If this was an industry requirement, you wouldn't have developers shipping tight, well-planned code.
You would have no developers and no applications. Technological progress has always centered on riding the bleeding edge, where the programmers themselves barely have a clue what the heck they're doing. If people knew how much of the stuff they use was designed under impossible time requirements by bleary-eyed schizophrenics, we'd still be riding in horse carriages.
Look at how today's technology compares to NASA. They sit and pore over every detail, examine and re-examine; approve and check. What are they using in the space shuttles? 386's for main computers still?
Requiring open code would put many companies out of business. A lot of customers have their own businesses depending on applications, and they don't care if the code is nice; they just want something that works most of the time and keeps their business running. That and a support contract keeps them happy, and the developers can gradually issue fixes to reduce the twinges of sloppy-code guilt.
Re:Science has caught up with Saturday Night Live
on
Getting More Face Time
·
· Score: 2
Except that it wasn't American scientists doing the research, so it would be your tax pound if you lived in England.
Imagine your body deciding to reject the transplant, on the bus to work, in the morning....
Most people would try to hold the face on with one hand and grope for the cell phone to call up a doctor. The typical Slashdot reader would stand up and bellow something about stealing souls.
Even more interesting to hook up a phototransistor to a trigger and frequency counter, then point it at a flourescent tube. Or remember that current flows both ways in the gas of a flourescent tube, and AC goes through a positive/negative cycle 60 times a second, reaching a ~160 volt peak 120 times per second.
Ah, those early lab experiments back in school....
Only at 1 pixel by 1 pixel black-and-clear resolution, per eye.
Re:Don't blame me, I voted for Nader...
on
Green Geeks?
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· Score: 2
Sure, they have rich parents who can afford to take off from work or to hire someone to tutor their child.
Well, consider that my family was just off food stamps when my mother (herself with an English degree) stayed home to teach first grade. Now, all of her children have been or are in very prestigious private colleges, two with full-ride music scholarships plus spending money. And the family income is still not very much higher than then median. I believe your assertion that home-schoolers are rich is false and not backed up by any fact you can cite.
If one parent stayed home, then the cost to taxpayers was the lost income taxes of that parent.
Since when is someone not earning tax money a COST? You're thinking like a typical tax-and-spend liberal. I'd say that any "lost potential revenue" would be more than made up in a reduced crime rate, more intelligent people to enter the work force, and not going to some state school that would have paid any of us a full scholarship. Plus, in our later years, we had more opportunity to work part-time jobs and we certainly paid taxes on those.
Local property taxes? Come on. My data shows 6-8% federal funding, 45-50% state funding, and the rest made up by local taxes. That's well over half of school funding that does not come from local property taxes, and instead is gained from income tax, tobacco tax, even speeding tickets (in Wisconsin about $25 per ticket goes to the schools). So it's not even "primarily" what funds public schools. That's another myth you've been fed, check it out for yourself if you don't believe me.
Re:Don't blame me, I voted for Nader...
on
Green Geeks?
·
· Score: 2
I had to reply to this:
They want to implement school vouchers, which will destroy the public schools which both of my parents teach in, by taking away the smarter and more wealthy kids and leaving all the poor dumb ones.
Are you a complete idiot? (well, you do have two public school teachers as parents....)
Flamebait aside, the purpose of school vouchers is to give the kids without money a chance to go to a private school! The rich kids can and do already go there! Vouchers are not something you buy, they help pay for a better education than the public schools can provide.
And yeah, the public school system completely sucks. Look up any comparision of our students with those in other countries. It's depressing.
Also look at homeschooling. Home schooled students beat out public AND private schools in every area. Cost to taxpayers: zero. Cost to parents: one has to stay home, which studies have shown helps kids grow up with better health, intelligence, and attitudes anyway. Maybe if the government wouldn't tax the heck out of us (to pay for worthless public schools) whenever they got a chance, it would be financially painless for one parent to stay home.
Anonymous Coward defense aside, maybe I didn't get the education I paid about $29,000/year for. But I did once learn something about heterodyning receivers, IF and sideband demodulation.
And no, by "bounce" I didn't mean transmit the original signal back out of the antenna. I just don't currently work in RF, and didn't realize automotive receivers radiated that much energy in the demodulation.
Apparently you do work in RF, and have a few years of experience as well. Obviously, it still hasn't taught you some of the rudimentaries of respect.
