Comments for Area 0x51

Comment on Continuing Education by Felice Tufo

Felice Tufo — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:28:00 +0000

Hello Mike,
I recently discovered the IEEE CSDP certification: the good news is that it’s not a “vertical” certification (that is, demonstrating that you can use a particular framework, technology, or whatever), rather it’s about software engineering methodologies as a whole and you have to continuosly stay updated with the best practices, to get the re-certification (every 3 years). Moreover it seems that some (big) companies are beginning to ask their employee to take this certification.
Are you aware of other certifications like the CSDP one?

Comment on The Personal Computer vs. The Chemistry Set by Matthew

Matthew — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 06:16:21 +0000

Ah chemistry sets, nothing quite like them. The ones you find in the stores today are soft, useless and boring. The more interesting ones on the internet will likley see your house raided by some goverment agency if downloaded or purchased (*sigh*) a sign of the times.

Our final year chemistry teacher spent the first four weeks of our first term teaching us all to make explosives safely. He was of the opinoin if you had gotten this far in chemistry then you were (the boys especially) going to try making explosives after school, He wasn’t wrong and all of us have our sight, fingers and toes despite making gun cotten, amonium tri-iodide, thermite and other interesting substances. Knowing when to stay and fight and when to run is a valuable life skill, regardless of the situation.

The day that we see a VIRTUAL chemistry lab in a school, where VIRTUAL chemicals are mixed together in a VIRTUAL beaker and the reaction is animated on a webpage, well it’s probably time that we sent all our students outside to play.

Thanks for a fun article

Comment on The Personal Computer vs. The Chemistry Set by Mike Ficco

Mike Ficco — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:00:49 +0000

I hate toll roads. The dollar or two (or five) aren’t that much but still make you think about whether or not you NEED to make the trip. This is just one more example of a psychic “chill” being imposed on modern society. These tolls are the best (worst?) example of politicians refusing to make choices. The want more money to throw around but don’t want to bite the bullet and raise “taxes”, so they create the socialistic concept of “user fees”. Do they not understand how much our economy accelerated with the creation of the FREE TO DRIVE ON Interstate Highway System under President Dwight D. Eisenhower? They are COWARDS, afraid to ask for the taxes to do good things yet unwilling to cut their favorite Earmarks.

Ahh, you got me foaming at the mouth again. I should stop now.

Anyway…
You being lucky to have all your fingers is exactly what I’m talking about. I remember one event where I had on heavy gloves, a heavy winter jacket – backwards, safety goggles, and a heavy scarf covering any possible exposed flesh on my face and head. That was my protection in case the experiment went badly. As it turned out, it only caught fire and blackened a cement floor. But, like you, I have all 10 fingers and both eyes. Note that one of the fingers hasn’t worked very well in years – not because of a chemistry experiment but because a hitter tried to remove it from my hand while I was trying to block a volleyball. My point is precisely that. You are always at risk of being injured unless you sit on a couch and watch TV all day – even then a meteor could get you. We are giving up too much in our headlong attempt to circumvent nature and make life absolutely safe. Many people, not all, have a basic nature such that they will not have a full life unless they have adventure, experimentation, and risk. The modern rules are boxing in and frustrating these people and we are losing their creativity and massive contributions to society. All this to make the whiners and scaredy-cats feel better while they watch some reality TV show and eat nachos.

Ahh… foaming at the mouth again… time to say goodbye.

Comment on Microsoft After Bill by Bernhard Weller

Bernhard Weller — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 22:29:32 +0000

I faced the same problems as you, and I found some nice tools (freeware but not open source) to help me out:

For locating a file on my (NTFS) harddisk I use a tool called “Everything” (bit of a strange name), it’s incredibly fast if you have a clue about the file name.
For searching file contents or on FAT filesystems I use “Filelocator Lite”, which allows even searching for regular expressions and offers a preview window to show where it found something in the file, so you can check without opening the file – great.

As for calculators – I use “PhyxCalc”, it behaves more like a scratchpad than a calculator, it’s fabulous (though only available in German – but how hard can it be to use a calculator). It can also calculate using units, so if you have a hex value of seconds and want to know it in minutes just type something like:
7FF_hs -> min and it will tell you: =34.11666666666667min (_h for hex, s for seconds, -> for convert to, and min for minutes)
Or: 3,6V/20kOhm->mA =0,18mA
It’s the best calculator I’ve used so far. It won’t do rocket science, but for that you probably want to use rocket science tools anyway.

