When I was involved in writing one of the first packet switching systems in Europe (AT&T, Belgium, 1979), we found a brilliant way to fix bugs was to explain the bug (and thus the operation of the program) to someone. They didn't have to do much, just nod and look interested. Then usually about halfway though, the hapless coder (eg me) would go "Oh shit"... and the listener cold then leave. We called it the "tailors dummy" approach to debugging.
A bit like pair programming, only less labour intensive.
I suspect it would be a rare male who has not at least **thought** about sex with under-age girls.
I seem to recall a story about an army general who was training schoolboys in gun use. He was complained to that they would be equipped to be terrorist, and he responded to the - female - complainant that she was fully equipped to be a prostitute. But was she?
I believe the interview went badly from then on.
Seriously though, who has not thought about the most horrendous deeds? Fire-bombing ones school, blowing up the Houses of Parliament, raping the odd supermodel (or teacher, perhaps?); surely all males have fantasies? Presumably females too, but I claim less direct experience.
If people go to jail for thinking about terrible things and even writing them down, where would almost all American movies come from?
As a one time ocean cruiser - in a small boat - may I just say how terrifying this sounds? There you are, sailing along off the coast of somewhere, minding your own business and wondering if you can stretch to one more warm beer from your fast-dwindling supplies, when a robot helicopter comes along and shoots the shit out of you.
As if rogue waves, giant fish, waterspouts and annoying customs officials weren't enough, now we get robot helicopters? Come back Bender, all is forgiven. At least you could try to reason with him, um, it.
In Australia, many organisations (such as banks) are forbidden to hold customer information in a location where it may be seized by a non-Australian court order. This effectively prevents us from doing business with American outsourcing companies. UK is ok, and Singapore, the list is surprisingly short.
If this were true of other countries, as I suspect, isn't American business going to get a bit cross about being ostracised by foreign companies.
"Buy our cool new cloud service!"... sorry, can't do that until your laws become more business friendly. (Did you ever expect to see non-business friendly, and USA in the same sentence? No, nor did I).
Yes, this happens. A while ago I was made redundant by a Very Large Telephone Company. Said VLTC paid me a nice redundancy, and gave me a system I'd written they didn't want (which made me a nice living for a few years, thanks VLTC). No complaints. Before I left, I archived everything nicely, documented the archives, and handed over several copies.
A year or two later, they called me up and asked if I "happened" to have a copy of the source to a system I'd written. (Yes, it had been in those archived copies). Fortunately I did (what, me, paranoid?), so I then made a nice living for a short while selling them back the stuff I had written for them before, for which they had already paid me. And both parties were quite satisfied. Oh - rinse and repeat. Happened again a year later for yet another system (they were trying to replicate its functionality outsourcing the writing of it to India). I charged more and again, all were happy.
No sci-fi - yes, this seems to be a problem. Sci-fi seems to have split into several splinters. Fantasy claiming to be sci fi. Lots of this. TV and game stuff - crappy books claiming to be Halo books (spare me), and crappy Start Trek or Dr Who stories. and some dribs and drabs of actual sci fi. With far too many excessively long series (come up with some NEW ideas, why don't you?)
Actually, fantasy overwhelming the sci fi and fantasy shelves is my big complaint. Who are these followers of dragons and magic? I've read Lord of the Rings, and it was damned good, but that's not why I'm here in this bookshop.
I miss Niven - when he was just Niven. And Forward. And... oh anyway there are quite a few.
Well, one of them might be mine. I run unencrypted WiFi - but try and actually connect, and you'll find I have a list of MAC addresses I accept, so you won't get a connection. And yes, I'm in Sydney.
The problem is simple. It costs USD200,000,000 to make a movie, right? (Ok, that's an expensive one - but what the heck, I like expensive ones).
Now, a fair number of movies are flops - and it's hard to predict this in advance.
So the studio needs to earn an awful lot of money from the good ones to stay in business (and we all want the movies to get made, right?)
