Yes, they need to know how to read, write, type, and do math, but this question was about computers.
Students should know how to convert base-10 numbers to binary.
They should understand how to map a character set to binary.
They should understand how to add two numbers in binary and then--time permitting--learn about AND/OR/XOR gates.
They should understand the concepts of CPU/memory/bus/network/storage and transferring data over a wire.
They should understand that a network can be wired or wireless.
They should understand what a cloud computing facility looks like and how their files get to/from it.
After the above, given time, you can teach them enough so they can decide whether or not they want to pursue a degree in computer science. This might include parsing a language by hand, talking about simple algorithms and algorithmic complexity, introduction to the Turing machine and computability, and maybe some simple data structures like arrays and linked lists.
Each of the above concepts can be absorbed and exercised in a week.
-Todd
p.s. "Computability" was not in my Chrome dictionary. Sheesh!
The problem of disappearing personal Web sites has been in the news a couple of times this week.
It seems like an obvious startup to guarantee viability of Web content after death for a fee. It seems pretty straightforward, except...
I assume there will be some law to define. For instance, does the company have the same rights as the deceased when it comes to asking/forcing Facebook to not delete their page/wall.
This sounds like a great business project, and a great career-maker for at least one lawyer.
This plane can potentially fly in scary, unbelievable ways. It is too bad a full demo will give away too much. I wonder what the minimum turning radius is for a plane moving a Mach 2. Exciting!
Why do we bother to hire real doctors to work in medical units? Aren't they going to have trouble figuring out whether or not someone was shot? Shouldn't we train military people to operate on wounded soldiers?
Sheesh! This is yet another case of the average person thinking technical people spend years learning what they know and somehow they are not valuable experts the way other specialists are.
A quick clarification: The top of the AM dial (around 1500) is 1500kHz, or 1.5MHz. This is not close to the 2400MHz, or 2.4GHz at which WiFi operates.
The ability to identify the origin of the interference using an AM radio relies on the fact that the interference is produced from a source (often an electrical spark or arc) which generates RF noise on the entire spectrum. The spark plugs in car engines are a notorious cause of this sort of interference. If the spark plug wiring in a car is not shielded properly, you will hear a whining sound on an AM radio which changes pitch as the engine RPM changes.
AM radios happen to be easy to find and are very good at "hearing" the noise produced by an arc. If the noise is something like a microwave oven, which produces RF energy only at about 2.4GHz, then the AM radio will not help you find the problem.
I hope this helps to clarify the issues.
-Todd
p.s. As an interesting experiment. If you have WiFi and a microwave oven in your house/apartment, start downloading a large file. Look at the download rate (300kB/sec. or whatever). Then, start the microwave and look at the download rate. Mine drops to about 10-20kB/sec., because the microwave interferes with the WiFi signal.
First try what is suggested by BabaChazz in his comment above and is what most Hams would do to start. Listen for the noise on an AM radio. You do not want FM, as one of the characteristics of FM is to block this noise.
Take your (preferably hand-held) radio and tune it somewhere on the dial where there is no station. Then, you can try moving it around your computer to hear all of the RF interference your motherboard, etc. are giving off. If you cannot hear this noise, something is wrong with the radio--be sure it is set to AM.:-)
Leave the radio on, and you might hear the noise start at the time your WiFi drops. If you do not, the interference is not covering the AM frequencies (an arc will cover everything), and it is probably time to call in a Ham. It is likely you will hear it.
If you hear it, you can walk around inside and outside your house listening for where the noise gets stronger. Often this will be tracked down to a phone pole or something else.
Once you find it, contact the appropriate person (electric distribution supplier, city, etc.) Convincing someone to fix a problem like this is not always easy.
I know nothing about this other than my own inability to focus on different points without the aid of a stereoptic viewer. Many people can do this, but I cannot.
It would seem that anything which hinders the development of the ability to focus both eyes on a single point could be designed to help train one's eyes to do this.
Hopefully, if this has not already been researched, this issue being in the news will catch the interest of a PhD student with the proper background to look into it.
Cosmic ray events tend to affect multiple neighboring transistors. For this reason, they tend to affect multiple bits. However, by laying out memory cells so immediate neighbors are from different locations, the ability of single-bit-correction-double-bit-detection (SECDED) methods to detect most events is usually preserved.
