Ah yes, another day, another piece of stupidity to sort out.

We have some equipment in our lab. It needs a computer to control it. 
Unfortunately, the control software requires somebody to be logged in. 
As soon as you log out, it quits the control program, halting the machine.

But don't worry. There is a straight-forward way to solve this problem. 
We have some other software, which we are already using, which has the 
facility to control this equipment. And *this* software runs as a 
service, as it should, and has appropriate security access controls and 
auditing and so forth. This will make our job vastly easier - even 
easier than it is currently.

So we're _not_ going to use this feature. Why? Because the people at HQ 
don't use this feature. Currently all the sites work slightly 
differently, and the people in charge want to "harmonise" business 
practice across all sites. In English, they want everybody to do exactly 
what HQ does.

I should point out that when somebody asked HQ for the wiring diagram to 
connect up a certain piece of equipment, their senior lab expert sent 
back a diagram that includes, among other things, a paper clip to 
complete the circuit. (We won't be following this practice. We elected 
to use a junction block, like any half-sane person would...)

Getting back on track... How *are* we going to control this equipment 
then? Well, the solution dictated to us by HQ is to use a seperate 
laptop to run the control software. Which seems reasonable, if not 
particularly optimal.

Ah, but here's the fun part: The equipment is controlled by RS-232. Now, 
how many laptops do you know of which actually possess a serial port? 
Exactly.

But it's OK, it's not a problem. All we have to do is purchase a USB to 
serial converter and we're golden.

Except that the control software stubbornly, repeatedly *refuses* to 
believe me that the USB serial port actually exists. Every other piece 
of software I've tried can access it without issue. But not the one 
piece of software that we *need* to access it. No sir. Not interested. 
It can "see" the port, but it refuses to *select* that port. And nothing 
I've done so far seems to convince it to work.

I also got sent three laptops from HQ which have built-in serial ports. 
The reason for this is that they're ancient. One of them is already set 
up and running. One of them won't turn on. The charging indicator comes 
on when I plug it in, but it won't actually switch on. And the third... 
well, I was hoping to set that up today.

I became worried when I saw the big "Designed for Windows 98" sticker on 
it. The harddrive is a mess. It has every application, screensaver, game 
and utility imaginable installed. It has files everywhere. My plan was 
to erase everything and load Windows XP, except - and you can see the 
horrifying inevitability of where this is going - the laptop is powered 
by an AMD K6-II processor and sports 64MB of RAM.

Now there is no way in HELL that Windows XP is going to run like 
anything faster than a glacier with 64MB of RAM. Hell, Windows 98 crawls 
along on this PC!

Clearly improving the CPU is impossible, but maybe adding more RAM would 
speed it up? Except... what the hell kind of RAM does a K6 laptop take 
anyway? Wikipedia claims that the K6 has a 66MHz FSB, so... PC66 maybe? 
Of course, that's no longer on sale. But Wikipedia claims PC100 is 
backwards-compatible. Ah, but *that* isn't available either. But I can 
buy PC133. Wikipedia claims PC133 is backwards-compatible with PC100, 
but is that transitive? Will PC133 work in a PC66 laptop?


128MB is really not enough. But the biggest single-stick listing I can 
find is for 512MB (which should probably just about work). Then again, 
this is a *laptop*. How many tracks do you think Compaq bothered to 
connect up? Can it actually address half a gigabyte of RAM??

Still, I have until tomorrow to sort all this out... no biggie.

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In article <4a815b1f$1@news.povray.org>,
Invisible wrote:

> Ah yes, another day, another piece of stupidity to sort out.

[...] LOL! I mean, sorry.

You know, the whole idea of working somewhere and having to accept
tyranical measures is wrong. Work is far too important to leave it up
to others. It is the very foundation of one's life.

I do know what to do in my case, but I don't know what to do in
everyone's case. I don't think I ever will. But I do think that one
must think about saving oneself from the tyranny of companies.
Particularly because we can. Or can't we?

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The more I think about this, the more I'm losing the will to go on. All 
this effort to jump through hoops to hook up an elaborate jerry-rig of 
obsolete hardware to solve a problem which we ALREADY HAVE A PROPPER 
SOLUTION FOR. The correct solution is right in front of our eyes, so 
we're just going to ignore something and build something that's going to 
cause us problems for years to come instead. WHY?! >_<

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> So we're _not_ going to use this feature. Why? Because the people at HQ 
> don't use this feature.

  What happens if you use it anyways?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > So we're _not_ going to use this feature. Why? Because the people at HQ
> > don't use this feature.
>
>   What happens if you use it anyways?

HQ gets upset because you don't follow protocol.  You get upset because they
require an unreasonable solution.  They get more upset because you are now
deliberately disobeying orders.  You get more upset they don't listen to
reason.  They get upset because they can't simply apply one rule to all groups
and create a nice, perfect world.  Meanwhile, both groups think the other is a
collection of complete idiots, too stubborn to just do the reasonable thing,
solve the problem, and move on.

At least, that's how it works around here.  Now, it's an external contract so
it's a little different, but really it's basically the same.  They used
incorrect physics to redesign the prototype so it can use a little less power.
We know it won't work and don't want to go down that road.  We try to explain it
to them, but they just get upset that we refuse to help them.  And it goes back
and forth.

 - Ricky

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On 11-8-2009 18:38, Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> So we're _not_ going to use this feature. Why? Because the people at HQ 
>> don't use this feature.
> 
>   What happens if you use it anyways?
> 
Indeed, my advise would be to find an (obscure) british rule about 
quality control that could be interpreted to the effect that the HQ 
solution being illegal. There may be a rule about using an OS that is 
unsupported and therefore vulnerable to any new virus that comes out. 
OSLT. Andy, use your knowledge, you know more about legal requirements 
than HQ.

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In article <4A8### [at] hotmailcom>,
andrel wrote:

> On 11-8-2009 18:38, Warp wrote:
>> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> So we're _not_ going to use this feature. Why? Because the people at HQ 
>>> don't use this feature.
>> 
>>   What happens if you use it anyways?
>> 
> Indeed, my advise would be to find an (obscure) british rule about 
> quality control that could be interpreted to the effect that the HQ 
> solution being illegal. There may be a rule about using an OS that is 
> unsupported and therefore vulnerable to any new virus that comes out. 
> OSLT. Andy, use your knowledge, you know more about legal requirements 
> than HQ.

That's good thinking. One could actually find in the law the support
needed to defend oneself from corporative despotism. I just hope you
can find something in the law... :-)

Also notice this can always get one fired. Disobedience is not at all
praised out there.

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On Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:00:09 -0400, Daniel Bastos wrote:

> Disobedience is not at all
> praised out there.

Depends on the job and the company, and the reason why.  If a company is 
making you do something that could get you put in jail, disobedience is 
the right course of action.

Jim

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>> So we're _not_ going to use this feature. Why? Because the people at HQ 
>> don't use this feature.
> 
>   What happens if you use it anyways?

The MHRA gets upset with us for using a software feature which we 
haven't performed extensive formal testing on.

Now, we *could* devise and execute a test plan... but nobody here really 
has the necessary expertise. HQ does. And they can't be bothered to go 
down this route.

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What OS can the software run in? You might make use of virtualization 
(VMWare, VirtualPC, etc.) to solve your problem.

You should be able to control the properties of the virtual machine and 
tell it it has a serial port even if it doesn't. Running an old OS 
within a virtual machine on a modern laptop should still be faster than 
running the same OS on its native hardware.

-Mike

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