As an ordinary citizen, the question of terrorism is not anywhere near the top of my list of questions regarding "how" or "why" an accident may have occurred...
The words following the comma in the above sentence demonstrate that the words before the comma are false.
Or, perhaps, maybe the problem is with me? Should I learn to be more afraid?
Oh, no, there's no problem with you. But that, in an of itself, would make you far from ordinary... and is probably untrue. What I should have more accurately said was, "the problem [referring specifically to this one] isn't with you". Doubtless you're as screwed up as the rest of us, just in ways that aren't relevant to the topic at hand.
If I ever have to do an emergency evacuation and the guy in front of me has his cabin baggage with him (like we see in some of those pictures) I'm gonna throw it into the fire.
I do hope the widow/children/survivors of the guy whose life-saving medicine you threw in the fire manage to get a substantial reward from the court. I'd hope for at least a criminal manslaughter charge, too, but that might be more difficult to get. With any luck, you'll die before this situation comes up and no one will have to be harmed by how obviously huge an asshole you are...
...people interpret what they see; rather than just say what they saw.
The mistake some people make is in assuming the latter is even possible without doing the former. Optical illusions are possible because even the most immediate mental image of what's before you eyes at the very moment is an interpretation in your mind of what you think your eyes are telling you. Perception necessarily involves interpretation.
But how do you deal with people who don't know what "yaw" means?
First, you ask them which axis it rotated around while avoiding the terms they're unfamiliar with, like "roll" (in the technical sense), "pitch" and "yaw". When they respond with obvious confusion, you go on to explain what an "axis" is and what "axis of rotation" means. If they haven't wandered away by that point but are still standing in front of you making apparent eye-contact, wave your hands to verify that they are in fact too dazed to wander off on their own and call over a paramedic.
Or since it's an aircraft how about "rotated around it's yaw axis".
That works for this site. Your average CNN viewer isn't enough of a geek to know what "yaw" means. Heck, the majority of them will get "axis" wrong if you ask them to define it in their own words...
For anyone confused by this comment, the original title of this article (before an editor stepped in and fixed it) read "Boeing 777 Crashes In San Francisco". The current title (at the time I'm posting this comment), "Boeing 777 Crashes At San Francisco Airport", is a much better description of the event without taking the mind in some horrific directions before giving the important details.
They need to focus more on addressing the root causes.
Do you even know what you are asking for? All it takes is one rogue block of people to decide, taliban style, that they want to make a statement, and there goes your airplane. You are asking for world peace - a total solution to every angry person's reason for disagreeing with any other person in a violent manner. It would be nice, but that's not going to happen. Root causes is too vague.
Actually, no, that's not what's being asked for, although this is the common invalid argument against taking positive action on something. Show that a solution won't be 100% effective, and therefore shouldn't be tried at all. That's bullshit thinking. He's not asking for "world peace", and reducing the problem is worth doing, even if it can never completely eliminate it. What you are doing is making a silly argument along the lines of "we can never completely eliminate fatal traffic accidents, so why do we even bother with traffic laws and automobile safety standards?" Because reducing the problem is a worthy goal, even if it cannot be entirely eliminated. No one is asking for world peace, that's just absurd. But equally absurd is not even trying to address root causes for these problems. It's not an all-or-nothing proposition where if we can't get it all, we should setting for nothing. We should do what we can...
The issue is and always will be... not detecting the weapon, but detecting the person who wishes to use it. Finding the weapon only removes one item from the intended assassins potential arsenal.
True, but it must be noted that detecting the weapon is often the easiest way to detect the person who wishes to use it. (Note: not necessarily easy, just easier that the alternatives in many cases.)
That's never stopped Apple before.
"Oh, just a recompile away is a glorious land of milk and honey, here are the tools to do it, you have two months."
Adapt or die. That said, don't they usually provide an emulator for the older apps? You could run Motorola 68K-series binaries on the PowerPC Macs IIRC, they just weren't as fast as native...
Once you've completely misidentified the problem, you'll never find the solution. But I'm sure it makes it a lot easier to dismiss criticism if you can pretend it comes from somewhere unreasonable.