The thing is though, Windows doesn’t feel as a complete pack if you have to install software for basic functions…

Comment on The Personal Computer vs. The Chemistry Set by Dan

Dan — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 18:45:12 +0000

Mike,

Many good points. Don’t even get me started on toll roads…

One comment: I noticed the yellow highlighter on the scanned book page… I smiled when I saw the phrase “… end of the carbon rod gets as hot as 3760 degrees Centigrade” *wasn’t* highlighted — I mean, that’s 6800 degrees Fahrenheit (!!!). Granted, it’s probably a very small region, but still… (Then again, to a human, anything over a few hundred degrees is probably all in the category of “ouch ouch OUCH!”)

I’m pretty sure that many of the chemistry experiments I did in high school many years ago are now verboten. I remember some fun ones with magnesium, others with steel wool, others with hydrochloric & sulfuric acids… don’t even get me started on the self-funded pyrotechnic experiments I did during summer breaks – in retrospect, I’m probably lucky to have all my fingers (not mention hearing & vision, close calls there too).

Comment on Saving REAL Money on Healthcare by The Personal Computer vs. The Chemistry Set « Area 0×51

The Personal Computer vs. The Chemistry Set « Area 0×51 — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:35:59 +0000

[...] the possibility of significantly reducing the cost of healthcare by allowing regular people direct access to curative drugs without needing a doctor as an expensive [...]

Comment on Probability, Stochastic Processes, and Airport Security by The Personal Computer vs. The Chemistry Set « Area 0×51

The Personal Computer vs. The Chemistry Set « Area 0×51 — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:34:30 +0000

[...] Financially, we’re headed for disaster if we keep spending money creating and policing anti-danger laws. Spending money to arrest and prosecute a citizen who buys fireworks seems like an incredible waste of money; and we’ve experienced decades of failed, expensive, zero-tolerance drug interdiction. Don’t get me started on airport security. [...]

Comment on Apple After Steve Jobs by Gary Urista

Gary Urista — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:45:58 +0000

Your background sounds like mine, most of the companies I worked for are now gone. To go beyond that, most of the projects I worked on never saw the light of day. My stuff worked, somebody up the chain changed their mind or didn’t know what they wanted in the first place. People are viewing Steve Jobs as one of the smartest people who ever lived and though I’m sure that he was smart, he didn’t design hardware or software. As far as I know he didn’t “make” anything. When I first tried a MacIntosh I thought it was the stupidest piece of garbage I had ever seen. I was used to CPM and DOS. The processor and the memory coupled with a floppy disk drive made the Mac useless as it was… then. With the software we have now coupled with the processing power we have a DOS model wouldn’t work. We have to have a GUI interface. I think that Steve Jobs was a smart, stubborn, and REALLY LUCKY man. I don’t know why a $250 mp3 player is that much better than a $50 one or why their tablet is brilliant when others that came before were stupid trash. Nothing explains it except brilliant marketing, snob appeal, new processing power, and incredible luck. I would have used a Mac a long time ago if it was close to the same price as a PC and lately I have tried running software on a PC that required me to run several operating system updates to use and one install wouldn’t occur until another was done first but that update won’t load because it thinks the update was already done and refuses to do it again. Now maybe I’m ready for a Mac. I’d try Linux but in a lot of ways, they are still DOS machines.

Comment on Apple After Steve Jobs by 42Bastian

42Bastian — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 18:11:06 +0000

Thanks for your thoughts.
I think, if Jobs teached the managers of Apple well, I see no problems for Apple future.
Actually the Apple way sounds a bit like the Japanese Kaizen:Sell a product where _all_ the features work, and continue to develop noew features for the next release.
Instead many companies try to get out a product with _all_ possible features (the competing product has) and don’t care if they work correctly.

Just my two €-cent

Comment on Microsoft After Bill by Apple After Steve Jobs « Area 0×51

Apple After Steve Jobs « Area 0×51 — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:59:45 +0000

[...] Mr. Jobs is with us no more. Not too long ago I did a commentary on the state of Microsoft after the departure of Bill Gates so it seems only fair that I do one on Apple after Steve Jobs… Except we don’t know yet. [...]