Posts by Pompous Git

That'd have to be a very bright lady who is proficient with JTAG equipment and debuggers.

Also know how cardiac resynchronisation via the three electrodes attached to the CRT-D works using some arcane (if you aren't trained in cardiology) software. The technologist told me that it took her 12 months to train up a recent uni graduate.

Highly recommended reading.

Indeed, though I have only skimmed it. Interesting in that I was assured by the cardiologist, the surgeon and the technician that the Merlin@home device is receive only from the POV of the CRT-D. Its transmissions are via the telephone connection to the St Jude server that passes on alerts to the cardiologist via SMS & email.

If I was a Merkin, presumably I'd be lawyering up to sue the team responsible for keeping me alive. Curmudgeon that I am I have emailed my cardiologist to enhance his hard-earned holiday...

Re: Equality of Opportunity, not Attainment

I wonder what it is about these engineering jobs...

Systems Engineer

Female Median Annual Salary: $72,300

Male Median Annual Salary: $71,500

Electrical Engineer

Female Median Annual Salary: $66,000

Male Median Annual Salary: $66,000

Mechanical Engineer

Female Median Annual Salary: $61,100

Male Median Annual Salary: $60,400

Videographer

Female Median Annual Salary: $39,300

Male Median Annual Salary: $38,800

Computer Repair Technician

Female Median Annual Salary: $31,500

Male Median Annual Salary: $31,500

...that could be replicated elsewhere in industry?

Re: Inconsistent approach

The only gender slant I'd've thought worthwhile adding to it at all is to ensure that all students are made aware of the women who have done great things in science in the distant past despite the huge hurdles they had to overcome.

How about "all students are made aware of the women who have done great things in science in the distant past"? Hurdles exist for both sexes. Presumably the men of Hypatia's time were unable to overcome those that led to her becoming head of the Neoplatonist School in Alexandria ca. 400 CE.

Most of the truly egregious discrimination against women in physics appears to be quite recent. Thinking in particular here of Amalie Noether here. Oh and Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.

Re: Yup, women are smarter.

I get asked some truly basic shit more often than is reasonable.

I don't think this is at all constrained to either IT, or either sex. Fifty percent of the population are below average intelligence. Live with it...

Kerry Packer once remarked about the Dean of the University of NSW that "He's the most intelligent fuckwit I've ever met."

Re: Inconsistent approach

to get more girls interested in physics they changed the syllabus to focus more on the social impact of physics

This actually goes back a long way. My brother was studying for his degree in Engineering (having discovered that mathematics wasn't going to find him any interesting work) in the late 1970s. My mother came home from work to discover him crying. When she asked what was wrong, he showed her the essay he had just had marked. He'd been given 19/20 for it.

My mother said she thought he'd be pleased, but he disagreed. His previous essay had received a very low mark, so in retaliation he'd written the most egregious bullshit he could think of.

Re: Gender or viewpoint imbalance ?

Another suggestion... pay a bonus for males to 'identify as female.

After all we are being told gender is just a social construct.

Perhaps it's time we blokes complained about the "gender imbalance" in prostitution... After all only 20% of prostitutes in the US are male.

Re: the problem

For what it's worth, she reckoned "chicks just don't really dig computers".

Is that because chicks=dumb-clucks?

Re: Yup, women are smarter.

There seems to be an assumption that people over 50 can't possibly understand about computers. Wrong!

Not to mention we can remember that there seemed to be more women in computing back in the "Dark Ages". I can't remember any of them complaining about "gender imbalance". It seems to me that the ones doing the complaining aren't in IT. If they are that pissed off about the "gender imbalance" why the fuck don't they eat their own dogfood?

Re: Surely this is almost the definition of insider trading?

it won't receive any instructions unless the magnet in in place.

Not quite. Once in receive mode, the device is accessible wirelessly; my technologist demonstrated this by removing the magnet and making the last lot of adjustments without the magnet in place. She also pointed at the wireless device.*

I think the main point here is that if someone wants to kill you, there are so many easier ways than fucking about with CRT-Ds.

* This is a distinctly different device than the Merlin@home device that telephones information it receives from the CRT-D to the cardiologist.

Re: different view

The problem is the feral DA is apparently not interested in the case...

Have you considered domesticating the DA?

Re: Surely this is almost the definition of insider trading?

your general connected gadget (medical or otherwise) developer neither has the clue nor desire to make it secure.

What is it you don't understand about needing to switch the device into receive mode with a magnet?

Re: Interesting possibilities...

