'standard' NDA

[bitrex]

On 10/2/19 1:59 PM, bitrex wrote:

On 10/2/19 1:49 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 1 Oct 2019 17:55:09 -0700 (PDT), George Herold
gherold@teachspin.com> wrote:

John (Larkin), You offered to send me a 'standard' NDA.  I wanted to
take you up on that.  Maybe on dropbox?  Or my email (now) is
ggherold@gmail.com

Thanks
George H.

Here is our starting-point NDA.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b924j4e9jbbven2/NDA%20Draft%20-2%20.docx?dl=0

This has been mangled by multiple lawyers, and other companies usually
sign this, sometimes with minor revs. It's pretty much the standard
Silicon Valley NDA.

We have had some legal doings with a giant company who signed this
basic form when they needed stuff badly. They later discovered that we
take it seriously.

One trick companies will do is to sign the NDA, let you do a lot of
work for them, show them how it's done, and then do a big prior-art
search to justify stealing the designs. I could name names. About all
you can do then is walk away and concentrate on working with people
who have ethics.

It happens and unless the job is heading towards mid five figures
there's not much to do but write it off. I rarely have any work that
pays that much so far.

Clue: if their engineers look eager to do it themselves, they probably
will.


In the 21st century there are online avenues both for contract
work/employment and for just contracting to do tutoring/general
education. If someone seems super-eager to do it themselves then there
is no reason not to just acknowledge that and re-direct to the proper
department, they often accept.

You can charge hourly for just talking, which while perhaps not quite as
well-paid or as emotionally satisfying as designing something, is pretty
easy money. Sometimes they decide they'd rather you do something once
they fully realize it's beyond them so it turns out into being an
elongated pitch session, but you get paid for it.

PID controllers are apparently a hot area of interest and there are
software guys who will pay just to talk with someone who seems like
they've successfully implemented one.

 

[Robert Baer]

bitrex wrote:

On 10/2/19 12:00 PM, bitrex wrote:

The expiration date on NDAs are not about when you can disclose the
information unless it specifically says that which is rare.  Usually
they are in force until specifically released by the company holding
the information.  The expiration typically is the end of the contract
for proving new information that would be covered.  So once the
contract expires new information should not be provided until a new
agreement is signed.

Of course it all depends on the wording, but it would be counter
productive for a company to set a time limit on their trade secrets
when there is no need to.


So if the terms of a particular NDA state the company has to release
you but it's impossible to contact that company to discuss the NDA I
guess they are in force forever. /shrug

The couple times it has happened I just destroy all the documents and/or
samples associated with their project, wipe any email correspondence and
put the NDA in my files and forget about them.
* Good thing that you can ignore SOX.

Without any further guidance from the client as to a de-facto
end-of-contract behavior on my part it seems like cheap insurance.

 

[Robert Baer]

bitrex wrote:

On 10/2/19 11:15 AM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 10/1/19 10:23 PM, bitrex wrote:
On 10/1/19 8:55 PM, George Herold wrote:
John (Larkin), You offered to send me a 'standard' NDA.  I wanted to
take you up on that.  Maybe on dropbox?  Or my email (now) is
ggherold@gmail.com

Thanks
George H.


tangentially anyone know what happens with an NDA if the client
company just "ghosts" you/disappears off the face of the Earth? with
no money or services having been exchanged.

It's somewhat common behavior with small companies and startups run
by "the kids these days" unfortunately; their way of informing you
that they've decided to go in a different direction or cancel the
project is just never respond to emails or phone calls from you, ever
again. this is usually "undefined behavior" in the text of NDAs I
have read


It stays in force until the expiry date, if any.  I don't sign NDAs
that make my work product their confidential info, and especially not
ones that would make my existing knowledge theirs.  Of course I
wouldn't sell the exact same design to somebody else, but they're
benefiting from knowledge gained on previous projects, and I need to
be able to keep doing that.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


There are occasionally start-up-type clients who start out with what
seems like a good-faith relationship, have you sign some work
agreements, pump you for information a bit under the guise of
"requirement discussion", and then bail out figuring that yeah we
breached the work-order portion of the contract but you're not going to
sue us over eight op-amps and a four-figure job.

* Small claims court is cheap and covers that.
Maybe include a covering statement, and if possible an up-front NDA
fee to cover E&O insurance.

