assemble

That is what tracking your billable hours means....

Clocking in and out is, however, common for hourly employees.

My grandma loves her new Windows 8 computer. She hasn't called me for help at all since she got it--a vast improvement over her old Mac laptop and XP desktop.

There are a lot more who use their ecosystem than you think. All of their services work very well together, the Music and Video services have anything I could ever want (seriously, more current TV shows than anywhere else I've seen), the email calendar and other things work together, Skydrive is incredibly useful.

If you don't think Microsoft's ecosystem is competitive, it tells me you haven't tried it.

Good companies should not have a single point of failure. If they do, the only way they'll learn to live without you is if you're not there.

Just take a break. Go somewhere that doesn't have cell phone coverage. (Alternatively, just turn it off when you get on the plane and leave it off until you get off the plane coming back.) Don't pay for internet. I did that a few months ago on my trip to Italy. Best. Vacation. Ever.

It's really not that long. TL;DR is for the lazy or people who should be working but aren't.

A pilot probably wouldn't know how all the systems work together. (They probably know what ACARS and ADS-B -do-, but not the implementation details.) You would want an avionics engineer--so someone who works at Honeywell, Rockwell-Collins, Garmin, etc.

If you can access the wiring in the aircraft, especially with the new fly-by-wire stuff, you could cause problems. None of the communications are encrypted (as far as I know), because it's pretty much assumed you can trust what's on the a/c buses. Also, redundancy helps get rid of erroneous data when it only shows up on one bus.

I don't know much about ACARS and ADS-B. While it wouldn't surprise me if there were problems, we also tend to notice rogue transmissions in our spectrum. Much more quickly than people realize.

"4mericans" might actually work.

Bombardier also build CRJs, business jets (Globals, Challengers and Learjets), does government work and builds fire-fighting aircraft. Oh, and the C-Series is a brand new a/c entering into the lower end of the Boeing market.

That being said, building even these small aircraft is a multi-billion dollar investment. If people here think that software design is hard. It takes a monumental amount of work to design a commercial aircraft and the manufacturing processes around it. Oh, and then there is the test phase. That part is fun.

When I was out of the country on vacation recently, I didn't turn on my phone and I didn't bring my computer. I didn't have internet (because I refuse to pay for internet at hotels) either.

Writing (by hand) in a journal and just experiencing the place you are in can be amazing. I found that some of the most amazing parts of my trip were when I (a) was not trying to takes pictures or something and just took it all in or (b) when I was writing in my journal about what had happened during the day.

Every time I've gone without a computer/phone for several days has been wonderful. I really should do it more often, but I have a job where I have to use both all day...

Or, you know, you can just say something like: - "I'm in the middle of something right now. I'll call you back." - "Hey, I can't talk right now. Try again after 3." - "Hey, I've got a call on the other line that I need to take. Talk to you later!"

Usually. My group isn't IT, so with almost every purchase we ask for customization. (IT gets custom stuff too, but they also buy a lot more off-the-shelf stuff.) We have disqualified vendors for not being able to customize their product fast enough or well enough. We pay (a lot) for this. While we could write the code ourselves for a lot of these customizations, the vendor can do it faster and it's easier for us to buy the software than increase our headcount to do the work.

You'd be amazed at how much an enterprise is willing to pay for software, if you have the right niche and are going to make life easier for a bunch of people.

Article I of the US Constitution deals with Congress. Section 1 is a introduction and establishes the House and the Seante. Sections 2-6 deal with how to elect congressman and the "floor rules" basically. Section 7 is how a bill becomes a law.

Section 8 specifically lists the powers reserved to Congress. Neither the Executive branch nor the Supreme Court is given this treatment. (Side note: patents are specifically listed here: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;")

Section 9 deals with a few other things such as immigration, ex post facto laws, taxes and spending money. Section 10 is rules on what states can't do.

Furthermore, Amendment 10 reads:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The government does have power to step out of this specific list, due to the "necessary and proper" clause, but in general this used to be considered a clause where the government can do whatever is "necessary and proper" to exercise their duty to govern within their enumerated powers. This is spelled out by Justice Marshall in McCulloch vs. Maryland: "If the end be legitimate, and within the scope of the Constitution, all the means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, and which are not prohibited, may constitutionally be employed to carry it into effect."

However, later on in his opinion he also states: "This Government is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers. The principle that it can exercise only the powers granted to it would seem too apparent to have required to be enforced by all those arguments which its enlightened friends, while it was depending before the people, found it necessary to urge; that principle is now universally admitted. But the question respecting the extent of the powers actually granted is perpetually arising, and will probably continue to arise so long as our system shall exist."

This has always been a tricky question. There is a limit on Congress' power. While it is not limited simply to those listed in the Constitution, everybody that I know thinks Congress has overstepped their boundaries countless times.

