I have no intention of giving my white list over to an ISP. Yes, I know they could determine who I receive email from by monitoring logs, but it just bothers me to go the extra step of doing the work for them. Step 2 is the government requiring all ISPs to have an interface that allows them to read all white lists. Mining of such a complete social map could crack through a lot of privacy.
Yes, I've seen the trend. I'd expand that this is a shift away from what engineering used to be. It also offers an explanation as to why "engineering jobs" can be moved overseas now that couldn't before. Many of the ones that are moving aren't what we would have called engineering jobs in the past. They are more like what engineering assistants used to do.
Perhaps what has happened in engineering is similar to what has happened in education. In education, we've clearly boosted bottom at the price of a slight drop in the middle and a devastation of the top. It improves our current averages, but the long term outlook plummets because the breakthroughs disappear. I think we've done the same in engineering. In trying to prevent the occassional failure through eliminating the hero and inserting the process god, we've destroyed engineering. I think we forgot that humans are involved, not robots. The human equation involves risk, but also gives tangible though not wholly predictable rewards that can blow away the dry process oriented world. This is where America was king, and this is the throne we gave up. The ride may not be so wild now (not as many lows), but it also may not be worth riding. If we don't regain the courage to take risks and put our faith in people (even dreamers), we are doomed to gradually sink to being just another player.
I agree that dropping the bomb was a favor to the Japanese, but not to the general reasons I'm reading for why. Basically, I think it took something that immediate, devastating and scary to change the character of the Japanese. The result of their character change is their great success today. If peace had come without the character change, it would have been shortlived and they wouldn't be who they are today.
I seem to have a talent for miscommunicating today. I was in fact agreeing with you (mostly) and trying to expand on what I see as the core factor. And the "if you're not a teenager" was directed at "you" the general reader thinking of changing careers, not "you". Sorry for the lack of clarity.
Where we might differ is in the identification of where in the education system we're losing the "could've been engineers". I think we're losing them earlier rather than later. I'd even say it starts in preschool. And it has to do with the shift in foundational principles of work ethic and how to be happy. There is little reason to engineer (at least working things) in the "just be happy regardless" atmosphere of early education today. As the years have progressed, I've encountered more and more newbies who seem to think I should be happy at whatever they do just because they did it and perhaps it looks pretty or it was by some modern book. Some even get downright hostile when you question whether it works or works well enough to justify the money you've just paid them or is original enough to market or any of the other myriad things that define the "well" in "well engineered". These attitudes don't come from a lack of higher education so much as from a lack of grasp on reality that must have happened in their lower education.
Sorry, my apologies if I offended. I've definitely miscommunicated and, in fact, still can't think of the best way to say it. So, I'll struggle with several.
I have seen older folks transition in successfully, but after talking with them, I've found they always were an engineer and didn't know it or knew it and wanted it but got sidetracked. Also, note that I use the term "engineer" widely. A master chef is usually a master "engineer". Many good authors "engineer" their books. Perhaps since the word "engineer" carries specific training and education connotations, "craftsman" might be better. I've been widening my crafts lately to include all those used for building homes and the things in them and have found that my "engineering" talent and training carries to all of them with ease.
Maybe it would have been better to say that you've either got it or you don't, but that isn't accurate either. The inclusion of the age factor was due to my belief that the statistical distribution of those in the population who "have it" can and has been effected by changes in early education. This leads to a belief that, given an awareness of that bias, a younger person -may- be able to increase the likelihood of having it through things like a focus on experimentation (both thought and real).
And from yet another direction, less people have it now, and I don't think that is just because they haven't been attracted into the field. Certainly, there are those not in the field who would be great in it, but that has always been true. I don't think that's where the shift is at. The shift has occurred as a byproduct of a fundamental shift in lower education that has changed the work ethic and drive to meet public (as opposed to personal) muster of newer generations.
The only new thing here is the thought of shipping SFU with Windows (and presumably a lot of new glue to make it possible for a non geek to configure). SFU and Cygwin are both old but good technologies.
Technically, SFU != Cygwin. They achieve the same aim, that of exposing a Unix API so that Unix programs can be compiled to run under Windows, but are apples and oranges under the hood. SFU does it by adding an API on top of the kernel and beside the Win32 API using a little known but cool capability of windows. Cygwin does it by adding an API on top of the Win32 API. Theoretically, SFU has less in its way to hinder performance than Cygwin. I've not tested whether the potential was realized.
IMO, we're "losing" engineers because we're not making real engineers. The percentage of "good" engineers, those that really have the talent and breadth to create things that just make you go "wow", was way different in the crop of the 90s versus the crop of the 50s and 60s. Good engineers are still in high demand and are still paid very well. In fact, because they are getting more and more scarce, I'd say they are in higher demand than ever. I know good engineers with just Bachelors degrees making 100K at 40 years of age and loving their work. With Masters degrees, 120K by that point isn't out of the question. I don't think I've ever known a MBA manager that loved their work.
And by the way, if you're not a teenager and you're looking to find what you can do to become a good engineer, you probably ought to find another career. Good engineers are made by more by talent and good parents than schools. Being a good engineer is not about processes, degrees or certifications. Its more about loving to create, a good sense of the "right" way to do things that can't really be taught, loving to work, always finishing what you start, and a personal responsibility for everything you do.
