Now compare this to the West, where standards of wealth for the average citizen have been improving for over a century.
Actually, median income
of employed males in the United States has been stagnant since 1970. Any rise in overall median income since 1970 is only due to increasing number of women in the workforce. Although we are better off than people living under the repressive Saudi regime, our increasingly repressive economic culture is having problems as well. Blame this on corporate-sponsored rollback of new deal and great society programs since 1970.
On the contrary, due to the enormous economical and social impact of the changes proposed by the "Environmentalists" to fix the "problem", the burden of proof is on you.
There is no justification for your claim that the economic impact of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is necessarily "enormous" (presumably, you mean something like "enormously detrimental"). On the contrary, I believe that a "moon race" type effort to advance renewable energy, conservation, and public transportation technologies would be enormously beneficial to the economy, and would have an ultimately beneficial effect on society as a whole. The only detrimental effects would be felt by the vested interests, our current set of corporate masters.
Furthermore, there is a greater threat from NEOs smashing into earth than from a global rise in temps of 2 degrees Celsius over the next fifty years.
Based on the past frequency of collisions with large NEOs, I would gather that the probability of such an event occuring in the next 50 years is very tiny. Regardless, the threats are completely orthogonal - any threat posed by global warming is neither enhanced nor diminished by the threat posed by collisions with NEOs.
"We are not going to destroy the planet by global warming. The earth has endured a great deal of meteorological change and life goes on. "
A little George Carlin quote seemed appropriate here:
"...there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin' around the sun?
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!
We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance."
Ironically, given the expected changes due to a warming earth (partly based on paleoclimatological inferences made from past warmer periods), one of the countries likely to suffer the most is the good ol' USA, due to expected increased aridity in our main crop-producing regions. On the other hand, Russia and Canada may actually experience some benefits, at least in terms of agricultural productivity.
I followed your link, and frankly I was not impressed. So you have found a sociologically-oriented "case study" written by a couple of dissidents. An interesting data point, perhaps, but these guys are definitely in the minority. Healthy debate and disagreement is part of the scientific process, but there are are increasingly few serious climatologists, meteorologists and geologists who don't believe that human activities are having a sigificant effect on the Earth's climate. Beyond a few legitimate contrarians, what you are left with are the ideologues and the outright sellouts.
Sorry, due to the potential seriousness of the threat, the burden of proof is on you. I'll follow the prepondence of evidence.
"Thats a really good point, it could all be a trick, a decoy, in chess often its wise to make yourself seem weak so you can strike your enemy when his guard is down."
Exactly right. Didn't the DMCA pass by voice vote, in the dead of night?
I worked on a terrain database analysis tool, called ZCAP, that was funded a few years back by U.S. Army STRICOM and the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office We distributed the application (and still do) in a complete package that included a number of supporting free source applications, such as gnuplot and tcl/tk. We handled the combination of free source, (no longer)export-restricted software, and proprietarty libraries by loosely integrating using system calls under a tk-based gui. Not very clean, but there is a lot of good code in there, and I'm planning to gpl it in the near future.
Just to name a few. Why should my rights to enjoy this music be taken away? Why should rights of the artists to chose a free distribution business model be restricted?
Don't tar us all with the same brush: "download mix burn" does not mean copyright restriction!
As an addendum, please do not mistake my posts for an argumentum ad populum defense of Chomsky's political ideas, just an appeal to consider the man's other contributions before passing judgement.
Perhaps you don't write many articles for academic journals, so I will spell it out for you. A serious academician will never cite someone they believe is "a lunatic" in their article, simply because a lunatic does not merit serious consideration. Of course, simply citing someone does not necessarily mean you agree with them, oftentimes, quite the opposite.
Citing somebody else's work in the peer-reviewed academic literature is a sign of serious respect, but not a sign of agreement or aquiescence.
Hmmm...The post I was responding to refers to Chomsky as a lunatic. I was simply pointing out that many scientists and academicians seem to disagree. This seems to put a burr in your undershorts...
As for others on the list, I agree that the appearance of Lenin is unexpected. I'm guessing there is a significant fraction of Russian/Soviet academic journals in the sample (journals not as likely to reference Chomsky, BTW). I'm not surprised at the appearance of Marx on the list, but I didn't expect him to be #1. Might be explained by the same.
