I learned electronics as an adult. Beginning electronics books found in the library is an excellent place to start. Check many library branches and suburban nearby districts. Often you can get a library card for the suburban district libraries with a central city card at no charge.
Some other suggestions:
>Get a cheap digital voltmeter for about $20. Invaluable.
>Download several of the sound-card oscilloscope programs floating around on the web. Many of them have poor quality user-interfaces and documentation, but nearly all of them work on low-frequency AC signals like audio.
> Get an inexpensive soldering iron and salvage/recycle parts from junk electronics, especially old electronics that used through-hole components. A spring-loaded plastic tube solder-sucker used to remove solder from joints on recycled/used circuit boards is quite useful. A solder-less 'breadboard' where components can be connected to make temporary test circuits is handy. Sometimes community college students in software have to take electronics classes to graduate. They have to buy component kits for labs. After finishing the class, they show their contempt for these electronics classes by selling their supplies for super-cheap or by giving them away.
> Ask 'stupid' questions on 'beginner's' web sites. Ignore all the smart-ass 'stupid noobie' responses.
> Post a message on the local CraigsList for free surplus hobbyist electronic components. You might meet local people who can direct you to local inexpensive parts-sources and assistance.
> Be open to exploring microcontrollers. There's a real learning curve, but they are now very cheap and flexible. I recommend exploring the Atmel AVR family. I strongly discourage using the Microchip PIC, because they are a pain in the neck to program, and are not very cheap. The AVR chips can be programmed directly through the PC parallel port.
> Most electronic manufacturers will give free samples of their parts if you ask them. It is standard practice in the electronics industry to get free samples to build a prototype of a new product, and then buy thousands of the chips when the product goes into production. You can use your work e-mail address to convince the electronics manufacturers that this is your plan with the samples.
> Eagle makes a great free software package for creating schematic drawings of your circuits and, as you advance, for designing a printed circuit board. Google for more info and download site.
> Several companies now make small numbers of small-sized professional quality circuit boards for $35-50. These 'board-houses' are invaluable for use with tiny surface-mount components and integrated circuits that the electronics industry is standardizing on.
I hope that all this helps. I suggest focusing on a specific area that you find interesting. For several years I studied electric guitar effects pedals like fuzz/distortion, flangers, and echo/delays. The schematic circuits (and documentation on how the circuits work) for the older 1970s and 1980s effects are available on the web. Also you can get cheap knock-off clones of expensive effects on eBay for $15-$25 each. With a DIY signal generator (like a simple 555 timer), you can feed signals into these cheap effects clone boxes and use the free PC sound card oscilloscope programs to see how the circuitry is changing the signal through each stage of the effect.
Thank you for your reply. As always whenever this subject comes up and I comment on it to Slashdot, I get bombed to -1 or -2 within minutes. I touch nerves. And at -1 no one ever see my comments and then gets angry enough to reply.
You can't just segregate space exploration from the rest of science...
Sure you can. You segregate scientific categories by deciding which of them gets funding. In civilized societies, money is limited and funding is allocated according to the best possible benefit for the society. Space exploration has no benefit for society in general.
Slashdot is a special forum. Slashdaughters are well educated, and have a tendency to be nerdy and sarcastic within a limited framework. Their attention spans are short and (outside their field of technical specialty) they are generally ignorant and boorish. Using the common two or three English language general-accentuation words (the swear words) and putting my points into their manner-of-speech rhythms is the most effective way to grab their attention. They are generally mean and narrow-minded little shits, which is why they instantly mod anything outside their point-of-view down to -1. They act like college freshmen, probably because many of them are or haven't developed the social or rhetorical skills to advance beyond that level.
I can't swear in scientific papers, in polite company, or at work. But I can on Slashdot. I aspire to do it there brilliantly.
Maybe water on Mars? Maybe, so what? If you want water, we have plenty of water here.
Oh, I'm so excited. Ice on Mars could actually mean LIFE on Mars! Maybe, and maybe after spending billions of dollars of other people's money you might find certain combinations of chemicals that would appear to indicate the possibility of pre-existant conditions that could preclude the factors that may have had influence on the development of life on Earth! WoW! Holy Smokes! We definitely need to spend another twenty billion dollars to really check this out! I tell you, man, I am so excited about this that I could just shit!
Chill out, amigo. If you want life, you got all the life here that you can handle. Yes, right here on Earth; right in your backyard. You don't have to go a hundred million miles to find it. And not little bacterium either, but real big thinkin', drinkin', and stinkin' human beings. Billions of the fuckers, right in your face; on mother Earth. All the life that you could ever hope to know and love. You don't have to spend billions of dollars of other-people's-money to look for life on for what is nothing more in reality than just a bright dot in the night sky.
"Man, You are so short-sighted! Life is dying on the Earth. We fucked up the whole planet. We need space exploration to seed the cosmos. Can't have all eggs in one basket. Think...Noah...Think ark, man!"
You watch too much television, amigo, and you get too many government grants. All the bad things about climate change, economic collapse, and overpopulation are happening here and now. The ability to use space exploration technology to address these problems won't be realistic for hundreds of years, if ever.
If you are involved with space exploration to the point where you are actually being paid by the government or a government-funded corporation to do so, then you are just a chickenshit leech who is pissing away public funds that are desperately needed for more important things in order to finance your own private Tom Swift-Star Wars fantasies.
You're a fucking twit. Grow up and contribute to the real world where real adults deal with real issues and solve real problems.
Microsoft uses The Wizard of Oz to train the PC's speech-to-text system buried in later versions of Word. My co-workers thought that I was crazy when I read a few chapters of it into the PC to get the Sp2Tx working. I was too busy to follow up on it.
I have not the slightest doubt that your experience is completely true.
I had an experience like this at Hewlett-Packard in Camas, WA in 1993. I was assigned to tear apart fully-assembled printers so that the parts could be used for prototypes of the next generation. I worked alone in a room filled with printers. No one had access to this room except from me and my (supposedly) male boss.
After a few weeks, I put a close-up picture of Claudia Schiffer on the PC's wallpaper. My boss saw it and flipped out. He ordered me to remove it immediately. I said that I liked it and that no one could be offended because no one had access to the room.
A day later I was fired from Hewlett-Packard for 'creating an environment conducive to sexual harassment'. I couldn't get unemployment benefits.
To this day I hate H-P and I don't believe anything anyone says about it being an advanced or great company. I will never sign off a purchase order for any of their products for any company that I work for. I suspect that most of the so-called great companies in the electronics/computer industry are the same way.
As with many topics in technology, this one can be solved by learning to use more advanced technology. You need documentation, we all do, but you don't have the time or the patience to type it.
Use the speech-to-text package that is buried in Microsoft Word, or the stand-alone packages like Dragon. Train the program by reading a few chapters of book into your headset. Your co-workers think that you're weird for taking a half-hour to read The Wizard of Oz out loud while staring at the computer screen? Fuck 'em, you're implementing a technology that allows you to double your productivity.
