I've been running Linux on the desktop since 2002. I used Fedora until this past summer when I bought a Dell Ubuntu system. My wife, who is not computer literate, and my 8 year old daughter have neither one had any problems. Occasionally a relative will buy some kids game at Best Buy as a gift for my daughter; but we've made it through with Wine for the most part, though not always. Occasionally we hit a website that doesn't work in Firefox, but they're getting fewer and farther between. Now that Flash is giving respect to Linux, our experience is very pleasant. Even those glitches provide a better experience than we had previously running Windows.
I don't worry about viruses, and I have all my geek-tools at hand, while my wife and daughter do just fine creating docs, sending email, surfing webkinz, etc. I've not found anything that I really want to do that I can't because I'm not running Windows.
But perhaps the best part about it is that I don't feel like I'm having to pay Microsoft to use my own computer. It's my data; I shouldn't need to pay them to access it.
You're dead on. In fact, I feel the same uneasiness as the original poster, and feel a similar awkwardness in situations where I'm alone with a female stranger. I completely understand the caution women exercise and I'm glad my wife is cautious and aware of her surroundings; but it is an odd feeling to recognize that the woman walking across the parking lot in front of me is keeping a close eye on me, or even hurrying her pace when simple chance has placed my car near hers.
I find myself walking to the side when following a woman who is by herself so that she can see me in her peripheral vision. I have slowed my pace before when the woman walking ahead of me toward the parking garage elevators was clearly keeping a wary eye on me, so that she could get the elevator car to herself.
I understand the caution, and I sympathize with it; but it almost makes me feel guilty or dirty when I haven't meant or done anything remotely wrong.
I agree. I've done well so far in my career, and my degree (English, not CS) has had little to do with it. I started as a computer operator working through school, and moved into systems administration, then later management.
When I moved into management at my current employer, I rewrote the requirements for the positions under me so that "equivalent experience" was allowed as a substitute for the degree. The degree does indeed show me that you can stick with something, sometimes under absurd circumstances or in ridiculous environments. It doesn't tell me that you know anything about systems administration. In fact, most of the people I work with who have CS degrees know little or nothing about what I do.
Equivalent experience shows me the same ability to stick it out; but with the added benefit of some expected level of skill in this particular arena.
So, my advice is to go ahead and apply, even for those positions that ask for a degree. Some of them may have more flexibility than they let on, and if you have the skills, you'll have an advantage over your job competitors.
I wonder also what the impact would be of collecting that ag waste instead of tilling it back into the land.
Although this whole thing seems awfully fishy to me, there are others who talk about using ag waste of particular types to produce oil. I wonder what the impact to the fertility of the land would be.
Troll away, if you feel like it. I couldn't care less.
The irony is that of you demonizing the opposition for being a demonizing bunch of whiners. It's a bit of a pot and kettle situation that you didn't appear to get. And it's the root of what's tearing our country apart. It's a zero sum game. Both parties need to start serving the majority of our populous, and stop serving their narrow bases.
The irony of your post is really amazing, if unfortunately typical.
Both parties demonize eachother with abandon. The bases of our 2 party system would be equally responsible for the failure of this union. The tragedy of it is that neither party base represents the people of this nation; but they foment enough anger and unrest that otherwise reasonable people end up in shouting matches or flamewars.
Roughly half of this country is Republican and roughly half is Democratic. All of them are citizens of equal standing in this country, and deserve to have their opinions heard. Neither party has more right than the other to govern in the manner they prefer. They are both responsible for serving the other half of the populous as well as their own. This notion that "My country would be better without all of you [liberal/conservative] nutbags" is not only false but willfully destructive to our union. Our nation consists primarily of people who don't classify themselves as liberal/Democrat or conservative/Republican until somebody forces that choice upon them. Ultimately, it's the baggage that those choices impose that will cause us our greatest difficulty, this notion that it's us versus them in our own country.
Liberals and Democrats don't have any corner on that market by a long shot. Your post simply typifies the exact same behavior you're complaining about.
Us and them. It will be the downfall of our nation.
As mentioned by others, a flight plan is not required for VFR flight. There are reasons for this (and yes, they are debatable); but it is generally considered that even if they aren't required, they are wise. Statistically, you are found faster if you have one on file. The authorities are pretty good about tracking the overdue planes and initiating search and rescue. As somebody else mentioned, it is a good idea to at least check in with a family member before leaving and again when arriving. I call it, filing with Dad.
If you're not on a cross-country flight, a flight plan is not much use.
As for beacons, every airplane has an ELT (emergency locator transmitter) that sends a signal on 121.5Mhz. Satellites listen for that signal and are monitored by (I believe) the Air Force, which initiates search and rescue. The ELT is activated by an impact of 5 g's. Transient g-loads which build and dissipate very rapidly can inadvertently activate them at times. It's a dubious honor to have set one off with a hard landing. On the other hand, it's possible for the ELT to be damaged in an accident, or to lose the antenna for it in an accident, etc.
