What the Night Sky Would Look Like If the Other Planets Were as Close as the Moon

What the Night Sky Would Look Like If the Other Planets Were as Close as the Moon

It's not always easy to imagine just how big the other planets are. Here, a space artist's thought experiment turns into a lesson in Earth's relative size.
REBECCA J. ROSENJUN 26 2013, 12:59 PM ET




Moon over Death Valley

Perhaps the hardest thing to wrap one's mind around in astronomy (or in anything, for that matter) is scale: just how big these objects are, how far away they lie, and how long ago they formed. How can anyone understand a planet that is more than 1,300 times the size of our own? Or the 93 million miles between us and the sun? And these are just measurements in our own solar system, a puny speck in the galaxy, to say nothing of the entire universe. Our intuitive sense of sizes, distances, and time are of little help when it comes to space.

Space artist Ron Miller has created a series of images that illustrate the sizes of the other planets in our solar system in a way that makes them a bit more accessible, showing what they would look like if they were 240,000 miles away -- the approximate distance of the moon from the Earth. He began with a picture of the moon over Death Valley (up top), and then calculated the number of degrees in the sky a given planet would take up at that distance. "For instance," he explained to me over email, "the moon covers just 1/2 a degree. Venus would cover about two degrees, so it would appear about four time larger than the moon."

Venus

The other thing Miller decides is how wide to make the entire picture. "I usually choose 50 or 60 degrees, which emulates a typical snapshot," he explains. "This determines how much space the planet takes up in the final picture."

Mercury

Miller says he's always loved astronomy. "It helped to grow up in the Sputnik and Mercury program days, when you couldn't open your eyes without seeing something about rockets," he writes. But an "utter ineptitude with math" led him to pursue his interest via a different path: art. For five years he was the art director at the National Air & Space Museum.

Mars

Miller likens the work of being a space artist to the crafts of forensic and paleontological arts, both of which require their practitioners to rely on small bits of information -- bones, fossils, other clues -- to imagine what something once looked like. Or, in this case, what it would look like, were the solar system radically different, and Jupiter were our very close neighbor.

Jupiter

"Of course," he continues, "the role of being an inspiration is important, too. Space artists have in fact been an important factor in the history of the development of space flight and have additionally inspired hundreds of people to pursue careers in astronomy or astronautics." He points to a painting by Chesley Bonestell from 1944 of Saturn as it would appear from its moon, Titan, once described as "the painting that launched a thousand careers." Here's how it would appear here from Earth, if it were at the distance of our moon:

Saturn

No offense to our moon, but imagine looking up in the sky and seeing this:

Uranus

Or this:

Neptune

Miller thinks that the night sky shapes who we are, and having a huge other planet so large would change us. "'We would all feel a lot more humble with Jupiter's presence constantly looking over us," he told The Daily Mail.

BIG BROTHER: -->>License-plate readers let police collect millions of records on drivers

License-plate readers let police collect millions of records on drivers
Jun 26, 2013


Click for larger image
A license-plate reader mounted on a San Leandro Police Department car can log thousands of plates in an eight-hour patrol shift. “It works 100 times better than driving around looking for license plates with our eyes,” says police Lt. Randall Brandt.

Credit: Michael Katz-Lacabe

When the city of San Leandro, Calif., purchased a license-plate reader for its police department in 2008, computer security consultant Michael Katz-Lacabe asked the city for a record of every time the scanners had photographed his car.

The results shocked him.

The paperback-size device, installed on the outside of police cars, can log thousands of license plates in an eight-hour patrol shift. Katz-Lacabe said it had photographed his two cars on 112 occasions, including one image from 2009 that shows him and his daughters stepping out of his Toyota Prius in their driveway.

That photograph, Katz-Lacabe said, made him “frightened and concerned about the magnitude of police surveillance and data collection.” The single patrol car in San Leandro equipped with a plate reader had logged his car once a week on average, photographing his license plate and documenting the time and location.

At a rapid pace, and mostly hidden from the public, police agencies throughout California have been collecting millions of records on drivers and feeding them to intelligence fusion centers operated by local, state and federal law enforcement.


Click for larger image
An image captured by a license-plate reader in 2009 shows Katz-Lacabe and his daughters stepping out of a car in their driveway. The photograph made Katz-Lacabe “frightened and concerned about the magnitude of police surveillance and data collection,” he says.


Credit: San Leandro Police Department photo courtesy of Michael Katz-Lacabe



With heightened concern over secret intelligence operations at the National Security Agency, the localized effort to track drivers highlights the extent to which the government has committed to collecting large amounts of data on people who have done nothing wrong.

A year ago, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center – one of dozens of law enforcement intelligence-sharing centers set up after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – signed a $340,000 agreement with the Silicon Valley firm Palantir to construct a database of license-plate records flowing in from police using the devices across 14 counties, documents and interviews show.

The extent of the center’s data collection has never been revealed. Neither has the involvement of Palantir, a Silicon Valley firm with extensive ties to the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. The CIA’s venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, has invested $2 million in the firm.

The jurisdictions supplying license-plate data to the intelligence center stretch from Monterey County to the Oregon border. According to contract documents, the database will be capable of handling at least 100 million records and be accessible to local and state law enforcement across the region.

Law enforcement agencies throughout Northern California will be able to access the data, as will state and federal authorities.

In the Bay Area, at least 32 government agencies use license-plate readers. The city of Piedmont decided to install them along the border with Oakland, and the Marin County enclave of Tiburon placed plate scanners and cameras on two roads leading into and out of town.

Law enforcement agencies throughout the region also have adopted the technology. Police in Daly City, Milpitas and San Francisco have signed agreements to provide data from plate readers to the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center. A Piedmont document indicates that city is also participating, along with Oakland, Walnut Creek, Alameda and the California Highway Patrol.

Katz-Lacabe said he believes the records of his movements are too revealing for someone who has done nothing wrong. With the technology, he said, “you can tell who your friends are, who you hang out with, where you go to church, whether you’ve been to a political meeting.”

Lt. Randall Brandt of the San Leandro police said, “It’s new technology, we’re learning as we go, but it works 100 times better than driving around looking for license plates with our eyes.”

The intelligence center database will store license-plate records for up to two years, regardless of data retention limits set by local police departments.

Many cities use license-plate readers to enforce parking restrictions or identify motorists who run red lights. Police in New York City have used the readers to catch car thieves and scan parking lots to identify motorists with open warrants.

In California, Long Beach police detectives used scanner data to arrest five people in a 2010 homicide. Plate readers in Tiburon identified celebrity chef Guy Fieri’s yellow Lamborghini in March 2011, which allegedly had been stolen from a San Francisco dealership by a teenager who embarked on a crime spree two years ago and now faces attempted murder charges.

