I have a ti-89, but i use it as little as possible. In my university no calculators are allowed during exams, and if you're stupid enough to use them in class you don't have much chance of passing the exam (simply because you wont understand)
At my university, the calculus classes were optimized for calculators, and you were lost if you didn't use one, because the answers weren't round. Not that it made it any easier, you still had to show every step of solving the problem; you just used the calculator for the sake of time. In fact, the professor had a TI-85 with an overhead projector attachment so he could show how integrations looked when plotted, slope fields of differential equations, etc. He would even let us transfer the programs on his calculator via a link cable (or give handouts with programs to type in if you had a TI-81 or whatever.) He said he knows all the tricks of graphing calculators, and that people often stored "crib" in the form of text files or bitmap images on them, but he didn't worry about that, because the problems were written so that if you had taken the time to learn the material rather than entering crib on your calculator, it would take less time to do the problem because you know how to do it than it would take to scroll through a text file of crib to find the right solution and not finishing the exam when time ran out.
I'm surprised that nobody else has posted about colorblindness yet-- I was under the impression that more of us engineering types were affected!
I once read an interesting write-up on color blindness on (of all places) Wendy Carlos' page (you know, the Wendy Carlos that did the music for Tron??) at www.wendycarlos.com. She even suggests how to simulate red-green color blindness with a deep blue fluorescent light and a (low pressure, not high pressure) sodium vapor light. And somebody must have had color blind people in mind when the HP-65 calculator was designed, as all the buttons are ivory, gray and black, with the function keys being yellow and light blue. (Of course, the red display would appear as yellow.)
Any good Junkyard Wars aficionado knows what to do in 10 easy steps:
1. Obtain a 10-speed bike.
2. Build some kind of stand that will raise the back wheel off the ground about an inch.
3. Remove the back tire from the rim.
4. Attach an old car alternator to the stand.
5. Loop a long rubber belt over the back tire rim and over the alternator. A clothes dryer belt works nicely. (Whether to use an idler pulley or a tension adjuster on the alternator is up to the imagination of the engineer who is bodging this contraption together.)
6. Connect the alternator to a car battery.
7. Connect an inverter to the car battery. (Or instead, the alternator could be wired to charge the gel cells of an uninterruptable power supply.)
8. Have fun designing charge indicator meters, writing calories burned programs, etc.
9. Pedal until fully charged.
10. Hack until the battery peters out. By then, you need a brain break anyway. Pedal, hack, repeat. You WILL lose weight.
What's that they used to say about the B-52? It has enough aluminum to make 10,000 garbage cans, contains 10,000 miles of wiring and it has the power of 10,000 locomotives. And that flying one is like steering 10,000 locomotives that are towing 10,000 garbage cans behind 10,000 miles of wire.
Lately in the binaries newsgroups, there has been increasing use of.PAR files. If a large number of.RAR or.ACE files are downloaded but some are incomplete or corrupt, just so long as you have an equal number of.PAR files as there are missing/corrupt files, the original data can be reconstructed, no matter which of the original files are missing. An explanation and a PAR file reconstruction program can be found at:
http://www.disc-chord.com/smartpar/
[beating a dead horse]
Know what's enclosed in the back of every $34.95 "Linux for Idiots" book? A complete, fully functional distro of Red Hat Linux. I'm pretty sure the "For Idiots" company pays a tithe to Red Hat, don't they?
If M$ "gave away" their most basic product, the OS itself, in the form of a flashy "Learn how to use Windows XP!" manual with the full program enclosed, and charge no more than the price of a "For Idiots" book, then people will say "Why would I want to pirate XP when I can get it for free in the back of this book?" and cheerfully pay for it. Then sell a home/small business version of Office XP in the form of another flashy book. They needn't even open-source their software. Then they can charge the normal price for all the programming environments, games, customer service, etc.
But it seems that Linux companies are the only ones to figure out how to make a profit off of "free" software this way.
[/beating a dead horse]
Instead of turning the bulb off, what if you turned the bulb "down" - via some sort of rheostat or more properly, a potentiometer in a variable voltage divider configuration.
Well, that depends on what the power consumption of the bulb is. If it is a 120 VAC incandescent bulb, a heavy duty Triac light dimmer would be the fastest and cheapest way to dim the bulb, and would extend the life of the bulb even at full brightness by allowing you to gradually increase the current. In the case of filament breakage, the sudden inrush of current into an old weak filament is what does it in, that's why a bulb is more likely to fail when you flip the switch than during the middle of use. Most failures during operation are due to bulb breakage, usually caused by fingerprints on the bulb as was stated in a previous post.
However if the bulb is DC incandescent, a Triac light dimmer couldn't be used as a Triac depends on AC to work properly. A power rheostat rated for the wattage of the bulb would be required, or an adjustable voltage power supply could somehow be used.
Of course, if the bulb is an arc tube, like used in some video projectors, yer outta luck.
This gives the possibility of using solar power during the day the power a computer and generate hydrogen,
When are people gonna learn that making hydrogen by solar means is a total waste of money? You'd have much, much, much more power available for a hell of a lot less money by connecting solar cells to rechargeable batteries (lead-acid, Nicad, NiMH, or even Li-Ion) than you would by connecting the same set of solar cells to an apparatus to generate, compress, and store hydrogen for a set of fuel cells. To understand why, read the "Properties of Electrolysis" segment at http://www.tinaja.com/glib/muse153.pdf
It turns into a hand-truck
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 1
You'll do what every other kid who has ever tried to balance and ride a hand-truck (or dolly, 'pendin on whar yer from) has experienced: Ker-BLAM!
$1,000,000,000 idea: How 'bout a self-propelled self-balancing hand truck based on this technology? It'll sure save my back on moving day.
Will it be sold by Amway?
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 1
Segway? Amway? Yessiree, Bob, I can see the pyramid scheme sale of these things a-coming! Wotta segue'!
So this version doesn't report its CD key by some means, e.g. when you go to the M$ website for updates, where M$ could compare the CD key against a database to see if there are any duplicates, then remotely disable the software? I remember when some shareware programs used to do that. They would "phone home" and report the registration info, and if the activation key was pirated or a bogus one made by a key generator, the software would be disabled (usually with a scary message that the FBI, Gestapo, or Mafia is coming after you), either remotely or upon installing an upgrade or bugfix patch.
The truth is generally the most widely accepted lie.
However, what if there's a non-commercial certification process. Run, not by RedHat or Microsoft, but by a vendor-independent group of engineers. You prove to them that you are a capable engineer/programmer/whatever. They give you a certificate that actually means something. Perhaps require the certification to be re-written every N years.
There already is such a certification process in place, it's the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (www.ncees.org). They're the ones that administer the Fundamentals of Engineering (a.k.a. Engineer-in-Training) and the Professional Engineer examinations. This is the biggie all civil, mechanical, electrical, etc. engineers have to take every 5 years to keep their licenses current. The FE and PE exams are written by engineers for engineers. Engineer licenses aren't granted by NCEES, but the exams administered by NCEES are accepted by most licensing boards much in the same way the SAT or ACT is standardized and accepted by most universities.
The way NCEES exams work is the test is given in two 4 hour sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The first part is 120 questions in multiple choice format that are inclusive for all engineering disciplines. There is an equal mix of basic chemical engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering and a bunch of math and physics related questions. The afternoon half is 60 questions and is discipline specific, e.g. EEs take the EE specific exam where the test goes into much more depth. There are some computer programming questions in the electrical engineering portion of the test, but they're generalized and non-platform specific; e.g. pseudo code implementations of simple things, such as sorts and machine language loops.
If software engineering is considered "real" engineering, NCEES will probably pick up the testing end of the certification process, but then software engineers will have to do what all other engineers do and take engineering courses outside their major, just like MEs, ChEs, EEs, etc. do. Then they too can sit through the same dreadful 8 hour long motherfscker of a test all the other engineers take.
A better solution would be a NCEES style exam where the first half tests knowledge of things that should be common to all software engineering, such as familiarity with Windows, unix-like OSes and Mac platforms, networking, programming fundamentals, language syntax, basic algorithms, etc.; and the second half would be more specific such as embedded systems programming, network engineer, graphical user interfaces, or whatever. The exam would of course have to be written by software engineers for software engineers.
What I'm looking for is freely downloadable scientific software where you don't have to give them your personal info before being allowed to download it. It's pretty damn bad when you have to look for warez versions of free programs just because you don't want vendors harvesting your personal info to sell to others.
Despite all the light (and air) pollution of southeastern Louisiana, I counted anywhere from 2-3 a minute the whole time I was outside from 2-4:30. The most I saw was between 3:30-4:30, seeing up to 4 at one time, from tiny red ones to white ones that leave a blue trail, and a couple big juicy green ones that looked like Roman candles, including one that took a dog-leg path, leaving a trail of "smoke" that lasted for a couple minutes. Best meteor shower I've ever seen.
I know I'd rather carry around an AC adapter than a container of methanol.
Try carrying a container of alcohol through an airport, especially these days since Sept. 11. If the idea ever catches on and these batteries become as common as cigarette lighters, maybe things will change. But then again, smoking is not allowed on airplanes, I wonder if they've been confiscating lighters these days?
SNO has recently added salt to their heavy water, since comparing the reaction rates with and without the salt will provide a very interesting ratio for understanding the mass heirarchy of neutrinos.
Interesting. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the stable isotope of chlorine-37, which makes up about 24% of the total amount of available chlorine (the rest being the stable isotope Cl-35), is what is of interest in neutrino detection. Although Cl-37 is stable, it is just enough on the edge of stability that a neutrino with the right amount of energy will knock the electron out of a neutron in the Cl-37 atom, which then produces the tiny Cherenkov effect wink of light that the photomultiplier tubes detects. The neutrino now occupies the place inside the neutron that the electron did, and lack of the negative charge makes the neutron into a proton. The Cl-37 atom is thus converted to Ar-37, which will decay back into Cl-37, by electron capture (which, of course, kicks the neutrino back out.)
Top! Bottom! Up! Down! Strange! Charmed! Leptons, muons, tachyons, bosons! Antimatter! Isn't subatomic particle physics fun! Let's build an atom smasher! (Isn't it ironic that the largest structures in the world are used to investigate the tiniest?) But then again, I'm an electrical engineer... What if neutrinos were the carriers of charge? Then we'd be neutrinoical engineers. I think the left half of my brain annihilated the right half. Maybe the SuperK accident was caused by a neutrino being annihilated by an anti-neutrino?
International Standards Organizations
on
Defining Globalism
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· Score: 1
Wanna know who the leader in the globalization effort is?
It is not the US, not Great Britain, not Germany, Japan, Israel, Saudia Arabia, Mexico or any other nation for that matter.
It is not the FBI, CIA, NSA, KGB, OSS, ISI, Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, the Illuminati and their old hoax of a document The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, or any other sinister organization that conspiracy theorists can dream up for that matter.
The biggest leaders in globalization is the various institutions that set up global standards for science and technology, such as ISO. The Metric system is the prime example of the globalization of standards. It is universally recognized and accepted by all nations of the world, even those who insist upon adhering to older standards, such as pounds, feet, Farenheit, etc. Another prime example: Ever wonder why the Internet works the same in every other country as it does in the US? An internationally agreed upon set of standards and protocols.
This comes straight from the ISO website, on why international standards are needed:
_____________________________________________
The existence of non-harmonized standards for similar technologies in different countries or regions can contribute to so-called "technical barriers to trade". Export-minded industries have long sensed the need to agree on world standards to help rationalize the international trading process. This was the origin of the establishment of ISO.
International standardization is well-established for many technologies in such diverse fields as information processing and communications, textiles, packaging, distribution of goods, energy production and utilization, shipbuilding, banking and financial services. It will continue to grow in importance for all sectors of industrial activity for the foreseeable future.
The main reasons are:
Worldwide progress in trade liberalization Today's free-market economies increasingly encourage diverse sources of supply and provide opportunities for expanding markets. On the technology side, fair competition needs to be based on identifiable, clearly defined common references that are recognized from one country to the next, and from one region to the other. An industry-wide standard, internationally recognized, developed by consensus among trading partners, serves as the language of trade.
Interpenetration of sectors No industry in today's world can truly claim to be completely independent of components, products, rules of application, etc., that have been developed in other sectors. Bolts are used in aviation and for agricultural machinery; welding plays a role in mechanical and nuclear engineering, and electronic data processing has penetrated all industries. Environmentally friendly products and processes, and recyclable or biodegradable packaging are pervasive concerns.
Worldwide communications systems The computer industry offers a good example of technology that needs quickly and progressively to be standardized at a global level. Full compatibility among open systems fosters healthy competition among producers, and offers real options to users since it is a powerful catalyst for innovation, improved productivity and cost-cutting.
Global standards for emerging technologies Standardization programmes in completely new fields are now being developed. Such fields include advanced materials, the environment, life sciences, urbanization and construction. In the very early stages of new technology development, applications can be imagined but functional prototypes do not exist. Here, the need for standardization is in defining terminology and accumulating databases of quantitative information.
Developing countries Development agencies are increasingly recognizing that a standardization infrastructure is a basic condition for the success of economic policies aimed at achieving sustainable development. Creating such an infrastructure in developing countries is essential for improving productivity, market competitiveness, and export capability.
___________________________________________
So there you have it in a nutsack, folks. And guess what? ISO certification is totally voluntary, no one forces it on anyone, instead industries seek it out in order to gain an edge in a global marketplace.
No, being an EE is not all about being so busy and stressed out. Not all EE's are cubicle slaves, many work out in the field, where there's no room for stress, particularly hard core EE jobs where it is all in a day's work to deal with 200,000 volt power distribution systems.
Another job I've worked at where stress is very low almost by requirement is a nuclear power station. When I first started, I was amazed at how laid back everybody was, how even the boss man would hang out in the break area and bullshit with everybody else, but I came to understand his "open door policy" very well when given the sheer scope of things: Releasing the energy in 1,000 tons (we're talking physical mass here, not equivalent yield in TNT) of enriched uranium veeeeery slowly to keep a 100 ton turbine spinning at precisely 3,600 RPMs to deliver approximately 1.35 million horsepower to a generator that puts out a gigawatt of power. Making a small mistake here because you're under pressure, or even being mad at your wife for something trivial, can cause a disaster and jeopardize an entire industry. Everyone is encouraged to get a good night's sleep and take vacations regularly, and there is even a team of counselors and psychiatrists on the staff full time to deal with people who feel they may be under stress.
And, of course, there's any job that requires a security clearance, e.g. working at the Pentagon, the Lockheed Skunk Works, etc. There you are absolutely prohibited from "taking your work home with you".
Well, it depends on what area of EE you are studying. The area dealing with everything from the generator to the outlet on your wall is very mature, over 100 years old. And, of course, the CS field can trace its roots back to Eniac and beyond.
However, these fields are being kept immature by ever changing technology. Since computer components have gone from vacuum tubes to chips, tube theory classes are practically nonexistant. Someday optical computing will replace semiconductors, and maybe even chip based logic classes will cease to be taught. But the math will still be the same.
And even "hard-core" electrical engineering is being rapidly changed by advances in semiconductor technology. Consider that 450 watt power supply in your tower computer. Barely 20 years ago a DC power supply capable of that kind of wattage would have required a heavy iron core transformer, along with a majorly huge heatsink full of transistors and voltage regulators, and filter capacitors the size of soup cans. Just the power supply alone would have been the size of the tower case itself! But due to advances in semiconductor power electronics, all that has been shrunk down to the small lightweight silver box with the fan on back that sits behind the drive bay.
But despite all the advances in EE, power plants are still being built that burn coal. And the engineers that run the electrical grid have to learn the basic engineering fundamentals that were established more than 100 years ago.
Wanna know who the leader in the globalization effort is?
It is not the US, not Great Britain, not Germany, Japan, Israel, Saudia Arabia, Mexico or any other nation for that matter.
It is not the FBI, CIA, NSA, KGB, OSS, ISI, Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, the Illuminati and their old hoax of a document The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, or any other sinister organization that conspiracy theorists can dream up for that matter.
The biggest leaders in globalization is the various institutions that set up global standards for science and technology, such as ISO. The Metric system is the prime example of the globalization of standards. It is universally recognized and accepted by all nations of the world, even those who insist upon adhering to older standards, such as pounds, feet, Farenheit, etc. Another prime example: Ever wonder why the Internet works the same in every other country as it does in the US? An internationally agreed upon set of standards and protocols.
This comes straight from the ISO website, on why international standards are needed:
_____________________________________________
The existence of non-harmonized standards for similar technologies in different countries or regions can contribute to so-called "technical barriers to trade". Export-minded industries have long sensed the need to agree on world standards to help rationalize the international trading process. This was the origin of the establishment of ISO.
International standardization is well-established for many technologies in such diverse fields as information processing and communications, textiles, packaging, distribution of goods, energy production and utilization, shipbuilding, banking and financial services. It will continue to grow in importance for all sectors of industrial activity for the foreseeable future.