I'd like to know a bit more about the technology as well.
Do superhet receivers really bounce that much back out of the antenna?
Are they using lasers to monitor glass vibrations and compare to current radio signals? Or maybe bouncing microwave off the cars and using the chassis as a resonant cavity?
I'd like to say I know exactly what they're doing, but on this one I draw a blank.
It won't work unless you put a speaker right next to the fan, OR you can guarantee an exact distance to both ears from the fan.
See, not only is the inverse waveform important, but the PHASE as well. Shift ear position 180 degrees out of phase (at 13392 in/s, a 3000 Hz signal will be 180 out of phase by moving 2.232 inches) and the speaker will actually double the sound pressure.
That's why the noise-cancelling headphones work. They are guaranteed a distance from the sensing microphone to the ear. Also, noise-cancelling devices on machinery work because they are very close to the origination point of the noise, so the inverse waveform is nearly on top of the noise waveform.
In fact, why would anyone care? No one cares how OEM's do stuff. For all I know, they can have the settings preprogrammed from the factory.
Did you really want to know how you can roll out BIOS settings to a large amount of computers? Or are you trying to write a "CMOS Duplicator" program and want some free market analysis and tech tips?
It's called putting the CDs on the network. With the exception of an OS that needs to boot from a CD, the installs should work fine over the network.
That's how my school did/does it, and it worked just fine. If someone can't use the network for whatever reason, you can still check out the CD -- but 0.1% as often.
If you came to me, and claimed you'd learned VC++, Java, an assembly language and a few other skills to a professional standard, all in six months, I would file you under "deluded" and move on. It probably takes six months....
Of course I didn't learn them to a professional standard. But for someone whose programming experience was primarily Applesoft BASIC before college, and took no programming classes, it's pretty damn impressive. Let's put a task in front of you: "Hi. You will be building a USB-controlled camera pan/tilt head, from scratch. The device will also contain an integrated USB hub, from scratch. You will be required to learn HC08 assembly and develop the necessary firmware to create an instance of a USB device. You will also be required to learn Visual C++ and develop all user interfaces, TCP/IP communications, and interfacing with a USB device. You will also have to learn Java to create a remote control for the camera, that operates over the Internet. You will be required to design and construct all required hardware. In addition, you will have a dozen other classes during the project, each with design projects and copious amounts of homework. Go. BTW, yes, that is just your part of the project, your group members will be working on other things."
Well, I'd suggest that they don't communicate with satellites at all. Other than receiving GPS signals, that is.
Look at it this way: at BG Micro you can now buy a GPS module, with serial output, for less than $20. A minor microcontroller circuit and a cellphone or cellphone module later, and you have your little tracking device.
The monthly fees are about right for cellphone access, and the large equipment cost certainly leaves enough room for a profit.
I could certainly build such a device, order cellphone service for my customers' areas, and provide a server to phone home to. And I would also have to be paid some way other than by credit card.
By the way, someone was selling a strikingly similar service on eBay, for the same price. There were a bunch of those auctions with all the huge all-caps text and yellow backgrounds, etc.,.
You really should look into the enrollment data in engineering schools right now.
In three to four years, people who need engineers are going to be screwed. And people who are already engineers are going to be raking in the cash.
Also, a recent graduate does not necessarily have zero experience. I've been working in an engineering enviroment, I've been able to come up with some pretty good ideas even though I'm not a mechanical engineer. I've also been keeping up on my own projects, trying to increase my knowledge of C++, and have real experience taking a product from concept to completion. I had to learn Visual C++, assembly, Java, TCP programming, USB interfacing, and PCB design within a six month period, while attending classes with their own projects and demands. I know people who scored an engineering job last year, and nothing they do ever comes close to that level of insanity (with the exception of some startups).
The older engineers I know, for the most part, aren't willing to devote more time than necessary to a project. They have less energy, a family to spend time with, and think more about moving into management. They are invaluable for their guidance and know-how, but it's the engineers in their mid-20's who will order some pizzas and hack on a problem until 11:00 PM, just because they want to succeed and are genuinely interested in their work.
It's a hard life, being a 2001 electrical engineer grad at this time.
What I really want to know is what makes these companies so completely STUPID that they won't hire fresh graduates? Many kids are kicking out of engineering already, and starting engineering majors are at an all-time low.
