This was the plot of the book Man Plus, which had a man retrofitted into a cyborg capable of living on Mars without a spacesuit. In the end it turns out to be a plan of the networked computers of earth to extend themselves into space.
Keeping in mind that PHBs are considerably less sophisticated than the supervised, the possibilities are endless to mess with their heads. I'm reminded of the "laughing man" story arc from "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex". Everybody is dependent upon internet mediated perception, resulting in a hacker who simply inserts some code to mask his face with an animated logo. With the use of image loops, and other tricks the PHB could never be sure that his X-Ray vision wasn't on the fritz.
Thank goodness you feel that way. Falsification of data is bad when it involves esoteric technology. When it involves strength of materials such as concrete, lives can be on the line. Ph.D.s have to be responsible becase they have an impact on the world.
A degree is a for something you did in the past. Well the thing he did was false, so he should get nailed for it. I spent 10 years in grad school getting a Ph.D. in physics and I have zero sympathy for folks who cheapen the process by falsification of results.
As for someone being extremely smart to keep a scam like this going through a period of years doesn't impress me in the slightest. First, the scientific community is depressingly prone to frenzies when it comes to things they want to believe, cold fusion, polywater, N-Rays and the present case all provide object lessions on how the abstract/publishing/verification process outruns the scientific method at times. Second, the process of research and publishing is very political, allowing an opportunist to game the system for years. Third, the more esoteric and difficult the field is the easier it is to pull a scam like this, I've known some prime bullshit artists who get away with murder because the average physicist is knows he is a little sketchy on the topic and is unwilling to challenge a self professed expert. Finally, a topic is very hard when you play fair and do the work, if you fake results, plagarize, and steal the work and ideas of fellow grad students it's a lot simpler.
Back when Andrew Cunanan was on his murder rampage the press was all treating him as some evil genius because he was covering his tracks so well. One pundit noted that it wasn't to hard if you killed everybody you came in contact with. It's the same with this guy, the scientific process isn't set up to deal with scociopaths quickly, although the process usually catches up eventually.
Recently a friend had the hard drive of his thinkpad crash. Faced with a considerable delay on a replacement IBM drive (seems they are replacing a lot of drives), He asked me if I could do anything about it. I said I'd install linux on a flash drive and mount it on his system. He asked if I could fit linux on the drive and my other friend noted that you could install linux on a Zippo lighter. Well a few hours later we had the 182 MB SLAX distibution up on his thinkpad and he's overjoyed with the functionality. Once we score a 1 GB drive we're putting a compressed Knoppix distro on. The point of thos story is that when a free as in beer and speech mini live-cd distro of open source gives you the majority of XP's vaunted capability we are approaching a tipping point. In a similar vein, my Zippo lighter friend is seriously considering using the Quantian Live CD distro for teaching his college courses. My third friend runs a mini-ITX system with WiFi I built for Christmas. Just to illustrate the point about the thinkpad I booted the SLAX distro on her system. It installed flawlessly and she couldn't find any difference from the Win 2k on the hard drive for her purposes. So fast forward to 1-2 years from now when nano-itx PCs with Knoppix burnt into ROM sell for $99 in bubble packs in Target and Wal Mart. Where does M$ stand then?
Project Gutenberg recently released a 4.7 GB DVD Image containing the 10,000 books scanned so far so i figure I should be able to squeeze at least 3,500 books on a 2 GB SD. i.e. 97 yards of books. A good start! Put this on a next generation e-ink unit like the sony libre and you have a "read or die" level bibliophiles dream.
Boot the system off of a write protected CF card version of Knoppix, and provide a USB key for configuration and storage which the guest can keep afterwards (incorporate the cost in the price of the rental). The added benefit is that each member of party renting the house can get their own key and have their own configuration and files.
Trying to teach someone a skill they don't see the need for will only result in frustration. I didn't learn my favorite language (Python) until I needed it to script vtk. The key aspect of teaching programming is to identify a need your mother has for an automated task. Then teach her how to automate it with a simple language such as Python using just the subset needed to solve the problem. Then branch out aadding features to the solution and identifying new needs. As the programs expand, introduce new language features.
HP's quality has dropped by orders of magnitude since Carly took over. HP used to be highly proprietary, high priced, but lasted forever. Now HP shoves out marginal product with high failure rates, HP still beats the hell out of Lexmark but simply can't compare with the quality of Epson. In essence it's the Ford Pinto versus the GM Corvair when Epson is pumping out Honda Civics. I bought a cheap HP when my Epson 400 gave out, The quality of the printing was marginal, the registration was horrific, and the paper feed mechanism jammed every few pages. When printing CD labels I had a 25% wastage rate. As soon as I had amortized the cost I ran out and got an Epson C84, runs like a tank and generates spectacular print quality, I haven't had a jam in 6 months! HP seems to be following the path of Polaroid and Xerox, once great innovators who have been mismanaged to oblivion. Dell is worse with Lexmark (Ugh!) printers, but that does not exonerate HP from destroying a once great brand.
