I take the amount of time I think it will take, double it and move it up a time unit.
So, if I think it will take two days, I estimate 4 weeks. If I think it will take a week, I estimate two months and so on.
Exactly my method too. I assume we both stole it from the same place, but I can't remember where. I am also ashamed that it is often right.
Which either means I'm lousy at estimating or brilliant. Or maybe just lousy at implementation. Or maybe nothing at all.
But it doesn't matter, of course, since the boss will ask "Are you sure?" And we all know that that means "try to come up with an estimate that fits my predetermined schedule." So you either cut features/quality by plan or by fact. Usually by fact, since no one wants to give up anything. So you give up whatever doesn't happen to be done (or give up your release date -- which is also a feature of a sort).
Deadlines are useful, though, in avoiding a DNF type situation.
What do you expect access to "design documents" will help with?
That way you know what kind of epoxy was used so to better disassemble it . . .
But seriously, like you said, "So they only way to get the key is to break the chip apart and look at the hardware somehow." Wouldn't the design documents be useful? Like schematics and EDA files, block diagrams, masks, engineering memos, or even the definition of the algorithm -- among other possible "design documents". Why wouldn't access to this information be helpful, given that physical access is? Gratuitous car analogy: You don't need to take my car apart if you have access to the plans.
You make valid points, but still there is too much of a PANIC!!!! epidemic:-)
True, but that's a bug (or is it a feature?) in us. We're built to take quick action (or inaction) when presented with danger. And often our more instinctive behaviors don't help much in modern situations. Of course, it's not nearly as bad for us Slashdotters, what with our massive brains running all the time, but we're talking about the Normals here.
I've been reading The Design of Everyday Things, fka The Psychology of Everyday Things and one of the times people have trouble dealing with a situation is when it's rare or unique.
When we're doing something ordinary, it doesn't seem to present any danger since we know what we're doing.
Even unusual stuff, if it happens at least occasionally, doesn't drive us into a primitive state. I bet a lot of us "rehearsed" emergency maneuvers driving on slippery surfaces as new drivers. Perhaps for the thrill or maybe as a conscious exercise.
But the really, really rare event -- perhaps even unique -- we've probably never rehearsed even in our heads. You can't flee the car, so you end up trying to fight the controls or just freezing up. But even a mental exercise ahead of time can make a difference. Trouble is, sudden unintended acceleration hasn't been in the news for like 20 years. A whole generation of drivers has never heard of it, and the rest of us haven't thought of it in a long time.
But you can bet a lot more people will be ready for it now, having had to think about it every time they see a news story.
For sake of completeness, the appropriate equivalent for manual-transmission cars (slightly extended):
That does complete the instructions, but somehow I don't think unintended acceleration crashes are nearly as common in manual transmission cars, what with the clutch being right there. Or that manual drivers need the emergency checklist nearly as much as automatics -- when going faster than desired, letting up on the gas, then clutching, then braking are pretty standard vehicle control techniques in both emergency and non-emergency situations.
This whole "sudden acceleration" issue is a non-issue (or at least it should be a bug, but not a horrible death trap) if people just had functioning brains; as the parent said: "PUT THE DAMN CAR IN N and PRESS THE BREAKS (sic)" and all should come to a stop. I guess that too many cheeseburgers with super-sized fries have finally shown their effects in people's brains...
Isn't it bad enough that other cars on the roads can do unpredictable things on the road? Now you gotta be prepared for your car to go nuts too? Most of the time what you describe is what happens -- driver gets the car back in control. You don't hear much in the news about accidents that don't happen, though. Accidents do happen when a sufficient number of problems arise at once and exceed the driver's ability to cope with all of them in time. Some of those things are the your fault, some are the other guy's fault, some are your passengers', some are environmental, some just happenstance. Exceed the driver's ability to cope and you will occasionally get crashes. Put enough cars on the road and "occasionally" adds up. This has nothing to do with diet, excepting actually eating while driving of course.
Some new "licensed" or "official" content required you have DRM approved connections every step of the way to play it. That means an approved machine, an approved tv, an approved HDMI cable, every single step must be on the "ok to run licensed content" list. The handshaking constantly between them all causes problems - as does any DRM given enough time.
