The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

gnasher729:
Making two translations, telling the translators that absolutely nobody cares about the quality, might be cheaper, quicker and less painful than arguing for an exception with the authorities.

Agreed. You would think that a country of rational people would at some point conclude that too much government regulation cripples even a robust economy, let alone a sputtering one.

https://www.google.com/search?num=30&newwindow=1&safe=off&site=&source=hp&q=how+many+man+hours+are+spent+complying+with+government+regulations&oq=how+many+man+hours+are+spent+complying+with+government+regulations&gs_l=hp.3...1451.15148.0.15491.87.58.3.3.3.3.546.6487.6j21j5j2j0j2.36.0....0...1c.1.35.hp..65.22.2977.otEZbgBHClU

80 million man-hours to comply with ObamaCare, 24 million for Dodd-Frank. The list goes on.

Sadly, I am nearly convinced that the country I was born in and was always proud of, is no longer populated with a majority of rational people.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

gnasher729:
Making two translations, telling the translators that absolutely nobody cares about the quality, might be cheaper, quicker and less painful than arguing for an exception with the authorities.

Agreed. You would think that a country of rational people would at some point conclude that too much government regulation cripples even a robust economy, let alone a sputtering one.

https://www.google.com/search?num=30&newwindow=1&safe=off&site=&source=hp&q=how+many+man+hours+are+spent+complying+with+government+regulations&oq=how+many+man+hours+are+spent+complying+with+government+regulations&gs_l=hp.3...1451.15148.0.15491.87.58.3.3.3.3.546.6487.6j21j5j2j0j2.36.0....0...1c.1.35.hp..65.22.2977.otEZbgBHClU

80 million man-hours to comply with ObamaCare, 24 million for Dodd-Frank. The list goes on.

Sadly, I am nearly convinced that the country I was born in and was always proud of, is no longer populated with a majority of rational people.

cellocgw · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

RichP:
I can relate to mortfurd. I once worked in a similar facility (in the USA, although some of us were of Eastern European ancestry if that counts). We once had a non-technical person come up with an interesting workaround to running out of a bin of parts. The board in question had both diodes and transistors in TO-220 packages. When the assembler ran out of diodes, they got the bright idea to clip off the "extra" leg from the transistors and plop those in the places for the diodes. Ingenious, but not exactly to specification.

Oddly enough, assuming the "right" transistors -- and the correct remaining pair of legs, they do function as diodes. But you knew that :-) . Didja know (you young punks trying to walk on my lawn) that the early transistor radios in the 60's often put " 12-transistors!" in their ad blurbs, even tho' 10 of the 12 were defective transistors pushed into service as diodes? Back in the tubes days, more transistors just sounded more awesomely something.

herby · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Re: Translations...

I have a friend that translates manuals (for two-way radios) from "Chinglish" (please no offense here) to normal English. From appearances most of the original translations are done by a "technical" person whos only English instruction is a Chinese to English dictionary. Some of the first translations can actually be quite humorous. I'm sure you have read them on the little sheets you get from inexpensive electronics you buy.

It really is a job to get these things "right".

So this is why the tower of Babel (and possibly the Rosetta stone) was invented.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

We have TTL UART connectors on our boards that require an RS-232 to TTL adapter. The on-board connector provides power to the adapter. But if the cable is plugged in backwards, the adapter gets fried.

We have two ODMs in China who produce the boards. One uses a keyed connector which cannot be inserted backwards. The other does not. Both connectors uses 0.100 spaced pins and a common connector fits both; but one of them can be plugged in backwards. We have thousands of these connectors around the labs in the hands of developers.

We explained to the 2nd ODM we wanted the connectors on the next boards to have keyed connectors. "We don't know what kind of connector that is. Please explain." Yes you do. It's keyed, so it only goes in one way. Like connector #42 on the front-panel. It's keyed. "Ok, we will make it like #42."