The main reasons are:
Worldwide progress in trade liberalization Today's free-market economies increasingly encourage diverse sources of supply and provide opportunities for expanding markets. On the technology side, fair competition needs to be based on identifiable, clearly defined common references that are recognized from one country to the next, and from one region to the other. An industry-wide standard, internationally recognized, developed by consensus among trading partners, serves as the language of trade.
Interpenetration of sectors No industry in today's world can truly claim to be completely independent of components, products, rules of application, etc., that have been developed in other sectors. Bolts are used in aviation and for agricultural machinery; welding plays a role in mechanical and nuclear engineering, and electronic data processing has penetrated all industries. Environmentally friendly products and processes, and recyclable or biodegradable packaging are pervasive concerns.
Worldwide communications systems The computer industry offers a good example of technology that needs quickly and progressively to be standardized at a global level. Full compatibility among open systems fosters healthy competition among producers, and offers real options to users since it is a powerful catalyst for innovation, improved productivity and cost-cutting.
Global standards for emerging technologies Standardization programmes in completely new fields are now being developed. Such fields include advanced materials, the environment, life sciences, urbanization and construction. In the very early stages of new technology development, applications can be imagined but functional prototypes do not exist. Here, the need for standardization is in defining terminology and accumulating databases of quantitative information.
Developing countries Development agencies are increasingly recognizing that a standardization infrastructure is a basic condition for the success of economic policies aimed at achieving sustainable development. Creating such an infrastructure in developing countries is essential for improving productivity, market competitiveness, and export capability.
___________________________________________
In otherwords, if a nation wants to compete economically, they have to be able to conform to international standards.
Now if Nautilus could be made to behave exactly like Windows Explorer, all the way down to the last cut, copy and paste operation, listing the folders in the left pane and contents of the folders in the right pane, showing a list of small icons in both panes, it might be workable. Of course it would also have to ditch the written-in-stone file associations that plague Windows Explorer. Hey, wait a minute, I just described Konquerer.
What I hate about Nautilus (and other Linux file managers, for that matter, this ain't just a Nautulus problem) is that it tries to launch files upon clicking them once. Also the automatic thumbnailing of images is annoying, wastes time, and adds garbage to folders (the thumbnail file, indexes, etc...)
Ooh- I know! Let's bring back SID from the old Amiga days! The file manager, that is, not the Commodore 64 sound chip.
Conspicuous dropping of aid doesn't change the fact that the US is using its technology to slaughter by remote control. "Cowardly" would be the word that comes to mind.
Fighting by remote control does not define a coward. Bin L.'s group brainwashed a bunch of dupes to hijack civilian airliners and slam them into buildings. Then they all sat back and watched CNN to verify their targets have been destroyed. If that ain't remote control, then I don't know what is.
What makes the terrorists cowards is that they never owned up to it.
The US forces told the Taliban to hand over Bin L., and told them what would happen if they didn't. An ultimatum was given, and the Taliban knew exactly who their enemy was.
Then attacks began, and their air defense is wiped out. There are some civilian casualties, but only a tiny fraction of what was killed in the WTC, Pentagon, and the 4 hijacked planes.
Clearly the battlefield is extremely lopsided against them, so they then call the US forces a bunch of cowards because the US won't fight them at close enough range for them to shoot at?? Crybabies.
The amount of oil money flowing into the Middle East is unbeleivable. How much is being spent on the well being of the people?
Exactly nothing, and that's the whole point of this conflict. We buy their oil, it builds their economy, so they're supposed to have the highest standard of living on Earth, right?
The only answer I can think of is that there is a horrible misappropriation of their resources. Furthermore we accomodate them because we supply them.
Bingo. Instead of using oil money to build dams to supply water to fields to grow food crops, then building roads and railroads to deliver food to places where crops can't be grown (e.g. mountainous regions), thus building an infrastructure and build up an economy, the money is hoarded by religious fanatical warlords so they can build up their war machines. They keep their borders closed, and prevent their people from leaving to obtain food and water and freedom and wealth, because they might enter a region that will blaspheme their religion.
In an ironic way Bin Laden is correct that "we" are taking their wealth. First we give them money for oil. Next we give them old weapons for money. In the end we have their oil and they have our discarded weapons. Of course they wanted these weapons so they could fight their endless wars. And we wanted the oil. The deal was struck.
And the U.S.A. and its allies, probably jacked up the price of those weapons way beyond their worth, to keep them from amassing too many just in case some nut cases like the Taliban were to come in posession of them, thus plunging the world into a conflict as big as that with the Nazis.
Remember, folks, all wars have a real estate motive, and religion is used to fuel the support of wars. Control of religion inside that real estate is the primary objective, whether it is to convert people to a certain religion (Crusades), eradicate believers of certain religions (Nazis vs. Jews, or Taliban vs. all but THEIR flavor of Islam), forbid religion altogether (Communism), or promote freedom to worship as you please so long as you don't bother others (U.S.A. and allies).
Its blood money all right. But its their people's blood and we look the other way.
