crgrace, your post is excellent. I can't really tell if the post previous to yours is a troll or not.
One of the things that always strikes me as odd is peoples dislike of unions. A union is the sort of thing that would be able to really help out with the ungodly work hours that most technical people get. When management says something like: "yes, we're happy to pay you 100,000 a year" and then 2 months later say, "we expect you to work 80 hours a week, no overtime pay". That sucks.
Organized labor can help stop that. Hell, organized labor did help stop that and give most sane jobs the 5 day work week and the 8 hour work day. How can management get away with taking that away from technical employees? The employees aren't organized.
I haven't checked recently, but last year at this time I desperately needed to be able to use C++ to drive communications through the parallel port to control a robotic arm. While I could find people selling their $100 dollar books online, I couldn't find any good instructions on how to go about it.
Funny how they normally store books on shelves, in relative order to that which was in card catalogs... Maybe you could look there instead.
In data collection, there's the same possibility. I check out cnn.com every once in a while to look too see other news.
However, filtering news is not really a new thing. I'd say a large percentage (insert fake statistic here) of the paper newspaper is not actually read. People skim headlines for things that strike them. That's why their are headlines, so people can filter through the articles faster.
I find it interesting whenever someone takes some statistic or finding and says "Look at this! it's a brand new problem!" when it likely isn't.
only if you get some very fast FPGA's. Right now I'm working with a Xilinx Vertex II. For a simple Time Of Arrival buffer the max estimated clock is 70 Mhz. I believe that the Vertex II haven't even been completely created yet either.
You'd be much better off using ASICs so far, but FPGA's are getting faster.
* Slashdot is so out of date. This was made in 1969. Why isn't slashdot up with the times?
* So now do meteors have to fill out forms before they fall to earth?
* This is where Mulder and Scully need to start searching for alien technology! in Customs records.
You got it the wrong way around, Taco. The CIA spy's on other countries. It's the FBI that spy's on you, and the NSA that breaks your encryption.
Anyway, I work for a defense contractor on classified projects. The whole point of having the project classified is so that the other countries don't know our secrets. We do missile jammmers. It becomes pretty pointless if we open source the code/firmware so you can jam the police radar, because then other countries know how our jammer works, and simply make their missiles act in a way that our jammers can't stop.
The same may go for any software the CIA designs. If they explain thoroughly to you how they're spying on other countries, then the other countries know how they are being spied on, and they take actions to prevent it.
I'm an electrical engineer that does hardware design. I design this hardware in VHDL, which is basically a programming language. The VHDL is then compiled for a particular programmable part, and then loaded into the part.
For the hardware I design, I don't personally use transistors, capacitors, or resistors. I write code.
The guys upstairs write the software for the sytem. They write it in C. It's compiled, and then loaded into a chip (FLASH) on the same board as my part.
This is why a Hardware patent and a Software patents could be confusing. Hardware design (for FPGA's) is very similar to software design.
What would also look good on your resume is knowledge of VHDL or Verilog, since that is what most logic ends up being implemented in. As a learning experience, building a flip flop out of physical nand gates is a good idea. Once you get the hang of that, you should check out a Hardware Design Language.
VHDL is a concurrent language, which is different from all the software languages I know of. Concurrent here means that instead of going line by line through the code, every line happens at the same time. This makes sense, because in a circuit layout, electricity flows through all the wires at once.
There are cases (like if then else statements) when sequential logic needs to be used, but this gets put into an object called a process, that will have an sensetivity list with it. Any time a signal in the sensativity list changes states, the process will get executed.
In other posts on this topic they mention free VHDL tools. You should get a book from the library on VHDL, and check out one of those tools if your still interested in the hardware aspect of CS (most people call it computer engineering)
Whine, whine, whine, not useful because I can't fab the chip.
Neither do they. It's a Field Programmable Gate Array. I know most of slashdot are just software people, and don't really understand hardware so let me explain: An FPGA is built of many Combinational Logic Blocks (CLB's) with flip flops, buffers, and gate level logic. To implement an FPGA, a fuse file is created from an HDL (Hardware Design Language). This fuse file is used to determine which internal connections to the FPGA will be active and inactive.
Programming an FPGA from a computer isn't too tough. A cable needs to be made up that can handle JTAG communication with the part, and voila. It's funny to see people whining that progamming an FPGA is too hard, but on other stories saying they're going to build a portable atari, or hack their Tiva box.
FPGA's can be very useful for smaller runs of a chip, especially if the design has a good chance of changing. Since a lot of FPGA's are reprogrammable, screwing up the design doesn't have as big of an impact as screwing up an asic. Also, Asics only become economical when you make a ton of them.