They're right, of course, getting burned sometimes is a cost of doing
business as a freelancer, in any discipline even graphic design. That
putting some op-amps together in such a way that they accomplish
something of value is such a rare skill apparently that some of The Kids
These Days would be enticed to cheat to figure out how to do it is
almost flattering.

I have a buddy from ART SCHOOL who now works for a certain big-name
company that makes drawings about super-heroes in books that people like
to read. there are several works he did as a freelance designer years
ago that became so popular they've popped up on so many t-shirts and
coffee mugs and random kitsch from all sorts of companies both Chinese
and domestic that never cared a bit about copyright, that he has
entirely given up on trying to sue anyone, he just keeps a
"flattery-file" of spin off designs of his work each time he sees a new
one.

 

[bitrex]

On 10/2/19 3:36 PM, Robert Baer wrote:

bitrex wrote:
On 10/2/19 11:15 AM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 10/1/19 10:23 PM, bitrex wrote:
On 10/1/19 8:55 PM, George Herold wrote:
John (Larkin), You offered to send me a 'standard' NDA.  I wanted
to take you up on that.  Maybe on dropbox?  Or my email (now) is
ggherold@gmail.com

Thanks
George H.


tangentially anyone know what happens with an NDA if the client
company just "ghosts" you/disappears off the face of the Earth? with
no money or services having been exchanged.

It's somewhat common behavior with small companies and startups run
by "the kids these days" unfortunately; their way of informing you
that they've decided to go in a different direction or cancel the
project is just never respond to emails or phone calls from you,
ever again. this is usually "undefined behavior" in the text of NDAs
I have read


It stays in force until the expiry date, if any.  I don't sign NDAs
that make my work product their confidential info, and especially not
ones that would make my existing knowledge theirs.  Of course I
wouldn't sell the exact same design to somebody else, but they're
benefiting from knowledge gained on previous projects, and I need to
be able to keep doing that.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


There are occasionally start-up-type clients who start out with what
seems like a good-faith relationship, have you sign some work
agreements, pump you for information a bit under the guise of
"requirement discussion", and then bail out figuring that yeah we
breached the work-order portion of the contract but you're not going
to sue us over eight op-amps and a four-figure job.
* Small claims court is cheap and covers that.
  Maybe include a covering statement, and if possible an up-front NDA
fee to cover E&O insurance.

Small claims courts in the US have basically no ability to enforce
judgments when the client is out of state. Nobody is going out across
state lines to arrest them if they just ignore a summons entirely, or
repo their assets to pay off a summary judgment for being a no-show.

About the "best" that might happen is a blip shows up sometime down the
road when the company or client tries to get credit that they have a
bench warrant attached to them. but spending time and paying money out
of my pocket for "revenge" unwitnessed is a lousy use of my money and
time IMO.

I think the up-front fee for NDA-processing is a better idea I will
consider.

 

[Robert Baer]

bitrex wrote:

On 10/2/19 1:49 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 1 Oct 2019 17:55:09 -0700 (PDT), George Herold
gherold@teachspin.com> wrote:

John (Larkin), You offered to send me a 'standard' NDA.  I wanted to
take you up on that.  Maybe on dropbox?  Or my email (now) is
ggherold@gmail.com

Thanks
George H.

Here is our starting-point NDA.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b924j4e9jbbven2/NDA%20Draft%20-2%20.docx?dl=0

This has been mangled by multiple lawyers, and other companies usually
sign this, sometimes with minor revs. It's pretty much the standard
Silicon Valley NDA.

We have had some legal doings with a giant company who signed this
basic form when they needed stuff badly. They later discovered that we
take it seriously.

One trick companies will do is to sign the NDA, let you do a lot of
work for them, show them how it's done, and then do a big prior-art
search to justify stealing the designs. I could name names. About all
you can do then is walk away and concentrate on working with people
who have ethics.

It happens and unless the job is heading towards mid five figures
there's not much to do but write it off. I rarely have any work that
pays that much so far.

* Small claims courts usually are good to $5K; if you anticipate
problems like that, try breaking the project into logical sub-sections
and make those desperate contract projects.
Also look into E&O insurance that THEY pay for, proceeds to you when
they mess up.

Clue: if their engineers look eager to do it themselves, they probably
will.


In the 21st century there are online avenues both for contract
work/employment and for just contracting to do tutoring/general
education. If someone seems super-eager to do it themselves then there
is no reason not to just acknowledge that and re-direct to the proper
department, they often accept.

