The staff isn't judged on whether they are helpful or even friendly - their metrics are all about sales, without teaching them any skills at interaction that might make sales happen. [....] How about, just for giggles, trying service, just once?
You hit the nail on the head there. Unfortunately, sale monkeys are ranked based on sales. That's all. Not whether they know _what_ they're selling, or how to plug it in, or whether it will work under windows vista. Purely, solely, how much product (and extended warranty) they sell in a day.
From the staff's point of view, the trouble is that working retail pays the same whether you're selling groceries, TVs, or computers. So the kid who works in the technology store who has great product knowledge will get the hell out as soon as he graduates, because if he knows his way around technology he can can paid a lot more elsewhere, or at the very least get a lazier job that pays the same.
Wow, I thought the skill involved in assembling surface-mount boards would be worth more than 7 pounds an hour. How much would I get paid for stacking shelves in a UK supermarket?
Um, yes. If I'm being paid well until the company folds, I propose that I should have been intelligent enough to have put some money away for just such an event. Whereas if my wages slowly dwindle, chances are my savings will be eaten up in the day-to-day cost of living, so that if/when my employer "shuts its doors," I have no reserves.
I'd also like to point out that wages are not necessarily the main expense of a company. Also that a better way for a company to cut costs is not to reduce wages, but to reduce management bonuses, and golden parachutes for incompetent CxOs.
The _fuselage_ of the Concorde used to flex enough to be noticeable to the passengers inside. I think I read something about the galley, toilets etc being strategically placed so that at no point could a passenger look down the entire length of the aircraft, but I can't find this information in the wikipedia article.
I'd have to hunt to find the reference, but last I heard, roads in the USA are not fully funded by "road-related" taxes such as gas and registration fees. From memory there's something like a 30% shortfall that comes from other tax revenue. So increasing the tax on gas would merely serve to restore some of this balance.
One could also argue that there are many other negative externalities going unpaid by road user, like the extra pollution from burning gas, the extra police, fire and ambulance personel, dirty runoff from roads, etc.
I'm pretty sure that in the USA the taxes on gas and vehicle registration _don't_ totally fund the road network. Some funds for maintenance etc come from general federal funds. Sorry, you'll have to google the excat numbers yourself but I think it was in the order of a 30% shortfall that direct road and gas taxes don't cover. So increasing the tax on gas would merely restore some of this balance.
A pedant could also sugest hidden externalities, like the cost of polluting automobiles, toxic runoff from roads, healthcare for those injured in road accidents, etc.
+1 on the low power consumption. If you're running from batteries or solar, the ~2W drawn by the Raspberry Pi becomes a big problem compared to the milliwatts that an Arduino uses. Both boards are awesome (and I'll be buying a couple of RPs when they are released) but each board occupies a different niche.
Also, while the Arduino board costs about $30, a bare AVR is more like $3 (cheaper in bulk). So you can design a device with an Arduino and its exposed I/Os and simple IDE, then embed the CPU in other hardware for minimal cost.
I'll second that. On their own, Totino's pizzas are pretty awful, but if you think of them as a base that you add extra toppings to, they can be transformed into a decent meal, and still very cheap.
One of these days I'm going to put together a college cookbook, with hints like this, and a bunch of cocktail recipes to make cheap wine palatable...
And there are plenty of examples already out there for inspiration. Here's a setup that one guy did for his scooter that has all the tracking features you need (and plenty that you don't, however that big touchscreen is nice) http://www.janspace.com/b2evolution/arduino.php/2010/06/26/scooterputer
I may be feeding a troll here, but they're not taking money until they have a product to ship. They're not taking pre-orders either. So nobody is trying to scam money for vapourware here.
I'll add another anecdote here. Nokia 6110 Navigator, dropped onto concrete from 1.5m. Survived just fine. In an unrelated incident a few months later, I left it in my shorts when I put them through the washing machine. The phone was switched on at the time, went through a full warm-wash cycle, then got hung on the clothesline to dry. When I eventually found it, I pulled the back off the phone and laid it out to dry for a few days. Not only did it still work, the GPS worked, both cameras worked. If anything, it was better than before, because all the lint that phones tend to accumulate had ben washed off.