How can you jump to that conclusion? There is a whole lot more to a new technology level being "here today" than a few chips being able to run at that level. Yield, reliability, availability of memory at reasonable price points and reliability, reliability of motherboard support, etc. all play a part. The famous Pentium floating point bug had rare effect except on scientific applications, but clearly that version of the Pentium wasn't even "here" when it shipped.
I currently have an ASUS based AMD64 system at home that I made the mistake of buying in the second month of availability. I can tell you from firsthand experience that it wasn't "here" when it shipped. Almost everything of any meaning has been replaced and the system still freezes solid twice a day. Only a hard reset brings it around. Pretty soon, I'll go another round of replace the processor... does it work... replace the motherboard... does it work... replace the memory... does it work. I'm betting this time I'll finally get there because someone has figured out a problem and fixed it in the latest releases of these 'stable' products.
For this to be possible, all hardware has to reach the same capability and innovation has to basically halt forever. The desktop environment that I run at home is very personal and consists of both hardware and software. Even assuming everyone had 3 screens and the same keyboard and mouse type as the ones that I use, the bandwidth isn't available to make the applications and data reasonably portable. If you went the approach of just running them all remotely, you would not meet the response requirements for the system to feel right. If you ran everything locally, every machine out there would need a minimum of a 1GB RAM, a high end processor, and high end video cards + you'd need the communications bandwidth to download GBs of data quickly. Either way you're hosed.
Also, high speed internet is by no means ubiquitous at this point. I live in the eastern US, have only modem access, and there is no promise of that changing at any time soon. And don't say satellite is an option. Its more a joke for various reasons including 400K isn't exactly high speed anymore, you can't really use that for any decent length of time without being throttled, and you can forget running applications remotely or accessing data through a VPN due to latency issues. Anybody visiting me and depending on this system would be out of luck.
A far better approach is to carry all of the personalization data and have an automatic system for invisibly backing up to multiple secure sites whenever you're "plugged in". Also, a new portable interface paradigm should be developed so that we carry our "screens", "keyboards", and "mice" with us. I envision glasses, contacts, or implants for visualization and the use of cameras, sound and other input mediums to provide data. The trusty old keyboard interface can be faked using a combination of overlaying some space near you with a virtual keyboard and using video analysis to read the keystrokes. More advanced and natural interfaces could also be developed by overlaying and merging virtual reality with the real world around us.
Years ago, I took a trip on a bus the day after the Supreme Court decided that a warrant was not needed to search public transportation. The guy in front of me was trying to pick a fight with the guy behind me. The guy in front was a DEA agent. I had seen his badge and gun before we boarded the bus. The guy behind me was fresh out of prison and had a gun also. He was bragging about it and showed it to another ex-convict that was sitting across from us that he had just met.
While at a lunch stop, I asked the DEA agent if he knew that the guy he was jawing on had a gun. His response was "Yeh, don't worry, just stay low if he pulls it. After the ruling yesterday, we've all been assigned to take trips and catch those who haven't heard yet that we can now search the bus without a warrant. I could arrest him now before he gets off at Memphis, but there's less paperwork if I just shoot him."
The agent was pretty rugged and I believed him. Don't know what happened because they ended up jawing each other into riding on to New Orleans on some sort of dare.
I'll bet there's a similar effort on right now. The wire tapping law is the only thing that has held the FBI back from email not transmitted via international satellite to date and is at least temporarily out of service. Bet they are working overtime.
What about analog signal delay chips? What about digital phone systems that temporarily store signals in RAM? And if volatile memory is considered transmission instead of storage, what if they used MRAM in the future?
Others summed it up with "stupid", but "stupid" just doesn't seem to come close.
I'll bet some ISPs are madly looking at what they have that they could market to the tabloids. Anyone out there have some Senators or Representatives as clients? Publishing all of their email might get a law out quicker than you can say "stupid".
Re:The city was being reasonable, not Smirnoff
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Reverse Graffiti
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· Score: 2, Interesting
No, he didn't clean the wall at all. At least not to me. I'm very familiar with this whole line of thought because my wife and I get into it all the time. The argument results from a fundamental difference in what different people consider "clean" which I think has to do with a fundamental difference in mental processing.
My wife would say that you're right, he cleaned the wall. I'd say you're wrong, he didn't clean it in any way. In fact, he may have made it more dirty. My wife judges "clean" by how much dirt is present or not present. I judge clean by how little the scene departs from a white noise or natural condition. The difference causes a lot of trouble for us both outdoors and indoors. For example, a mowed lawn to me is dirty, especially if the lines are visible. I prefer our grassland to grow wild and random. Natures natural variations add interest without adding dirtiness. She prefers it to be mowed and forced more towards a humanized order. An inside example is figurines and other small knick knack type items. To her, they don't effect cleanliness either way. To me, they add to the scene in an unnatural, complicated, non-white noise fashion that I interpret as dirty or cluttered. It really leaves me mentally spinning and unsettled.
