Conical inductors--still $10!...

[Joe Gwinn]

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

I did get the job, worked there for seven years, leaving only when I
decided to move back to the Boston area.

I was an embedded realtime programmer, writing in assembly code on the
metal in those days. All the embedded realtime programmers at that
company had hardware degrees, which was necessary to do much of
anything. Computer science had not yet been invented.

Joe Gwinn

 

[bitrex]

On 7/16/2020 12:04 AM, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Sunday, July 12, 2020 at 2:48:55 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 7/12/2020 2:19 PM, David Brown wrote:
On 12/07/2020 19:44, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, July 8, 2020 at 12:34:40 PM UTC-4, Ricketty C wrote:

The Soviets were confident for all his talk, Reagan would never pull the
trigger on them. They were less sure about Carter. Part of why they and
their allies worked so hard to help get rid of the guy.

Is that why Trump is their man?

No. Trump won my respect because he\'s proven to be a remarkably
capable chief executive, studiously faithful to the idea of limited
government, liberty, and a free people laid out in our constitution.

That let-Americans-decide back to American basics allowed Americans
to get back to work less impeded, producing a fountain of benefits
for the people who needed it most.

Unlike Obama\'s autocracy, President Trump hasn\'t sicced the IRS on his
opponents. Hasn\'t lied to the courts to get spy warrants against
political opponents based on falsified documents, he hasn\'t spied on
journalists or Congress or other political campaigns like Obama did
as a matter of course. Trump\'s been amazingly restrained, staying
within the lawful confines of his office, despite the most outrageous
provocations.

He\'s been exemplary. Both in policy, and in staying true to the American
Experiment, that immortal idea that a virtuous, educated people could,
had the right to -- and should -- rule themselves.

That\'s why.


A finer example of Poe\'s Law would be hard to find.


He thinks Obama sicced the IRS on him.

On Tea Parties. Don\'t read the news much, do we?

Doesn\'t seem paranoid at all.

Is bitrex your real name? If not, who\'s paranoid?

Cheers,
James Arthur

If you think any statements I\'ve made in this venue will somehow be
deeply materially devastating to my TRUE IDENTITY like some kind of
Slate Star Codex-man situation figure it out and find whomever you think
it is who\'s so interested and forward the lot of it. Go \'head, forward
it to the FEMINIST POLICE! or me mum!

oh, fuck! oh shiiiiiiit:

<http://gph.is/1eL3Czm>

Living life without delusions of grandeur is my fashion of freedom,
James. Try it sometime! You might get to like it...

 

[bitrex]

On 7/16/2020 12:04 AM, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Sunday, July 12, 2020 at 2:48:55 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 7/12/2020 2:19 PM, David Brown wrote:
On 12/07/2020 19:44, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, July 8, 2020 at 12:34:40 PM UTC-4, Ricketty C wrote:

The Soviets were confident for all his talk, Reagan would never pull the
trigger on them. They were less sure about Carter. Part of why they and
their allies worked so hard to help get rid of the guy.

Is that why Trump is their man?

No. Trump won my respect because he\'s proven to be a remarkably
capable chief executive, studiously faithful to the idea of limited
government, liberty, and a free people laid out in our constitution.

That let-Americans-decide back to American basics allowed Americans
to get back to work less impeded, producing a fountain of benefits
for the people who needed it most.

Unlike Obama\'s autocracy, President Trump hasn\'t sicced the IRS on his
opponents. Hasn\'t lied to the courts to get spy warrants against
political opponents based on falsified documents, he hasn\'t spied on
journalists or Congress or other political campaigns like Obama did
as a matter of course. Trump\'s been amazingly restrained, staying
within the lawful confines of his office, despite the most outrageous
provocations.

He\'s been exemplary. Both in policy, and in staying true to the American
Experiment, that immortal idea that a virtuous, educated people could,
had the right to -- and should -- rule themselves.

That\'s why.


A finer example of Poe\'s Law would be hard to find.


He thinks Obama sicced the IRS on him.

On Tea Parties. Don\'t read the news much, do we?

Doesn\'t seem paranoid at all.

