If kids were getting out of CompSci and CompEng but taking up ChemEng and Bioinformatics, we'd rule the world.
That's OK, I'm sure China will be only to happy to export us the latest crop of bio technology and miracle cures. For a price, of course.
We'll see how much the restrictions on stem cell research and or aborted fetus tissue mean after someone uses them to cure prostate cancer.
The funny thing is nature handed us nano assemblers on a silver platter. They're called cells. It's sad to say it probably -won't- be us leading the world though.
The reason high-tech jobs are being outsourced is because there are fewer high-tech skills being taught domestically. Universities at the undergraduate level have become what "high school" used to be -- a piece of paper that says you've got the minimum skills and education necessary to participate in the economy.
I have an EE degree. Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at any Canadian University anyway are much more difficult than any other undergraduate program on campus - to the point where it is foolish. I imagine the situation is similar in the US. Part of this is because you can't dumb down engineering - there are professional review boards that make sure that doesn't happen. Engineering has actually changed very little - same math people learned 50 or 100 years ago - but if all you want is a degree, you'd have to be insane to literally beat yourself stupid for 4 or 5 years.
Most of the people in the program I took got NAILED by the math. I had a rough time, but I did OK, mainly because I can teach myself things - Profs don't help much if there's 100 people in your class, they can't. Enrollment went from 180+ my first year to a graduating class of about 40, same as it's always been.
One interesting thing though is once I understood the math, it was like some light went on in my head, and it wasn't that hard anymore. I struggled with basic mathematics early on, and I really don't know why. Why is math drilled into people's heads as "hard"? I know learning STUPID USELESS DRILLS in grade school is something that the education profession should be UTTERLY ASHAMED of. Why do students not learn about set theory and relationships early on? We have these wonderful machines for drawing math - math is all about pretty pictures, really - teach students THAT instead.
On a practical measure, why should a student go through hell.. (sleeping on floors so you'd wake up for 8:30 classes, 2-4 labs per week, my last year I had 75+ pages of assignments due EVERY week plus labs!) - when you could just go do arts instead, then study law, and have a good time? There is no guarantee of a good job any more if you slug it though.
It's good for me in engineering now - I have had no problem finding work as an embedded systems / hardware guy, not many people can program with only an oscilloscope to debug.:) Even now there is lots of work. It makes me wonder where as a society we are headed, though - Many of the people I have worked with were not born here, and this is more and more the case as I move up my career and get to more difficult and advanced projects.
What's going to happen in 50 years, when all these other countries realize maybe they don't need to pander to a nation of marketdroids and attorneys?
Interestingly enough - engineering is one of the most democratic and fair programs - when you do a page of calculus to solve a kinematics problem, it's either right or wrong. Unfortunately, if it's wrong, there isn't much to work on.
If you want a fast 4-cyl car, buy a WRX. AWD, well designed boxer engine with oodles of torque, fantastic chassis/drivetrain, real brakes... All the things that a hopped up Civic will never achieve. Add some STi performance parts and you'll soon be turing 0-60mph in under 5 seconds.
A FSP-class civic will easily outrun a stock STi on an autoX course or road circuit. The only place it won't win is off the line. You don't know what you're talking about - all the civic is at the point I deal with it is a chassis. It weighs 2000lbs, not the 3000+ of the STi.
Go spend some time on a track and learn something. I'm not talking about the riced out cars you see on the street. Boneheaded ricer? Most of the IT-spec cars are hondas of one type or another. You got the bank account and the balls to roll that new STi up into a little ball?
As far as powerbands go, again, you don't know what you're talking about. All that matters is I have enough power to break traction in 2nd gear coming out of a turn.
Just make that 4000lb monster car turn. F1 cars are only 3.5L for a reason. In most parts of the world, racing involves doing something besides driving in a straight line. A 2.2L engine can deliver 400 hp for a long time; the problem is when you get to rediculous levels of HP it isn't good for a whole lot outside of a drag strip. You can't put the power down.
upon second read of your post, you admit that a boosted 2.2 vtec cant compete with a 460. it's also going to cost a hell of a lot more to build the honda motor. 4cylinders can be plenty fast, but it takes HUGE amounts of money to do it, especially with hondas.
4 cylinders means you only need 4 forged connecting rods and pistons and half the honing time. In fact, it works out cheaper to build a very fast 4cyl engine - you don't even need as big a turbo. I am just finishing a project to get 300hp from a 1600cc honda engine. The total expenditure was around $3000cdn, and that was most ly because I wanted to get a brand new turbo not a rebuilt one. That INCLUDED buying another engine to work on. There are millions of those engines and they are cheap.
You can't work on a V8 engine in your kitchen. A dismantled little 4 banger is very easy to work with. Two guys can easily pick it up. One guy can pick it up dismantled.
Do you know what insurance is on a 1600cc engine compared to a 8000cc engine?
