More to the point keeping the "standard" size of the bill has more to do with the millions of installed cash drawers, bank machines, vending machines, etc. that accept that "standard" size of bill.
No matter what you tell the new person you will still be the answer guy for months especially since you are still at the university.
I gave my last employer almost two months notice and a handful of resumes of fully qualified people who were available to start immediately.
The HR idiots didn't get someone hired and able to show up until my last day. I took that day off as my spouse had a bad feeling about me commuting to work that day.
So the new guy got nothing, no logins, no script explanations, no documentation overview, nothing.
I started getting calls at my new employer from "friends" that still worked there asking me to help the new guy before they strung him up in the server room. I helped for a bit then cut them all off. No money no answers.
Buy a digital Timer. Set it to power up the wireless AP only when you want it available. Keep the AP and timer out of reach of those that may want to mess with it. If a special event comes up and wireless access is needed anybody can push the timers "ON" button to turn on the wireless and then the "OFF" button later to return it to timer mode.
I have used this solution in the past to great success in a warehouse/office environment to cut the internet at night because warehouse night staff were surfing instead of working.
No joke. There are existing therapies where individuals who have seriously disrupted gut bacteria colonies basically take a poop pill. The idea is that you re-seed the GI track with the desirable flora in order to establish a healthy and balanced community. Of course the source of the donated flora is something that you might not want to dwell on too long.
Of course other animals do this all the time voluntarily.
Considering that the bacteria in our bodies outnumber our own cells (numerically) it should not be a surprise that when they get messed with we get messed up.
Why is the total electricity used by Google a problem? Google has a huge network of data centers, offices and other business entities that use electricity. The total amount of electricity used is going to be huge.
The real question... has and is Google working to use that electricity wisely and with an eye to maximizing value and minimizing waste? Well from what I have read over the years the answer is Yes.
Everyone, GM, Toyota, the US government, The City of LA, and even my dear old Mom uses electricity (directly and indirectly) and it isn't the total used, but rather the waste (if any) and the strategies to maximize value out of that electricity that needs to be reported and scrutinized.
No doubt there are many teacher's who don't care anymore. They have been denigrated in the media, made the whipping boy by politicians looking for re-election. They have been kicked in the nads by everyone with an axe to grind.
But let me ask you does this not happen in any work environment where the employees are treated like sh*t?
Students know their rights, but few know their responsibilities. Parents demand their kids be taught by teachers, but don't support the teachers in this task. Tax payers demand fewer taxes while demanding results from schools. Politicians and school board politicos demand schools toe the line with outrageous ill-conceived plans to fix the ills of society by downloading them into the schools.
Yes, I am less surprised by the statement that "teachers just don't give a damn anymore" and more surprised that there are still teachers showing up in schools to teach and entering the profession at all.
Hey everyone let's not forget that the school environment in which our kids sit every day is also the same environment in which teachers work.
Simply placing any technology in a classroom will do nothing more than increase the amount of stuff in the room. We all know this. It doesn't matter what the technology is, paper, pencils, projectors, laptops, unless the technology can be meaningfully integrated into the curriculum it will not have a positive effect on overall learning.
What this study does, beyond saying the obvious, is to identify the two main problems with education.
Problem one is that politicians, the public and school board administrators think they can increase student learning by stuffing technology in the classroom. Well I've seen many a classroom over the last 40 years that have wonderful technological marvels collecting dust as they sit unused on the shelf. I've also seen classrooms with next to no cutting edge technology that have produced students who excel in learning. So the presence of technology does not make for increased test scores. So why is money being spent on laptops and networks and other gadgets when this is shown to fail? Well, because we as a society think the quick fix is the way to make it happen. Society is looking for the quick fix for everything, buy on credit vs saving, liposuction instead of lifestyle change, etc. So why not education too.
