This is not some magical thing. Parts will be available unless they used custom chips, but this is no digital storage scope, there are no ASICs in there. About the only thing that would worry me would be some PAL/GAL or an FPGA somewhere with a protected bitstream -- that'd be a single point of failure. It breaks and you're done. Those can be reverse-engineered, though.
Dude (or dudette): that's a relatively simple back-of-the-wheelchair system, not a bridge nor a HVAC system for a 50 story highrise. Even if it does have safety implications as, presumably, it also controls the motion of the wheelchair. Heck, I'd consider it negligence to just let it linger unknown and undocumented. Professional standards, my ass, you consider it professional to whine?! Professional standards mean that you'll take care reverse engineering what's there, documenting it for your successors, and will do the job you're asked to do. Reverse engineering is often done in a lot of professional work where you want to extract extra value from existing products that are either unsupported or where the support is uncooperative. I've done it on some servo drives simply because they had shortcomings in their design and they came to light after we deployed hundreds of them in the field, on multiple continents to boot. If I refused to do it, I might have as well written a resignation letter. Engineers are there to solve problems, hiding behind some made-up moral high ground is silly.
You're thinking backwards about it. This would be a first-rate opportunity to learn about requirements for such a system in a real use scenario. Figure out what the shortcomings of the existing design are, but also likely what is brilliant about it, and make your own product based on that.
Lack of documentation doesn't mean it's necessarily poorly designed. There's a whole lot of decently designed systems out there with no documentation or lost documentation. Or documentation that's written in such a style that noone today can understand it. And I'm not talking about something that fits on a wheelchair. Think entire industrial plants.
I know for a certainty that I'm taking the pain and the time.
Well, I guess that torture survival training will pay off eventually... I think you should go and volunteer at a hospice for a while, because either you're just battle hardened a lot, in a way, or simply have no clue about real pain.
Agreed. Especially that dialysis is under-administered, because fucked up insurers simply won't cover more of it. People on dialysis feel sick most of the time. There was a study where they dialyzed the "heck" out of people, just to see if it'd help. And of course it did help, but IIRC the patients needed dialysis for 8 hours every day, and they felt just as good as any person with full kidney function. So dialysis is something I don't wish on anyone as a "permanent" solution. It should be a life-preserving stand-in before a transplant. I'd much rather take risks of a transplant than suffering on dialysis. Recall how you feel when you'd describe yourself "under the weather". Now imagine feeling that way every day of your life while on dialysis. That's how insufficient dialysis makes you feel: it keeps you alive, but the quality of life is quite poor.
Re:What about their children?
on
How Doctors Die
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Tell your wife about my wife. She was clinically dead for a short while because she took an antibiotic -- even though she did have a very painful bacterial sinus infection where taking that antibiotic was not out of line. Things got bad not due to a direct reaction to antibiotic, but due to a c-diff infection in her gut that got triggered, apparently, by the good bacteria getting decimated by the antibiotic. She can't take that particular antibiotic (nor its "cousins") anymore, because that problem seems reproducible. When it reoccured, we both saw knew what the symptoms meant and she could take the IV stuff to get rid of the c-diff (confirmed in both cases by stool cultures). C-diff, if you're unlucky, can well get you into septic shock, and from there it's a short walk to going into cardiac arrest.
Never mind that even if you won't ever hit such serious complications, you're contributing to the MRSA problem by taking antibiotics unnecessarily. I do know that some people, if they're sick with upper respiratory viral stuff, may pick up secondary bacterial infections. But even so, you only take antibiotics when it's obvious that you in fact have a secondary infection. Viral stuff doesn't give shit about antibiotics, it's stupid to take them without a good reason.
Re:This is what's wrong with private healthcare.
on
How Doctors Die
·
· Score: 1
I had it done, and I'd hardly call it torture. I didn't suffer for a week. Hell, I didn't even suffer right after waking up from the surgery either (I opted for general anesthesia). There was some discomfort, I couldn't exactly start munching on nuts or muesli right after, but with good painkillers I was essentially pain-free.