When you get the Sp2Tx recognizing about 95% of your speech, get a picture of someone you would like to impress and put it next to the screen. Your spouse, hot babe, film star, pop star, porn star, it doesn't matter. Open the Sp2Tx in the background and your code editor in the foreground. Start describing your code to the person in the picture as if they are really interested. Say the word 'paragraph' every few sentences. Be proud of your work and describe it in exacting detail. Pop open a beer or coke. Basically you are having an intimate conversation with your PC on the subject this demonstration of your wonderful coding ability displayed on the screen.
You co-workers now know that you are really weird. But again, fuck 'em. They don't think you're weird when you hold a little plastic box to your ear and walk around talking to yourself. What you are doing now is creating a more detailed documentation package in a half-hour than they could (or would) do in a week.
Don't forget to save the Sp2Tx file and include it with the source code. Goodness, put a comment character in front of every line of text and then append the Sp2Tx file to the end of the source code. A year from now, you or another programmer will be able to understand this code from your description quickly while all the other people's code leaves people scratching their head for hours.
Yes, this is weird. All new technology is weird. Dare to be weird.
You're a programmer. People depend on you. If weird works, then work weird. You're not a Nordstrom's sales girl. They can't be weird, but they can't be productive either.
I love France, but I can't trust them to determine what constitutes 'hate speech'. They will let the most violent jihad site continue and force Likud sites to be blocked.
Now France in the mother of western civilization, but they don't have two wide oceans protecting them from monsters. This has led them over the centuries to develop the tendency to talk tough but roll-over whenever someone shows up on the border with the ability to disrupt their version of the soft life. When someone else shows up to defeat their common enemy, then they turn so brave, noble, and courageous.
I do like France and French people. French culture and English culture are parallel universes. So much incredible stuff doesn't cross over between them. But when it comes to politics, most of the French really are just 'surrender monkeys'. It's a flaw in their national character. I accept it. But I won't let them decide what constitutes a 'hate speech' site.
That old adage comes to mind: "freedom of the press only exists for those with a press". If we want to have access to all the internet then we have to control our access to the internet. We have to create our own internet service providers. We have to have the demonstrable power to convince politicians (not the loud ones but the ones who actually control things by blocking bills in the early stages) not to interfere with our activities.
Developing the ability to control and/or prevent child pornography distribution through the web would go a long way to convincing loud politicians that we recognize this problem and can control it better than the giant corporations who approach everything with a 'just shut it all down for everyone' approach. This is assuming that the politicians are actually doing this to prevent distribution of child porn. They could be using child porn as a red herring to shut down ALT access to non-teckies because they can't control it.
My point is that if we want to control the access to the web (so that we don't get shut out of parts that are important to us) then we have to be able to do a better job of catching the criminals who use the web than the police or giant corporations can.
It's a mantra in the electronics industry: 'If you want to succeed, increase your failure rate' - 'Just Do It' - 'It's not that you failed, it's what you learned from that failure'.
I claim horseshit. Those mantras are only repeated by people who have managed to succeed after relatively small failures. Failure marks you in a puritan society. Failure marks you like a tattoo. Failure burns away all your trust in yourself and your energy.
Learn or burn. Read or bleed. Let others fail and develop the skills to actually learn from their failures , not yours. Let them suffer.
* Don't buy Yahoo! stock at $160 a share at the height of market bubble.
* Don't buy a 3-room clapboard box house for $500000 at the height of a housing bubble.
* When you boss tells you that 'a positive mental attitude and vitamin D will cure cancer, along with most other ailments' and then explains that this is why you aren't going to get health insurance, take the vitamin pill and look for another job.
* When the old man at the VFW tells you 'it's your duty' to go to Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq, salute him, and find some other old men to hang with who don't still wake up with 30-year-old nightmares of senseless slaughter.
* When someone says 'bet ya can't do...' on a skateboard, rub your tongue over your front teeth. Because that might be the last time that you feel them if you try it and don't quite pull it off.
* When you get stopped by the police and they pull a marijuana cigarette out of your (or their) pocket and then suggest a little trip to the ATM, pay them off and move. You can't fight it in court without paying many, many thousands in legal fees. And you'll end up with a chickenshit pot conviction like 25 million other Americans who find themselves being the only people left subject to legal discrimination and bigotry.
* Last but not least in this series, actually believe what the black people tell you about their experiences with the authorities and institutions that you have come to know and trust.
Wow. After reading the headline, I thought that Microsoft was actually going to fight against the companies that steal their employee's careers by refusing to hire them except as 'temporaries'. Companies like Microsoft and Intel only hire the top graduates of the best universities. Everyone else that does all the real grunt work in these companies is 'hired' on a six-month contract as a 'temporary'. This allows Microsoft and Intel to avoid paying benefits and health insurance to all the people who work for them (and create their profits).
Please don't tell me that this isn't so. Half the people in the electronics industry in Seattle and Portland Oregon deal with this situation on a daily basis. And please spare me the horseshit about how you are in the top ten percent of the class of MIT or IIT and therefore you don't have to worry about this problem, because you are so much superior to the rest of us. There are so many of the 'rest of us' that they haven't gotten around to you yet. Or you hop between companies so often that you're still flying high solely on the basis of your transcript. That will change.
So I thought at first that Microsoft was going to make a serious commitment to honor the basic social contract between companies and employees: if you make a serious commitment to us then we will make a serious commitment to you and we will all prosper together. That was the IBM way. But Microsoft has nothing but contempt for IBM and its tried-and-true methods of doing business. So the chances are good that if you work 'for' Microsoft then you are a perma-temp. And it's not going to change any time soon.
Use the God damn library for your music needs. Every big city library has thousands of music CDs available for you to check out, take home, make exact copies for your personal use, and return. For Free! And the libraries have their catalogs on-line. Go to your libraries web-site, search for the latest and greatest songs that you were going to download, reserve the librarie's CD (they have many copies of the most popular stuff), and within a few days to a month you will have the disk in your hand. No charge, No RIAA harassment, no ISP fees.
Then go on Craig's List or some other web site that caters to all the other people in the place where you live who like the same kind of music that you do. Put all the music that you like that you have copied from the CDs that you have borrowed from the Library, and make arrangements with all the other people who have your taste in music in your area to meet and trade your CDs. CD blanks cost 10 cents American each and they can be copied in five minutes or less.
File sharing over the web seems cool because you can do it without interacting with actual human beings. But the whole point of music and entertainment is to interact with other people. Use computer networks to develop real human networks. Then expand your real human networks to areas outside of traditional web interaction, like grocery shopping and ride sharing (and sex with real humans, if you're so inclined).
This is the only real and effective way to crush the RIAA.
Movies,eye candy, and other products of the entertainment industry aren't critically important to the success of ultra-high resolution (UHR)video screens. (screens that have resolution higher than average human ability to see). These products are pre-edited and adjusted for color and balance by video and photography experts for the best, most profitable, and most appealing entertainment product. Which is not what UHR videos do best.
Current monitors have deep problems with specific color balance. Take a photograph, turn it into a GIF or JPG, view it on one PC and monitor. Then put another PC and monitor next to the first and view the same image file side-by-side with the first monitor. Does it look exactly identical? No Way! Is there a button that you can push on the monitor that makes a image look identical to any other monitor? None that I've ever seen.
