I have my own "theory" of the universe, and I'm sure that some clever physicist has a proper name for it, thought of it 80 years ago, and can explain it in symbols and equations, but I'm happy to be embarrassed by y'all so here goes.
I suggest that not just time but spacetime and everything - every field, all matter, everything - is quantised. I think of the universe like a picture on a monitor, with the "tick" of the universe being the framerate of the monitor. The game cycle of the universe is MUCH faster, but that's handled by a processor and code that 'feeds' the universe. So all fields ARE calculated as waves, and in-between ticks there are many, many game cycles applying these calculations. But when it's time to "tick", everything in the universe gets written into reality as it is right there, like the beam on an old monitor writing a single graphic frame.
It explains how light can have the properties of both particles and waves, and if you think of the universe like graphics code, you can see how there would be some optimisations and short cuts - e.g. discounting the gravity of a single atom, instead taking a bunch of a billion or so atoms in one go past a certain distance and so on.
It also explains how matter can spontaneously emit particles and things like that, because a 'click' at the right point, and taking into account the optimisations, one particle could separate from another because it's close enough to be in one calculation, but far away enough to be optimised in another.
Think back to the 8-bit days and how some coders did crazy cool things, like changing the colour of an 8x8 block on the Spectrum at the exact right time so that you could actually display more than the 2-colour-per-8-by-8 block limit (I'm thinking of a game called Extreme BTW). Imagine what cool things the coders of the universe have done!
This is all probably absolutely bollocks, but I was thinking about it all morning and where better to invite trolling, criticism, embarrassment and condescending insults than New Slashdot?
I decided to try my best to understand what's being proposed here. So I RTFA, then I read the linked articles, then I read the articles supporting those, essentially in an attempt to get to the underlying "proof" or "theory" on which this "new" proposal is built.
Absolutely every single one, without exception, ended up at a wikipedia page that explained [such and such] was a conjecture. No real-world experiments, no measurements, no ACTUAL mathematical theories that ACTUALLY proved anything, just absolute pure conjecture.
Conjecture is, of course, just another word for "guess". Sure, maybe a good guess, and one supported by logic, but a guess nonetheless.
So here's my question. For years, thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people have suggested that wormhole travel is possible, and many of them have "conjectured" that it involves the quantum entanglement of two black holes. Perhaps the smartest of them has even suggested that the method of travel resolves itself so there is no "entanglement overhead". But for sure the "conjecture" that wormhole travel is possible has got to be at least 50 years old.
So.... just because someone who calls themself a physicist makes exactly the same guess - still with absolutely no experimental nor mathematical proof (in the sense of resolvable equations) we're now supposed to say "Oh wow, well done, it must be true!"?
Can anyone with more knowledge than me explain (perhaps in layman's terms) what's actually NEW about this latest guess? And why it has any more weight than the physics of Star Trek, of Interstellar, or even of your average 1950s B Movie?
The headline seemed to suggest we actually met a completely new type of living, breathing human. When I found out that we're talking about an ancient species dead for millennia, I was really disappointed.
Do you think Assange should be free to break any and all laws he chooses?
Exactly this.
I get that many people see him as some kind of hero, but you have to look at things like Wikileaks from a number of perspectives.
Is it interesting to know all about government secrets? Certainly.
What if revealing those secrets endanger people's lives? Hmmm. Are they all evil?
What if revealing those secrets upsets international diplomacy considerations?
That last question is the serious one. Wars have been fought for less that some of the things made public in various leaks.
Sometimes leaking is important, like knowing about shady agencies using dodgy tools to snoop on us. Other things, like diplomatic cables are probably best left un-leaked, even if they'd be interesting to read? It's a bit like taxes. If you ask people, pretty much 100% of them would say that if they had a choice they wouldn't pay taxes. But if no-one paid taxes, civilisation as we know it would collapse. What people want isn't necessarily what is best, even when people just want to know "the truth". Every country has spies, and they often do some pretty damn important work. Releasing documents that reveal what some spies have done (for instance) isn't of benefit to anyone, other than an interesting bit of reading material - and surely that's not a good enough reason to endanger lives. It's great that we all get to see governments' dirty laundry, but doing so isn't without consequences.
This stops what once was an easy smuggling ability. A person who is trusted and in constant contact could transport contraband during an in person visit
If that's the REAL reason for doing this, let people visit, but have glass screens between them with a microphone and speaker each side. No physical contact nor chance of passing contraband over. Prisoners don't have to be searched, nor do the visitors; they could be in completely different security areas.
I'm all for punishment (although I believe prison should be about more than just punishment) but not allowing prisoners to see someone IRL is just... nasty. Hateful. Torturous. Sickening.
