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Comment Let them fail. (Score 1) 177

Software is eating the world, as the saying goes. Organizations that refuse to invest in building and maintaining software that defines their businesses will simply fail. You can't wish away the incidental complexity of creating software, and it takes YEARS of experience to learn how to minimize the accidental complexity. Until the singularity comes and Skynet puts us all out of our misery; software is here to stay, and only getting bigger.

So: I say, keep your technical skills sharp and go into consulting. Charge lawyers hourly rates (or better) to lean up after these disasters. Between the constant revolving door of developers who only last 5-7 years moving out of the field, and the idiot MBA's who think that this (or offshore outsourcing for mission critical apps, or rapid application development, or whatever other BS comes along) will save them from being responsible: we old programmers are in good demand, doing good business for ourselves, and getting paid relatively well.

Comment Fuck Microsoft for 'Me Too'ing Raspberry Pi (Score 1) 133

They sat on their asses for years and let all the people involved with the Raspberry Pi do the hard work, scrape up the hard money, and NOW they come along and try to co-opt the hardware with their shitware OS to steal mindshare from users of a platform chartered to support low cost, NO STRINGS ATTACHED, hands on learning about computing? Google at least donated a laughable pittance for 1M USD from their coffers (see http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/...) to the foundation. Microsoft isn't donating shit to support the vision, but is rather gleefully SHITTING ON the vision. Their motives are clearly to just spread 'Windows everywhere' like the syphilitic pestilence it is. New CEO or no, it's damage Linux and promote windows while killing the spirit of Open Source and learning that it is. Same old Microsoft. They can't die out fast enough.

I would love to see the Raspberry Pi foundation come out with a 'not recommended' statement on that bullshit.

Comment Re:College admissions is not a life-value system (Score 1) 389

"It's not hard to earn at least Bs on basic high-school materials; having all Cs shows a lack of ability to do the hard work or a difficulty with or lack of commitment to basic academics."

And it might also show that the kid in question partied through high school, which I suppose is a lack of commitment. But we're talking about teenagers. Some will succeed in academics later on if given a chance.

I was a late bloomer. I partied and had a damn good time in high school, doing the minimum I could to get by. I showed up. That was 80%. After graduating from high school, I worked, played in bands, dated women and continued to party for the rest of that year. My parents then read me the riot act.

Back in the 70s, some of the large land grant universities had less stringent admissions requirements than they do today. I was admitted to one. It was just as difficult to do well there back then as it is now but they'd let you try. And lots of students did flunk out. I knew it was for real. I either had to work or go to school. Having already worked a series of shit jobs for asshole bosses, I was motivated. I made the dean's list for 5 consecutive semesters and was admitted to engineering school, eventually graduating with honors. I've been doing technical work for 33 years.

Today, that would be way more difficult. The admissions requirements are so stringent today, late bloomers would not be admitted. They would have to prove themselves in a community college first and then maybe they would be admitted. They would then have to meet the requirements of the engineering school which is now highly selective. Assuming they were admitted and completed the degree, it would probably have taken about 7 or 8 years to get that degree. Most who enter engineering school today straight from high school take 5 years to finish.

I understand why they tightened the admissions requirements at my alma mater. Too many students were flunking out and it looked bad. The board of governors pressured the university into adopting the same requirements other universities used. The way I see it, the exclusion of late bloomers was a kind of collateral damage.

Comment Re:I dunno about LEDs, but CFLs don't last (Score 1) 602

In my entire life I've never seen an LED burn out unless it was in my own circuit.

The LED itself is very reliable. The problem is the driver circuit, which may include a regulator. That's what fails, not the LED.

Many light fixtures are not ventilated and get very hot. This wasn't much of a problem for incandescent bulbs. But it is for LED and CFL, despite the lower dissipation. The Sylvania CFL 13W (60W equiv) has a warning on it's base saying not to use it in an enclosed space. At work, the restrooms were renovated and new LED light fixtures were put in. Half of them failed. The manufacturer replaced them with ventilated types. Those all worked.

It's not uncommon to see traffic signals with portions of the LED cluster flickering. This failure is likely due to an intermittent connection, perhaps on the printed circuit board.

As for CFLs, I've had mixed results. The 13W (60W equiv) have acceptable reliability. But higher wattage CFLs I've used in the garage don't last very long. I've replaced those with 4 ft florescent tube fixtures. I will not use CFLs or LEDs in hard to reach flood lamps outside. In one fixture, I have incandescent floods that have been in service for more than 27 years.

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