Daniel

Hey guys Need some help, I have a PCB built and it doesn't quite operate as I expect it to. I have a PIC microcontroller and a couple of LEDs which should be on when it is operating. The ground and power planes are providing power to the PIC, the MCLR pin is set high and the rest of hte circuit seems to work. However, the PIC just doesn't work. It seems to burn out after awhile. Another phenomena which happened was the LEDs turned on when I brought my hand over the board, but turned off when I pulled it away. The circuit died soon after. And funnily enough, the PIC seems to be fine. I just reprogram it and put it back in, and it operates (until it dies out again). Any ideas ?

This is some cool stuff. I like the idea. Simple but seems pretty effective.

There is a guy from Toronto uni here on exchange doing my course. Cool guy, accent is so thick though. He's leaving there within the next week I think. A friend of mine is going to McGill university in Montreal for a year on exchange.

Damn your uni seems to set you up. Our bachelor course is 4 years, and I think a masters is another two if you do by coursework. My exams didn't go too well either, but everyone else found them difficult too so lets hope the scaling works in my favour

Apparantly cold fusion isn't possible. Last I heard, the guy who claimed it was mathematically possible had made a mistake.

Yea, the guy is a freak. He pissed one of my lecturers off because in some class, the lecturer was going over a hard proof and instead he goes "couldn't you do this, this and this and it would be a lot easier ?". Lecturer glares at him and replies "yes.........yes you could". My friend has a few funny stories about his big brother who did electrical engineering and computer science. His brother did the Control subject I was talking about earlier, got kicked out of lectures in the second lecture, and was told not to come back (ever). The exam was really hard, out of 10 questions his brother maybe gets equivalent of 3 and a half correct. He gets an email from the lecturer telling him that he topped the class, and that the lecturer couldn't remember him, and wanted to know if he was interested in studying under his guidance. Didn't take the offer up, went overseas or something.

You have 6 subjects Wolverine ? For me the usual load is 4 subjects a semester. People who do well can opt to overload and do 5, and there is a guy I know who was regularly doing 6 subjects a semester. Freakish people, he is slightly older than I am and doing a PhD (21 I think). One of the subjects I am doing now (Control system design), he got a perfect score of 100. I don't know how people do that. Anyway, my exams are on next week too. Good luck with yours.

Thanks for the summarisation. I read through the thread, but some things stuck out more to me than others. I can't disagree with the standpoint. I think the US shouldn't have been there in the first place. But now that they are, they need to finish the job. Or someone needs to finish the job, ideally the United Nations would send a peacekeeping force in while a new government was set up. People die in war, whether they are innocent or not. I think what matters is the intention of it. If you have troops going into villages, raping and murdering people wilfully, then that should be condemned. If a bomb is dropped and some people die due to mistakes, it is regrettable and deserves condemnation, but I don't put it in the same category. That is why I cannot agree with people who say that Nick Berg's killers are in the same league as an American pilot who drops bombs on a wedding (with the assumption that it was a mistake)

"he was decapitated after the images of appalling conditions for Iraqis in an American-run jail, and allegations of similar abuse carried out by British troops. Which incidentally came after our forces invading their country, deposing their leaders, and killing civilians. And regardless of whether he volunteered or not, he was a combatant. And - by virtue of the USA declaring it's war to be "on terror" - so were they." "No, I'm not making an attempt to reconcile or justify those abhorrent actions in any way. What I'm saying is that it's not like they just ran up to someone at random and chopped his head off for a laugh." "When the US or the UK kills such people working for the other side, we call them combatants." Do you really consider Nick Berg a combatant ? Did you know that he did aid work in Ghana and gave nearly everything he had to help those people before he left ? A combatant.................he sounds like the type of guy Iraq needed to be there. And these crazies killed him because he was American and Jewish. I don't know what you are trying to say, you say that such an act was "abhorrent", and yet you call him a combatant and make it out like he deserved what he got. "Do you love your country when it makes war on an entire people to strike the crazies?" If America wanted to make war on all the Iraqi people, there would be many many more dead. Civilians always die in war, that is a fact. No one here is celebrating that, but it is going to happen. If the idea was to invade Iraq to kill Iraqis, then the bodycount would be multiple times more than it is already. If you are condemning the US for killing civilians, then I would agree with you, although I would add that it happens in any war. If you are condemning the US because you think it has the intention to go and make life hell for the average Iraqi citizen, then I would disagree. "I think atm was more referring to the fact that if a civilian defends their home/property/town etc from US or UK troops, they are treated as combatants." What do you expect ? The moment someone takes up arms against you, you have to defend yourself. I don't think that our troops are just shooting people for the sake of it. If these Iraqi citizens do as they are told, then they don't have to worry right ? Nick Berg cannot be compared to Iraqi citizens who take up arms because he was not armed. "Neither the USA or the UK has the right to tell people in Iraq when or where they can be - it's their country, not ours." Not yet. The new government hasn't been set up yet. A war just happened, and is still being fought. How the hell can you expect everything to be back to normal already ?

