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Comment Subscription fees (Score 1) 298

Two separate points: First, It is easy to say that survival depends on subscription fees, but the reality is that many people today choose either to pay for subscriptions or to view ads. For a technical magazine, it might make sense to make the content more open and attempt to increase subscribers and, through that, increase ad revenue. This might not be a viable model, but it serves your purpose well. Second, sadly, even without piracy, tech articles can be easily duplicated, rewritten, or otherwise usurped. Tech articles have a short lifetime and I see very little value in print articles. Once the article appears online, I typically skip the later print versions. Relating this to piracy is simple: by the time someone has pirated the average tech article, it is old news. Dozens of aggregation websites exist that point people to the original article immediately. If it is "breaking" news, ads are the primary means of revenue generation. Frankly, most technically interested readers skip subscription serveries because they are becoming irrelevant in the tech news world.

Comment Re:Extreme Geek Kitchen Ideas (Score 1) 372

I love the sentiment. For most meals, I totally understand this. My experience has been that the gadgets are not necessary but can be cool. I've cooked 7 course meals for 20 people without any of the devices I mentioned. When it comes to the geek kitchen, however, a bolometer IR thermometer is a truly useful addition to a kitchen. You do not NEED a device of this sort, but for quickly telling the temperature of everything on a stove, the IR thermometer is great once you understand how to use it. There are tons of gadgets out there that people use. Some gadgets are useful, others are for the sake of pushing the limits. My rice cooker does not cook better rice than I do on the stove top. What it does is allow me to do is prep the rice before I go to work and have freshly cooked rice ready 10 hours later for dinner. That is useful. Borrowing a FLIR IR camera and using it to cook steaks - now that is pushing the limits. It turns out to be quite useful as well. Oh, I do not own a toaster - I use the grill... I also bake all my own bread. I do all the prep and kneading by hand and use the IR thermometer to get the oven to the correct temperature. There are other ways to do it, I admit, but this way is fun and it works well. I also play with liquid nitrogen in the kitchen whenever I can get it. Nothing is simpler than Milk + sugar + vanilla + liquid nitrogen = ice cream!

Comment Extreme Geek Kitchen Ideas (Score 1) 372

Recently I've started to work on the geek kitchen concept. I'm working on the idea of an admin panel that tells the person cooking exactly the temperature of the oven, stovetop adventures, etc. Going beyond this, I want to throw a few point-able IR thermometers/bolometers around the kitchen that are linked into this system. The creme de la creme of a geek temp monitoring system for a kitchen would be a couple of IR cameras (think FLIR-style temperature monitoring). This would also be point-able and could be used to monitor hotspots on grills or a cold marble slab if you are making candy or specialty ice cream. The other awesome geek kitchen idea (for those who really like weird food prep) would be to incorporate a liquid nitrogen cooling slab. This is used for freezing weird liquids into a variety of shapes and is especially useful for desserts. For my ultimate geek kitchen, automated storage is one of my goals. The first is an inventory system that is tied into a recipe db. I want to schedule meals and have a shopping list automatically generated. Not easy to build and probably not simple to maintain. That one is going to take some effort. I'm also looking at automated small appliance storage and alternatives to the standard dishwasher. These are goals and I have no good solutions to offer right now.
Apple

Is Gawker's "Apple Tablet Scavenger Hunt" Illegal? 172

theodp writes "Not too surprisingly, Apple was not amused by Valleywag's announcement of an Apple Tablet Scavenger Hunt, which offered cash prizes ranging from 10K-100K for info about the much-anticipated new Apple device. The promo prompted a threatening cease-and-desist letter from Apple's lawyers, which Valleywag deemed the most concrete evidence yet that there may indeed be a tablet in the works. But is the Scavenger Hunt really illegal, as the attorney claimed? The jury's still out, but Slate concludes Apple's got a pretty good case, although it notes that Valleywag's unconventional Scavenger Hunt 'stunt' may not really be all that different from 'reporting' practiced by mainstream publications like the WSJ."
NASA

Lacking Buyers, NASA Cuts Prices On Shuttles and Old Engines 131

Hugh Pickens writes "Russia's Space Shuttle, Buran, ended its days at a theme park in Moscow and was once offered for sale on the Internet for 3 million dollars. Now the NY Times reports that when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration put out the call in December 2008 seeking buyers for US shuttles from museums, schools and elsewhere, the agency didn't get as much interest as expected, so now NASA has slashed the price of the 1970s-era spaceships, available for sale this fall once their flying days are over, from $42 million to just $28.8 million apiece. 'We're confident that we'll get other takers,' says agency spokesman Mike Curie. The Discovery is already promised to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum but the Atlantis and the Endeavour are still up for grabs and it is possible that the Enterprise, a shuttle prototype that never made it to space, will also be available. The lower price is based on NASA's estimate of the cost for transporting a shuttle from Kennedy Space Center to a major airport, and for displaying it indoors in a climate-controlled building. As for the space shuttle main engines, those are now free. NASA advertised them in December 2008 for $400,000 to $800,000 each, but no one expressed interest. So now the engines are available, along with other shuttle artifacts, for the cost of transportation and handling."
Businesses

