Long ago, when most consumer electronics were built using discrete components connected via point-to-point wiring or simple printed circuit boards, i.e. single sided or double sided, a resourceful hobbist could build it in his garage. As more custom integrated circuits and multi-layer PC boards were used, these hobbists found themselves outclassed.
Years ago, you could build a Heathkit stereo that was really good. It would be difficult for a hobbist to build a modern receiver, not only because of the parts but because of more sophisticated functionality.
The job-hunter and the job-offerer simply do not have symmetrical power or luxury to walk away from the table, and it is disingenuous in the extreme to pretend that they do. And the net effect of all those assymetrical relationships is a "race to the bottom," where an employer can pick between dozens of applicants, all of whom have families to feed, and simply let the sticklers go walking.
Yep. I've been saying this for a long time. It ain't half fair. Employers get to know a whole lot more about you than you get to know about them. This "race to the bottom" started in earnest during the last recession. Even during the internet boom, many of the questionable hiring practices continued. With this downturn, it's gotten worse. It's heads, they win; tails, you lose. The prospective employee's situation is weak so long as the labor market is being manipulated in this way. The law is fully compliant with this arrangement. It's fascism.
If you chose an education, you should not choose what is trendy, but what you *like* or what you are *interested* in.
Good advice but the grain of salt that needs to accompany this advice is that just because you love something and you're good at it doesn't mean you'll be able to make a living with it.
Don't get me started
on
Making Change
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
It doesn't matter what the denomination is. As long as change has to be made, some patrons will receive the wrong change.
Lots of cashiers don't know how to make change. Many have been trained to do it wrong. The most common error is the cashier puts the large bill the customer just handed them into the drawer before giving the customer change and watching them count it. There used to be a little slot between the plastic guard and the metal cash register enclosure that was perfect for temporarily storing that large bill in customer sight. When the customer looks at you after counting his money, pause to see whether he questions it, then put the large bill in the drawer and close it.
Adding this momentary delay before putting the customer's large bill in the drawer and closing it, protects the cashier and the customer from being short changed.
I've seen managers put large bills in the drawer before I counted my change. One gave me change for $10 instead of change for a $20. I'm a creature of habit. When I hand a cashier a large bill, I always say, "outta twenty" or whatever the bill is. I'm sure I did that with this one. But she'd already put the bill in the drawer and insisted upon a recount of the drawer and by the time she did, my food was cold. That is not the way to do things. When I pointed out her mistake, she lost her temper. Then I lost mine.
I was trained on older cash registers to do things this way by a store manager who was very particular about this. He's been in business for more than 30 years and says he's never had a dispute with a customer over incorrect change. Way back then, you had to actually count the coin change. Many of the newer cash registers do this for you. I wonder how many of today's cashiers could make change in their heads.
What's my point? Most point of sale problems concerning change making are due to lack of skill and/or poor training of the cashier. Using more efficient denominations or pricing items to the nearest buck won't fix this.
Once you sing a song in public, the lyrics are now "out there".
For that matter, so is the music.
What's next? Is the RIAA going to send snitches out in public to rat on local bands for playing cover tunes? What is the difference between posting lyics to a copyrighted song on your website versus actually playing the song live in a club to a large group of people and singing those copyrighted lyrics over a PA system? Seems to me both constitute broadcasting the lyrics to the public. So is the RIAA going to sue us for playing cover tunes in clubs?
That means working like hell to overcome the undervaluation. Engineers who fail to realize or accomplish this are doomed to become managers or... something else. Some careers end, deal with it.
Actually, most careers end earlier than they should because human beings can't "work like hell" indefinitely. Most people will burn out if put in such a situation. I'm in my late 40s and I'm consistently the oldest person anywhere I work because I "work like hell". It's hard to keep it up. I can't recommend this strategy because it's not sustainable.
To the individual who asked Slashdot for a sober assessment of an older worker's chances in programming, I offer this advice. If you aren't very far into it, try a different field. It was hard to break enough for an older guy to break into software during the internet boom. Your timing couldn't be worse.
