I'm most likely way too late in this conversation to get this post viewed, but I'll try anyway...
I live in the Huntsville metropolitan area (nearby, and completely surrounded, Madison).
The cost of living here is *RIDICULOUSLY* cheap. You can easily get a 1,500 sq. ft. starter-house on a half-acre of land for $120,000. Food and other necessities are, likewise, a small fraction of the average Engineer's salary.
And that's almost all there is here! Engineers. If you meet somebody new, you just kinda assume that they're an Engineer. Mechanical, Electrical, Computer, Aerospace. They're everywhere.
I bought my first house in the area just six months after finishing college. Starting salaries in the $50k - $60k range will do you just fine. And advancement is trivial if you just do your job. Either you advance in your starting job, or you can easily job-hop to any of the other tech companies in the area. Change jobs every ~5 years, and (in combination with normal salary increases) you'll easily hit 6-figures around your 10-year-mark. And at that point, you're just starting to get silly. 4,000 sq. ft. houses for $350,000 are easily affordable at that point.
And I also need to mention that almost every tech company out here offers continuing-education incentives. My first company paid for my Master's, and all I had to do was agree to work for them for 2-years after graduating. No big deal.
Long story short, Huntsville is a wonderful place for Engineers of almost any sort. I highly recommend it.
P.S. If you're still in college, Huntsville has tons of internships and co-ops programs. Do it! Graduate with a year+ of real-world experience, and it's even easier to get a job. And that company with which you co-oped is almost certainly going to make you an offer. After all, they had a year-long interview with you. They know *exactly* whether they want you or not.
Was it 100% like the book? No. But it was pretty dang close. The acting was decent. The special effects were decent. I certainly didn't feel like my time had been wasted.
As of this past Monday, I have a 1GigE Fiber line into the house from AT&T. It's been available in my neighborhood for about 2 weeks.
The tech was extremely nice. He worked with me on where the ONT would be installed outside the house. Ended up with the AT&T-provided router sitting on an upper-shelf in the pantry. Quite convenient.
AT&T wouldn't provide any additional installation services inside the house, though. So I'm also pulling Cat6 throughout the house right now by myself.
Also, the AT&T trencher that buried the fiber-line ended up cutting my Cable line... which was inconvenient, as the Cat6 hadn't finished being pulled yet, so I was using a hybrid setup depending on where in the house Ethernet had already been run. Had to use WiFi for Legion-gaming over the weekend. Bah!
Install Tech actually gave me his cell number, and told me to call him directly if there were any issues rather than calling AT&T directly. Already hit him up once about a router-config-issue, and he answered immediately.
Speed is good. I'm getting something like 600Mb down / 400Mb up on a crappy laptop hooked directly to the router. Not sure if the non-1GigE speed is a result of ONT-distance from the GPON head, limited processor/RAM on the laptop, or what... but, hey, it's a hell of a lot better than the 30Mb that I was getting from Wow (former Knology).
And why do I have this line in my house right now? Because Google is coming in soon. AT&T just beat them to the punch. For that matter, Wow/Knology is supposed to have 1GigE service over coax in the area around the start of the new year. Everybody is racing to get 1GigE to the prem.
It took me 5 years to graduate as well... because I co-oped with the same engineering company 4x times.
Yeah, I never got a "summer break" after my Freshman year, but it was *soooo* worth it.
First off, my resume showed a year+ of actual engineering work before I'd even graduated.
Second, I got to swap around every semester that I was co-oping, so I did everything from Product Qualification to Tech Support to actual software-design.
Third, the semesters co-oping got me a ton of cash. May more than I'd make working 2x semesters at minimum wage.
And as for "never having a break", work is a hell of a lot less difficult than school. You work 8-5... and then you're *free*! Go bowling with your other co-workers. Head to a movie with your new-found money. Whatever. I got more than enough "rest" during my co-op semesters.
Oh, and that company with which I co-oped? They treated their co-op program as an extended interview session. They knew *exactly* who they wanted to hire full-time after those co-ops graduated. Easiest interview I ever did. They already knew they were gonna make me an offer before I even went on-site again. It was just a question of which department wanted me the most.
Best I remember, Brooks' explanation for why your suggestion above proved ineffective is a combination of two things: 1) amount of ammunition available and 2) fear and confusion.