Mr. Fosset was a smart man, and obviously had filled fellow pilots/friends in on his intentions. They alerted search and rescue a few short hours after he intended to return. So, to say that his lack of a flight plan was a "huge fuckup" is perhaps a bit harsh. All the search and rescue efforts that would have been activated by the overdue flight plan are in fact, activated.
I wish him well. That's a hostile environment he is in.
This whole "hybrids aren't as good as people say they are" thing is getting tiresome, isn't it?
First, let's concede that they're not as good as the real patriots say. They won't save the world, or cook your breakfast, or supplant the SUV.
Second, let's acknowledge that their benefits are real. My '03 Civic Hybrid averages about 43 mpg in town (start/stop, not many traffic jams; but lots of lights and I don't pay attention to how I drive it) and gets on average about 48 on the highway. In real terms, I fill it less than half as often as I used to fill my old Nissan Altima in the same driving conditions. I know some of you are going trot out the "not equal comparison" thing; but there is no equal comparison. Even civic-to-hybrid-civic will draw complaints about the difference of their construction, etc.
I get twice the mileage with my hybrid that I historically got with any of my previous cars.
You like the VW Golf instead? Great. I'm happy for you. You like your Accord? Good for you. Love your Hummer H2? Excellent. I don't begrudge you a thing, and I find the people who do to be childish. But don't begrudge me either.
I live in Northeast Kansas and I drive to Paducah Kentucky on a tank of gas. Tucumcari New Mexico on a tank of gas (these aren't computations, they're actual experience). Oklahoma City? Half a tank of gas. Admittedly, it was downhill and downwind; but I once drove from Espanola, NM to El Dorado, KS on a tank of gas. Had 1.5 gallons left in my 13.4 gallon tank. That's about 640 miles.
I have 80k miles on the car without a lick of trouble.
I don't care what the sticker says. I pay a lot less at the pump. No matter how you slice it, my hybrid is the real deal. Do whatever you want with numbers, arguments etc. I don't care. My car gets what it gets.
Okay, so let's not beat up on him too awful much. There are smaller GA aircraft that have rear windows; but most larger GA and commercial aircraft do not. I suspect that a lack of specificity may be the big issue here.
As for seeing behind him, it's not that big of a mystery. He sees the piece in front of him and alerts Center. Center then pays closer attention to him and sees radar targets around him from other pieces.
This is not to say that the article couldn't be wrong or full of it; but is either the article or the parent comment worth everybody jumping on a pile and punching?
On experimental aircraft, yes. On certified aircraft, no.
For now.
The FAA's certification bureaucracy is legendary; but is navigable. They can get STCs (Supplemental Type Certificates) for different models of aircraft, and many others can probably get 337's (Major Repair and/or Major Alteration Authorization) for theirs.
I think the real boon here is just getting one to market. Somebody will build a better one, with internal flash storage instead of an i-pod port. Especially for new GA aircraft with the Garmin and Chelton type glass cockpit displays, this kind of device is a no-brainer. It's a welcome arrival.
Really, that's looking a gift horse in the mouth. There is no regulatory requirement for flight data recorders on small aircraft. For the most part, the NTSB guys do a great job of analyzing needle positions, light filaments, structural deformation, etc. to determine the causes of crashes and get a good idea of the parameters the airplane was operating under when it went in.
However, the new generation of small planes now includes glass cockpits and carbon-fibre materials. They make accident investigation much harder. I had the opportunity to speak with Greg Feith about this at length. Greg was the investigator in charge for the Valu-Jet crash, and worked on TWA800, and a number of other high profile accidents. He said it makes it much more difficult to investigate these airplanes when there are fewer instruments to analyze and a "plastic airframe" as he called it.
I'm glad to see it come out, and I will be interested to see the future development of this and the others that are sure to follow. I'd prefer that somebody was able to tell what happened if I ever died in an accident. The cockpit voice recorder function will also be a boon. All radio transmissions to and from ATC are recorded now; but you don't get to hear what's being said in the airplane. That is good information and could be a great educational tool for the rest of the flying community.
Whether or not the i-pod is functional after the crash, as long as data can be extracted from the flash drive, we're golden.
There are potentially huge safety benefits to this.
I'm more concerned about the call from the uneducated user who simply says they can't get to anything on the network, only to find that a self-approved techie has placed an unauthorized WAP on the lan and is handing out DHCP addresses that go nowhere. He will probably effect more people than just his immediate co-workers, but IT will get the blame for the network not working.