The main concern is for structures with no error correction, such as the gates in the processor pipeline. Several research ideas have been put forward. See here (PDF) for a good overview of the issues.
Dr. Gawande suggests the "13,600 different service lines [doctors] deliver" is an issue in health care costs. I put forth these comments:
* How many services are listed in the manual which guides the number of hours an auto mechanic is allowed to charge for a repair, e.g., replace spark plugs: 0.75 hours. How many items are in this book?
* How many different services does a software engineer deliver over a year's time?
I suggest the problem is related to control over charges. Car mechanics have a job with similar complexity to what doctors face. Software engineers often face a problem much more complex. (How many "surgeries" require several weeks to solve a single-line bug?)
The control of health care "service" in the US is in the hands of the AMA and the bureaucracies created around hospitals and other facilities. If they were willing to reduce their profit margins (assuming we can eliminate the defaults they see because of uninsured/under-insured patients), we could see significant reductions in general health-care costs.
I guess they're just following the Soviet era tried and tested rocket development program. Start by blowing up rockets, and continue until they stop blowing up. Then strap some pilots on top.
This sounds pretty much like the US space program.
It is unfortunate people still have to learn from their mistakes when this has already been done at least twice (CCCP and the US). A person might figure they could afford to hire a couple of engineers who already went through this trial and error.
Let us remember that Joby Energy also sponsors this excellent project!
I would also like to add my insight to the previous excellent comments, as this is what allowed me to understand how the car goes faster than the wind:
What is the wind hitting to drive the vehicle forward? Where is the flat spot on the back of the vehicle the wind is pushing against? It is the rear surface of the propeller. The wheels are not driving the propeller to make the car go, they are keeping the relative speed of the air hitting the rear surface of the propeller at the proper speed so the car acts like a sailboat sailing at an angle to the wind.
The fact that this seems counter-intuitive at first makes it a cool problem. With the above, I now feel this makes sense and I have no problem believing it.
In the early '70s Zappa wrote a song called 'Penguin in Bondage,' an obvious foretelling of the anti-Linux lawsuits and threats from SCO, Microsoft, and other evildoers.
Some past scientists were in a position where they could speak about religion without fear. Unfortunately, I am not certain that is the case today. Examples from Einstein:
I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. (Albert Einstein, 1954)
I think this one is of interest given our religious-values/anti-socialist Republican party:
One strength of the Communist system... is that it has some of the characteristics of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion. (Albert Einstein, Out Of My Later Years, 1950)
Several former office-space buildings are being converted to data centers.
In a regular commute from West San Jose to the Google-plex area in Mountain View I have seen these changes. An existing office building has its windows removed/covered and then a sign goes up showing data center space available or the name of a data warehousing company.
This conversion seems less wasteful as far as materials, but I am not sure how using an existing building compares to building a data-center-specific one for long-term energy efficiencies.
It is disappointing to see Amazon finding out only now that engineers will want to scribble on pages, highlight items, need color, etc.
Amazon employs hundreds if not thousands of engineers, most if not all of which could have told senior executives this.
Unfortunately, many companies in Silicon Valley are being run by executives who have forgotten their companies were built by engineers, and consulting with them once in a while might be useful.
This is not meant to be flame-bait. It is from personal experience and the experiences of other engineers, e.g., Bob Colwell and the inability of Intel to acknowledge the failure of the Itanium processor line before it wasted billions of dollars and several years of engineering time (read Bob's book The Pentium Chronicles for more detail.)
Slashdot Mirror
...about computers.
Yes, they need to know how to read, write, type, and do math, but this question was about computers.
Students should know how to convert base-10 numbers to binary.
They should understand how to map a character set to binary.
They should understand how to add two numbers in binary and then--time permitting--learn about AND/OR/XOR gates.
They should understand the concepts of CPU/memory/bus/network/storage and transferring data over a wire.
They should understand that a network can be wired or wireless.
They should understand what a cloud computing facility looks like and how their files get to/from it.
After the above, given time, you can teach them enough so they can decide whether or not they want to pursue a degree in computer science. This might include parsing a language by hand, talking about simple algorithms and algorithmic complexity, introduction to the Turing machine and computability, and maybe some simple data structures like arrays and linked lists.
Each of the above concepts can be absorbed and exercised in a week.
