Geek count

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I guess the university didn't want to hire
another member of staff with adequate knowledge lest it affect the
ludicrous profits they make.

Er - which university are you talking about here? - I don't know of any
relevant to urc which aren't somewhat strapped for cash.

It's an ex-poly and is (relatively) unencumbered by expensive to run
degrees (science, engineering etc). Also, the student teacher ratio is
certainly nothing to shout about. Most of the profits go back into the
university to help it grow (and make even more profits), while the rest
presumably goes into the pot for the gravy-train high flyers. This is all
ok by me tho, as degrees are now impossible to fail unless you don't hand
any work in (have you seen my pass criteria?!?) and only £1,000ish a year
of my money goes to the university itself - everything else is living
expenses.

The gravy train IMO has to be there - it's an award for brilliant academics
and hard nosed office-politics who would have otherwise been earning
squillions in industry. I'm not too sure about the never-ending expansion
of the university. I suppose their profits & the uni will stop expanding
once the student population stops getting bigger, but there is a vague
worry in my mind that the uni's will keep getting bigger and bigger until
they take over the world. Could you imagine the petty bureaucracy?

I worked on AB during the late '70s early 80's. The old PLC1 and 2. Things
were soooo simple then. S7 is like anything else though - fine once you get
used to it's little idiosyncrasies. The block system is really just a way of
splitting things up into segregated areas for ease of finding things. It
looks a little weird it's good kit.

Rgds, Bob

"Peter B" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I sent in re computers:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I use one a lot for PLC programming, CAD, the usual Office

applications

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

and

Quoted message said:

communication. Oh, and listening to streaming radio.

And got this reply:
"bob watkinson" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

we are of the same mould Pete. I'm an Siemens S5/S7 man.

Allen Bradley RSlogix and Mitsubishi FX GX Developer, me.
I also have Step7 installed (not cheap) but other than a demo never used

it

Quoted message said:

(long story).
The S7 block system seems a little different to the ladder I'm more used

to

Quoted message said:

and I'd like a crack at it but only have one end user who specs it and
they're not buying kit from us at the moment :-(

Regards,
Pete

you know? said:

Al C-F said:

Never written a line of deliverable code in my life. Too late to
start now.

Normal for a programmer :-)

I'm a geek, too.

Guy

Many years ago, I had to do some mathematical modelling of the
tracking radar system I was working on. Faced with an early PC plus
BASIC, Pascal and sundry other languages, I chose Lotus 123.

I think that was the decision that made the company keep all the
programming opportunities at arm's length from me.
--

Cheers,

Al

In article <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 16:35:05 GMT, Simon Brooke <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Colin Blackburn

(') said:

My ambition is to not work with
computers.

Why?

Because I don't see them as toys anymore?
Because I'd rather be out there doing something else?
Because I've worked with them all my adult life and now I'm bored?
Because doing other stuff is more fun?
Just because.

Colin

WhatColinSaidBut... My ambition is to not work anymore.

(Just back from St Neots (on a LateGNER train "Speed restrictions due to
overheated track" ) tinkering with a Sun Arsolis "UNIX-InItsOwnWay"
box.)

Bah!

In article <[email hidden]>, apsw07048
@blueyonderdotco.uk says...

Quoted message said:

OK, how many people reading this NG ( like me ) work with computers as a
profession.?

Quite a few I'd bet.

I -try- to get the geeks to deliver what they said they could when we
asked them if it was a good idea. It's usually a one sided battle, geeks
ALWAYS underestimate when asked for a better delivery date, and senior
managment ALWAYS ALWAYS believe them 🙁
--
..paul

If at first you don't succeed...
Skydiving is probably not the sport for you.

In article <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

Mr. Alan Paterson said:

OK, how many people reading this NG ( like me ) work with computers as a
profession.?

Quite a few I'd bet.

Technically no, I work with the yogurt pots and bits of wet string that
go between them, and I'm steadfastly maintaining I'm not a geek.

and which company would that be? not the one now employing the senior
petrol head himself to promote our *promises* by any chance?
--
..paul

If at first you don't succeed...
Skydiving is probably not the sport for you.

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

nope, use computers, but not my main line of work which is Telecoms
protection, so get to play with dangerous voltages and currents

Mr. Alan Paterson said:

OK, how many people reading this NG ( like me ) work with computers as a
profession.?

Quite a few I'd bet.

But you probable count as more of a geek then most people on site these
days Pete ;o)
--
..paul

If at first you don't succeed...
Skydiving is probably not the sport for you.

Mark Thompson said:

Quoted message said:

If I thought there was a decent career and respect in just teaching at
a Uni it would be a job I'd really enjoy. But there isn't.

<pedant>
To be fair there's very little *teaching* done at universities, at least on
humanities subjects.
</pedant>

Snap for science subjects IME. In this redbrick uni, exams are multiple
choice, marked by computer and the same exam is used year after year so no
past papers are available (and only one practice paper). There's no
subdivision of the marks, so it's impossible to tell whether you've done
well in physiology but lousily in statistics, for example.

The average essay gets separate marks for content, presentation and
grammar/punctuation/spelling, no corrections and up to 3 sentences of
freehand feedback. The medical students are 15-20 per cadaver which
explains why surgeons tend to be tall, male and pushy (nobody else knows
any anatomy).

