On Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:26:33 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:55:02 -0800, JosephKK
wrote:

On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:00:06 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:
Nope. We will all be promoted to a position of responsibility, where
we will be setup to fail, thus demonstrating that technologists are no
better at running the country than politicians, crooks, bureaucrats,
and thugs.

How very weird. I am the pretty much acknowledged top technologist in
my workplace. Yet i cannot get promoted.
YMMV

That's because nobody has found a reason to want you to fail. There
can be many reasons for this. Optimistically, you have a well managed
company, that keeps people in positions where they are best suited.
That's rather rare as most companies will follow the Peter's Principle
method of promotion (rise to your level of incompetence).

Another possibility is that you have successfully eliminated any and
all competition for your position, thus making find a replacement
impossible. Unless you have a suitable replacement trained and
waiting, most companies will not your promotion to create vacuum.

In some companies, a promotion is tracked by a raise in salary and
benefits. In some countries and companies, it's actually impossible
to get a raise without a change of title. Perhaps your company needs
to manufacture a suitable position and title for your promotion? Note:
Assassinating your boss is not a viable option.

It's also possible that you have hit the glass ceiling, where
promotion is no longer possible. For example, many family owned
companies will not promote non-family members beyond a certain point.
If you're the wrong race, religion, sex, age, or nationality, you will
have problems getting a promotion. Same with failing to join the
correct country club, attending semi-mandatory social occasions,
wearing the wrong style clothes, attending the wrong church, and
generally sticking out like a sore thumb. Conformity pays well.

It's conceivable that you also lack sufficient initiative to obtain a
promotion. Many managers assume that someone that keeps their mouth
shut, does not need a promotion. Leaving your resume floating around
your desk is great way to either indicate that it's time to move up or
move out. Unfortunately, it can also get you fired, so use this trick
sparingly.

Anyway, if you need advice on what NOT to do in order to get promoted,
I have a long list of personal experiences that eventually inspired me
to become self-employed. I can't say that it was the right decision
from the financial point of view. However, I can say that I probably
saved a few companies from self destruction by removing myself from
their management structure.

Good stuff. I think i need to reconsider hanging out my own shingle.
It is not the best time out there versus a stable position though.

On Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:50:59 -0800, JosephKK
wrote:

Good stuff. I think i need to reconsider hanging out my own shingle.
It is not the best time out there versus a stable position though.

Maybe. I'm not an authority on self-employment and small biz.
However, I've been doing it for 25 years, so I must be doing something
right.

One of my "hobbies" was collecting business cards sitting on the
counter at the local retail electronics parts supplier. Every time
there was a layoff or downturn in the industry, a wide assortment of
business cards for newly minted consultants would appear. I would
grab a card, and scribble the date on the back. I would then wait to
see how long they would last. 6 months was the running average before
they found employment and/or decided consulting was not for them. A
few moved out of the area. I wasn't very organized or accurate, but
when the local economy sucked, there were perhaps 100 consultants.
When it was going full blast, perhaps 10.

A fairly small number survived over the years, and have built up a
customer base and revenue source sufficient to maintain their
lifestyle. Several have day jobs as well. One characteristic I noted
was the higher up in corporate America they went, the smaller the
likelihood of survival as a consultant. My guess is that this is
because of their addiction to the corporate support structure. For
example, I was horrified at the prospect of having to buy my own
stationary supplies, instead of simply stealing them from the company.

Another characteristic is that most consultants get their start by
obtaining work from their former employers. That included me. If you
burn your bridges when leaving a company, you will have problems.
Later, as your contacts move to other companies, your business base
will expand with them. If you have a mentor, do everything you can to
make them happy. I would say that without the business provided by a
very small number of industry contacts, I would have starved long ago.
I should also mention that I started my biz taking on small consulting
projects while still employed. I didn't need the money, but I was
bored and knew that I would evenutally need the experience and
contacts.

At one point, I had illusions of designing and producing antennas.
It's an ideal product. Few people understand how they work. Antennas
tend to be surround by hype and are often close to magic. Testing is
difficult and expensive. Product comparisons are non-existent.
Religion and bias toward specific styles and manufacturers seem to be
the prime criteria for selection. The weirder it looks, the better it
sells. Aesthetic concerns have provided a whole new market. There
are already some rather dubious antenna products on the market. Etc.
In all, it's a perfectly acceptable small market waiting to be
exploited. Hopefully, my marketing and sales expertise will
adequately compensate for my marginal antenna design abilities. I had
plans to build the product line using the audiophile model, where
garish industrial design and endless ambiguous buzzwords have done
quite well. Due to health problems, I doubt that I'll do anything, so
it's all yours.

