A couple friends of mine recently hired on with a growing government contract IT firm out here. The HR department didn't even really care about the resume, but rather the fact that two of them already had clearances. According to them, they work with some utter idiots, but they're qualified to see almost anything, so they keep them around.
I agree with WrongMonkey - following too close. It's your responsibility to determine the signal indication before entering the intersection, even if that means you have to wait until the semi is half-through.
Do I actually do that? Not usually. But that doesn't mean that sliding through a red arrow practically under the semi's rear bumper is particularly the right way to do it, either.
Um, realistically unless there's somebody sniffing along the way while *all* the email on your machine was transferred, or they break in and steal your ISP's backup tapes, it is reasonably private if your computer is secure. I have the last 14 years of email on my machine, and 10 of those were running through my own mail server as a recipient. I guarantee you it's private enough for my purposes, much more so than if all 14 years were stored on some public service that could be compromised. Most of those emails live only on my machine and on some assorted backup tapes I have - thus, private.
As for me, I don't like web apps. They're too damned slow, and I prefer my data to be on my machine. Yes, I have a GMail account. It was novel and interesting at first, and it's great for casual use, but I seldom use it. I get *way* too much email on a given day to handle without some pretty tricky filter setups, and I keep huge back archives of mailing lists and such to search through for past facts and tidbits I may need.
Outlook? Bah, it'll never hold a candle to Eudora. When I need remote access, I just use pine. It's worked for me for some 12 years, and I'm guessing it'll work for a lot more. Here's to hoping Thunderbird eventually becomes tolerable, since Eudora 7.1 isn't going to last forever.
Umm... most complex hardware *is* buggy. That's why datasheets often have errata issued with them, listing the different revs of silicon and what doesn't work...
It's also why modern BIOSes and OSes apply microcode updates to the processor - to fix "hardware" while it's in the machine. They literally rewrite the microcode that runs the processor on boot to correct certain types of issues.
I spent days in a previous job chasing around problems with one particular batch of small microcontrollers. Turns out, I eventually noticed that all of the misbehaving ones were rev B silicon, which eventually lead me down the path to the errata sheet. Turns out, our code, which worked perfectly on every other rev, had fallen into one of the rare pitfalls of that revision.
FPGAs are a horrid idea for mass production. They're usually either slower or utter power hogs. If it's a low-production device, or something that needs regular field updates, then great, but for mass-produced bits, it just won't work out well. I just can't see putting an "FPGA area" into regular ASICs due to the massive amounts of stuff you'd need to wire around in order to divert lines away from the usual areas of silicon over to the FPGA area. Plus there's all that wasted silicon if the FPGA area was never used, which would decrease yields and raise costs.
Tune in to next week's installment of "Adventures in Utah" - you never know what those wacky Mormons are going to do next! Will they fight off evil by taking away its beer, or will the sight of a boobie in Manti bring about the apocalypse? Find out in next week's hilarious episode!
Difficult at best, impossible in 99.999% of cases. For the most part, in modern high speed digital design, all of the bus path lengths are close to the same for reasons of propagation delay. Also, you don't really want to induce current flow, you want to induce a DC voltage at exactly the right moment. As you'll remember, one of the components of induction is frequency, and you'd need to synchronize your induced peaks with exactly when the device was sampling.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would be a herculean effort to even provide the most basic of anomalies reliably. Plus, well, most of your massive effort could be defeated by the $4 metal case.:)
Um, a large part of that black plume is just plain ol' carbon particulate. Not tremendously good to breathe in because particulate matter irritates the lungs, but not that bad in the overall scheme of things. As for your sulfur assertions - well, wrong. Diesel fuel is being transitioned to ultra-low sulfur (>15ppm) as of last year. The newest EPA Tier 2 gasoline standards set a flat cap for gas at 150ppm. New diesels will kick the crap out of gas vehicles for SOx reductions... Now I will admit, diesels do generate other weird exhaust by-products not created by gas engines, but as for your black plume and sulfur emissions, that's bunk.