This is the big problem. A lack of standards for color characteristics between monitors. And no technology integrated into the monitors and video circuitry that brings an image into international standards. Nothing that makes color #123456789 look exactly the same on every monitor, on earth.
When the problem of international color standards is solved and the technology is integrated into UHR monitors, then we can do things like stick a fiber optic into someone's vein in Africa, thread it up to their heart, and have a doctor in India or Chicago look at the image and make a diagnosis. Because they can trust that color and image that they are looking at on the screen is exactly what they would see if they were in the operating theater. Medicine, Robotics, Science, and manufacturing have far more important and profitable uses of UHR monitors than the entertainment industry. People are entertained and willing to pay for what the entertainment industry gives them.
Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP? Now the marketers that put this together for Sir Richard were convinced that this was a good idea. But it is turning out to be the marriage from hell. Did the lunatics who came up with Daimler-Chrysler have anything to do with this?
Now if someone in Virgin were smart (and when are virgins ever smart?) they would give reduced or even near free downloads to Virgin Music's recordings. And do it in such a way that the anti-monopoly regulators can't do anything about it. Pure Syzygy. But these bozos are turning Virgin into the most hated conglomerate in the UK. Smooth move for a company that relies on its prominent logo as a universal brand of quality among youthful consumers.
However it appears that in Virgin only Sir Richard has any brains. Does he hire dolts in order to appear that no one in the organization looks cooler than he does?
The real difference between digital intellectal property and real physical property is that with digital intellectual property, the more you pay for it, the less control you have over it. With real property, the more that you pay,and the greater of the percentage of the property that you own, the more control you have over its use.
The only way to control intellectual property in a digital format in the ways that you have described is to obtain it for free. The fact that this is illegal puts the category of digital intellectual property outside the parameters of the legal system. Nearly all digital property is possessed by people illegally. Very few of the pieces of intellectual property like the MP3 files on most people's PCs and iPods are actually owned legally. Since possession is 9/10s of the law (and 100% for drug offences), then the fact that most digital intellectual property is owned illegally means that the concept behind digital property law is flawed and unworkable, not that all the people with MP3s on their PCs are criminals. It can be realistically determined that digital intellectual property is not property at all, and therefore can't be stolen.
Whenever some schumck CEO says that they are considering pricing internet access according to usage they mean that they are going to charge more for the people who do a lot of downloading and run high traffic websites.
They never mean that they are going to reduce the ISP access fees to pennies a month for the people who use their internet access for only about five minutes a day, to read e-mail, etc...
Their computers could be programmed to make these microcharges, but they won't do it. They love having a minimum pricing floor that everyone must pay regardless of how little they access the web.
Young people are beginning to realize that every word that comes out of the mouth of a white-haired, white male American corporate CEO is just horseshit designed to keep the CEOs and their class rich.
Thanks for the reply. My point is not that whatever reasons people have for downloading free media product, it's that the digital revolution has taken the concept of physical property off the media product (music and film recordings). The media companies need to come to a realization that their products are not physical boxes that can be bought, sold, and moved. These products are much more fluid now. Some people are going to pay a high price and many people won't pay a high price for their product. Having the consumers determine the price that they will pay for the individual title of media product being offered is concept that the media companies completely detest, but one that they are going to have to adjust to. Digital technology has destroyed the 'one price for all' model. The companies that can adjust to this will survive during the great coming 21st century crash, and the others won't continue to be around.
Since the media companies have become so dependent on the tech community to create and deliver their products, they should accept that the people who work in the tech community are going to consume their products for free (by downloading them). The media companies could encourage young people to go into technology careers by granting free legal downloads to everyone who graduates from college with an engineering or computer science degree. Since these are the very people who are creating the P2P programs that are wrecking havoc on their industry, it would be in the interests of the media companies to buy the techies off so cheaply.
But they don't seem to realize this.
The problem of differenciating between 'there' and 'their' is not important. The reader can do that and fix it if they chose to. The major advantage of Speech Recognition is that it takes the thoughts of the moment that would never have been recorded on paper and makes them into a text file that can be stored, saved, or expanded at a future time. It allows personal histories to be preserved without having it become a serious task, like sitting down to write a book would be.
Now that WE are controlling music distribution, we should give some thought over what exactly we are going to do with the situation.
There appears to be a great struggle going on between the four global music/film corporations and the thousands of technically advanced internet applications programmers over the ability to control (or to be more precise, the ability to remove controls) over the distribution of recordings of music and films.
Incredibly, the internet applications programmers appear to be winning. Otherwise the big four companies wouldn't be going to such extreme legal measures to stop them.
Now would be a good time to ask ourselves whether we really want this. We should consider the long-term ramifications of destroying the music/film distribution industries. Remember that ancient Chinese curse: be careful about what you ask for, since you just might get it.
Basically what the technical elite want is to have free or nearly free access to all the media recorded products currently offered for sale by the big four. The real question here is whether they want this access for themselves only or for everyone. Or whether the technical elite want to be able to control who gets access to free media product and how much free media product the technical elite (those people who write the P2P programs) plan to distribute.
The big four media companies fear that the P2P programmers are going to attempt to make all commercial media product free to everyone, and put them out of business. But this is absurd. Because there are billions of people who depend on the big four for their continued access to new product, and the technical elite (those who write and to a limited extent, control the P2P environment) don't have the interest or the ability to supply all these people with a continuous stream of new media product. They are programmers, not media distribution executives.
If the big four CEOs were smart and seriously wanted to crush the P2P community, they would cut back on product development and releases and blame it on the P2P programmers. Instead they make exciting ads telling people that it is illegal to get free media product by using P2P programs. Which is the same thing as educating people who weren't aware that it was possible to get free music and films by using P2P. Which is really dumb on their part.
Because the big four won't consider cutting back on product release in order to crush the P2P community, then it must be that the revenue streams that they are getting from new product is far, far greater than the revenue that they are losing through the P2P programs enabling of free access to media product. So this anti-P2P vendetta is just a personal thing between the big four executives and the P2P developers; a 'my dick is bigger' contest between these two small groups.
The big four executives and the P2P developers would be wise just to sit down and work out a 'cap and trade' agreement that would give the P2P developers free access to media product in return for the P2P developers agreeing to limit the distribution of this product to only the people whom they consider to be 'cool'. Since this is what is going to happen eventually anyway, they should formalize the situation before someone (someone important) gets hurt by allowing the lawyers to run amok.
How come Slashdaughters don't think like this and talk like this whenever this topic comes up for discussion?
Thank you for your reply. I gave your comments some thought.
I think that it would be best to give every student a solid foundation in arithmetic and also a much deeper intro to computer math (base 2, base 16, how electrical voltages can represent numbers, how computers work) in middle and early high school (years 7-9 of basic education). Then present the important basic concepts of math; subjects such as a elementary algebra, geometry, trig, calculus, probability, and statistics; in a one year survey course that needs to be passed for No-Child-Left-Behind. All other math classes would be optional for students, but recommended for those interested in learning engineering. Students would get arithmetic in elementary school, computer math and an intro to higher math in middle school, and one year of upper math topics in high school required for graduation. None of this four years of math such as required at the present because few people use it.
