I'm sure they'll wrap it in a better sounding decision, but essentially, yes.
The job itself isn't really all that fun. You're dealing with people from the beginning of your shift, to the end of your shift, who all hate you. Everyone from traffic cops writing tickets, to special crime units, their job is to enforce the law, which means someone you encounter is going to get the shit end of the stick.
I have never heard anyone sincerely say "Well thank you for stopping me officer. I wasn't aware that I was going 5 miles per hour over the speed limit. I really appreciate it that you have given me this $150 reminder to slow down. Have a beautiful day." Nope, it's more like (either verbalized or in your mind) "Fuck you, I wasn't speeding, if I wasn't running late already, I'd back my car over you, but I don't want to have to stop again to wash the blood off."
And that's the easy shift.
Try showing up to do a preliminary interview on a murder suspect.
If they're innocent of the murder, they may cooperate. They may say "fuck you, call my lawyer", or shoot you, because you might find the 100 kilos of heroin in the spare bedroom being sorted and bagged by illegal aliens you had smuggled into the country for just that purpose. But the crime doesn't always resemble the reaction. They may just shoot because there's an outstanding speeding ticket that wasn't ever paid. And, that's just the innocent people.
If they're guilty, that changes the playing field, sort of. Some think they can talk their way out of anything. Some don't. And when they realize that the conversation is going towards "you have the right to remain silent", out comes Uncle Glock to finish the conversation.
I, by no means, am implying that any of it is right. Law enforcement, rent a cops, and... well, whatever the TSA is suppose to be (we are not law enforcement, but we are the government, and you surrendered your rights the moment you thought about buying a plane ticket, you terrorist scum). They all pick and choose the laws the enforce. And frequently enough to make the news every day if you look for it, they just plain make up the laws. Yes, you are allowed to film on a public street. You need model releases if it's for commercial purposes. And no, anyone at any level (outlined at the beginning of this paragraph) cannot just decide "Fuck you, you can't do that. I'm going to smash your shit and arrest you for whatever I feel like, after I get done kicking you and your girlfriend a few dozen times. That'll teach you to talk back to me." Ok, they may not say all those words, but by about the 5th swift kick into your ribs, or trying to kick your head like a soccer ball, the implication is there.
And no, nothing that we can say or whine about is going to make a bit of difference. There's one route that will change it, and that is significant change. But I am not advocating the change that can be implied, because those who start it will not survive to see the end of it.
Actually, the way Florida law reads (and probably in other states), anyone injured during the commission of a crime will be found at fault for that injury.
This is the way it was explained to me in law enforcement school.
If Suspect A were robbing a bank. The police show up, secure the area around it, and the situation escalates. Suspect A realizes he doesn't have a chance, and comes out of the bank, gun held above his head in a submission manner. SWAT is going to be in full battle gear (body armor, assault weapons, etc).
IB 1 (Innocent Bystander 1), a 90 year old gentleman, see the commotion, realizes what's happening and has a heart attack and dies. Not a shot has been fired yet.
SWAT1, a member of the SWAT team determines that the submissive manner isn't submissive, but aggressive, and fires. Because of the shot, every officer on the scene starts firing. we'll assume for this argument, that none of the officers shots hit their target due to the distance from the police line, and the inaccuracy of their weapon.
Random shots ricochet and hit IB 2 through IB 10, people who were standing at another police line (on the other side of the street, or an intersecting street, it doesn't really matter).
The shooting stops, ambulances come and collect the injured. Here's the summary.
Injured: Suspect A
Fatality: IB 1, IB 2 - IB 4 (3 dead from gunfire injuries, one from heart attack)
Who did it?
SWAT1 injured Suspect A.
Other officers injured IB 5 - IB 10
Other officers killed IB 2 - IB 4
So when the charges come down, who gets charged?
SWAT 1 - no charges.
Officers - no charges.
Suspect A - 4 homicides, 6 attempted homicides, all without firing a single shot.
The logic goes like this. If Suspect A had never been robbing the bank, the police would not have responded. The scenario would have never happened, and therefore it's all Suspect A's fault.
The same applies to the real case in question. The blame *WILL* be laid on the driver who is now dead. The IA investigation regarding the shooting will likely find that it was a good shooting. There may be some misconduct charges for the threats to bystanders and destruction of private property. That'll result in a nasty note in their file, and maybe a few days of paid vacation.
You know, I half-way considered it, but... I'm fairly confident that they're really on track to release as promised. Despite that, I'm not confident enough to lay down even a few bucks. A playable demo *may* make me want to part with my hard earned dollars. An excellent demo experience would make that even more likely.
But, as someone not willing to part with $45 to be one of the first people to find out if it sucks or not.
Actually, it seems they like those. They read them all the time. Well, if they publish frequently enough. I've seen every intelligence organization I've ever heard of, and quite a few even friends in the government (current and retired) couldn't guess at. Some of them take some substantial research, but you know it's bound to be something with the US Gov't when it ends in.gov or.mil. Very few.gov's that I've seen come by are locate or state. Maybe it's because of the demographic who seems to like our news.
It really did become the Star Trek tricorder. The damned thing could do anything and then some. Need to adjust a cell phone to work through time and space? [points sonic at it] Done. Need to see what this lifeform is? [points sonic at it] Done. Need to fix the computers that were just destroyed in a massive explosion? [points sonic at it] [points it again] Done.
