Slashdot Mirror


User: MightyYar

MightyYar's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
17,498
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 17,498

  1. Re:Not all engineers are regulated - just civil on Should Programmers Be Called Engineers? (theatlantic.com) · · Score: 1

    Most mechanical engineers in the construction field are also PEs for the same reason - but yes, in general most design and manufacturing engineers don't bother with certification. It's easier and more effective to regulate the products themselves rather than the process that results in the product. In other words, create a regulation that specifies that cars should not burst into flames and then let the market figure out how to produce cars that do not burst into flames. Bridges are different because they are often one-off designs, or worse, modified stock designs where they guy doing the modification had better know exactly what he's doing. They are expected to last 50 years in the face of little to no maintenance and a single failure has massive human, economic, and political consequences.

  2. Re:In Portugal "Engineer" is a regulated professio on Should Programmers Be Called Engineers? (theatlantic.com) · · Score: 1

    No, I don't think it is a money grab. Engineers self-regulated to stave off government regulation that was going to happen due to some high-profile failures. Any time you introduce regulation, you reduce efficiency - but I think sometimes it is OK to give up some efficiency in order to get some other benefit.

  3. Re:Not all engineers are regulated on Should Programmers Be Called Engineers? (theatlantic.com) · · Score: 2

    I'm not a big-e Professional Engineer, but I am a small-e engineer. I have a degree and everything :)

  4. Re:In Portugal "Engineer" is a regulated professio on Should Programmers Be Called Engineers? (theatlantic.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    In the US we have "engineers" and then we have "Professional Engineers (PE)". PEs are regulated in the usual US way - the certification and regulation is provided by the professional organization, but the state governments generally require certification in order to do certain types of things or to offer your services to the general public. Almost every civil engineer that I know is a PE. Every mechanical engineer that I know who works in the building trade is certified. However, the vast majority of engineers who simply design or manufacture stuff are not certified unless they have some specific reason to go through the hassle.

  5. Not all engineers are regulated on Should Programmers Be Called Engineers? (theatlantic.com) · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm a mechanical engineer, and while continuing education is certainly necessary for the sake of both myself and the company that I do work for - I am not regulated in any way. It might be different if we did work with the government, but I have no requirement to be a Professional Engineer. I did sit for the test, but since no one at this entire company is certified there was no way to apprentice. Technically I could now sit for the test again and get the certification based on my work experience, but it is simply not worth my time or effort.

  6. But digital signals will either give you an error or they won't - they either work or they don't. If you get zero errors with a 6' crappy oxidized cable then it is objectively and subjectively just as good as the 6' oxygen free magic gold-plated cable.

  7. Re:It's either that... on UK and US Suspect That ISIS Bomb Took Down Flight 9268 (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    Depends on where it is maintained and where they get their replacement parts from. Do they follow FAA standards (surprisingly many countries do)? And so on.

  8. Re:That's strange! on UK and US Suspect That ISIS Bomb Took Down Flight 9268 (cnn.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There could be many explanations. They could have a agent at the airport who only has access to Russian flights - or some other explanation that fits in the "opportunist" category. They could be more worried about Russian involvement since the regime was about to fall until the Russians stepped in, or some other simple explanation that fits into the "motivation to attack the Russians" category. They might fear a physical on-the-ground American presence as the result of an act of terror, whereas with the Russians this has already happened. That could fall in the "strategy" category. Who knows? But it is at least plausible.

  9. Re:I second the RF jammer on Federal Prison System Wants Anti-Drone Technology (networkworld.com) · · Score: 1

    At the moment, they are doing exactly what you say they should do: request for information. If after this they decide that they need something completely home-grown, then we can criticize. Right now they are just seeing what is available.

  10. Re:Nets... on Federal Prison System Wants Anti-Drone Technology (networkworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Any solution that involves squirrels is automatically a winner.

  11. Re:Nets... on Federal Prison System Wants Anti-Drone Technology (networkworld.com) · · Score: 1

    GPS is still RF :)

    And the jamming of GPS is one of the reasons I'd only get government customers...

  12. Re:Nets... on Federal Prison System Wants Anti-Drone Technology (networkworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Net-over-everything is definitely the least fun and most effective :)

    Though to be fair, I can imagine that it wouldn't be too hard to rig a drone that drops it's payload in packets small enough to pass through any practical net size.

  13. Re:Nets... on Federal Prison System Wants Anti-Drone Technology (networkworld.com) · · Score: 1

    My personal favorite way to solve it would probably limit me to government customers, because I would probably combine detection with a directed RF jammer. Both the detection and the jammer are likely to use FCC-frowny methods. Lasers are probably a no-go because of the potential to harm aircraft and the cost of such a laser. A shotgun would be almost as much fun, anyway :)

  14. Re:Nets... on Federal Prison System Wants Anti-Drone Technology (networkworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Sure, 5 minutes for the broad strokes. And a few months of work. And you get to play with drones and directed electrical thingies.

  15. Re:Nets... on Federal Prison System Wants Anti-Drone Technology (networkworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Because, as an engineer, this is a really fun thing to work on.