Very few people take it this far, but there are a lot of very fast Hondas out there. It once was more expensive, but now it's very cheap to build a 12 second Honda. Cheaper if you don't care about it blowing up.
Lots and lots of people do this.
Turbo D16 has lots of pointers on how to get started on cheap turbo setups.
Braking from 150mph into an increasing radius turn off the back straight on the other hand.. Women like men who are confident, and there's not much room for indecision on a racetrack.
(Often) ladies don't find too much that's macho about a XP chip running at 3000mhz (duh), and there's not much risk other than the possible damage to your bank account. So I think this article is just tripe to make those with low self esteem feel better about themselves.
"Overclockers say, "Instead of buying a new PC, just overclock the old one."
I don't know any overclockers that say that. I run a mildly overclocked system because I can with no impact on reliability. I've run extremely overclocked and watercooled systems in the past. It was not done to save money on a new PC - a combination of the very top of the line being insanely priced, and "because I can". This article feels like fluff and has a questionable feel to it. I'm suprised it's from the IEEE.
On the other hand, in my own experience fast cars are a lot more fun than fast women.:-)
I agree with you, but only partly. Another problem is that some people are interested in programming applications as a ends in itself - e.g. their whole life revolves around implementing solutions to other people's problems. The guy from cox probably couldn't care less about Knuth - it's just what he's being told to do. Perhaps this isn't so much a problem as it is a side-effect of the need for programming services.
That's because business has a need to get their problems solved, and finds the most effective tool to do it - in this case, generic problem solvers or programmers. This is work that is easily outsourced.
Back in the day, the guy programming was solving problems to make -his- life easier. It's not a stark distinction, but one that needs to be made. My formal training is as an EE, I I took MANY more advanced mathematics courses than the CS people at least at the undergraduate level. We did a grand total of three programming courses, all of them offered by the CS faculty, and when I was there, we were taught Modula-2. It's since moved to Java. They don't start out teaching the virtual machine or bytecode, either. Pointer? Eh?
Anyway, back to my point - I used Matlab, C, Assembly, you name it in my digital systems courses. We were not taught those things; we were expected to know them or learn them on our own to solve the problem at hand.
Using a calculator to solve a problem and making the calculator are different things.
Is just as horrific as what you described. War sucks, and it's been going on a lot longer than anyone has written down. The first books were about ways to effectively kill each other. Not much has changed since you gutted your enemy with a sword - a real innovation over the club and spear techniques. That is just as violent and gory - perhaps moreso. War is part of our very being. I find it interesting we debate so heavily what happened to the nethanderals.. heh. I can make an educated guess or two, and they all involve me making a better club and having a full tummy.
Nukes put it all out there - the only thing that has changed is there are more of us now, that we're all fooling ourselves about human nature - it's easy to be a pacifist when you have lots of food on the table without really knowing what makes our cities run (oil). So what if it was a war about oil.. oil runs the whole show my friend.
I caught the tail end of growing up in the cold war, and you mark my words: Nuclear weapons are going to be used again. They will be used to devastating effect, and the genie is indeed out of the bottle. If the western world does not demonstrate it has the willpower to use them, then someone else will - it is a dangerous game if nuclear weapons become a "paper tiger".
The sad fact is we are all headed to a very dramatic showdown over oil. People pretend there's an unlimited supply, but there's not. And we will do ANYTHING as a nation to insure the ready availablity of oil to fuel the economy.
Use nuclear power to find a way to get off the need for oil. If you care, don't rally government to stop wars and weapons development - I would perfer my side to be armed to the teeth with the beast weaponry known to man. "Green" technologies can NEVER come even close to replacing the energy quality of oil. Without that energy quality, "our" world just doesn't work.
Rally around a tax to fund nuclear physicists and other people who might figure a way to get energy out of the quantum vaccuum - but do something, and do it soon. Fooling ourselves helps nobody, and there's good reasons why the sun doesn't power your SUV - and none of them have to do with grand oil company conspiracies.
You need way more power than is feasible with a solar array of any practical size. Use solar for powering your notebook computer and / or electronics, nice clean and easy.
If you want A/C, you need kilowatts of power. Ac is pretty dismal power wise.. it's inefficient to pump heat in the wrong direction. No way around that one. A medium sized windmill can easily supply 2-3kW of power you'd need for a nice A/C unit. You need to be in a location that lends itself to windmills, and you're probably going to need a battery bank too.
I've got a plan to move off grid, and AC isn't on it. Also, selling power back to the power company is more trouble than it's worth unless you have a lot of money. They don't pay much, and you need specialized equipment that costs many thousands of dollars. It's far more effective to dump the output of a windmill unrectified into a resistive heater for warming water for example if you want house heat.
What may work is an evaporative cooler using water.. I haven't played extensively with these systems but it might be an idea. Basically you'd have a radiator. Spray water on the outside of the radiator, that evaporates, taking energy out of the radiator - cooling the liquid inside. You can then pump this back into the area you want to cool. More efficient, but needs water.
