I should add a rule zero then: Take your time to properly understand your costs and revenues so you can make a sensible investment. Maybe it ends up being cheaper just to close door for a week every 30 years than your A-Bomb-proof continuity plan.
And then a zero-plus: Make sure you get business-aligment in written. Maybe the board member that agreed to your investment-sensible less-than-A-Bomb-proof continuity plan wants you as scapegoat once the shit hits the fan.
"Meg knows this contract is losing money and wants to lose it to let go of all the US Citizens and their expensive security clearances."
What an antipatriotical act! Wait... unless Meg doesn't give a damn about US Citizens and it's simply the case about going out of a contract that's losing money! That would be pure capitalism in action, the soul of USA and therefor the most patriotical act anyone could take!
"Sadly, the press and many of the investigators involved in this will probably not understand the techical aspects of this, and why this is a fundamental cheat that could only have been created by the team that engineered the ECU."
There's no problem understanding it even without the slightest knowledge about ECUs. In fact, the problem would be if by any remote chance the ECU team was not involved.
Prosecutor: This a basic IF...THEN...ELSE. (if in emissions test then do this, else do that). IF...THEN...ELSE... is the kind of stuff programers and only programers do. Only the authors of the ECU's code could add the test; doing these kind of things (the legal ones, of course) is exactly what the programers are there for.
"Nope, their whole ignition switch failure was swept under the rug with only about 20 million vehicles recalled, and a paltry 900 million dollar forfeiture."
So here we are talking about 500.000 cars instead of 20.000.000 (40x less) but the fines could reach 18.000.000.000 instead of 900.000.000 (20x more).
Overall German-based WV may be fined 800x more per car than US-based GM.
"The European mileage tests are absolutely silly."
Well, they probably are a bit stretched as, no doubt, are American, but I for one have to say that my 15 y-o car behaves as advertised (and, of course, YMMV): it was published as making 10.4 l/100Km mixed and mine makes 10.2 l/100Km (so even slightly better).
So what? We weren't talking about Japanese automobiles, much less Subaru.
"It has a lot to do with their penchant for using flat 6 engines, which are particularly well-balanced compared to straights."
So a flat 6 is "particularly well-balanced" compared to a straight 6? Maybe you should review your sources. Or are you talking apples to oranges again?
"Managers get enormous wages because they're part of the good old boys club who's members set each other's wages - in other words, corruption."
That's not what they say. I hold them by what they say.
"their job description is management, not technical expertise."
I don't ask for anything else. First definition for the verb "manage" is "be in charge of (a business, organization, or undertaking); run.". The one that is in charge is in charge and therefore is the top responsible for the outcome. Note that in order to manage the manager needs to have whatever is needed to manage. If in order to properly manage something you need technical expertise (i.e.: because lacking it would open your ass to liabilities as soon as one of your employees cheats you), then so be it: it's not required to be explicitly exposed on the position requirements because it's obviously implicit.
"Expecting them to know what a specialist working under them knows is unreasonable, and if enforced, will simply limit technology to whatever a single human non-expert can hold in his head. That's not good for anyone except buggy whip makers."
There's quite a *hugh* middleground between being a world minutiae expert and having a good technical grasp about what you are managing. And, yes, you can acquire that level of expertiseness on a wide variety of fields. True: you won't have managers on their late twenties/early thirties whose all expertise comes from their expensive MBAs but older people that grew out of the ranks instead. Can't see this as a bad thing since, arguably, that's the strategy that made USA's big engineering companies to be what they were and to achieve what they achieved.
"Not for the scapegoat it won't be."
If it *is* a scapegoat. But that's not the point.
"Nor for anyone who'll have to deal with the resulting culture of ass-covering and plausibly deniable orders."
On one hand, we *already* are on an ass-covering culture, haven't you worked on any corporate environment lately? On the other, most of this ass-covering culture comes exactly from the "plausibly deniable orders": the system defaults on "the boss didn't know" and the burden of proof is on the side of the one saying that he knew. If changed to "the boss knew unless demonstrated otherwise" things would change a lot because "plausible deniability" would be covering asses no more.
"No, it's not. It is the stock market that sets the values of a publicly traded company."