All these scientists that signed the 2nd paper discounted what the
1st guys said and they did it with an overwhelming number of people
Last time I looked, the scientific method did not include petition drives
and petition signing contests. What you may not know about the "2nd
petition" that you mention is that it was circulated, like a piece of junk
mail, to many thousands of people having no expertise in climatology. I
know this because *I* got a copy, requesting my signature, even though my
work is in computer science and engineering. *Anyone* can sign that
"2nd petition" online, right here . This petition drive is being lead by Frederick Seitz, President Emeritus,
Rockefeller University. Anyone recall how the Rockefellers made their fortune?
The "2nd petition" is debunked in a
letter written by top scientists from the American Meteorological Society
(AMS) and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).
It is a fact that CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing, it is a matter of simple physics
that increased atmospheric CO2 will lead to higher temperatures. What,
to me, still seems debatable, is what the effects of those higher temperatures
will be on the Earth's ecosystems, and human civilization in particular.
Change is certain, but the nature of the change, and the relative benefits
and drawbacks, are unknown.
"Many are the authors who may wonder is anyone is paying attention to
what they write. Professor Noam Chomsky, MIT's preeminent linguistics
authority, doesn't have that problem. Recent research on citations
in three different citation indices show that Professor Chomsky is one of
the most cited individuals in works published in the past 20 years.
In fact, his 3,874 citations in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index between
1980 and 1992 make him the most cited living person in that period and the
eight most cited source overall -- just behind famed psychiatrist Sigmund
Freud and just ahead of philosopher Georg Hegel. Indeed,
Professor Chomsky is in illustrious company. The top ten cited sources
during the period were: Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare, Aristotle, the Bible, Plato,
Freud, Chomsky, Hegel and Cicero."
Also, even though he is a linguist and also known for his political commentary,
Professor Chomsky is still among the
top 1000 cited authors in Computer Science:...721. N. Chomsky.
Maybe you should quit watching all thoe sitcom reruns and work on expanding
your intellectual horizons. I recommend reading , including those authors
with views you don't necessarily agree with. Chomsky is undoubtably
one of the most brilliant intellects of our time, the father of modern linguistics,
and regardless of whether you like his political views, if you have not read
his work in linguistics you only cheating yourself out of a whole universe
of wonder.
Thank you for the interesting follow-on reply - so "unslashdotlike" of you;-), seeing how we have probably moved to the tune of 20 topics by now.
I suppose it is fruitless to argue that the mean intelligence of the working class is on par with that of the management class, by any measure we have at our disposal. However, if we could somehow measure the predisposition to "intelligence", say, at the day of birth, rather than the "intelligence" of adults, then this would allow us to better separate true genetic influences from cultural and other envronmental influences, not yet accounting for superior pre-natal care, but closer to the truth. I suspect that this measure would show a much less significant correlation with economic class.
Of course, this is speculation on my part, not having the measurements or the means to make them, and as you say, an interesting study for another day (hopefully, someday soon, as it is a question important to the way we view our fellow human beings).
You point to mean IQ rather than money as being a better measure of social success, but it is well-known that environmental and cultural influences play a predominant role in mean IQ when measured as a function of economic class. You need to make a much stronger case for devolution of the human species than this.
Really, I see the "devolution" argument as being purely a case of conceit and justification for the ruling classes.
If evolution is truly favoring those that are unsuccessful in our current social system, then I think this bodes ominously for our current social structure, and those that control it, insofar as they constitute any kind of genetic group.
"One disturbing trend is an inverse relationship between wealth(social success) and number of children. Sucessful families with 1.2 children (below the replacement level, their genes are effectively selected against). Poverty level people having 3.6 children (geneticaly sucessfull).
We are effectively selecting against being sucessfull. Wierd."
Obviously, "Mother Nature" disagrees with your assessment that money equates with success. I wonder who will win the argument?
I look forward to being "taken over by robots". "Robots" with sufficient intelligence to take control of the human race are likely to have a much more evolved sense of fairness and justice than our current set human masters. After having experienced the takeover of corporate elites, their puppets (Bush, Scalia), and their brownshirts (headed by Ashcroft), being "taken over by robots" should be a welcome change.
You are actually choosing your subjects based
on a future career? That's interesting.
In my view, few of us has any idea what we are going to be doing twenty years
from now.
Exactly. Technological progress continues to accelerate at an exponential rate.
Therefor, you should focus your studies on the eternal principles instead
of learning only of today's technology. For example, instead of only worrying
about the syntactical details of a handful of computer
programming languages, try to focus on the theory of computer languages. Get
a bigger perspective by including studies of human linguistics, from Chomsky
to current thought. Try to analyze the computer languages that are
the fads of today, in terms of their weak points and future failings. Include
a greater emphasis on mathematics and statistics then is usually found in
the modern curricula. As an exercise into obtaining insight, imagine
technical events leading up to the Singularity (or the failure of said Singularity to occur).
