100G of video in the first year? I guess you should archive it...he can show it to his therapist when he gets older.
One way to solve the archiving problem is to do some editing (serious editing) so there's much less to store.
I noticed one of our neighbors named their WiFi station "VirusFarm".
I thought that was a clever way to discourage people from mooching their bandwidth!
Seriously, a "Surface" machine in a busy public place is going to be a smeared mess within an hour. I wonder if the MSFT people have thought of this. I can just imagine my wife: "Ewww...I'm not going to touch that..."
Pictures of thalidomide babies caused heads to roll at the FDA...
Actually, thalidomide was one of the FDA's great successes...the drug was never approved in the US; most of the birth defects happened in Europe. It's one of the reason the FDA's drug approval process is so slow relative to other countries.
Involve the reader. Instead of "the user" or "I",
say "You".
Avoid passive voice. Stay away from words like "that",
"which", "can", etc.
Keep it simple. Use the most basic language possible to get
your point across.
Most important: Words are only half the story. To do good
technical communication, you need to learn how to prepare figures,
graphs, tables and photographs. If you want to do great tech
writing, you must master basic skills in drafting, art and photography.
The perspective of the rest of the book is a bit dated (it's
pre-Internet), but the basic concepts of his writing chapter are
still just as relevant today.
It turns out you can use LED arrays as both displays and sensors. People have successfully used them for touch sensor controllers. See this blog for some experiments. The original concept came out of the NYU media lab.
The BART is the SF Bay area's excuse for a subway / mass transit. To ride, you buy a ticket at a kiosk full of $x worth of "BARTness". When you get board the train, you stick your ticket into a turnstile, and it hands it back to you. When you reach your desgination and get off the train, you again stick your ticket into a turnstile. It deducts the cost of your trip (based on how far you traveled) and gives your ticket back. You keep using the ticket until $x is used up.
BUT: Suppose you walk toward the train, put your ticket in the entrance turnstile. You pick up your ticket, then you change your mind and leave, putting your ticket in the exit turnstile to get out. The cosmic BART megamachine will charge you the maximum possible fare, even though you haven't gone anywhere. For a good reason. What's the reason?
Somebody (Gordon Bell?) predicted that in the future the computer will be "just a bump in the cable". Looks like we're there. Can anybody find the original quote?
I use the basic Unix mail format, essentially plain text series of messages. Eudora does fine with it; and most anything else can read/import it. I have email going back to the 80's in this format.
The one time I had to convert was when I was working for a company that used "Quickmail" on the Mac. I wound up reverse engineering their format and hacking up a program to convert it to plain text.
Just looking at the trailer, Depp is -way- to young to play Wonka. The whole point of the story is Wonka is getting on in years and is looking for an honest young person to help take over. Gene Wilder was the only redeeming feature of the first C&tCF...
In terms of coursework and knowledge, I don't think there's a huge difference, at least at the undergrad level. But a large part of what gets you a good job when you leave school is who your friends and professors are. Said friends and professors are likely to have much(!) better industry connections at a prestegious school than they will at a lessor known one. This particularly important if you want to get a job in another state.
What's really cool these days is the amount of free software available
for DIY electronics. I'm not talking about free as
in GNU, but free as in beer. Want to design your own
digital chips? Get your free WebPack
FPGA design software. Want to do your own circuit boards?
Get your free CAD
software... Want to program your embedded product? Most chip
companies have free development tools.
There's also PCB123.com, which offers more advanced software (auto router, schematic capture, etc.). Haven't done a firm price compare on them yet. Those prices for boards/w solder mask & silk screen look great, but the software has a ways to go.
People who want to do circuit boards should check out PCBPOOL running with the Target CAD software. Target is much more advanced than the "toy" programs offered by ExpressPCB or Pad2pad (e.g.: auto-router, schematic capture, full component database, etc).
See here for more info.
