Agreed. Livescribe totally rocks. I was blown away by my first demonstration.
The only thing I don't like about Livescribe is that it isn't the best tool for producing presentations, because you can't get the recorded audio and transcriptions out to a format that lets you publish them on your own system. So while it's a great learning tool for me, it isn't as great a teaching tool for others.
The problem for RIM being, of course, that great alternative operating systems already exist. I don't see how RIM could successfully implement something of their own that wasn't either an also-ran, or simply a reskinned Android device that would expose them to all the "problems" they claim their current technology avoids.
Do the Q&A.... Give a 3 or 4 minute introduction of yourself and what you do and then open it up for questions about anything the students are willing to ask, about technology or otherwise...
Fail: Not until you help them understand the material enough to know what to ask. Your response amplifies your misunderstanding of the context of the OP's appearance, and your example with Woz confirms it.
The OP is appearing because the students want him to tell them what THEY should be interested in. The only way they could ask productive questions on this would be if they knew the answers already--- in which case there would be no need for a presentation.
I doubt a high-school student really cares about the "theoretical foundations of information and computation". As you suggest yourself, your audience is more interested in the things they can DO with computers--- which is more about Engineering than Computer Science.
I suggest that you spend the first 5-10 minutes helping your audience see the fact that they are literally surrounded by computers, and that SOMEONE needs to learn how to program them. The real excitement in computing is found in embedded systems, not games or tablets. But unless you get people to see all these invisible computers, they have no idea that it's a viable and meaningful career choice.
Then give them a demo of an Arduino, preferably one connected to the guts of an R/C car or the like. Something tangible. Of course, if you can't do this yourself then you have an obvious skills gap that needs to be addressed.
After that, leave the rest of the presentation to your audience. You will not have any trouble filling the time allotted, I assure you.
The only potential point I can see (which they didn’t try to make, so I’m probably imagining it) is that by having these bounty programs, bugs are discovered that otherwise might not have been looked for. Very thin.
No, that's EXACTLY the point he is making. He even says in the article that researchers aren't creating bugs, they are merely looking closely at the software with the purpose of finding those bugs. His analogy with rat farming isn't a very good one, but the main thrust of the article is that bug bounties ARE working--- and that commercial companies are recognizing that.
The rat farming analogy works if you think about the tools researchers create purely for detecting bugs in the target code. Programs that send bogus ping packets or attempt buffer overflows, for example.
It isn't a completely open source project, as they used a closed-source program to capture the schematic and board layout. EagleCAD is a proprietary program that runs on certain versions of Linux, but the file format is proprietary. The no-cost version of EagleCAD limits the size of the circuit, I haven't checked to see if CheapStat's circuit exceeds that size, or not. Regardless, if you want to modify the circuit then you are either downloading/buying EagleCAD and continuing to lock up your design, or you have to re-capture the schematic in a truly open tool.
gEDA would have been a better tool choice for schematic capture and layout, in my opinion. And the result would have been truly open, as the file formats it uses are documented and text-based. Aside, I have used both EagleCAD and gEDA, and much prefer the latter due to its flexibility and open file format.
It's nice that they provide complete schematics in PNG, however. No complaints there.
Medicare doesn't just pony up whatever a vendor bills for, but what they consider a "fair rate".
Indeed, that's Medicare's dirty little secret: it doesn't _actually_ cover the full cost of the services it provides. The balance is added to the fees charged by the service provider to their non-Medicare customers. I have relatives in the health care profession, and based on conversations with them it generally seems that Medicare pays about half the amount that non-Medicare patients pay. (But the comparison is difficult to make because the rates charged to non-Medicare patients are really "soft" due to negotiated rates with their insurance companies, writedowns for cash-only customers, etc. etc. As a result, defining the "price" for a service is difficult at best).
Based on that, I don't think a provider can make a living seeing only Medicare patients. It also means that using the general, per-capita cost of Medicare as a baseline for anything is pretty senseless.
My guess is that those of us who pay insurance, and those of us who carry most of the burden for medicare/aid (in the US, mind you), are doing most of the buying for a lot of the people wearing them.
Good guess! In fact, it's spot on!
But here's the secret: that's how _insurance_ works. You should look into it sometime.
I do stem cell research for a living. I am paid a WAGE not a PROFIT, for my work; and if I were to produce something patentable, I would be able to be well paid based on negotiations between me, the patent owner, and the firms that purchase the product. Compensation and Wage are NOT profit.