The second problem is that we all assume we know what education needs, in this case computers. We all know all there is to know about education, after all most of us sat in a classroom for a dozen or more years we should be experts. In fact today we are allowing our politicians and media to use education as their whipping boy. We denigrate teachers. We fail to support schools. We have allowed the educational system to be perverted to the point where we value the politicos who run our education systems more than the teachers who actually do the real work. Well folks collectively we know next to nothing about education. Our politicians and education politicos know F**k all. To resolve this problem in education let's put the resources (money, people) back in the classroom where they belong. Let's invest more in teachers and less in the administrators whose job it is to support the actual education of our kids. Let's invest the money in actual classroom resources like books, manipulatives, lunch programs, and ongoing professional teacher training. Let's put the resources back where the education rubber meets the education road.
Sorry to ramble here folks, but let's all realize that large schools, huge school boards, and standardized testing are not in place for the benefit of students. These things benefit the politicians and education politico. Bring education back to the neighborhoods and the kids it is meant to searve. Take it away from politicians. hey folks consider getting involved.
Although I suspect you are kidding with your comment there is plenty of truth to it and that is not unexpected.
First school from k-4 is usually remembered only very sporadically as are all memories up to the age of about 10. The reason being that the mental framework required to categorize and store these memories isn't developed until the age of 10. So the ability to access those memories is very poor.
Second, for most people the memories that come to mind when asked about anything done for long periods of time and somewhat repetitive, school, home life, scouting, dating, parenting, working, etc. are the memories of events that were out of the normal range. Snow days are definitely out of the normal range. Think about dating and you probably remember the big events like losing virginity (yes, many of the folks who read Slashdot have in fact lost their virginity) and people you dated for extended periods, but not likely every face of everyone you dated. Think about married life and you remember the wedding, the new apartment or house, moving, having kids, etc. but you likely can't easily recall too many events that aren't special. Actually now that I think of it married life may not be a great example as many try to block many of the memories in this stage of their life.
Many folks working out how education will evolve in a productive way (not the politicians and corporations who only look to break education in order to line their pockets during the crisis they create) see the coming of the virtual classroom as a done deal. It will happen and we will see it in our lifetime.
So to see the end of Snow Days (due to transportation problems) because students can be required to participate in lessons from home is a done deal. All the technical stuff students learn in school today, you know the stuff that they assess with standardized testing (another useless and damaging corporate weapon) can easily and quickly be learned in a virtual learning environment.
What will be interesting is how we deal with the aspects of schooling that aren't shown on report cards, socialization, mental and physical well being. Parents who home school their children tend to work very hard to include these very important components of development. I have talked to parents who go way out of their way to have their students participate in group activities educational, spiritual and recreational.
So I say good riddance to the Snow Days of old that more often than not rewarded the bus students and punished those who walked. Good bye to the nightmare of parents having to leave kids at home with only a moment of preparation time and having to rely on the TV and game console to guard over them. Welcome to the new reality of the web being used for more than just porn.
By the way, yes, I was never a bus student and I didn't get my fair share of snow days.
When I was a little kid I remember my Dad telling me about using incandescent light bulb(s) to prevent the pump and pipes from freezing when the winter temperatures would fall well below zero. Granted the pump house was well insulated to retain the heat. I can also see using a backup bulb placed in a fixture governed by light sensor that turned on only if the first bulb died to provide a backup.
I recall seeing light bulbs used for their heating properties in a couple of other situations. I recall a mechanics trouble light turned on and placed under the hood of a car in winter to keep the engine block from getting too cold to start. I seem to recall a blanket and tarp also place over the hood of the car. I recall using the heat from a light bulb to soften plastic parts to mold them for a custom fit (plastic models and later car parts). Not to mention the easy bake oven application.
So I would have to say their is plenty of prior art to support light bulbs imported as heating devices.
But Shatner did do a fun "I am Canadian" routine! Seriously, I would agree he is not in the same league as dozens of truly deserving Canadians who have worked hard for a better Canada.
I found I already owned a router that allowed me to control we access hours I just set static IP's on the target machines and gave them restricted access to the web...
I use OPENDNS.com for the parental controls... I direct the router to OpenDNS for its dns lookups...
and I have installed a opensource program called iTalc to monitor the users on the machines... iTalc requires a small client on the users machine and an admin install on the teachers machine... you can then view what is going on, take control of a user or shut them down...
Remember to have the kids login as users not admins... take away those admin rights!