I absolutely agree that large-scale munitions are going to do structural damage to multiple targets. That's a given. Brooks' point was that it simply didn't do *enough* to stop a steadily-advancing horde with a large population difference between the attackers and defenders. If you have a thousand troops trying to fight off a million or more zombies, then the question becomes more about how quickly and effectively you're using those heavy munitions and are you slowing down their advance quickly enough with structural (rather than lethal) damage to keep them from overrunning your position.
Also, Brooks did keep the genre-standard of the concept of a "zombie" being largely absent from the collective awareness. Those previously-mentioned thousand troops, then, not only have to deal with the possibility of running out of ammo and not stopping the advance, but also the uncertainty of *why* their munitions seem to be so ineffective. Troops, not understanding what's going on, have their nerve break, and then you have collapsing formations and the zombies pushing a wedge through your protections.
With more experience later in the book where humans start pushing back (after years of learning what does and doesn't work), then military encounters *do* become effective with only slight modifications to their tactics. So you're speaking from their perspective, and you're right. It does work, and you can take down a massively-imbalanced zombie horde with even just a small, organized military force. But you have to know what you're doing first.
Brooks does keep the infectious nature, however, so that's at least one possible explanation as to, "Why, then, inhabit a body at all?" If whatever the zombie plague *really* is requires an incubator, then there's your reason.
After full infection, Brooks' zombies seem to require little of the human physiology, but initial infection still requires a live human host for, effectively, reproduction.
"World War Z" (the book, not the movie) by Max Brooks actually covers this fairly well.
***Spoilers***
At least in my opinion, the zombies in WWZ are either some form of alien parasite, a nanite plague, or some equivalent mechanism that facilitates some rather severe changes in the zombies' biology. The internals have largely converted to a black, tar-like substance which appears to actually be providing the locomotive force. Gun shots, stab wounds, blunt beatings, etc. just pretty much don't do anything. They're spongy, soft, and simply absorb most impacts. There are no internal organs of any importance. The skeletal structure may or may not still be there, but any injury to it simply changes their mobility slightly. Their 100% immune to any bacterial, viral, or fungal infection, as whatever they've been transmuted into isn't compatible with local microbiology, so they don't rot or decay in any way, nor are do they appear susceptible to exposure. A zombie stuck in extended sub-freezing temperatures simply freezes solid and then thaws and returns to shambling around if and when temperatures increase. Trying to burn them is just as ineffective, as their new physiology has them slowly burn off their clothing and maybe an exterior layer of semi-normal-looking skin before the interior tar-substance makes the flames go out. To paraphrase the book, napalm is useless, as all you end up with is converting a bunch of slowly advancing zombies into a bunch of slowly advancing flaming zombies. And something else that the book goes into detail concerning is the complete and utter lack of fear. There is no such thing as using "shock and awe" tactics on something that literally doesn't care if it dies (since it's already dead anyway). The "Battle of Yonkers" shows this quite clearly, with the military using traditional tactics including large-scale artillery while the horde just continues advancing. A bomb might blow off a zombie's legs and throw it 20 feet to the side, but then the top half just starts clawing towards you again. Then you have the scale issues, as the numbers of infected eventually get so bad that those stuck up on the ISS can see them from space on the Midwest plains ebbing and flowing like herds of buffalo before Western colonization. And finally, you have the "call for help". The book describes the zombies calling to each other whenever "food" is located. And what's worse is that that sets off a chain reaction. Any zombie that hears a call-out will then call out again, so you have an ever-growing network effect where even just one zombie spotting you may be catastrophic. This lead to any roadway being a certain death trap. People would starve to death or dehydrate while trapped in their cars surrounded by zombies. The zombies never got to them, but then the person who died inside might become a zombie from latent infection. That car-trapped zombie then just became a standing warning signal. If somebody passed what appeared to be a deserted car on the road, and the trapped zombie noticed them, then it would call out, and any zombie in ear shot knew that dinner was served.
Tying this back to the original military-force problem, basically any military engagement would, therefore, draw enough attention that you were guaranteed a mass wave of them in a relatively short time frame. Combined with their nigh-invulnerability where literally *nothing* but a head shot was effective, and the military would simply run out of ammunition before they'd come close to dealing with the immediate threat.
Now I'm in no way saying that most zombie descriptions even come close to some of these details. And it's my understanding that Max Brooks' goal was to specifically modify the zombie milieu to account for any unbelievable aspect such as your assertion of military force being effective. So, yeah, in most cases you're right that artillery would probably work just fine. But if you're looking for somebody to try and actually make a *working* description of how a zombie plague might actually beat us, then try out the book. Avoid the movie, IMHO. It completely glosses over 90% of what I described above, which made it a standard, unbelievable scenario, unfortunately.
