Do you agree that (mean-20%) is a meaningless definition of poverty?
Not arguing, just asking.
For instance, if I were a single bloke sharing a house with 3 others, in an upmarket housing estate, our individual incomes would be what, half?, of those around us, in their mortgaged hutches.
Yet we were the ones with Lotii, TR4s, down the pub every night, foreign holiday every 3 months, while they stayed in and drove their Mini Metros to work and looked forward to their monthly visit to the flicks and a cheap Biriani afterwards.
Money is their game. Career satisfaction can be yours. You choose.
My commute is 10 minutes, 15 on my pushbike, 40 if I walk.
I usually work a 37 hour week
Exceptionally, this week I'm going to work 50 hours.
Every extra hour I work I can claim as overtime, or I will flex off. Due to my tax situation, and general slackness, the latter will do.
If you don't routinely spend half your life at work, then it no longer has to be socially fulfilling. You can get in, do it, get out, and then, as I do usually, race yachts 1.5 days a week.
Anyway, thanks for the in-depth analysis, that's saved me 10c for a fortune cookie.
No probs buddy. My division has been making more money than its American uber-division ever since I've been here, that's thirteen years.
You just keep telling yourself you're better, we'll be taking your techniques and our attitude and turn them into profit. Oh, and our execs will be (and are) running your companies.
99/100 eh?. I bet you have never worked with a foreign engineer.
WTF has India got to do with it? You've got/much/ more serious competition than them. In 20 years India may be a serious competitor, by that time you'll be selling hot dogs or delivering the mail, if we can't figure out how to outsource those jobs.
a) C is twice as heavy at least, so in a free for all wrestling match it will win
b) C is funnier than S
c) S has the best shaggy dog story (the fight in the mall)
d) C has the best sidebars. The breakfast cereal one, in particular.
e) S is a bit, well, dull. Software hackers (or pizza delivery people) might be very interesting to themselves, but entrepeneurs are more exciting to read about for the rest of us.
I make that 4:1 in favour of the current heavyweight, Mr Cryptonomicon.
Which town? 33 k in Glittertown is pathetic, on the other hand 33 k in woop woop is fine.
Even in good old socialist Oz we vaguely have market forces, let's face it, IT admins are two a penny. Engineers get 45k straight out of uni, guess you chose the wrong career, if you were after money.
I've yet to see a demand-led pay case, but what the hell, our brilliant moderators seem to think that someone with more outgoings should get a higher wage. So, I learned to use a condom, now I get penalised becasue I don't have trailer-full of brats?
Cluestick: I will metamod you moron mods to newbie-.
I think the original poster had no experience, other than internships. That's not a bad place to be, but I'd guess 45k, tops, outside of NY.
"Laughing hysterically"? well, maybe. That first job is the hardest to crack, acting like a maniac is no real plus.
FWIW I have never taken a job for the money, after leaving uni. Oddly enough I am still within 1% of being the highest paid engineer in my businees region for my company.
I must confess that when I visited my American colleagues I was, to put it mildly, nonplussed by their relaxed attitude to actually doing any f'ing work at all while at the office. They have a nice canteen, great Internet access, big cubicles, we had to book ahead for lunch at the local restaurants... AND/they/ get a bonus for Christma
No wonder we get the contracts. And six weeks off a year.
There used to be a legal principle (in the UK) called 'betterment', so if the inusrance compay fitted new parts to your old rustheap you were partly liable for the cost, since the car was worth more repaired than it was before the accident.
Meanwhile here in Australia it is common practice for the insurance company to specify the use of secondhand parts. I do not know how they justify this.
"In basically every case where the ABS system is worth leaving in the car the vehicle has a limited slip diff. "
Is what you said. This is just plain wrong. Few manufacturers use Torsen diffs, which admittedly are at least durable, unlike most LSDs. However, using an LSD, any LSD, forces a compromise in the handling.
