The most annoying thing about them is a prevailing attitude that if a job isn't done the way they are used to doing it, it's the wrong way to do it. This rigor usually has a good outcome, until they just aren't suited to the task (i.e. if it's too complex) and then shit falls apart in a bad way..
Funny, I'd say the exact same thing about non-military but well educated IT professionals.
But my experience with military personnel is that they'll not quit until the job is done successfully. Normal IT workers are often drama-queens and little princesses, they KNOW they have the knowledge to do it, and they know damn well that they're hired because of this, and there's not a chance that anyone else on the job can get it done, so they can pretty much say anything and get away with it. And they do. I've heard the worst excuses in the world for not doing a job, just because they can't be bothered.
Military people however? If they don't understand it, they talk to people who do. And if that doesn't do it, they read up on the subject and actually get it done without bothering their higher ranking supervisors or bosses, that's why I love them so much. They just gets things done, military style! (And if you think I'm a military man, sadly - no. But I'm not young anymore, and I never cease to be impressed with the fact that EVERY TIME I'm HAPPY with a job well done somewhere, it's always some former marine, navy or other military personnel that's behind it).
...than most people who haven't served in the military.
In the military there are no excuses for failure, yes - everyone can get it wrong, but if you're a military man...you don't complain, you get it DONE!
That attitude alone solves a LOT of problems. I've been working in the IT Sector for a LONG time and no matter what field you're in, I could spot a former military man MILES away, because they have a positive go-getter attitude, and I've yet to ever hear an long boring attitude related discussion about an issue with such a man, they listen - and work until the problems are solved.
I'm curious, why do you give a shit what others think of you if you yourself are comfortable you're a decent person? I ask with all seriousness. I used to feel that way when I was much younger and at some point sat down and examined myself and how I related to others. I came up positive and thereafter didn't really care what others thought. If you're a good person, that's it, end of story. They're rejecting a good person, the onus is on them.
It's a good question, and to an extent I do care less and less what others think of me, I guess that comes with age. But I still care how others feel, this is how we learn and evolve. If we where perfectly content with who we are and what we know, we wouldn't learn anymore. Now that would be truly tragic.
In life, you never stop having to prove yourself. Sure - you can have money and riches, as an example I can tell you that I have a fully paid house, property and all the gadgets I could ever want, this "oddly enough" buys me a lot of credit with the locals, but also a lot of envy as very few around here actually owns their own property...rather the banks and their mortgages. Still - I always feel that I need to evolve, to become more than I am.
Actually, I have a theory -- and it's a revolution, just not a positive one.
You have many valid points there.
However, I'd still like to challenge the belief that the technology of today is creating noise rather than giving people the focus and energy they need to concentrate on good education. You have to see these devices as a PART of their education.
Their smartphones, iPads, Android-tables etc. are like carrying around huge stacks of books with all the information they could possibly fit in their heads, the more information you have at hand - the more material you have for making better design decisions rather than book-smarts from the past and gone times.
I can however agree that constantly using smartphones during classes when they're supposed to focus on what the teacher say etc. can create noise and take away their focus from the current lessons. We're already onto that at our schools and we plan to forbid the use of Cellphones during lessons. However, iPads will be available to them during self study.
My impression (and you have to understand that I come from a life as a service tech, designer AND a teacher) of these kids (especially women), are that they are quick to learn, quick to pick up anything technical, even theory. As an example I can mention their Science classes. They had to explain how a computer mice works in technical detail, how a radio works, how their electrical appliances worked in detail (it's a part of their curriculum) - and I took it upon me to explain to them in detail how these things worked, I drew outlines & theoretical schematics on how the various components worked and what they do together, and surprise surprise, they picked it up like NO ONE I remember from my time as a student, it's amazing (at least to me).
I could mention numerous examples like this, but I guess we have to agree to disagree, and basically lean back and watch the show. However, I really thought you had a LOT of valid points to you theory, your theory isn't uncommon at all.
Being good with tech is not the ability to play with a smart phone. It's the ability to design one.
Programmers are often the worst designers in the world. They understand logic and how to code, but often lack the design skills to make the code actually useful to the masses.
The super users of a product often understand the products way better, and even use their products in ways the original designers couldn't even dream of. I've seen kids design their own apps just because they're THAT much into their smartphones.
...I used to believe the opposite, until I became a teacher and noticed that Women are actually quite good with technology if the environment is right.
When was the last time you sat in a classroom full of kids/students? Take a look around yourself, most if not all females are heavily into their smartphones, they quickly share apps and use their cellphones as it would be a natural part of their body. I've been working with computers since I was 12 years old when I even programmed my first videogame in the 80s, still - the women I've seen handling their phones, are nothing short of amazing when they solve problems with their phones, dealing with technical difficulties etc, it's almost like a science fiction movie that you just wouldn't believe would come true. Yessir, they did. Wake up and take a look around.
Also, beware - these kids grow up now, and will take their place into science and technology workplaces, you're going to witness a revolution.
Thanks for the obligatory, "If you feel bad, reach out to someone or the suicide hotline." I thought I only got this PC bullshit from TV.