How do you do it? If everyone downloads the movie for free, then the studio goes broke and doesn't make any more movies. Or do you want everyone else to pay, and just special computer-savvy people to get it for free? Is that it? Because that's what's happening now. Doesn't sound quite fair to me.
So stop moaning about how the studios are stealing your money - instead come up with a decent workable business model so you get a fair product for a decent prince, and everyone can make a little money. And we can all sleep much better.
We always come back to the same thing - money. Radio stations make money - like Google, like free-to-air television - with adverts. Therefore they want to get the maximum exposure to their transmissions possible. It is in their interests to achieve that by including a decent DJ, reasonable news, maybe some talkback - oh, and music. It is, surely, the radio station's responsibility to do that legally.
Let's use a car analogy... ok, truck analogy. I buy a truck from Ford. Off I go, driving about. Sometimes at night. I don't expect the manufacturer of the headlights to come along and say "Hey, you are using my lights a lot, you have to pay me extra money".
So why the heck should it happen here?
And why pick on truckies (not a group, actually, I'd choose to pick on, but there you go)? Why not - well, anyone?
I worked as a process automation specialist. I was automating the processes that ran a last furnace. Yes I put people out of work, but the jobs I was replacing were just about intolerable. No question there. Sadly, I didn't manage to automate the rather heavily clad bloke who had to wander about sweeping up the spilt piles of coal and iron ore. I always wanted to manage that, but failed.
And what did these people do, these people I put out of work? I don't know, but I do know that a similar blast furnace eventually closed down, unable to compete with cheaper steel from overseas. So I staved that off a bit, and kept lots of other people in employment. Overall, it was a good result.
Basically, what automation does is to replace people with - effectively - robots. This should reduce costs, and improve quality. Economics says this is a good thing. It improves the return on capital. Economics is less good about what happens to the replaced people, it simply sees them as "labour". It's true that displaced people usually go on to do something else, though whether it is as satisfying to them is well outside the realm of economics (not known for its kind heart). Outsourcing is a little different. It simply moves work to where labour is cheaper. It doesn't make the product (a help desk) better, indeed it's usually worse in my experience, all it does is save money. Saving money isn't a bad thing, it means it might be spent better elsewhere. Unfortunately, with the dreadfully short-sighted management we seem to be beset with at the moment, this isn't what happens. The money gets siphoned off into managers and shareholder pockets.
We need a better approach. When Ford opened his Model-T factory, he wanted his workers to be able to afford a Model T. He paid them well. The results speak for themselves. Let's find a better approach!
Let's see - the London Stock Exchange swapped to Linux based software. It changed FROM Microsoft based software. (TradElec Windows-based C# and.NET programs, apparently).
And there was a major cyber attack during the changeover.
You have to admire the simple, brilliant, trick Microsoft used to get where they are today.
It was a long time ago. MS-DOS was doing fairly well.
And then someone... probably Bill Gates, as there weren't many other people in Microsoft at the time... had a brilliant idea. He offered to supply MS-DOS cheaper to computer manufacturers - but the price was "per computer shipped", not "per operating system shipped". This meant that any other operating system - and there were quite a few at the time - would cost the manufacturer extra. So the default became MS-DOS.
Brilliant, eh?
Illegal? Probably not at the time, though I feel it ought to be today.
But it doesn't quite seem to work out that way, does it? "The default is Microsoft" is still hanging in there.
Pah. Woods. Pah - there's water, food, raw materials, plenty of room, too.
Try sailing. I spent two years sailing, the longest trip out of sight of land being three weeks. Resupplying - er, no. Carry all your food, water and spares. Get on with the rest of the crew (ok, so there were just two of us) in a VERY small space with no possibility of escape.
So - the round-the-world sailors could handle this isolation. Not the current lot with their GPS equipment, radios, fridges, weather reports... luxury... no, the earlier ones, with little more than a sextant and some spare spars. Or their predecessors, the whalers. Three years without seeing a port.