Sid Heal, a retired commander with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, oversaw the adoption of plate readers in his agency in the mid-2000s. Heal recalled the dramatic uptick the plate readers made in the auto theft unit’s productivity.

“We found 10 stolen vehicles on the first weekend in 2005 with our antitheft teams,” Heal said. “I had a hit within 45 minutes.”

Before, Heal said, police had to call license plates in to a dispatcher and wait to have the car verified as stolen. Plate readers, Heal said, “are lightning fast in comparison” and allow officers to run up to 1,200 plates an hour, as opposed to 20 to 50 plates per day previously.

But Jennifer Lynch, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the Northern California database raises significant privacy concerns. “Because so many people in the Bay Area are mobile, it makes it that much more possible to track people from county to county,” Lynch said.

In May, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s and Los Angeles Police departments for a week of data gathered and retained in a multiagency network. For now, it’s unknown which agency administers the Los Angeles database, how many agencies contribute or have access to the database, how many records the system retains or how long they are kept.

In San Diego, 13 federal and local law enforcement agencies have compiled more than 36 million license-plate scans in a regional database since 2010 with the help of federal homeland security grants. The San Diego Association of Governments maintains the database. Unlike the Northern California database, which retains the data for between one and two years, the San Diego system retains license-plate information indefinitely.

“License-plate data is clearly identifiable to specific individuals,” said Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “This is like having your barcode tracked.”

Few limits on license-plate data

License-plate readers are not subject to the same legal restrictions as GPS devices that can be used to track an individual's movements. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously last year that lengthy GPS tracking constitutes a Fourth Amendment search and may require a warrant.

But plate readers might not fall under such rulings if police successfully argue that motorists have no “reasonable expectation of privacy” while driving on public roads.

Then-California state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, introduced a bill last year that would have required California police to purge license-plate data after 60 days and applied that rule to companies that collect such data. Law enforcement and private businesses involved in the technology resisted, and the bill died.

“Do we really want to maintain a database that tracks personal movements of law-abiding citizens in perpetuity? That’s the fundamental question here,” said Simitian, now a Santa Clara County supervisor. “Larger and larger amounts of data collected over longer periods of time provide a very detailed look at the personal movements of private citizens.”

While some law enforcement agencies, like the California Highway Patrol, have their own data retention guidelines for license-plate scanners, Simitian said there still is no larger policy that protects the privacy of Californians on the road.

“Public safety and privacy protection are not mutually exclusive,” he said. “There's a balance to be struck, and most people understand that.”

Heal, the retired sheriff’s commander, said that absent clear legal limits on license-plate readers, law enforcement agencies will continue to expand their ability to gather such information.

“A lot of the guidance on this technology – the court doctrine – is nonexistent,” Heal said. “Until that guidance comes, law enforcement is in an exploratory mode.”

New Discovery May Lead to Mile-High Buildings

Materials Science Update: New Discovery May Lead to Mile-High Buildings
Posted on June 23, 2013
Subject(s):
Cities



When I was a young man I visited the Empire State Building in New York, seen on the right in the image below. It was at the time the tallest human-made structure in the world. Today it isnumber 22 among world skyscrapers with towers like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, to the left of in that same image, making the Empire State look quite small.







What limited the height of buildings at the time the Empire State was constructed was a combination of materials and design. With load bearing directed to the outer walls a building needed a counter weight in the base and tiered construction to achieve height. But the technology of skyscraper construction changed in the years that followed. Glass towers with concrete cores bearing the load became the standard for skyscrapers.

Today the Burj Khalifa, to rise to its height, requires a strong tripod base containing poured concrete and steel pylons to give stability to its massive structure above. It combines the technologies of both glass-clad and load-bearing outer wall construction. But is there a limit to how tall a building can be and is the Burjpretty much at that limit? Not according to design engineers who believe buildings a kilometer or even a mile high are possible.

Today most engineers will tell you that the limit of vertical height in buildings has more to do with the steel cable in elevator shafts than any other factor. Known in the industry as the "rope," conventional materials have limited the travel distance of elevators to about 500 meters (1,640 feet). As buildings have been getting taller elevator transportation has become more problematic. That's because a single elevator with conventional steel rope carrying 24 passengers consumes 130,000 Kilowatt hours of energy per year and weighs up to 27,000 kilograms (almost 60,000 pounds). And that elevator rope is subjected to severe strains. In fact on windy days building sway can put a steel-cabled elevator out of service.

So Kone, a Finnish-based company, decided to create a rope that could withstand building sway and manage weight load while reducing the amount of energy needed for operation. Called the UltraRope, it is composed of a carbon fiber core with a high-friction coating. UltraRope resonates to a different frequency than steel and other building materials and as a result provides stability for the elevator shaft and compartment even on the windiest of days. With UltraRope an elevator would no longer be limited to a 500 meter run. In Fact, Konebelieves UltraRope equipped elevators can double the distance an elevator can travel vertically.

Kone is keeping a tight lid on the formula it has used for the carbon fiber and coating in its new rope. With Earth's cities increasing urban population density it is expected that vertical construction will dominate requiring taller structures. According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, nearly 600 tall buildings over 200 meters in height are planned in the next few years. Kone sees itself playing a critical role in making the elevator rides in these dwellings a much more pleasant experience.

How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again?

Open Enterprise
Glyn Moody
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Glyn Moody's look at all levels of the enterprise open source stack. The blog will look at the organisations that are embracing open source, old and new alike (start-ups welcome), and the communities of users and developers that have formed around them (or not, as the case may be).
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How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again?

Published 14:34, 17 June 13

Irrespective of the details of the current revelations about US spying being provided by Edward Snowden in the Guardian, there is already a huge collateral benefit. On the one hand, the US government is falling over itself to deny some of the allegations by offering its own version of the story. That for the first time gives us official details about programmes that before we only knew through leaks and rumours, if at all. Moreover, the unseemly haste and constantly-shifting story from the US authorities is confirmation, if anyone still needed it, that what Snowden is revealing is important - you don't kick up such a fuss over nothing.

But perhaps even more crucially, other journalists have finally been shamed into asking some of the questions they ought to have asked years and even decades ago. This has resulted in a series of extremely interesting stories about NSA spying, many of which contain ancillary information that is just as important as the main story. Here's a great example that appeared over the weekend on the Bloomberg site.

Among other things, it is about Microsoft, and the extent to which it has been helping the NSA spy on the world. Of course, that's not a new fear. Back in 1999, it was asserted that backdoors had been built into Windows:

A careless mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA "help information" trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled.

