I have the same slight sense of unease because they're a charity doing important work, but the people responsible (the individual[s] and their management) have to be taught a lesson they won't forget. Perhaps naming and shaming them is more appropriate.
If they fuck it up (and fuck the users over) like they did with the N800, N9, and Meego, then forgeddit.
but it's hard to see why Nokia would be working on such a project at this time
Because they suffer from what my medical colleagues refer to as Glutaeo-Humeroid Distinction Disability (the medical term for not knowing your ass from your elbow). They had exactly what was needed three times (a pocket computer that was also a phone, or could at least run Skype) and threw it away three times. There is precisely zero evidence that they are even marginally competent nowadays to run a phone company,
On a visit to CERN many years ago I noticed all their keyboards, monitors, etc (stuff in plastic boxes, basically) was not engraved but branded with a heated device that melted their name deep into it. Virtually impossible to remove or obliterate.
Expensive stuff I label with "There is a reward for returning this device to XYZ Corp" followed by a contact number. The only time I lost such an item it was returned anonymously in the mail, so thank you to whoever that was.
Cheaper stuff just gets a label with my company name and contact number.
From what I see, engineers are not well paid; certainly not paid enough for what they do. The comparison with managers is specious: engineers should be paid more than managers, because the work they do is more valuable.
Dyson has seriously misunderstood the problem. There is no shortage of engineers. There is just a shortage of engineers willing to work for peanuts.
Don't even get me started about trying to email a customer about their MSEXCHANGE domain...
-- How do we persuade new users that spreading fonts across the page like peanut butter across hot toast is not necessarily the route to typographic excellence?
This allows them to drastically reduce costs of administering them as a t1 connection is about 1/10 or less of the cost of one of several IT staffers that would be required to maintain them at local only access.
Until someone cracks their way in. Then the falsity of this economic model is exposed.
Another reason is that some SCADA systems aren't actually purchased. They are sort of rented and need to contact a server in order to validate their installs and operate periodically.
This can be done over something other than the Internet, as several people have explained.
This is by no means unique to SCADA systems: I think most people here recognise the symptoms in many fields.
The people who run the plant are trying to squeeze the maximum amount of yield from their plant.
Very laudable. That's their job.
Shutting down a SCADA system so that it can be patched and tested may literally cost them millions of dollars per hour.
That cost should have been factored into the financials from Day 1. It's usually omitted by managers and accountants because with it, their projections wouldn't look as good.
Furthermore, the cost of upgrading is not looked upon kindly unless it's going to help you create more of product X at a lower price.
Bear in mind that the cost of not upgrading may be the end of the company.
In Economics 1.0, business students get taught that the primary objective of the corporation is to make a profit. Most managers believe this. Wrong. The primary objective of the corporation is to assure continuance, even if that means a couple of years of losses from time to time.
Failing to recognise this is usually among the early symptoms of eventual failure.
And others would call it "It's cost you an extra $5 million to add a reverse".
And precisely how much extra is that lacking feature going to cost them now?
Granted, your point about the reduced diameter. But engineers are smart enough to figure that one out.
I don't have a bad work environment, but I do separate 100% work from home 'play' time.
I mess around with tech/computer projects quite a bit at home, but they are only ever directed at my personal interests or projects I'm working on at home. Any help they give me in my work capacity, is purely accidental and un-intended.
I'm pretty much the same: I work in a non-academic IT job in an academic institution which doesn't have any interest in my interests, and doesn't have the money to fund ongoing staff development at the level I would want anyway (although oddly enough, they seem to have no shortage of money for the top brass to visit far-flung countries for weeks at a time several times a year:-)
I'll do a colleague a favour out of hours (like log in and fix something urgent) but there I draw the line. I like to learn, but I do it for my own benefit. In better times, I would often pay to go to a conference that would advance my knowledge, but that's become impossible in recent years. I'm sure the institution has benefited tangentially from what I have learned, and I don't have a problem with that, unless they start to try and claim that I had learned it all on their dime.
Moral: if you spend money on self-education, keep the receipts.
In Ubuntu at least, the area of sensitivity for dragging a window border appears to be microscopic (actually one pixel). This makes it unbelievably difficult to grab a window border on those occasions when you do want to resize a window. I guess accidentally finding that one-pixel-wide column when trying to select text at the edge must be an application of Sod's Law (aka Murphy's Law).
