What's with all the anti-tech posts lately? We're supposed to be technology for technologies sake! Drive me to distraction, I want radar, a HUD, ten different kinds of TV, wireless internet, porn, inflatable sexbots
There are a lot of engineers on planet earth, and I assume that we are no more, or less ethical than the superset of all people on planet earth; though there is data that suggests we may be less ethical, or at least more prone to violent solutions (it was a slashdot article I'm too lazy to find). Assuming a number of hundreds who are capable and interested enough in building a thing, one or more will do it, no matter how unethical.
Given a specific scenario:The atom bomb is the one that comes to my mind first, and in that case I believe more lives were saved than lost. Better that none were lost, I'm not sure about the decision to actually USE it, but having seen it in action even unethical people have to consider the dire and near certain consequences of using such a weapon.
It's not the same situation. Very few people have access to the poor goat herder in gitmo. If you are in a situation to know that those with access will refuse the order, that this insubordination may have to stand (i.e. no one can be summoned to do the job) and you believe that torture in this situation hurts more people than it helps (i.e. 1), then you can and should refuse. If you know that someone else WILL follow the order, perhaps it is better to do it yourself, all evidence suggests torture is unreliable at best, you may be able to minimize his pain and suffering by appearing to hurt him while pulling the punches. In this case you are morally obligated to try.
Of course if you believe torture is effective, or necessary and will save lives...being squeamish is being immoral. Passing the buck, in my opinion, is never ethical.
However when you consider a planet full of 7 billion people, of which even.01% have the skillset required to invent something, it's impossible to know the field and it's impossible to truly believe that every one is moral. You may as well build the thing, and attempt to use it to do less harm.
Choosing to shelve a project for an ethical principle, for the reason I stated in my last sentence, makes sense only if you think you are uniquely clever and no one else will think of it.
That strikes me as profoundly arrogant. Perhaps a few people in the world at any time are justified in so thinking, but there are plenty of historical examples that suggest even really clever things can be conceived of independently.
Strictly speaking coders are not engineers. We use that term colloquially but I definitely got the impression that the article was speaking primarily of PEs.
Very few engineers of any sort are PEs, at least in the US. Whether you are a classical mechanical/electrical engineer, or a coder, seems to be purely a subjective distinction. Some coders I know are definitely engineers, some are not (by my world view).
I think the article applies to any of the above, but the cited examples may be the domain of PEs - which as stated in the article - are not funded at all like corporate engineers, and thus have concerns more relevant to their funding model. Plenty of coders are involved in making missiles, and in fact some distruptive things (like bitcoin) were created by coders. There are huge ramifications to bitcoin, should it become successful: tax evasion, illegal trug trafficking, import/export bypass, etc. All things our government was asked to interfere with, by someone, for some reason, that are bypassed by someone's experiment. You may not support "the war on drugs", but the freely elected government of the US chose to take it on in response to various pressures. There are ethical implications to providing a mechanism to easily bypass this to others.
This topic always comes up, but the bottom line is: if it can be done, someone will do it. The world is not populated by exclusively ethical people, engineers are no different. Having a thing and then choosing not to use it probably causes less actual destruction than not having it at all.
I'd wait until I've started eating the most expensive item on the menu before putting mine on. Just to see how much they really care about their policy.
1 GHz scope with 4 passive probes A good Multimeter, preferably one that can do capacitance measurements as well 2 DC bench supplies
I understand saying "scopes are dead" when talking about high speed measurements. Even DDR speeds are so high that any place you stick a probe you are being lied to and probably chasing your tail. In this case I have to trust sweeps and margining, same goes for high speed serial (though below 5GHz you can trust a scope reasonably well, if you are careful).
But I use a scope an awful lot, often in conjunction with HW I add to the board to ease apparatus (like kelvin sense resistors, etc.)
There are people who are allergic to this. 9/10s of SW vs HW guy debates center around this. HW guys need something fast that exercises the hardware thoroughly so that it can be tested and respun/shipped. SW guys need code they can continue to work with long after the HW guy is on the next big thing.
