There are reasons for my interest in the facts and data. In 1982, I had submitted my design documents for three device drivers I had written. Each was about ~200 lines of code and 2000 lines of design documents embedded as comments. In fact, I wrote the comments before the code and corrected both during testing. When the hardware delivery was delayed, I added macros to coded the driver to work without the hardware.
The application programmers were a little slow so I wrote a command line, QIO, to exercise the driver for my debugging. This predated the applications programmers starting their integration and test which didn't start until after the hardware arrived. Mine was the first of ~10 device drivers whose design document was released before coding and release for a review that didn't happen.
Meanwhile, my supervisor and I developed a personality conflict. When my tummy started to hurt, I resumed long distance running to relieve the pain. After a couple of weeks, I realized it was time to find my next job because I don't work hurt. When I turned in my resume, the program office asked what it would take to keep me. So they moved me to operations, a different supervisor, and my tummy stopped hurting.
By 1983-84, we had launched the Landsat satellites and our customer, NASA, asked for the design documents. But many of the other device driver writers had turned in their code, spent one week on the "design" document, one day on their resumes, and were gone. So that same hateful supervisor hired baby programmers to finish the design documents for device drivers they never written.
Being in operations, these fraudulent documents came by and I would do a cursory review and other than simple English problems, sign them off. I was an easy 'grader.' Then one day, my driver design documents came by and my name was not on the cover.
I was so angry I told my supervisor I had to knock off early (I was typically a 45-50 hour per week worker.) Driving home, I knew the hurt of plagiarism which is why I am such a stickler for at least a URL to reference the source. Or enough of an embedded footnote to recognize the author and source.
The next day, I delivered my copy of my design documents to my supervisor when he was with some other of his peers. I my Marine voice, I said what I'd scribbled on the cover sheet,
"These are the best design documents that I have ever seen. They could not be better if I'd written them myself!"
'Nough said.
In 2005, I bought my first Prius, a 2003 model. I drove it 800 miles home and by the time I'd arrived, figured out how to get 52 MPG highway and higher city driving. I showed it off to my fellow engineers. One day I was walking into work and spoke about it to a "Mother Earth" woman. Then she said to me, 'I heard they are a risk to blind people.'
This was the first Prius lie I'd ever heard but would not be the last. It turns out there were liars who claimed:
- Hummers were more efficient than the Prius.
- Prius did not make a profit.
- You could not get the 'hybrid premium' back in gas savings.
- Landfills full of Prius batteries (I answered, I have a shovel, where?)
- Prius nickel mining had decimated a Canadian town.
- Prius are too quiet and keep running into the blind.
Refuting these lies led to my debunking skills. Hopefully with the skill to cite sources along with facts and data.
Bob Wilson