Sure, that's eminently practical. I can take 48 hours to get from Detroit to LA, or I can take six (including travel time and check-in time at both airports).
Uh, that Baron crash out of PDK was NOT a result of the pilot having a heart attack.
It was a result -- most likely -- of the pilot failing to prevent airspeed from degrading to Vmc after loss of an engine at about 1000' AGL.
In other words, he didn't fly the airplane, which is ALWAYS rule #1. That aircraft was still flyable, but for some reason (poor training, pilot freaked out, momentary brain fart, whatever -- it doesn't matter; they're both dead), the pilot failed to do so.
A chute wouldn't necessarily have saved these guys, and as PIC, unless my passengers know I'm *dead*, if one of them pulls a handle to activate such a system, I'm opening the door and throwing him out of the aircraft. I am the PIC, and if anyone makes the decision to pull the chute, it will be me, and NOT a passenger.
We aren't going to know what land it's going to drop on until probably a day or two before it hits, at best.
Hitting the ocean won't devastate the "entire oceanic biosphere," either. It'll create local disruption, but keep in mind the heat capacity of water versus that of air and rock. (Hint: water absorbs the thermal impact a lot better.)
A 50-foot tsunami hitting the entire East Coast of the US and the western portions of Europe and Africa would be FAR less devastating than a hit directly on any landmass except possibly Antarctica or the middle of the Sahara Desert. At least with a tsunami, only the areas within ~10 km of the coasts would need to be evacuated, and the destruction wouldn't be nearly as total as if the asteroid impacted directly on, say, New York City. You hit NYC with a giant wall of water and most of it survives. You hit anywhere in the state of New Jersey or Connecticut with an asteroid this size and NYC turns into a pile of smoldering rubble.
Better to spread out the devastation into a lot of absorbable chunks than hope against hope that if it *does* hit a landmass, it will hit somewhere benign. The way the population is expanding right now, in 24 years, there won't BE anywhere like that.
I think the effects of the resulting tsunami would be easier to deal with than the total obliteration of a 200 km (diameter) circle in most land areas.
Personally, I don't see much of a point of these systems. The likelihood of a structural failure or a complete loss of control is very rare. Anything else, a properly trained pilot can fly him/herself out of.
In the best case, sure.
In reality, not true.
Have a gander at the December 2004 Flying magazine (at least, I think that was the one) -- they had a really good article about BRS chute deployments and their contributions to safety, or lack thereof. The general conclusion was that they reduce the fatality rate by about 50% in loss-of-control accidents.
Because he knows what his employer is doing with his work.
If you're hired to find holes in software, and then you find out your employer is using those holes to write new viruses, or steal people's identities, and you keep on working because "it's a paycheck," you're just as much scum as your boss is.
This is no different. Knowingly working for scum makes you scum too.
They don't need mail relays. The zombies can use their own SMTP engines just like the various Windoze viruses can.
The problem is the ISPs who allow all their DSL/cable clients to do direct-to-MX mailing. A large secondary cause is all the ISPs who do spam filtering but who DO NOT assign a +100 SpamAssassin score to any mail that originates directly from a dynamic IP pool. Fix those two problems and zombie spam drops to nearly nil.
I've given this some serious thought since my earlier post, and while I'd love to see every edit moderated in some way, I don't think it's in any way practical, nor do I foresee that it ever will be.
Let's look at a few statistics, shall we?
Wikipedia's Wikistats show that for November 2004, there were over three-quarters of a million edits. That's an average of about 25,000 edits every day.
There are just over 15,000 registered "Wikipedians." Of these, approximately 1,000 have performed at least 100 edits. Let's call these people "active Wikipedians" and assume that these people all have time to moderate on a daily basis and, more importantly, are willing to moderate on a daily basis. That leaves each active Wikipedian with 25 edits each and every day that must be moderated.
Now, let's look at Wikipedia's growth during 2004. Since January, the number of monthly edits has increased by a factor of just over four. The number of active Wikipedians has increased by a factor of just over three. In one year's time, if these rates hold steady, the daily moderation burden of each active Wikipedian will increase to about 33 edits.
The number of edits is increasing faster than new Wikipedians are joining, which means this problem is only going to get worse.
In order for a moderation system to work -- I'm trying to be optimistic here -- Wikipedia would have to implement something that judged the "degree" of each edit. Edits that make large-scale changes -- where, say, more than one percent of the page changes -- would be a top priority for moderation, because it's these edits that have the most potential for destruction. Edits that simply change a character or two, copyediting stuff, wikifying, etc., would be less likely to be specifically harmful, and perhaps could be moderated at random.
