A functional spec means that others can understand and use your stuff if you get hit by the proverbial truck.
Thanks for telling me what I've already known for 20 years. You jumped to an incorrect conclusion - I'm *not* the person that designed the hardware, I'm not an electrical engineer, and I wasn't a project manager. I'm a software engineer just like this other guy was, but unlike the guy with the impeccable pedigree, I had a good understanding of how computers actually work. I fail to see why he couldn't have done the same. Any CS graduate should have had some exposure to and at least a basic ability to grok an electrical schematic of a digital circuit. I don't expect they'd be capable of doing a full circuit analysis nor be able to understand how a complex analog circuit works, but they should at least be able to grasp the basic idea of what's going on.
And what is so fucking hard about writing down the instruction set, ports, adresses and so on, a little effort on your part and ANY programmer can write software for your christmas lights or whatever the hell your plugging into the machine.
As I mentioned before, I didn't design the hardware, so writing that functional spec wasn't my job. Besides, what is so unreasonable about expecting that someone that writes drivers might actually know a little bit about hardware in general? This wasn't a microcontroller or FPGA design where you'd actually have to look at the code to see what the circuit does. This was a stupid-simple 8255-based circuit on an ISA board with all the I/O clearly labelled on the schematic. Personally, I think that the reason there are so many piss-poor drivers out there is because there are so many programmers now that don't have the first idea how hardware really works. That's fine for an applications guy that's writing a spreadsheet, but that's not acceptable for someone that's writing drivers. Unfortunately, in the real world management does not always have a clue and doesn't always push the EEs to document things in a manner sufficient to hand-hold the software guys, so if you've not yet run into that situation and have always had good functional specs, then count yourself as lucky. Incidentally, the "Christmas lights" that were being plugged into the machine happened to be a controller board for a 100-watt carbon dioxide laser.
I might also point out that this guy didn't have the first idea how to use an oscilloscope either. If part of what the driver does is set I/O lines at specific states for the specific lengths of time, it sure helps to be able to test it without running to an EE every time you need to check your code.
Agreed, but I'd also give kudos to the geek that has foresight enough to see that the untold wealth in stock options can buy himself a lifetime of freedom to work on whatever the hell he wants after he cashes out.:-D
Even then, the experience sometimes doesn't tell you the whole story. At a previous job, my employer hired a programmer with a master's in CS and time at Microsoft on his resume to write device drivers. A problem that I quickly ran into was that the guy couldn't read a schematic to save his life, which meant that I (who had been writing the drivers up till then, along with juggling a hundred other things) had to take time from *my* job to write up functional specs just so he could do his thing. Coupled with his attitude that he was better than everyone else because of the degree and the Microsoft experience, it made him an almost totally useless employee IMHO.
Personally I would deal with it for a couple more months and upgrade to the "new" macbooks when they come out in a few more months.
I refuse to reward Apple with yet another sale after dealing with their shoddy engineering twice now. If I do end up replacing the MacBook, it most assuredly will not be with another Apple.
I'm about in the same place with Apple. My wife's old iBook G3-600 was in the shop four times under warranty, and she's had to replace the power adapter three times, with the current adapter being a third-party model that is *much* sturdier (and way cheaper) than the crap Apple shipped with the iBook. Against my better judgement, I bought her a new 2GHz MacBook (she much prefers OS X to Windows), and I've yet to get that machine to a usable state. Random shutdowns that resetting the PRAM/PMU won't fix, and the machine won't stay connected to the wireless network for more than 10 minutes at a time when it *is* able to stay powered up. And for those that will ask, yes, it's set to a preferred network and the software is up-to-date, which wasn't easy to do with the constant shutdowns. Which reminds me - I need to call Apple *again* tonight.
It's a shame, as I have a number of older Apples, none of which have given me the first bit of trouble. I just don't forsee another Apple laptop anytime in my future, though.
Yeah, because labeling the 13 out of every 1000 people in the US population that happen to be in the NRA as "rednecks" takes *such* an open mind. It *is* kind of comical, however, for someone to say something like that and then turn around and say they're against intolerance, prejudice, and ignorance.
with all the other information you have to give them as well as being run through the NIC you may as well just give it to them
Except that the gun shop is required to keep the 4473 on file, and gun shops tend to be attractive burglary targets. I would imagine that anyone breaking in would be more interested in heisting the inventory rather than paperwork, but it's still safer to not have your SSN anywhere it doesn't absolutely have to be.
If the credit union's offering was a combined checking/savings account (as mine is), then they would have to have the SSN in order to report the interest earned. If it was checking only where no interest could have been earned, then I agree that they had no need for it.
being given checks by another bank, which were rejected by almost everyone because their starting number was too low
Yup, and for the life of me I can't figure that one out. Every bank I've done business with has asked me what I wanted my starting check number to be, which makes the check number completely useless.
I think if there are a lot of people that end up with non-working media and the stores refuse to take them back, the stores will start learning a lot more about "implied warranty of merchantability" once one of those customers turns out to be a lawyer.
