While I agree with your post concerning angles affecting the speed measured by the radar gun, I would think the radar gun designer would have accounted for opening or closing targets. It's just a matter of your RF frequency planning. Suppose inside the radar I had two oscillators I could use (This could be done with two phase lock loops, for example). Suppose I transmit the radar signal at 200 MHz where I then am looking for the doppler shift away from 200MHz. A closing target might give a received frequency of 200.05 MHz where as if the target was moving at the same speed but away from you, you would see 199.95 MHz signal.
Now, as with any radio receiver, you need to mix the received frequency to a usable frequency so you can do something with it. Suppose this hypothetical radar mixes the received radar return with 175 MHz and take the difference frequency (200+/-doppler-175)= 25+/-doppler MHz. At this point, I could take IQ data* and mix down to 0+/-doppler MHz (Perfectly tuned IQ data will remove frequency images, with in reason).
Remembering my Fourier theory, if doppler is negative, the signals should be processed the same as the positive doppler (with the exception of a possible 180 degree phase shift). In other words, if a target is opening at speed V or is closing at the same speed, the radar should read the same frequency difference.
*Another possible way to handle this might be with a frequency discriminator of some sorts. A phase lock loop of the receiver might work too since it could lock to the new received frequency with the doppler and provide a DC voltage output proportional to the frequency received, which is another type of discriminator...
This would be true if there really was a free market in the cell phone business. I would like for you to go and look at any of the cell phone company's plans and see how much differentiation you see. Go on. I'm waiting. I bet you really didn't see much difference did you?
The thing is they have no business trying to compete against each other. They are in collusion. Not an obvious one, since collusion in the US is illegal. Instead they all maintain the same plans with little differentiation in these plans so that they all make a profit. If some company really wanted to aggressively price to gain more market share they could do this, but it will never happen.
The 'biggest' differentiator between carriers is the network quality and the phones provided. You may not have the ability to test the network and phone combination until you've already signed a two year contract with a $200 early termination fee. (To be fair, some companies do have a grace period on this.)
Superior military power does not necessarily mean you will 'win'. I would think to some extent that a US soldier would have a harder time firing/killing other US citizens. The US soldier has more in common with US citizens than say a Vietnamese person (at least from a xenophobic standpoint) thereby making more difficult to pull the trigger.
History is filled with cases where guerrilla warfare has been successful over stronger military powers. Our own nation's independence was due primarily to guerrilla warfare tactics. You can add Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Algiers to that list too.
(These are the only ones that I can think of off the top my head. You might even add Iraq to some extent.)
I am not saying that fighting the military would be easy, but the population of the US >> than the number of people in the military. Firepower can only get you so much before sheer numbers would overwhelm.
I might agree with you on the engineer shortage, but I would have to disagree with you on innovation. There are very few companies that actually innovate. Apple, to me, is an example of a company that innovates. They take existing products in the market,like mp3 player and smart phones for example, and make them great. In the case of iPod, they were the first to have a circular jog wheel, the UI was simple, and the interface software worked quite seamlessly*. Were they the first mp3 player? No. But many other companies tried to copy them at that point.
Back to the original point. Companies tend not to innovate too much because they are risk adverse. It takes a lot of money and research to build something new. Product development can take years from conception to market. With most companies concentrating on short term gains (due to say, their stock prices), R&D will usually be shut down first since it simply an expense on a balance sheet.
Other companies will tend to rest on their laurels after making a hit product. Look at Motorola today. They had the Razor, but what did they really have after that? The Rokr? Instead of investing their huge profits made on the Razor, they just sat back and relaxed. Now, Motorola will be splitting up into two companies. Motorola should have leveraged these profits to develop new hardware to stay in the short lived lead they had in the cell phone market.
*Slashdot might consider this as anecdotal evidence, but I did have a creative Zen before I owned an iPod. The software was horrible, the menu navigation was horrible, importing songs was a pain, the player was quite large, etc... Since I have owned an iPod, I have had no issues.
I see this comment so many times, that it's starting to get old. The previous two posters had good points, but I will expand on them. One poster said gas would need to be $10/gallon before people would change their habits. I would have to agree with that. The problem being is that people have gotten used to inexpensive gas, so living 30 miles from work is not uncommon. This in turn also has contributed to sprawl; people can live further away, so they can get more bang for the buck when it comes to buying a house. Buying a house within a reasonable distance from where I work would simply be cost prohibitive for most of the employees here.
