It's none of the rental company's business that you were speeding. That you knocked 5000 miles of life off the tires by peeling rubber every time you moved. That you tripped the ABS every time you braked, so every braking event is an emergency stop. That you killed the engine by putting it into first gear and driving a hundred miles with the engine screaming at you. That you drove for a day with the parking brake half-engaged, and the rear brake drums now need replacing. That you came back all wide-eyed and innocent and said "What, me?! I never!"
When you go through all the things that a bad driver could do to a rental car and still bring it back superficially intact (I'm not including major visible damage here), you almost wonder how rental companies survive. I swear, I'm just surprised it's taken this long for it to be a regular thing.
The only way you could avoid blame in a rear-end collision is if someone pulls across in front of you and brakes, without giving you any chance to take avoiding action. That's it.
If it's a straight road and neither of you has changed lanes, a rear-end is ALWAYS (no arguments, no mitigating cases, no nothing) the fault of the person behind. A driver may have to do an emergency stop at any time (child runs out, tire bursts, cambelt snaps), and you have to be ready for that to happen to the driver in front. If you're not, you're driving too close. So the driver in front could slam the brakes on for no better reason than that he felt like it, and you have no comeback.
The guy in front could be done for dangerous driving if he admitted he did it deliberately to cause an accident, but if he can give even a halfway believable excuse (even if he only says he braked to avoid running over a rabbit) then you're screwed.
If it's a necessity, you have the option to buy the vehicle. In which case you're at liberty to alter the car in any way you like, so long as it still passes any State-mandated roadworthyness tests. You may have to choose between using one of these and having cheaper insurance, just as you may have to choose between a store tracking what you buy and getting cheaper groceries. So just decide what matters to you.
And as the original poster said, a rental company has the right to put whatever they want into their cars. You have the right to refuse to hire the car if it's got a tracker in it and go elsewhere to hire a car, so again, just decide what matters to you.
Yes they are. Our towns and cities are full to bursting with cars, so the obvious solution is to try and get some public transport working. So provide a good reason for drivers to get out of their cars and onto public transport, and urban areas will no longer be dirty, noisy and unhealthy places where it takes you hours to travel a couple of miles.
My objection isn't that they're doing this, it's that they're not putting the alternative in place first. If they'd already got working bus systems and cycle routes sorted, they'd have a good argument. But in too many cases it just looks like back-door taxation, bcos there's no practical alternative to driving.
Let me know when any of these help the police trace me, or when any of these infringe on my rights. Unless there's a "right to die".
Are you also against IEEE wiring regs and building regs? I mean, restricting how you can build a house has to be wrong. Even if it could fall down in the night and crush you.
Fair enough, if someone's posting with your name then there's no protection against that. The thing is, the article's saying that these ppl have put info about themselves on websites, thereby putting that info in the public domain, and then they're surprised when other ppl read it! I mean, duh! Maybe with hindsight they shouldn't have posted this stuff on their websites, but it's their own fault and not anyone else's. If I screw something up, I'm not going to blame Google for what I've messed up myself.
The other big duh! is that they say ppl are searching on a name and assuming there's only one person with that name. With 6 billion ppl in the world, chances are that at least one of them will have your name, unless you're called something really obscure like Zebulon Zachariah Zarquon of course!;-) Hell, if someone won't date me bcos they've confused me with someone else with my name off the web, I'd think myself lucky that I didn't have to meet someone who was obviously as thick as a builder's yard full of short planks.
OK, OK. I'm a hang-glider pilot myself, so I do know the specifics. But I'm not about to post all that in reply to someone who's first language isn't English.:-)
You're right, stall recovery is straightforward, but it does require the room in which to do it. Dropping out of the sky is only the start; on my hang-glider, once it's started dropping, the nose goes down and the speed goes up, and it starts flying again; on more serious aircraft the pilot hits extra power and/or controls the pitch to recover; but you need a certain amount of space below you for this to take effect. Hence stalls at low level (eg. that DC-10 accident on takeoff) usually make a bit of a mess.
Whether it's anyone else's business depends on if you happen to be talking to someone who's using it as the mainstay of their argument. In that case it's definitely someone else's business. I don't personally care if you ring the Amazing Cleo for a prediction, but if you reply to someone saying "well this is the case bcos the Amazing Cleo told me so" then please expect that someone to take an interest in the source of your evidence.
As skeptics, we believe that our view of reality is the correct one until someone gives us evidence to the contrary. Crop circle enthusiasts have spectacularly failed to recognise human-created crop circles, even ones where ppl say "dude, it's just too symmetrical, it must be aliens" (erm, ever heard of this magic art called surveying?). If they can't recognise a well-done human-created crop circle, they can't be taken as a source of authority when they say "oh, it's definitely an alien this time". It may just be that the guys responsible have found some new technique. For example, sooner or later, someone's going to make up a crop circle template in wood and fly it in on a hot air balloon or a helicopter - try working that one out!
