While I feel that it would be nice to get a well-rounded introduction to the programming world, I also feel that I am going to come out of school not having the expertise required in a single language to land a good job.
It sounds like you enrolled in a better school the second time around.
Ideally, school should teach you the nuances of each language and all the conpcets, but there is limited time. Learning how to program in one language will make you just make you a code-monkey if you don't learn how to extend the programming concepts to other languages and projects. Learning the programming concepts and a number of languages will send you on the path to be a computer scientist and teach you the basics of a number of languages. Personally, I feel that you can easily learn syntax yourself with a compiler and a book. It takes more mental effort and motivation to learn the larger-scale concepts, so it is better to learn these in class.
So you really need to decide what you want to be: a programmer or a computer scientist.
From your employer's perspective, anyone fresh out of school is going to be pretty useless at first. You have no corporate work experience and probably limited experience working with a team. But just think what would be more embarrassing to you as a new employee? Would you rather admit to your boss that you don't know the proper syntax for an if statement in Java or that you never fully worked out what a three-dimensional array was?
32% of scientists identify themselves as Independent, while 55% say they're Democrats and 6% say they're Republicans.
I think it is funny how that percentage doesn't add up to 100% (even if you include the 4% "Other/None" from TFA).
And as a scientist who is frustrated with the current political party offerings in the US and doesn't really like any other county's situation any better, I think it would be pretty cool if someone would start a country for scientists, run by scientists.
These people did their duty and saved the lives of many of their countrymen. But their work was not done at great peril to themselves. It was not under a hail of cannon fire and bullets that they worked at Bletchley Park. Their work is appreciated, but it cannot be more appreciated than the lives of soldiers who gave much much more in the defense of their countrymen.
Do you feel the same way about the Manhattan Project participants?
Their work doesn't need to be "more" appreciated than that of the basic soldier, but it still isn't "ordinary." Ordinary is if you keep doing your day job. In some cases, "ordinary" also means you get drafted and go along and follow orders.
A lot of these scientists worked 18+ hour days to get their jobs done in wartime. They probably also had to justify their existence to the government for all or part of the time they were working until they succeeded. Were they in harm's way? No. But each time they cracked a Nazi code, they saved many many more lives than they would have saved doing their "ordinary" jobs or serving as soldiers.
I don't think that anyone is trying to equate their efforts to that of a brave soldier performing valiantly under fire. But their amazing scientific progress should definitely be acknowledged given the impact their work has had on the field and the war.
I'm 100% with you, but you've got to remember that Apple is a corporation that is only out to make money. They don't even care about not being evil like Google. They probably determined that neutering their iphone for China would give them the best profit, just like all of their other product "oversight" has been working in the West.
Sure, as techies we think it is annoying, but mommy is happy to buy a "porn-free" phone for her little Johnny and she is also happy that her iMac "just works."
What? Were you really fooled into thinking that one administration was going to be heads and tails above another? If you were let me be the first to say I'm sorry.
We will not see a truely progressive politician make it to the presidency until we get a viable third party. And even then it's a long shot.
I don't think we will see a truly progressive politician until we (the people) elect one. But instead we continue to be shepherded by mass media and corporations.
I used to get upset about it, but I have now decided that we actually have the government we deserve. The majority of voters devote minimal time to researching our candidates and mostly select them by party affiliation, by their standing on hot button issues like abortion and gay marriage, and by who our friends are voting for. No one votes for the independent candidates because they "want their vote to count." So in the end, we make our vote count by voting for someone we aren't really happy with, but hate less than the other guy.
The truly progressive candidates never make it out of the local or state governments, because they aren't supported by corporations or the media. Also, their nonstandard opinions on basic issues confuse people. And when I say "people," I don't mean some arbitrary retarded scapegoat in some backwoods state, I mean you and me.
If we could focus a little harder on the candidates and the local level, things would eventuall... OOOOH LOOK! SHINEY!!!...
Why is it that you Americans instantly react to stories like this with "I could crush that like a bug under my monster truck"? What the fuck is wrong with you people?
There's nothing wrong with us. We have just grown up driving on highways with gigantic SUV's tailgating us and we don't have very developed systems of public transportation outside of large cities, so we spend more time in our cars. This increased driving time leads to increased probability of being in a collision, so we worry more about survivability.