When you consider the higher thermal efficiency of a diesel engine, the higher energy density of the fuel to start with, the fact it will run on dang near anything combustible, and the now the ultra low sulfur emissions, they really are just a better design.
Why is a fairy tale -- and an expurgated, badly translated fairy tale at that -- so much more compelling than the tools and concepts that allow you to take control of your own life and environment? Simple (at least IMHO) - people don't want that kind of power or responsibility. It's so much less mentally exhausting to just say "God runs my life" than to try to face up to the fact that you're all alone, and that your decisions influence what happens to you. It's the same lazy-ass phenomenon that's lead to our litigious society (because it's *never* my fault I'm a dumbfuck) and the desire for a nanny-state government (because government knows best, and you should only be able to use your liberties to make "good" choices). Facing up to reality often sucks - people claim they want full control and full knowledge, but I think when it comes down to it, most of them would rather live in blissful ignorance because it's easier.
As a former Westinghouse STS finalist (back in 1995, before it became the Intel STS), you get to keep all rights. The cash is just the prize for being top in the nation. It literally is just prize money, or at least was back then. I wouldn't think things have changed that much, as some of the research I was competing with had applications far more valuable than $100k. There's also a lot of other perks - academic offers and scholarships to all sorts of interesting institutions, trips, resume padding, etc.
if you are american, and you pay one more dollar in tax, you are complicit in the murders of millions of people. do you understand this? I did everything in my power (and my accountant's power) to not pay any taxes this year. Too bad I'm still too poor to pull it off.
I'm complicit with a lot of crap, so just add that to the list. (Millions? Um yeah, maybe you and reality should get together sometime... That'd be great, okay?)
Start on FPGAs? You've got to be kidding... They're expensive, nasty-ass complicated to program if you don't even understand the basics, and don't really let you experience any of the "basics" of electronics (basic RC/LC circuits, discrete transisotrs, op-amps, etc.) Once you grasp the fundamental analog stuff, then move on to logic gates, etc., and then from there microcontrollers. Once you're at that level, then go on towards greater integration and more modern tools, like FPGAs.
Once you do master the basics, I'd strongly recommend moving on to either Microchip PICs or Atmel AVR parts as your first foray into microcontrollers. Both architectures are relatively simple and the parts are cheap when you screw up (and you will... I do this kind of stuff for a living, and I still smoke 'em every now and then.)
I'd strongly recommend not starting with the manual and the projects in it, but with Forrest Mims' "Getting Started in Electronics". It won't be a perfect match for whatever you buy, but it's a great way to get used to a lot of the parts and a get a feel for what they do. Try out some of the basic stuff on your new parts and a lot of stuff will quickly start to make sense. Particularly bipolar transistors and op-amps - two very fundamental things that are sometimes hard for people to grasp. Once you get through that, pick up "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. Great book for non-electrical engineers to help learn electronics.
Well said. I stopped buying anything with a rebate years ago in protest. If you want to give me a good deal, then give me a good deal and I'll buy from you. I'm even willing to pay a bit more if I can buy it locally, because I can have it *now*. However, if you make me wait for weeks on a rebate, I'd just as rather buy from the mighty internet and save the hassle.
Why should this even be protected? Shouldn't we just encourage people to use stronger encryption that isn't as easily circumvented (in effect, why are we legislating that the use of "weak" encryption is okay)? Because that's not the fantasy that most folks want to believe. Most people think that security by obscurity is pretty good, and beyond that, they'll go to basic crypto. (I admit that SBO works in some cases in the physical world, but in the electronic world it doesn't stand a chance.) They want to believe that anything encrypted is protected.
