You're right. Both the Solo Trek and that Moller thingy are purely vectored-thrust, powered-lift aircraft designs. These kinds of things are the most unstable, fault-UNtolerant flying contraptions you could possibly conjure up. Hell, even a rocket is safer. This kind of aircraft is a fatal accident -guaranteed- just waiting to happen. They are very difficult to control and the total number of combinations and permutations of all possible operating parameters and various failure modes of all the components that keep such a craft in the sky would need a redundant beowulf cluster of redundant beowulf clusters to keep all the computations updated to stay on top of things in all circumstances the craft could possibly encounter in "flight"(sic). Don't even mention a BRS parachute to bail you out of trouble in one of these craft.... because when you blow the 'chute, you are no longer in control, you are just a passenger along for whatever ride you get... maybe into high-voltage power lines to get fried to an extra crispy crisp. And no, I'm not anti-personal-aviation at all...in fact I'm a pilot myself and I own a single engine small airplane that I fly all the time just for the fun of it. Give me a flying machine with a wing I can glide and stay in control of... or at the very least a rotorcraft that will give you at least one slim chance of autorotation to a controllable crashlanding.
Classic SciFi: Bester's "The Stars My Destination"
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
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· Score: 2
I always hated hearing someone call themselves a Star Wars or Star Trek geek and then I ask them "Have you read Asimov, Heinlein, Bear, Benford, Brin, Adams, Niven, Pournelle?" And the answer was invariably "Huh?". Sad. So much more out there.
I first read this book while in sixth grade (and from then onward it set my whole standard by which to judge all other scifi), and have always wished it would be made into a big-dollar Hollywood movie production. Now I'm not so sure about that wish... maybe it will be best that this wonderful story never get ruined for me. I'm not so sure any actor could ever portray the Gulliver Foyle I picture in my mind.
...would be to make it a criminal offense for any entity other than a registered-to-vote individual US citizen to contribute any money whatsoever to any any political candidate's election campaign and also make it a criminal offense for any politician to accept any campaign contribution from other than individual US citizens who are registered to vote. Also make it a requirement for all politicians to publish a quarterly, fully audited report of all contributions they have received the prior quarter.
Of course, you'll probably have serious difficulty getting this passed as law.
A friend of mine who built a Van's RV-4 airplane is wanting a small PC onboard with touchscreen for multi-uses (gps, engine monitoring, in-route weather, flight planning, mp3 player, etc) and one of these would be a perfect fit due to small size, light weight, 12V, and being a convenient, already built, nicely packaged computer for only about $200 more than the cheapest comparable-performing miniature pc we could build from individual pieces-parts... and we were planning to have to make its case from raw sheet aluminum ourselves.
If I were to hazard a guess, I would guess that if the state of the economy were better, most, if not all, of the other seven states would join. Nearly every state is broke and have other things that are of a higher priority at this time. I'm sure that the economy is hurting M$ but they can just downsize. Government never finds it easy to downsize so M$ probably has the advantage.
Now is the time for the states to tax the sale of software (separately from the normal sales tax). Of course, when you're favorite O/S and apps are free, guess which ones everybody will migrate towards:-)
What else is there besides Lindows? Well, a couple weeks ago I saw a demo of Xandros at a local college, and it blew my socks off. I just wish it would run Lotus Notes ver 6 (and supposedly they're working on getting it to install and run now) and I could start deploying it at work in lieu of Win 9x/NT4/2k right now since it'll run every other one of our core business apps (O2K, Oracle Forms stuff, other various Win32 apps). SuSE has already announced a similar project in the works and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to hear if RH and Mandrake have a similar project in the works too.
2003 is going to be a very exciting year for Linux.
I agree 100%. Ksh is the best shell out there for universal script development. I can't stand using the up and down arrows to scroll thru my command history either... reminds me too much of NT/2000 cmd.exe, I'd much rather use [ESC]j and [ESC]k and also export EDITOR=vi so I can use my good old familiar vi editing on the command line too .
So If Apple has legal rights to "Trash Can" and MS has "Recycle Bin" I think we should call it the "Grot Shop", as our repository for rubbish... in honor of Reginald Perrin.
I always did like the way the Brits commonly use the term "rubbish" for trash. It's got a classier sound to it.
