The problem with the Darwin approach is that they might take you or me out as well, or at the very least do endless thousand of dollars of damage to our cars and millions of dollars of damage to our bodies.
Selection, natural or otherwise, is not best played out with large masses of metal moving at high rates of speed that become very unselective when out of control.
I went into that test sweating bullets. I had bought the Barron's guide to prepare, and the logic problem examples were enormous. One was the type where you have a line of chairs and you need to sit people in them according to a huge list of rules. I did them all, but they were taking 20 minutes each! One had 15 slots and 20 rules. WTF?
Then I got to the test, and the actual problems there were a shadow of what was in the guide. Took a minute or two for each one. All I can figure is that Barron's put the complicated ones in the guide to get you really good at the type of problem, and to make the actual test appear easy.
Ha! I run into that. They create these ungodly complicated things in Matlab, and then act baffled when I tell them the biggest FPGA in the world contains about 1/100 the number of gates they need to implement it.
Then I come up with some silly kludge developed on a white board that does the same thing in about 50 lines of VHDL. Oh, that baffles them.;-)
It's terrible in engineering. I know so many fellow engineers who have little or very atrophied coding skills. They sit around creating these gigantic, clunky spreadsheets to solve problems that a small program could do so much more efficiently. I survived a bloody round of layoffs early in my career because I could do all the firmware and external control software for the hardware I designed, so I was considered way more valuable than a hardware only or software only person.
And, really, except for the fact that now all of the 'cool' kids are doing it too... how does this differ from IRC, ICQ, AOL/MSN, Everquest, Second Life and all of the other things which have filled this niche before?
Well, for one thing, those others were generally done while at home, and not while walking around or driving or other public activities. That seems to be the problem most people have with it. If they are sitting on a bench minding their own business, that's fine, but with increasing frequency their distraction causes problems for others.
There was a case here in California just recently of another shithead teen wiping out her car because of texting, and another where someone walked right in front of a car because they were so buried in their texting they just wandered into a street. You could argue Darwin Award for the latter, but do you want to be the guy who hit that person? There's still going to be an investigation as to whose fault it was, and, yeah, *that's* a perfect, flawless process, right?
On the other hand, YouTube videos like the woman who texted her way into a mall water fountain are always gold.
The college age guy in front of me in a food place a couple days ago had to be prompted three times by the woman working the register before he got his attention off the damn phone text.
But, you know, I'm sure he was in contact with a colleague about their imminent breakthrough on a cancer cure.
Analog is cool, but it's difficult. Give me the digital part any day of the week.
Ha. I went from RF/microwave to fully digital. The former had become boring, buying pre-rolled amps and mixers and couplers and whatnot and putting them together on a board. Creating a gain profile was a highlight of the day. FPGAs are much more fun. My RF background did make things easier when I started doing digital above 1 GHz clock rates. I had an intuitive feel for VSWR and the need for terminations. Now they have digitally controlled terminations right on the FPGAs- bless you Xilinx.
I eventually replaced most of our Labview hardware control software with RealBasic and later C#. I know some overly serious folks don't like those two, but they are *perfect* Labview replacements. You get the same "draw the interface and attach functions" approach but you can write actual code instead of drawing street maps. It did help that National Instruments documents their APIs very well, so rolling up the API declares was a breeze.
I just find myself more productive doing work on a nice HP RPN calculator with all the physical buttons. I've tried doing the same thing on a smartphone (and before them on pocket computers), but productivity drops off. It's almost purely visceral. Even the applications that mimic HP calcs just are not as smooth.
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What I love is people saying "Derp, I can drive and text fine!" as if we're supposed to [1] just accept that and [2] give them a medal or something.
The problem with the Darwin approach is that they might take you or me out as well, or at the very least do endless thousand of dollars of damage to our cars and millions of dollars of damage to our bodies.
Selection, natural or otherwise, is not best played out with large masses of metal moving at high rates of speed that become very unselective when out of control.
Well, it was like "What would you like? Hey. HEY!" Happened quickly.
Don't be such a misdirected blamer. Sheesh. [samuel jackson mode] Only on motherfucking Slashdot. (eyeroll)
The logic problem section was also pretty easy.
