This is an "Ask Slashdot" that I submitted a few weeks back.
Can't seem to find the article that I quoted from when I submitted this to Slashdot, will see if I can dig up...
'Under the conditions of a normal return to earth, the shuttle flies on autopilot until it is traveling more slowly than the speed of sound. But pilots train to take the shuttle all the way down in case the autopilot malfunctions, and so it is possible one of the pilots was trying to take control of the yawing craft in its final moments. 'It is relatively easy for the autopilot to be turned off by accident, which in fact happened just minutes before the problems with the Columbia started to become apparent. In the recovered segment of flight deck video of the waning minutes of the flight released by NASA, Colonel Husband is heard to exclaim, "Oh, shoot," and to tell mission control that "we bumped the stick earlier," briefly disengaging the autopilot. He quickly and calmly corrected the error' What this all leads me to is this, and I have not seen this suggested in anything I have read as an important concern: Is it possible that this accidental disengaging of the autopilot CONTRIBUTED to the loss of the Shuttle? Although the pilots are trained to fly the Shuttle without the Autopilot, if they were unaware that it was turned off then the "minute" adjustments that either one would make would be missed. All accounts I have seen suggest that the slightest details on the approach make HUGE differences in the results. Add to this the fact that it has been reported that the Autopilot, when on, was acting to correct the flight path anomalies caused by the damage outside. If the autopilot is off, then what other consequences were being experienced? Is it possible that this with the likely outside damage and other factors may have COMBINED have caused the loss of the Shuttle where any issue ALONE would have not? With all the speculation I have seen in the media, I am not sure this is any less of a possibility... BTW, I personally am not trying to lay blame on the astronauts themselves. Much like a Cruise Control that starts to mysteriously disengage on a vehicle, I would not be surprised if the Autopilot may have "sensed" a disengage as simple as moving the stick, and the pilots assumed that one of them must have done it."
Brillant...and you found other crackpots to buy it
on
Windows 2003 Going Gold
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Your argument is quite logical based on your assumption/accusation. But, really, that's where the problem lies:
All Microsoft has to do to force people to purchase upgrades is include a fatal flaw in each of their released systems
Fine, call them idiots everytime a new security issue is found. Instead, you are insinuating that they PURPOSELY include holes PREMEDITATED before the release of the product under the ASSUMPTION that it will not be found until AFTER they release the latest greatest product.
their new OSes all include legacy VM support so you can run the old programs without the security bugs.
From your POV, this is support for your twisted accusation. Actually, it is a very customer friendly action. You can use what you have for now instead of insisting that you have to use "Mission Critical App your Business Would Fail Without.LATEST VERSION designed ONLY for Latest Windows (TM)"
Not a big deal that you can try to make this lousy argument. What is sad is that you found people to mod your post "Insightful" and "Interesting" while my post will soon be modded "Flamebait" and "Troll" becuase it is unpopular not to see ultimate evil in every action by M$
A particularly clueless user, who luckily no longer works here, I will call Eve.
Eve INSISTED on storing important HR documents on floppy disks. Tho I explained 20 different reasons why this was a bad idea and better, safer alternatives, she did it anyways.
This lead to "INVALID BOOT DISK" error messages on more than 10 times during a two month span.
As someone who once worked as a trainer, I am quick to politely explain how to fix an issue and many times even a layman's explanation of why.
"Eve, just take the floppy disk out..." etc.
I thought about disabling the option to boot from a floppy disk, but EVERY time she SEEMED to get it.
So finally one day it happened. She called me up:
Eve (stressed)- "I am getting an error message that says 'Invalid Boot Disk' and I did what you said, I took the floppy disk out"
Knowing that FOR ONCE just maybe the hard drive had died, I told her I would come right down.
Luckily, when I arrived Eve was on the phone.
She was right.
She was getting the error message.
She had taken the floppy disk out.
She had NOT, however, read the message that said "PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE"
I waited for a moment, decided that it wasn't worth the effort, and because she was leaned over the keyboard, I turned the comp off and back on and walked away.
Those who "steal" music clearly believe that $18 a CD, which contains songs the listener is not interested in, is too high a price to pay.
