Most high school students are perfectly capable of learning how electronics work and how to build robots. The courses won't necessarly prevent a well-rounded education.
Building a robot is a great way to stimulate interest in math, science & mechanics, which applies to a wide variety of careers-- from high-level software architects to an auto mechanic.
In addition, if you limit this sort of education to the 400-level college courses, you exclude the majority of students who will never go to college, enroll in a EE program, or make it the 400-level college courses.
The submitter says he has a bunch of links, but this is for the rest of you:)
American Science & Surplus has a ton of cheap electronic components for sale. No breadboards, but they do sell LEDs, some resistors, motors, etc. They even have a whole "Robot Parts" selection, with items such as Windshield Wiper motors, etc. They also have a great (and entertaining) paper catalog, and their inventory changes very often. Lasers, high quality optics, weather balloons-- all sorts of fun, geeky stuff.
I haven't built any robots myself, but I have been ordering random bits and pieces for various projects for more then 5 years.
Why do so many new devices still use RS-232 (or a varient) instead of using USB? Does USB require too much processing power verses a RS-232 connection?
In particular, we see many 'legacy free' desktop computers coming out now which only have USB connections. However, many embedded computing devices still have a serial port and no USB. It seems that a single tiny USB port would be more space efficient and versatile then a serial port.
The spherical magnets have many fun applications. You can do roll them across the floor and do tricks, if you put a bunch magnets on the ground 6" from the other magnets, they slowly wobble towards each other and eventually join up with each other, which increases the strength of the magnetic field and sucks in more magnets and more and more-- nice magnetic effect.
My friend can get his magnets spin for 5 minutes straight. I am not sure how he does it, but it has something to do with levitation and low friction.
On the practical side, the round magnets are a great way to find nails in the floorboards.
In addition, the spherical magnets pinch less then the sharp square ones:)
Contact KJMagnetics via email. They have been very responsive to my queries, and might ship to Canada for an extra fee.
Although, maybe there is some shipping restriction on these things since they might demagnitize things... I accidently erased a bunch of my BART cards last week. The magnets were a 6+ inches from the cards.
Plasmonics does not sound like a perfectly cromulent word. Are you sure that the authors haven't embiggened the word a bit a bit? I mean, it's not unpossible...
The only thing I'd like to see in a package manager is to allow non-root users to install software
Check out the Flash demo. They actually demonstrate that capability-- the application installs packages under $HOME/.local/lib $HOME/.local/share, etc. I dislike cluttering $HOME with $HOME/lib, $HOME/share, $HOME/man, etc. -- installing these pieces under a dot directory to keep them hidden & organized is a great idea.
But I am also curious about allowing groups to install software under/usr/local or/usr/department .
There was a Netscape 5.0 project, but it was scrapped. You can probably still get the source code somewhere.
If I remember right, Netscape 5.0 used most of the UI-code base for Netscape 4.x, but used the new 'Gecko' rendering engine.
I remember soon-to-be Mozilla Developers at Linuxworld and some Bay Area LUGs talking about how 5.0 was so horrible, they basically decided to rewrite the browser from scratch, using a few components from Netscape.
What, was GM supposed to hold a gun to [x]% of buyers' heads and force people to buy them?
Oh the irony of your statement. The EV-1's were never for sale (Only lease) in the first place, which was not at all related to the State of California's requirement.
$179 is the miniumum price for a RHEL licence. The official server versions is $349. That is too expensive for my vision of a home-server, but might work for you. Of course, there are free alternatives which are 100% compatable with RHEL, such as CentOS.
Also, Fedora has a very active user community. If you want to experiment with different packages, there are often RPMs which are better supported by the community then the regular source code. For RHEL, you usually need to build from the sourcecode, which just means that it may be harder to get support from your peers.
There are many comments about how RAID isn't a backup scheme. While that's mostly true, I've known some shops that actually do use a RAID1 array as a backup scheme.
Not sure of all the details, but it works like this:
1. Setup 2 disks with RAID1 mirroring. Designate one as the backup disk. 2. Copy files to the mirror 3. Once a week, unmount the backup disk, take it out and insert a new disk. 4. Turn on the machine. When the array comes back online, the disks sync.