Is bitrex your real name? If not, who\'s paranoid?

Cheers,
James Arthur

If you think any statements I\'ve made in this venue will somehow be
deeply materially devastating to my TRUE IDENTITY like some kind of
Slate Star Codex-man situation figure it out and find whomever you think
it is who\'s so interested and forward the lot of it. Go \'head, forward
it to the FEMINIST POLICE! or me mum!

oh, fuck! oh shiiiiiiit:

<http://gph.is/1eL3Czm>

Living life without delusions of grandeur is my fashion of freedom,
James. Try it sometime! You might get to like it...

 

[bitrex]

On 7/16/2020 12:15 AM, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Sunday, July 12, 2020 at 10:58:54 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:

James Arthur does seem to act as if he is in the top 1% of the income distribution, or maybe he just gets paid to act that way. Apparently Obama\'s attempt to use the IRS to go after the money the Koch brothers were spending to astro-turf what used to be the Republican Party into the Tea Party faction impacted James Arthur and he\'s been cross about it ever since.

snip


He much gives the impression of a man who had a crooked scheme and then
much irritated that even the US Government was smart enough to figure it
out.

Gossip, and flat wrong.

Bill\'s similarly loony. I know a lot of Tea Party people and a lot
about the workings. Real people putting their own money into the
coffee can, not Bill\'s ridiculous fiction.

(And we\'re still at it.)

Cheers,
James Arthur

Can you tell me more about this \"coffee can\" and if I were to say, put a
MAGA hat on, where exactly I would need to put the coffee can for people
to put their money into it?

For science

 

[bitrex]

On 7/16/2020 3:13 AM, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 2:04:17 PM UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sunday, July 12, 2020 at 2:48:55 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 7/12/2020 2:19 PM, David Brown wrote:
On 12/07/2020 19:44, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, July 8, 2020 at 12:34:40 PM UTC-4, Ricketty C wrote:

The Soviets were confident for all his talk, Reagan would never pull the
trigger on them. They were less sure about Carter. Part of why they and
their allies worked so hard to help get rid of the guy.

Is that why Trump is their man?

No. Trump won my respect because he\'s proven to be a remarkably
capable chief executive, studiously faithful to the idea of limited
government, liberty, and a free people laid out in our constitution.

That let-Americans-decide back to American basics allowed Americans
to get back to work less impeded, producing a fountain of benefits
for the people who needed it most.

Unlike Obama\'s autocracy, President Trump hasn\'t sicced the IRS on his
opponents. Hasn\'t lied to the courts to get spy warrants against
political opponents based on falsified documents, he hasn\'t spied on
journalists or Congress or other political campaigns like Obama did
as a matter of course. Trump\'s been amazingly restrained, staying
within the lawful confines of his office, despite the most outrageous
provocations.

He\'s been exemplary. Both in policy, and in staying true to the American
Experiment, that immortal idea that a virtuous, educated people could,
had the right to -- and should -- rule themselves.

That\'s why.


A finer example of Poe\'s Law would be hard to find.


He thinks Obama sicced the IRS on him.

On Tea Parties. Don\'t read the news much, do we?

It wasn\'t the Tea Party movement as such that worried Obama, but the fact the Koch brothers had spent a lot of money on a successful attempt to astro-turf what had been the Republican Party. They astro-turfed it to such effect that none of the 2016 Tea Party candidates for the Republican Party nomination were more attractive than Donald Trump (which is a pretty low bar).

Doesn\'t seem paranoid at all.

Is bitrex your real name? If not, who\'s paranoid?

Remaining anonymous in this crowd of kooks is realistic, not paranoid. It wasn\'t anything like as bad back in 1996 when I started posting under my own name.

Wasn\'t Jim Thompson often complaining that his web site was getting
hacked? Or thought it was getting hacked?

Probably Cursitor Doom if you ask me. I think he\'s a deep-cover leftist.
He\'s too dumb to be anything else, it must be an act.