"I find your implication that we should be pro-American to be racist" You should be pro american ? Well firstly I didn't say that, and secondly, I think your definition of "racism" is a little stuffed up. Saddam doesn't need removing, but what do you suggest the Americans do ? Jump in there, get rid of him, and have to end up taking out one of his sons in a couple more years ? Leave a huge power vacuum there so that each ethnic group can start fighting for power ? "if we weren't there now - and we shouldn't be - they would have no opportunity to act" Again what do you think should be done ? Why shouldn't the Americans be there to fix up their own mess ? Maybe they did do wrong putting Saddam there in the first place all those years ago, but now that they have decided to take him out (which I do not think can be seen as a bad thing), then they will have to fix the country up. To clear things up, if you think that resistance groups in Iraq are justified in kidnapping non military US citizens and chopping their head off, then you are certainly siding with savages. I don't believe this is a justifiable act, no matter how bad the prisoner abuse was.

Moral/ethical standpoint ? It is good to get rid of people like Saddam. Is that morally wrong ? I am not American either. There will be individual soldiers who wish to abuse the Iraqi people, but these should not be a reflection of American intentions in Iraq.

"Not only do I find that comment to be racist" Did I say that all Iraqis were "savages and animals" ? I was referring to those who fight the Americans in such ways as the Berg killing. Maybe your quick jump to conclusion is indicative of your own views. My point about the Russians is that if America was really there to treat the citizens like shit, then it would be a lot worse. They have to rebuild Iraq now, they know that.

This debate is getting silly. I think it is only a good thing that the killers are gotten rid of. Would you like to live alongside them ? The American army could be a lot worse in treating the civilians. Do you know how the Russians treat the Chechens in that particular war ? They regularly take civilians off the street into a basement, and that civilian is never seen again. You and I cannot possibly imagine how some of them are killed. I don't support America being in Iraq, but a lot of people here are siding with savages and animals, due to them being blinded by their anti americanism.

Wow this is an interesting thread. I am learning about both microwaves and ants reaction to the microwave radiation.

"But was it? The population has increased quite a bit so it depends what you mean by 'commonplace' - gross numbers, or 'poor per capita'?" The majority of the population back then were not educated. People nowadays get educated, or at least finish school. Those who don't want to go to school can drop out, but that is their choice. School is pretty much a given when it comes to success. Sure there are the highschool dropouts who end up making millions, but those are freak cases. "if anything the barriers against people trying to get out of poverty have multiplied." Maybe, handouts don't encourage people to strive for a better lifestyle. There is a safety net that people end up relying on instead of working their way to the top. That is one of the reasons. "it relates because most of the poor people remain poor because of circumstances, their entire cultural outlook often promotes this crap way of life." Hmm..............I think the argument goes that man should be able to change his environment and culture. Culture comes from people. I don't deny that it also has the ability to shape the way a person is. "does bad luck include the culture you are born in? you have a number of nested statements there which I disagree with and it will take time to go over them." Which culture promotes poverty ? Why do some white people rise to the top, yet other whites stay at the bottom of society ? Already the culture is not that different. If you talk about class cultures, then why would the poor wish to remain poor ? From my mother's experience...............her family was quite poor. No handouts either. But now all of her brothers and sister are working, and some are pretty filthy rich. They wanted to get out of the poverty cycle, and realised that it required sacrifice. Family heirlooms were sold off and money was borrowed to send her and her siblings to higher education. It paid off in the end. I am grateful for the sacrifices my grandparents made.

A very informative post admiral. Thanks for taking the time to explain those concepts to me. Now that I have a better idea of how the brain works, I see that some of the questions I asked were rather incorrect. It is quite incredible how little we know about the brain. Out of interest, what was the conclusion of the last PET scan that you linked ? The one with the obese vs the normal person's brain ?