Not all./ members are cold psychopathic nerds that can only understand logic/black & white/1 and 0s. If there is anyone on the planet that has felt the suffering of rejection...it must surely be nerds. Have you ever seen the movie "Revenge of the Nerds?", yeah...it's a comedy, but very much rooted in reality.
I think it's great that Slashdot flashes the human side of who we are once in a blue moon.
Man, my comment subject looks like it was written by a 14 yo. But that aside...
...I can absolutely relate to that. My biggest fear in life is rejection, I hate rejection, I have such a hard time handling rejection that last time I was rejected for something, it took me 3 years of my life just to recover. Many times I contemplated suicide, but I wussed out every time I tried (and that's a good thing).
That's the NO #1 reason I'm not starting up my company right now, I have experience and TONS of it, I've been a service tech for years, an elected official for large groups of people, teacher for all ages. And STILL - I am worried about failure. C'mon, who isn't? I read somewhere that most business executives are Psychopaths because running a business with no empathy makes for one helluva war machine hellbent on winning, thus increase the chance of actually getting there, no matter the costs of others...which definitively isn't me as I have deep feelings for anyone who suffers or goes trough hard times.
Heck, I even went trough a very expensive leadership assessment test (not online, this was with a bunch of professional coaches, psychologists etc.) and of the entire group I was elected the most likely to be a good successful leader. But would you believe I STILL DOUBT THAT?!
This is tough stuff, not easy for anyone. This is a problem that gets WAY too little attention, and I'm pretty confident that any country who paid attention to this, would have a lot more successful starter companies and thus a much lover unemployment rate.
...in Scandinavia (at least where I live) have been throttling their cellphone unlimited data plan users for a very long time, they don't ever admit to this so how do I know? Fairly simple. All four indicators (signal strength) indicates that the reception is top notch. Doesn't miss a call, but when you try to connect the phone to the computer to use it as a modem...things change pretty fast. The signal remains at full strength, but after surfing a few pages (or using roughly 1mbit), I got the famous 404...and of course, I couldn't surf anywhere. Still...how do I know?
Once I reset the data connection (on the mobile), I get about the same amount of surfing until the famous 404 shows its ugly face again. In the beginning I called the phone company Telenor again and again about this, and finally two technicians called me and told me they had a capacity issue in my area, and that it wouldn't be economically viable to put up another relay or increase the capacity. But they denied throttling it, but said that they where working on "optimization". Confession right there. 4 years later, same story. Luckily I'm on a land line now.
It really isn't rocket science. Take a look at the top of the IC or Transistor, often you'll see a "glazed" top which indicate that the chip has been painted over, and the new fake numbers gets printed on top of the paint.
Another way, look closely at the transistor or semiconductor - just use glasses or a magnifying glass to take a close look, a hobby microscope will do just fine too...if you discover that the surface has been "sanded", you should be on alert.
Cheap knockoffs are IMHO a far greater problem than counterfeit chips, on eBay you'll often encounter 2nd grade components that have failed the factory quality control, these may be fine for hobby usage (in fact, I use them myself - but not for anything serious). These include LED's and transistors, I often purchase these bulk so I can afford to toss them away like candy wrapping and do as many experiments as I wish without thinking about the economics behind it.
The most surefire way to test for counterfeit components is - surprise - to test them. I have a Curve tracer for the Diodes and Transistors, and I can test them in 10-20 current/voltage steps, drain, amplification, switching speed etc...and the curves will show me the actual specs of the semiconductor on the screen, practical stuff. These are rarely cheap though, you can pick one up at eBay...but you're probably better off making one yourself with a Stepping/multiplier-PSU + a cheap oscilloscope as these are VERY expensive, even 30 year old units like mine.
I've shopped for components at eBay for a long time, we're talking over 10 years, and yes...I can confirm that it IS an increasing problem, but not at a disastrous level yet, It's very rare for me to come across counterfeit products...it's FAR more common to come across second-grade components.
...Microsoft wants Latin America to become the new India.
You know, Rosalita from the Goonies (the 85s Steven Spielberg movie)? Everyone used to have a Latino maid, worker, dishwasher, grease-monkey doing all the hard work you don't want to. And then all the good jobs was outsourced to brainy India who had both the means and poverty to make it happen. Today most programmers come from India.
Microsofts idea is nothing but pure genious. Remember the issues America have with skilled immigration these days? This could change it all.
...The Odd Effects of Being Struck By Lightning...
And here I was hoping for special powers like instant genius or telepathic abilities, and it turns out that the best we can hope for is instant Alzheimer?
...many MANY freaking years ago (man, I'm old)...I came up with an idea slightly different from this, I never tried it so maybe some of you have some theories on if this would work or not, but I'll try to describe my Optical Cloak design idea:
You know what an endoscope is, right? If not...google it and then read this again. Now...imagine you have a million strings of fiber and utilizing the same technology as with an endoscope, filling each sides with a lens just like the endoscopes work, you should (at least in theory) have a very effective cloak from a distance.