You can charge hourly for just talking, which while perhaps not quite as
well-paid or as emotionally satisfying as designing something, is pretty
easy money. Sometimes they decide they'd rather you do something once
they fully realize it's beyond them so it turns out into being an
elongated pitch session, but you get paid for it.

 

[bitrex]

On 10/2/19 3:52 PM, Robert Baer wrote:

bitrex wrote:
On 10/2/19 1:49 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 1 Oct 2019 17:55:09 -0700 (PDT), George Herold
gherold@teachspin.com> wrote:

John (Larkin), You offered to send me a 'standard' NDA.  I wanted to
take you up on that.  Maybe on dropbox?  Or my email (now) is
ggherold@gmail.com

Thanks
George H.

Here is our starting-point NDA.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b924j4e9jbbven2/NDA%20Draft%20-2%20.docx?dl=0

This has been mangled by multiple lawyers, and other companies usually
sign this, sometimes with minor revs. It's pretty much the standard
Silicon Valley NDA.

We have had some legal doings with a giant company who signed this
basic form when they needed stuff badly. They later discovered that we
take it seriously.

One trick companies will do is to sign the NDA, let you do a lot of
work for them, show them how it's done, and then do a big prior-art
search to justify stealing the designs. I could name names. About all
you can do then is walk away and concentrate on working with people
who have ethics.

It happens and unless the job is heading towards mid five figures
there's not much to do but write it off. I rarely have any work that
pays that much so far.
* Small claims courts usually are good to $5K; if you anticipate
problems like that, try breaking the project into logical sub-sections
and make those desperate contract projects.
  Also look into E&O insurance that THEY pay for, proceeds to you when
they mess up.

Ya, doing a project for a new client who's sort of an unknown without
setting regular milestones is bad idea.

Posting bids somewhat higher than the ask doesn't hurt much either. It
encourages the non-serious to bail.

 

[bitrex]

On 10/2/19 3:31 PM, Robert Baer wrote:

bitrex wrote:
On 10/2/19 12:00 PM, bitrex wrote:

The expiration date on NDAs are not about when you can disclose the
information unless it specifically says that which is rare.  Usually
they are in force until specifically released by the company holding
the information.  The expiration typically is the end of the
contract for proving new information that would be covered.  So once
the contract expires new information should not be provided until a
new agreement is signed.

Of course it all depends on the wording, but it would be counter
productive for a company to set a time limit on their trade secrets
when there is no need to.


So if the terms of a particular NDA state the company has to release
you but it's impossible to contact that company to discuss the NDA I
guess they are in force forever. /shrug

The couple times it has happened I just destroy all the documents
and/or samples associated with their project, wipe any email
correspondence and put the NDA in my files and forget about them.
* Good thing that you can ignore SOX.

The only "investor" I have to please at the moment is myself and it
would please me if flakes and scam-artists just went away forever ASAP,
they can keep their money.

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 14:02:07 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 10/2/19 1:59 PM, bitrex wrote:
On 10/2/19 1:49 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 1 Oct 2019 17:55:09 -0700 (PDT), George Herold
gherold@teachspin.com> wrote:

John (Larkin), You offered to send me a 'standard' NDA.  I wanted to
take you up on that.  Maybe on dropbox?  Or my email (now) is
ggherold@gmail.com

Thanks
George H.

Here is our starting-point NDA.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b924j4e9jbbven2/NDA%20Draft%20-2%20.docx?dl=0

This has been mangled by multiple lawyers, and other companies usually
sign this, sometimes with minor revs. It's pretty much the standard
Silicon Valley NDA.

We have had some legal doings with a giant company who signed this
basic form when they needed stuff badly. They later discovered that we
take it seriously.

One trick companies will do is to sign the NDA, let you do a lot of
work for them, show them how it's done, and then do a big prior-art
search to justify stealing the designs. I could name names. About all
you can do then is walk away and concentrate on working with people
who have ethics.

It happens and unless the job is heading towards mid five figures
there's not much to do but write it off. I rarely have any work that
pays that much so far.

Clue: if their engineers look eager to do it themselves, they probably
will.


In the 21st century there are online avenues both for contract
work/employment and for just contracting to do tutoring/general
education. If someone seems super-eager to do it themselves then there
is no reason not to just acknowledge that and re-direct to the proper
department, they often accept.

You can charge hourly for just talking, which while perhaps not quite as
well-paid or as emotionally satisfying as designing something, is pretty
easy money. Sometimes they decide they'd rather you do something once
they fully realize it's beyond them so it turns out into being an
elongated pitch session, but you get paid for it.

