Any form of semi-manditory software QA, like UL for code, will happen over the rotting corpse of Bill Gates, Bill Joy, Steve Jobs, and Robert Young.
A UL for software would greatly hurt FOSS, as few FOSS projects could afford the cost to get registered. No stickee, no washee - you would find GREAT resistance to deploying FOSS.
First funny one: we had a guy list as an accomplishment on his resume (for a DSP software engineer) his marriage to his wife.
Second funny one: A friend of mine was part of the team interviewing folks where he works. During one inDUHvidual's interview, my friend closed his notebook and put down his pen 5 minutes into the interview. The higher muckitymucks noticed this, and after the interview said to him "OK, you noticed something we didn't - what was it?"
The inDUHvidual kept talking about how she had worked at "bom-BUH-deer" aerospace here in town. Yes, she was really a good worker at "bom-BUH-deer".
Bombardier is a Canadian company, and is pronounced according to French rules - "bom-BAR-dee-AY". And they are VERY clear about that to their employees.
The problem is finding a shielding material that will absorb the radiation that will affect a human body, without transmuting radiation that would pass harmlessly through a human into radiation harmful to a human. Thus, you need a shielding material that is cheap and has the same absorbsion parameters as a human.
If you want an immediate response, get off your fat ass and come to my office. If you cannot, then pick up the phone and call me.
One of the BIGGEST problems in today's world is this "I MUST HANDLE THIS NOW!" mindeset we find ourselves in.
No, you DO NOT NEED AN IMMEDIATE RESPONSE.
Unless the building is on fire, or somebody is in cardiac arrest, or "they've pushed the big red button", you can damn well wait a few minutes (hours, days even) for a response.
Too damn many people think they are being "productive" because they are on the phone all the time. No, you are not being "productive". You are being busy. There is a big difference.
Forcing people to wait for things makes them assess the value of those things, and culls the wheat from the chaff. BS requests get dropped, important requests get made.
But too many people think they can wait until the last minute, then dump a load of shit onto somebody else and make them jump. They use that as a tool to get what they want - they condition you to jump when they ring the bell, and eventually they can slip past anything they want.
We are turning into a world of three year olds - "I WANNA GLASS OF WATER - NOW!".
There is a fundimental flaw in your idea, which is why no-one has done it:
OK, you have a module plugged into your USB port providing temperature to the computer. Oops, the computer has crashed - now who takes care of the problem?
OK, the computer has rebooted, and sees that it is too cold in the house - the furnace has failed. OK, so now what does the computer do - start crunching SETI@Home packets to heat the place?
OK, the computer emails you. The email goes out, and then the computer picks it up and throws it into your mail queue.
OK, you don't have the computer getting your email - you get it via Webmail. So, your computer is in Ohio, and you are in Hawai'i. Now, what do YOU do about the furnace?
There is already a solution to the problem of keeping your pipes from freezing - it is called an electric space heater. Set it to 45 degrees. Place it in the basement away from any flammable items. If the furnace fails, the heater will automatically keep things from freezing.
Sure, a long term power outage will prevent this from working. Guess what - it would also prevent your computer from working. Yes, a UPS will keep the machine running for a while - how many minutes?
The other solution is even more ingenious - it is called "a neighbor".
Lastly, if you WANT temperature monitoring for your computer - look at Dallas Semiconductor's One Wire system. They have cheap sensors that will report the temperature over 1 wire - a little programming on the parallel port and you can read them.
But really, try the simpler solutions first. They will work better.
But the silly thing is, Stupor8 is NOT cheap - they are consistently $10 or more a night more expensive than Motel6 or other chains.
The reason I *used* to do business with them was that they *used* to have a pretty good continental breakfast. However, other motels are offering that, and more and more Stupid8s think "Continental breakfast" means some nasty coffee that has been on the burner since the '60s and a couple of cheap donuts, "served" starting at 7:00 (by which time I am usually 200 miles way).
But your point is correct - Stupid8 does not care about its customers, and they are starting to see the effect on their bottom line. Rather than correcting the fundimental problem, they are resorting to spam, misleading mail, and other nasty tricks to try to make more money.
What I am surprised that I have not seen yet is McDonalds investing in some robotics.
Consider how the average McD's runs - there is a proceedure for EVERYTHING, and they pretty tightly control everything, as well - the time the fries are in the oil, the time burgers are on the grill.
Let the minium wage be raised a few times more, and I would not be surprised to see a McFryer that you load a pallet of frozen fries into, and it handles thawing, frying, drying, salting, and storing, and a McFlipper that takes a cartridge of meat patties, grills, flips, and stacks them onto buns.