Ok, an HR guy may see someone with FIVE or TEN years of experience to be a better choice. But what happens in five years, when I have been working a job barely related to engineering? I won't remember a thing I learned in school. I've been keeping up with my projects, trying to learn additional skills, but it's not easy when trying to hold down a (poorly paying) full time job and pay off student loans. The companies are setting themselves up to have NO competent engineers available in the next three to four years.
By setting insane required experience levels, they are limiting their candidates to two types: those who will demand higher pay and retire ten years earlier, and those who are ethically twisted enough to blatantly lie on their resumes.
The idiocy evident in many of these corporations, as well as their failure to analyze the talent pool on a long-term basis, is seriously convincing me that contracting may be the only way to keep a safe distance. The only problem with that, is developing a good contracting business is even harder than finding a job. People just don't understand that an engineer doesn't need to have the EXACT experience in what you want them to do. Most engineers have the skill of learning everything necessary to complete a project, and making decisions based on the research of others. It's primarily an application field; you wouldn't question a carpenter's ability to make a desk out of black walnut even if he's only made maple and cherry desks before.
Someday I will find people who have a clue. Or take a few of my money-making inventions and actually do something with them.
"It's 2:00 am. Do you know what OS your kids are using?"
Comments like "I may use Linux, but if I ever catch you with a Redhat CD, you'll be grounded for a month!" will also do well.
That's why Microsoft doesn't run many ads featuring middle-to-late-teenagers. Anything an advertising agency would have an teen actor do or say, I guarantee a typical teenager would rather cut off both feet first. The advertising industry's idea of cool rarely is.
Slashdot Mirror
If this was an industry requirement, you wouldn't have developers shipping tight, well-planned code.
You would have no developers and no applications. Technological progress has always centered on riding the bleeding edge, where the programmers themselves barely have a clue what the heck they're doing. If people knew how much of the stuff they use was designed under impossible time requirements by bleary-eyed schizophrenics, we'd still be riding in horse carriages.
Look at how today's technology compares to NASA. They sit and pore over every detail, examine and re-examine; approve and check. What are they using in the space shuttles? 386's for main computers still?
Requiring open code would put many companies out of business. A lot of customers have their own businesses depending on applications, and they don't care if the code is nice; they just want something that works most of the time and keeps their business running. That and a support contract keeps them happy, and the developers can gradually issue fixes to reduce the twinges of sloppy-code guilt.
Except that it wasn't American scientists doing the research, so it would be your tax pound if you lived in England.
Dunes. The desert is full of dunes.
Imagine your body deciding to reject the transplant, on the bus to work, in the morning....
Most people would try to hold the face on with one hand and grope for the cell phone to call up a doctor. The typical Slashdot reader would stand up and bellow something about stealing souls.
Even more interesting to hook up a phototransistor to a trigger and frequency counter, then point it at a flourescent tube. Or remember that current flows both ways in the gas of a flourescent tube, and AC goes through a positive/negative cycle 60 times a second, reaching a ~160 volt peak 120 times per second.
Ah, those early lab experiments back in school....
...any other light will make your eyes go goofy, especially the flicker you'll see with 60Hz fluorescent tubes.
That's 120Hz. Flash on positive swing, flash on negative.
Only at 1 pixel by 1 pixel black-and-clear resolution, per eye.
Sure, they have rich parents who can afford to take off from work or to hire someone to tutor their child.
Well, consider that my family was just off food stamps when my mother (herself with an English degree) stayed home to teach first grade. Now, all of her children have been or are in very prestigious private colleges, two with full-ride music scholarships plus spending money. And the family income is still not very much higher than then median. I believe your assertion that home-schoolers are rich is false and not backed up by any fact you can cite.
If one parent stayed home, then the cost to taxpayers was the lost income taxes of that parent.
Since when is someone not earning tax money a COST? You're thinking like a typical tax-and-spend liberal. I'd say that any "lost potential revenue" would be more than made up in a reduced crime rate, more intelligent people to enter the work force, and not going to some state school that would have paid any of us a full scholarship. Plus, in our later years, we had more opportunity to work part-time jobs and we certainly paid taxes on those.