Get a 240V circuit installed if you plan on ever doing anything like this, and it will add to the value of a garage. 240V tools are much better and don't dim the lights - nowhere near the amperage draw.
I'm looking at getting a TIG welder, I have a small MIG, and I'm going to need 240V. If I get a milling machine or lathe, more 240 needed.
Something to think about that's not networking related.
While you might not want to play a game you have to live in, there are enough socially maladjusted or rejected people out there to fill the void. So I would argue if you have a socially active lifestyle, you are not the market for these games. In general, most people are not happy and want an escape of some type, and that's what these games provide. There are going to be social problems as a result of this down the road.
By their very nature, once you invest that much time and energy you are not going to give up easily. Companies are aware of this.
This is not to discount the possibility of MMOGs that don't require a large investment. The tremendous popularity of Internet Chess Clubs is one angle to exploit this from.
Something about video games as communist propaganda bothers me. It really bothers me that Nintendo would be involved with this, or at least announce it publically. Perhaps this is troll?
"Nintendo Develops Communist Propaganda"
That's a headline I'm guessing the PR department would rather not deal with.
Massively multiplayer games are going to get very, veyr big. They've come a long way since Trade Wars. Since many of them can evolve into outright economies of their own, there are many social experiments waiting to happen in this arena yet - the Sims isn't the end by a long shot.
The revenues from games like GTA3 mean that this industry is going to be around for a long, long time. Gaming is HUGE. The entertainment value from good video games is much higher than movies or cable TV, or even books. You can play a video game for hundreds and thousands of hours. Combine this with the BS from Hollywood and the music industry.. although I think games nail the television providers worst overall. Most of the time you're using their primary distribution media for your video game.
Aging demographic? What? More kids play video games than ever these days.
We haven't even BEGUN to see the revolution that photorealistic 3d pr0n, er, rendered adult entertainment is going to bring. Up until now, the graphics weren't good enough to be convincing. I believe the current high end video games ARE good enough to be convincing. Unfortunately, this isn't an area that is actively pursued by people seeking advanced degrees in computer animation.
Please inform the Mac developers who are reading of the Windows applications that are not available (or have equivalents) for Macintosh. You can be specific or describe categories.
I own many computers including an Al powerbook, I'm a big supporter, I love OSX, but please:
There is no professional CAD software for Mac. Think Unigraphics, Solidworks, AutoCAD. There are some cad programs, but these have more in common with the Gimp than Photoshop.
There is no professional EDA software for Mac. Think OrCAD, not Electronics Workbench.
There is no support for lab equipment for Mac.
There is no support for almost any motor or industrial control. You can do stuff in C though, close enough.
Matlab is a big win, but those are some very big misses for Apple. It is in industry where apple needs to make inroads. The home market is about on par. The platform is capable; the vendors are weary.
Yeah, it's horrible, flame away, but it works like you wouldn't believe. Good insights into the female mind. I played around with it as an experiment many years ago to help get my people and relationship skills up. It's actually sickening how well it works. 3 second rule is gold in all walks of life. And for gods sakes, get some new clothes and get a haircut and shave. $150 worth of weights and 45 minutes a week will change your appearance forever, and it MATTERS in interviews.
The feynman stuff is as true as EVER. You don't buy a chick anything. You should be trying to get her to buy YOU stuff. Now there's a challenge.
Treating social interaction as a grand experiment is a lot of fun, you might learn something, and maybe get some, too.:)
Along the same and more depressing lines, check out the Ladder Theory of male/female relationships. It's amusing, but has a ring of truth to it.
even though the government with which the treaty was signed no longer existed?
There is always a difference between the spirit and letter of the law. The intent of the ABM treaty was to stop nuclear prolifertion and hold the status quo of power. While the Soviet Union has been dissolved, Russia and it's friends still have ICBMs in silos - and if their effectiveness is reduced, alternatives WILL be found. Nations do not have friends.
The agreement to not militarize space is supposed to represent a understanding amoung nations that our conflicts here on this planet should not exend elsewhere. Perhaps this is a naive view of the world, but I'd like to think that others might share it. The USA is in a position to militarize and dominate the theatre of space; At least until the LGM decide to show off their superiority in weapons.
Never forget, that this is a slippery slope - once it starts, it -will- end with nuclear weapons in space pointing down on us. I don't want to have to explain to my kids that there has to be MIRV orbital warheads aimed at the planet because we're really miserable to each other. Space is the last hope left for man working together as a species, and once it is gone, I fear it is gone forever.
It is likely the inevitable outcome of the USA's emerging world dominance. It will accellerate the development of (american) space initiatives. The USA will be making many moves in the next 10-20 years to solidify it's military power before world oil reserves become a problem. Having a monopoly on the heavy hydrogen reserves on the moon may be a justification down the road as well. Alas, I am an engineer, and not a military strategist.
Is there any kind of International treaties governing use of the Moon? I'm thinking particularly of the situation with the Antarctic here. There certainly should be some kind of International agreement that it's "common ground".
