That reminds me of the "neodogs" in Heinlein's Starship Troopers (the book, not the horrible movie). They were genetically modified dogs that were 4 times as smart is regular dogs, and could actually speak, although you apparently had to get used to their accept because they had a kind of cleft palate (sp?). They were used mainly for scouting.
If I remember correctly, they didn't do very well against the bugs though...
Wouldn't Google Sky be more useful if you could enter a lat/long, and it could give you a picture of the sky from that location at a given time, related to NSEW, etc.? Then you could actually see that the bright object in the SE sky in the morning really is Venus, etc.
The problem with it currently is that there's no frame of reference. On Google Earth, you generally look at everything from some frame of reference, like you start with your house or the Eiffel Tower or Hoover Dam and start looking around from there.
That's getting to be an old stereotype/joke. For instance, here's my history of programming languages in chronological order for the past 15 years (since mid-high-school):
- QuickBASIC - 8086 Assembly - C++ - C - 68000 Assembly - Perl - Pascal - PHP - Java - C again - Ladder Logic - VB6 - ASP - VB.NET Compact Framework - ASP.NET - VB.NET
At this point, from what I've seen, working in VB.NET is easier than working in C#.NET because the intellisense is better. Now, throw SQL in there and you can see that it's more about using either the right tool for the job, or the tool that management has declared we're going to use for the job. Ultimately, the algorithms and data structures you use are universal. Some languages have specialized uses, and others are general purpose. VB6 had a specialized use: it was a rapid application development environment. It evolved from the natural realization that for many simple programming tasks, focusing on saving a programmer's time is much more cost effective than focusing on saving a few CPU cycles.
Let's say you're in the government and you want to discredit your opponent. All you have to do is make up a story about them and post it on wikileaks, and everyone will go around repeating it like it's the truth. Won't this be fun?
The Taliban may be using roadside bombs that are detonated by cell phones. They may be trying to mask the position of these devices which are probably deployed at night and the cell phone gets turned on when the device is deployed. If you're monitoring cell traffic and you see a device turn on in the middle of the night right beside a highway, you have a suspected IED.
That's a good point. It's kind of like getting caught in a game of tag, or getting hit with the ball in dodge-ball. You know you're out, so you take a deep breath and relax a bit.
This isn't terribly surprising. In the military you learn the principles of why things are seen. The entire concept is about understanding that perception is very much about expectation. For instance, one thing you're taught is that position has a lot to do with it. If you see a large object on a road, your brain will tend to see it as a vehicle, even if it's not. Similarly, you can open the door of your fridge and not "see" the ketchup on the shelf because you were expecting to find it in the door.
There are a whole bunch of pre-requisites required to form a contract. One of them is that the acts carried out by both parties have to be legal. If they are not, then no contract was deemed to have existed between the parties.
I believe that the X-Prize only required the craft to reach 100 km, which is kind of the accepted division line between space and not-space. It has something to do with the physics of spaceflight factoring more into the equations than the physics of aerodynamics above that altitude.
To actually achieve orbit, not only does it need to reach this altitude, but also move horizontally at probably over 20,000 miles per hours once it gets there.
* The so called "Underwater stage"? Supposedly this was cut in lieu of your creature moving from cell to the beach... * Flying critters, or otherwise critters with wings?
This is Will Wright we're talking about. These kinds of things will be reserved for expansion packs. You didn't think he was going to sell the you *whole* game for that price, did you?:)
If this guy was serious about proving his idea, he could just publish a detailed design of the machine (after patenting it to protect himself) and let other people verify it independently. It sounds to me like the same old hoax.
think you're not giving enough credit to the materials science aspect of electrical engineering. Control engineering, which is probably the most important coding-based application of EE industrially, requires a fairly thorough knowledge of not only the processes you're trying to automate, but the behavior of the control hardware itself.
Actually, I am a controls engineer and have been since graduating from Comp. Eng. in 2000. While I can attest that the hardware design is generally "engineered", the controls software rarely is. In many, if not most cases in industry, the controls software development is started too late in the process and most systems are installed on the plant floor with software that barely downloads to the controller without faulting it. The program is usually fleshed out and debugged during the startup phase, unfortunately.
Note that this is not the case with OEM machines (where a company just sells one type of standard machine over and over), but in almost all custom machines I've seen installed, most of the "software development" gets done onsite after the equipment is in place. Also, in many cases it is written by non-engineers and non-software developers. Sometimes it's written by electricians. Certainly, after you leave the machine, it's normally modified regularly by electricians, and sometimes by the end customer's engineering department.
The firmware on the controllers that runs the user application is typically quite well tested and reviewed, but even leading vendors such as Allen-Bradley have only recently started using CMM for software development. Certainly there have been plenty of bugs found in deployed firmware, and they have been fixed over time.
Now in Canada at least, the "safety" components of the machine (both hardware and software) have to pass a Pre-Start Review (PSR) that is signed by an engineer. Some components of the safety system can now reside in software, but those are specially standardized and certified modules that run on redundant processors and are locked with a password by the signing engineer. Those parts can't be modified. Certified safety components and systems are designed in such a way that any single component failure will be detected and the equipment will stop, and can't be restarted until the failure has been corrected. Specifically it only applies to the safety of the operators, not necessarily to maintenance personnel (who can always remove physical guarding, etc.), and not to the machine itself which is always capable of destroying itself through bad programming.