I think my problem is shared by a lot of people and is very hard to express in a fashion that those who don't have it can understand and relate to. And it probably has a basis in fundamental thought processes that make it, not a preference, but a need. I think that what is going on is that I cannot not process certain types of visual information. When a lot of complex non-natural lines and shapes are in a scene, I can easily get overwhelmed and have to shut down to a degree to protect myself. Its a cumulative thing to. i.e. there is some principle of conservation in effect or some limited resource, probably chemical, that is playing a part. For example, I can take a complex scene (complex is the wrong word because a forest wouldn't bother me unless it wasn't random, but the best I can do) for a little while if I've been out on my land for the day.
Anyway, these graffiti artists are adding to the amount of information that people like me can't turn off and have to processed in a scene. So, from our point of view, whether they created lines and shapes by cleaning a surface or adding materials to a surface is irrelevant. The probelm is that they created the lines and shapes and added the complexity to the scene.
Since he brokered two deals for transferring used equipment from Kansas to Chile worth over $100K while I was sitting there, I'd guess he qualifies as a millionaire rather than the son of one. Whether or not he personally has a lot of money, he certainly moves a lot. So, he would likely be a special target for those in the business of getting ransoms. Other targets I've heard about that have been handled quietly are typically high level corporate managers visiting operations. Their corporation's dollars are the real target.
The case with Iraq in some ways is little different. At least some of the kidnappings have been done by small time players who immediately sold the victims to the bigger organizations. So, they are still driven by money and power (with a smattering of religious excuse to make them feel better), just from a different source that will pay for a wider range of targets,,, American instead of wealthy or powerful American.
I suspect some of the other responders are the types that go to the tourist areas or American sectors of the other countries and think they've been there. They might get a different reception if they leave the safe zone where people are playing nice and try to find the real country instead of its mask. From what I gathered, this guy was out in the trenches of these countries visiting the construction sites and farms that wanted the heavy equipment, not in the cities.
Anyway, I'd feel safer with the protection of soldiers in Iraq than roaming the countryside of many other countries without. And that probably has at least a little to do with me. Being someone who can't imagine why you would travel to see a city, when I imagine travelling to other countries, I don't imagine travelling to the tourist traps.
About a year ago, I purchased a grey market tractor from a man who makes his living off of international trade. He has spent much time on foreign soils wheeling and dealing heavy equipment. He has a physique like a green beret, was raised on a farm, and yet has a law degree with a specialty in international law. I recognized him as an expert in international affairs. Someone in the trenches, not the ivory towers. And I started asking him about his experiences.
Amongst the more interesting things he stated was that given the current world situation, even before the whole deal with Iraq started, he had decided to stay home for a while. He might consider a trip to Canada, but would not go to Mexico without a few of his ex-Ranger body guards and would under no circumstance venture to South America. He said that worldwide, it had become an accepted business to capture Americans and ransom them back or use them for political means. The authorities in the countries were of no help and usually on the bankroll themselves.
This was not your average everyday traveller, but a seasoned veteran with heavy duty protection.
After that discussion and listening to his accounts of how common this problem actually was, especially of friends and acquaintances he knew in the biz who had actually encountered troubles, I'm surprised that there hasn't been far more trouble in Iraq. In truth, it sounds as if the heavy protection being supplied to the contractors there is making them safer than if they were in South America. The only difference is that both the news media and the captors involved in the Iraq situation are motivated to amplify this microcosm of the overall story while they seem motivated to suppress the story of the true worldwide situation.
So, enjoy your trip to Iraq. But be very careful of Columbia, Peru, Brazil, Indonesia, etc.
I don't believe they'd seek true invisibility with this technology. Rather, cameras mounted on the soldier would sense the surrounding environment and a computer would analyze the images and create an optimized camouflage made up of shapes that cause you to blend into the environment. The soldier wouldn't be "invisible", but the need for separate uniforms for every environment would be reduced and a few critical seconds might be gained.
Also, instead of projection technology, one of the new reflective electronic paper type technologies would be needed.
I agree 100%. You'll see a ratcheting up in response to cable, but there is no eagerness to do what is possible. It would have cost little more to go straight to true rate ADSL at 7Mbps 5 or more years ago than going through this crippled generation. Now, we're years behind the true technology curve for no good reason and all they are doing is responding to other techs. Major infrastructure rollouts should be designed to offer services that won't be obsoleted for at least a decade, not services that are obsolete the day they roll out.
As for services requiring the speed, they will roll when the speed is there. I still think that the big problem here is that the companies in charge are afraid of a real market shaking competition. If they rolled out something in the 200Mbps range 2 years from now and did so agressively, there would finally be enough bandwidth to the home to fully the information medias. VOIP, HDTV level cable, radio, and internet access could easily all come in via the net.
It would seem that that would be exactly what these companies would want, but the reality is that they are all afraid of starting a war that they might not win.
It would be nice if they just gave us ADSL
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200mbps DSL On Its Way?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
We would have had 7Mbaud almost a decade ago if the phone companies hadn't sabotaged ADSL. They reduced the power so that they wouldn't have to do home visits, then found out after deployment that there was still too much interference and filters were necessary anyway. Thus, they knocked us from the original specification to 1.5Mbaud for no real reason.