 

[bitrex]

On 7/16/2020 12:04 AM, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Sunday, July 12, 2020 at 2:48:55 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 7/12/2020 2:19 PM, David Brown wrote:
On 12/07/2020 19:44, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, July 8, 2020 at 12:34:40 PM UTC-4, Ricketty C wrote:

The Soviets were confident for all his talk, Reagan would never pull the
trigger on them. They were less sure about Carter. Part of why they and
their allies worked so hard to help get rid of the guy.

Is that why Trump is their man?

No. Trump won my respect because he\'s proven to be a remarkably
capable chief executive, studiously faithful to the idea of limited
government, liberty, and a free people laid out in our constitution.

That let-Americans-decide back to American basics allowed Americans
to get back to work less impeded, producing a fountain of benefits
for the people who needed it most.

Unlike Obama\'s autocracy, President Trump hasn\'t sicced the IRS on his
opponents. Hasn\'t lied to the courts to get spy warrants against
political opponents based on falsified documents, he hasn\'t spied on
journalists or Congress or other political campaigns like Obama did
as a matter of course. Trump\'s been amazingly restrained, staying
within the lawful confines of his office, despite the most outrageous
provocations.

He\'s been exemplary. Both in policy, and in staying true to the American
Experiment, that immortal idea that a virtuous, educated people could,
had the right to -- and should -- rule themselves.

That\'s why.


A finer example of Poe\'s Law would be hard to find.


He thinks Obama sicced the IRS on him.

On Tea Parties. Don\'t read the news much, do we?

Doesn\'t seem paranoid at all.

Is bitrex your real name? If not, who\'s paranoid?

Cheers,
James Arthur

If you think any statements I\'ve made in this venue will somehow be
deeply materially devastating to my TRUE IDENTITY like some kind of
Slate Star Codex-man situation figure it out and find whomever you think
it is who\'s so interested and forward the lot of it. Go \'head, forward
it to the FEMINIST POLICE! or me mum!

oh, fuck! oh shiiiiiiit:

<http://gph.is/1eL3Czm>

Living life without delusions of grandeur is my fashion of freedom,
James. Try it sometime! You might get to like it...

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

I did get the job, worked there for seven years, leaving only when I
decided to move back to the Boston area.

I was an embedded realtime programmer, writing in assembly code on the
metal in those days. All the embedded realtime programmers at that
company had hardware degrees, which was necessary to do much of
anything.

My experiences, in companies other than GEC, were
broadly similar.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

I did get the job, worked there for seven years, leaving only when I
decided to move back to the Boston area.

I was an embedded realtime programmer, writing in assembly code on the
metal in those days. All the embedded realtime programmers at that
company had hardware degrees, which was necessary to do much of
anything.

My experiences, in companies other than GEC, were
broadly similar.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

I did get the job, worked there for seven years, leaving only when I
decided to move back to the Boston area.

I was an embedded realtime programmer, writing in assembly code on the
metal in those days. All the embedded realtime programmers at that
company had hardware degrees, which was necessary to do much of
anything.

My experiences, in companies other than GEC, were
broadly similar.

 

[server]

On Thursday, 21 February 2002 20:51:10 UTC+3, Patrik Johansson wrote:

I would like to calculate the force that a electro magnet is able to
lift. Or rather to know the formula for designing a magnet to lift a
certain weight. Is the \"push-force\" equal the \"lift-force\"??

For example:
If I would like the magnet to be able to lift 10kg using 12V. How
would that formula look like??

/Patrik

 

[server]

On Thursday, 21 February 2002 20:51:10 UTC+3, Patrik Johansson wrote:

I would like to calculate the force that a electro magnet is able to
lift. Or rather to know the formula for designing a magnet to lift a
certain weight. Is the \"push-force\" equal the \"lift-force\"??

For example:
If I would like the magnet to be able to lift 10kg using 12V. How
would that formula look like??

/Patrik

 

[server]

On Thursday, 21 February 2002 20:51:10 UTC+3, Patrik Johansson wrote:

I would like to calculate the force that a electro magnet is able to
lift. Or rather to know the formula for designing a magnet to lift a
certain weight. Is the \"push-force\" equal the \"lift-force\"??

For example:
If I would like the magnet to be able to lift 10kg using 12V. How
would that formula look like??

