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So here's the deal with state cool or 2nd tier school vs. a top engineering school like MIT or Stanford. If you are a good student and work hard, you will probably get the same education at any ABET accredited school.

At a top tier place, like MIT, you will be an environment of high achieving students unlike anything you've probably experienced before. Being surrounded by such incredible minds can be very stimulating and you will have access to research opportunities unlike anywhere else.

At a 2nd tier or state school, if you are a top student, it's easier to stand out from the crowd. I went to a good school, but not a top tier one, (WPI), and I stood out with a 3.9 GPA, which I don't think I would have carried at MIT. Financially, the scholarship money I got at WPI made it a much better choice, which counts for a lot these days.

I got a job working at MIT Lincoln Laboratory (which does indeed do a fair bit of aerospace work). Honestly, I think I could have gone to any school and gotten a good job afterwards. Pick a place with a decent program, work hard, learn a lot, get internships, and you'll go places.

www.awkwardengineer.com

It's a fancy name for a tensor. It contains information for all angles, but can be extracted in regard to specific vectors.

-www.awkwardengineer.com

By my calculations, after the fine, he still has $4,750 profit.
www.awkwardengineer.com

They at least made a "first to file" change instead of the "first to invent" garbage. I wonder if this means all that time you spent keeping detailed and dated lab books doesn't matter anymore.

Anyway... go Colonials!
-www.awkwardengineer.com

The library down the street used to do this for free. -www.awkwardengineer.com

This sounds like the last gasps of a dying revenue stream. Both the google+ and facebook messenger phone apps have great alternatives to text messaging, including group chat features, and they're only as expensive as the data plan you already have.
-www.awkwardengineer.com

They want their movie idea back.
-www.awkwardengineer.com

Sometimes, you have to send a maniac to catch a maniac. Or AIDs to catch cancer.
-www.awkwardengineer.com

I wanna go fast.
-www.awkwardengineer.com

Dude... astronauts drink their own pee. The people of texas can, too!
www.awkwardengineer.com

The 1st amendment grants freedom of speech and hence, the freedom to criticize. Part of doing that is being able to use anonymity to protect yourself. It's a government protected right. Of course, Facebook and and Google+ are free services and if you don't like what you get, you don't need to pay or participate. Facebook and Google+ also happen to be organizations with constituencies and customer bases that number in the millions. In many ways, they are like small governments, but without the same responsibilities. It's a very scary and dangerous situation and they wield a lot of power. It is not a social network of the people, by the people, for the people, it's their own profit making motives. I think at some point in the future, (within the next 10 years), government will start regulation rights to online access, including social media.
-www.awkwardengineer.com

...natural born killers?
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"However visible light signals can easily be blocked, such as when a hand is passed in front of the transmitter."

Some people would point out that this is not a flaw, it is a privacy feature. Try getting on the network with a wi-fi sniffer outside a room with the door closed and the curtains drawn. With this system, the privacy of your network is indeed much more private. -www.awkwardengineer.com

The article says they used a $35 webcam. Imagine what they could have done if the had a $100 webscam! That would be almost 3 times the facial recognition and 3 times the SSN cracking! Oh noes! Don't give them any more funding! -www.awkwardengineer.com

A lot of the foundation for SLAM came out of Kalman filtering... Kalman filtering is essentially a state estimation technique reconciling where you THINK you are versus where your sensors TELL you you are. The technology was originally developed and applied for use on the guidance systems for the Apollo missions. SLAM is a giant step beyond just Kalman filtering though and there has been a large body of work from a large number of university researches. To sum it up as NASA technology is a little misleading. www.awkwardengineer.com

But how will I know who my real friends are!?!?!?!?!!!111!!!!! -www.awkwardengineer.com

Jack Welch's strategy for turning around GE involved sending questionnaires to his employees asking them how to make the company better. Revolutionary, I know. Sounds like a RIM could use a healthy dose of that. -www.awkwardengineer.com

MacGyver wouldn't have needed the pen. He would have made his own conductive ink from a paperclip. - www.awkwardengineer.com

Somewhere in the iTunes license agreement, it used to have language prohibiting use in nuclear power plants, air craft control computers, and life support facilities. I read that and thought, "good to know". Here's to lawyers, keeping us safe from ourselves! -- www.awkwardengineer.com

This is viral marketing scheme that didn't take off until after X-Men First Class was released. - www.awkwardengineer.com

Sometimes, this is what engineering is about. When faced with a difficult problem, sometimes the design solution is rewrite the problem. It's a fact of life. Conservatism is the easy side to fall on when you write requirements. The time and effort it would take to write just-conservative enough requirements doesn't justify the cost of doing so. With equipment built and in-place, it is now worth the time to find out what you really need.