It depends on when you lock the outhouse door. If you do it while the outhouse is in use, well, you've just bought yourself at least a few minutes of quality entertainment and time enough to get away.
f the registrar was GoDaddy or someone high profile like that, we'd probably be alright
We'd "be alright" with GoDaddy only because they take an even more self-righteous view of spam than most of the RBL operators, and have shown a propensity to deal harshly with people that they *think* might be spammers based on the thinnest of evidence.
The solo's not something I find difficult either, and I consider my guitar skills to be on the low-average end of things. "Paradigm Shift" by Liquid Tension Experiment, or just about anything by Yngwie Malmsteen is what I'd tend to think of as difficult.
Being a lawyer, perhaps you could answer this (not being snippy, genuinely curious):
If it's not proper to refer to an activity that has been determined to be unconstitutional by a lower court (you gotta start somewhere, right?) as "unconstitutional" simply on the basis that it's still under appeal, then why is it proper, for instance, to refer to someone that has been convicted of murder as "a murderer" when they still have *years* of appeals remaining? Does the ruling of a lower court not matter at all when choosing terminology?
Adaptive optics work great for telescopes looking out into space, since you have stars that are effectively point sources that you can use to tell you what kind of correction to apply. If you don't have a star nearby, you can use a laser to generate one in the upper atmosphere. It's won't be a point source, but it's still small enough to help you determine how to move the mirrors. How would one determine how to correct the image when looking down from space?
If a person feels that their possessions have been searched or seized unreasonably, then they have recourse to the courts to bring suit against the Administration for their damages. At that point it becomes incumbent upon the Administration to provide evidence of the reasonability of the searches.
Good luck with that. All the Administration has to do is say that testifying in the case would reveal state secrets that could endanger national security, and with that your case is over. "National security" trumps all else, and there's no way for the citizenry to know if those claims are valid.
In the words of Mel Brooks, "It's good to be da king". I use the word "king" pointedly, as our current President appears not to be particularly accountable to anyone.
Slashdot Mirror
A functional spec means that others can understand and use your stuff if you get hit by the proverbial truck.
Thanks for telling me what I've already known for 20 years. You jumped to an incorrect conclusion - I'm *not* the person that designed the hardware, I'm not an electrical engineer, and I wasn't a project manager. I'm a software engineer just like this other guy was, but unlike the guy with the impeccable pedigree, I had a good understanding of how computers actually work. I fail to see why he couldn't have done the same. Any CS graduate should have had some exposure to and at least a basic ability to grok an electrical schematic of a digital circuit. I don't expect they'd be capable of doing a full circuit analysis nor be able to understand how a complex analog circuit works, but they should at least be able to grasp the basic idea of what's going on.
And what is so fucking hard about writing down the instruction set, ports, adresses and so on, a little effort on your part and ANY programmer can write software for your christmas lights or whatever the hell your plugging into the machine.
As I mentioned before, I didn't design the hardware, so writing that functional spec wasn't my job. Besides, what is so unreasonable about expecting that someone that writes drivers might actually know a little bit about hardware in general? This wasn't a microcontroller or FPGA design where you'd actually have to look at the code to see what the circuit does. This was a stupid-simple 8255-based circuit on an ISA board with all the I/O clearly labelled on the schematic. Personally, I think that the reason there are so many piss-poor drivers out there is because there are so many programmers now that don't have the first idea how hardware really works. That's fine for an applications guy that's writing a spreadsheet, but that's not acceptable for someone that's writing drivers. Unfortunately, in the real world management does not always have a clue and doesn't always push the EEs to document things in a manner sufficient to hand-hold the software guys, so if you've not yet run into that situation and have always had good functional specs, then count yourself as lucky. Incidentally, the "Christmas lights" that were being plugged into the machine happened to be a controller board for a 100-watt carbon dioxide laser.
I might also point out that this guy didn't have the first idea how to use an oscilloscope either. If part of what the driver does is set I/O lines at specific states for the specific lengths of time, it sure helps to be able to test it without running to an EE every time you need to check your code.
Agreed, but I'd also give kudos to the geek that has foresight enough to see that the untold wealth in stock options can buy himself a lifetime of freedom to work on whatever the hell he wants after he cashes out. :-D
Even then, the experience sometimes doesn't tell you the whole story. At a previous job, my employer hired a programmer with a master's in CS and time at Microsoft on his resume to write device drivers. A problem that I quickly ran into was that the guy couldn't read a schematic to save his life, which meant that I (who had been writing the drivers up till then, along with juggling a hundred other things) had to take time from *my* job to write up functional specs just so he could do his thing. Coupled with his attitude that he was better than everyone else because of the degree and the Microsoft experience, it made him an almost totally useless employee IMHO.
Actually, I think it was more like this:
10 PRINT "Attempt to sell service"
20 INPUT I$
30 REM IF I$="Customer is annoyed" THEN PRINT "Terminate call quickly"
40 GOTO 10
"Let there be light."
Great flick, if you're into the kitschy 70's sci-fi like me.