"Hey Charlie, why are you twitching like that?"

"Sorry love. I'm actually dead. That's just the defibrillator trying to reboot me."

Re: Surely this is almost the definition of insider trading?

Even it there is a flaw, the manipulators only report a working range of 7 feet/2 meters.which means any attack using these flaws would probably be investigated as (attempted) premeditated murder.

Before the CRT-D can receive any signals, a strong magnet must be placed in very close proximity to the device. Confirmed this with the technologist in charge of mine last week. I'm not panicking. When your heart's in such bad shape that you need a CRT-D you tend to worry about things other than some random script-kiddy hacking the device.

Hollerith must be turning in his grave!

Nah! He's just punch-drunk ;-)

Tell me they wont use that information for their own purposes!!

I don't think they are likely to sell us many desktop PCs using that info ;-)

Re: Errrm

How many people know the names Electrolux and Kirby? Not many these days,

Shirley you're joking. "Electrolux is the fourth largest household appliance company worldwide based on its sales in 2013."

Statistics and facts about Electrolux

Mrs Git was given her Electrolux vacuum cleaner for her 21st birthday. It's almost as geriatric as we are ;-)

Re: Infinite Economics

Why American capitalism thinks this is good idea is beyond me.

Perhaps it's because it's not capitalism that's at fault. I recall back in the 1960s reading in Scientific American that government spending had outstripped spending by everyone else.

Re: I spy a factual error in the argument.

But but but...

Back in the 19th century heyday of British industrial capitalism, a typical factory worker did 12 hours a day for 6 days a week.

Unfortunately for Grand Theories, the relationship is not at all simple. Hunter-gatherers worked ~4 hrs/day to make their living and spent the rest of the time presumably doing what we do i n our leisure time these days: getting pissed, fornicating and telling lies. The typical 19th C rural labourer worked six days and at harvest time very long ones. But much of the year was nowhere near as arduous and there were ever so many holidays.

In the mid 1950s to 1960s my father made machine tools on piecework in the UK. Mostly he only had work 3 days a week and needed to supplement the family income with two part-time jobs: collecting the football pools and selling seafood snacks in pubs on Friday and Saturday nights. My mother had three part-time jobs: bus conductor, football pools collecting and also selling seafood snacks on weekends.

Moving to Australia in 1965 increased both their leisure time and their income.

Re: @I guess that's economists for you

if you don't also have knowledge about what the fuck you are talking about

You really do need to read Aristotle before condemning him...

Then how do you explain the fact that the unemployment rate in the USA is 23% and rising?

Hint: offshoring. My "American" shoes are made in Vietnam. Probably by hand.

Re: Errrm

How many of the people reading this have a job?

Not me :-) I'm retired and it's kewl...

Re: @Doctor Syntax

Healthwise, I think the horse manure was probably a great deal less harmful.

It was the basis of the French Intensive market gardening system.

Re: @I guess that's economists for you

If I were to list the number of occasions I had seen someone assume that because they understood logic and had decent reasoning skills, they could make pronouncements in any field by abstracting a few gross principles and finding a pleasing conclusion, we would be here for a very long time.

In that case why don't you justify your argument for not using logic and reasoning skills? Presumably you have everyone join hands and sing Koombaya.

Case in point, Aristotle loved his idea of his five elements to explain matter. And justified it with assumptions and logic based upon them because the conclusion seemed elegant to him.

The strong compulsion people have to rubbish Aristotle has always mystified me. Apart from inventing logic, the metaphysical stuff of mathematics that allows computers to work, and his contributions to marine biology that needed 2,000 years to confirm, he also proposed an amendment to Empedocles' four elements (earth, water, air and fire, or solid, liquid gas and plasma in modern parlance). The fifth element he named aether and until the 20th C was considered essential in physics. After a brief period of no being needed, it would appear to have snuck back by John Wheeler under the name quantum foam.

"The arrogance of someone who thinks" they understand Aristotle without reading him is "staggering".

My comment was aimed at the comment, not the article. The article was rubbish and had nothing whatsoever to do with the author majoring in philosophy. It is entirely possible to major in philosophy in the 21st C without any understanding of logic, though it was not always so.

Re: Errrm

has anyone even TRIED to design something that rewards sociophilic behaviour (and thus disadvantaginging the kind of buggers that have caused the big economic meltdowns that have happened every now and then) ? And if not, why not?

Esme, have a look at the Icelandic Commonwealth from ca. 930 and the pledge of fealty to the Norwegian king with the Old Covenant in 1262.