Is Australia planning on building their own code from that source?
Because how would they know that what they were running was actually the source code they were provided?
And would Australia even be interested in jumping through that extra hoop considering that there are other vendor options available where Australia feels this isn't necessary? The price difference between Huawei and other vendors would have to be fairly sizable to warrant that.
Or, even more insidious, I've heard of the possibility to include backdoors via the compiler rather than via the source code.
Quote from that article: It is also possible to create a backdoor without modifying the source code of a program, or even modifying it after compilation. This can be done by rewriting the compiler so that it recognizes code during compilation that triggers inclusion of a backdoor in the compiled output. When the compromised compiler finds such code, it compiles it as normal, but also inserts a backdoor (perhaps a password recognition routine). So, when the user provides that input, he gains access to some (likely undocumented) aspect of program operation. This attack was first outlined by Ken Thompson in his famous paper Reflections on Trusting Trust (see below).
If Huawei's code requires anything more than generic gcc, Australia may not be able to verify 100% security, regardless... unless they're given the source code to the compiler as well.
Long story short, this just seems like a huge hassle that Australia is probably going to avoid anyway.
I hate to be a pessimist, but it's my understanding that there's no real technological hurdle that needs overcoming in terms of getting a strength-assist exoskeleton.
Sure, some fine tuning. You know, making sure that it doesn't break the user's bones and all that. But nothing too technically complicated.
It gets slightly more complicated if you're wanting a pure machine-brain interface rather than it being controlled through some other arrangement. But we've seen stuff like this already. The brain adapts well to new stimuli, and I'm sure somebody will get all the kinks worked out of that at some point not too far away.
The problem, as far as I'm aware, is with the power source. Battery technology has been stuck at roughly the same point for decades now. The weight to power-concentration ratio just isn't there.
So unless this story is actually about Nasa figuring out coke-bottle-sized cold fusion, then (unfortunately) go read this post's subject line.
Here's what I don't understand: Why is tenure necessary? What is different about academia such that teachers require "protection"?
And if someone does choose to respond to my post, please keep the vitriol down. Both of my parents were high school teachers. I've been around teachers for an extremely long time. I understand that they work much longer hours than just regular school hours. I understand that they take money out of their own pockets for school supplies. I know all the hardships. That's fine.
So, I repeat: What is different about teaching such that it requires tenure?
I live in a "Right to Work" state, i.e. a "we can fire you for any reason and, as long as we don't tell you that reason, you have no legal recourse" state. Everybody I know functions in this *absolutely no protection* environment, and we all do fine. Sure, sometimes somebody gets screwed over by the system. But in general, skilled labor is required to fill most positions such as engineering, software development, etc. Businesses don't just go off and clear out their entire staff on a whim, even though they can, because it would be disastrous for the business.
How is the same thing not true for teaching? You keep the good teachers. You fire the bad teachers. You get on with life.
You can even feel the tone of the original submitter. How there is an implicit denunciation of the firing of academics. But if you switched out the profession and said, "100 software developers were fired for not meeting coding deadlines", would anybody here even bat an eye?
I just don't get it. And, seriously, if I'm missing something, please explain it to me.
I don't really care if you're talking out of your ass. You write beautifully. I want to hear this spoken, because it was great just with the voice in my head.
Agreed. I know that *technically* the units being using in Afghanistan are robots. A mechanical arm used to weld cars in a factory just following a pre-programmed series of movements is technically a robot.
But if allusions to Terminators are going to be made, then we have to consider autonomy as the real metric for a "robotic war".
IMHO, people worried about things like robotic wars are implying a problem with the robots running amok, at least primarily. True, there are other issues to consider. For instance, would a person controlling a robot from 1,000 miles away take more risks with that robot, or go in firing more freely without worrying about reprisals, as opposed to somebody inside a tank where the control is more "involved"?
But it's not like modern aircraft are directly controlled by the people inside them either. There are tons of stabilizing modifications performed per second completely autonomously just to keep a modern combat aircraft from dropping out of the sky. It's all electronic signals. And a human is controlling that at a high level whether he's sitting in the cockpit or in California with a remote joystick.
Call me when, "afterward, the Stealth Bombers flew with perfect operational records..."
Just a warning, my Ex worked in the USPTO after graduating in 2002 as a biomedical engineer.