At least that's the party line. My feeling is that they aren't ready for true competition and are doing everything they can to keep the rate low enough to delay the onset of VOIP.
I see no incentive for them to give us a generation that skips several though that is certainly the right thing to do. Putting the infrastructure in their hands has reduced it to a new tech every 6 years or so. At that rate, they should be shooting for at least a 16 times increase with every rollout. And the ADSL generation was rolled out years later and 4 times slower than what it should have been. So, at this point, we're so far off the curve it seems hopeless.
Though I use it and swear by it, I don't believe that fully automated application will ever occur. There are too many critical sites that must go through difficult testing to approve the patches.
In that light, are we really doing ourselves any good by finding these vulnerabilities? How many vulnerabilities were first found by script kiddies vs. companies making money off of viruses? If the companies making millions off of antivirus software and services didn't spend those millions to find these vulnerabilities, would the exploits have ever been created?
These are the kinds of questions that it seems we need to have truly independent people take a look at and provide answers for, but the fact is that the antivirus juggernaut is now exceedingly well funded and spend much money to fund the studies and messages of fear that have created the current paradigm. Any news produced by a truly open minded study would be unlikely to see the light of day in mass media unless it is either in the favor of the antivirus businesses or easily spinnable. And if it did, everyone mass media has on their list to bring in as a virus expert would be looking to spin it into nothingness.
So, did he pay for the cost to the US ISP?
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Testing ISP Censorship
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· Score: 2, Insightful
People seem to think that "experiments" like this are a cheap way to come to conclusions. But its only because they are stealing from the companies that they are experimenting on. I see no indication that the author paid for the time that he cost those companies. There was no indication that the letter he received from the US ISP was a generic one. A thought out letter, especially if a legal consult was made, can be very expensive. Even an hour of a senior employee's time would be significantly more than one would pay for a hosting service. This is not a no-harm no-foul situation.
Before encouraging the individual to actually perform a wider "study" and rip off more companies by criticizing the size of their "study", encourage them to be considerate and responsible and not only offer all involved ISPs payment for the unnecessary work he caused, but also state that the companies were at least offered reimbursement to encourage good citizenship of others that might attempt the same type of "low cost" study.
Slower/faster cannot be measured by clock speed alone. If it feels slower, it is slower. The reason is that there is more going on than just the movement of a window. There is a person moving that window. That person is likely thinking and may even be reading something on that window while they are moving it. If it is flashing and ugly, just the distraction from a thought train in progress may in fact "slow" that person's process down. It might even derail a thought and cause something to be missed that was vital. A concentration on speed instead of the holistic process of the common computer user (as opposed to the specialist) is part of the reason Linux is behind on the desktop.
This is exciting but not unexpected news to me. Two of my children have a flaw in one of these junk areas that causes dramatic effects for them. Their symptoms range from mild mental retardation to muscular effects throughout every muscle type. Its amazing, given the many known diseases that result from flaws in junk DNA, that its taken them this long to come close to admitting there is no such thing as junk DNA. So called "scientists" have a remarkable blindness to the facts that they can't explain that makes science anything but. Anyway, here is an excerpt from a site discussing congenital myotonic dystrophy.
... The unusual nature and marked genetic instability of the expanded CTG repeat in DM continues to be a source of fascination. However, the DM mutation is just as notable for its unusual position, because it is located in a part of the DMPK gene that does not code for protein. Seven years after the gene discovery, it remains unclear how a mutation that does not interrupt the DMPK protein coding sequence has a dominant effect with such severe consequences. Complex molecular mechanisms have been postulated at the DNA level, the RNA level, and the protein level (reviewed in reference 13). At the DNA level, the expanded CTG repeat may alter the structure of chromatin, raising the possibility of a "ripple effect" on the function of neighboring genes. At the RNA level, the expanded CUG repeat in the DMPK mRNA may bind to specific proteins and interfere with nuclear function. At the protein level, reduced levels of DMPK, a protein kinase, may interfere with signal transduction pathways. Evaluating each of these proposed mechanisms has proved to be a slow and difficult process.
I'd definitely count consulting as support. But one of the reasons they can sale consulting is because their systems are proprietary and only they know how to best utilize them. If they open the source and it truly did become popular, they would soon have a lot of very knowledgeable consulting competition.
I suspect one of the other repliers was correct. They're simply screwed and already dead. But, their death throes are interesting nonetheless. Who knows, maybe they have something up their sleeves.
As an aside, I think someone will shake up the market with a disruptive technology in the next couple of years. After that, all bets are off and any company that predicts it accurately could ride the wave back to success. My theory is that those who know will have to start making their positioning moves this year. So, any company making bold moves like this catches my eye right now. Are they a piece to the puzzle, or just a red herring?
Re:Good moves... Gotta start somewhere
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Fiber To The Dorm Room
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I hit the limit on 100BaseT at home ages ago. I now have Gigabit throughout. Its really the very simple things that hit it. Try playing a DVD quality movie over your net or watching live output from a firewire video camera without actually getting up and moving it to the PC that you're on. These are exactly the kinds of things that regular consumers should be doing but probably tried once and "learned their lesson" without knowing that all they needed was to have current networking technology.
