Right. Specifically, what I said was "SPICE derived from CANCER ("Computer Analysis of Nonlinear Circuits, Excluding Radiation")."
So, you think they didn't use computers to solve numerical problems in 60s? Problems related to design? Is this what you are claiming?
The article said that the F-1 engines were not designed with computerized design aids. That is correct. CAD was just being developed-- in fact, it used to be called "Computer Assisted Drafting", long before it became a design tool-- and was not being used at MSFC back then. http://www.cadbuilt.com/cad-drafting.html
They needed them smaller, but banks and businesses needed them cheaper and more reliable.
Correct. NASA was the driver for small computers, where "small" meant "smaller than a room." Pretty much all other applications-- such as the banks and businesses you mention-- used timeshare on big mainframes. Or, for the early 60s, sent the punch-cards to the mainframe to be entered.
By the way, in 1963 banks mostly didn't use computers. You youngsters are too young to remember when a bank "passbook account" meant a physical object that the teller wrote in by hand.
How can NASA be a "driver" for ICs when they were using generic commercial ICs????
They paid the companies to develop those products in the first place, because they didn't exist until the NASA contracts to develop them. The IC was developed with Air Force and NASA funding, because at the time, those were the two customers for whom integrated circuits were an enabling technology.
The comment you're responding to was about computer design tools--CAD--not about numerically-controlled milling machines."
They designed the parts on computers.
Wrong.
They fabricated the parts as part of a computer-driven process.
Wrong.
Look, learn something about 1963 before posting so confidently about how engineering was done with computers back in the early 60s, OK? Do you even know what a slide-rule was???
They had CAD applications, just not what you think as CAD. Anyways, this is interesting, because when do you think CAD applications started? Did the whole thing just pop into existence fully formed, or were there intermediary steps? Just on the electronics side, look at something like SPICE. It didn't pop into existence with a GUI on a personal computer, it started as a punch-card reading batch application on a mainframe.
SPICE dates to 1972. The Saturn V had been designed, built, flown, and out of production for years by the time SPICE was released to the public.
To be fair, SPICE derived from CANCER ("Computer Analysis of Nonlinear Circuits, Excluding Radiation"). But that was also not released to the public ready until the early 70s (the paper describing it was dated 1971: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1050166 )
Boom, computer aided design.
"Boom," just in time to be ten years too late to be used in the Apollo program.
This flies in the face of at least history. It also flies in the face of the usual mythology that NASA invented the computer. Which is it?
NASA didn't invent the computer. However, in the 1950s computers were room-sized assemblies of hardware. NASA and the Air Force were the only two entities that needed computers that were smaller than that (the Air Force to put in missiles, NASA to put in spacecraft). The Block I Apollo computer was the driver for integrated circuits, and hence the grandfather of all of today's desktop computers (called "microcomputers" back in the old days, when "non-micro" computers meant the Univacs and 1103 and the other big iron of the day. http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/timeline/1962-Apollo.html
They had no computers, or they invented them?
Both.
It's neither, actually. But by 1963 manufacturing, at least for the money-means-nothing military, was already computerized. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=_1g1b_EeVHw&NR=1 Why do you think it's called "numerically controlled" and not "digital"? It's because the whole concept is so old that the wording has had time to become obsolete.
The comment you're responding to was about computer design tools--CAD--not about numerically-controlled milling machines. And for that matter, the numerically-controlled milling machines of 1963 weren't really what you would call general purpose computers.
in case you're wondering its the kind of ion drive Deep Space 1 (NSTAR) , progressing technology but not some crazy new thing.
Actually, Deep-Space 1 was an ion engine-- specifically, an electrostatic ion thruster.
Solar Electric Propulsion for asteroid missions-- at least the ones I've been involved in analyzing-- tends to be Hall thrusters (aka "Stationary Plasma Thrusters"), which are higher thrust and use energy more efficiently (in terms of less energy per unit of impulse), but aren't as fuel efficient (in terms of more propellant per unit impulse). Some people call Hall thrusters a form of ion engine (after all, the exhaust is plasma, which is ionized), but it's a different kind of thing from classic ion engines.
That's what I figured it was. I'm somewhat disappointed NASA decided to hype it up with green terms. Solar! Electric!