Re:This is what's wrong with private healthcare.
on
How Doctors Die
·
· Score: 1
I think that both medical insurance and all medical service providers should be, by law, forced to be non-profits.
Either Danica is fine with selling her body cheap, or GoDaddy are the only ones that would want to keep sponsoring her... I would want to say I feel sad for her, but she may simply not mind such a treatment. You never know.
I'm the same. Dropping words is seemingly easy for me, as is substituting improper words (wrong tense, etc). Typos seem to stand out for some reason and are thus much easier to correct, even without a spellchecker.
I meant obviously without any active devices, if one considers a linear transformer to be a passive device (as opposed to a magnetic amplifier that would be considered active).
It's not the voltage drops that kill it, it's voltage levels and the fact that a current source needs to have infinite impedance. It's hard to approximate that without active devices.
I concur, and I'd also consider no-interest credit accounts also not to be necessarily in "living on credit" category. There have been plenty of purchases I made where paying cash upfront would be stupid, since I could just get a 12-month same-as-cash credit card and spread the same total payment over 12 months. Those "same-as-cash" deals usually imply deferred interest: if you pay it off, without ever being late, within the allotted time (usually 3, 6, 9, 12 or 24 months), they forgive the interest. If you're ever late, or if you don't pay it off, then they tack the accrued interest to the balance. Seems like a fair enough deal to me. Especially that I can, in many cases, set up automated on-line payments so that there's nothing for me to forget.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there a way to contact you? wendy_at_dee_ee_vee_oh_ell_vee_ee_dot_com bounces :(
And they are, I think, all the better for it. Being used to living with plenty can make you pretty vulnerable should circumstances change.
Thank you. You've made my day. It had to be said, and you've said it very well. Heck, my wife works and it doesn't make my penis any smaller, ha.
Maybe you want to skip the employers that can't even understand your fine resume?
This is not some magical thing. Parts will be available unless they used custom chips, but this is no digital storage scope, there are no ASICs in there. About the only thing that would worry me would be some PAL/GAL or an FPGA somewhere with a protected bitstream -- that'd be a single point of failure. It breaks and you're done. Those can be reverse-engineered, though.
We don't know if energy can not be created or destroyed. We know that we don't know how to pull it off, doesn't mean it's universally impossible.
I don't really get it, considering that costs of living seem to be higher in UK. Even grocery store prices seem significantly higher (50% or more).
If I had no family to support, I'd jump on that job, even if it meant taking a huge pay cut.
Dude (or dudette): that's a relatively simple back-of-the-wheelchair system, not a bridge nor a HVAC system for a 50 story highrise. Even if it does have safety implications as, presumably, it also controls the motion of the wheelchair. Heck, I'd consider it negligence to just let it linger unknown and undocumented. Professional standards, my ass, you consider it professional to whine?! Professional standards mean that you'll take care reverse engineering what's there, documenting it for your successors, and will do the job you're asked to do. Reverse engineering is often done in a lot of professional work where you want to extract extra value from existing products that are either unsupported or where the support is uncooperative. I've done it on some servo drives simply because they had shortcomings in their design and they came to light after we deployed hundreds of them in the field, on multiple continents to boot. If I refused to do it, I might have as well written a resignation letter. Engineers are there to solve problems, hiding behind some made-up moral high ground is silly.
You're thinking backwards about it. This would be a first-rate opportunity to learn about requirements for such a system in a real use scenario. Figure out what the shortcomings of the existing design are, but also likely what is brilliant about it, and make your own product based on that.
Lack of documentation doesn't mean it's necessarily poorly designed. There's a whole lot of decently designed systems out there with no documentation or lost documentation. Or documentation that's written in such a style that noone today can understand it. And I'm not talking about something that fits on a wheelchair. Think entire industrial plants.
