The post reminded me of their excuse, full of self-justification and blaming others for their actions, especially if things go wrong and someone ends up getting hurt. Remember it's not the people at the top, the town planners who designed an estate with little children to do, but the people at the bottom who get hurt.
I wonder to whom and where this animosity is directed?
The events of the late 80's and very early 90's were much different than the world today. The barriers to entry were much higher - there weren't many script kiddies. There was NO free unix. Access to real computers was almost nonexistant - as was free access to almost any telecommunications service. A 'C' compiler could run you real money. The internet did not exist as you know it now, except in the hands of few academics. TeleNet, Datapac, and other networks were the only means to access longhaul data communication.
The exposure of vulerabilities went a long way towards demonstrating that little or no forethought had gone into the security of communications infrastructure. Blue boxing was a driving force to give AT&T a kick in the ass to move to OOB signalling in the late 80's / early 90's.
It's difficult to justify or look back at now, but a lot of the GOOD that you see in the community today came out of the seeds of that movement. Articles and writing such as the Mentor's capture the emotions and motivations behind the hacker mind moreso than any artifical piece of writing ever will.
Apologies to phrack for the lameness filter edits.
==Phrack Inc.== Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3 of 10
The following was written shortly after my arrest...
\/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/ by +++The Mentor+++ Written on January 8, 1986
Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
Damn kids. They're all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.
I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.
And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found.
"This is it... this is where I belong..."
I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...
You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will- ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.
+++The Mentor+++
mainly because people are ignorant
on
Mars Rovers Update
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Why did NASA stray from 'nuclear' batteries
Because the feel-good environmentalists have heart attacks when you mention the word nuclear. The risk is very low and the potential benefits to science are very high. The amount of nuclear material required is not large.
There are some problems with output from nuclear batteries, and I don't claim to be a rocket scientist - but surely it could be made to work.
I'll be laughing my ass off when oil triples in price and people are rioting - we'll see how long the nuclear boogeyman scares people then.
I long for the day when I get a new gizmo, plug it into my box, and it "just works". Man, that would be so cool.
There's this new unix distro out that does all this. Stuff just works. No sweat. It's not cheap though.
Linux needs a company to take what's out there, invest a few million dollars into making it "just work", and then turn around and sell it. The GPL makes that difficult, though, so for better or for worse that might be a ways off. Redhat dropped the ball here, IMHO.
In the meantime, linux works GREAT as a dedicated development workstation, I use it all the time for signal processing problems and network development. Once I graduated from University I just don't have the time to fuck around with making cameras work anymore. Luckly, a solution appeared that didn't involve "Start" buttons.
When it gets down to the real big numbers, semiconductors are just sand and some big fancy photograph machines. Unfortunately, those are big numbers.
Often it is cheaper to get the much higher end than lower power smaller volumes. A 5.25" 300Mhz Geode SBC factor computer - not many people are aware of the industrial PC world - will run you around $300-400US for a brand name with a great MTBF.
My whole athlon system with a geforce ti cost $400us.
People have tried writing Steve Jobs, petitions, you name it. They do this all the time with notebooks. Their ram and HD upgrades are a ripoff anyway, I just add that stuff later. Apple won't take the machine back if there is a problem.
Worse, IMHO, is that there is no way to get Apple to send you a machine in the interim while yours is getting fixed. I make money with my hardware, and if I don't have a machine, that costs me a lot of money. So I have to have a backup machine just for that eventuality. Kinda stupid eh?
Hey Apple Executives, if you ever read anything here, FIX THIS BEFORE IT BITES YOU. This is one part of Apple that is really lacking, and coinidentally I'm sure, it's also one that Steve Jobs doesn't have a lot of personal expertise with.
I'm already paying a huge premium for Apple hardware. I would gladly pay a little more for the ability to get a hotswap done - Applecare does not offer this.
I'm in the process of connecting a fan to a civic engine - a nifty fan called a turbocharger that spins at around 100,000 rpm, give or take. Estimated wheel horsepower at 10-12psi of boost is 210-240 from a 1600cc D16Y7 engine. Starting horsepower was 107 on a good day.
To accomplish this I'm using a secondary fuel system running a custom intake manifold with 4 extra injectors. The injectors are controlled by a atmel AVR microcontroller programmed with the port of GCC. (avr-gcc, www.avrfreaks.net). How's that, a little piece of GNU in there even. Ignition retard under boost is being handled by an aftermarket controller until I get that figured out.
Obviously the engine internals have been upgraded with forged components that are designed to handle more load. The total cost of the engine and related parts is under $5000 though - with me doing the labour.