"Electric propulsion" is a generic word for any sort of rocket engine in which the reaction mass is given energy from electricity (rather than, say, chemical energy). There are a whole array of different technologies to do this, each of which has advantages and disadvantages.
Solar electric propulsion narrows that down to specify that the power source is solar. This is in contrast to, say, Nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) in which a nuclear reactor is the power source, or conceptually beamed-power electric propulsion, in which the power comes from a laser or microwave beam. A SEP system is very different from a NEP, but actually, a SEP using an ion engine looks a lot like SEP using, say, a magnetoplasmadynamic thruster (although the details will be different).
I'm sorry if you think that the term "Solar Electric Propulsion" is green. From my point of view, it's simply descriptive.
The comment I was replying to stated that the decrease in arctic ice thickness "has reversed." That statement is not correct, and I posted a link to the data.
Now you, apparently, are trying to come up with a hypothesis to explain this, other than the trivial hypothesis that since temperatures are increasing, ice is melting.
Fine. Do some back of the envelope calculations, and if you still think that's a viable hypothesis, well, uh, maybe you should get somebody else to check your calculations. Then, if you still think it's plausible, go get your ice model peer reviewed.
... I tend to be a skeptic on all end of the world scenarios, until an asteroid or comet are heading in our direction.
This majorly pisses me off. I point out data showing that Arctic ice is thinning, and people jump immediately to "he's screaming about the end of the world"! That's a false dichotomy: either carbon dioxide has no effect on climate and everything's fine, or it's the end of the world, no other alternatives.
The planet is warming. This is very well documented. "End of the world"?? Why does everything have to be "it's the end of the world"? It's not the end of the world.
The most unambiguious measurement of arctic ice at the moment is from the GRACE satellite (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), a satellite that is measuring the mass of ice on the poles.
These results do not support your statement "the amount of multi-year ice is increasing." In fact, it is significantly decreasing
Please excuse my in-exactness (I was born American, still not a good excuse). High enough to have the Earth's curvature clearly defined.
The apparent curvature was mostly an artifact of the lens used. Get a short enough focal length lens, and you can photograph "the Earth's curvature" from your backyard.
The balloon launch requires that you notify the FAA.
Looking at the video, the release is around 3:00, and at that point the vehicle goes into a spin. The video is cut after a few seconds of spin, and resumes when he finally pulls out, but it looks like he didn't regain control until it lost a lot of altitude and got into much denser air.
Sheldon Cooper would probably point out that they are wrong.
Hawking radiation is an effect of the accelerated frame-- it's Unruh radiation, with gravity substituted for acceleration. In a freefall frame, there's no radiation from the event horizon-- in fact, in the freely falling frame, there's nothing particular about the event horizon, it's not different in any way from any other part of space.
If you drop into a black hole, you may get stretched to spaghetti... but you won't get cooked. (At least, not by quantum effects. The accretion disk, on the other hand, is another story.)
Cryptography experts have proven long ago that ROT-13 is weak against simple brute-force attack. But it turns out that there is also a little-known security hole in ROT-26, which allows a sophisticated eavesdropper to read the message WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING THE PASSWORD.
Cryptography experts suggest, for robust security, the use of at least ROT-39 encoding should be encouraged. This takes a minimum number of log_2[2^39] tries to decode by brute force.
Some experts have suggested that ROT-39 shares the same security hole as ROT-13, but I don't believe I've seen that result confirmed in peer-reviewed literature.
Specifically, what it says is that both MSNBC and Fox are more than 50% opinion (well, non-news "analysis", anyway). So, these are primarily "chat" sources rather than news sources.
if you want actual news, according to this, go to CNN.
Give him the source code. Have him go over it. If he has any specific questions, answer then succinctly and accurately. But keep in mind that as a contractor you have no obligation to share any of your coding "secrets" with anyone, or teach anyone else how to code.
I would say exactly the opposite. I assume they are in fact paying you to train him, but assuming that they are, and that the person you've been assigned to train is intelligent and teachable-- then, do your best.
First, training the next generation is, or ought to be, part of everybody's job; it's to everybody's advantage that the next generation be capable and competent. (They'll be maintaining the infrastructure when we're in nursing homes shaking our canes at the doctors.)