I can foresee the day when your average McD's has one PFY busing tables while acting as a meatware speech recognition unit and occasionally loading a cartrige of food into a machine, with an ATM style interface in the store for the normal customers, and all the cooking is done by machine.
True, that is too expensive for them to do, today. But like I said, a couple of hikes in the minimum wage, maybe a law about health insurance, and it will happen.
You already have several robots in your home
on
The Robots are Coming
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
There is no reason for any individual to have a robot in his home.
You already have several robots in your home, more than likely:
You have a robot for cleaning your dishes
You have a robot for cleaning your clothes
You have a robot for drying your clothes
You have a robot for maintaining the temperature of your house
In addition, there are folks like me who have robots for preparing their coffee in the morning. Some have robots for baking bread, and for making ice cream.
Most people make the mistake of thinking ROBOT = anthropomorphic device but that is not true.
Now, if you want to say "There is no reason for any individual to have an anthropromorphic robot in their home" you are correct, today
But as my mother, who was born in the 1920's once said to me, "When I was your age, if somebody had told me I would have a computer in the home, I would not have believed them - simply because I could not have seen any use for one." This, as she was playing cards on her computer.
Be careful, or you may find yourself up there with the "there is a market for 6 computers in the world", or the (non-quote) "640K is enough for anybody".
With every bank trying to screw you for using any ATMs other than theirs, and with the level of acceptance of credit cards nowadays, who needs ATMs anymore?
It used to be that when I travelled, I carried a fair amount of cash with me. Not anymore - I simply find that I don't need it - gas, food, lodging, all are put on the credit card.
Furthurmore, should I feel the need for cash, my local grocery store allows me to get cash back from a credit card purchase. I simply make a habit of getting $40 back when I buy groceries, and then keeping about $200 at the house. Thus, I rarely if ever need an ATM under normal conditions.
It is pretty stupid - I am sure running an ATM costs a bank far less than paying for a teller, but they seem bound and determined to drive us all away from using ATMs.
At this time, general aviation aircraft do not have to file a flight plan - just stay out of certain volumes of the sky. I have a friend who has a hangar attached to his garage, and a runway out back.
Just last weekend the weather was unusually nice, and he said "Let's get Mr. Cessna's aluminum kite out" - so we hopped in the 182 and took off - buzzed another friend's farm, flew around, practiced stalling, and so on.
We just had to make sure we stayed out from the airbase's airspace.
So, this would be little different than owning a Cessna in that regard.
However, unlike a car, an aircraft has to go in once a year for its annual inspection, where they tear the thing down and make sure all is well. I would assume that this thing would be no different.
So the question is, can you do without your car for a couple of weeks of the year?
There could be - I don't know is an APFSDSDU round would notice something as soft as a human body - it might pass right through with minimum energy transfer.
Sure, the human would have a nasty hole from the passage, but the amount of energy transferred from the round wouldn't be nearly as much as when the round hit something hard.
Now, were the unfortunate soldier in question wearing a ceramic trauma plate under his armor....
The main cannon on an A-10 is not a "vulcan" - that would be an 20MM 6 barrel rotary cannon.
The main cannon on an A-10 is a seven barrel 30MM GAU-8A Avenger.
However, one of the optional weapon systems that can be mounted on an A-10's center hardpoint is an M-61 20MM Vulcan pod - for that "light housekeeping work" that the Avenger is overkill for.
I would take issue to the oft-quoted (even in this discussion) statement "The customer is always right".
The customer is not always right. However, the customer always thinks he is right.
If you blindly follow your customer's whims you will end up with a car designed by Homer Simpson that nobody wants.
If you LISTEN to your customers, and then THINK about what they said, however, you will end up with a product that they will want to buy.
However, the tricky bit is dealing with a customer that you disagree with - you must show tact in how you blow them off.
Case in point: I used to be a regular customer of the Super8 motel chain when I travelled. I would stay there preferentially to other chains. (you may note the use of the past tense in those statements).
One day I received one of those "fake check" mails from them - what looks like a real check, but in.0001 point microfont on the bottom says "by cashing this check you agree to join this plan that is going to cost you and arm, leg, and the gonad of your choice, for a cost orders of magnitude greater than this check is worth."
Those sorts of things piss me off. I found the name of the CEO of the company, and sent him a nice letter explaining that I felt such advertising was unacceptable, and that while I was sure that they didn't really MEAN to do that, they should look into the company that they hired to do this and re-evaluate their position.
In short, I gave them every possible out to use to say "OOPS! Sorry!". I was NOT accusitory in the letter.