Take a look at the retarded laws covering scanners and cellphones/cordless telephones. We could just tell people that these things are insecure and let the market handle it, or legislate the implementation of real security, or we could tell all the law-abiding folks to stop monitoring those frequencies and force equipment manufacturers to degrade performance across the spectrum to filter these particular frequencies. Meanwhile, anybody who really wants to can still come up with a receiver that will work in those bands... The public *wanted to believe* that their phone conversations were secure, so they made listening illegal rather than actually trying to make them secure (or letting the free market do it as a "feature"). Legislate to the fantasy, that's what we do today, because it makes people feel better even if they're worse off...
The obvious answer is lossless (FLAC, etc.) so that I can store it perfectly and then recompress it into whatever I need. However, that takes a lot of bandwidth to distribute, so I'd have to say my next choice would be high bitrate MP3s (256 or 320kbps) because they work *everywhere*. (I can't tell the difference, so I stick to 256kbps myself. I'd like to see a statistically valid double blind test that shows any difference in perception.)
I admire the Ogg Vorbis project for creating a free codec that may not be patent-encumbered, but my cars and my iPod don't play ogg files. Considering that I think of my cars as my personal listening studio, well, they're first on the importance list when it comes to compatibility. MP3 for me, and it will be for the foreseeable future.
About a year and a half ago, I threatened to strike if I didn't get a Blackberry. Having a Blackberry gives me much much more freedom and I don't understand why some people are so against them. Depends on your work environment, management expectations, etc. I personally detest the things, but that's largely because if you carry one around here, you're expected to respond within seconds whenever anything twitches in your inbox. It completely destroys the value of email when used in that manner - email's best benefit is as an asynchronous queuing tool for thoughts and questions. It's worse than a damn cell phone (which I don't carry, either, except when I'm doing on-call production support). The most horrid thing is when you're trying to interact with one of the addicts, because their attention is switching a few times a second and they only at best catch half of what you say. They adamantly claim that they can do both, but the reality is far different from their perceptions. If you're discussing fluff, that's one thing, but if you're trying to explain complex problems and solutions, then eventually you just want to punch the addict or throw the crackberry out the window.
I simply told them I'd quit before I carried one, and that ended that discussion. I almost always have my laptop in front of me at meetings anyway (because I need to it address technical questions without carrying a mountain of paper), so I can always flip over to email if the meeting goes somewhere boring and irrelevant.
Once I go home, though, that's it. I don't check work mail, I don't check voicemail, and I don't respond to any phone calls that come up with work's caller ID. (That is unless I'm on production support that week, but that's a special scenario where I do my best to stay on top of everything.) It helps I like to spend my weekends in places that are very electromagnetically quiet and no cell signal ever reaches. They don't know if I'm out hiking in the mountains or just ignoring them, and I prefer it that way.
We're not special. (Any primate zoologist could tell you your claim that "homo sapiens is the first creature to evolve on this planet that, instead of adapting its needs to its environment, adapts its environment to homo sapiens needs" is ludicrous.) Laughable. All of it. Laughable? Name me another creature that literally reforms the planet in front of it, adapting to each unique situation and providing unique solutions derived using abstract thought about how the universe works (physics, chemistry, mathemathics to model these systems, etc.) We can adapt to virtually any environment because we are a step beyond - space, deserts, the arctic, the depths of the oceans, etc. We model, we design, we build, we go. Sometimes we screw up, in which case it's back to the modeling stage. Name another creature that understands the universe adequately to consciously change the very nature of matter (nuclear fission/fusion). Face it, we're smart enough to eventually engineer damn near anything we want. Whether we're wise enough to use that power in non-detrimental ways, well...
We're special in the same way every other creature is special - they're unique classes with unique traits. The point here being that we're the brightest and most versatile of the bunch.
Symbian: the Platform Nokia Secretly Hates I'm pretty sure anybody who has ever had to work with that godforsaken OS (myself included) hates it openly...
