Darwin simply stated that it was survival of the fit (not fittest). So it is not about each generation being superior to the previous, it is a matter of each generation reflecting the traits of the most prolific of the previous set. In harsher times this meant that those who hunted the best were more likely to have offspring that made it to mating age. In modern times groups with morals against condoms, and for large families will represent a growing share of the population, while the well educated with access to birth control, forethought about the tradeoffs of procreation, etc will have fewer kids and be a smaller slice of the population.
Since the education of your parents is a good indicator of your education level (vastly fewer college grads have dropout parents than the other way around) it is likely that lower procreation rates among the well educated will cause this to be a shrinking lice of the population.
So yes, from a simplified Darwinian perspective we are presently evolving towards a society of less educated horny Morman's and Catholics. Other countries (i.e. Euroland) have taken roughly the same breeding stock and pointed it the other way.
More than once we've run into log jams where I don't want a massive headache, but others in the crowd really have their hearts on seeing the lame hollywood flop in 3D. A simple set of either RH only or LH only polarized lenses would be great!
I RTFA, but didn't find the results of their calculation. The old method yielded 67% of the effect, but they didn't say what the new method resulted in (other than get the "right" answer). Also I'd want to know error bars. Does the new answer +/- error bars overlap with the detected phenomena within the error bars of it's value?
"Guess who wrote the operating system that's running on my Motorola DVR from Verizon FiOS? Hint, it's a rather large company located in the Pacific Northwest."
Really?! No wonder mine locks up and fritzes out so often! i figured it was just that Verizon paid some hack to put it together (apparently they did), since it was such a huge letdown from our 6 year old TiVO in terms of polish, stability, and general user experience. Boy that explains a lot!
Ipods didn't replace desktops and laptops, so I don't see why Microsofts logic holds up?
Apple has been a niche player for almost it's entire life. It managed to get great profits from it's mac fad that has yet to really "catch on". It made megabucks on ipods, and then came to dominate the portable music player arena, but given the high end nature of most of their play (well till the nano and shuffle were rolled out) it didn't appear to me that total market domination was their actual goal, but rather a byproduct of making a good/profitable product that just worked, and sneaking in a little monopolistic spin along the way too (wonder who they learned that from...).
Heck, if Apple only ever slurped away 10% of the consumer e-widget market with their tablet, it would be plenty enough to make it worth their while. Unlike Microsoft they set themselves up to capture both the software and hardware profits (well, except with the Xbox, one of the few bright spots in MS these days). Apple realizes it is better to be a profitable well regarded 10-20% player with high margins than a big hulking 80% player in the throes of irrelevance and decline.
Need we ask what the pundits predicted for the iphone looking 4 years out this early in it's life? Sure seems to me that in the technology arena that 4 years is WAY too early to make big predictions, heck in 4 years MS could be bankrupt and Apple could have been split up over antitrust issues.
Oh well, anything to fill the pages in between the ads of you magazine...
"The best solution would be to run 240VDC to the wall and then have a step-down transformer in the form of a power brick or the like for your end devices. Since the brick no longer needs to be a rectifier, its construction is a lot simpler."
Ummm, what?
AC voltage conversion: Copper windings on a ferrous core. Easily made 95-99% efficient depending on guage of copper used, core materials, etc. Lifespans of 50-100 years are common thanks to simplicity, lower current densities, etc. At the final stage of used you take a modest voltage (120V AC) and convert down to DC if needed, or just use it as AC for driving things like induction motors (which have no brushes to wear out life DC motors do).
DC voltage conversion: DC-DC converters REQUIRE rectifiers. You must initially chop the DC input into an AC waveform, which is fed through a rectifier, followed by an LC filter (vast oversimplification). There are about as many voltages needed for electronics as you have fingers on your hands and toes on your feet, and most products internally run on MANY voltages, so you have multiple DC-DC converters to spew out all of these.
DC vs. AC is a vast over simplification. At one point they talk about tying in solar cells and wind turbines that output DC. But what voltage? AC handles voltage conversion easily and efficiently with transformers. DC usually loses 10-20% going from one voltage to another (or one polarity to another), and in the middle it is converted to an AC signal then back. So while it makes a good sound bite, such stunts are a mere distraction, and reek of ignorance on the universities part.
Managers are given huge leeway in negotiating salaries for new hires, including signing bonuses, relocation, stock options, etc. New hires represent a huge gamble, so the return on that investment is really hard to assure.
