I mean, can't you rent your own virtual server for 10 bucks a month with access to files via ssh so wtf?
Did exactly that a couple of years ago. I discovered that the "unlimited storage" only applied to "media files" which were accessible from your web pages.
So after I'd uploaded a pile of my stuff (family photos, etc) crunched up into zip files, totalling a few 10s of GB (which takes a while on standard 0.5MB/s upload ADSL here, but would have taken longer on my 33kb/s acoustic modem), the hosting provider shut down my account citing my violation of their ToS. If I'd made uninteresting web pages containing links to "Backup file #1", "Backup file #2"...., and put them behind a un/pw protected phpBB forum set up, then I'd probably have been within their ToS. But I suspect they'd have terminated me anyway.
Back to swapping hard drives from my NAS every couple of months.
... there are good reasons for some lines to be built to a different gauge. The cited examples of "hill lines" (probably in the Himalaya foothills, but not necessarily) are a case in point ; on steep, rapidly curving hillsides, narrow gauge systems have much lower construction costs because they need less length of tunnels, viaducts, etc.
There are costs of trans-shipping between gauges, etc ; but it's not a totally one-way calculation. You do need to evaluate the alternatives.
Yes, reducing the number of gauges in use would have benefits for rolling stock manufacturers, but they're only modest benefits since equipment is built in batches on short production lines. Again, there's a calculation involved in the bidding. And there is an external relevant standard for new systems : the shipping container. If you can get standard shipping containers along your line, then the drive to upgrade/ completely rebuild would be lower.
Which standard to choose... probably varies from one continent to another. Though the cited Australian morass illustrates the problem well.
Rather it is primitive compared with the available technology and projected needs. The monitoring and control equipment on much of the grid remains rather primitive, the wire infrastructure is fragile
A former drinking buddy of mine - haven't seen him for several years now - is/ was a maintenance planning engineer for the UK National Grid ; he expects typical field life of an item of equipment (i.e. Mean Time Before Failure) to be around 40 years. So he's going to be installing equipment now, in his run-down to retirement, which should not need to be replaced until his replacement is also nearing retirement.
Unsurprisingly, nation-level electrical grids are not composed of cutting edge technologies.
I don't know - I'll ask next time I see him - how they validate the MTBF of equipment? Probably by looking at it's installed lifetime in non-grid systems such as heavy plant. So if you're tearing down an industrial plant's electrical system for a re-build/ re-purpose, then your colleagues in the National Grid will be very keen to see how various of your components have survived 18 years of abuse and neglect. And it is to both of your benefits to share this knowledge.
I am an oil geologist ; finding new reserves is getting harder, and un-explored or under-explored areas are getting fewer and further from market - which is my specialism, and why I work intercontinentally and inter-hemispherically.
Actually... you've just proposed a problem for me - is there a hemisphere on the Earth where I haven't worked, and if there is, what would it's pole be? That's an interesting maths problem, but I think it'd be easier to check with my globe and some Post-Its(TM).
And where, exactly, do you suggest I plug in my iPad?
I thought the iPad had it's network socket in the middle of the big glass sheet on one side (user supplies own nail to hold it in place).
This may suggest that I haven't read the specs of the iPad yet ; you'd be correct in thinking that. Why should I bother reading such things when I've got an iColleague who will keep me iUpToDate on iAnything iApple. Indeed, he's waiting on his iPad to be iDelivered iIn the iNext iFew iDays. (Sorry,iI'll try to stop speaking like iHim.)
Strange that he not once mentioned this iLack. But he knows fully-well that iI don't have an iWireless network in my iHouse, because iI still have the wired network iI put in over a decade ago, and it is still iFaster than any iWireless network iI've met.
That's a point - has wireless reached the speed of 100-base cable yet? ; iISTR hearing of such a thing recently. But it's not terribly iImportant to iMe ; I'm still unconfident of my ability to properly secure an iWireless network, and a 1000-base network might well be simpler.
Uh, no ; a supplement to fuel taxing ; some significant amounts of fuel are used in non-propelled engines. Generators, prime movers, etc. Some is used in tyre-less vehicles, e.g. boats. But yes, that's an interesting idea.
