Say you’re hired for a new job. At the end of a four-week training period, your new boss offers you a big bonus to quit right then. Would you stay on the job, or take the money and run?

TwitterZappos employees interact on Twitter.

Think of it as an employer’s test for whether you’ve come on board for the money or for love of the job.

That’s the strategy online shoe-retail giant Zappos is using to cultivate a more committed customer service staff. Zappos, which has banked on strong customer service to grow its business, offers all of its new call center employees $1,000 to walk away after training. Apparently, new hires turn down the buyout offer 90 percent of the time.

Youre Hired: Now Quit - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

If anyone cares the math is not that hard to follow:

You take the transmitter output power, subtract any loss in the cable between the transmitter and the antenna, add the gain of the anteana. http://db.osoal.org.nz/eirp-calculator.html [osoal.org.nz]

Then you have to subtract the free space loss of your path ( the loss you get by putting the signal across the air ): http://db.osoal.org.nz/freespace-loss-calculator.h tml [osoal.org.nz]

And finally you add the recieve gain of the receiving antenna, subtract the loss from the cable on the recieving end and compare with the receive sensitivity of your wireless receiver. I have bundled the rest of the calculation into this bit of javascript. [osoal.org.nz]

For example, if I have two 2.4ghz radios that output 15dbm (32mw) that have a recieve sensitivity of -83db that are in waterproof boxes on the antenna mounting connected to two 22db antenna's 5km apart very roughly.

15db - 1db 22db = 36db or ~3981mw (just under the 4 watt max).

- 121.65db for our free space loss

22db - 1db = -64.65

-64.65 is the strength of the signal received at the other end, fortunately the receiver has a receive sensitivity of -83 so we are in business. There is a link margin of ~19db to account for a little bit of noise, fade, solar flares, alien abductions etc.

If you want more range, increase the power of the transmitter or the gain of your antenna. The government limits ( 4 watts for 2.4ghz, 250mw for 5.3ghz and 4 watts for 5.8Ghz in New Zealand ) are going to determine your maximum range barring some magical new wireless gear that has a better receive sensitivity.

Slashdot | 5 km Range Commercial Wi-Fi Available

Astronomers have been able to capture and record the first moments when a massive star blows itself apart.

After decades of searching, researchers have used the world's top telescopes to observe the remarkable event.

Previously, scientists had only been able to study these "supernovas" several days after the event.

The results, published in the journal Nature, show that within two hours of the blast, a giant fireball scattered radioactive debris across space.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Exploding star caught in the act

Air Force Historical Research Agency
The Air Force Historical Research Agency is the repository for Air Force historical documents. The Agency's collection, begun in Washington, DC, during World War II, moved in 1949 to Maxwell Air Force Base, the site of Air University, to provide research facilities for professional military education students, the faculty, visiting scholars, and the general public. It consists today of over 70,000,000 pages devoted to the history of the service, and represents the world's largest and most valuable organized collection of documents on US military aviation.

Air Force Historical Research Agency - Home

eVetRecs:
Request Copies of Military Personnel Records

Welcome to our online military personnel records request system.

Use our system to create a customized order form to request information from your, or your relative's, military personnel records.

My grandfather was a Marine deep in the shit in the Pacific in WWII. I want to learn about his service. Apparently these people can help. Cool.

eVetRecs: Request Copies of Veterans Military Personnel Records

Some days are bad. Some are great. You can read about mine here. I've been surfing here in Northern (or "Central" for you absolutists) California for twelve years. I now live in Pacifica, just south of San Francisco. The site focus is San Franciso Bay Area but includes other areas as well. Check out my pictures, videos, and blog.

You will also find articles on gear and vacations with some of my recommendations. The fitness section has an exercise routine that helps me catch more waves. If you're really bored you can download some wallpaper and stare at it at work.

California Surfing - Report, Video Clips, Pics, and More

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Open Computer
Price per Unit (piece): $399.99

The highly extensible Open Computer is a configuration of PC hardware capable of running unmodified OS X Leopard kernels. If you purchase Leopard with your Open Computer we will not only include the actual Leopard retail package with genuine installation disc, but we also preinstall Leopard for free so you can begin to use your computer right out of the box. If you choose to have Ubuntu preinstalled we will not include installation media for Ubuntu but the media can be downloaded from Ubuntu.com. If you buy a Microsoft operating system, your Open Computer will have the OS preinstalled and the OEM OS package will be included with your system.

With 4GB of RAM... a really nice OS X dev box.

Psystar Corporation - Open Computer - OS X PC

I came to Japan in 1988 at age 19, spent most of college living in a Zen Buddhist temple, and then became the first U.S. citizen hired as a regular staff writer for a Japanese newspaper in Japanese. If you know anything about Japan, you'll realize how bizarre this is -- a gaijin, or foreigner, covering Japanese cops. When I started the beat in the early 1990s, I knew nothing about the yakuza, a.k.a. the Japanese mafia. But following their prostitution rings and extortion rackets became my life.

Most Americans think of Japan as a law-abiding and peaceful place, as well as our staunch ally, but reporting on the underworld gave me a different perspective. Mobs are legal entities here. Their fan magazines and comic books are sold in convenience stores, and bosses socialize with prime ministers and politicians. And as far as the United States is concerned, Japan may be refueling U.S. warships at sea, but it's not helping us fight our own battles against organized crime -- a realization that led to my biggest scoop.

I loved my job. The cops fighting organized crime are hard-drinking iconoclasts -- many look like their mobster foes, with their black suits and slicked-back hair. They're outsiders in Japanese society, and perhaps because I was an outsider too, we got along well. The yakuza's tribal features are also compelling, like those of an alien life form: the full-body tattoos, missing digits and pseudo-family structure. I became so fascinated that, like someone staring at a wild animal, I got too close and now am worried for my life. But more on that later.

Very good article on Yakuza.

wat

This Mob Is Big in Japan - washingtonpost.com

bloodshed

Foreign Policy: The List: The World’s Most Dangerous Gangs

wat

7 Insane Conspiracies That Actually Happened | Cracked.com