No-one seems to have picked this up, but it says it all. If any of your support classes has a Line 8000, especially one at which an exception can arise that is not being caught, you may need to go back and do a few basic classes in software design.
Confession time: the worst Swing based class I have ever committed has about 4000 lines, but about 2/3 of that is Swing.
If anybody else actually bothers to investigate, CACERT relies on signups physically identifying themselves to more than one person already in the network of trusted persons. Without that, you get an anonymous certificate. Of course, there is some risk of criminals getting into the trusted network - but people who in much of the rest of the world would be criminals (e.g. US hard pornographers, who I guess are as likely to have links to the various mobs as they ever did) have no trouble getting certs from Verisign. The principle is sound.
I have written to my professional association suggesting they look into becoming a trusted body for CACERT, and I suggest that anyone else who thinks CACERT is a good idea should do the same. If bodies like universities, professional engineering and software associations, law societies, accountancy organisations and medical societies can be interested, this could (a) rapidly expand CACERT and (b) create a roll which would "encourage" Microsoft to add it to their default list. Of course, this means explaining to the various bodies the benefits of encrypted email.
I use self-signed site certificates where my interest is in a secure channel to a previously authorised user, but it would be convenient not to have to ask users to import certificates.
So please, remember this site is partly about FOSS activity, stop being negative, drop the stupid Australian jokes (no, I am not Australian) and encourage these guys in practical ways.
Having just had a wing mirror damaged by a moron, the question I have is, how do we force all the morons who can't park to use this technology? It's like parking sensors; they work well but they don't stop the other guy reversing into you. I'm all in favor of freedom, but a number of classes of drivers - soccer moms in SUVs, the white baseball cap brigade and anyone with a gun rack in their pickup would surely benefit from compulsory parking sensors linked to the brakes. In fact, they'd benefit from permanently engaged brakes...rant ends
In fact the whole idea of RF over power lines, though attractive at first sight, is a triumph of will over physics. A system designed to take kilovolts at around 50-60Hz, with mechanical switches all over the network and a mixture of capacitors and inductors to adjust power factor, is not a benign environment for RF. But people keep trying to do it. There have been attempts at LANs over household wiring - but wireless networking has just about killed that with a combination of speed, convenience and safety.
You can adapt a car to travel on water, but the result is expensive and technically poor. In the same way, I feel broadband over AC power is a cross-model step too far.
There is no such thing as a "vacuum tube transistor". Most US tubes had a metal shell, and a fried moth would have no ill effects on that. European computer tubes (yes, I used to have a catalog of them once) had glass envelopes but the contacts were down inside the chassis, again a dead moth on a glass bulb would do precisely nothing.
In fact, the things that bugs could affect were open relay contacts - in use surprisingly late on many systems, punch readers, tape and large floppy drives.
True or not I don't know for certain but I read recently that in North Korea houses have a built in radio that broadcasts State propaganda, and that while it can be turned down, it cannot be turned off. Whereas under Capitalism some judges think that companies should be allowed to try and make you receive their propaganda, and that while the instructed may be able to stop it the majority can't....but of course that's completely different.
In the book, Tom Wolfe comments at length on the problems experienced with the X-craft on the edge of the atmosphere, including total loss of control surfaces and craft spinning sideways. It's worth re-reading (surely every self respecting geek has read it at least once?) now that the Bell X approach to spaceflight seems to be on the road again.
And yes, Chuck Yeager (IMHO) was the greatest. The book reminds us of the distinction between real pilots and astronauts (mostly passengers). The guy who piloted Richard Noble's Thrust (supersonic on land) and the guy who piloted the Rutan craft are pilots.
I have artilleryman's ear, and I use an in-ear hearing aid. I use a neck microphone (under my shirt) on my cell phone with an inductive loop, so phone speech comes directly into my ear. Unlike a Bluetooth unit, the battery life is weeks. Because the hearing aid is music grade, the sound quality is vastly better than you get with the tiny speakers on cell phones. The result is that I can answer the phone and talk with no visible phone at all. I still derive minor pleasure from the shock of some people watching this madman talking to himself, but the fact is, it works extremely well. The microphone is shielded and has good noise rejection, and on the T setting I can block out external sounds and hear perfectly in very noisy environments. The one thing I would really like is an external keypad I could velcro to a jacket, or a better voice dialing system than the (frankly crappy) Nokia 6310 the company provides.
