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I was tempted to gently snicker and mention to my friend that he didn't have to punch the ``Open Door'' button; elevator doors open themselves. The belief you have to hit Open is persistent in Singapore society. It's a good thing I didn't; this time, the door didn't open. The car just sat there, dot-matrix display turning to a down arrow. He jabbed the button more insistently; I pushed the nearest lower floor button, and between the two we got the door open.
Other campus elevators, including the slowest elevator in the world, have nifty Windows-driven LCD screens showing huge embossed-metal-effect up or down arrows spinning. I know they're Windows systems because I've seen them crashed. I hope the software not up to the challenge of drawing an ``up'' arrow doesn't have controlling authority over the elevator.
I only saw a bit of the Presidential Debate -- too early for me -- but it appeared unknown parties kidnapped George W. Bush from bed at quarter to 5 a.m., threw him into the auditorium, shone a spotlight in his eyes, and then slapped him with a fish. Did somebody throw him by asking where the ``Weapons of Mass Destruction'' went or something?
The first shipment of southern Malaysia poultry came yesterday, after last-minute paperwork delays. Received were eggs, ducks, then chickens, in that order.
Trivia: The programming error of writing if (a = b) -- setting a equal to b rather than testing for equality with if (a == b) -- occurs on average once every 3,306 lines of commercial C code. Source: Safer C: Developing Software for High-Integrity and Safety-Critical Systems, Les Hatton.
Currently Reading: The Jersey Game, James M DiClerico and Barry J Pavelec.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-01 05:35 am (UTC)I'd hope not, too. My guess is the idea was that they could display advertisements or announcements on the display. Elevators are the latest frontier in the effort to cram electronic advertising into every crevice of the universe.
"Elevator controller" has taken on symbolic meaning as an application in computer programming, as the generic example of an embedded app. You see it come up in debates; for example, "Why on earth would you want to disable console support in the kernel?" 'Well, what if you're designing an elevator controller?' The original elevator controllers, of course, were done with relay logic. Modern systems are a lot more refined in how they operate, but to me there's still something satisfying about things being controlled by a big rack of relays that click and clack at odd intervals.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-01 10:27 pm (UTC)They haven't tried elevator ads (yet), but the SMRT corporation sold most of the space on their ``Next Train Arriving'' boards -- which they replaced with nifty plasma-screen TVs that got severe burn-in after about a month -- to ads, meaning there's just one tiny little line with the ``Please do not stand in front of the yellow line'', ``Next Train to Jurong East 2 min'', and all that, virtually invisible since they have one monitor for one half the platform, and it's not even centered.
I really like nice, clunking relays for simple control problems. I love hearing the thumping as I walk past a streetlight, for example. Probably they're going to be lost, though, just because you can buy a computer so cheap and if it breaks, throw the whole thing away instead of trying to find what relay broke.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-01 08:37 am (UTC)Chahala
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-01 10:30 pm (UTC)Channel i's News at 8:30 -- the broadcast news for The Straits Times -- declared Kerry the winner. Unfortunately Singapore hasn't got many electoral votes ...
The election is just barely news here, as you might figure. I imagine already it's gotten more news than Singapore's 2001 election did in the U.S., although admittedly Singapore elections are pretty dull affairs. The only real suspense last time was would the People's Action Party win all 84 seats in Parliament. (They fell two short.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-01 10:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-01 10:36 pm (UTC)I didn't realize there was a setting to check
if (a = b)... but compiling with all the warnings reported and delousing every one of them is really good habit. As an obsessive-compulsive loon it's easy for me to get into things like that.(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-02 03:20 am (UTC)Another simple controller system in which computer control is fine without, being invaded by Microsoft...?? *runs and awks!!*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-02 04:46 am (UTC)They've also got a Windows platform doing the self-checkout stations in the libraries. That crashes more often; possibly because they have the IP addresses of the machines written on tape on top of the machines, pretty much daring people to toy with them.