My first job after college was in the gaming industry. It has NOT been a black mark on my record, in fact, quite the opposite, it led to my next three jobs and was a factor in the fourth and fifth because another programmer from the same company was also contracting there at the time.
What it did do, though, was set the start of a pattern for me that I've been unable to escape: 1 to 2 year positions at small companies contracting. I suspect that if you're going to work for Bally Midway or some other such big slot machine company, that wouldn't be a problem- but table gaming software even 10 years after the.com I first worked for is still very much in it's infancy, we're not about to replace dealers with robots and just about tech you put into the pit is going to be somewhat hackable or vulnerable to everything from card counting to spilled alcoholic drinks they insist on comping the players with to keep them playing, so it's kind of a tough business to get into. I'm glad I escaped.
Having said that- in this economy a RCG can't pick and choose- you MUST take the first thing that comes along- so go ahead and go for it. Vegas may be the suicide capitol of the US, but it isn't the worst place you could end up living.
At the start of the course, maybe. But the teacher's job is to help the kids learn. If most students still have no clue at the end of the course, the teacher has failed.
There is also the point of age appropriate instruction. The subject was when beginning electronics should be taught- the GGP said 10th grade, the GP said 5th or 6th grade. I'm making the point that the concepts involved would NOT be developmentally appropriate for a 5th or 6th grader, unless the kid is a 1 in 10 level genius. Even the best teacher in the world can't teach an idiot.
Of course, you could really scare both the left wing and the right wing by having the students build a *working* model of the Ark of the Covenant and hook it up to a HERF gun. Should give you a range of about 40 feet, at only 3 Farads.....
Given that bit of geek narcissism, I think the really hard part for you will be remembering that the majority of any given population has, by definition, IQ scores less than 110.
Anyway, it is for me- and yes, by 5th grade I had built my first crystal AM set, though no soldering iron- I had the spring kit on cardboard circuit diagram from Radio Shack....but that is by far NOT what you can expect from 21st century public school students for the most part. Oh, you'll get one or two kids in every class who understand what you're talking about, but the majority will have no clue.
Well, I expect I'll use recycled materials to do it; my main cost will be the wall plates themselves. Cat5e is getting pretty cheap now that everybody's "upgrading" to 1000BaseT Ethernet- just wait until a building near you is ripping out cable and offer to take it away.
I use weekends to catch up on my sleep, save for a couple of trips out, such as church or the kid's soccer game, but neither of those last 5 hours.
Even then, I'm usually in a vehicle which contains a 12V-to-USB adapter, and for the stranger weekend trips, I'm using the GPS capabilities of the phone (G1 built in for my wife's case, bluetooth to an external GPS unit in mine) for navigation.
Not quite ideal- as the other person who replied reminded me, I've run into a few computers where the motherboard can't handle it due to being below spec on the power provided to the USB ports- but a wallwart with a USB plug on it solves that trick, and one day I'm going to wire a low-voltage system into my house using USB ports.
The only thing in this I disagree with (my Wing is an HTC device as well) is this statement:
Another disadvantage of USB charging versus charging with wall chargers of the likes of my phone is that my charger, I'm told, knows when my phone's charged and eases back the juice so I don't overcharge my battery. USB may not be so smart.
Not sure about the blackberry or iphone, but in HTC devices, both Windows Mobile and Android, this is actually controlled from the operating system itself- and should shut off charging regardless of source (when the light on your phone goes from orange to green, on most HTC devices, it's no longer drawing power constantly from the Mini USB charging port). If you'll notice, you actually need enough electricity to boot up before you can charge your phone- which is why it's vitally important to never let your battery get below 5% charge. You *can* charge your phone without the OS appearing to load- it has a secondary boot that detects energy coming in the USB port and only loads the charging portion of the OS- but that charging portion is there in memory, and controls the charge.
Specifically (and this seems to be true on my TMobile Wing (Windows Mobile), my sister-in-law's blackberry, my aunt's iPhone, and my wife's G1) misbehaving apps seem to be the biggest battery draw: those that fail to turn off resources when they are done with them.
It's amazing how many times I've pulled my phone out of my pocket only to find Wifi or Edge turned on- and the battery below 50%.
Simple- use a USB charger...when I'm at my desk, my phone is plugged into a USB port. For the desks in sensitive areas when I'm not allowed to do that, a powered hub with the data not plugged into anything charges all my devices just fine.
Charge at my desk, and when I'm sleeping, and my smartphone's 5 hour battery life is never a problem.
It WAS hard to deal with even that level of scrutiny; but I had to admit, being accountable for my progress (and the rest of the team being accountable for theirs, it was a rather large project) helped greatly.