I think that we (the Linux/Unix & Open Source community) should seize the term "B#" and make it our own since the sound (be sharp) implies that we strive to be intelligent and do smart things, plus in music the (really non-existant) "B#" means "C" and most of our stuff is written in C anyway:-)
My little Piper Cherokee cost me $25K... about the same price as a new SUV or extended cab pickup truck. The engine was freshly overhauled when I bought it. If I fly about 100 hours a year, and nothing major breaks on the engine, then that 2000 hour TBO translates to 20 years. Lycoming suggests 2000 hours or 12 years on my O-320-E2A, whichever comes first. In actuality I fly more like 150-200 a year which means the engine has at least 10 years of useful service life but still, that $25K SUV or pickup truck will be worn out and worthless after 10-12 years of regular driving. The Piper will last forever, and will simply only need another engine overhaul then, and it will always retain it's resale value.
I'm VFR only and not much has changed for me. Granted, I do live in the middle of the boondocks and the only towered fields nearby are 3 class D airports within a 40 mile radius, which I never have reason to fly to, except one occasionally. I pretty much mostly only fly to uncontrolled fields. I've flown my little Cherokee almost 200 hours in the past year, mostly just for fun, but also for a few long cross country trips, so yeah, I've certainly done more than my part to help out general aviation.
I've been running Exchnage for a small, ~500 user network for 6 years and we're fed up with the expense and security hazards. We just bought Notes/Domino to switch away from Exchange and the licensing cost for this migration is less than half of what it would cost for all the MS licenses needed to upgrade all our servers and cals to go to Exchange 2000.
Yes Lotus has a very steep learning curve for the administrator, but it is extrordinarily powerful in how you can customize the inner workings of the system. All those folks who belly-ache about how Lotus is such an arcane and difficult product are exactly the same kind of folks who complain that Unix and C and C++ are too hard to learn and use because they'd rather write Visual Basic progs for Windows. It takes a intense commitment and willingness to learn a sophisticated and complex system to succeed in the Lotus world, and a sysadmin needs to have "The Right Stuff" to become proficient at this. A Lotus messaging system definitely ain't for point-n-click monkeys to administer.
I do have to admit that the current client (R5) user interface does suck somewhat, but it certainly is plenty useable if you're willing to invest in a bit of end-user training. The new R6 version is going to be a step in the right direction, and if will only improve from there. The calendering functionality does blow away Outlook/Exchange IMHO, once you learn how to use it.
The best part of this project is being able to finally get rid of a major MS server system in our organization and I'm very glad for this.
Oh and BTW, we're running our Domino servers on Linux and AIX boxes:-)
In the olden days, when I was a college freshman writing FORTRAN programs on punched cards for an IBM mainframe, all of us students were set up with login accounts that had a certain amount of "money" in them at the beginning of the semester. As we ran our jobs on the machine, it deducted money from this account based upon processing time consumed.
I'm surprised that a certain giant OS vendor hasn't yet re-implemented this concept, except using real money, and requiring all accounting transactions to go over the dot net.
This so-called "western culture" that all the backward nations are belly-aching about as "destroying their culture" is a bit of a misnomer. Sure it's predominantly identified with us, but you've got to realize that this wave of progress... this wave of technology and science, this wave of freedom and consumerism and all the good and bad things that go along with it... has been sweeping across all of humanity on this planet since the caveman days and has gained momentum exponentially, especially in about the past 300 years or so. Americans (and the rest of the "western society") have simply just learned how to surf this wave better than anyone else. There are those who, when upon seeing big waves pounding against the beach, proclaim, "Oh no!, There must be a storm coming" and then run and hide and bury their heads in the sand. Then there are those who proclaim, "Surf's Up Dude!" and charge headlong into it to catch a ride. If you do not progress forward, you die out. That's simply the way the universe is. Denying progress and intentionally stagnating your society is stupid as hell.