/Patrik

 

[whit3rd]

On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 12:46:44 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

That paper is hilarious. They declare that the public is so ignorant
that they look at a linear slope and don\'t appreciate that it\'s
actually exponential. What\'s worse, some of those ignorant rednecks
think they actually see a peak and a decline.

No, but John Larkin is hilarious. Any sufficiently-short piece of a smooth
curve has \'a linear slope\'. The exponential character of a propogating disease
is PART OF AN ANALYSIS. It is only one part, the one that dominates
with a new disease and no defensive counters.

COVID-19 is not entirely new, and defensive steps have been taken.
Refer to, for instance, <https://xkcd.com/2287/>

The exponential part isn\'t what gives you a peak and decline, but there\'s
other parts. Because, this is about analysis; there\'s more parts than one.

 

[whit3rd]

On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 12:46:44 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

That paper is hilarious. They declare that the public is so ignorant
that they look at a linear slope and don\'t appreciate that it\'s
actually exponential. What\'s worse, some of those ignorant rednecks
think they actually see a peak and a decline.

No, but John Larkin is hilarious. Any sufficiently-short piece of a smooth
curve has \'a linear slope\'. The exponential character of a propogating disease
is PART OF AN ANALYSIS. It is only one part, the one that dominates
with a new disease and no defensive counters.

COVID-19 is not entirely new, and defensive steps have been taken.
Refer to, for instance, <https://xkcd.com/2287/>

The exponential part isn\'t what gives you a peak and decline, but there\'s
other parts. Because, this is about analysis; there\'s more parts than one.

 

[whit3rd]

On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 12:46:44 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

That paper is hilarious. They declare that the public is so ignorant
that they look at a linear slope and don\'t appreciate that it\'s
actually exponential. What\'s worse, some of those ignorant rednecks
think they actually see a peak and a decline.

No, but John Larkin is hilarious. Any sufficiently-short piece of a smooth
curve has \'a linear slope\'. The exponential character of a propogating disease
is PART OF AN ANALYSIS. It is only one part, the one that dominates
with a new disease and no defensive counters.

COVID-19 is not entirely new, and defensive steps have been taken.
Refer to, for instance, <https://xkcd.com/2287/>

The exponential part isn\'t what gives you a peak and decline, but there\'s
other parts. Because, this is about analysis; there\'s more parts than one.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, July 17, 2020 at 6:21:00 AM UTC+10, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:

On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 3:46:44 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 12:06:23 -0700 (PDT),
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:

On Wednesday, July 15, 2020 at 12:16:45 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
Today\'s Proceedings of the (US) National Academy of Sciences has this paper

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2020/06/23/2006048117.full.pdf

Apparently if you spend time spelling out what exponential growth really means, even conservatives become more willing to take social distancing seriously.

It probably won\'t work on John Larkin who is really resistant to having things spelled out for him, and wouldn\'t work for Trump, who hasn\'t got a long enough attention span to let him absorb the message.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Another of your crap cites from the Sycophants. No such conclusions can be drawn from their phony research. Their phony work was based on a weak survey on MTurk, and it does not comply with any existing standards for psychological research.
Tell us about your career as a scientist.

That paper is hilarious. They declare that the public is so ignorant
that they look at a linear slope and don\'t appreciate that it\'s
actually exponential. What\'s worse, some of those ignorant rednecks
think they actually see a peak and a decline.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

Some people, when equations conflict with measurement, still believe
the equations.

The epidemiologists have all but abandoned the exponential growth model for COVID-19.

Not exactly true. Any realistic model has infected people infecting other people, and that\'s an exponential process.

Using the same average number of people infected per infected person - R - for each stage of the process was always unrealistic, and as soon as you can get a handle on the way this changes as the disease progress through the population you can make the model more realistic.

It\'s since been modified by a dispersion factor to account for the fact, determined independently by clinical field work and not a dweeb sitting at a computer, that most people don\'t spread it and a small number spread it like crazy.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all

“Probably about 10% of cases lead to 80% of the spread,”

> The models are linear

Taking the k factor - the dispersion in the individual R factors - into account doesn\'t make the model linear. Any model used for short term forecasting is approximately linear over the short term - that\'s basic differential calculus.

