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User: Paul+Jakma

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  1. Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it? on Airline Pilots Rely Too Much On Automation, Says Safety Panel · · Score: 1

    "ABSes have saved many lives when drivers slammed on the brakes to avoid a collision, or started slipping on ice." [citation needed]

    If anything, the evidence is somewhat to the contrary. Studies on taxis with and without ABS (the cabs are otherwise very similar vehicles), showed that ABS equipped cars did not have lower accident rates overall. Indeed, certain types of accidents, e.g. in snow, where significantly higher for ABS equipped cars. Cite:

    http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rI4c24VTriEC&pg=PA219&lpg=PA219&dq=Aschenbrenner+and+Biehl+ABS&source=bl&ots=RgRKvw7Qnx&sig=1hNW1rAyzlSw5hpcGjgFnpn4Qpc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3xmPUrDcOYX40gXHm4DYDw&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage

  2. Re: self-flying planes on Airline Pilots Rely Too Much On Automation, Says Safety Panel · · Score: 2

    The computer did not give any instruction. The computers went into alternate law (i.e. "act dumb, do 100% what the pilots command") precisely because the computer had detected sensors were giving conflicting readings. It was down to the pilots to determine what was needed to be done. The correct course of action was fairly obvious. They were flying at altitude, where maximum speed and stall speed are very close to each other. That is, any significant loss of airspeed risks stalling and disaster. The correct course of action, if there's a problem with airspeed indicators, then is to ensure airspeed is preserved - i.e. descend. This is real 101 stuff when it comes to "Flying high".

    The senior co-pilot, in command at the time, knew what had to be done, so did the captain (who was not on the flight deck initially). Unfortunately, despite both of them clearly ordering the junior co-pilot to descend and, later, leave the fucking controls alone (though, by that time, they were almost certainly doomed), the junior co-pilot inexplicably kept taking control and ordering the aircraft to climb - precisely the wrong to do. What was going through his mind we will never know.

  3. Re:If you're successful, Larry will come a callin' on OpenZFS Project Launches, Uniting ZFS Developers · · Score: 1

    Bit of a FUDish comment. This code comes with a licence from Sun^WOracle that grants all the needed patent rights to use and redistribute the code.

  4. Re: Update the constitution on Partner of Guardian's Snowden Reporter Detained Under Terrorism Act · · Score: 1

    You really think the BBC is _never_ a truth factory? :)

  5. Re:"Killer whale" on The Case of the Orca That Killed Its Trainer · · Score: 1

    [citation needed].

    Cetacea derives from the Latin for 'whale'. Its extant 2 branches are called "toothed whales" and "baleen whales", i.e. each branch is a class of whale and the encompassing order is therefore 'whales', so far as any living animal is concerned. Dolphins and porpoises come under "toothed whales", and are thus whales.

  6. Re:"Killer whale" on The Case of the Orca That Killed Its Trainer · · Score: 1

    The poster you're replying to is either ignorant, or using some extremely non-mainstream zoological classification. Dolphins are one of the cetacea, the order of whales.

  7. Re: Almost all students of orca believe... on The Case of the Orca That Killed Its Trainer · · Score: 2

    Cetacea is the order of *whales*. "Cetacea" derives from the greek for whale! So if porpoises and dolphins are cetacea, they are whales.

    There are 2 branches within the order of whales, the toothed whales and the baleen whales. Toothed whales include porpoises, dolphins, etc. The baleen whales are the filter feeders, with baleen combs instead of teeth, such as the right whale, blue whale, humpback, etc.

  8. Re:"Killer whale" on The Case of the Orca That Killed Its Trainer · · Score: 2

    Orcas are delphinidae, which *are* a part of the cetacean order. So they are very much technically whales, and it is quite correct to call them that.

  9. Re:"Killer whale" on The Case of the Orca That Killed Its Trainer · · Score: 1

    Toothed whales are whales. That there are 2 branches in the whale family doesn't make one 'true' or the other 'false'.

  10. Re: Almost all students of orca believe... on The Case of the Orca That Killed Its Trainer · · Score: 4, Informative

    Orcas are members of the dolphin family (delphinidae) of toothed whales (odontoceti), which means they belong to the order of whales (cetacea). I.e. orcas most definitely are whales. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcinus_orca).

  11. Re:But a BYTE Is a letter on Introducing the NSA-Proof Crypto-Font · · Score: 1

    PDFs very much can be searchable, and cut & paste-able, etc.

  12. Re:We did it! on AMD Says There Will Be No DirectX 12 — Ever · · Score: 1

    That was how it ended up for Firewire - its higher-bandwidth meant it was still useful for niche applications. However, Firewire was developed to do the same job as USB - general purpose, serial, packetised bus for peripherals. The reason it failed was because Apple wanted a royalty on every implementation.

  13. Re:We did it! on AMD Says There Will Be No DirectX 12 — Ever · · Score: 1

    That's not at all my memory. Intel were including USB on motherboards, and so the ports were very prevalent. You're right there few peripherals initially, because Windows didn't support USB until Windows 95 OSR2 (late 96), and not usefully so until OSR2.1 (late 97). Apple were pushing their Firewire instead. USB featured famously in Bill Gates' launch demo of Windows 98 in April '98, when it BSODed when a USB peripheral was live-plugged in. However, USB support in '98 was otherwise pretty good.