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You're right. Both the Solo Trek and that Moller thingy are purely vectored-thrust, powered-lift aircraft designs. These kinds of things are the most unstable, fault-UNtolerant flying contraptions you could possibly conjure up. Hell, even a rocket is safer. This kind of aircraft is a fatal accident -guaranteed- just waiting to happen. They are very difficult to control and the total number of combinations and permutations of all possible operating parameters and various failure modes of all the components that keep such a craft in the sky would need a redundant beowulf cluster of redundant beowulf clusters to keep all the computations updated to stay on top of things in all circumstances the craft could possibly encounter in "flight"(sic). Don't even mention a BRS parachute to bail you out of trouble in one of these craft.... because when you blow the 'chute, you are no longer in control, you are just a passenger along for whatever ride you get... maybe into high-voltage power lines to get fried to an extra crispy crisp. And no, I'm not anti-personal-aviation at all...in fact I'm a pilot myself and I own a single engine small airplane that I fly all the time just for the fun of it. Give me a flying machine with a wing I can glide and stay in control of... or at the very least a rotorcraft that will give you at least one slim chance of autorotation to a controllable crashlanding.
I always hated hearing someone call themselves a Star Wars or Star Trek geek and then I ask them "Have you read Asimov, Heinlein, Bear, Benford, Brin, Adams, Niven, Pournelle?" And the answer was invariably "Huh?". Sad. So much more out there.
I first read this book while in sixth grade (and from then onward it set my whole standard by which to judge all other scifi), and have always wished it would be made into a big-dollar Hollywood movie production. Now I'm not so sure about that wish... maybe it will be best that this wonderful story never get ruined for me. I'm not so sure any actor could ever portray the Gulliver Foyle I picture in my mind.
The funny thing is... when it's the truth it isn't funny anymore.
Now that you mention it, by jove I think you're right!
...made in the 1970's and re-runs played on PBS stations here in the states afterwards. Leonard Rossiter could've played the perfect Glitch.
...would be to make it a criminal offense for any entity other than a registered-to-vote individual US citizen to contribute any money whatsoever to any any political candidate's election campaign and also make it a criminal offense for any politician to accept any campaign contribution from other than individual US citizens who are registered to vote. Also make it a requirement for all politicians to publish a quarterly, fully audited report of all contributions they have received the prior quarter.
Of course, you'll probably have serious difficulty getting this passed as law.
This one's got a real P3 1.0 or 1.2GHz processor with PC133 sdram memory... probably a *lot* more powerful than the VIA.
A friend of mine who built a Van's RV-4 airplane is wanting a small PC onboard with touchscreen for multi-uses (gps, engine monitoring, in-route weather, flight planning, mp3 player, etc) and one of these would be a perfect fit due to small size, light weight, 12V, and being a convenient, already built, nicely packaged computer for only about $200 more than the cheapest comparable-performing miniature pc we could build from individual pieces-parts... and we were planning to have to make its case from raw sheet aluminum ourselves.
If I were to hazard a guess, I would guess that if the state of the economy were better, most, if not all, of the other seven states would join. Nearly every state is broke and have other things that are of a higher priority at this time. I'm sure that the economy is hurting M$ but they can just downsize. Government never finds it easy to downsize so M$ probably has the advantage.
:-)
Now is the time for the states to tax the sale of software (separately from the normal sales tax). Of course, when you're favorite O/S and apps are free, guess which ones everybody will migrate towards
What else is there besides Lindows? Well, a couple weeks ago I saw a demo of Xandros at a local college, and it blew my socks off. I just wish it would run Lotus Notes ver 6 (and supposedly they're working on getting it to install and run now) and I could start deploying it at work in lieu of Win 9x/NT4/2k right now since it'll run every other one of our core business apps (O2K, Oracle Forms stuff, other various Win32 apps). SuSE has already announced a similar project in the works and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to hear if RH and Mandrake have a similar project in the works too.
2003 is going to be a very exciting year for Linux.
Oh, wait... it's supposed to be already dead or dying or something like that... NOT!!!
I agree 100%. Ksh is the best shell out there for universal script development. I can't stand using the up and down arrows to scroll thru my command history either... reminds me too much of NT/2000 cmd.exe, I'd much rather use [ESC]j and [ESC]k and also export EDITOR=vi so I can use my good old familiar vi editing on the command line too .
... so said our illustrious nemesis.
So If Apple has legal rights to "Trash Can" and MS has "Recycle Bin" I think we should call it the "Grot Shop", as our repository for rubbish... in honor of Reginald Perrin.
I always did like the way the Brits commonly use the term "rubbish" for trash. It's got a classier sound to it.
Doh!