Easy to install, very inexpensive and remarkably effective... Especially with the users knowing I can monitor what they are doing at any time, even from work... Remember you don't always have to go so far as to cut access off, often all the user needs is to know and see you have all the tools to do it.
I have lived and worked in various IT environments over the last couple of decades and I have observed a very interesting thing... The best programmers I have had the pleasure to work with/for were also musicians. Usually amateur musicians, but musicians.
It seems there are very important skill transfers between the two.
I am also able to watch my own kids... and the musical one has chosen to go to university to get a software engineering degree... and is doing amazingly. By the way he also took every math he could get in high school and first year university.
because it provides a far more intelligent and useful way to interact and be part of society. However, it will more likely happen because it will give those folks who want to control us a better way to do just that. Of course as long as you can turn the devices off then you have some control.
I recall having capacitors blow in power supplies... often results in fudge production... Don't want to be on that bus when the capacitor blows. Good idea though.
I had a teacher years ago who when asked why we had to learn to do math manually instead of just using our calculators replied "what happens when your battery dies in the calculator? Do you put your life on hold?"
I agree with him. For all those folks who abdicate everything to devices and computers, they give up control of their lives. I just recently went on a road trip with a PHD and she relies on a satnav device. It was entertaining and reasonably functional, but it wasn't perfect. No we didn't drive over the cliff or any of the other fun stories that have been shared about when these devices go bad. We did however end up have a few interesting moments when the device said to do something and of course that wasn't possible. "Turn left here!" into the concrete wall?
Not that this will happen, but what if the US military degrades the accuracy of the system these devices depends on? It was done in Desert Storm. What if funding disappears. What if a solar flare takes out a handful of the satellites? What if a corporation or government agency wants to manipulate the data on the device in order to manipulate you? What if... Well for me nothing changes since I have chosen to retain the processing power for these and thousands of other functions between my ears. For my kids I hope nothing will change since I am a hard-ass and demand they use their brains for navigation or they don't drive my vehicles.
From a larger society standpoint there will always be people who chose to relinquish control and responsibility for many aspects of their lives, look at voting turnout rates. There will also be people who tenaciously hold onto control of their lives... and I suspect, get to live them more fully.
I have always found that when you are walking a puppy through any university or college campus you get approached by girls and the puppy is the catalyst. So go borrow or (if you are seriously a dog person) get a puppy and go for a walk. Cute puppies are babe magnets. Hey you could even select the part of campus you walk according to the interests you could share with a female friend... history, science, geography, psychology, engineering, etc...
Years ago I learned that most managers are so remarkably ignorant of what good IT workers do, you know preventative work that ensures users can do their jobs without interruption, that the only way to get ahead is to be a bad IT worker.
Meaning if you let all sorts of bad stuff happen and then rush in and be the savior of the day you will be rewarded with promotions and bonuses.
A few years ago, just before I left my last job, I demanded a job review having gone 6 years without one. I got to sit through my review by the VP in charge of the division I supported and my direct IT boss from Denton Tx, only to be criticized for not socializing with some techs who came up from Denton to help with a move of the office 80 mile to a new city. I had elected to do my appointed tasks for the move, baby the servers and double check backups prior to taking them down packing them up and reinstalling them in the new sites server room.
Had I done the socializing I would have ignored my duty to the corporation but not been f*cked over during the review. If the servers had not come up I would likely have been heralded as a saint had I been able to resurect them too.
It makes no sense but my advice is don't bother with looking at meaningful metrics unless it is to satisfy your own needs. Focus on the only metric management sees... Crisis frequency and crisis resolution... be the superhero!
How to look someone straight in the eye and tell then that their problem has cropped up alot lately in their department... and it is a PEBKAC or ID10T error... and it will be fixed as soon as possible... To not become the BOFH be sure to talk to other Tech guys over a few brews and laugh at the idiocy of (L)users... the L is silent.