Apple demonstrates pent up demand
on
The Law and P2P
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The customer was not being served by the music industry. Apple's recent Music Store opening offers ample evidence of that. It certainly has shortcomings but the overwhelmingly positive response to it clearly demonstrates that people will pay a reasonable amount to download a quality recording.
I despise those ads that commandeer my browser. I put this type of crap on equal footing with viruses. Only a valueless cretin would write such crap. It's ironinc that he's going to try and collect royalties from the sleazeballs who deploy his anal explusive technology.
What makes you think that Americans are somehow entitled by God to a sky high standard of living?
I never made such a claim. But I did point out that we have a sky high COST of living.
You dont want H1Bs , you dont want outsourcing yet
correct on both counts
you are perfectly OK with selling $400 MS office to third world countries.
no only no but hell no... M$ has ruined the software industry...
Anyhow, I thought US was a nation of immigrants, people who belive its ok to ditch your old country when the going get tough and move on to greener pastures...
I'm not an immigrant. The branch of my family bearing my sirname has been here at least 6 generations. Obviously, some ancestor of mine immigrated but I didn't know him. That being said, lots of people come to the US because they think they'll have a better life. For the most part, they do end up living better. But that lifestyle comes with a high price tag. The point I make is that the American lifestyle will deteriorate unless incomes keep pace with costs. For the past 10 years, we've been slipping. Our population is growing faster than our infrastructure. Rather than move on to greener pastures, what's wrong with fixing up your pasture? I've asked several arrogant Indian geeks if they are so smart, why don't they "fix" India? I've no desire to become a high tech bindlestiff.
It doesn't matter if you learned new stuff, or not...
You're preaching to the choir. I guess I wasn't being facetious enough. The young whippersnapper libertarian types often toss barbs like, work harder/smarter/better/cheaper and stay current with technology, etc. Oh yeah, I really felt like sayin' this to a guy I had worked with. Not! There's no way he could have retooled. I'm familiar with his circumstances. His family situation would have precluded a return to school. And as you point out below, retooling is mostly ineffective anyway.
1) Your 20+ dude must be 40 something, and ageism in the technical levels of IT is rampant.
2) If he's spent 20+ good years in IT his ending salary was probably above average. There is all kinds of stigma attached to people willing to work for less than "their worth". Yea, only in corporate logic can it be better that you sit unemployed on $0/year than to work for half of the $85K you used to make.
3) Dude was probably punched out in 2000-01. Now if he goes off and "learns" something, he won't have any "experience" in it. Few, very few, employers take resume's with "learned X, Y, and Z" seriously. Can't blame them, they spend fortunes on training and 9 of 10 times it is for naught.
4) Once the student loans, mommy, and financial aid gives out some of us have to earn a living, full time. Comming from IT, some of us might have enough money to go back to college, but only part time and that takes years to complete. There is no mommy the second time 'round. Then, you have a resume with a 5-7 year experience hole on it.
Hey, I'm an older guy too. I'm acutely aware of all this. Norm Matloff covers these points pretty well on his site. Yep, when you get old, you're pretty much SOL.
Fewer lower paid positions or off-shore positions is the real world trend.
Software industry is dead for the college graduate who expects good benefits, clean work environment, and a stable / bright future.
For ppl willing to work for peanuts and be shitted on, there's work for as far as the eye can see.
Anyone else here been asked to work more hours for free just to keep a job?
That's right. There's plenty of work at the "nice price". But what some of 'em make in India which allows them to live like kings would harldy be a living wage here. Predictably, the looneytunarians have chimed in with their be more productive/work cheaper drivel. An individual has no control over the cost of living. Retool for a different line of work? This is part of what Alvin Toffler was talking about in his book, Future Shock. I've already done it once and am likely to do it again in the near future. The last time took alot of wind out of my sails. I don't look forward to it again. I have to wonder how many people will be able to make career changes such that they maintain something close to their earning power. Anecdotally, the answer seems to be few. I've bumped into lots of engineers I worked with 20+ years ago working at Home Depot as sales clerks. Oh yeah, I really felt like sayin', "Dude, you shoulda like, kept up and learned some new stuff."