Which brings us right back to needing pirated content to be certain it plays properly on a given system . . . D'oh!
With access to sheep "parts", you could make your own. And there are sheep in the US. Homemade haggis was the way many a Scottish association got around the ban. Just tell the banquet hall that you're brining in a special ethnic dish and it's a deal breaker if they say "no". My society back in KC switched facilities rather than give it up.
I have known a number of people from "northern states" who seemed to have a fear of anything particularly strong tasting.
!
I live in Iowa now. They put a little star next to vanilla ice cream on the menu indicating "hot and spicy". (I think I stole that from Dave Barry.)
I've stopped using that joke with anyone outside the state, because they assume I'm not kidding. In reality, it's not that bad here, spice-wise. They do put mustard on the tables without special request. Don't try the BBQ. They've heard of it, but can't make it -- too scary. Over in Wisconsin, if you ask where to get barbecue, you are directed to Home Depot or Lowe's.
Haggis, OTOH, does not have to be particularly spicy, but I preferred plenty of pepper in the recipe. I don't think Iowans would be put off by it, though I haven't attended a Burns' Supper here.
No, it's a gamble. If the company goes bankrupt, the loan will never be repaid so it retroactively becomes a gift. I'm fairly sure that people gambling with other people's money was one of the causes of the current financial mess...
Every loan is a gamble in the sense that is might not get paid back. That's part of the reason you charge interest. You do your due diligence, diversify your lending and presumably you mitigate the risk. And yes, loaning other people's money is pretty much the way it's done. There's nothing inherently problematic about that. The practice isn't exactly new either. Remember the "Parable of the talents" from the bible? The boss man returns from his travels to find that the "worthless" servant has buried the money he entrusted to him: "Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury." [KJV -- which I chose for the word "usury"] I bring this up not to suggest that Jesus was a capitalist tool, but just to illustrate that the practice of loaning out other's money has been going on long enough that it would be so familiar eons ago as to be used metaphorically
Making loans, or even loaning out other people's money isn't a recipe for disaster. Failing to due proper investigation into the loan application and not evaluating whether the risk is acceptable, when widespread, is.
Perhaps that's what you meant, that this particular loan is a gamble, and lenders taking undue risk recently were gambling too. Well, in that case I'm just preaching to the choir, not to mention being redundant.
In most states letting your car start or run without you present is illegal. (yes, this includes starting your car and running back inside while the ice melts or the air cools). Also, it's not exactly the safest idea if you live in an area with high theft. I read a story a while back about some thieves that would cruise a nearby rich neighborhood and pop a door on a car 'warming up in the drive way' drive off and surprise the owner when there was no car there anymore. This made even easier by people who leave their car UNLOCKED AND RUNNING in the driveway.
So you freeze your butt off for like 5 min, oh darn. If it's that big of a deal, get a garage or heated seats, or an engine block heater.
All the places in the US I've lived, it's a municipal ordinance that outlaws leaving an unattended vehicle running -- where such a law existed at all.
Whose Wise Idea was it to start putting salt on the Road, I bought a car from up north and bottom was rusted out, I've seen beach cars that were in better shape.
Down here when it snows more then 1/2 inch the whole city shuts down.
Everything rusted from salt or everything smashed from sliding on ice. Take yer pick.
Did I mention that everyone goes into obscure specialties, meaning that if you want a Toe Oncologist, you can see one in a few days, but you've got to wait weeks in most major cities for a general practitioner...who just so happens to be the only person who can approve your care if you're on an HMO?
Pay for a GP-- now usually called a Family Practitioner or General Practitioner or Internist -- sucks compared with specializing. And medical school costs the same regardless of specialty. Major financial disincentive (at least in US). You'd think the shortage of GPs would result in higher pay -- free markets and all -- but it doesn't seem to be working in the short run.
I know what you're writing about. My wife is a first year resident in family practice. One of her responsibilities is clearing patients for surgery. Surgeons can't be counted on to even get the IV orders right, e.g. dextrose IV for a diabetic, so she has to fix those things at 3 AM. But they work their asses off so the hospitalsts don't have to be disturbed in the middle of the night.