PID controllers are apparently a hot area of interest and there are
software guys who will pay just to talk with someone who seems like
they've successfully implemented one.

Nobody teaches control theory in college any more? I guess the
software guys don't learn things like that. I'm not sure what they do
learn.

I just had to explain to a guy at a biggish aircraft outfit how
synchros and resolvers and LVDTs work. He had no idea.

 

[bitrex]

On 10/2/19 5:30 PM, bitrex wrote:

On 10/2/19 5:00 PM, John Larkin wrote:

It happens and unless the job is heading towards mid five figures
there's not much to do but write it off. I rarely have any work that
pays that much so far.
* Small claims courts usually are good to $5K; if you anticipate
problems like that, try breaking the project into logical sub-sections
and make those desperate contract projects.
    Also look into E&O insurance that THEY pay for, proceeds to you
when
they mess up.

Ya, doing a project for a new client who's sort of an unknown without
setting regular milestones is bad idea.

Posting bids somewhat higher than the ask doesn't hurt much either. It
encourages the non-serious to bail.

Econ courses present a classic sales-vs-price curve. In reality, there
is a long tail on the high end. If you double your price, some people
will still go for it. May as well.


making "affordable" products is sometimes a thankless job, put a $5
monochrome LCD display in a product costing $250 and reviewers may gripe
about the display, put the same screen in a $2500 product and reviewers
may say "wow! it even has a display!"

Or at the most mention the cheapness of the display but qualify it with
"at this price point buyers are true connoisseurs who understand the
limitations"

Hence why BMW still exists

And Maserati, and Cadillac, and...

 

[bitrex]

On 10/2/19 5:00 PM, John Larkin wrote:

It happens and unless the job is heading towards mid five figures
there's not much to do but write it off. I rarely have any work that
pays that much so far.
* Small claims courts usually are good to $5K; if you anticipate
problems like that, try breaking the project into logical sub-sections
and make those desperate contract projects.
  Also look into E&O insurance that THEY pay for, proceeds to you when
they mess up.

Ya, doing a project for a new client who's sort of an unknown without
setting regular milestones is bad idea.

Posting bids somewhat higher than the ask doesn't hurt much either. It
encourages the non-serious to bail.

Econ courses present a classic sales-vs-price curve. In reality, there
is a long tail on the high end. If you double your price, some people
will still go for it. May as well.

making "affordable" products is sometimes a thankless job, put a $5
monochrome LCD display in a product costing $250 and reviewers may gripe
about the display, put the same screen in a $2500 product and reviewers
may say "wow! it even has a display!"

Or at the most mention the cheapness of the display but qualify it with
"at this price point buyers are true connoisseurs who understand the
limitations"

Hence why BMW still exists

 

[bitrex]

On 10/2/19 4:57 PM, John Larkin wrote:

In the 21st century there are online avenues both for contract
work/employment and for just contracting to do tutoring/general
education. If someone seems super-eager to do it themselves then there
is no reason not to just acknowledge that and re-direct to the proper
department, they often accept.

You can charge hourly for just talking, which while perhaps not quite as
well-paid or as emotionally satisfying as designing something, is pretty
easy money. Sometimes they decide they'd rather you do something once
they fully realize it's beyond them so it turns out into being an
elongated pitch session, but you get paid for it.

PID controllers are apparently a hot area of interest and there are
software guys who will pay just to talk with someone who seems like
they've successfully implemented one.

Nobody teaches control theory in college any more? I guess the
software guys don't learn things like that. I'm not sure what they do
learn.

I just had to explain to a guy at a biggish aircraft outfit how
synchros and resolvers and LVDTs work. He had no idea.

software engineering and electrical engineering have diverged very far
over time to the point that outside a basic circuits class some students
take. They're both extremely broad disciplines there's hardly time to
even touch on all the fundamentals of just modern "computer science"
(well, at the undergraduate level this means programming, not what the
term computer science means at the graduate/research level) much less go
into control theory.

Back end web developers and game-algorithm writers don't encounter
things like heaters and motors much in their day to day work, but
sometimes the day comes when they try to write something like: if
(measurementTooLow) { ++controlVar; } else if {measurementTooHigh) {
--controlVar; } and become curious why their state variable never seems
to end up where they want it to be despite this code being pretty
elegant and self-documenting.

