I've heard of some with USB ports... and an OS that would almost certainly detect and allow you to use a USB keyboard should you get access to the ports.
Furthermore, the ATM vendor could continue to provide their own support and patches for Linux for as long as they wanted. Though I'm not sure if they could continue to claim their ATM run "REHL" once they start patching it themselves.
Every experienced engineer was, at one time, a new graduate with no experience and only a bunch of student and hobby projects to show off. But they got jobs, and now they have the crucial experience and qualifications to land a job in this market. Companies nowadays won't hire new graduates, instead filling the junior level positions with cheap imported labor or simply send the jobs overseas. The pipeline is broken. Experienced engineers aren't being created anymore, and as the previous generation retires or leaves the field there is a "shortage". But there is no shortage, there are plenty of STEM graduates out there looking for jobs, just not any with the incredibly narrow and specific skill sets that these employers seem to demand.
The really simple way is to make sure to increase the salary to match the market as the employee gains skills and experience. If their salary remains competitive with the market, they are going to be a lot less likely to bail. The problem is that companies seem to not want to give out the required raises, so it's no surprise when someone who was hired at junior-level wages and only receives modest increases switches jobs once they obtain enough experience to land a better paying job at another company.
Well, it's not unprecedented. Off the top of my head:
* The relief on the design was lowered after the first year of the Peace Dollar (1921) because the original relief kept breaking the dies. * The original design of the Morgan dollar has eight feathers in the tail of the eagle. Eagles always have an odd number of tail feathers so the design was changed to 7 sometime during the first year of minting (1878). * The original 1883 Nickel had only "V" as the denomination (no cents) which lead to people dipping them in gold and trying to pass them off as $5 gold coins. * The denomination "FIVE CENTS" on the rear of the buffalo nickel originally was one of the highest points on the back of the coin and was thus one of the first areas to wear away. To avoid a repeat of 1883, the area around the text was lowered within the first year to protect the denomination from being worn off. * Similar to the buffalo nickel, on the standing liberty quarter originally the date was one of the first things to wear away. While not as big of a deal as the denomination wearing off, the design was nevertheless changed to address this. * In 1828, originally on the half cent there was only 12 stars on the obverse of the coin, which was simply a screw-up as far as anyone can tell. This was fixed to the correct 13 stars sometime in the middle of the year. * One of the reasons why the "flying eagle" cent design only lasted 2 years (1857-1858) before being redesigned is that the coins did not stack well.
You're using a PowerPC Mac as an example? That thing has been a paperweight for some time now. It hasn't gotten an OS update in close to five years, and most every application developer on Mac stopped supporting it shortly thereafter (if not before). Sure, that doesn't mean it's useless, but compared to a 9-year old PC (which can certainly run Windows 7) it's hopelessly outdated. You can install Linux on it, but you can do the same with any PC. However, the 9-year old PC can run Windows 7 too. Fact is, PC hardware has a much longer useful life, from both the OS support and the fact the hardware is much more easily repaired and upgraded.
Also don't forget the absurdly high belt lines thanks to the side-impact requirements. Sitting in a new car is like being in a cave. It's no wonder they are talking about mandating back-up cameras, because without one you're pretty much backing up blind. I much prefer something I can see out of, as the safest car is the one that doesn't get into the accident in the first place.
While that might be true for some airplanes, I doubt there are many operators of an expensive, modern airliner like a 777 that would be interested in some parts that "fell off the back of a truck".
But in that case, where are the people? If the plane landed relatively intact, people would evacuate/escape the plane before it sinks, and you would have people and rafts or clinging to their seat cushions which would be spotted (and rescued). Same thing with the plane landing at some rural airstrip - eventually some of the passengers/crew would find a way to contact civilization.
Actually, Apple was crazy. The original iMac didn't come with a CD burner, USB thumbdrives didn't exist and even if you found one the OS didn't support it, and as far as networking was concerned most people were still on dial-up. So to get data off the machine you either had to have a second computer with an ethernet interface which most people didn't have, upload it at dial-up speeds, or buy a USB floppy drive. So pretty much everyone who bought an iMac ended up buying a floppy drive anyway. To add to the hilarity, most cheap USB floppy drives would only read DOS-formatted disks so your old Apple floppies were still unreadable.