They really need to just consider what it is. A sonic screwdriver. A device that sends a tuned frequency out. Some things, like unlocking modern doors, could be feasible, but it would require a tensioner too. Look at what a lock pick gun, a lock pick rake, or even a bump key do. But, a sonic device against a keypad? That makes just as much sense as shooting one to make the door fall open. Sure as hell, when I finish forming my evil intergalactic empire, I'll make sure it has locks that work, not locks that you can just shoot, kick, or yell at. I also will have well positioned guards and surveillance, and not build in secret back doors to subvert my own security.
If some schmuck in a blue box shows up, I'll have him captured immediately. He won't be able to just walk in, steal my evil universe destroying device, and disappear with it.
Ya, I know. I was reading a study on increased lightning strikes on motor vehicles due to it. They're using more carbon in performance tires, to assist with traction.
But.. This wasn't recent, it was about 20 years ago, and still, I wasn't touching the metal surface of the bulb, and I was wearing sneakers (pretty much all I wore back then), so I was insulated from the car by my shoes. The contacts on the bulb were isolated from me by an air gap.
A lot of them are only running at 80mw or less. I just did a quick search. The Linksys WAP54G puts out 16.5dBm for 802.11b, or approx 44.67mW. The WRT54G puts out 42mW, but you can crank that up past 100mW through some simple hacks. I use the Tomato firmware, which lets me set it from 1mW to 250mW. For the best signal to my relay AP, I leave it set to 200mW. That's enough to push through the walls, without causing signal distortion.
I had an Orinoco PCCard that put out 200mW. I had a 24dBi antenna attached, so my signal was about 47dBm, so I was well over 1W, but nowhere near 1000W. That wasn't for an in-building purpose though. It was specifically for a dedicated long range directional link over 1/2 mile, showing 100% signal strength at both ends.
Despite what anyone might claim, it didn't cook my hand when I was adjusting it. I put my hand in front of it, just to say I did. No heating, no burns, nothing other than interfering with the signal. That was a point to point, between the low end at about 25' AGL, and the high end about 90' AGL. The only signal problem I ever had was when some damned bamboo trees grew up into the line of sight. At first, the signal degraded when the wind blew. (the wind blew the tree in to block the signal). As they grew, it eventually became enough of a problem where I cut down the offending trees from the cluster.
It should be, and usually is. The obvious sign of that is, the signal is blocked all the time, when the metal box (microwave) is between the AP and the client. If it isn't in the "line of sight", a leaky microwave will still cause interference.
I had a friend with an old microwave. We'd talk for about an hour at a time, various times in our conversation, he may throw a cup of water in the microwave to make coffee. As soon as he hit the start button, all I'd hear was interference. He's walk away from the microwave and it would be fine. When he went back (after it had finished), we'd carry on the conversation with no problems. He wasn't moving to put the handset on the wrong side of the microwave or any other signal blocking object.
More often than not, interference is caused by some RF blocking material (like the refrigerator or the steel plate in your head), not the cravings of the stoner next door making cheese nachos.
Nice pictures.:) Obviously the lines are too low, or under a heavy load.
For reference, in case anyone wonders, it's not necessary to put them to ground (neither electrically and physically). When I did it, I held it in my hand, holding it by the glass part of the tube. The only reason for doing that was that the metal part isn't really all that big.:) Standing on the car, I was insulated from the ground by the tires, but since the metal ends weren't touching anything at all, it didn't matter.
That must have really taken some dedication to get them all arranged like that. I followed the link to the creators site, and he has more pictures. You can see that the tubes are all perfectly vertical, and perfectly spaced. He used 1,301 tubes in 3,600 square meters (38,750 square feet or 0.89 acres)
Several years ago, I had two pairs of cordless phones (house line and business line), and my wireless network. The house itself was very quiet as far as RF went. We were fairly isolated, with only one house adjoining us, and they didn't have anything wireless.
The house line and cordless line ran perfectly happily together at 2.4Ghz. Then I bought the new phones for the business line. It too was 2.4Ghz. As soon as I plugged it in, it killed the network and house phone. It was like a big kill light switch, and it didn't matter what channel I switched the wifi to. I had to return it to the store, and picked up a 5.8Ghz phone instead.
All of the equipment were good brand name items. They were all digital, frequenting hopping, so there should have been no interference. Some just don't play well with others.
I've helped people identify wifi problems. I have seen some troublesome microwave ovens. I've seen a lot more problems where an appliance is in the "line of sight" (through the wall) between the AP and the client. It's usually the refrigerator. They're amazed when I can move the AP a little to the side, or raise it up, to reduce their interference. I try to explain, when you have the AP, shoved behind the computer, with their UPS on one side, and a steel file cabinet on the other side, you've blocked the signal. Once I've moved it, they complain that the AP is ugly and they don't want it on their desk or on top of the file cabinet. {sigh}
Have you ever taken a flourescent tube and held it under high power transmission lines? Something like this.
Depending on the current load and the height of the lines, you can get it to light up pretty close to the ground. I've done it while standing on the ground (tube at 3 to 5 feet AGL). Sometimes it required standing on the car and holding it straight up (tube at about 8 to 10 feet AGL). You'd be surprised to find out what's there, that you can't see.
They could adopt the the DHS threat level color method. Every release would be orange, with the exception of the occasional red update, which would be randomly selected by background noise.
You know, I understand the Linux kernel version numbers, and even that gave me a headache. I guess they let the monkeys out of the cages at the NSA once in a while, just to taunt the rest of us.:)
I was just trying to get all the digits in order, and place them somewhere in the right area. I guess 48.151, -16.2342 would have been a little better.
