I'd appreciate hearing from Google employees about their impressions of Mr. Armstrong while he was an executive at Google. Is this a case of a competent upper level executive proving themselves too flawed to run a company as CEO?
At this point, I see little evidence that the U.S. citizenry has perceived the clues that are very obvious: free-market religion is destroying their country. Which also happens to be my country, alas.
Before jumping into iOS development in a very big way, I stuck a toe in the OSX waters by converting my old Toshiba notebook into a Hackintosh. It's been a few years. As I recall, it worked pretty well; but, would sometimes crash at inconvenient moments. My primary computer is now a three-year-old Macbook Pro. There are enough used Macs on the market to make Hackintosh less useful.
I briefly worked for a small grocery chain a few years ago in Bellingham, WA. IT personnel were of a much lower caste. Never mind that the whole operation would have almost immediately ceased to function if the technology folks took a walk en masse.
Grocery operations culture placed a very large value on antiquated rituals, rather than useful new industry approaches.
I recall how the clueless CEO and his direct reports would gather every few days in the BIG MEETING ROOM to strategize about next week's coupons -- coupons printed in the junk mail flyers that most folks probably just tossed directly into the recycle bin.
Sully may have been able to ditch successfully without it; but, William Langewiesche makes a strong case that the Airbus A320's fly-by-wire software was an important factor in the favorable outcome of the procedure. See http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/06/us_airways200906 and the expanded account in Langewiesche's excellent book, 'Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson.' I'm an instrument-rated private pilot who is in awe of both Captain Sullenberger and the Airbus engineering team.
And it's a stone's throw from Last Concert Cafe -- a great place for a quick lunch. Used to go there years ago before relocating to the Pacific NW.
http://www.lastconcert.com/
During flight training, pilots are drilled very frequently in doing essentially exactly that. The instructor will suddenly decrease the throttle, then announce "Okay, you just lost your engine. What are you going to do?" In my experience, this simulation will only happen when "at altitude" -- safely high enough to disallow any real risk in case the engine fails to spin up again.
Airline pilots are fortunate enough to have very realistic simulator training that can reproduce the situational context effectively. But, this isn't the case for primary flight training. So, no instructor is going to execute the above drill immediately after taking off when still low to the ground (the situation that led to Appleton's crash).
Classic stall/spin sequence. Given Appleton's apparently large amount of experience, it is sobering to pilots like myself to be reminded that even accomplished pilots can make fatal errors. As much as we drill on how to handle these scenarios, there is a powerful urge to return to the runway.
A few weeks after I passed my PP check ride twenty years ago, a high school boy practicing for his own check ride encountered engine problems with the rental airplane that I flew for most of my training. He could have landed the airplane in almost any direction (very large and empty farm fields all around). But, no, he tried to crank the airplane around in a 180 to get back to the runway from which he had just departed. Toast. Complete waste of a life.
Much of flying is about learning to overcome responses to crises that might be reasonable to land-based mammals, but are deadly when air born.
My mass transit agency client was quite happy to replace their mouldering Palm VIII devices with Archos 32 mini tablets. The former were deployed on a U.S. federally mandated passenger survey system that I created years ago. These inexpensive PDA successors have been a pleasure to use. Some of the older surveyors would probably appreciate the larger size of the Archos 43; however, transit agency budgets are tight these days.
Not having (or desiring... yet) a full-grown mass-consumer tablet, I cannot comment on whether current Android tablet offerings are iPad killers. For my own software development business reasons, I just want to keep having the option of buying and deploying Android mini-tablets for the kinds of business applications that made PDAs essential for many enterprises. This is a fruitful sector to mine.
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I'd appreciate hearing from Google employees about their impressions of Mr. Armstrong while he was an executive at Google. Is this a case of a competent upper level executive proving themselves too flawed to run a company as CEO?
At this point, I see little evidence that the U.S. citizenry has perceived the clues that are very obvious: free-market religion is destroying their country. Which also happens to be my country, alas.
Once we have universal healthcare provided by our government, this problem goes away. Perhaps in my children's lifetime.
Before jumping into iOS development in a very big way, I stuck a toe in the OSX waters by converting my old Toshiba notebook into a Hackintosh. It's been a few years. As I recall, it worked pretty well; but, would sometimes crash at inconvenient moments. My primary computer is now a three-year-old Macbook Pro. There are enough used Macs on the market to make Hackintosh less useful.
I briefly worked for a small grocery chain a few years ago in Bellingham, WA. IT personnel were of a much lower caste. Never mind that the whole operation would have almost immediately ceased to function if the technology folks took a walk en masse. Grocery operations culture placed a very large value on antiquated rituals, rather than useful new industry approaches. I recall how the clueless CEO and his direct reports would gather every few days in the BIG MEETING ROOM to strategize about next week's coupons -- coupons printed in the junk mail flyers that most folks probably just tossed directly into the recycle bin.
See: http://assets1.csc.com/innovation/downloads/LEFBriefing_MarkLogic_031512.pdf (slide 23)
My two cents:
Sully may have been able to ditch successfully without it; but, William Langewiesche makes a strong case that the Airbus A320's fly-by-wire software was an important factor in the favorable outcome of the procedure. See http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/06/us_airways200906 and the expanded account in Langewiesche's excellent book, 'Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson.' I'm an instrument-rated private pilot who is in awe of both Captain Sullenberger and the Airbus engineering team.
And it's a stone's throw from Last Concert Cafe -- a great place for a quick lunch. Used to go there years ago before relocating to the Pacific NW. http://www.lastconcert.com/
During flight training, pilots are drilled very frequently in doing essentially exactly that. The instructor will suddenly decrease the throttle, then announce "Okay, you just lost your engine. What are you going to do?" In my experience, this simulation will only happen when "at altitude" -- safely high enough to disallow any real risk in case the engine fails to spin up again. Airline pilots are fortunate enough to have very realistic simulator training that can reproduce the situational context effectively. But, this isn't the case for primary flight training. So, no instructor is going to execute the above drill immediately after taking off when still low to the ground (the situation that led to Appleton's crash).
Classic stall/spin sequence. Given Appleton's apparently large amount of experience, it is sobering to pilots like myself to be reminded that even accomplished pilots can make fatal errors. As much as we drill on how to handle these scenarios, there is a powerful urge to return to the runway. A few weeks after I passed my PP check ride twenty years ago, a high school boy practicing for his own check ride encountered engine problems with the rental airplane that I flew for most of my training. He could have landed the airplane in almost any direction (very large and empty farm fields all around). But, no, he tried to crank the airplane around in a 180 to get back to the runway from which he had just departed. Toast. Complete waste of a life. Much of flying is about learning to overcome responses to crises that might be reasonable to land-based mammals, but are deadly when air born.
My mass transit agency client was quite happy to replace their mouldering Palm VIII devices with Archos 32 mini tablets. The former were deployed on a U.S. federally mandated passenger survey system that I created years ago. These inexpensive PDA successors have been a pleasure to use. Some of the older surveyors would probably appreciate the larger size of the Archos 43; however, transit agency budgets are tight these days.
... yet) a full-grown mass-consumer tablet, I cannot comment on whether current Android tablet offerings are iPad killers. For my own software development business reasons, I just want to keep having the option of buying and deploying Android mini-tablets for the kinds of business applications that made PDAs essential for many enterprises. This is a fruitful sector to mine.
Not having (or desiring