How exactly would the patent owner recover the expense of your research? Drug _manufacturing_ isn't where the expense lies, the cost is in identifying the compound to manufacture. If you base the price on the manufacturing cost, then there is no money left for research on new products.
And I dispute your suggestion that stockholders and insurance companies don't contribute meaningfully to the process. Stockholders provide their cold, hard cash that helps the company e.g. make payroll during the research phase; insurance allows companies to take greater risks and still remain financially solvent if those bets don't pay out. Both are very real and tangible contributions.
Tell you what. Launch a business that has no stockholders, and purchases no insurance. Let me know how that works out for you.
Medical regulations aren't causing the expense of your hearing aids. I don't know where the blame lies, but that almost certainly isn't it.
The reason capitalism isn't necessarily fine with medicine is the number of suppliers is often so limited, there is no real competition. If there are only two vendors of hearing aids, for example, the first one to raise prices will invite the other to do likewise, since there is no point in leaving any cash on the table. And nobody wants to invite a race to the bottom.
In fairness, hearing aids today are much, much more sophisticated than they were a decade ago. I'm not saying that justifies their current cost (I don't really know), I'm just saying that comparing today's prices against inferior products of a decade ago isn't necessarily useful.
That $15million could have been spent better in road improvement projects than this... but that's just my opinion...
I totally disagree. The sooner we can get humans out from behind the wheel, the better. Driver error (for reasons you cite and many more) are at the root of the overwhelming majority of traffic accidents. Computers can be made better drivers than humans, if apply resources towards that.
$15M sounds like a lot of money, until you look at the expense of a few traffic accidents. Particularly those involving fatalities and/or commercial vehicles. In that light, $15M is basically "free". This investment is a no-brainer.
And besides, if I can trust a computer to drive then I can get some decent work done during my commute. At the moment, my best alternative is a teenager...
Agreed. Our track record for producing devices that can do good things while at the same time not doing bad things isn't so great. A part of me sees this project as being "3000 cars on the road with wide open wireless security issues", sadly. And even with undeployed systems, decent security isn't something you can simply add on at the end--- you have to plan for it from the beginning.
SURELY the UMich guys understand this and have security dealt with from the get-go, right?...Right? Please say I'm right!
A related benefit is that since they can assume that the signals never leave the chip stack, busses can be simpler and more fragile--- and faster.
Even a stack of only two wafers is of huge benefit. Today's package-on-package chips (which are two wafers surrounded by two complete external packages including BGA pads) allow mobile phones to put the memory right on top of the CPU, which reduces chip count and space. Assembly at the die level instead takes that a substantial step forward, by getting rid of the unnecessary pads that exist solely to provide interconnects between those chips. The resulting package footprint is half the size, or better.
I have flown more than 100 flight segments in the past 12 months alone, nearly all of them in the USA. Have been patted down many times. Without exception, every TSA agent I have encountered has shown professionalism in the performance of their duties.
I think the prejudice against the TSA is almost entirely unfounded. Will gladly hear contradictory statements with people having first-hand experience.
I won't argue whether the TSA should be allowed to exist. To the extent that they DO exist, however, I haven't had any issues with them.
... and sometimes the best thing a greedy worker can do is hire a manager who can see the bigger picture, and thereby make all the greedy workers more productive--- thereby satisfying their greed *if* those workers are shareholders.
The problem is when a greedy worker wants to satisfy their greed without being a shareholder. That short-circuits the process, killing off the source of satisfaction of the worker's greed. But when the worker is too near-sighted to see that...
In other words, a successful worker must by definition be aware of more than just the tiny cog they represent in the whole machine. If the greedy worker isn't willing to invest even THAT much (effort only, no cash required), then they aren't really participating in the system. They therefore shouldn't expect to reap any of the benefits that come from that system, and should also expect to be exploited by the other, more-aware and equally greedy workers around them. But try explaining that to a greedy worker on payday.
This is the crux of capitalism: it requires that we all be greedy workers (easy), and also that we all are investors in the sources that will satisfy our greed (hard).
Is there a reason you can't use a grow light instead of solar power from the sun?
Because he has only 2-3 days per site. Nothing will sprout while he's there, which means either a lame presentation, expendables that he has to leave at each site, and/or additional work for the teacher after he leaves.
