you make a good point. for some reason, even in our "enlightened" equal-rights-for-the-sexes age, we still treat the girls like half-retarded children. case in point, that boy in Georgia that was prosecuted for getting a blowjob from a teenage girl. iirc, she was about 15, old enough to know what she was doing. if underage sex is illegal, then she should have been prosecuted, too. but yet, girls never get prosecuted. if they get pregnant, we reward them.
now, i'm not saying we should treat sex between young people as a criminal act, but... we can't keep treating females as feeble-minded victims. if anything, their social intelligence is much higher than the boys, and we have every reason to expect them to be accountable for their actions.
and speaking of ascii art, i remember (yes, actually remember) when i was about 4 years old (which would place this clear back in 1973 or so), my dad brought home a printout from work. it was a big long computer printout on fanfold paper of Christmas-y stuff like Santa's sleigh and his reindeer. if there were any pron, well he didn't bring those home, but the art has been out there for a long time.
sorry, offtopic, but this has got me reminiscing for some reason.
hidden directories are fun. way back when, like early 90s in college, i had this cushy evening shift job where i filed and did computer backups. lots of 'down' time. so when i wasn't using the gym equipment, i was playing games on the phone receptionist's PC. so i'd create a hidden directory to store them in, and use non-printing extended ascii codes for the directory names. and back then, that was plenty sufficient to get away with running a few unauthorized programs. i guess today, if a kid wanted to be really sneaky, he'd just make another partition and dual-boot into linux or somthing. then, even if his folks were to somehow get wise, they'd have a whole 'nother layer of obscurity (and even security) to deal with. i don't think it's even possible to narrow the gap. unless your parents are geeks themselves, they just don't have the same amount of free time plus hormonal motivation to stay one step ahead of you.
this would only set a precedent for even more intrusive sensing. like say chemical sensors. then we might as well jump the gun and add firearm shot detectors. maybe the shot detection could even be integrated into the existing mic to save money. but we promise not to listen to anything more interesting than loud bangs. yeah, this is a great idea, for me to poop on.
exactly. nor does the IW article say anything about WARFARE, it says EXTORTION. and as we all know, extortion happens all the damn time. maybe it was even an inside job, in which case, local laws will apply just fine thanks.
well, that's what computers are for, sifting haystacks. and surely they're interested in far more than just rare diseases. most all of us end up taking a handful of pills by the time we're 65. cardiovascular disease, cancers, and dementia are where the money's at.
they really ought to teach basic genetics in schools.
you neglect the fact that each person has two sets of genes, one inherited from their mother, the other from their father. that brings the total number of genes to 2000 sets. and it's also likely they're interested in many more than ten conditions. so you should think more in terms of a probability density function of conditions found versus their rarity.
what about your own personal data ? is the "information wants to be free" movement at odds with people that want privacy and security (see other active topic) ?
most of the threats to your privacy don't even come from government, they come from businesses. and the businesses are just going to lobby Congress to limit their liability in case they do lose your data. because accountability is expensive. you don't think AT&T is ever going to have to account for anything, do you? of course not, they've got people. hell, even credit reporting agencies have no accountability. Congress decided that it would be your responsibility to make sure the data is accurate. you don't really expect security if there is no penalty for failure, do you?
Yeah, but he was forced to take some hormones or something after being accused of being gay, maybe that caused the imbalance that led to his suicide.
Terrible loss anyway...
it's entirely possible. testosterone, despite all the bad press about steroids lately (and no, i'm not a juicer), has a very positive effect on a man's sense of well-being. when testosterone drops, men become depressed. and estrogen reduces endogenous testosterone production by increasing negative feedback at the hypothalamus and pituitary. which, btw, is another reason not to get fat, it increases your estrogen and decreases your testosterone.