-Todd
p.s. "Computability" was not in my Chrome dictionary. Sheesh!
The problem of disappearing personal Web sites has been in the news a couple of times this week.
It seems like an obvious startup to guarantee viability of Web content after death for a fee. It seems pretty straightforward, except...
I assume there will be some law to define. For instance, does the company have the same rights as the deceased when it comes to asking/forcing Facebook to not delete their page/wall.
This sounds like a great business project, and a great career-maker for at least one lawyer.
-Todd
Its been doing well, but...
:)
...but is likely a necessary skill to do well in a computer science course of study, as well as engineering, physics, etc.
This plane can potentially fly in scary, unbelievable ways. It is too bad a full demo will give away too much. I wonder what the minimum turning radius is for a plane moving a Mach 2. Exciting!
-Todd
And not a single person was able to "get it".
Oh well, I guess North Dakotans are not big fans of Douglas Adams.
-Todd
Why do we bother to hire real doctors to work in medical units? Aren't they going to have trouble figuring out whether or not someone was shot? Shouldn't we train military people to operate on wounded soldiers?
Sheesh! This is yet another case of the average person thinking technical people spend years learning what they know and somehow they are not valuable experts the way other specialists are.
-Todd
Where is her dumpster?
Apparently they came up with the idea for the logo "code" before they hired the talent.
-Todd
Woops. I should have said "unfold/refold" in space...
Still cool stuff!
-Todd
Cool stuff!
-Todd
A quick clarification: The top of the AM dial (around 1500) is 1500kHz, or 1.5MHz. This is not close to the 2400MHz, or 2.4GHz at which WiFi operates.
The ability to identify the origin of the interference using an AM radio relies on the fact that the interference is produced from a source (often an electrical spark or arc) which generates RF noise on the entire spectrum. The spark plugs in car engines are a notorious cause of this sort of interference. If the spark plug wiring in a car is not shielded properly, you will hear a whining sound on an AM radio which changes pitch as the engine RPM changes.
AM radios happen to be easy to find and are very good at "hearing" the noise produced by an arc. If the noise is something like a microwave oven, which produces RF energy only at about 2.4GHz, then the AM radio will not help you find the problem.
I hope this helps to clarify the issues.
-Todd
p.s. As an interesting experiment. If you have WiFi and a microwave oven in your house/apartment, start downloading a large file. Look at the download rate (300kB/sec. or whatever). Then, start the microwave and look at the download rate. Mine drops to about 10-20kB/sec., because the microwave interferes with the WiFi signal.
First try what is suggested by BabaChazz in his comment above and is what most Hams would do to start. Listen for the noise on an AM radio. You do not want FM, as one of the characteristics of FM is to block this noise.
Take your (preferably hand-held) radio and tune it somewhere on the dial where there is no station. Then, you can try moving it around your computer to hear all of the RF interference your motherboard, etc. are giving off. If you cannot hear this noise, something is wrong with the radio--be sure it is set to AM. :-)
Leave the radio on, and you might hear the noise start at the time your WiFi drops. If you do not, the interference is not covering the AM frequencies (an arc will cover everything), and it is probably time to call in a Ham.
It is likely you will hear it.
If you hear it, you can walk around inside and outside your house listening for where the noise gets stronger. Often this will be tracked down to a phone pole or something else.
Once you find it, contact the appropriate person (electric distribution supplier, city, etc.) Convincing someone to fix a problem like this is not always easy.
-Todd
I know nothing about this other than my own inability to focus on different points without the aid of a stereoptic viewer. Many people can do this, but I cannot.
It would seem that anything which hinders the development of the ability to focus both eyes on a single point could be designed to help train one's eyes to do this.
Hopefully, if this has not already been researched, this issue being in the news will catch the interest of a PhD student with the proper background to look into it.
-Todd
Cosmic ray events tend to affect multiple neighboring transistors. For this reason, they tend to affect multiple bits. However, by laying out memory cells so immediate neighbors are from different locations, the ability of single-bit-correction-double-bit-detection (SECDED) methods to detect most events is usually preserved.
The main concern is for structures with no error correction, such as the gates in the processor pipeline. Several research ideas have been put forward. See here (PDF) for a good overview of the issues.