More recently, there has been concern about Skype, bought by Microsoft in May 2011. In 2012, there were discussions about whether Microsoft had changed Skype's architecture in order to make snooping easier (the company even had a patent on the idea.) The recent leaks seems to confirm that those fears were well founded, as Slate points out:

There were many striking details in the Washington Post’s scoop about PRISM and its capabilities, but one part in particular stood out to me. The Post, citing a top-secret NSA PowerPoint slide, wrote that the agency has a specific “User’s Guide for PRISM Skype Collection” that outlines how it can eavesdrop on Skype “when one end of the call is a conventional telephone and for any combination of 'audio, video, chat, and file transfers' when Skype users connect by computer alone.”

But even that pales into insignificance compared to the latest information obtained by Bloomberg:

Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft (MSFT) and other software or Internet security companies have been aware that this type of early alert allowed the U.S. to exploit vulnerabilities in software sold to foreign governments, according to two U.S. officials. Microsoft doesn’t ask and can’t be told how the government uses such tip-offs, said the officials, who asked not to be identified because the matter is confidential.

Frank Shaw, a spokesman for Microsoft, said those releases occur in cooperation with multiple agencies and are designed to give government “an early start” on risk assessment and mitigation.

So let's think about that for a moment.

Companies and governments buy Microsoft's software, depending on the company to create programs that are secure and safe. No software is completely bug-free, and serious flaws are frequently found in Microsoft's code (and in open source, too, of course.) So the issue is not about whether software has flaws - every non-trivial piece of code does - but how the people who produce that code respond to them.

What companies and governments want is for those flaws to be fixed as soon as possible, so that they can't be exploited by criminals to wreak damage on their systems. And yet we now learn that one of the first things that Microsoft does is to send information about those vulnerabilities to "multiple agencies" - presumably that includes the NSA and CIA. Moreover, we also know that "this type of early alert allowed the U.S. to exploit vulnerabilities in software sold to foreign governments".

And remember that "foreign governments" mean those in EU countries as well as elsewhere (the fact that the UK government has been spying on "friendly" countries emphasises that everyone is doing it.) Moreover, it would be naïve to think that the US spy agencies are using these zero-day exploits purely to break into government systems; industrial espionage formed part of the older Echelon surveillance system, and there's no reason to think that the US will restrain itself nowadays (if anything, things have got far worse.)

That means it's highly likely that vulnerabilities in Microsoft products are routinely being used to break into foreign governments and companies for the purpose of various kinds of espionage. So every time a company installs a new patch from Microsoft to fix major flaws, it's worth bearing in mind that someone may have just used that vulnerability for nefarious purposes.

The implications of this are really rather profound. Companies buy Microsoft products for many reasons, but they all assume that the company is doing its best to protect them. The latest revelations shows that is a false assumption: Microsoft consciously and regularly passes on information about how to break into its products to US agencies. What happens to that information thereafter is, of course, a secret. Not because of "terrorism", but because almost certainly illegal attacks are being made against countries outside the US, and their companies.

That is nothing less than a betrayal of the trust that users place in Microsoft, and I wonder how any IT manager can seriously recommend using Microsoft products again now that we know they are almost certainly vectors of attacks by US spy agencies that potentially could cause enormous losses to the companies concerned (as happened with Echelon.)

But there's another interesting angle. Although not much has been written about it - including by me, to my shame - a new legislative agreement dealing with online attacks is being drawn up in the EU. Here'sone aspect of it:

The text would require member states to set their maximum terms of imprisonment at not less than two years for the crimes of: illegally accessing or interfering with information systems, illegally interfering with data, illegally intercepting communications or intentionally producing and selling tools used to commit these offences.

"Illegally accessing or interfering with information systems" seems to be precisely what the US government is doing to foreign systems, presumably including those in the EU too. So that would indicate that the US government will fall foul of these new regulations. But maybe Microsoft will too, since it is clearly making the "illegal access" possible in the first place.

And there's another aspect. Suppose that the US spies used flaws in Microsoft's software to break into a corporate system and to spy on third parties. I wonder whether companies might find themselves accused of all sorts of crimes about which they know nothing, and face prosecution as a result. Proving innocence here would be difficult, since it would be true that the company's systems were used for spying.

At the very least, that risk is yet another good reason never to use Microsoft's software, along with all the others that I have been writing about here for years. Not just that open source is generally cheaper (especially once you take into account the cost of lock-in that Microsoft software brings with it), better written, faster, more reliable and more secure, but that above all, free software respects its users, placing them firmly in control.

It thus frees you from concerns that the company supplying a program will allow others secretly to turn the software you paid good money for against you to your detriment. After all, most of the bug-fixing in open source is done by coders that have little love for top-down authority, so the likelihood that they will be willing to hand over vulnerabilities to the NSA on a regular basis, as Microsoft does, must be vanishingly small.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+


Tags: cia, echelon, malware, microsoft, nsa, open source, prism, snowden, spying, zero day

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5 Keys to Inspiring Leadership, No Matter Your Style

5 Keys to Inspiring Leadership, No Matter Your Style

BY GWEN MORAN | June 14, 2013|




How Failure Made These Entrepreneurs Millions
5 Keys to Inspiring Leadership, No Matter Your Style
5 Social Media Rules Every Entrepreneur Should Know
5 Secrets for Making Your Logo Stand Out
Secrets to Lasting Success As an Entrepreneur


What are your keys to leadership success?

Forget the stereotypical leadership image of a buttoned-up person in a gray suit hauling around a hefty briefcase. Today, standout leaders come in all shapes and sizes. She could be a blue jeans-clad marketing student, running a major ecommerce company out of her dorm room. He might be the next salt-and-pepper-haired, barefoot Steve Jobs, presenting a groundbreaking new device at a major industry conference.



"Our research indicates that what really matters is that leaders are able to create enthusiasm, empower their people, instill confidence and be inspiring to the people around them," says Peter Handal, chief executive of New York City-based Dale Carnegie Training, a leadership-training company.

That's a tall order. However, as different as leaders are today, there are some things great leaders do every day. Here, Handal shares his five keys for effective leadership:


1. Face challenges.



Great leaders are brave enough to face up to challenging situations and deal with them honestly. Whether it's steering through a business downturn or getting struggling employees back on track, effective leaders meet these challenges openly. Regular communications with your staff, informing them of both good news and how the company is reacting to challenges will go a long way toward making employees feel like you trust them and that they're unlikely to be hit with unpleasant surprises.

"The gossip at the coffee machine is usually 10 times worse than reality," Handal says. "Employees need to see their leaders out there, confronting that reality head-on."

2. Win trust.


Employees are more loyal and enthusiastic when they work in an environment run by people they trust. Building that trust can be done in many ways. The first is to show employees that you care about them, Handal says. Take an interest in your employees beyond the workplace. Don't pry, he advises, but ask about an employee's child's baseball game or college graduation. Let your employees know that you're interested in their success and discuss their career paths with them regularly.