Articles like this, makes me warm and fuzzy all over, probably because I'm an old geezer in comparison to kids of today, but I think it's very important for anyone serious about hardware development and/or software development to dive into the past once in a while, it's a great way to learn simplicity and how the hardware inside our relatively complicated devices of today really works.
I'm a moderator of a major international electronics forum, and I don't have the number on just how many times the young generation feel completely lost when they're fresh out of school, trying to understand very complex structures. They either lack understanding of general electronics, or how the microprocessor works with different layers, ram, rom (especially embedded systems when they are working with complex IDE's with a maze of classes & libraries), they simply forget how the hardware works, and get to focus too much on programming.
I understand exactly that frustration, especially since this old geezer was lucky enough to grew up with basic home computers like the Commodore 64, Zx81 (Z80 cpu), Spectrum, Oric, Dragon 32, BBC etc. We often did our own hardware modifications, made fast I/O port load&save systems ourselves because we had a basic understanding of how the innards worked, and it really wasn't rocket science.
Sometimes it is relevant to take a step back in time (Like this article does, explaining some of the oddities with the Z80 processor), and spark interest in these old CPU's and their systems & possible uses even today. As an example, I have a HUGE stash of Micro-Controllers in my workshop, these are an absolute GEM to me. Why? Because they are very simple to work with. Like the good old Commodore 64 or ZX 81 - they don't have advanced hardware layers where you have to do special addressing to access certain memory areas or have to be kind to the operating system in order to write something to control your hardware (homemade or otherwise), it's as simple as writing a few pokes into memory...and you can turn on/off some external units such as relays, lights - or read on/off states from your sensors...maybe build your own satellite tracker the easy way, or control your homemade lawnmover unit.
And we still have VAST amounts of these MCU's unused all over the world, these are SUPER USEFUL (if you didn't get the above, think standalone apps...like each MCU was an app for a specific task). Many of these CPU's (MCU usually comes with internal memory/Ram/Rom/Flash/ and the most important part...an I/O) ready to use, just program it...and watch it go. If the kids of today understood this, they'd have a BLAST programming these (just watch the maker society with their modern versions...Arduino etc.) and the sky's the limit.
More articles like these thanks, brings/. back to the roots.
Too bad no company ever came up with a killer 8-bit machine. Z80 CPU, more than 64 kB RAM, sound and graphics like SID and VIC-II.
Really? Ever heard of MSX? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
It came with graphics, sprites (TMS9918/9929) and was a standard design carried by several manufacturers.
Ah, MSX... weirdest computers in history. The Yamaha MSX computer was an awesome music computer with built in FM synthesis, and then you had the vastly different Spectravideo MSX, it was fully compliant with the MSX standard...but it's just that, not everyone was compliant - every MSX computer seemed to be a special variant of itself, something that confused me something so fierce back in the days, I even had a Memotech MSX, weird WEIRD computer.
The games on the MSX computers wasn't mind blowing, nowhere near the commodore 64 games, it simply lacked the awesome sound capabilities of the 64. They had a wider color range though.
I remember the war between us Commodore users (65xx type processors) vs the Z80 series, yes - the Z80 was a far superior processor in many ways and sometimes I wished we had that processor just for the extended registers alone, not to mention that the speed was 4 mhz instead of our meager 0.97mhz (could be doubled if you turned off the screen). But the hardware sprites & scrolling is what beat the living bejeezus outta the other competing products.
And I nearly cried snot when the Commodore 65 didn't make it. It was a super-cool Commodore 64 with beefed up hardware, higher resolution, stereo SID sound (6 channels!) of pure ring-modulated goodness.
Ah, I'll go stare at my stash of Z0840004PSC, 27xxxx's and the rest of the Chip Pron in my vast land of NOS components...aaaahh..:)
I too have off-the-grid dreams as a house-owner, but the power companies always find a way, same thing with the electrical car that could run on water. Lobbyist will manipulate (read: FORCE) politicians into their direction, so you'll be depending on them one way or the other. The Politicians won't have a hard time accepting this as they need their energy tax income.
Taxes are like drugs, once you're hooked - it's very hard to get off, like addicts...politicians will find a way to make you pay either way. It's now getting to be environmentally sound? Fine...that's part of what I wish for too, but even though - we won't be off the hook that easily, government and companies that had enjoyed family power for centuries won't give up without a bloody fight, that I can pretty much guarantee you.
The general customer isn't that wise, they have no clue how anything affect our environment and politicians can pretty much tell them any half-truth to make them believe the complete lie. Half-truth is a classic, and widely used within leadership: Say...you purchase a new and better battery, but the management is taking losses on that purchase, it's environmentally sound - but they want the less eco-friendly solution because it earns them MONEY (and government profits on higher taxes as well), so they will tell you that YOUR SOLUTION isn't any good because of "insert-some-dubious-chemical-and-its-production-environment-here" and use that as a legitimate excuse. Nevermind the fact that it's actually a LOT more eco-friendly than the previous product, half-truth folks, it's a winner every time.
You as the consumer just need to educate yourselves a little bit more, stop accepting every thing imposed onto your lives by your elected politicians, demand scrutiny and don't just trust everything you hear. Be skeptical.