I use Emacs for writing; most of it is in XML (usually DocBook, sometimes TEI, occasionally XHTML). I use XSLT to transform it to LaTeX if I want publication-quality PDF, but more often the document is the input to other people's toolchains which want XML first. I occasionally transform to other formats (HTML, Word, or some wiki formats which are largely MarkDown-ish).
I author in XML because most of what I write involves quite detailed and very specific structure, and DocBook and TEI provide appropriate levels of markup for this. I made a conscious decision to go this way a very long time ago, when it was all still SGML, and I have never regretted it.
Most people don't have that level of specificity to adhere to. All the formats you mention have their areas of application, even Word, but there is a growing undercurrent towards using HTML5 as the default format, driven partly by the fact that Ebooks use it. The publishing industry is very interested, as they hate and detest Word, and only use it because its change tracking is useful and it has usable style-editing, which OpenOffice and friends don't have (ie they have no style margin like Word). It was very clear at the XML SummerSchool last month that there is growing support for HTML5 in editing tools, and some new advances in editorial control (eg systems like Xopus, FidusWriter, and Poetica) mean there may even be a way to escape from Word:-)
-- Disclaimer: editor interfaces are my thesis topic; I have no connection with any of the above except the XML SummerSchool.
...in most parts of the country it is only available from local growers during the cooler weeks at either end of the growing season...
What country is this you speak of? AFAIK broccoli is on the shelves of my local stores pretty much all year. Sure, it's imported from somewhere insanely far away like China or Africa or Tierra del Fuego half the time, but it's there.
Not that I eat it, mind you. It's on the banned list, like Brussels sprouts. As Nicholas Freeling said about British peas, all I can suggest is that it be put into concrete barrels with radioactive waste and the Mafia, and sunk in the ocean.
-- "I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed inter-state commerce." -- J Edgar Hoover
Slashdot Mirror
I have the same slight sense of unease because they're a charity doing important work, but the people responsible (the individual[s] and their management) have to be taught a lesson they won't forget. Perhaps naming and shaming them is more appropriate.
If they fuck it up (and fuck the users over) like they did with the N800, N9, and Meego, then forgeddit.
but it's hard to see why Nokia would be working on such a project at this time
Because they suffer from what my medical colleagues refer to as Glutaeo-Humeroid Distinction Disability (the medical term for not knowing your ass from your elbow). They had exactly what was needed three times (a pocket computer that was also a phone, or could at least run Skype) and threw it away three times. There is precisely zero evidence that they are even marginally competent nowadays to run a phone company,
On a visit to CERN many years ago I noticed all their keyboards, monitors, etc (stuff in plastic boxes, basically) was not engraved but branded with a heated device that melted their name deep into it. Virtually impossible to remove or obliterate.
Expensive stuff I label with "There is a reward for returning this device to XYZ Corp" followed by a contact number. The only time I lost such an item it was returned anonymously in the mail, so thank you to whoever that was.
Cheaper stuff just gets a label with my company name and contact number.
Right. Go read Charlie Stross's Accelerando
No, if we live in a created universe, then it's one in which evolution is the paradigm used for development once the universe was set going.
<-- It only takes one, and the rest will follow -->
You mean like this?
From what I see, engineers are not well paid; certainly not paid enough for what they do. The comparison with managers is specious: engineers should be paid more than managers, because the work they do is more valuable.
Dyson has seriously misunderstood the problem. There is no shortage of engineers. There is just a shortage of engineers willing to work for peanuts.
The bill was introduced by John Federico, a cable industry lobbyist.
What do you expect? Who let this asshat in the door?
Good luck with getting that enabled in the USA. I can hear the screams of "Socialism" already.
Don't even get me started about trying to email a customer about their MSEXCHANGE domain...
--
How do we persuade new users that spreading fonts across the page like peanut butter across hot toast is not necessarily the route to typographic excellence?
Nope. Sessile Grog.
This allows them to drastically reduce costs of administering them as a t1 connection is about 1/10 or less of the cost of one of several IT staffers that would be required to maintain them at local only access.
Until someone cracks their way in. Then the falsity of this economic model is exposed.
Another reason is that some SCADA systems aren't actually purchased. They are sort of rented and need to contact a server in order to validate their installs and operate periodically.
This can be done over something other than the Internet, as several people have explained.
The people who run the plant are trying to squeeze the maximum amount of yield from their plant.
Very laudable. That's their job.
Shutting down a SCADA system so that it can be patched and tested may literally cost them millions of dollars per hour.
That cost should have been factored into the financials from Day 1. It's usually omitted by managers and accountants because with it, their projections wouldn't look as good.