When employees, vendors or others make mistakes, don't reprimand or correct them in anger. Instead, calmly explain the situation and why their behavior or actions weren't correct, as well as what you expect in the future. When people know that you aren't going to berate them and that you have their best interests at heart, they're going to trust you, Handal says.

3. Be authentic.



If you're not a suit, don't try to be one. Employees and others dealing with your company will be able to tell if you're just pretending to be someone you're not, Handal says. That could make them question what else about you might be inauthentic. Have a passion for funky shoes? Wear them. Are you an enthusiastic and hilarious presenter? Get them laughing. Use your strengths and personality traits to develop your personal leadership style, Handal says.

4. Earn respect.



When you conduct yourself in an ethical way and model the traits you want to see in others, you earn the respect of those around you. Leaders who are perceived as not "walking their talk" typically don't get very far, Handal says. This contributes to employees and other stakeholders having pride in the company, which is an essential part of engagement, Handal says. Also, customers are less likely to do business with a company if they don't respect its values or leadership.

5. Stay curious.



Good leaders remain intellectually curious and committed to learning. They're inquisitive and always looking for new ideas, insights and information. Handal says the best leaders understand that innovation and new approaches can come from many places and are always on the lookout for knowledge or people who might inform them and give them an advantage.

"The most successful leaders I know are truly very curious people. They're interested in the things around them and that contributes to their vision," Handal says.



Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/227012#ixzz2WnMpUeAV

7 Tips for Negotiating a Higher Salary

J
7 Tips for Negotiating a Higher SalaryJune 20, 2013 at 15:30
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5 for Friday: Job Search Prep EditionJune 14, 2013 at 10:00
9 Tips to Make the Most of Your Temp JobJune 14, 2013 at 10:00
13 Career Tips for Aspiring EntrepreneursJune 11, 2013 at 10:41

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CAREER MANAGEMENT

7 Tips for Negotiating a Higher Salary
JUNE 20, 2013 3:30 PM
YEC
0 COMMENTS





9


The following answers are provided by members of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.
What is your best tip for negotiating a higher salary?

1. Create a Bulletproof Business Case
Negotiate a higher salary by presenting your manager with concrete evidence of how and why your organization’s bottom line is stronger because of your direct efforts. How has your team’s productivity been enhanced, profits been increased, etc.? Also, if the salary bump includes a promotion, demonstrate that you have already been succeeding at the next level’s responsibilities.
- Alexandra Levit, Inspiration at Work

2. Know Your Market Value Before You Negotiate

Negotiating a higher salary can be very stressful. In order to feel prepared when asking for a raise, be sure to determine the market value of yourself and your experience first. Websites like Glassdoor can help you determine what other companies are paying employees at your level.
- Heather Huhman, Come Recommended

3. Anchor High

Don’t eliminate yourself from the talent pool early on by setting lofty salary expectations. Get to know the company, and help them realize that you’re exactly what they’re looking for. When it comes time to negotiate salaries, anchor your request high as they’re only going to bump you down. Most importantly, remember that you never get what you don’t ask for.
- Heidi Allstop, Spill

4. Recognize What Others Are Earning

Use the website Salary.com to research what similar professionals in your geographic area are currently making. You can also purchase a report to find out more detailed information.
- Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

5. Ask for More Than You Think You’re Worth

While you shouldn’t go outside the realm of possible salaries, go a little higher than you actually think you can get. That way, you have room to maneuver in a negotiation. And, if you actually get what you asked for immediately, you’ll be happy.
- Thursday Bram, Hyper Modern Consulting

6. Get Another Offer

If you want a higher salary, then there isn’t a better way to get another offer than with higher pay at another job.
- Wade Foster, Zapier

7. Add Value Above Your Pay Grade

Get promoted by adding value and clearly showing you are doing a job that is above your current responsibilities. It may help to have competitive offers from other companies. Another idea is to check online resources that list average salaries for certain jobs. This way, you are armed with data when negotiating your salary.
- Ben Rubenstein, Yodle

The Right Way To Tell Your Career Story

The Right Way To Tell Your Career Story
June 11, 2013




In my last post on Linkedin I outlined the "Seven Elements of a Juicy Career Story."


Now, I'm going to show you what happens when your career story is bad. Not sure if yours is good? There's an easy way to check. The number one sign your career story is lacking is if it's missing key elements — especially, the happy ending.

Here's an example...
Meet Mike: "Poor Me, I Got Fired by an Evil Boss"


I recently worked with Mike. He had been at a company for 10 years. In the last six months, a new manager took over. Mike says within weeks he knew he was "pegged" as someone the new manager wanted to make an example of. Mike said he tried everything to make the new manager happy, but that each time he tried, it only seemed to make her more angry. He said all of his colleagues saw it too and felt bad for him, but nobody would help him fight back. Finally, he was put on performance review. Within a week, he had made a mistake, and was let go. He was out of a job with no reference from a place he had worked at decade.

"How do I explain leaving there to potential employers? I have no chance. She ruined me,"was Mike's comment to me. I said, "That's true if you are going to keep telling the story thatway."

"How else can I tell it?" Mike replied, "That's what happened."

I responded, "No, that's how you see what happened, and telling it that way makes you sound suspect. You aren't telling a good story. Even worse, you're telling the wrong story to the wrong audience."

Even if the facts in Mike's story were true, the way he was telling it wasn't going to serve him well in his job search. Stories are a creative process. There are many different ways to tell the same career story. I needed Mike to think about how the audience who'd be hearing his story would react to it.

Here's what's wrong with Mike's story:
Mike mentions he was made a target. He immediately positions himself as the only person in a large organization being singled out — most hiring managers will assume there was a good reason for that.
He claims he tried everything to make the manager happy, but nothing worked. This sounds very dramatic and most hiring managers will assume Mike didn't know what to do to really improve the situation. Hence, the reason for increasing the manager's frustration with him.
Mike had been at the company 10 years and now a new boss had come in and shaken things up. Most employers will assume the change in management was needed and that Mike was eliminated because he hadn't been pulling his weight for quite some time, and most likely, the previous management hadn't done anything about it.
Lastly, and by far the most important, Mike blames his entire situation on one person. Not taking an ounce responsibility for his part in the story. This makes him appear to lack any sense of accountability, which will make hiring managers run in the other direction.
Solution: Present a More Objective Account of Events

When I explained to Mike the above, he was shocked, and frankly, really defensive. But, when I shared with him what he would need to say in order to get employers to consider him for a job, he got the message. It went something like this:

"My last job was a powerful experience. I had 9.5 excellent years there. I got promoted three times. I learned so much from my employer and have many good colleagues that still work there. Unfortunately, in the last six months in the job, we had a change in leadership. It was clear the manager and I weren't on the same page, but given how long I had worked there, I thought I could get things back on track. I tried to improve our working relationship, but I seemed to only make things worse. Looking back, I think there are definitely things I could have done differently. However, it finally came to point that the new manager felt my performance didn't match what she needed. I was terminated."