So yeah, stick a fork in it. The software industry is dead if you want to make a good living here.
not passing those savings on to the consumer
on
Cheap Audio Production
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I realize that a talented producer can cost a lot of money and some bands drink a lot of beer, but why aren't the benefits of lower production costs being passed on to the consumer?
because they made some fantastic equipment. The HP 200CD Sine Wave Oscillator, 400D Vacuum Tube Voltmeter, HP3577 Network Analyzer, HP3585 Spectrum Analyzer and HP7475 Plotter were all superb instruments I used daily for years. I still have a working HP-15C calculator I cherish.
But lately, HP has been taken over by sleazy MBAs. It's a sad end. Now they're trying to out-sleaze Lexmark.
Anybody worried about police busting his porn site would have to be stashing some seriously hardcore stuff...
Porn can be "seriously hardcore stuff" and be legal so long as the models are all 18. Therein lies the problem. As one poster pointed out, you have no way of knowing the biographies of these models. Some petite college girls can easily pass for high schoolers. Obviously, porn depicting models who appear to be 12 years old doesn't fall in this grey area. But when people get busted for possession of "child porn", that distinction is seldom made.
At 2173K and 272atm, you basically have a plasma bomb. Nevermind the fairytale power source. How will they contain gas that hot and under that much pressure?
There really is no reason to do the old-school etching method anymore, in fact, I don't even know any hobbyists that do that anymore.... beats the heck outta the mask-and-acid roll of the dice method.
I don't know any hobbyists who do this either but a former employer still etches photoresist boards in ferric chloride. The techs call it ferrocious chloride and despise building boards. The ferric chloride is a hazmat and everything exposed to it's fumes, rusts. If you spill any on your clothes, toss 'em. It's a very messy chemical.
You can make do with a cardboard box but if you're serious about this, you'll need to build a darkroom, a ventilated darkroom. Depending on the kind of photoresist, you may be be using Trichloroethylene or Xylene as a stop bath. Those are carcinogens.
Yeah, it's a crap shoot. If you under-etch, you'll get bridges; over-etch and you start over. But the hassles and hazzards of handling these chemicals give more compelling reasons to abandon this method.
... how would this change the climate of US IT jobs leaving for other parts of the world if we did tax software imports?
If that's the only change made, then those companies would open IT shops here and staff them with imported workers on H1B visas. If the desired outcome is to employ more native born US citizens, imposing a tariff isn't sufficient by itself.
There was also the cellular law enacted in the 80's. Instead of encrypting the cellphone signals, they made it unlawful to listen to the 800 Mhz radio spectrum and illegal to manufacture or import any radio capable of doing so.
So, the radio manufacturers put jumpers in the radios which disabled the reception of 800MHz phone calls and leaked info out on the net about how to cut the jumper in the field. Here's one for the Alinco DJ580
None of this should come as any surprise to anyone who has kept up with trends in software developer employment. With few exceptions, lawmakers have been very accomodating to industry trade group lobbyists who have whined incessantly about acute shortages of workers even as millions were being laid off nationwide. The only surprise is how fast this is developing. At the rate this export trend is progressing, in about 3-4 years, the vast majority of software development in the world will be done outside the US. This will contribute significantly to the implosion of our consumer based economy.
I'm sure hydrogen fuel cells and for that matter, Zn/KOH fuel cells are feasible. But every time I think about hydrogen, I see the Hindenberg in my mind's eye.
you'll have to connect a diode in series with your AC supply to block the reverse voltage because otherwise it will be greater than the VR.
Connect the diode in parallel with the LED, cathode to anode, so that it clamps the reverse voltage across the LED to one diode drop. Then, all you need is the dropping resistor for 120 Vac operation.
