Pinter?
It'd be interesting to compare this with the Brit equivalent, the Pinter (https://pinter.co.uk). At anywhere between £15 and £23 for the ingredient packs, making 9 pints each time, this would look like a worthy comparison....
49 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Aug 2017
I was introduced to IT when (having screwed up my A-levels) went to work in a bank in the mid 70's. Eventually, I was trusted to key in the day's cheques and credits on the 'computer' AKA a huge Burroughs teletype device (maybe a TC500). Then there was that special day that we had to deal with the processing centre at Wythenshaw using reels of paper tape called 'algorithms'. After the trusty TC500 had hammered out the eagle logo in text graphics, I had to know more and went to uni to learn about computers. Only then, in the dying days of the 70's, did I discover the new-fangled microprocessors....Luxury! Yah, you try an tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you...
As far as I'm concerned I recall trying to deal with Autonomy to resolve a problem with their search engine; we'd switched to Autonomy and (mostly) it did OK. However when it didn't, we were on our own. Trying to get worthwhile support from them was best done with a Ouija board. All this flows from Lynch's attitudes, so a sojourn with the less-privileged will be good for his soul...
Amongst the many problems that this brings is that it takes people's/users attention away from their work and puts the focus on how a bunch of programmers *think* they could work. In the Real World, we need to pass around invoices for approval, POs for completion, works orders to get something done, a spec to persuade a bunch of coders that there *is* a Right Way to do things... All of these really mustn't be dynamic, practically all of English jurisprudence is predicate upon something from the past staying as it was in the past. Imagine an IT contract that was 'dynamic'? Interesting technological thing, but don't let it near SpaceX or NASA. Or the US military, or the UK MoD. Imagine the SA80 cockup with this involved in its genesis....
That turns out not to be the case; look at http://ukandeu.ac.uk/explainers/is-the-uk-marginalised-in-the-eu-2/ and note "The UK government is closer to final EU policy outcomes than are most other EU governments. This is also true for policy issues the UK government is particularly concerned about.". That's an academic way of saying that the Brits usually get what they want.
The one thing that the junior civil servants who get these things dumped on them will do is regard the project as a CV improvement service. They shift the project requirements to suit their career and the poor bloody supplier gets to try to square a dodecahedron. The cretinous lack of oversight of the juniors is where the Sir Humphrey's could actually make a difference, and then you could start worrying about why a supplier was chosen (see 'Door, Revolving, Mark 1')...
I was in the little machine room I habituated (back in the day) when an HP engineer was fitting a replacement PSU to our HP3000 Series III. I was just checking the 50Mb drives (washing machine size) when the engineer powered up the new PSU that he'd had flown in from the USA. He said afterwards that I appeared to teleport past the drives, mostly because he'd forgotten to switch over to 220V and a Series III PSU was a big. meaty beast to go POP...
"Or the typical impossibility of installing MacOS."
Nope, see https://www.tonymacx86.com/
"You aren't stuck with old hardware on your new system's day one like you are with MacOS."
Nope, see https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/building-a-customac-hackintosh-the-ultimate-buyers-guide/
And yes, I've tried this and it works. I used one such system for 18 months, for everything including Win 7 under Parallels.
I thought this sort of nonsense had died out after Y2K, but no. Bank sent a replacement departure lounge card after they decided that the old scheme was too generous, and so I had to find the appropriate app. Started that and was asked whether I would like to add a card to the app; 'Ho ho!', thought I to myself, the letter said they'd already activated the card so all should be good. Enter 16 digit magic number and activation code; no, letter only has 16 digit card number, no activation code. OK, use email. No, app doesn't know email address; enter 16 digit number and password. No, password not known, choose from email addresses to send password reset. No, no email addresses, so do not pass Go, do not collect £200, do not uninstall the app and file card with plastic waste...
The issue I found with governmental IT (I only ever dealt with one, just one) was that the junior civil servants who had to talk to us suppliers regarded the whole thing as a CV improvement contest. Consider that we were going to supply a football pitch (no, it's an example); the progress meeting went like this:
1. Approve minutes
2. Actions taken
3. <interruption> 'I wasn't happy with the way this was left; we quite clearly stated that the pitch had to be all-weather.' <nope, not in the minutes, but I've been told to go along with this>
4. <interruption> 'The shape is very limiting. Football is only one of many sports that we want to play there. It should be capable of being a running track as well. The football pitch can go inside.'
5. <interruption> 'Also, it needs to be pink. It's an all-weather pitch, we need to be able to see the players of whatever sport...'
After that, the competition to see who could bankrupt us became more intense...
Whatever they're doing, the Dublin Inkjet Manufacturing Operation is still wetting itself at the sight of druids trying to turn lead into gold. They turn soot, iron filings and water into gold, and all with a very tiny workforce. DIMO (the other one's in Singapore) is a huge factory site with machines and a small admin side. Very sparsely crewed as the machines are large, simple and just work.I think the manufacturing costs for an inkjet cartridge are on the order of about 7p (a blurp of plastic, a very small PCB, a small amount of water, some pigment and a little cardboard box. Then you pay how much for it???
I worked at a Mars unit for a while when the Brothers Grimm were still in charge. We did the whole 'paint everything' schtick, only to be well-chuffed when one of the Brothers emailed about the enormous waste of time and money that had occurred in getting the place painted just for them. Shortly afterwards, a company-wide policy on maintenance was well-received...
Very similar to the Haynes one:
Haynes: Rotate anticlockwise.