All I ever heard about that place was horror stories. There are quotas for how many patents you need to process per week. Managers regularly abuse those examiners who can't keep up. "Keeping up" requires approximately 10 to 20 hours of unpaid overtime per week.
And it's all mind-numbingly repetitive work.
This was a smart girl, 3.5+ GPA, never slacked off, and she couldn't handle it. If you decide to accept the offer, go in there with both eyes open.
P.S. Living in the D.C. area (near the USPTO) sucks also. Horrible, crime-ridden neighborhoods. Terrible traffic. Ridiculous housing costs. Good luck with all that.
I actually find that response curious. No offense to you, and I freely admit that I have no family members with Alzheimer's, but it seems to me that I would rather have a functional family member who doesn't remember me over, as you say, a bed-ridden one who does.
It seems like it would be a question between their happiness and yours. If they're a "normal" person who just happens to not know you, then they can still theoretically still lead fulfilling lives during their final years.
This is just a shot in the dark, but what if it's to placate Catholics? I'm not making any moral calls here, but contraceptives are a strict no-no for them from what I understand (IANA Catholic). And, yes, I know that a lot of people secretly ignore said ban, but we're talking official position here. Would a drug whose primary function is not related to reproduction, but which has a side effect that can interfere with the possibility of becoming pregnant, still be considered off limits?
Quote: I'm going to be generous and assume that these examiners are given a quota that they have to have resolved each week...
You're exactly correct. My ex worked at the USPTO on biomedical patents. Your evaluation was based on how many patents you had processed during the previous week. She estimated that, with proper investigation of all claims, you would have to work almost 60 hours a week on average to finish your quota. At first hire, you're not expected to meet this quota, i.e. they give you time to get "up to speed". But, after they think that enough time has passed, the quota is driven pretty hard. She spoke of coworkers literally being yelled at for not finishing the proper amount of cases. They don't really care if you pass or deny them, just as long as a "processed" stamp is placed on the case.
What's worse, even with these draconian measures, they were still roughly two years behind on processing patent applications.
Well, time for like my 3rd comment on Slashdot ever...
I realize you were joking, but, just in case nobody knows, here's how DSL works in a nut shell.
Your typical POTS line (Plain Old Telephone System) is just an analog connection to the phone company (yes, this is a generalization). The human voice and ear can only cover certain ranges of frequencies, so there's really no point in attempting to do voice communication beyond a frequency limit. But the higher frequencies can still go across the line just fine. As such, a DSL modem just modulates the data to correspond to frequencies higher than anything that you can say or hear and puts it on the same line as your voice traffic. To further ensure that there's no overlap between your voice traffic and the data modulations, you put a low pass filter on all your analog phone lines to make sure that they can't interfere with the data portion. At the phone company, they just strip the frequencies back into two separate systems and demodulate the data to get the 1s and 0s back.
Yes, actually, I do work at a company that makes this stuff. Why do you ask?
Obviously, this is merely the result of the space craft leaving the singularity of our solar system, thereby moving outside of Einsteinian laws of gravitation and physics. It can now enter hyperspace... or would be able to if the puppeteers would hurry up and arrange for a hyperdrive shunt to get dropped off.
If this can happen, then I'm pretty sure the spammer can win.
An arbitrator ruled in March that Pensacola, Fla., middle school teacher Robert K. Sites III, 37, was wrongly fired for showing up at work in a cocaine-distracted state (later measured at 50 times the level regarded as a "positive" test). The school has a "zero tolerance" policy on drugs, but it applies only to students. The arbitrator ruled that Sites is entitled to back pay and benefits and must be given drug counseling and a chance to get clean. [Pensacola News Journal, 3-15-02]
http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/nw020519.h tm l
Sorry if this seems a little self-serving, but may I recommend ADTRAN (www.adtran.com). I work as a co-op there, and we could take care of this for $80,000, no problem. We recently setup a wireless haul across the (I believe it was) Andes mountains in South America, going from peak to peak with our Tracer line of products. Just go and check us out. See what you think.
Slashdot Mirror
In my experience, lots of factories are running Win95... maybe Win2000 if you're lucky.
I know of PLC aggregation / communication software that literally only exists on Windows, simply because that's what many factories run.
The reason for that is because the first big wave of making "smart factories" was in the late 90s.
And factories, by and large, never replace anything unless it has been fully depreciated... and sometimes, not even then.
I'm most likely way too late in this conversation to get this post viewed, but I'll try anyway...