Sure what you're doing with your circuit board is probably nothing, but thanks to the media/govt./Hollywood, you need to adapt to the times. Like hell I do. I'm often carrying around prototypes, and yes, I understand the suspicious look thing. It's those of us electrical engineers that have made this wonderful, highly-automated, electrical world possible. If these halfwit inbred ingrates can't deal with us going about our regular work improving all of their lives without going "OMFG BOMB/TERRORIST!" then I think we'll just have to shut off the power except in our own little corner of the world. Right now it's isolated to those of us who do odd things in public, but wait - tomorrow reading a book about electrical circuit theory will be suspicious as well. Goddamn retards.
Not been a good day at work dealing with the technically-incompetent-but-ever-unappreciative. It seems it would have been very simple for the investigating retard in the ATHF case above to simply walk up to the device, examine it, and determine that there were no hostile elements (like, say, those pesky explosives that bomb makers often like to connect to circuits). I would understand some caution if it were in a box concealing the guts, but come on, this was a completely exposed board, based on the pictures I've seen.
>Pipe bombs? Ha! in the thirth grade they taught us to make NBC weapons!
I mean sure, NBC's had some real bombs on its primetime lineup in the last few years, but I'm not sure how to effectively weaponize them. They do, on the other hand, resemble being produced by third graders. Maybe if you forced someone to watch every episode of "Friends" simultaneously, you could cause permanent mental damage, but...
Nah, the Republicans are talking and acting like Democrats, and the Democrats are talking like Republicans but still acting like Democrats. Meanwhile, those of us who prefer conservative economic policy combined with a very libertarian social view are completely out in the cold. At least before the religious nuts overran my party, us quasi-libertarian types still had a refuge there.
Now, I'm a registered Dem. Switched parties not necessarily because I agree, but because I want the modern Republican party kept in check and defeated, if possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Why? Could it be because this is Soviet Russia, where Wikipedia blocks... oh just forget it. :)
>If this has changed since 9/11 I don't know.
A couple friends of mine recently hired on with a growing government contract IT firm out here. The HR department didn't even really care about the resume, but rather the fact that two of them already had clearances. According to them, they work with some utter idiots, but they're qualified to see almost anything, so they keep them around.
C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me!
:)
At least that was my motto when it came to grades...
I agree with WrongMonkey - following too close. It's your responsibility to determine the signal indication before entering the intersection, even if that means you have to wait until the semi is half-through.
Do I actually do that? Not usually. But that doesn't mean that sliding through a red arrow practically under the semi's rear bumper is particularly the right way to do it, either.
Um, realistically unless there's somebody sniffing along the way while *all* the email on your machine was transferred, or they break in and steal your ISP's backup tapes, it is reasonably private if your computer is secure. I have the last 14 years of email on my machine, and 10 of those were running through my own mail server as a recipient. I guarantee you it's private enough for my purposes, much more so than if all 14 years were stored on some public service that could be compromised. Most of those emails live only on my machine and on some assorted backup tapes I have - thus, private.
As for me, I don't like web apps. They're too damned slow, and I prefer my data to be on my machine. Yes, I have a GMail account. It was novel and interesting at first, and it's great for casual use, but I seldom use it. I get *way* too much email on a given day to handle without some pretty tricky filter setups, and I keep huge back archives of mailing lists and such to search through for past facts and tidbits I may need.
Outlook? Bah, it'll never hold a candle to Eudora. When I need remote access, I just use pine. It's worked for me for some 12 years, and I'm guessing it'll work for a lot more. Here's to hoping Thunderbird eventually becomes tolerable, since Eudora 7.1 isn't going to last forever.
Umm... most complex hardware *is* buggy. That's why datasheets often have errata issued with them, listing the different revs of silicon and what doesn't work...
e _papers_and_tech_docs/25759.pdf
For example, here's the summary one for the Athlon 64 family (warning - pdf link):
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/whit
It's also why modern BIOSes and OSes apply microcode updates to the processor - to fix "hardware" while it's in the machine. They literally rewrite the microcode that runs the processor on boot to correct certain types of issues.