It's a common case where a good software engineer will refuse to produce quick and dirty code that he'll have to rewrite later, just to test the hardware. It usually takes manager intervention to make it happen, and frequently a different personality and a who other team to do it. Looking at my software team write now, we have 2 guys who will do whatever it takes to make it work and who enjoy that, and the rest of their team sneers at them and periodically refuse to allow their code on to the main branch. But without those 2 guys we'd be out of business. On the other hand the code tree is 5 years old, and they've managed to change directions and keep up with mktg, so without the rest of the team writing maintainable code, we'd probably be out of business.
The real issue is calling someone "bad" because he doesn't think like you do.
But the main point is that this corporate officer is twisting company policy to his personal benefit of $77 million/yr and the majority of owners of the company don't like him screwing around with their investment that way.
I am confused by how that statement can be true. If the majority of the owners disagree with his compensation, how can the majority of the owners not go fix the problem? Did they sign a terrible contract?
Or by majority do they mean 5 entities versus 1 entity, with the 5 entities owning an insufficient amount of the company to influence policy? If this is the case then that's how the ball bounces. He's got more on the line, if he feels his compensation doesn't harm the company then it's his call.
Nobody needs that much cash, and nobody deserves that much cash. It's not like he did everything himself.
First, as long as he's spending it in volume, no one should care. The issue with wealthy people is they like to collect it and hold on to it and be on boards of directors to ensure they never lose it. If he's blowing it on islands and boats and fast cars, he's a great contributor. His money is up for grabs to anyone who wants to work for it. This is a great situation.
Second, we're not talking about taking his compensation and giving it to employees. We're talking about the shareholders not liking how much of the profits HE is getting. Shareholders are always the least valuable contibutors to any company. They are parasites, parasites with control, but parasites. Employees of a company are perfectly ok with 0 profit: salaries are paid. But investors are not happy with that, they will cut heads and salaries as much as possible to maximize that profit number. Taking money away from them, goes back to my first point: it's a good thing when the person doing the taking is spending it.
Thirdly, if people like him do not exist, then no one will try. Ellison, Gates, Jobs all exist as the motivator for business types to do something other than drink and screw. As role models go, he's doing fine.
While I'm not a fan of Steve or Apple, Apple PCs are still superior PCs. It's just not in "geeky" stuff like processor speed or 3D performance which Apple has no control over, it's in some tangibles like quality and some other things that I personally don't give a shit about ("Design", "Form Factor").
I have several Mac Pro's in my home, they have been in service for 5+ years without a single need to get tech support (and I won't pay for apple care or any such thing), compared to the other name brand (Dell/HP) and no-name (new egg ala cart) options which always seem to be blowing something, usually with respect to power delivery (PSU usually, caps occasionally) or BIOS compatibility with anything modern.
The tribalism has two edges, on one hand people rant and rave over things that are probably imaginary, on the other hand to maintain that tribalism, one has to deliver a product that the tribe wants to stand behind. If our overpriced Mac's started to behave as shitty HP or Dell laptops (or god help us, Asus and points east), then that tribe would dissolve.
Much though I find their actions disgusting, and hope they die young, painfully and soon... sovereignty is something that, in the age of the internet, is willfully disobeyed and more frequently, is necessary as a result of a failure in government.
However, many jobs which require STEM degrees fall under "IT" based on job market. For example a microprocessor designer may be considered "IT" to someone sufficiently far removed from knowing what IT really is (i.e. wall street analyst).
I have been listed as an IT industry worker more than once in my career, by virtue of who my employer is. No one cares that I don't give a rats ass what my company sells, nor does it bear any resemblance to what I do: all that matters to me and my career are the products I make. However to MBA types, your employer is your industry, and your industry defines you.
It uses "literary" and "research" in the same sentence. You have to use the "special" definition of research in this case, and by special I mean mentally challenged, and by definition of research I mean making shit up. So with this footnote, you get the general idea of what they're talking about.
