I just got a Shuttle SB75G2. And, yes, I'm glad it has the PS2 ports, because I am using it with a KVM switch. As to a floppy drive, I got one or those, too, but with built-in slots for CF, SD, and Memory Stick modules. Now that's what I call handy!
One way to accelerate the solution to a problem is just to redefine it. Here's one such bright idea, hatched by the DOE: "If we reclassify some of the waste to a lower-level category, we don't need to clean it up. We can just cover it with grout and leave it." Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington State) has a lengthy discussion of this here. Sen. Cantwell's efforts to short circuit this nonsense may have paid off, as this subsequent statement seems to indicate.
My all-time favorite quick-turn PCB prototyping house is AP Circuits in Calgary. Their P1 service is very inexpensive and fast (2-day turn with overnight shipping). You don't get soldermask or silkscreen with that, but for proof-of-concept -- even with surface mount parts -- you don't need it. What really sets them apart from other proto houses is their realistic policy regarding multiple designs or multiple boards on one panel (hint: they don't have one). They understand that what they're selling is a commodity service, i.e. drilling and etching -- not circuit boards. Try combining multiple boards or multiple designs in a single job at most other proto houses, and their Panelization Police will smack you down for it, and force you to pay extra.
For quick-turn plastic models from my 3D CAD drawings, I've used XPress3D. They broker the services of numerous prototyping houses, and their website is drop-dead simple to use. Just upload your file, and almost instantly you will see a rotating animation of your creation and quotes from several of their suppliers. Select the prototyping method and supplier you want to use, enter your credit card info, and in a couple days you have your prototype. It's the slickest, most well-thought-out web service I've seen in a long time.
Great symphonic programming masterworks will always be scored in high-level languages. But there are those of us minimalists who thrive on doing as much as we can with as little as possible. Writing a tightly-orchestrated fugue for an eight-bit microcontroller in assembly language is an art form I shall never grow weary of practicing. With a 2K program space and maybe 128 bytes of RAM, every single note must contribute to that ephemeral interplay between space- and time-efficiencies. Those of you who do this for a living will know what I'm talking about. To those just entering the field, I hope you seize whatever opportunities you can to learn assempbly language -- especially if it's for a low-level controller. You may become hooked for life!
This country has a legitimate interest in owning and regulating radio frequency spectrum. Privatizing it and selling it off to the highest bidders would be like selling our national parks to private industry. Consider this: frequency is but one way to carve up this limited resource. And such partitioning is based on analog electronic thinking, using passive filter methods dating back to the 20's. The dawn of digital radio techniques, including spread spectrum, CDMA, and ultrawideband, makes manifest how old-fashioned an idea frequency allocation is. If we carved up and sold off spectrum based on frequency allocations, we'd be denying access to these new technologies forever.
The browser release may be only part of the story. Netscape has also started advertising their own dialup internet service. Here's the website. This may be nothing more than a clever way to rebrand AOL, a service mark that's fallen on hard times, and compete with the likes of NetZero.
Though I'm no regulatory expert in the matter, I've seen numerous unlicensed devices operating at 433 MHz. As long as they adhere to Part 15 of the FCC rules, they're likely okay.
Having lived in Washington State now for nearly 30 years, I can remember when the red delicious apple lived up to its name. But that all changed as more and more orchards were planted, each aiming for that deep red apple that would make the grade "Washington Extra Fancy". Unfortunately, sugar content and pressure (crunchiness) didn't enter into the grading equation, because they were not factors that could be tested for non-destructively. As a consequence, the variey evolved into a deep red but tasteless, mushy fruit whose main job was making it to the grocer's checkout.
But such shortsightedness soon comes home to roost, and now the Washington red delicious is a much maligned fruit, with more flavorful varieties on the ascendency. So did Microsoft really get anything worthwhile with this patent? Hardly. The new sub-variety's main claim to fame is that it turns red sooner. Big deal! That merely reinforces already-discredited thinking.
If you haven't got an aptitude for and a love of mathematics, I would urge you stay out of computer science. You won't succeed. The same talents and interests that bear on math also come into play in CS. They're hopelessly intertwined. Math is the foundation for computing, and the more you take, the better.
As a minimum, I would suggest:
Algebra, Analytic Geometry, & Trigonometry. Know this stuff cold. After 30 years in computing, I still use it every day.
Logic. Ditto.
Calculus up to, but not necessarily including Differential Equations.
Very helpful at times:
Linear Algebra
Probability & Statistics
Numerical Analysis
Automata Theory (offered in CS departments)
And if you're really into it:
Number Theory
Topology & Graph Theory
A good grounding in one of the "hard" sciences like Physics can also be useful. And if you've got an aptitude for music, indulge yourself! Remember, it's not just the content of these discplines that makes them valuable. Each one teaches you to think in different ways. And an agile, flexible mind will make you more valuable to your future employers.