If a school wants to support live multicast video conferencing in something other than stupid little 320 line windows, you need tech like this. Students should be working with tomorrows tech, not yesterdays.
Slashdot Mirror
I have no intention of giving my white list over to an ISP. Yes, I know they could determine who I receive email from by monitoring logs, but it just bothers me to go the extra step of doing the work for them. Step 2 is the government requiring all ISPs to have an interface that allows them to read all white lists. Mining of such a complete social map could crack through a lot of privacy.
Of course, the national forest were set aside precisely as a means to assure the wood supply.
Perhaps they dismantled them before the subliminal messages could be found :o)
Yes, I've seen the trend. I'd expand that this is a shift away from what engineering used to be. It also offers an explanation as to why "engineering jobs" can be moved overseas now that couldn't before. Many of the ones that are moving aren't what we would have called engineering jobs in the past. They are more like what engineering assistants used to do.
Perhaps what has happened in engineering is similar to what has happened in education. In education, we've clearly boosted bottom at the price of a slight drop in the middle and a devastation of the top. It improves our current averages, but the long term outlook plummets because the breakthroughs disappear. I think we've done the same in engineering. In trying to prevent the occassional failure through eliminating the hero and inserting the process god, we've destroyed engineering. I think we forgot that humans are involved, not robots. The human equation involves risk, but also gives tangible though not wholly predictable rewards that can blow away the dry process oriented world. This is where America was king, and this is the throne we gave up. The ride may not be so wild now (not as many lows), but it also may not be worth riding. If we don't regain the courage to take risks and put our faith in people (even dreamers), we are doomed to gradually sink to being just another player.
I agree that dropping the bomb was a favor to the Japanese, but not to the general reasons I'm reading for why. Basically, I think it took something that immediate, devastating and scary to change the character of the Japanese. The result of their character change is their great success today. If peace had come without the character change, it would have been shortlived and they wouldn't be who they are today.
I seem to have a talent for miscommunicating today. I was in fact agreeing with you (mostly) and trying to expand on what I see as the core factor. And the "if you're not a teenager" was directed at "you" the general reader thinking of changing careers, not "you". Sorry for the lack of clarity.
Where we might differ is in the identification of where in the education system we're losing the "could've been engineers". I think we're losing them earlier rather than later. I'd even say it starts in preschool. And it has to do with the shift in foundational principles of work ethic and how to be happy. There is little reason to engineer (at least working things) in the "just be happy regardless" atmosphere of early education today. As the years have progressed, I've encountered more and more newbies who seem to think I should be happy at whatever they do just because they did it and perhaps it looks pretty or it was by some modern book. Some even get downright hostile when you question whether it works or works well enough to justify the money you've just paid them or is original enough to market or any of the other myriad things that define the "well" in "well engineered". These attitudes don't come from a lack of higher education so much as from a lack of grasp on reality that must have happened in their lower education.
Sorry, my apologies if I offended. I've definitely miscommunicated and, in fact, still can't think of the best way to say it. So, I'll struggle with several.
I have seen older folks transition in successfully, but after talking with them, I've found they always were an engineer and didn't know it or knew it and wanted it but got sidetracked. Also, note that I use the term "engineer" widely. A master chef is usually a master "engineer". Many good authors "engineer" their books. Perhaps since the word "engineer" carries specific training and education connotations, "craftsman" might be better. I've been widening my crafts lately to include all those used for building homes and the things in them and have found that my "engineering" talent and training carries to all of them with ease.
Maybe it would have been better to say that you've either got it or you don't, but that isn't accurate either. The inclusion of the age factor was due to my belief that the statistical distribution of those in the population who "have it" can and has been effected by changes in early education. This leads to a belief that, given an awareness of that bias, a younger person -may- be able to increase the likelihood of having it through things like a focus on experimentation (both thought and real).
And from yet another direction, less people have it now, and I don't think that is just because they haven't been attracted into the field. Certainly, there are those not in the field who would be great in it, but that has always been true. I don't think that's where the shift is at. The shift has occurred as a byproduct of a fundamental shift in lower education that has changed the work ethic and drive to meet public (as opposed to personal) muster of newer generations.
The only new thing here is the thought of shipping SFU with Windows (and presumably a lot of new glue to make it possible for a non geek to configure). SFU and Cygwin are both old but good technologies.
Technically, SFU != Cygwin. They achieve the same aim, that of exposing a Unix API so that Unix programs can be compiled to run under Windows, but are apples and oranges under the hood. SFU does it by adding an API on top of the kernel and beside the Win32 API using a little known but cool capability of windows. Cygwin does it by adding an API on top of the Win32 API. Theoretically, SFU has less in its way to hinder performance than Cygwin. I've not tested whether the potential was realized.
IMO, we're "losing" engineers because we're not making real engineers. The percentage of "good" engineers, those that really have the talent and breadth to create things that just make you go "wow", was way different in the crop of the 90s versus the crop of the 50s and 60s. Good engineers are still in high demand and are still paid very well. In fact, because they are getting more and more scarce, I'd say they are in higher demand than ever. I know good engineers with just Bachelors degrees making 100K at 40 years of age and loving their work. With Masters degrees, 120K by that point isn't out of the question. I don't think I've ever known a MBA manager that loved their work.