I've reverse engineered enough cheap knockoffs in my life to verify your story. Everything from cheap PSU's with barely more than a Triac inside, to USB-hubs, cheap lasers, cheap communications transceivers (a chip & an half).
But yeah, we really DO get what we pay for. So dear consumers who are reading this, please protest by not settling for the crappy stuff. Buy quality and prove to the world that's what we want! I've been 30+ years into electronics (many as a service tech). We've got a heck of a job in front of us, but I honestly believe the public will tire of the crappy products, hopefully NOT before it's too late.
...because it doesn't pay very well to sell you something that'll last forever, whether it's an Oled screen or LED bulb.
It's no coincidence that the CFLs die off after 1-2 years albeit they're supposed to last 10-20 years with normal usage. My first Philips 11w CFLs that I bought 20 years ago, still glows like mad and simply refuse to die. That is back when the CFLs was new, and cost like 40 bucks just for ONE bulb, but hey...it's actually worth the money, it still is my best bulb.
With LED's, it's a walk in the park for the industry to make them last less, all you need to do for your LED to last less than specified, is to OVERDRIVE them just a little, a little higher current and the LED's will die rapidly, they should be able to make the new LED lamps last just out the warranty period (that in most countries AFAIK is around 3-6 months), or cheap enough to avoid the warranty altogether.
There is nothing wrong with the LED's themselves, (we're talking the components...DIODES...not the whole circuit with drivers and all), I ordered strong RGB leds from China many MANY years ago, they're still glowing on my homemade alarm-systems so strong that I can use them as night-lights, yes...4 years later 24H day use...they still glow enough to lit up an entire room. And I just used Ohms law + 1% resistor values to calculate the right resistor value for my circuits. You can pretty much BET the manufacturers will "miscalculate" these values, or make the drivers for the stronger LED's last MUCH less in order to keep pumping out new ones for the consumers to waste and waste.
I'd rather pay a proper price for my LED lamps - and keep our environment safe from this mad overproduction that now has escalated totally out of hands.:(
...of radio wave sensing, would be to analyze how radio waves reflect on various surface materials & mass.
If we could do this (it would require MASSIVE programming & knowledge of structures and algorithms to recognize structures via RF waves & reflection), then we could use the RF waves as sort of echo-location, kind of like how bats see with the help of sound waves.
I've known this since I was a kid, when I was messing around with FM-transmitters to listen to my parents quarrel from a safe distance (ok, I was a weird kid), I noticed how I could sense my parents move around because they affected the signal strength and even the frequency shift depending on where they were located in that room. I've been pondering this ever since.
It has 1300+ cores (some of the bigger cards got over 2300+ cores), and yes - I realize that they're not full-fledged CPUs and just highly specialized to perform certain calculations, kind of like FPGAs if you like.
Also, it's important to consider that funding a kickstarter project, is kind of like investing money in the lottery or purchasing one of those scratch lottery tickets. You may or may not win, the likelihood of actually winning is bigger than the lottery, but in reality very small, it's like going to the casino and betting it all on one of 3 rows.
Kickstarter is a gold-mine right now for scammers as well. All you need, is a well thought out plan to CONvince a lot of people out there, and since most people aren't very technical...this isn't hard at all (thus, why we need a better screening process). Many of the funded projects gets WAY more than they asked for, and then GREED grabs them...they lack no skills when it comes to find a reason to use the extra money, and have you noticed how certain products doesn't get cheaper for the public even thought they receive MASSIVE support?
Oh wow. This will do wonders for the Blender Cycles rendering engine. Thanks to Blender & Brecht (The coder behind Blenders Cycles rendering engine) I've been able to enjoy the power of a thousand computers in one card thanks to the accelerated powers of the Nvidia GPU based cards with multiple GPUs, mine has about 1300 GPUs and renders like insanity knows no bounds, I love it. YAY the future looks even better now.
Reading this makes me behave like a kid in a candy store, seriously.
I bought the LG 920 Optimus 3D phone some years ago. Awesome 3D screen, 2 x HD cameras for taking 3D photos. Fun for 14 days, after that...it just became an annoyingly big bulgy battery guzzling smartphone just like any other oversized phone out there.
3D TV? I so wanted them when they came out. After a while with very little use for them I thought Meh... and after an even longer while, the 3D tv sets went for a few hundred dollars, even in 50" sizes. I still thought...Meh...I'll stick to my old 47" LG full HD tv.
Same thing with Kinect, fun the first few days, fun to also connect it to the PC and play with all the hacks out there....same issue, technically useless stuff, fun...for a little while, but ultimately useless.
3D scanners? Meh... it'll probably be another fad, scan your objects, watch them on a 3D screen kind of like my Optimus 3D phone or the Nintendo 3DS...novelty item at best.
Slashdot Mirror
The most annoying thing about them is a prevailing attitude that if a job isn't done the way they are used to doing it, it's the wrong way to do it. This rigor usually has a good outcome, until they just aren't suited to the task (i.e. if it's too complex) and then shit falls apart in a bad way..