Quoted message said:

<whinge>
I've yet to work out what the advantage of attending lectures is over
reading a few textbooks - apart from the few times the lecturer stops
wibbling in time to have a few questions asked. </whinge>

You're right about the pants teaching side of university tho. We had an
economic historian who specialised in WWI lecturing us on WWII. He'd
been ordered to take the subject and, whilst he knew far more than me
about the subkect, it was depressing to be able to raise your hand to
correct the odd fact or two in most lectures. I guess the university
didn't want to hire another member of staff with adequate knowledge lest
it affect the ludicrous profits they make. Hmmm, should have extended
the whinge tags to this paragraph too :-(

There's an argument that people are better able to explain things that
they know a lot about, than things they are experts on. If the students
can correct the lecturer it sounds as if it's being taken too far.

AC

In article <[email hidden]>,

paul said:

I -try- to get the geeks to deliver what they said they could when we
asked them if it was a good idea. It's usually a one sided battle, geeks
ALWAYS underestimate when asked for a better delivery date, and senior
managment ALWAYS ALWAYS believe them 🙁

That's not geeks. That's pointyhairs who give geeks a bad name.
If a geek lets his[1] name get attached to that kind of thing, it
was just to get some marketroid off their back and goes something like:

Suit: How long will it take?
Geek: Well, it depends on this, that, and ... Oh erm and ...
Suit: That's not what I'm asking. Get to the point.
Geek [disconcerted by not being allowed to think about the question,
as the Suit leans forward into his personal space with a stink of
aftershave and deodorant and a "get on with it you idiot" expression]:
Well, erm, if everything proves straightforward it'll be about
ummm, 3-4, no, 2-3, no ... well, yes about a month. But allowing
for unforseen real-life problems, could be more like six months.
Or how long is a piece of string?
Suit: Right, that's 2 weeks initially then is it? Can't we say less than
that if we focus on just something they want to hear?
Geek: Well we could perhaps bring it down to that if we restrict ourselves
to a simple mockup that'll do the job in controlled circumstances.
And that's omitting real-life testing, which will fail until we've
fixed it regarding this and that issues.
Suit: Right, that's 2 weeks then. Thank you.

I never underestimate. I say "it'll take about" or "it'll take up to".
It costs me a lot of work, because it puts me up against the unfair
competition of The Big Lie.

[1] or her, but that's unusual.

--
Nick Kew

Nick's manifesto: http://www.htmlhelp.com/~nick/

Mark Thompson said:

I guess the university didn't want to hire another member of staff with
adequate knowledge

There is an awkward tension between research and teaching. Staff is judged
by their research output rather than their teaching. Departments are both
assessed on teaching quality and research quality. Research quality is
directly translated into income. Our department went from research rating
5 to 4 last time, which meant a huge reduction in income. Ironically the
decrease in rating was caused by focussing on teaching in the preceding
period, which gave a top teaching quality rating. This will only give more
income if it leads to more students. More students will mean larger
classes which would probably cause a lower rating again as part of our
high rating was based on 'small, friendly' etcetera.

New staff is normally recruited because their research is in a certain
field, rather than that they can teach a specific topic.

Roos

Nick Kew typed:

Quoted message said:

I never underestimate. I say "it'll take about" or "it'll take up to".
It costs me a lot of work, because it puts me up against the unfair
competition of The Big Lie.

In an earlier life I lost a contract to The Big Lie ... but won it back,
with bells and whistles added, when I sent a report to the MD's and about
five board members of each of the companies who were buying and selling the
Solution .. 😉

It appeared that not only had there been The Big Lie, but there had also
been a couple of holidays to Hawaii thrown in for good measure that weren't
'on the books' of either company .. 😉

I can't think why the salesman and buyer didn't think I'd dig deeper, or try
harder, than their superficial coverups ..on a contract initially worth
£370,000, but which 'blossomed' to over £2 million ... knowing I would be on
at least industry standard 2.5 % commission ... 😉

--
Paul ...

(8(|) ... Homer Rocks

On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 21:45:05 +0100, Al C-F
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or
less):

Quoted message said:

you know? said:

Al C-F said:

Never written a line of deliverable code in my life. Too late to
start now.

Normal for a programmer :-)

I'm a geek, too.

Guy

Many years ago, I had to do some mathematical modelling of the
tracking radar system I was working on. Faced with an early PC plus
BASIC, Pascal and sundry other languages, I chose Lotus 123.

I think that was the decision that made the company keep all the
programming opportunities at arm's length from me.

And yet, it probably was /much/ faster to create, and less error-prone
in use.

--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
Symbian/Epoc wiki: http://html.dnsalias.net:1122
Smalltalk links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk) http://html.dnsalias.net/gawnsoft/smalltalk

Simon Mason said:

"Mr. Alan Paterson" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

OK, how many people reading this NG ( like me ) work with computers
as a profession.?

Quite a few I'd bet.

Well, nearly all of our chemical lab equipment is operated by
computers but we are not computer technicians, we are lab
technicians, so I don't think I would count.

I'm chemistry based and we use lots of computers now but 20 years ago there
was one.
--
Mark

Mr. Alan Paterson said:

Quite a few I'd bet.

amd counting...hand up here :-)

Mr. Alan Paterson said:

OK, how many people reading this NG ( like me ) work with computers
as a profession.?

Apparently my job title has changed from "Analyst/Programmer" to
"Development Engineer", but I think the term "Babbage-Lackey" is nearer the
mark...

--

Dave Larrington - http://www.legslarry.beerdrinkers.co.uk/
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