Personally I would deal with it for a couple more months and upgrade to the "new" macbooks when they come out in a few more months.
I refuse to reward Apple with yet another sale after dealing with their shoddy engineering twice now. If I do end up replacing the MacBook, it most assuredly will not be with another Apple.
I'm about in the same place with Apple. My wife's old iBook G3-600 was in the shop four times under warranty, and she's had to replace the power adapter three times, with the current adapter being a third-party model that is *much* sturdier (and way cheaper) than the crap Apple shipped with the iBook. Against my better judgement, I bought her a new 2GHz MacBook (she much prefers OS X to Windows), and I've yet to get that machine to a usable state. Random shutdowns that resetting the PRAM/PMU won't fix, and the machine won't stay connected to the wireless network for more than 10 minutes at a time when it *is* able to stay powered up. And for those that will ask, yes, it's set to a preferred network and the software is up-to-date, which wasn't easy to do with the constant shutdowns. Which reminds me - I need to call Apple *again* tonight.
It's a shame, as I have a number of older Apples, none of which have given me the first bit of trouble. I just don't forsee another Apple laptop anytime in my future, though.
Yeah, because labeling the 13 out of every 1000 people in the US population that happen to be in the NRA as "rednecks" takes *such* an open mind. It *is* kind of comical, however, for someone to say something like that and then turn around and say they're against intolerance, prejudice, and ignorance.
It's hard to be a pro-gun site and not be blocked, too.
Yup. It's the one civil right that isn't politically correct.
The U just doesn't remember the teachings of J because K pulled out the flashy thing and used it on them.
with all the other information you have to give them as well as being run through the NIC you may as well just give it to them
Except that the gun shop is required to keep the 4473 on file, and gun shops tend to be attractive burglary targets. I would imagine that anyone breaking in would be more interested in heisting the inventory rather than paperwork, but it's still safer to not have your SSN anywhere it doesn't absolutely have to be.
If the credit union's offering was a combined checking/savings account (as mine is), then they would have to have the SSN in order to report the interest earned. If it was checking only where no interest could have been earned, then I agree that they had no need for it.
being given checks by another bank, which were rejected by almost everyone because their starting number was too low
Yup, and for the life of me I can't figure that one out. Every bank I've done business with has asked me what I wanted my starting check number to be, which makes the check number completely useless.
Gun shops are REQUIRED BY LAW to take your social security number as part of criminal background checks.
Not true. There is a field for the SSN on a Form 4473, but it's not required that it be filled in.
But they're public courts whose time he continues to waste.
I think if there are a lot of people that end up with non-working media and the stores refuse to take them back, the stores will start learning a lot more about "implied warranty of merchantability" once one of those customers turns out to be a lawyer.
It depends on when you lock the outhouse door. If you do it while the outhouse is in use, well, you've just bought yourself at least a few minutes of quality entertainment and time enough to get away.
f the registrar was GoDaddy or someone high profile like that, we'd probably be alright
We'd "be alright" with GoDaddy only because they take an even more self-righteous view of spam than most of the RBL operators, and have shown a propensity to deal harshly with people that they *think* might be spammers based on the thinnest of evidence.
The solo's not something I find difficult either, and I consider my guitar skills to be on the low-average end of things. "Paradigm Shift" by Liquid Tension Experiment, or just about anything by Yngwie Malmsteen is what I'd tend to think of as difficult.
Those pugs are some pretty wise dogs.
Being a lawyer, perhaps you could answer this (not being snippy, genuinely curious):
If it's not proper to refer to an activity that has been determined to be unconstitutional by a lower court (you gotta start somewhere, right?) as "unconstitutional" simply on the basis that it's still under appeal, then why is it proper, for instance, to refer to someone that has been convicted of murder as "a murderer" when they still have *years* of appeals remaining? Does the ruling of a lower court not matter at all when choosing terminology?
Adaptive optics work great for telescopes looking out into space, since you have stars that are effectively point sources that you can use to tell you what kind of correction to apply. If you don't have a star nearby, you can use a laser to generate one in the upper atmosphere. It's won't be a point source, but it's still small enough to help you determine how to move the mirrors. How would one determine how to correct the image when looking down from space?
Spock will be played by Andie MacDowell
I am *so* there.
For a start, the continuity of Star Trek has been messed up beyond belief by Enterprise anyway.
Meh - I'd accept a story that says "Enterprise" was merely a bad joke that Q played on the population of Earth in the 21st century.
If a person feels that their possessions have been searched or seized unreasonably, then they have recourse to the courts to bring suit against the Administration for their damages. At that point it becomes incumbent upon the Administration to provide evidence of the reasonability of the searches.
Good luck with that. All the Administration has to do is say that testifying in the case would reveal state secrets that could endanger national security, and with that your case is over. "National security" trumps all else, and there's no way for the citizenry to know if those claims are valid.
In the words of Mel Brooks, "It's good to be da king". I use the word "king" pointedly, as our current President appears not to be particularly accountable to anyone.