Moderation, like meta-moderation here at Slashdot, could then be used to drive a karma system. The more useful edits a user makes, the higher his/her karma. After a certain point, perhaps that user's edits could be flagged as "low priority" for the moderators, because it's very likely that a user who has made many useful contributions in the past is continuing to do so.
In short, moderating every edit will never be practical, but moderation could probably be put to good use all the same. Implementation would be a nightmare, though.
I think a/.-style mod system would be great for large-scale (think a paragraph or so) edits, but it would be a giant pain in the ass for edits that clean up grammatical or spelling mistakes, mostly because in my experience, it would take months for five people who both know enough about grammar and spelling AND who give a shit about the topic to come along and say, "Yeah, that edit is OK."
If Wikipedians were *assigned* five random edits to moderate, though, things would probably work a lot better in that regard.
Of course, such a thing would still have to be *implemented* somehow...
It's an interesting idea. Someone should bring it up over there.
1) Uh, CodeWarrior was by Metrowerks, and AFAIK, there was never an OS X version. Apple's tools for OS 9 were less than useful in comparison to CodeWarrior, but by all accounts, Xcode is infinitely superior. The fact that it's free is a nice side benefit, but serious developers don't really care that much about what the development environment costs as long as it's a good value.
2) The rug got pulled out from all the other cloners, too, most of whom were doing FAR more business than the Starmax series.
3) The PPC/CHRP/AIM alliance (whatever they're calling it this week) had a lot of problems that may or may not have been Motorola's fault. Until the PPC 970 (G5) and 750fx (G3), IBM wasn't exactly delivering that many CPUs to Apple, which leads into...
The G4 debacle was really the first time Mot had trouble delivering what Apple asked for. After that it was all downhill. Of course, Mot's semiconductor division is a separate company now (Freescale).
Your last point is really your only good one, but I can't say as I disagree with your conclusion. Jobs has been pretty angry with Mot ever since the whole G4 debacle, but the Freescale spin-off might have softened that anger somewhat. I suspect Mot had to do some serious ass-kissing to get this deal to fly.
1) In Sino-Soviet Korea, a Beowulf cluster of iTunes-enabled fone overlords (who I, for one, welcome) plays Natalie Portman naked and petrified in hot grits to old people in a positive manner. 2) ??? 3) Profit! Because the iPod has made Apple money hand over fist, so a fone that has the same general function (could this be the flash iPod everyone is talking about?) will likely be a giant seller.
Problem is that cell fones are typically loss leaders for SOMEBODY, and we all know the iTMS is barely profitable, so I just don't see where the money would be coming from here.
You do realise that RF is nonionising radiation, right? And that *ionising* radiation is required to cause the mutations in DNA that lead to cancer, right?
An article in one of the major flight magazines (either Flying, AOPA Pilot, or AOPA Flight Training) just did a bit of statistical analysis on instrument approach procedures over the last 10 years or so. Precision approaches (ILS, PAR, MLS) were significantly safer than non-precision approaches (GPS, NDB, VOR, etc.). Period. (The article was in the September-December 2004 period if anyone's curious. I don't remember specifically which of the three magazines, or which issue.)
Disabling the GPS system is a stupid idea for reasons discussed elsewhere, but it would NOT appreciably affect instrument approaches in low weather. Most GPS approaches have minimums from 400-800 feet higher than an ILS to the same runway, and if the weather is so bad that you're shooting the ILS to mins, there's no way you'll be doing a GPS approach to that airport instead.
And yes, before you ask, I *am* a commercial pilot (SE/ME), CFI (SE/ME/Instrument), and ground instructor (advanced/instrument).
Slashdot Mirror
Hey! Am I the first person to wonder why Slashdot doesn't cache the stuff they link to...
No. You must be new here.
p
Sure, that's eminently practical. I can take 48 hours to get from Detroit to LA, or I can take six (including travel time and check-in time at both airports).
p
Apparently the United and US Airways bankruptcies weren't high-profile enough...
p
Uh, that Baron crash out of PDK was NOT a result of the pilot having a heart attack.
It was a result -- most likely -- of the pilot failing to prevent airspeed from degrading to Vmc after loss of an engine at about 1000' AGL.
In other words, he didn't fly the airplane, which is ALWAYS rule #1. That aircraft was still flyable, but for some reason (poor training, pilot freaked out, momentary brain fart, whatever -- it doesn't matter; they're both dead), the pilot failed to do so.
A chute wouldn't necessarily have saved these guys, and as PIC, unless my passengers know I'm *dead*, if one of them pulls a handle to activate such a system, I'm opening the door and throwing him out of the aircraft. I am the PIC, and if anyone makes the decision to pull the chute, it will be me, and NOT a passenger.
p
We aren't going to know what land it's going to drop on until probably a day or two before it hits, at best.