You should definitely be involved in meetings surrounding the technology that touches your projects or areas that you "have a large stake in" as you put it. And your description of a decentralized IT department sounds great. But...
It's not scalable and becomes unsupportable very quickly. Application A(God, why would anybody write it this way) requires multicast and isn't working right because your "keep the lights on" guys have prevented multicast for good reason. It's obvious to us because we've set the question up; but it manifests itself in the real world as "Application A isn't working". Eventually it would get sorted out; but it's much quicker and easier with centralized IT.
Application B transfers and manages financial data, and is therefore in-scope for Sarbanes-Oxley. An audit control must be written for it, approved, complied with, tested, and be proven to have been tested. But who is responsible for it? An auditor would really look down on a decentralized model. How does the company manage their in-scope systems if there is no defined group responsible for IT controls? Who would write the control? Would it be consistent with and compliant with other IT controls? The controls are complex and are a lot like writing fault-tolerant software. You have to write in the foreseeable special cases. There are a lot of interdependencies, and conflicts in the written controls are not uncommon.
It sucks and it shouldn't be that way; but there it is.
Also, there are real security concerns in the decentralized approach. Application C is using a downlevel version of openssl that is vulnerable. Application D is running on an old version of Apache/PHP that is vulnerable, etc.
All of these things can be fixed in your decentralized model. The intrastructure teams should be included in meetings on the deployment of new applications. Somebody should be in charge of IT audit controls: how they're written, applied and tested. Somebody should be in charge of security.
Now it's starting to sound a lot more like a centralized IT department.
I absolutely agree that you will not prevent the "Shadow IT" effect that the article describes, and I totally agree that the solution is to make the tools they want to use acceptable. Don't ban IM, find a way to control it, etc. But it MUST be done in a centralized IT environment if your business is of any real size. Otherwise, it's unsupportable, unexplainable, and indefensible to auditors.
Many thanks to the north east and north west! So while the people in a state like Kansas focus all their attention on debating whether or not evolution should be taught in science classes, the people in states like Maine, Vermont, and Washington are defending their freedoms.
So where does Pennsylvania fit in there?
As a whole, the people of Kansas typically have a lower IQ than those from other states.
Patently absurd. For what it's worth, I've seen a few articles trying to relate states' I.Q.s to voting records and/or political leanings, and it's all very speculative. I've linked a couple of them below. The first has been largely acknowledged as a fabrication, the second attempts to accomplish what the first promised. Both are operating shaky ground in terms of correlation and causation, as are you my friend.
So, defend yourself. Let's see how you back up your assertions.
Re:Definitely has uses but..
on
Oracle Linux?
·
· Score: 1
Absolutely. Also factor in that with RedHat, you're always nervous applying OS patches/updates and what that will do to Oracle. With an OracleOS, you would feel more comfortable.
I think that Oracle is on to something here, and would welcome it. I already have to support multiple versions each of AIX/Solaris/SuSE/RedHat/Fedora/Trustix/Debian/Open BSD/CentOS/etc. What's one more, especially if it doesn't require a great deal of attention?
Re:We've defined the wrong enemy...
on
iPods at War
·
· Score: 1
For the most part, I wasn't intending my post to be a rebuttal of or counter-argument to your post.
For example, regarding your comparison to the Roman Empire, I don't believe that your particular comparison was wrong, only that such comparisons miss the bigger truth which is as I said, the tendency for holding your position to become more important than executing the position itself. It's something we see in other microcosms as well, particularly in business and national politics. Bush himself is a perfect example. I think he has spent most of his presidency more interested in being the president than in doing the job of president.
My thoughts on the war on terror were admittedly not very well expounded. While I agree that it's the cover story for Iraq, I think it's one that some of the administration truthfully believed in. There were myriad motivations for the invasion. Wolfowitz appears to have believed that we were actually spreading freedom and democracy. It's naive to the point of being irresponsible; but I believe he really thought it was true. Powell believed we were defending our country. His evidence was fabricated by Iran, and its veracity was misrepresented to him; but I believe that he was sincere. Others may have thought that we could "scare the region straight" with an overwhelming military defeat of the Iraqis. Again, it's naive at best. And finally, money seems to be a perennial motivation for everything that happens. The fact that all of those motivations have been publicly rolled under the heading of "War on Terror" is a tribute to their spinsters. I make use of that moniker simply as a way to start the debate from one of their own positions. The very notion of a war on terror strikes me as impractical at best and criminal folly at worst. A war on Al Queda I could have supported; but on terror? It's a nice sentiment, but nothing achievable.
