Curious about the SDM32F4 Discovery -- Can you point out a reference to a good open source tool chain, as well as a supplier for the base board? The st.com web site won't let me order one, other places are out of stock...

We moved to a mix of NAS and Cloud a few years ago. We wouldn't go back.

No more time spent on our servers. No more worrying about patches, upgrades, hardware failure, etc. No staff time lost to systems maintenace, backups.

We use the cloud for most project storage. Always [sic] available, at the office, at home, at client sites. Added benefits include systems backups, syncing folders, etc. Requires some trust in the vendor maintaining system integrity, but the risk is lower than at-office implementation.

We use two NAS devices for corporate data and archival storage. Each has a mirror set; I just like two devices as well because (a) they are dirt cheap, and (b) it gives me some level of redundancy in case one of the boxes goes and dies. They sync to each other. We periodically burn DVDs for offisite backup, multiple copies. This is the only weak point; maybe at some point in the future I'll add a third, off-site, sync'ed system.

In all, it works well. IMHO, it provides more than a single onsite server would provide, at a lower cost.

Software patents work without source code "work" (please note that I'm using quotes to denote the process, not the validity of the process) because the patent discloses the technique. Having the source code in a particular language is irrelevant. The source code is not the invention. The method behind the source code is the invention. Beside, what relationship does the source code have with the invention? I'll postulate: None. First, the source code is an intermediary between the idea and the execution process. Any of a number of intermediaries can be used. Should revealing the source code in C++ mean that a parallel implementation in Fortran is allowed/does not violate the patent? Second, even using the same source code, what is the impact of compiling to a different architecture? No, source code has no value except as A METHOD of explaining the idea. It is not the idea.

And so many of these products are still extremely effective. Some, when you ignore biased studies, still more effective than the newer, patented meds that replace them.

Pharma pushes new meds over old ones because they are patented and more lucrative, not because they are better. (Yeah, a gross generalization, but true in many cases.) Pharma takes old meds about to expire, performs a minor tweak or a new study, and gets a new patent/patent extension on what is essentially the same medicine. No new development, just efficacity studies on the new use. I know someone who took viagra (effectively) (patented in 1996) for pulminary hypertension. $1500 a month (thank you big pharma). By the way, ED Viagra was due to expire in 2012, but with the "new" pulminary hypertension effect, the patent now expires in 2020. Who knows what use they'll find for it in 2019?

Here are some questions: WHY is it so expensive to bring a new drug to market? A lot is currently consumed in paperwork and trials. How effective are these trials? Can they be made more effective? If we reduced the trial set to half of what it is now, how much additional risk would there be? 5%? 10%? From a societal standpoint, would the added risk be offset by the impact of increased availability and improved general health? Would the risk of 100 additional deaths be offset by making a drug more available to 1000 additional people? Should cheaper/faster drugs be made available if people agree to limited liability on lawsuits (the Vioxx effect)?

Hey, I still have my Macintosh SE/30 and it still runs. Surely we can use it to write a computer virus that will wipe their databases, rewrite their laws, inject "Earth has Prior Art" all over their WikiPodia, spoil the milk in their fridges, raise their postal rates, and put big X marks at all of the wrong places on images on their porn sites!

Same thing happened when I bought a car. Okay, I'm not a car expert, but I really wanted a Camry. Went to a Chevy dealer, they both begin with C and that confused me. Doors, windows, wheels, I could have SWORN I got a Camry. Boy, was I surprised when I got home and finally saw the GM logo on the key!

Then please don't drink any orange juice, which can get to up to 0.4% alcohol (around 1 proof).

I'd be tempted to create a Judge Hall of Fame for judges that just plain "get it." For ones who have an understanding of the philosophy and content of the fields upon which they are judging. And produce decisions based upon sound reason.

Judge Posner.

Judge John Jones (Dover: Intelligent Design, everyone should read this at least once a year.

Comments requested: who else should be on this list?

If thier intent is to make a political statement, they will succeed.

If this is a business strategy, it will fail the same way that U.S. health care (ACA) will fail if you require companies to take all subscribers but do not require all people to subscribe.

As a business strategy, they are spreading the tax across IE7 users, a population that is not required to use thier site. IE7 users may choose to go elsewhere ("being insulted" and "higher costs"), which means the *fixed* cost of the support (web site maintenance) is spread across a smaller number of users. From here, basic economics: the fixed cost results in a higher per-user tax. Resulting in fewer users. Cycling to a higher tax again. (This will be true regardless of whether or not some IE7 users upgrade to use their site -- as long as some IE7 users go away, they have a reduced user population and a higher IE7 tax.

The end result will be no IE7 users and fewer users in general.

So they might as well jump to the endpoint: Don't bother coding for IE7 (saving cost), don't tax users (since they aren't using the tax to fund IE7 support), and as long as the drop in revenue/profits is less than the drop in cost, the strategy is successful. A simple log review will give them an estimate of IE7 usage on thier site. This should drive their decision.

Can we have some discussion without "so my guess", "arguably", and so on? Insinuations and personal attacks most definitely detract from any other arguments you present.

Sorry to tell you this, but half of all children are below the MEDIAN.

C     NO DONT USE COLUMNS 73-80                                                      00000010
C     THEY ARE RESERVED FOR SEQUENCE NUMBERS                                         00000020

Bills and coins only represent 3 percent of the economy. Engineers are only a small percentage of our population, does this mean we are moving towards an engineer-less economy?

Please don't confuse a balanced equation with an absolute endpoint. The balance between two models will shift back and forth, but both will always be with us.

The only way to describe most of the comments here is "industrial strength cluelessness." As in, the coments' authors don't have a clue about product development. They would have made the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney movie in the 40s, "Hey, I have a keyboard and Jimmy's dad has a monitor, let's write an app!"

Yes, the government holds contractors on tight leashes. Contract assignment is being done more and more heavily based upon past performance -- your last few contracts were duds, you're less likely to get the next one.

And yes, there is a lot of time spent on product specs. Full life cycle SDLC. Agile development where is is appropriate. Understanding the target before you write a line of code.

Exactly the opposite of what most of the code monkeys making comments above are used to.

So yes, there will be specs written before the product is architected. And it will be written for maintainability. And it will be tested before release. And yes, during the initial development period, this costs money. Because, and remember this, there isn't revenue built into the back end (it isn't "sold" or "advertising supported") to pay for fixes, rewrites, and handling customer complaints.

Disclaimer: I'm a government contractor. I don't code. I'm part of the analysis, review, and verification process. And I've seen a lot of extremely complex systems go out on time and work well when released.

Your PhD won't be "in" biology. If relevant to your employer, your PhD is "in Computational Modeling and Machine Learning for Biological Systems". It was granted by a biology department, but that's not relevant. And yeah, as has been pointed out, in all probablility, in five years you'll be doing something else. Hopefully equally interesting.