  16. Re:Photos on Microsoft Cuts OneDrive Storage Limits, Citing Abuse (onedrive.com) · · Score: 1

    I think your timeframe is just too small. Caesar was a mere 2100 years ago. While we do have written language that makes things easier to preserve, ask yourself how much is written about Caesar in Chinese or Sanskrit.

  17. Re:it's been out one week. on How Apple Is Preventing the Apple TV From Becoming a Console Rival (redbull.com) · · Score: 1

    Nicely crafted sentence. Apple isn't popular with most (i.e. 50% or greater) people.

    Wow, how true. And how meaningless. At 41% in the US smartphone market, they are by far the most popular smartphone, with their small handful of models beating out the entire line of Samsung (27%), LG (7%), and Motorola (6%). If your "cult" includes more people than all of the other major religions, your problem is one of terminology.

    If Apple still only made Macintosh, you might be on to something - they only command 5% of that market. But they make iPhones and iPads and iPods, all with larger market share than any other competitor.

  18. Re:I promise on Microsoft Cuts OneDrive Storage Limits, Citing Abuse (onedrive.com) · · Score: 1

    The way I see it, is that if I have to store locally, and all that entails, Storing it in the cloud as well, merely makes for another and pointless task.

    That's true for you, but most people are different. If not for cloud backup, most people would be completely without backup - or their "backup" would be whatever they happen to also keep on a memory stick. Even people who routinely back up to an external drive or a Time Machine would be without any sort of offsite backup.

    I have a server in my basement. But I don't run Owncloud or some other such service on it because Dropbox is so much easier, and I don't need to expose my probably insecure box to the public internet. In addition to Time Machine and Windows Backup, I run Crashplan for offsite backup because that's a lot easier than finding some friend in a different geographic location who wants to swap backups.* I run Plex rather than XBMC or similar because Plex has wonderful cloud features that effortlessly share with all of my mobile devices - as you point out, the kids are far more interested in watching TV on the tablets than on the TV :)

    Am I tied to the cloud? Sort-of. I mean, if Dropbox or Crashplan went away overnight, I'd have to install a competitor's product and it would take a few hours to sync. If Plex went away, I'd have to fall back on another similar product. But my data would be fine as long as my house didn't decide to burn down at the exact same moment that the cloud service decided to go away :)

    * I actually host off-site backups for friends and relatives. When I work on their PC, I setup Crashplan to backup their drive to my basement server. I lose a little drive space, but when they ask me to help me recover from a dead hard drive it makes things much easier...

  19. Re:Photos on Microsoft Cuts OneDrive Storage Limits, Citing Abuse (onedrive.com) · · Score: 1

    I'm just pointing out that the incredible luck of having a singular talent like Shakespeare just happen to write about you instead of any number of other ancient leaders is the only reason his name is in the common vernacular. This is unlikely to happen with others. Even with the Shakespeare connection, sadly he's probably most associated with terrible pizza. Eventually even Shakespeare will become practically unknown.

  20. Re:I promise on Microsoft Cuts OneDrive Storage Limits, Citing Abuse (onedrive.com) · · Score: 1

    Yes, because (a) lots of people here are advocating using the cloud as the sole repository of your data and (b) a whole freaking year isn't enough time to migrate to a new solution.

  21. Re:The real definition of "abuse" on Microsoft Cuts OneDrive Storage Limits, Citing Abuse (onedrive.com) · · Score: 1

    I don't know about "far, far cheaper". The "nearline" storage is $1/month for 100 GB, but that does not include the bandwidth out, which is an additional $0.01/GB. The reduced availability "DRA" storage is the same $2/month for 100 GB as Google Drive. Obviously, if you only need 50GB and not 100GB you can save - but not at the 100GB level.

  22. Re:Photos on Microsoft Cuts OneDrive Storage Limits, Citing Abuse (onedrive.com) · · Score: 1

    I'm agreeing with that guy. Tutankhamun is remembered, but not as a living God. And someday, when the pyramids have been weathered down to piles of sand, he will not be remembered by anyone except some hardcore Egyptologists. You could say the same thing about Julius Caesar. Very few people know anything about his role in the Roman empire - most know him as a character in a Shakespeare play that was written a thousand years later.

  23. Re:Photos on Microsoft Cuts OneDrive Storage Limits, Citing Abuse (onedrive.com) · · Score: 1

    They didn't forget Tutankhamun because they raided his tomb and paraded his mummified corpse around like a circus freak. The last thing I read about him was about how freaking inbred he was. Now that's a legacy!

  24. Re:I would teach with graphics first on Revisiting Why Johnny Can't Code: Have We "Made the Print Too Small"? · · Score: 1

    I still remember laying out screens on graph paper and then laboriously "plot"-ing it all out. When I got access to a PC in high school with it's totally different graphics capabilities it was fun to explore the new system.

  25. Re:Still not interested on How Tesla's Autopilot and Google's Car Are Entirely Different Animals (robohub.org) · · Score: 1

    I was hoping they'd be here in time for my kids not to drive (my oldest is 9). But unless I'm willing to be on the bleeding edge and fork over $100,000+, it's not going to happen. Oh, well :)