I would reverse the emphasis placed currently on foreign language in American high schools. Students would take four years of foreign language and one of math, instead of the current four of math and one (or none) of foreign language. This is would be a better use of educational resources, both teachers and students.
Thank you, Try in future comments to avoid personal attacks on previous writers. This is a skill that is lost on engineering types who never study debate and rhetoric in school.
Hello,
Congrats on working at Intel for 16 years. Might I suggest that you document this period of activity into a small book? It would be great for the historical record.
Typing is a real pain. I suggest using the speech-to-text feature found buried in newer versions of MS Word or the IBM or Dragon speech programs. Train the system by reading a few chapters off the screen. Then sit back and talk about the Intel years, the projects, the personalities, the cubicals, the picnics, the parking lot, the haircuts, the water cooler stories, anything and everything. Don't worry about punctuation and paragraphing, which can be awkward when using speech-to-text systems. It's important to get a text file of recollections from the people who were there. Intel was 'ground zero' for the digital revolution that transformed the world in the last quarter of the 20th century. In fifty to a hundred years from now, people will want to know what it was really like.
I realize that this is the last place in the world that I should say this, but it needs to be said:
There is no need for most math instruction in school!
Everybody has to take algebra in school. Everyone must pass it more or less to graduate from high school. You can't get any kind of decent job without a high school degree.
But less than one in a hundred thousand people will every use algebra. For anything. For the rest of their life!
"But learning algebra helps students to learn how to think!" So does spending four years learning 13th century Ukrainian grammar. So does learning anything stupid and useless.
So if the math tests are getting easier, fine! The vast majority of people who aren't destined to become rocket scientists don't need to learn math and don't need to put into a situation where their future career depends on learning a difficult subject that they will never use.
Math is a fetish of the educational establishment in the US and other countries. It used to be learning Latin, but that requirement was finally waived about thirty years ago. After the language had been dead for 1800 years. That goes to show what a bunch of cement-heads the teachers and the educational establishment are in the US. I understand that the situation is worse in other countries. So if the youth of America are the dead last of the civilized world in their mastery of mathematical concepts, so what!?! If you are never going to use a subject, what the fuck difference does it make if you don't learn it well?
I'm a firmware programmer and electronics technician. I've used algebra once in fifty years. I did OK in it in school, but I hated it. I wish that every hour spent learning this stupid and worthless subject could have been spent instead learning the Beatles and Rolling Stones guitar licks. Something fantastic that would be useful for my entire life! But no, some asshole with a Master's degree insisted that we all had to learn fucking algebra.
Now I know that you like math. You're reading this on Slashdot, for Christ's sake. But seriously, guys, it's not for everyone. Don't judge people by their fucking math scores.
Ok, I understand that you are from China. And you have mastered the English language, which is a significant acomplishment.
Nevertheless, I encourage you to actually use the spell checker on your PC. In our language, the first letter of each sentence is always capitalized. The first person singular noun, "I", is always capitalized.
This is not a little thing. We don't read individual letters in English. We read phrases, groups of words. If the rules of grammar are not followed, then our ability to read printed text is significantly slowed. I am not insulting you or making a trivial observation. Please continue to use the spelling checker. And don't let the dumb Americans tell you that this doesn't matter.
Imagine if I were to add another random stroke or draw a 'happy face' in every Chinese character. It would be a major irritant to reading. Worse than reading and writing the traditional Chinese characters still used in Taiwan. The same is true for the capitalization rules in English. And, the other European languages have completely different capitalization grammar rules than English does.
Plus if these grammar rules aren't followed, it is usually impossible to use language-translation programs.
Isn't VOIP illegal in most of the countries where data hiding needed to protect yourself from the political police? Telephone service is usually a government monopoly in the developing world. VOIP bypasses the government telecommunications monopoly. And since that monopoly is so profitable, the government authorities in these places violently suppress anyone that they catch using VOIP.
What kind of information would be hidden in VOIP transmissions? General political tracts and religious books are too large for the limited space available. Specific information about meetings, such as, "Go to this address at this time and ask for Raul if you want to receive absolution from an ordained priest" in places where Christianity is illegal? Or criminal activity information, like "go to this address at this time and ask for Abdul. He'll have the bomb that you need to blow up the infidel day-care center"? Or, in the USA, drug deal information like "We received your PayPal transaction, Thank you very much. Eight grams of dynamite skunk weed for you is located in a crushed Mountain Dew can in the gutter exactly sixteen feet south east of the bus stop sign at the corner of First and Main. We will pick it up if you don't do so by 3:30pm Tuesday"? I've always wondered why simple dope dealers don't use Internet technology for anonymous untraceable transactions? Could it be because most dope dealers are stupid, or just old-fashioned?
Why would someone want to hide information in a VOIP transmission when they could use an encrypted e-mail for the same purpose? This isn't a rhetorical question. I'd like to know your opinion. I don't have VOIP, so you'll have to take a chance and post it here.
When I was an undergraduate at Portland State University (Oregon USA) in the late 1970s, a semester of programming was required for us. In Fortran. Using punch cards. One card per line of code.
I managed to take the course about three times (like most classes outside my major) before passing. The first time was with a Chinese Grad student teacher. We didn't even have a textbook. He recommended that we buy the Donald Knuth series of books at about the cost of fifty hours of minimum wage work. No chance of that. I lasted about three classes. With any luck this guy is destroying the Chinese educational system.
The second class was with a computer technician who used what must have been a service manual for a mid 1960's 'big iron' mini-computer as a text book. I read the first two chapters about twenty to thirty times and still got nowhere.
The third class in Fortran was with a textbook that was actually clearly written in English. Programming is not hard when explained clearly and fluently. The class was about two-thirds women from the Middle East. I nearly choked to death on their perfume every class but I was able to 'learn' Fortran enough to write about twenty assigned programs that had about 30 lines each. Boy, the machines that punched the holes in the cards was loud! We would bring our deck of punched cards to the operator's window. They would run the program in a big batch with all the other student work. A few hours later, we could pick up a printout of the results. One little pissant mistake and the whole process would have to be repeated. CompSci for non-CompSci majors in the 1970s.
I bought my first microcomputer in 1984, a Radio Shack MC-10. Learned BASIC. Then mastered assembly language on the Commodore 64. Then Turbo C on the PC-AT 286. Then Visual Basic on the Pentium. Now I do assembler for Atmel AVR and C++ for the ARM. I believe that object oriented programming, like FORTH, is the product of a sick mind. But I do firmware and don't believe that any serious microprocessor should cost more than $2.50 US, which puts me into a limited subcategory of the programming community.
Tell us about your programming experiences in 'school' and your best training. Especially if you live outside the USA. Thank you.
Slashdot Mirror
I learned electronics as an adult. Beginning electronics books found in the library is an excellent place to start. Check many library branches and suburban nearby districts. Often you can get a library card for the suburban district libraries with a central city card at no charge.