The bit about loving PDA functionality but always leaving the PDA home is telling. One of the critical aspects of PDA utility is omnipresence. When you always have your PDA at hand it suddenly becomes indispensable. If tacking on a phone makes this happen all the better.
The CLIE PEG TJ-35 or TJ-25 are available as remainders and have the best screens I've encountered for E-Book Reading. High Res, paper white, jog dial, very easy to read for extended periods of time. The battery life is middling but the purchase of a external battery pack from PCMOBILE.net resolves this problem. check out this article as well http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000391.php for other nice clie's for ebook reading. In comparison the TJ-37 has a somewhat irregular screen.
I kept the old ZEOS 486 well past the point of obsolecence since it was the machine which got me through my doctoral dissertation, was the first machine I booted linux on and was the first machine I logged into the web on.
I watch about 3 hours of 'Live TV' (actually recorded on my PVR) every week (CSI's and Angel) w/ the number about to drop to 2 (after Angel ends). I watch 1 episode of Anime each day (25 min) and a movie on Friday (1.5-2hr). During the summer I don't watch regular TV at all (short of the occasional History Channel documentary). At the end of summer I have the cognitive dissonance of remembering that some TV programs are not in Japanese. TV has really hit the tipping point in which there is no worthwhile programming coming from American sources. My 'Home Theater' is just that, a place to watch movies because my schedule makes going to a theater impossible.
My 5500 has bluetooth on CF and a SD slot for storage, It's linux so the logger should be simple to write. The newer units also support bluetooth on cf.
Orthogonal: Mutually independent; well separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used in a generalization of its mathematical meaning to describe sets of primitives or capabilities that, like a vector basis in geometry, span the entire 'capability space' of the system and are in some sense non-overlapping or mutually independent.
to quote the article:...such as the IBM S/360 mainframe, had complex and redundant (or "orthogonal") instruction sets...
Othogonal is pretty damn close to an antonym of "complex and redundant". In fact, a RISC ISA should be as orthogonal as practical (under the other constraints of constant word size etc.)
While we are at it, the article notes: "All of that changed back in the thermionic valve (or "vacuum tube") days with the introduction of the IBM S/360(TM) line of computers, in 1964."
Huh? IBM was producing "transfer resistor" ("transistor") computers by the 1960's and the 360 was based on those newfangled "integrated circuits" (or "chips"). At that point tubes were as anachronistic as they are now!
One last howler: the sidebar title "Breaking the speed limits of Moore's Law" I always thought gemometric rates of increase didn't class as a speed limit as much as a brutal taskmaster, if the Transportation Department legislated a doubling of speed every 16 months beginning in 1960, transwarp drives would be required equipment on cars since we would have a minimum speed limit of warp 44!
Now that they've gone and cancelled Angel, I watch CSI and that's about it (Ok Mail Call too). The hour or so of time when I'm not working or sleeping or reading the internet while eating is taken up with subtitled anime. In fact, when new shows come on, I find it strange that they either speak english or their lips sync up when they speak. I do have a SageTV which is pretty much dedicated to harvesting Anime off of Adult Swim, recording movies off of TCM, pulling old buffy episodes, or catching documentaries off of History Channel or discovery channel.
My solution has been a folding keyboard and a Palm compatible with wordsmith. At present I use a Clie TJ-37 with the KB100 keyboard. It's very comfortable to work on especially in the cramped confines of an airlines coach seat. The overall price of the system is $380 the same cost as a Dana. The integrated wifi vga camera and color display may compensate for the display size depending on your temperment. A neat feature of the KB-100 keyboard is that it accepts a sony power supply jack (the annoying 3 pin type) allowing you to charge the Clie while using the keyboard. When I get a chance I'm rigging a battery pack using the connector. (any help on the pinout would be appreciated.
What makes you think that EE's won't be outsourced just as fast? In fact, outsourcing EE's is more likely since the production has been completely outsourced as well.
Slashdot Mirror
This was the plot of the book Man Plus, which had a man retrofitted into a cyborg capable of living on Mars without a spacesuit. In the end it turns out to be a plan of the networked computers of earth to extend themselves into space.