And by the way, if you're not a teenager and you're looking to find what you can do to become a good engineer, you probably ought to find another career. Good engineers are made by more by talent and good parents than schools. Being a good engineer is not about processes, degrees or certifications. Its more about loving to create, a good sense of the "right" way to do things that can't really be taught, loving to work, always finishing what you start, and a personal responsibility for everything you do.
How can you jump to that conclusion? There is a whole lot more to a new technology level being "here today" than a few chips being able to run at that level. Yield, reliability, availability of memory at reasonable price points and reliability, reliability of motherboard support, etc. all play a part. The famous Pentium floating point bug had rare effect except on scientific applications, but clearly that version of the Pentium wasn't even "here" when it shipped.
I currently have an ASUS based AMD64 system at home that I made the mistake of buying in the second month of availability. I can tell you from firsthand experience that it wasn't "here" when it shipped. Almost everything of any meaning has been replaced and the system still freezes solid twice a day. Only a hard reset brings it around. Pretty soon, I'll go another round of replace the processor... does it work... replace the motherboard... does it work... replace the memory... does it work. I'm betting this time I'll finally get there because someone has figured out a problem and fixed it in the latest releases of these 'stable' products.
For this to be possible, all hardware has to reach the same capability and innovation has to basically halt forever. The desktop environment that I run at home is very personal and consists of both hardware and software. Even assuming everyone had 3 screens and the same keyboard and mouse type as the ones that I use, the bandwidth isn't available to make the applications and data reasonably portable. If you went the approach of just running them all remotely, you would not meet the response requirements for the system to feel right. If you ran everything locally, every machine out there would need a minimum of a 1GB RAM, a high end processor, and high end video cards + you'd need the communications bandwidth to download GBs of data quickly. Either way you're hosed.
Also, high speed internet is by no means ubiquitous at this point. I live in the eastern US, have only modem access, and there is no promise of that changing at any time soon. And don't say satellite is an option. Its more a joke for various reasons including 400K isn't exactly high speed anymore, you can't really use that for any decent length of time without being throttled, and you can forget running applications remotely or accessing data through a VPN due to latency issues. Anybody visiting me and depending on this system would be out of luck.
A far better approach is to carry all of the personalization data and have an automatic system for invisibly backing up to multiple secure sites whenever you're "plugged in". Also, a new portable interface paradigm should be developed so that we carry our "screens", "keyboards", and "mice" with us. I envision glasses, contacts, or implants for visualization and the use of cameras, sound and other input mediums to provide data. The trusty old keyboard interface can be faked using a combination of overlaying some space near you with a virtual keyboard and using video analysis to read the keystrokes. More advanced and natural interfaces could also be developed by overlaying and merging virtual reality with the real world around us.
Years ago, I took a trip on a bus the day after the Supreme Court decided that a warrant was not needed to search public transportation. The guy in front of me was trying to pick a fight with the guy behind me. The guy in front was a DEA agent. I had seen his badge and gun before we boarded the bus. The guy behind me was fresh out of prison and had a gun also. He was bragging about it and showed it to another ex-convict that was sitting across from us that he had just met.
While at a lunch stop, I asked the DEA agent if he knew that the guy he was jawing on had a gun. His response was "Yeh, don't worry, just stay low if he pulls it. After the ruling yesterday, we've all been assigned to take trips and catch those who haven't heard yet that we can now search the bus without a warrant. I could arrest him now before he gets off at Memphis, but there's less paperwork if I just shoot him."
The agent was pretty rugged and I believed him. Don't know what happened because they ended up jawing each other into riding on to New Orleans on some sort of dare.
I'll bet there's a similar effort on right now. The wire tapping law is the only thing that has held the FBI back from email not transmitted via international satellite to date and is at least temporarily out of service. Bet they are working overtime.
What about analog signal delay chips? What about digital phone systems that temporarily store signals in RAM? And if volatile memory is considered transmission instead of storage, what if they used MRAM in the future?
Others summed it up with "stupid", but "stupid" just doesn't seem to come close.
I'll bet some ISPs are madly looking at what they have that they could market to the tabloids. Anyone out there have some Senators or Representatives as clients? Publishing all of their email might get a law out quicker than you can say "stupid".
No, he didn't clean the wall at all. At least not to me. I'm very familiar with this whole line of thought because my wife and I get into it all the time. The argument results from a fundamental difference in what different people consider "clean" which I think has to do with a fundamental difference in mental processing.
My wife would say that you're right, he cleaned the wall. I'd say you're wrong, he didn't clean it in any way. In fact, he may have made it more dirty. My wife judges "clean" by how much dirt is present or not present. I judge clean by how little the scene departs from a white noise or natural condition. The difference causes a lot of trouble for us both outdoors and indoors. For example, a mowed lawn to me is dirty, especially if the lines are visible. I prefer our grassland to grow wild and random. Natures natural variations add interest without adding dirtiness. She prefers it to be mowed and forced more towards a humanized order. An inside example is figurines and other small knick knack type items. To her, they don't effect cleanliness either way. To me, they add to the scene in an unnatural, complicated, non-white noise fashion that I interpret as dirty or cluttered. It really leaves me mentally spinning and unsettled.