Incidentally, James Randi's million dollars are up for grabs to anyone who can come up with evidence of paranormal activity, including religious organisations.
Not a "stall". A stall is where the plane flies too slow, the wings no longer produce enough lift to keep it in the air, and the thing basically just drops out of the sky.
The processor doing its little movements just means that it's an unstable system. Nothing new there, the SR-71 also requires an active control system to keep it going in a straight line, and that was designed 20-some years ago.
But interestingly, digital radio is now a reality. So if you tape off that? or even better, record to your PC and blow it onto a CD? Hmm, guess they've not really thought about that!:-)
"Most ppl don't upgrade their computers, oh, apart from upgrading this, and upgrading that..."
The proprietary hardware thing *is* a major barrier to sales. On a PC, you can always upgrade, and if you want to spend $1700, you will *always* get $1700-worth of the latest gear. On proprietary hardware, the best you can say is that it was worth $1700 at the time it was designed. Apple don't ramp their prices down as the hardware gets out-of-date, you know. So it'll still cost you $1700 for the same bit of hardware in a year's time, when all the components are well off top-line. And in fact you'd only get maybe $1200-worth of gear, bcos Apple's low volume turnover and extra costs in remanufacturing mean that everything has to be done as a special item instead of being a commodity.
And then remember that they can only chose gear which was top-line when the system was designed. It'll take a good 6 months to get this into production, and then it'll be sold for maybe 18 months without changes to the hardware. So your system could be as much as 2 years behind the times. If you're paying top-dollar for a 2-year-old system, I don't think that's much value for money.
When you get rid of that crufty old PC, buy a new PC and get value-for-money. Mac owners are just paying for the name, the flashy case, and the clique-membership.
Grab.
Re:They need to talk to the robot wars people on T
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Too true. I'm a Brit - I happened to be over in the States a couple of months back and saw Battlebots. And my only reaction was "well, put all the Battlebots in an arena, and the weakest Robot Wars entry will steamroller the lot in 5 minutes, no messing". They're just so badly made, not designed for any sort of "battle".
And where's the fun in assault courses? I mean, the US is the country that invented WWF, and they can't even see that a robot assault course is boring, boring, boring?! Compare and contrast to "Robot Wars" - cutting disks, hydraulic pick-axes, flipper mechanisms that'll throw a 60kg robot a metre in the air, even the most basic has a self-righting mechanism these days. Why does anyone bother to watch Battlebots? Or possibly, why does no-one at Battlebots watch Robot Wars to see how it *should* be done?
Grab.
Re:Skynet, here we come
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I'd give a different reason - we believe it *will* be human, and therefore will inherit human traits. And the most characteristic human trait is mindless destruction, especially destruction of those viewed to be "inferior" or "different". Jews, American Indians, African tribes, inner-city gangs, soccer hooligans, the list is endless. Soul, pity and remorse are generally in pretty short supply amongst humanity.
So if you confuse "intelligence" with "having human-like behaviour", then we will indeed be in some deep shit. "As you reap, so shall you sow" and all that bad karma stuff coming round...
However, that does kind of fly in the face of having an "intelligent" machine. If it's really intelligent, it'll make the right decisions without the emotional shit that makes humans as a species largely unintelligent.
Grab.
Re:The Zeroith Law of Robotocs
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Asimov already did that - check out "Robots and Empire". R Daneel integrates a "Zeroth Law" of "A robot shall not harm humanity, or through inaction cause humanity to come to harm". But all the rest of the Robot series have a straightforward logic approach to this - count the number of humans harmed either way, and save the greater number. Several Asimov Robot stories cover attempts to make robots "classify" humans, and always show the attempt failing.
Just got hold of "Grass" by Sheri Tapper. Imaginative, good plot, good characters, well-written. Highly recommended.
Heinlein fills in the trashy end of the sci-fi spectrum, kind of the Alastair Maclean or Harold Robbins paperback novel of sci-fi.
If you like conventional fiction that rambles a bit plot-wise but has superb imagery and ideas, you should try "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson. Phil Dick and William Gibson both have styles like this as well. All three of these are highly-rated for the visions of the future and the quality of writing.
Asimov's books have great ideas (particularly the robot short stories and novels), but I don't rate the writing much. Usually fun to read though.
Ditto Arthur C Clarke and Kim Stanley Robinson - both very inventive, but I don't rate their writing styles, I'm afraid. Others may disagree, but I think their plots and characters aren't that well shaped, cos they're too interested in the science and "big picture" society, and the actual ppl are kind of an afterthought.