You can get in to a GP if you can find an in-network residency clinic. Residents have plenty of free time in clinic hours -- lots of no-shows, etc. But yeah, that's a big if.
These "Highly Trained Morons" are working on killing my wife. She went in for a Hysterectomy and ended up with her ureter sutured or cauterized shut resulting in her kidney backing up and shutting down. Now she has a tube out her back to keep her kidney alive and in a few weeks they'll go in an cut her ureter above the blockage and reattach it to her bladder. All for the low, low, price of $$$$$$$$$$$$. Meanwhile, the nursing staff and E/R staff have done everything in their power to see how much additional damage they can do. No one has any common sense or care that I can see. I'm fit to be tied!
If you survive a hospital stay for anything serious, it's either luck or because you had reasonably intelligent friends and family looking out for you the whole time. Heaven help anyone without such a network of support. It helps if they're taking notes -- keeping their own charts, as it were. Twist all the arms you can, call in all your chips, and good luck.
For what purposes, really, should a corporation be given the rights of individuals? They aren't an individual. They are a tool created to maximize profits.
True, although to be fair, a corporation is a legal fiction created with the ability to do business -- own stuff, enter into contracts, etc. -- to enable a particular type of commerce. We allow this because pooling resources to do bigger stuff seems to promote general prosperity. However, I do not see why we need to grant these legal fictions any additional rights above what are needed to do business. To do so cheapens humanity without offsetting benefit.
You'd have an argument if corporations could themselves vote, but they cannot--that power is retained soly [sic] by individuals. Corporations should be treated like any other -group-, which means, collection of individuals, whom may even form a group around political issues. Any ill effects of corporations using money to spread messages is ultimately due to "the people" that accepted that message.
Is a corporation a "group" made of members, or an entity owned by other entities (which may be people)? I would argue that it is owned, since that is the relationship between shareholder and corporation.
Likewise, I can own a chair, but no one argues for the chair to have freedom of speech. For that matter, I can own a share of a chair with a group of others. We could even form a "chair owners" club. But the club and the chair would be separate things.
But owning a chair is a silly example. Even if a chair had civil rights, it couldn't use them, and it certainly doesn't make any money to buy a newspaper ad or a TV commercial or make a campaign contribution. So what about a moneymaking object? How about a gumball machine? It has owners. It sells stuff. It makes money. Why not call it a corporation?
Here's the crucial question: is the gumball machine the group of owners?
Right of free speech + right of association = right of groups, as corporations, to speak freely.
A corporation is not a person or a group. It is a legal fiction that we have given certain rights of a person to enable it to do business. "Santa Clara" expanded those rights -- a mistake. A group, like a soccer team or a political party or a trade union or the John Birch Society exists to represent its members, whereas a corporation exists create a disconnect between the investors and the company. A corporation facilitates creating a business without any individual being liable for anything beyond his own investment.
Since the 5200 was internally near-identical to the 400/800 computers (*), its version of Pac Man was effectively the 400/800 version with added inter-level animations. Which was in turn later backported to the 400/800; and I can confirm that with my 800XL's traditional-style joysticks, it was indeed an excellent version of Pac-Man.
Those analog 5200 joysticks made all the difference, and by difference I mean crappiness. They weren't bad, just bad for any game that needed to be played with a 1-bit controller (up or not up, left or not left). I don't know if there were any digital joysticks available for the 5200 -- I never found any and I don't know if they could've been used. I wish I'd had an 8-bit Atari computer in addition to the 5200 console, but I already had a C=64, and 2 computers would have been rather extravagant, wouldn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
I take the amount of time I think it will take, double it and move it up a time unit.
So, if I think it will take two days, I estimate 4 weeks. If I think it will take a week, I estimate two months and so on.
Exactly my method too. I assume we both stole it from the same place, but I can't remember where. I am also ashamed that it is often right.
Which either means I'm lousy at estimating or brilliant. Or maybe just lousy at implementation. Or maybe nothing at all.
But it doesn't matter, of course, since the boss will ask "Are you sure?" And we all know that that means "try to come up with an estimate that fits my predetermined schedule." So you either cut features/quality by plan or by fact. Usually by fact, since no one wants to give up anything. So you give up whatever doesn't happen to be done (or give up your release date -- which is also a feature of a sort).