Funny, I'd say the exact same thing about non-military but well educated IT professionals.
But my experience with military personnel is that they'll not quit until the job is done successfully. Normal IT workers are often drama-queens and little princesses, they KNOW they have the knowledge to do it, and they know damn well that they're hired because of this, and there's not a chance that anyone else on the job can get it done, so they can pretty much say anything and get away with it. And they do. I've heard the worst excuses in the world for not doing a job, just because they can't be bothered.
Military people however? If they don't understand it, they talk to people who do. And if that doesn't do it, they read up on the subject and actually get it done without bothering their higher ranking supervisors or bosses, that's why I love them so much. They just gets things done, military style! (And if you think I'm a military man, sadly - no. But I'm not young anymore, and I never cease to be impressed with the fact that EVERY TIME I'm HAPPY with a job well done somewhere, it's always some former marine, navy or other military personnel that's behind it).
...than most people who haven't served in the military.
In the military there are no excuses for failure, yes - everyone can get it wrong, but if you're a military man...you don't complain, you get it DONE!
That attitude alone solves a LOT of problems. I've been working in the IT Sector for a LONG time and no matter what field you're in, I could spot a former military man MILES away, because they have a positive go-getter attitude, and I've yet to ever hear an long boring attitude related discussion about an issue with such a man, they listen - and work until the problems are solved.
I'd hire people like that in a heartbeat!
I'm curious, why do you give a shit what others think of you if you yourself are comfortable you're a decent person? I ask with all seriousness. I used to feel that way when I was much younger and at some point sat down and examined myself and how I related to others. I came up positive and thereafter didn't really care what others thought. If you're a good person, that's it, end of story. They're rejecting a good person, the onus is on them.
It's a good question, and to an extent I do care less and less what others think of me, I guess that comes with age. But I still care how others feel, this is how we learn and evolve. If we where perfectly content with who we are and what we know, we wouldn't learn anymore. Now that would be truly tragic.
In life, you never stop having to prove yourself. Sure - you can have money and riches, as an example I can tell you that I have a fully paid house, property and all the gadgets I could ever want, this "oddly enough" buys me a lot of credit with the locals, but also a lot of envy as very few around here actually owns their own property...rather the banks and their mortgages. Still - I always feel that I need to evolve, to become more than I am.
Actually, I have a theory -- and it's a revolution, just not a positive one.
You have many valid points there.
However, I'd still like to challenge the belief that the technology of today is creating noise rather than giving people the focus and energy they need to concentrate on good education. You have to see these devices as a PART of their education.
Their smartphones, iPads, Android-tables etc. are like carrying around huge stacks of books with all the information they could possibly fit in their heads, the more information you have at hand - the more material you have for making better design decisions rather than book-smarts from the past and gone times.
I can however agree that constantly using smartphones during classes when they're supposed to focus on what the teacher say etc. can create noise and take away their focus from the current lessons. We're already onto that at our schools and we plan to forbid the use of Cellphones during lessons. However, iPads will be available to them during self study.
My impression (and you have to understand that I come from a life as a service tech, designer AND a teacher) of these kids (especially women), are that they are quick to learn, quick to pick up anything technical, even theory. As an example I can mention their Science classes. They had to explain how a computer mice works in technical detail, how a radio works, how their electrical appliances worked in detail (it's a part of their curriculum) - and I took it upon me to explain to them in detail how these things worked, I drew outlines & theoretical schematics on how the various components worked and what they do together, and surprise surprise, they picked it up like NO ONE I remember from my time as a student, it's amazing (at least to me).
I could mention numerous examples like this, but I guess we have to agree to disagree, and basically lean back and watch the show. However, I really thought you had a LOT of valid points to you theory, your theory isn't uncommon at all.
Being good with tech is not the ability to play with a smart phone. It's the ability to design one.
Programmers are often the worst designers in the world. They understand logic and how to code, but often lack the design skills to make the code actually useful to the masses.
The super users of a product often understand the products way better, and even use their products in ways the original designers couldn't even dream of. I've seen kids design their own apps just because they're THAT much into their smartphones.
...I used to believe the opposite, until I became a teacher and noticed that Women are actually quite good with technology if the environment is right.
When was the last time you sat in a classroom full of kids/students? Take a look around yourself, most if not all females are heavily into their smartphones, they quickly share apps and use their cellphones as it would be a natural part of their body. I've been working with computers since I was 12 years old when I even programmed my first videogame in the 80s, still - the women I've seen handling their phones, are nothing short of amazing when they solve problems with their phones, dealing with technical difficulties etc, it's almost like a science fiction movie that you just wouldn't believe would come true. Yessir, they did. Wake up and take a look around.
Also, beware - these kids grow up now, and will take their place into science and technology workplaces, you're going to witness a revolution.
Thanks for the obligatory, "If you feel bad, reach out to someone or the suicide hotline." I thought I only got this PC bullshit from TV.
Not all ./ members are cold psychopathic nerds that can only understand logic/black & white/1 and 0s. If there is anyone on the planet that has felt the suffering of rejection...it must surely be nerds. Have you ever seen the movie "Revenge of the Nerds?", yeah...it's a comedy, but very much rooted in reality.
