Indeed. Engineer, musician, astronaut...still has to swear personal loyalty and curtsey to someone on the other side of the planet who just happens to have the right blood in her veins.
You could call it "automatic programming." No need to learn arcane syntax that's particular to any one programming language or computing platform. All you have to do is say what you want and the computer gives it to you. Just like on Star Trek!
Yeesh! What's in the water these days? Have the smart phones already rotted people's brains to the point where they don't understand what "computing" actually is anymore?
Indeed. If I'm looking at an unfamiliar coding style, I might lapse into moving my mouth when I read it, but if it's written comprehensibly, I start thinking in terms of states and contents of memory locations. It's usually supposed to go the other way, I might add: to make a colleague (or myself at a later time) understand something in a compact way, I'd express it in pseudocode in an email or on a whiteboard rather than in English prose or even mathematical notion (sometimes, that's a rabbit hole too deep for a/. comment).
You know, I built a WinXP HMI back in 2010 and had it work wonderfully for me for years on an airgapped machine. And then about two years in, some screw condition with one of the proprietary hardware drivers on it causes the whole thing to reboot entirely on its own.
Now, you might ask, why would I do something like that at all. And the answer is that the nameless industrial controls vendors Allen-Bradley and National Instruments explicitly marketed a WinXP/LabView solution for HMI as an alternative (not even a cheaper alternative, just an alternative) to a dedicated touchscreen box for customers like me who needed more out of the HMI than what the touchscreen dowhicky came with, namely datalogging and additional helper logic that's naturally implemented somewhere besides the safety-critical ladders.
Now, a the Linux driver for that gizmo that caused the windows box to reboot didn't have that issue. And even if it had, Linux would have failed more gracefully and the controls would have still worked. But Allen Bradley was a Windows-only outfit. So the once a year spontaneous reboot is the price I paid for not having to reinvent a very expensive wheel. I suspect that this aircraft carrier is the same. They need Windows for something that would be very expensive to reinvent, and between their budget pressures, military procurement silliness, and the fact that they just might not have enough time and enough good people to do it...they went with WinXP.
Not really. Unless you really have a barrel length of zero and a round of zero mass, there will be a sonic boom from the bullet for at least a little while. A microphone staged downrange will pick up two cracks: one from the sonic boom of the bullet and a second one from the charge exploding. The bullet is supersonic, so the sound from it originates closer to the microphone, whereas the gun is stationary and its sound will arrive later. The reverse is true if the microphone is behind the gun, and there's an area of ambiguity if you're perpendicular to the muzzle on either side, which is why multiple microphones.
Firecrackers, nail guns, and anything else that doesn't send a supersonic projectile doesn't have that double crack. It's not hard to tell by ear in many cases and certainly not too hard to automate classification to some acceptable level of false alarm rates.
And in America there isn't. Europe doesn't understand freedom and it never really had the "government with the consent of the governed" thing we've got going over here. Hell, a good number of them still have kings and queens they have to bow to, and a good number who don't act like they do. It's a shame, but history shows you can't expect them to live up to our standards. It's not in their culture, it's not in their environment, it's not in their thinking.
Whoosh. Those strong employee protections exist because in a democracy, the squeekiest wheel gets the grease at the expense of everything else that doesn't waste its time and money on making the loudest noise. Part of the cost of doing business, sure, but let's recognize evil for evil and minimize it where possible.
In private enterprise, teeth is losing customers, or not having your contract renewed. In private business, that's going to happen for one of two reasons: market forces (ie a competitor with a better/faster/cheaper product) or managerial incompetence. In either case, the problem corrects itself when the business goes under. But because shareholders and beancounters, there can be extra sets of eyes to weed out managerial incompetence and workforce incompetence by firing underperformers. Or should be.
Services provided by governments are usually (but not always) monopolies, so market forces aren't at play, so that's half the teeth missing. That leaves only the tension between incompetence and oversight. Except. Do you know how damn hard it is to fire a government employee at the state or federal level? Very. Why? Because those rules are written by governments and governments are susceptible to lobbying by (among other groups) public employee unions, who advocate for strong employment protections for their members. And unlike private sector unions, inflated labor costs do not correct themselves by dragging down the business; government doesn't go out of business and is empowered by our social contract to collect revenue at the point of a gun. So where's the teeth in that system?
Not all government services lend themselves to privatization, but schools, highways, satellite launches, and ATC do.
So for better quality, you can either undertake a drastic overhaul of the FAR and federal employment rules. Or you can spin off some things to private entities. Which is the fight that you have a chance of winning?
You've obviously never worked within the framework of federal procurement. Where business practices for everything from road construction to R&D to janitorial services are one and the same. All glory to the RED TAPE!!!
And since government has the monopoly on military and defense matters, every single thing you do you owe to The Government for keeping you safe to do it. Or, if you're in America as opposed to China, you owe your debt of gratitude to the people who serve in harms way rather than worshipping at the altar of the state.