I know my sentiments toward the voters are rather harsh; but I think they're spot-on. We've been lazy/jaded/resigned long enough that we're not intellectually measuring our candidates. You and I do; but it's obvious that most of the public doesn't. This causes all levels of government to fill with people who can argue soundbite policies and positions that have little to do with the practical working of the offices they hold. When the race for Insurance Commissioner is a referendum on abortion, your electorate is not thinking hard enough but is rather indulging their passions. Any cursory examination of Bush's history exposes his weaknesses; but half our country didn't want to hear of it. He talked tough and religious and conservative, so they chose him. While I don't feel personally responsible for our feckless voting habits, I have to concede that they are unfortunately my people. They are as much citizens as I am. I think it's the responsibility of people like you and me to challenge the less discriminating voters to be smarter and more informed. So I'm taking them to task... and admittedly blowing off a bit of steam.:-)
As I said, overall, I didn't disagree with you as much as I had a slightly different take on things. It was good to get a reasoned response. I appreciate that.
We've defined the wrong enemy...
on
iPods at War
·
· Score: 1
We've defined the enemy as "terrorism". This is the "War on Terror"; but terrorism is a tactic, not a group. No matter how many "terrorists" you kill, you do not kill terrorism. Indeed, when the fighting drags on as it has, and the inevitable atrocities that come with such situations occur, and the inevitable innocents killed collaterally, you begin to recruit more terrorists than you kill.
You hear a great many comparisons these days between the U.S. and the Roman Empire. They're understandable; but I find them all just a bit off. We have all seen this before in many facets of life. It is at its heart, competition. We are failing because we are becoming more interested in our position as a leader than we are in leading.
We had a great deal of support from all regions of the world after 9/11. If we had been good leaders, we'd have declared war on Al Queda, and fought them relentlessly. The world would have respected that. The middle-east would have respected that. We'd have shown the world that we were strong, reasoned, and purposeful.
Instead, we picked terrorism as a broader target, and a third party Iraq as a specific. We invaded a country that was not a threat to us. We used evidence we knew was shaky to make the case for doing so. Because terrorism was more than just killing, we dreamed up more justifications than preservation. We did it for all manner of reasons: defense, liberty, humanity, etc. We talked ourselves into a position of wondering "why not invade Iraq?".
But the selfishness and hubris that corrupt our politics now also ensure that nothing will stay secret forever. Somebody who knows the truth will not be able to keep his/her mouth shut. And so we learn more and more about meetings where prococations are planned, where contradictory evidence is ignored, and where policy defines reality rather than the opposite.
It was a failure of leadership. And, we have ourselves as citizens to blame for not being more questioning of those who would propose to hold our high offices. We are lazy voters. We are uninformed voters. We surrender to our whims and our passions, at the expense of study and reason.
The thing that strikes me about such a law is that instead of compelling those in charge of our national security to be smarter, it compels the rest of us to be ignorant.
My brother was doing some welding in a new strip mall in the L.A. area about ten years ago, and noted that it being built with wood timbers. When he asked about it, the contractor told him that wood beams that were properly treated would take longer to break during a fire than it would take for a steel beam to deform and fall.
This is obviously anecdotal and third hand; but it also isn't the first time I've heard that.
The idea of winning a war on terrorism is ridiculous. Terrorism is a tactic. It may be a desparate and unreliable tactic; but it is indeed a tactic. Any people will resort to terrorism should preferred methods for achieving their goals fail. I like to think (I would in fact hope) that if the U.S. were invaded and our government fell, that we would also engage in terrorism against our invaders.
Understand that I'm not trying to justify or defend the "insurgents" in Iraq, or the Taliban or any other of these current terrorist groups. I'm simply saying that you can't defeat terrorism any more than you can defeat war itself. They are means to ends, processes, not individual targets.
It's really the same thing we face in airplanes... cockpit resource management.
Even if you did have the route planned, things change. Roads are under construction, traffic on heavily travelled sections backs up making alternate routes more desirable. The next thing you know, you have your head down programming the GPS and not looking outside.
We've been fighting this in aviation for years. You've entered your route and approach information, then air traffic control hands you an ammended routing. So you end up concentrating on the GPS while your heading and altitude wander off. Even if you're using an autopilot you lose some situational awareness (not to mention that many autopilots will hold headings and track airways but not hold altitudes). It has nothing to do with intelligence or aptitude. It's a matter of workload management.
In the car it can be even harder. Just about the time you're trying to reprogram the GPS your kids will want their dvd restarted or the stereo tuned, or your cell phone will ring, etc.
This is really not a surprise. It just makes sense. Anything that takes your attention, takes it away from your driving.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been running Linux on the desktop since 2002. I used Fedora until this past summer when I bought a Dell Ubuntu system. My wife, who is not computer literate, and my 8 year old daughter have neither one had any problems. Occasionally a relative will buy some kids game at Best Buy as a gift for my daughter; but we've made it through with Wine for the most part, though not always. Occasionally we hit a website that doesn't work in Firefox, but they're getting fewer and farther between. Now that Flash is giving respect to Linux, our experience is very pleasant. Even those glitches provide a better experience than we had previously running Windows.