Make all the arguments you want about obscure/old unattainable bootlegs/etc that you want, HOWEVER : I love file sharing, but there is no doubt in my mind that when I download a music file that I could easily walk into any music shop and pick up right off the shelf of the "Top 20" rack, I am circumventing paying for that song. If you want to sample it, turn on the radio.
Think the whole album might suck except for the one song? Don't buy it and wait for my one kick ass song to come on the radio.
In the absence of any alternatives, theft is the only other option.
...Yeah, I wont even waste anyone's time with this one. Just highlighting you said it is enuf
Put true competition (of choice, price and flexibility) into the market and then those on Kazaa et al; can be called thieves.
There is choice. Buy the package, OR there is likely a mid priced single.
If I am selling my car, does that give you any right to say- "Hey, I wasn't interested in the entire car, I only wanted the leather seats out of it for my tricked out Ford Escort. Since you were unwilling to sell it them separately, I took the liberty of just taking them. If I like them enough, I might just buy the whole car"
Yes, I am oversimplifying thing by looking at only the current music...Are you saying you never download a current song?
Respectfully, I think you missed my point. Yeah, I was trying to funny, but funny to make a point.
Take M$ out of it for second.
If a VMS supporter popped up and said-"This is how VMS handles software libraries...", I seriously doubt you would have seen anyone raise a finger as to how that method is backasswards, wasteful, etc.
As soon as M$ offers this same solution, the screams can be heard immediately.
It's funny reading through the different replies to this story-
Reply 1- "This is a horrible idea! Look at all the RAM/disk space this is going to use. M$ programmers are idiots!"
Reply 2- "VMS/Apple/*enter slanted fav OS here* already does this! This was a good idea when it was done 10 years ago by ____.
Reply 3- An idea like this is so stupid, it will NEVER work right.
So, its a stupid idea that will never work EXCEPT it has already been done BUT will take up too many resources UNLESS it is done by our fav OS AND then thats okay
Again, to the best of my recollection, what you are suggesting is similar to the TFTP and many streaming techniques approach:
Take FTP and strip the overhead error checking and if something doesn't come out right, refresh and download it again.
For streaming, you get more throughput, and every now and them you might miss a frame in exchange for the higher quality you can obtain with the lower overhead
That "Intro to the Internet" class from college is a little hazy now, but I don't recall it being as simple as the "internet" coming out of the pipe like water.
Someone far more knowledgable than myself will get to correct me, but I seem to recall there was a process of-
Send some stuff-wait for ACK.
When you get the ACK, send some more.
By turbocharging the ACKs, you are reducing that lag time
In short it gives priority to TCP ACKs over other types of traffic, thereby making it possible to max both upload and download bandwidth simultaenously
It appears that server ACKs have been optimized as well.
SERVER-ACK*wheez*ouch*ACK*sizzle*Damnit*
I am sure, however, that the bandwidth is being optimized as it came back almost immediately unreachable
Joking aside, this is the ultimate hack if it works as breezed through in the summary-just tweaking the priorities, more bandwidth!
AquaPharm are now responsible for the lives of the people who could be cured by an otherwise readily available antibiotic that they are keeping secret.
NOT readily available. This is not a case of Aquapharm finding a cure like "rub some dirt on it" and trying to patent it. Just because the source is "naturally occuring" does not mean the final product "grows on trees".
They have found a unique way of extracting an antibody from an uncommon source.
I just installed the Windows version of Opera on a computer this weekend and I am pretty damn sure it gave me the option to install the latest version of Java at that time...
Am I wrong?
And if I'm right, is your company just not willing or unable to do the same thing?
Or are you whining because its not preinstalled by M$? Are there not other platforms that do NOT have Java installed by default?
I would guess that there are but M$ is the most common OS used by your end users so you run into this most often.
I was referring to the fact that it's a point and click operation to assign someone administrative priviledges
There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with this being easy to do! Would you prefer to have to do ten complicated steps to accomplish the same task??? It still will not prevent it from being done and will only take more time.
The fault lies in how easy it is to convince most people to assign admin privileges to someone else.
I will, however, agree that administative privileges are handed out many times when not necessary.