Jesus Christ, I appreciate that Americans take crime seriously, but stopping prisoners from seeing their family in real life? They're still humans, no matter how much a-robbin' and a-killin' they've done. If you're going to treat them like shit, why not just execute them all instead for a nice big one-off fee? If you can get the chemicals, of course (it's nice to know that some companies have moral concerns for the welfare of prisoners).
I get that over there a private company can run a prison, but surely there are laws and government guidelines that stipulate the minimum rights that a prisoner has?
Since most users understand how to drag files to a browser and drop them to upload
Actually, this is something I find highly inconvenient. On a single-screen computer with a web browser running at full screen, it's actually quite a ballache to do this. You have to "un"-full-screen the browser window, re-size it so it doesn't fill the entire screen except for 1mm around the edges, drag it into a convenient position, open up a separate file explorer (or "finder") window, navigate to find the files you want, and then drag them across into the browser, hoping that you actually make it to the browser, and that you land on EXACTLY the right place, otherwise your gateway to the web will just decide to show you what's in one of your files rather than actually "use" it in the intended way...
...or you could use the Windows app which makes a "fancy" folder as part of the filesystem for convenience.
Do you know what impact Systemd has to the average user? Fat. Fuck. All.
This. Absolutely 100% this.
I thought "I wonder what this Systemd thing is that they're arguing about?". I googled and found an answer on a website called linux.com which I assume is authoritative on the subject. It said:
It's tempting to let personalities get in the way. As fun as it is to rant and rail and emit colorful epithets, it's beside the point. For lo so many years Linux was content with SysVInit and BSD init. Then came add-on service managers like the service and chkconfig commands. Which were supposed to make service management easier, but for me were just more things to learn that didn't make the tasks any easier, but rather more cluttery.
...and at that point I sighed and stopped reading. That attempt at an answer sums Linux up for you. You ask a question about a term, and the answer includes at least five more terms you need to look up. If you don't understand why this is a problem, you don't understand what the "average computer user" wants and/or needs.
Because no matter how hard people try to make Linux accessible, it isn't.
I'm certainly not a "n00B" when it comes to computers; at the same time I'm not a "power user" of any particular platform. I build my own PCs, I code (mainly in C#, but have learned C++ and a number of other languages). I'm probably as close as you'll get to someone "ripe for conversion".
But whenever I've given Linux a try - which I have done on more than one occasion - I've not had a good experience. The first time my graphics card wouldn't work, despite it being a pretty common Nvidia model. Another time it was my sound card that just wouldn't make any noise. A third time everything worked perfectly but with no network connection. Great. That's nul points for a basic installation on common hardware there.
And you know what? When I asked for help, the general reply was "cut & paste this code" or "type 'sudo [something]' in a terminal window". No-one explained WHY I should do that, they just offered random things to try. None of which worked, of course.
People want something that works and that they understand. My mother isn't an expert by a long way, but she knows how to investigate a number of problems, the vast majority of which are solved with a look at "control panel" and a couple of clicks. But ask her to start typing code into a window and she'll switch the damn thing off.
LINUX fans can't have it both ways. You can't tell me the system is "infinitely more flexible than Windows" AND say that "it's easy to use". No, you have an admittedly highly-customisable system that when something doesn't work quite as it should requires either a huge amount of learning, OR a huge amount of trust in the forum where you've just found the proposed solution to your problem is cutting and pasting half a page of code that you don't understand.
Also, every time I've said to a LINUX fan "So... I'd like to give LINUX a try," they immediately start boasting of the benefits of their favourite "flavour". The average user doesn't care about the differences between Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Dubuntu, Arch Ubuntu, Red Trilby, Arsecandle and Fetid Puma Goblin, they want "the best one". If you can't even tell someone who says they'll use a PC for gaming and browsing the internet which is "the best version" (without a three-hour discussion ending with six or seven choices narrowed down from the initial hundreds) then you'll never crack that magical "everyone" market.
Call me stupid (many have) but is there any reason why that couldn't be implemented today?
The more recent Mercedes SLK and SL models have "air scarf" as an option (to warm one's neck when the top is open) and I don't see any problem with the physics of what the hoax is suggesting. So... could this hoax actually turn into a real thing?
I'm with you on this. Everything I read about the MCAS system sounds like a fudge to save costs; safety took second place to profit.
It surprises me that I haven't seen any comments about the BOAC Comet. Back in the early days of jet flight, the country leading the world in aviation was Britain. Unfortunately, we didn't realise that square windows meant airframe weakness, and sadly it took two crashes to learn that lesson. Despite fixing that problem, most airlines cancelled their orders of the Comet, and America overtook Britain as the jet airliner manufacturer of choice.