How the heck can anyone make the ends meet for 25kGBP/year is beyond me. UK has higher costs of living than US does, supposedly?
I know for a certainty that I'm taking the pain and the time.
Well, I guess that torture survival training will pay off eventually... I think you should go and volunteer at a hospice for a while, because either you're just battle hardened a lot, in a way, or simply have no clue about real pain.
Agreed. Especially that dialysis is under-administered, because fucked up insurers simply won't cover more of it. People on dialysis feel sick most of the time. There was a study where they dialyzed the "heck" out of people, just to see if it'd help. And of course it did help, but IIRC the patients needed dialysis for 8 hours every day, and they felt just as good as any person with full kidney function. So dialysis is something I don't wish on anyone as a "permanent" solution. It should be a life-preserving stand-in before a transplant. I'd much rather take risks of a transplant than suffering on dialysis. Recall how you feel when you'd describe yourself "under the weather". Now imagine feeling that way every day of your life while on dialysis. That's how insufficient dialysis makes you feel: it keeps you alive, but the quality of life is quite poor.
Tell your wife about my wife. She was clinically dead for a short while because she took an antibiotic -- even though she did have a very painful bacterial sinus infection where taking that antibiotic was not out of line. Things got bad not due to a direct reaction to antibiotic, but due to a c-diff infection in her gut that got triggered, apparently, by the good bacteria getting decimated by the antibiotic. She can't take that particular antibiotic (nor its "cousins") anymore, because that problem seems reproducible. When it reoccured, we both saw knew what the symptoms meant and she could take the IV stuff to get rid of the c-diff (confirmed in both cases by stool cultures). C-diff, if you're unlucky, can well get you into septic shock, and from there it's a short walk to going into cardiac arrest.
Never mind that even if you won't ever hit such serious complications, you're contributing to the MRSA problem by taking antibiotics unnecessarily. I do know that some people, if they're sick with upper respiratory viral stuff, may pick up secondary bacterial infections. But even so, you only take antibiotics when it's obvious that you in fact have a secondary infection. Viral stuff doesn't give shit about antibiotics, it's stupid to take them without a good reason.
I had it done, and I'd hardly call it torture. I didn't suffer for a week. Hell, I didn't even suffer right after waking up from the surgery either (I opted for general anesthesia). There was some discomfort, I couldn't exactly start munching on nuts or muesli right after, but with good painkillers I was essentially pain-free.
I think that both medical insurance and all medical service providers should be, by law, forced to be non-profits.
Either Danica is fine with selling her body cheap, or GoDaddy are the only ones that would want to keep sponsoring her... I would want to say I feel sad for her, but she may simply not mind such a treatment. You never know.
I'm the same. Dropping words is seemingly easy for me, as is substituting improper words (wrong tense, etc). Typos seem to stand out for some reason and are thus much easier to correct, even without a spellchecker.
Thank you, very interesting indeed.
I meant obviously without any active devices, if one considers a linear transformer to be a passive device (as opposed to a magnetic amplifier that would be considered active).
It's not the voltage drops that kill it, it's voltage levels and the fact that a current source needs to have infinite impedance. It's hard to approximate that without active devices.
PIPA -- that's pussy in Polish vernacular :)
Yeah, and that makes an undetected typo a whooping 10x less likely. That's NOT ENOUGH.
I concur, and I'd also consider no-interest credit accounts also not to be necessarily in "living on credit" category. There have been plenty of purchases I made where paying cash upfront would be stupid, since I could just get a 12-month same-as-cash credit card and spread the same total payment over 12 months. Those "same-as-cash" deals usually imply deferred interest: if you pay it off, without ever being late, within the allotted time (usually 3, 6, 9, 12 or 24 months), they forgive the interest. If you're ever late, or if you don't pay it off, then they tack the accrued interest to the balance. Seems like a fair enough deal to me. Especially that I can, in many cases, set up automated on-line payments so that there's nothing for me to forget.