Deadlines are useful, though, in avoiding a DNF type situation.
What do you expect access to "design documents" will help with?
That way you know what kind of epoxy was used so to better disassemble it . . .
But seriously, like you said, "So they only way to get the key is to break the chip apart and look at the hardware somehow." Wouldn't the design documents be useful? Like schematics and EDA files, block diagrams, masks, engineering memos, or even the definition of the algorithm -- among other possible "design documents". Why wouldn't access to this information be helpful, given that physical access is? Gratuitous car analogy: You don't need to take my car apart if you have access to the plans.
You make valid points, but still there is too much of a PANIC!!!! epidemic :-)
True, but that's a bug (or is it a feature?) in us. We're built to take quick action (or inaction) when presented with danger. And often our more instinctive behaviors don't help much in modern situations. Of course, it's not nearly as bad for us Slashdotters, what with our massive brains running all the time, but we're talking about the Normals here.
I've been reading The Design of Everyday Things, fka The Psychology of Everyday Things and one of the times people have trouble dealing with a situation is when it's rare or unique.
When we're doing something ordinary, it doesn't seem to present any danger since we know what we're doing.
Even unusual stuff, if it happens at least occasionally, doesn't drive us into a primitive state. I bet a lot of us "rehearsed" emergency maneuvers driving on slippery surfaces as new drivers. Perhaps for the thrill or maybe as a conscious exercise.
But the really, really rare event -- perhaps even unique -- we've probably never rehearsed even in our heads. You can't flee the car, so you end up trying to fight the controls or just freezing up. But even a mental exercise ahead of time can make a difference. Trouble is, sudden unintended acceleration hasn't been in the news for like 20 years. A whole generation of drivers has never heard of it, and the rest of us haven't thought of it in a long time.
But you can bet a lot more people will be ready for it now, having had to think about it every time they see a news story.
For sake of completeness, the appropriate equivalent for manual-transmission cars (slightly extended):
That does complete the instructions, but somehow I don't think unintended acceleration crashes are nearly as common in manual transmission cars, what with the clutch being right there. Or that manual drivers need the emergency checklist nearly as much as automatics -- when going faster than desired, letting up on the gas, then clutching, then braking are pretty standard vehicle control techniques in both emergency and non-emergency situations.
Sorry to be picky, but emergency lights before brakes is a better idea.....
I always turn on the emergency lights right before braking or steering out of a potential accident. You're kidding, right?
This whole "sudden acceleration" issue is a non-issue (or at least it should be a bug, but not a horrible death trap) if people just had functioning brains; as the parent said: "PUT THE DAMN CAR IN N and PRESS THE BREAKS (sic)" and all should come to a stop. I guess that too many cheeseburgers with super-sized fries have finally shown their effects in people's brains...
Isn't it bad enough that other cars on the roads can do unpredictable things on the road? Now you gotta be prepared for your car to go nuts too? Most of the time what you describe is what happens -- driver gets the car back in control. You don't hear much in the news about accidents that don't happen, though. Accidents do happen when a sufficient number of problems arise at once and exceed the driver's ability to cope with all of them in time. Some of those things are the your fault, some are the other guy's fault, some are your passengers', some are environmental, some just happenstance. Exceed the driver's ability to cope and you will occasionally get crashes. Put enough cars on the road and "occasionally" adds up. This has nothing to do with diet, excepting actually eating while driving of course.
RobTheBold is "busy" sleeping it off. Today's post is written by his one year old daughter:
famasily ciurcs is sucsks!112!
Some new "licensed" or "official" content required you have DRM approved connections every step of the way to play it. That means an approved machine, an approved tv, an approved HDMI cable, every single step must be on the "ok to run licensed content" list. The handshaking constantly between them all causes problems - as does any DRM given enough time.
Which brings us right back to needing pirated content to be certain it plays properly on a given system . . . D'oh!
With access to sheep "parts", you could make your own. And there are sheep in the US. Homemade haggis was the way many a Scottish association got around the ban. Just tell the banquet hall that you're brining in a special ethnic dish and it's a deal breaker if they say "no". My society back in KC switched facilities rather than give it up.