The fact of the matter is, people love change... iff it's change with significant benefits. People like changes for the better. I've heard "I wish this worked that way" a hundred times, and people are ecstatic when you come back and give them an update that makes it work the way they said. People love change if it's a genuine improvement. People only hate change when they can't see any point to it. They may not be formal about it, but everyone runs a bit of a cost/benefit analysis in their minds, and when there's an obvious cost for no significant benefit, or to fix "problems" that they never saw as a problem to begin with, they react negatively, because that's the logical response to a change of that nature.
Why is that so hard?
Irrelevant question. The important question is, "why is that even necessary?" It might have a good answer, but if you can't make that answer clear to people, expect them to react negatively when you ask them to do what they see as unnecessary things for little apparent benefit.
What games developers want are games engines that can be easily portable between Windows and at least one major console.
...and what PC gamers want is a great PC game, not a crappy console port. It's somehow comforting to know that DirectX is only an advantage for people developing games I have no interest in playing.
My point comes down to this, anyone reviewing Window 8 should do so with a touch screen. Never install in a desktop.
Bingo. Windows 8 does not belong on a desktop computer. Couldn't agree more. But, you already highlighted the problem...
...it is the first OS that is trying to bridge the tablet/laptop gap.
...which is utterly idiotic.
...wait for MS to find a better balance between desktop use of their OS and the portable design...
I want my desktop OS to be the best desktop OS it can be, and I want my tablet OS to be the best tablet OS it can be. I don't want to settle for an ill-conceived UI which will necessarily sacrifice optimal performance in both areas by trying to find some middle ground between the two, rather than two UIs that do their respective jobs well.
I don't expect the controls to be identical between a Honda and a Cesna... what madness possesses some people to strive for a foolish consistency?
It takes paypal nearly two weeks to transfer money from a bank account in canada to my paypal account, sometimes three weeks. If they think they'll suddenly do better in space...
Well, they're obviously envisioning a future in which space is populated by humans. Unlike Canada...
Seems like rather than fight, Tesla could simply set up dealerships in those states. I'd imagine there are some dealers who would like to add Tesla to their portfolio.
Ah, the old "just pay the bribe, it's easier that way and really isn't that expensive" mentality...
Nvidia offers software to optimize game settings and record gameplay sessions
Did anyone else read that and think, "this does not belong in a device driver"?
Nope. Why would I, when nothing was said or implied that this functionality was being put in the device driver? My last AMD card said it came with some game software on the box, and I did not, upon reading that, think "games do not belong in a device driver" either. I'm quite comfortable with the notion that both nVidia and AMD can bundle software other than device drivers with their cards, and do not assume "software" necessarily means "device driver".
Probably doesn't help. My problems with AMD drivers had nothing to do with them not being optimized for x86, and everything to do with an engineering attitude that said "yeah we broke that OpenGL function with the latest driver release, but it's deprecated so games shouldn't be calling it anymore anyway so we're not going to fix it". Having to get their drivers working in the comparatively easy console market (where the environment is much more uniform and controlled) is not going to improve their inability to cope with the complexities of the diverse PC environment. They'll still be more likely to go bonkers when confronted with old or obscure titles, and still act like it's not their problem as long as the modern major titles run fine...
Not exactly. The Russians are arming a mass murdering dicatator, the Americans are arming the allies of al-Qaeda. The responsible thing would be to do neither.
Neither action is responsible, but one is less foolish, at least from the perspective of national self-interest. The one virtue most (yes, not all, but most) mass murdering dictators have is that they tend to leave people on the other side of the planet alone.
Slashdot Mirror
... For crashes like this, the injured/dead are usually in one section, and those are NOT the people you see walking away.
Or if you do see them walking away, you have bigger problems to deal with than an airplane crash...
As an ordinary citizen, the question of terrorism is not anywhere near the top of my list of questions regarding "how" or "why" an accident may have occurred...
The words following the comma in the above sentence demonstrate that the words before the comma are false.
Or, perhaps, maybe the problem is with me? Should I learn to be more afraid?