Seems that 5.25" drives would win there too. Sure, a 5.25" drive will use more power than a 2.5", but with today's data densities a 5.25" drive would be massive compared to a 2.5" drive and you would need a lot less of them.
The local school district here in Minnesota has a small garage where they store their wheelchair-accessible buses, but the rest get to sit outside. That seems to be pretty much the norm. Each parking spot does have power though, to run the block heater that each bus is equipped with.
It may be because the manufacturers strong-armed into it too. Used to be that the dealers would actually drill holes in the sheet metal to mount their logo, and oftentimes this was the first place the car would start rusting. The manufacturers got tired of warranty claims due to rust-through around the dealer logo and told the dealers to knock it off.
I'm not sure what that would buy you. With a traditional bank, it makes some sense to do it that way, as your checking account number isn't exactly a secret (it's printed on every check), but you can keep your savings account number secret. However, with Bitcoin anyone could go through the ledger and by "following the money" so to speak figure out your "mattress" and even know exactly how many bitcoins it has in it. Furthermore, at some point when transaction fees become the norm it'll even cost you money (granted, likely only a small amount) every time you move bitcoins between your "wallet" and "mattress".
Let me know where I can invest my money relatively safely and get a 4% return per year, and maybe I'll take your advice. In the meantime I'll keep making payments on my mortgage, with an interest rate that's quite favorable when compared to real inflation numbers.
Actually, the "recycling" process (if you want to call it that) is pretty complete. Circuit boards are stripped of their components, which are then soaked in acid to recover the metals. What's left of the circuit boards are burned along with the plastics. Wire is burned to get rid of the insulation, and the left over copper recycled. Metal parts are recycled. Glass is smelted down to recover the lead. There actually isn't much left once it's been "processed".
Actually, I noticed that picture too. The three in middle lack an ATX connector plate, have the IEC female connector for the monitor power, and have eight slots for expansion slots. Those are old PCs, probably 286's or 386's. Maybe a 486. That does kind of suggest the US, because back then (late 80's, early 90's) most of the IBM-compatibles were sold in the US, though they were certainly available overseas. Probably kind of unusual to run across something like that in what must be a sea of discarded P4's and Athlon's. Maybe that's why they appear to have been saved? Some of that stuff actually can fetch a decent dollar on eBay in working condition thanks to the whole retro gaming thing.
Most any modern car with an automatic transmission that still uses a physical key has an interlock where the key cannot be turned all the way to off or locked if the transmission is not in park. This also means that the key cannot be removed unless the transmission is in park. Granted, on a car with a computer-controlled transmission, you might be able to put the gearshift in park while moving at speed (since the car is moving the computer won't engage the parking cowl) and remove the key which will engage the steering lock while the car is still moving.
Manual transmission cars handle things differently. Some have a button next to the key that acts similar to the transmission interlock in the sense that you must push the button to allow the key to to be moved to off/lock and be removed. On a car like this, you could engage the steering lock (and remove the key) while the car is in motion by pushing the button, and since the whole push-the-button-to-turn-the-car-off motion becomes part of your muscle memory after a while, it's possible in a panic situation that you might engage the steering lock unintentionally (though in a manual I would hope that most people would simply push the clutch or put the car in neutral first). Some cars, such as some Saab models had a better system where the transmission must be in reverse to lock the steering and remove the key.
I've found the typical consumer router to be pretty unreliable compared to an old PC acting as a router. It shouldn't be that way, with the router being much simpler with no moving parts compared to a full blown PC. Even more so since my router PC is over 15 years so. But sadly that doesn't seem to be the case. It's literally been years since I last had a problem with the PC I've used as a router (last time it went down I found that some of the capacitors had burst on the motherboard - soldered some replacements in and it's been flawless since). Sure, I do have to take it offline to update it or whatever, but that can be planned, which is much better than the typical Linksys junk which seems to cut out randomly every few weeks requiring a power cycle.
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I've heard of some with USB ports... and an OS that would almost certainly detect and allow you to use a USB keyboard should you get access to the ports.
Furthermore, the ATM vendor could continue to provide their own support and patches for Linux for as long as they wanted. Though I'm not sure if they could continue to claim their ATM run "REHL" once they start patching it themselves.
