Posts by Bloody_Yank 35 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Apr 2007
As always, DONG power sounds great when you're young and full of it as you can take several trips a day. But sadly after mid-life you are down to a couple of trips a week that need to be well planned. Or you have to start a chemical dependency trip which could last up to 4 hours.
There are no easy answers ....
Yes its nice that these workers get a job and pay and perhaps their families benefit.
And goody for us as we get to send them our manufacturing base in return for cheap crap.
But whenever you have a situation where you have an extreme surplus of workers mixed with a wheel-n-deal anything goes environment ... there will be some regrettable collateral damage. Greed and power always corrupts.
I find it so amusing that we are slowly becoming so reliant on China for manufacturing. Its still learning how to walk so to speak ....
Didn't this supposedly happen at a trade show ? Maybe I'm confusing this with another lost prototype.
Very unfortunate incident and tragic for the engineer and his family. With Apples over the top fetish for secrecy - they were no doubt leaning pretty hard on FoxConn. Possible future "contract issues" and Apple may have even had a secrecy breach statement in their contract(s) with FoxConn.
As a HW developer for Intel in the past I've done a lot of business with Taiwan/Chinese manufacturers and pride for ones position - company - professional life is a big deal. So no doubt from top management on down this was a big deal at FoxConn. As noted he was a young engineer which may have contributed to his brash choice - but FoxConn clearly over reacted and over stepped their bounds.
Maybe he got sloppy or careless (being so young) and the phone was stolen ... or being so small its sitting in the bottom of some desk or was tossed out with the trash.
Also noted in the article was that Apple has contracted with companies not paying employees properly. This would not happen in Europe or the US - but as long as the masses won't pay $10 - $30 for some tech trinket we'll all have to live with some collateral damage.
At our large shopping mall we have an Apple store - always pretty busy and a happening place. To get there you must pass by a Sony store that is 99% PC focused --- I've never seen more than a dozen folks in there and its a bigger show space. Its pretty dismal.
I'm no Apple Fan-Boy as they have their own issues (I'm typing this on my old XP box). But its ironic that MS cannot see that they are destined to be a cross between Jabba the Hut and Rodney Dangerfield. Ruthless operators who get no respect. They own 80% of the desktop because of MS Office and the fact that Word and Excel are embedded into the cores of world wide business.
Dumb adds with Sienfeld and Gates failed to counter the popular I"m a Mac ads. They are a day late and a dollar short on the search engine / web services and they call it ... Bing ? And now they are going to instantly go head to head for the "shopping experience" with Apple who has an established presence and the iPhone and iPods .... WTF ?
Cheech and Chong had a bit about kamikaze pilots - and upon learning his fate pilot Hashimoto asked ... "Honorable General-son, Are you out of your Fucking Mind ?"
Working on the moon base would be really cool. Until you got laid off ... that is one long fucking walk home. Not to mention the whole re-entry thing.
But seriously - we should really finish destroying the Earth before moving onto other planets or orbiting bodies. If we start destroying the Moon and the Earth it will just take twice as long, and nobody wants that.
I love my OS X ... it just works and works and works and is easy on the eyes and the brain. But Apples obsession on slick style over easy upgrades / repairs is pathetic.
I was able to get a good deal on a old mirror door dual-G4 PowerMac on ebay. Installed quiet fans - 2GB RAM and dual 160GB drives. Easy access to everything .... I'll ride this baby into the ground.
Beats the hell out of my 17" G5 flat panel imac .... it barfed its hard drive 3 months after warranty. As an ex-designer I'm sure Apples penchant for style led them to push thermal limits of all components including the hard drive. What a crock of shit.
I'm sure our 'merican made nukes are much safer ... our problem is we just can't keep track of them. The Air Force loads them on bombers and flies them around the country like they were friggin' UPS packages.
I predict in the next 25yrs there will be a "nuclear event" somewhere in the world. Sort of like playing Russian Roulette with a map of the world and a shaky trigger finger.
If not - I'll be dead and miss the whole show ! Oh Crap
Balmer - cuz that crazy shit would press the button if it would boost sales
I enjoyed watching the Doctor back in the '90s when you could find the damn show being offered in the States (in the days before we had 5000 channels of shit being broadcast).
And I have to admit I've enjoyed Tennant as the current Doctor. He brings some real energy to the show and the part. Yeah some of the stories / plots are a bit campy or over the top --- but also so good surprises here and there.
Whoever the next Doctor may be ... I hope you Brits don't fuck this up. Or would cock up be more accurate ?
Paris - because we're both Yanks and we don't have a friggin' clue.
I've tested all the top distros SUSE is ok - Ubuntu is good - Fedora can be a little frustrating. SUSE 10.3 couldn't handle Nvidia drivers worth a shit - and its not fixed in 11.0 --- WTF sounds like a MSFT moment.
I recently loaded Mandriva - very easy install -- and the best surprise -- all ACPI functions actually reliably work out of the chute. Its a great release -- AND ITS FREE !