Second, teaching people, assuming that they're intelligent and want to learn, is fun.
And, third, you're training someone who will go on in the industry-- he won't be at your customer's place forever, you can count on it-- and if you train him to be competent and useful, he will move onward and upward and at every spot he goes, he's going to be crediting you as a really great programmer. And, the better he is, the better he makes you look./ He's not taking business away from you-- he's generating business for you.
Yeah. Their data does not support their conclusions.
First, note that their conclusion was that there is "essentially zero" correlation between illegal downloads and legal downloads. The correlation they found (for every 100 people who illegally download, 2 of them will go on to legally download the music) is insignificant (and "essentially zero" is their phrase, not mine.)
What they don't measure, though, is what would have been purchased if pirate downloads had not been available. They do say, however, that 20% of the people who clicked on pirate download sites never went to legal download sites, not ever once. If even one in ten of these people would have bought a legal download if they couldn't get the illegal one, that would wash out their 0.2 percent positive correlation entirely, not even thinking about the remaining 80% who sometimes looked at legal sites but ended up downloading from pirate sites. What fraction would have bought music legally if pirate downloads weren't available? I don't know-- but neither do they.
No it isn't. Amazon charges $0.10 per thousand emails.
Yes it is. You're quoting their price to send. So that will not include the cost of the internet infrastructure (once it's left Amazon's servers), or receiving, nor the cost of spam filters; nor the pro-rated cost of your computer and internet connection. And most particularly, you're not accounting for the recipient's time spent receiving and dealing with it. (And finally, note that you quoted price, not cost. Price is not necessarily cost, particularly in situations where the fixed cost is large, and the marginal cost small.)
The post office operates on almost the opposite model: the costs (including infrastructure cost) are paid for by the sender, not the receiver. Interesting thought experiment: maybe that model doesn't work any more. What happens if we make sending postal mail free, and support it entirely with taxes (to support the fixed-cost, that is, the postal infrastructure), and a fee on people who receive mail (to support the variable cost, that is, to support the delivery)? --Well, yes, that would be a bad idea. It is, however, much closer to the price model that e-mail uses.
And our tax dollars already go towards the up keep of the internet's infrastructure.
Ah, I love slashdot, where people simultaneously advocate anarchy, libertarianism, and socialism.
Yes, that's correct: we pay for the infrastructure with tax dollars (which would be socialism). Also, each person who pays for their connection also pays their ISP (which would be capitalism). This is true. So?
OK, here's the introduction to economics lecture. As a general rule, economic systems run more efficiently when people pay for the resources that they use, and run inefficiently when other people pay for resources that somebody else uses. Just a general rule to keep in mind.
Indeed, economic systems do not always run on this model (no, not even in ideal free markets). One example is the "all you can eat buffet." People don't pay proportionally to how much food they, primarily because the cost of the food itself is actually only a small portion of the total cost, and detailed accounting for the food eaten costs more than the trivial economic benefit gained. Yes, you can argue that e-mail is similar to that: the incremental cost of an e-mail (economists would say "marginal cost") is small compared to the cost of just keeping the network alive (however, email by nature goes through a series of computers between the sender and the recipient; so accounting would be less expensive than paying human waiter writing down orders on a pad.)
But the "all you can take" model relies on the implicit assumption that individual consumers do have a limit. If a semitrailer backs up to the all-you-can-take buffet, loads everything on the buffet into the trailer, and says to the cook "just keep it coming," the model will fail.
Like most of economics, then, there isn't always one price structure that works for all situations. There's always a trade-off of cost against benefit.
However, the knee-jerk reaction "put a cost on email! How dare anybody suggest such a thing!" seems a bit extreme. There are advantages in people paying for the resources that they use. There are also problems (which in economics, translates to "costs").
So, thanks for all the criticism, but I'll stick by what I wrote originally: Good idea. Only problem: how could we implement it?
Good idea; I wish there were a way to implement it.
Basically, emails do have a cost, both a real cost in the connections and computers that transmit and store them, and a time cost in the time I spend deleting them, and the fact that the senders don't bear this cost means that they overuse the resource. Hard to calculate that cost, but the hardware alone is certainly more than 0.01 cent per email if it's correctly pro-rated-- maintaining the internet is not without cost. A 0.1 cent per email cost would mean nothing to me, or to any legitimate users, but would stop indiscriminate spam.