I see and accept the cynical bias of your post, but that's wrong even under that light. The values of a publicly traded company are their own and then it's up to the traders to buy its shares or not. That's not theory but you can see this in practice too, since there are founds working on, say, ethical banking, or clean energy or whatever.
"As long as companies only purpose is to generate profit for their owners"
It's only... it's not! companies' purpose is stated on their Company Charter: profit can be their only purpose, or one among others, or the most important, or not.
"As long as companies only purpose is to generate profit for their owners, it is utterly dishonest to make speeches about their "values""
And then, it is not the stockmarket the one that goes to the corporate website and fills their "mission, vision, values" page, but the director's board so, if anyone, it is the director's board members the ones being utterly dishonest. One more reason for making them strongly liable, to stop theri dishonesty.
"Individuals and companies, even extremely corrupt ones like Kenneth Lay or SCO, are ultimately just doing what they've been taught; blaming them is both unjust and pointless."
Bullshit. They are grown adults, not children. They can and do take their own decisions and they should be held fully responsible for them.
"Unless, of course, the point is trying to defend the system itself from criticism."
I'm not trying to defend capitalism from criticism, it of course has its fair share of things to criticize but, in the end, "the system" can push up just to a level and it's the individual the one taking the final decision and acting one way or the other.
"This issue reminds me of smartphones that clock higher when a benchmark is running, and of graphics cards which get lower scores when you rename the benchmark executable."
Not at all. We are talking health hazards here. It's more alike to cheating the EuroNCAP than a GPU benchmark.
"They must sell different VW's in the states than here in Germany"
Exactly my view. If you look at American car forums about their opinion on European cars, be them VW, Audi, BMW or Mercedes (those make about 99% of what "European" they know about), you couldn't believe they are talking about the same cars running here. Where here you usually run any one of them 150, 200.000Km without major problems, just standard maintenance, it seems they break apart at 50.000 miles in USA! it must the weather or something...
"Do you really think the judge would let you off just because the cop couldn't catch you using a standard radar gun?"
Well, unless the cop can set the speed in any other meaningful way and/or that kind of coating was forbidden by law (which probably is, I bet there's some kind of provision for "defeating devices"), then, yes, he'd do.
"The officers of the company most likely have no clue how the engine management software works."
That's exclusively their problem. They didn't know? They should. They are officers for a reason and get enormous wages for a reason.
If they can make a convincing case that all this was the sole action of a lower rank employee, good, but after that's the case, any gross misconduct or liability at the corporate level should automatically be their own personal responsibility: it is the high officers the ones that set the vision, mission and values of the company and the ones that should guard them.
You can bet this could change the way business is carried on in USA and EU in quite satisfying ways.
"Doing a quick check, a first class one way ticket (Emirates) is already 4400 euros."
Yes, but how many first class seats load that plane? Those 5000 (or more) are for all of the seats. The result is a new Concorde, which, it seems, was never profitable.
"Out of curiosity, a quick google shows that the world free diving record is over 200m"
It has no relevance to this situation. That's why I talked about "the obvious lack of experience" of the parent poster that, it seems, you also exhibit. The problem is neither depth nor distance, but pressure differential. You must understand that all those records start and end at the same pressure level.
"Free escape" is the technical term you should look for. Max training depth is usually 30m and you should understand the problems grow exponentially, not linearly.
In practice, there's the description of the Pacocha submarine incident, 1988, when 22 tripulants carried free escape from around 30m deep: one dead, 14 with severe decompression problems, 7 with minor decompression problems.
There's no training facilities for free scape beyond the 300 feet limit that I'm aware of, not only because they'd be quite expensive but also because, taking the words of Edwyn Gray in "Disasters of the Deep: A Comprehensive Survey of Submarine Accidents & Disasters", "...the free-escape method is of doubtful utility at depths approaching 300 feet", that is, 1/3 the alleged depth here. I myself trained free escape both within a 10m tank and 22m free water and clearly understand why.
"That the "Free money for everyone" system has only led to government breakdowns, genocide, starvation and certain doom every time it's been attempted in the past?"