Ultimately I want to do my own EFI system based on a real RTOS like QNX. I have done smaller EFI systems for less complicated engines. People have reverse engineered the honda ECU, although in my experience, it's more trouble than it's worth. Check out the systems offered by Hondata, and it's open and free friend, Uberdata.
Anyone can make big numbers with 5 liters of displacement. It's a little harder with less than two. The reason you want more power from a small package isn't just elegance though; lighter cars handle much, much better than heavier ones.
There are very, very fast civics out there. Be careful who you laugh at if your girlfriend is riding with you.. but oh wait, this is slashdot.:)
It appears to me that overcoming human nature requires more than education.
Historically, I believe it has required a gun.
And yes, education rates about AIDS are falling. There is no reason for any educated person out there to get aids through volentary sexual contact. The responsibility for educating citizens falls upon governments, but in my world, everyone is responsible for their own choices.
I suspect the reason you don't see QNX used more is that it isn't American, it's Canadian, but maybe that's just the canuck in me coming out. QNX is a really interesting OS, and no, I don't have any affiliations with the company.
(RT) Linux is a long way from true RTOS performance, or at least it was when I last looked at it.
I have extensive experience working with the low-level serial communications facilities on the Palm platform. I've bypassed hotsync on a number of ocassions because it is overkill for a lot of things - but I can't see anything that difficult about it, just tedious. The information, at least on the Palm side, is all available.
They have ignored the OpenSource community, and now they are snubbing Apple.
Palm has ALWAYS BEEN SUPPORTIVE OF OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPMENT. I take it you have never actually DONE any palm development. There is a completely (f)ree toolchain available for the Palm devices, and it's why I use it. Palm does not have the resources to support the smaller market of linux (and mac, I guess) users. They have always been willing to work with developers and release information - at least so far as I've seen.
Please cite examples if you are going to make statements like the above.
If they choose not to write a conduit, then the information will be available to do so. My guess is that Apple will include palm syncing in their next iSync update as a internal thing, and this miffed PalmSource for some reason. (the iTools already do much of what Palm desktop does, better).
Maybe I'm wrong, but all the wince/linux based pda's are all too big for a PDA. And too small for a clamshell computer, still missing my 100LX sigh. Does anyone know of a similar unit that runs linux.. perferably with clicky keys.. sigh, with that crazy woman running the show at HP that seems unlikely. Oh well.
Anyway, m500-sized units from Palm are the best. Mac support has and always will be sketchy I think, there are alternatives and options. Some of the new tungstens are getting light and skinny enough for consideration. The larger ones are too big to be useful.
Unmoderated posting of these things on the internet is a bad idea, personally damaging, and maybe harmful to careers.
Then the prof can cite evidence to the contrary and demonstrate what a great prof they are. Perhaps post examples of their assignments and notes, and their fine consultations with students and maybe a positive reference or to from a past study. Like I have to provide in the real world (tm) to get a job. I have a lot of schooling, and I have had excellent profs - and some that were so horrible I literally walked out of class and hoped someone else would teach it next term.
Don't like it? Welcome to the internet.
I think these are great. Perhaps someone should set one up outside of the clutches of the US legal system, and go to town. It's also one of the few effective means students have to make their opinions known - universities are not democratically run and a bad run in with the adminstration could ruin that STUDENTS academic career. They are the ones forking over the big bucks, remember.
I will refrain from making psychiatric diagnoses of academic officials who see fit to unleash lawyers on some site that is not affliated with the university. A written rebuttal would have been more effective, and I am sure the teacher reviews site would have predominantly displayed it if it was such a big deal.
Academics are supposed to hold themselves to a higher standard. There were many other choices and avenues open. Boo!
I don't have the money to pay someone to work on or build my car. I race and build.
Showing up with a car that is not in proper tune is not the way to win. Maybe better driver was a bad term, but it's certainly made me much more successful. I'm not sure where you get the idea that I demonstrated that you HAD to be one or the other. Assembly language isn't machine language, just as understanding that the carbeurator provides fuel for the engine and that the engine doesn't work well if it's too rich or lean doesn't mean you can design a new one in your sleep.
Put another way, having a mechanical engineering degree sure isn't going to HURT you if you're a professional race car driver. I would certainly bet that Mr. Montoya and his friends understand with great detail how 10 cylinder naturally aspriated engine operates, too.
I race cars, albeit not professionally. You are very incorrect.
Being able to tell your crew that you think your car is leaning out under hard accelleration or that your suspension is too stiff or unbalanced is made easier if you understand the physics and engineering involved. Most professional race car drivers know a very great deal about these things indeed. Unless you are born rich, most dedicated racers build and repair their own cars and know a great deal indeed about the tools of their trade.