Every experienced engineer was, at one time, a new graduate with no experience and only a bunch of student and hobby projects to show off. But they got jobs, and now they have the crucial experience and qualifications to land a job in this market. Companies nowadays won't hire new graduates, instead filling the junior level positions with cheap imported labor or simply send the jobs overseas. The pipeline is broken. Experienced engineers aren't being created anymore, and as the previous generation retires or leaves the field there is a "shortage". But there is no shortage, there are plenty of STEM graduates out there looking for jobs, just not any with the incredibly narrow and specific skill sets that these employers seem to demand.
The really simple way is to make sure to increase the salary to match the market as the employee gains skills and experience. If their salary remains competitive with the market, they are going to be a lot less likely to bail. The problem is that companies seem to not want to give out the required raises, so it's no surprise when someone who was hired at junior-level wages and only receives modest increases switches jobs once they obtain enough experience to land a better paying job at another company.
Well, it's not unprecedented. Off the top of my head:
* The relief on the design was lowered after the first year of the Peace Dollar (1921) because the original relief kept breaking the dies.
* The original design of the Morgan dollar has eight feathers in the tail of the eagle. Eagles always have an odd number of tail feathers so the design was changed to 7 sometime during the first year of minting (1878).
* The original 1883 Nickel had only "V" as the denomination (no cents) which lead to people dipping them in gold and trying to pass them off as $5 gold coins.
* The denomination "FIVE CENTS" on the rear of the buffalo nickel originally was one of the highest points on the back of the coin and was thus one of the first areas to wear away. To avoid a repeat of 1883, the area around the text was lowered within the first year to protect the denomination from being worn off.
* Similar to the buffalo nickel, on the standing liberty quarter originally the date was one of the first things to wear away. While not as big of a deal as the denomination wearing off, the design was nevertheless changed to address this.
* In 1828, originally on the half cent there was only 12 stars on the obverse of the coin, which was simply a screw-up as far as anyone can tell. This was fixed to the correct 13 stars sometime in the middle of the year.
* One of the reasons why the "flying eagle" cent design only lasted 2 years (1857-1858) before being redesigned is that the coins did not stack well.
You're using a PowerPC Mac as an example? That thing has been a paperweight for some time now. It hasn't gotten an OS update in close to five years, and most every application developer on Mac stopped supporting it shortly thereafter (if not before). Sure, that doesn't mean it's useless, but compared to a 9-year old PC (which can certainly run Windows 7) it's hopelessly outdated. You can install Linux on it, but you can do the same with any PC. However, the 9-year old PC can run Windows 7 too. Fact is, PC hardware has a much longer useful life, from both the OS support and the fact the hardware is much more easily repaired and upgraded.
Apple can't even support their own 3-year old OSes, and you expect them to support Microsoft's?
Also don't forget the absurdly high belt lines thanks to the side-impact requirements. Sitting in a new car is like being in a cave. It's no wonder they are talking about mandating back-up cameras, because without one you're pretty much backing up blind. I much prefer something I can see out of, as the safest car is the one that doesn't get into the accident in the first place.
While that might be true for some airplanes, I doubt there are many operators of an expensive, modern airliner like a 777 that would be interested in some parts that "fell off the back of a truck".
But in that case, where are the people? If the plane landed relatively intact, people would evacuate/escape the plane before it sinks, and you would have people and rafts or clinging to their seat cushions which would be spotted (and rescued). Same thing with the plane landing at some rural airstrip - eventually some of the passengers/crew would find a way to contact civilization.
Actually, Apple was crazy. The original iMac didn't come with a CD burner, USB thumbdrives didn't exist and even if you found one the OS didn't support it, and as far as networking was concerned most people were still on dial-up. So to get data off the machine you either had to have a second computer with an ethernet interface which most people didn't have, upload it at dial-up speeds, or buy a USB floppy drive. So pretty much everyone who bought an iMac ended up buying a floppy drive anyway. To add to the hilarity, most cheap USB floppy drives would only read DOS-formatted disks so your old Apple floppies were still unreadable.
Seems that 5.25" drives would win there too. Sure, a 5.25" drive will use more power than a 2.5", but with today's data densities a 5.25" drive would be massive compared to a 2.5" drive and you would need a lot less of them.
