I haven't seen it brought up but I'm sure it must be a contributing factor to this shortage and how badly engineers are often treated: engineers are often incompetent. Yes, they took a harder road through college but that doesn't make them qualified. I'm finishing up my degree in mechanical engineering at MIT which has an excellent (and damn hard) mecheE program, both in the theoretical and practical aspects, and still wouldn't trust 60% of the graduating engineers to design something of importance. In my experience with real engineering jobs the people I usually work with DO make the MIT students deserving of the high reputation they carry, the average engineer I have worked with is downright useless. Huge gaping holes in knowledge pertinent to their work, inability to think critically, and they don't even understand how the systems they work with work.
Actually we do know. Before you fly off the handle with ignorant speculation you should at least try to find a few facts. As part of my robotics research I've had the opportunity to see an Asimo in completely impromptu situations. Disregarding this, most of the 'rigged' situations you describe such as open loop trajectories are STILL extremely difficult to do well for an underactuated machine like Asimo. You could have at least tried searching Google Scholar first.
Oh god, I cringe just thinking of Solidworks under Wine. For being so essential to the work I do every day Solidworks is often a disaster even on a well running Windows box. People ask why I don't run Linux on my main box, I say Solidworks, they nod and leave me alone.
I'm not sure if you're trying to be clever about pointing out that what I do doesn't work everywhere, but I've never ended up in the situation where I couldn't get a good free connection where I need to work. In fact I usually find myself within reach of a wired connection. I can't think of the last time I needed to run a big simulation from the middle of a corn field or on a bus that can't stop. If I ever find myself in that situation I guess I'll have to beg/borrow/steal something fancier.
Following that point, even as someone who does run MATLAB simulations on the go I feel no need for a high power laptop. I connect to my desktop or cluster through the internet and run my fancy stuff on a box designed for it. Even given the choice I'll often find a nice place to work that isn't my desk and work through Terminal Services or VNC. The only thing I get any advantage from being at the computer for is my 3D modeling work. A good network connection is really a fantastic thing.
I'm quite sure it isn't a novel idea but I haven't seen much info about it on the internets. A few of my friends and I got together last year to set up a similar system where we live. We use a plain old Soundblaster Live! Value card hooked up to four different zones (bathrooms). It's connected through a network drive to our music server and has a simple web interface to control the music in each zone. The web interface just controls four different instances of mplayer with the appropriate flags for rerouting the audio to the single channels. I'm sure the sound quality isn't great, but it's perfect if you like to air guitar with Dragonforce in the shower.
We'll probably write up a guide on how to do it if we ever get slightly less lazy. It's really simple if you don't get hung up by Linux's sound support. But yeah, lazy.
Great story and nice solution to the problem. It seems like no matter what the complexity of the robotics project you always end up coding for these little things, they're what separate programmers from roboticists. The interesting question to me is what layer of abstraction did you have your gear change fix at?
You're not looking forward far enough. The future of personal fabrication machines lies with magic dragons. Imagine downloading the plans for a giant robot and watching your magic dragon gobble up the raw materials and crap it out with precision that only a magic dragon can provide. I personally can't wait for magic dragon research to bring us these magical beasts, sure the scientists at the forefront of magic dragon research can't so much as make a magic toenail, but it's right around the corner!
I agree with you completely. I'm a mechanical engineer and do a lot of prototyping and in my experience stereolithography is a very niche tool. We've got one in my lab and it's used a fair bit, it's pretty good for small plastic parts that must be made in 3D, but that turns out to be a surprisingly small section of useful parts. We've got a 120W laser cutter too, and it rocks. Material is cheap, the machine is extremely fast, and with a good designer almost anything can be made. This last month I made a small roomba style robot for a competition: 3 days in CAD, 2 hours on the laser cutter and 2 hours in the machine shop and I had a great machine, and I could make another in 4 more hours, and another ad nauseum.
A part from any of these rapid prototyping machine is almost always useless by itself. You need hardware, motors, metal shafts, electronics, different materials, and some skill in putting it all together to make much of anything interesting. There might be a revolution, but it's for the people that have been fabricating for years anyway who are finding new and better ways to do the same jobs. I took a manufacturing class with one of the pioneers in applications for stereolithography, it's a useful process with some niche applications, but no revolution. It's no personal computer, life is a little harder when you're pushing around real matter instead of information.
I like Foxit and use it in place of Acrobat Reader, but there's one problem I have with it that makes me have to start up Acrobat Reader sometimes. Some types of PDFs like datasheets seem to cause the program to grind with what looks like completely rerendering the page every time it's scrolled. It gets hung up for a couple of seconds with every motion making it almost unusable for some documents but Acrobat Reader works perfectly with the same files. Anyone have some idea what this is about?
The deal with the concrete blocks was that they were provided to us quite cheaply by one of the companies doing construction at Sloan. They brought them in, put them where we told them to, and took them back when we were done so we couldn't do much to them. Without them stacked up like that it would have been horribly difficult to get the normal force required on the brick surrounding the Stata center (which of course we couldn't even think about touching).