I think it's great that Slashdot flashes the human side of who we are once in a blue moon.
Man, my comment subject looks like it was written by a 14 yo. But that aside...
...I can absolutely relate to that. My biggest fear in life is rejection, I hate rejection, I have such a hard time handling rejection that last time I was rejected for something, it took me 3 years of my life just to recover. Many times I contemplated suicide, but I wussed out every time I tried (and that's a good thing).
That's the NO #1 reason I'm not starting up my company right now, I have experience and TONS of it, I've been a service tech for years, an elected official for large groups of people, teacher for all ages. And STILL - I am worried about failure. C'mon, who isn't? I read somewhere that most business executives are Psychopaths because running a business with no empathy makes for one helluva war machine hellbent on winning, thus increase the chance of actually getting there, no matter the costs of others...which definitively isn't me as I have deep feelings for anyone who suffers or goes trough hard times.
Heck, I even went trough a very expensive leadership assessment test (not online, this was with a bunch of professional coaches, psychologists etc.) and of the entire group I was elected the most likely to be a good successful leader. But would you believe I STILL DOUBT THAT?!
This is tough stuff, not easy for anyone. This is a problem that gets WAY too little attention, and I'm pretty confident that any country who paid attention to this, would have a lot more successful starter companies and thus a much lover unemployment rate.
...in Scandinavia (at least where I live) have been throttling their cellphone unlimited data plan users for a very long time, they don't ever admit to this so how do I know? Fairly simple. All four indicators (signal strength) indicates that the reception is top notch. Doesn't miss a call, but when you try to connect the phone to the computer to use it as a modem...things change pretty fast. The signal remains at full strength, but after surfing a few pages (or using roughly 1mbit), I got the famous 404 ...and of course, I couldn't surf anywhere. Still...how do I know?
Once I reset the data connection (on the mobile), I get about the same amount of surfing until the famous 404 shows its ugly face again. In the beginning I called the phone company Telenor again and again about this, and finally two technicians called me and told me they had a capacity issue in my area, and that it wouldn't be economically viable to put up another relay or increase the capacity. But they denied throttling it, but said that they where working on "optimization". Confession right there. 4 years later, same story. Luckily I'm on a land line now.
...just take a look at the chip top.
It really isn't rocket science. Take a look at the top of the IC or Transistor, often you'll see a "glazed" top which indicate that the chip has been painted over, and the new fake numbers gets printed on top of the paint.
Another way, look closely at the transistor or semiconductor - just use glasses or a magnifying glass to take a close look, a hobby microscope will do just fine too...if you discover that the surface has been "sanded", you should be on alert.
Cheap knockoffs are IMHO a far greater problem than counterfeit chips, on eBay you'll often encounter 2nd grade components that have failed the factory quality control, these may be fine for hobby usage (in fact, I use them myself - but not for anything serious). These include LED's and transistors, I often purchase these bulk so I can afford to toss them away like candy wrapping and do as many experiments as I wish without thinking about the economics behind it.
The most surefire way to test for counterfeit components is - surprise - to test them. I have a Curve tracer for the Diodes and Transistors, and I can test them in 10-20 current/voltage steps, drain, amplification, switching speed etc...and the curves will show me the actual specs of the semiconductor on the screen, practical stuff. These are rarely cheap though, you can pick one up at eBay...but you're probably better off making one yourself with a Stepping/multiplier-PSU + a cheap oscilloscope as these are VERY expensive, even 30 year old units like mine.
I've shopped for components at eBay for a long time, we're talking over 10 years, and yes...I can confirm that it IS an increasing problem, but not at a disastrous level yet, It's very rare for me to come across counterfeit products...it's FAR more common to come across second-grade components.
...Microsoft wants Latin America to become the new India.
You know, Rosalita from the Goonies (the 85s Steven Spielberg movie)? Everyone used to have a Latino maid, worker, dishwasher, grease-monkey doing all the hard work you don't want to. And then all the good jobs was outsourced to brainy India who had both the means and poverty to make it happen. Today most programmers come from India.
Microsofts idea is nothing but pure genious. Remember the issues America have with skilled immigration these days? This could change it all.
...The Odd Effects of Being Struck By Lightning...
And here I was hoping for special powers like instant genius or telepathic abilities, and it turns out that the best we can hope for is instant Alzheimer?
...many MANY freaking years ago (man, I'm old)...I came up with an idea slightly different from this, I never tried it so maybe some of you have some theories on if this would work or not, but I'll try to describe my Optical Cloak design idea:
You know what an endoscope is, right? If not...google it and then read this again. Now...imagine you have a million strings of fiber and utilizing the same technology as with an endoscope, filling each sides with a lens just like the endoscopes work, you should (at least in theory) have a very effective cloak from a distance.
Articles like this, makes me warm and fuzzy all over, probably because I'm an old geezer in comparison to kids of today, but I think it's very important for anyone serious about hardware development and/or software development to dive into the past once in a while, it's a great way to learn simplicity and how the hardware inside our relatively complicated devices of today really works.