It happened like this: The Stamp-Out-Religion force (Soviets) invaded a piece of neutral Real Estate (Afghanistan) in a continuing march of conquest. So the owners of the Real Estate called upon the Freedom-Of-Religion force (USA and allies) to drive out the Stamp-Out-Religion force. The Freedom-of-Religion force didn't rebuild the real estate, it was hoped that the owners of the real estate would do that, but instead, a Forced-Religion regime (Taliban, Bin L., et. al.) took over. It's just too bad that it took 12 years to discover that the weeds which sprouted in the cracks and crevices of the rubble left behind came to fruit and spread seeds, otherwise it could have been stopped at the roots.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a ti-89, but i use it as little as possible. In my university no calculators are allowed during exams, and if you're stupid enough to use them in class you don't have much chance of passing the exam (simply because you wont understand)
At my university, the calculus classes were optimized for calculators, and you were lost if you didn't use one, because the answers weren't round. Not that it made it any easier, you still had to show every step of solving the problem; you just used the calculator for the sake of time. In fact, the professor had a TI-85 with an overhead projector attachment so he could show how integrations looked when plotted, slope fields of differential equations, etc. He would even let us transfer the programs on his calculator via a link cable (or give handouts with programs to type in if you had a TI-81 or whatever.) He said he knows all the tricks of graphing calculators, and that people often stored "crib" in the form of text files or bitmap images on them, but he didn't worry about that, because the problems were written so that if you had taken the time to learn the material rather than entering crib on your calculator, it would take less time to do the problem because you know how to do it than it would take to scroll through a text file of crib to find the right solution and not finishing the exam when time ran out.
I'm surprised that nobody else has posted about colorblindness yet-- I was under the impression that more of us engineering types were affected!
I once read an interesting write-up on color blindness on (of all places) Wendy Carlos' page (you know, the Wendy Carlos that did the music for Tron??) at www.wendycarlos.com. She even suggests how to simulate red-green color blindness with a deep blue fluorescent light and a (low pressure, not high pressure) sodium vapor light. And somebody must have had color blind people in mind when the HP-65 calculator was designed, as all the buttons are ivory, gray and black, with the function keys being yellow and light blue. (Of course, the red display would appear as yellow.)
Any good Junkyard Wars aficionado knows what to do in 10 easy steps:
1. Obtain a 10-speed bike.
2. Build some kind of stand that will raise the back wheel off the ground about an inch.
3. Remove the back tire from the rim.
4. Attach an old car alternator to the stand.
5. Loop a long rubber belt over the back tire rim and over the alternator. A clothes dryer belt works nicely. (Whether to use an idler pulley or a tension adjuster on the alternator is up to the imagination of the engineer who is bodging this contraption together.)
6. Connect the alternator to a car battery.
7. Connect an inverter to the car battery. (Or instead, the alternator could be wired to charge the gel cells of an uninterruptable power supply.)
8. Have fun designing charge indicator meters, writing calories burned programs, etc.
9. Pedal until fully charged.
10. Hack until the battery peters out. By then, you need a brain break anyway. Pedal, hack, repeat. You WILL lose weight.
What's that they used to say about the B-52? It has enough aluminum to make 10,000 garbage cans, contains 10,000 miles of wiring and it has the power of 10,000 locomotives. And that flying one is like steering 10,000 locomotives that are towing 10,000 garbage cans behind 10,000 miles of wire.
Lately in the binaries newsgroups, there has been increasing use of .PAR files. If a large number of .RAR or .ACE files are downloaded but some are incomplete or corrupt, just so long as you have an equal number of .PAR files as there are missing/corrupt files, the original data can be reconstructed, no matter which of the original files are missing. An explanation and a PAR file reconstruction program can be found at:
http://www.disc-chord.com/smartpar/
Well simply undefine it or
delete [] piracy;
Naw, that's way too simple. Better way?
[beating a dead horse]
Know what's enclosed in the back of every $34.95 "Linux for Idiots" book? A complete, fully functional distro of Red Hat Linux. I'm pretty sure the "For Idiots" company pays a tithe to Red Hat, don't they?
If M$ "gave away" their most basic product, the OS itself, in the form of a flashy "Learn how to use Windows XP!" manual with the full program enclosed, and charge no more than the price of a "For Idiots" book, then people will say "Why would I want to pirate XP when I can get it for free in the back of this book?" and cheerfully pay for it. Then sell a home/small business version of Office XP in the form of another flashy book. They needn't even open-source their software. Then they can charge the normal price for all the programming environments, games, customer service, etc.
But it seems that Linux companies are the only ones to figure out how to make a profit off of "free" software this way.
[/beating a dead horse]
Instead of turning the bulb off, what if you turned the bulb "down" - via some sort of rheostat or more properly, a potentiometer in a variable voltage divider configuration.
Well, that depends on what the power consumption of the bulb is. If it is a 120 VAC incandescent bulb, a heavy duty Triac light dimmer would be the fastest and cheapest way to dim the bulb, and would extend the life of the bulb even at full brightness by allowing you to gradually increase the current. In the case of filament breakage, the sudden inrush of current into an old weak filament is what does it in, that's why a bulb is more likely to fail when you flip the switch than during the middle of use. Most failures during operation are due to bulb breakage, usually caused by fingerprints on the bulb as was stated in a previous post.
However if the bulb is DC incandescent, a Triac light dimmer couldn't be used as a Triac depends on AC to work properly. A power rheostat rated for the wattage of the bulb would be required, or an adjustable voltage power supply could somehow be used.
Of course, if the bulb is an arc tube, like used in some video projectors, yer outta luck.
This gives the possibility of using solar power during the day the power a computer and generate hydrogen,
When are people gonna learn that making hydrogen by solar means is a total waste of money? You'd have much, much, much more power available for a hell of a lot less money by connecting solar cells to rechargeable batteries (lead-acid, Nicad, NiMH, or even Li-Ion) than you would by connecting the same set of solar cells to an apparatus to generate, compress, and store hydrogen for a set of fuel cells. To understand why, read the "Properties of Electrolysis" segment at http://www.tinaja.com/glib/muse153.pdf
You'll do what every other kid who has ever tried to balance and ride a hand-truck (or dolly, 'pendin on whar yer from) has experienced: Ker-BLAM!
$1,000,000,000 idea: How 'bout a self-propelled self-balancing hand truck based on this technology? It'll sure save my back on moving day.
Segway? Amway? Yessiree, Bob, I can see the pyramid scheme sale of these things a-coming! Wotta segue'!
