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Comment Which parts in the system are missing? (Score 1) 231

Um, I think we are forgetting something here. Throwing hardware at a problem - without understanding the problem - will not be as effective as hoped. Consider the context first - what is the environment, how much bio-diversity, is there a way to arrange things to increase fertility? Consider Haiti, a small country, where the dictator "Doc Duvalier" cut down all the trees. He didn't have to be worried about snipers in the tree tops; the unintended consequence was the arable land was washed into the ocean, beginning a cycle of poverty that continues to this day. Breaking the cycle of poverty takes insight, and small changes - composting, small bushes and shrubs to act as soil anchors, understanding how to make real wealth, and not something that is a photo op - only to rust unused.

Comment Why not both? (Score 1) 4

First, GAPP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) usually lists the NRE (Non-Recurring Engineering) as a Cost Centre. Sales is considered a Profit Centre. This is for tax reasons.

A well run company realizes that the real value is generated when both Sales and Engineering get along well. This can only happen if they understand each other's care-abouts. The Engineer's contribution is to generate wealth (and value). However, if nobody knows about it, their work is for nothing. In order to get that value to someone who needs it, you need sales. The person in sales is the face and character of the company. It is their responsibility to present that engineered value to the customer. They do that by identifying the features of the design, that would be of benefit to the customer.

This means that both Engineering and Sales (and Marketing) have to understand that an unused feature, or one having no benefit is a horrible waste of time and effort and leads to a schedule slip. Similarly, not understanding when a feature is clumsy or missing, and is a must-have means no sales.

The balance point is hard to discern, it takes a team to ask the right questions.

But this challenge is the art of engineering, and doing it right is one of the great pleasures of engineering. To Sales, having happy customers means possible future sales - and most importantly, being able to get real intelligence as to what is needed next to the engineering team- well before it is needed.

One quick word on skill sets: Project management and Sales are interrupt driven; Marketing and Engineering are insular activities -depending on uninterrupted effort. Accounting is there to reduce taxes and make the money flow at the right rate - not too slow (boredom, frustration) nor too fast (wasteful, insufficient planning)

C level executives are there to present the company to shareholders, and incidentally keep disasters small.

Personally I have flipped back and forth between design engineering, project management, and as a Field Applications Engineer.

I enjoyed each of these responsibilities; however each of them had their tedious dull spots.

Comment This is effective, and efficient (Score 1) 301

Consider it this way, using the electric grid is the most effective use of energy transmission. By using large plants, we can use every trick that an engineer can conceive to wring the last watt out of fuel. So far, so good. But by combining the electrical storage potential of any hybrid, with a tuned engine for maximal efficiency gets the best of both worlds. It's easier to design to, also. It's an old trick called co-generation, used in pulp and paper plants. Now, if we can store the "waste heat" for our homes ... well, we just reduced the total energy demand. Any takers? JB

Comment Fiction or non Fiction? (Score 1) 363

Lots more non fiction then I voted. There are advantages in reading a lot of SF when I was a tad; 5 books in a weekend. Now that I'm older, I read tech books in sciences and math - and some of them take a page a day to digest; especially the math (combinatorics, abstract algebra, that sort of thing). And I'm tackling literature and languages, and those are slow going too. But I am having fun, but the to-learn list keeps getting longer the more I understand. Dang these short lifespans... JB

Comment staying together (Score 1) 404

while battling depression/anxiety. Who knew that they co-exist? Try to avoid that fate. However, I have managed to catch up on my non technical reading; I have an ever lengthening to-learn list; and am helping others through their own rough spots; and am still keeping up with my own discipline, EE. It hasn't been a total waste of time, but I am inpatient to get back into harness, so to speak. I think I'll find some hairy problem to apply myself to. Improving education comes to mind. Cheers, JB

Comment Ummm, this is slashdot (Score 1) 1

Now that may be enough for most readers, but this is, after all the slashdot crowd. Vitally important information is missing!

It mentions "running out of steam". Is there a safety hazard to said device? Possibility of nasty scalds requiring a trip to smirking emergency room staff? Does it require carbon based fuels, like stoking it with coal? Or, worse yet, a coal fired power generating station? Can I have a solar powered charging station, as an option? Wilderness trips, ya know...

It seems that it is dynamically imbalanced, on purpose. Will bits of the device shake off with extended use? What about the interior design? Can it survive international shock, shake and vibration standards? What about electrical safety? Does it pose a risk to public health and safety? Does it have a breath metering device so as to prevent impaired operation?

And most important, what kind of microcontroller does it use? Does it have an SDK? Which languages does it support? Can it be re-programmed? Will it run Linux? Is there a logging function that permits peak useage times and rates? Does it have WiFi?

Hope this helps spark a discussion.

Education

Submission + - Teachers Union Boycotts LA Times Over Evaluations (newsweek.com)

Atypical Geek writes: According to Newsweek, the local teachers union is infuriated over the disclosure of teacher performance metrics.

