I worked as an electrical engineer doing control systems in workplace that is probably one of the most unsanitary- a wastewater treatment plant.
People only got sick when people passed the flu or cold from one person to another- an they usually caught the bug from their kids.
As for cleaning up equipment that has been, um, soiled- generally, if it's water-proofed, just bleach to disinfect and deorderize. If it's not water-proofed, I'm not sure what is done. Probably soak in bleach then throw it away.
I've learned two things from that job: 1) Wash your hands. 2) *hit flows downhill.
Also note- Clear Channel also owns XM, and many of the other outlets for music, like live music venues.
In other words- as an artist, if you don't play by Clear Channel's rules, your mass media exposure is extremely limited.
There's always, MTV. But, take a look at Frontline's documentary on Marketing to Teens, and see how Limp Bizit and Insane Clown Posse are 'mainstreamed' for your mass consumption.
Low level nuclear waste is already being stored in salt flats in New Mexico. It's the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad.
Some of my information may be out of date, as I visited the place in the summer of 1994, as part of a DoE program for talented science students. (One student from the 50 states, and a few from overseas. Unsuprisingly, the kids asked harder and more uncomfortable questions than the political delegations that came through. Unlike the delegations, we kids also understood their answers.)
The basic ideal is to tunnel deep into the salt flats and store the waste canisters. These canisters eventually will corrode and crumble to dust. This is not a problem. Remember the salt? Under extreme pressure (like that cause by millions of tons salt), the salt will flow. Over a few decades time the tunnels will close, and permanently entomb the waste.
As for problems: geologically speaking, the salt flats have been around for hundreds of millions of years, and no one is going to live there. There are two problems: 1) water: massive climate change might affect the preciptation in area is that in the future and also possible local water table contamination and 2) someone might mine for salt where the waste is.
Many engineers- mostly civil, but many mechanicals and electricals are licensed by the state. For example, an electrical engineer with a PE would work on firmware for a control system for a water treatment plant.
Just a thought. Of course, it would require a great change in the people hire for such jobs. It takes a long time to get the PE, and the test for it is extremely difficult.
"The Suffering Find Their Champions, and They Are Not All Gandhis", at here. I can't express this sentiment any better. Those who are ready to join organizations like bin Laden's suffer from opression, whether Israeli or of a corrupt and totalarian government. And their oppressors receive massive US government backing (Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia).
This also another US policy backfiring- the US fomented (with Pakistani, Saudi and other nation's intelligence services) a pan-Islamist movement to combat the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Once the Soviet spectre was gone, the movement turned it's sights on the US.
This very same topic was covered in the Economist.
(As an aside- this just reaffirms my belief that the media moves as a pack, or a mob of humans. Very often, stories I see in some places (the NY Times for example) show up later in other newspapers, then radio and TV.)
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm? Story_ID=730089
The Internet's new borders
Aug 9th 2001
'Geographical lines and locations are increasingly being imposed on the Internet. Is this good or bad?'
While Japan lags in home Internet usage, Japan is way ahead in wireless Internet. At least 10 million subscribe to NTT DoCoMo's I-Mode internet service, making DoCoMo the largest ISP in Japan.
Millions send each other e-mail and messages and surf the web on the subway, in the buses, in the fastfood joints, etc., already.
The color blue. It makes me think of a certain corporation that made Business Machines Internationally. And they were known for being Big on that the color too.
The whole topic is making me feel somewhat hued. Make I'll go listen to music that's colored this way too.
There are two reasons the wireless industry is embracing IPv6. The first is just as a marketing strategy. IPv6 adds functionality and interopability. The second is more serious- the need for addressing. Phone numbers become scarcer and scarcer. Ditto for IP addresses.
There is also the Nyke surface to air missles, of which there is a decommissioned but preserved battery just right outside of San fransico.
The US also deployed so called tactical nukes in Europe as a countermeasure to the numerically superior Soviet forces. These weapons were the target of numerous protests, especially by German activists. These weapons were also the reason why the United States doesn't have a first strike policy- i.e. the U.S. promising to not launch their nukes first.