God help you you're not very smart. "Landlords" have jobs too. They maintain property in exchange for rent by doing things like shoveling snow, landscaping, repairing/replacing applliances when they break at no cost to the renter, etc etc.
Reliable electricity as a concern usually plays second fiddle to having food on the table and not waking up dead from a barrel bomb dropped on your house by your own people. But what do I know? First world privilege and all that.
In ten years, most cars will not be electric. Not even most new cars will be electric (most cars purchased today will still be on the road in 2026). You know why? Stockpiling molecules is orders of magnitude better, cheaper, and faster than stockpiling electrons. That's not an opinion, that's both an empirical and theoretically grounded fact. By 2026, many new cars will have self-driving features, and I'll buy into the idea that by 2036, we'll be building or upgrading roads to accomodate self-driving vehicles. But autonomy isn't for free, and you won't be able to use them everywhere, just like aircraft are restricted to operating in certain places at certain times.
You're assuming money or commerce will still be allowed in the star trek fantasy land this guy thinks he's living in. Also: we'll all be be speaking Esperanto.
Two years ago. Getting off the shiniest subway train in the newest and modernest part of Shanghai, the biggest city on Earth, right next to the glittering sky scrapers and high end shops, were street merchants toting their wares in hand-made wicker baskets slung to their backs with ropes and pushing crudely-made hand-carts.
One renmibi banknote with a smiling portrait of Chairman Mao says they're not in a position to give up their paper currency any time soon.
You mean like how Thomas Edison was a Fed, Samuel Morse was a USPS letter carrier working in his spare time, and the Wright Brothers were on a far-sighted NASA contract? Learn some history.
Healthcare has made leaps and bounds, and it has trickled out to every segment of society. Even the poorest of the poor receive medical care in hospitals with advanced monitoring equipment and by doctors trained in modern techniques. This story reeks of bullshit. The bureaucracy may still be stuck in the past, but that's government. Very few innovations have come out of government business practices. Or ever will. For very fundamental reasons having to do with difficulties in managing large organizations with multiple conflicting objectives.
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Indeed. Engineer, musician, astronaut...still has to swear personal loyalty and curtsey to someone on the other side of the planet who just happens to have the right blood in her veins.
You could call it "automatic programming." No need to learn arcane syntax that's particular to any one programming language or computing platform. All you have to do is say what you want and the computer gives it to you. Just like on Star Trek!
Yeesh! What's in the water these days? Have the smart phones already rotted people's brains to the point where they don't understand what "computing" actually is anymore?
Indeed. If I'm looking at an unfamiliar coding style, I might lapse into moving my mouth when I read it, but if it's written comprehensibly, I start thinking in terms of states and contents of memory locations. It's usually supposed to go the other way, I might add: to make a colleague (or myself at a later time) understand something in a compact way, I'd express it in pseudocode in an email or on a whiteboard rather than in English prose or even mathematical notion (sometimes, that's a rabbit hole too deep for a /. comment).
Go for the gold, AC. Look down your nose at people who believe what they were taught in third grade arithmetic. Math is racist, after all, isn't it?
The self-awareness is NOT strong in this one.
You know, I built a WinXP HMI back in 2010 and had it work wonderfully for me for years on an airgapped machine. And then about two years in, some screw condition with one of the proprietary hardware drivers on it causes the whole thing to reboot entirely on its own.
Now, you might ask, why would I do something like that at all. And the answer is that the nameless industrial controls vendors Allen-Bradley and National Instruments explicitly marketed a WinXP/LabView solution for HMI as an alternative (not even a cheaper alternative, just an alternative) to a dedicated touchscreen box for customers like me who needed more out of the HMI than what the touchscreen dowhicky came with, namely datalogging and additional helper logic that's naturally implemented somewhere besides the safety-critical ladders.
Now, a the Linux driver for that gizmo that caused the windows box to reboot didn't have that issue. And even if it had, Linux would have failed more gracefully and the controls would have still worked. But Allen Bradley was a Windows-only outfit. So the once a year spontaneous reboot is the price I paid for not having to reinvent a very expensive wheel. I suspect that this aircraft carrier is the same. They need Windows for something that would be very expensive to reinvent, and between their budget pressures, military procurement silliness, and the fact that they just might not have enough time and enough good people to do it...they went with WinXP.
Not really. Unless you really have a barrel length of zero and a round of zero mass, there will be a sonic boom from the bullet for at least a little while. A microphone staged downrange will pick up two cracks: one from the sonic boom of the bullet and a second one from the charge exploding. The bullet is supersonic, so the sound from it originates closer to the microphone, whereas the gun is stationary and its sound will arrive later. The reverse is true if the microphone is behind the gun, and there's an area of ambiguity if you're perpendicular to the muzzle on either side, which is why multiple microphones.