Oh, no, there's no problem with you. But that, in an of itself, would make you far from ordinary... and is probably untrue. What I should have more accurately said was, "the problem [referring specifically to this one] isn't with you". Doubtless you're as screwed up as the rest of us, just in ways that aren't relevant to the topic at hand.
If I ever have to do an emergency evacuation and the guy in front of me has his cabin baggage with him (like we see in some of those pictures) I'm gonna throw it into the fire.
I do hope the widow/children/survivors of the guy whose life-saving medicine you threw in the fire manage to get a substantial reward from the court. I'd hope for at least a criminal manslaughter charge, too, but that might be more difficult to get. With any luck, you'll die before this situation comes up and no one will have to be harmed by how obviously huge an asshole you are...
Wait a moment... they haven't denied it was aliens yet... :o
Specifically, the way that newspapers use the term "casualty" is not explicitly bound to the manner in which the military uses the term "casualty."
Nor bound to any other specific definition. Hence, confusion...
...people interpret what they see; rather than just say what they saw.
The mistake some people make is in assuming the latter is even possible without doing the former. Optical illusions are possible because even the most immediate mental image of what's before you eyes at the very moment is an interpretation in your mind of what you think your eyes are telling you. Perception necessarily involves interpretation.
But how do you deal with people who don't know what "yaw" means?
First, you ask them which axis it rotated around while avoiding the terms they're unfamiliar with, like "roll" (in the technical sense), "pitch" and "yaw". When they respond with obvious confusion, you go on to explain what an "axis" is and what "axis of rotation" means. If they haven't wandered away by that point but are still standing in front of you making apparent eye-contact, wave your hands to verify that they are in fact too dazed to wander off on their own and call over a paramedic.
Or since it's an aircraft how about "rotated around it's yaw axis".
That works for this site. Your average CNN viewer isn't enough of a geek to know what "yaw" means. Heck, the majority of them will get "axis" wrong if you ask them to define it in their own words...
So, news for nerds is strictly about computers, mathematics and shit ?
Aerospace engineers and aviation geeks are apparently resented by computer geeks because they were never as uncool... :p
Yup. There are few things I trust less than computers, but humans are on the top of that list...
For anyone confused by this comment, the original title of this article (before an editor stepped in and fixed it) read "Boeing 777 Crashes In San Francisco". The current title (at the time I'm posting this comment), "Boeing 777 Crashes At San Francisco Airport", is a much better description of the event without taking the mind in some horrific directions before giving the important details.
Just time accelerate, and things will fly right through each other without damage. ;)
Honestly if I was working for GCHQ or NSA my response would be: "Of course we're bloody spying, that's what you damn well pay us to do."
Mr. Clapper didn't take that approach because he knows damn well if he told us what he was doing, we'd tell him to stop and/or stop the payments.
Do you even know what you are asking for? All it takes is one rogue block of people to decide, taliban style, that they want to make a statement, and there goes your airplane. You are asking for world peace - a total solution to every angry person's reason for disagreeing with any other person in a violent manner. It would be nice, but that's not going to happen. Root causes is too vague.
Actually, no, that's not what's being asked for, although this is the common invalid argument against taking positive action on something. Show that a solution won't be 100% effective, and therefore shouldn't be tried at all. That's bullshit thinking. He's not asking for "world peace", and reducing the problem is worth doing, even if it can never completely eliminate it. What you are doing is making a silly argument along the lines of "we can never completely eliminate fatal traffic accidents, so why do we even bother with traffic laws and automobile safety standards?" Because reducing the problem is a worthy goal, even if it cannot be entirely eliminated. No one is asking for world peace, that's just absurd. But equally absurd is not even trying to address root causes for these problems. It's not an all-or-nothing proposition where if we can't get it all, we should setting for nothing. We should do what we can...
The issue is and always will be... not detecting the weapon, but detecting the person who wishes to use it. Finding the weapon only removes one item from the intended assassins potential arsenal.
True, but it must be noted that detecting the weapon is often the easiest way to detect the person who wishes to use it. (Note: not necessarily easy, just easier that the alternatives in many cases.)