I have an EE degreee; I was taught how to build registers from logic gates; how to build counters and adders from those; how to form the basics of a primitive cpu and implement one in vhdl; how to program x86 assembly; I was also taught how the electrical signals interact to make those things possible; the physics of semiconductors and the things that make those logic gates possible. All of those things have made me able to more effectively program computers on a high level. Why would we expect less from a CS program? Computational engines, computers, are the things that drive the CS profession. I would expect anyone in the field to be intimately aware of their theoretical underpinnings.
Ironically, they have also made me a much better driver as I am intimately aware of the workings and how to tune my car's EFI system than most may be.
Would you go to a doctor who has never taken chemistry? Didn't think so.
Someone needs to invent a easy way to scan pages, or launch a distributed effort. Then it's bookster time. OCR and figure recognition are very good, as is the ability to generate PDFs.
There's another problem besides the high cost of text books - during my engineering degree, I often lugged around over 50lbs of books and notes. There is no reason that the university can't mandate that the books be made available electronically - should cost a FRACTION of the money for distribution of dead trees - and build the cost of the electronic book into the cost of the course, making sure piracy doesn't matter.
When I can scan, OCR, count in my time, and print a book with color diagrams cheaper than I can buy it mass printed, there is something WRONG. Does this situation sound framiliar? I would love to have all my engineering references available on my notebook computer - paper texts are a PITA.
Need I mention moving?
Something to think about. Oh, but then, they won't make any new books - good point. Maybe there are enough books out there. Or it's time for open books and open collections of wisdom distributed at 0 cost through the net, and constandly updated and reviewed.
Sounds like something ELSE I head somewhere before.
Slashdot Mirror
The post reminded me of their excuse, full of self-justification and blaming others for their actions, especially if things go wrong and someone ends up getting hurt. Remember it's not the people at the top, the town planners who designed an estate with little children to do, but the people at the bottom who get hurt.
I wonder to whom and where this animosity is directed?
The events of the late 80's and very early 90's were much different than the world today. The barriers to entry were much higher - there weren't many script kiddies. There was NO free unix. Access to real computers was almost nonexistant - as was free access to almost any telecommunications service. A 'C' compiler could run you real money. The internet did not exist as you know it now, except in the hands of few academics. TeleNet, Datapac, and other networks were the only means to access longhaul data communication.
The exposure of vulerabilities went a long way towards demonstrating that little or no forethought had gone into the security of communications infrastructure. Blue boxing was a driving force to give AT&T a kick in the ass to move to OOB signalling in the late 80's / early 90's.
It's difficult to justify or look back at now, but a lot of the GOOD that you see in the community today came out of the seeds of that movement. Articles and writing such as the Mentor's capture the emotions and motivations behind the hacker mind moreso than any artifical piece of writing ever will.
My $0.02.
There is only one hacker manifesto:
Apologies to phrack for the lameness filter edits.
==Phrack Inc.==
Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3 of 10
The following was written shortly after my arrest...
\/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/
by
+++The Mentor+++
Written on January 8, 1986
Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
Damn kids. They're all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of
the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.
I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain
for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms.
Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I
screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.
And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through
the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is
found.
"This is it... this is where I belong..."
I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...
You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at
school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying
for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek
after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us
and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,
but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.
+++The Mentor+++
Why did NASA stray from 'nuclear' batteries
Because the feel-good environmentalists have heart attacks when you mention the word nuclear. The risk is very low and the potential benefits to science are very high. The amount of nuclear material required is not large.
There are some problems with output from nuclear batteries, and I don't claim to be a rocket scientist - but surely it could be made to work.
I'll be laughing my ass off when oil triples in price and people are rioting - we'll see how long the nuclear boogeyman scares people then.
After reading your post, I find your sig somewhat ironic.
There's no need to panic if you have a bunker with 18-24 months of supplies.
Food for thought.
Until then, learn how to use a shovel. It's called a bunker, and a couple years worth of rice with long term storage costs less than a notebook PC.
I'm only half joking.
I long for the day when I get a new gizmo, plug it into my box, and it "just works". Man, that would be so cool.
There's this new unix distro out that does all this. Stuff just works. No sweat. It's not cheap though.
Linux needs a company to take what's out there, invest a few million dollars into making it "just work", and then turn around and sell it. The GPL makes that difficult, though, so for better or for worse that might be a ways off. Redhat dropped the ball here, IMHO.
