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Comment Show them your good side (Score 1) 315

I noticed that a lot of people seem to submit recommendations about your interaction with customers, but you could be also servicing the servers and network. If that's the case then add in there the number of outages that had no impact to the users. A power supply in a server went down, but the server had dual power supplies and no one noticed. Someone had a good idea at convening management to spring for that extra money. You connect your access switches with dual links and one of them went down?

If your going to collect metrics, let them know how much downtime the company avoided because you guys did your job. I've seen too many bad metrics around how much a person caused the company, only to find that 80/20 rule ended up biting them. 80% of the work was done by 20% of the workforce so all the murphy law scenarios only hit a limited number of people because they are the ones that did all the work. While all the people that sit back and did nothing reap'd all the metric glory.

Comment Re:there's a reason for that (Score 2) 608

However you are also missing the value of being taught by a researcher. Sure you could take some of your courses from someone who hasn't acquired any new knowledge on the topic in the past decade, but you'll finish those courses with that level of knowledge yourself. It is important to have educators who are well versed in the topic and aware of where that topic is going..

I think you missed the point of the poster. His complaint was that with some of his instructors there was no discussion happening at all. I can only assume he was alluding to people that felt that their research was their primary purpose and the teaching was a necessary evil, never putting any effort into it.

I can stand on the same ground as him. I've had some instructors that couldn't seem to get done with class fast enough. I think that the only reason they even held the class for a full period was because of the amount of information they had to convey by the end of the semester. While quite of few others, were exactly has you described. They knew their stuff, would frequently describe new methods being used. If someone asks for more information about a topic, they could speak volumes. I just wish all my instructors were like that. Maybe I wouldn't of had to spend so much time trying learn thermodynamics on my own from the text book. Oh wait, that was the semester I discovered DikuMUD, never mind that last statement.

Comment Re:Open up the books (Score 3, Informative) 211

Well, taxes on the wealthy are at pre-Depression era lows and ...

And with the same truthfulness you could say we have the highest corporate in the world (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world it's 38% federal with an additional 12% state and doesn't count local taxes). It's not until you take part in all the nice tax loopholes that you get an equivilent tax rate that's at the record lows. Unfortunately since many businesses are small, they can't afford the tax lawyers to take advantage of all the nifty loopholes.

If you actually listen to Tea Party whole stance and what many speak about at the rallies, it's to lower the tax rate overall (lowering the 38% to something reasonable) AND to get rid of the loopholes. Allow the local computer store up the street to pay the same tax rate as Best Buy down the street.

I know it's hard to actually hear words through the shrieking, but I'm sure that even you equate someone stealing from you, with your liberty. It's a question of do you equate getting charged left and right for something as stealing. I pay my sewer bill every month, I expect that that money to go to the upkeep of the sewer system. To have the sewer company turn around and tell me that they are going to charge me an extra fee depending on how much non-grass area I have in my yard (thus assuming rain run off into storm system), after I'm already paying for my use of the sewer system. Me... I find thing close to stealing from me.

IBM

Submission + - Jeopardy!-winning computer Watson "hired" to offer (techi.com) 3

AmyVernon writes: WellPoint and IBM announced an agreement today to develop and launch Watson-based medical solutions.

Stage One: Assist nurses who manage complex patient cases and help insurers review treatment requests from medical providers.

Stage Two: In a limited number of oncology practices, the system’s ability to process 200 million pages of data in three seconds will allow doctors to ask questions, input symptoms and compare reactions to treatments to streamline the process.

Half of me thinks this is SO cool. The other part of me feels like we've just created SkyNet. Once it becomes sentient, it'll start recommending the pulling of the plug.

Submission + - LucasFilm Lies to Darth Vader about Jedi Profits 1

schwit1 writes: "From prowse ...

“I get these occasional letters from Lucasfilm saying that we regret to inform you that as Return of the Jedi has never gone into profit, we’ve got nothing to send you. Now here we’re talking about one of the biggest releases of all time,” said Prowse. “I don’t want to look like I’m bitching about it,” he said, “but on the other hand, if there’s a pot of gold somewhere that I ought to be having a share of, I would like to see it.”

Return of the Jedi has grossed over $572 million worldwide, which includes an estimated $88 million when the film was re-released in 1997. So how is it possible that the film has yet to make a profit?"

Comment Re:He just used more solar cells (Score 4, Insightful) 410

If you check that image, his tree model was able to pack an increase of 80% cells in 50% of the surface area he placed in the normal flat panel model. The tree model has the advantage that it doesn't have to rotate in order to achieve direct sunlight during the day/year. So it's inventive in his being able to achieve cell density that other people haven't seemly taken advantage of as of yet.

Space

Submission + - The Signature of Parellel Universes in the CMB? (discovery.com)

astroengine writes: "An emerging new idea in cosmological circles is that the universe had a Big Bang, but only one of countless creation moments in a "megaverse" that is eternally inflating with multiple big bangs, like a string of firecrackers going off. But how can such a hypothesis have any observational evidence?