Saving gas is nice, but not at the expense of getting crushed to death.
Antarctica has no laws that I am aware of (aside from some UN treaties; though everybody knows how enforceable UN treaties are).
I was going to suggest Antarctica too. I think that it epitomizes the quintessential paradox of wanting to free oneself from humanity. You could be completely "free" there, yet your life would be miserable (and short).
The real question is if the OP really willing to give up what he has to get what he wants?
To be free of government, you would need to free yourself of humanity. And by doing so, you would avoid all the bad stuff, but you would also probably miss things like electricity, your computer, food, clothes, and health care.
And to be clear, if you read the article, it's obvious that the engineers working on this are SERIOUS and have thought of just about anything that slashdot readers have come up with. Drill/cut? Too high risk because of (a) vibrations transmitted to the window and microgrinding of the knob against the window and (b) metallic dust it will generate.
They should set up an EDM (electric discharge machine) in there and cut the knob in half with zero vibrations. Or they could just get a laser cutting machine. But, hey, I don't work for NASA, I only see these things working in the machine shop. Just keep rubbing dry ice on it though, I am sure that will do the trick.
Personally, I would scrap the whole shuttle and build something that was a little more modular. Because 6 months to replace a part is ridiculous.
Hitlers single, fatal mistake was taking on the Soviet Union without first ensuring that Britain and the rest of the Allies were out of the war for good. Had Hitler not committed to the Eastern Front, he could have easily have prevented an Allied invasion, and indeed have triumphed in North Africa.
Correction: He could have prevented an Allied invasion until the Allies started dropping atomic bombs on him a few months later. Germany is lucky that the Manhattan Project took as long as it did to yield success, otherwise Berlin and a few other German cities might look a little different today.
As an engineer, I completely disagree with you. All digital machines have a switch to go from inches to mm. Tools can be purchased in metric or inches. Machinists nowdays are able to machine in both systems and good shops often have both sets of tools.
NASA should just wrap their legacy code with an output layer that converts from British to SI. Sure, it will cost some money. But it also costs money when they lose a mission every few years because of British units... they just are not factoring this cost into their analysis.
It wouldn't be a big deal if NASA would develop and maintain everything in house. But if you are going to be communicating with the rest of the world, you have to be speaking the same language. Developing a new system sounds like the best time to suck it up and make the switch. What we really need is a DTV-style approach where a full switch is mandated to a deadline. Instead of pouring billions into banks, maybe we could actually pay people to change all the little dials on equipment over to metric.
Usually when you have to ask, you know what to do, but you are too shy/afraid to do it. Suck it up geekboy:
Zeroth step: Move out of mom's house. Get a job or go to college... this alone will dramatically increase your chances of meeting women above all else.
First step: Shower, shave, put on deodorant, make your hair look nice.
Second step: Have you purchased new clothing in the last year? If not, buy new clothes... preferably with the help of a woman... one of your friend's girlfriends will do. Just buy what she tells you to buy. No arguments.
Third step: Clean your room/apartment/house. You should be able to see at least 50% of the ground and it should not smell like any food product.
It pretty much takes care of itself from there... but if you need help, try to attend geeky things:
Fourth step:
-Enroll in an engineering or computer science school.
-Attend a Star Trek or SCA convention.
-Start playing a MMORPG like World of Warcraft.
-If all else fails, go to DEFCON (but it is only once a year)
Remember, there is a certain type of woman who actually likes to date geeks. If you are a nice guy (or a complete asshole), they will eventually seek you out if you put yourself out in social situations. Usually they are a little geeky or quirky themselves. If you dig this, you're set. If you don't, try hanging out with them anyway... they have lots to teach you, young grasshopper.
But nationwide operators, including Verizon, maintain (PDF) that 'in the absence of exclusivity agreements, wireless carriers would have less incentive to develop and promote innovative handsets.'
You've got to hand it to Verizon for trying to confuse the congressmen with idiot logic.
Are wireless carriers really developing innovative handsets? (or handsets at all)
I am trying to think of more than 3 revolutionary handset lines besides the iPhones, the Blackberries and Nokias. I guess we can throw in Motorola for their early efforts and Sony Ericsson for cute design too. But where are the carriers?