Also add to this that people want the space in the US. You don't need to live 5 feet from your neighbor because there is plenty of land. If you aren't putting people closer together, then walking does become more difficult as a viable means of transportation. A good example of what I am talking about is from when I lived in Detroit. You could tell which houses were built before everyone had a car. The houses were very close to one another since there was no driveway between houses. The streets were also a grid pattern primarily. This would make things like public transportation and walking much more accessible for most people. Fast forward to Detroit suburbs now and you see nothing like that. The houses are in these large subdivision which might be a mile deep of roads and only have one or two access points for the subdivision. This is not such a big deal if you have your own automobile, but this will make public transportation and pedestrian traffic as an unlikely alternative.
I also partially blame city planners. I would ride my bike to work in a minute if I didn't feel like my life was in danger driving on the roads where I am now. I only live about 11 miles from work. I would easily bike this in about 40-50 minutes going at a casual pace. The problem is that there are hardly any bike paths large enough for me to ride. On my route I need to cross over an expressway. The only place to cross is on one of the major road crossings, ie there is not a separate pedestrian crossing location. I don't even see any sidewalks on the one bridge that I would need to cross. This means that I would need to try and share the road with automobiles going in excess of 45 mph. No thanks! I also seem to remember growing up and seeing places to lock up bikes at store fronts. I no longer see anything like that anymore. They seem to be discouraging people from riding their bikes. Why? (rhetorical question). In summary City planner are just assuming that people will ride in their cars, so screw anyone else.
In direct response to standard of living, you might be right, but it's a matter of reference. We all still buy a similar number and types of gadgets, but when it comes to housing and getting around town, this is where the likeness ends.
Why would someone want to pay money for this? Will you get the ZOMG! level 50+6 two handed broadsword? If you are going to have online distribution, make it worthwhile. Take for example the Wii. There you can get plenty of old Nintendo and Sega games for a reasonable price. I know that Sony may not have the exclusive back library that Nintendo has, but you would think that they would find some of their old partners to revive the games and sell them online.
If you can follow the posting chain, I was trying to call shenanigans on the OP. I believe any worker should be compensated justly for the jobs that they are to perform. One of the OP's positions was that the money given to these people put them near poverty, in which I said bull s&*#. Earning $42k is not poverty! If the OP is going to support H1Bs earning near poverty, then he better represent it properly.
That said, if these jobs performed by H1B are earning $55k on average, then pay the H1Bs the average rate. This would make it such that companies could not abuse the visa system (or working "for peanuts" as you put it).
I live in Chicago, which is also an expensive city to live in. I will grant you that it may not be as bad as Boston, but it still is not cheap! However, there are plenty of people who work at or slightly above minimum wage. My wife, before we were married (not even two years ago), lived in the city making only $25k as a grad student in a studio apartment. While this is not an ideal living situation, she was certainly able to make do.
I think we can both agree that housing is the primary expense of any household. To help people who cannot afford their housing, Cook County (or maybe the state) has something called section 8 housing, which states that landlords are required to make some apartments available for people who are in poverty. The lease ends up being less than what the landlord would charge other tenants. The landlord will be compensated by the state for the difference that the landlord is losing due to renting to this person.
Again I will state that $42k is not a great salary, you can certainly live off of it.
You must live in bizzarro world if $55k is not enough to live in the US. There are plenty of people living in the US on much less than $55k,and later quoted to be equivalent $47k in US dollars,(think McDonalds employees for example). Are they living like kings? No. But to say that they can't live here is just a lie.
I love this idea though. Unfortunately, since our congress is bought and sold already to corporate interests, this will never get implemented. It has something to do with 'let the market decide, but only if it benefits us. Otherwise we will pass legislation to only aid our corporate interests through our bought congressmen'.
I can think of one good example of teaching on how to take the test.
Suppose you were told on the test to solve two linear equations simultaneously. If you were taught the normal way, you might solve for x in one equation, substitute this for x in the second equation and solve for y. Since you know y, you can now solve for x. Simple! This is the standard algorithm on how to solve a two equation linear system.
However, on a standardized test it is multiple choice so x and y are given already as the answer. All the student would have to do is plug in the values of x and y in both equations and see if they equal what they say they equal.
