You sir are a disgrace to humanity. Not only did this action cause the loss of decades worth of human effort and research. It might have delayed treatment for several diseases. And it has ruined human lives cause of that. Not to mention the graduate students who will be unable to finish their thesis cause they ran out of funding and lost years of their life's work cause of a bunch of idiots.
No, it is actually unfair and holds back development. I've seen total idiots get catapulted into a position simply cause they were of a particular race or female (or both). It's bad for business, it's bad for progress, and it's just discrimination really. So they're fighting discrimination (though in my opinion there isn't any) with discrimination. Is it that hard to apply the same hiring standards for everybody?
Problem is that in the technology business women often simply can't perform as well as men. It's common knowledge that men tend to perform better in abstract thinking, which is necessary in many parts of high-technology business. Good luck developing algorithms, debugging complex designs, etc. without those skills. I simply haven't met a lot of women who perform well at that. I think it's about a 10% group of those that make it into the technology industry that performs well at it. No problem getting beaten by any of those, but damn I'd hate getting pushed aside for somebody who is a plain idiot and gets hired due to gender equality laws (see next paragraph to read what I mean).
A good example is one of the women who was in my class back in school; She had no confidence (didn't dare to turn on a power supply when something was hooked up to it), didn't even know how to hook up a LED now that I come to think of it (fatal flaw as EE I'd say), only passed theoretical exams she could study by heart and for the others she cheated or took several attempts to get through. For labs the professors had to go easy on her cause else the gender equality number for the EE department would plummet (she was the only one that year). So she got let through due to gender "equality" laws, not based on performance in practical or theoretical skills. Sad thing is, she got a M.Sc. due to that and now wants to work in the medical industry. Luckily that market is flooded so it isn't working out for her, because I really think she'll kill somebody at some point due to her incompetence if she does end up in the medical industry; That's gender equality for ya.
For simple tasks they're fine. Now go and try to do something useful on them. I've also seen people attempt to write emails or even reports on them. It's sad to see, and while they have a laptop somewhere near them they still refuse to take it out simply cause they want to use the tablet. It's a disgrace for humanity. It's another fad that I hope will die down soon. It's like the netbooks that they said everybody would have by now. Most people I know who have one have downgraded it down to travel laptop or movie player. Only use I've found for those are presentations, mainly cause the battery lasts so long. But normal laptops are catching up with them in that area.so it's becoming semi useless. Additionally the processor is too slow to live stream high definition video. But to get back to the touchscreen keyboards. They work for typing small text messages. Then again I still give a preference to being social in public. Maybe I'm too old fashioned.
Well yes, but you still need tactile feedback to type quickly. Just doesn't work well without feeling the edges of the key under your fingers. Using a tablet to type is very time inefficient.
Well yes, we also use them as remote control for lab equipment. But the moment you want to visualize complex data you still need to have a computer somewhere to do it. And at that point I found that I can better use a laptop since it can do it without having to mess with remote viewers. Can't run MATLAB on a tablet. And lets be honest, Professional applications still are far more important than home use when considering these things. So I simply drag my good old 15" thinkpad along, I've had a tablet since the early move and I've bought a new one every time the old one became insufficient to run the latest software. But I simply don't see any use for it other than using it as remote control for my media centre at home. For reading books I hate LCD and OLED screens, can't help it. Guess for powerpoint slides during presentations they might be useful if you don't want to wear glasses.
So yeah, I hope this "tablet is all you need" fad goes over quickly and people get some common sense again.
A heat pump transfers thermal energy, it doesn't convert electricity.
And yeah, but a mainframe will often be restarted once in a while for maintenance. Can't afford those going offline unscheduled due to unexpected hardware or software failure.
I'd hate to be typing equations in TeX formatting on a tablet keyboard... Touch screens are inefficient and need to die eventually, we simply haven't found the right solution to the problem according to most people. In my opinion it comes under the form of the keyboard but oh well. And tablets will never be useful for professional activities, for starters they lack the processing power to go through a few gigabytes of data quickly and the quick and easy to use interface. And that's becoming a common requirement these days.
