angstrom

Especially considering consoles didn't have multiplayer beyond the living room. Having access to B.NET, Kali, MPlayer, and other gaming networks of the day was very cool.

Between 95 and XP there was a period of "What's next?" similar to Apple in the 2007-2012 time frame and Google in the 2002-2007 time frame. What made them cool was the ability to change the way we work and play.

You left off the part where he also had the technical chops beyond just being a pilot he had a background in aeronautical engineering. He was lucky, smart and humble enough to know the difference between the two.

If nothing else, the following plaque sums the humbling nature of someone who accurately captured the gravitas of the moment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A11.plaque.jpg

Today, some of the flags planted on the moon still stand upright. However, 40 years of intense UV radiation have bleached them all white. The plaque remains.

Yes, that's a closer description than what I recall. My understanding is based on a book I read several years ago: http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...

>>This would also explain why days with unusual content seem to last much much longer than others (at least that's my experience).

I've heard this explained in part because of how our neocortex works. New events tend to require the involvement of more layers of the neocortex than ones that are redundant and routine. This is part of the explanation for the time dilation we experience when surprised by something like a car crash or a thrill seeking adventure. Your mind is fully engaged much the way it was when you were younger and everything was a new experience. As your mind adapts the neocortex handles the events more efficiently; more reflexively. Your mind subconsciously ignores the sensory inputs that don't surprise you.

For this reason, it's often advised that if you want to slow down the apparent passage of time just change your routine. Granted...your neocortex would probably even adapt to this.

Now tack on the fact that it has an initial 2 year mission powered by an RTG. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_gen...

...but not just any RTG, a MMRTG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-Mission_Radioisotope_Ther...

It's able to supply a steady 125 W of power for 14 years, before dropping to 100W. The technology has been used reliably on multiple projects. Based on the longevity of the previous rovers that have safely made it to Mars it's worth considering that barring mechanical malfunctions and hardware failures (it has two main computers) the rover could turn power off to non critical components after 14 years and continue to run on 100W. It might not be far fetched to think that this rover could still be running if/when humans arrive in the 2030s.

That's far cooler than what you would get running on the latest and greatest for convenience.

> That's boring, and there are no incentives for fixing bugs in obscure features because only launching successful new features gains visibility from higher-ups.

Companies really should find a way to incentivize this. Rewrites are about as silly. "Write the next generation xyz." Translates to "No one here has any idea how xyz was written, so it's being rewritten instead of modified. We look forward to rediscovering the same problems we did the first time."

That's more along the lines I was thinking. Don't fighters still do evasive maneuvers?

Of course, the SR-71 Blackbirds had one of the most effective solutions. Fly fast and unpredictable vectors. Anything on an interception vector would be miles off by the time it reached it's predicted location.

So how many G's can one of these pull? I imagine it's much higher than any human fighter since the upper limit is what can safely hold the craft together.

Wait, you mean like how everyone is in the top 10% and they only hire the elusive 1%? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

Was working on a major project recently and had the opportunity to put stress in perspective. One of my parents had a stroke the week I needed to be working on the release. Nothing is more fucked up in the modern workplace than how people will perceive such unfortunate events as "convenient". Like you made it up to avoid the stresses of work. Fuck work. Most the stress is contrived due to some BS deadline created by someone trying to meet the deadline placed on them ultimately to make sure it fits in a given financial quarter.

Reminds me of a place I worked where we joked the company's technology was 180 degrees out of phase with whatever was the hot new thing. Looking at the code base you could see how it oscillated between what was hot or great at the time.

Heard of it? The first Iron Man movie was based on it.

Already actively looking, but thanks for the advice. If you're straight out of college with no other realities in place, it may be doable, otherwise it's just a stupid waste of an already too short life.

Currently working in an open plan office and I hate it. The open plan office seeks to solve the problem of knowledge silos where people hole up and wait for people to come to them. Unfortunately, once that knowledge is distributed the constant interruptions leads to an environment where no one can focus and formulate new ideas during the 9-6 time frame. So work starts to seep into personal time which leads to a far larger problem where people become resentful on a regular basis and burnout. Meanwhile, the CTOs and VPs who also sit in the open plan floor can be seen leaving on a regular basis at 6:00 sharp. I have not achieved a state of mental flow in over a year. If a place I'm interviewing at has adopted the open floor plan, it's a deal breaker.

I've worked in cubicle farms, private rooms, shared rooms, and clustered team cubicle rooms. Cubicle farms are equally abhorred to open plan. I think the best mixture is shared rooms with private meeting rooms on a reservation basis, preferably with the private rooms along the windows and meeting rooms in the middle of the building.

Peak Labor. Anyone that's ever argued this in the past 200 years has been called a luddite. Yet, in the past 40 years as computers have automated more work, both labor and white collar, it's become clear that the productivity gains are only making it into the pockets of the 20% or so that own investments.