Keeping in mind that PHBs are considerably less sophisticated than the supervised, the possibilities are endless to mess with their heads. I'm reminded of the "laughing man" story arc from "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex". Everybody is dependent upon internet mediated perception, resulting in a hacker who simply inserts some code to mask his face with an animated logo.
With the use of image loops, and other tricks the PHB could never be sure that his X-Ray vision wasn't on the fritz.
Last time I checked you couldn't back off your data from the sidekick or install non-cellphone approved software on it.
Thank goodness you feel that way. Falsification of data is bad when it involves esoteric technology. When it involves strength of materials such as concrete, lives can be on the line. Ph.D.s have to be responsible becase they have an impact on the world.
A degree is a for something you did in the past. Well the thing he did was false, so he should get nailed for it. I spent 10 years in grad school getting a Ph.D. in physics and I have zero sympathy for folks who cheapen the process by falsification of results.
As for someone being extremely smart to keep a scam like this going through a period of years doesn't impress me in the slightest. First, the scientific community is depressingly prone to frenzies when it comes to things they want to believe, cold fusion, polywater, N-Rays and the present case all provide object lessions on how the abstract/publishing/verification process outruns the scientific method at times. Second, the process of research and publishing is very political, allowing an opportunist to game the system for years. Third, the more esoteric and difficult the field is the easier it is to pull a scam like this, I've known some prime bullshit artists who get away with murder because the average physicist is knows he is a little sketchy on the topic and is unwilling to challenge a self professed expert. Finally, a topic is very hard when you play fair and do the work, if you fake results, plagarize, and steal the work and ideas of fellow grad students it's a lot simpler.
Back when Andrew Cunanan was on his murder rampage the press was all treating him as some evil genius because he was covering his tracks so well. One pundit noted that it wasn't to hard if you killed everybody you came in contact with. It's the same with this guy, the scientific process isn't set up to deal with scociopaths quickly, although the process usually catches up eventually.
Recently a friend had the hard drive of his thinkpad crash. Faced with a considerable delay on a replacement IBM drive (seems they are replacing a lot of drives), He asked me if I could do anything about it. I said I'd install linux on a flash drive and mount it on his system. He asked if I could fit linux on the drive and my other friend noted that you could install linux on a Zippo lighter.
Well a few hours later we had the 182 MB SLAX distibution up on his thinkpad and he's overjoyed with the functionality. Once we score a 1 GB drive we're putting a compressed Knoppix distro on.
The point of thos story is that when a free as in beer and speech mini live-cd distro of open source gives you the majority of XP's vaunted capability we are approaching a tipping point.
In a similar vein, my Zippo lighter friend is seriously considering using the Quantian Live CD distro for teaching his college courses.
My third friend runs a mini-ITX system with WiFi I built for Christmas. Just to illustrate the point about the thinkpad I booted the SLAX distro on her system. It installed flawlessly and she couldn't find any difference from the Win 2k on the hard drive for her purposes.
So fast forward to 1-2 years from now when nano-itx PCs with Knoppix burnt into ROM sell for $99 in bubble packs in Target and Wal Mart. Where does M$ stand then?
1337 ?
Project Gutenberg recently released a 4.7 GB DVD Image containing the 10,000 books scanned so far so i figure I should be able to squeeze at least 3,500 books on a 2 GB SD. i.e. 97 yards of books. A good start! Put this on a next generation e-ink unit like the sony libre and you have a "read or die" level bibliophiles dream.
Boot the system off of a write protected CF card version of Knoppix, and provide a USB key for configuration and storage which the guest can keep afterwards (incorporate the cost in the price of the rental).
The added benefit is that each member of party renting the house can get their own key and have their own configuration and files.
Trying to teach someone a skill they don't see the need for will only result in frustration. I didn't learn my favorite language (Python) until I needed it to script vtk.
The key aspect of teaching programming is to identify a need your mother has for an automated task. Then teach her how to automate it with a simple language such as Python using just the subset needed to solve the problem. Then branch out aadding features to the solution and identifying new needs. As the programs expand, introduce new language features.
HP's quality has dropped by orders of magnitude since Carly took over. HP used to be highly proprietary, high priced, but lasted forever. Now HP shoves out marginal product with high failure rates, HP still beats the hell out of Lexmark but simply can't compare with the quality of Epson. In essence it's the Ford Pinto versus the GM Corvair when Epson is pumping out Honda Civics. I bought a cheap HP when my Epson 400 gave out, The quality of the printing was marginal, the registration was horrific, and the paper feed mechanism jammed every few pages. When printing CD labels I had a 25% wastage rate. As soon as I had amortized the cost I ran out and got an Epson C84, runs like a tank and generates spectacular print quality, I haven't had a jam in 6 months!