I think Verizon is really pissing their pants because they are thinking "in the absence of exclusivity agreements, wireless carriers will have a harder time locking down good phones with carrier-specific crappy software."
In theory, non-exclusive phones would also reduce the number of overall phones brought to market and increase the quality since the developers would be competing against a larger market.
Really, with non-exclusive handsets, both consumers and cell phone companies win. Large carriers will be the only ones losing... they will have to choose between market share, profit, and handset control. Of course, who are we kidding, nothing is going to change because they probably own half of the senate.
If I am willing to pony up $4000 for a computer, chances are I have the necessary intellect
Odd.. I had used the same base fact for the exact opposite argument
$4000? Seriously?
Yeah, seriously. I have minimum processor requirements to keep myself from smashing the computer with a hammer when I try to work at home. And I need to have the ability to run OS X... again for my job.
Does this blow your mind? Could I have put a similar computer together for less than $4K? Probably. Would it run OS X? Probably not without a lot of effort.
I have had some ghetto machines in the past, but assembling computers myself stopped being cost effective for me when I finished grad school and started making real money. Sometimes the time you spend "saving" money ends up being more expensive than just buying what you need and getting back to making money.
But thanks for your snarky and anonymous judgment.
...or the total overkill that is the Mac pro line...
As someone who also got bit by Apple's non-user serviceable part philosophy, I agree with you 100%.
I've got a Mac Pro. I'm not an Apple fanboi, I just hate them less than other computer manufacturers. My computer works great. But I didn't get the wireless card installed when I purchased it because I didn't need it. Later on, I needed the wireless capability, so I tried to buy the Airport Extreme card from Apple. The fuckers (yes, they are fuckers) wouldn't sell it to me because "it was not a user installable part." I had to make an appointment at my "local" Apple store that is 60 miles away to let some teenage "genius" install it for me. Yeah, OK, I'll get right on that, because I really want to drive my expensive 90-lb machine 120 miles on my day off so some 13-year-old-looking smartass can paw at it.
Instead, I bought it off a third-party vendor and worked out how to install it myself, since the only instruction it came with said "This is not a user installable part, please refer to the Mac Pro service manual for installation." It worked fine and I now have wireless capability, but I found Apple's actions with that upgrade really insulting.
If I am willing to pony up $4000 for a computer, chances are I have the necessary intellect and experience to screw a wireless card to my motherboard and plug in two antennas. Or I am willing to accept the consequences of my actions if I screw up. Why would a company make it hard for a consumer to use their product?
Apple's increasingly common philosophy of non-user serviceable parts, lack of mid-range user-upgradable towers, and forcing weird connectors down our throats without including the adapters for free are annoying and I think, ultimately, holding them back in the PC market. Window's recent suckage has been working to Apple's advantage, but I feel they could have capitalized on it more effectively. Of course, I am sure that Steve and his financial analysts have determined otherwise.
I didn't say there was no iron at the core of the sun, only that there wasn't a great deal of it, at least in comparison.
And to quote the article linked, ''If secular variation is caused by the ocean flow, the entire concept of the dynamo operating in the Earth's core is called into question: there exists no other evidence of hydrodynamic flow in the core.''
So the only evidence of flowing iron at the earth's core causing the earth's magnetic field is... the existence of the earth's magnetic field itself. That's a bit circular, isn't it?
The author does not argue that the oceans cause the Earth's entire magnetic field, he only argues that they cause smaller temporal variations in the magnetic field. He says "The current consensus is that the main field is generated by the hydromagnetic dynamo in the Earth's fluid outer core." He questions this consensus at the end because (1) he has presented an alternate mechanism for small variations in the field strength and (2) he clearly disagrees with the accepted theory. But be can't contradict it because his work does not provide an alternate mechanism for the generation of the full field.
It isn't circular logic: The earth has a magnetic field. The oceans by themselves are not able to generate the Earth's full magnetic field. We know there is liquid iron at the earth's outer core. Flowing iron is the simplest concept capable of causing the magnetic field that we measure based on available knowledge. Nothing else proposed to date is as likely. So we conclude that there is flowing iron at the Earth's core.
Mod me down all you want for quoting the facts. But until someone can propose and supply supporting data for a different method of generating the entire Earth's magnetic field, accepted geological theory isn't going to change.
The sun doesn't appear to have much in the way of flowing iron at its core either. Does that mean that it can't have a magnetic field?
