In my college physics lab we used play-doh as a resistor - figuring out how resistance changed with varying surface areas and the like. Also measured whether there were differences in resistance among different colors of play-doh. Needless to say the play-doh got pretty fried at the points where you connected it to the rest of the circuit. Of course the play-doh was used more for constructing artistic masterpieces than using it as a resistor!
Now, why am I paying 40,000 bucks a year for this:x:x:x
I had my final earlier tonight too - that was rough - and no mention of play-doh resistors - in fact very little problems dealing with dc circuits at all, the only stuff I was really good at!
True, but think of all the money and resources lost by Intel for a rare error that would not effect the vast majority of the customers using the chip. How many perfectly decent chips were just thrown away, passing the cost onto the consumer who had to make up for the money lost in remanufacturing these chips.
Here is a report done by Intel on how often an average user might see an error:
http://www.intel.com/support/processors/pentium/fd iv/wp/6.htm
It's certainly bad PR for AMD and they will most likely offer an exchange program like Intel, but the practical need for exchanges isn't really there (if what I am reading in other comments is correct).
Before I had a device to transfer programs to my graphing calculator when I was middle-school aged - I would print off the program from http://www.ticalc.org/ and type it into my calculator. I learned a good amount of programming from this simple task - dissecting the code as I entered it and trying to figure out what it all meant.
My first programming experience on a computer was Visual Basic. Now it seems like not even a programming language. I coded a simple Jeopardy game that I ran one time in my French class. My goal in programming VB was to code some sort of GUI application where I could store my collection of baseball cards. All the programs out there that would do this were expensive and cost a bit of money (especially for a kid) so I set out trying to code this. Unfortunately I can't say I got very far. I tried using some sort of database thing that obviously wasn't going to work. I can honestly say that I hated VB - I really had no direction in syntax and structure and the code I produced was just terrible.
My first computer science class in high school originally dealt with programming in BASIC. The textbook must have been from the 80's and most of the programs we had to write were ridiculously simple. The class did give me a very good foundation on all the simple programming concepts.
As my senior year approached I had wanted to self-study for the AP exam which was Java based. I attempted for about two-weeks to learn it and gave up. All of the web tutorials were just terrible and I didn't understand a method from a class and really the whole concept of object-oriented-programming.
I fooled around with php code some times too but the mySQL aspect of it was way over my head. I finally learned Java in an intro college course and see the beauty of OOP, but I can't say that I think it would be easy to learn on your own.
I think that the biggest issue with learning a language is figuring out what you want to do with it. Every kid wants to make some sort of GUI - many want to program games. But, even now, I think that programming a simple game in java is pretty difficult (not mentioning that it is pretty difficult to just learn to program a gui in java).
Sorry for the long post - my main points were that the biggest reason kids don't code is because of the lack of freely available simple tutorials for the beginner programmer, the difficult nature of building a simple gui, and figuring out what needs coding.
This has been known for a while now in the competitive gaming community.
The WSVG - World Series of Video Games is basically taking over the CPL's World Tour function. There will be 3 major events - Lanwar in Kentucky, Dreamhack in Sweden, and the CPL Summer Event in Texas.
The thought that competitive gaming is dead is completely not true.
Very true, I was referring to a more direct, programmable way to mess with someone's mind. I am sure this would be pretty dangerous but I also think it would be pretty cool.
But, I remember after writing my initial comment that there was something called the Painstation. A somewhat crude way of accomplishing something I was imagining.
From the article
"Time-lapse phasecontrast and fluorescence images were collected from cells grown on glass coverslips using a Zeiss Axiovert 200M microscope equipped with a Hamamatsu ORCA camera."
They use a fancy (and expensive) inverted light microscope with a digital camera attached to it to take the images. The section on the right part of the movie is made using with a fluorescence stain as the cell proceeds through mitosis. There is a light source attached to the microscope that emits light at a certain wavelength to excite the fluorescence stain that can be bound to a variety of things - mitochondria, DNA, etc. In this case the fluorescence is bound to alpha-tubulin-GFP. Alpha-tubulin is a protein found in microtubules which are involved with cell shape and cell structure. GFP merely means "Green Fluorescent Protein" - that it will fluoresce in the green wavelength.
http://microscope.olympus.com/contentsDB/01world/0 1reseach/a_appli/12/contents.html
Use of fluorescence in biochem is really fascinating, and fortunately I have a good amount of experience as a student using fluorescence as a tool. You can bind several fluorescence probes to a cell and get some really cool images:
http://probes.invitrogen.com/servlets/photo?fileid =g002761&company=probes
Slashdot Mirror
In my college physics lab we used play-doh as a resistor - figuring out how resistance changed with varying surface areas and the like. Also measured whether there were differences in resistance among different colors of play-doh. Needless to say the play-doh got pretty fried at the points where you connected it to the rest of the circuit. Of course the play-doh was used more for constructing artistic masterpieces than using it as a resistor!