I have known a number of people from "northern states" who seemed to have a fear of anything particularly strong tasting. !
I live in Iowa now. They put a little star next to vanilla ice cream on the menu indicating "hot and spicy". (I think I stole that from Dave Barry.)
I've stopped using that joke with anyone outside the state, because they assume I'm not kidding. In reality, it's not that bad here, spice-wise. They do put mustard on the tables without special request. Don't try the BBQ. They've heard of it, but can't make it -- too scary. Over in Wisconsin, if you ask where to get barbecue, you are directed to Home Depot or Lowe's.
Haggis, OTOH, does not have to be particularly spicy, but I preferred plenty of pepper in the recipe. I don't think Iowans would be put off by it, though I haven't attended a Burns' Supper here.
No, it's a gamble. If the company goes bankrupt, the loan will never be repaid so it retroactively becomes a gift. I'm fairly sure that people gambling with other people's money was one of the causes of the current financial mess...
Every loan is a gamble in the sense that is might not get paid back. That's part of the reason you charge interest. You do your due diligence, diversify your lending and presumably you mitigate the risk. And yes, loaning other people's money is pretty much the way it's done. There's nothing inherently problematic about that. The practice isn't exactly new either. Remember the "Parable of the talents" from the bible? The boss man returns from his travels to find that the "worthless" servant has buried the money he entrusted to him: "Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury." [KJV -- which I chose for the word "usury"] I bring this up not to suggest that Jesus was a capitalist tool, but just to illustrate that the practice of loaning out other's money has been going on long enough that it would be so familiar eons ago as to be used metaphorically
Making loans, or even loaning out other people's money isn't a recipe for disaster. Failing to due proper investigation into the loan application and not evaluating whether the risk is acceptable, when widespread, is.
Perhaps that's what you meant, that this particular loan is a gamble, and lenders taking undue risk recently were gambling too. Well, in that case I'm just preaching to the choir, not to mention being redundant.
What would you give an average dressed dude driving a Jetta Turbo?
Gas or Diesel?
When I work the polls each year I try to pass the time by guessing the party affiliations of my voters.
"Large breasted college age chick. Democrat."
It's amazing how bored you get working a 15 hour day when you only get 40 voters.... ;)
That's because nobody's ever heard of a nice piece of elephant.
In most states letting your car start or run without you present is illegal. (yes, this includes starting your car and running back inside while the ice melts or the air cools). Also, it's not exactly the safest idea if you live in an area with high theft. I read a story a while back about some thieves that would cruise a nearby rich neighborhood and pop a door on a car 'warming up in the drive way' drive off and surprise the owner when there was no car there anymore. This made even easier by people who leave their car UNLOCKED AND RUNNING in the driveway.
So you freeze your butt off for like 5 min, oh darn. If it's that big of a deal, get a garage or heated seats, or an engine block heater.
All the places in the US I've lived, it's a municipal ordinance that outlaws leaving an unattended vehicle running -- where such a law existed at all.
Whose Wise Idea was it to start putting salt on the Road, I bought a car from up north and bottom was rusted out, I've seen beach cars that were in better shape.
Down here when it snows more then 1/2 inch the whole city shuts down.
Everything rusted from salt or everything smashed from sliding on ice. Take yer pick.
Did I mention that everyone goes into obscure specialties, meaning that if you want a Toe Oncologist, you can see one in a few days, but you've got to wait weeks in most major cities for a general practitioner...who just so happens to be the only person who can approve your care if you're on an HMO?
Pay for a GP-- now usually called a Family Practitioner or General Practitioner or Internist -- sucks compared with specializing. And medical school costs the same regardless of specialty. Major financial disincentive (at least in US). You'd think the shortage of GPs would result in higher pay -- free markets and all -- but it doesn't seem to be working in the short run.
I know what you're writing about. My wife is a first year resident in family practice. One of her responsibilities is clearing patients for surgery. Surgeons can't be counted on to even get the IV orders right, e.g. dextrose IV for a diabetic, so she has to fix those things at 3 AM. But they work their asses off so the hospitalsts don't have to be disturbed in the middle of the night.