I eventually replaced this phone with an N97 Mini. I found out how rugged this is when I got so pissed off with the combination of Symbian and Vodafone Australia that I threw it at a brick wall. The phone still works brilliantly. Again, both cameras, the GPS, the touch screen, still 100% perfect. Unfortunately Symbian is still completely unsuitable for a smartphone and unreliable to the point of being useless, which is a shame because I love the hardware keyboard on this phone. Vodafone.au still blows too, which is also a shame because they're generally pretty good in Europe.
In TFA there was a pretty big LiPo battery attached to the device, like, as big as as an entire phone. I don't think it would be a big drain on the battery to take a GPS reading every 30 seconds, then send a quick burst of GSM data when the GPS location changes.
I think it would be much easier to quickly swap out the tracker for a new one when the battery died (let's say, every two weeks or so) than to find the right wire to splice into to parasitically draw power from the vehicle.
And yes, there usually _is_ GSM coverage in parking garages and tunnels. You've never made a call in a car park?
The new Arduino Uno dispenses with the FTDI chip and instead uses another Atmel microcontroller (an 8u2 I think) to do the USB to serial conversion. Apparently this is faster to copy programs to the arduino than the FTDI version and also gives the user the option to use custom firmware on the USB-serial converter, so the arduino can identify itself to the host as something other than a generic serial device.
When programming picaxes with a USB-serial converter, the maker of the picaxe recommends converters that use the Prolific PL2303 chipset. It seems that some converters don't properly emulate the serial "BREAK" command which some legacy devices rely on. I'm not sure which devices require this, but it's something to look into if the emulated serial port isn't behaving as expected. I still managed to pick up a PL2303-based converter on ebay for under ten bucks.
See other posts about the semiconductor fab using DOS. Plenty of industrial processes are controlled by an XP machine too. The need to maintain these systems isn't going to go away, just because the the computer on the receptionist's desk now uses the latest flavour of windows.
What bugs me is that writing these sorts of hand-wavy, content-sparse articles probably nets the guy more money than a lot of us make by working for a living.
Actually, that's _exactly_ what a vaccine is. Lots of vaccines, especially the early ones, were made from dead cultures of the disease they were supposed to prevent. Later on, scientists learned to isolate the unique antigens presented on infected cells, and made vaccines consisting of just these compounds. But all vaccination relies on "priming" the immune system with either a non-threatening verion of the pathogen, or some other non-threatening compound that, to the immune system, "looks" like the pathogen.
Amen. If you live in a cheap house, drive a cheap car and try to buy used goods it's still possible to survive on half wages, and enjoy one's free time more. My car was built in 1992. I can do do basic maintenance on it myself. My phone is a few years old, and this laptop I'm using here was built in 2006. I get at least 50% of my clothes from thrift stores, and buy food when it's in season. I brew my own beer. By not spending so many hours at a "job" I have time to shop around for bargains, prepare my own meals, work on my hobby projects and even post on Slashdot. Sure, It would be handy to have more money, but at the end of each week I'm usually a few bucks ahead, which I am slowly accumulating to buy a property or other investments. I plan to have the time to manage these investments myself instead of paying some rich banker to fuck me over. Maybe in ten years I'll regret the experiment and wish I'd got a proper career, but then again maybe I'll be sailing aorund the world in my own boat, which is rent-free and cheap as long as you're happy to travel with the wind and eat what's available where you are. Fortunately this tends to be very fresh seafood and seasonal vegetables, which is hardly an unhealthy diet.
No, it was very popular, and sold very well. It was ruined by spectacularly, probably criminally incompetent management. If you've spent _any_ time here on Slashdot, you would have heard many tales of great engineering ruined by stupid managers, well the Amiga saga wrote the textbook on that. Tragic.
I still fire up my A1200 now and again.... and if I hadn't killed my SX32 card for the CD32 I'd have it plugged into the TV right now.
Slashdot Mirror
The staff isn't judged on whether they are helpful or even friendly - their metrics are all about sales, without teaching them any skills at interaction that might make sales happen. [....] How about, just for giggles, trying service, just once?
You hit the nail on the head there. Unfortunately, sale monkeys are ranked based on sales. That's all. Not whether they know _what_ they're selling, or how to plug it in, or whether it will work under windows vista. Purely, solely, how much product (and extended warranty) they sell in a day.