To become an accredited engineering program in Canada, there has always been a strong requirement for a scientific background. This first created problems for computer engineering programs in Canada to become accredited, so they added courses on things like the physical properties of silicon, etc. to meet this requirement. Electrical engineering, of course, has thermodynamics, etc.
Software engineering has this problem of needing to incorporate science courses into the curriculum. Also, the field of software engineering isn't considered to have matured *as much* as more traditional disciplines. I'm pretty sure that there are accredited programs and you can be a software engineer in some provinces now. These things don't happen overnight.
I would like to have as much confidence in a piece of software as I do in a bridge, but we're not at that point yet. I do think we're getting closer. At this point, very little software is really "engineered" in the rigorous sense. Software that is tends to be much more expensive, and much more reliable. Go figure.
Most software buyers don't want to pay the extra expense for the extra quality at this point. Of course, if you're purchasing a flight control system for an aircraft, you probably have deeper pockets and more stringent requirements.
People are very confused about electricity. My favorite is, "it's not voltage that's dangerous, it's current that kills." I'm not sure who was the first to say that, but here's a thought experiment for you:
- On the one hand, here's a 24VDC, 20 amp circuit
- On the other hand, here's a 575VAC - 3 phase, 1 amp circuit (~1HP)
Which one is safe to touch?
Realize that V=IR. Let's say R is the resistance from your left hand to your right hand (through your heart). It's a constant. Therefore, volts is proportional to amps, so more voltage = more amps = more dead.
If you use the David Allen "Getting Things Done" system (I thought all IT professionals had read that book), then you just open up your @Work, @Anywhere, @Phone, @Online, @Computer lists and pick something out of there. You can't seriously have NOTHING to do, can you?
I would think that having nothing to do is like winning world of warcraft.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn, I meant "accent", not "accept".
That reminds me of the "neodogs" in Heinlein's Starship Troopers (the book, not the horrible movie). They were genetically modified dogs that were 4 times as smart is regular dogs, and could actually speak, although you apparently had to get used to their accept because they had a kind of cleft palate (sp?). They were used mainly for scouting.
If I remember correctly, they didn't do very well against the bugs though...
Wouldn't Google Sky be more useful if you could enter a lat/long, and it could give you a picture of the sky from that location at a given time, related to NSEW, etc.? Then you could actually see that the bright object in the SE sky in the morning really is Venus, etc.
The problem with it currently is that there's no frame of reference. On Google Earth, you generally look at everything from some frame of reference, like you start with your house or the Eiffel Tower or Hoover Dam and start looking around from there.
That's getting to be an old stereotype/joke. For instance, here's my history of programming languages in chronological order for the past 15 years (since mid-high-school):
- QuickBASIC
- 8086 Assembly
- C++
- C
- 68000 Assembly
- Perl
- Pascal
- PHP
- Java
- C again
- Ladder Logic
- VB6
- ASP
- VB.NET Compact Framework
- ASP.NET
- VB.NET
At this point, from what I've seen, working in VB.NET is easier than working in C#.NET because the intellisense is better. Now, throw SQL in there and you can see that it's more about using either the right tool for the job, or the tool that management has declared we're going to use for the job. Ultimately, the algorithms and data structures you use are universal. Some languages have specialized uses, and others are general purpose. VB6 had a specialized use: it was a rapid application development environment. It evolved from the natural realization that for many simple programming tasks, focusing on saving a programmer's time is much more cost effective than focusing on saving a few CPU cycles.
Let's say you're in the government and you want to discredit your opponent. All you have to do is make up a story about them and post it on wikileaks, and everyone will go around repeating it like it's the truth. Won't this be fun?
Which made me think of a great strategy. You see a cell phone turn on in the middle of the night... just give the number a ring to see who answers"
"I only heard it ring once, then it went offline. I wonder what happened."
I have a theory of my own:
The Taliban may be using roadside bombs that are detonated by cell phones. They may be trying to mask the position of these devices which are probably deployed at night and the cell phone gets turned on when the device is deployed. If you're monitoring cell traffic and you see a device turn on in the middle of the night right beside a highway, you have a suspected IED.
That's a good point. It's kind of like getting caught in a game of tag, or getting hit with the ball in dodge-ball. You know you're out, so you take a deep breath and relax a bit.
It seems to stop being my computer whenever another Sims 2 expansion pack comes out... funny how that works!
This isn't terribly surprising. In the military you learn the principles of why things are seen. The entire concept is about understanding that perception is very much about expectation. For instance, one thing you're taught is that position has a lot to do with it. If you see a large object on a road, your brain will tend to see it as a vehicle, even if it's not. Similarly, you can open the door of your fridge and not "see" the ketchup on the shelf because you were expecting to find it in the door.
There are a whole bunch of pre-requisites required to form a contract. One of them is that the acts carried out by both parties have to be legal. If they are not, then no contract was deemed to have existed between the parties.