Agreed. The best project manager I ever had, had weekly meetings in which you were assigned lines in Microsoft Project- had to give an estimate when assigned- and then were asked to give percentage done for anything currently in progress, and reasons for missed deadlines.
And that's it. She didn't bother to understand technical details, didn't bother to try to tell you how to do your job, didn't micromanage anything at all, could care less when you were at work unless you missed that meeting.
Too bad it was a government job, and I was utterly unsuited to the rest of the management structure.
The day we traded the guru individualist programmer doing arcane tweaks inspired by the architecture of the machine, for the team in India writing on spec using no memory or speed optimization whatsoever.
Well, that's kind of the entire point of the debate, isn't it?
*Some* doctors think that a vegetative state is more like a stroke- killing a portion of the brain, so you need to retrain what is left to bring the person back.
*Other* doctors think it's more like brain death or a coma- and no conditioning is possible.
This article is more proof of the first, denying the second.
This study was done as a collaborative effort between the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), the University of Cambridge (UK) and the Institute of Cognitive Neurology (Argentina). By using classical Pavlonian conditioning, the researchers played a tone immediately prior to blowing air into a patient's eye. After some time training, the patients would start to blink when the tone played but before the air puff to the eye.
Where in the description of the experiment involved do you find any mention of fMRI data?
In fact, I think you could mimic this experiment with a tuning fork and a turkey baster.
I see crocodiles as a subspecies of dinosaur- given when they evolved as a definition of "dinosaur"- during the mid Triassic, much earlier than the Cretaceous era. Thus they are an example of a non-avian dinosaur species that survived the Cretaceous -Tertiary extinction event.
The Archosaur family, having evolved during the Triassic period, are considered dinosaurs, and half of them are land based without feathers. Trilobites, not so much- they're more related to scorpions and other insects than lizards.
Well, to be explicit, I'm a Cascadian Culturalist. And a Catholic Culturalist. In that I see in those two meta cultures something beyond normal humanity.
But that doesn't excuse the way Northern Europeans have done colonialism- over and over and over.....
What about the horseshoe crab? Aren't there fossil examples of that from the Paleozoic Era, along with other trilobites? And what about the crocodilian arm of the Archosaur family, of which there are several hundred individual species alive today?
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My first job after college was in the gaming industry. It has NOT been a black mark on my record, in fact, quite the opposite, it led to my next three jobs and was a factor in the fourth and fifth because another programmer from the same company was also contracting there at the time.
What it did do, though, was set the start of a pattern for me that I've been unable to escape: 1 to 2 year positions at small companies contracting. I suspect that if you're going to work for Bally Midway or some other such big slot machine company, that wouldn't be a problem- but table gaming software even 10 years after the .com I first worked for is still very much in it's infancy, we're not about to replace dealers with robots and just about tech you put into the pit is going to be somewhat hackable or vulnerable to everything from card counting to spilled alcoholic drinks they insist on comping the players with to keep them playing, so it's kind of a tough business to get into. I'm glad I escaped.
Having said that- in this economy a RCG can't pick and choose- you MUST take the first thing that comes along- so go ahead and go for it. Vegas may be the suicide capitol of the US, but it isn't the worst place you could end up living.
At the start of the course, maybe. But the teacher's job is to help the kids learn. If most students still have no clue at the end of the course, the teacher has failed.
There is also the point of age appropriate instruction. The subject was when beginning electronics should be taught- the GGP said 10th grade, the GP said 5th or 6th grade. I'm making the point that the concepts involved would NOT be developmentally appropriate for a 5th or 6th grader, unless the kid is a 1 in 10 level genius. Even the best teacher in the world can't teach an idiot.
Of course, you could really scare both the left wing and the right wing by having the students build a *working* model of the Ark of the Covenant and hook it up to a HERF gun. Should give you a range of about 40 feet, at only 3 Farads.....
Given that bit of geek narcissism, I think the really hard part for you will be remembering that the majority of any given population has, by definition, IQ scores less than 110.
Anyway, it is for me- and yes, by 5th grade I had built my first crystal AM set, though no soldering iron- I had the spring kit on cardboard circuit diagram from Radio Shack....but that is by far NOT what you can expect from 21st century public school students for the most part. Oh, you'll get one or two kids in every class who understand what you're talking about, but the majority will have no clue.
2nd vote on this one- it's an easy experiment requiring only two garbage cans and a loop of copper tubing.
Well, I expect I'll use recycled materials to do it; my main cost will be the wall plates themselves. Cat5e is getting pretty cheap now that everybody's "upgrading" to 1000BaseT Ethernet- just wait until a building near you is ripping out cable and offer to take it away.
