So far in the commenting, I've seen all kinds of contradicting opinions.
I think it'd be pretty strange to see a slashdot discussion without contradicting opinions. If you're looking for hard fact when talking about which lossy codec is better than another, you're not going to find much. Listen to all the various codecs yourself and see which sounds best to you.
If you want my two cents, I work in radio and the only codec I work with on a daily basis is MP2. It's simple, fast to encode/decode, and sounds basically transparent at high bitrates. If anybody here is an NPR fan, basically all their shows that aren't live are distributed as MP2 encoded files at 256kbps.
That Diamond didn't crash because the fuel pumps shut off, it crashed because it has a FADEC (Full Authority Digital Engine Control) system. Basically, a computer controls every aspect of the engine. The pilot noted he had an alternator failure while taking off and decided it was too late to abort the takeoff. When he retracted the gear, the load was strong enough to drop the voltage in the system enough to reset the FADEC. The FADEC resetting in flight was never supposed to happen, and it caused both engines to shutdown and the props to feather.
Without the FADEC the fuel pump probably would have kept right on running through the voltage drop. Diamonds have since been retrofitted to keep the same problem from happening again.
While I'm not an airline operator, I do know that jet fuel in my area is taxed to somewhere around $0.30 per gallon, most of which is federal tax. The airlines get a break on federal taxes to lower that by quite a bit but they generally don't get any breaks on state and local taxes, which can be very significant. There was talk on eliminating fuel taxes for airlines, but that only would have changed federal taxes and as far as I know it never passed.
That actually used to be a problem with steam that has now been fixed. I remember several years ago when steam first came out, I had a fairly flaky internet connection. If my internet went down and I wanted to play a game on steam I was out of luck. It would refuse to let you play unless you set it to offline mode while you still had a connection. I complained about this to a friend recently and he had no idea what I was talking about. I didn't believe him, so I was amazed when he disabled his connection and then proceeded to load Half Life 2 with no problems.
Anyway, to make a long rambling story short, the not being able to play complaint used to be valid, but is not anymore.
Given his altitude, airframe icing may be a cause.
Airframe icing is not possible without visible moisture. Since he was not on a flight plan he would not have been legally allowed to fly into a cloud, and if freezing rain was falling on the aircraft he'd be an idiot not to recognize it and turn around. Since I don't think he'd hang around in clouds for extended periods of time or be dumb enough to let freezing rain build up on the wings I highly doubt icing caused this crash.
Actually if you read the details for that image, it claims that the numbers have been randomly swapped. It seems to me it would have been easier to just blur it but whatever.
Interesting. My only experience with IR is IR photography, and pretty limited experience at that. So an IR filter for a camera is of course made to pass IR while blocking most visible light. I'm assuming this works because the IR range film captures is much shorter wavelength than what would be emitted by a filter at room temperature. I guess I never would have thought of radiation being an issue. Now I kinda wish I would have paid more attention in astrophysics class:-)
I've never experienced someone driving-by with the XM/Sirius transmitter turned-on, but yes I can see how that would be annoying.
I'm pretty sure I'm getting that for two reasons. 1) I live in a college town and have a disproportionate amount of students driving around that can't be separated from an iPod for more than five minutes. I'm fairly sure it has more to do with iPods than satellite radio since I don't actually know anybody that has a receiver for that. 2) NPR stations usually get crammed into the very bottom of the FM band, which for some reason is where most FM transmitters are set by default. Some even limit the frequencies that can be used to the bottommost five or six channels. As a result, my NPR station is more likely to be taken out by a rogue transmitter.
I didn't read the article when I posted that (are you surprised?) and thus didn't learn until later that they were basically chopping a hole in the aircraft for this assembly. That of course leads to many other considerations like controlling the turbulence as the boundary layer breaks up and not letting a resonance tear the entire aircraft apart. I guess I just assumed the telescope would fit in the aircraft and look through some sections of fuselage made transparent in IR.
Don't take my comment as support for whitespace devices, I was just responding to the hypothetical "what if somebody sets up a jammer" type situation. Personally I think unlicensed use of broadcast bands like TV and even FM are a horrible idea. I can't even count the number of times I've had the NPR station I'm listening to wiped out by some jackass with an iPod and a FM transmitter cruising by in the passing lane. Unlicensed use is possible in optimal conditions, but in realistic conditions it breaks down. Manufacturers don't adhere to specs well enough and make devices that are too powerful. People use devices on channels that are already occupied. Transmitters cause noise and take out adjacent channels. The list of problems could go on and on. It seems to me there's plenty of space available on other bands to do something like this. Why not use some space allocated to UHF mobile radios? At least those users have the possibility of moving to a different channel until the interference passes.
Unlicensed doesn't just mean a free for all. It would be regulated in much the same way the many existing radio services are. The new users would have to make sure they operate in such a way that the primary user is not affected in any negative way. This includes ceasing transmissions completely if necessary to avoid interference. If you violate it and a primary user complains, eventually you're going to attract attention from the FCC, and they will fine you.
It will probably be mounted on some kind of stabilized gimbal mount, much like the kind used to mount cameras to helicopters. A helicopter mount has to deal with probably 100x the vibration that a 747 in smooth air would have. Keep in mind they are going to not only be able to pick which days they fly, but pick the location as well. It won't be very hard for them to find good conditions. Example of helicopter mount here
But there are still quite some things very difficult like the games that used 3Dfx
I thought that Glide wrappers were available from multiple projects, and several work quite well. I can't say personally since I haven't used one, but I have seen them being used on an older game and it seemed to work just fine.
a very large percentage of the general public will lose all access to emergency information such as tornado warnings, etc.
That's ridiculous. Listen to any FM radio station and you'll hear watches and warnings over the emergency alert system. It is true that stations are given some ability to pick and choose what type of messages go out, but basically every station is going to broadcast warnings at the very least. If you need continuous updates for some reason, go pick up a NOAA weather radio. Basically the entire country is covered with 24/7 weather information transmitting all watches and warnings to radios that will automatically raise the alarm according to where you live and what you want to hear. If you live in an area with frequent severe weather, pick one up. They're actually quite impressive in their capability as a severe weather alert system. If you're even more concerned, get a ham radio license. In my area a ham radio gives you the ability to talk directly to both the national weather service and the state emergency management office.
Turboprops are pretty efficient at more modest flight speeds. Turboprops do have a few problems, one being that they're relatively low powered, the other being that they're slower. If you're an airline running a popular route, using turboprops would mean using many smaller aircraft as opposed to a single larger aircraft. Using many smaller aircraft is obviously less efficient. If it's a longer route, you may have to add several hours to the flight time to accommodate turboprops. If your competitors are using high-bypass turbofans, they will have much shorter flight times and people will flock to them for long haul flights.
Turboprops are very useful when those two problems can be overcome. Shorter flights along less popular routes. Those types of flights are exactly where you will see the greatest use of turboprops. Turbofans have been getting more and more fuel efficient however, and with the recent rise of light jets more and more turboprops are getting replaced with smaller jets. Operating costs are almost exactly the same and passengers love them because they're faster and don't have that annoying prop noise. I'm guessing that it won't be too much longer before turboprops are almost completely gone from new aircraft designs.
DUATS (the only place pilots should be getting official weather briefings online) provides plain english translations for all aviation weather briefings. By the way, none of what you posted has anything to do with weather. Those are NOTAMS (NOtice To AirMen) describing changes to some airport runway information and a few changes to instrument procedures. DUATS has plain english available for those too.
Here's how it works. In the US there is no federal sales tax. Sales tax is set and collected by the individual states themselves, and possibly some additional local tax on top of that. That results in a problem when you order online across state lines. Do you pay tax in the state the warehouse is in, in the state the customer is in, maybe both? The answer is, if the company you're ordering from is in your home state, they can collect tax. If the company you're ordering from is out of state, they don't charge tax, and you are supposed to declare that purchase on your tax return and pay a "use tax."
Of course nobody actually does that and most states don't get any of that use tax because people are effectively cheating on their taxes. Some states are getting more riled up about collecting tax than others, but most just don't care. Personally I think the government gets more than enough of my money anyway.
So a 4 passenger light aircraft landed with no electric power. Big whoop. Electrical failure on an aircraft like that means the radios go out, you lose a couple instruments, and that's it. Most of the important instruments for maneuvering are either powered by the pitot static system or an engine driven vacuum pump. Speaking of the engines, their ignition systems are powered by a fully redundant engine driven system and don't require any external electric power.
If the pilot wouldn't have had the cell phone, he would have been given signals from a light gun as he approached the airport. Losing radios isn't exactly all that uncommon, especially in older aircraft, so pilots and controllers have come up with ways to handle the situation.
was a series-100 737 with the old turbojet engines
Just to nitpick, 737s never had turbojet engines. The 100 and 200 series had turbofans with a much lower bypass ratio than later models. You'd actually have a hard time finding any modern examples of turbojet powered aircraft since they are so fuel inefficient. They might be found on supersonic aircraft, but better understanding of supersonic airflow and changes in inlet design have brought turbofans into that category of aircraft as well.
Uh... no. My local CBS affiliate has weather information on a sub channel. The picture quality on the main channel looks just as good as the local NBC affiliate which has no sub channels. In a nearby area, NBC is broadcasting the CW network in standard def on a sub channel, this also has no perceivable effect on their main channel. I agree that once you start cramming five channels in like PBS, picture quality is going to suffer, but adding one highly compressed channel isn't going to make a difference and I'm very glad the stations in my area carry those sub channels.
The PC can contain evidence, such as unpublished photos.
Unless those photos were of the crime scene, I agree with the GP. It's the state's job to prove that a crime was committed and that he was responsible. While attacking his character may be successful in getting him a harsher sentence, or maybe getting him convicted in the first place by manipulating the jury, it strikes me as a pretty unethical thing to do.
If there's reasonable suspicion that the computer contained something related to the crime, yeah the cops should go search it. If the best reason they can come up with is, "we'd like to make him look like a douchebag," that isn't good enough. That judge was an idiot for going along with it.
It's good to see progress being made. I'm not trying to suggest that the people working on it are going too slow or screwing up too much or anything like that. I'm just saying that whoever came up with this timetable needs to be smacked with a cluestick. This is supposed to be flying missions in about five years if I recall the timetable correctly, and that seems pretty unrealistic to me.
The shuttle's orbiter was doing in atmosphere testing for at least 5 years before it flew a mission, and I'd expect large assemblies of this rocket to be in testing by now for it to be on time. Again, I'm not an insider, but it just doesn't seem like things are there yet. Then again this is probably just a bullshit timetable for the benefit of congress, so who knows what NASA is picturing for a realistic timetable amongst themselves.
They're screwed. MacGyver himself couldn't keep this project on schedule with all the duct tape, rubber bands and paperclips in the world.
The problem is, this project is massive. It was obvious from the beginning that their time estimates were basically based on everything working perfectly the first time and optimization studies showing that they'd already picked the most efficient design. There are always going to be problems, and the bigger the project the more you're going to have.
If they're serious about replacing the shuttle with only a couple years of downtime, they should already be gearing up to test the system as a whole. I'm not personally involved in the project, but it doesn't even look like they're ready to test big pieces yet. Maybe 2020 is a more reasonable date to actually begin flights.
That Amanda Hudson is a film loader, not a camera operator, and since neither of those positions really gets paid the big bucks I'm guessing it's not the same person.
Slashdot Mirror
So far in the commenting, I've seen all kinds of contradicting opinions.