Managers are given very little leeway in giving out salary increases, cash bonuses, stock options, etc. (unless you are at the top, funny enough). Existing employees are a known commodity, those bonuses are based on much better understood performance.
So long as the dogma in HR/management that permeates corporate USA continues to fail to reward proven the winners in their own ranks less than they can be rewarded for jumping ship we will continue to have loyalty problems, which inevitably drives the vicious cycle of companies not hiring for the long term (i.e. the harsh experience hurdle new grads face), and employees feeling the need to job surf just to get the raises and bonuses they feel they deserve.
We've seen too many times over in the last decade (or three) that these powerful interests are pretty darn immune. Now and then someone high up either pisses off the rest, or is thrown under the bus and the perception of justice is maintained, thus muting the pitchforks long enough to snub any momentum. Sadly these guys could be found shooting orphaned kids to clear out foreclosed houses and they'd still get away with blaming it on "paperwork" or some such BS.
So, yeah, great, another treasure trove reminding me just how rigged our "free" society is, and another false circus to watch work through the worthless media system. More depression. More pointlessness. Take your loaf of bread home and feign thankfulness that the power elite have let you eat for another day.
I can think of very few degrees that allow you to be effective from day one.
Teaching degrees come the closest I know of, but even there most first year teachers tell of the horrors of unpreparedness they endure.
Degrees are mostly supposed to give you the tools and framework. The specifics of a job give you the experience needed to be good at some subsection of what your got in school.
The Analog devices ones from a few years back included an onboard reference (to allow single supply operation), and an on board buffer amplifier with externally settable gain (i.e. integrated op-amp). The 4 cent sensor still requires precision op-amps, nulling trim pots, etc to get a usable sensor. Don't forget packaging to protect the element from kinks, moisture, etc.
BUT, the most important thing about the accelerometers from Analog I used was they were laser trimmed for 0G, and used a very cool sense mechanism. The sensor was a micro-machined silicon mass on springs with a capacitive force/sense system that detects a perturbation of position by using a 1 MHz AC pump signal with a capacitive bridge and synchronous demodulation feedback. The mass is forced to be stationary by applying a DC electrical voltage on the capacitive sense plates, imparting a force 100% proportional to the applied DC voltage (i.e. purely LINEAR voltage to force relationship).
So what? Their system keeps the mass centered, thus making micro-machined springs that hold the mass irrelevant to the output voltage. In other words the NON-LINEARITY of crap springs is servoed out, and the output voltage is not an open loop measurement with gain, but a true measure of the force being applied to the tiny little mass by the acceleration trying to be measured.
Paper as a spring is not going to be repeatable from batch to batch, is subject to moisture, subject to fatigue, hysteresis, etc. Mad props for new uses of paper, but practical as a replacement for the devices it mocks it is not.
I'd argue that its opponents are hand selected to be Jeopardy-specific savants as well.
From what I saw, it was a great case of programmers getting schooled and having to rethink how to handle common english. If the same system could be applied to search, I might have a fighting chance at getting decent search results for obscure requests. The example they showed for Watson giving 9/11 as an answer based on its overwhelming frequency of appearance is the exact problem many of us face when say searching for widgets with even minimal overlap with pop culture (i.e. searching for the parts to make a widget instead of the widget itself). If similar programmatic changes to google could be made there would be much rejoicing (by me anyway).
I tried to read the link. It was long and rambling. Using Napster as your starting point for a discussion will immediately turn off your target audience. Go back to your unabomber shack you wingnut.
Pay as you go with light usage averages under $10 a month for me.
Cheapest smart phones with a plan are roughly $100/mo, plus a 2 year contract. You have to either be pretty addicted or pretty dumb to want that.
When they get around to letting me buy a gigabyte for $5-10 bucks as a pay as you go I might consider it, but right now the data plans are psychotic, the contract terms are draconian, and the non-subsidized prices are insane.
You are free to say anything you want, and free to feel the consequences.
Folks on the private side can get fired for not following a companies PR policies on even non-defamatory public comments (usually translated to mean that anything you say publicly about a company while employed there must be approved first). Public entities are a little different, and are covered by different laws, but the general rule stands that bad mouthing the hand that feeds you is not smart.
Whistle blowing for real grievances, safety issues, and illegal acts are a different story, and it is unlikely that laws such as this preempt whistle blowing laws.