The local school district here in Minnesota has a small garage where they store their wheelchair-accessible buses, but the rest get to sit outside. That seems to be pretty much the norm. Each parking spot does have power though, to run the block heater that each bus is equipped with.
Or the fact that the database is offered to law enforcement for free. What if your car ware erroneously spotted near the scene of a crime?
You do realize that there are practical reasons to wear a lab coat and it's not just a fashion statement?
Though you may still want to avoid the high fructose bee spit (aka honey).
It may be because the manufacturers strong-armed into it too. Used to be that the dealers would actually drill holes in the sheet metal to mount their logo, and oftentimes this was the first place the car would start rusting. The manufacturers got tired of warranty claims due to rust-through around the dealer logo and told the dealers to knock it off.
I'm not sure what that would buy you. With a traditional bank, it makes some sense to do it that way, as your checking account number isn't exactly a secret (it's printed on every check), but you can keep your savings account number secret. However, with Bitcoin anyone could go through the ledger and by "following the money" so to speak figure out your "mattress" and even know exactly how many bitcoins it has in it. Furthermore, at some point when transaction fees become the norm it'll even cost you money (granted, likely only a small amount) every time you move bitcoins between your "wallet" and "mattress".
Let me know where I can invest my money relatively safely and get a 4% return per year, and maybe I'll take your advice. In the meantime I'll keep making payments on my mortgage, with an interest rate that's quite favorable when compared to real inflation numbers.
Actually, the "recycling" process (if you want to call it that) is pretty complete. Circuit boards are stripped of their components, which are then soaked in acid to recover the metals. What's left of the circuit boards are burned along with the plastics. Wire is burned to get rid of the insulation, and the left over copper recycled. Metal parts are recycled. Glass is smelted down to recover the lead. There actually isn't much left once it's been "processed".
Actually, I noticed that picture too. The three in middle lack an ATX connector plate, have the IEC female connector for the monitor power, and have eight slots for expansion slots. Those are old PCs, probably 286's or 386's. Maybe a 486. That does kind of suggest the US, because back then (late 80's, early 90's) most of the IBM-compatibles were sold in the US, though they were certainly available overseas. Probably kind of unusual to run across something like that in what must be a sea of discarded P4's and Athlon's. Maybe that's why they appear to have been saved? Some of that stuff actually can fetch a decent dollar on eBay in working condition thanks to the whole retro gaming thing.
Even then it may not stop the car. Some of them just set off the alarm but don't kill the engine.
Most any modern car with an automatic transmission that still uses a physical key has an interlock where the key cannot be turned all the way to off or locked if the transmission is not in park. This also means that the key cannot be removed unless the transmission is in park. Granted, on a car with a computer-controlled transmission, you might be able to put the gearshift in park while moving at speed (since the car is moving the computer won't engage the parking cowl) and remove the key which will engage the steering lock while the car is still moving.
Manual transmission cars handle things differently. Some have a button next to the key that acts similar to the transmission interlock in the sense that you must push the button to allow the key to to be moved to off/lock and be removed. On a car like this, you could engage the steering lock (and remove the key) while the car is in motion by pushing the button, and since the whole push-the-button-to-turn-the-car-off motion becomes part of your muscle memory after a while, it's possible in a panic situation that you might engage the steering lock unintentionally (though in a manual I would hope that most people would simply push the clutch or put the car in neutral first). Some cars, such as some Saab models had a better system where the transmission must be in reverse to lock the steering and remove the key.
I've found the typical consumer router to be pretty unreliable compared to an old PC acting as a router. It shouldn't be that way, with the router being much simpler with no moving parts compared to a full blown PC. Even more so since my router PC is over 15 years so. But sadly that doesn't seem to be the case. It's literally been years since I last had a problem with the PC I've used as a router (last time it went down I found that some of the capacitors had burst on the motherboard - soldered some replacements in and it's been flawless since). Sure, I do have to take it offline to update it or whatever, but that can be planned, which is much better than the typical Linksys junk which seems to cut out randomly every few weeks requiring a power cycle.
After 5 years of Obama, I'm willing to give Joe Biden a chance.