Pons and Fleishmann's biggest deficit is that they were chemists, not physicists. Their little experiment encroached mightily on the physicists' hallowed domain, not to mention their billion-dollar funding for hot fusion. Rather than being viewed as an opportunity to discover new phenomena, cold fusion was treated as a threat. To be a physicist involved with the giant Tokamak and see these two lowly chemists with their glassware and palladium rods going to Congress for additional funding surely raised some hackles. This whole sad cold fusion affair proves once again that science is not driven by logic but by human ambition, with all its attendant territorialism and professional jealosies.
The goals of this project are either overambitious or overstated. Each of the 3D file formats in current use has its plusses and minuses, depending on what it's used for. For example, VRML works fine for dynamic 3D visualation, but I wouldn't want to fabricate anything from it. Likewise, STL is optimized for stereolithography, but IGES is de regeur for final manufacturing. A single, universal format would have to include a lot more data than any one single application could ever need.
Perhaps the best approach is a pseudo file format with plug in codecs, like Microsoft uses for its video playback.
If dust buildup on the solar panels is such a potential problem, why didn't NASA design wipers for them? Just make sure you use 'em before there's no power to run the wiper motors. 'Seems like a simple solution to me.
I've had my best ideas while running. Maybe more oxygen gets to the brain, I dunno. I just have to remember to write them down before the post-run brew, however.
So how cold can these things make their interiors? The article mentioned being able to keep perishables for three weeks, which seems to be on par with my fridge -- if not better! But what does that translate to in degrees Fahrenheit (or, for the rest of the world, Celsius) with, say, a dry 100-degree F ambient?
With China's ascendency and increased competition from them for scarce and expensive oil, travel will be out of reach to all but the richest few. SUVs will be converted into fish smokers and jumbo jets into low-income housing.
When determining whether a technology is "tamed", you have to ask two questions:
How likely is it to make a mistake with dire consequences?
How dire can those consequences be?
Given that a nuclear screwup can cost thousands of lives and that its calamitous effects can last 10,000 years or more, to consider the technology "tamed", it damn well better be idiot-proof. Chernobyl stands as stark testimony that it is not.
This is the most profound and disturbing story I've ever seen here. It underscores, where words alone are hopelessly inadequate, the depraved hubris in thinking we've "tamed the atom". My kudos to the editors for choosing to post it!
Slashdot Mirror
They're not exactly the hottest name in cellphones right now.
I just got a Shuttle SB75G2. And, yes, I'm glad it has the PS2 ports, because I am using it with a KVM switch. As to a floppy drive, I got one or those, too, but with built-in slots for CF, SD, and Memory Stick modules. Now that's what I call handy!
One way to accelerate the solution to a problem is just to redefine it. Here's one such bright idea, hatched by the DOE: "If we reclassify some of the waste to a lower-level category, we don't need to clean it up. We can just cover it with grout and leave it." Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington State) has a lengthy discussion of this here. Sen. Cantwell's efforts to short circuit this nonsense may have paid off, as this subsequent statement seems to indicate.
I Google-whacked 'quantum-computing Clear-Channel' and already got 63 hits.
My all-time favorite quick-turn PCB prototyping house is AP Circuits in Calgary. Their P1 service is very inexpensive and fast (2-day turn with overnight shipping). You don't get soldermask or silkscreen with that, but for proof-of-concept -- even with surface mount parts -- you don't need it. What really sets them apart from other proto houses is their realistic policy regarding multiple designs or multiple boards on one panel (hint: they don't have one). They understand that what they're selling is a commodity service, i.e. drilling and etching -- not circuit boards. Try combining multiple boards or multiple designs in a single job at most other proto houses, and their Panelization Police will smack you down for it, and force you to pay extra.
For quick-turn plastic models from my 3D CAD drawings, I've used XPress3D. They broker the services of numerous prototyping houses, and their website is drop-dead simple to use. Just upload your file, and almost instantly you will see a rotating animation of your creation and quotes from several of their suppliers. Select the prototyping method and supplier you want to use, enter your credit card info, and in a couple days you have your prototype. It's the slickest, most well-thought-out web service I've seen in a long time.
It's still a valuable tool for system monitoring.