In the meantime, linux works GREAT as a dedicated development workstation, I use it all the time for signal processing problems and network development. Once I graduated from University I just don't have the time to fuck around with making cameras work anymore. Luckly, a solution appeared that didn't involve "Start" buttons.
When it gets down to the real big numbers, semiconductors are just sand and some big fancy photograph machines. Unfortunately, those are big numbers.
Often it is cheaper to get the much higher end than lower power smaller volumes. A 5.25" 300Mhz Geode SBC factor computer - not many people are aware of the industrial PC world - will run you around $300-400US for a brand name with a great MTBF.
My whole athlon system with a geforce ti cost $400us.
I make my living with my computer.
People have tried writing Steve Jobs, petitions, you name it. They do this all the time with notebooks. Their ram and HD upgrades are a ripoff anyway, I just add that stuff later. Apple won't take the machine back if there is a problem.
Worse, IMHO, is that there is no way to get Apple to send you a machine in the interim while yours is getting fixed. I make money with my hardware, and if I don't have a machine, that costs me a lot of money. So I have to have a backup machine just for that eventuality. Kinda stupid eh?
Hey Apple Executives, if you ever read anything here, FIX THIS BEFORE IT BITES YOU. This is one part of Apple that is really lacking, and coinidentally I'm sure, it's also one that Steve Jobs doesn't have a lot of personal expertise with.
I'm already paying a huge premium for Apple hardware. I would gladly pay a little more for the ability to get a hotswap done - Applecare does not offer this.
Hahaha.
Humor aside;
:)
http://www.honda-tech.com
I'm in the process of connecting a fan to a civic engine - a nifty fan called a turbocharger that spins at around 100,000 rpm, give or take. Estimated wheel horsepower at 10-12psi of boost is 210-240 from a 1600cc D16Y7 engine. Starting horsepower was 107 on a good day.
To accomplish this I'm using a secondary fuel system running a custom intake manifold with 4 extra injectors. The injectors are controlled by a atmel AVR microcontroller programmed with the port of GCC. (avr-gcc, www.avrfreaks.net). How's that, a little piece of GNU in there even. Ignition retard under boost is being handled by an aftermarket controller until I get that figured out.
Obviously the engine internals have been upgraded with forged components that are designed to handle more load. The total cost of the engine and related parts is under $5000 though - with me doing the labour.
Ultimately I want to do my own EFI system based on a real RTOS like QNX. I have done smaller EFI systems for less complicated engines. People have reverse engineered the honda ECU, although in my experience, it's more trouble than it's worth. Check out the systems offered by Hondata, and it's open and free friend, Uberdata.
Anyone can make big numbers with 5 liters of displacement. It's a little harder with less than two. The reason you want more power from a small package isn't just elegance though; lighter cars handle much, much better than heavier ones.
There are very, very fast civics out there. Be careful who you laugh at if your girlfriend is riding with you.. but oh wait, this is slashdot.
It appears to me that overcoming human nature requires more than education.
Historically, I believe it has required a gun.
And yes, education rates about AIDS are falling. There is no reason for any educated person out there to get aids through volentary sexual contact. The responsibility for educating citizens falls upon governments, but in my world, everyone is responsible for their own choices.
www.qnx.com - free beer demo
I suspect the reason you don't see QNX used more is that it isn't American, it's Canadian, but maybe that's just the canuck in me coming out. QNX is a really interesting OS, and no, I don't have any affiliations with the company.
(RT) Linux is a long way from true RTOS performance, or at least it was when I last looked at it.
After once hearing "HEY EVERYBODY!" and having to rip the power cord from my computer after someone send me a redirect to a infamous site. (trolls?)
maybe it will maybe it won't, for us it's DNA, what will it be for them?
Some might disagree with me, but I'd be putting my money on some variant of struct {}.
I have extensive experience working with the low-level serial communications facilities on the Palm platform. I've bypassed hotsync on a number of ocassions because it is overkill for a lot of things - but I can't see anything that difficult about it, just tedious. The information, at least on the Palm side, is all available.
They have ignored the OpenSource community, and now they are snubbing Apple.
Palm has ALWAYS BEEN SUPPORTIVE OF OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPMENT. I take it you have never actually DONE any palm development. There is a completely (f)ree toolchain available for the Palm devices, and it's why I use it. Palm does not have the resources to support the smaller market of linux (and mac, I guess) users. They have always been willing to work with developers and release information - at least so far as I've seen.
Please cite examples if you are going to make statements like the above.
If they choose not to write a conduit, then the information will be available to do so. My guess is that Apple will include palm syncing in their next iSync update as a internal thing, and this miffed PalmSource for some reason. (the iTools already do much of what Palm desktop does, better).