Sounds like Edward Teller has been passing information onto the Chinese.
To be less flippant- Edward Teller has been a prominate advocate of 'peaceful' uses of the devices he helped develop. Besides thermonucelar bombs and their 'peaceful' uses, his resume also includes selling Reagan on SDI.
I went to UC Berkeley. Good stuff: Proximity to Silicon Valley. Top faculty, top students. You will learn Scheme (dialect of Lisp, first langauge taught to you)), C, Java, C++ and MIPS assembly at the very least.
However, in the first two years there will be weed out classes in gigantic lecture halls. And preferances will be given to people getting their EE/CS degree in the engineering school (as opposed to those in the College of Letters and Sciences).
It's a UNIX dominated environment:
* proximity to Silicon Valley (HP, Sun)
* the EE and CS are in one department: EECS- try seperating an EE from Unix
* most commercial Unix => Berkeley Unix
* widespread use of GNU tools
As for Linux- there was a large community of Linux users, even an occasional class used it- many classes ported code to it. Try the Linux user club at callug.cs.berkeley.edu
UMTS is an evolution of GSM, but the radio link technology may be either Time Division Duplex or Frequency Division Duplex. Most systems in planning, including NTT DoCoMo's version (which is scheduled to go online spring next year), use Wideband Code Division Mutiplexing Access or W-CDMA for the radio link. Obviously, W-CDMA is a CDMA technology. However, most implemntations currently strive to avoid Qualcomm's intellectual property.
Furthermore, GSM is much further ahead in implementing so called 2.5 Generation technologies, examples being EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution) and GPRS(General Packet Radio Service).
The actual standards and specifications can be found at the 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project)website (http://www.3gpp.org). 3GPP, a consortion of several large telecommunications bodies has also been given stewardship of GSM.
In any case, most of the major American equipment manufacturers are involved in UMTS- Lucent, Nortel (yes, I know they're Canadian), Motorola, etc.
Dr. Norman Matloff is probably the most visible and recognized voice against this 'IT shortage'.
He is hardly a marginal figure, since he has appeared on programs such as PBS's McNeil-Lehrer news hour. (The only reason I remember this is because they filmed part of that story segment at my university.)
The government's own GAO (General Accounting Office) points out deficiencies in the current system. You can find the report at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/he00157.pdf
I know Prof. Matlff's positions are echoed by IEEE- so yes, the technical community takes him seriously. You can find several IEEE statements at www.ieeeusa.org. Here's some testimony IEEE has given to Congress at
http://www.ieeeusa.org/forum/POLICY/00feb29.html
What is really needed is a H1B Visa program for politicians and business executives. Obviously, there's a shortage of qualified people for the above positions.
Except that these standards are open and anyone can implement them. Window's isn't like that. You don't have mutiple vendors of Window's out there. You have mutiple vendors of GSM equipment- including base stations and hand sets.
For example, the GSM standard is currently under the stewardship of a hodge-podge of international organizations and standards groups, with some kind of relationship to the ITU (United Nation's Internation Telecommunications Unioin).
It's not Morse code. Morse code is actually a form of entropy coding (like Huffman coding, if you've heard of it). Entropy coding is a way of coding symbols (like letters of a alphabet) so that the most common symbols get the shortest code.
This 'Ultra Wide Band' pulse coding technique actually a spread sprectrum technique. Pulses have interesting spectral characteristics. They don't occupy any particular part of the spectrum, and a particular sequence of pulses is easy to pick out among noise and interference.
There are two groups of standards being set up for 3rd Generation wireless. The first standard-type is UMTS/WCDMA, which is based primarily on GSM technology. The second standard- type is cdma2000, which is based on CDMA (Qualcomm, IS95) technology.