Good idea. Only problem: how could we implement it?
...Also, if I use an external kbd, the screen of the laptop (which is a beautiful 13" FHD screen) ends up further away, and why not use good screen real estate when it's available?
In the original question you say "The problem is that my main screen is the tiny laptop right in front of me... I want to put the 27" monitor directly above my laptop..."
Decide which one it is: A "tiny" laptop screen, which you don't want right in front of you, or a "beautiful 13 FHD" screen that you do want right in front of you.
I have no problem switching from external keyboard to laptop keyboard, but perhaps I'm not as good a typist, and hence my limiting factor isn't the keyboard.
"The stand does not have a high enough setting to accommodate this. What would be a good stand that can mount to a desk high enough to be above a laptop?"
Oh, that one's easy. Use a pile of old textbooks. I recommend geology, because they tend to be a large format.
Most people don't choose cars based on the bits that make them go
Really? I've never bought a car that didn't have the "bits that make them go."
salesman: "Take a look at this one! It's beautiful, isn't it? Comfortable inside, too. Just exactly what you need! No engine or wheels, of course, but that's not important to most consumers." customer: "I want it! I don't use those 'wheel' thingies anyway."
These guys aren't "printing a car". They're printing a shell. Without windshield or windows, either, electronics, or even the seats.
Well, I was talking about a fraud alert, not a freeze.
OK, a fraud alert won't reduce your numerical score. However, banks checking your credit report to consider issuing credit will see the fraud alert. Based on that, they chose whether to extend credit, and if so, what rate to offer. The law does not forbid them from taking the existence of a fraud alert on your account into consideration when deciding that, and you can expect that they will do so.
With the 3 main credit agencies, definitely put a credit fraud alert on your account
Do be aware that the mere act of putting a credit fraud alert on your file with the credit agencies will reduce your credit rating, and result in banks quoting you higher interest rates if you apply for a loan.
they could operate autonomously when conditions warrant
And that is exactly what these drones should NEVER be allowed to do. And that's the basic Terminator lesson.
Well, the autonomous operation commands would likely be things like "fly to the location where you are needed and wait for instructions", or "fly a survey grid over this area and take pictures," and "if you lose contact with control, go to altitude XX and circle for 30 minutes waiting for instructions, and if you don't get instructions, fly home and land."
Actually, I suspect that you misunderstand their objective. Oh, maybe stopping a US invasion is a secondary objective, but I don't think that's their primary objective. Their primary objective seems to be (if you take their word for it) bringing about a new Caliphate under Shi'a dominance.
Just as a note; they wouldn't be interested in a Caliphate; that was an Arabic hegemony. Iraq might like to see a new caliphate, ruled once again from Baghdad, but Iran wouldn't. They would like to restore the Persian empire.
--Basically, though, having the bomb would make them the big bullies on the block. It's more of the 90-pound-weakling-wanting-to-become-Charles-Atlas thing: once they have the bomb, they figure nobody's going to kick sand in their faces any more, and the world will pay attention to them, putting them back in (what they perceive to be) their rightful place as big boys deserving respect.
Well, a difficulty is the lagging of the Islamic world in science and technology-- they are very short in the skilled people needed for making a credible nuclear technology infrastructure, although Iran possibly slightly less than much of the rest of the middle East. Religious fundamentalism doesn't serve well as a way to educate scientists and engineers (...and that should be a lesson for the US, not just Iran.)
Slashdot Mirror
SPICE was a combination of earlier programs...
Right. Specifically, what I said was "SPICE derived from CANCER ("Computer Analysis of Nonlinear Circuits, Excluding Radiation")."
So, you think they didn't use computers to solve numerical problems in 60s? Problems related to design? Is this what you are claiming?
The article said that the F-1 engines were not designed with computerized design aids. That is correct. CAD was just being developed-- in fact, it used to be called "Computer Assisted Drafting", long before it became a design tool-- and was not being used at MSFC back then.
http://www.cadbuilt.com/cad-drafting.html
I don't think you have much of a memory of what engineering was like in the 1960s. You might try some of these:
http://history.nasa.gov/monograph45.pdf
http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/saturn_apollo/documents/F-1_Engine.pdf
They needed them smaller, but banks and businesses needed them cheaper and more reliable.