Unless the submitted materials actually made a claim of engineering authority, i.e. a stamped as being approved by a Professional Engineer (PE), then there is nothing wrong. In fact much engineering work is done by junior engineers, under the watchful eye of a PE, and then stamped by that PE as being approved. It is a requirement that you practice under a PE for a number of years to get your PE certification. Nothing is wrong with doing the analysis, only if it is presented fraudulently as an engineering work.
Intelligent analysis that puts a PE to shame should be welcomed. And unless it is being submitted as an engineering document, then sorry there is no foul.
Very nice comments. In short, science pays very poorly relative to the investment and expertise involved relative to many other professions.
As a microwave and RF design engineer I can fully agree with the sentiment that I would not recommend it as a career choice for anyone who isn't into it out of passion. Lots of work, modest pay, and little respect. MBA's can find work in almost any city. Scientists and engineers often must specialize to find a job, and often that means you can count the number of cities doing that work on one hand, often those are not the cheap ones to live in either (or in Texas, ick).
Foreign workers have been greatly masking the lack of scientists and engineers coming out of school, and also contributing to the problem. H1B visas keep wages down, which keep enrollment down. If more companies were truly hampered by the talent pool available in the US we'd have rising wages and rising enrollment. Not the whole problem for sure, but H1B's are masking the true extent of the problem.
Nope, not sad. Supply and demand are realities. Wish for more engineers in one hand, and shit in the other, see which fills up first.
If everyone simply went into a career doing what they loved, half the country would be artists and musicians. Good or bad, there are cost signals that help point out that if you become an artist you will have very little money, so only the most passionate or misguided people are artists today (and most of them still work a day job to augment their income from their chosen profession).
Money is a very powerful motivator that helps determine both how many folks go into a given profession, and how long they choose to stay there.
H1B visas are way too easy to get, allowing companies to distort the supply/demand curve resulting in lower average wages, and fewer US engineering graduates.
Slashdot Mirror
Darwin simply stated that it was survival of the fit (not fittest). So it is not about each generation being superior to the previous, it is a matter of each generation reflecting the traits of the most prolific of the previous set. In harsher times this meant that those who hunted the best were more likely to have offspring that made it to mating age. In modern times groups with morals against condoms, and for large families will represent a growing share of the population, while the well educated with access to birth control, forethought about the tradeoffs of procreation, etc will have fewer kids and be a smaller slice of the population.
Since the education of your parents is a good indicator of your education level (vastly fewer college grads have dropout parents than the other way around) it is likely that lower procreation rates among the well educated will cause this to be a shrinking lice of the population.
So yes, from a simplified Darwinian perspective we are presently evolving towards a society of less educated horny Morman's and Catholics. Other countries (i.e. Euroland) have taken roughly the same breeding stock and pointed it the other way.
Just saying,
There are days i envy Dilbert, his company is better run than some I have worked at.
More than once we've run into log jams where I don't want a massive headache, but others in the crowd really have their hearts on seeing the lame hollywood flop in 3D. A simple set of either RH only or LH only polarized lenses would be great!
I RTFA, but didn't find the results of their calculation. The old method yielded 67% of the effect, but they didn't say what the new method resulted in (other than get the "right" answer). Also I'd want to know error bars. Does the new answer +/- error bars overlap with the detected phenomena within the error bars of it's value?
"Guess who wrote the operating system that's running on my Motorola DVR from Verizon FiOS? Hint, it's a rather large company located in the Pacific Northwest."
Really?! No wonder mine locks up and fritzes out so often! i figured it was just that Verizon paid some hack to put it together (apparently they did), since it was such a huge letdown from our 6 year old TiVO in terms of polish, stability, and general user experience. Boy that explains a lot!
Ipods didn't replace desktops and laptops, so I don't see why Microsofts logic holds up?
Apple has been a niche player for almost it's entire life. It managed to get great profits from it's mac fad that has yet to really "catch on". It made megabucks on ipods, and then came to dominate the portable music player arena, but given the high end nature of most of their play (well till the nano and shuffle were rolled out) it didn't appear to me that total market domination was their actual goal, but rather a byproduct of making a good/profitable product that just worked, and sneaking in a little monopolistic spin along the way too (wonder who they learned that from...).
Heck, if Apple only ever slurped away 10% of the consumer e-widget market with their tablet, it would be plenty enough to make it worth their while. Unlike Microsoft they set themselves up to capture both the software and hardware profits (well, except with the Xbox, one of the few bright spots in MS these days). Apple realizes it is better to be a profitable well regarded 10-20% player with high margins than a big hulking 80% player in the throes of irrelevance and decline.