I don't worry about viruses, and I have all my geek-tools at hand, while my wife and daughter do just fine creating docs, sending email, surfing webkinz, etc. I've not found anything that I really want to do that I can't because I'm not running Windows.
But perhaps the best part about it is that I don't feel like I'm having to pay Microsoft to use my own computer. It's my data; I shouldn't need to pay them to access it.
You're dead on. In fact, I feel the same uneasiness as the original poster, and feel a similar awkwardness in situations where I'm alone with a female stranger. I completely understand the caution women exercise and I'm glad my wife is cautious and aware of her surroundings; but it is an odd feeling to recognize that the woman walking across the parking lot in front of me is keeping a close eye on me, or even hurrying her pace when simple chance has placed my car near hers.
I find myself walking to the side when following a woman who is by herself so that she can see me in her peripheral vision. I have slowed my pace before when the woman walking ahead of me toward the parking garage elevators was clearly keeping a wary eye on me, so that she could get the elevator car to herself.
I understand the caution, and I sympathize with it; but it almost makes me feel guilty or dirty when I haven't meant or done anything remotely wrong.
It's a tough issue.
I agree. I've done well so far in my career, and my degree (English, not CS) has had little to do with it. I started as a computer operator working through school, and moved into systems administration, then later management.
When I moved into management at my current employer, I rewrote the requirements for the positions under me so that "equivalent experience" was allowed as a substitute for the degree. The degree does indeed show me that you can stick with something, sometimes under absurd circumstances or in ridiculous environments. It doesn't tell me that you know anything about systems administration. In fact, most of the people I work with who have CS degrees know little or nothing about what I do.
Equivalent experience shows me the same ability to stick it out; but with the added benefit of some expected level of skill in this particular arena.
So, my advice is to go ahead and apply, even for those positions that ask for a degree. Some of them may have more flexibility than they let on, and if you have the skills, you'll have an advantage over your job competitors.
I wonder also what the impact would be of collecting that ag waste instead of tilling it back into the land.
Although this whole thing seems awfully fishy to me, there are others who talk about using ag waste of particular types to produce oil. I wonder what the impact to the fertility of the land would be.
Troll away, if you feel like it. I couldn't care less.
The irony is that of you demonizing the opposition for being a demonizing bunch of whiners. It's a bit of a pot and kettle situation that you didn't appear to get. And it's the root of what's tearing our country apart. It's a zero sum game. Both parties need to start serving the majority of our populous, and stop serving their narrow bases.
"Moron. If you can't tell..."
I've been spending time on the aggregate sites and found I was missing Slashdot, so today I came back.
Feels like home already!
The irony of your post is really amazing, if unfortunately typical.
Both parties demonize eachother with abandon. The bases of our 2 party system would be equally responsible for the failure of this union. The tragedy of it is that neither party base represents the people of this nation; but they foment enough anger and unrest that otherwise reasonable people end up in shouting matches or flamewars.
Roughly half of this country is Republican and roughly half is Democratic. All of them are citizens of equal standing in this country, and deserve to have their opinions heard. Neither party has more right than the other to govern in the manner they prefer. They are both responsible for serving the other half of the populous as well as their own. This notion that "My country would be better without all of you [liberal/conservative] nutbags" is not only false but willfully destructive to our union. Our nation consists primarily of people who don't classify themselves as liberal/Democrat or conservative/Republican until somebody forces that choice upon them. Ultimately, it's the baggage that those choices impose that will cause us our greatest difficulty, this notion that it's us versus them in our own country.
Liberals and Democrats don't have any corner on that market by a long shot. Your post simply typifies the exact same behavior you're complaining about.
Us and them. It will be the downfall of our nation.
A British company has designed an ego-friendly airliner that could make a trip from London to Sydney in under five hours.
There. Fixed that for you.
As mentioned by others, a flight plan is not required for VFR flight. There are reasons for this (and yes, they are debatable); but it is generally considered that even if they aren't required, they are wise. Statistically, you are found faster if you have one on file. The authorities are pretty good about tracking the overdue planes and initiating search and rescue. As somebody else mentioned, it is a good idea to at least check in with a family member before leaving and again when arriving. I call it, filing with Dad.
If you're not on a cross-country flight, a flight plan is not much use.
As for beacons, every airplane has an ELT (emergency locator transmitter) that sends a signal on 121.5Mhz. Satellites listen for that signal and are monitored by (I believe) the Air Force, which initiates search and rescue. The ELT is activated by an impact of 5 g's. Transient g-loads which build and dissipate very rapidly can inadvertently activate them at times. It's a dubious honor to have set one off with a hard landing. On the other hand, it's possible for the ELT to be damaged in an accident, or to lose the antenna for it in an accident, etc.
