I'm surprised that noone has mentioned the "last mile" problem with junking analog tv/radio signals. Many homes are in rural areas and only pick up 2-4 local TV stations with their set of bunny ears. If wireless analog TV broadcasts are chucked, then where will these people be? No mention has been made of sending digital TV signals through the air, where anyone could recieve them for free (heaven forbid), so these people can't even use set top converters. All other things that stand in the way of last-mile broadband adoption will be here too, though the consumers will be losing a service they didn't have to pay for in the first place, so there is little likelihood that they will foot the bill for digital cable wiring.
First, I was late too - it happens, its okay. Second, we *did* leave a forwarding address, complete with the MeetUp logo on it and a map. We went someplace with alcohol, since everyone at that point was of age. I agree with your third grievance - the place was hard to find and the size wasn't big enough.
Hopefully we can get a better handle on things in the future. OH well.
The Atlanta Meetup went fairly nicely. ~20 RSVPed, 6 showed up but one had to bail after less than an hour. Moved the proceedings to some place that served alcohol in appropriate quantities. Talked businesses, tech, world - general drunk geekiness. Despite only a few people showing up, it was really fun and I look forward to the next one.
However, I'd like to hear from some of the people that RSVPed but didn't show up. I'm not accusing anyone of being lazy (heck, I was an inch from not going myself - it was a 30 minute drive for me) but if we get feedback as to why people didn't show up, then maybe we can do something to get better attendance in the future.
"If someone buys a surround sound stereo system it's because they want good sound while they watch movies. They really shouldn't be asked to learn the intracacies of stereo system design."
The flip side is they still have to connect the wires together. TV, VCR, DVD, stereo - minimum of 5 sets of wires running around, and people need to know what "TV in" and "TV out" signals mean. Just because you want good sound doesn't mean you need to know about the electronics/theory of sound waves. They DO need to know how to wire the thing up and what buttons to push - read as "They need to know the UI"
This article contains so much flawed logic, it boggles the mind. First, [t]he latest find is a gas giant and orbits a Sun-like star 293 light-years away. Though how this relates to a 100 light year sphere around earth confuses me. Second, with about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, there could be about 30 billion planetary systems in the Milky Way alone. While the 300 billion stars is correct, a vast majority of them are on the galatic disk or in the galatic core, where the gravity of the densely packed stars would prevent planet formation according to any currently held theory, except maybe Electric Universe. Lastly, most of the exo-solar planets that have been found so far are multiple Jupiter-sized and orbiting so close to the star that it doesn't resemble our solar system, the only one we really know about, making any inferences about the existence of other planets useless and pointless. While 100 exo-solar plants found is a cheer for modern astronomy and a good sign for the likelyhood of ETs, this article uses poor logic to make a bang from a whimper
There is a lot of nit-picking about the performance of VMs running the software developed. I'd like to point out that Compaq and a few others are using hardware based virtual machines. "What?!?" you say. Quite simply, the Transmeta Crusoe processors and their kin take opcodes in ix86/PPC/68K/etc and translate them into a series of RISC instructions native to teh CPU core. EGAD! We have a hardware virtual machine!!!
Although actual silicon being called virtual does kinda twist one's mind.
I noticed a severe lack of software engineering in your topics list. While there is a book on Design Patterns (a very useful tool, if you can apply it), most large projects need a more abstract, guiding hand. The book I propose, Object-Oriented and Classical Software Engineering is a great guide on how to do Software Engineering. Furthermore, the author has provided PowerPoint slides for the book and a lot of other resources on website, available at http://www.mhhe.com/engcs/compsci/schach5/.
It explains the broad steps each software project should have, and applies the lessons taught to a (somewhat trival) sample application.
Requirements
Specifications
Design
Implementaiton
Integration
MAINTENANCE!
There is little C++/Java code in the book, and for the topic, there shouldn't be. Software engineering is about overall design and executing that design towards a finished project. This is often overlooked in many projects today. For a while, in the 70's and 80's, companies poured money into their software engineering process, but recently they realized that publishing reports on how they cut debugging time by 66% might tell their competitors how to do it too.
I think this (or any other software engineering book worth its weight, such as the Unified Software Development Process, the preeminent book on UML by the creators of UML) is a must have in any IT person's bookshelf, manager or not.
Lastly, note that the 6th edition of this book is going to print soon and should be available in a few months. The new edition has been highly reworked to include concepts from the Unified Software Development Process and more on UML and how to use it in software engineering.