I've never been accused of being an optimist, but for some reason I don't think international agreements not to militarize space are going to mean a whole lot in the next 15 years unfortunately. The ABM treaty issue is being hotly debated in Canada and will be an issue in the next election. (US Plans call for ABM sites in Canada, leading to space-based weaponry)
Go around to flea markets and buy things cheap that look interesting. Then hawk them on Ebay for a slight markup. You'll make some money, I know of two people doing this locally to suppliment their incomes. Interesting is in the eye of the beholder, but it's one idea that doesn't involve mowing lawns.
Another one is to walk around offering to do oil changes on cars in people's driveways. Buy a GOOD jack and jackstands, a torque wrench to properly tighten the drain bolt, brand name filters and oil. Most people are lazy. Identify yourself as a university student or canadate, and you will be suprised at the takeup rate. Using high quality oil and filters will get you a profit in the range of $7-10 as you can charge a slight margin over the cheap guys for doing it right there. You don't need a car - get a cart and hoof it.
OK, I let your first comment go, but this is the second time you have made this outrageous claim. Are you saying that you could open the hood of a 2004 Audi and diagnose even a small problem? Even the mechanics at the dealership need to hook the engine up to the diagnostic computers these days. I could understand doing repairs on older cars, say circa 1995 and older, but give me a break. I am mechanically inclined as well, but I wouldn't even attempt to repair anything inside the engine of a 2004 car.
I take it you actually know little about the internal systems on cars. Mechanically inclined?
Not only have I diagnosed OBD-II generation cars, but I have literally torn their little hearts into piles of bearings, pistons, connecting rods, crankshafts, seals, valves, springs, and gears. I have modified and removed fuel injection systems. I have rewired large portions of the electrical systems; hacked the ECU; and even wrote my own injection controller.
Literally thousands of enthusiasts do this all the time.
I am an EE, but I did all those things with no special diagnostic tools except a PC and a multimeter, and a scope for development work. Perhaps I have missed my calling, according to you!
Cars need three things to work: Fuel, air and spark. All problems in cars can be reduced to one of those things, and they are all quickly diagnosed. Other problems are lubrication or cooling related and a sharp eye and ear can spot them all. The exception is brakes, and brakes are a simple hydrualic system. If ABS fails there are many safeguards to tell you the system is broken, and even then, ABS just deactivates.
Hope you enjoy paying mechanics $80/hr. I just don't want you to discourage anyone else from learning about their cars. If you can figure out a kernel, then you can rebuild a car.
also bet that most car computers dont have the output capabilities that you desire. Probably you would have to use a whole custom computer from a 3rd party. Those are probably expensive too.
Unfortunately, it is illegal to drive a aftermarket ECU equipped vehicle on the road - compliments emissions laws almost everywhere. Not that it stops anybody, but you should be aware of this.
Almost all cars have a facility to blink you a warning light, usually the only tool you need is a paperclip, at least in the case of my car. The amount of other data you can get varies, and the update speeds of the OBD-II ports are limited.
Build yourself a little analog digital converter board and interface it to a PC or handheld. I did something like this for an article I wrote for Circuit Cellar, PalmOS Data Acquisition. Interfacing with the existing OBD I/II bus is one way to go, but unless you have the factory-approved tools, the updates are usually very slow and usually crippled in some way.
If you go custom, you get the ability to do lots of other interesting things too.
If you lack the ability to monitor and care for your children in a manner that you see fit, then don't have kids.
I grew up playing video games, hey, news flash, there were some pretty gorey games out there even back in the day if you knew where to look. I remember one I used to play called Speed Racer? Or somesuch, you ran over little old ladies. *splock*
Haha. It's a game, stupid. You filled in the violent details in your head back then. I'm a responsible member of society, I fully accept responsibility for my actions, I vote, I have a University degree, and I love playing GTA. For that matter, I drink beer to excess too!
Keep your ghoulier-than-thou hands off my video games and monitor what your children do. Teach your children to have minds of their own and to think critically rather than worrying about a video game. Maybe the reason there are so many irresponsible people out there is nobody explains the whole concequences-for-your-own-actions thing? Because it's the state's fault for LETTING me get these evil drugs and noodie-pics and video games. It's not my fault!
I like violent fiction and horror movies, too. There are some pretty offensive "holy" books out there too, at least to my sensibilities. Censorship is EVIL. You get to control your kids until they're 16 or so. Have fun.
I don't even bother playing the game in GTA. I laugh my ass off driving around running over people. I know I'm not the only one out there either! *haha* It's ENTERTAINMENT.
Don't you have a people-against-funny-cartoons meeting to attend, or something?
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If kids were getting out of CompSci and CompEng but taking up ChemEng and Bioinformatics, we'd rule the world.
That's OK, I'm sure China will be only to happy to export us the latest crop of bio technology and miracle cures. For a price, of course.