Essentially the theory stands at : flows of conductive fluid ( salt water, iron, plasma ) can generate magnetic fields. We have no evidence that there is flowing iron in the earth's core, but we have rather a lot of flowing salt water. Hmmm...
Ummmm, we do have some pretty strong evidence that the sun has iron at its core. If you believe in things like spectroscopy and archival meteorite data, then the sun is about 0.2% iron. And if you believe in gravity, then most of that iron is near the center of the sun, which is more than 300,000 times heavier than earth, so yeah, that's a lot of iron. Of course, the sun also has no solid crust and also has nuclear fusion occurring inside it, so maybe it isn't a good comparison body.
Why do you not believe that there is flowing iron at the Earth's core? Scientists have shown that there is a liquid layer of material beneath the material by studying the transmission of P and S waves generated from earthquakes. Do you not believe that the core of earth contains iron? Because the paper's author disagrees with you.
He just doesn't believe that the flowing iron at the core is the only source the magnetic field.
Nuclear is the only option for affordable and ecological responsible power.
Yeah, accidentally drop some nuclear waste in your water supply and see how affordable and responsible it is then.
Or better yet, let a terrorist get his hands on some and do it for you.
With history as my witness, humans are not responsible. We mean well, but we have very short memories and radioactive material has a very long life.
Widespread nuclear power would be a fucking catastrophe. You think third world countries run by dictators are going to be "careful" with their reactors or their waste?
Come on people. Use science, not anecdotal evidence about how you think someone might have touched something that fell from space at some point.
The meteoroid starts in the upper atmosphere at a cold temperature, usually approaching earth with a high relative velocity. Viscous effects from the atmosphere decrease the velocity of the meteoroid. These frictional effects also dissipate most of that energy into heating the air that is accelerated by the meteoroid. Conductive heating transfers a portion of that energy to the meteoroid, which can get hot enough to glow and ablate solid material, carrying away energy with it. Early on, the atmosphere can also get heated to the point that it glows due to ionization from shock heating or frictional heating.
If the meteoroid slows down sufficiently, frictional drag (and thus heating) becomes less significant (as it depends on the square of velocity). If it is hotter than the atmosphere then it loses heat to the air from conductive heat transfer.
At the end of the day, it is a heat transfer problem. The meteoroid starts with a certain mass and velocity. It travels through a characterized frictional medium and ends with a different mass and velocity.
No one can possibly say how hot or fast this specific meteorite was when it hit the ground unless they measured the initial state, the final state or calculated the problem based on some estimates. And it is absolutely possible that it was going at a supersonic velocity when it hit him. Of course it is also possible that the rock made a really loud clap when it hit him and a second clap when it hit the ground.
I am psyched! My wife and I were getting Direct TV until a few weeks ago. We recently got a new TV and tried to tune into the digital channels over the air and were pleasantly surprised. In fact, the increased quality of the network channels for free prompted me to cancel our basic cable (well, dish really) package instead of paying MORE to "upgrade" HD cable.
I figure why pay pay to watch commercials when I can get them in HD for free?
The cable company was a little disappointed, but they can go die. I can't believe they expected me to pay MORE money to upgrade to HD digital service when low rez analog service was going away anyway.
The best part is that you get to keep the dish on the roof! Bonus!
Here's a life lesson for everyone. This guy should have taken 30 minutes out of his busy day of jerking off to little kids to learn about encryption. Or better yet, to learn how to install a DVD drive by himself.
But wait, it gets better! If you dig deeper, the offender's name was Kenneth Sodomsky.
Increase the hunting season and limits around airports throughout the country. It won't hurt the airplanes. A shotgun with is only lethal for what, 70 yards tops?
Or, like others have noted, put a birdcatcher in front of the engine inlet to deflect the birds, like cowcatcher did on trains.
The real problem is that the airlines and airports are not willing to accept decreased efficiency (lower profits) for increased safety. No new news there.
Slashdot Mirror
While I feel that it would be nice to get a well-rounded introduction to the programming world, I also feel that I am going to come out of school not having the expertise required in a single language to land a good job.
It sounds like you enrolled in a better school the second time around.