I think that we (the Linux/Unix & Open Source community) should seize the term "B#" and make it our own since the sound (be sharp) implies that we strive to be intelligent and do smart things, plus in music the (really non-existant) "B#" means "C" and most of our stuff is written in C anyway :-)
Sound too corny?
Linux has, grand total worldwide... abso-freakin-lutely ZERO client licenses!!!!!!
My little Piper Cherokee cost me $25K... about the same price as a new SUV or extended cab pickup truck. The engine was freshly overhauled when I bought it. If I fly about 100 hours a year, and nothing major breaks on the engine, then that 2000 hour TBO translates to 20 years. Lycoming suggests 2000 hours or 12 years on my O-320-E2A, whichever comes first. In actuality I fly more like 150-200 a year which means the engine has at least 10 years of useful service life but still, that $25K SUV or pickup truck will be worn out and worthless after 10-12 years of regular driving. The Piper will last forever, and will simply only need another engine overhaul then, and it will always retain it's resale value.
... the Perpetual Motion DeLorean
I'm VFR only and not much has changed for me. Granted, I do live in the middle of the boondocks and the only towered fields nearby are 3 class D airports within a 40 mile radius, which I never have reason to fly to, except one occasionally. I pretty much mostly only fly to uncontrolled fields. I've flown my little Cherokee almost 200 hours in the past year, mostly just for fun, but also for a few long cross country trips, so yeah, I've certainly done more than my part to help out general aviation.
Will Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon be on this flight, too?
;-)
No, But I'm betting on Trish Stewart and Joel Higgins will be riding in a moonship that Andy Griffith made out of an old cement mixer truck...
Oops, that's already been done
...you've ever slashdotted yer live bait website ;-)
LOL!
I've been running Exchnage for a small, ~500 user network for 6 years and we're fed up with the expense and security hazards. We just bought Notes/Domino to switch away from Exchange and the licensing cost for this migration is less than half of what it would cost for all the MS licenses needed to upgrade all our servers and cals to go to Exchange 2000.
:-)
Yes Lotus has a very steep learning curve for the administrator, but it is extrordinarily powerful in how you can customize the inner workings of the system. All those folks who belly-ache about how Lotus is such an arcane and difficult product are exactly the same kind of folks who complain that Unix and C and C++ are too hard to learn and use because they'd rather write Visual Basic progs for Windows. It takes a intense commitment and willingness to learn a sophisticated and complex system to succeed in the Lotus world, and a sysadmin needs to have "The Right Stuff" to become proficient at this. A Lotus messaging system definitely ain't for point-n-click monkeys to administer.
I do have to admit that the current client (R5) user interface does suck somewhat, but it certainly is plenty useable if you're willing to invest in a bit of end-user training. The new R6 version is going to be a step in the right direction, and if will only improve from there. The calendering functionality does blow away Outlook/Exchange IMHO, once you learn how to use it.
The best part of this project is being able to finally get rid of a major MS server system in our organization and I'm very glad for this.
Oh and BTW, we're running our Domino servers on Linux and AIX boxes
In the olden days, when I was a college freshman writing FORTRAN programs on punched cards for an IBM mainframe, all of us students were set up with login accounts that had a certain amount of "money" in them at the beginning of the semester. As we ran our jobs on the machine, it deducted money from this account based upon processing time consumed.
I'm surprised that a certain giant OS vendor hasn't yet re-implemented this concept, except using real money, and requiring all accounting transactions to go over the dot net.
This so-called "western culture" that all the backward nations are belly-aching about as "destroying their culture" is a bit of a misnomer. Sure it's predominantly identified with us, but you've got to realize that this wave of progress... this wave of technology and science, this wave of freedom and consumerism and all the good and bad things that go along with it... has been sweeping across all of humanity on this planet since the caveman days and has gained momentum exponentially, especially in about the past 300 years or so. Americans (and the rest of the "western society") have simply just learned how to surf this wave better than anyone else. There are those who, when upon seeing big waves pounding against the beach, proclaim, "Oh no!, There must be a storm coming" and then run and hide and bury their heads in the sand. Then there are those who proclaim, "Surf's Up Dude!" and charge headlong into it to catch a ride. If you do not progress forward, you die out. That's simply the way the universe is. Denying progress and intentionally stagnating your society is stupid as hell.