Also, at the high school level I don't think you'd hold someone's interest with a heat lamp and a bean sprout in a styrofoam cup. Well, you MIGHT hold their interests, but probably not for reasons that the school's administration would sanction.:)
I recall seeing somewhere a stationary bike apparatus, e.g. "treadmill", which triatheletes use in the off-season. It's a frame that you put your own bicycle onto, and then pedal away like there is no tomorrow.
The frame I saw folded up into something pretty small and easily portable. I don't know if bicycles are as popular in Alaska as they are in the lower 48, but if so then perhaps a student would volunteer their own for a few days during your presentations.
You'd want to modify the apparatus so that it could be used to power a lamp, or something else that you would likely find at each destination. In fact, purpose-built treadmills-as-power-generators probably exist.
A nice side-effect of such an apparatus is that it tangibly illustrates just how much power even a small lamp consumes, considering how hard students need to pedal to generate the electricity required. You could demonstrate that CFL lights use less electricity by demonstrating that they don't have to pedal as hard to light it, and could show that the excess electricity of the incandescent lamp is converted to heat with a simple non-contact, IR thermometer like those sold at Radio Shack. Then swap the lamp for an X-Box, etc. etc.
Teaching students to use less electricity is an even better goal than teaching them new ways to generate it.
In particular, I'd love to know what browser you are using to produce your rant, cause I'm not aware of any browser implementation available today that "works" in the manner you suggest they should.
In the meantime, I'll stick with what "reasonably works, and coincidentally works better than the commercial alternatives". You know, like, Apache.
Actually, the blowout probably didn't kill nearly as many organisms as all the chemicals we poured into the water to try to mitigate the presence of the oil.
Oil and nature can coexist at the microorganism level, within some limits, but the detergents used to break up that oil are highly, highly toxic to microorganisms. That's why, for example, you use soaps and detergents to keep your hands clean.
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Agreed. Livescribe totally rocks. I was blown away by my first demonstration.
The only thing I don't like about Livescribe is that it isn't the best tool for producing presentations, because you can't get the recorded audio and transcriptions out to a format that lets you publish them on your own system. So while it's a great learning tool for me, it isn't as great a teaching tool for others.
But that's OT to the OP, really.
Frequently, if the route goes through a metro area with sporadic traffic congestion issues.
The problem for RIM being, of course, that great alternative operating systems already exist. I don't see how RIM could successfully implement something of their own that wasn't either an also-ran, or simply a reskinned Android device that would expose them to all the "problems" they claim their current technology avoids.
I might have been unnecessarily harsh. :)
Do the Q&A.... Give a 3 or 4 minute introduction of yourself and what you do and then open it up for questions about anything the students are willing to ask, about technology or otherwise...
Fail: Not until you help them understand the material enough to know what to ask. Your response amplifies your misunderstanding of the context of the OP's appearance, and your example with Woz confirms it.
The OP is appearing because the students want him to tell them what THEY should be interested in. The only way they could ask productive questions on this would be if they knew the answers already--- in which case there would be no need for a presentation.
I doubt a high-school student really cares about the "theoretical foundations of information and computation". As you suggest yourself, your audience is more interested in the things they can DO with computers--- which is more about Engineering than Computer Science.
I suggest that you spend the first 5-10 minutes helping your audience see the fact that they are literally surrounded by computers, and that SOMEONE needs to learn how to program them. The real excitement in computing is found in embedded systems, not games or tablets. But unless you get people to see all these invisible computers, they have no idea that it's a viable and meaningful career choice.
Then give them a demo of an Arduino, preferably one connected to the guts of an R/C car or the like. Something tangible. Of course, if you can't do this yourself then you have an obvious skills gap that needs to be addressed.
After that, leave the rest of the presentation to your audience. You will not have any trouble filling the time allotted, I assure you.
The only potential point I can see (which they didn’t try to make, so I’m probably imagining it) is that by having these bounty programs, bugs are discovered that otherwise might not have been looked for. Very thin.
No, that's EXACTLY the point he is making. He even says in the article that researchers aren't creating bugs, they are merely looking closely at the software with the purpose of finding those bugs. His analogy with rat farming isn't a very good one, but the main thrust of the article is that bug bounties ARE working--- and that commercial companies are recognizing that.
The rat farming analogy works if you think about the tools researchers create purely for detecting bugs in the target code. Programs that send bogus ping packets or attempt buffer overflows, for example.