"Since they don't specify the OS, I'm assuming these are drivers for Windows."
Funny, I am careful about checking my facts, and I am assuming that only 5 people will read my post. I would hope I would put a LITTLE more effort into my fact checking tho if I thought it was going to get 1,000,000 hits.
Since the poster and the editors don't check their facts, I am assuming they don't.
Slashdot is the first site I hit for tech info. And typically, while exagerrated, the attacks on MS have basis at least.
But an ASSUMPTION like above about "Well, there's a problem, it must be Windows!" just makes my ears perk up immediately and want to check the facts. Why doesn't it for the Slashdot editors?
WHY would you assume that? Just from the blurb the poster included it immediately seems the kind of oversight that would have the POTENTIAL at least to affect multiple systems.
And yes, I realize that Windows drivers written by third-parties have been targetted, I find it amazingly amusing the native Windows drivers have been determined not to have this issue
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, this is about to get really confusing...quotes of quotes, oh well...
/. gallery.
/. *grin*
I am not stating that they premeditate the insertion of the bug, but I am stating that they aren't going out of their way to remove them
My response was based on your original post and was all I had to go on. Look at it again, my emphasis, of course...
ALL Microsoft has to do to FORCE PEOPLE to purchase upgrades is INCLUDE A FATAL FLAW in each of their released systems"
I'm sorry, I am trying to see how it is your original post wasn't SUGGESTING that it was purposeful. REALLY trying.
If you simply think they missed it, then this is the normal software cycle and really is nothing to comment on.
In a way it is an irony that you were wrong and your post was modded insightful
I agree, I was wrong, and rather amused.
Okay, you wish to stand outside of the the camp that holds EVERY M$ action as evil. That's cool.
But, I stand by my original "insult"-
One person say something bad about M$=much cheering from the
Another person calls that post unfounded, it will most likely be buried.
ESPECIALLY on
Not the original link, but one that mentions the override of the autopilot when discussing pilot error:
Columbia Pilot Error Not Ruled Out in Investigation
(SPACE.com)
This is an "Ask Slashdot" that I submitted a few weeks back.
Can't seem to find the article that I quoted from when I submitted this to Slashdot, will see if I can dig up...
'Under the conditions of a normal return to earth, the shuttle flies on autopilot until it is traveling more slowly than the speed of sound. But pilots train to take the shuttle all the way down in case the autopilot malfunctions, and so it is possible one of the pilots was trying to take control of the yawing craft in its final moments. 'It is relatively easy for the autopilot to be turned off by accident, which in fact happened just minutes before the problems with the Columbia started to become apparent. In the recovered segment of flight deck video of the waning minutes of the flight released by NASA, Colonel Husband is heard to exclaim, "Oh, shoot," and to tell mission control that "we bumped the stick earlier," briefly disengaging the autopilot. He quickly and calmly corrected the error'
What this all leads me to is this, and I have not seen this suggested in anything I have read as an important concern: Is it possible that this accidental disengaging of the autopilot CONTRIBUTED to the loss of the Shuttle? Although the pilots are trained to fly the Shuttle without the Autopilot, if they were unaware that it was turned off then the "minute" adjustments that either one would make would be missed. All accounts I have seen suggest that the slightest details on the approach make HUGE differences in the results. Add to this the fact that it has been reported that the Autopilot, when on, was acting to correct the flight path anomalies caused by the damage outside. If the autopilot is off, then what other consequences were being experienced?
Is it possible that this with the likely outside damage and other factors may have COMBINED have caused the loss of the Shuttle where any issue ALONE would have not? With all the speculation I have seen in the media, I am not sure this is any less of a possibility...
BTW, I personally am not trying to lay blame on the astronauts themselves. Much like a Cruise Control that starts to mysteriously disengage on a vehicle, I would not be surprised if the Autopilot may have "sensed" a disengage as simple as moving the stick, and the pilots assumed that one of them must have done it."