And yes, I realized there is a flip-side to going to far with this. But that's why we pay engineers - to make tough decisions when money, equipment, and lives are on the line. -- www.awkwardengineer.com

Sorry. I just need to point out that calling it Project Spartan is a little close to the super soldier program that made the Master Chief in Halo. www.awkwardengineer.com

if you can't lipsync in videos, then a whole list of stars will be out of work. www.awkwardengineer.com

Sorry. When he makes references to the cold war and says it's a sign of "something bigger coming down the pipeline" lets go back to the history books and see what came down the pipeline. The USSR collapsed. There was no global nuclear war. --- www.awkwardengineer.com

Anyone notice that the bald dude (is that supposed to be Jobs?) looks like the Man of Steel's arch-nemesis? www.awkwardengineer.com

Being familiar with the course is a huge advantage. Now you know. And knowing is half the battle. G.III.JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOE --www.awkwardengineer.com

What else were you expecting. An overdue vaporware game turned out to disappoint when another company tried to pick up the pieces and shove it out the door? Shocker. www.awkwardengineer.com

An ancient creaking dinosaur on the largest distributed system in the world is still big enough to EAT YOU. - www.awkwardengineer.com

To the Bat-Remotely-Operated-Teleprocessing-Device! -www.awkwardengineer.com

...doesn't mean you need to use it. A man with himself for a lawyer has a fool for a client. -www.awkwardengineer.com

No kidding. It's my data plan, I'll use that data however I want. It's B.S. charging more for the privilege of charging an extra $20 a month to use my phone how I want to. I recommend rooting your phone and installing a tethering app on your own. It's your device, use it how you want. There is legal ground to stand on, and that's clearly what this case is about. www.awkwardengineer.com

maybe he started using a little something called SPELL CHECK!!! www.awkwardengineer.com

We need the Woz to tell us this? Google's Voice Commands on the Android have been out for a while now, and GOOG-411 was out for years before that. This was a long term initiative for them and they're way ahead of anyone else. - www.awkwardengineer.com

Seriously, people who are freaked out about this need to get over it. The food you eat used to be alive. That steak used to moo once. And guess what, it's delicious!

Om nom nom nom nom!

-www.awkwardengineer.com

Oh, you took a picture of my handsome handsomeness? That'll be $4, please. - www.awkwardengineer.com

Sounds like a new age of digital pick-pockets that steal your wallet without even touching you. And also, Google knows which ads you click on, but now they'll know which ads lead you to spend more money. And they'll know what you're buying in real life, too, not just on the webs. I'm gonna start using the barter system again. -www.awkwardengineer.com

Either that, or great minds think a like. Seriously though. This isn't that revolutionary. Mobile browsers hide the URL bar to try and save real estate on tiny tiny phone screens. www.awkwardengineer.com

I actually ran into the URL shortener debate for a QR code art project I was working on. Ultimately, I decided to have a slightly larger code so that the URL would fit in as plain text, and didn't need to wrap it in a shortner. (It also happened to make the stencil for the code easier to make, but that's another story.) Nerdbait QR Code Project

Wanna know something crazy? That nice fancy TIVO you have? It can tell if you watch the ads. Then the ads can be correlated with your four-square check ins to measure the ads effectiveness. You're giving the creepy level of insight into your psychology, and I for one don't like it. -www.awkwardengineer.com

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee... Time to buy a bunch of PS3s and put a cluster together! - www.awkwardengineer.com

Everyone in the video, sitting in uniform at the internet cafe makes me think of Attack of the Clones. - www.awkwardengineer.com

It's not just high school students. The Zuck said he wants facebook available for kids under 13, too. Child protection laws require age verification for kiddies, and the hastle of doing that is pretty much the only thing stopping them right now. Facebook, from it's founding, has always been on morally ambiguous ground, and there's no reason to suspect they'll change in the future. -www.awkwardengineer.com.

Austin Powers, anyone? - www.awkwardengineer.com

BREAKING NEWS: People who are NOT experts also question the value of linked in. And I am one of them. - www.awkwardengineer.com

I liked it when part of google's plan was to organize the worlds information and make it accessible and free, just as a way to drive more ad traffic. I hope OnePass isn't like the NYtimes firewall, which was basically no fun. - www.awkwardengineer.com

True story about the paper books. We have old engineering drawings on microfilm here at work. They're about 50 years old, but it's FILM. you shine some light through it, and there your image is. We don't have any CAD files from 10 years ago, that's for sure. Also, they didn't say anything in the article if the sales calculations were by units, or by cost. - www.awkwardengineer.com

The articles says that the spine itself has the neural circuitry to help with balance. That the brain isn't completely necessary. That's f-ing scary. www.awkwardengineer.com

If you read further into the article, you see that their guidelines are pretty much the same as preparing for any other disaster: have a meeting plan for your family, have water, food, shelter, etc. Good for them for having creative marketing. www.awkwardengineer.com

Everything goes in cycles. From terminal, to personal computer, to cloud. Here's terminal again. - www.awkwardengineer.com

Remember those super ultra targeted ads that had a camera scan your retina? Then the ad would CALL YOUR name and try and sell you something. That's where this is going. www.awkwardengineer.com