The next set of boards showed up with a keyed connector just like #42, with 0.050 pin spacing instead of the common 0.100. Now none of our UART adapters would work anymore until we had new cables made up, specially for these new boards.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

jaffa creole:
Yeah, it seems fishy that they wouldn't have schematics that made sense to people in both languages. The easiest way across a language barrier is to gesticulate or point at a picture. If you say, "Take care of the FET" and the guy reacts to the translator like you just said something preposterous, you point at the FET on the schematic and say "this thing. We've had problems with them in the past."

You assume the worker/foreman, translator and Herr Schwierigkeitmacher (who ironically wasn't actually the source of problems here) were together at the same time. The story doesn't tell us this.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

anonymous:
Paul M:
So what you need is to underline technical terms, and direct the translators to not attempt to translate underlined terms.
The way I understood it, the translator didn't translate "FET", but when the German workers were verbally told about the "FET" they thought they were being told "fett". So it was a miscommunication, not really a mistranslation.

The workers were East European, Val's company was German. So apparently the translator understood FET as Fett and did translate it into the worker's language.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

CigarDoug:
mortfurd:
I figure the multinational company that built that radio had some rule in place that required all products to have hand books in several languages - and that no one thought to make an exception for this one product.
I would guess it was a government regulation, not a company policy, that drove this. The kind of people who invent regulations requiring instructions to be written in extra languages are the kind of people who lack the intellectual capacity to realize that there might be valid exceptions. They think the government is right, all the time, and that the government knows far more about how to run a business than the people who actually run them.

Funny how anti-government people like yourself can take a story about a corporate WTF and turn it into a diatribe about governments. Sure, it may be a government regulation, or it may just as well be a corporate regulation to translate everthing. We aren't told this, but you can only read what fits into your world view, can't you?

Then you can go home and tell your friends: "Today I read another story about government screwup ..."

FWIW in my experience larger corporations are just as good as governments at screwing up, over-bureaucatizing etc. It's not a matter of being public or private, it's a function of their size.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

CigarDoug:
80 million man-hours to comply with ObamaCare, 24 million for Dodd-Frank. The list goes on.
Sadly, I am nearly convinced that the country I was born in and was always proud of, is no longer populated with a majority of rational people.

How many million man-hours wasted due to short-cuts taken and mistakes made by any large corporation? (I could say Microsoft as the obvious example, but you can really pick just any one.)

Oh yeah, that doesn't count, because that's all voluntary, right? All customers are informed before buying "This product will cost you XXX hours due to its hidden bugs." and make the informed decision to buy it regardless because they like to waste their time.

If that's what you think, I'm not very interested in your definition of rational.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Hey the word is "Schwierigkeitenmacher" for "troublemaker"

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

http://translate.google.com/#auto/en/Schwierigkeitenmacher

NMe · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

What kind of idiot pronounces FET as "fett", even in German? Especially when it comes to outsourcing it makes no sense at all to pronounce it as a word instead of letter by letter.

If there is anyone to blame here, it's Schwierigkeitmacher, definitely not the Asians.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

It reminds me of a project I once worked on for a Polish telecom. Though we were mainly a Polish group our employer was an American company and there was a bunch of foreigners on the team so our documentation was only in English. The customer, however, required all documents to be translated into Polish. A translator was assigned to do the job of creating Polish versions of the documents. Her English was excellent (both written and spoken) but she was a totally non-technical person. So her first efforts were full of pearls like

WYBIERZ * Z KLIENCI CL GDZIE CL.KATEGORIA W ...

where the original document contained

SELECT * FROM CLIENTS CL WHERE CL.CATEGORY IN ...

But after a while she caught on.

Konrad Ciborowski Krakow, Poland

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

My favorite story of a literary translator failing to catch a technical usage went from the original German into English, ending up as "male water sheep." Bilingual civil engineers, of course, immediately recognize an hydraulic ram.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

QJo:
Mike:
mortfurd:
I figure the multinational company that built that radio had some rule in place that required all products to have hand books in several languages - and that no one thought to make an exception for this one product.