Your argument is quite logical based on your assumption/accusation. But, really, that's where the problem lies:
All Microsoft has to do to force people to purchase upgrades is include a fatal flaw in each of their released systems
Fine, call them idiots everytime a new security issue is found. Instead, you are insinuating that they PURPOSELY include holes PREMEDITATED before the release of the product under the ASSUMPTION that it will not be found until AFTER they release the latest greatest product.
their new OSes all include legacy VM support so you can run the old programs without the security bugs.
From your POV, this is support for your twisted accusation. Actually, it is a very customer friendly action. You can use what you have for now instead of insisting that you have to use "Mission Critical App your Business Would Fail Without.LATEST VERSION designed ONLY for Latest Windows (TM)"
Not a big deal that you can try to make this lousy argument. What is sad is that you found people to mod your post "Insightful" and "Interesting" while my post will soon be modded "Flamebait" and "Troll" becuase it is unpopular not to see ultimate evil in every action by M$
A particularly clueless user, who luckily no longer works here, I will call Eve.
Eve INSISTED on storing important HR documents on floppy disks. Tho I explained 20 different reasons why this was a bad idea and better, safer alternatives, she did it anyways.
This lead to "INVALID BOOT DISK" error messages on more than 10 times during a two month span.
As someone who once worked as a trainer, I am quick to politely explain how to fix an issue and many times even a layman's explanation of why.
"Eve, just take the floppy disk out..." etc.
I thought about disabling the option to boot from a floppy disk, but EVERY time she SEEMED to get it.
So finally one day it happened. She called me up:
Eve (stressed)- "I am getting an error message that says 'Invalid Boot Disk' and I did what you said, I took the floppy disk out"
Knowing that FOR ONCE just maybe the hard drive had died, I told her I would come right down.
Luckily, when I arrived Eve was on the phone.
She was right.
She was getting the error message.
She had taken the floppy disk out.
She had NOT, however, read the message that said "PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE"
I waited for a moment, decided that it wasn't worth the effort, and because she was leaned over the keyboard, I turned the comp off and back on and walked away.
She was terminated in next month...
Make all the arguments you want about obscure/old unattainable bootlegs/etc that you want, HOWEVER : I love file sharing, but there is no doubt in my mind that when I download a music file that I could easily walk into any music shop and pick up right off the shelf of the "Top 20" rack, I am circumventing paying for that song. If you want to sample it, turn on the radio.
Think the whole album might suck except for the one song? Don't buy it and wait for my one kick ass song to come on the radio.
In the absence of any alternatives, theft is the only other option.
...Yeah, I wont even waste anyone's time with this one. Just highlighting you said it is enuf
Put true competition (of choice, price and flexibility) into the market and then those on Kazaa et al; can be called thieves.
There is choice. Buy the package, OR there is likely a mid priced single.
If I am selling my car, does that give you any right to say- "Hey, I wasn't interested in the entire car, I only wanted the leather seats out of it for my tricked out Ford Escort. Since you were unwilling to sell it them separately, I took the liberty of just taking them. If I like them enough, I might just buy the whole car"
Yes, I am oversimplifying thing by looking at only the current music...Are you saying you never download a current song?
Yes ... and what do we have to show for it?
It appears I have something I never would have had before the web:
Karma that is "EXX-cellent"
*pronouced with my miserable Mr. Burns accent*
You can't put RedHat in the Enterprise, but you can put Enterprise in the RedHat.
No, wait, you CAN put RedHat in the Enterprise, but you-no wait...crap...nevermind
When you put a high resolution screenshot on a server named "Minnow" you should expect nothing less
Teacher hands out quiz...
Scribble on paper briefly...
Ignore for 20 minutes...
Teacher-"Trade quizes."
End result:
Jason-"Yeah, Chris got a 98"
Chris-"Jason got a 96"
Yeah, this should be effective *grin*
Respectfully, I think you missed my point. Yeah, I was trying to funny, but funny to make a point.
Take M$ out of it for second.
If a VMS supporter popped up and said-"This is how VMS handles software libraries...", I seriously doubt you would have seen anyone raise a finger as to how that method is backasswards, wasteful, etc.
As soon as M$ offers this same solution, the screams can be heard immediately.
It's funny reading through the different replies to this story-
.
Reply 1- "This is a horrible idea! Look at all the RAM/disk space this is going to use. M$ programmers are idiots!"
