This has both good novelty value and potential to freak people out, but what about the impact of a new UI for cars?
Yeah. Cool.
Fill it with a brew involving fertilizer, and you've got a land-based cruise missile, ready for deployment, indistinguishable (well, maybe except for the smell) from lots of other cars.
Nice toy. I can imagine uses for something like that, in the wrong hands.
I was under the impression that the Columbia disaster happened *ABOVE* 10,000 feet.
Way, way above, beyond the point where 'normal' (as normal for the Shuttle as can be, anyway) flight dynamics are actually in effect... the point where they're doing the S-Curves to burn off delta-v enough for the atmosphere to actually *get its grip* on the Shuttle body...
Fly the S-curves by stick, and then tell me it's something that *every crew* does by hand...
If NASA would just give up on the option for human-controlled flight, they would be able to scrap the cockpit, and design a shielded "passenger" bay instead.
If only NASA (or somebody) would build a small, cheap-to-build, *SINGLE PERSON* Shuttle designed to keep just *one* human body alive during exit and entry, then we'd be in much better shape with the Space Program.
The requirement that we all go up together is just stupid. Mercury was cheap, and by todays standards, could be even cheaper.
At the point where Columbia was lost, the entry envelope was *DEFINITELY* under computer control.
At that point in the envelope, I believe only one human being has ever taken the stick, and he let auto-pilot take over. Columbia was doing it as planned: by computer.
Columbia was still going too fast, so at 8:49 a.m. it made the first of three planned sweeping S-curve maneuvers, banking first to the right and, later, to the left. These maneuvers extend the time the shuttle is in the atmosphere and can be slowed by friction.
The computer was still doing the flying, and that was supposed to continue until about three minutes before landing, when the astronauts would take computer-assisted manual control.
If something had gone wrong, said Rob Navias, a press officer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the astronauts could override the computers. It has never been done, and Hauck said it probably would not be done except in the most extreme circumstances, because computers can react more quickly than humans.
Word I have is that this S-curve maneuver has only had human hands involved with it *once*, and it was a quick default back to auto-pilot... It was not 'done', and it has always been 'done' by computers.
Ummm... those are all on final approach. I think that these overrides you're quoting occurred *much* later in the envelope than where the accident occurred.
I thought they were 20 minutes or so away from final when they lost contact?
What I'm referring to is the descent stage, prior to the point where full control surface energy allows 'gliding' to occur.
It's my understanding that the Shuttle broke up a fair ways *before* it would've been possible for the final approach, in the stage of the re-entry program whereby very *long* wide sweeps through the atmosphere are done to burn off enough delta-V for the control surfaces to start to take effect, so they're not *dropping* so fast any more. This is where the wing surfaces do the brunt of their work, dispelling heat energy as well as delta-v... no?
I know the CS" doesn't truly start to perform until *ground effect* kicks in... but I mean, weren't they at the point where it was mostly 'plummet for 15 minutes' and not 'glide for the last 5 minutes'...
Yeah, but the only video/audio they've got though, is from 20 minutes or so *before* shit started hitting the fan...
I presume that this 'autopilot knock' occurred at a point where it wasn't critical at all, just an info to ground control so that they knew what the data they were inevitably seeing about the FCS was indicating...
Nobody has done it except for the first crew. If I remember correctly, the first Shuttle pilot (dunno his name, some ex-Navy pilot) attempted to manually guide the Shuttle during its landing approach, and did so for a few minutes only to give up and let the auto-pilot take over, mid-way through.
I could have this story wrong (hey, it happens) but I do remember that there's little reason - other than extreme catastrophic failure of onboard systems - for a Shuttle pilot to attempt to override the autopilot. Such catastrophic failures of the onboard systems would definitely have been detected by NASA on the ground previously...
So, I'd say, there's little chance that an autopilot-override was performed by the crew which lead to the failure.