Firecrackers, nail guns, and anything else that doesn't send a supersonic projectile doesn't have that double crack. It's not hard to tell by ear in many cases and certainly not too hard to automate classification to some acceptable level of false alarm rates.
And in America there isn't. Europe doesn't understand freedom and it never really had the "government with the consent of the governed" thing we've got going over here. Hell, a good number of them still have kings and queens they have to bow to, and a good number who don't act like they do. It's a shame, but history shows you can't expect them to live up to our standards. It's not in their culture, it's not in their environment, it's not in their thinking.
You can build a gigabit one-way link out of three fiber optic transceivers for a few hundred dollars.
Whoosh. Those strong employee protections exist because in a democracy, the squeekiest wheel gets the grease at the expense of everything else that doesn't waste its time and money on making the loudest noise. Part of the cost of doing business, sure, but let's recognize evil for evil and minimize it where possible.
Accountability is something that requires teeth.
In private enterprise, teeth is losing customers, or not having your contract renewed. In private business, that's going to happen for one of two reasons: market forces (ie a competitor with a better/faster/cheaper product) or managerial incompetence. In either case, the problem corrects itself when the business goes under. But because shareholders and beancounters, there can be extra sets of eyes to weed out managerial incompetence and workforce incompetence by firing underperformers. Or should be.
Services provided by governments are usually (but not always) monopolies, so market forces aren't at play, so that's half the teeth missing. That leaves only the tension between incompetence and oversight. Except. Do you know how damn hard it is to fire a government employee at the state or federal level? Very. Why? Because those rules are written by governments and governments are susceptible to lobbying by (among other groups) public employee unions, who advocate for strong employment protections for their members. And unlike private sector unions, inflated labor costs do not correct themselves by dragging down the business; government doesn't go out of business and is empowered by our social contract to collect revenue at the point of a gun. So where's the teeth in that system?
Not all government services lend themselves to privatization, but schools, highways, satellite launches, and ATC do.
So for better quality, you can either undertake a drastic overhaul of the FAR and federal employment rules. Or you can spin off some things to private entities. Which is the fight that you have a chance of winning?
You've obviously never worked within the framework of federal procurement. Where business practices for everything from road construction to R&D to janitorial services are one and the same. All glory to the RED TAPE!!!
And since government has the monopoly on military and defense matters, every single thing you do you owe to The Government for keeping you safe to do it. Or, if you're in America as opposed to China, you owe your debt of gratitude to the people who serve in harms way rather than worshipping at the altar of the state.
God help you you're not very smart. "Landlords" have jobs too. They maintain property in exchange for rent by doing things like shoveling snow, landscaping, repairing/replacing applliances when they break at no cost to the renter, etc etc.
How about receiving other people's money for doing nothing yourself is immoral.
Mod up please. Slashdot editors really aren't very smart people these days.
Reliable electricity as a concern usually plays second fiddle to having food on the table and not waking up dead from a barrel bomb dropped on your house by your own people. But what do I know? First world privilege and all that.
Fake name. A shiny red penny says this is "Billy McFarland" under a new alias.
In ten years, most cars will not be electric. Not even most new cars will be electric (most cars purchased today will still be on the road in 2026). You know why? Stockpiling molecules is orders of magnitude better, cheaper, and faster than stockpiling electrons. That's not an opinion, that's both an empirical and theoretically grounded fact. By 2026, many new cars will have self-driving features, and I'll buy into the idea that by 2036, we'll be building or upgrading roads to accomodate self-driving vehicles. But autonomy isn't for free, and you won't be able to use them everywhere, just like aircraft are restricted to operating in certain places at certain times.
You're assuming money or commerce will still be allowed in the star trek fantasy land this guy thinks he's living in. Also: we'll all be be speaking Esperanto.
How about "trying," "experimenting with," "using," or any one of a dozen and a half phrases that are actual English?
and tell me with a straight face that you're gainfully employed. Good job on actually using quotation marks, this time, you lazy twit.
Two years ago. Getting off the shiniest subway train in the newest and modernest part of Shanghai, the biggest city on Earth, right next to the glittering sky scrapers and high end shops, were street merchants toting their wares in hand-made wicker baskets slung to their backs with ropes and pushing crudely-made hand-carts.
One renmibi banknote with a smiling portrait of Chairman Mao says they're not in a position to give up their paper currency any time soon.
You mean like how Thomas Edison was a Fed, Samuel Morse was a USPS letter carrier working in his spare time, and the Wright Brothers were on a far-sighted NASA contract? Learn some history.
Healthcare has made leaps and bounds, and it has trickled out to every segment of society. Even the poorest of the poor receive medical care in hospitals with advanced monitoring equipment and by doctors trained in modern techniques. This story reeks of bullshit. The bureaucracy may still be stuck in the past, but that's government. Very few innovations have come out of government business practices. Or ever will. For very fundamental reasons having to do with difficulties in managing large organizations with multiple conflicting objectives.