I spent days in a previous job chasing around problems with one particular batch of small microcontrollers. Turns out, I eventually noticed that all of the misbehaving ones were rev B silicon, which eventually lead me down the path to the errata sheet. Turns out, our code, which worked perfectly on every other rev, had fallen into one of the rare pitfalls of that revision.
FPGAs are a horrid idea for mass production. They're usually either slower or utter power hogs. If it's a low-production device, or something that needs regular field updates, then great, but for mass-produced bits, it just won't work out well. I just can't see putting an "FPGA area" into regular ASICs due to the massive amounts of stuff you'd need to wire around in order to divert lines away from the usual areas of silicon over to the FPGA area. Plus there's all that wasted silicon if the FPGA area was never used, which would decrease yields and raise costs.
Tune in to next week's installment of "Adventures in Utah" - you never know what those wacky Mormons are going to do next! Will they fight off evil by taking away its beer, or will the sight of a boobie in Manti bring about the apocalypse? Find out in next week's hilarious episode!
Difficult at best, impossible in 99.999% of cases. For the most part, in modern high speed digital design, all of the bus path lengths are close to the same for reasons of propagation delay. Also, you don't really want to induce current flow, you want to induce a DC voltage at exactly the right moment. As you'll remember, one of the components of induction is frequency, and you'd need to synchronize your induced peaks with exactly when the device was sampling.
:)
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would be a herculean effort to even provide the most basic of anomalies reliably. Plus, well, most of your massive effort could be defeated by the $4 metal case.
Um, a large part of that black plume is just plain ol' carbon particulate. Not tremendously good to breathe in because particulate matter irritates the lungs, but not that bad in the overall scheme of things. As for your sulfur assertions - well, wrong. Diesel fuel is being transitioned to ultra-low sulfur (>15ppm) as of last year. The newest EPA Tier 2 gasoline standards set a flat cap for gas at 150ppm. New diesels will kick the crap out of gas vehicles for SOx reductions... Now I will admit, diesels do generate other weird exhaust by-products not created by gas engines, but as for your black plume and sulfur emissions, that's bunk.
When you consider the higher thermal efficiency of a diesel engine, the higher energy density of the fuel to start with, the fact it will run on dang near anything combustible, and the now the ultra low sulfur emissions, they really are just a better design.
Earlier this week, I hated BB because they swallowed up Speakeasy. Now I hate Circuit City, so things are good with my ISP/Big Box conglomerate again.
:)
I kid, I kid... I still hate BB, and more so since Tuesday.
As a former Westinghouse STS finalist (back in 1995, before it became the Intel STS), you get to keep all rights. The cash is just the prize for being top in the nation. It literally is just prize money, or at least was back then. I wouldn't think things have changed that much, as some of the research I was competing with had applications far more valuable than $100k. There's also a lot of other perks - academic offers and scholarships to all sorts of interesting institutions, trips, resume padding, etc.
I'm complicit with a lot of crap, so just add that to the list. (Millions? Um yeah, maybe you and reality should get together sometime... That'd be great, okay?)
Start on FPGAs? You've got to be kidding... They're expensive, nasty-ass complicated to program if you don't even understand the basics, and don't really let you experience any of the "basics" of electronics (basic RC/LC circuits, discrete transisotrs, op-amps, etc.) Once you grasp the fundamental analog stuff, then move on to logic gates, etc., and then from there microcontrollers. Once you're at that level, then go on towards greater integration and more modern tools, like FPGAs.
Once you do master the basics, I'd strongly recommend moving on to either Microchip PICs or Atmel AVR parts as your first foray into microcontrollers. Both architectures are relatively simple and the parts are cheap when you screw up (and you will... I do this kind of stuff for a living, and I still smoke 'em every now and then.)
I'd strongly recommend not starting with the manual and the projects in it, but with Forrest Mims' "Getting Started in Electronics". It won't be a perfect match for whatever you buy, but it's a great way to get used to a lot of the parts and a get a feel for what they do. Try out some of the basic stuff on your new parts and a lot of stuff will quickly start to make sense. Particularly bipolar transistors and op-amps - two very fundamental things that are sometimes hard for people to grasp. Once you get through that, pick up "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. Great book for non-electrical engineers to help learn electronics.