Almost certainly a legal requirement

The good news here is that managing efficient and accurate translation between English, French and German is (practically) a somewhat easier proposition than translating between German and e.g. Czech, Romanian or Polish.

True. I remember being surprised to see the translations into French and English but I don't remember there being anything wrong with the translation.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Hannes:

Maybe we germans aren't the funniest people in the world, but it doesn't help much that you got the joke wrong, either. It's: "Treffen sich zwei Jäger. Beide tot." And no, that's still not funny.

And I wonder who that german comedian worth seeing should be?

Michael Mittermeier

WTF? Same Captcha twice in a row?

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Paul Neumann:
mortfurd:
2. I was adjusting the filters on the output side of the trasmitters one day. On the radios at that time, that meant stretching and twisting the coils in the filter. Radios started failing tests on the transmitter - too much power output outside that proper band, or too much wasted power to generate the required output. Both are signs of improperly adjusted filters. Since I was doing the filters, I knew damned good and well that they were done right when they left my bench. I went over to testing and picked up some of the failed units. All of my carefully stretched and twisted coils had been twisted and unstretched back into the original (useless) shape. You could see where the varnish was wrinkled from where I had adjusted things, but the otherwise the parts looked like they'd never been adjusted. What had happened was this: The coils have to be "fixed" with epoxy to hold their adjusted position. One of the women who was supposed fix the coils was straightening them and then fixing them. She thought the adjusted coils looked horribly untidy, and straightened them out. I got to redo a day's production because of that. You couldn't just readjust the coils, either. These were the longer ones that were filled with epoxy. Some of the smaller coils you just crack the epoxy off the outside and go on, but not these. You had to replace the bastards (all three on each board) and then adjust them.
I once held a job doing something similar, however we called it "potting" rather than fixing. The entire assembly was encased in an epoxy mold after adjustments were completed. One week our potter, Manfred, wanted to take a long weekend, but we were behind in our adjustments queue. He went ahead and potted the entire batch ahead of the adjustments causing a long weekend for one to turn into a long week for everyone.

Ow, ow, ow! That really sucks.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Not a german guy!:
Hey the word is "Schwierigkeitenmacher" for "troublemaker"

Except that "Schwierigkeitenmacher" is not a German word.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

NMe:
What kind of idiot pronounces FET as "fett", even in German? Especially when it comes to outsourcing it makes no sense at all to pronounce it as a word instead of letter by letter.

It's quite common to pronounce acronyms with enough vowels at the right places as a word instead of letter by letter.

NATO for instance is usually pronounced as a word instead of as "N" "A" "T" "O".

Also, it is not uncommon to give acronyms that can't easily be pronounced as a word a nickname for the purpose. "The Beeb" for "The BBC" comes to mind here.

Gurth · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Mike:
mortfurd:
I figure the multinational company that built that radio had some rule in place that required all products to have hand books in several languages

Almost certainly a legal requirement

If I’m not mistaken, in the EU the rule is more or less the other way around: manuals, labels, etc. must be in a language that can be expected to be understood where the product is sold. If your only market is Germany, then you’d only need a German-language manual; you could probably get away with an English-language manual instead on the assumption that the average German speaks English well enough to be able to use the device, but including only a (for example) Portuguese manual wouldn't be allowed, as that language is not exactly commonly-understood in Germany.

Of course, this doesn’t prohibit anyone from including manuals in as many languages as they like.

Gurth · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

herby:
So this is why the tower of Babel (…) was invented.

I always used to think its invention is what lead to this mess in the first place …

Sometime later I stopped taking things my schoolteachers told me for absolute truth, though.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

NMe:
What kind of idiot pronounces FET as "fett", even in German? Especially when it comes to outsourcing it makes no sense at all to pronounce it as a word instead of letter by letter.

