There's also a natural tension between making tools as useful as possible for the typical (able-bodied) user and the disabled user. Making a tool more useful sometimes means taking advantage of user capabilities which weren't being depended on before -- multi-finger touch-screen gestures, for instance. If you set up your system for the lowest common denominator you make it worse for the average user. If you try to include multiple interfaces appropriate for everyone from Stephen Hawking to Nastia Liukin, you'll never get a product out the door, or even out of the design phase.
The course agreement for most universities attributes the copyright from any works you create during your studies to the unversity. They own it.
Where did the student sign this agreement, specifically? In the US, a written and signed agreement is necessary for copyright transfer. A policy statement by the university isn't going to cut it.
with soc (system on a chip) its less and less possible to 'tap the wires'.
related: be CAUTIOUS about accepting pc systems that integrate too much in 1 chip. there is evil intent there, to be sure.
So far I haven't seen a system including a display that couldn't theoretically be tapped at the panel interface. Probably eventually there will be a system with encryption integrated into the panel, but I don't think it's there yet.
And then there's the silly idea of sticking a photosensor array onto the panel. I think that's technically infeasible today, but I doubt it will remain so.
Now this I do agree with - I think one thing this story may highlight is the problems of the American healthcare system. I like to tell myself that this wouldn't happen in the UK
I'm sure in the UK you'd get the right diagnosis the first time. Unfortunately you'd still have to wait 8 years for it.
The logical inference is that some doctor had suspected Crohn's, ordered a biopsy (which, for intestinal tissue, is a non-trivial procedure) and had slides made up for pathological evaluation. Somehow young Jessica managed to get the slides, probably because she had good relationships with the doctor and pathologist on the case. She even had (or was able to discover) the email address of the pathologist so as to send him an image from the slide.
I'm thinking the story isn't quite one of such significant medical ineptitude as the article makes it out to be.
Well, it lets the doctor who ordered the biopsy off the hook, but it makes the pathologist look pretty inept.
The exclusionary rule is targeted at government action, not private action. The repair shop wasn't (according to the summary) coerced or otherwise "encouraged" by the government to go through the computer, so the exclusionary rule simply doesn't apply.
Car analogy: You bring your car in the shop for repairs. The shop guys go poking around in the car (perhaps for legitimate reasons, perhaps not) and find your heroin stash. They call the cops. The evidence is admissible.
Car analogy 2: You bring your car in the shop for repairs. The cops call the shop and "suggest" the shop guys search your car for heroin. They find it. The evidence is... well, with the current court it would probably still be admissable, but it probably shouldn't be.
The point of security is to prevent a future attack vector, and the boxcutter at the throat does well. A simple phrase like "We're not going to crash we just want to go to X" will prevent anyone from rushing the attackers, potentially risking the lives of the flight attendants. Your fat ass will stay in its seat as will those of the hundreds of people you think would follow you in your playstation-fantasy of a situation. One day when you're in a real life/death situation you'll find it's not quite as easy as your slashdot-keyboard-aloofness suggests.
How many times have you been in one? And failed to act? It's de rigueur to assume that everyone is easily cowed and will never actually try to play the hero, but actual real life cases demonstrate otherwise -- unless people are actually taught not to fight back, a significant number of them will. Not everyone and certainly not the majority, but more than enough for there to be several on your average airliner. Probably more, if you count those who will act only after someone else does.
Further, I'm not sure what good your boxcutter attack does the terrorists. The terrorist grabs a flight attendant to use as a hostage against the passengers. Now what? He still doesn't have control of the plane. He's got one hostage, or one per terrorist if there's multiple terrorists. The flight crew aren't going to open the door and be seen as the biggest chumps since Neville Chamberlain. And if a terrorist starts working on opening that door by force, a rather large number of passengers are not going to believe his assurances either. So best case scenario for the terrorists is that they land somewhere of the flight crew's choosing and a standoff continues until the SWAT team comes in.