I don't fly very often, but when I do, I make sure that I am NEVER flying on a Boeing aircraft. To answer why, let my introduce you to the Boeing 707, the model on which all your wonderful Boeing aircraft today are based.
Let me ask you this. Just over one thousand Boeing 707s were built. How many of them do you think ended up as flaming wrecks on the ground, or in an accident so bad that even the most optimistic shyster wouldn't want to repair them and get them flying again - or, in aviation parlance "Total Hull Loss".
So here's a question. Would YOU willingly fly on an aircraft knowing that there's a 1 in 5 chance that it will end its life not in sunny retirement, but smashed into little pieces on the ground? Would you fly on an aircraft that borrowed heavily from the design of an aircraft that had a 1 in 5 chance of ending its life killing everyone on board?
1) First up, in case law, it's now been established (to the best of my knowledge) that an IP number does not identify an individual. So if all the "evidence" they have is an i.p. address, then that should get thrown out straight away.
2) OK, so let's say they now get hold of a hard drive that the pirate dropped in my house (amazingly it turns out that it fell into my NAS). "Here your honour," they say, "here's lots of movies and music that was pirated!". Well actually, the law says that the burden of proof is on the accuser, so... PROVE that those movies are not on the hard drive legally. The doctrine of fair use allows an individual to make backup copies of movies/songs/whatever that they have purchased, so.... prove I have never legally purchased each movie you are claiming has been illegally shared. That's actually quite a difficult thing to do - so difficult in fact, that without access to every single purchase I have ever made, it's pretty much impossible.
3) Let's say that a judge buys the "IP" argument, so now the industry bod is showing how at the same time a movie was being downloaded, it was also being uploaded as well. So... how did you come via that data? To obtain such data you would have required access to data from my computer, and permission to access that has never been granted by me. That would mean an offence has been committed in collecting the "evidence", and thus it would be dismissed from the case.
Ultimately it seems to me that the data is more likely than not collected illegally, and even if something in the t&c says that I have granted permission for anyone to access my data on the offchance I might be doing something naughty, then it's not a fair condition under contract law, and would be thrown out. So they'd have to prove their case without any data from my PC... and that in itself is surely nigh-on impossible?
So.... has anyone ever tried using these defences - which, to me, seem pretty obvious and legally sound (obviously IANAL but I have a fairly good understanding of the legal process and have won cases without any legal assistance) - and if so, what has been the result? I know no-one on here is a lawyer, but where's the obvious thing I'm missing?
The pro-vaxxers constantly come off as a bunch of pharma shills that are actually ADDING to the ranks of the anti-vaxxers with their vitriolic rhetoric and constant claims that they are perfectly safe.
So you think everyone should lie and say they're not perfectly safe so they sound more believable? Or just make the claim less often so the anti-vaxxer crazies don't always have to listen to that terribly off-putting constant barrage of sense, insight, truth, logic and statistically, experimentally and theoretically provable science?
For me, eBay made the most interesting "deduction" about my interests.
I happened to be looking at silverware because for some reason I fancied buying some silver knives, until I realised how much they cost. From there I was led into silver coins, and saw a few I thought would look good in my display cabinet, so I decided to 'watch' the auctions. One of the coins happened to be German in origin, from the year 1939. The others were British; silver sixpences and suchlike.
But a few days later, I received an e-mail from eBay that said something along the lines of "Joe, here's our latest Nazi Memorabilia just for you!"
I just couldn't believe how quickly it had escalated. I half expected Simon Wiesenthal to turn up at my door...
You're absolutely right, and when I learn how to use my mod points, I'll mod your comment up!
It does seem these days that companies are obsessed about getting as many clicks or eyeballs as possible without actually considering who is clicking or... umm... eyeballing.
The only real reason for spending money on advertising is to sell something. Surely you can work out roughly how much money people have got to spend by looking at what they'll do to save money? So... 20 minutes watching ads for a £5 cinema ticket, plus the 10 minutes of 'admin' time to register and all that crap basically puts the audience for this app into the "no money", "on benefits" or "minimum wage" categories at best.
And which company's business model is to specifically target that demographic?
Absolutely - it's the regulations which are the "problem".
Are we getting close to flying taxis? Uhhh... We've had them for years; they're called small planes. There's plenty of services where you can book a plane to take you from the closest airport to you to pretty much anywhere else in the world (as long as there's an airport at which you can land).
Are getting close to de-regulating our skies so that an airbourne vehicle can take off and land at any point in any city rather than at specially designated zones (or "air ports"), significantly lowering the 'permission' barrier to operating a vehicle capable of flight, introducing a suitable insurance network and defining all the relevant laws that will be needed to allow such a meteoric change in transportation?