I'm still trying to figure out if this is a wise idea, but it's low-cost and effective. 1 Device and 4 decent-quality 200GB disks will cost you what-- $1200? How much do 200GB tape solutions cost now?
I'm curious how this performs in comparison to traditional twisted-pair cable.
The wavy lines in the back of the photo look like "twisted pair" in two dimensions, but it seems like that would only be effective against EMF coming from either side, whereas traditional twisted-pair is effective against EMF coming from all directions.
But maybe it's good enough-- not everyone needs 100% throughput, especially in a home environment.
Right, it's never simple. I'm just being persnickety because I'm reading "someone's" undocumented, poorly-indented code.
In one-liners and class signatures, I think it's fine to use spaces instead of tabs. In signatures, you're really just lining up characters with characters.
But once you get to the body, you better use a Tab:)
But really, if a team just settles on one standard and modifies the tab key appropriately, I'm happy.
The only issue have is when developers sometimes setup their IDEs to use different tabs sizes (we say they're 2 spaces, but people forget sometimes) and when some IDEs reformat a whole class on you, which makes the CVS diffs difficult to apply to different branches for fast-tracked bug fixes.
This is a pet-peeve of mine. A 'tab' should never be 2/4/8 space characters, it should be the Tab character.
If people use spaces instead of Tab characters, then this means that *everyone* must use the same number of spaces and indent in the same style or the code is unreadable. BAD! It violates the KISS principal!
If you want Tabs which are 2 characters wide, then set the tab-width DISPLAY in the IDE or editor and use the tab key. That way, every developer can adjust the tabs to their liking. Simple, no silly CVS whitespace-merging issues and it works in most situations.
Any decent IDE or text editor should let you adjust how tabs are displayed.
Personally, I'm a 'set tabstop=4' kind of guy myself. You want a tab to be 1 or 18 characters wide? FINE! Go for it! But just use tabs... *sigh*
For new projects, you should seriously consider Subversion.
SVN is simple to use like CVS, but fixes many of CVS's fundamental shortcomings-- directories can be under version control, which means that re-organizing the directory structure isn't the anathema that it is in CVS. So many simple fixes which really affect the KISS process...
You can easily make the SVN repository available over Apache. This seems much more robust then CVS + RSH/SSH, and you can use the huge range of Apache modules for your SVN repository.
The version numbering scheme is a little hard to get used to-- the 'Version Number' is actually the version of the repository, not the version of the file itself. Not sure if I like that...
Look at people who you consider successful. How many of them chose to remain at a boring job for a long time?
Now, look at your current workplace. Can you see yourself being there in 3-5 years?
What do you want to do when you are 40? What are your long term goals? Will your current job help you to reach your goals?
However, staying in your current job will buy you time, if you can put up with the boredom for a short time. If you stay employyed, you can be more relaxed in your job search, and not be forced to take a new job that you will hate. Obviously, it will be harder to find time to look for a job if you stay employeed, but you can try to make time.
Plus, many potential employeers will take you more seriously when you already have a job.
If you ARE stuck at a job, then just make sure you have a good life outside of work. If you hate your job, and you hate your non-work life; it is time to reevaluate your situation.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it really is "Shut Do".
When you hit the button, Mr. Do runs across the screen, kills a few penguins with his bouncy ball, and shuts down the machine.
Most high school students are perfectly capable of learning how electronics work and how to build robots. The courses won't necessarly prevent a well-rounded education.
Building a robot is a great way to stimulate interest in math, science & mechanics, which applies to a wide variety of careers-- from high-level software architects to an auto mechanic.
In addition, if you limit this sort of education to the 400-level college courses, you exclude the majority of students who will never go to college, enroll in a EE program, or make it the 400-level college courses.
The submitter says he has a bunch of links, but this is for the rest of you :)
American Science & Surplus has a ton of cheap electronic components for sale. No breadboards, but they do sell LEDs, some resistors, motors, etc. They even have a whole "Robot Parts" selection, with items such as Windshield Wiper motors, etc. They also have a great (and entertaining) paper catalog, and their inventory changes very often. Lasers, high quality optics, weather balloons-- all sorts of fun, geeky stuff.
I haven't built any robots myself, but I have been ordering random bits and pieces for various projects for more then 5 years.