Japan's DoCoMo (I wish we had their I-Mode technology in the US) is set to deploy their WCDMA technology next spring, with a full rollout a few months later. In fact, NEC and Fujitsu have delivered equipment, and are already scheduled to go into production.
European trials of UMTS/WCDMA are scheduled for a year later.
...and they [young Americans] now know that at least one presidential candidate is an idiot.
To what do these same Americans turn to for political coverage? The TV networks? CNN?
Newspapers? None of the above. They go and watch Comedy Central's Daily Show. This political campaign may come down as the most absurd yet.
There's a serious effort for a manned exploration of Mars. In fact, NASA's budjet has most of it's money, post-International space station, going to various Mars missions. Look at the recent missions to Mars- one of them was supposed to be a satellite that was supposed to orbit Mars and relay signals from the surface of Mars to Earth.
NASA is already doing experiments on having people living on recycled air and water for extended periods of time. And there are serious efforts on designing space suits for Mars, etc. Perhaps the most serious efforts are going into desiging a spaceship to simulat gravity.
There are various books on Mars, such as ones by Bob Zubrin. In fact, I think this guy is the most visible advocate ofMars.
The target of this product is telecommunications.
(for more info see EE Times, www.eet.com)
The clock speeds and some features of the architectures are in line of embedded DSP (digital signal processors).
Currently, the telecommunications industry employs racks and racks full of shelves of cards. Each card has several dozen processor cores, mostly DSP. Each core handles up to a few data streams (voice calls). Depending on where the rack is in the voice network (which is the worlds largest and most complicated computer network), it may do GSM-AMR decoding, mu-law conversion, and diversity handling, etc.
As for the lower clock speeds- power consumption and cost are a big deal. When you can have a 200 Mhz DSP do the job, why got any faster?
Slashdot Mirror
I worked as an electrical engineer doing control systems in workplace that is probably one of the most unsanitary- a wastewater treatment plant.
People only got sick when people passed the flu or cold from one person to another- an they usually caught the bug from their kids.
As for cleaning up equipment that has been, um, soiled- generally, if it's water-proofed, just bleach to disinfect and deorderize. If it's not water-proofed, I'm not sure what is done. Probably soak in bleach then throw it away.
I've learned two things from that job:
1) Wash your hands.
2) *hit flows downhill.
Arguably, HP started to lose it way when it spun off Agilent.
As for the 'HP Way'- it was about innovating and taking care of employees. Until the last decade, HP never downsized, for example.
Also note- Clear Channel also owns XM, and many of the other outlets for music, like live music venues.
In other words- as an artist, if you don't play by Clear Channel's rules, your mass media exposure is extremely limited.
There's always, MTV. But, take a look at Frontline's documentary on Marketing to Teens, and see how Limp Bizit and Insane Clown Posse are 'mainstreamed' for your mass consumption.
Low level nuclear waste is already being stored in salt flats in New Mexico. It's the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad.
Some of my information may be out of date, as I visited the place in the summer of 1994, as part of a DoE program for talented science students. (One student from the 50 states, and a few from overseas. Unsuprisingly, the kids asked harder and more uncomfortable questions than the political delegations that came through. Unlike the delegations, we kids also understood their answers.)
The basic ideal is to tunnel deep into the salt flats and store the waste canisters. These canisters eventually will corrode and crumble to dust. This is not a problem. Remember the salt? Under extreme pressure (like that cause by millions of tons salt), the salt will flow. Over a few decades time the tunnels will close, and permanently entomb the waste.
As for problems: geologically speaking, the salt flats have been around for hundreds of millions of years, and no one is going to live there. There are two problems: 1) water: massive climate change might affect the preciptation in area is that in the future and also possible local water table contamination and 2) someone might mine for salt where the waste is.
Website: Radioactive Waste Management Complex - Background
PE- Professional Engineers
Many engineers- mostly civil, but many mechanicals and electricals are licensed by the state. For example, an electrical engineer with a PE would work on firmware for a control system for a water treatment plant.