no, your typical appliance can't tell if your hot and neutral are swapped. electrically, it just doesn't matter. mostly, it's important for items like lamps with screw-in bulbs. for safety sake, the screw part of the socket should be wired to neutral (the wire whose voltage is closest to ground, or 0 Volts), and the hot (120 Volts) should be wired to the connection in the bottom of the socket. this ensures that when unscrewing a bulb, you don't accidentally touch the threaded parts of the bulb or socket and get electrocuted. and for washers, dryers, refrigerators, etc., it is important that the metal casing be provided a secure path to ground, to protect the user if an unexpected short from hot to case occurs in the unit. and even here, if hot and neutral are swapped, it should still operate fine, because it's not a DC source, it's AC.
now, in a computer, what i would hope happens is that they use a transformer that is electrically isolated from the low-voltage side. assuming the transformer is doing its job, and not shorted internally, the power source won't matter. it will work just as well wired backwards as forwards, because it's AC. and now, you're left with low voltage (or whatever max voltage is used in switching power supplies these days) AC converted to low voltage DC on the non-isolated side. but it will perform the same with either lines swapped, or earth missing completely, or both. it just doesn't matter.
no, but IAA electrical engineer. it shouldn't matter if ground is missing, 110V vs 220V, or if hot and neutral are swapped. if you are getting shocked from your laptop, it's either bad design, a manufacturing defect, or some other part failure. these people are probably feeling a static charge that has built up on the metal case parts. if there's mains voltage on the case, then you should be able to measure it with a meter.
if there were an actual short to the plate, i'd look somewhere non-obvious. like maybe an inverter used to step up voltage for the display. (and no, i do not have any specific knowledge of the voltages used on modern displays)
several years ago, i had a job where we installed batteries in telecom shelters for Qwest, AT&T, etc. it was lead-acid batteries at the time. some of the guys were working on production, but even on hourly pay, there's still a lot of pressure to do the work in a timely manner. and invariably, the things get busted up. it may have happened during shipping, or during assembly. maybe the guys putting putting the connections on overtorqued them. maybe it was even a factory defect. but whoever is at fault, it inevitably happens. with lead-acid batteries, it's often pretty obvious. you get a crack in a case, and the thing leaks all over the floor. we always carried baking soda with us for this reason. maybe with a lithium battery, the defects are just not immediately evident. but from what i've heard wrt to lithium batteries on hybrid vehicles, lithium is just hard to deal with. too much energy density makes for more mishaps, i guess.
yeah, i also have a very hard time believing that the majority of the problem is kids meeting up with adults that they met online. no, it's probably still a lot like when i was in high school. there's a few guys that never seem to leave after they graduate. they don't go to college, they just kind of hang around and party for a few years. everybody depends on these guys to buy them alcohol and supply weed. and in return, they get free access to 12-year-olds mixed up with coke.
and that's just the people that aren't particularly evil. it doesn't even touch upon the issue of drunken stepdads.
well that's great, and i'm sure it will help the few students who grow up to be computer engineers and programmers. but otherwise, i think it entirely misses the point of introducing computers to children. we don't so much want them to learn how to design computers and software as we want them to learn how to use the computer as a tool in their daily lives. and they have to learn this, even the ones of lower intelligence, because computers are now ubiquitous.
despite what your own personal experience was, the point definitely is not teaching kids the nuts and bolts of computer science.
Students will get laptops with plan
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
BARNETT WRIGHT
News staff writer
Every student in grades one through eight in the Birmingham city school system will receive a laptop computer under a tentative agreement Mayor-elect Larry Langford has reached with a foundation that provides computers in developing countries, an adviser to Langford said Monday.
"Over 15,000 children will be receiving their own personal laptops," said John Katopodis, a longtime Langford friend who is negotiating with the One Laptop Per Child foundation on Langford's behalf.
"We feel that technology, and the ability to use technology effectively, is an important learning tool," Katopodis said. "We believe providing these children with the tools to catch up will give them a head start in life because technology is such an integral part of learning."
Katopodis said some details remain to be worked out. A spokeswoman for the Boston-based foundation said talks are being held this week about implementing the program.