There are few benefits of middle aged deafness, but this is one of them.
In the real world, fuel cell powered cars are always on the horizon, but for sheer fuel efficiency the good old direct injection Diesel is still winning. Works brilliantly on boats, and recharges my laptop in the car via an inverter.
The obvious answer is a tiny Diesel engine. It'll probably be commercialised faster, it will run nicely on rapseseed oil, which you can carry on airplanes, and the coolness factor would be enormous. The Powerbook would doubtless have some six-cylinder BMW design with engine management and a titanium-clad alternator, while Dell would have some two-pot Chinese job that emitted black smoke while starting. Of course, the plane could still run out of salad dressing on the way to a convention, and the filler better not look too much like a hypodermic.
In my limited testing of Skype it's managed to suck out all my bandwidth...on one occasion it appeared to be using about 80% of processor (AMD64-3000). Since when I have given it a miss.
OK, it's a bit stereotypical, but it's important. The reason so many engineers make bad managers is that they tend to let their male brains rule...they focus on systems and design. But the best managers are good at human factors. They navigate the office politics effectively and can identify trouble brewing before others are even aware. If such people are undervalued, it's often because senior management confuses frequent crises and resolution with success, while the really, truly efficient manager simply doesn't allow crises to develop. Any engineer who recognises this and steps back from management may be making a sensible decision. It's intelligent behavior to realise that if you are a cruise missile, your optimum role is not crowd control.
So the questions I would ask would focus on male-female brain balance. One of my own favorite interview questions is this. Modify as required.
"I was once approached by one of my engineers who, in a discussion, suddenly turned on me and said 'I've spent more years in college than you have, and I know this subject better than you do. You have no business arguing with me. In fact, I'm better qualified than you are and I should be the boss.' This guy was technically essential to the team but was so introverted that he was unpromotable. How would you deal with this situation?"
I think this question might help because
It elicits whether the potential boss has experienced this before and thought about it
The question shows that you are sensitive to the issue and appreciate the different skills of management, so you will not lose brownie point with your new boss for asking the question.
Yeah, I'm in the glacier. Looks like we're sliding about three centimetres a year. I guess I might be late for the meeting...sorry, you're breaking up. That's better. Look, if I give you the readings could you turn them into a quick Powerpoint?
If too many people read this paper and the nice things it says about Slashdot, we will be overwhelmed by aspirational would-be techies...fortunately it's been posted on Slashdot, virtually guaranteeing that hardly anyone will actually read it.
I agree, with a slight difference of emphasis: I suspect HP will develop their way out of trouble, not innovate. HP actually has some very good inkjet technology and has acquired some real high speed inkjet expertise in the Indigo digital commercial print line. Because of the need for a fuser, and heat disposal, lasers will always need more power and create more pollution than inkjets (remember all volume commercial printing is based around ink - there are reasons for that.)
HP doesn't really make laser printers any more. If they can improve the inkjets to compete on speed and accuracy with laser - and I suspect they can - they can start to roll up the laser market with low power, clean ink based printers, with enough patent protection to get them a clear start. The departmental multifunction device - say the 4300 series - could be replaced with a machine costing the same or less that could do everything from mono to photo quality color. The question is whether HP has the resources, the balls or the bucks to do it, and the motivation to change inkjets from a cheap machine-expensive ink model to a moderate cost machine-cheap ink model. The RIAA should remind us how people cling to obsolete business models - on which they have built their careers.
HP makes very few printers nowadays. The toner never even passes through HP. My lovely LaserJet 5M is a real HP/Canon printer, but basically Dell is only proposing to do what HP is already doing, because HP know perfectly well in reality that laser printers as such are merely differentiated commodities.
In fact, my other home printer is a Samsung which is also marketed as a Tally or a Lexmark - but is actually made by Samsung. It's about as good as the LJ5M, is also networked and Postscript compatible, but cost less than one fifth as much. That's commoditisation.
The really interesting advances in laser printers are being made by the likes of Minolta and Kyocera. As for really leading edge inkjet technology like Indigos, HP bought the company.
A good point. Latin inscriptions date from when everybody in Europe who could read, read Latin. That's a long time ago now, since rebels like Dante and Chaucer started doing serious literary stuff in local languages (OK, they were doing it in Provence in the 12th Century, but who reads Arnaut nowadays?)
