Group items tagged

I knew it !!!

maybe 90' is too much but we ve been saying for so long about the power nap and never actually did it. I think the management tries to promote only politically correct methods for more creativity and new ways of working etc etc and neglects the potential power naps could have for some of us. I suggest as a first step a pillow on the desk and leaning on it after lunch for 10 - 15 '

Where do you want to go to do academic research and still have a decent salary ? certainly not sweden, France or Germany... prefer the UK, US or the top... Switzerland !

Sure, 44k for a full professor, that's a bad joke! Just my experience from conferences: high saleries do not make good research, I rather suspect there's something like an optimal salery. People with too high saleries often seem to feel obliged to make much noise (whatever the reason might be), the result is not research but PR campagns.

I agree ! Just a correction, net salary for a full professor starting in France: 36456 euros/year... For a McF (equivalent junior prof.): 20160 euros/year, and of course a shitload of admistrative tasks and teaching. I don't know why i still dream to have a position...?

Damn I should have thought about it before!!! Just launch anything that manages to hit Apophis and the title of the Redeemer of the World is yours!!! Howdys to our Comrades for the idea!

"What you do for a living is not be creative, what you do is ship," says bestselling author Seth Godin, arguing that we must quiet our fearful "lizard brains" to avoid sabotaging projects just before we finally finish them. ... or to me the importance of setting deadlines, objectives and planning to not sabotage your creative work!

scary guy ..... his 'shipping' philosophy and his 'everybody is creative' line is close to Marx description of alienation ... I share more Stroustrup point of view "The idea of software development as an assembly line manned by semi-skilled interchangeable workers is fundamentally flawed and wasteful."

I don't think that is what he says, I think he says that everybody _can_ be creative but to be so you have to actually create things!

finally cross-scale is not selected, it was the only cosmic vision mission with multi-satellites formation flying, since the concept for Xeus has changed. There is still Swarm but it's not really formation flying... So ESA is missing something here...

Juxi are you following this one? any idea on its purpose?

Not that I'm an expert in the field in any way, but there are two things I could think of: 1) possibility of bringing the payload back means that it can collect huge amounts of data which wouldn't be possible to be transferred via radio in reasonable time and/or you can bring back data you don't want to be intercepted by enemy 2) I remember reading somewhere that possibility of re-entry from orbit means you can strike any country without violating the airspace of the neighbouring countries. As the project is now managed by military, a purely civil purpose can be safely ruled out in my opinion.

I forwarded the link to my experimental colleagues and here is the comment from Sergei (the master himself:) "this is what Igor has been doing - an array of plasmonic nanocables. This basically works as a wire-medium slab. All their epsilon and mu are rubbish." * If Sergei is as strict as in this comment, then it IS rubbish. He's not one of the notorious complainer (as e.g. myself.) * Please DO NOT FORWARD this to anybody else, Sergei's comment is NOT FOR PUBLIC USE!

UPDATE: I had a short chat with Sergei and Pekka, Sergei noticed that there is an increasing number of papers on metamaterials, especially in Nature and Science, which are simply wrong, this one being an example. * The idea is based on a very well known effect of wired media. What appears to be interesting about this paper is that they manage to make an optical analogue with aparently low losses. This could be interesting. * The whole interpretation as NIM, "wrong" refraction etc. is total nonsense.

wow, good to know ! But for the privacy you should be aware that this is a public group, so anyone has access to our comments i think !

Some juicy sound bites from the former Google CIO.

this might come very handy in case we explore further the idea of a virtual ACT - one of the key points: you still have to meet from time to time physically ...

Wasn't that what we actually wanted??? (del.icio.us + comments)

Evolution live: Due to the fact that bigger fish have a higher chance of getting caught in fish nets, the average body size at when fish start reproduce is drastically decreasing.

why financial planning of big projects fail (http://www.heise.de/tr/artikel/101614/0/0)

Crazy.....

check especially the IDEO interview ... really nice (LS)

Social networking in companies (german only)

ACT type at big industry.

Following a conversation between LS and KdeG.