Some other suggestions:
>Get a cheap digital voltmeter for about $20. Invaluable.
>Download several of the sound-card oscilloscope programs floating around on the web. Many of them have poor quality user-interfaces and documentation, but nearly all of them work on low-frequency AC signals like audio.
> Get an inexpensive soldering iron and salvage/recycle parts from junk electronics, especially old electronics that used through-hole components. A spring-loaded plastic tube solder-sucker used to remove solder from joints on recycled/used circuit boards is quite useful. A solder-less 'breadboard' where components can be connected to make temporary test circuits is handy. Sometimes community college students in software have to take electronics classes to graduate. They have to buy component kits for labs. After finishing the class, they show their contempt for these electronics classes by selling their supplies for super-cheap or by giving them away.
> Ask 'stupid' questions on 'beginner's' web sites. Ignore all the smart-ass 'stupid noobie' responses.
> Post a message on the local CraigsList for free surplus hobbyist electronic components. You might meet local people who can direct you to local inexpensive parts-sources and assistance.
> Be open to exploring microcontrollers. There's a real learning curve, but they are now very cheap and flexible. I recommend exploring the Atmel AVR family. I strongly discourage using the Microchip PIC, because they are a pain in the neck to program, and are not very cheap. The AVR chips can be programmed directly through the PC parallel port.
> Most electronic manufacturers will give free samples of their parts if you ask them. It is standard practice in the electronics industry to get free samples to build a prototype of a new product, and then buy thousands of the chips when the product goes into production. You can use your work e-mail address to convince the electronics manufacturers that this is your plan with the samples.
> Eagle makes a great free software package for creating schematic drawings of your circuits and, as you advance, for designing a printed circuit board. Google for more info and download site.
> Several companies now make small numbers of small-sized professional quality circuit boards for $35-50. These 'board-houses' are invaluable for use with tiny surface-mount components and integrated circuits that the electronics industry is standardizing on.
I hope that all this helps. I suggest focusing on a specific area that you find interesting. For several years I studied electric guitar effects pedals like fuzz/distortion, flangers, and echo/delays. The schematic circuits (and documentation on how the circuits work) for the older 1970s and 1980s effects are available on the web. Also you can get cheap knock-off clones of expensive effects on eBay for $15-$25 each. With a DIY signal generator (like a simple 555 timer), you can feed signals into these cheap effects clone boxes and use the free PC sound card oscilloscope programs to see how the circuitry is changing the signal through each stage of the effect.
Best of luck.
Thank you for your reply. As always whenever this subject comes up and I comment on it to Slashdot, I get bombed to -1 or -2 within minutes. I touch nerves. And at -1 no one ever see my comments and then gets angry enough to reply.
You can't just segregate space exploration from the rest of science...
Sure you can. You segregate scientific categories by deciding which of them gets funding. In civilized societies, money is limited and funding is allocated according to the best possible benefit for the society. Space exploration has no benefit for society in general.
Slashdot is a special forum. Slashdaughters are well educated, and have a tendency to be nerdy and sarcastic within a limited framework. Their attention spans are short and (outside their field of technical specialty) they are generally ignorant and boorish. Using the common two or three English language general-accentuation words (the swear words) and putting my points into their manner-of-speech rhythms is the most effective way to grab their attention. They are generally mean and narrow-minded little shits, which is why they instantly mod anything outside their point-of-view down to -1. They act like college freshmen, probably because many of them are or haven't developed the social or rhetorical skills to advance beyond that level.
I can't swear in scientific papers, in polite company, or at work. But I can on Slashdot. I aspire to do it there brilliantly.
Thank you,
Simonetta
Maybe water on Mars? Maybe, so what? If you want water, we have plenty of water here.
Oh, I'm so excited. Ice on Mars could actually mean LIFE on Mars! Maybe, and maybe after spending billions of dollars of other people's money you might find certain combinations of chemicals that would appear to indicate the possibility of pre-existant conditions that could preclude the factors that may have had influence on the development of life on Earth! WoW! Holy Smokes! We definitely need to spend another twenty billion dollars to really check this out! I tell you, man, I am so excited about this that I could just shit!
Chill out, amigo. If you want life, you got all the life here that you can handle. Yes, right here on Earth; right in your backyard. You don't have to go a hundred million miles to find it. And not little bacterium either, but real big thinkin', drinkin', and stinkin' human beings. Billions of the fuckers, right in your face; on mother Earth. All the life that you could ever hope to know and love. You don't have to spend billions of dollars of other-people's-money to look for life on for what is nothing more in reality than just a bright dot in the night sky.
"Man, You are so short-sighted! Life is dying on the Earth. We fucked up the whole planet. We need space exploration to seed the cosmos. Can't have all eggs in one basket. Think...Noah...Think ark, man!"
You watch too much television, amigo, and you get too many government grants. All the bad things about climate change, economic collapse, and overpopulation are happening here and now. The ability to use space exploration technology to address these problems won't be realistic for hundreds of years, if ever.
If you are involved with space exploration to the point where you are actually being paid by the government or a government-funded corporation to do so, then you are just a chickenshit leech who is pissing away public funds that are desperately needed for more important things in order to finance your own private Tom Swift-Star Wars fantasies.
You're a fucking twit. Grow up and contribute to the real world where real adults deal with real issues and solve real problems.
Gracias.
Microsoft uses The Wizard of Oz to train the PC's speech-to-text system buried in later versions of Word. My co-workers thought that I was crazy when I read a few chapters of it into the PC to get the Sp2Tx working. I was too busy to follow up on it.
I have not the slightest doubt that your experience is completely true.
I had an experience like this at Hewlett-Packard in Camas, WA in 1993. I was assigned to tear apart fully-assembled printers so that the parts could be used for prototypes of the next generation. I worked alone in a room filled with printers. No one had access to this room except from me and my (supposedly) male boss.
After a few weeks, I put a close-up picture of Claudia Schiffer on the PC's wallpaper. My boss saw it and flipped out. He ordered me to remove it immediately. I said that I liked it and that no one could be offended because no one had access to the room.
A day later I was fired from Hewlett-Packard for 'creating an environment conducive to sexual harassment'. I couldn't get unemployment benefits.
To this day I hate H-P and I don't believe anything anyone says about it being an advanced or great company. I will never sign off a purchase order for any of their products for any company that I work for. I suspect that most of the so-called great companies in the electronics/computer industry are the same way.
As with many topics in technology, this one can be solved by learning to use more advanced technology. You need documentation, we all do, but you don't have the time or the patience to type it.
Use the speech-to-text package that is buried in Microsoft Word, or the stand-alone packages like Dragon. Train the program by reading a few chapters of book into your headset. Your co-workers think that you're weird for taking a half-hour to read The Wizard of Oz out loud while staring at the computer screen? Fuck 'em, you're implementing a technology that allows you to double your productivity.