You can get in to a GP if you can find an in-network residency clinic. Residents have plenty of free time in clinic hours -- lots of no-shows, etc. But yeah, that's a big if.
These "Highly Trained Morons" are working on killing my wife. She went in for a Hysterectomy and ended up with her ureter sutured or cauterized shut resulting in her kidney backing up and shutting down. Now she has a tube out her back to keep her kidney alive and in a few weeks they'll go in an cut her ureter above the blockage and reattach it to her bladder. All for the low, low, price of $$$$$$$$$$$$. Meanwhile, the nursing staff and E/R staff have done everything in their power to see how much additional damage they can do. No one has any common sense or care that I can see. I'm fit to be tied!
If you survive a hospital stay for anything serious, it's either luck or because you had reasonably intelligent friends and family looking out for you the whole time. Heaven help anyone without such a network of support. It helps if they're taking notes -- keeping their own charts, as it were. Twist all the arms you can, call in all your chips, and good luck.
Are you familiar with the law of unintended consequences?
Can't say I've ever given it much thought.
Free the corporation from it's owners!
I can't even tell if you're kidding, so I guess that's a compliment!
For what purposes, really, should a corporation be given the rights of individuals? They aren't an individual. They are a tool created to maximize profits.
True, although to be fair, a corporation is a legal fiction created with the ability to do business -- own stuff, enter into contracts, etc. -- to enable a particular type of commerce. We allow this because pooling resources to do bigger stuff seems to promote general prosperity. However, I do not see why we need to grant these legal fictions any additional rights above what are needed to do business. To do so cheapens humanity without offsetting benefit.
You'd have an argument if corporations could themselves vote, but they cannot--that power is retained soly [sic] by individuals. Corporations should be treated like any other -group-, which means, collection of individuals, whom may even form a group around political issues. Any ill effects of corporations using money to spread messages is ultimately due to "the people" that accepted that message.
Is a corporation a "group" made of members, or an entity owned by other entities (which may be people)? I would argue that it is owned, since that is the relationship between shareholder and corporation.
Likewise, I can own a chair, but no one argues for the chair to have freedom of speech. For that matter, I can own a share of a chair with a group of others. We could even form a "chair owners" club. But the club and the chair would be separate things.
But owning a chair is a silly example. Even if a chair had civil rights, it couldn't use them, and it certainly doesn't make any money to buy a newspaper ad or a TV commercial or make a campaign contribution. So what about a moneymaking object? How about a gumball machine? It has owners. It sells stuff. It makes money. Why not call it a corporation?
Here's the crucial question: is the gumball machine the group of owners?
Right of free speech + right of association = right of groups, as corporations, to speak freely.
A corporation is not a person or a group. It is a legal fiction that we have given certain rights of a person to enable it to do business. "Santa Clara" expanded those rights -- a mistake. A group, like a soccer team or a political party or a trade union or the John Birch Society exists to represent its members, whereas a corporation exists create a disconnect between the investors and the company. A corporation facilitates creating a business without any individual being liable for anything beyond his own investment.
Since the 5200 was internally near-identical to the 400/800 computers (*), its version of Pac Man was effectively the 400/800 version with added inter-level animations. Which was in turn later backported to the 400/800; and I can confirm that with my 800XL's traditional-style joysticks, it was indeed an excellent version of Pac-Man.
Those analog 5200 joysticks made all the difference, and by difference I mean crappiness. They weren't bad, just bad for any game that needed to be played with a 1-bit controller (up or not up, left or not left). I don't know if there were any digital joysticks available for the 5200 -- I never found any and I don't know if they could've been used. I wish I'd had an 8-bit Atari computer in addition to the 5200 console, but I already had a C=64, and 2 computers would have been rather extravagant, wouldn't it?
E.T. nearly killed off an entire industry. Though I'm sure that's just what history remembers as its death blow.
I second that, but TFA is talking specifically about games during the past decade.
There oughta be a lifetime achievement category specifically for that game.
Then again I actually played the Atari 2600 version of Pac Man endlessly, so what do I know? ;-)
2600 Pac Man had lousy graphics but OK gameplay. I had the 5200 version, which had the opposite (mostly because of the unsuitable controllers).