But then, I dunno. I get most of my understanding of the Shuttle landing procedure from the X-Plane sim, which makes it very clear that it's extremely difficult for a human being to land the Shuttle...
But if you want rich multimedia content, the ability to do serious 3D imaging on the fly (think 3D operating systems) and the like, you're going to need more RAM. The only way to get that is with a 64-bit chip.
Ummm... no. If you want to fix this problem, use an OS that doesn't burn up half available RAM for itself...
Well, the US gave itself that right, a few day's after 9/11, or more specifically the American President authorized it. Which one (shadow or frontman) is left as an exercise to the reader.
This right is yet to be challenged in any International court, because the US refuses to recognize the authority of any court outside its borders.
The only court the US recognizes is... you guessed it, The World Bank.
To whom the good ol' U$ofA, (Inc.) owes a few trillion dollars, and has been seriously deficient paying its interest to, lately...
Fair enough, but you're forgetting about Germany, Japan, Australia, France, Italy, Mexico, Peru, and probably a few other 'nation states' which the U.S. has assisted in the road to becoming a so-called democratic repbublic.
Just wanted to balance your argument, before an American comes and does it for you, albeit super-aggressively.
I've invested in every single generation of PC since the 8088 days. I've only recently decided to go Mac-only on the personal level, though I do still maintain plenty of servers.
I'm completely multi-platform friendly, having owned SGI boxes, Sun, PC's, Wang, you name it. I don't care, at this point, about anything but stability and predictability in operational status.
Something you just don't get with Microsoft: predictability in operational status and procedure.
... is it just me, or does OSX frickin' rock or what?
What would you have to do to do something like this in Windows land? Some sort of.DLL monkeybusiness? Registry hacking?
Man, am I ever glad I switched. Friend of mine just came to my office to report yet *another* full re-install of WinXP is required on his test machine because... 'something has gone wrong with the USB driver updates'.
Can he figure it out? No. Is he stupid? No. Does Microsoft suck at designing OS's that make sense? Yes.
Oh man, the sky is the limit... development in the OSS realm is *easier*, because you can compare notes with other professionals who have - quite often - explored territories you've only begun to chart.
Focus shifts, then, on feature and performance, and the ol' not-sure-if-I-am-doing-this-right-because-I-don't- fully-understand-the-only-docs-I-can-find janx spirit becomes less and less evident... of course, there is plenty of that janx in linux land, but I believe you're referring to OSS specifically from an 'edge' developers perspective here, not user. Guys on the edge deal with janx.
As someone who has followed the TRON project since its earliest inception, this is really great news to me. TRON was - in the early 80's a conceptual framework for a computing on a massive scale.
Essentially, all devices in the TRON class - no matter their hardware design - would be able to communicate freely with each other, exchange information, and share load.
So, your fridges processor (or storage space) could be used as overflow if your microwave oven decides it needs just a little extra power to do what you're telling it to... all the way up to your personal communications system (conceptually, at the time, just-another-appliance).
I, personally, have been waiting for years to see what comes of TRON and the OSS movement - having had one foot firmly planted in both boats - and so for this sort of event to occur is very motivational indeed...
Slashdot Mirror
This has both good novelty value and potential to freak people out, but what about the impact of a new UI for cars?
Yeah. Cool.
Fill it with a brew involving fertilizer, and you've got a land-based cruise missile, ready for deployment, indistinguishable (well, maybe except for the smell) from lots of other cars.
Nice toy. I can imagine uses for something like that, in the wrong hands.
I bet that a fairly large % of the people that read
Thus, it isn't bullshit. We're not talking about "people", we're talking within the context of
Nothing like being sold something you could build yourself in a few hours...
I was under the impression that the Columbia disaster happened *ABOVE* 10,000 feet.
...
Way, way above, beyond the point where 'normal' (as normal for the Shuttle as can be, anyway) flight dynamics are actually in effect... the point where they're doing the S-Curves to burn off delta-v enough for the atmosphere to actually *get its grip* on the Shuttle body...