I live in the Huntsville metropolitan area (nearby, and completely surrounded, Madison).
The cost of living here is *RIDICULOUSLY* cheap. You can easily get a 1,500 sq. ft. starter-house on a half-acre of land for $120,000. Food and other necessities are, likewise, a small fraction of the average Engineer's salary.
And that's almost all there is here! Engineers. If you meet somebody new, you just kinda assume that they're an Engineer. Mechanical, Electrical, Computer, Aerospace. They're everywhere.
I bought my first house in the area just six months after finishing college. Starting salaries in the $50k - $60k range will do you just fine. And advancement is trivial if you just do your job. Either you advance in your starting job, or you can easily job-hop to any of the other tech companies in the area. Change jobs every ~5 years, and (in combination with normal salary increases) you'll easily hit 6-figures around your 10-year-mark. And at that point, you're just starting to get silly. 4,000 sq. ft. houses for $350,000 are easily affordable at that point.
And I also need to mention that almost every tech company out here offers continuing-education incentives. My first company paid for my Master's, and all I had to do was agree to work for them for 2-years after graduating. No big deal.
Long story short, Huntsville is a wonderful place for Engineers of almost any sort. I highly recommend it.
P.S. If you're still in college, Huntsville has tons of internships and co-ops programs. Do it! Graduate with a year+ of real-world experience, and it's even easier to get a job. And that company with which you co-oped is almost certainly going to make you an offer. After all, they had a year-long interview with you. They know *exactly* whether they want you or not.
In SyFy's *slight* defense, they have done some decent things recently.
I rather enjoyed the Childhood's End mini-series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Was it 100% like the book? No. But it was pretty dang close. The acting was decent. The special effects were decent. I certainly didn't feel like my time had been wasted.
So I'm tentatively hopeful for this as well.
As of this past Monday, I have a 1GigE Fiber line into the house from AT&T. It's been available in my neighborhood for about 2 weeks.
The tech was extremely nice. He worked with me on where the ONT would be installed outside the house. Ended up with the AT&T-provided router sitting on an upper-shelf in the pantry. Quite convenient.
AT&T wouldn't provide any additional installation services inside the house, though. So I'm also pulling Cat6 throughout the house right now by myself.
Also, the AT&T trencher that buried the fiber-line ended up cutting my Cable line... which was inconvenient, as the Cat6 hadn't finished being pulled yet, so I was using a hybrid setup depending on where in the house Ethernet had already been run. Had to use WiFi for Legion-gaming over the weekend. Bah!
Install Tech actually gave me his cell number, and told me to call him directly if there were any issues rather than calling AT&T directly. Already hit him up once about a router-config-issue, and he answered immediately.
Speed is good. I'm getting something like 600Mb down / 400Mb up on a crappy laptop hooked directly to the router. Not sure if the non-1GigE speed is a result of ONT-distance from the GPON head, limited processor/RAM on the laptop, or what... but, hey, it's a hell of a lot better than the 30Mb that I was getting from Wow (former Knology).
And why do I have this line in my house right now? Because Google is coming in soon. AT&T just beat them to the punch. For that matter, Wow/Knology is supposed to have 1GigE service over coax in the area around the start of the new year. Everybody is racing to get 1GigE to the prem.
Competition is nice when it actually works.
It took me 5 years to graduate as well... because I co-oped with the same engineering company 4x times.
Yeah, I never got a "summer break" after my Freshman year, but it was *soooo* worth it.
First off, my resume showed a year+ of actual engineering work before I'd even graduated.
Second, I got to swap around every semester that I was co-oping, so I did everything from Product Qualification to Tech Support to actual software-design.
Third, the semesters co-oping got me a ton of cash. May more than I'd make working 2x semesters at minimum wage.
And as for "never having a break", work is a hell of a lot less difficult than school. You work 8-5... and then you're *free*! Go bowling with your other co-workers. Head to a movie with your new-found money. Whatever. I got more than enough "rest" during my co-op semesters.
Oh, and that company with which I co-oped? They treated their co-op program as an extended interview session. They knew *exactly* who they wanted to hire full-time after those co-ops graduated. Easiest interview I ever did. They already knew they were gonna make me an offer before I even went on-site again. It was just a question of which department wanted me the most.
Best I remember, Brooks' explanation for why your suggestion above proved ineffective is a combination of two things: 1) amount of ammunition available and 2) fear and confusion.