You forgot to mention "reinforced cockpit doors" and "not congregating at the toilet." These also, like the former, do not prevent a terrorist with a boxcutter from putting it to the throat of a flight attendant (and four of them doing so to all four flight attendants) and threatening to kill them all.
The toilet stuff (not congregating, and not using the forward toilet if you're in steerage) isn't security OR security theatre. It's a way for the airlines to use government force to keep first class service levels better than those in economy.
Most undergraduate students don't have enough time to learn the basics of computer programming, never mind software design.
If a student can't learn the basics of computer programming as part of a four-year program (whether CS, CE, or SE), perhaps programming isn't the field for him.
In a perfect world, Computer Scientists (like myself, MS in CS) would be doing research and developing new advancements in CS.
Unfortunately in this imperfect world, there's few such research positions available. But they aren't nonexistent. (as far as I'm concerned, you can have them, I prefer to get my hands dirty with code:-) )
Plus, isn't an idea supposed to be a theory until proven to be a law? I mean does anyone really think it will continue indefinitely? I bet Moore didn't even think so. It seems we started calling it a law and it will continue until proven to be a theory.
Different kind of law. Moore's law is more like Murphy's than Newton's.
Sorry, but Software Engineering houses most of its complexity in the actual complexity of the chosen language and Art of Design that has nothing to do with Traditional Engineering. I'll put it this way: Becoming proficient in C/C++/ObjC/Java is a matter of exposure to the language and various APIs with well-tested design patterns others have tested and shown to be useful, on a domain specific problem set.
A lot of scientists try to write their own code based on that idea. Often it even works. It's unlikely to be efficient or scalable or easily adaptable to similar problems. You can learn the whole of a language but if you don't really understand it and just try to apply cookie cutter building blocks, you won't get good code, though you may get a workable prototype.
How much of the commercial/open source software for consumers or enterprise clients requires the software to actually require factors of safety standards set by ABET/ASME/ASCE, etc., to actually adhere to Electromagnetic Theory, actual Mechanics and expect to be highly precise so as to be useful in modeling the Boeing 787 for FAA certification before its even run a test flight?
Well, my initial thought is "Who cares? It's not engineering because life safety requirements are involved, and not 'not engineering' if they are not". And my second thought is "All the software used for modeling the Boeing 787, for starters".
There is a reason you don't get looked at for a traditional Engineering position with a Software Engineering degree on your resume, versus having a traditional Engineering degree with a programming background.
I doubt a Chemical Engineer would get looked at for a Mechanical Engineering position either, nor vice-versa. Which one isn't real engineering?
You don't see 50 differing versions of basic Calculus. You see 50 different programming languages with various pros/cons to justify their existence. This isn't acceptable in Engineering Fields that use applied Physics to make products which must guarantee Human Safety as a premium.
This only demonstrates your ignorance of mathematics. There's something called "The Calculus", but that just distinguishes it from all the other calculuses. And even within differential and integral calculus, there are multiple notations for the same thing, still in use.
How ironic that today the bulk of all "software engineers" are writing dynamic web sites/web services from the consumer to the enterprise and are fighting over getting their applications the most sales via smartphones. Cash talks bs walks in the world of the Internet.
How many engineers are designing molds for cheap plastic cases? A lot, that's for sure. The prevalence of scut work doesn't distinguish between engineering and non-engineering disciplines. As for the second statement, you went two words too long.
Software Engineering has evolved into keeping the masses glued to their computers where people can rant and rave by the millions. Its evolved into applying game physics to entertain kids as they continue to evolve into obese young adults incapable of being physically active. Its evolved into allowing traditionally inept large clusters of people from being more than a servant into being capable of driving a BMW, a Decati, a Porsche but still being no cooler than if they never had one. It's evolved into creating a culture of physically inept clods who have a short term skill set the ability to make far more money than ever possible in a traditional engineering discipline, never ever having to be required to have the broad and deep knowledge a traditional engineering discipline requires.