A short tale to illustrate this... back in '97 I had a co-op student from one of those "Get your IT credentials here in 6 months" schools... one morning we were walking throught the front office where the lowest IQ's but highest egos sit... and the secretary to the VP Sales asks to have one of those hand help manual scanners setup on her pc. Well the scanner wasn't company property and wouldn't work worth a dam (that's why I wouldn't buy one). I said we didn't have time to setup her toy, but the PFY co-op chirped up and said he'd give it a try. So I left him there and went outback and got the first aid kit out... He found me in about an hour and was next to tears. The whole time he was graciously trying to setup the illegal equipment for this "Bitch" she was walking up and down the hall in front of all the exec offices bitching about how "IT was preventing her from doing her job" and "IT was all fucked up"... After explaining to him that she is naturally a bitch and will do whatever she can, hurt whoever she can, lie, steel, kill to advance her career... he started to feel a little better.
I then pointed out to him a few basic rules. 1. If the more senior person answers the question keep silent. Ask in private why the answer was given. You can always go back later and be a hero. 2. If the job takes more than 10 minutes. Take it back to your desk to do. Don't sit in their office and be fodder for their ego development. 3. Listen to what I say. I know what is going on. 4. Finally, never listen to crazy people and get the f*ck out of my way.
Instead of adding more crap to vehicles lets start taking some of the crap out of them. Let's make vehicles safer by making them simpler. I am not suggesting we take stability control or antilock breaks out of cars or the other true safety features.
Let's remove the crap that interferes with the drivers ability to actually focus on the task of driving. Remove all cell phones, video screens for navigation and entertainment, complex controls, richly featured stereos, etc. Let's remove the complex crap that doesn't directly add to the drivers ability to drive safely.
Next let's train our new drivers better. The last time a vehicle hit my vehicle it was a taxi driven by a fresh off the boat imagrant who just that day got his drivers license and felt it was OK to try and push other vehicles out his way at stop signs. That is how it worked back in the old country. Granted this example I hope is rare, but it did happen.
So before we put more crap in cars look at what really needs doing to improve safety.
Who cares how it will do... More important is what they did with it...
Forking the time line so they don't have to pay attention to the original was brilliant. It makes follow up movies open to anything.
Introducing Kirk's propensity to bed the Jolly Green Giant's sister early in the show was hilarious.
Character development was spotty at best with Bones being nothing more than one line jokes and Scotty being an afterthought...
Nice to see Leonard Nimoy show up too...
I do wonder why all the crew seem so bloody young? They also really do need a pizza hut or McDonald's on the ship to get a little meat on the crews bones.
Visually, this was fun... not the best, but definitely fun.
Final verdict, this was fun!
Anyone want to bag-off work this afternoon and see the matinee?
I worked for 8 years in a company that went from family owned to major corporate ownership. When family owned there was never a problem when I ran network wire or made drop cables. I was trained by an electrician who knew how to do it right and cared to actually do it right. I do it right. Never a problem with the stuff I ran.
Go ahead a few years and now under multinational corporate ownership the call comes to run wire and a company of cable monkeys needs to be hired. I am not allowed to do it. I watch the monkeys. I point out the kinks in the wire, where it gets to close to danger areas... etc. I get a call from head office "WTF am I doing?" Making sure the wire is run properly, I reply. Then the conversation degrades into the head office telling me everything they have ever been told by wire monkey salespeople. I give up. I know to pick my battles and this one isn't ever going to go my way.
Seems if a manager type doesn't know how to do it they all to frequently assume that no one can do it. (Or did I miss the kickback memo?)
Good thing they ran two drops to each location...
I recommend to the companies I have worked for that they give the old equipment to their employees. Decommissioned laptops and desktops are often of better quality that the stuff their employees have at home. By giving it to the employees the company benefits in several ways.
Usually the employees are grateful and the process builds goodwill. Exception here is when all the good stuff is given to hand picked special employees creating great resentment and discontent within the ranks.
Donated to employees equipment gives the company a positive return as the employee work on the system at home they tend to learn new things... This new knowledge is brought back to work and didn't cost the company's training budget.
Donated equipment doesn't have a disposal cost.
This can reduce employee theft or borrowing.
All in all it is well worth a company looking into. It is also important to ensure the employees sign the relevant documents to release the company of liability... given half a chance the lawyers will put a stop to anything good.
Slashdot Mirror
More to the point keeping the "standard" size of the bill has more to do with the millions of installed cash drawers, bank machines, vending machines, etc. that accept that "standard" size of bill.