It could have been possible for them to head that way, if there was a big nasty storm off the coast of Spain and Southwestern France.
For those not keeping track, see the points we've discussed HERE. Points A through D and H were actual points on the route.
About a decade or so ago, I worked in a small computer store. We brought a guy on who rebuilt monitors. He had been in the US Navy repairing electronics on a carrier (if I recall correctly). He could work through almost any problem, and ended up collecting a decent set of monitor schematics. We charged $100 per monitor repair. It liked the work, because the company got good money, and he was paid a flat rate (like $40 per monitor, if I remember right). Most of them had common faults, so he could go through several per hour. He could do just about any component, including surface mount. His work was to repair monitors, but he could fix just about anything. We had a Soundblaster card, when they were going for over $100. Rather than sending it back, he looked and said "give me a few minutes, I'll have it fixed. He found the fault and had it fixed in just a few minutes. That made the customer happy, and we still got our hour repair rate ($50/hr on computers).
I've done some small repairs, but I don't even attempt surface mount stuff. I prefer to stick with the big obvious stuff, unless I designed and built the board.
My best guess, assuming the flight crew weren't idiots, was that the turbulent air they were in hit them from above and from the front. It would have shoved them down, and the indicated airspeed would have been high.
The autopilot would have most likely set the nose up, to climb back to the intended altitude, and that should have bled some of the airspeed off. It could have also throttled them back to reduce speed to where they needed to be.
When the wind stopped hitting them, they were suddenly underspeed with the nose up. When they stalled, the control surfaces wouldn't do anything right. Compare it to driving on ice. Once you lose traction, you can tell the car to do anything you want, and it will do anything it wants. You can consider an airplane as always driving on ice. The laminar airflow over the wings is their traction. Laminar airflow is where the air moves smoothly across the surface of the wing and control surfaces (elevator, rudder, and ailerons). Without that, you don't get lift, nor do the control surfaces work. When I learned to fly, the FAA required hands-on practice in stalls and spins. From what I understand, it's no longer required for private pilots, but I'd expect it would be required for commercial pilots.
From what I read, it indicated they had pulled back on the stick, which would have been wrong, unless the pilot(s) thought they had hit some really rough air, and were in a steep dive, or even inverted. The mention of them giving nose-up input may not have been the whole story either. They may have tried everything, and had no positive response. There was a mention that they tried to turn one way, and the aircraft turned the other way. In the end, they had changed their heading by about 180 degrees (i.e., they turned around), which probably wasn't intentional.
Once they were nose up and stalled, they were pretty much stuck falling. The only solution is to get a laminar airflow over the wings. Full throttle may have solved it, but apparently it didn't.
There may have been other circumstances that we aren't aware of. They had ice in the pitot tube. It could have been on the wings and intake of the engines also. I don't know if that aircraft has any way to indicate ice on the wings. If there was, it may have been very difficult to get moving properly again. That happened on Flight 3407 years ago also. Ice on the wings contributed to the loss of that aircraft, as did the improper response by the flight crew.
That's all just supposition based on the little bit of information that I know.
I wouldn't mind if they had at least a mechanical backups to the essential instruments. Compass, altimeter, airspeed indicator, attitude indicator, and vertical speed indicator.
If all (electronic and mechanical) airspeed indicators show 0, but you think you're flying, they're probably wrong. If the electronic gauges indicate everything is fine, but your lunch is stuck to the ceiling, and the mechanical gauges show your dropping like a rock, it's time to do something different.
Putting the aircraft 40 degrees nose up with a low air speed is catastrophic, as they found out.
Coincidentally, that was the order number with airbus.
And the last update from ATC had them going to their waypoint at 48.1516 -23.42 to avoid weather, before turning a heading of 049.
Damn, now you know the next two digits. Well, we don't have to worry about you guessing the next 8 pairs before... well, you'll find out the end of next year.
There was a gap of years, where I didn't need anything because I didn't have time to play around with my own electronics. I went back in looking for some little pieces. Don't ask me what. Resistors, switches, relays, or something along those lines. It really hurt to see that they didn't even sell a soldering iron. I asked the guy at the counter. He had been a long time employee, and we had a good chat about it. There was one RS store in the area that had *some* parts.
A few years ago, I needed a high load solid state relay / optical isolator. Pretty much, I was making a spark gap generator. Well, ideally it wouldn't be, since it was to be putting a current through water to test electrolysis at different frequencies and voltages. I couldn't handle the current through the equipment I had. 15A 170VDC is a bit strong.:) There were no local vendors. I could have ordered it from one of several domestic companies, but the price was too high. I ended up ordering them from some guy in Turkey who had a couple listed up on eBay for $5.
And for those wondering, 130VAC (full bridge rectified to DC) fed to carbon plates does a wonderful job of electrolysis. For my testing, it was perfect as far as the rate went. It was completely infeasible for the intended application. And as others have found (just check YouTube), you want to ensure your electrodes never have a shorter path through the air (resulting gasses), or you'll find your device exploding very quickly. My tests at that level lasted for about 2 seconds.:)
But back to the original purpose. Ya, I miss the days where you could go into the store and pick up any little piece you may require. Most of the kids on here won't even know, RS usually had a vacuum tube tester. Ok, they don't even know what a vacuum tube looks like.:) Now, we just take something that's broken, throw it away, and buy a new one. Oh, I forgot. There's a higher profit margin there. RS makes more money selling you a new [insert consumer item], than the components that only cost a few cents, to fix the old one.
I just built out two Linux servers, with AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Processor and 16GB RAM and 16TB RAID5. Those are office servers, so they're only busy during the week. Then a Windows workstation, AMD Phenom II x4 955 running at 3.8Ghz with 8GB RAM and a 2TB RAID 0.
Ya, I'm ready to do some rendering... I'll have until I'm awake enough to be able to read all the words on their page. Parts of my brain that understand written language seem to still be booting.
I wouldn't know. I never used NC. I was always very happy with my copy of DesqView, with 3 windows running my BBS, and the fourth for whatever I wanted to do. Oh, the good old days.:)
Planets? These aren't even *stars* they're looking at, they're entire galaxies
Ya, I just re-read what I wrote. I can't believe I wrote planets. I frequently am talking to my girlfriend while I'm writing, so sometimes I type what I'm saying rather than what I'm thinking.:)
Most of what we're seeing are galaxies, supernovas, and even galactic clusters.
And can you imagine how messy the plot would be if they gave us some clue of the galaxy motions? It's a horrible mess as it is. If they added a bunch of vectors showing the peculiar velocity (a conversion, by the way, that *also* involves a lot of model-specific assumptions, since the bulk of the galaxy motion is coming from the universal expansion, which has to be subtracted) then it would look like a child's scribble.
I wasn't suggesting that they show the motion in the plot. It would give the ability to add some fluidity to a 3d map. Not only could we move among the "stars" (galaxies, as you so properly noted), but you could set an accelerated timetable to be able to move among them in their motion. I do realize that we'd be talking about something on the scale of a minute equals a million years or more, and just because we know two objects are heading towards each other doesn't really mean much as our perception from here is just a dot in the sky, and those objects may be light years apart, moving on non-intersecting paths. It will still be far more interesting, and let our imaginations wander than "look, here's a 2d picture of a 3d rendering, which isn't actually 3d."
Consider how many people "travel" along Google Earth, just to have the idea of the experience of traveling over vast distances. I've gone cruising up along the Asian Pacific coast just to see what's there. I've found interesting places on it, and have sent the links to some ex-military intelligence friends of mine so we could have interesting discussions on what it could be. I found a fleet of submarines off of North Korea, and nuclear power stations in both North Korea and China. They weren't marked as "Here's a nuclear power plant". Actually, they weren't marked as anything at all being there. There are some signatures you can look for in the photos which make their real purpose pretty obvious.
People have a lot of curiosity, and that includes traveling through places that they can't. I doubt China nor North Korea would ever let me fly along their borders or hundreds of miles inland arbitrarily to look at things that they'd rather keep secret. But the secrets aren't just in far away places. For example, someone told me a story about being at a military base on the Aleution chain. This was back in the Vietnam era. The whole purpose of that base was to watch a Russian base on the horizon. So I said to myself "Hey, lets see if we can find them." Both bases appear to be almost totally abandon, but I found some small airports near by, and the FAA had live streaming weather cameras up. With public weather information, and looking through the cameras, it gave me a sense of being there. Since it was about 90 degrees here, it gave me chills almost immersing myself in as much information as I could find about that place. Sometimes you see things you are pretty sure you didn't, like this. Hmmm, looking at this one more, there's an awful lot of man made stuff out there, including 3 airports, and some recent tire tracks in the snow. Well, as recent as the last images were taken, but still.... It makes you wonder what you'd find if you went there to visit. It's not really recommended though, since the DOE considers it hot, and the nearest help when you realize your freezing your ass off in the middle of nowhere, is NAS Attu.
How much could the universe have changed in 380 million years.
Oh... ya... An awful lot. This is what was observed from a single location, looking at a very small portion of the sky (approx 1/10,000), looking for a specific type of supernova. In 3 years, in 1/10,000th of the sky, they identified 241 new supernovas.
I know you can't extrapolate that tiny sample set out to the whole period. That would be far too easy. (241 * 10000) * 380 million years. Nope, that'd be way too easy. And ya, planets, stars, and entire galaxies come and go. There's a whole new universe out there to explore. Oh. We don't have space travel.
Right, but a mess of colors on a 2d image then doesn't give us an indication of what color the planets are, nor can we easily identify distance.
They have the source data that generated the image. There's no way any of us (ok, most of us) are going to try to reverse engineer the list from the image. Even if we did reverse engineer direction and distance, that still doesn't give us indication of motion in the galaxies or around other bodies, but I guess we could at least find the outward vector from what we perceive as the center of the universe.
if you think any conceivable spacecraft could bring enough of it in to make a dent in the prices.
You're overthinking it.
You don't need any conceivable spacecraft to bring it home. You only need to get it into a geostationary orbit, and thrust appropriately to simulate dropping straight down slowly. There are tremendous options for reentry that don't involve burning the shit out of the hull of your spacecraft (or the payload). It just takes a lot of fuel, which is impractical to lift from Earth.
That is, of course, if the buyers are on Earth or want it for space purposes. The buyer always determines the destination.
The future of space travel, including developing new and better propulsion system, will *require* people living in it. Observing and experimenting with it. Making propulsion devices that work, and those that don't.
Right now, our understanding of space travel is primitive at best. We're like sailors in the Rocky Mountains, planning ships send to the open seas. The only experience we have so far is sending a whole bunch of paper sailboats down a creek, and a few bamboo rafts.
The people who learned to build ships that could cross the ocean lived on the shore. The built and sailed and learned from each others achievements.
We don't really know anything about space travel, and we never will, unless we try.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure they'll wrap it in a better sounding decision, but essentially, yes.
The job itself isn't really all that fun. You're dealing with people from the beginning of your shift, to the end of your shift, who all hate you. Everyone from traffic cops writing tickets, to special crime units, their job is to enforce the law, which means someone you encounter is going to get the shit end of the stick.
I have never heard anyone sincerely say "Well thank you for stopping me officer. I wasn't aware that I was going 5 miles per hour over the speed limit. I really appreciate it that you have given me this $150 reminder to slow down. Have a beautiful day." Nope, it's more like (either verbalized or in your mind) "Fuck you, I wasn't speeding, if I wasn't running late already, I'd back my car over you, but I don't want to have to stop again to wash the blood off."
And that's the easy shift.
Try showing up to do a preliminary interview on a murder suspect.
If they're innocent of the murder, they may cooperate. They may say "fuck you, call my lawyer", or shoot you, because you might find the 100 kilos of heroin in the spare bedroom being sorted and bagged by illegal aliens you had smuggled into the country for just that purpose. But the crime doesn't always resemble the reaction. They may just shoot because there's an outstanding speeding ticket that wasn't ever paid. And, that's just the innocent people.
If they're guilty, that changes the playing field, sort of. Some think they can talk their way out of anything. Some don't. And when they realize that the conversation is going towards "you have the right to remain silent", out comes Uncle Glock to finish the conversation.
I, by no means, am implying that any of it is right. Law enforcement, rent a cops, and ... well, whatever the TSA is suppose to be (we are not law enforcement, but we are the government, and you surrendered your rights the moment you thought about buying a plane ticket, you terrorist scum). They all pick and choose the laws the enforce. And frequently enough to make the news every day if you look for it, they just plain make up the laws. Yes, you are allowed to film on a public street. You need model releases if it's for commercial purposes. And no, anyone at any level (outlined at the beginning of this paragraph) cannot just decide "Fuck you, you can't do that. I'm going to smash your shit and arrest you for whatever I feel like, after I get done kicking you and your girlfriend a few dozen times. That'll teach you to talk back to me." Ok, they may not say all those words, but by about the 5th swift kick into your ribs, or trying to kick your head like a soccer ball, the implication is there.
And no, nothing that we can say or whine about is going to make a bit of difference. There's one route that will change it, and that is significant change. But I am not advocating the change that can be implied, because those who start it will not survive to see the end of it.
Actually, the way Florida law reads (and probably in other states), anyone injured during the commission of a crime will be found at fault for that injury.
This is the way it was explained to me in law enforcement school.
If Suspect A were robbing a bank. The police show up, secure the area around it, and the situation escalates. Suspect A realizes he doesn't have a chance, and comes out of the bank, gun held above his head in a submission manner. SWAT is going to be in full battle gear (body armor, assault weapons, etc).
IB 1 (Innocent Bystander 1), a 90 year old gentleman, see the commotion, realizes what's happening and has a heart attack and dies. Not a shot has been fired yet.
SWAT1, a member of the SWAT team determines that the submissive manner isn't submissive, but aggressive, and fires. Because of the shot, every officer on the scene starts firing. we'll assume for this argument, that none of the officers shots hit their target due to the distance from the police line, and the inaccuracy of their weapon.
Random shots ricochet and hit IB 2 through IB 10, people who were standing at another police line (on the other side of the street, or an intersecting street, it doesn't really matter).
The shooting stops, ambulances come and collect the injured. Here's the summary.
Injured: Suspect A
Fatality: IB 1, IB 2 - IB 4 (3 dead from gunfire injuries, one from heart attack)
Who did it?
SWAT1 injured Suspect A.
Other officers injured IB 5 - IB 10
Other officers killed IB 2 - IB 4
So when the charges come down, who gets charged?
SWAT 1 - no charges.
Officers - no charges.
Suspect A - 4 homicides, 6 attempted homicides, all without firing a single shot.
The logic goes like this. If Suspect A had never been robbing the bank, the police would not have responded. The scenario would have never happened, and therefore it's all Suspect A's fault.
The same applies to the real case in question. The blame *WILL* be laid on the driver who is now dead. The IA investigation regarding the shooting will likely find that it was a good shooting. There may be some misconduct charges for the threats to bystanders and destruction of private property. That'll result in a nasty note in their file, and maybe a few days of paid vacation.
You know, I half-way considered it, but ... I'm fairly confident that they're really on track to release as promised. Despite that, I'm not confident enough to lay down even a few bucks. A playable demo *may* make me want to part with my hard earned dollars. An excellent demo experience would make that even more likely.
But, as someone not willing to part with $45 to be one of the first people to find out if it sucks or not.
Actually, it seems they like those. They read them all the time. Well, if they publish frequently enough. I've seen every intelligence organization I've ever heard of, and quite a few even friends in the government (current and retired) couldn't guess at. Some of them take some substantial research, but you know it's bound to be something with the US Gov't when it ends in .gov or .mil. Very few .gov's that I've seen come by are locate or state. Maybe it's because of the demographic who seems to like our news.
It really did become the Star Trek tricorder. The damned thing could do anything and then some. Need to adjust a cell phone to work through time and space? [points sonic at it] Done. Need to see what this lifeform is? [points sonic at it] Done. Need to fix the computers that were just destroyed in a massive explosion? [points sonic at it] [points it again] Done.
They really need to just consider what it is. A sonic screwdriver. A device that sends a tuned frequency out. Some things, like unlocking modern doors, could be feasible, but it would require a tensioner too. Look at what a lock pick gun, a lock pick rake, or even a bump key do. But, a sonic device against a keypad? That makes just as much sense as shooting one to make the door fall open. Sure as hell, when I finish forming my evil intergalactic empire, I'll make sure it has locks that work, not locks that you can just shoot, kick, or yell at. I also will have well positioned guards and surveillance, and not build in secret back doors to subvert my own security.
If some schmuck in a blue box shows up, I'll have him captured immediately. He won't be able to just walk in, steal my evil universe destroying device, and disappear with it.
Ya, I know. I was reading a study on increased lightning strikes on motor vehicles due to it. They're using more carbon in performance tires, to assist with traction.
But.. This wasn't recent, it was about 20 years ago, and still, I wasn't touching the metal surface of the bulb, and I was wearing sneakers (pretty much all I wore back then), so I was insulated from the car by my shoes. The contacts on the bulb were isolated from me by an air gap.
Well, that 100mW depends on the AP.
A lot of them are only running at 80mw or less. I just did a quick search. The Linksys WAP54G puts out 16.5dBm for 802.11b, or approx 44.67mW. The WRT54G puts out 42mW, but you can crank that up past 100mW through some simple hacks. I use the Tomato firmware, which lets me set it from 1mW to 250mW. For the best signal to my relay AP, I leave it set to 200mW. That's enough to push through the walls, without causing signal distortion.
I had an Orinoco PCCard that put out 200mW. I had a 24dBi antenna attached, so my signal was about 47dBm, so I was well over 1W, but nowhere near 1000W. That wasn't for an in-building purpose though. It was specifically for a dedicated long range directional link over 1/2 mile, showing 100% signal strength at both ends.
Despite what anyone might claim, it didn't cook my hand when I was adjusting it. I put my hand in front of it, just to say I did. No heating, no burns, nothing other than interfering with the signal. That was a point to point, between the low end at about 25' AGL, and the high end about 90' AGL. The only signal problem I ever had was when some damned bamboo trees grew up into the line of sight. At first, the signal degraded when the wind blew. (the wind blew the tree in to block the signal). As they grew, it eventually became enough of a problem where I cut down the offending trees from the cluster.
It should be, and usually is. The obvious sign of that is, the signal is blocked all the time, when the metal box (microwave) is between the AP and the client. If it isn't in the "line of sight", a leaky microwave will still cause interference.
I had a friend with an old microwave. We'd talk for about an hour at a time, various times in our conversation, he may throw a cup of water in the microwave to make coffee. As soon as he hit the start button, all I'd hear was interference. He's walk away from the microwave and it would be fine. When he went back (after it had finished), we'd carry on the conversation with no problems. He wasn't moving to put the handset on the wrong side of the microwave or any other signal blocking object.
More often than not, interference is caused by some RF blocking material (like the refrigerator or the steel plate in your head), not the cravings of the stoner next door making cheese nachos.
Nice pictures. :) Obviously the lines are too low, or under a heavy load.
For reference, in case anyone wonders, it's not necessary to put them to ground (neither electrically and physically). When I did it, I held it in my hand, holding it by the glass part of the tube. The only reason for doing that was that the metal part isn't really all that big. :) Standing on the car, I was insulated from the ground by the tires, but since the metal ends weren't touching anything at all, it didn't matter.
That must have really taken some dedication to get them all arranged like that. I followed the link to the creators site, and he has more pictures. You can see that the tubes are all perfectly vertical, and perfectly spaced. He used 1,301 tubes in 3,600 square meters (38,750 square feet or 0.89 acres)
Several years ago, I had two pairs of cordless phones (house line and business line), and my wireless network. The house itself was very quiet as far as RF went. We were fairly isolated, with only one house adjoining us, and they didn't have anything wireless.
The house line and cordless line ran perfectly happily together at 2.4Ghz. Then I bought the new phones for the business line. It too was 2.4Ghz. As soon as I plugged it in, it killed the network and house phone. It was like a big kill light switch, and it didn't matter what channel I switched the wifi to. I had to return it to the store, and picked up a 5.8Ghz phone instead.
All of the equipment were good brand name items. They were all digital, frequenting hopping, so there should have been no interference. Some just don't play well with others.
I've helped people identify wifi problems. I have seen some troublesome microwave ovens. I've seen a lot more problems where an appliance is in the "line of sight" (through the wall) between the AP and the client. It's usually the refrigerator. They're amazed when I can move the AP a little to the side, or raise it up, to reduce their interference. I try to explain, when you have the AP, shoved behind the computer, with their UPS on one side, and a steel file cabinet on the other side, you've blocked the signal. Once I've moved it, they complain that the AP is ugly and they don't want it on their desk or on top of the file cabinet. {sigh}
Have you ever taken a flourescent tube and held it under high power transmission lines? Something like this.
Depending on the current load and the height of the lines, you can get it to light up pretty close to the ground. I've done it while standing on the ground (tube at 3 to 5 feet AGL). Sometimes it required standing on the car and holding it straight up (tube at about 8 to 10 feet AGL). You'd be surprised to find out what's there, that you can't see.
They could adopt the the DHS threat level color method. Every release would be orange, with the exception of the occasional red update, which would be randomly selected by background noise.
You know, I understand the Linux kernel version numbers, and even that gave me a headache. I guess they let the monkeys out of the cages at the NSA once in a while, just to taunt the rest of us. :)
I was just trying to get all the digits in order, and place them somewhere in the right area. I guess 48.151, -16.2342 would have been a little better.
It could have been possible for them to head that way, if there was a big nasty storm off the coast of Spain and Southwestern France.
For those not keeping track, see the points we've discussed HERE. Points A through D and H were actual points on the route.
About a decade or so ago, I worked in a small computer store. We brought a guy on who rebuilt monitors. He had been in the US Navy repairing electronics on a carrier (if I recall correctly). He could work through almost any problem, and ended up collecting a decent set of monitor schematics. We charged $100 per monitor repair. It liked the work, because the company got good money, and he was paid a flat rate (like $40 per monitor, if I remember right). Most of them had common faults, so he could go through several per hour. He could do just about any component, including surface mount. His work was to repair monitors, but he could fix just about anything. We had a Soundblaster card, when they were going for over $100. Rather than sending it back, he looked and said "give me a few minutes, I'll have it fixed. He found the fault and had it fixed in just a few minutes. That made the customer happy, and we still got our hour repair rate ($50/hr on computers).
I've done some small repairs, but I don't even attempt surface mount stuff. I prefer to stick with the big obvious stuff, unless I designed and built the board.
My best guess, assuming the flight crew weren't idiots, was that the turbulent air they were in hit them from above and from the front. It would have shoved them down, and the indicated airspeed would have been high.
The autopilot would have most likely set the nose up, to climb back to the intended altitude, and that should have bled some of the airspeed off. It could have also throttled them back to reduce speed to where they needed to be.
When the wind stopped hitting them, they were suddenly underspeed with the nose up. When they stalled, the control surfaces wouldn't do anything right. Compare it to driving on ice. Once you lose traction, you can tell the car to do anything you want, and it will do anything it wants. You can consider an airplane as always driving on ice. The laminar airflow over the wings is their traction. Laminar airflow is where the air moves smoothly across the surface of the wing and control surfaces (elevator, rudder, and ailerons). Without that, you don't get lift, nor do the control surfaces work. When I learned to fly, the FAA required hands-on practice in stalls and spins. From what I understand, it's no longer required for private pilots, but I'd expect it would be required for commercial pilots.
From what I read, it indicated they had pulled back on the stick, which would have been wrong, unless the pilot(s) thought they had hit some really rough air, and were in a steep dive, or even inverted. The mention of them giving nose-up input may not have been the whole story either. They may have tried everything, and had no positive response. There was a mention that they tried to turn one way, and the aircraft turned the other way. In the end, they had changed their heading by about 180 degrees (i.e., they turned around), which probably wasn't intentional.
Once they were nose up and stalled, they were pretty much stuck falling. The only solution is to get a laminar airflow over the wings. Full throttle may have solved it, but apparently it didn't.
There may have been other circumstances that we aren't aware of. They had ice in the pitot tube. It could have been on the wings and intake of the engines also. I don't know if that aircraft has any way to indicate ice on the wings. If there was, it may have been very difficult to get moving properly again. That happened on Flight 3407 years ago also. Ice on the wings contributed to the loss of that aircraft, as did the improper response by the flight crew.
That's all just supposition based on the little bit of information that I know.
So that makes you just as nervous as it makes me?
I wouldn't mind if they had at least a mechanical backups to the essential instruments. Compass, altimeter, airspeed indicator, attitude indicator, and vertical speed indicator.
If all (electronic and mechanical) airspeed indicators show 0, but you think you're flying, they're probably wrong. If the electronic gauges indicate everything is fine, but your lunch is stuck to the ceiling, and the mechanical gauges show your dropping like a rock, it's time to do something different.
Putting the aircraft 40 degrees nose up with a low air speed is catastrophic, as they found out.
Coincidentally, that was the order number with airbus.
And the last update from ATC had them going to their waypoint at 48.1516 -23.42 to avoid weather, before turning a heading of 049.
Damn, now you know the next two digits. Well, we don't have to worry about you guessing the next 8 pairs before ... well, you'll find out the end of next year.
There was a gap of years, where I didn't need anything because I didn't have time to play around with my own electronics. I went back in looking for some little pieces. Don't ask me what. Resistors, switches, relays, or something along those lines. It really hurt to see that they didn't even sell a soldering iron. I asked the guy at the counter. He had been a long time employee, and we had a good chat about it. There was one RS store in the area that had *some* parts.
A few years ago, I needed a high load solid state relay / optical isolator. Pretty much, I was making a spark gap generator. Well, ideally it wouldn't be, since it was to be putting a current through water to test electrolysis at different frequencies and voltages. I couldn't handle the current through the equipment I had. 15A 170VDC is a bit strong. :) There were no local vendors. I could have ordered it from one of several domestic companies, but the price was too high. I ended up ordering them from some guy in Turkey who had a couple listed up on eBay for $5.
And for those wondering, 130VAC (full bridge rectified to DC) fed to carbon plates does a wonderful job of electrolysis. For my testing, it was perfect as far as the rate went. It was completely infeasible for the intended application. And as others have found (just check YouTube), you want to ensure your electrodes never have a shorter path through the air (resulting gasses), or you'll find your device exploding very quickly. My tests at that level lasted for about 2 seconds. :)
But back to the original purpose. Ya, I miss the days where you could go into the store and pick up any little piece you may require. Most of the kids on here won't even know, RS usually had a vacuum tube tester. Ok, they don't even know what a vacuum tube looks like. :) Now, we just take something that's broken, throw it away, and buy a new one. Oh, I forgot. There's a higher profit margin there. RS makes more money selling you a new [insert consumer item], than the components that only cost a few cents, to fix the old one.