If nobody writes a free conduit to iSync, then I will. This isn't that big a deal.
Maybe I'm wrong, but all the wince/linux based pda's are all too big for a PDA. And too small for a clamshell computer, still missing my 100LX sigh. Does anyone know of a similar unit that runs linux.. perferably with clicky keys.. sigh, with that crazy woman running the show at HP that seems unlikely. Oh well.
Anyway, m500-sized units from Palm are the best. Mac support has and always will be sketchy I think, there are alternatives and options. Some of the new tungstens are getting light and skinny enough for consideration. The larger ones are too big to be useful.
Unmoderated posting of these things on the internet is a bad idea, personally damaging, and maybe harmful to careers.
Then the prof can cite evidence to the contrary and demonstrate what a great prof they are. Perhaps post examples of their assignments and notes, and their fine consultations with students and maybe a positive reference or to from a past study. Like I have to provide in the real world (tm) to get a job. I have a lot of schooling, and I have had excellent profs - and some that were so horrible I literally walked out of class and hoped someone else would teach it next term.
Don't like it? Welcome to the internet.
I think these are great. Perhaps someone should set one up outside of the clutches of the US legal system, and go to town. It's also one of the few effective means students have to make their opinions known - universities are not democratically run and a bad run in with the adminstration could ruin that STUDENTS academic career. They are the ones forking over the big bucks, remember.
I will refrain from making psychiatric diagnoses of academic officials who see fit to unleash lawyers on some site that is not affliated with the university. A written rebuttal would have been more effective, and I am sure the teacher reviews site would have predominantly displayed it if it was such a big deal.
Academics are supposed to hold themselves to a higher standard. There were many other choices and avenues open. Boo!
Don't waste your money. Go to community college instead.
I don't have the money to pay someone to work on or build my car. I race and build.
Showing up with a car that is not in proper tune is not the way to win. Maybe better driver was a bad term, but it's certainly made me much more successful. I'm not sure where you get the idea that I demonstrated that you HAD to be one or the other. Assembly language isn't machine language, just as understanding that the carbeurator provides fuel for the engine and that the engine doesn't work well if it's too rich or lean doesn't mean you can design a new one in your sleep.
Put another way, having a mechanical engineering degree sure isn't going to HURT you if you're a professional race car driver. I would certainly bet that Mr. Montoya and his friends understand with great detail how 10 cylinder naturally aspriated engine operates, too.
I race cars, albeit not professionally. You are very incorrect.
Being able to tell your crew that you think your car is leaning out under hard accelleration or that your suspension is too stiff or unbalanced is made easier if you understand the physics and engineering involved. Most professional race car drivers know a very great deal about these things indeed. Unless you are born rich, most dedicated racers build and repair their own cars and know a great deal indeed about the tools of their trade.
I have an EE degreee; I was taught how to build registers from logic gates; how to build counters and adders from those; how to form the basics of a primitive cpu and implement one in vhdl; how to program x86 assembly; I was also taught how the electrical signals interact to make those things possible; the physics of semiconductors and the things that make those logic gates possible. All of those things have made me able to more effectively program computers on a high level. Why would we expect less from a CS program? Computational engines, computers, are the things that drive the CS profession. I would expect anyone in the field to be intimately aware of their theoretical underpinnings.
Ironically, they have also made me a much better driver as I am intimately aware of the workings and how to tune my car's EFI system than most may be.
Would you go to a doctor who has never taken chemistry? Didn't think so.
I doubt you could eat $0.50 worth or rice, purchased in bulk.
Need protein? Leave some rice out and kill the rats.
I'm only half joking. Ha!
Someone needs to invent a easy way to scan pages, or launch a distributed effort. Then it's bookster time. OCR and figure recognition are very good, as is the ability to generate PDFs.
There's another problem besides the high cost of text books - during my engineering degree, I often lugged around over 50lbs of books and notes. There is no reason that the university can't mandate that the books be made available electronically - should cost a FRACTION of the money for distribution of dead trees - and build the cost of the electronic book into the cost of the course, making sure piracy doesn't matter.
When I can scan, OCR, count in my time, and print a book with color diagrams cheaper than I can buy it mass printed, there is something WRONG. Does this situation sound framiliar? I would love to have all my engineering references available on my notebook computer - paper texts are a PITA.
Need I mention moving?
Something to think about. Oh, but then, they won't make any new books - good point. Maybe there are enough books out there. Or it's time for open books and open collections of wisdom distributed at 0 cost through the net, and constandly updated and reviewed.
Sounds like something ELSE I head somewhere before.