Local property taxes? Come on. My data shows 6-8% federal funding, 45-50% state funding, and the rest made up by local taxes. That's well over half of school funding that does not come from local property taxes, and instead is gained from income tax, tobacco tax, even speeding tickets (in Wisconsin about $25 per ticket goes to the schools). So it's not even "primarily" what funds public schools. That's another myth you've been fed, check it out for yourself if you don't believe me.
I had to reply to this:
They want to implement school vouchers, which will destroy the public schools which both of my parents teach in, by taking away the smarter and more wealthy kids and leaving all the poor dumb ones.
Are you a complete idiot? (well, you do have two public school teachers as parents....)
Flamebait aside, the purpose of school vouchers is to give the kids without money a chance to go to a private school! The rich kids can and do already go there! Vouchers are not something you buy, they help pay for a better education than the public schools can provide.
And yeah, the public school system completely sucks. Look up any comparision of our students with those in other countries. It's depressing.
Also look at homeschooling. Home schooled students beat out public AND private schools in every area. Cost to taxpayers: zero. Cost to parents: one has to stay home, which studies have shown helps kids grow up with better health, intelligence, and attitudes anyway. Maybe if the government wouldn't tax the heck out of us (to pay for worthless public schools) whenever they got a chance, it would be financially painless for one parent to stay home.
Anonymous Coward defense aside, maybe I didn't get the education I paid about $29,000/year for. But I did once learn something about heterodyning receivers, IF and sideband demodulation.
And no, by "bounce" I didn't mean transmit the original signal back out of the antenna. I just don't currently work in RF, and didn't realize automotive receivers radiated that much energy in the demodulation.
Apparently you do work in RF, and have a few years of experience as well. Obviously, it still hasn't taught you some of the rudimentaries of respect.
I'd like to know a bit more about the technology as well.
Do superhet receivers really bounce that much back out of the antenna?
Are they using lasers to monitor glass vibrations and compare to current radio signals? Or maybe bouncing microwave off the cars and using the chassis as a resonant cavity?
I'd like to say I know exactly what they're doing, but on this one I draw a blank.
I never post 'MOD UP PLS' posts, but oakbox should get a '+6, Funny' on this one.
You've got a point there.
I don't use blocking software on this computer; it's running WinXP and the latest IE 6.
It failed the test. And I'm running the configuration that most of the ad-viewing public would be using.
Got that? Most common potential customer configuration == blocked.
They won't get any business.
It won't work unless you put a speaker right next to the fan, OR you can guarantee an exact distance to both ears from the fan.
See, not only is the inverse waveform important, but the PHASE as well. Shift ear position 180 degrees out of phase (at 13392 in/s, a 3000 Hz signal will be 180 out of phase by moving 2.232 inches) and the speaker will actually double the sound pressure.
That's why the noise-cancelling headphones work. They are guaranteed a distance from the sensing microphone to the ear. Also, noise-cancelling devices on machinery work because they are very close to the origination point of the noise, so the inverse waveform is nearly on top of the noise waveform.
Good point, if you have that kind of potential between two parts of a ship, there may be even bigger problems than the Ethernet shielding.
What happens if the actual computer and network equipment at each location is grounded there? You've just run 90 volts into an Ethernet port.
Definitely make sure all equipment grounds are connected.
Sounds like a nightmare.
Yes. Yes it does still exist. That will be $5.00.
The real question is, why do you care?
In fact, why would anyone care? No one cares how OEM's do stuff. For all I know, they can have the settings preprogrammed from the factory.
Did you really want to know how you can roll out BIOS settings to a large amount of computers? Or are you trying to write a "CMOS Duplicator" program and want some free market analysis and tech tips?
Either way, I am devoid of all caring whatsoever.
Someone has solved the problem already.
It's called putting the CDs on the network. With the exception of an OS that needs to boot from a CD, the installs should work fine over the network.
That's how my school did/does it, and it worked just fine. If someone can't use the network for whatever reason, you can still check out the CD -- but 0.1% as often.
If you came to me, and claimed you'd learned VC++, Java, an assembly language and a few other skills to a professional standard, all in six months, I would file you under "deluded" and move on. It probably takes six months....