Nothing wrong with netware and pentium 4s. The former's stability record might only come in danger once somebody bothers to leave NetBSD running for over a decade. And the latter is one of the most efficient ways to convert electricity to heat, no need for central heating when you have a pentium 4!
I know most of my class mates hated analog quite badly; I never quite got why they hated it so much. Analog circuits can be very elegant compared to digital. Nothing is brute forced, the component parameters can vary so much so care has to be taken to ensure stability. Probably why I ended up liking RF electronics more than most of my class mates.
But yeah, people often forget that digital gates are still based on analog amplifiers.
Yeah, the skill level in Asian countries for things like "large scale" RF design (antennas, power amplifiers, etc.) is sub par. In fact I've heard only European universities still seem to teach that consistently. It's not an easy subject, a lot of very expensive equipment is necessary and you can't even begin to imagine the amount of time you need to work on the subject to gain some feeling for it. EM waves don't always behave as your brain would expect them to.
As a fairly recent graduate I can say the following about this. Many of my class mates were idiots. Very very big idiots.
So why do they make it to the last year? Well quite simple, else they're going to shut down the program due to it not having a sufficient quantity of students. There were 8 students planning to finish their EE degree. Another problem is that governments demand a certain quantity of girls. Frankly a lot of girls that started in the first year weren't fit for it but got through anyway simply to avoid punishment due to gender equality laws. Combined with complaints from industry that they don't have enough engineers some schools lower standards sometimes. Luckily I know a couple of professors were (and hopefully still are) fighting that trend. Every time a subject was made easier they made a mandatory subject harder in an attempt to filter out idiots. It worked pretty well, I've seen people get caught on the same subject for years.
So what have I observed amongst my brethren? Many of them didn't grasp basic analog design at all, they were useless at HDL, and lets not even get started on DSP. Many subjects were scrapped due to lack of funding or interest. It's now automatically assumed by the schools that nobody will ever have to do any integrated analog design. They assume hitting the synthesize button in a random Cadence program will do it all for you. I got really annoyed by that one and after some minor campaigning it did sort of get considered for the next few years. So yeah, things we didn't get include: integrated design (though I followed a few seminars on that subject), SCADA systems, (de)modulator design (was discussed in a theoretical fashion in the assumption that they were smart enough to translate it into a circuit themselves), etc. Of people that graduated in my year it's safe to safe to say that only 2 of us deserved the legal title of engineer. This is also why the other 6 ended up as glorified sales people. That's also the main category where you'll find these guys/girls. It's mainly these people who can't find jobs. There's not much point in hiring an EE, having to pay him/her an EE's paycheck (which I must admit isn't small), and then concluding that they don't know a thing about electronics.
PS: I know one of my class mates in a masters program had trouble hooking up LEDs to a power supply.
5) Jam his WiFi.
That's what I did with my neighbour who stole my WiFi consistently. Stupid script kiddy that he is, he didn't realise I like playing with antennas and transmitters. Built a noise generator in the 2.4 GHz band, grabbed a minicircuits amplifier with considerable power (but still within legal limits) and a log periodic antenna that works in the 2.4 GHz band. A week later he apologised. Mind you, you should only try this in areas with very few people, you can easily jam a 100 by 1000 meter area with such a setup.
You gave the solution yourself, high frequency. Additionally the burns are due to arcing when you pull your hand away. And what did he learn from that? Never steal things that belong to my deceased girlfriend.
Nah it wasn't powerful enough to kill somebody, made sure of that. Never sufficient charge in the circuit for a fatal current combined with very high frequency discharge. Just hurts very badly. Additionally thieves aren't human, they're sub-human scum that deserves to die anyway. Why is it so hard to leave other people's things alone for certain people?
Had a problem a while back of an idiot trying to steal things from my desk drawers. Given that the drawers are made out of metal I decided to put some high voltage love into it. Between my drawer handles and the ground there's now a constant 170kV voltage differential. Caught the thief red handed due to him screaming from pain when he tried to steal something again. The skin of his hands was white and black due to the burns. Why are people stupid enough to ignore stickers saying "Warning: High Voltage - Touch at own risk"? Thieves aren't the smartest of people...