This brings up another question.
Why do so many new devices still use RS-232 (or a varient) instead of using USB? Does USB require too much processing power verses a RS-232 connection?
In particular, we see many 'legacy free' desktop computers coming out now which only have USB connections. However, many embedded computing devices still have a serial port and no USB. It seems that a single tiny USB port would be more space efficient and versatile then a serial port.
Well, if we extend DST by 2 months to save 10,000 barrels of oil per day, then if we extend it by another 5 months we'll save even more, right?
But really, I'm just being selfish. My 9 month old baby still has not recovered from this sudden 1 hour change in his sleep cycle...
Ah, it depends on your application.
:)
The spherical magnets have many fun applications. You can do roll them across the floor and do tricks, if you put a bunch magnets on the ground 6" from the other magnets, they slowly wobble towards each other and eventually join up with each other, which increases the strength of the magnetic field and sucks in more magnets and more and more-- nice magnetic effect.
My friend can get his magnets spin for 5 minutes straight. I am not sure how he does it, but it has something to do with levitation and low friction.
On the practical side, the round magnets are a great way to find nails in the floorboards.
In addition, the spherical magnets pinch less then the sharp square ones
Contact KJMagnetics via email. They have been very responsive to my queries, and might ship to Canada for an extra fee.
Although, maybe there is some shipping restriction on these things since they might demagnitize things... I accidently erased a bunch of my BART cards last week. The magnets were a 6+ inches from the cards.
This is more evil.
:)
Let someone play with the magnets. The magnets are so strong, that most people will pinch their fingers within a few minutes
Being good open-source citizen, you will immediately donate that $100 gift to your favorite OSS project! Thank you! Or Maybe just a few bucks.
Or, you can buy a bunch of little stuff, like:
Super-strong neodymium magnets. Magnets sound boring, but these things are really, really strong. Get the spherical ones.
There's a whole host of cheap, unusual geeky projects at American Science & Surplus.
Get a cheap computer. Buy a Used Xbox, and install Xbox Linux on it.
Color changing lights. The color change is nice and smooth. Popular with the kids.
Plasmonics does not sound like a perfectly cromulent word. Are you sure that the authors haven't embiggened the word a bit a bit? I mean, it's not unpossible...
The only thing I'd like to see in a package manager is to allow non-root users to install software
/usr/local or /usr/department .
Check out the Flash demo. They actually demonstrate that capability-- the application installs packages under $HOME/.local/lib $HOME/.local/share, etc. I dislike cluttering $HOME with $HOME/lib, $HOME/share, $HOME/man, etc. -- installing these pieces under a dot directory to keep them hidden & organized is a great idea.
But I am also curious about allowing groups to install software under
I used to know guy named Gimli-- honest! His parents were real big Tolkien fans in the 60s.
Among several careers, he worked as an EMT & a security guard in a big city-- he enjoyed the rough scene. Big guy...
'Malice's Turning Undead toolkit'.
... Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?"
I'm suprised they didn't take you up on the offer. Tools like that would be invaluable in both HR and Sales.
HR Person: "Hello, we received your resume. Could you come in for an interview?
Job Applicant: "Mnnnnnnngggghhhh!"
featuring Mensa questions on the MSN homepage, and Mensa will put MSN's search on their new homepage.
Whatever, that's fine with me.
It's just really too bad they keep spelling it "Msna".
There was a Netscape 5.0 project, but it was scrapped. You can probably still get the source code somewhere.
If I remember right, Netscape 5.0 used most of the UI-code base for Netscape 4.x, but used the new 'Gecko' rendering engine.
I remember soon-to-be Mozilla Developers at Linuxworld and some Bay Area LUGs talking about how 5.0 was so horrible, they basically decided to rewrite the browser from scratch, using a few components from Netscape.
Check out this Netscape press release from 1998: Netscape 5.0 was going to be released under a 'GPL-like' license.
Somewhere in there, Mozilla was born. My memory is fuzzy... so people with more knowledge feel free to correct me.
What, was GM supposed to hold a gun to [x]% of buyers' heads and force people to buy them?
Oh the irony of your statement. The EV-1's were never for sale (Only lease) in the first place, which was not at all related to the State of California's requirement.