So this version doesn't report its CD key by some means, e.g. when you go to the M$ website for updates, where M$ could compare the CD key against a database to see if there are any duplicates, then remotely disable the software? I remember when some shareware programs used to do that. They would "phone home" and report the registration info, and if the activation key was pirated or a bogus one made by a key generator, the software would be disabled (usually with a scary message that the FBI, Gestapo, or Mafia is coming after you), either remotely or upon installing an upgrade or bugfix patch.
The truth is generally the most widely accepted lie.
However, what if there's a non-commercial certification process. Run, not by RedHat or Microsoft, but by a vendor-independent group of engineers. You prove to them that you are a capable engineer/programmer/whatever. They give you a certificate that actually means something. Perhaps require the certification to be re-written every N years.
There already is such a certification process in place, it's the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (www.ncees.org). They're the ones that administer the Fundamentals of Engineering (a.k.a. Engineer-in-Training) and the Professional Engineer examinations. This is the biggie all civil, mechanical, electrical, etc. engineers have to take every 5 years to keep their licenses current. The FE and PE exams are written by engineers for engineers. Engineer licenses aren't granted by NCEES, but the exams administered by NCEES are accepted by most licensing boards much in the same way the SAT or ACT is standardized and accepted by most universities.
The way NCEES exams work is the test is given in two 4 hour sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The first part is 120 questions in multiple choice format that are inclusive for all engineering disciplines. There is an equal mix of basic chemical engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering and a bunch of math and physics related questions. The afternoon half is 60 questions and is discipline specific, e.g. EEs take the EE specific exam where the test goes into much more depth. There are some computer programming questions in the electrical engineering portion of the test, but they're generalized and non-platform specific; e.g. pseudo code implementations of simple things, such as sorts and machine language loops.
If software engineering is considered "real" engineering, NCEES will probably pick up the testing end of the certification process, but then software engineers will have to do what all other engineers do and take engineering courses outside their major, just like MEs, ChEs, EEs, etc. do. Then they too can sit through the same dreadful 8 hour long motherfscker of a test all the other engineers take.
A better solution would be a NCEES style exam where the first half tests knowledge of things that should be common to all software engineering, such as familiarity with Windows, unix-like OSes and Mac platforms, networking, programming fundamentals, language syntax, basic algorithms, etc.; and the second half would be more specific such as embedded systems programming, network engineer, graphical user interfaces, or whatever. The exam would of course have to be written by software engineers for software engineers.
What I'm looking for is freely downloadable scientific software where you don't have to give them your personal info before being allowed to download it. It's pretty damn bad when you have to look for warez versions of free programs just because you don't want vendors harvesting your personal info to sell to others.
Bob! Slack! Frop! Kill me! The Anti-Bob!
"Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke." -J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
Despite all the light (and air) pollution of southeastern Louisiana, I counted anywhere from 2-3 a minute the whole time I was outside from 2-4:30. The most I saw was between 3:30-4:30, seeing up to 4 at one time, from tiny red ones to white ones that leave a blue trail, and a couple big juicy green ones that looked like Roman candles, including one that took a dog-leg path, leaving a trail of "smoke" that lasted for a couple minutes. Best meteor shower I've ever seen.
I know I'd rather carry around an AC adapter than a container of methanol.
Try carrying a container of alcohol through an airport, especially these days since Sept. 11. If the idea ever catches on and these batteries become as common as cigarette lighters, maybe things will change. But then again, smoking is not allowed on airplanes, I wonder if they've been confiscating lighters these days?
SNO has recently added salt to their heavy water, since comparing the reaction rates with and without the salt will provide a very interesting ratio for understanding the mass heirarchy of neutrinos.
Interesting. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the stable isotope of chlorine-37, which makes up about 24% of the total amount of available chlorine (the rest being the stable isotope Cl-35), is what is of interest in neutrino detection. Although Cl-37 is stable, it is just enough on the edge of stability that a neutrino with the right amount of energy will knock the electron out of a neutron in the Cl-37 atom, which then produces the tiny Cherenkov effect wink of light that the photomultiplier tubes detects. The neutrino now occupies the place inside the neutron that the electron did, and lack of the negative charge makes the neutron into a proton. The Cl-37 atom is thus converted to Ar-37, which will decay back into Cl-37, by electron capture (which, of course, kicks the neutrino back out.)
Top! Bottom! Up! Down! Strange! Charmed! Leptons, muons, tachyons, bosons! Antimatter! Isn't subatomic particle physics fun! Let's build an atom smasher! (Isn't it ironic that the largest structures in the world are used to investigate the tiniest?) But then again, I'm an electrical engineer... What if neutrinos were the carriers of charge? Then we'd be neutrinoical engineers. I think the left half of my brain annihilated the right half. Maybe the SuperK accident was caused by a neutrino being annihilated by an anti-neutrino?
Wanna know who the leader in the globalization effort is?
It is not the US, not Great Britain, not Germany, Japan, Israel, Saudia Arabia, Mexico or any other nation for that matter.
It is not the FBI, CIA, NSA, KGB, OSS, ISI, Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, the Illuminati and their old hoax of a document The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, or any other sinister organization that conspiracy theorists can dream up for that matter.
The biggest leaders in globalization is the various institutions that set up global standards for science and technology, such as ISO. The Metric system is the prime example of the globalization of standards. It is universally recognized and accepted by all nations of the world, even those who insist upon adhering to older standards, such as pounds, feet, Farenheit, etc. Another prime example: Ever wonder why the Internet works the same in every other country as it does in the US? An internationally agreed upon set of standards and protocols.
This comes straight from the ISO website, on why international standards are needed:
_____________________________________________
The existence of non-harmonized standards for similar technologies in different countries or regions can contribute to so-called "technical barriers to trade". Export-minded industries have long sensed the need to agree on world standards to help rationalize the international trading process. This was the origin of the establishment of ISO.