So yeah, consider electrifying things. Just be sure to put up sufficient warning signs. Criminals only feel sorry for getting caught and going through some serious pain. Other options like guard dogs, very loud alarm,... aren't bad either. Saw something interesting a while ago that caused a fog tear gas, though you wouldn't want the trigger on that one to be sensitive.
See my comment above to see why this is the common response. Additionally if you treat us as arrogant pricks we tend to behave as such.
As far as I'm aware nobody I ever worked with has called me an arrogant prick except maybe for a manager last year. Though that's probably because I made him look bad in front of some of his colleagues more than a few times. Just love arguing with MBA's about resource management. But yeah, except for management in their ivory tower: We all eat lunch together, we meet each other after hours,...
So yes, us EEs are so arrogant that we totally don't fit in. As far as I know the year we graduated there were two arrogant guys out of 17. I've had more trouble with psychology graduates thinking they can read people. And don't get me started about management types.
Does make me curious though, what sort of job do you do for a living?
And here we go again, disagree with the Arduino folks and you're the devil. To use the analogy somebody else used: So you wish to compare a frozen meal put in a microwave oven with a homemade dinner?
Sure, call us obnoxious, arrogant,... Turns out that these days it's considered electronics to just slap two "lego blocks" together with a slightly modified example code. Believe it or not, there are levels of putting things together that require very different levels of insight. People are amazed when they wish to go into production these days that they can't use an Arduino as core of their system. It's one thing to slap together some modules, it's a different story to get a reliable result that is energy efficient and economical. The difference you'll see is quite remarkable and is something most Arduino users won't be able to appreciate. It's often in the little things that most people don't pay attention to. Another thing is the analog side of the story. Most folks on the internet seem to think going all digital is the way, the elegance of simple analog solutions is amazing. Like the software defined radio projects you so often see. They brute force it by getting an ADC with an as high as possible sample rate instead of considering a more elegant solution like a Tayloe detector. Though you'd have to avoid the US due to the patent still being valid on that one.
So yes, the hostile, arrogant and "anti-social" behaviour does have a source. People with an EE degree see people claiming they can do the same with their Arduino board; While these people don't even have a clue what's going on beneath the surface. Let alone design the microcontroller itself. People seem to forget that we also have to do those sort of things. Worst part about this: Managers actually believe the entire Arduino talk and think it is feasible to take an Arduino into the production stage of a larger product.
PS: I do approve of Arduino's as quick and dirty prototyping tools for things like data logging a sensor you intend to use in a new design. Cheaper than using a logic analyzer's pattern generator and a lot more mobile. I just don't think it should be called building, because in 99% of the cases it's slapping pre-made modules together without knowing anything about what's going on.
Actually, I'm not sure what college/university you went to. Here you weren't able to pass basic electronics without being able to solder properly.
And since when do we order more parts? Minimizing part count is general practice. Less parts, less things that can go wrong. Also, since when do we have money to hire technicians? Last time I checked we only have one old technician from the vacuum tube era, and he's sick most of the days. Great guy, just don't give him anything digital or high frequent.
No, never ever claim that around EE graduates. We despise things like this being called "building". If we build a robot we carefully select components, consider several circuit layouts, battery efficient motor operation, draw circuit boards, solder everything by hand to make prototypes, redo the flawed parts,... What they did was take a few pre-made modules and stick them together with pin-headers. You could teach a 8 year old to do that. So yes, there is a very large difference in assembly and building. So you might ask why we haven't shown off hundreds of these things: Building these sort of robots is fairly easy, they just don't have any real use. A simple analog circuit can be far more elegant and useful!
What sort of antenna did you use exactly? I've considered trying it with my log-periodic antenna, though I guess it won't be directional enough. Only achieves about 11 dBi.
It does, it was very popular before satellites became common. Take a look at "EME communications". With a good directional antenna and a fairly low power transmitter you can already do it in fact.
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Napalm does though!
You sir are a disgrace to humanity. Not only did this action cause the loss of decades worth of human effort and research. It might have delayed treatment for several diseases. And it has ruined human lives cause of that. Not to mention the graduate students who will be unable to finish their thesis cause they ran out of funding and lost years of their life's work cause of a bunch of idiots.