Here in the UK - on which much of your American system is based - we have varying levels of "being spoken to" by the police.
Often, the first thing that police will do is ask you down to the station to "assist with their enquiries". This is very much understood to mean that the person could well be a witness, an expert, or just someone who happens to be helpful to the case. If the police say that someone is "helping with their enquiries", it's usually because they either don't have the evidence to actually *point the finger* at someone, or because that person is genuinely helping them.
However, if the police think they've got something on you, they will arrest you and proceed to *interview you under caution*. This is very different to the above; if you're a journalist, you'll be smelling blood at this point.
So for us in the UK, being arrested implies a certain level of guilt, or belief of guilt by the police, even if that doesn't include handcuffs and a prison cell. With that in mind, he's quite right to be upset; the cops didn't even do the most basic of checks before they went from "helping us with enquiries" to "this dude is clearly guilty"
As a side note, plenty of people are arrested here everyday without having to be held captive; in fact most experienced criminals will "come gently", because they will usually be treated as a human being, no matter how bad their crime. Put up a fight on the other hand, and it's the handcuffs and the rough treatment.
Try raising a flock in your backyard, where they can scrounge for insects and worms, and you will get much more flavor.
I don't have a backyard, but maybe there's a gap in the market for you to exploit: hand-scrounged insect and worm egg seasoning powder. Just a thought.
don't look for this to be on aircraft anytime soon... that's my prediction.
My understanding of the phenomenon - which may well be wrong - is that it is already being used in acoustic dampening around aircraft engines, at least according to Wikipedia which says:
"Helmholtz resonators are also used to build acoustic liners for reducing the noise of aircraft engines, for example"
There's no way anyone is coming out alive of a Ford Focus crashing into a concrete barrier at top speed.
A head-on crash at 50mph into a concrete barrier can kill every occupant; on the other hand you can lose control at 155 and get out the car without a scratch. It very much depends on the specifics of the crash.
Cost-saving could easily be a factor here. My car, although limited to 155, is designed to go plenty faster; current tyres are good for 168 but higher speed ones aren't that much more. As far as I know, the most noticeable thing that AMG do to it compared to the 'base' Mercedes (apart from whacking on a great big supercharger) is the brakes. The back ones are a touch more expensive than standard Mercedes ones. The front ones though... jeez. £3000 per side for new discs I'm reliably told.
The difference between brakes designed for 112mph and 170mph is easily five times the price. Whether that's their MAIN reason for doing it, who knows? But there certainly will be cost savings if they only have to worry about stopping from a low (ish) speed...
According to Autocar, my 2002 AMG SL55 will hit 201mph. At 140 it was perfectly calm and stable, but I got scared and decided someone else could test the claim...
I don't know about America, but here in the UK it's quite common to need to overtake another vehicle. A good example - well known to those of us who grew up in the countryside - is having to overtake a tractor on a country road. From a procedural point of view, you need to back off from the tractor to be able to see more in front, make a decision about which section of road is good for overtaking, take into account not only traffic coming the other way, but also looking in your wing mirrors in case a motorbike or another car is also taking the same opportunity... and so on.
I'll step in a driverless car when you can prove to me that it can do all of the above safely every single time for, I dunno, 500 of these scenarios, all on different roads and in different conditions, from night time with black ice on the road, to a daytime blizzard, a mud-covered slippy country lane in the sunshine but just after a quick shower...
We're not 1 year away from driverless cars. We're not 5 years away from them. We're not even 50 years away from them. It'll NEVER happen, as long as their are non-driverless cars (or tractors, or anything else) on the road.
Unless you want to sit at 15mph and see a 20 minute country journey take almost an hour and a half?
Serious question: have they even TRIED any logic coding of overtaking rules? Or, if the car in front happens to break down (for instance), will the "amazing new driverless car" just sit there for hours, assuming it's in traffic?
Slashdot Mirror
Ha, that doesn't surprise me.
I have my own "theory" of the universe, and I'm sure that some clever physicist has a proper name for it, thought of it 80 years ago, and can explain it in symbols and equations, but I'm happy to be embarrassed by y'all so here goes.
I suggest that not just time but spacetime and everything - every field, all matter, everything - is quantised. I think of the universe like a picture on a monitor, with the "tick" of the universe being the framerate of the monitor. The game cycle of the universe is MUCH faster, but that's handled by a processor and code that 'feeds' the universe. So all fields ARE calculated as waves, and in-between ticks there are many, many game cycles applying these calculations. But when it's time to "tick", everything in the universe gets written into reality as it is right there, like the beam on an old monitor writing a single graphic frame.
It explains how light can have the properties of both particles and waves, and if you think of the universe like graphics code, you can see how there would be some optimisations and short cuts - e.g. discounting the gravity of a single atom, instead taking a bunch of a billion or so atoms in one go past a certain distance and so on.
It also explains how matter can spontaneously emit particles and things like that, because a 'click' at the right point, and taking into account the optimisations, one particle could separate from another because it's close enough to be in one calculation, but far away enough to be optimised in another.
Think back to the 8-bit days and how some coders did crazy cool things, like changing the colour of an 8x8 block on the Spectrum at the exact right time so that you could actually display more than the 2-colour-per-8-by-8 block limit (I'm thinking of a game called Extreme BTW). Imagine what cool things the coders of the universe have done!
This is all probably absolutely bollocks, but I was thinking about it all morning and where better to invite trolling, criticism, embarrassment and condescending insults than New Slashdot?
I decided to try my best to understand what's being proposed here. So I RTFA, then I read the linked articles, then I read the articles supporting those, essentially in an attempt to get to the underlying "proof" or "theory" on which this "new" proposal is built.
Absolutely every single one, without exception, ended up at a wikipedia page that explained [such and such] was a conjecture. No real-world experiments, no measurements, no ACTUAL mathematical theories that ACTUALLY proved anything, just absolute pure conjecture.
Conjecture is, of course, just another word for "guess". Sure, maybe a good guess, and one supported by logic, but a guess nonetheless.
So here's my question. For years, thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people have suggested that wormhole travel is possible, and many of them have "conjectured" that it involves the quantum entanglement of two black holes. Perhaps the smartest of them has even suggested that the method of travel resolves itself so there is no "entanglement overhead". But for sure the "conjecture" that wormhole travel is possible has got to be at least 50 years old.
So.... just because someone who calls themself a physicist makes exactly the same guess - still with absolutely no experimental nor mathematical proof (in the sense of resolvable equations) we're now supposed to say "Oh wow, well done, it must be true!"?
Can anyone with more knowledge than me explain (perhaps in layman's terms) what's actually NEW about this latest guess? And why it has any more weight than the physics of Star Trek, of Interstellar, or even of your average 1950s B Movie?
The headline seemed to suggest we actually met a completely new type of living, breathing human. When I found out that we're talking about an ancient species dead for millennia, I was really disappointed.
Yes, I'm weird. I RTFA.
Do you think Assange should be free to break any and all laws he chooses?
Exactly this.
I get that many people see him as some kind of hero, but you have to look at things like Wikileaks from a number of perspectives.
Is it interesting to know all about government secrets? Certainly.
What if revealing those secrets endanger people's lives? Hmmm. Are they all evil?
What if revealing those secrets upsets international diplomacy considerations?
That last question is the serious one. Wars have been fought for less that some of the things made public in various leaks.
Sometimes leaking is important, like knowing about shady agencies using dodgy tools to snoop on us. Other things, like diplomatic cables are probably best left un-leaked, even if they'd be interesting to read? It's a bit like taxes. If you ask people, pretty much 100% of them would say that if they had a choice they wouldn't pay taxes. But if no-one paid taxes, civilisation as we know it would collapse. What people want isn't necessarily what is best, even when people just want to know "the truth". Every country has spies, and they often do some pretty damn important work. Releasing documents that reveal what some spies have done (for instance) isn't of benefit to anyone, other than an interesting bit of reading material - and surely that's not a good enough reason to endanger lives. It's great that we all get to see governments' dirty laundry, but doing so isn't without consequences.
Thoughts?
This stops what once was an easy smuggling ability. A person who is trusted and in constant contact could transport contraband during an in person visit
If that's the REAL reason for doing this, let people visit, but have glass screens between them with a microphone and speaker each side. No physical contact nor chance of passing contraband over. Prisoners don't have to be searched, nor do the visitors; they could be in completely different security areas.
I'm all for punishment (although I believe prison should be about more than just punishment) but not allowing prisoners to see someone IRL is just... nasty. Hateful. Torturous. Sickening.
Jesus Christ, I appreciate that Americans take crime seriously, but stopping prisoners from seeing their family in real life? They're still humans, no matter how much a-robbin' and a-killin' they've done. If you're going to treat them like shit, why not just execute them all instead for a nice big one-off fee? If you can get the chemicals, of course (it's nice to know that some companies have moral concerns for the welfare of prisoners).
I get that over there a private company can run a prison, but surely there are laws and government guidelines that stipulate the minimum rights that a prisoner has?