Great symphonic programming masterworks will always be scored in high-level languages. But there are those of us minimalists who thrive on doing as much as we can with as little as possible. Writing a tightly-orchestrated fugue for an eight-bit microcontroller in assembly language is an art form I shall never grow weary of practicing. With a 2K program space and maybe 128 bytes of RAM, every single note must contribute to that ephemeral interplay between space- and time-efficiencies. Those of you who do this for a living will know what I'm talking about. To those just entering the field, I hope you seize whatever opportunities you can to learn assempbly language -- especially if it's for a low-level controller. You may become hooked for life!
This country has a legitimate interest in owning and regulating radio frequency spectrum. Privatizing it and selling it off to the highest bidders would be like selling our national parks to private industry. Consider this: frequency is but one way to carve up this limited resource. And such partitioning is based on analog electronic thinking, using passive filter methods dating back to the 20's. The dawn of digital radio techniques, including spread spectrum, CDMA, and ultrawideband, makes manifest how old-fashioned an idea frequency allocation is. If we carved up and sold off spectrum based on frequency allocations, we'd be denying access to these new technologies forever.
...too bad you had to waste it on I-5. If you have the chance to do it again, try Route 1 and US 101. They're much more scenic!
The browser release may be only part of the story. Netscape has also started advertising their own dialup internet service. Here's the website. This may be nothing more than a clever way to rebrand AOL, a service mark that's fallen on hard times, and compete with the likes of NetZero.
Though I'm no regulatory expert in the matter, I've seen numerous unlicensed devices operating at 433 MHz. As long as they adhere to Part 15 of the FCC rules, they're likely okay.
But such shortsightedness soon comes home to roost, and now the Washington red delicious is a much maligned fruit, with more flavorful varieties on the ascendency. So did Microsoft really get anything worthwhile with this patent? Hardly. The new sub-variety's main claim to fame is that it turns red sooner. Big deal! That merely reinforces already-discredited thinking.
As a minimum, I would suggest:
- Algebra, Analytic Geometry, & Trigonometry. Know this stuff cold. After 30 years in computing, I still use it every day.
- Logic. Ditto.
- Calculus up to, but not necessarily including Differential Equations.
Very helpful at times:- Linear Algebra
- Probability & Statistics
- Numerical Analysis
- Automata Theory (offered in CS departments)
And if you're really into it:- Number Theory
- Topology & Graph Theory
A good grounding in one of the "hard" sciences like Physics can also be useful. And if you've got an aptitude for music, indulge yourself! Remember, it's not just the content of these discplines that makes them valuable. Each one teaches you to think in different ways. And an agile, flexible mind will make you more valuable to your future employers.Go for an education, not just training!
Oh. At fist glance, I thought that "lies" was being used as a noun and that this was another SCO story. Never mind.
Pons and Fleishmann's biggest deficit is that they were chemists, not physicists. Their little experiment encroached mightily on the physicists' hallowed domain, not to mention their billion-dollar funding for hot fusion. Rather than being viewed as an opportunity to discover new phenomena, cold fusion was treated as a threat. To be a physicist involved with the giant Tokamak and see these two lowly chemists with their glassware and palladium rods going to Congress for additional funding surely raised some hackles. This whole sad cold fusion affair proves once again that science is not driven by logic but by human ambition, with all its attendant territorialism and professional jealosies.
I mean, there's just something about them that reminds me of Microsoft Word and what it's done to my documents.
Perhaps the best approach is a pseudo file format with plug in codecs, like Microsoft uses for its video playback.
If dust buildup on the solar panels is such a potential problem, why didn't NASA design wipers for them? Just make sure you use 'em before there's no power to run the wiper motors. 'Seems like a simple solution to me.
If five labels get together to jack up prices, isn't that illegal collusion under anti-trust law? 'Seems we've been down this road before...
I've had my best ideas while running. Maybe more oxygen gets to the brain, I dunno. I just have to remember to write them down before the post-run brew, however.
So how cold can these things make their interiors? The article mentioned being able to keep perishables for three weeks, which seems to be on par with my fridge -- if not better! But what does that translate to in degrees Fahrenheit (or, for the rest of the world, Celsius) with, say, a dry 100-degree F ambient?
With China's ascendency and increased competition from them for scarce and expensive oil, travel will be out of reach to all but the richest few. SUVs will be converted into fish smokers and jumbo jets into low-income housing.
- How likely is it to make a mistake with dire consequences?
- How dire can those consequences be?
Given that a nuclear screwup can cost thousands of lives and that its calamitous effects can last 10,000 years or more, to consider the technology "tamed", it damn well better be idiot-proof. Chernobyl stands as stark testimony that it is not.This is the most profound and disturbing story I've ever seen here. It underscores, where words alone are hopelessly inadequate, the depraved hubris in thinking we've "tamed the atom". My kudos to the editors for choosing to post it!