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 15:38:49 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 10/2/19 3:52 PM, Robert Baer wrote:
bitrex wrote:
On 10/2/19 1:49 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 1 Oct 2019 17:55:09 -0700 (PDT), George Herold
gherold@teachspin.com> wrote:

John (Larkin), You offered to send me a 'standard' NDA.  I wanted to
take you up on that.  Maybe on dropbox?  Or my email (now) is
ggherold@gmail.com

Thanks
George H.

Here is our starting-point NDA.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b924j4e9jbbven2/NDA%20Draft%20-2%20.docx?dl=0

This has been mangled by multiple lawyers, and other companies usually
sign this, sometimes with minor revs. It's pretty much the standard
Silicon Valley NDA.

We have had some legal doings with a giant company who signed this
basic form when they needed stuff badly. They later discovered that we
take it seriously.

One trick companies will do is to sign the NDA, let you do a lot of
work for them, show them how it's done, and then do a big prior-art
search to justify stealing the designs. I could name names. About all
you can do then is walk away and concentrate on working with people
who have ethics.

It happens and unless the job is heading towards mid five figures
there's not much to do but write it off. I rarely have any work that
pays that much so far.
* Small claims courts usually are good to $5K; if you anticipate
problems like that, try breaking the project into logical sub-sections
and make those desperate contract projects.
  Also look into E&O insurance that THEY pay for, proceeds to you when
they mess up.

Ya, doing a project for a new client who's sort of an unknown without
setting regular milestones is bad idea.

Posting bids somewhat higher than the ask doesn't hurt much either. It
encourages the non-serious to bail.

Econ courses present a classic sales-vs-price curve. In reality, there
is a long tail on the high end. If you double your price, some people
will still go for it. May as well.

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 13:59:03 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 10/2/19 1:49 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 1 Oct 2019 17:55:09 -0700 (PDT), George Herold
gherold@teachspin.com> wrote:

John (Larkin), You offered to send me a 'standard' NDA. I wanted to take you up on that. Maybe on dropbox? Or my email (now) is ggherold@gmail.com

Thanks
George H.

Here is our starting-point NDA.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b924j4e9jbbven2/NDA%20Draft%20-2%20.docx?dl=0

This has been mangled by multiple lawyers, and other companies usually
sign this, sometimes with minor revs. It's pretty much the standard
Silicon Valley NDA.

We have had some legal doings with a giant company who signed this
basic form when they needed stuff badly. They later discovered that we
take it seriously.

One trick companies will do is to sign the NDA, let you do a lot of
work for them, show them how it's done, and then do a big prior-art
search to justify stealing the designs. I could name names. About all
you can do then is walk away and concentrate on working with people
who have ethics.

It happens and unless the job is heading towards mid five figures
there's not much to do but write it off. I rarely have any work that
pays that much so far.

Clue: if their engineers look eager to do it themselves, they probably
will.


In the 21st century there are online avenues both for contract
work/employment and for just contracting to do tutoring/general
education. If someone seems super-eager to do it themselves then there
is no reason not to just acknowledge that and re-direct to the proper
department, they often accept.

You can charge hourly for just talking, which while perhaps not quite as
well-paid or as emotionally satisfying as designing something, is pretty
easy money. Sometimes they decide they'd rather you do something once
they fully realize it's beyond them so it turns out into being an
elongated pitch session, but you get paid for it.

My favorite customers don't have in-house electronic design teams. A
lot of aerospace outfits used to design their own stuff, but when the
guys retired they didn't replace them.

If we do compete against an in-house team, we usually use. They have
management's ear, and they can make extravagent claims about how cheap
stuff will be to make.

 

[George Herold]

On Wednesday, October 2, 2019 at 1:50:00 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 1 Oct 2019 17:55:09 -0700 (PDT), George Herold
gherold@teachspin.com> wrote:

John (Larkin), You offered to send me a 'standard' NDA. I wanted to take you up on that. Maybe on dropbox? Or my email (now) is ggherold@gmail.com

Thanks
George H.

Here is our starting-point NDA.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b924j4e9jbbven2/NDA%20Draft%20-2%20.docx?dl=0

Thanks John, Ughh that's a lot of legal-ease.
I think statement 3 is the only one I need,
stuff in the public domain can not be confidential.
Since most of my circuits come from AoE, spec sheets, app notes
or circuit's shown on SED, it's all public.