Fly the S-curves by stick, and then tell me it's something that *every crew* does by hand
I mean failure of onboard flight control systems (computers) ...
If NASA would just give up on the option for human-controlled flight, they would be able to scrap the cockpit, and design a shielded "passenger" bay instead.
If only NASA (or somebody) would build a small, cheap-to-build, *SINGLE PERSON* Shuttle designed to keep just *one* human body alive during exit and entry, then we'd be in much better shape with the Space Program.
The requirement that we all go up together is just stupid. Mercury was cheap, and by todays standards, could be even cheaper.
It was not 'done', and it has always been 'done' by computers.
:|
--
Ermm... except in this case of course.
At the point where Columbia was lost, the entry envelope was *DEFINITELY* under computer control.
... It was not 'done', and it has always been 'done' by computers.
At that point in the envelope, I believe only one human being has ever taken the stick, and he let auto-pilot take over. Columbia was doing it as planned: by computer.
Here, read the 8:49 a.m. section here:
Columbia was still going too fast, so at 8:49 a.m. it made the first of three planned sweeping S-curve maneuvers, banking first to the right and, later, to the left. These maneuvers extend the time the shuttle is in the atmosphere and can be slowed by friction.
The computer was still doing the flying, and that was supposed to continue until about three minutes before landing, when the astronauts would take computer-assisted manual control.
If something had gone wrong, said Rob Navias, a press officer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the astronauts could override the computers. It has never been done, and Hauck said it probably would not be done except in the most extreme circumstances, because computers can react more quickly than humans.
Word I have is that this S-curve maneuver has only had human hands involved with it *once*, and it was a quick default back to auto-pilot
I would suspect that they have a leetle bit more training than you do.
I would consider you stupid to not suspect this, and now think you're a bit of a dickhead for bothering to mention it.
Ummm... those are all on final approach. I think that these overrides you're quoting occurred *much* later in the envelope than where the accident occurred.
...
I thought they were 20 minutes or so away from final when they lost contact?
What I'm referring to is the descent stage, prior to the point where full control surface energy allows 'gliding' to occur.
It's my understanding that the Shuttle broke up a fair ways *before* it would've been possible for the final approach, in the stage of the re-entry program whereby very *long* wide sweeps through the atmosphere are done to burn off enough delta-V for the control surfaces to start to take effect, so they're not *dropping* so fast any more. This is where the wing surfaces do the brunt of their work, dispelling heat energy as well as delta-v... no?
I know the CS" doesn't truly start to perform until *ground effect* kicks in... but I mean, weren't they at the point where it was mostly 'plummet for 15 minutes' and not 'glide for the last 5 minutes'
Thus, computer control over the re-entry.
Yeah, but the only video/audio they've got though, is from 20 minutes or so *before* shit started hitting the fan ...
I presume that this 'autopilot knock' occurred at a point where it wasn't critical at all, just an info to ground control so that they knew what the data they were inevitably seeing about the FCS was indicating...
... hands-on.
...
Nobody has done it except for the first crew. If I remember correctly, the first Shuttle pilot (dunno his name, some ex-Navy pilot) attempted to manually guide the Shuttle during its landing approach, and did so for a few minutes only to give up and let the auto-pilot take over, mid-way through.
I could have this story wrong (hey, it happens) but I do remember that there's little reason - other than extreme catastrophic failure of onboard systems - for a Shuttle pilot to attempt to override the autopilot. Such catastrophic failures of the onboard systems would definitely have been detected by NASA on the ground previously
So, I'd say, there's little chance that an autopilot-override was performed by the crew which lead to the failure.
But then, I dunno. I get most of my understanding of the Shuttle landing procedure from the X-Plane sim, which makes it very clear that it's extremely difficult for a human being to land the Shuttle...
Really, this is a great idea.
It's a non-technical way of ensuring that your customer gets details on system health.
Very, very good idea...
You can't deny that this is the MOTHER of all forgotten-movie collections ...