To summarize, the first method will teach good algebra practices, thereby teaching you how to solve any set of equations. The second gives you the answer already and is simple 'plug and chug'; if given a real application of simultaneous equations where the answers are not provided, this person would not know how to do it.
This is just one example that I can think of. I am sure there are others.
It's funny how you posted this. I too spent this weekend pricing out a computer similar to what you did. However, you are missing one key part..the OS. Now you might argue that Linux is free so that is $0. You also might argue that if I was to put Windows on the machine, then I could always get a copy for "free" on bit torrent. The primary OS that I would spec this sort of machine would be a Windows box for gaming. If I was running Linux, I certainly would not need such a powerful GPU, since I wouldn't do any gaming on the machine. And again you might argue that I could configure WINE to run games from Linux.
In short, all of these and other "arguments" = more of my time spent tinkering. since I have a real job now, I will spend the extra $200 or so and have someone else do all of the research of part compatibilities and do the computer integration for me, since my time is worth more to me than the extra money I would spend.
And seriously, not to troll, but how much thought did you put into your list. For example, did you look at the total power requirements for all of the components and see that the case could handle that much power? I was looking at an EVGA 8800 GT and they suggeted at least a 450W power supply (I was not able to find the actual power consumption, since I did not find a datasheet or link to EVGA to do the research). Also, if the card were to draw that much power, how much cooling would I need? Anyone can just pick and choose parts from New Egg, but to design a reliable box it's more than just picking parts at random.
Give me a less-comfortable area in some non-generic suburbs.
I think that would be the sign of the apocalypse if there weren't hundreds of McDonalds, Targets, Walmarts, etc. in the suburbs. It ain't called Generica for nothing.
Not to direct my comment to you specifically Aglassis, but for anyone in general who recommends AoE. This book is ok, and that's it. (burn karma, burn!)
It is definitely a true engineers book in that it gives you circuits that you can use and there are plenty of them. BUT, if you want to learn about electronics, this is not the book. I find the explanations of the circuits to be mediocre at best if taken from the noob stand point of view. Granted, the article poster may not be looking for deep explanations, but I could not in good faith recommend this book to someone who is new to electronics and wants to learn 'how things work'.
(full disclosure: I am an electrical engineer and work in RF circuit design)
Thanks for bringing back some memories with this. I was a nuke EM and I received this book at some point during nuke school. Specifically, I think it was prototype.
I know of at least one other area where Fortran is still used. When I was a grad student, I was in the electromagnetics lab (think antennas and radar). Most of the students did computational electromagnetics for research. They essentially wrote their own Fortran code to solve Maxwell's equations since the number of unknowns for an accurately modeled problem would become quite large, therefore requiring efficient use of memory with even today's computer systems. This was only 3 years ago. Granted, part of this might have been because the professors only knew Fortran, but from what I have seen of the language, it certainly seems optimal since it has complex numbers native to the language (unlike C/C++ for example).
Your idea certainly is not unique. I was recently in the UK where there are plenty of speed cameras. One day while driving with a cabbie, we heard his GPS unit (a tomtom, I believe) give off a beep every now and then. We asked him what it was and he said it was to inform him that he was nearing an road which had a speed camera. I have no idea if that is a standard feature in UK GPS units, or if it was some sort of after market add on, but this idea certainly exists already. I might research online to see how others (commercial or otherwise) have done this before. Good luck.
Funny you mention Nuclear blast records (I know this is off topic). I am listening to the new Meshuggah while reading your post and writing my own. It's a great CD if you don't mind the near continuous screaming, but musically it is awesome.
I can't answer that statement, since I don't know the answer. I am not trying to pick fight. I think we are ultimately on the same side. I personally wouldn't mind having a union as an EE. I would also like everyone to have one. Especially when I hear about CEOs making obscene amounts of money even while the company is doing horribly. Because I know that inevitably, these CEOs will be financially taken care of (ala 'golden parachutes') while the workers are shown the door with a pat on the back. Having a union would just make it hard to compete with those companies which don't. And ultimately, if the company can't compete, there will be no jobs for them since the company will cease to be.
Lets start a union now! Why doesn't Leahy (pres IEEE) promote UNIONS. Lawyers have them, doctors have them, dentists have them.
