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Comment You must have limited experience (Score 3, Insightful) 569

in interviewing or being interviewed.

Your expression "the interview" reveals this.

Most non-entry level positions are filled by a process involving multiple interviews of multiple candidates over a period of days or weeks, often involving a pool or team of interviewers and a set of candidates that have made it past the initial filters. One of those filters being "the interview" that you have experienced.

Those candidates that pass the initial filters get further probing, meet more of the current staff, and eventually this results in offers for some and opportunities for them to counter.

There's no way a company making an offer is putting you "on the spot". When they do make an offer, the opportunity to ask the questions you so value becomes available. They say we offer $$$. They also offer XXX PTO, such and such working hours, etc. All of this is part of their offer package and subject to discussion and negotiation from the moment the offer is made until an agreement is reached, not before.

If such questions are so important to you that you must have the answers upfront, just send an email to the HR department before you send in your resume. Doing so will save both of us a lot of time and trouble.

Comment Don't be silly (Score 1) 867

> My guess: pulling tens of terawatts of energy out of the atmosphere will effect the climate.

Nobody is pulling anything *out* of anything. All they are doing is *moving* it.

As the Sun heats the surface, the surface heats the air, the air moves to carry the heat to places that are cooler.
As the wind blows it heats the environment due to conduction, radiation, and friction. The energy of the Sun has been moved from warmer to cooler and finally, ultimately, it is radiated back into space.

As the turbine is powered by the wind and generates electricity, the air is cooled, the electricity is transported elsewhere and the energy is ultimately dissipated as heat. Same net result, just a different distribution of the Sun's energy across the surface of the planet. Will it make a difference in the climate? Only locally as places downwind of the wind-farms will be cooler and less windy than otherwise and the places that consume the energy will be warmer than otherwise.

Comment The only proof that will ever be required is $$$ (Score 1) 867

As soon as one tech or another can produce energy for less $$$ than a previous tech, there will be changes.

Cost here is evaluated in the market. It includes things like the cost of bribing politicians, Environmental imPAct surveys, farmers' leases, manufacture, transportation, installation, maintenance, taxes, and on and on. The overall cost of doing business. The only reason that wind(and solar) plants are cropping up is because they are starting to be cost-competitive with existing energy sources.

Comment Sorry but you seem to be the narrow minded one. (Score 1) 223

My collection of music spans stuff written across more than two centuries. Yes, I have a focus on what was coming out when I was young, but that does not preclude me from enjoying stuff that was available 100 years before I was born, nor from enjoying tunes produced after my first grandchild was born.

What does stop me from enjoying(and here I repeat and emphasize) *most* of what is coming out or is otherwise popular today is that *most* of it sucks.

Comment You could also argue (Score 1) 223

That people buy games and DVDs these days instead of music because most of the music available now simply sucks.

For some time now(years?), most of the music-money I've spent has been back filling. I've been picking up (cheap) CDs of old albums that I never got around to purchasing in the past.

Finally got a copy of "The Bends" last week. ;-)

Comment Re:My Crating Tool (Score 1) 622

Combination hammer, axe, prybar. Used to be my grandfather's. Stamped "Made in Texas 1901".
There are more stampings, but I can't make them out.

I also have his old rail pike, used to manually bend rail track sections into place(remember when Arnold got staked to the deck in T2?), but I have no idea how old it is.

Old computer hardware?

AMD 386dx40 mobo with only ISA slots, plenty of peripherals including an ethernet card with cat-5 and coax connections, and a true VGA-only card. Runs Slackware in 16MB SDRAM and 100MB disk drive. Makes a great X server.

DEC Alpha 233MHz Noname mobo that still works like a charm. Runs old Red Hat.

I'm sure my dad still has a trx80 somewhere...ooh I forgot in the garage he has an old fashioned Teletype with paper tape punch/reader on the side. An authentic 110 baud machine.

Comment A small bit of dissent (Score 1) 502

While I agree with most of and the gist of your post, I must take exception to this:

...For example, in days past C was popular because CPU cycles were a lot more important than they are now, and memory sizes were a lot smaller than they are now...

If you think that CPU cycles and memory sizes aren't so important these days, just ask M$ about Vista. If there is any one thing that has made Vista a bust, it is M$ thinking that execution speed and efficiency don't matter much anymore.

Comment Try this (Score 1) 658

Katrina was simultaneously the fastest hitting and most severe localized ecological disaster this country has ever experienced. There were real live refugees. Are there any more today?

If there are, it's because they want to be or were already effectively socioeconomic refugees when Katrina hit in which case nothing has changed except their location.

Climate change and rising water will not hit anywhere near as fast. The wiser ones will sell their real estate and move out and buy something else while fools and/or speculators buy it cheap and move in. Later I'm sure there will be some sort of federal buy-out program(if there still is a federal gov by then) that will make the speculators smile. Even the fools will have resources to buy a new house inland. Renters can continue to do just that, just somewhere else.

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