Comment Re:LOL ... (Score 1) 73
nah the Robotech/Macross anime series. All the human piloted transforming jets had a brain controlled portion.
nah the Robotech/Macross anime series. All the human piloted transforming jets had a brain controlled portion.
So it sits there. Unpublished by anyone. I'll never know if nobody likes it until I hit the go button. But I'm also scared to learn that I suck at something I enjoy doing.
I went through a similar process to yours, with agents liking (but not taking) my novel. My wife has won literary awards for works agents wouldn't take because they couldn't see her stories becoming best sellers. Not just doing well (which they admitted they would do), but becoming best sellers! The entire publisher/agent thing is a bad joke on creative talent. These self appointed gatekeepers of our culture often miss the next big thing and are rarely looking for a new, different voice despite what they claim, but rather the next celebrity ghostwritten tripe where they can make a quick buck.
I can relate to your fear of rejection...I share it...but I'd encourage you to go for it. Make sure your book is professionally edited and proofread (this is absolutely critical, and far too many self-published authors don't do this). While you're doing that, figure out a promotional strategy. For example, line up bookstores in your area for signings, create a presence on goodreads, participate in book fairs, lit fests, and conventions applicable to your genre, etc.
Don't be too disappointed if you don't sell a ton of copies (it is very hard to get noticed), and don't measure yourself on that...measure yourself on how well people enjoy your work. That is the real metric on how well you write, and how good your work is. My novel Autonomy received all kinds of good reviews (from people I've never met!), but it's still not a "best seller." Just put your edited, polished work out there and if those who read it love it, then you don't "suck at something" you enjoy. Quite the opposite.
Sounds like a trap to nab a whole bunch of pot smokers imho.
Read up on the D-T reaction a bit more. Yeah I don't know what I'm talking about.
The reaction itself does, my bad. Compared to a D-T reaction however it yields many photons. This isn't really my field of physics however, so it's whatever i picked up off wikipedia.
Well this Mike Hopkins guy is mostly comparing neutron yields from the D-T reaction LPP were testing with. Lerner inevitably wants to use the p-B reaction which produces no neutrons (aside from residual gas sources), however to test his pinch device using D-T is much easier as the fusion temperature is lower. It also makes for a good comparison to other pinch devices. Since the p-B reaction yields mostly photons they seek to make a fusion device from the charged particles (a stream of electrons and ions) and the photon energy collected via photoelectric current. Some of those gammas are uncapturable but the energy still captured is supposedly a net gain once they can get a high enough plasma temperature.
Engineering the Photon Capture Sphere Thing (PCST) to capture photons and electrons while not activating all the material with a 100-year half-life used in its construction, nor having it rip itself apart from dissimilar metals and thermal gradients, not having an unacceptably high rate of particles sputter the crap out of inside, is all non-trivial and would require significant trial-and-error builds. This is of course assuming they manage to make a working p-B reaction with their pinch. Best of luck to Lerner, but I'm not counting on seeing any significant results unless some billionaire type takes a risk on him.
Some criticism of Mr. Lerner's DPF fusion approach by a person who seems to know what they're talking about. http://mikebhopkins.wordpress....
It really does look like he's just rebuilt a standard pinch device.
Yeah, Mono...
If you don't mind being stuck at
Seriously. Every huge, impossible project is made up of a bunch of smaller projects that are totally doable, plus maybe a couple that are actually hard. Divide and conquer is one of the most important skills you can develop as a programmer. Start with the first easy thing you can think of that you'll need to do before you get to the big hard thing, and get some code on the screen. Keep doing that. Pretty soon you'll find you have most of it done.
And as for the reading thing, you should expect to be spending more time reading than writing code. I think my time is about 50/50 now, and I've been coding professionally for three years, after doing a BS and about 70% of a master's in comp sci.
Creditors who do not act in a timely manner when an estate is closing or a corporation is being liquidated are simply SoL.
You might consider Reading The Fine Summary. I know, that's Crazy Talk! But, if you had, you might have noticed something about the statute of limitations (lawyer speak for "timely manner") has been lifted on these types of debt.
High frequency trading isn't the issue. The banks are the real "insiders", and are pointing fingers at small, high frequency prop shops to deflect attention from themselves, and to get back to the bad old days when they could really gouge their customers with wide spreads.
High frequency traders make their money by having better pricing models, narrowing spreads in the market, and being able to execute and then get out of a position quickly to lock in their profits and eliminate risk. The banks like to be the middleman, with wide spreads, so that they can pocket the difference.
The net result of high frequency traders is that the rest of us can get a stock much closer to their actual value (due to narrow spreads). Yes, the high freqency traders make good money by selling the stock $0.005 off the "real" value to me and then immediately getting out of the position by reselling it a millisecond later and locking in that $0.005 profit, but I have only paid a premium of $0.005 instad of the $0.35 or worse the banks would love to gouge me for (and used to, a few short years ago).
We get rid of high freqency trading and we'll be back to the bad old days, when the real insiders really did gouge us, and we all paid far too much for our investments, and were able to sell at far too little, with the likes of Goldman Sachs pocketing the enormous difference.
As for the front-running nonsense on 60 Minutes, that's always been illegal (contrary to what we're being told), and it is not at all how high frequency trading works. If someone was in fact doing that, then they're in a whole world of hurt with the SEC (and rightly so), but this entire exercise appears much more like a distraction: blame small outsider firms who've made the marketplace more effecient and tightened spreads for problems created by corruption within the big banks, and hope no one notices...at least until the next bank-induced crash.
Google Glass as an assistive device for the legally blind would fit a similar role. Especially with facial recognition enabled and audio feedback to the wearer, and just disable the display or make it a big block of colour output for people who are still 'blind' but can see a bit of light.
I imagine they would need two so they could obtain enough spatial information to aide in navigation.
However, I would feel bad for the legally blind to be assaulted for wearing Google Glass.
You've already resigned privacy and anonymity in public by living in America.
No amount of careful planning will ever replace dumb luck.