And then, I made sure Mike added this (the happy ending):

"Let me tell you, that is so hard to say. I won't lie, getting let go from a place I worked at for a decade was really tough. But, it taught me a lot too. And now, I just want to take what I learned, along with the experience I gained, and apply it someplace new. That's why I'm excited about your organization. I can see myself being really successful here."

By telling a more balanced story with an optimistic finish, Mike sounded more credible. Most importantly, when he ended it with a positive spin, he proved he knew how to create his own "happy ending" to his career story.
What Happened to Mike?

Mike and I practiced this for a month. He needed time to process his emotions and really allow himself to come to terms with the situation so he could deliver a more objective career story. He had to find a way to say this on his own terms. Eventually, he was ready to answer the dreaded, "Why did you leave your last job question?" in an upcoming interview. Not surprisingly, when the question arose in the phone screen, Mike was actually eager to answer it. He wanted to share his new story. It worked. Mike got the second interview, then the job ... and that was the true happy ending for both of us.
What tips can others share for ensuring your career story is told the right way?

P.S. - First time reading my posts? Nice to meet you. If you want to learn a bit more about my work, I am the founder of the free advice site, CAREEREALISM and the creator of this Job Search Accelerator Program (JSAP). I also head up this professional branding resource for executives, C-Suite Insider.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com

7 Elements of a Juicy Career Story

7 Elements of a Juicy Career Story
June 09, 2013




I recently had "virtual coffee" with an old colleague.

As we caught up on each others' personal and professional lives, we also updated each other on news about fellow colleagues from the place we all worked together. She filled me in on one gal who I hadn't known as well as her. She started by saying, "I have to tell you about ___. She has the greatest career story."

My friend proceeded to tell me the juiciest story about all the drama that unfolded at this woman's current employer. It was rich with details, full of highs and lows, and ended with our mutual colleague landing a promotion. When it was over, she said, "Isn't that an incredible story?" I thought, "Good? It could be a movie!" She knows me well. I'm always looking to celebrate success stories over at CAREEREALISM. We even started a success wall contest HERE >>.

Why Some Career Stories Are More Memorable Than Others


As I analyzed what made that story so gripping, I realized it had all the elements of the most captivating fairytales I heard growing up. There was a:
villain
victim-turned-hero
terrible obstacle to overcome
evil sidekicks
mild-mannered (yet powerful!) allies
lots of unexpected turns of events

(and most importantly)


happy ending

We ALL Have Career Stories

Each of us has a career story. It's the way we summarize and share what has happened in our professional lives. They explain where we've been, where we are, and where we are trying to go. These stories are very important to our success. Why? When we share them, they create our personal brand. The better the story, the more likely people will connect with our message. These stories are especially important when we are trying to affect change in our career (i.e. get a promotion, a new job, switch careers, start a business ,etc.) These stories become our "marketing message" - and if they aren't good, our ability to succeed suffers. For more evidence on the power of stories in your career, read fellow Linkedin writer, Peter Guber's article here on our "hunger" for a good story.

Bad Career Story? It's Time to Change the Plot


When a client comes to me and is miserable in their career, the story I hear usually sounds a lot like a fairytale that stops short of its happy ending. There's plenty of drama, but the story lacks key elements. I tell them, "If you couldn't get your happy ending with your career story told this way in your head, it's time to change the plot." We then work through their mindset towards their situation, slowly changing their assumptions and perceptions, until finally, it can be told in a different way. When that happens, a happy ending usually comes into view.

FYI - In my next post, I will share an example of how this works. I'll introduce you to Mike, who I helped go from "poor me" to "woo hoo" with his career story. (CLICK HERE >> to read it now.)

What do you think makes a juicy career story? How can people be more memorable (in a good way!) when they share their career stories?

P.S. - First time reading my posts? Nice to meet you. If you want to learn a bit more about my work, I am the founder of the free advice site, CAREEREALISM.com and the creator of this Job Search Accelerator Program (JSAP). I also head up this professional branding resource for executives, C-Suite Insider.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com

11 Uses for an Old PC

11 Uses for an Old PC

Original PC Mag article here.


You've finally gone and bought a new PC. It has a boatload of memory, lots of cores, and a fast, modern graphics card. But now your old computer sits in a corner, and although you know it's just a machine, it seems to be sulking like a puppy that missed its morning biscuit. It's weird, but you feel guilty with the whole idea of throwing it out.

After all, it's perfectly functional. When you first bought it, it was near state-of-the-art. If your new PC replaces one that's really on its last legs, by all means, take it to a reputable electronics recycler. But it's amazing how many users ditch perfectly good machines when they pick up a shiny new system.

You can do plenty of things with an old PC besides sending it to the recycling heap. Let's take a look at a few ways you might put that old system to work.

1. Convert It Into a NAS or Home Server

If you're running a home network and have multiple users--you, your spouse, your kids--reuse as network-attached storage or even as an actual server may be just the ticket for an old system.

However, it's not just a matter of plugging an old PC into a network connection and starting it up. Most desktop systems aren't configured to be effective servers or storage systems. For one thing, they probably use too much power. You'll want to set BIOS power management to run cooling fans in quiet mode, if that option exists. You'll also need to set up the operating system so that it doesn't shut down at inconvenient times, yet run in a low power state when it's not being actively used.

Bear in mind that you'll probably want to run your server "headless" (that is, without a monitor), and sans keyboard and mouse as well. While you'll need a display and input devices for the initial setup, make sure the system will work properly without them. Having a scheduled reboot hang because the system halted during startup (it couldn't find a keyboard, perhaps) is annoying, to say the least.

Also, the operating system is likely not well suited for storage applications, particularly for multiple users. While Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7 can function well as a storage repository for a couple of users, you'll want to take the time to create user accounts for each person who might need access. In some cases, you may want to set storage quotas.

A better solution would be to install a proper network operating system. One choice is Windows Home Server. However, that will cost you somewhat north of $100, and WHS may prefer newer hardware. An alternative is FreeNAS.

FreeNAS is open-source software designed to turn a PC into a network-attached storage device. It's based on FreeBSD, a UNIX variant. If you're uncertain whether you want to commit to an unfamiliar OS, FreeNAS can be downloaded as a LiveCD version. This is an ISO file which, when burned to a CD, will boot off an optical drive and run completely from memory. You can keep your old OS on the hard drive until you determine if FreeNAS is suited to your needs.