Oh, you're just trolling. Why didn't you say so in the first place. I suppose the Capital Letters of Pompousness should have tipped me off. Mea culpa.
If you can be counted on to design a system that reliably works without killing people, you're an engineer.
That's only half of it. You need to design it so when used within specs it reliably works, but when used outside specs (by some margin X) it fails. As the saying goes, any fool can build a bridge that will stand, but it takes an engineer to build one which will just barely stand.
Look, there is nothing wrong with being a programmer. Just as a good tech gets pissed off when he sees a 'nail technician', real engineers laugh at the IT crowd.
If you're going to insist on rigorous naming, you ought to be consistent about it. Programming != "the IT crowd". There's some overlap, but there's a lot more programmers not in "the IT crowd" and a lot more to be done than programming within the "IT crowd".
Furthermore, I don't care how many bridges, buildings, or aircraft you can design, if you can't drive a steam locomotive (with attached train), you ain't no engineer.
While that's perfectly logical and well-reasoned it flies in the face of actual real-world studies. Science now knows (for certain, using statistics and actual data) that drinking diet soda versus regular soda has no positive impact whatsoever on obesity rates. Source In fact, that article actually claims that diet soda drinkers are MORE likely than their regular soda drinking counterparts to be obese.
Biochemistry trumps statistical studies. Diet soda cannot (directly) cause weight gain. The study you posted is actually a textbook example of that mantra "correlation is not causation". And it shows why statistical surveys are no substitute for actual controlled studies.
So the batteries oxidize lithium or some lithium compound as they discharge, and release the oxygen when charged.
Does this mean that the batteries actually increase, significantly, in weight as they discharge? And if so, is power to weight/energy to weight ratio considered while charged or discharged?
Speeding. 99% of respondents want to drive faster than the speed limit, it seems.
A slightly lower fraction (but still well in excess of 90%, IME) of drivers apparently do also.
Change the law? I lack the power.
Remember that driving is licensed, it's not a right.
Only because the State says so. That's the same State which says I shouldn't exceed whatever the speed limit is. If I don't respect its wishes in the second case, why would I respect it in the first? It's the same group of thugs they'll be sending after me regardless.
If you feel that you should be able to drive faster than you're presently legally allowed to, then win the argument and get the law changed. But please stop bitching about the way that a given rule of the road applies to you; those are the terms you agreed to when you stepped into your car.
I agreed to nothing; those "terms", as with any laws, were imposed upon me. To misquote Washington, law is not contract, it is not agreement, it is force.
Let's all take a moment and remember how insurance companies make money, then we can proceed from there.
You've apparently never dealt with an insurance company. While investments may be their main business, they do have a little side business doing actual insurance work. Which, to an insurance company, means
1) Collecting premiums 2) Not paying claims unless they absolutely have to, and lowballing the insured when they do.
They'd love for claims to go down. That provides them with a windfall. Predictability? Well, a predictible _maximum_ level of claims is fine, but even insurance companies don't object to a windfall in the form of lower costs.
Since these are auto insurance companies, who have managed to wangle laws requiring auto insurance, they need not worry about reduction in demand for their product; they have the State to provide that for them.
That would be why it doesn't cut the power unless you've been driving over the limit for a certain period of time. I don't know about you, but I've yet to use a GPS which put me on the wrong road for more than a few yards.
Try riding on a highway adjacent to a service road and parallel to a nearby ridge line. Depending on the satellite geometry and other terrain, you can end up getting a long-term incorrect reading that way, due to receiving the satellite signals reflected from the ridge line.
Can you include those details on your resume, so that when I'm next hiring I know to file yours straight in the round filing cabinet? Anyone who starts coding "the second they have an idea what they're doing" clearly has no concept of design.
Objecting to a programmer doing his initial design in code is about as reasonable as objecting to a writer doing his first draft in English.
I don't think they're talking about a phase-change cooling system; if they wanted to do that, there's liquids which boil closer to chip temperature than water.
