On Oct 1, 4:03 pm, Phil Kane wrote:

I never did answer the title question - I'm 71 and the VP - General
Counsel and Engineering Manager of a major communications consulting
engineering firm in California.

And you also managed to scarf up just about every top-notch
disillusioned engineer in the Bay Area to help!

On Mon, 01 Oct 2007 03:24:02 -0700, wrote:

I've worked in sales, but I tried to avoid lying. For example when I
was in college I worked for Sears. They instructed me to "sell
extended warranties" I complied, but I also told the customers that I
thought it was un-necessary.

Recently I had an expensive Nikon camera damaged by being knocked off
a table to a concrete floor. Had I not had an extended warranty
policy (read: insurance) the repairs would have cost me almost half of
what the camera cost, because they had to send to Japan for major
repair parts to rebuild it. As it was, what I paid for the policy was
far less than the repair would have cost.

Similarly, I had a hard disk die a few days after the extended
warranty period expired, and CompUSA was good enough to "stretch" the
expiration date and give me a new one at no cost. The cost of the
extended warranty was about 25% of the cost of a new one. That's the
major reason why I buy my components at CompUSA if they carry them.

I believe in extended warranties.
--
Phil Kane
Beaverton, OR

"David Kaye" wrote ...
(G) wrote:
On these newsgroups, I get the impression the young people do not use,
or do not like to use USENET. Perhaps they are somewhere else.
It was not like this10 to 15 years ago. And, there is a lot
of frustrated old people around here.

10 to 15 years ago there weren't Web-based forums. In fact, 15 years
ago there wasn't a Web as we know it. Google Groups may have been the
salvation of Usenet.

OTOH, the view from Usenet is that Google Groups may be the
death of Usenet. In much the same way as AOL was a great blow
to the internet. i.e. suddenly foisting thousands of illiterate users
onto the service and significantly raising the level of chaos.

Actually, someone operating a for-profit news server could build some
market share by touting the uncensored nature of Usenet. They could
sell access and news clients for those people who don't have them.

Yes, people have been doing this for years and they have a large
and growing customer base. Many smaller ISPs outsource NNTP
service to large commercial providers such as Supernews, et.al.

Google Groups user interface is so desperately bad, I don't see
how anybody can tolerate it. The real thing, even with a lowest-
common-denominator newsreader like Outlook Express is so
much faster, more direct, more convenient, more efficient, it isn't
even a close comparison.

On Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:07:09 -0700, David Kaye
wrote:

On Oct 1, 4:03 pm, Phil Kane wrote:

I never did answer the title question - I'm 71 and the VP - General
Counsel and Engineering Manager of a major communications consulting
engineering firm in California.

And you also managed to scarf up just about every top-notch
disillusioned engineer in the Bay Area to help!

Are you looking for a job, David? ggg

PS - we don't do Broadcast work. We send that to one of our joint
venture partners in the Pacific Northwest. They send their land
mobile and microwave work to us.
--
Phil Kane
Beaverton, OR

In article . com,
wrote:

Telamon wrote:
SFTV_troy wrote:
Phil Kane wrote:

Perhaps after he has 40-50 years of experience --

Doubtful. Engineering is boring; you sit in a damn cube all day long,
staring at a computer. I've been saving every penny, such that I will
be able to retire at 40-45. Or semi-retire (only take jobs I like).

Engineering is dull.

Well you took a wrong turn didn't you but it's never to late to get into
marketing where you can lie your ass off. It's very exciting, just ask
Eduardo.


I've worked in sales, but I tried to avoid lying.

That's an impossibility.

For example when I was in college I worked for Sears. They
instructed me to "sell extended warranties" I complied, but I also
told the customers that I thought it was un-necessary.

Sears didn't like me very much
- what with telling the truth.

That would be an expected result.

I'd expect an electrical engineer to be more knowledgeable than
your posts indicate.

If you think one person can possibly know EVERYTHING there is to know
about the subject of electronics/electrical devices. For example:

snip

Not really. Just what you promote.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

"David Kaye" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Oct 1, 8:47 am, (G) wrote:

On these newsgroups, I get the impression the young people do not use,
or do not like to use USENET. Perhaps they are somewhere else.
It was not like this10 to 15 years ago. And, there is a lot
of frustrated old people around here.

