Some history on the 3D graphics chip industry; SGI sold a good number of their 3D technology patents to Microsoft. A good number of SGI engineers went to work for Nvidia. NVidia also acquired patents and technology from 3Dfx (there was a patent battle around the late 1990's), which led to 3Dfx merging with NVidia. With all that patent cross-licensing, it would be a natural consequence.
As part of some personal projects for learning 3D modelling using Blender, I tried reconstructing the interiors of some places I had visited. Could easily remember those areas where I had walked through or sat down in, but anywhere more than three or more metres away, I couldn't remember.
I guess if you were walking through a jungle trail, remembering the junctions on that trail would be more important that the surrounding vegetation.
Though, many supermarket customers get really annoyed when the supermarket decides to rearrange the layout and suddenly everything has been reshuffled around. Sometimes the store managers have to send out Sherpa guides to help shoppers find what they are looking for.
I'd give you moderation points (informative,insightful) if I had any.
Parental involvement is the biggest difference in the UK as well. I've seen the social activity calendar of the most successful schools. They involved parents in every activity from Electronics clubs to Chess, Horseriding, Orienteering, Origami to Theatrical workshops on puppetmaking and mime.
The education background of the principal is the second biggest influence. Even if a school were given a $1 million dollars to upgrade their facilities, it could either be spent on a new swimming pool and sportsground, or a digital media lab or language lab, all depending on which department head was in favor.
In the UK, boarding fees for a private school, were something like 20K pounds/year, while prison costs for an inmate are around 45K/year, due to all the additional security: guards, CCTV, inspections, basic health regulations (minimum and maximum temperature ranges, free newspaper (a href="http://www.insidetime.org/">Inside Time . The cost is higher due to the Victorian architecture as well.
It is a commentary that prisoners get better treatment than pensioners due to human rights legislation - they could sue for just about anything like the right to vote, that slopping out and cold cells were demeaning.
Biology seems to be more statistics than actual anatomy these days . Most research seems to involve measuring populations over vast areas in order to document effects of various ecological events in order publish papers. Most of the time, they can't measure the whole population, so have to take samples at specific points. Then all sorts of measurments can be made - time of arrival, departure, direction of arrival, direction of departure. There are specific fields of statistics which deal with distributions over particular topologies (square grids, spheres, circles). Trying to do this counting and identification of individuals is the hard part. Easy way is to just paint-spray a catalogue number onto the side of each animal like with polar bears, or stick on an electronic tag with seals or penguins. Doing the image processing bit takes out the mundane eye-strain bit of trying to match photographs with catalogue entries as well as not harming the animal.
It's true, the actual computer science bit is just going to be stringing together some image-processing stages (segmentation, feature vector extraction), to add a "plug-in" to a texture retrieval database, maybe as a shell or Python script. But there is still the analysis and determination of the best sets of stages and filters to use. That's the research bit.
The Computer Science research bit as geek would know it would be developing new image recognition algorithms or optimizing the image processing algorithms using multithreading or parallel processing.
From the historical viewpoint of an 80's home computer owner, everything was built into the keyboard (CPU, memory chips, ROM slots), all except for the large collection of separate power transformers for each peripheral. The floppy diskdrives, the keyboard, the hard disk drives, the monitor all had their own separate brick or cube power transformer, requiring not just one, but a daisy chain of power bars. In any promotional magazine, these cables would be conveniently airbrushed out.
There isn't much need for anyone to write their own statistical analysis or graphing software. Applications like Matlab, SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Studies), Excel or Gnuplot all do the basic statistics and graphing. Excel format (tabs and returns) is the standard way of exchanging data between these applications.
The philosophy was that trying to write your own statistics routines would more than likely introduce more errors - things like forgetting to zeroing subtotals and totals, starting at 0 or 1 or visa versa, using over-runs with fixed areas I've seen some homebrew libraries, and they had separate CLI programs for different sized images.
There's the same problem in the UK . The main problem is that PhD students are cheap (15K tax-free stipend a year). Research assistants only need MSc degrees or good BSc degrees, while a research associate or research fellowship is a bit more pricy (25K-35K). Each PhD in biology is based on studying particular gene or interaction of genes. Mostly the research concludes, there is no interaction, so there is nothing further more to study. Next PhD student please...
Sometimes it will go up as much as 8 years. The first couple of years, you get to do more or less what you like - research whatever areas you like. 3rd year, you do the experients your supervisor asks you to do. 4th year, you start writing up and repeat experiments as necessary, 5th year the thesis is submitted. Even without any actual text content, the title pages, introduction, acknowledgements, table of contents, appendices take up 40 pages. The remaining 80 pages are the actual content (20 pages - literature survey, 20 pages experiment, 10 pages results, 10 pages conclusions).
