Next thing you know all babies will be created in a test tube.

Around the year 1989 I was working as an Engineering Tech building and testing devices based on the 8051 embedded controller. Mostly access control systems. The company fell on financial hard times around 1990, I found myself dealing with unemployment. I was renting an apartment from my inlaws at the time, had two sons and one on the way. I hit the ground running looking for work, at that time the US was still designing and manufacturing products locally but the economic slowdown put the brakes on hiring anyone, no matter how good you were. So what did I do? I taught myself Solaris, CAD, hooked myself up as an Autodesk developer. Back in the 90s companies used to submit RFQs in the newspaper. I found one requesting a high speed large printer solution. I partnered with a company that provided such hardware, an high speed plotter. When I presented my company I had to come up with a name on the fly since I couldn't just be a DBA. I came up with Innovative Technology because the idea was that I'm gonna Innovate. The CTO of the company said "nice presentation, tell you what. Our current E size drawings take over 45 minutes to plot. We just won a contract to wire a major building in NYC. We need to cut the time down, can you help?" I replied that I could conduct a demo and plot out an E size drawing in less than 3 minutes. The CTO replied that If I could do that then they will offer me the contract. Well I called JDL, they hooked me up with another company, I wrote my code to integrate the plotter into their network, I bought a Sun Sparc 5 from a liquidator, ran my code on there. I installed PCNFS on the test workstation, connected to my printer driver, tested at the vendors site. I got the sample drawing done in 2.5 minutes. I was ready for the demo. I conducted the demo the following week, won the contract and the profit I earned bankrolled my business for a year. I grew the business, I added other vertical markets such as Point of Sale System, I even tought myself how to work on HP AS400 systems and landed a contract to provide system administration on a visiting nurse company's system. I ran my onw consulting gig for 6 years. The only reason why I sold it and gave it up was I had a young wife and family that I wanted to spend more time with. I put in over 140hrs /week into my business. With the experience I picked up I was able to get my resume out and get a new job in the IT Industry in one week. I used the money I saved to put down on my first house. Yes I miss running my own business, but when I ran my own business I missed my family. All in all it's been a great ride. I'm not an immigrant. I'm the great grandson of an immigrant if that counts. The way I look at it was I needed to leverage my skills to provide for me and my family. The motivation wasn't to earn megabucks. I would hustle, save some money, if I had a surplus for the month I'd take a short vacation with the wife and kids The short 3 day vacations wasn't enough though. Trust me, working 40hrs/week I see my family a lot more. I think anyone here on Slashdot, if they had to, they could run their own consulting business. Who knows, I may have to do it again someday.

Nevermind. This is a good thing. I was ripping at first. The Black Box has been with GM cars since 1994 and my 2010 Jeep Wrangler has it too. Basically the vehicles recorder stores the last 15 seconds of data this way if you die in a crash, data can be retrieved from the black box to see if the vehicle failed in any way. Also the data can help you if you are in an accident and the accident was not your fault. It can not be used to monitor your driving.

LED lights may be cheap to run but they are hard on the eyes. Fluorescent, Sodium Vapor, they all suck. There's nothing like the glow of a incandescent bulb. It's a warmer light. Easier on the eyes too.

Damn. When my kids were little I used to setup the refractor telescope with the solar reflector to view solar activity. Sunspots are easy to watch and detect. also I made my own equipment to observe the corona. It's real easy actually. Just create a metal disk that's large enough to block the disk of the sun, put it in the path of your telescopic solar projector. I taught my kids how to observe just the reflection on the screen.... and NOT TO LOOK DIRECTLY through the telescope. Hmm..this dude must have watch too much sci-fi and not enough schooling. I hope this article was posted on slashdot just to prove how dumb some people are.

As I'm getting older I'm starting to value my privacy more and more. So... I deleted all my friends, posts, and pictures on facebook and renamed my name to a fictitious character. As I'm getting older I value my privacy. If I want to talk about something I'll wait until I see them. I don't need everyone knowing my business. I think all of us here should do the same. Too many people are addicted to facebook. It's an illness. Do you have any idea how many work colleagues hit facebook during work hours or on the phone hitting fb during the commute home ?