Yes, getting your degree may take longer, so this becomes a mattter of economic
feasibility. Perhaps you should just plan on going through to your
Master's degree (almost always justifiable from an economic standpoint),
and not necessarily in the exact same field as your undergraduate degree.
As an undergrad, I was an EE (before there was even a computer engineering
program at my school), who took many extra classes in computer science, mathematics,
and other engineering disciplines. I took an overloaded schedule, and
five years to complete. I took my graduate degree at Dartmouth College,
Thayer School of Engineering,
the only school to my knowledge that offers a department-free engineering
curricula resulting in a degree in Engineering Science.
I think several (highly modded) contributors to this discussion are confusing
the concepts of information bandwidth and frequency bandwidth. Ultra-wideband
refers to the bandwidth in the frequency domain, which is only indirectly
connected to the concept of information bandwidth, in that a wide band in
the frequency domain translates to narrow pulse in the time domain. Coding
techniques also strongly affect the ultimate information bandwidth of the
system. UWB is nothing like IEEE 802.11b,
which operates in the narrow 2.4 GHz - 2.483 GHz band.
I have been working on a project for US Army STRICOM,
in which we are using 8 UWB devices manufactured by Time Domain Inc. to perform position location. These devices
operate at 1.9 GHz center frequency with a 2 GHz bandwidth,
which translates to a 500 ps pulsewidth.
We have a short conference paper on UWB simulation, accepted for presentation
to the 2002 IEEE Antenna and PropagationSociety Symposium,
which you can access here. Speaking in general and rather simplistic terms, the information
bandwidth of such a system would depend of the time frame over which you
will allocate these 500 ps slots to listen for the transmission of 1 bit
of information. For example, if we choose a 5 ns time frame, then we
could theoretically obtain 200 Mb/s information bandwidth, while (ideally)
allowing for 10 channels of operation. Of course, the previous analysis
neglects the need for redundancy, and you may want to choose a time slot
over which to listen for a pulse different than the pulsewidth itself, but
I think the discussion gives one a good idea about how to relate information
bandwidth to frequency domain bandwidth in a simple communication system.
A good example of a situation where non-uniform sampling is a "good thing" comes up often in computer graphics. Imagine trying to model the terrain surface in the vicinity of Denver, including the nearby Rocky mountains. It the only criteria of a good model were accuracy of the model and efficiency of the representation, then obviously non-uniform sampling (e.g.triangulated irregular network) is a "good thing, since fewer sample (triangles) are required to accurately model the gentle rolling plains then are required to accurately model the ragged height field of the Rockies. Thus, using non-uniform sampling, we can use fewer total samples to obtain the same or better overall accuracy of our terrain surface representation.
Re:Which formats support simple batch manipulation
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
·
· Score: 1
Exactly. I fail to understand much of the previous discussion. All you get from exceeding digital levels is massive distortion, really nasty digital distortion, not the warm smooth distortion of tube or tape-type overdriven compression. The sane way to drive up the RMS levels of a digital recording is to apply aggressive digital compression, then normalize up to close to 0 dB.
"You are wrong about that. You need a license even to play a CD or even the radio in public (I am not kidding)!
If you own a restaurant, and you want to play CDs or the radio quietly in the background, you need a license from ASCAP and BMI."
I believe what you say about needing a license to play music for your customers in a restaurant. I think the arugument for that (however specious) is that the restaurant owner is garnering commercial benefit from the music (as if, the customers flock to your restaurant to hear the muzak, rather than enjoy the food).
I know of somebody in the dance instruction business, who owns a number of dance studios. BMI bills them yearly, claiming they are due copyright royalties, even though BMI has no direct knowledge of what music is actually used in these establishments. The bills have been ignored, up until now, with no adverse repercussions.
Slashdot Mirror
Now compare this to the West, where standards of wealth for the average
citizen have been improving for over a century.
Actually, median income
of employed males in the United States has been stagnant since 1970. Any
rise in overall median income since 1970 is only due to increasing number
of women in the workforce. Although we are better off than people living
under the repressive Saudi regime, our increasingly repressive economic culture
is having problems as well. Blame this on corporate-sponsored rollback
of new deal and great society programs since 1970.