10 to 15 years ago there weren't Web-based forums. In fact, 15 years
ago there wasn't a Web as we know it. Google Groups may have been the
salvation of Usenet.


Sure there were. I was using web based forums at least as far back as 1983,
with my Commodore 64 and a 300 baud acoustic modem (even the crude graphics
of the era took forever to load. The bad old days of CompuSlave et al when
net time was charged by the minute (about two dollars IIRC). Even then, the
forums were very popular, taking over the job that was mostly done by BBS's.

On Oct 1, 4:50 pm, Phil Kane wrote:

Are you looking for a job, David?

Well, it would feel like going home. I've always admired Tim Pozar's
work. David Doon busted the pirate station I was involved with, and
you've been a presence for quite a number of years here.

PS - we don't do Broadcast work. We send that to one of our joint
venture partners in the Pacific Northwest. They send their land
mobile and microwave work to us.

Yeah, I notice that you do a lot of local government work. Well heck,
there's a lot to be said for local govt. For one, compared with
broadcasters their checks are less likely to bounce....

Brenda Ann wrote:
"David Kaye" wrote in message

10 to 15 years ago there weren't Web-based forums.....

Sure there were. I was using web based forums at least as far back as 1983,
with my Commodore 64 and a 300 baud acoustic modem



Sorry hun, but that's NOT the world wide web (which is based-upon
multiple servers & using Hypertext Markup Language & active point-n-
click links). What we used on the old commodore 64 was a SINGLE
server called a BBS, and it didn't use hypertext, or a mouse.. It was
just plain-jane text. (Yes even on the C64, it was text.... but it
was drawn to look like pictures.)

That's what Usenet is - all text
It's like visiting an old BBS.

The world wide web was not invented until circa 1993, and did not
"boom" until around 1995 (with Windows and Mac-based Mosaic &
Netscape). And thus was born web-based forums which slowly but surely
drew people away from the "boring" Usenet.


(even the crude graphics of the era took forever to load)

Yeah. There's a huge difference between 56k and 0.3k. It used to
take me an hour to download a 170 kilobyte floppy. Now I do it in
about 5 seconds.

On Oct 1, 11:18 am, (G) wrote:

On these newsgroups, I get the impression the young people do not use,
or do not like to use USENET. Perhaps they are somewhere else.
It was not like this10 to 15 years ago. And, there is a lot
of frustrated old people around here.


I suspect if you took this poll in a "hip" group like rec.arts.tv or
alt.tv.smallville, you'd find a lot of young people. It would still
skew older, but there'd also be lots of teens and 20-somethings in the
mix.

Phil Kane wrote:
On Mon, 01 Oct 2007 03:24:02 -0700, wrote:

- Do you know what VHDL is?
- How about a state machine?
- Synchronous DDR?
- PCI Express?
- Flip-flop?
- What does GCLK mean in the context of FPGAs?
- What are constraints?

That's not electrical engineering, that's computer science.


And thus you make yourself sound like an idiot. Hardware design is
*not* computer science (aka programming). ------ Besides my title is
"Electrical Engineer". Always has been, no matter where I worked.

This is just a small sample of what I know, because this is what I
work upon every day..... but I suspect a lot of it you have no clue
what it's about. And that's fine. Because I don't expect one person
to know everything there is to know about EE.

Not to denigrate Penn State, but graduates of the major EE (as
differentiated from CS) schools are expected to be fluent in most if
not all areas of ELECTRICAL engineering. ...

That sounds like a denigration of Penn State. They did teach me all
the basics, but not the advanced stuff (like synchronous AM reception
- whatever that is). To expect me to know that is unrealistic. And
not fair to the profs at Penn State. Every engineer has his or her
own specialty.



I'm registered as a PE (Electrical) in four states... I am also
licensed to practice law in all California and Federal courts

Wow. I'm impressed.

I passed the E.I.T. exam back in 1998, but never bothered to register
P.E. because I don't see any value in it. I'm still getting paid $55
an hour, and having a P.E. after my name is not going to drive that
Rate any higher.

Same with a Masters Degree. If I thought there was value in having
those, then I would go ahead and acquire them, but so far they've been
not necessary.

So how do you like law?

I was thinking about going back to earn a law degree (since I'm bored
with engineering).