Furthermore, the cost of upgrading is not looked upon kindly unless it's going to help you create more of product X at a lower price.
Bear in mind that the cost of not upgrading may be the end of the company.
In Economics 1.0, business students get taught that the primary objective of the corporation is to make a profit. Most managers believe this. Wrong. The primary objective of the corporation is to assure continuance, even if that means a couple of years of losses from time to time.
Failing to recognise this is usually among the early symptoms of eventual failure.
And others would call it "It's cost you an extra $5 million to add a reverse".
And precisely how much extra is that lacking feature going to cost them now? Granted, your point about the reduced diameter. But engineers are smart enough to figure that one out.
I don't have a bad work environment, but I do separate 100% work from home 'play' time.
I mess around with tech/computer projects quite a bit at home, but they are only ever directed at my personal interests or projects I'm working on at home. Any help they give me in my work capacity, is purely accidental and un-intended.
I'm pretty much the same: I work in a non-academic IT job in an academic institution which doesn't have any interest in my interests, and doesn't have the money to fund ongoing staff development at the level I would want anyway (although oddly enough, they seem to have no shortage of money for the top brass to visit far-flung countries for weeks at a time several times a year :-)
I'll do a colleague a favour out of hours (like log in and fix something urgent) but there I draw the line. I like to learn, but I do it for my own benefit. In better times, I would often pay to go to a conference that would advance my knowledge, but that's become impossible in recent years. I'm sure the institution has benefited tangentially from what I have learned, and I don't have a problem with that, unless they start to try and claim that I had learned it all on their dime.
Moral: if you spend money on self-education, keep the receipts.
And Viber beats WhatsApp into the ground.
I've tried half a dozen SIP products. Many of them look attractive but they all suffer from two major problems;
I use VOIP rarely (maybe once every month or so) so it's not a big deal for me. But SIP would be preferable to Skype. It's just not usable.
Huh? Instead of fixing the original bug, they added a post-op trap to defeat it? Way to go, Apple.
Wow, Apple should be widely lauded for being able to store each email, including its header, in just one byte!
Even that is awfully wasteful. To store spam wisely you use a counter.
Store spam? I recommend a 1-bit counter set to zero.
In Ubuntu at least, the area of sensitivity for dragging a window border appears to be microscopic (actually one pixel). This makes it unbelievably difficult to grab a window border on those occasions when you do want to resize a window. I guess accidentally finding that one-pixel-wide column when trying to select text at the edge must be an application of Sod's Law (aka Murphy's Law).
I use Emacs for writing; most of it is in XML (usually DocBook, sometimes TEI, occasionally XHTML). I use XSLT to transform it to LaTeX if I want publication-quality PDF, but more often the document is the input to other people's toolchains which want XML first. I occasionally transform to other formats (HTML, Word, or some wiki formats which are largely MarkDown-ish).
I author in XML because most of what I write involves quite detailed and very specific structure, and DocBook and TEI provide appropriate levels of markup for this. I made a conscious decision to go this way a very long time ago, when it was all still SGML, and I have never regretted it.
Most people don't have that level of specificity to adhere to. All the formats you mention have their areas of application, even Word, but there is a growing undercurrent towards using HTML5 as the default format, driven partly by the fact that Ebooks use it. The publishing industry is very interested, as they hate and detest Word, and only use it because its change tracking is useful and it has usable style-editing, which OpenOffice and friends don't have (ie they have no style margin like Word). It was very clear at the XML SummerSchool last month that there is growing support for HTML5 in editing tools, and some new advances in editorial control (eg systems like Xopus, FidusWriter, and Poetica) mean there may even be a way to escape from Word :-)
--
Disclaimer: editor interfaces are my thesis topic; I have no connection with any of the above except the XML SummerSchool.
It would be interesting to know from someone with the relevant expertise how this compares with the famous record of Jacques Beaurieux about the head of the guillotined Henri Languille.
Can I install Linux on one of these? Android?
...in most parts of the country it is only available from local growers during the cooler weeks at either end of the growing season...
What country is this you speak of? AFAIK broccoli is on the shelves of my local stores pretty much all year. Sure, it's imported from somewhere insanely far away like China or Africa or Tierra del Fuego half the time, but it's there.
Not that I eat it, mind you. It's on the banned list, like Brussels sprouts. As Nicholas Freeling said about British peas, all I can suggest is that it be put into concrete barrels with radioactive waste and the Mafia, and sunk in the ocean.
--
"I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed inter-state commerce." -- J Edgar Hoover