Reply 2- "VMS/Apple/*enter slanted fav OS here* already does this! This was a good idea when it was done 10 years ago by ____
Reply 3- An idea like this is so stupid, it will NEVER work right.
So, its a stupid idea that will never work EXCEPT it has already been done BUT will take up too many resources UNLESS it is done by our fav OS AND then thats okay
*grin*
Again, to the best of my recollection, what you are suggesting is similar to the TFTP and many streaming techniques approach:
Take FTP and strip the overhead error checking and if something doesn't come out right, refresh and download it again.
For streaming, you get more throughput, and every now and them you might miss a frame in exchange for the higher quality you can obtain with the lower overhead
That "Intro to the Internet" class from college is a little hazy now, but I don't recall it being as simple as the "internet" coming out of the pipe like water.
Someone far more knowledgable than myself will get to correct me, but I seem to recall there was a process of-
Send some stuff-wait for ACK.
When you get the ACK, send some more.
By turbocharging the ACKs, you are reducing that lag time
In short it gives priority to TCP ACKs over other types of traffic, thereby making it possible to max both upload and download bandwidth simultaenously
It appears that server ACKs have been optimized as well.
SERVER-ACK*wheez*ouch*ACK*sizzle*Damnit*
I am sure, however, that the bandwidth is being optimized as it came back almost immediately unreachable
Joking aside, this is the ultimate hack if it works as breezed through in the summary-just tweaking the priorities, more bandwidth!
NOT readily available. This is not a case of Aquapharm finding a cure like "rub some dirt on it" and trying to patent it. Just because the source is "naturally occuring" does not mean the final product "grows on trees".
They have found a unique way of extracting an antibody from an uncommon source.
I know what you mean but for fun I did a Google search and it was pretty useless in this case
At least, nice to see some compassion expressed on /. for people other the file-sharers who get their broadband connection turned off
Hope this turned out better than it looks right now
Now they're speculating about the presence of an Israeli on board
Um, not speculation. The first Israeli astronaut was on board
I just installed the Windows version of Opera on a computer this weekend and I am pretty damn sure it gave me the option to install the latest version of Java at that time...
Am I wrong?
And if I'm right, is your company just not willing or unable to do the same thing?
Or are you whining because its not preinstalled by M$? Are there not other platforms that do NOT have Java installed by default?
I would guess that there are but M$ is the most common OS used by your end users so you run into this most often.
Well, they should have to suffer just one day of the 200 years of the discrimination that our...
Oh...nevermind...
There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with this being easy to do! Would you prefer to have to do ten complicated steps to accomplish the same task??? It still will not prevent it from being done and will only take more time.
The fault lies in how easy it is to convince most people to assign admin privileges to someone else.
I will, however, agree that administative privileges are handed out many times when not necessary.
Funny, I am careful about checking my facts, and I am assuming that only 5 people will read my post. I would hope I would put a LITTLE more effort into my fact checking tho if I thought it was going to get 1,000,000 hits.
Since the poster and the editors don't check their facts, I am assuming they don't.
Slashdot is the first site I hit for tech info. And typically, while exagerrated, the attacks on MS have basis at least.
But an ASSUMPTION like above about "Well, there's a problem, it must be Windows!" just makes my ears perk up immediately and want to check the facts. Why doesn't it for the Slashdot editors?
WHY would you assume that? Just from the blurb the poster included it immediately seems the kind of oversight that would have the POTENTIAL at least to affect multiple systems.
And yes, I realize that Windows drivers written by third-parties have been targetted, I find it amazingly amusing the native Windows drivers have been determined not to have this issue
Everytime I see/hear the name Enix, I regret that it makes me think of the Dukes of Hazzard...
I know I will lose karma for this, but thats okay, I had to share and karma is crap anyways
Enix: You sure do look purdy today, Daisy.
Cu Cu Cu Cu
Wow, I mean really, they're Ghostbusters references, people.
/. turn out to be things other people misunderstand things and label as trolls.
The "Dogs and Cats" line is one of my favs, however, even if you don't think its funny, its not a TROLL...
Some of the funniest things I read on