If, on the other hand, you have an open diff then you can adjust the slip ratio of every wheel on the car to give the desired handling characteristic.
And for that matter for >>90% of the drivers out there (including me) the ABS should be left switched on in most conditions. Almost any 4 channel ABS is better than no ABS.
The rule of thumb (as I remember) is that a robot driver would have to be 10-100 times safer than the current idiot behind the wheel, before it could be introduced.
This is driven by product liability issues, whereas a moment's thought would indicate that there is a net benefit to society even if the robot is only as unsafe as a human, since the driver can then be doing something productive rather than failing to observe stop signs, and picking his nose.
"The part that sucks is that sometimes the cruise control decides to gun the engine when going up a hill. It's unacceptable for a human driver to spike the tachometer to 4500 RPM near the top of the hill just because he's 5 MPH under his desired speed."
Yes, that's where the current level of automation is failing.
In the next generation you might tie the cruise control into GPS so it knows it is near the top of the hill, and you might have an option in the menu indicating how slack you want the cruise control to be, ie some sort of logic like " only downshift if the speed error is >6 mph", and "don't downshift if the top of the hill is within 50 yards".
As it is cruise and transmission calibrations are separate beasts, usually, and the cruise just drives the throttle according to some fairly simple control strategy.
Seems pretty easy to me. There again I have a 32 valve V8 with an auto trans, 0-60 in never mind I'll stop giggling soon.
If you refuse to learn to anticipate then I can see that is a problem, there agian I used to have a Mini automatic, which had a 38 hp engine, and it would cruise at 83 mph, and never, ever, did not respond appropriately to the throttle.
Your inability to drive the machine is, frankly, not the machine's fault.
I'm glad this is common knowledge. Can you explain how applying the brakes will cause an auto trans to wear? Cos I'm buggered if I can.
There again, you are ASE certified, so you must be telling the truth.
I'm just a mechanical engineer, but I work on these things (developing transmissions for 4 years, modelling electronic chassis control systems for 2), and I have never heard such a crock in my life.
Onyer. (No that isn't a scrubber on Buffy, it's an Australian compliment, short for "good on you").
This works very well, and to be honest I have not seen a downside. The rule is leave a two second gap, and watch the brake lights of the vehicles far ahead. I can drive for 40 miles on the freeway on cruise control without touching the brake sometimes, even in heavy traffic.
The downside is that you have to be religous about the gap, and that means accepting that various idiots will slide into it occasionally.
"Airbus aircraft always have been fly-by-wire, with a computer-style joystick instead of a traditional full-sized stick-and-yoke. Boeing is now also fly-by-wire, but keeps the big stick, which is now entirely electronically connected. There is no question of "early Airbuses being different" - on the contrary, Boeing have followed a path pioneered by Airbus."
Bollocks. Early Airbuses were not fly by wire. The first Airbus I know of was A300 in 1972, FBW was introduced on the A320 in 1988
" This is why decent traction control includes the use of limited slip differentials."
Complete bollocks.
The trend is towards using open diffs and using the brakes and engine control to simulate an LSD. Guess what, I do this stuff as my job.
Check out the BMW X5, as an example where I was not involved at all, and almost any Bosch based traction controlled car. We don't need a mechanical system when the brakes are better.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you agree that (mean-20%) is a meaningless definition of poverty?
Not arguing, just asking.
For instance, if I were a single bloke sharing a house with 3 others, in an upmarket housing estate, our individual incomes would be what, half?, of those around us, in their mortgaged hutches.
Yet we were the ones with Lotii, TR4s, down the pub every night, foreign holiday every 3 months, while they stayed in and drove their Mini Metros to work and looked forward to their monthly visit to the flicks and a cheap Biriani afterwards.
Money is their game. Career satisfaction can be yours. You choose.
My commute is 10 minutes, 15 on my pushbike, 40 if I walk.
I usually work a 37 hour week
Exceptionally, this week I'm going to work 50 hours.