I absolutely agree that large-scale munitions are going to do structural damage to multiple targets. That's a given. Brooks' point was that it simply didn't do *enough* to stop a steadily-advancing horde with a large population difference between the attackers and defenders. If you have a thousand troops trying to fight off a million or more zombies, then the question becomes more about how quickly and effectively you're using those heavy munitions and are you slowing down their advance quickly enough with structural (rather than lethal) damage to keep them from overrunning your position.
Also, Brooks did keep the genre-standard of the concept of a "zombie" being largely absent from the collective awareness. Those previously-mentioned thousand troops, then, not only have to deal with the possibility of running out of ammo and not stopping the advance, but also the uncertainty of *why* their munitions seem to be so ineffective. Troops, not understanding what's going on, have their nerve break, and then you have collapsing formations and the zombies pushing a wedge through your protections.
With more experience later in the book where humans start pushing back (after years of learning what does and doesn't work), then military encounters *do* become effective with only slight modifications to their tactics. So you're speaking from their perspective, and you're right. It does work, and you can take down a massively-imbalanced zombie horde with even just a small, organized military force. But you have to know what you're doing first.
Point taken.
Brooks does keep the infectious nature, however, so that's at least one possible explanation as to, "Why, then, inhabit a body at all?" If whatever the zombie plague *really* is requires an incubator, then there's your reason.
After full infection, Brooks' zombies seem to require little of the human physiology, but initial infection still requires a live human host for, effectively, reproduction.
"World War Z" (the book, not the movie) by Max Brooks actually covers this fairly well.
***Spoilers***
At least in my opinion, the zombies in WWZ are either some form of alien parasite, a nanite plague, or some equivalent mechanism that facilitates some rather severe changes in the zombies' biology. The internals have largely converted to a black, tar-like substance which appears to actually be providing the locomotive force. Gun shots, stab wounds, blunt beatings, etc. just pretty much don't do anything. They're spongy, soft, and simply absorb most impacts. There are no internal organs of any importance. The skeletal structure may or may not still be there, but any injury to it simply changes their mobility slightly. Their 100% immune to any bacterial, viral, or fungal infection, as whatever they've been transmuted into isn't compatible with local microbiology, so they don't rot or decay in any way, nor are do they appear susceptible to exposure. A zombie stuck in extended sub-freezing temperatures simply freezes solid and then thaws and returns to shambling around if and when temperatures increase. Trying to burn them is just as ineffective, as their new physiology has them slowly burn off their clothing and maybe an exterior layer of semi-normal-looking skin before the interior tar-substance makes the flames go out. To paraphrase the book, napalm is useless, as all you end up with is converting a bunch of slowly advancing zombies into a bunch of slowly advancing flaming zombies. And something else that the book goes into detail concerning is the complete and utter lack of fear. There is no such thing as using "shock and awe" tactics on something that literally doesn't care if it dies (since it's already dead anyway). The "Battle of Yonkers" shows this quite clearly, with the military using traditional tactics including large-scale artillery while the horde just continues advancing. A bomb might blow off a zombie's legs and throw it 20 feet to the side, but then the top half just starts clawing towards you again. Then you have the scale issues, as the numbers of infected eventually get so bad that those stuck up on the ISS can see them from space on the Midwest plains ebbing and flowing like herds of buffalo before Western colonization. And finally, you have the "call for help". The book describes the zombies calling to each other whenever "food" is located. And what's worse is that that sets off a chain reaction. Any zombie that hears a call-out will then call out again, so you have an ever-growing network effect where even just one zombie spotting you may be catastrophic. This lead to any roadway being a certain death trap. People would starve to death or dehydrate while trapped in their cars surrounded by zombies. The zombies never got to them, but then the person who died inside might become a zombie from latent infection. That car-trapped zombie then just became a standing warning signal. If somebody passed what appeared to be a deserted car on the road, and the trapped zombie noticed them, then it would call out, and any zombie in ear shot knew that dinner was served.
Tying this back to the original military-force problem, basically any military engagement would, therefore, draw enough attention that you were guaranteed a mass wave of them in a relatively short time frame. Combined with their nigh-invulnerability where literally *nothing* but a head shot was effective, and the military would simply run out of ammunition before they'd come close to dealing with the immediate threat.
Now I'm in no way saying that most zombie descriptions even come close to some of these details. And it's my understanding that Max Brooks' goal was to specifically modify the zombie milieu to account for any unbelievable aspect such as your assertion of military force being effective. So, yeah, in most cases you're right that artillery would probably work just fine. But if you're looking for somebody to try and actually make a *working* description of how a zombie plague might actually beat us, then try out the book. Avoid the movie, IMHO. It completely glosses over 90% of what I described above, which made it a standard, unbelievable scenario, unfortunately.