They were tough.
So we may conclude - humans are tough. Very tough. Let's not forget almost all the people who migrated to the USA and Australia did not expect to return. They never expected to see their homeland or their family again. But they went.
Oh come on, you are so harsh. After all, Australia at least has beer - and air!
Mind you, there are some Australians I wouldn't mind seeing on Mars, preferably without a return journey, or indeed any possibility of communication, but that's just me being mean.
Oh all right. I admit we have a lot of flat red soil. And sun. And emptiness.
We had an all electric bus service when I was very small in London - Wimbledon, to be precise. Trolley buses - I remember the overhead wires. See http://www.trolleybus.net/subhtml/picture289.htm
Not sure when they stopped, maybe 1962.
And now they are back... but in Korea? The world is strange.
Hot weather - yes, it's summer where I am - is another problem. Stop the air conditioning and it gets warm rather quickly. You see disturbing numbers of people sitting in their cars, parked, running their engines just to keep the airco going.
I don't recall experiencing this when I rented a Prius though, so I guess it's powered electrically. This ought to mean the compressor could run on a fixed speed, which ought to make the engineering simpler, compared with belt driven, so there are some upsides - might save some weight, get some efficiency gains. (Also you could remote start the a/c walking up to the car so it'd be cool when you get there. That'd be nice). Is it worth considering reverse-cycle air conditioning for winter?
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When I was involved in writing one of the first packet switching systems in Europe (AT&T, Belgium, 1979), we found a brilliant way to fix bugs was to explain the bug (and thus the operation of the program) to someone. They didn't have to do much, just nod and look interested. ... and the listener cold then leave.
Then usually about halfway though, the hapless coder (eg me) would go "Oh shit"
We called it the "tailors dummy" approach to debugging.
A bit like pair programming, only less labour intensive.
I suspect it would be a rare male who has not at least **thought** about sex with under-age girls.
I seem to recall a story about an army general who was training schoolboys in gun use. He was complained to that they would be equipped to be terrorist, and he responded to the - female - complainant that she was fully equipped to be a prostitute. But was she?
I believe the interview went badly from then on.
Seriously though, who has not thought about the most horrendous deeds? Fire-bombing ones school, blowing up the Houses of Parliament, raping the odd supermodel (or teacher, perhaps?); surely all males have fantasies? Presumably females too, but I claim less direct experience.
If people go to jail for thinking about terrible things and even writing them down, where would almost all American movies come from?
As a one time ocean cruiser - in a small boat - may I just say how terrifying this sounds?
There you are, sailing along off the coast of somewhere, minding your own business and wondering if you can stretch to one more warm beer from your fast-dwindling supplies, when a robot helicopter comes along and shoots the shit out of you.
As if rogue waves, giant fish, waterspouts and annoying customs officials weren't enough, now we get robot helicopters?
Come back Bender, all is forgiven. At least you could try to reason with him, um, it.
It has puzzled me for years why Americans (and others) say math - and sports, whereas Brits (and others) say maths - and sport.
Consistency is a wonderful thing.
In Australia, many organisations (such as banks) are forbidden to hold customer information in a location where it may be seized by a non-Australian court order.
This effectively prevents us from doing business with American outsourcing companies. UK is ok, and Singapore, the list is surprisingly short.
If this were true of other countries, as I suspect, isn't American business going to get a bit cross about being ostracised by foreign companies.
"Buy our cool new cloud service!" ... sorry, can't do that until your laws become more business friendly. (Did you ever expect to see non-business friendly, and USA in the same sentence? No, nor did I).
Yes, this happens. A while ago I was made redundant by a Very Large Telephone Company. Said VLTC paid me a nice redundancy, and gave me a system I'd written they didn't want (which made me a nice living for a few years, thanks VLTC). No complaints. Before I left, I archived everything nicely, documented the archives, and handed over several copies.