I guess the answer is that if it's in English, you see how unimpressive it really is. Because the alternative to "Fortune favours the bold" is that saying of Flight Class 101, "There are no old, bold pilots".
I'm glad someone else found it as amusing as I did. The first time I've emailed people the URL to an NYT article in a long time. The whole article sends up pretentious wine writers brilliantly.
Well, as someone who spent years on standards making bodies, I can't resist responding.
Most really successful industries have a huge installed base. It's standards that make that installed base possible with volume manufacture driving down cost. Within a large standards area, innovation focusses on cheaper/more reliable/faster. This is good for the end user. When 35mm film first was used for still photography, a snapshot camera (original Leica) cost a working man's annual salary. Now, as 35mm is finally dying, a top of the range computerised Nikon or Canon costs a month's salary and the equivalent to the basic model is almost a giveaway. Standardised tarmac roads have changed the auto from a toy for the extremely rich (cost over $250000 relative dollars, life a few years) to remarkably cheap and reliable transport (cost less than $25000, life 10 years plus).
Standards, if necessary, evolve with time. There tends to be an initial evolutionary burst followed by asymptotic development to an optimum. Disruptive technologies are initially too expensive, too restrictive and too unreliable to give real benefits.
Good standards actually enable lots of innovation by specifying an essential interoperability framework, as in my examples above. Bad standards are when a few manufacturers form a cartel to try and keep out competition. Examples (imho) of bad standards were the multiplicity of European telephone sockets intended to keep out foreign phones, or some of the US road and bridge building codes which keep US roads expensive, while it's the Europeans that have allowed new, cheaper and more effective methods. A final example is the amazing variety of state standards for gas in the US, which is contributing to high gas prices right now. In Europe, where Diesel is popular, the standard for both gas and Diesel fuel is EU-wide, making refineries more efficient.
Finally, innovation within a widely adopted standard gives the innovator a bigger market (perhaps an obvious corollary of the comments above.)
The UK appears to be a pretty hierarchical state, apparently more so than 20 years ago from recent publications, and so is the US, though in the US it's biased more around geography and wealth. I'm not sure I agree that capitalists really believe in equality. And are you so sure that the City of Two Kings was so essentially hierarchical?
Worth considering too that the status of women in Athens was akin to that of Arab socieities today, while Sparta gave them something nearer equality.
The war between Athens and Sparta ( and their client states ) might have had parallels in the Cold War. In which case it's the Soviet Union that had the fate of Athens. But then, history never really repeats itself. We really have no way of knowing what the outcome of the present world political situation will be, whether it results in complete US global supremacy, whether China will take over, or whether the EU will eventually stop bickering, kick out the backwards-dragging UK, and become the next global superpower. The fact that Perikles might sound a bit like Rumsfeld is neither here nor there; there's always a tendency for people in power to become overbearing egotistical windbags who think the sun shines out of their anuses, and it's hardly surprising given the way other people defer to them.
That off my chest, I will make one observation that was made to me by a serious classicist, someone who has written and commented extensively on Aristophanes: It is almost impossible for a modern person to understand the Greek world-view. We would have to turn off so many things that we know, so many received ideas that are part of our culture, that the effort would be impossible. Forget not only cars, planes and televisions, forget the Americas, the Southern Hemisphere, biology,chemistry, the size of the universe, astronomy, physics, most of mathematics, and almost all of history. Forget, in fact, the existence of other cultures. Then try and imagine what it would be like to be a philosopher.
The scammer is in England and using an accomodation address. The sender is in the US. Where was the contract made? I bet that wasn't even specified, since it was off eBay. So who has legal jurisdiction? What's more, the arrangement is escrow, in theory. That means if the goods are unsatisfactory payment is not released. A genuine buyer would have to accept the risk that the duty would be paid and the goods would be unsatisfactory, and that the duty would not be recovered, unless there existed a proper contract specifying the country of jurisdiction and it was likely to be enforceable. This scammer has the option of visiting the US to start a lawsuit, but he has got to find a court which accepts jurisdiction, and all this is going to cost just a little more than $500.
The real moral of this story, I think, is don't get involved in interstate (that's state as in country, not as in US state) commerce unless you really know what you are doing, and you are going to be doing it often enough to make all the aggravation worthwhile. The scammer was obviously too dim to realise this since he hadn't realised in advance he would have to pay import duty and Value Added Tax, or even that someone might send him a fake parcel.