Correct. NASA was the driver for small computers, where "small" meant "smaller than a room." Pretty much all other applications-- such as the banks and businesses you mention-- used timeshare on big mainframes. Or, for the early 60s, sent the punch-cards to the mainframe to be entered.
By the way, in 1963 banks mostly didn't use computers. You youngsters are too young to remember when a bank "passbook account" meant a physical object that the teller wrote in by hand.
How can NASA be a "driver" for ICs when they were using generic commercial ICs????
They paid the companies to develop those products in the first place, because they didn't exist until the NASA contracts to develop them. The IC was developed with Air Force and NASA funding, because at the time, those were the two customers for whom integrated circuits were an enabling technology.
The comment you're responding to was about computer design tools--CAD--not about numerically-controlled milling machines."
They designed the parts on computers.
Wrong.
They fabricated the parts as part of a computer-driven process.
Wrong.
Look, learn something about 1963 before posting so confidently about how engineering was done with computers back in the early 60s, OK? Do you even know what a slide-rule was???
They had CAD applications, just not what you think as CAD. Anyways, this is interesting, because when do you think CAD applications started? Did the whole thing just pop into existence fully formed, or were there intermediary steps? Just on the electronics side, look at something like SPICE. It didn't pop into existence with a GUI on a personal computer, it started as a punch-card reading batch application on a mainframe.
SPICE dates to 1972. The Saturn V had been designed, built, flown, and out of production for years by the time SPICE was released to the public.
To be fair, SPICE derived from CANCER ("Computer Analysis of Nonlinear Circuits, Excluding Radiation"). But that was also not released to the public ready until the early 70s (the paper describing it was dated 1971: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1050166 )
Boom, computer aided design.
"Boom," just in time to be ten years too late to be used in the Apollo program.
This flies in the face of at least history. It also flies in the face of the usual mythology that NASA invented the computer. Which is it?
NASA didn't invent the computer. However, in the 1950s computers were room-sized assemblies of hardware. NASA and the Air Force were the only two entities that needed computers that were smaller than that (the Air Force to put in missiles, NASA to put in spacecraft). The Block I Apollo computer was the driver for integrated circuits, and hence the grandfather of all of today's desktop computers (called "microcomputers" back in the old days, when "non-micro" computers meant the Univacs and 1103 and the other big iron of the day.
http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/timeline/1962-Apollo.html
They had no computers, or they invented them?
Both.
It's neither, actually. But by 1963 manufacturing, at least for the money-means-nothing military, was already computerized.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=_1g1b_EeVHw&NR=1
Why do you think it's called "numerically controlled" and not "digital"? It's because the whole concept is so old that the wording has had time to become obsolete.
The comment you're responding to was about computer design tools--CAD--not about numerically-controlled milling machines. And for that matter, the numerically-controlled milling machines of 1963 weren't really what you would call general purpose computers.
in case you're wondering its the kind of ion drive Deep Space 1 (NSTAR) , progressing technology but not some crazy new thing.
Actually, Deep-Space 1 was an ion engine-- specifically, an electrostatic ion thruster.
Solar Electric Propulsion for asteroid missions-- at least the ones I've been involved in analyzing-- tends to be Hall thrusters (aka "Stationary Plasma Thrusters"), which are higher thrust and use energy more efficiently (in terms of less energy per unit of impulse), but aren't as fuel efficient (in terms of more propellant per unit impulse). Some people call Hall thrusters a form of ion engine (after all, the exhaust is plasma, which is ionized), but it's a different kind of thing from classic ion engines.
http://nmp.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/sep.html
http://htx.pppl.gov/ht.html
That's what I figured it was. I'm somewhat disappointed NASA decided to hype it up with green terms. Solar! Electric!
"Electric propulsion" is a generic word for any sort of rocket engine in which the reaction mass is given energy from electricity (rather than, say, chemical energy). There are a whole array of different technologies to do this, each of which has advantages and disadvantages.
