There are projects that do just this - that's what protein folding is about. Proteins are built up from DNA in that manner. We are a long way from doing this, but in theory - it can certainly be done. I believe we are hundreds, if not thousands, of orders of magnitude off the computing capacity to do this though.
Once I graduated from University, I had the time and money to go after what I've always lusted for, a fast car. The more I learned about cars and handling the less I liked the big muscle cars I looked at growing up, and yeah, I'm a hick too, complete with beer-drinkin', pickup drivin', tire-burnin', you name it.
I got into Solo I and II, hopefully Formula Ford soon. Import modification is all about using technology to keep engines making close to 200 hp -per liter- from blowing up under boost. Engines were a black box to me for awhile, so I got the manuals and studied them inside out. You can't afford to race unless you have more money than Gates, or you do a lot of your own repair work.
Over the years I've acquired quite a pile of tools, learned to weld, and my Xmas vacation project is to build up a D16 Honda engine to hold about 12-15psi of boost. Running my own injector controller board and timing retard circuitry. The look on a Corvette or Viper owner's face when he gets his ass waxed by a little Honda is priceless. There is a replacement for displacement - technology. You think there are holy wars with Vi and Emacs.. heh,/. hasn't seen anything yet.
If you can program a PC, you can do just about any mechanical repair. One of my goals is to build a fully functioning engine control system based on the QNX operating system.
All the experience that I gained from learning how to build electronic controls and the like paid off bigtime after the collapse of the IT industry - I make my living doing embedded programming and hardware design now. Once of the courses I did in University was to build your own computer - wire wrap - right down to the latches. Most people used it to do something with lego, but I ran straight for my car and got a pretty nifty tachometer setup.
Knowing how to rebuild car engines and cars in general can save you tens of thousands of dollars over the years, easily, too.
I am seriously considering getting a G5 just to run Matlab simulations. Where's the tests of something that may stress the hardware a bit, like Mathematica or Matlab?
These benchmarks are a bad joke. My pentium II or Athlon box runs Word pretty fast.
Run your own student network in the dorms. Tell the administration to go back to their RIAA masters.
A few access points comprising an isolated network with authentication using a secure file transport client would be undetectable. When I was in university, we ran unofficial and against policy ethernet and cable lines with little difficulty. Wireless should make it a snap.
There are many aftermarket ECU manufacturers out there. A number of open source projects are getting close. It's only a matter of time before someone releases completely open hardware and software that can replace your car's ECU. Any modern RTOS is more than capable (QNX, for example).
Unfortunately, the above is technically illegal in a lot of places because it lets you bypass emissions controls. Not where I live, though.:)
Here's some quick good links. I'm sure there are hundreds of others. Please educate others. There is no voodoo and radio waves for the most part will not hurt you, unless you stand in front of a high power transmitter.
Given the incredible lack of information taught in public schools about RF and electromagnetic energy, this doesn't suprise me. People think that wireless data communication is like magic. Science programs glaze over even the most basic introduction to electromagnetics. I don't think I even had an iota of a introduction to the topic until I started university in an Electrical Engineering program. How many people could answer the basic question: How are EM waves produced? (Or rather, why are they produced?")
I hope these parents get smacked down, because there is far more RF energy coming from other sources. What they MIGHT want to be concerned about is the placement of electical substation transformers for the power grid. Would they like to teach schools without electricity?
Ignorance brought us great things like witch burning and the inquisitions. I hope this doesn't turn into one..
I have a rule, and it's to run away screaming from anyone who uses voice recognition as a way to pimp a product. Speaking to people is tedious enough. I don't want to talk to a computer. I can type several times faster than I can talk, and I certainly can read many times faster than that.
Voice recognition is useless. Good for parlor tricks. Saviour for the disabled. Daily productivity booster? I don't think so.
Call me when we have good VISION for computers. Computer image recognition is just beginning to be feasible. It's a big enough of a chore for a computer to tell there is a human in a picture, let alone who that human is. There's many good applications for that technology all over the place.
Bodywork is another good one. Lots of work, and opportunnity to work for cash under the table. The worse the economy gets, the more work there is, too. I try to learn how to do something completely different every few years. Things that didn't seem to be practical (turbocharging hondas) have lead to things that are practical - much better understanding of control systems and noise tolerant embedded systems.
Networking is really important as well. Most of the jobs I've gotten have been the result of giving talks at shows, publishing papers and code, taking advantage of opportunities to talk to factory owners, you name it. There's nobody who can do a better job selling (or sinking) yourself than you. They've also come from the oddest places - the racing club I am a member of and race under, for example.
