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Replace the word "Flash" with any other plugin or technology that geeks don't like. Will it still be okay if we go out of our way to kill it and make sure nobody can use it? Replace "Adobe" with "Free Software Foundation". Is that better? How about we talk about the Unity3D plugin? That's a plugin, too, just like Adobe PDF and Java, so that means it's bad. It's easy to pick on Flash and I can't say I really like the plugin, but when organizations with a large amount of industry influence start talking about killbits, that makes me really nervous.

I'd have no problem with Facebook urging other web sites to stop using Flash, especially if they're willing to support development of an alternative. When they talk about actively killing things for the good of the community, that's going too far. This starts leaning to the direction that it's okay to execute prisoners because nobody likes them.

Sometimes I'm really disturbed by the will of the community. I'm already pissed enough that I can't run certain Java applets anymore because the great Oracle says I'd hurt myself if I tried. Heaven forbid they give me a warning and I make up my own mind. As for grandma's computer, I could just configure the web browser to not use Java or install any other plugin.

These might be useful:
https://www.circuitlab.com/
http://www.falstad.com/circuit/

http://www.falstad.com/circuit/ is nicer; it simulates in real time and isn't as clunky because it runs as an applet instead of javascript hackery.

Well, the falstad java app doesn't run under PC-BSD 8.1/FF 8.0 with Java JRE 1.6.0.07.02_6, but the CircuitLab javascript app works perfectly.

Seeing as most of the people I would intend to share circuits with run non-MS operating systems, many using FreeBSD, I'll have to go with CircuitLab.

Strat

http://www.falstad.com/circuit/ is nicer; it simulates in real time and isn't as clunky because it runs as an applet instead of javascript hackery.

I think it is important to mention Paul Falstad's Java circuit simulator that has been around for years and has probably influenced this project. http://www.falstad.com/circuit/

Here is a site full of applets demonstrating various topics in math, physics, and engineering:

http://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html

Some of it might be a little beyond the background of most 8th grade students, but they are all very visual and do not require understanding of the topic to play around with, so I imagine it could really spark some curiosity in some of the students (it would have for me, at that age). On the downside, it's java-heavy, so some browser configurations might not allow these to run.

There are also a ton of links at the bottom to other math and physics related sites that are supposed to be helpful for teaching, too.

This circuit simulator helped me a lot.

http://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html

A much larger and cooler collection of physics applets can be found at http://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html

That's a nice thing to do for your kids. If you want to show them more such programs, or draw inspiration, I recommend this collection of Java applets.

I can recommend the circuit simulator developed by Paul Falstad (find it at http://www.falstad.com/circuit/). It is a Java applet, which can be downloaded and used without net access.

There is a set of example circuits available at http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-index.html

I can recommend the circuit simulator developed by Paul Falstad (find it at http://www.falstad.com/circuit/). It is a Java applet, which can be downloaded and used without net access.

There is a set of example circuits available at http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-index.html

http://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html There's a bunch of Java applets here that I've always found useful. Not sure if it'll do EVERYTHING you want, but for circuitry the "Analog Circuit Simulator Applet" would likely be sufficient. Plus it's got a lot of other potentially related applets.

I like to use this, please don't laugh, I am an electronics novice. http://www.falstad.com/circuit/ It may be too simplistic to warrant being mentioned along the likes of OrCad, Spice, etc. but boy, does it help build intuition!

There is a nice applet at http://www.falstad.com/circuit/ - it might not be sufficiently sophisticated but it does at least handle op-amps.

This might not be anywhere near what you need, but this application definitely helped out my friend in his intro to electronics class

Falstad Circuit Simulator Applet

Really good on rudimentary stuff, done in Java for cross platform goodness.

Having recently started playing with electronics more myself, I can tell you that it is a very fun hobby. My recommendation is to find a project which you want to do, and work towards that, rather than just studying theory and doing tutorials. While it will cost you more (at least, I tend to make mistakes when doing things for myself, rather than just following instructions), the sense of accomplishment can be very worthwhile. My largest project to date is an electronic drum brain which I designed, prototyped, and soldered myself. In addition to learning the electronics side of it, I also taught myself Python (using that as the slave software to actually play the samples). See http://drummaster.thecave.homeunix.org/ if you are interested.

As for where to get equipment from, I would highly recommend Digikey. They have a good selection, decent prices, and low shipping costs ($8 to Canada for everything I have bought - that, and it is generally arrives the next day!)