Ideally, school should teach you the nuances of each language and all the conpcets, but there is limited time. Learning how to program in one language will make you just make you a code-monkey if you don't learn how to extend the programming concepts to other languages and projects. Learning the programming concepts and a number of languages will send you on the path to be a computer scientist and teach you the basics of a number of languages. Personally, I feel that you can easily learn syntax yourself with a compiler and a book. It takes more mental effort and motivation to learn the larger-scale concepts, so it is better to learn these in class.
So you really need to decide what you want to be: a programmer or a computer scientist.
From your employer's perspective, anyone fresh out of school is going to be pretty useless at first. You have no corporate work experience and probably limited experience working with a team. But just think what would be more embarrassing to you as a new employee? Would you rather admit to your boss that you don't know the proper syntax for an if statement in Java or that you never fully worked out what a three-dimensional array was?
Learn some statistics.
Mart
Mart,
The error for the scientist numbers was +/- 2.5%. So 55% is more than half with 95% confidence level.
Your terse (and rude!) replies make it look like you are trying to live up to your suggested mod category though. Cheers!
32% of scientists identify themselves as Independent, while 55% say they're Democrats and 6% say they're Republicans.
I think it is funny how that percentage doesn't add up to 100% (even if you include the 4% "Other/None" from TFA).
And as a scientist who is frustrated with the current political party offerings in the US and doesn't really like any other county's situation any better, I think it would be pretty cool if someone would start a country for scientists, run by scientists.
These people did their duty and saved the lives of many of their countrymen. But their work was not done at great peril to themselves. It was not under a hail of cannon fire and bullets that they worked at Bletchley Park. Their work is appreciated, but it cannot be more appreciated than the lives of soldiers who gave much much more in the defense of their countrymen.
Do you feel the same way about the Manhattan Project participants?
Their work doesn't need to be "more" appreciated than that of the basic soldier, but it still isn't "ordinary." Ordinary is if you keep doing your day job. In some cases, "ordinary" also means you get drafted and go along and follow orders.
A lot of these scientists worked 18+ hour days to get their jobs done in wartime. They probably also had to justify their existence to the government for all or part of the time they were working until they succeeded. Were they in harm's way? No. But each time they cracked a Nazi code, they saved many many more lives than they would have saved doing their "ordinary" jobs or serving as soldiers.
I don't think that anyone is trying to equate their efforts to that of a brave soldier performing valiantly under fire. But their amazing scientific progress should definitely be acknowledged given the impact their work has had on the field and the war.
I'm 100% with you, but you've got to remember that Apple is a corporation that is only out to make money. They don't even care about not being evil like Google. They probably determined that neutering their iphone for China would give them the best profit, just like all of their other product "oversight" has been working in the West.
Sure, as techies we think it is annoying, but mommy is happy to buy a "porn-free" phone for her little Johnny and she is also happy that her iMac "just works."
One must wonder ...
...how pilots experienced in the area and are still alive know that these downdrafts can rip the wings off an airplane?
Parachutes and radios, my friend.
The internet opened the world up to every sort of malware out there.
Fixed that for you.
What? Were you really fooled into thinking that one administration was going to be heads and tails above another? If you were let me be the first to say I'm sorry. We will not see a truely progressive politician make it to the presidency until we get a viable third party. And even then it's a long shot.
I don't think we will see a truly progressive politician until we (the people) elect one. But instead we continue to be shepherded by mass media and corporations.
I used to get upset about it, but I have now decided that we actually have the government we deserve. The majority of voters devote minimal time to researching our candidates and mostly select them by party affiliation, by their standing on hot button issues like abortion and gay marriage, and by who our friends are voting for. No one votes for the independent candidates because they "want their vote to count." So in the end, we make our vote count by voting for someone we aren't really happy with, but hate less than the other guy.
The truly progressive candidates never make it out of the local or state governments, because they aren't supported by corporations or the media. Also, their nonstandard opinions on basic issues confuse people. And when I say "people," I don't mean some arbitrary retarded scapegoat in some backwoods state, I mean you and me.
If we could focus a little harder on the candidates and the local level, things would eventuall... OOOOH LOOK! SHINEY!!!...
Why is it that you Americans instantly react to stories like this with "I could crush that like a bug under my monster truck"? What the fuck is wrong with you people?