I seriously injured my jaw on the floor upon reading their response. It wasn't a polite-but-bland "YourConcernsAreImportantToUsThankYou" form response. It was not a "You are right, the responsible individuals have been sacked" reponse.
It was a "Shut up! You Suck! We aren't doing anything wrong! This is NOT misleading! IS NOT! NEENER NEENER NEENER! We are making money doing this, HOW DARE YOU CRITICIZE US!" response.
Needless to say, they lost my business, and I take every opportunity to pass this story along to others.
In summary - listen to your customers - they may not always BE right, but they always THINK they are right. If you don't THINK they are right, then DON'T just blow them off.
Assuming this is NOT a story troll as some have asserted, I raise the same question that I did on the previous story:
Are the pumps and hoses they are using food-grade hoses, or are they using windshield wiper pumps like the last guys?
Again, when designing something that handles substances that are going into your body, you need to be VERY careful about what comes into contact with those substances - even more so when what you are handling is composed of two very powerful solvents (water and alcohol).
The chemicals that can leech out of non-food grade stuff are NASTY - as in "Well, we can put you on the list for a new liver, but...."
Yes, food grade pumps and tubes are more expensive than going down to the salvage yard. But a liver transplant or chemotherapy is even MORE expensive!
Obviously you've never read any of Alan Dean Foster's Commonwealth novels - the primary 2 races of the Commonwealth are human and thranx, who are insectiod.
AND the thranx are a damn sight "nicer" than the humans.
AND they aren't a "hive mind" or any of that crap - they are individuals.
Slashdot Mirror
Nuke War.
Gotta be Nuke War.
Got change for 25 million people?
Consider what would happen to the number of programs MS could sell if they had to have approval.
No, they WOULD NOT like this.
Any form of semi-manditory software QA, like UL for code, will happen over the rotting corpse of Bill Gates, Bill Joy, Steve Jobs, and Robert Young.
A UL for software would greatly hurt FOSS, as few FOSS projects could afford the cost to get registered. No stickee, no washee - you would find GREAT resistance to deploying FOSS.
First funny one: we had a guy list as an accomplishment on his resume (for a DSP software engineer) his marriage to his wife.
Second funny one: A friend of mine was part of the team interviewing folks where he works. During one inDUHvidual's interview, my friend closed his notebook and put down his pen 5 minutes into the interview. The higher muckitymucks noticed this, and after the interview said to him "OK, you noticed something we didn't - what was it?"
The inDUHvidual kept talking about how she had worked at "bom-BUH-deer" aerospace here in town. Yes, she was really a good worker at "bom-BUH-deer".
Bombardier is a Canadian company, and is pronounced according to French rules - "bom-BAR-dee-AY". And they are VERY clear about that to their employees.
The problem is finding a shielding material that will absorb the radiation that will affect a human body, without transmuting radiation that would pass harmlessly through a human into radiation harmful to a human. Thus, you need a shielding material that is cheap and has the same absorbsion parameters as a human.
I suggest using spammers.
I must disagree with you.
If you want an immediate response, get off your fat ass and come to my office. If you cannot, then pick up the phone and call me.
One of the BIGGEST problems in today's world is this "I MUST HANDLE THIS NOW!" mindeset we find ourselves in.
No, you DO NOT NEED AN IMMEDIATE RESPONSE.
Unless the building is on fire, or somebody is in cardiac arrest, or "they've pushed the big red button", you can damn well wait a few minutes (hours, days even) for a response.
Too damn many people think they are being "productive" because they are on the phone all the time. No, you are not being "productive". You are being busy. There is a big difference.
Forcing people to wait for things makes them assess the value of those things, and culls the wheat from the chaff. BS requests get dropped, important requests get made.
But too many people think they can wait until the last minute, then dump a load of shit onto somebody else and make them jump. They use that as a tool to get what they want - they condition you to jump when they ring the bell, and eventually they can slip past anything they want.
We are turning into a world of three year olds - "I WANNA GLASS OF WATER - NOW!".
There is a fundimental flaw in your idea, which is why no-one has done it:
OK, you have a module plugged into your USB port providing temperature to the computer. Oops, the computer has crashed - now who takes care of the problem?
OK, the computer has rebooted, and sees that it is too cold in the house - the furnace has failed. OK, so now what does the computer do - start crunching SETI@Home packets to heat the place?
OK, the computer emails you. The email goes out, and then the computer picks it up and throws it into your mail queue.
OK, you don't have the computer getting your email - you get it via Webmail. So, your computer is in Ohio, and you are in Hawai'i. Now, what do YOU do about the furnace?