Solar electric propulsion narrows that down to specify that the power source is solar. This is in contrast to, say, Nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) in which a nuclear reactor is the power source, or conceptually beamed-power electric propulsion, in which the power comes from a laser or microwave beam. A SEP system is very different from a NEP, but actually, a SEP using an ion engine looks a lot like SEP using, say, a magnetoplasmadynamic thruster (although the details will be different).
I'm sorry if you think that the term "Solar Electric Propulsion" is green. From my point of view, it's simply descriptive.
What about the volcanoes on the Gakkel Ridge.
The comment I was replying to stated that the decrease in arctic ice thickness "has reversed." That statement is not correct, and I posted a link to the data.
Now you, apparently, are trying to come up with a hypothesis to explain this, other than the trivial hypothesis that since temperatures are increasing, ice is melting.
Fine. Do some back of the envelope calculations, and if you still think that's a viable hypothesis, well, uh, maybe you should get somebody else to check your calculations. Then, if you still think it's plausible, go get your ice model peer reviewed.
...
I tend to be a skeptic on all end of the world scenarios, until an asteroid or comet are heading in our direction.
This majorly pisses me off. I point out data showing that Arctic ice is thinning, and people jump immediately to "he's screaming about the end of the world"! That's a false dichotomy: either carbon dioxide has no effect on climate and everything's fine, or it's the end of the world, no other alternatives.
The planet is warming. This is very well documented. "End of the world"?? Why does everything have to be "it's the end of the world"? It's not the end of the world.
The most unambiguious measurement of arctic ice at the moment is from the GRACE satellite (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), a satellite that is measuring the mass of ice on the poles.
These results do not support your statement "the amount of multi-year ice is increasing." In fact, it is significantly decreasing
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20121129.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/multimedia/chart20121129.html shows the graph.
Here's an animation showing specifically the data from Greenland: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA13955_Greenland_Ice_Loss_20111205-640.mov
Please excuse my in-exactness (I was born American, still not a good excuse). High enough to have the Earth's curvature clearly defined.
The apparent curvature was mostly an artifact of the lens used. Get a short enough focal length lens, and you can photograph "the Earth's curvature" from your backyard.
The balloon launch requires that you notify the FAA.
Looking at the video, the release is around 3:00, and at that point the vehicle goes into a spin. The video is cut after a few seconds of spin, and resumes when he finally pulls out, but it looks like he didn't regain control until it lost a lot of altitude and got into much denser air.
Sheldon Cooper would probably point out that they are wrong.
Hawking radiation is an effect of the accelerated frame-- it's Unruh radiation, with gravity substituted for acceleration. In a freefall frame, there's no radiation from the event horizon-- in fact, in the freely falling frame, there's nothing particular about the event horizon, it's not different in any way from any other part of space.
If you drop into a black hole, you may get stretched to spaghetti... but you won't get cooked.
(At least, not by quantum effects. The accretion disk, on the other hand, is another story.)
Cryptography experts have proven long ago that ROT-13 is weak against simple brute-force attack. But it turns out that there is also a little-known security hole in ROT-26, which allows a sophisticated eavesdropper to read the message WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING THE PASSWORD.
Cryptography experts suggest, for robust security, the use of at least ROT-39 encoding should be encouraged. This takes a minimum number of log_2[2^39] tries to decode by brute force.
Some experts have suggested that ROT-39 shares the same security hole as ROT-13, but I don't believe I've seen that result confirmed in peer-reviewed literature.
Specifically, what it says is that both MSNBC and Fox are more than 50% opinion (well, non-news "analysis", anyway). So, these are primarily "chat" sources rather than news sources.
if you want actual news, according to this, go to CNN.
What part of "the data doesn't support their conclusion" do you need me to repeat?
That is, indeed, what they said. However, the data does not support their conclusion.
Give him the source code. Have him go over it. If he has any specific questions, answer then succinctly and accurately. But keep in mind that as a contractor you have no obligation to share any of your coding "secrets" with anyone, or teach anyone else how to code.
I would say exactly the opposite. I assume they are in fact paying you to train him, but assuming that they are, and that the person you've been assigned to train is intelligent and teachable-- then, do your best.