For example, Motorola will probably use Asics for the hardware for their phones, since they make millions. On the otherhand, Nortrhop Grumman will use FPGA's for their missile jammers, since they make runs in the 100's.
FPGA's are designed so that their can be a multitude of different arrangements of connections inside the FPGA. This leads to not being able to optomize for speed as much. They can do most of the things Asics can do, but not as fast or efficiently, since they were designed to be multi-purpose.
You should really look into VHDL and FPGA's. It doesn't make much sense to me why you'd be using gate level parts on a board, unless you weren't doing TTL or CMOS, but even then, there are converter chips.
This is how I read that sentence the first time through.
Like it or not, with the patent office in the sorry state that it's in, and the DMCA becoming the flaw of the land, this sort of ridiculous tripe is becoming a viable business model.
I realized my mistake when I looked at it again, but I like my version better.
When I go to best buy, there are still a few aisles (how the hell do you spell that?) of tapes, and CD's have been around for more than a decade. While I agree that DVD's in, VHS out, I think it'll be a while before VHS is phased out.
It's strange because it's different. If I want to sell CD's on ebay, I register there, and put my auction up. I don't mind paying EBAY a small fee, because using EBAY could potentially get me a higher price on the CD's I'm selling. The buyer goes to EBAY because they can potentially get better prices than normal stores, and the buyer doesn't have to pay to look at the EBAY auctions, they only pay if they download.
Contrast this with napster, where it sounds like you pay a fee so that you can have access to the servers, and then you determine if there's anything you want there.
slashdot does seem to be almost trying to go mainstream at times.
Look at your user number. Look at my user number. Any website with 300,000 + users is mainstream.
I think you mean to say that "Snatch" isn't news for nerds, being that there's nothing technological or sciencey or nerdy about it. However, considering your post was #230, something about it must have been comment worthy by a whole lot of people, even if it's only katz bashing, which is a slashdot pass-time. Katz is worth keeping around if for only that reason.
I find it humourous that on one hand you have people complaining that Slashdot isn't as good as it used to be because the editors don't post in the discussions anymore, but in this article people complain because JonKatz posts too much.
That's why they patent the drug. Patent the process of the cure. Don't patent the gene that is in my body. Hell, patent a method of finding the gene. If you make a gene up on your own that doesn't have prior art (it's not in any other existing DNA) go ahead and patent that.
Dave
You may also want to think about the fact that digital engineering, and computer engineering hasn't been around much longer then software engineering (30 years if that), and digital designers seem to be able to do a better overall engineering of there stuff then software engineers. So the whole time factor thing isn't as big a deal as people make it.
Friendly fire isn't so good if it destroys 10's of millions of dollars of allied equipment. Sure, no human died, but Military aircraft is extremely expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
and hey, even your arrogance is above average too!
One of the things that always strikes me as odd is peoples dislike of unions. A union is the sort of thing that would be able to really help out with the ungodly work hours that most technical people get. When management says something like: "yes, we're happy to pay you 100,000 a year" and then 2 months later say, "we expect you to work 80 hours a week, no overtime pay". That sucks.
Organized labor can help stop that. Hell, organized labor did help stop that and give most sane jobs the 5 day work week and the 8 hour work day. How can management get away with taking that away from technical employees? The employees aren't organized.
but aren't they saying "this is how we broke the sdmi watermarks given in these files." instead of "For this CD, do this to break SDMI watermarks"?
How can content protected by SDMI technologies be attacked when there isn't any content? (is there? what?)
I only have desktop access to the net, but I think I like www.slashdot.org/palm even better. Less messy, much faster, no trolls.
There's another good article on this in the April issue of Discover. You can find it online here: http://www.discover.com/apr_01/feattrap.html
I haven't checked recently, but last year at this time I desperately needed to be able to use C++ to drive communications through the parallel port to control a robotic arm. While I could find people selling their $100 dollar books online, I couldn't find any good instructions on how to go about it.
Funny how they normally store books on shelves, in relative order to that which was in card catalogs... Maybe you could look there instead.
In data collection, there's the same possibility. I check out cnn.com every once in a while to look too see other news.
However, filtering news is not really a new thing. I'd say a large percentage (insert fake statistic here) of the paper newspaper is not actually read. People skim headlines for things that strike them. That's why their are headlines, so people can filter through the articles faster.
I find it interesting whenever someone takes some statistic or finding and says "Look at this! it's a brand new problem!" when it likely isn't.
You'd be much better off using ASICs so far, but FPGA's are getting faster.
* Slashdot is so out of date. This was made in 1969. Why isn't slashdot up with the times?
* So now do meteors have to fill out forms before they fall to earth?
* This is where Mulder and Scully need to start searching for alien technology! in Customs records.