There is already a solution to the problem of keeping your pipes from freezing - it is called an electric space heater. Set it to 45 degrees. Place it in the basement away from any flammable items. If the furnace fails, the heater will automatically keep things from freezing.
Sure, a long term power outage will prevent this from working. Guess what - it would also prevent your computer from working. Yes, a UPS will keep the machine running for a while - how many minutes?
The other solution is even more ingenious - it is called "a neighbor".
Lastly, if you WANT temperature monitoring for your computer - look at Dallas Semiconductor's One Wire system. They have cheap sensors that will report the temperature over 1 wire - a little programming on the parallel port and you can read them.
But really, try the simpler solutions first. They will work better.
No offence taken, because that is just my point - some "customers" aren't worth the money.
But you can blow a customer off nicely, or you can piss them off - and no matter what else, pissing them off unnecessarily is not a good idea.
SCO, perhaps? Maybe Microsoft?
But the silly thing is, Stupor8 is NOT cheap - they are consistently $10 or more a night more expensive than Motel6 or other chains.
The reason I *used* to do business with them was that they *used* to have a pretty good continental breakfast. However, other motels are offering that, and more and more Stupid8s think "Continental breakfast" means some nasty coffee that has been on the burner since the '60s and a couple of cheap donuts, "served" starting at 7:00 (by which time I am usually 200 miles way).
But your point is correct - Stupid8 does not care about its customers, and they are starting to see the effect on their bottom line. Rather than correcting the fundimental problem, they are resorting to spam, misleading mail, and other nasty tricks to try to make more money.
What I am surprised that I have not seen yet is McDonalds investing in some robotics.
Consider how the average McD's runs - there is a proceedure for EVERYTHING, and they pretty tightly control everything, as well - the time the fries are in the oil, the time burgers are on the grill.
Let the minium wage be raised a few times more, and I would not be surprised to see a McFryer that you load a pallet of frozen fries into, and it handles thawing, frying, drying, salting, and storing, and a McFlipper that takes a cartridge of meat patties, grills, flips, and stacks them onto buns.
I can foresee the day when your average McD's has one PFY busing tables while acting as a meatware speech recognition unit and occasionally loading a cartrige of food into a machine, with an ATM style interface in the store for the normal customers, and all the cooking is done by machine.
True, that is too expensive for them to do, today. But like I said, a couple of hikes in the minimum wage, maybe a law about health insurance, and it will happen.
You already have several robots in your home, more than likely:
In addition, there are folks like me who have robots for preparing their coffee in the morning. Some have robots for baking bread, and for making ice cream.
Most people make the mistake of thinking ROBOT = anthropomorphic device but that is not true.
Now, if you want to say "There is no reason for any individual to have an anthropromorphic robot in their home" you are correct, today
But as my mother, who was born in the 1920's once said to me, "When I was your age, if somebody had told me I would have a computer in the home, I would not have believed them - simply because I could not have seen any use for one." This, as she was playing cards on her computer.
Be careful, or you may find yourself up there with the "there is a market for 6 computers in the world", or the (non-quote) "640K is enough for anybody".
With every bank trying to screw you for using any ATMs other than theirs, and with the level of acceptance of credit cards nowadays, who needs ATMs anymore?
It used to be that when I travelled, I carried a fair amount of cash with me. Not anymore - I simply find that I don't need it - gas, food, lodging, all are put on the credit card.
Furthurmore, should I feel the need for cash, my local grocery store allows me to get cash back from a credit card purchase. I simply make a habit of getting $40 back when I buy groceries, and then keeping about $200 at the house. Thus, I rarely if ever need an ATM under normal conditions.
It is pretty stupid - I am sure running an ATM costs a bank far less than paying for a teller, but they seem bound and determined to drive us all away from using ATMs.
At this time, general aviation aircraft do not have to file a flight plan - just stay out of certain volumes of the sky. I have a friend who has a hangar attached to his garage, and a runway out back.
Just last weekend the weather was unusually nice, and he said "Let's get Mr. Cessna's aluminum kite out" - so we hopped in the 182 and took off - buzzed another friend's farm, flew around, practiced stalling, and so on.
We just had to make sure we stayed out from the airbase's airspace.
So, this would be little different than owning a Cessna in that regard.
However, unlike a car, an aircraft has to go in once a year for its annual inspection, where they tear the thing down and make sure all is well. I would assume that this thing would be no different.
So the question is, can you do without your car for a couple of weeks of the year?