First, training the next generation is, or ought to be, part of everybody's job; it's to everybody's advantage that the next generation be capable and competent. (They'll be maintaining the infrastructure when we're in nursing homes shaking our canes at the doctors.)
Second, teaching people, assuming that they're intelligent and want to learn, is fun.
And, third, you're training someone who will go on in the industry-- he won't be at your customer's place forever, you can count on it-- and if you train him to be competent and useful, he will move onward and upward and at every spot he goes, he's going to be crediting you as a really great programmer. And, the better he is, the better he makes you look./ He's not taking business away from you-- he's generating business for you.
Yeah. Their data does not support their conclusions.
First, note that their conclusion was that there is "essentially zero" correlation between illegal downloads and legal downloads. The correlation they found (for every 100 people who illegally download, 2 of them will go on to legally download the music) is insignificant (and "essentially zero" is their phrase, not mine.)
What they don't measure, though, is what would have been purchased if pirate downloads had not been available. They do say, however, that 20% of the people who clicked on pirate download sites never went to legal download sites, not ever once. If even one in ten of these people would have bought a legal download if they couldn't get the illegal one, that would wash out their 0.2 percent positive correlation entirely, not even thinking about the remaining 80% who sometimes looked at legal sites but ended up downloading from pirate sites. What fraction would have bought music legally if pirate downloads weren't available? I don't know-- but neither do they.
Hard to calculate that cost
No it isn't. Amazon charges $0.10 per thousand emails.
Yes it is. You're quoting their price to send. So that will not include the cost of the internet infrastructure (once it's left Amazon's servers), or receiving, nor the cost of spam filters; nor the pro-rated cost of your computer and internet connection. And most particularly, you're not accounting for the recipient's time spent receiving and dealing with it. (And finally, note that you quoted price, not cost. Price is not necessarily cost, particularly in situations where the fixed cost is large, and the marginal cost small.)
The post office operates on almost the opposite model: the costs (including infrastructure cost) are paid for by the sender, not the receiver. Interesting thought experiment: maybe that model doesn't work any more. What happens if we make sending postal mail free, and support it entirely with taxes (to support the fixed-cost, that is, the postal infrastructure), and a fee on people who receive mail (to support the variable cost, that is, to support the delivery)? --Well, yes, that would be a bad idea. It is, however, much closer to the price model that e-mail uses.
And our tax dollars already go towards the up keep of the internet's infrastructure.
Ah, I love slashdot, where people simultaneously advocate anarchy, libertarianism, and socialism.
Yes, that's correct: we pay for the infrastructure with tax dollars (which would be socialism). Also, each person who pays for their connection also pays their ISP (which would be capitalism). This is true. So?
OK, here's the introduction to economics lecture. As a general rule, economic systems run more efficiently when people pay for the resources that they use, and run inefficiently when other people pay for resources that somebody else uses. Just a general rule to keep in mind.
Indeed, economic systems do not always run on this model (no, not even in ideal free markets). One example is the "all you can eat buffet." People don't pay proportionally to how much food they, primarily because the cost of the food itself is actually only a small portion of the total cost, and detailed accounting for the food eaten costs more than the trivial economic benefit gained. Yes, you can argue that e-mail is similar to that: the incremental cost of an e-mail (economists would say "marginal cost") is small compared to the cost of just keeping the network alive (however, email by nature goes through a series of computers between the sender and the recipient; so accounting would be less expensive than paying human waiter writing down orders on a pad.)
But the "all you can take" model relies on the implicit assumption that individual consumers do have a limit. If a semitrailer backs up to the all-you-can-take buffet, loads everything on the buffet into the trailer, and says to the cook "just keep it coming," the model will fail.
Like most of economics, then, there isn't always one price structure that works for all situations. There's always a trade-off of cost against benefit.
However, the knee-jerk reaction "put a cost on email! How dare anybody suggest such a thing!" seems a bit extreme. There are advantages in people paying for the resources that they use. There are also problems (which in economics, translates to "costs").
So, thanks for all the criticism, but I'll stick by what I wrote originally:
Good idea. Only problem: how could we implement it?
Good idea; I wish there were a way to implement it.