I went into that test sweating bullets. I had bought the Barron's guide to prepare, and the logic problem examples were enormous. One was the type where you have a line of chairs and you need to sit people in them according to a huge list of rules. I did them all, but they were taking 20 minutes each! One had 15 slots and 20 rules. WTF?
Then I got to the test, and the actual problems there were a shadow of what was in the guide. Took a minute or two for each one. All I can figure is that Barron's put the complicated ones in the guide to get you really good at the type of problem, and to make the actual test appear easy.
Ha! I run into that. They create these ungodly complicated things in Matlab, and then act baffled when I tell them the biggest FPGA in the world contains about 1/100 the number of gates they need to implement it.
Then I come up with some silly kludge developed on a white board that does the same thing in about 50 lines of VHDL. Oh, that baffles them. ;-)
It's terrible in engineering. I know so many fellow engineers who have little or very atrophied coding skills. They sit around creating these gigantic, clunky spreadsheets to solve problems that a small program could do so much more efficiently. I survived a bloody round of layoffs early in my career because I could do all the firmware and external control software for the hardware I designed, so I was considered way more valuable than a hardware only or software only person.
Although "whoa is me" is valid, but only when spoken by Mr. Ed.
And, really, except for the fact that now all of the 'cool' kids are doing it too ... how does this differ from IRC, ICQ, AOL/MSN, Everquest, Second Life and all of the other things which have filled this niche before?
Well, for one thing, those others were generally done while at home, and not while walking around or driving or other public activities. That seems to be the problem most people have with it. If they are sitting on a bench minding their own business, that's fine, but with increasing frequency their distraction causes problems for others.
There was a case here in California just recently of another shithead teen wiping out her car because of texting, and another where someone walked right in front of a car because they were so buried in their texting they just wandered into a street. You could argue Darwin Award for the latter, but do you want to be the guy who hit that person? There's still going to be an investigation as to whose fault it was, and, yeah, *that's* a perfect, flawless process, right?
On the other hand, YouTube videos like the woman who texted her way into a mall water fountain are always gold.
The college age guy in front of me in a food place a couple days ago had to be prompted three times by the woman working the register before he got his attention off the damn phone text.
But, you know, I'm sure he was in contact with a colleague about their imminent breakthrough on a cancer cure.
I telecommute in the afternoon to beat the rush hour traffic.
*shrug* The "quirky" people are the ones I get along with the most.
Intertoob idea! Metabook! It's where you go and comment about what's happening on all of your other social web sites!
Four out of five dentists agree with you.
That would be one of the signs of the End Times, so we avoid it.
Anyway... Face-what?
Analog is cool, but it's difficult. Give me the digital part any day of the week.
Ha. I went from RF/microwave to fully digital. The former had become boring, buying pre-rolled amps and mixers and couplers and whatnot and putting them together on a board. Creating a gain profile was a highlight of the day. FPGAs are much more fun. My RF background did make things easier when I started doing digital above 1 GHz clock rates. I had an intuitive feel for VSWR and the need for terminations. Now they have digitally controlled terminations right on the FPGAs- bless you Xilinx.
So... the government takes a chunk of their assets and that encourages TI to hire more people... how exactly?
*shudder*
I eventually replaced most of our Labview hardware control software with RealBasic and later C#. I know some overly serious folks don't like those two, but they are *perfect* Labview replacements. You get the same "draw the interface and attach functions" approach but you can write actual code instead of drawing street maps. It did help that National Instruments documents their APIs very well, so rolling up the API declares was a breeze.
Challenge accepted. :-\
Really? The whole thing was such typical business-speak I chuckled through the whole thing. :-D Not quite buzzword bingo level, though.
I just find myself more productive doing work on a nice HP RPN calculator with all the physical buttons. I've tried doing the same thing on a smartphone (and before them on pocket computers), but productivity drops off. It's almost purely visceral. Even the applications that mimic HP calcs just are not as smooth.
Was your post satire?
How great can Algebra II and Algebra III be if they are still using Roman numerals?
Um... http://www.bettycrocker.com/products/hamburger-helper/products/tuna-helper-flavors
Not yet. I got ALL IN the question.
I can get more things entangled by just leaving a couple extension cords unattended for a few days.
Nah, he got busted for selling a joint to his uncle, so he's doing so hard time to PROTECT THE CHILDREN!!!!