Think about the stresses that this structure will be under! Nevermind the power requirements for a MAGLEV. Maybe the people who dreamed this tried to beat alcoholism by taking LSD ? ->reference to other insane slashdot news posting.

feet, stride, gait, and balance all need to be adaptable when walking on terrain.

Is this the dumbing down of science ? I design autonomous robots. Running on a treadmill is nothing compared to running on terrain! Running on a treadmill the feet and stride do not need to adapt for the terrain. The balance algorithm isn't as complicated if you are running on a treadmill. I'd imagine that this robot is pretty easy to knock off it's feet.

First it was manufacturing, next IT, next Software Development, now science and engineering. The government wonders why the economy is in the shitter. It's called globalization. Outsourcing sucks. Corporations are cutting the domestic workforce, and they wonder why their products are not selling. We gotta take industry back and reward US companies that design, and build their products here. Screw this globalization shit.

Yeah but assuming that an alien life form could be helpful and friendly is foolish. You don't know one way or the other.

When I was a little kid there was a show called "Get Smart".. it was in syndication but I watched it after supper. When I was 18 years old I designed gadgets. One gadget had a microphone, amplfied what it picked up and inverted the signal 180 degrees. I used an OpAMP to invert the signal, and also there was a potentiometer in the circuit so I can vary the signal phase. If you pointed a speaker connected the amp to the sound source that the microphone was pointing to you can cancel out most of the sound. I used a horned loudspeaker.. kind of like a megaphone. microphone was mounted below the speaker. OK so it looked kind of like a sound canceling gun. I made a lot of crazy gadgets when I was a kid. I also made a remote controlled fire alarm so if you are cooking and the alarm goes you can hit the remote and disable the alarm for 10 minutes.

US price for low sulfur diesel is $4.50/gal I run regular gas in my Jeep Wrangler... $3.60/gal not bad. I like to go 4 wheeling so I don't want to sell it and downsize. the commute averages me around 21mpg not bad for a Jeep. 17mpg in 4wd when I am on the trails. Fuel cost me $45.00/week

uhm.. my engineering Job is 24 miles each way. I drive a Jeep Wrangler because I love to go 4 Wheeling, it's a great convertible in the summer and awesome in the snow in the winter. It's fuel efficient enough for me. I get 21mpg for the back road commute to work. When I run synthetic oil I can squeeze 24mpg out of it. I run synthetic in the spring/summer/fall since I do the oil changes then and save money. In the winter I have the stealership do it and run the factory recommended. Fuel costs me $45.00/week for something I like to drive. If we all drive hybrids or fuel sippers the government is gonna look at other ways to pay for roads. There are already talks about taxing us by the mile instead of taxing us by the gallon. I can't justify the cost of an electric car. A volt cost $548.00/month.. no gas. My Jeep cost me $304.00 month and even at the price I am paying for fuel now my Jeep is cheaper to operate. Plus I can drive in places where you can't take a volt. And I have. Try driving in the Rhode Island Desert. Yeah it exists.. check out google maps. There was a quarry there that posioned the soil around there years ago. It's a desert. I have a blast 4 Wheeling there. You can get air off the mounds. If you live in the area it's off of 95 South, exit 6. My yard is 1 acre. 1/2 the yard is wooded, I cut 1/2 acre. And I only cut it once per week with a push 6hp mower. 5 gallons of fuel lasts me 2 months. That's not expensive. I prefer to have a yard.. great for a paintball game, archery, football. I use my yard. And doing my own landscaping is a nice change of pace from programming! I don't think it's practical to live 15 miles near your job. I prefer to live a rural area. I don't live in suburbia... I live in a heavily wooded area, only jobs really are agriculture. I prefer to live that way. I think oil speculators are the main problem. I have two vehicles. the fun vehicle is my jeep wrangler. The boring car that we will take for a long haul and my wife usually uses it anyway is a yaris. Yaris saves gas but at what cost ? It's not a fun car to drive at all.

Wow! That's the same perspective I have on the subject!