As sad as it seems, there are environmentalists who would sue in federal court to stop a mining operation on the Moon because [something]
And the effect that this would have on a (picking examples out of thin air) Swiss corporation (as is TransOcean) employing American, Swedish and Armenian companies to design and build equipment to be launched on various European and Chinese launchers, to land outside US territory... the net effect is?
[Insert sound effect of a sub poena being tossed into a metal bucket and burned]
The encomium he composed when he left the hilltown he loved must be one of the worst poems ever written.
That's quite a steep claim, but I'm not minded to pursue it. In the last couple of days I've been exposed to two of McGonagall's [ahemm]"masterpieces" dedicated to the Tay Bridge (one praising it's obvious strength, the other lamenting it's collapse). That is quite enough competition for the "worst poet in the world" for me for a few days^H^H^H^H^H years^H^H^H^H^H^H decades.
Since we were just talking about it elsewhere, I assume this comes with different flavoured wipes, such as Hakarl, "cigarette ash", "stale beer", or "dried semen".
That's what ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) is for. It's something they can mandate the minimums for. The countries participating in ICAO have to pass laws that implement it, and can easily demand that aircraft flying through their airspace must follow all ICAO rules.
And in my (not very long) quest to find the details of the ICAO rules, I find that the rules seem to have been (are to be) changed in 1987, 1989, 1991, 2005, 2010 and 2012.
But, you mention the situation for American air operators (I assume that is where you fly, if you fly at all) ; of course, they're required to follow FAA rules on the matter, not ICAO. So for each of the implementation dates above, you can expect another FAA date, probably a year or so later.
I do have some sympathy for the people who have to administer these things. Having lost flying for about 10 days out of a 21-day work "cycle" to flying rule changes already this year, I also have some sympathy for the poor schmucks trying to get home after work as well.
Actually, it sounds as if the newer planes in the fleet do have more standardised buses for data management, which would suggest that the situation for new build is simplifying. So in another 3 to 4 decades, it might be an improved system. Somehow I don't find that terribly encouraging - I hope to have finished flying by then.
Flags of convenience aren't a huge thing for aircraft as they are for boats.
Yet.
Do you think that planes that are becoming too expensive for running in high-compliance companies get broken for parts and scrap, or get sold onto lower-compliance countries? Uh-huh ; you got it : Sold on (mostly). And it's always been like that. There are plenty of air crashes in which equipment failure is a significant issue. This may not worry you in your home country, but I don't restrict myself to one continent for work, and it does worry me. I'm over 5 years overdue for a major flight incident, and it's really starting to make my ring twitch every time I get off the ground.
Your idea is implemented (rolling programme of replacement, takes a while);
A plane flies through the rain and is not perfectly maintained ; it leaks. (Alternatively, someone spills something in the appropriate areas ; whatever.)
Glues degrade and eventually fail.
Depending on detailed design, the FDR falls out of the plane in mid-flight, killing people on the ground, or falls out when it's inspection hatch is opened by a highly-trained service technician.
Police break down your door and drag you away for execution, as it was your idea.
Nope, I don't see any downsides.
Aircraft are well-engineered structures (I hope). So in principle you want something that isn't going to separate from it's mounting points until it's subjected to loads that are going to rip apart the rest of the surrounding airframe. Which should be reasonably achievable (to within a factor of 2) using pre-drilled mounting bolts for example.
However, your idea still has the problem of now leaving the data recorder bobbing around on the surface of the sea or on the seabed (at very low effective weight, because of properly configured and engineered buoyancy) in the immediate aftermath of the crash, then drifting away. Possibly days before any surface SAR vessels get there.
Oh, don't forget too, that different countries have different regulations about what FDR capabilities (in terms of data collected, length of storage before over-writing, and crash survivability) the airlines under their flags, which don't inherently affect the airplane's safety. So look forward to tieing things up in the courts for decades trying to apply this extraterritoriarily.
Then there's the minor detail that FDRs are manufactured in a small range of sizes for a wider range of planes, by a range of companies who are not aircraft manufacturers themselves.
TBH ; the idea is a mess. A well-meaning mess, but a mess nonetheless. I'd suspect that for new build, automatic streaming of data off to a satellite communication system (as this plane appears to have had, to some degree) would be the route to take. But that only affects new build, and there is a lot of installed base out there.