I think my problem is shared by a lot of people and is very hard to express in a fashion that those who don't have it can understand and relate to. And it probably has a basis in fundamental thought processes that make it, not a preference, but a need. I think that what is going on is that I cannot not process certain types of visual information. When a lot of complex non-natural lines and shapes are in a scene, I can easily get overwhelmed and have to shut down to a degree to protect myself. Its a cumulative thing to. i.e. there is some principle of conservation in effect or some limited resource, probably chemical, that is playing a part. For example, I can take a complex scene (complex is the wrong word because a forest wouldn't bother me unless it wasn't random, but the best I can do) for a little while if I've been out on my land for the day.
Anyway, these graffiti artists are adding to the amount of information that people like me can't turn off and have to processed in a scene. So, from our point of view, whether they created lines and shapes by cleaning a surface or adding materials to a surface is irrelevant. The probelm is that they created the lines and shapes and added the complexity to the scene.
Since he brokered two deals for transferring used equipment from Kansas to Chile worth over $100K while I was sitting there, I'd guess he qualifies as a millionaire rather than the son of one. Whether or not he personally has a lot of money, he certainly moves a lot. So, he would likely be a special target for those in the business of getting ransoms. Other targets I've heard about that have been handled quietly are typically high level corporate managers visiting operations. Their corporation's dollars are the real target.
The case with Iraq in some ways is little different. At least some of the kidnappings have been done by small time players who immediately sold the victims to the bigger organizations. So, they are still driven by money and power (with a smattering of religious excuse to make them feel better), just from a different source that will pay for a wider range of targets,,, American instead of wealthy or powerful American.
I suspect some of the other responders are the types that go to the tourist areas or American sectors of the other countries and think they've been there. They might get a different reception if they leave the safe zone where people are playing nice and try to find the real country instead of its mask. From what I gathered, this guy was out in the trenches of these countries visiting the construction sites and farms that wanted the heavy equipment, not in the cities.
Anyway, I'd feel safer with the protection of soldiers in Iraq than roaming the countryside of many other countries without. And that probably has at least a little to do with me. Being someone who can't imagine why you would travel to see a city, when I imagine travelling to other countries, I don't imagine travelling to the tourist traps.
About a year ago, I purchased a grey market tractor from a man who makes his living off of international trade. He has spent much time on foreign soils wheeling and dealing heavy equipment. He has a physique like a green beret, was raised on a farm, and yet has a law degree with a specialty in international law. I recognized him as an expert in international affairs. Someone in the trenches, not the ivory towers. And I started asking him about his experiences.
Amongst the more interesting things he stated was that given the current world situation, even before the whole deal with Iraq started, he had decided to stay home for a while. He might consider a trip to Canada, but would not go to Mexico without a few of his ex-Ranger body guards and would under no circumstance venture to South America. He said that worldwide, it had become an accepted business to capture Americans and ransom them back or use them for political means. The authorities in the countries were of no help and usually on the bankroll themselves.
This was not your average everyday traveller, but a seasoned veteran with heavy duty protection.
After that discussion and listening to his accounts of how common this problem actually was, especially of friends and acquaintances he knew in the biz who had actually encountered troubles, I'm surprised that there hasn't been far more trouble in Iraq. In truth, it sounds as if the heavy protection being supplied to the contractors there is making them safer than if they were in South America. The only difference is that both the news media and the captors involved in the Iraq situation are motivated to amplify this microcosm of the overall story while they seem motivated to suppress the story of the true worldwide situation.
So, enjoy your trip to Iraq. But be very careful of Columbia, Peru, Brazil, Indonesia, etc.
I don't believe they'd seek true invisibility with this technology. Rather, cameras mounted on the soldier would sense the surrounding environment and a computer would analyze the images and create an optimized camouflage made up of shapes that cause you to blend into the environment. The soldier wouldn't be "invisible", but the need for separate uniforms for every environment would be reduced and a few critical seconds might be gained.
Also, instead of projection technology, one of the new reflective electronic paper type technologies would be needed.
Thanks for the correction.
I agree 100%. You'll see a ratcheting up in response to cable, but there is no eagerness to do what is possible. It would have cost little more to go straight to true rate ADSL at 7Mbps 5 or more years ago than going through this crippled generation. Now, we're years behind the true technology curve for no good reason and all they are doing is responding to other techs. Major infrastructure rollouts should be designed to offer services that won't be obsoleted for at least a decade, not services that are obsolete the day they roll out.
As for services requiring the speed, they will roll when the speed is there. I still think that the big problem here is that the companies in charge are afraid of a real market shaking competition. If they rolled out something in the 200Mbps range 2 years from now and did so agressively, there would finally be enough bandwidth to the home to fully the information medias. VOIP, HDTV level cable, radio, and internet access could easily all come in via the net.
It would seem that that would be exactly what these companies would want, but the reality is that they are all afraid of starting a war that they might not win.