There could be - I don't know is an APFSDSDU round would notice something as soft as a human body - it might pass right through with minimum energy transfer.
Sure, the human would have a nasty hole from the passage, but the amount of energy transferred from the round wouldn't be nearly as much as when the round hit something hard.
Now, were the unfortunate soldier in question wearing a ceramic trauma plate under his armor....
OK, then - sorry I thought otherwise.
It is just that too many people call any multi-barrel rotary cannon a "vulcan", and that is just too much of a slight against the Avenger to let pass.
"... hosed down a small handful of Republican Guard troops...."
Like I said, light housekeeping....
The main cannon on an A-10 is not a "vulcan" - that would be an 20MM 6 barrel rotary cannon.
The main cannon on an A-10 is a seven barrel 30MM GAU-8A Avenger.
However, one of the optional weapon systems that can be mounted on an A-10's center hardpoint is an M-61 20MM Vulcan pod - for that "light housekeeping work" that the Avenger is overkill for.
Consider this:
Movies are 24 FPS.
TV is 30 FPS (NTSC) or 25 FPS (PAL). (frames per second, not fields per second).
The "killer app" for video phones is not business conferencing - it is "Look at Grandma! Wave to Grandma!".
And we USED to use postcards (1 frame per WEEK) for that.
I would take issue to the oft-quoted (even in this discussion) statement "The customer is always right".
.0001 point microfont on the bottom says "by cashing this check you agree to join this plan that is going to cost you and arm, leg, and the gonad of your choice, for a cost orders of magnitude greater than this check is worth."
The customer is not always right. However, the customer always thinks he is right.
If you blindly follow your customer's whims you will end up with a car designed by Homer Simpson that nobody wants.
If you LISTEN to your customers, and then THINK about what they said, however, you will end up with a product that they will want to buy.
However, the tricky bit is dealing with a customer that you disagree with - you must show tact in how you blow them off.
Case in point: I used to be a regular customer of the Super8 motel chain when I travelled. I would stay there preferentially to other chains. (you may note the use of the past tense in those statements).
One day I received one of those "fake check" mails from them - what looks like a real check, but in
Those sorts of things piss me off. I found the name of the CEO of the company, and sent him a nice letter explaining that I felt such advertising was unacceptable, and that while I was sure that they didn't really MEAN to do that, they should look into the company that they hired to do this and re-evaluate their position.
In short, I gave them every possible out to use to say "OOPS! Sorry!". I was NOT accusitory in the letter.
I seriously injured my jaw on the floor upon reading their response. It wasn't a polite-but-bland "YourConcernsAreImportantToUsThankYou" form response. It was not a "You are right, the responsible individuals have been sacked" reponse.
It was a "Shut up! You Suck! We aren't doing anything wrong! This is NOT misleading! IS NOT! NEENER NEENER NEENER! We are making money doing this, HOW DARE YOU CRITICIZE US!" response.
Needless to say, they lost my business, and I take every opportunity to pass this story along to others.
In summary - listen to your customers - they may not always BE right, but they always THINK they are right. If you don't THINK they are right, then DON'T just blow them off.
Assuming this is NOT a story troll as some have asserted, I raise the same question that I did on the previous story:
Are the pumps and hoses they are using food-grade hoses, or are they using windshield wiper pumps like the last guys?
Again, when designing something that handles substances that are going into your body, you need to be VERY careful about what comes into contact with those substances - even more so when what you are handling is composed of two very powerful solvents (water and alcohol).
The chemicals that can leech out of non-food grade stuff are NASTY - as in "Well, we can put you on the list for a new liver, but...."
Yes, food grade pumps and tubes are more expensive than going down to the salvage yard. But a liver transplant or chemotherapy is even MORE expensive!
Ammunition? Why waste perfectly good bullets on spammers? Besides, that is far too quick.
.... Ahh, now THAT'S comedy!
Now, a wood chipper
Dear Santa
Thank you for the most excellent gift, and early to boot!
Now, if you could just see your way to also delivering my request about spammers, I will endevour to be a VERY good boy this year.
Obviously you've never read any of Alan Dean Foster's Commonwealth novels - the primary 2 races of the Commonwealth are human and thranx, who are insectiod.
AND the thranx are a damn sight "nicer" than the humans.
AND they aren't a "hive mind" or any of that crap - they are individuals.
The winner and still champion
You might want to look at APT for RPM - that and Synaptic and you have a nice GUI for installing packages, with dependancy resolution.
And since Redhat is moving to have the APT repositories for Fedora, it makes it even easier to update code.
AND up2date in Fedora supportes APT respositories, as well.