International standardization is well-established for many technologies in such diverse fields as information processing and communications, textiles, packaging, distribution of goods, energy production and utilization, shipbuilding, banking and financial services. It will continue to grow in importance for all sectors of industrial activity for the foreseeable future.
The main reasons are:
Worldwide progress in trade liberalization
Today's free-market economies increasingly encourage diverse sources of supply and provide opportunities for expanding markets. On the technology side, fair competition needs to be based on identifiable, clearly defined common references that are recognized from one country to the next, and from one region to the other. An industry-wide standard, internationally recognized, developed by consensus among trading partners, serves as the language of trade.
Interpenetration of sectors
No industry in today's world can truly claim to be completely independent of components, products, rules of application, etc., that have been developed in other sectors. Bolts are used in aviation and for agricultural machinery; welding plays a role in mechanical and nuclear engineering, and electronic data processing has penetrated all industries. Environmentally friendly products and processes, and recyclable or biodegradable packaging are pervasive concerns.
Worldwide communications systems
The computer industry offers a good example of technology that needs quickly and progressively to be standardized at a global level. Full compatibility among open systems fosters healthy competition among producers, and offers real options to users since it is a powerful catalyst for innovation, improved productivity and cost-cutting.
Global standards for emerging technologies
Standardization programmes in completely new fields are now being developed. Such fields include advanced materials, the environment, life sciences, urbanization and construction. In the very early stages of new technology development, applications can be imagined but functional prototypes do not exist. Here, the need for standardization is in defining terminology and accumulating databases of quantitative information.
Developing countries
Development agencies are increasingly recognizing that a standardization infrastructure is a basic condition for the success of economic policies aimed at achieving sustainable development. Creating such an infrastructure in developing countries is essential for improving productivity, market competitiveness, and export capability.
___________________________________________
So there you have it in a nutsack, folks. And guess what? ISO certification is totally voluntary, no one forces it on anyone, instead industries seek it out in order to gain an edge in a global marketplace.
No, being an EE is not all about being so busy and stressed out. Not all EE's are cubicle slaves, many work out in the field, where there's no room for stress, particularly hard core EE jobs where it is all in a day's work to deal with 200,000 volt power distribution systems.
Another job I've worked at where stress is very low almost by requirement is a nuclear power station. When I first started, I was amazed at how laid back everybody was, how even the boss man would hang out in the break area and bullshit with everybody else, but I came to understand his "open door policy" very well when given the sheer scope of things: Releasing the energy in 1,000 tons (we're talking physical mass here, not equivalent yield in TNT) of enriched uranium veeeeery slowly to keep a 100 ton turbine spinning at precisely 3,600 RPMs to deliver approximately 1.35 million horsepower to a generator that puts out a gigawatt of power. Making a small mistake here because you're under pressure, or even being mad at your wife for something trivial, can cause a disaster and jeopardize an entire industry. Everyone is encouraged to get a good night's sleep and take vacations regularly, and there is even a team of counselors and psychiatrists on the staff full time to deal with people who feel they may be under stress.
And, of course, there's any job that requires a security clearance, e.g. working at the Pentagon, the Lockheed Skunk Works, etc. There you are absolutely prohibited from "taking your work home with you".
How 'bout a C-64 emulator for Ipaq to run the old Infocom games? Or any other C-64 game, for that matter.
CS and EE are very immature fields.
Well, it depends on what area of EE you are studying. The area dealing with everything from the generator to the outlet on your wall is very mature, over 100 years old. And, of course, the CS field can trace its roots back to Eniac and beyond.
However, these fields are being kept immature by ever changing technology. Since computer components have gone from vacuum tubes to chips, tube theory classes are practically nonexistant. Someday optical computing will replace semiconductors, and maybe even chip based logic classes will cease to be taught. But the math will still be the same.
And even "hard-core" electrical engineering is being rapidly changed by advances in semiconductor technology. Consider that 450 watt power supply in your tower computer. Barely 20 years ago a DC power supply capable of that kind of wattage would have required a heavy iron core transformer, along with a majorly huge heatsink full of transistors and voltage regulators, and filter capacitors the size of soup cans. Just the power supply alone would have been the size of the tower case itself! But due to advances in semiconductor power electronics, all that has been shrunk down to the small lightweight silver box with the fan on back that sits behind the drive bay.
But despite all the advances in EE, power plants are still being built that burn coal. And the engineers that run the electrical grid have to learn the basic engineering fundamentals that were established more than 100 years ago.
Wanna know who the leader in the globalization effort is?
It is not the US, not Great Britain, not Germany, Japan, Israel, Saudia Arabia, Mexico or any other nation for that matter.
It is not the FBI, CIA, NSA, KGB, OSS, ISI, Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, the Illuminati and their old hoax of a document The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, or any other sinister organization that conspiracy theorists can dream up for that matter.
The biggest leaders in globalization is the various institutions that set up global standards for science and technology, such as ISO. The Metric system is the prime example of the globalization of standards. It is universally recognized and accepted by all nations of the world, even those who insist upon adhering to older standards, such as pounds, feet, Farenheit, etc. Another prime example: Ever wonder why the Internet works the same in every other country as it does in the US? An internationally agreed upon set of standards and protocols.
This comes straight from the ISO website, on why international standards are needed:
_____________________________________________
The existence of non-harmonized standards for similar technologies in different countries or regions can contribute to so-called "technical barriers to trade". Export-minded industries have long sensed the need to agree on world standards to help rationalize the international trading process. This was the origin of the establishment of ISO.
International standardization is well-established for many technologies in such diverse fields as information processing and communications, textiles, packaging, distribution of goods, energy production and utilization, shipbuilding, banking and financial services. It will continue to grow in importance for all sectors of industrial activity for the foreseeable future.