I think it'd be pretty strange to see a slashdot discussion without contradicting opinions. If you're looking for hard fact when talking about which lossy codec is better than another, you're not going to find much. Listen to all the various codecs yourself and see which sounds best to you.
If you want my two cents, I work in radio and the only codec I work with on a daily basis is MP2. It's simple, fast to encode/decode, and sounds basically transparent at high bitrates. If anybody here is an NPR fan, basically all their shows that aren't live are distributed as MP2 encoded files at 256kbps.
That Diamond didn't crash because the fuel pumps shut off, it crashed because it has a FADEC (Full Authority Digital Engine Control) system. Basically, a computer controls every aspect of the engine. The pilot noted he had an alternator failure while taking off and decided it was too late to abort the takeoff. When he retracted the gear, the load was strong enough to drop the voltage in the system enough to reset the FADEC. The FADEC resetting in flight was never supposed to happen, and it caused both engines to shutdown and the props to feather.
Without the FADEC the fuel pump probably would have kept right on running through the voltage drop. Diamonds have since been retrofitted to keep the same problem from happening again.
But since jet kerosene is generally untaxed
Source Please?
While I'm not an airline operator, I do know that jet fuel in my area is taxed to somewhere around $0.30 per gallon, most of which is federal tax. The airlines get a break on federal taxes to lower that by quite a bit but they generally don't get any breaks on state and local taxes, which can be very significant. There was talk on eliminating fuel taxes for airlines, but that only would have changed federal taxes and as far as I know it never passed.
It isn't all that uncommon to not have wisdom teeth. I don't have any either. This is confirmed by x-ray, they just aren't there.
That actually used to be a problem with steam that has now been fixed. I remember several years ago when steam first came out, I had a fairly flaky internet connection. If my internet went down and I wanted to play a game on steam I was out of luck. It would refuse to let you play unless you set it to offline mode while you still had a connection. I complained about this to a friend recently and he had no idea what I was talking about. I didn't believe him, so I was amazed when he disabled his connection and then proceeded to load Half Life 2 with no problems.
Anyway, to make a long rambling story short, the not being able to play complaint used to be valid, but is not anymore.
Given his altitude, airframe icing may be a cause.
Airframe icing is not possible without visible moisture. Since he was not on a flight plan he would not have been legally allowed to fly into a cloud, and if freezing rain was falling on the aircraft he'd be an idiot not to recognize it and turn around. Since I don't think he'd hang around in clouds for extended periods of time or be dumb enough to let freezing rain build up on the wings I highly doubt icing caused this crash.
Actually if you read the details for that image, it claims that the numbers have been randomly swapped. It seems to me it would have been easier to just blur it but whatever.
Interesting. My only experience with IR is IR photography, and pretty limited experience at that. So an IR filter for a camera is of course made to pass IR while blocking most visible light. I'm assuming this works because the IR range film captures is much shorter wavelength than what would be emitted by a filter at room temperature. I guess I never would have thought of radiation being an issue. Now I kinda wish I would have paid more attention in astrophysics class :-)
I've never experienced someone driving-by with the XM/Sirius transmitter turned-on, but yes I can see how that would be annoying.
I'm pretty sure I'm getting that for two reasons.
1) I live in a college town and have a disproportionate amount of students driving around that can't be separated from an iPod for more than five minutes. I'm fairly sure it has more to do with iPods than satellite radio since I don't actually know anybody that has a receiver for that.
2) NPR stations usually get crammed into the very bottom of the FM band, which for some reason is where most FM transmitters are set by default. Some even limit the frequencies that can be used to the bottommost five or six channels. As a result, my NPR station is more likely to be taken out by a rogue transmitter.
I didn't read the article when I posted that (are you surprised?) and thus didn't learn until later that they were basically chopping a hole in the aircraft for this assembly. That of course leads to many other considerations like controlling the turbulence as the boundary layer breaks up and not letting a resonance tear the entire aircraft apart. I guess I just assumed the telescope would fit in the aircraft and look through some sections of fuselage made transparent in IR.