I believe that the X-Prize only required the craft to reach 100 km, which is kind of the accepted division line between space and not-space. It has something to do with the physics of spaceflight factoring more into the equations than the physics of aerodynamics above that altitude.
To actually achieve orbit, not only does it need to reach this altitude, but also move horizontally at probably over 20,000 miles per hours once it gets there.
* The so called "Underwater stage"? Supposedly this was cut in lieu of your creature moving from cell to the beach...
:)
* Flying critters, or otherwise critters with wings?
This is Will Wright we're talking about. These kinds of things will be reserved for expansion packs. You didn't think he was going to sell the you *whole* game for that price, did you?
Did I miss that memo? Hasn't this always been a serious threat, to all major nations?
I figured what they meant was, "this is justification to maintain funding at cold-war levels".
Canadian men would just laugh in your face.
Well, as a *married* Canadian man, all I can say is, "where do I sign up?"
If this guy was serious about proving his idea, he could just publish a detailed design of the machine (after patenting it to protect himself) and let other people verify it independently. It sounds to me like the same old hoax.
Strictly speaking, engineers don't consider math to be a science. Math is used as a tool to help us develop some scientific models.
think you're not giving enough credit to the materials science aspect of electrical engineering. Control engineering, which is probably the most important coding-based application of EE industrially, requires a fairly thorough knowledge of not only the processes you're trying to automate, but the behavior of the control hardware itself.
Actually, I am a controls engineer and have been since graduating from Comp. Eng. in 2000. While I can attest that the hardware design is generally "engineered", the controls software rarely is. In many, if not most cases in industry, the controls software development is started too late in the process and most systems are installed on the plant floor with software that barely downloads to the controller without faulting it. The program is usually fleshed out and debugged during the startup phase, unfortunately.
Note that this is not the case with OEM machines (where a company just sells one type of standard machine over and over), but in almost all custom machines I've seen installed, most of the "software development" gets done onsite after the equipment is in place. Also, in many cases it is written by non-engineers and non-software developers. Sometimes it's written by electricians. Certainly, after you leave the machine, it's normally modified regularly by electricians, and sometimes by the end customer's engineering department.
The firmware on the controllers that runs the user application is typically quite well tested and reviewed, but even leading vendors such as Allen-Bradley have only recently started using CMM for software development. Certainly there have been plenty of bugs found in deployed firmware, and they have been fixed over time.
Now in Canada at least, the "safety" components of the machine (both hardware and software) have to pass a Pre-Start Review (PSR) that is signed by an engineer. Some components of the safety system can now reside in software, but those are specially standardized and certified modules that run on redundant processors and are locked with a password by the signing engineer. Those parts can't be modified. Certified safety components and systems are designed in such a way that any single component failure will be detected and the equipment will stop, and can't be restarted until the failure has been corrected. Specifically it only applies to the safety of the operators, not necessarily to maintenance personnel (who can always remove physical guarding, etc.), and not to the machine itself which is always capable of destroying itself through bad programming.
To become an accredited engineering program in Canada, there has always been a strong requirement for a scientific background. This first created problems for computer engineering programs in Canada to become accredited, so they added courses on things like the physical properties of silicon, etc. to meet this requirement. Electrical engineering, of course, has thermodynamics, etc.
Software engineering has this problem of needing to incorporate science courses into the curriculum. Also, the field of software engineering isn't considered to have matured *as much* as more traditional disciplines. I'm pretty sure that there are accredited programs and you can be a software engineer in some provinces now. These things don't happen overnight.
I would like to have as much confidence in a piece of software as I do in a bridge, but we're not at that point yet. I do think we're getting closer. At this point, very little software is really "engineered" in the rigorous sense. Software that is tends to be much more expensive, and much more reliable. Go figure.
Most software buyers don't want to pay the extra expense for the extra quality at this point. Of course, if you're purchasing a flight control system for an aircraft, you probably have deeper pockets and more stringent requirements.
At some point I think they'd have to figure out how to replicate more bricks out of recycled plastic. Then you'd REALLY have a goo problem...
Given the obscurity of everything on that Wikipedia page, I'm tempted to ask if you wrote it just before posting your comment. ;)
Obviously they're not talking about all engineers. As everyone knows:
- Electrical, chemical and mechanical engineers build bombs
- Civil engineers build targets
People are very confused about electricity. My favorite is, "it's not voltage that's dangerous, it's current that kills." I'm not sure who was the first to say that, but here's a thought experiment for you:
- On the one hand, here's a 24VDC, 20 amp circuit
- On the other hand, here's a 575VAC - 3 phase, 1 amp circuit (~1HP)
Which one is safe to touch?
Realize that V=IR. Let's say R is the resistance from your left hand to your right hand (through your heart). It's a constant. Therefore, volts is proportional to amps, so more voltage = more amps = more dead.
If you use the David Allen "Getting Things Done" system (I thought all IT professionals had read that book), then you just open up your @Work, @Anywhere, @Phone, @Online, @Computer lists and pick something out of there. You can't seriously have NOTHING to do, can you?
I would think that having nothing to do is like winning world of warcraft.