On the contrary, due to the enormous economical
and social impact of the changes proposed by the "Environmentalists" to fix
the "problem", the burden of proof is on you.
There is no justification for your claim that the
economic impact of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is necessarily "enormous"
(presumably, you mean something like "enormously detrimental").
On the contrary, I believe that a "moon race" type effort to advance
renewable energy, conservation, and public transportation technologies would be enormously
beneficial to the economy, and would have an ultimately beneficial effect
on society as a whole. The only detrimental effects would be felt by
the vested interests, our current set of corporate masters.
Furthermore, there is a greater threat from NEOs
smashing into earth than from a global rise in temps of 2 degrees Celsius
over the next fifty years.
Based on the past frequency of collisions with large NEOs, I would
gather that the probability of such an event occuring in the next 50 years
is very tiny. Regardless, the threats are completely orthogonal - any
threat posed by global warming is neither enhanced nor diminished by the
threat posed by collisions with NEOs.
"We are not going to destroy the planet by global warming. The earth has endured a great deal of meteorological change and life goes on. "
A little George Carlin quote seemed appropriate here:
"...there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the
planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference.
The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been
here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the
arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've
been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've
only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years.
Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT
to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in
jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin'
around the sun?
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of
things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics,
continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic
reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by
comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide
fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic
bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The
planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!
We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't
leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little
styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be
long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological
mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad
case of fleas. A surface nuisance."
Ironically, given the expected changes due to a warming earth (partly based on paleoclimatological inferences made from past warmer periods), one of the countries likely to suffer the most is the good ol' USA, due to expected increased aridity in our main crop-producing regions. On the other hand, Russia and Canada may actually experience some benefits, at least in terms of agricultural productivity.
I followed your link, and frankly I was not impressed. So you have found a sociologically-oriented "case study" written by a couple of dissidents. An interesting data point, perhaps, but these guys are definitely in the minority. Healthy debate and disagreement is part of the scientific process, but there are are increasingly few serious climatologists, meteorologists and geologists who don't believe that human activities are having a sigificant effect on the Earth's climate. Beyond a few legitimate contrarians, what you are left with are the ideologues and the outright sellouts.
Sorry, due to the potential seriousness of the threat, the burden of proof is on you. I'll follow the prepondence of evidence.
"Thats a really good point, it could all be a trick, a decoy, in chess often its wise to make yourself seem weak so you can strike your enemy when his guard is down."
Exactly right. Didn't the DMCA pass by voice vote, in the dead of night?
I remember using a typesetting program called "Script" on an IBM mainframe, around 1984, this may have predated TeX, though I'm not sure...
OOPS - Replace the term "free source" with "open source" in my post above, before pulling the flamethrower triggers.
I worked on a terrain database analysis tool, called ZCAP,
that was funded a few years back by U.S. Army STRICOM
and the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office
We distributed the application (and still do) in a complete package
that included a number of supporting free source applications, such as gnuplot
and tcl/tk. We handled the combination of free source, (no longer)export-restricted
software, and proprietarty libraries by loosely integrating
using system calls under a tk-based gui. Not very clean, but there
is a lot of good code in there, and I'm planning to gpl it in the near future.
If it was download mix burn they might actually have a point...
There is plenty of music that is legally and freely distributed using the
"download mix burn" model:
http://www.etree.org/
http://www.furthurnet.com/
http://gdlive.com/
http://www.sugarmegs.org/
http://www.kapoho.net/
http://www.alternativetentacles.com/mp3.php
Just to name a few. Why should my rights to enjoy this music be taken
away? Why should rights of the artists to chose a free distribution
business model be restricted?
Don't tar us all with the same brush: "download mix burn" does not mean copyright
restriction!
As an addendum, please do not mistake my posts for an argumentum ad populum defense of Chomsky's political ideas, just an appeal to consider the man's other contributions before passing judgement.
Perhaps you don't write many articles for academic journals, so I will spell it out for you. A serious academician will never cite someone they believe is "a lunatic" in their article, simply because a lunatic does not merit serious consideration. Of course, simply citing someone does not necessarily mean you agree with them, oftentimes, quite the opposite.
Citing somebody else's work in the peer-reviewed academic literature is a sign of serious respect, but not a sign of agreement or aquiescence.
Hmmm...The post I was responding to refers to Chomsky as a lunatic. I was simply pointing out that many scientists and academicians seem to disagree. This seems to put a burr in your undershorts...
