I own an independant house music label in Chicago (www.oliverecords.com). We operate under the same business rules as the big labels, albeit with less money. Without radio play, record reviews, magazine interviews, and tons of store level promotions, its unlikely a record will sell enough to pay for itself. All of this is initially payed for by the label, to be eventually recouped from record sales. This means the Artist actually ends up paying for _all_ of it. Before an artist sees a dollar, all advances, marketing and production costs are deducted from sales. Often the artist ends up with nothing beyond the advance (which is an advance, so royalties don't start kickin in until the advance is recouped). What many people outside the industry dont realize is that there is no free marketing. Small labels have little chance of making a profit with all of the bigger competition about, and everyone has to pay for that essential PR.
Yerp, as I was saying somewhere below, the codes are usually accessible with a good diag computer. I have seen some codes in mid 90s cars that were listed in the database, but not described. They dont generally mean anything is wrong, they usually indcate a temporary fault like: You hit a very large bump, or Try driving with the handbrake off, or You ran completely out of gas, you moron. Im just guessing, I never had time to test to see if these things actually triggered a code to be generated. But it would have been nice to see them in the documentation somewhere....
Every time I plugged in my 96 Audi A4 Quattro, three or four undocumented codes would come up. One of these was due to a co-worker starting the car while it was in gear ( I was in the back seat, completely intoxicated after a lunchtime margarita fest.) I was lucky enough to know a mechanic who had _some_ of these codes in a database on a nice diagnostic computer. However, many codes were not listed at all, mostly non-critical or not a real error condition, and would not show up again when cleared. (these are the mystery codes) When I was a mechanic a few years ago working on Navistar Diesel truck engines controlled by the MC68HC11 microcontrollers (motorolla 68ks) all codes were documented and the engines could perform real-time checks of all the electronics. The ECU had to be plugged into a hand-held computer that would display all the engine's feedback in realtime on a 5X5 screen. I want one in my car, but that looks like its a few years down the road.
I have had problems with corrupted media. Must have been BIT ROT. I wouldnt say DVDRs are a stable storage medium yet. If you want to store non-critical data, maybe they are ok, but every once in a while expect to have a disk go bad and be unreadable for no reason. At least I do any way. Maybe this was a while ago and they have become more reliable by now.....
Short of that, it looks like your company is due to go down, oh say about.... (looks at watch) now. If management can't listen to its people and make changes, it needs to be overthrown, ousted, cleaned, deleted, etc. Go to the TOP. If the CTO does not listen to your suggestion, its probably because he knows everything about everything and does not need help from lowly Engineers. The truth is, the only code he has written is rotting on IBM punch cards from his university days. Look for a new JOB. These people are ruining your career.
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I own an independant house music label in Chicago (www.oliverecords.com). We operate under the same business rules as the big labels, albeit with less money. Without radio play, record reviews, magazine interviews, and tons of store level promotions, its unlikely a record will sell enough to pay for itself. All of this is initially payed for by the label, to be eventually recouped from record sales. This means the Artist actually ends up paying for _all_ of it. Before an artist sees a dollar, all advances, marketing and production costs are deducted from sales. Often the artist ends up with nothing beyond the advance (which is an advance, so royalties don't start kickin in until the advance is recouped). What many people outside the industry dont realize is that there is no free marketing. Small labels have little chance of making a profit with all of the bigger competition about, and everyone has to pay for that essential PR.
Yerp, as I was saying somewhere below, the codes are usually accessible with a good diag computer. I have seen some codes in mid 90s cars that were listed in the database, but not described. They dont generally mean anything is wrong, they usually indcate a temporary fault like: You hit a very large bump, or Try driving with the handbrake off, or You ran completely out of gas, you moron. Im just guessing, I never had time to test to see if these things actually triggered a code to be generated. But it would have been nice to see them in the documentation somewhere....
Every time I plugged in my 96 Audi A4 Quattro, three or four undocumented codes would come up. One of these was due to a co-worker starting the car while it was in gear ( I was in the back seat, completely intoxicated after a lunchtime margarita fest.) I was lucky enough to know a mechanic who had _some_ of these codes in a database on a nice diagnostic computer. However, many codes were not listed at all, mostly non-critical or not a real error condition, and would not show up again when cleared. (these are the mystery codes) When I was a mechanic a few years ago working on Navistar Diesel truck engines controlled by the MC68HC11 microcontrollers (motorolla 68ks) all codes were documented and the engines could perform real-time checks of all the electronics. The ECU had to be plugged into a hand-held computer that would display all the engine's feedback in realtime on a 5X5 screen. I want one in my car, but that looks like its a few years down the road.
I have had problems with corrupted media. Must have been BIT ROT. I wouldnt say DVDRs are a stable storage medium yet. If you want to store non-critical data, maybe they are ok, but every once in a while expect to have a disk go bad and be unreadable for no reason. At least I do any way. Maybe this was a while ago and they have become more reliable by now.....
Short of that, it looks like your company is due to go down, oh say about.... (looks at watch) now. If management can't listen to its people and make changes, it needs to be overthrown, ousted, cleaned, deleted, etc. Go to the TOP. If the CTO does not listen to your suggestion, its probably because he knows everything about everything and does not need help from lowly Engineers. The truth is, the only code he has written is rotting on IBM punch cards from his university days. Look for a new JOB. These people are ruining your career.