/. back to the roots.
I'm a moderator of a major international electronics forum, and I don't have the number on just how many times the young generation feel completely lost when they're fresh out of school, trying to understand very complex structures. They either lack understanding of general electronics, or how the microprocessor works with different layers, ram, rom (especially embedded systems when they are working with complex IDE's with a maze of classes & libraries), they simply forget how the hardware works, and get to focus too much on programming.
I understand exactly that frustration, especially since this old geezer was lucky enough to grew up with basic home computers like the Commodore 64, Zx81 (Z80 cpu), Spectrum, Oric, Dragon 32, BBC etc. We often did our own hardware modifications, made fast I/O port load&save systems ourselves because we had a basic understanding of how the innards worked, and it really wasn't rocket science.
Sometimes it is relevant to take a step back in time (Like this article does, explaining some of the oddities with the Z80 processor), and spark interest in these old CPU's and their systems & possible uses even today. As an example, I have a HUGE stash of Micro-Controllers in my workshop, these are an absolute GEM to me. Why? Because they are very simple to work with. Like the good old Commodore 64 or ZX 81 - they don't have advanced hardware layers where you have to do special addressing to access certain memory areas or have to be kind to the operating system in order to write something to control your hardware (homemade or otherwise), it's as simple as writing a few pokes into memory...and you can turn on/off some external units such as relays, lights - or read on/off states from your sensors...maybe build your own satellite tracker the easy way, or control your homemade lawnmover unit.
And we still have VAST amounts of these MCU's unused all over the world, these are SUPER USEFUL (if you didn't get the above, think standalone apps...like each MCU was an app for a specific task). Many of these CPU's (MCU usually comes with internal memory/Ram/Rom/Flash/ and the most important part...an I/O) ready to use, just program it...and watch it go. If the kids of today understood this, they'd have a BLAST programming these (just watch the maker society with their modern versions...Arduino etc.) and the sky's the limit.
More articles like these thanks, brings
Too bad no company ever came up with a killer 8-bit machine. Z80 CPU, more than 64 kB RAM, sound and graphics like SID and VIC-II.
Really? Ever heard of MSX? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... It came with graphics, sprites (TMS9918/9929) and was a standard design carried by several manufacturers.
Ah, MSX... weirdest computers in history. The Yamaha MSX computer was an awesome music computer with built in FM synthesis, and then you had the vastly different Spectravideo MSX, it was fully compliant with the MSX standard...but it's just that, not everyone was compliant - every MSX computer seemed to be a special variant of itself, something that confused me something so fierce back in the days, I even had a Memotech MSX, weird WEIRD computer.
:)
The games on the MSX computers wasn't mind blowing, nowhere near the commodore 64 games, it simply lacked the awesome sound capabilities of the 64. They had a wider color range though.
I remember the war between us Commodore users (65xx type processors) vs the Z80 series, yes - the Z80 was a far superior processor in many ways and sometimes I wished we had that processor just for the extended registers alone, not to mention that the speed was 4 mhz instead of our meager 0.97mhz (could be doubled if you turned off the screen). But the hardware sprites & scrolling is what beat the living bejeezus outta the other competing products.
And I nearly cried snot when the Commodore 65 didn't make it. It was a super-cool Commodore 64 with beefed up hardware, higher resolution, stereo SID sound (6 channels!) of pure ring-modulated goodness.
Ah, I'll go stare at my stash of Z0840004PSC, 27xxxx's and the rest of the Chip Pron in my vast land of NOS components...aaaahh..
A post that has random CAPITALIZED words screams NUTCASE.
Well, at least this NuTcAsE puts a name to his words unlike you, AC. :)
...even if you produce it yourself.
I too have off-the-grid dreams as a house-owner, but the power companies always find a way, same thing with the electrical car that could run on water. Lobbyist will manipulate (read: FORCE) politicians into their direction, so you'll be depending on them one way or the other. The Politicians won't have a hard time accepting this as they need their energy tax income.
Taxes are like drugs, once you're hooked - it's very hard to get off, like addicts...politicians will find a way to make you pay either way. It's now getting to be environmentally sound? Fine...that's part of what I wish for too, but even though - we won't be off the hook that easily, government and companies that had enjoyed family power for centuries won't give up without a bloody fight, that I can pretty much guarantee you.
The general customer isn't that wise, they have no clue how anything affect our environment and politicians can pretty much tell them any half-truth to make them believe the complete lie. Half-truth is a classic, and widely used within leadership: Say...you purchase a new and better battery, but the management is taking losses on that purchase, it's environmentally sound - but they want the less eco-friendly solution because it earns them MONEY (and government profits on higher taxes as well), so they will tell you that YOUR SOLUTION isn't any good because of "insert-some-dubious-chemical-and-its-production-environment-here" and use that as a legitimate excuse. Nevermind the fact that it's actually a LOT more eco-friendly than the previous product, half-truth folks, it's a winner every time.
You as the consumer just need to educate yourselves a little bit more, stop accepting every thing imposed onto your lives by your elected politicians, demand scrutiny and don't just trust everything you hear. Be skeptical.
