I went through security wearing a kilt once. Never have I seen a TSA agent so loathe to touch someone. His boss had to force him to pat me down higher than my knees.

Kilt + come hither smile == security breach 9/10

They problem with math education is that it is taught in a sort of vacuum. Students don't see the necessity of math until much later in their lives when it's too late. People try all sorts of methods to teach math, but what we really need to teach, I feel, is the necessity of math. We need to wow students young to show them that math can be useful.

That said I think that we should introduce logic and geometry at younger ages and geometry needs to play a more natural role than doing those retarded column proofs that scar 10th graders so much. Math was invented to help explain the world around us, to help keep count of that which is important to us, but it has been divorced from that in education. Sure we have those asinine word problems, but again these problems rarely connect with their target audience.

If you look at higher math so much of it has very deep connections to geometric structure as well as critical logic skills. So it makes no sense to me that these ideas are taught in compartmentalized nature and that all the areas of math are so segregated. Plus Logic and critical thinking are skills that cross all areas of life.

In conclusion, we need to be showing children how and why math is important, not just trying to beat the rules of arithmetic and fractions into their aching and confused brains.

I have a record player with the built in capability to rip records to MP3... It cost 50 or 60$

I just bought a CD the other day while on vacation. As I was walking back to my hotel all I could think was "Now how the hell am I going to listen to this..." Of course I have a CD player in my laptop but that thought didn't occur to me as a way to actually listen to the CD, just as a way to rip it into a digital format so I could listen to it in a more convenient manner. Hell the only reason I even bought the CD was because it was a regional exclusive release... [/anecdote]

When(and where) I did my undergrad in CS, it was mandatory that we took both the basic and advanced Computer Architecture courses and the intro to Logic and Design course. These were the same courses that electrical and computer engineers took. We designed Clock radio circuits, studied K-maps, Boolean logic, gray codes, wrote our own basic RISC chips(instruction set and layout) using Xilinx(with the option to put them onto FPGA's and run them), studied floating point calculations, studied parallel pipelining, did manual loop unrolling, worked with MIPS emulators, studied multiple assembly languages, and not once did I touch out of date hardware.

I just don't see how using such old computers is anything but a gimmick. Unless you're trying to study some rather obscure architecture for which no emulator exists, I just don't see how it adds much to the educational experience over having a properly designed curriculum

It would seem that GPL3 has been out long enough that if its merits for switching the kernel to said license were so important it would've happened by now. Or is it possibly the case that not everyone has the exact same values as you and still enjoys the flexibility of using the kernel under GPL2. God forbid someone get rich off the collective works of society. Sure, they should contribute back, it's the nice thing to do, but really not everything has to be about forcing openness. I would rather a company build on a solid foundation rather than have to reinvent the wheel all the time. It tends to result in better products.

That's what phones are after all, consumer products. 99% of the world just wants a product and could give two shits about rooting or jailbreaking the device. The vast number of people who buy these phones will just be focused on comparing things like price, service, available apps and the usability of the product. There's a reason that the iPhone is/has been so successful. It came with a slick UI out of the box(and has gotten slicker). Sure it's not open, but most people don't care because it doesn't impact the way they want and expect to use said device. Sure, you're effectively renting the hardware since you can't run whatever you want on it. Sure, that's not ideal. But given the choice between a semi-locked down system that is easy to use, looks good and does what I want or an open system with a crufty UI and so-so ease of use, I'll take the first one most of the time. Especially if it's a device I don't want to have to mess with constantly.

Yes I've run Linux and Solaris and I like them for their purpose. I also run OSX on my macbook and windows7 cause they fit my purposes. I appreciate the openness of Linux and openSource, but I can also respect the decision not to be open source. And as I've spent more and more time using computers, the need for good UI design has become more and more a factor and I've come to care less and less about being able or needing to hack code to make it work.

Gizmodo also has an axe to grind after the stolen prototype fiasco. So it's not really a NEUTRAL third party.

Option D: The bumper starts coming standard with all iphone4's sold and if you want some other case you have to spend money on it? But it will take until September 30 to get production to the point where that is possible.

They are after all only providing free cases because they can't produce enough bumpers to provide free bumpers for all.

Option C: Seems highly unlikely to me as I just don't see Apple as a company or culture changing their manufacturing process this soon into a product and/or completely redesigning their product. Especially given that a full hardware redesign or modification as you propose would be tantamount to full admission that this problem is that severe and they've already been burned in the PR dept for things like discounting first(or was it second gen) iphones too quickly before. Plus the only quick fix they could probably roll out in 2.5 months would be some sort of clear coat on the metal which would just seem 'tacky' in the mind of the designers at Apple. Who knows, I'm not an antenna engineer, maybe there is something they could do in the manufacturing process to change things that quickly.

I can play the anecdote game too... AFAIK I am the only person in the world with my first and last name. It is quite literally a unique identifier for me. If you just went by just my last name there are probably only 20 or so people who share it. However, as I am of the cell phone generation I don't show up in any real listings, but my family members do and you have to consider someone willing to stalk you is probably willing to stalk your family. Last thing I'd want is my mom being stalked by some nerd with rage issues over a fucking game.

Additionally... Have you never seen the Terminator? I mean there were like 10 Linda Hamiltons in LA... How did that work out for them :)

You missed the part where they're skipping all the actual computer science and math... as in they're not actually getting anything near as good as a proper degree cause proper degrees actually have to meet standards. These "seasoned veterans" are going to be rewriting bubble sort 40 times over at this rate.