There's nothing wrong with us. We have just grown up driving on highways with gigantic SUV's tailgating us and we don't have very developed systems of public transportation outside of large cities, so we spend more time in our cars. This increased driving time leads to increased probability of being in a collision, so we worry more about survivability.
Saving gas is nice, but not at the expense of getting crushed to death.
It means you need to watch more movies
Actually, he was quoting the movie... You just need to watch more of it!
Youtube Office Space Clip
God, that movie was so amazing.
Antarctica has no laws that I am aware of (aside from some UN treaties; though everybody knows how enforceable UN treaties are).
I was going to suggest Antarctica too. I think that it epitomizes the quintessential paradox of wanting to free oneself from humanity. You could be completely "free" there, yet your life would be miserable (and short).
The real question is if the OP really willing to give up what he has to get what he wants?
To be free of government, you would need to free yourself of humanity. And by doing so, you would avoid all the bad stuff, but you would also probably miss things like electricity, your computer, food, clothes, and health care.
And to be clear, if you read the article, it's obvious that the engineers working on this are SERIOUS and have thought of just about anything that slashdot readers have come up with. Drill/cut? Too high risk because of (a) vibrations transmitted to the window and microgrinding of the knob against the window and (b) metallic dust it will generate.
They should set up an EDM (electric discharge machine) in there and cut the knob in half with zero vibrations. Or they could just get a laser cutting machine. But, hey, I don't work for NASA, I only see these things working in the machine shop. Just keep rubbing dry ice on it though, I am sure that will do the trick.
Personally, I would scrap the whole shuttle and build something that was a little more modular. Because 6 months to replace a part is ridiculous.
Hitlers single, fatal mistake was taking on the Soviet Union without first ensuring that Britain and the rest of the Allies were out of the war for good. Had Hitler not committed to the Eastern Front, he could have easily have prevented an Allied invasion, and indeed have triumphed in North Africa.
Correction: He could have prevented an Allied invasion until the Allies started dropping atomic bombs on him a few months later. Germany is lucky that the Manhattan Project took as long as it did to yield success, otherwise Berlin and a few other German cities might look a little different today.
As an engineer, I completely disagree with you. All digital machines have a switch to go from inches to mm. Tools can be purchased in metric or inches. Machinists nowdays are able to machine in both systems and good shops often have both sets of tools.
NASA should just wrap their legacy code with an output layer that converts from British to SI. Sure, it will cost some money. But it also costs money when they lose a mission every few years because of British units... they just are not factoring this cost into their analysis.
It wouldn't be a big deal if NASA would develop and maintain everything in house. But if you are going to be communicating with the rest of the world, you have to be speaking the same language. Developing a new system sounds like the best time to suck it up and make the switch. What we really need is a DTV-style approach where a full switch is mandated to a deadline. Instead of pouring billions into banks, maybe we could actually pay people to change all the little dials on equipment over to metric.
Usually when you have to ask, you know what to do, but you are too shy/afraid to do it. Suck it up geekboy:
Zeroth step: Move out of mom's house. Get a job or go to college... this alone will dramatically increase your chances of meeting women above all else.
First step: Shower, shave, put on deodorant, make your hair look nice.
Second step: Have you purchased new clothing in the last year? If not, buy new clothes... preferably with the help of a woman... one of your friend's girlfriends will do. Just buy what she tells you to buy. No arguments.
Third step: Clean your room/apartment/house. You should be able to see at least 50% of the ground and it should not smell like any food product.
It pretty much takes care of itself from there... but if you need help, try to attend geeky things:
Fourth step:
-Enroll in an engineering or computer science school.
-Attend a Star Trek or SCA convention.
-Start playing a MMORPG like World of Warcraft.
-If all else fails, go to DEFCON (but it is only once a year)
Remember, there is a certain type of woman who actually likes to date geeks. If you are a nice guy (or a complete asshole), they will eventually seek you out if you put yourself out in social situations. Usually they are a little geeky or quirky themselves. If you dig this, you're set. If you don't, try hanging out with them anyway... they have lots to teach you, young grasshopper.
But nationwide operators, including Verizon, maintain (PDF) that 'in the absence of exclusivity agreements, wireless carriers would have less incentive to develop and promote innovative handsets.'