Though, things can go wrong without getting you fired. Instead, they will just drag out one or more of these stages several years. Do too much work - outshine an international ex-student, enter someone else's research field by mistake.
It would not be detectable using visible light, infra-red or radio telescopes, and it would not occlude any other celestial objects like planets, moons or stars.
That's what the Unabomber did - get the dog to lick the envelopes to seal them. Post offices in arab countries have a little waterpad and sponge for the envelopes. These days, you just get envelopes that just need a waxpaper strip removed.
There was one place I new of which had an upmarket arcade. They weren't just into arcade games, though, there were into everything racing cars - outdoor mini racing-cars, the networked sit down at the steering wheel time racing games as well as a game room of console systems with all the accessories. Rather than just go for consecutive customers, they arranged children's parties for a whole afternoon.
Even if there weren't any dealers, a standalone arcade would still have the problem with the hard-core gamers as well as needing the bucket-of-nickels to feed the machines. Not sure what the current prices are, but it seemed to be at least £1 or $1 for the first three minutes of any game.
I'd agree with that - operator precedence vs. parenthesis writing. In the past, the recommended practise was to put separate operations in parenthesis in case of dodgy compilers that didn't handle precedence correctly, and also to mimc mathematical notation.
The first time I heard about Gray codes, was when our local computer club had a visit to an oil company. They had some old oil rig weather stations with the anenometer disassembled. Right inside the (previously) hermetically sealed weatherproof case of the weather vane was this six inch steakpunk copper wheel with a crazy zig-zag pattern. It was actually a Gray code pattern used for determining the wind direction to 10+ bit precision.
Oh yes, I wrote my MSc thesis in Latex and PhD in Word.
The biggest problem with Word was that page numbering was a pain, because the front pages have no numbering, everything from the introduction, table of contents, list of figures is page numbered in roman numerals. The rest of the chapters are numbered normally. You also need a list of special keywords which are all in italics, not forgetting that the plurals of some words are hyphenated, while the singular isn't.
With mathematical equations, matrices are in bold capital letters, vectors are in bold letters, scalar values are in normal font. You have to list what each variable is for. Trying to remember the code sequence for greek symbols was even worse. On some occasions, particularly late nights, the equations could be scrambled due to some deleted entry somewhere.
Many companies (in the UK at least) have online pre-screening tests for candidates for C++ questions which are fairly easy to answer.
Some are a bit strange like, "What is the least number of parenthesis you can leave this equation with, and still have it function as intended?" Something like: result = ( ( a && b ) & (c || (d | e ) ^ f ) );
Presumably it's an optimization test, but really, I wouldn't want to change any piece of code unless there was something wrong with it in the first place. Management would probably fire me if I was unnecessarily changing working code.
Other questions are things like how many protected, private and public constructors can a class have.
There was once a discussion on TV on space travel:
Interviewer: "So, Dr., tell me about the difficulties in making a manned mission to other planets like Mars?"
Dr. "Well, to start with, you need a pressurised crew cabin with enough air, water and food supplies to last three years, as well as the large quantity of fuel to take you there and back again. All of these supplies, as well as the crew must be protected from radiation and the extremes of temperature. However, none of these problems are impossible to solve, but have well known and tested solutions."
Interviewer: "So, it's not really rocket science then, sending a manned mission to somewhere like Mars?"
Safest way is to jump onto the tail end of the train - that way you won't become salami meat with the wheels if you fall off. Assuming of course, that it is moving slower than you can run.
Long term health effects Victims of Bhopal disaster asking for Warren Anderson's extradition from the USA
It is estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people have permanent injuries. Reported symptoms are eye problems, respiratory difficulties, immune and neurological disorders, cardiac failure secondary to lung injury, female reproductive difficulties and birth defects among children born to affected women. [4] The Indian Government and UCC deny permanent injuries were caused by MIC or the other gases.
If the storage pools are giving off heat and need active cooling, that is energy being wasted and could be used somehow - surely it would be possible to have a mini-turbine + dynamo + condenser that converts that heat into a self-cooling system?
Banks want engineers to apply mathematics to stock prices; particularly derivatives. All that stuff related to CFD and engine combustion, signal processing can be applied stock prices, without consideration to what the the company does, their markets, their customers or employees. The stock price is just a number to be analyzed and manipulated with all sorts of put-orders, cancels and futures. The goal is to buy low and sell high. It's like gambling on the height of incoming ocean waves.
Slashdot Mirror
Some history on the 3D graphics chip industry; SGI sold a good number of their 3D technology patents to Microsoft. A good number of SGI engineers went to work for Nvidia. NVidia also acquired patents and technology from 3Dfx (there was a patent battle around the late 1990's), which led to 3Dfx merging with NVidia. With all that patent cross-licensing, it would be a natural consequence.