People, please realize this: Nearly all health problems are better prevented than fixed later. Most of the time it's way easier too. But species-appropriate food and sports are so uncool, right?
More of that awful Ribbon. Gratuitously modal interfaces are just SO helpful. I mean, I appreciate that Microsoft is actually trying to innovate, but they're really no good at it.
Slashdot Mirror
There's also a natural tension between making tools as useful as possible for the typical (able-bodied) user and the disabled user. Making a tool more useful sometimes means taking advantage of user capabilities which weren't being depended on before -- multi-finger touch-screen gestures, for instance. If you set up your system for the lowest common denominator you make it worse for the average user. If you try to include multiple interfaces appropriate for everyone from Stephen Hawking to Nastia Liukin, you'll never get a product out the door, or even out of the design phase.
Where did the student sign this agreement, specifically? In the US, a written and signed agreement is necessary for copyright transfer. A policy statement by the university isn't going to cut it.
So far I haven't seen a system including a display that couldn't theoretically be tapped at the panel interface. Probably eventually there will be a system with encryption integrated into the panel, but I don't think it's there yet. And then there's the silly idea of sticking a photosensor array onto the panel. I think that's technically infeasible today, but I doubt it will remain so.
I'm sure in the UK you'd get the right diagnosis the first time. Unfortunately you'd still have to wait 8 years for it.
Well, it lets the doctor who ordered the biopsy off the hook, but it makes the pathologist look pretty inept.
The exclusionary rule is targeted at government action, not private action. The repair shop wasn't (according to the summary) coerced or otherwise "encouraged" by the government to go through the computer, so the exclusionary rule simply doesn't apply.
Car analogy: You bring your car in the shop for repairs. The shop guys go poking around in the car (perhaps for legitimate reasons, perhaps not) and find your heroin stash. They call the cops. The evidence is admissible.
Car analogy 2: You bring your car in the shop for repairs. The cops call the shop and "suggest" the shop guys search your car for heroin. They find it. The evidence is... well, with the current court it would probably still be admissable, but it probably shouldn't be.
How many times have you been in one? And failed to act? It's de rigueur to assume that everyone is easily cowed and will never actually try to play the hero, but actual real life cases demonstrate otherwise -- unless people are actually taught not to fight back, a significant number of them will. Not everyone and certainly not the majority, but more than enough for there to be several on your average airliner. Probably more, if you count those who will act only after someone else does.
Further, I'm not sure what good your boxcutter attack does the terrorists. The terrorist grabs a flight attendant to use as a hostage against the passengers. Now what? He still doesn't have control of the plane. He's got one hostage, or one per terrorist if there's multiple terrorists. The flight crew aren't going to open the door and be seen as the biggest chumps since Neville Chamberlain. And if a terrorist starts working on opening that door by force, a rather large number of passengers are not going to believe his assurances either. So best case scenario for the terrorists is that they land somewhere of the flight crew's choosing and a standoff continues until the SWAT team comes in.
The toilet stuff (not congregating, and not using the forward toilet if you're in steerage) isn't security OR security theatre. It's a way for the airlines to use government force to keep first class service levels better than those in economy.
If a student can't learn the basics of computer programming as part of a four-year program (whether CS, CE, or SE), perhaps programming isn't the field for him.
Unfortunately in this imperfect world, there's few such research positions available. But they aren't nonexistent. (as far as I'm concerned, you can have them, I prefer to get my hands dirty with code :-) )
Different kind of law. Moore's law is more like Murphy's than Newton's.
A lot of scientists try to write their own code based on that idea. Often it even works. It's unlikely to be efficient or scalable or easily adaptable to similar problems. You can learn the whole of a language but if you don't really understand it and just try to apply cookie cutter building blocks, you won't get good code, though you may get a workable prototype.
Well, my initial thought is "Who cares? It's not engineering because life safety requirements are involved, and not 'not engineering' if they are not". And my second thought is "All the software used for modeling the Boeing 787, for starters".