No, it is actually unfair and holds back development. I've seen total idiots get catapulted into a position simply cause they were of a particular race or female (or both). It's bad for business, it's bad for progress, and it's just discrimination really. So they're fighting discrimination (though in my opinion there isn't any) with discrimination. Is it that hard to apply the same hiring standards for everybody?
Problem is that in the technology business women often simply can't perform as well as men. It's common knowledge that men tend to perform better in abstract thinking, which is necessary in many parts of high-technology business. Good luck developing algorithms, debugging complex designs, etc. without those skills. I simply haven't met a lot of women who perform well at that. I think it's about a 10% group of those that make it into the technology industry that performs well at it. No problem getting beaten by any of those, but damn I'd hate getting pushed aside for somebody who is a plain idiot and gets hired due to gender equality laws (see next paragraph to read what I mean).
A good example is one of the women who was in my class back in school; She had no confidence (didn't dare to turn on a power supply when something was hooked up to it), didn't even know how to hook up a LED now that I come to think of it (fatal flaw as EE I'd say), only passed theoretical exams she could study by heart and for the others she cheated or took several attempts to get through. For labs the professors had to go easy on her cause else the gender equality number for the EE department would plummet (she was the only one that year). So she got let through due to gender "equality" laws, not based on performance in practical or theoretical skills. Sad thing is, she got a M.Sc. due to that and now wants to work in the medical industry. Luckily that market is flooded so it isn't working out for her, because I really think she'll kill somebody at some point due to her incompetence if she does end up in the medical industry; That's gender equality for ya.
For simple tasks they're fine. Now go and try to do something useful on them. I've also seen people attempt to write emails or even reports on them. It's sad to see, and while they have a laptop somewhere near them they still refuse to take it out simply cause they want to use the tablet. It's a disgrace for humanity. It's another fad that I hope will die down soon. It's like the netbooks that they said everybody would have by now. Most people I know who have one have downgraded it down to travel laptop or movie player. Only use I've found for those are presentations, mainly cause the battery lasts so long. But normal laptops are catching up with them in that area.so it's becoming semi useless. Additionally the processor is too slow to live stream high definition video. But to get back to the touchscreen keyboards. They work for typing small text messages. Then again I still give a preference to being social in public. Maybe I'm too old fashioned.
Well yes, but you still need tactile feedback to type quickly. Just doesn't work well without feeling the edges of the key under your fingers. Using a tablet to type is very time inefficient.
Well yes, we also use them as remote control for lab equipment. But the moment you want to visualize complex data you still need to have a computer somewhere to do it. And at that point I found that I can better use a laptop since it can do it without having to mess with remote viewers. Can't run MATLAB on a tablet. And lets be honest, Professional applications still are far more important than home use when considering these things. So I simply drag my good old 15" thinkpad along, I've had a tablet since the early move and I've bought a new one every time the old one became insufficient to run the latest software. But I simply don't see any use for it other than using it as remote control for my media centre at home. For reading books I hate LCD and OLED screens, can't help it. Guess for powerpoint slides during presentations they might be useful if you don't want to wear glasses.
So yeah, I hope this "tablet is all you need" fad goes over quickly and people get some common sense again.
A heat pump transfers thermal energy, it doesn't convert electricity.
And yeah, but a mainframe will often be restarted once in a while for maintenance. Can't afford those going offline unscheduled due to unexpected hardware or software failure.
I'd hate to be typing equations in TeX formatting on a tablet keyboard... Touch screens are inefficient and need to die eventually, we simply haven't found the right solution to the problem according to most people. In my opinion it comes under the form of the keyboard but oh well. And tablets will never be useful for professional activities, for starters they lack the processing power to go through a few gigabytes of data quickly and the quick and easy to use interface. And that's becoming a common requirement these days.
Nothing wrong with netware and pentium 4s. The former's stability record might only come in danger once somebody bothers to leave NetBSD running for over a decade. And the latter is one of the most efficient ways to convert electricity to heat, no need for central heating when you have a pentium 4!