Since most users understand how to drag files to a browser and drop them to upload
Actually, this is something I find highly inconvenient. On a single-screen computer with a web browser running at full screen, it's actually quite a ballache to do this. You have to "un"-full-screen the browser window, re-size it so it doesn't fill the entire screen except for 1mm around the edges, drag it into a convenient position, open up a separate file explorer (or "finder") window, navigate to find the files you want, and then drag them across into the browser, hoping that you actually make it to the browser, and that you land on EXACTLY the right place, otherwise your gateway to the web will just decide to show you what's in one of your files rather than actually "use" it in the intended way...
...or you could use the Windows app which makes a "fancy" folder as part of the filesystem for convenience.
Do you know what impact Systemd has to the average user? Fat. Fuck. All.
This. Absolutely 100% this.
I thought "I wonder what this Systemd thing is that they're arguing about?". I googled and found an answer on a website called linux.com which I assume is authoritative on the subject. It said:
It's tempting to let personalities get in the way. As fun as it is to rant and rail and emit colorful epithets, it's beside the point. For lo so many years Linux was content with SysVInit and BSD init. Then came add-on service managers like the service and chkconfig commands. Which were supposed to make service management easier, but for me were just more things to learn that didn't make the tasks any easier, but rather more cluttery.
...and at that point I sighed and stopped reading. That attempt at an answer sums Linux up for you. You ask a question about a term, and the answer includes at least five more terms you need to look up. If you don't understand why this is a problem, you don't understand what the "average computer user" wants and/or needs.
Because no matter how hard people try to make Linux accessible, it isn't.
I'm certainly not a "n00B" when it comes to computers; at the same time I'm not a "power user" of any particular platform. I build my own PCs, I code (mainly in C#, but have learned C++ and a number of other languages). I'm probably as close as you'll get to someone "ripe for conversion".
But whenever I've given Linux a try - which I have done on more than one occasion - I've not had a good experience. The first time my graphics card wouldn't work, despite it being a pretty common Nvidia model. Another time it was my sound card that just wouldn't make any noise. A third time everything worked perfectly but with no network connection. Great. That's nul points for a basic installation on common hardware there.
And you know what? When I asked for help, the general reply was "cut & paste this code" or "type 'sudo [something]' in a terminal window". No-one explained WHY I should do that, they just offered random things to try. None of which worked, of course.
People want something that works and that they understand. My mother isn't an expert by a long way, but she knows how to investigate a number of problems, the vast majority of which are solved with a look at "control panel" and a couple of clicks. But ask her to start typing code into a window and she'll switch the damn thing off.
LINUX fans can't have it both ways. You can't tell me the system is "infinitely more flexible than Windows" AND say that "it's easy to use". No, you have an admittedly highly-customisable system that when something doesn't work quite as it should requires either a huge amount of learning, OR a huge amount of trust in the forum where you've just found the proposed solution to your problem is cutting and pasting half a page of code that you don't understand.
Also, every time I've said to a LINUX fan "So... I'd like to give LINUX a try," they immediately start boasting of the benefits of their favourite "flavour". The average user doesn't care about the differences between Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Dubuntu, Arch Ubuntu, Red Trilby, Arsecandle and Fetid Puma Goblin, they want "the best one". If you can't even tell someone who says they'll use a PC for gaming and browsing the internet which is "the best version" (without a three-hour discussion ending with six or seven choices narrowed down from the initial hundreds) then you'll never crack that magical "everyone" market.
Thank BMW Car and Driver for this...
Call me stupid (many have) but is there any reason why that couldn't be implemented today?
The more recent Mercedes SLK and SL models have "air scarf" as an option (to warm one's neck when the top is open) and I don't see any problem with the physics of what the hoax is suggesting. So... could this hoax actually turn into a real thing?
The plane should have been a white board redesign
I'm with you on this. Everything I read about the MCAS system sounds like a fudge to save costs; safety took second place to profit.
It surprises me that I haven't seen any comments about the BOAC Comet. Back in the early days of jet flight, the country leading the world in aviation was Britain. Unfortunately, we didn't realise that square windows meant airframe weakness, and sadly it took two crashes to learn that lesson. Despite fixing that problem, most airlines cancelled their orders of the Comet, and America overtook Britain as the jet airliner manufacturer of choice.
I don't fly very often, but when I do, I make sure that I am NEVER flying on a Boeing aircraft. To answer why, let my introduce you to the Boeing 707, the model on which all your wonderful Boeing aircraft today are based.
Let me ask you this. Just over one thousand Boeing 707s were built. How many of them do you think ended up as flaming wrecks on the ground, or in an accident so bad that even the most optimistic shyster wouldn't want to repair them and get them flying again - or, in aviation parlance "Total Hull Loss".