The main reasons are:
Worldwide progress in trade liberalization
Today's free-market economies increasingly encourage diverse sources of supply and provide opportunities for expanding markets. On the technology side, fair competition needs to be based on identifiable, clearly defined common references that are recognized from one country to the next, and from one region to the other. An industry-wide standard, internationally recognized, developed by consensus among trading partners, serves as the language of trade.
Interpenetration of sectors
No industry in today's world can truly claim to be completely independent of components, products, rules of application, etc., that have been developed in other sectors. Bolts are used in aviation and for agricultural machinery; welding plays a role in mechanical and nuclear engineering, and electronic data processing has penetrated all industries. Environmentally friendly products and processes, and recyclable or biodegradable packaging are pervasive concerns.
Worldwide communications systems
The computer industry offers a good example of technology that needs quickly and progressively to be standardized at a global level. Full compatibility among open systems fosters healthy competition among producers, and offers real options to users since it is a powerful catalyst for innovation, improved productivity and cost-cutting.
Global standards for emerging technologies
Standardization programmes in completely new fields are now being developed. Such fields include advanced materials, the environment, life sciences, urbanization and construction. In the very early stages of new technology development, applications can be imagined but functional prototypes do not exist. Here, the need for standardization is in defining terminology and accumulating databases of quantitative information.
Developing countries
Development agencies are increasingly recognizing that a standardization infrastructure is a basic condition for the success of economic policies aimed at achieving sustainable development. Creating such an infrastructure in developing countries is essential for improving productivity, market competitiveness, and export capability.
___________________________________________
In otherwords, if a nation wants to compete economically, they have to be able to conform to international standards.
Now if Nautilus could be made to behave exactly like Windows Explorer, all the way down to the last cut, copy and paste operation, listing the folders in the left pane and contents of the folders in the right pane, showing a list of small icons in both panes, it might be workable. Of course it would also have to ditch the written-in-stone file associations that plague Windows Explorer. Hey, wait a minute, I just described Konquerer.
What I hate about Nautilus (and other Linux file managers, for that matter, this ain't just a Nautulus problem) is that it tries to launch files upon clicking them once. Also the automatic thumbnailing of images is annoying, wastes time, and adds garbage to folders (the thumbnail file, indexes, etc...)
Ooh- I know! Let's bring back SID from the old Amiga days! The file manager, that is, not the Commodore 64 sound chip.
Conspicuous dropping of aid doesn't change the fact that the US is using its technology to slaughter by remote control. "Cowardly" would be the word that comes to mind.
Fighting by remote control does not define a coward. Bin L.'s group brainwashed a bunch of dupes to hijack civilian airliners and slam them into buildings. Then they all sat back and watched CNN to verify their targets have been destroyed. If that ain't remote control, then I don't know what is.
What makes the terrorists cowards is that they never owned up to it.
The US forces told the Taliban to hand over Bin L., and told them what would happen if they didn't. An ultimatum was given, and the Taliban knew exactly who their enemy was.
Then attacks began, and their air defense is wiped out. There are some civilian casualties, but only a tiny fraction of what was killed in the WTC, Pentagon, and the 4 hijacked planes.
Clearly the battlefield is extremely lopsided against them, so they then call the US forces a bunch of cowards because the US won't fight them at close enough range for them to shoot at?? Crybabies.
The amount of oil money flowing into the Middle East is unbeleivable. How much is being spent on the well being of the people?
Exactly nothing, and that's the whole point of this conflict. We buy their oil, it builds their economy, so they're supposed to have the highest standard of living on Earth, right?
The only answer I can think of is that there is a horrible misappropriation of their resources. Furthermore we accomodate them because we supply them.
Bingo. Instead of using oil money to build dams to supply water to fields to grow food crops, then building roads and railroads to deliver food to places where crops can't be grown (e.g. mountainous regions), thus building an infrastructure and build up an economy, the money is hoarded by religious fanatical warlords so they can build up their war machines. They keep their borders closed, and prevent their people from leaving to obtain food and water and freedom and wealth, because they might enter a region that will blaspheme their religion.
In an ironic way Bin Laden is correct that "we" are taking their wealth. First we give them money for oil. Next we give them old weapons for money. In the end we have their oil and they have our discarded weapons. Of course they wanted these weapons so they could fight their endless wars. And we wanted the oil. The deal was struck.
And the U.S.A. and its allies, probably jacked up the price of those weapons way beyond their worth, to keep them from amassing too many just in case some nut cases like the Taliban were to come in posession of them, thus plunging the world into a conflict as big as that with the Nazis.
Remember, folks, all wars have a real estate motive, and religion is used to fuel the support of wars. Control of religion inside that real estate is the primary objective, whether it is to convert people to a certain religion (Crusades), eradicate believers of certain religions (Nazis vs. Jews, or Taliban vs. all but THEIR flavor of Islam), forbid religion altogether (Communism), or promote freedom to worship as you please so long as you don't bother others (U.S.A. and allies).
Its blood money all right. But its their people's blood and we look the other way.
It happened like this: The Stamp-Out-Religion force (Soviets) invaded a piece of neutral Real Estate (Afghanistan) in a continuing march of conquest. So the owners of the Real Estate called upon the Freedom-Of-Religion force (USA and allies) to drive out the Stamp-Out-Religion force. The Freedom-of-Religion force didn't rebuild the real estate, it was hoped that the owners of the real estate would do that, but instead, a Forced-Religion regime (Taliban, Bin L., et. al.) took over. It's just too bad that it took 12 years to discover that the weeds which sprouted in the cracks and crevices of the rubble left behind came to fruit and spread seeds, otherwise it could have been stopped at the roots.