Well, according to researchers from University College London, patterns in the ubiquitous cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation may be the thumbprints of other universes that have been spawned alongside our own. What's more, they're not alone in this thinking. (Let's just hope they're not being duped by the cosmic equivalent of seeing bunny shapes in clouds.)"

NASA

Submission + - Hypersonic Test Fails, Jet Lost (ap.org)

GeekMarine72 writes: The much anticipated hypersonic flight of the DARPA funded Falcon HTV-2 appears to have failed after telemetry was lost shortly after separation from rocket. Theories abound including "achieved warp speed", "aliens", and "bad batteries".
The Military

Submission + - Contact Lost with Hypersonic Glider (usatoday.com)

x_IamSpartacus_x writes: DARPA says contact with its experimental hypersonic glider was lost after launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast. The agency says in Twitter postings that its unmanned Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 was launched Thursday atop a rocket, successfully separated from the booster and entered the mission's glide phase.
The agency says telemetry was subsequently lost, but released no details..

Comment Re:You underestimate the value (Score 4, Insightful) 913

I don't think that the person isn't interested in learning, he just doesn't see the value in learning outside what he feels he needs. The grandparent post is more spot on, he doesn't see the value in the other courses. Of course when he has a job in the profession and he's told that he needs to write a document on requirements or a system design, he'll sit there and tell himself "Well if only I had an example to work off of." If only he had those courses in Writing and was forced to write the papers and thesis' all the different types of writing assignments that college level courses make you grind through, he'd have the experience. He wonders why he'll need a class in Speech, when he just wants to be shut in a dark room, downing Mountain Dew like it is going out of style. Then when trying to do a presentation to a group or a conference, he'll wonder why people are loosing interest in what he's saying, or he'll wonder maybe there was a better way of arranging the material.

I never saw the value of many of the classes I took in college, while I was taking them. But between then and now, I've had projects and requests in which the experience and the things I learned in those classes came in handy. It's not to say I could live without them, but it sure made things easier that I already knew them at the time and didn't have to learn it at the drop of the hat, or that what I learned previously gave me a different perspective that allowed me to build a better system.

My 2cents, time learning something is time spent well.

Comment Re:hmm (Score 1) 605

I suspect this is a preemptive strike by MS to stop Facebook snagging Skype, ...

I view this as the real investment. It's not to get any synergy from Skype but to prevent what could happen to the Windows Live platform if FaceBook were to assimilate Skype. Once they have Skype, they are going to let it burn, in my opinion.

Comment Re:Should be good for the economy (Score 1) 1530

Actually I'm stating the opposite. I'm saying that there's a good chance that people will find it easier to duck the coverage (and many people do now) and pay the added taxes rather then go through the pain of getting health insurance.

Nice effort to duck my point. I was not talking about now. My point was in response to your assertion that pre-existing conditions is a strawman. That is why I linked to sources from during the healthcare debate, not after it.

Sorry, I misunderstood when you where talking about getting insurance being quick and easy and the number of people that have insurance declining, with my statements about people dropping in and out of the insurance risk pools based on if they need it. Rather then if an insurance company will honor a pre-existing condition. You'll need to be more direct and explain to me what the number of people with policies have to do with if there's currently criteria on when insurance companies have to honor pre-existing conditions.

It'll all come down to the payout of medical costs. If initially only the sick people sign up for the mandatory health care, you can kiss affordable health insurance out the window and you'll see insurance companies going broke left and right.

But they will also be getting more inflow from government subsidies for people who cannot afford insurance.

That's what I said it'll depend on how much the medical payout is. The subsidies from the govt. doesn't equal the same amount of money thought, remember all this is assuming the fine is less then the policy would be though. That means that the company will not be re-cooping the same amount as if the person bought the policy. Not to mention that there's no way the govt is going to pass through the entire amount of the fine to the insurance company. So the insurance company will be given a token of that amount and told be happy with it and keep paying out the medical claims on everyone else.

It does depress me, though, how my fellow Americans are so unwilling to sacrifice anything to make this country better.

That has got to be one of the most ignorant statements you've made.

The institute added that in spite of the economic recession, remittances increased 9% to an estimated $305 billion in 2008.

http://www.zenit.org/article-26474?l=english

Your fellow Americans have been sacrificing time and time again. Is it everyone? No. But it still stands that donations to private charities in America far exceeds every other country.

I knew from the beginning that changing healthcare in a worthwhile way would require some time while the system adjusted. Things may even get uncomfortable. Which gives us people like you who argue to put off solving a problem that will only get worse so that you can have a few more years of comfort at the expense of the next generation. I say fix it now, and not leave it in the hands of my descendants.

A problem seems to be that it also gives us people like you that seem to confuse the issue. If cable prices jump past to the point where people can afford it, does that mean that govt has to step in and subsidize everyone's cable bill? Or do you start asking the question why the cable prices jump and address the issue of high cable prices? By allowing the discussion to shift from health care costs to who's going to pay for it, doesn't fix the problem in any worthwhile way. The issue is not people can't afford insurance, it's that people can't afford health care without insurance.

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