Need we ask what the pundits predicted for the iphone looking 4 years out this early in it's life? Sure seems to me that in the technology arena that 4 years is WAY too early to make big predictions, heck in 4 years MS could be bankrupt and Apple could have been split up over antitrust issues.
Oh well, anything to fill the pages in between the ads of you magazine...
Perhaps we need a new law that states that comparison to Einstein for smartness immediately means you lose/fail.
Einstein as a measuring stick is both cliched and flawed.
"The best solution would be to run 240VDC to the wall and then have a step-down transformer in the form of a power brick or the like for your end devices. Since the brick no longer needs to be a rectifier, its construction is a lot simpler."
Ummm, what?
AC voltage conversion: Copper windings on a ferrous core. Easily made 95-99% efficient depending on guage of copper used, core materials, etc. Lifespans of 50-100 years are common thanks to simplicity, lower current densities, etc. At the final stage of used you take a modest voltage (120V AC) and convert down to DC if needed, or just use it as AC for driving things like induction motors (which have no brushes to wear out life DC motors do).
DC voltage conversion: DC-DC converters REQUIRE rectifiers. You must initially chop the DC input into an AC waveform, which is fed through a rectifier, followed by an LC filter (vast oversimplification). There are about as many voltages needed for electronics as you have fingers on your hands and toes on your feet, and most products internally run on MANY voltages, so you have multiple DC-DC converters to spew out all of these.
DC vs. AC is a vast over simplification. At one point they talk about tying in solar cells and wind turbines that output DC. But what voltage? AC handles voltage conversion easily and efficiently with transformers. DC usually loses 10-20% going from one voltage to another (or one polarity to another), and in the middle it is converted to an AC signal then back. So while it makes a good sound bite, such stunts are a mere distraction, and reek of ignorance on the universities part.
Managers are given huge leeway in negotiating salaries for new hires, including signing bonuses, relocation, stock options, etc. New hires represent a huge gamble, so the return on that investment is really hard to assure.
Managers are given very little leeway in giving out salary increases, cash bonuses, stock options, etc. (unless you are at the top, funny enough). Existing employees are a known commodity, those bonuses are based on much better understood performance.
So long as the dogma in HR/management that permeates corporate USA continues to fail to reward proven the winners in their own ranks less than they can be rewarded for jumping ship we will continue to have loyalty problems, which inevitably drives the vicious cycle of companies not hiring for the long term (i.e. the harsh experience hurdle new grads face), and employees feeling the need to job surf just to get the raises and bonuses they feel they deserve.
We've seen too many times over in the last decade (or three) that these powerful interests are pretty darn immune. Now and then someone high up either pisses off the rest, or is thrown under the bus and the perception of justice is maintained, thus muting the pitchforks long enough to snub any momentum. Sadly these guys could be found shooting orphaned kids to clear out foreclosed houses and they'd still get away with blaming it on "paperwork" or some such BS.
So, yeah, great, another treasure trove reminding me just how rigged our "free" society is, and another false circus to watch work through the worthless media system. More depression. More pointlessness. Take your loaf of bread home and feign thankfulness that the power elite have let you eat for another day.
However, as a wise man once said:
"Don't call a man a fool, borrow money from him."
I can think of very few degrees that allow you to be effective from day one.
Teaching degrees come the closest I know of, but even there most first year teachers tell of the horrors of unpreparedness they endure.
Degrees are mostly supposed to give you the tools and framework. The specifics of a job give you the experience needed to be good at some subsection of what your got in school.
(1 MHz AC) pump vs. 1 MHz (AC pump)
I should have said 1 MHz LO, and IF feedback instead of DC. I have trouble adjusting my terminology to more lay terms, sorry.
Most accelerometers are not just a sense element.
The Analog devices ones from a few years back included an onboard reference (to allow single supply operation), and an on board buffer amplifier with externally settable gain (i.e. integrated op-amp). The 4 cent sensor still requires precision op-amps, nulling trim pots, etc to get a usable sensor. Don't forget packaging to protect the element from kinks, moisture, etc.