Of course I didn't learn them to a professional standard. But for someone whose programming experience was primarily Applesoft BASIC before college, and took no programming classes, it's pretty damn impressive. Let's put a task in front of you: "Hi. You will be building a USB-controlled camera pan/tilt head, from scratch. The device will also contain an integrated USB hub, from scratch. You will be required to learn HC08 assembly and develop the necessary firmware to create an instance of a USB device. You will also be required to learn Visual C++ and develop all user interfaces, TCP/IP communications, and interfacing with a USB device. You will also have to learn Java to create a remote control for the camera, that operates over the Internet. You will be required to design and construct all required hardware. In addition, you will have a dozen other classes during the project, each with design projects and copious amounts of homework. Go. BTW, yes, that is just your part of the project, your group members will be working on other things."
I did it, and I think that shows something.
Well, I'd suggest that they don't communicate with satellites at all. Other than receiving GPS signals, that is.
Look at it this way: at BG Micro you can now buy a GPS module, with serial output, for less than $20. A minor microcontroller circuit and a cellphone or cellphone module later, and you have your little tracking device.
The monthly fees are about right for cellphone access, and the large equipment cost certainly leaves enough room for a profit.
I could certainly build such a device, order cellphone service for my customers' areas, and provide a server to phone home to. And I would also have to be paid some way other than by credit card.
By the way, someone was selling a strikingly similar service on eBay, for the same price. There were a bunch of those auctions with all the huge all-caps text and yellow backgrounds, etc.,.
You really should look into the enrollment data in engineering schools right now.
In three to four years, people who need engineers are going to be screwed. And people who are already engineers are going to be raking in the cash.
Also, a recent graduate does not necessarily have zero experience. I've been working in an engineering enviroment, I've been able to come up with some pretty good ideas even though I'm not a mechanical engineer. I've also been keeping up on my own projects, trying to increase my knowledge of C++, and have real experience taking a product from concept to completion. I had to learn Visual C++, assembly, Java, TCP programming, USB interfacing, and PCB design within a six month period, while attending classes with their own projects and demands. I know people who scored an engineering job last year, and nothing they do ever comes close to that level of insanity (with the exception of some startups).
The older engineers I know, for the most part, aren't willing to devote more time than necessary to a project. They have less energy, a family to spend time with, and think more about moving into management. They are invaluable for their guidance and know-how, but it's the engineers in their mid-20's who will order some pizzas and hack on a problem until 11:00 PM, just because they want to succeed and are genuinely interested in their work.
It's a hard life, being a 2001 electrical engineer grad at this time.
What I really want to know is what makes these companies so completely STUPID that they won't hire fresh graduates? Many kids are kicking out of engineering already, and starting engineering majors are at an all-time low.
Ok, an HR guy may see someone with FIVE or TEN years of experience to be a better choice. But what happens in five years, when I have been working a job barely related to engineering? I won't remember a thing I learned in school. I've been keeping up with my projects, trying to learn additional skills, but it's not easy when trying to hold down a (poorly paying) full time job and pay off student loans. The companies are setting themselves up to have NO competent engineers available in the next three to four years.
By setting insane required experience levels, they are limiting their candidates to two types: those who will demand higher pay and retire ten years earlier, and those who are ethically twisted enough to blatantly lie on their resumes.
The idiocy evident in many of these corporations, as well as their failure to analyze the talent pool on a long-term basis, is seriously convincing me that contracting may be the only way to keep a safe distance. The only problem with that, is developing a good contracting business is even harder than finding a job. People just don't understand that an engineer doesn't need to have the EXACT experience in what you want them to do. Most engineers have the skill of learning everything necessary to complete a project, and making decisions based on the research of others. It's primarily an application field; you wouldn't question a carpenter's ability to make a desk out of black walnut even if he's only made maple and cherry desks before.
Someday I will find people who have a clue. Or take a few of my money-making inventions and actually do something with them.
Thank you for significantly improving my case.
I can see the ad campaign already.
"It's 2:00 am. Do you know what OS your kids are using?"
Comments like "I may use Linux, but if I ever catch you with a Redhat CD, you'll be grounded for a month!" will also do well.
That's why Microsoft doesn't run many ads featuring middle-to-late-teenagers. Anything an advertising agency would have an teen actor do or say, I guarantee a typical teenager would rather cut off both feet first. The advertising industry's idea of cool rarely is.
Because. The key word here is she.
He is obviously attracted to her, and the motivation for helping out was to rescue the lady.
Now she hasn't called and said "we should have dinner, is tonight O.K? pasta and wine at my place?"
The poor guy now feels used, and wants to get at least a little money for his heroics.