A year or two later, they called me up and asked if I "happened" to have a copy of the source to a system I'd written. (Yes, it had been in those archived copies).
Fortunately I did (what, me, paranoid?), so I then made a nice living for a short while selling them back the stuff I had written for them before, for which they had already paid me. And both parties were quite satisfied.
Oh - rinse and repeat. Happened again a year later for yet another system (they were trying to replicate its functionality outsourcing the writing of it to India). I charged more and again, all were happy.
Weird.
last week I couldn't even spell engenier, and now I are one.
>> Damn. I guess I'll go and paint all my car windows black.
Is your name Spike?
>> what product or service other than narcotics is there such a passionate, unmet demand for in America?
er ... how about medical services. Oh, sorry, you already have cartels for that.
Maybe - lower cost medical service? Now there's a market!
No sci-fi - yes, this seems to be a problem. Sci-fi seems to have split into several splinters.
Fantasy claiming to be sci fi. Lots of this.
TV and game stuff - crappy books claiming to be Halo books (spare me), and crappy Start Trek or Dr Who stories.
and some dribs and drabs of actual sci fi. With far too many excessively long series (come up with some NEW ideas, why don't you?)
Actually, fantasy overwhelming the sci fi and fantasy shelves is my big complaint. Who are these followers of dragons and magic? I've read Lord of the Rings, and it was damned good, but that's not why I'm here in this bookshop.
I miss Niven - when he was just Niven. And Forward. And ... oh anyway there are quite a few.
Well, one of them might be mine. I run unencrypted WiFi - but try and actually connect, and you'll find I have a list of MAC addresses I accept, so you won't get a connection. And yes, I'm in Sydney.
The problem is simple. It costs USD200,000,000 to make a movie, right? (Ok, that's an expensive one - but what the heck, I like expensive ones).
Now, a fair number of movies are flops - and it's hard to predict this in advance.
So the studio needs to earn an awful lot of money from the good ones to stay in business (and we all want the movies to get made, right?)
How do you do it? If everyone downloads the movie for free, then the studio goes broke and doesn't make any more movies. Or do you want everyone else to pay, and just special computer-savvy people to get it for free? Is that it? Because that's what's happening now. Doesn't sound quite fair to me.
So stop moaning about how the studios are stealing your money - instead come up with a decent workable business model so you get a fair product for a decent prince, and everyone can make a little money.
And we can all sleep much better.
And you can stop moaning.
For a moment there, I thought they'd actually busted some Somalian pirates - you know, the people who actually steal ships and kill people.
But no, it's just a few people who make copies of stuff.
You know, when I wrote software for a nuclear reactor in 1977, it was definitely on a digital computer, albeit a PDP11 in FORTRAN.
We always come back to the same thing - money. Radio stations make money - like Google, like free-to-air television - with adverts. Therefore they want to get the maximum exposure to their transmissions possible. It is in their interests to achieve that by including a decent DJ, reasonable news, maybe some talkback - oh, and music. It is, surely, the radio station's responsibility to do that legally.
Let's use a car analogy ... ok, truck analogy.
I buy a truck from Ford. Off I go, driving about. Sometimes at night.
I don't expect the manufacturer of the headlights to come along and say "Hey, you are using my lights a lot, you have to pay me extra money".
So why the heck should it happen here?
And why pick on truckies (not a group, actually, I'd choose to pick on, but there you go)? Why not - well, anyone?
I worked as a process automation specialist. I was automating the processes that ran a last furnace. Yes I put people out of work, but the jobs I was replacing were just about intolerable. No question there.
Sadly, I didn't manage to automate the rather heavily clad bloke who had to wander about sweeping up the spilt piles of coal and iron ore. I always wanted to manage that, but failed.
And what did these people do, these people I put out of work? I don't know, but I do know that a similar blast furnace eventually closed down, unable to compete with cheaper steel from overseas. So I staved that off a bit, and kept lots of other people in employment. Overall, it was a good result.
