Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Find the intruder

 1. We can connect the set-top box to the tv first, and when it goes online it will bypass the Scart signal to override both the Vcr and the Dvd player. For switching between those two instead, we'll use this Scart switch.
2. This MySQL database, which is populated by the turnstile at entrance of the school when students enter the building the first time, should be synchronized with the custome e-school software. We can easily make a PHP script which is run daily and selects the right rows and inserts them in the right place.
3. We cannot fix the ship's engines in time, and the shields cannot survive the lava flow, under which we will be trapped, for long. But we can to use the impending explosion itself as our ticket out: the volcano's cataclysm will launch us, and by using the shields for some instants, we can engage the hyperdrive for a split second to get them into orbit, where we can be saved.
4. You can boot from the Ubuntu 10.04 live cd and get a running system from here, then check if your modem is working. You'll install it over the disk with Windows XP, which is now too slow to use, only if there are no connectivity problems. Besides that, you can also install Ubuntu and leave an empty partition for reinstalling Windows on it later."
Now detect which ones are real engineers quotes (mine, actually) and which comes from Stargate Atlantis. After a summer marathon of three series I started sound like Rodney McKay when explaining engineering topics to naive people.
I guess that's why we (engineers) are almost always sci-fi aficionados: in science fiction engineers save lives and travel between galaxies in every episode, while we are limited to build some indeed very useful web application. :)

3 comments:

Wojciech Soczyński said...

I think 1 and 3 are Rodney's words. I'am also a fan of SGA ;)

Giorgio said...

Only 3 actually, 1 is me explaining to my parents the complicate wiring of the television set. :)

Wojciech Soczyński said...

At first I choosed only no 3, but after a while it seemed to me to straightforward so I've choosen also no 1 ;)

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