Slashdot Mirror
Long ago, when most consumer electronics were built using discrete components connected via point-to-point wiring or simple printed circuit boards, i.e. single sided or double sided, a resourceful hobbist could build it in his garage. As more custom integrated circuits and multi-layer PC boards were used, these hobbists found themselves outclassed.
Years ago, you could build a Heathkit stereo that was really good. It would be difficult for a hobbist to build a modern receiver, not only because of the parts but because of more sophisticated functionality.
The next thing ya know, they won't take cash. Yessir
The job-hunter and the job-offerer simply do not have symmetrical power or luxury to walk away from the table, and it is disingenuous in the extreme to pretend that they do. And the net effect of all those assymetrical relationships is a "race to the bottom," where an employer can pick between dozens of applicants, all of whom have families to feed, and simply let the sticklers go walking.
Yep. I've been saying this for a long time. It ain't half fair. Employers get to know a whole lot more about you than you get to know about them. This "race to the bottom" started in earnest during the last recession. Even during the internet boom, many of the questionable hiring practices continued. With this downturn, it's gotten worse. It's heads, they win; tails, you lose. The prospective employee's situation is weak so long as the labor market is being manipulated in this way. The law is fully compliant with this arrangement. It's fascism.
If you chose an education, you should not choose what is trendy, but what you *like* or what you are *interested* in.
Good advice but the grain of salt that needs to accompany this advice is that just because you love something and you're good at it doesn't mean you'll be able to make a living with it.
It doesn't matter what the denomination is. As long as change has to be made, some patrons will receive the wrong change.
Lots of cashiers don't know how to make change. Many have been trained to do it wrong. The most common error is the cashier puts the large bill the customer just handed them into the drawer before giving the customer change and watching them count it. There used to be a little slot between the plastic guard and the metal cash register enclosure that was perfect for temporarily storing that large bill in customer sight. When the customer looks at you after counting his money, pause to see whether he questions it, then put the large bill in the drawer and close it.
Adding this momentary delay before putting the customer's large bill in the drawer and closing it, protects the cashier and the customer from being short changed.
I've seen managers put large bills in the drawer before I counted my change. One gave me change for $10 instead of change for a $20. I'm a creature of habit. When I hand a cashier a large bill, I always say, "outta twenty" or whatever the bill is. I'm sure I did that with this one. But she'd already put the bill in the drawer and insisted upon a recount of the drawer and by the time she did, my food was cold. That is not the way to do things. When I pointed out her mistake, she lost her temper. Then I lost mine.
I was trained on older cash registers to do things this way by a store manager who was very particular about this. He's been in business for more than 30 years and says he's never had a dispute with a customer over incorrect change. Way back then, you had to actually count the coin change. Many of the newer cash registers do this for you. I wonder how many of today's cashiers could make change in their heads.
What's my point? Most point of sale problems concerning change making are due to lack of skill and/or poor training of the cashier. Using more efficient denominations or pricing items to the nearest buck won't fix this.
Once you sing a song in public, the lyrics are now "out there".
For that matter, so is the music.
What's next? Is the RIAA going to send snitches out in public to rat on local bands for playing cover tunes? What is the difference between posting lyics to a copyrighted song on your website versus actually playing the song live in a club to a large group of people and singing those copyrighted lyrics over a PA system? Seems to me both constitute broadcasting the lyrics to the public. So is the RIAA going to sue us for playing cover tunes in clubs?
That means working like hell to overcome the undervaluation. Engineers who fail to realize or accomplish this are doomed to become managers or... something else. Some careers end, deal with it.
Actually, most careers end earlier than they should because human beings can't "work like hell" indefinitely. Most people will burn out if put in such a situation. I'm in my late 40s and I'm consistently the oldest person anywhere I work because I "work like hell". It's hard to keep it up. I can't recommend this strategy because it's not sustainable.
To the individual who asked Slashdot for a sober assessment of an older worker's chances in programming, I offer this advice. If you aren't very far into it, try a different field. It was hard to break enough for an older guy to break into software during the internet boom. Your timing couldn't be worse.