Every extra hour I work I can claim as overtime, or I will flex off. Due to my tax situation, and general slackness, the latter will do.
If you don't routinely spend half your life at work, then it no longer has to be socially fulfilling. You can get in, do it, get out, and then, as I do usually, race yachts 1.5 days a week.
Anyway, thanks for the in-depth analysis, that's saved me 10c for a fortune cookie.
No probs buddy. My division has been making more money than its American uber-division ever since I've been here, that's thirteen years.
/much/ more serious competition than them. In 20 years India may be a serious competitor, by that time you'll be selling hot dogs or delivering the mail, if we can't figure out how to outsource those jobs.
You just keep telling yourself you're better, we'll be taking your techniques and our attitude and turn them into profit. Oh, and our execs will be (and are) running your companies.
99/100 eh?. I bet you have never worked with a foreign engineer.
WTF has India got to do with it? You've got
I was wrong
wrongitty wrong
I have read "All families are psychotic"
And enjoyed it very much
Gong!
(c) not all Limericks rhyme either
Call me a dumb Ozzie twat,
but who the hell is that?
Orwell I know
and Dickens, fo sho,
But I've never heard of Coupland
(c) Limericks aren't us.
a) C is twice as heavy at least, so in a free for all wrestling match it will win
b) C is funnier than S
c) S has the best shaggy dog story (the fight in the mall)
d) C has the best sidebars. The breakfast cereal one, in particular.
e) S is a bit, well, dull. Software hackers (or pizza delivery people) might be very interesting to themselves, but entrepeneurs are more exciting to read about for the rest of us.
I make that 4:1 in favour of the current heavyweight, Mr Cryptonomicon.
Fix! fix!
No. I just work when I'm at work. Outside of work I play hard.
I don't go to work to be friends, I get that outside of work, what is the hard thing to understand?
Which town? 33 k in Glittertown is pathetic, on the other hand 33 k in woop woop is fine.
Even in good old socialist Oz we vaguely have market forces, let's face it, IT admins are two a penny. Engineers get 45k straight out of uni, guess you chose the wrong career, if you were after money.
I've yet to see a demand-led pay case, but what the hell, our brilliant moderators seem to think that someone with more outgoings should get a higher wage. So, I learned to use a condom, now I get penalised becasue I don't have trailer-full of brats?
Cluestick: I will metamod you moron mods to newbie-.
I think the original poster had no experience, other than internships. That's not a bad place to be, but I'd guess 45k, tops, outside of NY.
"Laughing hysterically"? well, maybe. That first job is the hardest to crack, acting like a maniac is no real plus.
FWIW I have never taken a job for the money, after leaving uni. Oddly enough I am still within 1% of being the highest paid engineer in my businees region for my company.
Good oh. Still looks like boring-as-all-fuck-I-haven't-got-/anything/-to-do- today -itis to me.
Doesn't anyone think this looks like big effort + small reward on that old 4 quarters chart?
I was going to say that.
/they/ get a bonus for Christma
I must confess that when I visited my American colleagues I was, to put it mildly, nonplussed by their relaxed attitude to actually doing any f'ing work at all while at the office. They have a nice canteen, great Internet access, big cubicles, we had to book ahead for lunch at the local restaurants... AND
No wonder we get the contracts. And six weeks off a year.
You might want to check on that.
There used to be a legal principle (in the UK) called 'betterment', so if the inusrance compay fitted new parts to your old rustheap you were partly liable for the cost, since the car was worth more repaired than it was before the accident.
Meanwhile here in Australia it is common practice for the insurance company to specify the use of secondhand parts. I do not know how they justify this.
You may be thinking of CAD operators. Real engineers don't use CAD much, we do engineering, not drawing.
(I do actually agree with your main point)
"Can anyone argue that cruise control has actually increased road safety? I've seen plenty of statistics that say otherwise."
References please. I wuld be astonished to learn that a gizmo that has been proved to reduce road safety is legal for fitment by the manufacturer.