We would have had 7Mbaud almost a decade ago if the phone companies hadn't sabotaged ADSL. They reduced the power so that they wouldn't have to do home visits, then found out after deployment that there was still too much interference and filters were necessary anyway. Thus, they knocked us from the original specification to 1.5Mbaud for no real reason.
At least that's the party line. My feeling is that they aren't ready for true competition and are doing everything they can to keep the rate low enough to delay the onset of VOIP.
I see no incentive for them to give us a generation that skips several though that is certainly the right thing to do. Putting the infrastructure in their hands has reduced it to a new tech every 6 years or so. At that rate, they should be shooting for at least a 16 times increase with every rollout. And the ADSL generation was rolled out years later and 4 times slower than what it should have been. So, at this point, we're so far off the curve it seems hopeless.
In that light, are we really doing ourselves any good by finding these vulnerabilities? How many vulnerabilities were first found by script kiddies vs. companies making money off of viruses? If the companies making millions off of antivirus software and services didn't spend those millions to find these vulnerabilities, would the exploits have ever been created?
These are the kinds of questions that it seems we need to have truly independent people take a look at and provide answers for, but the fact is that the antivirus juggernaut is now exceedingly well funded and spend much money to fund the studies and messages of fear that have created the current paradigm. Any news produced by a truly open minded study would be unlikely to see the light of day in mass media unless it is either in the favor of the antivirus businesses or easily spinnable. And if it did, everyone mass media has on their list to bring in as a virus expert would be looking to spin it into nothingness.
People seem to think that "experiments" like this are a cheap way to come to conclusions. But its only because they are stealing from the companies that they are experimenting on. I see no indication that the author paid for the time that he cost those companies. There was no indication that the letter he received from the US ISP was a generic one. A thought out letter, especially if a legal consult was made, can be very expensive. Even an hour of a senior employee's time would be significantly more than one would pay for a hosting service. This is not a no-harm no-foul situation.
Before encouraging the individual to actually perform a wider "study" and rip off more companies by criticizing the size of their "study", encourage them to be considerate and responsible and not only offer all involved ISPs payment for the unnecessary work he caused, but also state that the companies were at least offered reimbursement to encourage good citizenship of others that might attempt the same type of "low cost" study.
Slower/faster cannot be measured by clock speed alone. If it feels slower, it is slower. The reason is that there is more going on than just the movement of a window. There is a person moving that window. That person is likely thinking and may even be reading something on that window while they are moving it. If it is flashing and ugly, just the distraction from a thought train in progress may in fact "slow" that person's process down. It might even derail a thought and cause something to be missed that was vital. A concentration on speed instead of the holistic process of the common computer user (as opposed to the specialist) is part of the reason Linux is behind on the desktop.
This is exciting but not unexpected news to me. Two of my children have a flaw in one of these junk areas that causes dramatic effects for them. Their symptoms range from mild mental retardation to muscular effects throughout every muscle type. Its amazing, given the many known diseases that result from flaws in junk DNA, that its taken them this long to come close to admitting there is no such thing as junk DNA. So called "scientists" have a remarkable blindness to the facts that they can't explain that makes science anything but. Anyway, here is an excerpt from a site discussing congenital myotonic dystrophy.
... The unusual nature and marked genetic instability of the expanded CTG repeat in DM continues to be a source of fascination. However, the DM mutation is just as notable for its unusual position, because it is located in a part of the DMPK gene that does not code for protein. Seven years after the gene discovery, it remains unclear how a mutation that does not interrupt the DMPK protein coding sequence has a dominant effect with such severe consequences. Complex molecular mechanisms have been postulated at the DNA level, the RNA level, and the protein level (reviewed in reference 13). At the DNA level, the expanded CTG repeat may alter the structure of chromatin, raising the possibility of a "ripple effect" on the function of neighboring genes. At the RNA level, the expanded CUG repeat in the DMPK mRNA may bind to specific proteins and interfere with nuclear function. At the protein level, reduced levels of DMPK, a protein kinase, may interfere with signal transduction pathways. Evaluating each of these proposed mechanisms has proved to be a slow and difficult process.
I'd definitely count consulting as support. But one of the reasons they can sale consulting is because their systems are proprietary and only they know how to best utilize them. If they open the source and it truly did become popular, they would soon have a lot of very knowledgeable consulting competition.
I suspect one of the other repliers was correct. They're simply screwed and already dead. But, their death throes are interesting nonetheless. Who knows, maybe they have something up their sleeves.
As an aside, I think someone will shake up the market with a disruptive technology in the next couple of years. After that, all bets are off and any company that predicts it accurately could ride the wave back to success. My theory is that those who know will have to start making their positioning moves this year. So, any company making bold moves like this catches my eye right now. Are they a piece to the puzzle, or just a red herring?
I hit the limit on 100BaseT at home ages ago. I now have Gigabit throughout. Its really the very simple things that hit it. Try playing a DVD quality movie over your net or watching live output from a firewire video camera without actually getting up and moving it to the PC that you're on. These are exactly the kinds of things that regular consumers should be doing but probably tried once and "learned their lesson" without knowing that all they needed was to have current networking technology.
If a school wants to support live multicast video conferencing in something other than stupid little 320 line windows, you need tech like this. Students should be working with tomorrows tech, not yesterdays.