Slashdot Mirror
100G of video in the first year? I guess you should archive it...he can show it to his therapist when he gets older. One way to solve the archiving problem is to do some editing (serious editing) so there's much less to store.
It was quite the smoking crater last time around. Maybe technology has improved since then...
I noticed one of our neighbors named their WiFi station "VirusFarm". I thought that was a clever way to discourage people from mooching their bandwidth!
It's easy to do with an old Linux box
Seriously, a "Surface" machine in a busy public place is going to be a smeared mess within an hour. I wonder if the MSFT people have thought of this. I can just imagine my wife: "Ewww...I'm not going to touch that..."
...like blinking lights!
Interesting to note the Slashdot editor didn't run with my original headline: "Google Code Search Reveals the Evil of all Source"
Actually, thalidomide was one of the FDA's great successes...the drug was never approved in the US; most of the birth defects happened in Europe. It's one of the reason the FDA's drug approval process is so slow relative to other countries.
The best writing advice I've seen is the writing chapter in Don Lancaster's book, The Incredible Secret Money Machine. His tips:
The perspective of the rest of the book is a bit dated (it's pre-Internet), but the basic concepts of his writing chapter are still just as relevant today.
It turns out you can use LED arrays as both displays and sensors. People have successfully used them for touch sensor controllers. See this blog for some experiments. The original concept came out of the NYU media lab.
The BART is the SF Bay area's excuse for a subway / mass transit. To ride, you buy a ticket at a kiosk full of $x worth of "BARTness". When you get board the train, you stick your ticket into a turnstile, and it hands it back to you. When you reach your desgination and get off the train, you again stick your ticket into a turnstile. It deducts the cost of your trip (based on how far you traveled) and gives your ticket back. You keep using the ticket until $x is used up. BUT: Suppose you walk toward the train, put your ticket in the entrance turnstile. You pick up your ticket, then you change your mind and leave, putting your ticket in the exit turnstile to get out. The cosmic BART megamachine will charge you the maximum possible fare, even though you haven't gone anywhere. For a good reason. What's the reason?
There was an amusing spoof T-shirt from that era: "The network is the network. The computer is the computer. Sorry for the confusion."
Somebody (Gordon Bell?) predicted that in the future the computer will be "just a bump in the cable". Looks like we're there. Can anybody find the original quote?
I use the basic Unix mail format, essentially plain text series of messages. Eudora does fine with it; and most anything else can read/import it. I have email going back to the 80's in this format. The one time I had to convert was when I was working for a company that used "Quickmail" on the Mac. I wound up reverse engineering their format and hacking up a program to convert it to plain text.
Just looking at the trailer, Depp is -way- to young to play Wonka. The whole point of the story is Wonka is getting on in years and is looking for an honest young person to help take over. Gene Wilder was the only redeeming feature of the first C&tCF...
Check out Gigapxl.org. The guy creating the cameras for this project is a serious optical genious.
In terms of coursework and knowledge, I don't think there's a huge difference, at least at the undergrad level. But a large part of what gets you a good job when you leave school is who your friends and professors are. Said friends and professors are likely to have much(!) better industry connections at a prestegious school than they will at a lessor known one. This particularly important if you want to get a job in another state.
What's really cool these days is the amount of free software available for DIY electronics. I'm not talking about free as in GNU, but free as in beer. Want to design your own digital chips? Get your free WebPack FPGA design software. Want to do your own circuit boards? Get your free CAD software... Want to program your embedded product? Most chip companies have free development tools.
There's also PCB123.com, which offers more advanced software (auto router, schematic capture, etc.). Haven't done a firm price compare on them yet. Those prices for boards/w solder mask & silk screen look great, but the software has a ways to go.
People who want to do circuit boards should check out PCBPOOL running with the Target CAD software. Target is much more advanced than the "toy" programs offered by ExpressPCB or Pad2pad (e.g.: auto-router, schematic capture, full component database, etc). See here for more info.