Uuhhh.. nope, that hasn't been the case. Can you provide your examples?
"That such systems have never been shown to scale to a million people without complete loss of control."
Well, with the limited exception of Swizterland, I'm not aware of the free rent scheme being tried anywhere but certainly a very similar one has extensively used with much success since any public service is offered under "free lunch": from army to socialized healthcare, and has not only not led to "government breakdowns, genocide, starvation and certain doom" but it is the basis of modern-day occidental civilization.
"The shockwave was satisfying, but it would have crushed that helicopter long before it hit the ground and those cars would be crushed by the rapid pressure increase of the shockwave before being lifted up"
No, it wouldn't and no, they wouldn't. They were about 3 to 5 miles from the (ground-level) explosion by then so both pressure wave and wind speed would be "moderate" (probably well below 3psi/100mph). If any, the effects were too strongly depicted, not too lightly.
"the experience we've gained since the early 1960s, means we should be able to do it faster, not slower, even despite the reduced funding. The private space businesses are certainly proving this to be the case."
You know going to space is quite a logarithmical problem, right? And private space business has demonstrated up to now their ability to do *some* parts of the *easiest* part, right?
Slashdot Mirror
I should add a rule zero then: Take your time to properly understand your costs and revenues so you can make a sensible investment. Maybe it ends up being cheaper just to close door for a week every 30 years than your A-Bomb-proof continuity plan.
And then a zero-plus: Make sure you get business-aligment in written. Maybe the board member that agreed to your investment-sensible less-than-A-Bomb-proof continuity plan wants you as scapegoat once the shit hits the fan.
"Yea, and let's throw some lasers in there too for good measure"
Not shark-mounted though... this is North Dakota, remember?
"Yes! The Academy, as in when Kirk says, "It was standard reading at The Academy". Maybe we'll finally find out what that reading is. "
That's easy: their readings were the exact opposite to those of the arch-enemies' one... The Khan Academy!
"Meg knows this contract is losing money and wants to lose it to let go of all the US Citizens and their expensive security clearances."
What an antipatriotical act! Wait... unless Meg doesn't give a damn about US Citizens and it's simply the case about going out of a contract that's losing money! That would be pure capitalism in action, the soul of USA and therefor the most patriotical act anyone could take!
Oh... I feel a bit confused now...
"Sadly, the press and many of the investigators involved in this will probably not understand the techical aspects of this, and why this is a fundamental cheat that could only have been created by the team that engineered the ECU."
There's no problem understanding it even without the slightest knowledge about ECUs. In fact, the problem would be if by any remote chance the ECU team was not involved.
Prosecutor: This a basic IF...THEN...ELSE. (if in emissions test then do this, else do that). IF...THEN...ELSE... is the kind of stuff programers and only programers do. Only the authors of the ECU's code could add the test; doing these kind of things (the legal ones, of course) is exactly what the programers are there for.
"Nope, their whole ignition switch failure was swept under the rug with only about 20 million vehicles recalled, and a paltry 900 million dollar forfeiture."
So here we are talking about 500.000 cars instead of 20.000.000 (40x less) but the fines could reach 18.000.000.000 instead of 900.000.000 (20x more).
Overall German-based WV may be fined 800x more per car than US-based GM.
Quite interesting.
"The European mileage tests are absolutely silly."
Well, they probably are a bit stretched as, no doubt, are American, but I for one have to say that my 15 y-o car behaves as advertised (and, of course, YMMV): it was published as making 10.4 l/100Km mixed and mine makes 10.2 l/100Km (so even slightly better).
"Subaru's reputation is well-deserved."
So what? We weren't talking about Japanese automobiles, much less Subaru.
"It has a lot to do with their penchant for using flat 6 engines, which are particularly well-balanced compared to straights."
So a flat 6 is "particularly well-balanced" compared to a straight 6? Maybe you should review your sources. Or are you talking apples to oranges again?
Quite an interesting insight.
No surprise the Slashdot crowd doesn't moderate it insigthful.
"My Subaru has already gone 100,000 miles with nothing but oil changes. I'm expecting to get a solid 10-15 years out of the Subaru./P."