I'm working on a response, it includes a summary of my long and
rather sordid history with my ex-boss. Maybe sharing it is not
a good idea? But I'd like my colleagues and co-workers to know
I'm not a complete a-hole.

I was reading about Henry Briggs, the guy to make the first logarithm
tables.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Briggs_(mathematician)

The last line about probity struck me.

George H.

This has been mangled by multiple lawyers, and other companies usually
sign this, sometimes with minor revs. It's pretty much the standard
Silicon Valley NDA.

We have had some legal doings with a giant company who signed this
basic form when they needed stuff badly. They later discovered that we
take it seriously.

One trick companies will do is to sign the NDA, let you do a lot of
work for them, show them how it's done, and then do a big prior-art
search to justify stealing the designs. I could name names. About all
you can do then is walk away and concentrate on working with people
who have ethics.

Clue: if their engineers look eager to do it themselves, they probably
will.

 

The expiration date on NDAs are not about when you can disclose the
information unless it specifically says that which is rare.  Usually they
are in force until specifically released by the company holding the
information.

Not in my experience--I sometimes get sent ones like that, and if they insist on it, I walk. (I've had to walk as many as three times in an ultimately-successful negotiation.)

I do a lot of NDAs, and it's onerous having to remember who owns what chunk of my brain.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

 

[Steve Wilson]

On Wednesday, October 2, 2019 at 1:50:00 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

Here is our starting-point NDA.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b924j4e9jbbven2/NDA%20Draft%20-2%20.docx?dl=0

This has been mangled by multiple lawyers, and other companies usually
sign this, sometimes with minor revs. It's pretty much the standard
Silicon Valley NDA.

Thanks John.

For those who cannot read DOC files, here is a free DOC to HTML converter:

https://document.online-convert.com/convert-to-html

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 17:31:28 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 10/2/19 5:30 PM, bitrex wrote:
On 10/2/19 5:00 PM, John Larkin wrote:

It happens and unless the job is heading towards mid five figures
there's not much to do but write it off. I rarely have any work that
pays that much so far.
* Small claims courts usually are good to $5K; if you anticipate
problems like that, try breaking the project into logical sub-sections
and make those desperate contract projects.
    Also look into E&O insurance that THEY pay for, proceeds to you
when
they mess up.

Ya, doing a project for a new client who's sort of an unknown without
setting regular milestones is bad idea.

Posting bids somewhat higher than the ask doesn't hurt much either. It
encourages the non-serious to bail.

Econ courses present a classic sales-vs-price curve. In reality, there
is a long tail on the high end. If you double your price, some people
will still go for it. May as well.


making "affordable" products is sometimes a thankless job, put a $5
monochrome LCD display in a product costing $250 and reviewers may gripe
about the display, put the same screen in a $2500 product and reviewers
may say "wow! it even has a display!"

Or at the most mention the cheapness of the display but qualify it with
"at this price point buyers are true connoisseurs who understand the
limitations"

Hence why BMW still exists

And Maserati, and Cadillac, and...

You can buy a mechanical wristwatch for $60K. A $20 quartz watch works
better.

Some restaurant near here discovered that the more they charged for a
bottle of wine, the more people ordered it. They peaked out around
$3K.

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 17:22:50 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 10/2/19 4:57 PM, John Larkin wrote:

In the 21st century there are online avenues both for contract
work/employment and for just contracting to do tutoring/general
education. If someone seems super-eager to do it themselves then there
is no reason not to just acknowledge that and re-direct to the proper
department, they often accept.

You can charge hourly for just talking, which while perhaps not quite as
well-paid or as emotionally satisfying as designing something, is pretty
easy money. Sometimes they decide they'd rather you do something once
they fully realize it's beyond them so it turns out into being an
elongated pitch session, but you get paid for it.

PID controllers are apparently a hot area of interest and there are
software guys who will pay just to talk with someone who seems like
they've successfully implemented one.

Nobody teaches control theory in college any more? I guess the
software guys don't learn things like that. I'm not sure what they do
learn.

I just had to explain to a guy at a biggish aircraft outfit how
synchros and resolvers and LVDTs work. He had no idea.


software engineering and electrical engineering have diverged very far
over time to the point that outside a basic circuits class some students
take.

They should teach EE students the fundamentals, as always. Physics,
electromagnetics, circuit theory, EDA (engineering unit concepts),
signals+systems, control theory. Without that background, anything
more "advanced" is useless.

I have no idea what software engineering is. I should buy a textbook.
I did buy a sociology textbook; it was hilarious.