You had a keyboard? We didn't have one, we just tapped the two wires together in morse code to control the keypuncher monkey thing..
I once had a keyboard rained on while in the middle of the forest with no chance to get a replacement for a while. I took it apart and figured out the shorts I had to make in the controlling circuit board to enter the password with a paperclip...
... and you enjoyed the experience so much that you've not used a keyboard since.
Yeah, right.
(Dot matrix printer with a 9-pin head ; the cable developed a nick that propagated. For printing morning reports, I could get by with 6 pins, but for printing diagrams I needed to patch the cable back together to get at least 7 pins working. EVERY morning for a week until the shops opened again and I could get a new printer, this being over Christmas and a weekend.)
I remember AOL. I've still got some of the CDs propping up a broken cupboard somewhere. I remember them with a combination of mild loathing and some contempt.
I was a quite happy Compuserve user until AOL took it over and destroyed it. (OK, CIS was in slow decline at the time too. But that decline became a nose dive when AOL took over.)
There - what was difficult or embarrassing about that?
"I'm not in the US. Can I fund my project on Kickstarter?
Currently a US bank account is required to start a project. This is a restriction by Amazon Payments, our payments processor. If you don't have a US bank account and are interested in starting a project, we appreciate your patience (we're working on it!)."
So they seem to be pretty up-front about it (now ; I can well imagine that they didn't mention this so bluntly in earlier iterations).
I also note that the specific restriction is not on US citizens per se, but on having a US bank account. Getting an account at a US bank as a foreigner might be a PITA, but it should be do-able. (It might be less hassle to have a US-based front man/ woman/ gerbil though.)
I wonder if there is a Kickstarter project for getting round this restriction? Would be appropriate.
The MSDS for water (http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/w0600.htm) says the freezing/melting point and pH are "not available". I think I know those numbers -- doesn't everybody?
Freezing and melting points are dependent on pressure. pH (negative log of the concentration of hydrogen ions) is also going to vary with temperature.
Oh, and let's not even get started on the dozens of different allotropes of ice.
TomTom was already on my no-buy list for other reasons. E.g, when you buy a new map, the old one is deleted and you have to re-buy it.
That is, if true, and if it applies in my country, utterly insane. And in itself, it's sufficient to have earned TomTom it's place on your do-not-buy list. Mine too.
I'm becoming increasingly unhappy with the SatNav that the wife got me a couple of years ago - primarily because they won't issue map updates unless you subscribe to a year's worth of updates for their speed camera database. Since their base map is in parts at least 20 years out of date (i.e., it is barely younger than GPS as a system), I've no expectation that their camera data would actually be any good, even if I actually wanted such data. (I don't ; I don't worry about speed cameras ; 22 years driving and I still don't know what a speeding ticket looks like.)
I have a sinking feeling that the only way I'm going to get my GPS itch scratched is by working with OpenStreetMap.org. Damn ; more stuff to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Did exactly that a couple of years ago. I discovered that the "unlimited storage" only applied to "media files" which were accessible from your web pages.
So after I'd uploaded a pile of my stuff (family photos, etc) crunched up into zip files, totalling a few 10s of GB (which takes a while on standard 0.5MB/s upload ADSL here, but would have taken longer on my 33kb/s acoustic modem), the hosting provider shut down my account citing my violation of their ToS. If I'd made uninteresting web pages containing links to "Backup file #1", "Backup file #2" ...., and put them behind a un/pw protected phpBB forum set up, then I'd probably have been within their ToS. But I suspect they'd have terminated me anyway.
Back to swapping hard drives from my NAS every couple of months.
A common confusion I'll agree.
There are costs of trans-shipping between gauges, etc ; but it's not a totally one-way calculation. You do need to evaluate the alternatives.
Yes, reducing the number of gauges in use would have benefits for rolling stock manufacturers, but they're only modest benefits since equipment is built in batches on short production lines. Again, there's a calculation involved in the bidding. And there is an external relevant standard for new systems : the shipping container. If you can get standard shipping containers along your line, then the drive to upgrade/ completely rebuild would be lower.
Which standard to choose ... probably varies from one continent to another. Though the cited Australian morass illustrates the problem well.