We'll see how much the restrictions on stem cell research and or aborted fetus tissue mean after someone uses them to cure prostate cancer.
The funny thing is nature handed us nano assemblers on a silver platter. They're called cells. It's sad to say it probably -won't- be us leading the world though.
The reason high-tech jobs are being outsourced is because there are fewer high-tech skills being taught domestically. Universities at the undergraduate level have become what "high school" used to be -- a piece of paper that says you've got the minimum skills and education necessary to participate in the economy.
:) Even now there is lots of work. It makes me wonder where as a society we are headed, though - Many of the people I have worked with were not born here, and this is more and more the case as I move up my career and get to more difficult and advanced projects.
I have an EE degree. Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at any Canadian University anyway are much more difficult than any other undergraduate program on campus - to the point where it is foolish. I imagine the situation is similar in the US. Part of this is because you can't dumb down engineering - there are professional review boards that make sure that doesn't happen. Engineering has actually changed very little - same math people learned 50 or 100 years ago - but if all you want is a degree, you'd have to be insane to literally beat yourself stupid for 4 or 5 years.
Most of the people in the program I took got NAILED by the math. I had a rough time, but I did OK, mainly because I can teach myself things - Profs don't help much if there's 100 people in your class, they can't. Enrollment went from 180+ my first year to a graduating class of about 40, same as it's always been.
One interesting thing though is once I understood the math, it was like some light went on in my head, and it wasn't that hard anymore. I struggled with basic mathematics early on, and I really don't know why. Why is math drilled into people's heads as "hard"? I know learning STUPID USELESS DRILLS in grade school is something that the education profession should be UTTERLY ASHAMED of. Why do students not learn about set theory and relationships early on? We have these wonderful machines for drawing math - math is all about pretty pictures, really - teach students THAT instead.
On a practical measure, why should a student go through hell.. (sleeping on floors so you'd wake up for 8:30 classes, 2-4 labs per week, my last year I had 75+ pages of assignments due EVERY week plus labs!) - when you could just go do arts instead, then study law, and have a good time? There is no guarantee of a good job any more if you slug it though.
It's good for me in engineering now - I have had no problem finding work as an embedded systems / hardware guy, not many people can program with only an oscilloscope to debug.
What's going to happen in 50 years, when all these other countries realize maybe they don't need to pander to a nation of marketdroids and attorneys?
Interestingly enough - engineering is one of the most democratic and fair programs - when you do a page of calculus to solve a kinematics problem, it's either right or wrong. Unfortunately, if it's wrong, there isn't much to work on.
Oh well. I know I'm busy.
If you want a fast 4-cyl car, buy a WRX. AWD, well designed boxer engine with oodles of torque, fantastic chassis/drivetrain, real brakes... All the things that a hopped up Civic will never achieve. Add some STi performance parts and you'll soon be turing 0-60mph in under 5 seconds.
A FSP-class civic will easily outrun a stock STi on an autoX course or road circuit. The only place it won't win is off the line. You don't know what you're talking about - all the civic is at the point I deal with it is a chassis. It weighs 2000lbs, not the 3000+ of the STi.
Go spend some time on a track and learn something. I'm not talking about the riced out cars you see on the street. Boneheaded ricer? Most of the IT-spec cars are hondas of one type or another. You got the bank account and the balls to roll that new STi up into a little ball?
As far as powerbands go, again, you don't know what you're talking about. All that matters is I have enough power to break traction in 2nd gear coming out of a turn.
Just make that 4000lb monster car turn. F1 cars are only 3.5L for a reason. In most parts of the world, racing involves doing something besides driving in a straight line. A 2.2L engine can deliver 400 hp for a long time; the problem is when you get to rediculous levels of HP it isn't good for a whole lot outside of a drag strip. You can't put the power down.
upon second read of your post, you admit that a boosted 2.2 vtec cant compete with a 460. it's also going to cost a hell of a lot more to build the honda motor. 4cylinders can be plenty fast, but it takes HUGE amounts of money to do it, especially with hondas.
4 cylinders means you only need 4 forged connecting rods and pistons and half the honing time. In fact, it works out cheaper to build a very fast 4cyl engine - you don't even need as big a turbo. I am just finishing a project to get 300hp from a 1600cc honda engine. The total expenditure was around $3000cdn, and that was most ly because I wanted to get a brand new turbo not a rebuilt one. That INCLUDED buying another engine to work on. There are millions of those engines and they are cheap.
You can't work on a V8 engine in your kitchen. A dismantled little 4 banger is very easy to work with. Two guys can easily pick it up. One guy can pick it up dismantled.
Do you know what insurance is on a 1600cc engine compared to a 8000cc engine?
Very few people take it this far, but there are a lot of very fast Hondas out there. It once was more expensive, but now it's very cheap to build a 12 second Honda. Cheaper if you don't care about it blowing up.
Lots and lots of people do this.
Turbo D16 has lots of pointers on how to get started on cheap turbo setups.