Sounds like lore. Won't let them fly on a plane together? I hope they don't ride in the same car to the airport since that's even more dangerous. (see my point?)

It's possible only 2 people know it since 3 can't keep a secret. More likely anyone that knows it has signed NDAs on top of which they each know two versions of the same recipe with an indistinguishable flavoring difference due to a minor quantity differences. Either recipe were to get out it's obvious who leaked because the master copy is in the vault. The exact quantities are like a watermark that gives away the leaker. At any rate, if you have golden handcuffs you don't leak due to self preservation anyhow.

I see no electrocuted elephants. There's nothing wrong with changing expectations to match reality. I think the short term expectations might dampen, but the long term expectations are still intact. Oil refineries aren't being built to meet demand because the refiners know it's a finite resource. Prices will rise and hold and when they do it will force a switch, but the technology will be ready.

All the more reason it would be funny if every car on the road in the future carries the advances of a company named for him.

He's talking about the supply chain optimization. One example is the dram chips used to build the iphone came from Samsung. They were sourced at quantities so large they are actually cheaper for Apple's iPhone than they are for Samsung's own phones. Streamlined products where the only segmentation is storage space make this possible. They can actually request such a large order their competitors can't match and get squeezed to the end of the manufacturing line while also paying more. To match they have to spend more. This hurts even more if your'e not controlling the distribution.

To the average non-techie all they have to decide is what color and storage size they want. This makes the device friendlier to consumers and takes away stress of understanding the hardware choices. The customer is actually happier if they don't have too many choices. People pay as much for this as they do the curated apps.

That was my thought. I curl requests like this all the time. This is like a tire obstacle course, not a high jump bar.

Good point, I was thinking about that not long after I posted it. I think it had more to do with management shuffles than employee shuffles. Most stats I can find state it as 80-90% leaving in 6 months to 1 year which sounds right, often resuming their job hunt 90 days after receiving the counter.

Counters rarely make sense. There's probably exceptions, but I've never seen any.

Looking for the stat, but it's at least an 80% chance they'll be gone in 2 years; either of their own accord or the company's. So if your boss ever pulls one of these maneuvers either get on their boss's good side or start looking for work yourself because there's about to be a shuffle.

You're also legally liable for everyone you share with. A usenet client does not redistribute.

Binreader suffices for most.

Funny thing is I search these services first. If I don't find it, I go to usenet and usually find it. Since it's SSL my ISP doesn't throttle it and the downloads only take maybe 30-50 minutes. Unlike torrents I can watch while it downloads. They really should adopt streaming and move on.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a correlation between children's transition from asset to expense in the typical urban household.

As a child I would've been the perfect ADD candidate, but with plenty of stimulation in the form of work on my parent's farm, I winded up learning how to create outlets for my restless nature. There's nothing more boring or repetitive than driving a tractor around a very large field. My mind constantly wandered and in a few occasions led to damaged equipment because of it. Lesson learned and relearned. Another example would be pacing back and forth waiting to switch the milkers on the cows during the bi-daily 1-2 hr chores. Cleaning equipment, feeding, manure removal, stacking hay bales by hand. Repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, grueling.

School was fun by comparison. Even mundane lessons had their silver lining (at least it wasn't manual labor). And when I wasn't occupied with chores or school I found other stimulation; building a large purple martin bird house, flying model rockets, helping with mechanical repair, drawing, reading, shooting guns, exploring, painting ceramics, playing trumpet, and eventually, playing with our computer. The avenues of stimulation were not forced, but open. Most importantly: I could use the things I was learning in school to see how they had purpose, if not for my own satisfaction.

Why do these kids fidget and lack focus? In my non expert opinion it's because they lack both the perspective and a positive feedback loop to stimulate their own minds. It's not a disorder of the brain by any means, but a lack of purpose. Children reject the situations because they're contrived hoops with no meaning. The constant question in any child's mind is "HOW AM I GOING TO USE THIS?!" If they can't see the purpose of the lesson they haven't gained anything more than a useless set of facts.

That's a very good point. Four-square (the car sales strategy BS not the site) is one of the most dishonest tactics ever devised to subvert the buying process. Why should I have to deal with a gauntlet of crap that has been tilted so much in the favor of the seller due to decades of salesmanship trial and error? The basis of a good deal is mutual benefit, which can't be reached without honesty.

Think of the quality constraints of /r/askscience

Quality is discourse, not peanut gallery, vacuum sucking commentary that builds on puns, memes, insults and karma whoring.

Inflammatory comments often devolve into nothing. No insights, no evocative call to action. However, constructive assertions backed by reason are not inflammatory and equally capable of evocative statements that can be challenged.