Speaking as a fellow EE, there is a fundamental flaw when making these comparisons between manufacturing related jobs (like ours) and service based jobs (like lawyers, doctors, etc.) If we make product X and we use all US labor and we are in competition with product Y from a non-unionized, foreign manufacturer, how do we compete [1]? On the other hand, are you going to talk to a lawyer from the UK to handle a US issue? You can't. You would need to have someone who has passed the bar exam in your state. I doubt you would routinely see a doctor from a different state/country either, unless you lived trivially close to a state/national border. The services are tied to the region where the other workers live. However, consumer products are not tied to a region. These products will be in competition with anyone who can make and ship them globally.
You cite the auto unions in your reply also. Have you looked at the big 3 lately? Do you see how well they are doing right now? I grew up in Detroit. I have seen the ups and downs of the UAW. While the US auto industry was booming, so were the workers in the UAW. That was due in part to the leverage the UAW had over the big 3. Now-a-days, even the big 3 are closing plants in Michigan, because Michigan requires its workers to join unions in unionized shops. Instead, a lot of their manufacturing is either in Mexico (one 'benefit' of NAFTA) or in other "right to work"[2] states. In short, the UAW demanded too much from the US automakers to the point where they are having a hard time competing with foreign automakers.
[1] I guess you could implement some sort of tariff making our products more attractive than foreign competitors, but they would likely do the same to us.
[2] Right to work meaning that you are not required to join the union if the shop you work in has a union.
Allow me to apply another analogy that i know certainly applies to me.
1. You have to do math to do 3D graphics
1. I need to play an instrument to make music
2. You can do math in Excel
2. I can make music on a guitar.
3. Excel makes it possible to see your math as it happens
3. Playing notes on the guitar makes it possible to play music.
4. Excel can help prototype some ideas for 3D graphics engines
4. I can eventually write a song on my guitar.
See, I can make a list too. And the final song in my case may not be that great to others, but I will enjoy it. But if someone else likes it, then all the better. Plus I will have created the music. Would you be able to write a song, or as applied to the topic, would you be able to write a 3D engine in excel?
Sorry to make you the example of this, but this is one of my personal pet peeves. It is easy to dismiss someone else's work then to appreciate the effort that someone put into it. I would agree that this may not be the most efficient way to generate 3D graphics, but the concept is cool. He is using the tool in a different way than it was meant to be used.
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While I agree with your post concerning angles affecting the speed measured by the radar gun, I would think the radar gun designer would have accounted for opening or closing targets. It's just a matter of your RF frequency planning. Suppose inside the radar I had two oscillators I could use (This could be done with two phase lock loops, for example). Suppose I transmit the radar signal at 200 MHz where I then am looking for the doppler shift away from 200MHz. A closing target might give a received frequency of 200.05 MHz where as if the target was moving at the same speed but away from you, you would see 199.95 MHz signal.
Now, as with any radio receiver, you need to mix the received frequency to a usable frequency so you can do something with it. Suppose this hypothetical radar mixes the received radar return with 175 MHz and take the difference frequency (200+/-doppler-175)= 25+/-doppler MHz. At this point, I could take IQ data* and mix down to 0+/-doppler MHz (Perfectly tuned IQ data will remove frequency images, with in reason).
Remembering my Fourier theory, if doppler is negative, the signals should be processed the same as the positive doppler (with the exception of a possible 180 degree phase shift). In other words, if a target is opening at speed V or is closing at the same speed, the radar should read the same frequency difference.
*Another possible way to handle this might be with a frequency discriminator of some sorts. A phase lock loop of the receiver might work too since it could lock to the new received frequency with the doppler and provide a DC voltage output proportional to the frequency received, which is another type of discriminator...
Oh, how idealistic of you.
This would be true if there really was a free market in the cell phone business. I would like for you to go and look at any of the cell phone company's plans and see how much differentiation you see. Go on. I'm waiting. I bet you really didn't see much difference did you?
The thing is they have no business trying to compete against each other. They are in collusion. Not an obvious one, since collusion in the US is illegal. Instead they all maintain the same plans with little differentiation in these plans so that they all make a profit. If some company really wanted to aggressively price to gain more market share they could do this, but it will never happen.
The 'biggest' differentiator between carriers is the network quality and the phones provided. You may not have the ability to test the network and phone combination until you've already signed a two year contract with a $200 early termination fee. (To be fair, some companies do have a grace period on this.)