Google Phone Could Drive Apple Into Allegiance With Microsoft 325

rsmiller510 writes "A BusinessWeek report suggests that the Nexus One release marks the latest volley in an escalating war between Google and Apple, one that could force Apple into working more closely with Microsoft. 'When companies start to imitate one another, it's usually either an extreme case of flattery—or war. In the case of Google and Apple, it's both. Separated by a mere 10 miles in Silicon Valley, the two have been on famously good terms for almost a decade. ... Now the companies have entered a new, more adversarial phase. With Nexus One, Google, which had been content to power multiple phonemakers' devices with Android, enters the hardware game, becoming a direct threat to the iPhone. With its Quattro purchase, Apple aims to create completely new kinds of mobile ads, say three sources familiar with Apple's thinking. The goal isn't so much to compete with Google in search as to make search on mobile phones obsolete. ... Some analysts believe the Apple-Google battle is likely to get much rougher in the months ahead. Ovum's Yarmis thinks Apple may soon decide to dump Google as the default search engine on its devices, primarily to cut Google off from mobile data that could be used to improve its advertising and Android technology. Jobs might cut a deal with—gasp!—Microsoft to make Bing Apple's engine of choice, or even launch its own search engine, Yarmis says."
Mars

Options Dwindling For Mars Spirit Rover 120

coondoggie writes "NASA says it is narrowing a short list of things its scientists can do to extricate its stuck Mars Spirit rover. They are exploring a couple remaining options, such as driving backwards and using Spirit's robotic arm to sculpt the ground directly in front of the left-front wheel, the only working wheel the arm can reach. The amount of energy that Spirit harvests each day, however, is declining, as autumn days shorten on southern Mars. 'At the current rate of dust accumulation, solar arrays at zero tilt would provide barely enough energy to run the survival heaters through the Mars winter solstice.' NASA is currently analyzing results of a Jan. 13th attempt to move the spacecraft that involved a very slow rotation of the wheels. Earlier drives in the past two weeks using wheel wiggles and slow wheel rotation produced negligible progress toward extricating Spirit, NASA stated."
The Courts

Apple Seeks To Ban Nokia Imports To US 374

Hugh Pickens writes "Cnet reports that the ongoing patent battle between Apple and Nokia has escalated, with Apple moving to block imports of Nokia cell phones to the US by filing a complaint with the International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency that examines issues including unfair trade practices involving patent, trademark, and copyright infringement. In December, Nokia filed its own complaint with the USITC alleging that Apple infringes seven Nokia patents 'in virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, and computers' and sought to ban imports of Apple's iPhone, iPod, and MacBook products. Responding to Apple's latest move, Nokia spokesman Mark Durrant told Bloomberg that 'Nokia will study the complaint when it is received and continue to defend itself vigorously. However this does not alter the fact that Apple has failed to agree appropriate terms for using Nokia technology and has been seeking a free ride on Nokia's innovation since it shipped the first iPhone in 2007.' An ITC investigation is a lengthy process, but it's possible that Apple and Nokia might reach some sort of settlement as suits continue to escalate between the two companies."
Space

Spectrum of Light Captured From Distant World 32

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Cosmos: "Astronomers have made the first direct capture of a spectrum of light from a planet outside the Solar System and are deciphering its composition. The light was snared from a giant planet that orbits a bright young star called HR 8799 about 130 light-years from Earth, said the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ... The find is important, because hidden within a light spectrum are clues about the relative amounts of different elements in the planet's atmosphere. 'The features observed in the spectrum are not compatible with current theoretical models,' said co-author Wolfgang Brandner. 'We need to take into account a more detailed description of the atmospheric dust clouds, or accept that the atmosphere has a different chemical composition from that previously assumed.' The result represents a milestone in the search for life elsewhere in the universe, said the ESO. Until now, astronomers have been able to get only an indirect light sample from an exoplanet, as worlds beyond our Solar System are called. They do this by measuring the spectrum of a star twice — while an orbiting exoplanet passes near to the front of it, and again while the planet is directly behind it. The planet's spectrum is thus calculated by subtracting one light sample from another."
Space