And it's asinine to just assume that CS profs don't have tons of experience. Perhaps I was just lucky, but I had several profs with tons of real world experience. (Bell Labs, Airforce, Various Start ups). Had I chosen to enter industry immediately(as did several of my peers) I would've been well prepared. Instead I chose to pursue a PhD and I'm also well prepared for that. I've also had industry internships and been quite well prepared for those as well.

All this is going to do is produce assembly line coders who will slavishly obey the whims of their employers... and who are going to get low balled compared to the rest of the industry. You may get a lucky few out of this mess, but that's why they invented internships and co-ops as a method of getting job training while you get your degree.

These coders are going to be a likely source of code bloat, security holes and slip shod cookie cutter code in all likelihood given the attitudes expressed in all this. God help them if they actually need to design something outside the box.

I'm tired and this (as it currently stands) is going to just become a hot mess. So I'm going to stop here.

My lab is mostly focused in medical imaging on the CS side. The difference between the prestige of a conference in medicine and CS is a giant pain in the ass when it comes to working with MD's on projects. They have no concept of a peer reviewed conference paper and tend to be disinterested when trying to get their help on one.

In CS, most conferences are double blind peer reviewed while journals are not. This journal v conference issue(since CS is like the only field that does the peer reviewed full publication conference) is such an issue for getting tenure(most places ONLY look at Journal publications) that conferences like SIGGRAPH and EuroGraphics are publishing their proceedings as "Special Issues" of the graphics journal who's name is eluding me at the moment.

I will say though that conferences as full paper proceedings does sorta decrease the Signal to Noise ration when trying to do lit searches these days. I took a quick guesstimate based on counting the publications for a few major computer vision conferences lately and I'd estimate there are between one and three thousand papers being published a year in the field lately. The publish or perish mentality is kinda out of control everywhere though.

Most IEEE type journals require a submission in PDF format. They don't care how you get it to that form so as long as you use the right fonts and can express the math clearly. Use whatever PDF authoring tool you're comfortable with. As others have stated Latex is a great choice but it has a definite learning curve.

Here is a not so short intro(but shorter than most) to Latex. Intro

Furthermore, you'll want to have a number of references. It depends on the conference/journal in question but around 15 to 20 is pretty standard. Make sure to reference any and all algorithms you'll compare it to and any foundational work you used. Text books are fine if they're standard books to the field.

That's another decision you have to make as well. Do you want to publish to a Journal or to a Conference. A conference will have a higher acceptance rate usually and you can go network with other people in the field. A journal will be more prestigious, but will take much longer to get published(a year or more as you go through the review cycle). To decide I would start looking at IEEE(or ACM or whatever else you think might be of interest) to find a conference/journal you think might be appropriate and then read several papers in that area. Also go to your local university and browse through books on your subject as there may have been work done several years ago that just isn't used due to processing power issues. This can effect the tone of your paper.

On the topic of tone, you need to decide how you wish to frame the contribution of your paper. Is it a systems type paper that focuses mainly on implementation and comparison? Is it a proper new algorithm? Is it a mix of the two? Why do I as another researcher in the field care? This choice of tone will greatly affect both the place you submit the paper and the likelihood of where it will be accepted. You can try submitting to major journals like Science if you'd like, but it's very likely you will not get accepted as those types of journals focus very heavily on major cutting edge work.

Someone else mentioned looking through ArVix, but that is usually more of a pre-publication forum for math and physics type papers more than what I think you're working on. I'm not sure that will be particularly helpful to your situation.

I don't work in your field particularly, but I do have a fair bit of background in geodesic calculations and math so if you'd like to discuss things feel free to message me.

Good luck!

Using transistors in sub threshold modes has been around for ages. Carver Mead proposed their use for modeling neurons in silicon ages ago and there have been others who use these techniques for other low power techniques. See Delbruck(Zurich ETH) or Boahen(Stanford/Penn) or Andreou(Johns Hopkins). Two of my undergrad profs did thesis work at Georgia Tech using these techniques as well to do neuromorphic engineering tasks.

Requiring retailers(online or not) to collect use taxes starts us down a rather slippery slope and is probably not constitutional. Requiring they collect sales tax without 'a nexus of operations' is unconstitutional.

I didn't miss the point of the article, I was pointing out that the article is disingenuous in it's description of the situation. The only legal loophole amazon is exploiting is the separation of sub-entities related to it's primary business as a way to avoid the presence of a legal nexus of operation. And those sub-entities are still paying taxes with respect to everything else that they do. Even if that loophole was closed then only a handful of additional states would be receiving sales tax.

Additionally, if laws are passed requiring all online businesses to collect sales taxes this will have a distinct chilling effect on all but the largest of retailers.

As a final note, perhaps states should start enforcing use taxes if they're that concerned about it, but given the complexity of doing so, and the fact that enforcing it would probably cost more than could be recouped from them, use taxes still seem rather silly in their logic. Americans(speaking of patriotism) pathologically do not like paying taxes and expecting them to volunteer(in the sense of paying a nearly totally avoidable and confusing tax) even more money during a recession seems like an exercise in futility. Perhaps if the government provided a line item receipt on how tax money was spent we might feel differently.