$179 is the miniumum price for a RHEL licence. The official server versions is $349. That is too expensive for my vision of a home-server, but might work for you. Of course, there are free alternatives which are 100% compatable with RHEL, such as CentOS.
Also, Fedora has a very active user community. If you want to experiment with different packages, there are often RPMs which are better supported by the community then the regular source code. For RHEL, you usually need to build from the sourcecode, which just means that it may be harder to get support from your peers.
Can anyone shed some (flicker-free) light on this?"
Simple-- YOU are a robot, THEY are not.
There are many comments about how RAID isn't a backup scheme. While that's mostly true, I've known some shops that actually do use a RAID1 array as a backup scheme.
Not sure of all the details, but it works like this:
1. Setup 2 disks with RAID1 mirroring. Designate one as the backup disk.
2. Copy files to the mirror
3. Once a week, unmount the backup disk, take it out and insert a new disk.
4. Turn on the machine. When the array comes back online, the disks sync.
I'm still trying to figure out if this is a wise idea, but it's low-cost and effective. 1 Device and 4 decent-quality 200GB disks will cost you what-- $1200? How much do 200GB tape solutions cost now?
Anyone hear of some similar solutions?
I'm curious how this performs in comparison to traditional twisted-pair cable.
The wavy lines in the back of the photo look like "twisted pair" in two dimensions, but it seems like that would only be effective against EMF coming from either side, whereas traditional twisted-pair is effective against EMF coming from all directions.
But maybe it's good enough-- not everyone needs 100% throughput, especially in a home environment.
Right, it's never simple. I'm just being persnickety because I'm reading "someone's" undocumented, poorly-indented code.
:)
In one-liners and class signatures, I think it's fine to use spaces instead of tabs. In signatures, you're really just lining up characters with characters.
But once you get to the body, you better use a Tab
But really, if a team just settles on one standard and modifies the tab key appropriately, I'm happy.
The only issue have is when developers sometimes setup their IDEs to use different tabs sizes (we say they're 2 spaces, but people forget sometimes) and when some IDEs reformat a whole class on you, which makes the CVS diffs difficult to apply to different branches for fast-tracked bug fixes.
... *sigh*
This is a pet-peeve of mine. A 'tab' should never be 2/4/8 space characters, it should be the Tab character.
If people use spaces instead of Tab characters, then this means that *everyone* must use the same number of spaces and indent in the same style or the code is unreadable. BAD! It violates the KISS principal!
If you want Tabs which are 2 characters wide, then set the tab-width DISPLAY in the IDE or editor and use the tab key. That way, every developer can adjust the tabs to their liking. Simple, no silly CVS whitespace-merging issues and it works in most situations.
Any decent IDE or text editor should let you adjust how tabs are displayed.
Personally, I'm a 'set tabstop=4' kind of guy myself. You want a tab to be 1 or 18 characters wide? FINE! Go for it! But just use tabs
[/end rant]
For new projects, you should seriously consider Subversion.
...
SVN is simple to use like CVS, but fixes many of CVS's fundamental shortcomings-- directories can be under version control, which means that re-organizing the directory structure isn't the anathema that it is in CVS. So many simple fixes which really affect the KISS process...
You can easily make the SVN repository available over Apache. This seems much more robust then CVS + RSH/SSH, and you can use the huge range of Apache modules for your SVN repository.
The version numbering scheme is a little hard to get used to-- the 'Version Number' is actually the version of the repository, not the version of the file itself. Not sure if I like that
Life is too short to work at a job that you hate.
Look at people who you consider successful. How many of them chose to remain at a boring job for a long time?
Now, look at your current workplace. Can you see yourself being there in 3-5 years?
What do you want to do when you are 40? What are your long term goals? Will your current job help you to reach your goals?
However, staying in your current job will buy you time, if you can put up with the boredom for a short time. If you stay employyed, you can be more relaxed in your job search, and not be forced to take a new job that you will hate. Obviously, it will be harder to find time to look for a job if you stay employeed, but you can try to make time.
Plus, many potential employeers will take you more seriously when you already have a job.
If you ARE stuck at a job, then just make sure you have a good life outside of work. If you hate your job, and you hate your non-work life; it is time to reevaluate your situation.
Awww....
That's cute, as in beer.