10?
20?
50?
No. 173. Almost ONE IN FIVE. Don't believe me?
So here's a question. Would YOU willingly fly on an aircraft knowing that there's a 1 in 5 chance that it will end its life not in sunny retirement, but smashed into little pieces on the ground? Would you fly on an aircraft that borrowed heavily from the design of an aircraft that had a 1 in 5 chance of ending its life killing everyone on board?
Are you going to fly on a Boeing aircraft again?
I've often wondered about how I would react if some music industry person one day decided to take me to court for piracy. I've had a number of letters from Virgin, suggesting that my connection has been used to download such-and-such via BitTorrent. (note: no, it wasn't Natalie Portman Naked & Petrified Hot Grits Porn © Slashdot 2001). The letters are worded such that it suggests that the copyright owner has 'seen' my computer 'offering' the content via Bittorrent sharing. I'm not convinced that the industry peeps have a very good case - in fact a case at all - as otherwise they'd surely be doing more than asking my ISP to send a letter. So I thought about how they collect their "evidence", and what going to court actually means.
1) First up, in case law, it's now been established (to the best of my knowledge) that an IP number does not identify an individual. So if all the "evidence" they have is an i.p. address, then that should get thrown out straight away.
2) OK, so let's say they now get hold of a hard drive that the pirate dropped in my house (amazingly it turns out that it fell into my NAS). "Here your honour," they say, "here's lots of movies and music that was pirated!". Well actually, the law says that the burden of proof is on the accuser, so... PROVE that those movies are not on the hard drive legally. The doctrine of fair use allows an individual to make backup copies of movies/songs/whatever that they have purchased, so.... prove I have never legally purchased each movie you are claiming has been illegally shared. That's actually quite a difficult thing to do - so difficult in fact, that without access to every single purchase I have ever made, it's pretty much impossible.
3) Let's say that a judge buys the "IP" argument, so now the industry bod is showing how at the same time a movie was being downloaded, it was also being uploaded as well. So... how did you come via that data? To obtain such data you would have required access to data from my computer, and permission to access that has never been granted by me. That would mean an offence has been committed in collecting the "evidence", and thus it would be dismissed from the case.
Ultimately it seems to me that the data is more likely than not collected illegally, and even if something in the t&c says that I have granted permission for anyone to access my data on the offchance I might be doing something naughty, then it's not a fair condition under contract law, and would be thrown out. So they'd have to prove their case without any data from my PC... and that in itself is surely nigh-on impossible?
So.... has anyone ever tried using these defences - which, to me, seem pretty obvious and legally sound (obviously IANAL but I have a fairly good understanding of the legal process and have won cases without any legal assistance) - and if so, what has been the result? I know no-one on here is a lawyer, but where's the obvious thing I'm missing?
8chan wouldn't take down a post unless there was a very, very clear violation of law
Which is exactly how it should be, surely?
The pro-vaxxers constantly come off as a bunch of pharma shills that are actually ADDING to the ranks of the anti-vaxxers with their vitriolic rhetoric and constant claims that they are perfectly safe.
So you think everyone should lie and say they're not perfectly safe so they sound more believable? Or just make the claim less often so the anti-vaxxer crazies don't always have to listen to that terribly off-putting constant barrage of sense, insight, truth, logic and statistically, experimentally and theoretically provable science?
For me, eBay made the most interesting "deduction" about my interests.
I happened to be looking at silverware because for some reason I fancied buying some silver knives, until I realised how much they cost. From there I was led into silver coins, and saw a few I thought would look good in my display cabinet, so I decided to 'watch' the auctions. One of the coins happened to be German in origin, from the year 1939. The others were British; silver sixpences and suchlike.
But a few days later, I received an e-mail from eBay that said something along the lines of "Joe, here's our latest Nazi Memorabilia just for you!"
I just couldn't believe how quickly it had escalated. I half expected Simon Wiesenthal to turn up at my door...
You're absolutely right, and when I learn how to use my mod points, I'll mod your comment up!
It does seem these days that companies are obsessed about getting as many clicks or eyeballs as possible without actually considering who is clicking or... umm... eyeballing.
The only real reason for spending money on advertising is to sell something. Surely you can work out roughly how much money people have got to spend by looking at what they'll do to save money? So... 20 minutes watching ads for a £5 cinema ticket, plus the 10 minutes of 'admin' time to register and all that crap basically puts the audience for this app into the "no money", "on benefits" or "minimum wage" categories at best.
And which company's business model is to specifically target that demographic?
I have to agree.
When watching other people watching something became "a thing", it felt like the entire world was disappearing up its own arsehole.