About the sign, we assumed it would be wholly ignored. We needed it to satisfy the safety office I think (I wasn't involved with that end of the planning much).
Not on purpose as far as I remember, but when the rope reached a certain size it couldn't just be reeled up by hand anymore and we had to have two people act as a reel, twisting the rope around themselves as they walked down the hall. Eventually they'd be tied right up against each other with something like 70lb of rope around them.
Oh man, it wasn't pretty. My hands are pretty worn in from working on cars and in machine shops a lot of the time but they were always sore and red after a night of twisting. Sometimes I wore my mechanix gloves, but they don't give the feel really needed to work it fast.
Haha, talk about a late story at a completely random time. I was one of the leaders on the project, lots of late nights twisting twine together. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.
What happened to telling annoying and distracting people to just get the fuck out? This cell phone jamming business reminds me an awful lot of the kind of childish social antics that go on in high school. If you don't want customers using phones, then tell them and enforce it. Don't try to play both sides and do it behind their backs, not only are you doing nothing to improve the situation outside your little bubble, but you're also causing a host of problems that have been brought up elsewhere. Outside of people bitching on Slashdot I've never been in a situation where the distraction of a cell phone couldn't be fixed with a little social interaction, but it's usually not even worth that much.
Along the same lines one set of tools I've had some good experience with has been http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/18-03Spring-2006/Tools/ , a set of parameter tweaking applets for simple differential equations. You can really get a good feel for what's going on by screwing around with parameters in realtime, and in my experience a good feel for what is going on is one of the most essential parts of actually making mathematics work for you.
I, along with just about everyone I know at MIT, go to the Coop (Harvard/MIT Cooperative) at the start of every term, head over to the textbooks and copy down all the information and prices we need right in front of whoever is working there. I just did so two weeks ago, carrying a bag from Quantum Books (a bookstore next door with sometimes cheaper textbooks) too. It doesn't make any sense for them to care about getting the books somewhere else since it's a cooperative anyway. Something doesn't seem right here.
From my view in the research world I'd say that a large part of the hacking you see is done by researchers. Just because they do formal research and papers while on the clock doesn't mean they aren't cracking their iPhones or shopping cart wheels at night (or while the boss's back is turned).
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't seen it brought up but I'm sure it must be a contributing factor to this shortage and how badly engineers are often treated: engineers are often incompetent. Yes, they took a harder road through college but that doesn't make them qualified. I'm finishing up my degree in mechanical engineering at MIT which has an excellent (and damn hard) mecheE program, both in the theoretical and practical aspects, and still wouldn't trust 60% of the graduating engineers to design something of importance. In my experience with real engineering jobs the people I usually work with DO make the MIT students deserving of the high reputation they carry, the average engineer I have worked with is downright useless. Huge gaping holes in knowledge pertinent to their work, inability to think critically, and they don't even understand how the systems they work with work.
Actually we do know. Before you fly off the handle with ignorant speculation you should at least try to find a few facts. As part of my robotics research I've had the opportunity to see an Asimo in completely impromptu situations. Disregarding this, most of the 'rigged' situations you describe such as open loop trajectories are STILL extremely difficult to do well for an underactuated machine like Asimo. You could have at least tried searching Google Scholar first.
Oh god, I cringe just thinking of Solidworks under Wine. For being so essential to the work I do every day Solidworks is often a disaster even on a well running Windows box. People ask why I don't run Linux on my main box, I say Solidworks, they nod and leave me alone.
Why not? How do you know what's possible if you don't try it and what happens?
I'm not sure if you're trying to be clever about pointing out that what I do doesn't work everywhere, but I've never ended up in the situation where I couldn't get a good free connection where I need to work. In fact I usually find myself within reach of a wired connection. I can't think of the last time I needed to run a big simulation from the middle of a corn field or on a bus that can't stop. If I ever find myself in that situation I guess I'll have to beg/borrow/steal something fancier.
Following that point, even as someone who does run MATLAB simulations on the go I feel no need for a high power laptop. I connect to my desktop or cluster through the internet and run my fancy stuff on a box designed for it. Even given the choice I'll often find a nice place to work that isn't my desk and work through Terminal Services or VNC. The only thing I get any advantage from being at the computer for is my 3D modeling work. A good network connection is really a fantastic thing.
I'm quite sure it isn't a novel idea but I haven't seen much info about it on the internets. A few of my friends and I got together last year to set up a similar system where we live. We use a plain old Soundblaster Live! Value card hooked up to four different zones (bathrooms). It's connected through a network drive to our music server and has a simple web interface to control the music in each zone. The web interface just controls four different instances of mplayer with the appropriate flags for rerouting the audio to the single channels. I'm sure the sound quality isn't great, but it's perfect if you like to air guitar with Dragonforce in the shower.
We'll probably write up a guide on how to do it if we ever get slightly less lazy. It's really simple if you don't get hung up by Linux's sound support. But yeah, lazy.