I know most of my class mates hated analog quite badly; I never quite got why they hated it so much. Analog circuits can be very elegant compared to digital. Nothing is brute forced, the component parameters can vary so much so care has to be taken to ensure stability. Probably why I ended up liking RF electronics more than most of my class mates.
But yeah, people often forget that digital gates are still based on analog amplifiers.
Yeah, the skill level in Asian countries for things like "large scale" RF design (antennas, power amplifiers, etc.) is sub par. In fact I've heard only European universities still seem to teach that consistently. It's not an easy subject, a lot of very expensive equipment is necessary and you can't even begin to imagine the amount of time you need to work on the subject to gain some feeling for it. EM waves don't always behave as your brain would expect them to.
As a fairly recent graduate I can say the following about this. Many of my class mates were idiots. Very very big idiots.
So why do they make it to the last year? Well quite simple, else they're going to shut down the program due to it not having a sufficient quantity of students. There were 8 students planning to finish their EE degree. Another problem is that governments demand a certain quantity of girls. Frankly a lot of girls that started in the first year weren't fit for it but got through anyway simply to avoid punishment due to gender equality laws. Combined with complaints from industry that they don't have enough engineers some schools lower standards sometimes. Luckily I know a couple of professors were (and hopefully still are) fighting that trend. Every time a subject was made easier they made a mandatory subject harder in an attempt to filter out idiots. It worked pretty well, I've seen people get caught on the same subject for years.
So what have I observed amongst my brethren? Many of them didn't grasp basic analog design at all, they were useless at HDL, and lets not even get started on DSP. Many subjects were scrapped due to lack of funding or interest. It's now automatically assumed by the schools that nobody will ever have to do any integrated analog design. They assume hitting the synthesize button in a random Cadence program will do it all for you. I got really annoyed by that one and after some minor campaigning it did sort of get considered for the next few years. So yeah, things we didn't get include: integrated design (though I followed a few seminars on that subject), SCADA systems, (de)modulator design (was discussed in a theoretical fashion in the assumption that they were smart enough to translate it into a circuit themselves), etc. Of people that graduated in my year it's safe to safe to say that only 2 of us deserved the legal title of engineer. This is also why the other 6 ended up as glorified sales people. That's also the main category where you'll find these guys/girls. It's mainly these people who can't find jobs. There's not much point in hiring an EE, having to pay him/her an EE's paycheck (which I must admit isn't small), and then concluding that they don't know a thing about electronics.
PS: I know one of my class mates in a masters program had trouble hooking up LEDs to a power supply.
I just play soft non temperamental classical music. Very calming and not distracting at all.
No, liberal means people who are interested in business interests.
5) Jam his WiFi.
That's what I did with my neighbour who stole my WiFi consistently. Stupid script kiddy that he is, he didn't realise I like playing with antennas and transmitters. Built a noise generator in the 2.4 GHz band, grabbed a minicircuits amplifier with considerable power (but still within legal limits) and a log periodic antenna that works in the 2.4 GHz band. A week later he apologised. Mind you, you should only try this in areas with very few people, you can easily jam a 100 by 1000 meter area with such a setup.
Yeah, but hacking a powerline interface isn't exactly an easy to achieve goal.
You gave the solution yourself, high frequency. Additionally the burns are due to arcing when you pull your hand away. And what did he learn from that? Never steal things that belong to my deceased girlfriend.
Nah it wasn't powerful enough to kill somebody, made sure of that. Never sufficient charge in the circuit for a fatal current combined with very high frequency discharge. Just hurts very badly. Additionally thieves aren't human, they're sub-human scum that deserves to die anyway. Why is it so hard to leave other people's things alone for certain people?
Well yeah, what I made was a bit more powerful than what you'd use for a cow fence..
Had a problem a while back of an idiot trying to steal things from my desk drawers. Given that the drawers are made out of metal I decided to put some high voltage love into it. Between my drawer handles and the ground there's now a constant 170kV voltage differential. Caught the thief red handed due to him screaming from pain when he tried to steal something again. The skin of his hands was white and black due to the burns. Why are people stupid enough to ignore stickers saying "Warning: High Voltage - Touch at own risk"? Thieves aren't the smartest of people... ... aren't bad either. Saw something interesting a while ago that caused a fog tear gas, though you wouldn't want the trigger on that one to be sensitive.