When you get the Sp2Tx recognizing about 95% of your speech, get a picture of someone you would like to impress and put it next to the screen. Your spouse, hot babe, film star, pop star, porn star, it doesn't matter. Open the Sp2Tx in the background and your code editor in the foreground. Start describing your code to the person in the picture as if they are really interested. Say the word 'paragraph' every few sentences. Be proud of your work and describe it in exacting detail. Pop open a beer or coke. Basically you are having an intimate conversation with your PC on the subject this demonstration of your wonderful coding ability displayed on the screen.
You co-workers now know that you are really weird. But again, fuck 'em. They don't think you're weird when you hold a little plastic box to your ear and walk around talking to yourself. What you are doing now is creating a more detailed documentation package in a half-hour than they could (or would) do in a week.
Don't forget to save the Sp2Tx file and include it with the source code. Goodness, put a comment character in front of every line of text and then append the Sp2Tx file to the end of the source code. A year from now, you or another programmer will be able to understand this code from your description quickly while all the other people's code leaves people scratching their head for hours.
Yes, this is weird. All new technology is weird. Dare to be weird.
You're a programmer. People depend on you. If weird works, then work weird. You're not a Nordstrom's sales girl. They can't be weird, but they can't be productive either.
I love France, but I can't trust them to determine what constitutes 'hate speech'. They will let the most violent jihad site continue and force Likud sites to be blocked.
Now France in the mother of western civilization, but they don't have two wide oceans protecting them from monsters. This has led them over the centuries to develop the tendency to talk tough but roll-over whenever someone shows up on the border with the ability to disrupt their version of the soft life. When someone else shows up to defeat their common enemy, then they turn so brave, noble, and courageous.
I do like France and French people. French culture and English culture are parallel universes. So much incredible stuff doesn't cross over between them. But when it comes to politics, most of the French really are just 'surrender monkeys'. It's a flaw in their national character. I accept it. But I won't let them decide what constitutes a 'hate speech' site.
That old adage comes to mind: "freedom of the press only exists for those with a press".
If we want to have access to all the internet then we have to control our access to the internet. We have to create our own internet service providers. We have to have the demonstrable power to convince politicians (not the loud ones but the ones who actually control things by blocking bills in the early stages) not to interfere with our activities.
Developing the ability to control and/or prevent child pornography distribution through the web would go a long way to convincing loud politicians that we recognize this problem and can control it better than the giant corporations who approach everything with a 'just shut it all down for everyone' approach. This is assuming that the politicians are actually doing this to prevent distribution of child porn. They could be using child porn as a red herring to shut down ALT access to non-teckies because they can't control it.
My point is that if we want to control the access to the web (so that we don't get shut out of parts that are important to us) then we have to be able to do a better job of catching the criminals who use the web than the police or giant corporations can.
It's a mantra in the electronics industry: 'If you want to succeed, increase your failure rate' - 'Just Do It' - 'It's not that you failed, it's what you learned from that failure'.
I claim horseshit. Those mantras are only repeated by people who have managed to succeed after relatively small failures. Failure marks you in a puritan society. Failure marks you like a tattoo. Failure burns away all your trust in yourself and your energy.
Learn or burn. Read or bleed. Let others fail and develop the skills to actually learn from their failures , not yours. Let them suffer.
* Don't buy Yahoo! stock at $160 a share at the height of market bubble.
* Don't buy a 3-room clapboard box house for $500000 at the height of a housing bubble.
* When you boss tells you that 'a positive mental attitude and vitamin D will cure cancer, along with most other ailments' and then explains that this is why you aren't going to get health insurance, take the vitamin pill and look for another job.
* When the old man at the VFW tells you 'it's your duty' to go to Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq, salute him, and find some other old men to hang with who don't still wake up with 30-year-old nightmares of senseless slaughter.
* When someone says 'bet ya can't do...' on a skateboard, rub your tongue over your front teeth. Because that might be the last time that you feel them if you try it and don't quite pull it off.
* When you get stopped by the police and they pull a marijuana cigarette out of your (or their) pocket and then suggest a little trip to the ATM, pay them off and move. You can't fight it in court without paying many, many thousands in legal fees. And you'll end up with a chickenshit pot conviction like 25 million other Americans who find themselves being the only people left subject to legal discrimination and bigotry.
* Last but not least in this series, actually believe what the black people tell you about their experiences with the authorities and institutions that you have come to know and trust.
Above all, Don't Fail!
Wow. After reading the headline, I thought that Microsoft was actually going to fight against the companies that steal their employee's careers by refusing to hire them except as 'temporaries'. Companies like Microsoft and Intel only hire the top graduates of the best universities. Everyone else that does all the real grunt work in these companies is 'hired' on a six-month contract as a 'temporary'. This allows Microsoft and Intel to avoid paying benefits and health insurance to all the people who work for them (and create their profits).
Please don't tell me that this isn't so. Half the people in the electronics industry in Seattle and Portland Oregon deal with this situation on a daily basis. And please spare me the horseshit about how you are in the top ten percent of the class of MIT or IIT and therefore you don't have to worry about this problem, because you are so much superior to the rest of us. There are so many of the 'rest of us' that they haven't gotten around to you yet. Or you hop between companies so often that you're still flying high solely on the basis of your transcript. That will change.
So I thought at first that Microsoft was going to make a serious commitment to honor the basic social contract between companies and employees: if you make a serious commitment to us then we will make a serious commitment to you and we will all prosper together. That was the IBM way. But Microsoft has nothing but contempt for IBM and its tried-and-true methods of doing business. So the chances are good that if you work 'for' Microsoft then you are a perma-temp. And it's not going to change any time soon.
Sucka!
Use the God damn library for your music needs. Every big city library has thousands of music CDs available for you to check out, take home, make exact copies for your personal use, and return. For Free! And the libraries have their catalogs on-line. Go to your libraries web-site, search for the latest and greatest songs that you were going to download, reserve the librarie's CD (they have many copies of the most popular stuff), and within a few days to a month you will have the disk in your hand. No charge, No RIAA harassment, no ISP fees.
Then go on Craig's List or some other web site that caters to all the other people in the place where you live who like the same kind of music that you do. Put all the music that you like that you have copied from the CDs that you have borrowed from the Library, and make arrangements with all the other people who have your taste in music in your area to meet and trade your CDs. CD blanks cost 10 cents American each and they can be copied in five minutes or less.
File sharing over the web seems cool because you can do it without interacting with actual human beings. But the whole point of music and entertainment is to interact with other people. Use computer networks to develop real human networks. Then expand your real human networks to areas outside of traditional web interaction, like grocery shopping and ride sharing (and sex with real humans, if you're so inclined).
This is the only real and effective way to crush the RIAA.
Movies,eye candy, and other products of the entertainment industry aren't critically important to the success of ultra-high resolution (UHR)video screens. (screens that have resolution higher than average human ability to see). These products are pre-edited and adjusted for color and balance by video and photography experts for the best, most profitable, and most appealing entertainment product. Which is not what UHR videos do best.
Current monitors have deep problems with specific color balance. Take a photograph, turn it into a GIF or JPG, view it on one PC and monitor. Then put another PC and monitor next to the first and view the same image file side-by-side with the first monitor. Does it look exactly identical? No Way! Is there a button that you can push on the monitor that makes a image look identical to any other monitor? None that I've ever seen.