Good luck.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

...
At one point, I had illusions of designing and producing antennas.
It's an ideal product. Few people understand how they work. Antennas
tend to be surround by hype and are often close to magic. Testing is
difficult and expensive. Product comparisons are non-existent.
Religion and bias toward specific styles and manufacturers seem to be
the prime criteria for selection. The weirder it looks, the better it
sells. Aesthetic concerns have provided a whole new market. There
are already some rather dubious antenna products on the market. Etc.
In all, it's a perfectly acceptable small market waiting to be
exploited. Hopefully, my marketing and sales expertise will
adequately compensate for my marginal antenna design abilities. I had
plans to build the product line using the audiophile model, where
garish industrial design and endless ambiguous buzzwords have done
quite well. Due to health problems, I doubt that I'll do anything, so
it's all yours.

Good luck.


One of the most important paragraphs ever to have been posted to this NG ...

The logic and energy brought to bear is nothing short of astounding, and
provokes a "RIGHT ON, THUMBS UP" out of me ... :-)

However, the part of success in selling snake oil, "In all, it's a
perfectly acceptable small market waiting to be exploited", I'd have to
see to believe ... the market seems saturated already!

Warm regards,
JS

Defecation on your non-existent deity.


Yeah, this just "all happened", right.

I bet you see that a lot ...

Regards,
JS

Needs to be reminded that gravity doesn't work that way. Stand on your head
and try it.

Defecation on your non-existent deity.
Yeah, this just "all happened", right.

I bet you see that a lot ...

Needs to be reminded that gravity doesn't work that way. Stand on your
head
and try it.
Repeat ten times and average the results.

JB wrote:

...
Needs to be reminded that gravity doesn't work that way. Stand on your head
and try it.


Better yet, grab a hand full of plastic, glass, metal, wood, etc. and
toss it into a mud-puddle, come back in a few million years and see what
you can "dig up", what has "evolved" into being ...

While I cannot absolutely rule out molecules, atoms and other assorted
particles, materials and wavelengths of energies arranging themselves
into complex organisms, at least one of which has self-awareness--it
flies in the face of all forms of logic/maths/sciences I have ever had
contact with ... but true, ya' never know, ya' just never know.

Regards,
JS

"Art Unwin" wrote in message
...
On Nov 30, 4:47 am, "Dave" wrote:
"Art Unwin" wrote in message

...

THEFT OF PUBLIC FUNDS BY PRIVATE ENTITIES

so go file a criminal complaint... even at 'public' universities not all
research work is paid for by the public. many projects are funded by
private companies and other entities who retain the right to such work and
any patents that may result. now of course most patents are publicly
available, but not all of them... go figure that one out. of course how
much more are you willing to be taxed to support electronic publishing of
everything written at a public university? that service doesn't come for
free, and the sheer volume of that stuff would make it downright
expensive.

I have asked the trusties what the policy is regarding this before I
proceed.
I am in the rujst belt and there are many engineers that have and are
going to be laid off.
They will not be able to afford to stay abreast of things and thus
will be hurtin the coming depression.
Not good for the Countries future I would say
Art

What irks me is the video conference links that major universities have so
that their Russian counterparts can participate in the board meetings. Some
kind of open access thing. Them and Ron Burkle. What was this about
suppression?

JosephKK wrote:
On Sat, 29 Nov 2008 16:46:13 -0800 (PST), wrote:

The cost of actually printing the journals is significant, and has to
come from somewhere. They're not exactly huge circulation, and mostly
have no advertising, but are printed on high quality stock with good
quality typesetting.

The physical printing costs are actually minimal, distribution costs
more now.

Say it costs about $0.05/page for offset printing on glossy stock (no
idea if that's right, but it's probably within a factor of 10). A 100
page journal is then $5 in raw production costs, per unit. (and we'll
assuming binding, etc. is included)

But you have to add typography and editing and composition. I'd find it
hard to believe that a complete journal could be set up in less than 100
work hours. So, about $10K.

If the circulation of the journal is 200 copies, then that's another
$10K in repro costs. You're up to $10/issue, before you've distributed
it, maintained the subscriber list, etc. These things all cost money
(been there, provided the service, made a living from it, barely).


Check out what the "print to order" publishers charge. (e.g. Lulu.com)
(100 page, paperback perfect bound is about $5.30, exclusive of shipping)

]


This statement was in regard to the high costs of obtaining copies
from the IEEE without
having to pay the high costs of belonging .
The cost to get a single copy is quite high compared to the cost to
get access to thousands by being a member (check out those CCC prices
at the bottom of the first page.. they're fairly pricey.. a dozen
papers a year and you've just paid for your membership and access to
Xplore)

Just a few years ago i could get physical reprints of articles from
most journals for about $3 each, now electronic reprints cost $20 or
more? I think we all can figure out where the money is going.