I find it supremely interesting to see the # of members at this site tick up every minute. I wonder if anyone has done an analysis of time from post to time host server goes down when a news item is/.ed. Now, the scarriest thing is actually meeting all the people with cool sigs... if anyone lived in the Atlanta area.
What you're saying is in the real of the paranormal and of actual hoaxes out there - you know just enough to be dangerous but not enough to be insightful.
Your point, that you're only drawing the heat away to another area a small distance away plus the inefficiency is absolutely correct. However, that's how a traditional heatsink works, and its absolutely valid. Thermal flux is based on the surface area of contact. If the new heatsinks were designed with this miracle material so the bottom fits the chip (144mm square) and the top is 288mm square, then you've doubled the area that heat can be dissipated, probably giving you a cooling efficiency increase of 50% (not 100% because nothing in the thermal world is 100% efficent). Now, isn't 66 degrees C better than 100???
Beware physics like you would the Force - it can be used for good or for evil!
I'm a student at Vanderbilt University and our computer science department has a much more liberal honor policy. For one, we have a well declared honor code and the professors respect and honor it.
Secondly, after a major incident of mass cheating in intro comp sci, they didn't make the enforcement stricter (like wandering TAs through the isles during tests), they instead changed the honor code. Tests remain same, requiring students to write and sign a testament they didn't recieve unauthorized help, but programming and lab assignments are a different matter. As long as you physically type in the code, you're all good. Next, if you talk with someone else or use a site, book, etc as a reference, you cite it at the top. Note that if you do either of these, there is no penalty against you.
The moral is that if something is wrong, maybe you need to change the laws, not hire more cops. Unfortunately, in gigantic institution like G. Tech, this policy might not work. Our intro CS courses are only about 250 per....
Despite this thing sounding like ware de la vapor, imagine the possibilities. All you need is a monitor, a plug, mouse and keyboard and you have your desktop. Need to demo on client's site? No need to checkout a laptop from the corp and forget to change the previous person's nudie pic on the background. Need to download e-mail? Wireless phone right there, or plug in at any internet cafe (hey, they just have to buy $250 for the aux. equipment, not a $2000 machine). Don't have sync problems, can turn it into a laptop, etc. But, you lose it, you're screwed. Also, great technology if you're into the digital soldier concept - only 1 lb for 9.5 hours, and enough processing power to do all the targeting, recon, etc. stuff our boys do.
Yeah - they've been running it for around a year, off and on. Do you know of any better way to test a massively parallel clustered supercomputer in a useful way? Play BattleChess 3000? Gosh I love it when the rooks eat the queens
A lot of people compilain about wasting all the cycles this monster can do on researching nukes. First, this thing would take a month to calculate the first tenth of a second - having to compute every quark, lepton, and electon in a nuclear bomb. At that level we already know (almost) any physics there is, so it becomes a huge billiard-ball problem.
Second - these machines only work on simulated nuclear testing for a short while (a few years). Then they go up for other "Grand Challange" problems, like immense weather calculation machines (who wouldn't want to know the exact minute it starts raining in your neighborhood?), particle calculations for the solar system or the galaxy, etc. We're up in arms about ASCI White, but what about ASCI Red, Blue, Mountain?
Furthermore, the research involved to build something like this benifits us down the line. Super-advanced routers, ultra-fast fail-safe network storage, improved networked processor topologies, distributed algorithms.
At another southern university we're going to move in our freshman students in about a week. First thing that helps is to have freshmen move in 3 days ahead of upperclassmen. Next, every new student is mailed/e-mailed lists ordercodes for prebuilt computers at Dell and Gateway that are *already setup to work with our network*! There is a small additional cost by puchasing a preconfigured Dell/GW like this, but I know Dell offers a bulk 2% student discount, so it balances. Next, in every single freshman dorm room there is a folder with generic freshman info, but it also has a CD. On that CD are network drivers for most NICs and a pre-built installation program to configure user's machines, setup a (licenced) free e-mail program, install a (licenced again) anti-virus software, etc. It also has some other things to setup users' network drives (everyone has a 10meg networked drive they can get to from anywhere on campus). We also have a station of about 20-30 people in each of the freshman residence areas. These stations are manned by upperclassman computer-geeks who get a chance to move in early, before the freshmen even. Give the students $50/each for two days of work, and it balances wonderfully. We also have students who work during the school year with our Academic Computing System department to handle tougher calls - they're refered to as "senior staff". All requests for help are logged and checked on so we don't have people sitting around. These people are available for help for over 10 hours a day for the three days of freshman move-in. We have the ACIS phone number on magnets, slips of paper - just about everywhere - to help out students. We let people know about all these resources, such as ACIS, during freshman orientation during the summer, so if people buy new computers, they know what to get. We also discourage people from getting "custom made" computers - the people who know what they're doing will know how to setup network access if they have a custom computer. If someone isn't computer savy, then this just discourages them from getting in over their heads.