You got it the wrong way around, Taco. The CIA spy's on other countries. It's the FBI that spy's on you, and the NSA that breaks your encryption.
Anyway, I work for a defense contractor on classified projects. The whole point of having the project classified is so that the other countries don't know our secrets. We do missile jammmers. It becomes pretty pointless if we open source the code/firmware so you can jam the police radar, because then other countries know how our jammer works, and simply make their missiles act in a way that our jammers can't stop.
The same may go for any software the CIA designs. If they explain thoroughly to you how they're spying on other countries, then the other countries know how they are being spied on, and they take actions to prevent it.
DAve
I'm an electrical engineer that does hardware design. I design this hardware in VHDL, which is basically a programming language. The VHDL is then compiled for a particular programmable part, and then loaded into the part. For the hardware I design, I don't personally use transistors, capacitors, or resistors. I write code. The guys upstairs write the software for the sytem. They write it in C. It's compiled, and then loaded into a chip (FLASH) on the same board as my part. This is why a Hardware patent and a Software patents could be confusing. Hardware design (for FPGA's) is very similar to software design.
Troll.
VHDL is a concurrent language, which is different from all the software languages I know of. Concurrent here means that instead of going line by line through the code, every line happens at the same time. This makes sense, because in a circuit layout, electricity flows through all the wires at once.
There are cases (like if then else statements) when sequential logic needs to be used, but this gets put into an object called a process, that will have an sensetivity list with it. Any time a signal in the sensativity list changes states, the process will get executed.
In other posts on this topic they mention free VHDL tools. You should get a book from the library on VHDL, and check out one of those tools if your still interested in the hardware aspect of CS (most people call it computer engineering)
Dave
Whine, whine, whine, not useful because I can't fab the chip.
Neither do they. It's a Field Programmable Gate Array. I know most of slashdot are just software people, and don't really understand hardware so let me explain: An FPGA is built of many Combinational Logic Blocks (CLB's) with flip flops, buffers, and gate level logic. To implement an FPGA, a fuse file is created from an HDL (Hardware Design Language). This fuse file is used to determine which internal connections to the FPGA will be active and inactive.
Programming an FPGA from a computer isn't too tough. A cable needs to be made up that can handle JTAG communication with the part, and voila. It's funny to see people whining that progamming an FPGA is too hard, but on other stories saying they're going to build a portable atari, or hack their Tiva box.
FPGA's can be very useful for smaller runs of a chip, especially if the design has a good chance of changing. Since a lot of FPGA's are reprogrammable, screwing up the design doesn't have as big of an impact as screwing up an asic. Also, Asics only become economical when you make a ton of them.
For example, Motorola will probably use Asics for the hardware for their phones, since they make millions. On the otherhand, Nortrhop Grumman will use FPGA's for their missile jammers, since they make runs in the 100's.
FPGA's are designed so that their can be a multitude of different arrangements of connections inside the FPGA. This leads to not being able to optomize for speed as much. They can do most of the things Asics can do, but not as fast or efficiently, since they were designed to be multi-purpose.
DAve
You should really look into VHDL and FPGA's. It doesn't make much sense to me why you'd be using gate level parts on a board, unless you weren't doing TTL or CMOS, but even then, there are converter chips.
Actually, for Xilinx, they burnt it onto an EEPROM, which then configured the FPGA. Xilinx parts dynamically load on powerup.
Like it or not, with the patent office in the sorry state that it's in, and the DMCA becoming the flaw of the land, this sort of ridiculous tripe is becoming a viable business model.
I realized my mistake when I looked at it again, but I like my version better.
When I go to best buy, there are still a few aisles (how the hell do you spell that?) of tapes, and CD's have been around for more than a decade. While I agree that DVD's in, VHS out, I think it'll be a while before VHS is phased out.
Contrast this with napster, where it sounds like you pay a fee so that you can have access to the servers, and then you determine if there's anything you want there.
Dave
Look at your user number. Look at my user number. Any website with 300,000 + users is mainstream.
I think you mean to say that "Snatch" isn't news for nerds, being that there's nothing technological or sciencey or nerdy about it. However, considering your post was #230, something about it must have been comment worthy by a whole lot of people, even if it's only katz bashing, which is a slashdot pass-time. Katz is worth keeping around if for only that reason.
Dave
Dave
That's why they patent the drug. Patent the process of the cure. Don't patent the gene that is in my body. Hell, patent a method of finding the gene. If you make a gene up on your own that doesn't have prior art (it's not in any other existing DNA) go ahead and patent that. Dave
Dave
note: coming from a digital design engineer
That's because it's fscking Greek.
Friendly fire isn't so good if it destroys 10's of millions of dollars of allied equipment. Sure, no human died, but Military aircraft is extremely expensive.