This is educational for us Nerds as breasts have another, all natural and nurturing use not at all related to their common portrayal as fun bags.
No matter what you tell the new person you will still be the answer guy for months especially since you are still at the university.
I gave my last employer almost two months notice and a handful of resumes of fully qualified people who were available to start immediately.
The HR idiots didn't get someone hired and able to show up until my last day. I took that day off as my spouse had a bad feeling about me commuting to work that day.
So the new guy got nothing, no logins, no script explanations, no documentation overview, nothing.
I started getting calls at my new employer from "friends" that still worked there asking me to help the new guy before they strung him up in the server room. I helped for a bit then cut them all off. No money no answers.
Buy a digital Timer. Set it to power up the wireless AP only when you want it available. Keep the AP and timer out of reach of those that may want to mess with it. If a special event comes up and wireless access is needed anybody can push the timers "ON" button to turn on the wireless and then the "OFF" button later to return it to timer mode.
I have used this solution in the past to great success in a warehouse/office environment to cut the internet at night because warehouse night staff were surfing instead of working.
No joke. There are existing therapies where individuals who have seriously disrupted gut bacteria colonies basically take a poop pill. The idea is that you re-seed the GI track with the desirable flora in order to establish a healthy and balanced community. Of course the source of the donated flora is something that you might not want to dwell on too long.
Of course other animals do this all the time voluntarily.
CBC TV in Canada aired a show focusing on Autism and links to gut bacteria. http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/The_Nature_of_Things The episode is titled The Autism Enigma.
Well worth watching.
Considering that the bacteria in our bodies outnumber our own cells (numerically) it should not be a surprise that when they get messed with we get messed up.
Why is the total electricity used by Google a problem? Google has a huge network of data centers, offices and other business entities that use electricity. The total amount of electricity used is going to be huge.
The real question... has and is Google working to use that electricity wisely and with an eye to maximizing value and minimizing waste? Well from what I have read over the years the answer is Yes.
Everyone, GM, Toyota, the US government, The City of LA, and even my dear old Mom uses electricity (directly and indirectly) and it isn't the total used, but rather the waste (if any) and the strategies to maximize value out of that electricity that needs to be reported and scrutinized.
We all know this right?
No doubt there are many teacher's who don't care anymore. They have been denigrated in the media, made the whipping boy by politicians looking for re-election. They have been kicked in the nads by everyone with an axe to grind.
But let me ask you does this not happen in any work environment where the employees are treated like sh*t?
Students know their rights, but few know their responsibilities. Parents demand their kids be taught by teachers, but don't support the teachers in this task. Tax payers demand fewer taxes while demanding results from schools. Politicians and school board politicos demand schools toe the line with outrageous ill-conceived plans to fix the ills of society by downloading them into the schools.
Yes, I am less surprised by the statement that "teachers just don't give a damn anymore" and more surprised that there are still teachers showing up in schools to teach and entering the profession at all.
Hey everyone let's not forget that the school environment in which our kids sit every day is also the same environment in which teachers work.
Simply placing any technology in a classroom will do nothing more than increase the amount of stuff in the room. We all know this. It doesn't matter what the technology is, paper, pencils, projectors, laptops, unless the technology can be meaningfully integrated into the curriculum it will not have a positive effect on overall learning.
What this study does, beyond saying the obvious, is to identify the two main problems with education.
Problem one is that politicians, the public and school board administrators think they can increase student learning by stuffing technology in the classroom. Well I've seen many a classroom over the last 40 years that have wonderful technological marvels collecting dust as they sit unused on the shelf. I've also seen classrooms with next to no cutting edge technology that have produced students who excel in learning. So the presence of technology does not make for increased test scores. So why is money being spent on laptops and networks and other gadgets when this is shown to fail? Well, because we as a society think the quick fix is the way to make it happen. Society is looking for the quick fix for everything, buy on credit vs saving, liposuction instead of lifestyle change, etc. So why not education too.