Completely off-topic I know, but I was actually once referred to as a boffin by a British soldier (in the context of a field test of a military computer system at Larkhill, England.) From the context, it was simply used as a rank, meaning civilian scientist or engineer, as distinct from a military scientist or engineer who would have been in the RE.
Even then, 20 years ago, the presence of US forces in the next field was making the Brits very nervous. Plus ca change...
Slashdot Mirror
Confession time: the worst Swing based class I have ever committed has about 4000 lines, but about 2/3 of that is Swing.
I have written to my professional association suggesting they look into becoming a trusted body for CACERT, and I suggest that anyone else who thinks CACERT is a good idea should do the same. If bodies like universities, professional engineering and software associations, law societies, accountancy organisations and medical societies can be interested, this could (a) rapidly expand CACERT and (b) create a roll which would "encourage" Microsoft to add it to their default list. Of course, this means explaining to the various bodies the benefits of encrypted email.
I use self-signed site certificates where my interest is in a secure channel to a previously authorised user, but it would be convenient not to have to ask users to import certificates.
So please, remember this site is partly about FOSS activity, stop being negative, drop the stupid Australian jokes (no, I am not Australian) and encourage these guys in practical ways.
Having just had a wing mirror damaged by a moron, the question I have is, how do we force all the morons who can't park to use this technology? It's like parking sensors; they work well but they don't stop the other guy reversing into you. I'm all in favor of freedom, but a number of classes of drivers - soccer moms in SUVs, the white baseball cap brigade and anyone with a gun rack in their pickup would surely benefit from compulsory parking sensors linked to the brakes. In fact, they'd benefit from permanently engaged brakes...rant ends
- Put up power lines - = huge aerial system
- Inject wideband RF into huge aerial system
- Interference!
In fact the whole idea of RF over power lines, though attractive at first sight, is a triumph of will over physics. A system designed to take kilovolts at around 50-60Hz, with mechanical switches all over the network and a mixture of capacitors and inductors to adjust power factor, is not a benign environment for RF. But people keep trying to do it. There have been attempts at LANs over household wiring - but wireless networking has just about killed that with a combination of speed, convenience and safety.You can adapt a car to travel on water, but the result is expensive and technically poor. In the same way, I feel broadband over AC power is a cross-model step too far.
In fact, the things that bugs could affect were open relay contacts - in use surprisingly late on many systems, punch readers, tape and large floppy drives.
True or not I don't know for certain but I read recently that in North Korea houses have a built in radio that broadcasts State propaganda, and that while it can be turned down, it cannot be turned off. Whereas under Capitalism some judges think that companies should be allowed to try and make you receive their propaganda, and that while the instructed may be able to stop it the majority can't....but of course that's completely different.
And yes, Chuck Yeager (IMHO) was the greatest. The book reminds us of the distinction between real pilots and astronauts (mostly passengers). The guy who piloted Richard Noble's Thrust (supersonic on land) and the guy who piloted the Rutan craft are pilots.
There are few benefits of middle aged deafness, but this is one of them.
The obvious answer is a tiny Diesel engine. It'll probably be commercialised faster, it will run nicely on rapseseed oil, which you can carry on airplanes, and the coolness factor would be enormous. The Powerbook would doubtless have some six-cylinder BMW design with engine management and a titanium-clad alternator, while Dell would have some two-pot Chinese job that emitted black smoke while starting. Of course, the plane could still run out of salad dressing on the way to a convention, and the filler better not look too much like a hypodermic.
In my limited testing of Skype it's managed to suck out all my bandwidth...on one occasion it appeared to be using about 80% of processor (AMD64-3000). Since when I have given it a miss.
So the questions I would ask would focus on male-female brain balance. One of my own favorite interview questions is this. Modify as required.
"I was once approached by one of my engineers who, in a discussion, suddenly turned on me and said 'I've spent more years in college than you have, and I know this subject better than you do. You have no business arguing with me. In fact, I'm better qualified than you are and I should be the boss.' This guy was technically essential to the team but was so introverted that he was unpromotable. How would you deal with this situation?"
I think this question might help because
why do I never have mod points when there is something amusing to moderate?
Yeah, I'm in the glacier. Looks like we're sliding about three centimetres a year. I guess I might be late for the meeting...sorry, you're breaking up. That's better. Look, if I give you the readings could you turn them into a quick Powerpoint?
