This reminds me of writing. Employers have been complaining about writing for as long as I can remember, at least 30 years. Even in engineering school we were told that we had to learn to write. In high school we did have technical writing, but how much time was spent teaching accurate context free writing college? None, even though professors would tell us that employers were demanding the universities teach writing. Everyone says they want it, but not enough to pay for it. Those with critical thinking skills and writing skills will rise, and those that don't will muddle through and probably go into management.
First, it is arguable that at a a place like burning man which is allegedly a social event, the act of waiting in line is not in fact part of the stated purpose. I mean, where else do you get an opportunity to meet random like minded people. It is why waiting in line at whole foods is not big deal. It is really party time. Only overly introverted judgmental people get all stressed over it. If one is laid back and enjoying the groove, who cares?
Likewise it is reasonable to ask whether profits would increase with more ice. The writeup postulates that there is a fixed costs to bringing in ice and that profit increases linearly for more ice sold. If this were true, then there would be more than three distribution points. So what is probably going on here is that paying people to drive and sell the ice would cost more than the profits to sell the ice if more trucks were brought in. Probably three trucks of ice is probably what is sold, and through most of the day the wait time is not an hour. Wait time would probably be reduced more by people choosing a different time to buy ice. It would probably be beneficial to track wait times during the day and see if it would be possible to even out the flow of people. If more ice is needed than is supplied, then add another truck and increase if necessary.
Finally we have the cute idea of the volunteer. In the case of price gouging the last thing one want is an untrusted person dealing with the product. You might as well ask the drug dealers to have volunteers distribute the H. The marginal cost of a bag of ice is minimal, but the bags must be sold to cover the costs. If the situation is as dire as the poster suggests, there would be a large incentive for the volunteer to steal ice. Maybe each volunteer works an hour, and then thinks they are entitled to a couple free bags of ice. At minimum wage, the firm is not making any bargains off the situation.
I know how these festivals go, and roughing it is hard, but that is why we were given granola, and way clavier is not suitable for every occasion.
I am not sure what the fascination over high component count. Does that mean all we have to do is make the next music player out of a million discrete 74xx IC and we will get a write up saying how good our product is?
This to me is beyond a small product run. It is a prototype designed over a weekend.
I do not see that posting nude pictures of yourself on the cloud has equal expectation of security of walking alone at night or getting drunk at a party. If some people think that pointing out that the cloud is insecure is bashing the victim, then I suppose running educational campaigns where we tell people not to accept drinks from stangers at bars where the drink might by have date rape drugs in it is attacking the victim. It is not. All these cases must be prosecuted, but prevention and education is also important.
And this is where what some of what is going on here makes sense. Some people think they have a right to do whatever they want, even if it is illegal, as long as they don't get caught. We should talk about thing that are wrong to do, not because of a punishment, but because of right and wrong.
And this is my problem. There is nothing in AP CS that I would need for my time in engineering programming computers to solve problems. I think that the class is somewhat irrelevant to someone who want to pursue CS because most hopefully already have the basic skills taught in the class by the time they are a senior.
One real issue is people who can teach is class. It was only 35 years ago that I was sat down on a computer and taught to write basic programming. It will take time for the pipeline to fill with qualified teachers. One hopeful sign is that we have a lot more introductory engineering classes than when I was high school, made possible because we have been cranking out engineers in this country since the end of WWII. So in another 20 years, we might have CS teachers.
This is the way the web works. Service in exchange for private information. If it were 2000 it might be surprising. But it is not. And most everyone who is using snapchat has grown up in a world where such is standard mode of operation.
It reminds me of this poster. If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.
I see three problems here. First, this is a press release, so it has all the validity of any press release, in other words nothing. Second, nothing has been built, at least nothing approaching a gigawatt, and no way to know if the design will really scale to a gigawatt. Third, they are comparing the real cost of building a coal fired plant to the imaginary cost of building this device. That said, given that an advance coal fired plant is more in the range of 3 billion, the real cost of both might be comparable, and cheaper than the $40 billion for a conventional nuclear plant.
But really, the costs and all that is really besides the point. No fusion reactor has been able to produce significantly more power than it has consumed.
I also think that this has nothing to do with MS or the royalties to MS. I think it has to do with Apple. Samsung, for some reason, gave MS a sweetheart deal on the thinnest of evidence. Samsung did not go to court, wait for google, but just paid MS a reletively large amount of cash for every handset sold. This tells me that there was so backroom negotiations going on, possible lawfully questionable negotiations. This, probably, is negatively effecting the Apple situation because if they were so eager to give MS money, why are they fighting Apple on claims that are at least as good? Which means that whatever possible underhanded deal Samsung made with MS is no longer paying off.
Where there's a will, there's a relative.