2. Donate It to a Local School

If your PC isn't too archaic, consider donating it to a local school or daycare center. Worst case, it could go to the high school computer lab (most schools have one) and be used as a test bed, to take apart and reassemble. Alternatively, the school district computer services group might use it for parts, though it's been my experience that many school district IT groups tend to shy away from used gear, given the unknown pedigree or wear of older hardware.

If you donate it to a daycare or child development center, consider buying some low-cost educational software packages and preinstalling them before handing the system over. Also, as with selling a system, you'll want to remove all software that you've reinstalled on your new PC. And make sure to include all license information for the software you're preinstalling on the old system.

3. Turn It Into an Experimental Box

You've heard about this Linux thing, and maybe you'd like to give it a whirl. But the thought of trying to create a dual-boot system on your primary PC leaves you a little green around the gills. Now you can experiment to your heart's content on your old box.

Check out Ubuntu, the sexy Linux distro that geeks love to, well, love. The neat thing about Linux is all the built-in support for older hardware, so installation is usually easy. In fact, installing Ubuntu is sometimes simpler than installing Windows. And there's a wealth of free software for Linux just waiting to be tried out.

In Video: How to Install Ubuntu on Any PC

If you think you've got the tech savvy and a bent for tinkering, you might try creating a Hackintosh--a PC that can run MacOS X. It can be done, but it does take a fair amount of effort. The main hackintosh site is a good place to start, but expect a long and somewhat bumpy trip. Oh, and you'll have to pony up a few bucks for a legal copy of MacOS X.

In addition, a number of true UNIX-based operating systems are available, ranging from FreeBSD or PC-BSD (based on the Berkeley UNIX version) to OpenSolaris, based on the Sun Microsystems version of UNIX.

4. Give It to a Relative

I do this all the time. My brother-in-law has modest computing needs. So I'll often just hand over one of my two-year old PCs, though I'll usually drop in a midrange or entry-level graphics card.

I don't generally recommend doing this with your kids, though--at least, not if your kids are like mine. They often need as much or more PC horsepower than I use on a regular basis (outside of gaming and photography, anyway). My older daughter is a dedicated photographer, and makes heavy use of Photoshop, while my younger daughter has become a pretty hard-core gamer (she recently asked for a copy of Borderlands for her birthday).

Giving a system to family members can be fraught with peril, though. That's because you are now the go-to person for tech support. So you've been warned: Give a PC to a friend or relative, and you're now on call. Don't worry, though--we've got you covered in "How to Fix Your Family's PC Problems."

One thing you'll definitely want to do is completely erase the hard drive and reinstall the OS from scratch. If it's an off-the-shelf system from a major manufacturer, restoring it to its original condition from the restore partition or restore disc accomplishes the same thing.

In Video: How to Completely Erase Your Hard Drive


5. Dedicate It to Distributed Computing


Want to do a little good for humanity? How about dedicating your old PC to one of the various public distributed computing projects?



The best known is probably Folding@Home. Folding@Home uses computing resources from all over the world to help study protein folding, an essential element to understanding how many diseases operate. If your old PC has a fairly new graphics card, that hardware can often pitch in as well, and offer up even more computing resources. Other distributed computing ventures include:
SETI@Home, where you can participate in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, which is dedicated to finding newMersene Prime Numbers.
Plus many more based on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.
Check out "12 Worthy Causes Seek Your Spare PC Cycles" for more.

6. Use It as a Dedicated Game Server

Do you have a favorite multiplayer game? If so, check and see if it's a game where you can host a server on a local computer--you might consider making your old system a dedicated game server. Most multiplayer games capable of playing online often support dedicated servers. I ran a Civilization 4 "pitboss" server for a few months, and Desktops Editor Nate Ralph is in the process of setting up a PCWorld Minecraft server.

The neat thing about many of these dedicated game servers is how little system horsepower they actually need. I ran a Freelancer server on an old Pentium 4 laptop system, at times supporting eight simultaneous users, with no performance issues.

7. Use It for Old-School Gaming

Related to the idea of using an older system as a dedicated game server, consider repurposing that box for old school gaming. You can go as nuts as you want. For example, install Windows 98, so you can run those older Windows 95 and DOS games, if you have a bunch around. Note that this isn't as necessary as it used to be. Online services like Steam and Impulse are offering older games that have been rewritten to work under newer operating systems, and DOSBox lets you emulate a legacy DOS environment to get your classic gaming fix.

Perhaps the most complete site for older PC games is Good Old Games. GoG, as it's often called, offers a large number of older titles, all of which work fine under newer operating systems. So if you've always wanted to go back and play Planescape: Torment , now is your chance.

If you want to go really old school, install MAME (multiple arcade machine emulator) software. That will allow you to play arcade games and games written for older game consoles, provided you have access to the ROMs and other related files to run the games. MAME can become a gigantic time sink (albeit a very fun one), so you've been warned!


8. Make It a Secondary Computing Server

If you're a content creator using a title like 3dsmax, Adobe After Effects or Sony Vegas, having another PC to help with distributed rendering chores can greatly speed up final renders for complex projects.

Each application handles distributed rendering a little differently, so you'll need to consult your documentation. But typically, you'll install a lightweight application on the secondary rendering system, which will take data and commands from the primary system and then return results when done. The main application on your production system, or a separate manger app, manages the rendering across multiple networked systems.

9. Set It Up as a Light-Duty 'Living Room' PC

We have a small PC in our living room that's often used for quick Web surfing and to check e-mail. Occasionally, our kids will come down and do homework on the communal PC when they get tired of being cooped up in their rooms. This can work particularly well if you have networked storage somewhere in the house, so people can get to their files whether they're on a personal system or a communal one.

If you do have this type of communal PC, your first inclination might be to create separate accounts for each person. I've found this isn't really necessary. Since it's communal, no one really keeps private information on it.

The flip side is that you'll want security software that's as bullet-proof as possible. Since you have multiple users on one system, eventually someone, sometime, will hit a Web site that may attempt to download a Trojan horse or other malware.

10. Salvage It!

If you have a do-it-yourself bent and build your own systems, you may reduce the cost of your new system by salvaging parts from the old one. Good candidates for salvage include the case (if it's not a proprietary, prebuilt system), the optical drive, the power supply, and, sometimes, the memory modules.

Depending on how much you actually reuse, the distinction between new system and one that's simply been upgraded is a hazy one. If you replace the motherboard, CPU, memory, and primary hard drive, but keep the case, power supply, optical drive, and graphics card, is that a new system, or one that's been upgraded?