You've got to hand it to Verizon for trying to confuse the congressmen with idiot logic. Are wireless carriers really developing innovative handsets? (or handsets at all)
I am trying to think of more than 3 revolutionary handset lines besides the iPhones, the Blackberries and Nokias. I guess we can throw in Motorola for their early efforts and Sony Ericsson for cute design too. But where are the carriers?
I think Verizon is really pissing their pants because they are thinking "in the absence of exclusivity agreements, wireless carriers will have a harder time locking down good phones with carrier-specific crappy software."
In theory, non-exclusive phones would also reduce the number of overall phones brought to market and increase the quality since the developers would be competing against a larger market.
Really, with non-exclusive handsets, both consumers and cell phone companies win. Large carriers will be the only ones losing... they will have to choose between market share, profit, and handset control. Of course, who are we kidding, nothing is going to change because they probably own half of the senate.
If I am willing to pony up $4000 for a computer, chances are I have the necessary intellect
Odd.. I had used the same base fact for the exact opposite argument
$4000? Seriously?
Yeah, seriously. I have minimum processor requirements to keep myself from smashing the computer with a hammer when I try to work at home. And I need to have the ability to run OS X... again for my job.
Does this blow your mind? Could I have put a similar computer together for less than $4K? Probably. Would it run OS X? Probably not without a lot of effort.
I have had some ghetto machines in the past, but assembling computers myself stopped being cost effective for me when I finished grad school and started making real money. Sometimes the time you spend "saving" money ends up being more expensive than just buying what you need and getting back to making money.
But thanks for your snarky and anonymous judgment.
...or the total overkill that is the Mac pro line...
As someone who also got bit by Apple's non-user serviceable part philosophy, I agree with you 100%.
I've got a Mac Pro. I'm not an Apple fanboi, I just hate them less than other computer manufacturers. My computer works great. But I didn't get the wireless card installed when I purchased it because I didn't need it. Later on, I needed the wireless capability, so I tried to buy the Airport Extreme card from Apple. The fuckers (yes, they are fuckers) wouldn't sell it to me because "it was not a user installable part." I had to make an appointment at my "local" Apple store that is 60 miles away to let some teenage "genius" install it for me. Yeah, OK, I'll get right on that, because I really want to drive my expensive 90-lb machine 120 miles on my day off so some 13-year-old-looking smartass can paw at it.
Instead, I bought it off a third-party vendor and worked out how to install it myself, since the only instruction it came with said "This is not a user installable part, please refer to the Mac Pro service manual for installation." It worked fine and I now have wireless capability, but I found Apple's actions with that upgrade really insulting.
If I am willing to pony up $4000 for a computer, chances are I have the necessary intellect and experience to screw a wireless card to my motherboard and plug in two antennas. Or I am willing to accept the consequences of my actions if I screw up. Why would a company make it hard for a consumer to use their product?
Apple's increasingly common philosophy of non-user serviceable parts, lack of mid-range user-upgradable towers, and forcing weird connectors down our throats without including the adapters for free are annoying and I think, ultimately, holding them back in the PC market. Window's recent suckage has been working to Apple's advantage, but I feel they could have capitalized on it more effectively. Of course, I am sure that Steve and his financial analysts have determined otherwise.
I didn't say there was no iron at the core of the sun, only that there wasn't a great deal of it, at least in comparison.
And to quote the article linked, ''If secular variation is caused by the ocean flow, the entire concept of the dynamo operating in the Earth's core is called into question: there exists no other evidence of hydrodynamic flow in the core.''
So the only evidence of flowing iron at the earth's core causing the earth's magnetic field is ... the existence of the earth's magnetic field itself. That's a bit circular, isn't it?
The author does not argue that the oceans cause the Earth's entire magnetic field, he only argues that they cause smaller temporal variations in the magnetic field. He says "The current consensus is that the main field is generated by the hydromagnetic dynamo in the Earth's fluid outer core." He questions this consensus at the end because (1) he has presented an alternate mechanism for small variations in the field strength and (2) he clearly disagrees with the accepted theory. But be can't contradict it because his work does not provide an alternate mechanism for the generation of the full field.
It isn't circular logic: The earth has a magnetic field. The oceans by themselves are not able to generate the Earth's full magnetic field. We know there is liquid iron at the earth's outer core. Flowing iron is the simplest concept capable of causing the magnetic field that we measure based on available knowledge. Nothing else proposed to date is as likely. So we conclude that there is flowing iron at the Earth's core.