Great story and nice solution to the problem. It seems like no matter what the complexity of the robotics project you always end up coding for these little things, they're what separate programmers from roboticists. The interesting question to me is what layer of abstraction did you have your gear change fix at?
You're not looking forward far enough. The future of personal fabrication machines lies with magic dragons. Imagine downloading the plans for a giant robot and watching your magic dragon gobble up the raw materials and crap it out with precision that only a magic dragon can provide. I personally can't wait for magic dragon research to bring us these magical beasts, sure the scientists at the forefront of magic dragon research can't so much as make a magic toenail, but it's right around the corner!
See how much more sense it makes when I say it?
I agree with you completely. I'm a mechanical engineer and do a lot of prototyping and in my experience stereolithography is a very niche tool. We've got one in my lab and it's used a fair bit, it's pretty good for small plastic parts that must be made in 3D, but that turns out to be a surprisingly small section of useful parts. We've got a 120W laser cutter too, and it rocks. Material is cheap, the machine is extremely fast, and with a good designer almost anything can be made. This last month I made a small roomba style robot for a competition: 3 days in CAD, 2 hours on the laser cutter and 2 hours in the machine shop and I had a great machine, and I could make another in 4 more hours, and another ad nauseum.
A part from any of these rapid prototyping machine is almost always useless by itself. You need hardware, motors, metal shafts, electronics, different materials, and some skill in putting it all together to make much of anything interesting. There might be a revolution, but it's for the people that have been fabricating for years anyway who are finding new and better ways to do the same jobs. I took a manufacturing class with one of the pioneers in applications for stereolithography, it's a useful process with some niche applications, but no revolution. It's no personal computer, life is a little harder when you're pushing around real matter instead of information.
You're right, now we print them on the plotter and display them at conferences. My, how the times have changed. :P
I like Foxit and use it in place of Acrobat Reader, but there's one problem I have with it that makes me have to start up Acrobat Reader sometimes. Some types of PDFs like datasheets seem to cause the program to grind with what looks like completely rerendering the page every time it's scrolled. It gets hung up for a couple of seconds with every motion making it almost unusable for some documents but Acrobat Reader works perfectly with the same files. Anyone have some idea what this is about?
The deal with the concrete blocks was that they were provided to us quite cheaply by one of the companies doing construction at Sloan. They brought them in, put them where we told them to, and took them back when we were done so we couldn't do much to them. Without them stacked up like that it would have been horribly difficult to get the normal force required on the brick surrounding the Stata center (which of course we couldn't even think about touching).
About the sign, we assumed it would be wholly ignored. We needed it to satisfy the safety office I think (I wasn't involved with that end of the planning much).
Not on purpose as far as I remember, but when the rope reached a certain size it couldn't just be reeled up by hand anymore and we had to have two people act as a reel, twisting the rope around themselves as they walked down the hall. Eventually they'd be tied right up against each other with something like 70lb of rope around them.
Oh man, it wasn't pretty. My hands are pretty worn in from working on cars and in machine shops a lot of the time but they were always sore and red after a night of twisting. Sometimes I wore my mechanix gloves, but they don't give the feel really needed to work it fast.
Haha, talk about a late story at a completely random time. I was one of the leaders on the project, lots of late nights twisting twine together. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.
What happened to telling annoying and distracting people to just get the fuck out? This cell phone jamming business reminds me an awful lot of the kind of childish social antics that go on in high school. If you don't want customers using phones, then tell them and enforce it. Don't try to play both sides and do it behind their backs, not only are you doing nothing to improve the situation outside your little bubble, but you're also causing a host of problems that have been brought up elsewhere. Outside of people bitching on Slashdot I've never been in a situation where the distraction of a cell phone couldn't be fixed with a little social interaction, but it's usually not even worth that much.
Along the same lines one set of tools I've had some good experience with has been http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/18-03Spring-2006/Tools/ , a set of parameter tweaking applets for simple differential equations. You can really get a good feel for what's going on by screwing around with parameters in realtime, and in my experience a good feel for what is going on is one of the most essential parts of actually making mathematics work for you.
I, along with just about everyone I know at MIT, go to the Coop (Harvard/MIT Cooperative) at the start of every term, head over to the textbooks and copy down all the information and prices we need right in front of whoever is working there. I just did so two weeks ago, carrying a bag from Quantum Books (a bookstore next door with sometimes cheaper textbooks) too. It doesn't make any sense for them to care about getting the books somewhere else since it's a cooperative anyway. Something doesn't seem right here.
Why not just call it Python++? Oh, that's right, Python doesn't do that.
"Bender should not be on TV!" - Bender
It's a suppository!
It has finally happened! The time has come to plug this old graphic:
. png (NSFW for poorly drawn penis)
http://donkeykong.mit.edu/wiki/images/0/09/Ipwned
From my view in the research world I'd say that a large part of the hacking you see is done by researchers. Just because they do formal research and papers while on the clock doesn't mean they aren't cracking their iPhones or shopping cart wheels at night (or while the boss's back is turned).
Reminds me of that TMBG song "Thank You for Coming to the Show"
"Thank you Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, thank you for chairing the show!"