The customer was not being served by the music industry. Apple's recent Music Store opening offers ample evidence of that. It certainly has shortcomings but the overwhelmingly positive response to it clearly demonstrates that people will pay a reasonable amount to download a quality recording.
I despise those ads that commandeer my browser. I put this type of crap on equal footing with viruses. Only a valueless cretin would write such crap. It's ironinc that he's going to try and collect royalties from the sleazeballs who deploy his anal explusive technology.
What makes you think that Americans are somehow entitled by God to a sky high standard
of living?
I never made such a claim. But I did point out that we have a sky high COST of living.
You dont want H1Bs , you dont want outsourcing yet
correct on both counts
you are perfectly OK with selling $400 MS office to third world countries.
no only no but hell no
Anyhow, I thought US was a nation of immigrants, people who belive its ok to ditch your old country when the going get tough and move on to greener pastures
I'm not an immigrant. The branch of my family bearing my sirname has been here at least 6 generations. Obviously, some ancestor of mine immigrated but I didn't know him. That being said, lots of people come to the US because they think they'll have a better life. For the most part, they do end up living better. But that lifestyle comes with a high price tag. The point I make is that the American lifestyle will deteriorate unless incomes keep pace with costs. For the past 10 years, we've been slipping. Our population is growing faster than our infrastructure. Rather than move on to greener pastures, what's wrong with fixing up your pasture? I've asked several arrogant Indian geeks if they are so smart, why don't they "fix" India? I've no desire to become a high tech bindlestiff.
It doesn't matter if you learned new stuff, or not...
You're preaching to the choir. I guess I wasn't being facetious enough. The young whippersnapper libertarian types often toss barbs like, work harder/smarter/better/cheaper and stay current with technology, etc. Oh yeah, I really felt like sayin' this to a guy I had worked with. Not! There's no way he could have retooled. I'm familiar with his circumstances. His family situation would have precluded a return to school. And as you point out below, retooling is mostly ineffective anyway.
1) Your 20+ dude must be 40 something, and ageism in the technical levels of IT is rampant.
2) If he's spent 20+ good years in IT his ending salary was probably above average. There is all kinds of stigma attached to people willing to work for less than "their worth". Yea, only in corporate logic can it be better that you sit unemployed on $0/year than to work for half of the $85K you used to make.
3) Dude was probably punched out in 2000-01. Now if he goes off and "learns" something, he won't have any "experience" in it. Few, very few, employers take resume's with "learned X, Y, and Z" seriously. Can't blame them, they spend fortunes on training and 9 of 10 times it is for naught.
4) Once the student loans, mommy, and financial aid gives out some of us have to earn a living, full time. Comming from IT, some of us might have enough money to go back to college, but only part time and that takes years to complete. There is no mommy the second time 'round. Then, you have a resume with a 5-7 year experience hole on it.
Hey, I'm an older guy too. I'm acutely aware of all this. Norm Matloff covers these points pretty well on his site. Yep, when you get old, you're pretty much SOL.
Fewer lower paid positions or off-shore positions is the real world trend.
Software industry is dead for the college graduate who expects good benefits, clean work environment, and a stable / bright future.
For ppl willing to work for peanuts and be shitted on, there's work for as far as the eye can see.
Anyone else here been asked to work more hours for free just to keep a job?
That's right. There's plenty of work at the "nice price". But what some of 'em make in India which allows them to live like kings would harldy be a living wage here. Predictably, the looneytunarians have chimed in with their be more productive/work cheaper drivel. An individual has no control over the cost of living. Retool for a different line of work? This is part of what Alvin Toffler was talking about in his book, Future Shock. I've already done it once and am likely to do it again in the near future. The last time took alot of wind out of my sails. I don't look forward to it again. I have to wonder how many people will be able to make career changes such that they maintain something close to their earning power. Anecdotally, the answer seems to be few. I've bumped into lots of engineers I worked with 20+ years ago working at Home Depot as sales clerks. Oh yeah, I really felt like sayin', "Dude, you shoulda like, kept up and learned some new stuff."
