Dell/HP/Gateway, etc., pizza box/tower). But they reserve the right for parts to later be specified, basically anything with a circuit board or LCD.
That's not necessarily the way I read the bill. It says that typewriters and handheld calculators are exempted, but the terminology is so archaic there, that just about anything sold today could be deemed to fall outside that exemption! If we got a money-hungry administrator in office, we could be paying $10 on a $10 electronic addressbook, etc. I doubt very much if it would get that bad, but certainly $10 on a CRT monitor is pretty steep, since the the smaller ones are starting at $49 or so (a 20% tax!)
The danger in that assumption is that it is so easy to make a copy of a finger, as has been mentioned in other comments, that scanner companies are going to have a very hard time keeping ahead of the crooks.
My bet would be more on something like retinal scanning, where it's a bit harder to make a gummy beaqr retina;-)
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Turns out I really did have a better handle on the material than anyone else. I got the high score...
@#$% decimal points! OK, so that works out to 8.27 years [$87/(20W * $0.06/kWh * 1000 W/kW) = 72500 hours]
By my calculations, the power difference between the Intel and AMD will make up the difference in the chip prices in about a month of continuous operation, at lease for Seattle electric rates (~$0.06/kWh)...
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But make sure you get the completely sealed type of car battery. Most car batteries are designed to vent corrosive and toxic gasses during charging and discharge!!!
Try looking for a TeX to RTF converter that'll handle your documents. If you're as much of a TeX power-user as it sounds like you are though, probably nothing will convert cleanly. At least with RTF you can edit it by hand if worse comes to worst. Word can read/write RTF, so some of your hard-nosed editors may not even notice the difference...
OTOH, with schedule pressure and penny pinching, I've seen the Systems Engineering group squeezed to the point that they really can't do their job...
Overall, my recommendation is to check out how it really works in the position you're looking at. This goes for any position...
A Software Engineer will be closer to the code, though in the defense industry there are software engineers who don't do alot of coding.
As far as career advancement, I don't see a whole lot of difference. It all depends on what you want to be doing....
One possibility that comes to mind would be to modify the BIOS to include the phone home feature. That way even if the thief (or recipient of the stolen goods) would have to know to re-flash the BIOS to eliminate your watchdog...
--DLM
Visit somewhere in Europe and see how it makes sense.
You don't need to go that far. Canada uses $1 coins (aka Loonies) and $2 coins (Toonies)...
As an engineer, my family thinks I should know everything about computers and how to make them work. But I certainly know that just because I can design the hardware that goes into it, that doesn't mean I know how the first thing about how to make Windoze, or even Linux, do what I want it to. I'm smart enough to figure out pretty much anything I need, but it's so much easier to grab a technician friend and let him fix in 5 minutes what would take me hours....
Well, in a 30 second test each of Google Maps and mpa24, the Google beta definitely came out the winner. map24 came up with two locations for my home address, about 5 miles apart. One of them was correct, but I couldn't see any reason it tried to show me the other. The other thing that impressed me about Google was that when I did a Local Search for grocery stores, it came back with a good listing of the stores in my area. Map24 only has fixed categories that don't seem to include grocery stores...
More likely, it is going to cost more than the $10 to recycle...
That's not necessarily the way I read the bill. It says that typewriters and handheld calculators are exempted, but the terminology is so archaic there, that just about anything sold today could be deemed to fall outside that exemption! If we got a money-hungry administrator in office, we could be paying $10 on a $10 electronic addressbook, etc. I doubt very much if it would get that bad, but certainly $10 on a CRT monitor is pretty steep, since the the smaller ones are starting at $49 or so (a 20% tax!)
The danger in that assumption is that it is so easy to make a copy of a finger, as has been mentioned in other comments, that scanner companies are going to have a very hard time keeping ahead of the crooks. ;-)
My bet would be more on something like retinal scanning, where it's a bit harder to make a gummy beaqr retina