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Musical Wings Reduce Aircraft Stall Risk

Posted by samzenpus on from the fake-plastic-airlines dept.

notwrong writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that a Qantas engineer has found a way to help small aircraft avoid stalling at low speeds: pumping sound through the wings. He found that music also works, having tested Spiderbait and Radiohead (nice choices; Spiderbait apparently works better)."

6 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. Is that because... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Radiohead is shit?

  2. As a pilot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I'm a fairly technical user, not a tech god by any stretch of the imagination, but I know my way around. I know how to forward ports on my router, I do all my own XVID rips from Vdub, I can install most Linux distros without a problem, and I'm damned proficient at packages like Photoshop and Illustrator. In addition, I'm a gamer from back in the DOS days, so concepts like editing text files (config.sys, autoexec.bat, etc) don't necessarily scare me.

    That said, as much as I like the concept of Linux, I simply will not try it any longer until I hear that a number of problems have been solved.

    A) Having to recompile kernels/worrying that apps will be broken by upgrading that kernel. For that matter, I don't want to have to compile anything, ever. Just to make this clear, never. Come up with either something akin to Windows where I click on a standard installer, or make it like Mac where I just drag and drop the folder.

    B) Any time I'm forced to drop to a command line, you as a developer have failed. Back 10 years ago, this may have been acceptable. In this day and age, it isn't. Furthermore, while once in a blue moon I may change a text file in Windows, in Linux it's a constant occurence. Again, you have failed.

    C) MAN pages do not cut it. Neither does a message board where half the time I'll be called a clueless n00b, 25% of the time I'll be told to use a different distro, and the other 25% of the time I'll get genuinely helpful people giving me contradictory answers. If I'm expected to jump to an alien computing environment you'd best make sure your documentation is up to snuff. Linux sucks in this regard.

    I'm an advanced user who's in favor of open source, but the bizarre, arcane, and technical details I have to jump through to achieve the same things that are comparatively simple in Mac or Windows may Linux a deal breaker. You will never, ever, become successful on the desktop until idiocy like this is exorcised from the OS.

  3. probably by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    At one point, they kind of rocked. Then they did OK Computer and sucked.

    Not a damn good thing out of them since.

  4. quake3 source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    quake3 source been released. submit a proper news post already.

    now mod this down.

  5. Stealing your thread to bring you breaking news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Read this on a blog frequented by members of the armed forces. Something's happened in Iraq:

    The shit has hit the fan

    All I can say for now.....keep a look out for Michael Yons blog...something happened yesterday that involved Mr Yon having to pick up an M-4 and start shooting........And for lack of a better way to say it, we have a new Battalion commander, so you know that isnt good news, we had several guys get shot yesterday and we have 30 days of patrols left....death doesnt seem to care that we are leaving this shithole soon, no simpathy from death.

    Does anyone know anything about this?

  6. Stalls are not the only thing alleviated by music by techsoldaten · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    It's nice when science can agree with the things we already know to be true. Music is a great way to overcome more than stalls in aircraft engines. The right song can bring you right back to the moment you first heard it, make time stand still and everything seem alright until the time it ends (and you want to hear it again).

    The right song can melt a woman in your arms, make a bad date suddenly go right, turn a night of monotony into a night of romance. When I turn on that Barry White and the moment is just right, the lights go down and...

    oh wait...

    sorry, forgot this was Slashdot. This kind of talk has no place here.

    *ducking*

    M