HP seems to be following the path of Polaroid and Xerox, once great innovators who have been mismanaged to oblivion.
Dell is worse with Lexmark (Ugh!) printers, but that does not exonerate HP from destroying a once great brand.
The bit about loving PDA functionality but always leaving the PDA home is telling. One of the critical aspects of PDA utility is omnipresence. When you always have your PDA at hand it suddenly becomes indispensable. If tacking on a phone makes this happen all the better.
The CLIE PEG TJ-35 or TJ-25 are available as remainders and have the best screens I've encountered for E-Book Reading. High Res, paper white, jog dial, very easy to read for extended periods of time. The battery life is middling but the purchase of a external battery pack from PCMOBILE.net resolves this problem.
check out this article as well http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000391.php for other nice clie's for ebook reading.
In comparison the TJ-37 has a somewhat irregular screen.
I kept the old ZEOS 486 well past the point of obsolecence since it was the machine which got me through my doctoral dissertation, was the first machine I booted linux on and was the first machine I logged into the web on.
I watch about 3 hours of 'Live TV' (actually recorded on my PVR) every week (CSI's and Angel) w/ the number about to drop to 2 (after Angel ends). I watch 1 episode of Anime each day (25 min) and a movie on Friday (1.5-2hr). During the summer I don't watch regular TV at all (short of the occasional History Channel documentary). At the end of summer I have the cognitive dissonance of remembering that some TV programs are not in Japanese.
TV has really hit the tipping point in which there is no worthwhile programming coming from American sources. My 'Home Theater' is just that, a place to watch movies because my schedule makes going to a theater impossible.
My 5500 has bluetooth on CF and a SD slot for storage, It's linux so the logger should be simple to write. The newer units also support bluetooth on cf.
Have you any plans to move to Detroit any time soon. Do you want this level of devistation to become common in your community.
to quote the Jargon file:
...such as the IBM S/360 mainframe, had complex and redundant (or "orthogonal") instruction sets...
Orthogonal: Mutually independent; well separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used in a generalization of its mathematical meaning to describe sets of primitives or capabilities that, like a vector basis in geometry, span the entire 'capability space' of the system and are in some sense non-overlapping or mutually independent.
to quote the article:
Othogonal is pretty damn close to an antonym of "complex and redundant". In fact, a RISC ISA should be as orthogonal as practical (under the other constraints of constant word size etc.)
While we are at it, the article notes:
"All of that changed back in the thermionic valve (or "vacuum tube") days with the introduction of the IBM S/360(TM) line of computers, in 1964."
Huh? IBM was producing "transfer resistor" ("transistor") computers by the 1960's and the 360 was based on those newfangled "integrated circuits" (or "chips"). At that point tubes were as anachronistic as they are now!
One last howler: the sidebar title "Breaking the speed limits of Moore's Law" I always thought gemometric rates of increase didn't class as a speed limit as much as a brutal taskmaster, if the Transportation Department legislated a doubling of speed every 16 months beginning in 1960, transwarp drives would be required equipment on cars since we would have a minimum speed limit of warp 44!
Now that they've gone and cancelled Angel, I watch CSI and that's about it (Ok Mail Call too). The hour or so of time when I'm not working or sleeping or reading the internet while eating is taken up with subtitled anime. In fact, when new shows come on, I find it strange that they either speak english or their lips sync up when they speak.
I do have a SageTV which is pretty much dedicated to harvesting Anime off of Adult Swim, recording movies off of TCM, pulling old buffy episodes, or catching documentaries off of History Channel or discovery channel.
My solution has been a folding keyboard and a Palm compatible with wordsmith. At present I use a Clie TJ-37 with the KB100 keyboard. It's very comfortable to work on especially in the cramped confines of an airlines coach seat. The overall price of the system is $380 the same cost as a Dana. The integrated wifi vga camera and color display may compensate for the display size depending on your temperment.
A neat feature of the KB-100 keyboard is that it accepts a sony power supply jack (the annoying 3 pin type) allowing you to charge the Clie while using the keyboard. When I get a chance I'm rigging a battery pack using the connector. (any help on the pinout would be appreciated.
Transparent Aluminum
I want to obtain a Physics degree from a department which doesn't require all this math stuff
I thought that MREs were meant to promote that
You stated:
I do have career ambitions to move up the ladder of responsibility and authority
Watch out! The bosses are prone to shove you up the ladder of responsibility, while leaving you on the same rung of authority.
What makes you think that EE's won't be outsourced just as fast? In fact, outsourcing EE's is more likely since the production has been completely outsourced as well.