Day: December 18, 2023

When Is An Engineer Not An Engineer? When He’s A Canadian Engineer

December 18, 2023 by 218 Comments

In medieval Europe, many professions were under the control of guilds. These had a monopoly over that profession in their particular city or state, backed up with all the legal power of the monarch. If you weren’t in the guild you couldn’t practice your craft. Except in a few ossified forms they are a thing of the past, but we have to wonder whether that particular message ever reached Western Canada.

An electoral candidate with an engineering degree who practices what any sane person would call engineering, has been ordered by a judge to cease calling himself an engineer. The heinous crime committed by the candidate, one [David Hilderman], is to not be a member of the guild Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of B.C. We get it that maybe calling a garbage truck driver a waste collection engineer may be stretching it a little, but here in the 21st century we think the Canadian professional body should be ashamed of themselves over this case. Way to encourage people into the engineering profession!

Here at Hackaday, quite a few of us writers are engineers. Stepping outside our normal third person, I, [Jenny List], am among them. My electronic engineering degree may be a little moth-eaten, but I have practiced my craft over several decades without ever being a member of the British IEE. No offence meant to the IEE, but there is very little indeed they have to offer me. If the same is true in Canada to the extent that they have to rely on legal sanctions to protect their membership lists, then we think perhaps the problem is with them rather than Canadian engineers. You have to ask, just how is an engineering graduate who’s not a guild member supposed to describe themselves? Some of us need to know, in case we ever find ourselves on holiday in Canada!

Header: Joe Gratz, CC0.

Renewable Energy: Beyond Electricity

December 18, 2023 by 72 Comments

Perhaps the most-cited downside of renewable energy is that wind or sunlight might not always be available when the electrical grid demands it. As they say in the industry, it’s not “dispatchable”. A large enough grid can mitigate this somewhat by moving energy long distances or by using various existing storage methods like pumped storage, but for the time being some amount of dispatchable power generation like nuclear, fossil, or hydro power is often needed to backstop the fundamental nature of nature. As prices for wind and solar drop precipitously, though, the economics of finding other grid storage solutions get better. While the current focus is almost exclusively dedicated to batteries, another way of solving these problems may be using renewables to generate hydrogen both as a fuel and as a means of grid storage. Continue reading “Renewable Energy: Beyond Electricity” →

Mickey Shall Be Free!

December 18, 2023 by 24 Comments

The end of the year brings with it festive cheer, and a look forward into the new year to come. For those with an interest in intellectual property and the public domain it brings another treat, because every January 1st a fresh crop of works enter the public domain.

We’ll take a look at the wider crop around the day, but this year the big story is that Mickey Mouse, whose first outing was in 1928’s Steamboat Willie, is to get his turn to be released from copyright. [Jennifer Jenkins] from Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, is using Mickey’s impending release to take a look at the law surrounding such a well-protected work.

Mickey has perhaps the greatest symbolism of all intellectual property when it comes to copyright terms, having been the reason for the Disney Corporation’s successive successful attempts to have copyright terms extended. Now even their reach is about to come to an end, but beware if you’re about to use him in your work, for the Mickey entering the public domain is an early outing, without gloves or the colours and eyes of his later incarnations. Added to that, Disney have a range of trademarks surrounding him. The piece makes for an interesting read as it navigates this maze, and makes some worthwhile points about copyright and the public domain.

Last year, we welcomed Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to the public domain. Meanwhile if you’re reading this in 2023, we believe our use of a header image featuring the 1928 Mickey to be covered by the doctrine of fair use.

Storage Media Forgotten

December 18, 2023 by 24 Comments

These days, cheap removable storage is no problem. USB sticks are virtually free at moderate capacity and not unreasonable, even at relatively large sizes. They are rugged, work across platforms, and don’t require any exotic interfaces. But this hasn’t always been the case.  In the 1990s, people wanted to store too much data for floppies, but weren’t willing to shell out for removable hard drives or tapes. Many companies identified this opportunity with, perhaps, the most successful being Iomega with the Zip drive. But there were others, including the Avatar Shark that [This Does Not Compute] remembers in a video you can see below.

Haven’t heard of the Shark? We had not either, but reviewers seemed to like it. The drive would fit in your pocket if you had a fairly large pocket. The 250 MB cartridge was smaller (but thicker) than a 3.5-inch floppy. It performed ok and connected to the parallel port which was common in those days.

Continue reading “Storage Media Forgotten” →