Translation: Clamp with molegrips then beat repeatedly with hammer anticlockwise.
Haynes: This is a snug fit.
Translation: Clamp with molegrips then beat repeatedly with hammer.
Haynes: This is a tight fit.
Translation: Clamp with molegrips then beat repeatedly with a hammer.
Haynes: As described in Chapter 7...
Translation: That'll teach you not to read right through before you start. Now you are looking at scary photos of the inside of a gearbox.
Haynes: Prise off...
Translation: Hammer a screwdriver into...
Haynes: Undo...
Translation: Go buy a tin of WD40 (giant economy size).
Haynes: Retain tiny spring...
Translation: PINGGGG - "Jesus, where the hell did that go?"
Haynes: Press and rotate to remove bulb...
Translation: OK - that's the glass bit off, now fetch some good pliers to dig out the bayonet part (and maybe a plaster or two).
Haynes: Lightly slacken...
Translation: Start off lightly and build up till the veins on your forehead are throbbing then clamp with molegrips and beat repeatedly with hammer.
Haynes: Weekly checks...
Translation: If it isn't broken don't fix it.
Haynes: Routine maintenance...
Translation: If it isn't broken, it's about to be. We warned you!
Haynes: One spanner rating.
Translation: An infant could do this... so how did you manage to **** it up?
Haynes: Two spanner rating.
Translation: Now you may think that you can do this because two is a low, teensy weensy number... but you also thought the wiring diagram was a map of the Tokyo underground (in fact, that would have been more use to you).
Haynes: Three spanner rating.
Translation: Make sure you won't need your car for a couple of days.
Haynes: Four spanner rating.
Translation: You're not seriously considering this are you?
Haynes: Five spanner rating.
Translation: OK - but don't ever transport your loved ones in it again.
Haynes: If not, you can fabricate your own special tool like this...
Translation: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
I was inside Vignette during this time, having spent a fair number of years working with and for HP. I was truly gobsmacked at hearing what HP did. Vignette used Autonomy as the federated search engine inside their content management software, and sometimes it worked. Sometimes, it simply wouldn't and then we got to try to get 'support' out of Autonomy. After years of contract PM work, I thought I could get blood out of a stone but Autonomy 'support' was mind-numbingly crap. Hearing that HP were going to pay $11b for such a lame pile of dipshits?? I thought the world was taking the mick, but no, HP post-Fiorina was simply a management wasteland.
She dumped the mini business, even whilst there were buyers like Shell Expro, Lockheed, Boeing et al, bought Compaq ("Because it stands for 'Compatibility and Quality', doesn't it?") to bolster HP Consulting (Compaq still had the rump of DEC Consulting), redirected HP Research to digital cameras and flat screen TVs (which they had to buy in from Dell), and generally tried to go for consumer electronics margins to consumers. After that, there was no way back.
No, no, gambling is GOOD! Oh shit, what I *meant* to say is that financial services as specialised in the Stock Exchange and Wall Street are good. Not gambling, no, that's bad and wrong and addictive and very, very profitable... Not like stocks, shares, and stuff like that. No.
One of the things that bothers me about the whole EV question is that the manufacturing costs of EVs tend to be ignored by the Green side of things. An EV takes comparatively huge amounts of rare earths for its electronics etc. by comparison with an older ICE car, substances that are difficult to extract cheaply and which pose a question for recovery. I appreciate that the retail prices of Teslas et al are an indicator but I doubt that they show the whole cost. Although I would be classed as a 'petrolhead' within this thread, I wonder if we are really comparing like costs with like costs when I run an antique petrol hatch-back against, say, a Tesla?
"A seasoned software innovator would sniggle at the notion..."
After nigh-on 40 years in DP/IT/software, and much seasoning, I need a training course! I want to know how to sniggle, I want to be able to hold my head high in right-on places like Starbucks, able to sniggle with the best of them...
Ah, so he thinks someone is going to solve the Hard Problem in the next decade? Don't think so; all the AI stuff I've seen recently was already around when I started back in the 70s, but now it can go further because there's more horsepower, and the Hard Problem is *still* hard. At a guess, it's because it's very similar to the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything" question; no-one actually knows what it is...
If there'll be the same sort of race to reception to remove her photo that happened when Fiorina left? I remember the one at Amen Corner, as it was only CEs that were allowed screwdrivers, SEs had to talk about stuff...
HP died at Fiorina's hands, the rest have been simply steering the corpse to where the bean-counters can extract the most.
Flippant answer - I married my degrees
Serious - I bombed out halfway through mine (which was in the wrong place, and folded around me), so I don't have a degree. I've got the intellectual curiosity to keep looking and learning (only to find that things really do go in cycles and we're back in the "Ooo, Visual Basic is so liberating!" phase), and it's only a few City-based agencies that won't talk with me. Experience, persistence and serious attention to integrity get me places. Again, FWIW, I started an OU masters a decade or two ago, only to find that I was being asked to learn and answer questions about a development methodology that I'd had to learn and use 8 years previously. Having to pay to 'learn' something I get paid to do indicated that the OU was a refuge for the incompetent, as far as compsci was concerned. Anyway, this is all just opinion...
Here's what Chhabra says in the footnote:
"No court of law has ever established that a statement implying a false assertion of fact is constitutionally protected speech..."
They're going after Perens by implying that an opinion about a future event (which may or may not happen) is "a false assertion of fact", nothing to do with the GPL in and of itself. So that's any opinion about anything in the future that suddenly has become a false assertion if you don't like it. Is it me or is that really thin ice he's walking on?