How do you pay for serious investigative journalism, something I think that we are seriously lacking and suffering from, if you can't pay for your journalists? You cannot expect the masses to read lengthy and detailed reports on Syria, NSA, etc. and those things cost real money to investigate. Those guys are off watching Miley shake her ass, and honestly those stories are cheap to produce and highly profitable (and frequently just video clips from where miley last shaked her ass, no work at all!).
It's always been for the more discerning types to read the paper, understand it, and start shouting out loud (i.e. subscribers). This in turn sells the papers to casual observers who are skeptical but scared enough to verify. But the paywall doesn't do that, people see the paywall and run elsewhere and either get puddle deep, misinformed or even outright misleading coverage from fox/cnn/msnbc and content themselves with drivel. Further, because the content is online on someone's server, and there's no hard copy, it feels frequently as if the story changes every time you read it. (And on some websites, it DOES!).
The paywall needs to be fast and easy, one click shopping. Buy the story, receive an epub (that you can view in the web browser). Allow libraries to archive the epub and loan out a copy at a time, etc. I agree, stop with the goddamn video, words are far more searchable and faster to consume. What we want is actual journalism. But it has to be paid for (and worth paying for), ad revenue alone won't cut it with all the distraction out there.
"Banned" is a strong word, there are at least 3 Tesla's on the road in Austin, TX, One parks in my parking garage, I get to drool on it for free. I feel that pro-oil interests are probably not as powerful as dealer issues.
But everyone should do their part and vigorously drive dealer margin out of the sales price on any vehicle they buy. I usually go pretty far playing one against the other, but I may go farther and farther afield just to be a dick.
Slashdot Mirror
What's with all the anti-tech posts lately? We're supposed to be technology for technologies sake! Drive me to distraction, I want radar, a HUD, ten different kinds of TV, wireless internet, porn, inflatable sexbots
Let the mundanes worry about the safety crap.
There are a lot of engineers on planet earth, and I assume that we are no more, or less ethical than the superset of all people on planet earth; though there is data that suggests we may be less ethical, or at least more prone to violent solutions (it was a slashdot article I'm too lazy to find). Assuming a number of hundreds who are capable and interested enough in building a thing, one or more will do it, no matter how unethical.
Given a specific scenario:The atom bomb is the one that comes to my mind first, and in that case I believe more lives were saved than lost. Better that none were lost, I'm not sure about the decision to actually USE it, but having seen it in action even unethical people have to consider the dire and near certain consequences of using such a weapon.
It's not the same situation. Very few people have access to the poor goat herder in gitmo. If you are in a situation to know that those with access will refuse the order, that this insubordination may have to stand (i.e. no one can be summoned to do the job) and you believe that torture in this situation hurts more people than it helps (i.e. 1), then you can and should refuse. If you know that someone else WILL follow the order, perhaps it is better to do it yourself, all evidence suggests torture is unreliable at best, you may be able to minimize his pain and suffering by appearing to hurt him while pulling the punches. In this case you are morally obligated to try.
Of course if you believe torture is effective, or necessary and will save lives...being squeamish is being immoral. Passing the buck, in my opinion, is never ethical.
However when you consider a planet full of 7 billion people, of which even .01% have the skillset required to invent something, it's impossible to know the field and it's impossible to truly believe that every one is moral. You may as well build the thing, and attempt to use it to do less harm.
Choosing to shelve a project for an ethical principle, for the reason I stated in my last sentence, makes sense only if you think you are uniquely clever and no one else will think of it.
That strikes me as profoundly arrogant. Perhaps a few people in the world at any time are justified in so thinking, but there are plenty of historical examples that suggest even really clever things can be conceived of independently.
Strictly speaking coders are not engineers. We use that term colloquially but I definitely got the impression that the article was speaking primarily of PEs.
Very few engineers of any sort are PEs, at least in the US. Whether you are a classical mechanical/electrical engineer, or a coder, seems to be purely a subjective distinction. Some coders I know are definitely engineers, some are not (by my world view).