So yeah, consider electrifying things. Just be sure to put up sufficient warning signs. Criminals only feel sorry for getting caught and going through some serious pain. Other options like guard dogs, very loud alarm,
See my comment above to see why this is the common response. Additionally if you treat us as arrogant pricks we tend to behave as such. ...
As far as I'm aware nobody I ever worked with has called me an arrogant prick except maybe for a manager last year. Though that's probably because I made him look bad in front of some of his colleagues more than a few times. Just love arguing with MBA's about resource management. But yeah, except for management in their ivory tower: We all eat lunch together, we meet each other after hours,
So yes, us EEs are so arrogant that we totally don't fit in. As far as I know the year we graduated there were two arrogant guys out of 17. I've had more trouble with psychology graduates thinking they can read people. And don't get me started about management types.
Does make me curious though, what sort of job do you do for a living?
And here we go again, disagree with the Arduino folks and you're the devil. To use the analogy somebody else used: So you wish to compare a frozen meal put in a microwave oven with a homemade dinner?
... Turns out that these days it's considered electronics to just slap two "lego blocks" together with a slightly modified example code. Believe it or not, there are levels of putting things together that require very different levels of insight. People are amazed when they wish to go into production these days that they can't use an Arduino as core of their system. It's one thing to slap together some modules, it's a different story to get a reliable result that is energy efficient and economical. The difference you'll see is quite remarkable and is something most Arduino users won't be able to appreciate. It's often in the little things that most people don't pay attention to. Another thing is the analog side of the story. Most folks on the internet seem to think going all digital is the way, the elegance of simple analog solutions is amazing. Like the software defined radio projects you so often see. They brute force it by getting an ADC with an as high as possible sample rate instead of considering a more elegant solution like a Tayloe detector. Though you'd have to avoid the US due to the patent still being valid on that one.
Sure, call us obnoxious, arrogant,
So yes, the hostile, arrogant and "anti-social" behaviour does have a source. People with an EE degree see people claiming they can do the same with their Arduino board; While these people don't even have a clue what's going on beneath the surface. Let alone design the microcontroller itself. People seem to forget that we also have to do those sort of things. Worst part about this: Managers actually believe the entire Arduino talk and think it is feasible to take an Arduino into the production stage of a larger product.
PS: I do approve of Arduino's as quick and dirty prototyping tools for things like data logging a sensor you intend to use in a new design. Cheaper than using a logic analyzer's pattern generator and a lot more mobile. I just don't think it should be called building, because in 99% of the cases it's slapping pre-made modules together without knowing anything about what's going on.
Actually, I'm not sure what college/university you went to. Here you weren't able to pass basic electronics without being able to solder properly.
And since when do we order more parts? Minimizing part count is general practice. Less parts, less things that can go wrong. Also, since when do we have money to hire technicians? Last time I checked we only have one old technician from the vacuum tube era, and he's sick most of the days. Great guy, just don't give him anything digital or high frequent.
No, never ever claim that around EE graduates. We despise things like this being called "building". If we build a robot we carefully select components, consider several circuit layouts, battery efficient motor operation, draw circuit boards, solder everything by hand to make prototypes, redo the flawed parts, ... What they did was take a few pre-made modules and stick them together with pin-headers. You could teach a 8 year old to do that. So yes, there is a very large difference in assembly and building. So you might ask why we haven't shown off hundreds of these things: Building these sort of robots is fairly easy, they just don't have any real use. A simple analog circuit can be far more elegant and useful!
Tell that to Microsoft... Ever installed the Windows XP service packs?
What sort of antenna did you use exactly? I've considered trying it with my log-periodic antenna, though I guess it won't be directional enough. Only achieves about 11 dBi.
It does, it was very popular before satellites became common. Take a look at "EME communications". With a good directional antenna and a fairly low power transmitter you can already do it in fact.