Unfortunately, networking and technically minded people seem to mix like oil and water.
I'm a EE. I'm thanking my lucky stars, because most people here will hire (or displace) someone with a CS degree for me. I remember deciding to do EE over physics in class one day in high school. Big day, that was.
Anyhow - I don't just program - learn how to do something else. I've been learning how to rebuild engines - not the oil change stuff, the jack the engine out of the car variety. I've already had people approach me wondering if I can do work for them, and I've made a few bucks on the side. Anyone who can fix a computer or program can fix a car - hell, there's even programming involved.
Same applies for industrial controls. There are many factories and production lines using older control systems - you can make them faster and more profitable by changing the electronics a little. I make a nice side income there, too.
If things are really bad - move. If you don't want to, make do.
Do what I do, store files on your local machine, sync to network storage, and once in awhile buy a new HD and store the old one someplace safe. I burn really important files - source code and the like - to CD on odd intervals.
It isn't ideal, but it's good enough for my purposes (and most others, I assume).
These little boxes are great for that. Just don't use them for primary storage is all.
I wish the commies would sponsor some DSL here. I'm trying to get WiFi on the go, but I need a friendly person to let me put a relay in.. and haven't found them yet.
This is in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.. we didn't have private phone lines until 1992.
..this message brought to you by a 26k connection on a 56k modem over a POTS telephone line. At least the connection doesn't drop when it rains anymore.
Most people in Canada live in one of a half dozen large cities. It is not suprising there is broadband penetration there. Also, a lot of telecom research happens in Canada - Caller ID is very, very old here - in fact, was developed here.
My best hope for broadband is none of these pipe dreams. I'd settle for something in the $100/mo range providing solid 128k/s always on via the cellular networks.
Those recently unemployed don't see that side of the coin. It takes people willing to take risks to create employment - not just "get a job". If the USA was destination one for those people, it will hurt in the long run as those people will create their ventures elsewhere.
Of course.. then we cry about the jobs going to India, now, don't we?
Canada has a relatively open immigration policy and free trade via NAFTA with the USA. I recommend you try here. Last time I checked, educated, ambitious people were still welcome here.
Yeah, they get better mileage and diesel is -marginally- cheaper. ($.12/l here)
The problem, unfortunately, is that the added cost of a new diesel cancels out the gain from the mileage. Unlike old gasoline engines, diesels begin to have problems starting in the cold weather very quickly and require much more maintenance and care to the glow plugs and fuel system to sotp this from happening.
Nevermind if it gets cold enough, diesel lines freeze. I had to stick a heater in the engine of a co-worker's TDI Jetta last winter.
If you really care about saving money, do what I did and get a old-ass light Honda Civic, gut it, have the engine redone, and enjoy your 50mpg.
If you really care about the enviornment, do what this guy did - but take it one step further and have the car tuned for mileage. An aftermarket air/fuel computer (easily installed or constructed) that modifies the signals to the car's manifold air pressure sensor allows you to lean out the engine and save fuel. Installing a wideband O2 sensor with a digital readout lets you maintain an eye on it. Does it get geekier than that?
If you want to take it to the next level, rebuilding the engine with forged internals that can take the odd detonation caused by extreme lean running is another idea, as is installing a better air intake system and exhaust. You can investigate alcohol injection as a means to counter the lean running. Etc, etc etc.
Weight reduction is another area you can improve; the unfortunate emphasis on making "safer" cars rather than "safer" drivers means that your average economy car weighs a LOT. Learn to be a safe driver.
It's not just the gas consumption - think of the energy costs of building and transporting a new vehicle. There are thousands of cars out there that can be refurbished and used for many more hundreds of thousands of miles. I'm not talking out of my ass here - I rebuild engines (although usually for power) in my spare time. My brother has a 1991 Civic hatchback we modified for mileage that rotinely gets 40mpg with heavy city driving. The car has 430,000km on it, and is probably good for another 200,000 km with some body work. There is a myth perpetuated that engines are a) not possible to rebuild anymore, b) too expensive to rebuild, and c) not possible to rebuild yourself. This is FUD.
Nevermind you save another car from rusting in a junkyard. Most peole here are of above average intelligence, use those skills to help the environment AND save a pile of money. Don't just rush out and get a new vehicle without thinking.
If you live in a tight urban area, look at a scooter - they're fun, and you can tweak them to run with extreme efficiency without much difficulty.
If more people said "Fuck the prophet".. and were just a little bit nicer to each other instead. Unfortunately - religion and politics are tools towards the same ends, and neither is really about being nicer to each other.