So yeah, stick a fork in it. The software industry is dead if you want to make a good living here.
How bad do you want to go today?
I realize that a talented producer can cost a lot of money and some bands drink a lot of beer, but why aren't the benefits of lower production costs being passed on to the consumer?
Obviously, you don't understand the problem.
because they made some fantastic equipment. The HP 200CD Sine Wave Oscillator, 400D Vacuum Tube Voltmeter, HP3577 Network Analyzer, HP3585 Spectrum Analyzer and HP7475 Plotter were all superb instruments I used daily for years. I still have a working HP-15C calculator I cherish.
But lately, HP has been taken over by sleazy MBAs. It's a sad end. Now they're trying to out-sleaze Lexmark.
Free Market? Yeah, right.
Wut? '93 they still sold dot matrix printers?
Yes, I got a Citizen GSX130 24pin dot matrix in '93. It still works but I seldom use it.
Now they're projecting a big turn-around in the labor market 7 years from now. Next they'll start wailing about a severe shortage of labor.
Anybody worried about police busting his porn site would have to be stashing some seriously hardcore stuff
Porn can be "seriously hardcore stuff" and be legal so long as the models are all 18. Therein lies the problem. As one poster pointed out, you have no way of knowing the biographies of these models. Some petite college girls can easily pass for high schoolers. Obviously, porn depicting models who appear to be 12 years old doesn't fall in this grey area. But when people get busted for possession of "child porn", that distinction is seldom made.
At 2173K and 272atm, you basically have a plasma bomb. Nevermind the fairytale power source. How will they contain gas that hot and under that much pressure?
There really is no reason to do the old-school etching method anymore, in fact, I don't even know any hobbyists that do that anymore.
I don't know any hobbyists who do this either but a former employer still etches photoresist boards in ferric chloride. The techs call it ferrocious chloride and despise building boards. The ferric chloride is a hazmat and everything exposed to it's fumes, rusts. If you spill any on your clothes, toss 'em. It's a very messy chemical.
You can make do with a cardboard box but if you're serious about this, you'll need to build a darkroom, a ventilated darkroom. Depending on the kind of photoresist, you may be be using Trichloroethylene or Xylene as a stop bath. Those are carcinogens.
Yeah, it's a crap shoot. If you under-etch, you'll get bridges; over-etch and you start over. But the hassles and hazzards of handling these chemicals give more compelling reasons to abandon this method.
If that's the only change made, then those companies would open IT shops here and staff them with imported workers on H1B visas. If the desired outcome is to employ more native born US citizens, imposing a tariff isn't sufficient by itself.
There was also the cellular law enacted in the 80's. Instead of encrypting the cellphone signals, they made it unlawful to listen to the 800 Mhz radio spectrum and illegal to manufacture or import any radio capable of doing so.
j -580&selectid=51#51
So, the radio manufacturers put jumpers in the radios which disabled the reception of 800MHz phone calls and leaked info out on the net about how to cut the jumper in the field. Here's one for the Alinco DJ580
http://www.mods.dk/mods.php3?radio=alinco&model=d
None of this should come as any surprise to anyone who has kept up with trends in software developer employment. With few exceptions, lawmakers have been very accomodating to industry trade group lobbyists who have whined incessantly about acute shortages of workers even as millions were being laid off nationwide. The only surprise is how fast this is developing. At the rate this export trend is progressing, in about 3-4 years, the vast majority of software development in the world will be done outside the US. This will contribute significantly to the implosion of our consumer based economy.
I'm sure hydrogen fuel cells and for that matter, Zn/KOH fuel cells are feasible. But every time I think about hydrogen, I see the Hindenberg in my mind's eye.
you'll have to connect a diode in series with your AC supply to block the reverse voltage because otherwise it will be greater than the VR.
Connect the diode in parallel with the LED, cathode to anode, so that it clamps the reverse voltage across the LED to one diode drop. Then, all you need is the dropping resistor for 120 Vac operation.