You're very right.
I've reverse engineered enough cheap knockoffs in my life to verify your story. Everything from cheap PSU's with barely more than a Triac inside, to USB-hubs, cheap lasers, cheap communications transceivers (a chip & an half).
But yeah, we really DO get what we pay for. So dear consumers who are reading this, please protest by not settling for the crappy stuff. Buy quality and prove to the world that's what we want! I've been 30+ years into electronics (many as a service tech). We've got a heck of a job in front of us, but I honestly believe the public will tire of the crappy products, hopefully NOT before it's too late.
...because it doesn't pay very well to sell you something that'll last forever, whether it's an Oled screen or LED bulb.
:(
It's no coincidence that the CFLs die off after 1-2 years albeit they're supposed to last 10-20 years with normal usage. My first Philips 11w CFLs that I bought 20 years ago, still glows like mad and simply refuse to die. That is back when the CFLs was new, and cost like 40 bucks just for ONE bulb, but hey...it's actually worth the money, it still is my best bulb.
With LED's, it's a walk in the park for the industry to make them last less, all you need to do for your LED to last less than specified, is to OVERDRIVE them just a little, a little higher current and the LED's will die rapidly, they should be able to make the new LED lamps last just out the warranty period (that in most countries AFAIK is around 3-6 months), or cheap enough to avoid the warranty altogether.
There is nothing wrong with the LED's themselves, (we're talking the components...DIODES...not the whole circuit with drivers and all), I ordered strong RGB leds from China many MANY years ago, they're still glowing on my homemade alarm-systems so strong that I can use them as night-lights, yes...4 years later 24H day use...they still glow enough to lit up an entire room. And I just used Ohms law + 1% resistor values to calculate the right resistor value for my circuits. You can pretty much BET the manufacturers will "miscalculate" these values, or make the drivers for the stronger LED's last MUCH less in order to keep pumping out new ones for the consumers to waste and waste.
I'd rather pay a proper price for my LED lamps - and keep our environment safe from this mad overproduction that now has escalated totally out of hands.
...of radio wave sensing, would be to analyze how radio waves reflect on various surface materials & mass.
If we could do this (it would require MASSIVE programming & knowledge of structures and algorithms to recognize structures via RF waves & reflection), then we could use the RF waves as sort of echo-location, kind of like how bats see with the help of sound waves.
I've known this since I was a kid, when I was messing around with FM-transmitters to listen to my parents quarrel from a safe distance (ok, I was a weird kid), I noticed how I could sense my parents move around because they affected the signal strength and even the frequency shift depending on where they were located in that room. I've been pondering this ever since.
I know, but for the sake of simplicity.
It has 1300+ cores (some of the bigger cards got over 2300+ cores), and yes - I realize that they're not full-fledged CPUs and just highly specialized to perform certain calculations, kind of like FPGAs if you like.
They should improve their screening process.
Also, it's important to consider that funding a kickstarter project, is kind of like investing money in the lottery or purchasing one of those scratch lottery tickets. You may or may not win, the likelihood of actually winning is bigger than the lottery, but in reality very small, it's like going to the casino and betting it all on one of 3 rows.
Kickstarter is a gold-mine right now for scammers as well. All you need, is a well thought out plan to CONvince a lot of people out there, and since most people aren't very technical...this isn't hard at all (thus, why we need a better screening process). Many of the funded projects gets WAY more than they asked for, and then GREED grabs them...they lack no skills when it comes to find a reason to use the extra money, and have you noticed how certain products doesn't get cheaper for the public even thought they receive MASSIVE support?
Money baby! It's the shit.
Oh wow. This will do wonders for the Blender Cycles rendering engine. Thanks to Blender & Brecht (The coder behind Blenders Cycles rendering engine) I've been able to enjoy the power of a thousand computers in one card thanks to the accelerated powers of the Nvidia GPU based cards with multiple GPUs, mine has about 1300 GPUs and renders like insanity knows no bounds, I love it. YAY the future looks even better now.
Reading this makes me behave like a kid in a candy store, seriously.
I bought the LG 920 Optimus 3D phone some years ago. Awesome 3D screen, 2 x HD cameras for taking 3D photos. Fun for 14 days, after that...it just became an annoyingly big bulgy battery guzzling smartphone just like any other oversized phone out there.
3D TV? I so wanted them when they came out. After a while with very little use for them I thought Meh... and after an even longer while, the 3D tv sets went for a few hundred dollars, even in 50" sizes. I still thought...Meh...I'll stick to my old 47" LG full HD tv.
Same thing with Kinect, fun the first few days, fun to also connect it to the PC and play with all the hacks out there....same issue, technically useless stuff, fun...for a little while, but ultimately useless.
3D scanners? Meh... it'll probably be another fad, scan your objects, watch them on a 3D screen kind of like my Optimus 3D phone or the Nintendo 3DS...novelty item at best.
Well, if they're like Mr. Nash in the movie A beautiful mind - then I can sort of see this as a problem.
He basically asks the girl to simply skip the pleasant introduction, courting etc. and just go for the sex.