That will still leave you with a few old parts. Which brings us to our final point.

11. Sell It

Somewhere on eBay, someone is looking for a computer. They may not be able to afford a new PC, or are looking for a second PC for the family. Your old PC, at the right price, may be just what they need. Assuming it all goes smoothly, everyone wins: You unload your old hardware, which finds a good home with a new user who can appreciate it.

However, it's not as simple as selling it at a garage sale. For one thing, scammers cruise both Craigslist and eBay, looking to convince unwary buyers to take deposits that mysteriously vanish when you try to cash them. Always be suspicious of anyone who wants to use Western Union and has an overseas address.

My general rule of thumb is to stick to selling locally (if it's Craigslist) and only in the United States, if its eBay (since I live in the U.S.). Also, using an escrow site like Paypal (required for eBay anyway), gives you a sense of security, though clever scammers still manage to take advantage of Paypal. Read "How To Sell Your PC and Other Gadgets" for more tips on selling your old tech gear.

As we've seen, an old computer can have many uses, particularly if it's still in good working condition. And not all uses for a PC require quad-core systems with high-end graphics. So if that old system is sitting in a closet somewhere, dig it out and put it to use. Who knows? It might be your PC that identifies the signal that's the first sign of intelligent life outside our planet.

The Art and Science of Risk Management

Tony Bradley@bradleystrategy
Jun 10, 2013 10:30 AM
Tony Bradley, PCWorld

Tony is principal analyst with the Bradley Strategy Group, providing analysis and insight on tech trends. He is a prolific writer on a range of technology topics, has authored a number of books, and is a frequent speaker at industry events.
More by Tony Bradley

Computers, networks, and information security seem to fall comfortably under the heading of science, but science alone is not enough. Security system developer Tripwire recently conducted a survey in cooperation with the Ponemon Institute to find out whether IT professionals consider risk management to be “science” or “art."

Ponemon surveyed 1,320 respondents across the United States and the United Kingdom: IT professionals working in information security, risk management, IT operations, business operations, and compliance. Participants were asked, “In your opinion, is information security risk management an ‘art’ or ‘science’?” Tripwire commissioned the Ponemon Institute to
conduct a risk management survey.

Ponemon defined the two concepts for the purposes of the survey. “Science” means basing decisions on objective, quantifiable metrics and data. “Art” refers to analysis and decisions that are based on intuition, expertise, and a holistic view of the organization.

Two-thirds of those from IT and enterprise risk management or business operations sided with “art,” while nearly two-thirds of the respondents who work in IT security and IT operations chose “science.”

Tripwire CTO Dwayne Melancon weighed in with some thoughts on the results. His take is that those who work in business operations and risk management generally don’t believe a precise answer is necessary in order to make a decision, so they favor art. Those who work in IT operations and security, on the other hand, view the world of risk management as a math problem with a specific answer, so they see it as a “science”.

Melancon explains that the disparity between art and science is the crux of the problem when it comes to managing risk effectively. “People with these viewpoints are talking about the same thing, but they are using very different language, which can make it difficult to come to a mutually agreed point of view.”

The simple reality is that risk management is both an art and a science. Computers are precision instruments that operate purely on ones and zeros. Computers—how they work, how they can be attacked, and how you manage risk and protect them—are devices that function based on science. But there is also a human factor—both in terms of the attackers and the victims—that adds an element of unpredictability, mixing intuition and art with the science.

Attackers are adept at exploiting the human factor to bypass security controls. Effective risk management depends on having the right tools in place—the science—while also having the big picture in mind, and understanding that the user is generally the weakest link in the security chain—the art.

The Hard Problem of Assessing Soft Skills

The Hard Problem of Assessing Soft Skills
June 06, 2013



In Part 1 of this post , I suggested that soft skills were misnamed. I’m okay with non-technical skills or “foundational skills” as one commenter suggested, but “soft” is too soft for something so important.

“Soft skills” encompasses more than personality, including traits like communicating with both techies and non-techies; the ability to plan and organize; drive and initiative; hitting budget and schedule deadlines; influencing and collaborating on technical and non-technical issues with all types of people; balancing and prioritizing work; dealing with changing circumstances; dependability; and coaching and team development, to name a few. That’s a lot of important stuff that is far from soft.

I’m not sure if it take exceptional technical skills to assess technical skills in others. This is a smokescreen. If true, it means that it also takes exceptional soft skills to assess soft skills in others. Maybe that’s why technical managers over-emphasize technical competency and give short shrift to everything else. From what I’ve seen the real problem is a lack of understanding of how technical and non-technical skills are actually used on the job. As a result, the wrong things are measured the wrong way, winding up with too much tech and not enough non-tech. As described in The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired, here’s the 4-step process I suggest using for assessing both technical and non-technical skills, whether the interviewer possesses either in abundance or not:
Covert how the skill or trait will be used on the job as a performance objective. For example, if a senior engineering staff position requires close collaboration with operations and product marketing to meet a tight schedule, the performance objective would be: working closing with marketing and operations lead the engineering design effort to launch the XYX EOIR optical product line by Q3. This is much better than saying, “must have 8-10 years in advanced state-of-the art optics design, a can-do attitude and strong communications skills.”
Use The Most Important Interview Question of All Time to assess the traits. First describe the performance objective to the candidate including both the technical and non-technical challenges. Then ask the candidate to describe some major accomplishment that best compares to this. This is called the Most Significant Accomplishment question (MSA) in Performance-based Hiring jargon. For the example above, some of the fact-finding would include getting specific examples of how the candidate collaborated with other functions, overcame schedule challenges, made technical compromises, dealt with setbacks, and organized the entire effort. This fact-finding can often take 10-15 minutes, but by focusing on realistic non-technical issues the new hire will likely face on the job, you’ll have the needed information to make a proper assessment.
Ask the problem-solving question (PSQ) to assess critical non-technical skills. The best people have the ability to figure out how to solve realistic job-related problems, appreciate the implications of different approaches, and know how to develop a workable plan before implementing a solution. There are a lot of soft skills involved in this, like being aware of potential pitfalls, what a plan of action would need to include, figuring out the required resources, understanding the technical challenges, conducting what-if business analysis, and knowing the impact on the people involved. The PSQ starts by describing a realistic job-related problem like, “we have to get the XYZ project done in 6 months instead of the 9 as originally planned. How would you pull this off?” The subsequent back-and-forth dialogue allows the interviewer to dig into all of the soft-skills associated with the actual job. The quality of the candidate’s questions are a key part of the assessment.
Complete the assessment giving equal balance to all of the hard and soft skills. I suggest using a scorecard to collect this information during a formal debriefing session. (Here’s a sample from The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired.) As part of this assessment it’s important to use specific evidence to rank all of the technical and non-technical factors, not feelings, emotions or intuition. For example, for meeting a tough delivery schedule I’d want to see multiple examples of the candidate meeting some comparable challenging deadlines. As part of this I also want to see if the candidate anticipated these problems and planned them out properly, or just reacted to the events as they unfolded.