Don't take my comment as support for whitespace devices, I was just responding to the hypothetical "what if somebody sets up a jammer" type situation. Personally I think unlicensed use of broadcast bands like TV and even FM are a horrible idea. I can't even count the number of times I've had the NPR station I'm listening to wiped out by some jackass with an iPod and a FM transmitter cruising by in the passing lane. Unlicensed use is possible in optimal conditions, but in realistic conditions it breaks down. Manufacturers don't adhere to specs well enough and make devices that are too powerful. People use devices on channels that are already occupied. Transmitters cause noise and take out adjacent channels. The list of problems could go on and on. It seems to me there's plenty of space available on other bands to do something like this. Why not use some space allocated to UHF mobile radios? At least those users have the possibility of moving to a different channel until the interference passes.
Unlicensed doesn't just mean a free for all. It would be regulated in much the same way the many existing radio services are. The new users would have to make sure they operate in such a way that the primary user is not affected in any negative way. This includes ceasing transmissions completely if necessary to avoid interference. If you violate it and a primary user complains, eventually you're going to attract attention from the FCC, and they will fine you.
It will probably be mounted on some kind of stabilized gimbal mount, much like the kind used to mount cameras to helicopters. A helicopter mount has to deal with probably 100x the vibration that a 747 in smooth air would have. Keep in mind they are going to not only be able to pick which days they fly, but pick the location as well. It won't be very hard for them to find good conditions. Example of helicopter mount here
But there are still quite some things very difficult like the games that used 3Dfx
I thought that Glide wrappers were available from multiple projects, and several work quite well. I can't say personally since I haven't used one, but I have seen them being used on an older game and it seemed to work just fine.
a very large percentage of the general public will lose all access to emergency information such as tornado warnings, etc.
That's ridiculous. Listen to any FM radio station and you'll hear watches and warnings over the emergency alert system. It is true that stations are given some ability to pick and choose what type of messages go out, but basically every station is going to broadcast warnings at the very least. If you need continuous updates for some reason, go pick up a NOAA weather radio. Basically the entire country is covered with 24/7 weather information transmitting all watches and warnings to radios that will automatically raise the alarm according to where you live and what you want to hear. If you live in an area with frequent severe weather, pick one up. They're actually quite impressive in their capability as a severe weather alert system. If you're even more concerned, get a ham radio license. In my area a ham radio gives you the ability to talk directly to both the national weather service and the state emergency management office.
Turboprops are pretty efficient at more modest flight speeds. Turboprops do have a few problems, one being that they're relatively low powered, the other being that they're slower. If you're an airline running a popular route, using turboprops would mean using many smaller aircraft as opposed to a single larger aircraft. Using many smaller aircraft is obviously less efficient. If it's a longer route, you may have to add several hours to the flight time to accommodate turboprops. If your competitors are using high-bypass turbofans, they will have much shorter flight times and people will flock to them for long haul flights.
Turboprops are very useful when those two problems can be overcome. Shorter flights along less popular routes. Those types of flights are exactly where you will see the greatest use of turboprops. Turbofans have been getting more and more fuel efficient however, and with the recent rise of light jets more and more turboprops are getting replaced with smaller jets. Operating costs are almost exactly the same and passengers love them because they're faster and don't have that annoying prop noise. I'm guessing that it won't be too much longer before turboprops are almost completely gone from new aircraft designs.
DUATS (the only place pilots should be getting official weather briefings online) provides plain english translations for all aviation weather briefings. By the way, none of what you posted has anything to do with weather. Those are NOTAMS (NOtice To AirMen) describing changes to some airport runway information and a few changes to instrument procedures. DUATS has plain english available for those too.
