And why exactly can't a USB port or headphone jack be waterproof? It's just metal contacts, right? That shouldn't be too difficult to seal? The electrons can just go through the metal to the other side while water can't.
Of course water will short the different contacts, but that shouldn't be too hard to detect by electronics. Water is not going to magically apply the right voltage to the right contacts.
My computer had one disavantage at the time: there was no software available (except for the BASIC interpreter). Later, I appreciated that this was actually an advantage: by the time I went to university I had written about 200 games, a couple of word processors and a spreadsheet program.
Exactly, and the big disadvantage of today's computers is that they have too much software with almost no skill required to use it. You pretty much boot up right into FaceBook, why would you learn to program? There's just no challenge anymore, you don't need to know how it works, it's an appliance. Kids just prefer to play games rather than make some simplistic BASIC program that does nothing they're interested in.
People who sing and dance AS A HOBBY seem to be very happy, indeed.
Children who are forced through music lessons, though, are they so much happier than those who weren't? Learning how to read notes never struck me as more enjoyable than learning maths, and certainly felt a lot less useful.
Programming may have come at the cost of... music?! Oh, my, now we're really going down the wrong road! We must not let useless hobbies like programming get in the way of much more important and useful things like music!
You can even go further, who needs math or writing skills if it comes at the expense of singing and dancing? Get rid of it!
Well, planes normally do have plenty of redundant sensors and the software is normally supposed to be crosschecking all data to make sure it is consistent. If there is a problem, we get (or should get) a warning. A failure of a single sensor causing a crash is completely unacceptable. But every now and then, cases like this do still come up. Most have been fixed by now, it was a lot worse in the beginning of Fly By Wire.
There are so many electronic links between the different systems that it's hard to keep track of them all. A failure of a sensor on a landing gear strut, for example, can cause a pressurization failure because the pressurization system assumes the plane is still on the ground. Little things can have big consequences. If you then throw random errors caused by electronic interference into the mix...
Software engineering in modern aircraft is pretty crappy. A few years ago, a 737 crashed because of a simple malfunction of a radio altimeter, so the plane thought it was directly above the runway and pulled the throttles back to idle way too soon. Sure, the crew should have caught that, but they didn't and they crashed. And then of course there's the Air France that crashed because of incorrect airspeed indications (exacerbated by inappropriate actions by the crew). So we try to keep electronic interference to a minimum to avoid this kind of issues. Ever heard the strange noises in your car radio when a cell phone call was coming in? The Instrument Landing System is using frequencies that are not very far from those used by music radio stations.
One cell phone is probably not going to bring the airplane down. Hell, I often forget mine and I'm in the cockpit! But if a hundred passengers all start calling and e-mailing during a cat 3 ILS approach in dense fog, I wouldn't be too relaxed about it.
I really suggest you read this article, about the actions of Asiana cabin crew during a crash and how many lives were saved by their training and dedication.
The most important function of cabin crew, and the main focus of their training, is safety. And that's a lot more complicated than demonstrating a life vest and pointing to emergency exits. You seem to have absolutely no idea how important that is.
I don't think you've traveled business class recently. There's still a difference on long haul, but on medium and certainly short haul the difference between business and economy is often an extra little bag of peanuts. And you're often thrown into the same bus with the rest of the cattle to bring you to and from the plane, too.
You know, NPAPI is dinosaur technology, everyone should have stopped using it years ago. Really, all the major companies have ported their stuff long ago, except for a few lazy holdouts who haven't bothered to do the work, like... errr... Google itself?
I'm actually rather pleased that no life has been found. This increases the probability of the long term survival of humanity.
After all, if some simple life form existed on Mars, we could reasonably expect the galaxy to be teeming with life everywhere. And in the right conditions (which exist in plenty of places), we would expect those life forms to have evolved just like we did. So why haven't we received any intelligent signals from space, then? Only one variable left: maybe intelligent civilisations tend not to survive very long. Maybe we're overdue for some huge natural disaster, or maybe it's just the inherent instability of civilisations with huge destructive power in the hands of individuals.
If, on the other hand, no life is found on Mars, the very occurrence of the first basic forms of life may be so extremely rare that that explains why we haven't detected any other civilisations.
I would have taken that bet and put all my savings on the earth not burning. Who were the idiots betting the other way? What did they think they would do with the money if they won?
Slashdot Mirror
But just to be sure, maybe we should have a Slashdot poll on this issue.
And then the little girls would get thrown in jail for it.
Probably because it's slightly more expensive to manufacture and, more importantly, will result in less sales through accidental damage.
And why exactly can't a USB port or headphone jack be waterproof? It's just metal contacts, right? That shouldn't be too difficult to seal? The electrons can just go through the metal to the other side while water can't.
Of course water will short the different contacts, but that shouldn't be too hard to detect by electronics. Water is not going to magically apply the right voltage to the right contacts.
My computer had one disavantage at the time: there was no software available (except for the BASIC interpreter). Later, I appreciated that this was actually an advantage: by the time I went to university I had written about 200 games, a couple of word processors and a spreadsheet program.
Exactly, and the big disadvantage of today's computers is that they have too much software with almost no skill required to use it. You pretty much boot up right into FaceBook, why would you learn to program? There's just no challenge anymore, you don't need to know how it works, it's an appliance. Kids just prefer to play games rather than make some simplistic BASIC program that does nothing they're interested in.
People who sing and dance AS A HOBBY seem to be very happy, indeed.
Children who are forced through music lessons, though, are they so much happier than those who weren't? Learning how to read notes never struck me as more enjoyable than learning maths, and certainly felt a lot less useful.
Programming may have come at the cost of... music?! Oh, my, now we're really going down the wrong road! We must not let useless hobbies like programming get in the way of much more important and useful things like music!
You can even go further, who needs math or writing skills if it comes at the expense of singing and dancing? Get rid of it!
http://xkcd.com/895/
have different amounts of energy depending on how much energy they have
Makes sense to me.
Well, planes normally do have plenty of redundant sensors and the software is normally supposed to be crosschecking all data to make sure it is consistent. If there is a problem, we get (or should get) a warning. A failure of a single sensor causing a crash is completely unacceptable. But every now and then, cases like this do still come up. Most have been fixed by now, it was a lot worse in the beginning of Fly By Wire.
There are so many electronic links between the different systems that it's hard to keep track of them all. A failure of a sensor on a landing gear strut, for example, can cause a pressurization failure because the pressurization system assumes the plane is still on the ground. Little things can have big consequences. If you then throw random errors caused by electronic interference into the mix...
I was being ironic. Google is saying that the technology is obsolete, yet they are still using it themselves for Google Earth and Google Talk.
Software engineering in modern aircraft is pretty crappy. A few years ago, a 737 crashed because of a simple malfunction of a radio altimeter, so the plane thought it was directly above the runway and pulled the throttles back to idle way too soon. Sure, the crew should have caught that, but they didn't and they crashed. And then of course there's the Air France that crashed because of incorrect airspeed indications (exacerbated by inappropriate actions by the crew). So we try to keep electronic interference to a minimum to avoid this kind of issues. Ever heard the strange noises in your car radio when a cell phone call was coming in? The Instrument Landing System is using frequencies that are not very far from those used by music radio stations.
One cell phone is probably not going to bring the airplane down. Hell, I often forget mine and I'm in the cockpit! But if a hundred passengers all start calling and e-mailing during a cat 3 ILS approach in dense fog, I wouldn't be too relaxed about it.
I really suggest you read this article, about the actions of Asiana cabin crew during a crash and how many lives were saved by their training and dedication.
http://confessionsofatrolleydolly.com/2013/07/13/angels-of-the-sky-asiana-airlines-flight-214/
The most important function of cabin crew, and the main focus of their training, is safety. And that's a lot more complicated than demonstrating a life vest and pointing to emergency exits. You seem to have absolutely no idea how important that is.
I don't think you've traveled business class recently. There's still a difference on long haul, but on medium and certainly short haul the difference between business and economy is often an extra little bag of peanuts. And you're often thrown into the same bus with the rest of the cattle to bring you to and from the plane, too.
You know, NPAPI is dinosaur technology, everyone should have stopped using it years ago. Really, all the major companies have ported their stuff long ago, except for a few lazy holdouts who haven't bothered to do the work, like... errr... Google itself?
I'm actually rather pleased that no life has been found. This increases the probability of the long term survival of humanity.
After all, if some simple life form existed on Mars, we could reasonably expect the galaxy to be teeming with life everywhere. And in the right conditions (which exist in plenty of places), we would expect those life forms to have evolved just like we did. So why haven't we received any intelligent signals from space, then? Only one variable left: maybe intelligent civilisations tend not to survive very long. Maybe we're overdue for some huge natural disaster, or maybe it's just the inherent instability of civilisations with huge destructive power in the hands of individuals.
If, on the other hand, no life is found on Mars, the very occurrence of the first basic forms of life may be so extremely rare that that explains why we haven't detected any other civilisations.
I would have taken that bet and put all my savings on the earth not burning. Who were the idiots betting the other way? What did they think they would do with the money if they won?
What about transporting Titan itself, putting it into an earth orbit? I bet you can crowdsource a pretty big amount of funding for that.
Well, a snake without a tail is basically just a pair of eyes and a mouth.
Homeless? Maybe they were just regular passengers who had only been served airline food and then saw a tasty-looking lizard pass by.
Or they were hit by airplane wheels and lost their legs that way.
He meant the nuclear boom caused by their bombs going off accidentally.
I'm Belgian
That text is hilarious. Try applying it in the real world on a busy highway. Good luck :-)
Just for your information, I'm Belgian :-)