Under the tentative agreement, the city would buy the laptops at a discount through the foundation and provide them to the city schools. They would not be the students' personal property....
i think the problem is that most people seem to be focused on this as applied to CPUs and the cooling of CPUs. it simply doesn't seem practical for that because the heat generated by CPUs is generally very high. seems to me that the best applications would be small chips that serve other functions. say you've got a chip that gets just a little too hot for its environment, dump some heat out into the printed circuit board. it could save manufacturing costs versus gluing a small heat sink to the chip.
but in a CPU that already requires external cooling, you might still have some circuitry on the chip that produces hot spots. or produces hot spots intermittently, generating heat cycling and mechanical stress in the chip. these peltier devices could alleviate that problem, improving reliability or performance. but for larger cooling problems or reclaiming waste heat, they just don't sound practical to me. efficiencies aren't that good.
I don't agree, running everything through the same box does not simplify things from an engineering POV, it makes things a lot more complicated. Robust design is redundant, distributed, and independent. All of your nuts in one basket is not. Maybe from a systems engineering POV it might make it easier to see everything that is going on, but you could just model that if you wanted. It would certainly make it easier to change your mind about some engineering decisions (or possibly inject multiple fuckups with one simple software update).
I'll bet you a beer they did it to reduce costs, both manufacturing, and maintenance (the airlines' biggest concern).
Face it: it's a global marketplace now, and if a 3rd world engineer is willing to do your job for 1/10th the cost, HE deserves that job, you don't. Period. You are NOT more important just because you were born in a rich nation. This fact is going to come as a very rude surprise to many people in the next decade.
i think you're missing out on something important, though, and that is a sense of community. for any nation to be successful, it's important that the people all have a sense of belonging to the same 'tribe'. and with any tribe, your success in life isn't simply dependent on your individual success, but the success of the tribe as a whole. i don't know about you, but the nation i live in did not become the largest economy in the world on the basis of just a few individuals, it was a group effort. and if we intend to maintain that level of success, then it's important that people have loyalty to the other members of their tribe that made their success possible.
now, a few people have had success far beyond the expectations of the average Joe. and maybe they've decided that they are now a citizen of the world and would like to move their asses and assets offshore, say to the Bahamas or Dubai. well, more power to them, and good riddance. but when it becomes time to defend yourselves from invaders, i won't be there. which, incidentally, is also the reason you want to maintain a robust engineering force domestically. you will need them one day.
now, i'm sure some libertarian out there will preach economics to me. but i must remind you that your Rand Objectivism is not simply about economics, but self-interest. and, whether you realize it or not, your self-interest is at stake here.
if you're interested in airline safety, there's a guy named "Stuck Mic" that posts a good bit on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=stuckmic
best i remember, he's either an air traffic controller(or was), and some of the problems go all the way back to the illegal controller strike back during the Reagan Administration. seems there's been an effort under way ever since to replace controllers with an automated system, with the results being that more money goes into the automation effort than actually training and paying a sufficient number of people to do the job. fwiw, i don't have a dog in this fight, just found it interesting. i'm sure there's three sides to everything. they also have a website here: http://www.stuckmic.com/
Digital stethoscopes have been around for a while, and I don't think anyone is questioning the value of being able to record heart sounds for later re-examination, training, etc. The main question is: being such a simple device (recording audio, transferring it to a computer later), why put an OS on it at all? You could do the same with a $.50, 8-bit microcontroller and a bit of C - no OS needed.
well, OK, as a former student myself that went through a sr. design project, i'll give my own perspective. one of the things you want to do on a project like this is limit the scope of the problem. on the surface, it seems like a small task, but they probably have to document everything. and defend everything. and those things alone can consume you. maybe you could implement a file system with a bit of C code on a microcontroller. but then again, that's one more thing you'd have to go research and study, design, document, and defend. and even then it still may have some bugs or quirks and you spend all your time chasing down ghosts instead of the real problem at hand: a portable computer-interfaceable audio recorder. plus, having an OS like linux offers you an incredible amount of flexibility, more options for dealing with different protocols, signal processing, things you didn't plan for, etc. and let's not forget, this is a prototype, not a production run. it doesn't make sense to put it on the most economical platform. yet. that should be another design process at a later date, once you've figured out exactly how this device is to operate.