This same four-step process can be used to assess technical and non-technical skills. From a practical standpoint you need to have both to be successful. Unfortunately, the problem for most interviewers is a lack of understanding of how the technical and non-technical skill are actually used on the job. That’s why step one – converting the skill into some measurable outcome – is the key for increasing assessment accuracy. Without this, the interviewer will naturally revert to a personal benchmark for technical competency or box check skills, and then make a superficial assessment of soft skills usually based on presentation, affability and personality style. This is a great way to hire “90-day Wonders.” These are the people who seemed great during the interview, but 90 days later you begin to wonder.

3-D printing goes from sci-fi fantasy to reality

3-D printing goes from sci-fi fantasy to realityBy MARTHA MENDOZA | 

Associated Press


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Associated Press/Eric Risberg - In this photo taken Wednesday, May 15, 2013 Wayne Losey, co-founder of Dynamo DevLabs, speaks about 3D printing during the Hardware Innovation Workshop in San Mateo, Calif. With …more

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SAN MATEO, Calif. (AP) — Invisalign, a San Jose company, uses 3-D printing to make each mouthful of customized, transparent braces. Mackenzies Chocolates, a confectioner in Santa Cruz, uses a 3-D printer to pump out chocolate molds. And earlier this year, Cornell University researchers used a 3-D printer, along with injections of a special collagen gel, to create a human-shaped ear.

Once a science-fiction fantasy, three-dimensional printers are popping up everywhere from the desks of home hobbyists to Air Force drone research centers. The machines, generally the size of a microwave oven and costing $400 to more than $500,000, extrude layer upon layer of plastics or other materials, including metal, to create 3-D objects with moving parts.

Users are able to make just about anything they like: iPad stands, guitars, jewelry, even guns. But experts warn this cool innovation could soon turn controversial — because of safety concerns but also the potential for the technology to alter economies that rely onmanufacturing.

"We believe that 3-D printing is fundamentally changing the manufacturing ecosystem in its entirety — how and where products are made and by whom," said Peter Weijmarshausen, CEO of New York-based Shapeways, an online company that makes and sells 3-D printed products designed by individuals. Products include a delicate, twig-like egg cup (cost: $8.10) and a lamp that looks like a nuclear mushroom cloud (cost: $1,388.66).

"We're on the verge of the next industrial revolution, no doubt about it," added Dartmouth College business professor Richard D'Aveni. "In 25 years, entire industries are going to disappear. Countries relying on mass manufacturing are going to find themselves with no revenues and no jobs."

On ground, sea or air, when parts break, new ones can be made on the spot, and even the tools to install them can be made, eliminating the need for staging parts in warehouses around the world, said Jeff DeGrange, vice president of Direct Digital Manufacturing at Stratasys Inc., currently the industry leader in a field of about 50 3-D printer companies.

"We're going to see innovation happening at a much higher rate, introduction of products at a much higher rate," said DeGrange. "We live in an on-demand world now, and we'll see production schedules are going to be greatly compressed."

Airplane mechanics could print a replacement part on the runway. A dishwasher repairman could make a new gasket in his service truck. A surgeon could print a knee implant custom-designed to fit a patient's body.

But the military, D'Aveni said, is likely to be among the first major users of 3-D printers, because of the urgency of warfare.

"Imagine a soldier on a firebase in the mountains of Afghanistan. A squad is attacked by insurgents. The ammunition starts to run out. Is it worth waiting hours and risking the lives of helicopter pilots to drop it near you, or is it worth a more expensive system that can manufacture weapons and ammunition on the spot?" he said.

In the past two years, the U.S. Defense Department has spent more than $2 million on 3-D printers, supplies and upkeep, according to federal contract records. Their uses range from medical research to weapons development. In addition, the Obama administration has launched a $30 million pilot program that includes researching how to use 3-D printing to build weapons parts.

NASA is also wading into this arena, spending $500,000 in the past two years on 3-D printing. Its Lunar Science Institute has published descriptions of how it is exploring the possibility of using the printers to build everything from spacecraft parts while in orbit to a lunar base.

While the U.S. is pursuing the military advantages of 3-D printing, it's also dealing with the potential dangers of the technology. On May 9, the State Department ordered a group to take down online blueprints for a 3-D printable handgun, and federal lawmakers and some state legislatures are contemplating proposals to restrict posting weapons plans in the future.

Since 2007, when these printers first entered the mainstream marketplace, sales have grown by 7.2 percent each year, according to IBIS World, a company that tracks the industry. Sales are projected to jump from about $1.7 billion in 2011 to $3.7 billion in 2015.

Cliff Waldman, a senior economist at the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation, a group that promotes the role of manufacturing in global economies, said it's still too soon to know exactly what impact this 3-D technology could have on more traditional manufacturing. However, he doesn't envision it changing the "fundamental shape" of manufacturing, as others suggest.

"I think 3-D has the capacity to impact both products and processes," he said. "I am not ready to say that it is completely disruptive, however. It might be in a few narrow industries."

Starting in June, office supply chain Staples plans to be the first major retailer to supply 3-D printers with "the Cube," a plug-in device that uses 16 colors and costs $1,299. And in September the smallest and cheapest 3-D printer on the market — a printing pen priced from $50 — is due to start shipping. Similar to a glue gun, the 3Doodler plugs into the wall and is filled with cylinders of plastic that come out of a 518-degree Fahrenheit tip. Once the plastic leaves the pen it cools and hardens.

Makers Peter Dilworth, an inventor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Maxwell Bogue, a toy maker, first pitched their pens earlier this year on a website for startup projects. They sought $30,000 and wound up collecting $2.3 million from more than 26,000 investors, who each got one of the 3-D pens. Four artists who teamed up with the men have used the pens to make a mini Eiffel Tower, earrings and butterfly pendants.

___

Follow Martha Mendoza on Twitter at twitter.com/mendozamartha

The Internet - The People's Media - Matt Drudge Speech

The Internet - The People's Media - Matt Drudge Speech at the Washington Press Club June 2nd 1998.

Mr. Drudge discussed the Internet, dubbing it “the people’s media,” and talked about the ways in which news that is not reported in the mainstream media can be generated and reported on the Internet. He focused on the investigations of President Clinton and his reasons for creating the Drudge Report. Following his prepared remarks, Mr. Drudge answered questions from the audience. After the luncheon, he also answered questions from the media.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/TheInte