Superior military power does not necessarily mean you will 'win'. I would think to some extent that a US soldier would have a harder time firing/killing other US citizens. The US soldier has more in common with US citizens than say a Vietnamese person (at least from a xenophobic standpoint) thereby making more difficult to pull the trigger.
History is filled with cases where guerrilla warfare has been successful over stronger military powers. Our own nation's independence was due primarily to guerrilla warfare tactics. You can add Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Algiers to that list too. (These are the only ones that I can think of off the top my head. You might even add Iraq to some extent.)
I am not saying that fighting the military would be easy, but the population of the US >> than the number of people in the military. Firepower can only get you so much before sheer numbers would overwhelm.
I might agree with you on the engineer shortage, but I would have to disagree with you on innovation. There are very few companies that actually innovate. Apple, to me, is an example of a company that innovates. They take existing products in the market
Back to the original point. Companies tend not to innovate too much because they are risk adverse. It takes a lot of money and research to build something new. Product development can take years from conception to market. With most companies concentrating on short term gains (due to say, their stock prices), R&D will usually be shut down first since it simply an expense on a balance sheet.
Other companies will tend to rest on their laurels after making a hit product. Look at Motorola today. They had the Razor, but what did they really have after that? The Rokr? Instead of investing their huge profits made on the Razor, they just sat back and relaxed. Now, Motorola will be splitting up into two companies. Motorola should have leveraged these profits to develop new hardware to stay in the short lived lead they had in the cell phone market.
*Slashdot might consider this as anecdotal evidence, but I did have a creative Zen before I owned an iPod. The software was horrible, the menu navigation was horrible, importing songs was a pain, the player was quite large, etc... Since I have owned an iPod, I have had no issues.
I see this comment so many times, that it's starting to get old. The previous two posters had good points, but I will expand on them. One poster said gas would need to be $10/gallon before people would change their habits. I would have to agree with that. The problem being is that people have gotten used to inexpensive gas, so living 30 miles from work is not uncommon. This in turn also has contributed to sprawl; people can live further away, so they can get more bang for the buck when it comes to buying a house. Buying a house within a reasonable distance from where I work would simply be cost prohibitive for most of the employees here.
Also add to this that people want the space in the US. You don't need to live 5 feet from your neighbor because there is plenty of land. If you aren't putting people closer together, then walking does become more difficult as a viable means of transportation. A good example of what I am talking about is from when I lived in Detroit. You could tell which houses were built before everyone had a car. The houses were very close to one another since there was no driveway between houses. The streets were also a grid pattern primarily. This would make things like public transportation and walking much more accessible for most people. Fast forward to Detroit suburbs now and you see nothing like that. The houses are in these large subdivision which might be a mile deep of roads and only have one or two access points for the subdivision. This is not such a big deal if you have your own automobile, but this will make public transportation and pedestrian traffic as an unlikely alternative.
I also partially blame city planners. I would ride my bike to work in a minute if I didn't feel like my life was in danger driving on the roads where I am now. I only live about 11 miles from work. I would easily bike this in about 40-50 minutes going at a casual pace. The problem is that there are hardly any bike paths large enough for me to ride. On my route I need to cross over an expressway. The only place to cross is on one of the major road crossings, ie there is not a separate pedestrian crossing location. I don't even see any sidewalks on the one bridge that I would need to cross. This means that I would need to try and share the road with automobiles going in excess of 45 mph. No thanks! I also seem to remember growing up and seeing places to lock up bikes at store fronts. I no longer see anything like that anymore. They seem to be discouraging people from riding their bikes. Why? (rhetorical question). In summary City planner are just assuming that people will ride in their cars, so screw anyone else.
In direct response to standard of living, you might be right, but it's a matter of reference. We all still buy a similar number and types of gadgets, but when it comes to housing and getting around town, this is where the likeness ends.
Why would someone want to pay money for this? Will you get the ZOMG! level 50+6 two handed broadsword? If you are going to have online distribution, make it worthwhile. Take for example the Wii. There you can get plenty of old Nintendo and Sega games for a reasonable price. I know that Sony may not have the exclusive back library that Nintendo has, but you would think that they would find some of their old partners to revive the games and sell them online.