If you want to anonymize the purpose of a psychological test, that would seem the perfect way to achieve that purpose.
The population sample would be more varied that the usual method of asking for volunteers from the local campus with a reward of a $10 gift token.
As part of some personal projects for learning 3D modelling using Blender, I tried reconstructing the interiors of some places I had visited. Could easily remember those areas where I had walked through or sat down in, but anywhere more than three or more metres away, I couldn't remember.
I guess if you were walking through a jungle trail, remembering the junctions on that trail would be more important that the surrounding vegetation.
Though, many supermarket customers get really annoyed when the supermarket decides to rearrange the layout and suddenly everything has been reshuffled around. Sometimes the store managers have to send out Sherpa guides to help shoppers find what they are looking for.
I'd give you moderation points (informative,insightful) if I had any.
Parental involvement is the biggest difference in the UK as well. I've seen the social activity calendar of the most successful schools. They involved parents in every activity from Electronics clubs to Chess, Horseriding, Orienteering, Origami to Theatrical workshops on puppetmaking and mime.
The education background of the principal is the second biggest influence. Even if a school were given a $1 million dollars to upgrade their facilities, it could either be spent on a new swimming pool and sportsground, or a digital media lab or language lab, all depending on which department head was in favor.
In the UK, boarding fees for a private school, were something like 20K pounds/year, while prison costs for an inmate are around 45K/year, due to all the additional security: guards, CCTV, inspections, basic health regulations (minimum and maximum temperature ranges, free newspaper (a href="http://www.insidetime.org/">Inside Time . The cost is higher due to the Victorian architecture as well.
It is a commentary that prisoners get better treatment than pensioners due to human rights legislation - they could sue for just about anything like the right to vote, that slopping out and cold cells were demeaning.
Biology seems to be more statistics than actual anatomy these days . Most research seems to involve measuring populations over vast areas in order to document effects of various ecological events in order publish papers. Most of the time, they can't measure the whole population, so have to take samples at specific points. Then all sorts of measurments can be made - time of arrival, departure, direction of arrival, direction of departure. There are specific fields of statistics which deal with distributions over particular topologies (square grids, spheres, circles). Trying to do this counting and identification of individuals is the hard part. Easy way is to just paint-spray a catalogue number onto the side of each animal like with polar bears, or stick on an electronic tag with seals or penguins. Doing the image processing bit takes out the mundane eye-strain bit of trying to match photographs with catalogue entries as well as not harming the animal.
It's true, the actual computer science bit is just going to be stringing together some image-processing stages (segmentation, feature vector extraction), to add a "plug-in" to a texture retrieval database, maybe as a shell or Python script. But there is still the analysis and determination of the best sets of stages and filters to use. That's the research bit.
The Computer Science research bit as geek would know it would be developing new image recognition algorithms or optimizing the image processing algorithms using multithreading or parallel processing.
From the historical viewpoint of an 80's home computer owner, everything was built into the keyboard (CPU, memory chips, ROM slots), all except for the large collection of separate power transformers for each peripheral. The floppy diskdrives, the keyboard, the hard disk drives, the monitor all had their own separate brick or cube power transformer, requiring not just one, but a daisy chain of power bars. In any promotional magazine, these cables would be conveniently airbrushed out.
There isn't much need for anyone to write their own statistical analysis or graphing software. Applications like Matlab, SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Studies), Excel or Gnuplot all do the basic statistics and graphing. Excel format (tabs and returns) is the standard way of exchanging data between these applications.
The philosophy was that trying to write your own statistics routines would more than likely introduce more errors - things like forgetting to zeroing subtotals and totals, starting at 0 or 1 or visa versa, using over-runs with fixed areas I've seen some homebrew libraries, and they had separate CLI programs for different sized images.
There's the same problem in the UK . The main problem is that PhD students are cheap (15K tax-free stipend a year). Research assistants only need MSc degrees or good BSc degrees, while a research associate or research fellowship is a bit more pricy (25K-35K). Each PhD in biology is based on studying particular gene or interaction of genes. Mostly the research concludes, there is no interaction, so there is nothing further more to study. Next PhD student please...
Sometimes it will go up as much as 8 years. The first couple of years, you get to do more or less what you like - research whatever areas you like. 3rd year, you do the experients your supervisor asks you to do. 4th year, you start writing up and repeat experiments as necessary, 5th year the thesis is submitted. Even without any actual text content, the title pages, introduction, acknowledgements, table of contents, appendices take up 40 pages. The remaining 80 pages are the actual content (20 pages - literature survey, 20 pages experiment, 10 pages results, 10 pages conclusions).