Hitting the ocean won't devastate the "entire oceanic biosphere," either. It'll create local disruption, but keep in mind the heat capacity of water versus that of air and rock. (Hint: water absorbs the thermal impact a lot better.)
A 50-foot tsunami hitting the entire East Coast of the US and the western portions of Europe and Africa would be FAR less devastating than a hit directly on any landmass except possibly Antarctica or the middle of the Sahara Desert. At least with a tsunami, only the areas within ~10 km of the coasts would need to be evacuated, and the destruction wouldn't be nearly as total as if the asteroid impacted directly on, say, New York City. You hit NYC with a giant wall of water and most of it survives. You hit anywhere in the state of New Jersey or Connecticut with an asteroid this size and NYC turns into a pile of smoldering rubble.
Better to spread out the devastation into a lot of absorbable chunks than hope against hope that if it *does* hit a landmass, it will hit somewhere benign. The way the population is expanding right now, in 24 years, there won't BE anywhere like that.
p
Let's hope it doesn't land in the ocean
Alternatively, let's hope it *does*.
I think the effects of the resulting tsunami would be easier to deal with than the total obliteration of a 200 km (diameter) circle in most land areas.
p
Personally, I don't see much of a point of these systems. The likelihood of a structural failure or a complete loss of control is very rare. Anything else, a properly trained pilot can fly him/herself out of.
In the best case, sure.
In reality, not true.
Have a gander at the December 2004 Flying magazine (at least, I think that was the one) -- they had a really good article about BRS chute deployments and their contributions to safety, or lack thereof. The general conclusion was that they reduce the fatality rate by about 50% in loss-of-control accidents.
(Commercial pilot/CFII/MEI/AGI/IGI)
p
Because he knows what his employer is doing with his work.
If you're hired to find holes in software, and then you find out your employer is using those holes to write new viruses, or steal people's identities, and you keep on working because "it's a paycheck," you're just as much scum as your boss is.
This is no different. Knowingly working for scum makes you scum too.
p
Who is the real bad guy?
Your buddy.
And you for still being friends with such a lowlife creep.
If he has any morals at all, he'll tell his boss exactly how far up his own ass the boss's head is, and then he'll leave the company.
Until he does, don't try and play the self-righteous "I just do this to pay the bills" bullshit here.
p
They don't need mail relays. The zombies can use their own SMTP engines just like the various Windoze viruses can.
The problem is the ISPs who allow all their DSL/cable clients to do direct-to-MX mailing. A large secondary cause is all the ISPs who do spam filtering but who DO NOT assign a +100 SpamAssassin score to any mail that originates directly from a dynamic IP pool. Fix those two problems and zombie spam drops to nearly nil.
p
The last guy on the Internet who still believes in the supremacy of PageRank gets modded "Interesting?"
Interesting.
p
I've given this some serious thought since my earlier post, and while I'd love to see every edit moderated in some way, I don't think it's in any way practical, nor do I foresee that it ever will be.
Let's look at a few statistics, shall we?
Wikipedia's Wikistats show that for November 2004, there were over three-quarters of a million edits. That's an average of about 25,000 edits every day.
There are just over 15,000 registered "Wikipedians." Of these, approximately 1,000 have performed at least 100 edits. Let's call these people "active Wikipedians" and assume that these people all have time to moderate on a daily basis and, more importantly, are willing to moderate on a daily basis. That leaves each active Wikipedian with 25 edits each and every day that must be moderated.
Now, let's look at Wikipedia's growth during 2004. Since January, the number of monthly edits has increased by a factor of just over four. The number of active Wikipedians has increased by a factor of just over three. In one year's time, if these rates hold steady, the daily moderation burden of each active Wikipedian will increase to about 33 edits.
The number of edits is increasing faster than new Wikipedians are joining, which means this problem is only going to get worse.
In order for a moderation system to work -- I'm trying to be optimistic here -- Wikipedia would have to implement something that judged the "degree" of each edit. Edits that make large-scale changes -- where, say, more than one percent of the page changes -- would be a top priority for moderation, because it's these edits that have the most potential for destruction. Edits that simply change a character or two, copyediting stuff, wikifying, etc., would be less likely to be specifically harmful, and perhaps could be moderated at random.
Moderation, like meta-moderation here at Slashdot, could then be used to drive a karma system. The more useful edits a user makes, the higher his/her karma. After a certain point, perhaps that user's edits could be flagged as "low priority" for the moderators, because it's very likely that a user who has made many useful contributions in the past is continuing to do so.