The second problem is that we all assume we know what education needs, in this case computers. We all know all there is to know about education, after all most of us sat in a classroom for a dozen or more years we should be experts. In fact today we are allowing our politicians and media to use education as their whipping boy. We denigrate teachers. We fail to support schools. We have allowed the educational system to be perverted to the point where we value the politicos who run our education systems more than the teachers who actually do the real work. Well folks collectively we know next to nothing about education. Our politicians and education politicos know F**k all. To resolve this problem in education let's put the resources (money, people) back in the classroom where they belong. Let's invest more in teachers and less in the administrators whose job it is to support the actual education of our kids. Let's invest the money in actual classroom resources like books, manipulatives, lunch programs, and ongoing professional teacher training. Let's put the resources back where the education rubber meets the education road.
Sorry to ramble here folks, but let's all realize that large schools, huge school boards, and standardized testing are not in place for the benefit of students. These things benefit the politicians and education politico. Bring education back to the neighborhoods and the kids it is meant to searve. Take it away from politicians. hey folks consider getting involved.
Although I suspect you are kidding with your comment there is plenty of truth to it and that is not unexpected.
First school from k-4 is usually remembered only very sporadically as are all memories up to the age of about 10. The reason being that the mental framework required to categorize and store these memories isn't developed until the age of 10. So the ability to access those memories is very poor.
Second, for most people the memories that come to mind when asked about anything done for long periods of time and somewhat repetitive, school, home life, scouting, dating, parenting, working, etc. are the memories of events that were out of the normal range. Snow days are definitely out of the normal range. Think about dating and you probably remember the big events like losing virginity (yes, many of the folks who read Slashdot have in fact lost their virginity) and people you dated for extended periods, but not likely every face of everyone you dated. Think about married life and you remember the wedding, the new apartment or house, moving, having kids, etc. but you likely can't easily recall too many events that aren't special. Actually now that I think of it married life may not be a great example as many try to block many of the memories in this stage of their life.
Anyway I think you can get my point.
Many folks working out how education will evolve in a productive way (not the politicians and corporations who only look to break education in order to line their pockets during the crisis they create) see the coming of the virtual classroom as a done deal. It will happen and we will see it in our lifetime.
So to see the end of Snow Days (due to transportation problems) because students can be required to participate in lessons from home is a done deal. All the technical stuff students learn in school today, you know the stuff that they assess with standardized testing (another useless and damaging corporate weapon) can easily and quickly be learned in a virtual learning environment.
What will be interesting is how we deal with the aspects of schooling that aren't shown on report cards, socialization, mental and physical well being. Parents who home school their children tend to work very hard to include these very important components of development. I have talked to parents who go way out of their way to have their students participate in group activities educational, spiritual and recreational.
So I say good riddance to the Snow Days of old that more often than not rewarded the bus students and punished those who walked. Good bye to the nightmare of parents having to leave kids at home with only a moment of preparation time and having to rely on the TV and game console to guard over them. Welcome to the new reality of the web being used for more than just porn.
By the way, yes, I was never a bus student and I didn't get my fair share of snow days.
When I was a little kid I remember my Dad telling me about using incandescent light bulb(s) to prevent the pump and pipes from freezing when the winter temperatures would fall well below zero. Granted the pump house was well insulated to retain the heat. I can also see using a backup bulb placed in a fixture governed by light sensor that turned on only if the first bulb died to provide a backup.
I recall seeing light bulbs used for their heating properties in a couple of other situations. I recall a mechanics trouble light turned on and placed under the hood of a car in winter to keep the engine block from getting too cold to start. I seem to recall a blanket and tarp also place over the hood of the car. I recall using the heat from a light bulb to soften plastic parts to mold them for a custom fit (plastic models and later car parts). Not to mention the easy bake oven application.
So I would have to say their is plenty of prior art to support light bulbs imported as heating devices.
But Shatner did do a fun "I am Canadian" routine! Seriously, I would agree he is not in the same league as dozens of truly deserving Canadians who have worked hard for a better Canada.
I found I already owned a router that allowed me to control we access hours I just set static IP's on the target machines and gave them restricted access to the web...
I use OPENDNS.com for the parental controls... I direct the router to OpenDNS for its dns lookups...
and I have installed a opensource program called iTalc to monitor the users on the machines... iTalc requires a small client on the users machine and an admin install on the teachers machine... you can then view what is going on, take control of a user or shut them down...