Like faoileag said. Especially as acronyms get longer. (Perhaps they used MOSFETs a lot ...)

If there is anyone to blame here, it's Schwierigkeitmacher, definitely not the Asians.

Definitely not the Asians. (Not that far East European, you know.)

no laughing matter · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

gnasher729:
Not a german guy!:
Hey the word is "Schwierigkeitenmacher" for "troublemaker"
Except that "Schwierigkeitenmacher" is not a German word.

Why not? The Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz says that it is!

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

NMe:
What kind of idiot pronounces FET as "fett", even in German? Especially when it comes to outsourcing it makes no sense at all to pronounce it as a word instead of letter by letter.
If there is anyone to blame here, it's Schwierigkeitmacher, definitely not the Asians.

What about MOSFET? Do you pronounce it as a word or letter by letter?

chubertdev · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

https://xkcd.com/927/

It works for languages, too!

no laughing matter · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Gurth:
(...) you could probably get away with an English-language manual instead on the assumption that the average German speaks English well enough to be able to use the device, (...)

Nope. Not if security is involved (Geräte- und Produktsicherheitsgesetzes §4 Absatz 2) or if you are adressing the average consumer (Landgericht Bochum, Urteil vom 02. 02. 2010, Aktenzeichen: I-17 O 159/09).

You may get away with it when your product is targetted at specialised customers, e.g. business or if you inform the customer in advance, i.e. when advertising the product.

chubertdev · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Spezialpfusch (too lazy to log in):
But the story shows a major reason why it is safer to avoid acrynoms, especially when speaking to translators. With the unabbreviated "Feldeffekttransistor", we wouldn't have today's WTF.

Exactly. If it's an initialism, maybe. But acronyms should not be used in a technical, multilingual environment. I can imagine a German person looking around an office for a wizzy wig.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

CigarDoug:
mortfurd:
I figure the multinational company that built that radio had some rule in place that required all products to have hand books in several languages - and that no one thought to make an exception for this one product.
I would guess it was a government regulation, not a company policy, that drove this. The kind of people who invent regulations requiring instructions to be written in extra languages are the kind of people who lack the intellectual capacity to realize that there might be valid exceptions. They think the government is right, all the time, and that the government knows far more about how to run a business than the people who actually run them.

Outside of your pseudo-libertarian delusion where everything the government does is incompetent at best and evil at worst, and where all the truly righteous, liberty-loving, free-men drive to work on their gas guzzling unicorns, no country is going to pass a law requiring all manuals to be printed in foreign languages.

Your two possibilities are the government passing laws to enforce foreign languages, or a company that already does everything in foreign languages doesn't bother to setup exclusions as it is cheaper to follow a process than it is to redesign the process for each new product. I mean seriously, drop your prejudices and get a clue.

CigarDoug:
Agreed. You would think that a country of rational people would at some point conclude that too much government regulation cripples even a robust economy, let alone a sputtering one.
80 million man-hours to comply with ObamaCare, 24 million for Dodd-Frank. The list goes on.

Sadly, I am nearly convinced that the country I was born in and was always proud of, is no longer populated with a majority of rational people.

And we spent nearly 12 BILLION man hours watching porn. 12,000 million! You think an extra 100 million hours of dead weight is going to cripple, or even have any effect on, the economy? You think that extra drop in the bucket is is going to have more dead weight loss than the legislation removes?

Americans earn, on average, under 25$ and hour. So how much does Dodd-Frank cost in compliance? 625 million dollars. How much did not having Dodd-Frank cost? Oh, right 30 TRILLION dollars in bailout money.

And you think that rational people should be against this, and that there aren't many rational people left?

Hi Pot! I'd like you to meet my good friend Kettle.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

CigarDoug:
Sadly, I am nearly convinced that the country I was born in and was always proud of, is no longer populated with a majority of rational people.

