I provide free support to my immediate family. For example, I recovered the data from my Dad's fux0r3d computer and put it on his new Mac. (You've got to love Linux's mounting capabilities, don't you?) I've been fixing, troubleshooting, and programming computers since I was eight. (My daughter's started at 6)
Would I charge him? WTF? This is the guy who's given me more time, energy, and free help than anyone else on the planet. Hell, he even got me my first computer! I've gone to his house to install insulation in his attic, and I wouldn't charge for that either. It's pretty close to the least I can do.
Acquaintances hear, "Not sure... I use Linux. Have you tried turning it off and on again?" Insistence is met with "The going rate is about $200 / hour, with a one-hour minimum. Did you want me to come by tomorrow on a rush rate, or can you wait until next week?"
I'm in a concert band, and one of the other players is a medical doctor. Another player was asking him about something with her nose. I replied as an interruption, "That's why I like our Code of Ethics. I'm not legally allowed to give an opinion on something unless I've taken a close look personally. We even carry insurance just in case something we say casually gets taken out of context." (Which is true; I'm an Engineer.)
The asker looked at me and I could tell she thought "oh, yeah." Later the doctor thanked me.
Good point. From what I understand, that's why there was a rash of grocery store robberies about 10 years ago. The banks had more money, but the stores had a few thousand on hand, plus no security systems to speak of.
If you want to steal, white-collar crime is the way to go. Higher ROI, lower penalties, and your time is usually served in low-security facilities or under house arrest.
I was looking for a yoga mat last week./. starting serving up Yoga class ads. What bothers me more than anything else about the ads is that they're never, ever useful. I can't buy anything online, since the shipping costs and duty are inane. I'm not going to take a yoga class in Arizona when there's a gym next door.
Anyway, you'll note that the newest DRM requires a constant internet connection. It's not going to take someone a lot of brainpower to require the permanent connection to be to the ad server, or put the hearbeat on the ad server.
Thank you for remembering this. Keyed locks aren't very secure. However, they are in general secure enough for residential use. In D&D, we joke about the fighter having "industrial lockpicks and 100% chance to find traps". ("I kick in the door!")
I have windows on my house* and rocks in the garden. If someone wants to get in, it's not going to take a lot of brainpower to bypass the lock on the door.
People in secure relationships don't care that the other person looks at other people. It's a normal thing. For example, my wife drags me to EVERY Johnny Depp film. I don't care.
"If we outlaw gay marriage, then we'll end up outlawing hetero marriages, and then we'll end up outlawing marriage to Jesus, and then we'd have no priests!"
The EMR will fail open, unless it fails closed. Failing closed will be from welding due to overcurrent, so it will have triggered a separate fault (i.e. the blown fuse) so it does reliably fail open, from a certain point of view.
The SSR is a phototransistor / optical isolator in an IC package. The problem is that all semiconductors fail in an unknown manner, so it can fail open, fail closed, or fail in an intermediate state, or even worse, fail in an intermittent state.
Transistors of all kinds are not the ideal type that you generally learn about in school. (I'm an EE and I took several of the device behaviour / quantum physics courses. I know a lot about this subject.) Think of a transistor as a leaky tap. Even when it's off, it's still dripping a little bit. (The standby current is usually picoamps.) Now smash that tap with a hammer -- what happens to it? Maybe it'll leak more. Maybe you'll jam up the pipes. Maybe it'll still work. You've got a spike from the contactor depowering that went past the reverse breakdown voltage for the SSR output. What behaviour will it exhibit from now on?
Make no mistake, the MTBF is longer for the SSR. The EMR will fail first, but all you have to do is replace the part more often. The maintenance schedule is a critical part of your safety system. Regular testing is another critical part, even if the system is expensive to repair after an e-stop.
Electronic parts are always less reliable than their analog counterparts.
Let's look at an electromechanical relay (EMR) vs a solid-state relay (SSR)
The EMR will fail in a specific way. When the coils wear out, then it will fail open. When it the contacts weld, then it will fail in the state it was in when it welded. (And this will always blow the fuse unless you fucked up your design.)
The SSR will fail in an unpredictable way, because the damage to the pn junction on the output will either create a full conductor or a full insulator, or ANYTHING ELSE IN BETWEEN. You cannot predict the failure mode of an SSR.
An e-stop keeps the system in a non-stable state where pertubations will kill power in a rapid way. You can't wait for a CPU to read Port A, pin 1 to see if someone hit e-stop -- what if it has hanged? You usually have dedicated safety equipment, rated to a certain safety level, which disconnects power to the drive unit. For example, these controllers from tapeswitch will work. You'd then connect the output to the power relay for the contactor, meaning that when the sensor is hit, the safety controller trips, and power to the contactor (and thus the motor) is shut down. You'd wire this as an active low, so a loose wire acts the same as a safety stop. E-stops must always be outside of computer control. (Extraordinarily large motors may require active powering down to stop quickly enough, but those have special controllers to do so and are wired so that loose wires hit the brakes.)