Absolutely - it's the regulations which are the "problem".
Are we getting close to flying taxis? Uhhh... We've had them for years; they're called small planes. There's plenty of services where you can book a plane to take you from the closest airport to you to pretty much anywhere else in the world (as long as there's an airport at which you can land).
Are getting close to de-regulating our skies so that an airbourne vehicle can take off and land at any point in any city rather than at specially designated zones (or "air ports"), significantly lowering the 'permission' barrier to operating a vehicle capable of flight, introducing a suitable insurance network and defining all the relevant laws that will be needed to allow such a meteoric change in transportation?
Nope, try 50+ years rather than 5.
Here in the UK - on which much of your American system is based - we have varying levels of "being spoken to" by the police.
Often, the first thing that police will do is ask you down to the station to "assist with their enquiries". This is very much understood to mean that the person could well be a witness, an expert, or just someone who happens to be helpful to the case. If the police say that someone is "helping with their enquiries", it's usually because they either don't have the evidence to actually *point the finger* at someone, or because that person is genuinely helping them.
However, if the police think they've got something on you, they will arrest you and proceed to *interview you under caution*. This is very different to the above; if you're a journalist, you'll be smelling blood at this point.
So for us in the UK, being arrested implies a certain level of guilt, or belief of guilt by the police, even if that doesn't include handcuffs and a prison cell. With that in mind, he's quite right to be upset; the cops didn't even do the most basic of checks before they went from "helping us with enquiries" to "this dude is clearly guilty"
As a side note, plenty of people are arrested here everyday without having to be held captive; in fact most experienced criminals will "come gently", because they will usually be treated as a human being, no matter how bad their crime. Put up a fight on the other hand, and it's the handcuffs and the rough treatment.
Try raising a flock in your backyard, where they can scrounge for insects and worms, and you will get much more flavor.
I don't have a backyard, but maybe there's a gap in the market for you to exploit: hand-scrounged insect and worm egg seasoning powder. Just a thought.
don't look for this to be on aircraft anytime soon... that's my prediction.
My understanding of the phenomenon - which may well be wrong - is that it is already being used in acoustic dampening around aircraft engines, at least according to Wikipedia which says:
"Helmholtz resonators are also used to build acoustic liners for reducing the noise of aircraft engines, for example"
I'm sure the nuke crap would be far more sophisticated.
You sure about that?
The Nuclear Launch Code at US Minuteman Silos Was 00000000
There's no way anyone is coming out alive of a Ford Focus crashing into a concrete barrier at top speed.
A head-on crash at 50mph into a concrete barrier can kill every occupant; on the other hand you can lose control at 155 and get out the car without a scratch. It very much depends on the specifics of the crash.
Cost-saving could easily be a factor here. My car, although limited to 155, is designed to go plenty faster; current tyres are good for 168 but higher speed ones aren't that much more. As far as I know, the most noticeable thing that AMG do to it compared to the 'base' Mercedes (apart from whacking on a great big supercharger) is the brakes. The back ones are a touch more expensive than standard Mercedes ones. The front ones though... jeez. £3000 per side for new discs I'm reliably told.
The difference between brakes designed for 112mph and 170mph is easily five times the price. Whether that's their MAIN reason for doing it, who knows? But there certainly will be cost savings if they only have to worry about stopping from a low (ish) speed...
According to Autocar, my 2002 AMG SL55 will hit 201mph. At 140 it was perfectly calm and stable, but I got scared and decided someone else could test the claim...
I don't know about America, but here in the UK it's quite common to need to overtake another vehicle. A good example - well known to those of us who grew up in the countryside - is having to overtake a tractor on a country road. From a procedural point of view, you need to back off from the tractor to be able to see more in front, make a decision about which section of road is good for overtaking, take into account not only traffic coming the other way, but also looking in your wing mirrors in case a motorbike or another car is also taking the same opportunity... and so on. I'll step in a driverless car when you can prove to me that it can do all of the above safely every single time for, I dunno, 500 of these scenarios, all on different roads and in different conditions, from night time with black ice on the road, to a daytime blizzard, a mud-covered slippy country lane in the sunshine but just after a quick shower... We're not 1 year away from driverless cars. We're not 5 years away from them. We're not even 50 years away from them. It'll NEVER happen, as long as their are non-driverless cars (or tractors, or anything else) on the road. Unless you want to sit at 15mph and see a 20 minute country journey take almost an hour and a half? Serious question: have they even TRIED any logic coding of overtaking rules? Or, if the car in front happens to break down (for instance), will the "amazing new driverless car" just sit there for hours, assuming it's in traffic?