:x :x :x
I had my final earlier tonight too - that was rough - and no mention of play-doh resistors - in fact very little problems dealing with dc circuits at all, the only stuff I was really good at!
Now, why am I paying 40,000 bucks a year for this
True, but think of all the money and resources lost by Intel for a rare error that would not effect the vast majority of the customers using the chip. How many perfectly decent chips were just thrown away, passing the cost onto the consumer who had to make up for the money lost in remanufacturing these chips. Here is a report done by Intel on how often an average user might see an error: http://www.intel.com/support/processors/pentium/fd iv/wp/6.htm
It's certainly bad PR for AMD and they will most likely offer an exchange program like Intel, but the practical need for exchanges isn't really there (if what I am reading in other comments is correct).
Before I had a device to transfer programs to my graphing calculator when I was middle-school aged - I would print off the program from http://www.ticalc.org/ and type it into my calculator. I learned a good amount of programming from this simple task - dissecting the code as I entered it and trying to figure out what it all meant. My first programming experience on a computer was Visual Basic. Now it seems like not even a programming language. I coded a simple Jeopardy game that I ran one time in my French class. My goal in programming VB was to code some sort of GUI application where I could store my collection of baseball cards. All the programs out there that would do this were expensive and cost a bit of money (especially for a kid) so I set out trying to code this. Unfortunately I can't say I got very far. I tried using some sort of database thing that obviously wasn't going to work. I can honestly say that I hated VB - I really had no direction in syntax and structure and the code I produced was just terrible. My first computer science class in high school originally dealt with programming in BASIC. The textbook must have been from the 80's and most of the programs we had to write were ridiculously simple. The class did give me a very good foundation on all the simple programming concepts. As my senior year approached I had wanted to self-study for the AP exam which was Java based. I attempted for about two-weeks to learn it and gave up. All of the web tutorials were just terrible and I didn't understand a method from a class and really the whole concept of object-oriented-programming. I fooled around with php code some times too but the mySQL aspect of it was way over my head. I finally learned Java in an intro college course and see the beauty of OOP, but I can't say that I think it would be easy to learn on your own. I think that the biggest issue with learning a language is figuring out what you want to do with it. Every kid wants to make some sort of GUI - many want to program games. But, even now, I think that programming a simple game in java is pretty difficult (not mentioning that it is pretty difficult to just learn to program a gui in java). Sorry for the long post - my main points were that the biggest reason kids don't code is because of the lack of freely available simple tutorials for the beginner programmer, the difficult nature of building a simple gui, and figuring out what needs coding.
This has been known for a while now in the competitive gaming community. The WSVG - World Series of Video Games is basically taking over the CPL's World Tour function. There will be 3 major events - Lanwar in Kentucky, Dreamhack in Sweden, and the CPL Summer Event in Texas. The thought that competitive gaming is dead is completely not true.
Very true, I was referring to a more direct, programmable way to mess with someone's mind. I am sure this would be pretty dangerous but I also think it would be pretty cool. But, I remember after writing my initial comment that there was something called the Painstation. A somewhat crude way of accomplishing something I was imagining.
Now how long will it be until this sort of input is reversed and a game will directly impact our physical body?
From the article "Time-lapse phasecontrast and fluorescence images were collected from cells grown on glass coverslips using a Zeiss Axiovert 200M microscope equipped with a Hamamatsu ORCA camera." They use a fancy (and expensive) inverted light microscope with a digital camera attached to it to take the images. The section on the right part of the movie is made using with a fluorescence stain as the cell proceeds through mitosis. There is a light source attached to the microscope that emits light at a certain wavelength to excite the fluorescence stain that can be bound to a variety of things - mitochondria, DNA, etc. In this case the fluorescence is bound to alpha-tubulin-GFP. Alpha-tubulin is a protein found in microtubules which are involved with cell shape and cell structure. GFP merely means "Green Fluorescent Protein" - that it will fluoresce in the green wavelength. http://microscope.olympus.com/contentsDB/01world/0 1reseach/a_appli/12/contents.html
Use of fluorescence in biochem is really fascinating, and fortunately I have a good amount of experience as a student using fluorescence as a tool. You can bind several fluorescence probes to a cell and get some really cool images:
http://probes.invitrogen.com/servlets/photo?fileid =g002761&company=probes
Friday Night at 4AM and TFA is slashdotted :( .
But will it run Duke Nukem Forever?
Thanks for the editorialistic introduction to my Slashdot science articles.
I did - but try a search for falun gong. You get a nice "page cannot be displayed"