Welcome to the Lounge

Re: The Lounge is rated safe for work

3-Jan-20 1:47

I propose to rate it as saviour on a slow day at work or distraction from work.

Yes, you guessed it, it is former for me.

"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[^]

Chris Maunder3-Jan-20 6:49

Chris Maunder

3-Jan-20 6:49

Motion seconded.

Struggling to focus today. Struggling...

cheers
Chris Maunder

No tailgating

kalberts3-Jan-20 1:00

3-Jan-20 1:00

We have had a couple of incidents were people have entered our facilities with dubious intentions. So at all the card lock doors, signs were put up: "No tailgating" (as if that would make those spies say: Oh well, then we'll have to try to break into another hi-tech company).

It struck me that since we make chips, at least a third of our employees are hardware experts, shouldn't the sign display a NAND gate symbol?

GKP19923-Jan-20 1:10

GKP1992

3-Jan-20 1:10

That "No Tailgating" sign is not for the person trying to break in, but for the employee.

Marc Clifton3-Jan-20 2:26

Marc Clifton

3-Jan-20 2:26

GKP1992 wrote:
but for the employee.

Ah. I had no idea what that expression meant, as for here in the US, it's referred to driving too close behind another person or, at a football game, a tailgate party. Never heard it applied to people before. Roll eyes | :rolleyes:

Latest Articles:
Abusing Extension Methods, Null Continuation, and Null Coalescence Operators
Database Transaction Management across AJAX Calls

ZurdoDev3-Jan-20 3:34

ZurdoDev

3-Jan-20 3:34

The way I understood it is GKP1992 was referring to the OP's statement that when a spy sees the sign they'll leave. GKP1992 is pointing out that the sign isn't to deter the spy but rather so that the employees do not allow people to follow them in.

Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.

Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.

kalberts3-Jan-20 4:06

3-Jan-20 4:06

Of course. But we have been joking a lot about these signs, like when we come a group of six people from the canteen and one unlocks the door and the guy behind tries to follow, he may be grabbed from behind: No no! with finger pointing at the "No tailgating" sign: You have to wait until the door has closed and locked up, then you can present your keycard and type your code!

We have had discussions about what to call it when someone comes from the other side, opens the door, and you slip through the other way before the door closes. Are you then headgating? Are you both headgating, or only you who didn't use your card?

With something like 400 people in the building, you do not know every face. If you see them wearing some name tag, you trust them, if they behave "normally". And there are people who do not work here, but nevertheless has a card: The fruit basket delivery guys, the newspaper boy, craftsmen doing e.g. electrical or plumbing work and several others (they obviously have restricted cards that won't let them into the high security areas). If someone behaves if they belong here, and carry a card that accidentally has been turned backside-out, they will not be stopped at the main entrance - "No tailgating" signs or not. So for all practical purposes, the signs are a joke in themselves. We catch people far more easily from their behaviour inside the building. Also, we know the people working in this floor, this wing. An unknown face amidst all the familiar colleagues is easy to spot. But not at the main entrance.

GKP19923-Jan-20 5:39

GKP1992

3-Jan-20 5:39

Yep.

RickZeeland3-Jan-20 1:26

RickZeeland

3-Jan-20 1:26

Those chips are just too delicious $Shucks | :-\$

Greg Utas3-Jan-20 1:28

Greg Utas

3-Jan-20 1:28

You could add a NAND gate symbol yourself!

dan!sh 3-Jan-20 1:45

3-Jan-20 1:45

Member 7989122 wrote:
at least a third of our employees are hardware experts

Or, at least 2/3rds of employees have no clue what this sign means.

"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[^]

phil.o3-Jan-20 1:52

phil.o

3-Jan-20 1:52

lw@zi wrote:
at ~~least~~ most 2/3rds of employees

"Five fruits and vegetables a day? What a joke!
Personally, after the third watermelon, I'm full."

OriginalGriff3-Jan-20 2:00

OriginalGriff

3-Jan-20 2:00

I've know a few engineers who would be puzzled by signs for capacitors, resistors, ... logic gates would take their confusion to another level. Laugh | :laugh:

"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

fd97503-Jan-20 6:54

fd9750

3-Jan-20 6:54

If you don't recognize ( god awful american spell checker ) the symbols for resistors and capacitors you are not worth your salt. Stay far away from anythings electronics, it will only cause grief and pain.

kalberts3-Jan-20 8:24

3-Jan-20 8:24

Well... OriginalGriff said 'engineer', not 'electronics engineer'.