BUT, the most important thing about the accelerometers from Analog I used was they were laser trimmed for 0G, and used a very cool sense mechanism. The sensor was a micro-machined silicon mass on springs with a capacitive force/sense system that detects a perturbation of position by using a 1 MHz AC pump signal with a capacitive bridge and synchronous demodulation feedback. The mass is forced to be stationary by applying a DC electrical voltage on the capacitive sense plates, imparting a force 100% proportional to the applied DC voltage (i.e. purely LINEAR voltage to force relationship).
So what? Their system keeps the mass centered, thus making micro-machined springs that hold the mass irrelevant to the output voltage. In other words the NON-LINEARITY of crap springs is servoed out, and the output voltage is not an open loop measurement with gain, but a true measure of the force being applied to the tiny little mass by the acceleration trying to be measured.
Paper as a spring is not going to be repeatable from batch to batch, is subject to moisture, subject to fatigue, hysteresis, etc. Mad props for new uses of paper, but practical as a replacement for the devices it mocks it is not.
I'd argue that its opponents are hand selected to be Jeopardy-specific savants as well.
From what I saw, it was a great case of programmers getting schooled and having to rethink how to handle common english. If the same system could be applied to search, I might have a fighting chance at getting decent search results for obscure requests. The example they showed for Watson giving 9/11 as an answer based on its overwhelming frequency of appearance is the exact problem many of us face when say searching for widgets with even minimal overlap with pop culture (i.e. searching for the parts to make a widget instead of the widget itself). If similar programmatic changes to google could be made there would be much rejoicing (by me anyway).
I tried to read the link. It was long and rambling. Using Napster as your starting point for a discussion will immediately turn off your target audience. Go back to your unabomber shack you wingnut.
Pay as you go with light usage averages under $10 a month for me.
Cheapest smart phones with a plan are roughly $100/mo, plus a 2 year contract. You have to either be pretty addicted or pretty dumb to want that.
When they get around to letting me buy a gigabyte for $5-10 bucks as a pay as you go I might consider it, but right now the data plans are psychotic, the contract terms are draconian, and the non-subsidized prices are insane.
You are free to say anything you want, and free to feel the consequences.
Folks on the private side can get fired for not following a companies PR policies on even non-defamatory public comments (usually translated to mean that anything you say publicly about a company while employed there must be approved first). Public entities are a little different, and are covered by different laws, but the general rule stands that bad mouthing the hand that feeds you is not smart.
Whistle blowing for real grievances, safety issues, and illegal acts are a different story, and it is unlikely that laws such as this preempt whistle blowing laws.
Unless the submitted materials actually made a claim of engineering authority, i.e. a stamped as being approved by a Professional Engineer (PE), then there is nothing wrong. In fact much engineering work is done by junior engineers, under the watchful eye of a PE, and then stamped by that PE as being approved. It is a requirement that you practice under a PE for a number of years to get your PE certification. Nothing is wrong with doing the analysis, only if it is presented fraudulently as an engineering work.
Intelligent analysis that puts a PE to shame should be welcomed. And unless it is being submitted as an engineering document, then sorry there is no foul.
Intimidation pure and simple.
Empires generally don't fail gracefully. We can only hope that as America crumbles that we do so as gracefully as the USSR did.
Very nice comments. In short, science pays very poorly relative to the investment and expertise involved relative to many other professions.
As a microwave and RF design engineer I can fully agree with the sentiment that I would not recommend it as a career choice for anyone who isn't into it out of passion. Lots of work, modest pay, and little respect. MBA's can find work in almost any city. Scientists and engineers often must specialize to find a job, and often that means you can count the number of cities doing that work on one hand, often those are not the cheap ones to live in either (or in Texas, ick).
Foreign workers have been greatly masking the lack of scientists and engineers coming out of school, and also contributing to the problem. H1B visas keep wages down, which keep enrollment down. If more companies were truly hampered by the talent pool available in the US we'd have rising wages and rising enrollment. Not the whole problem for sure, but H1B's are masking the true extent of the problem.
Nope, not sad. Supply and demand are realities. Wish for more engineers in one hand, and shit in the other, see which fills up first.
If everyone simply went into a career doing what they loved, half the country would be artists and musicians. Good or bad, there are cost signals that help point out that if you become an artist you will have very little money, so only the most passionate or misguided people are artists today (and most of them still work a day job to augment their income from their chosen profession).
Money is a very powerful motivator that helps determine both how many folks go into a given profession, and how long they choose to stay there.
H1B visas are way too easy to get, allowing companies to distort the supply/demand curve resulting in lower average wages, and fewer US engineering graduates.