In short, moderating every edit will never be practical, but moderation could probably be put to good use all the same. Implementation would be a nightmare, though.
p
People who edit Wikipedia articles.
p
I think a /.-style mod system would be great for large-scale (think a paragraph or so) edits, but it would be a giant pain in the ass for edits that clean up grammatical or spelling mistakes, mostly because in my experience, it would take months for five people who both know enough about grammar and spelling AND who give a shit about the topic to come along and say, "Yeah, that edit is OK."
If Wikipedians were *assigned* five random edits to moderate, though, things would probably work a lot better in that regard.
Of course, such a thing would still have to be *implemented* somehow...
It's an interesting idea. Someone should bring it up over there.
p
The fact that this is modded funny merely proves the grandparent's point.
That isn't a contraction. It's a possessive. Confusion of "number" with "amount" aside, the grandparent did quite well.
p
Oh, and when we change networks, our phone number comes with us.
Same in the US.
I'm not denying the state of the US cell fone market sucks, but what you just picked to illustrate it isn't anywhere NEAR the real reason.
p
Microsoft didn't want SP2 users to feel that features had been removed from the OS with the update... ;)
p
No, not a dupe.
The vulnerability discussed in the article you linked is here:
http://secunia.com/advisories/13251/
which, as you can plainly see, is #13251. Secunia calls it the "window injection vulnerability."
The vulnerability discussed in THIS article is
http://secunia.com/advisories/13482/
Quite obviously number 13482. Secunia calls this one the "cross-site scripting vulnerability."
So no, they're not the same thing at all, and you're karma-whoring with falsely "informative" posts.
p
1) Uh, CodeWarrior was by Metrowerks, and AFAIK, there was never an OS X version. Apple's tools for OS 9 were less than useful in comparison to CodeWarrior, but by all accounts, Xcode is infinitely superior. The fact that it's free is a nice side benefit, but serious developers don't really care that much about what the development environment costs as long as it's a good value.
2) The rug got pulled out from all the other cloners, too, most of whom were doing FAR more business than the Starmax series.
3) The PPC/CHRP/AIM alliance (whatever they're calling it this week) had a lot of problems that may or may not have been Motorola's fault. Until the PPC 970 (G5) and 750fx (G3), IBM wasn't exactly delivering that many CPUs to Apple, which leads into...
The G4 debacle was really the first time Mot had trouble delivering what Apple asked for. After that it was all downhill. Of course, Mot's semiconductor division is a separate company now (Freescale).
Your last point is really your only good one, but I can't say as I disagree with your conclusion. Jobs has been pretty angry with Mot ever since the whole G4 debacle, but the Freescale spin-off might have softened that anger somewhat. I suspect Mot had to do some serious ass-kissing to get this deal to fly.
p
1) In Sino-Soviet Korea, a Beowulf cluster of iTunes-enabled fone overlords (who I, for one, welcome) plays Natalie Portman naked and petrified in hot grits to old people in a positive manner.
2) ???
3) Profit! Because the iPod has made Apple money hand over fist, so a fone that has the same general function (could this be the flash iPod everyone is talking about?) will likely be a giant seller.
Problem is that cell fones are typically loss leaders for SOMEBODY, and we all know the iTMS is barely profitable, so I just don't see where the money would be coming from here.
p
In Soviet Chinese Korea, positronic radiation affects YOU, but only if you're old!
p
they would rather make money...How can this be a good thing?
I think you just answered your own question.
p
You do realise that RF is nonionising radiation, right? And that *ionising* radiation is required to cause the mutations in DNA that lead to cancer, right?
Just checking.
p
Uh, no it's not.
An article in one of the major flight magazines (either Flying, AOPA Pilot, or AOPA Flight Training) just did a bit of statistical analysis on instrument approach procedures over the last 10 years or so. Precision approaches (ILS, PAR, MLS) were significantly safer than non-precision approaches (GPS, NDB, VOR, etc.). Period. (The article was in the September-December 2004 period if anyone's curious. I don't remember specifically which of the three magazines, or which issue.)
Disabling the GPS system is a stupid idea for reasons discussed elsewhere, but it would NOT appreciably affect instrument approaches in low weather. Most GPS approaches have minimums from 400-800 feet higher than an ILS to the same runway, and if the weather is so bad that you're shooting the ILS to mins, there's no way you'll be doing a GPS approach to that airport instead.
And yes, before you ask, I *am* a commercial pilot (SE/ME), CFI (SE/ME/Instrument), and ground instructor (advanced/instrument).
p
...and she's naked and petrified in a bowl of hot grits!
C'mon, someone had to say it...
p