Just a thought. Of course, it would require a great change in the people hire for such jobs. It takes a long time to get the PE, and the test for it is extremely difficult.
Yeah, the Medieval Christians got around the ban on the practice of usury by hiring Jews as bankers.
"The Suffering Find Their Champions, and They Are Not All Gandhis", at here. I can't express this sentiment any better. Those who are ready to join organizations like bin Laden's suffer from opression, whether Israeli or of a corrupt and totalarian government. And their oppressors receive massive US government backing (Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia).
This also another US policy backfiring- the US fomented (with Pakistani, Saudi and other nation's intelligence services) a pan-Islamist movement to combat the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Once the Soviet spectre was gone, the movement turned it's sights on the US.
This very same topic was covered in the Economist. (As an aside- this just reaffirms my belief that the media moves as a pack, or a mob of humans. Very often, stories I see in some places (the NY Times for example) show up later in other newspapers, then radio and TV.) http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm? Story_ID=730089
The Internet's new borders
Aug 9th 2001
'Geographical lines and locations are increasingly being imposed on the Internet. Is this good or bad?'
While Japan lags in home Internet usage, Japan is way ahead in wireless Internet. At least 10 million subscribe to NTT DoCoMo's I-Mode internet service, making DoCoMo the largest ISP in Japan.
Millions send each other e-mail and messages and surf the web on the subway, in the buses, in the fastfood joints, etc., already.
The color blue. It makes me think of a certain corporation that made Business Machines Internationally. And they were known for being Big on that the color too.
The whole topic is making me feel somewhat hued. Make I'll go listen to music that's colored this way too.
There are two reasons the wireless industry is embracing IPv6. The first is just as a marketing strategy. IPv6 adds functionality and interopability. The second is more serious- the need for addressing. Phone numbers become scarcer and scarcer. Ditto for IP addresses.
There is also the Nyke surface to air missles, of which there is a decommissioned but preserved battery just right outside of San fransico.
The US also deployed so called tactical nukes in Europe as a countermeasure to the numerically superior Soviet forces. These weapons were the target of numerous protests, especially by German activists. These weapons were also the reason why the United States doesn't have a first strike policy- i.e. the U.S. promising to not launch their nukes first.
Sounds like Edward Teller has been passing information onto the Chinese.
To be less flippant- Edward Teller has been a prominate advocate of 'peaceful' uses of the devices he helped develop. Besides thermonucelar bombs and their 'peaceful' uses, his resume also includes selling Reagan on SDI.
I went to UC Berkeley. Good stuff: Proximity to Silicon Valley. Top faculty, top students. You will learn Scheme (dialect of Lisp, first langauge taught to you)), C, Java, C++ and MIPS assembly at the very least.
However, in the first two years there will be weed out classes in gigantic lecture halls. And preferances will be given to people getting their EE/CS degree in the engineering school (as opposed to those in the College of Letters and Sciences).
It's a UNIX dominated environment:
* proximity to Silicon Valley (HP, Sun)
* the EE and CS are in one department: EECS- try seperating an EE from Unix
* most commercial Unix => Berkeley Unix
* widespread use of GNU tools
As for Linux- there was a large community of Linux users, even an occasional class used it- many classes ported code to it. Try the Linux user club at callug.cs.berkeley.edu
UMTS is an evolution of GSM, but the radio link technology may be either Time Division Duplex or Frequency Division Duplex. Most systems in planning, including NTT DoCoMo's version (which is scheduled to go online spring next year), use Wideband Code Division Mutiplexing Access or W-CDMA for the radio link. Obviously, W-CDMA is a CDMA technology. However, most implemntations currently strive to avoid Qualcomm's intellectual property.
Furthermore, GSM is much further ahead in implementing so called 2.5 Generation technologies, examples being EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution) and GPRS(General Packet Radio Service).
The actual standards and specifications can be found at the 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project)website (http://www.3gpp.org). 3GPP, a consortion of several large telecommunications bodies has also been given stewardship of GSM.