And if you think 'Murica was ever something to be proud of, you're more delusional than you are for thinking that spending 650 million dollars to save 30 trillion is irrational.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Aaaah I'm dying ;)

Monty Python ftw

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

foo AKA fooo:
jaffa creole:
Yeah, it seems fishy that they wouldn't have schematics that made sense to people in both languages. The easiest way across a language barrier is to gesticulate or point at a picture. If you say, "Take care of the FET" and the guy reacts to the translator like you just said something preposterous, you point at the FET on the schematic and say "this thing. We've had problems with them in the past."
You assume the worker/foreman, translator and Herr Schwierigkeitmacher (who ironically wasn't actually the source of problems here) were together at the same time. The story doesn't tell us this.

It said Schwierigkeitmacher traveled to the factory. I hope that was to meet with them in person, not just save on long distance phone calls

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

CigarDoug:
gnasher729:
Making two translations, telling the translators that absolutely nobody cares about the quality, might be cheaper, quicker and less painful than arguing for an exception with the authorities.

Agreed. You would think that a country of rational people would at some point conclude that too much government regulation cripples even a robust economy, let alone a sputtering one.

https://www.google.com/search?num=30&newwindow=1&safe=off&site=&source=hp&q=how+many+man+hours+are+spent+complying+with+government+regulations&oq=how+many+man+hours+are+spent+complying+with+government+regulations&gs_l=hp.3...1451.15148.0.15491.87.58.3.3.3.3.546.6487.6j21j5j2j0j2.36.0....0...1c.1.35.hp..65.22.2977.otEZbgBHClU

80 million man-hours to comply with ObamaCare, 24 million for Dodd-Frank. The list goes on.

Sadly, I am nearly convinced that the country I was born in and was always proud of, is no longer populated with a majority of rational people.

Assuming a US population of 320 million, 80million man hours is 15 mintues per person......is that really so much?

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

herby:
Re: Translations...
I have a friend that translates manuals (for two-way radios) from "Chinglish" (please no offense here) to normal English. From appearances most of the original translations are done by a "technical" person whos only English instruction is a Chinese to English dictionary. Some of the first translations can actually be quite humorous. I'm sure you have read them on the little sheets you get from inexpensive electronics you buy.

It really is a job to get these things "right".

So this is why the tower of Babel (and possibly the Rosetta stone) was invented.

TV manuals are amusing.....

When the menu is illuminating....

chubertdev · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

aehrtaerh:
Assuming a US population of 320 million, 80million man hours is 15 mintues per person......is that really so much?

I didn't work on it, so assume 319,999,999 people did.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

vt_mruhlin:
foo AKA fooo:
jaffa creole:
Yeah, it seems fishy that they wouldn't have schematics that made sense to people in both languages. The easiest way across a language barrier is to gesticulate or point at a picture. If you say, "Take care of the FET" and the guy reacts to the translator like you just said something preposterous, you point at the FET on the schematic and say "this thing. We've had problems with them in the past."
You assume the worker/foreman, translator and Herr Schwierigkeitmacher (who ironically wasn't actually the source of problems here) were together at the same time. The story doesn't tell us this.

It said Schwierigkeitmacher traveled to the factory. I hope that was to meet with them in person, not just save on long distance phone calls

He might have talked to the translator, and the translator later to the workers (or even just given them written orders).

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
aehrtaerh:
Assuming a US population of 320 million, 80million man hours is 15 mintues per person......is that really so much?

I didn't work on it, so assume 319,999,999 people did.

Stupid assumption.

I think the point is that the US Govt is investing only 15 minutes in each person.....that's not a lot, really. I guess if you're not happy with that we could certainly invest less....

Expecting the argument on not everyone benefits from it and all that rot... Note: Anything "For the greater good" will never seem fair at the individual level.....

chubertdev · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Mick:
chubertdev:
aehrtaerh:
Assuming a US population of 320 million, 80million man hours is 15 mintues per person......is that really so much?

I didn't work on it, so assume 319,999,999 people did.
Stupid assumption.