Mr. Fosset was a smart man, and obviously had filled fellow pilots/friends in on his intentions. They alerted search and rescue a few short hours after he intended to return. So, to say that his lack of a flight plan was a "huge fuckup" is perhaps a bit harsh. All the search and rescue efforts that would have been activated by the overdue flight plan are in fact, activated.
I wish him well. That's a hostile environment he is in.
This whole "hybrids aren't as good as people say they are" thing is getting tiresome, isn't it?
First, let's concede that they're not as good as the real patriots say. They won't save the world, or cook your breakfast, or supplant the SUV.
Second, let's acknowledge that their benefits are real. My '03 Civic Hybrid averages about 43 mpg in town (start/stop, not many traffic jams; but lots of lights and I don't pay attention to how I drive it) and gets on average about 48 on the highway. In real terms, I fill it less than half as often as I used to fill my old Nissan Altima in the same driving conditions. I know some of you are going trot out the "not equal comparison" thing; but there is no equal comparison. Even civic-to-hybrid-civic will draw complaints about the difference of their construction, etc.
I get twice the mileage with my hybrid that I historically got with any of my previous cars.
You like the VW Golf instead? Great. I'm happy for you. You like your Accord? Good for you. Love your Hummer H2? Excellent. I don't begrudge you a thing, and I find the people who do to be childish. But don't begrudge me either.
I live in Northeast Kansas and I drive to Paducah Kentucky on a tank of gas. Tucumcari New Mexico on a tank of gas (these aren't computations, they're actual experience). Oklahoma City? Half a tank of gas. Admittedly, it was downhill and downwind; but I once drove from Espanola, NM to El Dorado, KS on a tank of gas. Had 1.5 gallons left in my 13.4 gallon tank. That's about 640 miles.
I have 80k miles on the car without a lick of trouble.
I don't care what the sticker says. I pay a lot less at the pump. No matter how you slice it, my hybrid is the real deal. Do whatever you want with numbers, arguments etc. I don't care. My car gets what it gets.
Okay, so let's not beat up on him too awful much. There are smaller GA aircraft that have rear windows; but most larger GA and commercial aircraft do not. I suspect that a lack of specificity may be the big issue here.
As for seeing behind him, it's not that big of a mystery. He sees the piece in front of him and alerts Center. Center then pays closer attention to him and sees radar targets around him from other pieces.
This is not to say that the article couldn't be wrong or full of it; but is either the article or the parent comment worth everybody jumping on a pile and punching?
On experimental aircraft, yes. On certified aircraft, no.
For now.
The FAA's certification bureaucracy is legendary; but is navigable. They can get STCs (Supplemental Type Certificates) for different models of aircraft, and many others can probably get 337's (Major Repair and/or Major Alteration Authorization) for theirs.
I think the real boon here is just getting one to market. Somebody will build a better one, with internal flash storage instead of an i-pod port. Especially for new GA aircraft with the Garmin and Chelton type glass cockpit displays, this kind of device is a no-brainer. It's a welcome arrival.
Really, that's looking a gift horse in the mouth. There is no regulatory requirement for flight data recorders on small aircraft. For the most part, the NTSB guys do a great job of analyzing needle positions, light filaments, structural deformation, etc. to determine the causes of crashes and get a good idea of the parameters the airplane was operating under when it went in.
However, the new generation of small planes now includes glass cockpits and carbon-fibre materials. They make accident investigation much harder. I had the opportunity to speak with Greg Feith about this at length. Greg was the investigator in charge for the Valu-Jet crash, and worked on TWA800, and a number of other high profile accidents. He said it makes it much more difficult to investigate these airplanes when there are fewer instruments to analyze and a "plastic airframe" as he called it.
I'm glad to see it come out, and I will be interested to see the future development of this and the others that are sure to follow. I'd prefer that somebody was able to tell what happened if I ever died in an accident. The cockpit voice recorder function will also be a boon. All radio transmissions to and from ATC are recorded now; but you don't get to hear what's being said in the airplane. That is good information and could be a great educational tool for the rest of the flying community.
Whether or not the i-pod is functional after the crash, as long as data can be extracted from the flash drive, we're golden.
There are potentially huge safety benefits to this.
I'm more concerned about the call from the uneducated user who simply says they can't get to anything on the network, only to find that a self-approved techie has placed an unauthorized WAP on the lan and is handing out DHCP addresses that go nowhere. He will probably effect more people than just his immediate co-workers, but IT will get the blame for the network not working.