In many countries, such as Norway, programming is considered an engineering discipline. My education is so old that I learned the symbols for both basic components and logic gates, but I am am far from sure that today's students learn them, though. In my professional work, I have never been close to know them or refer to them.

I do program hardware directly (so I stay close to the electronics), but I see the hardware as logical functions, not as components. I do not even use or refer to logical gates, but relate to registers, interrupt signals, hardware timers...

Those guys designing the chips obviously know component symbols, but the great majority of their design work is done at the level of logical gates (or even above that). I am quite sure that half of them couldn't read the size of a capacitor from the color bands without looking up the values in a table; they certainly know that the table exists, but it is far away from their daily life even if they do electronics design.

I would say that if you don't know the symbols for resistors and capacitors, stay away from electronics circuit design. You can still make a career even in, say, microcoding a CPU, which I would consider quite close to the electronics. Of course I would be surprised if I ever met someone doing microcoding but didn't know capacitor/resistor symbols, but that is not because they need it to do microcoding. Even microcoding doesn't relate to capacitors.

Rather, I just have to force myself to tolerate that people with a degree in programming says "Huh? What's that?" when you refer to the static link in the stack frame. That the only understanding they have of finite state machines is as a documentary tool of blobs and arrows. Even backtracking is a vague term for too many software developers ... All sorts of really basic software concepts.

It is not that they are not going down to that low level, but that the education has focused on a very narrow selection of solution methods. Like in networking: You could spend a lot of effort on explaining that you do not have to carry 32 bits of source and destination addresses in every single network package, that is just a choice made in the IP protocol. (I have been through that explanation a few times.) Or: You do not have to put the "if" condititon in parentheses; that is just because those who "designed" the C language weren't really language designers, and didn't know how to make the languge unambiguous without the parentheses. And so on. Lots of software developers seem to believe that C style syntax and the IP protocol and eight other commmandments were what Moses brought down from the mountain.

If you attend some on-job training course to obtain a certification that you master this and that tool or mehtodology, I don't expect you to know other tools or methodologies. But if you present a Master's Degree, I am equally disappointed whether the only thing you know is the gcc suite and open source tools, or what you know is nothing but the Visual Studio ecosystem. If all you get out of a university education is a detail knowledge of every single call line option to the gcc C++ compiler, then you have wasted a lot of time on that education. Too often I think that is the case. I think that is much worse than not knowing what a capacitor symbol looks like.

dan!sh 3-Jan-20 2:40

3-Jan-20 2:40

You are assuming 1/3rd to know about gates. I did not.

"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[^]

kalberts3-Jan-20 2:08

3-Jan-20 2:08

My degree in software is a few years old. In my days at the Tech U, even though were were not learning to be masters of digital logic, we certainly had an introduction to it, so that we would know how a flip-flop, a memory cell and that kind of things works. We even did microcoding on a 2903 evaluation board, routing signals to the various control lines to read two 4-bit switch banks into the registers, add them and display results on 4 LEDs plus a carry LED ...

So in my old University textbooks, I can find the full collection of gate symbols. It may be different today, though.

dan!sh 3-Jan-20 2:46

3-Jan-20 2:46

I studied mechanical engineering so I get a free pass for not knowing gate symbols.

"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[^]

modified 3-Jan-20 8:52am.

ZurdoDev3-Jan-20 3:31

ZurdoDev

3-Jan-20 3:31

Member 7989122 wrote:
so that we would know how a flip-flop

I guess you studied politics too. Big Grin | :-D

Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.

Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.

honey the codewitch3-Jan-20 6:09

honey the codewitch

3-Jan-20 6:09

Member 7989122 wrote:
It struck me that since we make chips, at least a third of our employees are hardware experts, shouldn't the sign display a NAND gate symbol?

I thought microsoft would get more productivity out of their coders if they localized visualstudio to klingon.

I showed up on halloween once and thought i got lost at a star trek convention.

When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.