Finally, as a software guy myself, I would also recommend the Arduino to start with (this is what was used in the article). It is a very nice bridge between computers and microcontrollers, as it uses a simple C-based language with a good IDE to simplify uploading and compiling. It is powerful enough to do some nice projects with, and yet is simple enough that you can get some simple projects going after just a few minutes / hours. It costs about $35 (less for various non-official versions), and is available from a number of places.

Another great help is to get a circuit simulator, and try playing with simple circuits in software before you buy components. I found a nice Applet based one at http://www.falstad.com/circuit/directions.html

Hope this helps, and best of luck with your soon-to-be new hobby!

Cheers

Forrest M Mims -Getting Started In Electronics ...is a fun and informative starting point for the basics. It is kinda high school level in its presentation but covers most topics. It was my main source of 'basics/teach yourself' as a mechie. I eventually found my way to wiring PLCs, creating sensors, etc. In my role as a Mechanical Technician, I now perform power usage studies on products and fully automate our prototypes.(PLC wiring and Programming)

METER EXAMPLE: ESI480A
http://www.toolsusa.com/asp/item_detail.asp?T1=PBE%209WT%20ESI480A&trackcode=YahooShopping&WT.srch=1

Features you will immediately / eventually want in a meter:
(aside from standard features like ac/dc volts, resistance)

-Autoranging
-DC AMPS = 10.0
-Diode Test ->|-
-Capacitance -|(-
-Relative Reading(ability to zero the meter)
-Freq(Hz) / Duty cycle(%) / ms (to measure pulse trains/PWM)

I use that meter at home.
I use a Fluke 89IV at work because I didn't have to pay for it. (Fluke is gold standard in DMMs)

A Circuit Simulator applet:
http://www.falstad.com/circuit/
check out the examples in the 'Circuit' menu.

Good Luck

The work is dated and I've seen nothing else since, but the idea of providing presentations as videos or audio recordings for review by students who can select, speed up, and extract what they need should have merit.

Here's a quote I picked up a few years back's:

"Apparently, American Psychological Association research has shown that while listening to a speaker, people do the following things:

*18% are really listening to the speaker

*25% are having erotic thoughts

*57% are thinking about something else

(Note: I say "apparently" because I read this in a handout I got at the CPSI conference, and haven't been able to find any actual confirmation of this research on the APA site.)

Most people can speak about 150 words per minute, but can hear and comprehend 900-950 words per minute. So after the first 20 seconds or so of a presentation, the audience will fade in and out and think about other things. So, we were told, you can make this work in your favor by drawing a line down the center of your notepaper and recording "in" thoughts on one side, and the "out" thoughts on the other side. This is supposed to free you from trying to remember "out" thoughts, and encourage you to generate ideas without losing track of the presentation. http://www.corante.com/ideaflow/ 20030201.shtml#21117"

Others have noted some web sites of possible value. Here are several more:

http://www.hardscience.info/

http://library.advanced.org/10170/menuw.htm

http://webphysics.iupui.edu/

http://www.aip.org/education/

http://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html

http://www.vias.org/feee/index.html

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Indexe s/HistoryTopics.html

http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/geometry/content.htm

http://acept.la.asu.edu/courses/phs110/expmts/toc. html

http://nsac.ca/eng/courses/math1000/index.asp

Hope there's something of value there. Jim

I agree that Java is not good for making interactive web pages. Where Java does well is small self-contained programs that are too sophisticated to work well as scripts or code snippets but too small to justify the trouble of downloading and installing permanently. A while back I was trying to learn more about electromagnetism and I came across some physics applets that are a good example of this.

HTML, by the way, was never meant to have an IMG tag. By your logic, it still wouldn't have one today. Similarly, we'd only ever use 7-bit ASCII and not Unicode.

This difference is that the IMG tag was added through the proper channels. Plans were discussed, other tags were added, the standard was refined. Nothing was a rushed fuckjob for the simple fact of looking cool. Security, functionally, and everything else was thought through.

Microsoft can do what everybody else does and get stuff added through the proper channels. If they want to complain about it taking too long, or ideas getting rejecting because the security model is fucking stupid, they can see Figure 1.

Chris Anderson replied with the following in regard to ignoring standards.