I think the point is that the US Govt is investing only 15 minutes in each person.....that's not a lot, really. I guess if you're not happy with that we could certainly invest less....

Expecting the argument on not everyone benefits from it and all that rot... Note: Anything "For the greater good" will never seem fair at the individual level.....

green text == sarcasm on my part

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

TRWTF is not knowing the difference between a translator and an interpreter.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Mick:
chubertdev:
aehrtaerh:
Assuming a US population of 320 million, 80million man hours is 15 mintues per person......is that really so much?

I didn't work on it, so assume 319,999,999 people did.
Stupid assumption.

I think the point is that the US Govt is investing only 15 minutes in each person.....that's not a lot, really. I guess if you're not happy with that we could certainly invest less....

Expecting the argument on not everyone benefits from it and all that rot... Note: Anything "For the greater good" will never seem fair at the individual level.....

Oops - I got the wrong nd of the sztick (and so did you). The claim is that complying with ObamaCare will "...cost US families and businesses nearly 80million man hours..." The OP is right - that's less than (a lot will be absorbed by the companies) 15 minutes of your time it's going to cost you. Hmmm....

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
aehrtaerh:
Assuming a US population of 320 million, 80million man hours is 15 mintues per person......is that really so much?

I didn't work on it, so assume 319,999,999 people did.

To fork an off-topic flamewar from another off-topic flamewar, when dealing with rounded numbers, 320 million - 1 is still 320 million, strange as it sounds.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

OMGWTFBBQ:
Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

Now that is the real WTF

HA HA HA

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Mick:
Mick:
chubertdev:
aehrtaerh:
Assuming a US population of 320 million, 80million man hours is 15 mintues per person......is that really so much?

I didn't work on it, so assume 319,999,999 people did.
Stupid assumption.

I think the point is that the US Govt is investing only 15 minutes in each person.....that's not a lot, really. I guess if you're not happy with that we could certainly invest less....

Expecting the argument on not everyone benefits from it and all that rot... Note: Anything "For the greater good" will never seem fair at the individual level.....

Oops - I got the wrong nd of the sztick (and so did you). The claim is that complying with ObamaCare will "...cost US families and businesses nearly 80million man hours..." The OP is right - that's less than (a lot will be absorbed by the companies) 15 minutes of your time it's going to cost you. Hmmm....

Mea Culpa - I didn't realise Green was the official standard for sarcasm.....

My Bad. Oops.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Mick:
Mick:
Mick:
chubertdev:
aehrtaerh:
Assuming a US population of 320 million, 80million man hours is 15 mintues per person......is that really so much?

I didn't work on it, so assume 319,999,999 people did.
Stupid assumption.

I think the point is that the US Govt is investing only 15 minutes in each person.....that's not a lot, really. I guess if you're not happy with that we could certainly invest less....

Expecting the argument on not everyone benefits from it and all that rot... Note: Anything "For the greater good" will never seem fair at the individual level.....

Oops - I got the wrong nd of the sztick (and so did you). The claim is that complying with ObamaCare will "...cost US families and businesses nearly 80million man hours..." The OP is right - that's less than (a lot will be absorbed by the companies) 15 minutes of your time it's going to cost you. Hmmm....
Mea Culpa - I didn't realise Green was the official standard for sarcasm.....
My Bad. Oops.

Everyone knows this. It's not necessary to point it out.

chubertdev · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Mick:
Mick:
Mick:
chubertdev:
aehrtaerh:
Assuming a US population of 320 million, 80million man hours is 15 mintues per person......is that really so much?

I didn't work on it, so assume 319,999,999 people did.
Stupid assumption.

I think the point is that the US Govt is investing only 15 minutes in each person.....that's not a lot, really. I guess if you're not happy with that we could certainly invest less....

Expecting the argument on not everyone benefits from it and all that rot... Note: Anything "For the greater good" will never seem fair at the individual level.....