> and useful for short term forecasting to be used by policy makers to make decisions like this is getting worse, this is getting much worse, this is stabilizing, this is declining.

The decisions are based on what the data means, which is also what gets plugged into any mathematical model.

> Every little thing they do on the grand scale potentially costs a gazillion bucks, so the post processed modeling as it \"informs\" the decision making is very useful.

It\'s a pity that you don\'t have clue about what\'s actually going on, and waste our time with verbiage that illustrates this.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, July 17, 2020 at 6:21:00 AM UTC+10, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:

On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 3:46:44 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 12:06:23 -0700 (PDT),
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:

On Wednesday, July 15, 2020 at 12:16:45 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
Today\'s Proceedings of the (US) National Academy of Sciences has this paper

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2020/06/23/2006048117.full.pdf

Apparently if you spend time spelling out what exponential growth really means, even conservatives become more willing to take social distancing seriously.

It probably won\'t work on John Larkin who is really resistant to having things spelled out for him, and wouldn\'t work for Trump, who hasn\'t got a long enough attention span to let him absorb the message.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Another of your crap cites from the Sycophants. No such conclusions can be drawn from their phony research. Their phony work was based on a weak survey on MTurk, and it does not comply with any existing standards for psychological research.
Tell us about your career as a scientist.

That paper is hilarious. They declare that the public is so ignorant
that they look at a linear slope and don\'t appreciate that it\'s
actually exponential. What\'s worse, some of those ignorant rednecks
think they actually see a peak and a decline.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

Some people, when equations conflict with measurement, still believe
the equations.

The epidemiologists have all but abandoned the exponential growth model for COVID-19.

Not exactly true. Any realistic model has infected people infecting other people, and that\'s an exponential process.

Using the same average number of people infected per infected person - R - for each stage of the process was always unrealistic, and as soon as you can get a handle on the way this changes as the disease progress through the population you can make the model more realistic.

It\'s since been modified by a dispersion factor to account for the fact, determined independently by clinical field work and not a dweeb sitting at a computer, that most people don\'t spread it and a small number spread it like crazy.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all

“Probably about 10% of cases lead to 80% of the spread,”

> The models are linear

Taking the k factor - the dispersion in the individual R factors - into account doesn\'t make the model linear. Any model used for short term forecasting is approximately linear over the short term - that\'s basic differential calculus.

> and useful for short term forecasting to be used by policy makers to make decisions like this is getting worse, this is getting much worse, this is stabilizing, this is declining.

The decisions are based on what the data means, which is also what gets plugged into any mathematical model.

> Every little thing they do on the grand scale potentially costs a gazillion bucks, so the post processed modeling as it \"informs\" the decision making is very useful.

It\'s a pity that you don\'t have clue about what\'s actually going on, and waste our time with verbiage that illustrates this.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, July 17, 2020 at 6:21:00 AM UTC+10, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:

On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 3:46:44 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 12:06:23 -0700 (PDT),
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:

On Wednesday, July 15, 2020 at 12:16:45 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
Today\'s Proceedings of the (US) National Academy of Sciences has this paper

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2020/06/23/2006048117.full.pdf

Apparently if you spend time spelling out what exponential growth really means, even conservatives become more willing to take social distancing seriously.

It probably won\'t work on John Larkin who is really resistant to having things spelled out for him, and wouldn\'t work for Trump, who hasn\'t got a long enough attention span to let him absorb the message.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Another of your crap cites from the Sycophants. No such conclusions can be drawn from their phony research. Their phony work was based on a weak survey on MTurk, and it does not comply with any existing standards for psychological research.
Tell us about your career as a scientist.

That paper is hilarious. They declare that the public is so ignorant
that they look at a linear slope and don\'t appreciate that it\'s
actually exponential. What\'s worse, some of those ignorant rednecks
think they actually see a peak and a decline.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

Some people, when equations conflict with measurement, still believe
the equations.

The epidemiologists have all but abandoned the exponential growth model for COVID-19.