I think the article applies to any of the above, but the cited examples may be the domain of PEs - which as stated in the article - are not funded at all like corporate engineers, and thus have concerns more relevant to their funding model. Plenty of coders are involved in making missiles, and in fact some distruptive things (like bitcoin) were created by coders. There are huge ramifications to bitcoin, should it become successful: tax evasion, illegal trug trafficking, import/export bypass, etc. All things our government was asked to interfere with, by someone, for some reason, that are bypassed by someone's experiment. You may not support "the war on drugs", but the freely elected government of the US chose to take it on in response to various pressures. There are ethical implications to providing a mechanism to easily bypass this to others.
This topic always comes up, but the bottom line is: if it can be done, someone will do it. The world is not populated by exclusively ethical people, engineers are no different. Having a thing and then choosing not to use it probably causes less actual destruction than not having it at all.
I'd wait until I've started eating the most expensive item on the menu before putting mine on. Just to see how much they really care about their policy.
1 GHz scope with 4 passive probes
A good Multimeter, preferably one that can do capacitance measurements as well
2 DC bench supplies
I understand saying "scopes are dead" when talking about high speed measurements. Even DDR speeds are so high that any place you stick a probe you are being lied to and probably chasing your tail. In this case I have to trust sweeps and margining, same goes for high speed serial (though below 5GHz you can trust a scope reasonably well, if you are careful).
But I use a scope an awful lot, often in conjunction with HW I add to the board to ease apparatus (like kelvin sense resistors, etc.)
seriously, I would not trust US hardware and software, either.
Nor I, it's all manufactured in China, completely with secret firmware updates.
He was very nearly bagpiped though.
There are people who are allergic to this. 9/10s of SW vs HW guy debates center around this. HW guys need something fast that exercises the hardware thoroughly so that it can be tested and respun/shipped. SW guys need code they can continue to work with long after the HW guy is on the next big thing.
It's a common case where a good software engineer will refuse to produce quick and dirty code that he'll have to rewrite later, just to test the hardware. It usually takes manager intervention to make it happen, and frequently a different personality and a who other team to do it. Looking at my software team write now, we have 2 guys who will do whatever it takes to make it work and who enjoy that, and the rest of their team sneers at them and periodically refuse to allow their code on to the main branch. But without those 2 guys we'd be out of business. On the other hand the code tree is 5 years old, and they've managed to change directions and keep up with mktg, so without the rest of the team writing maintainable code, we'd probably be out of business.
The real issue is calling someone "bad" because he doesn't think like you do.
But the main point is that this corporate officer is twisting company policy to his personal benefit of $77 million/yr and the majority of owners of the company don't like him screwing around with their investment that way.
I am confused by how that statement can be true. If the majority of the owners disagree with his compensation, how can the majority of the owners not go fix the problem? Did they sign a terrible contract?
Or by majority do they mean 5 entities versus 1 entity, with the 5 entities owning an insufficient amount of the company to influence policy? If this is the case then that's how the ball bounces. He's got more on the line, if he feels his compensation doesn't harm the company then it's his call.
Nobody needs that much cash, and nobody deserves that much cash. It's not like he did everything himself.
First, as long as he's spending it in volume, no one should care. The issue with wealthy people is they like to collect it and hold on to it and be on boards of directors to ensure they never lose it. If he's blowing it on islands and boats and fast cars, he's a great contributor. His money is up for grabs to anyone who wants to work for it. This is a great situation.
Second, we're not talking about taking his compensation and giving it to employees. We're talking about the shareholders not liking how much of the profits HE is getting. Shareholders are always the least valuable contibutors to any company. They are parasites, parasites with control, but parasites. Employees of a company are perfectly ok with 0 profit: salaries are paid. But investors are not happy with that, they will cut heads and salaries as much as possible to maximize that profit number. Taking money away from them, goes back to my first point: it's a good thing when the person doing the taking is spending it.
Thirdly, if people like him do not exist, then no one will try. Ellison, Gates, Jobs all exist as the motivator for business types to do something other than drink and screw. As role models go, he's doing fine.
While I'm not a fan of Steve or Apple, Apple PCs are still superior PCs. It's just not in "geeky" stuff like processor speed or 3D performance which Apple has no control over, it's in some tangibles like quality and some other things that I personally don't give a shit about ("Design", "Form Factor").
I have several Mac Pro's in my home, they have been in service for 5+ years without a single need to get tech support (and I won't pay for apple care or any such thing), compared to the other name brand (Dell/HP) and no-name (new egg ala cart) options which always seem to be blowing something, usually with respect to power delivery (PSU usually, caps occasionally) or BIOS compatibility with anything modern.
The tribalism has two edges, on one hand people rant and rave over things that are probably imaginary, on the other hand to maintain that tribalism, one has to deliver a product that the tribe wants to stand behind. If our overpriced Mac's started to behave as shitty HP or Dell laptops (or god help us, Asus and points east), then that tribe would dissolve.
You need some TERRORISM in there some where.
Much though I find their actions disgusting, and hope they die young, painfully and soon... sovereignty is something that, in the age of the internet, is willfully disobeyed and more frequently, is necessary as a result of a failure in government.
Everyone knows that Hitler was Obama's fault.
However, many jobs which require STEM degrees fall under "IT" based on job market. For example a microprocessor designer may be considered "IT" to someone sufficiently far removed from knowing what IT really is (i.e. wall street analyst).
I have been listed as an IT industry worker more than once in my career, by virtue of who my employer is. No one cares that I don't give a rats ass what my company sells, nor does it bear any resemblance to what I do: all that matters to me and my career are the products I make. However to MBA types, your employer is your industry, and your industry defines you.
For starters, that ain't milk.
Going out on a limb, the idea of defaulting to second class citizens promotable only through military service? Patriotism without cause?
It uses "literary" and "research" in the same sentence. You have to use the "special" definition of research in this case, and by special I mean mentally challenged, and by definition of research I mean making shit up. So with this footnote, you get the general idea of what they're talking about.
test subjects must be faulty if they don't immediately believe the academic's interpretation of some data presented to them.
Probably the actual discovery in this experiment: There were a lot of faulty test subjects.
How do you pay for serious investigative journalism, something I think that we are seriously lacking and suffering from, if you can't pay for your journalists? You cannot expect the masses to read lengthy and detailed reports on Syria, NSA, etc. and those things cost real money to investigate. Those guys are off watching Miley shake her ass, and honestly those stories are cheap to produce and highly profitable (and frequently just video clips from where miley last shaked her ass, no work at all!).
It's always been for the more discerning types to read the paper, understand it, and start shouting out loud (i.e. subscribers). This in turn sells the papers to casual observers who are skeptical but scared enough to verify. But the paywall doesn't do that, people see the paywall and run elsewhere and either get puddle deep, misinformed or even outright misleading coverage from fox/cnn/msnbc and content themselves with drivel. Further, because the content is online on someone's server, and there's no hard copy, it feels frequently as if the story changes every time you read it. (And on some websites, it DOES!).
The paywall needs to be fast and easy, one click shopping. Buy the story, receive an epub (that you can view in the web browser). Allow libraries to archive the epub and loan out a copy at a time, etc. I agree, stop with the goddamn video, words are far more searchable and faster to consume. What we want is actual journalism. But it has to be paid for (and worth paying for), ad revenue alone won't cut it with all the distraction out there.
My keys keep flipping you off.
Palpatine is entirely too compentent to refer to anyone in a government I'm familiar with.
Except Wiener, at this point he pretty much has nothing to hide. May as well vote him in, he'll surely flip off at least one person who deserves it...
"Banned" is a strong word, there are at least 3 Tesla's on the road in Austin, TX, One parks in my parking garage, I get to drool on it for free. I feel that pro-oil interests are probably not as powerful as dealer issues.
But everyone should do their part and vigorously drive dealer margin out of the sales price on any vehicle they buy. I usually go pretty far playing one against the other, but I may go farther and farther afield just to be a dick.