And your point is? My Merc is from 2000, so already 15 years, 100.000 miles and just oil changes.
"Managers get enormous wages because they're part of the good old boys club who's members set each other's wages - in other words, corruption."
That's not what they say. I hold them by what they say.
"their job description is management, not technical expertise."
I don't ask for anything else. First definition for the verb "manage" is "be in charge of (a business, organization, or undertaking); run.". The one that is in charge is in charge and therefore is the top responsible for the outcome. Note that in order to manage the manager needs to have whatever is needed to manage. If in order to properly manage something you need technical expertise (i.e.: because lacking it would open your ass to liabilities as soon as one of your employees cheats you), then so be it: it's not required to be explicitly exposed on the position requirements because it's obviously implicit.
"Expecting them to know what a specialist working under them knows is unreasonable, and if enforced, will simply limit technology to whatever a single human non-expert can hold in his head. That's not good for anyone except buggy whip makers."
There's quite a *hugh* middleground between being a world minutiae expert and having a good technical grasp about what you are managing. And, yes, you can acquire that level of expertiseness on a wide variety of fields. True: you won't have managers on their late twenties/early thirties whose all expertise comes from their expensive MBAs but older people that grew out of the ranks instead. Can't see this as a bad thing since, arguably, that's the strategy that made USA's big engineering companies to be what they were and to achieve what they achieved.
"Not for the scapegoat it won't be."
If it *is* a scapegoat. But that's not the point.
"Nor for anyone who'll have to deal with the resulting culture of ass-covering and plausibly deniable orders."
On one hand, we *already* are on an ass-covering culture, haven't you worked on any corporate environment lately? On the other, most of this ass-covering culture comes exactly from the "plausibly deniable orders": the system defaults on "the boss didn't know" and the burden of proof is on the side of the one saying that he knew. If changed to "the boss knew unless demonstrated otherwise" things would change a lot because "plausible deniability" would be covering asses no more.
"No, it's not. It is the stock market that sets the values of a publicly traded company."
I see and accept the cynical bias of your post, but that's wrong even under that light. The values of a publicly traded company are their own and then it's up to the traders to buy its shares or not. That's not theory but you can see this in practice too, since there are founds working on, say, ethical banking, or clean energy or whatever.
"As long as companies only purpose is to generate profit for their owners"
It's only... it's not! companies' purpose is stated on their Company Charter: profit can be their only purpose, or one among others, or the most important, or not.
"As long as companies only purpose is to generate profit for their owners, it is utterly dishonest to make speeches about their "values""
And then, it is not the stockmarket the one that goes to the corporate website and fills their "mission, vision, values" page, but the director's board so, if anyone, it is the director's board members the ones being utterly dishonest. One more reason for making them strongly liable, to stop theri dishonesty.
"Individuals and companies, even extremely corrupt ones like Kenneth Lay or SCO, are ultimately just doing what they've been taught; blaming them is both unjust and pointless."
Bullshit. They are grown adults, not children. They can and do take their own decisions and they should be held fully responsible for them.
"Unless, of course, the point is trying to defend the system itself from criticism."
I'm not trying to defend capitalism from criticism, it of course has its fair share of things to criticize but, in the end, "the system" can push up just to a level and it's the individual the one taking the final decision and acting one way or the other.
"hooking someone up to a machine with wires is a good way to scare the crap out of them, the "polygraph" machine could be an empty box."
Even if that "someone" is a veteran FBI agent? Don't think so.
"This issue reminds me of smartphones that clock higher when a benchmark is running, and of graphics cards which get lower scores when you rename the benchmark executable."
Not at all. We are talking health hazards here. It's more alike to cheating the EuroNCAP than a GPU benchmark.
"They must sell different VW's in the states than here in Germany"
Exactly my view. If you look at American car forums about their opinion on European cars, be them VW, Audi, BMW or Mercedes (those make about 99% of what "European" they know about), you couldn't believe they are talking about the same cars running here. Where here you usually run any one of them 150, 200.000Km without major problems, just standard maintenance, it seems they break apart at 50.000 miles in USA! it must the weather or something...
"Imagine a scenario of no government and a society ruled by free market and what the people want."
I want to smack your face right now.