Remember to have the kids login as users not admins... take away those admin rights!
Easy to install, very inexpensive and remarkably effective... Especially with the users knowing I can monitor what they are doing at any time, even from work... Remember you don't always have to go so far as to cut access off, often all the user needs is to know and see you have all the tools to do it.
I have lived and worked in various IT environments over the last couple of decades and I have observed a very interesting thing... The best programmers I have had the pleasure to work with/for were also musicians. Usually amateur musicians, but musicians.
It seems there are very important skill transfers between the two.
I am also able to watch my own kids... and the musical one has chosen to go to university to get a software engineering degree... and is doing amazingly. By the way he also took every math he could get in high school and first year university.
because it provides a far more intelligent and useful way to interact and be part of society. However, it will more likely happen because it will give those folks who want to control us a better way to do just that. Of course as long as you can turn the devices off then you have some control.
I recall having capacitors blow in power supplies... often results in fudge production... Don't want to be on that bus when the capacitor blows. Good idea though.
I had a teacher years ago who when asked why we had to learn to do math manually instead of just using our calculators replied "what happens when your battery dies in the calculator? Do you put your life on hold?"
I agree with him. For all those folks who abdicate everything to devices and computers, they give up control of their lives. I just recently went on a road trip with a PHD and she relies on a satnav device. It was entertaining and reasonably functional, but it wasn't perfect. No we didn't drive over the cliff or any of the other fun stories that have been shared about when these devices go bad. We did however end up have a few interesting moments when the device said to do something and of course that wasn't possible. "Turn left here!" into the concrete wall?
Not that this will happen, but what if the US military degrades the accuracy of the system these devices depends on? It was done in Desert Storm. What if funding disappears. What if a solar flare takes out a handful of the satellites? What if a corporation or government agency wants to manipulate the data on the device in order to manipulate you? What if... Well for me nothing changes since I have chosen to retain the processing power for these and thousands of other functions between my ears. For my kids I hope nothing will change since I am a hard-ass and demand they use their brains for navigation or they don't drive my vehicles.
From a larger society standpoint there will always be people who chose to relinquish control and responsibility for many aspects of their lives, look at voting turnout rates. There will also be people who tenaciously hold onto control of their lives... and I suspect, get to live them more fully.
I have always found that when you are walking a puppy through any university or college campus you get approached by girls and the puppy is the catalyst. So go borrow or (if you are seriously a dog person) get a puppy and go for a walk. Cute puppies are babe magnets. Hey you could even select the part of campus you walk according to the interests you could share with a female friend... history, science, geography, psychology, engineering, etc...
Years ago I learned that most managers are so remarkably ignorant of what good IT workers do, you know preventative work that ensures users can do their jobs without interruption, that the only way to get ahead is to be a bad IT worker.
Meaning if you let all sorts of bad stuff happen and then rush in and be the savior of the day you will be rewarded with promotions and bonuses.
A few years ago, just before I left my last job, I demanded a job review having gone 6 years without one. I got to sit through my review by the VP in charge of the division I supported and my direct IT boss from Denton Tx, only to be criticized for not socializing with some techs who came up from Denton to help with a move of the office 80 mile to a new city. I had elected to do my appointed tasks for the move, baby the servers and double check backups prior to taking them down packing them up and reinstalling them in the new sites server room.
Had I done the socializing I would have ignored my duty to the corporation but not been f*cked over during the review. If the servers had not come up I would likely have been heralded as a saint had I been able to resurect them too.
It makes no sense but my advice is don't bother with looking at meaningful metrics unless it is to satisfy your own needs. Focus on the only metric management sees... Crisis frequency and crisis resolution... be the superhero!
How to look someone straight in the eye and tell then that their problem has cropped up alot lately in their department... and it is a PEBKAC or ID10T error... and it will be fixed as soon as possible... To not become the BOFH be sure to talk to other Tech guys over a few brews and laugh at the idiocy of (L)users... the L is silent.
