You're probably among the top 5% (if not top 1%) of people in physics, and you attended top institutions. That's fantastic (I really mean that), but it gives you a skewed view of academia.
Most physics PhD candidates do not have free choice of research questions (or, at best, they are spending their "10% time" on their own questions, which is what I did).
On institutions: I did my PhD at the University of New Mexico. A fine institution, but also not Harvard / MIT / etc. I went there because Carl Caves had created a great environment to work on quantum information. Carl encouraged me to work on whatever problems I wanted, but was also happy to provide advice upon request. My fellow PhD students enjoyed similar freedom, and I believe it benefited them enormously as well.
Edit: To clarify my earlier comment: I am certainly _not_ saying that it is universally the case that people are able to choose their PhD project. That's not true, especially in fields involving expensive experimental equipment. I'm saying that someone not able to choose their project is being badly trained. It should count as a very heavy mark against doing a PhD when the advisor believes they should control the direction of the project.
Well... As someone with a brand new physics Ph.D., I think you're wrong that the pay doesn't need to be competitive. Ph.D. programs are really coasting along on the ignorance of the Ph.D. candidates, and I'm not sure how much longer that will last.
Here's what I mean by that: The opportunity cost of a Ph.D. in physics, in terms of foregone salary, earnings on tax-advantaged savings accounts, stress, etc., is north of half a million dollars (and 5 to 8 of the best years of your life). Talking to people I know from my own department, and those I've met at conferences, and such, the lifetime value added to one's salary from having a Ph.D. is probably greater than the opportunity cost. But it's not obviously greater--a Ph.D. is a pretty good signal for "smart and gets things done."
In other words, it tells you "this person was probably going to do well anyway." You can't compare the mean or median salary of Ph.D.'s with those of, say, people with a Bachelor's in some STEM field. If you were to compare median STEM Ph.D. salaries with same-field top-quartile (or maybe top-decile) Bachelor's salaries, you'd find there is not much difference.
Am I just a bitter washed-out Ph.D.? Hell no! I did all sorts of fun things (like intermural sports and traveling) that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. I cherish those memories. But, if someone asked me "Should I go to grad school to improve my chances of earning a decent living?" my answer would be "Hell no!"
"I think you're wrong that the pay doesn't need to be competitive. "
I would say the pay is competitive judging from the difficulty of gaining admission into these programs. Why do you think it isn't competitive?
"(and 5 to 8 of the best years of your life)"
I'm not sure about a physics Ph.D. but most of my friends who are finishing up their Ph.Ds enjoyed their mid 20's more than the ones of us who decided to did the daily work grind.
Indeed, my friends who do postdocs at places like MIT never get more than $50k a year. That is definitely not competitive. You're getting compensation in a higher chance of your lottery ticket to getting a faculty job getting chosen, and people wouldn't accept such low salaries if there weren't some perceived trade-off value.
> If a pilot of a real plane is flying under 400ft outside of the landing or takeoff pattern in Class B airspace there's an issue with that pilot or the plane.
Well... not really. First, rotary wing aircraft don't have the same altitude and horizontal separation limits as fixed wing aircraft. And, second, in Class B specifically, most aircraft are relying on ATC to provide separation from conflicting traffic.
> The FAA should only have jurisdiction over 500ft and in class B airspace as it has been for the past 80 years. They need to get a framework in place for licensed commercial operation under 400ft rather then just trying to ban it outright
This doesn't make any sense. I suspect that you aren't aware of all the different types of airspace because you're essentially saying that drone operators should have free range to operate in the controlled airspace of smaller airports. Chicago's Midway Airport and the Bay Area's San Jose are just two examples of such "small airport" with scheduled commercial flights out of class C. Class C and D, which extends to the ground within a 4 mile radius of the airports, is absolutely within the jurisdiction of the FAA.
But even aside from that, there is plenty of VFR traffic in class G. You're essentially saying that aircraft carrying humans bear the entire responsibility for avoiding drones, as well as the (human) cost in the event of such a collision.
"You're essentially saying that aircraft carrying humans bear the entire responsibility for avoiding drones, as well as the (human) cost in the event of such a collision."
Nope that could not be further from the case, I was under the (wrong) impression that class B was five miles out from any normal airport thanks for correcting me on that. You should not be operating in controlled airspace unless you have contacted ATC at the airport, the FAAs rules state exactly that which is very reasonable.