well, they're students, so it's unlikely they have a wealth of experience to draw from and know what will work before even beginning. and (this is my assumption) it looks like the device would not normally be connected to a USB port, but be standalone. i can't see how it'd be useful as a stethoscope, otherwise. walk around, collect and tag data, and download it to a PC later for analysis.
well, basically, some script kiddies (sr. engineering design team) are hooking up a stream ripper to a pair of Bose noise-reduction headphones. so not a whole lot, really. but it mostly comes down to not reinventing the wheel.
put another way, let's say their project was to build an amplifier. in theory, they could design the whole thing with discrete components. but in reality, using an off-the-shelf op-amp in the design will yield better results than they could ever achieve.
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you make a good point. for some reason, even in our "enlightened" equal-rights-for-the-sexes age, we still treat the girls like half-retarded children. case in point, that boy in Georgia that was prosecuted for getting a blowjob from a teenage girl. iirc, she was about 15, old enough to know what she was doing. if underage sex is illegal, then she should have been prosecuted, too. but yet, girls never get prosecuted. if they get pregnant, we reward them.
now, i'm not saying we should treat sex between young people as a criminal act, but... we can't keep treating females as feeble-minded victims. if anything, their social intelligence is much higher than the boys, and we have every reason to expect them to be accountable for their actions.
and by "porn" you mean ascii art.
and speaking of ascii art, i remember (yes, actually remember) when i was about 4 years old (which would place this clear back in 1973 or so), my dad brought home a printout from work. it was a big long computer printout on fanfold paper of Christmas-y stuff like Santa's sleigh and his reindeer. if there were any pron, well he didn't bring those home, but the art has been out there for a long time.
sorry, offtopic, but this has got me reminiscing for some reason.
hidden directories are fun. way back when, like early 90s in college, i had this cushy evening shift job where i filed and did computer backups. lots of 'down' time. so when i wasn't using the gym equipment, i was playing games on the phone receptionist's PC. so i'd create a hidden directory to store them in, and use non-printing extended ascii codes for the directory names. and back then, that was plenty sufficient to get away with running a few unauthorized programs. i guess today, if a kid wanted to be really sneaky, he'd just make another partition and dual-boot into linux or somthing. then, even if his folks were to somehow get wise, they'd have a whole 'nother layer of obscurity (and even security) to deal with. i don't think it's even possible to narrow the gap. unless your parents are geeks themselves, they just don't have the same amount of free time plus hormonal motivation to stay one step ahead of you.
this would only set a precedent for even more intrusive sensing. like say chemical sensors. then we might as well jump the gun and add firearm shot detectors. maybe the shot detection could even be integrated into the existing mic to save money. but we promise not to listen to anything more interesting than loud bangs. yeah, this is a great idea, for me to poop on.
exactly. nor does the IW article say anything about WARFARE, it says EXTORTION. and as we all know, extortion happens all the damn time. maybe it was even an inside job, in which case, local laws will apply just fine thanks.
well, that's what computers are for, sifting haystacks. and surely they're interested in far more than just rare diseases. most all of us end up taking a handful of pills by the time we're 65. cardiovascular disease, cancers, and dementia are where the money's at.
they really ought to teach basic genetics in schools.
you neglect the fact that each person has two sets of genes, one inherited from their mother, the other from their father. that brings the total number of genes to 2000 sets. and it's also likely they're interested in many more than ten conditions. so you should think more in terms of a probability density function of conditions found versus their rarity.
what about your own personal data ? is the "information wants to be free" movement at odds with people that want privacy and security (see other active topic) ?