Safety wiring is an art and a science and it takes a significant amount of practice, timing, and oversight to get it right. Even with a safety mindset it is easy to make mistakes, and damnably, mistakes that work, until one edge condition shows up that you didn't think of.
I don't think the manufacturers were negligent. They probably did their best, and hopefully followed good procedures. (It is acceptable to be wrong in Engineering, as long as you followed the standards of the time and you did your best.)
This problem cannot be solved without the source code. We'll never get it, and it'll get blamed on:
It's a credit card. I used to use debit for everything but switched to credit to provide a buffer between merchants and my real life cash. My parents had their debit card info skimmed by an organized group from Russia.
Two scenarios: 1. In which my debit card info is stolen:
"Hello bak, my debit card was stolen and thousands were removed from my account!"
"Well, if you can prove that it wasn't you who flew to all those cities, and if we can get ATM video of the transactions, then we can refund your money in 6-8 months."
2. In which my credit card info is stolen:
"Hi, this is [your bank]. We noticed some odd transactions. Have you been to [odd city] lately?"
"No..."
"Okay, I'll mark your card as stolen and send you a new one tomorrow. We apologize for the inconvenience."
There's not really much benefit. The major upside is that you can't ever forget your wallet, and it's going to be a bitch to steal your card. (If the guy in front of you is trying to pay with a stump, then it's probably stolen.)
You don't think that Macs and Linux machines are unhackable, do you? It's just that XP was so easy to hack, and had such a huge market share, that you'd be foolish to hack other systems.
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I provide free support to my immediate family. For example, I recovered the data from my Dad's fux0r3d computer and put it on his new Mac. (You've got to love Linux's mounting capabilities, don't you?) I've been fixing, troubleshooting, and programming computers since I was eight. (My daughter's started at 6)
Would I charge him? WTF? This is the guy who's given me more time, energy, and free help than anyone else on the planet. Hell, he even got me my first computer! I've gone to his house to install insulation in his attic, and I wouldn't charge for that either. It's pretty close to the least I can do.
Acquaintances hear, "Not sure... I use Linux. Have you tried turning it off and on again?" Insistence is met with "The going rate is about $200 / hour, with a one-hour minimum. Did you want me to come by tomorrow on a rush rate, or can you wait until next week?"
I'm in a concert band, and one of the other players is a medical doctor. Another player was asking him about something with her nose. I replied as an interruption, "That's why I like our Code of Ethics. I'm not legally allowed to give an opinion on something unless I've taken a close look personally. We even carry insurance just in case something we say casually gets taken out of context." (Which is true; I'm an Engineer.)
The asker looked at me and I could tell she thought "oh, yeah." Later the doctor thanked me.
Good point. From what I understand, that's why there was a rash of grocery store robberies about 10 years ago. The banks had more money, but the stores had a few thousand on hand, plus no security systems to speak of.
If you want to steal, white-collar crime is the way to go. Higher ROI, lower penalties, and your time is usually served in low-security facilities or under house arrest.
"All the songs you got tired of 20 years ago."
I was looking for a yoga mat last week. /. starting serving up Yoga class ads. What bothers me more than anything else about the ads is that they're never, ever useful. I can't buy anything online, since the shipping costs and duty are inane. I'm not going to take a yoga class in Arizona when there's a gym next door.
Anyway, you'll note that the newest DRM requires a constant internet connection. It's not going to take someone a lot of brainpower to require the permanent connection to be to the ad server, or put the hearbeat on the ad server.
Meh, this way we get all their Engineers.
Aw, nuts. I brainfarted. It's running Puppy. (Which is the same distro as my kids' computer.)
Thank you for remembering this. Keyed locks aren't very secure. However, they are in general secure enough for residential use. In D&D, we joke about the fighter having "industrial lockpicks and 100% chance to find traps". ("I kick in the door!")
I have windows on my house* and rocks in the garden. If someone wants to get in, it's not going to take a lot of brainpower to bypass the lock on the door.
*But funnily enough, not on any of my computers.
It's $2.50 for a copy of my house key.
It works in a power failure. I have a spare locked up in the shed so if I get locked out, I can get back inside.
My car has key fob entry. Spares are $250.
People in secure relationships don't care that the other person looks at other people. It's a normal thing. For example, my wife drags me to EVERY Johnny Depp film. I don't care.
You're lucky. I have to enter any 7-digit prime number to use my microwave.
Just use the SMBC line:
"If we outlaw gay marriage, then we'll end up outlawing hetero marriages, and then we'll end up outlawing marriage to Jesus, and then we'd have no priests!"
See, slippery slope arguments work both ways.
Pfft, my netbook is a P2 366 Thinkpad running Mint.