I think you've just realised where some of our idiomatic baggage came from. Congrats!
A former drinking buddy of mine - haven't seen him for several years now - is/ was a maintenance planning engineer for the UK National Grid ; he expects typical field life of an item of equipment (i.e. Mean Time Before Failure) to be around 40 years. So he's going to be installing equipment now, in his run-down to retirement, which should not need to be replaced until his replacement is also nearing retirement.
Unsurprisingly, nation-level electrical grids are not composed of cutting edge technologies.
I don't know - I'll ask next time I see him - how they validate the MTBF of equipment? Probably by looking at it's installed lifetime in non-grid systems such as heavy plant. So if you're tearing down an industrial plant's electrical system for a re-build/ re-purpose, then your colleagues in the National Grid will be very keen to see how various of your components have survived 18 years of abuse and neglect. And it is to both of your benefits to share this knowledge.
cheap energy didn't last forever.
FTFY
I am an oil geologist ; finding new reserves is getting harder, and un-explored or under-explored areas are getting fewer and further from market - which is my specialism, and why I work intercontinentally and inter-hemispherically.
Actually ... you've just proposed a problem for me - is there a hemisphere on the Earth where I haven't worked, and if there is, what would it's pole be? That's an interesting maths problem, but I think it'd be easier to check with my globe and some Post-Its(TM).
I thought the iPad had it's network socket in the middle of the big glass sheet on one side (user supplies own nail to hold it in place).
This may suggest that I haven't read the specs of the iPad yet ; you'd be correct in thinking that. Why should I bother reading such things when I've got an iColleague who will keep me iUpToDate on iAnything iApple. Indeed, he's waiting on his iPad to be iDelivered iIn the iNext iFew iDays. (Sorry,iI'll try to stop speaking like iHim.)
Strange that he not once mentioned this iLack. But he knows fully-well that iI don't have an iWireless network in my iHouse, because iI still have the wired network iI put in over a decade ago, and it is still iFaster than any iWireless network iI've met.
That's a point - has wireless reached the speed of 100-base cable yet? ; iISTR hearing of such a thing recently. But it's not terribly iImportant to iMe ; I'm still unconfident of my ability to properly secure an iWireless network, and a 1000-base network might well be simpler.
How silly is that?
FTFY
Uh, no ; a supplement to fuel taxing ; some significant amounts of fuel are used in non-propelled engines. Generators, prime movers, etc. Some is used in tyre-less vehicles, e.g. boats. But yes, that's an interesting idea.
If what you're extracting is valuable enough (e.g., cardboard, cloth), and your labour force is cheap enough.
And the effect that this would have on a (picking examples out of thin air) Swiss corporation (as is TransOcean) employing American, Swedish and Armenian companies to design and build equipment to be launched on various European and Chinese launchers, to land outside US territory ... the net effect is?
[Insert sound effect of a sub poena being tossed into a metal bucket and burned]
That's quite a steep claim, but I'm not minded to pursue it. In the last couple of days I've been exposed to two of McGonagall's [ahemm]"masterpieces" dedicated to the Tay Bridge (one praising it's obvious strength, the other lamenting it's collapse). That is quite enough competition for the "worst poet in the world" for me for a few days^H^H^H^H^H years^H^H^H^H^H^H decades.
Oh Teledildonics, wherefore art thou?
Like a million souls crying out
"This is no surprise."
(You can tell that I'm not a great SW fan.)
Ah, that puts an entirely new light on the [CK]ool-aid jokes. And here I was thinking it was just a popular type of coloured/ flavoured water.
And in my (not very long) quest to find the details of the ICAO rules, I find that the rules seem to have been (are to be) changed in 1987, 1989, 1991, 2005, 2010 and 2012.
But, you mention the situation for American air operators (I assume that is where you fly, if you fly at all) ; of course, they're required to follow FAA rules on the matter, not ICAO. So for each of the implementation dates above, you can expect another FAA date, probably a year or so later.
I do have some sympathy for the people who have to administer these things. Having lost flying for about 10 days out of a 21-day work "cycle" to flying rule changes already this year, I also have some sympathy for the poor schmucks trying to get home after work as well.