While I'm always ready for a ride in a F-22 or a trip into orbit ... I'd be scared shit-less riding in any Russian (Soviet) hardware. Especially re-entry ... I'd need a double set of space-diapers.
Of course thats ironic as we Yanks have only record of re-entry disintegration of a space craft. But that was not due to an engineering failure - but a process / management failure.
I have to give this lady thumbs-up ........
Being tied to a screen for hours - especially having to monitor things closely will become very tiring. Plus add the stress that you are "flying a plane" AND looking for bad guys (or avoiding detection) and you've got one hell of an "office job".
On the other hand -- real pilots (and flight crews) are out in the real world doing a job they love (typically). Their "work day" is much more interactive etc.
Sounds like drone pilots need regular breaks in an outside / refreshing / stimulating environment
Paris cuz these boys need something different
I worked for "the company" as a R+D engineer thru the '90s and into '05. It was a crazy place to work-your-ass off during the '90s plenty of $$ - raises - options - parties. Stock splits like clock-work. Lots of opportunity and management was open to giving you a chance (risk taking). After the tech-implosion of 2000 / 2001 that was all over. In fact for years after 2000 Intel never really addressed stock options given to employees that were really useless (i.e. options to buy stock at $30 - $40 when the actual daily stock price was $22)
Bottom line is before 2000 working your ass off got you compensation and opportunity - afterwards working your-ass-off meant you kept your job. Even into '05 it was common to get your yearly review "you did a lot of good work this year - but no raise - no stock .... (i.e. feel free to leave if you want to). ". It used to be a place to make your career - now just a place to start a career and move off to somewhere else.
Oh - the rule of Intel stock:
- Stock price hits $19.75 ... buy a shitload
- Stock hits $23.50 - sell
Been good to my IRA account which came from Intel
After all it was our fuck-witted president and his moronic administration that de-regulated the whole banking / loan sector. Thus causing humans to be the greedy stoopid pigs they tend to be when the rules are removed. And this time the ripples (as in ripping) have crossed the pond.
Up to this point El Presidente Fuck-Tard's biggest mess was contained to Iraq, but this credit thingy and US recession will maul lots of places. Plan for rough seas until 2010 or so. Please keep in mind that only 50% of 'mericans are morons - the rest of us are just trying to move forward and have a normal life.
At this point I've moved to IT - but in the Public Sector ... pay ain't great but the job is steady
Ya got to keep in mind - when when you mix complex technology ( computer ) and the average Joe/Jane together ... some interesting stuff is bound to happen. These folks have no clue as to where these files - photos - etc. are - or are not - or just tossed in the "trash".
I ran my own consulting biz for a year or so - charging a fair rate (certainly more than these boobs were being paid) and giving my customers good value. And a big part of that was PRIVACY - ensuring their files were kept private - and if they were selling or giving a computer away - that their disks were scrubbed.
In the end I just got tired of dealing new customers trying to haggle me down or suggest my rates were a bit high. I now laugh as I leave Tech stores passing a line of noobs carrying their junk in to be geeked on by some teenager.
I totally agree on not mixing technology and guitars ... yes yes new pick-ups - extra hot pick-ups - even noise reducing pick-ups ------- but self tuning or fully digital guitars ???? And yes some digital effects on amp are fine too.
I play to take a break from all the total techno crap I deal with all day. Christ - having to stop playing because your axe "lost" it IP address --- or that annoying Red LED is blinking indicating your low on memory or you need to update your firmware. Screw that shit.
I tune my guitar in less than a few minutes and then beat the crap out of it.
Gene Simmons clearly is a poster child for the music industry ... greedy, ignorant of technology, and fearful of change. What a dick head.
Radiohead did a bold experiment - basically cutting out all the middlemen - all the wasted packaging - use of fosile fuels for moving inventory - etc. All their profit went back to the band (and of course some went to the web service).
This is the future of music sales
Such a law is definetly useful in fighting TERRORISM -- by this I mean violent acts against the State or the population at large. You know the usual bombing - poisoning - killing (or planning to kill) 10s - 100s - 1000s of people.
Not for protesting animal research or even impeding research - yes if property damage or injury ocurrs they need to be prosocuted.
But defining such acts as TERRORISM only serves to muddy the water and dilute that word TERRORISM. TERRORISM is some serious shit not some boobs hoping to free some lab rats.
As someone else mentioned -- allow enough dilution and government over-reaching ( El Presidente Bush ) and next thing you know posting annonomously become a crime. The only solution here is for everyone to place encrypted files on your computers and toss out the keys .... they can't arrest everyone.
By the way I am a member of PETA ( People Eating Tasty Animals ).
I had the pleasure to sit in on a lecture by Cerf around 1997 - the 'net was just getting really spun up then. Nice guy - unassuming - and very insightful. While he was wearing a suit + tie - he said he just had a batch of tee shirts printed up saying "IP on Everything" :-) As this was also the time that the notion of "every device" needed to be designed network ready was starting to emerge.
Also a cool coincidence the a guy named Cerf (pronounced "surf") helped create the net we all Surf on.