Basically, emails do have a cost, both a real cost in the connections and computers that transmit and store them, and a time cost in the time I spend deleting them, and the fact that the senders don't bear this cost means that they overuse the resource. Hard to calculate that cost, but the hardware alone is certainly more than 0.01 cent per email if it's correctly pro-rated-- maintaining the internet is not without cost. A 0.1 cent per email cost would mean nothing to me, or to any legitimate users, but would stop indiscriminate spam.
Good idea. Only problem: how could we implement it?
...Also, if I use an external kbd, the screen of the laptop (which is a beautiful 13" FHD screen) ends up further away, and why not use good screen real estate when it's available?
In the original question you say "The problem is that my main screen is the tiny laptop right in front of me... I want to put the 27" monitor directly above my laptop..."
Decide which one it is: A "tiny" laptop screen, which you don't want right in front of you, or a "beautiful 13 FHD" screen that you do want right in front of you.
I have no problem switching from external keyboard to laptop keyboard, but perhaps I'm not as good a typist, and hence my limiting factor isn't the keyboard.
"The stand does not have a high enough setting to accommodate this. What would be a good stand that can mount to a desk high enough to be above a laptop?"
Oh, that one's easy. Use a pile of old textbooks. I recommend geology, because they tend to be a large format.
Most people don't choose cars based on the bits that make them go
Really? I've never bought a car that didn't have the "bits that make them go."
salesman: "Take a look at this one! It's beautiful, isn't it? Comfortable inside, too. Just exactly what you need! No engine or wheels, of course, but that's not important to most consumers."
customer: "I want it! I don't use those 'wheel' thingies anyway."
These guys aren't "printing a car". They're printing a shell. Without windshield or windows, either, electronics, or even the seats.
the mere act of putting a credit fraud alert on your file with the credit agencies will reduce your credit rating
That is a common misconception.
Will a freeze lower my credit score? No. (Source: http://atg.wa.gov/freeze.aspx)
Well, I was talking about a fraud alert, not a freeze.
OK, a fraud alert won't reduce your numerical score. However, banks checking your credit report to consider issuing credit will see the fraud alert. Based on that, they chose whether to extend credit, and if so, what rate to offer. The law does not forbid them from taking the existence of a fraud alert on your account into consideration when deciding that, and you can expect that they will do so.
Your mileage may vary.
With the 3 main credit agencies, definitely put a credit fraud alert on your account
Do be aware that the mere act of putting a credit fraud alert on your file with the credit agencies will reduce your credit rating, and result in banks quoting you higher interest rates if you apply for a loan.
they could operate autonomously when conditions warrant
And that is exactly what these drones should NEVER be allowed to do. And that's the basic Terminator lesson.
Well, the autonomous operation commands would likely be things like "fly to the location where you are needed and wait for instructions", or "fly a survey grid over this area and take pictures," and "if you lose contact with control, go to altitude XX and circle for 30 minutes waiting for instructions, and if you don't get instructions, fly home and land."
Actually, I suspect that you misunderstand their objective. Oh, maybe stopping a US invasion is a secondary objective, but I don't think that's their primary objective. Their primary objective seems to be (if you take their word for it) bringing about a new Caliphate under Shi'a dominance.
Just as a note; they wouldn't be interested in a Caliphate; that was an Arabic hegemony. Iraq might like to see a new caliphate, ruled once again from Baghdad, but Iran wouldn't. They would like to restore the Persian empire.
--Basically, though, having the bomb would make them the big bullies on the block. It's more of the 90-pound-weakling-wanting-to-become-Charles-Atlas thing: once they have the bomb, they figure nobody's going to kick sand in their faces any more, and the world will pay attention to them, putting them back in (what they perceive to be) their rightful place as big boys deserving respect.
Well, a difficulty is the lagging of the Islamic world in science and technology-- they are very short in the skilled people needed for making a credible nuclear technology infrastructure, although Iran possibly slightly less than much of the rest of the middle East. Religious fundamentalism doesn't serve well as a way to educate scientists and engineers (...and that should be a lesson for the US, not just Iran.)
There was a good article "Why the Arabic World Turned Away From Science" recently:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-the-arabic-world-turned-away-from-science
(Yes, I know that Iran is not Arabic, but Persian. The article title is somewhat misleading; it discusses Persian science as well as Arabic.)