    That Apple changed course relatively quickly, and accepted USB had achieved market acceptance in a way that Firewire would not, does not change the fact that Apple before that were pushing Firewire to fill the same needs as, and *rather than*, USB, and that Apple hardware did NOT feature USB until *LONG* (2+) years after it was implemented by default on PC boards.

  14. Re:We did it! on AMD Says There Will Be No DirectX 12 — Ever · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, Apple developed IEEE 1394. Apple were quite resistant to USB initially.

  15. Re:My answer on Fighting TSA Harassment of Disabled Travelers · · Score: 1

    It is definitely not the case at DUB or GLA, both of which certainly handle international traffic. DUB also handles some international transfer traffic - it actually has US Immigration there that you go through /before/ boarding a US bound flight.

    If it really is generally the case, then I suspect you're confused about what "European" generally means (possibly you actually mean "Schengen" area). I'm still sceptical though. Can you provide a citation? :)

  16. Re:My answer on Fighting TSA Harassment of Disabled Travelers · · Score: 1

    Amen to this, security at Schiphol is getting ridiculous and annoying. They took a bottle of water off us when we transferred, even though we had bought it airside at our departing airport. The immigration control to get to the Schengen area is also annoying - long queues. The Marchaussee check-point (customs/immigration) is slow, and the dumb phony-exploding-water security check there-after is often even slower - causing further slow-down at the Marchaussee check-point. :(

  17. Re:My answer on Fighting TSA Harassment of Disabled Travelers · · Score: 1

    “All European international airports have an area behind customs declared 'neutral',”

    I don't think this is true. Some big ones (Schiphol, Charles de Gaulle) maybe, but I don't think it's generally true.

  18. Re:Ironic on US Stealth Jet Has To Talk To Allied Planes Over Unsecured Radio · · Score: 1

    Since when does encryption prevent radio signals from being triangulated? (Hint: it doesn't).

  19. Re:inequality on US Near Bottom In Life Expectancy In Developed World · · Score: 1

    Scotland is still suffering from the effects of its de-industrialisation. The lowlands and its central belt particularly, used to be home to much labour intensive, heavy industry - steel, shipyards, mining, heavy engineering. The industry is gone, but the people (or their descendants) largely remain. Thus there are many pockets of poverty around. Life expectancy can be extremely low there, due to substance abuse particularly. The area of Glasgow I live in, Calton, has the lowest male life expectancy in the UK - 53.9 years!

    Scotland is a special case, and is dealing with some tough social problems that are a legacy of how the world around it has changed over the last 60 years. Scotland has excellent health care though, I've found. They spend quite a lot on social health-care, relative to rest of UK. That the life expectancy is still low is due to that poverty and attendant education and life-choices that seem to correlate with that.

  20. Re:Pilots... on FAA Device Rules Illustrate the Folly of a Regulated Internet · · Score: 1

    The aural interference is almost certain. The noise is very recognisable - many of us will have heard it on the ground when leaving a digital mobile phone near a radio.

  21. Re:burden of proof goes the other way on FAA Device Rules Illustrate the Folly of a Regulated Internet · · Score: 1

    My understanding is that these liquid explosives are difficult even for trained technicians to mix under controlled laboratory conditions, never mind dumb foot soldiers trying to do this in an aircraft toilet. For the UK liquid bomb plot trial, the UK government produced demonstration videos of the power of these bombs, however I thought I read somewhere that those producing that demo actually had great difficulty making it work. Unfortunately, I can't a good ref for this now, so...

  22. Re:Pilots... on FAA Device Rules Illustrate the Folly of a Regulated Internet · · Score: 1

    There are a number of examples of possible interference to flight systems from passenger equipment in that report, including some which are near certain to have interference from cell/mobile phones (e.g. aural interference on VHF radio comms).

  23. Re:The argument against regulation ... on FAA Device Rules Illustrate the Folly of a Regulated Internet · · Score: 1

    without proof that such emissions will actually harm someone.

    There is plenty of proof that various kinds of emissions, those from combustion particularly, cause harm. E.g. start with death rate statistics from London in the 50s when they had terrible smog during some winters, when cold air trapped emissions. Large numbers of people *died*, quite obviously directly due to the smog - animals were falling down dead. This was the impetus for regulation of emissions there. Similar stories elsewhere.

  24. Re:but on FAA Device Rules Illustrate the Folly of a Regulated Internet · · Score: 1

    Oh, my father's take on mobile/cell phones being banned was that it was done to protect the *ground* GSM networks - not the aircraft. Having many thousands of phones in the air, in range of tens, maybe hundreds of GSM cells would have put a strain on, perhaps overloaded, the GSM networks. Also, he's heard that "tu duh duh duh tu duh" kind of interference in his headphones, from the mobile phones of passengers roaming. Which potentially could be a safety hazard - though that was in an older aircraft without any complex, modern electronic control systems or cockpit instruments.

  25. Re:burden of proof goes the other way on FAA Device Rules Illustrate the Folly of a Regulated Internet · · Score: 1

    This isn't a terribly uncommon problem, and the fault is often the sensors in the wheel wells. I can ask my (retired) airline captain father for more details if you wish. I've had mobile/cell phone conversations with him in the late 90s, where he was phoning home from the cockpit. ;)