A short tale to illustrate this... back in '97 I had a co-op student from one of those "Get your IT credentials here in 6 months" schools... one morning we were walking throught the front office where the lowest IQ's but highest egos sit... and the secretary to the VP Sales asks to have one of those hand help manual scanners setup on her pc. Well the scanner wasn't company property and wouldn't work worth a dam (that's why I wouldn't buy one). I said we didn't have time to setup her toy, but the PFY co-op chirped up and said he'd give it a try. So I left him there and went outback and got the first aid kit out... He found me in about an hour and was next to tears. The whole time he was graciously trying to setup the illegal equipment for this "Bitch" she was walking up and down the hall in front of all the exec offices bitching about how "IT was preventing her from doing her job" and "IT was all fucked up"... After explaining to him that she is naturally a bitch and will do whatever she can, hurt whoever she can, lie, steel, kill to advance her career... he started to feel a little better.
I then pointed out to him a few basic rules.
1. If the more senior person answers the question keep silent. Ask in private why the answer was given. You can always go back later and be a hero.
2. If the job takes more than 10 minutes. Take it back to your desk to do. Don't sit in their office and be fodder for their ego development.
3. Listen to what I say. I know what is going on.
4. Finally, never listen to crazy people and get the f*ck out of my way.
Instead of adding more crap to vehicles lets start taking some of the crap out of them. Let's make vehicles safer by making them simpler. I am not suggesting we take stability control or antilock breaks out of cars or the other true safety features. Let's remove the crap that interferes with the drivers ability to actually focus on the task of driving. Remove all cell phones, video screens for navigation and entertainment, complex controls, richly featured stereos, etc. Let's remove the complex crap that doesn't directly add to the drivers ability to drive safely. Next let's train our new drivers better. The last time a vehicle hit my vehicle it was a taxi driven by a fresh off the boat imagrant who just that day got his drivers license and felt it was OK to try and push other vehicles out his way at stop signs. That is how it worked back in the old country. Granted this example I hope is rare, but it did happen. So before we put more crap in cars look at what really needs doing to improve safety.
Who cares how it will do... More important is what they did with it... Forking the time line so they don't have to pay attention to the original was brilliant. It makes follow up movies open to anything. Introducing Kirk's propensity to bed the Jolly Green Giant's sister early in the show was hilarious. Character development was spotty at best with Bones being nothing more than one line jokes and Scotty being an afterthought... Nice to see Leonard Nimoy show up too... I do wonder why all the crew seem so bloody young? They also really do need a pizza hut or McDonald's on the ship to get a little meat on the crews bones. Visually, this was fun... not the best, but definitely fun. Final verdict, this was fun! Anyone want to bag-off work this afternoon and see the matinee?
I worked for 8 years in a company that went from family owned to major corporate ownership. When family owned there was never a problem when I ran network wire or made drop cables. I was trained by an electrician who knew how to do it right and cared to actually do it right. I do it right. Never a problem with the stuff I ran. Go ahead a few years and now under multinational corporate ownership the call comes to run wire and a company of cable monkeys needs to be hired. I am not allowed to do it. I watch the monkeys. I point out the kinks in the wire, where it gets to close to danger areas... etc. I get a call from head office "WTF am I doing?" Making sure the wire is run properly, I reply. Then the conversation degrades into the head office telling me everything they have ever been told by wire monkey salespeople. I give up. I know to pick my battles and this one isn't ever going to go my way. Seems if a manager type doesn't know how to do it they all to frequently assume that no one can do it. (Or did I miss the kickback memo?) Good thing they ran two drops to each location ...
I recommend to the companies I have worked for that they give the old equipment to their employees. Decommissioned laptops and desktops are often of better quality that the stuff their employees have at home. By giving it to the employees the company benefits in several ways. Usually the employees are grateful and the process builds goodwill. Exception here is when all the good stuff is given to hand picked special employees creating great resentment and discontent within the ranks. Donated to employees equipment gives the company a positive return as the employee work on the system at home they tend to learn new things... This new knowledge is brought back to work and didn't cost the company's training budget. Donated equipment doesn't have a disposal cost. This can reduce employee theft or borrowing. All in all it is well worth a company looking into. It is also important to ensure the employees sign the relevant documents to release the company of liability... given half a chance the lawyers will put a stop to anything good.