That's never stopped Apple before. "Oh, just a recompile away is a glorious land of milk and honey, here are the tools to do it, you have two months."
Adapt or die. That said, don't they usually provide an emulator for the older apps? You could run Motorola 68K-series binaries on the PowerPC Macs IIRC, they just weren't as fast as native...
Why are so many of you afraid of change?
Once you've completely misidentified the problem, you'll never find the solution. But I'm sure it makes it a lot easier to dismiss criticism if you can pretend it comes from somewhere unreasonable.
The fact of the matter is, people love change... iff it's change with significant benefits. People like changes for the better. I've heard "I wish this worked that way" a hundred times, and people are ecstatic when you come back and give them an update that makes it work the way they said. People love change if it's a genuine improvement. People only hate change when they can't see any point to it. They may not be formal about it, but everyone runs a bit of a cost/benefit analysis in their minds, and when there's an obvious cost for no significant benefit, or to fix "problems" that they never saw as a problem to begin with, they react negatively, because that's the logical response to a change of that nature.
Why is that so hard?
Irrelevant question. The important question is, "why is that even necessary?" It might have a good answer, but if you can't make that answer clear to people, expect them to react negatively when you ask them to do what they see as unnecessary things for little apparent benefit.
What games developers want are games engines that can be easily portable between Windows and at least one major console.
...and what PC gamers want is a great PC game, not a crappy console port. It's somehow comforting to know that DirectX is only an advantage for people developing games I have no interest in playing.
My point comes down to this, anyone reviewing Window 8 should do so with a touch screen. Never install in a desktop.
Bingo. Windows 8 does not belong on a desktop computer. Couldn't agree more. But, you already highlighted the problem...
...it is the first OS that is trying to bridge the tablet/laptop gap.
...which is utterly idiotic.
...wait for MS to find a better balance between desktop use of their OS and the portable design...
I want my desktop OS to be the best desktop OS it can be, and I want my tablet OS to be the best tablet OS it can be. I don't want to settle for an ill-conceived UI which will necessarily sacrifice optimal performance in both areas by trying to find some middle ground between the two, rather than two UIs that do their respective jobs well.
I don't expect the controls to be identical between a Honda and a Cesna... what madness possesses some people to strive for a foolish consistency?
It takes paypal nearly two weeks to transfer money from a bank account in canada to my paypal account, sometimes three weeks. If they think they'll suddenly do better in space...
Well, they're obviously envisioning a future in which space is populated by humans. Unlike Canada...
Seems like rather than fight, Tesla could simply set up dealerships in those states. I'd imagine there are some dealers who would like to add Tesla to their portfolio.
Ah, the old "just pay the bribe, it's easier that way and really isn't that expensive" mentality...
Nvidia offers software to optimize game settings and record gameplay sessions
Did anyone else read that and think, "this does not belong in a device driver"?
Nope. Why would I, when nothing was said or implied that this functionality was being put in the device driver? My last AMD card said it came with some game software on the box, and I did not, upon reading that, think "games do not belong in a device driver" either. I'm quite comfortable with the notion that both nVidia and AMD can bundle software other than device drivers with their cards, and do not assume "software" necessarily means "device driver".
Probably doesn't help. My problems with AMD drivers had nothing to do with them not being optimized for x86, and everything to do with an engineering attitude that said "yeah we broke that OpenGL function with the latest driver release, but it's deprecated so games shouldn't be calling it anymore anyway so we're not going to fix it". Having to get their drivers working in the comparatively easy console market (where the environment is much more uniform and controlled) is not going to improve their inability to cope with the complexities of the diverse PC environment. They'll still be more likely to go bonkers when confronted with old or obscure titles, and still act like it's not their problem as long as the modern major titles run fine...
No. That would be COBOL running on machine code. By the time it's running, compile time (the only time C was involved in the process) is past...
Not exactly. The Russians are arming a mass murdering dicatator, the Americans are arming the allies of al-Qaeda. The responsible thing would be to do neither.
Neither action is responsible, but one is less foolish, at least from the perspective of national self-interest. The one virtue most (yes, not all, but most) mass murdering dictators have is that they tend to leave people on the other side of the planet alone.