Here's how it works. In the US there is no federal sales tax. Sales tax is set and collected by the individual states themselves, and possibly some additional local tax on top of that. That results in a problem when you order online across state lines. Do you pay tax in the state the warehouse is in, in the state the customer is in, maybe both? The answer is, if the company you're ordering from is in your home state, they can collect tax. If the company you're ordering from is out of state, they don't charge tax, and you are supposed to declare that purchase on your tax return and pay a "use tax."
Of course nobody actually does that and most states don't get any of that use tax because people are effectively cheating on their taxes. Some states are getting more riled up about collecting tax than others, but most just don't care. Personally I think the government gets more than enough of my money anyway.
So a 4 passenger light aircraft landed with no electric power. Big whoop. Electrical failure on an aircraft like that means the radios go out, you lose a couple instruments, and that's it. Most of the important instruments for maneuvering are either powered by the pitot static system or an engine driven vacuum pump. Speaking of the engines, their ignition systems are powered by a fully redundant engine driven system and don't require any external electric power.
If the pilot wouldn't have had the cell phone, he would have been given signals from a light gun as he approached the airport. Losing radios isn't exactly all that uncommon, especially in older aircraft, so pilots and controllers have come up with ways to handle the situation.
was a series-100 737 with the old turbojet engines
Just to nitpick, 737s never had turbojet engines. The 100 and 200 series had turbofans with a much lower bypass ratio than later models. You'd actually have a hard time finding any modern examples of turbojet powered aircraft since they are so fuel inefficient. They might be found on supersonic aircraft, but better understanding of supersonic airflow and changes in inlet design have brought turbofans into that category of aircraft as well.
(CBS bans secondary channels)
Uh... no. My local CBS affiliate has weather information on a sub channel. The picture quality on the main channel looks just as good as the local NBC affiliate which has no sub channels. In a nearby area, NBC is broadcasting the CW network in standard def on a sub channel, this also has no perceivable effect on their main channel. I agree that once you start cramming five channels in like PBS, picture quality is going to suffer, but adding one highly compressed channel isn't going to make a difference and I'm very glad the stations in my area carry those sub channels.
The PC can contain evidence, such as unpublished photos.
Unless those photos were of the crime scene, I agree with the GP. It's the state's job to prove that a crime was committed and that he was responsible. While attacking his character may be successful in getting him a harsher sentence, or maybe getting him convicted in the first place by manipulating the jury, it strikes me as a pretty unethical thing to do.
If there's reasonable suspicion that the computer contained something related to the crime, yeah the cops should go search it. If the best reason they can come up with is, "we'd like to make him look like a douchebag," that isn't good enough. That judge was an idiot for going along with it.
It's good to see progress being made. I'm not trying to suggest that the people working on it are going too slow or screwing up too much or anything like that. I'm just saying that whoever came up with this timetable needs to be smacked with a cluestick. This is supposed to be flying missions in about five years if I recall the timetable correctly, and that seems pretty unrealistic to me.
The shuttle's orbiter was doing in atmosphere testing for at least 5 years before it flew a mission, and I'd expect large assemblies of this rocket to be in testing by now for it to be on time. Again, I'm not an insider, but it just doesn't seem like things are there yet. Then again this is probably just a bullshit timetable for the benefit of congress, so who knows what NASA is picturing for a realistic timetable amongst themselves.
They're screwed. MacGyver himself couldn't keep this project on schedule with all the duct tape, rubber bands and paperclips in the world.
The problem is, this project is massive. It was obvious from the beginning that their time estimates were basically based on everything working perfectly the first time and optimization studies showing that they'd already picked the most efficient design. There are always going to be problems, and the bigger the project the more you're going to have.
If they're serious about replacing the shuttle with only a couple years of downtime, they should already be gearing up to test the system as a whole. I'm not personally involved in the project, but it doesn't even look like they're ready to test big pieces yet. Maybe 2020 is a more reasonable date to actually begin flights.
That Amanda Hudson is a film loader, not a camera operator, and since neither of those positions really gets paid the big bucks I'm guessing it's not the same person.