Though, things can go wrong without getting you fired. Instead, they will just drag out one or more of these stages several years. Do too much work - outshine an international ex-student, enter someone else's research field by mistake.
It would not be detectable using visible light, infra-red or radio telescopes, and it would not occlude any other celestial objects like planets, moons or stars.
That's what the Unabomber did - get the dog to lick the envelopes to seal them. Post offices in arab countries have a little waterpad and sponge for the envelopes. These days, you just get envelopes that just need a waxpaper strip removed.
What about the emergency power generator - that little windmill that drops out of the side of the plane, and uses air speed to drive a dynamo?
It used to be SGI's headquarters back in the 1990's - right next to the cineplex.
There was one place I new of which had an upmarket arcade. They weren't just into arcade games, though, there were into everything racing cars - outdoor mini racing-cars, the networked sit down at the steering wheel time racing games as well as a game room of console systems with all the accessories. Rather than just go for consecutive customers, they arranged children's parties for a whole afternoon.
Even if there weren't any dealers, a standalone arcade would still have the problem with the hard-core gamers as well as needing the bucket-of-nickels to feed the machines. Not sure what the current prices are, but it seemed to be at least £1 or $1 for the first three minutes of any game.
There is the Solar Sail
On earth, you can play around with Crookes radiometer
I'd agree with that - operator precedence vs. parenthesis writing. In the past, the recommended practise was to put separate operations in parenthesis in case of dodgy compilers that didn't handle precedence correctly, and also to mimc mathematical notation.
The first time I heard about Gray codes, was when our local computer club had a visit to an oil company. They had some old oil rig weather stations with the anenometer disassembled. Right inside the (previously) hermetically sealed weatherproof case of the weather vane was this six inch steakpunk copper wheel with a crazy zig-zag pattern. It was actually a Gray code pattern used for determining the wind direction to 10+ bit precision.
Oh yes, I wrote my MSc thesis in Latex and PhD in Word.
The biggest problem with Word was that page numbering was a pain, because the front pages have no numbering, everything from the introduction, table of contents, list of figures is page numbered in roman numerals. The rest of the chapters are numbered normally. You also need a list of special keywords which are all in italics, not forgetting that the plurals of some words are hyphenated, while the singular isn't.
With mathematical equations, matrices are in bold capital letters, vectors are in bold letters, scalar values are in normal font. You have to list what each variable is for. Trying to remember the code sequence for greek symbols was even worse. On some occasions, particularly late nights, the equations could be scrambled due to some deleted entry somewhere.
Many companies (in the UK at least) have online pre-screening tests for candidates for C++ questions which are fairly easy to answer.
Some are a bit strange like, "What is the least number of parenthesis you can leave this equation with, and still have it function as intended?" Something like: result = ( ( a && b ) & (c || (d | e ) ^ f ) );
Presumably it's an optimization test, but really, I wouldn't want to change any piece of code unless there was something wrong with it in the first place. Management would probably fire me if I was unnecessarily changing working code.
Other questions are things like how many protected, private and public constructors can a class have.
There was once a discussion on TV on space travel:
Interviewer: "So, Dr., tell me about the difficulties in making a manned mission to other planets like Mars?"
Dr. "Well, to start with, you need a pressurised crew cabin with enough air, water and food supplies to last three years, as well as the large quantity of fuel to take you there and back again. All of these supplies, as well as the crew must be protected from radiation and the extremes of temperature. However, none of these problems are impossible to solve, but have well known and tested solutions."
Interviewer: "So, it's not really rocket science then, sending a manned mission to somewhere like Mars?"
Dr. "Actually, it *IS* rocket science."
Safest way is to jump onto the tail end of the train - that way you won't become salami meat with the wheels if you fall off. Assuming of course, that it is moving slower than you can run.
Yet no one is equally as up in arms about these places as they are about nuclear.
The Bhopal disaster
Long term health effects
Victims of Bhopal disaster asking for Warren Anderson's extradition from the USA
It is estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people have permanent injuries. Reported symptoms are eye problems, respiratory difficulties, immune and neurological disorders, cardiac failure secondary to lung injury, female reproductive difficulties and birth defects among children born to affected women. [4] The Indian Government and UCC deny permanent injuries were caused by MIC or the other gases.
If the storage pools are giving off heat and need active cooling, that is energy being wasted and could be used somehow - surely it would be possible to have a mini-turbine + dynamo + condenser that converts that heat into a self-cooling system?
Banks want engineers to apply mathematics to stock prices; particularly derivatives. All that stuff related to CFD and engine combustion, signal processing can be applied stock prices, without consideration to what the the company does, their markets, their customers or employees. The stock price is just a number to be analyzed and manipulated with all sorts of put-orders, cancels and futures. The goal is to buy low and sell high. It's like gambling on the height of incoming ocean waves.