As for others on the list, I agree that the appearance of Lenin is unexpected. I'm guessing there is a significant fraction of Russian/Soviet academic journals in the sample (journals not as likely to reference Chomsky, BTW). I'm not surprised at the appearance of Marx on the list, but I didn't expect him to be #1. Might be explained by the same.
All these scientists that signed the 2nd paper discounted what the
1st guys said and they did it with an overwhelming number of people
Last time I looked, the scientific method did not include petition drives
and petition signing contests. What you may not know about the "2nd
petition" that you mention is that it was circulated, like a piece of junk
mail, to many thousands of people having no expertise in climatology. I
know this because *I* got a copy, requesting my signature, even though my
work is in computer science and engineering. *Anyone* can sign that
"2nd petition" online, right here
. This petition drive is being lead by Frederick Seitz, President Emeritus,
Rockefeller University. Anyone recall
how the Rockefellers made their fortune?
The "2nd petition" is debunked in a
letter written by top scientists from the American Meteorological Society
(AMS) and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).
It is a fact that
CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing, it is a matter of simple physics
that increased atmospheric CO2 will lead to higher temperatures. What,
to me, still seems debatable, is what the effects of those higher temperatures
will be on the Earth's ecosystems, and human civilization in particular.
Change is certain, but the nature of the change, and the relative benefits
and drawbacks, are unknown.
Yes. You are all alike. You all read fucking Chomsky.
If you don't read Chomsky, I guess that means you don't read much at all. Chomsky is one of the ten most cited authors in history:
"Many are the authors who may wonder is anyone is paying attention to what they write. Professor Noam Chomsky, MIT's preeminent linguistics authority, doesn't have that problem. Recent research on citations in three different citation indices show that Professor Chomsky is one of the most cited individuals in works published in the past 20 years. In fact, his 3,874 citations in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index between 1980 and 1992 make him the most cited living person in that period and the eight most cited source overall -- just behind famed psychiatrist Sigmund Freud and just ahead of philosopher Georg Hegel. Indeed, Professor Chomsky is in illustrious company. The top ten cited sources during the period were: Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare, Aristotle, the Bible, Plato, Freud, Chomsky, Hegel and Cicero."
Also, even though he is a linguist and also known for his political commentary, Professor Chomsky is still among the top 1000 cited authors in Computer Science: ...721. N. Chomsky.
Maybe you should quit watching all thoe sitcom reruns and work on expanding your intellectual horizons. I recommend reading , including those authors with views you don't necessarily agree with. Chomsky is undoubtably one of the most brilliant intellects of our time, the father of modern linguistics, and regardless of whether you like his political views, if you have not read his work in linguistics you only cheating yourself out of a whole universe of wonder.
Thank you for the interesting follow-on reply - so "unslashdotlike" of you ;-), seeing how we have probably moved to the tune of 20 topics by now.
I suppose it is fruitless to argue that the mean intelligence of the working class is on par with that of the management class, by any measure we have at our disposal. However, if we could somehow measure the predisposition to "intelligence", say, at the day of birth, rather than the "intelligence" of adults, then this would allow us to better separate true genetic influences from cultural and other envronmental influences, not yet accounting for superior pre-natal care, but closer to the truth. I suspect that this measure would show a much less significant correlation with economic class.
Of course, this is speculation on my part, not having the measurements or the means to make them, and as you say, an interesting study for another day (hopefully, someday soon, as it is a question important to the way we view our fellow human beings).
You point to mean IQ rather than money as being a better measure of social success, but it is well-known that environmental and cultural influences play a predominant role in mean IQ when measured as a function of economic class. You need to make a much stronger case for devolution of the human species than this.
Really, I see the "devolution" argument as being purely a case of conceit and justification for the ruling classes.
If evolution is truly favoring those that are unsuccessful in our current social system, then I think this bodes ominously for our current social structure, and those that control it, insofar as they constitute any kind of genetic group.
"One disturbing trend is an inverse relationship between wealth(social success) and number of children. Sucessful families with 1.2 children (below the replacement level, their genes are effectively selected against). Poverty level people having 3.6 children (geneticaly sucessfull).
We are effectively selecting against being sucessfull. Wierd."
Obviously, "Mother Nature" disagrees with your assessment that money equates with success. I wonder who will win the argument?
I look forward to being "taken over by robots". "Robots" with sufficient intelligence to take control of the human race are likely to have a much more evolved sense of fairness and justice than our current set human masters. After having experienced the takeover of corporate elites, their puppets (Bush, Scalia), and their brownshirts (headed by Ashcroft), being "taken over by robots" should be a welcome change.