Not exactly true. Any realistic model has infected people infecting other people, and that\'s an exponential process.

Using the same average number of people infected per infected person - R - for each stage of the process was always unrealistic, and as soon as you can get a handle on the way this changes as the disease progress through the population you can make the model more realistic.

It\'s since been modified by a dispersion factor to account for the fact, determined independently by clinical field work and not a dweeb sitting at a computer, that most people don\'t spread it and a small number spread it like crazy.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all

“Probably about 10% of cases lead to 80% of the spread,”

> The models are linear

Taking the k factor - the dispersion in the individual R factors - into account doesn\'t make the model linear. Any model used for short term forecasting is approximately linear over the short term - that\'s basic differential calculus.

> and useful for short term forecasting to be used by policy makers to make decisions like this is getting worse, this is getting much worse, this is stabilizing, this is declining.

The decisions are based on what the data means, which is also what gets plugged into any mathematical model.

> Every little thing they do on the grand scale potentially costs a gazillion bucks, so the post processed modeling as it \"informs\" the decision making is very useful.

It\'s a pity that you don\'t have clue about what\'s actually going on, and waste our time with verbiage that illustrates this.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, July 17, 2020 at 5:06:29 AM UTC+10, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:

On Wednesday, July 15, 2020 at 12:16:45 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
Today\'s Proceedings of the (US) National Academy of Sciences has this paper

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2020/06/23/2006048117.full.pdf

Apparently if you spend time spelling out what exponential growth really means, even conservatives become more willing to take social distancing seriously.

It probably won\'t work on John Larkin who is really resistant to having things spelled out for him, and wouldn\'t work for Trump, who hasn\'t got a long enough attention span to let him absorb the message.

Another of your crap cites from the Sycophants. No such conclusions can be drawn from their phony research.

In your opinion. Nobody seems to have asked you to peer-review the paper when it was first submitted to PNAS.

> Their phony work was based on a weak survey on MTurk, and it does not comply with any existing standards for psychological research.

As if you would know what they were. Or could even point to place where they were codified.

> Tell us about your career as a scientist.

Why bother? I got a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry but never got around to publishing the research it reported. The one paper I have published which has collected a respectable number of citations - 24 - is

Sloman A.W., Buggs P., Molloy J., and Stewart D. “A microcontroller-based driver to stabilise the temperature of an optical stage to 1mK in the range 4C to 38C, using a Peltier heat pump and a thermistor sensor” Measurement Science and Technology, 7 1653-64 (1996).

The classic paper I cite - Larsen (1968) - has only had 35 citations, so 24 isn\'t too bad for the instrument literature.

Tell us about your own stellar career in science ..

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, July 17, 2020 at 5:06:29 AM UTC+10, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:

On Wednesday, July 15, 2020 at 12:16:45 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
Today\'s Proceedings of the (US) National Academy of Sciences has this paper

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2020/06/23/2006048117.full.pdf

Apparently if you spend time spelling out what exponential growth really means, even conservatives become more willing to take social distancing seriously.

It probably won\'t work on John Larkin who is really resistant to having things spelled out for him, and wouldn\'t work for Trump, who hasn\'t got a long enough attention span to let him absorb the message.

Another of your crap cites from the Sycophants. No such conclusions can be drawn from their phony research.

In your opinion. Nobody seems to have asked you to peer-review the paper when it was first submitted to PNAS.

> Their phony work was based on a weak survey on MTurk, and it does not comply with any existing standards for psychological research.

As if you would know what they were. Or could even point to place where they were codified.

> Tell us about your career as a scientist.

Why bother? I got a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry but never got around to publishing the research it reported. The one paper I have published which has collected a respectable number of citations - 24 - is

Sloman A.W., Buggs P., Molloy J., and Stewart D. “A microcontroller-based driver to stabilise the temperature of an optical stage to 1mK in the range 4C to 38C, using a Peltier heat pump and a thermistor sensor” Measurement Science and Technology, 7 1653-64 (1996).

The classic paper I cite - Larsen (1968) - has only had 35 citations, so 24 isn\'t too bad for the instrument literature.

Tell us about your own stellar career in science ..

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney