Euhm... I don't think it's a good idea to actually run a full-sized jet engine inside a wind tunnel. Because that's what you will have to do, after all the problem is not as much the sandblasting but the melting of ash inside a hot engine. And you would have to do that for many hours on end, without melting the wind tunnel in the process.
Maybe overclockers have an idea on how to get rid of all that excess heat.
If so, how difficult would it be for the airliner to rent/lease a fleet of prop planes for the duration of this problem?
Very difficult.
There is no-one in this world with dozens of aircraft available for rent. Let alone the hundreds that would be needed to cover existing jet services. And they are no drop-in replacement: slower, less range, less passenger capacity.
This is too occasional and too extreme in scope to actually be prepared for. Also it's expected to be temporary, so no reason to start turning your business model upside down for that.
From such wording I would conclude that working exploits are out there.
They may be hard to come by, but it can be done, and the fact they say "have been hard to come by" means that they got at least one (have been being a past tense). And no matter how hard a flaw is to exploit, as soon as a single exploit exists, the rest of the attackers can in principle just re-use it. If script-kiddies can do that, then more serious attackers surely can.
Obscurity may work for a while. Until someone discovers it: by accident or by trying.
For example a hidden web page: www.example.com/secret that is not published or linked to anywhere. Secure because it's obscure - works great until someone guesses the URL. Or finds it by an accidental typo.
If you want something to be proven secure, obscurity has no place. If you want to keep something hidden (but don't care too much if ends up out in public) then keeping it obscure is good enough.
Funny and innovative as the idea is: I wonder how clean this energy really is. It doesn't come out of thin air, those cows have to eat. And a cow's digestive system tends to produce quite some methane (a major greenhouse gas), and quite some waste - which also releases lots of ammonia amongst other harmful chemicals. On top of that the fodder also has to be produced (often using power for machinery and so), and a cow that walks that much definitely eats a lot more than a cow that grazes the pasture or is kept in a stable without much room to move.
And besides I think there are much more cattle-friendly ways to exercise your cow.
Accountability - yes that's an issue. Mostly to who the leaders are accountable.
And then fighting corruption is difficult when the whole society is corrupt. How can you make sure the anti-corruption body isn't corrupt themselves? Basically the age-old "who watches the watchers" issue. How to fight corruption in the police for a start? When you need that very police force to arrest corrupt people? You basically ask them to arrest themselves. And then the suspects will just again bribe the officers trying to arrest them.
It's very hard to do. Truly hard. And it requires great vision and guts - and that is what the current government is missing. The problem is so big, it becomes almost impossible to fight. You have to start with the top and work your way down. That's the only way.
You may want to look in the ICAC, which managed to get Hong Kong clean, and keeps doing so. It wasn't easy. There was a near war between the ICAC and Hong Kong police when the ICAC was set up, and the ICAC tried to arrest police officers for corruption. The ICAC in the end got the upper hand, but it was tough.
And that was just one small city. Now scale this up to a country with 1.3 bln people.
OK I'm European. My forefathers once sat down together and divided Africa between them. They took a map, a ruler and pencil, and started chopping up the continent. Literally. That's why to this day there are so many straight borders there.
That put many groups together in one country that shouldn't be, and spread other groups over two (or more) countries.
And as a result there is a virtual constant state of civil war in the continent. Some places more than others, but in the last ten years most have had civil war. Somalia is the current worst off, Ethiopia was a major problem before (I believe it's somewhat stable now but not really keeping track).
Kenya is currently doing quite well: no civil wars going on in most of the country at least, but the security situation is still poor though a handful of armed guards is enough for a foreigner to survive, and as a result they pull in a lot of foreign investment such as Dutch flower growers.
The far east has far more stable governments (whether you like them or not: China's government is a prime example of a stable, strong government), and that is what's needed for economic development.
Africa, largely thanks to European colonialism, suffers from constant civil war. It is not easy to set up businesses when you will have to run your own private army to protect your interests.
In China he would most likely have gotten a trial of 2-3 days behind doors followed by an execution within a few weeks after that.
Someone like Madoff would have been in too big a hole, and have pissed off too many people, to be able to buy his way out.
These days I regularly read in the Hong Kong newspapers about high-flying politicians and businesspeople being sentenced to long jail terms or indeed to death for corruption and other financial crimes such as pyramid schemes. The central government is serious when it comes to fighting corruption however it is really really hard as the lower echelons are so thoroughly corrupt. As a rule of thumb the higher up in the government the less corruption you find (though when it takes place the amounts of money involved become mind blowing).
I just noticed this story is now tagged "chinasucks"... oh well it's a US centric web site after all... too bad so many Americans have so rude ideas about this country.
China is a great country, with many great people. Of course not all is well there too - but to start saying things like "chinasucks" well that says more about the tagger than China.
I also often rile against the US (and at times also against China) but I won't say "ussucks". The government sucks maybe. Some companies suck. There sucks a lot. But for the rest like China I think the US is also a great country, with many great people.
The problem is that the US government sucks so badly that I don't feel like visiting. I've never been there, unfortunately. But with the current border checks it's as if entering a supermax prison. So sorry people but no thanks, later maybe.
Examples: fake Rolex watches, fake LV hand bags, fake jewelery (both as in copied design or fake gold/diamonds/gemstones), fake eggs (no kidding here - they appeared on the market in Hong Kong), fake medicine (featuring well-known brands on the packing but at best just a placebo and at worst a deadly poison), and fake beauty in their "miss plastic surgery" pageants.
Mainlanders come in droves to Hong Kong to buy genuine hand bags, watches, jewelery, milk powder, medicine, and more. At least in Hong Kong you can be reasonably sure it's the real thing, while in Mainland you're better off assuming it's a fake.
The Chinese approach to ethics is almost purely situational. Compound this with a manipulative media, and what you get are fat, happy citizens who are staunchly nationalistic and xenophobic. All they care about is money.
Mostly true (especially the "care about money" part, Chinese are getting very materialistic and may surpass the US in that soon if they haven't done so already - looking at the better-off city dwellers at least).
Manipulative media? Not really - manipulated media is the correct way to say it. The government manipulates the media in China, the press has very little freedom.
And nationalistic yes for sure, xenophobic also but less strong.
But fat and happy citizens? Well in the literal sense they are fattening up indeed (not as bad as in the US but certainly waistlines are increasing), but there is a lot of unhappiness in China. Really a lot. You don't hear too much about it because such news is suppressed by the censor. Unhappiness about censorship of news, about corruption, about abuse of power, and last but not least about the shortage of women due to the skewed birth rates leaving many men without wives (and for a man to remain unmarried and childless that's really really bad in Chinese social culture).
If you want some positive moderation, reply to the above true statement about the Chinese changing only the nationality.
Change it to "American" and you're about as close to the truth indeed:)
As discussed here many times before (this is not new): Chinese scientists are judged by number of publications, just that. Just the number. As a result a PhD student will do their best to pump out as many papers as possible, as the more they manage to get published the better future career prospects they have.
The quality of the papers is simply not taken into account when it comes to job offers.
And then this is the obvious result. Lots and lots of papers, with little to no really new information, and on top of that a lot of made-up stuff by the ones that really have nothing new but still need the numbers.
Train tickets are sold out on all international routes.
Ferries are packed.
Coaches... well there is Eurolines and some other long distance coach services but not really much capacity there either.
Good luck finding a rental car still available.
I heard around Schiphol some 1000 households have offered rooms for stranded passengers: hotels are full.
It is not easy to put all passengers from one transport on another. There is a balance: so many people go by car, so many by train, so many by air. If one of those breaks completely, then the other modes of transport have not enough capacity to catch up, as they have only capacity for the normal demand and maybe a little spare. There are no trains available to double the number of departures on e.g. the Channel tunnel link. There are no hundreds of extra rental cars available. It just isn't there, because all those travelers normally go by air.
And for aircraft flying above the ash cloud... that is possible of course. But how would they get from the ground to that altitude, other than THROUGH that cloud?
Today I talked to my parents who live about 200 km from the nearest major airport. They also mentioned it was much quieter out there than normal. We now and then could see contrails of aircraft flying by at high altitude, usually not audible. Or so we thought. They mentioned a background rumble has disappeared. Wow... I never realised aircraft were making that much noise, that 10 km down you could still actually hear them, albeit as part of background noise.
All the more reason to be careful with so many unknowns. Remember that this whole affair is pretty much unprecedented, and there is little to no experience and information available on the effect of volcanic ash on aircraft and their engines.
No matter how you argue it, the problem still lies with the ISP. They sell an internet connection with "unlimited data" and start complaining when you actually use it - even worse, they start secretly throttling the connection.
Years of non-use.... so why the sudden interest? Obviously you don't care about these clients anymore, you didn't keep in touch with them or continue working for them, why do you care if several years later someone approaches them pretending to be you and asks for money?
How about complaints and possibly police investigations coming your way? If someone pretending to be Mr X asks for money the obvious place to start complaining is Mr X. And being investigated for fraud is definitely no fun, no matter how you look at it.
I didn't immediately think "insider" but now you mention it... it makes total sense of a very unbelievable story.
Oh well yet another story that doesn't pass a reality check, and in good kdawson fashion no supporting links or so. Here we go:
The fraudsters copied the web site (that was
presumably off-line for a long time). Trivial if it is all static pages, not trivial to impossible if it includes a lot of server-side scripting and you do not have access to the server directly. And quite unlikely that a web site is copied and kept archived by would-be fraudsters hoping that in the future the owner lets the domain expire so they can bring it back on-line? No. It just doesn't happen.
Then they need to know which third-party services you used. And that you were so trusting that you use a third-party web service for invoicing in the first place.
Then they know your clients (potentially through the third-party invoice service).
Then they have your passwords (I may assume password protection).
And how come your old accounts at those invoicing services are still accessible in the first place? From the fact that you let your domain expire after "years of non-use" I take it your business has closed years ago too. Third-party web services usually require payment, especially specialised stuff like invoicing. Not likely they keep that active without it being paid for.
So Russian hackers? No. Insider job? That's where you should look first indeed. Start with former employees I'd say.
One version of Windows in 10 years time, versus half a dozen versions of OS-X. And more innovation in OS-X. And a completely new OS/user interface: the iPhone/iPad OS.
Don't just count titles. Look at what is actually produced, the innovation. And that is sorely lacking with MS.
Steve Jobs is obviously doing a better job than Steve Ballmer in that aspect.
MS is big - but why is it that big? Why does it have that many employees? You need only that many to manage your sales etc - they for sure have plenty more programmers than Apple. On the other hand they output less software it seems.
Maybe it is time for MS to slim down their core seriously. Leave the support side (sales, marketing, administration) but slim down the core. Make it lean and mean. It may just get rid of all that inertia. Oh and an overhaul of the general organisation may help as well, to indeed get rid of those inertia.
I just read TFA, before commented already on the salaries, and now I realise the numbers given do not add up.
The wage yes it looks very good. But according to TFA there is a base wage of RMB 770, plus overtime for longer working. TFA also talks about 12 hour shifts (sounds more reasonable) several times. There may be people that push on to 15 hours but that is rare. Quality falls rapidly with those hours and factory managers are not that stupid either.
By the way you are talking about migrant workers here, they tend to work seven hours a day, mainly because they do not have anything better to do, and are only there for the money in the first place.
OK then the strange bits: almost all workers are females of 17-25 years old, complaining that the base wage is "not enough to support a family". Women do not support a whole family in general, that's the man's task. And that age is a bit young for having your own family.
Salary and working hours as quoted add up to over 2000 RMB per month (15 hours a day, 4.5 RMB per hour, 30 days per month). Triple the base wage. That's a bit much for overtime.
During work hours, 1,000 workers could be crammed into one 105-foot by 105-foot room.
That is interesting. 11 sq.ft. (1 sq.m.) per worker? Including the conveyor belt, other equipment, space to work, aisles for the supervisor to walk through? Now Chinese ain't that big people, this is too tight to be believable. The photos do not back up so little space either.
While parts may be true (yes factory workers work very long hours in often poor conditions, though in the Pearl River Delta even double the minimum wage and airco on the factory floor is not enough any more these days!), it is also a bit sensationalist.
Slashdot Mirror
Euhm... I don't think it's a good idea to actually run a full-sized jet engine inside a wind tunnel. Because that's what you will have to do, after all the problem is not as much the sandblasting but the melting of ash inside a hot engine. And you would have to do that for many hours on end, without melting the wind tunnel in the process.
Maybe overclockers have an idea on how to get rid of all that excess heat.
If so, how difficult would it be for the airliner to rent/lease a fleet of prop planes for the duration of this problem?
Very difficult.
There is no-one in this world with dozens of aircraft available for rent. Let alone the hundreds that would be needed to cover existing jet services. And they are no drop-in replacement: slower, less range, less passenger capacity.
This is too occasional and too extreme in scope to actually be prepared for. Also it's expected to be temporary, so no reason to start turning your business model upside down for that.
From such wording I would conclude that working exploits are out there.
They may be hard to come by, but it can be done, and the fact they say "have been hard to come by" means that they got at least one (have been being a past tense). And no matter how hard a flaw is to exploit, as soon as a single exploit exists, the rest of the attackers can in principle just re-use it. If script-kiddies can do that, then more serious attackers surely can.
Obscurity may work for a while. Until someone discovers it: by accident or by trying.
For example a hidden web page: www.example.com/secret that is not published or linked to anywhere. Secure because it's obscure - works great until someone guesses the URL. Or finds it by an accidental typo.
If you want something to be proven secure, obscurity has no place. If you want to keep something hidden (but don't care too much if ends up out in public) then keeping it obscure is good enough.
Of course - if only because those books, if they still exist, are now antiques.
Now that is true security by obscurity.
I mean: ever been in an aircraft flying through the clouds? Nothing much to see, the cloud obscures it all!
Funny and innovative as the idea is: I wonder how clean this energy really is. It doesn't come out of thin air, those cows have to eat. And a cow's digestive system tends to produce quite some methane (a major greenhouse gas), and quite some waste - which also releases lots of ammonia amongst other harmful chemicals. On top of that the fodder also has to be produced (often using power for machinery and so), and a cow that walks that much definitely eats a lot more than a cow that grazes the pasture or is kept in a stable without much room to move.
And besides I think there are much more cattle-friendly ways to exercise your cow.
Accountability - yes that's an issue. Mostly to who the leaders are accountable.
And then fighting corruption is difficult when the whole society is corrupt. How can you make sure the anti-corruption body isn't corrupt themselves? Basically the age-old "who watches the watchers" issue. How to fight corruption in the police for a start? When you need that very police force to arrest corrupt people? You basically ask them to arrest themselves. And then the suspects will just again bribe the officers trying to arrest them.
It's very hard to do. Truly hard. And it requires great vision and guts - and that is what the current government is missing. The problem is so big, it becomes almost impossible to fight. You have to start with the top and work your way down. That's the only way.
You may want to look in the ICAC, which managed to get Hong Kong clean, and keeps doing so. It wasn't easy. There was a near war between the ICAC and Hong Kong police when the ICAC was set up, and the ICAC tried to arrest police officers for corruption. The ICAC in the end got the upper hand, but it was tough.
And that was just one small city. Now scale this up to a country with 1.3 bln people.
Not sure how serious you try to be here.
OK I'm European. My forefathers once sat down together and divided Africa between them. They took a map, a ruler and pencil, and started chopping up the continent. Literally. That's why to this day there are so many straight borders there.
That put many groups together in one country that shouldn't be, and spread other groups over two (or more) countries.
And as a result there is a virtual constant state of civil war in the continent. Some places more than others, but in the last ten years most have had civil war. Somalia is the current worst off, Ethiopia was a major problem before (I believe it's somewhat stable now but not really keeping track).
Kenya is currently doing quite well: no civil wars going on in most of the country at least, but the security situation is still poor though a handful of armed guards is enough for a foreigner to survive, and as a result they pull in a lot of foreign investment such as Dutch flower growers.
The far east has far more stable governments (whether you like them or not: China's government is a prime example of a stable, strong government), and that is what's needed for economic development.
Africa, largely thanks to European colonialism, suffers from constant civil war. It is not easy to set up businesses when you will have to run your own private army to protect your interests.
In China he would most likely have gotten a trial of 2-3 days behind doors followed by an execution within a few weeks after that.
Someone like Madoff would have been in too big a hole, and have pissed off too many people, to be able to buy his way out.
These days I regularly read in the Hong Kong newspapers about high-flying politicians and businesspeople being sentenced to long jail terms or indeed to death for corruption and other financial crimes such as pyramid schemes. The central government is serious when it comes to fighting corruption however it is really really hard as the lower echelons are so thoroughly corrupt. As a rule of thumb the higher up in the government the less corruption you find (though when it takes place the amounts of money involved become mind blowing).
Sorry to reply to your mail again :)
I just noticed this story is now tagged "chinasucks"... oh well it's a US centric web site after all... too bad so many Americans have so rude ideas about this country.
China is a great country, with many great people. Of course not all is well there too - but to start saying things like "chinasucks" well that says more about the tagger than China.
I also often rile against the US (and at times also against China) but I won't say "ussucks". The government sucks maybe. Some companies suck. There sucks a lot. But for the rest like China I think the US is also a great country, with many great people.
The problem is that the US government sucks so badly that I don't feel like visiting. I've never been there, unfortunately. But with the current border checks it's as if entering a supermax prison. So sorry people but no thanks, later maybe.
China loves fakes.
Examples: fake Rolex watches, fake LV hand bags, fake jewelery (both as in copied design or fake gold/diamonds/gemstones), fake eggs (no kidding here - they appeared on the market in Hong Kong), fake medicine (featuring well-known brands on the packing but at best just a placebo and at worst a deadly poison), and fake beauty in their "miss plastic surgery" pageants.
Mainlanders come in droves to Hong Kong to buy genuine hand bags, watches, jewelery, milk powder, medicine, and more. At least in Hong Kong you can be reasonably sure it's the real thing, while in Mainland you're better off assuming it's a fake.
The Chinese approach to ethics is almost purely situational. Compound this with a manipulative media, and what you get are fat, happy citizens who are staunchly nationalistic and xenophobic. All they care about is money.
Mostly true (especially the "care about money" part, Chinese are getting very materialistic and may surpass the US in that soon if they haven't done so already - looking at the better-off city dwellers at least).
Manipulative media? Not really - manipulated media is the correct way to say it. The government manipulates the media in China, the press has very little freedom.
And nationalistic yes for sure, xenophobic also but less strong.
But fat and happy citizens? Well in the literal sense they are fattening up indeed (not as bad as in the US but certainly waistlines are increasing), but there is a lot of unhappiness in China. Really a lot. You don't hear too much about it because such news is suppressed by the censor. Unhappiness about censorship of news, about corruption, about abuse of power, and last but not least about the shortage of women due to the skewed birth rates leaving many men without wives (and for a man to remain unmarried and childless that's really really bad in Chinese social culture).
If you want some positive moderation, reply to the above true statement about the Chinese changing only the nationality.
Change it to "American" and you're about as close to the truth indeed :)
As discussed here many times before (this is not new): Chinese scientists are judged by number of publications, just that. Just the number. As a result a PhD student will do their best to pump out as many papers as possible, as the more they manage to get published the better future career prospects they have.
The quality of the papers is simply not taken into account when it comes to job offers.
And then this is the obvious result. Lots and lots of papers, with little to no really new information, and on top of that a lot of made-up stuff by the ones that really have nothing new but still need the numbers.
Train tickets are sold out on all international routes.
Ferries are packed.
Coaches... well there is Eurolines and some other long distance coach services but not really much capacity there either.
Good luck finding a rental car still available.
I heard around Schiphol some 1000 households have offered rooms for stranded passengers: hotels are full.
It is not easy to put all passengers from one transport on another. There is a balance: so many people go by car, so many by train, so many by air. If one of those breaks completely, then the other modes of transport have not enough capacity to catch up, as they have only capacity for the normal demand and maybe a little spare. There are no trains available to double the number of departures on e.g. the Channel tunnel link. There are no hundreds of extra rental cars available. It just isn't there, because all those travelers normally go by air.
And for aircraft flying above the ash cloud... that is possible of course. But how would they get from the ground to that altitude, other than THROUGH that cloud?
Today I talked to my parents who live about 200 km from the nearest major airport. They also mentioned it was much quieter out there than normal. We now and then could see contrails of aircraft flying by at high altitude, usually not audible. Or so we thought. They mentioned a background rumble has disappeared. Wow... I never realised aircraft were making that much noise, that 10 km down you could still actually hear them, albeit as part of background noise.