Can anybody recommend a good (or at least popular) undergrad intro
textbook in software engineering?

They're both extremely broad disciplines there's hardly time to
even touch on all the fundamentals of just modern "computer science"
(well, at the undergraduate level this means programming, not what the
term computer science means at the graduate/research level) much less go
into control theory.

I asked the dean of a big CS depertment what sort of programming they
teach nowadays. She handed me my head. "We don't teach programming!"

Oh. Sorry.

Back end web developers and game-algorithm writers don't encounter
things like heaters and motors much in their day to day work, but
sometimes the day comes when they try to write something like: if
(measurementTooLow) { ++controlVar; } else if {measurementTooHigh) {
--controlVar; } and become curious why their state variable never seems
to end up where they want it to be despite this code being pretty
elegant and self-documenting.

We did a fan control loop like that recently. It just slews slowly up
or down around the temperature setpoint. That avoids audible drama.

It doesn't have your second IF. Once a second, it jogs up or down a
fixed amount.

 

[bitrex]

On 10/2/19 6:55 PM, John Larkin wrote:

They should teach EE students the fundamentals, as always. Physics,
electromagnetics, circuit theory, EDA (engineering unit concepts),
signals+systems, control theory. Without that background, anything
more "advanced" is useless.

I have no idea what software engineering is. I should buy a textbook.
I did buy a sociology textbook; it was hilarious.

Can anybody recommend a good (or at least popular) undergrad intro
textbook in software engineering?

They're both extremely broad disciplines there's hardly time to
even touch on all the fundamentals of just modern "computer science"
(well, at the undergraduate level this means programming, not what the
term computer science means at the graduate/research level) much less go
into control theory.

I asked the dean of a big CS depertment what sort of programming they
teach nowadays. She handed me my head. "We don't teach programming!"

Oh. Sorry.

It's not unusual for some academics and aspiring ones to get miffed when
asked pedestrian questions, like that time I made the mistake of asking
a TA in a literature class working on a novella "what's it about?" HOW
COULD YOU PRESUME ME TO SUMMARIZE MY _ART_?

I tend to think academics who can't negotiate pedestrian questions and
smoothly re-direct, if she really feels saying they prefer to focus on
the science aspect rather than the coding is something she needs to say,
is a bad academic. Or at least an out-of-touch one.

I took some CS classes in the mid 1990s and at the time I do recall the
professors liked sink-or-swimming students to dive into high-concept
aspects of CS ASAP and were little interested in like, "coding" or the
mechanics of actually writing understandable, repeatable code that
worked properly. Or at least viewed this as a task to be farmed out to
TAs who weren't much better.

 

[bitrex]

On 10/2/19 7:52 PM, bitrex wrote:

On 10/2/19 6:55 PM, John Larkin wrote:

They should teach EE students the fundamentals, as always. Physics,
electromagnetics, circuit theory, EDA (engineering unit concepts),
signals+systems, control theory. Without that background, anything
more "advanced" is useless.

I have no idea what software engineering is. I should buy a textbook.
I did buy a sociology textbook; it was hilarious.

Can anybody recommend a good (or at least popular) undergrad intro
textbook in software engineering?

They're both extremely broad disciplines there's hardly time to
even touch on all the fundamentals of just modern "computer science"
(well, at the undergraduate level this means programming, not what the
term computer science means at the graduate/research level) much less go
into control theory.

I asked the dean of a big CS depertment what sort of programming they
teach nowadays. She handed me my head. "We don't teach programming!"

Oh. Sorry.

It's not unusual for some academics and aspiring ones to get miffed when
asked pedestrian questions, like that time I made the mistake of asking
a TA in a literature class working on a novella "what's it about?" HOW
COULD YOU PRESUME ME TO SUMMARIZE MY _ART_?

I tend to think academics who can't negotiate pedestrian questions and
smoothly re-direct, if she really feels saying they prefer to focus on
the science aspect rather than the coding is something she needs to say,
is a bad academic. Or at least an out-of-touch one.

I took some CS classes in the mid 1990s and at the time I do recall the
professors liked sink-or-swimming students to dive into high-concept
aspects of CS ASAP and were little interested in like, "coding" or the
mechanics of actually writing understandable, repeatable code that
worked properly. Or at least viewed this as a task to be farmed out to
TAs who weren't much better.

In essence your success in a CS program of that type was predicated on
you already being a good programmer before you came.