Braking from 150mph into an increasing radius turn off the back straight on the other hand.. Women like men who are confident, and there's not much room for indecision on a racetrack.
:-)
(Often) ladies don't find too much that's macho about a XP chip running at 3000mhz (duh), and there's not much risk other than the possible damage to your bank account. So I think this article is just tripe to make those with low self esteem feel better about themselves.
"Overclockers say, "Instead of buying a new PC, just overclock the old one."
I don't know any overclockers that say that. I run a mildly overclocked system because I can with no impact on reliability. I've run extremely overclocked and watercooled systems in the past. It was not done to save money on a new PC - a combination of the very top of the line being insanely priced, and "because I can". This article feels like fluff and has a questionable feel to it. I'm suprised it's from the IEEE.
On the other hand, in my own experience fast cars are a lot more fun than fast women.
I agree with you, but only partly. Another problem is that some people are interested in programming applications as a ends in itself - e.g. their whole life revolves around implementing solutions to other people's problems. The guy from cox probably couldn't care less about Knuth - it's just what he's being told to do. Perhaps this isn't so much a problem as it is a side-effect of the need for programming services.
That's because business has a need to get their problems solved, and finds the most effective tool to do it - in this case, generic problem solvers or programmers. This is work that is easily outsourced.
Back in the day, the guy programming was solving problems to make -his- life easier. It's not a stark distinction, but one that needs to be made. My formal training is as an EE, I I took MANY more advanced mathematics courses than the CS people at least at the undergraduate level. We did a grand total of three programming courses, all of them offered by the CS faculty, and when I was there, we were taught Modula-2. It's since moved to Java. They don't start out teaching the virtual machine or bytecode, either. Pointer? Eh?
Anyway, back to my point - I used Matlab, C, Assembly, you name it in my digital systems courses. We were not taught those things; we were expected to know them or learn them on our own to solve the problem at hand.
Using a calculator to solve a problem and making the calculator are different things.
Is just as horrific as what you described. War sucks, and it's been going on a lot longer than anyone has written down. The first books were about ways to effectively kill each other. Not much has changed since you gutted your enemy with a sword - a real innovation over the club and spear techniques. That is just as violent and gory - perhaps moreso. War is part of our very being. I find it interesting we debate so heavily what happened to the nethanderals.. heh. I can make an educated guess or two, and they all involve me making a better club and having a full tummy.
Nukes put it all out there - the only thing that has changed is there are more of us now, that we're all fooling ourselves about human nature - it's easy to be a pacifist when you have lots of food on the table without really knowing what makes our cities run (oil). So what if it was a war about oil.. oil runs the whole show my friend.
I caught the tail end of growing up in the cold war, and you mark my words: Nuclear weapons are going to be used again. They will be used to devastating effect, and the genie is indeed out of the bottle. If the western world does not demonstrate it has the willpower to use them, then someone else will - it is a dangerous game if nuclear weapons become a "paper tiger".
The sad fact is we are all headed to a very dramatic showdown over oil. People pretend there's an unlimited supply, but there's not. And we will do ANYTHING as a nation to insure the ready availablity of oil to fuel the economy.
Use nuclear power to find a way to get off the need for oil. If you care, don't rally government to stop wars and weapons development - I would perfer my side to be armed to the teeth with the beast weaponry known to man. "Green" technologies can NEVER come even close to replacing the energy quality of oil. Without that energy quality, "our" world just doesn't work.
Rally around a tax to fund nuclear physicists and other people who might figure a way to get energy out of the quantum vaccuum - but do something, and do it soon. Fooling ourselves helps nobody, and there's good reasons why the sun doesn't power your SUV - and none of them have to do with grand oil company conspiracies.
You need way more power than is feasible with a solar array of any practical size. Use solar for powering your notebook computer and / or electronics, nice clean and easy.
If you want A/C, you need kilowatts of power. Ac is pretty dismal power wise.. it's inefficient to pump heat in the wrong direction. No way around that one. A medium sized windmill can easily supply 2-3kW of power you'd need for a nice A/C unit. You need to be in a location that lends itself to windmills, and you're probably going to need a battery bank too.
I've got a plan to move off grid, and AC isn't on it. Also, selling power back to the power company is more trouble than it's worth unless you have a lot of money. They don't pay much, and you need specialized equipment that costs many thousands of dollars. It's far more effective to dump the output of a windmill unrectified into a resistive heater for warming water for example if you want house heat.
What may work is an evaporative cooler using water.. I haven't played extensively with these systems but it might be an idea. Basically you'd have a radiator. Spray water on the outside of the radiator, that evaporates, taking energy out of the radiator - cooling the liquid inside. You can then pump this back into the area you want to cool. More efficient, but needs water.
You'd get the Nobel Prize if you found a violation of conservation of energy.
Not mine, but.. compelling.
Casimir Effect
Now that might be amusing. I feel bad for the pilots, though.
Get a 240V circuit installed if you plan on ever doing anything like this, and it will add to the value of a garage. 240V tools are much better and don't dim the lights - nowhere near the amperage draw.
I'm looking at getting a TIG welder, I have a small MIG, and I'm going to need 240V. If I get a milling machine or lathe, more 240 needed.
Something to think about that's not networking related.
While you might not want to play a game you have to live in, there are enough socially maladjusted or rejected people out there to fill the void. So I would argue if you have a socially active lifestyle, you are not the market for these games. In general, most people are not happy and want an escape of some type, and that's what these games provide. There are going to be social problems as a result of this down the road.
By their very nature, once you invest that much time and energy you are not going to give up easily. Companies are aware of this.
This is not to discount the possibility of MMOGs that don't require a large investment. The tremendous popularity of Internet Chess Clubs is one angle to exploit this from.
My $0.02.
Super Marx Brothers.
Something about video games as communist propaganda bothers me. It really bothers me that Nintendo would be involved with this, or at least announce it publically. Perhaps this is troll?
"Nintendo Develops Communist Propaganda"
That's a headline I'm guessing the PR department would rather not deal with.
Massively multiplayer games are going to get very, veyr big. They've come a long way since Trade Wars. Since many of them can evolve into outright economies of their own, there are many social experiments waiting to happen in this arena yet - the Sims isn't the end by a long shot.
The revenues from games like GTA3 mean that this industry is going to be around for a long, long time. Gaming is HUGE. The entertainment value from good video games is much higher than movies or cable TV, or even books. You can play a video game for hundreds and thousands of hours. Combine this with the BS from Hollywood and the music industry.. although I think games nail the television providers worst overall. Most of the time you're using their primary distribution media for your video game.
Aging demographic? What? More kids play video games than ever these days.
We haven't even BEGUN to see the revolution that photorealistic 3d pr0n, er, rendered adult entertainment is going to bring. Up until now, the graphics weren't good enough to be convincing. I believe the current high end video games ARE good enough to be convincing. Unfortunately, this isn't an area that is actively pursued by people seeking advanced degrees in computer animation.
Hard to beat this. Don't even need to invent the data - congress is well aware of this one.
Vectorworks is not Solidworks. Not even CLOSE.
Please inform the Mac developers who are reading of the Windows applications that are not available (or have equivalents) for Macintosh. You can be specific or describe categories.
I own many computers including an Al powerbook, I'm a big supporter, I love OSX, but please:
There is no professional CAD software for Mac. Think Unigraphics, Solidworks, AutoCAD. There are some cad programs, but these have more in common with the Gimp than Photoshop.
There is no professional EDA software for Mac. Think OrCAD, not Electronics Workbench.
There is no support for lab equipment for Mac.
There is no support for almost any motor or industrial control. You can do stuff in C though, close enough.
Matlab is a big win, but those are some very big misses for Apple. It is in industry where apple needs to make inroads. The home market is about on par. The platform is capable; the vendors are weary.
You need to check out Fast Seduction.
:)
Yeah, it's horrible, flame away, but it works like you wouldn't believe. Good insights into the female mind. I played around with it as an experiment many years ago to help get my people and relationship skills up. It's actually sickening how well it works. 3 second rule is gold in all walks of life. And for gods sakes, get some new clothes and get a haircut and shave. $150 worth of weights and 45 minutes a week will change your appearance forever, and it MATTERS in interviews.
The feynman stuff is as true as EVER. You don't buy a chick anything. You should be trying to get her to buy YOU stuff. Now there's a challenge.
Treating social interaction as a grand experiment is a lot of fun, you might learn something, and maybe get some, too.
Along the same and more depressing lines, check out the Ladder Theory of male/female relationships. It's amusing, but has a ring of truth to it.
Good luck!
even though the government with which the treaty was signed no longer existed?
There is always a difference between the spirit and letter of the law. The intent of the ABM treaty was to stop nuclear prolifertion and hold the status quo of power. While the Soviet Union has been dissolved, Russia and it's friends still have ICBMs in silos - and if their effectiveness is reduced, alternatives WILL be found. Nations do not have friends.
The agreement to not militarize space is supposed to represent a understanding amoung nations that our conflicts here on this planet should not exend elsewhere. Perhaps this is a naive view of the world, but I'd like to think that others might share it. The USA is in a position to militarize and dominate the theatre of space; At least until the LGM decide to show off their superiority in weapons.
Never forget, that this is a slippery slope - once it starts, it -will- end with nuclear weapons in space pointing down on us. I don't want to have to explain to my kids that there has to be MIRV orbital warheads aimed at the planet because we're really miserable to each other. Space is the last hope left for man working together as a species, and once it is gone, I fear it is gone forever.
It is likely the inevitable outcome of the USA's emerging world dominance. It will accellerate the development of (american) space initiatives. The USA will be making many moves in the next 10-20 years to solidify it's military power before world oil reserves become a problem. Having a monopoly on the heavy hydrogen reserves on the moon may be a justification down the road as well. Alas, I am an engineer, and not a military strategist.