Do parents have the right to know which of their kids' teachers are the most and least effective? That's the controversy roaring in California this week with the publication of an investigative series by the Los Angeles Times's Jason Song and Jason Felch, who used seven years of math and English test data to publicly identify the best and the worst third- to fifth-grade teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The newspaper's announcement of its plans to release data later this month on all 6,000 of the city's elementary-school teachers has prompted the local teachers' union to rally members to organize a boycott of the newspaper.

According to the linked Times article, United Teachers Los Angeles president A.J. Duffy said the database was "an irresponsible, offensive intrusion into your professional life that will do nothing to improve student learning."

Programming

Submission + - Throwing Out Software That Works

theodp writes: Just as the iPhone rendered circa-2007 smartphones obsolete, points out Marco Arment, the iPad is on the verge of doing the same to circa-2010 netbooks. Should this succeed, cautions Dave Winer, we may be entering an era of deliberate degradation of the user experience and throwing overboard of software that works, for corporate reasons. Already, Winer finds himself having to go to a desktop machine if he wants to view web content that's inaccessible with his iPhone and iPad. 'There was no bottleneck for software in the pre-iPad netbooks,' notes Dave. 'It matters. What I want is the convenient form factor without the corporate filter. It's way too simplistic to believe that we'll get that, but we had it. That's what I don't like — deliberate devolution.'
Google

Submission + - Google starts charging Chrome Extension developers (chromium.org) 2

trooperer writes: Yesterday, Google introduced two significant changes in the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery: a developer signup fee and a domain verification system.

The signup fee is a one-time payment of $5. Supposedly, it's purpose is to "create better safeguards against fraudulent extensions in the gallery and limit the activity of malicious developer accounts". Developers who already registered with the gallery can continue to update their extensions and publish new items without paying the fee.

Handhelds

Submission + - Real-time, detailed face tracking on a Nokia N900 (manchester.ac.uk)

ptresadern writes: Researchers at the University of Manchester this week revealed a detailed face tracker that runs in real-time on the Nokia N900 mobile phone. Unlike existing mobile face trackers that give an approximate position and scale of the face, Manchester's embedded Active Appearance Model accurately tracks a number of landmarks on and around the face such as the eyes, nose, mouth and jawline. The extra level of detail that this provides potentially indicates who the user is, where they are looking and how they are feeling. The face tracker was developed as part of a face- and voice-verification system for controlling access to mobile internet applications such as e-mail, social networking and on-line banking.
The Internet

Submission + - Telenet ISP: One of our customers downloads 2.7TB (geek.com) 1

An anonymous reader writes: While for most people the data limit is never reached, with media-rich websites becoming every more prevalent, and more media services going online (we’re looking at you streaming video services), it won’t be long before the average user is surpassing even the highest caps commonly imposed today.

But how much data is it possible to download every month? And do the so-called data-hogs really burn through that much more data than everyone else? According to Belgian ISP Telenet, the answers are “a lot” and “yes, they can”.

Programming

Submission + - Sorting algorithms: boring until you add sound (geek.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Anyone who has ever done a programming course or tried to learn to code out of a book will have come across sorting algorithms. Bubble, heap, merge, there’s a long list of these methods of sorting data. The subject matter is fairly dry. Thankfully someone has found a way to not only make sorting more interesting, but easier to remember and understand too.
Science

Submission + - What happens to a football player's neurons? (discovermagazine.com)

An anonymous reader writes: It seems like every week there's a new story about the consequences of all those concussions experienced by football players and other athletes — just a few days ago, the NY Times reported that some athletes diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease may actually have a neural disease brought on by head trauma. But missing in these stories is an explanation of what head trauma actually does to the brain cells. Now Carl Zimmer has filled in the gap with a column that takes a look at how neurons respond to stress, and explains how stretching a neuron's axon turns its internal structure into "mush."
Idle

Submission + - Scientists Find a Better Way to Pour Champagne (physicscentral.com)

BuzzSkyline writes: It's better to pour Champagne the way a good bartender draws a beer, by running it down the inside surface of the glass. The revelation, which appears in July 2010 issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, flies in the face of age-old French traditions, which require the bubbly to be poured in a stream that free-falls straight down the center of a champagne flute. By using infrared thermography to image the carbon dioxide that escapes over the rim of a Champagne glass for various style pours, the researchers proved that the gentler, beer-like technique allows the wine to retain more of the dissolved gas that is critical to the whole Champagne experience.
Transportation

Submission + - U.S. high-speed railway: a matter of economics

An anonymous reader writes: The federal government has committed at least $8-billion (and counting) for the development of a nationwide high-speed intercity passenger railway system in almost three-dozen states. Rail advocates have long dreamed of an extensive railway grid that will provide clean, speedy, energy-efficient travel. The high-speed rail program is also expected to create thousands of desperately needed jobs, while reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil and easing gridlocked highways and congested air-space. However, this noble, ambitious, multi-year plan faces a multitude of obstacles -- including costs that will no doubt escalate as the years pass by; and an American public that may be reluctant to relinquish the independence and convenience of their beloved automobiles for a train.

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