Well said. I stopped buying anything with a rebate years ago in protest. If you want to give me a good deal, then give me a good deal and I'll buy from you. I'm even willing to pay a bit more if I can buy it locally, because I can have it *now*. However, if you make me wait for weeks on a rebate, I'd just as rather buy from the mighty internet and save the hassle.
Take a look at the retarded laws covering scanners and cellphones/cordless telephones. We could just tell people that these things are insecure and let the market handle it, or legislate the implementation of real security, or we could tell all the law-abiding folks to stop monitoring those frequencies and force equipment manufacturers to degrade performance across the spectrum to filter these particular frequencies. Meanwhile, anybody who really wants to can still come up with a receiver that will work in those bands... The public *wanted to believe* that their phone conversations were secure, so they made listening illegal rather than actually trying to make them secure (or letting the free market do it as a "feature"). Legislate to the fantasy, that's what we do today, because it makes people feel better even if they're worse off...
The obvious answer is lossless (FLAC, etc.) so that I can store it perfectly and then recompress it into whatever I need. However, that takes a lot of bandwidth to distribute, so I'd have to say my next choice would be high bitrate MP3s (256 or 320kbps) because they work *everywhere*. (I can't tell the difference, so I stick to 256kbps myself. I'd like to see a statistically valid double blind test that shows any difference in perception.)
I admire the Ogg Vorbis project for creating a free codec that may not be patent-encumbered, but my cars and my iPod don't play ogg files. Considering that I think of my cars as my personal listening studio, well, they're first on the importance list when it comes to compatibility. MP3 for me, and it will be for the foreseeable future.
I simply told them I'd quit before I carried one, and that ended that discussion. I almost always have my laptop in front of me at meetings anyway (because I need to it address technical questions without carrying a mountain of paper), so I can always flip over to email if the meeting goes somewhere boring and irrelevant.
Once I go home, though, that's it. I don't check work mail, I don't check voicemail, and I don't respond to any phone calls that come up with work's caller ID. (That is unless I'm on production support that week, but that's a special scenario where I do my best to stay on top of everything.) It helps I like to spend my weekends in places that are very electromagnetically quiet and no cell signal ever reaches. They don't know if I'm out hiking in the mountains or just ignoring them, and I prefer it that way.
We're special in the same way every other creature is special - they're unique classes with unique traits. The point here being that we're the brightest and most versatile of the bunch.
Not been a good day at work dealing with the technically-incompetent-but-ever-unappreciative. It seems it would have been very simple for the investigating retard in the ATHF case above to simply walk up to the device, examine it, and determine that there were no hostile elements (like, say, those pesky explosives that bomb makers often like to connect to circuits). I would understand some caution if it were in a box concealing the guts, but come on, this was a completely exposed board, based on the pictures I've seen.
>Pipe bombs? Ha! in the thirth grade they taught us to make NBC weapons!
I mean sure, NBC's had some real bombs on its primetime lineup in the last few years, but I'm not sure how to effectively weaponize them. They do, on the other hand, resemble being produced by third graders. Maybe if you forced someone to watch every episode of "Friends" simultaneously, you could cause permanent mental damage, but...
(Yes, of course I know what you really meant...)
I don't know - having a couple spares in the car could have come in handy at a few points in my history...
"Tom Tom, should I use protection?"
Nah, the Republicans are talking and acting like Democrats, and the Democrats are talking like Republicans but still acting like Democrats. Meanwhile, those of us who prefer conservative economic policy combined with a very libertarian social view are completely out in the cold. At least before the religious nuts overran my party, us quasi-libertarian types still had a refuge there.
Now, I'm a registered Dem. Switched parties not necessarily because I agree, but because I want the modern Republican party kept in check and defeated, if possible.