ESA Wants ISS Extended To 2020 88

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that the European Space Agency's (ESA) Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain says that uncertainty is undermining the best use of the ISS and that only guaranteeing the ISS's longevity would cause more scientists to come forward to run experiments on the orbiting laboratory. 'I am convinced that stopping the station in 2015 would be a mistake because we cannot attract the best scientists if we are telling them today "you are welcome on the space station but you'd better be quick because in 2015 we close the shop,'' says Dordain. One of the biggest issues holding up an agreement on station-life extension is the human spaceflight review ordered by US President Barack Obama and the future of US participation in the ISS is intimately tied to the outcome of that review. Dordain says that no one partner in the ISS project could unilaterally call an end to the platform and that a meeting would be held in Japan later in the year where he hoped the partners could get some clarity going forward."
Science

"Doomsday Clock" Moves Away From Midnight 287

Arvisp writes to tell us that the symbolic "Doomsday Clock," designed to represent how close civilization is to catastrophic destruction, has been moved away from midnight. "First set at seven minutes to midnight, the clock has been moved only 18 times since its creation in 1947. The group, which includes more than a dozen Nobel laureates, last moved the hands of the clock in 2007, from seven to five minutes before midnight to reflect the threat of a 'second nuclear age' and the challenges presented by global warming. Today, at a press conference in New York, the Bulletin announced that despite the looming threats of nuclear weapons and climate change, it would move the hands of the clock from five to six minutes before midnight."
Space

India Developing Vehicle To Knock Enemy Satellites 178

Frankie70 writes "Star Wars are back in fashion. With perennial (and nuclear armed) foe Pakistan always teetering on the brink of political collapse and neighboring regional superpower China taking greater strides into space technology, India has announced that it is developing an exo-atmospheric 'kill vehicle' that will knock enemy satellites out of orbit."

Comment Sensibility (Score 1) 1049

The real question that’s been asked is whether @aol.com can ever be considered a sensible email address to have today. It shows an antiquated view of the internet, yes, but it also shows that the person did not sign up for Gmail as their first email address simply because they have to have an address on their resume. I have seen that many times. Personally, I prefer my employees to have AOL addresses, check them regularly, and know how to use them rather than having their own domain name that their progeny configured and that they have no idea how to properly use. If you are filtering based on domain name, you should really ask yourself what you are doing in the position of hiring manager. If I find someone with the right qualifications, I might ask them about something that stands out as an oddity such as an @aol.com email address, but I would only do so for someone who should definitely have superior email knowledge to compete in their profession. On a related note, I personally give out an alternate email address on each resume I pass out – I never use my personal email address for anything business related.

Comment Sytems Engineering: From the Prototype to Market (Score 1) 262

There are several steps in getting a product to market, and it sounds as though you are well on your way. First, I want to emphasize that hardware design in inherently more risky than software design, so you should first learn about systems engineering from someone who has put a product such as this together. If you tell yourself that you can do the software, make sure you are equally confident that your team can put the hardware together. It has been my experience that the hardware itself can be one of the most challenging as well as one of the most expensive aspects of the system design process. First, you must think from the system level about the product both in terms of the overall design specifications and the engineering required to meet your specification to meet a particular cost model. You will need someone to handle software (it sounds as though you have that covered), electronic design, mechanical design, PCB layout, sensor and optical system requirements, and how you will put it all together. Since you asked about PCBs, it is absolutely necessary that you find an experienced PCB engineer, either by hiring one (the market is great for this right now, if you have the money to hire) or by finding someone with hardware design experience to work as a consultant and could select the components, layout the board, and then work with a mechanical engineer to package the system for the mass market. There are many companies that are more than happy to contract with you to do this, but beware that they have different focuses in terms of quantity, reliability, and, most importantly, cost. The design process prior to going to a Chinese manufacturer will usually include a working prototype, a couple of design iterations, and a final (usually several copies) of the final test prototype for verification and comparison to the Chinese production model. Simply put, you donâ(TM)t want to order 50000 buggy boards. Express PCB will print the board itself, but you will need another shop to drop the components and solder them to the board. Iâ(TM)ve had luck with a couple of companies that are local to me and you will likely be able to find a shop that can provide you with PCB finishing services. Your PCB engineer will likely help you select components (probably from DigiKey) and whatever sensor you are using (likely directly from Kodak, depending on the sensor, or from a vendor that will give you a complete OEM camera (that is usually a better option if you have no sensor integration experience, but will typically cost more per unit, so if you are going to mass market the camera, youâ(TM)ll want to look into other options). In summary, your team will need to work on the product design from different perspectives, both the systems/business/cost side and the design/fabricate/testing side.

Comment Crooks? (Score 1) 662

I find the author obtuse... He goes so far as to say that the best students do not become crooks, rather it is people who do poorly in school, which is obsurd. Similarly poor points are found throughout the article and it seems that everything the author says is unoriginal, regurgitated trash-talk.

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