Not sure why, but auto spellcheck doesn't work on this site for me. Works on other sites.

Some employers want more than your diploma. They want to know what certifications you obtained and your ability to answer questions on the fly at the interview. Microsoft and Google interview questions come to mind. Can you problem solve?

Industry knowledge is very helpful. For the telcom people out there, do you have a CFC certificate (USA)? On one of my jobs requiring a clearance to enter the facility, this is a plus. The ability to give the managed network switch logs and the HVAC logs in one trip can separate basic trained and experianced skilled. Some employers will ask not only what software tools you are trained on, but want to know what tools you have in your tool kit. If you have a tone kit, crimpers, and a scope meter, they may expect you to be able to solve the software problems and check the actual port samples on the hardware.

Some engineers are just plain dangerous with a screwdriver. One that has a torque screwdriver and knows the tork to use on DB connectors, bay screws, and so on will get a job ahead of one that just has MSIE certifications. In the US even explaining a JIS screwdriver and why you have one can separate you from the other canidates.

How many of you just Googled JIS screwdriver?

How many of you already have one?

Being an engineering college we see many Indian and Chinese grad students. In both cases we numerous students who have real difficulty with any kind of synthesis and application of knowledge. They want to memorize a bunch of facts and formulas and crunch numbers to get the result. Solving real problems is something they have a lot of difficulty with. In particular there's not a good concept of problem solving. If they don't know the answer to something they believe the solution is to seek the person that does, not apply problem skills.

It, unsurprisingly, comes from the elementary and undergraduate education they received. That is what learning is to them. It is a real issue since of course in real engineering, you don't get to work from a textbook.

Guy is trying to play silly distinction games. Really, everyone in tech understands what people mean when they say "general purpose processor." Yes, said unit may have some specialized circuits and such, but it is made to be good at dealing with all kinds of problems. Integer, FP, branching, linear, etc doesn't matter its design can handle them all reasonably well.

That compares to something specialized like a GPU. For certain kinds of problems, specifically single precision vector math with fairly consistent branches, it does amazing. However for other things, not as much, though it is turning complete and capable of anything. Still a true processor and not an ASIC that can't be programmed, but not general purpose.

Try to play semantic games with it is silly. Are there going to be cases where the line might be blurred? Sure, but who cares? That's how life is. Everything doesn't always fit in to neat little boxes. It is still a generally useful way of looking at things.

One item that is a possibility wasn't mentioned. It could be simply collison avoidance instead of jamming. Fear of a high speed collsision would make most any animal pause. Is it loss of targeting, or avoiding a high speed crash?

Don't work for me. Most of the dev shops I've managed have been so ridiculously gender unbalanced that there are men who think it is actually acceptable to put up girlie mag art in their cubicles. Seriously, if that is the crap you want to defend, you have no place on my team. If you are unwilling to proactively work for a more balanced work environment, even if it is just telling said bone-head to take down the girlie mags, you don't need to be one of my employees.

Don't join my guild. I don't want to listen to you belittle women on vent. I don't want to hear about how "girls can only heal". I don't want to hear how you "raped" that boss. You know who got raped? Do you know more than 5 women? Odds are at least one of them have been raped. So when you're pwning that boss, and you're about to squeal with delight over "raping" it, just think, it could be your mother, your sister, your wife, your highschool sweet heart, that lady from accounting...

-Rick

Temp agencies seem to be worse. They offer the worst health care and 401K plans in existance.

A health plan that has NO out of pocket maximum? That only has the Maximum it will pay instead, such as $25/ per perscription, $250 for a hospital stay, etc. Seriously, this protects the employee none against any high cost medical needs. Anyone who has had a medical stay at a hospital and seen the bill will know that $250 for the visit barely dents the bill. Diabetic? $25 for your supplies and perscription is only a small co pay the insurance pays, not really protecting the employee with any meaningful insurance. Seriously, I would be far ahead to self insure at the rate the insurance pays in the event of any medical need. Why pay the premium for a plan that pays next to nothing?

On a tem agency 401K, I reviewed a plan that has 0 employer contributions and a $250/quarter maintenance fee on top of some other fees. Seriously, with fees like that brudening the account, how the **** is it possible to grow enough equity to earn enough interest to even cover the fees, let alone grow. I hate to say it, but a 401K in a Passbook savings account would be much wiser as the account is not heavly erroded by fees.

When consioering a temp agency, be sure to examine their "Health Plan" and "401K" offerings. Many of the benifits are worse than no offering at all.

Take any offerings and see your finincial planner. They will be able to direct you into plans with much less damaging fees.

Your benifit plans should not be a huge liability.

Yeah, that is my expectation as well, but I wasn't able to quickly find any number other than their press releases. If I get some time tonight I'll see what I can dig up.