In any case, most of the major American equipment manufacturers are involved in UMTS- Lucent, Nortel (yes, I know they're Canadian), Motorola, etc.
Dr. Norman Matloff is probably the most visible and recognized voice against this 'IT shortage'. He is hardly a marginal figure, since he has appeared on programs such as PBS's McNeil-Lehrer news hour. (The only reason I remember this is because they filmed part of that story segment at my university.)
The government's own GAO (General Accounting Office) points out deficiencies in the current system. You can find the report at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/he00157.pdf
I know Prof. Matlff's positions are echoed by IEEE- so yes, the technical community takes him seriously. You can find several IEEE statements at www.ieeeusa.org. Here's some testimony IEEE has given to Congress at http://www.ieeeusa.org/forum/POLICY/00feb29.html
What is really needed is a H1B Visa program for politicians and business executives. Obviously, there's a shortage of qualified people for the above positions.
Except that these standards are open and anyone can implement them. Window's isn't like that. You don't have mutiple vendors of Window's out there. You have mutiple vendors of GSM equipment- including base stations and hand sets.
For example, the GSM standard is currently under the stewardship of a hodge-podge of international organizations and standards groups, with some kind of relationship to the ITU (United Nation's Internation Telecommunications Unioin).
It's not Morse code. Morse code is actually a form of entropy coding (like Huffman coding, if you've heard of it). Entropy coding is a way of coding symbols (like letters of a alphabet) so that the most common symbols get the shortest code.
This 'Ultra Wide Band' pulse coding technique actually a spread sprectrum technique. Pulses have interesting spectral characteristics. They don't occupy any particular part of the spectrum, and a particular sequence of pulses is easy to pick out among noise and interference.
There are two groups of standards being set up for 3rd Generation wireless. The first standard-type is UMTS/WCDMA, which is based primarily on GSM technology. The second standard- type is cdma2000, which is based on CDMA (Qualcomm, IS95) technology.
Japan's DoCoMo (I wish we had their I-Mode technology in the US) is set to deploy their WCDMA technology next spring, with a full rollout a few months later. In fact, NEC and Fujitsu have delivered equipment, and are already scheduled to go into production.
European trials of UMTS/WCDMA are scheduled for a year later.
To what do these same Americans turn to for political coverage? The TV networks? CNN? Newspapers? None of the above. They go and watch Comedy Central's Daily Show. This political campaign may come down as the most absurd yet.
I think my work matters.
My previous job was working on IR and RF sensor and data processing systems. My present job is in 3rd generation wireless communications.
I like my work, and I think it matters. However burnout is a significant problem, as the stress can get pretty bad.
Check out Tom Tomorrow's comic on this: http://www.salon.com/comics/comics1961209.html
There's a serious effort for a manned exploration of Mars. In fact, NASA's budjet has most of it's money, post-International space station, going to various Mars missions. Look at the recent missions to Mars- one of them was supposed to be a satellite that was supposed to orbit Mars and relay signals from the surface of Mars to Earth. NASA is already doing experiments on having people living on recycled air and water for extended periods of time. And there are serious efforts on designing space suits for Mars, etc. Perhaps the most serious efforts are going into desiging a spaceship to simulat gravity. There are various books on Mars, such as ones by Bob Zubrin. In fact, I think this guy is the most visible advocate ofMars.
The target of this product is telecommunications. (for more info see EE Times, www.eet.com) The clock speeds and some features of the architectures are in line of embedded DSP (digital signal processors). Currently, the telecommunications industry employs racks and racks full of shelves of cards. Each card has several dozen processor cores, mostly DSP. Each core handles up to a few data streams (voice calls). Depending on where the rack is in the voice network (which is the worlds largest and most complicated computer network), it may do GSM-AMR decoding, mu-law conversion, and diversity handling, etc. As for the lower clock speeds- power consumption and cost are a big deal. When you can have a 200 Mhz DSP do the job, why got any faster?