Clever Americans
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A cocky Mac user has just told me that a Windows power user is an oxymoron, like a clever American. I would like to give a few hundred examples (besides present company on CP) of clever Americans, but I have too much sifting to do to find those that really stand out. I'm looking for really clever Americans, quantum physics etc. Please contribute.
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A cocky Mac user has just told me that a Windows power user is an oxymoron, like a clever American. I would like to give a few hundred examples (besides present company on CP) of clever Americans, but I have too much sifting to do to find those that really stand out. I'm looking for really clever Americans, quantum physics etc. Please contribute.
Here are two exmaples of what I call being clever. 1. You are given 20 tough electrical circuits problems to 'solve' and are told the algebraic solution is worth 17 points a problem and the numerical answer is worth an additional 3 points. You decide to obtain the algebraic solution to as many problems as possible within the 2 hours alloted for the test, because your professor has said all semester that it takes an engineer to solve the problem and any monkey can plug in the numbers. So you finish 17 of the problems and get the algebraic solution correct for all of them. 17 * 17 = 289. The highest score in the history of the test, prior to this one, was 11 * 20 = 220. Of course, the semester and every one forever after this trick was pulled off you had to attempt to derive the numerical answer to get any credit for the problem. Just thinking outside the box, and future EE students at UAB will forever hate me for that one :cool: 2. You are told to write a PID controller in 68000 assembly language that runs on the Commodore Amiga the interface is via a command line - no GUI required. The only way to get any source code in or out of the Amiga is by way of a Prime 5350 (if I recall correctly) - since they took out the Amiga's floppy drive. There is only 1 Commodore Amiga for the entire class of 32 students - so some resource contention is bound to occur. You decide staying up at 2:00 AM for some time on the Amiga is not an option. You course load is pretty heavy so totally learning and hand coding 68000 assembly language is probably out of the question as well. So the best solution to this problem seems to be to use the Microsoft C compiler and write in very strict generic C language on the IBM PC (dozens of those available) a PID controller that works and is totally debuggged. Then download the C source code to the Amiga and run its Aztec C compiler and let it emit the 68000 assembly language. Give some of the labels meaningful names like IncreaseMotorSpeed instead of L0000_01. Assemble it, test, and done! Total time spent on Amiga, about 1 hour. Total time spent learning 68000 Assembly language, about 2 hours. That is what I call being clever. Never was it stated WORKING at the Amiga was a requirement, nor was it stated LEARNING 68000 Assembly language was a reuqirement. They wanted a PID controller in 68000 assembly language that would run on the Amiga - product delivered thank you very much :cool: My two exmaples of being clever. Brighter students in
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A cocky Mac user has just told me that a Windows power user is an oxymoron, like a clever American. I would like to give a few hundred examples (besides present company on CP) of clever Americans, but I have too much sifting to do to find those that really stand out. I'm looking for really clever Americans, quantum physics etc. Please contribute.
Einstein was American... after a while. I've always thought the beautiful thing about Americans is there is really only one group of *natives* here, but we all claim to be uniquely American in some way. The natives invented a lot of things that the Europeans took and called their own. Everyone else is an import, but just as American as Einstein. As a country, we have contributed many inventions to the world, but not as many as people might think.
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