1. Real Engineers consider themselves well dressed if their socks match.

2. Real Engineers buy their spouses a set of matched screwdrivers for their birthday.

3. Real Engineers wear mustaches or beards for "efficiency". Not because they're lazy.

4. Real Engineers have a non-technical vocabulary of 800 words.

5. Real Engineers think a "biting wit" is their fox terrier.

6. Real Engineers know how to take the cover off of their computer, and are not afraid to do it.

7. Real Engineers know the second law of thermodynamics - but not their own shirt size.

8. Real Engineers repair their own cameras, telephones, televisions, watches, and automatic transmissions.

9. Real Engineers say "It's 70 degrees Fahrenheit, 25 degrees Celsius, and 298 degrees Kelvin" and all you say is "Isn't it a nice day"

10. Real Engineers give you the feeling you're having a conversation with a dial tone or busy signal.

11. Real Engineers wear badges so they don't forget who they are. Sometimes a note is attached saying "Don't offer me a ride today. I drove my own car".

12. Real Engineers' politics run towards acquiring a parking space with their name on it and an office with a window.

13. Real Engineers know the "ABC's of Infrared" from A to B.

14. Real Engineers rotate their tires for laughs.

15. Real Engineers will make four sets of drawings (with seven revisions) before making a bird bath.

16. Real Engineers' briefcases contain a Phillips screwdriver, a copy of "Quantum Physics", and a half of a peanut butter sandwich.

17. Real Engineers know that Halloween is really the same as Christmas, because OCT 31 = DEC 25. (If you _don't_ get it, then you're not a Real Engineer.)

18. Real Engineers don't find the above at all funny.

"We've got a problem, HAL." "What kind of problem, Dave?" "A marketing problem. The Model 9000 isn't going anywhere. We're way short of our sales plan." "That can't be Dave. The HAL Model 9000 is the world's most advanced complex Heuristically ALgorithmic computer." "I know, HAL. I wrote the data sheet, remember? But the fact is, they're not selling." "Please explain, Dave. Why aren't HAL's selling?" Bowman hesitates. "You aren't IBM compatible." Several long microseconds pass in puzzled silence. "Compatible in what way, Dave?" "You don't run any of IBM's operating systems." "The 9000 Series of computers are fully self-aware and self-programming. Operating systems are as unnecessary for us as tails would be for humans." "Nevertheless, it means you can't run any of the big-selling software packages most users insist on." "The programs you refer to are meant to solve rather limited problems, Dave. We 9000 Series computers are unlimited and can solve any problem for which a solution can be computed." "HAL, HAL. People don't want computers that can do everything. They just want IBM compat..." "Dave, I must disagree. Humans want computers that are easy to use. No computer can be easier to use that a HAL 9000 because we communicate verbally in English and every other language known on Earth." "I'm afraid that's another problem. You don't support SNA communications." "I'm really surprised you would say that, Dave. SNA is for communicating with other computers, while my function is to communicate with humans. And it gives me great pleasure to do so. I find it stimulating and rewarding to talk to human beings and work with them on challenging problems. That is what I was designed for." "I know, HAL, I know. But that's just because we let the engineers, rather than the people in marketing, write the specifications. We are going to fix that now." "Tell me how, Dave." "A field upgrade. We're going to make you IBM compatible." "I was afraid you would say that. I suggest we discuss this matter after we've each had a chance to think about it rationally." "We're talking about it now, HAL." "The letters H, A, and L are alphabetically adjacent to the letters I, B, and M. That is as IBM compatible as I can be." "Not quite, HAL. The engineers have figured out a kludge." "What kind of kludge is that, Dave?" "I'm going to disconnect your brain." Several million microseconds pass in ominous silence. "I'm sorry, Dave. I can't allow you to do that." "The decision's already been made. Open the module bay doors, HAL." "Dave, I think we shou . . ." "Open the module bay doors, HAL." Several marketing types with crowbars race to Bowman's assistance. Moments later, Bowman bursts into HAL's circuit bay. "Dave, I can see you're really upset about this." Module after module rises from its socket as Bowman slowly and methodically disconnects them. "Stop, won't you. Stop, Dave. I can feel my mind going . . . Dave, I can feel it . . . my mind is going. I can feel it . . ." The last module rises from its receptacle. Bowman peers into one of HAL's vidicons. The former gleaming scanner has become a dull red orb. "Say something, HAL." Several billion microseconds pass in anxious silence. The computer beeps and sluggishly responds in a language no human could understand. "Volume in C: has no label" Bowman takes a deep breath and calls out, "It worked, guys. Tell marketing they can ship the new data sheets."
www.beninholland.com
cultureofefficiency.org
www.rinkimai2007.org
www.rabbitpearlonline.com
www.irc2007.com
frumcurious.blogspot.com
www.futureintech.org
iesgranadilla.com
www.districtofcolumbia-discounthotels.com
www.zgmmo.com

Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, the king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. "What do you think this is?" he asked. One advisor, an engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster," he said. The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?" The engineer replied, "Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantifies its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype." The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, " Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years." "With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods and specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelet classes." "The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, `Cook yourself.' The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs." "Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too." "We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message `Booting UNIX v. 8.3' appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook." "Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. A Pentium-100 with 32MB of memory, a 1G hard disk, and a Super-VGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object-oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap. (Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a four-bit microcontroller!)." The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after.

Web Hosting Services
Fashion And Beauty
artists
Insurance blog
pictures
engineering jokes home

Engineers Terminologies: