Actually, Australian kangaroos are pretty nasty...
There's a story around about how a Australian helicopter simulator was being demonstrated to some US colleagues. After doing a few passes over some nice rural landscape they were very surprised when some of the kangaroos below pulled out a few shoulder-mounted SAMs and started shooting. They were even more surprised when they were "hit", and crashed and burned.
It turns out that when the software engineers created the kangaroo objects they did so by cloning some soldier objects, and then just changing the uniforms. They forgot to change some of the more aggressive behaviours.
The real reason that these researchers are being sacked is that someone high in the administration has what I term an "Edifice Complex". A common affliction in Australia, it consists of building something akin to the pyramids as a memorial to the wonderful wisdom, forsight, leadership, etc, etc, etc of the person at the top of the "pyramid". The edifice in question is called the "Centre for Obesity, Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease".
Blaming the funding problems on falling student numbers, or routine maintenance, is incorrect.
For people who really do want / need to go offroad, then there are small SUVs that are quite capable: Subaru Foresters and Suzuki Grand Vitara to name a couple. On a recent trip to Uluru (Ayers Rock) via the Oodnadatta track our heavily loaded Forester got 8.5 l/100 km (US 28 mpg), with a roofbox. Their off-road ability is quite high, and can be further increased with sump guards, heavy-duty tyres, lift kits, and so on. You don't need a tank like a Landcruiser or Jeep.
Remember that this is your boss's pet language. Say three nice things about it before you trash it. The best way to do this is a comparison table with columns like:
* upgrade path
* portability
* availability of trained staff
* error rate
* development speed
* performance
* etc, etc, etc.
The "best" language will depend, as other have said, on what the exact application is.
Given that your current environment is VB6(?), I would suggest that you consider:
* VB.NET
* C# - because VB.NET is much closer to C# than the original VB, so you might as well bite the bullet.
* Delphi - although unloved by IT types, it is a very good RAD environment suited to a medium-sized shop, and offers portability that puts M$ products to shame (Win16 projects can be opened, built and run for Win32 and.NET, with Win64 coming).
* Lazarus / Free Pascal - an open-source Delphi clone that is a bit clunky, but covers a very large number of platforms.
* RealBasic - a VB "clone" that is very cross-platform.
As many people here have pointed out, there would be many ways to circumvent any software protection, and such software would surely be an extremely large and complex project - and hence buggy. Anyone brave enough to try out such a system at say, Hong Kong International ?
The real problem of crashing large planes (airliners) into buildings is not their kinetic energy, but the chemical energy of the 100 tons or so of fuel they have on board. crudely speaking, that's the same chemical energy as 100 tones of high explosive.
What makes the 100 tons of explosive extremely dangerous is that all that energy is released in a few milliseconds. What makes an airliner a really dangerous weapon is that most of that 100 tons of fuel burns in a fireball in a few seconds. This occurs because the fuel "mists" on impact, as it it is violently expelled from broken fuel tanks and lines.
This was realised by ICI Paints Division over 30 years ago, who started work on how to prevent misting of aircraft fuel to prevent or minimize aircraft fires in crashes. This work recieved a huge impetus when two Jumbo jets collided on the ground at Teneriffe, and 500 people died.
ICI eventually developed a special fuel additive "FM9" that reduced misting greatly. A number of tests with old WWII bombers on rocket sleds demonstrated just how effective it was.
The FAA started to become keen on the idea, and got NASA to crash a remotely-controlled 707 with the modified fuel into a specially-prepared site at Edwards. Unfortunatly NASA did not do a sterling job: the remote control of the plane barely worked. The plane was crashed at double the planned sink rate, and in a slow flat spin. During the slideout, a "Tomahawk" sliced sideways through an engine, which exploded in a huge fireball. Burning fuel from the damaged engine entered the plane through a cargo door that burst open. The plane ended up a burnt-out hulk, and the senior managers present abandoned the project on the spot. It was a public relations disaster of the first magnitude.
It was a few months before all the troops got reassigned, so in the meantime the FAA guys did a thorough analysis of the crash. They found:
* only 50 gal / 12,000 burned up in the fireball
* the aircraft was not damaged by the fireball: the black soot could be rubbed off the airframe to reveal undamaged paint below.
* most of the fires went out just after the plane slid to a stop
* if you had been on board, you could have walked away (unlike the most similar crash on their database)
* the plane was burnt out by a fire in the cargo bay. the fire-fighters had used up all their foam on the wings and fuselage, and by the time they realised that there was fire _inside_ the cargo bay they did not have any left.
The FAA then did some rather dramatic experiments with jet engines and large quantities of fuel. When normal fuel was poured into the exhaust of a running engine, a large fireball developed, and when that impacted on a aluminium panel it melted and caught fire, with tempertures quickly exceeding 600 C. When the same was done with modified fuel, a small fireball developed, and the temperature of the aluminium panel rose to about 180 C - the boiling point of the fuel. When the test was finished the panel was intact, but blackened.
In the final tests, the modified fuel was poured into the _inlet_ of the running engine. A large fire developed, and so the engine was quickly shut down. When the same test was re-run with normal fuel, the engine exploded and the test site was wrecked.
Our conclusion was that the "FM9" additive worked in that it prevented misting, and hence extreme temperatures, however it was not able to provide perfect protection in the event of large quantities of fuel entering a major ignition source like a running engine.
My understanding is that the Twin Towers collapsed because the intense fire from the initial fireball overwhelmed the fire protection systems in the buildings, and led to sever
"Seems to be that this type of bad decision making is what needs to be addressed at NASA. Yes, the foam needs to be fixed, but it wasn't like the O-Ring problem in the Challenger accident ".
No. Like many science institutes today, NASA is run by bureaucrats who focus on politics and accounting. Columbia died for _EXACTLY_ the same reason as Challenger: the decision-making was _NOT_ done by the engineers and scientists (aside: go find out what happened to the engineers who warned against launching Challenger).
Unless NASA returns to "the good ole days", when the engineers were in charge, or it invents a new management paradigm in which real authority rests with the engineers "at the coal face", ships and people will continue to die.
Perhaps NASA should adopt the Japanese car-maker's paradigm - where a single production worker can stop the entire line if they see a problem.
In reality the way we do institutional science everywhere desperately needs an overhaul - but bad decisions at most reseach institutes only waste money - not lives.
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Actually, Australian kangaroos are pretty nasty ...
There's a story around about how a Australian helicopter simulator was being demonstrated to some US colleagues. After doing a few passes over some nice rural landscape they were very surprised when some of the kangaroos below pulled out a few shoulder-mounted SAMs and started shooting. They were even more surprised when they were "hit", and crashed and burned.
It turns out that when the software engineers created the kangaroo objects they did so by cloning some soldier objects, and then just changing the uniforms. They forgot to change some of the more aggressive behaviours.
The real reason that these researchers are being sacked is that someone high in the administration has what I term an "Edifice Complex". A common affliction in Australia, it consists of building something akin to the pyramids as a memorial to the wonderful wisdom, forsight, leadership, etc, etc, etc of the person at the top of the "pyramid". The edifice in question is called the "Centre for Obesity, Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease".
Blaming the funding problems on falling student numbers, or routine maintenance, is incorrect.
If you are interested, read the gory details at http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3822688.html
... and what happened to those countries who chose to persecute their best and brightest ?
Greece after Socrates ... Italy after Galileo ... Germany after Kristallnacht ... America next ???
Can you be fired - yes ...
For refusing to file a patent - maybe ... but ...
If you are fired, then your boss cannot file the patent because _YOU_ are the inventor.
Filing a patent without ALL the actual authors, or with any authors who did not make a contribution, automatically invalidates the patent.
For people who really do want / need to go offroad, then there are small SUVs that are quite capable: Subaru Foresters and Suzuki Grand Vitara to name a couple. On a recent trip to Uluru (Ayers Rock) via the Oodnadatta track our heavily loaded Forester got 8.5 l/100 km (US 28 mpg), with a roofbox. Their off-road ability is quite high, and can be further increased with sump guards, heavy-duty tyres, lift kits, and so on. You don't need a tank like a Landcruiser or Jeep.
Remember that this is your boss's pet language. Say three nice things about it before you trash it. The best way to do this is a comparison table with columns like:
.NET, with Win64 coming).
* upgrade path
* portability
* availability of trained staff
* error rate
* development speed
* performance
* etc, etc, etc.
The "best" language will depend, as other have said, on what the exact application is.
Given that your current environment is VB6(?), I would suggest that you consider:
* VB.NET
* C# - because VB.NET is much closer to C# than the original VB, so you might as well bite the bullet.
* Delphi - although unloved by IT types, it is a very good RAD environment suited to a medium-sized shop, and offers portability that puts M$ products to shame (Win16 projects can be opened, built and run for Win32 and
* Lazarus / Free Pascal - an open-source Delphi clone that is a bit clunky, but covers a very large number of platforms.
* RealBasic - a VB "clone" that is very cross-platform.
As many people here have pointed out, there would be many ways to circumvent any software protection, and such software would surely be an extremely large and complex project - and hence buggy. Anyone brave enough to try out such a system at say, Hong Kong International ?
The real problem of crashing large planes (airliners) into buildings is not their kinetic energy, but the chemical energy of the 100 tons or so of fuel they have on board. crudely speaking, that's the same chemical energy as 100 tones of high explosive.
What makes the 100 tons of explosive extremely dangerous is that all that energy is released in a few milliseconds. What makes an airliner a really dangerous weapon is that most of that 100 tons of fuel burns in a fireball in a few seconds. This occurs because the fuel "mists" on impact, as it it is violently expelled from broken fuel tanks and lines.
This was realised by ICI Paints Division over 30 years ago, who started work on how to prevent misting of aircraft fuel to prevent or minimize aircraft fires in crashes. This work recieved a huge impetus when two Jumbo jets collided on the ground at Teneriffe, and 500 people died.
ICI eventually developed a special fuel additive "FM9" that reduced misting greatly. A number of tests with old WWII bombers on rocket sleds demonstrated just how effective it was.
The FAA started to become keen on the idea, and got NASA to crash a remotely-controlled 707 with the modified fuel into a specially-prepared site at Edwards. Unfortunatly NASA did not do a sterling job: the remote control of the plane barely worked. The plane was crashed at double the planned sink rate, and in a slow flat spin. During the slideout, a "Tomahawk" sliced sideways through an engine, which exploded in a huge fireball. Burning fuel from the damaged engine entered the plane through a cargo door that burst open. The plane ended up a burnt-out hulk, and the senior managers present abandoned the project on the spot. It was a public relations disaster of the first magnitude.
It was a few months before all the troops got reassigned, so in the meantime the FAA guys did a thorough analysis of the crash. They found:
* only 50 gal / 12,000 burned up in the fireball
* the aircraft was not damaged by the fireball: the black soot could be rubbed off the airframe to reveal undamaged paint below.
* most of the fires went out just after the plane slid to a stop
* if you had been on board, you could have walked away (unlike the most similar crash on their database)
* the plane was burnt out by a fire in the cargo bay. the fire-fighters had used up all their foam on the wings and fuselage, and by the time they realised that there was fire _inside_ the cargo bay they did not have any left.
The FAA then did some rather dramatic experiments with jet engines and large quantities of fuel. When normal fuel was poured into the exhaust of a running engine, a large fireball developed, and when that impacted on a aluminium panel it melted and caught fire, with tempertures quickly exceeding 600 C. When the same was done with modified fuel, a small fireball developed, and the temperature of the aluminium panel rose to about 180 C - the boiling point of the fuel. When the test was finished the panel was intact, but blackened.
In the final tests, the modified fuel was poured into the _inlet_ of the running engine. A large fire developed, and so the engine was quickly shut down. When the same test was re-run with normal fuel, the engine exploded and the test site was wrecked.
Our conclusion was that the "FM9" additive worked in that it prevented misting, and hence extreme temperatures, however it was not able to provide perfect protection in the event of large quantities of fuel entering a major ignition source like a running engine.
My understanding is that the Twin Towers collapsed because the intense fire from the initial fireball overwhelmed the fire protection systems in the buildings, and led to sever
Almost right.
"Seems to be that this type of bad decision making is what needs to be addressed at NASA. Yes, the foam needs to be fixed, but it wasn't like the O-Ring problem in the Challenger accident ".
No. Like many science institutes today, NASA is run by bureaucrats who focus on politics and accounting. Columbia died for _EXACTLY_ the same reason as Challenger: the decision-making was _NOT_ done by the engineers and scientists (aside: go find out what happened to the engineers who warned against launching Challenger).
Unless NASA returns to "the good ole days", when the engineers were in charge, or it invents a new management paradigm in which real authority rests with the engineers "at the coal face", ships and people will continue to die.
Perhaps NASA should adopt the Japanese car-maker's paradigm - where a single production worker can stop the entire line if they see a problem.
In reality the way we do institutional science everywhere desperately needs an overhaul - but bad decisions at most reseach institutes only waste money - not lives.