Is this news for nerds just because it is open source? I mean - a potentiostat? Really?
This one is driven by a microcontroller, which is a nice touch. So, yeah, I think it rates high enough on the nerdiness scale to merit publicity.
It isn't a completely open source project, as they used a closed-source program to capture the schematic and board layout. EagleCAD is a proprietary program that runs on certain versions of Linux, but the file format is proprietary. The no-cost version of EagleCAD limits the size of the circuit, I haven't checked to see if CheapStat's circuit exceeds that size, or not. Regardless, if you want to modify the circuit then you are either downloading/buying EagleCAD and continuing to lock up your design, or you have to re-capture the schematic in a truly open tool.
gEDA would have been a better tool choice for schematic capture and layout, in my opinion. And the result would have been truly open, as the file formats it uses are documented and text-based. Aside, I have used both EagleCAD and gEDA, and much prefer the latter due to its flexibility and open file format.
It's nice that they provide complete schematics in PNG, however. No complaints there.
Medicare doesn't just pony up whatever a vendor bills for, but what they consider a "fair rate".
Indeed, that's Medicare's dirty little secret: it doesn't _actually_ cover the full cost of the services it provides. The balance is added to the fees charged by the service provider to their non-Medicare customers. I have relatives in the health care profession, and based on conversations with them it generally seems that Medicare pays about half the amount that non-Medicare patients pay. (But the comparison is difficult to make because the rates charged to non-Medicare patients are really "soft" due to negotiated rates with their insurance companies, writedowns for cash-only customers, etc. etc. As a result, defining the "price" for a service is difficult at best).
Based on that, I don't think a provider can make a living seeing only Medicare patients. It also means that using the general, per-capita cost of Medicare as a baseline for anything is pretty senseless.
My guess is that those of us who pay insurance, and those of us who carry most of the burden for medicare/aid (in the US, mind you), are doing most of the buying for a lot of the people wearing them.
Good guess! In fact, it's spot on!
But here's the secret: that's how _insurance_ works. You should look into it sometime.
I do stem cell research for a living. I am paid a WAGE not a PROFIT, for my work; and if I were to produce something patentable, I would be able to be well paid based on negotiations between me, the patent owner, and the firms that purchase the product. Compensation and Wage are NOT profit.
How exactly would the patent owner recover the expense of your research? Drug _manufacturing_ isn't where the expense lies, the cost is in identifying the compound to manufacture. If you base the price on the manufacturing cost, then there is no money left for research on new products.
And I dispute your suggestion that stockholders and insurance companies don't contribute meaningfully to the process. Stockholders provide their cold, hard cash that helps the company e.g. make payroll during the research phase; insurance allows companies to take greater risks and still remain financially solvent if those bets don't pay out. Both are very real and tangible contributions.
Tell you what. Launch a business that has no stockholders, and purchases no insurance. Let me know how that works out for you.
Medical regulations aren't causing the expense of your hearing aids. I don't know where the blame lies, but that almost certainly isn't it.
The reason capitalism isn't necessarily fine with medicine is the number of suppliers is often so limited, there is no real competition. If there are only two vendors of hearing aids, for example, the first one to raise prices will invite the other to do likewise, since there is no point in leaving any cash on the table. And nobody wants to invite a race to the bottom.
In fairness, hearing aids today are much, much more sophisticated than they were a decade ago. I'm not saying that justifies their current cost (I don't really know), I'm just saying that comparing today's prices against inferior products of a decade ago isn't necessarily useful.
That $15million could have been spent better in road improvement projects than this... but that's just my opinion...
I totally disagree. The sooner we can get humans out from behind the wheel, the better. Driver error (for reasons you cite and many more) are at the root of the overwhelming majority of traffic accidents. Computers can be made better drivers than humans, if apply resources towards that.
$15M sounds like a lot of money, until you look at the expense of a few traffic accidents. Particularly those involving fatalities and/or commercial vehicles. In that light, $15M is basically "free". This investment is a no-brainer.
And besides, if I can trust a computer to drive then I can get some decent work done during my commute. At the moment, my best alternative is a teenager...
Agreed. Our track record for producing devices that can do good things while at the same time not doing bad things isn't so great. A part of me sees this project as being "3000 cars on the road with wide open wireless security issues", sadly. And even with undeployed systems, decent security isn't something you can simply add on at the end--- you have to plan for it from the beginning.