"Do you really think the judge would let you off just because the cop couldn't catch you using a standard radar gun?"
Well, unless the cop can set the speed in any other meaningful way and/or that kind of coating was forbidden by law (which probably is, I bet there's some kind of provision for "defeating devices"), then, yes, he'd do.
"The officers of the company most likely have no clue how the engine management software works."
That's exclusively their problem. They didn't know? They should. They are officers for a reason and get enormous wages for a reason.
If they can make a convincing case that all this was the sole action of a lower rank employee, good, but after that's the case, any gross misconduct or liability at the corporate level should automatically be their own personal responsibility: it is the high officers the ones that set the vision, mission and values of the company and the ones that should guard them.
You can bet this could change the way business is carried on in USA and EU in quite satisfying ways.
"Doing a quick check, a first class one way ticket (Emirates) is already 4400 euros."
Yes, but how many first class seats load that plane? Those 5000 (or more) are for all of the seats. The result is a new Concorde, which, it seems, was never profitable.
"Nostalgia should not factor into a business plan."
Why not? It helps selling quite a lot of things, from straight razors to Morgan Roadsters.
And then, at five grands a-pop don't expect you have flights each hour, so add up "waiting for next flight".
Doesn't look as if it can go against private jets/flights which seems the natural competitor here.
"Out of curiosity, a quick google shows that the world free diving record is over 200m"
It has no relevance to this situation. That's why I talked about "the obvious lack of experience" of the parent poster that, it seems, you also exhibit. The problem is neither depth nor distance, but pressure differential. You must understand that all those records start and end at the same pressure level.
"Free escape" is the technical term you should look for. Max training depth is usually 30m and you should understand the problems grow exponentially, not linearly.
In practice, there's the description of the Pacocha submarine incident, 1988, when 22 tripulants carried free escape from around 30m deep: one dead, 14 with severe decompression problems, 7 with minor decompression problems.
There's no training facilities for free scape beyond the 300 feet limit that I'm aware of, not only because they'd be quite expensive but also because, taking the words of Edwyn Gray in "Disasters of the Deep: A Comprehensive Survey of Submarine Accidents & Disasters", "...the free-escape method is of doubtful utility at depths approaching 300 feet", that is, 1/3 the alleged depth here. I myself trained free escape both within a 10m tank and 22m free water and clearly understand why.
"i used to use virtual desktops - in the last millenium. Since it becamse possible to use more than one monitor, this is m preferred method of work."
Mine too... in addition to several virtual desktops. Why not having the best of both worlds?
"At work I use an Ubuntu workstation [...] In addition I have an old laptop running [...] with a newer laptop running Windows 7"
So, you see? You not only have several virtual desktops, but several physical ones. There must be something about it.
As for the original question, KDE's Activities*1 is exactly what he's asking for.
*1 see, for instance, http://askubuntu.com/questions...
"That the "Free money for everyone" system has only led to government breakdowns, genocide, starvation and certain doom every time it's been attempted in the past?"
Uuhhh.. nope, that hasn't been the case. Can you provide your examples?
"That such systems have never been shown to scale to a million people without complete loss of control."
Well, with the limited exception of Swizterland, I'm not aware of the free rent scheme being tried anywhere but certainly a very similar one has extensively used with much success since any public service is offered under "free lunch": from army to socialized healthcare, and has not only not led to "government breakdowns, genocide, starvation and certain doom" but it is the basis of modern-day occidental civilization.
"The shockwave was satisfying, but it would have crushed that helicopter long before it hit the ground and those cars would be crushed by the rapid pressure increase of the shockwave before being lifted up"
No, it wouldn't and no, they wouldn't. They were about 3 to 5 miles from the (ground-level) explosion by then so both pressure wave and wind speed would be "moderate" (probably well below 3psi/100mph). If any, the effects were too strongly depicted, not too lightly.
"the experience we've gained since the early 1960s, means we should be able to do it faster, not slower, even despite the reduced funding. The private space businesses are certainly proving this to be the case."
You know going to space is quite a logarithmical problem, right? And private space business has demonstrated up to now their ability to do *some* parts of the *easiest* part, right?