Actually, it sounds as if the newer planes in the fleet do have more standardised buses for data management, which would suggest that the situation for new build is simplifying. So in another 3 to 4 decades, it might be an improved system. Somehow I don't find that terribly encouraging - I hope to have finished flying by then.
Yet.
Do you think that planes that are becoming too expensive for running in high-compliance companies get broken for parts and scrap, or get sold onto lower-compliance countries? Uh-huh ; you got it : Sold on (mostly). And it's always been like that. There are plenty of air crashes in which equipment failure is a significant issue. This may not worry you in your home country, but I don't restrict myself to one continent for work, and it does worry me. I'm over 5 years overdue for a major flight incident, and it's really starting to make my ring twitch every time I get off the ground.
Jamie to Adam : "If in doubt, C4"
In other news, property prices near airfields and bomb ranges in the San Francisco area crash and burn.
... if it's of the right frequency range. (And I think that it's temperature dependant too.)
Scenario:
Nope, I don't see any downsides.
Aircraft are well-engineered structures (I hope). So in principle you want something that isn't going to separate from it's mounting points until it's subjected to loads that are going to rip apart the rest of the surrounding airframe. Which should be reasonably achievable (to within a factor of 2) using pre-drilled mounting bolts for example.
However, your idea still has the problem of now leaving the data recorder bobbing around on the surface of the sea or on the seabed (at very low effective weight, because of properly configured and engineered buoyancy) in the immediate aftermath of the crash, then drifting away. Possibly days before any surface SAR vessels get there.
Oh, don't forget too, that different countries have different regulations about what FDR capabilities (in terms of data collected, length of storage before over-writing, and crash survivability) the airlines under their flags, which don't inherently affect the airplane's safety. So look forward to tieing things up in the courts for decades trying to apply this extraterritoriarily.
Then there's the minor detail that FDRs are manufactured in a small range of sizes for a wider range of planes, by a range of companies who are not aircraft manufacturers themselves.
TBH ; the idea is a mess. A well-meaning mess, but a mess nonetheless. I'd suspect that for new build, automatic streaming of data off to a satellite communication system (as this plane appears to have had, to some degree) would be the route to take. But that only affects new build, and there is a lot of installed base out there.
I like this Carrigan person's style.
Yeah, right.
(Dot matrix printer with a 9-pin head ; the cable developed a nick that propagated. For printing morning reports, I could get by with 6 pins, but for printing diagrams I needed to patch the cable back together to get at least 7 pins working. EVERY morning for a week until the shops opened again and I could get a new printer, this being over Christmas and a weekend.)
I was a quite happy Compuserve user until AOL took it over and destroyed it. (OK, CIS was in slow decline at the time too. But that decline became a nose dive when AOL took over.)
There - what was difficult or embarrassing about that?
Uh oh. Didn't know that.
Well, I looked in the FAQs and found this
So they seem to be pretty up-front about it (now ; I can well imagine that they didn't mention this so bluntly in earlier iterations).
I also note that the specific restriction is not on US citizens per se, but on having a US bank account. Getting an account at a US bank as a foreigner might be a PITA, but it should be do-able. (It might be less hassle to have a US-based front man/ woman/ gerbil though.)
I wonder if there is a Kickstarter project for getting round this restriction? Would be appropriate.
Freezing and melting points are dependent on pressure. pH (negative log of the concentration of hydrogen ions) is also going to vary with temperature.
Oh, and let's not even get started on the dozens of different allotropes of ice.
That is, if true, and if it applies in my country, utterly insane. And in itself, it's sufficient to have earned TomTom it's place on your do-not-buy list. Mine too.
I'm becoming increasingly unhappy with the SatNav that the wife got me a couple of years ago - primarily because they won't issue map updates unless you subscribe to a year's worth of updates for their speed camera database. Since their base map is in parts at least 20 years out of date (i.e., it is barely younger than GPS as a system), I've no expectation that their camera data would actually be any good, even if I actually wanted such data. (I don't ; I don't worry about speed cameras ; 22 years driving and I still don't know what a speeding ticket looks like.)
I have a sinking feeling that the only way I'm going to get my GPS itch scratched is by working with OpenStreetMap.org. Damn ; more stuff to do.