This is the big problem. A lack of standards for color characteristics between monitors. And no technology integrated into the monitors and video circuitry that brings an image into international standards. Nothing that makes color #123456789 look exactly the same on every monitor, on earth.
When the problem of international color standards is solved and the technology is integrated into UHR monitors, then we can do things like stick a fiber optic into someone's vein in Africa, thread it up to their heart, and have a doctor in India or Chicago look at the image and make a diagnosis. Because they can trust that color and image that they are looking at on the screen is exactly what they would see if they were in the operating theater. Medicine, Robotics, Science, and manufacturing have far more important and profitable uses of UHR monitors than the entertainment industry. People are entertained and willing to pay for what the entertainment industry gives them.
Every other industry has more exacting standards.
Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP? Now the marketers that put this together for Sir Richard were convinced that this was a good idea. But it is turning out to be the marriage from hell. Did the lunatics who came up with Daimler-Chrysler have anything to do with this?
Now if someone in Virgin were smart (and when are virgins ever smart?) they would give reduced or even near free downloads to Virgin Music's recordings. And do it in such a way that the anti-monopoly regulators can't do anything about it. Pure Syzygy. But these bozos are turning Virgin into the most hated conglomerate in the UK. Smooth move for a company that relies on its prominent logo as a universal brand of quality among youthful consumers.
However it appears that in Virgin only Sir Richard has any brains. Does he hire dolts in order to appear that no one in the organization looks cooler than he does?
The real difference between digital intellectal property and real physical property is that with digital intellectual property, the more you pay for it, the less control you have over it. With real property, the more that you pay,and the greater of the percentage of the property that you own, the more control you have over its use.
The only way to control intellectual property in a digital format in the ways that you have described is to obtain it for free. The fact that this is illegal puts the category of digital intellectual property outside the parameters of the legal system. Nearly all digital property is possessed by people illegally. Very few of the pieces of intellectual property like the MP3 files on most people's PCs and iPods are actually owned legally. Since possession is 9/10s of the law (and 100% for drug offences), then the fact that most digital intellectual property is owned illegally means that the concept behind digital property law is flawed and unworkable, not that all the people with MP3s on their PCs are criminals. It can be realistically determined that digital intellectual property is not property at all, and therefore can't be stolen.
I'm assuming that every corporate executive spouting horseshit to keep himself rich is an Honorary White Male whether they are that in reality or not.
Whenever some schumck CEO says that they are considering pricing internet access according to usage they mean that they are going to charge more for the people who do a lot of downloading and run high traffic websites.
They never mean that they are going to reduce the ISP access fees to pennies a month for the people who use their internet access for only about five minutes a day, to read e-mail, etc...
Their computers could be programmed to make these microcharges, but they won't do it. They love having a minimum pricing floor that everyone must pay regardless of how little they access the web.
Young people are beginning to realize that every word that comes out of the mouth of a white-haired, white male American corporate CEO is just horseshit designed to keep the CEOs and their class rich.
Thanks for the reply. My point is not that whatever reasons people have for downloading free media product, it's that the digital revolution has taken the concept of physical property off the media product (music and film recordings). The media companies need to come to a realization that their products are not physical boxes that can be bought, sold, and moved. These products are much more fluid now. Some people are going to pay a high price and many people won't pay a high price for their product. Having the consumers determine the price that they will pay for the individual title of media product being offered is concept that the media companies completely detest, but one that they are going to have to adjust to. Digital technology has destroyed the 'one price for all' model. The companies that can adjust to this will survive during the great coming 21st century crash, and the others won't continue to be around.
Since the media companies have become so dependent on the tech community to create and deliver their products, they should accept that the people who work in the tech community are going to consume their products for free (by downloading them). The media companies could encourage young people to go into technology careers by granting free legal downloads to everyone who graduates from college with an engineering or computer science degree. Since these are the very people who are creating the P2P programs that are wrecking havoc on their industry, it would be in the interests of the media companies to buy the techies off so cheaply.
But they don't seem to realize this.
The problem of differenciating between 'there' and 'their' is not important. The reader can do that and fix it if they chose to. The major advantage of Speech Recognition is that it takes the thoughts of the moment that would never have been recorded on paper and makes them into a text file that can be stored, saved, or expanded at a future time. It allows personal histories to be preserved without having it become a serious task, like sitting down to write a book would be.
Now that WE are controlling music distribution, we should give some thought over what exactly we are going to do with the situation.
There appears to be a great struggle going on between the four global music/film corporations and the thousands of technically advanced internet applications programmers over the ability to control (or to be more precise, the ability to remove controls) over the distribution of recordings of music and films.
Incredibly, the internet applications programmers appear to be winning. Otherwise the big four companies wouldn't be going to such extreme legal measures to stop them.
Now would be a good time to ask ourselves whether we really want this. We should consider the long-term ramifications of destroying the music/film distribution industries. Remember that ancient Chinese curse: be careful about what you ask for, since you just might get it.
Basically what the technical elite want is to have free or nearly free access to all the media recorded products currently offered for sale by the big four. The real question here is whether they want this access for themselves only or for everyone. Or whether the technical elite want to be able to control who gets access to free media product and how much free media product the technical elite (those people who write the P2P programs) plan to distribute.
The big four media companies fear that the P2P programmers are going to attempt to make all commercial media product free to everyone, and put them out of business. But this is absurd. Because there are billions of people who depend on the big four for their continued access to new product, and the technical elite (those who write and to a limited extent, control the P2P environment) don't have the interest or the ability to supply all these people with a continuous stream of new media product. They are programmers, not media distribution executives.
If the big four CEOs were smart and seriously wanted to crush the P2P community, they would cut back on product development and releases and blame it on the P2P programmers. Instead they make exciting ads telling people that it is illegal to get free media product by using P2P programs. Which is the same thing as educating people who weren't aware that it was possible to get free music and films by using P2P. Which is really dumb on their part.
Because the big four won't consider cutting back on product release in order to crush the P2P community, then it must be that the revenue streams that they are getting from new product is far, far greater than the revenue that they are losing through the P2P programs enabling of free access to media product. So this anti-P2P vendetta is just a personal thing between the big four executives and the P2P developers; a 'my dick is bigger' contest between these two small groups.
The big four executives and the P2P developers would be wise just to sit down and work out a 'cap and trade' agreement that would give the P2P developers free access to media product in return for the P2P developers agreeing to limit the distribution of this product to only the people whom they consider to be 'cool'. Since this is what is going to happen eventually anyway, they should formalize the situation before someone (someone important) gets hurt by allowing the lawyers to run amok.
How come Slashdaughters don't think like this and talk like this whenever this topic comes up for discussion?
Thank you for your reply. I gave your comments some thought.