Stephen Donaldson's Gap series is good but it's bloody hard going, and his writing style kind of sucks (he's fond of using obscure words just to brainfuck you, and he keeps using the same ones over and over so his vocab obviously isn't *that* extensive, he's just looked up some stuff in a dictionary). But the plotline and characters are just awesomely done.
Yes, it was done using 1960s tech. Rocket-firing was actually done even earlier with German V1 and V2 rockets, which is why the US brought in the German rocket scientists (despite petty little niggles like them being war criminals) to man its space program.
The problem is that this guy won't even use 1700s technology. His water-catapult idea shows a fundamental failure to do basic calculations of Newtonian Laws of Motion. This does not bode well for his rocket launch. Maths is a totally fundamental part of all engineering - even the Wright brothers used it, they didn't just bolt the plane together and hope it worked! So saying "I don't like maths, so I'm not going to bother working out this" is basically saying "I'm going to die bcos I can't do this calculation". Kudos for putting his life on the line, but I reckon he'll be dead if he's ever allowed to fly.
Of course, if he is obviously going to crash and burn then the FAA will put the stoppers on this. And then he'll say "But I was all ready to go, it's not fair, it's all their fault" when in fact it's his own fault for not having done it properly.
Erm, it's possible to build a plane which is fundamentally stable. Anyone who's built a paper plane can show that. But it is NOT possible to build a rocket that's fundamentally stable. A rocket is fundamentally UNSTABLE, and what keeps it stable is a complicated control system. That control system requires a whole lot of maths to get it right. You ignore that, you go the way of all those rocket demonstration films you see, where it just spirals into the ground at full speed.
You what?! The parachutists will be dead, no questions. That is NOT survivable. Let's do the sums...
A catapult has no energy input once the projectile has left it. So if he wants to get to 15k feet, the projectile will need to leave the launcher at approximately 300m/s, ie. over 1000 km/h (from Newton, v^2 = 2*a*s, where s is 15,000 * 0.3 to give distance in m, and a is 9.8m for 1G).
Say the catapult is in contact with the projectile for 2s (for the sake of argument) and giving a smooth acceleration. That is probably way too high - planes launched off an aircraft carrier take less than 2s to leave the deck - but anyway. Then the acceleration is 150m/s/s (if the accel wasn't smooth, it could even peak higher than that).
That means that your parachutists are experiencing over 15G on takeoff. Which is well beyond the point at which every human (even top jet pilots) black out. So although the parachutists may make it to the top of the ride, they'll be unconscious and in no fit state to appreciate it! And since they'll be unable to pull their ripcords, they'll plummet to the ground and die.
Personally I think this guy should learn more fundamental physics, like basic Newtonian mechanics.
Yes, and those "certain speeds" are fighting speeds. On average, the pilot flying the best-reacting plane wins. Except that now planes don't have to be aerodynamically stable any more (eg. Eurofighter Typhoon, F-22) the pilot is becoming more and more the limiting factor, hence the drive for remote-piloted planes. The first remote-piloted plane will kick everything else's butt, simply bcos the remote pilot can send it into manoevers which no conventional pilot could withstand.
Getting rear-ended is about the worst scenario in compact cars, and even more so in one made of some ultimately stiff material. Compact cars don't have much of a rear area to crumple, so they don't collapse much from the rear so that the main compartment stays intact. The result is that in a rear-end collision, a large part of the push goes into propelling the front car forward. Your head isn't pushed directly, so it stays around a bit whilst the rest of your body shoots forward. Result - your neck bends backwards over your seatback, causing whiplash injuries (most ppl don't have their headrests set properly, and headrests aren't that successful anyway). My mom still has neck pains 30 years after a rear-end collision.
Now imagine what would happen if you got rear-ended in a car which put 100% of the impact into propelling your car forward, instead of only maybe 50%. Maybe your car would be intact with minor scratches, but your neck would be snapped like a twig. Good call man...
Sure, but for that you need to be in something with a *shitload* of inertia. Say, a Challenger tank. It's not impossible, and you can get a license to drive one on the road, but I sure as hell wouldn't want the fuel bills! (I believe it's measured in gallons per mile!)
And even then, you're not guaranteed to make it. Tank vs car, tank wins. Tank vs low wall, tank wins. Tank vs bridge support, bridge support wins, everyone inside the tank is plated round the walls. Oops. Bottom line is that most accidents out of metro areas involve one vehicle stacking it into the scenery, and the scenery (cliffs, large trees, big rocks, rivers) is usually pretty immovable, regardless of the size of the vehicle.
Solution for me (on Win98) is using the StayLive utility. It's a ticker to keep a dial-up link alive (to stop your telco cutting the link after 2 minutes of not doing anything), but it uses the various world clocks as its ticker, so it has the useful side-effect of keeping your PC clock perfect for as long as you're on the Net.