However claiming regulatory ownership of ALL airspace down to ground level when there is longstanding precedent that under 83ft belongs to the property owner and between 83ft and 500ft (not around airports) is unregulated is a bridge too far.
The FAA advises pilots not to fly under 500ft as it's not safe, 200ft may be dangerous for a full size aircraft but it's perfectly reasonable for a model aircraft (UAVs, MAVs, Drones, whatever you want to call them).
a. General. Many structures exist that could significantly affect the safety of your flight when operating below 500 feet AGL, and particularly below 200 feet AGL. While 14 CFR Part 91.119 allows flight below 500 AGL when over sparsely populated areas or open water, such operations are very dangerous. At and below 200 feet AGL there are numerous power lines, antenna towers, etc., that are not marked and lighted as obstructions and; therefore, may not be seen in time to avoid a collision. Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) are issued on those lighted structures experiencing temporary light outages. However, some time may pass before the FAA is notified of these outages, and the NOTAM issued, thus pilot vigilance is imperative.
Also, the context was "mass murders on airplanes." Mass murder means typically 4 or more deaths. I have found many murders which took place at churches in the US [1] and ending up with one or two death. However, I haven't haven't found much in the way of mass murders of the sort that is supposed to be identified by security theater measures.
[1] If we go outside of the US then there are certainly metal detectors at some synagogues, bomb detectors at Mecca’s Holy Mosque, etc.
Over the decades of following online discussions, I'm growing ever more irritated at pedantic declarations of wrongness by countering reasonable generalizations with obscure/rare exceptions. Yes, out of the total vast number of commercial "airbus" flights ever, a minuscule number have suffered such incidents; likewise, a tiny number of holy sites are secured due to extreme attraction of violent nutjobs; taken in context both in absolute percentage of instances and in this being a casual discussion involving short comments of understandably less than peer-reviewed encyclopedic thoroughness, we don't have to spend time arguing minute absolutes.
Right, and, plain as day, private pilots cannot fly people around for money. That's the baseline. You can't accept money in exchange for flying an airplane unless you hold a commercial or ATP certificate.
The FAA carved out an exception that allows pilots to share operating costs with passengers IF the pilot and passengers share a common purpose for the flight AND the pilot isn't advertizing the flight to the public or some subset of the public ("holding out"). I'll grant you there isn't a sharp, black line that divides when a private pilot is and is not breaking the cost sharing rule, but Flytenow is clearly outside the grey zone (or, pilots who use Flytenow are).
If you were building a system like this for real, you'd probably put sensors on toilets and trash cans in addition to the cash register connection. Real sensors fail, and, in a system where workers are explicitly discouraged from using common sense, that leads to overflowing trash cans.
> >Manna was connected to the cash registers, so it knew how many people were flowing through the restaurant. The software could therefore predict with uncanny accuracy when the trash cans would fill up, the toilets would get dirty and the tables needed wiping down.
The first two chapters are really good, but it goes downhill very quickly. Fiction requires suspension of disbelief, and I nearly burst out laughing at the dialog in the fifth chapter. It also fails to explore some of the more interesting aspects of robots-as-blind-managers.
For example, the robot asks workers in a store to report the shelf stock and asks a second to verify. What happens when typically-mischievous teenage workers lie to the computer (either individually or as a conspiracy)? Do they convince the computer that duct tape is a highly-shoplifted item? Is the software smart enough to correlate the misreporting with specific workers or groups of workers (and does it ever misidentify the perpetrator)? Do engineers spend untold hours figuring out why "Manna" keeps overstocking (or understocking) duct tape?
The computer manager in Manna is shown as a all-knowing with human intelligence and common sense. We all know that real software isn't like that.
Unfortunately, the original USB spec recommended connectors with spin-1/2 rotational symmetry, so you sometimes have to rotate the plug more than 360 degrees to make it fit in the port.
Nope! Boiling point of water at 760 Torr. In contrast, Fahrenheit uses a frigorific 1:1:1 mixture of water, ice and ammonium chloride as the second reference point, which does not depend on ambient pressure.
But which conversely no one in day to day life ever uses or is likely to come across, whereas the vast majority of the world's population still lives as close as it can to sealevel.
Most physics PhD candidates do not have free choice of research questions (or, at best, they are spending their "10% time" on their own questions, which is what I did).