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Reminds me of a post I saw on Get Rich Slowly awhile back on ditching a dream job for a boring one. Interesting perspective. Emotional investment can be taxing in its own way. I started in a job with very interesting problems but lacked meaning, then moved to a job with much more meaning but with less interesting problems (that eventually turned into boring, frustrating, and stupid problems). I've since found one that's more balanced, with interesting problems that I care about to a moderate degree.

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2012/03/18/reader-story-i-...

Indeed. The growing free software & hardware communities, and the numerous companies they spin off, are an existence proof that patents aren't a requirement of a working economy. They aren't going away any time soon until free hardware makes up a larger proportion of the market, because the current patent holders have too much to lose, and can buy politicians who will keep propping up the current system. So, start more successful free hardware companies that ignore the patent system, gradually rendering patents less relevant and less damaging.

This is one of the most clear & succinct - and more importantly high exposure - statements on the value of open source that I've seen to date. The same message from other sectors like 3D printing has been thoroughly muddied by the proprietary side of the market - who have benefited from the expiration of key patents & widespread open source designs.

"...limited demand for its products"? Not in Orange County, CA.

We can keep FPTP without the pathologies of plurality voting with something like Approval or Condorcet voting.

One of the most comprehensive guides to diplomatic critiques I've seen was written for the Critters science fiction & fantasy writing workshop. It serves a critical need in that venue:

http://critters.org/c/diplomacy.ht

Washington DC's one of the few places in the US I've seen with that same escalator etiquette in the Metro. I love it. Unfortunately, it doesn't usually apply at shopping malls.

For an overdose of information on this topic, see:

http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/

Using LyX, you can't even type extraneous space without extra effort.

Difference being that police don't make their livelihood from the people they go after; rather, the people the "parasites" prey on. There are a few exceptions, like seizures from drug dealers to augment taxpayer funding.

The US patent office has the Peer to Patent project for public comment on pending patent applications: http://www.peertopatent.org/

Looks like it's voluntary and applies to a limited number of patent applications, but it is a step in the right direction by the US patent office.

Physics also identifies the dynamics, which are a special type of constraint. Engineers also consider economics, which usually limits you to far less than physics allows.

I think the problem arises when a physicist is asked to speculate on an engineering problem.

The Dragon capsule's deorbit burn completed and it's headed back down to Earth.

[EDIT] and splashdown!

Here's the press conference in three ~10 minute parts: Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu5dXnCUs7I Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LsihAsX4z8 Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu0VvxuicLw

The lead author gives a talk at 2:26 in Part 1 that I thought was an excellent example of how to communicate science (or other technical subject) and implications to a general audience.

My controls lab in college (University of Washington, Aeronautics & Astronautics) had an inverted pendulum. I designed a controller to balance it and maintain position along the track for a controls class. We took a picture of Gumby standing on top of it for our report. It used rotary optical encoders to measure the angle, and a motor driven belt to move the base along the track. Somebody in our department developed a controller to flip the inverted pendulum up and balance it. Another stabilized a jointed pendulum in various configurations (both arms up, one up & one down, one down & one up). All are non-trivial problems. Combining them is commendable.

Also see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1891316

The system from Jurassic park actually exists. It's the 3D File System Navigator made by SGI for IRIX.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn

I was thinking it's too odd to be fake.

If you go through all the trouble to adapt to living in space for travel between the planets, why bother landing? Colonize the asteroids and short period comets, which are full of resources and much easier to access. No landing vehicles and ascent rockets are required. The gravity is so low that a spacecraft optimized for interplanetary travel can dock with them, or loiter nearby and transfer people & goods with space tugs.

Of course, it's a matter of preference. Many would still prefer to live on a planet. A dispersed civilization that includes the small bodies would be even more resilient to any one collision. More eyes out among the asteroids would also increase the chances of spotting potential collisions.

US service members or their families can get the same with USAA. You can choose another account, credit card, or line of credit.

I would think that people driven to attain those levels wouldn't listen to advice like that anyway.

I wonder if the the biggest aid to OO adoption will be the new interface in Office 2007? OO basically clones the old Office menu-driven interface for everything, which I find easier to navigate by drilling down in context to find things. Switching to OO avoids the need to relearn how to use an office suite.

and a link to the paper, "Anger Management: Using Sentiment Analysis to Manage Online Communities"

http://research.yahoo.com/pub/3352