Interestingly enough, we never "ignored" standards. We spent a huge amount of time understanding and evaluating the existing standards. SVG and CSS both were passed on because they weren't adaquate to meet our needs. WinFX is a platform for the next decade or longer - we can't start with a base that doesn't meet our needs.

What a load of shit. That mentality is where the "embrace and extend" came from. It might not meet Microsoft's needs, but CSS and SVG are the bloody standards that people are using! What do they know about the coming decade that we don't?

What Chris said pretty much flies in the face of the entire paragraph that Miguel wrote! Look:

I understand why someone would invent their own version of SVG or their own version of CSS: those standards can be difficult to implement, and growing your own version is a lot simpler than having to adapt an existing model to a new model.

I would have probably done the same if I had been in their position: its easy. But I would think that Microsoft has a higher responsibility towards the developer base that must create tools that interop with third party components: creating a new standard for graphics just because its `easy' is not really a good answer.

Implementing SVG might have problems and limitations, but the advantages outweight these problems: there are plenty of tools today to produce and consume it and it fits better with the rest of the industry. A benefit that Avalon users will not have and will just partition the industry again for a fairly poor reason.

Standards are there for a reason. If Microsoft doesn't like them they can see figure 1. I have a feeling that Microsoft may not dislike the standards themselves, they just don't like the fact that they're not their standards.

We're also forgetting about how things like "make tenure fast" (http://www.falstad.com/cite.html) affect the rankings.

For sure! I don't know Quake personally (I'm not into video games at all), but I assume that it's another one of the 3D videogames where your surroundings change with your perspective.

That requires loads of matrix transformations directly out of linear algebra. It sounds terrifying, but it's just about having a group of numbers called a matrix. By multiplying them with a bunch of (x,y) coordinate in a certain order, you can do all sorts of warps and shrinks and stuff. If those (x,y) coordinates correspond to a bitmap of an object, you've just warped or shrunk the object, exactly as you'd have to do in a 3D maze or similar.

Then, there's calculus. There are two courses *everyone* should have to take in high school - auto mechanics (so you know how to change a tire, among other things) and calculus. Calculus means "small stones", as for counting. It's all about rates of change. You could tell the speed of your car by looking at your odometer and your watch, but that will give you only the average speed over a given time or distance. The speedometer, on the other hand, gives you your instantaneous speed - which is the derivative (calculus term) of your position (odometer) with respect to time. This makes sense when you think about it: speed is the rate of change of position.

(Actually, it's velocity, but that's a whole other kettle of fish if you don't know about vectors from Linear Algebra yet.)

Don't worry about the math. It's usually the easiest course in your university schedule - and I tell you that as someone who failed high school math classes constantly and who dropped out of high school because of math (that's a long story, though). Math *is* your friend. How's that? You can be guaranteed that if you do all your homework, you will get an A+ in the course. That's it. No reading, no stupid assignments which get marked by TAs who know less than you, nothing. It doesn't even matter how good or bad your teacher is. Just do all your homework and you'll get an A+. It's a non-linear relationship, do 50% of your homework (every second assigned problem) and you'll get a B+. Do 25% of your homework and you'll get a C+.

As an EE, I had to take 7 university level math classes.

• Calculus I: Basic calculus, a re-hash of high school which introduced Integration by Parts (table method!)
• Linear Algebra: Matrices, parametric equations, Gaussian elimination, eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Don't let the names scare you, it's all very easy.
• Calculus II: Differential equations and infinite series. Always had a hard time with infinite series... but I passed it.
• Calculus III: Multivariable Calculus and Fourier Series. Very fun course, allowed me to become conversant in Vector Calculus (which is always good for scaring people, though it's actually dead easy). Fourier is really neat, allowing you to express any function (think waveform) as a sum of easily-manipulated sines and cosines.
• Numerical Methods: A whole course on how to make numerical approximations when you come across something that is impossible to integrate. Mostly programming in MATLAB. Open book exam, I used LyME (MATLAB clone) on my Palm.
• Calculus IV: Mathematical Methods. All about how to solve partial differential equations like the heat equation and wave equation, also Laplace and Fourier transforms, Sturm-Liouville differential equations, etc. Scary sounding, but actually rather easy once you get your head around it. Doing homework on the blackboard with your friends in an empty classroom is recommended - the arts class which came into the room after our homework sessions always looked at us like we were geniuses. We're not.
• Statisitics: Ugh. Mostly just plug numbers into equ