most of the threats to your privacy don't even come from government, they come from businesses. and the businesses are just going to lobby Congress to limit their liability in case they do lose your data. because accountability is expensive. you don't think AT&T is ever going to have to account for anything, do you? of course not, they've got people. hell, even credit reporting agencies have no accountability. Congress decided that it would be your responsibility to make sure the data is accurate. you don't really expect security if there is no penalty for failure, do you?
no, your typical appliance can't tell if your hot and neutral are swapped. electrically, it just doesn't matter. mostly, it's important for items like lamps with screw-in bulbs. for safety sake, the screw part of the socket should be wired to neutral (the wire whose voltage is closest to ground, or 0 Volts), and the hot (120 Volts) should be wired to the connection in the bottom of the socket. this ensures that when unscrewing a bulb, you don't accidentally touch the threaded parts of the bulb or socket and get electrocuted. and for washers, dryers, refrigerators, etc., it is important that the metal casing be provided a secure path to ground, to protect the user if an unexpected short from hot to case occurs in the unit. and even here, if hot and neutral are swapped, it should still operate fine, because it's not a DC source, it's AC.
now, in a computer, what i would hope happens is that they use a transformer that is electrically isolated from the low-voltage side. assuming the transformer is doing its job, and not shorted internally, the power source won't matter. it will work just as well wired backwards as forwards, because it's AC. and now, you're left with low voltage (or whatever max voltage is used in switching power supplies these days) AC converted to low voltage DC on the non-isolated side. but it will perform the same with either lines swapped, or earth missing completely, or both. it just doesn't matter.
no, but IAA electrical engineer. it shouldn't matter if ground is missing, 110V vs 220V, or if hot and neutral are swapped. if you are getting shocked from your laptop, it's either bad design, a manufacturing defect, or some other part failure. these people are probably feeling a static charge that has built up on the metal case parts. if there's mains voltage on the case, then you should be able to measure it with a meter.
if there were an actual short to the plate, i'd look somewhere non-obvious. like maybe an inverter used to step up voltage for the display. (and no, i do not have any specific knowledge of the voltages used on modern displays)
several years ago, i had a job where we installed batteries in telecom shelters for Qwest, AT&T, etc. it was lead-acid batteries at the time. some of the guys were working on production, but even on hourly pay, there's still a lot of pressure to do the work in a timely manner. and invariably, the things get busted up. it may have happened during shipping, or during assembly. maybe the guys putting putting the connections on overtorqued them. maybe it was even a factory defect. but whoever is at fault, it inevitably happens. with lead-acid batteries, it's often pretty obvious. you get a crack in a case, and the thing leaks all over the floor. we always carried baking soda with us for this reason. maybe with a lithium battery, the defects are just not immediately evident. but from what i've heard wrt to lithium batteries on hybrid vehicles, lithium is just hard to deal with. too much energy density makes for more mishaps, i guess.
yeah, i also have a very hard time believing that the majority of the problem is kids meeting up with adults that they met online. no, it's probably still a lot like when i was in high school. there's a few guys that never seem to leave after they graduate. they don't go to college, they just kind of hang around and party for a few years. everybody depends on these guys to buy them alcohol and supply weed. and in return, they get free access to 12-year-olds mixed up with coke.
and that's just the people that aren't particularly evil. it doesn't even touch upon the issue of drunken stepdads.
well that's great, and i'm sure it will help the few students who grow up to be computer engineers and programmers. but otherwise, i think it entirely misses the point of introducing computers to children. we don't so much want them to learn how to design computers and software as we want them to learn how to use the computer as a tool in their daily lives. and they have to learn this, even the ones of lower intelligence, because computers are now ubiquitous.
despite what your own personal experience was, the point definitely is not teaching kids the nuts and bolts of computer science.
there's some talk of doing this in Birmingham, AL.