All the more reason to be careful with so many unknowns. Remember that this whole affair is pretty much unprecedented, and there is little to no experience and information available on the effect of volcanic ash on aircraft and their engines.
Typical Slashdot:
Link to a photo presumably showing some image with a half-naked woman from a comment, result: target site slashdotted!
No matter how you argue it, the problem still lies with the ISP. They sell an internet connection with "unlimited data" and start complaining when you actually use it - even worse, they start secretly throttling the connection.
Years of non-use .... so why the sudden interest? Obviously you don't care about these clients anymore, you didn't keep in touch with them or continue working for them, why do you care if several years later someone approaches them pretending to be you and asks for money?
How about complaints and possibly police investigations coming your way? If someone pretending to be Mr X asks for money the obvious place to start complaining is Mr X. And being investigated for fraud is definitely no fun, no matter how you look at it.
I didn't immediately think "insider" but now you mention it... it makes total sense of a very unbelievable story.
Oh well yet another story that doesn't pass a reality check, and in good kdawson fashion no supporting links or so. Here we go:
The fraudsters copied the web site (that was presumably off-line for a long time). Trivial if it is all static pages, not trivial to impossible if it includes a lot of server-side scripting and you do not have access to the server directly. And quite unlikely that a web site is copied and kept archived by would-be fraudsters hoping that in the future the owner lets the domain expire so they can bring it back on-line? No. It just doesn't happen.
Then they need to know which third-party services you used. And that you were so trusting that you use a third-party web service for invoicing in the first place.
Then they know your clients (potentially through the third-party invoice service).
Then they have your passwords (I may assume password protection).
And how come your old accounts at those invoicing services are still accessible in the first place? From the fact that you let your domain expire after "years of non-use" I take it your business has closed years ago too. Third-party web services usually require payment, especially specialised stuff like invoicing. Not likely they keep that active without it being paid for.
So Russian hackers? No. Insider job? That's where you should look first indeed. Start with former employees I'd say.
One version of Windows in 10 years time, versus half a dozen versions of OS-X. And more innovation in OS-X. And a completely new OS/user interface: the iPhone/iPad OS.
Don't just count titles. Look at what is actually produced, the innovation. And that is sorely lacking with MS.
And management.
Steve Jobs is obviously doing a better job than Steve Ballmer in that aspect.
MS is big - but why is it that big? Why does it have that many employees? You need only that many to manage your sales etc - they for sure have plenty more programmers than Apple. On the other hand they output less software it seems.
Maybe it is time for MS to slim down their core seriously. Leave the support side (sales, marketing, administration) but slim down the core. Make it lean and mean. It may just get rid of all that inertia. Oh and an overhaul of the general organisation may help as well, to indeed get rid of those inertia.
I just read TFA, before commented already on the salaries, and now I realise the numbers given do not add up.
The wage yes it looks very good. But according to TFA there is a base wage of RMB 770, plus overtime for longer working. TFA also talks about 12 hour shifts (sounds more reasonable) several times. There may be people that push on to 15 hours but that is rare. Quality falls rapidly with those hours and factory managers are not that stupid either.
By the way you are talking about migrant workers here, they tend to work seven hours a day, mainly because they do not have anything better to do, and are only there for the money in the first place.
OK then the strange bits: almost all workers are females of 17-25 years old, complaining that the base wage is "not enough to support a family". Women do not support a whole family in general, that's the man's task. And that age is a bit young for having your own family.
Salary and working hours as quoted add up to over 2000 RMB per month (15 hours a day, 4.5 RMB per hour, 30 days per month). Triple the base wage. That's a bit much for overtime.
During work hours, 1,000 workers could be crammed into one 105-foot by 105-foot room.
That is interesting. 11 sq.ft. (1 sq.m.) per worker? Including the conveyor belt, other equipment, space to work, aisles for the supervisor to walk through? Now Chinese ain't that big people, this is too tight to be believable. The photos do not back up so little space either.
While parts may be true (yes factory workers work very long hours in often poor conditions, though in the Pearl River Delta even double the minimum wage and airco on the factory floor is not enough any more these days!), it is also a bit sensationalist.