Mod me down all you want for quoting the facts. But until someone can propose and supply supporting data for a different method of generating the entire Earth's magnetic field, accepted geological theory isn't going to change.
The sun doesn't appear to have much in the way of flowing iron at its core either. Does that mean that it can't have a magnetic field?
Essentially the theory stands at : flows of conductive fluid ( salt water, iron, plasma ) can generate magnetic fields. We have no evidence that there is flowing iron in the earth's core, but we have rather a lot of flowing salt water. Hmmm...
Ummmm, we do have some pretty strong evidence that the sun has iron at its core. If you believe in things like spectroscopy and archival meteorite data, then the sun is about 0.2% iron. And if you believe in gravity, then most of that iron is near the center of the sun, which is more than 300,000 times heavier than earth, so yeah, that's a lot of iron. Of course, the sun also has no solid crust and also has nuclear fusion occurring inside it, so maybe it isn't a good comparison body.
Why do you not believe that there is flowing iron at the Earth's core? Scientists have shown that there is a liquid layer of material beneath the material by studying the transmission of P and S waves generated from earthquakes. Do you not believe that the core of earth contains iron? Because the paper's author disagrees with you. He just doesn't believe that the flowing iron at the core is the only source the magnetic field.
Nuclear is the only option for affordable and ecological responsible power.
Yeah, accidentally drop some nuclear waste in your water supply and see how affordable and responsible it is then.
Or better yet, let a terrorist get his hands on some and do it for you.
With history as my witness, humans are not responsible. We mean well, but we have very short memories and radioactive material has a very long life.
Widespread nuclear power would be a fucking catastrophe. You think third world countries run by dictators are going to be "careful" with their reactors or their waste?
Come on people. Use science, not anecdotal evidence about how you think someone might have touched something that fell from space at some point.
The meteoroid starts in the upper atmosphere at a cold temperature, usually approaching earth with a high relative velocity. Viscous effects from the atmosphere decrease the velocity of the meteoroid. These frictional effects also dissipate most of that energy into heating the air that is accelerated by the meteoroid. Conductive heating transfers a portion of that energy to the meteoroid, which can get hot enough to glow and ablate solid material, carrying away energy with it. Early on, the atmosphere can also get heated to the point that it glows due to ionization from shock heating or frictional heating.
If the meteoroid slows down sufficiently, frictional drag (and thus heating) becomes less significant (as it depends on the square of velocity). If it is hotter than the atmosphere then it loses heat to the air from conductive heat transfer.
At the end of the day, it is a heat transfer problem. The meteoroid starts with a certain mass and velocity. It travels through a characterized frictional medium and ends with a different mass and velocity.
No one can possibly say how hot or fast this specific meteorite was when it hit the ground unless they measured the initial state, the final state or calculated the problem based on some estimates. And it is absolutely possible that it was going at a supersonic velocity when it hit him. Of course it is also possible that the rock made a really loud clap when it hit him and a second clap when it hit the ground.
I am psyched! My wife and I were getting Direct TV until a few weeks ago. We recently got a new TV and tried to tune into the digital channels over the air and were pleasantly surprised. In fact, the increased quality of the network channels for free prompted me to cancel our basic cable (well, dish really) package instead of paying MORE to "upgrade" HD cable.
I figure why pay pay to watch commercials when I can get them in HD for free?
The cable company was a little disappointed, but they can go die. I can't believe they expected me to pay MORE money to upgrade to HD digital service when low rez analog service was going away anyway.
The best part is that you get to keep the dish on the roof! Bonus!
Here's a life lesson for everyone. This guy should have taken 30 minutes out of his busy day of jerking off to little kids to learn about encryption. Or better yet, to learn how to install a DVD drive by himself.
But wait, it gets better! If you dig deeper, the offender's name was Kenneth Sodomsky.
Awesome.
Increase the hunting season and limits around airports throughout the country. It won't hurt the airplanes. A shotgun with is only lethal for what, 70 yards tops?
Or, like others have noted, put a birdcatcher in front of the engine inlet to deflect the birds, like cowcatcher did on trains.
The real problem is that the airlines and airports are not willing to accept decreased efficiency (lower profits) for increased safety. No new news there.