Basically, what automation does is to replace people with - effectively - robots. This should reduce costs, and improve quality. Economics says this is a good thing. It improves the return on capital. Economics is less good about what happens to the replaced people, it simply sees them as "labour". It's true that displaced people usually go on to do something else, though whether it is as satisfying to them is well outside the realm of economics (not known for its kind heart).
Outsourcing is a little different. It simply moves work to where labour is cheaper. It doesn't make the product (a help desk) better, indeed it's usually worse in my experience, all it does is save money. Saving money isn't a bad thing, it means it might be spent better elsewhere. Unfortunately, with the dreadfully short-sighted management we seem to be beset with at the moment, this isn't what happens. The money gets siphoned off into managers and shareholder pockets.
We need a better approach. When Ford opened his Model-T factory, he wanted his workers to be able to afford a Model T. He paid them well. The results speak for themselves.
Let's find a better approach!
That's the best use of "stimulus money" I've heard of.
Let's see - the London Stock Exchange swapped to Linux based software. It changed FROM Microsoft based software. (TradElec Windows-based C# and .NET programs, apparently).
And there was a major cyber attack during the changeover.
Let the conspiracy theories begin ...
You have to admire the simple, brilliant, trick Microsoft used to get where they are today.
It was a long time ago. MS-DOS was doing fairly well.
And then someone ... probably Bill Gates, as there weren't many other people in Microsoft at the time ... had a brilliant idea. He offered to supply MS-DOS cheaper to computer manufacturers - but the price was "per computer shipped", not "per operating system shipped".
This meant that any other operating system - and there were quite a few at the time - would cost the manufacturer extra. So the default became MS-DOS.
Brilliant, eh?
Illegal? Probably not at the time, though I feel it ought to be today.
But it doesn't quite seem to work out that way, does it? "The default is Microsoft" is still hanging in there.
--- There are no short, witty words that end in kp ...
Hmm, how about "crackpot", just without the "ot"?
Pah. Woods. Pah - there's water, food, raw materials, plenty of room, too.
Try sailing. I spent two years sailing, the longest trip out of sight of land being three weeks. Resupplying - er, no. Carry all your food, water and spares. Get on with the rest of the crew (ok, so there were just two of us) in a VERY small space with no possibility of escape.
So - the round-the-world sailors could handle this isolation. Not the current lot with their GPS equipment, radios, fridges, weather reports ... luxury ... no, the earlier ones, with little more than a sextant and some spare spars. Or their predecessors, the whalers. Three years without seeing a port.
They were tough.
So we may conclude - humans are tough. Very tough. Let's not forget almost all the people who migrated to the USA and Australia did not expect to return. They never expected to see their homeland or their family again. But they went.
We could call the ship - oh, I don't know - Ark B. Or perhaps the B-Ark. That's a good name.
Oh come on, you are so harsh. After all, Australia at least has beer - and air!
Mind you, there are some Australians I wouldn't mind seeing on Mars, preferably without a return journey, or indeed any possibility of communication, but that's just me being mean.
Oh all right. I admit we have a lot of flat red soil. And sun. And emptiness.
We had an all electric bus service when I was very small in London - Wimbledon, to be precise. Trolley buses - I remember the overhead wires. See http://www.trolleybus.net/subhtml/picture289.htm
Not sure when they stopped, maybe 1962.
And now they are back ... but in Korea? The world is strange.
Hot weather - yes, it's summer where I am - is another problem. Stop the air conditioning and it gets warm rather quickly. You see disturbing numbers of people sitting in their cars, parked, running their engines just to keep the airco going.
I don't recall experiencing this when I rented a Prius though, so I guess it's powered electrically. This ought to mean the compressor could run on a fixed speed, which ought to make the engineering simpler, compared with belt driven, so there are some upsides - might save some weight, get some efficiency gains. (Also you could remote start the a/c walking up to the car so it'd be cool when you get there. That'd be nice).
Is it worth considering reverse-cycle air conditioning for winter?