Ohhh, the evil you have brought upon us..
I just built out two Linux servers, with AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Processor and 16GB RAM and 16TB RAID5. Those are office servers, so they're only busy during the week. Then a Windows workstation, AMD Phenom II x4 955 running at 3.8Ghz with 8GB RAM and a 2TB RAID 0.
Ya, I'm ready to do some rendering... I'll have until I'm awake enough to be able to read all the words on their page. Parts of my brain that understand written language seem to still be booting.
I wouldn't know. I never used NC. I was always very happy with my copy of DesqView, with 3 windows running my BBS, and the fourth for whatever I wanted to do. Oh, the good old days. :)
Ya, I just re-read what I wrote. I can't believe I wrote planets. I frequently am talking to my girlfriend while I'm writing, so sometimes I type what I'm saying rather than what I'm thinking. :)
Most of what we're seeing are galaxies, supernovas, and even galactic clusters.
I wasn't suggesting that they show the motion in the plot. It would give the ability to add some fluidity to a 3d map. Not only could we move among the "stars" (galaxies, as you so properly noted), but you could set an accelerated timetable to be able to move among them in their motion. I do realize that we'd be talking about something on the scale of a minute equals a million years or more, and just because we know two objects are heading towards each other doesn't really mean much as our perception from here is just a dot in the sky, and those objects may be light years apart, moving on non-intersecting paths. It will still be far more interesting, and let our imaginations wander than "look, here's a 2d picture of a 3d rendering, which isn't actually 3d."
Consider how many people "travel" along Google Earth, just to have the idea of the experience of traveling over vast distances. I've gone cruising up along the Asian Pacific coast just to see what's there. I've found interesting places on it, and have sent the links to some ex-military intelligence friends of mine so we could have interesting discussions on what it could be. I found a fleet of submarines off of North Korea, and nuclear power stations in both North Korea and China. They weren't marked as "Here's a nuclear power plant". Actually, they weren't marked as anything at all being there. There are some signatures you can look for in the photos which make their real purpose pretty obvious.
People have a lot of curiosity, and that includes traveling through places that they can't. I doubt China nor North Korea would ever let me fly along their borders or hundreds of miles inland arbitrarily to look at things that they'd rather keep secret. But the secrets aren't just in far away places. For example, someone told me a story about being at a military base on the Aleution chain. This was back in the Vietnam era. The whole purpose of that base was to watch a Russian base on the horizon. So I said to myself "Hey, lets see if we can find them." Both bases appear to be almost totally abandon, but I found some small airports near by, and the FAA had live streaming weather cameras up. With public weather information, and looking through the cameras, it gave me a sense of being there. Since it was about 90 degrees here, it gave me chills almost immersing myself in as much information as I could find about that place. Sometimes you see things you are pretty sure you didn't, like this. Hmmm, looking at this one more, there's an awful lot of man made stuff out there, including 3 airports, and some recent tire tracks in the snow. Well, as recent as the last images were taken, but still.... It makes you wonder what you'd find if you went there to visit. It's not really recommended though, since the DOE considers it hot, and the nearest help when you realize your freezing your ass off in the middle of nowhere, is NAS Attu.
How much could the universe have changed in 380 million years.
Oh... ya... An awful lot. This is what was observed from a single location, looking at a very small portion of the sky (approx 1/10,000), looking for a specific type of supernova. In 3 years, in 1/10,000th of the sky, they identified 241 new supernovas.
I know you can't extrapolate that tiny sample set out to the whole period. That would be far too easy. (241 * 10000) * 380 million years. Nope, that'd be way too easy. And ya, planets, stars, and entire galaxies come and go. There's a whole new universe out there to explore. Oh. We don't have space travel.
Right, but a mess of colors on a 2d image then doesn't give us an indication of what color the planets are, nor can we easily identify distance.
They have the source data that generated the image. There's no way any of us (ok, most of us) are going to try to reverse engineer the list from the image. Even if we did reverse engineer direction and distance, that still doesn't give us indication of motion in the galaxies or around other bodies, but I guess we could at least find the outward vector from what we perceive as the center of the universe.
You're overthinking it.
You don't need any conceivable spacecraft to bring it home. You only need to get it into a geostationary orbit, and thrust appropriately to simulate dropping straight down slowly. There are tremendous options for reentry that don't involve burning the shit out of the hull of your spacecraft (or the payload). It just takes a lot of fuel, which is impractical to lift from Earth.
But where, oh where, oh where would you find something to give you propulsion?
That is, of course, if the buyers are on Earth or want it for space purposes. The buyer always determines the destination.
The future of space travel, including developing new and better propulsion system, will *require* people living in it. Observing and experimenting with it. Making propulsion devices that work, and those that don't.
Right now, our understanding of space travel is primitive at best. We're like sailors in the Rocky Mountains, planning ships send to the open seas. The only experience we have so far is sending a whole bunch of paper sailboats down a creek, and a few bamboo rafts.
The people who learned to build ships that could cross the ocean lived on the shore. The built and sailed and learned from each others achievements.
We don't really know anything about space travel, and we never will, unless we try.