My $0.02cdn.
Is there any kind of International treaties governing use of the Moon? I'm thinking particularly of the situation with the Antarctic here. There certainly should be some kind of International agreement that it's "common ground".
Kinda like the ABM treaty?
*cough*
I've never been accused of being an optimist, but for some reason I don't think international agreements not to militarize space are going to mean a whole lot in the next 15 years unfortunately. The ABM treaty issue is being hotly debated in Canada and will be an issue in the next election. (US Plans call for ABM sites in Canada, leading to space-based weaponry)
Go around to flea markets and buy things cheap that look interesting. Then hawk them on Ebay for a slight markup. You'll make some money, I know of two people doing this locally to suppliment their incomes. Interesting is in the eye of the beholder, but it's one idea that doesn't involve mowing lawns.
Another one is to walk around offering to do oil changes on cars in people's driveways. Buy a GOOD jack and jackstands, a torque wrench to properly tighten the drain bolt, brand name filters and oil. Most people are lazy. Identify yourself as a university student or canadate, and you will be suprised at the takeup rate. Using high quality oil and filters will get you a profit in the range of $7-10 as you can charge a slight margin over the cheap guys for doing it right there. You don't need a car - get a cart and hoof it.
OK, I let your first comment go, but this is the second time you have made this outrageous claim. Are you saying that you could open the hood of a 2004 Audi and diagnose even a small problem? Even the mechanics at the dealership need to hook the engine up to the diagnostic computers these days. I could understand doing repairs on older cars, say circa 1995 and older, but give me a break. I am mechanically inclined as well, but I wouldn't even attempt to repair anything inside the engine of a 2004 car.
I take it you actually know little about the internal systems on cars. Mechanically inclined?
Not only have I diagnosed OBD-II generation cars, but I have literally torn their little hearts into piles of bearings, pistons, connecting rods, crankshafts, seals, valves, springs, and gears. I have modified and removed fuel injection systems. I have rewired large portions of the electrical systems; hacked the ECU; and even wrote my own injection controller.
Literally thousands of enthusiasts do this all the time.
I am an EE, but I did all those things with no special diagnostic tools except a PC and a multimeter, and a scope for development work. Perhaps I have missed my calling, according to you!
Cars need three things to work: Fuel, air and spark. All problems in cars can be reduced to one of those things, and they are all quickly diagnosed. Other problems are lubrication or cooling related and a sharp eye and ear can spot them all. The exception is brakes, and brakes are a simple hydrualic system. If ABS fails there are many safeguards to tell you the system is broken, and even then, ABS just deactivates.
Hope you enjoy paying mechanics $80/hr. I just don't want you to discourage anyone else from learning about their cars. If you can figure out a kernel, then you can rebuild a car.
also bet that most car computers dont have the output capabilities that you desire. Probably you would have to use a whole custom computer from a 3rd party. Those are probably expensive too.
Unfortunately, it is illegal to drive a aftermarket ECU equipped vehicle on the road - compliments emissions laws almost everywhere. Not that it stops anybody, but you should be aware of this.
Almost all cars have a facility to blink you a warning light, usually the only tool you need is a paperclip, at least in the case of my car. The amount of other data you can get varies, and the update speeds of the OBD-II ports are limited.
Build yourself a little analog digital converter board and interface it to a PC or handheld. I did something like this for an article I wrote for Circuit Cellar, PalmOS Data Acquisition. Interfacing with the existing OBD I/II bus is one way to go, but unless you have the factory-approved tools, the updates are usually very slow and usually crippled in some way.
If you go custom, you get the ability to do lots of other interesting things too.
If you lack the ability to monitor and care for your children in a manner that you see fit, then don't have kids.
I grew up playing video games, hey, news flash, there were some pretty gorey games out there even back in the day if you knew where to look. I remember one I used to play called Speed Racer? Or somesuch, you ran over little old ladies. *splock*
Haha. It's a game, stupid. You filled in the violent details in your head back then. I'm a responsible member of society, I fully accept responsibility for my actions, I vote, I have a University degree, and I love playing GTA. For that matter, I drink beer to excess too!
Keep your ghoulier-than-thou hands off my video games and monitor what your children do. Teach your children to have minds of their own and to think critically rather than worrying about a video game. Maybe the reason there are so many irresponsible people out there is nobody explains the whole concequences-for-your-own-actions thing? Because it's the state's fault for LETTING me get these evil drugs and noodie-pics and video games. It's not my fault!
I like violent fiction and horror movies, too. There are some pretty offensive "holy" books out there too, at least to my sensibilities. Censorship is EVIL. You get to control your kids until they're 16 or so. Have fun.
I don't even bother playing the game in GTA. I laugh my ass off driving around running over people. I know I'm not the only one out there either! *haha* It's ENTERTAINMENT.
Don't you have a people-against-funny-cartoons meeting to attend, or something?