I said GEEK, not GLEEK

AMD's VP of Marketing - Leslie Sobon - posted some thoughts on finding and holding a relationship with a geek.  As a bit of a tech nerd myself, I think it's worthy of re-posting:
http://blogs.amd.com/home/2010/09/22/getageek/

Happy weekend, and maybe if you're lucky, you've got a date with a geek!

Get Your Hands on Education

Once again, I'm going to plug Curious Cat's Science and Engineering blog:
http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2010/09/18/the-diy-movement-revives-learning-by-doing/

Being a product of the homeschool system when I was younger (before 5th grade), I got a very hands on education. I was only allowed 30 minutes of electronic entertainment per day, so Legos were my primary form of entertainment and learning. In my opinion, this was a huge factor in my choice later in life to study engineering. I think it's also a reason that most kids learn technology faster now than our parents do. I also think that the government should think about this study in education reforms. Getting tangible experience with shapes and spatial reasoning could be the key to boosting the US's failing math and science scores.

Shameless Self Promotion

I guess the whole concept of a blog is pretty self-promoting.  I've tried to keep my entries interesting across the board, but I'm going to do a little shameless self promotion today and share an article that made the front page of the Daily Beacon (UT's student-led newspaper):

Software tutorial helps engineers

Robbie Hargett - Staff Writer
Thursday, September 09, 2010 issue

Theta Tau, UT's professional engineering fraternity, offered a free Autodesk Inventor tutorial to engineering students Wednesday.
Theta Tau members Alex Sheinfeld, senior in industrial engineering, and Stephen Oi, senior in electrical engineering, taught the tutorial.
"Autodesk Inventor is a program that allows the design, modeling and simulated testing of parts and assemblies in 3-D," Sheinfeld said. "This can range from one-piece parts, such as a key chain, all the way up to full, complex pieces of machinery, such as a car."
Karl Hughes, senior in mechanical engineering and Theta Tau professional development chairman, said all industrial and mechanical engineering majors at UT will use Inventor in industrial engineering 330/mechanical engineering 366 and manufacturing processes, but it is not explicitly taught in any class.
"Students are expected to teach themselves via the included tutorials, but the learning curve when starting out is pretty steep," Hughes said. "It took me several hours of tutorials plus hours of trial and error to figure out how to make a simple part."
Sheinfeld said the level of exposure to these kinds of programs in the classroom is much too low.
"The projects are mostly homework and very little time is spent in class teaching the techniques of the program," Sheinfeld said. "Furthermore it's only the very basics of the program which are covered, and it's really up to the student to take interest and try to discover more of the program on their own."
Sheinfeld said he started using Inventor in the manufacturing processes class. He said he developed an interest in the program that remained after taking the class.
"I hope (to) go a couple steps beyond what's normally taught in the classrooms to bridge the gap between learning how to make basic shapes and making the types of assemblies that we, as engineers, will be expected to make in the professional world," he said.
Hughes said Inventor and other similar programs are used frequently in the professional engineering world, and while there are many design programs other than Inventor, the skills are easily transferable.
"The advantage of this free tutorial is that every student who attends will be better equipped to face the challenges of being a professional engineer," Sheinfeld said. "The skills in this tutorial class will be very useful, not only in the context of how to use the program, but also in the context of how a product is designed."
He said he hopes students will obtain a greater appreciation for what it takes to actually make something, to "show students a more practical side of engineering than just bookwork."
"We're entering an age where every product you see, from pencils to jets, has been designed in a program like Inventor," Sheinfeld said. "This allows much greater precision in designing the product which results in more rapid prototyping, more efficient machine layouts, and an overall better and cheaper product."
Hughes said the overall goal of the tutorial was to reach out to fellow engineers, who could likely use the help.
"We will be hosting several more professional development opportunities for engineers this semester and will be working with other engineering student groups to bring guest speakers and company representatives to campus," Hughes said.

 Quoted from http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/showarticle.php?articleid=57181

I guess I can't take that much credit, the hour and a half class was taught by my good friends Stephen Oi and Alex Sheinfeld, but as the Professional Development Chairman, I did most of the behind the scenes planning. Either way, this is the first time that Theta Tau has made the Daily Beacon, and definitely the first time I've made the front page!

Net Neutrality and the Tea Party

It looks like one of the last vestiges of truly free speech and expression may be under siege.  Lately there has been a debate raging between some of the large telecoms and congress over the idea of "net neutrality". To sum the whole thing up in simple terms, Verizon and Google want to control the access speed of certain websites so that, for instance, YouTube will load faster than someone's personal home-video website. The ISP would have the power to allow bigger companies to pay them more in order to get faster connection speeds to users.

I have a fundamental problem with any sort of regulation or censorship of the Internet. I like the fact that the Internet provides (mostly) uncensored access to a wealth of information. To me, it has become one of the great equalizers in our society - allowing small companies to compete with big ones by getting equal exposure on the web for a relatively low cost. I don't know if this is going to continue if large companies are allowed to buy higher connection speeds.

Maybe this is just the way things go. As Wal-Mart kills off "mom and pop" stores, Google and other large internet companies will be able to keep the competition down on the web. Something that is interesting about this debate is the stance of the Tea Party. They oppose the FCC's attempts to block Verizon and Google's plan because they hold that government control of anything is wrong.  I see their point - I don't want the government regulating internet use either - but is it better to let large companies censor the internet?

This is the fundamental problem with letting the "free-market" control everything.  There is no such thing as a truly free-market.  Large corporations with exponentially greater resources than small start-ups will always be able to bully and monopolize the market if allowed to essentially create "legislation". In my mind, this replaces an elected government with a group of large businesses, but is this truly a better option?