I think you'd have to go back quite a ways in time to get to $3/article.
Grabbing a few things on my desk, a 2001 IEEE Proceedings article runs
you $10. A paper in a 2004 Trans Antennas and Prop is $20. A 1982
Proceedings of IEEE paper runs $0.75. Jim Breakall's paper on HF
propagation modeling over mountains in 1994 IEEE Trans A&P is $4.00

Of course, those are just the costs if you photocopy it yourself and
submit the fee to the copyright clearance center.

And, a lot of times, the author of the paper will send you a copy, if
you write and ask. (That's actually one of the fun parts about
publishing.. Getting those post cards from obscure places in the world
10 years later: "Meine geehrte Kollege, bitte schicken Sie mir ....")

Granted if the author is dead or unreachable, that's a challenge.




Funny thing about "work for hire", the hiring entity is the one with
any legal rights here in the US. But the NIH for some strange reason
does not assert its rights.

One would have to look at the specific contracts/grant language, but
I'll bet they require dissemination in something like PubMed these days.
The days of the Principal Investigator keeping their data secret for
decades while they dribble out a paper a year, are dying, if not dead,
at least for publicly funded work.

On NASA missions, there's typically a clause that requires dissemination
of the raw data from an instrument within 6 months, and you're required
to have budgeted for that dissemination in your proposal.


The IEEE does not publish work for hire
generally, but charges for submissions.

Of course the IEEE publishes work for hire. If you work for Boeing,
write a paper, and get it published, Boeing owns the copyright (as work
for hire), and executes a license to IEEE to use it. And they don't
always charge for submissions. My very first published paper (wasn't
with IEEE, as it happens) had the page fees waived, because I was in
high school at the time.

John Smith wrote:
JB wrote:

...
Needs to be reminded that gravity doesn't work that way. Stand on
your head
and try it.


Better yet, grab a hand full of plastic, glass, metal, wood, etc. and
toss it into a mud-puddle, come back in a few million years and see what
you can "dig up", what has "evolved" into being ...

While I cannot absolutely rule out molecules, atoms and other assorted
particles, materials and wavelengths of energies arranging themselves
into complex organisms, at least one of which has self-awareness--it
flies in the face of all forms of logic/maths/sciences I have ever had
contact with ... but true, ya' never know, ya' just never know.

Self-arranging and self replication are actually easy enough to do that
the old definition of life that depends on that have been discarded for
much tighter definitions, Otherwise we would already be able to claim
that we created life.

As an example, lipids, or phospholipids, are a common substance (read
oils) that have the tendency to form into small bilayer spheres that
isolate the interior from the exterior world. Then what is needed is for
the right compounds to get trapped inside that sphere, and maybe
something interesting will happen.


http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2...npu=1&mbid=yhp


A immune system analog:


http://www.sandia.gov/media/NewsRel/NR2002/nanoarch.htm


Point is, these things are not some impossible to happen, "just so"
scheme. As time goes on, it looks more and more like on a planet capable
of sustaining life, life will happen.

Now if someone wanted to claim that some entity made that planet that
could support life, then these things happened - that is a different story.

- 73 de Mike N3LI -

Michael Coslo wrote:

...
Self-arranging and self replication are actually easy enough to do that
the old definition of life that depends on that have been discarded for
much tighter definitions, Otherwise we would already be able to claim
that we created life.

As an example, lipids, or phospholipids, are a common substance (read
oils) that have the tendency to form into small bilayer spheres that
isolate the interior from the exterior world. Then what is needed is for
the right compounds to get trapped inside that sphere, and maybe
something interesting will happen.


http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2...npu=1&mbid=yhp



A immune system analog:


http://www.sandia.gov/media/NewsRel/NR2002/nanoarch.htm


Point is, these things are not some impossible to happen, "just so"
scheme. As time goes on, it looks more and more like on a planet capable
of sustaining life, life will happen.

Now if someone wanted to claim that some entity made that planet that
could support life, then these things happened - that is a different story.

- 73 de Mike N3LI -

I'd say that was the best argument for aliens I have ever seen ...

Since the universe is some ~13.7 billion years old, and the earth only
~6 billion ... it would be quite interesting to meet one of those races
who are ~1 billion years ahead of us ... I am waiting, indeed, have been
for some time now.

Regards,
JS