Re being reliant on MS, StayLive can connect to any of a dozen or so servers round the world (by default; more can be added if you know their IP addresses), MS is just one. So presumably XP could be set up the same way - there's bound to be an IP address settable somewhere. Oh, silly me, it's MS - what was I thinking?;-)
That's the "Big Sky" theory, which says "It's a big sky, so we're probably not going to hit anything".
In practise it doesn't work for various reasons. One of the main ones is that airspace is regulated into sections at certain areas and heights, and some of these areas are out of bounds to casual flyers. So in Britain, there's a few areas just outside restricted airspace sections (eg. Manchester airport) where it's SERIOUSLY crowded, not bcos there's lots of stuff coming and going from the airport, but bcos anyone flying past there has to detour round the airport, and no-one wants to go too far so they all skirt round in the same place. It's even more so for non-casual flights (eg. 747s) which are restricted to certain airlanes.
It's the same argument as saying: "The area of the US is this much. There's X million cars in the US, with an average area each of this much. Therefore the probability of an accident is this much." It doesn't take into account that most of those cars are driving on roads and therefore massively increase the density on the roads. Flying works in exactly the same way, except we have roads with height as well as width.
And then your calculation does assume that he's launching from a sensible place, ie. the middle of nowhere. If there were no rules, there'd be nothing stopping him launching from downtown New York, which would be a Bad Thing...
CDs are more expensive bcos the public will pay more for them. Simple as that. In the US, you pay typically $10-15 for a CD. In the UK, we pay £10-15 for the same CD. Why? bcos the companies have found that raising the price doesn't majorly affect sales, so they're busy using supply and demand. Tapes are shitty quality, so no-one's prepared to pay as much for them. But it actually costs more to produce a tape (compare the prices of blank tapes vs CD-Rs). The companies still make money on tapes though, so they're not bothered.
The absolute *best* solution would have been for Napster to have totally cratered record company sales. Seriously. Without pain in their pockets, why should they give a damn? They don't care if you complain while you're buying that CD, so long as you do actually buy it! But if you didn't buy it bcos it was too expensive, and everyone else stayed away too, *then* they start thinking on it...
I'm lucky - I mainly like blues, folk and classic rock. I can pick up a CD I'd like for £5 in a bargain bin. Maybe it's 10 years old, but it's still good music, know what I mean? And there's so much stuff I liked on the radio but never got round to buying back then bcos it was expensive, well now I can!:-) If you listen to Metallica and Led Zeppelin instead of Eminem and Linkin Park, your high-priced CD-buying days are just gone, man!
"Enough of software bugs"? Certainly. And when ppl stop praying for magic bullets to solve their problems, maybe it'll happen!
C's problem is that it will let you screw up - it gives you the power to decide "I want to do it a particular way, bcos I'm the coder and I say this is right". Rule-sets like those developed by MISRA allow you to specify that certain constructs will not be used bcos they commonly cause problems, and a reviewer (or a static checker program like Lint, for some rules) will flag up instances where they're used. It's then down to you to explain to the person reviewing your code exactly *why* this is the right way to do it, even if it's an "evil, hacked, bastardised" way (to quote id's code:-) and doesn't match the rule-set. The problem isn't using odd corners of the language, the problem is doing so accidentally or without giving proper thought to it.
The real issues are:-
1) Do you have requirements which can be individually traced from the highest level requirement right through to the lines of code, so every design decision can be justified and checked at review? and are the requirements straightforward enough that you can put a "yes/no" check in a box for meeting it?
2) Do you have code and design reviews, so no work product makes it out without every new draft and every change being reviewed against its requirements?
3) Do you test at every level that the code does what the requirement says?
People make mistakes. Shit happens. Under ANY system, using ANY methodology, with ANY design package, someone will do something wrong. The only solution is how to handle it. If you follow all three of the above, you're pretty much guaranteed to bee releasing bug-free code, and if there is a bug then you can at least have the satisfaction of knowing that even NASA probably wouldn't have found it!;-) If you're not following one or more of them, no new language or programming idiom will solve your problems. Your system is broken, and no magic bullet will help. Instead of wasting time on new fads, use existing best practise - there's a good reason it's "best" practise.
Desktop/games coders have a helluva lot to learn from the embedded industry. If you really want to learn how to develop bug-free, money-no-object, look at NASA. If you want to learn how to do it within a realistic time and to a tight budget, look at the auto industry. And if you want to learn what happens if you don't follow all the above, look at any first-release piece of desktop software (MS for preference, but they're all as bad as each other). If gamers and desktop users stopped buying products which are known to have more bugs than a plague ward, maybe the manufacturers would get the message. But some stupid bastards always want to be the first ones to play Doom3 or whatever. Ho hum.