...
http://www.al.com/birminghamnews/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1194945540247570.xml&coll=2
Students will get laptops with plan Tuesday, November 13, 2007 BARNETT WRIGHT News staff writer Every student in grades one through eight in the Birmingham city school system will receive a laptop computer under a tentative agreement Mayor-elect Larry Langford has reached with a foundation that provides computers in developing countries, an adviser to Langford said Monday. "Over 15,000 children will be receiving their own personal laptops," said John Katopodis, a longtime Langford friend who is negotiating with the One Laptop Per Child foundation on Langford's behalf. "We feel that technology, and the ability to use technology effectively, is an important learning tool," Katopodis said. "We believe providing these children with the tools to catch up will give them a head start in life because technology is such an integral part of learning." Katopodis said some details remain to be worked out. A spokeswoman for the Boston-based foundation said talks are being held this week about implementing the program. Under the tentative agreement, the city would buy the laptops at a discount through the foundation and provide them to the city schools. They would not be the students' personal property.
i think the problem is that most people seem to be focused on this as applied to CPUs and the cooling of CPUs. it simply doesn't seem practical for that because the heat generated by CPUs is generally very high. seems to me that the best applications would be small chips that serve other functions. say you've got a chip that gets just a little too hot for its environment, dump some heat out into the printed circuit board. it could save manufacturing costs versus gluing a small heat sink to the chip.
but in a CPU that already requires external cooling, you might still have some circuitry on the chip that produces hot spots. or produces hot spots intermittently, generating heat cycling and mechanical stress in the chip. these peltier devices could alleviate that problem, improving reliability or performance. but for larger cooling problems or reclaiming waste heat, they just don't sound practical to me. efficiencies aren't that good.
I don't agree, running everything through the same box does not simplify things from an engineering POV, it makes things a lot more complicated. Robust design is redundant, distributed, and independent. All of your nuts in one basket is not. Maybe from a systems engineering POV it might make it easier to see everything that is going on, but you could just model that if you wanted. It would certainly make it easier to change your mind about some engineering decisions (or possibly inject multiple fuckups with one simple software update).
I'll bet you a beer they did it to reduce costs, both manufacturing, and maintenance (the airlines' biggest concern).
it doesn't say a damn thing. if you're playing around with your own box, you're not doing forensics.
as for the forensics experts, why don't they just get licensed? seriously, how hard can it be? any bozo can be a PI.
now, a few people have had success far beyond the expectations of the average Joe. and maybe they've decided that they are now a citizen of the world and would like to move their asses and assets offshore, say to the Bahamas or Dubai. well, more power to them, and good riddance. but when it becomes time to defend yourselves from invaders, i won't be there. which, incidentally, is also the reason you want to maintain a robust engineering force domestically. you will need them one day.
now, i'm sure some libertarian out there will preach economics to me. but i must remind you that your Rand Objectivism is not simply about economics, but self-interest. and, whether you realize it or not, your self-interest is at stake here.
if you're interested in airline safety, there's a guy named "Stuck Mic" that posts a good bit on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=stuckmic best i remember, he's either an air traffic controller(or was), and some of the problems go all the way back to the illegal controller strike back during the Reagan Administration. seems there's been an effort under way ever since to replace controllers with an automated system, with the results being that more money goes into the automation effort than actually training and paying a sufficient number of people to do the job. fwiw, i don't have a dog in this fight, just found it interesting. i'm sure there's three sides to everything. they also have a website here: http://www.stuckmic.com/
well, they're students, so it's unlikely they have a wealth of experience to draw from and know what will work before even beginning. and (this is my assumption) it looks like the device would not normally be connected to a USB port, but be standalone. i can't see how it'd be useful as a stethoscope, otherwise. walk around, collect and tag data, and download it to a PC later for analysis.
well, basically, some script kiddies (sr. engineering design team) are hooking up a stream ripper to a pair of Bose noise-reduction headphones. so not a whole lot, really. but it mostly comes down to not reinventing the wheel.
put another way, let's say their project was to build an amplifier. in theory, they could design the whole thing with discrete components. but in reality, using an off-the-shelf op-amp in the design will yield better results than they could ever achieve.
it would screw the chinese egyptian pyramid souvenir manufacturers. all two of them.