Is Australia planning on building their own code from that source?
Because how would they know that what they were running was actually the source code they were provided?
And would Australia even be interested in jumping through that extra hoop considering that there are other vendor options available where Australia feels this isn't necessary? The price difference between Huawei and other vendors would have to be fairly sizable to warrant that.
Or, even more insidious, I've heard of the possibility to include backdoors via the compiler rather than via the source code.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backdoor_(computing)
Quote from that article:
It is also possible to create a backdoor without modifying the source code of a program, or even modifying it after compilation. This can be done by rewriting the compiler so that it recognizes code during compilation that triggers inclusion of a backdoor in the compiled output. When the compromised compiler finds such code, it compiles it as normal, but also inserts a backdoor (perhaps a password recognition routine). So, when the user provides that input, he gains access to some (likely undocumented) aspect of program operation. This attack was first outlined by Ken Thompson in his famous paper Reflections on Trusting Trust (see below).
If Huawei's code requires anything more than generic gcc, Australia may not be able to verify 100% security, regardless... unless they're given the source code to the compiler as well.
Long story short, this just seems like a huge hassle that Australia is probably going to avoid anyway.
Just my 2 cents...
I hate to be a pessimist, but it's my understanding that there's no real technological hurdle that needs overcoming in terms of getting a strength-assist exoskeleton.
Sure, some fine tuning. You know, making sure that it doesn't break the user's bones and all that. But nothing too technically complicated.
It gets slightly more complicated if you're wanting a pure machine-brain interface rather than it being controlled through some other arrangement. But we've seen stuff like this already. The brain adapts well to new stimuli, and I'm sure somebody will get all the kinks worked out of that at some point not too far away.
The problem, as far as I'm aware, is with the power source. Battery technology has been stuck at roughly the same point for decades now. The weight to power-concentration ratio just isn't there.
So unless this story is actually about Nasa figuring out coke-bottle-sized cold fusion, then (unfortunately) go read this post's subject line.
Here's what I don't understand: Why is tenure necessary? What is different about academia such that teachers require "protection"?
And if someone does choose to respond to my post, please keep the vitriol down. Both of my parents were high school teachers. I've been around teachers for an extremely long time. I understand that they work much longer hours than just regular school hours. I understand that they take money out of their own pockets for school supplies. I know all the hardships. That's fine.
So, I repeat: What is different about teaching such that it requires tenure?
I live in a "Right to Work" state, i.e. a "we can fire you for any reason and, as long as we don't tell you that reason, you have no legal recourse" state. Everybody I know functions in this *absolutely no protection* environment, and we all do fine. Sure, sometimes somebody gets screwed over by the system. But in general, skilled labor is required to fill most positions such as engineering, software development, etc. Businesses don't just go off and clear out their entire staff on a whim, even though they can, because it would be disastrous for the business.
How is the same thing not true for teaching? You keep the good teachers. You fire the bad teachers. You get on with life.
You can even feel the tone of the original submitter. How there is an implicit denunciation of the firing of academics. But if you switched out the profession and said, "100 software developers were fired for not meeting coding deadlines", would anybody here even bat an eye?
I just don't get it. And, seriously, if I'm missing something, please explain it to me.
I don't really care if you're talking out of your ass. You write beautifully. I want to hear this spoken, because it was great just with the voice in my head.
Agreed. I know that *technically* the units being using in Afghanistan are robots. A mechanical arm used to weld cars in a factory just following a pre-programmed series of movements is technically a robot.
But if allusions to Terminators are going to be made, then we have to consider autonomy as the real metric for a "robotic war".
IMHO, people worried about things like robotic wars are implying a problem with the robots running amok, at least primarily. True, there are other issues to consider. For instance, would a person controlling a robot from 1,000 miles away take more risks with that robot, or go in firing more freely without worrying about reprisals, as opposed to somebody inside a tank where the control is more "involved"?
But it's not like modern aircraft are directly controlled by the people inside them either. There are tons of stabilizing modifications performed per second completely autonomously just to keep a modern combat aircraft from dropping out of the sky. It's all electronic signals. And a human is controlling that at a high level whether he's sitting in the cockpit or in California with a remote joystick.
