mezzo toscano's Bookmarks tagged no_tag →  View Popular

Per capita, it turns out, the United States trains more engineers than either of the Asian giants.

But America's hidden secret is that most of these engineers are immigrants. Foreign students and immigrants account for almost 50 percent of all science researchers in the country. In 2006 they received 40 percent of all PhDs. By 2010, 75 percent of all science PhDs in this country will be awarded to foreign students. When these graduates settle in the country, they create economic opportunity.

Most satellites for earth observation use sun-synchronous orbits. These orbits let the satellite's cameras take pictures ob objects at the same solar time. This means that it will pass overhead at the same local time every day

You accomplish this by making the orbit precess exactly 360 degrees per solar year.

These orbits are typically nearly circular, but needn't be; you can put a spy satellite into a sun-synchronous elliptical orbit, so it'll swoops down and photograph near perigee, then waste a lot of time around apogee.

Since this orbit is around 684 Km, it can be shown that it must be pretty close to circular, has an orbital period of around 100 minutes, and its inclination is probably about 96 to 100 degrees (meaning that the satellite is slightly retrograde - 90 degrees inclination is polar, zero degrees is equatorial) In turn, this means that pretty much all of earth will be seen by the satellite, except for 8 degree circles around the poles.

A 96 minute period means that each successive orbit will look down on a place 15 degrees west

Waste Management spokeswoman Lynn Brown said Wednesday that her company is suing SAP, the German-based company that sold it the system, seeking all its expenses plus punitive damages.

The No. 1 U.S. trash hauler, which reported $309 million in fourth-quarter net income, has yet to determine whether it will take a charge for its investment in the failed system.

Levi's is standardizing on a single global instance of SAP ERP, and told The Reg it was forced to take shipping systems at its three massive US distribution centers off line for a full week in April to fix problems receiving and fulfilling orders.

The company not only lost business during the shut down, but also saw customers who'd placed orders cancel them once the systems were back up.

A Levi's company spokesman blamed the problem on integration of "legacy systems". He told The Reg Levi's is continuing the software rollout but notes it's currently in a "stabilization phase".

Nobody mentioned the Companies that sued or are suing the ERP software and consulting vendors. I found these links but don't know if there was an outcome or not?

http://news.cnet.com/Waste-Management-sues-SAP-over-complete-failure/2100-1014_3-6235776.html 

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878-1040637.html 

SAP is about the worst thing that can happen to a company.

It does make sure that everyone in the company with out exception will be very upset. Usually this is hard to do. SAP can do it for you. They get everyone.

Let's review: Clients pay for their work up front. Artists do the work before they have the contract. CrowdSpring collects the float.

It's the ultimate in weasel economics. But it works. Check out some of the closed jobs on the site - the quality of the work is quite good, there's a lot of variety to choose from, and customers are paying bargain prices.

I ask him what he thinks are the primary human virtues, and eventually he
comes up with magnanimity – punish your enemies but don’t bear grudges;
compassion – fairness always trumps efficiency; courage – very few people
have this; and tenacity – tinker until it works for you.

Startlingly, this great
sceptic, this non-guru who believes in nothing, is still a practising
Christian. He regards with some contempt the militant atheism movement led
by Richard Dawkins.

“Scientists don’t know what they are talking about when they talk about
religion. Religion has nothing to do with belief, and I don’t believe it has
any negative impact on people’s lives outside of intolerance. Why do I go to
church? It’s like asking, why did you marry that woman? You make up reasons,
but it’s probably just smell. I love the smell of candles. It’s an aesthetic
thing.”

Take away religion, he says, and people start believing in nationalism, which
has killed far more people. Religion is also a good way of handling
uncertainty. It lowers blood pressure. He’s convinced that religious people
take fewer financial risks.