But if you want rich multimedia content, the ability to do serious 3D imaging on the fly (think 3D operating systems) and the like, you're going to need more RAM. The only way to get that is with a 64-bit chip.
Ummm... no. If you want to fix this problem, use an OS that doesn't burn up half available RAM for itself...
With a switch to 64-bit, I could put *timestamps* on *every* item of data my current 32-bit programs use.
This'd be nice. Every var has its own timestamp.
If you don't know why that's cool, or why that would be cool to someone like me, well
... where can we go besides CNN and /. for frequently-updated briefs on the situation?
There's gotta be a time for a thread-of-links, and this'd be it.
Well, the US gave itself that right, a few day's after 9/11, or more specifically the American President authorized it. Which one (shadow or frontman) is left as an exercise to the reader.
... you guessed it, The World Bank.
...
This right is yet to be challenged in any International court, because the US refuses to recognize the authority of any court outside its borders.
The only court the US recognizes is
To whom the good ol' U$ofA, (Inc.) owes a few trillion dollars, and has been seriously deficient paying its interest to, lately
Fair enough, but you're forgetting about Germany, Japan, Australia, France, Italy, Mexico, Peru, and probably a few other 'nation states' which the U.S. has assisted in the road to becoming a so-called democratic repbublic.
Just wanted to balance your argument, before an American comes and does it for you, albeit super-aggressively.
Capitalism also dictactes that there will be competing standards, and in this light, I say bring on the EuroGPS!
...
Lord knows, the backwash from drinking American coolaid is harsh enough as it is without them futzing with GPS along the way
GPS: The New WoMD!
Another option: Stick to plain C, open API's, POSIX where possible.
Well, you don't, but I do.
I've invested in every single generation of PC since the 8088 days. I've only recently decided to go Mac-only on the personal level, though I do still maintain plenty of servers.
I'm completely multi-platform friendly, having owned SGI boxes, Sun, PC's, Wang, you name it. I don't care, at this point, about anything but stability and predictability in operational status.
Something you just don't get with Microsoft: predictability in operational status and procedure.
Cheap crack is still crack.
... is it just me, or does OSX frickin' rock or what?
.DLL monkeybusiness? Registry hacking?
... 'something has gone wrong with the USB driver updates'.
What would you have to do to do something like this in Windows land? Some sort of
Man, am I ever glad I switched. Friend of mine just came to my office to report yet *another* full re-install of WinXP is required on his test machine because
Can he figure it out? No. Is he stupid? No. Does Microsoft suck at designing OS's that make sense? Yes.
i.e. portable to non-MMU, cheap processor families such as the Coldfire, MIPS, or ARM?
...
It's been a while since I bothered checking to see if such a thing as an 'embedded BSD distro' existed, guess it's time to suss it out
Oh man, the sky is the limit ... development in the OSS realm is *easier*, because you can compare notes with other professionals who have - quite often - explored territories you've only begun to chart.
- fully-understand-the-only-docs-I-can-find janx spirit becomes less and less evident ... of course, there is plenty of that janx in linux land, but I believe you're referring to OSS specifically from an 'edge' developers perspective here, not user. Guys on the edge deal with janx.
... all the way up to your personal communications system (conceptually, at the time, just-another-appliance).
Focus shifts, then, on feature and performance, and the ol' not-sure-if-I-am-doing-this-right-because-I-don't
As someone who has followed the TRON project since its earliest inception, this is really great news to me. TRON was - in the early 80's a conceptual framework for a computing on a massive scale.
Essentially, all devices in the TRON class - no matter their hardware design - would be able to communicate freely with each other, exchange information, and share load.
So, your fridges processor (or storage space) could be used as overflow if your microwave oven decides it needs just a little extra power to do what you're telling it to
I, personally, have been waiting for years to see what comes of TRON and the OSS movement - having had one foot firmly planted in both boats - and so for this sort of event to occur is very motivational indeed...