Lithium ion cells are very dangerous - maybe more so. Something to think about.
And please, nobody hit your battery packs with a hammer. Bad things will happen and you could be seriously injured. Seriously. I made a mistake on a circuit board once and had a coin cell go off like a large metal jacketed firecracker.
Sorry, but process engineering is a dead field right now.
I make a very tidy sum doing process customization and optimization for this "dead" industry, in a small city on the east coast. If you can make a process more efficient, there's always money to be made. I don't know about larger industries, but smaller companies have been a goldmine for me. I'm an EE with an embedded design specialty, and right now I have more projects than I can handle.
The pulp mills in the area are hiring qualified people as well.
I don't know about the sysadmin / IT thing though. You might have a point, but this is far from a dead field.
Currently by our limited view of how life has come to be what it is and evolved, we believe water to be essential to the existence of life. Does this mean that there can be other forms of life that don't require water?
Ok. People watch too much Star Trek. On the other hand, this is Slashdot.
The reason life is grounded around water and carbon have to do with the very special chemical properties of water - a few being it's less dense solid than liquid, and it dissolves almost everything - and the fact carbon forms these nice long chains. Nothing else does. Biochemistry is mind-bogglingly complicated.
Those nice long chains allow all sorts of good things (tm) to happen. Like you and me. Nothing else has the properties that are required for those complex reactions to happen.
Until/Unless an AI is developed, nothing else in the known physical world meets the requirements for life. And that AI would have been created by sacks of water. I haven't seen any real papers or proposals to the contrary. If you could devise a mechanism based on known physics that demonstrated this would be possible, you would become very famous.
The depressing physics here are the same as everywhere else.
You neglect the fact the important thing is not calculating those numbers, but knowing what needs to be calculated and what the result will be. While the trivial example isn't my point, it just isn't worth my finite time to bother with making error-prone attempts to calculate numbers in my head. I'll estimate on the fly, and use a tool (computer) later.
Unless computers are truely intelligent, cognitive systems just make our job faster, and let me apply the tool (software) to solve the problem faster, saving money and effort.
If computers are truely intelligent, then our time here IS over.
Slashdot Mirror
There are projects that do just this - that's what protein folding is about. Proteins are built up from DNA in that manner. We are a long way from doing this, but in theory - it can certainly be done. I believe we are hundreds, if not thousands, of orders of magnitude off the computing capacity to do this though.
Once I graduated from University, I had the time and money to go after what I've always lusted for, a fast car. The more I learned about cars and handling the less I liked the big muscle cars I looked at growing up, and yeah, I'm a hick too, complete with beer-drinkin', pickup drivin', tire-burnin', you name it.
/. hasn't seen anything yet.
I got into Solo I and II, hopefully Formula Ford soon. Import modification is all about using technology to keep engines making close to 200 hp -per liter- from blowing up under boost. Engines were a black box to me for awhile, so I got the manuals and studied them inside out. You can't afford to race unless you have more money than Gates, or you do a lot of your own repair work.
Over the years I've acquired quite a pile of tools, learned to weld, and my Xmas vacation project is to build up a D16 Honda engine to hold about 12-15psi of boost. Running my own injector controller board and timing retard circuitry. The look on a Corvette or Viper owner's face when he gets his ass waxed by a little Honda is priceless. There is a replacement for displacement - technology. You think there are holy wars with Vi and Emacs.. heh,
If you can program a PC, you can do just about any mechanical repair. One of my goals is to build a fully functioning engine control system based on the QNX operating system.
All the experience that I gained from learning how to build electronic controls and the like paid off bigtime after the collapse of the IT industry - I make my living doing embedded programming and hardware design now. Once of the courses I did in University was to build your own computer - wire wrap - right down to the latches. Most people used it to do something with lego, but I ran straight for my car and got a pretty nifty tachometer setup.
Knowing how to rebuild car engines and cars in general can save you tens of thousands of dollars over the years, easily, too.
I am seriously considering getting a G5 just to run Matlab simulations. Where's the tests of something that may stress the hardware a bit, like Mathematica or Matlab?
These benchmarks are a bad joke. My pentium II or Athlon box runs Word pretty fast.
Run your own student network in the dorms. Tell the administration to go back to their RIAA masters.
A few access points comprising an isolated network with authentication using a secure file transport client would be undetectable. When I was in university, we ran unofficial and against policy ethernet and cable lines with little difficulty. Wireless should make it a snap.
There are many aftermarket ECU manufacturers out there. A number of open source projects are getting close. It's only a matter of time before someone releases completely open hardware and software that can replace your car's ECU. Any modern RTOS is more than capable (QNX, for example).
