There were no PC's in the 70s if you mean IBM (introduced in 1981) or any clone of which we have the children of today. We had some great games on mainframes though. They were all text based and even some were multi-user. The geeks were nerds then and could be found in the engineering depts at universities staying up late at night basking in the eerie glow of a ancient monochrome CRT monitor or the annoying noise of a paper fed TTY terminal. Those were the days.
Now I can get CD quality lousy programming. At least with satellite I am not stranded in the programming desert that I find in broadcast radio here in Sacramento
Embedded systems gurus are primarily ECE types. They are engineers that know programming. The math knowledge and emphasis will depend primarily on your background. There are a lot of so-called programmers out there that come from a variety of background and consequently have varying exposures to mathematics. You even tend to find programmers with MIS backgrounds who have never taken a calculus course.
It will depend really on what you call yourself. I am an engineer and I have been programming for almost 25 years however my background is definitly skewed towards scientific programming. You can even see it in the sequence of programming languages that I learned over my career:
I don't call myself a programmer, but an engineer who programs. This is because you will notice there are some importand tools missing from the above list. Things such as PERL which we know that every real programmer would have in their toolbox.
The property right is more like a lease on an apartment. You can use it and furnish it, but you can't just go and paint the walls bright red if the apartment owners say renters can't paint the walls
hmmm... might want to stick with windows. Two things inconsistent with Linux hacking (1. No free time and 2. a family). Unless of course you are living in their basement.
Go get the latest Slackware distribution. Install -> tinker around with XF86Config for an afternoon and an evening and then you won't be a so much of a newbie anymore. It's the only way to get your feet wet and dirty
"That observation may have implications beyond the virtual world. Research has shown that the network of human sexual partners seems to be scale-free, too. In other words, some people have all the luck, while others have none."
This person calls himself a scientist. It's not luck. He obviously overlooks the power of a good pick-up line
I guess I could quote something old and tired like the people get the government they deserve and it very well my be true; however, there is a cold reality to this current topic. Any other government would have done the same thing (Russian or the rest of the world). Politicians are politicians and people are people. They don't vary much from one geographical region to the next as much as popular belief would have you think. Ideal is basically just a word in the dictionary (and was a toy maker for a while) and a concept that rarely comes close to ever being realized. Expectations of something different will get you dissapointed everytime.
In those days it was more like being a prostitute than a politician. Most of us did work in the defense industry. Accepting the paycheck was not activism but I guess if you want to get bleeding edge technical about it, then it was prostitution by consent. Hey, you gotta eat. Also most of us were just there for the technology. I guess it was living in a state of denial about end use. My job was strictly in basic research and seemed so far from the end use that it wasn't too hard to sleep at night. I guess the business of holding a clearance should have been a dead giveaway huh
What a geek is today is very different from what a geek was 20 years ago. Geeks of old (I guess we were called nerds back then) focused strictly on technology and science and stayed as far away from politics of any kind as you could possible get. Geeks of today seem to love the political scene and enjoy engaging in the fray. This is a big distinction from the aboriginal geek (or geek derived from the nerd). I say stick with the science and engineering. Life is too short to get caught up in politics.
NASA has had an active role in technology utilization and commercialization for the private sector for a long long time. This kind of thing is not new except for the shiny new center in Pasadena. The NASA Spinoff Magazine describes the process and successfully transferred technologies.
Additionally, the NASA Tech Briefs are published monthly for the purpose of announcing new technology developed by NASA or its contractors that is available for commercialization.
This may be an option for you if you hold an advanced degree in the technology area in which you were working. I have an engineering degree and worked as a practicing engineer for quite a few years. I got tired and burned out and decided to teach. It sure is a lot more rewarding and less stressful. The pay is less but that is the way of the world and if you didn't buy a house that you couldn't afford and several sports cars during the dot.com boom then it may be an option for you.
1.) A lot will depend on your background. If you don't have a degree and are looking for another tech job then you will meet with a lot of resistance right now and probably forever more.
2.) If you have a non-tech degree and happened upon a tech position and are looking for another well then see # 1 above.
3.) If you have a technology degree (not an engineering or computer science degree, i.e., you never took a calculus course) then strongly consider a non-tech profession. Things will be rough going getting back into tech now if not forever more.
4.) If you have an engineering or computer science degree then you worked pretty hard and you should stick it out. You will eventually get back in the game.
I have been doing this for some time to improve my health. I first tried to laugh on a rigid schedule such as laughing on the hour or at specified times of the day. This was far too forced and just unnatural. I found that it was more beneficial to select a naturally occurring function as a signal to laugh that would be performed several times a day but without having to follow a schedule. Therefore I laugh every time I use the bathroom. This seems far more natural and satisfies my laugh quota for the day. My co-workers and family find nothing unusual in this and just think that I see something funny or that I am engaged in some humorous activity.
My suggestion is to contact someone at The Smithsonian. You might be surprised that someone there might be more than willing to offer suggestions and perhaps even some help. These people are academics and researcher and just love to talk about their work.
It sounds like you have a great project ahead of you in a very nice setting. Enjoy it !
This is an interesting use of the term "supercomputer". Traditionally this has been reserved for a machine with tremendous number crunching ability (a CPU(s) characteristic). Here the super reference relates to data rates. Kewl...
If your application has primarily a commercial focus then EAR restrictions dictate export control. If you were doing something very scientific like electromagnetic scattering codes (like I was) then ITAR will be the controlling broader restriction. The idea behind these export controls is basically to prevent rapid proliferation of codes that could be used by a hostile government. No one even pretends to think that software won't make its way to every stretch of the globe. What you are trying to protect is technology or technology-use lead-time. Even the best kept secrets find their way to the so-called wrong hands eventually. It's more a matter of delaying the process as long as possible.
There is a description of the differences between ITAR and EAR in the following link (note:it is a Powerpoint presentation) --> link
Slashdot Mirror
Raiford -- Hacking Linux since 1993
It will depend really on what you call yourself. I am an engineer and I have been programming for almost 25 years however my background is definitly skewed towards scientific programming. You can even see it in the sequence of programming languages that I learned over my career:
BASIC->FORTRAN->ASSEMBLER->PASCAL->C->LISP->XLISP- >C++->JAVA
I don't call myself a programmer, but an engineer who programs. This is because you will notice there are some importand tools missing from the above list. Things such as PERL which we know that every real programmer would have in their toolbox.
This person calls himself a scientist. It's not luck. He obviously overlooks the power of a good pick-up line
take a look
never should have stopped using gopher...
Additionally, the NASA Tech Briefs are published monthly for the purpose of announcing new technology developed by NASA or its contractors that is available for commercialization.
1.) A lot will depend on your background. If you don't have a degree and are looking for another tech job then you will meet with a lot of resistance right now and probably forever more.
2.) If you have a non-tech degree and happened upon a tech position and are looking for another well then see # 1 above.
3.) If you have a technology degree (not an engineering or computer science degree, i.e., you never took a calculus course) then strongly consider a non-tech profession. Things will be rough going getting back into tech now if not forever more.
4.) If you have an engineering or computer science degree then you worked pretty hard and you should stick it out. You will eventually get back in the game.
It sounds like you have a great project ahead of you in a very nice setting. Enjoy it !
There is a description of the differences between ITAR and EAR in the following link (note:it is a Powerpoint presentation) --> link