You should definitely be involved in meetings surrounding the technology that touches your projects or areas that you "have a large stake in" as you put it. And your description of a decentralized IT department sounds great. But...
It's not scalable and becomes unsupportable very quickly. Application A(God, why would anybody write it this way) requires multicast and isn't working right because your "keep the lights on" guys have prevented multicast for good reason. It's obvious to us because we've set the question up; but it manifests itself in the real world as "Application A isn't working". Eventually it would get sorted out; but it's much quicker and easier with centralized IT.
Application B transfers and manages financial data, and is therefore in-scope for Sarbanes-Oxley. An audit control must be written for it, approved, complied with, tested, and be proven to have been tested. But who is responsible for it? An auditor would really look down on a decentralized model. How does the company manage their in-scope systems if there is no defined group responsible for IT controls? Who would write the control? Would it be consistent with and compliant with other IT controls? The controls are complex and are a lot like writing fault-tolerant software. You have to write in the foreseeable special cases. There are a lot of interdependencies, and conflicts in the written controls are not uncommon.
It sucks and it shouldn't be that way; but there it is.
Also, there are real security concerns in the decentralized approach. Application C is using a downlevel version of openssl that is vulnerable. Application D is running on an old version of Apache/PHP that is vulnerable, etc.
All of these things can be fixed in your decentralized model. The intrastructure teams should be included in meetings on the deployment of new applications. Somebody should be in charge of IT audit controls: how they're written, applied and tested. Somebody should be in charge of security.
Now it's starting to sound a lot more like a centralized IT department.
I absolutely agree that you will not prevent the "Shadow IT" effect that the article describes, and I totally agree that the solution is to make the tools they want to use acceptable. Don't ban IM, find a way to control it, etc. But it MUST be done in a centralized IT environment if your business is of any real size. Otherwise, it's unsupportable, unexplainable, and indefensible to auditors.
Many thanks to the north east and north west!
a te/
So while the people in a state like Kansas focus all their attention on debating whether or not evolution should be taught in science classes, the people in states like Maine, Vermont, and Washington are defending their freedoms.
So where does Pennsylvania fit in there?
As a whole, the people of Kansas typically have a lower IQ than those from other states.
Patently absurd. For what it's worth, I've seen a few articles trying to relate states' I.Q.s to voting records and/or political leanings, and it's all very speculative. I've linked a couple of them below. The first has been largely acknowledged as a fabrication, the second attempts to accomplish what the first promised. Both are operating shaky ground in terms of correlation and causation, as are you my friend.
So, defend yourself. Let's see how you back up your assertions.
http://chrisevans3d.com/files/iq.htm
http://www.zombietime.com/iq_of_2004_voters_by_st
Absolutely. Also factor in that with RedHat, you're always nervous applying OS patches/updates and what that will do to Oracle. With an OracleOS, you would feel more comfortable.
n BSD/CentOS/etc. What's one more, especially if it doesn't require a great deal of attention?
I think that Oracle is on to something here, and would welcome it. I already have to support multiple versions each of AIX/Solaris/SuSE/RedHat/Fedora/Trustix/Debian/Ope
For the most part, I wasn't intending my post to be a rebuttal of or counter-argument to your post.
:-)
For example, regarding your comparison to the Roman Empire, I don't believe that your particular comparison was wrong, only that such comparisons miss the bigger truth which is as I said, the tendency for holding your position to become more important than executing the position itself. It's something we see in other microcosms as well, particularly in business and national politics. Bush himself is a perfect example. I think he has spent most of his presidency more interested in being the president than in doing the job of president.
My thoughts on the war on terror were admittedly not very well expounded. While I agree that it's the cover story for Iraq, I think it's one that some of the administration truthfully believed in. There were myriad motivations for the invasion. Wolfowitz appears to have believed that we were actually spreading freedom and democracy. It's naive to the point of being irresponsible; but I believe he really thought it was true. Powell believed we were defending our country. His evidence was fabricated by Iran, and its veracity was misrepresented to him; but I believe that he was sincere. Others may have thought that we could "scare the region straight" with an overwhelming military defeat of the Iraqis. Again, it's naive at best. And finally, money seems to be a perennial motivation for everything that happens. The fact that all of those motivations have been publicly rolled under the heading of "War on Terror" is a tribute to their spinsters. I make use of that moniker simply as a way to start the debate from one of their own positions. The very notion of a war on terror strikes me as impractical at best and criminal folly at worst. A war on Al Queda I could have supported; but on terror? It's a nice sentiment, but nothing achievable.