:)
Unfortunately, the above is technically illegal in a lot of places because it lets you bypass emissions controls. Not where I live, though.
Here's some quick good links. I'm sure there are hundreds of others. Please educate others. There is no voodoo and radio waves for the most part will not hurt you, unless you stand in front of a high power transmitter.
How Radio Works
How Antennas Work
Given the incredible lack of information taught in public schools about RF and electromagnetic energy, this doesn't suprise me. People think that wireless data communication is like magic. Science programs glaze over even the most basic introduction to electromagnetics. I don't think I even had an iota of a introduction to the topic until I started university in an Electrical Engineering program. How many people could answer the basic question: How are EM waves produced? (Or rather, why are they produced?")
I hope these parents get smacked down, because there is far more RF energy coming from other sources. What they MIGHT want to be concerned about is the placement of electical substation transformers for the power grid. Would they like to teach schools without electricity?
Ignorance brought us great things like witch burning and the inquisitions. I hope this doesn't turn into one..
Only if you live in California and modify the emissions. heh.
..talk about voice recognition.
I have a rule, and it's to run away screaming from anyone who uses voice recognition as a way to pimp a product. Speaking to people is tedious enough. I don't want to talk to a computer. I can type several times faster than I can talk, and I certainly can read many times faster than that.
Voice recognition is useless. Good for parlor tricks. Saviour for the disabled. Daily productivity booster? I don't think so.
Call me when we have good VISION for computers. Computer image recognition is just beginning to be feasible. It's a big enough of a chore for a computer to tell there is a human in a picture, let alone who that human is.
There's many good applications for that technology all over the place.
Bodywork is another good one. Lots of work, and opportunnity to work for cash under the table. The worse the economy gets, the more work there is, too. I try to learn how to do something completely different every few years. Things that didn't seem to be practical (turbocharging hondas) have lead to things that are practical - much better understanding of control systems and noise tolerant embedded systems.
Networking is really important as well. Most of the jobs I've gotten have been the result of giving talks at shows, publishing papers and code, taking advantage of opportunities to talk to factory owners, you name it. There's nobody who can do a better job selling (or sinking) yourself than you. They've also come from the oddest places - the racing club I am a member of and race under, for example.
Unfortunately, networking and technically minded people seem to mix like oil and water.
I'm a EE. I'm thanking my lucky stars, because most people here will hire (or displace) someone with a CS degree for me. I remember deciding to do EE over physics in class one day in high school. Big day, that was.
Anyhow - I don't just program - learn how to do something else. I've been learning how to rebuild engines - not the oil change stuff, the jack the engine out of the car variety. I've already had people approach me wondering if I can do work for them, and I've made a few bucks on the side. Anyone who can fix a computer or program can fix a car - hell, there's even programming involved.
Same applies for industrial controls. There are many factories and production lines using older control systems - you can make them faster and more profitable by changing the electronics a little. I make a nice side income there, too.
If things are really bad - move. If you don't want to, make do.
Do what I do, store files on your local machine, sync to network storage, and once in awhile buy a new HD and store the old one someplace safe. I burn really important files - source code and the like - to CD on odd intervals.
It isn't ideal, but it's good enough for my purposes (and most others, I assume).
These little boxes are great for that. Just don't use them for primary storage is all.
I wish the commies would sponsor some DSL here. I'm trying to get WiFi on the go, but I need a friendly person to let me put a relay in.. and haven't found them yet.
This is in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.. we didn't have private phone lines until 1992.
..this message brought to you by a 26k connection on a 56k modem over a POTS telephone line. At least the connection doesn't drop when it rains anymore.
Most people in Canada live in one of a half dozen large cities. It is not suprising there is broadband penetration there. Also, a lot of telecom research happens in Canada - Caller ID is very, very old here - in fact, was developed here.
My best hope for broadband is none of these pipe dreams. I'd settle for something in the $100/mo range providing solid 128k/s always on via the cellular networks.
Those recently unemployed don't see that side of the coin. It takes people willing to take risks to create employment - not just "get a job". If the USA was destination one for those people, it will hurt in the long run as those people will create their ventures elsewhere.
Of course.. then we cry about the jobs going to India, now, don't we?
Canada has a relatively open immigration policy and free trade via NAFTA with the USA. I recommend you try here. Last time I checked, educated, ambitious people were still welcome here.
Yeah, they get better mileage and diesel is -marginally- cheaper. ($.12/l here)
The problem, unfortunately, is that the added cost of a new diesel cancels out the gain from the mileage. Unlike old gasoline engines, diesels begin to have problems starting in the cold weather very quickly and require much more maintenance and care to the glow plugs and fuel system to sotp this from happening.