Call me when, "afterward, the Stealth Bombers flew with perfect operational records..."
Marketing will call it the "Volkswagen Scarab", and all will be right with the world.
For that matter, Electromagnetism and the Weak Force have been theorized to be the same thing: Electroweak
Just a warning, my Ex worked in the USPTO after graduating in 2002 as a biomedical engineer.
All I ever heard about that place was horror stories. There are quotas for how many patents you need to process per week. Managers regularly abuse those examiners who can't keep up. "Keeping up" requires approximately 10 to 20 hours of unpaid overtime per week.
And it's all mind-numbingly repetitive work.
This was a smart girl, 3.5+ GPA, never slacked off, and she couldn't handle it. If you decide to accept the offer, go in there with both eyes open.
P.S. Living in the D.C. area (near the USPTO) sucks also. Horrible, crime-ridden neighborhoods. Terrible traffic. Ridiculous housing costs. Good luck with all that.
I actually find that response curious. No offense to you, and I freely admit that I have no family members with Alzheimer's, but it seems to me that I would rather have a functional family member who doesn't remember me over, as you say, a bed-ridden one who does.
It seems like it would be a question between their happiness and yours. If they're a "normal" person who just happens to not know you, then they can still theoretically still lead fulfilling lives during their final years.
This is just a shot in the dark, but what if it's to placate Catholics? I'm not making any moral calls here, but contraceptives are a strict no-no for them from what I understand (IANA Catholic). And, yes, I know that a lot of people secretly ignore said ban, but we're talking official position here. Would a drug whose primary function is not related to reproduction, but which has a side effect that can interfere with the possibility of becoming pregnant, still be considered off limits?
Quote: I'm going to be generous and assume that these examiners are given a quota that they have to have resolved each week...
You're exactly correct. My ex worked at the USPTO on biomedical patents. Your evaluation was based on how many patents you had processed during the previous week. She estimated that, with proper investigation of all claims, you would have to work almost 60 hours a week on average to finish your quota. At first hire, you're not expected to meet this quota, i.e. they give you time to get "up to speed". But, after they think that enough time has passed, the quota is driven pretty hard. She spoke of coworkers literally being yelled at for not finishing the proper amount of cases. They don't really care if you pass or deny them, just as long as a "processed" stamp is placed on the case.
What's worse, even with these draconian measures, they were still roughly two years behind on processing patent applications.
Well, time for like my 3rd comment on Slashdot ever...
I realize you were joking, but, just in case nobody knows, here's how DSL works in a nut shell.
Your typical POTS line (Plain Old Telephone System) is just an analog connection to the phone company (yes, this is a generalization). The human voice and ear can only cover certain ranges of frequencies, so there's really no point in attempting to do voice communication beyond a frequency limit. But the higher frequencies can still go across the line just fine. As such, a DSL modem just modulates the data to correspond to frequencies higher than anything that you can say or hear and puts it on the same line as your voice traffic. To further ensure that there's no overlap between your voice traffic and the data modulations, you put a low pass filter on all your analog phone lines to make sure that they can't interfere with the data portion. At the phone company, they just strip the frequencies back into two separate systems and demodulate the data to get the 1s and 0s back.
Yes, actually, I do work at a company that makes this stuff. Why do you ask?
Kiki, have you been channelling Ayn Rand again?
Obviously, this is merely the result of the space craft leaving the singularity of our solar system, thereby moving outside of Einsteinian laws of gravitation and physics. It can now enter hyperspace... or would be able to if the puppeteers would hurry up and arrange for a hyperdrive shunt to get dropped off.
Sorry, just finished "Ringworld".
If this can happen, then I'm pretty sure the spammer can win.
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An arbitrator ruled in March that Pensacola, Fla., middle school teacher Robert K. Sites III, 37, was wrongly fired for showing up at work in a cocaine-distracted state (later measured at 50 times the level regarded as a "positive" test). The school has a "zero tolerance" policy on drugs, but it applies only to students. The arbitrator ruled that Sites is entitled to back pay and benefits and must be given drug counseling and a chance to get clean. [Pensacola News Journal, 3-15-02]
http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/nw020519.
Sorry if this seems a little self-serving, but may I recommend ADTRAN (www.adtran.com). I work as a co-op there, and we could take care of this for $80,000, no problem. We recently setup a wireless haul across the (I believe it was) Andes mountains in South America, going from peak to peak with our Tracer line of products. Just go and check us out. See what you think.
P.S. This is my first post, so please be gentle.