If you can follow the posting chain, I was trying to call shenanigans on the OP. I believe any worker should be compensated justly for the jobs that they are to perform. One of the OP's positions was that the money given to these people put them near poverty, in which I said bull s&*#. Earning $42k is not poverty! If the OP is going to support H1Bs earning near poverty, then he better represent it properly.
That said, if these jobs performed by H1B are earning $55k on average, then pay the H1Bs the average rate. This would make it such that companies could not abuse the visa system (or working "for peanuts" as you put it).
I live in Chicago, which is also an expensive city to live in. I will grant you that it may not be as bad as Boston, but it still is not cheap! However, there are plenty of people who work at or slightly above minimum wage. My wife, before we were married (not even two years ago), lived in the city making only $25k as a grad student in a studio apartment. While this is not an ideal living situation, she was certainly able to make do.
I think we can both agree that housing is the primary expense of any household. To help people who cannot afford their housing, Cook County (or maybe the state) has something called section 8 housing, which states that landlords are required to make some apartments available for people who are in poverty. The lease ends up being less than what the landlord would charge other tenants. The landlord will be compensated by the state for the difference that the landlord is losing due to renting to this person.
Again I will state that $42k is not a great salary, you can certainly live off of it.
You must live in bizzarro world if $55k is not enough to live in the US. There are plenty of people living in the US on much less than $55k,and later quoted to be equivalent $47k in US dollars,(think McDonalds employees for example). Are they living like kings? No. But to say that they can't live here is just a lie.
I love this idea though. Unfortunately, since our congress is bought and sold already to corporate interests, this will never get implemented. It has something to do with 'let the market decide, but only if it benefits us. Otherwise we will pass legislation to only aid our corporate interests through our bought congressmen'.
I can think of one good example of teaching on how to take the test.
Suppose you were told on the test to solve two linear equations simultaneously. If you were taught the normal way, you might solve for x in one equation, substitute this for x in the second equation and solve for y. Since you know y, you can now solve for x. Simple! This is the standard algorithm on how to solve a two equation linear system.
However, on a standardized test it is multiple choice so x and y are given already as the answer. All the student would have to do is plug in the values of x and y in both equations and see if they equal what they say they equal.
To summarize, the first method will teach good algebra practices, thereby teaching you how to solve any set of equations. The second gives you the answer already and is simple 'plug and chug'; if given a real application of simultaneous equations where the answers are not provided, this person would not know how to do it.
This is just one example that I can think of. I am sure there are others.
It's funny how you posted this. I too spent this weekend pricing out a computer similar to what you did. However, you are missing one key part..the OS. Now you might argue that Linux is free so that is $0. You also might argue that if I was to put Windows on the machine, then I could always get a copy for "free" on bit torrent. The primary OS that I would spec this sort of machine would be a Windows box for gaming. If I was running Linux, I certainly would not need such a powerful GPU, since I wouldn't do any gaming on the machine. And again you might argue that I could configure WINE to run games from Linux.
In short, all of these and other "arguments" = more of my time spent tinkering. since I have a real job now, I will spend the extra $200 or so and have someone else do all of the research of part compatibilities and do the computer integration for me, since my time is worth more to me than the extra money I would spend.
And seriously, not to troll, but how much thought did you put into your list. For example, did you look at the total power requirements for all of the components and see that the case could handle that much power? I was looking at an EVGA 8800 GT and they suggeted at least a 450W power supply (I was not able to find the actual power consumption, since I did not find a datasheet or link to EVGA to do the research). Also, if the card were to draw that much power, how much cooling would I need? Anyone can just pick and choose parts from New Egg, but to design a reliable box it's more than just picking parts at random.
I think that would be the sign of the apocalypse if there weren't hundreds of McDonalds, Targets, Walmarts, etc. in the suburbs. It ain't called Generica for nothing.
Not to direct my comment to you specifically Aglassis, but for anyone in general who recommends AoE. This book is ok, and that's it. (burn karma, burn!)
It is definitely a true engineers book in that it gives you circuits that you can use and there are plenty of them. BUT, if you want to learn about electronics, this is not the book. I find the explanations of the circuits to be mediocre at best if taken from the noob stand point of view. Granted, the article poster may not be looking for deep explanations, but I could not in good faith recommend this book to someone who is new to electronics and wants to learn 'how things work'.