SURELY the UMich guys understand this and have security dealt with from the get-go, right? ...Right? Please say I'm right!
You must be new here. :)
Won't work on politicians, because the magnets affect brain function--- meaning that you need a brain first. No worries here.
A related benefit is that since they can assume that the signals never leave the chip stack, busses can be simpler and more fragile--- and faster.
Even a stack of only two wafers is of huge benefit. Today's package-on-package chips (which are two wafers surrounded by two complete external packages including BGA pads) allow mobile phones to put the memory right on top of the CPU, which reduces chip count and space. Assembly at the die level instead takes that a substantial step forward, by getting rid of the unnecessary pads that exist solely to provide interconnects between those chips. The resulting package footprint is half the size, or better.
I have flown more than 100 flight segments in the past 12 months alone, nearly all of them in the USA. Have been patted down many times. Without exception, every TSA agent I have encountered has shown professionalism in the performance of their duties.
I think the prejudice against the TSA is almost entirely unfounded. Will gladly hear contradictory statements with people having first-hand experience.
I won't argue whether the TSA should be allowed to exist. To the extent that they DO exist, however, I haven't had any issues with them.
... and sometimes the best thing a greedy worker can do is hire a manager who can see the bigger picture, and thereby make all the greedy workers more productive--- thereby satisfying their greed *if* those workers are shareholders.
The problem is when a greedy worker wants to satisfy their greed without being a shareholder. That short-circuits the process, killing off the source of satisfaction of the worker's greed. But when the worker is too near-sighted to see that...
In other words, a successful worker must by definition be aware of more than just the tiny cog they represent in the whole machine. If the greedy worker isn't willing to invest even THAT much (effort only, no cash required), then they aren't really participating in the system. They therefore shouldn't expect to reap any of the benefits that come from that system, and should also expect to be exploited by the other, more-aware and equally greedy workers around them. But try explaining that to a greedy worker on payday.
This is the crux of capitalism: it requires that we all be greedy workers (easy), and also that we all are investors in the sources that will satisfy our greed (hard).
Is there a reason you can't use a grow light instead of solar power from the sun?
Because he has only 2-3 days per site. Nothing will sprout while he's there, which means either a lame presentation, expendables that he has to leave at each site, and/or additional work for the teacher after he leaves.
Also, at the high school level I don't think you'd hold someone's interest with a heat lamp and a bean sprout in a styrofoam cup. Well, you MIGHT hold their interests, but probably not for reasons that the school's administration would sanction. :)
I think you can pick up cheap little thermoelectric kits that are horribly inefficient (10%?)...
ALL Peltier coolers are horribly inefficient. 10% efficiency is a pretty decent one, in fact.
I recall seeing somewhere a stationary bike apparatus, e.g. "treadmill", which triatheletes use in the off-season. It's a frame that you put your own bicycle onto, and then pedal away like there is no tomorrow.
The frame I saw folded up into something pretty small and easily portable. I don't know if bicycles are as popular in Alaska as they are in the lower 48, but if so then perhaps a student would volunteer their own for a few days during your presentations.
You'd want to modify the apparatus so that it could be used to power a lamp, or something else that you would likely find at each destination. In fact, purpose-built treadmills-as-power-generators probably exist.
A nice side-effect of such an apparatus is that it tangibly illustrates just how much power even a small lamp consumes, considering how hard students need to pedal to generate the electricity required. You could demonstrate that CFL lights use less electricity by demonstrating that they don't have to pedal as hard to light it, and could show that the excess electricity of the incandescent lamp is converted to heat with a simple non-contact, IR thermometer like those sold at Radio Shack. Then swap the lamp for an X-Box, etc. etc.
Teaching students to use less electricity is an even better goal than teaching them new ways to generate it.
Grow up folks, buy software when it works.
You let me know how that works out for you.
In particular, I'd love to know what browser you are using to produce your rant, cause I'm not aware of any browser implementation available today that "works" in the manner you suggest they should.
In the meantime, I'll stick with what "reasonably works, and coincidentally works better than the commercial alternatives". You know, like, Apache.
Actually, the blowout probably didn't kill nearly as many organisms as all the chemicals we poured into the water to try to mitigate the presence of the oil.
Oil and nature can coexist at the microorganism level, within some limits, but the detergents used to break up that oil are highly, highly toxic to microorganisms. That's why, for example, you use soaps and detergents to keep your hands clean.