I know my sentiments toward the voters are rather harsh; but I think they're spot-on. We've been lazy/jaded/resigned long enough that we're not intellectually measuring our candidates. You and I do; but it's obvious that most of the public doesn't. This causes all levels of government to fill with people who can argue soundbite policies and positions that have little to do with the practical working of the offices they hold. When the race for Insurance Commissioner is a referendum on abortion, your electorate is not thinking hard enough but is rather indulging their passions. Any cursory examination of Bush's history exposes his weaknesses; but half our country didn't want to hear of it. He talked tough and religious and conservative, so they chose him. While I don't feel personally responsible for our feckless voting habits, I have to concede that they are unfortunately my people. They are as much citizens as I am. I think it's the responsibility of people like you and me to challenge the less discriminating voters to be smarter and more informed. So I'm taking them to task... and admittedly blowing off a bit of steam.
As I said, overall, I didn't disagree with you as much as I had a slightly different take on things. It was good to get a reasoned response. I appreciate that.
We've defined the enemy as "terrorism". This is the "War on Terror"; but terrorism is a tactic, not a group. No matter how many "terrorists" you kill, you do not kill terrorism. Indeed, when the fighting drags on as it has, and the inevitable atrocities that come with such situations occur, and the inevitable innocents killed collaterally, you begin to recruit more terrorists than you kill.
You hear a great many comparisons these days between the U.S. and the Roman Empire. They're understandable; but I find them all just a bit off. We have all seen this before in many facets of life. It is at its heart, competition. We are failing because we are becoming more interested in our position as a leader than we are in leading.
We had a great deal of support from all regions of the world after 9/11. If we had been good leaders, we'd have declared war on Al Queda, and fought them relentlessly. The world would have respected that. The middle-east would have respected that. We'd have shown the world that we were strong, reasoned, and purposeful.
Instead, we picked terrorism as a broader target, and a third party Iraq as a specific. We invaded a country that was not a threat to us. We used evidence we knew was shaky to make the case for doing so. Because terrorism was more than just killing, we dreamed up more justifications than preservation. We did it for all manner of reasons: defense, liberty, humanity, etc. We talked ourselves into a position of wondering "why not invade Iraq?".
But the selfishness and hubris that corrupt our politics now also ensure that nothing will stay secret forever. Somebody who knows the truth will not be able to keep his/her mouth shut. And so we learn more and more about meetings where prococations are planned, where contradictory evidence is ignored, and where policy defines reality rather than the opposite.
It was a failure of leadership. And, we have ourselves as citizens to blame for not being more questioning of those who would propose to hold our high offices. We are lazy voters. We are uninformed voters. We surrender to our whims and our passions, at the expense of study and reason.
The leaders we elect, we deserve.
It reminds me of a quote from the movie "Nobody's Fool" with Paul Newman
Wirf: Sooner or later we'll wear the bastards down. The court is already starting to get pissed. You heard the judge.
Sully: He's pissed at you, Wirf!
Wirf: Only because he knows I won't go away.
Sully: I know how he feels.
The thing that strikes me about such a law is that instead of compelling those in charge of our national security to be smarter, it compels the rest of us to be ignorant.
I could tell you; but it might get me thrown in jail.
My brother was doing some welding in a new strip mall in the L.A. area about ten years ago, and noted that it being built with wood timbers. When he asked about it, the contractor told him that wood beams that were properly treated would take longer to break during a fire than it would take for a steel beam to deform and fall.
This is obviously anecdotal and third hand; but it also isn't the first time I've heard that.
The idea of winning a war on terrorism is ridiculous. Terrorism is a tactic. It may be a desparate and unreliable tactic; but it is indeed a tactic. Any people will resort to terrorism should preferred methods for achieving their goals fail. I like to think (I would in fact hope) that if the U.S. were invaded and our government fell, that we would also engage in terrorism against our invaders.
Understand that I'm not trying to justify or defend the "insurgents" in Iraq, or the Taliban or any other of these current terrorist groups. I'm simply saying that you can't defeat terrorism any more than you can defeat war itself. They are means to ends, processes, not individual targets.
It's really the same thing we face in airplanes... cockpit resource management.
Even if you did have the route planned, things change. Roads are under construction, traffic on heavily travelled sections backs up making alternate routes more desirable. The next thing you know, you have your head down programming the GPS and not looking outside.
We've been fighting this in aviation for years. You've entered your route and approach information, then air traffic control hands you an ammended routing. So you end up concentrating on the GPS while your heading and altitude wander off. Even if you're using an autopilot you lose some situational awareness (not to mention that many autopilots will hold headings and track airways but not hold altitudes). It has nothing to do with intelligence or aptitude. It's a matter of workload management.
In the car it can be even harder. Just about the time you're trying to reprogram the GPS your kids will want their dvd restarted or the stereo tuned, or your cell phone will ring, etc.
This is really not a surprise. It just makes sense. Anything that takes your attention, takes it away from your driving.