If too many people read this paper and the nice things it says about Slashdot, we will be overwhelmed by aspirational would-be techies...fortunately it's been posted on Slashdot, virtually guaranteeing that hardly anyone will actually read it.
HP doesn't really make laser printers any more. If they can improve the inkjets to compete on speed and accuracy with laser - and I suspect they can - they can start to roll up the laser market with low power, clean ink based printers, with enough patent protection to get them a clear start. The departmental multifunction device - say the 4300 series - could be replaced with a machine costing the same or less that could do everything from mono to photo quality color. The question is whether HP has the resources, the balls or the bucks to do it, and the motivation to change inkjets from a cheap machine-expensive ink model to a moderate cost machine-cheap ink model. The RIAA should remind us how people cling to obsolete business models - on which they have built their careers.
In fact, my other home printer is a Samsung which is also marketed as a Tally or a Lexmark - but is actually made by Samsung. It's about as good as the LJ5M, is also networked and Postscript compatible, but cost less than one fifth as much. That's commoditisation.
The really interesting advances in laser printers are being made by the likes of Minolta and Kyocera. As for really leading edge inkjet technology like Indigos, HP bought the company.
I guess the answer is that if it's in English, you see how unimpressive it really is. Because the alternative to "Fortune favours the bold" is that saying of Flight Class 101, "There are no old, bold pilots".
I'm glad someone else found it as amusing as I did. The first time I've emailed people the URL to an NYT article in a long time. The whole article sends up pretentious wine writers brilliantly.
Most really successful industries have a huge installed base. It's standards that make that installed base possible with volume manufacture driving down cost. Within a large standards area, innovation focusses on cheaper/more reliable/faster. This is good for the end user. When 35mm film first was used for still photography, a snapshot camera (original Leica) cost a working man's annual salary. Now, as 35mm is finally dying, a top of the range computerised Nikon or Canon costs a month's salary and the equivalent to the basic model is almost a giveaway. Standardised tarmac roads have changed the auto from a toy for the extremely rich (cost over $250000 relative dollars, life a few years) to remarkably cheap and reliable transport (cost less than $25000, life 10 years plus).
Standards, if necessary, evolve with time. There tends to be an initial evolutionary burst followed by asymptotic development to an optimum. Disruptive technologies are initially too expensive, too restrictive and too unreliable to give real benefits.
Good standards actually enable lots of innovation by specifying an essential interoperability framework, as in my examples above. Bad standards are when a few manufacturers form a cartel to try and keep out competition. Examples (imho) of bad standards were the multiplicity of European telephone sockets intended to keep out foreign phones, or some of the US road and bridge building codes which keep US roads expensive, while it's the Europeans that have allowed new, cheaper and more effective methods. A final example is the amazing variety of state standards for gas in the US, which is contributing to high gas prices right now. In Europe, where Diesel is popular, the standard for both gas and Diesel fuel is EU-wide, making refineries more efficient.
Finally, innovation within a widely adopted standard gives the innovator a bigger market (perhaps an obvious corollary of the comments above.)
Worth considering too that the status of women in Athens was akin to that of Arab socieities today, while Sparta gave them something nearer equality.
That off my chest, I will make one observation that was made to me by a serious classicist, someone who has written and commented extensively on Aristophanes: It is almost impossible for a modern person to understand the Greek world-view. We would have to turn off so many things that we know, so many received ideas that are part of our culture, that the effort would be impossible. Forget not only cars, planes and televisions, forget the Americas, the Southern Hemisphere, biology,chemistry, the size of the universe, astronomy, physics, most of mathematics, and almost all of history. Forget, in fact, the existence of other cultures. Then try and imagine what it would be like to be a philosopher.
A few obvious questions:
- Do all comments have to be in terza rima
- Is there an annoying help popup called Virgil?
- Presumably the processor needs extreme cooling?
Oh, and isn't it a bit arrogant of the designers:"I was made by the first power, the first holiness and the first love"
And if the above sounds like raving, just google for Dante Alighieri...
The real moral of this story, I think, is don't get involved in interstate (that's state as in country, not as in US state) commerce unless you really know what you are doing, and you are going to be doing it often enough to make all the aggravation worthwhile. The scammer was obviously too dim to realise this since he hadn't realised in advance he would have to pay import duty and Value Added Tax, or even that someone might send him a fake parcel.
Even then, 20 years ago, the presence of US forces in the next field was making the Brits very nervous. Plus ca change...
So, entertainment not edutainment.