"In basically every case where the ABS system is worth leaving in the car the vehicle has a limited slip diff. "
Is what you said. This is just plain wrong. Few manufacturers use Torsen diffs, which admittedly are at least durable, unlike most LSDs. However, using an LSD, any LSD, forces a compromise in the handling.
If, on the other hand, you have an open diff then you can adjust the slip ratio of every wheel on the car to give the desired handling characteristic.
And for that matter for >>90% of the drivers out there (including me) the ABS should be left switched on in most conditions. Almost any 4 channel ABS is better than no ABS.
Ravenaux (4 speed epicyclic)
Hypoid
"I don't believe you're an engineer at all."
Fuck you.
You're assuming these towns called Sydney, Canberra (wherever the fuck that is) Melbourne and Rockhampton are in Australia.
Why so?
The rule of thumb (as I remember) is that a robot driver would have to be 10-100 times safer than the current idiot behind the wheel, before it could be introduced.
This is driven by product liability issues, whereas a moment's thought would indicate that there is a net benefit to society even if the robot is only as unsafe as a human, since the driver can then be doing something productive rather than failing to observe stop signs, and picking his nose.
"The part that sucks is that sometimes the cruise control decides to gun the engine when going up a hill. It's unacceptable for a human driver to spike the tachometer to 4500 RPM near the top of the hill just because he's 5 MPH under his desired speed."
Yes, that's where the current level of automation is failing.
In the next generation you might tie the cruise control into GPS so it knows it is near the top of the hill, and you might have an option in the menu indicating how slack you want the cruise control to be, ie some sort of logic like " only downshift if the speed error is >6 mph", and "don't downshift if the top of the hill is within 50 yards".
As it is cruise and transmission calibrations are separate beasts, usually, and the cruise just drives the throttle according to some fairly simple control strategy.
Seems pretty easy to me. There again I have a 32 valve V8 with an auto trans, 0-60 in never mind I'll stop giggling soon.
If you refuse to learn to anticipate then I can see that is a problem, there agian I used to have a Mini automatic, which had a 38 hp engine, and it would cruise at 83 mph, and never, ever, did not respond appropriately to the throttle.
Your inability to drive the machine is, frankly, not the machine's fault.
I'm glad this is common knowledge. Can you explain how applying the brakes will cause an auto trans to wear? Cos I'm buggered if I can.
There again, you are ASE certified, so you must be telling the truth.
I'm just a mechanical engineer, but I work on these things (developing transmissions for 4 years, modelling electronic chassis control systems for 2), and I have never heard such a crock in my life.
Onyer. (No that isn't a scrubber on Buffy, it's an Australian compliment, short for "good on you").
This works very well, and to be honest I have not seen a downside. The rule is leave a two second gap, and watch the brake lights of the vehicles far ahead. I can drive for 40 miles on the freeway on cruise control without touching the brake sometimes, even in heavy traffic.
The downside is that you have to be religous about the gap, and that means accepting that various idiots will slide into it occasionally.
"Airbus aircraft always have been fly-by-wire, with a computer-style joystick instead of a traditional full-sized stick-and-yoke. Boeing is now also fly-by-wire, but keeps the big stick, which is now entirely electronically connected. There is no question of "early Airbuses being different" - on the contrary, Boeing have followed a path pioneered by Airbus."
Bollocks. Early Airbuses were not fly by wire. The first Airbus I know of was A300 in 1972, FBW was introduced on the A320 in 1988
http://www.airbus.com/media/fly_by.asp
Or do you know better?
" This is why decent traction control includes the use of limited slip differentials."
Complete bollocks.
The trend is towards using open diffs and using the brakes and engine control to simulate an LSD. Guess what, I do this stuff as my job.
Check out the BMW X5, as an example where I was not involved at all, and almost any Bosch based traction controlled car. We don't need a mechanical system when the brakes are better.