I doubt a Chemical Engineer would get looked at for a Mechanical Engineering position either, nor vice-versa. Which one isn't real engineering?
This only demonstrates your ignorance of mathematics. There's something called "The Calculus", but that just distinguishes it from all the other calculuses. And even within differential and integral calculus, there are multiple notations for the same thing, still in use.
How many engineers are designing molds for cheap plastic cases? A lot, that's for sure. The prevalence of scut work doesn't distinguish between engineering and non-engineering disciplines. As for the second statement, you went two words too long.
Oh, you're just trolling. Why didn't you say so in the first place. I suppose the Capital Letters of Pompousness should have tipped me off. Mea culpa.
That's only half of it. You need to design it so when used within specs it reliably works, but when used outside specs (by some margin X) it fails. As the saying goes, any fool can build a bridge that will stand, but it takes an engineer to build one which will just barely stand.
If you're going to insist on rigorous naming, you ought to be consistent about it. Programming != "the IT crowd". There's some overlap, but there's a lot more programmers not in "the IT crowd" and a lot more to be done than programming within the "IT crowd".
Furthermore, I don't care how many bridges, buildings, or aircraft you can design, if you can't drive a steam locomotive (with attached train), you ain't no engineer.
Biochemistry trumps statistical studies. Diet soda cannot (directly) cause weight gain. The study you posted is actually a textbook example of that mantra "correlation is not causation". And it shows why statistical surveys are no substitute for actual controlled studies.
You've WHAT? Turn in your geek card. And your man card, if you're male.
So the batteries oxidize lithium or some lithium compound as they discharge, and release the oxygen when charged.
Does this mean that the batteries actually increase, significantly, in weight as they discharge? And if so, is power to weight/energy to weight ratio considered while charged or discharged?
A slightly lower fraction (but still well in excess of 90%, IME) of drivers apparently do also.
Change the law? I lack the power.
Only because the State says so. That's the same State which says I shouldn't exceed whatever the speed limit is. If I don't respect its wishes in the second case, why would I respect it in the first? It's the same group of thugs they'll be sending after me regardless.
I agreed to nothing; those "terms", as with any laws, were imposed upon me. To misquote Washington, law is not contract, it is not agreement, it is force.
You've apparently never dealt with an insurance company. While investments may be their main business, they do have a little side business doing actual insurance work. Which, to an insurance company, means
1) Collecting premiums
2) Not paying claims unless they absolutely have to, and lowballing the insured when they do.
They'd love for claims to go down. That provides them with a windfall. Predictability? Well, a predictible _maximum_ level of claims is fine, but even insurance companies don't object to a windfall in the form of lower costs.
Since these are auto insurance companies, who have managed to wangle laws requiring auto insurance, they need not worry about reduction in demand for their product; they have the State to provide that for them.
Most GPS units have a sampling rate of 1Hz. Some units are 5Hz. As far as I know, no consumer unit is higher, though 20Hz units are available.
Try riding on a highway adjacent to a service road and parallel to a nearby ridge line. Depending on the satellite geometry and other terrain, you can end up getting a long-term incorrect reading that way, due to receiving the satellite signals reflected from the ridge line.
Objecting to a programmer doing his initial design in code is about as reasonable as objecting to a writer doing his first draft in English.
I don't think they're talking about a phase-change cooling system; if they wanted to do that, there's liquids which boil closer to chip temperature than water.
...when I make sure to release it when most of the testing group is on vacation. Vastly cuts down on the initial bug list, let me tell you.
Eat healthy, stay fit, die anyway.
But not as a defendant. Take a page from the RIAA playbook: Sue the creator of the page as a "John Doe", and subpoena Yahoo for the actual owner.
More of that awful Ribbon. Gratuitously modal interfaces are just SO helpful. I mean, I appreciate that Microsoft is actually trying to innovate, but they're really no good at it.