The trouble is that we the people are no longer invested in our government and don't properly hold them to account. We elect people who benefit me the most, as opposed to the country. This is normal, but when you couple that with a court system that is overloaded and an executive branch that is, frankly, out of control and insanely drunk with power, bad government happens.

It just warns you and says that "same application featurews may not be supported" or something like that. TouchDevelop and some of the Compass apps do this.

They are for 0 points, so they're not really rewards.

Fair enough. My main point is that we spend a lot of time trying to get the autopilot to function right, but it's not an easy problem where you can just throw a bunch of edge case detection code in. There are lots of physical control laws involved in a/c code that you can't break. Silly laws of physics type things.

It's highly version controlled. Changing software versions on a plane usually means changing a lot of hardware too. After removing the boxes from the a/c, they can be returned to the manufacturer and the new software can be installed.

We test it in a ground-based simulator rig with the exact computers that would be on an a/c. If it gets approved, we put it on an airplane and we go fly the plane around a lot to make sure the software works.

A software upgrade almost always means switching out the hardware, because that's one way we ensure conformity.

Try writing the code for an autopilot some time. It's hard. We spend a lot of time flight testing just the autopilot.

Making something go in a particular direction at a particular altitude at a particular speed is hard enough. Throw in a stall and the best the plane can do is try to nose down.

Messages are prioritized on the screens in the cockpit in any aircraft I've ever seen. Higher priority messages are near the top and are a different color.

There are lots of messages because lots of things can go wrong with an aircraft. They aren't all critical "land now" messages, but may be relevant.

Yeah, I don't know about the a/c in question; however, the Colgan crash was a result of the pilot fighting the stick pusher and winning. The stick pusher is not easy to override.

It seems counter intuitive to nose down when you're falling out of the sky, but it's how you recover.

Just add a new search engine with the special url and make it the default as opposed to the pre-baked search engines.

The pressure difference between the interior and exterior of the aircraft causes considerable stress on the aluminum. One of the advantages with composite fuselages is their greater durability. This will allow for pressurization to an equivalent 6000ft altitude, as opposed to the current standard of 8000ft. This will help with numerous things, including but not limited to: air quality, ear popping, humidity, etc.

Thank you! I've been looking for something else ever since Readbility switched to their newer, heavier, slower version.

Ctrl+Z,X,C,V,R,Y,B,I,E, etc. work in Word, Excel, any web browser--actually, any windows application that uses standard controls.

Strange, it did for me yesterday.

Edit: Modern Philosophy seems to be missing the link to Philosophy, which should be there according to the edit history (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modern_philosophy&...).

Nuclear engineering is a sub-discipline of mechanical engineering at many schools that offer it... Mechanical engineers do LOTS of thermodynamics.

I've found readability ( http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ ) extremely helpful in situations like this.

I have a 1st gen Zune (black, not brown), and I think it's great. It doesn't have some of the flashy stuff or a touch screen like the newer models have, but it's never crashed on me. It's solid. I've dropped this thing a bunch of times (sometimes the "drop" was a bit more of a launch across the room, whoops) and it's not even scratched. Plus MS still supports it with almost all the new features, like Zune Pass--which is currently my favorite music service. (I wish the channels were updated more often, but they're still decent.)

The only reason I haven't upgraded to a new Zune is because this thing just works so well.

I suppose there are a few applications where e-books are handy, but if I'm traveling I normally read magazines. The idea of reading while commuting would be bad: I live in the Midwest--there isn't much in the way of public transit.

I'm not in college anymore, but I sold the books back unless they were particularly interesting. Even now, I prefer to buy programming reference books than using online references. If I can only find a manual online, half of the time I wind up printing it out and putting it in a binder. I write lots of stuff in the margins of reference books.

I don't know why everybody keeps trying to digitize books. I know it's cheaper to give someone a download than to make an actual book, but I'm willing to pay more for a print version. Print versions don't strain my eyes as much as computer version, they also look better in my opinion.

If you try taking notes in almost any engineering class on a computer the symbols are such a pain to input on a computer that it's far easier to take notes on paper. (Plus, I actually remember things that I write. I don't remember a lot of things I type.)

I believe that some things in life don't need to be digitized--textbooks and note-taking are two.

I'm not a tax guy, but based off my experience:

Assuming he's single: Federal taxes will be around $47.6k. (~28% at $170k, the 33% bracket hits you at $171,550.) State taxes vary widely. Some cities even have income taxes (e.g. NYC). Next you would have to add in investments, interest on investments, things like that as your income. Then you've got to consider deductions from your home, education, etc.

So it's a bit more complex than a simple percent; however, I would budget for a 35-40% effective income tax rate ($59.5k - $68k) in my state; however, in my state the cost of living is about half that--so taxes would be off $85k instead of $170k.