At Vanderbilt we're going to move in our students in about a week. First thing that helps is to have freshmen move in 3 days ahead of upperclassmen. Next, every new student is mailed/e-mailed lists of prebuilt computers at Dell and Gateway that are *already setup to work with our network*! There is a small additional cost by puchasing a preconfigured Dell/GW like this, but I know Dell offers a bulk 2% student discount, so it balances. Next, in every single freshman dorm room there is a folder with generic freshman info, but it also has a CD. On that CD are network drivers for most NICs and a pre-built installation program to configure user's machines. It also has some other things to setup users' network drives (everyone has a 10meg networked drive they can get to from anywhere on campus). We also have a station of about 20 people in each of the freshman residence areas. Give the students $50/each for two days of work, and it balances wonderfully. Most are upperclassmen computer nerds (such as myself) and we can do most of the air-head Vander-barbie installations. We also have students who work during the school year with our Academic Computing System department to handle tougher calls. Lastly, we have the ACIS phone number on magnets, slips of paper - just about everywhere - to help out students.
I hope this whole list of things helps - give me an e-mail at johann.klemmack@vanderbilt.edu if I can help clarify on anything.
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I'm surprised that noone has mentioned the "last mile" problem with junking analog tv/radio signals. Many homes are in rural areas and only pick up 2-4 local TV stations with their set of bunny ears. If wireless analog TV broadcasts are chucked, then where will these people be? No mention has been made of sending digital TV signals through the air, where anyone could recieve them for free (heaven forbid), so these people can't even use set top converters. All other things that stand in the way of last-mile broadband adoption will be here too, though the consumers will be losing a service they didn't have to pay for in the first place, so there is little likelihood that they will foot the bill for digital cable wiring.
First, I was late too - it happens, its okay. Second, we *did* leave a forwarding address, complete with the MeetUp logo on it and a map. We went someplace with alcohol, since everyone at that point was of age. I agree with your third grievance - the place was hard to find and the size wasn't big enough.
Hopefully we can get a better handle on things in the future. OH well.
However, I'd like to hear from some of the people that RSVPed but didn't show up. I'm not accusing anyone of being lazy (heck, I was an inch from not going myself - it was a 30 minute drive for me) but if we get feedback as to why people didn't show up, then maybe we can do something to get better attendance in the future.
The flip side is they still have to connect the wires together. TV, VCR, DVD, stereo - minimum of 5 sets of wires running around, and people need to know what "TV in" and "TV out" signals mean. Just because you want good sound doesn't mean you need to know about the electronics/theory of sound waves. They DO need to know how to wire the thing up and what buttons to push - read as "They need to know the UI"
This article contains so much flawed logic, it boggles the mind. First, [t]he latest find is a gas giant and orbits a Sun-like star 293 light-years away. Though how this relates to a 100 light year sphere around earth confuses me. Second, with about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, there could be about 30 billion planetary systems in the Milky Way alone. While the 300 billion stars is correct, a vast majority of them are on the galatic disk or in the galatic core, where the gravity of the densely packed stars would prevent planet formation according to any currently held theory, except maybe Electric Universe. Lastly, most of the exo-solar planets that have been found so far are multiple Jupiter-sized and orbiting so close to the star that it doesn't resemble our solar system, the only one we really know about, making any inferences about the existence of other planets useless and pointless. While 100 exo-solar plants found is a cheer for modern astronomy and a good sign for the likelyhood of ETs, this article uses poor logic to make a bang from a whimper
Although actual silicon being called virtual does kinda twist one's mind.
It explains the broad steps each software project should have, and applies the lessons taught to a (somewhat trival) sample application.
There is little C++/Java code in the book, and for the topic, there shouldn't be. Software engineering is about overall design and executing that design towards a finished project. This is often overlooked in many projects today. For a while, in the 70's and 80's, companies poured money into their software engineering process, but recently they realized that publishing reports on how they cut debugging time by 66% might tell their competitors how to do it too.
I think this (or any other software engineering book worth its weight, such as the Unified Software Development Process, the preeminent book on UML by the creators of UML) is a must have in any IT person's bookshelf, manager or not.
Lastly, note that the 6th edition of this book is going to print soon and should be available in a few months. The new edition has been highly reworked to include concepts from the Unified Software Development Process and more on UML and how to use it in software engineering.