I use weekends to catch up on my sleep, save for a couple of trips out, such as church or the kid's soccer game, but neither of those last 5 hours.
Even then, I'm usually in a vehicle which contains a 12V-to-USB adapter, and for the stranger weekend trips, I'm using the GPS capabilities of the phone (G1 built in for my wife's case, bluetooth to an external GPS unit in mine) for navigation.
Not quite ideal- as the other person who replied reminded me, I've run into a few computers where the motherboard can't handle it due to being below spec on the power provided to the USB ports- but a wallwart with a USB plug on it solves that trick, and one day I'm going to wire a low-voltage system into my house using USB ports.
The only thing in this I disagree with (my Wing is an HTC device as well) is this statement:
Another disadvantage of USB charging versus charging with wall chargers of the likes of my phone is that my charger, I'm told, knows when my phone's charged and eases back the juice so I don't overcharge my battery. USB may not be so smart.
Not sure about the blackberry or iphone, but in HTC devices, both Windows Mobile and Android, this is actually controlled from the operating system itself- and should shut off charging regardless of source (when the light on your phone goes from orange to green, on most HTC devices, it's no longer drawing power constantly from the Mini USB charging port). If you'll notice, you actually need enough electricity to boot up before you can charge your phone- which is why it's vitally important to never let your battery get below 5% charge. You *can* charge your phone without the OS appearing to load- it has a secondary boot that detects energy coming in the USB port and only loads the charging portion of the OS- but that charging portion is there in memory, and controls the charge.
This little device from Thinkgeek gets around that problem- a spare battery that charges just about anything with the right dongle:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/917b/
Specifically (and this seems to be true on my TMobile Wing (Windows Mobile), my sister-in-law's blackberry, my aunt's iPhone, and my wife's G1) misbehaving apps seem to be the biggest battery draw: those that fail to turn off resources when they are done with them.
It's amazing how many times I've pulled my phone out of my pocket only to find Wifi or Edge turned on- and the battery below 50%.
Simple- use a USB charger...when I'm at my desk, my phone is plugged into a USB port. For the desks in sensitive areas when I'm not allowed to do that, a powered hub with the data not plugged into anything charges all my devices just fine.
Charge at my desk, and when I'm sleeping, and my smartphone's 5 hour battery life is never a problem.
It WAS hard to deal with even that level of scrutiny; but I had to admit, being accountable for my progress (and the rest of the team being accountable for theirs, it was a rather large project) helped greatly.
I know of a couple who are looking to automate a hot dog stand....just to get back into assembly language...
Agreed. The best project manager I ever had, had weekly meetings in which you were assigned lines in Microsoft Project- had to give an estimate when assigned- and then were asked to give percentage done for anything currently in progress, and reasons for missed deadlines.
And that's it. She didn't bother to understand technical details, didn't bother to try to tell you how to do your job, didn't micromanage anything at all, could care less when you were at work unless you missed that meeting.
Too bad it was a government job, and I was utterly unsuited to the rest of the management structure.
The day we traded the guru individualist programmer doing arcane tweaks inspired by the architecture of the machine, for the team in India writing on spec using no memory or speed optimization whatsoever.
A Person's a Person, no Matter How Small.
-Dr. E. Horton.
Well, that's kind of the entire point of the debate, isn't it?
*Some* doctors think that a vegetative state is more like a stroke- killing a portion of the brain, so you need to retrain what is left to bring the person back.
*Other* doctors think it's more like brain death or a coma- and no conditioning is possible.
This article is more proof of the first, denying the second.
FTFA:
Where in the description of the experiment involved do you find any mention of fMRI data?
In fact, I think you could mimic this experiment with a tuning fork and a turkey baster.
I see crocodiles as a subspecies of dinosaur- given when they evolved as a definition of "dinosaur"- during the mid Triassic, much earlier than the Cretaceous era. Thus they are an example of a non-avian dinosaur species that survived the Cretaceous -Tertiary extinction event.
I'd think caffeine would be a little more available to middle school kids- and do the same thing.
Doesn't New York pay out more in taxes than it receives?
I'd bloody well hope so, Wall Street always takes in more than it gives out.
The Archosaur family, having evolved during the Triassic period, are considered dinosaurs, and half of them are land based without feathers. Trilobites, not so much- they're more related to scorpions and other insects than lizards.
Well, to be explicit, I'm a Cascadian Culturalist. And a Catholic Culturalist. In that I see in those two meta cultures something beyond normal humanity.
But that doesn't excuse the way Northern Europeans have done colonialism- over and over and over .....
What about the horseshoe crab? Aren't there fossil examples of that from the Paleozoic Era, along with other trilobites? And what about the crocodilian arm of the Archosaur family, of which there are several hundred individual species alive today?