As to Gore - he at least was a man of vision and persistence in getting the Arpanet technology into the hands of public companies to enable what is now the internet. Those on the bitter political right have so few things to cling to (that are real) that they must keep their "folk tales" alive by spouting them whenever possible. Sparkly things and the Fox Noise Channel is all they really have left.
You guys continue to impress me with the depth / breath of your reporting.
Going well beyond the headlines to understand and de-bunk BS like this. Thus helping us help those poor souls who get these asinine emails sent to them from the climate change deniers.
I apologies in advance for all the American idiots whos blind hatred of Al Gore blinds them to anything that he champions or supports. The good news is that they represent less than 25% of the American public .... similar number those who still worship El Presidente Bush
Meaning home users, businesses, governments in the developed world pay M$ outrageous license fees - thus allowing M$ to offer China or these fine Nigerian folks a OS + Office for $3 or less. In effect we're all underwriting this activity everytime we buy a M$ product.
And working in a school (doing tech support) it really pisses me off when school districts pay license fees to these goons --- or vampires at a highly inflated rate (compared to $3).
At this point I only deal with M$ as its part of my job -- OS X & Linux are my primary personal OS's at home ...... Bill and Balmer can rot in hell
As President Eisenhower warned in the '50s - the US Military Industrial Complex could eventually take on a life of its own and in effect make armed conflict (at any level) the first choice rather than the last choice.
The appearance of Blackwater and shows such as FW are the results of that prediction of not having any type of controls on that industry. I've watched the show a few times when I was bored shitless - its really pretty inane. But lets face the fact that its really is an info-mercial for these companies to show their "wares" off.
The danger here is when you couple "perfect weapons hype" with boneheads ( Bush administration implied) ... the idea is formed that you can have a quick + clean + tidy war on the cheap. Iraq is a fine example of this.
The many mini-wars / disputes around the globe are also a side effect.
The tooth-paste is out of the tube at this point - we need skillful and principled politicians to guide us through all this. Which is a nice way of saying we're screwed ------ so be sure and look for a mini-ADS on sale soon for your grand-mother
I give them full credit for doing things differently at the physical layout of a PC. But they should have aggresively priced these babies at 30% less than their iMac counter parts to stimulate purchasing.
Also - if you're going to take a risk then really go for it - they should offer a Linux flavor - a dual boot option - etc.
Actually sometimes engineers do use excel ----- this was on of the tools of choice for statistical analysis of data for PC board design - high speed circuit design at Intel from 2002 until I left a few years later ..... to be clear we we using many highend design tools - but the gobs of data would go right into Excel for analysis.
But really if you're designing a bridge or an airplane you wouldn't use Excel would you ..... I mean thats like REAL engineering
Used to work for Intel R+D doing PC design --- back in 2002 or so there were endless (mind-less) discussions / plans to to get the PC out of its price spiral. Boy that was a hoot
But bottom line is that Intel + MS got their wish in making Wintel the dominate platform ---- and that was by working from '93 till '99 in standardizing every part of the PC down to its last screw (thats why they all look the same). And by getting Asian manufacturers to compete on price down to the penny.
This allowed them to keep dropping prices while they were boosting performance and reliability (Win95 - Win98 - etc - XP) --- And in the process training PC buyers to expect AND demand low prices AND high performance.
Sometimes you get what you wish for .......
Meanwhile I'm typing this on a nice Apple computer running a real OS ..... how sweet it is
Its obvious some scared Henny-Penny's in the schools have influenced this Sir William or are playing to some "pet theories" he has.
The losers here are the students and the teachers. One of the primary benefits of wireless is that it can bring easy connectivity to older schools. Even when (expensively) re-wired - older schools still have fewer LAN taps per class room - and the LAN taps are not optimally placed.
This means teachers (who sometimes move to different rooms during the day) may not be able to easily access class notes stored on the server or connect their teaching laptop to both the network and the class projector.
Whereas wireless give all the flexibility of the newest schools that are wired to the hilt for connections. So until you Brits clear this up I'd say those poor lads-n-lasses at older schools are getting a "less rich" educational experience.
I work providing on-site support at a 2200 student high school built in 1959. Its been decently rewired - but we are adding 5 discrete wireless nodes to improve connectivity. We are building a new expansion wing next year that will be pre-wired for integrated wireless nodes.
As to ADHD - my step-son (born 1978) is profoundly ADHD ... I don't think we had wireless anything back then (in common use). Everything I learned about ADHD is that it is heavily hereditary and typically passed on by the father.
I predict you're going to see more cache tossed about as things heat up between Intel and AMD -- lots of cache helps to keep plenty of code and data nearby for those multi-cores to chew on and stay busy.
You want to minimize hogging the FSB having to go to the Fridge (Memory) or God help us all the way to the Freezer (hard drive).
This goes hand in hand with the new onboard "disk cache" Intel announced ----- this will evolve into a L3 cache sitting between the Fridge and Freezer.
Lastly - look for algorithm wars on how best to clevery up relevant stuff in them caches
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