I think that it would be best to give every student a solid foundation in arithmetic and also a much deeper intro to computer math (base 2, base 16, how electrical voltages can represent numbers, how computers work) in middle and early high school (years 7-9 of basic education). Then present the important basic concepts of math; subjects such as a elementary algebra, geometry, trig, calculus, probability, and statistics; in a one year survey course that needs to be passed for No-Child-Left-Behind. All other math classes would be optional for students, but recommended for those interested in learning engineering. Students would get arithmetic in elementary school, computer math and an intro to higher math in middle school, and one year of upper math topics in high school required for graduation. None of this four years of math such as required at the present because few people use it.
I would reverse the emphasis placed currently on foreign language in American high schools. Students would take four years of foreign language and one of math, instead of the current four of math and one (or none) of foreign language. This is would be a better use of educational resources, both teachers and students.
Thank you, Try in future comments to avoid personal attacks on previous writers. This is a skill that is lost on engineering types who never study debate and rhetoric in school.
Hello,
Congrats on working at Intel for 16 years. Might I suggest that you document this period of activity into a small book? It would be great for the historical record.
Typing is a real pain. I suggest using the speech-to-text feature found buried in newer versions of MS Word or the IBM or Dragon speech programs. Train the system by reading a few chapters off the screen. Then sit back and talk about the Intel years, the projects, the personalities, the cubicals, the picnics, the parking lot, the haircuts, the water cooler stories, anything and everything. Don't worry about punctuation and paragraphing, which can be awkward when using speech-to-text systems. It's important to get a text file of recollections from the people who were there. Intel was 'ground zero' for the digital revolution that transformed the world in the last quarter of the 20th century. In fifty to a hundred years from now, people will want to know what it was really like.
Thank you.
I realize that this is the last place in the world that I should say this, but it needs to be said:
There is no need for most math instruction in school!
Everybody has to take algebra in school. Everyone must pass it more or less to graduate from high school. You can't get any kind of decent job without a high school degree.
But less than one in a hundred thousand people will every use algebra. For anything. For the rest of their life!
"But learning algebra helps students to learn how to think!" So does spending four years learning 13th century Ukrainian grammar. So does learning anything stupid and useless.
So if the math tests are getting easier, fine! The vast majority of people who aren't destined to become rocket scientists don't need to learn math and don't need to put into a situation where their future career depends on learning a difficult subject that they will never use.
Math is a fetish of the educational establishment in the US and other countries. It used to be learning Latin, but that requirement was finally waived about thirty years ago. After the language had been dead for 1800 years. That goes to show what a bunch of cement-heads the teachers and the educational establishment are in the US. I understand that the situation is worse in other countries. So if the youth of America are the dead last of the civilized world in their mastery of mathematical concepts, so what!?! If you are never going to use a subject, what the fuck difference does it make if you don't learn it well?
I'm a firmware programmer and electronics technician. I've used algebra once in fifty years. I did OK in it in school, but I hated it. I wish that every hour spent learning this stupid and worthless subject could have been spent instead learning the Beatles and Rolling Stones guitar licks. Something fantastic that would be useful for my entire life!
But no, some asshole with a Master's degree insisted that we all had to learn fucking algebra.
Now I know that you like math. You're reading this on Slashdot, for Christ's sake. But seriously, guys, it's not for everyone. Don't judge people by their fucking math scores.
Ok, I understand that you are from China. And you have mastered the English language, which is a significant acomplishment.
Nevertheless, I encourage you to actually use the spell checker on your PC. In our language, the first letter of each sentence is always capitalized. The first person singular noun, "I", is always capitalized.
This is not a little thing. We don't read individual letters in English. We read phrases, groups of words. If the rules of grammar are not followed, then our ability to read printed text is significantly slowed. I am not insulting you or making a trivial observation. Please continue to use the spelling checker. And don't let the dumb Americans tell you that this doesn't matter.
Imagine if I were to add another random stroke or draw a 'happy face' in every Chinese character. It would be a major irritant to reading. Worse than reading and writing the traditional Chinese characters still used in Taiwan.
The same is true for the capitalization rules in English. And, the other European languages have completely different capitalization grammar rules than English does.
Plus if these grammar rules aren't followed, it is usually impossible to use language-translation programs.
Thank you.
Isn't VOIP illegal in most of the countries where data hiding needed to protect yourself from the political police?
Telephone service is usually a government monopoly in the developing world. VOIP bypasses the government telecommunications monopoly. And since that monopoly is so profitable, the government authorities in these places violently suppress anyone that they catch using VOIP.
What kind of information would be hidden in VOIP transmissions? General political tracts and religious books are too large for the limited space available. Specific information about meetings, such as, "Go to this address at this time and ask for Raul if you want to receive absolution from an ordained priest" in places where Christianity is illegal? Or criminal activity information, like "go to this address at this time and ask for Abdul. He'll have the bomb that you need to blow up the infidel day-care center"? Or, in the USA, drug deal information like "We received your PayPal transaction, Thank you very much. Eight grams of dynamite skunk weed for you is located in a crushed Mountain Dew can in the gutter exactly sixteen feet south east of the bus stop sign at the corner of First and Main. We will pick it up if you don't do so by 3:30pm Tuesday"? I've always wondered why simple dope dealers don't use Internet technology for anonymous untraceable transactions? Could it be because most dope dealers are stupid, or just old-fashioned?
Why would someone want to hide information in a VOIP transmission when they could use an encrypted e-mail for the same purpose? This isn't a rhetorical question. I'd like to know your opinion. I don't have VOIP, so you'll have to take a chance and post it here.
When I was an undergraduate at Portland State University (Oregon USA) in the late 1970s, a semester of programming was required for us. In Fortran. Using punch cards. One card per line of code.
I managed to take the course about three times (like most classes outside my major) before passing. The first time was with a Chinese Grad student teacher. We didn't even have a textbook. He recommended that we buy the Donald Knuth series of books at about the cost of fifty hours of minimum wage work. No chance of that. I lasted about three classes. With any luck this guy is destroying the Chinese educational system.
The second class was with a computer technician who used what must have been a service manual for a mid 1960's 'big iron' mini-computer as a text book. I read the first two chapters about twenty to thirty times and still got nowhere.
The third class in Fortran was with a textbook that was actually clearly written in English. Programming is not hard when explained clearly and fluently. The class was about two-thirds women from the Middle East. I nearly choked to death on their perfume every class but I was able to 'learn' Fortran enough to write about twenty assigned programs that had about 30 lines each. Boy, the machines that punched the holes in the cards was loud! We would bring our deck of punched cards to the operator's window. They would run the program in a big batch with all the other student work. A few hours later, we could pick up a printout of the results. One little pissant mistake and the whole process would have to be repeated. CompSci for non-CompSci majors in the 1970s.
I bought my first microcomputer in 1984, a Radio Shack MC-10. Learned BASIC. Then mastered assembly language on the Commodore 64. Then Turbo C on the PC-AT 286. Then Visual Basic on the Pentium. Now I do assembler for Atmel AVR and C++ for the ARM. I believe that object oriented programming, like FORTH, is the product of a sick mind. But I do firmware and don't believe that any serious microprocessor should cost more than $2.50 US, which puts me into a limited subcategory of the programming community.
Tell us about your programming experiences in 'school' and your best training. Especially if you live outside the USA. Thank you.