-Todd
Dr. Gawande suggests the "13,600 different service lines [doctors] deliver" is an issue in health care costs. I put forth these comments:
* How many services are listed in the manual which guides the number of hours an auto mechanic is allowed to charge for a repair, e.g., replace spark plugs: 0.75 hours. How many items are in this book?
* How many different services does a software engineer deliver over a year's time?
I suggest the problem is related to control over charges. Car mechanics have a job with similar complexity to what doctors face. Software engineers often face a problem much more complex. (How many "surgeries" require several weeks to solve a single-line bug?)
The control of health care "service" in the US is in the hands of the AMA and the bureaucracies created around hospitals and other facilities. If they were willing to reduce their profit margins (assuming we can eliminate the defaults they see because of uninsured/under-insured patients), we could see significant reductions in general health-care costs.
This is just a thought...
-Todd
This sounds pretty much like the US space program.
This is not flamebait.
The first attempt at launching a US satellite blew up shortly after launch. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_TV3
The Explorer program which followed, started with the successful launch of Explorer 1, the first satellite placed by the United States.
The Explorer program has launched about 100 satellites, but 8 of the first 17 failed.
Everyone seems to forget that it took a while to make these launches consistent as we saw (mostly) with the Gemini and Apollo missions.
-Todd
I guess they're just following the Soviet era tried and tested rocket development program. Start by blowing up rockets, and continue until they stop blowing up. Then strap some pilots on top.
This sounds pretty much like the US space program.
It is unfortunate people still have to learn from their mistakes when this has already been done at least twice (CCCP and the US). A person might figure they could afford to hire a couple of engineers who already went through this trial and error.
-Todd
Let us remember that Joby Energy also sponsors this excellent project!
I would also like to add my insight to the previous excellent comments, as this is what allowed me to understand how the car goes faster than the wind:
What is the wind hitting to drive the vehicle forward? Where is the flat spot on the back of the vehicle the wind is pushing against? It is the rear surface of the propeller. The wheels are not driving the propeller to make the car go, they are keeping the relative speed of the air hitting the rear surface of the propeller at the proper speed so the car acts like a sailboat sailing at an angle to the wind.
The fact that this seems counter-intuitive at first makes it a cool problem. With the above, I now feel this makes sense and I have no problem believing it.
I hope this helps other people.
-Todd
p.s. I am a systems architect/software developer available for employment.
In the early '70s Zappa wrote a song called 'Penguin in Bondage,' an obvious foretelling of the anti-Linux lawsuits and threats from SCO, Microsoft, and other evildoers.
Since Tux came into being in April-May of 1996, it is impossible for Mr. Zappa to have used a penguin reference to suggest anything about Linus in the "early '70s." See: http://www.sjbaker.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_History_of_Tux_the_Linux_Penguin
-Todd
Some past scientists were in a position where they could speak about religion without fear. Unfortunately, I am not certain that is the case today. Examples from Einstein:
I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. (Albert Einstein, 1954)
I think this one is of interest given our religious-values/anti-socialist Republican party:
One strength of the Communist system ... is that it has some of the characteristics of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.
(Albert Einstein, Out Of My Later Years, 1950)
-Todd
...and add on dehumidifying on top.
Recommended relative humidity in data centers is a range centered at about 50%. In California, this is going to mean adding moisture if anything.
-Todd
Several former office-space buildings are being converted to data centers.
In a regular commute from West San Jose to the Google-plex area in Mountain View I have seen these changes. An existing office building has its windows removed/covered and then a sign goes up showing data center space available or the name of a data warehousing company.
This conversion seems less wasteful as far as materials, but I am not sure how using an existing building compares to building a data-center-specific one for long-term energy efficiencies.
-Todd
It is disappointing to see Amazon finding out only now that engineers will want to scribble on pages, highlight items, need color, etc.
Amazon employs hundreds if not thousands of engineers, most if not all of which could have told senior executives this.
Unfortunately, many companies in Silicon Valley are being run by executives who have forgotten their companies were built by engineers, and consulting with them once in a while might be useful.
This is not meant to be flame-bait. It is from personal experience and the experiences of other engineers, e.g., Bob Colwell and the inability of Intel to acknowledge the failure of the Itanium processor line before it wasted billions of dollars and several years of engineering time (read Bob's book The Pentium Chronicles for more detail.)
-Todd