"Microns" is the colloquial form of "micrometers". "Micrometers" is technically correct.
Not quite, but very, very close.
The EMR will fail open, unless it fails closed. Failing closed will be from welding due to overcurrent, so it will have triggered a separate fault (i.e. the blown fuse) so it does reliably fail open, from a certain point of view.
The SSR is a phototransistor / optical isolator in an IC package. The problem is that all semiconductors fail in an unknown manner, so it can fail open, fail closed, or fail in an intermediate state, or even worse, fail in an intermittent state.
Transistors of all kinds are not the ideal type that you generally learn about in school. (I'm an EE and I took several of the device behaviour / quantum physics courses. I know a lot about this subject.) Think of a transistor as a leaky tap. Even when it's off, it's still dripping a little bit. (The standby current is usually picoamps.) Now smash that tap with a hammer -- what happens to it? Maybe it'll leak more. Maybe you'll jam up the pipes. Maybe it'll still work. You've got a spike from the contactor depowering that went past the reverse breakdown voltage for the SSR output. What behaviour will it exhibit from now on?
Make no mistake, the MTBF is longer for the SSR. The EMR will fail first, but all you have to do is replace the part more often. The maintenance schedule is a critical part of your safety system. Regular testing is another critical part, even if the system is expensive to repair after an e-stop.
Meh, they got to lipsync at the Olympics, which is as close as we can get to outing them as suckage.
You'd think that explosions would come through the mic, unless... unless it wasn't on!
Mozart in concert, live...ish.
Electronic parts are always less reliable than their analog counterparts.
Let's look at an electromechanical relay (EMR) vs a solid-state relay (SSR)
The EMR will fail in a specific way. When the coils wear out, then it will fail open. When it the contacts weld, then it will fail in the state it was in when it welded. (And this will always blow the fuse unless you fucked up your design.)
The SSR will fail in an unpredictable way, because the damage to the pn junction on the output will either create a full conductor or a full insulator, or ANYTHING ELSE IN BETWEEN. You cannot predict the failure mode of an SSR.
That's not how e-stops work.
An e-stop keeps the system in a non-stable state where pertubations will kill power in a rapid way. You can't wait for a CPU to read Port A, pin 1 to see if someone hit e-stop -- what if it has hanged? You usually have dedicated safety equipment, rated to a certain safety level, which disconnects power to the drive unit. For example, these controllers from tapeswitch will work. You'd then connect the output to the power relay for the contactor, meaning that when the sensor is hit, the safety controller trips, and power to the contactor (and thus the motor) is shut down. You'd wire this as an active low, so a loose wire acts the same as a safety stop. E-stops must always be outside of computer control. (Extraordinarily large motors may require active powering down to stop quickly enough, but those have special controllers to do so and are wired so that loose wires hit the brakes.)
Safety wiring is an art and a science and it takes a significant amount of practice, timing, and oversight to get it right. Even with a safety mindset it is easy to make mistakes, and damnably, mistakes that work, until one edge condition shows up that you didn't think of.
I don't think the manufacturers were negligent. They probably did their best, and hopefully followed good procedures. (It is acceptable to be wrong in Engineering, as long as you followed the standards of the time and you did your best.)
This problem cannot be solved without the source code. We'll never get it, and it'll get blamed on:
1. Driver error
2. Faulty chips
3. Industrial Espionage.
Wait a minute, 3. may be possible. If this is common to several manufacturers, then the code might be "borrowed".
It's a credit card. I used to use debit for everything but switched to credit to provide a buffer between merchants and my real life cash. My parents had their debit card info skimmed by an organized group from Russia.
Two scenarios:
1. In which my debit card info is stolen:
"Hello bak, my debit card was stolen and thousands were removed from my account!"
"Well, if you can prove that it wasn't you who flew to all those cities, and if we can get ATM video of the transactions, then we can refund your money in 6-8 months."
2. In which my credit card info is stolen:
"Hi, this is [your bank]. We noticed some odd transactions. Have you been to [odd city] lately?"
"No..."
"Okay, I'll mark your card as stolen and send you a new one tomorrow. We apologize for the inconvenience."
"Thank you."
Really?
I got Sony-branded low-light vision upgrades.
It is AWESOME.
There's not really much benefit. The major upside is that you can't ever forget your wallet, and it's going to be a bitch to steal your card. (If the guy in front of you is trying to pay with a stump, then it's probably stolen.)
However, electronic tracking of people does have its place. (I wrote the code for those transmitters.) Some people will wander away and be unable to ask for help or even realize that they are dying of exposure.
Swipe a card? How quaint.
My card has PayPass -- I just wave my card in front of the reader to pay, and a signature isn't required.
They'll just get them inserted into the left forearm.
You don't think that Macs and Linux machines are unhackable, do you? It's just that XP was so easy to hack, and had such a huge market share, that you'd be foolish to hack other systems.