-Rick

Yeah, I remember the math working out to just barely favorable 10 years ago when I was looking at doing my roof. So either I misses a w to kw conversion, or DOW's claim of 12 w per Sq foot is a massive improvement over the technology from 2004.

-Rick

Last time I checked a new roof was going to run me ~$10,000 installed. Going to a solar shingle roof was going to be ~$20,000 for the same roof. But thanks to State and Federal grants, I could shave about $5,000 off that price. Leaving me $5,000 more out of pocket than the standard roof replacement.

In Wisconsin, kWh averages about 14 cents per. So I would need to generate 35,700 kWh either in offsetting my existing usage, or with net metering to pay off the difference. Expected life span should be ~20 years, so I need to do it faster than that.

Solar shingles generate ~12 watts per square foot. Lets ballpark that a 2200 sq foot house, two story, maybe some gables, etc... has roughly 500 sq feet of south facing roof line. That's 6,000 watts at peak performance. Even if you only get 1 hour of peak performance a day, and nothing else, you will effectively generate the full 37.5 mWh in the first week.

Even if DOW is doubling their performance number you'll still crush the target in a month.

Even if the state/federal grants have dried up, you're still looking at paying off the difference in a couple of months.

Even if you don't have net metering, at a US average of 11 mWh per month, you'll pay off the difference in ~3 years.

This is of course based on the assumption that you are either building a NEW roof, or that your existing roof is in need of a full rebuild. If you have a house from the 1990's and are looking at throwing a layer of shingles on top of the original shingles, your base cost is going to be a thousand dollars or less for the same roof. It may still be economically wise to go solar, but it will have a much longer payoff than on new roofs.

-Rick

Years and years ago while working 3rd shift in college I stepped out for a smoke. Two cops, no lights/sirens, lined up at a stop light in the deserted 4-lane manufacturing district street. Both of them waited for the light to turn green, and buried the pedal. At the next stop light, both cops hit their red and blue lights and did a high speed U-turn. They raced all the way up to the original stop light and then drove off at more acceptable speeds.

I ask the other smokers what the heck that was and their response was, "They do that every night."

-Rick

Frames are similar to each other (this is a big way that H.264 gets compression) and the more FPS you have, the more similar the frames are since each is a smaller time slice away from the last one. So you may not need a whole lot more bandwidth.

A good example is AVCHD, that's the H.264 camera format that is popular with consumer and pro cameras. The 2.0 spec supports 30fps and 60fps. At 30fps you store data at 24mbps, at 60fps you store it at 28mbps. Same visual quality, only 4mbps more to get the extra 30fps.

Same idea scales down to lower bitrates. You do need more bits to maintain the same quality, but not a ton.

I wonder if they are knowedgable of the Streisand effect and the Slashdot effect. If not, they will know now. LOL. The news of the request is more important news than any old review they were trying to escape.

The idea that bitchy DRM is what you need to make money is silly. The bitchier the DRM, the more it costs you in terms of implementation and support and, guess what, it turns out that a great many of those pirates just won't buy your game, they don't want it for anything more than free.

You can see some good examples in the audio industry, which has some really bitchy DRM. Like take Steinberg Cubase and Cakewalk Sonar. These are two of the long time DAWs, both dating back to the DOS days. Both still make money, both are still in active development. Cubase uses super retarded DRM. A dongle that Steinberg bought and customized (syncrosoft, now called Elicenser) that is checked when you do anything. Seriously like opening menus has checks to the dongle. Sonar has no DRM effectively. You need a serial and an activation code, but the activation code is per serial, not per computer. It is just so you register your product with CW. The serial and code don't change and it doesn't phone home. Yet despite that weak DRM, Sonar continues to be developed and sold.

Or in audio samples. The big name in virtual instruments is Native Instruments, their program Kontakt being the king of sampling. They have some fairly weaksauce DRM on their products. A challenge/response kind of thing that is cracked and pirated versions abound. Despite that, they make lots of money and are the unquestioned top of the sampling game. Then you look at EastWest who uses their own custom software with an iLok dongle because of evil pirates. They are too small for anyone to care about cracking. So no piracy, but they are tiny, a fraction of NI's size and profits.

Really all bitchy DRM does is increase the cost on the developer. You end up spending more programmer time implementing it, more QA time making sure it works, and more support time helping people when it doesn't. There's no good evidence showing it increases sales. Remember that decreasing piracy is not the same as increasing sales. You can drop piracy to zero and yet discover you get little to no extra sales because the people who were pirating were only doing so because it was free, and have no interest in paying for it.

Or how much of the volcanic activity in the area is miss-labeled as human activity. Seriously, how much of this is volcamic ash?

Sensational story with the facts totally wrong conclusion is what I see. How much is volcanic? No EDX of the material on the snow was even considered. Is ir carbon from forest fires or silicon dioxode volcanic dust?