Re: Errrm

The author presumes that future economies must be Capitalist ones and then continues on that basis.

Society need not be so constrained.

Capitalism is the organisation of the wealth of a number of individuals to create infrastructure that no individual can create alone. For example hospitals, railways, airlines and sewage farms. If you believe such infrastructure can be created by individual wealth, please provide examples.

Re: Infinite Economics

you logically cannot have economic growth for ever on a finite planet.

Economic growth is a metaphysical quantity and so is not likely constrained by a finite planet. In any event, the universe is more than likely infinite and there's no good reason I know of to believe that we are forever confined to living on one planet.

Re: @I guess that's economists for you

The author is a philosophy major.

It shows:

Really? When The Git was in Big School, logic was taught by a philosophy major. Unsurprising really since logic has been an important part of philosophy since at least Aristotle's day over 2,000 years ago. There were quite a few computer science and mathematics students in that class. Perhaps when you get to go to Big School you will learn about such things.

Perhaps she righted the rong bits ;-)

Re: This is pretty disgusting.

I'll leave the misogynist argument for another time, but there's no goddamned reason it can't or shouldn't be enjoyed by young women and/or instructed by elder female relatives.

No need for misogyny. Boudica, queen of the Iceni in Britannia, led a massive uprising against the occupying Roman forces ca. 60 AD. Suetonius wrote that her army contained more women than men. It was common for Celtic women to train young men in warfare. Mainly because the men were away doing battle in the summertime.

Can a worker not also be an intellectual or a peasant, an intellectual also a peasant etc.

Read Living the Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing. And have an upvote :-)

Re: Cost

That in the age of fees so many still sign up for so many soft, pointless courses shocks me.

I suspect you'd be even more shocked by the absolute drivel the students undertaking those courses come out with then.

Re: The elephant in the room - stagnant wages because of the free movement of labour

expecting all of their staff to come fully-trained, making it rather hard for graduates to get a start (hint: at some point someone has to be trained by someone!).

Around 1990 The Git was declared unemployable by an expert in such matters. So, The Git purchased a computer to replace his rather aged typewriter. Wrote magazine articles and a book. And a newspaper column. Started a computer training business. Undertook several training contracts in the local village saving the 2 hours commute to the city. By 1999 he was banking $AU10-14,000 per month. That was the year he made enough money to build his dream home. Winding up the business, he saved ~$AU100,000 by building the house himself, so that was money he didn't have to earn and pay tax on, or borrow and pay interest.

None of this was offered to The Git. He had to do it himself. Not bad for someone declared "unemployable". By an expert.

Perhaps they'll remember that experts actually DO know what they're talking about, and that's what the word "expert" means

So Einstein was correct when he said that the power of the atom would never be exploited. Scientific American was correct when it claimed the Wright brothers hadn't flown a heavier-than-air aircraft. Paul Ehrlich was correct when he said in a speech in 1969: “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” In 1885, the US Geological Survey announced that there was “little or no chance” of oil being discovered in California.

Et Cetera

Re: The UK is not educating people in Tech...

Given the person mentioned being aspie, then looking for advertise jobs would be their main way of finding them - when the social side of things is phenomenally unpleasant for an individual then all that word of mouth

I'm an aspie* and nearly all of my friends are aspies. I was a contract computer trainer for a decade and most of the contracts were for 3 or 6 hour sessions. My life consisted of continuous job searching. I never advertised, nor did I respond to advertisements. When 95% of job seekers are applying for 5% of the available jobs you are making the task as difficult for yourself as possible.

Hint: handing out calling cards** to friends and relatives with your contact details and a precise description of the type of work you seek might be "phenomenally unpleasant" for a very small minority of the population.

* As an aspie I'd far rather work in isolation, but when needs must I fake being an NT.

* In the job clubs we printed 10 up on a sheet of ordinary paper and cut them up with scissors. They don't need to be fancy.

@ thumb down The UK is not educating people in Tech...

Confirmed this by having every job club participant list all the jobs they'd had and how they got them.

80% of today’s jobs are landed through networking

New Survey Reveals 85% of All Jobs are Filled Via Networking

Re: Don't forget us oldsters!

At your age you've probably been subjected to too many team-building exercises and similar BS. You're not impressed by management any more and too apt to call BS.

Heh, heh... Spent the last three years or so of my working life in the public service. (It was accidental! Honest!). Staff meetings were a nightmare that I alleviated somewhat. Anybody saying "stakeholder" would hear me say: "sausage-holder". Ditto for all the other foolish jargon I couldn't abide.