Nevermind if it gets cold enough, diesel lines freeze. I had to stick a heater in the engine of a co-worker's TDI Jetta last winter.
If you really care about saving money, do what I did and get a old-ass light Honda Civic, gut it, have the engine redone, and enjoy your 50mpg.
If you really care about the enviornment, do what this guy did - but take it one step further and have the car tuned for mileage. An aftermarket air/fuel computer (easily installed or constructed) that modifies the signals to the car's manifold air pressure sensor allows you to lean out the engine and save fuel. Installing a wideband O2 sensor with a digital readout lets you maintain an eye on it. Does it get geekier than that?
If you want to take it to the next level, rebuilding the engine with forged internals that can take the odd detonation caused by extreme lean running is another idea, as is installing a better air intake system and exhaust. You can investigate alcohol injection as a means to counter the lean running. Etc, etc etc.
Weight reduction is another area you can improve; the unfortunate emphasis on making "safer" cars rather than "safer" drivers means that your average economy car weighs a LOT. Learn to be a safe driver.
It's not just the gas consumption - think of the energy costs of building and transporting a new vehicle. There are thousands of cars out there that can be refurbished and used for many more hundreds of thousands of miles. I'm not talking out of my ass here - I rebuild engines (although usually for power) in my spare time. My brother has a 1991 Civic hatchback we modified for mileage that rotinely gets 40mpg with heavy city driving. The car has 430,000km on it, and is probably good for another 200,000 km with some body work. There is a myth perpetuated that engines are a) not possible to rebuild anymore, b) too expensive to rebuild, and c) not possible to rebuild yourself. This is FUD.
Nevermind you save another car from rusting in a junkyard. Most peole here are of above average intelligence, use those skills to help the environment AND save a pile of money. Don't just rush out and get a new vehicle without thinking.
If you live in a tight urban area, look at a scooter - they're fun, and you can tweak them to run with extreme efficiency without much difficulty.
the level of difficulty one has immigrating to the USA, even on the H1 visa program.
If more people said "Fuck the prophet".. and were just a little bit nicer to each other instead. Unfortunately - religion and politics are tools towards the same ends, and neither is really about being nicer to each other.
Booooooooooooooooooooommmmmmm!!!!!!
Lithium ion cells are very dangerous - maybe more so. Something to think about.
And please, nobody hit your battery packs with a hammer. Bad things will happen and you could be seriously injured. Seriously. I made a mistake on a circuit board once and had a coin cell go off like a large metal jacketed firecracker.
Sorry, but process engineering is a dead field right now.
I make a very tidy sum doing process customization and optimization for this "dead" industry, in a small city on the east coast. If you can make a process more efficient, there's always money to be made. I don't know about larger industries, but smaller companies have been a goldmine for me. I'm an EE with an embedded design specialty, and right now I have more projects than I can handle.
The pulp mills in the area are hiring qualified people as well.
I don't know about the sysadmin / IT thing though. You might have a point, but this is far from a dead field.
Currently by our limited view of how life has come to be what it is and evolved, we believe water to be essential to the existence of life. Does this mean that there can be other forms of life that don't require water?
Ok. People watch too much Star Trek. On the other hand, this is Slashdot.
The reason life is grounded around water and carbon have to do with the very special chemical properties of water - a few being it's less dense solid than liquid, and it dissolves almost everything - and the fact carbon forms these nice long chains. Nothing else does. Biochemistry is mind-bogglingly complicated.
Those nice long chains allow all sorts of good things (tm) to happen. Like you and me. Nothing else has the properties that are required for those complex reactions to happen.
Until/Unless an AI is developed, nothing else in the known physical world meets the requirements for life. And that AI would have been created by sacks of water. I haven't seen any real papers or proposals to the contrary. If you could devise a mechanism based on known physics that demonstrated this would be possible, you would become very famous.
The depressing physics here are the same as everywhere else.
You neglect the fact the important thing is not calculating those numbers, but knowing what needs to be calculated and what the result will be. While the trivial example isn't my point, it just isn't worth my finite time to bother with making error-prone attempts to calculate numbers in my head. I'll estimate on the fly, and use a tool (computer) later.
Unless computers are truely intelligent, cognitive systems just make our job faster, and let me apply the tool (software) to solve the problem faster, saving money and effort.
If computers are truely intelligent, then our time here IS over.
I'd rather live in a developed polluted world than the undeveloped alternatives.
-nm-