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It's none of the rental company's business that you were speeding. That you knocked 5000 miles of life off the tires by peeling rubber every time you moved. That you tripped the ABS every time you braked, so every braking event is an emergency stop. That you killed the engine by putting it into first gear and driving a hundred miles with the engine screaming at you. That you drove for a day with the parking brake half-engaged, and the rear brake drums now need replacing. That you came back all wide-eyed and innocent and said "What, me?! I never!"
When you go through all the things that a bad driver could do to a rental car and still bring it back superficially intact (I'm not including major visible damage here), you almost wonder how rental companies survive. I swear, I'm just surprised it's taken this long for it to be a regular thing.
Grab.
The only way you could avoid blame in a rear-end collision is if someone pulls across in front of you and brakes, without giving you any chance to take avoiding action. That's it.
If it's a straight road and neither of you has changed lanes, a rear-end is ALWAYS (no arguments, no mitigating cases, no nothing) the fault of the person behind. A driver may have to do an emergency stop at any time (child runs out, tire bursts, cambelt snaps), and you have to be ready for that to happen to the driver in front. If you're not, you're driving too close. So the driver in front could slam the brakes on for no better reason than that he felt like it, and you have no comeback.
The guy in front could be done for dangerous driving if he admitted he did it deliberately to cause an accident, but if he can give even a halfway believable excuse (even if he only says he braked to avoid running over a rabbit) then you're screwed.
Grab.
If it's a necessity, you have the option to buy the vehicle. In which case you're at liberty to alter the car in any way you like, so long as it still passes any State-mandated roadworthyness tests. You may have to choose between using one of these and having cheaper insurance, just as you may have to choose between a store tracking what you buy and getting cheaper groceries. So just decide what matters to you.
And as the original poster said, a rental company has the right to put whatever they want into their cars. You have the right to refuse to hire the car if it's got a tracker in it and go elsewhere to hire a car, so again, just decide what matters to you.
Grab.
Yes they are. Our towns and cities are full to bursting with cars, so the obvious solution is to try and get some public transport working. So provide a good reason for drivers to get out of their cars and onto public transport, and urban areas will no longer be dirty, noisy and unhealthy places where it takes you hours to travel a couple of miles.
My objection isn't that they're doing this, it's that they're not putting the alternative in place first. If they'd already got working bus systems and cycle routes sorted, they'd have a good argument. But in too many cases it just looks like back-door taxation, bcos there's no practical alternative to driving.
Grab.
Let me know when any of these help the police trace me, or when any of these infringe on my rights. Unless there's a "right to die".
Are you also against IEEE wiring regs and building regs? I mean, restricting how you can build a house has to be wrong. Even if it could fall down in the night and crush you.
Grab.
Fair enough, if someone's posting with your name then there's no protection against that. The thing is, the article's saying that these ppl have put info about themselves on websites, thereby putting that info in the public domain, and then they're surprised when other ppl read it! I mean, duh! Maybe with hindsight they shouldn't have posted this stuff on their websites, but it's their own fault and not anyone else's. If I screw something up, I'm not going to blame Google for what I've messed up myself.
;-) Hell, if someone won't date me bcos they've confused me with someone else with my name off the web, I'd think myself lucky that I didn't have to meet someone who was obviously as thick as a builder's yard full of short planks.
The other big duh! is that they say ppl are searching on a name and assuming there's only one person with that name. With 6 billion ppl in the world, chances are that at least one of them will have your name, unless you're called something really obscure like Zebulon Zachariah Zarquon of course!
Grab.
OK, OK. I'm a hang-glider pilot myself, so I do know the specifics. But I'm not about to post all that in reply to someone who's first language isn't English. :-)
You're right, stall recovery is straightforward, but it does require the room in which to do it. Dropping out of the sky is only the start; on my hang-glider, once it's started dropping, the nose goes down and the speed goes up, and it starts flying again; on more serious aircraft the pilot hits extra power and/or controls the pitch to recover; but you need a certain amount of space below you for this to take effect. Hence stalls at low level (eg. that DC-10 accident on takeoff) usually make a bit of a mess.
Grab.
Whether it's anyone else's business depends on if you happen to be talking to someone who's using it as the mainstay of their argument. In that case it's definitely someone else's business. I don't personally care if you ring the Amazing Cleo for a prediction, but if you reply to someone saying "well this is the case bcos the Amazing Cleo told me so" then please expect that someone to take an interest in the source of your evidence.
As skeptics, we believe that our view of reality is the correct one until someone gives us evidence to the contrary. Crop circle enthusiasts have spectacularly failed to recognise human-created crop circles, even ones where ppl say "dude, it's just too symmetrical, it must be aliens" (erm, ever heard of this magic art called surveying?). If they can't recognise a well-done human-created crop circle, they can't be taken as a source of authority when they say "oh, it's definitely an alien this time". It may just be that the guys responsible have found some new technique. For example, sooner or later, someone's going to make up a crop circle template in wood and fly it in on a hot air balloon or a helicopter - try working that one out!
Incidentally, James Randi's million dollars are up for grabs to anyone who can come up with evidence of paranormal activity, including religious organisations.
Grab.
Not a "stall". A stall is where the plane flies too slow, the wings no longer produce enough lift to keep it in the air, and the thing basically just drops out of the sky.
The processor doing its little movements just means that it's an unstable system. Nothing new there, the SR-71 also requires an active control system to keep it going in a straight line, and that was designed 20-some years ago.
Grab.
But interestingly, digital radio is now a reality. So if you tape off that? or even better, record to your PC and blow it onto a CD? Hmm, guess they've not really thought about that! :-)
Grab.
Eh?!
"Most ppl don't upgrade their computers, oh, apart from upgrading this, and upgrading that..."
The proprietary hardware thing *is* a major barrier to sales. On a PC, you can always upgrade, and if you want to spend $1700, you will *always* get $1700-worth of the latest gear. On proprietary hardware, the best you can say is that it was worth $1700 at the time it was designed. Apple don't ramp their prices down as the hardware gets out-of-date, you know. So it'll still cost you $1700 for the same bit of hardware in a year's time, when all the components are well off top-line. And in fact you'd only get maybe $1200-worth of gear, bcos Apple's low volume turnover and extra costs in remanufacturing mean that everything has to be done as a special item instead of being a commodity.
And then remember that they can only chose gear which was top-line when the system was designed. It'll take a good 6 months to get this into production, and then it'll be sold for maybe 18 months without changes to the hardware. So your system could be as much as 2 years behind the times. If you're paying top-dollar for a 2-year-old system, I don't think that's much value for money.
When you get rid of that crufty old PC, buy a new PC and get value-for-money. Mac owners are just paying for the name, the flashy case, and the clique-membership.
Grab.
Too true. I'm a Brit - I happened to be over in the States a couple of months back and saw Battlebots. And my only reaction was "well, put all the Battlebots in an arena, and the weakest Robot Wars entry will steamroller the lot in 5 minutes, no messing". They're just so badly made, not designed for any sort of "battle".
And where's the fun in assault courses? I mean, the US is the country that invented WWF, and they can't even see that a robot assault course is boring, boring, boring?! Compare and contrast to "Robot Wars" - cutting disks, hydraulic pick-axes, flipper mechanisms that'll throw a 60kg robot a metre in the air, even the most basic has a self-righting mechanism these days. Why does anyone bother to watch Battlebots? Or possibly, why does no-one at Battlebots watch Robot Wars to see how it *should* be done?
Grab.
I'd give a different reason - we believe it *will* be human, and therefore will inherit human traits. And the most characteristic human trait is mindless destruction, especially destruction of those viewed to be "inferior" or "different". Jews, American Indians, African tribes, inner-city gangs, soccer hooligans, the list is endless. Soul, pity and remorse are generally in pretty short supply amongst humanity.
So if you confuse "intelligence" with "having human-like behaviour", then we will indeed be in some deep shit. "As you reap, so shall you sow" and all that bad karma stuff coming round...
However, that does kind of fly in the face of having an "intelligent" machine. If it's really intelligent, it'll make the right decisions without the emotional shit that makes humans as a species largely unintelligent.
Grab.
Asimov already did that - check out "Robots and Empire". R Daneel integrates a "Zeroth Law" of "A robot shall not harm humanity, or through inaction cause humanity to come to harm". But all the rest of the Robot series have a straightforward logic approach to this - count the number of humans harmed either way, and save the greater number. Several Asimov Robot stories cover attempts to make robots "classify" humans, and always show the attempt failing.
Grab.
Depends on what you like reading, really.
Just got hold of "Grass" by Sheri Tapper. Imaginative, good plot, good characters, well-written. Highly recommended.
Heinlein fills in the trashy end of the sci-fi spectrum, kind of the Alastair Maclean or Harold Robbins paperback novel of sci-fi.
If you like conventional fiction that rambles a bit plot-wise but has superb imagery and ideas, you should try "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson. Phil Dick and William Gibson both have styles like this as well. All three of these are highly-rated for the visions of the future and the quality of writing.
Asimov's books have great ideas (particularly the robot short stories and novels), but I don't rate the writing much. Usually fun to read though.
Ditto Arthur C Clarke and Kim Stanley Robinson - both very inventive, but I don't rate their writing styles, I'm afraid. Others may disagree, but I think their plots and characters aren't that well shaped, cos they're too interested in the science and "big picture" society, and the actual ppl are kind of an afterthought.
Stephen Donaldson's Gap series is good but it's bloody hard going, and his writing style kind of sucks (he's fond of using obscure words just to brainfuck you, and he keeps using the same ones over and over so his vocab obviously isn't *that* extensive, he's just looked up some stuff in a dictionary). But the plotline and characters are just awesomely done.
Yes, it was done using 1960s tech. Rocket-firing was actually done even earlier with German V1 and V2 rockets, which is why the US brought in the German rocket scientists (despite petty little niggles like them being war criminals) to man its space program.
The problem is that this guy won't even use 1700s technology. His water-catapult idea shows a fundamental failure to do basic calculations of Newtonian Laws of Motion. This does not bode well for his rocket launch. Maths is a totally fundamental part of all engineering - even the Wright brothers used it, they didn't just bolt the plane together and hope it worked! So saying "I don't like maths, so I'm not going to bother working out this" is basically saying "I'm going to die bcos I can't do this calculation". Kudos for putting his life on the line, but I reckon he'll be dead if he's ever allowed to fly.
Of course, if he is obviously going to crash and burn then the FAA will put the stoppers on this. And then he'll say "But I was all ready to go, it's not fair, it's all their fault" when in fact it's his own fault for not having done it properly.
Grab.
Erm, it's possible to build a plane which is fundamentally stable. Anyone who's built a paper plane can show that. But it is NOT possible to build a rocket that's fundamentally stable. A rocket is fundamentally UNSTABLE, and what keeps it stable is a complicated control system. That control system requires a whole lot of maths to get it right. You ignore that, you go the way of all those rocket demonstration films you see, where it just spirals into the ground at full speed.
Grab.
You what?! The parachutists will be dead, no questions. That is NOT survivable. Let's do the sums...
A catapult has no energy input once the projectile has left it. So if he wants to get to 15k feet, the projectile will need to leave the launcher at approximately 300m/s, ie. over 1000 km/h (from Newton, v^2 = 2*a*s, where s is 15,000 * 0.3 to give distance in m, and a is 9.8m for 1G).
Say the catapult is in contact with the projectile for 2s (for the sake of argument) and giving a smooth acceleration. That is probably way too high - planes launched off an aircraft carrier take less than 2s to leave the deck - but anyway. Then the acceleration is 150m/s/s (if the accel wasn't smooth, it could even peak higher than that).
That means that your parachutists are experiencing over 15G on takeoff. Which is well beyond the point at which every human (even top jet pilots) black out. So although the parachutists may make it to the top of the ride, they'll be unconscious and in no fit state to appreciate it! And since they'll be unable to pull their ripcords, they'll plummet to the ground and die.
Personally I think this guy should learn more fundamental physics, like basic Newtonian mechanics.
Grab.
Yes, and those "certain speeds" are fighting speeds. On average, the pilot flying the best-reacting plane wins. Except that now planes don't have to be aerodynamically stable any more (eg. Eurofighter Typhoon, F-22) the pilot is becoming more and more the limiting factor, hence the drive for remote-piloted planes. The first remote-piloted plane will kick everything else's butt, simply bcos the remote pilot can send it into manoevers which no conventional pilot could withstand.
Grab.
How often? Umm, *very* often!
Getting rear-ended is about the worst scenario in compact cars, and even more so in one made of some ultimately stiff material. Compact cars don't have much of a rear area to crumple, so they don't collapse much from the rear so that the main compartment stays intact. The result is that in a rear-end collision, a large part of the push goes into propelling the front car forward. Your head isn't pushed directly, so it stays around a bit whilst the rest of your body shoots forward. Result - your neck bends backwards over your seatback, causing whiplash injuries (most ppl don't have their headrests set properly, and headrests aren't that successful anyway). My mom still has neck pains 30 years after a rear-end collision.
Now imagine what would happen if you got rear-ended in a car which put 100% of the impact into propelling your car forward, instead of only maybe 50%. Maybe your car would be intact with minor scratches, but your neck would be snapped like a twig. Good call man...
Grab.
Sure, but for that you need to be in something with a *shitload* of inertia. Say, a Challenger tank. It's not impossible, and you can get a license to drive one on the road, but I sure as hell wouldn't want the fuel bills! (I believe it's measured in gallons per mile!)
And even then, you're not guaranteed to make it. Tank vs car, tank wins. Tank vs low wall, tank wins. Tank vs bridge support, bridge support wins, everyone inside the tank is plated round the walls. Oops. Bottom line is that most accidents out of metro areas involve one vehicle stacking it into the scenery, and the scenery (cliffs, large trees, big rocks, rivers) is usually pretty immovable, regardless of the size of the vehicle.
Grab.
Solution for me (on Win98) is using the StayLive utility. It's a ticker to keep a dial-up link alive (to stop your telco cutting the link after 2 minutes of not doing anything), but it uses the various world clocks as its ticker, so it has the useful side-effect of keeping your PC clock perfect for as long as you're on the Net.
;-)
Re being reliant on MS, StayLive can connect to any of a dozen or so servers round the world (by default; more can be added if you know their IP addresses), MS is just one. So presumably XP could be set up the same way - there's bound to be an IP address settable somewhere. Oh, silly me, it's MS - what was I thinking?
Grab.
That's the "Big Sky" theory, which says "It's a big sky, so we're probably not going to hit anything".
In practise it doesn't work for various reasons. One of the main ones is that airspace is regulated into sections at certain areas and heights, and some of these areas are out of bounds to casual flyers. So in Britain, there's a few areas just outside restricted airspace sections (eg. Manchester airport) where it's SERIOUSLY crowded, not bcos there's lots of stuff coming and going from the airport, but bcos anyone flying past there has to detour round the airport, and no-one wants to go too far so they all skirt round in the same place. It's even more so for non-casual flights (eg. 747s) which are restricted to certain airlanes.
It's the same argument as saying: "The area of the US is this much. There's X million cars in the US, with an average area each of this much. Therefore the probability of an accident is this much." It doesn't take into account that most of those cars are driving on roads and therefore massively increase the density on the roads. Flying works in exactly the same way, except we have roads with height as well as width.
And then your calculation does assume that he's launching from a sensible place, ie. the middle of nowhere. If there were no rules, there'd be nothing stopping him launching from downtown New York, which would be a Bad Thing...
Grab.
CDs are more expensive bcos the public will pay more for them. Simple as that. In the US, you pay typically $10-15 for a CD. In the UK, we pay £10-15 for the same CD. Why? bcos the companies have found that raising the price doesn't majorly affect sales, so they're busy using supply and demand. Tapes are shitty quality, so no-one's prepared to pay as much for them. But it actually costs more to produce a tape (compare the prices of blank tapes vs CD-Rs). The companies still make money on tapes though, so they're not bothered.
:-) If you listen to Metallica and Led Zeppelin instead of Eminem and Linkin Park, your high-priced CD-buying days are just gone, man!
The absolute *best* solution would have been for Napster to have totally cratered record company sales. Seriously. Without pain in their pockets, why should they give a damn? They don't care if you complain while you're buying that CD, so long as you do actually buy it! But if you didn't buy it bcos it was too expensive, and everyone else stayed away too, *then* they start thinking on it...
I'm lucky - I mainly like blues, folk and classic rock. I can pick up a CD I'd like for £5 in a bargain bin. Maybe it's 10 years old, but it's still good music, know what I mean? And there's so much stuff I liked on the radio but never got round to buying back then bcos it was expensive, well now I can!
Grab.
"Enough of software bugs"? Certainly. And when ppl stop praying for magic bullets to solve their problems, maybe it'll happen!
:-) and doesn't match the rule-set. The problem isn't using odd corners of the language, the problem is doing so accidentally or without giving proper thought to it.
;-) If you're not following one or more of them, no new language or programming idiom will solve your problems. Your system is broken, and no magic bullet will help. Instead of wasting time on new fads, use existing best practise - there's a good reason it's "best" practise.
C's problem is that it will let you screw up - it gives you the power to decide "I want to do it a particular way, bcos I'm the coder and I say this is right". Rule-sets like those developed by MISRA allow you to specify that certain constructs will not be used bcos they commonly cause problems, and a reviewer (or a static checker program like Lint, for some rules) will flag up instances where they're used. It's then down to you to explain to the person reviewing your code exactly *why* this is the right way to do it, even if it's an "evil, hacked, bastardised" way (to quote id's code
The real issues are:-
1) Do you have requirements which can be individually traced from the highest level requirement right through to the lines of code, so every design decision can be justified and checked at review? and are the requirements straightforward enough that you can put a "yes/no" check in a box for meeting it?
2) Do you have code and design reviews, so no work product makes it out without every new draft and every change being reviewed against its requirements?
3) Do you test at every level that the code does what the requirement says?
People make mistakes. Shit happens. Under ANY system, using ANY methodology, with ANY design package, someone will do something wrong. The only solution is how to handle it. If you follow all three of the above, you're pretty much guaranteed to bee releasing bug-free code, and if there is a bug then you can at least have the satisfaction of knowing that even NASA probably wouldn't have found it!
Desktop/games coders have a helluva lot to learn from the embedded industry. If you really want to learn how to develop bug-free, money-no-object, look at NASA. If you want to learn how to do it within a realistic time and to a tight budget, look at the auto industry. And if you want to learn what happens if you don't follow all the above, look at any first-release piece of desktop software (MS for preference, but they're all as bad as each other). If gamers and desktop users stopped buying products which are known to have more bugs than a plague ward, maybe the manufacturers would get the message. But some stupid bastards always want to be the first ones to play Doom3 or whatever. Ho hum.
Grab.