"so you don't consider a terrible education, terrible upbringing and defeatist culture "circumstances"?" Well that was more commonplace back then, now there is the opportunity to rise above it if you work hard enough. I don't even see how your point relates to what I said. "do they even lack intelligence? granted they lack "knowledge" but alot of poor kids are intelligent. I know of a few people in the "underclass" of the UK and they know more about rare diseases than any doctor, and they know more about social service exploits than even the best accounants and lawyers. you aren't saying these people are stupid are you? misdirected is the word I would use." So we are now arguing whether poorer people have less intelligence ? Fair enough. Like I said earlier, I don't know. I used the word "if" to state the reasoning behind my claims. I do suspect that it works both ways. People who are less intelligent don't rise to the top of society you know. Sure some people let circumstances get the better of them, and that is truly bad luck, but I disagree that the majority of poor people are in that situation due to bad luck. " but equally there are also greater fiscal pressures on all people in society now than there were, say, 800 yrs ago." What do you mean by this ? That there is more pressure for people to work towards getting richer ? "Looking for evidence would be a good way of breaking that nightmare cycle. It gets tricky with humans though, because we behave very oddly for animals which can make prolonged study a bit difficult. Also we tend to have 'motives' for doing things, rather than doing them simply as responses to stimuli, and these can be near-impossible to detect or quantify." Yes I agree. I am not sure about selection pressures with regards to looks. Even with humans we see that each person has different taste, what one person finds attractive can be quite unattractive to another person. I think that the perception of what is attractive and what is not attractive (trends spread by the media) do have an effect on what some people will consider attractive. This makes it difficult for the same reasons stated above by Sayonara.

"this is a fallacious argument, especially given that in the 19th century and earlier, everyone pretty much was poor." Not necessarily. The poor back then were poor because of other circumstances. The poor today have more self determination. The general trend remains though, that poorer people usually have more kids. Then again, it could be a chicken and egg argument. Are they poor because they have more kids, or do they have more kids because they are poor ? Same goes with the intelligence issue. Are they poor because they lack intelligence, or do they lack intelligence because they are poor ? However smart people don't always have smart kids, and vice versa. Speaking of which, have they even determined the relationship between intelligence and genes ? "they would probably think we are ugly - remember evolution has shaped you to think that humans are pretty. It'S about the same reason that chimps don't lust after Nicole Kidman - evolution has shaped their brains to think that other chimps are desirable." Hmm, I don't know if we can speculate on that. If they were choosing features which were attractive to them, they it could be argued that the average human today has a lot of the attractive features the people back then were looking for. But this is all speculation.

I guess it will differ from course to course. Industry standards from country to country probably differ in little ways. I do suspect that the years are getting harder and harder though. They weed out the people who arn't committed or arn't smart enough for it in the first couple of years, then the rest is the hard stuff for the students who managed to stay in. I don't know if this is a trend, but the lecturers I have had who don't have engineering degrees (but instead have a mathematics degree (pure or applied)), usually tend to be better lecturers.

Sounds good. From what I have heard, I think I will prefer being in industry than at university. It is true with the industry moving along. I think there are big advancements in the field of electronic devices, using quantum theories to develop new devices and such. My electronics subject actually has a lot of emphasis on semi conductor physics. Previously it used to stress circuit analysis and design with electronic devices.

I think the more concerning thing is how society helps the weakest to survive (well this is the definition of society), and allows them to breed. Technology has changed the selection pressures humans face. Not many humans have to deal with deadly heat or cold, naked. We can use antibiotics to fight dangerous bacterias. We use guns to shoot dangerous wild animals etc. etc. etc. But there is no such thing as a better way to evolve. The "best" way to evolve is to survive. If it means that we lost our intelligence but gain super immune systems to combat high levels of bacteria in the atmosphere, then this is what is the best way, for that time of course. The poorer classes outbreed the richer classes. If it is true that the majority of the poor are of less intelligence, then our species is also getting less intelligent. We do look a lot better than our far ancestors. Believe me. Think of the humans who were around when the neanderthals were around. I doubt they could be made to look attractive.

I would think you need a brain to be conscious. From what we know of cells, they don't have a brain. But that doesn't stop them from interacting with the environment of course.

I see. I spend a lot of my time trying to understand and remember concepts. I usually don't try to remember concepts, but since the maths I learn is from the engineering department (which doesn't teach maths that well), I have to remember certain formulae. Hopefully the work I put into this semester will pay off.

Cool, at least I know I am aiming for the right field when it comes to doing something which interests me. Have you ever worked in the industry ? How were the jobs when it came to deadlines and stress ?

Binomial. 1. There is probability of success or failure. 2. A number of identical and independent (that is important) trials are being conducted 3. You are trying to find the probability that a certain number of these trials are a success. I think those are the three main points. Not sure about negative binomial, havn't come across it yet.