I find it supremely interesting to see the # of members at this site tick up every minute. I wonder if anyone has done an analysis of time from post to time host server goes down when a news item is /.ed. Now, the scarriest thing is actually meeting all the people with cool sigs... if anyone lived in the Atlanta area.
Your point, that you're only drawing the heat away to another area a small distance away plus the inefficiency is absolutely correct. However, that's how a traditional heatsink works, and its absolutely valid. Thermal flux is based on the surface area of contact. If the new heatsinks were designed with this miracle material so the bottom fits the chip (144mm square) and the top is 288mm square, then you've doubled the area that heat can be dissipated, probably giving you a cooling efficiency increase of 50% (not 100% because nothing in the thermal world is 100% efficent). Now, isn't 66 degrees C better than 100???
Beware physics like you would the Force - it can be used for good or for evil!
Secondly, after a major incident of mass cheating in intro comp sci, they didn't make the enforcement stricter (like wandering TAs through the isles during tests), they instead changed the honor code. Tests remain same, requiring students to write and sign a testament they didn't recieve unauthorized help, but programming and lab assignments are a different matter. As long as you physically type in the code, you're all good. Next, if you talk with someone else or use a site, book, etc as a reference, you cite it at the top. Note that if you do either of these, there is no penalty against you.
The moral is that if something is wrong, maybe you need to change the laws, not hire more cops. Unfortunately, in gigantic institution like G. Tech, this policy might not work. Our intro CS courses are only about 250 per....
Despite this thing sounding like ware de la vapor, imagine the possibilities. All you need is a monitor, a plug, mouse and keyboard and you have your desktop. Need to demo on client's site? No need to checkout a laptop from the corp and forget to change the previous person's nudie pic on the background. Need to download e-mail? Wireless phone right there, or plug in at any internet cafe (hey, they just have to buy $250 for the aux. equipment, not a $2000 machine). Don't have sync problems, can turn it into a laptop, etc. But, you lose it, you're screwed. Also, great technology if you're into the digital soldier concept - only 1 lb for 9.5 hours, and enough processing power to do all the targeting, recon, etc. stuff our boys do.
Yeah - they've been running it for around a year, off and on. Do you know of any better way to test a massively parallel clustered supercomputer in a useful way? Play BattleChess 3000? Gosh I love it when the rooks eat the queens
Second - these machines only work on simulated nuclear testing for a short while (a few years). Then they go up for other "Grand Challange" problems, like immense weather calculation machines (who wouldn't want to know the exact minute it starts raining in your neighborhood?), particle calculations for the solar system or the galaxy, etc. We're up in arms about ASCI White, but what about ASCI Red, Blue, Mountain?
Furthermore, the research involved to build something like this benifits us down the line. Super-advanced routers, ultra-fast fail-safe network storage, improved networked processor topologies, distributed algorithms.
At another southern university we're going to move in our freshman students in about a week. First thing that helps is to have freshmen move in 3 days ahead of upperclassmen. Next, every new student is mailed/e-mailed lists ordercodes for prebuilt computers at Dell and Gateway that are *already setup to work with our network*! There is a small additional cost by puchasing a preconfigured Dell/GW like this, but I know Dell offers a bulk 2% student discount, so it balances. Next, in every single freshman dorm room there is a folder with generic freshman info, but it also has a CD. On that CD are network drivers for most NICs and a pre-built installation program to configure user's machines, setup a (licenced) free e-mail program, install a (licenced again) anti-virus software, etc. It also has some other things to setup users' network drives (everyone has a 10meg networked drive they can get to from anywhere on campus). We also have a station of about 20-30 people in each of the freshman residence areas. These stations are manned by upperclassman computer-geeks who get a chance to move in early, before the freshmen even. Give the students $50/each for two days of work, and it balances wonderfully. We also have students who work during the school year with our Academic Computing System department to handle tougher calls - they're refered to as "senior staff". All requests for help are logged and checked on so we don't have people sitting around. These people are available for help for over 10 hours a day for the three days of freshman move-in. We have the ACIS phone number on magnets, slips of paper - just about everywhere - to help out students. We let people know about all these resources, such as ACIS, during freshman orientation during the summer, so if people buy new computers, they know what to get. We also discourage people from getting "custom made" computers - the people who know what they're doing will know how to setup network access if they have a custom computer. If someone isn't computer savy, then this just discourages them from getting in over their heads.
I hope this whole list of things helps - give me an e-mail at johann.klemmack@vanderbilt.edu if I can help clarify on anything.