(full disclosure: I am an electrical engineer and work in RF circuit design)
Thanks for bringing back some memories with this. I was a nuke EM and I received this book at some point during nuke school. Specifically, I think it was prototype.
I know of at least one other area where Fortran is still used. When I was a grad student, I was in the electromagnetics lab (think antennas and radar). Most of the students did computational electromagnetics for research. They essentially wrote their own Fortran code to solve Maxwell's equations since the number of unknowns for an accurately modeled problem would become quite large, therefore requiring efficient use of memory with even today's computer systems. This was only 3 years ago. Granted, part of this might have been because the professors only knew Fortran, but from what I have seen of the language, it certainly seems optimal since it has complex numbers native to the language (unlike C/C++ for example).
"I've gotta a fever! And the only prescription is more Cowbell!" [/Christopher Walken]'
Your idea certainly is not unique. I was recently in the UK where there are plenty of speed cameras. One day while driving with a cabbie, we heard his GPS unit (a tomtom, I believe) give off a beep every now and then. We asked him what it was and he said it was to inform him that he was nearing an road which had a speed camera. I have no idea if that is a standard feature in UK GPS units, or if it was some sort of after market add on, but this idea certainly exists already. I might research online to see how others (commercial or otherwise) have done this before. Good luck.
Funny you mention Nuclear blast records (I know this is off topic). I am listening to the new Meshuggah while reading your post and writing my own. It's a great CD if you don't mind the near continuous screaming, but musically it is awesome.
I can't answer that statement, since I don't know the answer. I am not trying to pick fight. I think we are ultimately on the same side. I personally wouldn't mind having a union as an EE. I would also like everyone to have one. Especially when I hear about CEOs making obscene amounts of money even while the company is doing horribly. Because I know that inevitably, these CEOs will be financially taken care of (ala 'golden parachutes') while the workers are shown the door with a pat on the back. Having a union would just make it hard to compete with those companies which don't. And ultimately, if the company can't compete, there will be no jobs for them since the company will cease to be.
Speaking as a fellow EE, there is a fundamental flaw when making these comparisons between manufacturing related jobs (like ours) and service based jobs (like lawyers, doctors, etc.) If we make product X and we use all US labor and we are in competition with product Y from a non-unionized, foreign manufacturer, how do we compete [1]? On the other hand, are you going to talk to a lawyer from the UK to handle a US issue? You can't. You would need to have someone who has passed the bar exam in your state. I doubt you would routinely see a doctor from a different state/country either, unless you lived trivially close to a state/national border. The services are tied to the region where the other workers live. However, consumer products are not tied to a region. These products will be in competition with anyone who can make and ship them globally.
You cite the auto unions in your reply also. Have you looked at the big 3 lately? Do you see how well they are doing right now? I grew up in Detroit. I have seen the ups and downs of the UAW. While the US auto industry was booming, so were the workers in the UAW. That was due in part to the leverage the UAW had over the big 3. Now-a-days, even the big 3 are closing plants in Michigan, because Michigan requires its workers to join unions in unionized shops. Instead, a lot of their manufacturing is either in Mexico (one 'benefit' of NAFTA) or in other "right to work"[2] states. In short, the UAW demanded too much from the US automakers to the point where they are having a hard time competing with foreign automakers.
[1] I guess you could implement some sort of tariff making our products more attractive than foreign competitors, but they would likely do the same to us.
[2] Right to work meaning that you are not required to join the union if the shop you work in has a union.
Allow me to apply another analogy that i know certainly applies to me. 1. I need to play an instrument to make music 2. I can make music on a guitar. 3. Playing notes on the guitar makes it possible to play music. 4. I can eventually write a song on my guitar.
See, I can make a list too. And the final song in my case may not be that great to others, but I will enjoy it. But if someone else likes it, then all the better. Plus I will have created the music. Would you be able to write a song, or as applied to the topic, would you be able to write a 3D engine in excel?
Sorry to make you the example of this, but this is one of my personal pet peeves. It is easy to dismiss someone else's work then to appreciate the effort that someone put into it. I would agree that this may not be the most efficient way to generate 3D graphics, but the concept is cool. He is using the tool in a different way than it was meant to be used.
If I had mod points right now, I would mod you down again for being 'off topic'. :P
I think you discovered his Kryptonite!