From the staff's point of view, the trouble is that working retail pays the same whether you're selling groceries, TVs, or computers. So the kid who works in the technology store who has great product knowledge will get the hell out as soon as he graduates, because if he knows his way around technology he can can paid a lot more elsewhere, or at the very least get a lazier job that pays the same.
In other news, one individual has found a way around the TSA that works in his individual case.
Is that Learjet on standby in case a family member is sick and you need to visit them at short notice?
Wow, I thought the skill involved in assembling surface-mount boards would be worth more than 7 pounds an hour. How much would I get paid for stacking shelves in a UK supermarket?
I already *have* three-dimensional, biodegradeable genitalia,
The Raspberry Pi is probably powerful enough that its GPIO connectors could be broken out and made compatible with Arduino shields...
Monty Python's "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
Um, yes. If I'm being paid well until the company folds, I propose that I should have been intelligent enough to have put some money away for just such an event. Whereas if my wages slowly dwindle, chances are my savings will be eaten up in the day-to-day cost of living, so that if/when my employer "shuts its doors," I have no reserves.
I'd also like to point out that wages are not necessarily the main expense of a company. Also that a better way for a company to cut costs is not to reduce wages, but to reduce management bonuses, and golden parachutes for incompetent CxOs.
The _fuselage_ of the Concorde used to flex enough to be noticeable to the passengers inside. I think I read something about the galley, toilets etc being strategically placed so that at no point could a passenger look down the entire length of the aircraft, but I can't find this information in the wikipedia article.
I've heard that full-suspension recumbents are better at such things as curbs. The editor of www.autospeed.com built a nice one.
Wow, it took THAT long for someone to point out that she's cute? Congratulations Slashdot, this must be a new record.
I'd have to hunt to find the reference, but last I heard, roads in the USA are not fully funded by "road-related" taxes such as gas and registration fees. From memory there's something like a 30% shortfall that comes from other tax revenue. So increasing the tax on gas would merely serve to restore some of this balance.
One could also argue that there are many other negative externalities going unpaid by road user, like the extra pollution from burning gas, the extra police, fire and ambulance personel, dirty runoff from roads, etc.
I'm pretty sure that in the USA the taxes on gas and vehicle registration _don't_ totally fund the road network. Some funds for maintenance etc come from general federal funds. Sorry, you'll have to google the excat numbers yourself but I think it was in the order of a 30% shortfall that direct road and gas taxes don't cover. So increasing the tax on gas would merely restore some of this balance.
A pedant could also sugest hidden externalities, like the cost of polluting automobiles, toxic runoff from roads, healthcare for those injured in road accidents, etc.
+1 on the low power consumption. If you're running from batteries or solar, the ~2W drawn by the Raspberry Pi becomes a big problem compared to the milliwatts that an Arduino uses. Both boards are awesome (and I'll be buying a couple of RPs when they are released) but each board occupies a different niche.
Also, while the Arduino board costs about $30, a bare AVR is more like $3 (cheaper in bulk). So you can design a device with an Arduino and its exposed I/Os and simple IDE, then embed the CPU in other hardware for minimal cost.
In the 1940s people were a lot more physically active.
I'll second that. On their own, Totino's pizzas are pretty awful, but if you think of them as a base that you add extra toppings to, they can be transformed into a decent meal, and still very cheap.
One of these days I'm going to put together a college cookbook, with hints like this, and a bunch of cocktail recipes to make cheap wine palatable...
And there are plenty of examples already out there for inspiration. Here's a setup that one guy did for his scooter that has all the tracking features you need (and plenty that you don't, however that big touchscreen is nice) http://www.janspace.com/b2evolution/arduino.php/2010/06/26/scooterputer
I may be feeding a troll here, but they're not taking money until they have a product to ship. They're not taking pre-orders either. So nobody is trying to scam money for vapourware here.
I'll add another anecdote here. Nokia 6110 Navigator, dropped onto concrete from 1.5m. Survived just fine. In an unrelated incident a few months later, I left it in my shorts when I put them through the washing machine. The phone was switched on at the time, went through a full warm-wash cycle, then got hung on the clothesline to dry. When I eventually found it, I pulled the back off the phone and laid it out to dry for a few days. Not only did it still work, the GPS worked, both cameras worked. If anything, it was better than before, because all the lint that phones tend to accumulate had ben washed off.