Ever hear of a "notch filter"?
You are actually choosing your subjects based
on a future career? That's interesting.
In my view, few of us has any idea what we are going to be doing twenty years
from now.
Exactly. Technological progress continues to accelerate at an exponential rate.
Therefor, you should focus your studies on the eternal principles instead
of learning only of today's technology. For example, instead of only worrying
about the syntactical details of a handful of computer
programming languages, try to focus on the theory of computer languages. Get
a bigger perspective by including studies of human linguistics, from Chomsky
to current thought. Try to analyze the computer languages that are
the fads of today, in terms of their weak points and future failings. Include
a greater emphasis on mathematics and statistics then is usually found in
the modern curricula. As an exercise into obtaining insight, imagine
technical events leading up to the
Singularity (or the failure of said Singularity to occur).
Yes, getting your degree may take longer, so this becomes a mattter of economic
feasibility. Perhaps you should just plan on going through to your
Master's degree (almost always justifiable from an economic standpoint),
and not necessarily in the exact same field as your undergraduate degree.
As an undergrad, I was an EE (before there was even a computer engineering
program at my school), who took many extra classes in computer science, mathematics,
and other engineering disciplines. I took an overloaded schedule, and
five years to complete. I took my graduate degree at Dartmouth College,
Thayer School of Engineering,
the only school to my knowledge that offers a department-free engineering
curricula resulting in a degree in Engineering Science.
I think several (highly modded) contributors to this discussion are confusing
the concepts of information bandwidth and frequency bandwidth. Ultra-wideband
refers to the bandwidth in the frequency domain, which is only indirectly
connected to the concept of information bandwidth, in that a wide band in
the frequency domain translates to narrow pulse in the time domain. Coding
techniques also strongly affect the ultimate information bandwidth of the
system. UWB is nothing like IEEE 802.11b,
which operates in the narrow 2.4 GHz - 2.483 GHz band.
I have been working on a project for US Army STRICOM,
in which we are using 8 UWB devices manufactured by
Time Domain Inc. to perform position location. These devices
operate at 1.9 GHz center frequency with a 2 GHz bandwidth,
which translates to a 500 ps pulsewidth.
We have a short conference paper on UWB simulation, accepted for presentation
to the 2002 IEEE Antenna and PropagationSociety Symposium,
which you can access
here. Speaking in general and rather simplistic terms, the information
bandwidth of such a system would depend of the time frame over which you
will allocate these 500 ps slots to listen for the transmission of 1 bit
of information. For example, if we choose a 5 ns time frame, then we
could theoretically obtain 200 Mb/s information bandwidth, while (ideally)
allowing for 10 channels of operation. Of course, the previous analysis
neglects the need for redundancy, and you may want to choose a time slot
over which to listen for a pulse different than the pulsewidth itself, but
I think the discussion gives one a good idea about how to relate information
bandwidth to frequency domain bandwidth in a simple communication system.
A good example of a situation where non-uniform sampling is a "good thing" comes up often in computer graphics. Imagine trying to model the terrain surface in the vicinity of Denver, including the nearby Rocky mountains. It the only criteria of a good model were accuracy of the model and efficiency of the representation, then obviously non-uniform sampling (e.g.triangulated irregular network) is a "good thing, since fewer sample (triangles) are required to accurately model the gentle rolling plains then are required to accurately model the ragged height field of the Rockies. Thus, using non-uniform sampling, we can use fewer total samples to obtain the same or better overall accuracy of our terrain surface representation.
Exactly. I fail to understand much of the previous discussion. All you get from exceeding digital levels is massive distortion, really nasty digital distortion, not the warm smooth distortion of tube or tape-type overdriven compression. The sane way to drive up the RMS levels of a digital recording is to apply aggressive digital compression, then normalize up to close to 0 dB.
"You are wrong about that. You need a license even to play a CD or even the radio in public (I am not kidding)!
If you own a restaurant, and you want to play CDs or the radio quietly in the background, you need a license from ASCAP and BMI."
I believe what you say about needing a license to play music for your customers in a restaurant. I think the arugument for that (however specious) is that the restaurant owner is garnering commercial benefit from the music (as if, the customers flock to your restaurant to hear the muzak, rather than enjoy the food).
I know of somebody in the dance instruction business, who owns a number of dance studios. BMI bills them yearly, claiming they are due copyright royalties, even though BMI has no direct knowledge of what music is actually used in these establishments. The bills have been ignored, up until now, with no adverse repercussions.