Oops - I got the wrong nd of the sztick (and so did you). The claim is that complying with ObamaCare will "...cost US families and businesses nearly 80million man hours..." The OP is right - that's less than (a lot will be absorbed by the companies) 15 minutes of your time it's going to cost you. Hmmm....
Mea Culpa - I didn't realise Green was the official standard for sarcasm.....
My Bad. Oops.

didn't get the memo?

chubertdev · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

foo AKA fooo:
chubertdev:
aehrtaerh:
Assuming a US population of 320 million, 80million man hours is 15 mintues per person......is that really so much?

I didn't work on it, so assume 319,999,999 people did.
To fork an off-topic flamewar from another off-topic flamewar, when dealing with rounded numbers, 320 million - 1 is still 320 million, strange as it sounds.

My fiancee teaches chemistry, so I've had this pounded into my head, just so I can ignore it.

2014-02-24 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
Mick:
Mick:
Mick:
chubertdev:
aehrtaerh:
Assuming a US population of 320 million, 80million man hours is 15 mintues per person......is that really so much?

I didn't work on it, so assume 319,999,999 people did.
Stupid assumption.

I think the point is that the US Govt is investing only 15 minutes in each person.....that's not a lot, really. I guess if you're not happy with that we could certainly invest less....

Expecting the argument on not everyone benefits from it and all that rot... Note: Anything "For the greater good" will never seem fair at the individual level.....

Oops - I got the wrong nd of the sztick (and so did you). The claim is that complying with ObamaCare will "...cost US families and businesses nearly 80million man hours..." The OP is right - that's less than (a lot will be absorbed by the companies) 15 minutes of your time it's going to cost you. Hmmm....
Mea Culpa - I didn't realise Green was the official standard for sarcasm.....
My Bad. Oops.

didn't get the memo?

Must have ended up in my Spam folder...

Matt Westwood · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

CigarDoug:
mortfurd:
I figure the multinational company that built that radio had some rule in place that required all products to have hand books in several languages - and that no one thought to make an exception for this one product.
I would guess it was a government regulation, not a company policy, that drove this. The kind of people who invent regulations requiring instructions to be written in extra languages are the kind of people who lack the intellectual capacity to realize that there might be valid exceptions. They think the government is right, all the time, and that the government knows far more about how to run a business than the people who actually run them.

Regulating for when to decide as to when handbooks are required not to be translated into 2 other languages is probably harder work and fraught with too many occasions for court cases, caused by something in the grey area which a decision has been made not to translate resulting in something going wrong for someone. "Oh, that radio is only ever going to be used in German lifeboats" and then said boa being borrowed in an emergency by a French team ...

Easier all round to pass a blanket law and just bloody translate everything, cheaper than actionable court-case bollocks.

da Doctah · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

Mick:
Mea Culpa - I didn't realise Green was the official standard for sarcasm.....
My Bad. Oops.

It's not. Green is the official standard for adultery. Or is that just in China?

Best personal translation story: back when Borders Books still existed, I found a copy of War & Peace on the liquidation table out front, published in Russia (info on the back of the title page and all that). Months later when I decided to actually open it up and try to use it to learn Russian, the first two pages of the novel itself were in French.

chubertdev · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

I realized what I did wrong.

#define [color=green] <sarcasm>
#define [/color] </sarcasm>

chubertdev · 2014-02-24 Reply Admin

da Doctah:
Mick:
Mea Culpa - I didn't realise Green was the official standard for sarcasm.....
My Bad. Oops.
It's not. Green is the official standard for adultery. Or is that just in China?

Best personal translation story: back when Borders Books still existed, I found a copy of War & Peace on the liquidation table out front, published in Russia (info on the back of the title page and all that). Months later when I decided to actually open it up and try to use it to learn Russian, the first two pages of the novel itself were in French.

No, that's scarlet.

Also, did you figure out the reason for the book having French? Was it a French distributor, possibly?

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