I eventually replaced this phone with an N97 Mini. I found out how rugged this is when I got so pissed off with the combination of Symbian and Vodafone Australia that I threw it at a brick wall. The phone still works brilliantly. Again, both cameras, the GPS, the touch screen, still 100% perfect. Unfortunately Symbian is still completely unsuitable for a smartphone and unreliable to the point of being useless, which is a shame because I love the hardware keyboard on this phone. Vodafone .au still blows too, which is also a shame because they're generally pretty good in Europe.
And a huge proportion of that Argentinian soybean meal is Monsanto's Roundup-Ready (tm) GM variety. Sorry, I can't find the article right now.
In TFA there was a pretty big LiPo battery attached to the device, like, as big as as an entire phone. I don't think it would be a big drain on the battery to take a GPS reading every 30 seconds, then send a quick burst of GSM data when the GPS location changes.
I think it would be much easier to quickly swap out the tracker for a new one when the battery died (let's say, every two weeks or so) than to find the right wire to splice into to parasitically draw power from the vehicle.
And yes, there usually _is_ GSM coverage in parking garages and tunnels. You've never made a call in a car park?
The new Arduino Uno dispenses with the FTDI chip and instead uses another Atmel microcontroller (an 8u2 I think) to do the USB to serial conversion. Apparently this is faster to copy programs to the arduino than the FTDI version and also gives the user the option to use custom firmware on the USB-serial converter, so the arduino can identify itself to the host as something other than a generic serial device.
When programming picaxes with a USB-serial converter, the maker of the picaxe recommends converters that use the Prolific PL2303 chipset. It seems that some converters don't properly emulate the serial "BREAK" command which some legacy devices rely on. I'm not sure which devices require this, but it's something to look into if the emulated serial port isn't behaving as expected. I still managed to pick up a PL2303-based converter on ebay for under ten bucks.
See other posts about the semiconductor fab using DOS. Plenty of industrial processes are controlled by an XP machine too. The need to maintain these systems isn't going to go away, just because the the computer on the receptionist's desk now uses the latest flavour of windows.
What bugs me is that writing these sorts of hand-wavy, content-sparse articles probably nets the guy more money than a lot of us make by working for a living.
Actually, that's _exactly_ what a vaccine is. Lots of vaccines, especially the early ones, were made from dead cultures of the disease they were supposed to prevent. Later on, scientists learned to isolate the unique antigens presented on infected cells, and made vaccines consisting of just these compounds. But all vaccination relies on "priming" the immune system with either a non-threatening verion of the pathogen, or some other non-threatening compound that, to the immune system, "looks" like the pathogen.
Amen. If you live in a cheap house, drive a cheap car and try to buy used goods it's still possible to survive on half wages, and enjoy one's free time more. My car was built in 1992. I can do do basic maintenance on it myself. My phone is a few years old, and this laptop I'm using here was built in 2006. I get at least 50% of my clothes from thrift stores, and buy food when it's in season. I brew my own beer. By not spending so many hours at a "job" I have time to shop around for bargains, prepare my own meals, work on my hobby projects and even post on Slashdot. Sure, It would be handy to have more money, but at the end of each week I'm usually a few bucks ahead, which I am slowly accumulating to buy a property or other investments. I plan to have the time to manage these investments myself instead of paying some rich banker to fuck me over. Maybe in ten years I'll regret the experiment and wish I'd got a proper career, but then again maybe I'll be sailing aorund the world in my own boat, which is rent-free and cheap as long as you're happy to travel with the wind and eat what's available where you are. Fortunately this tends to be very fresh seafood and seasonal vegetables, which is hardly an unhealthy diet.
No, it was very popular, and sold very well. It was ruined by spectacularly, probably criminally incompetent management. If you've spent _any_ time here on Slashdot, you would have heard many tales of great engineering ruined by stupid managers, well the Amiga saga wrote the textbook on that. Tragic.
I still fire up my A1200 now and again.... and if I hadn't killed my SX32 card for the CD32 I'd have it plugged into the TV right now.